OPEN: Someone has developed a personality test based on how you decorate for Christmas:
• If you have nothing but multicolored lights on your tree – you’re an extrovert.
• If you only use white lights – you’re the type who asks his guests to remove their shoes at the front door.
• But if you use blinking lights on your tree – you have A.D.D..
• If your tree has homemade ornaments – you have lots of children.
• If you string popcorn to put on the tree – you have way too much time on your hands.
• If you use nothing but red decorations – you secretly wish you lived in a Department store.
• If your tree has a VAGUE evergreen smell – you bought a healthy tree
• If it has a STRONG evergreen smell – you sprayed it with Pine-Sol
• If it’s just plain smelly – you probably have a dead bird in your tree someplace.
(Rebecca Munsterer 12/09 Reader’s Digest)
Christmas is a festive holiday, just filled with cheerful decorations and colors. And that’s a good thing, because it sits right in the midst of winter - when the sky is often gloomy, the trees are barren, and the grass is brown. Off-setting this dreariness and emptiness is Christmas, with all its bright colors … red, green, yellow, blue, and white. And it’s partly because of those colors that Christmas is such a joyful holiday.
And so, this month, we’re going to focus on the colors of Christmas, and this Sunday we’re looking at the color Green.
At Christmas, the color Green is just about everywhere. It’s in the garlands and the wreathes … and of course, it’s in the Christmas trees as well. It’s a color that cheers you up and speaks of the promise of life and hope.
And one of the reasons green is used at Christmas is because it speaks of a time to come - a time called Spring. A time when flowers bloom, trees blossom, and the grass becomes green again.
Christmas says – new life is just around the corner.
And, at just the right time, life will replace the death and decay.
Galatians chapter 4 says that’s what happened when Christ was born. “… when the time had fully come, God sent his Son…” Galatians 4:4
When the time was right – God sent the promise of life into a world filled with death and decay.
Now, what does Galatians mean by saying “when the time had fully come”? It means that God had spent a great deal of time setting things up for Jesus to come in the flesh. The birth of the baby in the manger had been planned for centuries.
In the Bible we’re told that back at the beginning of time, when Adam and Eve had sinned in the Garden, God came down and confronted them and pronounced a curse upon them. But then God turned to the serpent who had tempted Eve, and He promised him:
“I will put enmity (or hatred) between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he (the offspring of a woman) will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” Genesis 3:15
In other words: when the promised child was to be born, He wasn’t going to be the offspring of a man and woman. This child was to be the offspring of a woman. God tells Satan that the conflict will be “between your offspring and HERS.” Thus Isaiah 7:14 prophesied: “The virgin (a woman who’s never slept with a man) will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”
This child was not going to be the offspring of man and a woman. He was to be born of a virgin.
The 2nd aspect of that prophecy in Genesis was that this promised child would suffer pain (his heel would be crushed) – but in the process, He’d give Satan a mortal blow from which he’d never recover (his head would be crushed). That’s what took place when Jesus died on the cross for our sins, and rose from the grave on the 3rd day.
And that was just the first prophecy: that when the time had fully come – a promised child would be born to take away the power of Satan. Again and again, throughout the pages of Scripture, God predicted the coming of a “Messiah”.
God proclaimed:
• where this He would be born.
• when He would be born
• how He would live/ how He would die
• and what He was being sent to do.
There were over 300 direct prophecies and 100s veiled hints of what this Messiah would be like and what He would do.
God had made a PROMISE – a Messiah would come. And God had given 100s of PROPHECIES declaring what the Messiah would be like. And with that promise and with these prophecies…
God had a PLAN.
And the plan was this:
When the fullness of time had come, the Son of God would be born in a manger in Bethlehem. And HE would bring with Him the promise of life to a dead and dying world.
This plan was so intricate that it even involved the rise and fall of great nations to prepare for His coming.
Back in the book of Daniel, God gave King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon a baffling dream. It so confused and distressed him that he called for his magicians and astrologers to not only interpret the dream for him but to tell him what the dream was. But no one could do so. Finally someone suggested that the King call for Daniel.
And Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that in his dream he saw a giant statue
• its head was made of pure gold
• its chest and arms were of silver
• its belly and thighs of bronze
• its legs were of iron and its feet were a mixture of iron and clay.
While Nebuchadnezzar watched, a rock was cut out of a mountain – but not by human hands. This rock struck the statue at its feet and broke the image to pieces. In its place, the rock transformed into a huge mountain that filled the whole earth.
1) Daniel explained to Nebuchadnezzar that the head of gold represented his kingdom.
2) Then Daniel said to him "After you, another kingdom will rise, inferior to yours.” (Daniel 2:39a)This kingdom had a chest and arms made of silver - the kingdom of the Medes and Persians.
3) “Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth.” Daniel 2:39b This was the Empire that Alexander the Great created for Greece. But even this kingdom was replaced.
4) “Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron— for iron breaks and smashes everything— and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others.” (Dan 2:40). This was the Empire of Rome which ruled Judea when Jesus was born.
And then (talking about the rock that had been cut out of the mountain) Daniel declared:
"In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.” Daniel 2:44
(see Appendix #1 for further comments)
All of Biblical prophecy and history was focused on that one event: that in the fullness of time, God would send His Son - born of a virgin, born under the Law – into the world. And when that child was born He would establish a kingdom that would last forever.
That’s what the angel told Mary in Luke 1:33. He told her “(Jesus) will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
This kingdom was the Church, which began on the day of Pentecost, less than two weeks after Jesus ascended into Heaven (Colossians 1:13).
That’s why God had spent so much time working with the nations of this world. He wanted to make sure that everything was ready for the coming of Jesus.
But why did it take God so long to get things ready?
(pause) Well… frankly I don’t know.
I don’t know WHY He did what He did in the way He did it. But I do know that when the time had come for Jesus to be born the world was primed and ready for Him.
When Jesus was born - for the 1st time in human history - everything was right for God to spread His message to mankind.
When Jesus was born:
• There was a universal government in place. Rome ruled over all the known world.
• And the empire of Rome produced one of the longest periods of universal peace. In fact, it was so unique that historians still refer to it as the “Pax Romana” – the Peace of Rome.
• And Rome not only produced a lasting peace, they created an universal system of roads throughout their empire – 1st of its kind
• And throughout the Roman Empire, there was a universal language that practically everyone knew and used – Greek. And God used that One language to spread the Gospel.
There was ONE government
ONE peace
ONE system of roads
and ONE language shared by all.
And this was brought into being by the ONE God
who sent His ONE Son
at this ONE time in history
to save a world filled with the ONE cause of despair and death: Our sin.
Jesus came into the world to deal with that sin… with their sin, with our sin, with MY sin.
God gave us the PROMISE of New life through His Son
And He filled His Scriptures with PROPHECIES describing what His Son would accomplish.
And God spent centuries fulfilling His promise and His prophecies and putting His PLAN into effect.
And He did it all for you.
Galatians 4:5 tells us God did all that to redeem us… so that “we might receive the full rights of sons.”
ILLUS: I was teaching kids 2nd and 3rd graders this past Wednesday, and I asked them what they wanted for Christmas. One girl wanted some dolls. Another child wanted a cell phone. Still another was holding out for laptop. And then there was this kid who joked that they wanted a car.
Then I asked them how long they would use those gifts.
From experience we all know those gifts would last a couple of days, or a couple of months, or maybe even a few years. But sooner or later the children would grow too old to play with their toys. Or their toys would break down, or wear out, or get lost.
BUT when God gave us His Son, this was a gift that was going to last forever. We would never outgrow our need for Jesus. And His love for us would never break down, or wear out, or get lost.
What God has offered us in Jesus wasn’t some toy that would eventually be cast aside. NO… what He was offering was relationship that based upon the gift of His Son.
Galatians 4:5 says that IN JESUS we have become sons of God.
ILLUS: Now I’m a father, and I’ve found that there are times when I’ll buy gifts for someone else’s kids. They might want some candy or a toy, and – hey, I like kids. If they want some small thing, I’ll try to get it for them. But I’d never buy them as many gifts as I buy for my own children.
I may like those other children… but they’re not mine. I didn’t take them to raise.
But my kids are different. They belong to me. And I’m more likely to buy things for them than I would for some other child.
One of the most powerful verses in the Bible is found in Romans 8:32
“He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all— how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
God sent His Son to earth that we might become His children. And if God went to all that trouble to make us His children, He is more than willing to do even more for us than He would for others. Not because we “deserve it”, but because we belong to Him.
In fact, Ephesians 3:20 tells us just that God “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us”
(pause)
Now the birth of Christ in Bethlehem didn’t save us.
(repeat for emphasis)
His birth in the manger was just the BEGINNING of God’s plan. The fulfillment of His plan was found in an empty grave, 3 days after Jesus’ death on Calvary.
ILLUS: One woman talked of walking into church one Easter Sunday and greeting a friend “Happy Christmas!”
She quickly corrected herself and said, “I mean, Happy Easter.”
Her friend smiled and replied “Can’t have one without the other”.
(Cindy Hess Kasper Our Daily Bread, 4/8/07)
In Christmas we find the promise of Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins. In the fullness of time, God sent His son to be born in Bethlehem, so that in a Spring – 30 years later - His death burial and resurrection would bring life to a decayed and dying world.
CLOSE: This is the true message of Christmas.
And this message should shape how we look at the very images of the season.
One man described how he how he saw things:
“When I see a Christmas tree, I am reminded that the 1st Adam took the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and sinned against a holy God (Gen 3:6), But I Corinthians 15 tells me that the 2nd Adam (Jesus), took the fruit of that sin and bled and died on another tree to pay the price of that sin.
When I smell the scent of the evergreen, I’m reminded that the new life I enjoy because of what Jesus did on the cross which gives me everlasting life (John 3:16).
The ornaments hanging on the tree also remind me of what Jesus has done for me.
When I see the red ones, I think about the blood of Jesus that He shed for my salvation.
The silver and gold remind me of God’s blessings in my life
And the candy cane reminds me that Jesus is the Good Shepherd (1 Peter 5:4).
The white stripes remind me that Jesus was sinless (2 Cor. 5:21).
The red stripes that he shed His blood for me (Eph 1:7).
Both colors of the stripes on the Candy Cane remind me that my spiritual healing comes only through His stripes which were caused by the beatings He took at His crucifixion (Isa 53:5).
And the angel on the top of the tree reminds me of my responsibility to tell the world that Jesus has come, just as the angel of old did with the shepherds. (Luke 2:10).
(freshminstry.com)
APPENDIX 1: Many prophetic teachers intrepret the statue in Daniel 2 as having a 5th Kingdom represented by its feet. This 5th kingdom (they say) is a yet future empire that precedes the 2nd coming of Christ. There are a number of reasons why I find this difficult to accept.
The first 2 reasons are intrinsic to the text:
1) Daniel doesn’t make a distinction between the legs and feet. They appear to both be part of the same kingdom.
2) The 4 kingdoms that are represented by the statue rise and fall one after another. There is no time gap between the nation of the Babylonians, the Medes and Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. The popular prophetic teaching about the feet of the statue would require an enormous time gap that is not part of Daniel’s explanation.
My other reason for rejecting this interpretation is theological. Jesus came to establish His kingdom. Colossians 1:13 tells us that the Father "has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves". Many who teach prophecy have Jesus being a King in some future realm. I’m convinced that Jesus reigns now and that His kingdom shall never end.
