The State Of Our Hearts On The Night Before Christmas

Advent 4 - Love - The State of our Hearts on The Night Before Christmas

What is Christmas really about, anyway? Why, a few days after the winter solstice, is there this day that every year is celebrated with Santa and reindeer and Christmas trees and Ivy and presents galore.

Our culture would have us believe that all these things that I have mentioned are exactly what Christmas is about.

Our culture is increasingly disinterested in any other meaning of Christmas being communicated.

What you can say and do in publicly funded schools, what you can say and do in many circumstances, that relates to this season, is limited to Santa and fun and silly songs about the season. Why is that?

What is Christmas really about? And why does it matter? Is it really something to be celebrated? Or is it a distraction that we would be good to try to ignore and avoid?

The early Christians were part of the culture of their day. That culture was pagan, and as the young church they were sorting out how to best relate to that culture.

And near the 20th of December, there was an annual event celebrating the winter solstice.

The winter solstice is the longest, darkest day of the year. The early Christians were obviously passionate about Jesus.

And the Bible provided very clear and solid narratives about the birth of Jesus, which of course struck them as being extremely significant.

So with an evangelical motive, and with a heart wanting to celebrate the incarnation, the early Christians chose to have the birth of Jesus celebrated on December 25.

Notice that it is not on the day of the winter solstice. This year Dec. 21 is the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year in Earth's Northern Hemisphere.

There was some thinking and some writing that suggested that the Virgin Mary was made pregnant by the Holy Spirit with Jesus around or near the Passover, which would’ve been around March 25.

So add nine months to that, approximately, and you land on or about December 25.

Whatever the reason or the logic behind choosing that date, which for us is tomorrow, The celebration of the incarnation began as an annual event.

So that’s one question with one very short answer. What is Christmas really about anyway?

To me more the interesting question is what was the state of the planet earth and humanity the night before the Saviour came?

And then from that question comes another question that zooms in on why this is so personally consequential for all people: what was the state of your heart the night before you were saved?

The Bible gives us quite a clear idea of the answer to both those questions.

And the answer, while ultimately incredibly encouraging, does require us to spend some time pondering what someone would call the bad news before the good news,

the grave problem before the solution. The sickness before the cure. The dark before the dawn.

Let’s look at what scripture has to say about both of these questions, again what was the state of humanity the night before the Saviour came and the plan of salvation was put into play, in fact this very night of Christmas Eve?

And what was the state of your heart the night before you were saved, the night before you first believed, the night before you came a follower of Jesus, a disciple of Jesus?

In Colossians 1:21 we see this:

Colossians 1:21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.

So this is perhaps the most important truth to consider. And this is a bit of a strange one.

If you were to have asked me, the night before I came to Christ or when I was generally in the frame of mind that I lived in before Christ, I would have objected to almost every word in this sentence.

I would have objected to the word “God“. I didn’t believe in God, and if I had any understanding of the word “God”, it was way off the reality that I would later discover.

Not only did I not believe in God, but what I did believe was that anyone and everyone who did believe in God was a sucker, was, as I thought of the time, a knuckle dragging Neanderthal. So, yes, I would’ve objected to the word “God“.

And I would’ve had no concept of what “alienated from God“ met. Even if I was to, for a moment, have considered the possibility that God might exist,

I would’ve had no concept of his character - holiness, his purity, his otherness, or his love.

I might’ve been warm to the idea that God could be loving, but that would’ve been completely separate from any notion of his holiness.