Sermon Dan
Neary
Love
How
is Christmas going… any body panicked?
Our intent with these themes of
Advent is to help you enjoy the season… not inflict you with the season.
Hope, Peace, Joy… and now Love.
This is an important one: God is
Love (1 John 4:8)
So those who want to know more
about God need to know more about Love… and those who want to know more about
Love…
The theme of Love washes all
throughout the Christmas story.
Go
back to the announcement on the angels as recorded in Luke 2:8-14 as they
announced God’s gift.
What the shepherds heard from
the angels was later echoed from the mouth of the Lord himself.
What is that Good News of Great Joy?
We
can go to that familiar verse… John 3:16
So it is fitting that we
celebrate God’s gift by our own gift giving.
God demonstrated His love for us
with this marvelous gift… and we demonstrate our love for one another with our
gift giving.
Gift
Giving – All sorts of ways that we express our love through gift giving:
·
Magnitude
o Bigger
= Better
o Robb
Report
·
Volume
o 12
Days of Christmas
o $18,348
o $72,608
o 8-tons
($300)
·
Thoughtfulness
o Demonstrating
that those who love us know us
o
·
Personal Effort
o Hand
made
o Specialized
·
Practicality
o Enduring
o Constant
Reminder
We can consider all that is
behind a gift and maybe learn something that applies to God’s gift to us.
But
no matter what sort of presents we think about… what we
cherish more than all the presents at this time of the year is presence.
We’re grateful for the gifts at
this time of the year, but we most appreciate the presence of our friends and
families.
Love shows up.
God showed up: Emmanuel.
Everybody
knows that… right? You can get that much by just watching the Peanuts Christmas
special on TV.
And most are content with the
idea… the story that God sent a special baby to
It’s a pretty easy story to
take… God showed us that he loves us by giving us this baby… and we celebrate
it all with Christmas.
We’re grateful for that, but we
know that merely believing in the trappings of the Christmas story doesn’t
really make us a Christian… a follower of Christ. We know that there is so much
more.
We
are grateful for the gift that is explained in John 3:16. This gift from God
that demonstrates His love.
We
can look to 1 John 3:16 to help us embrace the whole story of this gift from
God that demonstrates His love.
1 John 3:16
By this we know love, that he
laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
Christ does the blessing (the
heavy-lifting if you will). He laid down His life.
A Son was born and Savior died;
it could work no other way!
But now He gives us a part in
the plan that follows.
What He demonstrated in His
love, we replicate (in a comparatively small way, of course) in our service to
Him.
Jesus glorified God by spending
His life for us.
We glorify God by spending our
lives for others.
Let’s go on to the passage in
chapter 4 that Paul read earlier.
4:7 Dear
friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who
loves has been born of God and knows God.
4:8 The one
who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Love is evidence that we are His.
4:9 God's
love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His only Son into the world so
that we might live through Him.
Love’s greatest expression is in the gift of His Son.
4:10 Love
consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son
to be the propitiation for our sins.
Love’s greatest work is that He paid for our sins.
2:2 He
Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for
those of the whole world.
4:11 Dear
friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another.
Love’s demand is that we love one another.
4:12 No one
has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is
perfected in us.
Love is displayed by
those who are loved.
- Jesus with skin on him
4:13 This is
how we know that we remain in Him and He in us: He has given to us from His
Spirit.
Love’s deposit is His Holy Spirit.
So what?
There are a
few… first:
Unwrap the Gift… don’t settle for the wrapping…
or even the package
Our
engagement with this celebration of Christmas must penetrate beyond the
surface. We can’t settle for just knowing about the story… we need to
experience the story. More than just observing the story… we must experience
the story.
It is so easy
at this time of the year to settle for the wrapping… you know the trappings of
it all… the carols and bells and tinsel and lights and presents.
Under our
tree is a gift I bought Laurie, just last week.
- It is wrapped the way I received it from the store
- She may think she knows what is inside (I did good)
- But she won’t really know, and won’t be able to
enjoy the gift, until she unwraps it Christmas morning
Enjoy the
wrapping… but don’t just stop there.
It is even easy to settle merely for the gift of the baby
Jesus at Christmas.
Such a great
gift!
But it wasn’t
His birth that saved us.
It wasn’t His
Advent… His coming to that stable that made it possible for us to enjoy
eternity with Him in heaven.
It wasn’t the
manger… it was the cross.
And that is
not all… Jesus was not only born as God’s gift of love to us… not only died to
pay the penalty for our sin… he rose from the dead conquering death and we
will, likewise, live forever. But that isn’t the end of the fully-unwrapped
gift either. Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit, God in us and through us,
would be with us.
Unwrap the
whole gift.
Advent isn’t
just first, or even second… but continual.
The second so-what
is Re-gift!
You all know
what I mean, especially at this time of the year.
There are
some gifts that you receive that you’re really not quite sure how to enjoy.
So you
scheme, and decide that there is somebody else that would enjoy it.
So you
re-gift.
Re-gifting
stories… re-gifting parties.
We all need
to be about the business of re-gifting Jesus!
That may
sound just a bit cheap… it isn’t the same.
When I give
away an unwanted gift, I don’t have it anymore.
When I “give
away” Jesus, I don’t have any less of Jesus.
In some ways
it seems like I have more.
We have so
much.
Materially?
Sure, look around the world.
Spiritually?
How much more.
We have been given the greatest gift,
God’s love in Jesus.
Now it is
given to us to express this gift by loving others.
- It is loves demand.
- It is the way a broken world will see God’s love
- It is enabled by the gift
of the enduring Holy Spirit.
God with us, in us, and thru us
I will tell
you this morning that when I think of how much He gave out of His great love… I
realize how very little I give.
There is more that I can do to demonstrate
God’s love.
So for family members who will test our patience this
season: Love one another.
For the
friends who are inconsiderate: Love one another.
For the
co-workers who take much more than they give: Love one another.
Experience
the God’s gift of love… unwrap the gift!
May you not
only experience God’s gift of Love this Christmas.
May you
express God’s gift of Love through your life.
Let us pray.