Grace Emmanuel Church

Pastor Sam Chess

(Are you sure you have received your Christmas GIFT from GOD?)

I. Question # 11 (in series) : Are you sure you have received your Christmas GIFT from GOD?

Have you ever had the experience of getting a special gift for someone… You put a great deal of thought …perhaps a great deal of time into it…maybe you make the gift with your own hands giving up precious time that could have been given to something else. You wait with excitement until the special day arrives… you smile with anticipation while they open your love-filled gift…. And their response is not at all what you expect. They are less than excited, quickly set your gift aside and turn their attention to more important things.

I remember giving a gift like that to someone once… and when they opened it they immediately made a very negative comment…set the gift aside and I've always doubted that the gift made it past the next trash pickup day.

…Point is…I've never forgotten that experience…giving a gift that was unappreciated and misunderstood...

Now imagine with me… GOD… fashioning an entire universe from the farthest star to the most delicious plant on earth…all of it designed to house the pinnacle of his creation…mankind… US! Into this most precious, and final, apex of His creation… GOD invests his image, his characteristics, and, then, he pours out on them His infinite love.

There's nothing in the Bible that suggest that God loves planets or comets or trees or even that he loves llamas…but the Bible is filled with references that he loves us (you and me), infinitely… intensely… personally…

Yet mankind rejected his Creator, turned their back on him… chose sinning against God over loving communion with God….

God could have annihilated the human race and started over… He didn't

He could have dropped us all into eternal punishment… He didn't

He could have pushed us outside the boundaries of His love forever… He didn't

He spent the next 5000 years of human history meticulously preparing the world for the arrival of His answer to our sin dilemma. When everything was exactly as it should be from which nation ruled who… to a little Jewish, virgin, girl reaching puberty God… sent his ultimate gift into the world…his solution to our sinfulness…

Galatians 4:4 … when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman… 5 God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves (to sin)….

Imagine, God taking off all the advantages of being God…scrunching down until he was small enough to insert himself into a single human cell, a divinely fertilized egg…. Then splitting and splitting again until he began to form human characteristics…

It sounds so strange…yet from a theological perspective it was the only path God could have taken. We, humans, are the one's who sinned… we are the one's who transferred our allegiance from God to his enemy satan. Man's sin had to be paid for by a man… yet all mankind were "slaves to sin." Mankind's bondage to sin had to be broken by a man but all mankind we're already slaves to sin and satan.

God had to become human! It was the only way to defeat man slavery to sin by taking every person's sin on himself…dying for each of our sins, defeating death by rising back to life… and offering us each our eternal freedom!

Galatians 4:4 … when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman… 5 God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves (to sin), so that he could adopt us as his very own children…. 7 Now you are no longer a slave but God’s own child….

All of that, (about you being no longer a slave to sin, but now God's very own child), presumes that you recognize the gift of God for what it is and receive it as your personal possession.

My grandchildren have been to my house this last week and they are magnetically drawn to the tree in the corner… they pass over every box…looking for just the right combination of letters that spell out their name… When they find it, they know that that is their gift. When Christmas day arrives their gift will not be given to someone else… When they go home on Christmas day…what ever is in that box will be theirs to take home.

They will own that gift for the rest of their life…

Imagine how absurd it would be, if one of my grandchildren saw their gift under the tree but decided that it wasn't really being offered to them… Can you fathom them sitting off in the corner, while their siblings open their gifts, certain that there is, really, nothing in their box… or if there is something in the box it would not change their life for the better?

My point is that, unbelievably, there are millions of people doing that on a spiritual level every day. Looking at the gift of eternal life, with their name on the tag, and walking away sure… that there is nothing in the box that can change their lives.

As I took another, closer, look at the Christmas story, this week, I was astounded, all over again, by how many people were actually part of the Christmas narrative… they were the characters in the divine unfolding of God's plan…. They had the gift right in there eyesight and still turned and walked away…

Take Asa, the temple priest…for instance: (fictional)

Asa had spent his life, serving God as a priest of God, to the Jewish people. His early life consisted of attending a Yeshivah (Jewish Rabbinical School) where he had the Word of God pumped into him seven days a week. In fact, he would have been required to memorize the entire first, five books of the Old Testament (pictured here).

One of the things that was drilled into him was the prophesys of the coming Messiah. He knew that the Messiah would come to this world as a baby, he knew that the Divine baby would be born in Bethlehem, he knew the mother would be a virgin girl. It had all been prophesied 400- 1500 years before his lifetime. He had studied the passages with excitement… wondering if he would still be a priest when the Messiah showed up.

When Asa's son was born, he began, early, preparing his son to follow his footsteps in "the greatest calling" on earth.

Perhaps Asa's son asked early questions something like this:

1) Daddy, does anybody know more about the Bible than you do? No son, I've studied the Bible as much as any other priest in Israel..

2) Daddy does anybody know more about the Messiah's coming than you do? No son…I've memorized every passage prophesying the coming of the Anointed One!

3) Daddy are you sure you'll know when he comes… Are you sure we won't miss him? We won't miss him son… My job is to make sure all Israel knows when he arrives!

4) Daddy tell me again why you come home, every day, with the blood of sacrificed animals all over your clothes? Isaiah says, son, that the Messiah will be a suffering Savior. The sacrificed animals are just supposed to cover your sins until God's Messiah comes and makes provision for a final sin sacrifice…

Let's move ahead a handful of years… Asa's son comes home from first year, Yeshiva, school with more probing questions.

1) Daddy, the kids at school are talking about a Baby being born in Bethlehem that fits the description of the Christ. Lot's of babies have been reported to be the Christ…says Asa…don't be easily fooled son..

2) But dad, some say the baby's father says he has proof that the baby's mom has never slept with a man… There's huge excitement around Bethlehem from a group of shepherds saying they got a visit from a sky full of angels. Son; those are just rumors… of course a man in love is going to make excuses for a woman he's determined to marry… and you know how little credibility shepherd have…

Finally:3) Dad the whole school heard today that you got a visit from some Magi that came here clear from Babylon saying they were following a star to the birth of the Messiah… We heard that you told them to go to Bethlehem… Dad what's going on… I asked you about that baby in Bethlehem and you told me there was nothing to the story… Son I sent them to Bethlehem because Scripture clearly says that is where the Baby is going to be born. They're on a fools errand…The Messiah has not yet been born… they will find nothing. When I find out that the Messiah has arrived I will surely let you know.

4) Dad the word at school is that Herod sent his soldiers to kill every child under two in Bethlehem. We just studied the passage that prophesied that was going to happen… I'm getting very concerned Dad that we may be missing the coming of the Messiah. Let it go Son….Do you think I would give my whole life to preparing for the coming of the Messiah and be so dense as to miss it now?

_____________________________________________________________________

One more move forward in time… two more communications between father and son… Asa's son is all grown up now… This time his communication is not in the form of a boy's question…. It's in the form of a grown man's accusation.

1) Are you aware, Dad, that the man you condemned to crucifixion today is, in fact, the same baby that was born in Bethlehem when I was a little boy? Are you aware that he's been healing whole villages of sickness, raising people from the dead, and claiming to forgive their sins?

2) Dad, are you aware that the Bethlehem baby, that you had crucified, has been seen, by people outside Jerusalem, alive! Hundreds of people are saying that they have seen him with their own eyes. Maybe you weren't so smart after all Dad…maybe the Messiah already came…

You said you wouldn't fail to recognize his coming!… You said I could trust you to let me know!... I think the Messiah arrived, Dad, and you missed him!

It really is amazing;

1) The Bible Scholars had the Word but didn't recognize the WORD!

2) They were religious professors…not possessors!

3) They were acquainted with God, but they hadn't experienced him

4) They knew a lot about the Messiah, yet never came to know the Messiah

5) They pointed others in the direction of the Savior, but wouldn't travel 5 miles to Bethlehem to find out for themselves!

6) They were part of the Christmas story but that exposure only made it into their heads…not into their hearts!

Conclusion: (Invitation ; Use boxes on stage and summarize below)

________________________________________________________________________

Luke 5:32 I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.”

Our repentance brings, to us, a secondary gift of God's grace: It is part of the gift of eternal life, but it's the first thing you receive right now:

Forgiveness!

Jesus says…as his gift to you… you can go from hopelessly offending God, stained by your many sins... to experiencing the gift of complete forgiveness!

Psalm 103: 12 He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west.

________________________________________________

There are two sides to this part of the gift… Not only does he wipe the sin out… he expunges your record so completely…it like you never committed the sin to start with!

What does the Bible call that part of God's gift? Justified!

Ephesians 1:4 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us, in Christ, to be holy and without fault in his eyes. (NLT) … that's a gift…

__________________________________________________

As a gift to you; God wants to move each of us from His enemy clear across the spectrum of relationships to _____________________?

John 15:15 I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. (NLT)

The Bible calls this move from God's enemy to God's friend Reconciled!

In order for the gift to be truly eternal, starting right now, there needs to be some part of the gift that will change you from a sinful person to a "righteous" person…Does anybody know if that is part of the gift that Jesus provided?

What might Jesus' gift of Grace be called that moves us from being spiritually dead to vitally alive? …. like this……

2 Corinthians 5:17 … anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! (NLT)

If we used to be slaves to sin, acting like our father, the evil one, and now we begin to increasing exhibit righteous actions more and more like our Savior, Jesus Christ… is there a name, in the Bible, for that transformation? ________________________

Regeneration!

______________________________________________________________________

But the last I want to point out to you today is:

Sanctification!

That process whereby God will continue the growth process in you… right up until the day you die… then continue to use your transformed life throughout all of eternity… as you finally begin to figure out what your time on earth was, really, all about.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at (until) the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (NIV)