The Gift Is Not The Box

The Gift Is Not The Box

Scripture: Proverbs 20:11; John 3:16; First Corinthians 13:11

Good morning Strangers Rest. The title of my message today is “The Gift Is Not The Box” and I want to focus your attention on spiritual maturity.

Proverbs 20:11, from the New American Standard Bible, says, “It is by his deeds that a boy distinguishes himself, if his conduct is pure and right.” It is a fact that a child distinguishes him/herself by how they act, and we label them accordingly – good, bad, respectful, disrespectful, etc. Those labels are based on the actions of the child. We do the same for the child like actions of adults; when we see characteristics of a child being exhibited in an adult we call their behavior “childish.” As it relates to acting childish, it speaks to a lack of maturity and/or growth. What I want you to keep in mind this morning is this: childish behaviors that are normal for a child are abnormal for an adult.

Let us begin by reading what Paul wrote to the Church in Corinth. He said in First Corinthians 13:11 says, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” Paul wrote that when he was a child he did childish things, because he was a child. He talked like a child; he understood as a child; and he thought like a child. However, when he grew into a man he began to speak as an adult; understood as an adult; and began thinking like an adult. When this happened he put away, stop doing childish things. You see it was no longer acceptable for him as a grown man to continue acting as if he was a child. The expectations are different for an adult when compared to the maturity level of a child. Now let us think about this for a moment.

When I was a child, as most children do, I enjoyed playing with empty boxes. The bigger the box the more use I got from it. With an empty box I could use my imagination to create all sorts of things. I could make a fort; a house; a car; the possibilities were endless. If you have ever seen a small child on Christmas morning opening their presents and discarding the gift within the box so they can play with the empty box, then you know what I am talking about. There were times when I thought of just giving my kids empty boxes as gifts when they were small. But this is normal behavior for a small child. The empty box becomes whatever they want it to be as they immediately start playing with the box. Those kids are happier with the box versus the gift that was in it. Now this can be frustrating for the parents as you spent hours in the stores looking for that special gift only to discover that all you had to do was give them an empty box. So, what do we do as parents? Instead of sitting there and watching our children exhibit pure joy while playing with the empty box, we try to force them to play with the gift that came in the box. We pick it up and start playing with it ourselves hoping that our interest in it will help our child start playing (and appreciate) the gift. That toy, for a moment, may capture their eyes because we are playing with it, but it is short lived as their eyes continually roam back to the empty box.

I cannot tell you this based on any scientific fact about why an empty box is so important to a child, but I can tell you that when a child plays with an empty box, that empty box becomes whatever that child wants that box to be. It could be anything in the eyes of that child. One of my daughters was a huge fan of the television show Sponge Bob Square Pants. There was one episode on that show where Sponge Bob and his friend Patrick were in an empty box, and you could hear the sound of machine guns and aircraft carriers coming from the box. Another friend, Squidward, walks up to the box and sees them sitting in the otherwise empty box. He asks where all the noise was coming from, and Sponge Bob says “Imagination.” All an empty box needs to become anything to a child is the child’s imagination. But what about the gift that came in the box?

It does not take a lot of imagination to play with the gift that came in the box because whatever it is it can only be what it was made to be. The gift inside the box can only be that one thing – the thing it was created to be. The toy can be played with in make believe scenarios, but it is still a particular toy. The toy is what it is – like it or not. Unlike the empty box, you cannot make changes to the toy and all of a sudden it becomes something else unless you are playing with the Transformers and even then the options are limited. If you give a child a doll in a box, the doll is a doll. The child can dress the doll up in different clothes, but it is still a doll. Now the empty box that the doll came in is only limited by the imagination of the child. This, my friends, is childlike behavior that is perfectly normal for a child. This behavior is not normal for an older teenager or an adult. I want you to hold this thought for later: Outer box Jesus or the Jesus in the box.