OPEN: On December 10th we’ve reserved the local movie theatre for a private viewing of “The Tale Of Narnia – The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe” It’s the story of 4 children in war ravaged WWII London who are sent to the country, to the home of a rich relative where 1 of their only pastimes becomes playing hide and seek.
During one of these games, one of the children hides in a wardrobe (closet) that turns out to be a doorway into a magical and mystical land called Narnia. It was a beautiful land, but Narnia was held in bondage by an evil witch who is so cruel that she had turned it into a realm where it was always winter… but never Christmas.
Narnia is a beautiful land, but it’s crippled because something was missing. It was always winter and the land and its people lacked the joy that Christmas could bring
APPLY – By contrast, the problem in our society today is NOT that we don’t have Christmas. In fact we seem to have Christmas for a veryyyy long time.
Even before Thanksgiving you begin to hear the “sounds of Christmas” – the music, the bells, the annoying TV commercials. It seems that everywhere you look, you see this holiday advertised in newspapers, on radios and TV and in every store across the land.
Our problem is NOT that we don’t have Christmas… but increasingly it is a Christmas without Christ. We have the celebration, but the celebration has gradually edged out Jesus. In fact, there are people who are attempting to gradually remove any mention of Jesus – who is the source of Christmas’ joy and power.
ILLUS: The American Family Association (AFA) recently examined a couple of newspapers in the Memphis Area & they analyzed over 280 pages of advertising they had collectively in them.
AFA found that Christmas was not mentioned by Target, Kroger, Office Max, Walgreen, Sears, Staples, Lowe’s, J.C. Penney, Dell and Best Buy. These stores refused to mention “Christmas” in their advertising – but substituted the term “holiday” 59 times instead. If you were to ask these companies why they’ve banned “Christmas” in their in-store promotions and retail advertising and they’ll tell you they didn’t want to offend anyone… except perhaps Christians.
Fox news commentator Bill O’Reilly sees this as a small conflict but one which is part of a larger “culture war” being waged to remove Christ from the public stage.
* School bus drivers in Maine were banned from leading Christmas carols.
* Broward County in Florida told Calvary Chapel a couple of years ago that they could not include the words "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" in their Christmas display, the church filed a suit in the U.S. District Court claiming they had the right to display the words. Judge William Zloch agreed with their "free speech" argument and allowed them to keep the words in their display as long as they included the words, "Calvary Chapel says," before the words "Jesus is the Reason for the Season."
* And recently one school even outlawed the “whistling” of Christmas carols” because someone just might recognize the words from those tunes and wrongly believe that Jesus was the reason for the season.
Now, this IS a culture war and it’s being waged despite the fact that the majority of Americans believe in the story of Christmas.
ILLUS: Last year, Newsweek conducted a telephone poll of over 1000 adults
79% of Americans believed that Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, without a human father
67% said they believed the entire story of Christmas was historically accurate
93 percent of Americans said they believed Jesus Christ actually lived and
82 percent believed Jesus Christ was God or the Son of God.
Of course, there ARE those who don’t agree. And they believe that by removing Christ from Christmas they would actually make the world a better place.
Well… what difference would it make if Christ was taken out of Christmas?
According to that same Newsweek poll, the question was asked: What if Jesus had never born?
63% - believed there would be less charity
61% - less kindness
59% - less personal happiness
58% - less tolerance
47% - more war (16% say less, 26% say the same)
Well… is that true? Would the world be worse off if Christ were removed from Christmas?
A visit to one period of history gives a startling insight:
ILLUS: According to one historian: Before the advent of the Christmas carol, celebrations of Christmas had become so depraved and rowdy that the observance of the joyous season was once forbidden by the English Parliament.
The meaning of Christmas had become lost in a maelstrom of reveling, drunkenness, rioting, and depravity. Decent people found it necessary to stay indoors for safety. The situation became so shameful that in 1644 Parliament passed strict laws making it illegal to commemorate the season in any way whatsoever!
ILLUS: Last month Brad – our youth minister – was teaching the kids about the celebration of holidays. He said “At our local Was-mart I noticed how they were ‘selling’ the upcoming holidays. One side of the aisle was Halloween candy costumes and decorations. On the other side was Christmas candy lights and decorations.
Halloween is primarily a ‘how much candy can I get’ holiday.
Christmas has become a ‘how many presents can I get’ holiday.
Sandwiched in between is Thanksgiving. The ONLY holiday set aside to thank others and God for our blessings!”
This has become so true of Christmas that this year’s most popular Christmas tree is the “upside down” tree. Have you seen it? Do you know why it’s so popular? Because there’s more room underneath the tree for presents!
When you remove Christ completely (or even partially) from Christmas you can simply end up with a holiday focused on “ME”. It can very easily become a extremely selfish time of the year.
But whether that would be true or not the fact remains… there are people who NOT ONLY don’t like Christ and Christmas but who are determined to remove any semblance of either one in America.
That actually is nothing new. The Bible tells us that the birth of Christ received the same opposition over 2000 yrs ago.
The Shepherds heard about His birth hurried to see Him.
The Wise men from the east followed the star and traveled to His birthplace with great expectation.
But not everybody was excited about this birth. Matthew. 2:3 tells us that “when Herod the king had heard these things, he was TROUBLED, and all Jerusalem with him”.
Today… just like years ago in Jerusalem there are people who are troubled by any reference to a king born in Bethlehem.
So what can we do about it?
Ø Well, 1st we can keep ourselves informed
I am grateful for the various commentators and editors have helped to hi-light the foolishness of
school and government officials who’ve tried to keep Christ away from our children.
We need to be aware of such things. We need to realize that there are people out there who are actively seeking to push the Jesus and the church off the public stage.
The more we know the better prepared we can be to deal with those situations.
There’s an old saying: forewarned is forearmed.
Ø 2ndly we can make our voice heard – we can protest
We’re in a free country… we can do that! That’s what the American Family Association has done. The AFA has asked people to send polite but firm letters to places like Sears, Target, and Walgreens asking them to change their policies on advertising. AND they’ve had some success:
Walgreen sent a letter apologizing - having left Christmas out advertising.
Lowe’s sent a letter saying their “holiday” trees will again be called “Christmas trees”
And according to a recent article in the New York Times, a spokeswoman for Target said it did not intend to ban Christmas and might use Christmas in advertisements later this year! In addition, Sears is adding "Merry Christmas" signs in their stores.
But we need to realize that as important as being informed… and as important as it is to make our voices heard… those things can solve ONLY PART of the problem.
ILLUS: What got me thinking about this was a news story on cable TV about a young man that was being interviewed in a town on the East Coast. The local politicians had erected a “Holiday tree” and had apparently removed any reference to Christ on the city square and this young man was protesting. The interviewer asked him why he was protesting and the man responded that he was a Christian and it really upset him that this was now being called a “Holiday tree” rather than a “Christmas tree”.
The interviewer asked the man if anyone had joined him in his protest.
“No” he responded.
Then he was asked if he felt lonely in his protest.
And I got to thinking – something was wrong here.
If this guy was the only Christian complaining about a shift of public policy towards Christmas, my guess is there weren’t many Christians in that community to begin with. As significant as it was that this city had taken Christ off the Christmas tree it seemed apparent that nobody there had believed on the Christ of Calvary’s tree for a long time.
And that led to realize that this young man had his priorities misplaced.
He was trying to protect that “status quo”. He was trying to shore up walls that had long since fallen down.
AND he would have been comfortable if the tree had continued to be called a Christmas tree. But now he was trying to protect and defend what had once been a cultural norm – but no longer was because NOBODY cared anymore.
What that young man needed to preach was not Christmas, but Christ.
You see.. the problem is this: That young man (and many other Christians like him) would have been “comfortable” if Newport News had simply called the tree a “Christmas tree” EVEN THO’ Christ was apparently not preached in that city.
WHY would they be comfortable with that? Because they want to be “comfortable” in their faith. They figure Satan has been vanquished and he no longer poses a threat, so once they have their own house in order – once Christ has become part of their lives - they can all just retire to their normal lives and pretend everything’s ok.
But Revelation chapter 12 tells a slightly different story. Revelation 12 tells of the fall of Satan from heaven. There is a great battle in heaven and the forces of the resurrected Christ overwhelm and completely defeat Satan. But then Revelation 12:12 declares: "…rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short."
Satan knows he is vanquished.
Satan knows he has been defeated.
But he’s not about to crawl away into a hole somewhere and wait for the final judgment. He thoroughly intends to do as much damage to Christ’s kingdom as he can accomplish before his final destruction is completed.
ILLUS: In the tale of Narnia, the rightful king comes and frees Narnia from grip of winter and despair. But there still remains a battle to be fought. There’s still an enemy to be confronted.
Our enemy – Satan – is not just roll over and play dead simply because the rightful King - Jesus -has thrown him out of heaven. Satan knows his time is short and he intends to do as much damage to the church and Jesus as possible. And he’ll do anything and everything he can think of to remove the advantages we have. And because he is a determined foe… once in a while he’ll succeed. Once in a while he will succeed in pushing back Christ from influencing society. Once in a while he’ll succeed in making it difficult for us to be the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world”.
And the tendency – when this happens – is to wring our hands and become filled with despair. To believe that maybe we should have kept our mouths shut and our faith to ourselves.
But we have no need to despair.
In 1 John 4:4 we’re told: “.. greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world.”
And Jesus said: Matthew 16:18 “… upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall NOT prevail against it.”
We may suffer setbacks… but we cannot lose as long as we keep our eyes on Christ.
One of the main phrases in the Tales of Narnia is: “Aslan Is On The Move”
And that’s what the Bible tells us about Christ: “Jesus is on the move”
We can’t lose because Jesus is always on the move. Jesus is not sitting back waiting to see what Satan will do.
CLOSE: And that’s just what He expects from you and me. Jesus expects us NOT to wait and worry about what Satan will do. Jesus EXPECTS US to be “on the move”. We cannot be satisfied with keeping our faith to ourselves.
We are told to “GO, and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:18)
We can’t obey that command if we allow ourselves to become “comfortable” with our faith. We need to realize that there is a lost world out there that we need to reach and having a comfortable faith just isn’t going to get the job done.
ILLUS: In Ontario Canada, a church was having a special Saturday Evening worship service.
Suddenly a thunderstorm swept through the town and a bolt of lightening plunged the church into darkness. The preacher – a man named Warren Hudson - felt his way to the kitchen to find candles which he handed out to everyone present. Persons lit their candles in much the same way as many churches do on Christmas Eve, each lighting the candle of the person next to them.
The worshipers then made their way through the church’s winding hallways to the front door.
“Peering out, we could see the rain coming down in sheets,” Warren remembers. With traffic snarled, people were running for the nearest shelter. Looking around they realized that the entire city was in darkness.
“There in the darkness we stood, a little band of Christians, each clutching a light, not sure whether to venture out into the storm or stay inside the church in hopes that the storm would soon blow over.”
There in the darkness the light of truth struck him. In this most dramatic way he realized what it means to be the “light of the world.” He writes, “It occurred to me then that this is the temptation that I face every day. It is easy to play it safe and be a good Christian in church. It is a lot harder to venture out in faith into the storms of life and tell people about Jesus.”
We need to realize, that as important as keeping “Christ in Christmas” can be for us… we need to focus even more on the task of putting Christ in the hearts of all men.
SERMONS IN THIS SERIES:
The Land Of Narnia - Romans 8:19-8:25
Narnia and an Angel Of Light - Matthew 4:1-4:17
Royalty - Revelation 1:4-1:7
The Unsafe Savior - Luke 2:25-2:35
Looking For A New Beginning - Deuteronomy 34:1-34:12
