Re: Christmas - Promises of Christmas

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon

Sunday, December 7, 2008

God said to Abraham, “Go outside. Look at the heavens.” I wonder what it must have been like as Abraham goes outside, he stares up at the expanse of the universe, remember, there are no city lights to compete with what’s happening in the stars on high. Desert climate, there are no clouds. There is no haziness. “Count them,” God says. Count them? Scientists today say that in the Milky Way alone, there are over 100,000 million stars. Count them? Then He says to Abraham, “So shall your offspring be.” As he stares at the stars in the sky, God says that will be the number of your descendants. It was God’s promise to Abraham. God’s promise to you? You were one of those stars.

As we get ready to celebrate the birth of God’s Son, we’re going to go back further than the prophesies of God and go to the promises of God. The prophesies foretold how it would happen. The promises tell us why it would happen. The first promise of a Savior coming into the world was actually given to Adam and Eve. As the two of them were being evicted out of the garden, God promised them, “I will send one who will crush the head of the serpent,” that is Satan, the one who deceived them, the one who’s drawn them into sin. But to Abram, when He gives the promise to Abram, all of a sudden God’s plan of salvation starts to take shape. From Abram, He will make a mighty nation, a people that He will call His own. He promised Abram, “All people will be blessed through you.” One of those descendants, one from this mighty nation that He would make would be the Savior, would be the Redeemer. But it begins here as Abram looks at the stars in the sky, the expanse of the universe and God says, “So shall your descendants be.” It must have seemed unbelievable. Unbelievable!

That’s how the promises of God are. The promises of God seem unbelievable. They seem unbelievable because they’re fantastical in nature and scope, almost seems too good to be true. I mean, here sits Abraham in the desert as he looks out at the universe and He says, “So shall your descendants be.” He can’t even count all the stars in the sky. That’s fantastical in nature. It’s even better when you consider the fact that Abram is in his 80's. Sarah is in her late 70's and they don’t have any kids yet. You think couples today are putting off starting a family? Wow, these two took it to the extreme. Then if you consider that it would be another 20 years before they have one lone son. It’s unbelievable. It’s fantastic in nature that the expanse of the universe would be their descendants.

Are God’s promises to us any less fantastical in nature? Are they any less too good to be true sometimes that it would even seem that to believe the promises of God touches on the fact of being naive just a little bit? God says don’t worry about tomorrow. Nope.  He says don’t worry about you’re going to eat. Don’t worry about what you’re going to wear. God says I have you covered. I’ll take care of you. “Hey, God, it still takes money to live. I still have bills coming in. I still have a retirement that I’m looking at because, at some point in time, I’m not going to be able to work. What am I going to rely on then? I still need a job. I still have to pull in some kind of income, you know, simple math sometimes that it just doesn’t add up on the bottom line. It seems almost fantastical, almost too good to be true, a little naive maybe a little bit to say, “Well, God’s going to take care of me. I don’t really need to stress and I don’t need to worry.”

God says, “Raise a child in the way in which he should go and one day he will return to it.” You need to hear that when they drop out of college and move in with their girlfriend. Maybe it’s time to start that return trip. Or maybe they struggle with an addiction or the time you bail them out of jail or when they turn their back on everything you’ve sought to teach them, when’s that return trip going to happen, God? I don’t see it. That’s just too good to be true.

God says, “Never will I leave you. Never will I forsake you. Never will I turn my back on you.” God says, “I’ll never walk away from you.” Maybe God didn’t anticipate some of the things that you’ve done. You see, maybe God didn’t plan on some of the stuff you ended up getting mixed up in because God doesn’t hang around people who do what you’ve done, does He? God’s promises. They’re fantastical in nature and scope. They seem too good to be true at times. God’s promises are unbelievable.

God’s promises are unbelievable when you consider the fact that God’s promises are unconditional. Now that’s a hard one for us to understand, unconditional. We live in a conditional world. God says no stipulations, nothing, no pre-requirements. You don’t have to do a certain amount of things and then, all of a sudden, God’s promises will kick in. Look at Abram, the promises to him were unconditional. God didn’t say, “You know, as soon as you start flying right, well then I will make your descendants as numerous as stars in the sky.” Don’t get me wrong, Abram was a man of great faith but don’t think of him as some super-righteous, uber-holy guy walking on thin air because that’s not the Abram of scripture.

In fact, if you just go back to Chapter 12 in Genesis, there is a real interesting story there about Abraham, give you a little insight into the man. Abram and Sarah are about to go into Egypt and Abram reasons that when they get into Egypt, they’re going to take one look at Sarah and they’re going to kill him so they can take Sarah to be their own wife. Evidently, Sarah was quite a looker in those days. So he convinces Sarah, he says, “When we get into Egypt, you tell everybody you’re my sister, not my wife.” They get into Egypt. Pharaoh sees Sarah, thinks it’s his sister, takes Sarah into his harem. Now how did he explain that one when he got home that night? That’s Abram. He’s not some super-righteous guy walking around. He is a sinful human being. God didn’t say, “Now listen, Abram, I don’t want to catch you doing what you did in Egypt again. And as long as you promise to stay straight, your descendants are as numerous as the stars in the sky.” It had nothing to do with who Abram was. It had everything to do with who God was. Unconditional promises.

Listen again what it says in the book of Genesis, “Abram believed the Lord,” but here it is, “and he credited it to Him as righteousness.” He credited it to Him as righteousness. You see, Abram isn’t righteous on his own. No, God declares him to be righteous. If Abram isn’t perfect, God declares him to be perfect. He credits him with righteousness because God’s promises are unconditional. His promise to Abram was unconditional.

We struggle with this one, whether we want to admit it or not. We struggle with the whole idea of something being unconditional. We live in a conditional world. Our relationships are conditional. “I’ll love you. You love me.” “I’ll be your friend. You be my friend.” “You do something for me and I’ll do something for you.” Our whole world revolves around stipulations and conditions. That’s just how we operate. And it does seem ironic to me that, during the season where we see the fulfillment of one of God’s unconditional promises, it’s a season that we put so many conditions around as we celebrate it.

Why is it that he sees you when you’re waking and when you’re asleep? And why does he care whether you’ve been naughty or nice? How many parents have said to their kids, “Boy, you better straighten up. Christmas is coming.” If you’re naughty, no presents. If you’re nice, lots of presents. Conditional. Don’t we even do that with our gift-giving? “You know, they gave us something last year. We probably better give them something.” “You know, she’s been so generous in the past. I think we need to really give her something nice this year.” “He has been working so hard at that first semester of college, I think we need to go all out this year and reward him.” Now I don’t want to debate whether that’s right, wrong or in-between, my point is we live in a conditional world. So how in the world are we ever going to understand a God who doesn’t have conditions? A God who makes promises to us with no stipulations? When God promises you that one day you will be in heaven unconditionally, it has nothing to do with you, it has nothing to do with what you do or what you say, just unconditional. How do we understand that?

This morning, if I were to go around and I were to ask you, “Why is it that you will spend an eternity in heaven, would you just give me a short answer?” “Why is it that you think when you die, you’re going to go to heaven?” I suspect some of the answers that I hear will be, “Well, you know, I know I am not perfect but I have tried hard all my life to live right. I try very, very hard to do the right thing in every circumstance.” Some of you would say, “Well, I’m only human, I’m not perfect but I have to tell you, there are a whole lot of other people who are way worse than I am.” Problem. Heaven isn’t open to people who try hard and it’s not as if, at the end of time, God is going to gather up all those who have the least amount of sins and invite them into heaven.  Heaven is for perfect people. There is no sin in heaven. There are no sinners in heaven. As God is perfect, so heaven is perfect.

God’s promise is an unconditional promise. The promise isn’t, “As long as you try really hard, then I’ll let you know.” The promise isn’t, “As long as you’re better than the majority of the people, then I’ll let you in.” God’s promise is, “I declare you righteous. You’re in.” It has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with Him. That’s what Paul was trying to say. Paul was trying to express that as he said, “Abram, as he was credited with righteousness, so also we will be declared righteous.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham, the blessing, you’re credited with righteousness, the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles. That would be you and that would be me. It would come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus so that by faith we might receive the power of the Spirit. You see, it has absolutely nothing to do with you and everything to do with Jesus because the righteousness of Jesus becomes your righteousness and your sin was laid upon Him. God puts no conditions, no stipulations. His promise is almost unbelievable. It’s fantastic in nature because it’s unconditional.

You want to believe the promises of God? Then look no further than the stars. The wise man from the east said, “We saw His star.” And that’s what led them to the baby Jesus. If you link that to the first book of the New Testament, to the first chapter in the New Testament, Matthew 1 traces back the genealogy of Jesus. And where does it all trace back to? Abram. It starts with Abram and it ends with Jesus. You see, when God called Abram out and He said, “Look at the stars in the sky,” one of those stars, one of those descendants was the Son of God. The promise was, “All people will be blessed through you, Abram.” God says, “All who believe in Jesus, all who look to Him as their Savior will be saved, their sins forgiven, heaven opened up.” Abram believed the Lord and it was credited to Him as righteousness. The promises of God to Abraham found fulfillment in Jesus and the promises of God to you find fulfillment in Jesus. God has called you to faith. You believe. You believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior. You believe the promises of God. Just when you think you’re at your wit’s end, that you don’t know where else to go, God will come in to the rescue. He has promised it. Just when you don’t think you know how a situation is going to turn out, you can’t figure out what’s going to happen, God will come in. And just about the time you think you’ve gone too far, you’ve not done enough, God reassures you that He loves you unconditionally, that He forgives you, that He accepts you for who you are. That’s His promise to you.

You want proof? Look to the stars. God said to Abram, “Look at the heavens. Count the stars if you can.” And one of those stars was the Son of God, His birth we’re going to celebrate in just a few weeks. That was God’s promise to Abraham but God’s promise to you is that one of those stars, that was you. Amen.

Copyright 2008 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church