The Plowman

Introduction:
I know that Christmas is about more than gifts but gifts are great aren’t they!  I remember Christmases from my childhood like they were yesterday.  Rheadon says that I was spoiled and I’m sure she is right.  I remember one Christmas in particular.  We had Christmas at my aunt Ruth and uncle Ed’s place.  I remember getting up early anticipating a lucrative morning but I was not prepared for what I got that year.  It was beautiful.  I couldn’t believe my dad spent that kind of money.  My first car.  I was stunned.  Speechless.  It was white with a red pinstripe.  A convertible.  It was the most beautiful peddle car you’ve ever seen.  The problem was that was the year my brother Ronnie got the grenade launcher and I made for an easy target in my car.  I still loved racing around in my car - welts and all.  As a kid I though nothing could be greater than a bountiful harvest at Christmas time.  Then I became a parent and discovered something far more wonderful.  I saw the joy in the face of my own children as they discovered the wonder and excitement of gifts.  It’s about to get much worse - next year I’ll be a grandpa!

I know that we can moan and complain about how commercial Christmas has become.  We can cry out against the secularization of the season and speak with distain about how “out of hand” things have gotten but like it or not, gift-giving is part of Christmas and some of that giving is wild, reckless, extravagant and costly.  But none more so than the gift of Christmas itself!

Christmas is a gift.  It is the gift of a holy and righteous God who created a world filled with beauty and wonder.  A world perfect and whole.  As the crowning glory of creation God created man in His own image and likeness.  A creature capable of love and fellowship with the Creator himself.  But something happened.  Something changed.  Through the temptation of the Evil One man sensed he was lacking.  He was being denied something that was rightfully his.  Adam chose rebellion as a means of gaining what he was denied and in the process lost everything.  First and foremost he lost fellowship with God.  Once God’s friend he was now God’s enemy.  Once God’s confidant he was now the object of God’s wrath.  Christmas is God’s gift to sinful man restoring what was lost and making intimacy with the Creator possible once again.  Our text this morning is found in Romans chapter 3 beginning with verse 21.

Text: Romans 3:21-31

Again this is not “your father’s Christmas text.”  This is not what you would expect to go along with Carols and hymns celebrating the birth of the Savior but I’m convinced of this:
Thesis: The true beauty and wonder of Christmas can only be understood from the perspective of God’s great and glorious gift to those who stand before Him as objects of His sovereign and holy wrath.

There are three things I want you to note.

1. God’s great gift to us is the provision of everything necessary for us to stand before Him loved and accepted.  (3:21)
2. This great gift must be received by faith.  (3:22-24a)
3. This gift is made possible by Christ alone.  (3:24-26)

God did not act is such a way as to suggest our sin didn’t mean anything or that the law was without meaning.  He upheld them both while upholding his own righteousness.

The result?
We are loved and accepted because of Christ.
Fellowship/intimacy restored.

That’s what Christmas is about.  It is about God’s wild, extravagant and costly gift.  A gift that allows hopeless rebells to become beloved children.