Carrying Christmas Into Life

I want to read to you from Matthew chapter 2.

Matthew 2 · chapter mention

It includes a lot of the story of Christmas, the coming of the Magi and the

fleeing into Egypt. So let's follow along.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea.

During the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked,

Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews?

We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.

When King Herod heard this, he was disturbed in all Jerusalem with him.

And when he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers

of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born.

In Bethlehem and Judea, they replied, for this is what the prophet has written.

But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers

of Judah, for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.

Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared.

He sent them to Bethlehem and said, Go and search carefully for the child.

As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.

After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had

seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.

When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house,

they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him.

Then they opened their treasures, presented him with gifts of gold,

frankincense, and wait, there's myrrh. No, I said that the other day.

And having been warmed in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to

their country by another route.

Or rout. When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.

Get up, he said, take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt.

Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.

So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt,

where he stayed until the death of Herod.

And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet out of Egypt.

I called my son. When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi,

he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its

vicinity, who were two years old and under,

in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.

Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled.

A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping in great mourning, Rachel weeping for her

children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.

After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt

and said, Get up and take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel,

for those who were trying to take the child's life are dead.

So he got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel.

But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father

Herod, he was afraid to go there.

Having been warned in a dream, He withdrew to the district of Galilee,

and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth.

So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets that he would be called a Nazarene.

In one of the Peanuts cartoons.

Lucy comes to Charlie Brown and says, Merry Christmas.

Since it's this time of year of

the season, I think we ought to bury our differences and try to be kind.

Charlie Brown said, why does it just have to be this time of season?

Why can't we be nice to each other all year long?

Lucy looked at him and said What are you, some kind of fanatic?

I hear kids saying it all the time I wish Christmas would last all year long

I'm not sure exactly why they do But there's an innate sense in each one of

us That it's not possible for Christmas to last all year long But what if it is?

It's a pipe dream, we think Already most of us have come down off of those mountaintops

Of joy and good times and some of you are even going home tonight to open the presents,

and then by tomorrow morning, half of them will be broken.

And we're back into the valley of trying to struggle for a living.

Christmas doesn't last. Someone compared Christmas to jumping out of an airplane

with a parachute for just a short moment in time when the parachute opens and

you soar suspended in the sky,

it's a magnificent feeling,

but it doesn't last.

You know that you can't stay up there forever, and before too long,

your feet come pounding down to the ground, and it's back to business as usual.

Business as usual. Some of us may even be going back to work tomorrow morning on Christmas Day.

Most of the rest of us will be going to work again on Friday.

Can it ever really last? Can ever really business be as usual after we have

once again gone through a Christmas experience?

It's almost as if we go through this on autopilot, isn't it?

Sometimes we go through Christmas season almost on autopilot.

I wonder if it was business as usual for the shepherds and wise men after they saw the child.

I wonder if it was business as usual for Mary and Joseph after the experience

of that birth, that first Christmas.

After we have sung the songs and worshiped at Christmas, after we have thought

again of the meaning of Christmas, can we go back with indifference to our everyday lives.

Can we do that without being changed by what's happened at Christmas?

Can we go back with indifference without ever being changed at all?

Or has Christmas possibly burned a new fire and a new hope into our bones,

somehow causing us to know that life can't ever be the same again?

Is there any possibility for you and for me to carry Christ into Christmas into

life? If Christ has entered into our personal world, is it really possible to

return the same way of living life?

In the story we read of the wise men, it says that they went home a different way.

And it's kind of like that. When we get impacted by the person of Christ,

we should go a different way from then on.

Our life should be transformed and we should go a different way. Mary and Joseph.

Had to do it. The shepherds and the wise men and the angels and the star,

all of that was wonderful, but there came that moment when they were all gone,

after the moment in time when time itself had seemed to stand still,

that Mary and Joseph were all alone, left alone with their new child,

left alone with the tremendous responsibility of having to take this child and

help him to become what God wanted him to be. Have you ever felt that, parents?

That your responsibility is huge to help your child become what God had wanted him or her to be.

So how do we do this? First, we must carry Christmas into the home.

Mary and Joseph had to do that. They were probably quite terrified of what was going on.

They were the earthly parents of God, of the Christ child, what is a tremendous

privilege and yet also an enormous responsibility at the same time.

They had to be responsible for this child who was the Son of God.

They had to help Jesus grow up to understand the importance of God and of doing his will.

We almost seem to think that Jesus was born with his full capacity of knowing what he was going to beat.

Be sacrificed. Maybe he did, we don't know, but he was still a little baby,

and they had to raise him.

I wonder what conversations they had. I'm sure that Jesus was like any other baby and any other boy.

I'm sure that he got sick in the night and cried and kept them up.

I'm sure there were times when he got into a little mischief.

He probably even wiggled and squirmed in the synagogue services like most children do in church.

There were probably those times when he didn't pick up his clothes or clean

his teeth before he went to bed.

Maybe there were those times when he didn't seem to be listening to them when

they tried to tell him about God and about all that he meant in their lives.

I wonder if there was any time in Jesus's life when his parents were talking

about God the Father, and he's like, yeah, I know.

We don't imagine that. We kind of think of him as an adult Jesus, adult baby.

But they tried. They tried to teach him. They took him to church.

They read from the scriptures.

They told him what they knew. But more importantly, they lived their faith in the home in front of him.

Through it all, Jesus heard, and we read later in the scripture that he grew

in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

And so we wonder how much of that has to do with his upbringing in that home of Mary and Joseph.

Somewhere along the line, Jesus understood what he was supposed to be and to do.

The idea of Christmas caught hold of Jesus because Mary and Joseph took that

love of God that was born that night and built it into him as they went.

We often talk about Christmas times of the past.

When we do, we most often talk about our families and we remember the good times

when we were with our loved ones and how nice it felt to be with family.

This Christmas, many of your families got together already.

Some of you are waiting to do so. You had reunions. Wasn't it great to feel

that feeling of togetherness and how you wished you could keep that togetherness?

But it wasn't easy. In order for us to keep the spirit of love and joy and peace

and hope that we feel at Christmas alive, we've got to keep it in our hearts and in our homes.

It's no secret if our children and our grandchildren are to grow up understanding

all of that Christmas means they're going to have to learn it first of all in

the home by what we teach our kids,

by what we model, by our attitudes, by the way we live at home,

the way we live in public.

Everywhere we live, everywhere we go, we have to exhibit the life of Christ

so that our kids can come up and learn it.

What have we carried into our homes? We talk about the love of Christmas.

Are we loving each other in the home?

I wonder how many family reunions are more like family rebellions.

Just the thought. But how often do we get together and just share the time together

as a family? We talk about hope.

Are we hopeful persons or are we pessimistic about the way things are and about

the way other people are? We talk about the significance of God.

How significant is he really in our lives?

How important is Jesus, is God in our homes? Do we worship him in our homes?

Do we act like him in the public?

Do we live like him wherever we go?

What concerns me as a pastor of 30-some years is that so many of our children

and many young adults are growing up with a disinterest in the matters of faith.

You look at Sunday morning, and this is a city of 5,000, a county of about 16,000,

and I would dare say that on any Sunday morning,

less than 10% of our population is in church or thereabouts.

There's not a lot that really attend overall when you think about it.

And even if it is more than that, it's not significantly more,

but what is important to us in this day and age I'll see you next week.

Dr. Horne, who was president of the Virginia Baptist Convention,

told of a time he visited the Amish in Pennsylvania.

The Amish have rebelled against modern technology and refused to be overcome by it.

You will see them. You know them around here. They still ride around in their

horse-drawn carriages, their buggies.

They don't have anything to do with modern convenience. We would consider them

as old-fashioned and out-of-date and maybe even backwards.

And yet Reverend Horne visited in one of the homes and talked about meeting

a kindly grandmother with two grandchildren, one of them eight years old and the other four.

He asked her, what is the greatest hope you have for your grandchildren?

And quick as a wick, she answered that they may know, love, and serve Jesus Christ.

That was her main interest for her grandchildren.

That was her main desire. I wonder, what is the greatest hope we have for our children in our homes?

Do we hope that they will be successful in business? Do we hope that they will

become astronauts? Do we hope that they will get good grades in school?

Do we hope that they will be beautiful or popular?

Do we hope that they will marry into wealth and share some of that with us? Just a thought.

What's our greatest hope for our children? Shouldn't it be that they know,

love, and serve Jesus Christ?

If Christmas has meant anything to us at all, we should take it into life.

And then second, if Christmas is to last more than just a few weeks each year,

we must carry Christmas into our work-a-day world.

Mary and Joseph had to survive, and it wasn't easy for them. Joseph was a builder.

In those days, that was hard work, and it didn't pay too much.

The Son of God was born into a poor family, but somehow they survived through

the hard work they were able to do.

Somehow I feel that after these days of Christmas, the work they did took on

a new significance because they were doing it to provide for the Son of God.

I wonder how many of us think of that, that when we go to our work of day worlds,

we are providing for the children of God.

Think about that. Our job as Christians, as followers of Jesus,

is to provide for those who are children of God, even if they don't know him yet.

Somehow believe that Joseph's tools didn't seem so heavy anymore,

and the work seemed a little bit easier.

The clothes to wash and the meals to cook were not as hard for Mary to do.

They both understood that they were offering service to God through their work.

Jesus learned to be a builder according to scriptures. He got blisters on his

hands. You know, it's hard for us to think about this with Jesus.

We think of this son of God and we forget that he's also human,

but he would have probably gotten blisters.

He probably would have gotten splinters, but he brought honor and glory to human

work, knowing that it would be used not only to serve others, but to serve God.

Most of us have either, like I said, either gone back to work or going back

to work soon, but it's probably not with a sense of excitement.

Most of us don't look forward to going back to work.

But if we look at going to work to provide for children of God,

if we look at going back to work to do what God has called us to do and wants

us to do, it makes us a little bit easier.

We can do is be offered up to God as an offering, and maybe when we do,

he will take it and use it to bless others.

What will God do with you? I don't know. Only God knows that as you search his heart.

But would it make a difference in your life and in your work if the letters that you.

Typed, the truth you taught in schools, the lessons and papers you wrote and

graded, the goods you sold, the tools you used were offered to God.

If you went to work every morning and said, listen, God, this is your day for

me to worship you and to glorify you, help me to glorify you in what I do.

Somehow, I'm not sure that most of us would look at going to factories and doing

work for the kingdom, but yet that's what we do.

We go through our work world to bless the Lord.

Maybe there's somebody that's working alongside you that needs the love of Christ.

The third thing, if Christmas is to be carried into life and last more than

a few weeks, we must carry Christmas into the area of our everyday life and our everyday faith.

Mary and Joseph would need to remember Bethlehem often because there were those

moments in their lives when they were questioning their faith,

were even challenged in their faith.

They wonder, just like us, there are times when we're down and a little bit

depressed that we wonder, what is this all for?

We're reminded that Joseph died and that Mary was left alone with the tremendous

responsibility of bringing up their children.

And Jesus wasn't her only son, her only child.

She had more. We know that Jude was the one that wrote the book of the New Testament

was one of Jesus' brothers. We know he had a sister named Siloam.

And he had other brothers and sisters or half-brothers and sisters that were

in the home. And when Joseph passed away, we know, and left her with those kids.

I wonder how many of us know single mothers or widowed mothers that are raising

children, and I wonder what kind of responsibility that may be.

And yet, she remembered that birth time.

It says even in that, she pondered it in her heart, wanting to know what was

going to be happening to her child. I can imagine all through his life,

she wondered what it was going to be.

She could remember that he had prophesied that the day would come when he would be crucified.

She could remember that God also had prophesied that times would turn rough.

But that God would always be there with her.

There's no doubt that many of us will go away from this Christmas season and

land in some Egypt, this faraway place, this place where we're trying to flee

away from the trouble that we're getting into.

Maybe it's a frustrating disappointment. Maybe it's a job we didn't get.

Maybe it's a love that was rejected. Maybe we'll just find ourselves bored with the way life is.

I was talking with somebody before the service how they knew a young girl who

was constantly being bullied in school and she finally committed suicide.

Side, I wonder how many people are in this world that we don't touch the way we should touch.

If Christmas is going to be carried into life, it has to be in the area of our

everyday faith, in how we treat others and how we live and how we give our example.

Christmas tells us that we can go on and on in the face of all of our difficulties

so long as we keep our eyes on the face of Christ.

So here's the closing part. Christmas is all about Christ coming to live on

our streets in our homes.

That's in John 1, verses 1 and on.

John 1:1

Helping us live at home and at work with a faith that helps us love and serve him to those around us.

That's what Jesus came for, is to live on our streets, live in our lives,

to be part of us, to live like us, so that we would have an example of being Christ-like.

Let's carry Christmas into life, not just through tomorrow, but through the

rest of the year and on into the next year, so that we can redo it again and

go through all of this again. Let's celebrate.

Heavenly Father, as we continue into this candle lighting and carol singing,

we give you thanks that you have come at this time of Christmas.

Help us to carry Christmas, even more than that.

Help us to carry Christ into life, and help us to be carried by Christ into

life. In Jesus' name, amen.