Series: Re-Discovering Christmas Week 2: Finding Hope in My Uncertainties
The Christmas story begins with an unbelievable, incomprehensible, impossible promise that the entire world is going to be blessed through Abraham because God believed the world needed to be blessed. God made this extraordinary promise because the world needed Christmas.
Paul, started off as a Christian hater … once he knew that God had sent Jesus into the world, he realized that God was birthing something brand new into the world, and the OT was basically the story of how God did it. He writes this, GALATIANS 4:4a. In other words, when God had things exactly the way He wanted them. When the empire of Rome – language, seaport system, highway system; peace in a part of the world there had never been peace …And a failed temple system back in Jerusalem.
With an empire built on violence, and a temple system built on corruption, when God had things just the way He wanted them …GALATIANS 4:4b. God sent His Son
When He got to that place in history where He knew that the story would not be forgotten, it wouldn’t slip through the cracks of history, that somehow it would happen in such a way that the world would know what happened.
But the Christmas question: Why? …
It gets even more complicated. GALATIANS 4:4c. Why show up like all the rest of us, as one of us, & not as a law unto Himself? He was born under the law, accountable to the law.
And then Paul tells us that he’s born under the law with a very specific purpose. GALATIANS 4:5a TO… or in order that.
Why did God send Jesus? Why did God need Christmas? To do what laws & regulations, what judges & prophets, what exile & punishment could not do. God was ready to do something personal, so God had to do something relational. A message or messenger wouldn’t get it done. God needed Christmas GALATIANS 4:5b
God wanted to move people into a personal relationship with Himself. So, at Christmas, God took the first step to remove all the obstacles of unrestricted fellowship with God.
If it was going to be personal, God had to come in person. How would we know where we stood with God if God had not come to stand with us?
So, at just the right time God staged … a Demonstration. Because actions speak louder than words. Don’t miss the significance of Christmas: 4000+ years ago God promised He would do something through Abraham. 2000 years later Jesus is born & 2000+ years after Jesus is born, we’re still talking about it. The birth of a Jewish baby in the armpit of the Roman Empire became a household name.
It had to be a demonstration that would be documented. Paul writes: ROMANS 5:8a. He showed us. And what does he demonstrate? ROMANS 5:8b This was the thing that, in Jesus, God demonstrated & documented for the entire world.
ROMANS 5:8c When Paul wrote this it’s in the present tense. This was personal for Paul. “God knew that’s what I would do. God knew my passion. God knew that I would be a one-man wrecking machine when it came to arresting Christians and having Christians stoned and put to death. God knew what I was going to do and while I was still a sinner, while that was still in my heart as a Jewish man, Christ died for me.
Jesus’ death was a demonstration of how much He was for us. He demonstrated He was for us before we had the opportunity to decide we were for Him. But … Why in the world did Jesus have to die? Why couldn’t Jesus just pronounce everybody forgiven? Couldn’t He get disciples on a hillside & say “Everyone is forgiven. All of your sins are forgiven.”
Why didn’t He just do that? First, nobody would have believed Him. No one would have taken Him seriously & His words would have never survived the 1st century because only a crazy man would claim to be able to forgive other people’s sins against other people.
But more importantly, Because God is the author of life. When you dishonor the source of life you dishonor God. To dishonor the source of life is an expression of ingratitude deserving the forfeiture of life. We owe God our lives, and our disregard for God forfeited our right to life.
We’ve been given life, & when we shake our fists at God saying we’re going to do what we want to do, the way that we want to do it. We deserve to lose the gift of life.
We owe a debt to the Giver of life that we cannot pay. We owe Him our lives. ROMANS 5:8d.
After Jesus goes back to heaven, and the disciples are in the presence of the very people who had Jesus arrested and crucified. They looked eyeball to eyeball with the people who had Jesus arrested & crucified & say: ACTS 3:14a—b
You chose Barabbas, someone who had taken life over the Man who came to give life. And they were stunned.
ACTS 3:15a. Implication is that God allowed you to kill the Author of life.
ACTS 3:15b God sent His Son into the world so that He could give what we would not and could not give.
Jesus’ death demonstrated the magnitude of our ingratitude and His death demonstrated the magnitude of His love for us.
You cannot demonstrate love without sacrifice. Love must be shown to be known. And you can’t demonstrate great love without a great sacrifice. ROMANS 5:7 …. ROMANS 5:8.
God needed Christmas to demonstrate and document His love for us otherwise, how would we have ever known? So, when the set time had come … a Jewish Carpenter discovers his fiancé is pregnant, what in the world do I do about this, & what in the world do I do with her? Do I shame her? Do I protect her? Do I lie? Do I marry her? Do I tell her mother? What in the world do I do about this, the angel of the Lord spoke to Joseph: MATTHEW 1:20
MATTHEW 1:21a. Why? MATTHEW 1:21b. Matthew 1:22–23a.
This is the best part of it: MATTHEW 1:23b.
So, God staged a demonstration and documented it so the world would know. Because He knew we needed to see it to believe it. And it wasn’t enough to say it. He had to send His Son to pay the price that we owed in such a way that once we embraced the truth of the story, and once we embraced who Jesus was, we would never, ever, ever, ever doubt God’s love for us. He had to be with us so that we could know He was for us. We needed a demonstration.
TRUTH: Hope is Realized with the Arrival of the Prince of Peace.