The Amazing Child of Christmas (Selected Scriptures)

• This morning as we consider together the  wonderful reality of the Christmas story,   I want us to look at a text of scripture  found in the first couple of chapters of   the gospel of Luke and I would invite you  if you will to open your Bible to Luke. We   are going to look at chapter 1 a portion of  it, and chapter 2, a portion of that as well.
• I’m sure that all parents are convinced, without  question, that their children are the most unique   children that have ever been born. And I am  also sure that no child ever comes into the   world without filling the hearts of their parents  with a great amount of expectation. When our four   children were born we of course, and even to this  day, continue to have great hopes and great dreams   and great desires that they might be everything  that they can possibly be for the glory of God.
• But at best, when a child comes in the world, what  we hope for is no more than hope, what we wish for   is no more than a wish, because the story is not  yet written. We do not yet know what that child   will become, and we wait with great anticipation,  with a great degree of anxiety and concern through   the years of the unfolding of the life of that  child to see what in fact that child will become.
• That was not true in the case of the  Lord Jesus Christ. For at the birth of   the child of Bethlehem, all that needed to  be known about the child was revealed at the   very beginning. There really wasn’t any need  for hope. There wasn’t any need for a wish,   a dream, imagining.
• All was told as to who the  child was and why he came and what he would do   and how he would affect the world. So different.  Two ordinary Jewish young people were faced with   the most astounding child the world has ever  known. A child whose life was already clearly   laid out and delineated to them from the time  of birth. Unlike any other child. What child has   his life and destiny and impact completely  described before ever the life is lived.
• What child has all the details of character  and accomplishment and affect clearly laid out   before any of them ever find their place  in history. A very, very unique birth. The only other child who comes with prewritten  credentials is a child born just before the birth   of Christ, namely, John the Baptist.
• Much was  said about him as well, which can also be found   in the early part of Luke chapter 1. John the  Baptist was to be born to a priest by the name   of Zacharias who had a wife named Elizabeth.  But although much was said about the ministry   of John the Baptist, there were still questions  in the minds of people, such as in Luke 1:66,   where the people who heard about this unique  child said, “What manner of child shall this be?”   It was still somewhat unclear, even in the  case of John the Baptist, though much was said,   just exactly what that child would be. But the  child born after John the Baptist, the child
• whose life and history is pre-written throughout  not only the initial part of the New Testament   announcement of his birth but through all the  Old Testament, is far more unique even than John.   And so many astonishing and astounding things were  said about Jesus Christ that we read in Luke 2:33,   “And Joseph and his mother were amazed at those  things which were said about him.