Devotions

 

More Than A Christmas Story

More Than A Christmas Story - December 23, 2025

The virgin birth is much, much more, than a Christmas story. It’s a story of how close Christ will come to you.

The first stop on his itinerary was a womb. Where will God go to touch the world? Look deep inside Mary for an answer. Better still, look deep within yourself. “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” Scripture says (Colossians 1:27).

Christ grew in Mary until he had to come out. Christ will grow in you until the same occurs. He will come out in your speech, in your actions, in your decisions. Every place you live will be a Bethlehem. Every day you live will be a Christmas. Deliver Christ into the world—your world!

Deuteronomy 32

The Message

The Song

32 1-5 Listen, Heavens, I have something to tell you.
    Attention, Earth, I’ve got a mouth full of words.
My teaching, let it fall like a gentle rain,
    my words arrive like morning dew,
Like a sprinkling rain on new grass,
    like spring showers on the garden.
For it’s God’s Name I’m preaching—
    respond to the greatness of our God!
The Rock: His works are perfect,
    and the way he works is fair and just;
A God you can depend upon, no exceptions,
    a straight-arrow God.
His messed-up, mixed-up children, his non-children,
    throw mud at him but none of it sticks.

6-7 Don’t you realize it is God you are treating like this?
    This is crazy; don’t you have any sense of reverence?
Isn’t this your father who created you,
    who made you and gave you a place on Earth?
Read up on what happened before you were born;
    dig into the past, understand your roots.
Ask your parents what it was like before you were born;
    ask the old-ones, they’ll tell you a thing or two.

8-9 When the High God gave the nations their stake,
    gave them their place on Earth,
He put each of the peoples within boundaries
    under the care of divine guardians.
But Godhimself took charge of his people,
    took Jacob on as his personal concern.

10-14 He found him out in the wilderness,
    in an empty, windswept wasteland.
He threw his arms around him, lavished attention on him,
    guarding him as the apple of his eye.
He was like an eagle hovering over its nest,
    overshadowing its young,
Then spreading its wings, lifting them into the air,
    teaching them to fly.
God alone led him;
    there was not a foreign god in sight.
God lifted him onto the hilltops,
    so he could feast on the crops in the fields.
He fed him honey from the rock,
    oil from granite crags,
Curds of cattle and the milk of sheep,
    the choice cuts of lambs and goats,
Fine Bashan rams, high-quality wheat,
    and the blood of grapes: you drank good wine!

15-18 Jeshurun put on weight and bucked;
    you got fat, became obese, a tub of lard.
He abandoned the God who made him,
    he mocked the Rock of his salvation.
They made him jealous with their foreign trendy gods,
    and with obscenities they vexed him no end.
They sacrificed to no-god demons,
    gods they knew nothing about,
The latest in gods, fresh from the market,
    gods your ancestors would never call “gods.”
You walked out on the Rock who gave you your life,
    forgot the birth-God who brought you into the world.

19-25 God saw it and spun around,
    angered and hurt by his sons and daughters.
He said, “From now on I’m looking the other way.
    Wait and see what happens to them.
Oh, they’re a turned-around, upside-down generation!
    Who knows what they’ll do from one moment to the next?
They’ve goaded me with their no-gods,
    infuriated me with their hot-air gods;
I’m going to goad them with a no-people,
    with a hollow nation incense them.
My anger started a fire,
    a wildfire burning deep down in Sheol,
Then shooting up and devouring the Earth and its crops,
    setting all the mountains, from bottom to top, on fire.
I’ll pile catastrophes on them,
    I’ll shoot my arrows at them:
Starvation, blistering heat, killing disease;
    I’ll send snarling wild animals to attack from the forest
    and venomous creatures to strike from the dust.
Killing in the streets,
    terror in the houses,
Young men and virgins alike struck down,
    and yes, breast-feeding babies and gray-haired old men.”

26-27 I could have said, “I’ll hack them to pieces,
    wipe out all trace of them from the Earth,”
Except that I feared the enemy would grab the chance
    to take credit for all of it,
Crowing, “Look what we did!
    God had nothing to do with this.”

28-33 They are a nation of idiots,
    they don’t know enough to come in out of the rain.
If they had any sense at all, they’d know this;
    they would see what’s coming down the road.
How could one soldier chase a thousand enemies off,
    or two men run off two thousand,
Unless their Rock had sold them,
    unless Godhad given them away?
For their rock is nothing compared to our Rock;
    even our enemies say that.
They’re a vine that comes right out of Sodom,
    who they are is rooted in Gomorrah;
Their grapes are poison grapes,
    their grape-clusters bitter.
Their wine is rattlesnake venom,
    mixed with lethal cobra poison.

34-35 Don’t you realize that I have my shelves
    well stocked, locked behind iron doors?
I’m in charge of vengeance and payback,
    just waiting for them to slip up;
And the day of their doom is just around the corner,
    sudden and swift and sure.

36-38 Yes, God will judge his people,
    but oh how compassionately he’ll do it.
When he sees their weakened plight
    and there is no one left, slave or free,
He’ll say, “So where are their gods,
    the rock in which they sought refuge,
The gods who feasted on the fat of their sacrifices
    and drank the wine of their drink-offerings?
Let them show their stuff and help you,
    let them give you a hand!

39-42 “Do you see it now? Do you see that I’m the one?
    Do you see that there’s no other god beside me?
I bring death and I give life, I wound and I heal—
    there is no getting away from or around me!
I raise my hand in solemn oath;
    I say, ‘I’m always around. By that very life I promise:
When I sharpen my lightning sword
    and execute judgment,
I take vengeance on my enemies
    and pay back those who hate me.
I’ll make my arrows drunk with blood,
    my sword will gorge itself on flesh,
Feasting on slain and captive alike,
    the proud and vain enemy corpses.’”

43 Celebrate, nations, join the praise of his people.
    He avenges the deaths of his servants,
Pays back his enemies with vengeance,
    and cleanses his land for his people.

44-47 Moses came and recited all the words of this song in the hearing of the people, he and Joshua son of Nun. When Moses had finished saying all these words to all Israel, he said, “Take to heart all these words to which I give witness today and urgently command your children to put them into practice, every single word of this Revelation. Yes. This is no small matter for you; it’s your life. In keeping this word you’ll have a good and long life in this land that you’re crossing the Jordan to possess.”

48-50 That same day God spoke to Moses: “Climb the Abarim Mountains to Mount Nebo in the land of Moab, overlooking Jericho, and view the land of Canaan that I’m giving the People of Israel to have and hold. Die on the mountain that you climb and join your people in the ground, just as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and joined his people.

51-52 “This is because you broke faith with me in the company of the People of Israel at the Waters of Meribah Kadesh in the Wilderness of Zin—you didn’t 

honor my Holy Presence in the company of the People of Israel. You’ll look at the land spread out before you but you won’t enter it, this land that I am giving to the People of Israel.”

No Favoritism

In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant was stopped for recklessly driving his carriage through Washington DC. One published account says that the officer, an African American named William West, warned Grant, “Your fast driving, sir . . . is endangering the lives of the people who have to cross the street.” Grant apologized, but the next night he was racing carriages again. West stopped Grant’s horses. “I am very sorry, Mr. President, to have to do it, for you are the chief of the nation and I am nothing but a policeman, but duty is duty.” West arrested the president.

I admire this brave man for doing his duty. So did Grant. He praised West and made sure he kept his job. God also was pleased, for He hates the injustice of favoritism. James wrote, “Believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism” (James 2:1). That includes not giving special favors to the rich and powerful, leaving only leftovers for the poor (vv. 2-4). Instead, we’re called to love our neighbor as ourselves (v. 8). If we play favorites, serving our platinum club neighbors rather than the less privileged, we “sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers” (v. 9).

God didn’t play favorites with us. He loved us when we had nothing to offer, when we were “without hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). With His help, we can love all people equally.

Identified with His Death

The gospel of Jesus Christ always forces an issue of will. Will I accept the verdict God passed on sin in the cross of Christ? Do I want to be identified with the death of Jesus? To be killed to all my former interest in sin, worldliness, and self? To be so identified with Jesus that I’m spoiled for everything else but him? The great privilege of discipleship is that I can sign on under his cross, and this means death to sin.

Get alone with Jesus and tell him either that you don’t want sin to die out in you or that, at all costs, you want to be identified with his death. The instant you act in confident faith on what our Lord did on the cross, a supernatural identification with his death takes place, and you will know with a knowledge that passes knowledge that your old self is crucified with Christ. The proof that your old self has been crucified with Christ is the amazing ease with which the life of God in you enables you to obey the voice of Jesus Christ.

Every now and again, our Lord lets us see what life would be like if it weren’t for him. It’s a justification of what he said in John 15:5: “Apart from me you can do nothing.” That’s why the bedrock of Christianity is personal, passionate devotion to him. We mistake the ecstasy of our first introduction into the kingdom of God for God’s purpose in getting us there. His purpose in getting us there is that we realize all that personal identification with Jesus Christ means.

The Open Door at the Manger - #10162

December 23, 2025

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It was Christmas Eve, and the Hutchcraft family was acting out the Christmas story. Our daughter was Mary, with a towel draped over her head. Our oldest son was Joseph, bathrobe and all. Our then two-year-old son was the closest we could come to a baby, so he was in the giant laundry basket. I was, of course, an angel dressed in a white sheet, sitting celestially on the back of the couch. And my wife - well, she wanted to be a sheep. So she was crawling around the living room floor with our sheepskin rug draped over her, doing her very best "baaa's." And the doorbell rang! It was two teenage girls from our youth group. Their folks were home getting drunk, and they were wondering if they could come to our house for a little sanity. When they came in, our Christmas players were in full gear, "baaa" and all. The door was open and we invited them right into our Christmas.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Open Door at the Manger."

It was only appropriate that we should say to anyone who came to our door on Christmas Eve, "Come on in." After all, that's what God did when His Son was born that first Christmas. He threw open the door and said, "Come on in" no matter what you're like. He might be saying that to you this very day.

Anybody's welcome to come on in and join God's family. How do we know? Well, for one thing, look at who got the first invitation to "come on in." Shepherds. These guys were considered the lowest of the low-lifes. They were unfit to even be allowed in God's temple. So of all the people God could invite to the first Christmas party, who does He ask to come? Shepherds.

It says so in Luke 2, beginning with verse 8, in our Christmas word for today from the Word of God. "There were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them..." The angel made this startling announcement: "Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord." So Jesus begins His life on earth by welcoming in people that most would say are definitely "not His type."

Maybe that's how you feel; you're not the religious type. Maybe you, like the shepherds, have experienced your share of closed doors, rejection, condemnation, and plenty of loneliness. It could be you've done a lot of things, and made a lot of mistakes, just looking for love and acceptance. And you know you've done a lot of wrong things. But that's the very kind of people Jesus came for!

The people who miss Jesus and miss heaven are the people who think they've got it all together, who are very religious and very good and they think not really in need of a Savior who died on the cross for their sins. But just like He did for those shepherds, whether you were born in church or never been in church in your life, Jesus is throwing open the door to His family and to His heaven and He's saying, "Come on in. I died. I rose again so you and I can be together forever."

The greatest mistake you could ever make would be if you missed what Jesus died to give you. Can you think of a better time to throw open the door of your life to Jesus than Christmastime - the time He left heaven to come here to rescue you? He's waiting for you to reach out to Him and put your total trust in what He did for you on the cross - whatever you've done. This isn't about what you've done. It's about what He's done on the cross for you.

Right where you are, at this very special time, why don't you tell Him, "Jesus, I'm Yours from this day on." Your life will never be the same. I would love to help you right now make that new beginning of making the Savior your Savior this Christmas season.

I just invite you to go to our website and there you can find for yourself how to be sure you've begun this relationship with Jesus. The website is ANewStory.com.

And as we celebrate the day Jesus was born, you can celebrate the day you get born into His family. Go to sleep tonight with Christ in your heart with His peace in your soul. From Him, and from our team here - Merry Christmas!