MK040 Sermons
The Greatest Gift (Audio)
Can you think of a gift that you received, maybe recently, when you found yourself looking at this gift wondering, "Hmm, I'm not sure what that is, I'm not sure why they bought that for me, whose idea was that?" A little bit of a head scratcher, you're not even sure what the gift is, let alone how you would use it and how it would improve the quality of life and make life a little bit better for you. And yet you discover, over time, that this gift that you initially thought, "What in the world is it?" makes a big difference in your life. I had a gift like that recently that came from my mother-in-law and father-in-law, but she's the gift buyer. So, gifts from my mother-in-law, there's a number of those that have been a bit head scratchers, is the best way to describe it, you know, as she's trying to come up and find a way to buy for her son-in-law. And so, when she gave me this gift that looked like this, and I opened it, I was like, "What is that?" I really didn't know what that was, and then I squeezed that, and that side popped open, and then I squeezed the other side, and that side popped open. I was like, "Well, that's interesting. You know, what in the world is that thing?" And I thought, "Well, I don't know what it is, but I put it in the shed, and then I needed to clean up some things in the yard." And I was like, "Oh, that thing." And I broiled it down, and I threw some things in there, and I don't live, have woods around me, so I can't just throw the stuff in the woods, and I don't have a truck, so I can't just throw it in the back of the truck, but I do live in the town of Denver, and so I have a place that I can dump stuff, and I'm like, "Wow, this would come in handy to dump stuff in the, you know, put it in the back of my van, and not have leaves and brush flowing out of the back of my van as I'm driving through Denver, and it's falling all over the street, you know, until I get to the dump spot." And I was like, "Wow, this thing could be kind of beneficial. I used it a couple times." I thought, "This is so beneficial. I'm going to Home Depot. Do you guys tell these things? Can I buy another one of these things?" And I bought another one, and then one of them broke, and I took it back. I was like, "This is really, really good. You got it. Can you replace this?" I was like, "Yeah, sure. Here's another one. Take it with you." And all of a sudden, this gift that I was scratching my head wondering, "What in the world is that thing, and how am I going to use it?" It became incredibly valuable and beneficial to me. I don't know if you've had a gift given to you this kind of like that, that upon initially receiving that gift, you're wondering what is it? These are the kind of gifts that somebody loves, and they love it so much. They buy it for everybody. Oh, everybody's going to love this, so everybody gets one that year for Christmas. We've all had those kind of gifts, right? But have you received the gift that you really weren't sure what it was, or the benefit it was going to have, but over time you realized this is a really valuable gift. It's a really valuable gift. And tonight my guess is that most people in this room are thinking about gifts in one way or another. You may be thinking about gifts wondering, "I wonder what they will think of the gift I am going to give to them. Will they like my gift? Will it fit? Will it be the right size, the right color, the right shape, the right accessory?" Some of you are wondering, "Well, I get the gift that I was hoping to get. I put it on the list. I hope they saw that on the list, and they got the right thing." And that's what some of you are wondering about gifts tonight. And so tonight I want to talk about gifts. I think there's probably not a parent in this room that hasn't bought a gift, or a gift card, or even some money that you give to your kids, because parents want to do that for their kids. They want to bless their kids. They want to give things that their kids are going to enjoy. They're going to be meaningful to them. And Jesus talked about that. He talked about the fact that parents want to give gifts to their kids. And he said, "But sometimes, as parents, we give gifts for some not so good motivations. Sometimes we give gifts because we hope our kids will like us, or we will feel validated in those ways." And so sometimes our motives aren't completely pure. But Jesus said this. He said, "If you then are, though you are evil, and at times you do things for not necessarily the right reasons, you give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?" He's kind of using a comparison here. He said, "If parents make an effort to give gifts to their kids, and they try to give the best gifts they can, but they kind of have some, maybe not so good motives, imagine what kind of gifts God makes available to us." And he says to those who ask him, "Maybe for you, you're asking God for a gift tonight. Maybe you've got some health news recently that wasn't very good. And so you're asking God to do something on the health scene for you. Maybe you just have enough to get through the end of the year, and you've got some things coming up in the new year, and you're not sure how you're going to cover them, and there's not enough coming in, and more is going out than it's coming in. So maybe for you, it's a financial request that you're going to talk to God about. Maybe it's a relational request, because being with family is not going to be the way it used to be because of some problems that are there that aren't getting resolved anytime soon. And so I think the truth is that all of us at some point in our lives have asked God for some kind of a gift. And so the question is, "What does God do? What does God give back to us when we ask God for a gift?" Well tonight I want to talk to you about a gift that God has given to all of us. And I want to talk about this gift in a way because I think sometimes this gift is just like that bag that I opened. It's not very well understood. And because of that, we kind of leave it in a distance, say, "I'm not sure it's for me. I don't know if I really need it wanted. It could be helpful to me. But I want to give you a perspective about this gift that maybe you haven't thought about before." Because what Jesus said when he was here, he says, "God loves you so much. This whole world so much that he gave his one and only son, Jesus." And that's what we're celebrating, right? We're celebrating Jesus coming to this earth, God giving his son to mankind. So what makes that gift so unique? What makes that gift so distinctive? What makes that gift so valuable? Some of you, it's very valuable. And this gift you've received in it, it's changed your life and it's altered your life in drastic ways. And you value and treasure this gift and you share this gift with others. For some of you, maybe this year it's a new gift and you just take it and you're just discovering exploring what is this like to have a relationship with Jesus. And maybe for others, you're kind of skeptical about this gift. You're like, "Yeah, that gift's good for my parents or that gift's good for my spouse." I don't really need that gift. I'm good with what I have. Well, I want to talk to you about this gift of a relationship with Jesus. And I want to tell you some things about this gift that maybe will give you something to walk away and think about as you consider this gift. One of the things that's true about this gift is that this gift when you receive it, this gift of a relationship with Jesus gives you a new identity. Anybody want to take a guess on what the fastest growing crime is in our country today? I'm going to take a guess. Identity theft. Identity theft. Guess where it's most rampant? College students, high school students, they don't understand and have in grasp the importance of protecting their identity. And their identity is stolen from what the reality is, is our identity gets stolen from us at all different kinds of ways, doesn't it? Our identity gets stolen from us because people pressure us to do something that we weren't planning to do. Our identity gets taken from us because our parents might label us in a certain way that's not really true of us, but they give us a label and that becomes our identity and it's who we really are is taken from us. So how do you find your identity? Well, most of us try to find our identity and things that aren't going to last. And if you try to find your identity in something that's not going to last, you're going to lose it. If you try to find out your identity and your appearance, I hate to tell you it's going to change. Whether you like it or not. And so if your identity is in your appearance, that might get lost. Maybe your identity is in your job and what you do for a living and the reality is is you can lose that very, very quickly. Maybe your identity is in your accomplishments or achievements or something that you're really good at and that can feed. So where do you get your sense of identity from? Where does that come from that's going to last? Well, Paul said this one of the writers in the New Testament. He said this. He said when you begin a relationship with Jesus, when you choose to follow him, he says this. He says, if anyone is in Christ, they are new. The old is gone. The new has come. There's a new identity that becomes theirs. Not something based on something they did or the way they look or something they've accomplished, but it's based on something that was done for them. And God says when you become a follower of Jesus, when you begin a relationship with Jesus, he says you are accepted by God. No matter what, you are forgiven for all of your sins. You are loved unconditionally. And you are valued beyond measure. So the first thing about this gift of Jesus is this gift gives you a new identity. There's a second thing about this gift. It gives you new power. It gives you a new power. The other night my wife and I were home and our kids were both out with doing other things. And so clicked on Netflix, wanted to watch a Christmas special and we found some cheesy Christmas movie. It was really bad. I mean, he kind of knew what the next three scenes were before they even happened. I don't remember what it was, but it was very, very bad. But I suffered through it. And at the end of it, I was like, I can't go to bed with that. I got to watch something else. So we were flipping through and I was like, oh, gone in 60 seconds with Nicholas Cage, stealing all these cars, hot cars out in Nelvay. That's kind of a good. Let's watch that. So we watched that movie. I hadn't seen it before. At the end, he's got this last car, Eleanor. If you watch the movie, you know what the scene is. He's in that 88 Shelby GT350 or 500. I don't know what it is. It's one of those two. And he's being chased and they're trying to catch him and he flips that switch and the nitrous fills the engine and he takes off and blows everybody away. They didn't know he had that power underneath the hood until he flipped that switch. And it changed everything, changed everything. And Jesus said this when he was here on the earth, he said to his followers, he said, guys, I'm leaving. I'm going, but I'm leaving someone here with you. He said, I'm going to leave you with the spirit of truth. And Paul talks about this in Romans chapter five and he describes it as the Holy Spirit who has been given to you. Jesus said, I'm going to send my spirit to be with you and my spirit is going to come alongside you and offer you comfort. But my spirit is going to give you a power that you will not realize is part of who you are that will give you the capacity to do things. You didn't even imagine possible. Say, what is that, John? It's going to give you the capacity to love people who don't deserve to be loved who deserve to be ignored and rejected and give you the ability to extend love and grace to them. It's a power that's going to give you the capacity to break the chains of sins in your past that have held you in bondage for all of your life to be freed from them for the first time. It's a power that's going to give you the capacity to sit in the sadness and sorrow and the grief and loss of pain that comes with living in a broken world. It's going to give you the power to deal with difficulties from your past and open those doors and clean out those causes and be free from those things forever. This gift of a relationship with Jesus gives you a new power that can transform your life. It not only gives you a new identity, a new power, but it also gives you a new community, a new community. One of the things that you discover when you begin a dating relationship and you eventually get married is you realize that not everybody does everything the way your family does things. That's kind of an eye opener, isn't it? You kind of think your family is normal until you start dating someone and go spend time with their family and then you realize, wow, my family is really weird and dysfunctional, you know, or maybe you think their family is weird and dysfunctional and yours is normal. I don't know which direction you go. One of the places that shows up the most is the way holidays are celebrated. It's always hilarious to my wife and I when we do premiere on a council with couples and we say, now you need to talk about this and you need to discuss. They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll be fine. We'll be fine. And then they show up here at Christmas Eve. They're like, oh my goodness, it's a nightmare. We're about to die, you know. But what happens? What happens? You kind of have this way of doing things and you discover there's another whole way. You know, my family experienced Christmas with eight people in a double wide mobile home with pets and animals. It was like managed chaos to the edge of chaos and beyond. You know, that's kind of what life was like in my house growing up for Christmas. It was just crazy, crazy. And when I first experienced Christmas with my wife's family, it was a very different experience. There was very little craziness in my wife's family experiencing Christmas. You know, there was a time that everyone got up and a time that everyone opened their stockings and a time that everyone had breakfast and the time that everyone started the day long process of opening gifts and then a pause to go to the bathroom for everyone and then a pause to start putting food for the meal for the afternoon and then a pause to get the phone calls from the relatives out on the west coast and then re-engaging the, I mean, it was just, you know, it was very, very different. And, you know, I'll let you imagine whose traditions evolved into our family and they weren't my family's craziness. That wasn't what evolved in our family. But I discovered there was another whole way of living life and experiencing Christmas than what I had ever known, ever known. And a relationship with Jesus, one of the things that happens is you become part of a community. You become a part of this thing called the family of God. Jesus said it this way in John 1 12. He said this to all who received him, to those who believed his name, he gave the right to become God's children. You see, you don't become one of God's children because you show up in a building or a setting like this. You don't become one of God's children because mom and dad go. You don't become one of God's children because someone don't share in some water, sprinkle someone in your head. It doesn't make you one of God's children. It's when you take the step of inviting Jesus into your life and beginning a relationship with him. The Bible says you are part of God's family. And not only are you part of God's family, but here at CCC, what we do is we have what we call small groups, which are smaller communities because there's no way you can know everybody that sits in this room in a meaningful way like you do your own family. And so we have structured our church around groups where people are a part of groups that literally become like your family. And they walk through life with you and they experience the good times and the bad times. They experience you at your best and you at your worst. They're there when life is filled with joy and they're there when life is filled with deep heart wrenching, sobbing sorrow. And they're in it with you and you are not alone. And a relationship with Jesus makes it possible to be a part of that kind of community. One final thing that's part of having a relationship with Jesus and that's a new destiny. That's a new destiny. You know, one of the things that I experienced when I married into my wife's family is that her family vacations every year at the same place up in Maine. And my family never went on vacation. So I didn't know what that experience was like. And so I got to be a part of that experience because I became a part of the family. And some of you have experienced that benefit as well because you became a part of the family. Now you get to experience that, you know, that cabin in the woods or that that house on the beach or that family get away. You get to be a part of something because you're now a part of the family. Paul put it this way. He said the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. You know, the future destiny, the new destiny is that your eternity is guaranteed. One thing that's true for every person in this room is that we're all going to face eternity. Nobody escapes it. Nobody escapes it. We don't think about it very often. I don't think about it very often. I really don't. Until someone I know or love or I'm close to passes away and then I think, wow, that will happen to me one day. But we don't like to think about it. And so we usually don't. But the reality is, is one day this life as we know it will come to an end and we will enter eternity. And the Bible says that if you have a relationship with Jesus, you will have your eternity guaranteed to be with him forever. I don't know about you, but that's not something I want to roll the dice on. That's not something I want to take a chance on. And if the only person who ever lived and came back from the dead said, this is what you have to do, I'm going to take his word for it. And that's Jesus. And that's the second half of John 3 16. The second half of John 3 16 says that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. A new destiny, a new destiny. And so as you think about a relationship with Jesus, as you think about what following Jesus is all about, as you think about that, for some of you, you have experienced these benefits and you know what it's like to have a new identity. And you know what it's like to have a power within you that sometimes you say, I don't know how I'm able to do this. It's only God through me that's doing it. You know what it's like to be a part of a community where people love you and you are known and loved for who you are. You are anticipating a destiny that God has for you. And just like me with this bag that I tell anybody, this is a great bag if you live in the situation I'm in, you share that with others. But maybe you're not sure about this whole Jesus thing and you think it's good for others and you'll come here and someone invites you. But it's not really a destiny. It's not really something that you feel like you need. And I hope tonight you'll reconsider where you're at. You'll reconsider that you don't have a need for Jesus because I want to challenge you to consider that you do. And maybe you've never thought about the value and benefit of that relationship. But I hope tonight you've gotten a glimpse of some of the benefits of having a personal relationship with Jesus. I say, John, I know about Jesus. I know who He is. He came from heaven. He came here to earth. That's why He celebrated Christmas. He grew up. He died in unjust death on the cross. And then I know about that. I know about that. Knowing about something intellectually is different than having a relationship. Very different. Jesus invites you to have a relationship with Him. He puts it this way in the book of Revelation John says, writing down Jesus words. He says, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone opens the door, I will come in and sit down and have a meal with Him and He with me. You see, a relationship with Jesus is not just intellectually knowing about it. It's being willing to say, I'm willing to turn over the keys of my life and say, God, I've been driving this thing called my life and I'm ready to be done. I'm ready to be done. I'm ready to turn it over to you. Slide over and let you take charge for me. And that's what beginning a relationship with Jesus is all about. As Tess and Linda come, they're going to sing a song that just summarizes the Christmas story and talks about the significance of us understanding and grabbing hold of this story. And I hope for some of you tonight, the lights have come on in the clarity about who Jesus is and why He came and what He offers to you has clicked. And so listen to this song as they remind us about that. (gentle music)