For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. . . .      Isa. 9:6

      My most favorite season of the year is Christmas.  I love everything about it.  The music lifts my spirits.  The sights brighten up the normally drab and gloomy land scape.  The many wonderful smells conjure up so very many childhood memories.  The old cliché “it’s all good” certainly applies to Christmas for me.  The celebration of Jesus’ birthday with the plays, pageants, and musical bring to the forefront the original truth of the reason for the practice of the giving of gifts.  That is, the very first great gift that made all this season happens.  NO!  It is not the holiday season! Bless God, it is the CHRISTMAS SEASON!  A time of year built around the celebration of the earthly birth of the Son of God.  The Savior of the World.  The One who came to deliver us from the bondage of drunken “holiday” parties, gluttonous feast, and financial bondage that can hardly be over-came before the next “holiday season” rolls around.  My, my, how we have polluted the magnificence meaning of this wonderful celebration of the most priceless gift.

I for one am tired of the world and Satan’s desecration of the birthday of my precious Lord and Savior.  No more “happy holidays” or “season’s greetings” from this old Ebenezer Scrooge. No sir!  It’s “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Jesus Birthday celebration” from this old codger.

Jesus, Himself, made it very plain and clear in John 3: 16-18 in His conversation with Nicodemus.  By the giving of this great gift of a Savior to the world Jesus clearly identified two classes of people.  Class number one is those with everlasting life and the second class is those who will perish.  God’s economy is quite simple.  The only qualifier that differentiates between the two classes of people is: “believeth in Him” (Him of course being Jesus).  Nothing else enters into the equation.  In verse 17 Jesus states His purpose for coming into the world, His purpose for giving that first great most priceless gift.  Note, it’s not so we can have a holiday, or parties, or any of the other things the world associates with Christmas but so that “the world . . . might be saved”.  Amazing isn’t it?  One great is over-arching purpose for all this season, i.e. so that the world might be saved!

Jesus so succinctly stated the present condition of everyone reading this newsletter right now.  He plainly says, based on that great most priceless gift of Himself that each one of us are now, at this present moment in one of two conditions, we are either “not condemned” or we are “condemned already”.  That my dear friend is the sobering reality of Christmas. Tell you what, let’s me and you make known the real reason for this celebration and stark reality of how we deal with the offer of that great most priceless gift.

 

Happy Jesus’ Birthday Celebration!

Pastor Homer