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Dec 25, 2011

Unwrapping the Ultimate Gift

Passage: John 1:1-18

Preacher: John Repsold

Series: Christmas 2011--The Ultimate Gift

Category: Holiday

Keywords: gift, free, irrevocable, heart longing

Summary:

The fourth in our Advent 2011 series, The Ultimate Gift, this message looks at the amazing love of God that caused Him to "come to his own" even though "his own did not receive/accept him." Rejection is something God is well acquainted with. Yet He keeps offering The Ultimate Gift our hearts were made for in every way. The Gift and the Giver are inseparable...and completely free. How to actually "receive" The Gift is the focus of this message.

Detail:

Giving & Receiving the Ultimate Gift

Christmas Day 2011—Sunday, Dec. 25th

#4 in the Advent 2011 series--The Ultimate Gift

 

John 1-- Christ, the Eternal Word (NLT)

 1 In the beginning [Christ] already existed.
      [The Christ] was with God,
      and the [Christ] was God.
 2 He existed in the beginning with God.
 3 God created everything through him,
      and nothing was created except through him.
 4 The [Christ] gave life to everything that was created,
      and his life brought light to everyone.
 5 The light shines in the darkness,
      and the darkness can never extinguish it.

 

 10 [Jesus Christ] came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. 11 He came to his own people, and even they rejected him. 12 But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. 13 They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.

 14 So the [Christ] became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son.

 

 16 From his abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another. 17 For the law was given through Moses, but God’s unfailing love and faithfulness came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. But the unique One, who is himself God, is near to the Father’s heart. He has revealed God to us.

 

Intro:  Have you ever been rejected by someone you loved dearly? 

  • It sometimes happens to parents lovingly yet imperfectly feed, clothe, nurture, train and educate their children only to see them turn away from them in the teen years, rebel, declare their independence and walk out of their lives, never to return.
  • It sometimes happens in marriages where a spouse who has loved and lived with their marriage partner for decades hears the words, “I don’t love you anymore…and I want a divorce.”
  • It sometimes happens between two young people who have been moving towards marriage and then one of them proclaims, “I can’t do this any more.  I’m breaking this off.”
  • It even happens all too frequently between friends who find themselves offending each so deeply that one or both of them prefer to choose life without the friendship.

It is interesting that human beings are somewhat unique in this emotional bond of love that develops between us and multiple other human beings like family and friends. Sure, it happens with a few other members of the animal kingdom who may mate for life with one partner or run in family packs as they mature.  But not often. 

            Even the canine kingdom treats their human masters better than we often treat each other.  How often do you find a dog just deciding to ditch their owner who raised them from a pup, feeds them every day and plays with them from time to time?  How many people do you know who would put up with being left alone at home 8-12 hours a day, fed the same dry food pellets year after year, told to go sleep outside in an unheated wooden box and sent during family vacations to a place with a bunch of other caged cousins making constant noise?  Dogs seem to have bigger, more forgiving hearts than close friends and families often do!

ILL:  Movie, The Return of Zoro.  At the beginning of the movie, we see the hero, Diego de la Vega (Anthony Hopkins), who is also Zoro, arrested by Don Raphael who is the villain of the movie.  From the beginning Don Raphael has tried to steal De la Vega’s wife and love.  So in this movie, one of his soldiers ends up killing her, their mansion is set ablaze and their only daughter, Elena, is taken by the villain Raphael.  Zoro is imprisoned. 

            Fast forward 20 years.  He escapes prison and finds a young man named Don Alejandro whom he trains to be the next Zoro.  Together they locate Zoro’s daughter who has been “adopted” by Don Raphael and raised as his own daughter.  She doesn’t know her true identity and believes that Raphael is actually her father. 

            In the scene I want to show you today, her true father, who is now playing the servant of the younger Zoro he has trained and goes by the name Bernardo, is in the stable caring for his horse.  He still has not revealed his true identity to his daughter (played by Cathrine Zetta Jones).  We pick up that scene where they converse about her mother, his deceased wife, and love of his life.

It’s a terribly hard thing to love someone and yet not be recognized by them.  It’s quite another to BE rejected once your identity is known, especially when you are trying to share your love with them. 

ILL:  This past week, different members of our family got different offers of different kinds of gifts, all from some of you right her at Mosaic.  One was for tickets to a wonderful symphony concert.  Another was tickets to a great college ball game or two next week.  But we declined them all simply because we’re trying to spend this limited time between Christmas & New Years more together as a family.  We’re trying to make our family bonds a priority during this short space of time.  But, bluntly speaking, you could say that we “rejected” the gifts. 

            Now, in no way does that mean we rejected the givers.  In fact, whenever I turn down gifts or invitations like that, I always end up feeling conflicted precisely because I don’t want the people who have made such a generous offer to feel that I am in any way rejecting them.  If I had nothing else to do that evening and nobody at home, then rejecting the gift would, in some way, signal a rejection of them too, I suppose. But that’s not the case here.  Saying “yes” to family necessitates that we say “no” to non-family at times. 

 

For the past several weeks we’ve been talking a lot about the Ultimate Gift God has made, wrapped and offered to every one of us.  That Gift has components or parts of it that are “things”—things that we receive that come along with the gift. 

            But the nature of God’s Ultimate Gift is such that you cannot have the gift and not have the Giver of it.  Conversely, you cannot reject the Gift without rejecting the Giver.  What do I mean. 

Obviously, at Christmas time we are talking about the Gift of God-in-human-flesh, Jesus Christ. 

John 3:16 tells us straight up, “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”   

The “what” God the Father, Son & Holy Spirit gave was a WHO—Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the 2nd member of the Trinity.  But along with receiving the gift of Jesus himself came this thing called “eternal life.”  But no one can have eternal life with God while saying “no” to the gift of relationship with God in Jesus Christ. 

 

ILL:  It’s a bit like what happens when you marry someone.  When Sandy said  “yes” to me that Saturday in April 1982 as we sat overlooking the beautiful Columbia Gorge, by doing that, she was signing on to a whole host of experiences with me.  She wasn’t thinking (at least, I hope she wasn’t thinking), “Well, I’ll say yes to your offer of marriage BUT I don’t think I want to…

  • live together…at least not all the time.  O.K.  No house then.
  • Have any children together (which, of course, would have meant we wouldn’t be having something else together either. J) O.K.  No kids.
  • Move all over the world with you if you do this “missions” thing.  O.K.  No traveling together.
  • Not sure I want to be a pastor’s wife so…don’t expect me to do church with you.  O.K.  Then we won’t experience counseling people together, having people into our home together, praying for people together, etc.

And that’s just the gift of marriage. 

Jesus made crystal clear that inseparable connection between the gift of eternal life and a relationship with God in his prayer for us in John 17:3 when he said,  “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” 

It’s like saying, “Now this is married life:  to experience all of life together with someone of the opposite sex to whom you have pledged your life, your love, your future, your all.”  If you don’t want that, you don’t want marriage.  .  In a marriage the most important gift you give each other is yourselves.  The same applies to our relationship with God.   

When we talk about God giving his Ultimate Gift to us and us receiving that gift, we’re talking about an even more life-shaping and changing gift exchange than marriage.  But before we look at what this “gift exchange” actually exchanges, let’s clarify exactly HOW it is that we even get this Ultimate Gift of God. 

ILL:  Any of you gotten any packages in the last couple of weeks from the UPS, the FedEx or the USPS delivery man/woman?  Many of us have.  I don’t know what it’s like in your neighborhood, but in ours, it’s like chaos has broken out.  From about noon to 8:00PM, which is when those various delivery trucks hit our neighborhood, you can hardly drive your car down the street without hitting someone!  There are people standing at the intersections and alongside the road, their running shoes laced up, their sweats on.  They’re out there doing jumping jacks, push-ups and sit ups all over the place.   And when they spot anything that looks even remotely like a package delivery truck, everyone takes off running down the street trying to catch the thing.  And when they actually catch one, they start scrubbing the tires and waxing the body of the truck.  Some of them pull out their favorite Christmas foods and start feeding the driver.  Others actually open their wallets and plead with the driver to take their money.  I mean, it’s starting to look like Congress in session out there! 

Is that how we get our Christmas gifts from our friends and relatives from the FedEx driver?   NO.  It’s a whole lot less complicated and taxing, isn’t it.  The doorbell rings.  You answer.  You sign for the package…and the driver hands you the package.  You take it, say “thank you,” walk inside and close the door.  End of exchange. 

            What did you DO to receive that gift?  You just answered the door…and took the package.  That’s ALL you do to receive a gift, isn’t it?  That’s the nature of a gift.  It may have taken a whole heap of time, a whole wad of cash, it may have required dozens of people to do something to get your gift from point A to your house.  But it didn’t require that you do anything except answer the door and accept it.  (In many cases you don’t even have to be there to get the gift.  You come home and find it on the doorstep…and if you want it, you pick it up and take it in.)

Why is it so hard, then, for people to understand that when God says eternal life with Him is a GIFT, we don’t have to do anything except take it? 

Romans 6:23—“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.” 

Ephesians 2:8, 9—“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.”  

 

So God is obviously The Giver when it comes to the Ultimate Gift of eternal life with and in Him. 

And what he gives is obviously a GIFT, not something to be earned or worked for or run after. 

What do we know about the GIFT itself?  What is it that we are accepting when we “receive Jesus Christ,” the gift? 

            Of course, the answer to that question is as big as your life in Christ.  It is as big as the history of people’s experience with God through Christ.  It is as big as God himself…and that’s pretty big!

            In a way, when we accept this Gift of God, Jesus Christ, we are accepting a gift that has more potential in every single way we could possibly imagine than anything or anyone you could possibly know or have in this life.

ILL: 

  • If you got a new sweater this Christmas, there was probably a little bit of a surprise about it—maybe the color, maybe the weave, maybe the blend of fiber…maybe even the size J(usually not such a fun surprise). 

But, if you go to use that gift tomorrow, are you going to discover a whole lot new about it?  Unless you’ve got Alzheimer’s, probably not.  You may make one or two more discovers, like just how warm it is…or how it handles stains or snags.  And if you use that sweater hundreds of times over the next 10 years, are you going to make any real surprising discoveries about it?  I’m guessing not…unless it catches on fire and you discover how fast it burns.  L

  • How about the gift of friendship?  Can every day bring a new discovery?  Sure.  Does it?  Probably not.  Some days in a friendship are pretty much like the day before.  Some or monumental and hold significant change. 

The same is true for marriage…or raising kids…or enjoying a life-long deep friendship.  There will always be changes and surprises, new discoveries layered over what you already know about someone.  People, while being infinitely more difficult to adjust to and work with than objects, are also infinitely more interesting.  That’s because we’re finite beings made in the image of the infinite God, a mere reflection of His infinite nature and character. 

If you’ve been married for any length of time, you know that life keeps changing the people you are closest to and they keep revealing new things about themselves as life unfolds. 

  • How much more the infinite God of the universe?  As the Ultimate Gift, He has the greatest potential for “surprise” factor of anyone or anything you have or will ever know.  We will never discover all there is to know about God, never!  If we’re bored with God, it’s probably because we’ve stopped trying to know more about him or know Him more deeply.  He is the ONE gift in all of life and eternity which can give us something new every time we connect with Him. 

That’s why it is not egotistical of God to desire to reveal His glory to us; it’s what He must do if he wants to give us the best there is.  It’s not arrogant of God to invite us to know him; it is what Perfection must do if it is THE best that can be given. To hide Himself is one of the most unloving things God could do.

That’s why Jesus kept telling people that he came to reveal the Father.  He said, “If you have seen me, you’ve seen the Father,” (Jn. 14:9).  Paul said, “…God was pleased to have ALL his fullness dwell in him,” (Col. 1:19). 

Receiving the gift of Jesus Christ has more potential for surprise, for discovery, for change, growth, blessing and everything our hearts long for than ANY other gift we could possibly want or even dream of in life. 

And when we talk about RECEIVING this gift, is it any wonder that when Jesus left this earth to ascend to heaven in order to continue his intercession on our behalf, that he over and over again promised to give each of his followers the gift of God’s presence in the person of the abiding Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit was simply “received” as a gift from God over and over again throughout the book of Acts.  By believing in Jesus Christ, we receive not only all that the 2nd member of the Trinity has to give us in relationship with Himself; we get the very pulsating, living presence of the 3rd member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. (John 14:16-17; 20:22; Acts 1:8; 2:38; Rm. 8:16; Gal. 3:14; I Jn. 2:27).     

 

We get God himself, and he throws in “THINGS”, if you dare reduce them to that designation, like…

  • reconciliation with Him and people (Rm. 5:11),
  • forgiveness of ALL our sins (Ac. 26:18),
  • “mercy and grace” (Heb. 4:16),
  • spiritual gifts for the whole Body of Christ (I Pt. 4:10),
  • “full rights as sons” (Gal 4:5)
  • and “abundant provisions of grace” (Rm. 5:17). 

 

And on top of it all, God gives a warranty, a guarantee that outlasts any you may have gotten with anything you have ever bought.  God’s gifts, his promises to us, have NO EXPIRATION DATE and NO LIFETIME LIMITED WARRANTY.   Listen to what Romans 11:29 says about God’s promises.  “…for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.” 

God doesn’t recall our adoption when we become incorrigible.

He doesn’t void His warranty promising ultimate redemption when we fail the millionth time…or rebel again…or quit trying.

He doesn’t withdraw his promises in disgust, return His gifts to their sender or kick us out of the family. 

His gifts to us and his call upon our lives are irrevocable!  In legal language that means you can’t undo it…even if you want to.  He made the agreement.  And once you accept the gift, there really is a “no return” policy.  

APP: 

  • Invitation to simply receive God’s Ultimate Gift—himself through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  Ready to stop trying to earn it?  Stop trying to insure it yourself?  Start believing God when he says it really is a gift to you at a very high cost to Him?

Which leads me to the last question for the morning: Are you ready to really take the gift out of the box this year?  We’ll talk much more about how we can do that next week.  But for now, let me leave you with the same challenge Christ gave to his own disciples when he sent them out 2 by 2 into every town and village of Israel to preach the kingdom. 

            After giving them authority over demons and illness, he told them this in Mt. 10:8:

            “…freely you have received, freely give.”    

Those of us who have already received the Ultimate Gift of Christ have a new calling in life.  We are to be the Santa Clauses of our culture—freely giving and giving and giving this Ultimate Gift which we received completely free. 

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