"The Perfect Christmas Gift"

     Dear Friends in Christ,  

I have a confession to make this evening that I just have to get off my chest because the guilt is about to consume me. Here it is: I got off far too easily this Christmas season when it came to the part of the holidays that we men typically dread. You know what it is, don’t you? We men call it (spoken in a dull tone) shopping. You women call it SHOPPING! My dear wife, bless her precious, sweet heart, took it upon herself as she has done the past several years to do all the shopping for our Christmas list this season. And I will be forever indebted to her for it because over the years I have found it harder and harder to find that perfect gift that we go in search of each year for my parents, our daughters, our granddaughters, and everyone else that we buy for. Now in all honesty, I don’t mind getting the perfect gift, and I really don’t mind giving the perfect gift. It’s just the search for the perfect gift that I have problems with.

All of which brings me to this particular gift that I have up here with me this morning. As you can see, it has been very neatly and nicely wrapped with some beautiful Christmas paper. You know, I often wonder how much we Americans spend each year on wrapping paper. Never mind that you could simply give a present to another person in a brown paper bag or, horror of horrors, completely unwrapped. No, it has to be hidden. It has to be a surprise for the other person. And of course, that’s part of the fun of Christmas – seeing the beautifully wrapped packages and trying to guess what’s inside of them and then tearing off the paper to reveal their contents.

Well, this evening I want to talk to you about a very special gift that I’m referring to tonight as God’s perfect gift, and just for the record I want you to know that this gift also came wrapped, only it wasn’t wrapped anything like the package I have up here. Rather, our text for today tells us that when God delivered this gift to our world, it was wrapped in swaddling clothes. Isn’t that interesting? As awesome and wondrous as this gift was, it had no bright and colorful wrapping. Rather it could be found in just a bunch of old cloths, which were made to fit neatly and snugly around this unusual present.

Perhaps that is why the world has been so reluctant to accept and receive this gift. We only like neatly wrapped packages, those with colorful paper and fancy designs. That’s certainly what the Jews were expecting concerning this gift which God had centuries before promised to send to his people. They were expecting a royal infant, a princely heir to the throne, one who would be born in a palace. This tiny infant, they believed, would grow up into a super-ruler, much like his great ancestor King David. He would restore Israel to her long-lost glory. He would defeat the Romans and do away with all the injustices that the Jews had endured at their hands. Like Moses, who had once delivered the Israelites from the hand of the Egyptians, so also the Messiah – God’s gift to men – would certainly deliver his people from the tyranny of Rome.

But such was not the case. Rather than being born in a palace, God’s gift to man was born in a lowly stable or cave. There was simply no room in the overcrowded inns of Bethlehem for his humble parents, so they were forced to spend the night where the animals were normally kept, out in the barn, so to speak. And it was there that God delivered his gift to mankind.

And whereas our gifts are normally placed beneath beautifully decorated trees glowing brightly with sparkling lights and shining ornaments, God’s perfect gift was laid in a manger, a feeding trough full of straw out of which the animals ordinarily ate. My, what a contrast between God’s Christmas and ours!

But there’s more. As we continue to look at the package I have up here, not only do we see that it is wrapped with beautiful paper, it also has all the other trimmings with which we like to conceal our Christmas gifts. Seems like the harder we can make it to open, the better. So we place colorful ribbon around our gifts and then we top that ribbon with a beautiful matching bow. It certainly does make a pretty sight, doesn’t it?

Well, God may have been outdone by us as far as wrapping his gift was concerned, but no way were we going to outdo him in the area of trimmings. The trimmings for God’s perfect gift are described for us in Luke 2:13-14 where it says: “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.’” So the angels can be thought of as the ribbon and bow that God placed on his special gift, but interestingly, only a very small and select group of men were permitted to see these beautiful trimmings. We know them as the shepherds – nothing very special or spectacular about them. They were just common ordinary Jews trying to earn a living by herding sheep and other domestic animals. On that first Christmas night they were minding their own business, lazily tending their flocks outside the city of Bethlehem, when all of a sudden the dark stillness of the night was broken by a beautiful angel who brought with him the brilliance of God’s glory and the most important message the world had ever heard, the message that the Messiah, the Savior, the Son of God had just been born. Then all of a sudden out of nowhere a whole multitude of these heavenly beings appeared, praising God and announcing that his peace had come to earth.

That must have been an unbelievably magnificent sight for those lowly shepherds to behold, and it would have been a terrible shame had they kept it all to themselves. But they didn’t, for as soon as the angelic choir left them, they left their flocks and headed for Bethlehem where they found God’s perfect gift just as the angel had said. And then we’re told they made known abroad all that they had heard and seen on that very special night to anyone who was willing to listen to them.

And what about us, my friends? Are we doing the same? Or are we just keeping this precious gift to ourselves? Many years ago I came across an old saying that for some reason I’ve never forgotten. It goes like this: “If like the shepherds you have heard and seen, then like the shepherds go and tell.” There is a big difference though between us and those shepherds, for we know so much more than what they knew. We have the entire life of this precious gift from God laid out for us in the Bible. That first Christmas night was only the beginning. 33 years later this perfect gift would be hung on God’s perfect tree, the cross, that I talked about a few weeks ago in my sermon. And he would die in a most cruel and horrible way, but that death was necessary for through it, death itself was defeated and the fear that it held for us was completely removed.

But getting back to our theme for today, what exactly is this perfect gift that comes wrapped in rags and yet is attended by angels? Well, before we answer that question, I’m sorry, but my curiosity is getting the best of me, so I think it’s high time I open this gift to see what inside of it…

Wow! Just what I wanted! And hopefully all of you will get what you wanted as well when you open your presents this evening or tomorrow. But even if you don’t, that’s ok because we’ve all received this one perfect gift from God that far outshines all the others. And that gift is described so well for us by the Apostle Paul in Gal. 4:4-5 where he says: “But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.” So God’s gift to us is none other than his only Son Jesus Christ. God made flesh; God giving us himself; that’s what Christmas is really all about. Oh sure, it’s fun to receive and open other presents and packages during this special time of the year, but we must be careful that we never allow those gifts to overshadow the very human, yet very divine gift that God has given us in the manger of Bethlehem.

By the way, did you notice when I opened this gift before, I failed to do something very important? I forgot to check the gift tag attached to it. I forgot to see who it was for and who it was from. So maybe I’d better do that. Let’s see, it was for me, thank goodness, and it says here that it was from Santa Claus. Well, whoever Santa Claus was, I’d like to say thank you.

But you know what? This gift tag reminds us of the one that God attached to his perfect gift. It can be found in Luke 2:11 where it says: “To you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.” So God’s perfect gift is for you and you and you. It’s for all of us and for all people. My goodness, it must have cost an awful lot to send such a special gift to so many people! And indeed it did! It not only cost our precious Savior his throne of glory in heaven where he was worshiped and adored by countless throngs of angels as the 2^nd Person of the Holy Trinity; it not only cost his extreme humiliation on this earth, but as we mentioned before, it ultimately cost him his very life. And yet he was willing to pay that price. He was willing to suffer the very pains and agonies of hell itself just so that you and I wouldn’t have to, just so that we could hear him saying to each and every one of us: “I love you. I forgive you. I died for you so that you could live with me forever.”

“But why?” we want to ask. Why would Jesus do that for us? Why would he go through all that for us? We’ve certainly done nothing to deserve such kindness from him. If anything, we’ve done just the opposite. We’ve hurt and offended him by what we have done and by what we have failed to do. We’ve hurt our neighbor instead of helping him. We’ve hated our enemies instead of loving them and praying for them. We have all too often followed the desires of our own hearts and the leading of Satan and left Jesus behind. Why is it then that God the Father would give us this perfect gift in Jesus?”

The answer to that question can be found in what I feel is one of the greatest Christmas passages of all, though we don’t normally think of it that way. That passage is John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” So it was only the infinite, insurpassable, incomprehensible, and incomparable love of God that moved him to give us this greatest of all Christmas gifts. Why he loves us so much is beyond me. Perhaps it’s because he created us. Perhaps it’s because he feels sorry for us. Perhaps it’s simply because that’s his nature for the Bible does tell us that God is love. Whatever the reason, I’m certainly not going to argue with him or try to change his mind, are you? Rather, what we should do is what everyone is supposed to do whenever they receive a gift of any kind. We should thank him. And that thanks should pour forth not just from our lips and our heart, but from the very lives we live. So with the hymn-writer of old let us offer ourselves to God not just this Christmas Eve but everyday of the year and say with the utmost sincerity: “Take my life and let it be Consecrated, Lord, to Thee; Take my moments and my days, Let them flow in ceaseless praise. Take my love, my Lord, I pour At Thy feet its treasure-store; Take myself, and I will be Ever, only, all for Thee.”

      Amen.