Luke 2:8-14 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. 12This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” 13Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 14“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”
Romans 7:25 Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! …
Romans 8:1-4 …there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. 3For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, 4in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.
Christmas day is already a memory. The gifts have been opened; the ham has been devoured along with all the accoutrements of a family Christmas meal. If you were in our home, traditional British Christmas crackers were pulled spilling out trinkets you never knew you wanted, and paper hats that are absolutely de rigueur .
Christmas day is already a memory. The family you were so much looking forward to seeing will soon be departing; for some, a sigh of regret, for others, a sigh of relief! Fun and laughter, the look on children’s faces as they open their gifts.
These are the memories we carry with us, but you know, we so often take Christmas so much for granted. It comes around once a year, too soon for many! We are caught up in the hustle and bustle of the season, decorations, and trimming the tree; lights up around the house; cards to mail and gifts to buy…and wrap. Family and friends; office and church parties; carolers at the door.
We watch “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” or Irvin Berlin’s “White Christmas,” and perhaps the Muppet version of “A Christmas Carol.” Did you watch “It’s a Wonderful Life?” Its message has something to say to us this morning.
We celebrate the Christ Child, the babe in the manger; the heavenly choir of angels; the shepherds; and the wise men with their precious gifts.
It is all so traditional, so familiar, and often—so routine. We know the carols and sing them joyfully. But deep down, we are often relieved that Christmas is over. We long to “get back to normal.”
However, this morning I would like us to ponder for a few minutes what this “normal” is that we so long to get back to, and more importantly, how different this “normal” would be if the world knew nothing of celebrating Christmas.
C.S. Lewis, in the second of the Narnia Series , The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, had the heroes and heroines of his novel strep through the back of a wardrobe into a world where the White Witch holds the land enthralled so that it was “forever winter but never Christmas.”
I suggest to you that if you were to step out of your front door on Monday to get on with your “normal” life, into a world where Christmas was unknown, you would, like Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter, be stepping into a world that, however externally familiar, would be as dramatically different as the one they encountered. Instead of a white witch, talking animals and deeds of “daring do,” you would step into a world of barbarity and misery, a society gripped by fear and chaos, and rather than get into your car to drive to the office, you would most likely be hitching up the oxen to plough someone else’s land.
This morning I would like us to consider what the world would be like if Christ had not been born, and what the implications of His coming are for us this morning.
In one sense, it is unfair to ask us to consider this, like asking you to imagine a world without language, because the very thought process needed to answer the question presupposes the existence of what is in question (fallacy of begging the question).
• Interestingly, Christ Himself understood the implications of this when He spoke of the relationship of believers to the world in John 15.
John 15:22, 24 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin… 24If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would have no sin; but now they have seen and also hated both Me and My Father.
Christ’s birth was a cosmic necessity. It was needed in order that man might realize once for all that he was a sinner and that he needed a savior. Christ also came in order that man would be without excuse; God demonstrated His existence, and man rejected Him…again.
I. THE MEANINGLESS VOID
So to imagine a world without Christmas is almost impossible, because to imagine a world without Christmas is to imagine a world without God. To imagine this, is to imagine a void without meaning, without law, and without hope.
A. THERE IS NO GOD
A world without Christmas means a world without God.
Christ’s coming was prophesied before His birth. Remember when the Wise Men came to Herod, and the priests were called who read to Herod the prophesy in Micah 5. (Matthew 2:6)
Micah 5:2 “But you, Bethlehem, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”
Herod, you will recall, was alarmed, most likely by the next part of the prophesy he was read:
Micah 5:4-5 He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth. 5And he will be their peace.
From the Garden of Eden, Christ was promised.
Genesis 3:15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.”
Therefore, if Christ had not come as promised, it would mean that the prophesies in the OT were not inspired by God. As Scripture declares that God is perfect, and cannot lie, and also asserts that God exists, Christ’s not coming would imply that the God of Scripture did not exist.
In that case, the universe is not the creation of a sovereign and gracious God; rather it is, as atheists have insisted for millennia, simply a universe that is the result of brute chance.
If that is the case, and reality as we know it is not the result of divine purpose, then the meaning that we assign to everything from words to human dignity to personal morality has no transcendent value, and, as Jean Paul Sartre said, “man is nothing else than what he makes of himself.”
If there is no God—if there is no sovereign above all, then the only sovereign I recognize is myself, and that means that I am inevitably at war with all others, especially those who do not recognize my sovereignty and challenge it.
A world without Christmas means a world without God.
B. THE RULES DO NOT APPLY
A world without Christmas means a world of lawless barbarity.
Are you aware of the darkness that descends when we consider the true implications of a world without the Christ child? Can you begin to place yourself in the midst of the swirling chaos of a society where the individual’s personal sense of his own power is paramount, where all others are simply the backdrop to his own quest for dominion?
The rules that we know concerning personal and societal morality just do not apply!
Ivan, in Dostoyevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamozov, rightly understood this when he said, “If God is dead, then everything is permissible.” If God is dead, then there are no rules, and the rules we have do not apply.
This Christmas, in many cities and townships across the nation, Christian symbolism was attacked, ridiculed, and even outlawed. Nativity scenes, Christmas carols, and even the colors red and green were banned all in the name of denying the right of Christians to publicly express their faith. Christmas is called “the Holidays,” as if the word “holiday” is devoid of Christian significance!
• Pat Buchanan once wrote that “Christian bashing [has become] a popular indoor sport.”
• Michael Novak said, “There is a bigotry rampant in America, against evangelicals. It is the last respectable bigotry.”
The Christian faith is under serious attack, and that attack is not the result of random forces and unfortunate freak court decisions that come out of thin air.
In a world that claims that all truth is relative, that no one “value” can be considered greater than another, is it any surprise that we find ourselves in a downward spiral into the void of ethical ambivalence.
• Homosexuality is legalized, abortion is unrestrained, our President is criticized for printing a Bible verse on the official Christmas card, our womenfolk are being frog-marched by peer-pressure into military combat, crime is rampant with once respected entrepreneurs sentenced for fraud, and government increasingly seeks to trample on the inalienable rights of those it is empowered to serve.
And this in a nation with a Christian heritage! Now imagine this nation without the veneer of civility that characterizes it, without a code of laws that enforces its peace, or without a national morality that cares for its poor and sick.
None of these would be in existence if Christ had not come, if God were not who He says He is, if He had not given us the Ten Commandments.
It was once suggested that:
• In the 18th C. the Enlightenment killed the Bible
• In the 19th C. the Existentialist Nietzsche declared that God was killed
• In the 20th C. the Socialists saw to it that Man was killed
Last century, over 130 million people were killed in only three genocidal pogroms; in Lenin and Stalin’s “Soviet paradise,” in Adolph Hitler’s “1,000 year Reich,” and Chairman Mao’s “Great Leap Forward.”
Their intention was to eradicate Christianity and all Christian morality from the face of the earth. Hitler is reputed to have said:
After the destruction of Judaism, the extinction of Christian slave morals must follow logically.
The societies these monsters created are among the most vicious known to man. Yet these are the very societies that strove for what socialists in this country, and every country, long for, a nation devoid of Christian witness and morality, a society where Christmas is outlawed.
Can you imagine what 1,000 years of such savagery would have produced? Now can you imagine what a world that had never heard of Christ would be like? The rules of civilization that we take so much for granted, just would not apply. A world without Christmas means a world of lawless barbarity.
C. HOPELESSNESS
A world without Christmas means a world devoid of hope.
I understand that one of the leading triggers for suicide is lack of hope concerning the future. The care and pressures of the world come crushing down upon the lonely, grieving, abused, ruined, and as they survey their future they see no way forward. For them the only way out is death, in the vain hope that either there is a god who will love them despite their rebellion, or that there will no afterlife at all.
There is no denying it—we live in a world of sin:
• We are abandoned or betrayed by our friends and family,
• We lose loved ones to the grave,
• We are ill-treated, neglected, and injured both physically and emotionally, and
• We find that life as we hoped it would be, often turns sour. A downturn in the stock market wipes out our savings, our job is replaced by a machine, or habits and addictions destroy our lives.
Perhaps we are not the victims of these sins, perhaps we are the perpetrators.
The apostle Paul, as he examined his life said…
Romans 7:21-25 …I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. …23 …I see a[nother] law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
We often cry this, even as Christians, as Paul was when he wrote this. He writes in verse 22, “…in my inner being I delight in God’s law.” We know what is right, but sin is waging a personal war against us, whether internally or externally. What can be done? What can I do? And all this to people who know Christ!
Now imagine a world that has never known Christmas—there is no hope at all, no answer to the question.
• No hope of forgiveness
• No hope of mercy
• No hope of peace of mind.
Despite the posturing of atheists like Sartre who claimed that we were, in effect, our own gods, when the lights are out, and we consider who we really are, we know that we are lost and helpless. There is a void that cannot be filled, no matter how much power, prestige, or personal wealth we have.
A person’s final words often reveal the truth of their life; pretense is stripped away by impending death, and what is real is revealed.
• William E. Henley, an atheist, wrote a famous poem Invictus; the last two lines have often been quoted:
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the year
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul
Bold in their defiance of God, men have quoted Henley’s poem and shaken their fist at God, but most of them are unaware that William Henley later committed suicide.
• Thomas Paine, the leading atheistic writer in the American colonies: “I would give worlds if I had them, that The Age of Reason had never been published. 0 Lord, help me! Christ, help me! … No, don’t leave; stay with me! Send even a child to stay with me; for I am on the edge of Hell here alone. If ever the Devil had an agent, I have been that one.”
What despair to find at the close of life that there is a God and you have lived in willful rebellion to Him! Without Christ there is no hope, just a life devoid of meaning, and an awful looming judgment.
If there was never a Christmas, how deep would be our utter hopelessness! Truly a world without Christmas means a world devoid of hope.
II. THE HOPE OF THE AGES
Having completely destroyed the “Christmas Spirit” I want to rescue you from the slough of despond because of one immutable, indisputable, and indomitable fact.
Isaiah 9:6-7 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end…
Christ did come! As a consequence we know that…
• There is a God
• The rules do apply
• There is hope
Christ’s coming as a babe in a manger proves beyond doubt that the prophesies of the OT were true, and that God is Who He says He is.
Because of this we live in a world of ethical and moral certainty, even if we choose not to acknowledge it or live in terms of it!
And the apostle Paul, after crying out in anguish of soul the question that has been on the lips of mankind since the fall,
Romans 7:24 …Who will rescue me from this body of death?
…could write in words that give us all hope this morning,
Romans 7:25 Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! …
Romans 8:1-3 …there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2because…God…sent…his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man…
Breath again! Christ is Come, and now we have hope to step boldly into the future, beyond our front doors, but this time you step into world that is ordered by God, a world that could not exist unless Christ had come as the Babe of Bethlehem, and in which, because there is a Christmas, there is hope for a future governed by righteousness.
Let me close by asking you to turn in your hymnal to hymn 128, I would like you to follow along as I read some of it to you.
It came upon the midnight clear,
that glorious song of old,
from angels bending near the earth
to touch their harps of gold:
“Peace on earth, good will to men,
from heaven’s gracious King.”
The world in solemn stillness lay
to hear the angels sing.
I will skip verse two and read the real verse three which is missing from this rendition:
Yet with the woes of sin and strife
the world has suffered long;
beneath the heavenly hymn have rolled
two thousand years of wrong;
and warring humankind hears not
the tidings which they bring;
O hush the noise and cease your strife
and hear the angels sing!
O ye, beneath life’s crushing load
whose forms are bending low,
who toil along the climbing way
with painful steps and slow;
look now, for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing:
O rest beside the weary road,
and hear the angels sing.
So friends, as we bask in the afterglow of our Christmas festivities, let us be mindful of this One whom God has sent.
If you find yourself burdened with “the woes of sin and strife,” if you are bowed “beneath life’s crushing load,” then the very fact of Christmas tells us that Hope has come to the world and is offered to you this morning.
He came that the separation from God mankind has endured since the shortly after the dawn of time might be ended, that the burden of condemnation, sin, and death we carry might be abandoned, and that we might have a hope for the future.
In the words of the carol,
…hush the noise and cease your strife
O rest beside the weary road,
and hear the angels sing.
Luke 2:14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”
May God’s favor rest on you as you commit yourself to Him.
AMEN.
