Love Walks in

What do you do when you come into contact with extravagant love?

An author by the name of Paige Clayton was writing about love and she wrote this about her father:

“My father loves my mother very much, and he expressed his love by surprising her with sweet gifts. He died more than 20 years ago after a long battle with an unnamed degenerative neurological disease that slowly stole him away from us. The disease robbed him of his fine motor skills, his speech, and much more.

When his speech was all but gone, he was still able to play some golf, which is one of his greatest joys on earth. One day, when mom picked him up from the golf course, my father looked very disheveled and more tired than usual. It took a long time of talking to him and the people he was with the golf club to realize that he hadn’t played golf at all that day. Instead, he walked, shuffling a lot of the way, the 2 miles to and from the nearby more to try and buy my mother a piece of jewelry for her birthday. Because his speech was virtually gone, he was unable to purchase what he wanted for her, so the surprise was ruined.

My mom didn’t get a new piece of jewelry for her birthday that year, but the knowledge of the active life, which came at a great cost my father’s physical strength, was more precious than anything he could’ve bought her. When so much else is being stripped away from him, he loves my mom remained and compelled him.”

Stories like this are moving. They are compelling…They are extravagant.....

And there is something about stories like this that reveal the love of the father.

We intrinsically know that the love of God is a limitless love that is an unmerited grace.

Its a love that we do not come close to deserving but He gives anyways...

And here is the deal

We best understand love through actions.

Saying, “I love you” is big..its nice…But there is nothing that can communicate this more than the grand gesture!

And this is what God did for us.

He stepped out of his privileged place in heaven to be with us. To love us! To die for us.

I want you to hear the way Jesus’ friend John says it, in 1 John 3:16-18

The New International Version Chapter 3

16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

Did you get what John says here? Because Jesus acted, we should act!

Because Jesus laid down his life for us we should lay down our lives for others.

Now we take this figuratively, but when John was saying this, it was a literal thing.

People were being killed for being Christians so John was saying, this is what being a christian is. Jesus died for us, you ought to die for others

And if you don’t live in a place where that is required of you. If you have more than you need, give what is extra away!

Love is action!

God stepped into the human condition. He became one with the human condition, and He died for all of us.

Love is not passive but it is a huge action

And we know this…you hear this every week. God didn’t just come for people who had it all together. One of my favorite things that Jesus says to the pharisees is, I tell you the truth, The prostitutes are entering the kingdom of heaven ahead of you!

Jesus came for those who don’t have it together.

We have to understand that By God taking on Flesh, this was not just words, this was not just an empty gesture, this was love in action, in a way that humanity has never seen it before.

I want to read you some of Isaiah 1

This shows what God thinks of the people he will redeem. We have to understand the book of Isaiah to be a book calling Israel to repent, but also telling them what it will be like when God is right there with them.

The New International Version Chapter 1

10 Hear the word of the LORD,

you rulers of Sodom;

listen to the instruction of our God,

you people of Gomorrah!

11 “The multitude of your sacrifices—

what are they to me?” says the LORD.

“I have more than enough of burnt offerings,

of rams and the fat of fattened animals;

I have no pleasure

in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.

12 When you come to appear before me,

who has asked this of you,

this trampling of my courts?

13 Stop bringing meaningless offerings!

Your incense is detestable to me.

New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—

I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.

14 Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals

I hate with all my being.

They have become a burden to me;

I am weary of bearing them.

15 When you spread out your hands in prayer,

I hide my eyes from you;

even when you offer many prayers,

I am not listening.

Your hands are full of blood!

16 Wash and make yourselves clean.

Take your evil deeds out of my sight;

stop doing wrong.

17 Learn to do right; seek justice.

Defend the oppressed. r

Take up the cause of the fatherless;

plead the case of the widow.

18 “Come now, let us settle the matter,”

says the LORD.

“Though your sins are like scarlet,

they shall be as white as snow;

though they are red as crimson,

they shall be like wool.

I mean God here is like…Your hypocritical life style has got to stop!

I mean the way you do church…I don’t want any part of it!

But the only way for this to end is if God himself steps in

And this is where Jesus steps into human guilt.

This is where when Jesus came, although he was perfect, he did not exonerate himself, yet took on our own guilt so that we could become made new.

See Even though God does not like our sin, he loves us as we are, because a love that leaves people alone in their sin is not really love at all.

Jesus’ love is action.

His incarnation, his becoming flesh, is the ultimate action of love because he steps into our guilty lives and he takes the guilt on himself. He becomes guilty for our sake and he makes us pure as snow!

This is more than a crippled father walking two miles to buy jewelry for his wife. This is a god who stepped out of heaven and into our sin and guilt to bring us back to him.

This is a divine rescue mission

In Jesus’ Birth announcement, this is what the angel says to Joseph

The New International Version Chapter 1

20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, t because he will save his people from their sins.”

And I want you to get something…We as a people are usually blind to our own sin.

I want you to understand what an offensive thing this was…When It says, I want you to name him Jesus because he will save people from “their sins”

Jesus’ people were an oppressed people. People who were under oppression usually will talk about the sins of their oppressors...

Let me give you a perfect example. If you read any of Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu’s work, He talk s about freedom for South Africa under the Yoke of Apartheid.

When Apartheid was happening, he talked about it as an elephant sitting on a mouse....The black population of south Africa was that mouse who was being crushed by the elephant…

Ancient Israelites would have felt the same way as south Africans under Apartheid! And God didn't say…I am coming to make the Romans pay for their sin…He said…He will save his people from their sin!

The sin that Isaiah talked about

The sin that caused such a seperation in worship between man and God...

And the only way that this could be solved is through a love that is self giving…A love that gives of itself until it hurts

But see Jesus didnt come to just deal with the sin of the oppressor but the oppressed too!

I think we view the world sometimes through the lens of the oppressed and the oppressor. We like to point out the sin of the oppressor which masks us from looking deeply at our own...

But the Christmas Story is not that Jesus came same to make bad people better

It is that he has come to my guilty life

to my sin

to the evil that is prevalent within me

And he has died so that that would die within me as well

1 John 4:11-12 says

The New International Version Chapter 4

11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

John makes it so simple…God loved us…We show this love by loving one another

Actions:

The first and best way that you can live in this love…Like the apostle John says is Forgiveness

Forgiveness is an action

Because God sent his son and forgave you, who is it that you need to forgive

In light of COVID this year

Maybe an act of love is not doing as much gathering in person

Maybe an act of love is doing the grocery shopping for those in need

Maybe it is giving to someone in need.

This christmas, Jesus wants you to spread his love to the world.

God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas Day Two: Taking on Guilt

Lord Jesus, come yourself, and dwell with us, be human as we are, and overcome what overwhelms us. Come into the midst of my evil, come close to my unfaithfulness. Share my sin, which I hate and which I cannot leave. Be my brother, Thou Holy God. Be my brother in the kingdom of evil and suffering and death.