How many of
you are really anxious for Christmas to come?
We all have
different times when we start really getting into Christmas, when we feel like
we just cannot wait for it to come. Some
people started way back in October, or as soon as Halloween is over. For some people, it’s when the Hallmark
Channel starts showing Christmas movies.
For others, it’s is the first Sunday of Advent, when the church starts
focusing on preparing for Christmas. Or
maybe it’s when we decorate the sanctuary, or maybe when you decorate your
house for Christmas. For me, when I
start hearing Christmas music on the radio is when I really start getting into
Christmas.
It can be hard to wait for
Christmas. It’s hard for me sometimes,
too. It was especially hard for me when
I was a kid. See, my birthday is
December twenty-second, so not only was I waiting for Christmas, I was waiting
for my birthday, too. And it was
hard. I had all this stuff I wanted,
stuff I was waiting for and hoping for, stuff I could not get for myself, but I
could not find out yet whether I was going to get it. I wanted the time to pass quickly and for the
big day to come, but time just kept moving one day at a time. All I could do was wait.
But then,
finally, the big day would come, and sometimes I would get exactly what I
wanted. And when I did, it was always
worth the wait. That’s the
thing—anything that’s really good is worth waiting for.
Now, put that
in the context of the first Christmas. In
a sense, though, the whole world was waiting for it. The world had been waiting, really since the
first humans walked the earth. You
probably remember the story of Adam and Eve and the serpent. That’s the story of sin entering the world.
As soon as sin
entered the world, humans became separated from God. We tried to find our way back. That’s what all that Old Testament law was
about. The theory was that if we could
just follow all the rules, if we could just do everything the way we’re supposed
to, then we’d be the people we were supposed to be, God would be happy with us,
and we’d feel close to God again.
Maybe that
would’ve worked. We’ll never know,
because we humans never could follow all the rules. We could never do everything the way we’re
supposed to. The thing is, we were
trying to do something by ourselves that we cannot do by ourselves. We were trying to get back to God by our own
abilities, and by our own merits, and that simply was not possible. It was not possible because we were and are
sinful people, and sinful people cannot follow all the rules perfectly and do
everything we’re supposed to do, no matter how hard we try.
Eventually,
people figured that out. They knew they
could not get back to God by themselves.
They knew they needed God to bring them back. In other words, they knew they needed a
Messiah. They knew they needed a Savior.
They knew they
needed a Savior, but they had no way to get one. There was no way they could bring a Savior
about. They knew, from scripture, that
they’d been promised one, but there was no way they could cause the Savior to
come. They wanted the time to pass
quickly and for the Savior to come now, but time just kept moving one day at a
time. All they could do was wait.
And so, they
waited. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month. Year after year. Eventually, it became decade after decade,
even century after century. They waited,
and they hoped, and they prayed. And
nothing happened. They waited some more,
and they hoped some more, and they prayed some more. And nothing continued to happen.
Eventually,
some of them got tired of waiting. Some
of them got so desperate that they started following false Saviors, false
Messiahs. Some of them got
discouraged. They decided their hopes
were worthless, that there was no point in praying. Either God did not hear their prayers and was
not going to answer, or God did not exist at all. And so, they quit waiting. They gave up.
And so, when
the Savior finally came, they missed it.
Think about that. Can you imagine
what that would be like? They’d waited
all that time, all those years, but they just could not wait long enough. And then, what they’d waited for and hoped
for and prayed for finally happened, and they missed it. They saw it, maybe, but they could not
recognize it for what it was. As John
says, “the world did not recognize him.”
That’s an incredibly sad thing, when you think about it.
We wonder,
sometimes, why God waited so long. We
don’t know, of course. We never will
know. We assume there was a reason. There are theories people have, but we’ll
only know when we get to heaven and can ask.
And at that point, it may not matter to us any more.
What we do
know is that, for those who did not give up, for those who did not get tired of
waiting, for those who kept waiting, and kept hoping, and kept praying, it was
all worth it. It was worth the
wait. Because, eventually, the Savior
came. The Savior came, and they no
longer had to be separated from God.
They could come back to God through their belief in Jesus Christ as the
Savior.
So can
we. We don’t have to miss out. We still wait for Christmas, but we don’t
have to wait the way they did thousands of years ago. We don’t have to wait for something to
happen. We just wait to celebrate the
anniversary of something that’s already happened.
We don’t have
to wait for the Savior to come. The
Savior has already come. We’re not
waiting for the first Christmas. We can
have Christmas any day of the year. Any
time we make a decision for Christ, any time we dedicate our lives to following
Jesus, it can be Christmas Day for us.
And any time we renew our decision for Christ, any time we re-dedicate
ourselves to following Jesus, it can be Christmas Day for us, too. We don’t have to wait. We can do that any time. We can do it now, today.
You know, when
I was a kid, Mom and Dad would try to get me what I wanted. They did not always succeed. Sometimes what I wanted was not practical or
was not good for me. Sometimes they made
mistakes because they’re human. But they
tried. God, though, did not need to try. God knew exactly what we wanted and what we
needed. God knew the one thing we could
not get for ourselves. And that’s what
God gave us: a Savior.
When we’re
kids, and we get just what we want for Christmas, we don’t hesitate, do
we? We tear off the paper, we see what
it is, our eyes get big, we get a big smile on our face, and we take it out of
the package as fast as we can. We cannot
wait to start enjoying the incredible gift we’ve been given.
And yet, too
many times, we don’t do that with the most incredible gift of all, the gift of
salvation. God has given us this
incredible gift, but so often, just like people did two thousand years ago,
we’re not sure about it. We see it, but
we don’t always recognize it for what it is.
We wait, as if we’re deciding whether to accept it. And so, sometimes, we miss out.
So, sometimes,
it’s God’s turn to wait. We’re no longer
waiting for the Savior to come to us.
Instead, now the Savior is waiting for us to come to him.
God will never
get tired of waiting. God will never
give up on us. God will never quit on
us. God does not want to wait, of
course. God wishes we would make the
decision now, today, to dedicate or re-dedicate our lives to God. But God is willing to wait. God is willing to wait because, to God, you
and I are worth waiting for.
Really, that’s
the most amazing thing of all. We
understand why it’s important for us to be close to God. What’s hard to understand is why it seems to
be important for God to be close to us.
We understand why it’s worth waiting for God. What’s hard to understand is why God would
decide it’s worth waiting for us.
Yet, God does
that. For reasons that we cannot
understand, reasons that don’t really make any sense to us, God does want to be
close to us. God does think that you and
I, the sinful people that we still are, are worth waiting for.
When you think
about how strong and powerful God is, and how small and weak we are in comparison,
there really can be only one reason for that.
God loves us. We’re God’s
children, and God loves us, and God thinks we’re worth waiting for.
When you think
about it, that’s the real message of Christmas.
God gave us the greatest Christmas gift of all. God gave us just what we’d been waiting
for: a Savior. It was exactly what we wanted and exactly
what we needed.
The world
waited for a Savior for thousands of years, but we don’t have to wait any longer. Let’s not make God wait any longer,
either. Let’s make the decision today to
dedicate or re-dedicate ourselves to God.
Let’s accept the incredible gift of the Savior that God has given us.
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