The Reason For The Season

Introduction A little boy and girl were singing their favorite Christmas carol in church the Sunday before Christmas. The boy concluded "Silent Night" with the words, "Sleep in heavenly beans." "No," his sister corrected, "not beans, peas." Just as the little children in this story misunderstood the words to the song they were singing, sometimes people misunderstand the reason behind the season we are now celebrating. Dave Barry writes in Notes On Western Civilization: To avoid offending anybody, the school dropped religion altogether and started singing about the weather. At my son’s school, they now hold the winter program in February and sing increasingly non-memorable songs such as "Winter Wonderland," "Frosty the Snowman" and--this is a real song--"Suzy Snowflake," all of which is pretty funny because we live in Miami. A visitor from another planet would assume that the children belonged to the Church of Meteorology. This may seem out of the ordinary but unfortunately it’s becoming all too common, in some places people are even being forced to go to Court just to have the right to put up a nativity in a public place along with other Christmas decorations. Laura Greska, a student tin Massachusetts was told that she could not bring a pop-up book called The First Christmas to school for sharing time. The book contained the Christmas story. Other children in the class were allowed to read stories about Santa Claus, Hanukkah, and the African tradition of Kwanzaa. And it was just announced this last Thursday that a high school in Kirkland Washington had censored the play A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, a production they had done for the last 20 years. The rationale given for the censorship is that the last line of the play by Tiny Tim is “too religious.” The famous line says, “God bless us, every one.”

Background: When Pope Julius I authorized December 25 to be celebrated as the birthday of Jesus in A.D. 353, who would have ever thought that it would become what it is today. When Professor Charles Follen lit candles on the first Christmas tree in America in 1832, who would have ever thought that the decorations would become as elaborate as they are today. It’s been a long time since 1832, longer still from 353, longer still from that dark night brightened by a special star in which Jesus the king was born. Yet, as we approach December 25 again, it gives us yet another opportunity to pause, and in the midst of all the excitement and elaborate decorations and expensive commercialization which surrounds Christmas, to consider again the event of Christmas and the person whose birth we celebrate. Today in this world we often overlook the true reason for the Christmas season. This morning we are going to take a look at the true reason for the season.


Proposition: Today in this world we often overlook the true reason for the Christmas season. This morning we are going to take a look at the true reason for the season.

Transition: This morning as we conclude our Christmas series we are going to look at three reasons for this Christmas season, three reasons why Jesus came to live among us. The first of these that we are going to look at this morning is that Jesus came…

I. JESUS CAME TO BRING PEACE

a.The concept of peace by itself is a grand idea

- All one had to do is look at the world around us to see the lack