As I was pondering what Christmas really is, my spirit was directed to several Bible verses and Biblical themes that I found impossible to ignore. None of these verses seemed to have much to do with Christmas at first though. I have a mind that is prone oscillate between hyper focusing and frantically bouncing around from one thought to the next ( think Tigger on amphetamines). Sometimes having a brain wired this way is of a great advantage to me, other times it is obvious that left uncontrolled, my mind is my Achilles' heel. Over the past few years I have made great strides to stop resenting the mind God gave me and to use it in constructive ways. This has involved a great deal of discipline, which is something that I will readily admit I have lacked and had no interest in obtaining for a large portion of my life. With a mind that is hardwired like mine, when a scripture (or in this case scriptures) nags at me, I have learned to pay close attention and wait for God to open my eyes to the truth that He is trying to speak into my heart.
I've been frustrated with the American church for several years. So much of the Christian culture in this country is not rooted in sound Biblical teaching, and a lot of it is definitely not Gospel focused. Sometimes I have dealt with my frustrations in constructive ways, other times, I have allowed my pride, passion, intensity, stubbornness and my emotions to interfere with God' s work. One of my most prominent frustrations has been with the apathy that I see within the Church in the United States. Apathy in everything from preaching sound Biblical doctrine down to the basic principles of living out a Christ-centered, Gospel-focused life.
Over 70 % of American adults identify themselves as Christians. I realize that many of them, if not the majority, are what would classify as "cultural Christians." They aren't Muslim, Buddhist, atheist, or another religion, so they figure that by default they must be Christian. The Bible is clear that many who think they knew Jesus are living a lukewarm life and will be spit out (Revelation 3:16). Christmas is intended to be a day to celebrate the birth of the Promised Messiah, Emmanuel, God in the flesh. Some how, this magnificent celebration seems to have lost its true significance and instead has been transformed into religious clichés and a season for retailers to reflect on the billions of dollars that Americans spend to celebrate God coming to save mankind from its sins. Americans spent $42 billion dollars at retail locations on Thanksgiving weekend alone. And we all know that Thanksgiving weekend is the weekend where we rush out to find the best Christmas deals, because that is what celebrating Jesus is all about, right? You can't properly celebrate the birth of baby Jesus, who came to save the world from its sins, without having that 52 inch flat screen TV bolted to your wall to watch 24 hours straight of A Christmas Story on TBS, right?
If you live in America and earn minimum wage, you earn more in two hours of work than 2.7 billion people that we share the world with earn in one week. Stop to process that for a second. Now transplant you and your loved ones into Africa (home to 17 of the top 20 poorest nations in the world) or Cambodia, or Nepal or Haiti or Mexico or Guatemala. A combination of geography and politics cause many of those 2.7 billion people to be stuck in situations that are almost unfathomable to any person who has been raised under the affluence of American society.
Imagine living in a place where those around you die from taking a sip of tainted water. Imagine watching helplessly as your toddler wastes away after contracting a disease by quenching their thirst. Imagine this happening because your country was too poor to afford both basic sanitation and basic medical supplies. The lack of proper water is the number one preventable cause of childhood death in the world.
Imagine living in conditions so treacherous that you would choose to sell your child to known sex traffickers for a handful of money. Imagine the guilt of knowing that you exploited and betrayed your child in the worst imaginable way and as a result they get raped dozens of times every day. Imagine being that helpless and innocent child. There are millions of them across the globe.
Imagine not being able to feed your hungry children. According to the USDA, there are almost 16 million children in the US who do not have adequate food at home. At least in this country we have free school lunches and food pantries, but other parts of the world are not so lucky. The United Nations estimates that 870 million people throughout the world are chronically undernourished. Imagine going blind as a child because you don't consume enough Vitamin A. It happens to 500,000 children every year. Imagine dying of diseases virtually extinct in the developed world because your starved and malnourished body can no longer fight off infection.
The world is full of problems, but that is no surprise. We should not be overwhelmed. The world has always been that way, and even if it hadn't always been that way, Jesus told is in John 16:33 that "in this world [we] will have many troubles! But take heart, I have overcome the world." Reassuring words to hear from the Messiah, but he didn't say "take heart, I'll do magic tricks and feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, comfort the lonely..." We have a role to play in relieving the pain from those who suffer in this world, if that weren't so, Jesus wouldn't have said in Matthew 25:35:
"'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the
foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and
you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed
Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me."
What's wrong with Christmas? It's not Jesus that is wrong with Christmas, so I suppose that it is Christians that are wrong with Christmas. We are self absorbed. We grab God's free grace and gobble it up for ourselves and forget to share. We cherry pick the Gospel, leaving out any part that might make us uncomfortable and savor the parts that tickle our ears. 2 Timothy 4:3 warns us about that. The thing about God's word is we are not supposed to add or to take away from it (Revelation 22:19). God's work was completed at the cross through Jesus. God's Word is perfectly preserved. When we pick and choose what parts to be obedient to, the Gospel ceases to be God's Good News for all mankind, and it transforms into a diluted I-Can-Save-Myself-And- I-Will-Let-God-Help-Me-When-I -Feel-Like-It kind of news.
We take God's blessings and hoard them, until every so often we "donate" from our bountiful stash out of obligation and guilt. Many of us donate once a week.We do this with both the physical as well as spiritual. We throw some money into the offering plate and we drag ourselves to church, give our hour or two to God, and then head back home to our regularly scheduled lives. We tithe standard amounts in order to conform to the teachings that have been engrained into us, when we should be cheerfully giving based on the convictions God places on our heart. God loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:6-7), problem is, we're naturally self-centered and giving as God commands us to give is unnatural. Matthew 19:21 tells of a young man who walked away from Jesus disappointed. We don't often hear about that happening, so that statement is worthy of our attention. Why did the young man walk away disappointed? Jesus commanded him "If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me." Verse 22 tells us that the young man was grieved because he owned much property. Many of us live our lives with the same mentality as that young man, as though this world is our permanent residence. Well, it is not. The act of giving wouldn't have bought the young man a place it heaven, rather, it would have proven that his heart was committed to Jesus and willing to obey Him at all cost. That is what our Messiah expect of us. He doesn't expect us to be robots programmed to follow Him; He desires us to be in love with Him so much that nothing on this earth matters in comparison. When we love God, obedience is not a burden, it is a blessing.
I n Luke 11:41, Jesus had a conversation with a Pharisees. Jesus stated "give what is inside the dish to the poor, and everything will be clean for you." The giving isn't what makes you clean, the giving is simply an outward manifestation of being filled with God's love.
The Pharisees were notorious for following rules. They were very good at it, and prided themselves with their ability to interpret God's Law and follower it rigidly. The problem was, their hearts were not in tune with God. They looked great on the outside, but inside they were far from God, or as Jesus put it in Matthew 23:27, they were whitewashed tombs.
We are more like the Pharisees than many of us are willing to admit. I think that Jesus often spoke in code, and I wonder if he was doing this in Luke 11:41. You see, He instructs us give what is inside the dish to the poor and then we'll be clean. I wonder if what he was really trying to say was that instead of trying to look good, just get your priorities right. Stop trying to follow rules and follow the Living God, you silly Pharisees. Stop being an exclusive club that has a long list of spoken and unspoken membership rules and start loving God so much that you give what He has given to you away to others. Before we find God we are spiritually poor. Actually, not just spiritually poor but spiritually broke. We have not one cent to offer God, but He walks into our lives and gives us a new life of abundance. He cleanses us of our sins and, according to scripture, He lives within us, and guides our lives via the Holy Spirit. In verse 40-41 Jesus gets pretty stern. He says "You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you."
The Greek word Jesus used for fool was "aphron". This word translates to the type of fool who is ignorant. What Jesus was saying was that these religious people had their religious rules, but nothing else. They knew the Law, but they did not know God. Their rituals and their zeal made them comfortable and gave them feelings of superiority, but they got so caught up in their religious practices that they became ignorant to who God really was. Grace requires action. God took that action for us, and once we accept it, we too should be taking action. We should be seeking out the spiritually poor and sharing the gift that made us spiritually rich. That's what giving alms to the spiritually poor would look like. Does what I am saying make sense? Maybe what Jesus was saying wasn't code after all; maybe what He was saying is so obvious that it is easy to overlook. Maybe we complicate what Jesus said here because we can't believe it to be so simple. But if we believe the Gospel, then we believe that it is that simple. We were spiritually filthy, but His grace washed us white as snow. Jesus did for us what we were never capable of doing for ourselves. He gave to us the ultimate of the ultimate alms, and in return, we are instructed to point people to the Giver, the One who brought us out of a land of spiritual desolation into a land of spiritual abundance.
In John 21 Jesus tells Peter that if he loves Him to feed His sheep. Funny thing about this is that Jesus chose to call Peter by the name Simon. Why is this significant? Simon was the old Peter. Peter was the changed man who gave up his life to follow Christ. This points out the tendency in all of us to return to our old ways. After all, He who made the outside, made the inside also (Luke 40). Jesus sees the heart. He sees the tendency of our flesh. He knows how easy it is for us to become complacent. He knows how quickly we can get sidetracked and pursue rules to make us feel holy more than we do God. He knows that the devil lures us into false ways of thinking and living that impede that Gospel from shining light into a dark world. There's a bit of Simon is each of us, but there's also a bit of Peter in us all. If we love Jesus, we'll feed His sheep. We should be feeding the physically hungry, but feeding people in the spiritual sense is the priority. We can't do that when our cup is only clean on the outside. Many of us get good at faking being clean on the inside, but God sees right through the outward (1 Samuel 16:7) and he calls to us. Jesus desires real change in us, because we can't change the world if we haven't been changed first.
So what is my point? I guess my point is that I don't much care for Christmas any more, but not because I'm some kind of Scrooge. Quite the opposite. Those who know me know giving in any way that I am able to is one of my ultimate joys. I am offended by Christmas because I love Christ so much I want to see every day be a celebration in His honor. I want my words and deeds and thoughts to honor and celebrate Him. And I want to live in a way that magnetizes people to Him. Christmas has become another gimmick, but God can't be fooled. We might easily be fooled, which is probably why we spend $42 billion the day after thanksgiving while there are people whose lives could be saved by being sheltered and fed for an entire year for the price we spend on a few luxury purchases.
God calls each of us to follow Him, but we have to be real and answer a few basic questions:
1)Who do we say that Jesus is? Do we really believe He is the Messiah, the Way, The Truth, the Life, and the only way to heaven? Or is He just another historical icon, another religious figure in a smorgasbord of choices? Is He somebody we worship with every breath that we breathe, or only for a few minutes every morning and a few hours one day a week?
2) Are we willing to count the costs to follow Him? When we do, we go against all that comes naturally and give up everything of this world, but in return, we gain eternity
When we accept Jesus as Savior and accept the costs associated with following Him, everything changes. We become the salt and the light of the world. We no longer focus on outward appearances to impress the world because we know God works from the inside out. Our behaviors change. Our priorities change. We should help meet the world's physical needs, because James 1:27 makes it clear God wants us to do that. Helping those in need is a byproduct of finding God's love and grace, but it is no substitute for God's grace itself. We must be careful not to become like the Pharisees and think that our works will earn merit in God's eyes, but we can't use that as an excuse to neglect helping those in need either. The most important thing we can do as Christians is let God authentically change us then allow God to use us to point the world towards Him, the Eternal Spring (John 7:38), the Bread of Life (John 6:35), the only source of eternal satisfaction and salvation. When we find a life like that, we find the true meaning behind celebrating Christmas. When we find life like that, we will never hunger or thirst again.
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