Why We Need Christmas

INTRODUCTION

"The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season! Now, please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason."

One of the more popular movies right now is “The Grinch,” based on the Dr. Suess story, “How the Grinch stole Christmas.”

The Grinch, whose heart is two sizes two small, lives in a cave on the side of a mountain, high above the Whos in the village of Whoville. The noisy holiday preparations and infernal singing of the happy little citizens below annoy him to no end. So the Grinch decides this frivolous merriment must stop. His "wonderful, awful" idea is to put on a Santa outfit, strap heavy antlers on his poor, quivering dog Max, construct a makeshift sleigh, head down to Whoville, and strip those chafingly cheerful Whos of their Yuletide glee once and for all.

Looking quite out of place and very disturbing in his Santa get-up, the Grinch slithers down chimneys with empty bags, stealing the Whos’ presents, their food, even the logs from their humble Who-fires. He takes the ramshackle sleigh to Mt. Crumpit to dump it and then waits (he hopes) to hear the sobs of the Whos when they wake up on Christmas morning to discover their beloved holiday has disappeared.

The Bible has it’s own Grinch. But this character in the pages of Scripture is scarier b/c he falls into the non-fiction category. Like the Dr. Suess Grinch, the Bible Grinch is mean, hard-hearted and he enjoys misery of others.

And yet he is different – more than just having termites in his smile and garlic in his soul – the Bible Grinch is the very embodiment of evil itself

Instead of having one lone canine sidekick, he has an army of demonic creatures at his disposal.

Instead of just wanting to steal Christmas, he’s out to steal your very soul. And if he can get it, he’s delighted to imprison you in hellish torture from which no one can ever escape.

He’s been known by many names throughout history – Beelzebub, Mephistopheles, Belial, the Prince of Demons, the Ruler of this dark world – but you and I probably know him best simply as the Devil or Satan.

TRANSITION: He’s introduced to us in Genesis chapter 3.

THE GARDEN

Read Genesis 3:1-7 – Now the serpent was more crafty…

And so goes the story of how sin entered the world.

Satan takes the form of a serpent, tempts Eve who eats the fruit and offers some to Adam. God is directly disobeyed ,and Creation’s perfection falls apart.

Verses 16 and 17 of Genesis 3 tell us some of the results

For women - It will hurt to have a baby (greatly increase pain in childbirth), The base instinctive urges of male/female relationships will be to desire and dominate (your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you), the ground will produce thorns making it difficult to produce food (by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food), and death will be a reality for all men and women (dust you are and to dust you will return).

And Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden into a world that now included pain, toil, separation and death.

This event is sometimes referred to as “The Fall of Man” and it leaves us in conflict. Some scholars describe it like this…

 Individuals experience conflict with God,

 Individuals experience conflict with Creation,

 Individuals experience conflict with Others,

 and Individuals even experience conflict with themselves

If you step inside FAO Schwartz toy store this time of you year, you’re likely to hear a song being played over their speaker system, “Welcome to our world, welcome to our world, welcome to our world of toys.”

The account in Genesis 3 also says, “Welcome to our World.” Welcome to our world of death, of imperfection, of crime, of flood, of famine, of incivility. Welcome to our world of abused power, of disease, of unequal distribution of wealth, of selfishness, and of greed. Welcome to our world where people say one thing and do another, where people get judged by the color of their skin, and where children sometimes get abused by the people who are supposed to love them the most.

Welcome to our world of sin. This is the world we know. We experience those multiple layers of separation. We experience what it’s like to be cast out of Eden.

And we, like Adam and Eve, have each contributed our fair share of sins to humanity’s common experience. We’ve lied, we’ve lusted, we’ve been unkind, we’ve murdered the self-image of others with our words, and we’ve loved ourselves much more than we’ve loved our neighbors.

The world has a lot of problems, and those of us here in this room are the cause of a number of them. We are fallen. But we’re not without hope. Look at Genesis 3:15…