DREAMS OF CHRISTMAS #1/6

#1 · November 26, 2007, 2:37 pm

Quote from Forum Archives on November 26, 2007, 2:37 pm
Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>
DREAMS OF CHRISTMAS #1/6

DREAMING OF CHRISTMAS

November 25, 2007

Text: Luke 2:21-40

Just in case you may have missed it: the Christmas season has arrived. In fact, because of concerns over retail sales slowdowns, the commercial side of Christmas got well underway long before Thanksgiving. It even appeared to be edging out Halloween this year! Clearly many people have been dreaming of Christmas for quite some time already, although not all for reasons that can be derived from the Bible.

Advent is the time of the year that Christs Church can devote to dreaming of Christmas. Advent is a word from the Latin advenire, meaning to reach or to arrive. The Christian Church, then, has used Advent as a period of time for believers to prepare for the arrival of the Savior, the Messiah, the Christ, who is known to us as Jesus. Our revealed Savior is Immanuel, meaning God with us. In addition to looking forward to our annual Christmas celebration of the birth of Christ, Christians also look ahead to the arrival of the Messiah at the time of his second coming. In this regard, Christians are in a constant season of Advent, not merely an annual calendar event filled with retail sales, Santa Claus, and Hallmark® cards. By the way, because of the way the dates fall this year, next Sunday is the first of the four Sundays Advent Sundays before Christmas, so we will light our first candle in Advent next Sunday.

This brings me exactly to the point why I have chosen an event after the actual birth of Jesus as this mornings sermon Scripture. In these latter verses of Luke 2, Jesus is eight days old. Clearly, Joseph and Mary were no longer looking ahead to the birth of their child. He had already arrived! Their Advent was over. A funny way to begin this years Advent, isnt it? By observing that it is over?

This highlights the distinction I want to make. Advent is different for us now than it was for anyone living in the year of Jesus birth and for several years afterward. In fact, there were no Christians looking forward to the arrival of the Messiah in that year and several afterwards. Advent took on quite a different meaning. I submit that it had a purer meaning for those who recognized the arrival of the Messiah because they were certainly not burdened by the distractions in which we are now engaged at Christmastime. I further submit that most, if not all, of those who recognized the arrival of the Messiah did not know that they were looking for the Messiah. Nevertheless, when he arrived and they were brought into his presence, they recognized and understood and praised God for the privilege He had given them. Certainly this was the experience and testimony of Simeon and Anna, two people present on that day that Jesus was consecrated at the temple in Jerusalem.

The Scriptures are straightforward about their respective encounters with the infant Jesus. Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel. Anna was also at the temple. Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. Simeon and Anna had respectively been given a vision in which they expected to personally see the Messiah, but I would speculate that they did not expect to see the Messiah as an infant. Nevertheless, when they saw the baby Jesus, they testified to those around them that they had seen salvation, and they praised God for it. Simeon and Anna were dreaming of Christmas, but quite clearly in a way that was far different from us.

What about us? Of what do our dreams of Christmas consist? Do we, like Simeon and Anna, recognize the arrival of the Messiah and praise God for him? Or do we, instead, lose our focus on other distractions and let the Messiahs arrival slip by virtually unheeded?

As I have said, our practice of keeping Advent and Christmas differs vastly from the experience of Simeon, Anna, and others. The purpose of our Advent and Christmas celebrations should be the same looking forward to the arrival of the Messiah with expectation and anticipation and praise but certainly the way we celebrate Advent and Christmas have changed over the centuries. Nevertheless, I believe that our Advent and Christmas celebrations can be just as pure and meaningful to us as they were to Simeon and Anna.

One of the remarkable assaults on Christmas in recent years that is meant to distract us from recognizing the arrival of the Messiah is the increasing attempt to convince people that our Christmas traditions are actually rooted in paganism rather than in Biblical Christianity. What some are therefore attempting to reason from this is that all of the calls to remember the reason for the season and to keep Christ in Christmas are simple-minded foolishness since there are more pagan roots than Christian found in the symbols and traditions of the season we celebrate. Lets go straight to the heart of the matter, then. In a narrow way, these skeptics are quite right. From the broader perspectives of historical fact and truth, they are absolutely wrong.

December 25^th, our Christmas day, is not the birth day of Jesus. I do not personally know anyone who claims it to be so, especially any scholar of Christian history. Not even all Christian faith groups today celebrate Christmas on the same date. Some churches from the Eastern Orthodox tradition celebrate it on January 6^th. The Bible does not spell out for us the birth date of Jesus. Some sources report that Bible scholars place the birth of the historical Jesus in the spring. (http://www.conservapedia.com/Christmas) Additionally, the early Church did not recognize the birth of Jesus as a part of the Church year or liturgy. For more than three centuries, the Church observed Jesus baptism, crucifixion, and resurrection. (Trudy West Revoir. Legends and Traditions of Christmas. Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: Judson Press, 1985, p. 15) Even in early America, some Christian faith groups refused to celebrate a Christmas because they considered it a tradition of the Roman Catholic Church, a religious authority they did not recognize.

The time of the winter solstice which falls around December 25^th its not always that precise day has been a festival day of some sort for centuries. Two thousand years before Christ, the early Mesopotamians celebrated a 12 day new year around that time. (http://www.conservapedia.com/Christmas) During the period of the Roman Empire, which of course had a far-reaching impact upon much of the world in that period, a festival to the god Saturn, called Saturnalia, was held from December 17^th through the 23^rd. So what gives? Are skeptics correct in asserting that we are merely perpetuating a pagan festival of one kind or another when we dream of Christmas?

Such assertions are believable only when disconnected from history. When dreaming of Christmas, Christians do not dream of paganism. Christians do not celebrate paganism. Christians celebrate the arrival of the Messiah; Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus. Around 350 AD, the Roman Emperor declared December 25^th to be the day of the Mass of Christ Christs Mass which morphs into Christmas. That date may have been chosen to coincide with the already familiar Saturnalia festival. The early Church went along with the Emperors declaration possibly in order to draw believers away from the rather immoral practices associated with the pagan festival. Even though some of the details of the establishment of December 25^th as Christmas Day are not completely documented, what remains clear is that around 350 AD, the Christian Church of that era designated a day to celebrate the birth of the Christ-child.

In like fashion, virtually everything we traditionally use to celebrate the season of Christmas originates from some symbolism developed or appropriated from another source in order to teach and remind everyone of the attributes of the Savior. Just as Paul did at the altar of the unknown god in Acts 17:23, so Christians have used the symbols and traditions of other religions to explain and teach the meaning of the love and salvation of Jesus Christ. Some of the symbols now baptized into the Christian faith have become enduring symbols of the Advent and Christmas season.

Candles and other lights, obviously, serve to remind us of the light of God that shines forth in the world through the Lord Jesus Christ. One of the legends of the symbol of the Christmas tree has its beginnings in 722 AD with Saint Boniface; a Christian missionary who spent his life in what is now Germany confronting the paganism there. The story goes that Boniface came upon a group of people worshiping an oak tree. Unable to persuade them of the futility of worshiping a tree, Boniface cut it down to demonstrate that he, a mere man, was stronger than the god they worshiped. When the oak tree fell, everyone saw a little green fir tree that had been behind it. Take this tree home, he told them. This green fir tree stands for everlasting life for it will never lose its leaves and is forever green. Gods love is like that; it lasts forever, even after death. (Revoir, pp. 83-85) Likewise, evergreen wreaths remind us of the everlasting love of God. Additionally, when formed into a circle without beginning or end, we can remember that Jesus is our Alpha and Omega Savior. He is without beginning or end. The Christmas gifts that we exchange remind us of the gifts presented to Jesus by the Magi, as well as the gift of love and life that God has given us in Jesus Christ. Even old secular Santa Claus has a Christian origin. Sinterklaas, the Dutch name for Saint Nicholas, was a kindhearted Christian bishop who lived in the A.D. 400s. He became a symbol for caring when he did special acts of love for children. Today, Santa Claus can be our annual reminder of how we should freely give because our Savior freely gave his life for our sins.

On and on it goes. Our Advent and Christmas season is filled with the symbols and traditions that have been established to point all men, women, and children to the saving truth of Jesus the Christ. Some men and women have even been cruelly persecuted or even killed for holding on to some of these simple symbols and celebrating the birth of the Christ-child. Without a doubt, some people will go through this season without a thought toward the Christian truths that the many symbols they use have come to stand for. Some will even go so far as to try to destroy the connection between the meaning of these seasonal symbols and the Christian truths they have come to represent. It comes down, then, to the individual to decide what he or she means when dreaming of Christmas. Advent and Christmas have not been a season for pagan celebration, but a time to give praise to God, just like Simeon and Anna, for our deliverance which has come through the birth of Jesus. Let us look for the arrival of the Messiah as we dream of Christmas.

Rev. Charles A. Layne

First Baptist Church

PO Box 515

170 W. Broadway

Bunker Hill, IN 46914

765-689-7987

bhfbc@bhfirstbaptist.com

www.bhfirstbaptist.com
-- To unsubscribe, send ANY message to: abesermons-unsubscribe@welovegod.org   

Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>

DREAMING OF CHRISTMAS

November 25, 2007

Text: Luke 2:21-40

Just in case you may have missed it: the Christmas season has arrived. In fact, because of concerns over retail sales slowdowns, the commercial side of Christmas got well underway long before Thanksgiving. It even appeared to be edging out Halloween this year! Clearly many people have been dreaming of Christmas for quite some time already, although not all for reasons that can be derived from the Bible.

Advent is the time of the year that Christs Church can devote to dreaming of Christmas. Advent is a word from the Latin advenire, meaning to reach or to arrive. The Christian Church, then, has used Advent as a period of time for believers to prepare for the arrival of the Savior, the Messiah, the Christ, who is known to us as Jesus. Our revealed Savior is Immanuel, meaning God with us. In addition to looking forward to our annual Christmas celebration of the birth of Christ, Christians also look ahead to the arrival of the Messiah at the time of his second coming. In this regard, Christians are in a constant season of Advent, not merely an annual calendar event filled with retail sales, Santa Claus, and Hallmark® cards. By the way, because of the way the dates fall this year, next Sunday is the first of the four Sundays Advent Sundays before Christmas, so we will light our first candle in Advent next Sunday.

This brings me exactly to the point why I have chosen an event after the actual birth of Jesus as this mornings sermon Scripture. In these latter verses of Luke 2, Jesus is eight days old. Clearly, Joseph and Mary were no longer looking ahead to the birth of their child. He had already arrived! Their Advent was over. A funny way to begin this years Advent, isnt it? By observing that it is over?

This highlights the distinction I want to make. Advent is different for us now than it was for anyone living in the year of Jesus birth and for several years afterward. In fact, there were no Christians looking forward to the arrival of the Messiah in that year and several afterwards. Advent took on quite a different meaning. I submit that it had a purer meaning for those who recognized the arrival of the Messiah because they were certainly not burdened by the distractions in which we are now engaged at Christmastime. I further submit that most, if not all, of those who recognized the arrival of the Messiah did not know that they were looking for the Messiah. Nevertheless, when he arrived and they were brought into his presence, they recognized and understood and praised God for the privilege He had given them. Certainly this was the experience and testimony of Simeon and Anna, two people present on that day that Jesus was consecrated at the temple in Jerusalem.

The Scriptures are straightforward about their respective encounters with the infant Jesus. Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel. Anna was also at the temple. Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. Simeon and Anna had respectively been given a vision in which they expected to personally see the Messiah, but I would speculate that they did not expect to see the Messiah as an infant. Nevertheless, when they saw the baby Jesus, they testified to those around them that they had seen salvation, and they praised God for it. Simeon and Anna were dreaming of Christmas, but quite clearly in a way that was far different from us.

What about us? Of what do our dreams of Christmas consist? Do we, like Simeon and Anna, recognize the arrival of the Messiah and praise God for him? Or do we, instead, lose our focus on other distractions and let the Messiahs arrival slip by virtually unheeded?

As I have said, our practice of keeping Advent and Christmas differs vastly from the experience of Simeon, Anna, and others. The purpose of our Advent and Christmas celebrations should be the same looking forward to the arrival of the Messiah with expectation and anticipation and praise but certainly the way we celebrate Advent and Christmas have changed over the centuries. Nevertheless, I believe that our Advent and Christmas celebrations can be just as pure and meaningful to us as they were to Simeon and Anna.

One of the remarkable assaults on Christmas in recent years that is meant to distract us from recognizing the arrival of the Messiah is the increasing attempt to convince people that our Christmas traditions are actually rooted in paganism rather than in Biblical Christianity. What some are therefore attempting to reason from this is that all of the calls to remember the reason for the season and to keep Christ in Christmas are simple-minded foolishness since there are more pagan roots than Christian found in the symbols and traditions of the season we celebrate. Lets go straight to the heart of the matter, then. In a narrow way, these skeptics are quite right. From the broader perspectives of historical fact and truth, they are absolutely wrong.

December 25^th, our Christmas day, is not the birth day of Jesus. I do not personally know anyone who claims it to be so, especially any scholar of Christian history. Not even all Christian faith groups today celebrate Christmas on the same date. Some churches from the Eastern Orthodox tradition celebrate it on January 6^th. The Bible does not spell out for us the birth date of Jesus. Some sources report that Bible scholars place the birth of the historical Jesus in the spring. (http://www.conservapedia.com/Christmas) Additionally, the early Church did not recognize the birth of Jesus as a part of the Church year or liturgy. For more than three centuries, the Church observed Jesus baptism, crucifixion, and resurrection. (Trudy West Revoir. Legends and Traditions of Christmas. Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: Judson Press, 1985, p. 15) Even in early America, some Christian faith groups refused to celebrate a Christmas because they considered it a tradition of the Roman Catholic Church, a religious authority they did not recognize.

The time of the winter solstice which falls around December 25^th its not always that precise day has been a festival day of some sort for centuries. Two thousand years before Christ, the early Mesopotamians celebrated a 12 day new year around that time. (http://www.conservapedia.com/Christmas) During the period of the Roman Empire, which of course had a far-reaching impact upon much of the world in that period, a festival to the god Saturn, called Saturnalia, was held from December 17^th through the 23^rd. So what gives? Are skeptics correct in asserting that we are merely perpetuating a pagan festival of one kind or another when we dream of Christmas?

Such assertions are believable only when disconnected from history. When dreaming of Christmas, Christians do not dream of paganism. Christians do not celebrate paganism. Christians celebrate the arrival of the Messiah; Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus. Around 350 AD, the Roman Emperor declared December 25^th to be the day of the Mass of Christ Christs Mass which morphs into Christmas. That date may have been chosen to coincide with the already familiar Saturnalia festival. The early Church went along with the Emperors declaration possibly in order to draw believers away from the rather immoral practices associated with the pagan festival. Even though some of the details of the establishment of December 25^th as Christmas Day are not completely documented, what remains clear is that around 350 AD, the Christian Church of that era designated a day to celebrate the birth of the Christ-child.

In like fashion, virtually everything we traditionally use to celebrate the season of Christmas originates from some symbolism developed or appropriated from another source in order to teach and remind everyone of the attributes of the Savior. Just as Paul did at the altar of the unknown god in Acts 17:23, so Christians have used the symbols and traditions of other religions to explain and teach the meaning of the love and salvation of Jesus Christ. Some of the symbols now baptized into the Christian faith have become enduring symbols of the Advent and Christmas season.

Candles and other lights, obviously, serve to remind us of the light of God that shines forth in the world through the Lord Jesus Christ. One of the legends of the symbol of the Christmas tree has its beginnings in 722 AD with Saint Boniface; a Christian missionary who spent his life in what is now Germany confronting the paganism there. The story goes that Boniface came upon a group of people worshiping an oak tree. Unable to persuade them of the futility of worshiping a tree, Boniface cut it down to demonstrate that he, a mere man, was stronger than the god they worshiped. When the oak tree fell, everyone saw a little green fir tree that had been behind it. Take this tree home, he told them. This green fir tree stands for everlasting life for it will never lose its leaves and is forever green. Gods love is like that; it lasts forever, even after death. (Revoir, pp. 83-85) Likewise, evergreen wreaths remind us of the everlasting love of God. Additionally, when formed into a circle without beginning or end, we can remember that Jesus is our Alpha and Omega Savior. He is without beginning or end. The Christmas gifts that we exchange remind us of the gifts presented to Jesus by the Magi, as well as the gift of love and life that God has given us in Jesus Christ. Even old secular Santa Claus has a Christian origin. Sinterklaas, the Dutch name for Saint Nicholas, was a kindhearted Christian bishop who lived in the A.D. 400s. He became a symbol for caring when he did special acts of love for children. Today, Santa Claus can be our annual reminder of how we should freely give because our Savior freely gave his life for our sins.

On and on it goes. Our Advent and Christmas season is filled with the symbols and traditions that have been established to point all men, women, and children to the saving truth of Jesus the Christ. Some men and women have even been cruelly persecuted or even killed for holding on to some of these simple symbols and celebrating the birth of the Christ-child. Without a doubt, some people will go through this season without a thought toward the Christian truths that the many symbols they use have come to stand for. Some will even go so far as to try to destroy the connection between the meaning of these seasonal symbols and the Christian truths they have come to represent. It comes down, then, to the individual to decide what he or she means when dreaming of Christmas. Advent and Christmas have not been a season for pagan celebration, but a time to give praise to God, just like Simeon and Anna, for our deliverance which has come through the birth of Jesus. Let us look for the arrival of the Messiah as we dream of Christmas.

Rev. Charles A. Layne

First Baptist Church

PO Box 515

170 W. Broadway

Bunker Hill, IN 46914

765-689-7987

bhfbc@bhfirstbaptist.com

http://www.bhfirstbaptist.com

-- To unsubscribe, send ANY message to: abesermons-unsubscribe@welovegod.org