Sermon Tone Analysis

Alêtheia Christian Fellowship        (Sermon 49, 12-19-04)

~~Christmas~~

 

Next Sunday is Still Christmas Season & Return to Yeast Series.

Jan 9th Birthday Party & Testimony

Jan 16th Baptism Service

No Tuesday evening until Jan 4th

 

 

Offering – King’s Kids – Katie’s Birthday

 

 

You know we have enjoyed this wonderful play, portraying what Christmas is really about: The birth of a baby more than 2000 years ago into a completely different culture, half-way around the world.

Who cares?

Why celebrate a birth?

We only do that if the person so honored is I personally important to us.

I celebrate my wife’s birthday and those of my children, I’m sure you celebrate birthdays of people who mean something to you.

Most people today don’t celebrate the birth of Jesus, they simply enjoy the party, because Jesus doesn’t mean anything to them, they don’t celebrate Him they celebrate Santa Clause.

Some of us are different, some of us genuinely celebrate the birth because Jesus is important to us, but not because He was born in a manger, it’s because of what He did with His life after that night.

It’s not enough to be great though, the birth of some guy, no matter how great he was, is nothing to celebrate unless His life has an impact on our own.

Alexander the Great was arguably the greatest General-King in human history.

He was truly great, conquering the known world by the age of 32.

Yet as much as he interests me I don’t celebrate his birth!

So what is it that Jesus accomplished, who was He and why does it matter?

We get the material for the play from the Bible and it is here where we must begin.

According to the eyewitness accounts, Jesus was born of a virgin who was literally impregnated by Almighty God.

Jesus was therefore fully human and at the same time fully God.

In the original language of the Gospel of John it says:

John 1:1, *ejn ajrch|~~ h+n oJ lo>gov.*

In the Beginning the Word already existed.

“In the Beginning,” is the identical first words of the Old Testament Bible.

In Genesis chapter one, verse one of the Septuagint it says: ejn ajrch|~~.

1 “In the Beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth.”

In verse three it goes on to say, “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”

Before there was anything physical there was God and God alone.

God exists outside of space and therefore outside of time; in fact there was no space and therefore no time in the beginning.

God chose to create the 1-space containing and as a byproduct time 2-all of the matter within and 3-all of the physical laws governing the universe and in order to do that, He simply spoke and it became.

It was His Word that caused His will to be done.

God created through the active agency of His Word.

 

2 John 1:1 says that in the beginning, before anything was created there already existed the Word and the Word was in perfect harmony and equal relationship with God and the Word was the same perfect essence as God.

In verse three it goes on to say that through the Word all things were created and that nothing came into being apart from the active agency of the Word.

 

3 In verse 14 it says, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

This is the scandal of Christianity that God would give up a portion of Himself to become human.

As it says in the Bible in 4 Hebrews 1: 2in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.

3And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.

When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

 

Not only did God create all things through the Word, it is the Word that actively holds all things together.

Without the active work of the Word we and our universe would literally fly apart at the speed of light.

This Word who is a portion of God is the Bridge between God and man.

He humbled Himself and stepped out of light into darkness to enable peace between God and mankind because God loves you so much.

God paid the ultimate sacrifice, not in dying for you, but in giving His Son.

Even though this was so costly to God He will not usurp your free will, even though He’s the one who gave you the ability to choose.

He will not force you to do anything, there is no brainwashing in God, He loves you so much He will allow you to spit on His gift.

That is exactly what people are doing when they dismiss Jesus Christ.

People sometimes ask how a Christian can claim to believe in only one almighty God and still worship Jesus.

Herein lies the answer,

Jesus is the Word of God which means His physical activity.

God’s interaction with the world is through His Word.

God the Father is the wish, will and desire of God.

It is here that the emotion and personality of God resides.

It is easy to see why this portion of God is called God because this is the heart and soul of God.

The Holy Spirit in the Hebrew of the Old Testament is ruach kodesh or the Spirit of God, ve ruach eloheem and it is hagios pnumatos in Greek.

Both mean the sacred breath of God and this is God’s intellect and reason.

The Holy Spirit interacts with our spirit our intelligence and reason, revealing Truth, convicting us of sin, encouraging and comforting.

When our Spirit buys what the Holy Spirit is selling we accept it into our heart, our soul.

That place where our personality and emotion reside.

We then have a different desire than before.

Instead of desiring our own selfish good we begin to desire God’s will.

When we, will to live for God then our word or our physical body obeys and carries out that wish in the physical world.

We are made triune beings in the image of the one true God.

 

5 Then in John chapter 17 verses 3 through 5, Jesus Himself praying to the Father says,

3“*This is eternal life*:

that people can know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ the One You have sent.

4“I glorified You on the earth, by accomplishing the work which You gave Me to do.

5“Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world began.

In 61 John, the beloved disciple, says,

1What has always existed---- what we have heard with our own ears, what we have seen with our own eyes, what we have touched with our own hands----the very Word of Life----that life that was manifested on earth, we have seen and testify and proclaim to you this eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us—

 

You may say how do I know the Bible is right?

Other than the spoken Word in the world around us everything else comes to us through the Bible.

It is a collection of *66* books written by God through *40* different authors representing *19* different professions.

These men wrote from *11* different locations on *3* different continents in *10* different genres and in *3* different languages, over a *1,500* year period, completing the work nearly *2,000* years ago.

And when you read it straight through, cover-to-cover, there is a perfect symmetry and a coherent progressive revelation unlike anything else in human history.

It is a cohesive whole, not a series of disjointed missteps.

There is no work that has been so *scrutinized*, examined, and reproduced *10s of billions* of copies in more than *2,200* different languages.

Through the discovery of the hundreds of texts at *Qumran* wadi known as the Dead Sea scrolls and the more than *25,000* ancient Greek manuscripts that have been discovered we know the Bible was what it claimed all along and not a later fabrication.

“The Bible has been translated and copied so many times it can’t possibly be right?”

Wrong!

I translate the Bible directly from manuscripts that were written and used by the earliest Christians dating to between *300 B.C. and 200 A.D.* and what I come up with has never been in *conflict* with the Bible you hold in your hand right now.

Science and archeology proves with certainty that it is the same today as it has been from the beginning and not one thing anywhere in those 66 books has been *proved* false Archeological discoveries have proven Biblical claims that critics said never happened, like a world-wide *flood*, the name *Abram* dating to 4,000 years ago, the price of a *slave* in ancient times, the existence of the city of *Jericho*, *Egyptian* records of the Hebrew people, The person of Pontius *Pilate*, the copper *mines* of King Solomon etc.

The Bible says in Isaiah that the earth is round and in Job that the earth is suspended in space, these are just a couple of the scientific facts found in the Bible centuries before *science “discovered”* them.

People have been trying to stamp it out for thousands of years and yet today there are more copies of the Bible in more languages that any other book in history.

In the *tenth* general persecution, the Emperor *Diocletian* and his evil son went on a ten-year rampage beginning in *303* A.D. against all Christians throughout the empire.

Possibly, several thousand men, women and children, often whole families, were killed, and in one case an entire city, in *Phrygia*, was destroyed but an interesting feature of this world-wide persecution was the destruction of all Christian writings especially the New Testament Bible.

Diocletian said, we have destroyed all Bibles stamping out Christianity once and for all.

In about *1750 Voltaire said*, “Another century and there will be not a Bible on earth.”

The Bible is quite simply the most remarkable thing in human history.

As the song goes, “It is the very Word of God and not the* invention* of any man.”

Galatians 1:11-12 ~~ I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up.

I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

The Bible claims to be the very words of God *3,808* times in the Old Covenant alone.

*14* authors specifically claim to be relating God’s Word.

Jesus refers to the Hebrew Scripture as the authoritative Word of God and more than *10%* of His words are Old Covenant quotes or allusions, that’s more than *180* times.

The New Covenant refers to at least *161 *Old Covenant events and quotes from over *246* passages of the Hebrew Scripture.

Jesus fulfilled *47* Old Covenant prophecies and another *33 *have been fulfilled that don’t directly relate to Jesus.

In fact it is said that just from the extant writings of the first three centuries we could completely reconstitute the Bible.