Sermon Tone Analysis
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By Pastor Glenn Pease
An aviator trainer told of how he would take students up in a plane, and deliberately fly in all directions to confuse them.
Then he would turn the controls over to the student and say, "Now take us home."
It was the job of the student to learn how to find the radar beam, and stay on it until they were back at home base.
The birds and fish have their homing instinct built in, but man needs to have outside help to get home.
Paul is helping the Galatian Christians develop their homing instinct.
He wants them to get back to the place where they can feel they are really a part of the family of God.
They are confused by the legalist, and feel disoriented and uncertain about their relation to God and the law.
Paul helps them get back to home base, and to their freedom in Christ, by following the beam God sent into the world on that first Christmas.
Follow this light, and you will know where Christmas comes from, and it will take you home.
For where it comes from is where you want to be.
This is not a mere seasonal question.
It is a supreme question for all time-where does Christmas come from?
The answer can guide us through confusion and uncertainty back to home base, in the very heart of God.
In this passage, Paul indicates that Christmas comes from three sources.
First of all-
I. CHRISTMAS COMES FROM HEAVEN.
In verse 4, Paul says, "When the time had fully come God sent forth His Son."
The God of the Bible is a God of action.
He gets involved in history to achieve goals for man, and to develop relationships with man.
He is not like Aristotle's God-The Unmoved Mover, who is so perfected that he needs nothing, and so he does nothing.
The God of the Bible does have needs.
He needs to redeem man and restore him to the family of God, because He is love, and love cannot remain unmoved.
The forces of darkness have enslaved man, and love demands that they be set free.
Christmas comes from heaven, because God cares about what happens on earth.
He sent His Son to bring light into earth's darkness.
As American Christians, who enjoy both political and spiritual freedom, it is hard for us to appreciate the liberating light that God sent in Jesus.
We have the light and the liberty, and, therefore, we take it for granted.
That has not been the case with all Christians in the 20th century.
Hans Lilje, the evangelical pastor who resisted Hitler, and ended up in a concentration camp, tells of his experience in his book, The Valley Of The Shadow.
"Christmas was near.
Christmas Eve in prison is
so terrible because of wave of sentimentality passes
through the gloomy building.
Everyone thinks of
his own loved ones, for whom he is longing; everyone
suffers because he doesn't know how he will be celebrating
the Festival of Divine and Human Love.
Recollections of
childhood comes surging back, almost overwhelming some,
especially those who are condemned to death, and who
cannot help looking back at their past lives.
It is no
accident that in prison suicide attempts are particularly
numerous on this special day; in our case, however, the
most remarkable thing was the sentimental softness which
came over our guards.
Most of these S. S. men were
young fellows, who were usually unnecessarily brutal in
their behavior, but when Christmas Eve came we hardly
knew them--the spirit of this evening made such a deep
impression upon them."
He goes on to tell of the camp Commandant, who allowed a few of the prisoners to get together and sing on Christmas Eve.
They were in bondage to the forces of evil, but they could see that even those who kept them imprisoned, knew it was wrong and contrary to the spirit of Christ.
They could see the light of heaven penetrating even the Nazi darkness.
Lilje wrote, "Upon us shines the Eternal Light, filling the world with radiance bright."
Their very darkness made them see, more clearly, the light they had received from heaven, in the gift God gave at Christmas.
Helmut Gollwitzer was another Christian leader who spent Christmas in prison, during World War II.
He was a German held captive in Russia.
In his book, Unwilling Journey, he writes of planning to celebrate Christmas in a setting deprived of all that makes life worth living-
"The Russian camp leader had given his permission, but some
of the prisoners objected loudly and even begged me to forgo
every reminder of Christmas; "Only by not thinking about it--
that's the only way I can endure it; if you celebrate I shan't be
able to stand it and I shall hang myself...."
He did not hang himself; not because at the decisive moment
he was to cowardly but because he had seen the Christmas
Light which shines in the darkness.
Not "not to think about it",
but rather to think about it with all one's might--that was the
lesson that Christmas Eve taught us.
But what exactly were
we to think about?
To immerse oneself in that dream could
not of itself bring salvation.
Homesickness filled our hearts too
bitterly in those days.
But when we heard the Christmas Gospel
and discussed it, a miraculous light seemed to have been
turned on; "God hath not forgotten those who sat in darkness."
On earth there was no power that could or would help us.
Surrounded by vast forests, we were forgotten and abandoned.
We hardly dared to hope that things would ever be different,
and yet we could not stop hoping.
Was it that someone was
thinking of us and knew about us, someone stronger even than
Stalin and the N. K. V. D.?"
Here were men who knew that Christmas came from heaven, because there was no other source of light and hope, strong enough to overcome earth's darkness.
In 1944, Corrie Ten Boom spent Christmas in the Nazi prison camp, Ravensbruck.
She tells of unbelievable darkness.
Christmas trees were set up between the barracks.
The bodies of dead prisoners were thrown under them.
She tried to talk to others about Christmas, but they mocked and sneered.
One feeble minded woman was crying for her momma in the night, and Corrie was able to comfort her.
She told her about Jesus, the only light that could penetrate that darkness.
The woman did pray to receive Christ, and Corrie writes, "then I knew why I had to spend this Christmas in Ravensbruck."
The point of these three examples, that represent many thousands, is that Christmas comes from heaven.
But all to often, only those who lose their earthly light and liberty fully recognize this truth.
When we have so many earthly lights, we sometimes fail to see the beam from heaven.
Thank God we do not have to spend Christmas deprived of liberty, love, light, and laughter.
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