Hello everyone and welcome to Trinity Sermons here at Trinity Church, St.
Louis. This is our third Sunday of Advent and our third sermon from the series Advent
Conspiracy. Today we will hear about the third tenet of the Advent Conspiracy which is called
Give More. Enjoy the sermon today and God bless.
A reading from the Gospel of John chapter 1 verses 1 to 14. In the beginning was the
Word and the Word was with God and all the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through Him all things were made. Without Him nothing was made that has been made. In
Him was life and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness
and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
He came as a witness to testify concerning that light so that through Him all might believe.
He Himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the light. The true light
that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world and though
the world was made through Him the world did not recognize Him. He came to that which was
His own but His own did not receive Him. Yet to all who did receive Him, to those who believed
in His name, He gave the right to become children of God. Children born not of natural descent
nor of human decision or a husband's will but born of God. The Word became flesh and
made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son who
came from the Father full of grace and truth. This is the Word of the Lord.
Well, good morning everyone and I want to welcome you to this our third gathering of
the Advent Conspiracy or should I say the Advent Conspiracy here at Trinity Streetsville.
You know, I was thinking conspiracy theorists around the world or secret societies have
been involved in changing the world in ways that we do not know. Some say that secret
societies have been pulling the levers of political power for hundreds of years. Some
say secret societies have overthrown governments. Some say they have even started wars. It may
be impossible to tell all that conspiracy groups and secret societies ever done. Why?
Because they're secret, of course, they're secret. That's why you would never know. But
here the Advent Conspiracy, we too are trying to change the world. By the way, does everyone
remember the secret handshake from last week? Everybody, it's okay, it's secure. You can
reveal that you know the secret handshake. A for Advent. Yes, our little movement is
a little bit different. We're not trying to start any wars but we are in the middle of
a battle, friends. We're in the middle of a battle. What are we doing? We're trying
to save Christmas. That's right. We believe that, you know, Christmas for the most part
here in Canada and mostly around the world has, well, it's kind of lost its way. It's
basically now about shopping, about spending money you don't really have on stuff that
you don't really need. And we want to push back against that. We believe, we believe
actually that Advent is the antidote to the modern chaos of the commercial Christmas.
And so we have not one, not two, not three, but four core commitments and beliefs that
we are sticking to this Advent season in order to resist the influence of the commercial
Christmas. You probably remember what they are, but let's just remind ourselves of them.
We have vowed to worship fully, which means that just at this time of year, when the world
is speeding up and everyone's calendars are getting jammed up, we have decided that we
are going to slow down and we are actually going to declutter our calendars. We're going
to decelerate our lives and we're going to de-stress. Why? So that we can put Jesus back
into the center of our lives and back into the center of our Christmas celebration. That's
how it starts. That's number one, worship fully, worship fully. And then secondly, what
we're going to do is last week we talked about we're going to spend less, spend less. Now
last week we heard that, you know, King Herod was hungry for power. He was hungry for possessions.
Meanwhile, Jesus comes along and he's just trying to serve and he's sacrificing. And
so we have kind of said, well, let's do the same when it comes to our Christmas shopping,
especially let's spend less. Let's make a budget. Let's set a limit and let's spend
wisely in all those ways we can spend less. Thirdly, we're going to talk about this one
here today, give more, but let's just fast forward to next week. We're going to talk
about loving all. That is what this whole movement is about. We want to love all. We
want to make sure that the least and the last and the lost of our world, all of those people
who desperately need God and desperately need help at this time of year are actually loved
and cared for. And that is why we are taking up a big time Christmas offering here at Trinity
streets fail to support our community partners and to support our ministry to those who need
it most. So that brings us to today, to today where we are going to talk about what does
it mean to give more? What does it mean to give more? It's a strange thing to say, I
must admit because how does one spend less on the one hand and give more on the other
hand? Well, here's the thing. What makes a gift special isn't the amount of money that
we spend on it because we've all probably spent a whole lot of money on a gift that
actually missed the mark. And then other times we probably spent very little on something
and it was, you know, we just hit it out of the park. It was the perfect gift for that
person and they're never going to forget it. Let me just give you an example. How many
of you here are familiar, by the way, I have to apologize for my voice. I was singing Christmas
carols way too loud on Friday night. And so I'm kind of losing my voice a little bit,
but how many of you know that TV show, the big bang theory? Do you guys remember that
TV show? Yeah. So in the big bang theory, it's basically about this guy named Sheldon,
who is a geek. He's a Star Trek fan. He is, he's actually a theoretical physicist, I think.
So he's brilliant, but he has a very low emotional intelligence, you might say. His EQ is very
low, especially when it comes to women. And so that's why Christmas is so tough for him
because he has a friend named Penny and Penny is an amazing gift giver and Sheldon is puzzled
and he's trying to figure out how to reciprocate for her at Christmas. We're going to show
you a little clip, but I just want to let you know, those of you who are watching online,
because of copyright reasons, we're going to have to mute the clip, but we'll be back
and the clip will be found in the chat so you can watch it later. There we go. So that's
pretty funny, but let's ask the question. What happened in that scene? Here's what happened.
Sheldon just realized that the quality of a gift has very little to do with the price
of that gift. The gift that Penny gave him was incredibly valuable to him, obviously,
and yet at the same time it was completely inexpensive. It cost her basically nothing.
All his gift baskets couldn't compare. And so what Penny did is she actually spent less,
but she gave more. And this flies in the face of a lot of conventional thinking these days
that says that if you spend more, then you're giving more. And if you spend more, you're
even loving more, but that's not true. Another cultural commentator, Michael Scott, says
this, he says, presents are the best way to show someone how much you care. It's like
this tangible thing you can point to and say, hey, man, I love you this many dollars worth.
The reason that sounds so hollow is because it is hollow. It's not true. In fact, I just
wanted to share with you this morning a few of the gifts that I have been given over the
years from mostly from my family. And they're pretty meaningful. I think you're going to
see that they're not necessarily that expensive. For one, a few years back, my girls gave me
this laminated little book. And in this book is a bunch of pictures of our days when we
lived on the hobby farm before we moved to Toronto and Mississauga. So it's got all these
wonderful memories. They've written their names, they've written little stories and drawn pictures
just to remember our time at the farm. That's a pretty special gift. We've also got an apron
that one of my daughters, I won't name them because they probably be thoroughly embarrassed
if I told them who was who, but they made me this nice apron at one point, which barely
fits me just barely. Here's a here's a t shirt that well, there's a couple reasons why I
probably don't wear this one a lot. First of all, it's a muscle shirt, and I don't have
a lot of muscles. And the second of all, it kind of, you know, I don't like to be that
noticeable throughout town. But on the front, there's a picture of me holding hands with
one of my daughters and on the back, it says homemade. And it says number one dad, number
one dad. Yeah. And then over, I'm going to show you another one here. This is a coffee
mug. Now when I was given this coffee mug, it said like, you know, in the office, World's
Best Boss, it said World's Best Dad on it. And on the back, it had my daughter's four
fingerprints that were pressed into it. And they had some hot Mod Podge or something they
had put in over top of it. But trouble was the first time we washed it, all that stuff
came off. And so I still keep the mug, because even the mug, of course, is a memory of what
they what they gave. And, and then of course, I want to show you this too. This is a little
tiny little set of coupons that one of my daughters gave me saying this is this is some
things that I could do for you, dad, I could walk the dog anytime, any day. And that was
good for one week. I was also told that she would be my personal stylist, which meant
she'd look after my outfits and my hair and my accessories. Again, that was for any day,
anytime, coupon for counseling, a whole yard work, there was a whole bunch of things in
there. These are pretty special gifts. I'll just show you one more. But this is one Sally
can my wife Sally can knit and she she spent a lot of time and energy. She's nipped me
a couple sweaters over the years, but she did me this this sweater as well. And it's
of course, very, very special. These are very precious and special gifts for me. Now what
makes them such meaningful gifts is the question. And here's the answer. The best gifts always
celebrate or commemorate a relationship. gifts are priceless when they're personal. And that's
how you give more at Christmas. You give more relational gifts. Here's another shot of Greg
Holder. The counterbalance to that is give more which you're absolutely right in suggesting
that that sounds like a contradiction. What we're saying is to give more relational gifts.
And what does that mean? Well, let's go back to the story. The most relational gift we've
ever been given is Jesus our Savior, who takes on flesh and blood. We can all go to the scriptures
for God so loved the world he gave he gave his son. So there's an incarnational aspect
to this. And what that means is that we begin to think through how do we give relational
gifts. You're going to hear the word relationship a lot during this sermon. So if you're taking
notes, just write down relationship and you're done. Because isn't it true that when God
came to provide a solution to all the world's problems, he did not give us some material
thing, but he gave us a relational he gave us a relationship with his son Jesus the most
personal gift anyone could give. And if you want to dig deep into that, there's no better
place for us to do that that in John chapter one beginning at verse one, which we did read
together it's a little complicated, but let's just read through a little more together.
Okay, we read that in the beginning, in the beginning, in the beginning, yes, in the very,
very, very beginning, go back to the very beginning in the beginning was, was what what
what possibly was there at the very, very beginning what we read here, the beginning
was the word. And the word was with God. And the word was God. Now the Greek word logos
is translated here as word, but it can also mean thought can also mean truth in the beginning
was the truth and the beginning was a thought. But what john goes on, what john goes on to
tell us in the rest of his gospel, of course, is that this word that was there at the very
beginning was not some idea, it wasn't some force, it wasn't some philosophy. This word
the very beginning was relational, it was personal. He goes on to tell us that in the
beginning, there was this living personal being and he even tells us who the name of
that being was. It was Jesus in the beginning was Jesus and Jesus was with God and Jesus
was God. In other words, if you were to pull back the curtains of the universe and look
deep into where it all came from, yes, you might see a Big Bang Theory, and you might
see the physics equation. But really, at the heart of all reality is a personal relationship
between a father and a son. In fact, the father and the son are so closely connected that
where Jesus says that if you have seen me, you have seen the father because relationally
we are one. And so just kept this with me. At the in the very beginning, in the very
beginning, you have the father, you have the son and you have the Holy Spirit, these three
beings constantly giving to each other, constantly in relationship with each other in love. This
is so important for us to remember at Christmas. I don't know if maybe you've not thought about
this, but Jesus is not just the baby in the manger, right? Jesus is also the creator of
the universe. He was the one who flung the galaxies into their place. He's the one who
holds all the galaxies in his hand. And you might say, well, how can that possibly be?
How can it be? It's because Jesus did not come into existence on Christmas morning.
Yes, he was born a baby. And yes, he was born in a manger and laid in the cradle. But understand
this, he's always existed. He's always existed in perfect relationship with his father. And
that brings us to one of the most amazing verses in all the Bible. I think you should memorize this one for sure.
The word became flesh. This word became flesh and it dwelt among us. The creator of the
cosmos was given to us. He came to be with us, to live with us, to be one of us. Talk
about a relational gift. The gift that God gives on the very first Christmas is himself.
Did you hear that song we just sang? We said, word of the father, word of the father, now
in flesh appearing. I love the way the message Bible translates this. It says, the word became
flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. God put on skin and bone and eyelashes and
toenails and came out of eternity and gave himself to us so we could feel him and know
him and love him and follow him. Tim Keller says, Jesus wasn't just born, he was given.
And theologians have a fancy word for this. They call it the incarnation, carne, carnivore,
meat, flesh. So incarnation means that God, the God of all creation puts on meat. He puts
on flesh. He's born as a human baby. And suddenly the God of the universe that was out there
is now right here. Talk about a relational gift. So here's what I'm thinking. When it
comes to Christmas shopping this year, what if this Christmas we took our cue from God
himself and gave relationally, gave ourselves to others, just as Christ gave himself to
us. What would it look like? Practically, if this Christmas morning you gave a different
kind of gift. I want to suggest three practical ways we could do this or think about this
that you can give relationally this Christmas. The first way I want to suggest to you is
we can make sure that our gifts we give are really, really personal. Right? We look in
John's gospel and we read, today in the town of David, a savior has been born to who? To
you. A savior has been born to Tracy. Savior has been born to Georgia. Savior has been
born to Chris. Very, very personal. Most Christmas gifts are not that personal. If I were to
ask you to turn to your neighbor, I'm not going to, and say, tell me three gifts you
got last Christmas, most of us would have a very hard time trying to remember. Why is
that? Why can't we remember a gift that we got 12 months ago? It's probably because we
got another shirt. We already had a closet full of shirts. We all get this stuff for
Christmas that is instantly forgettable because it's material and it's not relational. In
contrast, relational giving means we pour ourselves into that gift somehow. Let me just
give you an example. For this book here that my kids gave me was a very relational gift.
Now I will say to you, for you, this book is worthless. This has no value to you. To
me, this book is priceless. I would never part with this, right? Because, and I'll tell
you why, because it wasn't made for you, it was made for me, very personally made for
me. Or what if I was to take the sweater as another example? You know, it's interesting.
Sally actually put a tag on this sweater and it says, for you, Rob, for you with love.
Right? Now, first of all, I married up, didn't I? Like that's pretty sweet. I got to say.
But most of us, when we were looking at tags on sweaters in a mall, we're looking for a
Lululemon or we're looking for Calvin Klein or Ralph Lauren or something like that, something
expensive maybe. But you're not going to find anything personal like that. But because this
is personal, it is priceless. You're never going to find this sweater in Value Village.
It's about everything else I own will one day be in Value Village, but this will not
be in Value Village. So listen, God's gift to us is very, very personal given to show
you that he cares for you. So what if he took some time this December and you didn't just
buy something easy from the mall, but you actually gave some creative thought to the
other person, who they are, exactly what they care about and give them something personal
that speaks to them. That's the first way we can do that. The second way that we can
give more is to give our presence. Think about it again. God's gift of Jesus was the gift
of his presence. Oh, oops. It says there that a virgin will conceive and give birth to a
son and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us. In other words, it's a
gift of presence. This is a breakthrough. I hope you understand this is a breakthrough
in the Bible because I think beforehand, people knew about God and people knew God's name
even, but they had never seen God's face. And suddenly in the face of Jesus, God has
a face and a voice and a presence. And when Jesus walked the earth, he loved being present
with people and people love being present with Jesus as well. So what if this Christmas
you gave the gift of your presence, P-R-E, present with a C-E, not a T-S, presence, meaning
spending time with those you love. This Christmas, is there someone that you love that is craving
the gift of your presence? And just the act of you showing up to be with them would be
the most memorable and meaningful thing you could do for them this season. Again, let
me take you back to a couple of these gifts. The gift of this apron kind of reminds me
of the gift of presence because every year, actually, we just did this last night, we
get together as a family and we bake Christmas cookies and Rice Krispie Squares and haystacks
and all that stuff. And so while it's an apron, it's a physical thing, it's actually a symbol
of how we as a family kind of get together and share our presence with each other. Also,
even this muscle shirt, which does not get much use, as I said, but it has on the front,
I know it's got a picture of me holding hands with my daughter. That is a sign that this
is really a gift about how important the presence is to each other. I heard about one family
that was doing the Advent conspiracy and the father got really kind of upset because what
he did is they spent a lot of money and they went down to Disney. Now that's not spending
less, that costs a ton of money to do that. But the idea was, oh, we'll spend time together.
And so when they got back, the father asked the son, what was your favorite part? Was
it Magic Kingdom? Was it Epcot? Was it Animal Kingdom or whatever? And the boy said that
his favorite part was the hotel pool, just swimming in the hotel pool. And the father
was furious. He was like, I could have, the hotel pool, we could have gone to River Grove
and done that, right? We didn't have to go down to Florida. But why did his son love
being in the hotel pool with him? Because he got his dad's presence in that time, right?
He was off of work. He was fully present spending time with his child. Question, is there someone
in your life who is longing to experience your presence this Christmas? Rather than
get them more Axe body spray or whatever, brainstorm some ideas about giving them the
gift of presence. Check out this idea again from the Advent Conspiracy.
One of the classic gifts, and it's in the book that we wrote that eventually when this
really started to take off globally, Zondervan asked us to write a book. And so in the book,
we talk about a young man, I think he was in his twenties, if I'm remembering right.
He gives his dad a bag of coffee beans and you're like, okay, I mean, so dad liked coffee,
right? Okay. He spent less. No, he gave more because it was a note accompanying the gift.
And it said, dad, you're only allowed to grind the beans and to drink this coffee down with
me. And however long it takes, however many times we have to sit down as we go through
this bag of beans, I want you to tell me stories of how you became the man you are. I want
to get to know you at a different level. That's pretty cool. You know, speaking of coffee,
while I was even working on my sermon this week, I was in Tim Hortons and there was a
group of people at the table beside me and they obviously had not seen each other in
a long time. They obviously were getting together for Christmas and they were sitting down and
they were just, just for the cup of coffee, for the cost of a cup of coffee. They were
giving each other the gift of their presence and they seem to be delighted to be together.
So let's resist buying the easy thing or whatever's on sale and let's think about giving the gift
of presence. Finally, God's gift was personal. It was a gift of presence. But thirdly, this
is where it gets a little confusing. It was also very pricey. Coming to be with you cost
Jesus everything because when Jesus leaves his father's side, look at this, he leaves
behind splendor. He leaves behind the majesty of heaven. This is a pricey gift in that sense.
He made himself nothing. It cost him even more if you continue to follow the story,
because he ultimately gives his life to you and to me. He humbled himself, became obedient
to death, even death on a cross. So what did giving relationally cost Jesus? The answer
is it cost him everything. So just understand this at Christmas, when we are saying give
relationally, it will also be costly. It's not costly in the sense that you're spending
money, but you're spending yourself, you're spending your time, you're spending your energy,
you're spending your creativity. It's a real sacrifice to make a gift more relational.
You can't just go to the mall and say, oh, bath bombs, buy two, get a third one free
and you chuck them in your cart, right? If you want to give truly relational gifts, you've
got to pay the price with a bit more time. Just case in point, I want to show you one
of the gifts in here. Remember I mentioned that my daughter gave me these little coupons.
All of these require her time, especially this one. I want to show you one. She said,
she gave me a coupon that said a free drink, okay, coffee, tea, juice or smoothie. But
then on the back, you know what it says? Unlimited, unlimited free drinks, free. So technically,
if I were to redeem this, I could redeem unlimited smoothies for the rest of my life. That is
an incredibly costly gift when it comes to time and energy. Hey, and if you like that
idea, we've actually printed out these blank gift vouchers that you could pick up at the
resource table afterwards. And maybe you give one of these this Christmas, you can, you
know, with a different act of service, maybe it's for free babysitting or maybe it's for
yard work or, or folding laundry or cleaning the garage or whatever the case may be making
infinite smoothies, right? There's a way to give our time. That's very costly. These things
all take time. They all take time. And remember time is really the most valuable thing we
have to spend anyways. So there you have it. There you have it. The three ways we can give
more this Christmas, even if we spend less. But I know you're saying, Rob, there's like
eight days left till Christmas. I've already bought a bunch of stuff. What are you doing
to me? And that's okay. That's okay. Just think of it as baby steps this year. Why not
try to do this? What I've kind of talked about just for one person this year, say one person
on my list, I'm going to give a gift relationally to and next year, maybe it's two and the year
after that, maybe it's three. Yes, here at the Advent Conspiracy, our goal is to change
the world this Christmas, but, but that can actually happen little bit by little bit.
So please don't be overwhelmed. At the same time, though, I want to say, if you're ready
to do Christmas differently and give yourself fully to others, go for it. Give personally,
give the gift of your presence and don't be afraid to give a pricey gift that costs some
of your time and energy. Because when you do this, you know what you're doing? You're
reclaiming the incarnational heart of Christmas. And you are going to leave your friends and
your family and your neighbors with a gift that they'll remember not just next year,
but they'll probably remember it 10 years from now. And as we give ourselves, do you
know what else we're doing? They're going to get to see Jesus up close and personal
in our lives through our presence. And that kind of gift truly is priceless. So thanks
be to God. Amen.
Thanks for listening to our sermon. We are so glad that we can share our message with
you and we hope that you're inspired to put relationships first in your giving this Christmas.
Today's sermon was taken from the December 17th, 2023 service at Trinity Church, Streetsville
in Mississauga, Ontario.