Celebrating Christmas Part 2

Intro

Alright, if you were here last week then you were here for what I called in my head, my “hot message”…emphasis on the “mess”!

I call it that because we jumped all over the place. We were in 4 different spots in Luke, and then jumped over to Matthew 1 for a minute, and then jumped back to Luke.

All of that, in the name of laying a good foundation. And sometimes, laying a good foundation is messy. After a plot of land has been picked, it needs to be torn up, excavated, leveled, enforced, and so much more. It’s a messy process but it’s an important process if you want to build something strong on top of the foundation.

That’s what we did last week. We got messy, we tore through scripture, digging a hole to begin putting in the necessary foundation.

And that foundation, has been built on the idea of getting down to what we truly celebrate when we as the people of God come together to celebrate Christmas.

Let me give you a quick reminder. Don’t worry though, I won’t put you through scriptural gymnastics tonight.

We started out last Thursday talking about the fact that we don’t celebrate a specific date when we celebrate Christmas. We celebrate a specific event in the timeline of God’s story, that is, God’s redemptive work in history to redeem people and bring them to himself, to belong to him as his loved, chosen, and adopted children. That’s what we mean by redemptive history.

Now, we started talking about how it’s not the birthdate that we celebrate at Christmas, it’s the birth itself.

That’s why our first point was:

We celebrate a savior born.

But then we moved on from there, and we talked about the second point for the night.

When celebrating Christmas:

We celebrate a silence broken.

This is where we jumped to four different scriptures, dropping each one in the bucket, and then realizing they are all connected because they are points in time that broke this 400 years of silence from God.

That is, the 400 years between the old testament and the new testament, known as the intertestamental period. 400 years where God stopped speaking through prophets, and raising up kings or judges. 400 years of nothing from God to his chosen people.

In those 400 years the people of God were conquered multiple times and waited for God to act…but nothing happed. Until…angels appeared to Zechariah and Mary. Prophecies were given. New Psalms were written.

And suddenly, we see that all those scriptures we put in the bucket all connect, because they are the voice of God breaking the silence.

And that leads us to the third point of last Thursday, and our first and only point tonight.

Yeah, that’s right…you heard me. Just one point tonight, because that’s how important it is for us to grasp. It’s worthy of a message in itself.

In fact, what we are going to talk about tonight fills entire semesters and years of classes in seminaries and bible colleges...

We can’t possibly cover it all in a 25 minute message. But we can begin to understand it…and understand it enough that it stirs our hearts and our affections for Jesus in this Christmas season.

Because that’s what I want for you. Above all things. I pray that if there is anything this ministry accomplishes in your life is that it would stir your affections for Jesus in such as a way that you would be joyful in your worship. That you would be commited to serving him. That you would love him deeply.

So many of you, face an academic battle when it comes to your faith right now. Professors, and activists, and friends, and faculty, and everyone that you with in the culture of your college is fighting for you to believe what they believe. To conform to what they want you to conform to.

They are fighting for you to accept them or suffer the consequences. And for many of you in the work force, that’s no different.

And constantly facing that is tiring. It wears you down. And I’m telling your right now…if you’re walking into this battle with a whole bunch of head knowledge...

Like. I know who the Lord is. I know what the bible says (or at least what I’ve been taught it says), I know what I should believe, I know what the conservative view is, or I know what I should say...

Like, if you’re going into the fight with only head knowledge…and your affections for Jesus aren’t stirred up to love him and do good things for him to please him…to live your life for him...

If you aren’t going into your classroom or workplace with joy in your heart that Christ is born…and you’re just walking in with this head knowledge of Christ, and a commitment to do good things...you’re fighting a losing battle.

Because guess what…if all you’re fighting is an intellectual battle, or you’ve got just an intellectual faith…you’re going to eventually lose.

Because the day is going to come when you meet someone smarter than you. The day is going to come when someone out wits you, out argues you, out thinks you. The day is going to come when you don’t have the intelectual answer as to why you believe in Christ…and because that’s what your foundation is on it’s going to rock you to your core.

...

But …if you feel your faith in your guts. If you feel it in your heart. If your affections are stirred for Christ in a way that you have a love for him…and joy for him…you won’t be shaken.

Because it won’t just matter what has been said about Christ…what matters is what you’ve seen of Christ, and what you feel of Christ.

And my goal tonight is that we would see the majesty of God in our time together. That we would see the miracle of Christ. That we would see just how amazing it was that Jesus is born...

And that our hearts would stirred, and our souls would be filled by a joy that surpasses understanding.

That your faith would not just be lived out in your head by mentally ascenting to the Christian faith, and that it would just be lived out by doing all the right things…but that your faith would be sincere and belief and love for Jesus.

And I pray..that our point tonight…begins to do that in you. Begins to show you just how miraculous and amazing the birth of Christ is.

I pray that tonight shows you that when celebrating Christmas…we celebrate a promise fulfilled.

The most amazing promise that has ever been given.

The most complex promise to have ever been fulfilled.

I don’t know what your relationship with promises is. Maybe it’s great. You’re great at keeping your promises

Or maybe the idea of a promise doesn’t mean much to you. Maybe your parents made and broke promises. Maybe some unfilled promises have hurt you...

Or maybe your lack to keep a promise has hurt both you and others you have loved...

Whatever it is…you need to know. God is a promise keeper. What he says he does. Not just a promise he makes to us and fulfills in our lifetime…like a promise to provide for us...

I’m talking about God keeping his promises of thousands of years and tens of thousands of generations of people.

Let me show you just what I mean that when we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate a promise fulfilled.

We are going to go through scripture and trace the history of one specific promise that God made thousands of years ago… and fulfilled in Christ.

And it starts…in the Garden. Even back to the beginning of time, God was making this promise that we would see fulfilled in Christ.

Turn to Genesis 3.

I’m sure all of you are familiar with the story of Adam and Eve. God created them to be fruitful and multiply. To cultivate and have dominion over the earth. To be on the earth as the image of God, glorifying him in all they do.

They had one job. Don’t eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They eat it…and bad things happen.

In Genesis, God is dealing out the consequences of their sin. To the man, to the woman, and to the snake.

Genesis 3:14–16 ESV

The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”

So…as we are going through this tonight…in order to better understand the magnitude of the promise, we need to understand what it meant for the people it was promised to.

So back in the days of the Garden, before any nation existed, before the hebrews, the greeks, the romans…before different countries, and nations...

God spoke in the presence of the mother of all people, and said that her offspring, that his her children, or her child…would bruise or crush the head of the serpent…and that the serpent would bruise his heel.

Are you following here? Are you seeing that even back to the most ancient of times…at the dawn of all creation…God had a promise to make. A promise that a child of Eve would cause a wound to Satan…and satan would do the same.

In our culture it’s so easy to see that, now that we have seen the cross, that we know the cross, that we know who Jesus is.

But can you put yourself in this place? Not knowing Jesus yet but hearing that there was something to be done between satan and the children of man.

In the midst of these consequences…these curses…actually through these consequences…God made a promise about something that was to come in the future.

But he doesn’t just stop there, God keeps on clarifying this promise as time goes on…as he works throughout history…this is just the first instance.

Genesis 12:1–3 ESV

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

2 Samuel 7:8–14 ESV

Now, therefore, thus you shall say to my servant David, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel. And I have been with you wherever you went and have cut off all your enemies from before you. And I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. And violent men shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel. And I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men,

Jeremiah 31:31–34 ESV

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

Luke 1:67–79 ESV

And his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us; to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

If there was one verse to stir your affections for Christ this Christmas season, let it be this verse with you new understanding of what it means that God fulfilled the promises of God.

2 Corinthians 1:20 ESV

For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.