The New Testament The New Testament The New Testament The New Testament The New Testament The New Testament The New Testament Let me start by saying that this is not a video against the celebration of Christmas, or any other holiday on the basis of them containing similarities to various pagan practices. Nor is it critical of such things as, what is the correct day on which Jesus was born? So stay with me if you want to hear what I think the real problem is with so much that is seen as part of Christmas, birthdays and other similar celebrations. Recently, my three grandchildren received a big box in the mail. All three of them won prizes in a coloring-in competition. Yes, they're becoming very good artists. Anyway, they were jumping up and down in anticipation and shouting things like, ''Open it! Let me see it! I can't wait! This is so exciting!'' At the time, I thought it was nice to see them showing so much enthusiasm for something that was worth less than $100. I put it down to us always being frugal with regard to buying things like toys. So they got their toys out of the box, and for the rest of the day they excitedly focused on them. But, by the end of the day, they were pretty much all in a bad mood, with one of them saying one of the most hurtful things to his sister that I ever recall any of them ever saying. What had happened? I think the answer to this is one that anyone who has ever bought a gift for a child needs to think about, long and hard. Gift-giving may actually destroy happiness more than it creates happiness. Christmas is most famous for all the gifts that people get and give. Most people see that as a good thing, as an expression of love. However, in many homes even some of the gifts go missing almost immediately as they are swept up in the mountain of wrapping paper that is disposed of when all the gifts have been opened. We've come to think that this practice of giving gifts is almost the essence of Christmas. Over and over we say, Christmas is for kids. But is it really? Are all those trinkets and gadgets really what the kid needs, or even really what they want, in order to be happy? Or could it be that we are actually training them to believe something that we want them to believe in order to escape having to own up to a flaw in our own lives and in our own thinking? What I mean is this...do material things actually make us happy? Do they make anyone happy? Surely it is a great relief to get some food or warmth if one is starving or freezing, but that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about things like a new but absolutely beautiful tie or dress, a newer, more powerful or more comfortable car, very nice chocolates with liquid centers, a toy that says something if you squeeze it kind of thing Because so much of the Western world already has all the necessities and because we almost all have plenty of the most educational beautiful and or friendly luxuries as well like free access to libraries, beautiful plants or pet puppies, more and more of us have no choice but to buy stuff that we know in our hearts is just junk. A gift for the sake of saying we gave something. a gift that will be boring or useless one day after it is given. Our cupboards, closets, mantles and walls are cluttered with them already, and it's almost a drudge to be forced to squeeze in more. But still we buy. For our kids, for our friends, for our relatives and for ourselves. Why do we do it? We do it because that's the way we've been trained to think. We think that love is expressed most often through giving material gifts. It's why fathers work so hard, for example, to buy things for their families. Now here is where I want to look at a very powerful phrase that is used by the Apostle Paul when listing the vices from which Christians should keep themselves. It's found in Colossians 3.5. He finishes the list of vices with reference to covetousness, which, says Paul, is idolatry. Covetousness and idolatry, one and the same. yet we continue to miss that. Now, possibly as a way of actually missing the lesson in this passage, there are a lot of preachers who will tell us that almost anything can be idolatry. Your intelligence might become an idol. That beautiful sunset might become an idol. Your loved ones might be idols. And yes, there is some truth in this, but the real meaning of an idol is something specifically materialistic, something that you make with and hold in your hands, something that you can buy with money, and something that takes the place of obedience to God. It becomes what you serve, in preference to serving and obeying God. Look at the story in Acts about Paul nearly being killed in Athens when the various craftsmen felt that he was preaching against the little statues they made. He was ruining their business, and their business was crafting beautiful little things for people to put on the mantle in their homes to worship. Now, we don't go so far as to develop mantras to the idols that we hang and stack all over our houses today, but that is still what they are. And the same system that makes them takes violent exception to anyone teaching against them. This whole sin of covetousness, even though it has been defined as the root of all evil, gets very gentle treatment throughout the church scene today. A couple of years ago I preached in a little Tamil church in Australia. The congregation had almost all come from India to get good paying jobs in Australia. They didn't come to Australia because they wanted to preach the gospel. They came because they could make more money in Australia. But they were obsessed with self-righteousness against those of their countrymen who continued to live as Hindus after arriving in Australia filling their homes with Hindu idols which by the way include for many Hindus a statue of Mary Jesus and numerous saints In fact, many Hindu idol shops in India also sell statues of Santa Claus. Honest! I'm not making that up. They feel that selling jolly fat Santa is totally consistent with their own experience of idolatry And they have discovered that Hindu families will put anything up in their homes that they think may bring them material blessings, especially if the thing itself reflects material blessings. So I shared this with the congregation. I shared the passage from Colossians 3 where Paul says that covetousness is idolatry. And I told them that if they were honest, they would agree that it was idolatry that had brought them to Australia. and it is idolatry which continues to dominate their lives even now. Well, as you can guess, I wasn't invited back to preach there again. But in any case, those Tamils are not different to the vast majority of people who claim to be Christians in churches all over the world today. We continue to spend our lives working for more and more money so that we can go on more and more shopping trips in which we pick up more and more junk all in the hope that it will make us happy. Someone needs to have the courage to tell the truth. It does not make you happy. I think I need to repeat that. These toys, in one form or another, simply do not make you happy. They can give you momentary titillation, but not true and lasting happiness. Because there is always going to be someone else with some better trinket that you can lust after. And yet, people continue to chase the illusion. Not just the odd exception, but the entire human race spends their whole lives chasing more and more. We consistently try to increase our ownership of stuff, stuff that does nothing to fill the spiritual emptiness in our lives. And Christmas? Well, it's become the ultimate worldwide symbol of this unbridled materialistic debauchery, and the craftsmen everywhere build their whole lives around it. Sure, there's a little bit of lip service to helping the poor, and the occasional mention of Jesus being born as a poor, helpless baby. But what do you suppose any of us would have done if we had been there in Bethlehem and stumbled upon baby Jesus out there in the stables? Would we have bought him a floral bassinet? Some cute baby clothes? A doll? A little seat to bounce in, perhaps? How about a puppy? A Lego set? Coloring in books? A rocking horse? A tricycle? Boxes of candy? And all that just for starters. And before long, would we have advanced to buying him a backyard trampoline? Big name joggers? A mobile phone, perhaps? How about a PlayStation? The latest video games? A laptop computer? An Apple Watch? The latest fashion or a car of his own? Now I pretty sure that every step along the way we would have been telling ourselves that we were doing this in order to make that little boy happy just like we been doing with our own kids And the real Jesus Well he would have been swept up with all the wrapping paper tossed out never being heard from again, much like what has happened in the churches of today. If we really did have the answer, if buying such stuff really would make our kids or anyone else's kids happy, then there might be a case for saying that Jesus missed it. But I will say it again. All of that junk does not make anyone happy. The number of different choices you get for junk these days continues to increase with hundreds of new products coming out every day. But the actual practicality of any of it becomes more and more difficult to nail down. It is actually becoming easier to see that people are losing interest in the new toys faster than ever before. yet they keep coming back to find something better, instead of challenging the pointlessness of it all. This is just one more indication that the whole planet is moving further and further away from what life was really meant to be like when God created us. Jesus came to set the record straight, and yet we continue to ignore him. And we tell ourselves that Christmas is some kind of answer to it all, when it is actually the epitome of greed and all that goes with it. Don't you think it's time we junk the junk, and junk everything else we do to get more wealth? Isn't it time we just started listening to the One who came to bring real meaning, real happiness and real love? It's never popular at Christmas time to criticize what is happening. Ironically, people label such critics as Scrooges, with little thought about who the original Scrooge was. He was a businessman, who didn't want people to leave the rat race to spend time with their families. Scrooge, you see, was the prototype of all the owners of all these shopping malls and the hierarchy of the mail-order department stores. He is the guy who has really wrecked Christmas. He is the king of junk! Are you prepared to boycott him, Scrooge the merchant, this Christmas, in order to get back to something genuine? Now, I do believe we are at a point in history where it can't be both. You're going to have to choose. Even the little references that the Scrooges still allow to Christian concepts is quickly being taken away from us. Please understand, friends, that it's coming down to a choice between Scrooge and his Satan-claws marketing gimmicks, and the baby in the manger. So please consider coming outside with us and spending a few nights in the stables of the world. It's really not such a bad life out here at all. And if you'd like to know more about this tiny army of happily homeless followers of Jesus please write to me at the email address on screen at the moment. In the meantime, we do wish you all the best of what Christmas originally meant.
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