The Greatest Gift Series

Advent 2019 (Part 4)

Text: Isaiah 9:2-7, Galatians 4:4-7

This is our 4th and final Advent sermon of 2019… and let me just remind you that Advent season is not just about the first coming of Christ. It’s about His 2nd Coming as well… and I closed us out last week by saying that; and by reminding you all that just as sure as God kept His promises to Send the Savior for the 1st Advent, He’s going to keep His promise and send Jesus again for the 2nd Advent. And I said to you all, that we have to ask ourselves a question: Did Christmas happen, or didn’t it? Did God become a man? Did Jesus – God the Son – the Second Person of the Trinity, come as a flesh and blood human being? Was He born of a virgin? You see; there’s a lot of folks and religions out there that like to say that man became a god… but that’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says that God became a man. So if that happened – IT MATTERS!

You don’t get to take a few days off from work, and buy presents, and have family and friends over to celebrate the fact that it’s cold outside. And it’s not a holiday to celebrate a calorically challenged “jolly old elf”, even though that has been incorporated by some people into the holiday. Christmas is about Jesus – it’s about His birth some 2000 years ago.

So let’s take our Bibles and open them up to Isaiah 9 once more (READ text)… now if you’ll turn with me over to the Book of Galatians and let’s look at Galatians 4:4-7 (READ).

Now I just said to you all, that if Christmas DID happen, THEN IT MATTERS! And I want to zero in on WHY it matters. But before I get into that, let me ask you a question… Do you have a favorite Christmas show you like to watch every year? I actually got to watch my 3 favorite Christmas shows this holiday season. Christmas Vacation… a Christmas Story… and Die Hard. And I can watch those shows, and I’m good for an entire year. Now MJ is a different story. She has a gift. She can watch a movie on Monday night, and on Tuesday, watch the exact same movie again, and still enjoy it just as much. I think she watched Christmas with the Kranks 2 or 3 times in the last week. Now I can’t do that. I’ve seen it already. I’m good for at least a little while, and depending on the movie, I might be good for a year or two before having any kind of desire to watch it again. Of course there are some exceptions. I can watch and re-watch Raiders of the Lost Ark multiple times… but for the most part, once I’ve seen it, I’m good for a good long while. And if I do sit down and watch it again… it’s so familiar to me, I’m just kind of bored with it. Now the reason I bring this up is because sometimes, when we become so familiar with something, we can sort of lose interest in it. We feel like, we’ve seen it before, we know it, there’s nothing new or exciting about it… and I wonder how many of us can get to feeling the same way about Advent and story of Christ’s birth? Because the truth is, in todays’ world, Christmas seems to have become more of a family holiday than a religious holiday. Sure; Jesus is mentioned, and you might have a nativity up… but it’s really just more about family getting together, and presents… and there’s nothing wrong with that. But we can’t lose focus of Christ. And that’s why I wanted us to see what the Apostle Paul had to say about the incarnation in Galatians 4. When Isaiah prophesied about the birth of Jesus, he was pointing to Christ’s coming… but Paul was writing after the event. Paul was writing from our perspective, in that Christ had already come, and he’s telling us what that means, and why it matters.

And here’s what Paul says… the birth of Jesus matters because God the Son has entered into our world, in human flesh. Look again at Galatians 4:4 – “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman…”. Now; birth is a normal thing. It’s how human beings enter this world. It’s where we all started. To be human is to be born. But that’s what makes this so amazing. Because in the incarnation we see God the Son… the Second Person of the Trinity, become a baby, and be born into this world.