Dale Partridge - December 26, 2019


Real Christianity #77： A Special Christmas Edition


Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

86.7525

Word count

986

Sentence count

79

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this special Christmas special, Pastor Ken walks us through the biblical perspective of Christmas and explains why Christmas is not simply a celebration of the birth of our Savior, but the celebration of God's promise to his people.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Real Christianity Christmas special.
00:00:17.780 We hope that you and your family are enjoying this wonderful holiday with family and friends.
00:00:23.180 In this episode, I'll be walking us through a short message on the biblical perspective of Christmas.
00:00:30.720 We hope that your day will be blessed in the remembrance of our Lord's birth.
00:00:35.500 Merry Christmas.
00:00:53.180 o bethlehem word of the father now in flesh appearing
00:01:07.660 O come, let us adore Him.
00:01:12.400 O come, let us adore Him.
00:01:17.600 O come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.
00:01:28.100 As Christians, we often believe that the Christmas story begins in Luke chapter 2.
00:01:34.840 But that's not quite true.
00:01:37.400 The story of Christmas begins actually in Genesis.
00:01:41.280 It begins as a promise, a promise of a seed.
00:01:45.720 God creates the world, and then he creates man.
00:01:49.060 Man falls into sin, and the Christmas story is birthed in the sentencing of God's curse.
00:01:56.600 You see, but prior to delivering this bad news of consequences to Adam and Eve,
00:02:01.160 God delivers good news.
00:02:03.180 In fact, in Genesis 3.15, we see what theologians call the protovangelium.
00:02:09.720 Proto meaning first and evangelium being good news.
00:02:13.320 We see the first good news of the Bible all the way back in Genesis 3.15.
00:02:20.000 Let's read it together.
00:02:33.180 He's talking to the enemy.
00:02:34.940 He's talking to the serpent.
00:02:36.660 But God makes a promise.
00:02:38.320 A promise that one day God will send someone through Eve to conquer the enemy and redeem humanity.
00:02:46.280 A promise that one day a fallen humanity will be restored back to perfect fellowship with God.
00:02:53.300 A promise that one day we will be rescued from the grave.
00:02:57.740 Right?
00:02:58.020 The result of the fall was death.
00:03:00.100 and there is a promise that death will no longer reign.
00:03:05.140 Fascinatingly, the woman by which sin had first entered
00:03:09.180 will become the vessel in which sin is destroyed.
00:03:13.540 And now what makes this so interesting
00:03:14.880 is that I imagine that Adam and Eve had a very real,
00:03:18.860 immediate expectation of this promise.
00:03:21.460 Meaning, I imagine that they thought that Cain or maybe Abel
00:03:25.180 would be the promised serpent crusher.
00:03:29.120 But soon we learn that they're not the promised seed.
00:03:32.900 Abel is murdered and Cain is banished.
00:03:35.680 And the hope of God's promised seed seems to be lost.
00:03:40.280 Then we read in Genesis 4.25,
00:03:43.120 And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called him Seth.
00:03:47.200 For she said,
00:03:48.700 Again, we see the hope arise in Eve.
00:03:57.880 Maybe Seth is the promised seed.
00:04:00.760 But again, we find out that he's not.
00:04:03.280 It goes on in the next verse to say,
00:04:05.440 To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh.
00:04:10.500 At that time, people began to call upon the name of the Lord.
00:04:15.500 Now, I want you to catch something that's very important in that verse.
00:04:18.500 Because this is the first time we see people yearning for Christmas.
00:04:23.160 The very first prayer, the very first time humanity, quote, called upon the name of the Lord, was caused by people desiring to see God deliver on his promise.
00:04:37.660 They yearn to know when God will send that promised seed and restore them back to their creator.
00:04:44.480 And from this point on, prayer throughout the entire Old Testament is centered on God fulfilling his promises.
00:04:53.160 The longing for Christmas continues.
00:04:56.960 Prayer after prayer, covenant after covenant, prophet after prophet, the longing goes on.
00:05:03.560 And we see God's promise of seed is sustained in Noah, right?
00:05:09.440 The reason God spared Noah and his family is that without Noah, his promise could not have been kept.
00:05:16.080 The seed must stay alive.
00:05:18.980 But then God confirms that seed in Abraham.
00:05:22.320 He reaffirms that seed in Isaac and Jacob, and he identifies that seed in the line of David.
00:05:29.980 We see 20 generations from Adam to Abraham.
00:05:33.300 There are 14 generations from Abraham to David, and there's 28 generations from David to the birth of Christ.
00:05:41.020 62 generations of people groaning and anticipating Christmas, the Advent, the coming of Christ.
00:05:49.440 And what I want us to take away is this.
00:05:53.800 The birth of Jesus, the story of Christmas, is not simply God's gift to humanity.
00:05:59.880 It is the celebration of the fulfillment of God's promise to his people.
00:06:05.980 Christmas is not a new hope.
00:06:08.340 It's the satisfaction of an old hope.
00:06:11.520 We have a promise-keeping God.
00:06:14.640 He is a God who came, and he is a God who will come again.
00:06:18.360 And as we watched 62 generations of God's people wait for the promise of that seed,
00:06:25.820 so we also wait for the promise of his return.
00:06:30.100 He has come, and he will come again.
00:06:33.460 Let us thank God for the birth of his only begotten son.
00:06:37.560 Father, we thank you for Christmas.
00:06:40.180 We thank you that you are a promise-keeping God.
00:06:44.220 We thank you that you sent a son not only to be born, but to die.
00:06:49.780 Father, what a gift we have in Jesus, a God who dwells with us and in us.
00:06:57.140 But most of all, Father, we thank you that you are coming again to restore all.
00:07:03.440 And as Israel waited, we wait.
00:07:05.840 And as Israel yearned for the first coming, we yearn for your return.
00:07:10.940 We praise you and thank you, Father.
00:07:13.120 In the mighty name of Jesus, amen.
00:07:43.120 Exile me, until the Son of God I am thee.
00:07:58.020 Rejoice, Rejoice, Emmanuel, shall come to thee, O Israel.
00:08:16.520 Come Thou Dayspring, come and cheer
00:08:29.680 Our spirits by the night I have emptied
00:08:39.780 That drive away the shades of night, of night
00:08:52.480 And pierce the clouds and bring us light
00:09:01.120 Rejoice, Rejoice, Emmanuel
00:09:12.500 Shall come to thee, O Israel
00:09:20.300 Rejoice, Rejoice
00:09:30.220 Emmanuel
00:09:33.840 Shall come to thee, O Israel
00:09:42.140 Oh, rejoice, rejoice, oh, rejoice
00:09:57.940 Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice
00:10:07.940 Look out, look out
00:10:13.940 Emmanuel
00:10:19.940 Rejoice, Rejoice, Rejoice, Rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
00:10:49.940 Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
00:11:00.440 Shall come to thee, O Israel 0.97
00:11:19.940 You 1.00