The Gospel of Christmas

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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December 26, 2011

00:00: Well again, welcome on this Christmas morning.
00:03: It is good to see everyone I Kept being asked all week people would ask me Well, how do you think attendance is going to be on Christmas morning? You know Christmas is such a busy day and families are getting up and doing things and we have so many young families with children I was asked how do you think attendance will be good? I said I said I really feel like it's going to be good.
00:25: And I think I think I was right We have a lot of people here I just felt like we understand the reason why we celebrate today And I know that some people tend to make a big deal about the fact that we celebrate December 25th even though that was Probably not or likely not the actual day that Jesus was born and some people tend to make a big to-do about that Yet we worship on this day We celebrate on this day because it's part of our tradition to do so and we do believe that the birth of Christ is something Worth celebrating so we've picked a day and this is the day that we've chosen Others claim that we shouldn't worship on December 25th.
01:10: They say December 25th has pagan roots It's a pagan holiday That's just been De-Christianized and I wanted to sort of address that in my introduction this morning because I think sometimes we hear something enough and we begin to think that it's true and That's one of those things that I think needs to be cleared up How many of you know the oldest day that was actually celebrated as? Jesus's birthday the oldest day and I'll give you a hand.
01:37: It's not December 25th Okay, the oldest in history that we can find that the Christians actually celebrated was January 6th And if you look on your calendar, you'll notice that still the Eastern Orthodox The day they celebrate the birth of Christ is on January 6th Well, if you do math and most of you do and you count 12 days back from January 6th, what day is that? It's December the 25th, and there was a 12-day feast To celebrate the birth of Christ on January 6 which began on December 25th So that's where the day comes from and that's where we get our history.
02:17: It's not about Mithra and all that stuff It's just a part of our feast heritage there.
02:22: You know Christians are known for eating and We you know, we have feast just like in the Old Testament.
02:27: They had feast in the New Testament There are feasts as well.
02:30: So just kind of keep that in mind.
02:32: We do have some history here We do have some tradition here with this date on the 25th And I thought that would be an important way to begin though We do not know the exact day of Jesus's birth because our calendars are different You know, we go on a different calendar than they had in the first century There's a lot of ways that you can do the math and everything, but it's still not going to be perfect We have a tradition and this is the tradition that we hold and Traditions aren't bad traditions just mustn't become dogma Jesus did not When he came before the Sadducees and the Pharisees, he didn't disdain all traditions He just said don't it was the traditions that nullified the scriptures traditions that were actually opposed to God And there's nothing opposed to God about celebrating Jesus's birth on this day.
03:16: So we're here today We're glad to do it and I'm glad you all came to do it with us So this morning, we're going to open our Bibles to Mark chapter 1 And I want to ask that we'll stand together we stand for the reading of God's Word as is our tradition here But we're going to read Mark 1 1 and then we're going to move down to verses 14 and 15 And this will be our text for the morning Mark 1 1 Says this the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God and then verse 14 says now after John was arrested Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God and Saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand repent and believe in the gospel father as we seek to Expound on this text this morning.
04:26: I pray Lord that you would Keep me from error as I am a fallible man and capable of preaching error I pray that you would guard your people from that I pray that you would open their hearts to the truth and I pray Lord if there is anyone here who has never heard the gospel Lord that you might use this time to influence their heart to open it to change it To bring conversion where it's needed and Lord for those who are believers who are committed to Jesus Christ I pray that this will be a time of edification for them and will move them To a closer walk with their Lord And all these things we pray in Jesus name and for his sake Amen generally around Christmas time We begin to focus on certain verses of the Bible Particularly on the birth narratives of Jesus Christ and the information about Jesus's birth is contained for us in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke Matthew in Matthew chapter 1 in Fact if you want to turn there we can turn back to Matthew chapter 1 and we'll see a few things from Matthew 1 that we learn You'll notice that Matthew chapter 1 begins with the genealogy of Jesus Christ it tells us about where he came from physically in the sense of having been born in the line of Abraham remember Matthew is written to the Jews So it was very important to the Jews that it be confirmed that Jesus himself was actually a Jew so they spend time making sure that there is a Documented lineage taking Jesus all the way back to Abraham and then it goes on in verse 18 of Matthew chapter 1 to talk about the birth and it talks about particularly the point of view of Joseph you remember Joseph Found out that Mary was pregnant he knew that they had not yet had a physical relationship and So his concern was that she had committed an act of infidelity and He wanted to divorce her quietly at that time if you had been betrothed a betrothal period was about a one-year period which we Some people compare it to our engagement, but it's much more than our engagement Our engagement can easily be broken simply by someone giving the ring back or even they don't sometimes do that Sometimes they just say I don't want to marry you anymore but at this period in time a Contract was made a contract of marriage and during the betrothal period if you wanted to break that contract you had to give a certificate of divorce Even before you had come together fully married So there's about a year period of time where the husband's responsibility was to get his house together To get his land and everything ready to bring his wife into it and begin establishing a family That was his contract with the parents So this is what Joseph was under he was under contract and he found out she's pregnant and he begins to get concerned and Matthew chapter 1 tells us sort of his side of the story.
08:00: He is visited by an angel He's told do not be afraid to take this woman as your wife for that Which is born within her is of the Holy Spirit of God.
08:09: We we learned that in Matthew chapter 1 We learned that the virgin birth is a truism.
08:14: It is a reality It is something that actually happened and it's right there in the first chapter of the gospel of Matthew then we go over to Luke And we find in Luke chapter 2 the story of the birth of Christ again, but this time the story is given to us from the perspective of Mary it talks about Mary's relationship having seen the angel and Mary's relationship with God having been called the one who was full of grace and the one who is Going to receive this child and was going to be the one through whom the Messiah would come so we have Matthew 1 tells us about Jesus and his birth being born of a virgin and Luke chapter 2 tells us Jesus being born of a virgin And those are the texts that we usually spend a lot of time with here on Christmas time at Christmas time And sometimes we'll go to John chapter 1 if you want to look there real quickly You'll see in John chapter 1 sometimes people like to look here on Christmas because in John chapter 1 We see that it talks about not the birth of Christ But actually the fact that Christ though he was born as a man actually is God in the flesh because John 1 1 says in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and The Word was God and then later in verse 14 It gives us that miraculous statement and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory the glory of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth we Have those verses and that's again normal Christmas teaching Rarely, though do people preach on Christmas from the gospel of Mark The reason is is because Mark doesn't deal with the birth of Jesus Mark doesn't even deal with where Jesus came from or who Jesus is it simply goes right into the message So that's where we're going to go this morning.
10:16: We're going to take a turn for the different We're going to say, you know, normally we'd be in Matthew normally or Luke or John this morning We're going to go to Mark And I just want to show you a few things Again back to Mark chapter 1 in verse 1 The first thing I want to note is that Mark makes no apologies and He makes no explanation He simply says Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
10:48: I Like the fact that he doesn't make any explanation You see the Bible is like that the Bible takes some things for granted, you know in the beginning of the Bible It says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth You know It doesn't say God is this type of God or God came from here or God is this or God is that it simply says in The beginning God it makes an assumption not only that God exists, but he has the power to create Well mark does the same thing in his gospel He says the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God and he makes no apologies for it He makes no explanation for it.
11:25: He said he simply is the Son of God and what's interesting is that Some scholars believe and I know there's some debate about this But some scholars believe that mark is the earliest of the four Gospels some that somebody that's Matthew and there's a little debate on that But isn't it interesting that what possibly is the oldest gospel? We know Luke is one of the later we have John is the latest so there's debate whether it's Matthew or Mark came first It's called Matthew in primacy or Mark in primacy, but it doesn't matter But the key is mark is a very early gospel and yet he takes it for granted that this is just the truth This is the Son of God.
12:02: This is God in the flesh.
12:03: This is Emmanuel God with us and Then mark takes a moment to explain about John the Baptist in verses 2 through verse 13 Explained to us verse 14 rather No 13 Explained to us a little bit about John the Baptist because John is Jesus's forerunner John is the prophet who proclaims that Jesus is coming and then he turns his attention back to Jesus in verse 14 and After the baptism of Jesus and the temptation of Jesus.