Good God It's Christmas 3 | Freed From Fear

Then the angel of the LORD appeared to him... and fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him, "Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your prayer is heard..." (Luke 1:11–13) > > Then the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name JESUS..." (Luke 1:30–33) > > Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields... and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy... For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord." (Luke 2:8–12)

Christmas is the advent of the One who holds the keys of death—and so it is the end of our fear.

Fear and Its Many Faces

We all know how gripping fear can be. The response to fear is often described with three words: flight, fight, or freeze. We have all experienced one of these when something frightening comes upon us.

There are all kinds of fears and phobias. I found a list of 538 diagnosable phobias this week. Some we know well—arachnophobia (fear of spiders), acrophobia (fear of heights), aerophobia (fear of flying). Others are stranger: geniophobia (fear of chins), consecotaleophobia (fear of chopsticks), Dutchphobia (fear of Dutch people), pentheraphobia (fear of a mother-in-law). There is even homilophobia, the fear of sermons—which you apparently don't have, since you're here.

For some people, fear is no laughing matter; they live their entire lives in bondage to it. And there is one fear that is nearly universal—necrophobia, the fear of death.

All Humanity Lives Under the Shadow of Death

I would suggest that all people fear death unless one of two things is true: either they know the One who removes that fear, or they are ignorant of what lies beyond death and so, in their ignorance, are not afraid.

Death can be a fearful thing. Job writes of the terrors of the shadow of death (Job 24); David speaks of the same in Psalm 55:4. For some it is the certainty—ten out of ten people die. For others it is the finality, or the possible pain, or the unknown-ness of what lies beyond. Most people in the world believe in something after this life, and that unknown produces fear. Hezekiah, facing death, wrote of that fear in Isaiah 38.

Many fears can be avoided—if you fear flying, don't fly; if you fear spiders, don't go in my garage. But death cannot be avoided. And Scripture reveals a further certainty beyond it:

And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment. (Hebrews 9:27)

The Fear That Drives Us to Repentance

It is certain that human beings will die, and certain that they will face judgment. That people fear this judgment is actually a good thing. Jesus said:

Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. (Matthew 10:28)

Jesus exhorts us to reverence the One who has authority over the coming judgment. One preacher said that "fear is good office work for repentance," and I think that's true—it stirs us to seek a way not to be punished beyond this life.

Many hope their good works will outweigh their bad. But Isaiah tells us that all our good works are as filthy rags before a perfectly holy God (Isaiah 64). In the light of His perfection, our good works will never measure up.

Death entered through the fall. God warned Adam that the day he ate of the tree he would surely die (Genesis 2). When Adam and Eve sinned, they heard God's voice in the garden, were afraid, and hid themselves. That has been man's response to God in the face of sin and death from the earliest pages of Scripture. So our first point: all of humanity lives under the fearful shadow of death.

I know that is a wonderfully hope-filled Advent message eleven days before Christmas! But be grateful—we are not done yet.

Why We Commemorate Christmas

This morning we will take communion. On the night He was betrayed, Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and said, "Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of Me." Likewise He took the cup: "This is the cup of the new covenant in My blood." It is a tangible, physical reminder of what He did for us.

From its earliest days the church commemorated Jesus' death on Good Friday and His resurrection on Resurrection Sunday—both annually and weekly as they gathered on the Lord's Day. Paul writes of this to Corinth (1 Corinthians 11) only about twenty years after the cross.

But it was not until about the third century A.D. that the church began to also celebrate Christ's birth. Why? Because they recognized there would never have been a Good Friday or a Resurrection Sunday had there not been an advent. There is no crucifixion and resurrection without the incarnation. Without the coming of the Christ child, all of humanity would still be under the fearful shadow of death.

The Incarnation Brings Glory, Grace, and Truth

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

This is our second point: the incarnation brings in glory, grace, and truth. The advent of the child born in fulfillment of Isaiah 9:6—written 700 years before Bethlehem—is the ushering in of the fullness of glory and grace and truth. From that fullness, John says, we have all received one gracious blessing after another. The law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

All the old prophecies converge in Him—Isaiah's virgin and child, Micah's Bethlehem, Zechariah's timing, David's line in 2 Samuel 7, and Genesis 3, where the seed of the woman crushes the serpent's head. Through the coming of Jesus, glorious grace and truth break in upon those living under the shadow of death.

He Came for the Cross

Jesus did not merely show up to feed the hungry, heal the sick, and cast out demons—though He did those things. Those are the benefits of His coming, not its primary purpose. His purpose was to be the child born, the Son given. That is why John the Baptist said, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."

To Jewish ears that was unmistakable. Their whole life was bound up in the sacrifice of lambs, bulls, and goats—offered continually for over a thousand years to cover sin. But John says this Lamb does not merely cover sin; He removes it. And in removing it, He removes the fear of death.

Before Pilate, when asked if He was a king, Jesus answered, "For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world" (John 18:37). At the end of that day He cried, "It is finished." That is the cause for which He came—and it could not have been fulfilled had the advent never taken place. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. In that, the fear of death is removed.

The Five Evangelical Feasts

For centuries the church has celebrated five evangelical feasts. Early on they commemorated Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection through the bread and the cup. Over time they added His ascension, then the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, and after about 200 years, His advent.

From the third century to the sixteenth, the church added countless other feasts for various saints—until nearly every day of the year had one. Then came the Protestant Reformation and a return to sola scriptura. The church set aside those extra feasts and centered again on five: Advent/Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, the Ascension, and Pentecost.

This brings our third point: without Christmas there is no Good Friday, no Easter, no Ascension, no Pentecost. And there is one more blank—there is no church. Without the advent, there is no resurrection, no ascension, no outpouring of the Spirit, and no us. Without Christmas, we are still subject to fear.

Freed From the Fear of Death

Because God's children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could He die, and only by dying could He break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. Only in this way could He set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of death. (Hebrews 2:14, NLT)

Our fourth point: Christmas equals freedom from fear and death. Only in becoming flesh could Jesus set free all who have lived their lives in bondage to the fear of death.

Decades after the resurrection and ascension, the apostle John was in exile on Patmos, facing possible execution—yet he had no fear of death. Why?

When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, "Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death." (Revelation 1:17–18)

The same words Zacharias, Mary, and the shepherds heard—"Do not be afraid"—now come to John. There are only two ways a person will not fear death and judgment: either they are ignorant that it is coming, or they know the One who holds the keys of death, the One called in John 11 "the resurrection and the life."

You are not ignorant, and neither are most people you know. We have family, neighbors, friends, and co-workers who still live under the shadow of the fear of death. One of the greatest outcomes of Christmas is the doing away with that fear—because Christmas is the advent of the One who was dead but lives forevermore, who comes full of grace and truth.

Why I Will Keep Celebrating Christmas

Our purpose in this life is to be witnesses of Christ to a lost, dying, and needy world. Christians are to incarnate, as Jesus did, the glory, grace, and truth of God.

Some Christians urge abandoning Christmas for one of two reasons: modern materialistic commercialism, or perceived connections to ancient paganism. I believe such a departure is an affront to the incarnational nature of Jesus, the gospel, and the Christian life. Are there possible cultural connections to ancient practices? Perhaps—though the link is not as clear as some suppose. You are free in Christ to celebrate or not. If you have questions, I'd recommend Doug Wilson's book God Rest Ye Merry.

Is there commercialism connected to Christmas in American culture? Yes—you'd be a fool not to see it. But does that require us to abandon the holiday? No more than bad representations of churches require us to abandon the church, or worship music being marketed for profit requires us to stop singing, or publishers profiting from Bibles requires us to throw out our Bibles. We can still proclaim the truth, worship our Savior, and gather as the church.

Boycotting Christmas would be exactly what the devil would have the church do. To run from Christmas is to run from one of the only remaining state-recognized expressions of Christianity in a culture growing more secular by the minute. It would be throwing the baby Jesus out with the cultural bathwater.

As Paul told the Romans: he who observes the day observes it to the Lord, and he who does not, to the Lord he does not. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind—but why judge your brother or show contempt? A wholesale abandonment of Christmas would mean walking away from a great opportunity to incarnate the glory of Christ to people who are receptive to it this time of year. So the leaders of this church and I will continue to celebrate Christmas. Now let's worship the Lord.