Because He Is A Gift Giving God

I have shown you in every way, by laboring like this, that you must support the weak. And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." (Acts 20:35)

Why do we celebrate Christmas? Because our God can't keep the perfect gift to Himself.

It Is More Blessed to Give Than to Receive

How many of you believe that to be true? Most of you would agree with Jesus' words here: it is more blessed to give than to receive. This is one of those sayings that even people who've never read the Bible or gone to church have heard before. Yet very few of them know it's in the Bible, and fewer still know that Jesus said it.

It's an interesting word, because if you go searching through the Gospels—the accounts of Jesus' life, teaching, and ministry—you won't find Him recorded saying it there. But apparently the Apostle Paul had heard the Lord Jesus say it, or heard from others that He had said it. And I think there's a sense in which we all need to be regularly reminded of this truth—even those of us who study the Bible and go to church. There's no better time to be reminded of it than now, in the last couple of weeks before Christmas.

Christmas Is All About Giving and Receiving

I'm willing to bet that if we interviewed a hundred kids in our children's ministry and asked them their favorite part of Christmas, they'd all say the same thing: gifts. Christmas is all about presents. If you've seen The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, that was the focus there too—it was all about getting something for yourself.

That was certainly my focus as a kid, and my mission to get what I wanted began a couple of months early—right about the time the JCPenney Christmas catalog or the Sears Wish Book showed up in the mail. That big, four-to-six-hundred-page thing was like the Bible of Christmas joy, filled with glossy pictures of every toy a kid could want. I'd grab a ballpoint pen, sit down—my mom is sitting right there and remembers—and circle everything I wanted, hoping mom, dad, or Santa Claus would get the drift.

My mom gets into the Christmas cheer when it comes to decorating, starting immediately after Thanksgiving. As soon as the decorations went up, a steady flow of wrapped gifts would appear under the tree. With four siblings, that began the annual reconnaissance mission—sneaking under the tree to figure out which gifts were mine, checking the size, shape, and weight, shaking them, and keeping a tally against my sister and brothers, because mom's favorite would surely have the most.

Mom didn't like our recon mission, so she'd try to trick us. One year she used no name tags and a different wrapping paper for each kid—mom's cryptography. Another year she swapped names, so a gift labeled "Miles" might really be for my brother Alan. The problem was, mom would confuse herself with her own codes, and by Christmas morning she'd be saying, "Oh, open that—nope, that's not for you, give that over here."

As an adult, my love of Christmas gifts hasn't changed much, but the joy has shifted. As a parent, there's a greater joy in giving a gift and watching my kids open the very thing they were longing for. So just as Jesus said, there really is a greater blessing in giving than in receiving.

It's Hard to Conceal the Perfect Christmas Gift

There is a true blessing in giving a gift, especially when you find that perfect gift for that perfect someone. There's an anticipation, a joy, an excitement when you identify it and you want to see the joy they'll have when they open it.

If giving gifts is your love language, you can hardly contain yourself. My wife is one of those people—it's one of her major love languages. If I gave her an unlimited budget, she'd buy gifts every single day. But because Christmas and birthdays have an appointed day, she has trouble waiting. The moment the perfect gift is wrapped and ready, she starts dropping hints: "Don't you want to know what your gift is?" I've heard it for almost twelve years now, and I'll play it cool just to torture her.

The amazing thing is, even though she wants me to guess, she doesn't like it when I actually figure it out. This last month was my birthday, and I was reviewing a credit card statement online—a card we keep put away. I saw three charges, one of them significant, and went downstairs convinced the card had been stolen. "There was this big charge at the Sunglass Hut at the mall, and I didn't do it!" Well, somebody did—and that's how I discovered my birthday gift. She was not too happy.

Because gift givers want so badly for the gift to be revealed, they also work hard to conceal it. My wife will put a small gift in a big box, or won't put the gift in the box at all—just a note describing it, with the real gift hidden elsewhere. So here's point number two: it's hard to conceal the perfect Christmas gift, precisely because we want so much for it to be revealed and seen.

Our God Is a Gift Giver

Why am I talking about all this? Because I'm convinced our God is a gift giver, just like my wife. How do I know? Because God in the flesh, Jesus, said it is more blessed to give than to receive. The very reason you love to give gifts is that you were created in the image and likeness of God. That desire to give the perfect gift came from Him.

And when God has the perfect gift, He has a hard time not revealing it immediately. He has a hard time not dropping hints about what it is. What we'll see today is that our gift-giving God had the perfect gift for a broken and fallen world. Because He is such a gift giver, He gave hints all along the way—and those hints are what we call Bible prophecies. Through the prophets of the Old Testament, the first two-thirds of the Bible, He gave hundreds of hints saying, in effect, "Here's what this gift is like that I'm going to give to you."

The Setup: A Very Good Creation Broken

The setup for the perfect gift is where we were last week, in Genesis 1 and 2. Our God is a creator God and a life-giving God, and the Bible opens with the creation story. He spoke everything into existence, and at the end of it He looked at all He had made and said it was very good (Genesis 1:31).

In Genesis 2 the story unfolds further. God creates a perfect, beautiful garden full of trees pleasant to the eyes and good for food, and He places man in the middle of it. This garden is a gift, because God is a gift-giving God. Adam is told it's all for him—but one tree is off-limits, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. "In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." God also gives Adam another gift: a helper comparable to him. God joined them as one flesh, and they were naked and not ashamed.

Then comes Genesis 3 and the serpent, more cunning than any beast of the field. He asks the woman whether God really forbade the trees of the garden. She explains they may eat of all but the one in the midst of the garden, lest they die. The serpent cunningly says, "You will not surely die. God knows that when you eat, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." She saw the tree was good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise. She ate, gave to her husband, and he ate. Their eyes were opened, they knew they were naked, and now they were ashamed. They sewed fig leaves together, and a separation entered where there had been none.

God Seeks the Lost and Gives the First Hint

Then we read that God came into the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves among the trees (Genesis 3:8). The knowledge that came by that tree brought shame and fear, and so they hid, guilty.

Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, "Where are you?" (Genesis 3:9)

God is a missionary God; He seeks out that which is lost. Adam answered that he hid because he was afraid and naked. God asked, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree?" Adam blamed the woman—"the woman whom You gave me"—and the woman blamed the serpent. So the Lord God cursed the serpent above all cattle and beasts. Then look at this:

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel. (Genesis 3:15)

There's poetic language here, not easy to grasp immediately, but this is the mystery of the Christmas gift. God has the perfect gift for a broken world, and He's wrapped it in poetic mystery. The hint is this: a gift is coming, born of a woman, an individual who will come and accomplish something great—delivering a deathblow to the serpent who brought brokenness into the world. In the process He Himself will be wounded ("you shall bruise His heel"), but He will crush the serpent's head. The word translated "bruise" can literally mean crush.

This brings before us an important truth: the redemptive plan of God—of Jesus coming into the world—was not a backup contingency plan that God had to huddle up and figure out. This was His plan from the beginning. Bible scholars call Genesis 3:15 the protoevangelion, the first mention of the gospel. As one commentator said, it is the first glimmer of the good news. God is saying, "I have a great gift for you. It's not ready yet, it's not Christmas morning—but don't you want a hint of what it is?"

The Gift Narrows: From Abraham to Judah

Fast forward to Genesis 12 for the next hint, where we meet a new character.

Now the LORD had said to Abram: "Get out of your country, from your family and from your father's house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great... And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." (Genesis 12:1–3)

It is more blessed to give than to receive. God tells Abraham that through him a blessing will come for all people. Genesis 3 told us this would be a man, the offspring of a woman, who would break the bondage of sin. Genesis 12 narrows it: He comes from the family of Abraham.

But not only Abraham. In Genesis 17 we learn the promise comes through his son Isaac. In Genesis 25:23, through Isaac's son Jacob—the younger of two sons. And in Genesis 49, Jacob blesses his twelve sons, telling Judah:

The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes; and to Him shall be the obedience of the people. (Genesis 49:10)

So the gift narrows: a man, the offspring of a woman, from the family of Abraham, through Isaac, through Jacob, through Judah.

A Son of David, Born of a Virgin

Hundreds of years later, when Israel was secure in its borders, God spoke to their second king, David—a man after God's own heart even though he was a sinner like all of us.

Your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever. (2 Samuel 7:16)

So this one will also be of the royal line of King David. Then, about 300 years after David, a prophet named Isaiah gave a prophecy you've likely seen on Christmas cards:

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)

Immanuel, the New Testament tells us, means "God with us." The gift-giving God can hardly conceal His great gift. He keeps telling us: this gift will be a man born of a woman, who will deal a deathblow to the serpent, coming through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and King David—and He will be born by miraculous means to a virgin who has never been with a man. He is not merely a man; He is God with us, stepping into our world to deal with the brokenness.

This is point number three: Christmas exists because God is the gift-giving God. That's why we have a holiday where we exchange gifts—because we remember the God who absolutely loves to give the perfect gift.

Bethlehem and the Great Light

There are hundreds of hints surrounding Jesus' first coming. We're also told specifically where He would be born. When wise men came from the east seeking the King of the Jews, Herod asked the priests and scribes where the Messiah would be born. They pointed to Micah 5:2: Bethlehem. So God gave that hint too—born in Bethlehem to a girl who had never been with a man.

Let me finish these hints with one of the great statements about Him, in Isaiah 9. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death—upon them a light has shined. This gift would come from Bethlehem, to Galilee, bringing light to those in darkness. He would multiply the nation and increase its joy. He would break the yoke of their burden. And how?

For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)

Circle that word given. This great gift is a Child who is born, but a Son who was given. He comes to bring peace, freedom, and joy, and to establish His kingdom that will never end.

The Best Gifts Are Always an Expression of Love

Sitting on this side of the gift being opened, it becomes clear exactly what we were looking for: the perfect gift of the gift-giving God for a broken world. Of course it's Christ. Jesus, the Prince of Peace, has come to bring joy and freedom and to destroy the curse of sin. Why? The most famous, most translated verse of the Bible tells us:

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

Point number four: the best gifts are always an expression of love. That's exactly what the greatest gift in human history was—an expression of the love of the gift-giving, life-giving Creator who looked at the brokenness of this world and did not say, "Scrap it, let's start over." He said, "Let's deal with this. I have the perfect gift for a broken world." So for thousands of years He gave hint after hint: a man born of a woman to crush the serpent's head, of the family of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah, through David, born in Bethlehem by miraculous means to a virgin who would bring forth Immanuel, God with us.

So when we ask, why Christmas? Christmas exists because we live in a broken world, and because our God is the gift-giving God who loved us so much that He gave His only begotten Son.

Communion: Remembering the Gift

As we finish, we're going to partake of communion together—taking a little piece of bread and a little cup of juice to remember Jesus' body broken for us and His blood shed for us. Jesus demonstrated God's love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That is the gift, Church.

As we get ready in two weeks to exchange gifts, I pray that the best gift we could give would be the knowledge of the truth of the greatest gift ever given—the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus our Savior. By His death, burial, and resurrection, He destroys the brokenness of this world.

On the night that He was betrayed, He took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it, gave it to His disciples and said, "Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of Me." In the same manner, after they had eaten, He took the cup, saying, "This is the blood of the New Covenant. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me."

Closing Prayer

Father, thank You for Your grace, the gifts of grace You have poured out upon us. Lord, we are not at all deserving, but in Your mercy and love You have poured out this gracious gift upon us. I pray that over the next two weeks, because of the opportunity this holiday presents, we would be compelled by Your love to share the good news of Your grace with our co-workers, our neighbors, our family members, our friends—those who, if asked why they celebrate Christmas, may not have a good answer.

Lord, thank You for laying down Your life for us, for giving Your body and shedding Your blood that we could have life forevermore. We thank You that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. We thank You that this holiday about giving and receiving exists because You gave Your only begotten Son, and that as many as receive Him are given the right to be called the children of God. I pray that we would not conceal this great gift but freely give what has been freely given to us. And on that day when You return, ruling in righteousness, when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that You are Lord, may we see our friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors there with us praising Your glory. We thank You that You are the gift-giving God. We praise You, in Jesus' name. Amen.