The Danger of Missing the King
Luke 2; Matthew 2
Some of you may have read Rudyard Kipling’s "The Man Who Would Be King". It is a short story about two British adventurers in British India who become kings of Kafiristan, a remote part of Afghanistan.
The story was first published in 1888 and later in 1975 was adapted by director John Huston into a feature film of the same name, starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine as the heroes and Christopher Plummer as Kipling.
And even though it is a fictional account it serves as a reminder that history is crowded with men who would be King. They desire to be in the position of honor and authority and power.
However, history records only one King who would be man, and that is Jesus. And we so often lose the centrality of that among the clutter that comes with the season. There is so much confusion that sometimes you feel like the real Christmas story is like a diamond lost in a haystack--it just seems impossible to find.
The humility and the poverty of the stable are somehow confused with the wealth and indulgence and selfishness of gift giving. The quietness of Bethlehem is mingled with the din of shopping malls and freeway traffic. The soberness of the incarnation is somehow mixed with the drunkenness of this season.
Blinking colored lights somehow have been connected to the star of Bethlehem. There being no room in the inn has been replaced with “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”.
Expensive electronics and toys that are played with and forgotten are mixed with the true value of the gifts given by wise men. Salesmen somehow get mixed up with shepherds. Angels are confused with flying reindeer, one of which even has a red nose.
The pain of childbirth is mixed with the parties. The filth of the stable is confounded with the whiteness of fresh snow. And then there's Mary, Joseph, Perry Como, Bing Crosby and Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer and dogs barking Jingle Bells.
The great reality of Christmas, which is the glory of the Lord being revealed, that Jesus the King of Glory would become a Man is obscured by so much tinsel and activity and commercialism.
And I think it's true that Santa Claus really has become the focus of Christmas for most people.
If you doubt that, listen to this article written some time back by the rector of St. Mark's Church in Upland, California for The Episcopal News--The Diocese of Los Angeles.
"There are few causes to which I am more passionately committed than that of Santa Claus. Santa Claus deserves not just any place in the church but the highest place of honor, where he should be enthroned as the long-bearded, ancient of days, the divine and holy one whom we call God.
"Santa Claus is God the Son. `You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I'm telling you why, Santa Claus is coming to town' simply refers to God the Son slipping into the secrets of the heart as easily as he slips down the chimney of the house.
"Santa Claus is God the Father, the creator of heaven and earth, in whose hand is a pack bursting at its seams with the gifts of His creation. Santa Claus is God the Holy Spirit who comes with the sound of gentle laughter with a shape like a bowl full of jelly to sow in the night the seeds of good humor. Santa Claus indeed deserves the exalted and enthroned place in the church, for he is God, Son, Father and Holy Spirit.
"So there he is: God the Son, God the Father, God the Holy Spirit. I've seen him in the toy store. I've seen him in his car on the freeway. And when I saw him with his crazy beard and his baggy red suit, I saw more than the seasonal merchant of cheap plastic toys, I saw no less than the triune God."
Is that not unbelievable! Santa Claus is the incarnation? What confusion! And from the clergy, no less. How can you miss the real Christmas? And yet I think we would be safe in saying that most people, Christians included, miss Christmas.
Initially, that sounds like a foolish statement. I mean the Christmas trees start going up in July, and everywhere you look there are reminders. We are all drowning in a sea of advertising, publicity, promotion, public relations about Christmas.
And there is no question about the fact that we know there is a Christmas celebration. I'm not just sure we know what it's really about. It seems as though we are blind, deaf and dumb to the reality of Christmas. In spite of the media, in spite of the public relations, in spite of the advertising and in spite of all of those things that attract our attention it seems to me that most people will miss Christmas.
And I just don’t want us to lose sight of the fact that the great reality of the incarnation is that God became a man. Jesus, the King of Glory would be a man
Let me give you a little bit of the history of Christmas to show you what I mean.
In the middle of the fourth century the bishop of Jerusalem wrote a letter to the bishop of Rome. And he said I would like for you to ascertain the date of the birth of Christ so that we could establish a date and have a celebration annually. The bishop of Rome sent word back to the bishop of Jerusalem that Christ was born on December 25. And by the end of the fourth century this had become the accepted custom and since then every December 25 focuses on the birth of Christ.
Bible scholars know that there is absolutely no evidence at all that Christ was born on December 25. In fact, there is not only no evidence that He was but there is some evidence that He was not. Well why then did the bishop of Rome do this? Well, the conclusion is that he did it rather arbitrarily.
Even pre-dating Christ, December was the major month of pagan celebrations filled with festivals and feast things and orgies and all kinds of pageants put on by the pagans in honor of their gods as winter had reached its fullness and they were anticipating the thaw and the spring and the planting and the strength of the sun returning and the clouds rolling back.
And that’s why the bishop chose December. And he focused on the 25th because that seemed to be the high point of these festivities. And his thought was this. The wild winter revelries of the pagans must be sanctified by Christianity therefore, we will impose our celebration of the birth of Christ on the pagan celebrations and sanctify them all. It was a nice thought.
But it was dead wrong. Because what happened was the heathen festivity went on and the church was unable to make them conform to the sanctification of the true Christian celebration. And so what you have now is a strange weird marriage of the pagan and the Christian that we call Christmas.
A part of those festivals was gift-giving so that got thrown in the mix, and then there was the celebration of Yule. And it involved festivals, music, drinking and so forth.
To the east and Persia at the time of December they worshipped Mithra, the god of light. In England to the west the Druids who were involved in strange priestly worship engulfing demonic and occultic powers were gathering sacred mistletoe for their sacrifices which they made in the month of December.
The Druids would go out and find mistletoe and gather it and hang in their homes. And when people walked under it, they would embrace. It was a kind of forced reconciliation. So we threw some of that in.
Holland got into the act by giving us their favorite saint, St. Nicholas. St. Nicholas was a white bearded bishop of Asia Minor who was such a popular fellow that when he died it was believed that he came back every December 8 and all the little Dutch kids would put their wooden shoes out on the porch and as he would put goodies in the shoes of the good kids and where there were bad children he would leave a switch for obvious reasons. And the Dutch called St. Nicholas Sinterklaas and we got Santa Claus. In fact, as the legend goes, he was going through his act one year of putting things in the shoes and I guess he got pretty good at that so he started flipping things into the chimneys. And in one home, some folks had hung their stockings underneath the fireplace to dry them out over night and the stuff he was flipping in landed in the stockings and that's where we got stockings. Not very theological, is it?
Caroling started in the fourteenth century along with jesters and musicians. Christmas cards began in 1946, they were printed in London by a very enterprising man named Sir Henry Cole who was the owner of an art shop and saw it as a way to make a lot of money. And all the first Christmas cards printed for him were printings of drinking scenes.
And so what we’ve wound up with is this mess called Christmas.
And as a result, a lot of people miss Christmas. What with all the paraphernalia and the trappings around it the simplicity of the birth of Christ is literally drowned in a sea of paganism. We’re busy doing all kinds of Christmas things, but missing Christ.
You want to know something? If you think it's something that only happens in the hectic world of the 21st century you are wrong. They missed it at the first Christmas right there in Bethlehem also. Here is the most significant event of the ages when the King of Kings will step into human history as a man and so many missed it. Let me show you what I mean:
Turn with me to Luke chapter 2:7
Now the first person who missed Christmas was
1. The Innkeeper
The innkeeper missed Christmas. It was right in front of him but he missed it. He had to confront a pregnant woman and her husband but he had no room for them.
We sometimes miss the impact of verse 7. We find there that the birth of Jesus was a lonely birth. I am struck by the fact that she brought forth her first-born son. We don't even know where Joseph was. He’s not mentioned. If I know anything about fathers at the time of births, especially young fathers like Joseph, he wouldn’t have been much help anyway! And so it is recorded, she brought forth her first born son.
One must wonder where were all the caring Jewish women of Bethlehem?
After all, Jewish people are kind and caring people. They were not barbaric people. These people are civilized, intelligent, educated people who understand about human life. These are not the kind of people who are going to leave a woman alone or are they?
Mary brought forth her own son. And then it says, she wrapped Him in swaddling cloth. Mary did. Where were the midwives? Where were the people who were supposed to care for things like that? Where was the innkeeper? Didn't he know anybody who could help? Didn't his wife concern herself with this? Wasn't there some source of assistance to Mary?
This was a lonely birth.
Now I don't know anything about the innkeeper because the Bible doesn't say anything about it. He wasn't interested so he's not even included.
But we do know this: The innkeeper missed Christmas. And what amazes me is that he missed it even though it might have happened on his own property. Did you ever wonder about why he missed Christmas? The simple answer: Preoccupation.
He was so busy. I his inn was full or his guest room was full or all of his little lean-to's were full. Why?
Because it was the census in Bethlehem and the city was literally bulging with everybody who ever had any ancestry there and they were coming to the city and since it was the city of David those who were in the line of David were there. And that's why Joseph and Mary were there.
And he was just real busy. I guess there are a lot of people like that. All of the rooms in their lives are filled with needless things, filled with human interests. They're filled with the stuff that doesn't matter and they miss the Christ of God.
It was an ignorant preoccupation on the part of the innkeeper, he didn't know. I look at the world and that's what I see, they just don't know. They don't know who Christ is. They don't know who He is; they don't know why He came. They're just ignorantly preoccupied with the mundane and the meaningless.
The innkeeper missed it. He was too busy. Look at your own life. Did you spend more time shopping then you did adoring Christ? Did you spend more money on stuff than you invested in His kingdom? Then maybe you've been in the trap. too. Where the innkeeper was.
I want you to meet another man who missed Christmas.
2. Herod
Matthew 2:1-3,7-8
Now Herod pretended to want to worship Jesus Christ but he was tremendously fearful because one had been born who was called the King of the Jews. Now in verse 3 Herod is identified as the king. And when he knew there was born a king he was afraid.
Verse 3 says he was troubled. It means to be agitated, stirred up, shaken up. It is the idea of total panic. He panicked. He had no room for Jesus. Why? Fear. He was afraid of Him. He was afraid of another king.
Let me tell you why. Herod was an Edomite, he wasn't even a Jew. What was he doing ruling in the land? Well, he was of the Idumean family an Edomite, he was following along behind his father Antipater who had done some favors to Rome and Herod continued to do that and while Rome was occupying Palestine, Herod did everything he could to get into the favor of Rome. Rome really kind of liked Herod so finally the Senate appointed him king of Judea and he was not even a Jew.
Now when he heard there was born one called the king of the Jews, it's no wonder he panicked. He wanted the glory and grandeur and a kingly place and he is now threatened even though this was a baby and he was an old man. The rumor of another king panicked Herod. And he was a vile man.
He has already killed his own brother-in-law and his wife and his mother-in-law and his sons who threatened him. In fact, in his last days he had the notables of Jerusalem imprisoned with the orders for them to be killed when he died because he wanted people to cry when he died even if it was tears for someone else. So he’s not about to let some baby mess things up. In fact when the the wise men didn't come back and tell him, he killed all the children under the age of two.
Why did Herod miss Christmas? Fear. And there are still a lot of people who miss Christmas because of the same basic kind of fear that Herod had.
Herod's fear was that somebody else would take his throne. That was his fear. And I would affirm to you that there are a lot of people like that. Herod wasn't about to let this little child interfere with his career, with his position, with his power, with his ambition, with his plans and with his lifestyle.
There are a lot of people who want Jesus as a resource when they get into trouble. There are people who want Jesus as sort of a nice spiritual friend. There are people who want Jesus to keep them out of hell but they're not interested in crowning Him Lord.
They like the baby in the manger, but not the Sovereign King of Kngs and Lord of Lords. He messes things up too much. He likes to take over.
And there are a lot people who don't want to come to Christ because it will cramp their style. Because it will lay claim on their life that means they have to alter the way they live and think and talk and act. And they want to run the show. They want to be their own Herod of their own little kingdom. Their own thin, flat little kingdom.
So they, like Herod, miss Christmas because of fear.
There's a third group that missed Christmas.
Matthew 2:4
3. Scribes and Pharisees
Herod finds out about this baby king, and wants to kill Him so he assembles the chief priests and the scribes and demanded of them where the Christ should be born.
Here were all the theological minds of the day. They knew all the scriptures and their friends the scribes who were the linguists and the interpreters and the ones who knew the culture and the history that surrounded the biblical data and the combination of all of these men got together and they said - we know where the Messiah is to be born. And they quoted Micah, chapter 5 verse 2, that Old Testament prophet who said Bethlehem. They knew.
You know what shocks me? They never went there! Did you ever think about that? What was the one thing the Jews had been looking for? Ever since Moses had said there would come one known as that prophet, what is the one person they had looked for all the way through their history? A deliverer and here they were under Roman oppression. They were longing for and looking for a deliverer.
It had been the great hope of all their ages. It had been the one that they had looked for, the destiny of Israel was bound up in the coming deliverer, the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed, the greater son then David's son, the one who would come and establish the kingdom the great hope of their hearts, the hunger in their breasts illustrated in the ministry of John the Baptist as they flocked to hear of one who was preparing the way for the Messiah.
And here were the brains of theology, here were the ones who knew it all and yet they never even bothered to walk two miles to three miles south to Bethlehem to find out for themselves if this was not the Messiah. Why? Why did the Sanhedrin miss Christmas? I'll tell you why. Indifference.
They didn't care. What an insult! At least Herod feared the kingliness of this child. At least the inn-keeper could claim that he was ignorant. But these men had all the facts, they just didn't care. Having the Messiah was no big deal to them. They didn't need a Messiah.
Why? They were already self-righteous. They were already perfect. They had already kept the law. They were already all that God could ever ask of them in their own minds, they were sickening proud. You could call it proud indifference.
They didn’t need a Messiah. In fact, when He did show up they hated Him and despised Him and plotted His murder and screamed for His blood. They didn't want Him. They didn't need Him. They were all right just the way they were.
You see, the problem of indifference is the problem of not realizing the state of sinfulness. I think there are many people today who miss Christmas because of that. They ignore Christ because they don't know they are sinful. They don't care about the Savior because they don't understand that they need to be saved. They don't understand that the wages of sin is death, that sin destines people into an eternal hell. They don't understand that. So consequently they ignore the remedy because they don't even qualify the disease.
The innkeeper missed Christmas, because of ignorant preoccupation. Herod missed Christmas because of jealous fear. The Sanhedrin missed Christmas because of indifferent pride.
4. Jerusalem
missed Christmas. Isn't that amazing?
Luke 2:8
and you know the rest of the story. The angel told them what to do and the shepherds came and they saw the Christ child.
And verse 20 says; "The shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen as it was told unto them."
Out of the whole of Jerusalem society do you know who God picked to tell this to? Shepherds. Now let me tell you something, folks, shepherds y were at the bottom of the list. They were a despised group because they couldn't maintain all of the ceremonial washings and couldn't carry out all of the ceremonial activities and all of the festivals and feasts and all of those things. Because of their occupation they were busy tending to the sheep all the time.
And these outcasts came. No one else came. In fact, out of all Jerusalem we are told only of the shepherds and Simeon and Anna knowing about the birth of Jesus.
The mass of Jerusalem missed Christmas. Totally. It happened a couple of miles away, it was the fulfillment of all their dreams and all their hopes.
It was that great event which was to change the destiny of the world but they missed it.
Why did they miss it? Why did Jerusalem miss it?
Religion. They were very religious. They were so busy with their religion, carrying out their ritual that they missed the reality. Oh, they had all their feasts and all their festivals and all their ceremonies and all their washings and all of their rules and regulations and laws and myriads of things that had grown up around their religious system that weren't even biblical at all, all kinds of rules they had to keep. And in the midst of all of their religion they never got the message.
In fact, when Jesus said to His disciples in Matthew 16, "Whom do men say that I am?" Their answer was "Some say You are Elijah, some say You are Jeremiah and some say You are one of the prophets," and they were all wrong. They never got the message. They screamed - We'll not have this man reign over us, get rid of Him.
They missed Him. Why? Religion. They were busy worshipping the right God in the wrong way. They had the God of the Scripture but they had it all twisted up and so they missed the point.
Oh, listen, religion will damn you faster than anything else if it’s false religion or if it's the true religion in the wrong way.
All around us are people who talk the language of religion. They know all about it. They went to church with Grandma. They’ve got it all figured out.
And yet they miss Christmas. In the midst of their religion they are lost.
Have you ever tried to reach somebody like that? Ever try to talk to somebody who is all bogged down in a religion? Tough. Especially if it's got something to do with the Bible because they think they've got their system right. Religion will damn people to hell. And so Jerusalem missed Christmas, while they were religious.
Finally, and maybe this is the saddest of all,
5. Nazareth
missed Christmas. Nazareth. It says in Matthew 2:23 that after Herod had died Joseph and Mary took the baby Jesus, the child Jesus, and went back to Nazareth.
Luke 2:39
And that verse is saying - when He got back to Nazareth He was not like any other child in Nazareth. He was different. The grace of God was upon Him in a marvelous and incredible way. The child grew in wisdom and stature.
By the time he was 12, He was confounding the doctors of theology at the temple. Never was there a child like this child. And even though He spent 30 years of His life in Nazareth, they missed Him.
The time finally comes for Jesus to begin his ministry, and He goes to the synagogue in Nazareth on the Sabbath and begins to preach from the book of Isaiah.
He said, “This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." He said - I am the Messiah.
And what was their reaction? "And they all bore Him witness and wondered. And they said is not this Joseph's son," is He kidding? This is Joseph's son.
You know why Nazareth missed Christmas?
Familiarity. They knew Him so well He wasn't special. That is a deadly thing, people. And whenever I come across somebody who is not a Christian and I ask them if they've known of Christ and they say - Oh, yeah, I was raised in that. But I'm not a Christian. A fear grips my heart because familiarity strangles conviction.
You've heard it so many times, so many Christmas stories. So many Christmases, so many sermons, so many Bible lessons. Familiar breeds contempt.
You know what happened in Luke chapter 4 at the end of the chapter? When Jesus got done with His message in the synagogue? It says they grabbed Him and they took Him out to the cliff on the edge of the town to throw Him off, to crush Him to death for blaspheming but He passed through their midst miraculously. They would kill Him.
That's what I call missing Christmas.
I'm telling you, you'd better respond while your heart is soft or you'll heart will become hard and you won't have the opportunity to respond. Some of you have been raised in Christianity, raised in Christian homes and you've never responded to Jesus Christ and if you keep hardening your heart you never will.
Listen, there are lots of reasons why people miss Christmas. They miss it because of ignorant preoccupation. They miss it because of jealous fear. They miss it because of prideful indifference. They miss it because of religious ritual. They even miss it because of being so familiar with it.
During the Civil War, there was a woman from the south who was quite taken by Robert E. Lee. She was a great admirer of the general and had several pictures of him in her home. Late one evening two Confederate soldiers showed up at her door, asking for lodging for just a few hours. She extended them her hospitality.
As they left, one of the two men gave her some money for her service to them. As he stepped into the darkness, the other soldier stepped forward and said; On behalf of General Lee I want to thank you for your kindness to us. Unbelievable. The very man she most admired had been in her presence, but she did not recognize him.
The entire history of Israel revolved around the coming of the Messiah, but when He finally came, He was not recognized or received. Don't miss Christmas this year by missing Jesus.
Whatever your excuse, whatever the reason you've been missing Christmas if you receive Christ and believe on Him Christmas will become a reality in your life. It can happen today. That's between you and God.
Let's pray.
