Sermon Tone Analysis

What should be our attitude toward Christmas?

When you wake up on Christmas morning and you gather together with family and loved ones, what should be the theme of everyone’s heart?

What is the goal of celebrating Christmas?

What was the goal of the angles in celebrating that first Christmas?

Was not the theme of the angles on that first Christmas morn glory and joy?

My goal this morning is to prepare our hearts for Christmas so that we might leave here this morning ready to rejoice and glorify our Savior this Christmas in a manner worthy of His name!

How?

Years ago I saw a documentary on our solar system.

And in that documentary, there was a scene that gave you an incredible display of the scope of our universe.

The scene started out looking at a person standing on a grassy hill, and then the camera began to zoom out.

It panned back to reveal that person standing in a large park, and then that large park as part of a large city, and then that city viewed high up as if you were flying over it.

Suddenly, the camera zoomed out to space you and viewed the earth as a planet, and then you flew past the moon, and past the rest of the planets in our solar system, and then you flew by stars until you got to the galaxy and then you saw a magnitude of galaxies as the image expanded to the farthest reaches of known space.

And you hovered there marveling at the expanse and the complexity of the universe.

Then much more rapidly the camera zoomed back- back past the galaxies and past the stars and past the planets and back to the earth and that park and that person and in that person’s hand was a leaf and on that leaf was a small drop of water and suddenly the camera zoomed into the water droplet on a molecular level.

And incredibly you could zoom in to that one droplet of water about as much as you could zoom out to the extremities of the universe.

It gave you a sense of scope like nothing else could.

You felt awed and amazed and small all at the same time.

I want to accomplish something like this with the meaning of Christmas this morning.

In this way- I want us to see the entirety of the eternal scope of God’s plan for us and for this world- I want us to see the enormity of the eternal plan of God in Jesus Christ for this world, then I want to zoom in close all the way to the birth of the babe in the manger, and then I want to zoom back out to eternity future- and at the end of it all, my hope is that our hearts would respond much like the angles did in Luke 2:14- Glory to God in the highest!

What we are really examining this morning is the gospel.

Most people when they think of the gospel they think of Jesus’ death, burial, and his resurrection- but the gospel is so much more.

We are going to start zoomed all the way out- and we are going to view the gospel at the farthest reaches of God’s revealed will to us.

We are going to think about the ultimate goal of the gospel and how that ultimate goal of the gospel should delight our hearts and cause us to respond in worship.

I.

The ultimate goal of the gospel (the eternal kingdom) should cause us to delight in Jesus Christ our Savior.

(I Corinthians 15:24-28)

In your mind’s eye, zoom all the way out to the end of the revealed will of God.

Zoom all the way out to the final fruition of the gospel, which is the eternal kingdom of God.

Scripture says, “then cometh the end.”

This is the end or the goal of the gospel- when Jesus Christ our Savior delivers up the kingdom to God.

This is when those who have received Jesus and believed in His name will rule and reign with the One who sits on the throne and the Lamb for ever and ever.

This is the eternal life promised to us in the good news of the gospel.

And this eternal kingdom of God, where sin if finally and forever removed and we are given eternal life- this everlasting kingdom is essential to the gospel.

You must have an eternal kingdom and you must have believers living for all eternity with God or you do not have a gospel.

The gospel would no longer be good news.

The kingdom is essential to the Gospel, and Jesus Christ our Savior is essential to the Kingdom.

You don’t have an eternal kingdom without a King to rule and to conquer.

And it is Jesus who will bring everything into subjection and lay everything at the feet of the Father, so that God may be all in all.

This divine plan for an eternal kingdom should cause us to delight in our Savior Jesus Christ.

And what is the last enemy that Jesus will destroy?

Death- death itself will be vanquished finally at the end.

Now, let’s begin to zoom back toward that first Christmas morn.

In order to vanquish death for all who believe, first we need One who has the power to overcome even death itself.

We need one who has such power and such life in Himself, that not even death can conquer Him.

We need One to personally overcome death, so that by virtue of being connected to His life we too have life.

What event in the history of the gospel do we see our Savior personally defeating death?

Answer: The resurrection.

II.

The ultimate hope of the gospel (the resurrection) should cause us to delight in Jesus Christ our Savior (I Corinthians 15:20-22)

OK, in your mind’s eye I want you to pan away from the eternal kingdom of God, down through the corridors of time, and I want you to land at Easter Sunday.

I want you to picture the triumphant morn when Jesus split open the tomb, came back from the dead, and conquered death itself.

V. 20- But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.

Christ is the firstfruits of those who will rise from the dead.

He rose first, and because He rose, we have ultimate hope that we too one day will rise from the dead.

Now, wait a minute- doesn’t Scripture talk about other people who were resurrected from the dead?

And didn’t those other people rise before Jesus?

How is it that Jesus is called the firstfruits if He wasn’t the first one chronologically to raise from the dead?

Who else in Scripture was resurrected from the dead?

Lazarus

Jesus was the first one to be raised with a resurrection body, with a glorified body, with an imperishable body, with an eternal body.

No one else has been given that kind of body yet.

But Jesus is the firstfruits.

That means we have a hope that we will be given a glorious body like unto Jesus’ glorious body.

That is our hope.

And our hope is fully founded in Jesus Christ our Savior.

21 For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.

22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

The resurrection is essential to the gospel.

If Jesus had not been resurrected from dead to give us hope of resurrected bodies there would be no gospel.

But in Jesus Christ our Savior, we have the hope of the gospel, the resurrection of our bodies, and because of that hope we ought to delight in Jesus!

So we started zoom way out at the reaches of eternity future where Jesus finally destroys death and established the kingdom of God.

Then we zoom along the corridors of time to the moment where Jesus defeated death at the resurrection and gave us hope of resurrected bodies.

Now in the eternal plan of the gospel, death cannot be destroyed and death cannot be defeated unless first, sin is dealt with.

So, now I want us to zoom in to the moment in time when Jesus Christ overcame the curse of sin for us.

III.

The ultimate power of the gospel (the crucifixion) should cause us to delight in Jesus Christ our Savior (Romans 5:6-9)

Christ died for the ungodly.

Christ died for us- He died for our sins.

No one else could have died for our sins.

If anyone else had tried to die for our sins it would have been insufficient.

V. 9 could not be in the Bible if Jesus had not died for our sins.

Paul says in v. 9, that through His blood we are now being justified.

Our justification is only possible because of Jesus died for us, because Jesus shed His blood for our sins.

Our righteous God can only justify us, that is God can only legally declare us perfectly holy and just, fully free of sin- only because of Jesus’ blood.

We needed Jesus to shed his blood for us- that is for our sins.

And because Jesus had to shed His blood for our sins, what does that imply about us?

It implies that we are all sinners, that we are all ungodly.

And it implies that we as sinners we are too weak to take care of our own sins- we are yet without strength, Scripture says.

It implies that the immense gravity of our sin.

When we sin against a holy God the consequences are dire.

They are so much so, that the only way for God to deal with our sins and justify us in His sight was by sending Jesus Christ to give His life for our sins.

If our sins were no big deal, then Christ wouldn’t have had to die.

We cannot pay for our own sins- God had to do that for us.

Christ became our sin bearer.

What does that imply about Christ?

If Christ was the only one who could bear our sins, then what does a qualified sin bearer look like?

I cannot bear my own sins, you cannot bear my sins, I cannot bear your sins.

Only Jesus can bear our sins, because only Jesus is qualified to do so.

Why?

Let me give you three reasons: