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The Heart of Christmas is Love
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Gal. 4:4-5, Eph. 1:3-14, 1 Cro. 13:1-13
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Transcript
Holiday Preparations and Gift Etiquette
00:00:00
Speaker
Christmas, my friends, is right around the corner, amen. I hope you're prepared. It is a season of preparation. I hope that as you meet with your family and your friends this upcoming Christmas holiday that you're ready. You're ready for receiving that gift, that one gift that most definitely that you will receive this year. It's that odd gift that was re-gifted by somebody else to you. So how do you respond to that gift giver without hurting their feelings? As your pastor, I feel it's my job to prepare you. So I want to offer eight ways to respond to the gift that may be less than desirable. You might want to take notes
00:00:57
Speaker
You might want to rehearse these this week before Christmas. Prepare yourselves. Number eight. Well, well, well, now there's a gift.
00:01:11
Speaker
Number seven. No, really, I didn't know that there was a chia pet tie. Oh, and it's a clip on too. Number six. You know, I always wanted one of these things. Remind me again what this is?
00:01:28
Speaker
Number five, you know what? I'm gonna find a very special place for this thing.
00:01:35
Speaker
Number four, boy, you just don't see Christmanship like this anymore. Number three, oh, isn't that such an interesting color too? Number two, you say this gift was the last one on the shelf? Boy, i aren't I the lucky one. And number one, the number one,
00:01:58
Speaker
way to respond to a less than desirable gift, you shouldn't have. No, really, I mean it, you shouldn't have.
God's Love as the Ultimate Gift
00:02:11
Speaker
Eight ways to respond to a less than desirable gift, but this morning I really want to talk about a gift that doesn't need a rehearsed response at all. Brother Pease alluded to this. It's the greatest gift that we've been given.
00:02:25
Speaker
It's the gift during this particular time of Christmas that is presented to us in the manger. and I'm talking about God's love that is poured out for you and I. I had a pastor a long time ago used to refer to this Christmas season as God's pouring out of love into the manger for you and I. I just always think that's a great visual. um When God sent his one and only son to be born, it was an expression of Two words, which I think I want to just sit on for a couple of minutes here. It is an expression of his unfailing love and his relentless love for you. Unfailing means it's reliable. It's perfect. It's flawless. And relentless means it's constant. It's continual. It's never stopping. God's love for you is reliable and perfect.
00:03:24
Speaker
and flawless. It's constant and continual, and it will never stop seeking you. It's a true and thoughtful gift that meets our very greatest need. That's our sinful state.
00:03:41
Speaker
It's a priceless gift. It's a timeless gift. And above all, it's a gift that's given during this Christmas season. And this is what we're going to look at this morning. gods love as a gift to you and I and how that affects us and should affect us this Christmas season. So if you have your Bibles, if you'll bring bring them out and turn with me. Galatians chapter 4 is where we're going to
Personal Story of Timely Help
00:04:07
Speaker
be. Galatians chapter 4. We will jump a couple of different scriptures, but you'll have them on the screen there for you. Let me ask you this question. Have you ever received a present from somebody
00:04:22
Speaker
And you couldn't remember why they gave it to you, but when they gave it to you, it was like the perfect timing. You ever received a gift, that an unexpected gift that came just at the right time? When we were in seminary, and I like to say Kim and I were in seminary because when I was in seminary, she too had to undergo a lot of the same trials that I had to, but we had set aside before I ever went on this journey,
00:04:51
Speaker
ah All of the tuition to pay for seminary, we had put it in our savings account. And so as the years went by, we just kept paying bills out of, you know, school bills and books and things like that. And I remember one, I think it was close to the fourth year, it was the money was getting pretty thin.
00:05:11
Speaker
And I just remember thinking, okay, Lord, I thought we had prepared well. you know We're really hopeful that you know we're gonna make tuition this year.
Fulfillment of God's Plan Through Jesus
00:05:18
Speaker
And a friend of ours that lived down around the corner, who doesn't have any money to spare, they stopped by and they gave us, in an envelope, a a fairly large sum of money. And they just said, and Kim, you ah I'm gonna cry just because I remember it right now.
00:05:39
Speaker
ah came It came right at the right time, the perfect time. And I thought, wow, this is God's perfect timing.
00:05:52
Speaker
From that, from the moment creation was broken in the garden by sin, God has this fantastic plan. And it's a plan to put everything back together, to restore everything, to rescue everything that he has made,
00:06:08
Speaker
And it's in his perfect timetable. Friends, this Bible is not just simply a book that we read and that we live by. It is an account of his divine effort to rescue us and his faithfulness to restore everything that has been broken and reverse the entire effects of the fall.
00:06:29
Speaker
John MacArthur says this, he says, motivated by love, God partners with you and with me, those whom love and trust him, and I love this, listen to his wording, to enact the greatest rescue plan in history. Have you ever thought about that? That you are part of this great rescue plan that God has put into place. And it's all unfolding in his perfect timing.
00:06:59
Speaker
Chapter four talks about this perfect timing here. Paul writes, look here in Galatians four, verse four and five, it says, but when the right time came or the perfect time came, God sent his son, born of a woman subject to the law. Verse five says, God sent him to buy freedom or purchase for us who were slaves to the law so that He could adopt us as his very own children.
00:07:34
Speaker
You ever thought about that this Christmas season? You're in the family. You're part of God's family. He writes, here in this perfect timing, Jesus came and was born, your your translation may say the fullness of time,
00:07:54
Speaker
What does it mean when we hear this word, fullness of time or this this phrase? It means in God's perfect timing. In the entirety of the Old Testament that's constantly pointing to this coming Messiah, he says, in the birth of Jesus, in God's perfect timing,
00:08:16
Speaker
This was fulfilled. It was the right moment in history for God to send his son into the world to make a way for the world to be restored, to be rescued.
Unity and Love in God's Family
00:08:27
Speaker
Because of his love, he was not simply content just to sit back and watch us suffer. Rather, he went to great lengths to be with us and to make us part of this family once again. Billy Graham tells the story of A couple, his name is Clifford and her name is Tracy Howe. They live in Leonard, Texas. and Billy Graham says, he says, Tracy loves her husband, Clifford, and I know this. He said, they've been married for 31 years. He said, and from the day that Clifford went to work, Tracy would make him a sandwich, a homemade sandwich.
00:09:15
Speaker
and she would send it with him to lunch and he would go to the work site and he would enjoy that sandwich and think about her. He said, but every rare occasion Tracy would actually show up to the job site and she'd bring her own sandwich and they would sit side by side and they would have lunch together and they would enjoy these sandwiches to which Clifford said, on those occasions lunch just seemed to taste better when you have somebody to share it with you.
00:09:44
Speaker
However, when Tracy heard this, she thought, you know, I'm not with my husband every single day, but I want him to feel like I am. So what she ended up doing was starting to take one single bite out of the sandwich, and then she would put it in the Ziploc baggie and send it. Billy Graham was laughing, as he's recalling this, and he said, the first day Clifford opened the lunch pail and he thought to himself, well, this is odd. Somebody has taken a bite out of my sandwich. And so he went home and it reported it to Tracy. And she said, well, honey, I just didn't want you to think about me. I wanted you to know I'm right there with you, eating that meal right there with you. And friends, what is perhaps the most amazing thing is that when Jesus came, he came to meet us, not not just where we are at,
00:10:33
Speaker
He didn't come to just let us know He's thinking about you. He came so that He can join you in your daily experience, so that He can be God with us. In Galatians 4 here, the full expression of God's love is demonstrated right here in in verse 5. It says, we are adopted.
00:10:56
Speaker
And unless you've ever been adopted, and I think it's it's very difficult for us in in our times to understand what this fully means to be adopted into God's family. You get all the rights that the adopted family has. Everything that the adopted family has is now yours when that adoption happens.
00:11:22
Speaker
I like this jr J.I. Packer when I looked this week, I thought I need a ah great reference or a great illustration on on this particular verse of adoption, and J.R. Packard, he said this, he said, adoption is the highest privilege that the gospel offers, higher even than justification. He said, think about it, my friends. He said, to be right with God is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God is far greater.
00:11:59
Speaker
How great is God's love for us? Well, God's love has brought us into the family. He's fought brought us into the fold. And the Apostle Paul tells us more about this here in Ephesians chapter one. So if you have your Bibles, go ahead and flip with me to the right, Ephesians chapter one.
00:12:27
Speaker
Read with me here, I'm gonna start Verse three, three through 14 says this, all praise to God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ.
00:12:58
Speaker
This is what he wanted to do and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he has purchased our freedom with the blood of his son and forgave our sins. He has showered his kindness upon us along with all wisdom and all understanding.
00:13:25
Speaker
God has now revealed to us His mysterious his mysterious will regarding Christ, which is to fill fulfill fulfill His own good plan. And this is the plan. At the right time, He will bring everything together under the authority of Christ, everything in heaven and on earth.
00:13:45
Speaker
Furthermore, we are united with Christ. We have rec received an inheritance from God, for He chose
Love as the Essence of Christmas
00:13:52
Speaker
us in advance, and He makes everything work out according to His plan. God's purpose was that we Jews who were the first to trust in Christ would bring praise and glory to God.
00:14:04
Speaker
And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the good news that God saves. And when you believed in Christ, he identified he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God's guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he has promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him.
00:14:33
Speaker
Many of us live our lives every day missing the fact that God loves us. And when we miss the fact that we belong to his family, I think what ends up happening to us is that we we don't we don't treat others who are also part of the family like family. And some of you may say, well, you don't know my family. We fight all the time.
00:14:59
Speaker
Well, in God's family, what this looks like is, regardless if you're tall or short or male or female or black or white, you are all part of God's family. And if we began to see one another like that, we would be able to love each other as Christ loves us.
00:15:21
Speaker
Paul tells us the benefits of being adopted into God's family. He says first here, verse four, that we're made blameless in God's sight. Our sins are washed away by his love. God's will and way are made known to us as a father might share with his children. It says we are chosen to receive hope and salvation. Verse 13, we are marked with a seal to ensure that we are filled by the Holy Spirit and that we will inherit internal life as one of God's precious possessions. All of this is made possible by the arrival of Jesus in the manger.
00:16:00
Speaker
just at the right time. You ever thought about that, the birth of Jesus in the manger in Bethlehem was just at the right time? I think it's hard for us maybe 2,000 some odd years later to think that that was God's perfect timing. Just at the right time to be born into that manger and then one day to grow up to lead a sinless life, to give his life sacrificially on the cross,
00:16:30
Speaker
to validate God's love for you and I.
00:16:36
Speaker
Put a note down here. Do we recognize that God loves us this much? Today, do we recognize that God loves us this much? That he sent his son to die for us in our place? I thought,
00:17:00
Speaker
If we do, then we should show that. So how do we show God's love to other people? This is kind of where I wanna end today. You'll see in your outline, if you have one with you, our last point here just says, love freely received is love freely given. It's really hard to give what you haven't received. Do you ever notice that? I can often tell throughout my career when you meet somebody who just, they're not very pleasant. Probably the polite way to say that. There's often a story within their life of not receiving affection or affirmation or something in their life because then they are unable to show that to other people. um Friends
00:17:53
Speaker
The God-given love that you and I have in our lives should stir us to want to love others like Jesus loves us. The most famous passage in the Bible about love and about God's love here is it is what we read earlier today, 1 Corinthians 13. He meets us just where we're at and he and he shows us This is what love looks like. This is how I want you to reflect my love to other people. I'm gonna flip over with you, if you will, 1 Corinthians 13 to your left.
00:18:45
Speaker
The reason why I think this is so well-recited during marriage ceremony is that it gives the perfect ideal of what love is, between a husband and wife, but ideally that's mirrored down from the Father to us.
00:19:06
Speaker
As I read here chapter 13, I'm just going to accentuate a few words. Listen here, it says, if I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels but didn't love others, I'd be like a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
00:19:23
Speaker
If I had the gift of prophecy and if I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains but didn't love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it. But if I didn't love others, I would have gained nothing.
00:19:55
Speaker
Now listen, brothers and sisters, verse four.
00:20:01
Speaker
God's love is patient and kind. His love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It's not irritable. And it keeps no record of being wrong. It does not rejoice about injustice, but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. God's love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful and endures through every circumstance. Put down to verse 13. Three things will last forever. Faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love.
00:20:50
Speaker
I thought I'd offer you an alternate reading of this same verse this morning. It's a little more geared towards Christmas. And perhaps some of you who are not super familiar with your Bible, this might this might help you understand this passage a little bit better. If I decorate my house perfectly with plaid bows and strands of twinkling lights and shiny ornaments, but do not love, I'm just another decorator.
00:21:22
Speaker
If I work hard in the kitchen making cookies, preparing gourmet meals, and arranging a beautifully adorned table at mealtime, but I do not have love, I'm just another cook. If I dress up the Christmas tree with shimmering angels and crocheted snowflakes, if I attend all the holiday parties in Cameron, and I sing in the choir's cantata, but I do not focus on Christ,
00:21:52
Speaker
I have missed the point altogether.
00:21:56
Speaker
Friends, Christmas is not about those things, but how easy it is for us to get tangled up in those. How many of y'all have worried about how your house looks for Christmas? How many of y'all have spent so much time decorating the inside of your house for guests that you'll only see once a year and you're you're so worried about what's gonna be said and what's gonna be served and it's all gonna work out the way you hope in your head, right? And we get so wrapped up in this and we forget that it's really about him. But we like to throw in all these other distractions during the season. We can get up all caught up in all sorts of things, even good things, and miss the entire point if love is not our motivating factor.
00:22:49
Speaker
Love like we have been given from God should cause us to be patient and kind to one another. It should cause us to avoid being envious or proud. It should drive us to honor others and not ourselves. Does this sound like the love that you have received from God? Does it sound like the love that you give to others? Love stops all the cooking to hug the child.
00:23:20
Speaker
Love sets aside the decorating to kiss the spouse. Love is kind even when hurried and tired. Love does not envy the next-door neighbor's house who has Christmas china and matching table linens.
00:23:39
Speaker
Parents, love does not yell at the kids to get out of the way, but is thankful that they are there to be in the way.
00:23:51
Speaker
Love is not given only to those who can give it in return, but rejoices in those who cannot return that gift. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. God's love never fails. God's love never stops pursuing you. And I'll just end with this.
00:24:19
Speaker
Toys will break, necklaces will be lost, golf clubs will rust. But giving the gift of love will endure forever. So this Christmas, look upon the arrival of Jesus as that ultimate gift, the gift that you received and the gift that you should give to others. It's the gift that requires only one proper response, and that is to receive it.
00:24:46
Speaker
May that love that you receive in your heart cause you to love others just the same way that Jesus loves you today and throughout the rest of the year. Amen.