God's Greatest Gift

Christmas Eve Candlelight Service 2021

This is my 53rd Christmas celebration.

Each year the gifts, the celebration, the merriment, is wonderful, but mean less and less in comparison to the profound nature of the incarnation - God becoming man and living among us.

I understand more as I get older the sentiment of J.I. Packer when he says…

Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the incarnation, the more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. J.I. Packer

From the archives of radio legend, Paul Harvey…

Now the man to whom I’m going to introduce you was not a scrooge, he was a kind, decent, mostly good man. Generous to his family, upright in his dealings with other men, but he just didn’t believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmas time. It just didn’t make sense, and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldn’t swallow the Jesus story about God coming to earth as a man.

“I’m truly sorry to distress you”, he told his wife, “but I’m not going with you to church this Christmas eve”, he said he’d feel like a hypocrite, that he’d much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. So he stayed and they went to the midnight service.

Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper. Minutes later, he was startled by a thudding sound. Then another. And then another; sort of a thump or a thud. At first, he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window. But when he went to the front door to investigate, he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They had been caught in the storm and in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window.

Well, he couldn’t let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter if he could direct the birds to it. Quickly, he put on a coat and goulashes, tramped through the deepening snow to the barn.

He opened the doors wide and turned on a light. But the birds did not come in. He figured food would entice them in. So he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow making a trail the yellow lighted, wide open door to the stable. But to his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs and continued to flop around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them. He tried “shooing” them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms. Instead, they scattered in every direction except into the warm lighted barn.

Then he realized that they were afraid of him. To them, he reasoned, I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could let them know that they can trust me. That I’m not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how? Because any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led, or “shooed” because they feared him.

“If only I could be a bird”, he thought to himself “and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to the safe warm ----------

(Sudden recognition)

---- to the safe warm barn, but I would have to be one of them so they could see and hear, and understand.”

At that moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind. He stood there listening to the bells, Adeste Fidelis. Listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas. And he sank to his knees in the snow.[1]

Friends, the incarnation is of little consequence if it does not lead to the cross.

The sacrificial, atoning death of the incarnate one is necessary for our redemption.

Remember, redeem means purchase. Christ’s blood purchased our salvation. Blood is located in the flesh and so the incarnation was necessary for Him to be able to shed it on our behalf.

Our Greatest Need - If our greatest need had been information, God would have sent us an educator; If our greatest need had been technology, God would have sent us a scientist; If our greatest need had been money, God would have sent us an economist; If our greatest need had been pleasure, God would have sent us an entertainer; But our greatest need was forgiveness, so God sent us a Savior.

And because our Greatest Need was reconciliation between us and God, God sent HIS Greatest Gift! The only one who could fix our problem.

John 3:16 ESV

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

God’s motivation is love.

God’s direction is to love a lost, broken, sin-filled world. God directed His love toward this undeserving world. God directed His love toward you!

God’s demonstration is to love by giving his only unique, God/man - son as a substitute for you. Why do you need a substitute? Because...

God’s requirement to receive the benefit of His love is to believe in the Son!

God’s promise is your freedom from eternal death and your new eternal life with Christ!

This is the Greatest Gift we could ever be offered. And the reason it is so great is because our need is so great!

God knew our need from before the foundation of the earth. And so the prophet promised 700 years before it ever happened...

Isaiah 9:6 ESV

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Luke 2:11 ESV

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

Matthew 1:21 ESV

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

Does this sound too good to be true? It isn’t! It is our blessed hope. It is what we celebrate this season.

Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the incarnation, the more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. J.I. Packer

[1] Paul Harvey