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By Pastor Glenn Pease
Mr. and Mrs. Nudelman were on a 50th wedding anniversary trip to Paris where they visited the Louvre.
As they slowly walked past the masterpieces of the ages, Mrs. Nudelman stopped in front of a huge Renaissance painting called, The Child In The Manger.
As she stood there, Mr. Nudelman asked her why she looked so puzzled.
"Don't you know what the scene is about?"
"Certainly I know what the scene shows, but I can't figure something out".
He asked, "what's to figure out?"
She responded, "Here is a family living in a stable with animals, the floor is dirt, covered with straw, and the little baby is almost naked: How could they afford to have their picture painted?"
People do not see the same thing just because they are looking at the same thing.
This is especially true when people look at the nativity scene.
A mother was explaining the scene to her young daughter.
"See, next to the manger there is a man, and his name is Joseph, and in the manger there is a little baby, the baby Jesus, and the woman in the picture is reaching over to pick up the child.
Now who do you think she is?"
The girl thought for awhile, and then she said, "the baby-sitter."
Everyone is conditioned by their own experience to see different things in the Christmas scene.
The eyes play a major role in seeing the details of Christmas.
The shepherds were not sleeping, but were watching their flocks by night, and thus they were wide awake with their eyes searching the darkness for any threat to their sheep.
God honored their caring eyes with a sight that has never been equaled.
The Angel of the Lord appeared to them, and their first response was that of terror.
The radical brightness of God's glory filled them with fear.
The angel had to assure them that what they were seeing was not a threat, but a blessing.
He told them of a sign to look for; a baby wrapped in cloth and lying in a manger.
Their eyes were to be their guide to the gift of God.
Then a great company of angels appeared, filling both their eyes with glory and their ears with praise.
Their response was, "let's go to Bethlehem and see."
Seeing is believing, can be a valid motto, and it was for them, for they had received a message that only the eyes could confirm.
They had to see the sign.
And when they did, verse 17 says, "Having seen Him they spread the word", and verse 20 says, "They praised God for all they had heard and seen."
The shepherds became the first eye-witnesses of the Christmas story.
The story of the wise men follows the same theme.
They were not sheep watchers, they were star watchers in the night.
God also bore witness to them through their eyes.
They saw the Star of Bethlehem and knew it was a sign of wonder, and that God had sent a great king into the world.
They too followed their eyes to the Christ child, and became part of the Christmas scene, and the first eye-witnesses to the Gentile world.
The point of all of this is, God made the message of Christmas a visual message to appeal to the eyes.
Christmas from day one has always been a season for seeing.
By His coming into the world Jesus changed how men see reality.
He changed how man sees God and history, and how he sees the role of man and the goal of God.
In the first stanza of a Christmas hymn, I expressed it this way-
Before Jesus came to earth
God just seemed so far away.
But now because of His birth,
He's here with us on life's way.
Everything is different now,
Since the Lord came into view.
Before Jesus, now we bow,
For He's made everything new.
This is seen in the fact that Christmas is the season of the most radical visual changes in the church and the culture.
There is no other time of the year when we decorate the church and see the whole community put up lights, trees, and decorations.
What is this massive visual change of the environment?
It is a witness to the eye-witness nature of the Christmas message.
The message of Christmas is, the invisible God became visible, and the eyes of man beheld Him in the flesh.
The love of God became visible in a life that could be seen.
The goodness of God was no longer only a message to the ears, but now it was a message to the eyes of man.
Again, I said it in a chorus,
God you just didn't mean maybe
When you said this world you love.
You sent us this Christmas baby
To show us how much you love.
When the shepherds saw the baby, that was the beginning of eye-witness Christianity.
The gospel, ever since, has been an appeal to the eyes.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus and see who God is; see how much He loves; see the price He pays to save you.
Every light at Christmas; every decoration; every shining piece of paper and plastic is to shout at us, look and see.
See the salvation God has given us in the gift of His dear Son.
Christmas is a holiday of the eye.
It is a season of the sight where seeing is the source of our pleasure and delight.
Let me share with you what I saw for the first time as we approach this Christmas.
I saw that I had one more baby than I thought I had.
You do to.
Jesus was born as the universal baby.
Whose baby was Jesus?
Was He God's baby, Joseph baby, Mary's baby?
Yes He was all of those, but the Bible stresses that Jesus was born to the people He came to seek and to save.
The angel said to the shepherds, "A Savior has been born to you."
Not, a Savior has been born to Mary and Joseph, but the baby is born to you.
This is the same kind of language we see in the prophecy of Isaiah 9:6, "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on His shoulders.
And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."
The message of Christmas is not that God so loved Mary and Joseph that He gave them a wondrous baby.
Not even, God so loved Israel, He gave them a wondrous baby.
The message is, God so loved the world He gave the whole world a wondrous baby.
The Christ child is everybody's child.
There are no childless people in this world for everyone has one child born to them, the baby of Bethlehem.
Do men have a baby born to them?
Yes! Do singles have a baby born to them?
Yes! Everybody that God loves has had this baby born to them, and God loves the whole world.
You can't go to anyone on this planet and say Jesus was not born to you.
He was born to all, and He died for all, for He is God's gift to all.
I thought I only had three babies, but now I see I have four.
Jesus not only died for me, He was born for me so that I might through Him be a part of God's family.
Everyone who accepts this gift of the Christmas baby is part of the family of God.
Our new birth as babes in God's kingdom depends upon our receiving the babe of Bethlehem as our baby, born to us as our Savior.
If men do not take God's child as theirs, He will not take them as His child.
The gift has to be both given and received for the circle of love to be completed.
We must receive God's Son to be received as God's sons.
John 1:12 says, "..To all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God."
Christmas is a celebration of the birthday of Jesus, but also our own, for the two are directly connected.
Our birthday into the kingdom of God is directly related to our acceptance of the gift of God, the babe of Bethlehem.
The celebration of His birthday is our acknowledgment that we too have a new birthday to celebrate because of Him.
If He was never born to us, we could never be born again into the family of God.
Christmas is the celebration of His birth to us and our birth to Him.
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