We currently have several open positions - read the job descriptions and apply here!

The Virgin Birth

December 6, 2015 Preacher: Scott Hollingshead Series: Unwrapped

Topic: Holiday Messages

1. Four facts we learn about God

1A. God keeps his promises- Genesis 3:15 “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
Galatians 4:4 “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman…”

Isaiah 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”

Matthew 1:23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).”

2A. God uses the humble- Luke 1:26-30 26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” 29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. 30 And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.”
What caused her to have favor with God? Mary gives us the answer in Lk 1:48 “for he has looked upon the humble estate of his servant.”

3A. God takes sovereign initiative in our redemption- Luke 1:31-33-31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

4A. God confounds the measurable with the miraculous-

The virgin birth wasn’t a human birth?
Micah 5:2-3 “But you, O Bethlehem Ephathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth to me one who is to be ruler of Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days. Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has given birth.”

In a letter to John Adams in 1823, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The day will come when the mystic generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”

Rob Bell, author and pastor- “If Jesus had a real, earthly biological father named Larry, and archaeologists find Larry’s tomb and do DNA samples that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time, “we would essentially not lose any significant part of our faith because it is more about how we live.”

Let the record stand: Luke was a doctor and a historian who having followed all things close for some time past wrote "that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.
Luke 1:34-38-34 And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” 35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. 36 And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

2. Three things at stake
1A. God’s word- J. Gresham Machen, in his book the Virgin of Christ wrote, “If the Bible is regarded as being wrong in what it says about the birth of Christ, then obviously the authority of the Bible in any high sense is gone.”
2A. God’s character-
3A. God’s gospel- Gary Burge, NT professor at Wheaton, “If Jesus was not virgin born, then he was not the Son of God; if he was not the Son of God, then he was just another crucified man and not the sacrifice that would redeem the sins of the world.”

3. Two ways to respond
1A. Reject?
Donald Macleod, in The Person of Christ, “It (the virgin birth) stands on the threshold of the NT, blatantly supernatural, defying our rationalism, informing us that all that follows belongs to the same order as itself and that if we find it offensive, there is no point in proceeding further.”
2A. Receive?

4. One conclusion
The Jesus who came at Christmas was the God-man, fully God and fully man who came to save sinners.

More in Unwrapped

December 27, 2015

My New Year's Resolution for You

December 24, 2015

The Glory of God: Christmas Eve

December 20, 2015

The Exaltation of Christ