Christmas The Whole Story – Video Presentation Tracing God’s Plan Through The Bible Starting With Genesis

Christmas: The Whole Story

This is a summary of the entire message of the Bible. It’s titled “Christmas: The Whole Story” but it’s not another video about which day of the year Jesus was born, and it’s not a look at the roots of this holiday. Rather, it’s a look at how this event, Jesus’s birth, fits into the Bible as a whole.

This is for you if you’re a visual learner who likes to see things in a visual format. It’s also for you if you’re not very familiar with the Bible and don’t know what the big deal is, don’t really know that much about Christmas or how it fits into the Bible, and are wondering what the point is. If you were to read through the Bible by yourself it would take about 82 hours. Here I’m going to summarize all of the main points and the entire theme of the Bible for you. And it’s for you if you’re already a believer who knows the good news but wants to see the gospel presented in a clear and organized way so that you can use this to share with others.

No matter what season it is for you now or where you are, I hope you’ll enjoy this journey through the Bible together.

In the Beginning: God

Let’s start at the very beginning.

Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

This is the very first verse in the Bible and it is the foundation for all of scripture. Now if you remove God from the equation, the Bible just doesn’t make sense. There are people who say there are supernatural events in the Bible, there are miracles, people walking on water or feeding thousands with just a few loaves and fish, and they can’t believe that because they’ve never seen anything like it. But belief in God is the assumption of the entire Bible. It is the foundation upon which all the rest is built.

The Bible tells us that God is self-existent, that he exists from eternity past into eternity future. There is one God and he is all-powerful, holy, loving, and just. God is the Creator and the designer of the universe.

Why do I believe in God? There are many reasons but I’ll share one. I believe in God because logic dictates to me that there must be a God. When I look at my cell phone, I know it was designed by someone. Someone put the pieces together. This phone did not just come about by chance. When we see a phone, a computer, a television, anything with a complex system, we know that someone designed it. It didn’t come about by random chance. So if my car and my phone and my computer cannot come together by random chance, I believe this universe cannot either, because the universe has more complexity than all of these things put together. Even one human eye is incredibly complex. Where there is design there must be a designer, and I believe that is God.

I also believe that when God created people he hardwired his very existence into our DNA. If you look at every ancient civilization or culture on earth, they basically have one thing in common: they all believe in the existence of a God or gods. There’s something inside of us that tells us someone made us, that this life is not all there is, that there is something more. Even the belief in the afterlife goes way, way back. This is something God hardwired into us, this need for him, this desire to seek after him.

God Created People

Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

God created people, and people were originally good. When God made the earth and creation and people, he looked at it and said it is very good. God and people were close together. They had a connection, they had a relationship, people were friends with God.

What does it mean that we are created in the image of God? It means we have some similarity to God. It does not mean that we look like him, God is a spirit and doesn’t have flesh and blood like us. But he put something of himself inside of us. The Genesis account of creation never says this about animals, they are not created in his image. So what is the difference between us and animals? We have a soul. We are eternal, meaning our soul will continue on even after our body is gone. We are rational, social, emotional. We have the ability to love as God also loves us.

Creating us in his own image also means God put into us a sense of morals. If a lion sees a hyena with a kill and drives the hyena away and steals its food, no one says that’s a bad lion. They’re just following their natural instincts. But if a person attacks someone else and steals their stuff, we say that person is guilty of assault and theft and that person should be punished. Why? Because a person is supposed to know better. We have an idea of right and wrong inside of us. The theory of evolution does not properly explain where morals come from. In evolution it’s all about the survival of the fittest. But we can all look at many situations and say that’s not right, that’s not good, and in doing so we’re making a moral judgment. If there is no God, no standard, no Creator, no authority, then we have no basis from which to make a moral judgment.

People Rebelled

God created Adam and Eve and put them in the Garden of Eden. He said they could do basically anything except one thing: they must not eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. The one thing they could not do is the one thing they did. They broke God’s command and they rebelled.

Now you might say, they just ate a fruit, what’s the big deal? The problem was that in doing so they were in some way declaring their independence from God. They were throwing off his authority and saying, even though you created us and designed us, we are going to do our own thing. In their case it was a fruit. In our case today it could be any kind of thing which people pursue which God says they shouldn’t. This heart of rebellion is now rooted inside of people. If you ask a parent what are some of the first words a child tends to learn, one of them is “no.” Children grow up very early saying no, no, no, because this kind of resistance to authority is inside of us.

And so things descended very quickly. Genesis 6:5: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Only evil continually. Things went bad very fast.

People Are Separated from God

Because of their sins, people became separated from God. God is holy, which means he is perfect. We are not holy. So there is a chasm between us and God. Isaiah 53:6 says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way.” I’m not a shepherd, but I assume shepherds struggle with that a lot. A sheep wants to go over there, the shepherd says no, you should go over here, but the sheep has its own idea. It wants to do its own thing. The thing is, the sheep doesn’t actually know what is best for it. The shepherd does. We go after money, pleasure, lust, things that bring us thrills and excitement and we think happiness, and we go our own way. That’s really what it was when Adam and Eve ate the fruit. We do the same thing today.

Jumping forward to the New Testament:

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” – Romans 3:23

Imagine a person climbing, climbing, climbing, but never able to reach the top. No matter how hard we try, we cannot reach God’s standard. We fall short. Put another way, we miss the mark. The word for sin in the Bible has the idea of missing the mark, like an archer shooting for the center of a target and missing.

What is sin? Sin includes doing things we shouldn’t do: stealing, lying, boasting, unkind speech, and much more. It also includes not doing things we should do. Maybe we should go to work or help someone, but instead we’re lazy or apathetic. Sin can also include our thoughts. Greed, envy, jealousy, lust, these are sins of the mind. Jesus said that whoever looks at a woman and lusts after her in his heart has already committed adultery in his heart. He also said that if you hate your brother in hot anger, you are guilty basically of murdering him in your heart. Anger, unforgiveness, bitterness, these are sins of the heart.

“For all have sinned” — that includes me. I’m absolutely a sinner, ask my wife if you have any question about that. And is our sin serious? Imagine that you become a parent. You have a child, you take care of this child, you feed him, clothe him, give him a home, give him love, give him care, give him education, medical care, everything he needs, all the way through college. You’ve been an absolutely perfect parent, done everything you should do, watched all the soccer games, every step of the way. And then this child calls you on the phone and says, “I want nothing more to do with you. You are not my parent anymore. Do not contact me. I’m going to go my own way.” Is that serious? I think that is in fact very serious. This is what we do with God. God creates us, gives us the things that we need, cares for us, loves us, and then we say, God, I don’t believe in you, I don’t want to follow you. That is the most serious sin of all, which is actually what Adam and Eve did, and what many of us do today.

Another reason people think their sin is not serious is that they have the wrong standard. Some people say, well, I’m not Hitler, therefore I’m okay. Why are we looking at Hitler as our standard? That’s like a kid saying, well I got a 35 on my test, that’s pretty good because I didn’t get a zero. We need to have the correct standard. Outside my window there’s a river. Imagine I have a contest with my 15-year-old son and my six-year-old daughter: who can jump over the river? My daughter runs and jumps and gets maybe two feet. My son runs and gets seven feet. I jump and get nine feet. And yet we look up and realize we are barely away from this bank, so far short of the other side. That is what it’s like when we compare ourselves with other people. We can say I’m better than him, better than her, but when you actually look at God’s standard, we all fall short. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

The Bad News: What Sin Leads To

Romans 6:23: “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Wages are something you earn. Death is the earned result of our sin. God told Adam and Eve, if you eat the fruit you will die, and they did. There are multiple kinds of death. Physical death is the separation of our soul from our body. Spiritual death is separation between us and God.

And after death, Hebrews 9:27: “Just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.”

God is the judge, a fair, impartial, and just judge. The judgment will be a record of all the things we have done, thought, said. I can tell you I wouldn’t want my book of deeds opened up in front of everyone, because there are many things I’ve done which I’m ashamed of and feel guilty about. When our deeds, our thoughts, our dirtiest secrets are opened up, we are not innocent. We are guilty.

Now does that mean God is unloving because he says guilty? Let’s say I commit a murder and then I come to you, the judge, and I say please set me free, I’ll do good from now on. Will you set me free? If you do, people will say that’s a bad judge. He didn’t do his job. A judge’s job is to be impartial, to execute justice. So God is just. You cannot read the Bible and escape this fact: God hates sin and God judges sin. Some people like to pick out the nice promises and the verses about love and overlook his justice because that makes them uncomfortable. But it is very, very clear in the Bible that God is a just judge.

And what will happen after the judgment? 2 Thessalonians 1:9 tells us they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord. Not a pleasant thing at all.

You might be thinking, what kind of Christmas message is this? It’s all gloom and doom. Well, that’s true actually. Christmas had to happen. Jesus had to come because it was gloom and doom. If everything was fine and merry, Jesus never would have had to come. The Old Testament shows us that by ourselves, left to our own devices, it is gloom and doom. We cannot save ourselves. That sets the stage for what comes next.

The Bridges People Try to Build

People see their problem and they want to do something about it. They want to compensate for their sin and come back to God. So they try to build bridges. But none of these bridges work.

Works

People imagine there are giant scales in heaven: put the good things on one side and the bad things on the other, and whichever side is heavier, that’s where you go. But that’s not how judgment works. Going back to my illustration: if I go to the judge having committed murder and I say but I will do a lot of good from now on, the judge will still not set me free. He will still say you committed this crime, you need to be punished for it. If you sin even one time you are no longer perfect. And of course the reality is we do not sin only one time.

Another problem with our good works is that sometimes we do them out of bad motives. I’ve seen people give to charity and take a selfie with their cash fanned out to put in the newspaper. Sometimes we do things because we want others to see us and say, “Look how much he serves God, look at what he does in church, look at the money he gives.” Even some of the best things we do can come from polluted motives, from pride or selfishness. I like to give basketball examples because I like to play basketball. I’m 6’3″. If I join the NBA and my very first free throw I miss it, and then after that I never miss another free throw again and make thousands upon thousands consecutively and become the best free throw shooter in the history of the NBA, I still will never reach 100%. I never can, because I already missed one. Good works could work if you never sinned at all. But if you sinned even once, good works cannot save you.

Religion

Interestingly, every religion in the world except for the Bible says to do good deeds to solve your problem. Go to the mosque, give to the poor, practice self-denial, and many other good things are listed. But in the end these are all ways of trusting yourself to save yourself. Anyone who trusts in themselves, even in the name of religion, falls short and can’t make it back to God.

A person who identifies as a Christian might also trust in their prayers, the money they give to charity, going to church, reading the Bible. These are all good things, you should do them. But these things cannot save you. Any religion, whether Christianity or any other, in which you place your faith in your good works, is not enough.

Good Morals and Education

Some people say I’m a good person. By what standard? Not by God’s. Others say they’ll get educated, become more civilized, get degrees, and when they face God show their credentials. I don’t think a degree from Harvard or Yale will help us when we face God. There are some sins blue-collar people might do more, and some sins white-collar people might do more. An educated person is not actually better than someone without an education. In fact, we are judged based on what we know, so the more education you have, the higher the standard of judgment you receive. Maybe your judgment will be even more strict because of the education you have received.

So these are all bridges people try to build to come across to God, but none of them can get you there.

Ephesians 2:8-9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

It says it is not your own doing. It says it is not a result of works. You cannot save yourself, you cannot do anything to get yourself out of this problem of sin. We need God’s help. We need his gift.

The Good News: Why Jesus Came

So the bad news is that we have sin, we are separated from God, we deserve death, judgment, and punishment, and we cannot solve this problem on our own. The good news is that God doesn’t leave us in this state. God sees our problem and he extends his hand and says, I want to help you. These bridges which you try to build don’t work. You can’t save yourself. But I want to help you and I want to restore your relationship to me.

Matthew 1:21-23: “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

That is what the name Jesus means: God saves. And then: “They shall call his name Immanuel, which means God with us.” God came down in order to help us.

Who is Jesus? Jesus is 100% man and he is 100% God. What is a person? A person is a body and a spirit. An animal has a body but not a spirit. An angel has a spirit but not normally a body. A person has both. What is God? God is the eternal spirit, the uncaused cause, eternally existent in the form of a spirit. What is Jesus? Jesus has a body like we do, but his spirit is the eternal spirit, the divine spirit. He is God. He satisfies the definition of being a person because he has a body and a spirit, so he is 100% man. And he satisfies the definition of being God because his spirit is the eternal one. As man he can represent us, and as God he can save us. He is God’s solution to the problem of sin.

So why do we care about Christmas? Why is his birth so special? It’s not just because there’s a cute baby in a nativity with angels and shepherds. His birth is only one step in God’s plan. He grew up, he taught, he healed people, he showed us God’s love, he did many miracles. But how did he save us?

The Cross: Where It All Comes Together

Romans 5:8: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

The cross is the bridge from our side to God’s side. The cross shows us both God’s love and God’s justice at the same time.

If God could say I don’t care about sin, I’m just going to let it go, I’m just going to forgive it, then Jesus wouldn’t need to come. Jesus came because God’s righteous justice demands that sin be punished. If God was loving but not just, the cross wouldn’t be necessary, Jesus would just say all is forgiven. If God was just but not loving, then you would be punished for your sin instead of Jesus. But because God is both loving and just, that necessitated the cross, where these two parts of God’s character converge together.

What happened on the cross? Two illustrations. First, it’s like paying a debt. You borrow so much money you can never pay it off. And then a really rich person comes along and says, I’ll pay off your debt for you. You can go free. That’s what Jesus did for us. We have a debt because of our sin, bills too large for us to ever pay. Jesus said, my account can cover it. I’ll pay off your debt. You can be forgiven and go free.

Second, I’ve lived in China for a long time and I heard this story about a Chinese general who had a strict rule in his camp: no stealing. If you steal you will be flogged. Things kept disappearing around the camp and finally they caught the criminal. He found out it was an elderly lady who was very poor and had no means to sustain herself. She had been stealing food in order to eat. He felt a lot of compassion for this lady, and he was trying to think how to handle it. He had made a rule and the rule must be followed. The thief must be punished. But he also had compassion for her. So they took the lady out and tied her to a post. The person given the job of whipping her came up, but before he started, the general himself went and took off his outer cloak and stood in between the person doing the whipping and the elderly lady. He put his arms around her and said, begin the punishment. He covered her back while he received the whiplashes, over and over again, until the number was reached. The punishment was executed, fulfilled, and he also showed compassion, love, and mercy to this lady who was probably changed much more through that act of love.

That is a little bit of what Jesus’s death is for us. Jesus is our substitute. We deserve death and judgment because of our sin, and Jesus said, I will come as a substitute for you, in order to take your sin and your death onto myself. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Put your name in there. While Jason was still a sinner, Christ died for Jason. Whatever sins you have committed can be forgiven. Don’t let your sins keep you from coming to God.

The Resurrection: Proof That It Works

1 Corinthians 15:3-4: “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.”

Jesus died. Jesus was buried. That’s normal. People die and are buried. But then: he was raised on the third day. That is not normal at all. When is the last time you went to a funeral and a few days later someone told you the dead person had risen from the dead? This is the claim recorded in scripture about Jesus.

Imagine you’re lost going down a road and you come to a fork. One branch leads to paradise, the other to death, and you have no way of knowing which is which, except that there are two guides at the fork. One of the guides is dead. One is alive. Which one will you ask? I’m going to ask the one who is alive. That is the difference between what the Bible teaches and every other religion in the world. Jesus is alive. He rose again from the dead. Therefore his word counts, his promise is true. No other religion, to my knowledge, even claims that their leader or founder rose again from the dead. Jesus’s resurrection proves that he has the power to save you and proves he is who he says he is.

If you like evidence and want to know how we can know Jesus really rose from the dead, there are many good resources out there I’d encourage you to look up. But briefly: there were over 500 eyewitnesses, which is very strong testimony. The tomb was empty. If people could find and locate Jesus’s body, his body would have been produced, and all of this would have been a flash in the pan. And the disciples’ lives changed completely. They became martyrs for Christ. People will lie to escape death, but they will not lie in order to be killed. They will not maintain and hold on to a story they know is false even to the point of execution. The disciples were killed for their faith. Why would they do that if it was a lie? At the very last minute, right before they were killed, you would think they would say, I made it up, set me free. But they didn’t. They believed and held on to the end because they were convinced of the truth of Jesus’s resurrection, and they believed it strongly enough to give their lives for it.

The resurrection is the biggest event in the Bible. It’s not the manger, it’s not Christmas. It’s the resurrection. Though of course the resurrection could not have happened unless Jesus was first born at Christmas.

Your Response

So here is where we have landed. The bad news: we are separated from God, we have sin, we deserve death, judgment, and punishment, and we cannot solve this problem on our own. The good news: Jesus came, 100% man and 100% God, to solve our problem of sin by dying on the cross for us, and then he rose again from the dead.

Now the third and final point: what is your response?

John 5:24: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment but has passed from death to life.”

Two conditions: hear and believe. If you’ve gotten to this point, then you have heard. What’s left is to believe. And belief is more than just intellectual assent to the facts. It’s saying, I want that. It’s saying I want that free gift that God gives. It is entrusting yourself to him. Yes, it’s a belief in the facts intellectually, but it’s also an emotional belief, a faith that says I want to follow him and I want to entrust myself to him.

1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

So we are to hear, we are to believe, and we are to repent. If we do these things, our relationship with God can be restored. On our side: sin, death, judgment, punishment. On God’s side: eternal life, forgiveness, passing from death into life. In addition to eternal life with the Lord forever, we also have an abundant life now. We have meaning, we have purpose in our life. We know that God created us with purpose and intent and designed us to accomplish something. And we are forgiven. We don’t have to walk around carrying this pile of debt on our backs. It can be taken off.

John 1:12: “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”

If we believe in him we can become his child. We are adopted by him, restored to God, brought into his family, changed from enemies into family. What does a father do for his children? He loves them, cares for them, educates them, leads them, guides them. These are all things that God will do for us if we come to him.

At Christmas we celebrate by exchanging gifts. God’s greatest gift to you is his Son, and the opportunity to receive a full pardon for all sins and be a member of his family. You don’t have to carry your sins on your back, thinking of all the things you’ve done in the past. Those can be washed away, those can be forgiven, if you ask God to do it. You confess, say God please forgive me, and he will.

You’ve heard. What will your response be? Will you believe? Will you confess? Will you receive this gift? If you’ve already believed, I hope that you will pass this on to others. Use this season as an opportunity to tell others the whole story about Christmas.

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