What’s So Special About
Jesus?
Dr. Larry Thorson
Luke 1:67-79
67 His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied:
68 "Praise be to the Lord, the God of
because he has come to his people and redeemed
them.
69 He has raised up a horn of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David
70 (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),
71 salvation from our enemies
and from the hand of all who hate us—
72 to show mercy to our ancestors
and to remember his holy covenant,
73 the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
74 to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,
and to enable us to serve him without fear
76 And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
for you will go on before the Lord to
prepare the way for him,
77 to give his people the knowledge of salvation
through the forgiveness of their sins,
78 because of the tender mercy of our God,
by which the rising sun will come to us
from heaven
79 to shine on those living in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of
peace."
Today’s New International Version Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society
Henry
had a problem. One day in early December he found himself pressed with too much
work and too many deadlines and no time to respond to the Christmas letters he
was receiving daily from his many friends and business associates. Henry was
actually Sir Henry Cole. He was an assistant at the public records office in
Early
in December of 1843, Henry, this man with too many friends and too little time
had an idea. Sitting at his desk, he
picked up a rigid piece of paper. He began to play with it, folding it this way
and that, and as he did so, an old memory popped into his mind. He remembered a
school assignment he had received as a young boy, the task of drawing a holiday
picture as a present for his parents. He remembered the pictures he and his
classmates had drawn, pictures of biblical scenes, red roses, candy, and families
celebrating Christmas. And so Henry immediately went to see his friend, the
painter John Calcott Horsley. He commissioned Horsley to paint a picture of a
happy family and friends celebrating at a festive meal. Henry had this and
other drawings printed on 1000 cards of stiff paper, folded them into a little
booklet, added the words “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You,” and
then he mailed them to his huge list of friends and acquaintances. That is how
the Christmas card was born.
Within
a few years, all of Western Europe had adopted the tradition of sending
Christmas cards, and then, through the efforts of a German-born lithographer
named Louis Prang, who had moved to
I
don’t really need to describe Christmas cards to you. All of us send them, all
of us receive them, all of us fret and sweat until we have ours signed and sealed
and stamped and delivered to the post office. There are religious cards, funny
cards, generic cards, specialty cards for your wife or husband or mother or
father or any of a dozen other special categories of person. But why do we send
them at all? The main reason is because we want to be in touch with the people
in our lives.
The
people on my Christmas letter list are folks I actually see only rarely, and
some we haven’t seen in years. It’s a way we stay in touch and communicate that
we still care about them. Imagine that someone
you loved sent you a Christmas card but because you were so busy you never
bothered to open it. It would be your
loss. That’s what a lot of us do with
God’s Christmas card. Let me explain.
Long ago there was a priest named Zechariah who had
a wife named
One day while all alone, as he was offering up sacrifices
on the altar of the temple, the angel Gabriel visited Zechariah and told him he’s
going to have a son. “Yea right”. Zechariah doubted him and because he doubted
God for the next nine months lost his ability to speak.
I
ask you, what is a priest or a minister supposed to do without his voice? One year I led a mission team to
Zechariah
had nine months of silence to brood and ponder and pray and meditate on his
Bible, the Old Testament. His silence may have been a divine rebuke for his
unbelief, but God always turns his rebukes into rewards for those who keep
faith. Remember that, you who right now suffer from the scars of past sins. If
you keep faith now God will turn the marks of your sin into memorials of grace.
Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound (Romans 5:20).
Those
nine months gave Zechariah time to think, time to get his thoughts in
order. I can imagine him thinking "Why
didn't I believe the word of God? Why did I have to be so skeptical? What a
fool I was!" But then, gradually, in the silence of those months (I think
the angel had struck Zechariah deaf as well as dumb because in verse 62 it says
they communicated to him with signs instead of speech)—gradually in the silence
of those months, when he could not converse with his wife or friends, Zechariah
began to see what was happening. It began to sink into his head and heart that something
big and I mean big was happening.
I
believe that noise and busyness causes us to miss opening up the Christmas card
from God. There is a close correlation
between stillness and a sense of the incredible. The most astonishing things
about reality will probably be missed by those who use the radio and TV for a
constant background drone. Be still, be dumb and deaf, and know that I am God.
What
would it mean for your life if for nine months you could not hear or say
anything?! I have tried to imagine what it would mean for my ministry and home
life. No preaching. No counseling. No singing. But lots more seeing. Lots more
looking into the eyes of my wife. (When was the last time you looked steadily
into someone's eyes?) Lots more reading the great books. Lots more writing
journals, poems, letters, thoughts about life. Lots more prayer and meditation
on the Word of God. All in absolute silence.
If
that ever happens to me, I hope that I would turn it to as much good as
Zechariah did. Because when Zechariah came out, he came out filled with the
Holy Spirit and singing what has come to be known as the Benedictus, which means
blessing. It was a song filled with
insight that showed that he came to understand why he had finally become a
father. He came to understand the huge
significance of what was about to happen with the birth of Jesus.
This hymn is broken down into four stanzas. The
first stanza is found in Luke 1:68-71. There, Zechariah gives praise to God who
raised up a Savior.
67 His father
Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied: 68 "Praise be to
the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed
them. 70 (as he said through his holy prophets of long
ago), 71 salvation from our enemies and
from the hand of all who hate us—
Verses
72-75 provide the second stanza, in which he claims this Savior is the
fulfillment of a promise from long ago.
72 to show mercy to our ancestors
and to remember his holy covenant,
73 the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
74 to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,
and to enable us to serve him without fear
In the
third stanza, verses 76-77, Zechariah finally gets around to describing the
role of his son John will play in preparing the way for the Savior.
76 And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
for
you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
77 to give his people the
knowledge of salvation
through
the forgiveness of their sins,
The final stanza in verses 78-79 looks for the
tender mercy that the Savior will bring like the dawn from on high.
78 because of
the tender mercy of our God,
by which the rising sun will come to us
from heaven
79 to shine on those living in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of
peace."
So, the subject outline of the hymn goes like this:
stanza one is about Jesus, stanza two is about Jesus, stanza three is about
John, and stanza four is about Jesus. You would think that if an old father,
who has spent his life waiting for a child, is going to break out in song, he
would sing about his own boy. But no, Zechariah starts singing about Jesus. He doesn’t
get to his own kid until the third stanza, and then he goes back to singing
about Jesus
again.
That’s what a nine
month silent retreat with the Holy Spirit did for him. It gave him time to read his Christmas card
from God. A Christmas card means nothing unless it is opened, and
then read, and then…believed. An
unopened, unread Christmas card is just more paper for the recycling bin. A
message is truly a message not just when it is sent, but when it is received.
And
so that raises a question about the message God has sent to us. Do we receive
him? Do we believe him? There are some people today who do not believe that God
exists. They have no answer to the question of from where the universe got its
start, but they still refuse to accept the existence of a Higher Being.
Christmas
is a very simple pronouncement that there is a God and that this God chose to
be born into the world as a human being, fully divine while still fully human.
That is what Christmas is about. Accept no substitute interpretations.
Christmas is not—first and foremost—about love or family or peace or hope or
goodwill. All those things are involved, but only because Christmas is first
and foremost about a loving God who expressed that love by sending himself to
us to show us the way to have life and to rescue us from death.
I
suppose you can read a Christmas card and be unmoved by the fact that someone
took the trouble to send it. Simply to
receive a card and not be warmed, excited, or encouraged is not really to
experience the message at all. Some of us treat Jesus that way. We don’t really
let him into our hearts, into our minds, into our lives. And when we don’t let
him in, he can’t do much for us.
There’s
a little poem about Christmas cards, the source of which I can’t find that goes
like this:
We have a list of folks we know
All written in an address book,
And every year when Christmas comes
We go and take a look.
That is when we realize
These names are all a part,
Not of the book they’re written in,
But of our very hearts.
Never think our Christmas cards
Are just a mere routine
Of names upon a Christmas list,
Forgotten in between.
When we send a Christmas card
That is addressed to you,
It is because you are on the list
Of folks we’re endeared to.
Each name stands for someone
Who has crossed our path sometime
And in that meeting they’ve become
The rhythm in each rhyme.
While it may sound fantastic
For us to make this claim
We really feel that we’re composed
Of each remembered name.
You may not be aware
Of any special link,
Just meeting you has changed our lives
Much more than you may think.
For once we’ve met somebody
The years cannot erase
The memory of a pleasant word
Or of a friendly face.
Every year when Christmas comes
We realize anew
The best gift life can offer
Is meeting folks like you.
So, may the spirit of Christmas
That forevermore endures
Leave its richest blessings
In the hearts of you and yours.
I
cannot prove to you that God exists, or that God sent himself to us in Jesus. I
can only invite you to welcome Jesus as your friend, your guide, your Savior,
and your Lord. When you do, he will prove himself to be a person whose presence
in your life changes your life forever.
A
Christmas card is really nothing more than a piece of paper that reminds you of
a person who is important in your life. Jesus is the “Christmas card” who
reminds you of a God who loves you, and he is also God himself, the person like
no other, whose presence in your heart and in your life will fulfill the
promise of which Zechariah spoke, “to guide your feet into the way of peace.”
What
if Jesus was to come back for us on this Christmas morning? What would you do to get ready? Your assignment this week in preparation for
Christ’s second coming is to send a Christmas card or a letter or make a phone call
to someone or more than one who is least expecting to hear from you. Tell them how special they are to you and if
you have the opportunity, tell them what’s so special about our Jesus. Amen.