Christmas 2013 #1: an exposition of Genesis 3:1-15. This message by Pastor Rod Harris was delivered at Trinity Baptist Church on Sunday morning, December 8, 2013.
Intro:
They say that familiarity breeds contempt. I think that is true in the sense that when you become familiar with something the tendency is to take it for granted. You become a bit jaded and you lose something of the joy and wonder of it. Too often that is the case with the great truths of the Christmas story. Often those who have been around the truth for years lose the joy and the wonder of it all. The reason? It is not because the story has lost something. It is not because the power of the story weakens over time. And it is not because the need for the story has lessened. It is because we have developed an unhealthy familiarity with the story of Christmas. It has become routine. “Yeah, yeah, I know and then they couldn’t find any room in the inn…shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night…then a multitude of the heavenly host…glory to God in the highest and all that.” We look at it with the same excitement and enthusiasm as two plus two equals four! It’s true – we don’t doubt that. We know it to be fact – its just we’ve been there, we done that.
Such a crude familiarity with the details of the Christmas story leads to an abuse of the profound Gospel truths revealed in that story. I want to remind you that Christmas is about the Gospel. Christmas is about God’s solution to our sin problem. Christmas is about God’s gracious act of saving repenting rebels like you and me. To understand Christmas you must understand the Gospel.
The Gospel assures us that those who repent of their sin and trust in Christ and Christ alone are made the children of God. They are declared righteous in God’s sight because they have been clothed with the righteousness of Christ. The Gospel also assures us that those who are genuinely in Christ will persevere to the end. That you cannot be a child of God one day and a child of the devil the next. Once you are a child of God you are forever a child of God. We commonly call this the “security of the believer” or “once saved always saved.” The danger is in that truth being perverted and salvation being viewed as merely a legal agreement with no need for continual obedience or the need to follow through with anything because it’s a “done deal.” The contract has been signed and there is no such thing as my living up to the contract because “I’m saved by grace and not by works.”
Now the only way you can fall into that error is to fail to understand the depth of sin and the nature of grace.
We tend to view sin as a moral lapse or weakness. It is not that big a deal after all “to err is human.” We fail to see that sin, any sin, is a gross violation of the law of God. That to sin is to defy the Creator and Sovereign Lord of the Universe. That any sin is deserving of the most severe punishment. As the Puritans used to say, “There is enough sin in your righteous acts to condemn you to hell.” We tend to severely underestimate the wickedness of our sin.
Then we tend to expect grace, which is a contradiction in terms. Grace is unmerited favor. It is not earned or deserved. What right do we have to “expect” it? The very nature of grace is that it is unexpected. And it accomplishes far more than we could ever imagine. We are sinners fully deserving of eternal damnation. But God graciously chose to saves us. “For by grace are you saved through faith.” We are delivered from the penalty of our sin by the grace of God and by his grace alone. We are upheld by his grace and we’ll enter glory by his grace. I not only needed God’s grace when I committed my life to Christ 40 some years ago – I need his grace this very moment.
I’m not sure we understand how gracious grace really is. Maybe we need to consider how all of this started in the first place. Christmas begins in the Garden with an act of defiant rebellion.
Text: Genesis 3:1-15
Let’s set the context.
Creation – good
At the end of creation – all is well.
Then along came that Serpent.
Working through this text we discover:
Thesis: The joy-filled message of Christmas focuses on God’s gracious act of deliverance.
There are three things I want us to note in the light of this truth.
- Man’s sin and rebellion requires deliverance.
- God in mercy and grace promises a deliverer!
- The heart of repentance and faith appropriates God’s Christmas gift.