THE
CHRIST OF CHRISTMAS
Sermon By
Dr. Walter A. Maier
Unto us a
Child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon
His shoulder. And His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The
Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. — Is. 9, 6.
ONLY five hours more in the Pacific Coast country, only two short hours
on the Atlantic seaboard, and another Christmas will be but a memory. A
few moments more to linger in the colorful radiance of the
Christmas-tree, a few moments more to blend our hearts and voices in
the cheerful Christmas melodies, a few moments more to enjoy the
happiness that comes to our reunited family circles on Christmas, and
this day of days from which we unwillingly release our grasp is gone
and has given way to the tomorrow, in which, as men resume their wonted
activities, the spell of Christmas is often broken, its luster dimmed,
its message forgotten.
But Christmas is too wonderfully magnificent to be confined to one
solitary, fleeting day. There is rather a deathless significance in
this Child of Christmas, a per-manent and divinely bestowed gift of
God, which brings perpetual happiness, immeasurable and unspeakable,
both here and hereafter. And if you have never permitted the star of
faith to guide you to Bethlehem; if you have never opened the door of
your heart to receive the Christ-child; if with Herodlike determination
you have steadfastly tried to stifle the glorification of the Babe in
Bethlehem, to what better advantage can I employ these happy moments
than to ask you to separate your hearts from all earth-born
attachments, to submerge the harsh dissonance of cold doubt and frigid
skepticism, to follow the lowly shepherds to that glorious Child in
Mary’s arms, and to immortalize Christmas as a hope of perpetual and
undying happiness by hear-ing and believing the divine and unfailing
answer to this question, Who is this Child about whom the very universe
revolves, in whom the hopes and fears of all the years have found their
joyous fulfilment?
Seven centuries before the heavenly messenger aroused the drowsy Judean
shepherds, Isaiah, the evangelist of the Old Testament, straining his
gaze to the dim and distant horizon, answered this question in better
terms than merely mortal lips can find. Casting aside the modern
camouflage, which finds in the birth of Jesus Christ only such alien
thoughts as the magnificence of motherhood or the glorifi-cation of
childhood, and probing deep down beneath the externals of our Christmas
celebration, he strikes at the very heart and center of a
Christ-conscious Christmas, when, in those deathless words beginning,
“Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given,” he identifies this
Christmas-child by these five glorious names, “Wonderful, Counselor,
The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace,” and tells
us tonight who this Christ-child is and what He must mean to our modern
world after nineteen centuries.
“WONDERFUL.”
Isaiah calls the Christ-child, first of all, “Wonderful,” or, as we can
emphatically reproduce the original, “The Miracle.” Daniel Webster was
once asked whether he could understand Christ. Replying in the
negative, he declared that, if he could understand Him, there would be
nothing to give Jesus faith and divine force and fact. The
Christmas-message is thus not an appeal to reason, to be sure; and we
breathe an ardent word of thankful prayer that it is something
ineffably greater than this. It is an appeal to the truth of God’s
love; it is the mystery of God’s becoming man; Divinity putting on
humanity; the Creator appearing as creature; the eternal Son of God
incarnate as the Son of Man. In an age when men glibly and confidently
prate about the twilight of Christianity, as they compose their
obituaries on the Biblical truth, the cold and calculating
rationalizing of reason bids them ask with age-old skepticism, “How can
these things be? How can this Child, called the ‘Wonderful,’ be both
divine and human, both a helpless babe and the Ruler of the universe,”
of whom our text says, “The government shall be upon His shoulder,”
implying that He directs the affairs of men, controls the forces of
nature, and governs this vast universe? But as the first
Christmas-gifts were expressive of the willing tribute which scientific
thought paid to religious verities, so today, when we daily accept
uncounted arrangements and innumerable procedures as beyond the ken of
the most enlightened mind, let no one who hears the Christmas evangel
indulge in skeptical quibbles or sophisticated sneers, but let us
rather rejoice that instead of understanding we must only believe and
kneel down before this Wonder of the Ages to offer, as Magi-minded
Christians, the pure gold of our faith, the fragrant frankincense of
our hope, and the mystic myrrh of our love.
But the wonder of this Child, the supreme miracle in the history of all
lands and ages, becomes intensified when we realize, as I pray God we
may all realize on this joyful Christmas Day, that this Babe in the
manger is the super-human solution to the great and universal problem
of sin. When the stern demand of God’s holiness tells you, “The soul
that sinneth, it shall die”; when it continues its warning indictment,
“All have sinned”; and when it individually emphasizes the weaknesses
and inconsistencies that abound in every life and says, as it points
the finger of accusation at you, “Thou art the man;’ — then to every
one who humbly and gratefully accepts Christmas for what its name
implies, the wonder of wonders is accomplished, and they all are
assured of this miracle-working love, announced even before the Child’s
birth, “He shall save His people from their sins.” There is the
glorious wonder of this wonderful Child, — no sin too great, no offense
too vile, no wrong too oppressive to be removed freely and completely
and for all time by His priceless, deathless love.
“THE COUNSELOR.”
The second blessed name of the Christ of Christmas is “The Counselor.”
I believe that for many thousands who are listening in tonight the need
of a capable, competent counselor has perhaps never been as great as it
is on this Christmas Day, when we remind ourselves that the past year
has brought to millions a long series of disappointments of various
kinds and degrees. You who have gone on year after year with a smug
sense of self-satisfaction and with a good deal of confidence in your
money power, your brain power, your social power, but who have found
that this house of cards in which you have enshrined your happiness
has been puffed over by bank failures, financial reverses, and
unemployment, and who now look about for some one and something that
can effectively lift you out of the labyrinth of hopelessness and
helplessness, — you can find a divine Counselor today in Bethlehem.
Here is a Counselor who is concerned first and foremost about the soul
that lives on after the trinkets and baubles that men clutch so
frantically crumble into disappointing dust. Here is the faithful and
efficient Counselor, who tells us, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God”;
that is, get right with God. Remove the barrier that separates you from
God and that keeps you away from the inner happiness which alone makes
life worth living. And when you come and ask, “How can I get right with
God? How can I remove the impurity of sin from my life?” — great and
wonderful Counselor that He is, this Christ tells us, “I am the Way,
the Truth, and the Life.” “Believe in Me.” Never has His counsel
failed; never is there any problem too intricate for His constructive
solution; never is there any sorrow too deep to be healed by the balm
of His consoling love. So tonight, when the joy of Christmas stands out
in crying contrast to the sorrow that reigns in the hearts of some of
my audience, when you think of your own misfortunes, of the gladness
that has been turned to sadness though the coming of cold death or
through the blasting of long-cherished hopes or through the tragedy
that has followed in the wake of grievous sins; look above these
difficulties to the Counselor, reposed in Bethlehem’s manger, and
believe Him, when He calls out to you, “Come unto Me, all ye that labor
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
“THE MIGHTY GOD.”
The third name of this Wonder-Child is “The Mighty God.” Here, then, we
have the real, essential Christ of Christmas; not the Christ whom the
barrage of modern oratory and rhetoric likes to picture — a ghastly
counterfeit of the world-conquering Son of God; but the Christ who from
the lowly beginning at Bethlehem until the bitter, heart-breaking end
at Calvary claimed to be, proved to be, and was declared by God to be,
God manifest in the flesh. Oh, He had to be God to offer substitution
for the over-powering weight of sin and its consequences. He had to be
God to give to humanity a hope that was stronger than human power,
truer than mortal truth, more hopeful than earth’s strongest hope.
I sometimes wonder whether beneath all the hurry and the scurry of
Christmas we realize, even as far as this is humanly possible, the
practical meaning of this sublime truth, that God became man, that He
lived and walked and had His being here on earth, in the closest
contact with sin-stained men. What unutterable love, what indescribable
mercy, what unfathomable grace! And what surpassing promise! For does
not He who once trod the paths of men give to those who know Him and
who love Him and who have been reconciled by His atoning blood the
assurance even in today’s turmoil, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto
the end of the world”? Think of this priceless Christmas-gift of God’s
grace, Immanuel, “God with us.” God with us to turn the night of sin
and sorrow into the brilliancy of a radiant day! God with us to lead us
on through the devious and difficult paths of life! God with us in the
happiness of our homes, in the stern realities of the battle for
existence! God with us in the trials and temptations that bear down
upon us! God with us as the all-sufficient, all-embracing Friend,
Guide, and Savior, now and forevermore!
“THE EVERLASTING FATHER.”
Yes, “forevermore,” because Isaiah’s fourth name for this helpless
Infant is “The Everlasting Father.” Paradox though they seem when
applied to this Babe of Bethlehem, let us linger for a moment on these
two names of majestic import, “Everlasting” and “Father.” Throughout
their long and varied existence men have yearned and strained for
something firm and unchangeable, for something positive and
everlasting, since the highest achievements of human ambitions rise
only to fade and wax only to wane. They are here today and gone
tomorrow. Even the choicest products of man’s intellectual attainments
are ephemeral, hailed in this hour and rejected in the next. But
tonight I want you to look with me at this Pillar of the Ages, this
changeless Christ for a changing world — Him who is “the same
yesterday, today, and forever,” and find in Him the everlasting Rock of
Ages to which, amid the ebb and flow of man’s fluctuating hopes and
delusions, you can cling with unending and undying assurance. Friends
and their favors may change; your hopes and plans may be shattered and
crushed, but here in this Child is God’s answer to your search for
eternity, the solution of the mystery of the grave, the promise of Him
who says, “Because I live, ye shall live also;” whose eternity is the
unfailing pledge of our life after death.
Think of the other word, “Father,” and remember that behind all the
love that this word expresses and the confidence that it inspires,
leading us to come to Christ as loving children come to their loving
father, there is the majesty of power, the mystery of the Holy Trinity,
the very revelation of God to mankind. When Christ complied with
Philip’s request, “Lord, show us the Father,” He answered, “He that
bath seen Me hath seen the Father.” My friends, I pause to ask you on
this Christmas Day, Have you seen the Father in Christ? Remember, if
you think you have seen God in any other way; if you think you can
accept God without accepting Jesus Christ; if you try to stifle the
appeal of the Bible by asserting that you believe in a “Supreme Being”
or in “the great Creator” or in “the Father of us all,” and exclude
Christ from all this, then you do not know the meaning of Christmas,
and you do not know God.
“THE PRINCE OF PEACE.”
But the sweetest note of the Christmas-message comes in Isaiah’s last
name for the Christ-child, “The Prince of Peace” Above all the hatred
of a war-torn world the Christmas anthem “Peace on earth” goes out into
the world tonight to tell men that the only way to establish peace with
our God and peace with our conscience is to come to Christ and to
believe that He has effectually and forever removed the discord that
exists between the holiness of God and the unholiness of men; that He
by His incarnation, by the poverty and suffering to which He as the
Lord of lords and the King of kings subjected Himself, satisfied the
claims of divine justice and offers to all the benefits of that
momentous peace treaty between heaven and earth that has been signed
and sealed by His very blood.
What more wonderful privilege could there be on the birthday of this
Prince of Peace than to offer in His name, by His command, and with His
promise the surpassing gift of this inner, spiritual peace of God? And
what greater cause of rejoicing, even in heaven, than this, that some
of you within the reach of my voice this evening who are still at war
with God, who are still allied with the forces of sin and hell, come to
accept peace — not the peace of the world, but the peace of the soul
that Christ Himself, our Shioh, offers, the peace which, because it
transforms our inner life, is reechoed in our outer existence. I appeal
to you who have never learned the marvelous joy of life that comes when
the benediction of Christ’s peace is pronounced upon your sin-free
soul; to you who do not know this peace because you do not show it; to
you who, although you may to all appearances kneel at the manger this
night, nevertheless harbor thoughts of hatred and envy against your
fellowmen; to you young people who live in strife and discord with
your own fathers and mothers; to you husbands and wives who are
permitting the rancor of selfishness and dissatisfaction to mar the
beauty of a happy Christian home; to you who professionally promote
misunderstanding and bigotry in the lives of men, — I appeal to you
and beseech you in the name of the Lord Jesus: Do not let this night
draw to its completion without coming to the Christ-child in spirit and
in truth, without asking Him for the forgiveness of these sore and
besetting evils, and without receiving from Him this priceless,
peerless peace of soul and mind. Thus, and thus alone, can Christmas be
to you what it should be and what, pray God, it will be — the birthday
of Christ, The Prince of Peace, not only in Bethlehem, but also in your
innermost heart. Amen.