Calvary Road Baptist Church

“THE BIRTH OF CHRIST IN CONTEXT” 

How many of you are old enough to remember a famous attorney named F. Lee Bailey? F. Lee Bailey is most usually recognized as one of the defense attorneys in 1995 for O. J. Simpson, who cross-examined the Los Angeles Police Department homicide officer, Mark Furman. However, Bailey was very famous as a trial lawyer for many years before the O. J. Simpson trial.

I became aware of F. Lee Bailey while watching the Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. One night Johnny Carson had Bailey as one of his guests. During the segment in which Johnny Carson interviewed him, Bailey insisted that eyewitnesses to an event were notoriously inaccurate in their recollections of what they believed they saw and remembered.

To illustrate his point, F. Lee Bailey had planted someone in the studio audience who stood up on cue, discharged a cap gun, and ran down the aisle and across the stage before disappearing behind one of the curtains. The individual was in full view of the surprised studio audience and was illuminated by the bright stage lights so that he was clearly seen. Nobody had an impeded view of the guy.

Afterward, Bailey polled the audience to determine what those many eyewitnesses could remember about what they saw and heard. They then rolled the tape to show the event, so they could see again what they saw before. Almost no one in the studio audience was anywhere close to accurately describing the perpetrator’s hair color, the color of his shirt, the color of his jacket, or the color of his trousers. Nobody got any of that right. I seem to recall that they were also mostly wrong about his facial hair.

Additionally, the audience was mostly wrong about what events took place and the sequence of events. The point that F. Lee Bailey was seeking to establish was that many people who were convicted of crimes based upon eyewitness testimony rather than scientific evidence such as fingerprints were wrongly convicted of crimes.

Many criminal defense attorneys insist that eyewitness testimony is inherently unreliable. Of course, they do. They have to. It’s their job. Everything about their job is to impugn the testimony of eyewitnesses. If you search the Internet, you will find many videos and articles insisting that eyewitness accounts of criminal conduct given as testimony in courts of law are unreliable. The cases of death row inmates whose convictions have been overturned based upon DNA evidence that proved eyewitness accounts to be erroneous are piling up everywhere.

What seems to be the problem with memory? The problem, as I see it, is twofold. On the one hand, there is the nature of memory. Our memories are not digital files or tape recordings of data that we have acquired visually and audibly. Instead, our memories are impressions.

Additionally, our memories are malleable, saying they are not fixed and unchangeable.[1] Our memories change all the time. Anyone who knows me knows how unreliable my recollection of events happens to be, with a somewhat better memory of Bible facts. At least, that’s how I recall it.

On the other hand, some guidelines ought to be employed when using someone’s memory. For example, in the Bible, there are almost thirty passages in the Word of God that reinforce the practice of utilizing two or three witnesses when seeking to reliably ascertain that an event is accurately remembered or reliably observed.[2] Two or three witnesses. Two or three witnesses. Two or three witnesses. Two or three witnesses.

Consider the incredible events that God then has orchestrated to have taken place, and He did so in front of witnesses. God’s creation of the time-space-matter continuum was witnessed by His innumerable host of angels, Job 38.7. The angels saw it all. The heavenly host observed the human race’s Fall, and both humans then living. Eight surviving souls witnessed the Flood. The miraculous conception of Christ was attested to by the angel Gabriel, Joseph, and the Virgin Mary.

The birth of Christ took place with some understandable privacy for Mary. All the moms here can appreciate that. But the aftermath was witnessed by Joseph, Mary, and a company of shepherds and angels. Christ’s circumcision was witnessed by His mother Mary, a man named Simeon, and an aged woman named Anna.[3] Joseph is not mentioned in the account, but I am sure he was there. Multitudes observed his baptism at the Jordan River, including at least four men who would become His apostles. Even His transfiguration was observed by three apostles, James, John, and Peter.[4] And on it goes with the hundreds who witnessed Him post-resurrection and at His ascension.[5]

The point that I seek to establish is that even in a culture where memory played a more critical role in daily life than our culture, and when memories were likely less malleable than today, the culture of that day insisted on attestation and verification of facts and events. However unreliable witnesses are in our day, witnesses were far more reliable back in the day, for various reasons, setting cell phones aside that could take pictures and recordings of everything.

Still, no one lived long enough that they might witness all that they needed to know, even with reliable witnesses and certainty about details. Therefore, God has given us His Word. Psalm 119.89 declares, 

“For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.” 

It was ever the purpose of God to give to His people His Word. And so, a portion at a time, beginning with the Pentateuch at the hand of Moses, He inspired His Word to be given to us so that we would not only have certainty and confidence that events witnessed were reliably understood by us but so that all of the important events and truths that comprise the faith once delivered to the saints (including those events not witnessed by anyone) would be set before us to study and learn.

We have God’s Word, complete and intact. And because we have God’s Word, complete and intact, we have for our consideration something Joseph and Mary did not have in Bethlehem, something the wise men who came along later did not have, something that even the apostles and others who witnessed Christ as the risen Lord of glory did not have.

What do we have that they did not have? We have context. We have the context because we have the completed revelation of God’s Word. Context is defined as “the whole situation, background, or environment relevant to some happening or personality.”[1] That is what we have with the Bible.

That understood, what say we consider the birth of Christ in context using a very superficial overview of God’s Word? 

Let Us Begin With THE CREATION 

We begin with the creation of the material universe, the time-space-matter continuum, what is sometimes broadly referred to as stuff. Most people are familiar with Genesis 1.1: 

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” 

A few more are familiar with John 1.1–3: 

1  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 The same was in the beginning with God.

3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 

Then there is Paul’s letter to the Colossians, in 1.16: 

“For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him.” 

It is widely understood that God spoke the universe into existence, creating the time-space-matter continuum. Further, it is understood by we who are Trinitarians that the Second Person of the Triune Godhead, the eternal Son of the living God, the Lord Jesus Christ, is that Person of the Godhead Who created all things and by Whom all things presently consist.[6] What is not understood by all who read the Bible, perhaps even a majority who actually believe the Bible is that Genesis chapter 1.1 is not the beginning of all things but speaks only about the beginning of all things existing in the material universe. God did engage in creative activity before Genesis 1.1, but it was creative activity in the immaterial realm. He created what was not stuff.

We now come to the creation of the incorporeal beings who were on hand to witness God’s creation of the material universe. Witnesses watched that happen. Let’s talk about them a bit. Although the focus of God’s Word is God’s dealings with the human race, the Bible does reveal to us that not only did God exist prior to Genesis 1.1, existing from eternity past, but He also engaged in creative activity prior to Genesis 1.1. The phrase “sons of God,” found in both the Old and New Testaments, refers to those who are the direct creations of God.[7] All of the angelic beings are because they are a vast company of individuals, each created directly by God, are “the sons of God.” As well, Adam, being directly created by God, is the son of God, in a sense different than the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Adam was the created son of God. Jesus is the eternal Son of God. In the New Testament, the phrase “sons of God” does not refer to those human beings who were directly created by God because human beings descended from Adam are not created directly by God but are the result of biological reproduction. Therefore, in the New Testament, the phrase “sons of God” refers to those who have been created anew, who have been born again by the Spirit of God, John 1.12–13: 

12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:

13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Not created by God, but recreated by God. 

Therefore, when you find the phrase “sons of God” in the Old Testament, if the passage does not refer to Adam, it refers to angelic beings. This is the case in Job 38.7: 

“When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” 

What were they doing shouting for joy? They were cheering as they watched God speak this into existence and then that into existence. As they sat there, eating their popcorn and watching everything happen. This verse, Job 38.7, is from a passage in which the LORD questions Job, asking him where he was during God’s creation of the heavens and the earth? The verse shows us that, during God’s initial creation of the physical universe, the angelic host witnessed the events as they occurred, meaning God must have already created them to serve as eyewitnesses of the creative activity.

Thus, it is clear that the Bible does not present a consistently chronological record of events as they unfolded but begins with the creation of time and the physical universe, which is most pertinent to its intended audience, which is you and me, the human race. Only later, when God deemed it appropriate, did He choose to provide details about His prior creative activity and the incorporeal beings we refer to as angels. 

Let Us Proceed From There To THE FALL 

Baptist theologian Emery Bancroft wrote Christian Theology.[8] On pages 188–192, he summarized what the Bible teaches about the Fall of mankind into sin, dividing his comments, A. The Scriptural Fact of Man’s Fall, Various interpretations of the Scripture Narrative of Man’s Fall, B. The Immediate Effects of Man’s First Sin, C. The Judicial Consequences of the First Sin, 1. Divine Judgment, 2. Separation, 3. Death (Physical Death, Spiritual Death, Eternal Death).

While Bancroft’s fine book reflects what is typically embraced by conservative Bible students, commentators, scholars, etc., his telling of the facts leaves out details that I believe are pertinent to interested readers of the Bible, and important in seeing the Biblical narrative as an unfolding of the details of a spiritual war.

Let me begin with the attack upon humanity by the supernatural foe. We come to Genesis chapter 3 with the human race existing as our first father and our first mother, Adam and Eve. They were the direct creations of Almighty God at the end of the sixth day. God then rested. Sometime after the seventh day, Eve was confronted by a creature described as a serpent which was no ordinary serpent. The serpent that approached Eve spoke to her intelligently and with cunning. The creature challenged the integrity of God and tempted Eve to disobey. Eve was deceived according to the Apostle Paul.[9] She then gave the forbidden fruit to Adam, and he sinned. The consequence was the Fall and the reign of sin and death in the human race.

The serpent’s temptation of Eve was the broadening of spiritual warfare by opening a new front. The serpent’s temptation of Eve to sin was not the introduction of sin and rebellion into God’s creation but sin into the human realm. Sin, transgression, rebellion, and disobedience to God existed before the serpent’s conversation with Eve took place. To be sure, sin existed nowhere at the end of the sixth day when God pronounced all that He had made very good and throughout the seventh day in which God rested. Some time after the beginning of the eighth day and until the serpent’s temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden, sin was introduced into the angelic realm. How long that time was, we are not told. Sin was introduced into the angelic realm. Therefore, the occurrence recorded in the Garden of Eden in Genesis chapter 3 was not the beginning of sin. Instead, it was the broadening of an already begun spiritual warfare to a new front, the human front.

The beginning of the spiritual warfare by the rebellion against God is likely recorded in Isaiah 14.12–17 and Ezekiel 28.11-19, in which wicked pagan kings are spoken to by the prophets while also alluding to the rebellion against God of Lucifer, the anointed cherub. Those are two very challenging passages to interpret. Following the Devil’s rebellion against God, I am persuaded he led a revolt in heaven after persuading one-third of the angels of heaven that God had created to follow in his rebellion.[10] However, it did not stop there. With the assault on the human race in the form of evil spirits identified as “the sons of God” coming unto the daughters of men and siring children by them, Genesis 6.4, the spiritual warfare directed against the human race intensified.

The assault on the human race began in the Garden of Eden. The warfare escalated with the contamination of the human race in Genesis 6.4. And the warfare escalated once more with the wholesale idolatry fostered by the tower of Babel, Genesis 11.1-9. It has been asserted that if a 21st century Christian was asked about the problems faced by the human race, their origins, he would likely point to Genesis 3. But if a first-century Christian was asked about the problems faced by the human race, he would likely refer to Genesis 3, and then Genesis 6, and then Genesis 11. Therefore, the spiritual assault on the human race is worse than most people conceive it to be. So much so that the whole world lieth in wickedness, First John 5.19, and spiritual seduction has accomplished more, and demonic doctrines are more widely embraced than most people imagine, First Timothy 4.1.

Think about this. If you are moved to do that which is seemingly contrary to Scriptural directives and principles, and you would excuse or justify or apologize for that behavior somehow, you would do well to reflect on the possibility that you have been spiritually seduced or that what you believe to be true is demonic in nature and not Biblical truth. We are in a vicious conflict, and the main battleground is the human mind. 

Let Us Conclude With THE REMEDY 

Creation, catastrophe, and correction. Reality is shown to be much more complex than is usually envisioned by even the most well-intentioned and thoughtful people, but God has His reasons for doing things the way He chooses to do things. Consider two surprising approaches God has employed:

First, there are the demonstrations of the inadequate remedies God has employed. You might say, “What? You are suggesting God has seen fit to employ throughout human history employed inadequate remedies?” Yes, I am. Intentionally so. The Bible reveals that God has seen fit throughout human history to implement remedies that have proven to be inadequate to the problem addressed. Allow me to very superficially survey nine remedies God has employed that are inadequate to the task, but which God wisely knew would be inadequate to the task. He employed these inadequate remedies so that He might receive glory.

First, the banishment of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. God accomplished several things when He banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. The first thing He accomplished by banishing Adam and Eve was the fulfillment of His promise that they would spiritually die the day they sinned against him, and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden accomplished that. Separation from God means spiritual death. Their banishment accomplished the hardship of their sinfulness and an environment in which to experience physical death. They had to go someplace to die. What their banishment from the Garden of Eden did not accomplish, however, was any stifling of the newly acquired tendencies to commit sins. After all, the first child born to the first couple became the first murderer.

Second, the Flood. Genesis 6.1-5 is clear evidence that the expulsion of Adam and Eve did nothing to dissuade the human race from great acts of wickedness. That passage also shows that human beings were accomplices with supernatural beings in sexual sins that produced hybrids. The Flood that God brought to destroy all the earth, saving alive only eight souls in the Ark that Noah built, was a great judgment visited upon the antediluvian world. However, that remedy imposed upon the human race by God did nothing to restrict man’s sinful impulses. This is no surprise because punishment is not meted out to be remedial. However, it benefits us to be reminded that punishment for past sins does not prevent future sinning.

Third, the judgment at Babel. No sooner did Noah depart the Ark that he became drunk. It was during his drunken stupor that his son Ham committed a great sin against him. Within two generations of God’s directive that the survivors and descendants from the Ark spread out to repopulate the earth, they were doing the opposite by gathering into cities and building great ziggurats to facilitate their gross idolatry. God then visited upon the human race the confusion of languages. The confusion of languages at Babel did not in any way diminish human sinfulness but served only to make cooperation and collaboration in sinning against God more complicated, more difficult.

Fourth, the Exodus. By Genesis chapter 11, it was clear that the very nature of the human race made us a lost cause. God’s remedies were designed to show the terrible sinfulness of the human race, and He succeeded. We showed Him, didn’t we? He then called Abram from Ur of the Chaldees and established a covenant with him, and his son, and his grandson, from which the twelve tribes of Israel came. Four centuries after Jacob’s clan moved to Egypt, they were redeemed by God using Moses. But their removal from Egyptian slavery did not improve them spiritually at all. At their first opportunity, they worshiped a golden calf.

Fifth, the Law. While God was giving the Law to Moses atop Mount Sinai, the people were worshiping a golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai. The people were breaking the Ten Commandments as God was giving the Ten Commandments, with the irony not lost on Moses as he broke the two tablets. The Law of Moses was a conditional covenant, with the people agreeing to something they could not uphold. When it was put to them, this is their response: “All that the LORD hath spoken we will do,” Exodus 19.8. The rest of their history as a people illustrates their inability to do what they committed themselves to do. Had they a correct understanding of their nature, as soon a that was presented to them, they should have fallen on their faces and said, “God have mercy, we can’t do that! We can’t do that!”

Sixth, the Promised Land. Did their conduct improve in the Promised Land? The cycle of rebellion, retribution, repentance, and restoration was repeated again and again for centuries. It did not help them at all.

Seventh, the kings. Israel had three kings before Civil War split the nation in two. Each king reigned for forty years. The first was Saul. The second was David, a man after God’s own heart. The third was Solomon, the wisest of men. Forty years for each of them. But each in his own way failed miserably. Yet another inadequate remedy to the problem of sin. Eighth, the captivity. The Assyrians overwhelmed the northern kingdom of Israel, carrying the male population of Jews to other countries and replacing them with Gentile men, the result being the Samaritans of Christ’s day. Several generations later, the Babylonians overwhelmed the southern kingdom of Judah, the Babylonian captivity lasting 70 years. But did it change anything, really? No. The Jewish people seemed to have been cured of their overt idolatry by the Babylonian captivity. But the spiritual condition of the people was not improved, replacing one kind of sinfulness with yet another kind of sinfulness without being reconciled to God.

Ninth, the Millennium. This is yet future. The Jewish Diaspora has lasted for about 2000 years. Jewish people are emigrating to the modern state of Israel in unbelief. But for the last 2000 years, the Jews as a people have been set aside in God’s dealings with people of this being in the age of the Churches. When the Lord Jesus Christ returns in power and great glory, He will establish His millennial kingdom on earth, with Jerusalem as His capital, sitting on the throne of His father David in fulfillment of covenant promises. Yet, there will be an uprising against the Savior at the end of the Millennium, led by Satan. The rebellion will be put down, and Christ will be victorious, but the millennial kingdom, the theocratic kingdom, will come to an ignominious end. The children born to the first citizens of the theocratic kingdom will, for the most part, not turn to the Christ of their parents. And when given the opportunity, though they lived in a perfect environment ruled by the messianic King, they will wickedly rebel. With no hope of success, yet they will do it anyway. Yet another inadequate remedy.

I am persuaded that God has implemented these inadequate remedies, and He will yet introduce the final inadequate remedy, the Millennium, to demonstrate once and for all that there is only one remedy for sin, and it is not any of these remedies which have been tried out. None of them worked.

Second, we come to the implementation of the adequate remedy God has employed, which is the salvation of individual sinners resulting from a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Which brings us to the Incarnation, ending in the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem, in fulfillment of Old Testament predictions made centuries before. We celebrate Christ’s birth at Christmas. Or, at least, we ought to. The ultimate purpose for which Christ came, of course, was the Crucifixion, His substitutionary death on the cross for our sins, Isaiah chapter 53. It might be good to read that passage to your children on Christmas Day to let them know where what started in Bethlehem is supposed to end up. Three days after His burial was His predicted Resurrection from the dead. It demonstrated Who He was, the Resurrection, and the Life. It anchored our justification. The Savior ascended to the throne room in heaven several times following His resurrection, with His final Ascension being His enthronement at the Father’s right hand, where He is until His return to earth.[11] He is there now.

The Lord Jesus Christ gave the Great Commission before His final ascension. The local Church is authorized by the Head of the Church to preach the Gospel to every creature (we are authorized to preach the Gospel to everybody). We don’t have to ask their permission for anything. The Son of God has commanded us. I am not suggesting that we be obnoxious, but we certainly don’t have to ask permission. That would be granting authority to the person who needs Christ, and denying the authority that Christ wields.

It is the local Church’s authorization from the Head of the Church to preach the Gospel to every creature, baptize converts, and train Church members for effective service and ministry. Keep this in mind when you reflect on the Christians in Nigeria, when you reflect on the Christians in northern Syria, when you reflect on the Christians in Iran, and Afghanistan, and China, and Vietnam. Our number one priority has never been our safety. Our priority has never been our safety. I am not saying it should not be a reasonable, rational, responsible consideration. But it has never been our priority. Our number one priority has always been, for 2000 years, and must always continue to be, faithfulness to our Savior, faithfulness to our cause, and faithfulness to our concern.

The Second Advent refers to the Lord Jesus Christ’s return to this wicked world, at which time He will establish His millennial kingdom and rule on earth for a thousand years, Revelation 19.11-20.6. It will be a glorious time, with just about perfect conditions, before Satan is loosed and the final rebellion takes place, Revelation 20.7 and following. Of course, the rebellion will be put down the Savior, the Great White Throne Judgment will commence, and those without Christ will be cast along with Satan into the lake of fire.

The eternal state will then begin, Revelation 21. The inadequate remedies will all have been tried, with the adequate remedy being implemented concurrently. Nothing will have been shown to succeed but the new creature in Christ, blood-washed and blood-bought. 

This is Christmas in context. A spiritual war was begun against God and was spread to the human race. Every conceivable remedy was employed, not to try and see if they would work, but to demonstrate how miserably they would fail. God knew when He gave Saul to Israel that he was not equipped to get the job done. But what the people did not realize, even the godly people, was that the most well-equipped to get the job done still failed. David and Solomon.

We celebrate Christmas, the birth of Christ, as the outcome of the Incarnation, whereby God became a man to effect a real solution to a sinner’s desperate condition. Christ’s coming was integral to the implementation of the real solution, the only solution, to each person’s otherwise hopeless dilemma.

What does Christmas mean in context? The real meaning of Christmas is that you desperately need Christ as your Savior, or your eternal situation is without remedy, and you will suffer conscious, constant torment throughout eternity if you don’t turn to Christ.

That is Christmas in context.

__________

[1] https://the-gist.org/2016/09/malleable-memory/ and https://www.yalescientific.org/2013/04/5227/

[2] Numbers 35.30; Deuteronomy 17.6-7; Joshua 24.22; Ruth 4.9-11; Job 10.17; Isaiah 8.2; 43.9-12; 44.8-9; Jeremiah 32.10, 12, 25, 44; Matthew 18.15-20; Luke 24.46-48; John 5.31; Acts 1.8; 2.32; 3.15; 5.32; 10.39-40; 13.31; 2 Corinthians 13.1; 1 Thessalonians 2.10; 1 Timothy 5.19; 6.12; Hebrews 10.28; 1 John 4.1; 5.7-9; Revelation 1.1; 2.2

[3] Luke 2. 25-40

[4] Mark 9.2; John 1.14; 2 Peter 1.16-18

[5] 1 Corinthians 15.5-8; Acts 1.9

[6] Colossians 1.17

[7] Genesis 6.2, 4; Job 1.6; 2.1; 38.7; John 1.12-13; Romans 8.14, 10; Philippians 2.15; 1 John 3.1-2

[8] Emery H. Bancroft, Christian Theology, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, revised edition 1961)

[9] 1 Timothy 2.14

[10] Revelation 12.4

[11] Psalm 16.11; 110.1; Matthew 26.64; Mark 12.36; 14.62; 16.19; Luke 20.42; 22.69; John 3.13; 13.1; 14.2-4; Acts 1.9-11; 2.33, 34-35; 7.56; Romans 8.34; Ephesians 1.20; 6.9; Colossians 3.1; Second Thessalonians 1.7; Hebrews 1.3, 13; 8.1; 9.24; 10.12-13; 12.2; 1 Peter 3.22; Revelation 19.11

Would you like to contact Dr. Waldrip about this sermon? Please contact him by clicking on the link below. Please do not change the subject within your email message. Thank you.

Pastor@CalvaryRoadBaptist.Church

 

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