Long before Jesus was born in Bethlehem on Christmas morning, thousands of years before, we had these remarkable glimpses, or insights, into Christ’s identity. These glimpses were moments of inspiration in which God would reveal part of himself, or part of his unfolding plan for the salvation of mankind, to certain select individuals. There was nothing particularly special about the individuals God revealed himself to. For the most part they were ordinary people, not unlike you and me.
However, the people to whom God revealed himself quickly became special. With these great revelations came great responsibility. These glimpses, these revelations, were not to be kept secret. They were to be shared openly and freely with all people. They were to be shouted from the rooftops and mountaintops.
At times, those who shared these revelations received a warm reception. People have a natural curiosity about God and spiritual things. In our day virtually anyone who has anything to say about God or spiritual things gains a hearing! But most often, those who shared the revelations they received from God instead found themselves at odds with their families and communities. They were ostracized, shunned, mocked, and ridiculed because of God!
Many times they were assaulted and all too often they were summarily executed. Consider how the writer of Hebrews describes this in Hebrews 11:35-38 (NIV). "Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground."
All of us have been horrified by the images of torture promulgating out of Iraq on live television. The brutal beheadings of hostages are most notable. But these tortures aren’t unique to our time. In the New Testament John the Baptist, the prophet and forerunner to Christ, was beheaded for proclaiming a message from God. Jesus was brutally executed. Stephen was stoned in cold blood. Most all of Jesus’ disciples eventually met a similar fate. Yet none of these prophets, these messengers, folded under the threat of death. They never once recanted the revelations they received from God. They feared God and trusted in him in order to receive a better resurrection, as the writer of Hebrews states.
Upon their deaths their writings were collected and their teachings were canonized. It was recognized that perhaps they really had heard the voice of the living God and had understood his purpose of salvation. After all, what they said was known to be true, or quickly became true! What they said was consistent with what God had spoken throughout the ages to his messengers and servants. What they said was later fulfilled in history. And on top of all this, God authenticated their message with miraculous signs and wonders. So these individuals became special as they sacrificially spoke on behalf of God.
What is the Old Testament? What is the New Testament? What is the Bible? The Bible is God’s revelation of himself and his purposes to all mankind. It’s a collection of ancient writings, ancient scrolls, and oral traditions originating from God himself, purchased for us by the blood of martyrs, and ultimately by Jesus Christ.
2 Timothy 3:16 (NIV) says, "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness…" Deuteronomy 29:29 (NIV) says, "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law."
As I pointed out last week, these revelations have become the foundation upon which Jesus continues to build a deep and abiding faith into his followers. Our faith is only as strong and deep as is our knowledge of God’s revealed word, a word that has been handed down through the ages, protected and kept pure by God’s Holy Spirit. 1 Peter 1:24-25 (NIV) says, "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever."
For what message have countless messengers died? What did they see? What did they know? Who and what did God show them? Is it not the Christ of Christmas that they bear witness to? Christ stands in the center of all scripture. All scripture bears witness to Jesus Christ.
I read an article about how scholars are now using sophisticated computers and algorithms to search for secret messages in the Bible. They believe that thousands of messages which reveal secrets about future events have been encoded in scripture. And the only way to decipher these messages is with some special new technology.
Well, the key to unlocking the meaning of the Old and New Testaments isn’t some hot new piece of machinery. The key is a person. It's Jesus Christ, God’s Son. What a tragedy it would be if we were to miss the Christ of Christmas, the one to whom our scriptures testify and in whom we can find eternal life!
Christmas is all about the birth of Jesus Christ. The Christian believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God. Just as a son inherits the human nature of his human father, so we believe that Jesus possesses the divine nature of his Father in heaven, God. Jesus is the Son of God. He is everything that the living God is, completely and fully.
John 1:1-3 (NIV) couldn’t be more clear. It says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." I never grow weary of Colossians 1:15-17 (NIV) which says, "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together."
The belief of the Christian is that at Christmas, this God came to earth in the flesh. God visited us. He became one of us. He became fully man. He shared in our human nature. That baby laying in the manger on the first Christmas night was the fullness of God dwelling among us in bodily form.
How God’s Son, Jesus Christ, could be fully God and fully man at the same time is one of the most profound mysteries of our great faith. Yet it's certainly not beyond the capability of God to become or to do whatsoever he chooses. He is, after all, God. Philippians 2:6-8 (NIV) describes how Jesus, "Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!"
John 1:10 (NIV) says, "He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him." John 1:14 (NIV) says, "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."
So this is the great mystery that is revealed at Christmas. And this is the mystery to which all scriptures, new and old, bear testimony. The scriptures testify that God the Father was sending his one and only Son, Jesus Christ, into the world. Forget about Santa and all the counterfeit reasons for the Christmas season foisted upon us by our capitalistic, materially-driven society. How much more exciting is it that God has been mindful of us? That God was coming to visit us, to save us, and to bless us on Christmas in the person of his only Son, Jesus Christ? Our spiritual forefathers could let go of this world and their own lives because they caught a glimpse of the one promised of old. Simply put, they trusted God word.
One of the first glimpses we have of Jesus Christ comes in a most unexpected place. In Genesis 1:1 (NIV) we have the account of God creating the world. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." One of the first things we learn about God is that he has a Spirit. Genesis 1:2 (NIV) says, "Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."
But the most startling revelation comes in Genesis 1:26 as God is about to create man. In Genesis 1:26 (NIV) God says to himself, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness." The last time I checked, most people don’t address themselves with the first person plural pronoun "us". Bob Dole referred to himself in the third person, and we made fun of him. But not God! God didn’t say, "Let me make man in my image." But he did say, "Let us make man in our image." Just who is God talking to? And why is the Hebrew name for God plural? Does God have multiple personalities? I think not.
When God finally creates man in his image, he creates a man and a woman. Just as God was incomplete without the Son, so Adam would be incomplete without Eve. Just as God existed in community with the Son and Spirit, so Adam and Eve were to exist in community. In Genesis 2:24 God unites Adam and Eve together and declared them to be one flesh. This is one of the mysteries of marriage, that two people can become one flesh. But this is also a mystery of the Godhead, that the Father and Son and Spirit are one. The stage is set early in the first chapter of Genesis for the coming of God’s Son.
The next glimpse we have of Jesus Christ comes a few short chapters later in the third chapter of Genesis. Many of you are familiar with the scene. God places Adam and Eve in Garden of Eden. He sets them free to eat from any of the trees in the garden, including the tree of life! But he commands them not to eat any fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Of course, the serpent tempts Adam and Eve and they eat the forbidden fruit. Suddenly the eyes of both of them are opened, and they realize that they are naked. They sew fig leaves together and cover themselves. When they hear the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden, they hide from him amongst the trees. They are afraid because they have violated his law.
In Genesis 3:14 (NIV) the Lord spells out the curse that is to come on the serpent, man, and woman. To the serpent God says, "Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life." But notice Genesis 3:15 (NIV). "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will crush his heel." Several Bible translations more accurately translate the word "offspring" as "seed." Because of the fall of Adam and Eve into sin, a cosmic war is set in motion between the evil one and mankind, between the offspring "seed" of the evil one and the offspring "seed" of woman. The offspring of Satan will strike the heel of the woman’s offspring, but the seed of the woman will crush the seed of Satan. In other words, a descendant of Eve will be victorious over evil in a way that Eve was not!
This is nothing less than a messianic prophecy, foretelling the day when Christ would have a showdown with Satan, and Satan would be crushed. Sin would be conquered. In Romans 16:20 (NIV) the apostle Paul applies this verse to the Roman Christians saying, "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you." But this is not what I want you to notice! The oddity is that God is even referring to the seed of a woman. Why not speak of the seed of Adam, or of the man?
Everyone knows that during conception the seed, the sperm, is delivered to woman’s womb. It would make sense to say that through Adam’s seed, Satan’s seed will be crushed. Yet it is through Eve’s seed that all humanity will be redeemed from curse of sin. Amazingly, in Genesis 3:15 we have a foreshadowing of the virgin birth, in which Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary. It wasn’t through the seed of man, through the seed of Joseph, that Jesus was born. It was through the seed of woman!
This seed, this child of Eve, this child of Mary, this one to be born on Christmas day who is to overcome evil and crush the head of Satan, becomes the focus throughout the rest of the Old and New Testament. In the story of Abraham in Genesis 12:3 (NIV) God reminds Abram, "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." Through Abram's child. Abram's seed. This promise is repeated by God throughout Abram’s life. It is extended to Abram’s son Isaac, to Isaac's son Jacob, to the nation of Israel, and down through the generations leading up to the time of Christ.
Just flip through your Bible sometime. It is filled with endless genealogies. If you can’t sleep on Christmas night flip your Bible open to1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles. Read the hundreds of names you find. Flip over to books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Take special note of how the gospels of Matthew and Luke begin. They begin with genealogies, tracing Mary and Joseph’s family trees back to Adam and Eve!
Now why would people care who their great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother or grandfather was? Most of us certainly wouldn’t care! Unless. Unless. Unless they had a good reason to trace their lineage back to the beginning of time. Unless they understood that the seed of Eve would soon crush the seed of Satan. Unless they understood that a virgin, not given in marriage to a man, would conceive of the Holy Spirit and give birth to the Son of God.
Christmas wasn’t some side show. God didn’t blindside the Jewish people after thousands of years of rich history and tradition. It was always about Jesus from the beginning. Before the beginning of time God purposed to send his Son, his seed, the seed of a woman, of a virgin, to redeem all creation from the curse of sin. God’s purpose was to undo the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and once again offer all men and women a taste of the tree of life eternal.
Have you ever read 1 John 3:9 (NIV)? "No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God." It is all about Jesus. It's always been only about Jesus, God’s Son, God’s seed, sent to us on Christmas Day to redeem us from the curse of sin and restore us to life.
It is this glimpse, this revelation of Jesus as the Son of God, that transforms us. And with this great revelation comes the great responsibility of proclamation. Shout it from the mountaintops, from the rooftops. Jesus is God’s Son, born of a virgin, sent to redeem us from the curse of sin and the reality of death. John 3:16 (NIV) says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
Isn’t Christmas exciting?