What Is On My Heart This Christmas – 2007
Selected Scriptures
As most of you know, I had surgery a couple of days ago. The procedure went well and my recovery is going as expected. My wife is taking very good care of me and making sure that I have what I need and that I’m not over-doing things.
My normal schedule is off-track, so my preparation time for today was short. That being the case, I thought today would be a good opportunity to share some of the things that God has been speaking into my heart and life of late, to open myself to all of you a little more than usual and speak from my heart for a few minutes.
You know that I usually invest my study and preparation time in the text that follows the text we studied last week. Today, I want to share some things from my own private time with God. There have been some things that He has shown me and said to me that have impacted me deeply; things that are making changes inside of me that are uncontrollable and necessary.
The first text I would like us to open to is Philippians 3:7-11: “But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”
I want to focus on the first few words of verse 10, “that I may know Him.” In verse 8, Paul mentions “the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jess my Lord”. He goes on and enlarges on that by saying that it isn’t just knowing about Jesus that matters to him, but it is knowing Jesus personally that matters.
What this whole passage says to me, and especially these words I have highlighted, is that self-realization is the wrong direction for me to focus my time and my energies – it is supposed to be about me getting to know Jesus for who He is.
Now, I know those words sound like a platitude, but if we stop and think about them intentionally for a few minutes, we will see that they are anything but a cliché. To focus my time and energies on getting to know Jesus instead of on self-realization means that I have to see everything in my life as being intentional and on purpose from Him and for Him – nothing is haphazard, nothing is coincidence, nothing is by my planning and arranging.
What that means is that I have to see everything in my life as being a part of the means and the method for me to get to know Jesus Christ better. There is no territory of my life that He does not control and influence. There is no work that I do or plan that I have that does not involve Him, even if I am unaware of it. If my plans and work are intentionally focused on Him, that is all well and good. But, if they are not, then that, too, says something about my relationship to Him and what He is going to do in my life.
If He is not the focus of my work and my plans, the Holy Spirit is going to prompt me or nudge me or get my attention somehow – even if it is to allow me to suffer loss in order to get my attentions back to where they ought to be.
To say with Paul, “that I may know Him,” is to abandon myself to the realization that Jesus Christ is in everything that I think, say and do, and that it is all caught up in Him until the very end. You have heard me say this before: there is nothing in my life that Jesus Christ does not lay His finger on and say, “This is mine!” Every aspect of my life has a matching aspect in the life of Christ.
When I am given a gift from someone, I sit with Jesus as He is anointed with the expensive perfume by the woman in Luke 7. When I see someone who is in need of a helping hand, I stand with Jesus facing the man who had been blind from birth in John 9. When I am confronted by someone who is snide to me, rude and insulting to me, I stand with Jesus when He was confronted by the Pharisees and Scribes on any number of occasions. And, when I come before you with a lesson each week, I kneel with Jesus as He knelt and washed His disciples’ feet in John 13.
So you see, there is nothing in my life that doesn’t correspond to the life of Jesus and nothing in my life that is an accident. This is the perspective I must have if I am to be able to say with Paul, “that I may know Him.”
The next passage I would like to share with you is 1 Corinthians 2:1-5: “And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.”
The key words here for me are in verse 1, “I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom”. There are things in Paul’s life that I can identify with. Though I am not at the same level as he was, scholarship and learning are two areas where God has gifted me to do well. And, like Paul, there are times when I can speak with a force and a power that demand attention and cause people to think. What Paul helps me see in this passage, and especially these few words, is that being a scholar and an orator is inadequate for preaching the Gospel for any real effect.
The Gospel will only have effect as it is presented simply and clearly. If I try to use the force of my personality or my powers of persuasion, then people will look at me instead of the Gospel. My mission is to present the Redeemer and have people look to Him. I must say with John the Baptist, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30)
If it is only because of my preaching or teaching that people desire to change or to do better, then I am standing between them and Jesus Christ. Anything that flatters or draws attention to me detracts from the One to whom I am to point with all of my life and all of my words. That makes me a traitor to my call and to my Lord. What I am called to instead is to be loyal to Him first, to His glory first, to His being lifted up first. It must be my goal to live by what He said in John 12:32, “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself."
And that brings me to the third text I want to share with you today; John 16:14: "He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.” Here, Jesus is speaking of the Holy Spirit.
Now, we know that the Holy Spirit is God – just as much as the Father is God and just as much as The Son is God. Yet, Jesus says, “He will glorify Me…” What that says to me is that I, being a simple, sinful human being, with no glory or honor of my own, can do no less than that.
What I mean to say is, everything that is in my life is to point to Jesus Christ – His life, His death, His resurrection, His power, His exaltation, His return. People are not supposed to be drawn to me. They are to be drawn to Jesus Christ.
I can share all of the insights I think I have into people’s lives and situations, but if I am not living in the reality of the New Testament, the reality of the passion of Christ in coming to this earth and going to the cross, then I am being loyal to myself and not to Him; I am not glorifying Jesus Christ, I am glorifying someone or something else – and, that usually is going to be me.
As we sit here a couple of days before Christmas, I want us all to ask ourselves these questions: who am I glorifying? Who am I lifting up? Am I speaking with elegant or flowery words and phrases, drawing attention to me and my thinking or am I speaking simply and plainly about Christ and His shed blood? Am I focusing my life – every iota of my time and energy and thoughts and feelings – on knowing Him more, knowing Him better, surrendering ever more of myself to Him? Am I giving God everything of Me that He is entitled to?
You see, that’s what it took for Jesus to come here and be born to that poor couple in Bethlehem those many years ago. That’s what it took for Jesus to come to this earth and strip Himself of His rights and privileges and reduce Himself to the level of a created being. That’s what it took for Him to subject Himself to the evil and vile hearts and devices of the self-righteous in order to fulfill the will of His Father and secure salvation for mankind.
Bethlehem was not about an adorable little baby being born in a stable to a beautiful young woman and a strong and good man. Bethlehem was not about the lowliest of men – shepherds – being the first to hear the host of heaven proclaim the birth of the King. Bethlehem was not about the Magi, the king-makers of the ancient world, coming to worship the One they knew whose birth would be the most remarkable in all of human history.
No, Bethlehem was about the Prince of Heaven, the Eternal God, the Wonderful Counselor, the Everlasting Son of God denying Himself and all he was due and entitled to in order to do the will of God the Father. And, that will was the only hope mankind has ever had of being able to face God one day and be accepted – on any level. That will was the only chance any human being would ever have of receiving anything good from God instead of the punishment we are all due.
My life, your life, the lives of any and all of us – they must resonate with the message that the hallmark of that birth in Bethlehem was that one day that God-child would die and shed His blood in our place, thus securing for any and all who would receive His gift the eternity God had originally intended for us.
When you go home today, when you listen to the Christmas carols and see the lights and decorations, remember that the cradle was the precursor to the Cross. When you sit with your loved ones on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning and eat special foods and enjoy special traditions and laugh and open gifts to one another, pause a moment and think about the reason you can have that kind of joy in your life.
Take a moment to thank Jesus Christ for emptying Himself and becoming a man, living a sinless life, and then willingly being tortured and brutalized and crucified so that you could enjoy those moments and the moments of eternity you can one day have with Him in heaven.
And, take a moment and tell Him from your heart, “Jesus, that I may know You, that I may not draw attention to myself though my words, and that I may glorify You – thank You for what this day really means. Thank You for showing me the way and for living in me to do Your will in my life. Touch the lives of others through me today just as You did when You walked among us.”
Let’s pray, shall we?
