PRICELESS THE CHRISTMAS GIFTS OF CHRIST

(Romans 5:1-5)
December 21, 2014
Intro Grandma handed her present to Grandpa: Honey, I bought you
something unusual this year. For the man who has everything. He said,
You shouldnt have. What is it? She replied, The deed to a cemetery plot.
Unique indeed! Next year she didnt buy him anything, so he asked, why no
present. She replied, Well, you still havent used the one I bought you last
year! Good point! If you get a present you ought to use it, right?
Perhaps there are some presents lying around your house, unused -- presents
from Jesus Himself. Its His birthday, but let me tell you, He gives incredible
presents. This passage has 3 eternity changing gifts -- ours for the taking but
often laid aside in favor of others of far less value. Look at 3 priceless gifts.
I.

Peace With God (1)

1) Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ. Doesnt everyone have peace with God? No.
That is not what this verse teaches. Therefore refers back to the first 4
chapters of Romans. In the first 3, God makes the point that all people are
sinners by birth and by choice. We are therefore at war with God not at
peace! Why? He is holy and we are not. He is sinless and we are sinful. He is
judge and we are those who will be judged. In fact, His verdict is already in.
Rom 1:18: 18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness
suppress the truth. Gods wrath is no temper tantrum. It is His settled,
persistent, constant rejection of all sin and anyone tainted by sin. Any error,
any unrighteousness, any slippage, any selfishness, any naughtiness, any sin at
all disqualifies us from acceptance by Him. That puts every person on the
planet in the same sinking ship. Disqualified from Gods presence. We even
disqualify ourselves! We dont need God as a judge; we condemn ourselves.
Rom 2:1: Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who
judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because
you, the judge, practice the very same things. Put a tape recorder around
your neck and you will make enough judgments against other people about
things you do to deep six yourself. Paul summarizes the whole rotten mess in
Rom 3: 10) as it is written: None is righteous, no, not one; 11) no one
understands; no one seeks for God. 12) All have turned aside; together they
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have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Skip to 23) for all
have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. There it is. The judge has
already rendered his verdict. Guilty!
This means the greatest enemy of any person who has ever sinned even in the
slightest is God Himself. Not the harsh boss or the demanding self or even
Satan. Oh, no. The greatest enemy of every person who has ever gone astray
is God. Jesus warns that well all know it one day when every secret is
revealed. And He warns in Mt 10:28, And do not fear those who kill the
body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and
body in hell. Outside of Christ our greatest enemy is God Himself. And
unless our guilt can somehow be expunged, there can be no peace with Him.
God consistently uses marital unfaithfulness to depict mankinds betrayal of
Him with our idols. Remember the movie Camelot? King Arthur and
Guinevere build the Round Table which champions peace over war. But then
Lancelot turns up the greatest knight of all. Despite themselves, Lancelot
and Guinevere fall in love and betray King Arthur. They are tormented by
Arthurs goodness, but they choose each other thinking he doesnt know. But
he does. In a heartwrenching scene Arthur says, If I could choose, from
every woman who breathes on this earth, the face I would most love, the
smile, the touch, the voice, the heart, the laugh, the soul itself, every detail
and feature to the smallest strand of hair- they would all be Jenny's. If I
could choose from every man who breathes on this earth a man for
my brother and a man for my son, a man for my friend, they would all be
Lance. Yes, I love them. Even in their betrayal, I love them, and they answer
me with pain and torment . . . and they must be punished. That could be
God talking. He is not our greatest enemy because He hates us but bc we have
betrayed Him. And the wages of sin is death. Gods wrath against sin does not
spring from a heart of hatred, but from a heart of love that has been violated.
For loves sake, sin must be punished. And we all find ourselves on the wrong
side of that love naturally. Thats Romans 1-3. All hopeless lost.
But chapter 4. The solution. It is not what we might think. We dont get a
do over. But we can accept a gift by faith. Abrahams the example. Rom
4:2, For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about,
but not before God. 3 For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed
God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. Why Christmas? Why did
God become man in Jesus? To save Abe. To live the life we could not live so
He could die the death we could not die to pay the penalty we could not pay
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to give us life we could not have. Thats good news, the gospel. The peace
with God we cant earn, Jesus already earned. And we can accept by faith.
Our greatest enemy is also our best friend. What He demands, He provides
by dying in our place so He can pardon our guilt. But that pardon must be
accepted, by faith. Its not automatic. In 1829 George Wilson killed a man
during a robbery. He was arrested, found guilty and sentenced to hang.
Amazingly friends got a pardon him from President Andrew Jackson. But
Wilson refused the pardon! The sheriff, not wanting to violate a presidential
order sent word of the refusal to Jackson. Equally perplexed, Jackson appealed
to Supreme Court Justice John Marshall who ruled that a pardon must be
accepted to be valid (a ruling later upheld again in 1915). No one could
imagine that a condemned person would refuse a pardon, but if it is refused,
then it is not valid. Shortly thereafter, George Wilson was hanged as his
pardon lay unused on the sheriffs desk. So have you accepted Jesus pardon?
Then, since [you] have been justified by faith [you] have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ. Gift #1 from Jesus, peace with God. What
He demands; He provides! Have you taken the pardon? Or are you still at
war?!
II.

Promise of Glory (2)

Paul just informed his readers in Rom 3:23, For all have sinned and fall short
of the glory of God. That is our default position short of Gods glory. But
now Paul says in the 2nd half of v. 2: and we rejoice in the hope of the glory
of God. How can we rejoice in Gods glory if we fall short of it? Paul
answers in Col 1:27 when he characterizes the gospel as, 27. . . Christ in you,
the hope of glory. It is Christ in us and we in Christ that enables us to
rejoice in the hope of glory. The impossible becomes possible -- in Christ. He
is the hope of glory. He is the focus of the believers life, and to be with Him
forever is the greatest gift He can bestow. That is the great hope that now
drives our existence. We are not going nowhere; we are going somewhere!
Hope is used here not in our sense of maybe it will happen and maybe not.
Hope in the Bible is something certain but just hasnt happened yet. Heaven
hasnt happened yet. Eternity with Jesus hasnt happened yet. But it will. That
reality overcomes any adverse circumstances! The promises of God in this
regard are mind-blowing. I Jn 3: 2) Beloved, we are Gods children now, and
what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we
shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. Can you imagine being
just like Jesus? Just like Jesus! Jn 17:22, 22 The glory that you have given me
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I have given to them. We will share in His glory. Rev 21:23 tells us there
will be no sun or moon in heaven for the glory of God gives it light. And
Jesus shares that glory with us? Really? Yes. He says in Mt 13:43, Then the
righteous [pardoned] will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.
What a Christmas present, huh? To share in the glory of Jesus in heaven.
Christians have a future. People outside of Christ have no future. Hope is in
short supply in our world. James Reston writing in the NY Times not long
before he died reported that in Washington the feeling grows that man is
totally incapable of solving the worlds problems. For once the NY Times
and the Bible agree. Were losing hope for the world in general.
And we are losing hope personally. We see it so clearly when we get sick.
Hope means everything, so at first we hope nothing is wrong. When we
discover that all is not well, we hope it is not serious. When its serious, we
hope something can be done, but eventually we are given the death sentence:
there is no hope. And outside of Christ that is true. Its just a matter of time.
If you dont have hope beyond this life, you dont have hope!
One of the last statements George Bernard Shaw made before his death was
that he had pinned his hopes on atheism his hope was that there was no God
by whom he would be judged. But as he came face-to-face with the reality of
his own mortality, his hope faded badly as it does with many outside of
Christ. He made this remarkable statement: You are looking at an atheist
who has lost his faith. An atheist who who lost his faith?! He was smart
enough to realize it takes just as much faith to believe in no God as it takes
faith to believe in the true God. But when an atheist loses his faith he has
nothing in the world to hang on to. How different from Paul who says in Titus
2:13 that believers are waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the
glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.
Christians have a future. They have hope like no one else on earth. The hope
naturalism offers is the destruction of both body and soul at death. Eastern
religions hope is to lose your identity in the Whole or the One or the All the
impersonal pantheistic god who has no glory. Your goal is to decompose into
personal nothingness. By contrast God promises complete identity. Rev 3:17,
To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna [eternal
sustenance], and I will give him a white stone, with a new name [complete
identity] written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives
it. That includes soul AND body. Because Jesus will transform our lowly
body to be like his glorious body. Its all part of sharing His glory.
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Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse had 4 small children (2 boys; 2 girls) when his
wife, Ruth, died of cancer. As they drove home from her funeral service, kids
overcome with grief, Dr. Barnhouse wondered how to comfort them. A huge
moving van passed them, its shadow sweeping over the car. Inspiration struck.
He said, Children, would you rather be run over by a truck or by the
shadow of a truck? They said, Well, of course, Dad, wed rather be run
over by the shadow. The shadow cant hurt us. Dr. Barnhouse said, Did
you know that two thousand years ago the truck of death ran over the Lord
Jesus in order that only its shadow might run over us now. Mom was
with God. Absent from the body present with the Lord. Death No other
religion in the world can say that. None. That separates faith in Christ from
any other faith. He has suffered death for us so that we may never die. Jesus
told Lazarus sister Martha just before he raised him: I am the resurrection
and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and
everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. (Jn 11:25-26).
Someone has well said, The Christian doesnt die long enough to know he
is dead! Thats the hope of glory a hope that is a certainty that just hasnt
happened yet. A gift to all who are justified by faith. Believers have a future.
III.

Pain for Gain (3-5)

Isnt it interesting that right here in the midst of these stupendous, eternal
gifts, God suddenly introduces suffering? Isnt that strange? Isnt that a
strange gift? Ever get a gift that wasnt all that great? One Christmas when I
was about 11, I opened a package to find a baseball glove. Youd have thought
Id love the glove, right? I loved baseball. But Mom and Dad werent up to
date! Somehow they found the only 1920s glove still in existence flat, no
pocket, over-padded, no leather between the fingers totally inadequate for
the 1960s. I think I hid my disappointment. I hope so. I fully appreciated their
loving intention. But it was, nevertheless, a total bust of a gift.
Do you feel that way when you open the gift of suffering this morning? Do
you? We shouldnt. Gods gifts are never a bust, and that includes suffering.
We may not rank it up there with peace with God or the promise of glory. But
it is no less critical to providing us gain both in this life and the life to come.
Just look at the chain of events that follows suffering: 3 Not only that, but we
rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and
endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does
not put us to shame, because Gods love has been poured into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Growth comes from
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suffering a growth that would come in no other way and so suffering is

one of Gods great gifts that we need to embrace with all our heart. Phil 1:29
says, For it has been granted (graced) to you that for the sake of Christ you
should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake.
When I think of suffering, Joseph always comes to mind. Hated and isolated
by his brothers because Dad loved him best. Couldve been bitter but wasnt.
Sold into slavery in Egypt by his own family. Could have been bitter but
wasnt. Faithfully ran the household of his owner, Potiphar. And when the
beautiful wife came onto him, refused her advances for which faithfulness
he was thrown into prison for 2 years. Couldve have been bitter, but wasnt.
All for nothing? No God was teaching him all he needed to know to become
#2 in Egypt to save that world, including his own family from starvation in a
7-year drought. And BTW, he also saved brother Judah from whom later came
David from whom later came Christ to pay for your pardon and mine. All
possible because Joseph was faithful in the gift of suffering. When his bros
thought hed kill them when Dad died he said in Gen 50:20, 20 As for you,
you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that
many people should be kept alive. Rest assured, Beloved. Gods children
never suffer without reason. Its a gift of Jesus for our good and His glory.
Conc Close with a Christmas story. Dorothy Sayers was an early 20th
century English author one of the first women to graduate from Oxford and
writer of detective stories. They featured Lord Peter Wimsey a handsome,
aristocratic detective who was also single and lonely. Well, in the middle of
the Lord Wimsey books, a young woman, Harriett Vane suddenly appears.
Harriett is one of the first women to graduate from Oxford and a writer of
detective stories. She and Peter fall in love, get married and solve mysteries
together. Dorothy Sayers, a Xn BTW, looked into the world she created in
the character she created saw his pain and loneliness, fell in love with him
and wrote herself into the story to save him.
Which is exactly the story of Christmas and the incarnation when God, in His
love for His creation, wrote Himself into the story long before time began to
pay for the pardon that He now offers freely to all who will open the gift.
Have you opened the gift? H. G. Wells, English author whose belief in
naturalism and mans inherent goodness was devastated by two world wars
said near the end, Here I am at 65, still seeking peace. Dont let that be
you. Open the gift so that, having been justified by faith, [you] have peace
with God through [the death and resurrection] of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Dont wait for Christmas. Open it now. The gift of God is eternal life through
Christ Jesus our Lord. If you get a present, you ought to use it! Lets pray.