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As we again come upon the celebration of Christmas in the year 2017, I wanted to remind myself and those who read my words of what this season is really all about. We will read the story in our Church this Sunday night at our Christmas Eve Service. We shall again hear that the child is born in a barn, and placed in a feed trough because there was no room in the inn.

But will we hear that there is more to this story than just that a child is born, a Son is given? You see, the birth of the child, fully human baby boy, fully also GOD, is just one part of the story of Christmas. There is a great deal more to this story. There is the death of `100’s of children in Bethlehem 2 years later as the King Herod tries to find and destroy this baby who is the King of Israel in the line of David.

There is the growing up of Jesus in Egypt and in Nazareth in Galilee, becoming a carpenter, experiencing all the stuff that you and I experience. Hurt when you hit the wrong nail with the hammer, pain when a loved one dies, joy when there is celebration at a wedding. All the stuff you and I have in our own lives, happiness and sorrow, pain and suffering, he experienced.

Then, he experienced the worst pain of all, death as a criminal on a Roman Cross outside Jerusalem. That’s right he died a criminals death, because we, yes we humans were all guilty of the crime of rejecting God and His way of living our lives. Not the onerous laws that the Religious elites had stamped on society, no not that way. Jesus taught the truth of the way to live a proper God fearing life:

Mat 22:36-40 ESV “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” (37) And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. (38) This is the great and first commandment. (39) And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (40) On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

We don’t live that way, we see instead hatred, war, and famine, that is not what He came to teach. Since we humans seem to have a propensity to ignore that which we profess to believe, Jesus had to die to save us from our sins. He died for all, but we have to be willing to surrender our lives, our lusts our sins to God in the name of Jesus Christ, and name him as LORD of our lives, in order for us to become new persons in God’s Kingdom.

You see, none of us is perfect, none of us live without sin in our lives, even after we accept the sacrifice for ourselves, we still sin. Jesus lived a sinless life, and therefore he could be our sacrifice. That is what the Christmas story really is all about. Yes it is a wonderful story about the birth of the child in Bethlehem of Judea, and all that goes with that birth. However, without the cross at the end of that life, there is no atonement for sin, we would have no hope.

I wish you all a blessed and Merry Christmas, and I pray that if you do not have a personal relationship with the one who we celebrate at this time, please get right with God. The scripture says: Rom 6:23 ESV For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

AMAZING!! ✨🙏❤️

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Comment by joyshimmers December 20, 2017 @ 10:40 am

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