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I’m going to paint with a very broad brush this morning, but I’m hoping to give us all a deeper and richer appreciation for what Christmas is all about and how the coming of Christ brought untold blessings to our world. We don’t want to live in a world without Christmas. Many of the world’s inhabitants over the last 2000 years have lived without Christmas, and the results have been hardship, tyranny, slavery, death.
I love the lights of Christmas. There seem to be more Frosty the Snowmen, Jolly Ole St. Nicks, Grinches, reindeer, even ducks and penguins and a 10-foot-tall skeleton with a Santa hat decorating front lawns than the manger scene of Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus. My favorite lawn ornament this year is a large JOY (about 8 feet by five feet) with the manger scene nestled in the “O”. The angel announced to the shepherds, “I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people.” Without Christmas, there is no great and lasting joy.
I want to read John the Baptist’s father Zecharias’ prophecy in Luke 1. It is full of Christmas truth.
Luke 1:68-75, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, For He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people, 69 And has raised up a horn of salvation for us In the house of David His servant– 70 As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old– 71 Salvation FROM OUR ENEMIES, And FROM THE HAND OF ALL WHO HATE US; 72 To show mercy toward our fathers, And to remember His holy covenant, 73 The oath which He swore to Abraham our father, 74 To grant us that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies, Might serve Him without fear, 75 In holiness and righteousness before Him all our days.”
CHRISTMAS CONTROVERSY
Now, with those truths in our minds and hearts, let’s imagine a world without Christmas. I don’t mean the commercialized, Santa Claus-exalting, consumeristic, materialistic, financial bonanza for retailers. I’m talking about the celebration of the birth of Christ. True, we don’t know the exact date of Christ’s birth. The early church didn’t make much of Christ’s birth. They focused on his death and resurrection. But there were many pagan festivities around the winter solstice, so in 336 AD the emperor Constantine, who made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, declared December 25 to be the celebration of Jesus birth. Some connect December 25 back to March 25, the assumed date of Mary’s conception of Jesus. The Eastern Orthodox Church (the east split from the west in 1054 AD) celebrates the birth of Christ on January 6 or 7, nine months after April 6 or 7. No one knows for sure on what day Christ was born.
But imagine with me a world without any recognition or even awareness of the birth of Christ. North Korea does not recognize Christmas. It’s an atheistic state. Many North Koreans have no idea who Jesus Christ or God is. The Kim family is god. On December 24th the nation celebrates Kim Jong Un’s grandmother’s birthday with hours of historical lectures and various performances. You can be imprisoned, tortured, or killed for celebrating Christmas.
In his book When a Nation Forgets God: 7 Lessons We Must Learn from Nazi Germany, Erwin Lutzer explains that since the Germans celebrated Christmas for centuries, Hitler decided to reinterpret the whole meaning. Christmas was turned into a totally pagan festival. The date for his soldiers was changed to December 21, the date of the winter solstice. School prayers were banned, carols and Nativity plays were forbidden in the schools, and in 1938 even the name of Christmas was changed to Yuletide. Yuletide was a Germanic pagan midwinter festival. Farmers and locals would gather at local heathen temples with food, ale, and livestock to be sacrificed.
This year the Canadian Human Rights Commission proposed that Christmas is a form of discrimination and intolerance. Observing the birth of Jesus is an “obvious example” of a type of religious bias that is rooted in colonialism. Members of the Conservative Party of Canada immediately blasted this suggestion as “ridiculous” and “woke.”
Our own nation for the most part has moved away from remembering the birth of Christ to extravagant celebrations and gift-giving. One third of Americans go in debt to foot the bill. For many Americans, we could easily get along without celebrating the birth of Christ. Secularists reject the idea of a personal God and Christ as pure myth. Humanists reject the idea of a supernatural God or Savior. We will save ourselves. Many progressives and leftists see Christ as a model of morality, not a Savior, and atheists find no good reason to believe that Jesus exists. We live in a post-Christian culture steadily sandblasting the truths of Christmas from our memory.
A WORLD WITHOUT CHRISTMAS
What would a world without Christmas in the truest sense mean? I jotted down 21 things that would not be true. There are many more. And let me say, even western atheists and secularists would not want to live in a world without Christmas. History is full of savagery, brutality, darkness, depravity, and death. All you have to do is read of the horrors of Communist Russia, where 100 million people were starved or murdered, or the tragedy of Chinese Communism under chairman Mao who caused the death of 40 to 80 million. Thirty million were murdered in Hitler’s Germany. There was the Armenian genocide of 1915 when the Ottoman Turks tried to erase the memory of the Christian Armenians. Or in our own godless nation where millions of unborn human beings have been murdered by the government supported abortion industry. Where there is no God, the state becomes god. This is a world without Christmas. Here are the 21 things that would not be true in a world without Christmas.
- No fulfilled prophecies. The virgin conceiving Emmanuel of Isaiah 7:14 would not be true. The child born and the son given to rule as Wonderful Counselor of Isaiah 9:6 would not be true. Isaiah 53 with its detailed description of the suffering Messiah would not be true. The Micah 5:2 prophecy that Israel’s ruler would be born in Bethlehem of Judah would not be true. And Daniel’s prophecy of the coming Messiah that would be cut off would not be true (Dan. 9:25-26).
- No incarnation of the second person of the Godhead, God revealing Himself to us in His Son Jesus Christ. No hypostatic union, the joining of God and Man in one Person, Jesus Christ.
- No perfect sinless Man to qualify as the Savior of the world.
- No angelic announcement by Gabriel of the virgin conception to the young peasant girl in Nazareth named Mary.
- No actual birth of the Christ child in Bethlehem, born to set His people free.
- No shepherds out in those fields surprised by the angel’s announcement of the good news of great joy about the Savior, Christ the Lord. No angelic light show blazing in the dark night praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest.”
- No miracles of healing, sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, cleansing of lepers, stilling the storms, raising the dead, feeding 1000s with a few morsels of fish and bread. No glory shining through Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration.
- No substitutionary sacrifice at the place of the skull outside the city of Jerusalem.
- No victory over sin and death in the resurrection of Christ.
- No promise of eternal life.
- No forgiveness of our sins.
- No promise of Christ’s preparing a place for us in heaven and coming again for us.
- No future for Israel; no king from the tribe of Judah to rule in righteousness in the millennial kingdom.
- No Church with Christ as the head.
- No Christian influence in a brutal, pagan, godless world of the Roman Empire and throughout the middle ages.
- No Reformation that would bring the joy of peace with God through justification by faith alone, or John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion.
- No Great Awakening and the powerful preaching of Whitefield, Wesley, Edwards, Spurgeon. They would have no message in a world without Christmas.
- No great missionary movement taking the saving gospel to the ends of the earth.
- No settling of America by Pilgrims and Puritans coming to worship in freedom and no establishing of this great nation based on Judeo-Christian values to strengthen and bless our beautiful nation! No Harvard University founded in 1636 as a Christian university to prepare pastors for ministry.
- No salvation for you and me from our sins to bring us joy, peace, light, and hope.
- No hope of the rapture, the second coming, the millennial reign of Christ, and being with God forever.
We could add there would be none of the beautiful Christmas hymns full of great truths about the Little Town of Bethlehem, Silent Night, Away in a Manger, O Holy Night, Charles Wesley’s Hark the Herald Angels Sing with its “veiled in flesh the Godhead see”, or Handel’s great oratorio Messiah with its grand Hallelujah Chorus at the end.
A world without Christmas would be a world of darkness, depravity, and death, like the world before the flood, where every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually and the entire world was corrupt and filled with violence before God (Genesis 6:5,11). The world would be filled with paganism and superstition, every form of sexual perversion like Sodom and Gomorrah, idolatry, murder, tribal warfare, horrendous slaughter like we see with godless Hamas beheading, raping, abusing young and old, and murdering with no qualms of conscience. A world without Christmas would promote insanities like transgender surgery, open display of sodomy and same sex relationships, slavery, sex trade, robbery, and brutality. The world doesn’t realize how Christ and the power of the gospel have brought untold blessings both spiritual and social to this world. You don’t want to live in a world without Christmas!
THE WORLD WITH CHRISTMAS
Here’s the good news from Zecharias in Luke 1:67-68, Filled with the Spirit he prophesied, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, For He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people.” He has visited us. God came to us through that virgin conception, through that holy child, Mary’s son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Our planet was visited by God Almighty 2000 years ago in the person of Jesus Christ. He was rich, but He became poor so we might be made rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). He was in the form of God but humbled Himself to become a sinless Man and go to that cross bearing the sins of His people, redeeming us by purchasing us from the slave market of sin (Philippians 2:6-8).
Here’s the good news! The second person of the triune Godhead did come just as the prophets foretold. A virgin did conceive, a child was born, a son was given, the suffering Servant did come, our Savior was born in Bethlehem just as Micah 5:2 said. Daniel’s Messiah did come and will come again as that stone cut out without hands to smash the kingdoms of this world and set up the millennial kingdom that will encompass the globe.
As the angel told Mary, she gave birth to the holy child Jesus the Lamb of God to redeem His people from their sins. He did come to show us the Father. “If you see Me, you see the Father.” He did heal every kind of disease. He cast out demons, gave sight to the blind, and hearing to the deaf. He did raise from death a 12-year-old girl, a widow’s son, and a best friend whom He loved. He did walk on water and instantly stilled the storm. He did suffer and lay down His life for His people, bearing God’s wrath in the place of sinners. He did rise from the dead. He did ascend to heaven with the promise that He’s returning. He will come back; we just don’t know when.
He did send the Spirit on Pentecost. He did begin to build His church that has spanned out across the world, bringing the good news of salvation from sin and the blessings of the fruit of the Spirit throughout Europe and the four corners of the world. He did move Luther to nail those 95 theses on the chapel door and preach justification by faith alone. He used John Calvin to set forth true doctrine in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. He became the heart prize of the Puritans, the power of the Great Awakeners Whitefield, Wesley, and Edwards, the impulse to send men and women to the new world for spiritual liberty and missionaries to the remotest parts of the world to bring the light of the gospel message to savages, cannibals, and lost souls in spiritual darkness.
He providentially brought about the greatest nation in the world, the United States of America, founded with the Judeo-Christian values. Values such as the truth that all men are “endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights,” and the firm restraint on tyrants with the second amendment. While the church has waxed and waned over the centuries with liberalism and worldliness corroding her witness, the sovereign Lord Jesus Christ is still building His Church. The world does have Christmas: Jesus’ birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and His promised return filling redeemed sinners with hope for the future. We do know the love of God for sinners, the peace of God in Christ, the joy of the Lord for forgiveness of sins.
Luke 1:68, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people!”
May our great Lord and Savior Jesus Christ bless each of our families richly this Christmas season. May every one of us in this room know, trust, and love our Emmanuel, our risen Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord. Zecharias ended his prophecy with these hope-filled words.
Luke 1:78-79, Because of the tender mercy of our God, with which the Sunrise from on high will visit us, 79 TO SHINE UPON THOSE WHO SIT IN DARKNESS AND THE SHADOW OF DEATH, to guide our feet into the way of peace.