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THE GIVING HEART OF GOD 1
Grace Emmanuel Church
Pastor Sam Chess
A few days before Christmas, a postal worker at the main sorting
office found an unstamped, handwritten, envelope addressed to God.
Curiously, he opened it and discovered that it was from an elderly
woman who was in great distress because her last 200.00 had been stolen
and her Christmas would be without gifts and even without food.
The postman went to his fellow postal workers and took up a
collection for the woman. They all dug deep and came up with 180.00. He
put the money in a plain envelope and sent it by special courier to the
woman that very day. A week later, the same postal worker noticed
another unstamped letter, in the same handwriting, also addressed to
God. He opened it and found inside a brief note.
Dear God, Thank you for the 180.00 that you sent to me. My Christmas
would have been so bleak without it.
PS. It was $20.00 short, but that was probably those thieving post
office workers.
But then we gave gifts….why?
Where did that all come from? We often play the Reader’s Digest
condensed answer
in our minds… it goes something like this.
Jesus was born that first Christmas day and three wise men showed up
carrying gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. People noticed…so when
the next December 25th rolled around they decided to honor
Jesus birthday by giving gifts to their family, friends, the people at
work, and the mailman.
I spent some time this week “googleing” the history of Christmas and
gift giving. There was no exchange of gifts for 300 more years and that
was done, not by Christians to honor Christ’s birth, but by the Romans
in honor of a pagan God.
If fact… The early church celebrated the birth of Christ on March 25th
and, interestingly enough, they celebrated the death of Christ on March
25th exactly three years later.
Most of our Christmas traditions have their roots in others
festivals like the pagan Yule celebration in Scotland or the Roman
exchange of evergreen branches. After the Reformation the early
“Protestants” rejected the celebration of Christmas because they said
it was a Catholic thing and they didn’t like the Catholics. The early
settlers in America completely rejected the celebration of Christmas
because they said it was an English thing and they didn’t like the
English. In fact…The early colonies made celebrating Christmas against
the law! The whole Saint Nick thing had nothing to do with Christmas,
it was a January New Year celebration.
In fact the modern idea of Santa Claus was from a cartoon published
in the 1920’s and that probably would never have caught on if it hadn’t
been used in an advertisement of a “new” soda fountain drink called
Coca Cola.
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If you love the trappings of the modern Christmas season you, maybe,
shouldn’t read its history because it will pop all the air out of your
sentimental bubbles.
We all know, down deep, that Christmas isn’t about all the
trappings….it’s not really connected to most of the traditions that we
have built around it. The real “reason for the season” is that God
incarnated himself, came to this earth in human form, to take on
himself all the sins of mankind and then die on a cross… Paying the
penalty for your sins and mine, and then he offers us eternal life in
exchange for eternal damnation.
When a sense of giving envelops you around Christmas time… It’s not
because of the traditions going on around you. It’s not something
St.Nick inspires in you; That’s all fluff. The spirit of giving that we
all feel is ricocheting through society because it sources from the
greatest gift and gift-giver of all time.
John 3:16 “For God loved the world so much that he gave his
one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish
but have eternal life. (NLT)
Ephesians 5:2 and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and
gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to
God. (NIV)
Galatians 2: I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of
God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (NLT)
Most of you are settling back into your seat now saying, yeah I know
this stuff….
But… I felt like God told me three weeks ago…. I want you to mine
deeper into the idea of me being a giving God… and you will
discover nuggets that are new and fresh. So I started that study this
last Wednesday and I gave you this handout that shows us, from
the Bible, that God has, from the beginning of the Old Testament, had a
benevolent heart that loves to pour out gifts on His children.
All of these Scriptures, from Genesis on, detail God as being
the giver of everything from the breath of life itself, to the land we
live on, the success we experience at what we do, the children we
have….. the defeat of enemies. All these things are carefully laid out
in the Old Testament as a loving, giving, God pouring out himself and
his gifts on his children.
As we thought about that on Wednesday evening we discovered the
heart of why that was so important. Why did God spend so
much time assuring his children that everything good that came in their
direction was not the result of “good karma”, or a “proper aligning” of
the planets but was, in fact, a gift directly from the hand of their
loving heavenly Father?
I need to repeat a concept from Wednesday evening to get us all on
the same page; then I want to take you to an example in the Bible that
makes it all vividly clear.
The Patriarchs of the Bible lived their whole lives among pagans….
In fact they were pagans. When God called Abraham he and all his family
were, undoubtedly polytheists…worshipping many gods; gods of the sun,
moon, rain, sexuality, fertility…
God called Abraham and told him he alone was God and all the rest of
them were imposters.
What we know about pagan gods…and every generation throughout all of
the Bible lived next door to pagans. What we know about paganism for
the last 7000 years is that these pagan god’s were not characterized as
“givers”. They were “takers”… Pagan god’s often demanded the sacrifice
of one or more of your children. If the rains stopped somebody needed
to be killed to appease the angry pagan god. If you hoped to have
plenteous children and good crops you had to be willing to freely give
away the lives of your sons and the virginity of your daughters to the
pagan priests. Pagan gods did not ever give away anything without
exacting far more in return!..... That’s all the world the patriarchs
knew…that’s all they’d ever seen.
When Creator God made Adam and Eve, in the garden, everything he
created had been a universal display of his giving nature…but the
entrance of sin into the world had broken that all down and mankind had
completely lost their understanding of a loving, benevolent, gift
giving, Heavenly Father.
Then one day God calls Abraham out of his pagan world and his call
is unlike anything Abram had ever heard:
Genesis 12: 1 The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your
country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I
will show you. 2 "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless
you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will
bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all
peoples on earth will be blessed through you." (NLT)
Okay, Okay, Okay….what’s the hitch? No hitch!
What great thing are you going to demand from me. How many of my
kids do I have to sacrifice. How many of my daughters have to be
compromised? None, None!
This is not about my taking from you Abram…it’s about my giving to
you! I’m revealing to you my nature.. the nature Adam and Eve knew. My
nature is to pour out myself on/for my children. I’m going to give you
descendants, I’m going to give you a country, I’m going to give you my
protection…and best of all.. I’m going to give you my presence.
I’m going to pour so much blessing in your direction that it will
cascade off onto those your life comes in contact with.
Most of you are familiar with how Abram’s life unfolds as he learns
to walk with God….but there is one point in his life where all of this
comes back into vivid focus and I want to take you there for the
balance of this message.
Over the years Abraham learns more and more what it means to trust
in his loving, benevolent Heavenly Father. The descendant promise is
his greatest challenge, and he had that whole Ishmael stumble, but
finally…along comes Isaac the promised heir… the child through whom God
would raise up a nation of descendants.
In his walk of faith…Abraham reaches the bottom of the ninth. with
the bases loaded… the Bible doesn’t actually use those words, it says:
Genesis 22: 1 Now it came to pass after these things that God
tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!”….And he said, “Here I am.”
This is one of the most intense passages in all the Old Testament. I
spent years reading it and not quite understanding why it needed to be…
Genesis 22:2 “Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love
so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt
offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.” (NLT)
Oh here we go…God I thought we were past this whole pagan “go kill
your kid for me” thing… God I thought you had revealed yourself to me
as a giver, not a taker like the pagan gods.
And, God this isn’t just any son… this is my only (legitimate) son
This is the son of your promise…this is the son you were going to
build a nation through
The Bible doesn’t record any of these objections…. But I can’t help
believe they filled Abraham’s mind. All the Bible records is:
Genesis 22:3 The next morning Abraham got up early. He saddled his
donkey and took two of his servants with him, along with his son,
Isaac. Then he chopped wood for a fire for a burnt offering and set out
for the place God had told him about. (NLT)
There are two huge lessons God is getting ready to hammer home in
Abraham’s mind. The first is Abraham’s faith…his willingness to
trust God no matter what…and we have dealt with that subject throughout
this year and even referred to this story….
But there is a second lesson God is wanting to put a capstone on…See
if you can figure out what it is:
Genesis 22:4-5 On the third day of their journey (that’s a lot
of time for thinking), Abraham looked up and saw the place in the
distance. 5 “Stay here with the donkey,” Abraham told the servants.
“The boy and I will travel a little farther. We will worship there,
and then we will come right back.”
Hebrews 11:17 It was by faith that Abraham offered Isaac as a
sacrifice when God was testing him. Abraham, who had received God’s
promises, was ready to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, 18 even though
God had told him, “Isaac is the son through whom your descendants will
be counted.” 19 Abraham reasoned that if Isaac died, God was able to
bring him back to life again. And in a sense, Abraham did receive his
son back from the dead.
You can see the growing faith thing here, but you can also see
Abraham getting his mind around “the giving heart of God.”
God had promised a son, He had promised a nation would be born
through the boy. If he sacrificed his son in obedience to God…God was
still not going to back up on his ultimate promise to birth a nation
through the boy.
If Mt. Moriah turned into a volcano and sizzled them into charcoal
and a tornado blew their ashes to the ends of the desert… one way or
another, God was going to give Abraham exactly what he promised to give
because that is who God is!
Genesis 22: 6 So Abraham placed the wood for the burnt offering on
Isaac’s shoulders, while he himself carried the fire and the knife. As
the two of them walked on together, 7 Isaac turned to Abraham and said,
“Father?” “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied. “We have the fire and the
wood,” the boy said, “but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” 8
“God will provide a sheep for the burnt offering, my son,”
Abraham answered. And they both walked on together. (NLT)
Just to stimulate your side thoughts here:
Provide- yireh/jireh – to see
What’s the verb “to see” have to do with God providing?
Genesis 22:9 When they arrived at the place where God had told him
to go, Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood on it. Then he tied
his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. 10 And
Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son as a sacrifice. 11 At that
moment the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, “Abraham!
Abraham!” “Yes,” Abraham replied. “Here I am!”
12 “Don’t lay a hand on the boy!”…. 13 Then Abraham looked up and
saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. So he took the ram and
sacrificed it as a burnt offering in place of his son.
14 Abraham named the place Yahweh-Yireh (which means “the Lord will
provide”). (NLT)
God will provide:
God’s “pro-vision” – before vision - to see beforehand
“to see before” –providence
That’s the whole concept behind God preparing to send his son into
this world. Jesus is God’s “pro-vision”
Faith in God’s “Pro-Vision” kicks it up a notch!
Genesis 22:15 Then the angel of the Lord called again to Abraham
from heaven. 16 “This is what the Lord says: Because you have obeyed me
and have not withheld even your son, your only son, I swear by my own
name that 17 I will certainly bless you. I will multiply your
descendants beyond number, like the stars in the sky and the sand on
the seashore. Your descendants will conquer the cities of their
enemies. 18 And through your descendants all the nations of the earth
will be blessed—all because you have obeyed me.” (NLT)
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