During the Christmas time, setting up and decorating the Christmas tree is a task by itself, that becomes a competition in homes. It also carries the hope and desire of getting a gift that one has been looking forward to. But despite consistent efforts, the tree keeps on tilting towards one side and it reveals the sinful tilt in our own lives also. We try but keep on failing to walk right but in these failures also, we get strengthened to live right. However, many do not realise in time the tilt and fall from faith itself, without even realising their fallen state.
Immanuel and the Christmas Tree – The start of the Christmas Tree is from Germany sometime in 723 AD and it is supposed that they were referred to as ‘Paradise Trees’. They were meant to represent the Garden of Eden, presence of God and His abundant blessings. It was Martin Luther in the 16th century, who lighted candles on the tree displaying the ‘Light of the World’ and the connected blessings. Later the Germans took this tradition to the rest of the world and today it has become a standard part of our celebrations.
Anyone who is involved in the setting up of the tree in his house knows how it keeps on tilting towards one side. Try as we must but every effort fails after a while but the great Creator God sent His beloved Son to set the tilt in our lives right. We are all blessed with a certain number of blessings, whether we are rich or not so rich or poor. But as believers we want to present our best side to all others. However, deep within us envy keeps on gnawing at us when we see others enjoying their abundance. On the other hand, pride is the thorn on the side of the wealthy.
Prophet Jeremiah received the Word from the LORD God, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified (set apart) you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations’ (Jeremiah 1:5). God has clearly declared about His plan for everyone born on earth and this is established before anything was. God keeps on trying to ensure compliance of His plan despite our sinful nature. Sometime back, a single-engine aircraft crashed in the remote jungles of Colombia. Extensive search was launched and in reaching the aircraft, the rescuers could only find the dead bodies of three out of seven passengers and those who were missing were four children aged between 11years to the youngest just a few months. The two elder children grew up to that age on the edge of the jungle and were taught about which snakes and other things to be avoided. The rescuers reached up to about 5o feet from the children, who hid out of fear. Finally, the authorities started playing the appeal of the children’s grand-mother, to contact the people searching for them. After forty days they were rescued and brought home. After the sin of disobedience, Adam and Eve were hiding from God, who came looking for them in His Divine love (Genesis 3:8-9). God called out to them, ‘Where are you?’ Mankind was not abandoned by God who kept sending His Word to turn them back to Him.
The plan of salvation was declared by God immediately when sin entered the world, for He was fully aware of the futility of our own efforts to cover our sins with tree leaves. He blessed the Israelites with His presence and His Word to help them live a life worthy of His presence and thus show the light to others. God’s call to the Israelites from Mount Sion was to bless them by teaching them His desired way of life for mankind to live free and independent of the fear of slavery (Exodus 20:18-19). They had been held captive as slaves in Egypt but when they saw ‘the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking’, they were filled with fear. In that fear they tried to hide from the God of love, to say to Moses, ‘You speak with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die’.
We also want to remain hidden away from God, filled with the fear of His judgement. The construction of the ‘Tower of Babel’ was an effort to have a place to hide from any future flood that may come to punish them (Genesis 11:4).
God established the system of sacrifices of animals as a way for atonement of sin as a pointer to their need for a perfect sacrifice to atone for them. His blessing to Abraham, David and others always provided a glimpse of the perfect reign of His Son on earth where His love would prevail over evil. Various prophetic messages about the coming of the Redeemer, all gave hope to the suffering humanity. We were all banished from His presence in the Garden and He promised to be with us, our Immanuel, born of a virgin woman (Isaiah 7:14). He was born sinless and lived a righteous life in absolute obedience to the will of God the Father. His obedience started from heaven, where He emptied Himself of His Divine glory of the Son of God to become Son of Man. On earth this was preceded by His mother Mary’s submission to say to angel Gabriel, the messenger of God, ‘Behold, the maidservant of the LORD! Let it be done to me according to your word’ (Luke 1:38). And also, the obedience of His earthly father, Joseph, who heard the voice of God in a dream, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit’ (Matthew 1:20; 25). Joseph took Mary as his wife but ‘did not know her till she had brought forth her firstborn Son.
The Christmas Tree may be leaning to a side but we have the way of our Saviour Lord to walk straight and not tilt towards the evil ways of the devil. He came to do His Father’s will most diligently so that we could also turn to Him as His children, through faith in the salvation that we receive.
Working of Peace of the Prince of Peace in us – On meeting Eve Adam said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man’ (Genesis 2:23-24). This oneness extended beyond physical togetherness into spiritual strengthening of each other for she was called by God ‘Ezer-kenegdo’, similar but ready to oppose any wrong doing of Adam. This changed after sin, for Adam first blamed God and then the woman, to say, ‘The woman You gave me to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate it’ (Genesis 3:12). Adam was to be her protector and partner but he did not do anything to stop the lies of the devil, spoken through the serpent. The curse of sin that entered mankind was spiritual and physical death and with that separation from God and also from each other started.
In the Garden of Eden where there was perfect communion with God, for man, but expulsion brings in separation between God and humanity. It brings in the need for redemption and restoration. With this the role and task was also changed from ‘tend and care’ to toil and burden of hard labour. Even the earth produces ‘thorns and thistles’ along with a good crop of hard labour, returning to working the earth brings them back to their origins, from dust of the earth and dependence on God for life itself. This also leads to the hope of resurrection and new creation into eternal life, free from the curse of sin.
Moses in his last and final message to the Israelites, repeated all that the LORD God had commanded Him earlier. He said, ‘Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse; The blessing if you obey the Commandments of the LORD your God which I command you today; and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD your God’ (Deuteronomy 11:26-28). Mankind was in rebellion with God due to sin, with all relationships in turmoil; with God above, with each other and with the whole of creation. God being our Creator knows all about us and our inability to get back into a close relationship with Him, which can only be through forgiveness of sins. God sent His Son to free us from this bondage and help us turn back to Him, in repentance and submission.
Lord Jesus was forever at peace with His Father in heaven and here on earth also, for always accepting obedience to the ‘Will of the Father’. God sent His Son to reconcile us to Him and made ‘Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him’ (2 Corinthians 5:21). For us sinners, the Son of God became sin by taking our sins on Himself to free us from our bondage to sin and the devil. He bore our curses, that we had brought upon ourselves because of our sinful deeds. He gave us His peace and ended our life of disobedience to God by giving us His righteousness. What the devil had stolen from us, our fellowship with God and right living, was restored in abundance (John 10:10). On the cross He showed us to care for our parents, by entrusting the care of His mother Mary to the most trusted disciple, Apostle John (John 10:26-27).
We are not only blessed to be the children of God but also assured of a prepared place in heaven. On the cross, first Lord Jesus checked and assured Himself ‘that all things were now accomplished’ and that the Scripture might be fulfilled by saying, ‘It is finished (John 19:28-30). With that, freedom from control of the devil was granted to all who believe in Him. All believers are tasked to make disciples by freeing others from this slavery, for Lord Jesus has said, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth’ (Matthew 28:18). He has given us, ‘authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you’ (Luke 10:19). We use this in His name for He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords.
What was taken by the devil in the Garden of Eden through deceit was taken back by Lord Jesus. Lord Jesus restored us to the status of Adam when He was created, sinless and with glory. He declared in His prayer to the Father in heaven, ‘the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one’ John 17:22). Our relationship with God above, with each other and with the creation is also brought back to normal by the Messiah for He came for this and completed the assignment.
Relationship of the Christmas Tree to a believer – The Christmas Tree bears lights, stars and gifts for all who join us in celebrating this great day for Mankind. We need to analyse the root to which this tree in our house is connected, to the Tree of Life or the one giving knowledge of good and evil. We are warned to look ‘carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many get defiled’ (Hebrews 12:15). We carry the hurts of past years deep in our hearts, never forgiving and never forgetting and continue to hurt ourselves. We are taught to pray, by the Lord, ‘and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors’ (Matthew 6:12). All those hurts that we carry deep within us are hurts that we have not forgiven others, while He came and ‘was crushed for our iniquities’ (Isaiah 53:5).
Another root grows from the Tree of knowledge of good and evil, which leads us to be independent of God and follow our desires in our strength and wisdom. In old age we write our last will expressing our desire to divide our earthly property to our children, for to will is to desire. Our Saviour Lord’s last will before God was in the Gethsemane Park, ‘Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done’ (Luke 22:42). Is our root of faith so firm, to commit every day, to do His will and His will alone and that too not in our wisdom but His? His prayer was not about physical pain on the cross but about the anguish of being separated from God while bearing our sins. He carried no resentment for anyone, whatever they had done to Him. We carry bitterness due to anger and disappointment; unfulfilled expectations, pride and self-focus and a weak faith in God.
The consequences of this root are both spiritual and physical. The spiritual part of this is identified by Apostle Paul in the form of prolonged anger and sin in that, for in this manner we give control to the devil (Ephesians 4:26-27). This affects us by restraining us from genuine loving relationships and sustaining these. The physical aspect involves undue stress, emotional turmoil causing sickness like cardiac health issues. We need to remember that ‘A sound heart is life to the body but envy is rottenness to the bones’ (Proverbs 14:30). When we envy someone for who he is or what he has, we violate the Tenth Commandment and carry doubts in our hearts about the love and ability of God to provide.
God became Man, dependent on His creation, suffered all that the devil brought on Him and defeated death and the devil and freed us. But when we continue to live a life under the control of the devil, we continue to draw the darkness from him, rather than abundant life from the Tree of Life. For this Apostle Paul asks us to ‘Examine yourselves, as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves’ (2 Corinthians 13:5). We need to consider our overall conduct and behaviour towards others, for Lord Jesus is in each believer. If there has been no change in our attitude during the year and we are still carrying bitterness towards everyone including God, we are living a lie about our faith.
When we turn to Lord Jesus as the source of all our blessings and remain focused on Him, we start receiving answers to our prayers also. However, when we are not stable in our faith, we fall into the control of the devil and suffer endlessly. During the Christmas season, we must examine ourselves properly lest we continue to live in false belief. Our Father in heaven has already given to us the most precious Jewel of heaven but have we really received Him as a great treasure.
