Proving Jesus Is The Real Christ Of Christmas

PROVING THAT JESUS IS THE REAL CHRIST OF CHRISTMAS

December 22, 2013

INTRODUCTION:

1.) Christmas is the season when we celebrate the birth of Christ.

2.) The question I want us to ask this morning is how do we know that Jesus is truly the authentic Christ we celebrate at Christmas?

3.) That may seem like a strange question for us to ask this morning, but do we know for sure that Jesus is truly the Christ or Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament Scriptures?

A.) To us, that question might seem strange, but to the Jewish people of the first century they had to know without a shadow of doubt that Jesus was truly the Christ before they would worship Him.

aa.) In fact even to this day the Jewish people can look at Jesus, and accept him on at least some level as a great one from God, but they fail to recognize that He is in fact the Promised Messiah of God.

B.) Our Scriptures contain four Gospel accounts.

ba.) The reason for four different accounts of the Gospel narrative is that each writer has a specific audience he was writing to, and a purpose for his account.

C.) Today I want us to look specifically at the Gospel of Matthew because Matthew was writing to a Jewish audience with the purpose of convincing them from the Old Testament Scriptures that Jesus is the promised Messiah.

4.) Today, I want to take a quick survey through Messianic prophecies in the first few chapters of the book of Matthew by which Matthew used fulfilled prophecies to prove to the Jews that Jesus is the Christ.

A.) Really the entire book of Matthew is filled with Messianic prophecies proving from the Old Testament Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ.

B.) Though the entire book deals with such prophecies, I want today, to just focus on those prophecies dealing with the message of Christmas.

I. GENEALOGICAL RECORDS SHOWED HE MET THE FAMILY LINE THROUGH WHOM THE MESSIAH WAS TO COME.

1.) This family tree is traced back to Abraham.

A.) God had specifically prophesied to Abram that he would be the father of a great nation and the entire world would be blessed through One of his family line.

2.) God later extended this prophecy through the generations after him of Isaac, Jacob(Israel) and through Judah.

A.) Everything went fine until the line of Judah.

B.) Judah’s line messed up with sinful rebellion against God.

ba.) God had to put two of Judah’s sons to death because of their wickedness.

bb.) Even Judah himself had messed up sinfully before God.

C.) Because of time, I am not going to go into all the details but as a result of the chain of events that occurred, a child was born to Judah out of wedlock.

ca.) Because of that, the child Judah would father though he was of the line of the Messiah would be excluded from the temple and full fellowship with the people of God.

cb.) Not only that, but several generations after him would also be excluded because of Judah’s sin.

cba.) (cf. Deut. 23;2)

cc.) At this point in Jewish history God’s prophecy of Gen. 49:10 that the sceptre would not depart from the line of Judah seemed almost ridiculous.

cd.) How could this come to fulfillment if the next ten generations of the line of Judah were outside of fellowship in the temple of God?

cda.)I want us to see this in the genealogy of Matthew 1.

3.) Matthew began his genealogy genealogy of Christ with King David.

A.) Matt.1:1

B.) Certainly David was the greatest and most significant person in the line of Judah to this point.

C.) More importantly though verses 3-6 Matthew showed us that God could still deal with that earlier generational separation.

ca.) If you count the names in Matt.1, you will find that David was the tenth generation from Judah, and therefore the first line of that family since Judah who could go to the temple of God.

cb.) For Matthew’s Jewish audience, this detail we might overlook gave credentials from both prophecy and the family tree, to show that genealogically speaking, it was possible for Jesus to be the prophesied Messiah.

cc.) As the first in the family after Judah with the rights to go to the temple of God and full fellowship with the people of God, in some ways David was the new patriarch starting again the line of the Messiah.

II. OLD TESTAMENT PROPHECY HAD DECLARED THAT THE MESSIAH WOULD BEBORN OF A VIRGIN AND BE CALLED THE CHILD OF GOD.

1.) This came from a prophecy by Isaiah 750 years before the birth of Christ.

A.) We looked at this a few weeks ago, but to refresh us on it we go back to Is. 7:14