Sermon Tone Analysis

\\ What is the real honest to goodness message of Christmas?

What does it all mean?

It was a significant enough occurrence for God to highlight it in many different ways.

It can be anything that you want it to be and I’m not sure that it really matters in one way.

What you believe about Christmas isn’t really important – what you believe about Christ is a matter of eternal life or eternal death.

Forever living or forever dying.

To be stuck in the throes of death neither getting well nor finding relief.

·         Signs in the heavens.

·         Angelic encounters

·         Prophecy fulfilled

·         Personal Visions

·         Resistance

 

Much about Christmas remains veiled and puzzling.

It harbors a mystery of faith and has a rather checkered history.

For more than 300 years after Jesus' time, Christians celebrated his resurrection but not his birth.

The later Christmas festival was even banned in 17th century England and in early America.

The observance first begin in fourth-century Rome, timed to coincide with a midwinter pagan festival honoring the imperial army's sun god, Mithra.

The December date was taken over to celebrate Jesus' birthday.

But on what day he was born is unknown.

Even the precise year is uncertain.

However, it was not in the year 1 A.D., as the calendar's Anno Domini (Year of the Lord) suggests.

Its dating system derived from an error about the year of Christ's birth by a sixth-century monk in Rome, Dionysius Exigus, in working out the starting point of the Christian era.

Scholars since have calculated that Jesus' birth came in about 6 or 7 B.C., meaning paradoxically "Before Christ".

The revised time was determined partly by the fact that Herod the Great ruled Judea when Jesus was born and history records that Herod died in 4 B.C.

 

In what month the birth occurred, or on what day, has been a matter of speculation for centuries.

Possible dates include:  January 6, February 2, March 25, April 19, May 20, October 4, November 17.

A British physicist and astronomer, David Hughes, has calculated that the date was September 17, 7 B.C., based on various scientific evidence, including that of a conjunction of two planets, Jupiter and Saturn, in the constellation Pisces on that date.

He concludes in a book that this extraordinary celestial display was the "star" seen by the distant wise men.

The 17th century German astronomer, Johannes Kepler, similarly had calculated a three-planet conjunction, including Venus as well as Jupiter and Saturn, in the same constellation in 7 B.C.

 

In any case, a variety of months and days have been used over the centuries in different parts of the world to celebrate the occasion.

Some Eastern Orthodox churches still do it on January 6.

 

Christmas was banned in 17th century England when Oliver Cromwell and his puritan followers gained temporary rule, forbidding what was called the "heathen celebration of Christmas."

The holiday similarly was banned in colonial New England.

Christmas wasn't made a legal holiday in Massachusetts until 1856.

For all of the clouded chronology and legal background of Christmas, however, the biggest mystery is in its message -- that God has entered the human race in love for it, on with it, and one of it.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God... and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth," the Bible says.

That is the mystifying core of Christmas, an awesome concept that has challenged hearts and minds since.

It  holds that Jesus was truly human, sharing the nature of all people, yet also truly God.

"Emmanuel -- God with us," Scripture says.

"The light of the world."

See:  Matt 1:22-23; John 1:1, 14

 

The Fulfillment of a Promise

 

God’s entrance into human history.

*/KARL/* - I found this fellow in the church this morning when I arrived.

I knew that some of our kids knew who he was and I asked him if he could give us a hand with the sermon today since the children would be in with us for the entire service.

What’s your name

*/ /*

*/MARC/* - Gives puppet’s name

 

*/KARL/* - In the sermon today, I’m talking about the . .

.

*/MARC/* - The meaning of Christmas – now there’s a surprise.

You guys talk about that every year, don’t they ever give you any new material?

*/KARL/* - Well do you think that we have learned what Christmas is all about?

*/MARC/* - Learned, we’ve got it down to a science.

It’s the time of the year when we tell each other what we would like and then we go head over heels in debt to get it.

The very thought stresses us out and we go shopping with other people who are just as troubled as we are, - none of us are fit to be around.

We risk our lives driving to the malls and then stand in long lines in the stores.

We wrap things up in paper and then pretend it’s a surprise when we open the presents.

*/KARL/* - Why do we go through all that?

*/MARC/* - It’s Jesus birthday.

*/KARL/* - So we buy presents for each other?

*/MARC/* - Well  yeah . . .

.

*/KARL/* - Does that make sense?

*/MARC/* - Ok here it comes.

*/KARL/* - What?

 

*/MARC/* - You’re going to break into a sermon aren’t you?

 

*/KARL/* - In a minute.

I was just going to ask where this idea all comes from?

*/MARC/* - I don’t know – the Bible I guess.

You know the wise men brought gifts.

*/KARL/* - To each other?

*/MARC/* - No they brought them to Jesus.

Look I know the Bible.

*/KARL/* - What part of the Bible do you like best?

 

*/MARC/* - I like the New Testament best.

*/KARL/* - What book in the New Testament is your favorite?

*/MARC/* - The Book of the Parables, Sir.

 

*/KARL/* - Can you tell me one of the parables?

*/MARC/* - Once upon a time a man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves; and the thorns grew up and choked the man.

And he went on and met the Queen of Sheba, and she gave that man, Sir, a thousand talents of silver, and a hundred changes of raiment.

And he got in his chariot and drove furiously, and as he was driving along under a big tree, his hair got caught in a limb and left him hanging there!

And he hung there many days and many nights.

The ravens brought him food to eat and water to drink.

And one night while he was hanging there asleep, his wife Delilah came along and cut off his hair, and he dropped and fell fell on stony ground.

And it began to rain, and rained forty days and forty nights.

And he went and hid himself in a cave.

Later he went on and met a man who said, "Come in and take supper with me."

But he said, "I can’t come in, for I have married a wife and cannot come."

And the man went out into the highways and hedges and compelled him to come in!

He then came to Jerusalem, and saw Queen Jezebel sitting high and lifted up in a window of the wall.

When she saw him she laughed, and he said, "Throw her down out of there," and they threw her down.

And he said, "Throw her down some more,’ and they threw her down some more, seventy times-seven.

And of the fragments they picked up filled twelve baskets full!

Now, whose wife do you think she will she be in the day of Judgment?

*/KARL/* - Well listen, thanks for your help.

It’s obvious that you know the Bible – I’m just going to try it on my own for a few minutes here.

Merry Christmas.

I watched a movie the other day and this guy was talking about people walking in circles when they are lost.

Depending on whether or not a person is right or left side dominant, the strong side of the body strides marginally farther than than the weaker side so that , without direction we just keep running in circles.

My Dad taught me that when we used to rabbit hunt together.

He’d send me to the top of a brush pile and have me jump up and down.

The rabbit would scatter and then he would shoot them.