Psalm 111:1-10
Praise the LORD. I will extol the LORD with all my heart in the council of the upright and in the assembly. Great are the works of the LORD; they are pondered by all who delight in them. Glorious and majestic are his deeds, and his righteousness endures forever. He has caused his wonders to be remembered; the LORD is gracious and compassionate. He provides food for those who fear him; he remembers his covenant forever. He has shown his people the power of his works, giving them the lands of other nations. The works of his hands are faithful and just; all his precepts are trustworthy. They are steadfast for ever and ever, done in faithfulness and uprightness. He provided redemption for his people; he ordained his covenant forever-- holy and awesome is his name. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding. To him belongs eternal praise. (NIV)
Luke 2:8-20
And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about." So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told. (NIV)
Two young newlyweds were preparing to enjoy their first Christmas dinner together in their new home. The wife was preparing a baked ham. After unwrapping the meat and setting it on the cutting board, the wife chopped off both ends of the ham with a knife and tossed the two small ends in the garbage can.
"Wait a minute," said the mystified husband. "Why did you do that? Why did you just cut off the ends of the ham and throw them away?"
"I don’t know. Every year my father would cook this wonderful holiday ham, and that’s what he always did," answered the wife. "Maybe it helps bring out the flavor."
Unsatisfied with this answer, the husband called his father-in-law. "Can you tell me why you cut the two ends off a ham before you cook it?"
"Well," said the father, "I’m not really sure why. That’s just the way my mother did her ham, and it was always delicious."
As soon as he hung up he called his wife’s grandmother. "Grandma, we have an important question for you. Can you tell us why you cut the ends off a ham before you cook it?"
"Oh, my yes, dear," answered Grandma in her quiet, thin voice. "I cut the ends of the ham off so it would fit in my pan."
Traditions shape our lives, but it’s important to know why we do them. "Because we’ve always done it that way" doesn’t provide enough meaning to keep our traditions from becoming stale and meaningless.
There is no time of the year more filled with traditions than this time of the year.
How many of you have Christmas trees? Great tradition!
How many of you have traditional decorations, like stockings, wreaths and outside lights?
How many of you, during the holidays, gather the family together, fill up your glass with a traditional beverage, then sit in front of the television set, and watch a traditional holiday game of football????
Traditions are great.
But sometimes, traditions become stale and lose meaning. And they begin to misguide us.
One great holiday tradition is the Christmas parade. According to a recent online edition of the Rocky Mountain News, the city of Denver is preparing for their annual Christmas parade. It’s an event for everyone! There will be floats. There will be bands. There will be Santa Claus. There will be clowns. There will be everything a Christmas parade ought to have.
Well, except for one thing.
One of the city’s largest churches decided to enter a float in this year’s parade.
Now did I tell you this is a “Christmas” parade?
The church’s pastors and elders filled out the proper forms and described their float. They planned a simple float, upon which one of their children’s choirs would be singing.
Now, I did tell you this is a “Christmas” parade, didn’t I?
Well, the form required them to describe their music. The pastor and elders put down a list of well known Christmas Carols.
“Joy to the World.”
“O Little Town of Bethelehem.”
“Silent Night.”
After all, it was a Christmas parade, and Christmas carols seemed appropriate.
Well, not appropriate to some.
The parade leaders rejected the application. It was too religious, and the city didn’t want to offend people of other faiths.
But it is a Christmas parade.
Christmas is full of traditions – so much so, that these traditions have squeezed Jesus out of his own birthday party.
We get so busy decorating our homes, that we forget why we decorate. All those decorations were supposed to draw us toward Christ.
We get so busy shopping and we feel so much pressure to buy the perfect gift that we lose our joy. We lose our patience. We lose a sense of Christ. We get tied up in the crowded stores and we get angry and frustrated with the traffic.
We get so wrapped up in THINGS at Christmas – gotta buy this, gotta buy that, I want this and I want the other thing! We forget the baby born in a simple stable.
You know what has become the biggest tradition at Christmas? Self-centeredness.
It’s all about us!
It’s all about me!
That’s what Christmas has become.
Christmas is becoming so secular that Christ is not even included in this year’s Christmas parade in Denver.
If you want to have a great Christmas, you need to look at what the angels did the night Christ was born.
In our New Testament lesson, we read, “Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.’”
We need to praise God. We need to focus on God.
If you want to have a great Christmas, you need to look at what the shepherds did after the angels announced Christ’s birth. What did they do?
Our New Testament lesson said “the shepherds returned (to their work), glorifying and praising God.”
But you know, it’s all about us, not Christ.
Christmas has become all about the shopping. The eating. The sporting events. The giving and the receiving of material possessions that we often cannot afford to give and that we often do not need to receive.
Now all of those are great traditions! I love to eat Christmas dinner! It’s almost as good as Thanksgiving dinner.
I love the tree. I love the decorations. I love the gifts.
But they can be so dangerous.
Traditions of Christmas are only good IF, they help us to focus on Christ.
Because the praise and adoration of Christ is what Christmas is all about.
Not long ago, our church concluded the 40 Days of Purpose program. Central to that study was the book, Purpose Driven Life. Page one declares, “It’s not about you.”
Of course life is not about you. It’s about God.
And we need to learn that same truth about Christmas.
It is not about us.
It is about Christ.
Christmas is a great time to learn more about how to give praise and adoration to God, and our Old Testament lesson is a great text to go to in order to learn how to give praise and adoration to God.
The first verse of this text tells us WHERE to praise God.
It says: “Praise the LORD. I will extol the LORD with all my heart in the council of the upright and in the assembly.”
Those of you who have children – can you imagine praising your child only in the privacy of your heart? No – you may do that but you also praise your child to your child’s face, and you praise your child in public. You tell your family and friends how happy you are about your child.
If you are happy about your political candidate, your favorite restaurant, a television show you have seen and enjoy – you tell people.
Praise may sometimes be a quiet and intimate matter, but it is most naturally expressed in a public arena.
Christians need to praise and adore God in public – and specifically this public place is here in the Sanctuary. The psalmist says, “Praise the LORD. I will extol the LORD with all my heart in the council of the upright and in the assembly.”
We are gathered in the council of the upright and in the assembly right now!
Almost all of those times the word praise appears in the Book of Psalms, it is reflective of a group activity, showing us that church life needs to involve praising God. We cannot be what God wants us to be and not include praise in our church.
Where two or three gather together, a special bond of the Holy Spirit exists between believers. This enables us to multiply our praise to God!
Now, at Christmas, we don’t have a problem with coming to church to praise God. We have in our church a lot of CEOs. Every church has CEOs – which doesn’t stand for Chief Executive Officer – but rather Christmas and Easter Only.
We need to praise God at Christmas, but we need to do it all year-round. And we need to do it here in the church.
The Psalm also teaches HOW we are to praise God. Again in verse one, the psalmist says, “Praise the LORD. I will extol the LORD with all my heart…”
How many of us praise God in a half-hearted way?
I think we are more susceptible to this at Christmas time than at most times. Because a lot of what we are doing are traditional things that ought to help us to focus on Christ, but they detract us. The decorations, the tree, the giving of gifts, the family gatherings – all of these traditions ought to help center us on Christ. But they do not. They detract us. They stress us out. They make us tense. Sometimes.
We need to praise God as the psalmist did, with our whole heart. At Christmas time especially, but at all times, we need to praise God with our whole heart.
The psalmist also tells us WHY we should praise God. And the psalmist goes into quite a good list here.
In verse four, the psalmist says, “He has caused his wonders to be remembered; the Lord is gracious and compassionate.”
Christmas is a time to remember – and I don’t mean to remember the people you need to send Greeting cards to, or the gifts you have to buy, or to remember to put the decorations up. If you remember all these great traditions but forget to remember Christ, then you have wasted your time this holiday season.
God “has caused his wonders to be remembered.”
We need to remember Christ. We need to remember his birth, his life, his death and resurrection.
Every tradition we observe at Christmas time ought to be centered on praising God and remembering Christ.
God “has caused his wonders to be remembered; the Lord is gracious and compassionate.”
If we get nothing else out of Christmas, we need to be assured that the Lord is gracious and compassionate – this is what this holiday is all about.
Why do we praise God? Because he has taken care of our spiritual needs by giving us grace and compassion for our redemption.
But also, God has taken care of our physical needs. In verse five, the psalmist says, God “has provided food for those who fear him.” God has given each of us wonderful things that fill our lives. We have the necessities of life provided for, but we also have the pleasures and luxuries in our lives.
And we have God to praise for that.
Unfortunately, Christmas is often so materialistic that we are too distracted to praise God for giving us these material things!
But there is another reason to praise God.
We praise God for giving us what we need spiritually, and we praise God for what he has given us physically.
We also praise God for something else – and it has nothing to do with us.
It is not about us at all.
It is about God and God alone.
The psalmist says in verse nine that he praises God because God is holy and the name of God is awesome.
Praise to God does not have to be specific – such as, “I praise God because he did this list of 27 things for me today.”
No – that sounds like you are God’s employer and God has done a good job working for you so you now praise him.
No – you may praise God for what he has done, but the best and purest praise of all is simply praising God because God is God. Because he is holy. Because his name is awesome.
Christmas can be a terrible time of the year – stress, traveling in congested traffic, shopping in crowded stores, over spending and going into debt. Or it can be a wonderful time of the year, filled with love and joy and peace and the presence of Christ.
Whether it is a great time of year or a lousy time of the year depends on whether you are centered on yourself, or centered on Christ.
If you focus on Christ, adore Christ, praise Christ – Christmas can be a wonderful season.
Copyright 2004, Dr. Maynard Pittendreigh
All rights reserved.
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