The Christmas Scramble & the Gift Indescribable

7/30/2019 The Christmas Scramble & the Gift Indescribable

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THE CHRISTMAS

SCRAMBLE & THE GIFT

INDESCRIBABLE

The picture above is reminiscent of real life

happenings on Black Friday the day after

Thanksgiving when thousands stand outside

department stores in the bitter cold at 5:00 amin the morning or earlier to get the things that

someone on their Christmas list must have.There are Little Billies all across the US whoface permanent emotional scarring if they do

not get a FUZZBO2000. Of course, it will be

broken on December 26 or thrown in thebottom of a toy chest before the New Year, but

it must be purchased at the Black Friday price

at any cost (i.e., no matter how many little old

ladies must be trampled). Once Little Billygets the FUZZBO2000 he will be happy, that

is, until the FUZZBO2001 comes out.

Christmas is a good time to evaluate our

pursuits are they meaningful or are they

trivial. As a starting point, consider the story ofthe stockbroker who came across a lamp with a

genie in it. Unlike the standard genie, this one

only granted the person rubbing the lamp onlyone wish instead of the customary three. The

stockbroker carefully deliberated as to how to

spend his one wish. Finally, he asked the genie

for a copy of the newspaper one year in thefuture. He reasoned that, if he could see which

stocks increased in value over the coming year,

he could make a killing. He would be

financially set for life. After he looked over thefinancial section, he accidentally dropped a

portion of the newspaper. Upon picking it up,he saw his picture. Much to his dismay, he sawthat the picture accompanied his obituary,

which indicated that he died the previous day

of a heart attack. All of a sudden, the stock

market killing that he planned was very trivial.

That little story is modern day equivalent of aparable that Jesus once told:

The ground of a certain rich man yieldedplentifully: And he thought within himself,

saying, What shall I do, since I have noroom to store my crops? And he said, Iwill do this: I will pull down my barns, and

build greater; and there I will store all my

crops and my goods. And I will say to my

soul, Soul, you have many goods laid upfor many years; take your ease, eat, drink,

and be merry. But God said to him,

Fool! This night your soul will be requiredof you: then whose will those things be,

which you have provided? So is he who

lays up treasure for himself, and is notrich toward God. (Luke 12:16-21)

How much of Christmas or life as a whole for

that matter involves a scramble to get

treasures like the FUZZBO2000 and yettotally ignores God and His Indescribable Gift.

What indescribable gift? The Apostle Paul

wrote:

For you knowthe grace of our Lord Jesus

the Messiah, that though He was rich, yet

for your sakes He became poor, that youthrough His poverty you might become

rich. Thanks be to God for His

indescribable gift! (2 Corinthians 8:9,

9:15)

Jesus is Gods indescribable gift. Christmas is

not about our exchanging FUZZBO2000s with

one another, but rather it is about God sending


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His Son as a man so that He could die for thesins of mankind. Jesus said in the gospel of

John:

ForGod so loved the world that He gave

His only begotten Son, that whoever

believes in Him should not perish but have

everlasting life. (John 3:16)

This is not just a verse that you see on a banner

near the goal posts of a football game. It is the

real Christmas story. I enjoy kids TVChristmas specials. However, even those that

make allusions to Jesus (e.g., Linus quoting the

gospel of Luke to Charlie Brown), miss the

mark about the true message. Why? Simplyput, without the cross, the manger has no

meaning. Jesus was born so that He could die.

HE WAS RICH

A great commentary on 2 Corinthians 8:9 is

Philippians 2:6-8 where we read of voluntary

humiliation of Jesus. Paul begins by describing

His exalted position (being in the form of

God [vs. 6a]). In eternity past, He came forth

from the bosom of the Father, as the Word ofGod (John 1:1, 18). Paul writes of Jesus that:

He is the image of invisible God, the

firstborn of all creation. For by Him allthings were created that are in heaven and

that are on earth, visible and invisible,

whether thrones or dominions or

principalities or powers. All things were

created through Him and for Him. And

He is before all things, and in Him all

things consist. And He is the head of the

body, the church, who is the beginning, the

firstborn from the dead, that in all things

He may have the preeminence. For it

pleased the Father that in Him all fullnessshould dwell. (Colossians 1:15-18)

With the exception of God, the Father, no one

holds a higher position than the Son of God,Jesus. He has the preeminence.

HE BECAME POOR

He was indeed rich; the entire universe

belonged to Him. However, He was willing tobecome poor. The Apostle provides a seven-

step humiliation:

1. The first step is found in these words fromPhilippians 2, (He) did not consider it robbery

to be equal with God (vs. 6b). Weymouthtranslates this as: He did not reckon His

equality with God a treasure to be tightly

grasped. Most monarchs do whatever ispossible to retain their power and position,

including murdering wives and children that

they feel threatened by. However, in order toreconcile a sinful world to the Father, Jesus did

not cling to His rights and privileges. The rest

of His actions in His amazing descent beginwith this heart attitude.

2. Paul describes the second step as: madeHimself ofno reputation (vs. 7a). Weymouthtranslates this as He stripped Himself of His

glory. He, who is described as the brightness

of Gods glory (Hebrews 1:3), was prophesiedby Isaiah as one who had no form or

comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no

beauty that we should desire Him (53:2). For33 years He hid the glory He shared with the

Father from before the creation of the universe

(John 17:5).

3. The third step involved Jesus taking theform of a bondservant (vs. 7b). The word

translated bondservant refers to one whototally surrenders his will to another. Jesus saidto His disciples:

The Son of Man did not come to be served,

but to serve, and to give His life a ransom

for many. (Matthew 20:28)

The Son of Man (Daniel 7:13) was Jesus

favorite title for Himself. He came to do the

will of the Father, which required serving sinfulmen by dying in their place. In lowliness of

mind, He esteemed others and their needs as

more important than His own. Politicians are

supposed to be public servants; however, somuch of what they do is based on selfish


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ambition. The One Who existed in the form

of God took the form of a bondservant.This is not simply the prince trading places

with the pauper, but the king trading place with

the paupers slave.

4. The fourth downward step involved coming

in the likeness of men (vs. 7b). Angels arereferred to as servants; however, they are not

subject to the limitations of humans. Jesus wasin every way human He became hungry and

thirsty and tired. He felt pain and loneliness.

Imagine the creator of the universe becoming a

helpless baby, totally dependent on humanparents to meet His needs.

He was even tempted to sin; however, unlike

every human before Him, He did not sin one

time in thought, word, or deed. Paul writes:

For what the law could not do in that it was

weak through the flesh, God did by sending

His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.

(Romans 8:3)

The Apostle is noting that no one was ever

saved by trying to keep the law (embodied inthe Ten Commandments). The law was not

given to make man right with God, but to show

man that he was sinful and in need of a Savior.

God sent His Son, who kept the law perfectly,and then punished Him for the sins of the

world. Jesus had to take upon the likeness ofsinful flesh, so that He could die for sinfulman.

5. As a fifth step, Paul indicates that Jesus was

found in the appearance as a man (vs. 8a).

The apostle is indicating that Jesus humiliation

was so thorough, that He appeared to men assimply a man. If He had been a king, they may

have had some clue that He was the Son ofGod. But, Jesus was born to poor parents

(Luke 2:22-24; Leviticus 12). For the firstthirty years of His life on earth, He lived in an

obscure village that was looked down upon

(John 1:46 can anything good come out of

Nazareth?). Because of the virgin birth andMary being with child at the time of her

betrothal to Joseph, many believed Him to be

illegitimate (John 8:41, 48). He didnt ownanything but the clothes on His back (Matthew

8:20).

6. Sixthly, He further humbled Himself and

became obedient to the point of death (vs.

8b). As we have hinted at previously, salvation

does not come by Jesus birth. Most of us havea price that we consider too high to pay. Not

many are willing to obey God if it cost themtheir lives. I myself withhold talking about my

love for Jesus and telling others about His love

for them for fear of making them

uncomfortable and having them ridicule me.

The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23) and

the soul who sins shall die (Ezekiel 18:20).Jesus never sinned and therefore He never had

to die. However, He was willing to preach the

truth tirelessly no matter how much it causedthe religious leaders of His day to hate Him.

Even though they despised Him, He loved themso much that He warned them that they were

about to perish (i.e., its not love to allow a blind

person to walk out into traffic and be run overby a car). As a result, they wanted to kill Him.

7. Last, He subjected Himself to the worse type

of death, the death of the cross (vs. 8c).Jesus didnt die by lethal injection, hidden

away in some room in a prison. He was put todeath by the most humiliating and excruciating

death devised by sinful men the cross. To

grasp the enormity of Jesus death, imagine theinnocent king of the world being put to death as

a criminal in an electric chair. However,

instead of supplying the voltage required to kill

Him in several seconds, the electrocution wasdrawn out so that it took hours. Before being

strapped in the chair, He was stripped naked

and whipped to within an inch of His life. As

the hours passed, hundreds passed by spittingon Him, making fun of Him, and cursing Him.

However, no matter how severe the physical

pain associated with the cross, it was not theworst faced by Jesus. While it was the

religious leaders who pushed for His death and

the Romans who carried it out, the prophetIsaiah says that it was Yahweh, His Father,

who bruised Him and put Him to grief (53:10)


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and placed on Him the sin of us all (53:6).Jesus cried out from the cross, My God, MyGod, why have You forsaken Me? (Matthew27:45). By taking our sin, Jesus was separated

from His Father so that we do not need to be.

THAT YOU MIGHT BECOME RICH

We were poor we did not have therighteousness necessary to be right with God.

Isaiah accurately described our condition as:

But we are all like an unclean thing, and all

our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; we

fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the

wind, have taken us away. And there is no

one who calls on Your name, who stirs

himself up to take hold of You; for You have

hidden Your face from us and have

consumed us because of our iniquities

(64:6, 7)

Our situation was hopeless. Even the good

things we did were filthy rags in Yahwehssight. Not one of us had the strength to reach

to God. But thankfully the story does not end

there. Paul writes:

When we were still without strength, in due

time the Messiah died for the ungodly.

God demonstrates His own love toward usin that while we were still sinners, the

Messiah died for us. (Romans 5:6, 8)

For He (Father) made Him (Jesus) who

knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might

become the righteousness of God in Him.

(2 Corinthians 5:21)

Because Jesus relinquished His rights andprivileges as God, stripped Himself of His

glory, surrendered Himself totally to the will of

His Father and the needs of His people, tookupon Himself the weakness of human flesh,appeared as a mere man, was obedient

regardless of cost, even to the point of the cross

death, He was able to take our sin and offer us

His righteousness in return.

Someone has developed the following acrostic

to help us understand the word grace:

G Gods

R Riches

A At

C Christs

E Expense

That summarizes 2 Corinthians 8:9. BecauseJesus paid the price, we can know all the riches

of Gods forgiveness and love.

OUR RESPONSE

As with all gifts, there are two responses: youcan accept the gift or you can reject it (either by

not opening it or returning it). Following his

description of the seven-step humiliation of

Jesus, Paul gives the response of Yahweh:

Therefore, God also has highly exalted Himand given Him the name which is above

every name. (Philippians 2:9)

Having humbled Himself as low as a man

could go, Yahweh has highly exalted His Son:

Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher

of our faith, who for the joy set before Him

endured the cross, despising the sham, and

has sat down at the right hand of the

throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

Paul also gives us the proper response of therecipients of the Indescribable Gift:

That at the name of Jesus every knee

should bow, of those in heaven, and of

those on earth, and of those under the

earth, and that every tongue should

confess that Jesus the Messiah is Lord, to

the glory of God the Father. (Philippians

2:10-11)

The proper response is to surrender control ofyour life (bow the knee) to the One Who died

in your place and to confess Him as your

Sovereign.

We started this study by examining our

pursuits. The Westminster Confession of Faith

begins by stating that the chief end of man isto glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. The


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primary way that you can bring glory toYahweh is to bow the knee and confess Jesus

as Lord. The Psalmist states this truth as

follows:

Now therefore, be wise, O kings. Be

instructed, you judges of the earth. Serve

Yahweh with fear, and rejoice withtrembling. Kiss the Son, lest Yahweh be

angry, and you perish in the way, when His

wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all

those who put their trust in Him. (Psalm

2:10-12)

Dont follow trivial pursuits. Dont trust in

your own goodness to make you right withGod. This Christmas put your trust in the One

Who became flesh, died for your sins, rose

from the dead, and ascended to the right handof Yahweh. As Linus said to his best friend,

thats what Christmas is all about, CharlieBrown.

Merry Christmas

In Jesus Love, Donald

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The Christmas Scramble & the Gift Indescribable