Christmas Eve
December 24, 2012
Well, if you haven’t bought a gift for someone yet, I suppose you can still go to the Internet and buy a gift for someone and show them the receipt that you bought them a gift before Christmas day. It just will not arrive before Christmas day.
Gifts, don’t you love them? Honestly, we all do! It’s Christmas Eve and we can’t lie, we can’t tell a little fib, we all enjoy receiving gifts. I tell Debbie, don’t get me anything, but secretly I want something, anything but a lump of coal and a stalk of celery will do. I don’t want anything extravagant, I want to be thought of. I think that’s the real point. And I know Debbie will always get me something, so I’m not worried.
Do you know what you’re going to receive this year? You see, we think of gifts and go shopping and hit the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales hoping to get the best of the best deals. And sometimes we will even regift. We’ll take a gift someone else gave us and because we don’t like it or need it, we regift it and give it to someone else.
For the past 2 months, we’ve been talking about God’s grace. In short, grace can simply be defined as ~
Grace - receiving what we don’t deserve.
Mercy - we don’t receive what we deserve.
They sound like the same thing, but they really aren’t. You see, in grace we receive something, namely Jesus, eternal life, hope, forgiveness, peace, power, the Holy Spirit, and more. We receive all of that and more which we DO NOT deserve. We don’t deserve it because we’re sinners. We’ve messed up, but when we believe in Jesus, God doesn’t seeks ot have a relationship with us and forgive us, and we receive what we don’t deserve.
On the other hand, mercy means we don’t receive what we deserve. You see, this is the negative side of things. When we receive God’s mercy we don’t receive what we deserve, like death, eternal separation from God, condemnation, God’s wrath and anger, unforgiveness.
For the next few minutes I want to remind you about the components of the word grace.
Firstly, in grace, Gifts are given
At it’s core, at its very root, salvation is a gift, we don’t earn it, we can’t do anything good to receive it. It’s a gift. You have been saved by grace through faith, through believing in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Hard work, amazing work, costly work, selfless work . . . will not get you there, His work is what matters, not ours. We tell our kids to work hard, but hard work does not earn us salvation and heaven, God does the work.
I love the way Eugene Peterson paraphrases what Paul said in Romans 5:20 - where sin increased, grace increased all the more. Peterson describes it saying, we receive the aggressive forgiveness of God called grace.
Isn’t that a great way to describe God’s grace, He aggressively forgives us. Imagine if we did that for others. So, when grace happens we move from takers to givers. We find ourselves able to love even unlovable people. We can’t out give God, as God pours His love into our hearts through Jesus. So, not only do we receive gifts from God, we also learn . . .
We are Redeemed
A boy bought wood and materials to make his own remote controlled sailboat. He loved his boat, but one day the wind blew it from his backyard and he couldn’t find it anywhere. He was devastated. A few days later he was walking with his father when he saw his sailboat in a thrift store.
He was super excited and ran into the store and told the owner that was his boat and he wanted it. The owner said a fisherman brought it in, but because it was his and had his name on the bottom of the boat, he would sell it for what he paid for it.
When they were leaving the store, the boy said to his father, “I made the boat and now I’ve bought the boat.” Folks that happened for us. God made you and God bought you.
He designed you, He created you, He places His mark on you, but we’ve drifted away from God, but God never abandoned us. So, He bought us so we could be His . . . again.
Titus 2:14 ~ Jesus gave Himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness.
1 Peter 1:19 ~ but we have been redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.
You were deemed worthy when God created you, and you have been redeemed because God loves you and bought you. Because of this, we know that we have been ~
Accepted by God
Karl Barth was one of the most prominent and important theologians of the last 100 years. He was asked about his most profound theological truth. He thought for a moment and then said,
God loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
We don’t need to be a super theologian and say big theological words. We need to know and believe that God accepts us. God has now moved you into His family. You are accepted by God, acquitted by God and adopted by God. Sometimes we believe God loves everyone – but not me, Jesus died for others – but not for me. We need to get those voices out of our heart, God loves you, He came for you, He wants you to be part of His family. When you allow God to accept you, you start to accept others as well. You begin to accept others and give love you never knew you had. It’s Christ at work in you.
And this happens because you have become a ~
Christ-ian
What you cannot do, Christ can, He lives inside of you. Paul reminds the saints, you and I that it is Christ who lives in us when he reminds us the mystery of the gospel 27 Christ is in you, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:27) It’s also in 2 Corinthians 13:5, when Paul asks, Do you not recognize that Jesus Christ is in you?
On your own, you can’t do it, Christ who is within you, can, because He lives inside you. God has permanently joined Himself with you.
You are now complete ~ Colossians 1:20
chosen, holy and dearly loved ~ Colossians 3:12
blameless ~ Ephesians 1:4
righteous ~ 2 Corinthians 5:21
Lastly, God has
Established us
We are His, and He is ours!! God has given us a new position. We can expect eternity. We should live differently. God has not put our name in the book of life with a pencil, He’s written our name in ink and God does not have an eraser.
God will not regret His decision to bring salvation to you.
We have hope only through Jesus.
So, we end up with God’s wonderful, amazing grace.
