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It has been said that you can tell when you have passed from youth into adulthood by how it seems the days of Christmas pass. If you are young or young at heart, then the days before Christmas seem to pass all too slowly and you are eaten up by the anticipation of the great day to come. If you are no longer young, then the shopping days to Christmas fly by all too fast as you have the responsibility of all the preparation that the holidays entail. Garfield, the popular comic-strip cat, says that all the days of the year rush and run by until they get to December and then they crawl along. Garfield is still young at heart!

I still like Christmas, and probably part of that comes from positive experiences that I received when I was a kid. Christmas was a big deal at our house with the entire week full of family and fun. All the cousins would stay at our house and we would play all-night Monopoly and Foosball games. On Christmas Eve, we would all exchange gifts and then go outside to shoot fireworks. On Christmas morning, we would have a personal Christmas and then spend the rest of the day and the next with our spiritual family, the family of the people who had won my parents to God so many years before. It was exciting because there was much going on and good food and presents! If we were lucky in North Louisiana about every five years or so it would snow and every once in a while we would have snow for Christmas. My favorite Christmas memory is one Christmas Eve my friends and I had wished for snow with all of our might and prayed for it and hoped for it and been on our best behavior for it. And it started to fall in bucketfuls! Our house in North Louisiana was situated on a huge hill that sloped downward probably 150 yards or so and as my brother and I were outside scooping up the snow and throwing it at each other and tasting it and laughing, I looked up and my father was down at his workshop motioning for me to come to him. When I got there, he presented me with a brand-new, shiny red, metal sled with wooden slats. He had purchased it from a catalog two or three years before and had hidden the sled in the attic of his workshop, waiting for the day that he could present to me in a snow hard enough to ride it. My brother and I spent all day on that sled that Christmas Eve and most of the next day riding down the hill in the snow. It's one of my favorite Christmas memories.

Because of the special memories, I could not dream of missing a Christmas when I was a kid. Bob Hope, the famous comedian, tells of a trick that his father used to love to play on the kids every other Christmas or so. His family had a big calendar of the type that you pulled off the page to reveal the next day and so every few years, he would get up early on Christmas Day and hide all of the presents and rip the pages off of the calendar so that December 26th showed on it and when the kids came down the stairs and stared with horror at the barren tree, he would point to the calendar and say, "Sorry, you slept too long, you slept for a whole day and slept right through the 25th. You missed Christmas this year!" And then he would wait for a few moments as the horror of what had supposedly happened settled into the kid's minds and then he would laugh and say "ha, ha. Just kidding." Cruel and unusual punishment. That's every kid's nightmare on Christmas Eve to after waiting for so long, fall asleep too long and miss Christmas. No wonder his children grew up with a sick sense of humor.

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As an adult in America today, I think it would be nigh upon impossible to miss Christmas. They put the trees on sale in August. They count down the days for you. People ring bells at you as you come and go from stores in your normal business. If you were to miss Christmas you would have to have left the country and traveled to the back jungles of Borneo or something. Even then, you'd probably get a sales flyer or two. You can be safe in knowing that unless you are blind, deaf, dumb, and in a coma, you probably won't miss the coming Christmas in a few days.

As I read the story of the first Christmas, though, I am amazed at the thought that were quite a few people that missed it. If there were any Christmases of past year that you did not want to miss, then it was definitely the first one! I would trade in every one of my past Christmas experiences if I could just have attended the first, because the first is the reason why we celebrate, anyway. I would have given anything to be there in the manger seeing God revealing Himself in a baby! I would have loved to see the faces of the shepherds and of Mary and Joseph as they entered telling of having seen angels and the great message that they brought. I would have loved to have traveled with the wise men following the star and seeing them kneel in the house and present gifts. I would have loved to have heard the first cry in the stable joining in with the sounds of the animals in that warm Spring night. How great an honor it would have been to, like Simeon, take up this child in my arms and quote scripture about Him, knowing that He was the Messiah, the Savior of the World, and God come to earth for the sake of my salvation!

If I had had the opportunity to be there, I certainly would not have missed it for the world, but the sad fact is that many, many people missed the first Christmas. People who should have been there. People who knew better. People who had every opportunity to be there but didn't take advantage of the great entrance made for them. But it passed them by and for various reasons they missed it. And as we peruse the scriptural record, it becomes obvious to me that more people missed it than those who did not. John wrote:

With the exception of a handful of select people, the most important event of history to that point, the first and greatest Christmas, went by largely unnoticed by humanity. What a shame!

And not only is it a shame, but it brings a dire warning for us today. We were not given the opportunity to witness the first coming of Christ and celebrate the first Christmas, but we have been given life in the generation that just may see the last one! Jesus Christ is coming again. And if there is any spiritual purpose for the scriptural record of His first coming and birth, it is to reveal to us the dangers of just how easy it is to miss Him. Missing the first coming was bad enough, but to miss His second would be a tragedy of immeasurable proportions. The scripture says in our text that:

He will return the second time to "save those who are eagerly waiting for him." In other words, those who will be saved will be those who look for His return and who are ready and prepared not to miss it! The last Christmas -- the final coming of Christ -- is one you definitely better not overlook. And the only way to be ready for that final stirring of the Spirit, is to be sensitive to every stirring of the Spirit. To learn to hear His voice now. To live ready in eager expectation of His return. To be filled and consumed with His kingdom now. Because whatever you do, you don't want to miss the final Christmas!

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"When's the final Christmas going to be, preacher?" We don't know. The signs have definitely been fulfilled. In prophecy, the bell ringers are out and the carols are playing and the stockings are in place. In prophecy, it's getting cold outside and the snow has started to fall and so we ought to be preparing for the big day. Everywhere you look the colors and decorations say "He's coming soon." It could be fifty years from now that Jesus comes to earth again and the final Christmas takes place, but it could also be this year. It could be before the chimes of the year 2006 ring in. It could be before you even get a chance to wrap those gifts that are hidden under your bed. It could be that your New Year's Eve plans are going to be for naught. It could be that waiting for the New Year to make a resolution to get things right with God would be too little too late. The signs of the season couldn't be clearer in the Spirit or in the Word of God. And yet there will be people that, despite all the clear signs of His coming, yet will miss His coming completely. And if the first Christmas was any indication, there will be more that miss the final holiday than who participate in it.

I don't want you to miss it, so let's take a moment today and peek into the lives of those who missed Christmas the first time. And in doing so, let's ensure that we are not the people who fill such categories the last go around!

That's obvious from our text in Matthew chapter 2, but to grasp the significance of it for us today, you must know a little more about the Herod that was dubiously called "the Great." Herod wasn't really a king of royal lineage but was Idumean. His father had done great service to Rome and so was given the right to be a leader in Judea as a gift. Herod had through "skull and daggery" and efficient taxation extended his kingdom to cover all of Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon. He married the sister of the Jewish High Priest hoping to gain favor with the Jewish people and then proclaimed himself "King of the Jews."

The word that best sums up Herod was "ruthless." He was known for being a cold-blooded killer if it came to somebody possibly interfering with his self-proclaimed kingship. When he began to reign, Herod found out that the Hasmoneans had once stood up against Greece and so lest they fight against them, Herod had them all murdered. After a while, he became suspicious of his brother-in-law the High Priest of the Jews and so he killed him too. He then had his wife put to death, lest she try to avenge her brother's death and fight against him. When his two oldest sons became young men, Herod had them put to death lest they try to take his throne away. Five days before his death, when it became clear that in a very short time, he would leave this life, Herod had his next son in line killed so that he could not take the kingdom a few days early. Ruthless. One of the last acts of Herod was to command that at his death many of the most distinguished citizens and business men of Jerusalem were to be killed because as Herod said, "The people will not weep when I die, but I want them weeping -- even if it is over someone else."

All that background helps you to better understand Herod's panic when the wise men walked into his palace that evening and asked where the true "King of the Jews" had been born. And an even greater panic set in when the Jewish scholars on his payroll were able to effortlessly pinpoint from the Word of God the birth city of this newborn king. When Herod asked that the wise men come back to inform him of exactly where the child lay, he did not desire to worship Jesus but rather to kill Him. And scripture and history both records that when the wise men, warned by God in a dream, did not come back to him, that Herod had all male babies in the region two years old and younger killed and Jesus escaped only because Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt with Him.

Herod missed Christmas because he was scared that somebody else might be king in his life. He missed the opportunity to meet and worship the King of Kings because he wanted to be king and was willing to do whatever it took to be in control of his life.

Sadly, there will be people who miss the final Christmas of Jesus' second coming because they refuse to allow the King of Kings to rule over them. They aren't royalty, but they have decided that they alone are king of their life and they alone will decide what is best for them. They only answer to themselves. They are going to live their life like they want to and refuse to admit that Jesus might know a better way. This world is full of people like Herod who might call themselves believers and even believe the scriptures to a point, but they are not about to surrender their will over and let Jesus be their King and Lord. If the commandments of His word does not match their lifestyle then they will do whatever it takes to do what they want. They want Him as Savior but not as King. And they will kill whatever they must in their life for it to be so: cut off the preacher, leave the church, kill their conscience; whatever they have to do in order that they can live their life like they desire.

But hear this preacher: If Jesus Christ is not Lord of all, then He is not Lord AT all. We cannot allow God to reign over part of our life and then hold other areas as off limits. We cannot hold onto to our pride and say "He can change this and this, but there are certain things that I'll never do." If you have such an attitude today, then like Herod you are trying to keep yourself king in your life, and He is not really the King of Kings in your life. And like Herod, your pride and self-trust will cause you to miss the coming of the Savior of the world! If you don't want to end up like Herod and missing the final Christmas, then you must acknowledge that you don't know everything. You must admit that there is a higher power in your life that knows what is best for you. You must admit that Jesus Christ is the King and Lord of all your life therefore His decrees are of the utmost importance. Don't sit on your self-proclaimed throne and miss His coming! Don't miss the most important Christmas yet to come because of pride and self-exaltation!

The religious people of Jesus' day for the most part missed Christmas by the droves. Not all did, of course, but men who knew the scriptures better than many who made it to the stable, never even bothered to make the trip. When I read the story of the first Christmas, I want to scream at the advisors to Herod, "you fools! You know where He is to be born and yet not one of you packed your bags and journeyed the few miles to see Him!" They were religious and scripture packing and yet their failure to act upon what they knew caused them to miss the first Christmas.

In Israel at the time of Jesus' birth there were four primary and distinct groups of religious people around. They correspond startlingly close to groups of religious people today. Nothing wrong with being religious if it is a true religion, but beware lest you fall into the traps of the religious leaders back then and miss the final Christmas just as they missed the first! The four Jewish religious groups who all largely missed Christ's coming were the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Essenes, and the Herodians.

The Sadducees believed in God in general and believed that the scriptures were a "good book" and all but they did not believe that the scriptures had to be taken or obeyed literally. They thought that the other groups wasted their time and went a little "overboard" in their literal readings of the scriptures. The Sadducees were the skeptics who did not believe in miracles, angels, or life after death. They were "too smart" to take all of the scripture literally.

There are people like that today. Those who are believers in God but "how can we know God and how can we really know the Bible is true." "It's a good book, but we cannot take it too literally, and all that miracle stuff, is that really real?" Let me point out that people with such an attitude not only missed the first Christmas, but in all of Jesus' ministry and in spite of seeing thousands of genuine miracles performed in front of their faces we do not read of one of their conversions to Christ. If you believe that the Word of God adds up to nothing then you will receive nothing from it because the kingdom of God operates on faith. I could go on a long list of how we know the Bible is true and that's another sermon for another time, but sufficient enough that the Sadducees missed the coming of Christ and so will you too unless you believe and take literally and literally obey this precious Word from the King of Kings. If you want proof that it is so then look at the thousands of Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament and see how that Jesus Christ perfectly fulfilled every one of them despite the prophecies being written centuries and even millennia before. Then read the prophecies of His return that are recorded in the New Testament and know that just as He fulfilled the prophecies in His first coming, so will He fulfill the prophecies of His second coming! You'd better not miss it! He is real and He's really coming back!

The Pharisees believed in the literalness of the Word of God but they had added so many man-made traditions and doctrines into their life that they failed to recognize truth when it was before their eyes. A few of them were eventually converted, but the sect by and large missed the first Christmas.

Beware of man's traditions that "steal the treasures" of truth from your walk with God. Many people quote scriptures and have been taught traditions of men about those scriptures that they blind themselves to the entire light of God's Word. If you believe something because such and such denomination believes that or such and such people say it's so, then you are a modern-day Pharisee. Traditions in themselves are not bad if they line up with the Word of God but if I cannot actually find the tradition in the Bible and it comes from other sources, then you'd better beware because you are setting yourself up to miss His second coming just as the Pharisees missed His first.

"Well, preacher my grandfather believed this way or baptized this way and my father did too." But what does the Word of God say? It supersedes traditions even the ones that go back hundreds of years. If you want to hold on to a tradition, then hold onto the traditions of the Apostolic Church of the Book of Acts. If anybody had it right, they had it right. If they didn't have the revelation then I doubt God gave it to anybody else. They were the chosen leaders of God that He anointed to lead and write scripture. You'd better beware the traditions fabricated by men and churches and better check back to what the scriptures say, lest you miss His coming!

The Essenes were the religious hermits of their day. They pulled out of society and lived off in caves and had their heads in the clouds all of the time. The world was horrible and so they decided to pull themselves out and refused to even submit to the High Priest or go to the temple. They could pastor and lead their own selves in worship and teaching. They could instruct themselves in righteousness without a formal place to worship. They were the "free spirits" that could serve God without a preacher and a church.

What happened is that when they got off by themselves, they fell into error and that error so consumed them that they completely missed the coming of Christ. There is multitude in a safety of counsel. The scripture says that as "iron sharpens iron" so do we sharpen each other. The Bible says that God gave the gifts of Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, and Teachers for the maturing and perfecting of the saints (Ephesians 4:11-12). Pastors are a "God idea" and a "God-called" position. Jesus Christ is our chief Shepherd but pastors are His "undershepherds" (1 Peter 5:1-4) When you reject the man of God in your life, then you reject Christ because He is the one who gave you the man of God. The Essenes of old completely missed the first Christmas because they had gotten off track without the balance provided from a man of God in their life and "modern Essenes" will do the same thing. Don't fall into the group of people who will fall into the same snare again!

The last group, the Herodians, were a sect of believers that believed the scripture was the Word of God, but they only believed about it what their leader, Herod, told them to believe. They were loyal to a man who had influenced their life and so they would believe anything as long as their hero and leader said it was okay.

How true it is that even today some people find a man, even a preacher and decide that they are going to believe everything that that man believes unquestionably and reject anything that does not agree with him. If the person whom they choose to blindly follow preaches only sound doctrine, then they might be okay, but the question is "how do you know that he preaches only sound doctrine unless you look for yourself?" Therefore to follow a man and a man only is a very definite danger sign in light of how close we are to Christ's second coming. I've had people tell me after I showed them scripture that revealed truth about a particular doctrine or something, "I see it preacher, but so and so doesn't believe it and so I'm not going to obey it." As my mother used to say, "if so and so, jumps off a cliff, are you going to follow suit?" But sadly, people who would never do such a thing in the natural will jump in the spirit over great truths in the Bible and ignore them because the leader that they are blindly loyal to doesn't believe it.

And it's not always a preacher who influences people's spiritual opinions. It might be a family member, or a friend you grew up with, or somebody at the job, or somebody that you see on television. Whatever you believe, you'd better make sure that you believe it because God's Word says it and when you take ALL of God's word on a subject it still combines to say what you believe.

I've had people tell me "preacher, I can take three scriptures here and three scriptures there and prove any doctrine true that people teach." That is somewhat true to a point. You can take a few scriptures here and leaving out a few justify almost every denominational point. But the scriptures says itself that it is of no private interpretation (2 Peter 1:20) and that everything in scripture will be "here a little and there a little (Isaiah 28:10). If you take all of the verses of scripture about any subject and take them all together without leaving any of them out and let them interpret each other -- truth interpreting truth -- so that there is no contradiction, then you have God's interpretation and I don't care what a denomination says, the Bible says "let God be true and every man a liar" (Romans 3:4)! You'd better go with truth, no matter what so and so says! What does the Bible say? Don't miss the last Christmas just because you took somebody's word for it and they missed it!

How horrible it was for people in nearby cities and countries to miss such a close encounter of God in flesh, but how even a greater horror that those to whom Christ came the nearest would be oblivious to what was truly going on. The scripture records only that Mary "laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn" (Luke 2:7) I think that people often "miss the boat" in blaming the innkeeper for not taking them in. The inns in those days were quite different a Motel 6 or Holiday Inn of today. There were usually not separate rooms but rather one great room where everyone slept on the floor while fully clothed. Not only was the inn packed because of the great amount of travelers at the time of taxation, even if there had been a spot, it would not been appropriate for a live child birth and Mary herself would not have desired for such an event. I do not fault the innkeeper for giving Mary the stable, because the stables of those days were often shallow caves cut into the hillside which would have been a private place for her to endure the agony of childbirth and also a warm shelter for her and the baby.

The true tragedy of the innkeeper is that after giving the woman a place to have her baby, that he is never recorded as having come and visited the child. It was just a quick walk next door to the stable. It was not even cold and uncomfortable. Everybody was no doubt talking about it as births and successful ones were big news in those days. But the innkeeper never made the short stroll next door. He was literally only a few short strides from the coming of the King of Kings and completely missed out.

If we could have interviewed the innkeeper, I think that his excuse would have been "I'm extremely busy." He had many guests all of which had needs that needed to be taken care of continually. He had mats to wash and stack and meals to cook and serve. He had issues arising between guests that needed his attention and new people arriving looking for a place to stay almost constantly. There were kids running around and people talking and resting and then all of the questions of those who were essentially tourists and all of the responsibility added up to a great busyness for the innkeeper. In short, he missed Christmas by only a few feet, but miss it he did, because of his extreme business.

Today, it's not just the innkeepers that are busy, but "everybody's busy." You have the responsibility of school or work and family and friends and right now everyone is really going crazy with the hectic schedule of trying to buy presents and make preparations for the holidays. But in the hustle and the bustle of the season, let's not forget that if we miss Christ and His workings in our life during this time, we have missed the entire point!

What if Christ were to come back during the holiday season and this Christmas would not be "just another celebration" but the last? I wonder how many people who were so close and familiar with the kingdom of God would miss out because they were too busy to focus on Him this particular month? They were too busy to pray. They were too busy to fast. They were too busy to come to church. They were too busy to seek His will for this time. They were genuinely busy, but their busyness caused them to miss the most important Christmas of their lives!

We can have a tree and cookies and office parties and presents and a feast and if we do not take notice of His presence among us this season, then we have made the same mistake of the innkeeper. We can have our theology right, our doctrine right, our lives right, our attitude right, our worship right, our hearts right, but if our priorities are off, then we can still be lost. It could be said of some of us: Christmas came to us, but we missed the Savior in all of it because we were too busy!

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Let me end this message with the reminder that not everybody missed the first Christmas. There was an old faithful man and a faithful older woman who despite the hustle and the bustle of the season were at the house of God when Jesus was taken for His dedication. They didn't miss Christmas!

There were the shepherds that were keeping their flocks by night that heard the proclamation of the angels and said "let's go find and see this great sight for ourselves!" They didn't miss Christmas, despite their work duties that called and their busyness, they understood the importance of giving time for their Lord.

There were the wise men who traveled so far following scriptures and following a star of promise that made it to where the child was. It was a long hard journey, but they did not miss Christmas, and their gifts were the first ever given to the child who would one day pay the ultimate sacrifice on the ultimate Christmas tree.

In those days the shepherding was done by the poorer people. The shepherding at night was undertaken by the young. And so we find that the group of people who did not miss Christmas make up a cross section of every possible age and social group. The young boys stood with their sheep and yet they were balanced by the middle aged wise men and the elders, Simeon and Anna, who prophesied over Him. The poor shepherds stood in contrast to the rich wise men and the normal, middle-class elders. The first Christmas tells us that there will be people from all walks of life and from all economic backgrounds and from all ages, both male and female that will be ready for the second coming of Christ. But there will also be those from every possible genre that miss it as well. Matters not your social status of the past or present, what matters most is if you will "eagerly wait for His return" then you will be one of those that He saves! Many people missed the first Christmas and no doubt many will miss the last, but make up in your mind, that even through this holiday season, you are not going to be among those who "missed Christmas!" He is the reason for the season! May He be the Lord of All in our lives!