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Open Door SDA Church

Dwayne Lemon

The Greatest Christmas Gift

Growing up, I grew up in a household where Christmas was the holiday.

It was a legal opportunity to demonstrate selfishness.

It was like, man, I get a chance to go even before my family and expect the gift that I've been waiting for all year.

And so I remember growing up and Christmas was definitely a special time for me, not only because of the gifts that I would get, but of course, again, spending time with my family.

So, you know, I come from a big family and I love big families.

And that was a time that me and all of my brothers and sisters and mom and dad would come together and we would just have a blast.

So I know that many of us have different ideas and concepts when we think about Christmas.

But there's some things that I want to share with you that I hope will be both educational as well as edifying and just give us a different view or an additional view to this wonderful holiday and how we may honor God with it.

And so as we prepare our hearts to receive the word, I'm going to go ahead and have a word of prayer.

If you'd like to join me, please kneel with me.

If you cannot kneel, just bow your heads reverently and let's go ahead and prepare our hearts to receive the word.

Our loving Father, we are very grateful, Lord, because you have truly made this a high day, because it is both the Sabbath and it also is a time of the year that many hearts are reflecting upon thy Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ.

And so we're very grateful for this Christmas season, and we are very thankful for the gift of your son.

And Lord, we avail ourselves at this time because we know there's even more that you want to give to us, but we're praying that you'll please forgive us of anything that we have said, done, or entertained in our thoughts that have offended you.

We pray that you will truly give us the gift of true repentance, and that we will turn away from the things that break your heart.

And Lord, we ask that you will endow us with your Holy Spirit and that we might have the mind of Christ, and that even as we go through your word, Lord, that you will open our eyes and help us behold wondrous things out of your law.

And Lord in a special way, I want to remember every family that has to for the first time in their lives go through such a precious holiday season without their loved ones.

I think about so many people that I know personally and that you have been impressing on my heart to pray for.

And so I just want to lift up the McKeever household, the Franklin household, Sister Jude's household, and Lord, there's so many households that we can't call it all by name, but we're grateful you know them all.

May your comfort be with these families in a most marked manner, and we are grateful that you have not only heard, but we trust that you've answered this prayer, for we do ask it all in Jesus' name.

Let us go to the book of Isaiah, chapter 9.

We're going to the book of Isaiah, chapter 9.

I want us to just go ahead and see something that the Bible makes very clear, because as I said, growing up, I grew up in a very irreligious home.

I mean, we were not religious by any stretch of the imagination.

We did not believe, Well, I guess you would say we believed in God, but not really.

We intellectually knew that there was a creator, but there was no worship in my home.

I always let young people know that if you grow up in a home where mother and father call you for worship, if you're growing up in a home where your family values Bible study, if you're growing up in a home where you have parents that actually pray with you about issues, you have no idea how blessed you are.

It's like I'll say that to every young brother and sister in this room, you are so incredibly blessed because I did not grow up in a home like that.

I remember 1 time I got a phone call, and it was a phone call from a gang, and the gang was saying that they were gonna come to my house and kill me.

And I remember they said they were gonna come to my house and spray my house.

And the word spray meant they were gonna use a semi-automatic gun, and it was just, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, you know, just come to my house and just shoot us all up.

And I remember being nervous about that, because, you know, I'm like, man, somebody's gonna try to kill me.

And it's a long story, but, you know, I got myself into a little bit of trouble.

I remember that my father picked up the phone and my father was a former gangster, you know?

And when they called and was like, yeah, yeah, you know, we're gonna come to your house, we're gonna kill you and all this other stuff.

I got off the phone, my heart's racing, I'm nervous, and I remember my father came to me, and my father said, son, listen, the next time they call you back, he says, if they tell you that they're gonna kill you, he says, I want you to remember to tell them this.

He's telling me to tell them, come to the house.

And he says, tell them, all right, come to the house.

And he says, tell them, but remember, when you come here, remember, you are not bulletproof.

And then my father reached in his back pocket and pulled out a gun.

And he left it on a table in front of me.

And I'm thinking to myself, I was, what, 16, maybe 17?

And I've fired guns many times, but I never fired it to try to kill somebody.

And it was just, you know, I look back at that And how much I would have loved to have had a father that said, son, let's pray.

Son, let's look to the word of God and let's look to his promises about how the angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him because they trust in him.

I mean, how valuable That would have been to me as a teenager to have a dad that would pray with me, that would admonish me in the word of God and assure me that even when evil men want to come and do evil things, that we have a higher protection, even better than the best of the military forces of this world.

And so it is that I'm just simply saying that growing up for me was very, very secular and there's tons of disadvantages with that.

And if you're growing up in a home where you have worship, if you're growing up in a home where mom and dad actually pray with you about issues, they direct you to the words of the living God on how to solve a problem, young people, you have no idea how blessed you are.

And you need to thank God and you need to cherish your blessings.

Because to have a mom and dad that's acquainted with our heavenly father is a beautiful thing.

To have a home where the home desires to work and to operate in the fear and admonition of the Lord, what a blessed home to be in.

And so it is as a result of growing up in such an irreligious environment, When Christmas came, like I said, it was an opportunity for selfishness.

It was like you had a right to be selfish.

But it was amazing how we never really thought about the gift of why this season even exists.

And that gift is found in the book of Isaiah chapter 9.

The Bible says in the book of Isaiah 9, with considering verse 6, and it says in Isaiah 9 and verse 6, for unto us a child is born.

And the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." This is the gift that God has given to humanity.

It was the gift of his son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And God wanted us to understand that in that gift encompasses all of the blessings that humanity could ever experience.

The Bible says something that we often don't consider.

When Jesus came into this world, when he was born, and when he lived and died and rose, there was such incredible benefits that came to humanity that I love how Paul spells it out in the book of Acts chapter 17.

If we really understood the gift of Jesus Christ coming to humanity and all that encompasses in it, often when we think about Christ coming to this world, some people just look at him as a historical figure, Some other individuals will look at him as their personal Lord and Savior But I want us to understand something so beautiful about this gift that came that child that was born and the Bible spells it out Very nicely in Acts 17 Paul is finding himself in Athens Greece and as he's there he's coming in contact with a bunch of pagans, and they're worshiping an idol, and they're worshiping a god that they don't know, to the point that they're really open about it.

I mean, they actually have it inscribed on the actual altar.

And here it is that Paul says, well, let me let you know who God is.

And as Paul starts breaking down who God is, Paul begins to say, listen guys, this shouldn't even be a surprise to you because even some of your own writers, Paul was a super educated brother because He didn't just know the words of God, he knew the words of other pagan poets.

And here it is, he's saying, even your writers and poets have said thus and so.

And let's notice 1 of the things that they said in Acts 17.

It says, for in him, talking about Jesus, the God that they don't know, he says, for in him we live and move and have our being as certain also of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring.

So literally, Paul is letting him know, every single time we move, it is because of that child that was born.

I remember 1 time I was working with an organization that worked with people who were mentally disabled and dually diagnosed.

They were kind of going through mental retardation, mental illness and stuff like that.

And I remember that I was walking with a lady, her name was Irene.

And you know, Irene needed a little bit of help.

You know, she kind of had this little kind of like way that she walked that wasn't like everybody else when they walked.

And I remember 1 time that we were walking and I just did something like you know we were walking from the street and you know we had to walk over the curb and then just keep going.

But I remember looking back and I remember looking at Irene and Irene literally was stuck.

She was still stuck on the street and she's kind of like going like this.

And for her to just walk over a curb was like a major task because of the way things were going on inside of her mind that unfortunately negatively impacted her.

And I think to myself sometimes how we live and we move and we have our being like I'm looking at you but at the same time I'm able to know like where I'm going at every step at every single time, right?

We don't understand how much our brain is firing information that keeps us coordinated so that we can even do that without even looking.

We take for granted the reality that because of that son that was born, I live, I move.

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The Greatest Christmas Gift

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