Can you believe it? It seems like yesterday that we were in the advent season. For those that may not know what Advent is, Advent is the 4 Sundays after Thanksgiving that lead up to Christmas day. This year there are actually 5 Sundays between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. So, our Advent season will lead us to Christmas Eve. Our choir will be performing our Christmas music that Christmas Eve morning that they have diligently been practicing.
Advent is defined as the arrival of a notable thing, event, or person. For us as Christians, we celebrate all three. The THING we celebrate is the joyous adventure we are on that leads to something exciting. The EVENT we celebrate is Christmas Day, the birthday of a special person. And the PERSON we celebrate is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
It is a special time of year where our hearts are usually a little more joyous, hopefully. If we don’t allow the hustle and bustle of the world’s hectic race to find the perfect gift, and if we step back and look at the real reason we celebrate, our hearts are happier. We smile more. Hopefully we get a little bit closer to those we love, not always, but we can hope for that.
And that is our subject for today’s message. The Hope of Christmas. PRAYER
**********
Christmas is a time of celebration. Even those who don’tt believe in the birth of Jesus still take the time to enjoy themselves at Christmas. They might not celebrate Christmas for the same reason that Christians do, but the world celebrates.
Even Jewish families celebrate Christmas. One man who was born into a Jewish family tells his story. He said, “Even though they were Jewish, they always celebrated Christmas.” He says, “We had a Christmas Tree, we had Christmas Decorations, we sent and received Christmas Cards, we ate Christmas Dinner and we got Christmas Gifts.
But my parents never mentioned the real reason for Christmas. Growing up, as far as I was concerned, Jesus was no more than a picture of a baby on a Christmas Card. Christmas was a celebration of Santa Claus, not the birth of Christ. I was a Jew, I was waiting for the Messiah to come, no one thought to tell me He had already come. No one told me that the Savior of the World had been born and that Christmas was a celebration of His birth, His birthday. Although Christmas was full of celebration it was empty of any association with Christ Jesus.”
Sadly, that is a fact for so many in the world today, they experience a Christmas without Christ. They may have a very happy Christmas by the worlds standards but don’t understand the real reason for the season. And so, today, I not only want to talk about the Hope of Christmas, I want to share some other aspects of Christmas that I feel are extremely important if we really want to take in every minute of this Advent season.
The first thing I want to mention is The Reality of Christmas. Maybe it would be a good thing for all of us to come back to reality. Speaking of coming back to reality;
The story is told of three men who began talking one day about their wives. The first man said, "When we got married, I told my wife in no uncertain terms that from now on she would have to do all the cooking. Well, the first day after I told her, I saw nothing. The second day I saw nothing. But on the third day when I came home from work, the table was set, a wonderful dinner was prepared...and there was even dessert."
The second man spoke up, "I sat my wife down and told her that from now on she would have to do all the shopping, and also do all the cleaning. The first day I saw nothing. The second day I saw nothing. But on the third day when I came home, the whole house was spotless, and in the pantry the shelves were filled with groceries."
The third man sat up straight, pushed out his chest and said: "I gave my wife a stern look and told her that from now on she would have to do all the cooking, shopping, and housecleaning. Well, the first day I saw nothing. The second day I still saw nothing. But on the third day I could see a little bit out of my left eye."
********
More than anyone, we, as Christians need to know that the reality of Christmas is that Christ has come, the Messiah has been born. Jesus stepped out of eternity and into the form of a human baby. Emmanuel, God with us. God has come.
Christ has come. At the right time, as God planned, Christ came. Church tradition says we remember the birth of Christ on the 25th of December. But the reality is Jesus was probably born in March or April - neither shepherds or their sheep would have been out in the fields in the deep mid-winter. The actual specific day and date of the birth of Jesus are not important, though. What is important is that we believe His birth really happened.
I have to ask you, “Do you really and truly believe that Jesus was really born of a virgin girl named Mary? Do you really believe that Jesus was an actual baby that was laid in a manger at His birth?
If you are not sure of that, let me tell you that on an actual day and date that is lost to history, The Reality of Christmas actually took place. Whether it was in the bleak mid-winter or in spring or during the heat of summer or during autumn, Christ was born. We know it was in the evening, we know it was in Bethlehem, and we know it happened in the stable where the animals were kept. That is where the Son of God was born.
As a Christian, we each need to realize and believe that The Reality of Christmas happened, not in a palace or a hospital or where anyone writing a story would have used for a suitable birthplace.
The Reality of Christmas took place in a dirty, smelly stable. That stable might have possibly been a cave or a cut out in the mountainside. You know there is an important message in this. This should remind us all that no place is too common for Jesus, no circumstance is beneath Him. And in all of this, our hope lies. That’s why HOPE is an important part of the Advent season. Let’s talk a bit about this HOPE of Christmas. What’s the difference between hoping for something and wishing for something. It’s like the way author Eugene Peterson explained the difference between hoping for something and wishing for something.
In his book Living the Message: Daily Help for Living the God-Centered Life, he points out that what a lot of people call hope is in reality something different. It's wishing, not hoping: and wishing and hoping are not the same thing.
"Wishing," Peterson says, "is something all of us do. It projects what we want or think we need into the future. Just because we wish for something good or holy, we think it qualifies as hope. It does not. Wishing extends our egos into the future; hope grows out of our faith. Hope is oriented toward what God is doing; wishing is oriented toward what we are doing."
He goes on to say that we can picture wishing (Pic 1) as though it were a line coming out from us with an arrow on the end, pointing into the future, pointing toward that thing we most want to possess. Hope is just the opposite. (Pic 2) It's a line that comes from God out of the future, with its arrow pointing toward us.
"Hope," he continues, "means being surprised, because we don't know what is best for us or how our lives are going to be completed. To cultivate hope is to suppress wishing -- to refuse to fantasize about what we want, but live in anticipation of what God is going to do next."
Maybe the first Christmas was very different from what Mary had hoped for. The journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem was not an easy one, even for a person in peek physical fitness it could take its toll. For a woman who was nine months pregnant that journey would have been a nightmare.
Maybe Mary had hoped Joseph would have been able to find them somewhere nice for them to stay when they reached Bethlehem.
Maybe she had hoped there would be someone to assist in the birth.
Maybe she had hoped for a comfortable bed rather than a bed of straw.
Whatever Mary had hoped for I’m sure the moment Jesus was born, Mary knew Jesus was worth everything she had endured. And so, during this Advent season, we sing of this miraculous birth.
Listen to the opening words of the Christmas carol by Philip Brooks:
O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight. Those words could have been the prayer and praise in Mary’s heart that night.
The Hope of Christmas shows us that we can place our hope and faith and trust in God. Do you need to be reminded of this? I think sometimes we do need to be reminded.
Remember Romans 8:28 tells us,
Romans 8:28 – “God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose for them.”
When Christ was born, so was our hope. Because Christ came, God is always near us. He is always for us and always in us. Jesus understands what you feel and He knows what you face. We have a hope that’s steadfast and certain, God can use times of difficulty and struggles in our lives to accomplish His will and purpose.
The certain hope of Christmas is that God has sent His only Son, Jesus, to bear our burdens and save us from your sins. And that, my friends, is a miracle in and of itself. So, let’s talk a bit about The Miracle of Christmas.
The Miracle of Christmas is that Jesus was born to save us from our sins.
Romans 3:22-24 says: “We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.”
The Miracle of Christmas means we have a Savior. The Miracle of Christmas is the free gift of salvation to all who accept Jesus as Lord and Savior.
The Miracle of Christmas is Jesus entered the world to save you from your sins. So,
The Reality of Christmas is the Savior has come.
The Certain Hope of Christmas is the Savior has come.
The Miracle of Christmas is the Savior has come.
God has shown His love for you by sending His only Son Jesus to take away your sins. All who trust in Jesus have been saved from the guilt of our sin, we have been saved from the punishment for sin.
1 John 4:10 reminds us: “This is real love—not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.”
The baby Jesus grew to be the man who became the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Jesus took the punishment for our sin. In His death on the cross, He endured what we should have endured, He paid the ultimate price to save us.
Romans 5:6 says: “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.”
1 Peter 3:18 says: “Christ suffered for our sins once for all time. He never sinned, but He died for sinners to bring you safely home to God. He suffered physical death, but He was raised to life in the Spirit.”
The Message of Christmas is our Savior has come. We have a Savior, whose body was broken and His blood was shed for the forgiveness of our sins.
Jesus was born to die in your place, in my place. Jesus paid the penalty so that our sins could be forgiven. Jesus conquered death, He rose from the grave, and in Him and Him alone we have the promise of eternal life and peace with God.
And so, we put forth an effort today and in the coming weeks, to look forward in anticipation of the coming of the Savior of the world. Our Hope lies in Jesus Christ.
