The Grinch That Keeps Stealing Christmas
by Pastor Jim May
There has been somewhat of a ruckus among the rich residents of California’s Silicon Valley lately. Six years ago, Alan Aerts and his wife spent $150,000 to create an amazing display of Christmas lights at their mansion in the city of Monte Sereno. The dazzling array of lighted Santa and reindeer, angels and singing Christmas carolers was so astounding that, for five straight holiday seasons, about 1,500 cars drove past the spectacle each night.
The problem is that these folks live on a dead end street with only a circle at the end to turn around. The traffic crawled one way to the end, rolled around a circle and crawled back again. Neighbors could hardly get out of their driveways. And besides that, every morning there was a mountain of trash that had to be removed.
Finally, a couple living across the street had enough. They got 90 other families in the community to join them in a complaint to the city council. The council then passed a stern law saying, “bah, humbug” to the Christmas lights. Since that day, no outdoor exhibit in Monte Sereno could last more than three days.
O-K, said the Aertses. Three days it is. But this year there would be no galaxy of glittering lights. Instead, they decorated their lawn with a single custom-made, 9 foot tall green, singing Grinch. And they made sure that the animated grinch, complete with bad teeth and red eyes, had an arm pointed directly across the street at their neighbors as it sings out the song, “You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch!”
Well, tonight I want to tell about a real “grinch”. Now, if you look up the word “grinch” in the dictionary, you might be surprised to discover that there is no such word. It is a word that was made up by Dr. Seuss when he wrote the book about the Grinch. But even though the word is not a real word, there isn’t a single one of us who doesn’t know what a grinch is like and he is one bad character.
The real story of the greatest grinch of them all started out long before the creation of the world.
God spoke something like 6000 years ago and with the word of his mouth created billions and billions of stars, hanging them in place in the vast emptiness and blackness of space.
Somewhere in the middle of all those stars, alone in the darkness he created a shining blue ball. There is the blue of the sky and the water, the white of the clouds, green grass, and purple mountains. God called his world, Earth, and said that it was good. This beautiful world became the home of God’s greatest and most cherished creation.
God’s crowning achievement in his creation was the creation of a living soul – the only thing out of all that God created that was given the spark of eternal life. All of creation had been given life, but no other creature had received the very breath of God to become a living soul. Every other creature had been given life that arose from the earth itself but there was no eternal spark; no breath direct from God in them. Thus we find that none of God’s creation has the capacity for eternal life except man that was created in God’s own image.
Genesis 2:7, "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."
God placed his most beloved creature, man, in a place of perfect peace, perfect provision and perfect communion with himself. It was God’s plan and intention that man would live forever, never to die, never to grow old, never to be sick and always to prosper. He wanted man to live in this state of perfection forever; to never know the wages of sin.
But God gave man one special ability that he gave no other creature. He gave man the power to reason, and to choose whom man would serve.
The question often arises, “Why would God allow us to have the power to choose to worship Him or not?” If we had not had that power to choose, man would not have fallen into sin and we could still be living in the Garden of Eden today. “Why did God give us the power to choose knowing that we would choose the wrong way?”
The answer is simple really. God wanted someone who could appreciate God for who He is and What He is, not just a robot who obeyed every command without question. God wanted someone who could know him for his love, mercy, kindness and his great ability to care.
Man and woman are God’s crowning touch to creation. Everything was good according to God’s own words.
Then, into this pristine world of beauty, love and grace, comes the “Grinch”.
This grinch wasn’t a green, furry, red eyed, fairy tale creature. He is far worse than any fairy tale creature that the mind of man could conjure up.
He is often portrayed as a red skinned, slivering type of creature, with horns on his head, a forked tail and a pitchfork in his hand to prod his minions onward into oblivion and death. But he is really much more deceptive that to appear in such a recognizable form.
Instead he comes as an angel of light, bringing deception and lies that are hard to discover and even harder to resist.
2 Corinthians 11:14, "… Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light."
In the fairy tale story by Dr. Seuss, the grinch looked down from his mountain cave and hated the Who’s of Whoville. The Who people were whimsical, clueless to the wiles of the grinch, almost helpless, and weak with a perfect life to live.
That sure sounds a lot like the condition of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
The grinch of the fairy tale decide that he was going to stop Christmas from coming by stealing all of the decorations, all of the toys, all of the lights from the trees and all of the food for the Christmas feasts. His thought was, “If I can take away all that makes the Who people happy at Christmas, then Christmas would never come, and I will have won.”
The real grinch of this message is far more dangerous and powerful than the grinch of the fairy tale. His hatred for all Who are made in God’s image is beyond understanding. He hates everything and everyone that God created and his ultimate goal is to kill, steal and destroy everything that God loves, or to corrupt it to the point that God can no longer call it “good”.
Isaiah 14:12-15 describes the heart and thinking of the devil in his hatred for God, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit."
And so this grinch, called Lucifer by name, formulated a plan. He planned and he schemed and he thought had found a way to eternally destroy us all.
The first step was the fall of Adam in the Garden, for Lucifer knew that if he could persuade the first man to sin against God, that it would be even easier to destroy every one that would follow.
Romans 5:12, "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:"
Satan thought that he gotten even with God for casting him down to the earth. But he hadn’t counted on God knowing his plan in advance. God had already formulated a plan to redeem fallen man, and his corrupted creation from the devil’s lair.
God’s plan was begun in a lowly manger in a little town in Judea called Bethlehem. It was the first Christmas. That was the day that the heart of mankind began, once again, to see the possibility of regaining that original perfect condition with God.
But like the grinch of the fairy tale, Lucifer wanted to steal this Christmas too. He understood that his entire kingdom was at risk. He could not allow this “Christ Child”, the very Son of God, Jesus, to live and fulfill his mission as the Savior of the World.
The devil had conceived a plan long before Jesus was born. First he would steal the meaning of Christmas by destroying the Christ child by the use of murderous fallen men. Just to ensure that his plan would not fail, Lucifer worked a great deception upon mankind so that they would not recognize the Savior when he would come. He deceived the very leaders of God’s chosen people so that they would not just allow the Christ child to be born unnoticed, but they would continue to deny him forever. Satan knew that if he could stop mankind from recognizing the Savior and accepting him as the Son of God, then God’s plan would still ultimately fail.
But Lucifer’s plan was flawed. No matter how much he planned and schemed, this grinch couldn’t stop Christmas from coming. Jesus was born, grew up, died on the cross and rose again from the dead. That was a sad moment in the devil’s kingdom. Lucifer knew, at that moment, that his days were numbered. The war was lost, though there would be many battles ahead. There would come a day when his kingdom will end, and all that he had stolen from God would be redeemed by the blood of the Lamb as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords would step out to claim his own.
Even though Lucifer now knows the war is lost and that he is defeated, he still does all he can to steal Christmas from every man, woman and child in the earth.
He is still the greatest grinch of all, still stealing Christmas at every opportunity. But he doesn’t just steal Christmas around December 25th of each year. He steals Christmas every day of the year. How does he do that?
What is Christmas anyway? What is it all about? What is its real significance and meaning?
Most people only think of Christmas as a time of Happy Holidays, giving and receiving of gifts, being around family and friends, and an endless celebration of parties to attend. Very few really know what the greatest gift of Christmas really is.
That old grinch, Lucifer, has deceived them into thinking that their singing, and fun times are what it’s all about. He has blinded them to the real joy, the real peace, the real happiness and the real life that Christmas has in store.
Jesus didn’t come just so we could have a good time. He came so that we could have eternal life through him. He didn’t come just so we could have a Holiday. He came so that we could have an eternal day in glory.
Lucifer, that sly grinch, is stealing Christmas from every man, woman and child who refuses to accept or recognize Jesus as their Savior. He is blinding them to the love of God. He is wrapping them up in presents, putting a bow on their heads and then packing them off to hell as fast as he can get them there.
We go through every Christmas season and yet our loved ones don’t know Jesus. We go through every Easter Sunday and still the world is lost without God. We have our Happy Holidays and sit around eating our roast beast while the whole world is starving for the reality of God’s love and eternal life.
Lucifer is the greatest Grinch of them all. He is still stealing Christmas from the hearts of people. He is still doing all he can to stop Christmas from really coming to all Who will obey him and hear his voice above the call of God.
He steals Christmas from the sinner who doesn’t find the Savior.
He steals Christmas from the children whose parents won’t teach them about the baby in the manger.
He steals Christmas from the Christian who forgets the Jesus is the real gift to give and to receive.
He steals Christmas from the church that forgets that its primary duty is to spread the news that Jesus, the Savior is born in Bethlehem; come to die and live again so that we can have life.
Don’t allow that old Grinch, Satan, to steal your Christmas again. Recognize the real meaning of Christmas and give yourself wholly to the Lord. Worship the Christ Child, but even more importantly, worship our risen Lord.
The real meaning of Christmas is that we can be born again, into a new creature, made after the image of God, and renewed forever with eternal life in Jesus Christ.
In the fairy tale story, the sad small heart of the fairy tale grinch was broken and it grew to love the people. Instead of stealing Christmas from them, the Grinch joined in with their joy and celebration.
I wish I could say the same for the real Grinch but it just won’t happen. The real Grinch isn’t some fairy tale where everybody lives happily ever after. Lucifer, the real Grinch who keeps stealing Christmas from the hearts of men, will never be broken and never join in worshipping the Savior. His ultimate end is the fiery pit of hell that God has prepared for him and for all who follow him. There they will be punished eternally.
Don’t let Lucifer be the Grinch that steals Christmas from you. Serve the Lord with all your heart, mind, body, soul, spirit and strength. Christmas means eternal life for you if you will only serve the Lord.
Have a Merry Christmas and don’t let the Grinch steal your Christmas this year!
