Christ Church (Moscow, ID)

The point this evening is not to load your Christmas down with any exegetical postmill work, which has been done elsewhere. This is just intended as a simple word of Christmas encouragement—I do not seek to persuade you in these few minutes, but rather to embolden you.

We have emphasized in the past that the gospel consists of two aspects—the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The first has to do with who He is, and the second aspect concerns what He has done. Regarding the person of Christ we confess that He is YHWH come in the flesh, Jehovah Incarnate. With regard to His work, we are talking about His life of sinless obedience, His death on the cross, and His resurrection from the dead. What did the Messiah do? He became one of us, only without sin, and He was crucified, buried, resurrected and crowned in Heaven. And who was it that did this thing? It was Emmanuel—God with us. This incarnate reality is closely connected with various Old Testament prophecies concerning the Lord’s nativity. Let’s consider some of them now. 

The Text: Luke 2:21-40

The Psalmist said that the wicked dig a pit for capturing the righteous, but they fall into it themselves. Wicked men and godless kings have hounded God’s people, persecuted the righteous, and done the bidding of the Dragon in trying to stop God’s redemptive purposes. But all their schemes miscarry. All their plots are foiled. All their dreams are disappointed. The birth of Christ is the moment when the tide of redemption turned. Christ’s dawn meant that the darkness of despair was driven back. Evil’s doom had come.

The texts we are going to look at today are the genealogies of Christ, and other passages related to them, but the theme of this message will be on the promises of God. The fact of genealogies in Scripture are often nothing more than an obstacle to Christians in their Bible reading, but this is not the way to think of them. The genealogies are vast and intimidating mountain ranges, but what we need to realize is that there are actually rich veins of gold there. Like the land of Havilah, the gold is good there (Gen. 2:12).

The coming of the Christ-child was God’s brilliant wit on full display. How would God overthrow Satan’s kingdom? With a baby. How would God defeat the mighty, fallen cherubim, Lucifer? By planting a human seed. How would God destroy death? By laughing in its face.

The Text: 1 John 1

The Text: Luke 1:26-38

The hallmark of Christmas is joy. Ear to ear grins. Hot chocolate mustaches. Gleeful shouts as presents are unwrapped. But your joy, true joy, is given to you by the grief of the Man of sorrows. The story of Christ’s birth, which brought glad tidings and peace on earth, is swiftly followed by a grisly tale of the ravenous wolf of sin.

Scripture is quite clear that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin. But what was the point? Why is this important?