Sermon Tone Analysis
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God Sent His Son For a Guilt-Free Christmas
12.24.21
[Galatians 4:4-7] River of Life (Christmas Eve)
The days around Christmas are always packed.
More than any other holiday, more than any other celebration, more than any other season, Christmas is packed.
Packed with extra chores, extra errands, extra events, and extra-high expectations.
So much extra effort goes into getting our homes ready for Christmas.
The house has to be cleaned, then decorated.
The tree has to be trimmed.
The lights and the stockings have to be hung.
If you’re hosting a meal at any point this weekend, you had to figure out the menu; find the right recipes; and then venture into the nightmare before Christmas known as the grocery store.
And you haven’t even begun to cook anything or serve anyone a meal.
If your guests are from out-of-town you have extra tasks.
The whole house has to be cleaned—from top to bottom—especially the guest room.
You had to go the extra mile and find that little piece of paper you scribbled the Wi-Fi password on, too.
So much extra effort goes into getting our homes ready for Christmas.
So much extra effort goes into getting ourselves ready for Christmas, too.
We’ve got to find the right clothes, the right shoes, and tonight the right coat.
Presents have to be purchased, delivered to our front door, then wrapped, then hidden, then found, and finally tucked under the tree.
So much extra effort goes into getting ready for Christmas.
But Christmas isn’t just packed with extra chores, extra errands, extra events.
It’s also pressure packed, more than most holidays.
Let’s say for the sake of argument, this Christmas, you nail it.
Do you know what your reward is? Heightened expectations.
You get to host next year.
You get to make the Christmas dinner next year.
You get to pick out all the presents next year.
When you knock Christmas out of the park, the pressure to perform next year grows.
Even if this Christmas is a flop, the pressure doesn’t magically disappear.
Strangely, it increases.
Because next year you have to make up for last year.
So much extra effort goes into Christmas.
Rather than enjoying ourselves, we’re just trying to endure it all and survive.
It can feel more like a sentence than a celebration.
If you’ve ever felt this pressure to perform, then you’ve gotten a taste of what it means to live (Gal.
4:4) under the law.
What law?
The law of God.
(Rom.
2:15) The law that has been engraved upon your heart and imprinted on your conscience.
This is the law that we were all born under.
This law is powerful.
There’s nothing seasonal or cultural about it.
We feel the power of this law most when someone else breaks it, especially at your expense.
When someone takes something that is yours, when someone deceives you, when someone dishonors or discredits you unfairly, your blood boils.
This law helps you determine who is a good guy and who’s not.
But you also live under the pressure of this law.
The law that compels you to do what you know is right, even when it’s inconvenient or taxing, exhausting or painful.
At times, this law also speaks against you, too.
You know the guilt that comes after failing to perform.
You know how guilt gnaws away at you.
How guilt remembers failures that everyone else has long forgotten.
How guilt ruins moments when everyone else is happy.
How guilt can dominate your inner thoughts.
So how do we deal with this guilt?
Well, we can try to outrun it.
Keeping ourselves busy with all kinds of things.
But guilt is a persistent bugger.
We can try to deny it.
But telling ourselves we have no reason to feel guilty doesn’t actually do anything to the guilt.
Discrediting it by pointing out everyone else’s failures might turn guilt’s volume down a bit, but it will never silence it.
Guilt is a little like that pink spot in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.
The more we try to clean it up, the bigger it grows and spreads.
We can try to wipe it away, but it stains.
We can try to sweep it or blow it away; beat it with bats and rakes; but it just becomes a bigger mess.
Of course, The Cat In The Hat Comes Back is just a children’s story.
As in most children’s stories, in the end, things get resolved.
The pink spot gets cleaned up.
That tiniest of cats, Cat Z, takes off its hat and releases the VOOM.
What VOOM is, no body knows.
But it works.
It cleans every spot.
Sets everything right.
Imagine if VOOM were real.
But waiting for things to turn out “happily ever after” seems naive.
So what do we do?
Most of us being to play the “if only” game.
If only we could get a do-over.
If only we go back in time and take back those words.
If only we could move back the hands of time and do the right thing.
But we know we can’t.
Even if we could go back in time, why do we think we’d do better?
How many times don’t we fall short of the standards of right and wrong today— right here and now?
A time-machine wouldn’t fix that, because the problem is us.
So instead we try to live with the guilt.
We get used to feeling the pangs of regret.
And we tell ourselves that everyone who’s honest with themselves is in the same boat.
And that’s true.
There is nothing you or I can do to get rid of our guilt.
But that doesn’t mean that nothing can be done.
Tonight I bring you (Lk.
2:10) good news of great joy that is for all us guilt-ridden people.
(Gal.
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