Psalm 8

If I had to give a definition of Christmas in America, I would call it a cesspool of commercial excess decorated with pretty lights. You don’t need anyone to tell you about the materialistic harlotry of our modern-day Christmas. This picture of Jesus sitting in Santa’s seat about says it all—we have taken a cup of Jesus, a cup of Santa, added a little sugar and baked yummy cake we call Christmas. Christmas is in sorry shape.

This is why I was so glad when Karen ran across the following advertisement on a news website: “Bumper sticker returns Christ to Christmas.” All of these years I was wondering how we could ever get Christ back into Christmas, and all of a sudden I had my answer—a bumper sticker!

I don’t do Christian bumper stickers. I decided to never put one of those Christian fish symbols on my car, because I don’t want anyone to get mad at Jesus if I accidentally cut them off in traffic. Besides, you can never win the battle of the bumper stickers. When Christians started putting fish symbols on their car, how did our enemies respond? Of course we know they put legs on our Christian fish and replaced Jesus with Darwin. But we Christians are a smart bunch, so we devised a response to their Darwin fish—a Christian fish that swallowed their Darwin fish! We won the bumper sticker battle, right?! If you think so, then you haven’t seen the latest response from the other guys—a T. Rex eating the Jesus fish. Then you have variations on a theme: the “Darwin Loves You” bumper sticker, and also my personal favorite—the “Jesus Loves Darwin” sticker.

I am sorry to say that a bumper sticker will not save Christmas. How then will we save Christmas? It depends on what you mean by “saving Christmas”. If you mean that our nation must reverse its materialistic domination of the Christmas season and restore it to its Christ-centered roots, then I don’t think there is much hope to save Christmas. Christmas is not about Jesus bumper stickers, forcing the Walmart cashier to wish us a “Merry Christmas,” or even suing to keep the nativity scenes in the public square. If the U.S. were a theocracy, this is what we would do—we could force everyone to celebrate Christmas in the way we thought best. But we don’t live in a theocracy and God has not called us to transform the culture. Rather, God has called us to transform our local community of believers we call Grace Church. If we do this well, we will in fact have a transforming effect upon the greater culture, but it starts with what we preach from the pulpit every week and what you teach in your homes every day. Therefore, the only way to “save Christmas” is to continually elevate the supremacy of Jesus Christ in all things.

The funny thing about Christmas is that churches have somewhat fallen into the same overemphasis as the culture at large. Churches spend two to four weeks of Sundays on some kind of Christmas theme. I am not saying this is wrong, but let me ask you this—did Jesus ever command us to remember his birth? Did he ever tell a parable about his birth? Before he died, did he give us a powerful symbol by which to always remember his birth? He did give us such a symbol for his death—it is called the Lord’s Supper. As we will do this morning, we are to regularly celebrate the Lord’s Supper and proclaim his death until he returns.

It seems, therefore, that we are slightly out of balance with our celebration of Christmas. I think this happens because we take our cues from the culture. Since the shopping season and lead up to Christmas is at least four weeks long, the church feels like we should battle the culture by also offering four weeks of our own ‘Christmas programming’, if you will. Do you know much emphasis the birth of Christ is given in Scripture? Matthew gives us one chapter and Luke gives us one and a half chapters. Mark and John don’t even mention Jesus’ birth. That’s a total of two and a half chapters about his birth compared to twenty-five chapters about his death and resurrection.

Please do not misunderstand me: I am not saying that Jesus’ birth is not important. It is absolutely vital in its every detail. The authors of Scripture take great pains to make sure we know that Christ was miraculously born of a young virgin named Mary. They want us to understand that Jesus’ birth was a direct fulfillment of many Scriptures. If you read the gospels carefully, there is no doubt that Jesus’ birth is the greatest birth in all of human history and that his birth has set amazing things in motion. But still, we can easily become out of balance and mixed up about Christmas. For this reason, let me offer three ways to help you celebrate Christmas.

1. As I have already been saying, don’t fight against the secular culture. If someone wishes you a Happy Holidays, trust me—it won’t destroy your faith. And if it does, you didn’t have much of a faith to begin with. The American culture is a secular culture, so don’t expect them to celebrate Christmas the way you want them to.

2. Don’t get caught up in mere sentimentality about Christmas. I think one of the reasons we like Christmas is because it is wrapped up in a deep level of sentimentality. Fundamentally, Christmas is about the birth of a baby who was born under very humble circumstances. And after all, who doesn’t like babies?! Even those who are not believers like the idea of the newborn babe in the manger. It is a serene and tranquil event which naturally pulls at the heart strings.

The sugary sentimentality of Christmas is a feeling often devoid of truth. What I mean is that you can feel all warm and bubbly about Christmas and not understand the message of Christmas. In the December issue of The Kickapoo Free Press, the editor shares how an article about Christmas music in that issue caused her to weep. Thinking it was a great article, I immediately turned to it and read it myself. I didn’t weep. In fact, if I was to weep after reading this article, I would have wept because of its theological emptiness. The author used Christmas songs and Christmas themes to weave a sentimental journey of what could be called a new age or humanistic Christmas. It was really quite sad. I think it was moving to the editor because the author skillfully tugged at Christmas memories and human emotions.[i] As a reader, you could get caught up in the superficial sentimentality of Christmas and completely miss the Biblical emphasis. Check out this brief video about kids explaining the nativity story. Kids Explain the Nativity

I think every Christian is in danger of falling into this same trap. All of us have years of Christmas memories and traditions stored up in our hearts and minds, but many of these memories are not really about Christmas—they are about the nice feeling surrounding Christmas. Most adults don’t fall into the trap of thinking that Christmas is all about giving and receiving presents, but this danger of sentimentality is a subtle one because it can have the appearance of genuine celebration but in reality be little more than a nice memory or favorite family tradition. I believe that we should develop nice memories and strong family traditions, just make sure you do not get caught up in the mushy emotions of a newborn babe at Christmas and miss out on the mysterious celebration of newborn King at Christmas.

We must guard against the needless cultural battles over Happy Holidays or falling into the trap of superficial sentimentality, and the best way to do this is to continually restore Christmas to its Biblical foundation. Next, we are going to look at a passage of Scripture that we would not normally associate with Christmas: the eighth chapter of the book of Psalms.

We are probably are most familiar with this Psalm through the popular worship song. In one sense, this Psalm is rooted in the creation chapters of Genesis when God made men and women to rule over his creation. In that sense, it is a Psalm of praise from the lips of all believers. But in the second chapter of the book of Hebrews, the writer applied this Psalm to Jesus. 2:9 reads, But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. What the writer did is to take the eighth chapter of Psalm and pull together the entire coming and work of Christ into two verses. Therefore, in two verses we see three events: the birth of Christ, his death and resurrection and his second coming. These three wonderful events are all inseparably linked together in two verses

Being made a little lower than the angels is what happened when God took on human flesh and human limitations. This was the greatest possible act of humility. Jesus could have been born in a king’s palace surrounded by an army of physicians and nursemaids—but he was not. He could have been born in a rich man’s house, someone like Joseph of Arimathea—but he was not. He could have been born in the humble home of Joseph and Mary in Nazareth—but he was not. Instead, he was born in the most humble and humiliating of all places. This is the Christmas story. Yet the birth of Jesus is not an end in itself. It cannot be separated from everything else that Jesus did. This is the very temptation we face at Christmas when we give so much attention to the birth of Christ. It is important and absolutely vital, but even if we remove every last trace of secular contamination, we must never elevate the birth of Christ so highly as to overshadow the cross.

The writer of Hebrews is clear that Jesus was crowned with glory and honor through his death and resurrection. Jesus defeated death and therefore deserves all glory and honor. In the writer’s mind, the cross of Christ follows immediately on the heels of the birth of Christ. Jesus was not born to live, but he was born to die. One very small way that our family ties these two events together is by hanging a Christmas nail on our tree. This is a visible reminder of the inseparable link between Christmas and Easter.

Finally, the psalmist ties the final work of Christ together with the first two.

This verse is a statement about the reign and complete sovereignty of God. Everything will be put under his feet. Let me ask you two questions. First, is God sovereign over all things? Of this we have no doubt because the Bible is quite clear on the fact. Second, if God is sovereign over all things, is everything under his feet—is everything subject to Christ right now? Here is where we need to make a careful distinction between the two. The writer of Hebrews explains it this way. In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him.

God is sovereign over all, yet everything is not yet subject to him. This world is fallen and broken. It is not yet what it will be. The enemies of Jesus Christ still run free. The full number of souls have not been harvested and the full number of martyrs have not been counted. Jesus birth is inseparably linked to his death and resurrection which in turn is inseparable from his second coming. So as we celebrate the first advent of Christ and wait for Christmas day to arrive, so we wait for Christ’s second advent—his second coming. As you celebrate the birth of Christ, do not let it overshadow the cross of Christ nor the return of Christ. The prophecies of Jesus’ birth were all perfectly fulfilled and the prophecies of his final coming are just as certain. So we wait. With all believers throughout the world, we wait.

But we do not wait for a simple homecoming. We wait for our sovereign Lord. We wait for one who was born of a woman, who was tempted in every, just as we are, yet was without sin. We wait for one who knows what it feels like to be rejected by men. We wait for the one called Jesus—not the one who will save his people from their sins, but who ha already saved his people from their sins.

[i] Sample paragraph from the article: “Christmas music, for all its pomp and cliché, contains some of the most hopeful and humble messages. I am always stirred and sobered by “O Come O Come Emmanuel,” with its pleading for a savior to “ransom captive Israel, who waits in lonely exile here.” Captive Israel is all of us locked in this cruel and mortal world, hoping for transcendence.
For me, the music is the deliverance, and it pays my ransom. It offers everyone a chance, and if you don’t know, ask the Little Drummer Boy. “I played my best for Him,” he says. I’ve always loved the rendition of that tune sung by David Bowie and Bing Crosby. An incongruous pair, sure, but from the humble gift of the drummer boy, Bowie extends a wish to see the day when people can finally learn to live in peace. If we can play our drum, if we can sing, we can make it.” Read the whole thing here.