WHY IS CHRISTMAS IMPORTANT?

Introduction

-{Matthew 1}

-It is hard to believe that Christmas is only 10 days away. And just by me saying that, it may have sent some people’s anxiety through the roof because in your mind there is so much that still needs to be done. You may stress because you are trying to create the “perfect” Christmas experience. You want to get the perfect gift—and hopefully get it in time. You want your house to be pristine with the perfect decoration. You want to make sure that each dish of the meal you want to prepare is perfect.

~But is all of that what is most important? When you think about it, there is no such thing as perfection with anything in this world. And truly, wanting to have special time with family, do you believe that your family would be put off if everything wasn’t perfect? How much of the things we do to reach what we think is perfection is overlooked by family because that’s not what is most important to them.

-So, what is it that makes Christmas important, and what is most important about Christmas? Being here at a church service you would expect the answer to be Jesus because you shouldn’t expect anything less from a true church. And that is the correct answer, but it’s deeper than that. It is more meaningful than just giving a pat answer.

-There is a theological richness about Christmas that then moves us toward life-altering choices. If I were to summarize what we find in our passage it is that the theological importance of Christmas moves us toward life-changing belief. What I desire from today’s passage is that we don’t let the theological truths of Christmas get lost on us in all the hustle and bustle of the season. I want these truths to draw us closer to God in a way that changes us.

Matthew 1:18–25 LSB

18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. 19 And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. 20 But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the One who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. 21 “And she will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” 22 Now all this took place in order that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet would be fulfilled, saying, 23 “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which translated means, “God with us.” 24 And Joseph got up from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took Mary as his wife, 25 but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he called His name Jesus.

-{pray}

-Matthew’s version of the Christmas story focuses on important theology that we need to know, and it then reflects what our response ought to be. Matthew writes his gospel to demonstrate to Jews that Jesus fulfills God’s prophesied plans. So, we are going to reflect on a couple of theological points before we talk about what is to be our response to these truths. So, first I want to talk about...

1) The intervention of God

-The first important truth is that God has done a mighty, supernatural work on the earth that alters earth’s history and people’s eternity. God has intervened in the earth’s normal routine and has so changed things that human destiny in this life and the afterlife has made a complete change of course. He emphasizes that it did not come about from human ingenuity, but it came from God through this Christmas event.

-Matthew is the first gospel for a reason. It doesn’t mean that Matthew was written first (although there are some who believe it was). But it is a perfect segue from the Old Testament into the New Testament and how the two are consistent. They are one continuous story.

-We look at the Old Testament and we see how God created everything and because of humanity’s choices sin was introduced and creation fell. But from there we see how God declared His plan to redeem a remnant from humanity and eventually destroy the deceiver. But God doesn’t do everything at once, but He progressively moves toward His ultimate plan. It first starts by choosing one man, Abraham, through whom He would make a nation to represent Him on the earth.

-However, that nation would not be the ultimate goal, but they would be the conduit through whom God would bring about a Savior that would reverse the curse of sin and death. So, from Genesis through Malachi, we get bits and pieces of prophesy of what God would do and how He would do it. We would see pictures and shadows and types of where God was moving human history.

-But then everything kind of abruptly stops in Malachi. At that time Israel was under foreign control. The people were spiritually mediocre at best. God hadn’t fulfilled the promises as of yet. And then came 400+ years of silence. No prophecies. No supernatural acts of God. It’s as if God had cut Himself off from His people and from the world.

-But then comes Matthew who gives the rest of the story. God sent Jesus. Jesus is where everything in the Old Testament was headed. In the previous passage, Matthew starts with a genealogy to prove that Jesus is the fulfillment of the promises given in the Old Testament. Jesus is the seed of Abraham. Jesus is the promised eternal king from David’s line. Every prophecy, every picture, every shadow, every type that was given in the Old Testament pointed to who Jesus would be, what Jesus would do, and everything that His work would accomplish. Yes, there are some still to be fulfilled, but they will be fulfilled by, in, and through Jesus. Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah.

-So, after giving the genealogy, Matthew tells the world that the 400+ years of silence is over. The plan of redemption promised from the day of the Fall and prophesied for thousands of years has now come to fruition. God is intervening in human affairs and world history and is completely shaking up the physical and spiritual realms. Even when God seems silent, His promises will endure and God will intervene. And He did through Jesus Christ.

-I picture God’s intervention this way. Many years ago I went on a few mission trips to Japan. To learn their culture, we went to the city of Kyoto where there are many temples and shrines. Under one of the temples is a hall that is supposed to represent Buddha’s mom’s womb and in it is a stone that supposedly gives good luck and grants wishes if you touch it. But the catch is that the pathway to the hall and the hall itself is completely pitch black dark. No light at all. What you are supposed to do is keep your hand on a rope along the wall that leads to and through the hall and then back out.

~For obvious theological reasons I didn’t do it. But I want you to picture somebody walking through that darkness, but they slip and they no longer can find the rope. They can’t see where they are going. All they can do is grope around but it doesn’t get them anywhere. They need someone to come to them and intervene, to shine some light in the darkness to help them find their escape.

-That is a picture of the world and the people in it. The world was in the darkness of sin and the deception of the evil one. And unless God intervened with light to bring people to Him and the truth, all the world would do is grope around. But on that first Christmas morning, God intervened and brought the light. And that light is One who was born, but He is so much more than merely a human child. And Matthew demonstrates that through what he tells us about this child. So, this leads to our second theological point as we look at:

2) The significance of Jesus

-This passage records the extraordinary birth of Jesus Christ. Although Mary and Joseph were engaged, they were not fully married. They did not enjoy the physical benefits of marriage yet, but Matthew says that Mary was with child. But this child was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Not having an earthly father, conceived by the Holy Spirit, this child was not ordinary. Who was He? Why was He significant?

-A few weeks ago when we looked at the previous passage I talked about how the names of the child point to who He is and what He would accomplish. He is given the title of Christ, which is Greek for Anointed One or Messiah. And the name that He is given is Jesus. The name means YAHWEH saves. Jesus would save His people from their sins. He died on the cross, rose again, ascended into heaven, and had accomplished everything necessary to deliver those who believe in Him from the penalty and power of sin.

-But this passage adds something more. In v. 23 Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14 that 700 years prior had prophesied the means of the child’s birth and the significance of the child’s birth. Again, it reiterates that the virgin, one who did not have the physical relations to create a baby, nevertheless was pregnant with child. And the child is given another name here—a name that points to exactly who He is. This name is Immanuel, which is a Hebrew phrase that means God With Us. This child is significant in that He is not only human—which He was because He had a human mother. This child is God Himself—God with us humans.

-Pagan philosophies and religions try to pervert this story. They speak of deities that take on human form, have relations with women to produce demigods—human and deity hybrids. What Matthew and Luke describe for us could not be any further from these pagan aberrations. God did not have relations with Mary. Mary was a virgin, the Holy Spirit overshadowed her, and conceived a child while maintaining her virginity (as Matthew makes clear). The child was fully 100% human. But the child was also fully 100% God. No, we do not believe in multiple Gods. The Bible is clear there is only one God with one nature, yet with three persons within the one Godhead—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

-And John in His gospel tells us that God the Son, the Word, came to the earth as this child—both God and man, having the nature of both without losing any of the nature of the other. This is very hard for us to wrap our minds around, but Matthew tries to make it as clear to us as possible—the fully human child is God with us. It is hard to describe it any better than this through fear of accidentally falling into false teaching.

In the early centuries of the Church, theologians struggled to articulate the mystery of Jesus Christ as both fully God and fully man. Imagine a bridge spanning two cliffs—one cliff represents the divine nature of Christ, and the other cliff represents His human nature. Just as the bridge must be sturdy and balanced to support traffic from both cliffs, so too must our understanding of Christ. It must sit steadily on Him being fully human and being fully God.

-But think of the importance of this—from eternity past God had His plan of redemption in place knowing humanity would fall, and yet having a way to bring them back to Him without compromising His holiness and justice. And this is the way that God intervened—God became human—God came to us.

-This is significant because only a human can represent humanity to God, and only God can represent God to humanity. Only a human could take on the sin of the world, but only God could bear the brunt of the eternal justice to pay for that sin. Only one who is God with us and human could have brought the light to us to bring us out of the darkness.

-But not only is there this important theological truth, but there is something about this truth that speaks to our human experience. We have a God, who taking on humanity, experienced and suffered through so much that we do—except for sin. But He is able to sympathize with us because (according to Hebrews 4) He understands our weaknesses in every way. He is not only transcendent (meaning above us), He is also imminent (meaning that He understands our level of existence as well). So, when you are going through some trial, we shouldn’t think that God doesn’t get it or doesn’t care.

-You know, when you’re a teenager, and your parents try to give you life advice for something you’re going through, you have a tendency to ignore them or blow them off because you don’t think they know what you’re going through. You yell out “You don’t understand” and storm off. You forget that your parents have lived a good bit of life and used to be teenagers, so yes, they do get it. They do understand.

-And here’s the thing, God came to be with us and was fully one of us. And He experienced as one of us all the good and bad experiences that we ever have. So, He gets us. He does understand. And He wants us to seek Him in the midst of that trial. The significance of Jesus is that He is God with us. So, having looked at some of the theological importance of Christmas, I want to consider our response, and do so by looking at another person in our passage. So, finally today I want us to consider:

3) The belief of Joseph

-With everything that Joseph goes through in this passage, he is experiencing first hand the importance of Christmas. And we see in so many of his actions and reactions how we ought to react to the importance of Christmas. We are faced with these theological truths of God’s intervention and Jesus’ significance, now what?

-First, we seek to live a righteous life. Joseph and Mary are betrothed to one another. I know that in our day and age we might call it an engagement, but it was much more binding than that. It really was more like the first stage of marriage. A betrothal was legally binding. The man would pay the bride price and they would be legally connected. Then usually after about a year the man would come to get his wife and bring her to his home, and there would be the wedding proper, and they would then be fully married.

-But because it was considered part of the marriage, the only way to get out of it was to go through divorce. So, Joseph is betrothed to Mary and she is found to be pregnant, so Joseph assumes she was unfaithful—it would be considered adultery. He probably heard her explanation and thought it was quite far fetched. Now, in v. 19, it says that Joseph was a righteous man. That means that he sought to do what was right according to God’s standards. Having a fiancee that committed adultery was a breaking of the law, and he had every right to divorce her. Joseph wanted to do right in order to please God. And having the full theological picture that we have in Christ, we seek to do the same. Based on God’s intervention and Jesus’ significance, I want to do that which is right in God’s sight according to His standards. This is loving God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.

-But a second reaction to our important Christmas theological truths is to seek to be compassionate toward others. It says in v. 19 that he did not want to disgrace her, so he was willing to divorce her secretly or privately. In God’s law, the penalty for adultery was actually death—both parties involved would be taken out of the city and be stoned to death. However, under Roman rule, they were not legally allowed to carry out the death penalty. So, instead, the fiance or husband would bring the adulteress wife to the city gate where business was conducted, and she would be shamed and very openly and publicly divorced. Her name and reputation would be completely tarnished.

-Joseph did not that to happen to Mary. Even though he felt betrayed, he still loved her and did not want her or the child to face any more hostile scrutiny than what they would endure because of the situation. So, instead, he would get a couple of witnesses who was close to them and carry out the legal transaction without all the prying eyes. He showed her compassion. And we are reminded that Christmas itself is God showing compassion and mercy to sinful humanity. And we are called to show that same compassion and mercy to others, even if it is at great personal cost. This is loving our neighbor as ourselves.

-A third reaction to these truths is obedience. Joseph had been going back and forth in his mind about what to do about this situation, thinking about the divorce and how to go about it. With these things weighing heavy on his heart, he goes to sleep one night and an angel from the Lord appears to him in a dream and tells him to take Mary as his wife, because the child is of the Holy Spirit.

-And what does it say he does about it? In v. 24 he got up from his sleep and did what the angel of the Lord commanded him, taking Mary as his wife. When confronted with the truth of God which included a command from God, he did not hesitate to obey the Word of God. And it says that they did not have normal marriage relations until after the child was born.

-And it says that Joseph called the child’s name Jesus, which the angel told him. But what is inferred is that Joseph legally adopted the child as his own even though it wasn’t his own biologically. In normal Jewish tradition, a male child was circumcised on the eighth day and on that day the father would name the child, declaring the child as his descendant. Joseph did that with Jesus. Joseph legally adopted Jesus. And that is why the previous genealogy went through Joseph—Jesus is legally an heir of King David, fulfilling the prophecies and promises. And it is because Joseph obeyed. And with the truths we are faced with, we also seek to obey God’s commands to us through His Word.

-And finally, and quickly, we consider Joseph’s great faith in God’s promises. By taking Mary as his wife and the child as his own, he opened himself up to the stares and snickers of his community. Everybody else would assume Joseph and Mary did something that was taboo, and it could have relational, societal, and economic repercussions. But Joseph knew that this is what God desired, and while not knowing what the future held, he trusted that God would provide since God called him to it.

-And we remember that if God did not spare His own Son in order to save us, how much more will He give us that which we need. If God provided for the afterlife, how much more will He provide for the here and now life. And so, we seek righteousness, we show compassion, we obey, and by faith leave the results to God.

Conclusion

-Christmas comes and goes so fast, we don’t usually have much time to reflect upon the truths that it stands for, and yet Christmas is foundational to all that we believe. God intervened in world history to save a people. He provided the Christ who is GOD WITH US. Through Him our lives are changed, and we live obediently by faith. -Christian, let the truths of Christmas move you closer to God, toward a life-changing faith.

-But if you have never believed in Jesus, He is God with Us who died for you and rose again. Come forward today and believe and receive the gift of eternal life.