Christmas Eve Service: God’s Christmas Card

Christmas Eve Service

God’s Christmas Card

Once again, it’s time for Christmas, and one of the things most people do is send Christmas cards via e-mail or regular mail to family and friends. And these cards usually center around Jesus in the manger scene, and the angel’s proclamation of “Peace on earth, good will to men.”

And if I could, once again we’re celebrating Christmas in troublous times, and while we read and say the phrase, “Peace on earth, goodwill to men,” we see very little of it.

• We are still fighting wars on several fronts. We’re fighting a war on the COVID virus. We’re also fighting a cultural war as social unrest is rampant in our nation, and let’s not forget the war on terror that has never gone away.

• We are also fighting battles within our own country with rival gangs and people groups are killing one another, as well as innocent bystanders. Violence is now more of the norm, and is on the uptick in our major cities. And then there is the increased violence within our schools.

• And to top it all off, we are seeing an increase in illnesses and fatal disease, along with natural disasters and famine around the world.

Now, these sorts of pictures really don’t make for good Christmas card photos. And these are not the scenes we think about when we think of Christmas, scenes like chestnuts roasting on an open fire, or Bing Crosby’s “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.”

But maybe we can get a glimpse through these images of what was going on in the world and in the land of Israel on that very first Christmas. The Roman Empire ruthlessly controlled the nation of Israel. Acts of terrorism by religious zealots were commonplace with the Romans retaliating with ruthless savagery. And religion was making rules with severe punishment if broken.

It was to this world that Christmas came, and God broke through a world filled with turmoil.

And it is this same story of Christmas that God breaks through into our world as well. In this world filled with turmoil and chaos, Jesus can break through and bring that same peace promised by the angels into the lives of those who will believe.

In other words, God sends to this earth a Christmas card with the same pictures He’s sent every year since that first Christmas. It is a picture designed to bring hope and peace to all who will embrace it. It is the picture of Jesus’s birth.

And what this picture says is that in the midst of our troubles, trials, and tribulations, we can have the peace and hope God promised through it.

Let’s take a closer look at this wonderful picture.

The first thing that captures our attention is The Star, which represents God’s Direction for our Lives.

It is the light that guided the Magi to the child Jesus. What this star represents is our receiving directions for our lives. This was no ordinary star. It was a divinely commissioned light.

• Maybe you’ve been wondering if anything’s going to change?

• Maybe life isn’t adding up the way you thought it should? and

• Maybe you’re thinking that there’s no such divinely commissioned light for you.

But God has given and commissioned for each person such a light, and it’s just as bright today as it was back then. And that light is the divine light of God’s word, the Bible.

The Psalmist says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” (Psalm 119:105 NKJV)

We need the light of God’s word to help guide us through these troublous times, and as we read it, God’s light will shine in our hearts and in our minds to dispel the darkness and evil that Satan covers our world in.

Next, we see The Stable, which represents Jesus Becoming One of Us

Now, when our eyes move from the star to the stable, the first thing we notice is the inherent inconsistency of the whole thing. Here, God divinely commissioned a heavenly light but couldn’t provide a suite in the Bethlehem Hilton.

But the stable is as divinely commissioned as the star.

What the stable is saying is that Christmas is all about Jesus becoming one of us so that He would know exactly what we go through. The stable is saying that God sent His Son to experience the full force of this sin filled and dominated world in order to defeat it through His death and resurrection.

The writer of Hebrews describes Jesus just this way saying, “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15 NKJV)