Bella Vista Church of Christ
LIFELINES
December 19, 2001 Bobby Dockery
Home For Christmas
During World War II, Americans, scattered all over the globe by war, began singing the words of a Christmas song which has remained popular ever since:
I'll be home for Christmas; You can count on me.
Please have snow and mistletoe, And presents under the tree.
Christmas Eve will find me, Where the love light gleams.
I'll be home for Christmas--If only in my dreams!
Home becomes a magnet for the heart at this time of year. Christmas is when Americans go home. Families separated by miles or years or heartaches come together. Children who have left home to pursue dreams and careers come back trying to recapture whatever it was they left to escape! This human desire for home is a reminder of some great spiritual truths.
1) God Gave Us Earthly Homes To Prepare Us For A Heavenly Home.
We have an instinctive longing for home. That is due in part to the fact that the home and family are creations of God given for the good of mankind. God's intent is for the home to be one of the sweetest blessings which this world can provide. To that end, God has given us laws to regulate the home so it can be all He intended it to be. Mid McNight calls Christian homes the "Vestibules of Heaven." Ecclesiastes 3.11 tells us that God has set eternity in our hearts. In all of us there is an instinctive longing for home. That instinct is rooted in heaven. Popular wisdom says, "You can't go home again." But God does not place any longing in us which He Himself cannot satisfy! We can't go back, but we can go forward to our greater home.
2) Christ Left Home So We Could Go Home.
Being separated from those you love--especially at times like Christmas--is painful. Our most tragic, most serious separation is separation from God. God created us; He loves us; but we become estranged from Him through sin: "Behold, the LORD'S hand is not so short that it cannot save; Neither is His ear so dull that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He does not hear." (Isaiah 59.1-2, NAS).
God devised a plan to bring us back home.To accomplish that plan, when the time was right, He sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law that we might receive adoption as His children.
Jesus gave up His home in glory in order to come to this world on a mission of reclamation! In His last years on earth, Jesus had no home: "The Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.." (Luke 9.58.) During those years of service and sacrifice and suffering--did He long for the home in which He had grown to manhood? Did He long for His mother's cooking? For the sight of His brothers and sisters? More to the point, did He long for the home he had left in glory? He could have had it! But Jesus deliberately chose to leave home for our sake! "For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost." (Luke 19.10.)
Today, God invites you to become a member of His family, and He offers the promise of an eternal home. Home for Christmas? The real question is, will you be going home for Eternity?
Bobby Dockery
