Introduction: In America today, when most people think of Christmas, they think of images like these.
(Show slides of Christmas images.)
We have a very glamorous, glittery, plastic, cheery, bright image of Christmas here in America. It’s a holiday of parties, and gifts and shopping and decorations. It’s a holiday loaded with nostalgia and memory. It’s a holiday full of children singing and Rockwellian images of snow covered roofs, Christmas trees and the joy of discovering just what lies entombed within the shiny red, white and green paper covered boxes under the tree.
We don’t really have a solid grasp on this holiday. That’s largely because we celebrate a holiday when the true celebration should be that of a HOLY DAY. I do want to make clear, as I have done many times before, that Christ never called for us to celebrate, commemorate or in any other way remember his birth. He DID call us to celebrate and remember his death, but not his birth. However, if we’re going to celebrate it, we need to focus on the Holy Event that occurred and not on all of the glitzy, sparkly minutia that goes with our current celebration of Christmas.
Typically, we get so caught up in the celebration, the business, the shopping, the decorations the grand memories, that we forget that there is a dark side to Christmas. We often forget that it was because of despair, shame, frustration, hatred and darkness that Christmas even occurred.
We’re so often distracted by the bright lights of the holiday that we forget the darkness that brought us a Holy Day. That’s why, this Christmas season, I’m preaching a series call “The Dark Side of Christmas.” The focus is not the darkness, but the light. I’m not wanting to focus on the dark, negative, depressing aspects that are symptomatic of our need for Christmas, but I do want to make sure we understand them so that we may have a greater understanding of the amazing grace of God. So that we may have a greater understanding of just what it was he gave us through the gift of his Son on Christmas.
Today, I’m going to focus on the fact that God brought us hope from despair. Traditionally Christmas is seen as a time of hope, but for so many people despair is the controlling emotion of their lives. And that despair can bring a suffocating darkness. Despair is the lack of hope. And many people, of all walks of life, of all faiths, of all experiences find themselves buried in the darkness of despair so deeply that hope isn’t a glimmer in the distance, it’s barely a distant memory. Yet, out of this despair, God brinks hope.
To understand this, let’s look at the despair Israel found themselves in when God chose to bring hope.
Movement 1: A Growing Darkness
Review Jewish history OT:
• Called out of slavery in Egypt to re-present God to the nations (God always hears the cry of the oppressed.)
• Failed to live up to their God given destiny
• Returned to slavery under the Babylonians
• Persians defeated the Babylonians…giving the Jews a small degree of self-rule.
• OT ENDS…With Malachi giving God’s promise that “THE DAY OF THE LORD” is coming…a day of rescue and a day of judgment (refiner’s fire.) It will be proceeded by one who will prepare the way in the spirit of Elijah (John the Baptist)
Teach Jewish history Intertestamental:
• Alexander the Great conquers Persia (332 BC) and begins “Hellenization.” The policy of uniting the world under Greek language and culture…the policy was followed by Alexander’s successors.
• Two of Alexander’s successors set up dynasties at his death. One, the Ptolemic dynasty was based in Egypt, the other, the Seleucid dynasty based in Syria and Mesopotamia. Both fought over Palestine…and the Jews…for more than 100 years.
• Eventually the Seleucids won control and one of their leaders, Antiochus IV Epiphanes (literally translated…God made manifest) was especially harsh and radical in his attempts at Hellenization.
o He aimed to eradicate Jewish religion.
• He prohibited central elements of Jewish worship
• He attempted to destroy all copies of the Torah
• Required offerings to Zeus
• Erected an idol of Zeus in the temple and to that image he sacrificed a PIG on the altar of God.
• Antiochus was opposed by Mattathias. An old man from the tribe of Levi. He had five sons, the oldest named Judas Maccabeus (the Maccabes) this family led a revolt against Antiochus, destroying Greek altars and beginning a revolution that turned into a 24 year war in which Israel ultimately won it’s freedom from Antiochus IV and the Seleucid Dynasty.
• However, upon winning the new Jewish leaders established a kingdom that largely followed the Greek ways of Antiochus and often persecuted the more devout Jews. During this time the two dynasties that were ruling Israel fought amongst themselves, leaving the nation in a constant state of unrest.
• This continued until the Roman general, Pompey, intervened. He put Jerusalem under a siege and then entered the temple and slaughtered the priests as they were performing their duties. He then entered the Holy of Holies and declared Roman rule over Israel…this was an act that the Jewish people would never forget nor forgive.
• Shortly after this the Roman Senate elected Herod the Great as, “King of the Jews.” And He then conquered Jerusalem where he reigned as king for the next three decades…dying shortly after the birth of Chirst.
• Herod was not a Jew and he was cruel to the Jewish people when he wanted to be, but kind to them when he thought it would benefit him.
Movement 2: A Ray of Hope
400 years before Herod began his insidious reign over the Jewish people, the prophet Malachi had promised…
"Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire," says the LORD Almighty. "Not a root or a branch will be left to them. But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall. Then you will trample down the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I do these things," says the LORD Almighty.
"Remember the law of my servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel.
"See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse."
Malachi 4:1-6 (NIV)
Throughout 400 years of despair, bloodshed, disillusionment, betrayal, mistrust, anger and fear, there was a ray of hope. The Jews knew that God had promised a deliverer. They knew that he had promised them that a day was coming when there would be judgment for sin and when they would be set free from their oppression.
That ray of hope had been trampled on time and time again. First the Greeks would free them from the Persians, but the glory was short-lived as their liberators became their newest taskmasters. Once the Greeks fell, surely the leaders of the Ptolemic Dynasty would free them…but these masters soon fell to the Seleucids.
Finally, though in the Maccabean revolt they had found their freedom…yet that victory too was hollow. Their own people, their own leaders who had lead them to freedom now fought amongst themselves as the common people continued to experience injustice and darkness…the hope promised by Malachi was fading. Despair was becoming a way of life.
As the Romans intervened and deposed the squabbling leaders, placing Herod on the throne of Israel, all that was left in the darkness was a small ember, a small spark of hope. Surely a deliverer, the Messiah, would come soon and deliver them from the darkness and hopelessness in which they found themselves. Surely the Day of the Lord must be fast approaching.
The people of Israel clung to promises like the one found in Malachi or the one that Moses gave long before that…
The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him.
Deuteronomy 18:15 (NIV)
The people of Israel found themselves in need of a deliverer. They needed God to raise up one who would set them free from their oppression, one who would bring light to the darkness and hope where there was only despair
And so, in their despair they cried out to God and waited for deliverance, they waited for hope to come.
However, sometimes hope comes from the most unlikely of places…
We expect hope to come into the darkness like a shaft of sunlight through the broken ceiling of a dark and dusty barn. But God doesn’t always work that way. In fact, God rarely works that way.
Here, in Israel’s darkest hour, God sends them a deliverer, a Messiah but he doesn’t send a ray of light into the darkness…he brings the ray of light, the SUN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS out of darkness. God brings HOPE OUT OF DESPAIR. God takes what would appear to be a hopeless and dark situation and brings to Israel…and to us…the hope that was longed for, the light that would do more than illuminate the darkness, it would eventually eradicate the darkness.
In the midst of Israel’s darkness and hopelessness God begins to work as only God can. Through a young, unmarried woman and her fiancé, both of whom must have been terrified, God’s redemptive plan begins to unfold.
Imagine the deliverer of Israel, God’s “Treasured Possession” his “Kingdom of Priests,” being born to a young Jewish girl and her fiancé, through a situation that violated all of the Jewish customs, norms and religious traditions.
Imagine the deliverer being born in a stable during a time when the power of Rome held the people down like a boot on their backs…Deliverers, Kings are not born in stables.
Imagine a Messiah…the deliverer of God’s people…the SUN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS coming through a lineage that was less than pristine.
(Tamar…a prostitute who tricked her father-in-law into sleeping with her)
(Rahab…a prostitute who wasn’t even Jewish)
(Ruth…a Moabite woman…the Moabites were the enemy)
(David…a man who committed adultery [basically rape] and then committed murder to hide his first sin)
(Solomon…who was led into idol worship through the influence of his 700 wives)
That’s not what you think of when you think of the lineage of the SUN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. This isn’t the way God shatters darkness with light is it? Surely God would use a powerful and royal messiah. Surely God wouldn’t take the darkness of an illegitimate child, born in a barn, descended from whores and foreigners to bring light and hope.
But that is exactly what God did. He took the darkness that engulfed the people of Israel, He took the desperate situation of Mary and Joseph, He took the things that made no sense at all and out of that darkness and despair, he brought light and hope…not just for Israel, but for the entire world!
It’s just like God to take what’s weak, worthless, hopeless and dark and use it to bring light and hope to the world. Many years after these events, the Apostle Paul describes God’s tendency to work in this way like this…
Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world. things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important.
I Corinthians 1:27-28 (NLT)
God used the things that were powerless, foolish…the things that were nothing…to bring about his plan so that no one can boast about how great they are. He leaves us with only one option, to give him the praise, to give him the credit. Only God could make a plan like that work.
But then God has always been good at speaking into the darkness and bringing forth light.
In Israel’s darkness, in their hopelessness, as they cried out for a deliverer, God heard the cry of the oppressed and responded by bringing out of the darkness…
One who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times… He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord his God. And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach the ends of the earth. And he will be their peace…
Micah 5:2, 4 (NIV)
You see, God’s not afraid of the dark. Out of darkness he can bring light and hope where, otherwise, there would be none. The Prophet Isaiah put the promise this way.
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.
Isaiah 9:2 (NIV)
When God is involved, out of darkness comes light. Out of despair comes hope.
So What?
This is a beautiful story. It’s the story of God reaching into the darkness and, out of that darkness, brining light, hope, life, and freedom. It’s a story that I never get tired of hearing. It’s a story that, as I learn more and more about it, becomes more meaningful to me. Every time I hear this story…the story of God bringing hope out of despair…I fall in love with all over again. I fall in love with the story of Christmas because it is MY story. And if you think about it and if you’re honest, it’s YOUR story too…
You see, that first Christmas wasn’t all bright and cheery. It wasn’t decorated with plastic trees, bright lights, candy canes and gifts. The first Christmas came in a time of darkness and despair. It was a time that many believed to be hopeless. It was a time when people called out to God for deliverance, and GOD ALWAYS HEARS THE CRY OF THE OPPRESSED. There was a dark side to that first Christmas, but God wasn’t limited by the darkness. Instead, he used it to bring light and hope. OUT OF DESPAIR COMES HOPE
And here is the good news for you and me today; here is how this story is our story. God still brings light out of darkness. God still brings hope out of despair. God didn’t limit his transforming power to the first Christmas. God’s hope wasn’t dangled in front of Israel and all of mankind as a limited one time offer. He makes it available to each and every one of us right here, right now.
I don’t know what despair you may be dealing with in your life right now. I don’t know if it’s just a shadow of darkness or if it’s all consuming. Debt, divorce, bad health, broken relationships, spiritual emptiness, whatever despair you are dealing with, whatever situation you find to be hopeless, I know that God isn’t afraid of the darkness. I know that, just has he did during the first Christmas, he will take that darkness and despair and he will bring light and hope…It’s what he does.
If you are in the dark right now, if despair describes your emotional state, your life then I want to encourage you with the Christmas story. It is a story of God taking despair…the despair of oppression, the despair of poverty, the despair of a hopeless pregnancy, the despair of a hopeless ancestry, the despair of a hopeless people and out of that despair brining HOPE. He will do the same with your despair. THAT’S WHAT HE DOES.
Let’s Pray
