Whatever Is Evil and Undesirable Can Be Changedīut not only that, the message of Christmas is that whatever is evil and undesirable in your life can be changed.
I AM JESUS CHRIST I CAME INTO THE WORLD FULL
"The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save it for you, not to destroy it." Not one of you needs to live in fear or anxiety that what is good and precious in your life will be lost. The Christmas message is that even when you feel them slipping between your fingers, God can catch them all and restore them to you again. No beauty, no pleasure, no love, no skill that is good and precious need vanish forever from you. The message of God to you this Christmas morning is that whatever is good and precious in your life need never be lost. Must I, then, live in fear that I will lose Noël? The message of Christmas for me on my anniversary is that I need never lose her-ever! Christmas is God's guarantee to his children that whatever the new age may bring, it will not bring the annihilation of anything good. We also recall that our Lord said, "In the resurrection there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage" (Matthew 22:30). We like to say with the Puritans, "It was no accident but a 'gracious Providence' when we fell in love in 1966." But we know very well that sooner or later one of us will be taken away. One of the things I said to Noël as I took her in my arms Wednesday evening was, "I would sure hate to lose you." And we sat quietly for a while letting that thought intensify our love for each other. Last Wednesday was the fifteenth anniversary of my marriage to Noël. The message of Christmas to you who see your death on the horizon is that you need never lose your life.
Then you will know why Hezekiah wept bitterly with his terminal illness and pled for added years (2 Kings 20:1–7). If you don't feel it now, wait till you get very sick. "What does it profit if you gain the whole world and lose your life?" O, how precious is our life. We can talk all we want about the good things of life, but if we don't have life, we don't have anything. There are many in our church family who because of age or sickness will inevitably ask themselves the question today: "Is this my last Christmas?" Life is good and precious and we don't want to lose it. What Is Good and Precious Need Never Be Lost It is God's message of hope this morning that what is good need never be lost and what is bad can be changed. The fears that the few good things that make you happy are slipping through your fingers, and the frustrations that the bad things you hate about yourself or your situation can't be changed-these fears and these frustrations are what Christmas came to destroy. Thus says the Lord: the meaning of Christmas is that what is good and precious in your life need never be lost, and what is evil and undesirable in your life can be changed. It is a Christmas gift to you this morning, December 25, 1983, from the voice of the living God. And since the Son of God lived, died, rose, reigns, and is coming again, God's message through him is more than a historical fact. It was a message of hope sent by God to teenagers and single parents and crabby husbands and sullen wives and overweight women and impotent men and retarded neighbors and homosexuals and preachers and lovers and you. That's because the coming of the Son of God into the world is so much more than a historical fact. Evidently there is not much power in giving right answers on religious surveys about historical facts. They have the same anxieties that good things will be lost and the same frustrations that crummy things can't be changed. But thousands of Americans fill out Gallup Poll religious surveys that they believe this fact but then live just like everybody else. The coming of the eternal Son of God into the world as the God-Man, Jesus Christ, is a fact of history. The message of Christmas for you from Christ this morning is that what is good and precious in your life need never be lost, and what is evil and undesirable in your life can be changed.
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