Christmas
What do you think of when you think of Christmas? Lights, trees in your house, wreaths, gifts, meals, family time?
We traditionally have all these symbols at Christmas and spend gads of money so we can buy gifts the recipients don’t really need and we could give to them all year long without a holiday.
To the kids it’s Santa and the reindeer, school vacation and excitement on Christmas Eve to see what kind of haul they will get this time.
To some it’s a culmination of a year’s worth of shopping and hiding for the big day.
How many think of what Christmas really is? You don’t get gifts when you tell the story of God made flesh and born of a virgin, come to earth to save us from our sins and eternal spiritual death. But if you believe it and accept Jesus as the Messiah you get the Greatest Gift of all: eternal life and fellowship with God Himself.
Christmas and Easter are so holy we actually celebrate both in Christian churches of any denomination.
Some people think they have never sinned, but fail to understand that when Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden fruit they passed along a gene in every person’s DNA that was labeled “Sin and Eternal Spiritual Death”. Every person except for One.
Today it’s trendy to say anything to do with the Bible is fiction written over 2,000 years ago and not applicable today and certainly not proven science.
It’s strange, though, that when one studies the Bible he or she can follow the thread from the Old Testament prophesying the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ to the New Testament showing exactly how it all came about just as the prophets wrote.
Just as the mother of Moses hid her son so he wouldn’t be killed by Pharoah’s men, so did Joseph and Mary flee to Egypt to escape the death sentence placed on the heads of all boys under the age of two by Herod, who was afraid this King of the Jews was going to take his throne.
We think of Mary and Joseph as being homeless and Jesus being born homeless when that is not the case at all. They had a home in Nazareth, but a decree went out by Caesar Augustus that all men would return to the city of their birth and register and pay taxes. It was on this trip that Mary gave birth. They were homeless only in the sense that all the hotel rooms were full and they took refuge in a kind man’s stable, where she gave birth to the King of Kings.
Everything the prophets wrote about Jesus came true down to the tiniest detail.
Isaiah wrote that He went as a lamb to his shearers and spoke not a word when accused. He wrote that by His stripes we are healed.
He did have stripes on His body, you know. It wasn’t the sanitized version of crucifixion we have always imagined until we actually saw a depiction of it in “The Passion of the Christ”.
Yes, I knew He was beaten, I knew He had a crown of thorns placed upon His head, I knew He willingly lay down and had the nails put through His feet and wrists (it had to be the wrists or the hands would have torn and defeated the purpose of execution), I knew He gave the care of His mother to John, and I knew He cried out when the Father turned His back on Him as He became sin for you and for me. I just never imagined how extremely horrible it was. But, remember, He came down off that cross and went to the grave but only for three days. He lives even now!
Good Friday and Easter are the reasons we celebrate Christmas. It was to die and rise again that He stepped into space and time. He committed no sin, but became our sin that we might have the fellowship with God the way He intended it before Satan successfully tempted Eve.
Yes, by His stripes we are healed and by His blood we are sealed—forever if we just accept Him on His terms as a child would do. Accept by faith He is the One and only begotten Son of the One and only God Who died that we might have eternal life and fellowship with this God Who loves us so much He gave His most precious Only Begotten Son because He was the only Perfect Lamb Who could take away the sins of the world.
You can’t reason God; you have to believe as a child believes, only this isn’t a fairy tale and the consequences of not believing are eternal.
I honestly believe that when He was on that cross He looked down through the ages and saw you and me as individuals. Why couldn’t He? He’s God.
So enjoy the gifts and relax from the shopping and just think of what Christmas and its companion holy day are all about, because without one we couldn’t have the other, and without either we would be eternally separated from God.
We don’t deserve His love and we still sin because we are human, but our goal is to accept Him as our savior and try to walk in His footsteps. We won’t completely succeed until we are physically with Him for eternity, but it’s so much better than believing everyone who doesn’t believe will have their heads lopped off. That’s only physical, and what He offers is spiritual.
For some strange reason some people, most people, will not choose Jesus over Satan and will be doomed to eternity in Hell, where the physical punishment won’t be as bad as the mental anguish of knowing they could have prevented it and could have had fellowship with God. They will see those they loved in Heaven while those they loved will not be able to see or remember them.
This is because God gave us all free choice to decide for ourselves. It’s not what He wants and the Bible says that one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the Glory of God. For some that confession will come too late.
I wish you all a Happy Birthday to Christ, the Messiah still rejected by His own people. One day, soon I hope, they will see He is the King God promised them, and you will too if you haven’t already.
Written by ~J~
Truman Says:
December 19th, 2007 at 10:28 pmVisit Truman
J - you must have been reading my mind. I have a post you’re going to like.