With the commercialization of Christmas and the busyness of travel and shopping during the Holiday Season, it can be easy to forget what Christmas is all about. Christmas should not be a holiday reduced down to the activities of hanging lights on our houses and in our yards, buying and receiving gifts, visiting family, and enjoying a few extra days off from work. Christmas is about remembering and celebrating the ultimate gift given to us by God. It is all about Jesus—He is the Reason for the Season.
Stuart Briscoe in Meet Him at the Manger sums it up best as he writes, “The spirit of Christmas needs to be superseded by the Spirit of Christ. The spirit of Christmas is annual; the Spirit of Christ is eternal. The spirit of Christmas is sentimental; the Spirit of Christ is supernatural. The spirit of Christmas is a human product; the Spirit of Christ is a divine person. That makes all the difference in the world.”
In Matthew 1:22-23 it says, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: (23) “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” –which means, “God with us.”
What an amazing thought that the Almighty God is with us. 1 Timothy 3:16 says, “16Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory.
Jesus, as a baby in manger, for the first time since all of creation was seen by angels. Angels are beings who minister to the Lord and for the Lord. The Bible reveals to us some of their physical features. One of them is that they have six wings. This is significant because as they minister before the Lord they use two wings to fly, two wings to cover their feet and two wings to cover their eyes. Throughout the Old Testament no one in creation was allowed to look at the Holy God face to face and live.
Can you imagine how the angels must have longed to behold the beauty of God? Since the beginning of time, I bet the temptation to take a peak at God must have been inconceivable. With the birth of Jesus, now for the first time ever they could look into the face of God.
Cindy and I, as proud parents of three young boys, and pastors of a church that is birthing a ton of new babies, have personally experienced the excitement of gazing upon many new born babies. With the birth of each of our sons, there was a renewed excited to discover what they looked like. They got their gender from me and their good looks from Cindy—praise God! We also get excited to see the babies of all of our friends in the church for the first time. As we receive the news about the new births, we always ask, “Who does he/she look like?” Everybody gets excited to see a new born baby for the first time.
The Apostle John was also amazed at the thought of how he had the privilege of beholding this Jesus, the Son of God and the Word of Life. In 1 John 1:1-2 he writes, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched.—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. (2) The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.” It was so astounding; he would spend the rest of his life proclaiming his experience with Jesus to the world.
Have you seen Jesus? If so, I trust you are celebrating and worshipping Him with all of creation this Christmas. If not, my prayer for you is that you would receive the greatest gift ever given to mankind--Jesus Christ.
Merry Christmas!
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