What If At Christmas Time

What If

Psalm 14:1-7 John 3:16-21

What if there was only one God at Christmas instead of two, would it change the way that we view Christmas. Would it change the way that we view God? Would it change the way that we view ourselves. Throughout time, God has had a very difficult time convincing us that that there is but one God, and He is that one God. But we are forever attempting create more gods. Gods who serve our purposes and desires. Gods who are created to make us feel good about ourselves.

At Christmas, the world has given to us a god who is a happy, loving, generous and jolly old fellow. He keeps watch over everyone with the single task of keeping a record of who does good and who does bad, whose being naughty and whose been nice. He wants to make people happy, especially the good people.

This God is everywhere at the same time for one single day of the year, then after that he retires into the heavens until next year. People around the world pray to him. With this god, you can believe what you want to believe and do what you want to do, until the month of December. Only then must your mind and your life must focus in on being good. Calvin in the Calvin and Hobbs cartoon has not thrown a snowball at anyone for two weeks in anticipation of Christmas morning, but after Christmas, you better not turn your back on him.

You only have to do it long enough until you’ve fooled him long enough to get what you want on the big day. After the presents have arrived, you can do as you please and before the week is over you can go back to your own old selfish ways once again.

Many think about this god the season has given to us and say, what a wonderful god who is just and fair. The good get the gifts and the bad don’t. You can earn the size gift you want by making sure your good outweighs your bad. What if we took a closer look at this god. We would see the pain he inflicts on the poor, who not matter how good they are, they don’t manage to get close the kinds of gifts that are given to the bad of the rich. We would see a god that leaves behind a mountain of debt for people who can’t afford it. We would see a god that does not speak, does not hear, and does not move, but gets the credit for the hard work that others have done.

We would see a god that has given people a false sense of hope, in that if you believe hard enough something is going to happen. Truth is not determined by hard we believe something, but rather in the truth of what we believe. We would see a god that has shaped people thinking about the true God, in that they believe, if they do more good things than bad things, they will be accepted and eventually given the gift of heaven. We would see a god whose only interests was in giving us things, not changing our character, removing our sin, our providing us with strength in the times of difficulty. What if we got rid of this god? How would it change us and the way we view Christmas. We just might come to realize that we need more than a once a year God. We need a greater power than someone we can demand send us gifts because we’ve been good. We might see that a god who can give presents, but no direction, no wisdom, no power to change the lives we live, isn’t that much of a god after all. All gods that we create full short of the one true God.

What if the bible is true in what it has to say about the other God. What if there truly is another God involved at Christmas. A God that is not motivated by the desire to simply give us gifts and make us happy at Christmas time. In fact, this God sees that because of the danger we were in, all the gifts in the world will fail us, and none of us can be good enough to do anything about it. This God looks at us and loves us, because this God has created us. He knows who we truly are inside.

This God created us to be in fellowship with Him, not just one day of the year, but every day of our lives. There is a problem though. This God is holy and pure. God cannot stand evil. Each time we disobey the laws of God, we do evil or we sin. God is forever going to be holy, and no evil will ever be able to stand in the presence of God. Unlike that other god that sees some people as good people and others as bad people, God says no. All people have done wrong which makes them all bad in need of some help.