CHRISTMAS IS COMPLETE
The gift is given!
Matthew 27:39-56
The veil in the temple is ripped from top to bottom! Everyone has equal access to God! God has delivered his Christmas Gift to us.
For those of us still wrestling with life, our God is no more high and lifted up except in our own esteem.
He is here with us—in us, a part of us—living in our own Spirit that he created and now makes it his home.
Jesus has suffered much to give us salvation full and free. He gave up the glory of God—the might, the power, the prestige, the sovereignty!
He left heaven! He left a universe of wealth and beauty to make his home on what God the Father called his footstool.
Acts7: 48“However, the Most High does not dwell in temples made with hands, as the prophet says:
49 ‘Heaven is My throne,
And earth is My footstool.
What house will you build for Me? says the LORD,
Or what is the place of My rest?
50 Has My hand not made all these things?’
This is quoted from Isaiah 66:1, 2.
John 16: 27, Jesus is talking to his disciples and he says: for the Father Himself loves you, (Why?)
Because you have loved Me, and have believed
that I came forth from God.
As a human stripped of his former glory, he could say that.
28 I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father.”
He does not return the same way he came down. He goes back with a resurrection body and with all the glory of God before he took on flesh.
Once again he controls the universe and everything and everyone in it.
John 17:20“I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word;
21 that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.
Here is the prayer of Jesus, himself, for us—all who have accepted him personally as savior—that we might be one with him… in Us!
22 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one:
Here we have the unity of the faith-- that they may be one.
23 I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect(complete) in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.
We are made complete in Jesus—reunited with God, the same fellowship that Adam and Eve enjoyed in the Garden.
This completeness leads us to glorification.
As Jesus said, And the glory which You gave Me I have given them(Why?), That they may be one just as We are one:
24 “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.
We have difficulty in understanding the glory of deity!
But John gives us a hint in his own relationship with Jesus.
In the flesh, at the communion supper, John was comfortable to lay his head back on the chest of Jesus just to look up at him to ask a question.
Yet, on the Isle of Patmos, that Roman prison colony, when the resurrected Jesus in all of his inherent glory appeared to John, he fell at his feet. Let’s read it:
Rev. 1:13…the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band.
14 His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire;
15 His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters;
If you have ever been to Niagara Falls or another of similar magnitude, you know what “many waters” sounds like.
16 He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength.
Not dim! Not bright! But the very brightest!
17 And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last.
18 I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen.
I know it all sounds spooky, but remember he told John: “Do not be afraid…
Back on Golgotha, the job was about finished.
45 Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land.
They reckoned time from sunup. Jesus was put on the cross at about 9a.m.
At high noon the sun went black!
Until this happened the priests and scribes, those responsible for putting him on the cross were making fun of him.
They taunted him!
They chided him about his claims.
They yelled, “you claimed to be the Son of God, save yourself!”
Even the thieves by his side joined in with insults also.
And then, when the right time came, God turned out the lights.
It was though God did not want the world to see the final and excruciating pain that Jesus suffered.
He shrouded the transfer of our sin and his righteousness in darkness.
God had turned his back on the “Light of the world.”
The darkness was both physical and spiritual.
46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
For 3 hours, God the Father turned his back on God the Son. “He, who knew no sin became sin for us.”
God could not embrace our sin.
Jesus screamed according to the Greek.
It was a scream of utter despair. He suffered the separation.
He was quoting the first line of Psalm 22.
The context of this psalm indicates screamed a prayer of expectation for deliverance, not a cry of abandonment.
During that time, Jesus was suffering our separation from God so that we would never have to experience the pain of being ripped out of God’s sovereign control.
John gave us full assurance in Chapter 10 of his Gospel that “there is no power in heaven, on earth or beneath it that can take us out of the hand of God.”
John also quotes Jesus as saying, “neither will I cast you out.”
47 Some of those who stood there, when they heard that, said, “This Man is calling for Elijah!”
48 Immediately one of them ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and offered it to Him to drink.
49 The rest said, “Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to save Him.”
50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit.
According to John, Jesus said, “It is finished!”—John 19:30.
This cry climaxed the horror of six hours on the cross, and it announced that the job that Jesus came to do was done.
God’s Christmas present to a lost and dying world: Eternal and abundant life, FREE for the taking.
Satan is still a threat, but nothing that we can’t overcome if we stand in our faith in the completed work of Jesus Christ and “resist the devil.”
Peter assures us that, “he –the devil—will flee from us. The shackles of sin have been broken.
No more is any human being a slave to spiritual darkness.
51 Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split,
That which had separated God from man, the veil of the temple was ripped open from God’s end. He did it!
Everyone has equal access to salvation and a place in God’s own family for all of eternity.
Jesus told Mary at his resurrection “stop clinging to me” because he had not been to the heavenly father to complete his task as our High Priest. His forgiving blood had yet to be spread over the Mercy Seat in God’s Temple on High.
To further convince those with blood on their hands, and those who were simply curious…
52 and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised;
This was a demonstration of the power of God and not a full resurrection of all saints. Many, not all, were raised.
That is they were brought back to life to reveal that the death of Jesus broke the power of death. These like Lazarus were alive only to die again later.
In time we will all make a transition.
We will trade in this old body for a resurrection body—a body designed for the new heaven and the new earth. It will be a body not restricted by the physics of this life and this world.
53 and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.
There were no witnesses to this event at the time of the resurrection, but scripture tells us that Jesus is the first to be resurrected and that many will follow him.
For untold generations we will continue to follow him in the resurrection until he announces his return and calls the church to meet him “in the air”—out in interstellar space.
54 So when the centurion and those with him, who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly, saying, “Truly this was the Son of God!”
This confirms the events of that day: The dispensation of Law was at an end.
Now the door of salvation is open to all—Jew and Gentile alike.
The Law could not forgive sin, only atone or cover it. Jesus, however by the grace of God, forgives and forgets confessed sin. His death paid the penalty of all sin, past, present, and future. His Christmas present to us is his blessed forgiveness and total acceptance into the family of God.
Only the Holy Spirit can reveal the truth about Jesus as the Christ—as God the Son.
The centurion, like Cornelius much later, was opened to the spiritual truth.
God revealed to him the deity of the man on the cross.
55 And many women who followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to Him, were there looking on from afar,
56 among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons.
The women who followed Jesus watched from afar.
The men who followed Jesus were in hiding.
The question today is: Where are you?
Have you, like the centurion, recognized and accepted the Jesus as the Son of God?
Are you still hanging around the fringes of faith?
Perhaps, hiding from the call of God!
Just remember, God’s Christmas present to us adorned that cruel tree at Golgotha.
That was the price to keep us out of hell and the eternal lake of fire.
We can follow Jesus in his resurrection by accepting him as our personal savior.
Or we can follow Satan, and all who follow him into his eternal punishment.
Hebrews 4: 1 tells us, Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it.
2 For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.
There is only one thing that any human being has a right to fear, and that is leaving one, single promise of God unclaimed.
This starts with the promise of eternal life by faith in Jesus as our Christ.
It is a gift that keeps on giving.
Because, once in Christ, we have a multitude of promises—all under this first Christmas Tree.
Please, don’t leave here today without your gift of eternal life. It makes possible a blessed and abundant life if we yield control to the indwelling Spirit of God.
Jesus suffered much to pay for it.
Won’t you take it?
