Let me be the last to pronounce that we are in the season of
Advent. Even though we’re less
than a week after Thanksgiving, we’ve seen the evidence that Christmas is
coming for three months in the displays and commercials seeking to condition
our minds into pulling out cash and plastic. To a growing number the reason for the season is what
stimulates the economy.
Indicative that our society has lost its memory of the
meaning of Christmas was the theft last week of a Salvation Army kettle containing
perhaps fifty dollars at a Belk store in Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem.
Yet it is for these very kinds of wrongs that we need
Christmas. I’m going to use my
opportunities here in December to explain just why it was necessary for Christ,
the Immanuel – “God with us” – to step down from His throne on high to be born
in a barn and laid in a feeding trough for livestock.
Go back with me all the way…at least all the way as far as
our existence is concerned to creation.
In the first chapter of Genesis, as God spoke the universe into
existence He paused seven times to pronounce each aspect of His creation as
“good”. In fact, the last time He
looked at our home and said, “It is very good”. Of course it was!
God don’t make no junk!
(Pardon my grammar.)
Creating the day and separating it from the darkness of
night caused God to say, “It is good”.
Separating the dry land from the seas, He called the continents and
islands “good”. All of the
vegetation He created was “good”, (which let’s us know sandspurs came
later). Sun, moon and stars? All “good” according to God. The birds of the sky and the creatures
of the sea were “good”. Then He
made all the animals that live on the land, from livestock to the creepy-crawlers
and said they were all “good”.
His last creation was us. Putting His own image into humanity was a step above the
rest of earth’s occupants. And
when that was done verse 31 tells us, “God saw all that He had made, and it was
very good.”
Can you imagine with me a world void of any sort of
pollution? None of the animal
kingdom was on an endangered list because the “good” earth allowed them all to
thrive. Think of the brightest,
starriest night you can recall. In
the beginning every night was like that.
It was a perfect world, beautiful in every way. In fact, we’re later told that creation
itself was enough to show our world how much our Creator cared when He made all
this and that He alone is God.
But something adverse would take place that ruined
perfection, turning God’s masterpiece into much less. Fast-forward to these words of Paul to the Roman church,
describing what followed.
“They [mankind] exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and
worshiped and served something created instead of the Creator, who is blessed
forever.” (Romans 1:25 HCSB)
Then fast forward again. Way forward this time to one of the last recorded phrases
uttered by Christ. In Revelation
21:5 He says, "Look! I am making everything new." His plan is to re-create what has been
broken. That day is yet to
come. And Christmas was a
necessary event in re-creating the earth and final perfection.
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