Christmas I Learned from Jesus Christ-No One Comes to the Father Except Through Me
No One Comes to the Father Except Through Me
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SERIES:
Christmas
I Learned from Jesus Christ
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PREACHER:
Lenin
Kumar
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DATE:
December
21, 2014
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SCRIPTURE
REFERENCE:
Matthew
1:21
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Introduction
Today I
want to begin by reading you a story written by one of my favorite
story tellers, Max Lucado. It’s entitled, Because I Love
You. Get comfortable and listen.
[BECAUSE
I LOVE YOU]
A
long time ago a wise man named Shaddai built a wonderful village for
children to live in. He talked to them and sang for them and told
them stories. He gave them everything they needed. And with his own
hands Shaddai built a protective wall around their village, rock by
rock. He did all of this for just one reason--because he loved them.
One day Paladin, the village's most curious child, discovers
something troubling about the wall. Something that makes him wonder
about Shaddai's love. Could there be a mistake? Young Paladin is
about to discover the answer. And when he does, he will come to
understand just how deeply he is loved. And so will you. Everything
God does for your children, He does because of love. He protects
them. He listens to their prayers. He provides for their needs. He
even gives warnings and sets boundaries--for no other reason than
love. As an adult you already know this. Now your children can know
it too through this captivating tale, which was first published in
the award-winning children's bestseller Tell Me the Story. Let this
timeless story of a curious boy's choice and a caring man's
sacrificial response help you make the infinite love of their
Heavenly Father as real to your kids as your own love. Because they
need to understand about Him what you have already learned--that
everything God does throughout our lives, He does for one reason
only, and for the best reason of all: Because I Love You.
I’m
sure you’ll agree that the Scriptural parallels to this story are
numerous — but let me just highlight a few that stand out to me… and
I’ll begin with this one:
Sermon
Like Paladin—God’s first two children, Adam and Eve, broke His one law—a law that, like all His laws—are meant to protect us… like a “wall” of sorts.
And, as
descendants of Adam and Eve—every human being born since has
followed suit. As fallen beings—as sinners, all of us break God’s
laws. We disobey our Loving Creator by DOING things we know He tells
us not to do and by NOT doing things we know we should. In essence we
have all crawled through the hole in God’s wall. As Isaiah 53:6
puts it, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have
turned, everyone to his own way.” Romans 3:10, 23
says, “There is none righteous, no, not one…All have
sinned.”
Second, as in Lucado’s story, our sin—our wall-breaching behavior—has a horrible consequence—DEATH.
Ezekiel
18:4 plainly says, “The one who sins is the one who will
die.” And—thousands of years of experience have shown
this text, and others like it, to be true because our sinful actions
and inactions do indeed KILL. Wall-breaching— sin— kills our
DREAMS… it kills our BEST INTENTIONS… it kills our RELATIONSHIPS… it
kills our PEACE… it kills our attempts at a meaningful LIFE… and in
the end it kills US. No matter how many vitamins we take or how many
miles we jog — these bodies of ours eventually quit working. And on
our own we are powerless to stop all this. So—we ARE like
Paladin—outside the wall—afraid and yearning to get back to God.
Well, the good news of Christmas is that God has made the way for us to come home to Him.
Hebrews 10:19 calls it “…a new
and LIVING way…” referring of course to Jesus. Jesus IS
the way for sinners like you and me to come to God. In fact it’s
why He was born. As Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:15, “Christ
Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” Like Shaddia
breaching the wall and entering the deadly wilderness, Jesus came
into our fallen world for the express purpose of making the way for
sinners — wall-breachers like you and me—to come back to God.
And, this
is something we really DO need to know if we are to know all we need
to know about Christmas. In fact, it’s the most important thing to
know because to fully understand the Christmas story—to know what
it’s really all about—we must know that, “God so loved
the world that He sent His only Son, that whosoever believes in
Him….will not PERISH but have everlasting LIFE…and that… “God
did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but to save
the world through Him.” (John 3:16-17) Or, to put it as
Paul puts it in Romans 7:24-25, “Who will rescue me from
this body of death? Thanks be to God—Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Well,
God has loved you and me this much since before the beginning of
time. As Lucado illustrated in his story, this Christmas rescue
mission has been God’s plan all along. I believe it was Philip
Yancey who said, “As the first echo from the crunch from
the first bite of the forbidden fruit was echoing through the Garden
of Eden, Jesus was leaving for Calvary.” This is what Revelation
13:8 means when it says that Jesus is “…the Lamb that was
slain before the foundation of the world.”
And
that leads to one other Christmas truth that this children’s story
points toward. Jesus came to save us — but to do that He had to
die. Jesus had to take the death we deserve as sinners on
Himself… so He came carrying not an aspen staff but a wooden cross.
You see, the truth is there was no salvation in Jesus’ birth nor
did the sinless way He lived His life have any redemptive force of
it’s own. Jesus’ example, as flawless as it was, could not rescue
us from our sins. Even His teaching — the greatest truth ever
revealed to man, could not save us — BECAUSE THERE WAS A PRICE TO BE
PAID FOR OUR SINS! Someone had to die. And as the sinless Son
of God only Jesus could do it. You see, since He never sinned
in thought word or deed Jesus had no death sentence hanging over His
head — which means He could die for you and me.
So,
the hard Christmas truth is… those soft little infant HANDS,
fashioned by the Holy Spirit in Mary’s womb, were made so that
NAILS might be driven through them. Those baby FEET, pink and unable
to walk, would one day walk up a dusty hill to be IMPALED on a cross.
That sweet infant’s HEAD with sparkling eyes and eager mouth was
formed so that some day men might force a CROWN OF THORNS onto it.
That tender BODY, warm and soft, wrapped in swaddling cloths, would
one day be ripped open by a Roman SPEAR. Jesus WAS born. He came to
earth to die for, as 1 John 2:2 says, He is, “…the
atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for
the sins for the whole world.”
Each
Christmas we observe communion as a way of symbolizing this
amazing truth. As we share this meal, let me invite all Christians
present to partake with us… because even if you are not a member of
this church…. If you are a Christian… if you are His, this is
Yours.
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