The Christmas Gift

OPENING SCRIPTURES:

Micah 5:2 (ESV) — 2 But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, too small to be among the clans of Judah, from you one will go out for me, to be ruler in Israel; and his origins are from of old, from ancient days.

Matthew 1:18–2:6 (ESV) — 18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ occurred in this way. His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit. 19 So Joseph her husband, being righteous and not wanting to disgrace her, intended to divorce her secretly. 20 But as he was considering these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for what has been conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 And she will give birth to a son, and you will call his name ‘Jesus,’ because he will save his people from their sins.” 22 Now all this happened in order that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet would be fulfilled, saying, 23 “Behold, the virgin will become pregnant and will give birth to a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.” 24 And Joseph, when he woke up from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and he took his wife 25 and did not have sexual relations with her until she gave birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus. 1 Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, 2 saying, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star at its rising and have come to worship him.” 3 And when King Herod heard it, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him, 4 and after calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired from them where the Christ was to be born. 5 So they said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet, 6 ‘And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for from you will go out a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’ ”

The Greatest Gift

The Greatest gift that God Has for every human being is not of a kind that comes readily to the fore of the human mind when petitioning God for a great blessing, such as, a good wife or a good husband, children, success in your chosen career, healing from physical or mental illness, it is not taken from the very best that this world can offer, for his greatest gift is not of this world, if it were of this world then the world and humanity could rightly claim credit for it. No, God’s greatest gift is not made of anything that the earth possesses, for this gift is to be found only in the Heavenly Holy of Holies, even in Heaven it is the rarest thing. All other gifts from God pale in comparison to this One.

During This Christmas Season of 2020

Last year, the Christmas holiday retail sales surpassed the trillion-dollar mark (yes, that's 12 zeros!), with U.S. households spending an average of $1,536 during the season.

Individuals will go to the extreme to give the best gifts to their loved ones, even if they cannot afford to (22% of Americans go into debt over the Christmas season).

It is sometimes like a Gift-Buying Frenzy, totally out of control.

So much effort for so much stuff that will lose its shine and value over a short period of time, and then its back to life as we know it.

We will go to the best stores for the best gift, foolishly believing that, with such a gift, we will enrich the quality of life for our loved ones. And perhaps we do bring joy, a smile, for a week, or a month, but soon the joy and the smile fade and is replaced with what was before and now is again, for things, no matter how expensive, do not have the potential to satisfy the human soul. The kind of gift that will satisfy the human soul cannot be purchased with any amount of money.

This Gift Can Only be Freely Given

This soul-satisfying gift comes in a way that turns our program of gift-giving on its head; makes no sense at all to the human mind

Instead of choosing the greatest and most prominent city to introduce the “King of kings” and “Lord of lords” to the world, God chooses an insignificant little village with a population of about two hundred to five hundred people, too small to be numbered among the clans of Judah, a place where no one would ever think to find such a priceless treasure.

And we might think that God would choose the most prominent, wealthiest family for his precious Son to be born into, one in which the baby Jesus would be well taken care of, but on the contrary, he chooses a poor, lowly family, the head of which would be a poor carpenter whose name was Joseph, for the woman whose womb would be the entrance from which Jesus, the Son of God, would become human and be born into the world of man, he chose Mary, a young, insignificant girl. This was not the kind of family where one would expect to find a king.

The hometown of this family would be the village of Nazareth, a place whose reputation was dubious, for we find that when the Apostle Philip went and found Nathanael to inform him that they had found the Messiah, Nathaniel's first response was “can anything good come out of Nazareth”?

But God does not think like man, nor are our ways his ways. For God is not a man, and his thoughts and ways are so superior to ours that, because we cannot understand them, we think them foolish. But when God does reveal his ways and thoughts to us, we see that it is we who stand in the corner wearing the fool’s cap.

This way in which God goes about giving us The Greatest Gift should tell us one thing, that we are looking in all the wrong places for something that will satisfy the very soul of men and women, something that will never fade or lose it’s shine, something that will change the lives of those who receive it, something that will never grow old or outdated, but will continue to increase from glory to glory; that gift is the gift of “abundant life” in his Son Jesus Christ.

This, we as Christians would say, is The Greatest Christmas of all.

If this really is the very best Christmas Gift (from God) why are we, above all others on this planet, still looking in all the wrong places for the best gift to give?

This, the greatest of all gifts, has been entrusted to each one of us to give to everyone, at every opportunity, on any given day, because for true Christians, every day is Christmas.

You may feel that you are insignificant, the least and the poorest in your family, but God has chosen you to carry his very best Gift to everyone you know, and to those you have yet to encounter.

Why would you not pass it on, especially to your loved ones?

Is Christ in YOUR Christmas?

ALTAR CALL

Benediction