Sermon Tone Analysis

A little less than a year after we lost our baby, we had the opportunity to adopt this little red head boy.

He was about as cute as could be, had a lazy eye that, if I remember correctly was the result of his biological mothers probable alcohol and drug use during her pregnancy.

To be honest, the lazy eye just added to the cuteness of the little guy!

The adoption was to be handled through the State of Nebraska’s Foster/Adopt program.

At the time he was almost 3 years old and already had foster parents, but they were not going to be able to adopt him, so the State was looking for a home that had the potential to be permanent.

Our next door neighbor, Joanne, was a Social worker and we were very close to her.

She helped us with everything.

Their plan was to start with short visits, first at his current foster parents home, then they would bring him to our home for a couple hours at a time.

Before long he would come and spend the night with us.

Besides his lazy eye, this little guy had some other health issues as well.

It seemed he almost constantly struggled with bronchitis and bronchial infections, which included some nasty coughs.

3 times every day he had to do breathing treatments, but we felt we were prepared for the issues.

So the 1st over night visit was set up.

We were a little nervous, but we were also pretty excited.

At the time he had a one of those nasty bronchial infections and a cough, so he came with some medicines in tow.

One was a cough medicine that had codeine in it that was supposed to be taken right before bedtime.

So being the good soon to be parents we were, right before bedtime we gave him the medicine.

Did I happen to mention that at 33 & 34 years old Pam and I had never had a child before that could actually walk?

Well with our years of experience raising 3 year olds, after giving him his night time medicine, we set it on the bathroom counter, I mean in 4 hours we were supposed to give him another dose, so the counter seemed like a logical place to keep it!

We then went downstairs to watch a little TV.

After a couple hours we came upstairs and Pam noticed the bathroom light was on.

She went in to the bathroom to turn the light off and noticed a little cough medicine had been spilled on the counter.

When she picked up the bottle, she realized that our little guy had decided he was big enough to take the medicine himself, and why take just 2 teaspoons full, surely more would be better, so he downed the entire bottle.

Soon we were rushing to the ER to have his stomach pumped.

The State must have been pretty hard up for adoptive parents, because for some reason they didn’t stop the whole process right then!

Fast forward a couple months, he now lived with us full time.

By then we had pretty much fallen in love with little Stevie.

Since he was sick all the time, his Dr. wanted to run some tests to see if they could figure out what was causing the constant bronchitis.

After running a series of tests, his Dr. said it appeared he had Cystic Fibrosis.

This was before there was an internet, so we were sent home some information on this deadly decease.

The easiest description of this decease is that the child always has a lot of fluid in their lungs as well as other internal organs.

This fluid interferes with the respiratory, digestive and reproductive systems and produces a thick, sticky mucus.

It builds up and clogs the small airways and passageways which carry harmful bacteria out of the body.

Because the bacteria is trapped, serious infections develop that weaken the organs and place constant stress on the immune system.

At the time the best case scenario was a hard life for child and parents that would end in his 20’s.

We were soon headed across the State to Omaha for further tests to confirm the diagnosis.

The State gave us the option of immediately ended the adoption process, but how do you do that?

By now we loved little Stevie, the thought of abandoning him when he needed us most was beyond our comprehension.

Our answer was easy, we were not about to stop.

Then came the good news, the initial diagnosis was incorrect, Stevie did not have Cystic fibrosis, just a severe case of asthma, and there was a good chance he could outgrow the asthma.

Which he did.

Stevie now goes by Steven, and he just turned 28 on the 10th.

Now perhaps you’re wondering what this story has to do with Christmas, and particularly what it has to do with this week’s Advent, the Advent of Love

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2018 Christmas Advent-The Advent of Love

To answer that question, turn with me in your Bibles to 1 John 3:1.

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1 John 3:1 Page 1303 In the pew Bibles.

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1 John 3:1

Did you notice what I noticed?

For those who have put their faith and trust in Christ, we are now “called children of God”.

We have been adopted into the family of God.

Similar in some ways to Pam and me adopting Steven, our choosing Steven to be our son, we were chosen by God, but that is where the similarities end.

When Pam and I started the adoption process with Steven, he was so cute that you couldn’t help but fall in love with the little guy.

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The same cannot be said for any of us, when we were chosen by God.

We read in Romans 5:8 Next Slide

Romans 5:8

I can’t speak for you, but for me there are times that in my mind I get to thinking that I was chosen by God because He looked down at me and thought, “Now I can do something great with him!”

That He chose me because of the incredible potential He saw in me!

Like excuse me while I pat myself on the back!

But Romans 5:8 is pretty clear.

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He loved me enough to chose me when there was nothing at all cute and lovely about me.

The same is true of you!

Need a little convincing?

The Greek word Paul uses for “sinner” is the word hamartōlos.

As I have mentioned a few times in the past, the Greek language is a beautiful language filled with word pictures.

hamartōlos is one of those word pictures.

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hamartōlos means-devoted to sin, a sinner, pre-eminently sinful, especially wicked.

We’re not talking about a kid who was caught with his hand in a cookie jar here.

We are talking about an individual, and by individual I mean every last one of us, we are talking about an individual who is sinful to the very core of their being.

Yet there we are, rotten to the core, and still God adopted us as “children of God”.

That is what I call love.

Did you notice the difference between Pam and my love for Steven and God’s love for us?

We fell in love with Steven because of his characteristics.

His red hair, lazy eye, his cute little voice, that lower lip of his that would stick out like 2 inches when he was pouting.

However, when it came to God’s love for us....well lets just say that if He was going off of our characteristics....we’d still be waiting in the spiritual orphanage.

With these things in mind, let’s turn in our Bibles to this mornings Christmas passage.

Now before you head back in your Bibles to Matthew or Luke, I’d like to introduce you to another little known Christmas passage.

By little known Christmas passage, I mean many of you are familiar with the passage, just not as a Christmas passage, but I think as we go through it this morning together, you will see why it is a perfect fit for Christmas, and especially this Sunday’s Advent of Love.

Turn in your Bibles to 1 John 4:9.

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1 John 4:9

Now while this passage may not have angels present, bringing a message of a miraculous birth, while it may be absent sheep & shepherds, wisemen and gifts, and some strange boy that brought a drum to play to a sleeping baby, oh wait, that last part isn’t in the Bible!

That being said, I do love listening to Bing Crosby and David Bowe version of The Little Drummer Boy.

While it may not have many of the things we traditionally think about when we think of Christmas, I believe it is still a pretty powerful Christmas passage.

There are 3 keys in this verse I want us to consider this morning.

The first one is this: Next Slides

The birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus makes clear to us that which was previously hidden.

We see that in the word “manifest”.

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The word manifest means “to make visible or known that which has been hidden or unknown”.

So what was it that was previously hidden?

Well in many ways it was the love of God.

While the people may have had a head knowledge of the love of God.

They had been told of all that the God of Moses had done for them in delivering them from their slavery to the Egyptians.

They had been told the stories of the great Judges of the past, of Sampson and his great strength, of Gideon and his 300 men that defeated an army of close to 150,000.