Sermon Tone Analysis

The greatest gift

Sermon: “The Greatest Gift” ()

On Christmas we tend to receive the best presents from people who know us the best and love us the most—perhaps a spouse or parent or child.

We sometimes receive funny and odd Christmas presents.

One Christmas I received a nerf gun with foam bullets to fire at the kids around the house.

Almost the perfect gift for any dad trying to get their teenage kids to do stuff around the house right?

I dare say that was one of the more strange presents I have received over the years, and I’m sure if I asked each of you to share some strange gift stories you’d all be able to do so.

On the other hand, one of the best presents I ever received was Ryobi hedge trimmer, which Barb brought me a couple of years back.

I love trimming the trees or getting a straight line on the trees and I think the family know the satisfaction I get from it.

On Christmas we join millions and millions of people around the world who celebrate the Greatest Gift of all from the Greatest Giver of all as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God—as we prayed in the prayer for this night: “Gracious God whose eternal word (term for Jesus) took flesh among us…….”

God knows us the best and loves us the most, and so it makes sense that God has given us the greatest gift of all in Jesus Christ.

And yet as we see the reading from John’s gospel, Jesus, the Greatest Gift from the Greatest Giver, was rejected.

John tells us that Jesus “11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.[1].”

It’s as if the world put the present back under the tree, or wrote “return to sender” on the Christmas card envelope and put it back in the letter box.

Jesus’ life was marked by rejection.

If you know the story of Jesus’ life:

· He was rejected by the inn keeper before he was born, and so he was born in a barn.

· He was rejected as illegitimate growing in up in Nazareth, addressed as “Mary’s son” () by his neighbours instead of the traditional “Son of Joseph.”

· He was rejected by the Jewish religious leaders for teaching grace over law.

· He was betrayed by Judas and rejected by the other disciples who all ran away in his darkest hour.

· He even felt rejected by God himself as he cried from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

For many people Christmas can be painful because of strained relationships in their lives, and more often than not, a sense of rejection is a part of that.

The good news is that God understands that, and that God cares.

And God knew his Gift would be rejected, for in being rejected Jesus fulfilled the prophecy the Holy Spirit spoke through the prophet Isaiah over seven centuries earlier: 3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,

a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.

Like one from whom people hide their faces

he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

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God knew his greatest gift would be rejected, but he gave the gift anyway.

And that is the good news of the gospel—that although the world rejected Jesus, Jesus did not reject us.

In fact,

· Jesus accepted people, people who were often rejected by others.

· Jesus accepted the lepers who lived on the outskirts of town because they had been rejected by society—

· he even touched them and healed them.

· Jesus accepted the Samaritan woman at the well who had a reputation of being “that” kind of woman—

o he even spoke with her and listened to her.

· Jesus accepted sinners and tax collectors who had been rejected by the religious leaders as being unfit to be around—

o he even ate with them and laughed with them.

· Jesus accepted little children who were often treated as chattel or a nuisance—

o he even welcomed them and held them in his arms.

And yet Jesus, the Gift who was rejected, did much more than accept us as we are, he died on the cross to forgive our sins and give us the hope of eternal life.

Jesus came not only to accept us, but to save us.

John Mason Neale’s hymn reflects this in the last verse of that carol:

Good Christian friends, rejoice with heart and soul and voice.

Now you need not fear the grave: Jesus Christ was born to save! Calls you one and calls you all to gain his everlasting hall.

Christ was born to save! Christ was born to save!

And although most people rejected Jesus, John tells us some did not, that some people actually accepted Jesus and received him, as John writes in today’s passage: “12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”

The verb for “receive” here also means to accept, to take home.

In other words, believing/accepting the gospel accounts of Jesus life means we accept Jesus and welcome him into our home, into our hearts.

This is the best way to respond to the Greatest Gift, to accept Jesus and welcome him into our hearts.

That is how we receive the salvation of God.

When we believe the gospel and receive Jesus Christ into our lives not only do we receive forgiveness of our sins and the hope of eternal life, we also receive adoption as God’s children through the Holy Spirit.

This is at the heart of Christmas, as Paul wrote in his Letter to the Galatians:

“4 But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.

6 Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.””

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When we believe this good news and receive Jesus Christ, God adopts us - his children -because he wants to and because he loves us, as John wrote in his first letter:

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!

And that is what we are!

Ultimately, this gift of adoption is rooted in the grace of God—God’s undeserved favour towards us at his expense…….

Grace means

· God loves us all the time,

· that God is on our side,

· that even though we rejected him he accepted us,

· that before we loved him he loved us,

· that while we were still sinners he died for us.

· God is a gracious God, and He loves us because he loves us.

· He gave us the Greatest Gift because he wanted to.

· And he not only welcomes us to himself, he adopts us as his children.

All this is found in the baby born on Christmas Day, God incarnate human divine, Jesus Christ, who came to save us: “Christ was born to save!”

So this Christmas, regardless of whether you’re given great gifts or strange gifts, regardless of whether you feel accepted or rejected by people in your life, the good news is that the birth of Jesus Christ shows us once and for all that God has accepted us, that he loves us all the time and for all time.

God gives us something that no one else can give us, something we cannot even give ourselves, salvation in Jesus Christ.

The label on this present reads “To Us... From God.” God knows us the best and loves us the most—and on Christmas Day God gave us Jesus, the Greatest Gift of all.

Amen.

[1] The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), .