The Christmas Story

Today, I want to just share with you a simple telling of the Christmas story; I’ve asked some of kids to remain up here on the platform with me, because they’re going to help me with the word, CHRISTMAS! So, kids, as I come to each letter in that word, I want you to just hold your letter in your lap, and keep it there until we have spelled the entire word! Okay?

Of course, Christmas starts with the letter, C; it’s fitting that it starts with that letter, because that letter stands for Christ, God’s great gift to our world! In fact, the word Christmas comes from a combining of the phrase “Christ Mass.” The word Christ means anointed One, that is, the One sent by God with a specific task to carry out; the word Mass means “a service of celebration.” Christmas is a day of great joy, because it marks the beginning of Jesus Christ’s time here on this Earth. It’s a day that we celebrate in a number of ways, but is a day that should make worship of Jesus, the Christ, the Anointed One sent by God, an integral part of the Holiday Season. God sent His only Son, Jesus, to our world because our world had a problem: that problem is called sin! Sin separated us from God as His crowning achievement of creation, and it came about because mankind disobeyed God! That’s what sin is—disobedience to God! God told Adam and Eve clear back at the beginning of the Bible, that they could eat of any fruit from any tree in the Garden of Eden!—except the fruit of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil! What did they do? They ate of the forbidden fruit, and from that time until now, their disobedience brought sin into the world, and a holy God cannot, and will not tolerate sin!

That brings us to the letter H; the God of Heaven, the God who created all that is, loved His creation so much that He couldn’t bear to see His creation suffer the consequences of sin! Out of that love, God made a plan from before He even laid the foundations of the world; that plan was to send His Son, Jesus, to live a sinless, perfect life, and to bear the penalty for mankind’s sin with His own death! Jesus came down from Heaven to be born as a baby in a manger, at Bethlehem. You would think that such a noble act would require a very lavish, pompous entry into our world; but God chose rather to have His Son, and His plan for the world to come in the form of a normal baby, born in a dingy manger of a barn, surrounded by stinky animals! So, the letter H not only represents that Jesus was sent from Heaven, but that He was also sent with very humble beginnings!

The letter R stands for redemption; redemption is the reason God sent this gift of Jesus, His only Son, from Heaven to our world. To redeem something means to buy it back; God created us, but then He had to buy us back, and the only “thing” with enough value to buy us back, to redeem us, was the sinless blood of Jesus, poured out upon the Cross, where Jesus died for the sins of mankind! Let me explain with an illustration, how redemption works:

“A little boy once made a toy boat. He was very proud of his boat because he hadn’t bought it, he had made it himself. One day whilst sailing his boat on the lake, the wind suddenly strengthened and blew the toy boat out of sight towards the other side of the lake. The boy immediately ran around to the far side of the lake to look for his boat. He searched and searched, but couldn’t find it anywhere, the boat was lost. The boy was bitterly disappointed because this wasn’t any ordinary boat, this was his special boat that he had made with his own hands.

Sometime later, the boy was walking past a shop in his village. He happened to look in the window, and there up for sale was his boat. He knew it was his because he had made it himself and knew exactly what it looked like. Immediately the boy rushed into the shop and paid the asking price for his boat. On leaving the shop, the boy looked admiringly at his boat and said Now you are mine twice over. I made you, and now I have bought you back again. I have redeemed you.”

That is a picture of what God has done for us! He made us and therefore owns us, but because of our sin we became lost and separated from Him. But in His love, God sent Jesus to buy us back, to redeem us. And the price Jesus paid? – His own blood that He shed on the Cross. So, although at Christmas time we remember the coming of Jesus to our world as a baby in a manger in the city of Bethlehem, we must also think of Easter, that time of year that we are reminded of Jesus’ death on the Cross for our sins. We must always remember the purpose of His coming, was to redeem us to God!