Who Needs Christmas??
So, how do you feel about Christmas?
I know it is
sometimes not my favorite time of year!
·
The
pressure of the gifts
·
The
constant eating
·
The
demands on your time
·
And
if you have kids, the pressure of Santa!
·
It’s
no wonder we have lost sight of the Christmas story!
We have reduced it to a sound bite!
·
It’s
about a birth
·
It’s
about a mangier
·
It’s
about some wise men and a camel
·
It’s
about forgiveness
·
And
frankly we have lost sight of the true Christmas story!
It is so much more!
·
The
true Christmas story spans more than 4000 years
·
The
true Christmas story is far from over
·
The
true Christmas story is not about forgiveness it’s about deliverance!
So, what is the Christmas Story?
The way I see
it the Christmas story is about the one true God’s promise to his people to bless
them, and Gods perfect timing.
It’s about a
relationship so important to God that he would make the ultimate sacrifice for
it, and the delivery of a world that desperately needed saving!
Christmas is
not a story about the birth of a baby, the Christmas story is the ultimate love
story!
So, who needs Christmas? First the
world did!
The
Christmas story didn’t begin with Joseph and Mary in a manger. It began with
God making an unbelievable, incoherent, and impossible promise to a man named
Abraham. That promise carried through the entire history of ancient Israel and
beyond.
Genesis
12:1–3 (NIV)
1The Lord
had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s
household to the land I will show you.
2“I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
3I will bless those who bless you, and
whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed
through you.”
·
Sometimes
we read things and don’t understand what it meant to the people in the story
·
And
these set of promises where so unbelievable that it makes it remarkable that
Abraham would even chose to follow
·
He
had no kids, and was in his 70’s
·
And
God made promises that seemed impossible
o He left the safety of his family,
Family meant everything.
o He didn’t know where he was going
·
There
weren’t even any nations yet, clans, tribes, but not nations
·
And
to bless every person on earth, everyone that has been and will ever be born on
planet earth
o No one blessed anyone then
o Violence was how people got anything
o This was a set of promises that seemed unbelievable,
incoherent, and impossible but he followed!
God kept his promise, Sort of.
·
Abraham
did have kids and their kids had kids
·
And
a few hundred years later the nation of Israeli was born
·
And
ended up in Egypt, a slave nation
·
And then Moses came and they left Egypt for
the promises land eventually became a great nation
·
but
fell again, not many blessings to anyone so far!
Chaos came
·
the
kingdom of David was destroyed
·
and
for the next few hundred years the Jewish people were spread all over the
region and God sent a prophet Isaiah
Isaiah
49:6 (NIV)
I will also
make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of
the earth.”
·
And
I can’t believe that anyone thought that they could be a light or save anyone
·
They
couldn’t even save themselves
A few hundred
more years went by and more devastation, more violence, ensued. And Gods sends the
prophet Malachi
Malachi
1:11 (NIV)
11My name will be great among the
nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets. In every place incense and
pure offerings will be brought to me, because my name will be great among the
nations,” says the Lord Almighty.
·
This
just added insult to injury!
·
The
Jewish people were not felling blessed
·
God
was not great at all in anyone’s eyes
·
And
they felt defeated, let down, and hopeless
So you see the world needed Christmas!
God needed Christmas too!
And in Gods
perfect timing he kept his promise!
Galatians 4:4 (NIV)
4But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born
under the law,
·
When
the time was right
·
When
the world had fallen under one rule
·
When
the delivery system was in place through the Roman empire
·
When
the world could be reached God kept his promise!
And God sent His son to fulfill the
promise
·
And
the burning question is why his son
·
Why
did God need to send his son, God in a body
·
Why
in human flesh
·
Why
did God need Christmas?
·
Why?
Galatians
4:5 (NIV)
5to redeem those under the law, that we
might receive adoption to sonship.
·
God
need Christmas to do something personal and to do something personal he needed
to do something relational!
·
He
had to do something that prophets could not do
·
That
text or miracles could not do
·
God
wanted to remove the boundaries to a personal relationship
·
And
to do that he needed Christmas
·
For
God to make it personal he needed to come in person
·
God
Needed to stand with us to show us
·
How
would we know that God was with us if he never stood beside us?
·
God
needed Christmas!
He need a demonstration!
Romans
5:6–8 (NIV)
6You see, at just the right time, when
we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.
7Very rarely will anyone die for a
righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.
8But God demonstrates his own love for
us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
·
Why
did God need Christmas?
·
He
needed to demonstrate his love for us
·
He
need to demonstrate that 4000 years ago he made a promise
·
And
2000 years later when the time was right he fulfilled that promise
·
God
had to come in to human history to make a personal demonstration
Why did Jesus have to die?
·
Because
the giver of life (God) is owed a debt (from us)
·
And
God being owed a debt had to be paid
·
He
couldn’t simple say your forgiven, he had to show it, he had to insure the debt
was paid
·
No
one would ever believe it without seeing it
The true message of Christmas
·
Jesus
death demonstrated the magnitude of our ingratitude, and the magnitude of God’s
love for us!
Love is shown to be know!
·
To
show love you need a sacrifice
·
You
will never know how much someone loves you until they sacrifice for you
·
Words
are cheap
·
To
show great love you need a big sacrifice
·
So
how would God show us his great love for us?
John
3:16 (NIV)
16For 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.
·
Through
the greatest sacrifice, his son!
God need Christmas, to demonstrate and document
his love for us!
We need Christmas too!
So what’s in a name?
Matthew
1:16 (NIV)
16and Jacob the father of Joseph, the
husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah.
Jesus = Joshua
·
The
Jewish people were not expecting a savior they were expecting a warrior!
·
Joshua
was a warrior, and the people wanted a deliver a warrior to defeat there
captures
·
The
long-awaited messiah was to, in their minds, was to deliver them from the here
and now, not the ever after!
·
This
is an important part of the story!
And God spoke to Joseph!
Matthew
1:21 (NIV)
21She will give birth to a son, and you
are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
·
God
had bigger plans
·
It
was time for God to fulfill his promise to Abraham
·
It
was time, the set time
·
To
bless the world
·
To
redeem the world from its self
·
And
a warrior was sent! His son!
Acts
3:15 (NIV)
15You killed the author of life, but God
raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.
·
God
sent a warrior not to forgive us of our sin but to deliver us from it!!!
If you
water down Christmas to the birth of Jesus, and the mere forgiveness of Sin we
lose the story of true Christmas, the story of a warrior sent to deliver the
world from the power of sin!
·
Jesus
did not come to deliver us from the consequences of sin
·
He
came to deliver us from the power of sin
·
The
nation of sin
·
The
stronghold of sin
·
The
dominion of sin
·
The
kingdom sin
·
Jesus
the warrior came to deliver us from the power of SIN!
You can be delivered from sin!
John
8:11 (NIV)
11“No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither
do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go
now and leave your life of sin.”
Is it possible to leave our life of
sin?
·
Can
we leave our life of sin?
·
Can
we leave our captivity to sin?
·
Can
we really leave our life of sin?
Jesus came to do more than just forgive
us of sin!
John
10:10 (NIV)
10The thief comes only to steal
and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the
full.
·
Jesus
came for so much more than to simply forgive us
·
He
came to free us
·
He
came to deliver us
·
He
is not the frail carpenter, he is Joshua the deliver!!!
·
And
he wants to deliver us all!
What masters you
Romans
6:12–14 (NIV)
12Therefore do not let sin
reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.
13Do not offer any part of yourself to
sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those
who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to
him as an instrument of righteousness.
14For sin shall no longer
be your master,
because you are not under the law, but under grace.
·
You
know that battle in you to do right and wrong
·
The
one side says “do it” and the other “says don’t”
·
The
sin side does not have to master you any longer
Romans
6:23 (NIV)
23For the wages of sin is death, but the
gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Sin kills things, we always pay the consequence
for sin!
·
Prisons
are full of people paying the consequences of sin
·
Marriages
are destroyed by sin
·
Family’s
are decimated by sin
·
Lives
are shattered by sin!
·
Forgiven
sin still kills things,
·
But
we don’t have to live like that anymore!
The true gift of Christmas is: the gift
of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus!
·
The
real Gift of Christmas is the freedom from the bondage of Sin today
·
If
you think that forgiveness is all Jesus came for you are missing out!
·
Jesus
came to deliver you from sin today!
·
Give
you a life today, a life to the full today
·
And
Just like Dorothy, you are wearing the slippers that will take you home today! So stop wandering around!
·
That
addiction does not need to be you master
·
That
bottle does not need to be your master
·
That
lust does not need to be your master
·
Sin
does not need to be your master
·
You
have the gift of the Spirit of God in you and you can turn from sin once and for
all! AMEN!
Close
SO, Christmas
is not just about the birth of a baby, its about a promise 2000 years before the
birth and 2000 years after that you warrior king Jesus came to deliver you and
me from the bondages and the chains of sin! Christmas is truly the gift from
God that keeps on giving until the end of time!
No comments:
Post a Comment