The Gift of Christmas: Christmas #1
An exposition of Romans 3:21-31. This message by Pastor Rod Harris was delivered at Trinity Baptist Church on Sunday morning, December 13, 2015.
Intro:
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 grandparent’s in Pryor. I remember getting up early anticipating a lucrative morning but I was not prepared. The first thing I opened was a G.I. Joe. A sailor, complete with frogman accessories! He had a rubber suit, mask, fins and air tanks. I slept with it that night and I, well had an accident. My dad said, “Lucky for Joe he had that wet suit!” 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. I thought, there’s nothing better. Then I had grandchildren!
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 disdain 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 Romans 3 beginning with Romans 3:21.
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.
Paul has painted a bleak picture. He has shown that all men stand condemned before a holy God. The heathen, the hypocrite and the Hebrew. Jew and Gentile – all without exception stand accused and condemned. Every mouth is stopped. They are without excuse. All are under sin. That is they are dominated or controlled by sin. He paints that disturbing portrait in 3:10-18 and concludes that the whole world is accountable to God.
Then comes two glorious words – “but now.” These two words indicate a change of direction for the chapter and indeed the book of Romans. Yet it is more than that. It signals a radical shift and change for man. There is this horrible, hopeless and helpless condition but now everything changes.
This is where we, as the people of God, live – in the “but now.” Martin Lloyd-Jones says this is one of the great tests for the Christian. Does your heart leap with joy at the sound of those words…but now? Does hope spring up with the sound of them? When the enemy of your soul assaults you with condemnation, guilt and doubt you must rise up and declare, “But now!” When you are discourage due to your failure to live up to God’s standard, when you are downcast due to your sin you must declare, “but now” in Christ all of that has changed. Donald Grey Barnhouse believed these verses to be the most important verses in the whole of Scripture because it is here we learn that God’s total answer is sufficient for man’s total failure.
There are three things I want you to note.
- God’s great gift to us is the provision of everything necessary for us to stand before Him loved and accepted. (3:21)
- This great gift must be received by faith. (3:22-24a)
- This gift is made possible by Christ alone. (3:24-26)
That’s what Christmas is about. It is about God’s wild, extravagant and costly gift. A gift that allows hopeless rebels to become beloved children.