Christmas Eve Service Devotional

(This is the gist of what I shared tonight in our annual Christmas Eve service)

A little later Brent will read us some of the Christmas story from Luke chapter 2, but we sensed our first meditation in this service ought to come from the first revelation in the New Testament about the long awaited Messiah. What is it that God wanted readers of the New Testament to know first about His Son?

Well we get the answer to that question from an Angel – sent from God - who appeared to Joseph in a dream -  as recorded in Matthew 1:20,21  “…Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. vs. 21 She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” Matthew 1:20, 21       

Emphasis of Matthew ch. 2 is Jesus’s kingship – His rule and reign – then and now and forevermore. Ch. 1 is more personal. Ch. 1 vs. 20 reveals that the Messiah came because of our great need and because only He could meet that need. Or you could say, He came because of our great problem and only He could solve it.

Six things I want to touch on from this verse: First His origin; Second, His gender; Third His name; Fourth, His mission; Fifth His target or clientele or intended audience; And sixth - His ultimate purpose

God first wants Joseph and all of us to know who the Messiah’s Daddy was. It was not Joseph nor any other human. God was His Father via the Holy Spirit. No human no matter how great his lineage or how spiritual his other worldliness is could solve humanity’s terminal untreatable spiritual disease.  Not only does the Angel let Joseph in on Mary’s baby’s origin, he also informs of His gender. He will be a Son of God the Father. Then he lets Joseph in on what the baby’s name will be (please note while Adam was invited by God to name the animals there was no negotiation on the naming of God’s Son - - whereas our naming of our children sometimes happens at the last minute, God’s naming of His Son happened before the foundation of the world). Of all the names God could have come up with – why this one?

Well the English word Jesus is translated from the Hebrew word Yeshua – meaning Yahweh saves or God saves. God wanted His Son’s name to reflect His mission – His primary purpose for coming to this sin stained earth. God wanted His Son’s name to always breathe hope to those who most needed it.

What did God’s Son come to do – What is His mission?  It is to save us from our sins. That of course begs the question - what is “sin” and how does Jesus save us from it?      Sin is an invisible inner condition that has very visible - eventually devastating fruit or consequences. As the apostle Paul declared in Romans 6:23 – “…the wages or penalty of sin is death” (both physical and spiritual).   Sin is not just bad things you say or do or perhaps things you should have said or should have done and didn’t; but sin speaks to our very nature that we are born with and stuck with unless God intervenes and saves or delivers us from it. Sin can be thought of as innate independence from God, which results in self righteousness, self reliance, self deception,  self worship, etc. It is a terminal condition of the soul that all of us are born with and very quickly begin to manifest even before we can talk.

Ultimately if someone doesn’t save or deliver us from this awful condition, once we die we will be doomed to eternal separation from God, God’s people, and the good angels, and we will spend eternity in hell with Satan and his demons and all the foolish and wicked people who refused to allow Jesus to save and deliver them.

So who will he do this for – “He will save His people”.  This people is an ever growing multitude of people from every tribe, tongue, ethnicity and nation whom God chose before the foundations of the earth to know and enjoy Him forever. While He loves each of us individually, He especially delights in our growing to be a part of a people He is forming among whom He Himself can dwell and manifest His glory.

Why He will do it? What is the ultimate purpose for Jesus dying to save us?

Matthew provides context to answer that question:   VS. 22 “Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet.”  Vs. 23 “BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL,” which translated means, “GOD WITH US.”  (from Isa. Ch. 7 & ch. 9)    God determined that His Son would be named Jesus; and that He was by Mary and Joseph and everyone else thereafter. But the prophet Isaiah prophesied hundreds of years before - that when God’s Son is born to a virgin, which ended up being Joseph’s wife Mary, His descriptive title would be Immanuel, because His ultimate mission is to break the estrangement between us and God or to make a way (where there was no way) for us to become intimately acquainted with God.

The apostle Peter states it this way, “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God,…”  bring us to God – that is to provide a way to know and be right with and intimate with the living God of the universe. You see for those back in Jesus’s day who knew they were sinners and who knew God was holy, they needed to know that God Himself wanted to and intended to make a way for this holy God and sinners like you and me to be in relationship, and one of the ways God solved the problem or answered that question is He Himself in the form of His Son lived among sinners for 33 long years. Immanuel -  “God with us”  brought hope where there was no hope that men could somehow despite our sins be brought into relationship with the living God of the universe.

Well this room is full of people who have experienced this wonderful saving restoring work of Christ. And we’ve asked a few of you to share a bit of your story with us.

Mike’s Testimony