The Christmas You've Always Longed For part 5 - Enjoy Christmas
The Christmas You’ve Always Longed For 5
Christmas Day – Enjoy Christmas
043-00631 Luke 2:19
I. Christmas is a hectic time of year.
A. There’s the shopping.
1. Even though the stores start advertising earlier and earlier there always seems to be last minute things to get.
2. And the streets are crowded – and people are impatient – and the shelves are getting empty – and the wallet is even emptier.
3. No matter how much you plan, doesn’t it get down to one last thing you forgot to get at the market?
B. There’s the decorating.
1. When is it convenient to get all the decorations out and put them up in the house?
2. Hopefully all of that is past, but of course it has altered the schedule so that other things have been pushed back.
3. And of course there is the decorating of packages. How many times have you been up late Christmas Eve doing last minute wrapping or putting together that last gift?
C. There’s the visiting and entertaining.
1. The cards have to go out – not too early and not too late.
2. What about that annual Christmas letter that is the only link many of our friends and family actually have with us each year?
3. Plates of cookies to the neighbors; visits to friends and family that have been put off far too long; phone calls made to wish people a Merry Christmas where we struggle to find anything else to say.
D. Of course there’s Church.
1. That pesky pastor actually thinks we ought to attend every week before Christmas and then Christmas morning as well!
2. Planning of services; preparing music, special goodies for fellowship time, getting up early on Sundays and scheduling around normal church activities that don’t seem to get that much in the way at other times of the year.
II. Christmas is a hectic time of year.
A. I can’t imagine that it is more hectic for us, though, than for Mary and Joseph.
1. Mary was pregnant – due at any time.
2. She and Joseph had to make that trip to Bethlehem just to register for a census.
a) Government bureaucracy!
b) All they want to do is track us down so they can tax us more and take our children from us for military service!
c) Don’t they know that having to stop work for this silly trip takes food from a family’s table?
d) Don’t they realize what a hardship this is?
3. On top of all that, Mary and Joseph knew that the child that was to be born was special – a child of God destined to be King.
a) When God said he would be a deliverer for their people he must surely have meant that he would deliver them from this insidious Roman nonsense.
b) Let us alone to live in peace. Don’t place extra burdens on us that get in the way of life.
B. That, of course, is not how they thought, though.
1. The birth of John.
2. The message to Mary from Gabriel and to Joseph, too.
3. The visit with Elizabeth when her baby leapt within her at the sound of the good news.
4. The shaky engagement.
5. The trip to Bethlehem.
6. Ending up giving birth in a smelly, cold manger.
7. A strange visit from scruffy shepherds who told of an even stranger story, one that only Mary and Joseph would believe.
8. All of these events surrounding the birth of the baby called Jesus, Immanuel, God with us, our Savior.
9. And we think Christmas is hectic for us!
C. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.
1. These things were not inconveniences for Mary.
2. They were not negatives that rocked her world in the way our busyness rocks ours.
3. For Mary, these things were all treasures.
4. They were events and activities and evidences of God that were to be pondered.
III. Christmas is a time to be treasured and pondered.
A. Something that is a treasure to us is something of great value.
1. What could be of greater value than the presence of God with us?
2. Matthew 6:19-21 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
3. Mary saw each and every part of her experience with God as something to be treasured.
4. They were signs that she was "highly favored" even though I’m sure she didn’t know why.
5. They were confirmations that this infant boy was not some dream that she had made up, but that God himself was in this child.
6. I am sure that as Jesus grew, Mary continued to treasure up in her heart all the experiences she had in raising him.
a) And I am sure that every one of these treasures weighed heavy upon her as she saw her son mocked and mistreated, bullied and crucified.
b) Her agony was more than any other mother witnessing injustice to her baby.
c) Her agony was as C. S. Lewis would say, the weight of glory knowing that Jesus was not just her son but the very Son of God.
B. That which is important to us, that which we treasure, we ponder.
1. To ponder is to reflect upon or to think about over and over and over.
2. Remember that feeling of first falling in love?
a) You couldn’t spend enough time together.
b) You were on the phone constantly with one another.
c) And when you were apart, you pondered your love for one another.
3. Pondering is meditation. And meditation is never a waste of time.
a) As we ponder on that which is most important to us, we become centered on our treasure.
b) If it is money or fame or power, our reflection works to sharpen our focus to the degree that our activity is motivated and our decisions are influenced by our treasure.
c) This is all the more true when our treasure is Christ.
(1) To meditate on the life of Jesus is to make it the central theme of our lives.
(2) Such pondering hightens the value of our treasure and is used by the Holy Spirit to transform us into the image of Christ, who is the perfect image of God.
(3) Meditation upon Christ also is used by the Holy Spirit to cause all that is around us to fade into the background of the activity of God.
(4) It is much like the chorus, Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grown strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace.
(a) Nothing is as bad as it first appears if we are confident that God is in it.
(b) Nothing hurts as much when we know that God is loving us as much as he did when he sent his Son into this world.
(c) Nothing is as negative because God is the gracious and merciful God who maneuvers and manipulates all events so that the work toward his goals and objectives.
(d) And God’s plans are always good.
IV. How do you have a Christmas that is not so hectic but is rather a time of peace and joy?
A. Review everything that has happened to you and around you in the past weeks, months, and years.
1. Look at these things from a new perspective.
2. They are all signs of God’s presence with you, in you, and his work through you.
3. Every one of these things are not as you first thought of them but they are treasures, because Christ is in them.
B. And ponder on this activity of God.
1. Pondering takes time and pondering takes quiet.
2. It takes a desire to hear God’s voice and to see God’s hand in all that is around you.
3. Pondering refuses to interpret things apart from the loving, gracious, merciful presence of God.
C. Today, enjoy Christmas.
1. Take time to reflect on all that is hectic and all that is not.
2. And take time to treasure up every experience in your heart, knowing that they are the gift of God’s presence in Christ.