The Wonder of Christmas

         To many people, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. As the old song goes, it is filled with family and friends of good cheer. Holiday traditions make the season bright and merry. But for those who know about the baby, who is the basis for all of our celebrations, it is even more wonderful.

          Let me give you some reasons why Christmas is so wonderful. If you’ve grown up hearing about the first Christmas story, some of these may not seem so amazing. Make sure never to get so familiar with the story that you lose the wonder.  

          1) Real angels appeared to men and women. Again, that may not seem so impressive since it’s in the Bible. But consider that even in Bible times, verifiable angelic visitations were very rare. Do you remember what the first thing out of the angel’s mouth always seemed to be? “Fear Not!” It must have been overwhelming to be in the presence of a messenger of the Almighty.

          Christmas was especially important because there was not just one but several angelic visitations. The angel Gabriel appeared to Zechariah and to Mary in Luke 1. In Matthew 1, an unnamed angel appeared to Joseph in a dream, telling him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife. In Luke 2, one angel and a multitude of angels appeared to the shepherds with the greatest birth announcement of all time. An angel also warned Joseph to take the child to Egypt and return after King Herod died.  

          Angelic figurines are not merely sweet Christmas decorations; they played a vital part of the story. Their presence demonstrates the wonder of the event. 

          2) The glory of God was manifested. This is also a case where familiarity with the Bible stories tends to minimize the seriousness of what happened. When the angels were announcing Jesus’ birth and praising God, the Bible says, “the glory of the Lord shone around them” (Luke 2:9).

          The glory of God is created by visible radiance that God uses to reveal his splendor. While no one can look directly at God and live, God has, on occasion, chosen to reveal himself as pure light. These manifestations have been extremely rare. It’s possible that those first days of creation (before the sun was created on Day 4) it was God’s glory shining by day. God’s glory led Israel into the wilderness. God’s glory filled the temple but later departed. In heaven, we won’t need a sun anymore because God’s glory will be the light. It may’ve been God’s glory that blinded Paul on the Damascus Road, but apart from these wonderful appearances, God’s glory has hardly ever been seen in the Bible.  

          When the glory of God was shown all about the angels, it was a wonderfully big deal. While you sing all the Christmas hymns that include bits about God’s glory, don’t forget to pause in your hearts and say, “Wow!”

          3) The birth of Jesus fulfilled lots of incredible promises. If you know anything about the Bible, you realize that there had been predictions of the birth of Jesus long before the fact. Many of the details of Christmas can be found right in the pages of the Old Testament. Certainly, they all became more clear after the fact. Many of the prophecies seemed obscure at the time. After Jesus was born, however, many knocked themselves on the head and thought, “I should’ve seen it all along.”

          Although there are literally hundreds of traces of the Old Testament obviously fulfilled by Jesus in hindsight, there were many good promises that were clearly fulfilled as well. Even the scholars of Jesus’ day knew that God had promised to send the Messiah, the deliverer of Israel. They knew for certain that he must be born in the line of King David and in the city of Bethlehem.  

 
          In fact, Jesus had been promised all the way back in the Garden of Eden. Genesis 3:15 said that the seed or offspring of the woman would crush the serpent’s head. That promise became richer as the Old Testament unfolded. It would be through Abraham’s seed that all the families of the world would be blessed (Genesis 12:3). He would go through the line of Isaac, Jacob, and then Judah. He would be a king (Genesis 49:10).  He would be in the line of King David and would reign over God’s people forever (2 Samuel 7:13).  

          So when Gabriel shows up and tells Mary that her baby would be receiving the throne of his father David and would reign forever and of his kingdom, there would be no end (Luke 1:32-33), this was a wonderfully big announcement. God’s faithful promises are fulfilled in the Christmas baby.

          4) A virgin really did conceive a son. While this point became a mere battle cry during the seventies and eighties among certain church circles, the Bible clearly says it, and it is a wonderful thing. Mary asked Gabriel, “How will this be since I am a virgin?” And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore, the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God” (Luke 1:34-35).  

          If angelic appearances and seeing the glory of God were rare and wonderful, this thing has never happened before or since. Don’t lose out on the wonder of Christmas. This was some baby. He came to take away the sins of his people (Matthew 1:21). Do you need your sins taken away? Only Jesus can do it. The most wonderful thing you could do at Christmas is to cry out to him to share his mercy with you. He’ll do it. That is what he came for on that first wonderful Christmas.