Sermon preached by Dr. John A. Huffman, Jr.
December 2, 2007
Copyright © 2007, John A. Huffman, Jr.
All rights reserved.

". . .how can we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?" (Hebrews 2:3a)

Question: What will preoccupy most of your creative energies and personal anxieties these next three-plus weeks?

Answer: Gift buying!

Am I correct?

The holiday we call Christmas is known for gifts. The season is preoccupied with gift receiving and gift giving.

For these four weekends in Advent, Jim Birchfield and I are team-preaching on the theme "The Gifts of Christmas."

There are many we could mention. We've chosen to zero in on four of these. Our list is: Salvation; Abundant Life; Peace; and Hope. We are doing this in alternate weeks of preaching.

These four gifts have elements in common that make them different from those gifts we are in the frantic process of buying to give to others. They are different in that they are priceless. You can't buy them. And they are different in that they are available to all. That doesn't mean that everyone will receive them, but these priceless gifts are available to anyone who is willing to receive them.

Today, I zero in on the gift of Salvation.

One of the most familiar Christmas stories involves the shepherds tending their sheep on the hillsides outside of Bethlehem. Luke records, "Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid; for see--I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord'" (Luke 2:9-11).

A Savior!

The same Luke, writing in the Book of Acts the history of the early church, describes a series of events that happened in the temple area of Jerusalem not long after that first great day of Pentecost. Peter and John had been telling people about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, calling them to repentance and trust in Him for the forgiveness of sins. Agitated religious rulers had them arrested, threatened by the fact that some five thousand people had, in this short period, come to faith in Jesus Christ. One man, crippled from birth, had been healed. Placed under inquisition, Peter and John were challenged to answer the question, "By what power or by what name did you do this?" Luke records,

Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, "Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. This Jesus is 'the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.' There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:8-12)

Did you catch that? There is no other name than that of Jesus by which we must be saved!

Some years later, the writer of Hebrews begins that New Testament book reflecting on the Advent of Jesus Christ, God's Son, into this world to deal with the horrendous consequences of sin and His atoning work on the cross. He writes, "Therefore we must pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it. For if the message declared through angels was valid, and every transgression or disobedience received a just penalty, how can we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? It was declared at first through the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard him, while God added his testimony by signs and wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit, distributed according to his will" (Hebrews 2:1-4).

Those words of the first century are just as appropriate for us today. How can we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?

The very word salvation implies something being wrong from which we need to be saved.

This week's TIME magazine, dated December 3, 2007, has as its cover article the topic "What Makes Us Good/Evil: Humans are the planet's most noble creatures--and its most savage. Science is discovering why." It juxtaposes a series of pictures titled "Historic Duality: The Altruistic, The Atrocious." Then on one page, you see a lineup of pictures including Mohandas Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Dalai Lama--the Altruistic. Across the page, you see a lineup of pictures including Joseph Stalin, Augusto Pinochet, Adolf Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, and Pol Pot--the Atrocious. And you read these words:

What Makes Us Moral. Morality and empathy are writ deep in our genes. Alas, so are savagery and bloodlust. Science is now learning what makes us both noble and terrible--and perhaps what can make us better.

If the entire human species were a single individual, that person would long ago have been declared mad. The insanity would not lie in the anger and darkness of the human mind--though it can be a black and raging place indeed. And it certainly wouldn't lie in the transcendent goodness of that mind--one so sublime, we fold it into a larger "soul." The madness would lie instead in the fact that both of those qualities, the savage and the splendid, can exist in one creature, one person, often in one instant.

We are a species that is capable of almost dumbfounding kindness. We nurse one another, romance one another, weep for one another. Ever since science taught us how, we willingly tear the very organs from our bodies and give them to one another. And at the same time, we slaughter one another. The past 15 years of human history are the temporal equivalent of those subatomic particles that are created in accelerators and vanish in a trillionth of a second, but in that fleeting instant, we've visited untold horrors on ourselves--in Mogadishu, Rwanda, Chechnya, Darfur, Beslan, Baghdad, Pakistan, London, Madrid, Lebanon, Israel, New York City, Abu Ghraib, Oklahoma City, an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania--all of the crimes committed by the highest, wisest, most principled species the planet has produced. That we're also the lowest, cruelest, most blood-drenched species is our shame--and our paradox.

I have my own personal footnote to the opening paragraphs of this article. Back at the turn of the last century, the movement in Western Europe and the United States we now refer to as Liberal Protestant Christianity had come to deny many of the historic doctrines of the Christian faith, such as the Virgin Birth, the Deity of Christ, the Blood Atonement, the Infallibility of Scripture, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Its basic theological tenets were "The Fatherhood of God" and the "Brotherhood of Man." Jesus was the great example of the finest man who ever lived, the great teacher, the one by whose example we should live our lives. It had bought into a social Darwinism that saw the gradual perfectability of humankind. There was a mantra some even chanted that went like this, "In every day, in every way, we're getting better and better!" A theological publication was founded, which still exists, named The Christian Century. Although that publication has long-since adjusted its theology to accept the realities of what happened in that century, the thought then was that the nineteen hundreds would be an era in which the world would get much better as these kinds of Christian influences would impact human activity.

Well, the twentieth century was anything but the "Christian century." I've been overwhelmed to realize that World War II itself didn't just evidence the genocide of some six million Jews, but also an additional fifty-four million combatants and non-combatants were killed as part of the horrors of that war. And those numbers do not include the atrocities of World War I, the Korean War, the Viet Nam War, and the dozens of other wars that raged through that century but were not on the radar screen of many of us.

The problem with an article such as this one in TIME magazine is that it is very good on description but very poor on prescription. The problem with classic liberal Christianity and any other religion that emphasizes improvement by good works is that there's no adequate understanding of the human condition. The tendency is to try to figure out what influences there are on the brain that can cause such altruistic and such atrocious behavior on the parts of human beings, in some cases the very same human being doing some of both. This secular approach fails in that. As much as it aspires to something moral, it almost, but not quite, declares us to be animals driven by our DNA and the idiosyncratic functions of our brains.

To some extent this is true. I do not deny at all the impact of DNA and brain function. But human beings are different from the animal world. The Bible says that we are created in the image of God. The Bible says that each of us has a capacity for evil and good within us. And the Bible declares there is none righteous, no not one of us, while at the same time, we have the privilege of receiving God's imputed righteousness on our behalf.

The fact is, every one of us needs to be saved.

The biblical understanding of human nature involves a theology of creation, the fall, and redemption.

This is what Advent is all about--God's plan of salvation.

One of my very special, long-term friends is Charles Colson, whose own personal testimony combines the very worst and the very best of what it is to be human. When I first met him, he emerged from prison having served his term, convicted of illegal activities when he was White House Counsel for President Richard Nixon. I did a TV interview with him, one of the first upon his release. At the time, I was quite suspicious that he was one of those who was simply using Jesus and a faked conversion experience to rehabilitate himself in the public mind. When I queried him on this, his blunt and honest response was, "Just wait and see what I'm doing ten years from now." It's now thirty-three years later, and the verdict is clear. His life was changed. He was "saved," experiencing God's salvation through the person and work of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.

A few weeks ago, he sent me the galley proofs of his brand-new book, written in collaboration with Harold Fickett, titled The Faith. I've been working my way through it. It's a book that, when it is actually published, I will give out like I give out Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis to those who are struggling with their own doubts and yearning for something more from life than they've experienced to this time.

In his manuscript, Colson contends that we live in a day of mushy thinking and living. One of the highest values of our day is "tolerance." People who are committed to "truth" are looked down on as out-of-date and intolerant. In his book, he addresses the theme of "What Christians Believe, Why They Believe It, and Why It Matters." In a very insightful chapter titled "What Went Right, What Went Wrong," in his own unique way, he describes God's creation of all that is, magnificent and unspoiled. He describes the biblical account of the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. In the very image of God, human, above the animals, privileged to take care of God's creation. He moves on to describe the problem of evil, of Satan wooing Adam and Eve to disobey God, and the blame game we've been playing ever since to try to free ourselves from responsibility of that which destroys our own lives and the lives of others, producing the kind of stuff personally and globally to which we have already referred.

His next chapter is titled "The Invasion."

He describes an experience he had as a young Marine when he was part of an invasion with a flotilla of warships, including an aircraft carrier, in activities off the coast of Guatemala that broke the back of the Communist insurgency, and then he goes on to declare how that military event pales in comparison with the invasion of Normandy on D-day, June 6, 1944, the largest seaborne landing in history. He writes about the invasion of Normandy being the first successful opposed landing across the English Channel in nine centuries, described to us in movies like Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, as well as books like The Longest Day and The Greatest Generation.

He describes how more than 150,000 troops were committed to the initial invasion, employing 6,900 vessels, 4,100 landing craft, and 12,000 airplanes flying 14,000 attack sorties. A thousand of these airplanes were transports that parachuted troops behind enemy lines the night before the invasion in order to thwart counterattacks. He goes on to describe other preparations before an initial invasion, and then within two weeks, the British landed an additional 314,547 men, 54,000 vehicles, and 102,000 tons of supplies at Arromanches, while the Americans put ashore 314,504 men, 41,000 vehicles, and 116,000 tons of supplies at Omaha. Ten thousand tons of bombs were dropped on German defenses, with the word given to the French resistance to sabotage key bridges, railway lines, telephone exchanges, and electricity substations. Despite the Allies' air superiority and hours of heavy bombardment against the beach defenses by the warships' guns, the Germans stayed intact as thousands of brave men in the landing craft motored toward shore. Nothing stood between these troops and the German guns but the morning air. At Omaha, Gold, Sword, Juno, and Utah beaches, the troops' only chance was to run, swim, and crawl up the beach to the sea walls, where they could reassemble for assaults on enemy gun positions. In the first hours at Omaha, more than 2,400 died. Over the next weeks, as the battle progressed inland, the U.S. would eventually lose 29,000 men and more than 100,000 wounded and missing, while the British gave up 11,000 of its finest, and Canada 5,000. And all this was just the initial set of invasions. The Battle of the Bulge and other potentially catastrophic reversals were still to come, but the invasion of Normandy was so massive and successful that it allowed the Allies to turn every counterattack into another victory. He writes, "As if preordained, the outcome was clear; the evils of Hitler and fascism would be conquered."

Then Colson goes on to liken the Incarnation of these events, citing:

In one sense, the great invasions of history are analogous to the way in which God, in the great cosmic struggle between good and evil, chose to deal with Satan's rule over the earth--He invaded. But not with massive logistical support and huge armies; rather, in a way that confounded and perplexed the wisdom of humanity.

It was a quiet invasion. Few people understood what was happening. Mary, the mother of Jesus, knew that she was with child, but she also knew that she had never been with a man, not even Joseph, to whom she was engaged. She had learned of her pregnancy and what was to be a virgin birth when an angel told her that she was pregnant with the Son of God.

For many, including Joseph, the doctrine of the Virgin Birth is hard to accept. But the God who could speak the universe into being, who could create human life, could certainly choose to make Himself known by the power of the Holy Spirit through a virgin. And it was essential He do it this way. Jesus could never have been the Savior of humankind if He were born into sin, because then His death on the cross would be for His own sins, not for ours alone. Only a totally sinless savior could take our sins upon Himself, which means God, and only God, could be his Father.

Most of the people in Palestine at the time of Jesus' birth were expecting a Messianic invasion like we saw at D-day--conquerors in armor bringing a sword to set the people free from oppression.

Jesus only added to the bewilderment of the people who knew Him when He announced: "The time has come. . . . The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news" (Mark 1:15). This was the time the Jews had waited for for so long? Liberation? And who was this ordinary Nazarene carpenter to say he was bringing in the Kingdom of God?

God's gift is to save you from something terrible to something wonderful!

This is the whole motif underlying the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Many different themes are mentioned in the Bible, but the underlying and overarching theme of everything is that of Salvation. Theologians refer to the biblical story as "Holy History." And the theological term for this gift named Salvation is "soteriology." Big words, such as "salvific," are discussed in great detail. But all of this important and very technical theological language boils down to the simple question, "Brother, sister, are you saved?" In the final analysis, this is the privileged testimony of each one of us who has repented of sin and put our trust in Jesus Christ alone for salvation.

This salvation is wonderful! But don't let that word mislead you. Christians are not exempt from difficulties, troubles and pain. The Christian faith is not a success formula. It is based on historical facts and actions that God has taken in human history. When we hear stories of such godly people as Mother Teresa struggling with a sense of God's distance and even absence, we are puzzled. Then we remember "the dark night of the soul" experienced and written about by St. John of the Cross. Our experience is based on God's action in human history and our response to that action even in times of doubt and discouragement.

This is a gift that needs to be both received and shared.

Let me ask you two questions.

Question One: Have you received and are you using this Christmas gift of salvation?

It's one thing to hear this story year in and year out. I've tried to express it slightly differently this year by using the Colson's D-day analogy of God's invasion into the planet marked by such corporate and individual spiritual and moral schizophrenia, as noted in that TIME magazine cover article.

In the final analysis, the relevance of God's gift fleshes itself out in how you and I as individuals respond to it.

You don't always accept every gift you're offered, do you? Most of us, at one time, were romantically involved with someone we chose not to marry. It wasn't because they said no to us. The person may have very well proposed to you, and you said no. Or they were waiting for a proposal from you, which never came. They were willing to give you the gift of their life, one of the most precious gifts a person could give. But for whatever reason, you said no. I hope your refusal was a good thing. We dare not accept every gift, especially if that gift has long-term implications to it. This gift has those long-term implications.

What's different is, I commend to you, that this is a proposal you refuse only to your own loss, because this is God's gift of salvation, rescuing you. It moves you from meaninglessness to a meaningful existence. It frees you from the bondage of sin to forgiveness. It replaces your powerlessness with divine energy. It enables you to move from a life of immorality to one sanctified by the Holy Spirit of God in which your existence is conformed more and more to the lifestyle and attitudes God dreams for you to have.

Sometimes, we receive gifts that, although we open them, we never fully use them.

Years ago, I told you the story about the preacher who presided at the wedding of a young couple. It was a June wedding. The bride came from one of the wealthiest families in his congregation. He had invested a considerable amount of time in premarital counseling. His wife had bought a wedding shower present as well as a wedding gift. He had cleared the weekend from other opportunities and was to be at the rehearsal dinner and the reception following the wedding, employing a babysitter to take care of their children. When it was all over, just before the couple left on their honeymoon, the groom came up to the pastor and handed him a gift. When they got home, the pastor opened the package, expecting a note and perhaps a generous honorarium, only to see in the box a pair of gloves. A bit irritated at an event so opulent in every aspect bore with it such a modest gesture of appreciation, he tossed the gloves in a low dresser drawer along with some other winter apparel and forgot about them. A few months later on one of the early days of winter, he put on his top coat, remembered the gloves, and went to the drawer, figuring at least he'd get some use out of that token gift. As he went to put his fingers into the glove, he found he couldn't quite get them in. There was something stuffed into each one of the fingers. It felt like paper. As he went to pull the paper out, much to his amazement, he discovered a hundred dollar bill. By the time he was finished pulling the paper out of all eight fingers and two thumbs, there before him was one thousand dollars.

Yes, he'd accepted the gift, but he'd never come to fully realize what it involved.

Again, I ask you, have you received and are you using the gift of God's salvation?

Remember, this gift has two dimensions to it.

One is the dimension of personal salvation. The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 3:22-25, ". . . For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith."

The other is social justice, God's gift of salvation in the form of His direct ministry and His ministry through us to those with all kinds of needs--what we call social as well as spiritual. At the very beginning of his public ministry, Jesus went into the synagogue in Nazareth on the Sabbath, as was His custom. Luke records (Luke 4:16-21):

. . . He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to

the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

This gift is not just valuable insurance of forgiveness of sin in this life and heaven with Jesus Christ in the life to come. It also involves the holistic dimensions of who you are as a human being in relationship to others and the privilege of healthy, reciprocal, holistic relationship that is spiritual, physical, emotional and economic in nature. We dare not separate spiritual salvation from social salvation. It's very hard to hear the good news of the Gospel of forgiveness and new life in Christ when one is homeless, starving and thirsty!

Question Two: Are you sharing the gift with others?

You and I are mandated to be witnesses for Jesus Christ to others.

I know that some of us have an aversion to being too vocal in our witness, even though the Great Commission is clear that we are to go into all the world and share the Gospel with every creature. We find the fellow with the sandwich board loaded with Scripture verses and declarations of "repent or go to hell" not our style and quite off-putting. It's even difficult for us to think of sharing with an acquaintance the question, "Are you saved?"

How sad it is if we luxuriate in God's gift of salvation to us and we do not share it with others. For we've been commissioned to do just that.

Tuesday night, one of our elders, Jim Jefferson, gave a great devotional word expressing his own struggles in being faithful to Christ's commission of Acts 1:8, which reads, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." He told how this verse made him feel pretty uncomfortably, where he didn't find it easy to be a verbal witness for Jesus Christ.

One Tuesday evening, at Men's Bible Study Fellowship in his small group of ten men, they were discussing Matthew 5 where Jesus tells us we are salt and light and that we are to let our light shine on those before us. The group leader invited each one to tell how their light had shined upon others.

The fellow sitting next to Jim, whose name also was Jim, noted how we're to be careful not to do our acts of righteousness or giving to the needy before other people, but he would share a recent act of witnessing. He and his wife had just finished a cruise in the Mediterranean where they had visited such places as Ephesus, Corinth and Rome. The last port was Barcelona. There, they checked into a hotel, where Jim had attended to his wife who had become quite ill that evening. Once she began to feel better and began to sleep, Jim stepped outside the room into the common sitting room where several patrons of the hotel were congregating before turning in for the night. As he joined the group conversation, he overheard just bits and pieces of a story being told by a young lady from Australia. Once she finished her story, everyone but the Australian and Jim left. Jim asked the young lady to tell him more of her plight.

This young woman, perhaps thirty years old, told of her brother who lived in London and had sent her plane fare from Australia to Barcelona and planned to join her on holiday for several days. Not knowing exactly when he would arrive, the brother told his sister that he would send her four thousand dollars to cover any expenses she might incur until he arrived. The problem was that the funds had not arrived, and she didn't know how she would get along. She didn't know what to do and was in panic.

Jim, thinking of his responsibility to bear witness to his faith, quickly told the young woman that he would give her the four thousand dollars, and she could repay it when it was convenient. The Australian was astonished! She said, "You don't even know me. Why should you do this? Why would you trust me to repay?"

Jim told her that God was telling him to care for her. The woman went on, "My mother was a Baptist, and my father was a Methodist, but I never bought into this religious stuff. I'm not religious!" Jim responded, "I'm not religious either, but I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and He tells me to love and care for all brothers and sisters. I want to help you in His name. Please charge all your expenses to my room, and if you need additional funds, I will give you my Visa card." She was in shock.

The next morning, Jim and his wife were having breakfast in the hotel restaurant. The young lady approached them and told Jim the funds she was expecting had arrived. Although the young woman had not taken advantage of Jim's offer to help her, she went on to say, "Jim, your offer to help in God's name has truly impacted my life!"

As you make your rounds this Christmas season, with all the gift receiving and giving, don't forget God's Christmas gifts to you!

Be certain that you have received His gift of salvation, that you've opened it up, and that you are using it in all of its fullness on a daily basis. And make certain that, in creative, sensitive ways, you are His agent of sharing that same gift of salvation in its spiritual, social, physical and emotional aspects with others!