Transcript – Can We Celebrate Christmas?

(Note that all transcripts were created from audio recordings, and therefore any mistakes are the transcriptionist's, not the speaker's.)
filename = CanWeCelebrateChristmas_TheReasonForTheSeason_RickAtchley_transcription.htm

The Reason for the Season
Rick Atchley

I heard a story about a guy cleaning out his attic and he saw his preacher the next day. He said, “Aw man I wish I had seen you yesterday, I was cleaning out my attic and I saw this old Bible in my attic. Gutten-something printed it. And I couldn’t do anything with it so I threw it away.”

“You threw away a Gutenberg bible?! Do you have any idea how much that was worth?!”

“Well this one wasn’t worth anything; some guy named Martin Luther scribbled all over the inside of it!”

Sometimes we don’t realize what a valuable thing we have. And I think that’s what happens a lot at Christmas. I want to take just a few moments to prepare our thoughts so we can understand why this is such an important season. And what I want to do tonight, I don’t really think I need to do it completely, but, for some of you, I want to give you permission to really celebrate Christmas.

I grew up in a church that did not celebrate Christmas. We had the hymns in the book but we never sang them. And I never understood that completely. The first church that I ever preached for had for years been served by a godly man, sweet preacher, but he didn’t believe in Christmas. He would preach against Christmas. He wouldn’t even have a Christmas tree in his home. It almost became a mark of fellowship. And some of you have backgrounds similar to that.

Now I want to just deal with some of the objections that I’ve heard growing up. And I hope to give you some permission for you to really celebrate this season. One of the things I heard growing up was, well, Christmas has its roots in paganism. Well let me deal with that. Let’s just go ahead and admit upfront, we don’t know the day Jesus was born. December 25th has been the day celebrated since about the late fourth century. The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates January the 6th. The Arminian Church January the fourteenth. We don’t know the exact day he was born. I’ll also admit that the day December 25th was picked by the church because at the time there was something called the Winter solstice and it was a time of revelry and drunkenness and the church was looking for a way to Christianize it, so in the middle of that solstice they had a Christmas. And a lot of the things about Christmas trees and wreaths and gifts and a lot of those things actually have a pagan background.

Now my response is that a lot of things we enjoy have pagan backgrounds but those things don’t have any meaning to us anymore. You wear these earrings. Where did that come from? Earrings were amulets that women wore in the old days so that they could worship their idols. The Bible talks in Romans about people that, they don’t eat meat to idols because they think it belongs to idols. But Paul says now, “If you don’t think about that, if you don’t even think about that, eat that meat.” I don’t think about paganism when I set up a Christmas tree or I see lights or I see gifts. And if you don’t then go ahead and celebrate them and enjoy those things. We have complete freedom in Christ to do things like that. In fact you might even say it was a pagan holiday, a pagan day, well you know what? They ALL were when Jesus was born. If God had to choose a clean day to send Jesus, he never would have come. Ok? They were all pagan days. And so, scripture says clearly, “if you want to have a day that’s special between you and the Lord, you have that day, and you celebrate it.”

Now some may say, “but we don’t have any command in the Bible to celebrate Christmas.” Well, that’s true. We don’t have any command to celebrate Thanksgiving or Mother’s Day, but no one gets mad when I preach about those. The idea that if the Bible doesn’t give you permission you can’t do something is I think a very legalistic way to look at the Bible. Instead, if God isn’t against it then enjoy! If God hasn’t spoken against it, celebrate it! My feeling is that God intentionally gave people celebrations in scripture so that they could remember important things that He did for them in history. The past is over. Do you think He only wanted them to remember him on the Passover one day of the year? Of course not! He wanted us to remember what he did every day of the year. Do you think God only wanted us to remember Jesus came one day out of the year? Of course not! But it was good to have a time of the year to refocus to make sure we are really centered in it and rooted in that. I think it’s good to have a day every year where we remember again the gift of God for sending Jesus. And we get rooted and established in those grounds. So I celebrate Christmas and I remember what it’s about.

One last thought, people say, “But Christmas today is so entwined with greed and materialism!” And my response to that is: you shouldn’t be surprised that Satan would try to ruin it. Satan always tries to ruin anything that might point people to Jesus. Folks, Satan doesn’t counterfeit stuff that doesn’t matter! Has anybody ever pulled you aside and said, “Hey you wanna see my counterfeit paper bags?” We don’t counterfeit stuff that’s cheap. But you see counterfeit currency, you see counterfeit jewelry. Sometimes you see counterfeit Christians. Satan only tries to cheapen that which is important. So I’m not surprised that Satan would try to counterfeit or ruin Christmas. I think it’s our job to see that it doesn’t happen in our homes. And to keep Christ in Christmas. And that’s why I’m going to preach on the coming of Christ this Sunday like I do every year. That’s why we’re going to have a Christmas evening service that we want you and your friends to come to. And that’s why tonight we’re going to unashamedly, we’re going to worship! Consider the most amazing of thoughts -- that God would become like us if that’s what it took to save us. And that’s what we celebrate. We celebrate it, I hope, every day of the year. But especially at this time of year we have a chance to tell the world of the good news of Jesus.

So we’re going to do that tonight; we’re going to sing some of your favorite hymns. Some staff guys are going to share some things about Jesus and Christmas that are special to them . I’m going to invite the praise team to come up right now because they’ve got a lot of songs they want to lead us with tonight.

Will you bow with me? “Father, if we could live a thousand lifetimes we could never unravel the mystery of deity encased in the flesh of eternity tactfull in time of God as an embryo. These things are just too profound for us but we believe in them. We believe in the virgin birth. We believe in the incarnation. We believe the Messiah came and fulfilled all the prophesies of the Old Testament. And we believe that Jesus was a GOD/man. And we believe He is A King/Savior. He was announced to be by the Angels. And we offer tonight the worship that the wise men offered him. And we say thank you for sending Jesus. We pray in Jesus name, Amen.”

[The congregation then began singing What Child is This?]
Return to Sermon SoundBytes