Why Christmas?

In our culture, this weekend tends to mark a time of transition. During this weekend, we tend to find ourselves transitioning from a time of thanksgiving to a time of expectation. This past Thursday, we paused to give thanks for the blessings we received this past year. By the following day, however, we tend to transition from a time of thanksgiving to a time of expectation as we look forward to the Christmas season. For many people, this expectation has already begun to build as shopping malls fill with those looking for the perfect gift.

As a matter of fact, for many of you, there is such an expectation and anticipation that is driving you to find that perfect gift, that you know exactly how many days there are until Christmas. For some of you this morning, you know that there are only 24 days until Christmas. There are only 24 days left to make sure that all of your Christmas shopping is done. Only 24 days to prepare and plan for the big day that is Christmas Day.

But you did not need me to remind you of that reality, did you. No, you did not need me to remind you that there was only 24 days until Christmas, because for the last several months, as a culture, we have been counting down to Christmas.  Since Labor Day weekend, when the first signs of Christmas trees and ornaments began to appear in stores, we have been counting down toward Christmas.

And the closer and closer we get to Christmas, the more we are reminded that Christmas is coming. There are more reminders in the form of Christmas ads on T.V. and radio. There are more reminders from family and friends. All around us, the countdown to Christmas continues to grow and gain momentum. And in the next several weeks, the countdown to Christmas will continue to grow in its frequency and intensity. And as the countdown to Christmas grows and gains momentum, our anticipation for Christmas also grows doesn’t it? As the days until Christmas decrease, we find ourselves increasingly looking forward to Christmas Day, don’t we?

Now this growing expectation and anticipation that surrounds the countdown to Christmas is not a new phenomenon. The phenomenon that surrounds the countdown to Christmas has been around for centuries. If you happened to grow up in church or have been around church for a while, you are probably somewhat aware of the countdown to Christmas that occurs in church world. We even have a special name that we use to describe the countdown. In church world we refer to the countdown to Christmas as the Advent season.

Now the word advent comes from the Latin word adventus which the means coming and refers to a time of waiting and preparing for the celebration of Christmas. Advent is a countdown that followers of Jesus throughout history have participated in that marks a time of expectation and anticipation as we remember the birth of Jesus Christ. Followers of Jesus celebrate Christmas to reflect and remember that Jesus Christ, who is God, came to earth to become a man. Followers of Jesus celebrate Christmas to remember that Jesus entered into humanity to live life here on earth.

Yet, whether you call it Advent, or the Christmas season, or the holiday season; Whether you are a follower of Jesus; or whether you don’t buy the whole Jesus, Bible church thing. Whether you are a regular attender of church or whether the only reason that you attend church is because someone agreed to buy you lunch if you came to church with them, we all recognize that expectation and anticipation that grows as we approach December 25^th.

However, I want to pause from the growing expectation, anticipation, and intensity of this countdown to Christmas. I want us to take a minute to pull away from this countdown in order to ask a simple question. And that question is this: Why Christmas? Why is Christmas so significant? And specifically, why would Jesus enter into humanity that first Christmas?

To answer these questions, at the church where I serve, we are going to spend these weeks leading up to Christmas in a sermon series entitled “Why Christmas. During this series, we are going to look at five different passages that are found in the letters that make up the New Testament of the Bible. And as we look at these five different sections of letters that are found in the New Testament of the Bible, we are going to discover five timeless answers to the question “Why Christmas?”

This week, as we launch into this series, I would like for us to look at a section of one of the accounts of Jesus life that are recorded for us in the Bible. In the Bible, there are four different accounts of Jesus life, which are called the gospels. What is so interesting is that these four different accounts of Jesus life, which were written to four different types of people, complement one another in a way that provides us a vivid picture of the life of Jesus and what drove Him to live the life that He lived.

One of these four accounts of Jesus life, called the gospel of Matthew, was written to Jewish people to explain and to show that Jesus was the Messiah that God had promised would come to rescue and restore the Jewish nation as His chosen people. You see, the Jewish people knew that God had promised Abraham, who was the person from which the Jewish nation descended from, that through his offspring that all the nations would be blessed. I

n addition, God had promised the Jewish nations most famous king, King David, that one of his descendants would be the Messiah. So the Jewish people were looking for the descendant of Abraham, from the line of David that would be the promised Messiah who would bring the Jewish people back to God and back to prominence in the world. So to prove that Jesus was the long promised Messiah, Matthew began his gospel with a genealogy to show that Jesus had the proper family background to be the Messiah.

Now, I don’t know about you, but reading a genealogy, which is a list of names that details a person’s family tree, does not sound very exciting. As a matter of fact, maybe you are here this morning and at one time you actually started to try to read the Bible. And then you came to a genealogy. And then, after about five minutes into trying to read the genealogy, you stopped reading the Bible, right. I mean, who can pronounce all of those names? And reading a list of names is so boring, isn’t it?

However, for the Jewish people, being from the right family, having the right family background, was essential to be their rescuer and redeemer. The Jewish people knew their history; their upbringing and their education revolved around the teachings of the Torah, or the Law, which are the first five books of the Old Testament, and the writings, which was the history of the Jewish nation. Many, if not most, Jewish people had the entire Old Testament memorized. They knew the stories and they knew the names and the people behind the stories.

So for Matthew, who was writing to Jewish people to explain and to show that Jesus was the Messiah that God had promised would come to rescue and restore the Jewish nation as His chosen people, the natural place to start his account of Jesus life was with a genealogy that displayed Jesus family tree. In addition, for Matthew, it made sense to write his account of Jesus life this way because Matthew knew something that they did not know and that we often do not recognize.

You see, Matthew wrote the story of Jesus life this way because Matthew knew his story. And it is in Matthew’s story we find a timeless truth about our story. Tomorrow, we will begin to look at Matthew’s story…