christmas

When you normally think of Christmas what do you think of? I would guess that you think about presents, Christmas dinner, parties, presents, shopping deals, decorating your house and presents. Now those are not bad thing at all, but that is not really the point of Christmas.

Yes, everyone knows that it is about baby Jesus being born in a manger. Do you know what a manger is? A manger is smelly and discusting and by by no means a good place to have a child. think about this Jesus was put into the world the worst way possible and he was taken out the worst way possible on a cross, tortured and scorned.

Yeah, we all know about Jesus and the christmas story, but do you know that the Christmas story was planned it great detail about 2,000 years before the event actually happened? For example in Micah 5:2 god explained how Jesus would come out of the tribe of Judah (which wasn't even the religious tribe) and it was fullfilled in Luke 3:33. In Jeremiah 23:5-6 it is written that that he will be of the house and line of David and it was fullfilled in Luke 3:31.It is also written that he would be born in Bethlehem in Micah 5:2 and it is fulfilled in Luke 2:4-7. another prophecy was that Jesus would be born of a virgin this was written in Isaiah 7:14 and it was fulfilled in Matthew 1:18. There are many other prophecies about Christmas and Jesus for example the bible said that Jesus would be worshipped by shepherds, be worshipped and given gifts by kings, and that he and his parents would flee to Egypt in fear of king Herod who was trying to kill Jesus because he did not want Jesus to be king.

All of these verses are in extreme detail. Last thursday at my School's bible club that I run I used this as the topic and one of the girls asked me why we need to read all of these names it was Matthew 1:1 which goes like this

¹A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham:
²Abraham was the father of Isaac,
Isaac the father of Jacob,
Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,
³Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar,
Perez the father of Hezron,
Hezron the father of Ram,
⁴Ram the father of Amminadab,
Amminadab the father of Nahshon,
Nahshon the father of Salmon,
⁵Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab,
Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth,
Obed the father of Jesse,
⁶and Jesse the father of King David.
David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife,
⁷Solomon the father of Rehoboam,
Rehoboam the father of Abijah,
Abijah the father of Asa,
⁸Asa the father of Jehoshaphat,
Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram,
Jehoram the father of Uzziah,
⁹Uzziah the father of Jotham,
Jotham the father of Ahaz,
Ahaz the father of Hezekiah,
¹⁰Hezekiah the father of Manasseh,
Manasseh the father of Amon,
Amon the father of Josiah,
¹¹and Josiah the father of Jeconiah^[a] and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon.
¹²After the exile to Babylon:
Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel,
Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel,
¹³Zerubbabel the father of Abiud,
Abiud the father of Eliakim,
Eliakim the father of Azor,
¹⁴Azor the father of Zadok,
Zadok the father of Akim,
Akim the father of Eliud,
¹⁵Eliud the father of Eleazar,
Eleazar the father of Matthan,
Matthan the father of Jacob,
¹⁶and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

¹⁷Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.

As you can see this is A LOT of detail. what i told that girl is that we read this because i am demonstrating how not vague it is and how if god can plan all of this in exact detail thousands of years before it actually happened then god has a plan for your life and you can definitely trust in him.

As Christmas day comes around and you open your presents, go to parties and eat christmas dinner i want you to remember what Christmas is really about and that it was planned long before it actually happen.

Jesus loves you so live for him!