Pastor
Steve Geiger First Sunday after Christmas
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Galatians 4:4-7
4 But when the time had fully come, God sent his
Son, born of a woman, born under law, 5 to redeem those under law, that we
might receive the full rights of sons. 6 Because you are sons, God sent the
Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” 7
So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made
you also an heir.
We
Are Family Galatians
4:4-7
1.
Jesus made human challenge his own
2.
Jesus made divine joys your own
I
had no idea whom it was from.
A
box. A Christmas box. Delivered to me by my mom and dad, but it
wasn’t from my mom and dad. It was from
my brother or one of my sisters. On the
box, a card. The handwriting, that of
my mother. But all it said is that the
box was from one of my siblings, but it didn’t say from whom.
A
mystery. That’s sometimes part of the
game played by Geiger brothers and sisters around Christmas time. We don’t know who has whom. We draw names and keep it a secret. We then buy presents for the brother or
sister we picked.
A
tradition. A family tradition. Something we have in common. An activity we share.
That’s
what makes a family. A family has
things in common. Experiences. Challenges.
Struggles. Joys.
Could
you ever imagine yourself being considered part of the same family as God?
If
being a family means that you have important things in common, it would be
quite difficult to think of something that humans just naturally have in common
with God. In fact, when we think of
humans and God, we most naturally think of things we don’t have in common. God is perfect. We are not. God is always
at perfect peace with himself. We can
so struggle inside. God decides what
the rules are. We are the ones who
should obey the rules. God has all
power. We can do nothing by
ourselves. God made a perfect
creation. We humans have brought sin
and pain into God’s beautiful world.
Family? One would look at us and God and figure that
we have nothing in common. That we
could never have anything in common.
Not that we wouldn’t want to have things in common with God. Not that we wouldn’t want to be perfect,
happy, at peace, having eternal joy.
Not that we wouldn’t want to be part of God’s family. But why would God want us?
Even
more incredible, why would God ever want to become one of us? We’d be the last family anyone would want to
join, yet that is exactly the miracle described for us today.
At
Christmas, we think of a baby in Bethlehem.
To make real the joy of that day, those who have had children might
remember the thrill of holding a baby in arms, the joy of a new life, the
excitement of pain having passed and a growing child’s future.
Babies
are nice. But it wasn’t the fact that
Jesus was a baby that made that first Christmas spectacular. It was the fact that Jesus was a human. It wasn’t how old Jesus was that made that
first Christmas touching. It was the
fact that God had decided to become also a man.
God
made himself a part of our family.
To
our minds, an inexplicable decision.
If
a child had to make a choice to be part of a new family and the options
included one family with a beautiful house, nice cars, a boat, big bedrooms,
good food, and friendly parents, and then another family whose house was about
to fall, who had no car, hardly any toys, only a couch to sleep on, and food
enough for only one meal a day . . . if a child had to make a choice, well,
there hardly would be a choice.
Jesus
faced options similar. Yet he decided willingly to join us. To make our hurts his. To open himself up to physical persecution,
to emotional trauma, even to the curse owed one having treated God as an enemy.
Willingly
he joined us in our pain.
Do
you ever feel alone in your pain?
Pain
can take on many forms. The pain may be
physical—a broken leg, a slow-growing cancer, recurring headaches, the
inability to sleep, one cold after another, an infection that keeps coming
back. The pain may be emotional—you
made a mistake at work and you’re afraid you’ll lose your job; someone you once
loved has turned on you and tries to make you miserable every chance they get;
you face a most difficult decision and can’t decide which way to go; you long
for someone to love but can’t seem to find the right one. The pain may be spiritual—you’ve done something
wrong that not many know about, and you’re afraid to face up to and confess
your sin; at some point in the past you fell, and the guilt haunts you to this
day; you’ve thought about dying recently, and part of you almost wishes you
could decide when that moment comes because you want to escape, but part of you
feels so afraid of facing God and then feels guilty for even thinking about the
subject.
Pain. Physical aches. Emotional heartbreaks.
Spiritual guilt and terror.
Pain
is so common a part of the human experience.
Isn’t
the worst, though, to have such pain and to feel that you are alone? A physical hurt, and you can’t get to or
find a doctor who can help. An
emotional hurt, and you’re afraid that the pain will never go away. Spiritual fright, and because you’ve treated
God as an enemy you’re sure there is nowhere to turn.
Strangely,
when we’re in pain and we feel so alone, we will often try to make ourselves
even more alone. We will push away
people who care. We will allow Bible
study and worship to become more rare.
We even may feel that since obviously God isn’t my friend, as he hasn’t
taken the pain away, well, then I’m not going to treat God as my friend
either—I’ll disobey even more, as if there’s nothing more to lose.
Isn’t
that the greatest tragedy when in pain?
Satan so easily can succeed in persuading us that we are alone. That not even God loves us. How excited that tempter, that enemy is, to
sneak past us such a lie, that we might despair. That we might give up.
That we might admit our guilt and feel our human sinful failings but
then refuse to be comforted. Only to
discover, when eternal suffering happens next, that all Satan had to say about
God was a lie. That we followed, to our
own destruction, a lie.
“When
the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law.”
Alone?
Remember. God made himself a part of our family.
You
are not alone in carrying a heavy burden, whether physical or emotional or
spiritual. Jesus willingly chose to
experience it all. The physical . . .
forced to flee from his home to a foreign country, forty days of hunger, no
regular place to lay his head, nails and spit.
The emotional . . . two times with Jesus the words “troubled” and “in
spirit” are used—when Jesus cried as Mary was leading him to the tomb of his
dear friend Lazarus, and then at the Last Supper as he said, “I tell you the
truth, one of you is going to betray me.”
The spiritual . . . when he became a curse for us; whatever guilt you
have ever carried, whatever pain you have felt for the wrongs of your past . .
. Jesus took that all and experienced most fully the horror of living under,
then living through, God’s curse.
You’re
alone?
“When
the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law.”
You’re
not alone.
But
he didn’t just join in your pain to say, “I know how you feel.” He does, but he became a human and took on
himself the obligations and then the curse of the law to do something about
your pain. He paid a price to set you
free. You and I, slaves because of our
sin. Slaves to all the consequences
that sin brings. We couldn’t get away. We could not free ourselves from the curse.
Jesus
could. By becoming the curse. In the eyes of God, in reality, Jesus became
all that we have ever done wrong. As if
he had disobeyed every part of the law.
Condemned. He was hung on a
tree. Innocent, but God looked on him
as guilty. He became you. Then it was finished. God’s penalty for sin paid. You, set free. In God’s prison, we were.
Fear and guilt our companions.
Until we were freed. You aren’t
in the prison of fear and guilt anymore.
Jesus became you and has taken care of everything. Forgiven.
You are forgiven.
Because
Jesus made our human hurts his own. He
has now made divine joys your own.
Because
the son of God chose to make the hurts and guilt of humans his own, we humans
now baptized into the robe of Jesus’ righteousness are considered sons of God.
Your
last name is God.
That’s
how we show that we belong to someone, isn’t it? When children are born, it is common for them to receive the last
name of their father. I am not just
Steve. I am Steve Geiger, the son of my
father.
You
are not just Marty or Tom or Harriet.
You are Harriet God. Understand
that God isn’t saying that we’re God.
But we, because he has shown and persuaded us that Jesus is our Savior .
. . we are part of the family of God.
God is our last name.
You’re
not alone.
In
fact, as you know that the one who became one with us has freed us from the
curse of the law, you have God in your heart.
God sent his Holy Spirit in your hearts. As it is God who works in you both to will and to act according
to his good pleasure, so in a special way it is the Holy Spirit who from
within, through you, calls out to God by calling him “Father.”
Christians,
God is your Father. He loves you. He cares especially for you. He longs to hear your every concern. He is with you whenever you struggle. He promises to give whatever you need. He promises to protect and strengthen
whenever necessary.
You
are not alone.
And
you’ll never be alone. Since you are a
son, God has also made you an heir.
It
may not have meant much to be an heir of your parents. Perhaps your mom and dad didn’t have that
much to pass down at their death. God
does. When you are an heir of God, you
are a child who looks forward to more than you can even imagine. An inheritance of a smile no one will wipe
from your face, an inheritance of freedom from all pain, an inheritance of heaven.
Because
you’re family.
When
hurting, you may feel that you are alone.
That no one has in common what you are facing.
Families
have things in common. A Christmas
tradition with presents mysterious. Or
sharing pains and joys in a most special way.
Remember
that Jesus became you, making all your hurts his own. Remember that Jesus has forgiven and freed you, making divine
joys your own.
You
have something in common with God. You
are family. You are the family of God.
Amen.