What is Christmas and why do we celebrate it

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What is Christmas and why do we celebrate it?

I logged on to the internet yesterday, typed in Ask.com and asked that very question. This is what I found:

Christmas is a mid-winter festival observed as the birth date of Jesus Christ. Many people celebrate the season with gift-giving, tree decorating, and Santa Claus.

The next entries were ads for Christmas music, poems, recipes and games, an attack on the Catholic Church, articles about Santa Claus and holiday customs.

On page 2, I found a Christian website called Christiananswers.com. They said:

The historic record of the birth of Christ can be found in Matthew 1:18-25 and Luke 2:1-20.

Unlike any other baby, the one born that night in Bethlehem was unique in all of history. He was not created by a human father and mother. He had a heavenly pre-existence (John 1:1-3, 14). He is God, the Son—Creator of the universe (Philippians 2:5-11). This is why Christmas is called the incarnation, a word which means “in the flesh.” In the birth of Jesus, the eternal, all-powerful and all-knowing Creator came to earth in the flesh.

Why would God do such a thing? Why would he come as a baby, instead of appearing in power and majesty? Why make himself a true man and live among us, when he knew full well how terribly he would be treated? It was LOVE! It was necessary, if you are to be saved!

I was then led to take a Christmas Quiz: Insert Quiz

Quite frankly I was turned off by the page. If I didn’t know what Christmas was, I probably didn’t know who Matthew & Luke were. I certainly wouldn’t know why I needed to be saved. So I went back to the web and wasn’t prepared for what I found. More music, poems, traditions, sites by country: an Italian Christmas, Christmas in Wales, Christmas in Iceland…Christmas gift baskets, how Christmas lights work, Books like “Jesus and the Christmas Train”, Christmas trees, coloring books, stickers, crafts, cards… 20 pages! And not one website that mentioned Joseph or Mary or the Messiah.

This just had to be a mistake: So I logged into my favorite search engine Altavista and asked the same question.

The results were better. Up popped Sunday School lessons, encyclopedia entries, and more family friendly sites. I found one I really liked and started reading:

Ø    The word Christmas comes from the words Cristes maesse, or "Christ's Mass”, the celebration of the birth of Jesus for members of the Christian religion.

Ø    the first celebration of Christmas took place in Rome in 336 A.D.

Ø    The tradition of giving gifts started with the gifts that the wise men (the Magi) brought to Jesus. As recounted in the Bible's book of Matthew, “they presented him with gifts of gold, incense and myrrh."

Ø    in 336 A.D. Christian leaders set aside the date December 25 to celebrate Christmas in an attempt to eclipse a popular pagan holiday in Rome (Saturnalia) that celebrated the Winter Solstice. Originally, involved a simple mass, but over time Christmas has replaced a number of other holidays in many other countries, and a large number of traditions have been absorbed into the celebration in the process.

Bingo! That’s what happened. Just as we have been studying when the Children of Israel intermarried and absorbed the cultures of other people it diluted their religion. The significance of Christmas has been polluted – diluted.

This morning I want to take you back to the significance of Christmas. I want to look at the Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament to prove without a shadow of a doubt that Christmas is about the coming of a promised Messiah and the Jesus was the fulfillment. Handout

As you can see, God’s 1st promise of a Messiah goes back to the Garden of Eden. After that there are more than 100 more. These are just a few. Scientists have calculated the chances of fulfilling just eight specific prophecies is one in One hundred quadrillion – 1 followed by 17 zeros. (100,000,000,000,000,000 the American Scientific Affiliation).

The word Messiah comes from a Hebrew term that means “anointed one.” — the one anointed by God and empowered by God’s spirit to deliver His people and establish His kingdom. The Jews thought the Messiah would be their king  an earthly ruler,  a political leader who would defeat their enemies and usher in a golden era of peace and prosperity.

In the Greek the word for messiah is Christos, where we get the word Christ. For Christians, the term Messiah refers to Jesus as a spiritual deliverer, setting His people free from sin and death.

I said Messiah means “anointed one”. In Old Testament when a person was appointed for a special task the priest or the prophet would anoint him with oil. Pour it on his head, rub it on his body. Aaron & his sons were anointed, Saul & David were anointed, in fact in the Old Testament, the word Messiah (anointed one) was used more than 30 times to describe kings (2 Sam. 1:14, 16), priests (Lev. 4:3, 5, 16), the patriarchs (Ps. 105:15), and even the Persian King Cyrus (Is. 45:1).

Who do we associated with King Cyrus? Daniel

But it was not until the time of Daniel (sixth century b.c.) that Messiah was used as an actual title of a king who would come in the future (Dan. 9:25–26). Still later, as the Jewish people struggled against their political enemies, the Messiah came to be thought of as a political, military ruler.

From the New Testament we learn more about the people’s expectations. They thought the Messiah would come soon to perform signs (John 7:31) and to deliver His people, after which He would live and rule forever (John 12:34). Some even thought that John the Baptist was the Messiah (John 1:20). Others said that the Messiah was to come from Bethlehem (John 7:42). Most expected the Messiah to be a political leader, a king who would defeat the Romans and provide for the physical needs of the Israelites.

According to the Gospel of John, a woman of Samaria said to Jesus, “I know that Messiah is coming.” Jesus replied, “I who speak to you am He” (John 4:25–26). In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, however, Jesus never directly referred to Himself as the Messiah, except privately to His disciples, until the crucifixion (Matt. 26:63–64; Mark 14:61–62; Luke 22:67–70). He did accept the title and function of messiahship privately (Matt. 16:16–17). Yet Jesus constantly avoided being called “Messiah” in public (Mark 8:29–30). This is known as Jesus’ “messianic secret.” He was the Messiah, but He did not want it known publicly.

The reason for this is that Jesus’ kingdom was not political but spiritual (John 18:36). If Jesus had used the title “Messiah,” people would have thought he was a political king. But Jesus understood that the Messiah, God’s Anointed One, was to be the Suffering Servant (Is. 52:13–53:12). The fact that Jesus was a suffering Messiah—a crucified deliverer—was a “stumbling block” to many of the Jews (1 Cor. 1:23). They saw the cross as a sign of Jesus’ weakness, powerlessness, and failure. They rejected the concept of a crucified Messiah.

But the message of the early church centered around the fact that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Christ (Acts 5:42; 17:3; 18:5). They proclaimed the “scandalous” gospel of a crucified Messiah as the power and wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:23–24). John wrote, “Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ [the Messiah]?” (1 John 2:22).

By the time of the apostle Paul, “Christ” was in the process of changing from a title to a proper name. The name is found mostly in close association with the name “Jesus,” as in “Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24) or “Jesus Christ” (Rom. 1:1). When the church moved onto Gentile soil, the converts lacked the Jewish background for understanding the title, and it lost much of its significance. Luke wrote, “The disciples were first called Christians [those who belong to and follow the Messiah in Antioch” (Acts 11:26).

As the Messiah, Jesus is the divinely appointed king who brought God’s kingdom to earth (Matt. 12:28; Luke 11:20). His way to victory was not by physical force and violence, but through love, humility, and service.

[1]


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[1]Youngblood, R. F., Bruce, F. F., Harrison, R. K., & Thomas Nelson Publishers. (1995). Nelson's new illustrated Bible dictionary. Rev. ed. of: Nelson's illustrated Bible dictionary.; Includes index. Nashville: T. Nelson.

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