Merry Christmas!
Welcome tonight as we come together to celebrate the virgin born Son of God, Jesus the Messiah, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the One Who came to bring salvation, Emmanuel-God with us….the baby in the manger.
As we start this Christmas weekend together, I think that it’s a great time to stop and reflect on why we gather at Christmas.
I read information about a survey this week that tells us:
Survey: Family Trumps Jesus in Christmas Celebrations
Family is the "reason for the season" for 81 percent of people who celebrate Christmas in America, according to a Lifeway Research survey. [E]ven among Christians, Christ's birth tends to get lost among other traditions. "[A] closer look at how they celebrate reveals that it typically revolves around family and that Christ-centered elements are not as common," said Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research. "For many in our culture, the season is disconnected from the reason. For many of those, family is the reason for the season."
One of the things that I’m thankful for this year is that together as a church family, we have been looking at ways to return the rightful place of Jesus to the center of our Christmas celebrations.
We have looked at our need to:
Worship Jesus Fully as the wisemen/magi did
Spend Less and focus on Jesus like the shepherds did
Give More like we saw God the Father, Joseph and Jesus do
And Sunday, we’ll look at our need to Love All
As the Lifeway Survey demonstrates, many of our friends and family (surely none of us here tonight) think of Christmas as a holiday that is here for us to spend money on buying presents and spending time together as a family.
As we’ve looked this month, there are very important family relationships between Joseph and Mary and their new Son. There are the relationships among the Godhead as God the Father sends His Son on the most important rescue mission ever conceived. There are relationships between the Magi as they spent many months together traveling to see Jesus. There are the relationships between the shepherds who worked and lived together.
So, while all of these people spent part of their Christmas experience celebrating relationships between family and friends, the common focus was on the birth of Jesus.
So, how do we leave here in a few minutes and change the focus that we’ve been working on for days, weeks, months, or even all year?
Here are three easy ideas of ways you can slightly tweak your celebration this weekend to focus more on Jesus.
1. Read the Christmas story before you open presents and talk about Jesus being the real reason for the season.
2. Bake a birthday cake for Jesus and celebrate that
3. Set an empty place setting at your Christmas dinner to remember that Jesus is with you for HIS birthday party
Yes, these are all simple things, but each of them could be a small step as part of our Advent Conspiracy of moving our Christmas passions from giving and getting gifts to giving honor to the One Whose birth 2000 years ago in that manger is truly the main focus of this time of year!
As part of our commitment to keeping Christ in the center of our lives, we’re going to take some time remembering the ultimate reason that Jesus came to earth…not just to be the baby in the manger, but ultimately to give His life on the cross to provide the opportunity for us to restore our relationship with God the Father through Christ’s sacrifice of His life to pay for our sins.
As John comes up to lead us in that time, I encourage you to right now spend just a minute thanking God for sending Jesus to be the Savior of our lives!
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