M-G: 12.13.13 // Jesus is the best got you will ever get, Luke 2:13-14

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 Passage: Lk 2:8-18

This is supposed to be my Christmas devotion which so happened to be published on Friday the 13^th! When I read of the “multitude of the heavenly host” I thought of their counterpart, demons. So here is a Christmas-related story with some discussion on the popular subject of demons added in for good measure; it is after all an “unlucky” day! Isn’t life full of twists and turns, ironies and paradoxes!

Every year around this time we revisit this passage that somehow gets lost in the shuffle while trimming the tree, shopping, wrappings and bows, and festive occasions. There is a frantic pace to get things wrapped up before Christmas, navigating our automobile amidst the traffic congestion and bumping shoulders with the crowd of shoppers in the malls. It’s getting worse every year fighting a growing crowd,” we mutter to ourselves. So we say out loud, “Bah humbug,” in the spirit of the coldhearted Ebenezer Scrooge in the Charles Dickens novel, A Christmas Carol! It is as if the surrounding sounds of Franticville are drowning out the joy of Christmas like snow heavily falling on a warm campfire. Has Christmas time become a killjoy? The ghosts of Christmas pasts are growing in number!

Sometimes I read this passage “out of season” because it moves me beyond the pandemonium and noise of the countdown to Christmas, and I step back getting a greater perspective on the “good tidings of great joy which will be to all people” and “goodwill toward men” on trying to comprehend just how deep the love of God went in sending His precious Son to a sure-death situation for the likes of me into a very dark and cold world engulfed by unseen ominous forces arrayed against God and man. It thrills my heart to read about all the good angels doing work for the glory of God because all those who love the Lord are recipients of that work.

Don’t you think that we are getting bombarded with a lot of talk about demonic activity through the various entertainment mediums today? I guess paranormal activity sells nowadays like never before, “We got to capitalize on those demons and gain market share, don’t we?” I remember, as a young believer, being curiously attracted to stories from devout missionaries during annual missionary conferences who spoke on engaging demonic forces in the field. I was captivated, intrigued, and fascinated by what missionaries had to say on the subject of demons. I came away with the knowledge that missionaries avoided demons like the plague and warned us of making sure that we were right with God before confronting the enemy.

I can also recall being left with a sense of foreboding or a feeling of evil to come my way in promoting the very good news of Christ. I often thought, “What have I gotten myself into?” Today, there is the dangerous and reckless pursuit of interacting with paranormal activities in the world and profiting from them. It's entertaining and scary, but it is anything but harmless. Demons are everywhere! 

Ghost hunters and paranormal researchers have no idea of the dangers of exposing themselves to that which they do not fully understand, and they are supposed to be the experts?! They arm themselves in their eager-beaver-ness to engage the spirit world with various EMF (electromagnetic field) detectors, digital cameras, DVRs, IR thermometers/thermal scanners, video cameras, night vision scopes, thermal imaging cameras, EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) devices, motion detectors/door sensors, laptops, and so on. These are the tools of the trade in foolishly searching for demons. What they don’t know is that all demons literally hate the sons and daughters of Adam. These creatures particularly hate the sons and daughters of Adam who have the Holy Spirit living inside of them.

One other thing I should mention. There is no putting a soul at rest. Demons are minions of the dragon, mimicking human beings long gone from the face of the earth, in heaven or hell. The majority of the appearances that are human-like and in a familiar form (living shapeshifters) are in fact demons following orders from the dragon and his demonic hierarchy. Confronting demons can be a dangerous proposition (cf. Acts 19:13-16). I cannot say categorically that all human-like appearances are evil in nature. Angels have appeared to people in the Bible in human form (cf. Lot’s rescue from Sodom by angels, Gn 19:1). One thing is for sure, demons are definitely not interested in helping the sons and daughters of Adam to be more Christlike in their living. they want the lost to stay lost and the saved to live for themselves or die.

There are opposing invisible forces going at it relentlessly with no quarter given, and all believers are caught up in the middle of it, like it or not. Paul was not waxing metaphorically in putting on the whole armor of God in Ephesians (Eph 6:10-18, note v11-12). When people sincerely sing, “Open the eyes of my heart, Lord,” they are going to see the majesty and beauty of the Lord but also get an eye full of the ugliness of the spiritual conflict that exists in every crook and cranny of this earth. There is no need to look for it like a paranormal prospector; it’s before our very eyes wherever we are and everywhere else!

Why, because there are so many of them. They are like spiritual germs; they contaminate anything they are allowed to get their hands on. I am glad we cannot see germs or demons; I believe it would create paranoia because of the number of germs and demons in the world. Their numbers are actually unable to be calculated, like germs, but we can arrive at some kind of “perspective” on their numbers. In Rev 12:4 even though it doesn’t speak of the moment a certain number of angels sided with Lucifer in the angelic insurrection of the past, John speaks of an angelic conflict in the future, possibly at the midway point of the Tribulation period (Rev 12:6), taking place in heaven between Michael and the angels and the dragon and his angels (Rev 12:7). Satan and his fallen angels were defeated and cast from heaven to earth (cf. Rev 12:8-9). The number of unfallen angels cast to earth with Satan was a third of the angels (Rev 12:4).

If interpreting Rev 12:4 literally and there is no reason not to do so, this would mean that there are twice as many angels of heaven than the demons of the dragon. How many good angels are there? This is where it gets amazingly crazy. Rev 5:11 speaks of their number around the throne as “ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands and thousands.” Want to guess how many that is? Scientifically, it is a bunch! Gloriously, their numbers are beyond calculation! Literally, their numbers are “myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands” (JBP translation). It could be expressed as innumerable (Heb 12:22). So a third of the innumerable is the bad guys, a third mind you; two-thirds of the innumerable are on our side.

Imagine two-thirds of the innumerable angels letting it rip around the throne, “with a loud voice,” in surround sound,

"Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom, and strength and honor and glory and blessing" (Rev 5:12)!

Loud enough to trigger seismic activity!

Coming back to the Lukan text, this passage is spiritually therapeutic because something took place on earth to heal this brokenness inside of me that would change my world forever – “born to you this day in the city of David a savior [emphasis mine], who is Christ the Lord.” Oh, for too long I saw no need of a Savior; blinded to my brokenness from sin and unbelief (2 Cor 4:4), I could never see the real in the spiritual mirror of God’s Word  until the glorious light of the Gospel shone upon me. Jesus came, died, and reached out to me. This is the gift of eternal life offered to the world when a little One who was born of the virgin Mary to save us from the penalty of sin, was put to death on a cruel cross thirty-three to thirty-six years later for you and me.

Do you think the Shepherds got a light and sound show that night in the fields while keeping watch over their flock! The Shekinah glory was lighting up the fields (Lk 2:9), and an ear full of angelic sounds was waking up the silent night (Lk 2:13-14)!

I love the reaction of the Shepherds when everything returned to normal (Lk 2:8b,15a), black and silent: “let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass,” and they went with “haste” and “found Mary and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger” (Lk 2:15, 16). What they had heard and seen “They made widely known” (Lk 2:17)! It didn’t stop after the normal or natural went supernatural and back to normal or natural; the shepherds returned, “glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen” (Lk 220). The transitive verbs, glorifying and praising, are in the present tense suggesting they continued to do so. Their lives and their outlook had been changed forever!

This Christmas season do we find ourselves succumbing to the normal routine of the seasonal shuffle of the holiday? Are the words holiday and Xmas characterizing your Christmas rather than singing joy to the world because the Lord has come? Have we so drifted into the secular season that we cannot “see this thing that has come to pass?” Is there any “haste” in our seeking out Jesus? He is always where He is supposed to be (Jn 8:29), ruling and reigning (Heb 4:16), Do you know Him? Is He ruling and reigning in your heart this time of year and throughout the year? 

This is a very special time of year, at least representatively, that we should be glorifying and praising God for all the things heard and seen surrounding His birth according to the Scriptures. Sure, our country is in a fix; outcomes are uncertain, but life back in the days of Mary and Joseph and the Shepherds was probably worse under a very unstable, deranged, and dangerous man known as Herod the Great. This is a time when the normal or natural went off the measurable to abnormal and supernatural. Isn’t this what characterizes Christianity from the world, joy in the midst of gloom and doom because Jesus makes a difference in our lives. Does He make a difference for you?

We spoke a lot about demons, but this is not really about those evil and vile critters. Yeah, we should be thankful they are outnumbered, but an all-powerful God doesn’t need angels to protect us really (cf. Rom 8:37, 38, 39), but they are His servants because God decreed it so. It’s all about “Glory to God in the highest” in our lives; it has always been about Him, and it should always be about Him in our lives anytime, not limited to Christmas time. Someone rightly said, “God didn’t send Jesus to earth to get Him out of heaven, but to get heaven into us.”   

What have I gotten myself into? Well, in spite of all those nasty antagonizing demons running around out there causing mayhem and havoc, I have gotten myself into something that was the best thing that I could have ever gotten myself into! From out of those earthly swaddling clothes to the heavenly vestures of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, I, solely by the grace and mercy of God in the Highest, became a son of His forever. Jesus was the greatest gift ever given to me.

If there ever was anything that I could point to and say with absolute confidence about the one thing I did right in this world, it would be trusting in Jesus as my Lord and Savior (Eph 2:8-9; Titus 3:5)! How about you? I will, obviously, never regret that decision made on Monday morning of January 19, 1976, at 10:40 hours. With all the rollercoastering in the Christian life that I had experienced over the years, if I had to do it all over again, I would trust in Him again for my salvation and run a better race than ever before; sometimes I wished that I could do that, but I know I have only one life to live for Him.

To the one on bended knee, to the wise seed planter, to the one who watered, and to the One who gave the increase, I am eternally grateful to, but particularly to my Savior who in His great humility became flesh (our reason for the season) to procure my salvation. Thank You and you, who had a part in my redemption, from the depths of my soul, Merry Christmas!

Have a Merry Christmas and peace on earth to all through Jesus Christ our Lord and goodwill to all men. How meaningful is Christmas? Why Jesus is the best got you will ever get (Jn 3:16; Eph 2:8). Your Christmas future will never be the same! <><