A couple of years ago on America’s Funniest Home Videos, a young boy was shown on Christmas morning. He came down to see a large present beside the tree and ran over to tear it open to see what was inside. The paper went flying and suddenly he broke into a dance and jumped around the room saying, “Wow! Just what I wanted! I really love it. Wow!” After awhile he went over to look at it again and said with a puzzled look on his face, “What is it?”
On that first Christmas the angels announced the birth of a new child. The heavens were opened and all the company of heaven broke into praise. Shepherds went racing to Bethlehem to see what it was all about. And for two thousand years we have been jumping up and down saying, “Just what I wanted! Exactly what I needed!” But in the next breath we look again inside the stable and ask, “What is it?” We are puzzled by God’s gift. They didn’t understand it then, and we are still trying to understand it now.
In the last few Sundays we have attempted to see Christmas through the eyes of Mary and Joseph, through the eyes of the shepherds and wise men, and the eyes of the world, but today we want to get a different perspective and see Christmas through the eyes of God. Christmas was not easy for God. So often we feel like God has it made. We can’t imagine him having any problems. Nothing troubles him. But when we read the Bible we see humanity rejecting God time after time. He created mankind as an object of his love, but from the very start that love has been spurned. From the beginning of his attempt to have fellowship with his creation he has met with rejection.
The prophet Isaiah wrote: “Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not... We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:1-3,6). The images of God that the Bible paints for us are shocking. In Hosea he is the betrayed husband seeking his unfaithful lover over and over again (Hosea 1-3). In Luke he is the anxious Father who watches for his sinful and rebellious child to return home. He is the Shepherd who searches for the wandering, lost sheep (Luke 15).
Jesus mirrored God’s emotions over his lost children as he wept over Jerusalem. We hear him saying as he longs and weeps for his people, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34).
It was not easy for God to give us Christmas. It was not easy for Christ. It was not easy to keep loving and coming after a creation that had continually betrayed him and rejected his love — nailing it to a cross. The Christmas story is not as cute as it is terrible and profound. A child born to die. A child destined for suffering, abuse and misunderstanding. A child whose very life was in danger shortly after his birth.
It wasn’t easy to be the Savior of a world that does not want to be saved. The world showed its distaste for a Savior from the very beginning. Give the world someone to talk to when they have problems. Give the world a wonderful story. Give it beautiful holidays, but don’t give it a Savior — a Savior that will actually save them from their real problem — real sin. God’s gift of a Savior makes us face the truth about ourselves. It disturbs us to have someone tell us we are wrong. Save our economy, save our nation, save our children, but don’t talk about saving us from our sin.
It was into that hostile atmosphere God sent his infant Son, and left him unprotected. He allowed the world to do with him as it pleased. The apostle John tells the Christmas story in these words: “The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him” (John 1:9-12).
Christ gave up his position and place in glory that we might have Christmas. It began in a dirty manger and ended on a filthy cross. He was born in a borrowed stable and was buried in a borrowed tomb. God became a refugee in the midst of his own creation.
We have seen Christmas through the eyes of different people, but what if we looked at it like God did. The questions we want to ask are: “What was God up to? What was he trying to accomplish? What was the purpose of it all? What did he have in mind? What did God see in the events of Christmas?”
God had a plan in mind. And it was not a last minute plan which God hurriedly put in place because it looked as though things were going badly. From the very beginning he knew what he was doing. Peter writes this about Christ: “He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake” (1 Peter 1:20). The book of Revelation describes Jesus as: “the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). Obviously, God had Christmas planned before the world began. God had one thing in mind from the beginning of the world: to rescue and redeem his creation.
The book of Revelation gives us a glimpse of what God had in mind, and the reality of what Christmas will mean in the end: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). In the end Jesus Christ will reign, he will reconcile all things to himself. God reveals his ultimate plan for us in the scripture that says, “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 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” (Ephesians 2:6-7). That is a wonderful end to a wonderful story — and nothing can stop it.
I recall a fascinating part of John Bunyan’s book Pilgrims Progress where Interpreter leads Christian into a place where there is a perplexing sight. He sees a fire burning beside a wall. It continues to burn under extraordinary circumstances. There is someone standing beside the fire who is continually throwing water on the fire in an attempt to extinguish it. But instead of the fire going out, it only burns brighter and hotter. Then Interpreter takes Christian behind the wall and shows him what he could not see before. Behind the wall is another man who is continually feeding the fire with oil. Christian cannot understand the whole thing until Interpreter explains to him that the man putting water on the fire represents the devil. He is always trying to dampen and extinguish the work of God in the world. But what he and the others on that side of the wall cannot see is the man on the other side of the wall who represents Christ. He is continually fueling the fire with the oil of his Spirit, and the forces of evil can never put it out.
The meaning is clear. Those of us on this side of the wall only see the discouraging signs of what the evil one is doing to extinguish the work of God in the world. What we do not see with our natural eyes is that Christ is stoking the fire of God and causing it to burn hotter and brighter in spite of all the enemy is trying to do.
God knows exactly what he is doing, and no one can put out the fire that God has begun in the world. He begins with things that look like nothing; things that seem to be easily defeated by the devil. The Bible says, “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things — and the things that are not — to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him” (1 Corinthians 1:27). The more the powers of evil try to put out the fire of God, the more Christ stokes the fire as the power of the Holy Spirit is poured out on the world.
All of us saw the incredible pictures of Saddam Hussein after he was taken from his hole in the ground. We were astounded to see this once powerful man who terrorized his own country and people throughout the world. But there he was looking dazed and confused as he was being deloused. He was filthy and his hair and beard were unkempt. He looked pitiful instead of powerful. The same thing happened with Osama bin Laden. Somehow, I think that is going to be the way it is at the end of the world, when the final battle is over. We will look at our enemy, the devil, after he has been deposed and his power taken away and say, “That was who we were afraid of? That is who terrorized the world? The frightening serpent turned out to be only a worm.” And he will be thrown back into his pit.
God’s perspective of Christmas is this: “Jesus. . . Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:5-11). In the end, every knee will bow — the knees of those who despised him, rejected him, and ignored him, along with those who loved and served him. Christmas in God’s eyes begins with Christ humbling himself in order to come in human form; it ends with him returning and reconciling the world and every knee bowing before him.
The first Christmas saw him as an inconspicuous and helpless babe in a crude manger. But in the book of Revelation, John describes his appearance when he returns: “His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance” (Revelation 1:14-16).
Think of what God has done. God sends a baby who seems to be so vulnerable, but turns out to be the King of the universe. At the time, who would have guessed how it would affect our world today? Who would have believed the lives that would be changed? God told only one band of shepherds. He chose only one star. He revealed the star to only a few wise men. The star shone, the shepherds came and the wise men brought their gifts when the only thing God had to show was a baby. But God was faithful to send his powerful gift to the world in spite of its unbelief in order to save the world he loved. The Bible says, “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” (1 John 4:9).
In 1962, missionaries named Don and Carol Richardson went to New Guinea to bring the Good News of Christ to a group of people known as the Sawi. The Sawi was a headhunting, cannibalistic tribe who used the skulls of their victims as pillows. He wrote a book about his experience called Peace Child. He began his work among the Sawi by reading through the Gospel of Matthew. But to his consternation when he got to the part of Judas betraying Christ everyone cheered. He did not realize that their culture was one built around treachery. The one who was the most devious was the one who had the most respect in their tribe. The missionary searched for every possible means to explain the greatness of God’s gift of truth and pure love to a people whose values were based on deceit. Then one day he witnessed a solemn ceremony between two warring tribes. One of the chiefs walked over to the other and handed him a child. In fact, it was the chief’s own son. Their custom had been that peace could come between two tribes only if the chief of one of the tribes would give his son over to the people of the other tribe. He was called the “peace child.” The chief would place his own son in the hands of a people who hated him and had been his enemies. It was the only way to bring peace between them. Richardson saw in this act the perfect bridge to help these people understand what God had done. God had given his “peace child” into the hands of a hostile world in order to bring the hostility between us to an end. The angels said at his birth: “Peace on earth, good will toward men.”
The amazing mystery of God’s gift is explained in the beautiful passage of Scripture which says: “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?” (Romans 8:32). That is the way it was two thousand years ago, and it is still that way today. Merry Christmas from the God who gives!
Rodney J. Buchanan
December 25, 2011
Amity United Methodist Church
rodbuchanan2000@yahoo.com
