Christmas Eve

Hey, guys, look what I found.

- Ooh, what's that?

- It looks like a book. "Have been come to earth."

- Yeah, it's cool. We should go read it in the tree house.

- Aww, But I still wanna play tag.

- Well, it's a cool book found right here, I think we should go read it.

- I guess Let's go.

- Oh, let's go.

- "Thousands of years ago, it was just a normal night in a quiet, normal town. This town called Be, Be Bethlehem wasn't exceptionally large or special, but on this night, it was full of people. So full in fact, that two people named Mary and Joseph couldn't find a place to stay to have their baby. See, they were just ordinary people living at an ordinary time. And on this night, they had to come back to their hometown for the authorities decreed that everyone should return to their hometowns for a census. While they were there, the only place they could find was a stable with a manger. And that is where Mary gave birth to her first child."

- Can I read?

- Yeah.

- "As the baby opened his eyes to look at the world, at the face of his parents, they were filled with joy. What an incredible moment as it is for every parent to see the birth of their child. But there were many babies born in Israel at the time. Many may have even been born on that very day. There was something special about this birth, about this child that made him special." 

Hey, can I see the book a minute?

- Sure.

- "On that silent night, his birth was so much more than ordinary and it wasn't just his parents who were excited for his arrival. There were shepherds who heard about his birth. There were wise men who traveled across the land to come and meet this child to bring him gifts. Even angels in the heavens were rejoicing, but there were also people in authority who were not happy with his birth and wanted to see him gone. You see, in this quiet town, the very first Christmas took place. The child in that small major may look like another baby, but in fact he was much, much more. But the only way to see how incredible this birth was is to see it from a different angle, from Heaven's point of view."

- [Speaker] Girls, it's time for bed.

- Aw, but I wanna keep reading.

- Well, I'm hung.

- Come on, let's go inside.

- Let's go in school.

- Quit being a scrooge.

- Well, Merry Christmas, everybody.

- [Congregation] Merry Christmas.

- I loved it that one of the young girls said, "Don't be a scrooge." As I was thinking about that, you know, that phrase has been around a while because we obviously got that from the telling of the story of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens classic, "A Christmas Carol." What's interesting to me though is that people are still referencing that and still using those statements. And that book was written in 1843 and for some reason still, we are using those kinds of phrases. I think maybe the reason is because the story is such an enduring story. When we talk about Ebenezer Scrooge, we're invited into a journey where he gets to see beyond what he sees. He gets to look at his life from past and present and future, and it ultimately wakes him up to reality and it changes him deeply. I'll be honest with you that I think we need that kind of message at Christmas sometimes. See, we get stuck in only seeing what we can see. Trees, gifts, food, parties, family, shows. By the way, I'm, for all of those, particularly the food part. Like I'm for all of those things and it's a part of the joy of the season, but sometimes, we can still lose sight of what Christmas is actually supposed to be about. We only see what we can see and nothing more. I think if we're being honest, this can happen to us as well. When we look to the actual story of the birth of Jesus, the actual Christmas story, we see a baby see a manger. Shepherds, magi, a star. And we should, by the way, 'cause the story is history. The story is true. The story is beautiful and good. So we should see all of those things. But sometimes, if we're not careful, we can view the true story of Jesus as just a backdrop for our nostalgia. In other words, we make it the premise for all of our fond memories of getting a bike when we were little or having that fun family gathering or tricking Aunt Carol into eating 2-year-old fruitcake. But what if like Scrooge to some degree, we could see beyond what we can actually see? What if we could look through heaven's eyes and maybe be able to see what Christmas looked like from that perspective? What if we could see a picture of past and present and future all kind of at the same time when it came to the true story of Christmas? Well, at least a little bit, we can. You see, there's a book in the Bible that is not one that you would normally think of when you think of the Christmas story. Generally speaking, we usually think about Matthew's gospel or Luke's gospel that tells us the story of the birth of Jesus. But there's another book that helps us to see this from a different perspective. It's a book that was given to the Apostle John actually when he was exiled to an island that was right off of the coast of what we would call modern day Turkey today. It was called Patmos. And John was there because of his testimony of Jesus Christ. And while he was there, he received a vision from the resurrected Jesus. Now, the title of this book is a real simple one. It's called Revelation. Now that word "revelation" just simply means to reveal or to unveil. In other words, it's a book that gives us a behind the scenes look at what we could otherwise maybe not see. The style of the book is unique. It's called an apocalyptic style, don't let that scare you. That's just a style of literature that's used. And in the ancient world, it was used to use symbol as the predominant ways of telling true stories about things that were happening. It would also feel free to move around from past to future or even from heaven's perspective to earth's perspective. So you kinda see all of it when you see this apocalyptic literature that we call the Book of Revelation. And while you may never have realized it before, this book actually gives us a look beyond the Christmas story that we normally see. We get to see Christmas from Heaven's perspective. And in seeing Christmas from Heaven's perspective out of the book of Revelation, there's actually two primary ideas that I would wanna pass along to you this Christmas season for you to remember about the birth of Jesus. Here's the first one, that the birth of Jesus is a declaration of war. I'm betting that when you showed up today to this Christmas Eve service, that's not what you were thinking you were going to hear. You might've been thinking, "Well, I'm gonna hear a bunch of cute things about, you know, Ricky Bobby's little baby Jesus or whatever," right? That's kind of what you were thinking you were going to hear, but in truth, when we see it from Heaven's perspective, we realize that the birth of Jesus is a declaration of war. Now though that you may not have expected that, just stay with me and maybe you'll stumble into something that will change you. I recently read about a father who was talking to his son, five-year-old son. And he was asking him, he said, "Do you know the words to the song 'Silent Night' like that we just sang a few moments ago?' And the son was like, "Yes, I know that song." And he said, "Are you sure?" The dad said. The kid said, "Yes, I know that song." Dad said, "Are you sure?" And the kid just started singing it. ♪ Silent night, holy night ♪ ♪ All is calm, all is bright ♪ ♪ Round yon virgin mother and Child ♪ ♪ Holy infantry ♪ ♪ Tender and mild ♪ Oh man, when I read that, I started laughing because it's just the cuteness of a five-year-old boy. But then I realized he's onto something. You see, the birth of Jesus is yes, the birth of a holy infant, but it's also the invasion of a holy infantry. It was a war declaration. In fact, let me read it to you in Revelation 12, beginning in verse number one, it says this, "A great sign appeared in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of 12 stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven, an enormous red dragon with seven heads and 10 horns and seven crowns on its heads, its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth so that it might devour her child the moment he was born." And then verse seven says, "Then war broke out in heaven." I'm guessing you're probably thinking, man, these are images and thoughts that I didn't think that I would ever be thinking or seeing during Christmas time. And let's see if we can just take a quick moment and see if we can unravel the signs that John is giving to us through this vision in the book of Revelation. The first was there was a child that was to be born. And if you're guessing, I'm guessing that child is Jesus, you would be exactly right. We'll see that in just a moment in verse number five. But no question that the child to be born is Jesus. But then there's this other sign, a great red dragon. I'm sure that probably you're expecting when you come thinking about Christmas, you're maybe expecting some sheep and potentially maybe even a donkey or a camel. But a seven-headed dragon was not really on your bingo card. I haven't seen it show up on any Christmas card I've ever received. On this peaceful Christmas, we are wishing you glad tidings. Here's a red dragon with seven heads. It has seven heads, seven crowns upon the heads and 10 horns. Without going into all of the symbolism here, what we know is in the big picture, we know exactly who this red dragon symbolizes because a few verses later, the scripture actually tells us in Revelation 12:9 it says this, "The great dragon was hurled down that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth and his angels with him." So the great red dragon symbolizes Satan, the enemy of God and the enemy of the souls of every person. But then there's one other sign that is appearing in the heavens, and that's a sign of a woman. Now this sign is a little bit more complex because it's multilayered. Certainly the 12 stars around this woman's head give us a picture of the 12 tribes of Israel and is helping us to see that this woman who's giving birth to this child is coming from this people known as Israel. But she also has these celestial bodies around her. She's clothed with the sun and the moon is at her feet. And it gives us a picture of something that is enduring, something that's for all time and it's likely signaling the very first woman, Eve. And of course, a descendant of that first woman, Eve, who was also a true Israelite, was none other than Mary, the birth mother of the Lord Jesus. And she was kind of a secondary picture here. So you can see that this look behind the scenes in the Book of Revelation shows us a picture of Jesus soon birth and Satan, as the great dragon desiring to devour the child the moment he's born. When we peek behind the invisible realm and begin to see what we cannot see, what we see is an invisible war. And the birth of this child is a declaration of war against evil and darkness and all of its forces. Now maybe you've forgotten, friends, that there is a real enemy and a real war for the souls of humanity. And maybe we like Scrooge, need to be awakened to reality by seeing what we cannot see. See, Revelation 12 is a picture that gives us that. It's a panorama of salvation history. It brings in the past and looks toward the future all at the same time. And it reminds us that from the very beginning, Satan has tried to make sure that the first Christmas in Bethlehem never happened. In fact, Satan remembered, he's got a long memory. And Satan remembered the promise that God made back in the Garden of Eden. You see, after our first forebearers, Adam and Eve gave into the deception of Satan himself and thought that they could be their own directors, their own lords, their own gods, so to speak, and they fell into sin, God started making some promises even though he was dealing with humanity, he was going to also deal with the great dragon, the ancient serpent, Satan himself. And God made a promise to Satan in the Garden of Eden. And here's what he said in Genesis 3. "I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers." He meaning the one to come, the rescuer. "He will crush your head, Satan, and you will strike his heel." See, friends, I can tell you this. Satan has a long memory and he's done everything he could from the very beginning of time to eliminate what happened with this promise. This promise was there's one that's going to come that is going to deal with you and it's going to come through the offspring of this woman that would ultimately turn into embodied in this picture of Israel, this nation. And Satan wanted to make sure that never happened. So in just the next chapter in Genesis 4. Satan influences Cain to kill his brother Abel because he wants to eliminate the line of humanity. Cain certainly did kill his brother Abel, but Satan was not victorious in eliminating the line of humanity. And there was another brother that was born named Seth. But in Genesis 6, we see Satan trying to corrupt the line of Seth so that the Savior, the rescuer could not come through that line. And all through the scripture, it just continues to unfold that way. In Exodus 1, we see Satan influencing Egypt's Pharaoh when Israel is in bondage. And they endeavor to try and exterminate all the lives of the male children of Israel. In 1 Samuel 18, we see Satan influencing the first king of Israel, King Saul to kill who is actually the one that was going to come after him, King David. Because he knew that through the line of David was coming, the great rescuer, the great Messiah, the great king. In 2 Kings 11, after behavior that would make "Game of Thrones" blush a wicked queen named Athaliah, who is actually the daughter of evil Jezebel, she tries to destroy every royal heir there is to the throne of Judah and she succeeds except for one. His name was little Joash. And he remained as the seed, as the line of David that stayed intact. Many years later, we read about in Esther 3 we've got a record of Satan influencing evil Haman to pass legislation to extinguish all of the Jewish people. He fails and it implodes on him as well. And by the time we get to Matthew 2 and we look into the story, the narrative of the birth of Jesus. We see Satan influencing evil King Herod to terminate the lives of every male child born in the Bethlehem region that's two years old or younger, yet God and his providence allows Jesus and his family to escape to Egypt. You see time after time in history, friends, we see this picture unfold that's given to us in Revelation 12 of the dragon waiting to devour the child. But the dragon failed. Just the birth of the child Jesus is in itself all by itself, a declaration of war against the power of evil. And it's also a reminder that God makes good on his promises. But too often, we create a narrative about Christmas that's not really true to Christmas. It's a narrative that goes something like this. We say that Christmas is a reminder that all is right in the world. It's actually the opposite. In fact, as British scholar, N. T. Wright, pointed out in his book, "For All God's Worth," what we typically think of Christmases is is a season of nostalgia of carols and candles and firelight and happy children. But that misses the point completely. Christmas is not a reminder that the world is a really quite a nice old place. It reminds us that the world is a shockingly bad old place where wickedness flourishes unchecked. Christmas is God lighting a candle and you don't light a candle in a room that's already full of sunlight. You light a candle in a room that's so murky that the candle when lit reveals just how bad things really are. The light shines in the darkness, says St. John and the darkness has not overcome it. See, when we look at Christmas, friends, from heaven's perspective, we see a declaration of war against evil and all its forces. And I would say this, we are foolish if we miss that because that's the point of Christmas. You know, in J. R. R. Tolkien's, one of his famous works called "The Hobbit," the protagonist there is named Bilbo Baggins. He is indeed a hobbit and he's been enlisted by the dwarves and the dwarf kingdom to be able to recover gold that was stolen from the dwarves by this dragon named Smaug. And Bilbo and the dwarves put their minds together and they come up with all these great plans of how they're going to get all the gold back. But Tolkien writes through the wizard Gandalf, these words. "It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations if you live near him." Friends, I would tell us the exact same thing. We are indeed foolish if we miss the truth, the truth that we should see clearly at Christmas. You see, there's a real enemy that wars against Jesus and against light and against true goodness. And there's a real enemy that wars against your soul. Maybe it's by active evil that you have seen or experienced. We don't have to look very far in our world to see active evil, do we? But maybe it's a subtle evil that lulls you to spiritual sleep by thinking that being a pretty decent guy or being a relatively nice lady somehow is all it takes to earn God's favor and a place in his kingdom. Do not be fooled by that. Christmas tells us that we need help. Christmas tells us that we need a rescue. Christmas tells us that we are hopeless and helpless on our own and that's why God sent his son. The birth of Jesus is an invasion of the kingdom of darkness by the kingdom of light. But it's also something else that we see in this passage in Revelation. The birth of Jesus is a declaration of the world's true king. You see, we see that in verse number five as we continue reading in this Revelation, it says that, "She, this woman gave birth to a son, a male child who," watch the quotation marks, "who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter," end quote. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. I point out the quote in here because in this vision that John is receiving, it's hearkening back to Psalm 2. Psalm 2 is what we call a messianic psalm. It's describing the king who is going to come, the one who was promised from the very beginning in Genesis, and it's the one coming through the line of David. And there's the promise right there. This is why we know that this child is referring to Jesus because it's messianic in its nature. And then it says that this child was snatched up to God and to his throne. What exactly is that picture? Well, it's a summary picture of the whole life of Jesus. It's a summary of all that Jesus did and accomplished for humanity that resulted ultimately in victory. See, maybe you remember this. Jesus was given his name for a reason. You will call his name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. That's what the scripture tells us, right? So we already know that we have a problem that Jesus is coming to rescue us from. He was born of a virgin, not of a human father, but of the Holy Spirit was born of a virgin. He lived sinlessly as the perfect son of God. That means that he fulfilled the law of God perfectly in every way in his deeds and in his thoughts and in his motives. And then Jesus, this perfect son of God taught us that reconciliation to God could only happen through him. In fact, he had the audacity to say this, I am the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me. You see, he recognized that sin had separated us from a relationship with God, our Father. And Jesus is telling us that he is the only solution to that. And then he demonstrated it because holiness must deal ultimately with sinfulness. And so the perfect sinless son of God went to a cross on our behalf, sinful humanity. So that he could take upon himself the just outpouring of God's wrath against sin and Jesus took it upon himself. And he died for sin, for our sin. And I can only imagine that the great red dragon must have thought that he had won that moment. The very thing that he had been after since the dawn of time, he was now seeing and rejoicing over in his own disgustingly dark heart. But Jesus did not stay dead. He rose from the grave, never to die again. And then he ascended to the Father and took his rightful place at the right hand of the Father. And we now await the world's true king. This is what John is telling us when it says that the child was snatched up to God and to his throne. It is a picture of victory, of triumph and a vindication. In fact, as we continue forward in the Book of Revelation, it reminds us of that in chapter 12:10, it says, "Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say, 'Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his messiah.'" See friends, the one who was snatched up to God and to his throne is the king of the kingdom and the one who holds all authority. There is nothing, friends, that the enemy could do to prevent the king from coming, even though he tried. There is nothing the enemy could do to prevent the king from winning, even though he tried. Christmas is a declaration of war while simultaneously being a declaration of victory. It's a declaration of the world's true king who is coming to be with us. The true king, Emmanuel, God with us. The word made flesh, the savior of the world, the light of the world, the wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the prince of peace. Paul writes, "He is the fullness of deity in bodily form. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. In Jesus, all things were created. Things in heaven and on earth. Whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things. And in him, all things hold together. He is the warrior of heaven. He is the destroyer of the works of the devil. He is the lion of Judah, the alpha and the omega. And he is indeed the king of kings and the Lord of lords." What if you could see that when you look at your nativity set? What if when you think of the Christmas story, you could see beyond just what we see into the unseen realm? Maybe it would change your life. Maybe you would finally wake up to reality. And you would understand that everything you are and everything you have should be willingly submitted to the one true king of the world. What if we really saw Christmas from heaven's perspective? We wouldn't just see a quiet night in Bethlehem. We would see a declaration of war for the souls of humanity. When we really see Christmas from heaven's perspective, we wouldn't just see a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes we'd see a king wrapped in majesty. If we really could see Christmas from heaven's perspective, we wouldn't just see a manger. If we look close enough, we'd see a throne.