The Gospel Coalition

Every Christian loves the story of Christmas. We love to hear about the angels and the shepherds. We love the think about noble Joseph and humble Mary. We love the wise men and the star of Bethlehem. We love the whole nativity scene. Most of us have heard the story so many times we smile just to hear the name Quirinius (whether its pronounced correctly or not).

It’s a great story because it’s a familiar story. It’s a true story. And Christmas is wonderful because it’s not the beginning of the story. In fact, the more you know about the stories leading up to The Story, the richer and deeper and sweeter Christmas will be.

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Once upon a time–and this is a once upon a time that really happened–there lived a man and a woman. They were actually the only people on the planet. There names were Adam and Eve. God made them. And like everything else God made, he made them good. But they didn’t stay that way very long. On one very bad day, they ate from the only tree they weren’t supposed to eat from. It was a terrible day, the second worst thing that’s ever happened in the world.

A snake had tricked them and told them a lie about the fruit. He said they would be like God if they ate it. But actually the opposite was true. When they ate the fruit, the were separated from God. It would never be as easy to be close to God as it had been before that day.

God was not happy with Adam and Eve. He wasn’t happy with the snake either. Because they disobeyed, God put a curse on the man and the woman and the snake and everything else. He kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden paradise he had made for them. It just wasn’t possible for people so bad to live with a God who is so good. That’s why they had to leave.

But before they left, God made a promise. He promised that the evil serpent, the Devil, would always be at war with Eve and her children. Now that doesn’t sound like a very nice promise, that bad guys and good guys would fight all the time. Who wants to be in a war that never ends? But that’s where the good part of the promise comes in. God promised that one of Eve’s children would, some day, eventually, sooner or later, crush the head of that nasty serpent. Nobody knew when or how, but one day one of her children would put things right.

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But things got a lot wronger before they got righter. Adam and Eve had several kids, including two brothers named Cain and Abel. Abel was a good man, but Cain was not. And when God accepted Abel’s gift, but rejected Cain’s, Cain got very angry. So angry, so hurt, and so jealous that he killed his brother. The first murder in history, but sadly not the last.

Things were not the way they were supposed to be. Everything fell apart after sin entered the world. Things got so bad, so fast with his creation that God decided to start over. The people on the earth were terribly wicked in their hearts, all the time, every day. They didn’t deserve to enjoy God’s world anymore. So God took it from them. Actually he took them from it. He sent a flood that wiped away everyone and everything, because it had all been stained with sin.

But God saved one family that trusted him and believed his word. Noah, his wife, and their sons and daughters-in-law were spared. They lived for a lot of days with a lot of animals in a big boat called an ark while it rained and rained. God was going to start over with his creation. He was angry with the world that hated him, but he was still at work to save the world nonetheless. That’s why he rescued Noah and his family. God wanted to give his people another shot. Noah was going to be a new kind of Adam.

The problem was Noah was too much like the first Adam. It didn’t take long after they got of out the boat for Noah to do some pretty bad stuff himself. He trusted God enough to build an ark when everyone laughed at him, but it turns out he could be just as foul as the rest of them. Even one of Noah’s sons got cursed, just like everything got cursed back in the Garden. History was repeating itself. Whether it was Adam or Noah, the first world in the beginning or the second world after the flood, people just couldn’t get things right.

One time, a whole bunch of people got together to build a giant tower. They thought they could build all the way up to heaven. But it must not have been too big because God had to come down just to see it. And when God saw it he was not pleased. Everyone was working together, which was ok, but they weren’t working for God, and that was not ok. They were trying show how smart and impressive they could be all on their own. They thought they didn’t need God. So God mixed up all their languages and spread them out all over the place.

As you can see, things were still not going well in the world God had made. God would have to find another way to save his people.

to be continued…