Advent 4
Hebrews 10:5-10
It’s crunch time now. Once church gets out, you will have three and a half days to finish your Christmas shopping. Maybe all of your shopping is done. But I’m willing to guess there are a few of you out there who have some names on your list that are still present-less. Perhaps you’ve already been to Wal-Mart, and Borders, and the Mall, and Best Buy, searching for that perfect gift to jump out at you…but you haven’t found it yet. And with time running out, you’d probably be open to suggestions at this point.
Well, you’ve come to the right place. God has some last minute gift ideas for you. But these gifts you won’t find in a department store, you won’t find in a catalog, and you won’t find them on Amazon.com. The Lord has two gift ideas: 1: The Perfect Body, and 2: The Perfect Vacation.
Part I
Yeah, you heard me right. God thinks that a perfect body would be the ideal gift to give at this time of year. Now we aren’t talking about a membership to Bally’s Swim and Fitness that will give you this perfect body. We aren’t talking about a clinic that will perform surgery to try to make your body perfect. And we aren’t even talking about changes in your diet that will promote a perfect body. Because none of those things can bring lasting effects, can they? Show me a perfect body from 50 years ago, and I’ll show you a body that is displaying limitations today.
But it isn’t God’s fault. In fact, it was the Lord who designed human bodies to be flawless in their form and function. A few thousand years ago, God designed two different models of human bodies. The Lord made a rugged, heavy-duty model, and he called that Adam, and then he designed a beautiful, more sensitive, and slightly smaller version, Eve. And these first two models of human bodies were perfect. They didn’t need to consistently go to the gym or visit a plastic surgeon. But they were perfect in another, more important way. They didn’t only have a perfect appearance, but they also acted like they were perfect. They always treated each other with kindness. They were never selfish, but they loved God their Maker more than themselves. But boy, did those two perfect models mess things up. So much so that there has never been a perfect body since. Human bodies not only do a lousy job staying in the prime of life, but they all are tainted by sin.
That’s why God decided to give the human race another chance. He was going to design another model, prepare another perfect body, and fill that body with the Son of God. Listen to the way that our text explains it, “When Christ came into the world, he said: ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me.’”
Remember the story of Adam and Eve’s first child, Cain (who was also the first murderer)? How would you sum up Cain’s view of sacrifices and offerings to God? Imagine that you are an employee with an unpleasant and demanding boss. You might try to soften your boss up by giving him a Christmas gift. That’s how Cain felt about his offerings. Cain didn’t particularly like God. Cain didn’t see God as someone fair. He was just going through the motions of whatever it would take to get on God’s good side.
God didn’t want those kinds of offerings. No sacrifice that any person could give God would be enough to take away sins. So why did God command the Israelites to perform sacrifices of animals day after day, year after year, century after century? Our text clearly says that those offerings couldn’t fix the sin problem of human beings, “sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them,” but then the reading goes on, “although the law required them to be made.” When you look in a mirror, you see that you have a big strand of hair sticking straight up. Without the mirror, you’d never notice it. It is the same with the law of God. These sacrifices showed the people that there was something that matter with them. Every time they went to the priest with an animal as the offering for their sins, and every time the priest took a knife a slit the throat of that innocent lamb, and every time they caught a whiff of a foul odor as the carcass of that innocent lamb was burnt on the altar…the average Israelite would understand sin, and its penalty. Those sacrifices couldn’t take away sin, but they were a great illustration of the need for a Savior from sin. The Israelites were left with the unmistakable message, “that should have been me having my throat slit. That should have been me burning in the fires of hell.”
And against the backdrop of these incomplete sacrifices, here comes the Lord with a permanent solution to the problem of sin: the perfect body of Jesus Christ. That’s what we are celebrating at Christmas: God taking on a human body. God becoming a human being.
Who celebrates Christmas? Well, just about everyone does nowadays. You don’t have to be a member of a Christian congregation to celebrate the holiday. You don’t even need to be a Christian. Many Muslims and Hindus and atheists will be opening gifts on December 24th & 25th. Many celebrate this holiday, but few observe it. Few realize what Christmas really means. It’s a lot more than just a baby born in a stable, laid in a manger, as his penniless parents looked on. Christmas is the beginning of the story of that perfect body. God gave that perfect body to the world for one reason alone: to punish it. You see, God demands that only a perfect body will do as a sacrifice for your sins. That perfect body of Jesus would one day be whipped, spit upon, beaten to a bloody pulp, and hung on a cross to die. And that’s a place where a lot of Christmas celebrators don’t want to go. They want the baby to stay sleeping in the manger. They don’t want to see him on the cross. It causes too much too guilt.
It was last Sunday after Bible study that I was told of the news of Saddam Hussein’s capture. And like almost all Americans, I received this news with great joy. One last dictator to oppress his people. One less terrorist leader to worry about. When I got home that day at about 2:30 in the afternoon, the TV was on for the rest of the day, to Fox News of course. But I want to take you back 3 or 4 years: would you have minded trading places with Saddam? He lived in cushy palaces. Yes, he was under sanctions, but he ruled a small but wealthy nation. I think any one of us would have been quite comfortable with that life. What about now? Any one want to trade place with him today…as he is interrogated, paraded on the TV screens as someone to ridicule, and awaiting a trial in which the guilty verdict is certain? Anyone want to trade places with Saddam now? I don’t think so! Let’s say Saddam is eventually sentenced to death for his crimes against humanity. Does anyone here want their son or daughter to take that execution in Saddam’s place? I don’t think so…and yet that’s exactly what Jesus did for you. You might not have gassed the Kurds, invaded Kuwait, and had torture chambers…but each of us commits plenty of crimes against humanity. Our selfishness, our greed, our materialism, our impatience, all lead us to sins against others. Yet Christ came to earth with his perfect body to stand in for us. To take our punishment. God the Father would rather punish his perfect Son instead of vile sinners like us. Looking for a last-minute gift idea for someone? Why not tell them about the perfect body that they were given, and what that perfect body did for them.
Part II
And we are going to look at the second gift that we are given on Christmas. The perfect body means that we get the perfect vacation.
If money and time were no object, where would you go on vacation…and how long would you stay? A week from today I am looking forward to taking a little vacation as Val’s family and we go to the Keys. I’m sure it will be nice…but no matter how nice it is, like all vacations, they never last forever. You can’t always be on vacation, because if you are, soon you will find yourself out of a job.
But Christ’s perfect body means a perfect (and permanent) vacation for you in the bliss of heaven. The last verse of our text reads, “And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus once for all.” Now even though heaven isn’t mentioned specifically here, that is the logical outcome of this verse. The perfect body was sacrificed…making us what? Holy! Perfect! Righteous! Just what we need to get to heaven!
Today is not only the holiday season, but if you are a football fan, things are really heating up now. Teams are vying for the playoffs. Yesterday I heard that there were 11 AFC teams fighting for 6 playoff spots. Perhaps your favorite team is trying to get into the playoffs. And you probably know the scenarios that need to happen. Maybe they need to win this week and next week, and then Team X and Team Y need to lose, and if all those things happen just right, they are in the playoffs.
That’s NOT how it is for determining if we get to heaven or not. We don’t have to worry about missing that perfect vacation and being on the outside looking in at the joy of heaven. Look at the tense of the verb in verse 10, “we HAVE BEEN MADE holy.” It’s a done deal! We’re in! No matter what happens! Christ’s perfect sacrifice of his perfect body means a perfect time for you in the perfect heavenly vacation! Can you get (or give) a Christmas present that will top that?
Conclusion
So whom do you need to shop for still in these next 3 and a half days? Or let’s put it this way: who on your Christmas list could use a perfect body, and a perfect vacation? You have it already; that’s why you’re here. But there are people you work with, people you go to school with, people you are next-door-neighbors to, that don’t have these gifts. They won’t find them under their Christmas tree, but they will hear about them if they come to a Christmas church service with you. It’s the last minutes before Christmas, and don’t settle for a last-minute gift like the Perfect Pancake Maker. You can find a better gift than that! Take the Lord’s advice on last-minute gift ideas. Give the gifts of a Perfect Body and a Perfect Vacation. Amen.
sdg
