Hope Church LV Sermons
Christmas Eve 2011
How many of you have spent the last month or maybe even just the last week looking and searching for the perfect gift? How many of you, be honest, have spent the last week or maybe even the last month, right? We've been looking for the perfect gift. Well, you're not alone. A lot of people have been doing that. As a matter of fact, exchanging gifts has become a major part of the celebration of Christmas in America. And nothing is more evidence of that than the statistics that you hear that come out of the retail market, right? I mean, just the stats of retail sales alone last year in 2010. And we know that the economy's been extremely difficult, but even in the midst of a difficult economy, last year in 2010, pre-Christmas sales registered over $584 billion, $584 billion. Visa cards right now, how many of you have bought a gift using a Visa card, right? A lot of us have done that. Did you know that from Thanksgiving to Christmas, Visa cards are swiped, 5,340 times per minute. From Thanksgiving to Christmas, 5,340 times per minute. Now once we've bought all of these gifts, now we have to wrap all of these gifts, right? One spend annually, $2.6 billion on wrapping paper, $2.6 billion just to cover up what we've already bought. Let me give you a statistic that I think will astonish you, it didn't mean. 4 million tons of trash are generated every year from gift wrap and shopping bags during the Christmas season. 4 million tons of trash. Now the last that I want to give you to show you how big this is in our country, I honestly had a hard time even believing this, 50% of all the paper used in the United States of America is used in gift wrap, 50%. You're going to look it up on the end. I know I can believe it either, 50% of all of the paper that is used, I mean I thought surely it had to be toilet paper, right, but 50% of all the paper used in America is used to wrap presents. Now I know how some people react to these kinds of stats, especially Christian people. Christians sometimes we get all pious and we get all radical and we hear these kinds of stats and we watch our culture and we say Christmas is really not about presents, Christmas is really not about gifts and we become the Bahumbug if you're not careful trying to be very spiritual and we begin to be condescending about this whole idea of buying and exchanging gifts and if you go and search it out on the internet I was shocked at how many blogs there are that are entitled Christmas without presents. They just look mean on those blogs, I mean they don't even look nice and their whole thing is that we've gotten so caught up in this that it shouldn't be that Christmas is really not about gifts. Now before we run too fast down that path, let me remind you that Christmas is really all about the greatest gift ever given. So this thing of buying and exchanging gifts is we do it in the right spirit and we communicate the right message. We can really celebrate Christmas through gifts because Christmas is all about gifts. It's about the greatest gift and let me quote it for you. You know the verse say it with me John 3 16 for God so love the world that he gave. Stop right there. He didn't want? He gave. He gave a gift. Christmas is the celebration of the greatest gift ever given. Listen to me, Jesus Christ is the greatest gift ever given. Greatest gift ever given. I want to read it for you in an unusual place in the Bible. It's not a place you might normally turn to read the Christmas story, Galatians chapter 4. If you have a Bible you can turn over Galatians chapter 4, if not I'm going to put these verses up on the screen, Galatians chapter 4 verses 4 and 5, Paul gives us a brief summary which really explains the Christmas message. Listen to what Paul says. But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law so that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And those two simple verses, Paul answers a big question that I want to ask an answer today. Why is Jesus God's perfect gift? Jesus is God's perfect gift. And there are three reasons in these verses. Why Jesus is God's perfect gift? I want to give him to you and then we'll be finished this afternoon. Here's the first one. He came at the perfect time. The first reason that Jesus is God's perfect gift is that he came at the perfect time. Did you hear how those verses open, Paul said, but when the fullness of the time came? Now that was a phrase that was commonly used in Greek culture to really talk about two different things. It was commonly used in either one of these two expressions. Number one, it was used to describe fruit that had become ripe and was ready to be picked off the tree. When the fullness of time came, it would be time to harvest the fruit. So the farmer would plant the seed, he would watch the tree grow and then when the fruit was ripe, when it was ready, when it was just at the right time, you take the fruit off the tree, that's that phrase fullness of time. Another way that this phrase was used in the Greek culture that was commonly understood is to describe an expectant mother at the end of her pregnancy. Now when you understand it that way, you get the picture of the fullness of time, right? My wife has had four babies, four children that we have in our household. I have four times walked through that nine months with her and as best as we can, husbands, we feel so useless during that period of time. I mean, there's suffering, all the struggle, all the anguish and all you can do is just pat them on the back and just be there and just try to do the best you can and it's probably the most useless feeling that we ever have as husbands, but four times I've walked through that process with my wife and having done that four times now, I recognize that fullness of time, right? I mean, you can see it in their eyes. You can hear it in the tone of their voice, the entire countenance screams the fullness of time is here, right? And you ladies that have been through, you know it well, I mean, we'll be walking down them all and my wife will go, man, she's ready, we already know these people and she can just, it's like an eighth sense that she has that this lady's about to drop a baby, man. I mean, I just go with, she's pregnant, my wife goes, no, she's ready. The fullness of time, here's what Paul is saying, from the beginning of time, from Genesis 1 1, when God created the heavens and the earth, the world was born pregnant with God's plan of redemption. Everything in history was leading up to one significant moment and that moment is when God would bring forth his son into this world, born as the Messiah, the Savior at exactly the right time in history. Here's the way Donald Guthrie said it, God had prepared the whole world for the coming of his son at this particular time in history. Let me give you two ways God had prepared the world. Number one, he'd prepared the world spiritually. If you study the Old Testament, everything in the Old Testament was pointing to the coming of a Messiah. For example, God began to give glimpses into his character. In the Old Testament story, starting in creation and moving throughout the Old Testament, God began to give us glimpses of his character, glimpses of his power, glimpses of his glory, glimpses of his majesty, never a full picture. It was like getting a piece of a puzzle and you couldn't see the whole thing, but you would get pieces of the puzzle and people were getting what the theologians call a progressive revelation of God. God was making himself known throughout the history of the world through these glimpses of his character and then God gave us the law. In the Old Testament, God gave us the law. Now most of us, our knowledge of the law is limited to what we might call the Big Ten, right? It's the commandments, the law of God, but actually the law is much more detailed than that. There are chapters and chapters in the Old Testament describing all kinds of rituals and regulations and ceremonies that were the Old Testament law, but God gave us the law and he gave us the law to demonstrate the righteousness that was required in order to be accepted by God. If you go back one chapter in the book of Galatians, Paul writes about it. Listen to what he says. I'll put it on the screen. Galatians chapter 3, verse 23, listen what he said, "Before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ so that we may be justified by faith." You see, God had been progressively revealing his character and then God gave us the law and the law revealed the holiness of God and the law revealed the righteousness that was required on our part in order to be accepted by God. And what the law did was it showed humanity, our inability to ever be accepted by God on our own because you don't even have to get into all the rituals and regulations. I mean, you just take the top 10. We don't even get through that clean. You shall not lie. You shall not steal. I don't look at me, Pius. You were in school. Come on now. You had the smart kids sitting by you in class and stolen answer to. Come on. You're in church. It's all right. God gave us the law to show us there was no way we could ever earn a right standing before God. There was nothing I could do to be accepted by God. No matter how hard I tried, I could not keep the law. Then God began in the Old Testament to give us promises. He began to reveal his character. He showed us his holiness. He gave us the law to show us the righteousness that was required to be accepted by. And then God began to make some promises that are awesome, some promises that he was going to send someone who would do for us what we could not do to keep the law. The Bible called him a Savior, someone who would save us. Listen to one of the promises. Now the one I'm about to read you was written 700 years before Jesus was born. Listen to it. Isaiah chapter 7, "Therefore the Lord will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son. And she shall call his name Immanuel all," and then then over in chapter 53, towards the end of the book of Isaiah, he continues to describe what this child, this Messiah's going to do. All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way. But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. It was this promise. God had shown us who he was. And it's shown us through the law, our inability to be accepted by God. But God said, "I'm going to send a Messiah." And he's going to take all of your sin on himself. And he's going to in exchange give you my righteousness. All this preparation was leading up to this moment in history. God didn't just prepare the world spiritually. God prepared the world socially. It was at this particular time in the world that the Greco-Roman Empire had taken over all of the known world. And because the Greco-Roman Empire had taken over the whole world, there was a global connectedness that had never existed before that existed during this period. It was called the Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome. Men were free all over the known earth. There was no fighting, no wars going on. And cities were connected to cities because the Roman Empire had built an infrastructure of roads that for the first time in human history connected city to city and village to village all leading up to the city of Rome. There was one language, the Greek language that had been accepted all over the known earth that was this social platform of global connectedness. And then there was a growing hunger of spiritual truth. One writer said the old mythological gods during this time of Greece and Rome were losing their hold on the common people. So the hearts and minds of men everywhere were hungry for religion that was real and satisfying. These factors paved the way for an explosive spread of Christianity in the early days that could have never happened were it not that particular time in history with all those things in place. What am I saying to you? He came in God's perfect time. Number two, he came in the perfect way. Paul uses three phrases here, born, he says, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law. He came not just at the perfect time, but he came in the perfect way. Number one, he says, God sent forth his son. Let me tell you what that tells us about him. He was 100% God. He came as 100%. God sent forth his son. It's an interesting choice of words. It's a Greek word that literally means to send out of the place from where one already is. Meaning that when Jesus was born into this world, he was sent from somewhere else and it raises a serious question. Where was he sent from? Well John opens his gospel and he answers that question. In John chapter one and verse one, John says, "In the beginning was the word." And the word was with God and the word was God. In John one one, John borrows a phrase from Genesis one one in the beginning. In Genesis one one, that phrase points us forward into the stream of human history. But in John one one, it points us backward to eternity past and the beginning was, meaning before there ever was a beginning, Jesus Christ already was. John MacArthur said it this way, "Jesus Christ was already in existence when the heavens and the earth were created. Thus he is not a created being, but existed from all eternity. The word did not then begin to be, but at that point at which all else began to be, he already was." Let me read that phrase for you again. The word did not begin to be, but at that point at which all else began to be, he already was. In the beginning, place it where you may, the word already existed. In other words, the word is before time eternal. Listen to me, Jesus is not just a good teacher. Jesus is not just a spiritual leader. Jesus is not just a moral person. Jesus is not just someone whom, if you follow, you will have a better life. Jesus is not even a great man who became God. Jesus is and always has been 100% God. He is God, God sent forth his son, but then he gives us a second phrase, born of a woman. The first phrase describes something extraordinary. God sent forth his son. The second phrase describes something extremely ordinary, born of a woman. You see, he came as 100% God, but what this phrase tells us is, he also came as 100% man. John says in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. Then down in verse 14, he says, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. Some unbelievable verbiage in John 1, as a matter of fact, last weekend, I spent the entire message preaching John 1, 1 through 3 in verse 14. If you're a guest today, when you leave, if you pick up that gift bag and one of the things, there's many things in it, but one of the things in that gift bag is last weekend's message, where we exhaustively walk through the reality that God became a man. The word became flesh. It does not mean he ceased to be what he was, God. It means he became something he was not, man, 100% God, 100% man. That phrase became flesh and dwelt among us. The word dwelt, we get an English word from it, it's the word skin. It literally means God with skin on. Here's the way John MacArthur says it, God took on humanity. The infinite became finite, eternity entered time. The invisible became visible. The Creator entered his creation. Then there's a third phrase, born under the law. God sent forth, his son tells us that he came as 100% God. Born of a woman tells us that he came as 100% man. Born under the law speaks to the reality that he came as 100% righteous. The writer of Hebrews tells us about Jesus' relationship to the law. You and I see the law, we don't even make it past the first ten. Listen to what it says about Jesus. One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Jesus perfectly fulfilled the righteous law of God. John Stott said it this way. Throughout his life, he submitted to all the requirements of the law. He succeeded where others before and since have failed. He perfectly fulfilled the righteous law of God. You see the truth is that in order for Jesus Christ to save us, he had to be in one person both eternal God and sinless man. Let me give you three summary statements about what we're saying in this text description. Number one, he came as God in order for his sacrifice to have infinite value. He came as man in order to atone for the sins of humanity. He came as righteous in order for his sacrifice to be acceptable to God. You see, some people have it wrong. They think Jesus Christ came to die in my place so that I wouldn't have to. That is not true. Jesus Christ came to die in my place because I could not. It required an infinite sacrifice that was 100% God, but also 100. You see, I could not die for my own sin. If I were to go to hell for all eternity, I could not pay for my sin why because my sacrifice would not be infinite and my sacrifice would not be acceptable. In order to be my Savior, he had to be God and man and righteous. Listen, that's exactly who Jesus was. He came in the perfect way. Let me give you the last one. He came to demonstrate God's perfect love. What I've shared with you so far is out of Galatians 4, verse 4. When the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law. Then verse 5 begins with these two little words. So that, let me tell you something. Those are two very important words. Anytime you see those words in the New Testament, you need to circle those words because here's what they mean. They mean for this purpose or here's the reason why. They're like a flashing light, they're like the blue light special that came out the week before Christmas. I mean, it means something. He came at the perfect time and in the perfect way and then God says, let me tell you why. So that he might redeem those under the law. I wish I had more time today to tell you about redemption. Let me give you a quick, quick, quick, quick, quick sum of everything. The word redeem was a word that everybody in the Roman Empire knew. It was a common everyday word. The Roman Empire, one of the downsides of that empire is there were over six million slaves in the Roman Empire. Now if you had a friend or family member that was a slave, you had the right under Roman law to redeem them. Here's what it meant. Whatever price their owner had put on their head, you could as a friend or family member step up to the plate. You could approach that owner and you could pay that price. And upon paying that price, you redeemed them and set them free. They were no longer a slave. They were no longer owned by someone else. They had been redeemed and set free. Listen to me. You and I were in bondage to sin. We were on the slave block of sin. Sin dominated our lives. Sin the Bible says, "Oh, it's in." The reason that we look at the list of ten in the Old Testament and we can't even get past that is because we come into this world dead to God and alive to sin. Let me prove it to you. You don't have to teach anybody to sin, right? You got to teach them to do right. You don't believe that? Just stay and keep the nursery and the next service, right? You're not back there teaching them how to sin. They come in with that information. They got that, right? They know how to do that. Why? Because we come into this world dead to God and alive to sin. And because of that, we're enslaved to sin. And no matter how hard we try, even if you walk out of here today and say, "I'm never going to sin again." Let me guess. Let me tell you what. You're not going to make it past this week. You're probably not going to make it past today. Why? We are in bondage and enslaved to sin. And the Bible says that there's a price. There's a redemption price. The Bible says the wages of sin is death. You see, because I was in bondage to sin, I had a price on my head and it was death. And not just any death. It was an eternal, righteous death, a death that I couldn't even offer. Let me tell you what Jesus did. He came to redeem. He took the price of my sin on Himself. Why does the death of Jesus? What in the world does that have to do with me? Let me tell you what it has to do. Because of our sin, we earned death and separation from God. And God sent forth His son born of a woman born under the law. And Jesus Christ took my death on Himself. And on the cross He experienced the full blow of the wrath of God against sin and He died. And when He rose again from the dead, God said, "I've accepted His sacrifice for Your sin, and because of Jesus we can be set free." Oh, but listen, it's even more precious than that. He said, "So that He might redeem those who were under the law that we might receive the adoption as sons." Here's what that means. Jesus did not die just to set me free. He died to set me free to become a part of His family. Again, I wish I had the time to unpack the word adoption. Let me just give you a definition. The word adoption means to become a part of a family to which you did not originally belong. And that's good theology. I used to be separated from God because of my sin. I used to be alienated from God. And listen, there was nothing I could do to change that. But God did for me what I could not do left to myself. He sent His son, born of a woman, born under the law that He might redeem us and adopt us. I am not just a slave that has been set free. I am a son at the Father's Table. Let me give you a summary of the message of Christmas as a demonstration of His great love for you and me. God at the perfect time and in the perfect way sent His son into the world to redeem us and adopt us into His family. Listen, that is the perfect gift. But as in all gifts, a gift must be received. You must receive. Everything I've said is true. Christ came. God, man, in the flesh to live a sinless life, died on the cross, rose again from the dead. It's all true. He died to redeem us. But it's interesting in Galatians chapter 4 and verse 5, it says, "So that He might redeem so that we might receive. He redeems we receive." On 1 12, I'll close with this verse, "But as many as received Him to them, He gave the right to become the children of God, even to those who believe on His name." So here's the question of the day, have you received God's gift? Say, "How do you do that?" Well, John 1 12 tells us, "It's my faith." My faith. Listen, you don't earn it. That you can do to deserve it. It's my faith. My faith, I repent, I turn from my sin, and I trust Christ as my Lord and Savior. And the Scripture says, "In that instant, I become the child of God." Have you? Listen, you're going to tonight, tomorrow, you're going to exchange gifts. Have you ever received the perfect gift, the only real perfect gift? Have you ever received God's forgiveness, God's freedom, and become a part of God's family. [BLANK_AUDIO]