Submitted by admin on Mon, 07/12/2009 - 11:15am
MP3 File:
We're in a series of messages called "Four Words That Will Change Your Christmas." Maybe it would be better to say "four words that could change your Christmas," because obviously, the words themselves do nothing. It's only as we respond to them and put them into practice.
But some might say, "Well, what if I don't want to change Christmas? What if I like it the way it is?"
That's fine. Most of us enjoy the Christmas season. At least we enjoy most of it. There are a few Grinches and Scrooges out there, but most of us like Christmas time. A lot of things about Christmas don't really need changing.
But some things do need changing. Some things have gotten out of hand. I mean, there's a lot of stress and craziness this time of year.
Just untangling the Christmas lights from last year can put me over the top! (Do you know I went to Wal-Mart to replace the lights that didn't work this year, and two out of five new packages of lights didn't work either? I exchanged a faulty string of lights, took the new string home, plugged it in, and it didn't work either.)
There's all kinds of stress and craziness: scheduling events (parties, concerts, work, school, family, extended family); there's the shopping, spending, rushing, pushing, traffic, people who drive too fast, people who drive too slow, in-laws, out-laws.
Certainly we could benefit from some changes in these areas! Where do all these pressures come from, anyway? Who is driving the craziness and the stress? Who is pushing all the frenetic activities? The spending, the shopping, the rushing? Who?
Simple answer: We are. But why do we? I'll tell you why. It's because we've allowed the culture to take over. The things that drive our culture have become things that drive us. We are too influenced by the ways of the world! We follow the herd.
Video: BBC special: Planet Earth. Flocks of birds, schools of fish, swarms of insects, herds of wildebeests in migration—like little sub-cultures of their own. Normally it's good to be with others, but there can be danger in following the herd—like when the herd has this uncontrollable urge to cross an African river infested by crocodiles!
And that's why we need to UNPLUG if we want to change our Christmas.
Last week Fred talked about the gift of "presence"—the unique gift of spending time with someone, to linger, listen, learn, and lend a hand...especially when extra obligations and over-commitment can steal our time and attention away from God and away from those we care about most.
"Presence" is about connecting with others; "unplugging" would seem to be the opposite of connecting. So to clarify, I'd like to begin by telling you what we're NOT talking about.
1. To "unplug" does not mean to withdraw from [or check out of] this world.
Some people think the only way to live a holy life is to join a monastery—separated from the world, cloistered away in cubicles, meditating and praying in solitude, away from the temptations of the world. [See recent National Geographic article where women are restricted from an entire region.]
When Jesus came to this world, though, he came to connect with the world, not withdraw. He came because he "so loved the world"; he came to be a "friend of sinners." Jesus didn't "unplug" in the sense of escaping from the world. Rather he encountered the world.
He laid aside the culture of heaven, along with his power and privileges as God's Son, to live in the culture of earth! Jesus was fully God, but he became fully human!
Born as a human baby, he grew up surrounded by his Jewish community and its ways. He played with other kids. As he grew he learned to work in his father's carpenter's workshop, surrounded by wood-working tools. Jesus was fully a part of his world—he spoke their language, he adopted their customs, he walked their roads, he ate their kosher food.
Before Jesus left this world to return to his Father in heaven, he said, "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you" (John 20:21). He does not want us to withdraw from the world. He wants us to go to the world.
We are to be "...children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world" (Phil 2:15, NASB)
It's possible to connect with culture without being crushed by culture.
[Unreached people groups—many have never heard because no one has bridged the cultural gap.]
2. To "unplug" does not mean to freeze time [or go back to simpler times].
You don't have to go back to a horse and buggy to unplug. You don't have to wash your clothes by hand or cook over a wood stove to unplug. You can't make yourself more spiritual or godly just by getting rid of your indoor plumbing and using an outhouse. I mean, get real! Where would you find a Sears & Roebuck's catalog?
Simpler times, in some ways, may have been more stressful. So to unplug, we're looking for something more than stopping the clock.
3. To "unplug" does not mean to condemn culture.
Some parts of culture may be negative. Some parts of culture may be bad. But culture alone—the customs, habits, behaviors, expressions and institutions of society—is not automatically evil. In fact, culture can be put to either good or evil purposes—depending on who is using it.
Before Wernher von Braun led NASA to land a man on the moon, he'd designed rockets for the Germans in WWII. What he said about science could just as easily have been said about culture: "It is like a knife," he said. "If you give it to a surgeon or a murderer, each will use it differently."
A knife isn't necessarily evil on its own—and neither is a flat panel TV or an iPod or an Internet connection. Culture alone isn't necessarily bad.
But here's a problem—any of these things can become bad in the hands of a bad person.
The problem is that human nature is sinful. People—at their core—are inherently bad. We are sinners by nature. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" (Jer 17:9, NKJV). This is why our culture can often lead us astray!
When the world hijacks Christmas and makes it into something wrong or destructive, we need to pull the plug on the pressures and the influences of our culture.
We need to unplug from the expectations, the competition, the attitudes of society. We need to unplug from the worldly values of our culture.
It's not easy to unplug from our culture because...
We can't stop the clock. We can't turn back the pages of the calendar. Change is inevitable. Try to stop the winds from blowing—it's harder to halt the changes in society.
It's not easy to unplug from our culture because...
We live in this world. We cannot help but be part of the culture! It's who we are. The culture we live in is as much a part of us as water is to fish or the forest is to trees.
So what can we do? How can we "unplug"?
1. With your mind. Your view of the world needs to be shaped by God's truth and God's values.
"...do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2, NASB).
J. B. Phillips paraphrased this: "Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold, but let God re-mold your minds from within" [Phillps]
Eugene Peterson paraphrased this: "Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking..." [Message]
To unplug your mind from the world means you can start learning new things—you can start seeing things from God's point of view. One of the most important things we must learn is to be in the world, but not of the world.
While we live in this world, we don't have to let the world live in us!
In this world, we're to be like aliens from another place—like an ambassador who lives in one country but represents another. An ambassador respects the people and culture where he lives, but he follows the instructions from home. Sometimes an ambassador may need to stand up to the government where he lives, because he's following orders from his home country. In the same way, we can relate to the culture where we live, but our core values and views are shaped by the God of heaven. Though we live in this world, we can't allow the world to live in us—distorting or undermining our core biblical values and views.
[Like Jesus, we can be friends of sinners, but we cannot risk being friends of the world: "whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God" (James 4:4, NASB).]
2. With your hands. What does the world expect you to do? Do something different!
What do you normally do? Do something different! Living a life of faith is not about doing the expected thing, the routine thing, or the convenient thing.
Faith is about risk. Sacrifice. Service. Unplug by doing service. Unplug by giving yourself.
When the culture pressures you in one direction, you can push back by choosing to do something different. For instance...
- Talk with your family about spending less on each other this Christmas.
- Make gifts with your own hands—invest more love than dollars into your gifts.
- Give away things you no longer need or use—simplify.
- Clean out your closets, gather up your excess toys and bring them to the toy exchange.
- Give more to those who have less (think globally: World Vision, Samaritan's Purse websites—give a goat, a cow, some chickens, a well, etc.)
- Ring bells for the Salvation Army.
- Serve food at a community Christmas dinner.
What you do with your hands to unplug will be different than what someone else will do. But do something!
3. With your heart. Redirect your heart—your passion—toward God and away from the world. Toward truth, toward right living, toward a healthy balance, toward proper priorities.
Secular culture has shifted the focus of Christmas. It's redefined the meaning and undermined the values of Christmas:
"God so loved that he gave" has been replaced with "you've got to give; you've got to buy, you've got to spend, you've got to do more."
Companies and businesses are doing everything they can to squeeze us into their mold, to shop and spend and buy and waste.
Advertising and marketing campaigns want to persuade us to follow the herd. Advertising agencies are competing with the devil to tempt us! They want you to spend more money than you have on things you don't need to impress people who don't care.
The devil doesn't care if we max out our credit cards. He's glad if we're left strapped for cash and short of resources. He's happy if we handicap ourselves so we're unable to do ministry.
God gives us a number of ways to unplug from worldly values:
- Put off the old self. (Eph 4:22, NIV)
- Flee evil desires (2 Tim 2:22, NIV)
- Be holy [separate] in what you do (1Peter 1:14-15, NIV)
- [Like foreigners] abstain from sinful desires (1 Peter 2:11, NIV)
- Live good lives among the pagans (1 Peter 2:12, NIV)
- Do not love the world or anything in it (1 John 2:15-17, NIV)
Secular culture, quite frankly, has hijacked Christmas and shifted the focus of Christmas away from Jesus! You can fill an entire Christmas season, from Thanksgiving to December 25, with all kinds of things other than Jesus: chestnuts roasting on an open fire, yule tide greetings, halls decked with balls of holly, mistletoe, Santa, partridges in pear trees, sleigh rides, stockings hung by the chimney with care, lights, tinsel, trees, snow, eggnog...
We cannot—we must not—be swept along by the ideas and thinking of the culture. Not now at Christmas time—not anytime. If we can unplug just a bit from the prevailing, pervasive culture, we could change Christmas as we know it.