THE
GREATEST CHRISTMAS GIFT
A Sermon by
Dr. Walter A. Maier
“The
Dayspring
from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in
darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of
peace.” Saint Luke 1:78,79.
CHRIST, THOU LIGHT OF THE WORLD: In an
age of deep darkness we plead with Thee, Thou “Light to lighten the
Gentiles”: With the radiance of Thy redeeming love banish the darkness
with which sin has enshrouded our lives!! Without Thee we cannot find
the way to heaven, know the truth of Thy redemption, nor obtain life
everlasting! Therefore we contritely confess the evil in our souls
which would separate us from Thee and send us to hell. Humbly we
beseech Thee, who in the fullness of time and with the fullness of
mercy wast born in Bethlehem for our salvation, to illumine our hearts
as “the Dayspring from on high,” that we may love Thee with increasing
loyalty and sincerer devotion as our Savior and eternal Advocate! Give
Thyself to the sick and suffering, the forsaken and forlorn, the
burdened and bereaved! By Thy Spirit’s indwelling, help them this
Christmas season to cling closely to Thee for joy, courage, and
victory! Remember the many millions suffering from selfish global
strife! Guide the President, the Congress, and every official in
authority to follow the paths which lead to truth and a God-pleasing
peace! Thou art our Lord, our Savior, our King, our Friend, our
heavenly Helper. Hear us, then, and help us for Thy name’s sake! Amen!
One busy, overcrowded week still
remains before the anniversary of our Savior’s birth dawns on a
blood-soaked world—seven days of buying and selling, wrapping and
unwrapping, giving and receiving, planning and replanning, a week that
will probably mark the nation’s all-time high in sales, with newspaper
and magazine advertisements displaying $98 nightgowns, $245 porcelain
monkey figures eight inches high, $19,000 mink coats. While our
soldiers are caked in mud and ice as they struggle through European
blizzards or battle filth and vermin in the tropics, comfortable
unconcerned Americans eat $12 holiday dinners, drink $20 holiday
whisky, and complain about the scarcity of holiday cigarettes.
While Americans
will give costlier gifts then ever before, this fourth wartime
Christmas will not be the happiest for many. Eight-five million
packages have been sent to our fighting forces overseas, but you know
that our men would gladly forego all these remembrances if only they
could spend next Sunday and Monday with their dear ones at home. Money
cannot buy real joy, even during this festive season. A few days ago a
Saint Louis newspaper discovered a millionaire who for almost six years
had lived as a hermit in one of our city’s fashionable hotels. During
all this time he never answered his telephone, opened the door when a
visitor knocked, spoke to the maid who cleans his room or to the
waiters who bring his food. Such people cannot have a smattering of the
Christmas happiness which faith brings a hard-pressed white-collar
worker. Besides, many homes of wealth are beset by sin, burdened by
pain, cursed by quarreling.
If only they were
ready to accept God’s Christmas Remembrance the most marvelous and
magnificent Gift even heaven knows! History tells us of some costly
presents in the past. In 1522 Charles V of Germany received the most
expensive piece of baked goods ever produced. The Emperor had borrowed
about a million dollars from Jacob Fugger, the international banker,
who on Christmas day placed the canceled note in an immense Yuletide
pie. With a single gulp Charles swallowed the note, and the
indebtedness was wiped out for all time. Every believer, however, has a
far more remarkable receipt of canceled liabilities when he worships
the Child at Bethlehem as God incarnate, the Redeemer of the world, and
the Rescuer of his soul.
If the pile of your
Christmas packages is smaller this year then usual; indeed, if, as
friends forget you, there is no pile, you can have a remembrance in
comparison with which all jewels, bonds, expensive furs, costly
clothing holiday bonuses are but as dust and ashes. Therefore, with
your eyes directed even now to Bethlehem, take reverent time, under the
Holy Spirit’s guidance, for preparing your hearts for
THE
GREATEST CHRISTMAS GIFT
the Savior’s light and the Savior’s
peace, as promised by the pledge of our text (Saint Luke, chapter one,
verses seventy-eight and seventy-nine): “The Dayspring from on high
hath visited us, to give light to them
that sit in darkness and in the shadow
of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
1- IT IS CHRIST AND HIS LIGHT
These strengthening
words were spoken by John the Baptist’s father, Zacharias. America
needs men like him, Scripture-loving, truth-testifying husbands who
will help their sons become powerful servants of God, as was John. That
wilderness preacher treated rich and poor alike, never sugar-coated his
warnings of eternal death to the unrepentant, but repeatedly
proclaimed, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the
world!” May the Holy Spirit give us more faithful followers of Christ
who will not let business, pleasure, or other selfish concerns keep
them from leading their children to Jesus, and, especially in this
pre-Christmas week, from finding time to tell their boys and girls of
Bethlehem’s Babe and its blessing for their souls! In these modern
Zachariases, who, keeping first things first, know that the Lord
expects them to teach real religion to their sons and daughters, lie
some of our country’s highest hopes. Christian fathers of America,
don’t fail us in this grave emergency!
May the
enlightening Spirit also give us devoted, faith-filled mothers like
Elisabeth, Zacharias’ wife! She, as many of you women, had endured one
of life’s deepest sorrows: she had been married for many years, but the
Almighty had not blessed her with a baby. Humanly speaking, she was far
too old for that now. How inexpressibly happy she must have been when,
believing that "“with God nothing shall be impossible," the Lord kept
His Word and presented her with baby John! If some of you wives have no
little one of your own to cuddle and caress, don’t let your soul become
embittered! Don’t accuse God! Don’t try the sinful proposals openly
discussed in our newspapers! Do what Elisabeth did! Take it to your
heavenly Father in prayer! He has often helped when experts have
failed; and if, in His unsearchable judgment, your arms are to remain
empty, He can fill your heart with the compensation of other great
blessings.
Now, when John the
Baptist was born, his father sang one of the most remarkable hymns of
praise the Bible contains. It is recorded in only twelve verses at the
end of Saint Luke’s first chapter, but I ask you to read them
thoughtfully, prayerfully. First of all, Zacharias emphasizes that the
birth of John as the forerunner of Jesus was foretold in ancient
prophecies. This miracle of fulfilled promise is one of the wonders of
Christmas that even believers often overlook. Every major part of the
Nativity was described centuries in advance. Think of it, ages before
Bethlehem, the Old Testament pages predicted that the Messiah would be
a Deliverer from sin; that He would be divine, yet the “Seed of the
Woman,” the Almighty God, yet a helpless Child in a manger. Scripture
foresaw that He would come in a line of descent from Abraham, Issac,
Jacob, Judah, and finally from David. Not only was His family thus
traced, but the place of His birth was made known, as the village of
Bethlehem, “little among the thousands of Judah.” The time of His
advent was proclaimed by Isaiah and Daniel. Seven hundred years before
Jesus came, Scripture recorded that His mother would be a virgin.
Almost a thousand years before the first Christmas, Solomon foretold
that the mighty would pay tribute to the incarnate Infant, just as the
Wise Men did. Jeremiah predicted the massacre of the infants at
Bethlehem, and Hosea had a prevision of the Christ Child’s flight into
Egypt. I challenge any of you to produce prophecies outside the Bible
which have thus graphically been fulfilled. Experts in Queen Mary’s
College, London University, recently asserted that certain individuals
can foresee the future. Investigators over there base this claim on the
fact that two of 160 people examined apparently guessed the animal
pictures printed on cards better than others could; yet even these two
individuals made many glaring mistakes. How humbly we ought to bow
before the Bible’s fulfilled prophecy and hail this as proof if its
divine origin and power, especially when we realize that the world has
never before seen as many false forecasters as in recent years! Last
week we met with another promise of political peace that has been
forgotten. Before the election both major parties pledged themselves to
support the commendable Zionist program for a homeland in Palestine. A
few days ago, however, the Senate committee temporarily killed this
proposal. Yet the Almighty’s guarantee of your heavenly homeland, your
eternal Zion, will not only be fulfilled, it will also offer you far
more glory and grace then you can ever imagine here on earth. How
eagerly people should reply on Scripture, convinced that if the Bible
has proved its power to foresee and foretell, then the truth of its
guidance, the strength of its comfort, the might of the Savior’s love
should be accepted unquestioningly. You can always trust God’s Word!
In the mighty
climax of his hymned praise, Zacharias looks beyond John to the coming
Deliverer. The Savior was dearer to him than his own son. Magnificently
he foresees Jesus as “the Dayspring from on high,” that is, the One who
will make night spring into day, usher an era of new brightness into
sin-darkened, sorrow-clouded hearts. During the past twenty-five years
men have often boasted that they could produce a new age through their
political plans, social revolutions, world wars; and they have
succeeded in making a new day, but one of greater grief and deeper
darkness. Where are the charters, pacts, covenants, and treaties signed
with impressive formality? They have been cast into discard, just as
many promises made now and after the war will be ruthlessly broken.
Praise God with me, therefore, that Christ in truth is “the Dayspring
from on high: who has brought all humanity a completely new day. Even
our calendars recognize this, as they date our years from His birth. He
inaugurated a new era of hope for the world when He helped destroy the
tyranny and oppression over men’s souls, promoted liberty, saved
womanhood from the violence of lust, gave children their chance in
life, elevated the home, championed the laboring classes, advanced
education, struck out against slavery, and pleaded for peace.
Everything good our twentieth century knows stems originally from
Bethlehem’s Babe. If the Son of God had not come, the world would have
destroyed itself long before this time.
Believe with
personal assurance that the Lord is “the Dayspring from on high” for
you; that with faith in the Savior’s Christmas gift of Himself you can
say, “A new day has dawned for me. A new life has started in my soul. I
am born again “of water and of the Spirit.’” If you are distressed by
the evil of drunkenness or addiction to drugs; if your conscience is
burdened by bad habits which are ruining your health or by degrading
vices that make you ashamed of yourself, and you want to be through
with all this, live decently in a clean, God-pleasing way; if your
yesterday has been a failure, with your hopes crashed, your ambitions
broken, your whole past one mistake after the other, then start over
with Jesus in the joy, assurance, and blessing He can give you through
faith! Today you can begin life anew with Him.
Note that the
Christ Child is “the Dayspring from ON HIGH”! What comfort and courage
every one of us can find in the fact that our Lord is not from below,
not merely human with all our faults and frailties, not originally from
this earth with its deceit, lying, hypocrisy, and falsehood! He to whom
the angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest”; He who is “now ascended
on high,” did indeed come from heaven, our Immanuel, our God-with-us. A
few weeks ago seven official representatives of Christian churches in
this country voted to accept into full membership a religious group
which flatly and openly denies the Savior’s deity. Do you wonder, with
the foundations of their faith thus destroyed, that many American
churches have lost their influence and have become little more than
social centers? When Christ Himself says, “I and My Father are one,”
and again, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,” and again, “I
am in the Father, and the Father in Me”; when he proves Himself divine
by His unnumbered, unparalleled miracles, this settles the issue: Jesus
is our God “from on high.” We do not need human helpers. The world is
sick of bungling men whose brutal mistakes have strewn battlefields
with frozen corpses. We want a superhuman ,heavenly Helper, Deliverer,
Savior, who has God’s almighty power, God’s all-seeing knowledge, God’s
all-forgiving mercy. And here he is, “the Dayspring from on high,”
before whom mankind weary of power-mad, sin-gripped men, should humbly
bow to cry in the truth of ancient Scripture: “Lo, this is our God; we
have waited for Him, and he will save us.”
Christ, the
celestial Dayspring, came to earth and “visited us,” as our text
explains, first, “to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the
shadow of death.” It is Isaiah’s language which Zacharias here uses,
but it holds for today. Jesus came, not to establish an earthly
kingdom, not to present a social gospel, not merely to give men an
example. He came as “the Light of the world,” to illumine “them that
sit in darkness: and that includes every one of us. With the new rays
physicists have discovered, with all the mental brightness that marks
our age, our globe is still enshrouded in night. When you see
50,000,000 human brings mobilized to kill their fellow men; when you
count more than that number who every day are engaged in making
instruments of death; when you witness experts feverishly experimenting
with more widespread plans to massacre and technicians striving to
perfect new equipment which will destroy faster, wider, surer, don’t
claim that we live in an enlightened age! For masses the world has
never been blacker than it is today, with man’s proud learning unable
to produce a single ray of real hope for soul darkness.
Thank heaven, then,
for Christmas! It shows us that Jesus has come into the darkness of
ignorance, where men, as in deep midnight, grope blindly for the truth.
Yet millions in America know nothing of the Savior and His redemption.
Some may have a string of college degrees and a Phi Beta Kappa key, but
they are religious illiterates. Once after Dwight L. Moody had studied
the single Biblical term “grace” for several days, he ran to the street
and asked the first man he met, “Do you know anything about grace?”
“Grace who?” the man replied. – A student of our seminary was standing
before a Saint Louis department-store window which depicted the
Nativity scene. A child beside him, wide-eyes in amazement at the
colorful figures of the shepherds with the sheep, the Wise Men with the
camels, pointed to the cradled Babe and eagerly asked, “Who’s that?”
When the mother answered, “Jesus,” the child continued uncertainly,
“Jesus who, Mom?” Similarly, if you would inquire of people who crowd
downtown streets in this holiday rush, “Do you know anything about Mary
and Joseph?” Many of them would counter: “Mary who? Joseph who? Do you
mean Joseph Stalin?” If you would say to our financiers, “Do you know
the way of redemption?” many would answer: “What redemption?”
Redemption of War Bonds?” If you would put the question to brokers,
“What do you think of Bethlehem?” many would demand: “What Bethlehem?
Bethlehem Steel?” Our country has more churches than any other nation,
but the other day after preaching in Long Beach, California, I met a
man fifty-nine years old, who had never before crossed the threshold
into God’s house.
Into the darkness
comes “the Dayspring from on high,” Jesus, “ the Light of the world,”
to show us the right path, the only road to our salvation. Dimness and
uncertainty disappear when you take His hand and follow Him. He is the
Light that never fails, with no “perhaps,” or “perchance,” no “maybe”
or “could be.” Instead, absolute, positive, unquestionable surety! If
you wish to know the truth about yourself and your soul; if you want to
be certain of your salvation, look to the Christ Child; and as the
blessed sun rises to remove the night, so the Lord, who says, “I am the
Way, the Truth, and the Life,” will dispel your spiritual ignorance. At
Bethlehem’s manger you can gain the conviction which triumphs: “I know
whom I have believed” and “I am persuaded that neither death, nor life,
nor angels nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor
things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be
able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord."
When we thus
receive the Son of God as the Light of our souls, we recognize Him as
the Savior who can remove the gloom of evil. Every transgression of the
divine Law sentences the sinner to eternal night, separation from the
Almighty, and unrelieved punishment. As the lights go on again in
London, Paris, and other previously darkened European cities, people
are once more promised gaiety, amusement, adventure. Yet what a damned
and cursed thing sin is! It makes the servant of secret vices shun the
light. It drives men and women to the cover of assumed names and
clandestine meetings. It sends those who rob homes out under midnight’s
cover and those who rob youth of its purity and decency into the
meagerly lit dens of lust. As sin shuns the light, so it leaves its
victims in despair. The most startling letters I receive are from
people whose souls are overshadowed by heavy blackness, who feel
themselves on the very brink of hell. What a blessed privilege it is,
then, to proclaim: In the Christ Child, as God’s greatest Gift, you
have complete forgiveness for every sin, even those that make you blush
in shame. At the manger you know you are saved forever by mercy which
cost you nothing but which sent your Savior to the cradle and then to
the Cross. You have the assured redemption from ruin, whereby all
question marks are removed. With His brightness to give you unspeakable
joy, why do some of you insist on groveling in the darkness of defeat
without Jesus, when, clinging to Him in trusting faith, you can learn
that all is bright, all is light?
Our age especially
needs His guidance, for in addition to the sorrows ordinarily besetting
men, come war’s breaking burdens. “I lost my two sons in battle,” an
Ohio mother tells us. “How can I ever stand it?” “My husband is listed
as killed in action,” a Pennsylvania wife writes. “What can I do?” As
the pall of darkness settles more deeply on many American homes and the
gold stars appear more frequently on our service flags, may we prepare
ourselves for the pilgrimage to Bethlehem, where the cradled Infant can
bring heaven’s brightness for earth’s gloomiest hour! By our faith in
the Savior the blows that strike us down become blessings which raise
us up to Him; the hindrances which destroy our human hopes are turned
into helps which build our eternal joy. In His Scripture, Jesus, who
exchanged a heavenly throne for an earthly manger, has promised, “They
that sow in tears shall reap in joy.”
This, then, is your
most precious Christmas gift: the Savior’s light to banish blackness
from your soul. And, marvel of grace, to have all that I have promised
in God’s name, you need only believe, only humbly worship the incarnate
Redeemer as your own Lord. Illumined by His mercy, you can “walk in the
light,” and avoid all cheap, tawdry hated. Looking to His compassion,
keep Japanese skulls off American Christmas trees this year and refuse
to display souvenirs made from the bones of fallen enemies! The Holy
Spirit grant that, starting today, you, the peace-robbed,, will
personally worship Christ, the “Dayspring from on high,” come “to give
light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,” yes,
especially
to you, the afflicted, who may not be
on earth next Sunday and who need His sustaining love this moment!
2- IT IS CHRIST AND HIS PEACE
The other part of your greatest
Christmas gift is found in the promise of our text that Jesus is come
“to guide our feet into the way of peace.” This does not entitle us to
expect a warless world. Even after peace is declared in the present
hostilities, the clouds of international strife will still hang low
over the world.
Six years ago this broadcast predicted
that whoever else triumphs in this war, atheism will surely win. Today
that forecast is being fulfilled. Governments collapse, cabinets
resign, but godlessness marches on. In China, Greece, The Balkans,
Italy, Spain, France, and the Baltic regions anti-religion, anti-God,
anti-Bible movements have recruited millions.
If this happens in war, how terrifying
will be the conquests of unbelief in peace, when crushing debts demand
payment, impoverished multitudes march the streets searching for
employment and food, masses in defeated Germany and Japan overthrow
their governments and vainly seek refuge in political programs which
laugh the Almighty to scorn? Whatever else the future brings, it now
seems certain that it will produce increased rebellion against the
Almighty—I mean the kind which closes churches, rakes lines of
ministers and priests with machine-gun fire, paints blasphemy on
chruches, drags effigies of the Savior through muddy streets, cunningly
teaches children there is no God, laughs at Scripture, coddles crime,
and applauds lust. Even America, where the down-with-the-Gospel
procession strides on more confidently than ever before, will not
escape attack by this infidel invasion, and only our heavenly Father’s
mercy can preserve us from the horror which will bleed other nations
white.
Thank heaven, however, Christmas
comes—and no one will ever be able to tear it from us—to tell us that
while we must expect further bloodshed in a world which hates Jesus,
spurns His grace, blasphemes His cross, strikes His outstretched arms
down, and would actually kill Him today just as certainly as they
crucified Him 1900 years ago, nevertheless those who cling to the
Savior can have inner peace, calm confidence, fortitude. However
brutally wars may rage as men devise new methods of mass destruction;
wherever in the depth of suffering man’s hatred may lead you parents
through bereavement and the loss of your loved ones; whenever the
prophecies of “the next war” send a foreboding chill through you,
remember, the Prince of Peace is ready to fulfill the promise of our
text, “to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
We need God’s Son
to lead us “into the way of peace,” because human direction, despite it
promises to the contrary, has repeatedly brought the race to the edge
of ruin. With their pride and vaunted claims for goodness and progress,
men without the Almighty, enemies of the Cross, are such selfish,
snarling, cruel, hate-filled, vicious creatures that, if they were to
guide themselves, they would, day and night, march away from God, away
from His love, away from our Lord’s promise of peace, Yet, instead of
permitting this world to become a complete madhouse, instead of leaving
us to our own destruction, Jesus came, “to guide our feet into the way
of peace.” It was no easy matter, the Savior’s granting peace to you.
How appalling the total cost of human conflict! Yet, all this does not
compare with the price Christ paid to bring you peace. No sacrifice of
human lives, no mountains of money, could make you and me, enemies of
heaven, friends of the Almighty. Jesus had to offer Himself; the Son of
God had to come into the world as a Babe and leave it as a crucified
criminal. He had to shed His own blood to meet the demands of divine
justice, remove your sins, reunite you with the Father, reestablish the
harmony between heaven and earth, redeem your soul forever.
We speak glowingly of peace treaties
today; yet they have often been made only to be broken, while the Lord
declares, “The mountains shall depart and the hills be removed; but My
kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of My
peace be removed: – the covenant of Calvary signed in the Savior’s
crimson blood. We read of secret peace conferences between favored
nations; but there is nothing exclusive about the Gospel of grace. It
is for you Negroes as well as for us white people, for the poor and the
plenteously blessed, for the Ph.D. and the number in the in sane
asylum, for the have’s and have-not’s, for the upper 400 and the lower
138,000,000. Bethlehem’s peace can be yours, whoever, wherever,
whatever you are.
Oh, that we could
realize, especially in the Christmas season, what an all-marvelous,
all-merciful gift this peace is! We say Jesus loved us and gave Himself
for us. But how inadequate this peace is! We say Jesus loved us and
gave Himself for us. But how inadequate this statement is! When a
native woman in India first heard the story of His grace, she cried
out: “The ‘love’ is not enough. Christ did indescribably much more for
us.” She was right. No language can fully explain our Redeemer’s
devotion unto death. Today we seek to fill our enemies as they try to
annihilate us, to bomb people to pieces, destroy their homes, their
families, their children, but Jesus who never grasped a sword, laid
down His life to bring peace to those who hated Him. Can you think of
our President giving himself to secure peace for the German people? Yet
our Lord did a million times more than that: He has extended eternal
blessing to all His enemies throughout the world and every age. He
brought peace for you. That love is the heart and center of Christmas,
not the trees, the gifts, the festivities, the decorations, but the
assurance, “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God.”
The Holy Spirit
grant that this assurance will be truth, not merely theory, in your
life! Because many willful unbelievers refuse to permit Jesus to guide
their “feet into the way of peace,” on all sides we meet
trouble-burdened lives, peace-robbed homes, nervous breakdowns,
suicides. To keep you from such tragedy the divine Comforter now offers
you His great Christmas gift, soul peace and security. Does sorrow,
grief or worry burden you? Do your violations of God’s Law still
distress you, the transgressions now thirty, forty, fifty years old,
which, as you write me, still rise up to haunt you? As you pray, “O
blessed Babe, lead my feet ‘into the way of peace,’” He will answer,
“Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though
they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” If your conscience
lashes you, cry out, “Christ has taken all my wrongs away forever.” If
the devil whispers that there is no hope for you, no remission for your
ruinous evil, declare: “Get thee behind me, Satan!” “The blood of Jesus
Christ,” God’s Son, “cleanseth us from all sin.”
Is there trouble in
your home? Your letters mention divorce and desertion, crime, and
quarrel in families which should be closely united in love and harmony.
Looking to Bethlehem, pray, “O Savior, guide our ‘feet into the way of
peace,’” and as you welcome the Christ Child into your home, through
prayer in personal and family intercession, you will realize that the
Redeemer, who forgives, also strengthens, purifies, and subdues the
selfishness responsible for household strife.
Did the war bring
its heavy cares to you? Do you lie awake at night worrying about your
son in distant lands or in danger areas? Pray this Advent petition with
fervent faith: “O Jesus, guide our ‘feet into the way of peace’” and
the merciful Mediator will lead you to the conviction that if your son
trusts Christ in his heart, nothing can merely happen to him, since he
is always under the divine Deliverer’s direction, with the guarantee
that “all things work together for Good” to him because he loves the
Lord.
Are you distressed
by problems of health? Will Christmas find you in a sick bed, alarmed
by the doctor’s disheartening report? You who hear this message in a
hospital or a convalescent home, look to Jesus and pray, “Guide our
feet into the way of peace,” and as He takes your hand to lead you, He
will give you “the peace… which passeth all understanding,” the
assurance that whatever the Almighty ordains is good, the knowledge
that since you are God’s child, your heavenly Father can restore you in
an instant. Yet if He loves you too much to permit you to linger long
in a world of woe and instead wants you with Him, how marvelous the
mercy of celebrating Christmas in heaven, of hearing the host of angels
which once caroled over Bethlehem sing again to the risen Redeemer,
your King!
One all-important
week remains before the Savior’s birthday. Will you have His peace in
your heart and in your home? Will you be ready worthily to receive Him?
Not if you spend these days in exhausting work and useless worry, with
no time to hear the carols of Christmas joy! Not if you waste the week
in carousal and drunkenness as one holiday party gives way to the other!
We shook our heads
a few days ago as we read of a prisoner in an Illinois penitentiary
who, his term expired, refused to leave his cell, insisting that he
stay behind the bars and the gray walls for the rest of his life. That
is tragic enough; but not half as perverted and painful as when some
among you prefer the slavery of sin to the “liberty wherewith Christ
hath made us free.”
The Holy Spirit
grant that when your Father now offers you the greatest Christmas
blessing heaven and earth know, you will fall on your knees before the
cradled Babe, confess you sins, every one of them, rejoice in the light
which “the Dayspring from on high’ has brought you! As you follow the
royal Redeemer’s footsteps in the say of peace, peace with your God,
peace with yourself, peace with your fellow men, may your contrite,
converted, convinced heart cry out: “‘Thanks be unto God for His
unspeakable gift.’ The gift of Christ, my Light and my Love, my Pardon
and my Peace.” Amen!
Note: The preceding Lutheran Hour
sermon first aired in December 1944. (From the book “Jesus Christ our
Hope”.)