Christmas 2021
Let’s start at the beginning. God is up in Heaven looking down at this rock we call home. This is how the Bible describes the Earth…
“The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.” - Genesis 1:2 NLT
The Earth was just there. It needed shaping. It needed stuff to fill its empty surface. So God started creating. But He did so in an amazing way. God started speaking to the Earth and it began to take shape [1]. Then God gets to the humans He wants to create. This is where the creation process changed from God speaking to God forming [2]. The creation story ends with God looking over all He had created and saying:
“…and he saw that it was very good!” - Genesis 1:31 NLT
God had created a very good place. He had a place for His most valuable creations - us - to dwell [3]. It was all going well until….
Adam and Eve decided that they would eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil [4]. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree, they sent the world into a downward spiral and the world has never been the same. They broke the world. The Bible says, in Romans 6:23, that the payment for what they did is death. Something has to die to cover sin. You might be thinking back to the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 and be thinking that they didn’t die for what they did. You’re right. They didn’t die. But something did. We can see this in this verse…
“And the Lord God made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife.” - Genesis 3:21 NLT
God sacrificed the animals He had created to make clothes for them - to cover them and to cover their sin. But things would keep getting worse and worse.
By the time of Noah, the people of Earth had gone crazy. God’s heart was broken and He was sorry that He had ever created the people of Earth. But He found one man that wasn’t like everyone else. This man was Noah. God told Noah to build a boat because He was going to flood the Earth. The flood would wipe out all living things - except for those on the boat [5].
As I’ve said, something has to die to make the payment for sin and at the time of Noah people took that payment. God was also trying to reset the world. God was trying to restore the world to what it was before sin broke it. But it didn’t work.
The people of Earth would continue to go more and more out of control. But God would realize that people couldn’t continue to take the punishment and payment for their sins themselves. God would come up with a different way to do it. God would start allowing the people to sacrifice an animal to cover the payment for their sins. This would be called the Day of Atonement [6]. But this was just a temporary solution. God had one more step in His plan to cover the payment for sin once and for all.
God would send His one and only Son to save people from sin [7]. God would send His one and only Son so that people could have eternal life if they believe [8]. God was putting the payment for our sin on the shoulders of His one and only Son [9].
But Jesus didn’t step in for us as a grown-up mighty king. He stepped in for us as a baby. Jesus was born during a census and Mary and Joseph had to travel to Bethlehem to be counted.
“While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. - Luke 2:6-7 NIV
Jesus stepped in for us. Jesus stepped in so that He could grow up [10] and live a life that we could live. Jesus stepped in to save us from our sins [7]. Jesus stepped in to take the payment for our sins [11] so that we didn’t have to take it ourselves.
Christmas is when we celebrate the wonderful gift from God - Jesus. Christmas is also a time where we celebrate that God gave everything He had to save us from our sins. God gave His only Son. God gave everything so that we could be free from our sins.
This is why we celebrate the birth of Jesus - God’s great gift to us.
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[1] Genesis 1:3-25
[2] Genesis 1:26-27 and Genesis 2:7
[3] Ephesians 2:10, NLT
[4] Genesis 3
[5] Genesis 6-9
[6] Leviticus 16
[7] Matthew 1:21
[8] John 3:16
[9] Isaiah 53:6
[10] Luke 2:52
[11] Romans 6:23
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