The Gift We REALLY Need

Take a break from the chaos of Christmas and come to learn about the GIFT we really need, why we REALLY need it, and what God wants us to do with it.

Note: This transcript was auto generated and may have errors.

Uh, we are going to be in the gospel in just a moment. First, I want to talk to you about Christmas. Am I not okay here? Keep going. I’m really trying to do better, honestly, I am. But this is not the happiest time of the year for me. It’s the busiest time of the year. Uh, it’s not likely I’m going to be able to come home. Do you want me to wait? Thank you. It’s not likely I’m going to be able to come home, make popcorn, turn on the fire and see how many kernels Charlie can catch in her mouth in a row. This time of year, it’s more likely I’ll sit down and Michelle will go. Honey, don’t get too comfortable. Why? Well, we’re going over to the Larsons tonight at 630. We are y Friendsgiving. Friendsgiving. If there are friends, they’d be giving us the night off. It’s the noisiest time of the year. Now at home. I can control it, right? No problem. Uh, or I can turn on YouTube. Eight hours of instrumental Christmas carols, huh? But out there. It’s everywhere and it’s mostly bad. Okay, on three, I want you to say out loud your most despised holiday song. Now out loud. Ready? One. Two. Three. Oh, doesn’t that feel better? And maybe I’m just turning into a geezer. But does it sound like even the good ones? The singer is trying to turn chairs on the voice. It’s the craziest time of the year. Now my wife, God bless her, she does all the shopping.

Of course, I’m talking about people rushing home with their treasures. Right? But somebody’s got to stay home and feed the dog, right? Bring in the Amazon packages. I don’t know how she does it. I mean, what do you get for on Edna? A woman who’s got everything. Two of them. Well, you go on, you know, a website and stuff. You don’t need.com, and you order something she doesn’t have. I mean, something she doesn’t need. Something she’ll never use. The problem, of course, with all this is it takes our eyes and energies off the gift we really need. And that’s what we want to talk about this morning. Samuel Johnson, a long time ago said we need to be reminded more often than we need to be instructed. And that’s never more true than at Christmas. Because the chaos and clatter and clutter of Christmas take our eyes off the gift we really need. Now, occasionally it leaks through a little bit, if no other time than Linus coming out onto a bare stage and saying the Gospel of Luke out loud. And that’s the real meaning of Christmas. Charlie Brown. This morning. I want to remind us. More than I want to instruct us. And I’m going to just ask, Josh, can you come and get this? Because I really would like. Oh. It’s working. Oh. Thank you. I need my hands free. I want to remind us more than instruct us about the real reason for the season.

You can get your Bibles out. I know a lot of you use your phones. I would encourage you to grab the Bible in your seat back, because we’re going to be looking at a number of references this morning. We’re looking at the gift we really need. And in your Bible, the gift part is the last third, the New Testament. The really neat part is the first two thirds. So I want to start with the really need part. Could we? The really need part for the gift. So I’m going to have you. If you write in your Bibles or you take notes on your phone, I want you to write down four words that tell us how much we really need this gift. It summarizes the first two thirds of your Bible. Here they are. First word made. God made us for a relationship with him. Throughout this first two thirds it says, I’ll be your God, you’ll be my people, and we will dwell together. Isaiah says, down the road God would send someone. He says, A virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us, huh? We get to the New Testament. And Angel says to Joseph, Jesus, stepdad, your fiance’s going to carry a baby. That’s the promise. The manual of Isaiah. And as that baby grows up, Jesus read the New Testament gospels for his teachings and his actions, showing how badly he wanted to be with us.

We were made for a relationship with God. Write that down. Made second word in our Old Testament review. Strayed. Genesis three. Starting with our ancestors, Adam and Eve, they broke God’s command. They broke his heart. They ran from him and hid. And they passed it on to their DNA. To us. And you might be sitting out there saying, I don’t believe I’ve broken God’s command or his heart, and I’m not hiding from him. Isaiah once again says, you’re wrong. He says, all we like sheep have gone astray, each of us in our own way. We’ve strayed. How straight are we? Well, that’s the third word. Lost. We’re lost. Strayed. Now to show us how lost we are, how broken our relationship is. God gave us a little section in your Old Testament, Exodus 20 through the end of Leviticus. It’s called his law. Now I’ve got to stop and do a little instructing here, because we’re very confused on the purpose of the law, as were the people in the passage we’re going to look at in a few moments. What’s the purpose of God’s law? Hope you’re all listening. It’s not something we do to make us better or repair our relationship with God. It’s something to show us how sick we are and how broken it is. Since this is Medcity, I’ll give you an illustration. This section of the Old Testament is like an MRI. God runs his people through to show us how sick we are inside.

It’s not a prescription that we fill and keep to make us healthy. You’re catching that. It’s really important. I’ll give you one more way to look at it. I played football in seventh through 12th grade, and I took my practice socks home to my widowed mother every week. Well, every other week sometimes. And she’d wash them. I couldn’t believe how clean she got them until she bought new socks and threw them in that drawer. And then I realized they weren’t that clean. After all, the law is a new sock in the drawer to show us the stains in our hearts. Really important and not just the law. God, throughout the Old Testament uses four words to show us just how stained those socks are. And if you want to write these down here, they are repeated over and over again. Sin. It means to fall short of God’s standard. Trespass. It means to go outside God’s appointed boundaries. Iniquity. Or is the way I like to say iniquity. It means to be unjust, unfair toward God, each other, in ourselves, and an old English word wickedness, the twisting of a wick to twist God’s character, his purposes. His truths were sin lost, trespass lost, iniquity lost, wickedness lost. We are lost now. I taught Old Testament for 12 years at Schaefer, and before I taught the course, I had talked to the parents and I’d say, I’m going to do my best to try to walk your student through this Old Testament.

But honestly, if this was made into a movie, your student couldn’t watch it. Without parental guidance. That’s how bad it is. We are deeply lost and we can’t fix it. Isaiah says, all our efforts to fix our broken relationship are to God, as does anybody know? Filthy rags. Unfortunately or fortunately for our benefit, God wasn’t okay with that. He said, I want my kids back. That’s the fourth word cost. The price for those sins, trespasses, iniquities, wickedness has to be paid. In the Old Testament, it was usually a critter that God valued and had made, that was sacrificed for one made in his image that he valued more. Isaiah. Once again, Isaiah would be a good book to read this year, wouldn’t it? He says someday someone would come who would bear the iniquity of us all. There’s that iniquity word. And Jesus in the New Testament is approaching the Jordan River in John the Baptizer stops and says, look, there he is, the Lamb of God. Who? What? Takes away the sin of the world. Cost. So that summarizes the first two thirds of your Bible the how bad we need this part. Now I just said quite a bit. So maybe if I could just summarize this Old Testament into one phrase, it’d be helpful. And we’re going to do that right now. Although I’ve told my chauffeur students for years, if I see you on the street or run into you in 20 years, be prepared.

I’m going to ask you, what’s the theme of the Old Testament? Do I have any Schaffer students in here? This morning? It’s quiz time. I saw Evan Kluth walk in Evan Kluth. Ah, I’ll give you a push. Evan. In one sentence, guys and gals. Guys and gals glued together? No, that’s a different one. Schaefer, student. Guys and gals, our gross. But. God. God is gracious. Did you write that down? Thank you. You always were my favorite student. Both of you guys and gals are gross. That’s the first two thirds, folks. But God is gracious. That’s the last third gracious. The word grace in the New Testament means gift. We’re going to talk this morning about the gift you really need. We’re now going to the letter of grace, Galatians chapter four. If we were looking at a narrative passage, you know, Daniel and the lion’s den, Jesus teaching about the woman at the well, we could dive right into it and dissect it right now, like Kyle does so marvelously every Sunday morning. But we’re diving into the middle of a letter, and you can’t just pick up a letter and start in the middle unless you know who wrote it, who it’s to, and why it was written. So let me just give you a little bit more background. Paul and God wrote this letter. I say that because the New Testament says the Spirit of God picked Paul up like water under a ship and carried him along like a wave, as he wrote in his own way that God could say, that’s my truth, that’s my word.

Paul was just a couple of years younger than Jesus. He grew up in a Pharisee home. Pharisees didn’t believe that their relationship was very broken, and what was broken could be fixed by obeying the law. He became a terrorist. And the reason he became a religious terrorist is this Jesus guy came, taught, healed, died, and his followers said he was raised from the dead. And if they would just go all in on his death and resurrection, they would be right with God, good with God. And he came unglued over that and started hauling people off and killing them, until he met the gift on the road to Damascus. And went all in and he became the greatest missionary Christians have ever known. He was sent as a missionary by ascending church in Acts 13 and 14 on the first missionary journey through Asia minor, and it was brutal. He lost his partner John Mark, who ran home at the beginning of the journey. He got sick in Antioch of Pisidia, really sick, and everywhere he went he was belittled, his message was undermined and he was beaten, stoned to death, we believe, or close in one city. He gets back to his sending church and he finds out it’s not only people out there who are white elephant King Jesus death is unnecessary.

Superfluous. It’s Christian leaders in Jerusalem. Acts 15 and they said this unless you are circumcised and you keep the law, you cannot be saved. So he runs to Jerusalem and has this fight, works it out, and he gets back to his home church. And he hears those churches in Galatia that he got brutalized, bringing the gift they really need. Had also white elephant to Jesus. And I would hate to have been a dog in his apartment when he started to dictate this letter. It’s an angry letter. Let’s look at it. Open your Bibles. I’m going to give you a couple of lead in statements he made. Before we get to our text about the gift we really need. So in chapter two, verse 21, he’s just pounding on them about, how could you be so foolish to think you’re filthy? Rag works could fix your hopelessly lost relationship with God instead of the Son of God, Emmanuel, paying for your sins. And he says in verse 21, I do not nullify the grace, the gift of God. For if righteousness, a right relationship were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. If you could fix it. Jesus death was meaningless. Unnecessary. He goes on. Number two. Look at verse two of chapter three. See, when he went around to those Galatians and they went all in on Jesus, something remarkable happened. The Holy Spirit came inside to them. We can’t open up what that looks like today in this message, but it’s proclaimed loudly in the last third of the Bible.

They started to be transformed by the Holy Spirit. And he says this in verse two. Let me ask you a question or let me ask you only this did you receive the spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? When did you get the Holy Spirit trying to do those works? Or when you went all in on Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world? Third thing he hits him with. He says, uh, let’s see which one do I want to take you to? He says this. He says, uh, works have never worked. Let’s look at chapter three, verse six. I think I might have skipped one in your notes. He says works have never worked. He said, just as Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. God said to Abraham, at some point, we’re right, we’re good. I’m fist bumping. They’re not conflict. Go back to Genesis 15 and read it. God says, uh, Abraham, you’re going to have descendants like the stars. He’s got no kids. He’s too old to have kids. And he believed God. He went all in on who God said he was and what he’d do. And God says, that’s how you become right with me. You go all in on who I am and what I do. Abraham before the law. It’s always been works that have not made you right with God.

It’s faith. It’s trusting in who God is. Uh, fourth one is uh, let’s look at verse ten. For all who rely on the works of the law. This is chapter three are under a curse, for it is written, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to do them. You want to be right with God by keeping the law. You got to be 100% no failures. And if you think that’s ridiculous, everybody, you know, nobody’s perfect. Why would God ever expect you to be 100%? I’d like you to find one of these Schaefer students and ask them to tell you the story of the turd in God’s punchbowl. And then we get to the last one. And that’s in chapter three, verse 24. The law was never meant. To save us. Look at 24. So then the law is our guardian or was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith. A guardian was a slave that would knock on the door in the morning and say, is little Jedediah ready to go to school? Yeah, I’ll send him out. And that guardian, that escort escorted him to school to be taught by a rabbi. What’s the law? It’s a vehicle to take us to school, to someone who can do something. In today’s terminology, the law is just a school bus to get us to Jesus school.

All those things he says before the part of the letter we’re going to look at. How do you fix a broken relationship? Lost people. You do it through Jesus, not the lost. So now let’s look at our text. We’re in chapter four. Verse one through three, he gives another reason. That it’s a gift. I mean, that the air, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by the father. That’s an illustration. In the same way, we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. Now Paul’s a really deep guy, and I could sort of break that text down, but I think I can tell you what it means with a couple of questions. Um, we have some little people in here. I see a couple of young ladies in the front row. Uh, has your mother ever told you to chew your food a certain number of times? Has anybody out there like, I want you to slow down and chew your food 21 times. Anybody had that done? Oh, Josh in the back. Slow down, chew your food. I’m going to be watching your account. Or maybe they said, I’m going to get you this little timer here. You don’t brush your teeth. They’re falling out. So every time you brush your teeth, you’re going to flip the timer over and you brush until the the last sand falls through that timer.

Or the timer goes off. Anybody had that? Josh again. Okay, now imagine college students, you come home for Christmas and you’re sitting there tomorrow having Christmas dinner, and you look up from this plate and your mom’s going. Watching your mouth. What are you doing, mom? I just want you to digest your food. Well, mom. Later you open up presents and your mom gives you a toothbrush. Then that night, you turn it on upstairs and you’re using it, you know, and you turn it off, and it won’t go off, and you go, mom, what’s. I think this thing is broke. You got the receipt? She goes, no, it isn’t broke. It just it goes for two minutes automatically. Mom. I’ve grown up. I care for my teeth. Now stop treating me like a kid. That’s what this is saying. The law is for kids. People grow up. It’s time to grow up. And that’s verse four. Boy, is it time. And here’s our here’s our Christmas verse. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His son, born of woman. Let’s take it phrase by phrase. When the fullness of time had come. Fullness there means pregnant. Get me to the hospital. It’s ready to give birth kind of fullness and time. There’s just the tick tock time. It’s the tear the pages off the calendar time. It’s almost as if God had been tearing pages off the calendar for this time.

And some people who study prophecy think that’s exactly what he was doing since the book of Daniel when the time was pregnant. But it wasn’t just the time the calendar, uh, people have noticed that the culture was pregnant. The Greeks had brought a common language that they could spread the good news of the gift we really need. The Romans had brought the peace of Rome and the roads to travel and, uh, and move around the nation and the world. The time was ripe for this. And more than that to God’s people. They were just so weary of trying to to keep the law being so broken as they were. Jesus was talking to a group of people like that in Matthew chapter 11. And he said to them, come to me, all you who are weary and heavily burdened with what? Those rules. Those 221 times. Brush your teeth. Two minutes kind of rules. The time was full. So God sent forth his son. Make no mistake about it, Jesus had to be more than a man. Now we’re told in Scripture, we’re made in the image of God, but we’re told Jesus was begotten of the father. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Now that’s trying to communicate to us people something that’s way beyond our imagination, right? There never was a time Jesus was not. But Scripture says he was begotten. He’s like God, you beget something like you.

Jesus said in the New Testament. If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the father. And Jesus had to be God to pay for our sins. Can you imagine the sins, trespasses, iniquities, wickedness of estimated 88 billion people that have walked this planet so far? In the fullness of time, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law. What’s that all about? Jesus couldn’t just be God. He had to be like us. Genesis three said, some in that fall in the garden to the serpent, Satan behind the serpent. Some day a woman, the seed of a woman, will crush you. And Isaiah again says that virgin shall conceive and bear a son. Emmanuel. Right. And. He has to be like us. Jesus was a fetus and then a toddler, and then a young child learning God’s commandments. And Hebrews says he never broke them. He was tested in every way like us, yet without sin, so he could stand in our place as a substitute. In the fullness of time, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, and look at what he did. Verse five, to redeem those who were under the law, to redeem those who are under the law. What’s that all about? Well, to redeem means to buy out a slavery. We’re in slavery to sin. Some people say, well, why couldn’t God just pardon us? Here’s what Galatians says. Earlier, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

For it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. And when Jesus was hanging on that tree, one of his last statements pushing up on the nails was tetelestai. Your translation might say it’s finished. It should be paid in full. It’s an accounting firm. It’s what you stamp on an IOU and it’s satisfied. Jesus satisfied that sin debt. But he did more than that. Look at the next phrase so that we might receive adoption as sons. Remember the promise in the first two thirds? I’ll be your God. You’ll be my people, and we’ll be together. Now he’s given us a new relationship. Not just his people, but his sons and daughters that we might be. Notice, there might be that verb is a verb of possibility, as is the previous one to redeem. It’s a possibility, but it needs to be acted on. It’s not a certainty for all. We’re coming back to that. Chapter or verse six. God’s not done yet. This is what we can expect if we respond. Look at verse six and because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ABBA, father, I have a friend. When he prays, he prays, Papa, that’s what ABBA means. It’s daddy. It’s the probably second word in Aramaic that a young Jewish child would learn. They learn mama first. Papa I have. For adult children, and three of them still call me daddy or Papa.

It does something. It’s a special relationship. He sends that spirit and we can’t talk much about that. Jesus said that would happen. My spirit will come into you and work on you and notice it goes into our hearts. The center of our wills. Intellect and passions, and he comes in there to do what? To reshape our hearts. Ezekiel prophesies. God says through him they’ll come a time, Ezekiel 36, that I will give you a heart of flesh, and take away your heart of stone, so that you will want to do my will. You’ll learn to want to. Sometimes it’s painful. That’s talked about in that last third of your New Testament. But this is a gift that still keeps on giving. Look at verse seven. So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. You’re an heir through God. The last two thirds tells us, or the last third tells us what? What we can inherit. If his spirit is working in us and we’ve been, our sins and debts have been paid by Jesus. We can not only be transformed on the inside, but we can become a gift that the world out there really needs in his name. So the way we need to end this is how do we respond? So when you get when you get a gift card right, there are four things you can do with it, right? The first thing you can do now, your Minnesota nice and your moms have taught you well.

So you’d never say this, but you can think it. You can say, I. I don’t want that. I’ll never use that. Now, don’t get me a gift card for a pedicure, because there ain’t no stranger touching these feet unless it’s an undertaker. I don’t want it. A second response is, you get it and you go, that’s cool. I’m going to use that someday. And then you put it in your purse or your wallet and you sit on it. Now, half of you in here have statistics are right. Have a gift card that you’ve never touched, that you’ve had for at least a year or you’ve lost. A third response is, you can do what I did with this gift card. I got it and I immediately texted Michelle, I got this gift card date night tonight and we hit it that night. We used 30% of it and then I sat on it. Hopefully I won’t lose it. And the fourth thing you can do is you can do what I did yesterday. I got an Aldi gift card from a dear family at 1030 in the morning, and it was gone by noon. I’m going to use it up and love it. It’s going to be our dinner on Christmas. Thank you. You know who you are. If you’re listening. This morning, Jesus gave us a gift we really need. Uh, he became a curse for us and paid for our sins.

He made it possible for us to have a brand new relationship as his sons and daughters. He moved into the Holy Spirit, into our hearts to rearrange them and recreate them if we’ll let him. He makes us an heir of all the promises of God, both here and hereafter. And when he lifted up on those nails and said, it’s paid in full, in essence, he charged a gift card up with all those things, the gift we really need and put your name on it. What are you going to do with it? Now, before you write me an email this week, some of you and say, you know, I’ve read some verses that not everybody got her name on a gift card. Don’t send me that email. Okay, I’ve read those verses and I’ve read the arguments, and I’ve also read the verses from cover to cover that suggest he wants all his kids back. I don’t know, I’ll let him figure it out. But here’s what I think. I do know you’re here watching. And I think because of that, he’s got a gift card with your name on it at least. What are you going to do with it? We have the same responses. You can say I don’t want it, don’t need it, I’ll never use it. And I encourage you to be Minnesota or not. Minnesota. Nice. Be honest with God on that. No, really. Take a walk.

Or if that’s too weird, walking, talking out loud. Write it down. Write him a letter and say, you know what? Uh, I don’t believe you made me for a relationship. Or if you did, I don’t think it’s very broken. I don’t think I’ve broken your commands or your heart. And what I have broken, I can fix. I’ll work real hard at. And if my best isn’t good enough for you, then that’s a you problem. Well, tell them. Jesus said as much in revelation three. I wish you’d just go all in or all out. This Christmas and Easter thing just doesn’t work. The second response could be, you get that card, you hear about it, it is paid in full and you go, that’s cool. Maybe you’ve heard this many times, or just today you go, I understand that. That makes sense. I’m going to I’m going to do something about that someday. And then you sit on it. Now some pastors would go, they would appeal to your mortality. Right. And say, how do you know you’ll get a chance to use that card? I’m not going there. I have a deeper question. If you know what’s on this card. Our sins, trespasses, wickedness, iniquity paid for by Jesus in full. A new relationship possible his working in us through his spirit, changing us into something that can be a gift to those around us. Why would you wait? Now there’s some good answers, one of which would be, I’ve know enough about that book that if if I redeem that card, he he’s going to mess with my life and it’s going to be painful and he will and it is.

That’s clear in the rest of the New Testament. But when you if you redeem this card, you know how to do it. This gift you really need. Just take out those notes, maybe, and just take a walk and say, I acknowledge you made me for a relationship and it’s terribly broken. I’ve broken your commands. I’ve broken your heart. And I can’t fix it. But you fixed it. And I say, yes, I’m all in. Come in, work in me, change my heart. And if you do that, when you do that, tell somebody about it, because you can’t do this alone. Whereas people together. The third response is, I think my response, and maybe many of you, is you’ve you’ve opened that card, you’ve accepted his payment, but you left a big balance on there. Did you know that the average American has $187 in unused balance in their gift cards? And I think we’ve got that and more in ours. If we understand what he wants to do to us, to transform us into his image, his people, we’ve left a lot on the card. And wouldn’t it be great this year to just say, I want to be more for you and not leave things on the card? Boy, that’s what I want till my last breath.

I want to use that thing up. And then it dawned on me. We’ve been talking an awful lot about the gift we really need. But it’s his birthday. Maybe we should think about Jesus now. So I want to show you a gift. Maybe one of the most precious gifts I’ve ever gotten. And it’s not because we put it in a plastic bag and store it on a shelf, you know, to let it accumulate value. It’s because we use it so much. This, folks, is the Mavis Blanket. Ten years ago, Mavis Wachholtz, for no reason, walked up to me in the kitchen and handed me this. There’s no reason. And she’s handed some of these to you too, hasn’t she? Yeah, I’ve heard it just out of love. Shia. I can’t imagine how long it took her to do this. We use it every day. We keep it on our sofa. We take naps under it. Even my dog likes it. The Mavis blanket is precious to us. And I just thought. Wonder how Mavis will feel when she hears about this. You’ve given. Have you ever given a gift that was really used and loved and cherished? It does something in your heart, doesn’t it? And I’m just thinking. Us saying, I love it. I love the gift you’ve given. I’ll use it and I’ll use it till I use it up. What do you think that does to the heart of our God? It is his birthday after all.