Word of Salvation – Vol.43 No.45 – December 1998
True Peace this Christmas?
A Christmas Sermon by Rev S Bajema on Micah 5:5a
Suggested Hymns:
BoW 271; 277; 279; 268; 265
1st Reading: Micah 5:2-5; 2nd Reading: Matthew 2:13-23
Sermonette 1:
THIS PEACE IS… LIVING DESPITE OUR STRIFE
Congregation,
It has been nearly two thousand years since Jesus Christ came and shared in our humanity by being born in a stable in a small town in Palestine. That’s twenty centuries ago, since He lay as a baby upon an animal feeding trough.
The Divine Deity graced us with His presence. But has it really changed us?
It has been nearly twenty-eight hundred years since the words of Micah were first declared. Those words which spoke of this Messiah becoming the peace of His people; the One who though born in lowly circumstances would rise to claim the throne which was rightfully His own; the King who would gather in all His subjects from around the very ends of the earth.
He’s been – and He’s done it. Or has He?
It’s all very nice for the world to use a baby being born as the focus for a time when they can feel and be a little kinder to others; when the Scrooges in our society get a bit of a battering for not sharing that something extra. But what change has Christ’s coming really made?
It might have been awe-inspiring for the shepherds to be confronted by the great heavenly host singing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favour rests” – still, where is that peace? How come there are more troubles than ever before this so-called Prince of Peace came along?
Mind you, the Bible does speak honestly about this. We have just read of the escape to Egypt, and the terrible slaughter of all those children two years and under in Bethlehem, because Herod, like so many of the world’s megalomaniacs before him and since, couldn’t stand the barest whiff of opposition to his illegal and brutal puppet regime.
The Christ-child just survives, and His life later in ministry won’t show anything different with His treatment at the hands of men. He really wasn’t given any peace on this earth. Well, not peace as the world likes to know it. For what the world tries to celebrate today is an absence of strife; they think that Christmas ought to be a time when we can be materially and emotionally happy.
If there is one phrase which I have heard repeated so often of late, it would have to be this remark after there has been a personal or community tragedy, as for instance after the bush fires, “Nah, it’s not Christmas for us this year.” And they’ve missed the whole point! THIS PEACE IS… LIVING DESPITE OUR STRIFE.
You see, the true spirit of Christmas is what keeps us going in spite of whatever happens. Christmas isn’t meant to be a ‘merry’ time but a blessed memory time. In the words of John Calvin, Jesus Christ is the peace of His people “because He will drive away all harmful things, and will be armed with strength and invincible power to check all the ungodly, that they may not make war on the children of God, or to prevent them in their course, if they do make any trouble.”
The sense is of a direction to our lives, which the LORD enables us to keep on living despite our strife! Just like in Micah’s time, when he acknowledged that there would be the Assyrian invasion, he yet prophesied the LORD’s keeping His Church still. And, indeed, in spite of so many other enemies which have confronted the people of God ever since – whether they be the Seleucid Syrians, the Romans, the Inquisition, the Modernists, or the Communists.
They’ll all be checked and repulsed by spirit-empowered leaders – whether the Maccabean patriots, the apostles, Athanasius, Augustine, Wycliffe and Luther, and whoever else would be needed to preserve the community of true believers from conquest or extinction.
It’s of great comfort that the number ‘seven’ in the second part of verse 5 shows us the full and perfect work of God. So, to have seven shepherds raised to protect the church is easily enough. But the LORD adds still one more. There will be ‘eight’ shepherds; one more than enough; exactly so that we will always have enough to continue on our Christian living despite our strife.
For that strife is our strife. While it is of our making, because we in our sinfulness opened this whole Pandora’s Box the world has become, with the Lord’s grace and power it may be undone. It’s as Dwight Moody said: “A great many people are trying to make peace, but that’s already been done. God hasn’t left it for us to do; all we have to do is to enter into it.”
Dear friend, have you tried to make peace the world’s way? As yet another conference for peace was held, did you hope that mankind might work it out then? They didn’t, did they? Ah, perhaps in one area and for a time there was an absence of conflict. But it didn’t change their hearts underneath. That’s one thing we just cannot change. Yet, God can. God can take life’s broken pieces and give us His unbroken peace.
Perhaps you’re struggling right now in your walk with the Lord. Maybe your family gathering this Christmas reminds you of all the hope and joy and peace which you don’t have. And yet it seemed once it was there.
You know – it hasn’t gone away. You have. And the Prince of Peace has just called you back. Come home this Christmas to your Heavenly Father; join with your family in the faith. You know His Spirit can help you stay.
Let’s sing now, “Silent Night! Holy Night!” And let’s notice in this hymn that while the first Christmas wasn’t so peaceful physically, yet it has peace spiritually because the Peace Himself is there… (Singing Bow 279)
3rd Reading: Colossians 1:15-23
Sermonette 2:
THIS PEACE IS…LIVING IN HIS LIFE
Dear Family in the Faith.
There is a passage in the New Testament which the commentators believe is a direct reference to our text in Micah. It is found in Ephesians 2 verse 14, when the apostle Paul declares that Jesus Christ “himself is our peace”.
What we have just heard from Colossians is the twin passage to that word in Ephesians. Both Ephesians and Colossians are speaking of a time after Christ has come, and so they’re reflecting on the impact of His coming.
The apostle describes how that vital part of Christ’s work for us through the Holy Spirit poured out at Pentecost means we are guided and strengthened by the LORD in a far more complete and thorough way than the Church was before that time.
That’s why Gentiles – non-Jews, you and me – are now in the Church. Jesus Christ has become our peace! Now it is through Jesus Christ that anyone may enter directly into the presence of God by faith. There is no more code of Old Testament Law, for all those sacrifices which it needed, have been offered up once and for all by Jesus Himself. He is our ‘shalom’.
Many of us would have heard that Hebrew word ‘shalom’. Most commonly it’s translated as ‘peace’ in the Old Testament. But it is a true peace. You see, this is not the peace when things are given a nice plastic coat of shiny new paint on the outside, while inside there’s nothing changed. This is a peace of wholeness and unity. It’s a totally restored relationship. It’s just like starting over. In fact, it is, in the most restored way possible!
Congregation, God’s way of peace in Christ has reached its highest and most fulfilling part. It’s this last and final phase which began with Christ’s human birth in the hovel called a stable, and being laid upon a manger, which – no matter how much one romanticises it – is the animal’s feeding trough.
But we need to see more in that birth. We have to realise that this is a new way God is showing Himself to this world. From that physical relationship to Israel in the Old Testament, which just didn’t work, Jesus wants us to see that there is now a higher, spiritual relationship that does work. As Colossians 1 said, “And God placed all things under Christ’s feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way” (vs.22 f).
Can you see it now? THIS PEACE IS… LIVING IN HIS LIFE.
So if Christ is described as the first-fruit of those believers who have died, how much isn’t He just as much the first-fruit in His birth? He becomes the precursor, the forerunner, of all those yet to be born into His Life. Or, for that matter, those who so much looked for His fulfilment but didn’t meet it on this earth. As the expectant Simeon, holding the Christ-child in his arms, praises God, “For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel” (Luke 2:30 ff).
Congregation, that’s why when someone raises with us again their cry that they didn’t have much of a Christmas this year, tell them, no one had a Christmas this year, for Christmas has already been, and all we can do is remember the earth-shattering effect that Christmas had.
And then let’s be ready to tell them about the peace in our hearts which lifts us beyond these sad surroundings, the peace which lifts us up, to share the same view as those hosts of angels had, praising God in that sky above Bethlehem!
THIS PEACE IS… LIVING IN HIS LIFE.
Psalm 91 sings of the same, “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust’.” (vs.1f)
Not even the Gates of Hell can prevail against that, dear friends, for you are in Zion’s holy city, safe in the protection of the eternal Prince of Peace, God’s own Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
There can be no such thing as “The Christmas from Hell”, because Christ came from heaven, and while He would certainly suffer the effects of hell on the cross, His birth showed the parting in the door through which the Light did shine, and still does shine – even right this very minute!
It may have been nearly two thousand years ago that a star led the wise men to the Christ-child. But there is still a star today which shines the way to the Saviour – actually there are thousands upon thousands of stars all shining toward the Lord of all.
Dear believer you are one of those stars. And, praise God, I am another! Let it all shine out; let the Light lead you always. For… THIS PEACE IS… LIVING IN HIS LIFE.
Amen.
PRAYER:
Let’s pray… O Son of the Father’s Love, Babe at Bethlehem. How much don’t we bow in your presence now! That we, as inadequate, weak and sinful as we are, have yet been loved into eternity through your doing and dying on our behalf. You whom the angels sing of, whom the shepherds travelled to, and whom the wise men bowed before; may we, too, worship you, not only now, but forevermore. Amen.