It's Christmas.
When is Christmas?
What do the kids focus on?
What's under the tree, right?
And some adults kind of focus on that too,
except that adults sometimes are more focused on
what they're going to get people than what they're getting.
Sometimes we forget to focus on the greatest gift that was ever given.
You know, I had somebody this morning say,
four gifts? I'm really curious about what the fourth gift is.
Because they automatically think of gold,
frankincense, and myrrh, right?
Well, today we're going to focus on
four gifts that were given to us.
Okay?
On four gifts that the Father has given us.
Now, there's all kinds of gifts that can be given.
The ones I really dislike
are the ones that people give me because they feel like they're obligated to give me something.
It's like, thank you.
You know, don't give me something
because you feel like you're obligated to give me something.
Give me something because you want to.
Something that you've thought about that you think might please me.
Don't give me a basket of fruit.
Really, you know? So there's all kinds of gifts
that are given. This morning we're going to focus on
gifts that are from the Father's heart.
We read it in our scripture reading this morning.
And, Grace, I'm glad you read it in a different version
because you kind of said something new.
And that was really great.
The gifts from the Father's heart,
the ones that come from His heart to us.
Let's go back to our scripture again.
It's 1 Corinthians 1.30.
Of Him, the Father, we are in Christ.
His desire
is for us to be in Christ, to be all that we can be.
To be His sons and His daughters,
to be subjects of His royal kingdom.
His desire is for us, not against us.
His gifts are given to us
and they come from the Father's heart.
This business of being in Christ
is not our work, by the way.
It is the work of the Father Himself.
Of God we are in Christ.
The heart of the Father places us in Christ.
He, through the Spirit, inspires us, takes possession of us,
loves us, and places us in Christ.
The only condition to that gift
is our belief
and our acceptance of that gift.
We still have to do our part, of course.
Right? Prayer, faith, obedience.
Letting Him do His work in Him.
Sometimes I think the biggest and the hardest
word in the English language is let.
Our part is to let Him
do His work in us.
So often, our human
nature rises up against the let.
Somehow we want to do it our own way.
Our job is to let Him do His work.
But of God we are
in Christ Jesus. It is His heart,
it is His desire that we be in Christ.
To accomplish this, God sent us
some gifts. Now, there are many,
many, many, many gifts in the Bible
that come from the Father. But this text
contains four gifts. And that's what
we're going to focus on this morning.
He sent Jesus to be wisdom for us.
Is that an amazing gift or not?
He sent Him
to be His righteousness for us.
That's gift number two. Gift number three,
He sent Him to be His sanctification for us.
And gift number four, He sent Him to be
redemption for us.
Those are four pretty amazing gifts.
Jesus became for us
wisdom from God. That's the first gift.
What man lost
in the Garden of Eden is restored to us
in Christ. In Him are hidden all the
treasures of wisdom and knowledge. If we
are in Christ where the Father has placed us,
if we abide in Him, all the treasures of His
wisdom are available to us. I don't know about you,
but that's a pretty big gift. The gift of
wisdom. And this is a really good thing since
I freely admit I don't have any wisdom of my own.
How about you? Do you have any wisdom of your own?
I sure don't. I don't have wisdom of my own.
But all the treasures of His
wisdom are available to me.
So if I lack wisdom, what do I need to do?
Ask for it. And He'll
give it to me. Can't tell you how many
times I've failed to do that.
Ask Julie, she could probably give you some examples.
I know my girls probably didn't think I was very
wise when they were teenagers. You know, oh mom,
what does she know anyway? She's old fashioned. She just, yeah,
she's not with it. Yeah, well, now she's got
teenagers of her own.
But just think, the wisdom from God
He sent His son
as a helpless baby in a manger, totally
dependent on His earthly parents and His heavenly Father.
God sent wisdom as a baby.
Do you get that?
I'm not sure I do. He sent His
wisdom in the form of a baby. And so
just as He was totally dependent upon Him for life,
He was totally dependent on His earthly parents
and on His heavenly Father.
From the time He was born in that manger
until He died on the cross,
He was dependent upon them for help and for
wisdom.
Back to wisdom. Jesus is our wisdom. We as a
people, me in particular, seek knowledge.
I'm always delighted when I come upon a new idea
or something I didn't know before.
A new bit of information.
I thrive on that.
Just little tidbits. I'm going, yes!
But wisdom is different
than knowledge.
Knowledge is about facts. It's about information.
Wisdom is the right use of knowledge.
It's the ability not only to believe
what is right, but to act upon it.
Jesus is our wisdom. He came from the Father
to reveal the Father and to teach us who He is,
to teach us how to live.
How to live is living how Jesus lived.
So how do we get it?
Well, somebody already said, you lack wisdom, what do you do?
You ask for it. James says, if any man
lacks wisdom, let him ask of the Father and He will give it to you
how? Liberally!
He'll give it to you in abundance.
So ask.
Another way we access this wisdom
is by abiding in Him.
The Father placed us in Christ
but we have to choose to stay there. I don't know about you,
sometimes, mmm, that can be a bit
difficult. We have to choose to stay there.
How do we access it? By reading
the Word. By studying
the Word. By spending time in meditation
and conversation
with our Heavenly Father.
And by living in obedience to what we find there,
if you don't live in obedience
to the wisdom you find in the Bible, are you very wise?
No. But remember,
wisdom is not just head knowledge, it's knowledge that's
acted upon in accordance with the treasury of
His wisdom that is in Christ. His life
shows us what wisdom looks like.
He was made the wisdom of God for us. If we
abide in Him, all the treasures of wisdom
are available to us.
If we abide in Him and we ask for it,
the gift is ours.
Okay, can you unwrap that gift?
Can you take off the wrapping paper and is that how
you access that gift? No. None of these
gifts are things that you're going to find under the Christmas tree.
They don't come in boxes, they don't come in gift bags,
and they don't come wrapped. But they are
given with the utmost
love and care.
Gift number two. Jesus became for
us righteousness. He became
righteousness for us because we have none of our own.
He came to bring righteousness and as
a work of righteousness, peace, peace to the soul,
in restoring righteousness to us.
He gives us rest, quietness, and
assurance. He became for us righteousness
and He gives us
His righteousness.
From the manger to the cross, Jesus lived a life of righteousness.
The life He lived was a righteous life.
On the cross, He died the death of a righteous
life and paid the penalty for all of mankind's
sin. While we can be eternally
grateful for the life that He lived and the death that He died on our
behalf, it goes beyond
that. He offers
not only to give us His life in exchange for our sinful life,
He offers to give us His very
own life.
This is the most amazing gift of all.
It's the best Christmas gift anyone could receive.
Jesus said, I will give
you my righteousness.
Can you unwrap it?
Does it have ribbons on it? Is it
in a gift bag? No. It's a gift
from the Father's heart. The question
becomes, if it's offered and freely given,
how do I get it? How do I receive it?
Again, the secret is found in abiding
in living and dwelling in Christ.
Our text said, of Him you are in Christ.
The Father places us there, but we need to
choose to remain there, to live in that place and allow
or to let Him to do His work in us. Sounds easy, right?
Ah, it does. It sounds easy.
Is it?
Not always. Not always.
It seems our fallen human nature is ever ready
to take charge and to take control.
And it's only continually abiding
that success is to be found. I had a friend once
who described it like this, when we're born again,
when we give ourselves to Christ, we are given a new nature.
I'm sure grateful for that. There'd be no hope otherwise.
It's given to us this new nature.
He gives us His righteousness, but our
old nature is still camping out. Anybody
found that? That your old nature is still camping out?
And he said, it's kind of like being in a room with a rattle snake.
Now, I
have no real love for snakes of any kind, but I especially
am not fond of rattle snakes.
I've run into a few, okay?
I'm not fond of those critters. I don't like coral
snakes and I don't like copperheads and I don't like watermockensens and other things
that bite. In fact, I'm not fond of snakes, period.
But he said it's like being in a room with a rattle snake.
And
God gives you a new nature. And there's a hole
in the floor and He stuffs that rattle snake down through the hole
and you put your foot on top of it.
As long as your foot is over the hole,
the rattle snake is contained.
But the minute you take your foot off the hole, guess what happens?
It pops back up again.
And that is kind of like our human nature. It's a rattle snake and it likes to pop up.
The only
way that rattle snake stays under control
is by continually abiding in Christ.
It's a gift that the Father gives us.
I am so grateful for that. And I am so grateful
that when my human nature pops up, He can stuff that rattle snake
back down the hole. Okay?
Sometimes it seems impossible.
But let's look at a couple of, couple three Bible
texts that kind of say the same thing. Romans 5
and 19. For by one man's
disobedience many were made sinners. So also
by one man's obedience
many were made righteous.
So it's because of what Jesus did that He
makes us righteous. I'm glad to be counted
righteous because of what Jesus did. If I had to be counted righteous
because of what I do, I'm in really big trouble.
Okay? 2 Corinthians 5 21.
For He made him who knew no sin for us, knew no sin to be sinned
for us, that we might become the righteousness of God
in Him. That one is a real
wow. We might become the righteousness
of who? Of God
in Jesus.
I'm not sure I have my brain totally wrapped around that one.
But it's pretty much of a wow.
To become is to cause to be.
He wants to cause us to be righteous.
There's many, many more.
Still, righteousness is a gift.
It's a gift that Jesus gave us.
It's a gift from the Father through Jesus.
Gift number 3. Jesus
became for us sanctification.
He calls us all saints. Ones who are called
to be pure, morally blameless, sanctified ones,
ones who are purified by, here's a nice word for you,
expiation.
You heard that word before? Do you ever look it up?
It's a Bible word. I didn't create it.
We are purified by expiation.
We are made pure by the act
of another. That's what expiation means.
By the act of
another, by Jesus, we're freed from the guilt of sin.
That has to do with justification and being given
righteousness. Because of who he is and what he did
for us, he calls us saints.
Hmm.
Alright, saints. How are you doing this morning?
He calls you a saint. Ones who are
morally pure and blameless.
We are made pure by his life and his
death on the cross. Because he lived a sanctified life
that was morally pure and blameless,
he is free to give it to us.
Is that a gift or what? Gift number 3.
Sanctification is something he gives
us. Now again, the question becomes how do we
access that gift? Is it under the tree? Do we unwrap it?
Does it have ribbons? Is it in a gift bag?
It's a gift,
but we have to receive it and live it.
Jesus has made the gift available.
He lived it. He became sanctification for us.
We are like the man in the Bible
who asked, what must I do to be saved?
Ask, what must I do to receive this gift?
It's not a tangible gift that we can take and unwrap
and enjoy like we would any other gift.
Now, we have gift givers
in our family. Julie, the daughter that you know,
has this unique ability
to find something I would really like.
She just does that.
She finds something I would really like, and I can be sure
I'm going to like it when I unwrap her gift because she has that unique ability to
select a gift. Laura, my other daughter,
figures for the most part, I don't need more stuff.
But she has a unique ability
to select a gift for me
that pleases me,
but her Christmas gifts are
something to do with her. It's a shared
experience, okay?
I can't unwrap it, I can't put it on the mantle, I can't hang it on the wall,
but it's a shared
experience. One year, it was a trip to a glass
blowing shop where she paid the price and we both made
a hand blown Christmas ornament.
Yeah, I ended up with a Christmas ornament that's
really special, right? But it was the
shared experience. Another year,
it was a shared bird watching trip that she paid for.
We went to see the Sandhill Cranes
up on the river on a boat, on a boating,
on a birding tour. It was a shared experience.
And one year for my birthday,
it was a tubing trip down the Okohi River.
Okay?
Her gifts were a shared experience. The gift of
sanctification is somewhat like that.
It's a gift of a shared
experience
in which the price has already been paid.
Jesus brought the gift, he paid the price
already. His death on the cross bought my justification,
but it also bought my sanctification. With justification,
I'm declared righteous or right with God, at
peace with him. With sanctification, I am made
right, grown right, grown into his likeness.
It is a shared experience.
I don't know if you've ever thought about sanctification
being like that. Often time, sanctification is
presented as something we have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. It's something we have to
do. Woe unto us
if that's the way it is. This
is a shared experience with Jesus.
It's a living experience.
It's an experience that Jesus and I share together.
He purchased it, he bought it,
but we, he and I,
develop it and grow it together.
That's how sanctification works, by the way.
It's a shared gift. My part,
again, abide in him. Spend time with
him in study and conversation. Some people call
it prayer. And live in
his presence. Now, we got into that in Sabbath school
somewhat this morning, and I thought, Keelan did a really good
job with that. This
business of living in God's presence is to be ongoing.
It's not just a morning devotional or an evening
worship period. It's continuous.
The sanctification thing is a big deal.
It's ongoing.
Gift number four. Jesus became
for us redemption.
This is the summation of all his gifts.
He became redemption for us. We love to enjoy the
fact that we are redeemed. Redeemed from what,
by the way? It comes with part A and part B.
And that's something I kind of stumbled onto this week that I went,
oh, never quite saw it that way before.
Part A, okay? To be redeemed,
the meaning of the word, means to be
ransomed from something evil.
These people that kidnap children and demand a ransom,
when the ransom is paid and the child is returned, the child
has been redeemed. We won't say how often they kill the
child and take the money. But
when we are redeemed, the price is paid,
and we're taken from something evil.
Sin's penalty
is paid for.
We are ransomed from Satan's power.
He has no more power over us. We are redeemed from that.
We are redeemed from sin's hold
over us. As long as we don't let the rattlesnake out of the hole,
by the way. We are delivered from the
bondage of this world. He became
the ransom for us.
We are redeemed because he paid the price.
That's part A. Part B.
Our final redemption means
that we will be removed from this planet, from
sin's presence, and taken to another place.
Yay!
Have you noticed that
the world is going crazy lately? It's beyond
going crazy. You know, there will be
wars and rumors of wars. Well, sure enough, that's going on. There will be
earthquakes in diverse places. Sure enough, that's going on.
Hurricanes, tornadoes,
drought,
all kinds of things. I read one
yesterday in the news
that there is a fault in California. Now, we've heard
about these faults in California for years and years and years and years.
What this is saying is when this fault
goes, and it's not if it goes, it's when it goes, and it's not even the San Andreas
fault. It's another one. It runs
through San Francisco,
and they're predicting when that one goes, the
city goes. It will knock out
the infrastructure. It will knock out all electricity.
It will literally destroy the city.
Yeah, that kind of stuff's happening.
Okay? It's just I saw it in the news yesterday and I went, whoa,
there it is again.
Part B of this
is we get to get removed from this planet
from sin's presence and taken to another place.
We get to come back, but
God's going to fix it before we come back. But think about this
place a minute. There's no more sin. There's no more tears.
There's no more grief. It's a place without poverty.
It's a place without crime. It's a place of joy
and contentment. It's a place where people no longer
hurt each other. It's a place where a friend
is really a friend, not one who kind of
comes along behind and stabs you in the back.
And it's a place where we can literally walk with Jesus.
Our final redemption is heaven, a place where
we are physically delivered from this world.
That is the final gift. So, a summation
of the gifts. Wisdom.
His wisdom that he gives me, the knowledge
of who God is and what it means to me.
His righteousness. His righteousness that he
gives to me. His standing in heaven
he gives to me. Sanctification.
His sanctification that he gives to me.
It's his life that he shares with me.
Redemption. His deliverance
that he gives to me now from sin, power,
and penalty will be delivered fully
to me
in heaven when I am delivered from its presence. The secret
to all these gifts is found in abiding in him,
spending time in the Bible, and in conversation with him,
and living continually and
consciously in his presence.
Now there are many, many, many gifts
from the Father in the Bible.
But I think these four gifts
are the core of all of them.