Sermon-All I Want For Christmas Is Peace
12/4/2016 Genesis 4:1-15 Luke 1:5-17
How many of you remember the song all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, my two front teeth? How many of you have given thought to something you might want for Christmas this year? We are starting a new sermon series today entitled All I Want For Christmas Is. We are going to look at the topics of peace, forgiveness and hope in the series. Today I want to look at Christmas from a slightly different perspective. Let’s look at it from God’s viewpoint.
If God was answering this question, “All I For Christmas from you this year is”, what do you think some of the things God might ask for. If God asked all I want from you this year New Life At Calvary is….I think one of the things at the top of the list that God wants from us is peace. God wants us to be in a right relationship with each other. One of our purposes is to love each other.
Is there anybody here who grew up in a home with brothers and sisters who did not get along with each other? Is there anybody here who grew up in a home in which people were jealous of each other? Is there anybody here who grew up in a family, in which one person wanted to get the same as everybody else when it came to getting a reward, but did not want to do their part when it came to doing the work. Has anyone ever been a part of our church that had some of these issues?
God desires the gift of peace for Christmas. Peace means “being in a right relationship.” So peace with one another means, being in right relationship with each another. Peace within means being in right relationship with yourself. Peace with God means being in a right relationship with God. How many of us are willing to offer ourselves as a gift of peace for God to use this Christmas season? Jesus told us, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons and daughters of God.
There was a news story in which a happily married couple had two boys. Each boy chose their own career path, but the older son got jealous of the younger son because the younger son had a better grade point average. The older son could have raised his grade point average if he worked harder but he did not want to do that. He found it easier to have the higher gpa by getting rid of his brother. He tricked his younger brother into meeting him in a secluded place, and when his brother was not looking, he smashed the back of his head with a large stone and killed him. He tried to cover it up and lied about knowing anything about his brother’s disappearance. The truth eventually came out and he was given a life sentence.
How do you think the parents felt when they found out their younger son was dead? How do you think they felt when they found out their youngest son had been killed by his brother, simply because he was jealous of his brother’s grade point average? How do you think they felt about his life sentence? How do you think God felt about this family’s situation?
You see this all happened in the very first family that God created. Adam and Eve’s first child Cain. Adam and Eve were thrilled when Cain was born. Remember, after they had eaten the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they were kicked out of Eden. But God gave them a hope before they were removed. God gave them the that one of Eve’s offspring would crush the devil’s head. They thought that maybe Cain was going to be the one to put everything back in place. Maybe Cain would restore the peace they had lost with God. Maybe they had Cain believing that he was going to be a special deliverer.
But then to their surprise they had another son. Here comes Abel. Humm. Maybe its not Cain that’s going to restore the peace, maybe its Abel. Have they unintentionally set up a small rivalry between the boy? Have the boys set up a rivalry among themselves? Has Cain set up a rivalry in his own mind that Abel is not even aware of
All of these things take place in the middle of our families that rob us of peace. Coming together at Christmas for family events is a time for the enemy to stir up all these negative emotions. Parents are accused of favoritism by the kids, kids work one parent against another to get what they want, kids try to compete against each other sometimes real and sometimes imagined.
We interpret actions of others one way, and we are wrong, but we accept it as truth, and it clouds our future relationships We carry hurts into the future and the other person has no idea what we are talking about. Are we willing to give those hurts to God for Christmas so that God can provide us peace by putting us in right relationships.
Well Cain and Abel both grew up and became young men. They were both trying to grow in their relationship with God. Cain and Abel both offered gifts to God. Cain offered God some of his vegetables. But Abel brought God some of the best of the animals that he had raised.
Abel made much more of a sacrifice with his gift than Cain did. God assigned and A++ to Abel’s gift and a C- to Cain’s gift. God could see that Cain was get very angry that his offering had received a lower rating than Abel’s offering. But instead of looking at what he had offered, he became jealous of his brother approval by God. We can quickly blow things out of proportion when we are angry. Maybe thoughts ran through Cain’s mind that this was proof that Abel was going to be the hero who would crush Satan’s head. He didn’t want his brother being spiritually superior to him.
What God wanted for this family and from this family was peace. So God intervenes to put things back in ord. So God told Cain, “look, there is no need for you to be jealous and angry. If you do what is right, your offering will also be acceptable. Sin is trying to take over your life, but you must resist it.” God wanted what was best for Cain and for Able. He wanted to be in a right relationship with both of them. But God knew Cain’s anger was leading him down a dangerous path. Do you remember in our study with James, James told us that our anger does not lead to the righteousness of God.
Do you know why we become so angry and upset? It is because we do not get our own way. We learned in the book of James, we fight and quarrel with each other because we do not get what we want. We can’t make others behave in the way we want them to behave. We can’t make them think in the way want them to think. We can’t get them to adopt the same beliefs that we have. Cain was angry with Able, because Abel had a different viewpoint on what was the best thing to offer as a gift to God. The sad thing is that both of them wanted to serve God.
Cain’s problem was not with Abel. It was with himself. He was not at peace with himself because of the rejection of his offering to God. How often do we blame others, for something that has gone wrong inside of ourselves? We may think it is the other person’s fault, when in reality the fault lies within our own heart. I wish I could say, I never have a problem with envy, but there are times when I do. If I don’t check myself, I found myself trying to find some weakness in the person I am envious of.
Cain was angry that Abel had made him look bad in the eyes of others. Who knows what all Cain had been thinking about Abel before. Cain had been the first child born on the planet. Maybe he didn’t like his younger brother coming along. But none of that mattered to God. God wanted peace for the family and from the family, so God went to the source of the problem and told Cain, “you need to let it go otherwise sin will destroy you.” Cain did not have peace with himself, he didn’t have peace with his brother, and now he didn’t have peace with God.
Why? Because, Cain would not let it go. Have you ever wondered where “not letting it go” is going to lead you? For Cain it led him to murder his brother. Have you been guilty of murder? You see we can allow anger to turn into hatred toward a person. 1 John 3:15 (NIV) 15 Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.
Like Cain, we do not want to admit to the hatred that we allow to build up on the inside of us. The good news though is that God sees it, and points it out to us, so that we can deal with it. That’s what having the Holy Spirit within us is all about. We can’t allow hatred to be in the same place as the Holy Spirit without pushing the Holy Spirit into the background.
Hatred can gain a spark in any relationship, in any family, at any time if we do not admit it’s there. We are told in Romans 12:18 “if it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” Otherwise the spark is going to grow.
Once it turns from a spark to a flame, we do, just like Cain. We try to cover our tracks and look innocent and holy. When God confronts Cain on where was his brother, Abel, Cain just sort of brushed it off and said, “Am I my brother’s keeper.” In other words,” isn’t that your job to know where he is.” With this one flippant answer, Cain destroys the peace in his life, the peace in his family’s life and the peace he had with God. God placed him under a curse and he lost everything he had .
Sin was rapidly spreading through humanity. This story took place in chapter four of Genesis. In chapter six of Genesis, people were doing so much evil that God regretted that he had made human beings on the face of the earth. But because of his great love for us, even in the midst of our sin, God had a plan because God wanted peace for us with each other and peace for us with Him.
There were two babies born in the year of the first Christmas. We all know about Mary and Joseph, but another couple that are very important are Elizabeth and Zechariah. They had a miracle child of their own. Both of them were old, and for some reason, Elizabeth had not able to have children. This was a great disappointment to both of them. Zechariah knew that time had passed them by. Having kids was a very big thing in their culture. They carried a sense of shame with them because of all the negative comments about not having kids.
Zechariah was a priest, and he was chosen to go into the holy area of the temple and offer incense and prayers for the people. A priest would only be chosen once in a lifetime for this event and some priests never got to do it all.
After praying for the people, Zechariah decided to slip in one prayer for himself, saying “Lord, I know this might be a tough one, but do you think you could help us out one of these times and Elizabeth and I just might have one boy.” I want you to see that God is not afraid to talk about sex. Here Zechariah is in the most holy part of the temple praying to God about his and Elizabeth’s sex life. A believer recognizes that God is over every area of his or her life.
It was the prayer about sex, that caused the angel Gabriel to show up and tell Zechariah that his prayer had been answered. He and his wife was going to have son and his name was to be John. John was going to be a joy and a delight to them. God wanted to bring peace to their marriage and to their family but even more important God wanted to have peace with everybody who was willing. For it was said of this child, that he would be full of the Holy Spirit even before he was born.
John was going to bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God, and he would turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and he would make ready a people prepared for the Lord. This John grew up to be the John The Baptist who announced the coming of Jesus. John the Baptist was the one who pointed the world to Jesus.
Jesus is God’s offer to us all to bring us peace with God and peace with each other. The whole reason for our salvation is to enable us to love the God with all our heart, our soul, our mind and our strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. God says that this is what peace is all about.
This Christmas, we are going to have plenty of reasons to get angry and upset. Somebody is going to give us the right reason to have a bad attitude. Some things are going to happen to us that will get us all bent out of shape. That’s when I want us to remember what God wants from us this Christmas. In each of these situations, we will have the opportunity to offer peace back to God by the way we allow the Holy Spirit to respond through us.
The good news about Christmas is that it announces that God is willing to remove the sin that we all have so that we can have peace with God and with each other. But the removal comes with a catch. We have to first admit that yes we have sinned, and yes we are living in rebellion against God by choosing to do our thing. If we are not willing to admit, just how bad we are, then we will not appreciate the offer God is making to us through sending His son into the world to die for our sins.
Jesus did not die on the cross for us to say “I believe in Him, but I’m not going to let Him change my life”. If that is your position, it puts you on the same level as demons. For they also believe, but they will not submit to Jesus’ authority over their lives. God sent Jesus Christ into this world to die for our sins to pay for the wrong we have done, so that we might be forgiven and changed into sons and daughters of God.
God raised Jesus from the dead as proof, that Jesus had paid the penalty for our wrong and that Jesus can give us new life. If we are unwilling to accept that life, we are not going to have peace with ourselves, peace with others, and peace eternally with God. Just remember for some of us, this is going to be our last Christmas before the great judgment.
What does God want for Christmas. God wants a little peace from you, from me, and from this church? Are we willing to offer it to God by turning our lives over to Jesus Christ.
