Sermon Tone Analysis

Christmas 365 Days a Year

 

Luke 1:26-38

 

December 11, 2005

 

*Introduction: Christmas Spirit Isn’t Enough*

Is it too soon to start talking about Christmas?

I don’t think so, it’s only three weeks away.

So, let’s talk about Christmas, we need to be ready for it.

We often talk about the night before Christmas, but what do you think about on the morning after Christmas?

I’ve been thinking about this wonderful thing called “the spirit of Christmas.”

Have you noticed it?

I’m all ready for the annual viewing of Dicken’s “Christmas Carol”.

Once a year toward the winter solstice, something odd happens.

People’s attitudes go through an annual change.

People start talking about peace and goodwill.

They go out of their way to give and forgive.

Families get together.

We call this different atmosphere “the spirit of Christmas.”

There’s a problem with Christmas spirit, however.

You’ve noticed how it passes?

On Christmas Day have you heard people say, “It began to leave me last night.

It began to slip away.

The old feelings started to come back.”

Most of us know what that means.

The sad thing about the departure of the spirit of Christmas—the kindness, the generosity, the peace and goodwill, the warm relationships—is that it is something we long for and look for deep down in the human heart.

I suppose what adds to the disappointment is that such things, which we really enjoy, are ephemeral.

One of the most striking illustrations of this comes from a story told many years ago by an old German man.

He fought with the German forces in the First World War.

For the benefit of the 30-something people, I’ll remind you that in those days warfare was not high tech but hand-to-hand trench warfare.

Soldiers lived, fought, and died in trenches full of mud and blood and vermin.

In those trenches, dug in the fields of France, enemies could actually hear each other talking.

They didn’t need satellites to locate the enemy.

The enemy was just over there.

This old gentleman told  how on one cold, moonlit Christmas Eve, he huddled in the bottom of the trench.

Because of the annual Christmas truce, the fighting had stopped.

Suddenly, from the British trenches a loud, sweet tenor voice began to sing “The Lord Is My Shepherd,” and the sound floated up into the clear, moonlit air.

Then he said something surprising: from the German trenches, a rich baritone voice tuned in, singing “Der Herr Ist Mein Heiter auf Deutsche.”

For a few moments, everybody in both trenches concentrated on the sound of these two invisible singers and the beautiful music and the harmony.

The British soldier and the German soldier sang praise to the Lord who was their shepherd.

The singing stopped, and the sound slowly died away

.

“We huddled in the bottom of our trenches and tried to keep warm until Christmas Day dawned,” he said.

“Early on Christmas morning, some of the British soldiers climbed out of their trenches into the no man’s land, carrying a football.”

One soldier carried a round football (a real football where the foot is applied to the ball!

You need to understand that whenever the British go anywhere, they always take two things with them: their teapots and their footballs.)

These English soldiers started kicking around a football, in a pickup game in no man’s land, between the trenches.

Then the old man said, “Some of the German soldiers climbed out, and England played Germany at football in no man’s land on Christmas Day in the middle of the battlefield in France in the first World War.” (England won.)

Then he said, “The next morning, the carnage began again, with machine guns and bayonet fighting.

Everything was back to normal.”

The spirit of Christmas will produce a truce but no lasting peace.

The spirit of Christmas makes people think of peace and good will.

The spirit of Christmas thinks in terms of giving and forgiving.

It actually has celebrities going to the homeless and feeding them a meal.

Although the strain of keeping it up is too much, the spirit of Christmas says something about the deepest longings of the human heart.

It also says something about the incapacities of the human heart.

We need something more.

*I.

Christ Can Dwell in Our Lives*

The spirit of Christmas needs to be superseded by the Spirit of Christ.

There’s all the difference in the world.

Let me read something about the Spirit of Christ and Christmas from Luke 1 verses 26 to 38.

 

“In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David.

The virgin’s name was Mary.

The angel went to her and said ‘Greetings, you who are highly favored!

The Lord is with you.’

 

“Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.

But the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary.

You have found favor with God.

You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.

He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.

The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.’

“‘How will this be,’ Mary asked the angel, ‘since I am a virgin?’

“The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.

Even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month.

For nothing is impossible with God.’”

 

“‘I am the Lord’s servant,’ Mary answered.

‘May it be to me as you have said.’

Then the angel left her.”

 

Please notice the difference between the spirit of Christmas and the Spirit of Christ.

The spirit of Christmas is annual; the Spirit of Christ is eternal.

The spirit of Christmas is sentimental; the Spirit of Christ is supernatural.

The spirit of Christmas is a human product; the Spirit of Christ is a divine Person.

The angel told Mary she was actually going to experience the birth of Christ through the Holy Spirit in her life.

The angel said to her that the power of the Almighty through the Holy Spirit was going to rest upon her.

The angel spoke to her and said that the one who would be born in her and of her would be the one whose kingdom would never end.

The angel’s statements should resonate with you.

The Bible teaches us that, in a way not dissimilar to what happened to Mary, it is possible for Christ to be born in people’s lives by the Holy Spirit.

In Romans 8:11, Paul puts it this way: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you”.

This probably is referring to what happens after we die, but it clearly relates to what happens before we die.

Think of it for a minute: Is it possible that the Spirit of him who raised up Christ from the dead can actually come into people’s lives?

Do we believe that?

If it is true, then the Spirit of him who raised up Christ from the dead comes into our lives to make Christ, if you like, to be born within us.

When you ask the Spirit of Christ to come live in you, He does just that.

You become a child of God, born again into His family.

Paul, writing to the Galatians, used a dramatic term.

He said to his beloved Galatians, in verse 4:19, who were giving him all kinds of fits, “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you...”

 

In other words, the essence of Christianity is this remarkable truth: Christ came from heaven and died for us on the cross and rose again so that, in the person of the Holy Spirit, he might indwell our lives.

The possibilities are boundless.

We’re not talking about an annual event.

We’re talking about a perpetual indwelling.

We’re not talking about something that is basically sentimental.