Christmas: A Love Story | Northpoint Church

1.3.2019

Christmas: A Love Story

By Dave Dussault
Northpoint Prayer Ministry

Christmas is the greatest love story ever told. It’s the story of God’ love for you. It’s not magic. It’s a miracle performed by God. It didn’t just happen to happen. God planned it every step of the way—to make us his own—his perfect Bride.

A Determined Lover: God is the Main Character in his Word, and his love drives the story of the World. The Christmas story tells the romance of redemption—God loving and winning a people for himself.
• God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him (Ephesians 1:4). Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25b).

A Rejected God: The backdrop of Christmas is the ache of evil—the wound in the world that goes deep into the heart of everyone in it. And our wound is self-inflicted. We used our freedom to reject our Maker. His ongoing intention and our aching need are to restore the relationship our sin has broken.
• What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away (Hosea 6:4). He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him (John 1:10-11).

The Virgin Birth: God sent His Son to be born of a virgin, and this event was a miracle. God himself caused Mary to conceive Jesus. Because God was His Father, Jesus is God also—the one and only God-Man. With Mary as His mother, Jesus is human like you and me. He’s One of us.
• “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” which means, God with us (Matthew 1:23).

The Perfect Man: Jesus came from a perfect home to a hurting world. The pain we endure and the evil we decry have roots inside each person except Jesus. Though untouched by sin, he shares our pain.
• He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly (1st Peter 2:21-22).

The Radiant Bride: In his Beloved, God sees the beauty of his own creation. The church is his Bride. Sanctification is growing into the splendor of all our loving God intends us to be.
• Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish (Ephesians 5:25b-27). You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you (Song of Solomon 4:7). We love because he first loved us (1st John 4:19).

A Responsive Bride: God gave those who rejected him the freedom to be restored to him.
• But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:12-13).

Glorious Consummation: The same Jesus who came before will come again. Life has a purpose that will one day be realized when Christ returns for his Bride, and we will be with him forever.
• The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord (1st Thessalonians 4:16-17).

Imminent Expectation: Everything we hope for—all we have in Christ—will be realized when he returns in glory. The hope of Christ’s return is an ever-present possibility.
• Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality (1st Corinthians 15:51-53).

Every story reflects the great story. Every conflict-complication-climax-resolution cycle, in every tale or epic, reflects the Christmas story—the story of God’s love for his people. It’s not over, but we know how it ends—for our good and to the praise of God’s glory.

Dave Dussault
Northpoint Prayer Ministry

– Each week, Dave updates a monthly Bible reading plan and writes a Bible and prayer focus, Prayer Life. The preceding is a recent installment. You can pick up both offerings at the Information Center in the Foyer on Sundays, or sign up there to receive them via email. You can also click here to find the archive: https://northpointcorona.org/ministries/prayer/