There is one picture that captures the essence of Christmas better than any other. It’s a scene that unfolded on the very first Christmas day and conveys the point of the history-altering event...
Transcription (automatically-generated):
Well, 101 years ago this month, December of 1921, a man by the name of Frederick Barnard is thought to have been the one to come up with the well known saying a picture is worth a thousand words. You guys heard that saying before? Someone can nod for me one. Okay, now I'm about to show you a picture here in just a moment. And if nor normal pictures are worth 1000 words, I'm not sure how many words this picture is worth.
I'm not sure if there's enough words in all of the universe to be able to properly articulate what this picture is saying to us. It's a Christmas picture. But it's not just any old picture that people associate with Christmas. It's not a picture of things like Santa or elves or reindeer. It's not a picture of a family gathered around a Christmas tree opening presents.
It's not even a picture of Mary or Joseph or angels or shepherds or a star or wise men. The picture I'm about to show you is not just a picture of Christmas. The picture I'm about to show you is the picture of Christmas. It's a picture of a scene that took place on the very first Christmas Day. It's a picture that captures the very reason why Christmas exists, why Christians the world over have celebrated it each year for the last 2000 years.
So l j, do me a favor. Put this picture up on the screen behind me. You recognize the picture. What you're looking at is a picture of a baby Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born into this world, wrapped in cloths and laying in a manger. This is the Christmas picture.
Now, how many words do you think this picture is worth? What are its words saying to us? What do the words of this picture communicate to those who look at it? Well, this picture speaks of timeless, eternal truths about who God is and what he's like. Let me share a few of these truths with you tonight.
The Christmas picture of baby Jesus laying in a manger speaks to you something about the faithfulness of God. We know that our world is broken. That should be obvious, plainly obvious to everyone. And we know when and why everything in our world became broken. In the very beginning of human history, mankind rejected God when they sinned against him in the Garden of Eden.
And then that rejection of him ushered sin into our universe for the very first time. And once sin came in, it started to break everything. Everything that's wrong with our world today could be traced back to the original sin of human beings rejecting God. We can read about that happening in only the third chapter of the Bible. But do you know what else happened in the third chapter of the Bible?
In Genesis, chapter three, god made a promise to send a savior into this world to fix everything that was broken. And then throughout the centuries that followed, he kept making more promises about this Savior again and again and again, until the time came when God did exactly what he said he was going to do. The time came when God fulfilled his promise to mankind. The time came when God sent us a Savior. The savior of the world came when Jesus Christ was born that very first Christmas Day.
God always does what he promises to do. He is always faithful to His Word, even if it takes thousands of years to happen. When you look at the picture of the Christ Child lying in the manger, it's telling you something about the faithfulness of God. That's not all. The Christmas picture tells you something about the power of God.
Jesus's mom, Mary, didn't experience any of the birds and the bees, and yet she was found to have a bun in the oven, if you know what I'm talking about. Now, what kind of power has to be at play to enable a virgin woman to give birth to a child? It's a kind of power that's not of this world. And just because something is impossible for us, it does not mean for 1 second that's impossible for God. When you look at the picture of the Christ's Child lying in the manger, it's telling you something about the kind of power God has.
And that's not all. The Christmas picture tells you something about the humility of God. Do you know who that is in the Christmas picture lying helpless in the manger? It's the one who exists eternally outside of time and space. It's the one who spoke and brought the entire cosmos into existence by the word of its power, and who sustains everything in the cosmos by that same word.
It's the one who is absolutely perfect in every way, who has no beginning and no end, who owns everything, needs nothing, who enjoys perfect peace and joy and love in Himself. It's the one who in heaven is constantly surrounded by thousands upon thousands of angelic hosts who never cease worshiping Him with the words Holy, holy, holy. And it's this One who left all of that to come be born into this jacked up world. He put aside his deity, and he clothed Himself with humanity. Like us.
He wrapped Himself up in flesh. God became a man. And what kind of humility do you think is needed to make a decision like that? It's impossible for anyone to fully grasp the height that he's left and the depth that he came to, because the distance is too vast for our minds to comprehend. But let's try to imagine it anyway.
Try to imagine for a second you making a decision to put aside your humanity so that you could become a worm. And then imagine you spent the next 33 years of your life living in the dirt with other worms. And to top it all off, imagine all the other worms hated you. And that doesn't even come close to the humility that God exhibited when he decided to leave Heaven to be born into this world as a human being. The distance God crossed to become a man is infinitely greater than the distance you or I would have to cross in order to become a worm.
Let that sink in. So when you look at the picture of the Christ child lying in the manger, understand that it is telling you something about the humility of God. And that's not all, because the Christmas picture tells you something incredible about the love of God. Do you see love when you look at the Christchild lying in the manger? You should, because love is the loudest message that this picture is speaking to you.
See, God didn't leave Heaven and come to Earth for a vacation. He didn't break into humanity for a sightseeing expedition of sorts. He didn't come to satisfy some cosmic curiosity of his. He came on a specific mission. He came to live for you, and he came to die for you.
Jesus was born on that first Christmas Day so that he could die for those he loved. That is why he came. Being born was only the start. Jesus went on to grow up as a boy and then into a man. When he was 30, he left home and began his public ministry, calling his disciples to follow him.
He traveled around Israel preaching about the Kingdom of God and working all kinds of miraculous signs and wonders. He gave people reason to believe in Him through his words and through his deeds, that he was the promised Savior come to rescue them. He was and is the Son of God come to deliver them. But the people didn't receive Him. They didn't believe who he claimed to be.
They didn't believe who he proved Himself to be. Instead, the religious leaders of his day hated him and conspired to kill him. One of his closest friends betrayed him. The rest of his friends eventually abandoned him. False witnesses brought lying accusations against him.
The high court of his day wrongly condemned him to die. The crowds in unison cried out for his crucifixion. The Roman soldiers mocked him and tortured him. The governor pilot handed him over to be crucified. The soldiers stripped him and stapled his flesh to a wooden cross and lifted him up, suspending him between Heaven and Earth, crucifying him between two common criminals.
Passersby ridiculed him. And after hanging on the cross for 6 hours, and after paying for the sins of the entire would, he died. At the beginning of Jesus' life, human hands placed his tender body in the manger. At the end of Jesus life, human hands placed his beaten body on a cross. You put your Christmas presents to the ones that you love underneath the tree.
God put His Christmas present to you on the tree. After Jesus died, he was buried in a tomb. And on the third day after his death, he rose again because death could not hold him. Sinners deserve to die, but death has no legal claim on the sinless God man, Jesus Christ. Now, none of these things happened to Jesus that happened to Jesus, took Jesus by surprise.
He knew all these things were going to happen to Him before he left heaven to come here. And he came anyway. He was born anyway. The little baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and laying in a manger. Why?
Because don't leave without knowing this and believing this. He did this because God loves you. And because God loves you. He came on that first Christmas so that he could give you a gift you could never pay for, a gift that none of us deserves. Jesus came to pay the price it cost to have your sins forgiven so that you could come into a relationship with God.
He paid that price with his very life. Jesus came to save you, and he did that because he loves you. When you look at the picture of the Christ child lying in the manger, it is telling you something about the incredible love that God has for you. God's faithfulness god's power. God's humility God's love.
Do you hear the Christmas picture saying these things to you when you look at it? So what should you do in response to the Christmas picture and its message to you? Simple. Receive what it's saying into your life. That's the point.
That's why it's speaking. And here's what it's saying to you right now. Because God is faithful, you can trust any promise that he makes to you, no matter how long that promise takes to be fulfilled. Because God is powerful, he will work. The same power that caused Mary to get pregnant, the same power that rose Jesus from the dead, the same power that that same power can cause you to be born again and receive spiritual life out of your spiritual deadness.
That same power can enable you to live a life that is pleasing to God if that's what you want in your life. Because God is humble, he will lower Himself once more and come to live inside of you. He was born in Bethlehem and lived in Nazareth, but now he will come by His Spirit and live in you if you want Him to. Because God is love. He will wash your sins away, and he will be your God if you want Him to.
If you're a Christian, then you've already received the words of this picture into your life. And so I would encourage you, remember Him this Christmas, praise Him this Christmas, worship Him this Christmas for who he is and what he's done for you. But if you're here tonight and you've never received God into your life as Savior and as Lord, then you can do that right now if you want to. And this will end up being the best Christmas of your life. Humble yourself before God.
Confess your sinfulness to Him right where you sit. Ask Him to forgive your sins, and he will lay down control of your life to him and ask Him to be in control of your life from here on out. And he will do this, and you will experience the point of Christmas. God with us. Emmanuel with that said, I'm going to invite the worship team to come back up.
I'm going to pray for you and over you. I'm going to pray for you guys. Words from the Apostle Paul, found in Ephesians, chapter three, verses 14 to 21. It's a prayer.
For this reason, I kneel before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. I pray that he may grant you according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God's love, and to know Christ's love that surpasses knowledge so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us to him, be the glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.