A Savior Came: Jesus

Victories: 1. Thanks to all who helped last week to make the Christmas Program a success 2.

Prayer: Immanuel Baptist Church Pastor Ray Kughen

Missionary Prayer: Doug & Jenny McGee / China, Pray for the women of Starfish Project

Bible Reading: Luke 2:1-7 Kenny Luke 2:8-14 Paul Luke 2:15-20 Merrill

A Prophesied Savior

We are four days away from Christmas, and as we await that day, we are reminded of just how wonderful a Savior we have. To the world around us, the main thrust behind Christmas is family, presents, food, and the feeling of happiness and contentment you feel. But those things are without question bunk. What happens when your family is terrible, or you have no money for food or presents, or you feel no sense of happiness or contentment? When those things are all that you have made Christmas about, then you are left with nothing and there is no hope. So I repeat it, Christmas without Christ is bunk.

The account of Jesus’ birth is beautiful, and it is a section of scripture that I love to read over and over again because it reminds me of God's love, God’s provision, God’s mercy, and God’s plan. But Christmas is not about a baby being born, but it was this specific baby born at this specific time for this specific purpose. We celebrate at Christmas the birth of Jesus, who was and is the Savior for all time, for anyone who believes. Christmas is about Jesus, and it doesn’t matter who your family is because belief in Jesus makes us part of His family. It doesn’t matter if we have the money to buy the presents or the big Christmas dinner because we aren’t celebrating us we are worshiping Christ. Christmas isn’t about us feeling happy and content although those feelings are nice; it is about the mercy and hope of our Savior, Jesus Christ, that is makes Christmas, Christmas. We are simply the receivers of these perfect gifts all wrapped up in that swaddling cloth, laid in a manger that first Christmas morning.

Over the past several weeks leading up to Christmas, we have been looking at types of Christ that were given in the Old Testament who pointed to the true messiah. We looked at Joseph, who saved his people from famine, who, though not the oldest in his family he became the one God chose to lead his family and whom God chose to lead not only Israel but all of Egypt for a time; second only to Pharaoh. We looked at Moses, who ended Israel's time in Egypt by saving them from that ruler, Pharaoh, and who brought God’s people through the wilderness. He was a savior, a ruler, a priest, an intercessor, and a judge for Israel. And last week, we looked at David, just an ordinary guy whom God chose to use in an extraordinary way. David led his people as a king, a man whom God loved.

These men were great, and they personified a “Savior” for the people of Israel, but they all had one problem, they were sinful men. They were broken by their disobedience and condemned by their rebellion against God. They could be a “picture” of a savior, but they could never be the savior. Instead, what Israel needed and what the whole world received was a savior who was all of the greatness of these men but without any of the sin, disobedience, and rebellion. What the world needs is Jesus, and on that day spoken of there in Luke 2, that is exactly what we received.

The examples of a savior were great, but that is not all that God gave to the people of the Old Testament. Throughout all of the Bible, God left us a trail that points us to Jesus, and God gave us truths and promises of who this savior would be. Let me show you some of them just in the book of Isaiah, written over 700 years before Jesus’ birth.

Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.”

Isaiah 9:6–7 “For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace There will be no end, Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, To order it and establish it with judgment and justice From that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.”

Isaiah 11:1 “There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, And a Branch shall grow out of his roots.”

Isaiah 49:6 “Indeed He says, ‘It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant To raise up the tribes of Jacob, And to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also give You as a light to the Gentiles, That You should be My salvation to the ends of the earth.’ ””

The Savior who came, the Savior we needed, the Savior we celebrate is Jesus, and it is because of His love for the world that we can receive forgiveness of Sin, the promise of Heaven, and the joy of a life lived for Him. In short Christmas isn’t Christmas without Jesus.

A Relatable Savior

But why do we need Jesus? Why did Jesus, the man, have to come? Can’t God just forgive sin at will and provide heaven for anyone He pleases? To answer that, we need to know that God does have the power to forgive and grant access to heaven to whom He wills, but He is also bound by His own Laws. Let me steal a bit from our Missionary Caroline Curtis and the SOS ministry. There are 3 things God cannot do: God cannot lie, God cannot change, and God cannot allow into heaven anyone who is not born again. That last one points us to the fact that God cannot and will not force anyone into heaven, nor will He accept anyone into heaven who does not believe in Jesus as their savior. Jesus is not just a means to belief, but He is also the power behind the belief. God set it up in His law that forgiveness is given to humanity through the shedding of blood, and throughout the whole of the Old Testament, that meant the shedding of animals' blood. A bull, a lamb, a bird. The death of these was the means of forgiveness, but they had to be sacrificed over and over again. Their blood could only be shed for a time, and then more blood had to be shed. Therefore, God had a better solution. The blood of a perfect sacrifice who could atone for all of humanity's sin, but whose blood would never run out because Jesus would come back to life so that His blood could atone for the sin of all those who believe for all of eternity. Jesus’ death made forgiveness possible, but his resurrection from the dead made the forgiveness permanent.

Those are the details of Jesus’ gift of mercy, and they provide us with hope, but the wonderful story of Jesus is more than just these details. The beauty of Jesus’ life isn’t just the ending, it is the whole thing from beginning to today, it is the infant, it is the years in Egypt, the trip to Jerusalem as a youth, the gathering of disciples, the sermons, the parables, the friendships, and everything else. The wonder of Jesus’ life is that it is relatable to US, and it was meant to be because it means that God experienced life as we know it. Jesus came and lived just as we do. We cannot take for granted the fact that Jesus can be empathetic to us because He came and lived life just as we do.

When I was 18 years old, the summer before I left for college, one of the families I had known most of my life experienced great tragedy. This family had three kids, and I graduated with the oldest and rode countless hours on the bus with the others. I had them over in the summers for swim parties. We were friends. That summer, their father, who had endured abuse as a child, after years of trying to work through the pain appallingly chose to commit suicide instead of continuing the fight. It was tragic, and it was unexpected. The funeral was very difficult for all of us were just so numbed by the senselessness of it all. After the funeral, I saw one of those friends of mine crying, and I immediately went to her and cried with her. I hugged her, and we just wept. There were no words that could be spoken to soften the blow of this tragedy. It is one of the few times in my life that I was empathetic to the needs of others. And that is the power of empathy, knowing the hurt, knowing the brokenness, knowing the pain, and just simply loving the other person through it. That is what Jesus does for us. Because lived it. He knows our hurt. He experienced it firsthand. He knows our brokenness, for He saw it every day in the people around Him, and He knows the incredible pain of death, for Jesus experienced that on the cross. And through it all, Jesus, our relatable Savior, loves us through it. This is why Jesus is relatable; it is why God sent Him to be our Immanuel, our “God with us.”

A Victorious Savior

Jesus was born the Messiah. He didn’t become one because of all the good deeds he had performed. He wasn’t just a really good guy who was bestowed greatness. He was born 100 percent Man, and yet he was also 100 percent God. But Jesus came with a mission. His mission was to destroy sin, and in that battle, there was an enemy to defeat. Jesus’ enemy started doing battle with humanity right from the beginning. Here is another of those prophecies that pointed to Jesus from the Old Testament. Genesis 3:15 “And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.” Right from the taste of that fruit, God was planning on sending His son. In this verse, God calls His coming Messiah His seed, and the victory over sin is also declared. “He shall bruise [sins] head." Sin brought about the defeat of man, and from that time on, humanity fought a losing battle, one which they couldn’t hope to win. But Jesus’ birth changed all that. He was here to bring victory to humanity's defeat. To not only bruise the head of Sin but to defeat it totally.

Read 1 John 3:8–10 “He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God. In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother.”

The first part of verse 8 is where every man finds himself before Jesus. We have all sinned, and not one of us has perfect righteousness, so we fall short of the mark that God has for us to be able to make it to heaven on our own merit. Because of sin, there is a chasm that separates us from God and stands even today as an impassible barrier. Sin is the weapon wielded, and Satan is the enemy wielding it, but we are the victims as well as the willing participants in the battle against God Himself. But the second half of verse 8 says it is because of this defeat that God brought us Jesus so that He might destroy the work of the devil.

On Christmas Day, we celebrate the birth of Jesus. And yet a Shadow of death hangs over the manger, but we know that that shadow does not remain there for that baby is humanity's only hope for salvation. The Baby Jesus was born so that He might be the sacrifice for our sins. What the enemy believed to be a win has proven to be the final nail in the Devil's coffin. Death is defeated, and sin is forgiven through the blood that was shed for the forgiveness of sin. But we place our hope in a risen victorious savior, the one the angel spoke of in Mark 16:6 “But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid Him.”

He is our Victorious Savior whom we celebrate on this day. Born as a man. Born as a King. Born as the Messiah who would die so that we might have life.

Gospel

You might be tempted to pass this off as just a nice story to help give us something to celebrate this time of year. You might even be able to convince yourself that it is just nonsense created by man to give us hope. But what if you are wrong? What if Jesus is who he said he is? What if Jesus really is the Messiah? Then your unbelief is your destruction. You can continue living in your sin, trying desperately to fix your broken life, or you can give up and let Jesus fix it for you. Today, as we celebrate this baby born in a manger, you can celebrate your rebirth.

Jesus died for our sins, and because He did, we can place our belief in that sacrifice. 1 John 1:9 says, “we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We have the promise of God that if we ask for forgiveness and believe in the saving power of Jesus, we will be saved. And from the saving power of Jesus, we become new creations. 2 Cor. 5:17 states, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” This means that as Christians, we get a fresh start, we aren’t who we used to be, and we have the power of God behind us to change who we are becoming. Glory to God in the highest, for He has saved my soul, and He can save yours too if you will let Him. If you aren’t sure, then you can confess Him as your savior. If that is your desire today, you can say this prayer with me. Bow your heads.

Dear Lord, I know that I’m a sinner. I’m sorry for my sin, and I ask you to forgive me. I believe you died for my sins and rose from the dead. I repent of my sins, and I ask you to come into my life and take control. I make a commitment to follow you, and I trust you as my Lord and Savior.

Friend, if you prayed that prayer today, I ask that you come and speak to me after the service.

For those of you who are believers-

Benediction: Psalm 121:7–8 “The Lord shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul. The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in From this time forth, and even forevermore.”