We Must Do Our Part

God did His part by giving His Son, the greatest Christmas gift, God’s great gift to the human race. But we must do something. We must humble ourselves. We must admit our sins. We must admit that we’re moral failures and turn to Him by faith. We must say as the publican did, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13). The Scripture says that a broken and a contrite heart God will not despise (Psalm 34:18). If we as individuals and as a nation would humble ourselves and turn from our sins, God has promised forgiveness, healing to the nation, and eternal life to the individual (2 Chronicles 7:14).

This is the good news that the world is morally, psychologically, and spiritually longing for. Some may dismiss it as idiotic and ridiculous that a man dying 2000 years ago could be relevant today. The apostle Paul anticipated we’d say that when he said in 1 Corinthians 1:18 (Phillips Translation),

“The preaching of the cross is, I know, nonsense to those who are involved in this dying world. But to us who are being saved from that death, it’s nothing less than the power of God.”

The Only Cure For Sin
The Bible teaches that the only cure for sin is the blood of Christ on the Cross. Every Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Church celebrates Communion. When we put the juice to our lips, it’s the symbol of the blood that was shed. And one of the most prominent aspects of the worship of ancient Judaism was the shedding of blood to make an atonement for sin. The word blood symbolizes life, a life that was given. Christ became the Lamb of God whose blood was shed, and He died on the Cross for our sins.
The Cross and the resurrection stand today as humanity’s only hope. It was on Good Friday and Easter that God did for us what we could not do for ourselves. From these momentous events, God is saying to sinful man, “I love you. I love you so much I gave My Son.” But He’s saying more than that. He’s saying, “I can forgive you, because of what My Son did on the Cross.” And that is the good news of Christmas!

“They has seen an angel, they repeated. And the angel had told them about a Baby born in Bethlehem and called the Baby ‘Savior’ and ‘Lord.’ They had just seen the Baby with their own eyes — out in the stable behind the inn — and they wanted everyone else to know about it too.
He was a tiny thing, wrapped tightly in a long linen band of cloth and sleeping soundly as any newborn baby. Sleeping as though the world had not waited thousands of years for this moment. As soundly as though your life and my life and the lives of everyone on earth were not wrapped up in His birth.”
 —From This Christmas Night—

Free from the law, O happy condition — Jesus hath bled, and there is remission;
Cursed by the law & bruised by the fall — Grace hath redeemed us once for all.

Now we are free, there’s no condemnation — Jesus provides a perfect salvation;
Come unto Me, O hear His sweet call — Come, and He saves us once for all.

Children of God, O glorious calling — Surely His grace will keep us from falling;
Passing from death to life at His call — Blessed salvation once for all.

Once for all, O sinner, receive it — Once for all, O brother, believe it;
Cling to the cross, the burden will fall — Christ hath redeemed us once for all.

                                -Philip Paul Bliss-

Man — A Paradox

Every time we board an airplane they search our luggage, and they even search our clothes and our bodies. All of this because of terrorism all around the world. And we ask ourselves, “What’s wrong with this world? Why can’t we solve our problems? Why can’t the world find this peace that this Prince of Peace was supposed to bring?”You see, man is actually a paradox. On the one hand there’s futility and sin, on the other hand there’s goodness and kindness and gentleness and love. On the one hand man is a moral failure, and on the other hand he has the capacities that would relate him to Almighty God. No wonder the apostle Paul called this moral failure “the mystery of iniquity” (2 Thessalonians 2:7)

The Bible teaches that the human race is morally sick. This disease has affected every phase of our life in society. The Bible calls this disease by an ugly, 3-letter word: SIN.

“He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”
                                    (Isaiah 53:3-5)

The Cross

The Greatest Transformer

For Christmas to have meaning, it cannot be separated from the Cross. The angel said at the birth of Jesus, “He shall save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21 KJV). Jesus himself said, speaking of His death, “To this end was I born” (John 18:37 KJV). He was the only person that’s ever been born in history who was born with the purpose of dying. The apostle Paul years later said, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”

The central message of Christmas is that Jesus Christ, by His death and resurrection, can transform both individuals and society. Almost everyone at some time or another feels moral guilt and failure. It’s like the little boy who said, “I guess I was born wrong.” Online and in every newspaper and magazine we pick up, and in every newscast that we watch, we see a picture of hate and lust and greed and prejudice and corruption manifested in a thousand ways. And the fact that we have to have police and jails and military forces indicates to us that something is wrong with the human race, and something is radically wrong with human nature.

“Have the same mindset as Christ Jesus; who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross!”        (Philippians 2:5-8) NIV

Once in royal David’s city — Stood a lowly cattle shed,
Where a mother laid her Baby — In a manger for His bed.
Mary was that mother mild — Jesus Christ her little Child.

He came down to earth from Heaven — Who is God and Lord of all,
And His shelter was a stable — And His cradle was a stall;
With the poor and mean, and lowly — Lived on earth our Savior holy.

And our eyes at last shall see Him —Through His own redeeming love;
For that Child so dear and gentle — Is our Lord in Heaven above,
And He leads His children on — To the place where He has gone.

                            -Cecil Francis Alexander, 1848

“Christ came into this world as God’s Ambassador, sent from Heaven to tell us of God’s love.”            -Billy Graham-

“So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.”
                                (Luke 2:16-20) NIV

“May the Christmas morning make us happy to be Thy children, and the Christmas evening bring us to our beds with grateful thoughts, forgiving and forgiven.”
                            -Robert Louis Stevenson-

Christmas is not a myth, not a tradition, not a dream;
 it is a glorious reality!

Have you ever thought about what has happened because Christ came into the world. That baby in the manger of Bethlehem grew up to become our crucified and risen Savior — and the world has never been the same.

Jesus’ compassion has made the world more compassionate. His healing touch has made the world more humanitarian. His selflessness has made the world more self-effacing. Christ drew a rainbow of hope around the shoulders of men and women and gave them something to live for.

If Christ had not come, our world would indeed be a hopeless world. If Christ has not come, our world would be a lost world. There would be no access to God, there would be no atonement for sin, there would be no forgiveness, and there would be no Savior.

Yes, Christ came into the world and made it a better place. And He will do the same for you if you will open your heart & life to Him.

Eternal Impact

The virgin-born baby was God in human form. He humbled Himself, He took the form of a servant, He was made in your likeness and mine, He identified Himself with the problems of the human race. And thus it was that the apostle John wrote, “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, as of the only begotten of the Father.)” (John 1:14 KJV)
In the early days of the 19th century, the world was following, with fear & trembling, the march of Napoleon across Europe. Day after day, they waited with impatience, fo the latest news of the wars. And no one was paying any attention to the babies that were being born. In just one year, lying midway between Trafalgar and Waterloo, there came into the world a host of heroes. During that year of 1809, listen to the list of people who were born that year — when everybody was pre-occupied with the problems of Napoleon: Gladstone was born in Liverpool, England; Alfred Tennyson was born in Somersby, England; Oliver Wendell Holmes was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Frederic Chopin was born in Warsaw, Poland; Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg, Germany; and Abraham Lincoln was born in Hodgenville, Kentucky. But nobody thought about babies. Everybody was thinking about battles.
Yet, over 200 years later, with a truer perspective which the years enable us to command, we can ask ourselves, “Which of the battles of 1809 were more important than the babies of 1809?”

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him, nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
                                    (John 1:1-5) NIV

What a difference the baby born in Bethlehem’s manger 2000 years ago makes to our world today. The educational systems He has inspired, the social reforms that His teachings have instituted, & the transformation of families and lives that have come about as a result of His birth! The whole world was thinking about Rome & Caesar, but in God’s eternal plan, He was thinking of a baby in a manger in the tiny little town of Bethlehem.

A tiny secluded manger, with its sweet-smelling straw and its lowing cattle, comprised the homely stage upon which the most striking and significant drama of the centuries was enacted. It was there that God, in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ, became identified with man. In meekness and humility, He came to earth as the Prince of Peace.

 Christmas is a time of miracles. The angelic chorus, lowly shepherds, a humble manger as the birthplace of deity — all are miraculous happenings!
                            -Kenneth W. Osbeck-

    Away in a manger, no crib for a bed,
    the Little lord Jesus laid down his sweet head;
    The stars in the sky looked down where He lay,
    the little Lord Jesus, asleep on the hay.

    The cattle are lowing; the Baby awakes,
    but little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes;
    I love Thee, Lord Jesus! Look down from the sky,
    and stay by my cradle till morning is nigh.

    Be near me, Lord Jesus, I ask Thee to stay
    close by me forever, and love me, I pray;
    bless all the dear children in Thy tender care,
    and fit us for heaven, to live with Thee there.

                    -John Thomas McFarland, 1851-1913

THE CRADLE
God Visited Earth
On that first Christmas night, the Bible tells us about the angel coming to those fearful shepherds and saying, “Fear not, I bring you good news.” What is the real meaning of that good news?
During World War II, many a mother would take her son and try to keep the memory of the father who was away at war in the memory of that boy. One mother I heard about took her son every day into the bedroom and showed him a large portrait of the father who was away. One day, the little boy said to his mother, “Mom, wouldn’t it be great if Dad could just step out of that frame?”
That’s exactly what happened that first Christmas. For centuries, man has looked into the heavens longing for god to step out of the frame, and at Bethlehem, that’s exactly what God did. Incredible and unbelievable as it may appear to a modern person, the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ was a visitor from Heaven itself. He was God Incarnate.

“And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today, in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger’.”                    (Luke 2:8-12) NIV

Those were no ordinary sheep . . . No common flocks, huddled in sleep among the fields, the layered rocks, near Bethlehem That Night; but those selected for the Temple sacrifice: theirs to atone for sins they had not done. How right the angels should appear to them That Night.
Those were no usual shepherds there, but outcast shepherds whose unusual care of special sheep made it impossible to keep Rabbinic law, which therefore banned them. How right the angels should appear to them That Night.
-From Ruth Bell Graham’s Collected Poems-

Hey Church Family!
Several years ago, I read a couple of devotional books about Christmas written by Billy & Ruth Graham. They were very meaningful to me throughout that Christmas season and I believe they would be meaningful to you as well. With permission, I’m going to share some of those thoughts from those devotionals with you during this Christmas season. These devotionals will start tomorrow and end up on Christmas Eve. I pray that they will touch your heart and help you focus on the true meaning of this Christmas season.

In the midst of all the upheaval and crisis and difficulty and problems and fear that is a part of our lives and country during this Covid pandemic, comes the message of Christmas with all of its hope, goodwill, and cheer. The message of Christmas has been terribly misapplied and misunderstood for many years, especially in this country. Most people think of business profits, shopping, gifts, tinsel, toys, and celebration. Others think only of Bethlehem, of the star in the sky, shepherds in the field and angels singing. Still others cynically ask, “Where is this Prince of Peace in this world filled with so much turmoil and trouble?”

The real Christmas message goes far deeper. It heralds the entrance of God into human history. It is heaven descending to earth. It is as though a trumpeter had taken his stand upon the turrets of time and announced to a despairing, hopeless, and frustrated world the coming of the Prince of Peace. It answers all the great questions that plague the human race at this particular hour and time of history. Even during these troubling times, the Christmas message is relevant, revolutionary, and reassuring to us. That message can be summed up in three words:
A Cradle, a Cross, and a Crown.