The Christmas story as the modern world knows it begins when Jesus Christ was born in a manger more than 2,000 years ago.
With Mary and Joseph, his earthly parents, making their way to Bethlehem. With the angels heralding the birth to the shepherds keeping watch over their fields. With the Magi bringing gifts fit for a King — and the star that leads them to the place.
This is the story.
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But what people should remember during this Advent and Christmas season is that the love that brought us this miraculous birth is from all eternity.
And even more so, that same love is in the world still today.
While we love the New Testament accounts of Jesus' birth in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, the true narrative begins in Genesis, the very first book of the Bible.
There, the grandness and an otherworldly mysticism that Christmas is begins to truly unfold for us.
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We all have a story we tell about who we are and what defines us.
But what if all of our stories of our hopes and dreams, struggles and longings point to this one story?
What if the Bible really is the grand narrative of the whole world that points guides and helps us understand our own life dramas?
Christian theologians break down the Bible into basically four periods: Creation, The Fall, Redemption and Restoration.
We are today living in the overlap of the two ages, The Fall and Redemption.
The brokenness in the world was caused by the Fall. But Jesus' birth, death and resurrection introduced the redemptive power that is operating in the world and that is available to all who believe.
This is the "so what?" to Christmas. It's the message that gets lost in our traditions, as wonderful as they are — gift giving, decorated trees, parties.
The real St. Nicholas, the 4th century Bishop of Myra, would be appalled at what we've turned Christmas into.
But I do believe that instead of berating us, he would with compassion tell us how God loved mankind so much that He became one of us, in order to bring us closer to Him.
But why was it necessary? Why would God need to be born as a little baby in order to bring us joy? And why was He born at that point in history?
The answer to the first question of why was it necessary is found in the third chapter of Genesis. The Fall of humanity.
Whether you think the Garden of Eden is allegory or a real event is not important right now. The most crucial point is what it means.
After Adam and Eve — deceived by the serpent, AKA Satan — disobeyed God about not eating the fruit of the tree in the Garden of Eden, sin entered creation.
Not only sin but the "curse" that causes everything that is wrong in the world: death and everything that feels like death — disease, disappointment, decay, pain, suffering.
Anyone who has lost a loved one understands that feeling welling up in the soul that screams, "This shouldn't be happening!"
And you'd be right. It was not supposed to be like this.
The Fall not only brought incomprehensible sorrow but a separation between God and all of Adam and Eve's descendants for millennia upon millennia.
It wasn't the eating of the fruit that severed the relationship, but the act of distrust that brought the Fall.
But the plan was hatched even in the Garden, and maybe before, to bring us back into the fold. It's a cryptic stanza: "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" (Genesis 3:15).
This verse holds the mystery of how God will move forward to undo what was done in the Garden.
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World renowned theologian Dr. Timothy Keller sheds light on this verse, saying, "It's an enigmatic prophecy when you first read it, but over the years all scholars have understood that it's a prediction that a Savior will come and destroy the works of darkness and evil and that Savior will be a human being, a descendant of Adam and Eve."
He went on, "But at the same time this Savior, though a human being, will destroy the works of darkness. So even in Genesis it seems to be talking about some human being who has got more than human power. And that's the very, very beginning. That's the first promise that someone's going to come into the world who is both divine and human at the same time — and that's what happened at Christmas."
The Old Testament is filled with clues to the plan.
Each book reveals more and more about God's redemptive strategy. Keller has preached that every book in the Old Testament in some way tells the Gospel story revealed later in real time with the birth of Jesus.
So here in Genesis things begin to take shape. Instead of working with the entire world of humans, God chooses a small band of image bearers, the Israelites.
Genesis ends with the 12 tribes of Israel, also known as Jacob and his 12 sons and their offspring, living comfortably in Egypt as special guests of Pharaoh.
The next book after Genesis — Exodus — begins by explaining how the Israelites over several centuries became detested slaves in the land that once welcomed them with open arms. God raises Moses to become their leader and forces Pharaoh to free His chosen people.
Pharoah does so — but grudgingly, after 10 plagues. Each plague is becoming more harsh than the previous. The last plague is a crucial clue to Christians about God's plan: the 10th plague, the death of the first-born of Egypt.
Moses, God's servant, warns that the angel of death would pass through Egypt killing the first-born, from the highly born to the lowest. But God tells Moses that the Israelites will be saved by putting the blood of a lamb on their doorposts.
The angel of death will see the blood and Passover.
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"For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast and all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt" (Genesis 12: 12-13).
The Passover is a hallmark event in Judaism, celebrated still today to commemorate their ancestors' freedom.
The Israelites' flight from slavery in Egypt includes miracle after miracle: the parting of the Red Sea, the pillar of fire by night, the tower of smoke by day.
They come to God's holy mountain, Sinai.
Here God gives them The Ten Commandments.
This law is intended to separate Israel from the pagan world around them, to keep them holy. Other cultures have laws, but only the Israelites have the law.
This is not an arbitrary list of do's and don'ts, but an actual description of who God is. The first law is the hinge that holds them together: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:2-3).
After all the miracles God has shown the children of Israel, one would think the law would be easy to keep. But the human heart is a deep, deep, cesspool of depravity ... thanks to The Fall.
The prophet Jeremiah says, in Jeremiah 17:9, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: Who can know it?"
So if humans are so sinful, why would the blood of a little wooly creature save them? Why would it keep the Israelites safe from the angel of death?
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It can't. And we know this because the ritual had to be repeated every year. It was a placeholder, a shadow of what's to come.
The answer begins to unfold in the book of Leviticus, where God's plan of redemption begins to take physical form. Leviticus is also the veritable graveyard of New Year's resolutions and good intentions to read the Bible all the way through.
Up until then, the Bible stories are exciting and riveting. But then Leviticus reads at a snail's pace. It's pedantic and plodding — hard for modern readers to grasp. But it's crucial to an understanding of why blood is so central to God's strategy. Blood is mentioned more times in Leviticus than in any other book in the Bible.
"Blood was God's ordained means of effecting atonement: 'For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life'" (Leviticus 17:11).
This is long before science understood "the complex and extraordinary life-sustaining properties of blood."
God introduces animal sacrifice to the Israelites as a way to make atonement for their sins. They must make animal sacrifices continually on God's holy altar. Only the priests, carrying out specific rituals, could make the animal sacrifices. But it's pointing to what will be the permanent solution.
"It [Leviticus] describes how to deal with sin and impurity so that the holy Lord can dwell in the people's midst," notes the ESV study Bible.
There are more clues as the Old Testament begins to unwind. The prophet Isaiah has quite a few, including the two that follow.
— "Therefore, the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel" (Isaiah 7:14).
— "For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given: And the government shall be upon His shoulder; and His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6).
We could dwell more on the Old Testament, but there's enough said to enable a jump to the New Testament and the Gospel of Luke — and an encounter those shepherds have with the angel.
"Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger" (Luke 2:8-12).
This is one of the most startling clues, according to pastor and theologian Rick Renner.
In his book "Christmas: The Rest of the Story," and on a recent episode of the "Lighthouse Faith" podcast, he said these shepherds aren't just common shepherds.
And the flock they're watching over are not just any flock of lambs.
Renner said these were "rabbinical shepherds," and their job was to raise the sheep, which would be offered at Passover. They were watching over these little lambs that would be offered in sacrifice.
Said Renner, "When those little lambs were born, they wrapped their legs in little strips of bandages so that they would remain blemish free, so they wouldn't hurt their legs. That's what they did to all little sacrificial lambs."
Now Leviticus comes full circle. Renner explained that "the angel said, when you get to Bethlehem and you find this babe, you'll know him because he'll look like a little lamb wrapped in swaddling clothes, laying in a manger, waiting for inspection. He was the real lamb of God — which means the first time Jesus ever appears in Scripture, He appears as the LAMB of God that's going to take away the sin of the world."
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In God's plan, there are no coincidences.
The entire Bible is filled with them.
But on Christmas morning, God's redeeming love broke through the wall separating us and Him because of the Fall.
Without Christmas, there is no cross.
And without the cross, there is no Christianity.
The love that created the world is redeeming the world — and is restoring the world.
