THE MIRACLE OF CHRISTMAS
Text - John 1:14
Introduction
I don’t remember how long ago it was, but someone once gave me a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip out of the LA Times. In it Calvin asks his friend Hobbes about Santa Claus and says, “This whole Santa Claus thing just doesn’t make any sense. Why all the secrecy, why all the mystery? If the guy really exists why doesn’t he ever show himself and prove it? And if he doesn’t exist, what’s the meaning of all of this?” Hobbes responds by saying, “I don’t know, isn’t this a religious holiday?” And Calvin says, “Yeah, but actually, I’ve got the same questions about God.”
So many people are asking today, “Does God really exist?” “Is God real?” “If God is real, why doesn’t He show Himself?” “Why can’t we see Him?”
God is real! God does exist! And there are people who have actually seen Him!
John MacArthur writes: "In July of 1978, a little girl named Louise Brown was born in England. At five pounds 12 ounces, Louise was a tiny baby, but what made her birth truly extraordinary was that she was conceived outside the human body. Little Louise Brown was the first 'test-tube baby.'
"Since then, many other children have been conceived by in vitro fertilization. It is amazing--unthinkable just a few years ago--but it is not miraculous. Conception occurs by a male seed fertilizing a female egg. Birth occurs normally. The only difference is the place of conception.
"Scientists are experimenting with other amazing techniques to enable conception and birth by other than natural means. For example, sperm and eggs may now be frozen and thawed to conceive an in vitro fetus even after years of dormancy. For years scientists have experimented with parthenogenesis. The name comes from two Greek words, parthenos, meaning 'virgin,' and genesis, meaning 'beginning' or 'birth.' Literally, then, parthenogenesis is the science of virgin birth. Laboratory experiments have revealed that in some cases parthenogentic life can be generated in some animals. Among honeybees, for example, the unfertilized eggs develop naturally into drones. Artificial parthenogenesis has been used to produce silkworms since 1888. Many forms of invertebrates and plants may be reproduced by parthenogenesis in laboratory experiments.
"But parthenogenesis can reproduce only genetically identical species. Frog eggs, for example, might be stimulated to develop by parthenogenesis into living frogs, but all of them will be female frogs genetically identical to the mother who laid the eggs. Also, parthenogenesis, cloning, and other experimental forms of reproduction have all proved impossible on the human level.
"Even in the face of modern science, Christ's conception remains unique. Science can never explain how a virgin, a woman who had never had a sexual relationship with a man, could give birth to a male child. It was a miracle of God, the greatest miracle of conception the world has ever known." [The Miracle of Christmas by John F. MacArthur. Zondervan, 1989.]
The miracle of Christmas is that God has manifested Himself to man through the form of His Son Jesus Christ. The miracle of Christmas is that God came in contact with man and revealed Himself to us. That’s the miracle of Christmas.
This morning as we consider the miracle of Christmas I would like us to think about three things that it means here in verse 14.
John 1:14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.