Christmas Series (Dec 24) Dave Grant

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the Spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

It's a privilege to worship with you guys tonight.

Christmas Eve, it's a special time.

It's so busy.

We all got so much going on.

The ground's just quaking underneath our feet every turn.

It's nice to ground ourselves with something familiar, something solid, right?

So my message tonight is called the characters of Christmas and what we can learn from these biblical characters of Christmas.

However, when I think of the word Christmas, here I'll let you know how I came up with this.

When I think of the word Christmas, we attach a lot of words after it.

Let's try a couple Christmas tree, Christmas present, Christmas pudding.

I don't think anybody has that anymore.

But one of the ones that came to my mind is Christmas stories.

In our popular culture, there are so many Christmas stories.

And in those stories are so many amazing characters that we've fallen in love with over the years, and we watch them year after year, and we can learn something from these because we can relate to them.

Let's take a look.

We got some pictures here.

See if you recognize some of these famous Christmas characters.

One of my favorites.

Who recognizes that guy?

You'll shoot your eye out.

The Griswolds.

No Christmas would be complete without them.

The Grant.

The Grant.

You guys recognize it?

Buddy the Elf.

Everybody knows this one.

Who knows this one?

Right?

Yes.

That's right.

Ebonese or Scrooge.

And of course, had to save it for last.

The greatest Christmas movie of all time.

Help me out, guys.

You gotta agree, Die Hard! And Yippie Kaye.

After watching that, if I end up at my wife's Christmas party and that happens to be taken over by a band of ruthless international terrorists, I'm prepared because of the example of John McClain in this Christmas masterpiece.

Die Hard is the greatest Christmas movie of all time.

We love these characters.

I think we identify with their situations.

At the very least, we're entertained from them.

Some of them, these characters are so rich.

Their backstory, how they got to where they are now, how they got in the situation they're in, how it impacted them.

We can begin to learn something from these characters.

So, for instance, imagine, I think we got a picture coming up here.

Imagine a young child, youngest in the family, feeling a little alienated, lost in the shuffle of life, and your parents leave you home alone to go on vacation.

You are better equipped to handle that situation if you have met Kevin McAllister.

Or what dad, as he bravely goes to the garage to bring out the ladder to adorn the family home with Christmas lights, isn't inspired by the sheer genius and creativity of Clark W.

Griswold.

I'm a better man for watching that movie.

Without question, my favorite Christmas show or program is the Charlie Brown Christmas Special.

I learned to read with Charlie Brown Christmas, with Charlie Brown comic books, and to be honest, my reading level really never accelerated much past that level, but nonetheless, I learned to read from Charlie Brown.

He taught me a lot about life.

In 1965, though, Charles Schultz, his comic strip, it was at its peak of its popularity, and the networks started pitching an idea about doing a primetime Christmas special on TV.

A producer named Lee Mendelssohn.

He was a senior production director.

He was assigned the project, and he had just completed a real big award-winning documentary on legendary baseball player Willie Mays.

And it was reported that Lee Mendelson joked and said, I just made a documentary about the greatest baseball player.

I might as well make a documentary about the worst baseball player in history.

And so it started off the project.

Interesting thing is that Mendelssohn had worked with Schultz.

He had done a documentary on Charles Schultz's life and just the backstory and how that cartoon was created and how it came about every day and the story behind the characters.

So they had a relationship.

And then when they met to discuss the format and the general storyline for the Christmas special, the two had such synergy that the main part of the story was hammered out within about an hour.

Mendelsso was inspired by a book by Hans Christian Andersen called The Pine Tree.

And he wanted the story to focus around a main character of a Christmas tree.

And you can close your eyes and remember this pathetic little Christmas tree that Charlie Brown brought up.

And when they put a Christmas decoration, it fell over pathetically.

And from Mendelssohn, the character kind of mirrored what Charlie Brown was.

But when he was surrounded with love, we remember the scene where Lina said, It's not that bad, it just needs a little love.

And he put his blanket around it, the tree sprung to life, and we saw its full potential.

And Mendelssohn thought that was a great Christmas message.

But we got a little clip right now.

You might recognize this.

Come on, you know the dance that kid did, right?

It's such a great scene with the kids all dancing around.

And there's an entire soundtrack, and a lot of these songs have really been kind of become sort of iconic and tied with Christmas.

But these were a lot of departures from normal for primetime TV specials.

And as a result, when the network executives had their first screening of it, they hated it.

They hated it.

They didn't get it.

They didn't get the jazz music.

They didn't get the pacing of the storyline.

They didn't get the characters' voices.

They just didn't like it.

And they really did not like the use of the New Testament scripture that was quoted.

That's right.

Charles Schultz had one deal breaker, one requirement for this was that if we're doing a Christmas special, we are going to declare the actual gospel message straight word for word from the Bible.

And it will be part of the show.

And we will point that the characters believe that that is the true meaning for Christmas, and that's in it, or I'm out.

The show was one week away from airing, and the network, once they had consulted the sponsor, Coca-Cola, another one of my loves, they were okay with it, and it went to air.

And when this show aired on December 9th, 1965, half of the entire US market tuned in to watch, and it was met with rave reviews.

We're just gonna show you guys my favorite clip from the show here.

And there were in the same country shepherds, abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night, and lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not.

For behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you.

You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel, a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

Right on, amen.

Thanks, Linus.

That clip was known as Linus's monologue, has become to be widely regarded as one of the most beautiful, impactful 90 seconds in animated television history.

And it almost didn't make it to the show.

And Linus went on to be one of the most endeared characters in the Peanuts franchise.

We know Linus.

Can anybody relate to Linus a little bit?

His persona evolves around that blue security blanket.

It appears with him in every scene.

We almost never see him without it.

And in the couple of episodes where he doesn't have it, he's gripped with crippling fear and anxiety and can't even leave the house without it over just a common thing like his mom putting it in the wash.

And the beautiful thing is that this character was modeled after Charles Schultz himself, who had struggled his entire adult life with severe anxiety and severe identity um issues, and and this resonated with him, and he wanted to make a character tender like that with those kinds of struggles.

But Charles Schultz understood the message of Linus's monologue so well that he built a hidden little gem.

He built a hidden little gem into this scene that the average eye, the casual observer, it would go unnoticed.

But I want you to notice something that Linus does when he recites the line when the angel says, Fear not.

What's he let go of?

He drops his blanket.

Charles Schultz put that in to give the message that the gospel makes all these things that we hold on to for security pale into the distance.

And that blanket that was the iconic symbol of his character didn't even exist for the most special scene in the entire franchise's history.

We can learn a lot from these Christmas characters.

And we're thankful for Christian men like Charles Schultz that get involved in popular culture and can and are bold enough and brave enough to tell what the true story is.

But let's move on into the non-animated world, the real world, and let's talk about a story that really happened.

Real characters that went on before us and played a role in this incredible story.

So tonight we open up our service with that scripture reading and with some singing.

And that's actually part of a real special family tradition that my family has that was passed down from my mother-in-law and was passed down from her family.

It's a cool little thing.

That probably was posted in some newspaper in the early 1960s, maybe.

And it's kind of become a tradition.

We just go through that Christmas Eve before we open gifts, and it was a fun way to open up the service tonight.

So, in our short time together now, though, we are going to look at three characters that are central to the Christmas story.

And we're going to see, not unlike Clark Griswold and John McClain, we're going to see what we can learn from these characters.

So let's just dive right in.

First, we're going to start with the shepherds.

When I think of the shepherds, it's hard for me not to wonder what it was like for them to sit in awe in a dark field when those angels appeared.

It's hard for me to kind of not wonder why God chose them, shepherds, sitting outside of town, isolated from everyone, this group of people to make that announcement.

Just a few miles up the road, the town of Bethlehem was full.

Everyone that was anyone had come to town to be part of that census.

God could have gone and rang on the doors of the political leaders or the religious leaders or the rich and famous, create some kind of a groundswell of excitement and support.

He could have manipulated the algorithm and got Jesus' birth trending on Twitter or Facebook.

Okay, I'm modernizing the text a little bit for the analogy, but you get what I'm talking about.

He chose these lowly shepherds in a field outside of town.

And I think part of the message here is that God sees everyone, regardless of their position, regardless of their status.

And this tells me that he sees me and cares about me and is able to reach me in any circumstance wherever I am.

And he wants us to know tonight that the message he had on Christmas Eve was for everyone.

I think that's part of why he went to the shepherds in the field.

I think there's more too.

I think there's something special about these guys.

We can glean a lot from the shepherd's response.

So I'm going to read from Luke 2, starting at verse 15.

I'm going to read it out loud.

I apologize, y'all.

We didn't have time to get these up on the slides, or we wouldn't let you read them up there.

But I'm going to read from Luke 2, 15.

When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one other, let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.

When they heard the word from God, they immediately responded.

It compelled them to action.

And I think an authentic encounter with God demands a response.

And the character of these shepherds demonstrates for us that exact point.

They were compelled to act.

They said, Let's go.

Luke goes on to say, verse 16, and they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger.

They must have been blown away.

My goodness, it's true.

What has happened tonight?

And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told to them concerning this.

And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds had told them.

That word wonder just jumps out at me, wondered.

Wondered.

Like we all wonder.

We wonder what all this means.

What all means are going on in the world around me?

Where do I fit in?

How do I make sense of all this?

We wonder all the time at our circumstances in the world.

And when the word of God is spoken, we're told it cannot return void.

The very hearing of God's word causes wonder.

And that wonder can be turned to revelation by the power of God's Spirit.

So, more importantly, I think the shepherd's response tells us that when we experience God in our lives, a word he gives us, a prayer he answers for us, a way in which he provides, we need to go and tell it to people and share it because it's not meant to stay with us alone.

The characters of the shepherds demonstrate that God's message about his son is for everyone.

The lowly shepherds arrived before any of the religious leaders whose job it was to keep on top of these things, even knew what was going on.

People who had studied the scriptures their entire lives.

They knew very well what Isaiah and the other prophets had written six, seven hundred years ago.

Isaiah introduced them to the term Emmanuel, God with us.

Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel.

How is it that the shepherds jumped and ran to respond and see what was going on?

And the religious leaders, the ones that were expected to know, were oblivious.

These leaders would have also been all too familiar with the words of the prophet Micah.

Micah 5, verse 2.

Micah 5:2

But you, O Bethlehem, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth me, one who is the ruler of Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient of days.

The religious leaders of that day had committed these passages to memory.

They had recited them hundreds, if not thousands, of times in corporate gatherings.

Yet when God moved and it was happening for them, they were blind to it.

And it leads me to ask, what is it in some of these characters that got it right away and responded?

The prophet Isaiah went on to say in chapter 11, a shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse.

From his roots, a branch will bear fruit.

This message was so relevant because we have to think back where this nation of Israel was at.

They were a group of people who had been cut off and cut down to nothing.

And these words would have been a profound promise of hope.

And the anticipation you must have had, you would think you would have just been sitting on pins and needles, waiting for that moment.

I remember once hearing an old country preacher say, son, when you're down to nothing, God's working on something.

The fact is that I believe these characters and that scripture from Isaiah are here to remind us at Christmas that God is always up to something.

Even if you don't see it, even if you can't discern it with your natural senses, God is up to something in your life.

If you've had a banner year or a barren year, God is up to something in your life.

That's hope.

That's hope.

Now I hope, I hope that the Leafs win a Stanley Cup.

Well, it's a different kind of hope.

It's a different kind of hope, isn't it?

This hope that we're learning from Isaiah, this is a hope that the Apostle Peter called a living hope.

And the writer of Hebrews, we don't know his name, but he called it the anchor of my soul.

The apostle Paul, who was responsible for taking the gospel message to the Gentile world, shout out to Paul, because we're kind of part of that Gentile world.

He had this to say in Romans 8, verse 24.

Romans 8:24

For in this hope we were saved.

Now hope that is seen, that ain't hope.

For who hopes for what they've already seen?

But if we have hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Patience, it's another word that jumps out at me.

Patience is the proof of hope.

And at Christmas, we should be reminded that we have a hope.

Can somebody please yell out with me, I have a hope.

Amen.

Thank you for the audience participation.

You guys are great.

I have a hope.

A new covenant promise that was held on to for generations, anticipated for, longed for, but when it came, so many didn't recognize it.

God was up to something in the nation of Israel.

They had spent so much time placing their hope in false gods and false idols.

They missed the promise right before them, even though it was echoing over 700 years from the words of Isaiah.

The character of the shepherds tell me to stay close to God, to keep my heart and my eyes open, that I don't miss the moments.

That He has a word or direction or comfort for me.

That I can pray that God keeps me ready and sensitive for the moments in life where he's at work and faithful enough to trust him even when I don't sense it.

On to the wise man, the next character we're going to talk about tonight.

A couple of weeks ago, if you were in church with us, Paul Little, Pastor Paul Lill, um told us about the wise men and how there was this amazing connection to Daniel.

And we remember when Daniel was exiled from Judah and he was taken and ultimately Daniel had to be faithful and exiled.

He was taken to Babylon.

They took away his Hebrew name.

He was given a Babylonian name.

He was given a Babylonian government job supporting this pagan government that he was so contrary to everything he had believed.

And he still remained faithful to God.

And that faithfulness was noticed.

When King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream, and that psychopathic, narcissistic king who threatened to kill anyone who couldn't tell him what that dream was, Daniel was able to answer the call and tell him not only what he had dreamed but what it meant.

And he made him head over all the wise men, all the prefects, or the magi.

And Daniel must have remained faithful through that time.

He must have taught them about Moses and Aaron.

He must have taught them the teachings from the Torah, among the other responsibilities he would have had with them.

And this faithful teaching would have been passed down from generation to generation in a non-Jewish community, in a non-Jewish pagan culture.

And clearly it was passed along over generation and generation because when the time came, some of those men that were descendants of the original group Daniel would have overseen, they were ready to respond when that star was in the sky and they knew what it meant, and they came to worship and played a very key role.

First they came to attend and see the child in person, and later being ward in a dream to not go back to Herod.

They were a pretty key role.

And I believe that all around us we see amazing similar examples of effective discipleship and the legacy of faithful believers who diligently.

Teach the scriptures and prepare young hearts and minds.

Many of us here tonight are here because of the faithful prayers and discipleship and guidance of Christian mothers and fathers and grandmothers, Sunday school teachers, neighbors and friends who tirelessly worked hard to share the gospel with us.

And we have them to thank for us.

And when we see the wise men, we see an example of a result of effective discipleship.

And we should try and model that.

So the third character, we're talking about a birth here.

So it'd be crazy.

I would be uh remiss in my duties if we did not talk about the mother.

So I don't know if you guys don't know, but in a lot of cases, the mother plays a pretty critical role when it comes to having a baby.

And if anyone's not too totally clear on that topic, we actually have a special series that's going to be taught by Jeremy Laverty, and there's a signed up sheet at the back, and he's going to go into more detail on this.

I'm totally kidding.

Jeremy does enough.

But we see some amazing things in Mary.

She's an incredible woman.

She's a character that I think we could have a hundred sermons on and never fully understand her.

Even though the fact that, you know, this is the first time she's even mentioned in the Bible.

Some of the greatest characters in the Bible we followed from their birth.

Moses, we follow, we met him when he was placed as a baby in a basket to be protected.

Mary, we hear about her for the first time now.

So what do we know about her?

Who is she?

Why was she chosen?

Let's dig into it a bit now.

So, Luke 1, we are so we already read this, and I think this is part of what made me go over last time.

But we read this passage about the Annunciation, and it's an amazing passage.

I'm not gonna read it because we already read it together.

So thank you for doing my job for me.

You guys are great.

But one thing I want to mention here is Gabriel uses one word twice that really, really stood out to me in this passage, and that's favored.

He said, You fear not, you have found favor with God, and then he says it again, you are highly favored.

And that sticks with me.

Why?

Why was she favored?

What had she done?

What was special about her?

Why did God favor her?

I look at that word and I say, I want to know more.

If you were part of the nation of Israel at the time this was written, lots would jump out to you in that passage.

You would see rich references to the prophecies of Isaiah and Daniel and Michael.

They'd be just ringing in your head.

But I'm interested in this favor, why Mary was favored.

We don't know much about Mary, other than uh she's one of the key biblical characters in the story.

It's the first time that she's mentioned.

We can deduce a few things.

We know that she was a Jewish teenager.

Um, we know that she was engaged to Joseph, and we know the real key thing.

We heard that part about his lineage, and we know that's a real significant thing because we remember from the Old Testament that he was going to come out of the line of David.

So we know that's a real significant thing.

We know that she had four, at least four other children.

I can read through different parts of the gospel gospels.

We know that she experienced doubt.

Remember her initial response?

Luke Luke lays it out for us and she says, How can this be?

She's puzzled and says she pondered in her heart and she didn't know what kind of greeting it was.

And she said, How can this be?

I'm a virgin.

And I hear myself saying that same way to God, how can this be?

I didn't go to Bible school.

How can this be?

I'm a messed up sinner.

I've lived a horrible life.

I'm not worthy of any kind of leadership in this church.

I can't serve you, God.

How can this be?

I'm this.

How can this be?

I've done that.

These words go through our heads all the time.

We have doubt.

John the Baptist, when he was in prison, sent word to Jesus.

And he said, um, go send a message to Jesus and say, Hey, are you the one or is there someone else we're waiting for?

John the Baptist had doubts.

John the Baptist was so connected with our Lord that when they walked into the same room as unborn children, they both jumped for joy and reacted.

That's how supernaturally they were connected.

He paved the way for the Lord and Savior.

He's the one that said, Behold, here comes the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the earth.

That guy had doubt when he was in prison, and that encourages me that people like that have doubt.

So we know that Mary had doubt.

But one thing that we can see clearly in Mary, that she was rooted strong in her faith.

Her response later on is, Behold, I am the servant of the Lord.

Let it be according to your will.

What a monumental step of bravery and bold faith.

She must have been trembling inside at the thought of the difficult path she was going to walk.

Nobody was going to believe her.

Joseph wasn't going to believe her.

Was this the end of her relationship?

Could she end up being killed?

We were in a day where women were killed for adultery and this kind of thing.

She must have been terrified.

But she says, let it be.

I think she gives us a glimpse at the strong foundation of faith she had that positioned her well for God's favor.

What's one of the next things she does?

We're told that Mary then goes to visit her cousin, who's also pregnant with John the Baptist.

And it's a great example of how when we are in crisis, when we're down and feeling alone and isolated, and we're not sure and we need encouragement, that we go to something positive.

And the wise counsel of a fellow believer that's in our life is put there for a reason for God for us to benefit from that rich wisdom, and God can minister through that person to us.

And that was Mary's initial response was to go there and be there.

She could have done a hundred other things.

She could have gone and hid out, but she went to seek counsel of Christian family and be close and be ministered to in that way.

I think it's another example of her faith.

What are some of the things that we run to when we're in crisis like that for comfort?

The idols we run to, the things we do for distractions.

I can learn something from Mary's response in the days after that.

We also know that Mary was really well educated.

She knew her scripture well.

I'm not going to read this again tonight, guys, because I'm going to respect your time.

But there's a beautiful passage later in Luke when she's just finished visiting her cousin.

And it's Mary's song.

It's a beautiful little poem.

You can tell because it's formatted differently.

It's a poem, it's a song.

And her song is just rich with Old Testament theology, and she's reflecting on God's faithfulness.

She obviously had really committed these scriptures to memory, and they were tightly bound in her heart and who she was and how she viewed her current situation, the lens she viewed them through, were these strong spiritual truths.

Mary shows us a lot.

Mary clearly had said yes to God at a young age.

And that's clearly the strong foundation for the favor that God put on her.

She clearly had said yes to God in being part of the worship service and memorizing scripture and committing these things in memory and hiding them in her heart.

But Mary faced an opportunity where she had to say a second yes to God when she was faced with her calling.

When God came to her, this was not as easy a yes to say.

She knew the hard road that was going to be before her.

She knew the dangers.

She knew the pain and the suffering it was going to cost.

But still she said yes.

That second yes is one that we all sometimes run away from.

We can say yes to salvation.

Yes, Lord, come into my heart.

But we have a hard time saying yes when it comes to can I serve in church?

Can I be a spiritual leader in my home?

Can I reach out to my unsaved spouse in a bold, effective way?

Can I lean on God when I have no answer for what I'm going to do next?

What decisions I'm going to make, or make sense of anything in my world.

Yes, Mary's got deep roots in her faith, and I think this strong base was a big part of what was her foundation.

Jeremiah 17, 78, I think gives a bit of an answer here.

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord.

He is like a tree planted by the water that send out sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when the heat comes, for its leaves remain green.

Mary got this.

She understood it.

And it was modeled in her life, and that I think was part of the foundation for the favor God had in her and why she was able to respond to the calling he put on her life.

She's a symbol for us of God's desire.

Check this out, don't lose these words.

She is a symbol of God's desire to use the obscure and the ordinary to advance his kingdom.

And as one incredibly obscure and ordinary man, that gives me hope.

That gives me tremendous hope that God can use me.

So as we leave now, we had our own ways, we've all got our own Christmas celebrations.

I'm here to tell you that God wants you to know that the story of Christmas is for you.

And because of that, we should seek to deepen our own relationship with the God who brought it all about and increase our knowledge of his word that is quite simply one continuing story that points to Jesus.

That's really what the Bible is.

It's a continuing story that points to Jesus and His perfect plan to make us complete again in the plan God had originally for our lives and our purpose.

As we increase our knowledge of his word, we increase our ability to respond to his call in our lives.

These Christmas story characters teach us the importance of purposeful discipleship, to build hearts that are prepared on a foundation that God can use.

And isn't that what we want for the people around us in our lives, for our children, for our other family members, for the friends in our lives?

And keep ourselves in a position where we don't miss the opportunities to achieve what God wants to do through us.