Transcript
I love Christmas. I love everything about Christmas. I love setting up our ridiculously big Christmas tree, twelve feet high. It's nuts. I love decorating it. I love all of those traditions and I'm very aware that Christmas is all about a tree, but it's not the tree that you decorate.
Another Tree Christmas Is All About
There's another tree that Christmas is all about. In fact, I've thought many times that even before the foundations of the earth, there was a tree in Jesus' future. And from the first breath that Jesus took, every step He took was marching toward this tree.
This was not a tree of happiness. This was not a tree of joy. This is not a tree that you would celebrate. Nobody would ever want to be any part of this tree but Jesus. In fact, the Bible says that Jesus approached this tree with joy. That tree is not an evergreen. It was a cross. Jesus knew when He came to earth that that cross was His destiny.
When the angels sang, their song of joy was really about the cross. When the wise men searched for Jesus, they were searching for One who would hang on a cross because there was no other way for what was broken inside of human beings to be fixed other than the cross and so, Jesus came.
He Came to Suffer and Die
He didn't come as a reigning king. He didn't come to be celebrated. He came to suffer and to die. And so, it's true that every step He took brought Him to the cross. That cross was an essential part of everything that God had in mind for human beings because what was broken at the garden, the separation of sin, had to be dealt with. There had to be One who would live perfectly, who would die acceptably, who would rise again, conquering sin and death in order for us to have forgiveness, acceptance with God, power for living, and eternal life.
I would just say to you my prayer is that when you look at your well-decorated tree, that you would remember that other tree. Your tree that you decorate can't give you life. The other tree is a source of life. Christmas is a story about that tree and the One who came to hang on that tree to satisfy God's requirement, so we would know life abundant and life forever.
