CHRISTMAS IS OVER...NOW WHAT?
Luke 2:1-20
I have a bit of post-Christmas humor to share with you. It’s called "The Month After Christmas."
‘Twas the month after Christmas, and all through the house, nothing would fit me, not even a blouse.
The cookies I’d nibbled, the fudge I did taste, all the holiday parties had gone to my waist.
When I got on the scales there arose such a number! When I walked to the store (less a walk than a lumber).
I remembered the marvelous meals I’d prepared, the gravies and sauces and beef nicely rare.
The pies and the cakes, the bread and the cheese, and the way I never said, "No thank you please."
As I dressed myself in my husband’s old shirt, and prepared once again to do battle with dirt---
I said to myself, as I only can "You can’t spend the winter disguised as a man!"
So away with the last of the sour cream dip, get rid of the fruit cake, every cracker and chip.
Every last bit of food that I like must be banished, ‘till all the additional ounces have vanished.
I won’t have a cookie, not even a lick, I’ll want only to chew on a long celery stick.
I won’t have hot biscuits, or corn bread, or pie, I’ll munch on a carrot and quietly cry.
I’m hungry, I’m lonesome, and life is a bore --- But isn’t that what January is for?
Unable to giggle, no longer a riot ... Happy New Year to all and to all a good diet!
The title of the message is CHRISTMAS IS OVER...NOW WHAT?
I’m going to ask you to join me in Luke chapter 2 as we read once again the very familiar Christmas story.
Read Luke 2:1-20
Look again at verse 16. The shepherds, Joseph, Mary, "the babe lying in a manger"... isn’t that pretty much the picture of Christmas? Isn’t that pretty much the Christmas standard? We see it in just about very picture and program and pageant that has to do with Christmas. There may be a few extras thrown in like angels and cattle and sheep and every now and then the wise men, but for all intents and purposes, Christmas is "Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger."
My question is "What happened after that? What happened after that one scene was over?"
Is Christmas over when we take down the pictures and pack away the costumes and put the manger back in the closet and return the doll to whoever it belongs?"
When the signs of Christmas are no longer visible, does that mean that the significance of Christmas is no longer valuable?
I want us to focus in on the last 4 verses of our text and see what happened after Christmas, if you will. I submit to you that there are a number of things that we can, and should do, after Christmas to make it Christmas all year long.
We should continue to:
I. CELEBRATE THE MAJESTY OF CHRISTMAS - Verse 20
Celebrating the majesty of Christmas involves:
A. Glorifying God
1. The word "glorifying" is an interesting word in the Greek. It is the word doxazo (dox-ad’-zo) which comes from the root word doxa which means "opinion."
2. When the Bible speaks of "glorifying" God, in essence it means to give others a right opinion about God.
3. 1 Corinthians 10:31
a. Everything we do ought to give those around a right opinion of God.
b. Paul makes it a bit more clear in the next verse.
c. Verse 31
d. The things we do ought not be a stumblingblock to others. We should never be guilty of leading others into sin or giving them a reason to form a negative opinion about God, His people, or His church.
e. Someone is quoted as saying, "The number one cause of atheism is Christians. Those who proclaim God with their mouths and deny Him with their lifestyles is what an unbelieving world finds simply unbelievable."
4. 1 Peter 4:11
a. Another meaning of "glorify" is to "magnify God."
b. When we magnify something, does it get larger or smaller? It gets larger.
c. Our goal ought to be to make God look bigger in our life...especially when it comes to ministry as Peter suggests in this verse.
d. If our goal in ministry is to make ourselves look larger in the eyes of others, then we’ve got the wrong idea about ministry.
e. Everything we do in the work of the Lord ought to be with the goal of lifting up Jesus.
5. As those shepherds left that humble little manger scene some 2,000 years ago, they did so in such a way that gave others a right opinion of God.
B. Praising God
1. I can never speak of praise without giving its definition found in Hebrews 13:15. Praise is "the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name."
2. The shepherds, along with the rest of the world, truly had something to be thankful for ... GOD HAD COME TO EARTH! They had seen with their own eyes, GOD IN THE FLESH! Like Simeon they could say, "...Mine eyes have seen thy salvation".
3. Should our praises cease with the dimming of the lights and the fading of the carols and the dismantling of the decorations? I THINK NOT!
4. We ought to be praising the Lord all year long. Like David we ought to say, "his praise shall continually be in my mouth."
II. CONTEMPLATE THE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS - Verse 19
The word "ponder" means "to put one thing with another in considering circumstances." When the Bible says that Mary "kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart" it means that she began to consider all the details associated with the miraculous birth of the Son of God. It means that she tried to put them altogether in hopes of trying to better understand the miracle that she had been a part of.
As I began to "ponder" the Biblical account of Jesus’ birth, I tried to put together some thoughts as to the meaning of Christmas. I tried to consider some things that could help us make Christmas a year long celebration, at least in our hearts. What I came up with is this, Christmas means:
A. God Keeps His Word
1. Does His Word not say in Isaiah 9:6, "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace"?
2. Did He not say previous to that in Isaiah 7:14, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel"?
3. Matthew 1:23
4. Christmas means that God keeps His Word. But God is a God of His Word 365 days of the year. In that sense, we can celebrate Christmas all year.
5. In Ezekiel 22:14 we find these words, "I the LORD have spoken it, and will do it." Three other times in the same book find God’s promise to do what He said He would do.
6. Listen to Numbers 23:19, "God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?"
7. How many times have you heard someone say "Don’t worry. I’ll make it good."? And it’s those very words that seem to make you worry even more.
8. God’s not that way. When God says He’s going to do something, it’s going to be done. a. When God says He’s going to supply our needs, count on it. It’s going to get done.
b. When God says He’ll never leave us nor forsake us, we can count on that.
c. When God says that He’s going to always provide us a way out of temptation, start looking for the door.
d. When God says that He’s going to send His Son to catch away the saved, mark it down, it’s going to happen.
9. The point is, when someone asks, "Well Christmas is over ... now what?", ask them what they mean by Christmas being over. My God keeps His Word 24/7/365.
B. God Performs His Work
1. Who can deny that a virgin, conceiving a child of the Holy Ghost, is anything short of a miracle? And by the same token, who’s to say that God does not still perform miracles today?
ILLUSTRATION: A man and his dog were walking on the beach when they happened to come across another man. The owner of the dog had just taught him a new trick and he was anxious to put it to the test, so he said to the man standing there, "Watch this." About that time he tossed a piece of driftwood out into the sea and the dog immediately ran on top of the water, grabbed the stick up with his teeth and ran back to shore. The stranger just shook his head in disbelief.
The dog’s owner did the same thing again ... and again. Finally he asked the stranger, "Did you notice anything unusual?" The stranger responded, "Your dog can’t swim, can he?"
The guy had missed the whole point.
2. I wonder how many miracles you and I have witnessed and then passed them off to chance or fate or luck? I wonder how many times we’ve experienced miracles and then counted ourselves fortunate that we were in the "right place at the right time?"
3. Vance Havner is quoted as saying, and I agree with him wholeheartedly, "Too many times we miss so much because we live on the low level of the natural, the ordinary, the explainable. We leave no room for God to do the exceeding abundant thing above all that we can ask or think."
4. In the sense that we’re talking about in this message, Christmas can happen in July or August. Anytime God performs a miracle, it’s Christmas.
5. How many of you feel that you’ve ever been part of a modern day miracle? Let me share with you a recent miracle that took place that many of you had a part in. It involves a letter I received this week from Bro. Jim Sickmeyer. It’s dated 26 Dec, 2000 and it reads:
Dear Pastor Prater and the Members of Fellowship Baptist,
Oh my! were we surprised! We wept; we laughed; and we gave praise to our Almighty God for your outpouring of love for us. My wife got the call from the Post Office Sunday morning about a registered package we had to sign for. When we saw the check for $2,250.00 we just looked at each other and cried. Unbeknownst to you folks, we were facing a tax on our home that was a burden in addition to the property tax issue we were facing concerning our church property. The Lord took care of the church tax issue in short order. Our home property tax issue was still before the Lord. For testimony purposes, it needed to be paid by the 31 of December. I told my wife that the Lord knows our need and that we will just have to rely on Him as we always have done. "Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think..." (Ephesians 3:20) Unto Him be glory in the church. Your gift of love is a tremendous answer to prayer. May our Lord richly bless you for your concern, care, and compassion for this Man of God and his family.
Take care and may God bless you, your family, and your church.
But by the Grace of God, His servant
Bro. Jim Sickmeyer
6. Here was a family in Worthington, MN, needing money to pay the property taxes on their home in order to maintain a good testimony before their community, praying and asking God to supply the need.
And here I am, a pastor in Liberal, KS, praying about who should be the recipients of this years CMO and the Lord lays on my heart a family in Colorado Springs, CO. That’s a long ways from Worthington, MN.
Then I get a missions letter in the mail from a missionary in Rochester, MN that we support and the Lord tells me to divide the CMO between the missionaries in Colorado and this one in Rochester, MN. And no sooner had that thought come to my mind when I remembered that there was another young family in Minnesota we supported. I knew the Sickmeyers were in Worthington, trying to get a gospel preaching church started there and before I knew it the Lord had divided the CMO not two ways, but three.
7. I don’t have any idea how the Lord worked on your heart in regards to this years offering, but I would venture to guess that some of you right now are thinking to yourself "That’s why the Lord led me to do what I did. My wife or my husband thought I was crazy, but I just knew it was what the Lord wanted."
8. You can live, as Vance Havner said, "on the low level of the natural, the ordinary, the explainable" and leave no room for a modern day miracle in this story if you want to, but not me.
9. I believe with all my heart that what I just shared with you was a miracle from God, and I believe that God does those kinds of things all the time and we don’t even realize it.
10. Christmas means that God performs His work.
C. Brings Hope to the World
1. The birth of Jesus in a manger, in Bethlehem, brought hope to the world as it was in that day. But praise God, that hope did not die when the shepherds left, and Mary and Joseph and the baby went to sleep.
2. Thank God there’s still hope today!
3. Every time the gospel is preached, it’s a Christmas message of sorts, because it’s the message of hope.
4. The gospel message says that we’ve all sinned and come short of the glory of God ... that there’s none righteous, no not one. It tells us that because of our sin, we deserve to die and go to hell.
But that same message tells us that God loved US so much that He sent His only begotten Son (that’s Christmas) and that His Son took our sin upon Himself and died on the cross so that we might live.
The message of the gospel tells us that after His death, Jesus was buried and that He remained in the tomb for three days and three nights, and then UP FROM THE GRAVE HE AROSE, WITH A MIGHTY TRIUMPH O’RE HIS FOES, HE AROSE A VICTOR FROM THE DARK DOMAIN AND HE LIVES FOREVER WITH HIS SAINTS TO REIGN. HE AROSE! HE AROSE! HALLELUJAH, CHRIST AROSE!
5. Listen, hope doesn’t begin the first day after Thanksgiving and end the first day after Christmas. There’s hope TODAY, and EVERYDAY, because Jesus was born of a virgin.
6. If you’re here without Christ, there’s hope for you.
Christmas means that:
God Keeps His Word
God Performs His Work
God Brings Hope to the World
and...
D. God Shows the Way
1. Matthew 2:1-2 says, "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,
Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him."
We go on to read in verse 9, "and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was."
2. Just as God led the wise men some 2,000 years ago, He still leads His people today.
3. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, "Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths."
4. Do you need some direction? Do you need some guidance? Go to the Lord, He still shows the way.
If we’re going to enjoy Christmas all year long we need to continue to:
Celebrate the Majesty of Christmas
Contemplate the Meaning of Christmas
and...
III. COMMUNICATE THE MESSAGE OF CHRISTMAS - Verses 17-18
A. The Word of the Shepherds
1. The Good News of Christmas was too great for the shepherds to keep to themselves. They had to tell somebody.
2. If there is ever a sense in which it could be Christmas everyday of the year it is in the sense that we can communicate the message of Christmas everyday to those around us.
3. Verse 17 says that the shepherds "made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child." And what was the saying they made known? It’s the saying of the angel in verse 11.
4. Our message is, "THERE IS A SAVIOUR!"
5. The poet wrote:
Oh, to have been a shepherd the night that Christ was born!
To have heard the hallelujahs and that great angelic horn!
To have crossed the plain to Bethlehem with sandals on my feet;
To have touched the hand of God’s own Son where He lay upon the wheat!
To have seen the bright heraldic star; to have found the manger place;
To have seen the cattle kneeling and Mary’s shining face!
Oh, to have been a shepherd the night that Christ was born;
To have carried in my heart for life the glory of that dawn!
6. What a terrible tragedy it would have been had the shepherds merely carried the angels words in their hearts and never shared them with anyone else.
7. Would it not be as a great a tragedy for us to live our lives with the hope of heaven beating in our breast and to never tell those around us that they too can have that hope.
B. The Wonder of the Others
1. "And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds."
2. The story of Christ’s birth and the salvation that it brings is indeed a wonderful story. But the MOST wonderful thing is when that wonderful story becomes a powerful reality.
3. Even though it’s December 31st, it can still be Christmas for you if you’ve not yet invited Christ into your life.
4. The 25th may have come and gone and you could have very well missed the greatest gift of all!
