Introduction
Christmas is traditionally a time
when people go home to be close to family.
Unfortunately, not everyone is able to go home for the holidays. There are often obstacles in the way that
keep us from going home. Home may be too
far away. We may be too busy to go home. Or it may be too painful to because we don’t
get along with our family or we may be overcome with grief as we think of loved
ones who have passed away.
Even so, Christmas is still a time
when we long to go home to the place where we feel at peace, where love is
freely given and freely received.
Ultimately, our Home is with our Heavenly Father. As we prepare to celebrate Christmas over the
next few weeks, I want to challenge you to think of “Home” in its broader,
spiritual sense. Consider how
Jesus came to overcome whatever keeps us from being at home
with God.
Sometimes Home seems too far away. I
think of our brave soldiers serving oversees. This must be an especially difficult time of
year for them. They feel the same
longings we feel to go home for Christmas, but their duty to our country
will not allow it. For them, home must
seem especially far away this season.
In a similar way, there is a deep
spiritual longing in the heart of humanity to be at home with God, but sin
separates us so far from Him it seems impossible to go Home. Throughout history, men and women of faith
have sensed this obstacle and longed to find a bridge between God and
humanity. People have gone to great
lengths to cross this chasm, but all human efforts fail. The prophet Isaiah wrote of the Jewish longing
to be at home with God in Isaiah 64:1-9. This was written over 500 years before Christ was born and laments how sin separates humanity form God.
Isaiah 64:1-9
1Oh, that you would burst from the heavens and come down!
How the mountains would quake in your presence!
2 As fire causes wood to burn
and water to boil,
your coming would make the nations tremble.
Then your enemies would learn the reason for your fame!
3 When you came down long ago,
you did awesome deeds beyond our highest expectations.
And oh, how the mountains quaked!
4 For since the world began,
no ear has heard
and no eye has seen a God like you,
who works for those who wait for him!
5 You welcome those who gladly do good,
who follow godly ways.
But you have been very angry with us,
for we are not godly.
We are constant sinners;
how can people like us be saved?
6 We are all infected and impure with sin.
When we display our righteous deeds,
they are nothing but filthy rags.
Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall,
and our sins sweep us away like the wind.
7 Yet no one calls on your name
or pleads with you for mercy.
Therefore, you have turned away from us
and turned us over to our sins.
How the mountains would quake in your presence!
2 As fire causes wood to burn
and water to boil,
your coming would make the nations tremble.
Then your enemies would learn the reason for your fame!
3 When you came down long ago,
you did awesome deeds beyond our highest expectations.
And oh, how the mountains quaked!
4 For since the world began,
no ear has heard
and no eye has seen a God like you,
who works for those who wait for him!
5 You welcome those who gladly do good,
who follow godly ways.
But you have been very angry with us,
for we are not godly.
We are constant sinners;
how can people like us be saved?
6 We are all infected and impure with sin.
When we display our righteous deeds,
they are nothing but filthy rags.
Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall,
and our sins sweep us away like the wind.
7 Yet no one calls on your name
or pleads with you for mercy.
Therefore, you have turned away from us
and turned us over to our sins.
8 And yet, O Lord, you are our Father.
We are the clay, and you are the potter.
We all are formed by your hand.
9 Don’t be so angry with us, Lord.
Please don’t remember our sins forever.
Look at us, we pray,
and see that we are all your people.
We are the clay, and you are the potter.
We all are formed by your hand.
9 Don’t be so angry with us, Lord.
Please don’t remember our sins forever.
Look at us, we pray,
and see that we are all your people.
Christmas Materialism
God did look and see His people. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of
our Savior. God loves us so much He sent
his son Jesus to bridge the gap that sin places between us and God. Jesus already did everything necessary to
make a way for us to go Home spiritually.
In order to overcome the obstacle of sin that keeps us from being at Home
with God we must: believe in Jesus, repent
of our sin, and invite Jesus into our life.
Unfortunately, few people consciously recognize that they
are lost and far from Home. We mistake
the temporary trappings of this world for things of eternal value. And so, as Isaiah said in verse 7, “No one calls on [God’s] name or pleads with [God] for mercy. Therefore, [God has] turned away from us and turned us over to
our sins.”
The Christmas season often
heightens our pursuit of worldly things.
It is a time of great excitement and expectation. Retailers play off this to increase sales and
make more money. A friend of mine told me
a funny story that illustrates the effect the Christmas hype can have on
people. He said he once stood in line to
see Santa Clause with his little boy. Of
course, it was a long line with many children eagerly waiting to tell Santa what
they wanted for Christmas. They must
have stood in line for nearly an hour.
Then, just before Ken and his boy got their turn, Santa stood up and
said, “I’ve had enough of this!” He
ripped off his beard and hat, threw them down, and walked off the job. Ken just stood there dumbfounded with his jaw
on the floor. He didn’t know what to say
to his son. Would his image of Christmas
and Santa Clause be shattered? Then, his
son looked up and said, “Dad, what’s the matter with that elf? He’s not doing a very good job filling in for
Santa!”
The excitement builds as we wait
for Christmas to come. We wait and wait
and finally we get our turn at Christmas and then we are disappointed. Christmas was not all it was cracked up to
be. Why?
Because we can’t find true peace, joy, and happiness in a fat man
dressed up in a red suit.
Sometimes, even visiting family for
the holidays isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Maybe we have fond memories of how great Christmas was in the good ole
days. And maybe it seems things can
never be as good as they once were. The
music just isn’t as good, the food isn’t as tasty, the presents aren’t as special,
the laughs aren’t as funny, the relatives aren’t as friendly… Could it be that sometimes we even substitute
family for God? And when we do, we are always
disappointed.
That’s not what Christmas was meant
to be. Christmas is the celebration of
God’s love revealed to us through the birth of His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus was born to remind us and invite us to
come Home to God. Jesus lived to show us
the way Home. He died to overcome the
obstacle of sin that keeps us away from Home.
He rose from the grave because not even death can keep us from being at
Home with our Father in Heaven.
The key to overcoming sin is
repentance. Jesus has already broken the
power of sin over us, but we must repent—that means to turn away from sin and
turn to God. But how do we actually
repent. First, we must ask ourselves in
all honesty, “What do I put in the place of God?”
I have a good friend who is a
die-hard Tennessee Volunteers football fan.
He used to spend all his time tracking statistics on his team, watching
games… He even lost sleep over whether or not they would beat Georgia ! But one day a few years ago as he was praying,
he realized that he was being foolish.
He spent more time on a silly college football team than he did on his
family. He was even more passionate
about the VOLS than he was about God.
When he came to his senses, my friend asked God to forgive him and he
repented. That means he changed the way
he lived his life. He’s still a Tennessee Volunteers
football fan, but instead of being a fanatic sports fan, he’s a fanatic God
fan. And football never comes before God
or the things that are truly important in life.
2. Ask Forgiveness
Once we are aware we have put
something before God, we must ask forgiveness.
It’s OK to ask for forgiveness in general… because we may never be fully
aware of all the things we put before God.
But we should also reflect deeply on our life and then ask for
forgiveness for the specific things that God reveals we have put before Him.
3. Let God Change You
Next, we must let God change our
behavior. It is good to be sorry for our
sins, but just feeling sorry is not enough.
There must also be a change in our behavior. Change comes as a result of a personal
encounter with Jesus. I hope then, you
will pray for more and more personal encounters with Jesus that you may be
changed. And pray for God to open your
eyes more and more so you can recognize how you have already encountered Jesus in
your life. These divine encounters have
profound, life-changing effects on us.
They help us to truly repent and come Home to God.
We change as a response to God’s
love. I think about the lady who was
caught in the act of adultery in the passage from John 8:1-11. She was caught red-handed, dragged from the
bed by an angry mob, and thrown at the feet of Jesus. According to the law, she was supposed to be
stoned to death. The mob demanded an
answer—should they stone her or not. You
remember Jesus’ response. He said, ““All right, but let the one who has never
sinned throw the first stone!” Then he stooped down again and wrote in the
dust. When the accusers heard this, they
slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left
in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said
to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?” “No,
Lord,” she said. And Jesus said,
“Neither do I. Go and sin no more.””[i]
The Bible doesn’t tell us what
became of her after this, but an early church tradition says she went on to
become a saint. If that’s true, she
didn’t become a saint to impress Jesus.
He had already seen her at her worst and he loved and forgave her anyway. She became a saint in response to the great love of Christ that forgave her and spared
her life when she was still a sinner.
The same is true for us. We don’t try to be good people to earn God’s
favor. Isaiah said, “When we proudly display our righteous deeds, we find they are but
filthy rags.”[ii] We can’t impress God and we don’t have
to. God loves us in spite of our
sin. His love for us is demonstrated by
Christ who gave up the glory of heaven to be born as a helpless baby in a
rickety old manger. He lived a perfect
life and was crucified for our sins so that we can be washed clean—as white as
snow.
Conclusion
So how do we respond to all this? Well, we could disregard it and keep on
falling for the same old hype the world offers every year. We could place our hopes in the temporary
pleasures the gifts of this world bring.
Or we could spend our time
preparing our souls for the coming of Christ.
One day, we will face Jesus and look into the eyes of the man who
hung on a cross for our sins. If Christ
came to take you Home to heaven today, would you be ready to go or would you
keep clinging to the temporary things of this world? The season of Advent is a very fitting time
to prepare our souls to go Home to be with God.
Won’t you look into the eyes of your Savior today and say, “I’ll be Home
for Christmas this year?”
Thank You Jesus, for
the great gift you gave us on the cross at Calvary . You have made a way for us to truly come Home
for Christmas this year. We long for
Home—the place we’re always certain to find hope and joy and peace. Reveal to us those things in our lives that
we have put before God. And help us to
know that no sin is too big for you to overcome. Urge us to repent and to always put God first
in our lives so that we will be ready to be at Home with God this Christmas. Amen.