Christmas
Is About Bringing People Together! By Kelly Durant 12-24-17
Psalm
68:6 God sets the solitary in families; He brings out those who are bound into
prosperity; But the rebellious dwell in a dry land.
2.
Sometimes I feel very sad for many people! You and I can all observe that there
are a lot of people out there that have very few friends! They often don’t have
any family nearby either! Often my wife and I will get a call from someone, can
you take me to the hospital, can you take me to work? Can you help me move
because I’m getting evicted?
We
are here to serve one another in love and not let our right hand know what our
left had is doing but I am shocked and saddened over the poverty of many
people! It is a poverty not so much of a lack of food or money, but a poverty
of having no friends or family! It’s sad when no one is willing to do anything
for another, right?
Thank
God Christmas can change this! Christmas is all about giving and receiving, and
in supporting each other, in supporting strangers you may never even meet
either! This happens when people buy gifts to donate to children. The kings
gave gifts to Jesus but the gift of Maria and Joseph getting to make friends
and meet new strangers such as the kings and the shepherds was what made it all
special.
3. The
first strange encounter that Mary had was with the angel that told her she
would bear a child by the Holy Spirit. On course, messengers, such as angels,
do not stick around for you to make friendships with, but Christmas would not
be what it is without the sudden appearance of the angels.
The
shepherds got to see all of the angels in heaven as well. 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a
multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: Luke 2:14 “Glory to God in the highest,
And
on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”
15
So it was, when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, that the
shepherds said to one another, “Let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing
that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us.”
So
the first ones on the first Christmas got to meet angels! Have you ever
wondered how many people have been angels to people they didn’t know at all? This
happens at Christmas time. Christmas has inspired many people to act as angels,
to be messengers of the good news of the arrival of Jesus, and be generous to
help people with gifts, and they are helping people they do not even know.
4.
Another unusual uniting of people was that of the shepherds meeting Joseph and
Mary. This divine couple was chosen by God to raise the savior of the world but
they were nothing more than small town folks whose friendships probably did not
extend any further than with their neighbors and family nearby.
So
now they are making new friendships with the shepherds who live outside the
city. Imagine a bunch of strangers arriving after your baby is born saying we
have come here to this barn door to see you and to worship the newborn child?!
It must have surprised them for sure!
Mary
and Joseph made new friends that night! These were humble folks, and they were
humble as well. What they had in common was they both experienced something
heavenly and supernatural, and they both were aware that a chosen special child
was born, Jesus the Christ.
5.
The next characters to appear on the scene were the kings of the Orient, the
wise men. Think about this, these men were strangers and did not know each
other until they met each other in Bethlehem after their long journey. They
probably did not speak the same language, but they did have the same purpose in
common, to meet Jesus! We see it again, Jesus uniting people.
They
then went on to meet Mary, Joseph, and Jesus by following the unexplained
phenomena of the star over Jesus’ temporary residence. These kings would never
have left home and travelled for months had they not been on a spiritual
mission to see the mystery at the end of their journey. They wanted friendship
with the King of kings whose presence was foretold, and foretold even in the
stars!
These
wise men knew to bring gifts, but how? They knew the star was leading them
somewhere special, they knew they would meet someone special, but I suspect
they really did not expect to find some common folks with a baby so small! What
we observe here is that when you have Jesus with you, you can expect kings to
come, pay respect, and be generous to support the mission of God’s work! Common
people make friendships with the rich to do Jesus’ work!
6. I
love the verse of study today with God’s promise of “God sets the solitary in
families”. This is what Jesus was all about, to bring together you and me and
all kinds of groups of people together that never would meet under ordinary
daily circumstances. With Jesus we become family! Forget your flesh family who
may often let you down, Jesus gives you a real family in God!
I
think most everyone, either rich or poor, live quite isolated from each other.
But Jesus wants to bring us all together over Himself! Jesus is the
supernatural uniting force that causes you and me to meet and to be friends
with each other!
The
people of the Christian faith travel to do mission work and make friendships
that last a lifetime. Christians make deep friendships with unusual characters
far and wide because it is all about Jesus! Jesus was the first one to get poor
shepherds and rich kings to come together and be in awe at the work of God, was
He not? With Jesus and your Christian family, you should never be alone!
7. And
here is something to ponder, Jesus not only united odd people together, He was
the first to unite us on all levels, socio-economical-racial-&-religious!
He united the uneducated with the educated, which was Mary & Joseph with
the shepherds.
Jesus
united the rich and powerful with the common folks, Mary and Joseph with the
Orient Kings. And here is another factor, the kings were of different races
too, Jesus unites us from different races!
And
what about religion? Jesus unites those of other faiths to Him! The kings had a
religion that included astrology and who knows what else, they were not
Christian before meeting Jesus. God loved them anyway and revealed Himself to
them. Jesus and God brings us all together when often our own people will not
be close to us. Spiritual brothers and sisters are formed over our common faith
in Jesus and we should value each other as family. When Jesus called His disciples, they too were
from very diverse backgrounds; Jesus was iconoclastic to the established set of
societal customs.
8. Psalm
68:6 God sets the solitary in families; He brings out those who are bound into
prosperity; But the rebellious dwell in a dry land. So we see now how God
unites us, an odd family, over Jesus but what about the rebellious, the
faithless, the haters and the ones who refuse to honor Jesus?
The
rest of this verse makes it clear, if you have God with you, and His Son Jesus
as your focus, you can expect prosperity and the blessings of God. It is an
observable truth that many of the children of poor immigrants, or people in
poverty, have risen above their level because they received the support of
their family of friends, those from the Christian church community.
“But
the rebellious dwell in a dry land”! In all families, and throughout the world,
there are so many that seem to go from bad situations to worse ones and why?
Often because they are just brute beasts, living selfishly to survive, never
thinking of helping others, never considering making friends with people very
unlike their selves. If a person doesn’t have Jesus, either by ignorance or
flat out rejection, then this person will not learn the beauty of being made
rich with friends and family that are near them everywhere.
9. Christmas
is about family and friends, and the sharing of good experiences together.
Giving gifts and getting gifts can reveal to you that there are good people out
there! Who knows, you might even make a new friend this Christmas.
Take
advantage to tell others about Jesus this Christmas, that is the best gift you
could ever give anyone! Giving Jesus to another means you are opening up the
door for them to learn a new way of life, one where God is in control, one
where God forgives, and one in knowing you are loved that you will go to heaven
in the end!
Because
of Jesus, life is worth living! Because of Christmas we can all meet new
people! I have made friendships with a few thousand people in my lifetime and
this never would have happened if it were not for Jesus telling me to go into
all the world to preach the gospel. I have been to more than a hundred cities
and Jesus has blessed me beyond my wildest dreams!
I
thank God I have met you, you who are here today, and I met you because we
share in the same faith, that of having Jesus! And I thank God you are in the
Salvation Army serving God as well!
