Tonight I want to begin by reading you a story written by one of my favorite story tellers, Max Lucado. It’s entitled, Because I Love You. Get comfortable and listen.
[BECAUSE I LOVE YOU]
I’m sure you’ll agree that the Scriptural parallels to this story are numerous—but let me just highlight a few that stand out to me…and I’ll begin with this one:
Like Paladin—God’s first two children, Adam and Eve, broke His one law—a law that, like all His laws—are meant to protect us….like a “wall” of sorts.
And—as descendants of Adam and Eve—every human being born since has followed suit. As fallen beings—as sinners, all of us break God’s laws. We disobey our Loving Creator by DOING things we know He tells us not to do and by NOT doing things we know we should. In essence we have all crawled through the hole in God’s wall. As Isaiah 53:6 puts it, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, everyone to his own way.” Romans 3:10, 23 says, “There is none righteous, no, not one…All have sinned.”
Second, as in Lucado’s story, our sin—our wall-breaching behavior—has a horrible consequence—DEATH.
Ezekiel 18:4 plainly says, “The one who sins is the one who will die.” And—thousands of years of experience have shown this text, and others like it, to be true because our sinful actions and inactions do indeed KILL. Wall-breaching—sin—kills our DREAMS…it kills our BEST INTENTIONS…it kills our RELATIONSHIPS…it kills our PEACE…it kills our attempts at a meaningful LIFE…and in the end it kills US. No matter how many vitamins we take or how many miles we jog—these bodies of ours eventually quit working. And on our own we are powerless to stop all this. So—we ARE like Paladin—outside the wall—afraid and yearning to get back to God.
Well, the good news of Christmas is that God has made the way for us to come home to Him. Hebrews 10:19 calls it “…a new and LIVING way…” referring of course to Jesus. Jesus IS the way for sinners like you and me to come to God. In fact it’s why He was born. As Paul says in 1st Timothy 1:15, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” Like Shaddia breaching the wall and entering the deadly wilderness, Jesus came into our fallen world for the express purpose of making the way for sinners—wall-breachers like you and me—to come back to God.
And—this is something we really DO need to know if we are to know all we need to know about Christmas. In fact, it’s the most important thing to know because to fully understand the Christmas story—to know what it’s really all about—we must know that, “God so loved the world that He sent His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him….will not PERISH but have everlasting LIFE…and that… “God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through Him.” (John 3:16-17) Or, to put it as Paul puts it in Romans 7:24-25, “Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Well, God has loved you and me this much since before the beginning of time. As Lucado illustrated in his story, this Christmas rescue mission has been God’s plan all along. I believe it was Philip Yancey who said, “As the first echo from the crunch from the first bite of the forbidden fruit was echoing through the Garden of Eden, Jesus was leaving for Calvary.” This is what Revelation 13:8 means when it says that Jesus is “…the Lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world.”
And that leads to one other Christmas truth that this children’s story points toward. Jesus came to save us—but to do that He had to die. Jesus had to take the death we deserve as sinners on Himself…so He came carrying not an aspen staff but a wooden cross. You see, the truth is there was no salvation in Jesus’ birth nor did the sinless way He lived His life have any redemptive force of it’s own. Jesus’ example, as flawless as it was, could not rescue us from our sins. Even His teaching—the greatest truth ever revealed to man, could not save us—BECAUSE THERE WAS A PRICE TO BE PAID FOR OUR SINS! Someone had to die. And as the sinless Son of God only Jesus could do it. You see, since He never sinned in thought word or deed Jesus had no death sentence hanging over His head—which means He could die for you and me.
So, the hard Christmas truth is … those soft little infant HANDS, fashioned by the Holy Spirit in Mary’s womb, were made so that NAILS might be driven through them. Those baby FEET, pink and unable to walk, would one day walk up a dusty hill to be IMPALED on a cross. That sweet infant’s HEAD with sparkling eyes and eager mouth was formed so that some day men might force a CROWN OF THORNS onto it. That tender BODY, warm and soft, wrapped in swaddling cloths, would one day be ripped open by a Roman SPEAR. Jesus WAS born. He came to earth to die for, as 1st John 2:2 says, He is, “…the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins for the whole world.”
Each Christmas Eve we observe communion as a way of symbolizing this amazing truth. As we share this meal, let me invite all Christians present to partake with us…because even if you are not a member of this church….If you are a Christian…if you are His, this is Yours.
THE ORDINANCE OF COMMUNION