Advent 4 - Love - The State of our Hearts on The Night Before Christmas
What is Christmas really about, anyway? Why, a few days after the winter solstice, is there this day that every year is celebrated with Santa and reindeer and Christmas trees and Ivy and presents galore.
Our culture would have us believe that all these things that I have mentioned are exactly what Christmas is about.
Our culture is increasingly disinterested in any other meaning of Christmas being communicated.
What you can say and do in publicly funded schools, what you can say and do in many circumstances, that relates to this season, is limited to Santa and fun and silly songs about the season. Why is that?
What is Christmas really about? And why does it matter? Is it really something to be celebrated? Or is it a distraction that we would be good to try to ignore and avoid?
The early Christians were part of the culture of their day. That culture was pagan, and as the young church they were sorting out how to best relate to that culture.
And near the 20th of December, there was an annual event celebrating the winter solstice.
The winter solstice is the longest, darkest day of the year. The early Christians were obviously passionate about Jesus.
And the Bible provided very clear and solid narratives about the birth of Jesus, which of course struck them as being extremely significant.
So with an evangelical motive, and with a heart wanting to celebrate the incarnation, the early Christians chose to have the birth of Jesus celebrated on December 25.
Notice that it is not on the day of the winter solstice. This year Dec. 21 is the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year in Earth's Northern Hemisphere.
There was some thinking and some writing that suggested that the Virgin Mary was made pregnant by the Holy Spirit with Jesus around or near the Passover, which would’ve been around March 25.
So add nine months to that, approximately, and you land on or about December 25.
Whatever the reason or the logic behind choosing that date, which for us is tomorrow, The celebration of the incarnation began as an annual event.
So that’s one question with one very short answer. What is Christmas really about anyway?
To me more the interesting question is what was the state of the planet earth and humanity the night before the Saviour came?
And then from that question comes another question that zooms in on why this is so personally consequential for all people: what was the state of your heart the night before you were saved?
The Bible gives us quite a clear idea of the answer to both those questions.
And the answer, while ultimately incredibly encouraging, does require us to spend some time pondering what someone would call the bad news before the good news,
the grave problem before the solution. The sickness before the cure. The dark before the dawn.
Let’s look at what scripture has to say about both of these questions, again what was the state of humanity the night before the Saviour came and the plan of salvation was put into play, in fact this very night of Christmas Eve?
And what was the state of your heart the night before you were saved, the night before you first believed, the night before you came a follower of Jesus, a disciple of Jesus?
In Colossians 1:21 we see this:
Colossians 1:21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.
So this is perhaps the most important truth to consider. And this is a bit of a strange one.
If you were to have asked me, the night before I came to Christ or when I was generally in the frame of mind that I lived in before Christ, I would have objected to almost every word in this sentence.
I would have objected to the word “God“. I didn’t believe in God, and if I had any understanding of the word “God”, it was way off the reality that I would later discover.
Not only did I not believe in God, but what I did believe was that anyone and everyone who did believe in God was a sucker, was, as I thought of the time, a knuckle dragging Neanderthal. So, yes, I would’ve objected to the word “God“.
And I would’ve had no concept of what “alienated from God“ met. Even if I was to, for a moment, have considered the possibility that God might exist,
I would’ve had no concept of his character - holiness, his purity, his otherness, or his love.
I might’ve been warm to the idea that God could be loving, but that would’ve been completely separate from any notion of his holiness.
And more than likely, I would assume that this “loving God“, would simply let me be me, let me do me, not have any thing to say about my life,
my choices - moral or otherwise; and likely would’ve said that God would’ve had no right to say anything about anything that I didn’t wanna hear about.
I wouldn’t have understood what “enemies in your minds”, referred to, well…
Firstly how can you be an enemy to something that doesn’t exist or probably doesn’t exist, and then what does it mean to be an “enemy in my mind“ to God, if He did exist.
So that would have drawn a complete blank. In my ignorance I would have mocked the idea.
And I would for sure have recoiled at the idea of “my evil behavior“, because I was a moral relativist.
What that meant for me, was that if I did something, anything, and got away with it, it was good. I was fine.
Sure, I had some moral qualms about some of my sketchy behaviour as a teenager,
but because I did not have any form of belief in what you might call “objective reality“, or objective moral truth”, again…This sentence would not have computed.
So something had to shift in my mind and in my heart in order for this sentence to start to make sense.
And I would say entirely outside of myself, outside of my ability to think things through, outside of my mental capacity, definitely outside of my spiritual capacity, God did something to make the next part of this passage click for me. Here it is:
Col 1:22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— 23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel.
So I had a real problem with Colossians 1:21; but the rest of these verses here, would have given me insight that I didn’t have before.
And it was maybe because I wasn’t left hanging with the very difficult thought in verse 21, I wasn’t left with that bold ugly statement.
Verse 22 begins with “but“. And that is a very, very large “but“. Now I had to consider that something else is going on here rather than just pointing the finger at me, rather than just condemning me.
I mean, I would’ve felt condemned, and that would’ve closed my mind; but here there’s something deeper going on.
However once I may have been alienated from God, somehow an enemy to God in my mind due to my conduct, and more than likely my lack of faith in God, now…
Something has changed. This being, God himself, has reconciled me to himself. He has done that work that I found so impossible to imagine doing.
He has brought about a healing in the relationship. He has done something to fix what was broken, and he did it long before I had any clue it was busted.
But what was that thing that he did? And as I considered that question, I began to understand both the bigness of the gift that I have been given and cost of this gift.
You see a free gift is never free. It’s free to you, it is cost–free as far as you’re concerned, but somebody paid. Someone paid the debt.
And that someone, I came to learn was Jesus who through his physical body, through death, he did something to reconcile me to God.
And not only reconcile me to God, which is mind blowing enough. He did something to enable me to be presented to God as holy in his sight, I mean completely holy like no blemish and totally free of accusation.
So because of Jesus’ death, God regards believers as holy (having God’s own character), unblemished (free from imperfections), and free from accusation (a legal term expressing full vindication, a “not guilty” verdict).
So I couldn’t handle verse 21 for the reasons I described. I didn’t have the capacity or the means to take it in. The rest of this passage explained how this gift was given.
It explained how this gift was given and how I could say and I can still say that I am a sinful man who has been rescued; rescued from alienation from God, rescued from being opposed to God in my thoughts, rescued from the ultimate consequences of my evil behaviour.
Before the coming of Christ, I was lost in ways far more severe and far more consequential than I realized.
That was the state of my heart before the coming of the Christ, that was the state of my heart before that first Christmas Eve, before God’s plan was to be birthed.
With the coming of Christ, born so perplexingly as an infant in the humblest imaginable of circumstances, I am, and you who believe, are as scripture states fully in completely reconciled to God.
23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel
And if anything is required of me, it is not required of me for the earning of salvation. It is simply the fruit of the gift of salvation that God has given me.
And so we have this interestingly conditional statement.
We simply need to keep walking, keep believing, established and firm, and not drift from the Hope held out in the gospel.
We cannot take our new status in Christ for granted and be nonchalant about the responsibility it incurs. If we allow ourselves to be dislodged from our foundation in the gospel, we will lose our hope.
As we remain established and firm, which is the work and fruit of God by the Holy Spirit in us, all these promises we are assured are true we are holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation
While we absolutely should rejoice in the total reconciliation with God that Jesus won for us and paid for with his life, we must not grow careless,
but must remain established and firm (1:23). The Christian life is a spiritual battle because the devil, though defeated, is not disarmed.
He would love to see us moved from the hope held out in the gospel. So we need to maintain constant vigilance, we need to daily put on the whole armour of God, for there are many ambushes on the road in our journey.
So with all that background, considering what was the state of humanity on that first Christmas Eve, before the Christ had come, and considering what was our state in our own personal “Christmas Eve“, that time just before Jesus came into our lives through faith in him, let’s quickly look at Ephesians chapter 2.
Here Paul is saying a lot of the same things, but highlighting some important facts that we really do need to appreciate in order to better grasp how seriously awful things were going for us before we came to Jesus.
Here Paul unpacks what he means by saying that before Christ we were alienated from God. This is what that alienation looks like.
Ephesians 2:1 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.
This is, across-the-board, true of all of humanity.
The only way we can escape this, other than just closing our minds to what is unpleasant about this, is to be able to argue that we are somehow separate from and better than everyone else. But no. We are all alike in this.
From the king of England to the loneliest servant, from the Prime Minister right on down to each one of us here, before Jesus - we were dead, spiritually dead, in our transgressions and sins in our rebellion against God.
We didn’t know it at the time, but we were following the ways of this world and the ways of Satan, who here is described as the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.
All. Every last one of us. All of us lived the same way, and because of this we were, before we were born again, before we were given the gift of salvation we were in and of ourselves, quite naturally, deserving of God‘s wrath.
That’s another idea that nobody likes thinking about, and that you’ll even find some Christians denying the reality of, which I always find is a bit odd. God‘s wrath is a serious thing. God‘s distain for sin is a serious thing.
God‘s wrath is really an expression of his love.
Just take a human example. If God wasn’t angry at the Hamas soldiers who raped and brutalized and beheaded and murdered over 1200 people in Israel, if God was like…
Oh well stuff happens. If God was indifferent toward that kind of sin, well… He wouldn’t be the God of the Bible; and he wouldn’t be worthy of the praise that is his due.
I have heard some people try to justify that behaviour of the Hamas soldiers, but that just proves the point of how depraved people can be.
Of course this has led to the current war, and because Hamas uses the Palestinian people to defend its weapons and war machine, this has led to over 20,000 deaths of Palestinians, although that number is suspect because it is reported by Hamas.
Just as an aside, we should be able to understand why God would be wrathful toward the soldiers for their terrorism. We should be able to hold compassion for the many innocent Palestinians who are victims of the Israeli response to Hamas’ being imbedded under hospitals and schools and in Gazan neighbourhoods.
No one is innocent in war. The war is an ugly, horrific business that needs to stop. Hopefully there will be openness to the existence of a 2-state solution, which will likely only be possible if the surrounding Arab nations remove from their objectives the complete destruction of Israel and the annihilation of all Jews there.
I realize this topic is loaded, but it’s point is to illustrate - let’s not get away from this - it’s point is to illustrate that the wrath of God is a real thing.
Sin is a real problem in all of its expressions, from this terrible war to the way sin finds expression in each of our lives. But...here’s another big but,
4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
Can you say: praise God...praise the Lord!? Amen
So, big picture - the state of humanity was that it was separated from its Maker - the night before that first Christmas, the night before the Infinite became an infant.
And with the birth of the Messiah Jesus, Who was the fulfillment of centuries of waiting for God’s promised Deliverer, God plan to raise YOU up with Christ and to seat you with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ was put into motion.
Motion that would ultimately lead the Holy Child born becoming a man Who was God.
The incarnate Son of God Who revealed God’s full character, revealed God’s mind and revealed God’s heart through the teachings that we find in the 4 gospels.
The God-man who would willingly go to the cross to suffer - not at all for His own sins - for He was without sin.
But to suffer for you and for me. To lay his life down as the lamb slain for the forgiveness of all - whosoever will come.
This Jesus who was created of a Mother whom He created. He was carried by hands that He formed.
He who cried in the manger in wordless infancy, He, the Word, without whom all human eloquence is mute. (St. Augustine).
And all of this leads us back to our Scripture reading for today.
All of this plan of salvation, so ingeniously conceived by God, is, if our hearts are open the evidence of, and in its totality the proof of, God’s immense and incomparable love.
And this love, received in gratitude and praise and worship and adoration, must cause us, beloved Church to do as the Scripture says:
1 John 1:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
So may we consider, even as we have just scratched the surface today of what God has done to prove His love, may we consider that when we love one another,
God indeed is pleased that he is alive in us...and that His own love is finding completeness - finding the expression of itself that God wants - in us.
And let’s remember that in the gospel, tonight, this holy night when God came as promised the first time, that was not the last time.
St. Augustine said this: The first coming of Christ the Lord, God’s Son and our God, was in obscurity. The second will be in sight of the whole world.
In the book of Revelation we read this (please stand as we do if you are able).
Revelation 1:5“To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen. 7 “Look, he is coming with the clouds,” and “every eye will see him, even those who pierced him”; and all peoples on earth “will mourn because of him.” So shall it be! Amen. 8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”
Amen and amen.
