The Christmas Story- Up Close

Yesterday was the first Sunday in Advent. And this is the way that Christians have mainly talked about Advent throughout the history of the church, is Advent as a season of waiting. It's like the fast before the feast.

And when you fast before a feast, the feast tastes all the better. And so as you mark the Advent season with waiting, we grow in anticipation, we grow in our patience, and we ready ourselves for the opportunity to celebrate Christmas Day. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at FamilyLifeToday.com. We can make this Christmas season a more special season by embracing this time of waiting and preparation.

We're going to talk more about that today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. Is this your time of year, Ann? I love this time of year. Oh my goodness.

And my husband, no, he does not love the time. Are you the Grinch? He is, Bob.

He's the Grinch. You're getting way better. No, I mean, I love Christmas. I love the story. I love what it means.

Yes. But I don't love spending money on gifts. And I'm married to the woman.

If we were millionaires, we would give it all away. Gift giving is her love. You love giving gifts. I love giving gifts. I do know this about you. You may not like the trappings of the season, but when it comes to generosity and giving to kingdom work, you get excited about that.

Yeah, and it's because it's two separate things. You know, when you buy gifts at Christmas, which are honestly, I was going a little over the top. I love that. But, you know, the tie that I got, it's going to be gone in five years. Right. And the toys are going to be in a closet in five years.

But when you find a mission that's changing the world and you generously give to that, that's eternal. And I got to tell you, this has been one incredible year. I mean, think about the year we've just gone through and it's really been hard and it's really impacted in many ways, in negative ways, marriages. They're in trouble. There's people struggling, getting divorced through this year. Oh, and it breaks our hearts.

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We need to hear from you. We also want to talk about Christmas and getting ready for Christmas. And, you know, I think over the years, as we've gone through this with our family, I've started to look forward more and more to the spiritual season of Christmas, not just the holiday and the traditions, but keeping Jesus at the center of all of this is so, not only so important. It's critical, I think. It's such an opportunity for us as parents.

It's like, in volleyball, it's the set at the top of the net. You've got a chance to spike home some really good, solid, spiritual truth over the next several weeks. And we've got David Mathis joining us this week on Family Life Today. David, welcome. Thank you, Val. Good to be here.

He's like, are you guys ever going to stop talking so we can talk about something of substance? David is an author. He's a speaker.

Do you work full-time with this Iron Gun? I do, yes. And so anybody who goes to the Desiring God website and sees articles, I've benefited from so much of your writing on there. And now the Advent devotional that you put together called The Christmas We Didn't Expect, which your heart for this book is so that in the midst of a busy season, we can keep calling our hearts back to what this season's all about. Trying to keep Christ central in this season. When we get the volleyball set, that Christians would spike that in our families, in our churches, with our neighbors.

And we would know how to spike it. And I think that's what you've done. You've given us a tool, a reminder, scripture.

I love your book because it really does give us some new insight, maybe that we haven't discovered in the Bible that we haven't noticed before. Explain Advent, because some people didn't grow up hearing about Advent. I didn't.

Your church didn't do anything. I didn't grow up knowing what Advent was. So there's a lot of people that don't know what it means. Advent's based on a Latin word, adventus, that means coming or arrival. And so it's the marking of, the celebrating of, the coming of God himself in human flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ. So Advent is a season of waiting for that great coming, that great first coming. And also the second coming gets drawn in as well. When we think joy to the world, the Lord has come. Isaac Watts wrote that about the second coming.

Right. And we sing it at Christmas because there is this kind of mapping on of the first coming to the second coming. The Old Testament saints waited for the first coming. We're waiting for the second coming.

And so there's an overlap there. But that first Advent, that main Advent is the coming of Jesus in that first Christmas that we celebrate on our seasons. This is something that's been a part of church tradition and the church calendar for centuries. There's really not anything in the Bible that points us to Advent as something we're supposed to do. But the Bible does point us to the events that happened before Jesus came. And reflecting on that is really what Advent is about, right?

That's right, Bob. You said a minute ago about Advent being an opportunity. I'd like to say that Advent is not an obligation.

It's an opportunity. Romans 14 is very clear that Christians are not mandated to celebrate days and feasts and seasons. So there is no biblical mandate that you must celebrate Advent during the December time or Lent during the Easter season or a specific Christmas day, a specific Easter day.

These are options. These are opportunities for us as a Christian. And what I want us to do, since most of us do celebrate some sort of Christmas season, is let's make Jesus central in it. Let's make the most of that opportunity that is Advent. And Advent also says don't start on December 24th, right? It's like back it up and take a month.

That's right. Well, one way to say it is the 24 hours of Christmas Day is just too little time to celebrate how stupendous it is that God himself became human and tabernacled among us in the person of Christ. So one way to approach Advent is to say, hey, let's take 24 days and more to prepare our hearts and to lengthen out the celebrations. That's one way that Advent serves us is by lengthening the celebration of Christmas back toward our Thanksgiving, back toward the early parts of December. But another aspect, and this is the way that Christians have mainly talked about Advent throughout the history of the church, is Advent as a season of waiting. It's like the fast before the feast.

And when you fast before a feast, the feast tastes all the better. And so as you mark the Advent season with waiting and with putting yourselves back into the shoes of God's first covenant people as they waited year after year, century after century for this promised anointed one, the Christ, the Messiah to come. It's captured so well in the song O Come, O Come Emmanuel with the minor chords, how they waited. O Come, O Come Emmanuel is a really good theme song for Advent as a season of waiting. And so as we rehearse that together as Christians, we grow in anticipation.

We grow in our patience and we ready ourselves for the opportunity to celebrate Christmas Day. And I'll just say, if your church on the first Sunday of Advent did not sing O Come, O Come Emmanuel, you need to say Ichabod, the glory of the Lord is departed. Leave that church and go find it. It's a rule in our church. O Come, O Come Emmanuel and Come Thou Long Expected Jesus.

Those are kind of the two Advent carols you sing them every first Sunday of Advent. And if you didn't do it at church, you could do it in your home. Well, you could, I guess. It'd be a good way to start the Advent season. And that way you wouldn't have to leave the church.

You could stay with the same church. In the history of the church, some people have looked at Advent and looked at Christmas differently. They've seen Advent as this time of waiting. They don't put up the decorations early. They don't put presents under the tree early. They kind of save everything for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, right? We've all heard about the 12 days of Christmas because we sing the silly song, but most of us don't know what the 12 days of Christmas means. I mean, typically, this is more often than not in church history, people have, the church has celebrated the 12 days of Christmas.

They've said, this is such a significant celebration, let's lengthen it out to 12 days. So, December 25th through January 6th, and January 6th being the Epiphany, which is Greek for appearing or coming. So, you've got this Advent season of celebrating Jesus coming. You've got January 6th celebrating the arrival of Jesus among us. And there's a 12-day season there to celebrate this great feast of Christmas.

And Advent, then, is the fast coming before the feast. And so, sometimes Christians have been, you know, strict in the sense of, let's not do the Christmas tree. Let's not do the decorations. Let's not sing the bright, happy Christmas songs that we love, like Joy to the World, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. Let's not sing that until the 12 days of Christmas. Which, if that's what you do, God bless you, that's fantastic.

I'm not fighting that battle. Does your tree go up early at the Mathis house? We do. We usually take the most of the Thanksgiving weekend and go ahead and get it up and enjoy it. We love the decoration.

And so, what you want to do in your home, that's great. I want to help you keep Jesus central in that season. If you're waiting until Christmas Day, if you're celebrating 12 days of Christmas in the way the church has done it traditionally, God bless you, that's awesome. Or, if it's probably more typical these days, that the whole month of December becomes this Advent season. And it's really kind of a pulling of Christmas back toward the end of November and celebrating Christmas in that space.

I want to help there as well. Well, David, in your book, you talk about how the first Christmas teamed with the unexpected. Even the title of your book, The Christmas We Didn't Expect, what do you mean by that? It is amazing to reflect on how many things were unexpected in that first Christmas.

For us, it seems so obvious. We do it every year. The wise men come every year.

The shepherds come every year. We're so used to the story. But to put ourselves back there 2,000 years and to think of the surprising way God did all the twists and turns, that King David would talk about his great Messiah, his great ancestor to come, his great descendant that would be coming, and then it would be 1,000 years. And Isaiah would prophesy, and there would be 700 more years. And Malachi would give us that last revelation in the Old Testament, 400 more years after Malachi. And then that the angel would come to an unwed woman?

The virgin birth is one of the great surprises. And then that the angel would come to Nazareth, such an out-of-the-way place that all the gospels have to explain what it is. Because readers have never heard of Nazareth.

It is a backwater town. People have heard of Bethlehem. That was the city of David. It's small compared to Jerusalem, but nobody ever heard of Nazareth.

I mean, that is serious backwater. One detail after another, that God would save his son by bringing him out of Herod's jurisdiction to Egypt. God saved his people from Egypt. Now they're going to Egypt to save his son. So there is one unexpected thing after another, that even in that early season, when he goes to the temple to be dedicated, that Simeon, an old man, would say to Mary that a sword will pierce your soul as well.

What do you mean? Talking about this little baby. A sword is going to pierce him? And then a sword is going to pierce Mary's soul as well? What's going on? What tragic, what catastrophe is going to happen to this child? And so it is one unexpected thing after another.

And the Magi and the shepherds are part of that as well. Now, when you go through the Advent season, like with your family, do you start talking about those kind of things? I mean, what's it look like for a family? You've got twins, right? Ten-year-old? Twin boys who are 10. My daughter, Gloria, she has a Christmas birthday. The book is dedicated to Gloria. She'll be six this Advent.

And then Mercy's three and a half. So talk, I mean, a lot of families are listening. They're like, OK, I'm going to do this Advent thing.

I've never really done it. What would it look like? First of all, get your book. You've got to start there.

And then what? So here's an idea. If you're a father of a family like mine with young kids, the kids can handle a verse or two that's really direct. And then daddy's heartfelt explanation of why that verse matters.

And so what we've done at the Mathis House the last couple of Advent's, and you can do it very differently. And I think we'll probably do it again this way this year, is we take one verse for each day. So beginning December 1, I've got a verse assigned to that day all the way through December 24. We wrap up the verse. We print it out, wrap it up with a piece of chocolate. Then we take that verse for the day. We unwrap it. I read the verse. Who gets the chocolate? We all do. Oh, you all get a piece.

That's why it's good. OK, good. Mommy and I get chocolate, too. Unwrap the, read the verse, and give my explanation of why that verse is significant. What's the meaning of that verse related to Christmas and the season we're celebrating? And then we break up the chocolate, and we all hold it up, and I say, Christ has come, and all the kids say, Christ will come again, and we eat the chocolate. Wow.

Good. If you want to know what my 24 verses would be, there is a verse at the beginning of each chapter. So day one, day two, all the way through chapter 24. Each has a banner verse. So one thing you could do, one way you could use this resource for your own devotions during Advent, as well as for your children, is Mom and Dad could read the meditation on the verse, then close the book, put the book aside, gather the kids, read the one verse, and then just share from your heart what comes to mind from reading the devotional.

Any thought, anything that struck you, share that with your kids just briefly, and maybe have a chocolate together and pray together. And one way to move through Advent. Well, I mean, the beauty of that is we've never done this. No, we haven't celebrated Advent.

When you've got tickets for a great concert and you start counting the days, you get so excited because you know. I mean, I was thinking when you were talking about Advent, the NFL does this every week. Oh, my.

That's right. If you think about what people do, which is crazy, they watch pregame shows all week long. I know I've done this when I watched Super Bowl.

I'll sit down and watch the pregame. I never do that. And I'm like, oh, I'm so excited now for the game because I know some of the backstory. That's what Advent's doing. It's like taking you back to say, get your heart ready, get your heart ready, get your heart ready, day after day after day. And it makes the day so much more significant. I can't believe we've never done this. I know so few dads that would say our family devotions are really where we want them to be. Like, we're doing it every day.

It's the right length. Usually there's always, ah, I go way too long or we don't have the devotions or it doesn't go how I want. Advent is a great opportunity to work on that as a family. It's a good occasion to say, you know, we're going to do this daily. It's one verse. I'm going to read one verse and I'll give you 30 to 60 seconds of why I think that verse is important. And let's pray together.

And that could be a great thing you do in your family to help just jumpstart a spiritual dynamic, a family devotion that would be regular if it's not daily. Yeah. You say in your book, Christmas is not a beginning, it's a becoming. Ah, yes. What does that mean?

Okay. So that's talking about the incarnation, about God himself becoming man. That Jesus didn't start in Mary's womb. The eternal second person of the Trinity has always existed.

And so Christmas is in that sense a becoming. It's not Jesus' beginning, but God himself in the person of his son is taking on our full humanity. He becomes human without ceasing to be God.

This is just amazing. It's an important truth for us to understand as humans that humanity and divinity aren't opposed to each other on the same plane of reality, such that to be fully human means you can't be God. So for Jesus, he's fully human and fully God.

Humanity and divinity operate on different levels of reality, such that fully God can take on full humanity, that God himself can become man without ceasing to be God. That's what we mean in the book by saying it's a becoming, it's not a beginning. Jesus doesn't start in Bethlehem. He doesn't start in Mary's womb.

Jesus has always been there in happy joy and relationship with his Father, and the Father sent the Divine Son who became human at that first Christmas. So we just got a little understanding of the Hypostatic Union. The Hypostatic Union is in there. Look at you throwing out a theological term like that. Well, you know, I actually went to seminary about 50 years ago.

I know that. No, I mean, you literally just described it and didn't even use the term, and people are like, wow, that's a powerful concept. Well, a little insider tip is that so much theological language is really just to help keep in place very simple realities.

And so if you just learn the terms, you see how simple they can be. Hypostatic is just the Greek word for person. So it'd be much easier for us to call it the one-person union. And by that, what we mean is that united in the one person of the Divine Son, the eternal Divine Son, in that one person there is the union of full divinity and full humanity.

And it didn't happen at the same time. Jesus has always been fully divine. He's always been fully God. And then at Christmas, this is what we mark. This is why Christmas is so significant. He became one of us to the full, fully human body, human emotions, human mind, human will. He took on our human environment.

He identified with us in totality, except for sin, that he might come and save us. I love your enthusiasm about this because as you're talking, I'm thinking kids would get this. You could explain it in a way that, I mean, God is fully God, but fully human. To explain that to your kids, they can kind of start grasping it. And if you're excited about it, your kids are going to get excited about it. Our daughter-in-law puts out her nativity scene. And as she does it, the first time I went over to her house, I said, why are all the shepherds over here across the room? And she said, oh, the journey has just begun. And so I thought even that, it'd be so fun to move the shepherds a little closer every day and to explain what's going on in history right now because kids can get that visual and they can start to feel what's going on.

Even the fact that the angels came and sang to these shepherds who were nobody out in the field. Like, it'd be so fun to have a conversation about that with the kids. I'm going to find it. I thought maybe I could find it here on my computer right now, but I can't. One Christmas, right before Christmas, when our girls were still, I think, like, seven and four, maybe six and three, Mary Ann said, come in here.

Sit down in the living room. And she said, the girls have got something for you. And I said, what is it? And so they stood by the fireplace and the two of them looked at each other and smiled. And they said, in those days, there were shepherds keeping watch over their flock by night in the fields. And they went through Luke 2, and they had memorized about 12 verses of Scripture. The Christmas story from Luke. That's impressive.

It was very impressive. And I'm not sure Katie understood about half the words she was saying, but this is something Mary Ann had been working on with them during the Advent season. And they gave it as a gift to Daddy right before Christmas. This is how a mom and a dad can say, we're going to make Jesus the center of December. There's a lot going on with so many activities and so much busyness that we can set Jesus off to the side and kind of get to Christmas, even go, oh, yeah, yeah, it's about Jesus tomorrow, isn't it? And I think, David, this is what you're doing in this devotional you've written. You're saying, don't let this season become a distraction.

Make sure our focus is on what it ought to be on. The book that David has written is a devotional called The Christmas We Didn't Expect. Daily devotions for Advent.

I know Advent is underway, but you can get a copy of the book now and get caught up once the book arrives. Go to familylifetoday.com to order David Mathis' book, The Christmas We Didn't Expect. Or you can call us for more information. Our number is 1-800-FL-TODAY. Again, the website is familylifetoday.com. Or order David Mathis' book, The Christmas We Didn't Expect by calling 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Quick reminder, we've already talked about this today. The month of December is going to be a significant month for us here at Family Life, the month ahead. And we've had some friends who have made a significant offer to us. They have agreed that they will match every donation we receive this month, dollar for dollar, up to a total of $2 million. And of course, we're hoping to take full advantage of that matching gift opportunity. We're asking you to make as generous a year-end contribution as you possibly can. If God has used this ministry in your life, if you believe in what we're all about here at Family Life, if you want to see Family Life Today continue on your local radio station, be as generous as you can be. Go online or give us a call and make a year-end contribution. We'll say thank you when you do by sending you two things, a copy of my book, Love Like You Mean It, which is all about 1 Corinthians 13 and how that applies in a marriage relationship. And we'll send you a flash drive that has the top 100 Family Life Today programs of all time, programs on marriage, programs on parenting, on family, some great interviews we've done with names you will recognize through the years. The flash drive is our thank you gift to you along with my book, Love Like You Mean It, when you make a year-end contribution. Again, you can do that today. You can get that out of the way.

Get it done for the year. Go to familylifetoday.com to donate or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to donate over the phone. Thanks in advance for your support of this ministry, and we do look forward to hearing from you. Now, tomorrow we're going to continue to look at the details of the Christmas story to see the surprising things we learn about God and His grace by studying the birth of Jesus. David Mathis joins us again tomorrow. I hope you can be with us as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.