The Best Christmas Present Ever!

A Christmas Sermon.

What is the best Christmas present you have ever received?

I was really lucky as a child as I had very generous parents who always made sure my brother and I got really good Christmas presents.  I had several bikes over the years, a Scalextric set and other wonderful presents.  Usually I knew what I was getting, but one year I got a complete surprise.  My brother and I opened all our presents as we’d got pretty much what we’d asked for; but there was one more parcel off our mum and dad for both of us and we didn’t know what it was.  Eager hands tore at wrapping paper, bows and tags were flung to one side and a Hornby train set was revealed.  It was a Duchess of Sutherland engine with four LMS coaches and a big circle of track.  A couple of weeks later a baseboard was built and more track, engines and rolling stock were added.  It was a present that far out grew its initial wonderful promise, eventually ending up as a massive layout in the loft. This was the second best Christmas present I have ever received.

The best present was given long before I was even thought of (except by God) and that present too far outgrew what it seemed to be.  That present was, of course, Jesus of Nazareth, born as a baby in the Middle East just over two thousand years ago.

Familiarity with the Christmas story, with the angels visiting Mary and Joseph, with the baby lying in the manger and with the visits of the shepherds and the magi can lead to us losing some of the impact of this unique event in the history of the world.

Take a moment to think about what actually happened on that first Christmas Day.  Paul expressed it this way in his letter to the Philippians:

‘Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.’ (Philippians 2:6-7)

John put it this way in the Fourth gospel, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1).  The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. (John 1:14).’

We sometimes miss the importance on what happened at Christmas.  Jesus was not the Son of God in the sense that mythic Hercules was the son of Zeus or Thor was the son of Odin; Jesus and God are one and the same, two persons of a Trinitarian God.  It was God himself who was born as a helpless baby to a Jewish teenager in Bethlehem.  It was God himself who suckled at Mary’s breast.  It was God himself who the shepherds and magi bowed down and worshipped.

It is hard for us to take it all in, I know, the truth of what happened on that first Christmas Day.  The concept of God as a helpless baby is literally mind boggling and try and we might we cannot fully understand it; and we aren’t meant to, not completely.  God’s gift to the world wasn’t just his only begotten Son, it was the gift of himself in the Incarnation.

And what a gift, a gift that as we read the Christmas story we are only beginning to unpack.  Matthew tells us that the Magi bowed down and worshipped Jesus without really understanding who he was.  Luke tells us that the shepherds spread the word of what the angels told them about Jesus, that a Saviour had been born who is Christ the Lord.  They knew that Jesus was very special, but they didn’t really understand fully who he was and what he had come to do.

We, with hindsight, know the full story. We know that Jesus would grow up and become the perfect human being who would live a life completely free of sin and teach others about the amazing love of God.  We know that Jesus gave his life for us on the cross so that we might be reconciled with God and receive eternal life.  We know that Jesus rose from the dead, not only giving us assurance of our salvation but also demonstrating the power of God to transform that which seems to be bad into something wonderful.

Such potential in this Christmas gift of God, such possibility, such assurance, such love.  Words are simply inadequate…..

Jesus is the best gift I have ever received!  Jesus has brought forgiveness for my sins, Jesus has brought me new transformed life, Jesus has given me more than I will ever know or fully understand.  God, in his grace, has given us all, every single human being, the greatest present of all in Jesus Christ.

Jesus is God’s present to the world.  Like all presents, God’s present needs to be accepted, picked up, unwrapped and explored to fully appreciate all the possibilities the present offers.

By accepting Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, by reading the word of God in the Bible, by praying and worshipping we gradually come to know more and more of Jesus Christ and to be transformed by the presence in our lives of the Holy Spirit.

God, through his grace, has given us Jesus.  Let us open grateful and thankful arms to receive him a Lord and Saviour this Christmas time and for ever more.