Christmas Sunday 2018 - Christmas ... Can You Believe It?

Unbelieving “Christians”

Please stand as we read our newest memory Scripture together …

Isaiah 9:6

“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder. And His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”

And our memory refresher verse(s) for today is(are) …

Galatians 2:20

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me; and the life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

Please open your Bibles to John 1:1-18

Today is what we call Christmas Sunday – the day we celebrate the birth of Christ our Savior together as a congregation. Today we come together to worship Jesus just as did the Shepherds and the Magi who are parts of the great narrative.

The four Gospels each give us a perspective on Birth of Jesus.

Matthew starts out with a genealogy of Jesus’ lineage back to the time of Abraham, followed by a “Reader’s Digest” version of all that took place between an angel, Mary and Joseph. He follows that with the account of the Magi, the escape to Egypt and the return from Egypt.

Mark does not engage at all with the account of Jesus’ arrival on earth. It seems that Mark relies on the arrival of John the Baptist and his testimony to introduce Jesus as the Messiah.

Luke is the most descriptive with accounts of angelic visits to Zechariah and Mary, Mary’s visit to see Elizabeth (Zechariah’s wife), the birth of John the Baptist, followed by Jesus’ birth, and the proclamations of the prophets Simeon and Anna at the Temple.

But John takes another path not so much to describe Jesus’ entry into the world but to tell us who it was who actually entered the world and why He came!

With that in mind let’s go ahead and read John 1:1-18

May the Lord bless the reading of His Holy Word.

(Prayer for the Lord’s help with the message)

I am sure that there are entire books, or maybe even sets of books, written on these first 18 verses of the Gospel of John.

What are some of the amazing statements that we see in this passage?

- Jesus (The Word) existed pre-Creation

- The Word was and is God

- Jesus is the Creator of all that exists

- Jesus is the source of all true spiritual light for all of humanity

- The Lord sent a prophet, John the Baptist, ahead of Jesus to announce His arrival

- Eternal salvation is available to anyone who believes in Jesus’ name; to anyone who places their faith and trust and life itself into the care of Jesus

- Jesus the Son of God came to make God the Father known

How close are God the Father and God the Son?

The NASB translates it like this, “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.”

Here we see something that is incomprehensible to us. Something which we try to describe with our limited language and our limited understanding …

Jesus the Son of God is not beside the God the Father, He is not next to the bosom of the Father but He is IN the Father and The Father is In Him! This is a partial glimpse of the Holy Trinity; the Holy Trinary-Unity!

And this Trinary-Unity is inserting Himself in to humanity in another incomprehensible way that is Fully God and fully human!

That is called the incarnation. And the incarnation is attempted to be defined by something call the Hypostatic Union.

“Jesus’ two natures, human and divine, are inseparable. Jesus will forever be the God-man, fully God and fully human, two distinct natures in one Person. Jesus’ humanity and divinity are not mixed, but are united without loss of separate identity. In summary, the hypostatic union teaches that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, that there is no mixture or dilution of either nature, and that He is one united Person, forever.”

Now, that is really an amazing concept. It’s a mind-boggler!

But, at Christmas time it is so easy to think of Jesus as just a tiny baby in a manger being worshiped by shepherds and wise men from a distant country.

And we need to ask ourselves, “How much of that do we really believe?”

Just look at this list of what we find in the Gospels …

- An angel visits Zechariah and tells him that he will have a son in his old age

- Elizabeth in her old aged becomes pregnant