Because of Christmas: We Know God Loves Us

Because of Christmas: We Know God Loves Us December 24, 2017 Romans 5:8, John 3:16, 1 John 3:1 1 st John 3:1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Romans 5:8 God demonstrates His love for us in this. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. All 5 of our grandkids have used our old tried but true pack-n-play. When Avery and Henry were born I looked on the internet and thought that maybe they something better a REAL CRIB. So I asked Mr. Google for some help and I found some amazing options. This first one is what I call The Craft Country Crib. Isn t it cool? I have never seen a Train Crib like this. The second one I found interested me because Avery and Henry were born so close together, we even have called them twin cousins. This third crib is more of a toddler BED but I still think it is awesome sort of a WAGON TRAIN kind of deal. It would be perfect for Henry, he is a little John Wayne-esk! And then this last crib/fairytale carriage would be perfect for my Avery princess. These are all amazing cribs but the bad news is I discovered they are very expensive. They cost thousands of dollars much more than a full-sized ADULT bed. In fact, most of the time when I looked for the price the catalogue said, Call for a price quote. which means, If you have to ask you can t afford it. In any case, the high price of 1

these cool cribs led me to keep my crib shopping to myself, Henry and Avery have done just fine in the good ole pack n play! On this fourth Sunday of advent I want us to focus on a more important baby bed I want us to look at the crib where the newborn baby Jesus was first laid that first Christmas night. And of course, it wasn t anything even remotely close to these baby beds I ve shown you. No Jesus first bed was a simple manger. In most Christmas pageants we make the manger look nice and cozy we fix it so it looks like a wooden cradle of sorts overflowing with warm dry, clean straw. But that s not at all what it was REALLY like. No wood was too precious in Israel for use in a stable. The manger Jesus was laid in was made of cold stone like this one. This was NOT a customary place to put a baby back then. I say that because the way the angels told the shepherds how they could spot the messiah was to look for a baby lying in an odd place a manger. Think of it. The Son of God was laid not in the first century version of a crib not even in a warm straw-filled wooden cradle. No, the newborn baby Jesus was laid in a cold, stone feeding trough that was no doubt full of fodder made soggy by the saliva of cows or sheep. I mean, it would be much like our laying a newborn in a gutter. Now think about that for a moment because there s a message here. This manger deal wasn t accidental. Nothing about God s plan is. Jesus was laid in that cold stone manger to underscore how very much God loves us. It s another indication of the lengths He would go in order to save us. from our sin. 2

Lucado writes, The story of Christmas is the story of God s relentless love for us. You can question His actions, decisions, or declarations. But you can never, ever question His stunning, unquenchable affection. Christmas proves there is no place God will not go. If He is willing to be born in a barnyard, then expect Him to be at work anywhere bars, bedrooms, boardrooms, and brothels. No place is too common. No person is too hardened. No distance is too far. There is no person He cannot reach. There is no limit to His love. So because of Christmas when a man or woman or boy or girl admits the fact that they are sinners and confesses their belief that Jesus did indeed die in their place God can and will forgive them of their sin. As 1 st John 1:9 says, He is faithful and just to forgive them of their sins and to cleanse them from all unrighteousness. But the best part of it all is that because of Christmas God can and will come into their hearts into their lives. In that allimportant decision, a person becomes the manger where God resides. As Paul described it, it is CHRIST IN YOU the hope of glory. Of course that caliber of love is hard for us to grasp. God s love is in a different league altogether. It s one way that, as God puts it in Isaiah 55:8, My thoughts are not your thoughts and My ways are not your ways. God s love is hard for us to wrap our heads around. It s like me trying to understand particle physics. We need help to even begin to understand the LOVE of God. Paul hints at this when he wrote to the Ephesians, I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord s holy people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to 3

know this love that surpasses knowledge. Well, this morning I d like to try us to prepare ourselves for Christmas conversations with people who don t know Jesus by helping them begin to GRASP the love of God. I want to do this by giving you four basic statements. Commit them to memory. I ll be praying God gives you opportunities to use them. Here s the first thing you can tell someone who is trying to understand God s great love a love that surpasses knowledge: First, God has ALWAYS loved you and He ALWAYS will. In other words, God s love is ETERNAL.As Tozer puts it, Since God is self-existent, His love had no beginning; because He is eternal, His love can have no end; because He is infinite, it has no limit. God has ALWAYS loved us. In fact, LOVE is why God created us in the first place! Even at the dawn of our time, His limitless love prompted Him to plan for our redemption by sending His only Son to earth for the purpose of dying for our sins. Think of it this way. God has been loving YOU since before the dawn of time. And that leads me to mention a second thing we must remember to share about God s love. We must tell our friends and neighbors and co-workers: Secondly, God loves YOU. Did you get my emphasis? God s love is PERSONAL! When God sent His Son into the world when He gave us Jesus -He had you and me as individuals in mind. Do you remember what the angel said to the shepherds that night? In Luke 2:11 he proclaimed, Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to YOU! The glorious 4

news of Christmas is that, like that angel said, Jesus came for YOU and YOU and YOU and YOU and ME! God s indescribable Christmas Gift was given with every individual in all of creation in mind. Paul understood this. As he said in Galatians 2:20, The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved ME and gave Himself for ME. And every person can say these words just as confidently as Paul did! I have always loved these words, If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If He had a wallet, your photo would be in it. He sends you flowers every Spring, and a sunrise every morning. Whenever you want to talk, He ll listen. He can live anywhere in the universe and He chose your heart. And the Christmas gift He sent you in Bethlehem? Face it friend, He s crazy about you! I know it sounds a bit irreverent but the Bible teaches that God IS crazy about each of us that He focuses on each of us. As a grandfather crazy about his grandkids, I get it. But, God is INFINTELY more crazy about EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU. That s why He gave us the gift of His only Son that first Christmas night, He did so with each of us in mind. God s love is a PERSONAL love a love that seeks each of us. The basic fact I m trying to convey is the humbling profound truth that God almighty loves You. Here s a third sentence to commit to memory and I ve borrowed it from Philip Yancey. You ve heard it many times before. There s nothing you can do to make God love you any MORE and there s nothing you can do to make Him love you any LESS. In other words, God s love is a truly UNCONDITIONAL love. God loves all people equally not just the good or the obedient He loves even the bad and the disobedient. He doesn t love what they do but He loves them just 5

as much as He loves anyone else. And He loves like this because the source of His love is in Himself, not in the object of His love. You and I don t provoke, trick, convince, earn, or win God s love. He doesn t love us because of who we are but rather because of Who He is. His nature and character compel Him to express complete, unconditional love toward each and every one of us. Back in the 1960 s the BBC made a television series about Jesus called The Son of Man and in it, they pictured Jesus vastly different than any film I ve ever seen. He s earthy, disheveled -even somewhat pot-bellied. It s kind of shocking to watch and it s definitely not my favorite image of Jesus. But, I remember seeing a clip of this film in a video study of Yancey s book, What s So Amazing About Grace a clip that really spoke to me. In this particular scene, Roman soldiers descend on a Jewish village, sacking, burning, beating, and killing. Women shriek. Men lie in pools of spilled blood. And shortly after the Romans leave Jesus arrives. He sees the survivors standing around weeping, cursing, and nursing wounds. Houses smolder in the background. Jesus looks at all this and then He begins to speak, saying, You have hard it said, Hate your enemy. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Well, the people love this. They howl, Yes! Yes! Find those Romans! Gouge their eyes out! Break their teeth! Then Jesus looks around, and says, You have heard THIS but I tell you, LOVE your enemy! No! they shout. Yes! Jesus shouts right back at them. Love him, and if he strikes you on the cheek, give him the other to strike also. In response, they almost lynch Jesus for His outrageous grace. Well, I like this scene because it brings into clearer focus that this is exactly how God loves us. 6

How many of you know the name Ted Kaczynski? Right, he was also known as the Unabomber. If you know anything about Kaczynski s story, you know that he grew up a very gifted young man. He became a math professor, but was soon disillusioned and moved to the mountains of Montana. He would sometimes come down from the mountains to send mail bombs to people he didn t like. After years of investigation, he was finally discovered by police and sent to prison. A while ago, his mother, Wanda Kaczynski, was interviewed by a reporter with the Chicago Tribune. She made some statements that I thought were powerful. At the time that the article was written, she had been writing monthly letters to her son in prison. She shared with the reporter what she had written in her most recent letter. She wrote: I want you to know, Ted, that when a child is born, the parents give them the gift of unconditional love for a lifetime. This is true of you. No matter what happens, my love for you will be there for a lifetime. Love, Mother. Even after he had refused to look at her when he entered the courtroom during his trial, even after he had given testimony in court that described her as a horrible person she still loved him enough to write those monthly letters. We look at that as a rather amazing act of human love the love of a mother for her son but at Christmas we are reminded that God has done something even more incredible than that. While we were still sinners while were still in fullout rebellion against Him He sent His son to die for us. As 1 st John 4:10 says, This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 7

Here s a fourth fact to remember it will help you explain GOD S unconditional love. God s love is ALL-ENCOMPASSING. As John 3:16 says, God so loved the WORLD - ALL of it! And aren t you glad it s worded that way? As Lucado points out, aren t you glad John 3:16 doesn t say, For God so loved the rich or For God so loved the famous or For God so loved the thin Or For God so loved 62-year-old men who still have a lot of their hair? It doesn t say that does it! Nor does it say For God so loved the Europeans or Africans or The sober or successful or the young or the old. No, it says that God so loved the WORLD and everyone in it. That s how big, how all-encompassing the love of God is. Think of it this way: if your best love would fill a tiny vial, God s would fill the oceans on a billion, billion, billion planets. In fact, that s another way to put it. You could say, GOD S LOVE IS BIG because it is. In fact it is so big it can t be measured. As we read earlier it SURPASSES KNOWLEDGE SURPASSES MEASURE. This week I came across an article about the HIGHEST and the LOWEST spots in the universe. The HIGHEST would be the galaxy that is the farthest away. It was discovered by spectroscopy and is referred to as: z8_gnd_5296.6. Now that s not an old AOL screen name. It s a galaxy that is 13.8 billion light-years old, or 13.8 billion light-years away. Spatially speaking, it s the highest height. The deepest depth is the Challenger Deep, part of a trench 6.85 miles beneath the U.S. Territorial Island of Guam. Well, that gives us a picture of how BIG God s love is. It goes from the zero gravity of space 13.8 billion light years away to the 1,000-times atmospheric pressure of the deep seas and beyond that. But you don t have to remember all that you just 8

have to remember that God s love is BIG big enough to encompass everyone including YOU. One more statement and I m done. God s love can be SEEN. I mean, God s love is far more than an immeasurable emotion or inclination. It s more than an aspect of His holy character. God s love is visible. You can see clear evidence of it. 1 st John 3:16 puts it this way, This is how we know what [God s] love is. [We can see it in the fact that] Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. Referring to His coming sacrifice on the cross, in John 13:1 Jesus said, Having loved His own who were in the world, He now SHOWED them the full extent of His love. Above all things, Christmas the Christ story, Jesus birth, life, sacrificial death, and victorious resurrection -shows us the love of God. T A year ago this week I went to see the new film produced by Mel Gibson Hacksaw Ridge. I must warn you it is not a film for children because it very accurately portrays the violence of war. But it is a powerful TRUE story. It s about Pfc. Desmond T. Doss, who won the Congressional Medal of Honor despite refusing to bear arms during WWII on religious grounds. He s the only conscientious objector to do so. Doss, a Christian who wouldn t touch a weapon or work on the Sabbath, enlisted in the Army as a combat medic because he believed in the cause, but had vowed not to kill. Well, the Army wanted nothing to do with him. His fellow soldiers considered him a pest, questioned his sincerity, and threw shoes at him while he prayed. Doss commanding officer, Capt. Jack Glover, tried to get him transferred. In a 9

documentary based on Doss life, Glover says Doss told him, Don t ever doubt my courage because I will be right by your side saving life while you take life. At Okinawa in the spring of 1945, Doss company faced a grueling task: Climb a steep, jagged cliff sometimes called Hacksaw Ridge to a plateau where thousands of heavily armed Japanese soldiers were waiting for them. The terrain was treacherous. After his company faced a heavy counter attack they retreated back down the cliff but Doss stayed. Under a barrage of gunfire and explosions, he crawled on the ground from wounded soldier to wounded soldier. He dragged severely injured men to the edge of the ridge, tied a rope around their bodies and lowered them down to other medics below. The most powerful part of the movie was when, after lowering each wounded man to safety, Doss would say: Lord, please help me get one more. Veteran Carl Bentley, who was also at Hacksaw Ridge, once said, It s as if God had his hand on [Doss ] shoulder. It s the only explanation I can give. Well, over a 12-hour period God answered that prayer over SEVENTY-FIVE TIMES. He even saved his captain, Jack Glover. Doss even lowered a couple wounded Japanese soldiers to safety. The same soldiers who had shamed him now praised him. Glover said, He was one of the bravest persons alive. And then to have him end up saving my life was the irony of the whole thing. In fact, the next day, the company refused to go back up Hacksaw Ridge until DOSS finished praying. They won the battle that day but Doss was severely wounded and sent home. 10

Well, in the same way DOSS fellow soldiers could SEE his faith SEE his bravery we need only look at the CHRISTMAS STORY to SEE God s great love. In Jesus God came to save us. In essence He crawled up a HACKSAW ridge to rescue each us. Lucado writes, In Jesus God became one of us so we could become one with Him. He did away with every barrier, fence, sin, bent, debt, and grave. Anything that might keep us from Him was demolished. He only awaits our word to walk through the door. One request from you, and God will do again what He did that first Christmas: scatter the night with everlasting light. He ll be born in you. Listen as God whispers, No mess turns me back; no smell turns me off. Every heart can be a manger. Every day can be a Christmas. 11