Christmas 2020: Love

Welcome to our Christmas Eve Service!

This is a special service each year, when we celebrate Christ’s coming to Earth.

This year, we are going to have some of our members reading through the Biblical accounts of the events leading up to, including, and following the first Christmas, when Christ was born.

Interspersed with the scripture readings, Pastor Micah will lead us in worship with songs about that first Christmas, and we will have special music by Becky and Autumn Linskey.

As a special way to remember this event, we will have Phyllis Rennie painting a nativity scene while we worship.

Thank you for joining us, as we celebrate Christmas this special evening!

What’s so special about Christmas?

What makes this evening so special, that we would celebrate it so?

Many people love Christmas for the family celebrations and the presents. Others love it for the Christmas meals! Then, there are the presents. Still others love all of the cookies and the special treats. And of course, there are the presents!

Who doesn’t like the presents? Who doesn’t like to give presents?

We love giving presents to our family and friends, don’t we? We want to show them that we love them, that we care and want to bring them joy.

However, what is so special about Christmas that we celebrate this way? Why is giving presents such a part of this celebration?

I believe that giving gifts is a reminder, a reflection of that first Christmas. That first Christmas was God giving us a very special gift. It was a gift giving completely different then our gift giving. It was a gift to bring Hope. It was a gift to bring Peace. It was a gift to bring Joy. It was a gift to bring Light. It was truly a gift of love.

God’s giving was different than our giving

Did you catch what I said? It was different than our gift giving. And, it was truly a gift of love.

Well, if it was a gift of love, how was that different than our gifts that we give at Christmas? Aren’t our gifts, gifts of love? I mean, when we give gifts at Christmas, to whom do we give gifts? We give gifts to people we love. To people we with whom we have a relationship. Sometimes, like with our giving tree, we give gifts to people we do not know personally, but to whom we want to show love.

But how many of us give gifts to people that we do not like? How many of us would give a gift to someone that we believe is completely unworthy of a gift? How many of us would give a gift to an enemy, to someone who opposes us and does all they can against us?

Most of us would not. I dare say, that most people in the world would not give a gift to someone they feel is completely unworthy, or that is hateful, unless they were forced to do so.

But God’s gift that first Christmas, was completely different.

God’s gift was to the unworthy; to His enemies

God’s giving was different than our own, because God gave a gift out of love to people who were completely unworthy, and who were truly his enemies.

Let’s consider this and fully understand God’s gift of love at that first Christmas.

God created mankind in His image. He created us to be Holy and Righteous like Him. He created us with minds to know and understand Him. He created us with emotions to feel His love and to in turn love Him. He created us to be in a relationship with Him.

However, instead of being Holy and Righteous, instead of receiving His love and loving Him, instead of receiving His direction and wisdom, ever since the first man and woman, we have all gone our own way, wanting to be our own boss, our own ‘god’ if you will. Instead of following His loving direction, we go our own way, and do things which He says are wrong.

We all lie. We all steal. We are all envious. We all have hateful thoughts and actions making us murderers. We all have impure thoughts. We all act selfishly at times instead of loving and considering others. In these, and many other ways, we go against all that God says.

We are unholy and unrighteous. We do not love God. We love ourselves.

This is what the Bible calls sin, or missing the mark of God’s standard of Holiness and Righteousness.

Romans 3:23 NIV

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Instead of acting as His loving creation, we act like, and are by our actions, His enemies.

Colossians 1:21 NIV

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.

Our evil behavior made us His enemies, and completely unworthy of His love.

And yet, God loved us.

John 3:16 NIV

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

When it says “For God so loved the world,” it means “In this same way God loved the world.” Why does it say that. It is follows from verse 14.

John 3:14–15 NIV

Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

Jesus was refering back to the people of Israel. After God demonstrated His love and power by delivering them from slavery in Egypt, after showing them love by destroying their enemies, after showing them love by providing water for them where there was not water, after showing love by providing food for them daily, where there was no food, after showing His love by protecting them from attacks, after showing His love by giving them a covenant and laws to follow, after showing His love by continuing to dwell among them and lead them after their great rebellion, after showing them love and patience when they would not go into the promised land He was giving to them, He showed them love by providing a way for them to live after they once again rebelled against Him in the wilderness. They had rebelled and the Lord sent venomous snakes among the camp as a discipline, a discipline to show them that they were wrong, and that they needed the Lord. He then told Moses to put a bronze serpent on a pole so that whoever would look at it would live. This was an act of love to an unworthy, repeatedly rebellious people who acted like His enemies instead of His special, chosen people for whom He cared.

It is this same way that God loved the world. The people of the world have repeatedly lived in rebellion against the Lord. They reject Him and His authority. They reject His standards. Each one does what is right their own eyes. And we all belonged to the world. We are all like this.

And even still, God loved the world and sent His Son as a gift.

Ephesians 2:1–5 NIV

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

John wrote about it this way,

1 John 4:9–10 NIV

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

How is God sending His Son an act of love?

Because like the verses we have read say, we were objects of God’s wrath due to our rebellion. We deserved death.

Romans 6:23 NIV

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Death means we would be separated from God and the life He wants to give us for eternity!

However, God gave a gift. God gave His Son so that we could live with Him for eternity.

How is this possible?

Since the wages of sin is death, the penalty of rebellion against God is death, Jesus died.

Romans 5:6–8 NIV

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

The word ungodly in this verse (6) is not just someone who doesn’t go to church. It is someone who is actively, purposely practicing the opposite of what God is, what God stands for, what God says.

We were all like that. We were ungodly. We were enemies.

And while people would not willingly die for someone like that, Jesus did.

Jesus came into this world in order to willingly dies for us. He died for our sins. He took our punishment.

God’s gift was love to His enemies, to make them His children