AM sermon preached at Central Christian Church December 15, 2013
A Different Kind of Christmas sermon series “Scandalous Love”
A couple of nights back Lori and I went to watch Lanee in her school’s Christmas program. Lori commented on the way how the last time we had gone to a school Christmas program together our kid’s were little. “And now,” she said, “here we are going to see our granddaughter in a program.” I responded with something like, “Are you trying to make me feel old, or what?” Anyway I’d been told a little about the program days before---the storyline centered around Martians visiting the earth and observing earthlings celebrating Christmas and then wanting to learn the reason for all the celebrating. Since this was a public school program and I was sure they wouldn’t be saying that the reason for the season is because Jesus was born, I was wondering what were they going to say. The program was very entertaining and it hit on the ideas of sharing and helping others in need. And the kids did a great job with their singing and speaking parts as they built up to the climactic moment in the program where they offered their answer for all of the celebrating----the reason for Christmas they sang in loud unison “is love.” Now the moment they sang those words, I thought to myself---well I guess that’s about as close as you can get at a public school program to the real reason. After the program I left feeling both pride and disappointment. I was proud of my granddaughter and I was disappointed that our nation under God has so wandered away from God that the name of God and the birth of Jesus can’t be mentioned at public school programs.
It’s really kind of goofy when you think about it. I don’t know maybe maddening would be a better choice than goofy. Seriously have we thought about what we have to do next under the demands of political correctness and tolerance which, of course, has come in many cases to mean reverse discrimination? Will we be told to stop bringing up Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays on President’s day? Will we be told not to bring up Martin Luther King’s name on MLK day and if kids ask we’re to tell them the reason we celebrate that day is equality? Will we have to stop recognizing veteran’s on Veteran’s day?...and while we’re at it will we have to stop talking about any holiday references that have any connection to war because well you know, some people just don’t believe in war. Don’t you ever wonder where does the insanity stop?
Yes, friends, the reason we celebrate Christmas is love---but it’s not love in the general sense---the reason we celebrate Christmas is love in the very specific sense that God so loved the world that He gave His Son, Jesus. Christmas is not a celebration of your birthday and it’s not a celebration of my birthday. It’s a time when we celebrate the birth of Jesus---or at least that’s reason the holiday was started. Celebrate Jesus’ birth, that’s what I want to do more than anything else this Christmas season. And by saying I want to celebrate Jesus’ birth, I’m not just talking about feeling good about His coming. I’m not just talking about singing songs about Him. I’m not just talking about taking the time to reread the Biblical accounts of Jesus’ birth. While all of those things are good and important, I want something more. I want something to take place in me. I don’t want to simply go through the motions, I want my celebration to run a lot deeper than that---I want to celebrate His coming at the very core of my being as these things remind me how His light has shined upon my darkness. And I hope that’s what you want more than anything else this Christmas season too.
Now the scripture passage I’m about to read is one to my knowledge I’ve never used before in a Christmas related message and maybe since I’ve been wanting us to have a different kind of Christmas this year that’s why I feel so compelled to share it. The words are from the third chapter of the book of Revelation. Jesus is basically telling some Christians how He become disappointed with them because their love for Him isn’t what it used to be.... Listen to what He said, Revelation 3:15-19 “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16 So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. 17 You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. 18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. 19 Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent.”
Now those are some really loaded verses of scripture but at the heart of them what Jesus is saying to the Christians at the church in Laodicea was this, “you guys believe in me but because you’re doing well financially you’ve forgotten how spiritually poor you are. You’ve forgotten that you need what only I can give you.” Mike Slaughter writes this, “The Laodiceans professed Christ, but placed their trust in monetary success and sought meaning in the accumulation of material possessions. Like so many church folk, the Laodecians believed in God, but lived their daily lives as though they didn’t need God. They were self-reliant, taking the controls and navigating most of life’s challenges, while giving God no more than a casual nod.” When I read those words by Slaughter, I thought of how it’s so easy for us to travel that same path, especially at Christmas. It’s so easy to make Christmas about spending money on gifts and getting gifts for ourselves. It’s so easy to set up our decorations and make our cookies and have our family get-togethers and place piles of presents under the tree and sit back and think we’ve got it all---we don’t need a thing. It’s so easy to go through the motions and give Jesus nothing more than a casual nod during the Christmas season. It’s so easy to talk about love in general at Christmas and forget how desperately we need God’s love in specific and how lost we’d be without it.
The crazy scandalous kind of love God has for us and how desperately we need it is probably nowhere in the Bible more clearly illustrated than in the book of Hosea. God asked Hosea to do something that’s so out there that most of us can’t imagine doing it. To begin with God tells Hosea to get married---well now there’s nothing all that hard about that, right? I mean I could hardly wait to marry Lori and after three decades together I’m still loving being married to her. But that’s just it, God didn’t tell Hosea to marry the kind of girl he’d always hoped to marry, God told Hosea I want you to marry a woman that you think will cheat on you. Hosea does what God asks him to do. And sure enough, in time she cheats on Hosea and not just once, repeatedly with different men. Now it’s my understanding of Jewish history that at that point Hosea could have taken Gomer to court and if he proved she had been unfaithful to him, he could have had her stoned to death or he could have given her divorce papers and walked completely out of her life. But the way I read Hosea’s story is that he did neither. He remained faithful to her even though she was being unfaithful to him. In time she abandons Hosea and leaves him to take care of three kids, one which was his for sure the other two, only God knows. As Gomer’s life continues to spiral downward, she even begins to sell sexual favors to other men. Eventually her passions aren’t the only things that enslave her and she’s put up for sale on the auction block. And this is where the story gets really crazy---listen to what God tells Hosea at this point---reading from Hosea 3... The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.” 2 So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley.”
I have to be honest---all of my initial reactions through the years when I’ve read that story have revolved around some type of association with Hosea. I’ve always thought of things like, “wow, I don’t know if I could ever do what God asked Hosea to do.” and “I’m sure glad I’ve never had to worry about where my wife was at and who she was with like Hosea did.” and “I hope I will be as obedient as Hosea if God asks me to do something really tough like that.” And maybe when you’ve read that story you’ve thought along those same lines. Here’s what I’m getting at---we see Hosea as the good guy in that story and I think we tend to relate to his side of the story because we think of ourselves as good...but the truth of the matter is it’s not Hosea we’re supposed to be seeing ourselves in, it’s Gomer.
God told Hosea, “I want you to show your love to your wife Gomer again. Yes there’s another man in her life right now and yes, she’s committed adultery. But I want you to take her back. And I want you to genuinely love her. Love her the way I love my people, the Israelites.” Today, friends, God’s people are the people who make up His church. That’s you and me. And God’s saying several things to us through what He had Hosea do---for one, He’s saying, remember I paid a high price for you because just as Gomer was unfaithful to Hosea, you’ve been unfaithful to me. God says to us through Hosea’s story---Let’s get real about our relationship. You’ve got a history---we both know you’ve blown it. We both know you’ve sinned not just once but many many times. We both know you bought into and went along with some bad things. We both know that spiritually you were on a downward spiral when I came after you. But even though I didn’t have to, I did come after you----because I love you. And I bought you back. I had to leave heaven’s glory and I had to lay aside my power. I had to become a weak human, a baby. And I had to grow to manhood and die on a cross. That was the price I had to pay so your sins could be forgiven. As you open your presents this Christmas---as you have your parties and observe your traditions, please don’t forget that. I paid a high price for you because I love you and because you needed me to do it.
And let me add this before we move on---if you, like me, have had the tendency to relate to Hosea’s side of the story, don’t let this Christmas go by without taking the time to relate and think through Gomer’s side of the story. Try to imagine the hurt, the guilt and the shame she must have harbored in her heart. Think about her quiet desperation. Think of how she must have felt being used by so many. Don’t you wonder if after she’d abandoned her family if she ever wished and longed to go back home to Hosea but was afraid to attempt it for fear of rejection or worse punishment? Don’t you think there were times she cried herself to sleep feeling lost, alone and unloved? And can’t you just imagine her relief when after Hosea bought her and brought her home, he made it clear it he was going to love her? And as we think of Gomer and her situation, let’s relate it to our own and the gift God gave that first Christmas, the gift of Himself. Jesus came to save us, to love us, to be with us and to give us a fresh start.
Another thing I believe God is telling us through Hosea’s story is this: Just like the angels did that first Christmas so long ago, God wants us to get out there and tell others the good news of how much He loves them. God’s saying to us “Tell others I’m willing to forgive them and take them back no matter how much they’ve messed up in the past. Tell them that that’s the heart of the Christmas story. No matter who they are, no matter their age or occupation---I love them and I’ve come to be with them. They can be as poor as shepherds or as wealthy as magi---they can be young like Mary or old like the prophetess Anna---they can live in Israel or Africa or anywhere else in the world---it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I want to be with them. We can enter into a new and wonderful relationship anytime they’d like.”
And finally and I keep coming back to this during this Christmas sermon series, show your love for others in need, just as Hosea did. Gomer needed someone to come to her aide, someone to rescue her from the auction block and Hosea became that someone. Who do you know whose need you can help meet? If you see a need that you sense the God wants you to meet and you have the resources, then do it....Give some of your money, give some of your time, but most of all give some of your love and meet that need. People may think you’re crazy. In fact you can probably expect they will think you’re crazy. People thought Hosea was crazy for doing what he did. He wasn’t crazy, he was obedient. People thought and said Jesus was crazy too. He wasn’t crazy either. He was obedient. Are you seeing a pattern here? And think about this, Hosea didn’t meet everyone’s need. He didn’t rescue every person up for auction in his day. But he did rescue one.
I know, it’s so discouraging when we see so much need around us. There are millions of AIDS orphans around the world. Somewhere in the world, a child dies every forty five seconds from malaria, which could have been prevented by a simple mosquito net that costs about ten dollars. Over three million children die of malnutrition every year, that’s one every ten seconds. Nursing homes have many residents who are very rarely visited by friends or family members. Low income families struggle to keep basic utilities on. According to figures I read this week, every 3 seconds someone who doesn’t believe in Jesus dies. The need is so far beyond us. What can we possibly do to make a difference? We can be like Hosea---we can start by making a difference in one person’s life. Maybe we can’t afford to buy food for the 11 million people who were displaced by Typhoon Haiyan, but maybe we can afford to give enough to feed one child for a week. Maybe if we can’t afford to buy a water purification system for a village, we can buy a case of bottled water for a family. Maybe we can’t afford to provide shelter for every homeless person in the world---but can we volunteer a couple of days each year to help the local Habitat for Humanity? Maybe there’s not enough time in our week for us to visit with every lonely person in the nursing home, but could we possibly find time to visit with one? Okay so we don’t have the time needed to talk to every person in the city who doesn’t believe in Jesus, but can we strike up an ongoing conversation with one or two?
The more I look into it, the more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that this is what Christmas is all about---this is the celebration we’ve been called to participate in...Jesus came to the earth so He could pay the price that had to be paid so we could start fresh and live a new life with Him, a life where His love flows through us to touch the lives of others in need, just like it did through Hosea. Whenever you God’s love to flow through you to reach out and meet the need of someone, it’s like giving a gift to Jesus because in Matthew25 Jesus in effect said, “whatever you’ve done to meet the needs of the least of these, you have done for me. If you’ve given them food or water that they needed or if you gave them the time of day when they were lonely it’s just as if you’ve done those things for me. If you’ve ignored their needs, it’s as if you ignored me.”
So as we approach our hymn of decision this morning, I challenge you to find some way to help meet a need this Christmas---whether it’s through participating in this year’s Christmas offering for Typhoon victims that the church is taking up or whether it’s by doing something entirely on your own, I challenge you to find a way to help meet someone’s need and in that way give a Christmas gift to Jesus, because after all Christmas is supposed to be a celebration of His birthday. Let’s stand. If anyone would like to make a public decision this morning, please come forward and meet with me down front as we sing this next song....
NOTE TO THOSE WHO READ AND OR CHOOSE TO MAKE USE OF ANY OR ALL OF THIS SERMON: I am sharing this sermon with the hopes it will be an encouragement to others. I apologize for any blatant typing errors! If you find any I’d appreciate hearing from you so I can correct them. I try to give credit where credit is due, noting writers and or sources to the best of my ability. I have for years been drawing from a wealth of sources including this website. I recognize that my mind and writing processes are fallible. I may occasionally fail to properly identify a source. Please do not take offense if you see anything of this nature. I never intend to plagiarize. Having said that I want you to feel free to draw from my message. When appropriate I hope you will give credit as I do. But most of all I hope Christ will be lifted up and God will receive the glory in all things.
