The Meaning of Christmas

Transcript

JRS 59
The Majesty of Christmas: Part Four “The Meaning of Christmas”
Selected Scripture
Jesse Randolph

Good evening. On behalf of our Indian Hills Church family, I just want to welcome you and wish you a Merry Christmas. You know, there is really no other holiday that inspires people the way that Christmas inspires people. Right? Can you think of another holiday that serves as such a major benchmark in peoples’ holiday calendars and schedules? “This is baby’s first Christmas.” “This is our first Christmas without grandma or grandpa” or you name the relative. “I’m going to propose to my girlfriend on Christmas.” Or “He better propose to me on Christmas.” Can you think of another holiday that has inspired such radical changes to our schedules? Did you run all over town this year attending 14 different Thanksgiving parties? Are you already looking ahead to what you’ll be doing on Easter next year? Are you and your newlywed spouse fighting over where you will spend Labor Day next year, with your side or her side, or your side or his side. Can you think of a holiday which has inspired such changes to our lifestyles? Who intentionally wears ugly sweaters in the month of February? Who’s sending two-sided, single-spaced life update letters to anyone remotely connected to them in the month of May? Who drinks eggnog in the month of September? Can you think of a holiday which has inspired more artistic and creative and literary output than Christmas? Of course you can’t. It’s not even close. The volume of books and poems and movies and artistic depictions surrounding Christmas is absolutely staggering.

There’s no question there is something uniquely inspiring about Christmas. There’s something about this holiday that grips us and causes us to do many things this time of year, that any other time of the year would be considered out-of-the-ordinary. And that includes the type of reflecting that many will do around Christmas. And many times reflecting through their pen as they think about past Christmases, or the warm Christmas memories from their childhood or they think about what Christmas means to them.

In fact, in preparing for this evening’s message, I came across dozens of articles and online journals and blog posts from various people, from all walks of life, from all over the world, from various different faith backgrounds, who have written an article with some version of the title, “What Christmas Means to Me.”

Here’s one article, by a woman named Rahima Jamal. She writes, “Being Muslim, I always get weird looks from people when I tell them that Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year. It’s true, I am Muslim and I love Christmas time. To specify, I love the atmosphere that comes with Americanized Christmas. I understand that Christmas was originally a holiday to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Parts of traditional Christmas still do exist today but Christmas in America definitely has evolved from these traditional ideas. What I actually love about Christmas time is the community, culture and happiness that seems to come with it. There are very few days in the year where the entirety of the U.S. seems to comes together to celebrate that one thing happily. Though not everyone in the U.S. today celebrates Christmas, including my family, everyone has some sort of sense that it is Christmas time and that it is a time of coming together time with the ones you love. In my experience, Christmas has always been a time where I can watch Christmas movies, listen to Christmas music, walk down any sort of downtown and look at Christmas lights, even though my family does not celebrate Christmas whatsoever, I have different traditions that are my own that happen during Christmas time.”

Then there is this one. Written by a man named Ira Sukrungruang. He reflects on what Christmas traditions meant to him going back to his childhood. He says, “On Christmas, my mother played Bing Crosby and Pat Boone throughout the house, their baritone voices reverberating holiday cheer. She sat by the bay windows and hummed and watched winter howl outside. Above her sat a gold Buddha, his eyes breaking from a pleasant dream. My father strung lights around the entirety of the house. Christmas was not a Christian holiday. It wasn’t an American one. For my Thai family, 8,000 miles from home, Christmas was our holiday. I didn’t know it didn’t belong to us displaced Buddhists on the gritty southside of the city. I only knew that the voices of Bing and Pat gave my mother joy. I only knew the care and precision my father took in making our house the brightest on the block. I only knew that when dinner came, we gorged ourselves on basil chicken, green curry, roasted meats and steaming bowls of jasmine rice. ‘What a good day,’ my father would say. ‘Thank Buddha,’ my mother would say. ‘Merry Christmas,’ I would say, looking toward the fireplace in hopes of a fat man emerging with presents.”

And then there’s one more, written by a woman named Dawn Cutaia, who self-identifies as an atheist. She writes, “It’s that time of year again. The time when us heathen atheists wage our war on Christmas. I look forward all year to executing my plan to destroy Christmas, starting the day after Thanksgiving. My plan includes hanging a Christmas wreath on my front door, decorating my Christmas tree, sending out Christmas cards and listening exclusively to Christmas music. I am a former Catholic, so I admit there is a little part of me that wants to believe. I am not going to fight it. Christmas music makes me think about my family and how much I love them. Christmas lights make the cold weather seem warmer. The Christmas story makes me have hope for humanity. It’s a great story. A little baby born to save a world that is unworthy of being saved. There is a lot of good stuff in the Gospel. Stuff that gives you chills because it is so powerful. And it isn’t because it is about God, it's powerful because it is about us.”

I want to make sure you caught all of that. Those are three voices, one Muslim, one Buddhist, and one atheist. And each is saying that they will be celebrating Christmas this year. And each is tying their celebration of Christmas to what Christmas means to them. It’s not what Christmas actually means, it’s what Christmas means to them.

And that’s the state of the world in which we live today, is it not? This is a world in which people are so afraid to declare black and white truth, that we perpetually live in the shadows of the gray. This is a world that is so afraid to say that right is right and wrong is wrong, that we end up cowering behind the convenient cop-out line, “Who am I to say?” Or “That’s none of my business.” Or “Judge not.” And we live in a world that is flooded by and dominated with that slippery two-word mantra, steeped in subjectivity, “to me.” “To me, the meaning of life is…” “To me, justice is…” “To me, purpose is…” “To me, love is...” “To me, the Bible is…” “To me, God is…” “To me, Jesus is…” “To me, Christmas is…” And here we are now, Muslims and Buddhists and atheists alike are making the claim that they are celebrating a Christ-less Christmas. Which is a ludicrous assertion. That’s like a vegetarian saying their favorite food is a ribeye steak. That’s like somebody saying that the most refreshing kind of water they have ever had is the kind that’s not wet.

In case you’re new to Indian Hills this evening, this is the fourth and final installment of a sermon series we have been going through in the month of December called “The Majesty of Christmas.” In the first sermon, it was titled “The Mythology of Christmas,” and we worked through some extra-biblical myths that have developed around the Christian holiday. Things like cattle and oxen near the manger. Myths about the wise men from the East, the magi, who visited the newborn King. Myths about Jesus’ mother, Mary, supposedly being perpetually a virgin, as the Roman Catholic Church teaches. In the second sermon, we went through “The Misunderstanding of Christmas,” which we looked at two totally extra-biblical Christmas traditions, Santa Claus and the Christmas tree. And we just looked at those through the lens of Scripture and how we are to think about traditions biblically. And then the third sermon this past Sunday we looked at “The Mystery of Christmas,” which was a study of what the Bible reveals about the wonder of the incarnation. That event recorded in the Bible, when the eternal Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, left His glorious and eternal heavenly abode, entered into His own creation, born to a young Jewish virgin girl named Mary, in a dusty little village called Bethlehem.

And then tonight, in this final installment, we are simply going to answer the question, why? For what purpose? Why did Christ come to earth? As we’re going to see, God came to earth in the Person of Jesus, not so that we could have some neat and tidy little nativity scene on our mantle each and every Christmas. And not so that Buddhists and Muslims and atheists, and for that matter, lukewarm and deceived so-called Christians can experience warm and fuzzy feeling at Christmas. No. Christ came to this earth for a purpose which was to save. To offer salvation. The incarnation was ultimately always about salvation. Salvation from sin. Salvation from the judgment and punishment our sin deserves. Salvation from the wrath of God we otherwise would have faced.

Let’s consider just a few passages from the Bible which highlight this truth, that the meaning of Christmas is salvation. For starters, the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem didn’t happen randomly. It wasn’t some chance event. It’s not as though the baby Jesus was just dropped out of the sky by a stork which just happened to be flying over Bethlehem. That’s not what happened. His coming into this world, first and foremost, was predicted hundreds of years, 700 plus years, before He entered this world as a baby. It was predicted by certain Old Testament prophets that He would be virgin-born in the small and non-descript town known as Bethlehem. That He would be one who came through the line of His ancestor David, and it was also predicted that He would be a Savior.

Consider these words, from Isaiah 53:6. These are written over 700 years before the birth of Jesus. It says, “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but Yahweh has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” What that’s saying is that the Christ, the one we know as Jesus, would not only be born, but that He would ultimately suffer and die and pay the penalty for the sin that we committed. That penalty would lay on His shoulders. The “the iniquity of us all,” as the passage said, would “fall on Him.”

Not only was His saving purpose predicted though, as the time of His arrival here to earth drew near, His saving purposes were pronounced. Namely, by the angel Gabriel, who told certain shepherds out in a field, in Luke 2:11, that “today in the city of David there has been born for you a” what? “A Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” Then that same angel, Gabriel, would go on to tell Joseph, the man who was betrothed to this young girl named Mary, in Matthew 1:21, “And she will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”

Well, not only were the saving purposes of Jesus predicted by Old Testament prophets. And not only were they pronounced by the angel sent from God, Jesus’ saving mission and saving purpose were portrayed namely in His own words and also in the words of those who would later convey His message. For instance, during His earthly ministry, Jesus Himself would say, in John 12:46, “I have come as Light into the world, so that everyone who believes in Me will not remain in darkness.” In Luke 5:32, He would say, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” And in Luke 19:10, He would say, “the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost.”

Note that connection in each of these passages I just read now. He begins in all 3 of those by saying, “I have come,” meaning into this world. That’s incarnational language. That’s Christmas language. And then he follows up immediately with the mention of salvation. He says that He came to seek and to save and to call sinners to repentance so that they would no longer remain in spiritual darkness.

And then there were those who came after Jesus, those who gave us the Scriptures. They also pointed to the fact that Jesus came into the world in order to die for the sins of the world. Think of what Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:15. He says “It is a trustworthy saying and deserving full acceptance: that Christ Jesus came into the world.” That’s incarnational language. And then he says, “to save sinners.” That’s salvation language. The Apostle John, in 1 John 3:5 says, “And you know that He was manifested.” That’s incarnational language. And then he says “in order to take away sins.” That’s salvation language. Then there is the author of Hebrews, in Hebrews 2:17. He says, “He had to be made like His brothers in all things.” That’s incarnational language. And then he says, and here’s the purpose clause, “so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.” That’s salvation language.

So, while many people these days will make Christmas all about, to anybody who will listen, what Christmas means to them -- what God’s Word reveals over and over is that Christmas is about salvation. It is about our need for salvation and God’s provision of salvation through His Son.

I would be entirely remiss, totally negligent if I didn’t put out this question here tonight. Which is this: have you received God’s gift of salvation through Jesus Christ? Do you know, without a shadow of a doubt, where you would go if you didn’t survive Christmas Eve night and didn’t wake up to see Christmas morning? Do you have a saving relationship with God, based on the faith that you have placed in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ? If so, praise the Lord. That means you have all the reason in the world to rejoice and give thanks and praise, and to truly enjoy a Merry Christmas.

But if you’re here this evening as an unbeliever whether through your own admission as evidenced by the scowls and the folded arms -- or because Satan has blinded your eyes into believing that you are a Christian when in fact you’re not -- I have to tell you that without a saving relationship with Jesus Christ or through Jesus Christ, all of what we’re doing tonight for you is cold ritual. All of what we are doing is empty formalism. And the fact is when you one day face your Maker, as we all will, that One who created you in His image, the One who made You to worship Him -- the fact that you were extra nice to people around Christmas time or that you threw a few coins in the red cup outside of Scheels, or that you came to church this evening and sang a few Christmas songs with us -- none of it’s going to matter. No. The only thing that’s going to matter on that last day as your body goes into the ground and your soul lives on, which our souls do, is whether you have put your faith in Jesus Christ.

If I’m describing you right now, the message you need to hear is not that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life or that God thinks you’re so special and cuddly and cute. It’s not to say that God has a you-sized hole in His heart that He just needs to fill so desperately. No, if you are unsaved, if you don’t know the Lord, the Christmas message that you need to hear is that you are a rebel and the One that you have rebelled against is a thrice holy God revealed on the pages of Scripture. He is a merciful God and He is a patient God, but He is also a just God. And He is not going to overlook your rebellion forever. Instead, because He is a just God, and because He is a righteous God, He will one day punish you for every single one of the sins you’ve committed against Him in the eternal fires of hell. There won’t be merriment or celebration there I can assure you. There will be suffering there. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth there. There will be the facing of unending wrath and judgment and righteous wrath of God for all of eternity.

I know what I am saying sounds harsh. I know it doesn’t sound very Christmassy. But I say this on the authority of God’s Word. And I do say this with a clear heart and a clean conscience in love. The one thing you need to do this Christmas if you have not trusted in the Savior is to believe. Believe that God sent His Son into the world -- that first part of the Christmas message, the incarnation -- believe that God did so. But believe also that God sent His Son ultimately to die offering a way for your sins to be forgiven, no matter how dark or bleak or awful or unforgivable you think those sins are. Paul says in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners,” not perfect people, not righteous people, not self-righteous people – sinners, “Christ died for us.”

You not only need to believe that Christ died, though. You have to believe that He rose. Romans 10:9, “if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” So one must believe in His death, and believe in His resurrection. But not only believe, but repent. Meaning turning from your wicked ways in which we once walked. Turning from the sinful practices and behaviors that gripped us and enslaved us. And now instead, living with the Spirit’s help in accordance with the righteous standards that God has laid out for us in His Word, the Bible.

So friends, don’t reject the greatest gift that has ever been given -- through God sending His Son into this world on a mission to seek and to save that which was lost. Instead receive this free gift of grace as you repent and believe in Jesus Christ.

Right before I came up here we were all singing “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” Recall the lyrics, “God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay. Remember Christ our Savior, was born on Christmas Day. To save us all from Satan's power, when we were gone astray.” That is us. As sinners, we have gone astray and before we are saved, before we come to know God through the Savior, Jesus Christ, we are under Satan’s power. But when a sinner puts their faith in Jesus Christ -- when they confess with their mouth that He is Lord -- when they believe in their heart that God has raised Him from the dead -- they can rest, they can be merry. The modern word for that is ‘joyful’. They can have true joy and they can find that rest and joy in their Savior. Not in people. Not in relationships. Not in paychecks. Not in titles. In their Savior. That’s the true meaning of Christmas. Salvation offered through that baby who was lying in that manger in that part of the world some 2000 years ago where God and sinners were reconciled. Merry Christmas. Let’s pray.

Father, we thank You for this time together this evening. We thank You for an opportunity to praise and worship You, the Living God, through song and through Your Word. God, I pray for we who have put our faith in Jesus Christ, that this would be an evening of joyful reflection on what You did in taking us out of the pit of darkness and destruction and sin that we once wallowed in, and instead setting our foot upon the rock of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. God, if there is anybody here this evening who does not know You, whether by their own admission or through deception from Satan, I pray that this evening they would put their faith in Jesus Christ. That they would turn away from all the wicked ways and the darkness in which they have been enslaved. And instead come to see the light, the light of the gospel, the light of the truth of Your Word, and the Light that has come into the world, Jesus Christ. May You be praised and glorified this evening and in all of our Christmas celebrations this year. In Christ’s name, amen.