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Text: Luke 2:1-20; John 3:16
Theme: Christmas means many things to many people, but the real meaning has been assigned by God.
Date: 11/30/14 File name: Incarnation1.wpd
ID Number: 93
What does Christmas mean to you?
That question will probably draw as many answers as we have people here this morning.
To a child, Christmas often means receiving presents.
For parents, it may mean the joy of watching children open those presents.
It may be the one time of the year that a scattered family gathers together.
To a business owner, it may mean taking inventory, hiring extra workers, and planning sales strategy for the coming year.
For an educator it may mean preparing for Christmas concerts and programs or just looking forward to a break from the kids.
For a church staff member, it can mean polishing up a music program, preparing special sermons, and visiting lonely people.
For some, Christmas means returns, special holiday sales and shopping!
God has a different view of Christmas.
To our Heavenly Father, Christmas celebrates incarnation!
Incarnation is a term meaning ‘to enter into or become flesh.’
It refers to the Christian doctrine that the pre-existent Son of God—the second person of the Trinity—became flesh in Jesus.
In the incarnation, the divine nature of the Son was perfectly united with human nature in one divine Person.
This person, Jesus Christ, was both "truly God and truly man."
Te term does not appear in the New Testament, but the elements of the doctrine do.
Most explicitly in a verse most of us memorized in childhood.
If you know it, say with me John 3:16:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
The Nativity Story begins long before the conception of the Savior in the womb of the Virgin Mary.
The Apostle John tells us that Christmas begins in the eternalness of God, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, ...
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth,” (John 1:1, 14)
Why did God come in the flesh?
Jesus once told a man by the name of Zacchaeus that the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost, (Luke 19:10).
Jesus came to redeem us and to save us from our sin.
Redemption
Revelation
Reconciliation
Righteousness
Resurrection
I. THE INCARNATION MEANS THAT GOD DEALS WITH US IN UNEXPECTED WAYS
1. the Nativity Story shows us that God delights in doing the unexpected
a.
He does not work in ways that we assume He should
b. each of us has our own set of agendas, and timetables, and reasons for doing things when and how we do them
c. we frequently expect God to work within the confines of our schedules and programs
1) our attitude is often, “God this is what I need you to do, and yesterday would not have been too soon!”
2. the really neat thing about God is that He almost always does more than we expect and He usually does it in wonderfully startling and unforeseen ways
A. GOD DID THE UNEXPECTED WHEN HE CHOSE WHOM HE DID TO BE THE PARENTS OF JESUS
1. the Nativity Story shows us that God chooses to work through the weak and nondescript things of this world
“But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;” (1 Corinthians 1:27, KJV)
a. the word confound in 1 Cor.
1:27 means to shame down, or to put to blush
1) it’s the purposeful public humiliation of someone
2) the Scriptures tell us that God purposely chooses what the world considers nonsense in order to put wise men—or men who think they are wise—to shame
b. the worldly-wise assume they know how things should go, they assume to know how the real world operates
1) they assume this because they’re usually the ones in charge—they’re the ones who make the decisions, and expect everyone else to fall in line
c. in the real world we know who the power- broker s are, the movers, and shakers, and makers of culture
1) and it’s rarely the common man
ILLUS.
In July 2013 George Alexander Louis Mountbatten was born.
We know him better as Prince George, the thee-year-old son of Prince William, and Catherine, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
His paternal great grandmother is Queen Elizabeth II of England.
The moment he was born he was a Royal Highness.
People will bow in his presence.
Prince George will grow up living a life of privilege that we can scarcely imagine.
Even if his parents bring him up as normally as possible, there is nothing normal about this child.
Much of his life will be scripted and choreographed.
He is third in line to the British Throne, and though that throne is not as powerful as it once was, he will be one of the movers and shakers and makers of his world.
We know this because that’s simply how things are in our world.
1) unfortunately, God does not consult the rich or the powerful or the influential for advise about His decisions—He never has
2. worldly wisdom tells us that the couple whom God chose to serve as the earthly parents to the Messiah should have never been chosen
a. certainly, you would think that God would have selected a member of the current royal line sitting upon the thrown of Israel to be the progenitor of Israel's deliverer
1) that would have meant an heir of Herod the Great
b. if not a royal lineage, then surely a family of power, and wealth and notoriety
3. but whom did God choose?
a.
He would choose a young, common girl from a small, insignificant village, in an insignificant part of Israel
1) Mary would bear the Son of God
b.
He would also choose a carpenter to become the earthly step father of the one who would save his people from their sin
1) Joseph would be the man who would raise Jesus to be a son of Israel
c. together Mary and Joseph would mold and shape the child who was God’s Anointed One
4. Mary and Joseph must rank as two of the most surprised and surprising tools of God in all of history
1) if it were not for this event, their names, and their lives would be lost to history
5. the worldly-wise did not expect such a thing
B. GOD DID THE UNEXPECTED WHEN HE CHOSE WHERE HE DID FOR THE SAVIOR TO COME
1. God took the world by surprise in choosing to send His Son to be born as a Jew
a. the political power of the day was Rome
b.
Rome was the military occupier of all the Mediterranean world, including Israel
c. if God was to send a savior into the world, surely that Savior would come through the most significant military and economic power of the day
2. the political and military occupation of their nation coupled with the general contempt Gentiles held toward the Jews made such a thing almost unbelievable to many
3. but not only would God’s Anointed One be a Jew, he would come from Galilee
a. Galilee was the “fly-over” part of Israel
1) it was rural, and the cosmopolitan aristocrats of Jerusalem sneered at their hayseed cousins
b.
Galilee was full of Gentiles
1) their foreign accents grated on the ears of sophisticate Judeans
ILLUS.
The fact that Herod had raised pagan temples and held pagan sports events in Galilee increased their scorn among fellow Jews.
c. as for Nazareth, that only added to the Jews’ contempt
1) it had the reputation for corruption that is illustrated when Nathanael responded to his brother, “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?”
(John 1:46)
4. and yet, to this unprepossessing town came the Angel Gabriel to find “a man whose name was Joseph, of the House of David,” and “Mary, a virgin pledged to him”
a. the incarnate son of God would be born into a poor family, raised as a blue-collar laborer, in a suspect town, in a backwater province of Israel
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