The Need for Christmas

Introduction

How do you talk about things that are impossible to capture with human language? Imagine if you traveled to a land that was grayscale. (Show Sunset picture) How would you describe to them the vibrancy of a sunset? How would you describe the oranges, pinks, and purples to eyes that have only ever seen various shades of gray?

It feels like that kind of task this morning as we kick off our Christmas series. Over the next couple of weeks leading up to Christmas on Sunday mornings, we will explore 1. The Need for Christmas, 2. The Arrival of Christmas, 3. The Purpose of Christmas, and 4. The Result of Christmas.

This morning as we talk about the need for Christmas we can’t understand why The Son of God had to come and be born a human unless we understand The Holiness of God & The Sinfulness of Man. And as we think about the holiness of God the task feels a bit overwhelming because I know it is a mark that I’m going to miss. Like explaining a sunset to a people who have never seen color, the human tongue is insufficient to capture the holiness of God. And yet God has given us passages in scripture that show his holiness and so what we’ll do this morning is get as close as we can with the tools God has given us—knowing that we could spend our entire lives meditating on God’s holiness and we will still have our breath and words stolen from our mouths when our eyes see Him for ourselves.

And likewise, we’ll explore the sinfulness of man knowing, even though our eyes are accustomed to the darkness we don’t fully grasp the depths of our sin. But we’ll use the tools that God has given us to see what we can see.

My prayer this morning is that you and I would leave this morning having a more clear vision of God’s holiness and our sin and that we would leave seeing the great need for Christmas.

The Holiness of God

Let’s take a look at a couple of Bible passages that God has given us about His holiness.

Isaiah 6:1-4

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!’ And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: ‘Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!’”

We notice a couple of things about God’s holiness in this passage...

Notice God’s Position

Isaiah is caught up into the throne room of God. And the first thing that Isaiah notices is that the LORD’s throne is high and lifted up. Isaiah is looking up to see the LORD.

When God was calling me to Himself as a teenager I started looking for him. And I was rebellious so I determined at the outset that God couldn’t be the Christian God—that was too obvious—God had to be somone that I found; even then my rebellious heart wanted to work toward God so that I could boast about finding him.

The first place I looked was at a Bhuddist temple near my home. About 30 minutes away from Southport, NC is a Bhuddist Monastery tucked away in the woods. This place looks like a set for a kung-fu movie. And so I went with a couple of friends and we sat before a teacher who was sitting a cushion on a raised platform. And as he was teaching us the tenants of Bhuddism a woman came in with food and the teacher started to speak harshly to her in Chinese—and the translator who was there told us that he was “chastising her for entering the room in a higher position than him. Her head was to be lower than his. In this temple space he was Supreme and no one else should be more lifted up than him.

The only reason it wasn’t akward was because we couldn’t understand the words he was saying. But the message was clear—I am high and lifted up.

The position of God’s throne is lifted high above the floor where Isaiah stands because the God who sits on the throne and rules from the throne is higher and more glorious than all that he rules. He is over all things—because all things have come from Him.

All that we see is a result of God’s creating. All that we see is a reflection of His rule.

When we see the majesty of nature. It is reflecting the majesty of God.

When we observe the ‘laws’ of science. We are peeking behind the veil of creation and seeing the creative genius of God.

When we see love and grace and compassion take place in the world we are seeing the overflow of God’s own grace and mercy as it comes to bear in the hearts of men and women and children.

God is the Alpha and the Omega. He, literally, is the beginning and the end. All things flow from Him and come back to him.

He is supreme over all creation. The bottommost part of God’s attire—the train of his robe—fills the temple of his throne. This gives us the picture of God’s immense glory—

This is why even the Seraphim who are continually in his presence hide their faces and cover their feet. Because he is all glory, all beauty, all power, all majesty and they are aware that God is Supreme in his Godness.

So they shield their eyes and cover their less glorious parts.

Have you ever gone to an event way underdressed? You thought you were dressed appropriately, but then when you looked around you notice that you are the most dressed down person? I went to a beach wedding one time—in shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-flops. That’s what you wear to the beach! Apparently that is not what you wear to a beach wedding. I was painfully aware that I was out of place.

Application: And this response to God is appropriate. It makes me address my own heart toward God, my Father. Do I come before him lacking reverence? He is my Father, but He is my glorious Father. Do I come before him sometimes with a swagger in my step and bravado in my voice? He can handle it—and His love overcomes my irreverent familiarity—but that doesn’t mean that I’m not in the wrong.

How do you approach the Holy God of the Universe? Do you lose sight of his Holiness like I sometimes do?

We see in this that God is high and lifted up, we see that Isaiah is painfully aware of the holiness of God. We also see...

2. The Response of the Angels

The angels seeing the holiness of God cry out, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is filled with his glory!”

What is the response of the angels? It’s praise. And it’s proclamation. Notice that they are calling out to one another the text says. They can’t contain what they are seeing to a quiet wonder, they call it out, and knowing that the other angels see it, they still call out to one another.

As if to say, “Are you seeing what I am seeing? This is incredible. The LORD is holy, He is holy, He is holy. And His glory spills over into all the earth. It fills up the creation! Are you seeing this!

When Vickery and lived in Wilmington before we went to seminary we lived in a house no where near the woods, with our friend Brian. And one day we were all going out to eat and as we started to walk out the front door I saw a baby bear cub in the empty lot across the street.

This was so unusual and amazing that I began calling out. “Do you see that! Do you see? Is that a bear cub?! Do you see that bear cub!”

And Vickery and Brian, were looking trying to see what I could see. And I just got more excited. And said even more enthusiastically, “Do you see that bear! Right there!” And I began pointing.

And Brian said, “Do you mean that cat!”

And as he said it I realized it was only a big, black cat. Both Vickery and Brian saw the cat instantly and had no idea what I was talking about. The majesty of seeing a bear cub in the middle of the city was a false majesty because it wasn’t real.

Friends, let us not treat the holiness of God—his otherness—his set apartness—his glory as if it was commonplace.

Unlike me, with the “bear cub” the proclamation of the angels is full and true.

God is holy, holy, holy, and his glory fills the whole earth.

Application: Do you have this image of God in your heart and mind as you worship Him? Or has your image of God become some lesser version of God—not because that is who He is—but because that is who you have decided Him to be?

Have you let the trials of life—the disappointments of your plans not being God’s plans—the struggle of your own sin and weaknesses—have you let these things define God for you? Are you viewing God through the lens of these things? Or are you viewing all of life through the lens of our Glorious God?

Your trials are meant for you good from a loving Father—God never relinquishes his plan for your life for yours, because his plan is best—God has overcome your weakness and sin in Christ and these things don’t define you anymore.

Are you seeing the LORD correctly?

Notice too...

3. The Response of Isaiah

Isaiah seeing the holiness of God cries aloud...

‘Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!’”

Isaiah in the presence of God is keenly aware of his sin. He is fearfully expectant of judgment for being a sinner—a person of unclean lips.

And I think that our hearts don’t like this response because it highlights that humanity has something to fear from a Holy God like ours.

We like Father God, Gentle God, Patient God, God who Blesses, God who Encourages...

And our glorious God is all of these things to those who are in Christ Jesus...

But he is also Holy God, Awesome God, Mighty God, God the Judge!

Isaiah’s response is wrapped up in all that he sees, hears, and feels.

He sees God high and lifted up—He sees God worshipped—He sees the foundations shake at the sound of His voice—and his response is fear and the expectation of judgment.

Isaiah sees the great divide between Holy God & Sinful Man.

And we shouldn’t try and explain this away. Sinful man should be fearful of Holy God.

Application: What is your response to your own sin? Your own rebellion against God? Do you quickly dismiss it? Do you plead the blood of Christ without repentance?

Friends, do not take lightly your sin—if you are found in Jesus then it is true that your sin has been forgiven—past, present, and future—it has all been paid for on the cross by the sacrifice of Jesus—otherwise, you could not be saved and would not be called children of God.

But don’t use the glorious truth of the gospel as an excuse to take your sin lightly? Does your sin wound you? As your pastor, I’ll tell you that it doesn’t as much as it should.

Most of us have a knack for ignoring what we don’t like.

But when it comes to our sin we should pray to God—asking to feel the full force of that sin—to experience guilt of that sin—to take it as serious as God takes it—sin is as serious as death—as serious as the death of an innocent man on the cross.

Why would I want that pastor Jacob? Because when we see the truth of who God is and the truth of who we are—we see the true value of who Jesus is—and we get closer to understanding the immense need of Christmas—the absolute hope of the Son of God coming to us as a baby on Christmas.

When we see things truly—we cling to Jesus who is our hope—and we live oIur lives as God has called and equipped us to live them. We share the gospel because we know people need it! We fight our sin because we know what it cost Jesus. We forgive and have grace with each other because God has forgiven us of so much and has given us grace upon grace upon grace.

And we want to be those who truly see the Holiness of God and live in truth. Do you want that?

Look with me briefly at Revelation 1:12-18.

“Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw wevn golden lampstgands, and in the midst of the lampstadnds one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his fet were like burnished bronze, refinded in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.”

When the apostle John saw the risen Christ in glory his response was the same as Elijah’s. He fell down as though dead. He was keenly aware that he was in the presence of Holy God and that Holy God was set apart from sinful man.

Why does this matter?

This matters as we try to understand the great need for Christmas.

Why did God the Son have to come and be born as one of us? Because we needed a representative that would be acceptable to Holy God.

I got an opportunity to share the gospel over the Thanksgiving break. I was at the Verizon store and was a having a good conversation with a brother named J-Rich and God gave me the opportunity to share Christ with him. I used the 3 circles and drew it out for him. And when I share the gospel I always make the point to say something true and shocking.

I told J-Rich that God required perfection of him in order to for him to be reconciled to God and to have the relationship with God that he was created for. And the question I’ve always asked after that statement is: “Are you perfect?”

I’ve never had one person tell me that they were perfect.

The holiness of God requires perfection—not because God cannot have relationship with those who aren’t like him—his very nature as our Father dismisses that objection--

Relationship with God requires moral perfection because while God is Father, He is also a holy and just judge—and no just judge leaves lawbreakers unpunished.

Isaiah understands this—John understands this—people I share the gospel with understand this. A good judge punishes those who break the law.

And God is the best judge—who judges without bias or preference—His judgement is pure and righteous.

But the bad news is that you and I are not perfect. We do not meet the standard required to have a relationship with God.

“Pastor, what about the Israelites, didn’t they have a relationship with God even though they were sinners?” Friends, yes, but it was based on the same ground that you and I can have a relationship with God. The sacrificial system of Israel that allowed for relationship with God found it’s true power—not in the blood of goats and lambs—but in the blood of Christ.

God knowing that Christ would die in the place of God’s people forebeared their sin knowing it would be paid for. The sacrificial system of Israel was a shadow that pointed to the true lamb of Jesus Christ who would shed his blood once and for all as Hebrews says.

This is what Paul alludes to in Romans 3:24-25 when he says,

“and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

What is Paul saying here? He is saying that in Jesus, God is just in punishing sin and the one who justifies those found in Christ. That God “overlooked” former sin—not as a bad judge, but as a just judge knowing that there would be a day when the sins of man were truly forgiven by an appropriate perfect sacrfice.

God says in Hebrews 10:4, “It is not possible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins”

These were placeholders for when the true sacrifice would come!

Why is Christmas such a big deal? Because we needed a true sacrifice to justify us before Holy God. God the Son incarnated man, took on flesh becasue that was the sacrifice required for man to be freed from sin.

Through one man, our ancestor Adam, we were plunged into sin, and through one man, Jesus, we would be freed from sin.

Without Christmas you and I go to Hell—justly by the good judgements of a Holy God.

God is just and Holy. Let us now look to...

The Sinfulness of Man

As we consider the great need for Christmas it is not just that humanity is morally neutral, at 0, and God is far above us.

When we think about the divide between God and man we could think about it in opposite cardinal directions. How far does the East travel from the West? How large is the expanse between North and South? It is an ever-widening divide.

It’s not just that God exceeds us in holiness, but we run full speed away from him in sin.

And the perpetual human problem when it comes to our sin is that we rationalize and excuse our own behaviors.

Why do ‘self-help’ gurus like Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar, or Joyce Meyer have a following at all?

It’s because they say what people want to hear. These men attract a following in the way 2 Timothy 4:3-4

“For the time is coming when people will not endure soiund teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”

These speakers have vast followings because they say what itching ears want to hear.

The human heart craves God’s throne and despises dependency on God in any form. Human autonomy free from God is the heart of all human sin. And it takes humanity to dark places.

Let’s just walk through scripture for a little bit.

Genesis 3:1-6, Adam and Eve reject their relationship with God and sin against him. They had perfection, all their needs supplied, they had the opportunity to bring forth children and populate the world in paradise. And they believed the lie of Satan and questioned the goodness of God. And the result was that death came to all men.

Genesis 6:11-13, human sin gets so bad on the earth that everywhere God looked there was violence, corruption, and sin abounding. God executes judgment but preserves Noah and his family to preserve the promise that a “son of Eve” would defeat death and sin.

Genesis 11:1-8, humanity has spread again over the earth and it has not taken long for humanity to copy the spiritual rebellion of their parents Adam and Eve. They seek to build a tower that reaches into the heavens to prove that they can occupy the same territory as God. And to prove that they don’t need God. God in his grace and mercy knocks down their tower and confuses their language so that they won’t continue to pursue sinful independence that will lead them further away from their God in whom life is found.

Genesis 19:8, Lot in a shocking abandonment of his fatherly role offers his daughters to be raped by a crowd in order to protect strangers. God’s angels blind the men and God provides protection for these young girls.

Genesis 37:18-22, Joseph’s brothers, fueled by jealous envy seek to kill their youngest brother, but relent and sell him into slavery. They then go and lie to their father and say that his son was killed by a wild animal. God uses their sin as a means to accomplish his plan to provide for Israel and protect the hereditary line that would bring about the savior.

Exodus 1-12, we see the Israelites who have seen the mighty miracles of God in Egypt are being personally led by God, fed by God, given water by God. They complain and long for the captivity they had in Egypt because their slave masters provided for them better. God relents from justly punishing them and preserves his promise to bring them into a land of their own where He would be their God and they would be His people.

Exodus 32:1-6, after witnessing God’s presence descend on Mt. Sinai the Israelites get bored waiting for Moses and immediately break the first commandment that God gave them not to have any other God’s before him. And reject his command to not cast idols. While Moses is talking with God on the mountain, Aaron the High Priest, casts a golden calf and calls Israel to worship it, calling it the God who saved them. God preserves his promise and doesn’t kill all of them.

The book of Judges is characterized by the phrase “And everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” And spoiler alert, what is right in the eyes of sinful man is a nauseating list of murder, jealousy, adultery, human sacrifice, idol worship, rape, prostitution, and the list goes on and on. Once again God continues to preserve his people and call them back to Himself. He humbles them and acts as their God staying true to His word.

In Leviticus 20:2-3, we find Israel is sacrificing its infants to false gods.

In 2 Samuel 11:1-17, David commits pre-meditated adultery and murder.

And the list goes on and on and on in the pages of scripture.

But it doesn’t stop there. We can’t judge our ancestors in the pages of scripture because humanity hasn’t gotten any holier in modernity.

(Show slides of news headlines)

Look around at humanity today and do you know what you find? A nauseating list of murder, jealousy, adultery, human sacrifice, idol worship, rape, prostitution, and the list goes on and on.

And if we zoom into our own lives, and we are honest with ourselves, we find a list of sin, if you are in Christ your sin was rampant before He saved you—but even now in Christ you struggle against sin—you are tempted by sin—you fail in sin.

David the pre-mediated adulterer and murderer was a man after God’s own heart.

The truth is friends that the need for Christmas is great because human sin is great.

God is holy and will judge sin and so we desperately need someone who will take our punishment for us. Who atone for us. Who will provide salvation for us.

And God, just as he has with His people—will not abandon his promise to bring about an end to the death and destruction of sin.

So he sent his Son to be born of a woman as an infant, the Son of God came because the sons of men are in great need of a savior who can once and for all restore their relationship with God.

Conclusion

This morning as we get ready to take the Lord’s Supper and have lunch together. This week and the week’s following while you are preparing for all the festivities of Christmas. My hope is that you will feel more than you ever have, your own great need for the miracle of Christmas.

And if you have never come to Christ for salvation—my prayer and hope is that you will trust Christ to save you. Today can be the day that all your sins are forgiven and you can truly be a part of the miracle of Christmas.

Earlier, we read that John fell as though dead before the feet of Jesus being aware of his sin. Let me read you the rest of that passage. Revelation 1:17-18,

“When I saw him, I fell athis feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me saying, ‘Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.”

Jesus came because our need for Him was great. He is the beginning and the end, He is the one who died on our behalf and rose from death on our behalf, he has defeated death and the power of Hell. This is God’s Christmas gift to you. Let’s pray.

Discussion Question: What is something God has shown you this morning?