Harrison Faith Church
Christmas Unwrapped - Unwrapping the Sacrifice of Jesus | Pastor Scott Brandon | Dec 1, 2024
[MUSIC] >> Happy December 1st, who's excited? >> [APPLAUSE] >> Okay, it's that time of the year, right? It's that time of the year. Fellas, you know what time of the year it is? You can pull out your pocketbook and wrap those gifts. That's what time of the year it is. How many guys love to wrap gifts? >> [LAUGH] >> Travis, you know, well, it's two right there. I love traditions, I don't know if you guys have traditions or not in your house, but I love some traditions. I'd like to start a new tradition here if you guys don't mind at our church. In fact, if you've not seen it or not, but out in the lobby on this side of the church, we have a Harrison Faith Postcard office. Have you seen that out there before? Have you seen it already? So, simply what it is, is this, we're trying to get into the tradition of giving and exchanging cards. So, when you're out there at Hobby Lobby for the 55th time, right? You know, you know how, I'll say this, if your wife has been out there the 55th time, then go ahead and just buy some Christmas cards and say, you know what? I just need to send some love to some people. So, this is gonna be up all month long and how it works simply as this, you know, whoever, you're sending it to, just put it in the box that corresponds to the last thing, the letter of the last thing. So, we'll start that. But there's something else to, I think it's December, I want to bring a gift to the men this morning. I want to, I've come to emancipate you, I've come to liberate you this morning. It's a good gift and I hope that you take notes and write this down, or maybe you should internalize this and write this upon your heart, okay? Men, go with me to Matthew chapter 2 verse 11, you're going to memorize, you want to know what this is, right? I'm going to do you a favor. You should put a shrine up in your house after this for me, okay? Matthew chapter 2, 11 is the, is the, is the kind of climax here of the whole story, Jesus with the Magi and they come and they bring gifts and it reads like this and going into the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him, then opening the treasures. So they open up, the treasures, they offer him gifts, gold, frankincense, and mer. Now who did this? The wise men, I want you to notice something here, wise men did not wrap gifts. Did you hear what I'm saying this morning? There was nothing here, the theologically we are incorrect to you to, now if you're not a wise man, that's okay, but a wise man does not wrap gifts. We're standing on the word, we follow one book around here people, okay? So I, you know, maybe, maybe you men can't say amen because you already wrapped up. I don't know, but you know, I'm trying to unwrap you today. I know some of y'all when y'all read that because y'all love some wrapping, some of y'all when y'all read that, y'all read it like this, and lo, the wise men bought gifts each covered with seven square cupits of decorative paper. And the paper was adorned from within and without with the image of frosty, a man fashioned of snow. And Joseph purposed in his heart and cast the paper into the barrel of refuse, but Mary sayeth unto him, cease man, release the decorative parchment, for it must be preserved for future generations, Joseph wrote his eyes, and it came to pass that the child was far more interested in the crinkling of the paper than the gold, than the gold, the frankincense and myrrh. That's how y'all read that verse right there. Like, it's in the word, we're supposed to wrap gifts? No, it's not. You know, I love about this time, it's really, we get to look into the gift of Jesus, right? We get to see. I love about this time is because really it's not just Christ, but what He does in us and through us, even people who don't know Jesus, they love this feeling, they love this feeling that Christmas brings about. And I love to talk about it, I love to explain it and help people understand that what you're looking for, that world is fake, but Christ offers us something real. You know what I've seen in over time is that our culture longs to commercialize Christmas. It loves to make it all about the gifts, right? All about the packages. And we want to talk about what's it look like when we talk about Jesus. We want to talk about what does it look like when we unwrap Jesus. But before we do that, I want to just deal with a few things that are trying to creep into our lives that I hope is not crept into yours, but I got to be honest, I've seen it try to creep into my family and even my own personal life. And that is the commercialization of gifts. Gifts used to represent something, but now it's not so much anymore. You see, the world we live in wants us to place quantity over quality, right? That's why you can go to Timu and Sheen and wish and by all that cheap stuff, some of you all just need to come down to the altar right here, right here, right here, right here, right here. Because you all know y'all have spent inheritance and life savings and bonuses and all that stuff on those places. What is it about cheap stuff we like? It's the quantity, right? But that's what the world wants us to do. We tend to find the volume of gifts being greater than the gift itself. Parents, we can't act like it's not us because what parent in here is going to say, "You know what? I'm going to put one gift under the Christmas tree." Now that child needs to know that all I have and all I am is in that one gift, right? If you can do it, if you can afford it, you know you're going to put at least two presents under that tree because honestly we feel this pressure that if we have one gift, we feel like it's what? Not enough. You and I were in this situation of life and honestly that kind of creeps into our own relationship with God sometimes, right? Because we feel like when we're talking with the Lord, it's got to be quantity, right? We got to put minutes and days and we forget about just the quality of it all. The Lord just longs to spend with us. The second thing the world wants to put into our life is the idea that gifts are more important than the giver, right? That's what it wants to put into our lives because it wants us to understand that there is an ideology that we should seek to impress and not seek to express. When we give a giver, we should express the relationship, right? But you and I typically want to impress and the last one is simply this we have to fight off is that expectations are more important than appreciation. Oftentimes we find ourselves wondering if the present we've been wanting and coming our way is finally here. In fact, it's seldom do you hear all you shouldn't have, but you probably find out now it's finally, you know, like, I didn't wave it all year long, you know, but here it is. And so these are the things that we have to take care of because oftentimes what we find is the world wants to teach us this. The world wants to teach us that a gift is a tool for validation and obligation, but we want to get back to what a real gift is. When we see these gifts everywhere, what's our first idea, what's our first understanding about what a gift is, because just because our Western transactional culture wants to take gifts and commercialize it, does not mean that gifts are something we should shy away from. And I don't think you're going to be shy away from gifts anytime soon because as long as McDonald's is handing out free gifts, right, you're still going there. So we want to look at how to reframe our mindset with the idea of gifts. This Christmas, let's return back to the gift that shapes the way we see Christ and each other. Amen. And so over the next several weeks in this month, we want to look at the gift of Jesus unwrapped. When we unwrap the gift of Jesus, what does He show us? We want to look at His sacrifice, we want to look at that today, we want to look at His servitude and His shared gift that defines what true love is and how do we experience that? When you talk to people, I didn't have time to put the study together, but as they did studies on people who were looking at Christmas images, they realized that it was activating parts of the brain that was responsible for joy and peace and happiness and those types of feelings and love, just by looking at the images. That's funny because this person, they may be saved, they may not be saved, who knows? But we know that as they're looking at, there's something being stimulated here. And what we find is that people often talk about what they love about Christmas is the feeling that they get, really what they love is the togetherness, right? It's the intimacy, the closeness, we call that unity. And so funny how that is, imagine that, that unity results in a love for each other. We know that because Jesus said that, John 17, "I am them and you and me that they may become more perfectly one." There's the togetherness so that the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you love me. And so Jesus said that unity reveals the nature of God's love. That's what your neighbor is looking for. They're looking for some kind of a love but they're tying it to packages and boxes and bags and all those things that Dr. Seuss said, those things that are material. And so we want to look at what Jesus helps us understand about what a gift is supposed to be and most importantly what it represents. So when you pray with me this morning, Father in heaven, I pray God you would just show us Lord the gift of Jesus' sacrifice. Man, what an incredible gift. We know God the sacrifice that was upon the cross but Lord there was even more of a sacrifice. God, it ain't just Him coming. Well, the first thing He sacrificed was was leaving heaven and coming down here on earth. And so I pray today that you would open our mind up, God, that we might understand the suffering, we might understand the significance, and we might understand the spirit behind His sacrifice and that it will help us reframe and reinterpret God the meaning of what a gift is. That when we give it and we receive it, God we understand that this is an overflow of a relationship that we have with each other but most importantly from you and we ask that love would abide in us in Jesus' name we pray, amen. And so as we kind of unwrapped the gift of Jesus over the next several weeks, we want to see that His life and that His love cause us to unity and that reflects the very heart of God. The one that Jesus prayed for in John 17 wasn't just an abstract idea, right? It was a gift that He gave us at great personal cost. True unity, the kind that reveals God's love to the world, came through the ultimate act of sacrifice which is Jesus laying down His life. Even though we're going to be in a sermon series called Unwrapped, we're still talking about functioning as one body. We're just changing it up because if we are one body that means our allegiance, our head is Jesus. He is the head of the church and I want you to know that whatever your head does, right? Whatever your head does, the body does. So as we look at Jesus over the next few weeks, we want to say Jesus, what are we supposed to be doing as the body because whatever the head does is what we want to do. We want to be in alignment with Christ. We want to be in alignment not with just His actions but His heart, His sacrifice, all those things matter. If we truly love God, if we truly honor Him, then we will align ourselves with Him and so that brings us to the first layer of this sermon series is the sacrifice of Christ's gift. It wasn't just in His death that Jesus sacrificed, it was actually in His suffering throughout His entire life that we see layers of sacrifice. From His birth in a manger, all the way to the cross, Jesus sacrificed, was marked by humility and servitude and just relentless love. And so look at with me at Philippians chapter 2 verse 5 through 8. One of my favorite verses I love. It says this, "Having this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but He emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant, being born the lightness of men, and being found in a human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross." What I want you to know is that Jesus definitely had a sacrifice from His childhood, from when He was in the womb, from when He was born, to up in the time He was in the inter ministry all the way up into His death. Jesus always dealt with suffering. Do you know how important it is to know that when someone gives you a gift, the sacrifice behind it? Have you ever heard of the story, the gift of the Magi by O Henry, back in the 1900s? It was put in the New York Times, and it's a story about a couple, they were very poor. His name was Jim, her name was Della, and Jim had an incredible gold watch. He loved that gold watch. He showed it to everybody. He was just so proud of it all the time, but his wife Della, she had beautiful hair, long, beautiful hair, and so one Christmas, Della said, "I want to do something for Jim, but we don't really have any finances, so I'm going to go buy him a gold band for his watch because his other one's been beat up and tore up and it's time for it to be revitalized." So she went to the shop, she went to the wig place, and sold her hair, cut her hair off, and sold it for enough money for her to go buy a brand new watch band for her husband, Jim. Now, what she did not know is that Jim loved her, and Jim said, "You don't want to do it for my wife. I'm going to buy her two brand new combs for her hair because she's a beautiful woman, but to do this, I'm going to sell my watch." So he imagined Christmas Day, right, or actually when she comes home, he's like, "What happened to your hair?" But what I want you to see is that even in the story that O'Henry talks about, he says that even though their gifts seemed irrelevant, it was the love expressed to the gift. There's no such thing as a true gift apart from sacrifice. It's sacrifice that makes the gift what it is. If you've ever received a regift, which you probably have, and then you knew about it, you thought, "Oh, that's nice," but you knew that person didn't sacrifice for it. But when you have known about someone who gave something and it cost them much, even if the gift was irrelevant, you still equated value to it. Thankfully, we know that Jesus gave the ultimate sacrifice. That's what it causes his gift to be so superb, but it wasn't irrelevant to our life. It mattered. So what I want to look at this morning is look at the suffering of Jesus. Jesus was subject to uncommon suffering, even in his infancy. We know about the big milestone moments of Jesus suffering, but today I just want to kind of bring you along to his life and just show you the suffering that you and I probably didn't even realize that as a normal man, as a human being, that he encountered along the way. Luke 2.7 says, "And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the end." Now what we don't know, and you've probably not seen, maybe you have read, is that during this time when a woman was to give birth, it was a humongous thing, it was a family celebration. And no doubt, as they came back home, because there was a consensus yesterday, came back to their birth home, where their family was at, to be counted, they came back home and here she is ready to give birth, and she gives birth in an end. Now that was not customary for Jewish culture, because Jewish culture would make a huge celebration out of this. So what we see, just because she was giving birth in an end, was simply this. This was how Jewish culture dealt with premarital sex. For those who became pregnant before marriage, they would shun the child, they would shun the kids, and not celebrate them because it was a form of shame that would be passed on, or a demonstration to show other people that we don't tolerate this type of culture here. We don't tolerate this type of acts. And so Mary and Joseph were shunned and put in an end. And you've probably heard about what the end consists of, but most important what you need to know is that Mary and Joseph, much like most of us, because they were doing God's will, Jesus' life, endured suffering, and those who embraced Him also suffered with Him. There's no celebration for this moment. There's no party, there's no embrace from society. They have been ostracized and rejected, and we find that all throughout Jesus' life. But He wasn't just rejected in the womb of Mary. We find as we read on in verse 13, "Now when they had departed, beholden angel, the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, and said, 'Raj, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you. Your hair is about to search for the child to destroy him. As soon as Jesus was born, suffering moves from being rejected, to being hunted down, to be murdered. And that night was, as Herod sent out his minions, I guess you could say, we could say that hundreds, maybe even thousands of babies died that night. And so Mary and Joseph have been put on this trip of suffrage. Now they have to travel from Bethlehem all the way down to Egypt. It's a very long trip. Some of y'all were complaining about the three-hour drive, maybe you had to drive for Thanksgiving. But can you imagine traveling days after just having delivered a baby? Imagine being a baby traveling days upon days. The suffering never stops with Jesus. There's no breaks, there's no times off. And then can you imagine as Jesus as he gets older, he realizes that maybe thousands of babies died because of him. They were looking for him, and everybody else lost their life because of him. But it just doesn't stop in his infancy or his early years of life. We find that in Jesus' natural life, his first 30 years of his life, his private life, is what we see. We see that he was persecuted as well, or he suffered as well. It says in Mark 63 to make one highlight, it's not just the carpenter, the son of Maryam and brother of James. So what we know about Jesus is that he was a carpenter. And if you don't know much about being a carpenter, especially during this era, what we know is this is that it was a very laborious occupation. They worked hard with wood and with stone. Long days, matter of fact, one of the words that was used to describe a carpenter was exhaustion, complete exhaustion. They would work all day long until completely exhausted. And as he did this, he simply worked just so he could have bread, just so he could put food on the table, which is funny because we see that in Genesis chapter 3 verse 19, it was God who pronounced the judgment upon mankind because of their sin. He says this, "By the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread." Notice that Jesus is there in that moment pronouncing the judgment, and now Jesus has to undertake his own judgment, his own punishment for sin. He has to work to produce bread for his table. And Jesus was not only subject to his own creation, but 30 years as he worked alongside other people who did common work and common laboring, not once did they know he was the king of kings, not once did they know he was the Lord of lords, not once did they know that there was divine glory inside Jesus. And at the same time, Jesus saw their pains, he saw their hurts, he saw their problems, he saw their condition, he knew how to fix it, but he couldn't do nothing because he was just a man during this time period of his life. He had to work as common as a man. Not only was he working in a common sense, but he also was not known in the world but rejected by his own people. John chapter 1 verse 10 through 11 says, "He was in the world and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him." Think about that. Have you ever been over somebody's house you were invited to and nobody really knows you? Can you remember that feeling of just awkwardness of, man, I should probably leave. Can you imagine leaving heaven and coming down to the earth that you created, the people that you created, the people that you breathed life, the breath of life into, and they act like they don't even know you. Don't even acknowledge you. We're not talking about physical afflictions, we're talking about the emotional ones that Jesus had to go through, all because he understood the sacrifice to be worth it one of these days. But he didn't just face suffering as a baby boy or even a man of him privately, obviously we know about the suffering that he paid publicly. Scripture tells us in Matthew 8.20 and Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." Have you ever thought about the idea that Jesus was broke, poor, didn't have anything. Often times he was hungry, often times he was thirsty, often times he was cold. And that feels a bit far from us because we know Jesus to be the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. And somehow when we look back to the Scriptures, we just think, "Well, you know what? He was doing fine. He was okay." No, no, he was not. Jesus understands what the lowly walkthrough. He understands what the poor walkthrough. He understands what those who are lonely walkthrough. He knows what it means to be cold. He knows what it means to be hungry. He knows what it means to be thirsty. And he did those things because he loved you because he wanted to sympathize with you that one day when he was on his throne in heaven and you cry out to him from the disparity of your situation, he would say to you, "I did it, I know I suffered like you." That's why my sacrifice was what it was because I wanted to be able to intercede with you and not just dream up what it might feel like but to truly know how to ask the Father for you because I know what it's like to be poor and broke and cold and thirsty and hungry. In fact, he was so poor that he couldn't even pay the temple tax, which is a tax that every adult over the age, every mill adult over the age of 20 had to pay once a year. He couldn't even pay that, which wasn't much. It was one coin. He had to ask Peter to go and perform a miracle, basically put a coin in a vicious mouth and have Peter go pay for the both of them. He was so poor that it was a man's responsibility to prepare his sepulchre, which is his tomb, his grave. As a man was alive, as he came into adulthood, it was his job to prepare a place for him to lay. And Jesus was so broke that he didn't have a tomb or a sepulchre because Jesus didn't own any land. Can you imagine that? We're talking about the creator of heaven and earth, possessor of all things, right? That by him and through him, all things exist. Everything is held together by the word of his power and he has no land to even bury himself. Jesus was walking in the poverty of mankind's situation. And we know this is as a rabbi. He suffered great hatred and rejection. He was rejected because of the hometown he came from, from Nazareth. They said, "Is anything good come from Nazareth?" They called him a glutton, a drunkard, a friend of sinners, a deceiver of people, a madman, a Samaritan, a person possessed by the devil, a blasphemer. He was thought to be a wizard of one who performed miracles by talking to be as above the devil. They excommunicated him, and anyone with him, they wished he was dead. They sought to murder him, tried to stone him, and push him off a hill. Regardless of where he went, whether it was neighbors or family in the temple or the wilderness, Jesus' life was constantly under suffering, which eventually led to the place where even his own father would turn his back on him and turn his face with him from him as he took upon the sins of the world. So when we look at the gift of Jesus' sacrifice, what we find is that he did all of this, not just for those he endured all that he went through, not just for you and me who believe, but notice who he did it for even beyond. Isaiah 53 says this, "All, all," we like sheep have gone astray, "we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us, all, all of us. Even those who reject his sacrifice, even those who reject his suffering, he still died." 1 John 2 2 says this, "He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world, that even if you never receive Jesus, he still suffered for you. He still sacrificed for you. If you die and go to hell and reject him, you should know his love was just as constant towards you as it was towards those who responded with love of their own." That's the kind of love we're talking about. That's the kind of gift that we're unwrapping today. Church when we unwrap the sacrifice of Jesus' life, his life tells us that even if my suffering is unseen, even if my sacrifice is unvalued, my love remains unrelenting. Even if my suffering is not noticed, you don't see it, or my sacrifice isn't valued. My love does not change. Remember, Church, this is important because whatever the head does, the body does. We can glorify Jesus saying, "Oh, that's wonderful all day long." But the question is, is all we doing that? If we're the body, we should line up, does the love of Jesus compel us, Church, to suffer without being noticed, to sacrifice without being appreciated, and to give without anything in return just as Jesus gave us? Because that's what he's calling us to, and you have that ability in you because the love of Christ is now important to your heart through the Holy Spirit. So now you have the ability to love people that will not respond back to you in love. You have the ability to forgive people that will reject your apology. That is the kind of love that Jesus exemplified as he suffered and he died for us. So the sacrifice of Jesus wasn't just about suffering, thank God. It was also about the significance of it. For what value does a gift have unless it meets the need, right? So there's a significance of his sacrifice. You see, the struggle in man coming to God is not in the acceptance of Jesus, but really it's in the admittance of himself. It's him acknowledging that I'm a sinner and I need Jesus. He has no problem accepting Jesus, being a loving, you know, wonderful, gracious, soft-spoken, fair, complex, but his problem is that he can't admit himself to be who he really is. It's not the embrace of a Savior that stumbles us. It's actually the exposure of our own sin. And without this understanding, we see no need for his gift. So it's important for us to understand the significance of his sacrifice that he realized there's something in you that he needs to address, that he needs to focus on. Scripture will tell us this in Isaiah 5-9-2, but your iniquities, mine iniquities, have made a separation between you and your God and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. Psalms 14, 2-3 says this, "The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt. There is none who does good, not even one." And so Jesus knew the need long before, long before we even expressed to God that we needed him. He knew the need, he understood the significance of his sacrifice because he knew what he was going to fix when he came down here. There was a time church, I don't know about you, that I didn't know I was in need. There was a time that I didn't know I was on my way to hell. There was a time I didn't know I couldn't have peace with God. I didn't know I was living under a curse. I didn't know my life was dysfunctional. I didn't know those things. I didn't know I was lost and dying in need of a savior, but God didn't wait on Scott Brandon to figure it out. Thank God. He found me when I didn't want him. He found me when I rejected him and he just kept on coming. He kept on coming and every time I pushed him away, he just kept on coming because he realized the significance of his sacrifice. He says, "That boy needs a heavenly Father. That boy needs love. That boy needs grace. That boy needs compassion." No matter how many times he rejects me, I'm coming for him because even when he doesn't understand the significance of my sacrifice, I do. Romans 5, 6, 2, 8 gives us one of the greatest views of God's prevenient love. A love that meant a need before it ever existed. He says in verse 6, "For while we were still weak," why Scott Brandon was still weak, unable to call out and leave him, "at the right time Christ died for the ungodly." For almost scarcely died for a righteous person, though perhaps a good person would even dare to die, but God chose his love for us in this, that why you were still unrepentant, still a sinner, still unknowingly acknowledging God, Christ died for you, Christ died for you. Even when you didn't want it, he said, "I'm going to do it anyway." Now, I'm just going to remind you this morning to Christ didn't die just for you, but he also died for that family member that will not accept him. He also died for that neighbor who will reject him. He'll also die for that co-worker who persecutes you, "Christ died for them just like Christ died for you." Even when you and I rejected it and didn't want it, he still came with his gift. So while was his gift so significant, well, because John 3, 16 says, "I was perishing and destined for eternal separation from God." But Jesus sacrificed, met my need for eternal life, and gave me hope beyond death, securing a future with God forever. Because Romans 5, 10 said, "I was an enemy of God, alienated and separated by my sin." But Jesus sacrificed, reconciled me to God, restoring peace, and making communion with Him, possible again. Because Romans 6, 2, 23 says this, "It said I was enslaved to sin, condemned to death as its consequence." But Jesus' sacrifice was significant because it set me free from sin and death. It gave me the promise of eternal life and a new purpose to life to live in righteousness. Because Galatians 4 said, "I was a spiritual orphan, burdened under the law, and estranged from God's family. But Jesus redeemed, Scott branded. He adopted me as a child of God, with the full rights of an heir to His kingdom." Because John 14, 16 says this, "I could not live a life pleasing to God in my own strength, and His sacrifice made it possible for me to receive the Holy Spirit, who empowers me every day and helps me to live in obedience by which I don't have the strength to do all my own and live with intimacy with God." Because Ephesians 1, 7 says this, "That my sin left me in debt and under condemnation, but Jesus' sacrifice redeemed me through His blood and lavished me with forgiveness and grace, erasing my guilt, erasing my guilt." Because Colossians 1, 20 says this, "That my sin created hostility between me and God, but Jesus' sacrifice was significant because it made peace through His blood, His, not my blood. He didn't ask me to pay for that, but His blood, ending the enmity and restoring my relationship with God. And so when we unwrap the significance of the sacrifice of Jesus, His life tells us this, I saw your need before you knew it existed, and I met it with my love. Before you ever ask, before you were ever sick, before you were ever broke, before you were ever lonely, before you were ever terminal, before you were ever those things, He said, "I was waiting for the moment, and I was there in the moment." Oftentimes, we feel like God's not there, but He was always there. Always there. He says, "I met the knee with my love." Church, the significance of His sacrifice isn't in just what He gave, but in what is accomplished. Eternal life, reconciliation, freedom, adoption, empowerment, forgiveness, peace, all those things. The question we have to ask ourselves is this, does His sacrifice compel us? Does it move us to live lives that reflect its worth? If He truly is the head, shouldn't the body respond the same way? If He's living that life, if He's demonstrating His love, then as the body of Christ, should we align with the head? Shouldn't it motivate us to love sacrificially, to live humbly, to serve others with the same unrelenting grace that He's shown to us? And lastly, as we continue to unwrap the gift of Jesus' sacrifice, I want you to look at the spirit behind the sacrifice. Let me just start the end from the beginning. Matter of fact, worship team, you can come on up. Philippians 2, 8 says this, "And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." Jesus' sacrifice was so significant because the spirit in which He made the sacrifice was a spirit of obedience to the Father. You know, you've had those kids, when you ask them to do something, and they'll walk off stomping and upset, you know, and you're like, "Boy, if I've got to come over there and make sure you're doing that, it's going to be something to pay." But Jesus very easily could have said, "Father, why do we have to redeem this creation? Why not we just wipe them out and start anew? Why would I have to leave my place of glory to come down there and to become like them, to inhabit their place of life, to deal with their stress, to deal with their suffering, to deal with the ridicule, to deal with the rejection, to deal with all that persecution? Why would I need to suffer?" But He did because the Father asked Him to do that, and He did that because He loved us. Church, the response to a biblical love, or I would say the response with a biblical love is always obedience to the Father. In fact, we should have a heart of gratitude that helps us to respond. Father, whatever you ask me to do, isn't that what Jesus said? It's not my will, but it's your will. Even when obedience costs everything, Jesus says, "I'll follow," and that's the head of the church speaking. Even when love requires sacrifice, I will freely give. The question I'm asking of myself is, "Scott, does the Spirit of Jesus compel me to live with the same self-is humility and obedience to that Christ model?" And my self-is as Jesus as I, my humble as Jesus, my is relentless in my love towards people that offend me, talk bad about me, persecute me, whether they know it or not. It's my heart unrelenting in love towards them. And if it's not, I know that how in the world can I call him my Lord or my Savior? How can I call him my God if I don't operate in the way that he's prescribed for me? Again, it's not my will, but yours be done. Today, I've asked you to come ready to give before we do that. I just want to ask first and foremost, "Is there anybody in here today?" Now, you say, Pastor Scott, you know, I've heard those things before, but I feel like today is a little bit different. We all, these concepts are not new to most of us. We know the suffering of Christ. I want you to remember. We know the significance of our need. Today, I want you to remember. We know the spirit in which he came and gave his life. I want you to remember. I want you to remember because I want you to remember that you are part of one body. And that if the head is doing those things, the body should do those things as well. But if you don't know those things, if you don't know that Christ suffered the way he did, if you don't know all the things and so much more that he came to give you and restore back to you. And if you don't know the heart in which he gave that says, "Even if you reject him, I do it any way." If you don't know that, but today you feel ready to receive that message. Today, I want to follow Christ. I want to make it my Lord and Savior. At the end of service, we're going to have some people right here and right here. I want you to come up and just say, "Today, I want to receive the gift of Christ today." I want to receive his sacrifice. I want to receive all he did in terms of his suffering. I want to receive the Spirit of God's love into my heart. I want to be made new. Before we get to that, I've asked you to come ready to give today. I've asked no small thing for this church. And I read that poverty and America was at so much percent and about 12 percent. And then I read in Harrison that we were almost 2.9 percent, I guess, even worse than the rest of the nation. I realized that there are people in Harrison that are hungry and starving. And I'll be honest with you, I'm just being clear for a second. I thought for a long time that there was no real need for people around here because there are so many, we have, we've partnered with tremendous local partners here. They do such a great job. They work seven days a week, they've got a full-time staff, and I struggle to think, "Lord, what can we do?" But as I begin to drive around and talk to people, I realize that the Harrison still needs the love of Christ in the most simplest form. So we want to give, I want to feed 300 families, that's half of the population that's below the poverty line in Harrison Arkansas. And if we can do more than great, but that's what I want to do, so today, before we do that, I want to just remind you that before we give, we give sacrificially because that's what our head did. We give with significance, understanding that we see the need, even if somebody else doesn't realize the need they have in their life. But most importantly, Church, what I want you to not miss is the opportunity to give in the right spirit. Because if you're not in the right spirit, then you miss the blessing, you miss the opportunity. Jesus was obedient because of His love for the Father. He sacrificed everything for the love of the Father. As we give, I want you to prepare your heart. I said, "Lord, I don't want to miss this. I'm not given to a church, I'm given to you. I'm not given to people who are in need, I'm given to you." And when I put this offering in the bucket, I want you to see my heart. I want you to know my heart. I want you to know that if I could have been there at any point in your life, God, I'd have been there with the best I could have been to give you whatever I could have. I'd have been there on that night that you were born in the end, I'd have came with gifts. I'd have came with stuff I could have helped you with. But I'm here now. And His Word says, "Whatever you've done to the least of these," matter of fact, says this, "The righteous said, "Lord, when do we see you hungry or feed you?" And Jesus says, "Truly I say to you, as you did to the least of these, you did it to me." So today, what we're gonna do is give, and let me just explain to you some of y'all who have not seen what we're gonna do. We're gonna have a Christmas meal box. That means we're gonna be distributing a Christmas dinner, and hopefully, if we can work with some of our partners to add even more items in there that might be just toiletries or things like that. But the hope is simply this, is to show up with the love of Christ on our face and in our hearts, and to give them and meet a need. They might have a Christmas dinner. So we're gonna get to that right now, and then I'm gonna talk about how we can serve later on. So would you just go ahead, as they're gonna sing, and as they sing, she's gonna come down. But I want you to right now, just begin to get into a place of prayer, and I want you to ask the Lord, "Lord, help me make sure my heart is ready to give. Make sure my spirit is ready to give." Because church, this is an opportunity, if you don't know this, if you've not been taught this, giving is not something superficial. It is an incredible opportunity to give the Lord might see our heart, and there's a reward when we do it rightfully. So would you pray with me, ushers, when you come, Father, in the name of Jesus. We thank you, Lord, for your son, first off, Father, for Christ coming down and suffering to the point of sacrifice where you would turn your face against Him, and the one thing that He would never experience in life would be separated from His Father, Lord, but He was willing to do that because He understood your love for us, for God's soul, love, the people in this room, and He gave His only, only the God and Son. So Father, today, Lord, we honor you in that. Help us, Lord, to understand the gift that was given to us in Christ, and I pray, God, as we give for today, and pray as we place our offering, Father, in these buckets, Lord, I pray first that you multiply, God, we want to do far beyond what we dream, Lord. Lord, I pray most importantly, God, you would see the opportunity, God, by looking into our heart, Lord, and know the heart in which we give. The give is just materialistic things, but Lord, the heart is what you look at, God. It's what you inspect. And I pray today that as you look in Scott Brandon's heart, as you look at every one of our hearts today, you will see a heart of gratitude that says thank you for everything you sacrificed for us and everything you gave to us to be sons and daughters, to have eternal life, to have peace with you, to no longer have shame and guilt, God, there's a heart of gratitude in us, and response in that way, and I pray, God, you have blessed these people as they honor you with their love in Jesus' name, we pray, amen. [MUSIC]