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Father, thank you so much for the opportunity that we have to gather this evening. God, as we all, in the midst of our busyness and our preparations and the stress and the hustle and everything else that goes on, we thank you for the opportunity to take a pause and to reflect on what it is that we're celebrating and to provide you the worship that you so richly deserve.
God, we know that all things have come from you, including your Son, whose birth we celebrate as we go into the midst and the depths of this Advent season. Lord, we thank you for what this means, God, and we thank you for how you've showed it to us.
In your word.
Lord, I pray that our hearts and our minds would be open tonight as we dive just a little bit deeper into what Christmas truly means. And we love you and pray all this in Jesus' name, amen. All right, so y 'all can go ahead and have a seat.
I wanna begin this evening by, actually, I know that we have Isaiah 53 .5 in the bulletin, but I wanna start by reading the story of Jesus' birth as told in the Gospel of Luke chapter two. This is verses one through 20.
So I invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter two, and we'll begin with verse one and read to verse 20. Jesus is born in Bethlehem. Now it happened that in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus for a census to be taken of all the inhabited earth.
This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. And everyone was going to be registered for the census, each to his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, in order to register along with Mary, who was betrothed to him and was with child.
Now it happened that while they were there, the days were fulfilled for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son, and she wrapped him in cloths and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the guest room.
In the same region, there were some shepherds staying out in the fields and keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terribly frightened.
But the angel said to them, do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy, which will be for all the people. For today in the city of David, there has been born for you a savior who is Christ the Lord, and this will be the sign for you.
You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased.
And it happened that when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds began saying to one another, let us go to Bethlehem then and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us.
So they went in a hurry and found their way to Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger. And when they had seen this, they made known the statement which had been told them about this child, and all who heard it marveled at the things which were told them by the shepherds.
But Mary was treasuring all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds went back, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen, just as was told them. This is the word of God for the people of God.
And again, this is the Christmas story. This is the Christmas story that we're all familiar with. And leaving aside all the controversy and all the discussions that inevitably pop up about the origin of Christmas, whether Jesus was born in the summer or the winter, all of these things that go along with the traditions and the practices that we have at Christmas, whether it's trees, exchanging gifts, all that stuff.
Setting all of that aside, the silly discussions that we like to get into about that, I hope that we're all in agreement that the fundamental reason that we make a big deal about this holiday is to celebrate the birth of Jesus.
Right?
Again, we're probably all in agreement that that's the most important thing here. But the implications of his birth often get muddled up once we move beyond that, once we move just beyond a simple recognition that this is Jesus's birthday, supposedly.
And our religious traditions and our cultural traditions, they often get so mixed up together that sometimes we lose sight about, that we lose sight of why the birth of Jesus is so significant, what this is really about.
And another reason that we lose sight of it is because we have this Christian calendar. We have these very specific times that we celebrate specific things. We celebrate Jesus's birth at Christmas, and we celebrate his resurrection at Easter.
And that draws something of an artificial barrier in between his entire life and ministry, where we only think about his birth now, and we only think about his resurrection later. And we sing songs like Joy to the World Now, when in actuality, Joy to the World is an Easter hymn, of all things.
But the point of this is the death and the resurrection, and everything that flows out of that should influence our Christian life every single day of the year. These are the most important things that have happened.
But back to, again, the idea of losing sight of what the true meaning of Jesus's birth is, I wanna tell you a couple of stories. And before I tell you the main one that I was thinking of, I wanna go ahead and tell you a story that's a little bit embarrassing for me.
Now, when I was a kid, or maybe a young adolescent, somewhere in that general age range, maybe early teens or slightly before, I can't really remember, it just so happened one year that Christmas Day fell on a Sunday, and I was devastated.
That was probably the worst thing that could have happened to me. Do you know why? Because it meant we had to go to church on Christmas Day. The church that we were members of was having a service, and my parents absolutely made sure that we were there.
Now, I don't even remember, I think that we got to maybe open some of our presents before, but we had to wait for some of them after. My parents, again, they can fill in the details on that. But it was basically the end of the world, because as an unregenerate child, a child who had not experienced salvation, despite being in church, despite knowing the information, knowing the stories, I had no true concept of what Christmas was actually about.
It was much more about the fun and the presents and all of that kind of stuff. Now, fast forward many years into the future, where I'm far from perfect, and I'm not talking about today. We're still a couple of years back.
Not perfect today, either, but. I'm starting to understand a little bit more the depth of what Jesus's birth means for all Christians. The whole reason why we're celebrating it, beyond just his birth, what his birth means.
And the church that I was at decided, this year, not this year, but the year this happened, that Christmas happened to fall on a Sunday again, church decided not to have a service. The Christmas Eve service was used as a justification for skipping Sunday service.
The term legalism was thrown around. And someone even said that we were gonna not have our Sunday church service, because Christmas is about spending time with family. So even churches can get this kind of thing mixed up.
But then I have to wonder, how can anyone expect the congregants of a church to take this seriously, to take the Sabbath seriously, to take Sunday and the Lord's Day seriously, if the churches themselves don't take it seriously?
And there are a lot of modern churches that are gonna cancel their service, the last service of the year, or the first service in January, however it works out, under the idea of giving the volunteers or the people that make the service happen a break.
But if we have turned our weekly worship service, our worship of Christ, into something that has become so burdensome on the people that help it happen, that it's better for us to give them a Sunday off than it is to continue to meet, as Hebrews 10 .25 tells us, then I would suggest that the church's whole approach to their services might be wrong.
There might be something in that that needs an adjustment. Now, with all my criticism and my judgment and the stuff that I'm saying right now, what am I suggesting should be the true focus for all of us?
What am I suggesting should be the true focus at Christmas? What is this significant implication of the birth of Jesus that I've been talking about? Now, I wanna give a caveat, and that caveat is that it's very hard, obviously, to boil the entire life and ministry of Jesus into one concept that's more important than the other, but we're still gonna narrow our focus tonight to something that is and should be completely life-changing for anyone who considers themselves a Christian, anyone who considers themselves to be a redeemed follower of Christ, transformed by the Holy Spirit.
It's something that only Jesus could do. And to look at this concept, we are gonna get into the book of Isaiah as promised. We're gonna turn to the prophet Isaiah, chapter 53, and we're gonna read just a small part of his inspired prophecy of the Messiah.
And as I said on Sunday, if you were with us, the thing that's so miraculous about this, so amazing about this prophecy is that he prophesied it hundreds of years, several centuries before it actually happened.
So we're gonna look only at one verse today, and that's Isaiah tonight. That's Isaiah 53, verse five. Isaiah 53, five says, but he was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.
The chastening for our peace fell upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. Now, contained in this one single verse are four important points. Each one of those lines is telling us something significant.
Number one, he was pierced through for our transgressions, and number two, he was crushed for our iniquities. I'm putting these two together because they go with one another. Because we know now where we are today as Christians that this was a prophecy of Jesus.
Isaiah didn't know that the Messiah was going to be Jesus Christ. He wasn't even alive at the same time. But we now know that this was a prophecy, and these lines were fulfilled by Jesus's crucifixion and death.
In fact, he was quite literally pierced with a spear. We see that in John 19, 34. And he was killed, crushed for our iniquities, obviously before he was resurrected and he was rose again. But don't miss the reason that he was pierced, and don't miss the reason that he was crushed.
It tells us right there in that verse. This is a prophecy to Israel, but it still applies to us. Again, as I've said before, we're not Israel. Don't ever make that mistake. But this prophecy fulfills what it is that we believe as Christians.
It was for our transgressions and our iniquities that this happened. Jesus, the Messiah prophesied by Isaiah, was not punished for anything that he did, but he was punished as our substitute and as Israel's substitute.
For the sins and transgressions of people. Now, number three, you see in that third line, the chastening for our peace fell upon him. Arnold Fruchtenbaum says the Hebrew term for peace, shalom, refers to the spiritual peace of those who believe.
And that peace, that spiritual peace, frankly, is only available to people who believe. That peace is only available to those who are truly saved and follow Jesus. And then number four, by his wounds we are healed.
And this is quite possibly the most profound truth of everything that we see here, or at least it's one that inspires within us the most hope, the most admiration, the most celebration. And the concept that we have in view based on these four points from Isaiah 53 .5 is what's known as the concept of atonement.
Now, I'm sure this word has probably crossed your radar at some point, but it's not one that you use commonly. It's not something we throw around in our dinner table conversations or anything like that.
And maybe there's even better ways to explain it, but we at least need to know what the idea of atonement is. A theologian named Richard Mayhew defined atonement this way. Christ giving himself to suffer and die by bearing the full penalty for sin in the place of all sinners whom God saves.
Christ giving himself to suffer and die by bearing the full penalty for sin in the place of all sinners whom God saves. I hope that you're following now and you're starting to see what it is. It's not simply the birth of Jesus, but it's what his life led up to and it's what has happened on our behalf.
Sometimes you'll hear this called substitutionary atonement or penal substitutionary atonement, just adding some additional words to that concept, the fact that he was killed for our sins. Now, I wanna highlight now two important aspects of Christ's substitutionary atonement.
And the first one is the reason for it. And that is Christ's substitutionary atonement, Christ's atonement is the only way that we can stand before God given the nature of the sin in our lives, given the nature of the sin in our hearts.
We can never be right enough to stand before God. There's absolutely nothing we can do because Jesus did it. And this is what it means to be clothed in Christ's righteousness. Now, we see this concept referenced just a little bit later in Isaiah, in Isaiah 61, chapter 61, verse 10.
Isaiah 61, 10 says this, I will rejoice greatly in Yahweh, my soul will rejoice in my God, for he has clothed me with garments of salvation. He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness as a bridegroom decks himself with a headdress and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
We can't ever forget that God is holy and we are not. God is perfect and we are not. First Timothy 6, 16 says of God, who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light whom no man has seen or can see.
If you're familiar with your Bible,.
If you've read it,.
If you've gotten through all these passages, if you've read more of Isaiah, you see what happens when he finds himself in the presence of angels of the Lord. He immediately realizes he's not worthy. If you've read Revelation and you see what happens when John finds himself in the presence of angels of the Lord, he falls down on his face and worships them.
They tell him not to. That's the natural response to merely being in the presence of these creatures who serve God, much less God himself who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light whom no man has seen or can see.
So it's only by Jesus's atonement that we are saved from the wrath and judgment of God. It's only by Jesus's atonement that we are spared exactly what we deserve were we to ever find ourselves in the presence of God and we will eventually find ourselves in that presence one day.
So that's one. This is the only way we can stand before God without being eternally punished, by being clothed in the righteousness of Christ. And the second important concept of this atonement is related to the first, obviously, but that's that Christ accomplished what we could not.
Christ did something for us that we could never do on our own, something that we completely lacked the ability to. We are sinful and incapable of living the perfect life that would please God. And no matter how many good deeds we do or how many good works we do or how many church services we attend or how much money we give to charity or how much money we give to our church or how much we do in our lives, there's nothing we can do to earn our own salvation.
Romans 8, three through four reminds us of this. Paul writes this, for, this might be my poor handwriting, I know, for what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did, sending His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.
And as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh so that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. He said what the law could not do because we are the ones trying to keep the law, God did.
And He sent His Son to fulfill the law for us because it's impossible for us. So contained in this one verse, again, this one verse, Isaiah 53, five, there's a lot more. We read a lot of this section and Isaiah itself is full of prophecies of the Messiah.
But just in this verse, there's at least a large majority of the essence of the gospel distilled into these four lines that we have. The gospel, which we could put this way, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in dying fulfilled the law and destroyed the power of death.
And by that, He canceled the power of sin and wiped out the sinful debt of humanity. And by that power of His Spirit, a man can be created anew and start upon a new eternal life. This is the gospel of what Jesus Christ has done for us.
He became a man, He took the weight of all of our sin on His own shoulders, suffered the wrath of God in our place so that we wouldn't have to. Ephesians 2, eight through nine drives this point home. And it drives home the point that atonement is a gift and it's not something that we can ever earn.
Ephesians 2, eight through nine, for by grace, you have been saved by faith. And this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of work so that no one may boast. And the thing that's so incredible about this as we focus on His birth at Christmastime is that I would suggest to you that Christ's atoning sacrifice is sufficient for all of us.
Christ's atoning sacrifice is sufficient for everyone. John 3, 16 tells us that. I hope that you're familiar with John 3, 16. Maybe you saw it at a sign at a football game and looked it up. For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him would not perish, would have eternal life.
But when we read on and we get to verse 18, we read this. He who believes in Him is not judged. He who does not believe has been judged already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
So while Christ's atoning sacrifice is sufficient for all of us, it's not going to save everyone because salvation comes only through faith in that atoning work. It comes only through belief in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus.
Eternal life is available only to those who believe. And there is no other way. There's no additional route that you can take. All religions are not the same. They're not just different paths to the same destination.
Acts 4, 12 tells us this. There is salvation in no one else for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved. And I can't remember if I wrote this later, but Jesus Himself tells us that as well.
I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me, through faith in Christ. So as we reflect on the birth of Christ, moving into the sacrifice of Christ, the atonement that was provided by that sacrifice, I would ask anyone who's here, I know a lot of you, but I don't know all of you, but anyone who's not truly placed their faith in Christ, I would ask you what it is exactly that you're placing your faith in.
What is, if you're not placing your faith in the work of Christ, what is your ultimate destination? Is this life all that there is? When this is over, are you done? Do you disappear into nothingness? I hope for your sake that you're right, but I also know tragically that you're wrong.
Have you placed your faith in yourself? Have you placed your faith in science, technology, education? Have you placed your faith in another God? Are you placing your faith in the hope that you will be good enough to get into heaven when everything is weighed in the balance?
All of those paths are wrong, and I would also humbly ask you if this is you, and if this is not any one of you in this room, praise the Lord, but if it is, I would ask you to search God's Word. Go ahead and do it skeptically.
Look for those answers. Question what you read. You can test the words that I believe to be the inspired Word of God. You can bring all your questions to these words, the words of God contained in Scripture that have stood up to millennia of critical scrutiny by brilliant people, words that have stood up to probably thousands of failed attempts to undermine them and to undermine their meaning and to find a way around it.
People have tried, and it doesn't work. But again, take your skepticism to God's Word. Then honestly compare your life experiences and your beliefs with what you find there. And then the request that I have would have of you, using the same inspired words that Paul used in 2 Corinthians 5 .20, we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
It's not too late for any of you right now, but at any moment it could be too late. John 3 .36 says, he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. And one last thing before I move on from this, and again, if this is you, if this is how you feel, if this is your life, if you're skeptical, if you don't have faith in Christ, even if you have attended church all your life and continue to attend, thinking somehow that does something for you if you still don't have actual faith in what he's done, it's not too late.
And I am constantly encouraged by the words of Romans 10, nine through 13. These are words of hope, words of encouragement. Actually, we'll start at eight. But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that is the word of faith which we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
For with the heart a person believes, leading to righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, leading to salvation. For the scripture says, whoever believes upon him will not be put to shame, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on him.
For whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. So as we close, let's loop all the way back around to where we started. The true purpose, the true meaning of Christmas. Yes, it's absolutely, absolutely about the birth of Christ.
We can celebrate that. We can celebrate our time off work. We can spend time with our friends and family. We can eat, we can give and receive gifts. We can just relax and enjoy it. Some of us, probably none of the moms, wives, women, none of them can relax and enjoy it, but the rest of us can.
But my prayer for all of us is that we would never forget that the true significance of our observance of Christmas comes from the work of Jesus on our behalf, and specifically from his work of atonement.
The atonement that we only have because of his sacrifice, which was because of God's love. The salvation that we have only because of his sacrifice and because of God's love. The angel appeared to Joseph, as we see in Matthew 1 .21, and told him this, and she will bear a son and you will call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
Isaiah prophesied it long before Jesus. The angel came and told Joseph exactly what was going on when Mary was pregnant with Jesus. You will call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
That is a promise that has been fulfilled for many believers who are now with the Lord. It's a promise that's extended to each and every one of you if you have faith. So enjoy all the good things that God has given you.
Enjoy your family, enjoy your life, enjoy all that you have, but never let that make you forget the purpose for which Jesus came into the world. Jesus was sent for our salvation. Jesus was sent as a sacrifice to atone for our sins.
That is why we celebrate his birth, because of everything that goes along with that. So I wanna leave you with these words from 1 Peter 2 .24, which actually references Isaiah 53 .5. 1 Peter 2 .24, who himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that having died to sin, we might live to righteousness.
By his wounds you were healed. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, once again, we thank you for this day. We thank you for the opportunity to dwell, even on a single verse of your word. A single verse, four lines that contain so much profound truth that when we really focus on it and if we really internalize it and understand it, it becomes overwhelming.
It becomes overwhelming when we understand who we are, sinners, and we understand who you are, a perfect, holy, all-powerful, sovereign God. And though we don't deserve it, you loved us enough to send your Son, to be pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, chastened for our peace, and wounded that we would be healed.
God, we thank you. I don't even have words to put this into a prayer, but we worship you and we show you gratitude in everything that we do because of this truth. Lord, we ask that the Holy Spirit would open hearts to the reality of this.
If there is anyone who is not fully comprehending this or who is not fully believing it or continues to have doubts, God, we pray that you would help change their heart as we know that it is not your desire for any to perish, but that all would repent and be saved, God.
So once again, we pray for faith and we thank you for your love. We thank you for your grace and we thank you for your mercy. We are your humble slaves when we come before you and worship, Lord. We love you and we pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.
I wanna send you out with this benediction.
From Isaiah 55, verses six and seven. Seek Yahweh while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to Yahweh and he will have compassion on him.
And to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. Hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and I look forward to seeing you on Sunday.
