Christmas Hope - Christmas Eve

Look Up - A Christmas Story (Skit)

Introduction

Have you ever asked why?

Wondered if your prayers are heard?

Struggled with the circumstances in your life?

If we are honest, we all have. 

Yet often our  questions are NOT born from jealousy, bitterness or unbelief

- it's simply not seeing

- not understanding what God is doing.

Over 2000 years ago, God chose a family to bring Hope to the world.

Zechariah, a temple priest, and his wife Elizabeth

– too old to have children

– yet they became the parents of John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Messiah.

Elizabeth's cousin, Mary, and Mary's fiance Joseph, would become the mother and earthly father of Jesus, the Savior of the world.

But what about the rest of the family?

Mary's parents – perhaps her brothers and sisters, cousins, Aunts and uncles. 

How would they have handled the circumstances surrounding their family?

Scripture doesn't tell us

– we can only imagine

What if . . . . . . . . . .

Zechariah and Elizabeth, and their 6 month old son John,  are traveling for the census.

They stop to visit with Mary's mother – their aunt, and learn that things have not been so easy for her.

In fact, she has dared to ask why?

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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, ..., it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way. . . .”

This is how Charles Dicken’s classic work, A Tale of Two Cities begins.

The French revolution had brought the worst of times and the best of times to both France and England.

Dicken’s words were truly descriptive of the mood of the world during that time.

But, if you think about it, these words could also be spoken about our day.

There just seems to be so much to be gloomy about. Or at least so much in question.

You would almost think it was the end of the world the way some people are talking these days.

And you know what that day may come some day.

More cheer to add to the pile. BUT

If our American civilization experience is consistent with all other civilizations, there will come a day when another civilization will be conducting excavations in what used to be known as America.

If our life experience is consistent with the life experience of millions of others, there will come a day when death will wrap its arms around us in a grasp that we cannot escape from.

If our sun is consistent with all other stars, there will come a day when it will burn out and our solar system will be driven into a deep freeze where life can no longer be sustained.

Well now that is a cheerful for Christmas. But this is the reality of the world that we live in.

Nick we came here to experience the joy of Christmas - You are depressing me...

So how do we shake off this atmosphere of gloom?

Christmas.

Not the kind of Christmas celebration that we’re used to here in America.

Doctors have actually given health warning about the stress an American Christmas causes!

That kind of Christmas Season is marked by more emotional stress than any other season of the year!

It’s often a season marked by excess -

spending money we don’t have,

over eating food our bodies don’t need,

busy schedules we just can’t keep up with.

and all kinds of other excesses,

The kind of Christmas we need is a God-kind-of-Christmas.

You see, into this gloomy world, filled with hopelessness and despair, God sent a baby.

What speaks more to the simplicity of life than a baby.

Now, I am fully aware that babies don’t make your life simple.

We’ve had four of our own babies.

BUT, when you are in the presence of a baby what happens.

Joy, smiles, love all seem to flow freely.

We fight over who gets to spend a few precious moments just holding that baby in our arms.

Our eyes and our actions get very focused and drawn to the world of the baby.

We get drawn in and focused.

When God really wants to get a message through, a message that will penetrate the hopelessness and gloom of humanity, He wraps it up in a person, in a baby.

Our "Christmas Hope" is found in the person of Jesus Christ.

And when we look at Jesus we realize a few things about our reality:

We realize that we do not have the power to defeat death; this is something that everyone will experience.

We realize that human civilization as we know it will eventually self-destruct due to man’s sinfulness; we are first hand witnesses to the political and moral battles going on all around us.

and we realize that we are separated from our Creator with no moral or spiritual power, on our own, to be restored to Him,

And then we see that God sent us our "Christmas Hope." Jesus Christ

And, surprisingly enough,

he cried.

He grew.

He laughed.

He listened to our stories.

He lived in our towns.

He ate what we ate.

He got to know us.

He experienced our fear of death and he wept with us as we buried our loved ones.

He saw the beautiful world that we live in, as well as the temporal, passing nature of the world in which we live.

And into this hopelessness and uncertainty, a light shined on this planet earth.

A light that was bringing hope to a world steeped in hopelessness.

Our Christmas Hope

The nation of Israel was looking for hope through a messiah to come.

The one who would come and save them as a nation, restoring them as God’s people.

They had been given the signs to look for and the promises that would be fulfilled through the messiah.

They had over 300 prophecies about the Messiah in their holy Scriptures.

Isaiah 9 is one of those strong Messianic passage.

Isaiah wrote about a day that would come when a savior would be given to Israel

(9:6) and his name would be Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

Even though Israel was going into Assyrian captivity, Isaiah promised that a Messiah would eventually rule on David’s throne.

Isaiah 9 starts out with this:

Isaiah 9:1–2 CSB

1 Nevertheless, the gloom of the distressed land will not be like that of the former times when he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali. But in the future he will bring honor to the way of the sea, to the land east of the Jordan, and to Galilee of the nations. 2 The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; a light has dawned on those living in the land of darkness.

Zebulun and Naphtali were sons of Jacob.

They along with the other sons of Jacob were allotted land in Israel during the time of Joshua’s conquest of the land.

The statement in this verse probably alludes to the Assyrian conquest of Israel around 734-733 BC when Assyria annexed much of Israel’s territory and reduced Samaria to a puppet state.

But now, Isaiah says, he brings honor to the way of the sea, the region beyond the Jordan, and Galilee of the nations.

Here he uses the prophetic perfect tense to describe what is going on - say what?

This was a common way to describe future events in a past tense way, because they are assured to happen.

9:2 The people walking in darkness see a bright light; light shines on those who live in a land of deep darkness.

This particular region that Isaiah talks about was blessed with a major travel route that ran right through it.

This brought commerce and economical blessings.

However, it was also a land of much blood shed and war.

The geography of the land would allow armies to travel through this area easily, and so those who lived there, lived in the shadow of uncertainty, mainly because the travel route could accommodate rogue nations.

It’s interesting to note one of the initial reasons why our vast interstate system in America was built was for security and military purposes. It would allow us to move equipment quickly in a time of war or crisis as well as to evacuate large cities in the event of a nuclear threat.

The land of Zebulun, and the land of Naphtali was the home of a major highway of the Middle East.

Vast military machines from Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia moved through this area to position themselves to conquer their world.

And, unfortunately, this meant a great deal of heartache for the residents of this region for many years.

Civilization in this area was always on the brink of destruction. Death was close by. Darkness hung over the region.

But Matthew recognized that a new day had dawned for this entire region in the person of Jesus.

In the place where pain and suffering were first inflicted upon God’s people in the Assyrian Captivity, this same place is the location where Jesus officially began his public ministry and thus transformed this gloomy area into the most exciting thing the world has ever seen.

God came to live in our darkness!

Fresh from his baptism and temptation, Matthew wrote this about Jesus in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy:

Matthew 4:12–17 CSB

12 When he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee. 13 He left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali. 14 This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: 15 Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, along the road by the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. 16 The people who live in darkness have seen a great light, and for those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned. 17 From then on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

This passage in Matthew and the Isaiah passage are all about reversal.

Christmas is all about reversal.

Christmas is about:

taking our places of discouragement,

our places in life where our sin has stung us the most severely,

and letting the Christmas Hope, named Jesus, to move in to that very spot and live in our neighborhood of deepest failure and disappointments.

When Jesus moves into our places of pain, darkness is overcome by Light!

Uncertainty is overcome by stability!

The prospect of death is defeated by Life!

Devastation gives way to glory and honor.

An atmosphere of gloom dissipates with Light that has come flooding in.

This is the Christmas Hope, named Jesus Christ!

Humanity has experienced reversal because Jesus moved into our neighborhood.

We have been located and delivered from our despair and sin.

What about you? What about this Christmas Hope and your life?

It’s time for reversal.

This atmosphere of gloom can end. We can find hope in our struggle because of Jesus.

As soon as Jesus got to our place and region of pain he said to “Repent.

Repent means to -

Change your mind about the way you’re living,

what and who you believe in,

and the role that the Savior will have in your life.”

This is the beginning of our Christmas Hope!

Let me close with this short story by John Powell, a professor at Loyola University in Chicago as he writes about a student named Tommy in his Theology of Faith class:

God Found Us at Christmas

Some twelve years ago, Professor Powell says, I stood watching my university students file into the classroom for our first session in the Theology of Faith. That was the day I first saw Tommy. His hair hung six inches below his shoulders. It was the first time I had ever seen a boy with hair that long.

Tommy turned out to be the "atheist in residence" in my Theology of Faith course. He constantly objected to, smirked at, or whined about the possibility of an unconditionally loving Father/God. We lived with each other in relative peace for one semester, although I admit he was, for me at times, a serious pain in the back pew.

When he came up at the end of the course to turn in his final exam, he asked in a slightly cynical tone, "Do you think I’ll ever find God?"

I decided instantly on a little shock therapy. "No!" I said very emphatically.

"Oh," he responded, "I thought that was the product you were pushing."

I let him get five steps from the classroom door, then called out, "Tommy! I don’t think you’ll ever find Him, but I am absolutely certain that He will find you!"

He shrugged a little and left my class and my life.

Later I heard that Tommy had graduated, and I was duly grateful. Then a sad report came. I heard Tommy had terminal cancer.

Before I could search him out, he came to see me. When he walked into my office, his body was very badly wasted, and the long hair had all fallen out as a result of chemotherapy, but his eyes were bright, and his voice was firm.

"Tommy, I’ve thought about you so often. I hear you are sick," I blurted out.

"Oh, yes, very sick. I have cancer in both lungs. It’s a matter of weeks."

"Can you talk about it, Tom?" I asked.

"Sure, what would you like to know?" he replied.

"What’s it like to be only twenty-four and dying?"

"Well, it could be worse."

"Like what?"

"Well, like being fifty and having no values or ideals, like being fifty and thinking that booze, seducing women, and making money are the real ’biggies’ in life."

"But what I really came to see you about," Tom said, "is something you said to me on the last day of class." "I asked you if you thought I would ever find God, and you said, ’No!’ which surprised me. Then you said, ’But He will find you.’

I thought about that a lot, even though my search for God was hardly intense at that time. "But when the doctors removed a lump from my groin and told me that it was malignant, that’s when I got serious about locating God. And when the malignancy spread into my vital organs, I really began banging fists against the bronze doors of heaven, but God did not come out. In fact, nothing happened.

Well, one day I woke up, and instead of throwing a few more futile appeals over that high brick wall to a God who may or may not be there, I just quit. I decided that I didn’t really care about God, about an afterlife, or anything like that. "I decided to spend what time I had left doing something more profitable. I thought about you and your class and I remembered something else you had said:

’The essential sadness is to go through life without loving. But it would be almost equally sad to go through life and leave this world without ever telling those you loved that you had loved them.’

So, I began with the hardest one, my Dad. He was reading the newspaper when I approached him." "Dad."

"Yes, what?" he asked without lowering the newspaper.

"Dad, I would like to talk with you."

"Well, talk."

"I mean . . . it’s really important."

The newspaper came down three slow inches. "What is it?"

"Dad, I love you. I just wanted you to know that."

"The newspaper fluttered to the floor. Then my father did two things I could never remember him ever doing before. He cried and he hugged me. We talked all night, even though he had to go to work the next morning. It felt so good to be close to my father, to see his tears, to feel his hug, to hear him say that he loved me."

"It was easier with my mother and little brother. They cried with me, too, and we hugged each other, and started saying real nice things to each other. We shared the things we had been keeping secret for so many years. I was only sorry about one thing-that I had waited so long. Here I was, just beginning to open up to all the people I had actually been close to." "

Then, one day, I turned around and God was there. He found me. You were right. He found me even after I stopped looking for Him."

When we had stopped looking for God, God found us at Christmas.

That is our Christmas Hope, and his name is Jesus.

John 3:16 CSB

16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

We are about to start a brand new year. For many of us a new year means a new beginning.

How about we take this opportunity of a new beginning to allow Jesus to take us even deeper in the transformation of our lives in a way that only he can do.

What needs to be left in 2020 so that the light of Jesus can shine even brighter than it ever has before?

Are you and I willing to let the Savior of the world be the Savior of each and every moment of our day starting with this Christmas?

He is the Savior that brings light to the gloomy places and hope when it seems so hard to find.

Tomorrow is Christmas. May our day be complete as we invite the Hope of Christmas to participate in all of our activities and celebrations.

Prayer

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