The Beginning of the Christmas Story (Christmas Eve)

It's good to have you all here, as I said. It's good to celebrate together the birth of Christ. Now, this evening, what I am going to attempt to do in 30 minutes is go over the story of Christmas for us. The story of Christmas is one that's familiar to many of us, maybe all of us. Some of us may have grown up hearing it our entire lives, and for others it may be relatively new. But the story of Christmas is one that's filled with sadness and even misery, but it's also full of some of the greatest joys imaginable. The Christmas story is one that's been told many times and in many different ways. But if it's told accurately, it's the same truth, truths that are both terrible and wonderful to hear.

To tell that story, I want to begin at the beginning of the story, right? Or almost the beginning. We're not going to talk about the covenant God made before time. But I want to start at the creation of the world. Because the Christmas story doesn't actually begin with an angel's pronouncement and showing up. It actually begins thousands of years before that in the Garden of Eden. After God had made the world, He created it beautiful. He handcrafted man, Adam and Eve, after his own image. He put them in this beautiful garden. And in that garden, they were given the task, right? They were told what are the creation mandates. They're to tend the garden. They're to subdue the earth. They're to multiply and be fruitful, right? They're supposed to have lots of kids. And God declares that that was good, very good even.

In that garden, God gave Adam one rule. And that rule was that he should not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil on pain of death. And if you've ever read a story, you know, right, this, what happens, right? Because there's always the big rule given, the do not do to the main character. And of course, what does the main character always do? Well, they proceed post haste. to break the rule that they were given. And probably the reason that's a theme in literature is because that's the theme of the story that God's wrote, is that our father Adam had one big command of what he should not do, and he goes ahead and does it. Eve hands him the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and Adam takes it and eats. And in the moment that he does, it's the fall. The moment he does, His eyes are open to see that he's naked and that he is no longer in union with God. Adam was our representative, our father. From him, every one of us has come. And so when he sinned and his flesh was corrupted, all his future descendants were corrupted as well. Everyone, and that would include all of us here, who is a descendant of Adam, is now born in sin, conceived in sin, and their bodies,

And their spirits are corrupted by Adam's sin. And all we have done is add to it. Because of the sin of Adam, God would have been very justified to just put Adam to death. To say, we're done. We're going to start over. But he didn't. That isn't what God did. Rather, God made a promise. He made a promise to Adam and to Eve and to their descendants. And that promise is found in Genesis 3, verse 15, which says this. And I will put enmity between you, and this is part of the curse towards the serpent, between you, that is the serpent, and the woman, between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel. And this is the first promise, the first prophecy of Christmas. So there's a few things that we should take note of in this promise that we're given. One is enmity, fighting, strife.

Now, you might not think immediately that that's a good thing, but it is. Because this means that Adam isn't dead. He's dead in his sins, but God is going to provide life. So there's going to be a fight. The serpent hasn't won. He thinks that in corrupting man and causing the fall that he's won, and he hasn't. Because God says there's going to be a fight. the seed of the woman is not going to simply just lay over. But man, having been made in God's image, has an impulse to do right. Amidst all of his sin and corruption, man is not as bad as he could be. And even in fallen men who hate God, there's still an impulse sometimes to do something right in some perverted way. But it's better than that. Well, the other thing with that, that we have to acknowledge or pay attention to is that if you read in our student of history, all pagan cultures have hated children. They've put children to death. You might wonder why they have such an antipathy against children. And I would submit to you that part of the reason that that is comes from the serpent.

who in this verse is told that it's going to be the seed of the woman who will bring about his destruction. And so from that flows a hatred of all men, but especially of children who bear the image of God, because he knows that it will be a child someday who brings about his destruction. And so all wicked men, they hate children. The other thing we see in this promise is that it's the woman's seed. might strike us as an odd phrase when you read through the Old Testament. It often talks about men's seed and descendant, but it doesn't talk about woman's seed. But here, the promise is given that it will be a woman's seed. The prominence is given to the woman, which is made clear why that would be when we get to our reading in Matthew, that it is the seed of the woman. It's a virgin who gives birth. The next thing we should notice in this this promise, is that it goes from enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, which is plural, to a singular. There's going to be fighting between the seeds of these two enemies. And yet, when it comes to the ultimate victory, it's not in the plural. It's dropped to the singular.

What we see is there is one seed of the woman who is going to crush the head of the serpent. And that serpent will bruise that seed's heel. Now you got to think about the picture, right? It's a picture. You think of someone lying on the ground and another with their foot on the head. You think of the snake, the snake reaching up and biting the ankle. And yet who's winning in that? It's the one who's on top, the one who's crushing the head. And so here we have this beautiful, promise of a future victory in this world that had been fallen. Now, what we then see in Genesis, it goes on and Eve has a child. And it seems that Eve thinks this is the promise. She says, look, I have acquired a son from the Lord, a man from the Lord. Of course, if you know the story, Cain wasn't even a small fulfillment of this promise. He was the first murderer.

He actually hated God. So Cain was punished and thus began the long wait, the long wait for the promise to be fulfilled. And it was a long wait. The history of the Old Testament is the history of God's people waiting for the fulfillment of this promise that was made back in Genesis 3. And what you would see in the Old Testament as you read through is that many times God raises up a seed of the woman and they fight the serpent. They fight hard. Men like Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses, Samuel, David, Hezekiah, Elijah, Ezra, Nehemiah. And those are just a small sampling of the seed of the woman that God raises up to fight against the serpent.

If you're familiar with all of their stories, you realize that none of them are able to actually crush the serpent's head. It's a task that's beyond all of them. In fact, they all have sins, big sins, that keep them from being able to do the job in the way that it needs done. In a sense, we could read the entire Old Testament in the time leading up to Advent. Advent is the preparation for Christmas. It's the season where we look at all the prophecies and all the things that lead up to the event in Bethlehem of the baby being born, right? But really, that's the whole Old Testament. Beginning with this verse, 315 in Genesis, the promise is in its nascent form, is there.

then the rest of the Old Testament is the unfolding of this fight between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. And yet we see that the woman's seed is never strong enough. The men never have the ability to rise to the heights that they need. Even David, one of the greatest, is unable to do that work fully. And so the whole Old Testament, the whole story is bringing us up to, this point, which we come to in Matthew chapter 1. And we'll begin in verse 18. But it all leads up to this point, which says, Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. And Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man, and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly.

But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit, and she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. Now, All of this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which translated means God with us. And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took Mary as his wife, but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus.

Now, have you all ever experienced where you're waiting for an event to happen? You're really looking forward to something. You're working hard on a project to achieve a particular goal. And it takes forever, right? You're just waiting for it to happen, waiting for it to come. And then all of a sudden, you accomplish it. The thing happens. And there's sort of this, you've been looking forward to it. But then when it happens, it feels very sudden because you've been waiting. You just think it's never actually going to happen. And then it does. And it's like, whoa, it actually happened. And this is how I think of it with Christ's coming, where you have had 4,000 years of waiting for this promise and Genesis to be fulfilled. And then all of a sudden, Christ is on the scene.

And we notice what the angel says. He says that there will be a virgin who will conceive and bear a son. And this should remind us of what we were just talking about earlier, about the seed of a woman, right? But now we're getting down to the seed of the woman. But notice that this seed is not from a man. Though Christ comes in the lineage of David, He is not fathered by a man. Rather, he is conceived by the Holy Spirit. He has no earthly father. The next thing that we learn from what the angel says is this. The purpose. The purpose. What was the purpose for his coming? What was to save his people? And it was to save his people from what? From their sin. And notice the possessive nature of what he's saving them from.

He's saving them from their sin. All of us, the descendants of Adam, are corrupted by his fall, and we've added to that sin daily. We've added to the need of being saved. And your need for salvation is not from everyone else's sin. You need salvation from your own sin. It's so easy for us to get caught up and to decry all the things around us as wicked and to forget that the primary salvation that we need is from the wickedness that does not come from out there, but comes from right inside our own corrupted hearts. It's so easy to think everyone else has need and forget about the need that we have, to forget that when we come, And we imagine the babe born in Bethlehem, that he came to fix us, to fix you. From the brokenness that stems from your own heart. The greed that wraps its fingers around you. Your selfishness, your lusts, your fears, your anxieties. And the beauty of this is, it's actually in his name.

When he says his name shall be called Jesus, what Jesus is, is it's two Hebrew words. It's Yahweh, which is God, the covenant name of God. And it's Yashah, which is to rescue or save. Now, in Hebrew, we call it Joshua. But when the Hebrew is transliterated into Greek, it becomes Jesus. There have been many... Small case saviors that we mentioned about, the seed of the woman, but none of them could actually do the work. And now we have the fulfillment of the name Yeshua, of Jesus, the one who actually came to save his people. And so what we have is this angel who says, this is what he's going to do, and it's in his name. It's actually everywhere he goes, when they call him by his name, his name is a proclamation of the work that he came to do.

But how did he save us? Well, we've spoken of we have a problem. If you recall in the garden when Adam sinned, God had used to come down and walk with man. He would walk. I mean, think about this. Adam would walk through the garden with God, speaking to him as to a friend. But when Adam sinned, God withdrew himself. God could no longer walk with man in that way. If he did, he would have to destroy him for God is holy and we're corrupted by sin. Man now is in the need of salvation and yet man can't do it because he is corrupted from his very beginning. We have the need for a savior that has to do what Adam could not do in the state of perfection. We have to have a savior who's holy, not corrupted by sin.

This gets complicated because we couldn't just have a savior. We had to have a savior who was a man because we had to have someone who could take on all the weaknesses and infirmities of man to be like us in nature and to fulfill the covenant in the way that Adam had failed to. But if this man came as normal men do, he would have been corrupted by the corruption of Adam. And his sacrifice as a mere man would not have been enough. And so we need salvation from a very specific individual. He has to be a man from the seed of woman that fulfills the promise given in Genesis 3.15. But he also has to be infinitely holy. He has to be God. And God in his great wisdom created the God-man.

Christ, who's existed from all eternity, came down and was incarnated. What does that mean? It's flesh, right? Carnivore, you know the word. He was incarnated. The eternal word who's existed from all creation was given flesh. And so now all of a sudden we have this beautiful union of the exact savior that we needed. A God who has made man. God sent Jesus. And this is the next name that we're given in this text. It's Emmanuel, God with us. God became a man. He grew up as a man. He learned as a man. He suffered as a man. And yet he was still, he was and still is God. In the manger in Bethlehem, the creator entered into his creation.

And Jesus, who sustains the entire world, was sustained by his mother's breasts. In Jesus's birth, we have the foundation for the perfect salvation. We have the second Adam who could live a perfect life. And then when all things were accomplished, every jot and tittle, he had lived according to the will of his father. When the perfect time came, he died. But not an ordinary death. He was nailed and crucified on a cross. A cursed, horrible death. Why? Because death was the penalty for sin. And for the great salvation that was promised, someone had to die. But it couldn't just be a man. All men die. It had to be a perfect man. One who was great enough and righteous enough and holy enough to do away with the sins of all those.

who put their hope and trust in him. But the problem is he couldn't just die. What good would that do? And so Christ didn't stay dead. He rose from the dead on the third day. And in the resurrection, he completed and accomplished the work of our salvation. In Christ's death and resurrection, he broke the power of sin and death. And that is the most glorious and blessed news that you could hear. And this is what the angels proclaim, isn't it? Because they say, glory to God in the highest on earth, peace, goodwill to men. How could a holy and gracious God, a righteous God, in whom sight the heavens are not even clean, have peace and goodwill toward men? Only when looking through the lens of his son. And so we can be at peace with God because of the work that Christ did. And so we can never separate.

The story. When we come to Christmas time and we think about the baby born in a manger, we can't get so myopic that we forget why the baby came or the necessity of that baby coming or of the work that he came to do. Now, the story doesn't end there. Jesus came to save his people and he did. And when he did, he came humbly and quietly. He came as an infant. But Christ is no infant anymore. There's no baby in a manger anymore. And Christ has promised that he will come again. And the next time that he comes, it will not be silently in the middle of the night, known and announced to lowly shepherds only. This next time that Christ comes, there will be a trumpet blast. And that trumpet blast will be so loud, it will literally wake up the dead.

There will be a shout that will come. And when he comes, he will not be weak like a baby, but he will be full of strength and power. And he will come with angels, but these angels will no longer be proclaiming a message of peace towards men. This time they will be coming with bowls full of judgment, plagues, terrors, swords. This second coming will be nothing like the quiet coming in Bethlehem. It will come to bring about the final reckoning, the justice that is due ever since and long overdue since Adam first sinned and since every man born since then has added to it. And so in that day, repentance will be too late. If you don't love Christ now as he's revealed himself in Bethlehem, And throughout his time on earth since then, you will not have a chance to love him then. You will despise him and hate him, and yet you will give him glory. And so today is the day of repentance. Repent while there is time. Repent while the proclamation of peace towards you stands, because it will not stand forever. And if you have repented, then I have a couple other things I want to say to you.

Some of us, this is going to be the first Christmas where we will be missing loved ones. And it's hard because there's all this joy that we think about with Christmas, but it's hard. And that's because of the sin. It's because of the destruction wrought by sin. And what I want you to remember is the second name that was given to Christ was Emmanuel. So not only is God with us in the sense that Christ came and took on flesh, but he has promised to never leave us or forsake us. And so we can find joy and comfort in the Christmas season knowing that the great God who created the universe, who spoke into existence, the word that was there at creation, now is with us and will always be there with us. And while he sits at the right hand of God, he's not left us alone. Rather, he sent the helper to dwell in us and to comfort us and to give us understanding. And so the other thing is, if you've repented,

and you've turned from your sin, then rejoice with exceedingly great joy. Because our Messiah has come and he saved us. And you are no longer a slave to sin. He has set the captives free, which means you are free. You're no longer captive to sin. You no longer walk in darkness. You walk in the light. And maybe the greatest blessing of all is that you have peace with God. And all the chaos and conflict of this world and with family and with friends and with enemies, you, if you're a child of God, have peace with God. And I can't think of any greater blessing than that, than the message that we have peace with God through Christ. So that's the joy of the Christmas story. Let's pray.