The Forgotten Miracle of Christmas!

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I love the carols that we sing and there're memories with all of them. I'm sure for many of you there are, as well. You trace back through your life, some of them are very serious and thought-provoking, others of them humorous. I can't sing Silent Night without thinking about the story of the Sunday School teacher who asked her class to draw, you know, pictures of Christmas and their conception of Christmas and each one drew their little pictures and of most of them drew what you would expect. There was Mary and Joseph, and there were shepherds, and sometimes the wise man that was the manager. the teacher, came to this one student's paper and she looked at it and she said, "you know, Johnny, that looks a whole lot like an airplane there. How exactly does that fit into the Christmas story?" He looked up at her as if, you know: how could she miss it? He said, "that's the flight into Egypt." She said, "oh, okay." That's the flight into Egypt. She said, "well, okay, I know I see there's Joseph and there's Mary and there's clearly the Baby. Who's this person?" Well, that's Pontius, the pilot." "Okay. Well, what about this one over here? Who is this?" "Well, that's Round John Virgin." Such it is, sorry. Now forever, you'll be stuck with the same memory.

As we anticipate the celebration of our Lord's birth this week, you know, of course, that His birth was surrounded, literally surrounded, by supernatural events and miracles. You can list them along with me. There's the appearance of the angel Gabriel to Zechariah. There's Zechariah's inability to speak for nine months because of his unbelief. Elizabeth conceives and gives birth to a son in her old age, past childbearing years. Gabriel, the angel, appears to Mary. A virgin conceives and bears a child. John leaps in Elizabeth's womb when Mary enters her home. God arranges a Roman census so that an engaged couple living in Nazareth will have to go to Bethlehem so that the prophecy given by Micah more than five-hundred years before that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem takes place. An army of angels appears to a group of shepherds near Bethlehem supernaturally. vet and miracle after miracle. But there's one miracle connected to the Christmas season that I think has been largely forgotten by Christians and there are very important lessons in this miracle for us. It's a miracle that reveals much about the character of our God but before we look at the miracle itself, we need to start by asking: why was a miracle even necessary?

Well, first of all, it was made necessary by a promise, God's promise to David. In 2 Samuel 7, as we saw this morning, God makes a legally binding promise to David, a covenant. The heart of this covenant God made was the promise that the coming Messiah would come from his family in the tribe of Judah. And I belabor this because we saw it this morning, but that funnel I talked about narrows from humanity to the line of Seth, to the line of Shem, to the descendant of Abraham and the nation of Israel, through Isaac, through Jacob, through Judah - the tribe of Judah - and ultimately through it send it of one family in Judah, King David's. It had to be this way. This was the promise God made in the Davidic Covenant. By the way, in 2 Samuel 7, it's not called a covenant but later it is. David, I love this 2 Samuel 23. "He has made" - speaking of God – "an everlasting covenant with me, properly ordered in all things, and secured." I love that. We're participants of the new covenant. We could say the same thing ourselves. But God made a covenant with David.

When you look at that covenant, its recipients were obviously David and his descendants. It was an unconditional covenant. That is, God didn't come conditions. He didn't say, "David, if you do this, then I'll do this." God came and unilaterally said, "this is what I'm going to do and I'm making you a promise and I will do it." It wasn't conditioned on anything but God's own nature. The provisions of the covenant God made with David - and I'm just going to hurry through this because you're familiar with most of this I want you to get the big picture - was an enduring dynasty. Yahweh will make a house for you, He says. A successor, "I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come from you, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever." The ultimate fulfillment of this was not during the first coming of Christ, but after the second coming, when Christ establishes His millennial kingdom, which will then lead into His eternal kingdom. The point - and here's where I want you to come, the key part of the covenant - the promise God made to David was this: one of his descendants will reign forever. Messiah reigns forever. So, Messiah, therefore, must be one of David's descendants, even as we saw this morning. But I want you to turn back to 2nd Samuel for a moment because there's one thing I didn't show you that's very important to what we want to see tonight. Look at 2 Samuel 7:12. God, in this unconditional, legally binding promise, this covenant with David says, "when your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendants after you who will come forth from you and I will establish his kingdom" - talking of Solomon, here – "he shall build a house for My name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever." In other words, the Messiah will come through him as well. So, Solomon is going to be the one through whom the Messiah will come. So, not only will it be David's family but now we even learn which of David's children the Messiah will come through, through Solomon. The line of the Messiah must come through David through Solomon for God to fulfill His promise. That's very important. God promised to establish David's dynasty forever through one very special King and that special King, the Messiah, would descend through Solomon. That's the first reason this miracle became necessary, but that's only part of the reason.

There's another reason this miracle is necessary, not only because of God's promise to David, but because of God's curse on a man named Jeconiah, When I mentioned this to my wife this afternoon, she said, "really, you're going to talk about a curse on the Sunday night before Christmas?" Stay with me. I think it will be meaningful when we get there. You too, sweetheart.

Jeconiah. Who is this? Well, that's his birth name. Sometimes, it's shortened to Coniah. When he became king of Judah, his name became the more formal - and this one you may recognize - Jehoiachin. He was the son of Jehoiakim. His father died fighting raids against Judah and incited by Nebuchadnezzar and after the death of his father, Jehoiachin at 18 years old ascended to the throne of the nation. You, imagine that your father has died, killed by Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Babylonians or at one of the raiding parties that he sent, and now at 18 years old, in that volatile situation, you're on the throne. It didn't last very long Jehoiachin ruled a total of three months and ten days. That was his fifteen minutes of fame, figuratively speaking. He was carried off captive on March 16, 597 as the Babylonian chronicles describe it. He was taken, along with his mother, up with some other famous people as well - Ezekiel, Mordecai - but his mother, his wives, and his children. He stayed there. He was captured at 18 and he would live more than thirty-seven years in captivity in Babylon. He died in Babylon. But in the years before all of this happened, in the years before these three months and ten days of fame, Jeremiah the prophet made a prophecy about this man and it figures into the Christmas story. I want you to turn with me to Jeremiah 22.

Jeremiah prophesied during the time of the last kings of Judah before it fell to Nebuchadnezzar and then after it fell. But here, he tells us what's going to happen to Jehoiachin or Jeconiah, as he's also called. Look at verse 24. Jeremiah 22:24. This is before he becomes king. This is God, through the prophet, saying what's going to happen. "'As I live,' declares the Lord, 'even if Coniah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah were a signet ring on My right hand.'" Now that means if he were, he's not, but if he were just piece of jewelry. One of our local famous people just got engaged and bought his bride-to-be this massive engagement ring. God's saying, "if this man were a precious ring on My hand, even if that were true - is not true, but if it were true – I would still pull you off and I will give you over into the hands of those who are seeking your life. Yes, into the hands of those who you dread, even the hand of Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon into the hand of the Chaldeans. I will hurl you and your mother who bore you into another country where you were not born, and there you will die. And, oh, by the way, they may want to bring you back" - Verse 27 – "you're not coming back." Verse 28, "Is this man Coniah a despised, shattered jar? Or is he an undesirable vessel? Why have he and his descendants been hurled out and cast into a land that they had not known? O land, land, land, hear the word of the Lord!" Here, the prophet says, "I want you to understand it." "Thus says the LORD," verse 30 - here's the heart of it – "write this man" – Jeconiah – "write him down" - or, literally, put him on the register, put him on the census – "as childless, a man who will not prosper in his days; for no man of his descendants will prosper sitting on the throne of David or ruling again in Judah." Underline that. No descendant of Jeconiah will sit on the throne of David or rule again in Israel. Wow.

Why did God pronounce this curse? Well, 2 Kings tells us that, "he did evil in the sight of the LORD according to all that his father had done." What did his father do? Well, he was involved in idolatry and a list of other sins, as well, which you can read about. 2 Chronicles 36 says, "Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he became king and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem and he did evil in the sight of the LORD." In response to that, the Lord says he's going to go into captivity and nobody who's his descent, he has sons - in fact, they're listed in the scripture, seven of them - not one of them will sit on the throne. They were all taken captive into Babylon. They're probably, one or two, born before he was taken at 18 years of age into Babylon and then the others were born there. Not one of them sat on the throne. One of them came back and served as a kind of governor, of sorts, but never became king of Israel.

Now, that brings us to the heart of the problem. Why was this Christmas miracle necessary? Because of God's promise to David that one of his descendants through Solomon would sit on the throne, because of God's curse on Jeconiah, and because of the apparent irreconcilable conflict between these two promises. One of them is positive, addressed to David. The other is directed to Jeconiah. What's the problem? Here's the problem: Jeconiah is in the line of David through Solomon. You see it? God had promised David that one of his descendants would be the Messiah and would reign forever. So, in order to claim the throne, to have legal right to David's throne, Jesus' line had to come through Jeconiah The royal line had to, but in order to fulfill the prophecy to Jeremiah, Jesus could not be of the seed of Jeconiah. How could God solve what appears to be an irreconcilable conflict in the promises He's made - one promise of cursing and judgement, the other promise of blessing.

That brings us to the forgotten miracle of Christmas. What is the forgotten miracle of Christmas? You see this miracle in the most unlikely of places. It's not a place you turn for your devotions, I can promise you. It's the New Testament genealogies of our Lord. Matthew and Luke give us the genealogical records of Jesus. And if you compare these, there are significant differences. Luke takes us back to Adam, Jesus' ancestors back to Adam. Matthew only goes back to Abraham. But from Abraham to David, the two genealogies are practically identical. If you compare them, they're essentially the same from Abraham to David. But the difficult problems are from David to Christ. There are two obvious problems. One of them is the number of generations. Count them. There are different numbers of generations. But that's not a big problem. Even if it was the genealogies of the same person, it's not unusual to leave a few generations out. So, that's not a huge, insurmountable problem. The big problem is this: from Abraham to David, they're practically identical, but from David to Christ, the names are greatly different. In fact, there are only two names that the list share. Other than that, they're entirely different. So, how did that happen?

Well, a number of solutions have been proposed, but I think the simplest and most obvious one, is this option: from David, they are different genealogies. You see, the problem is Jeconiah. The legal right to David's throne was to pass through Solomon, but one of Solomon's descendants was Jeconiah and because of his sin, God had said that none of his physical descendants would sit on the throne of David. This is where the genealogies come in. They are the genealogies of two different people. The genealogies of Christ, but through two different people.

The first is Matthew's genealogy. This, obviously, is of Jesus through Joseph, his legal father, and this line comes through David's, son Solomon. And if you look at Matthew 1. In fact, turn there with me. Matthew 1, notice verse 11. "Josiah fathered Jeconiah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon. After the deportation to Babylon: Jeconiah fathered Shealtiel," and so forth. So, there he is in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. The very one that Jeremiah the prophet said would never have a descendant who sat on the throne. Here in Matthew, you have the legal claim of the throne passed to Jesus through Joseph. Listen carefully. Because Jesus was not physically descended from Joseph, He escaped the curse on Jeconiah's seed. Remember the promise? None of his physical descendants will sit on the throne. Well, guess what. Jesus wasn't. Joseph didn't contribute to Jesus humanity, and so, He gets the legal right to the throne and yet He doesn't get the curse. In fact, notice verse 16 in Matthew 1. "Jacob fathered Joseph the husband of Mary, by whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah." Now, in English there, the pronoun "whom" is unclear. "By whom." Is that talking about Joseph? Or is that talking about Mary? in the Greek text, "whom" is feminine singular. So, we could accurately translate this verse like this: "Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. It was by Mary that Jesus was born, who is called Messiah." So, here you have Jesus fulfilling the promise made to David that through his son Solomon there would be the King, the Messiah, and yet, because He's not physically descended from Joseph, He escapes the curse on Jeconiah.

Now, what about Luke? Turn over to Luke 3. In Luke 3, you have the genealogy of Jesus, as well, but here you have it, I believe, of Mary, His physical mother. Look at verse 23, "when He began His ministry, Jesus Himself was about thirty years old, being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph, the son of Eli." Let me translate that for you as it reads in the original text. "Jesus, being the son as was supposed of Joseph of Eli," and so forth. Now, I would propose - and I'm not alone here, I'm standing on the shoulders of great men - that parentheses be put around "as was supposed of Joseph" and remove Joseph from this genealogy entirely. "Being the son, (as was supposed of Joseph) being the son of Eli." That makes Jesus the son of Eli, likely Mary's father. If you want to read a good defense of this - and I'm really going to get to the application of this, I'm not here really to defend this view - but if you want to read a good defense of this view, get Stanley N. Gundry and Robert L Thomas's "Harmony of the Gospels." There's a great essay in the back on this very issue of these genealogies and how to relate them. But what you have here in Luke is the genealogy of Jesus through Mary, His physical mother through David's son - not Solomon, but Nathan. Look at verse 31. You have, "the son of Nathan, the son of David." So now, we're not going from David to Solomon and, ultimately, to Jeconiah. We're taking a different trace on the family tree. We're going from David to another son, Nathan, and we're escaping the curse on Jeconiah. This excludes that curse. He's not mentioned in this genealogy because he's not a part of it. And here, you have, through Mary, the physical claim to the throne passed to Jesus through Mary. David's physical descendant, would be the Messiah because David's blood, humanly speaking, flowed through Jesus' veins through Mary but it was untainted by the blood of Jeconiah on whom the curse fell.

Now you say, "okay, so what?" The lessons about God in this are huge. I just want you to think about this as we anticipate this week. The first one is not a really fun lesson, but it's an important one about God. God keeps His promises of judgment just as certainly as His other promises. In response to Jeconiah's sin, God promised that none of his descendants would sit on the throne of David. Six hundred years later, God, arranges the virgin birth to keep that promise. When God promises a curse and judgment, He's serious. He's serious. You know, at Christmas time, people tend to get very nostalgic and sentimental in their ideas about who God is and who Jesus is. So, God becomes the sort of heavenly Santa Claus who just wants to give people things, you know. He just wants to give us good gifts and He doesn't really care how we live. Everybody gets gifts because that's God. And God does delight to give us - we were reminded this morning - God delights to do good to those who deserve and have earned the opposite and He has given - hasn't He? - He's given us His best gift, His Son. But for those who reject His Son, for those who turn on the gift He's given, He also made promises - promises of judgment. And it's sobering. Psalm 76:7, the psalmist says to God, "You, even You are to be feared, and who may stand in Your presence, when once you are angry?" It takes God a long time to get hot. It takes God a long time to display His anger and His wrath. He is patient in the extreme, but don't mistake God's patience for a lack of faithfulness to His promises of what He said He would do. Even though it's bad news, God will do what He said He would do. In the virgin birth, the two genealogies are proof that God will keep His promises, even of judgment. So, when you read in Revelation 6 that there's going to come a time when people want the rocks to fall on them and hide them from the presence of God and the wrath of the Lamb, "for the great day of Their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?" Guess what. That's not a fairy tale. The people that we see around this Christmas season who aren't in Christ, this is the reality of their future. The same God who makes gracious promises makes promises of judgment and He will keep them. The point is: God is not someone to be trifled with.

Can I just say? it's easy, particularly for those of you who grew up in the church - for all of us who many of us who grew up in the church - it's easy to sort of take God for granted. Listen. "God is good," as C.S. Lewis wrote, "but He's not safe." Don't for a moment think that God is to be trifled with. He is faithful to His word - whether it's a good word or a bad word.

Now, that brings us to the second lesson, because the main point in the virgin birth was not the curse on Jeconiah, the promise of judgment on him. The main point was this: God delights to keep His gracious promises and He will do whatever it takes to keep them. That's the big point. In order to claim the throne, in order to have the legal right to David's throne, Christ's line had to come through Jeconiah. The royal line had to pass through him, but in order to fulfill the prophecy of Jeremiah, it couldn't be of the seed. God's solution: the virgin birth.

Now, think about this for a moment. "Why the virgin birth?" you say. Well, it was to keep Jesus from being tainted with human sin. Really? Mary was sinful. God had to do a miracle to protect Jesus from human sinfulness, even in the fact that He was born to a virgin. So, why virgin birth? Certainly one - if not the reason, one of the major reasons - was to work all this out to fulfill His promise to David, whatever it took. Since Joseph married Mary before Jesus was born, Jesus was legitimately the son and legal heir of Joseph and therefore, through Joseph, Jesus was legally in the royal line and, through Mary, Jesus was physically related to David - not through Jeconiah, not through Solomon, but through Nathan only. Listen carefully. Only the miracle of the virgin birth could have permitted Christ to be the fulfillment, completely, about the promise made to David and the curse made on Jeconiah. It's the only way.

Here's the point: God makes gracious promises and He never forgets, and He never reneges, and He will do whatever it costs to fulfill those promises - even if it takes a miracle, like the virgin birth. I love Psalm 138. I mentioned it recently. "The LORD will accomplish what concerns me." God will accomplish what concerns me. "Your steadfast love, O Lord, is everlasting." You've made promises and You're going to keep them. You're going to do what You said. You can be trusted. God will ransack heaven and earth to fulfill His promises to you. Philippians 1:6 "I am confident of this very thing that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ." Listen, if God made a promise to David that one of his sons would sit on the throne and He had to work out the virgin birth to accomplish it, then He can get you to heaven. 1 Thessalonians 5, "faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass." God delights to keep His gracious promises and He will do whatever it takes to accomplish them. I love that. Don't you? This is the miracle of Christmas we celebrate: God keeping His word in so many ways.

There's one final lesson. I want you to note from here. God keeps His promise of judgment just as certainly as His other promises. Secondly, God delights to keep His gracious promises and He'll do whatever it takes to keep them. There's third lesson the curse on Jeconiah - and really on all human kings because Jeconiah was thrown in with a bunch of them, really, if you read that chapter - just puts a brilliant spotlight on our Lord, and His Rule, and His ruling as King.

Go back to Jeremiah 22. Jeremiah gives us a beautiful image to appreciate our Lord. Jeremiah 22. We read what God said about him at the end of chapter 22. Now, turn over to chapter 23. He begins - and this is where you see it's not just Jeconiah, it's all those kings of Israel. "'Woe to the shepherds who are causing the sheep of My pasture to perish and are scattering them!' declares the Lord." Here, he's talking primarily, not about the prophets - he's going to get to them - he's talking about the kings. They're supposed to be, "tending My people," verse 2, but they've scattered them and are not caring for them. Verse two, God says He's going to intervene. Verse 5, "'Behold, the days are coming,' declares the Lord, 'When I will raise up for David a righteous Branch.'" That's a powerful picture. A righteous Branch. The metaphor is like this Isaiah 11:1," a shoot." That's the word branch. It's really not a branch like, you know, I have branches, as you do as well, coming out from the trees, from the trees in your yard. It's not a branch in that sense. The word is really a shoot or sprout. Here's the picture I want you to get it. The picture is of stump, a great massive tree that has been cut down and hauled away and all that remains is a stump. You look at that stump. You kick it. It appears that it's dead. No life there. And then, one day, out of that stump springs shoot, like this picture. It's massive dead stump and then there comes a little shoot, a sprout, and eventually that shoot becomes a massive tree. You see, in the image that Jeremiah's using here, David's dynasty became great, the kings that followed him were great, they had a great kingdom, but because of sin, God cut it down and had them hauled away to Babylon. Nothing but a stump. You look at the kings, at the reign of David's descendants. Go over and kick the stump and there's no life. It's dead. It's gone. Nebuchadnezzar is in charge. All that was left appeared to be a dead, lifeless stump. But the prophet says that someday a little shoot, a little sprout, is going to grow up out of that stump and this shoot is a person, will be a king. At first, He won't look like much, but eventually, He will become a great King with a massive kingdom that will encompass everything in the universe and His kingdom will last forever. That's our Lord, Jesus Christ. Look again, at verse 5. "'Behold, the days are coming,' declares the Lord, 'When I will raise up for David a righteous Shoot"- a righteous Sprout out of that stump that looks like it's dead and gone – "and He" - speaking of this righteous Branch, this righteous Shoot, speaking of the Messiah – "He will reign as a King and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land." Listen. Jesus will one day rule on this world for a thousand years during the millennial period and forever in a new Heaven and a new Earth. And, in His reign, He will reign and He will act wisely and He will do justice and He will do righteousness in His days. You know, "in His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely; And this is His name by which He will be called, 'The Lord Our Righteousness.'" That is, He will be the source of their righteousness. It's probably referring, I think, to both imputed righteousness and practical righteousness. He will be the source of both any righteousness in us, He'll be the source of it. That's our King. That's what we celebrate.

Listen, we don't celebrate this week a baby in a manger. Oh, we do celebrate that, but that's not where it stops. We celebrate a living Lord. We celebrate a dying Savior. We celebrate a resurrected Christ. But we also celebrate a coming King who will act wisely and rule in righteousness and bring salvation.

Let me just ask you tonight, as we complete this study. Are you taking God seriously? Are you taking His promises seriously? His promises of judgment if you're living in sin and open rebellion against Him? Listen, God is not one to be trifled with. Don't for a moment think that He's unaware and that He doesn't care. Are you taking His promises of grace seriously, the promise He's made to you in Christ? Do you believe He'll keep those? Listen. Look at the virgin birth and you know He will keep them. He will do whatever it takes to fulfill His gracious promises. Do you really believe that Jesus Christ deserves to rule the world and will someday? Do you believe that? Listen, God has promised and He will do whatever it takes to fulfill that promise. As we prepare to celebrate Christmas, let me ask you the most direct and personally applicable question of all. Can you honestly say that today, right now, practically you are responding to Jesus Christ as your King? If you know Him, He is and you must. The King is born. Let's pray together.

Father, thank You for this brief study tonight that reminds us of who You are. Lord, we are amazed at Your wisdom. We are amazed at Your faithfulness, that You keep Your promises and Your promises are always, yes and no, and certain in Christ. Father, we thank You that we can trust in You, that what You have said You will bring to pass. And Father, we thank You most of all that Your gracious promises to us in Jesus - the promises of forgiveness, the promises of justification, the promises of adoption, the promise of sanctification, the promise of glorification - that You will complete what You have begun and the promise that one day we will live on this renewed Earth and Jesus will reign, "where'er the Son doth it's excessive journeys run." Thank You, oh God, that Your promises to us are true. May the celebration of Christmas this week not only remind us of Your grace, as we learned this morning, but may it also remind us of Your faithfulness to Your word, that You will do whatever it takes to keep Your word. We love You, Father, for all these reasons and so many more. May we worship You through the season, through Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.