Christmas 2011 A Time to Think
What are the chances of us being remembered in 2,000 years time?
Why does history remember some people and ignore most people?
Consider this: There was a man named Augustus. He was the first and greatest emperor of the Roman empire. Augustus ordered a census that brought a man named Joseph and his wife Mary to Bethlehem where he son Jesus was born. The month of August is named after Augustus. Why don’t we remember his birthday?
This brings us to Christmas. Why, out of the billions of people who have lived is so much attention still given to a baby born in Palestine 2,000 years ago? Why have thousands of books been written about his life and teachings. Why in the year 2011 do over a billion people follow him?
The story of Jesus is amazing: It’s about God appearing on earth as a human being.
Why did Jesus come?
The historian Luke knew Jesus personally. He wrote extensively about his birth and life. According to Luke, when Jesus was born an angel appeared to some shepherds. Luke wrote that the angel talked with the shepherds about a baby just born in nearby Bethlehem. The angel said: ‘Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born for you; he is Christ the Lord’ (Luke 2:11)
The apostle Paul wrote this about Jesus some 50 years after Jesus was born: ‘When the time set by God arrived, He sent his son, born of a woman. (Galatians 4:4-5)
Here is a mystery: God sent his son––Jesus came from God, yet he entered our world through the body of a women. No wonder people were still talking about this 50 years later and even today.
Why did God send a saviour.
God sent a saviour because people were lost from God and didn’t know it.
People hadn’t forgotten God existed. They had just forgotten how to live in relationship with him as creature to Creator.
What happens when people are lost from God?
We get pretty much the kind of world we have now. A world where people make things of great beauty that enrich life. Yet at the same time we make things that cause great suffering and destroy life.
When people are lost from God there are consequences. Individuals and nations fall towards a spiritual and moral vacuum. Why have family breakdown, suicide and depression reached epidemic proportions in this wonderful land of Australia? Because people are lost from God!
Christmas is a happy time of giving and family re-union for many people. But it’s also a sad time of loneliness, alienation and depression for many others.
Why is it that in the last century we saved millions of lives through scientific discoveries and in the same century millions of lives were destroyed by war?
Why are people wiping themselves out with alcohol & other drugs? These are all consequences of being lost from God.
Think about this: Everything that takes away our happiness is a consequence of being lost from God.
What does the coming of God in a person 2011 years ago say to us?
It tells us that although we may be lost from God God isn’t lost from us.
As savoir Jesus came to bring lost people back into relationship with God.
Christmas is about the beginning of the work of the Saviour. He was born to be our Saviour. And he had to become a man to complete our rescue.
What happened to cause us to be lost from God was so terrible that Jesus had to die to rescue us. There’s a mystery here but mystery does not take away truth. Easter completes the story of Jesus coming to be the saviour. Our rescue is achieved at great cost––not to us but to God.
‘“God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have everlasting life’ (John 3:16)
To find and know God in a personal relationship we must first receive Jesus as our eternal leader and follow him through the twists and turns of our lives.
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