Why Christmas Is All About Giving (& Receiving) Series

Have you ever wondered why Christmas is all about giving?

Well, I imagine most of us have a feel for this. It’s because Jesus was all about loving and giving.

But there’s a little bit more to it than that. And my goal this evening is that you don’t miss what Jesus intended Christmas to be about for you.

So as we begin our meditation on what Christmas is all about, I’m going to ask everyone here to answer this question for yourself. This will help you determine if you both know what Christmas all is really about and if you have applied what Christmas is all about to your own life.

The question is this: If you were to die tonight and meet God at heaven’s gate, and He were to ask you why He should let you in, what would you say? Now this is very important. I really want you to think about it. And just in case you missed it, the question is, if you were to die tonight, and meet God at heaven’s gate, and he were to ask you why He should let you into His heaven, what would you say? Do you have any idea? What’s the first thing that comes to mind.

Now remember your answer because we’ll be referring to it again in a few minutes.

This evening I want to talk about one-on-one conversations Jesus had with two very different people in back-to-back chapters of the Gospel of John. These two people were as different as night and day. One was a man, the other was a woman. One was a great success and highly respected by other people. The other was a great failure in the things that mattered to her and was an outcast among outcasts. They had this in common. They were both religious and they both likely thought that the way to heaven depended on either keeping the Law or doing good works.

The first person was a man named Nicodemus. We find his story in John chapter 3. Now Nicodemus was a religious and political leader among the Jews in Jerusalem. Jesus called him “the teacher of Israel.” He was a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, the equivalent of today’s Jewish Knesset, or the Senate in our country, which ruled Israel under the authority of the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate. So it seemed like he had everything going for him. And he was in Jerusalem when Jesus got there for the Passover Feast early in his ministry. And Jesus did what He did everywhere He went. He did miracles, he delivered people from evil spirits and he miraculously healed absolutely everyone who came to him.

Well, Nicodemus was impressed. Nicodemus, despite all of his human accomplishments, was insecure about his relationship with God. He wasn’t absolutely sure he had one. He wasn’t absolutely sure he was gong to heaven when he died. And from all the miracles Jesus was doing, it was clear to him that Jesus did have a connection with God that he might not have. So he decided to go see Jesus by night to get an answer to his question: How can I know that I’m headed to heaven, that I’m gong to enter the Kingdom of God.

So Nicodemus came to Jesus saying that he knew Jesus was from God because no one could do all these miracles unless God was with him. And then Jesus answered Nicodemus’ question before he could ask it. He told him his insecurity about whether he was going to heaven was well founded. He told him, “Truly, Truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.”

Well, Nicodemus was completely flabbergasted by the answer. He thought Jesus might be talking about a second physical birth. He literally didn’t know how he was going to be able to fit into his mother’s womb again.

So Jesus clarified. And essentially what He said was that He was talking not about a physical birth, but a spiritual birth—that what Nicodemus lacked in terms of getting to heaven was that not been born of God’s Spirit, He had not been born from above, that he had not received the new spiritual life that he needed that represented the eternal life he would in heaven. He indicated that this new spiritual life would come by means of the Holy Spirit when Nicodemus was born again.

Well, all this came as a great surprise to Nicodemus. He was so surprised, he kept asking, “How can these things be?” And eventually, after a lot of explaining, Jesus explained how Nicodemus or any of us could be born again. And the explanation came in one of the most well-known and beloved verses in all of the Bible, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whosoever believes in Him should no perish but have everlasting life.”