Christmas is complicated

Pastor John Talcott
Christ's Community Church

(12/1) Most people would agree that Christmas can be complicated, because it’s expensive, it can be messy, and there’s all this drama. And so, sometimes it’s like we’re just holding on trying to make it to the 26th. But when I say it’s complicated, I’m not even talking about December 25th or even the 12 days of Christmas with two turtledoves, a partridge in a pear tree and all that kind of stuff. What I’m really referring to, is the first Christmas when Mary and Joseph had to go to Bethlehem to pay their taxes.

You see, back in that day they didn’t have American Airlines, Southwest, Uber or anything like that. And so, it’s like they’re going to Washington to pay their taxes and if I need to remind you, Mary is really pregnant. I mean she’s so pregnant that she’s practicing her Lamaze breathing techniques in the backseat of a donkey. But things for this couple were about to get even more complicated as they pulled into Bethlehem late that night, Mary is timing her contractions, and Joseph discovers that God never reserved a hotel room.

Now, let me remind you, it’s not like God didn’t know this was going to happen, because this child was the Son of God, this was the One who was the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world (Revelation 13:8). And so, this wasn’t a surprise, God had thousands of years to prepare, and he’d worked out hundreds of specific details. In fact, the Old Testament contains over 300 prophecies that were written hundreds of years before Jesus birth and he fulfilled each one in his coming, in his life, his death, and in his resurrection. And so, Jesus came fulfilling all these really specific prophecies about how his coming was going to go down so that you would know when it happens that it didn’t just happen by accident.

Meanwhile, as Mary and Joseph are unknowingly fulfilling every prophecy related to the birth of this child, there was also somebody who was actively antagonistic and who had only one thing on his mind and that was to put an end to Christmas. And so, you can just imagine how difficult it would be to do something that is this complicated and then add someone else into the mix who is trying to stop it the whole time. But this is exactly what the Gospel of Matthew tells us in chapter 2, and it’s a lot like "The Grinch who stole Christmas" from Dr. Seuss, because just after the wisemen left the Bible says,

"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 and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more" (Matthew 2:13-18).

And so, here’s this king with this Napoleon Complex, sending his soldiers to kill all these baby boys just in case they might be the one that was prophesied to be born who would be King of the Jews. And Herod had a very simple mission and that was to put an end to Christmas because he didn’t want anyone to threaten his throne. Little did he know that he was just a puppet and that trying to end Christmas wasn’t original to him at all. In fact, it was much more complicated than that, because it had been going on since the Garden of Eden when mankind first fell into sin.

Christmas actually shows up way back in Genesis chapter 3 when Adam and Eve disobeyed God. As he was addressing the consequences of their willful disobedience, God spoke prophetically about how he was going to fix things and the not so simple answer was that Christmas was coming. Turning to the snake, the tempter, the one who had deceived the woman, God said, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head and you will strike his heel" (Genesis 3:15). And right here in this one verse, God speaks of the coming of Jesus at Christmas, Good Friday where Satan would drive a stake through Jesus’ heel on the cross, Easter where Jesus would rise triumphantly, and the Judgment where Jesus would crush his head.

God announced this judgment and Satan has been planning a strategy to avoid getting his head crushed ever since. He’s been relentless, because he knows that God had promised that the head crusher would be the offspring of Adam and Eve, that he would be of the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that he would come from the tribe of Judah, and that he would be out of the house and lineage of King David. And so, in hindsight, looking at years and years of human history, we can recognize that every attempt at anti-Semitism in the world is because Satan doesn’t want to get his head crushed. This is exactly why King Herod was working so feverishly to eliminate Jesus, in his mind, it didn’t matter how many babies he had to kill. He had to do it because Satan knew that it was fourth-and-goal with just seconds on the clock. The Savior had come, the virgin had given birth, he is, "Immanuel"—which means, "God with us" (Matt 1:23). Jesus Christ had come just like God said he was going to, and even though Satan had attempted to destroy him, his plan had failed and Jesus fulfilling another prophecy was whisked away to safety in Egypt.

However, the real power behind the Christmas story is what God was actually doing behind the scenes. You see, Herod thought that through death he could stop Christmas, but it’s actually much more complicated than that, because God was using Christmas to stop death. You see, the Christmas story wasn’t filled with cookies, candy canes, and gumdrop forests. It certainly wasn’t the happiest day of the year, because the Christmas story was marked by mothers weeping and mourning over their children who are no more. In fact, many of us today enter the Christmas season with grief in our hearts because there’s going to be an empty place at the table this year, but the truth is that Jesus came to solve the problem of death.

This is where it gets really interesting, because God had a plan in all of this death and bloodshed. In fact, death is the real reason why there ever was a Christmas in the first place. And so, God had a plan, but His plan and Herod’s plan were one in the same. Herod’s plan was the death of Jesus; God’s plan was the death of Jesus; and the only difference was that it wouldn’t be in Bethlehem as a baby, but that it would be outside of Jerusalem as a full-grown man hanging on a cross for the sins of the world. You see, Jesus didn’t give his life as a baby as though he had nothing to say in the matter, but he would lay it down as a 33-year-old man and say, "I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again" (John 10:18). And so, Jesus was willing to do what Herod was unwilling to do and he humbled himself and became like one of us. Herod pathetically clung to his throne until death pried it from his fingers, but Jesus left his throne and the worship of angels in the glory of heaven, coming down into this world where he voluntarily became one of us, taking our place on the cross.

Jesus became our example. You see, it should have been you and I dying for our own sins because we’ve all fallen short of the glory of God. The Bible is very clear that the wages of sin is death and that’s why we all die physically, but it also says that we’re already dead spiritually because true death is being separated from God. And so, that’s why Jesus came to solve the problem of death, because if we die physically and we’re already dead spiritually, we’ll remain dead eternally. That’s what the Bible describes as hell, eternal separation from God, but that’s not what God wants for any of us. And so, he sent his Son Jesus Christ to lay down his life, so that he could take it up again, so his life could become our life, his resurrection our resurrection, and he’s returned to heaven to prepare a place for you and I by his side.

In conclusion, Christmas is complicated, but our choices are much simpler. We can choose to be like Herod, clinging to our power, our glory, our sin, and ourselves, being the captain of our fate and the master of our soul. Or we can choose like Jesus to willingly humble ourselves before God, discovering that in losing our life we actually gain it. You see, if our throne and our treasure is in this world, death takes us from our treasure, but if our treasure is in heaven, death takes us to our treasure. That’s the hope and the shocking power of the Christmas story, it’s complicated, but that’s the good news of Jesus Christ.

Read past sermons by Pastor John Talcott