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Sabbath 1-3-15 Daytona Beach Seventh Day BAPTIST Pastor Wray “Born to Be a Savior” Luke 2;8-12
I chose to bring this sermon today because we are in between Christmases. The world has celebrated Christmas December 25th but until the 1700’s, we celebrated Christmas on January 7th. There are still 8 to 10 churches in our area that are sticking to January 7th as Christmas day. You will see a lot of activity next week for the 2nd Christmas day celebration. So we are between Christmases and that is why I chose to share this sermon today.
For many of us, Santa Clause as come and gone but he has an email address. Emailsanta.com has received millions of emails each year. Among these emails a boy named John said he was sorry he didn’t have a chimney but he would leave the cat flap door open for Santa. Little Christen emailed Santa saying “Mommy and Daddy said I haven’t been good these past few days. How bad can I get before I lose my presents?” Rosie Ann age 11 emailed Santa saying “do you know Jesus is the reason for Christmas? Not to be mean but He is”. I say right on Rosie Ann! But do we know why He is the reason?
The night Jesus was born, an angel appeared to shepherds saying a Savior was born. The Messiah was born. Why was Jesus born? He was born to be a savior. The fact that Jesus came to be my savior means He came to be my rescuer, my hero, my knight in shining armor. In other words, I need Him! If our greatest need had been information, God would have sent an educator. If our greatest need had been technology, God would have sent a scientist. If our greatest need had been money, God would have sent us a financial planner. But our greatest need was forgiveness. God sent us a Savior! Jesus!
The Bible says I needed Jesus and because I need Him, He saved me. The question is what did He save me from? The angel that appeared to Joseph told him that Mary would give birth to a son that would save people from their sins. Matthew 1:21. What does this mean? Well if you ask most people if they are going to Heaven when they die, they will say “I hope so”. What do they mean with this “I hope so”? They meant that they know they did bad things in their lives and there is no way they could deserve Heaven. So their hope is that they can do enough good things to outweigh the bad things. The point is that when people say they hope they have done enough to be saved, they are acknowledging that they have sinned in their lives and this sin has to be paid for. They are saying “I have to do enough good to counteract my bad deeds”. They need to pay off their sins. It troubles them that they have sinned but somehow they have come to believe that they can fix it because they are really not that bad a person. Their sin reminds them of things that they are ashamed of and that they are not entirely the nice person they like to think they are. Sin reminds them of their guilt at the most inconvenient times.
This is like the comic strip Peanuts. Lucy is playing baseball and is explaining to Charlie Brown why she dropped a catch. She says, ”Sorry I missed that easy fly ball. I thought I had it but suddenly I remembered all the other catches I have missed in the past”. The past got into her eyes. That is part of the pain of sin. The past gets into our eyes, you can’t remove it, you can’t fix it and you can’t undo it. It hangs around our necks like rotting flesh. It reminds all of us that we have failed and proves how wicked we can be. We don’t like that and it frustrates us.
Then the Bible tells us about Jesus and that He was born to change all this. He was born to save us from the shame of all our sins. Jesus was born to remove the guilt of our sins. Jesus was born to pay for our sins so that God will say they no longer exist. Jeremiah 31:34. God promised in the New Covenant He made thru Jesus that He would remember our sins no more. We should be glad that there are some things in our life that Jesus says He is not going to remember anymore! Isaiah 1:18 promises that our sins which are like scarlet shall be as white as snow. I John 2:7 says the blood of Jesus purifies us from sin. How did Jesus do this? He did it by paying for my sin. We have redemption thru His blood and forgiveness of sin. We have been bought with His blood. In the Old Testament we are taught that sin has a price. The price of sin is death. God tells us that sin was and is a terrible thing and that it brings terrible results. In Romans, Paul says the wages of sin is death. God’s law allowed that sin could be forgiven if someone else dies for the guilty person’s sin. Hebrews tells us that God’s law required that nearly everything be cleansed with blood. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. Hebrews 9:22.
Something or someone could die to fix our sins, to pay for our mistakes. In the Old Testament, people sacrificed sheep, goats and bulls to gain forgiveness. Everybody began to sense that this wasn’t good enough because the animal had not done anything wrong. The animal had not signed up to take the individual’s place that they were taking. But then Jesus came and that all changed. Jesus came to die and be a volunteer to take my place on the cross. Jesus came to be my Savior. John 3:16. God so loved the world and gave His son that whoever believed in Him shall not die but have everlasting life. This is the simple message of the season.
Jesus had to be an infant because He was needed to be both God and man. Jesus took on humanity, being equal to God, humbled Himself, made Himself nothing, became a servant in human likeness and died on the cross for our sins. Phil 2:6-7. Before Jesus was born in the manger, Jesus was God! When He came down to earth to be the baby in the anger, Jesus stripped Himself of His Godhood. He took it off like a coat you would hang in a closet. Jesus allowed Himself to become a mortal like you and I and be born of a virgin woman. Jesus had to be both man and God, mortal and Divine because He came to be our Savior, our substitute to die for us. God was the only one pure enough to die for us, but God doesn’t die. Mortals can die but no mortal man could ever be the sinless sacrifice required by the law to pay for our sins. No ordinary man would be pure and holy enough to take our sins and to die for us.
To understand this, let’s say you are in the hospital and you are scheduled for serious surgery. In walks the surgeon and she’s a 2 year nursing student. How many of you would want a 2 year nursing student to perform surgery on you? I see the heads shaking. You don’t like that and of course you wouldn’t. You want a 40 year old surgeon with 40 years of experience. There is no way an unqualified surgeon would be allowed to use a scalpel on you. Now let’s change the scene. You are in for surgery and in walks the surgeon. He’s got the experience but from the moment he walks in the door, you know that this man is a pig farmer. He smells like a pig and has pig manure on his shoes. His hands haven’t been washed in a few days and he is going into surgery like that. Are you going to want him to operate on you? Noooo…but why not? Because he is not clean. What you want is a doctor that is qualified to do the surgery, but at the same time you want him to be clean and pure enough to do it safely.
In the same way, Jesus was both mortal enough to die-this made Him qualified and Divine enough to pay the price-that made Him pure. First, Jesus had to be born as an infant to prove to us that He was both God and man. Second, Jesus came as a baby in Bethlehem because that’s the message God wanted to give. God could have chosen many other ways to introduce Himself. He could have had sparkling lights and opened up the sky and visibly stepped down from His throne to earth. He could have put on such a light and sound show that everyone would know that this is God. God could have done like He did on Mt Sinai with Moses and the Ten Commandments. The mountain trembled, the earth shook, there was smoke, clouds and the trumpets sounded loudly. God did not want to do it like this when Jesus was born because He was proving His love for us and not His great earth shaking power. Jesus didn’t come to put us in our place. He came to lift us up out of our place. Can you say Amen?
Everything God did the day Jesus was born, spoke of a Messiah that would be approachable. What is more non-threatening than a little baby in a cradle? Everyone seems to love babies. Babies don’t pass judgment and they don’t point fingers in anger. They just hold out their arms and want to be held. God sent His first announcement about Jesus’ birth to shepherds in the field. These shepherds were common laborers, not kings or princes. These shepherds that were the first to be told about Jesus, smelled like sheep. They were not people that got invited to swanky parties or to the birth of a King. God was sending the message that Jesus was going to be someone that common people could touch. People came to Jesus day and night. They followed Him around the Sea of Galilee and they touched him. They invited Him to their homes. No one considered Jesus too holy or too divine to touch. No one was afraid to approach Jesus because they knew He would not reject them. We must remember that there are NO barriers between Jesus and us. People always seem to build barriers between God and man. Jesus came to build bridges instead!
AMEN
I chose to bring this sermon today because we are in between Christmases. The world has celebrated Christmas December 25th but until the 1700’s, we celebrated Christmas on January 7th. There are still 8 to 10 churches in our area that are sticking to January 7th as Christmas day. You will see a lot of activity next week for the 2nd Christmas day celebration. So we are between Christmases and that is why I chose to share this sermon today.
For many of us, Santa Clause as come and gone but he has an email address. Emailsanta.com has received millions of emails each year. Among these emails a boy named John said he was sorry he didn’t have a chimney but he would leave the cat flap door open for Santa. Little Christen emailed Santa saying “Mommy and Daddy said I haven’t been good these past few days. How bad can I get before I lose my presents?” Rosie Ann age 11 emailed Santa saying “do you know Jesus is the reason for Christmas? Not to be mean but He is”. I say right on Rosie Ann! But do we know why He is the reason?
The night Jesus was born, an angel appeared to shepherds saying a Savior was born. The Messiah was born. Why was Jesus born? He was born to be a savior. The fact that Jesus came to be my savior means He came to be my rescuer, my hero, my knight in shining armor. In other words, I need Him! If our greatest need had been information, God would have sent an educator. If our greatest need had been technology, God would have sent a scientist. If our greatest need had been money, God would have sent us a financial planner. But our greatest need was forgiveness. God sent us a Savior! Jesus!
The Bible says I needed Jesus and because I need Him, He saved me. The question is what did He save me from? The angel that appeared to Joseph told him that Mary would give birth to a son that would save people from their sins. Matthew 1:21. What does this mean? Well if you ask most people if they are going to Heaven when they die, they will say “I hope so”. What do they mean with this “I hope so”? They meant that they know they did bad things in their lives and there is no way they could deserve Heaven. So their hope is that they can do enough good things to outweigh the bad things. The point is that when people say they hope they have done enough to be saved, they are acknowledging that they have sinned in their lives and this sin has to be paid for. They are saying “I have to do enough good to counteract my bad deeds”. They need to pay off their sins. It troubles them that they have sinned but somehow they have come to believe that they can fix it because they are really not that bad a person. Their sin reminds them of things that they are ashamed of and that they are not entirely the nice person they like to think they are. Sin reminds them of their guilt at the most inconvenient times.
This is like the comic strip Peanuts. Lucy is playing baseball and is explaining to Charlie Brown why she dropped a catch. She says, ”Sorry I missed that easy fly ball. I thought I had it but suddenly I remembered all the other catches I have missed in the past”. The past got into her eyes. That is part of the pain of sin. The past gets into our eyes, you can’t remove it, you can’t fix it and you can’t undo it. It hangs around our necks like rotting flesh. It reminds all of us that we have failed and proves how wicked we can be. We don’t like that and it frustrates us.
Then the Bible tells us about Jesus and that He was born to change all this. He was born to save us from the shame of all our sins. Jesus was born to remove the guilt of our sins. Jesus was born to pay for our sins so that God will say they no longer exist. Jeremiah 31:34. God promised in the New Covenant He made thru Jesus that He would remember our sins no more. We should be glad that there are some things in our life that Jesus says He is not going to remember anymore! Isaiah 1:18 promises that our sins which are like scarlet shall be as white as snow. I John 2:7 says the blood of Jesus purifies us from sin. How did Jesus do this? He did it by paying for my sin. We have redemption thru His blood and forgiveness of sin. We have been bought with His blood. In the Old Testament we are taught that sin has a price. The price of sin is death. God tells us that sin was and is a terrible thing and that it brings terrible results. In Romans, Paul says the wages of sin is death. God’s law allowed that sin could be forgiven if someone else dies for the guilty person’s sin. Hebrews tells us that God’s law required that nearly everything be cleansed with blood. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. Hebrews 9:22.
Something or someone could die to fix our sins, to pay for our mistakes. In the Old Testament, people sacrificed sheep, goats and bulls to gain forgiveness. Everybody began to sense that this wasn’t good enough because the animal had not done anything wrong. The animal had not signed up to take the individual’s place that they were taking. But then Jesus came and that all changed. Jesus came to die and be a volunteer to take my place on the cross. Jesus came to be my Savior. John 3:16. God so loved the world and gave His son that whoever believed in Him shall not die but have everlasting life. This is the simple message of the season.
Jesus had to be an infant because He was needed to be both God and man. Jesus took on humanity, being equal to God, humbled Himself, made Himself nothing, became a servant in human likeness and died on the cross for our sins. Phil 2:6-7. Before Jesus was born in the manger, Jesus was God! When He came down to earth to be the baby in the anger, Jesus stripped Himself of His Godhood. He took it off like a coat you would hang in a closet. Jesus allowed Himself to become a mortal like you and I and be born of a virgin woman. Jesus had to be both man and God, mortal and Divine because He came to be our Savior, our substitute to die for us. God was the only one pure enough to die for us, but God doesn’t die. Mortals can die but no mortal man could ever be the sinless sacrifice required by the law to pay for our sins. No ordinary man would be pure and holy enough to take our sins and to die for us.
To understand this, let’s say you are in the hospital and you are scheduled for serious surgery. In walks the surgeon and she’s a 2 year nursing student. How many of you would want a 2 year nursing student to perform surgery on you? I see the heads shaking. You don’t like that and of course you wouldn’t. You want a 40 year old surgeon with 40 years of experience. There is no way an unqualified surgeon would be allowed to use a scalpel on you. Now let’s change the scene. You are in for surgery and in walks the surgeon. He’s got the experience but from the moment he walks in the door, you know that this man is a pig farmer. He smells like a pig and has pig manure on his shoes. His hands haven’t been washed in a few days and he is going into surgery like that. Are you going to want him to operate on you? Noooo…but why not? Because he is not clean. What you want is a doctor that is qualified to do the surgery, but at the same time you want him to be clean and pure enough to do it safely.
In the same way, Jesus was both mortal enough to die-this made Him qualified and Divine enough to pay the price-that made Him pure. First, Jesus had to be born as an infant to prove to us that He was both God and man. Second, Jesus came as a baby in Bethlehem because that’s the message God wanted to give. God could have chosen many other ways to introduce Himself. He could have had sparkling lights and opened up the sky and visibly stepped down from His throne to earth. He could have put on such a light and sound show that everyone would know that this is God. God could have done like He did on Mt Sinai with Moses and the Ten Commandments. The mountain trembled, the earth shook, there was smoke, clouds and the trumpets sounded loudly. God did not want to do it like this when Jesus was born because He was proving His love for us and not His great earth shaking power. Jesus didn’t come to put us in our place. He came to lift us up out of our place. Can you say Amen?
Everything God did the day Jesus was born, spoke of a Messiah that would be approachable. What is more non-threatening than a little baby in a cradle? Everyone seems to love babies. Babies don’t pass judgment and they don’t point fingers in anger. They just hold out their arms and want to be held. God sent His first announcement about Jesus’ birth to shepherds in the field. These shepherds were common laborers, not kings or princes. These shepherds that were the first to be told about Jesus, smelled like sheep. They were not people that got invited to swanky parties or to the birth of a King. God was sending the message that Jesus was going to be someone that common people could touch. People came to Jesus day and night. They followed Him around the Sea of Galilee and they touched him. They invited Him to their homes. No one considered Jesus too holy or too divine to touch. No one was afraid to approach Jesus because they knew He would not reject them. We must remember that there are NO barriers between Jesus and us. People always seem to build barriers between God and man. Jesus came to build bridges instead!
AMEN