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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