Life Project Blog

Earlier today, I posed a question relating to Christmas and compromises we might make relative to custom and tradition; I’d like to thank everyone who participated in the discussion which I found to be quite interesting.

Do we really compromise the true “Christmas Story” of Scripture at this time of year with our customs and traditions…?

If you’re on your game today, you can see that these are two quite different questions, and although neither is a “trick question”, answering can be a bit tricky. I say this because there is a rather big difference between what we call “Christmas” and what we call the “Christmas Story” from Scripture.

“Christmas” is what we celebrate on December 25; it’s a holiday complete with symbols, songs, foods, pageants, church services, stories, reindeer, shopping malls, red kettles, and logs on the fire… Quite frankly, it is in itself a compromise of the “Christmas Story” from Scripture. The “Christmas Story” is the complete account of the birth of Christ, its prophetic roots and God’s purpose in sending His Son to earth in redemptive history, and this has nothing at all to do with Christmas.

Christmas, the holiday, has an unholy beginning and a very checkered past with its roots in Roman paganism. Even the very date, December 25, was a Roman feast day for their god Saturn that was called “Saturnalia”. The early church adopted the holiday to a more Christian theme late in the 4^th or early in the 5^th century, since the Government had made Christianity the State religion. I’m not quite sure what you could call that, other than a compromise, particularly when you consider that the early Christian writers seemed to believe that Jesus had been in the spring, not in the winter.

Naturally, anyone not so sure about this might do a little research, and in the process, you’ll also discover that most of the symbols of Christmas have pagan roots as well.

Christmas, the holiday, has a long past as something celebrated more like a wild New Year’s Eve party than a holy day. In America, it was banned entirely in Puritan New England for instance. Congress was in session on Christmas Day until the Administration of U.S. Grant, when it became our first official national holiday… that was in the 1870’s. The idea of making it popular to include Christ in Christmas in Protestant America became popular in the mid 19^th century.

This is why I say that Christmas is a compromise in itself with the Christmas Story. Yet it has a distinct tie with the Christmas Story, one that might be much more profound than being called the birthday of Jesus, for the tie to which I refer is a redemptive one.

It is a story of redemption because a day of drunken revelry, originally a party for a succession of pagan idols has become a day in which people all over the world hear the story of Jesus Christ. In many cases, this is the only time of year the story is told. It is a season when many people will be open to hearing about Jesus, who would never listen any other time; they let their guards down for just a short time each year. As a disciple of the King of kings, how can we let such an opportunity pass us by?

Each year the Christmas Season is a season of salvation for thousands, and if that isn’t a story of redemption then I don’t know what would be. So, I’d say that while the whole thing is one big compromise, sometimes compromise is a good thing.

Genesis 17

On a certain day Abram was going about his business as usual when God came to him out of the blue…

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.” (17:1-2)

For the first time in the relationship, God is giving Abram covenant terms (conditions) that he must follow, beginning in verse 1 with “walk before me faithfully and be blameless.” In the next several verses (3-8) God promises Abram that he will not only have a son, but that he will be the father of many nations, and changes his name to Abraham. As the father of nations, he will also be the ancestor of kings, and God’s covenant will extend to all of Abraham’s descendants, and those of his entire household. The land of Canaan will be their homeland and they will take possession it, something Abram had not yet been able to do. There is another condition as well, for all males must be circumcised.

In 17:9-14 God makes it abundantly clear that each and every male must be circumcised as a sign of the covenant, including anyone in the household who is not a blood relation and that if they do so, God will be their God, and the God of their descendants. If they do not do so, they are to be cast out.

Sarai is also to be blessed, for she in spite of their ages, will bear a son through whom the covenant will pass to future generations; her name was changed to Sarah.  Abraham’s reaction was to laugh, for how could they produce children at their ages? He suggested that Ishmael could be the son through whom the covenant would pass, but God, while willing to bless Ishmael with a great nation of his own, insisted that Abraham and Sarah would have the Son of Promise; they would name him Isaac, and he would be born within the year. To his everlasting credit, Abraham stopped laughing and was circumcised on that very day, along with all of the males in his household.

Let’s take just a moment and ask ourselves a simple question: Why did God wait around until Abraham was 99 and Sarah was 90 to fulfill His promise to give them a son? Was He too busy in another galaxy or something?

While we’re asking ourselves questions, let’s ask another one: Why did the Son of God come to earth as an infant born to a teenager in a manger in Bethlehem instead of coming on the wings of angels into downtown Jerusalem?

I can suggest one answer: God’s power is best seen when the humans in the picture are weakest. Certainly a son born to a 90 year old, fathered by a 99 year old is just as unlikely as a child born to a virgin, for as we know, both are not possible in the normal course of events.

Am I on the right track?

Genesis 16

The Christmas Story would never be complete without an examination of the friction between human customs and traditions and the promises and ways of God. In our text, Sarai is getting old, yet she has never conceived a child. She knows that God has promised a son to her husband, but so far, God hasn’t come through with the heir. Custom in those days dictated that if an important person like Abram didn’t have an heir by his wife, then she could conceive a child through her slave girl, and Sarai encouraged Abram to use this option to help God get the job done, one might say. Abram took his wife’s advice, and Hagar, the slave girl, became pregnant.

From this point forward, there would be no end of grief for Abram and Sarai; there are consequences to such things as they had done.

Hagar, realizing that her stock was rising, became unpleasant with her mistress, and Sarai complained of this to her husband who seems to have tried to wash his hands of the entire matter. Sarai sent the pregnant Hagar away into the wilderness… where Hagar had an encounter with the angel of the Lord. It would seem that God was disapproving of such treatment as Hagar had received at the hands of Sarai.

For our purposes in this survey, I will leave the details of this continuing saga for you to read on your own should you choose to do so. I must point out however, that there is a great lesson for us to apply as we celebrate Christmas, for in doing so, we must come face to face with the awesome promises of God, promises that have been fulfilled as well as a few which have yet to be culminated. At the same time, we deal every day with human custom and tradition, especially at this time of year, and sometimes these come into conflict.

I am curious to see if you have any thoughts on this: This Christmas season, when custom, tradition and God come into conflict, which will we choose? I know that in my personal case, I always say that I will choose God’s promises over tradition and custom, and yet I am always under pressure to compromise so that we can have both. There’s always a way to justify doing things, don’t you agree?

Yet this is what Abram and Sarai did, they compromised, and they came to regret that compromise, in fact it nearly tore them apart at one point.

Or… maybe you don’t see any conflicts at all. If so I’m sure we’d be interested to hear about that view as well.

Genesis 15:7-21

In this passage, the conversation of our last post continues, this time Abraham asks God how he can be sure that God will give him the land of Canaan, an amazing question all things considered. God’s reply is even more amazing: He swears out a covenant.

So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”

Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. (15:9-11)

God’s response was to tell Abram to gather certain animals together, which Abram did and cut them in half, laying the carcasses out with the halves side by side. In doing so, Abram consented to the covenant in blood without swearing an oath which is not the Old Testament norm.

Then, God swears an oath:

Beginning in verse 13, God tells Abram that his descendants will be taken to Egypt where they will be enslaved 400 years which is a part of the Covenant we don’t often bring up in Sunday School. Abram will not be involved in that phase as he will have died at a ripe old age. Then God will save the people out of Egypt after they become enriched from the wealth of that land (15:13-16).

Next, God passed through the carcasses in the form of fire, swearing that He gives the Land to Abram’s descendants (15:17-21). Normally both parties would march through the bloody carcasses, symbolizing that if they broke their covenant, this would be their fate, but here only God passes through. Why was it done this way?

There was no way for Abraham to avoid sinning against God because there was no provision for atonement for sins in this covenant; that would come along much later. When you step back and consider these incredible events, you quickly find yourself in one of those “Wow” moments, for God had sworn and passed through the blood on Abram’s behalf. This means that God took the penalty for the sins of Abram and those who would follow upon Himself, setting the stage for our Christmas Story, for when the Lamb of God appeared as a babe in that manger, God was fulfilling His obligation to Abram to pay for his sin.

Merry Christmas indeed!