Four Reasons Christmas Is Special

Audio Transcript

Excellent morning on this Xmas Working day. We’re honored to share this getaway with each other with you. And for you, Pastor John, on this kind of a day, I essentially have no issue for you. I want to clear the decks and allow you choose it from below, to share front-burner ideas with us. What’s on your brain as you assume about Scripture and meditate on these types of a glorious day like now?

On this Xmas Day, what I would like to do is to test and enable you, all our listeners, to marvel at the coming of the everlasting Son of God into the entire world. I want to enable you marvel now. Jesus is coming back again to this earth, the Bible suggests, “to be marveled at among the all who have believed” (2 Thessalonians 1:10). That’s his future — to be marveled at by hundreds of thousands on that working day.

And Christmas is a great day for rehearsing what it will be like to marvel at Jesus on that working day — mainly because Christmas rivets our notice on four stupendous realities, which, if we see them for what they actually are, will trigger our hearts to marvel at

1. the mysterious greatness of God, who was simply there right before there was just about anything else,
2. the actuality that this infinite, everlasting Creator entered his creation as the God-man, Jesus Christ,
3. the pleased rationale for why he came to development, a creation in superior treason towards him, and
4. the boundless pleasure provided to all since of what Jesus did when he arrived.

Let’s take these four realities one at a time and see if we can awaken in our souls Xmas marveling, previous-day marveling in advance.

1. God is and usually was.

The initially Christmas marvel is the mysterious greatness of God, who was simply there in advance of there was anything at all else. When God commissioned Moses in Exodus 3:14 to notify the individuals of Israel who experienced sent him, God claimed, “I Am Who I Am. . . . Say this to the folks of Israel: ‘I Am has despatched me to you.’” What does that suggest?

It means that the God of the Bible, the God in excess of all record and all truth, just is and always was. He is absolute reality: “I am who I am. I simply just am.” He had no beginning he will have no ending. There was no fact just before him there is no truth exterior him except if he wills it and makes it. In advance of development, he is all that was: no room, no universe, no emptiness, no dim, no chilly and unlimited vastness — only God. God was and is complete actuality. All else, from galaxies to subatomic particles, is secondary.

We have a tendency to believe that the content universe, with all its vastness, is the key actuality. It is not. It’s secondary — secondary at the most. God is reality. He carries the universe, so to speak, like a peanut in his pocket. Anything that the James Webb Place Telescope or the electron microscope exhibits us is as nothing as opposed to God. Let this sink in, due to the fact if we really don’t commence with this staggering reality and marvel, very little else will have the ponder that it really should. Practically nothing else will be great the way it really should be.

2. The Creator entered creation.

The second Xmas marvel is the wonder that this infinite, eternal Creator entered his creation in the man or woman of Jesus — definitely male, truly God. Jesus explained to the Pharisees, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my working day. He noticed it and was glad.” They responded, “You are not yet fifty a long time old, and have you viewed Abraham?” And Jesus mentioned to them, “Truly, genuinely, I say to you, ahead of Abraham was, I am” (John 8:56–58).

You’re kidding me. “Before Abraham was, I am.” He could have mentioned, “Before Abraham was, I was.” That would have been magnificent ample. But he did not. He stated, “Before Abraham was, I am,” because he is the fantastic “I Am” of Exodus 3:14, really God of extremely God, absolute getting in the flesh. “He is in advance of all points, and in him all issues maintain together” (Colossians 1:17) — absolute remaining. I Am Who I Am “became flesh and dwelt among the us, and we have noticed his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, comprehensive of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

This has happened by a divine conception in the womb of a virgin, Mary. She was staggered at the news and reported, “How will this be, given that I am a virgin?” The angel said, “The Holy Spirit will occur upon you, and the power of the Most Superior will overshadow you therefore the child to be born will be termed holy — the Son of God” (Luke 1:34–35). “Before Abraham was, I am.” At Christmas, I Am Who I Am became a person.

3. Jesus arrived to die and to save.

The 3rd Xmas marvel is the unspeakably delighted cause for why he came into this generation in high treason from him. Why did he enter the incredibly creation that regarded him so flippantly — without a doubt, with these types of dishonor? Here’s the simplicity and natural beauty and glory of Paul’s simple, simple respond to: “Christ Jesus arrived into the environment to help you save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15). Or the phrases of Jesus himself: “The Son of Guy arrived . . . to give his everyday living as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

How can that be? God can’t die. But the God-guy can die. So, Hebrews 2:14–15 claims he took on a human mother nature “that as a result of death” — mainly because you just cannot die if you really don’t have the appropriate character to die. He took on a human character “that as a result of loss of life he may possibly ruin the a person who has the electric power of dying . . . and supply all those who as a result of fear of demise were subject matter to lifelong slavery.” The fantastic I Am Who I Am arrived into the earth, into this rebellious creation, to die and to conserve.

4. Christmas is for every person.

Last but not least, the fourth Xmas marvel is that the reward of the Xmas incarnation is for absolutely everyone.

• “Everyone who believes in him gets forgiveness of sins by way of his name” (Functions 10:43).
• “Whoever hears [Jesus’s] word and believes him who despatched [Jesus] . . . does not appear into judgment” (John 5:24).
• “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life” (John 3:36).
• “[He] died for us so that . . . we may well reside with him” (1 Thessalonians 5:10).

That is, so that we may possibly live with the inexhaustibly satisfying, terrific I Am forever and ever, in whose existence “is fullness of joy” and at whose “right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

Oh, permit us marvel together on this Xmas Working day that the terrific and only God only is: “I Am Who I Am.” That this I Am turned the God-gentleman Jesus Christ. That he arrived not to ruin, but to conserve his treasonous creatures. And that by faith in him, our sins are forgiven, and our judgment is handed. We will dwell without end in the existence of this infinite, form, all-satisfying I Am. May I wish you this form of Merry Christmas.