God’s greatest Gift John 3:15-18 & Genesis 3:1-7
When I was little, children often spent many months of the year, dreaming about what they would get for Christmas. There were generally only two events in the year when you received gifts, back then, Christmas and your birthday. Christmas was extra special as the extended family and friends joined in the celebrations as some families were only able to come together once a year. So Christmas morning/day had great dreams and expectations attached to it. Would our dreams become a reality? For some of us, they did, even way beyond our expectations. For others our dreams were absolutely shattered, but for most of us, I suspect our dreams were somewhere in between – good but not quite what we expected.
Did you know, that God had a dream? Genesis 1 tells us about God’s dream. A perfect world that was inhabited by men and women created in His own image. They would trust Him to look after them, love Him for what he had created and given them and be able to have fellowship with Him, as he walked in the evening with them. A perfect dream! We read in Genesis 3 of how this dream was ruined. Mankind, had decided that they didn’t want to trust God one hundred percent, they wanted to do things their way and so they took matters into their own hands.
God’s dream was still good but not really what it might have been. The thing that was different for Him, was that He knew what was going to happen and so He had a backup plan, a way to fix the problem.
That plan was to send Jesus down to earth, to show us how God wanted us to live and ultimately go to the cross and sacrifice Himself so that our relationship with God could be restored.
I want to share something here, that happened to me recently. I’ve had a dream, for a while now, it’s not as big as God’s but it is special to me. It looked like I was going to have a scaled down version of that dream realised for my sixtieth birthday. But, other members of my family also have a dream. They also have their own problems and it would have cost them all a lot in order to make my dream come true. So in order to save them, I have had to let go of my dream. As I battled with this, I came to appreciate a great deal more of what it cost Jesus to save us and just how much He loves us.
Jesus, lives in Heaven, it is a perfect place. The bible tells us there is no pain, no sorrow, no death and Jesus had to leave it in order to save us. We read about His distress in the garden of Gethsemane but I have wondered lately if He had a similar time of distress before He left Heaven. If He also wondered if there was another way to restore that relationship between us and God without Him having to leave Heaven. It was hard for me to give up my dream, how much harder was it for God to give up His perfect existence in Heaven. The good news is that regardless of what His thoughts and concerns were, He let go of His dream of staying in Heaven. He came, as a baby and grew up amongst us and did exactly what God wanted Him to do. He did it to save us because once mankind decided to do things the way they wanted then we had to pay the price which is: go to hell once our time here on earth is over.
Not only, did Jesus leave Heaven but He spent 33 years on this earth, walking, talking, teaching, and healing those He came in contact with. He loved us, and yet many of us have very little appreciation of what He gave up to spend that time here. I don’t appreciate it, not to its full extent, I can’t, and nor can anyone else. Until we get to Heaven ourselves, we have no idea of what He left behind. Yet, Jesus was willing to go even further to save us, He went to the cross. He took on all the sins of the world, He went to hell for us, He lost fellowship with God his father, the most precious thing for Him, to show us just how much He loves us.
The good news is that He fought death, returned to earth and continued to show us how to love each other and God, until He returned to Heaven. He also gave us the Holy Spirit who also continues His work here on earth.
Yes, God’s greatest gift to us was our salvation. When God’s gave us His Son to save us, it was a gift that cost Him so much, it also cost His Son a great deal but they did it because they love us and they really want to restore that relationship/dream that was broken when we decided to go our own way.
Our reading from John tells us how much He loved us and therefore came and paid the price for our Salvation. I wish that I could tell you that I’m going to be Godly enough to pay the price of letting go of my dream as willingly. I will try but I am realistic enough to know that I will have moments when I will not be happy about it. I don’t even know if God will find another way for my dream to come true, Jesus had to go to the bitter end and I might have to as well, although my bitter is nothing compared to what Jesus suffered, mine is meaningless in comparison. I do, however, thank Him for helping me to understand a little more of what it cost Him to give me my salvation and my ultimate dream of seeing Him in Heaven. It has also helped me to appreciate both our Christmas and Easter celebrations a lot more.
Let me ask you! Do you appreciate how much that greatest gift cost God and His Son? Do you appreciate it enough to love Him in return, to restore the dream that God had? You can! You can thank God for what He did and ask Him to forgive you for trying to do things the way you want to. Once you have taken that step you can continue to develop that relationship by making God the Lord of your life, by living the way He wants you do and then when your time is over here on earth you will get to see what Jesus left behind for you because then you will be there with Him.