Every
Christmas season, we get reminded of something from a Christmas gone by. This year, as Amy and I are really for the
first time doing much in terms of getting our kids gifts and as we’ve been
working through an Advent series about the ultimate gift, I have done a lot of
thinking about past gifts that I have received at Christmas. One of them that comes to mind is a gift that
I never actually got, but that I have heard a great deal about. My parents got me what were called “Rock’em
Sock’em Robots” when I was a little.
They were these little robots that fought and punched until one of them
lost and their head sprung upward. It
was the “it” toy of that year apparently.
However, upon trying to assemble this particular toy late at night, my
father broke the thing and it never made it to Christmas morning. Apparently it wasn’t that big of a deal
because I don’t ever remember being disappointed that I didn’t get that
particular toy. I’ve always tried to be
(sometimes more successful than others) focused upon what I do have than what I
don’t have. I’ve been very fortunate to
receive so much in my life as I’m sure that many of you have as well. However, there is one Christmas gift that
stands out to me over all other gifts that I have ever gotten. Several years ago, my sweet wife bought me
tickets to a country music concert that was coming to MS during the state rodeo
competition. Now, the tickets weren’t
expensive and the band (although one that I liked and still do like) wasn’t
someone that you would find on my bucket list of folks to see in concert. So, what made that gift so special? Well, the truth of it is that this was during
a season of financial strain for our family.
It was a time in which we were waiting to hear God tell us where to go,
but at that moment we were feeling directionless in the silence. It was a time in which Amy and I had
seemingly completely shifted from being husband and wife to mom and dad (a
dangerous transition for many couples).
And despite all the reasons to find dissatisfaction and unhappiness in
our marriage and our situation in life, my wife was telling me that all she
wanted was to spend one evening with no one else but me. You see, many times we forget the magnitude
of a gift. We easily forget how much a
gift really means to us or to someone else.
Until now, Amy had no clue what her gift meant to me.
Think about how
God created the world. He created it
completely perfect and without any flaws.
However, our first parents, Adam and Eve, sinned and shattered that
perfection and flawlessness. Once that
perfection was gone, we no longer deserved anything from God nor could we ever
work to being worthy of anything from Him either. Like a shattered mirror, we could never
restore things to where there was no evidence of the damage that had been
done. Much like what we saw last Sunday,
that’s where we stood hopelessly desperate and in need of something much
greater than ourselves. We needed a
Savior; we needed Jesus, and he came.
Christ came into this world as James Boice says, “which was weeping in
its failure and sin.” And when he came,
he changed everything. Jesus didn’t
attempt to simply put the shattered pieces of perfection that we call humanity
back together. He didn’t come and try to
help us put the broken mirror back together, but he came to recreate us. He came so that we could be regenerated and
reborn. Look at some of the words that
Jesus spoke as to how we are in him.
John 3:7, “You must be born again.”
Paul, in 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new
creation.” Friends, that is the grace of
God. We’re not something that is old
polished up to give the appearance that we are new. No, we are entirely new creations in Jesus
Christ. Charles Spurgeon once wrote of
God’s grace saying, “Because God is gracious, therefore sinful men are
forgiven, converted, purified and saved.
It is not because of anything in them, or that ever can be in them, that
they are saved; but because of the boundless love, goodness, pity, compassion,
mercy and grace of God.”
“For
by grace [we] have been saved through faith” says our text. “And this is not your own doing; it is the
gift of God.” Now, we talked a great deal last Sunday about the fact
that this gift of eternal life in Christ was a gift that was free to us but not
God. We talked about how it cost God a
great deal to pay the debt that we owed and to achieve for us salvation. It cost Him dearly to restore the sort of
balance of perfection and flawlessness that once existed. Now, obviously we are not made perfect and
flawless. All of us have flaws, all of
us have imperfections, just because we don’t notice them or acknowledge them
doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. If
you’re married, go ask your spouse; they will help to identify your flaws and
help you find new ones that you never knew you had. No, we’re not flawless, but because of God’s
grace, we can receive the flawlessness and the perfection of Jesus Christ. It is not our own, but Christ’s. Our text concludes, “It is the gift of God, not a
result of works, so that no one may boast.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,
which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
One
of the most infuriating things for those who do not believe Jesus Christ to be
Lord and Savior is the notion of faith.
Faith, as the writer of Hebrews states in Hebrews 11, “is the assurance
of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” They’ll ask, “How can you believe this
stuff? Even you have to admit that it
doesn’t make any kind of logical sense.
One minute God’s giving Moses the Ten Commandments and says that we
shouldn’t murder and then He turns around and tells Joshua and the rest of
Israel to go kill this group and the next minute Jesus is condemning murder and
telling us that it’s wrong.” Well,
that’s setting aside that there is a stark difference between killing and
murder, but I don’t want to go down that road today. What I want all of you to do is to think of
why in the world it is that you believe that Jesus Christ is your Lord and
Savior. Despite all the flaws that we
find in ourselves and all of the reservations that we may have with Scripture
or the way that we read the Bible and quite honestly have whole entire sections
(even books) of it that just don’t make sense to us; despite all of that we
still believe in God and we believe in Jesus Christ. Why is that?
Well, it’s faith. You can’t
explain it in a way that makes sense to someone that doesn’t have it and some
of us probably can’t even tell others when exactly we got it but that one day
we just sort of realized that it was there.
I
said a moment ago that Amy didn’t know that that gift had meant so much to me
until today. The truth of the matter is
that I didn’t realize how much that simple gift of concert tickets meant to me
until just recently as well. All
throughout the days and weeks leading up to that concert I didn’t really know
what it meant to me. During the concert,
after the concert, and even a couple of years after it I still didn’t see the
ultimate meaning behind the gift until, one day, it just sort of dawned on me
what she had really given me all that time ago.
You see, our faith is like that many times as well. We don’t really realize what a wonderful and
precious gift it is that we’ve been given, until one day we are just sort of thinking
about all that God has done for us and we are astounded.
I
think that this text is a beautiful summation of sorts of the entirety of our
Advent series on the True Gift of Christmas.
We’ve talked about the fact that Jesus is the one true gift of Christmas
when we looked at James 1. Well, here it
is again. We are saved by grace alone
through faith alone in Christ alone. If
we were to rewrite this verse in its fuller sense (and no I don’t really like
getting into the business of rewriting Scripture), then it would read something
like, “For you have been saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ
alone who is the gift of God.” Notice
that article “the.” Paul, inspired by
the Holy Spirit, doesn’t right a
gift, one of the gifts, or even the most important gift, but the gift. Jesus Christ, the Son, the Savior, the
Messiah…is the gift of the Father.
The
second text that we looked in our series was that of 1 Peter 4 and we saw how
we are to be faithful stewards of this good and perfect gift from God. Well, we need only look at the final verse of
our text to see that displayed. “For
we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God
prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” We are reborn, recreated in Jesus for good
works. We’re created to do the things
that God calls us to do. What are good
works? Well, they’re those things that
we were made to do in service of God. We
talked about that feeling that we get when we help someone in need or when we
do something to aide those less fortunate.
We talked about how it just warmed our hearts for reasons that we can’t
explain other than we were just created that way. Well, God made us that way. He made us for the purposes of (as WSC 1
says) glorifying Him and enjoying Him always.
In other words, we were created to proclaim God’s name in service,
speaking, and worship while rejoicing in the fact that we find ourselves in
Christ. We share the gift of Christ by
proclaiming the gospel, whether it is with our mouths or with our actions and
the way we live our lives.
Finally,
we saw last Sunday the magnitude of the gift.
We’ve already mentioned that we talked about the cost of the gift of God
that is Jesus Christ; a cost that God paid and then gifted to us. “And this is not your own doing; it is the
gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Like we said last Sunday, we are saved not
because of anything good that we have done or anything good within us, but
because of God’s love for us. We’re not
saved because of who we are but because of who God is. We talked about how while we can outwardly
say that it cost Him his one and only Son, inwardly we really have no clue how
great that cost really is. Y’all I am a
fairly confident person, especially when it comes to my faith. I’m not one of those folks who get swayed
back and forth questioning God’s love for me.
I know some who do and really there’s nothing wrong with it per-say,
it’s just one of those things that some people experience that others don’t. Now, do I question the methodology of God at
times? Do I question God’s sovereignty
and timing and provision for me? Well,
sure I do. I’m not proud of that fact,
but I will openly and honestly acknowledge that it does happen. However, I never for one second think that
God doesn’t love me. I never for one
second think that God doesn’t love all of His children. After all, He sent His one and only Son to
die in our place. There is no greater
act of love that God could perform to display how great His love is for
us. Now, love doesn’t mean no
discipline. Love doesn’t mean no
accountability or no hardships whatsoever (at least real love doesn’t). I love my children very much, but I’m sure
that there are times when they would tell you that my sole purpose upon this
earth is to discipline them. You know
what? Sometimes, that discipline or
punishment or hardship or whatever you want to call it is an expression of my
love for them. I love them; so I help
guide them to where they ought to be, and sometimes it isn’t always pleasant
for them (or me either for that matter).
However, my love for them never diminishes, and only grows stronger over
time.
So,
as we bring this series to somewhat of a close today (with only a few remarks to
come on Christmas Eve), we know that by God’s grace alone through faith alone
in the good and perfect gift of God that is Jesus Christ we find our
salvation. We find it not because of
anything that we have done but because of who God is, since He is the only one
with the ability to pay the price for the debt that we owe. And He paid it by willfully sending His Son
to this earth to die in our place and achieve the forgiveness of our sins. Friends, we’re only a few days away from
celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. We’ve
all got those little nativity scenes placed around our homes or offices or
yards that depict what truly is an amazing scene. We know how precious a moment it is when a
mother gives birth to her child and the child is surrounded by family for the
first time. We know that it must have
been an even more precious moment that night some 2000+ years ago. There wasn’t just family there, but magi,
shepherds, livestock, and a beautiful starry night celebrating the fulfillment
of at least 4000 years of prophecy. It
truly must have been an amazing scene and an emotional moment.
Now,
I want to end by asking you this, and it’s going to hit really close to home if
you have had kids before. Imagine Mary
looking in the eyes of her newborn child for the first time (mind you this is
her firstborn). Think about all of the
emotions that flowed through her in that moment. Think about how you felt when you first
looked into the eyes of your first child if you’ve had kids. Y’all it almost brings me to tears to think
back to the thoughts I had when I looked into Ashby’s eyes for the first
time. Now, imagine that the purpose of
that baby born all those years ago was to die.
Imagine as God looked down upon the scene that night and saw the joy and
the celebration and felt the love that He had for His Son. However, God loves us so much that He was
willing to send His Son to this earth to die for us. He sent him to die for you and for me. Friends, there truly is no other gift that
can ever compare to the gift that we have been given in Jesus Christ our Lord
and Savior. Glory be to God; in the name
of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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