Christmas

If you are someone that likes to philosophize and argue and debate and think deeply, always around Christmas, and if you have people like that around you, always around Christmas, I find that Christians love to debate whether we as Christians should celebrate Christmas or not. We start questioning whether it's worth doing and there are arguments like Christmas: well, we share it with an ever-increasing secular Christmas all around us. We have to deal with the Santa Claus that was designed by the Coca-Cola Company a hundred years ago. We have to deal with the Christmas date that was set hundreds of years after Christ by a Roman emperor.

We have to combat the pagan worship of the winter solstice date that we were given at that time. People say we can't accept Christmas because it's not commanded of us to celebrate it as Christians in the Bible. We have to deal with the Christmas tree, whether that is a Christian symbol or not. And we have to deal with or answer the questions: why do we give gifts and so forth. And all of these things can be so overwhelming that it might drive us to despair and we may think, well, maybe it's not worth celebrating Christmas.

Maybe there is truth to this. Maybe the whole thing is rubbish. I'm not going to be arguing this morning for any of these traditional or even sentimental things, but there is a significance, I believe, for us to be celebrating and stopping in the middle of our week to celebrate the story, the message of Christmas. And I would argue that the early church, in fact, did remember and celebrate Christmas. They didn't call it Christmas, but the writers of the gospels remembered the time when Jesus came to earth and they thought it was important enough that other disciples like them should remember it too.

We often listen to and reflect on the details of the accounts of Matthew and Luke about the shepherds and about the wise men. We hear about the manger. We hear about the unusual star. We hear about the surprise of the virgin birth. There's another account of the birth and the coming of Jesus in the Gospel of John.

And it talks about the same things; it talks about the time of Christmas, but it does so in a profoundly spiritual way. We've already read some of those words that Rob led for us, but I want us to look at the opening statements this morning of John's gospel and see what he focused on as he remembered the coming of Christ at Christmas. And the main thing that he wants to communicate is the incarnation of Christ. Firstly, the apostle John, we see, avoids all of the things that we may have come to associate with Christmas. All the human stories that peak our interest.

He prefers to draw larger, significant, spiritual, theological lines when he paints the picture of God coming to be with us. He says, just in case you got lost in all the details of that event, of shepherds and angels and babies, he says, hear this: God has come to be with us. God has come to be with us. For John, the incarnation is a word that means enfleshening, God taking on flesh. For John, it's the most important aspect of the Christian message. And it's been the case that in every century of the church, in every century, the church has had to deal with Christians who claim that they are Christians while denying the deity, the divinity of Christ.

We may know them as Jehovah's Witnesses today. In the year 325, they were known as the Arians. And the Council of Nicaea in 325 got the whole church, the whole worldwide church, together, sent delegates from these various churches and places, and brought them all together to make a final, ultimate declaration of their faith. In opposition to this heresy, hundreds of theologians and pastors declared that Jesus is begotten, not made. That His divine nature is of the same essence as the Father.

In other words, Christ is not merely similar to deity. He is deity. But we see that even in John's time, he was having to explain this. In majestic words, the apostle John writes about Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, who he says in verse one, was the Word, but that Word was God. In Greek philosophy, the logos, which is this word for word, was brought about, was used as an abstract concept to explain how the world existed in harmony and in logic.

Here was John saying the logos, however, was not an abstract force. He was a person summed up in Christ. But the majesty of John's opening to his gospel continues and speaks of that Christmas night that we reflect on this morning. The night that Jesus was born by saying in John 1:9, the true light that gives light to every man, every person, was coming into the world. The true light that gives light to every person was coming into the world.

There was an artist who was once painting a beautiful winter scene. As he began to paint, the scene came to life on the canvas and it was a picture of a snow-covered ground and pine trees all around. The artist had brought the day to a close and night was falling on the canvas. The entire scene was covered by a darkening twilight. A small, grim log cabin was barely visible in the shadows of the trees, but then, subtly, the artist dipped his brush in the yellow paint of his palette and with a few strokes placed a candle in the window.

As he finished the painting, the gold rays of the lamp of the candle reflected happily on the fresh snow. And that single light changed the whole outlook of that painting, taking a gloomy, chilly night and transforming it into a warm, secure scene. When the Son of God, Jesus Christ, came, He entered a dark and grim world. We sung it today. We sung it at our Christmas carols, a world in error pining, in sin and error pining.

Hope came along with Jesus that day. And the light that gives light to every man had come. But John goes further, however, and he sums up the irony of this event as well in verse 10. He says, He was in the world and though the world had been made through Him, the world did not recognise Him. He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him.

And as we see again in Matthew and Luke, the story of Jesus was not an entirely happy one. It was one fraught with danger. He came into a scene where He was rejected immediately, where He was questioned immediately, and He was hunted down. Matthew and Luke tell of Herod the Great's welcome to the newborn King. His paranoia, his lust for power, led him to kill all the male babies in Bethlehem at the time because he had heard a prophecy of a King of the Jews coming, being born in Bethlehem.

And even as we sit here this morning, we have friends and family that aren't here with us this morning. We have friends and family who don't bow the knee to this King. Though our friends were made by Him, though they see a world created by His powerful hand, they don't recognise Him or bow the knee to Him. I want to encourage you this morning, spend some time praying for these friends and family. Spend some time sharing with them the hope that you have in Jesus Christ.

John goes on to say, however, in verse 12, yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God. Children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision, or a husband's will, but children born of God. The wonderful promise that gives the light, that gives peace, that gives joy this morning is that those who have received Him, those who have called Him God and Saviour, who believe in His name, they will be called; they will be given the right to be reborn as children of God. Moreover, to those who believe that Jesus has come from God, that He came not just from God but to redeem us, the same royal lineage of Jesus is given to us as we become co-heirs with Christ. Jesus did not come to remain a baby. He came to grow up, to die on a cross, suffering the wrath of God on our behalf.

He came to suffer and offer for us new life, a life that hasn't been given to us by natural descent because our Christians that were parents, because our tradition is so good. He came to offer us life by God's will, by God's love, by God's mercy. And so now, having believed and laid down our broken lives to Him, we are offered the right to become sons and daughters of the living God and to find satisfaction, this satisfaction that our hearts, that our souls have longed for. To finally have a life that makes sense. As Christians, we believe that Christmas not only signifies the birth of Jesus, but the birth of every person who would receive Him as King.

That is the hope of Christmas. To all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God. But, secondly, God chose us to be born to Him. This is the great joy. He is our Father in as much, or in a much closer way, than we sometimes realise.

We sometimes, or often, are called to speak to God as our Father, but very seldomly do we realise that this is true in a very intimate way. He is a real father. Verse 13 in John 1 says that we are born of God. Now that is a very significant word. Again, if you have to scratch, you find that the word there is gennao, the Greek word which means begotten.

It is the same word that is used of Jesus here. That Jesus is the one and only Son of God. Jesus is God's only begotten Son, older Bible translations will say. And the promise is that we are begotten by God. In this, we become children of God.

Now, certainly John is not saying that we are in the same sonship as Jesus Christ. But there is an intimacy here that John is alluding to that is staggering for us to understand. We are not simply God's children because He created us, because we've come to life physically because of Him. We are God's children because we have been born again. And He says, more than this, we have become; we have received the right to become children of God. The word "the right" in Greek means privilege and authority.

To put it into other words, it means that all those who have become Christians, you are truly family with God. You are so much His family that if God was to have a Christmas lunch today, you wouldn't need an invite. You would be expected to be at the table. That is how much of a son and a daughter you are this morning. You get to celebrate Christmas with a Christmas ham at God's right hand.

The apostle Paul sums this up in Galatians 4:4-7. He says, but when the time had fully come, in God's perfect timing, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under law to redeem those under that law that we might receive the full rights of sons. What a promise that is. Because Jesus came and because of His work on the cross, that has given us the right to call God Father. But then verse 8 in Galatians 4 says this: God went further still and He sent the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of the Son, into our hearts so that our desire to have God as our Father will not even be dependent on us, but our desires have been fulfilled, have been taken over by the Spirit of the Son who will call out from us, from within us, Abba, Father.

So not only are we forced this morning to try and scrounging up enough joyful sentiment to say Father God this morning, the promise is this morning that the Spirit working in your heart will make you alive, will make you find satisfaction and joy this morning, that God is your Father. What a gift that is this Christmas to be reminded of. But finally, I also want to say that it's not enough for us at Christmas to remember that Christ came. It is not enough for us to remember that He was born a King if we do not bow low before this King. Accept His gift in the way that it should be received.

If we do not enter the kingdom, if we do not leave the kingdom of our making, if we do not recognise the gloominess of the canvas of our lives and enter into that warm cabin, that warm, safe place, which is the kingdom of Jesus, Christmas would be meaningless for me. It would be meaningless for you. Unless I personally establish Christ as the conqueror who needed to come for my sin, Christmas will be meaningless. It means nothing that Jesus came. It has no meaning unless I personally open my heart to Christ to crown Him the King of my life, to confess Him the Lord, to confess Him the sovereign master and the ruler of my heart.

So I pray this week, not just today because today will be full of celebration and happiness and joy, but this week to go and remember, to go and pray, to go and see God for the ones in your life, the ones sitting in your home this week, that Christ born a King on Christmas day, that He might be the King of their life, that He might be the King of your life more and more. That we may bow the knee and seek forgiveness for the area of our life where He is not yet King, to seek mercy from the gracious King, that we might seek to dwell in His glorious kingdom and experience the blessings of all that He bestows upon those who look to Him. Let's do that this Christmas and this week. Celebrate hard. Enjoy it.

But celebrate because He has come for us, God in flesh. Let's pray. We thank You, Father, that we have been given the right, the authority, to be children of You and co-heirs with Jesus. We thank You, Jesus, that You did not consider equality with the Father something to be grasped, but that You poured Yourself out to become a human being on Christmas day. Thank You, though, that even though You are a King, You offer us co-ownership in Your kingdom.

That every victory You win for the kingdom, You win for us too. Thank You that today we remember that we are sons and daughters of God, our Father, and that we may sit at His table because Jesus Christ came and won us back to You. Through Jesus' powerful ministry and His coming this morning and in His precious name we pray. Amen.