The WHAT of Christmas
Watch the video of this sermon here.
The WHAT of Christmas by Rev. L. John Gable
December 1, 2019
Every good story has a “who, what, where, when and why” aspect to it and the Christmas story is no exception! During the weeks of Advent, this season of preparation and anticipation in the church-year leading us up to the celebration of the birth of Jesus, I will be preaching a series on these aspects of the Christmas story.
Of course the “Who” of Christmas is Jesus. The “Where” of Christmas is Bethlehem, that little backwater burg, but there are other “wheres” in this story as well. The “When” of Christmas is the “perfect timing” when God sent His Son in to the world. And of course, the “Why” of Christmas is the most important part of the story of all: that God sent His Son, Jesus, the promised Messiah, to be our Savior and Lord. Jesus, Emmanuel, God “in the flesh”, came to show us God’s love and to do for us what we could never do for ourselves, to save us and restore us once again in to a right relationship with God through His death and resurrection. All of that begins with the story of His miraculous birth. It is little wonder why this story is called the “greatest story” ever told… and the best part is, whoever, wherever, whatever, whenever, why-ever this story is told, IT’S TRUE!
This morning we are going to begin with the WHAT of Christmas in order to better understand the great hopes and expectations these people who were “walking in darkness” as Isaiah put it were living with because perhaps we too are living in that same kind of darkness with hopes and expectations of our own.
Imagine a promise being made to you from a very reliable source: a parent, a grandparent, a trusted friend. “Someday this will be yours, I promise” they tell you, and you believe them because you trust them. So, you live your entire life with the full confidence and assurance that one day that promise they made to you would be fulfilled. Now imagine that that promise you are holding on to was given to you by God, and you’ve been waiting for its fulfillment, not just for your lifetime alone, but for generations of your ancestors before you. This promise has been passed to you, parent to child, for centuries and still the promise is outstanding!
Surely you’d begin to wonder, what’s going on? Did God forget His promise to us? Did He change His mind? Is He incapable of fulfilling all that He once told us He would do? Did we misunderstand something somewhere along the line?
These questions and countless others like them have been asked by people of faith for generations, particularly in times of crisis, personal and national, such as we read in Isaiah’s prophecy this morning.
The setting is 700 years before the birth of Jesus. The nation of Israel is being threatened by greater nations all around them and their entire sense of being and well-being as the people chosen by God is being threatened. Where was God in all of this? What was He doing or not doing to rescue His people? What happened to the promise He made to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and all those who followed, including to their own beloved King David, that He would be their God and they would be His people, and that this land would be given to them and that someone from the line of David would reign over Israel forever?
That may not exactly be the darkness we are facing today, but it rings true, doesn’t it? Maybe the darkness we face feels more personal than that: the darkness of depression or discouragement or disappointment; the darkness of sickness or disease; the darkness of broken relationships or meaninglessness; the darkness of grief or of fear for safety and a sense of well-being, your own or someone close to you, in the present or for the future, physically, emotionally, financially. Or maybe the darkness that hangs over you does have a national or global dimension to it: concerns about the body politic, about nations and regions, even neighborhoods, at war about the fate of the planet entrusted to our care. All legitimate fears which raise legitimate questions of faith. What’s going on God? What are you doing and what do you want us to do?
This is the beauty and power of Scripture, we can read our story in to His –story, into The Story and it gives us words we can speak or cry in prayer and the confidence and hope and promise that God has not abandoned or forgotten us, but that He hears us still.
So listen to the words of the prophet, spoken to them, our ancestors in the faith, in their darkness and to us as well: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them light has shined…for a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests on his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.” (2:1,6-7). Friends, the Good News is this: God has not forgotten His promises! He is faithful still.
Fast forward seven centuries: the Romans are now the world leaders and they have conquered this same land and people and their oppression is as great as any who have gone before them. The very same questions are being asked by this new generation of the faithful as were asked by those who had gone before them. Where is God in all of this? Why isn’t He doing something? He has promised to one day send His promised Messiah, the anointed one, who will come to set His people free, so what is He waiting for? Lord, help us! Lord, save us! Lord, set us free!
We can understand that cry for deliverance as well, can’t we? Perhaps our bondage is not to a foreign power, but we know we too are being held captive none the less: by a sinfulness that is pervasive, by a brokenness of heart or of relationship with God and with others, by the symptoms of a dis-ease that perhaps we cannot name or diagnose but we know we cannot cure ourselves of it, so we cry out for deliverance, “How long, O Lord? Come, save us! Come, heal us! Come, restore us! Come, set us free from that which holds us captive.” Friends, our prayers don’t need to be long or elaborate or flowery or even liturgically correct. They don’t even need to be spoken in words. They simply need to be honest, spoken or cried from the heart, and you need not cry very loud, He is closer than you think. This is His promise to us: that He will hear and give answer.
Such has been the cry of the people of faith in every generation, perhaps it was particularly so during the time of the Roman occupation in the province of Palestine 20 centuries ago when an angel of the Lord appeared to a young woman named Mary in a little, out of the way, never before mentioned, village called Nazareth. She was the unexpected recipient of a divine message – young, unmarried, of no particular social rank or ability – but the message she received and willingly accepted was this: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name Him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to Him the throne of His ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of His kingdom there will be no end…therefore the child to be born will be holy: he will be called Son of God.” (Luke 1:30-35)
Friends, this is the WHAT of Christmas! The birth of Jesus, the One called great and Son of the most high God, the One out of the house and lineage of David, the One who will reign over the house of Jacob forever and whose kingdom will never end – is the fulfillment of all of God’s promises! Jesus is the WHAT of Christmas because He fulfilled over 300 prophecies spoken by different voices over 500 years including 29 major prophecies fulfilled in a single day – the day He died!
God didn’t forget, and He hasn’t forgotten still, any of the promises He has made. As the Apostle Paul writes, “All of the promises of God find their “yes” in Jesus Christ!”, including the promise that He has come to save us and to set us free from the bondage of sin and the fear of death; to give us a peace that surpasses all human understanding such that the world cannot give us and a joy that is abundant and eternal, and a hope that will never fade away and a love that will seek us and find us and never let us go.
300 hundred years before the birth of Jesus, a Sicilian named Archimedes made a remarkable claim to the King of Syracuse. The King had asked him, “My dear philosopher, how much can you lift?” The question came in light of Archimedes’ invention of the fulcrum. He had invented a lever that could lift incredible weights by attaching them to the short end of a pole and then manipulating the long end. In order for his invention to work, however, he needed a solid place on which to place his fulcrum. So in response to the question, “How much can you lift?” he said, “If you give me a place to stand, I can lift the world.”
Friends, Jesus Christ is our solid place on which to stand. He is trustworthy
and true. “All of the promises of God find their “yes” in Jesus Christ!” because He is the WHAT of Christmas, the One who fulfills all of the promises of God.