Introduction:
A. There’s a story told of a middle-aged woman who had a heart attack and was taken to the hospital.
1. While on the operating table she had a near death experience.
2. During that experience she saw God and asked Him if this was it for her, was she dead.
3. God said no and explained that she has another 30 years to live.
4. Well, after her recovery she decided to just stay in the hospital and have a face lift, liposuction, and a tummy tuck. She also had a hairstylist come to the hospital and change her hair color and style.
5. She figured that since she’s got another 30 years she might as well make the most of it.
6. When she had recovered from all of this work, she walked out of the hospital and was run over by a car racing by.
7. When she arrived in heaven, the woman approached God and said, “I thought you said I had another 30 years to live!”
8. God replied, “I’m sorry, I just didn’t recognize you.”
B. Today I want us to be filled with hope as we realize that God is able to bring us to a place of conversion and transformation that will make us unrecognizable to others, in some respects.
1. Jesus came into the world to seek and to save the lost.
2. He came to bring us abundant and eternal life.
3. Through the power of God Himself, anyone can be converted and transformed – that is the good news of the Gospel.
C. As you know, I really love the Christmas holiday season.
1. I love the sights and the sounds.
2. I love the family traditions and gatherings.
3. And most of all, I love the fact that the birth of Christ is brought to the forefront in many people’s thinking.
4. I am fully aware that we do not know the exact date of Christ’s birth, nor are we specifically commanded to have a special celebration in honor of the birth of Christ.
5. But I believe with all my heart that God the Father is pleased with any attention we give to His Son, Christ Jesus.
6. And to miss the opportunity of this season by not pointing people’s attention to Christ would be a tragic loss of opportunity.
7. Therefore, at this time of year, I do my best to point our attention to the coming of Christ into the world.
D. But I have to admit that it is not easy to return to this familiar story, year after year.
1. You might feel that you are so familiar with the story that you don’t need to take another look.
2. That’s why I try to be creative each year to help us see the story anew.
3. This year I want to do a short series of three lessons that all have Christmas season themes.
4. I’ve borrowed the idea for the series from others I’ve seen do series like this.
5. I’m calling the short, three-part series “Christmas Classics.”
6. We will be using three classic Christmas season movies to illustrate the spiritual ideas we will address.
E. I’ve titled today’s sermon “A Christmas Conversion” and we will use Dickens’ classic story A Christmas Carol as our illustration.
1. Our brother, Tracy Cochran, should be delivering this lesson, because he’s the biggest fan I know of this Dickens story.
2. Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol in 1843 (that’s 165 years ago).
3. Since its first publication, it has been adapted for theatre, film, television, radio, and opera countless times.
4. The various adaptations have included straightforward retellings, modernizations, parodies and sequels.
5. I was surprised to discover that the story has been adapted into as many as 200 films.
6. We won’t go through all of them, but let’s see how many of these film adaptations you have seen::
a. A Christmas Carol (1938), starring Reginald Owen as Scrooge and Gene Lockhart and Kathleen Lockhart as the Cratchits.
b. Scrooge (1951) Ebenezer Scrooge played by Alastair Sim.
c. Scrooge (1970), a musical film adaptation starring Albert Finney as Scrooge and Alec Guinness as Marley’s Ghost. (later you will see a picture of Alec playing Marley’s ghost)
d. Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983), an animated short film featuring the various Walt Disney characters, with Scrooge McDuck fittingly playing the role of Ebenezer Scrooge.
e. Scrooged (1988), a remake in a contemporary setting with Bill Murray.
f. The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), featuring the various Muppet characters, with Michael Caine as Scrooge.
g. A Christmas Carol (1997), an animated production featuring the voice of Tim Curry as Scrooge as well as the voices of Whoopi Goldberg, Michael York and Ed Asner.
h. And most recently, Barbie in a Christmas Carol (2008), is a computer animated adaptation featuring Barbie.
7. The made for TV adaptations include:
a. Bugs Bunny’s Christmas Carol (1979), an animated television special featuring the various Looney Tunes characters, with Yosemite Sam as Scrooge.
b. A Christmas Carol (1984), starring George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge.
c. A Jetsons Christmas Carol (1985), with tyrannical boss Mr. Spacely as Scrooge.
d. Alvin’s Christmas Caro. (1983), where Alvin becomes a Scrooge-like character.
e. A Flintstones Christmas Carol (1994), featuring Fred Flintstone as Eboneezer Scrooge.
f. Finally, let me mention Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol starring Jim Backus.
F. One of the interesting things you may not know about the Dickens’ classic has to do with the name – A Christmas Carol.
1. Originally the word “carol” meant “a medieval round dance” and then it came to mean a word for a particular type of ballad.
2. In Dickens’ time the word “carol” had come closer to its modern meaning, being a joyful hymn specific to Christmas.
3. Dickens takes this musical analogy further by dividing the story into five “staves,” instead of chapters.
4. A musical stave is the five lined staff on a musical page.
G. Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is a Victorian morality tale, something that Jon Singleton must know a lot about because he is working on a PhD in Victorian literature.
1. It is such a powerful tale that it’s credited with helping to define our contemporary understanding and expression of Christmas.
2. I think that’s enough about the background – let’s get into the story!
Story:
A. A fresh look at this all-time classic, reminds us that it’s far more than just a feel-good festive tale featuring a miserly old humbug with one of the oldest catchphrases in the world. “Bah, Humbug!”
1. The book’s main character, of course, is the mean and intimidating Ebenezer Scrooge, who lives to make money and very little else.
2. He certainly has no use for religion or sentimentality.
B. Scrooge parallels many biblical characters, but perhaps no one more than King Herod.
1. Herod is the original Ebenezer if ever there was one, and represents to you and me the character of everyone and everything who tries to remove the Spirit of Christmas, and more importantly the Spirit of Christ from all of us, and all around us.
2. Herod commands the wise men to return to him and report to him where the Christ was born, so that he could go and worship him also.
3. After finding Jesus and worshiping Him, the wise men were warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, and so they didn’t.
4. The wise men were not called wise men for nothing. They knew Herod’s reputation as one who killed his wife and two of his sons because they threatened his power.
5. They knew he didn’t want to worship the Christ child.
6. These kinds of Scrooges are not isolated in history. Their spirit lives on even today.
7. They are the ones who are trying to take Christ and His influence out of every part of American culture.
C. Back to our story - You may remember from the story how one Christmas Eve, Scrooge receives a terrifying wake-up call.
1. The spirit of his business partner, Jacob Marley, who died seven Christmas Eves previous and was a miser like Scrooge, comes to visit, bound and wrapped in terrible chains.
2. Marley has been condemned to roam the face of the earth, tormented in death by the things he neglected to value in life.
3. He reminds me of Jesus Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16.
4. The Rich Man in Jesus’ parable is in the torment of hell and cries out to Lazarus to go his father’s house and warn his five brothers, so that they will not also come to that place of torment.
D. Marley is desperate to give his old colleague a final chance to avoid the same fate. “My spirit never walked beyond our counting house,” he warns Scrooge.
1. A great length of chain traps Jacob Marley’s spirit and weighs it down. Marley tells Scrooge that he alone forged it in life: “I made it, link by link and yard by yard.”
2. These were chains that were forged with regrets and sins of his own making which he could not release, and hurts he would not forgive.
3. And as he stands before Scrooge, he can see the even greater chains that bind his old colleague: “Would you know the weight and length of the coil you bear yourself?” asks Marley. “It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have labored on it since. It is a ponderous chain.”
E. Marley makes it clear that this is Scrooge’s last opportunity to turn from selfish ways.
1. Marley’s spirit instructs him to wait for three more spirits ¬the spirits of Christmas past, present and future.
2. Reluctantly, Scrooge understands that this is for real, as he sees Marley float away to join a crowd of tormented souls who are wailing and moaning in the night sky.
3. Yet even after contemplating Marley’s fate, the thought really does nothing to cause Scrooge to repent at that moment.
4. He thinks “Well I still have time but not right now.”
5. Perhaps the words of James 4:13-14 ring resoundingly true in the Scrooges’ ears: “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”
6. The spirit of Scrooge is alive and well- for he does not heed that warning.
7. For all we know, that spirit of Scrooge may be in this very room right now - Ignoring the plea of Peter who calls us in Acts 3:19 “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out.”
8. Some people today will hear this and say, “Yes, I will give my life to God, but not today.”
F. When the clock struck one o’clock, the spirit of Christmas Past arrived and took Scrooge on an unforgettable trip down memory lane, on a visit to his own childhood.
1. Scrooge is astonished to see old, familiar faces playing happily in the open air.
2. As the spirit takes him into a schoolroom in the late 1700s, they see a lonely little boy sitting by the fire, whose only companion is the book he is reading.
3. Scrooge remembers his loneliness, and how he longed for the presence and warmth of friends.
4. He recalls his past desires for the love and approval of his family, but then sees all the people who tried to reach out to him, who attempted to stop his slide into self-absorption.
5. He sees his former fiancée, Belle, who came in a poor second to Scrooge’s passion for wealth.
6. “A golden idol displaces me,” she complains to him from the past. “All hopes have merged to a master passion; the thought of money engrosses you!”
G. We spring ahead to the 21st century, and we realize that we can fall into a similar trap, seeing money - and the things it can buy - as the answer to our problems and as the purpose of life.
1. The spirit of Scrooge seems to highjack every Christmas; turning our pilgrimage of faith into pilgrimage to the mall.
2. It’s true that the tradition of Christmas presents was inspired by God’s gift to us in the Savior.
3. But Scrooge has taken that tradition and run it out as far as he could so that it no longer resembles the Christmases past, or even what God would be pleased with.
4. We perceive the “good life” as being about an abundance of bigger, brighter and better things.
5. And if we start to feel guilty, we can excuse ourselves with the thought that we want our children to have the things we missed out on.
6. But Jesus said, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” (Lk. 12:15)
7. And Paul wrote, “But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (1 Tim. 6:6-10)
H. If Scrooge has been shaken by the visit of the first spirit, then the second is no less disturbing.
1. The Spirit of Christmas Present arrives to take Scrooge on a tour of the people he now knows.
2. He finds himself standing in the home of his poor clerk, Bob Cratchit, where he feels the warmth of a large and friendly family who are making the best of what little they can afford on the tiny salary Scrooge pays.
3. Scrooge experiences their anxiety over the fate of Tiny Tim, the Cratchit’s sick, youngest child.
4. Scrooge is clearly shown the effects of his selfish nature; but the spirit helps him understand that even though he is utterly hard-hearted, others have not entirely given up on him.
5. As the Cratchits sit down to their feeble Christmas dinner, Bob Cratchit thinks to toast his boss, despite protests from his wife.
6. Tiny Tim answers the toast with one of his own: “God bless us, everyone!”
I. When one reads the original Dickens’ tale, the Spirit also reveals two hauntingly thin and deathly children from within his cloak. You seldom see them in the movie version.
1. They are called IGNORANCE and WANT - two of the grim realities of Victorian life.
2. The Spirit describes them as the “children of all who walk the earth unseen.”
3. On their brow is written the word: “DOOM.”
4. As Scrooge pleads for them to be removed from his sight, the Spirit explains that “doom spells the downfall of you and all those who deny their existence.”
5. It’s true that the Victorian age may have been such a time of ignorance and want, but we have our own ghosts in the 21st century. We have our own ignorance and want.
6. We certainly have an ignorance of God’s truths, and an ignorance that continues the sins of prejudice and discrimination.
7. And we certainly have want of godliness and character, compassion and benevolence.
8. Dickens holds a mirror not just to Scrooge’s face, but also to ours.
J. The final spirit, the Spirit of Christmas Future arrives and it has no face and does not speak. It merely points.
1. Scrooge looks to where the spirit is pointing and sees the Cratchit family again, worn down in their struggle against poverty, and now without Tiny Tim, whose lonely crutch stands unused in a corner.
2. The Spirit takes Scrooge to visit the house of a man who has died in his sleep.
a. A maid and a cleaner are dividing up his belongings before the undertaker arrives.
b. Two associates out in the street are discussing whether it’s even necessary to hold a funeral service, since no one would bother to come.
c. “But who is this man?” asks Scrooge.
d. The spirit leads him to a grave, whose headstone bears the name “Ebenezer Scrooge,” Died 1843. No other words adorn his grave marker.
e. Two grave diggers leave his open grave to visit the local pub.
3. It seems that Scrooge lived long enough to make it miserable for everyone.
4. The Bible tells us, “The length of our days is seventy years - or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.” (Ps. 90:10)
5. Yet there is no such guarantee of 70 or 80 years for any of us. How ever long our journey of life may be, it is brief.
6. That’s why we need to be saved today, for the Bible says, “I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.” (2 Cor.6:2)
K. I have preached 64 funeral services during my ministry, and yet it never ceases to amaze me to see people at the graveside of loved ones and friends who don’t seem to take one thought of their own souls.
1. Some people refuse to go to hospitals or funerals to keep from having to contemplate their own mortality.
2. Fortunately for Scrooge, he recognized this as his life-changing moment; it’s now or never.
3. He asks whether it’s possible to mend his ways and so alter his life and destiny. Surely the Spirits wouldn’t be visiting him if not?
4. As Christmas morning dawns and he wakes, once more, to the world, Scrooge realizes that he has been given a reprieve- a second chance.
5. Dickens believed that we have all been given another chance, only because of the birth of Jesus, the hero of the greatest Christmas story.
L. The good news is that if we will learn from the past, we can change in the present and create a better future.
1. Just as the spirits of Christmas wanted Scrooge to change for good, so God knows us better than we know ourselves, and loves us enough to help us to change.
2. Christmas is the time and place where God draws back the curtain so we can see Him more clearly.
3. Jesus has come to free us, because we are bound by chains like those that bound old Jacob Marley .
4. But we must look to the Christ who went to the cross who died for us and then arose from the grave to give us hope and victory.
5. The good news is that we, like Scrooge, are still alive – and that means there is still opportunity.
6. It’s not too late: we can choose to change.
7. Whatever our past has been, we can have a better future in Christ.
8. The Bible says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
9. And the Bible says, “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)
Conclusion:
A. At the heart of A Christmas Carol lies Scrooge’s transformation.
1. He changes from a selfish, greedy and bitter old man into a grateful, generous and compassionate person.
3. Scrooge, a man filled with deep regret, who sees his life transformed to the point where Dickens concludes that he became “as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew.”
4. Scrooge learned his lesson, and experienced what amounts to a “conversion.”
5. He responds by changing his ways and living out the lessons that he learned that Christmas Eve.
6. He repented and changed his destiny.
B. Jesus, the Son of God, invites us to do the same.
1. What better time than Christmas time to repent and turn to God?
2. The passage read for the Scripture Reading from Titus 3 speaks of the wonderful change that all of us who are Christians have gone through – “at one time we were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures.”
3. But then God’s love got a hold of us and we realized that we can be saved through the mercy and grace that comes from Christ’s sacrifice.
4. If we will believe in Jesus and offer ourselves to Him, being immersed in water for the forgiveness of our sins, we will experience rebirth and renewal through the Holy Spirit.
C. If you are already a Christian, but there is still too much Scrooge still in you, then God would be pleased if you would repent and turn to Him.
1. Allow God to bring further transformation into your life through the Holy Spirit.
2. Maybe, like Scrooge, you are living too selfishly or greedily.
3. Maybe, like Scrooge, you are not valuing people as you should.
4. Maybe, like Scrooge, you need a Christmas conversion.
5. If we turn to God and submit ourselves to Him, He will do a wonderful work in our lives.
6. Let’s follow Scrooge’s good example, let’s not miss our opportunity for conversion and transformation.
Resource: “The Scrooge In All of Us” by Jeffery Russell
