Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Conscientiousness
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The Giver
I have two gifts I’d like to show you this morning.
The first is a very special gift.
I keep this on a shelf in my office.
When kids come into my office, they like to see my Star Wars stuff.
And one of the things I like to show it to kids when they come in, is an original painting of R2D2.
This is an original painting of R2D2.
It was painted by Amanda and given to me on my 21st birthday.
6 months after she gave it to me, we’d got married.
I like this picture.
I like it because it’s Star Wars.
I like it because it’s R2D2.
I like it because it’s painted by Amanda.
I like it because it’s painted by Amanda and she took the time to make something that she knew I would like.
Contrast that gift to another gift I recently received.
There’s a new grocery store that opened up off of Rancho California, it’s called Alde.
Amanda and I went there the first week they opened, and they really went all out for us.
They gave us … this bag.
Back in the day who would care?
Back in the day I got a bag every time I bought something from a store.
But now that there is this law that you have to bring your own bags, or the store has to charge you, a bag is extra special.
Though I don’t know how they can give me a bag, I thought that’s what the whole law was about, that they couldn’t give me bags anymore.
Any way, they gave me a bag.
It’s something we all used to get for free.
But now I’d have to pay 10 cents for it.
So it’s a gift.
And I’m grateful.
If I compare these two gifts there are some similarities.
They are both small.
They’re not very expensive.
You’re not going to break the bank buying a canvas of this size.
And you’re definitely not going to go into debt with this plastic bag.
But what sets them apart?
Clearly, Amanda went to a lot more effort to paint this picture than Alde did with giving me a plastic bag.
But what sets them apart is the giver.
Suppose Alde gave me an R2D2 picture instead of a plastic bag.
I’d still like Amanda’s more.
Why?
Because of the one who gave it to me.
Amanda gave it to me, she’s my wife.
I love her more than a grocery store.
And because I love her, her gift means much more to me.
The effort that she went into to paint the picture.
The time that she took.
It all adds up.
And I appreciate the gift so much more.
I proudly display it in my office for everyone to see when they come in.
This Alde bag … it’s tucked away next to our trash can at home.
Today we are starting a new series in preparation for Christmas.
I’ve titled it, The Cost of the Gift.
We are in the Christmas season.
We celebrate the incarnation, the advent, the birth of Jesus.
We celebrate by giving gifts to one another.
, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
We are joyful, so we give gifts.
There is peace between man and God, so we celebrate.
As we give gifts, we frequently remind ourselves of the reason for the season.
We don’t want forget the ultimate gift, Jesus Christ.
We celebrate the ultimate gift, forgiveness of sins.
Yet, on some level, it’s an effort.
It’s an effort to remember the reason for the season.
We set up nativities, we read the Christmas story, we go to great pains to try and make the season special.
As Christians, it’s hard not to get caught up in the commercial aspect to Christmas.
And we aren’t the only ones, the world around us tries to not get commercial about it as well.
The world’s noble celebration at Christmas is to celebrate family and friends.
Yet, even that isn’t what the season is about.
It’s about the birth of Jesus.
As Christians we make it a point to try and get the world around us to celebrate Christmas rightly.
We expect them, in their unconverted state to remember the reason for the season to celebrate the birth of Christ.
And when they don’t celebrate it rightly, we get very angry.
Starbucks changes their cups to the color red, without the words Merry Christmas on it, and all we see is red.
We call for boycotts of a nonChristian, liberal company acting like a nonChristian liberal company.
Unfortunately, if someone doesn’t know the Giver, they’ll never appreciate the gift.
If we don’t know the Giver, then the gift will be nothing more than a plastic bag from Alde.
But if we know the giver, then everything changes.
I look at Amanda’s picture:
I see the attention to detail.
I see the shading.
I see the work that she put into it, and I treasure it.
As we look at salvation, and as we look at Christmas, we have to do the same thing I do to Amanda’s picture.
We have to look at Who the Giver is.
We have to know Who the Giver is.
Then we can see what the Giver did to give His gift.
What sacrifices did He give up?
How was He humbled?
What was His labor like?
And then we’ll appreciate it.
Until we know the Giver, we’ll never understand the gift and what Christ went through to give it.
So before we look at the gift in our Christmas season, we are going to look at the Giver.
People have a problem,
We will be in a familiar passage, one that you probably have memorized already.
Please open your Bibles to , and follow along as I read it.
Read .
It’s a small verse.
But it’s packed with truth to help us know the Giver.
The first thing we see is that Jesus is eternal.
The text begins by saying In the beginning was the Word.
Notice what it doesn’t say.
It doesn’t say in the beginning the Word was created.
No, it says that when the beginning happened, the Word was already there.
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