P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

LONNIE AND THE KING OF SIAM

I've got a great little bit of Christmas trivia to share with you today for the next time Alex Trebek calls and invites you to participate in his Tournament of Champions on Jeopardy! Do you know the name of the king of Thailand? Well, probably not. But here it is right now.

Bhumibol Adulyadej (Boom i POHN A dul ya DET), who carries the royal name of Rama IX, was born in the year 1927 — ironically, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Married to one of the most beautiful queens still reigning today, Queen Sirikit (SIR i kit), His Majesty is an accomplished saxophonist and jazz musician, and has been the king since May 5, 1950.

Well, I'm sure you're frantically writing all this down, in case there's a quiz later. But let me tell you the point of interest.

Thailand is a country that's 95% Buddhist, so, of course, celebrating Christmas wouldn't enter into their thinking very much. But the king's birthday happens to fall on the FIFTH of December. And, as is common in many Asian countries, a king's birthday is a major event. The entire nation celebrates and puts up lights and decorations everywhere . . . and they pretty much keep them up for the entire month of December. In fact, my friend David Smith told me — he spent his childhood there — David told me December 25 pretty much LOOKS like Christmas, even in that resolutely non-Christian country.

We've been mentioning all this week that God doesn't fail to get His message through. Here's a Buddhist society entrenched in an entirely different system, but on the 25th of December, the people on the streets of Bangkok hear a faint cry: "Merry Christmas! TODAY'S the birthday of another King — and His name is Jesus Christ."

In fact, as David said, one of his favorite memories was Christmas caroling in Bangkok on Christmas Eve. Do you know where they'd go? To the big, high-rise luxury hotels downtown. This was still the late 60s, so, because of the Vietnam War, there were quite a few Americans in Thailand during the holidays, and, of course, plenty of tourists. And on Christmas Eve, the huge, smoke-filled ballrooms and dance floors would be filled with Americans homesick for a little bit of Christmas music.

And David and his family, as members of the Seventh-day Adventist church choir there in Bangkok, would go to those big hotels at the invitation of the management. And they'd walk right up into the spotlight on the stage of those big ballrooms and look out at the glittery evening gowns and tuxedoes and catch a whiff of all the martinis and scotches-on-the-rocks. And then they'd sing "Silent Night" and "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing."

And there in that Buddhist culture, with secular-minded tourists and Thai waiters and cocktail waitresses listening in, this church choir would penetrate people's minds with the Christmas story. The message about a child named Immanuel — "God With Us" — couldn't be prevented from shining through. God always has His way.

This week our theme has been: "Why Does God PERMIT Christmas?" Here's a
holiday that's so filled with commercialism and selfishness, where those scotches-on-the-rocks DO flow too freely. Many people DO head out onto the dance floor on Christmas Eve and they tend to forget about Jesus. Christmas has a pretty ragged reputation as a global holiday, and we could understand if God were to decide to take it off the calendar.

But He hasn't! And all this week we've been talking about why.

Christmas GIVING, of course, is what the holiday revolves around for just about everybody. We're all making a list and checking it twice . . . and then when the credit card bill comes, we check IT four or five times, wondering how in the world things got so completely out of control. "What did we buy THERE?" we sob to ourselves, rummaging through the desk drawer trying to find some kind of receipt that might remind us. For many families, most of the next year is spent recovering financially from their December debaucheries.

Maybe you've been at a Christmas party where the giving was almost profligate. Every kid has a pile of presents 30 boxes high . . . and there's a hundred-dollar prize in every single box. And you know, after about the first five or six presents, the child's mind simply goes blank. Here's a toy. And then another one. Then a computer game. Then some other gizmo. And even though his thanks and his enthusiasm is quite profuse at first, about seven or eight boxes into the marathon, you can see his eyes glaze over. "Oh," he says as he opens another box. "Okay. Thanks, I guess. What's next?" And the JOY of it all is completely dissipated by the MAGNITUDE of it all. It's simply TOO MUCH.

Well, today's program isn't a lecture on stewardship or proper gift-giving, but I wanted us to think for a moment about this very real danger at Christmastime. All the MONEY, all the MERCHANDISE, all the MALL-HOPPING . . . can literally make us go blank. And we get to today, December 28, and we kind of stir a bit and mutter to ourselves: "Where have I been? Where did it all go — the time, the money, the mood? In all my spending, I never once saw JESUS!"

And God sees all that. He sees that MasterCard coming out of the purse 900 times in one week. He sees the piles under our trees and our obsession with MATCHING the incoming presents with the outgoing flow. "I gave him a Ferrari and he only got me a Hyundai!" And yet, He lets Christmas happen. Why?

We've already shared several important reasons, but here's another one. Despite everything, in spite of all the problems, GIVING is still a good thing for us. It's GOOD to give; it's better to give than it is to receive, and yes, it's better to give than it is to NOT give.

Think of that little boy or little girl who first discovers the joy of shopping for Daddy and Mommy. And they very carefully hand over to the clerk that pile of coins or a few rumpled bills. And they're very proud when they tell that lady at J. C. Penney's: "This is for my daddy." "Wonderful!" the nice lady responds. "You're a good shopper. Your daddy will like that, I'm sure." And the child wraps it up and tapes eight bows to it, and then tingles with anticipation as they wait for the big moment when Dad gets to that present. "Open mine first! Open mine first!" Have you heard that before? And then when they see Dad's eyes light up — and boy, they BETTER light up — it's a precious moment for the child. AND a wonderful learning experience. "It's better to GIVE!" And Christmas, despite all of its flaws, does teach that Bible truth.

The right kind of Christmas CAN teach unselfishness. I praise God for homes where Christian parents teach children to think about others, to remember the homeless and the widows and the kids who are being raised in a single-parent family. December can be a time when such rich learning takes place, when our attitudes get more UNselfish, more caring. It all depends on what we DECIDE to do.

And you know, despite the devil's best efforts to clog the information pipeline, the story of the Greatest Gift still manages to penetrate, doesn't it?

Actually, a Christian preacher can rattle off the Christmas message fairly quickly. "Jesus left heaven . . . to come to earth . . . to give His life for you and for me." That's just 16 words! "Jesus left heaven . . . to come to earth . . . to give His life for you and for me."

But I want to challenge you with something right here. Focus with me for just a moment on the FROM and the TO of that gift. When we stick a label on a Christmas present, it usually says "FROM Uncle Lonnie and Aunt Jeannie" "TO Nick." And Jesus Christ came FROM heaven. Now, the splendor what that means, we simply can't comprehend. But the Savior came FROM a position of rulership over the entire universe. Billions of angels adored Him; the Father and the Spirit loved Him. Heaven was a place of warmth and love and fellowship and adoration and continual worship. That's the "FROM" in the equation.

And what did Jesus come TO? Well, He came to a manger, a barn, with dirt on the floor and the lowing of the cattle and all of that. He came here to be despised and hated and misunderstood. He came here to 33 years of loneliness and disappointment, and then a crown of thorns and a cross. And so when you consider the FROM and the TO of this gift, we quickly have to acknowledge that this is indeed the Greatest Story Ever Told, the Greatest Gift Ever Given.

And so how do we respond? I heard a story once about a boy, maybe in the third or fourth grade. And his was a wonderful Christmas — with lots of presents coming his way. And then, sometime during the holidays, he heard his pastor preach a sermon about giving a gift TO Jesus. That our best gifts should be for the Savior during Christmas. And he thought about that. What in the world would JESUS want? None of his new toys seemed to be of the variety that Jesus would want to play with. He'd gotten lots of new clothes, but they weren't Jesus' size. How about his new games? Well, no, that couldn't be it.

But then that night as he talked with his daddy about it and said his evening prayers, it really did come to him. He thought about how sometimes he was selfish and wanted to just do the things HE thought were fun. How pleasing SELF had always been his first priority, on the playground and even at home.

And as he talked with his dad about what kind of gift Christ would want from him, he finally made the admission: "He wants ME. That's what He wants." It came pounding home to him what a gift like that might entail, what kind of surrender it would really be. Tears came into his eyes and into his dad's eyes too. "He wants ME, doesn't He?"

And Dad nodded his head. "That's right."

Friend, God permits Christmas because He has a gift for you. And there's a gift He WANTS from you. Not later, but now. Today. And even though it's two days before Christmas, it's not too late to give Him that gift . . . right now.