Christmas According to Christ
Text: Hebrews 1:1 - 18
By: Ken McKinley
Everyone here today has heard the Christmas story. We’ve all heard it; and we’ve heard it from just about every perspective possible. I mean, I’ve heard it from the perspective of Mary and Joseph. I’ve heard it from the perspective of the shepherds, the wise men, King Herod, even the inn keeper who turned Mary and Joseph away. Some preachers even get so desperate that they try to preach a sermon from the perspective of the animals that might have been in the stable… from the donkeys or the sheep. Now I don’t know about you, but to me… if I ever get to that point, it’s probably time to stop.
And the fact is; everyone has a view of the Christmas story… and not all of them are actually Biblical. I really like to get the perspective of little kids. It’s always fun when they tell me the Christmas story. I read the other day about a little boy in Sunday School, and his Sunday School teacher had the class draw a picture of the Christmas story on a card for their parents. The teacher noticed that one little boy had drawn a picture of Mary and Joseph, and baby Jesus, the shepherds, the wise men, and over in the corner was a really big, fat guy. The teacher asked the boy, “Who’s that?” And the boy said, “Oh, that’s Round John Virgin… you know, from the song Silent Night.”
Well what I want to do this morning is look at Christmas from the perspective of Jesus, and I hope that this will help us all understand what Jesus was looking at and thinking of, and why He came. So if you’ll take your Bibles and open them up to the Book of Hebrews 10:1 – 18 (Read).
Now in that passage; I want to hit a few of the main points, but specifically focus on that phrase, “A body You have prepared for Me.” And if you notice the author of Hebrews writes this as if Jesus said this, and some of your Bibles will have a footnote and they will tell you that this is a quote from Psalm 40, and then a little later, in verses 16 and 17 He quotes Jeremiah chapter 31. So which is it? Are these quotes from Jesus, or David and Jeremiah? Well; all three. The Bible is a book from Jesus, about Jesus. In-fact John describes Jesus as the “Word”… the Greek word there is “Logos.” He says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God, the same was in the beginning with God.” And, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” And Paul tells Timothy that “All Scripture is given by inspiration from God.” And so; since the Bible is from Jesus, and it’s about Jesus, then if we are going to understand the Bible, we need to keep our eyes on Jesus. Every book is telling us about Jesus. It’s a story about how Jesus came and did what we couldn’t do for ourselves, in order to bring us back into a right relationship with God. That’s essentially the story of the Bible. So the context of our passage this morning is the whole Bible.
Now I’m not going to read the whole Bible, but I want you to understand that the Christmas story is what the Bible is pointing to… All of the Bible is talking about how man has sinned, and rebelled against God, and how man – despite his best efforts, and despite all his religion, and works… man couldn’t get himself back into a right relationship with God. But… The Bible also teaches that God had a plan from the beginning. That God made a promise that the Seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. And then it goes into this long history of how God called for Himself a particular people, and How He would teach them, and lead them, and how He would have them institute a sacrificial system that would be a type and shadow of the ultimate sacrifice that would come.
The Bible also talks about how God’s people would go through things and experience things, and how they would continually rebel against Him and His ways, but how none of that would deter Him from fulfilling His promise. And about 4 A.D. the beginning of that fulfillment started to take place, when a body was prepared for Him. Look at verse 5 (Read).
So you see; what Jesus is saying there is that all of those Old Testament sacrifices were just a shadow of what was to come. They weren’t really the ultimate reality of what God wanted. They couldn’t cleanse sin from the soul, they couldn’t wipe clean our guilty consciences, and they couldn’t satisfy the righteous requirements of our holy God. They were a temporary fix whose purpose was to point man in the right direction and prepare us for the ultimate reality.
All of those Old Testament sacrifices were animals. Sheep and goats. But the sacrifice of Jesus was a sacrifice of a consenting will. The animals had no real part to play other than to die… They didn’t volunteer for it – they were picked out of a herd, based on their lack of blemish, and they were put to death, simply to cover man’s sin, not to wash it away, that’s what verses 2, 3 and 4 are saying. Verse 11 says, “And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.”
But in that system; was the foreshadowing of the ultimate sacrifice – which was Jesus Christ, in this body that was prepared for Him – for that very reason.
You see; Jesus’ death on the cross is the reason His birth took place.
Now sometimes people ask me, “If the sheep and goats couldn’t take away a person’s sins, then how in the world was anyone saved before Jesus came?” And that’s an honest question. How were they saved? And the answer is: They were saved in the same way you and I are. By believing in the promises of God. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David… they were all saved by grace through faith. God had told Adam Eve that He would send a Savior, and they all looked forward to that fulfillment of the promise in faith. Today we look back at the cross; they looked forward to it, with anticipation. That’s exactly what Hebrews 11 teaches us.
But what happened is that people began to trust in the system rather than the Savior, and in reality… they were just trusting in themselves. They took God’s Law, that was designed to point them to Christ, and show them their inability to live up to it and meet its requirements, and instead made obedience to that Law the requirement to salvation. And for hundreds of years, and thousands of years, people labored under it. Trying and trying to earn God’s favor; and always falling short. That’s no different than any other religion in the world. Every other religion in the world bases their concept of salvation on what the individual does. Every other religion in the world bases their concept of salvation on the idea that, “Well I’ve done pretty good. My good deeds outweigh my bad deeds. I’m kind, and I help people out, and I’m not as bad as so and so down the street.” But the Bible strikes at the heart of that and says, “You’re still not good enough.” Because the thing is, we can never be good enough for God’s standard. God is perfectly holy, and perfectly righteous, and perfectly good, and perfectly loving, and perfectly just. And all of our good deeds look like filthy rags in comparison. Every other religion out there, that claims that mankind can be good enough in and of themselves has basically admitted that they have a god, or a higher power, that is morally equivalent to his or hers or its worshipers. Not Christianity. God is infinitely holy, and infinitely righteous. And man is sinful and totally depraved. In-fact, the Bible teaches that the only reason people aren’t as bad as they could be is because God keeps them from being that way. Our only hope was for someone who once and for all made a sacrifice for sin, and by that sacrifice could restore us to fellowship and make us acceptable to God. And that’s why a body was prepared for Him. That’s why a baby was born in a manger.
In 1st Peter 2:24, Peter said it this way, “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed.” In other words; Jesus does perfectly and finally, once and for all, what is necessary for sinful men and women, so that we can enter into eternal fellowship with God.
You become the very righteousness of God, in Christ.
And because Christ’s righteousness is accredited to your account, you are able to meet that standard of righteousness, and because you meet that standard of righteousness, you are accepted by God, and brought back into a right relationship with Him.
Basically; in Christ, God has reached His arms out to us. Kind of like a father would his young child. In Christ; God runs to us, and lifts us off the ground and hugs us.
Have you ever seen any of those videos of soldiers coming home after deployment, and they run to their kids, and hold out their arms and lift them off the ground and hug them? That’s what God does in Christ.
But in order to do that, a body had to be prepared; a baby had to be born.
Christmas is God doing something about our situation. Christmas is Christ, coming as a man, so that in His body, He could bear my punishment and my guilt. Christmas is Christ coming so that He could endure the wrath of God on my behalf.
But in Jesus; God is pleased to pardon and accept those who believe, even though we have sinned and deserve condemnation. Christmas is Christ coming and doing what we could never, never ever do. Christmas is Christ coming, so that He could die and by dying, bring you to God, and verse 9 tells us that it’s in accordance with God’s will.
Trying to be good so that you can earn your way to heaven, and earn favor with God, is not the Gospel. That’s every other religion in the world, but it’s not Christianity. Christianity is trusting that what Jesus did on the cross is more than enough to make us right with God, and that faith is the sole basis for God’s acceptance of us.
It’s kind of like skydiving… and I’ll close with this. In the Army you go to jump school and they teach you all the ins and outs of how to do it, and then, when you finally do jump, you jump and a static line pulls your chute. But in the civilian world, if you don’t have the training, then you have to do what’s called a tandem jump. In other words, you have to be strapped to a trained professional and he or she pulls the chute, and takes you down. Now in essence; what you’re doing there is, you’re giving yourself up to that person. You are trusting that they know what they are doing, and that they are going to get you safely down to earth. You put yourself entirely in their care, and trust them.
Becoming a Christian is like reverse skydiving. It’s strapping yourself to Jesus, and trusting Him completely. Trusting that He’s going to take you up. It’s giving yourself to Him, and trusting Him totally. When you do that, our text tells us that God will remember your sin and your lawless deeds, no more!
And it all became possible because a little more than 2000 years ago, in the town of Bethlehem, Jesus was born, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and placed in a manger.
MERRY CHRISTMAS to you all, and I pray that you all know Christ and are known by Him, and if you don’t, that you would let go of your pride and unbelief and attach yourself to Him, and come to trust Him completely.
CLOSING PRAYER
