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Introduction: Every year right after thanksgiving, our family begins decorating for Christmas.
We break out the tress and the ornaments and decorations.
But I’m now to a certain age and my kids are to a certain age that the decorations that we’ve accumulated tell a bigger story of our lives.
When Amanda and I first got married, we didn’t have a lot of decorations.
And as a broke seminary student, we didn’t have a whole lot of money to buy them.
Amanda’s family gave her some of her baby ones.
I brought nothing to our meager Christmas tree.
Walking out of Ikea, we found a stuffed rat that somebody had dropped.
We did look around to see if someone had lost it, but to no avail.
we took it home and we put it on our tree.
And for the last 15 Christmases this rat has been on our tree.
We call it our Christmas rat.
A few weeks later, I gave Amanda an ornament for our first Christmas.
Over the years we’ve added dog ornaments, pregnancy ornaments.
Baby’s first Christmas.
2nd baby’s first Christmas
3rd baby’s first Christmas
Vacations.
At the end of our lives, we will be able to tell a big part of our life story, just by showing you our Christmas tree.
You might say, we started deocating our Christmas tree 15 years ago.
And here’s the many more to come.
Transition to the Text: Turn with me in your Bibles to Genesis 3:15.
Did you know that there are at least 300 prophecies in the OT that speak of the coming Messiah?
These prophecies range from the vague to the incredibly specific.
And they start all the way back at the beginning in Genesis 3.
Now Jesus certainly couldn’t intentionally fulfill prophecies that speak of the circumstances of his birth.
But could he accidentally fulfill all 300?
Let’s just say that the odds of Jesus accidentally fulfilling just 8 would be less than the number of futures Dr. Strange had to see before he found one where the avengers defeated Thanos.
No, what 300+ prophecies of the coming Messiah tells us is...
Introduce:
Authentic Principle: God started preparing for Christmas well in advance.
Now this sermon will be a little different in that rather than focusing on one passage, we’re going to do a survey of of some of the main prophecies of Jesus’ birth.
Obviously we can’t do all 300.
The ones we will look at break down the prophecies into:
Jesus’ purpose.
Jesus’ family
Jesus’ world.
First:
1. God prepared Jesus’ purpose.
Explanation: In the beginning, God created the a good world.
Adam and Eve were free to enjoy the fruits of God’s creation.
He only had one rule: Don’t eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
In the day that they would eat from it they would surely die.
And that’s exactly what happened.
Adam and Eve defied God’s law and brought about their own condemnation.
Genesis 3 is the story of sin’s consequences.
It’s a bleak and dreary outlook.
What started as a good world, quickly went sideways as the world was marred by sin and death.
It would have been completely hopeless if not for a glimmer of hope.
It’s just a glimmer, like light at the end of a very very dark tunnel.
God would not leave His people to die in their sin.
He, Himself, would make a way for God to have a relationship with HIs people.
But it was going to take along time.
But God was starting now.
Jesus’ purpose was to deal with our sin so that we could have a restored relationship with God.
Perhaps the clearest articulation of this is Isaiah 53:5
There are hundreds of such prophecies in the OT that spoke of the coming Messiah.
The coming savior.
God was preparing for Jesus.
Everything was getting put in place.
The necessity was there.
But the Roman World, the Jewish unbelief, the cross, the soldiers.
It was all prepared beforehand.
Illustration: Decorating for Christmas takes a lot of work because it takes planning.
You can’t just start stringing lights.
Otherwise you might end up with plugs on the wrong end.
It all works together so in the end when the switch is flipped, the lights come on into a beautiful display of light.
God was preparing all along so that everything was ready.
Application: Jesus didn’t come to be a good teacher or give us a model to follow.
Jesus came first and foremost to save His people from their sins.
You and me.
Jesus came to fulfil God’s purpose of saving us from our sins so we could have a restored relationship Him.
2. God prepared Jesus’ family.
Explanation: When God promised to send a savior, over time he revealed more about who that son would be.
The Jewish people always expected a Messiah.
Eve expected that the savior would be her first born son, Cain.
We know how that worked out.
Because God promised that through Abraham, the nations of the world would be blessed, Abraham expected that it would be Isaac.
Isaac expected that it would be Jacob or Esau.
Jacob thought maybe it would be Joseph.
However, he later found out that it would be through his other son Judah.
Oddly enough, Judah was likely the least godly of his sons…not whom you would expect to bring about a Messiah.
Over time, god narrowed it to the family of a man named David.
Therefore David expected the Messiah to be his son Solomon.
But God was looking forward to a perfect son.
Still God had more to reveal.
Ahaz was a wicked king of Judah in the line of David.
In fact, most of Judah’s kings were evil in that they didn’t follow God at all.
It’s hard to believe that one of the most clear prophecies of Jesus is originally a warning for the house of David to get their act together.
Isaiah goes on to prophecy that the House of David would be demolished to the point of no return.
You might recal that Joseph who was the rightful heir to the throne of David....was not a king, but a humble carpenter.
It was out of this humble beginnings, the Messiah would come.
Jeremiah gets in on the prophecy after talking about the destruction of Jerusalem.
And finally, Bethlehem.
The city of David.
Mary and Joseph likely grew up with their family story, wondering how GOd was going to bring this about.
Each new boy born wondering....is this Him?
But all of these people were sinful in line with Adam and Eve.
Still they waited.
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