Sermon Tone Analysis

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.