Jesus Is The Reason For The Season (December 2001)

JESUS IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON

Text: Luke 2:4-7

People have always searched for the meaning of life in order to fill some void that they feel. Some try to fill that void with material things. Others try to fill that void by trying to gain power so as to prove their importance when the truth of the matter is that they are trying to evade their feelings of insecurity. There are others who feel an emptiness inside that they try to escape from their pain through drugs, alcohol or immoral behavior.

Shakespeare once said that life was "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Just as words mean nothing to someone who is functionally illiterate, life "signifies" nothing if we are spiritually illiterate. Jesus came to teach us how to read about the significant things about life. He came to teach us about where and how we are illiterate about life's significance. And unless we learn from Him, we remain illiterate without learning why.

On July 14, 1789, Jean Lenoir, a cobbler living in an obscure side street in Paris, wrote in his diary: "Nothing of importance happened today." Just a short distance away was the Bastille, and on that very day a mob has stormed it. they killed the troops, freed the prisoners, destroyed the building, and started the French Revolution. That event changed the whole course of life in France." (Charles M. Crowe. Sermons For Special Days. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1951, p. 162).

Sometimes we are guilty of celebrating Christmas as if it was "nothing important." We are sometimes so near Christmas as a holiday with festivalism and commercialism while we are so far away in heart from our Savior who was born in Bethlehem almost 2000 years ago.

Christmas is more than just a holiday to celebrate the break we get from work or school. Christmas is a time to celebrate; a time to proclaim; a time to demonstrate (C. W. Keiningham. Year 'Round Sermon Outlines. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987, p. 47).

CHRISTMAS IS A CELEBRATION

Every year we celebrate Jesus's birthday.

We make a big deal about the birthdays of Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Why then can we not make a bigger deal out of Christ's birthday which is far more important? We celebrate Christmas while we sometimes slight the fact that it is Christ's birthday. When we do that, it appears as if we have taken Christ out of Christmas.

Years ago, I attended Sunday School at my home church, prior to entering the ministry. I was regular in attendance and often enjoyed the lessons. However, there is one lesson that still stands out in my mind to this day. That is a point that Jim Ransom, then teacher made about the substition that we sometimes see as Merry Christmas is often substituted with Merry Xmas. Mr. Ransom madethe point from some that literature that he read that some made the substitution in such a way as to take Christ out of Christmas. However, though some may try to substitute the X for Christ so as to "x" His name out. They fail, because the X is a Christian symbol that is known as St. Andrew's cross. Whether people use it in that fashion or not, one thing is certain. You cannot take Christ out of Christmas.

"When we put Christ into Christmas, our hearts are revived by a renewed sense of the divine at the heart of life" (Crowe p. 163).

"On February 24, 1948, one of the most unusual operations in medical history took place in Ohio State University's department of research surgery. A stony sheath was removed from around the heart of Harry Besharra, a man thirty years of age. When only a boy he had been shot accidentally by a playmate with a .22-caliber rifle. The bullet had lodged in his heart but had not caused his death. However, a lime deposit had begun to form over the protective covering of the heart and gradually was strangling it. The operation was a delicate one separating the ribs and moving the left lung to one side. Then the stony coating was lifted form the heart as an orange is peeled. Immediately the pressure of the heart was reduced, and it responded by expanding and pumping noramlly. "I feel a thousand per cent better already," said the patient soon after the operation.

"There is a parable of life here. Our hearts develop a hard protective coating because of accidents and incidents in life. They are coated by the deposits of a thousand deceits and rebuffs. They are hardened by the pressure of circumstance. Inevitably they become smothered and insensitive to the divine. Ever so easily we find it easier to sneer than to pray. It becomes simpler to work than to worship. Self-satisfied, proud, often cynical, our hearts need a spiritual operation that only Christmas can perform when we dare to surrender our hearts' burden before the cradle of Bethlehem" (Crowe p. 163).