Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows After his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph before they came together. She was found with child of the Holy Spirit and Then Joseph, her husband, being just a man, and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly. But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid, and to take to you, marry your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. she will bring forth the son and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins. So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet saying behold the virgin shall be with child and bear a son that shall call his name Emmanuel which is translated God with us. Then Joseph being aroused from sleep did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Commanded him and took to him his wife and he did not know her until she had brought forth her firstborn son And he called his name Jesus Father God, thank you again today for your word. Thank you for the chance for us to gather together and worship. I Pray that we would not forget but walk away rejoicing today in the glory of your first advent in Jesus name. Amen We started last week, and that's briefly to speak to the issue of the Advent church calendar. You might remember that last week we noted that there are those in the Reformed circles, and there are more than just a few that don't like the season of Advent, don't like the decorating of the church, The Advent candle lighting. I think that this season should not be recognized. It's a long tradition dating back hundreds of years to be opposed to Advent. But I want to give a brief apologetic, a very brief one for keeping Advent, if only because, as I said, there are more than a few Reformed people who don't like the idea of keeping the church calendar or celebrating Christmas. We would only know that if we do not mark time in a Christian manner, we'll mark time, therefore, in a non-Christian manner. But you're right, that's the word that they use anymore. If we really believe that there's no such thing as neutrality, then we'll embrace the idea that there is no neutrality even in the way that we mark time. So it's interesting that for every Christian saint we no longer honor on a calendar, we worship a pagan saint or a pagan occasion. For example, we set aside a day for St. Martin Luther King, the unrepentant whoremonger, plagiarizer, and non-Christian. He gets the same billing as Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Also on this score, you might think of Labor Day or Memorial Day. They get a higher billing than Good Friday or Palm Sunday or even Reformation Sunday. And I actually think that Christians, if given the choice, would prefer that their time be marked by distinctly Christian-named days as opposed to keeping time by themes that are either explicitly non-Christian or only Christian in a tertiary manner. So, really, if you don't like the idea of Advent or Christmas, if you don't like the idea of Good Friday or Easter, so that you would like to ban their celebration forever, rather, inside or outside the church, you really are doing the work of the enemy by suggesting that the marking of a time is a neutral manner. So there's an aside as we open this morning. As we come to the Christmas narrative, we repeat from last week that we solemn pause to consider the worldview implications during the Advent season. As we've said, a worldview consists of a series of sundry givens or presuppositions or starting points that all men use to access in order to interpret their world in the nature of reality. Those sundry presuppositions or starting points vary from man to man and peoples to peoples depending on their a priori allegiances touching their view of God and religion. Perhaps that was most wonderfully exemplified in an old Game Show, going way, way back, even before my time in terms of when it was on. I don't even remember the name of the show, but what they would do is they would take something, a piece of something, and they would show it to the panelists. They would show it to the panelists as something. that nobody had any idea what this something was that they were being shown. And then they would be given opportunities to ask X amount of questions about this something, and at the end of each panelist having a few questions, they would then be required to say or guess what this something was that they were seeing. They had no idea what this something was, but they had to make a guess. And of course, the guesses would range over a host of different areas. But the point is that the reason they were coming at this conclusion as what this unknown thing was, was because of the starting points they had in terms of interpreting this unknown something. Am I making sense? They had a particular worldview and that worldview was impressing itself upon how they were interpreting that unknown something. that they had to guess at what it was. And it's the same way with Christmas. If we don't share the worldview that's packed in the narrative here, we'll never understand Christmas, and we'll give some examples, and we won't understand the scriptures, and we'll give some examples as we go on. So in other words, packed inside this Christmas narrative is a worldview that must be present in order to comprehend a narrative of angels and aged women and virgins conceiving. The aged woman I'm talking about, of course, is who? Elizabeth, remember? She wasn't supposed to be able, she was past the age of childbearing, yet there is this miracle that she conceives. So you have all these miracles going on, and if you want to be able to comprehend all of that, you have to think in terms of a Christian worldview. If you come to this text and willing to abandon a worldview that says such things are impossible, well, therefore the narrative is impossible to believe, given its own standing and its own presuppositions. For example, this neo-Orthodox theology or the Bardian theology that I've brought before you from time to time, It comes to the text and overturns the Christmas narrative by the way they reason. They have presuppositions that don't allow for the supernatural. Or if they allow for the supernatural, they interpret the supernatural in such a way that it really isn't supernatural. One example is a chap named Diedrich Bonhoeffer. Have you heard that name before? Many evangelicals have. He's kind of the hero in our upside-down world. And really, he should not be. Bonhoeffer comes to this text, and he reasons this way. He reasons what's called dialectically. He'll say, okay, well, first of all, we have to say as our thesis that human flesh is fallen and frail, and Jesus took on himself fallen and frail flesh. Jesus in the flesh was therefore a sinner. But then, having argued the thesis in a classic dialectical fashion, he will argue now what? He will argue the antithesis. And in the antithesis, he will argue in his writing, the Son of God, as God, is sinless, even though He is incarnate. So you know what's going on here. You see what's going on here. And instantly, we have a what between these two statements? A contradiction, right? And this is pretty standard stuff for this school of thought. And the way that he resolves this, the synthesis that he gives, is that the Son of God in His flesh is a sinner. As God in the flesh, He is sinless. This is a paradox, a contradiction, a mystery to be apprehended by faith. You see, he wants to say he is a Christian, but he reinterprets the worldview of the text to make it fit his worldview. A worldview that is by contradiction and so says, at the same time, says everything and therefore nothing. All right? And these chaps, these neo-Orthodox, these Bardians, they do theology by contradiction. They'll take completely opposite ideas and will say them both simultaneously. Or as you're reading them, you'll come across and you'll be reading along, you'll say, wow, that's good, yeah, great, I agree. And then all of a sudden it's, er! Pivot on a dime and now they're saying just the opposite. And it's not accidental. And it shows up here in their understanding of the Christmas narrative. So the Christmas nativity narrative asks not only to believe a certain account, but it demands that we embrace its worldview in order to understand that account. The Christmas account asks us not only to accept what is on its surface about Joseph and Mary and a virgin conception, but also asks us to accept a good deal more that lies beneath the surface. And modern man does not like what's beneath the surface. Last week we considered the worldview issues of epistemology, how do we know what we know, and anthropology, that is the doctrine of man. We considered them as they're present in this text. The text here teaches that our authority in knowing must be the revelation found in Scripture. That's why Matthew quotes here from Isaiah about the virgin being with child. Matthew is inspired by the Spirit, sets the whole narrative on earlier Spirit-inspired men. And so Matthew is teaching here beneath the surface that the answer to the question of how do we know what we know is, the answer to that is by way of revelation. It's not by way of reason. It's not by way of intuition. It's not by way of tradition. We know by way of God's revelation. Last week we also dealt with the inner world view of anthropology. And here we're just reviewing to tee up where we are going. Anthropology, of course, you could tell me, is the doctrine of man. Whenever you see that suffix "-ology," you know what it means, the study of. Anthropos is man. In this text, we have communicated again, as we find everywhere in Scripture, that fallen man has a sin nature. So we want to understand the Christmas narrative. We want to understand what's going on here. We have to understand that man is fallen. and that he's therefore basically wicked. The passage teaches that the name of the coming child is to be Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sin. Sin is seen as being rebellion against God. It's seen as walking in ways that are contrary to his word. The Christmas story, indeed the whole gospel, cannot be comprehended apart from the understanding and embracing of this particular anthropology. And yet, as we noted last week, our broader culture and much of the contemporary church does not hold to a Christian anthropology. For example, in the church, we see this in all Arminian churches, the Wesleyans, the Nazarenes, the Church of God, the Anabaptists, They all affirm that man is not so fallen that he can't cooperate with grace. So in as much as they say that man is not so fallen that he can't cooperate with grace, in that much they have a humanist what? Anthropology. Doctrine of man. Today we move on to point out two more worldview ideas that are in this text. We move on from epistemology and anthropology to bring out the idea of ontology and soteriology that is packed into this passage. It's lying beneath the surface. Now, I would not have you put off by that philosophical word ontology. It is, after all, just a word, though it's not a word that you'll probably use over the course of the next year, maybe the next decade. It has a broad meaning that's often used in philosophy. It is a word with a broad meaning that has many different disciplines. I thought about giving you many, I think there were five or six different tributaries off of this word. But the word literally means, first, etymology, the study of being. In its broadest sense, it considers the nature of reality. That's one of the things, areas that it deals with. In the Greek, the word antos, or an, is the prefix, and it means a being or that which is. And of course, logio means the study of or the logical discourse. And so it literally means the study of being. And of course, it is simply the case that we all have being, that God has being. And so, one area that ontology considers is into what categories, if any, we can sort existing things. That is the one category the text gives us information upon here. That is, how can we sort existing things? The text teaches us that there exists the categories, for example, of the natural and the supernatural, of the material and the spiritual. These are categories that we can sort reality into. Now remember, I said ontology is a word in philosophy that has several disciplines, but one of the disciplines it is, is to look at this idea of into what categories, if any, can we sort existing things. And we're saying that the text here teaches a certain Christian ontology and that we can sort things as they exist either into the supernatural or into the natural. And of course, what do we most commonly interface with and throughout our lives? Matter of fact, I doubt if any of us will live to see the supernatural, although the work of Christ in regeneration is a supernatural work. So all of us have experienced that as we look to Christ. So we have this idea of the ontology that's taught in the text, and we have to embrace this ontology if we want to understand the text. So we look at the text. The text begins here in chapter one. It gives us a very natural theology. I'm not gonna go through the whole thing, but if you look at chapter one, verse one, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Judah and his brothers, and it goes on and on. And what it's describing is a very natural something. This is a category that's being put forth on how we can understand in one way, the birth of Jesus. In the way, in the sense that he is a descendant of, naturally, he's a descendant of King David. And we remember in the scriptures that the Messiah had to come from the tribe of Judah, and it teaches that in this text. And he had to come from the line of David, and it teaches us in that text. And all of this is by a way of natural categories. There is an ontology here that's saying, okay, this is natural, this is natural, this is natural. But then there's also an ontology that gives us, of course, as you all know, it gives us the supernatural. As we mentioned, there's Elizabeth, the old woman cousin of Mary, who conceives when her time of fertility had long passed. What else can we call that but supernatural, right? There is Mary, maybe 12, 13, 14 years old, the virgin giving birth to a son. There we drop it in the category of supernatural. There are angels freaking everywhere. If you look at Luke and if you look at Matthew. When's the last time you had angels sing to you? We drop that in the category of the supernatural. There is the inexplicable star that guides the wise men to their destination. And that can be understood, the debate is out there whether that's to be understood in this category of natural or whether this is to be understood in this category of supernatural. James Kennedy years and years ago did an interesting presentation on on the star. He was arguing it naturalistically, how certain planets lined up. But then you have, to the contrary, you have the idea almost that the star is moving and it's hovering right over the birthplace. That would make it more supernatural. But anyway, you get the idea that's going on here is that there's an ontology here that includes these categories. When we talk about things that exist, it's either dropping in the natural bucket or dropping in the supernatural bucket. And that has to be embraced if you're going to understand the worldview that's communicating the Christmas story. Just by way of a rabbit trail, it's interesting that when we consider the supernatural in Scripture, we see that there are only three times that there's a burst of the supernatural in those pages of Scripture. You have the creation, so that's four if you count the whole creation event. But then after that, there's only three times in Revelation history where you have this burst of the supernatural, of the miraculous. First, in the days of Moses and Joshua, you have this burst of the miraculous. Second, in the scriptures during the ministries of Elijah and Elisha, You have this burst of the supernatural, then the time of Christ and the apostles. And none of these periods where you have this burst of the miraculous lasted much more than 100 years. Each of them saw a proliferation of miracles that were unheard of in other eras. And even during those three time periods, miracles were not exactly the order of the day. It wasn't like you were seeing three of them every day. The miracles that happened involved men who were extraordinary messengers from God, that is Moses and Joshua, Elijah and Elisha, and Jesus and the apostles. And aside from these historic periodical events, these intervals, the only supernatural events recorded in the scripture were isolated incidents. And we might say, as we examine this brief rabbit hole, we might say that that indicates that we shouldn't expect what? the supernatural to be something that we see in our lives. Now we're not going to say it's impossible. There's an element of the reality of the fact that we see the supernatural every time we come to the table, every time we come to the sacraments, every time we come and hear the means of grace, whether it's word or sacrament, there's a sense that there's a supernatural going on at that point. But when I use the word supernatural here, it's unlikely that in our lifetime we're going to see dead people rise, we're going to see lame people walk, we're going to see blind people see. And if that's true, then what follows is that charismania and Pentecostalism is likely out to lunch. Because their whole movements are premised on this idea of the miraculous constantly happening. I think I've mentioned it before, but there was nothing I've seen much sadder in my life than attending a Pentecostal service where there was a faith healer, and they took out the pews in one whole front section in order to do what? In order to line up the wheelchairs, because people came expecting a miracle. And the reason I found it sad is because I think that is setting people up to be disappointed with God. So can the extraordinary happen? We talk about the idea of remarkable providence. Can God heal you today? Absolutely. But we shouldn't look for the miraculous as we find it here in this particular text. Although we should have our antenna out when we understand that word and sacrament is indeed God being active in the supernatural in the lives of his people. So in these times that I've mentioned, these three times after creation, these exploding times of supernatural, one finds nadir points in redemptive history. So all that's to say is this, a Christian ontology, you have a word to take with you, if nothing else, a Christian ontology, which is the study of being, has to embrace the idea that reality has a duality. in unity aspect to it. We live in a world that is not just natural but it's also supernatural. There's a supernatural reality and a natural reality. As Christians we affirm that we have a supernatural component about us. That supernatural component is called? Thank you. That's right. It's called the soul. But we also have a natural component about us. The body. We have a corporeal aspect to us. We have a brain. But we also have a spiritual aspect to us, we have minds. And any Christianity that does not embrace this duality and unity has an ontology that cannot make heads or tails out of this Christmas narrative, where we find the supernatural and the natural present together. We find genealogical tables that somehow are ho-hum to us, and we find angels serenading peasant shepherds. Neither makes sense without the other. This is our ontology. Another word for ontology, by the way, is metaphysics. This ontology is everywhere present in our confessions. I just talked to the children this morning. When we speak of Jesus being 100% God and 100% man, we are speaking of a Christian ontology that finds the natural and the supernatural in our Lord Christ. When we speak of the inspiration of Scripture, our ontology is right there with us, as we say that Scripture is 100% God-breathed, but also 100% characteristic of the writers who penned it. The Bible then is a human divine document. It has the supernatural and the natural all about it. And so there is about Christianity this fantastically mind-expanding truth that the supernatural and the natural are not strangers, but exist as a duality and unity. As another example, we've mentioned already briefly, in the means of grace, the natural and the supernatural are always present together. There we find the supernatural grace of God is combined with ordinary water, wine, bread, and there we find an ordinary minister speaking the supernatural Word of God. And in the Christmas narrative, we find our Christmas ontology of the supernatural and the natural, of the spiritual and the material. And so in order to be biblical Christians, in order to accept this account that we find in Matthew and again in Luke, all the way we find from Genesis to Revelation, we have to have a biblical ontology, which means the idea that we accept the idea of putting into these categories all created things as being either natural or supernatural. And believe it or not, that's hard for people to do. I had an elder here for some years who worked as a public school teacher, and he was a bit like Bonhoeffer that we looked earlier. When he went to teach, he was very non-supernatural. But he was able to accept here, just on Sundays, the supernatural, as long as he didn't impinge upon his science teaching during the week. This is not a Christian ontology. We have to understand that the supernatural is a reality. Those who don't believe in the supernatural cannot therefore be Christian. Those who do not have a Christian ontology are outside the faith. Finishing up this morning, then we look at one other aspect of a worldview that's packed in this passage. We looked at epistemology last week. We looked at soteriology last week. We looked at ontology. I'm sorry, we looked at anthropology last week and epistemology. So far, we've looked at ontology. Now we want to consider soteriology. That is the doctrine of salvation. Did you know that everybody you meet And here I'm speaking especially of non-Christians. Everybody you meet, whether they're conscious about it or not, they have a doctrine of salvation. We don't usually think that way about people, but it really is the case. Soteriology or the doctrine of salvation is one of those inescapable categories that all people have whether they're conscious of it or not. They're trying to be saved, in other words, from something. And if you look closely, you can see what that is in people's particular life. This text teaches that the Christian doctrine of soteriology, you should know the answer to this, I'm sure you do, our doctrine is that one is saved from our sin by Jesus and the Messiah. We understand in our doctrine of salvation, our soteriology, that we're sinners and that we need to have a salvation that comes from outside of us that does not include our contribution to our salvation in any sense. For generations and generations, the covenant people here had been looking for this Messiah who would provide this salvation that was constantly put on visual parade in the Old Testaments. The saints longed for it. They had it, you could say, even prolectically. But they did not have the reality. And in the arrival here in Matthew of the Messiah, not only has salvation come, but also has the new creation. The fact that Jesus is and brings a new creation is a worldview teleology. That we'll consider more in depth next week. But here we learn that Jesus is our salvation. As the pages of scripture unfold, we learn more and more about that salvation from sin and what that means and looks like. However, this is the real joy of salvation. The idea that we no longer have to carry our sins like Pilgrim did in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, how he carried his burden. Christ in salvation is the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world. In Christ, we no longer carry the guilt, the misery, or the psychological distress of sin. We can once again behold people, because in our salvation, Christ takes all that twists and distorts us. He takes all that God is wrathful against, and He gives us wholesomeness and peace with God through our Jesus Christ. And so the text teaches us soteriology, and it is that upon which the church is founded. Why else do we have what is behind me, behind me? A cross. But everybody has a salvation or a soteriology in their worldview. For the Christian, the salvation that Christ came to bring is the salvation that restores not only us as individuals with God, but also gives us a restoration in our relationships, in our callings, and in our thinking. Upon being saved by Christ, we are now a different people. There's a story of Augustine. He'd been converted. Prior to his conversion, though, he led a life of debauchery. And one of his paramours, after his conversion, seeing Augustine, ran out, calling me all after him, Augustine, it is I, it is I. And finally, Augustine pivoted and said, yes, but it is no longer I. Why? Because he'd been saved. He was a different person. This is the salvation that the Christian faith teaches and what we find here being promised in this narrative in Matthew. This then is a worldview issue. Man needs salvation. Where will he find it? All worldviews, as I said, provides a doctrine of salvation, has a soteriology, and to boil it down to its essence, what all non-Christian worldviews, hear me now, what all non-Christian worldviews provide in terms of salvation, what all non-Christian worldviews provide in terms of salvation, when you boil it down to its essence, is salvation from the salvation offered in Christ. Sin is seen, therefore, as anything that has to do with the limitations that the Christian faith puts on an individual. In our times, the chief place that fallen man looks for salvation is salvation in and by the state. In this state we live and move and have our being. It is believed the state would deliver us from our limitations. The state will provide salvation from poverty. The state will save us from fascindity and fertility by pushing abortion. The state will feed our children, educate our children and care for the aged. The state will provide salvation by giving the good society. And so we should really pray in many cases, our father who are in Washington. But such a doctrine of salvation, in the words of Rushduni, has the smell of the leopard, of the beast. Because the state cannot offer a saving order, God alone offers salvation. Others seek for their salvation in perverse sex. The only sin for these folks is the sin of any limitations on their libido and their perverse desires, and salvation is found in the inversion of what is biblically defined as normative. All of this giving in to one's libido and perverse pursuits, all of it is about pursuing some kind of salvation. Being against Christ and being resolved that this man should not rule over us, what is being attempted in these perverse activity is the desire to strip away the image of God from man. Because there's a close connection between our sexuality and the imago Dei. If we can just get rid of normalcy and sexuality, we can at the same time get rid of the image of God. And that will be our salvation. Pagan salvation then always ends up calling good evil and evil good. This means their salvation is really destruction and their sin is really righteousness. All salvation then in all worldviews are not Christian and in death. Scripture teaches, after all, that all those who hate me love death. But the Christian faith provides us with a salvation that is life-giving, invigorating, and powerful. It's a salvation that relieves the conscience and emboldens the saint. And I'm sure you would agree with me when I say I would give up everything in order to keep that which cannot be taken away from me. I would give it all up in order to know Christ and His deliverance that comes with salvation. Indeed, our understanding of salvation and the impact of it should be something that gets to the core of our character so that we would not even understand ourselves or know ourselves if it was not for this idea of the fact that we are a saved people. And here we have this good news of the salvation that's been given to us and offered us in Christ. And should we not then therefore be a people who want to do what? Offer that salvation. to as many people as we desire, to call upon them to repent, to come and taste and see that the Lord is good, to remind them that Jesus says, come unto me all you labor and heavy laden, and I will give you rest, which is another word for salvation. And so here we find in the Christmas narrative all this worldview material that's lying underneath the surface, that's implied, that we're bringing up and we're drawing out and we're saying, look, here's an epistemology that's taught in the Christmas narrative. Here's an anthropology that's taught in this Christmas narrative. Here is an ontology that's taught in this Christmas narrative. And here is a soteriology. And all of this is our elements that form and shape our worldview so that as we understand these things in ever more richer ways, we find ourselves growing in our Christianity and the sanctification of our faith so that we understand this isn't just a nice story. It is the heart and essence of how we think and of who we are. Thank God for the Christmas text, and thank God for the coming of Christ, and how it reveals all that it reveals. Let's stand for a closing word of prayer. Father, we pray that we would take great delight in this Advent season, learning anew all that has been provided for us in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Grant us the ability to unpack in all of our thinking the worldview that provides the template for all of Scripture. Grant us an abundance to leverage powerfully in all of our life all the worldview that you reveal in your Holy Word. We pray that we would have a Christmas ontology and that we would understand our Christmas soteriology. We pray, Father, that we would see how that gets unpacked in our everyday living. Grant us the ability to speak back to our world when it shouts Contrary soteriologies and contrary ontologies. Help us at the very least to see these things and to recognize them for what they are and to reject them. Grant us grace, we pray, to delight in the richness of our inheritance in Christ. And then grant us grace to earnestly pray that all men would know the goodness of the salvation that only you can provide. We thank you, Father, again for this Advent season. We're thankful again that we're reminded that Christ has come And then we're no longer a people that have to bear our sins. In Christ's name we pray, amen.