Christmas Eve 2019 (Message)
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Some of the greatest difficulties of the faith are said to be in the understanding of the atonement, the resurrection, the virgin birth or even the Gospel miracles.
About the atonement, some say, how can one man take away the sins of the whole world.
Or how is it possible for Jesus to have rose physically from the dead?
Many have denied the virgin birth ever happen because it would be a biological anomaly.
Even the Gospel miracles haven been a stumbling block for so many.
The stories of Jesus walking on water, feeding five thousand or raising the dead?
It is not the Good Friday message of the atonement, or the Resurrection Easter message, but in the Christmas message of the incarnation where the real difficulty is.
This is as JI Packer says, “is where the supreme mystery with which the gospel confronts us… the staggering Christian claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man… truly and fully divine as he was human.”
JI Packer goes on to say,
“”The Word became flesh (John 1:14); God became man; the divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child… the babyhood of the Son of God was a reality. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the Incarnation.”
When we understand and grasp that Jesus was divine, it dissolves any other doubts or arguments that may linger about the New Testament all together.
Truth #1
The baby born in Bethlehem was in fact the Son of God, not a son of God but THE Son of God.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John, knew that the word Son of God was tainted by Jewish theology in that day because the Jews then awaited a (human) Messiah).
So when he wrote about Jesus, he made sure to acknowledge that Jesus was in fact the Son of God which relates directly to His Deity.
I’d like us to read the profound Christmas message from John’s writing, turn with me to John chapter 1.
Read John 1:1-18
Some observations in these passages:
Verse 1- The Word’d Eternity, no beginning- has always existed.
Verse 1- The Word’s personality. Eternal fellowship with God.
Verse 1- The Word’s Deity. Distinct form the Father but not a creature; divine in Himself as the Father is.
Verse 3- The Word creates. Jesus was the agent in which the Father create everything. Everything was made through Him.
Verse 4- The Word is life. The answer to every origin of life is in Jesus. Life is given and maintained in the Word.
Verse 4- The Word reveals. In giving life, Jesus gives light too.
Verse 14- The Word Incarnate. The baby in the manger was none other than the eternal Word of God.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
The Christmas message as a whole rests on the fact that the child in the manger in Bethlehem was in fact God.
Truth #2
The baby born at Bethlehem was God made man.
Jesus didn’t give up being God to be man, He was God plus man.
The New Testament doesn’t demand that we sit and be confused about this wonder but instead to worship God for the great love that was shown in the incarnation.
It was the greatest gift and act of self-humbling the world has ever known.
Read Philippians 2:6-8
He humbled himself to come to earth to live among us, to sympathize with us and to ultimately pay the greatest price to set us free from our sin.
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.
This is not talking about becoming rich as the world might think in monetary terms.
This is becoming rich in holding the greatest source of wealth ever to meet earth.
The source of eternal life and freedom from sin, through God’s one and only Son, Jesus Christ that was given to us on Christmas Day.
Giving gifts is not a bad thing in itself, but remember that the greatest gift we could ever offer someone else this season, and each day is to introduce them to the Word who became flesh and lived among us, who made a way when there was no way, and changed the course of our history forever.
The greatest gift is Jesus Christ.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Let’s Pray