My Sony notebook computer has one of those batteries which have been in the news lately for their propensity to catch fire. This is not a good thing. And so Sony has sent me a replacement battery which I must install today. For some problems, recharging a battery is sufficient. For others a replacement is needed. It is the same with our souls.

Are you ready for a holiday yet? Doubling up on work so you can take a few days off? Needing to rest and recharge in the days ahead? I'm with you.

As we saw yesterday, Jesus is his Christmas gift to us. He was born in Bethlehem to solve our greatest problem: our alienation from God, each other, and ourselves. The last sin you and I committed was enough to separate us from a holy God and his perfect purpose for our lives. How can we restore this broken relationship?

God didn't have our dilemma when he chose his Christmas present to give us. He made us and knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows that our greatest problem is the fact that our souls are broken, that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).

You and I have only a week to get ready for Christmas, but the One who invented the day had all eternity to prepare. The God who became flesh was the "Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world" (Revelation 13:8).

You are the reason for the season. You are the purpose behind Christmas. Your salvation was the goal of his birth, death, and resurrection. If you were the only person ever to have sinned, Christmas would have come just the same.

The consolation of competitors was one of the primary motives behind Christmas as well. Racial prejudice was epidemic in the ancient world. For instance, Gentiles despised Jews, and Israel returned the favor.

The word of God sought no such ambiguity in predicting the Messiah who would be born at Christmas. Consider these Old Testament promises regarding the specifics of the Christ child's parentage, lineage, and birth circumstances:

Just when human history couldn't get more bleak, with the pagan Roman Empire in control even of God's Hebrew people, his Messiah came to set us free.

If you had been voting for King 20 centuries ago, who would have gotten your support?...One candidate you probably wouldn't have considered was a baby born to a Galilean peasant teenager and her carpenter husband, laid in a feed trough in a cow stall.