Typically, fairy tales and legends begin in the middle of the story, starting with, “Once upon a time….” The Christmas story isn’t that way.
It begins with a genealogy, a long list of names connecting the family of Jesus to the family of Adam, the first man. So, technically, the Christmas story begins with, “At the very beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
Christmas is connected to creation.
And Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Methuselah, the flood, the Exodus, Mt. Sinai, the Ten Commandments…all of it.
So in order to understand the story of the nativity, we have to understand the backstory.
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It’s one long story of redemption, but it sure is hard to follow. The story begins with creation. God created Adam and Eve in a perfect garden. But there was a serpent, a tree, and a command. Adam and Eve broke the command of God, choosing to listen to the subversive whisper of the serpent, trusting themselves instead of God. This rebellion is what introduced chaos and curse into the world, creating a gap between God and man.
The rest of the Bible is a story about God closing that gap, bringing the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve back to Him.
God chooses one family through which he would save the world: the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. One night, Jacob wrestles with the angel of God, all night, begging to see His face. As the sun comes up, the angel supernaturally touches Jacob’s hip, causing him to limp forever. Jacob walks away with a limp, but not before God commissions him with a name-change.
God changes Jacob’s name to “Israel”, meaning “God fights”, and that is the beginning of His holy war. But Israel turns out to be a terrible warrior. In 1800 BC Israel is enslaved by the Egyptians for 400 years, but God rescues them through His prophet, Moses, who himself has a type of limp—a breaking of God’s law. Then by 1000 BC God’s victory seems almost complete. Israel is the greatest nation on earth under King David and King Solomon’s rule. But David and Solomon have limps of their own, guilty of breaking God’s law at every point. So Israel declines, abandoned by God, and by 700 BC, Israel is divided, conquered, failing, never truly to recover.
Their limp has gotten worse, much worse. Victory seems hopeless.
It is into this world Jesus is born.
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There, in a dirty manger in backwater Israel, when Israel had no true king or kingdom, God writes himself into the story, taking up the mantle and fighting the Holy War himself, doing what Jacob, Moses, David, or Solomon could not do.
But He didn’t come as a King, to fight Israel’s enemies, He came as a carpenter’s son in the broken line of David, and his strategy isn’t to conquer, but to sacrifice.
This is our story—the genealogy continues. But we have forgotten.
As pastor and author Tim Keller writes, “If Christmas really happened, it means the whole human race has amnesia.” We can’t connect the dots to identify Him because we have forgotten who we really are. His own people rejected him; how much more would we.
And yet there He is, thousands of years later. He is still talked about, still believed in, still died for—across the globe.
Silent night, Holy night.
Do you hear what I hear? Angels singing.
He comes to make his blessings flow, far as the curse is found.
Peace on earth, goodwill toward men.