Posted December 17, 2025

The birth of Jesus is the Good News to the world that “heralds” the promise of Salvation for a fallen and sinful world. It ushers in the New Covenant of Grace, promised in the Old Testament to a people who had proven over and over they just “couldn’t get it right”. God’s desire has always been that we would be His people, and He would be our God. Jeremiah 31:31, hints at the message of the Christmas Story: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah”. That new covenant is one of Grace and forgiveness, not Law and condemnation. Jesus Christ, came into the world, Immanuel, “God with us”, to take back the power that sin had over us.

From the time mankind submitted to Satan’s trickery in the Garden of Eden and fell from God’s favor, sin has influenced much of man’s decisions. Because of this, God made Adam and Eve leave the Garden of Eden – they disobeyed God, and we lost our original place in Paradise because “unholy” cannot co-exist with a Holy God. (Gen. 3:22-23). As the people multiplied, God observed even more wickedness on the earth: “He saw that everything people thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil….(He) was sorry He had ever made them…..It broke His heart.” (Genesis 6:5-6). God destroyed the world with a flood – all except faithful Noah (Genesis 7:23). Later in their history, in spite of taking the Israelites by the hand “as a husband” and bringing them out of Egypt; in spite of feeding them manna and giving them water out of rocks, in spite of all the “goodness” of the Lord, the Israelites fell short of keeping all of the Law given to Moses, written on stone tablets.

Back to the prophet Jeremiah, God chose him to prophesy the future new covenant to his Israel in one of their darkest times, captivity in Babylon. God tells Jeremiah, “I will put my law in their minds and I will write (my law) in their hearts….I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:33-34).

The Birth and Death of the Lord Jesus Christ are symbolic of the Old Testament sacrificial lamb born in a barn, blood shed for sin, but now “we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10). “Second Adam from above, Reinstate us in thy Love” (Charles Wesley, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing). Because He came, lived and died, we can face tomorrow! “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that Whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” is a familiar scripture (John 3:16), but do we teach it with “conditions”? Romans 8:1 says, “Therefore, there is now No condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Pastor Joseph Prince says the pulpit is Not the place to tell people how bad they are. The pulpit is the place to tell people how glorious Jesus and the new covenant of Grace is!

What will it look like, when earth “receives” her King?

“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)