Bill Harvison

I doubt anyone would disagree with me when I say that America has become a consumer nation. We want everything and we want it right now, and it drives our society.

Sadly, our hyper-consumerism has also trickled into the Christmas season. You see this in everything between Thanksgiving to New Year’s; it’s just one big rush between school events, office parties and family gatherings. Before you know it the Christmas season has come and gone, and it ends up being a blur. 

Sadly, this has even trickled into the church itself, between the church events, church programs and parties that take place during the Christmas season. It seems that we have all but forgotten what we’re really celebrating. Christmas is about family, Christmas is about Christmas trees. It’s about gifts, and that is all wonderful and we celebrate that. However, none of the gatherings, parties, events, decorations or gifts truly represent what this holiday is about.  

Christmas is about remembering the day that the perfect gift, the greatest gift to ever be given to all mankind, was sent from heaven to be born in a lowly little manger in a small town for the whole world to know.

No other time in history have I ever read or been told where shepherds came to worship at a birth. No other time have I ever been told or read where wise men traveled several months to come and see a newborn baby. So there was definitely something special about that Christmas.

I think we need to get back to remembering the most important part about Christmas. It’s not the Christmas tree. It’s not the pretty ribbons, the presents or even Santa Claus. It’s about remembering the birth of Jesus Christ, the prophesied messiah, the Lord God himself. 

His birth was a wonderful time. His birth was a time that would set forth into motion the greatest event ever.

Jesus’s birth that first Christmas set into motion his death. We even see this in the gifts that the wise men brought to him, symbolizing that, even at his birth, his death was already preeminent. Myrrh was used in biblical times like an embalming fluid to help control the odor of the bodies. It was symbolizing how his body would be given, his body would be slain and his body would be buried in the ground. Praise God his body did not stay in the tomb! Three days later, he arose from the grave, savior of the world.

What started in the lonely manger in Bethlehem 33 years before fulfilled prophecy and truly gave us the greatest gift. 

Let’s not forget what Christmas really means. Christmas gives you a gift that money cannot buy.  Christmas gives you the opportunity that only God can give, and that is eternal salvation with him.

“Joy To The World,” a classic Christmas hymn that we will sing and hear throughout the season, truly describes Christmas. Joy to the world the lord has come! Christ came as a baby, died as a man and rose as the savior. It is my prayer that you know him today, not as the baby, but as the savior.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

(Bill Harvison is the senior pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Powell.)