PLEASE Open Before Christmas
John 3:16
What do you want for Christmas?
Just ask any member of my family. I am the hardest person in the world when it comes to Christmas presents. No, I am not a “Bah-hum-bugger”, nor am I unappreciative of what anyone gives me. I just rarely have anything that I can tell you that I want for Christmas. The only thing I can tell you that I don’t want is a box of Chocolate-covered cherries! I used to get a box of those EVERY year for Christmas from a particular aunt. And I used to like them, but I’ve just gotten one too many boxes of them. But I did get smart some 31 years ago: I married a girl who loves them!
Isn’t what we really want for Christmas what we really need?
What we really need for Christmas, God has already given!
John 3:16
16 "For 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.
(NIV)
The love of God is one of the great realities of the universe, a pillar upon which the hope of the world rests. But it is a personal, intimate thing too. God does not love populations, He loves people. He loves not masses, but men. -- A. W. Tozer
John 1:14
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
(NIV)
Where do you place Christmas presents until Christmas?
Do you purchase them so early that you must hide them so that they won’t be found until Christmas? Or do you put them under the tree until it spreads out so much you think you may have to cut a hole in the roof?
If your house is anything like mine, I have snoops who want to check out the presents before Christmas. They shake, rattle, and sometimes roll the presents trying to see what’s inside. If something is breakable or fragile or perishable, how do you make sure it makes it until Christmas? Wherever you put it, you want to make sure it is carefully placed so that it will be perfect for Christmas!
When God gave His Christmas Present to you, He placed your present in a very precarious place, in the heart and hands of a young lady, who was just beyond childhood herself.
Matthew 1:21
21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."
(NIV)
In a short devotional for Christian Standard magazine, Paul Williams writes about an unusually bumpy flight he once had from Philadelphia to Long Island. Being a frequent flyer, Williams wasn’t all that concerned as the plane was batted around in the sky. Others, however, were grabbing onto their armrests or steadying themselves on the seat back in front of them. While observing the reactions of his fellow passengers, Williams took notice of one young mother caring for her baby. He watched as she "wrapped her arms around her infant and pulled the child very close. Then she dropped her chin, rested it on the back of the child’s head, and began to sing ever so quietly, ’Hush, Little Baby.’"
The moment caused him to reflect on Christmas, of all things. He writes:
Helpless fragility is the lot of the infant. Those early days leave a lasting impression on the human psyche we never really resolve. That vulnerability stays with us all of our days, reminding us of the seemingly capricious nature of things—a bitter world that does not care if we exist.
But then God came—as an infant, unable to reach out and steady himself on the seat back in front of him, fully trusting a human, fallible mother to pull him close to herself through the pitching, shaking nature of things.
What an extraordinary risk, to trust the infant of God to a frightened young girl.
Luke 2:1-7
1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.
2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.)
3 And everyone went to his own town to register.
4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.
5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.
6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born,
7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
(NIV)
When God gave His Christmas Present to you, He gave you the best present He could, just what you needed and placed the Gift under a Tree. The Christmas present was placed under the long shadow of the Cross.
I heard a story on the radio of a woman who was out Christmas shopping with her two children. After many hours of looking at row after row of toys and everything else imaginable, and after hours of hearing both her children asking for everything they saw on those many shelves, she finally made it to the elevator with her two kids.
She was feeling what so many of us feel during the holiday season time of the year. Overwhelming pressure to go to every party, every housewarming, taste all the holiday food and treats, getting that perfect gift for every single person on our shopping list, making sure we don’t forget anyone on our card list, and the pressure of making sure we respond to everyone who sent us a card.
Finally the elevator doors opened and there was already a crowd in the car. She pushed her way into the car and dragged her two kids in with her and all the bags of stuff. When the doors closed she couldn’t take it anymore and stated, "Whoever started this whole Christmas thing should be found, strung up and shot."
From the back of the car everyone heard a quiet calm voice respond, "Don’t worry, we already crucified him."
2 Corinthians 5:21
21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
(NIV)
Does it bother you if some of the wrapping gets torn?
When God gave His Christmas Present to you, He wrapped your Christmas Present in human flesh, flesh which would feel the prickliness of the hay, poking at His newborn skin. But this was nothing compared to the nails which would poke and pierce His flesh.
When God gave His Christmas Present to you, God wrapped His Christmas Present in tender baby skin, baby skin which would feel the scratchiness of swaddling clothes pulled tightly around Him. But this was nothing compared to the pulling of whips which would tear stripes across His back.
Isaiah 53:5
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.
(NIV)
Christian comedian Mark Lowry observed that Mary’s silence at the cross always amazed him. If he were being crucified in the middle of town, his mother would have "Pitched a fit", but Mary never said a word. Lowry wondered if maybe what made the difference for her was remembering back to that first Christmas. Remembering touching his little hands and feet and counting his fingers and toes. Lowry says: "I wonder if she realized then that those were the same fingers that had scooped out the oceans and formed the seas. Mary probably counted those little toes- I wonder if she realized that those were the same feet that had walked on streets of gold and had been worshipped by angels. Those little lips were the same lips that had spoken the world into existence. When Mary kissed her little baby, she wasn’t just kissing another baby - she was kissing the face of God. Thirty-three years later, she’s standing on a hillside watching blood pour from His veins, from the side of her own son... and she didn’t open her mouth. What a great testimony to the fact that He wasn’t just a great prophet; He wasn’t just a great preacher; He wasn’t just a great teacher; He was the virgin born son of God. He was our Savior. And... He didn’t just die for us: He died for His own mother. The baby boy she had delivered on that first Christmas was now on a cross, delivering her. God’s Christmas Present to you had His wrapping ripped to shreads so that you could be saved from your sins.
When do you open your Christmas presents?
Some open them Christmas Eve. Some wait until they get up Christmas morning. Some open one each day for a certain number of days before December 25th. Did you ever get a present graced with a card stating: Do Not Open Until Christmas? Don’t you hate seeing that warning? Doesn’t it make you want to open it before Christmas?
God has given you a Christmas Present that He wants you to open BEFORE Christmas! In fact, you can open His Present now!
2 Corinthians 6:2
2 … I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.
(NIV)
Here’s how you can open God’s Christmas Present to You right now:
A – Admit that your sin brought Jesus from Heaven to Earth and from the cradle to the cross.
B – Believe God gave Jesus as your only payment for your sin.
C – Confess Him as Lord of Your Life!
John 1:12
12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--
(NIV)
Some years ago Donald Grey Barnhouse was counseling a young woman on the sidewalk in front of a church following an evening service. She said she was a Christian and that she wanted to follow Christ. But she wanted to be famous, too. She wanted to pursue a stage career in New York. "After I have made it in the theater, I’ll follow Christ completely," she said. Barnhouse took a key out of his pocket and scratched a mark on a postal box standing on the corner. "That is what God will let you do," he said. "God will let you scratch the surface of true success. He will let you get close enough to the top to know what it is, but He will never let you have it, because He will never let one of His children have anything rather than Himself."
Years later he met the girl again, and she confessed that this had indeed been her life story. She had dabbled in the stage. Once her picture had been in a national magazine. But she had never quite made it. She told Barnhouse, "I can’t tell you how many times in my discouragement I have closed my eyes and seen you scratching on that postal box with your key. God let me scratch the edges, but He gave me nothing in place of Himself."
