Perhaps no non-creedal concept of Christian belief so clearly sets Christianity apart from all humanistic or naturalistic philosophies as its conviction that man, without salvation, is a homeless wanderer in an alien waste, or, with salvation, a citizen of another kingdom on pilgrimage through enemy-held territory. The concept cuts fundamentally between two views because it goes to the heart of the question, What is man? Is he a marvelous achievement of self-driven progress from mud to modern society, or is he a tragic and fallen creature, haunted by memories of a Garden at evening and of a Creator who walked with him there? Is he the master of his fate and the captain of his soul, or does he labor, like Samson, “eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves … in bonds under Philistian yoke”? If he is the former, then this life and this planet, no matter how unsatisfactory they may appear, are “home,” and the pressure of much modern education to “adjust” the student to his environment is only common sense. If he is the latter, then “adjustment” becomes folly and the only valid question is the one Christian put to Evangelist: “Whither must I fly?”

Then said Evangelist, pointing with his finger over a very wide field, Do you see yonder wicket-gate? The man said, No. Then said the other, Do you see yonder shining light? He said, I think I do. Then said Evangelist, Keep that light in your eye, and go up directly thereto: so shalt thou see the gate; at which when thou knockest, it shall be told thee what thou shalt do.

As Chesterton phrases it:

For men are homesick in their homes

And strangers under the sun,

And they lay their heads in a foreign land

Whenever the day is done.

Whether one is ready to acknowledge the homelessness of man as a fact of his being or not, he must acknowledge that there is no theme in literature so universal as that of a Fall (or a disinheritance) and of a Journey. Tragedy, the noblest form of drama and the most universal, is the symphony, in a minor key, of man’s fall; epic poetry, the noblest form of verse, is most frequently concerned with a symbolic journey. Almost every folklore has its dim memory of some kind of existence better than the present one, and of having been, in the words of Cardinal Newman, “implicated in some terrible aboriginal calamity.” Through the millennia, man has listened to this melody of loss and separation, like the song of the nightingale “… that found a path through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, she stood in tears amid the alien corn.”

It is difficult on any reasonable ground to explain this almost universal conviction if it be not in some way related to the truth. If man is merely the product of random properties inhering in primal atoms, if he represents the highest mode of life which has yet erupted, whence arises his dissatisfaction? What property of random atoms teaches man to affirm that certain things “ought” to be? Why is it so hard to accept Alexander Pope’s dictum that “everything that is is right?” “Man’s unhappiness, as I construe it,” says Carlyle, “comes of his Greatness.” “There is surely a piece of divinity in us,” writes Sir Thomas Browne, “something that was before the elements and owes no homage unto the sun, Nature tells me I am the image of God, as well as Scripture; he that understands not thus much, hath not his introduction or first lesson, and is yet to begin the alphabet of man.” And in another place, Browne puts man’s homelessness in a memorable image: “For the world, I count it not an inn, but an hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in.” (I once had a student in a course in 17th-century literature who was told by his psychiatrist that he must be excused from reading the old divines because they were too morbid and melancholy!)

Universal Nostalgia

But my topic at this Christmas season is not the intellectual aspect of man’s homelessness, but the way in which the Nativity story illuminates certain dramatic and emotional values of humanity’s universal nostalgia.

The Christian faith, unique among religions in many ways (notably, of course, in that for the believer it is the only totally true religion), is strikingly different in its satisfaction of every dimension of man’s being and nature. It satisfies his need for knowledge, for hope, for guidance, for strength, for confidence, for security, for serenity, for beauty, for happiness. And those needs which relate most nearly to man’s emotional and aesthetic nature are met in the one fact that Christianity restores man to his eternal home. How many metaphors, images, parables, and historical episodes in the Bible exhibit this theme—the wanderings of the Jews in the wilderness, the story of Ruth, the Good Shepherd theme (above all, that), the parable of the prodigal son, of the marriage feast, the metaphor of the opened door and Christ coming in to dwell, the companionship of the upper room—the list is endless. And all breathe the comfort of an inheritance regained, a relationship re-established, a home restored. Like the lines of light radiating from a strange star in the East two thousand years ago, these bright strands of promise and home emanate from a single spot in time and space: the stable in Bethlehem where, again to quote Chesterton, “God was homeless and all men are at home.”

The English word “home” is too rich for definition—it is practically all connotation—but in simple analysis it may be said to involve two concepts: a place (or inheritance) and a relationship. To the mystic, the former seems of secondary importance, relating to nothing fundamental. But man is a finite creature, frightened by the limitless, for he has no intellectual or emotional apparatus with which to comprehend it. One of the favorite themes of the superbly gifted and saintly poet of the 17th century, George Herbert, is man’s need to feel localized, to know the boundaries of his habitation, to feel secure, as it were, from the danger of falling. After thinking of the incredible vastness of God and of the universe, he writes:

O rack me not to such a vast extent;

Those distances belong to thee.

The world’s too little for thy tent,

A grave too big for me.

O let me, when thy roof my soul hath hid,

O let me roost and nestle there;

Then of a sinner thou art rid,

And I of hope and fear.

Whether I fly with angels, fall with dust,

Thy hands made both, and I am there.

Thy power and love, my love and trust,

Make one place everywhere.

And as Milton conceives it, one of the most potent terrors for the rebel angels in Paradise Lost as Messiah, terrible in his mighty chariot and dark-browed with divine wrath, hurls them to the edge of heaven and the vasty deep is the dimensionlessness of the chaos into which they are cast. Indeed, in the “Great Consult” which later takes place in hell, Mammon and Belial both agree that any place, no matter how grim and dreadful, is preferable to the total absence of normal dimensions, threatening loss of being, which they had experienced as, for nine days, they fell from their bright home. Satan’s right to supremacy in hell is demonstrated by his willingness to enter once again the dark vacuity of things uncreated, to hear perhaps once again Chaos open his cavernous mouth in limitless dismay and roar. Even modern man, protected by his lesser intellect from seeing total reality as clearly as did the fallen angels, grows uncomfortable as he contemplates the mysteries of time and space. The solidity of the chair he sits in, the comfort of the four walls about him are sought to give him once again a sense of being and of locality.

Emotional Needs

It is true that some religions, notably the various forms of Hinduism, have sought to assuage man’s homesickness by assuring him that his nostalgia is a symptom of his finiteness and that the infinite will cure it, not by giving him a home but by absorbing him. Anything which is less than everything is inadequate, or evil, so that man’s hope is that his yearning will vanish as his personality blends into totality. The belief is strikingly unsatisfying to the emotions, since emotional needs can scarcely be said to be satisfied by the eradication of the thing which needs the satisfaction and to the intellect, since intellect cannot be conceived to exist without individuality and personality. To conceive that self-consciousness can rightly operate only to condemn itself for existing is to throw into total confusion any attempt to explain how self-consciousness came to exist in the first place.

Equally futile is the effort of materialism to comfort man in his homesickness by telling him that, granted things are pretty bad right now, he is, in each generation, the necessary stepping stone for an endless future of evolutionary advance. At the emotional level, as Rossetti points out, this is remarkably depressing:

Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be

Glad in his gladness that comes after thee?

Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell? Go to:

Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear.

But, some reply, it is “noble” or “good” to be content to be the stepping stones of the future. Unfortunately, however, within the very materialistic framework which demands this rationalization there is no basis for believing that the terms “noble” or “good” mean anything—and we can scarcely borrow ethical values from one philosophy (in this case, Christianity) to bolster an antithetical philosophy.

Intellectual Frustration

Intellectually, in short, the materialistic effort is even more frustrating than the mystic, because with an “open-ended” concept of progress, moving from nothing to an unpredictable something, the term “progress” itself is impossible to define. The question has often been asked, but never answered by materialism, what makes man think that he is “better” than a stone or a single-celled animal? Why should the complexity of an organism be considered a criterion of its value? Why should it not be exactly the reverse? In a universe without thought or values, what is meant when one says that man is “better” than an animal? Better for what?

Huston Smith, writing in The Saturday Review a year or two back, summarizes this problem as it was discussed by scientists at “A Conference on Science and Human Responsibility” at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.

Three considerations … prevented the conferees from passing from recognition of this “advance” to any easy faith in progress. First, there seem to be certain areas of life, pre-eminently the value areas, where progress seems very difficult to define.… Second, comparable difficulties arise if we try to specify progress with regard to man’s life as a whole.… It is difficult to find a yardstick in terms of which overall progress could be measured. Third, each step in human advance seems to introduce new problems and perils along with its benefits. We are constantly finding that even where advance is unmistakable it does not result in the elimination or even provable diminution of human evils.

In short, if a man does not know where he is going, much less where he is supposed to go, it is a little difficult to tell if he is on the right track. All of this is not, of course, to deny the obvious and wonderful advances in knowledge and in man’s mastery over his environment, nor is it to take away one jot of honor from the great minds which have produced this advance. It is to say that “time improves only things,” and things have very little to do with the “place” and nothing to do with the “relationship” which makes home.

For the Christian, all questions and all longings reach the focus of a single point and come to perfect rest, for he hears a Voice: “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” Marvelous words, the most marvelous ever spoken on the subject of home—if he who spoke them had a right to do so. And this doubt once again directs our gaze to Bethlehem, the answer, so far as the earthly scene is concerned, to Pilate’s brooding query: “Whence art thou?” To Pilate, we read, “Jesus gave no answer.” But to us, the whole of Scripture is an anthem: He who inhabits eternity, who was before all world, by whom all things were made, came at a certain moment of time and dwelt with man. And with him is man’s dwelling place and home. Indeed, while he walked the earth, those who walked with him in faith were at home; for the relationship is more important than the place. One can have an environment without a relationship, but one cannot have a relationship without an environment.

Nature’S Response

It is an ancient tradition that when the Creator visited his rebellious planet, Nature, though infected by man’s sin, responded to his presence with reverence and awe. Says Marcellus in Hamlet:

Some say that ever, ’gainst that season comes

Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,

The bird of dawning singeth all night long;

And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,

The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,

No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,

So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

Just as man had a little respite from homesickness when God walked the earth in disguise, so nature, in this old story, ceased its travailing and groaning as its Creator soothed its sin-caused anguish. Even the oceans forgot to roar, says Milton, so that the halcyon birds might in peace and safety bring forth their young and “sit brooding on the charmed wave.”

This is a very pretty old story, but the scriptural reality is far more wonderful. When he came to this earth, God was not protected by an aura of heavenly environment; rather, he underwent a homelessness far more acute than man can ever know. Man, by reason of sin, does, in one sense, belong here; he is at home in an environment of darkness and fear, for that is the condition of evil. On this point, incidentally, one often reads or hears it said that Medieval Christianity exhibited extravagant pride in assuming that this earth occupied the center of the universe, but such an interpretation of the Medieval point of view is violently at odds with the facts. The conviction was, rather, that this earth lay at the “bottom” of the universe, farthest removed from the region of light, the empyrean, where God dwelt. All sublunary regions had suffered from the curse, and, as a 16th-century French writer put it, “the earth is so depraved and broken in all kinds of vices and abominations that it seemeth to be a place that hath received all the filthiness and purgings of all other worlds and ages.”

Only a few times since Adam have mortal senses had a hint of the sort of place we were intended to inhabit, in each instance through a theophany. And it is inevitable that it should be through this means, for to the Christian the final home is God. He is the environment and the relationship. He satisfies for finite creatures both their need for a local habitation and a name, and their yearning for the infinite dimension of immortality.

“No human relations,” says T. S. Eliot, “are adequate to human desires.” To many, this truth is a matter of infinite poignance, a poignance which Housman (though his purpose is not to comment on this specific point) communicates movingly:

Into my heart an air that kills

From yon far country blows:

What are those blue remembered hills,

What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,

I see it shining plain:

The happy highways where I went

And cannot come again.

The same haunting loneliness is caught in the last stanza of a Medieval ballad which laments “a new slain knight,” deserted now by hawk, hounds and lady:

Many a one for him makes moan,

But none shall ken where he is gone;

O’er his white bones when they are bare,

The wind shall blow for evermair.

But for the Christian, the statement of Eliot merely expresses neatly a truth which holds no sadness, for he knows that man fulfills his human relationships only as he returns to dwell in God, the source of all values. He knows, with Walter de la Mare:

This is not the place for thee;

Never doubt it, thou hast come

By some dark catastrophe

Far, far from home.

The Christian does not search for his home either here or now; instead, he turns his inward eyes back to that place where, two thousand years ago, there “clashed and thundered unthinkable wings round an incredible star.” And he turns them forward to an event as sure as the unalterable fact of the Incarnation: “Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.”

Calvin D. Linton, A.M., Ph.D., is associate dean of Columbian College and professor of English Literature at George Washington University in the District of Columbia. He has written numerous articles, particularly in the area of Elizabethan drama.

And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever (Dan. 2:44).

And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed (Luke 2:1).

These two verses taken together, and put into juxtaposition, will enable us to consider what the Bible has to say concerning the true message of Christmas. Nothing is more wonderful about the Bible than that this great message of Christianity is not confined to the New Testament but appears in the Old Testament also. As St. Augustine first put it, it is “latent in the Old and patent in the New.” It therefore behooves us always to take these two together. The theme of the one Book, both in the Old and in the New, is this glorious fact, this great event, of the coming of the Son of God into this world for our salvation.

Now in the Old Testament, of course, it appears mainly in the form of prophecy and foreshadowing; and as one thinks of this aspect of the message one is really in difficulties because of the bewildering extent of the material. The prophecies are almost endless; they are to be found in almost every book of the Bible, and they are put in different forms and in different pictures. The Lord Jesus Christ is foreshadowed and foretold in the Old Testament in an almost endless variety of ways.

The Message Is For Us

I direct your attention to this particular prophecy because of the message that it has for us at this present time. There is something that is always very wonderful about the Bible. It does not matter what may be happening in this world, the Bible always has its relevant message. The Christian faith is not merely a matter of personal salvation; it has a world view, and therefore it speaks to every time, to every era, to every epoch in the history of struggling mankind. And so, whenever we find ourselves in some particularly difficult situation and are tempted perhaps almost to be overcome by it, if we know our Scriptures, and if we search them, we shall find a word that is particularly appropriate. Here we have at one and the same time one of the great prophecies of the coming of the Son of God, but, because of the particular form in which it is put, it also gives to those of us who are Christians and who view all things with a Christian eye, one of the greatest messages of comfort, consolation and final assurance that we can ever have.

King Nebuchadnezzar has had that dream which Daniel alone was able to recall and to interpret. Now the precise time when all this happened was this: the children of Israel, because of their sins, had been conquered by Babylon and carried away into captivity. Jerusalem had been destroyed, the Temple was in ruins, and all that Israel had prided herself on, in a sense, lay there in desolate and hopeless condition. The land was derelict and the Israelites captives, indeed slaves, under the domination of Nebuchadnezzar. It was one of the lowest points in the history of Israel. They were the people of God, the people to whom God had made his promises, but here they were in this miserable and seemingly hopeless condition. But it was just there and then, in such a situation, that this tremendous thing happened and this message was given to them, full of hope and bright future, full of a certainty which nothing could remove and destroy.

Here is something thoroughly typical of God’s method, something that runs through the Bible as a recurring theme, even at the very beginning in Genesis. Watch those men on whom God had set his affections; constantly he allows them to get into some hopeless position. There they are feeling utterly disconsolate and their enemies are full of a sense of triumph and of rejoicing. But suddenly God comes in and the whole situation is changed.

Now that has always been God’s method, and it is an essential part of the message of the Christian faith, illustrated most perfectly of all in the coming of the Son of God into the world. When the Lord Jesus was born into this world, once more the situation was completely hopeless. Since the prophet Malachi there had been no word from God, as it were; for 400 long years there had been no true prophet in Israel. God seemed to be silent. The children of Israel seemed to be abandoned, and their country conquered by Rome. It was into that kind of situation, when it was least expected, that God did the greatest thing of all—he sent his only begotten Son into the world to rescue and redeem men.

That is the great thing that stands out in the whole history of the Christian Church; and that is why this message is of such comfort and strength to Christian people at the present time. How often the Christian Church has seemed to be at the very end of its tether—lifeless, helpless and hopeless. Her enemies had become loud, proud and arrogant, convinced that Christianity was finished; the doors of the churches seemed about to be shut for the last time. A bleak midwinter had settled upon the Church, and then suddenly and quite unexpectedly God sent a mighty and glorious revival. That message stands out on the very surface, and is quite clear in this prophecy. The prophecy was fulfilled literally and it has continued to be fulfilled in principle ever since. Therefore as we look at ourselves today and see the Christian Church as but a dwindling remnant in this sinful, arrogant world, and many begin to feel hopeless and anxious about the future—here is the message of God. It has been God’s custom throughout the centuries to come and visit his people when they least expect it. Who knows but that round the corner there may be waiting for us a mighty and glorious revival of religion! Let us take hold of this great principle.

God’S Mysterious Way

Notice in the second place the way in which this message came. There is something peculiarly enthralling about this, almost an element of divine humor. God chose to give his message of comfort and encouragement to his depressed and hopeless people through the person of this great king Nebuchadnezzar, described as “a king of kings,” a man who had conquered the then known world. God chose to give this man a dream; a dream about this great image with the head of fine gold, the breast and arms of silver, the trunk of brass, the legs of iron, and the feet of iron and of clay. He had this wonderful dream but, of course, like any busy man, he woke up in the morning and could not remember what his dream was, so filled was his mind with affairs of state. But the dream had left an impression upon his mind and it disturbed him. However, he was a powerful man, and had his astrologers, soothsayers and wise men, and he had simply to command them and they would tell him all about it. But alas, not a man among them could tell him what the dream was, still less give him the interpretation! So here he was fuming in a rage, insisting that unless these men could remind him of what the dream was and what it meant he was going to kill them all. Now there happened to be among these men Daniel, an Israelite, one of the captive people. The message came to him also, but because he was one of God’s children he pleaded with God to have mercy upon him and his fellows and his people. And God revealed the dream to him and its interpretation. So Daniel, to the astonishment of the king and everybody, repeated the dream and gave the interpretation of it.

That is how God did it. He did it in such a way as to humble this great man, this colossus that seemed to stand astride the earth in greatness and glory. This, Christian people, is one of the things that ought to make us shout with laughter. That is how God did it. He chose an “unknown,” one of his own people, to show forth his divine glory and wisdom, and to humble the great king of this world.

If you and I are depressed by what is happening in the world today, it is because we are not truly Christian in our thinking. This is the whole story of the Bible. Look at the great powers that have risen against God. For a while virtually everybody believed they were going to be triumphant; but suddenly God arises and in a most contemptuous manner (I use the term advisedly) he just humbles them and puts them in their place, and goes on with his wonderful purpose. Many powers have arisen in the past that seemed to threaten the extermination of Christianity. They have all gone. And every power in the world today that seems to be threatening the Christian faith will go in exactly the same way, and we can anticipate that as God pricked this particular bubble called Nebuchadnezzar, he will do so again. He brings down the great and mighty, and he exalts the humble.

The Time Of His Coming

Now let us come to a consideration of the message itself, for it is full of the most extraordinary things. First of all God gives here a prophecy of the exact time his Son is going to be born into this world, “And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom.…” The dream indicated that there was going to be a succession of kingdoms. First of all this head of gold, which Daniel told him in the interpretation was Nebuchadnezzar himself, and the kingdom of Babylon. That was going to be followed by a kingdom of silver—the Medo-Persian dynasty, that in turn to be replaced by a kingdom of brass—the kingdom of Greece, Alexander the Great, so called. And that was to be followed by this kingdom of iron with its divisions and the admixture of clay as well—and that is, of course, the Roman Empire.

Then we are told that when the Roman Empire would be in the fullness of its sway and its sovereignty, God was going to set up his Kingdom, was going to send his Son as King to start this mighty Kingdom of Heaven. And so, that 1st verse in Luke 2 tells us that it actually happened at that time: “And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus.” Here we have one of those numerous instances of the particularity of Old Testament prophecy. It does not merely prophesy the coming of the Son of God into the world generally and vaguely; it tells us the exact time. Later on, in the 9th chapter of this Book of Daniel, it is still more particular and fixes the very year when He was to come. Micah tells us that he was to be born in Bethlehem, and so on. Notice the particularity, and let us draw the great lesson from it, that God is controlling history. It was when “the fulness of the times was come” that God “sent forth his Son made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law.”

An Unique Kingdom

Let us look at the characteristics of the Kingdom—and here, as we do so, we shall see a summary of the Gospel. The thing emphasized is that this Kingdom is going to be essentially different from all other kingdoms. In what respects? First, it is not going to rise out of any one of the other kingdoms. It is a kingdom that will arise independently, apart from, entirely distinct from the others. You remember that in the case of the earthly kingdoms, each arose out of the ruins of the previous one. A great conqueror came and conquered and demolished the previous kingdom, set up his own on the foundation of the former. And that happened to each in turn.

But God’s Kingdom is not going to be like that, it does not belong to that order at all. Let us never forget, therefore, that this dream image of Nebuchadnezzar not only describes those four kingdoms and empires, but it typifies and represents all earthly, human, worldly power. But this other Kingdom does not belong to that order. That is why our Lord said to Pontius Pilate, “My Kingdom is not of this world.” It is a spiritual Kingdom, an unseen Kingdom, a Kingdom in the hearts of men. That is God’s Kingdom. It does not belong to the image seen by Nebuchadnezzar.

Let me point out something still more wonderful. It is a Kingdom that presents a striking contrast in its lowliness and in its apparent insignificance. It is compared to “a stone cut out without hands.” You see at once this striking contrast. The kingdoms of the world are great and wonderful in their pomp and majesty, their external show and all their glory—gold, silver, brass, iron! And then there is this other little kingdom—a common stone!

What a perfect description of the Kingdom of God! We must never lose sight of this. It is an essential part of the Bible’s message. The children of Israel seemed so small and insignificant in their origin. Israel was a very small country, and when you contrast her with these great empires, how insignificant she always seemed to be.

But that is not really the thing to emphasize. Look what happened when God’s Son came into this world. Where was he born? It was not in a king’s palace, not in purple, not surrounded by gold and silver and brass. Born in a stable, placed in a manger—a stone! Born into a very poor family that could not afford to sacrifice a lamb, they could only buy turtle doves. There was nothing more humble and more lowly. It is all in that picture of the stone. It shows us the humble origin of our Lord as born in the flesh: the insignificance of his position, because he was not a Pharisee and had never been to the schools; the insignificance of his kingdom, just followed by a rabble of ordinary, common people; spending most of his time in Galilee and not in the capital, nor in Jerusalem and in Judea. There it is, the stone contrasted with the gold and the silver and the brass and the iron.

A Divine Kingdom

Let me emphasize this still more: it was a stone that was “brought out,” we are told, “without hands.” Have you noticed the repetition of that? Each time this stone is mentioned that is added—why? This means that everything that has happened in connection with the coming of the Kingdom of God has been entirely outside all human agency, all human ability, all human power, all human policy and all human understanding. “When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son made of a woman, made under the law.…” It is all of God.

Here we have this extraordinary mystery, this amazing paradox—the humility and the glory, the insignificance and the Godhead, a Babe placed in a manger, yet eternal Son of God, and both together! “Veiled in flesh the godhead see!” The mystery, the marvel, the miracle of it all! And here it is, prophesied so long ago in the interpretation of this dream that king Nebuchadnezzar had and which Daniel alone could interpret.

But let me remind you that all this is not only true of the Son of God himself, the King of the Kingdom. It is perfectly true also of the Kingdom. Look again at the beginning of the Kingdom of God as seen especially in the form of the Christian Church. Could there possibly have been a more insignificant beginning? It started by his just preaching to common, ordinary, poor people. He did not spend his time in kings’ palaces. The first disciples were not the great men of the world; they were just ordinary artisans, publicans and sinners. The learned and the rich were virtually all outside. That is the Kingdom at the beginning as seen in the Gospels. And he goes back to heaven and leaves it all in the hands of just these insignificant men. You begin to read the Book of the Acts of the Apostles and you say, “Well, of course this is monstrous, it cannot possibly continue. How can this stand up against the centuries of the Jewish religion? How can this stand up against the great Roman Empire? What can this do in the face of Greek philosophy? It is hopeless!” It is a stone, cut out without hands! But you know the story, you know what happened. And the explanation, you see, is still the same. It is not man’s action. The stone was “cut out without hands.” You simply cannot explain the spread of Christianity in terms of the first disciples and apostles.

The authorities met together and said, “What is this? How can we put a stop to it?” They said, “These men are insignificant, unlettered and untutored, yet they seem to have worked this miracle.” Somebody said: “These are the men who have been with Jesus, and the Holy Ghost has come upon them. It is God!” Cut out without hands! It is divine! It is supernatural! It is miraculous!

That is the truth about the Christian Church. This reminder was never more needed by the Church than it is today. The Church is as she is today because she has forgotten this very thing. She has been trying to buttress herself and her message by human learning, philosophy and understanding. We say we must have a learned ministry and we must, but we have forgotten that preachers must be men filled with the Holy Ghost. We adopt worldly methods of advertising and of organizing. We are going to do it. It was never meant to be like that. It is a Kingdom that has come into being “without hands,” and we must learn to look less at “our hands and our abilities,” and look to God, and realize that it is God’s doing. You see this principle in the King; you see it in the Kingdom.

An Enduring Kingdom

We are told that this Kingdom shall “break in pieces and consume all these other kingdoms.” There is a sense in which it has already done that. There is a yet greater sense in which it is going to do it. Within three centuries this despised little sect became the official religion of the great Roman Empire. And when the Goths and the Vandals came down and sacked and ruined Rome, what little was left of civilization was preserved by the Christian Church. There was nothing, in a sense, that was not conquered except the Christian Church: And so the Church, and the Church alone, remained when the world was reduced to chaos.

But it is yet to come in a more glorious and a more wonderful manner! For there is a day coming when “at the Name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Have you heard the angels shouting and saying: “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ”? He is the King of kings and the Lord of Lords, because, as the interpretation of the dream reminds us, this is an invincible kingdom.

Did you notice that other interesting phrase, “and the Kingdom shall not be left to other people”? Now there is a better translation: “Its sovereignty and its power shall never be transferred to other hands.” This Kingdom, as I have been reminding you, is entirely different from every earthly kingdom. Who would have thought that the power and sovereignty would ever be taken out of the hands of Nebuchadnezzar? And so in turn, with the great Medo-Persian empire, Alexander the Great, the Caesars, and so with them all. But the power, the sovereignty, the glory and the might have never been taken out of the hands of Christ the King. His authority and power will never pass into other hands. His Kingdom shall stand for ever.

Make Your Citizenship Sure

Very well, what conclusion must we draw from all this? Hear the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews: “Wherefore, we receiving a Kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace and let us be steadfast.…” The thing that matters is that we belong to this Kingdom. The kingdoms of this world, whatever form they may take—whether military, or social, or political, or philosophical—talk about the gold, the silver, the brass and the iron. Exalt them as you will, they are all going to be destroyed. Listen: “Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver and the gold, the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter. And the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.”

I ask you this personal question: Are you a citizen of this Kingdom which cannot be destroyed, whose power shall never pass to another? Do you know that you are reconciled to God by the blood of Christ? Have you been made anew? Not by the hands of man, or man’s manipulation or understanding, but by the hands of God? Have you experienced the second birth? Have you “the authority” to become a son of God? Are you born “not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”? If so, you are in the Kingdom and you will remain in it though the whole world rock and shake in the convulsion of an Armageddon. You are secure because you belong to a Kingdom which never can be moved. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath visited and redeemed his people.

A Welsh physician who answered God’s call to the ministry today occupies the pulpit of Westminster Chapel, London, where G. Campbell Morgan once ministered. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who ranks as one of Britain’s great expositors of Bible doctrine, is the author of this Christmas sermon.