God Is The Great Gift Giver!

Date Preached: Dec 14, 2014

Church: Oak Park BC (2014)

FOUNDATIONAL ELEMENTS

Title: God is the Great Gift Giver!

Text: Luke 1:5:25

ETS: God gave a great gift to Zach and Liz!

ESS: TODAY! God has a great gift for YOU!

Objective: I want the listeners to hear & know God has a great gift for them in the person of Jesus Christ!

Introduction

Who wants a gift this morning? [hold up/show Sam’s Shopping Passes] Now I am going to give out three gifts to 3 people this morning, but because I am giving them, I get to choose how I give them and to whom I give them to…

First of all, I am NOT going to give it to a guy… so guys, I’m sorry but you do not qualify for any of these gifts!

2nd I am only going to give it to people who are sitting in these front two sections of the church, so sorry about that...if you are a back row Baptist you lose out on this gift.

Finally, I am going to give these gifts to someone who has a name that begins with… [pick 3 people and use their names as guides for how you give out the gifts] …

We ALL just LOOOOVVVEEEEE getting gifts, right? Wasn’t that fun? Let me ask you something thought, were you upset how I came to my decision on who to give the gift to?

Have you ever made a choice to give a gift to ONE person and NOT to another? Have you ever segregated people for where they live, how they dress or who they were…

Now I want us to think about the giving of gifts and think about it from a spiritual perspective… I want us to realize that God is the great gift giver and He decides who receives His gifts… but the wonderful thing is that He has said He wants to give it to all the world.

In James 1:17 (ESV) we read: 17Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

Basically what James is saying is that God is the greatest gift giver EVER! ALL of His gifts are PERFECT!

During this time of the year, we hear so many stories and sermons about Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the manger… and I want you to know that I believe that is GREAT because the focus of this season IS Jesus!

However, I do not want us to miss some other really interesting stories from the Bible that directly relate to the Christmas story of Jesus.

Now we have read this morning how God is the great giver of gifts, so today, I want us to look at a great story about how God gave a great gift… and how God chose to give His gift… and finally how God has a great gift for YOU today as well!

Read the passage Luke 1:5-25 (ESV)

In reading this passage, I see many things that Luke wanted to communicate to his readers. In this particular story, we find at least 4 ways that God’s giving of a gift goes against the grain of how the world MAY look at giving gifts!

First we will see how God chooses to give His gift to someone society did not believe was worthy of God’s love…

Second we can see that God’s gift always comes in His perfect timing… so often we want our gift and we want it NOW

Third we can see that regardless of what others may think…God knows what is the best gift. So often we want to TELL God what we want…

Lastly, God’s gift may not be what we expect, but we should praise Him because He is the great gift giver and ALL of His gifts are perfect and good!

1. God Gives His Gifts to THOSE deemed unworthy by this world...

v.7 reads: …But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.

The people in this story were NOT considered to be worthy… instead they were pitied and considered cursed by God!

The reason was that they did not have any children and Elizabeth was not able to have children! Even in their own town, they were outcasts!

Even though Z was a faithful priest and Elizabeth a faithful servant of God… they were considered to be cursed, but yet… God still chose to give them a wonderful gift!

In fact, we look at the Bible we can see that throughout all Scripture God is giving to people from all walks of life! Many times we don’t or can’t understand His choices or His gifts but still God gives!