The Christmas Story

Father, it's such a sacred thing bringing the Word, and I just pray today that your hand would be upon this, and that you would, by your Holy Spirit, apply the truths of your Word to our lives. I pray also, as Pastor Chad said, that for this Christmas, Father, we'll have a heart to reach those that don't know you right here in our area. And Father, you enable us to let this Christmas Eve services be filled with people who don't know you this year. In Jesus' name, and everybody said amen.

So, you know, in that video, Pastor Chad really wanted us to utilize Christmas Eve as an opportunity to invite people. And we as a church talk a lot about the three billion plus people on the planet that have no one to share the gospel with them. I just came from the Silk Road over in a couple of former Soviet republics, and, you know, there's not many representations there for the gospel.

It's pioneer work. And that is so important that we send people to those places, and it's so important that we support those that go. But I would also say this, that you and I also have a responsibility to share the gospel with the people around us, right? And maybe you're in a workplace where there's people that don't know the Lord. Maybe there's people in your home or your family. Maybe there's neighbors.

Maybe there's businesses you frequent, right? And it's not just the responsibility of global workers to reach unreached people groups like the Pentecostal with the Kitua. It is our responsibility as followers of Christ to reach the unreached people groups right here in the Raleigh-Durham area. And we do these Christmas Eve services, and we do them because we want to celebrate Christmas and what it's about, which is presents.

That's why I celebrate it. It's a joke. I'm kidding. Dear Lord. Pastor Chad will be back next week. Fine. I don't like his sarcasm or his Yankee nasal voice. But you know, I think that God has you genuinely as a follower of Christ.

I think he has you in that workplace and in that neighborhood, in that family for more than just yourself, but to be a light. And I really love it if during the service, I kid you not, I really mean this, that if you are planning to come to one of the Christmas Eve services, we have two on Monday the 23rd at 5 and 7 p.m. We have two on December the 24th, Christmas Eve at 11 and 1. You got to go to cross that family to register. But I want to challenge you, don't register unless you're going to invite someone.

Invite someone. And during this service, you have my blessing to grab your cell phone. How many of you have a cell phone on you right now? How many people are going to lie and not raise their hand? All right. I would love for you right during the service while I'm teaching to send a note to that co-worker if you have their number or that family member and say, hey, we're going to a Christmas Eve service across the sun.

We'd love to have you come with us. Because sometimes people will say, you know, I don't know how to share my faith. I'm nervous about evangelism. I get it. And it does take boldness and the Holy Spirit to do that.

And this message today is not a training and sharing your faith. But you can do that, right? You can just invite someone to Christmas Eve, right?

Think so? Let's do that. Let's fill this place with lost people. Can we give God praise for that?

Let's do that this Christmas Eve. We're going to be in Matthew, chapter 1, verse 18, and we're going to read that passage, and then I'm going to give you some context for this. Would you stand with me for the reading of the word? Sorry, I know I've got you up and down like a yoga class or something else. He takes yoga.

I don't take yoga. Don't freak out. Dear Lord. So Matthew 1, verse 18, the Christmas story. I'm reading from the English Standard Version.

It says, now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. Because Mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, and just stop for a second there. Betrothal was legal marriage. If you wanted to break a betrothal, you had to get divorced.

But you weren't living together, you weren't sleeping together. Typically during the betrothal period, the groom was preparing a place for his bride. And because of nuclear families at that time and part of the world, typically that meant adding a room on or preparing a room for the newly married couple to live in as a part of the family. That's why Jesus said in heaven, there are many rooms in my father's house.

It's this idea of that's what would happen. And so during the betrothal period, they would be getting ready to get married. And so Mary had been betrothed to Joseph.

It was arranged. They had arranged marriages. Before they came together, meaning before they were doing what married couples do, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband, Joseph, being adjustment and unwilling to put her to shame, which by mosaic law, he could have had her stoned to death, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David. That's really important because the Messiah, the promised one, would be a part of the lineage of King David.

And Joseph was a part of that lineage of the tribe of David, which I believe is Benjamin. Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife. That which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name what?

Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord has spoken by the prophet. This is Isaiah 7 14, I believe. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke from his sleep, he did as the angel Lord commanded him.

He took his wife but knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus. Let's go back to verse 21 and together outline all the campuses and online. Would you read this with me? You're ready out loud. Here we go. Verse 21. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. Amen.

Amen. God is blessing the reading of his word. The New Living Translation puts this passage this way. She will have a son, and you shall name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. In fact, in Luke's account of the Christmas story, it says, And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son. This is the angel speaking to Mary, and you shall call his name Jesus.

He will be great. He will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David. King David.

And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. Of the three gospels that we call synoptic, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Matthew and Luke tell a birth narrative story about Jesus. So we're going to take this morning and talk about this story because according to a survey done in 2021 by LifeWay, only about 22% of Americans can answer the question, what is the story of Christmas? Now, that's probably not true in a room full of believers, but this message is not just for those who are believers. It's for all who would want to hear the gospel.

So I'm going to assume you don't know the story. And so Matthew was writing to Jewish people, and he wrote from the perspective of Joseph when it came to the birth narrative. And Luke, who was writing to Gentiles, non-Jewish people, was writing to Gentiles, and he was writing from the perspective of Mary.

So this time of year, if you want to read the Christmas story, I would encourage you to, if you can, read Matthew and read Luke. They both have a genealogy, and the genealogies are important because the Messiah, the promised one that was prophesied about in the Old Testament, would come both through the lineage of Abraham and through King David. And those genealogies, one traces Luke's goes back to Adam from Joseph, and one goes from Abraham to Joseph. They show that Jesus was of the right lineage that the Messiah would come. And then they begin to tell this narrative about the birth story.

So several things happen. Well, first off, there's a map. I feel like I can't preach without a map, so I'm sorry about that. And there's a map I'm going to put up behind me here. And in the upper right-hand corner, there's a little dinky town called Nazareth.

You can go there today. In fact, there's a church that sits over top. Most of the holy sites where they think Jesus was had churches built all over them, going back to the 300s when Helen, the mother of Constantine. You know, as in Constantinople, the Roman emperor was really sent there by her son to commemorate these holy sites.

So Nazareth is where the story happens. Now, was Jesus born on December 25th? No, probably not.

Does that mean that when we celebrate Christmas, we are celebrating the Roman god's son, Saturnaia, and we're all going to hell? No. Okay? You all stop getting freaky about weird stuff like that, okay? I'm grateful God didn't tell us which was his birthday, right?

Because you all probably be weird about that too, right? So there's all kinds of bad things that have happened in the world on your birthday. So when you celebrate your birthday, you celebrate the bad things that happened on your birthday?

No. So don't worry about it. There's a great saving on the King James when it comes to this December 25th date.

It's who careth. So around the 300s, when Constantine was the first Christian Roman emperor, they began to celebrate the Nativity, the birth of Christ, on this date because it was a date that the Romans celebrated the coming of the sun. It was Saturnaia, right? But they made it the coming of the sun, S-O-N. So we know that this story about Jesus' birth happens no later than the spring of 4 BC because Herod the Great, and he was not a great guy. In fact, he murdered some of his sons and one of his wives, and he was pretty rough. But he was a great builder.

He built a lot of things. And in fact, he rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem. And Herod the Great died in March or April of 4 BC. So we know that Jesus could not have been born any later than that. And if by the time the Magi showed up, he was two years old, which we don't know if he was two years old or not. They just said that they saw the star in the east for two years prior. And they had come east, like they come from way over Iraq, that direction, okay? Because there was a prophecy in the Old Testament about when the Messiah would come, there would be a sign in the heavens.

And I won't go into what that was, but it's actually really cool if you ever study it. So we know that Jesus was born between 6 and 4 BC. A lot of scholars put him in the spring, March and April of 5 BC, but again, we don't really know. But we do know that he was born somewhere around 6 to 4 BC, and we know that human history is now dated by his birth.

Now they got the date wrong by about 4 to 6 years, but BC and AD, they're all dated around this very moment in human history. And is it a story? Is it make believe? Is it like a certain Christmas figure that if I say it, I'll have a lot of parents mad at me, so I'm not going to say what figure that is. That's make believe, right? Or is it true? Is it a real story?

We're going to talk about that. So this story happens around this time, and Joseph and Mary are up in Nazareth, and about 6 months before an angel appeared to Mary, a guy named Zechariah, who was married to a woman named Elizabeth, who was a relative of Mary, who had never had children. They were older.

They were barren. Zechariah was of the priestly line. He was serving burning incense in the temple in Jerusalem, and Gabriel the angel appears to him and tells him, you and your wife are going to conceive naturally, and you're going to have a son, call him John, and he is going to prepare the way for the Messiah. And Zechariah doesn't believe it, and so he goes mute, comes out, and the angel strikes him, loses his voice until John is born. And so about 6 months later, Elizabeth is miraculously pregnant. An angel appears to Mary up in Nazareth, and she probably lived in a cave, not because she was nesting poor, but there's a lot of limestone formations in Israel, and they would use a lot of those caves as homes and as places to put livestock like a nativity scene. And so, in fact, you can go to Nazareth today, and there's a church built over top of these caves that they think was Mary's home. So an angel appears to her and says, you are going to conceive and have a son, and she says, well, how can this be?

I've never known a man. Even though she's betrothed, he and Joseph aren't sleeping together, and said that the Holy Spirit will come on you, and you'll name him Jesus, and say they'll be from their sins. And so, and the angel also tells her, by the way, your relative Elizabeth is pregnant, which was a big deal because she was barren and was older.

I don't know how old. So Mary does what a lot of young ladies would do. They go to the home with their relative to help them prepare for having the baby, and so Mary stays with Elizabeth and was probably there when John the Baptist was born. She's probably in the room. And the baby is born, and she stays and helps Elizabeth in some other village in Judea.

I don't know which one. And then she comes back to Nazareth, and uh-oh, you know, she's showing it. Something has happened. And Joseph, being a righteous man, decides that he's just gonna divorce her quietly and not bring her to public shame, not bring her before the religious authorities and have her stoned to death. And then he has a dream, and the dream, an angel appears to him and tells him, hey, this is of God. And so he takes Mary as his wife. And then this guy, there is a Caesar Augustus, who was the Roman emperor at the time. He had taken a census. In fact, that stone on the right, which is a resgeite, which is basically bragging about what Caesar did, but it actually has in it, noting there was a census. Now, there were several censuses taken.

And governments aren't any different than they are today. They took censuses so they could tax people. And the way that they would tax you in Israel is they would ask you to return to the tribal home of your tribe. And Joseph was of the tribe of Benjamin, and their base was in Bethlehem, where David was from. And so even though Mary was full-blown pregnant, they had to travel down for this census to this village. And the next scene you'll see is an artist rendering. It's really like a real-world depiction of what the nativity may have looked like. And I don't know, it didn't look exactly like that, but the reality is it was a cave, most likely. And of course, lots of people are traveling, and so there isn't a lot of places for people to stay, so they stay in a cave where the animals are, and there's a manger. It was probably a carved-out rock, because that's what they would do, and their feet, and that's where she placed them.

And so this scene is closer to the real scene that we see that happened at the time. And in fact, the next slide is a church called the Church of the Nativity. And the original church was built by Helen, again, back in the 300s, who was the mother of Constantine. And in fact, you see some hatches on the floor. You can look through that floor. I've been there, and there is an original floor from the church that Helen built. And underneath this church are some caves, and they think in one of those caves Jesus was born.

And so this story is about Joseph and Mary and Mary being pregnant without sleeping with a man and having a baby, and a baby boy named Jesus, and that this Jesus would save the people from their sins. Why is this important? Why do we date human history from it? Why should Christmas be celebrated?

Why is it important? I love Christmas. I have some great memories of Christmas growing up. My parents, we didn't have a lot of money growing up, but my parents, and I know for some of you maybe you don't have great memories about Christmas, but I have great memories, and my parents always made sure we had a great Christmas. And we didn't have a TV at the time. We were practically Amish, and this was really, really dating me. And I remember, you remember rabbit ears?

Okay, that was before cable and before the internet, and God forbid young people before cell phones. Can you imagine? Are the youth sitting over here? Yes, yes, can I hear from you?

Are you there? Yes, woo, wow. That's the most mature youth I've ever seen.

Too cool for school. So we'd get the rabbit ears out, and we would watch some deeply spiritual Christmas specials like Frosty the Snowman, and that biblical tale, that four-legged creature Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer, right? I remember we showed that to my son, and he was two years old, and he ran out of the room screaming when he saw the abominable snowman, so we scarred him for life. And then my favorite, the Charlie Brown Christmas special, right, you gotta love Charlie Brown, that's great, right? And that was a tradition for us. And then we would come out Christmas morning, and the tree would be loaded with presents, and my parents had stayed up most of the night wrapping, and how many parents have done that?

The night before, you're okay, right? And then the kids wanna get, we woke up like four in the morning, we were so excited, and my mom and dad made a rule, something like we couldn't open any presents till 7.30, so we would play every board game we had and do everything we could, and we were just so excited. Such good memories, all those presents. Well, Christmas is really about the greatest present that has ever been given.

It's really about the fact that God came into the world to save the world. And, you know, I don't know that we can date the tradition of giving presents to Christmastime. I know that we in our family give presents in honor of God giving the greatest gift ever given. The Christmas tree has zero spiritual meaning. It's just something we do. It's a weird tradition. There's nothing spiritual about it, really. You know, there's all kinds of things at Christmas that we have, but really, what is Christmas about?

Why is human history dated by this moment? Why did God come into the world to save the world? The name Jesus Yeshua, or in the Greek, Yesu, sounds like Spanish, doesn't it? Literally means the Lord saves. The Lord saves.

And if Christmas is the story of how God came into the world to save the world, it begs the question, why did the world need to be saved? This moment, this incarnation, is not just the birth of a little boy. It was the moment that God took on flesh. John Piper said the person, not the body, but the essential personhood of Jesus existed before he was born as a man. One of the descriptions of Jesus in the Bible is the lamb slain before the foundations of the world.

His birth was not a coming and a being of a new person, but a coming into the world of an infinitely older person. I'm sorry I'm wearing a jacket today. The heat is not working in the room because y'all aren't tithing well enough to pay for the heat bill. No, it's not here at all.

It just broke. We're getting it fixed, but if you get cold, just snuggle up. We'll allow that at this service. Just snuggle up, okay? No spooning, no spooning, all right? Just snuggle up, okay?

All right. Can you believe I said that? I can't believe I said that. John Piper said his birth was not a coming and a being of a new person, but a coming into the world of an infinitely old person. The advantage of such a picture isn't that it helps us see that the Son, who is the very image and glory of God, is indeed begotten by the Father, and yet is not created. There never was a time when God the Father did not have this perfect, real, and living image of himself.

They are co-eternal. The Son is eternally begotten, not created. But it feels so strong that among those of us who've grown up in the church and who can recite the great doctrine of our faith and our sleep, that among us something must be done to help us once more feel the awe, the fear, the astonishment, the wonder of the Son of God, begotten by the Father from all eternity, reflecting all the glory of God, being the very image of his person through whom all things were created, upholding the universe by the word of his power. You can read every fairy tale that was ever written, every mystery thriller, every ghost story, and you will never find anything so shocking, so strange, so weird and spellbinding as the story of the incarnation of the Son of God. Even if you are an atheist or someone who confesses for another faith, you should ask yourself, why was Jesus of Nazareth so important that all of human history is dated by his birth? This moment is not just a little boy coming into the world, it was God taking on flesh. Jesus, Yeshua, the Lord saves.

Christmas is the story of how God came into the world, saved the world, but why does the world need saving? Science says that time, space, and matter came into existence all at the same time. They didn't come separately, they couldn't. And science cannot tell you where matter came from, where time came from, where space came from. They just know that there was a moment, sometimes called the Big Bang Theory, there was a moment when it did not exist and suddenly it did exist. The Bible calls it the beginning.

Can you take your hand and do it like this? Thumbs up, the beginning. This is, we're gonna give you the whole history of the world through your hand today. The beginning. When time, space, and matter came into existence. Now, science says 14 billion years ago, I don't agree with that time frame, but they do agree that something came from nothing. The Christian worldview is this, Genesis 1-1, that in the beginning that the universe as we know it did not happen by accident.

That there was a cause, there was a personal cause, there was a person behind it. In the beginning, Genesis 1-1, in the beginning, who created? Who created?

God created. The heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness over the face of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters and God said, let there be light and there was what?

Light. It's a story of the beginning. In Genesis 1-26, then God said, let us make man in our image. So note in the Christian worldview, human beings are not the same as other creatures within the universe. Let us make man in our image after our likeness, Genesis 1-26, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image and the image of God he created him, male and female, he created them. To understand Christmas, you gotta understand the history of the world. And one, in the beginning, God created.

He desired that the universe come into existence and that within that universe, there was a creature, Adam and Eve, that he brought into the world that were different from the rest of creation. This is still true today. We know this, right? If you hear a news story about a shark biting someone at the beach, right? You never get a reporter saying, hey, we've interviewed the parents of the shark. This shark never knew its dad. Shark was in a gang. Shark was doing drugs. Shark was making a lot of bad choices. And this just shark chose poorly.

Shark didn't know, he was just trying to eat, right? We as humans inherently have a sense of right and wrong. And I can prove it. People say there's no such thing as objective truth, meaning truth that is always true no matter the circumstances. And I know there's a few people that would say otherwise, but if that's true, then why is pedophilia wrong? And you're saying, oh, you're being gross.

No, I'm just telling you. If somebody tells you there's not objective truth and just ask them is pedophilia wrong, was the Holocaust wrong? Clearly, we are born with a conscience of right and wrong.

Doesn't mean we listen to it. And as Pastor Chad says, if you don't believe in original sin, you'd never had children. But clearly, human beings in the beginning were created different from the rest of humanity.

And fundamentally, they were given a choice. It was really simple. You can eat from everything in the garden, but this one tree. And usually the story is there was a fall. So take your hand, go like this at the beginning, and put your finger like this, the fall.

There was a fall. There was a separation between God and man. There was sin coming into the world through Adam and Eve disobeying God and eating from that tree.

And it had consequences. Now, some people will argue, and just bear with me for a moment, some people will argue that one of the reasons that there cannot be a loving God is the existence of evil in the world. If God is good, how can bad things happen to good people? How can evil happen, right? Well, one, in Scripture, there's no such thing as a good person. But two, if you want to be philosophically honest, how many of you are married? All right, okay. How many of you want to be married to somebody who does not choose to love you, they just have to?

That's the best, isn't it? Well, God's no different. He wanted a relationship with a part of his creation, human beings, where there was a choice. If you say you want the freedom, the free will of man to exist, and you want the ability to choose good, the only way you can have the option to choose good is if it was an opposite choice. If every time a human being chose poorly, God stopped it, there would be no free choice.

We'd be a bunch of robots. The vast majority, not all of it, but the vast majority of suffering in the world occurs because people make stupid decisions. Someone gets drunk, they drive a car, they kill somebody.

Why did the person die? Not because God's bad, but because somebody chose to get drunk and drive a car and kill somebody. There's a lot of power in free will. And God, even though he knew in his foreknowledge that we would fall, God allowed free will because he wanted a creature that would choose to serve and follow him and be in relationship with him.

The beginning, the fall. Romans 5-12 says, Therefore just as sin came into the world through one man, Adam, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sin in Adam, for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not kind of where there is no law. 1 Corinthians 15-21, For as by a man Adam came death, by a man Jesus has come also the resurrection of the dead. Sometimes Jesus is called the second Adam in theology. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

Christmas is the story about God came in the world to save the world. Why? Because God created it.

It's his world and he cares about it. 2, because there was a fall. And make sure you're using all three fingers for this next one, okay? So go to your middle finger, all right?

I want you guys using the universal symbol of disapproval on me here. Say the promise. The beginning, the fall, the promise. There was a promise in the Old Covenant, the Old Testament, to a guy named Abraham, known as Abram, that his wife, who was barren and at 75 years old, God told him, through you I will form a nation and through your seed all nations, all people on earth will be blessed.

And his wife was barren. In fact, God did not fulfill that promise until he was 100 years old. But there is a promise in Genesis 12, verse 3, I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse and in you all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. There was a promise that God would deal with the fall. There was a promise that God would deal with the separation of God and man because of the fall. And it says this, and he brought Abram outside in Genesis 15, 5. He said, look toward heaven and number the stars if you're able to number them, socially or offspring be. And it says he believed the Lord, meaning Abraham, Abram believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

Why is that significant? It's the first time when the Bible says someone was right with God, not because of what they did, but because of their trust and faith in God. In fact, in Romans chapter 4, Paul writes the church in Rome, he says, so the promise of eternal life is received by faith, it is given as a free gift, and we are all certain to receive it, whether or not we live according to the law of Moses, if we have faith like Abraham's, for Abraham is a father of all who believe. That is what the scripture means when God told him, I have made you the father of many nations.

This happened because Abraham believed in the God who brings the dead back to life and who creates new things out of nothing. So there was a promise. And in fact, I won't cover it now, but there was also a promise to David, who came hundreds of years later, that his kingdom, his kingdom would reign forever. So when they were talking about a Messiah, a promised one in the time 2000 years ago, and they were really looking for a Messiah because they were under Roman rule and they didn't want to be under Roman rules.

They were looking for a political and military leader, really, honestly, to throw Rome off their back. But there was these promises and a couple of the promises were, as one, this Messiah would come through the lineage of Abraham, and that's why you have the genealogies in Matthew going back from Abraham to Joseph. And then also that he would be of the line of David. And you see that in the genealogy, particularly in Luke's genealogy, which goes right back to Adam.

And so there is what? The beginning, right? The fall and then the promise. Number four, your ring finger, put it out there, the fulfillment. The fulfillment. 1 Timothy 2 five, for there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is a testimony given at the proper time. The fulfillment. How many Old Testament prophecies did Jesus fulfill?

Well, there are varying viewpoints on this. There's at least 70 major prophecies. We know of over 300 Old Testament prophecies that Christ fulfilled. Some even hold that he fulfilled as many as 570 messianic promises.

Here's just a few of them. Isaiah said in Isaiah 11 that the Messiah would be called a Nazarene from Nazareth. He was. In Psalm 78, it says that he would speak in parables, stories, he did. And Zechariah, he said he would be called a king, and he was. Zechariah again in Zechariah 11 said he would be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver, and he was.

And a potter's field would be brought with the money. That happened. He would be silent when accused. Isaiah 53, he was. He would be killed with criminals. He was crucified between two thieves. Isaiah 53 again.

He would be a sacrifice for sin. Isaiah 53 again. Matthew 1, 22, all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they will call his name Immanuel. Jesus is, that finger, the fulfillment. He is the fulfillment of the promises that were given.

Right, in fact, listen to, and it's a bit long passage, but bear with me. Isaiah 53 written hundreds of years before Christ's death and resurrection. It's a messianic passage. He, the Messiah, was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, Isaiah 53, and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted, but he was pierced for our transgressions.

You see, because the punishment for sin is death. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep, pardon me, have gone astray.

We have turned everyone to his own way. The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. See, God is all loving, but he's also all just. And the punishment for sin is death.

In fact, there is no forgiveness with the shedding of blood, Scripture says. So there was a beginning, there was a fall, there was a promise, there was a fulfillment in Christ. And then we'll go to the future. There will be an end, your pinky finger, the beginning, the fall, the promise of fulfillment, the end.

There will be an end to creation as we know it. It says in Hebrews 9, 27, 28 that he will appear a second time. Revelation 1, 7, behold he, Christ, is coming with the clouds and every eye will see him. This is of his second coming. And even those who pierced him and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him.

Those who don't want to see him return. Even so, amen. And then it says of him, I am the alpha, the beginning, and the omega, the end, says the Lord God, who was, who is, and who is to come the Almighty. In fact, 2 Peter, Peter writes to the church in chapter 3, verse 9, it says, the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise of some kind slowness, the promise of his second coming, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief and the heavens will pass away with a roar and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

The end means that time, space, and matter as exist now will change and there'll be a new heavens and a new earth. Christ is in the middle of all that. Christmas is a story of how God came into the world to save the world, why? Because in the beginning he created the world, he cared about it. Why did he come to save the world? Because there was a fall and a separation between God and man because of sin. Why did he become? Because he promised he would come and fulfill the need for sin to be taken care of. Why did he come at Christmas?

To be that fulfillment and eventually to bring this world, this creation as we know it, to an end. This is why we have the Christmas story. There are some facts about Jesus of Nazareth that I think are important.

They're a little geeky but bear with me. One, he was a real human being whose actual existence has been historically validated. Let me just say that for anybody who's a skeptic. I could read you quotes, I don't have them with me right now, from atheists who argue that Jesus of Nazareth existed. There is actual historical records outside of the Bible. So it's not a made up story and if you want to deny Jesus existed you're gonna have to deny that Alexander the Great existed and some other people that we have less evidence for than we do of Jesus of Nazareth. He was an actual human being who actually existed and the fact, I love this, 1 John 1, 1. That which is from the beginning, meaning Christ, which we have heard, they heard him, which we've seen with our eyes, they saw him, which we looked upon and they touched him, have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life, meaning Christ, the life was made manifest, manifest a fancy word for made real and we have seen it and testified to it and proclaimed to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us.

Jesus was a real human being whose actual existence has been historically validated. Number two, Jesus claimed to be the unique eternal son, one with the Father and thus to be fully God. 1 John, pardon me, John 14 six, Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Well, you are either a liar when you say that and you know it's not true or you're crazy, you're a lunatic or you are Lord, you are who you say you are. Number three, his claims and the life that supported them were anticipated prophetically in the Old Testament. We talked about that quite extensively but even Jesus himself, after his resurrection, spoke to some disciples on a walk on a road and he said to them in Luke 24 25, O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all the prophets have spoken, was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things, the crucifixion and enter into his glory and beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures of things concerning himself. Number four, his claims to deity were validated historically by his resurrection from the dead, marking both Christ himself and the Christian faith as utterly unique, it is an empty tomb. Matthew chapter 27 verse 54, at his death, a centurion was standing there and when the centurion was an overseer of 100 Roman soldiers and those who were with him keeping watch over Jesus saw the earthquake, there was an earthquake when he died, and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, truly, this was the Son of God. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 15 verse three and he said, for I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that one, this is an early creedal statement, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, that he appeared to Cephas, that's Peter, then to the 12, the 12 apostles, then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep, meaning a few had died, then he appeared to James, the half brother of Jesus, if anything testifies who Jesus is, it's a half brother calling him Lord, I have great brothers, they're never gonna call me that, and then to all the apostles, last of all, it's the one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

Paul wrote again in 1 Corinthians 15, 20, but in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. Jesus was a real human being whose actual existence has been historically validated. He claimed to be the unique, eternal Son, one with the Father and thus to be fully God. His claims and the life of support of them were anticipated prophetically in the Old Testament, and his claims of deity were validated historically by his resurrection from the dead, marking both Christ himself and the Christian faith as utterly unique. If Christmas is a story of how God came into the world to save the world, it often begs the question, why did God make such a sacrifice?

Did he have to? George Whitefield said, For God could not, nor can receive any additional good by our salvation. But it was love, mere love, it was free love that brought the Lord Jesus Christ into our world about 2,000 years ago. Why did God make such a sacrifice?

Why the incursion? Why the death on the cross? Why the resurrection?

Because he wanted to. The world may seem cruel to you, but don't let the sins of human beings deter you from the truth that there is a loving creator who is fully just and he fulfilled the justice of sin through the blood of his very own Son, that you and I could be free and forgiven and have a relationship with him. That's what Christmas is about. Can we give God praise for that? At his own trial before Pilate, Jesus was brought and was arrested because he claimed to be God and they said it was blasphemous and Jewish leaders brought him and had him arrested. And Pilate, who was a procurator of Israel at the time, said to him, So you are a king, and Jesus answered, You say that I am a king, for this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. See, truth is knowable in its objective. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. For this I was born, he said, and for this I've come to bear witness to the truth. The connection between this and what we've said till now is that the Christ who came into the world to bear witness to the truth is God and no one can more reliably present the truth than God. For God is the author of all truth and wills to make it known reliably. Therefore, God has no fault, no weakness, no finitude that he ever needs to hide by deceit. God is so sovereign, so perfect and glorious that the truth will always rebound to his honor. Therefore, God is committed to revealing the truth reliably because he wills to be known and glorified for who he really is. The other wonderful thing implied in Christ's coming to testify to the truth is eternal life.

If, as Jesus said in John 17, three, this is eternal life, to know you, the only true God, then the purpose of Jesus to bear witness to the truth of God must mean that his purpose is to give eternal life. You see, when every person is born, under the tree of their life is a gift wrapped in waiting for them. It is the gift of eternal life. It is a gift of redemption. It is a gift that overcomes the fall. It is the gift that provides purpose and meaning and identity in Christ, and it is free, and it can only be opened by that person. And it's there from the moment they are born to the moment they die. Christ came to bring that gift. Have you received it?

Have you opened the greatest gift ever given? You see, you will not find purpose in making more money. You won't find it in relationships. You won't find it in success. You won't find it in following your heart. Don't follow your heart. Your heart's an idiot, the Bible says.

You won't find it there. If you're looking for an identity that is immovable and secure, you're only going to find it in Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life. And only you can make that decision. No one goes to heaven through someone else. There's no grandchildren in the kingdom. We're all children of God. So why follow Jesus? Why receive the gift? Because it's easy?

No. You know, the biblical worldview is that we as human beings at our core are selfish and wicked and evil. So when we follow Jesus, there's a lot of death to self. Everybody wants to receive Jesus' forgiveness for their sins because we all know that we fall short.

We all know there's a standard. We all know there's a better way to live than the way we're living, but we can't live it because we're sinners. And we need forgiveness to be right with God. Everybody wants that part. The part we really wrestle with is Him being Lord.

In fact, the number one word in the Greek for followers of Christ is doulos, which was a Greek word that meant slave. When we follow Christ and receive that gift, we are submitting our life to Him. He is now in charge. He's in charge of your money. He's in charge of your time. He's in charge of your relationships. He runs your life.

That's submitting to Him. And it's a better life than you'll ever find anywhere else. But only you can receive that gift. If you've never received it, whether you're here in this room or North Raleigh or Benson or online, you can receive it right now. You can simply, right where you're seated, say, Jesus, I am a sinner, and I need forgiveness for all the wrong things I've done. Come into my life. Be my Savior, be my forgiver, and be my Lord, take over, be my master. Fill me with your Holy Spirit that I may live the life you've called me to live and take me to heaven with you when I die. That is all it takes, a simple statement of faith, trusting in Christ.

He's done the work. You can't do it, but you gotta have the humility to know that you need it. And if you receive that gift today and you call Cross Assembly home, I wanna encourage you, the next time we have a water baptism, make a public proclamation of being a fog user through doing that. Many of you have a friend, a coworker, a neighbor, that doesn't know Jesus.

Maybe you're thinking of them right now. What do you need to do to make them aware of the gift of eternal life that is available to them? I've given you at the beginning of this message a really simple task. If you're here in Raleigh over Christmas, and you can come to one of the Christmas Eve services, and you gotta register for them because we're gonna run out of space, go to Cross to have family. I'd like you today, if you have someone's cell phone number, just to text them and say, hey, I would love to have you join me for one of our Christmas Eve services at Cross. If you don't know how to share your faith, that's as simple as it gets.

You can do it. God has placed you right in your workplace, right where you live, for a reason and a purpose. And a part of that is to give the gift of eternal life through Christ to others. Would you please stand with me? Worship team is gonna come. We're gonna sing a song about God being mighty to save. And while we sing this song, why don't we think about the people in our lives that need to hear about Jesus. We're gonna sing this song. I'll come back and close this in prayer.