Welcome to December. December got here faster than I expected. For me, I’m not sure where the year went. It has been a blur for me. It’s hard for me to catch up to what the date on the calendar is. I just feel like my body and mind aren’t in the Christmas season yet. I hope that you can downshift, decompress, and enjoy Christmas,
I think most people would say their schedules get worse. We have our regular things to get done but then with Christmas, we just add to the normal things we do. We don’t erase anything from the To-Do list, we just add to the To-Do list. You have your regular things to do like chase kids, school programs, work deadlines, sports events, and add to it, shopping, gifts, parties, traveling, family get-togethers, and more. Not to mention all the emotions around the relationships we are in.
Before Christmas, Christmas seems like a romantic time of year. A time period where we will be able to relax or reset. Then on the other side of Christmas looking back, we think, I need a vacation from my Christmas vacation. The reality of Christmas is that unless we are intentional, we will be exhausted on January 1. Our hope for you, and our prayer for you is that Christmas really becomes a special time for you to connect with God and family and friends. Why? Because Christmas is the story of God and His love for us. It’s a story of how God saw our struggle and personally did something about it. Christmas is a story of God changing everything. And when you connect with the mystery of Christmas, you find hope in everything, and your life can be deeply impacted. I want to share a verse with you that explains the mystery of Christmas.
He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted. MSG John 3:17
The part of that verse that always gets me is, ‘He came to help.’
We invite you to be intentional before walking through December. To slow down and do the things that matter. That might mean that you are going to have to cross things off the To-Do list. That might mean you need to change your schedules and routines. That might mean saying, ‘No’. That might mean you slow down and embrace the Christmas story.
That’s where I want to start today. Have you ever slowed down to fully understand the Christmas story? I ask because we can live such busy lives that Christmas becomes another date on the calendar with no real meaning. We can even attend church for years and years and never really slow down to understand the magnitude of Christmas. The real question would be, can you tell someone what Christmas means to you? What would you say to them? For you, is the God story about Christmas something that brings you closer to God or is it just another Holiday?
Christmas is a God story. It’s a story about God who comes after the person He loves – you. Have you ever struggled with questions like, who is God? Is God good? Does God love me – like really love me? Have you ever felt insecure about God’s love for you? Maybe you have even concluded that if there is a God, He isn’t good. Today, I want to share the God story with you. I believe when you can wrap your mind around the God story, you will never doubt God’s love for you.
Before the world was created, what was going in on God’s mind? Scripture tells us.
Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. MSG Ephesians 1:4
With you in mind, God created the world. It was a perfect place called the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve wanted to be like God, so they sinned and since that moment, sin entered all of creation like a virus. Sin was devastating. It forever separates us from God with no ability to be in a relationship with God. That sin turned people’s hearts to evil. We see evil as early as Adam and Eve’s son Cain who killed his brother Able all the way to the days of Noah. Evil spread everywhere. It becomes an out-of-control problem. This is about 1,000 years from the days of Adam to the days of Noah.
God saw that human evil was out of control. People thought evil, imagined evil – evil, evil, evil from morning to night. God was sorry that he had made the human race in the first place; it broke his heart. MSG Genesis 6:5-6
There is so much evil that God has to do something. So, he does. The flood happens. But God through Noah continues to bless and protect people. However evil continues to grow. At the same time, God sees a few people like Abraham who try to honor him. So, God made a covenant with Abraham.
7 I will set up my covenant with you and your descendants after you in every generation as an enduring covenant. I will be your God and your descendants’ God after you. 8 I will give you and your descendants the land in which you are immigrants, the whole land of Canaan, as an enduring possession. And I will be their God. CEB Genesis 17:7-8
What is happening? God is frustrated. All God wanted was to love people. He creates a perfect place for people to live. They chose to sin. For over 1,000 years he watches as they make choices to follow sin and do evil. He finally sees someone, Abraham, who loves God. The story continues.
From the days of Abraham to David were 14 generations about 1,000 years. It’s a long story of how God rescued Israel from Egypt. God gave them the 10 commandments to set Israel apart from other countries. God gives them the promised land. After Israel is in the promised land, their hearts turn evil again. Let’s read.
10 Finally all that generation died; and the next generation did not worship Jehovah as their God and did not care about the mighty miracles he had done for Israel. 11 They did many things that the Lord had expressly forbidden, including the worshiping of heathen gods. TLB Judges 2:10-11
God continues to love and protect the country of Israel through judges and kings. All God wanted was for His people to love Him back. It was finally one man who loved God with all his heart who became King – David. These 1,000 years are filled with violence, jealousy, affairs, prostitutes, rebellion, and evil. In all of it, God is trying to love His people and have them love Him back.
It was another 14 generations from David to captivity, from captivity to Jesus another 14 generations about 2,000 years. Those years are filled with Kings, some good, most of them bad. God sent prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and others to tell everyone how much God loves them and wants them to love Him back. Their response?
They were disobedient and rebelled against you [God]; they turned their backs on your law. They killed your prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to you; they committed awful blasphemies. NIV Nehemiah 9:26
These 1,000 years were filled with hard-hearted rebellion, war, idol worship, and tragedy when other countries destroyed the Northern and Southern kingdoms of Israel. The countries took the people away in captivity. Through those years, God was trying to reach out to people to love him back.
Again, stop and think about what is happening. God is frustrated. All God wanted was to love people. He creates a perfect place for people to live. They chose to sin. For over 1,000 years he watches as they make choices to follow sin and do evil. He finally sees someone, Abraham, who loves God. For another 1,000 years, even after God rescues them and places them in the promised land, what do they do? They reject God. Then David came and God finally had someone who loved God with all his heart. For another 1,000 years, even after God blessed David, what did His people do? They kill off God’s prophets and ignore every message God sent them. What I just shared with you is the entire story of the Old Testament.
From God’s point of view, can you see how broken His heart is? He has spent over 4,000 years [the Old Testament] wanting to love His people and have them love Him back and they can’t do it. Their hearts are filled with sin which leads them to do evil. They can’t love Him. They can’t focus on Him. They can’t obey Him. They can’t enjoy Him. So let me ask you. If you were God, what would you have done? You are head of heals in love with people, the people you created, and at every moment they reject you, for over 4,000 years.
Let me read for you what God did. It’s amazing when you see this through the history of 4,000 years.
20 As he [Joseph] lay awake considering this, he fell into a dream, and saw an angel standing beside him. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “don’t hesitate to take Mary as your wife! For the child within her has been conceived by the Holy Spirit. 21 And she will have a Son, and you shall name him Jesus (meaning ‘Savior’), for he will save his people from their sins. 22 This will fulfill God’s message through his prophets – 23 ‘Listen! The virgin shall conceive a child! She shall give birth to a Son, and he shall be called “Emmanuel” (meaning “God is with us”).’” TLB Matthew 1:20
After 4,000 years of rejection, God personally enters earth in the form of an innocent baby. God doesn’t come like a warrior or king to kill, defeat, or get revenge on people. No. He comes as a baby born in a barn. Why? Because sin has forever ruined man’s heart. Sin separates us from God and makes man evil. Sin is the problem. So, God comes to save us, rescue us from that sin. God came once and for all to kill sin. God came to be with us. Do you see why we call Christmas a love story?
Here we are, over 2,000 years after Jesus’ birth. What does all this mean to us? Let’s read the verse we started with today.
Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. MSG Ephesians 1:4
What does Christmas mean? Christmas isn’t just another Holiday. Christmas is the story of God and His love for you. The proof is how God has walked through over 6,000 years of pain and rejection from people, but God didn’t turn away from you. It’s a story of how God saw our struggle with sin and personally did something about it. Christmas is a story of God changing everything. And when you connect with the mystery of Christmas, you find hope in everything, and your life can be deeply impacted.
To close I want to explain how to enter the mystery of Christmas. You and I have sin in our lives. It separates us from God and it turns our hearts evil. Things come out of us that we aren’t proud of. We try to hide it, but sin comes out. Scripture says it shows up when we try to get our way all the time.
It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. MSG Galatians 5:19-21
If you want to be rescued from sin and the damage it creates, if you want to be rescued from sin that separates us from God and turns our hearts evil, you have to surrender your life to God. Why? You can’t do anything about sin. You have no power or ability to do anything about sin. Only God can rescue you from sin and defeat sin in your life. Let’s read.
Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ. MSG Romans 3:23-24
You see that the job is too big for you, that it’s something only God can do, and you trust him to do it – you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked – well, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift. MSG Romans 4:4-5
To surrender simply means I ask God to forgive me of my sins and ask Him to send me the Holy Spirit to live in me. And from this day forward, I chose to be in a relationship with God. To be a Christian, to start a relationship with Jesus means, I take time to read the Bible and pray.
What does Christmas mean to you? How would you answer that?
Maybe you have accepted Jesus as your savior, but Christmas has become another religious Holiday you have to walk through to keep others happy. That’s a sign that something has been stolen from you. The mystery of God has been stolen and you will need to reconnect with Jesus. It could be that you have had to face hard times and those hard times have led you to believe God isn’t with you anymore – that’s real. It could be that you are concerned and worried about the things of this world and it has stolen your focus on God and what He has done – that’s real too.
Maybe you have never asked Jesus to rescue you from sin. And maybe today you want Jesus to be your Lord and Savior and for the first time, enter into the mystery of Christmas. We will close with a prayer to help you, but I want to give you a verse that explains what God does when you fully surrender your life to Him.
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. NIV 2 Corinthians 5:21
That means that the sin stain is gone. You are now filled with the righteousness of God. Sin doesn’t define who you are anymore, God does. Because of what Jesus did, when God sees you, God sees you filled with righteousness.
Please hear me. When you surrender your life and enter into the mystery of Christmas, you should never be insecure about God’s love for you. Of course, you can have moments of doubt but remind yourself of the God story. God walked through 6,000 years of pain and rejection from people, but He never turned His back on you.
Let’s pray. Father, we pray that You would help us enter into the mystery of Christmas. Our hearts are filled with sin, some hearts are wounded, and some hearts are indifferent about You. Father, we need You. We need Your Holy Spirit to do things we can’t do. Father, please forgive us. Father, please heal our wounded hearts. Father, please bring us to life. Today, we fully surrender our lives to You and ask that You send your Holy Spirit to live in us and remind us of God’s love. Help us from this day forward to understand and believe scripture when it says, we are filled with the righteousness of God. Help us see ourselves the way You see us. – In Jesus’ Amen