Christmas

Click below to listen to the sermon being preached:

Dear friends, I invite you to turn with me to Matthew’s Gospel, to the passage we just read. Together with its Lucan counterpart (Luke 2. 1ff) this is the sum total of the Gospels’ narrative description of Christ’s birth. When we compare it to the Nativity Plays that you and I may have been to in the past, it may be worth us taking just a moment to consider what we see here and, perhaps crucially, what we don’t see. For example, if I was a betting man I would wager you could not find a donkey, nor a grumpy innkeeper, nor three wise men. While it is clear that Jesus was laid “in a manger” (Luke 2. 7), there is no mention of a stable. Contrary to ‘Away in a manger’, there is no indication that “the little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes” – indeed Hebrews 4 makes it clear that Christ was fully human (Hebrews 4. 15), so to imagine a baby that doesn’t cry is rather a stretch! However, fear not – this evening I am not intending to dismantle all of our favourite Christmas carols (there are some really good ones!), but I would like us to consider what actually is in Jesus’ birth narrative, and see what this tells us about the Christmases that you and I will celebrate tomorrow.

Our passage this evening makes an immediate link between the birth of Jesus Christ and a prophecy made some 735 years before His birth.; and indeed we will come to this in a minute or so. But before we turn to Isaiah, let’s consider what else the passage says. Firstly, the passage comes hot on the heels of the Genealogy that Kenny preached on earlier in the year – 17 verses of largely unpronounceable names which, beneath their linguistic complexity, offer us a fascinating insight into the rather messy family tree of Jesus Christ. For, while within the verses we see such wonderful people as Abraham, David and Solomon, we also find such names as Rahab, Zerubbabel and Tamar. The reading, on the one hand, clearly links Jesus Christ into this amalgam of names, showing His relationship to David, Isaac, Abraham and Jacob, yet on the other hand makes clear (a number of times) that Joseph was not the father of Jesus – “before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit” (1. 18), “that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit” (1. 20), and “[he] knew her not until she had given birth to a son” (1. 25). At a time when ink and parchment was expensive, to have made this point at least three times indicates that it is something worth us sitting up and listening to!

The reading also makes some claims about Jesus Himself. Not only are we told that Mary “was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit” (1. 18), but also that Jesus is “God with us” (1.23), and that “He will save His people”, “not from the physical oppression of the Roman occupying forces”,[1] but “from their sins” (1. 21).

Let us pause here to take a moment to consider what was going on at the time of Christ’s birth. Turn, if you would, to page 804 of your Church Bibles, if you have them, and you will find a blank page. This page is representative of the so-called Intertestamental Period – a period of time lasting some 400 years, between God saying “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction” (Malachi 4.6), and the opening verses of Matthew’s Gospel. This period is also known as the 400 Years of Silence, because of time length of time between these books with no recorded prophecies or canonised Scriptures. The Old Testament ended with a great promise which is fulfilled hundreds of years later in the birth of Christ, but for the intervening period there was a spiritual silence, a spiritual darkness, a spiritual void, summed up well in the words of John Morison:

  The race that long in darkness pined,
  have seen a glorious light;
  The people dwell in day, who dwelt
  in death’s surrounding night.[2]

It was onto this scene that Jesus came. The darkness of the 400 years was banished by “the true light, which enlightens everyone” (John 1. 9), the silence of the 400 years was shattered by the cry of a baby who was the “God with us” (1. 23), come to “save His people from their sins” (1. 21).

As I mentioned earlier, the reading turns back some 730 years to the time of Isaiah, quoting the words of Isaiah 7. So let us turn back to that passage, as Matthew did – to page 572 of the Church Bibles – and read from verse 10:

Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz: “Ask a sign of the LORD your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.” But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, and I will not put the LORD to the test.” And he said, “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted. The LORD will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father’s house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah—the king of Assyria!” (Isaiah 7. 10-18)

You see, friends, we have to be careful as Christians that we treat the Old Testament with the respect it deserves. All too often I have met Christians who see the only purpose of the Old Testament as backing up the New; and while the saying of St Augustine, “The new is in the old concealed; the old is in the new revealed”, is correct, we would be missing an awful lot if we treated the Old Testament as some sort of fortune cookie, predicting the New Testament and nothing else. Therefore, to understand this passage, we need to look at it in three distinct ways – what the prophecy prophesied to Ahaz (its initial recipient), what it prophesied to Matthew, and what it prophesies to us.

In its original context, we can read Isaiah 7 and see the Lord God speaking to King Ahaz, King of Judah. Ahaz, we can read in 2 Kings, was “twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord his God, as his father David had done, but he walked in the way of the kings of Israel.” (2 Kings 16. 2-3). In the passage, we heard God speak to Ahaz through the words of the Prophet Isaiah. Ahaz had just heard that “Rezin the king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remaliah the king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to wage war against it” (Isaiah 7. 1). We read that Isaiah was sent to the king with the words of comfort, “Be careful, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint” (7. 4), and that the Lord challenged him to ask for a sign to “confirm [His] promise that he would destroy the two kings from the lands to the north that were currently threatening Judah. Ahaz protest[ed] that he [would] not test the Lord (7.12), but Isaiah, speaking for God, berates Ahaz for trying [His] patience in his reply.”[3] Even though Ahaz refuses to ask a sign of the Lord, God promises him a sign anyway, in those famous words, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isa. 7. 14). It should be noted that some scholars, such as Carson and Beale, claim that the word “virgin” is the Hebrew word almâ, which means “a young woman of marriageable age”,[4] and this will become important in a moment. This child, himself, will be God’s sign that what He has said will come to pass. He explains that, “before the child is old enough to know the difference between right and wrong, the lands of the dreaded kings will be laid waste (7. 15-16). But before that can be interpreted as very good news, the prophet adds that they will be replaced by an even worse invader: Assyria.”[5]

The prophecy surrounding the son comes to pass only one chapter later where Isaiah goes to his wife, she conceives and bears him a son, Maher-shalal-hash-baz (8. 3), and the Lord tells him that “before the boy knows how to cry, ‘My father’ or ‘My mother’, the wealth of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away before the king of Assyria” (8.4). This son is also called “Immanuel” (8.8) and this name is explained as “God with us” (8. 10), from where Matthew likely draws the definition. Returning to 2 Kings we can read that “Rezin king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, came up to wage war on Jerusalem, and they besieged Ahaz, but they could not conquer him” (2 Kgs. 16. 5), showing the prophecy came true and that Judah was not overtaken by the two kings. The prophecy made to Ahaz came true.

Turning to the next distinct way, we can consider how the prophecy came true to Matthew. The links between the Matthew passage we read earlier, and the Isaiah passage, are clear for all to see, but let’s explore them one at a time.

“The virgin shall conceive and bear a son” (Isa. 7. 14; Mt. 1. 23) – in itself this is an amazing declaration as we know this just does not happen. However, for Jesus to make any sense, it was essential that He have no earthly father, or else He could not have been the Son of God. This is why Matthew makes the point three times (1. 18, 20, 25) that Joseph was not the father of Jesus. However, because Joseph took Mary to be his wife, it meant that Jesus’ family tree also included the likes of Abraham and Isaac (as foretold in Genesis 12. 3 and 17. 19) as well as Jacob (foretold in Numbers 24. 17). Furthermore, Luke tells us that “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be registered… And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David.” (Luke 2. 1, 3), agreeing with Matthew’s genealogy (Matt. 1. 1), bringing to fulfilment the prophecy found in Micah 5:

  But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,
  who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,
  from you shall come forth for me
  one who is to be ruler in Israel,
  whose coming forth is from of old,
  from ancient days. (Micah 5. 2)

“And they shall call His name Immanuel, (which means, God with us)” (Mt 1. 23, Isa. 7. 14 and 8. 10). But what did this birth mean? The ancient world was full of people who claimed to be ‘son of god’ or ‘son of the gods’ – from Alexander the Great to the Egyptian Pharaohs to Julius Caesar himself – and indeed we read that Maher-shalal-hash-baz, Isaiah’s son, was called Immanuel, meaning God with us (Isa. 8. 8, 10) – but this meant that God was with them, He was on their side (hence the armies not succeeding in their attack), while the birth of Christ gave new meaning to the phrase ‘God with us’. This was not a promise that God would be with them, but rather a definition – Jesus was God, and He was on earth. It wasn’t just that God was on their side but, to quote C. S. Lewis, the “stable had something in it that was bigger than our whole world.”[6] God was with them, in the flesh or, to quote the Wesley hymn we will sing later, “Our God, contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man.”[7]

Having considered the effect of the Isaiah prophecy at the time of Ahaz, and at the time of Christ’s birth, let us now fast forward to the end of the New Testament, to the book of Revelation because, as I mentioned, this prophecy can be held up to the light and seen from three perspectives – the time of Ahaz, the time of Christ, and the time of the New Jerusalem. Another way of saying this is to say, what was the prophecy promising Ahaz, what was it promising Matthew, and what is it promising us?

Well, I’ll have to be honest here, friends: of all my points this evening this is the one I have least to say on because it is arguably the most tangential – however in Revelation 12 we can read:

And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. (Revelation 12. 1-2)

Biblical scholars believe this to be an image of the birth of Jesus as well – perhaps thanks to verse five “She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to His throne” (Rev. 12. 5). The dreadful imagery of the book of Revelation makes it clear that the time of this birth was pretty awful too, like the timing of the birth of Christ in Matthew (coming after some 400yrs of silence and darkness, and just before the murder of the baby boys), and like the timing of the birth of Maher-shalal-hash-baz: “The LORD will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father’s house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah—the king of Assyria!” (Isaiah 7. 18)

Furthermore, we are promised (as seen in Revelation) that Christ will once again be “with us” when He returns in glory at the last day, that things will get immeasurably better, and that we will be with the Lord.

With this in mind, there are similarities across all three of the timescales for the Isaiah prophecies – true in the time of Ahaz, the time of Christ, and the time of the second coming. I am a terror for making notes in my Bible, and on page 805 of my Bible, representing those Intertestamental years, I have written the phrase, “Things can only get better”. Perhaps, for some of us, this will turn our minds back to when that song was used in the run up to the 1997 General Election, or perhaps for others it will cast minds back into history when, in 1952, we were emerging from the gloom of the war, the misery of rationing, and were faced with the hope and prospects of a new Queen, or, a decade earlier, Winston Churchill declared that the tide of the war had turned and that “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” This page, this single page, between the Old and New Testaments, is illustrative of “the end of the beginning”, and indeed, the “beginning of the end”, for the opening verses of the New Testament tell us that God has put His rescue plan into place, and has begun His redemption which He had been making plans for from before the beginning of time. We are caught up in this time now – perhaps some may even see it as another intertestamentary period – the time between the end of Jude and the beginning of Revelation, when we are living with all that Jesus and His followers have said and done, but are waiting for “Christ to come, with shout of acclamation”.[8] “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 31. 31)

This teaches us a number of things, friends: we have considered that we must be careful how we treat the Old Testament, well I would suggest that we must be careful how we treat Christmas. Only the other day, I was listening to a radio programme where the presenter described Christmas as “all about fun and family and happiness”,[9] but, while there is time for all these things, doesn’t this just illustrate what so many people think of Christmas? Surely there is more to Christmas than this? Well, if our Scripture readings have taught us anything this evening, if we have learned anything, we have learned just how long beforehand God was planning the birth of Christ and all that He would achieve. We, as humans, are wont to overlook parts of the story as we (either deliberately or inadvertently) add large chunks of it in from popular imagination (the grumpy inkeeper, the little donkey, the three kings). If we do this, we risk allowing the beautiful, exciting, message of the opening verses of the New Testament to be swamped by the Dickensian Christmas ideal. Even yesterday, as I listened to the radio and heard the Chris de Burgh song, ‘A Spaceman Came Travelling’, which imagines Christ as “a spaceman… travelling on his ship from afar”, who said:

  “Do not fear
  I come from a planet a long way from here
  And I bring a message for mankind to hear,"
  And suddenly the sweetest music filled the air.[10]

Now I do not presume, for one moment, that this is how you understand Christmas, friends. Indeed, the fact that you are spending Christmas Eve in Church attending divine worship would show me that you don’t. But how many people do we know, where these cultural tropes are the only exposure they get to the birth of Christ? And isn’t it tragic?

Indeed, I once met a Christian at a church event who believed (genuinely) that Christ is born each Christmas: that every December 25th the little Baby Jesus is made incarnate again somewhere in the world! Perhaps some of the phraseology of our Christmas carols has something to do with this: where we sing, “O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray; cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today”,[11] or “Yea Lord, we greet Thee, born this happy morning.”[12]

But there is something else we can take away from these readings, friends. Something, aside from the warning to remain close to Scripture and not allow the pervasive ways of the world to interfere in what we believe: we can remember how the words of the prophecies came true. Every. Single. One.

A few years ago I sat down and set myself a challenge – to find as many Old Testament prophecies that foretold the life of Christ as I could, and find their New Testament fulfilment. I ended up with 47 of these (and no doubt missed some!) - at least 47 times where God spoke hundreds, if not thousands, of years before Jesus’ birth, and all came to pass. What does this tell us?

It tells us that we are justified in having great faith in the promises of Scripture – God’s promises foretelling the birth of Christ came to pass, and there is every reason to believe that His other promises will come true as well. The promises from Matthew’s account of Christ’s birth, that “He will save His people from their sins” (Mt. 1. 21) apply as much to you and me as they did to Matthew’s original readers. The promise of “God with us” (1. 23) is as much the case now as it was back then. This is the message of Christmas. This is our hope, this holy night.

So, tonight, as the weeks or months of Christmas planning is over, and the eager anticipation of tomorrow’s day of turkeys and tinsel and presents looms large; as the world prepares to gather around the television for the favourite old-time Christmas film, or to listen to the King; let us remember the 22nd and 23rd answers from the Catechism:

A22. Christ, the Son of God, became man by assuming a real body and a reasoning soul. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, who gave birth to Him; yet He was sinless. A23. As our redeemer, Christ is a prophet, priest, and king in both His humiliation and His exultation.[13]

And let us sing, in the words of the carol, “We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell; Oh, come to us, abide with us, our Lord Immanuel!”[14]

Works cited:

  • Boberg, Carl, and Stuart K Hine. How Great Thou Art! 1949. Hymn.
  • Brooks, Phillips. O Little Town of Bethlehem. 1868. Hymn.
  • Burgh, Chris de, and Christopher Davison. A Spaceman Came Travelling. 1975.
  • Carson, D. A., and G. K. Beale. Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Academic, Div of Baker Publishing Group, 2007.
  • ‘Front Row’. The Unthanks, Lucinda Coxon, the North East Cultural Partnership. BBC Radio 4, 20 December 2023. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001tj1r.
  • Kelly, Douglas F., Philip B. Rollinson, and Frederick T. Marsh, eds. The Westminster Shorter Catechism in Modern English. Phillipsburg, N.J: Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. Co, 1986.
  • Lewis, C. S. Last Battle (The Chronicles of Narnia). HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2009.
  • Morison, John. The Race That Long in Darkness Pined. 1781. Hymn.
  • Wade (tr.), John Francis. O Come, All Ye Faithful. 1751. Hymn.
  • Wesley, Charles. Let Earth and Heaven Combine. 1745. Hymn.
  1. D. A. Carson and G. K. Beale, Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Academic, Div of Baker Publishing Group, 2007), 3.
  2. John Morison, The Race That Long in Darkness Pined, 1781, Hymn, 1781
  3. Carson and Beale, Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, 4.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Ibid.
  6. C. S. Lewis, Last Battle (The Chronicles of Narnia) (HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2009).
  7. Charles Wesley, Let Earth and Heaven Combine, 1745, Hymn, 1745.
  8. Carl Boberg and Stuart K Hine, How Great Thou Art!, 1949, Hymn, 1949.
  9. ‘Front Row’, The Unthanks, Lucinda Coxon, the North East Cultural Partnership (BBC Radio 4, 20 December 2023), https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001tj1r.
  10. Chris de Burgh and Christopher Davison, A Spaceman Came Travelling, 1975, 1975.
  11. Phillips Brooks, O Little Town of Bethlehem, 1868, Hymn, 1868.
  12. John Francis Wade (tr.), O Come, All Ye Faithful, 1751, Hymn, 1751.
  13. Douglas F. Kelly, Philip B. Rollinson, and Frederick T. Marsh, eds., The Westminster Shorter Catechism in Modern English (Westminster Assembly, Phillipsburg, N.J: Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. Co, 1986), 8.
  14. Brooks, O Little Town of Bethlehem.