Jeremiah 10:2-4, 10
Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen…For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold…
But the LORD is the true God, he is the living God, and an everlasting king.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): What is “Christmas?” Does not the very term itself denote its source—“Christ-mass.” Thus it is of Romish origin, brought over from Paganism.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): We have no superstitious regard for times and seasons. Certainly we do not believe in the present ecclesiastical arrangement called Christmas: first, because we do not believe in the mass at all, but abhor it, whether it be said or sung in Latin or in English; and, secondly, because we find no Scriptural warrant whatever for observing any day as the birthday of the Saviour…If there be any day in the year, of which we may be pretty sure that it was not the day on which the Saviour was born, it is the twenty-fifth of December.
A. W. PINK: But, says someone, Christmas is the time when we commemorate the Saviour’s birth. It is? And who authorized such commemoration? Certainly God did not. The Redeemer bade His disciples “remember” Him in His death, but there is not a word in Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, which tells us to celebrate His birth. Moreover, who knows when, in what month, He was born? The Bible is silent thereon.
C. H. SPURGEON: Probably the fact is that the holy days were arranged to fit in with heathen festivals.
JOHN GILL (1697-1771): The birthdays of princes, both of their coming into the world, and accession to the throne of government, were kept by the Gentiles; as by the Egyptians (Genesis 40:20), and by the Persians, and Romans, and other nations, but not by the Jews, who reckon these among the feasts of idolaters.
A. W. PINK: And who is it that celebrates “Christmas?” The whole “civilized world.” Millions who make no profession of faith in the blood of the Lamb, who “despise and reject Him,” and millions more who while claiming to be His followers yet in works deny Him, join in merrymaking under the pretence of honouring the birth of the Lord Jesus…Verily, the customs of the people are vain.
C. H. SPURGEON: Nevertheless, since the current of men’s thoughts is led this way just now and―since it is lawful, and even laudable―to meditate upon the incarnation of the Lord upon any day in the year, it cannot be in the power of other men’s superstitions to render such a meditation improper for to-day.
CHRISTMAS EVANS (1766-1838): With the greatest astonishment Solomon asked the important question, 2 Chronicles 6:18―Will God in very deed dwell with man on earth? The question is now answered in the affirmative by men and angels. The Word that was in the beginning with the Father, in the fullness of time tabernacled in the flesh; and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, John 1:1,14. Though we cannot form any idea of the infinite distance between God and man, yet that vacuum is filled up by the incarnation of the Messiah, so that He is called the true God, and the man Christ Jesus.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): Try to consider for a moment what all this meant for Him.
C. H. SPURGEON: Before we can ever get a right idea of the love of Jesus, we must understand His previous glory in its height of majesty, and His incarnation upon the earth in all its depths of shame. Now, who can tell us the majesty of Christ? When He was enthroned in the highest heavens He was very God of very God; by Him were the heavens made, and all the hosts thereof, by His power He hanged the earth upon nothing; His own almighty arm upheld the spheres; the pillars of the heavens rested upon Him; the praises of angels, arch-angels, cherubim and seraphim, perpetually surrounded Him; the full chorus of the Hallelujahs of the universe unceasingly flowed to the foot of His throne: He reigned supreme above all His creatures, God over all, blessed for ever. Who can tell His height, then? And yet this must be attained before we can measure the length of that mighty stoop which He took when He came to earth to redeem our souls.
CHRISTMAS EVANS: Though the incarnation of Emannuel does not take away or tarnish in the least degree the essential glory of the Deity, yet it was a great condescension in Him, who is above all, God blessed forevermore, to be united to the nature of man.
A. W. PINK: In becoming Man, Christ took upon Him a nature that was capable of dying. This the angels were not; and in this respect He was, for a season, made a little lower than the angels.
C. H. SPURGEON: To be a man was something, but to be a man of sorrows was far more; to bleed, and die, and suffer, these were much for Him who was the Son of God; but to suffer as He did—such unparalleled agony—to endure, as He did, a death of shame and a death of desertion of His God, this is a lower depth of condescending love which the most inspired mind must utterly fail to fathom. And yet must we first understand infinite height, and then, infinite depth―before we can understand the love of Jesus Christ.
THOMAS WATSON (1620-1686): He came down from heaven, that He might bring us to heaven.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): The Son of God became the Son of Man that the sons of men might become the sons of God.
JOHN WESLEY (1703-1791): And in order to raise us to this dignity and happiness, the eternal Word, by a most amazing condescension, was made flesh, united Himself to our miserable nature.
C. H. SPURGEON: God’s great visit to us is the incarnation of our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ…This is the heart of the gospel—the incomparable fact of the incarnation of the Son of God, His dwelling upon the earth, and His presentation of Himself as a sacrifice unto God…Sin had separated between God and man; but the incarnation bridges the separation: it is a prelude to the atoning sacrifice, but it is a prelude full of the richest hope. From henceforth, when God looks upon man, He will remember that His own Son is a man. From this day forth, when He beholds the sinner, if His wrath should burn, He will remember that His own Son, as man, stood in the sinner’s place, and bore the sinner’s doom.
THOMAS WATSON: He was poor, that He might make us rich. He was born of a virgin that we might be born of God. He took our flesh, that He might give us His Spirit. He lay in the manger, that we may lie in paradise.
C. H. SPURGEON: Consider, again, the incarnation of Christ, and you will rightly say, that His name deserveth to be called “Wonderful.” Oh! world of wonders, what is that I see? The Eternal of ages, whose hair is white like wool, as white as snow, becomes an infant―Oh wonder of wonders!
THOMAS WATSON: That the ancient of Days should be born. That He who thunders in the heavens should cry in the cradle…that a virgin should conceive; that Christ should be made of a woman, and of that woman which [He] Himself made.
AUGUSTINE (354-430): Man’s maker was made man.
C. H. SPURGEON: Can it be? Ye angels, are ye not astonished?
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: Oh, the glory and the wonder of it all!
A. W. PINK: Yes, we behold His glory—the glory of an infinite condescension, the glory of a matchless grace, the glory of a fathomless love.
