An elderly man in Phoenix, Arizona, calls his son in New York and says, “I hate to ruin your day, but I have to tell you that your mother and I are divorcing – 45 years of misery is enough.”
“Pop, what are you talking about?” the son asks.
“We can't stand the sight of each other any longer,” the old man says. “We're sick of each other, and I'm sick of talking about this, so you call your sister in Chicago and tell her.”
Frantic, the son calls his sister, who explodes on the phone. “Like heck they're getting divorced,” she shouts. “I'll take care of this.”
She calls Phoenix immediately and screams at her father, “You are NOT getting divorced. Don't do a single thing till I get there. I'm calling my brother back, and we'll both be there tomorrow. Until then, don't do a thing.”
The old man hangs up the phone and turns to his wife. “Okay,” he says, “They're coming for Thanksgiving and paying their own fares. Now what do we do for Christmas?” (Van Morris, Mount Washington, Kentucky; www.PreachingToday. com)
That’s a good question: What do we do for Christmas? Often, at this time of year, relationships do get frazzled. People lose focus, and priorities get all messed up. So what do we do to bring purpose and meaning back into our lives at this time of year?
Well, we do what Isaiah did in a time when his world was in turmoil. We focus on the One that Christmas is all about. If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Isaiah 9, Isaiah 9, where Isaiah talks about this One who would bring light and life to a dark and despairing world.
Isaiah 9:2 The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned… Why? Skip down to verse 6
Isaiah 9:6 For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Do you want to bring purpose and meaning back into your life? Then focus your attention on the Child Isaiah saw 700 years before He was born. Focus your attention on Jesus Christ, who is not only the Wonderful Counselor, as we saw last week; He is also the Mighty God! El Gibbor in the Hebrew – i.e., God, the Mighty One. If you want light in the midst of your darkness, it begins when you…
REVERENCE JESUS AS DEITY.
Worship Christ as Lord. Adore Jesus Christ as your God. You see, Jesus is none other than YHWH God Himself. You’re in Isaiah 9. Turn with me to the next chapter, Isaiah 10
Isaiah 10:20 In that day – i.e., in the day when God destroys Israel’s enemies – the remnant of Israel, the survivors of the house of Jacob, will no longer rely on him who struck them down, but will truly rely on the LORD, the Holy One of Israel.
Notice, the word, LORD, is all in capital letters. Whenever you see that in our English Bibles, it is a translation of the Hebrew word, YHWH, the personal name for God Himself. So there’s coming a day when the survivors of Israel, a remnant, will rely on YHWH. Well, just who is this YHWH? Look at verse 21.
Isaiah 10:21 A remnant will return, a remnant of Jacob will return to the Mighty God (El Gibbor in the Hebrew).
That’s the same name we have for Jesus Christ in Isaiah 9:6. He is none other than YHWH God Himself. Deuteronomy 10:17 says, “For the LORD (YHWH) your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty (gibbor, same word) and awesome…” When Isaiah called Christ “the Mighty God, his readers understood this as a clear reference to YHWH God Himself. In Jeremiah 32:18, the prophet calls God “the great and mighty God” (El Gibbor in the Hebrew, the same word we’ve seen all along), whose name is the LORD (YHWH) Almighty.”
Jesus Christ, the child born in a manger, is none other than YHWH God Himself! And our life regains purpose and meaning when we take the time to worship Him as such. The problem is too many of us “worship our work. [Then] we work at our play, and… play at our worship.” (Gordon Dahl, Work, Play and Worship in a Leisure-Oriented Society, Augsberg Press, 1972). No wonder our lives are so messed up. No! If we want to bring purpose and meaning back into our lives, then we must worship JESUS as Lord, Him and Him alone!
A man was inspecting a house he wished to buy and was particularly struck by the beauty of one of the rooms he was going to use for his study. He didn’t like a cupboard in the corner, so he said to the builder, “I’ll have to remove it.”
“No you won’t,” replied the builder.
“But I can do what I like if I buy the house,” said the man.
“Not with that cupboard,” answered the builder.
“Why not,” the man asked. “Is it protected by a clause in the deed?”
“No,” said the builder. “It is not on the deed; it is in the plan. You cannot take away that cupboard without taking down the house; it is part of the main structure.” (Bible Illustrator)
That’s the way it is with the worship of Jesus Christ as our only God. We cannot that away without the entire structure of our lives falling apart.
Pastor and author, Tim Keller, in his bestseller, The Reason for God, makes this point very vividly. He writes, “If you center your life and identity on your spouse or partner, you will be emotionally dependent, jealous, and controlling. The other person's problems will be overwhelming to you.
“If you center your life and identity on your family and children, you will try to live your life through your children until they resent you or have no self of their own. At worst, you may abuse them when they displease you.
“If you center your life and identity on your work and career, you will be a driven workaholic and a boring, shallow person. At worst you will lose family and friends and, if your career goes poorly, develop deep depression.
“If you center your life and identity on money and possessions, you'll be eaten up by worry or jealousy about money. You'll be willing to do unethical things to maintain your lifestyle, which will eventually blow up your life.
“If you center your life and identity on pleasure, gratification, and comfort, you will find yourself getting addicted to something. You will become chained to the ‘escape strategies’ by which you avoid the hardness of life.
“If you center your life and identity on relationships and approval, you will be constantly overly hurt by criticism and thus always losing friends. You will fear confronting others and therefore will be a useless friend.
“If you center your life and identity on a ‘noble cause,’ you will divide the world into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and demonize your opponents. Ironically, you will be controlled by your enemies. Without them, you have no purpose.
“If you center your life and identity on religion and morality, you will, if you are living up to your moral standards, be proud, self-righteous, and cruel. If you don't live up to your moral standards, your guilt will be utterly devastating. (Tim Keller, The Reason for God, Dutton, 2008, pp. 275-276)
Don’t center your life on anything or anyone else but Jesus Christ, for He alone brings meaning and purpose to life. Centering your life on anything else just brings bondage and pain, so worship Christ, and Christ alone as your God. Reverence Jesus as deity. More than that, if you want to bring purpose and meaning back into your life…
RELY ON JESUS AS YOUR DEFEDER
Trust Christ to protect you. Depend on our Lord to keep you secure.
He is the MIGHTY God! Now, the word “mighty” is a word commonly used of the heroes and champions of war in the Old Testament. It describes the great soldiers who fought valiantly on the fields of battle.
For example, 1 Chronicles 11 lists the “mighty men” who fought with King David. They include men like Jashobeam, who lifted up his spear against the enemy and killed 300 of them at once. Then there was Eleazar, who stood his ground when everybody else fled from the Philistines. He and David stood in the middle of a barley field and fought off the entire Philistine army. David’s “mighty men” included the three who broke right into the Philistine camp, took water from the well there, and brought it back to their king. These were the “mighty men” (the gibborim), the heroes and champions of war.”
Well, in Isaiah 9:6, Jesus is called El Gibbor – God, the Mighty One. That means Jesus is a champion. He is a great soldier, a valiant warrior, who makes all other champions look like toy soldiers in comparison.
Isaiah 42:13 says, “The Lord will march out like a mighty man (a gibbor), like a warrior he will stir up his zeal; with a shout he will raise the battle cry and will triumph over his enemies.”
Our Lord Jesus Christ is that Mighty Man, a great a mighty warrior who triumphs over all his enemies. And as such, He is OUR defender if we’re with Him, and He will protect us from the enemy of our souls.
Jeremiah, the prophet, was beaten and put into stocks, because Pashhur, the chief priest, wanted to shut him up. Pashhur thought that by harassing Jeremiah, he’d scare him into silence.
Only Jeremiah was not intimidated in the least. The very next day, when Pashhur released Jeremiah, Jeremiah prophesied against Pashhur and said, “The LORD (YHWH) is with me like a mighty warrior (a gibbor); so my persecutors will stumble and not prevail. They will fail and be thoroughly disgraced; their dishonor will never be forgotten” (Jeremiah 20:11). Jeremiah relied on the LORD as his Mighty Warrior, his defender, and so can we!
Several years ago, the residents of Wauconda, Illinois, refused to let the plug be pulled on Christmas. Two water towers had always served as landmarks for travelers heading for Wauconda, especially at Christmas.
Over 60 years ago, John Kuester, then village police chief, suggested mounting large twin crosses on the towers to light up the season. The village adopted his idea, and the display of crosses became a tradition. Right after Thanksgiving, when Christmas decorations went up, the crosses also lit the sky.
But in 1989, Robert Sherman, spokesman for American Atheists, Inc., heard about the crosses. Since Wauconda's crosses were on government property, Sherman saw an alleged violation of church and state. He delivered an ultimatum: remove the crosses from the water towers or meet in court.
Several town hall meetings followed. Joyce Mitchell, a resident and a member of Crossroads Community Church, asked God to give her the right words and right spirit before each meeting.
“The Christians in the community were united with the rest of the community – whether they were churchgoers or not – in refusing to let some outsider tell us how to celebrate Christmas.”
But the decision was forced by economics. Realizing a similar case had lost in court, the residents of Wauconda opted not to burden themselves with hundreds of thousands of dollars in court costs.
Then a grassroots group of residents had the final say. “Our business, Wauconda Boat Company, is located across from the village hall,” Rosemary Buschick, another resident, explained. “The meeting about the crosses was on a Tuesday night, and when it was over, we knew the crosses would have to come down. Then my husband, Chuck, went to the back room of the shop and constructed a window-sized cross with lights to display the next day. Will Shumaker, whose home appliance store is also on Main Street, also put up a cross. Within weeks, crosses were appearing on houses everywhere – attached to antennas, stuck in yards, beaming from trees, shining in windows. It seemed to just happen.”
When Joyce Mitchell drove around the village with her daughters, who were 6 and 9 at the time, she began to cry. “The media portrayed us as losing the fight, but we didn't lose. Two crosses had been replaced with hundreds, and God was glorified in the end.” (“Ordinary Heroes,” Christian Reader)
That’s because Jesus is the Mighty God – our Gibbor – our Champion, who wins the battle every time.
Hebrews 2:14 says, “[Jesus] shared in [our] humanity so that by his death he might destroy him (literally, so that he might render him powerless) who holds the power of death – that is the devil.”
Jesus won the victory over Satan on the cross, so we don’t need to take his stuff any more. We don’t need to let Satan wreck our relationships. We don’t need to let Satan destroy our families or our churches anymore. Jesus, our Defender, our Champion, our Gibbor won the victory for us on the cross more than 2,000 years ago. All we need to do is call on Him.
Rod Cooper was raised on a pig farm, which processed about a thousand pigs a year. In one field they had two or three hundred little piglets running around, and every day, at four in the morning, he had to feed those little oinkers. When he walked into the field, they’d all scatter, but one day a little pig came up to him and began to chew on his foot. Rod picked the little pig up and began to pet him, but soon the little pig wanted down.
Rod said, “No, I’ll let you down when I’m ready.” At that moment, the little pig let out a squeal such as Rod had never heard. In about two seconds, thirty mama pigs, weighing five to six hundred pounds each were headed his way. Rod put the piglet down and headed for the fence. He barely made it over, and all the mama pigs were snorting, walking back and forth on the other side of the fence, daring him to come back and bother one of their kids.
Later, Rod Cooper reflected on the incident. He said, “I look back at that and realize the little rascal was not intimidated. He was out of control, but he wasn’t intimidated. Why? Because one squeal away he had resources.” (Rod Cooper, “Worship or Worry?” Preaching Today, Tape No.108)
So it is with us! We’re just one squeal away from resources. One Squeal is all it takes, and Jesus Christ, the Mighty One, our Champion, will be there to defend us. If you want to bring purpose and meaning back into your life, then reverence Jesus as deity in your life; rely on Jesus as your defender; and…
RELY ON JESUS ALSO AS YOUR DELIVERER.
Trust Christ as your Savior. Depend on Him to rescue you from sin and Satan himself.
In the little book of Zephaniah, the prophet declares, “The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save (Literally, He is a mighty one – a gibbor – who saves). He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing” (Zephaniah 3:17). Jesus, the One who delights in us, is also the Mighty One who delivers us from the enemy.
On March 5, 1994, Deputy Sheriff Lloyd Prescott was teaching a class for police officers in the Salt Lake City library. As he stepped into the hallway, he noticed a gunman herding 18 hostages into the next room. With a flash of insight, Prescott (dressed in street clothes) joined the group as the 19th hostage, followed them into the room, and shut the door. When the gunman announced the order in which the hostages would be shot, Prescott identified himself as a cop. The gunman attacked, but Prescott shot back in self-defense, killing the gunman and setting the hostages free unharmed. (Greg Asimakoupoulos, Leadership, Vol.15, No.3)
Prescott was a hero, a champion that day – in the Hebrew, a gibbor. In the same way, Jesus is our champion. He is El Gibbor – God, the Mighty One – who dressed Himself in street clothes.
God took on human flesh, entered our world, and joined all of us, who were held hostage to sin. Satan attacked, and Jesus hung on a cross; but on that cross, Jesus dealt the fatal blow and set us free.
Hebrews 2 says, “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14-15).
Jesus’ death on the cross was only temporary – three days later, He rose again from the grave. The devil’s destruction, on the other hand, was permanent – he was rendered powerless at the cross; and one day he will be thrown into the lake of fire, reserved for the devil and his angels forever!
Jesus is your Champion, your Deliverer. Trust Him to deliver YOU from sin and Satan today.
If you want to bring purpose and meaning back into your life this Christmas season, it starts when you reverence Jesus as deity. Then rely on Him as your defender and deliverer from sin, for He, and He alone is the Mighty God.
O holy Child of Bethlehem!
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in;
Be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel. (Phillips Brooks)
