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To All…Merry CHRISTmas

  German and English speakers put words in different order in their sentences. An English speaker asks in his language, “Will you go to town with me?” If one transliterated into English the way a German would phrase it in his native language, it would ask, “Will you with me to town go?”  

  God, too, arranged word order in the Bible for emphasis. The Holy Spirit directed Luke to pen: 𠇏or you is born today a Savior who is Christ the Lord in the town of David” (Luke 2:11). God puts us first. He stresses how He blesses us with His Savior, Christ the Lord. It is no coincidence, either, how Jesus’ three names/titles speak sermons about His person and work as the promised Savior who is Lord!

  Despite modern attempts to obscure “Merry Christmas” from the public eye, Christ must come to bless us. If sinners think we can find holiness before God apart from Jesus, that futile path is like hoping to capture grass clippings in a lawn mower bagger with a basketball-sized hole. That’s what I found one time, when I planned to capture leaves using my mower bagger. Although the bagger appeared in show-room condition on the surface, the mice had destroyed the unseen underside. 

  Similarly, we may look holy on the outside. However, the apostle Paul confesses for us all, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature” (Romans 7:18). We are not sinners because we sin on the outside; we sin because we are sinners on the inside. Truly, we remain unholy beggars needing repair before God. We cannot patch up our unholiness like mending the lawn bagger with duct tape. But that’s when God’s grace, His underserved love in Jesus, shines brightly—just like that star guiding the wise men to Jesus. 

  The Scottish poet Robert Burns once wrote, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Animal instinct and human plans fail. God’s loving nature predetermined and achieved this unfailing plan: “When the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full rights of sons” [His legal heirs] (Galatians 4:4-5). 

  We do not know the exact day and month of our Savior’s birth. Nevertheless, it came at exactly the right time—God’s time. God’s divine plan involved just the right kind of Savior, who was the Father’s Son, true God from eternity, and true man in history, born of a woman in Bethlehem. Why?  Christ must live perfectly as our Law-Fulfiller Substitute to win heaven for us. Christ must trade His innocence for our sins and die for them on the cross—through faith in Him, you and I are forgiven. Christ must rise from death in victory to underline the truth that He conquered our sin and defeated our death. 

  Indeed, God put us first. He still announces to all through the angel in the thousands of Bible translations today this emphasis: 𠇏or unto you is born this day a Savior, who is Christ the Lord….” That truth accents our lives to be merry every day. So…go ahead and live it and say it: “To all Merry CHRISTmas!”