How do I tell The Story? (Luke 2, Matthew 1)

Yesterday morning in chapel we heard the Christmas Story from Luke and Matthew.  (Mark doesn't have a story of the birth of Jesus at all, and John's story of the Nativity is this: "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.  We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:14)

The speaker asked us, how do we tell the story?  What does it really mean to us, that a baby was born in a manger to a virgin?

John 3:16 would be a concise way of telling the story.  But here's how I'll tell it:

God created the world.  It was good, until sin entered it.  People chose death instead of life.  But because God still loved men and women, he created a plan.  It was a great, perfect, complex plan, that would involve every person who would ever live.  God would use the people he had created as part of his plan to save those people.

One of those people was a Jewish girl named Mary, who lived about four thousand years after God created the world.  God sent one of his angels, Gabriel, to this girl.  She was a virgin, and she was engaged to a man named Joseph.  God had decided that Mary would be the mother of his Son.  Because he is all-powerful, he was able to create a baby inside of her, even though she was still a virgin.  Gabriel explained this to Mary, who was obedient to God.

God chose a very humble, simple place for his Son to be born.  He chose a stable, full of animals, smelly but warm.  Mary gave birth in this stable, one cold night, because there was nowhere else for her and Joseph to go.  Instead of the Son of God being born in a nice house, he was born where animals lived, and slept in their feeding trough.  Instead of being greeted by wealthy, important people, the first people to visit the baby God-man were humble shepherds, who heard the song of angels announce the birth of God's Son.  Later, this baby was visited by men who studied the sky, had seen a special star, and had followed it for many miles until they found where the child was.  These men were not Jewish, but they knew that this little boy, Jesus, was special. They gave him gifts signifying who he would become and what he would do.

The boy Jesus grew up, without sin, obedient to his earthly parents and his heavenly Father.  When he was grown, he completed the task that God had sent him to earth to do.  He saved the world into which he had been born.

This is how I tell the story- the greatest story ever told, the greatest story that is the greatest truth in existence.  Today, I want to live this story.