There Is No Good Earthly Reason for Christmas!

1st Sunday after Christmas, 12/29/19
Hosea 11:1-7


There Is No Good Earthly Reason for Christmas!
I. Not when you consider humanity’s sinful record
II. Only when you know and believe the astounding grace of God


I heard the words spoken several times the past few weeks. They referred to a mythical, jolly, old Christmas figure dressed in a red and white suit who was constantly watching over children to see if they were naughty or nice. The implication was, based on their recent behavior, the children would get what they deserved for Christmas.

But I also heard similar thoughts from real, living and breathing human beings. I heard things such as, “No one deserves to go hungry at Christmas.” The flip side of that statement is that everyone deserves to be fed. I also heard that every child deserves to open gifts at Christmas.

And I don’t intend to sound mean or even indifferent to the plight of unfortunate people. I understand why people and charitable organizations make those kinds of statements. They want to touch your heart and move you into charitable action.

But it’s easy to think that we do deserve a good Christmas celebration, especially if we’re God’s good people. We’re not the ones making the headlines each day for our heinous actions. Just the opposite. We’re the ones who are doing what we can to make our world better, spiritually speaking. We’re trying to make an eternal difference in people’s lives. Surely that worth something at Christmas, isn’t it?

Not if you take the words of Scripture seriously. The truth is that we’re evil by nature. To paraphrase Paul’s words in Romans, people are so evil they invent ways of being evil. And you and I are not exempt from that evil propensity. It’s solely by the grace of God that we don’t make the daily headlines for our evil actions.

And yet Christmas marks the event of God’s greatest gift to the sinful world—his Son. But there’s no good earthly reason for it. And that’s the truth our God impresses on our hearts and minds this morning through these words from his prophet Hosea. I imagine this text might be a little unfamiliar to you, so please follow with me as we take these words to heart.

Part I.

Perhaps you heard about some of the details of the tragic case of child abuse here in Dayton recently. I can’t talk about it here. I really don’t even want to think about it at all. But it led me to wonder if the perpetrator had been badly mistreated at some point in his life that caused him to be so wicked. Had he been mistreated as a child?

In these words of Hosea, the Lord gives a brief history of the kind of mistreatment he had received for centuries from his people, the Children of Israel. Could it be that his children were simply responding to his mistreatment of them?

Not a chance! The Lord had never mistreated his people. He was always and only absolutely faithful and loving towards them. Listen to his description of his loving treatment, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. But the more I called Israel, the further they went from me. They sacrificed to the Baals and they burned incense to images. It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms; but they did not realize it was I who healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love; I lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them.”

The truth is that the Lord rescued them from slavery in Egypt. When they cried out to him because of the cruel oppression they were enduring, he sent them Moses. And the Lord used Moses to perform ten amazing acts of his almighty power in front of Pharaoh, one of the most powerful men on the face of the earth at that time. The Lord led his people out of Egypt with a mighty hand and then he crushed Pharaoh and his army.

And that’s not all. The Lord refers to the way he fed his people—miraculously. They enjoyed manna every day for forty years. He caused water to flow from a rock. He protected them from their enemies who wanted to exterminate them. Indeed, the Lord had not mistreated his people.

Nor has the Lord mistreated us. He has freed us from slavery, too. Not at the hands of the Egyptians but from the cruel clutches of Satan. He rescued us at our baptisms and brought us into his eternal kingdom, a kingdom in which he protects us and blesses us eternally.

One of those blessings is the daily assurance of our forgiveness. Daily sinners need daily forgiveness more than anything else, and our God provides it. He’s destined us for life with him in heaven. And if that weren’t enough, he provides for us richly and daily. We have more than we need to live on—far more than we need.

What’s more, he protects us daily as well. He sends his holy angels to guard and protect us from evil. None of us knows how often our God has averted disaster in our lives by the intervention of his holy angels.

So, for all this goodness, what does our God expect from us? To love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. But we just can’t seem to respond to him that way, not even close. To be sure, we’re not bowing to Baal as the Children of Israel did, but we daily bow to the idol called Self when we put ourselves before God and others, and when we tell our God we’ll do as we please, so leave us alone. Our sorry record of faithfulness to our God makes us wonder if he’s speaking these words to us, “My people are determined to turn from me.”

And yet we celebrated Christmas. There really is no good earthly reason for Christmas—not when you consider humanity’s sinful record.

These words of Hosea make me uncomfortable. How about you? I could reply, “But, Lord, I’ve tried! I’ve tried to love you above all things.” But who am I fooling? Surely not God who knows my heart and mind. The truth is, I have failed to love him as I should and the idols all around me are evidence of it. What’s even more pathetic is how often I haven’t even really tried to love him above all things. The Jews of Hosea’s day literally worshipped idols. Put your favorite sin in place of their idols—worry, greed, discontentment, lust, judgmental thoughts and words, sinful pride. That’s the description of my daily life, of your daily life. And there’s no use denying it. You might fool Santa, but you can’t fool God. The Children of Israel never gave God what he expected—full commitment to him, and neither do we. So, really? Deserve Christmas? Deserve to have God send his Son in human flesh and blood to be our Savior, to sacrifice him for our sins? Not a chance! There is no good earthly reason for Christmas!

Part II.

I’m sure there are times when you hear the three scripture readings here in worship and wonder what the connection between them is. But not today. The connection is crystal clear. Matthew 2:15 quotes Hosea 11:1. You didn’t need me to tell you that.

But are you a little puzzled at how Matthew 2:15 is the fulfillment of Hosea 11:1? We know that God led the Children of Israel out of Egypt. We also know that God told Joseph and Mary to go to Egypt to protect Jesus and, when it was safe, to return to the Holy Land. But what do the two events have to do with each other?

Well, the Children of Israel, in spite of all the advantages God gave them, were never the people God wanted them to be. He called them stiff-necked and rebellious, and they showed it time after time. Remember how they worshipped the golden calf? Remember how they rebelled against Moses and Aaron, their God-appointed leaders? They were never the children God wanted them to be.

But Jesus was. God called Jesus out of Egypt and Jesus perfectly obeyed his parents and his heavenly Father. As a boy in the temple, he perfectly submitted to the authority of the religious leaders and his parents. As an adult, we know of three times that the Father spoke from heaven and gave his divine approval of his holy Son. Jesus even obeyed when his Father demanded that he go to Calvary’s cross to complete his work of redemption. But how can we be sure? How can we be sure he perfectly obeyed his Father’s will? Because he rose from the dead. Jesus’ life, death and resurrection was his Father’s plan for his Son from eternity. Before he created the world, God planned to send his Son at Christmas to be the world’s Savior from sin. And in eternity, before the creation of the world, God knew you by name as one of his own dear children. And two verses after our text, we have God’s own commentary on that plan. He stated, “For I am God, and not a man—the Holy One among you. I will not come in wrath” (11:9). The holy God had every reason to come to this earth in righteous wrath because “there is no one who does good, not even one” (Rom. 3:12). But instead, he comes as the God of grace for sinful people. And that’s what Christmas is all about.

There is no good earthly reason for Christmas. But there is a good heavenly reason, and we, who know and believe the astounding grace of God, are joyfully aware of it.

So, as your Christmas celebration winds down and you make your way into another year of God’s astounding grace, your God wants you to remember that Christmas is not about what you deserve from him, and the blessings in your daily life are not what you deserve from him. It’s all about the astounding grace of God.

As you begin to consider what things you’d like to accomplish in the new year, make this one of them: to consider the daily grace of God to you. Every day is a sinful day in your life, but every day is also a day of God’s grace in Christ to you. And it all started on the first Christmas when God sent his grace to you in human flesh and blood. That gift is the only gift you truly need. And it’s the only gift that lasts forever. There is no earthly good reason for Christmas! Thank God there isn’t, because Christmas is all about God’s grace to you, and our world doesn’t understand that grace.

Grow in that grace in the coming new year. Cherish the saving grace and the lavish love of God! Amen.