True Bread
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Intro:
Intro:
The Christmas season—
lights
trees
music
food
presents
memories/family
Hallmark specials…
I want to take a moment, if you’ll allow me, to destroy your hallmark Christmas. Not as a Grinch, but as Lucy’s little brother, Linus.
I want to do this because he hallmark version of Christmas is essentially worthless, make-believe. We don’t live in a hallmark world. We live in a world marked by suffering, selfishness, pride, and death. A world which has rejected God and therefore languishes in darkness.
“I didn’t come to a Christmas Eve service to be reminded of darkness. I came to sing some songs and feel good.”
But we love you too much to perpetuate a make-believe Christmas, where you try to fill the hole in your heart with nostalgia and material comforts. But we want you to remember the darkness only so that the true light of Christmas, against the background of darkness, may be seen in its true brilliance, as the one beacon of hope for all peoples.
Darkness
Darkness
How did darkness begin?
Adam and Eve committed treason against God, breaking his one rule not to EAT of a particular tree…
When Adam and Eve ATE of the one tree God had marked off…
Genesis 3:17-18 “…cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall EAT of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall EAT the plants of the field.”
What happened?
Adam and Eve turned against God (1st darkness—sin)
EATING would become a struggle… the blessings of the wheat field and the grape vine would require painful work—and would be here today, gone tomorrow (2nd darkness—curse)
In context, includes death itself…
Deeper symbolism: lack of blessing from God/lack of fellowship w/ God
As history => , God would often bless… but did not last b/c of how they treated the blessings:
forgot who
rejected fellowship
And she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, and the oil, and who lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for Baal.
Baal = a false god/statue worshiped…
We take his gifts of grain/wine/life/breath… use them in pursuit of everything but Him
Promise
Promise
Into this cycle of darkness, God spoke hope!
Isaiah 25:6-8a “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever… ”
What is this feast that marks the end of death?
shines light into the darkness of the nation?
overturns the curse with the best wine and richest food?
By implication, restores fellowship w/ God?
Fulfillment
Fulfillment
Here’s how Jesus explained it:
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
The living bread that came down from heaven—
the Son of God gave up glory to be conceived miraculously in the womb of Mary—an unimportant, Jewish teenage peasant
to be born in Bethlehem, for us and for our salvation—to become a weak and helpless infant, truly human, yet while remaining truly God
“The Word became flesh, and lived among us, and we beheld his glory…”
So then, Jesus is the true bread/true feast—
In becoming truly human—in being born into the world in Bethlehem—he made it possible:
to give his body to be broken like bread, and
his blood to be poured out like wine,
at the cross
Thus, he became a feast for all nations,
through which sin is forgiven
the curse ended
death swallowed up forever
fellowship with God restored
Conclusion
Conclusion
This is why the angel said to the shepherds:
And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”
Born in poverty and helplessness, like us, that he might die to crush death, and so become the feast that restores to fellowship with God.
Do you know him?
Have you trusted in him?
Fellow believers: let your Christmas center around worshiping him!