We all love stories of any form. Either happy or sad, we are story people.
Don't you just love sitting in a room to listen and talk about the stories in their lives? It's so fun to see the road that each person travels. How different, and yet similar they seem to be. And yet, there is something missing; the big picture! These stories are so small. They involve people and situations that we know and are familiar with. But they have a beginning and an ending.
I often think about stories at Christmas time. It's not because I like reminiscing of the wonderful childhood years, or the excitement of the season as a child. I think of stories at Christmas, because Christmas is all about a story. A Big Story.
This story is about God the Father sending His own Son, Jesus, to earth by the power of God the Holy Spirit. The world says that a story must have a beginning, but we know in Scripture that God has no beginning or end. His story is no different!
It's a Big story because it points to a finale unlike anything ever imagined. God wins! It's a Big story because it involves the Creator of the universe choosing to become like the created things He made. This is a story about hundreds of thousands of millions of people all specifically created and placed where they needed to be. It's these people doing things every day, but doing them according to God's plan. It's prophecy spoken and fulfilled. It's the natural forces of floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and volcanoes all coursing according to their determined time. It's a story about disobedient, stubborn, and rebellious people choosing to act in sin, independently from God. It's about God's holy foreknowledge to send His Son to be the perfect sacrifice for sins, so that these creatures could have communion with Him.
This Big Story is about the perfect time, place, and people who were waiting for their Messiah to come. It was during that time that God orchestrated the nations of the world so that a young girl and her fiance would need to travel to Bethlehem. It's about a group of dirty shepherds watching their flock of sheep in a specific fields so that when the angel announced to them the birth of the Messiah, they could go, find Him and worship Him. It's about a star, created by God's hand, for the purpose of leading Gentile men to the place where Jesus was. It's about a woman too old to have children, conceiving a son who would be the one to prepare the people's hearts for the Lamb of God.
Christmastime tells us about the coming of Christ to earth. It's the Biblical account of God becoming man that is the greatest story ever told. And it involves me. Wait! Me?
Yes, because the birth of Christ, His coming to earth as 100% God and 100% man to live a perfect life, dying as the complete satisfaction to God for our sins, and rising from the dead to prove that reality, is Christmas. It's the Gospel! But here's where we put these two truths together. The Gospel is the only true story of Christ, and it is His grace that allows people, little people, to be made righteous by faith in the Son of God. Christmas marks a time in history when God became man. God became man, for His glory, to bring men into fellowship with God the Father.
The Gospel is the "big story" of Christmas!
Now, let's look at this perspective. Christmas is about the Gospel.
"Long ago, at many times and in many ways,
God spoke to our fathers by the prophets,
but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son,
whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world.
He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature,
and He upholds the universe by the word of His power.
After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
having become as much superior to angels as the name He has inherited is more excellent than theirs."
- Hebrews 1:1-4
"In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made.
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it...
He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him.
But to all who did receive Him, who believe in His name,
He gave the right to become children of God,
who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory,
glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."
- John 1:1-4, 11-14
