Telling the Truth

Guest (Male): As Christmas approaches, you might be thinking about the list of presents you need to buy and wrap. But on the first Christmas, there was only one gift: Jesus Christ. Today on Telling the Truth, Jill Briscoe opens God's Word to help you prepare for Christmas.

But first, right now is one of the most important times of the year for Telling the Truth. As we approach December 31st, generous friends have stepped forward with a special matching grant that will double your gift to help more people experience life in Christ. That means your support will go twice as far to help share God's Word around the world through Stuart and Jill's biblical teaching, digital broadcasts, and global partnerships.

So don't miss this powerful opportunity to make an even greater impact before midnight, December 31st, while your gift will be doubled through the special matching grant. Call 262-788-4648. That's 262-788-4648. Or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now, here's Jill Briscoe with her message, "Joy Is Jesus."

Jill Briscoe: 2 Corinthians chapter 9 and Luke chapter 1. We'll be in both passages of scripture as we think a little bit about Christmas and get our hearts ready for it today. Strange passage to turn to for Christmas, you might think, but Paul is talking about giving. We're going to think a little bit about giving and the joy of giving as we concentrate on focusing on what Christmas is all about.

Well, the first Christmas came along and there was only one gift, and God gave it: the gift of His Son. We have two sons, and I can't imagine wrapping one up to give away at Christmastime, but that's what God did. God's gift. That's what brought to mind 2 Corinthians chapter 9. Paul is talking about giving.

He says in verse 6—he's talking to Christians—"Remember, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." The word is "hilarious." God loves an extravagant giver. When I think of God giving at Christmas, He was extravagant in the extreme.

He was generous to a fault. Of course, all giving should reflect the gift at Christmas. How did God give? He gave not grudgingly or of necessity. He gave hilariously, cheerfully. God loves a cheerful giver. Why? Because He is a cheerful giver. What an incredible thing it is that the grace of God was able to give a gift to the world that He knew would be mishandled, misused, rather like some of the grandchildren that would unwrap a present and look at it and then put it down to find the next one.

That's what mankind did, in a sense. They unwrapped God's gift and put it aside to look for something that they would rather have, perhaps, or the excitement of something perhaps better that was hidden in the next package. But God is able to make all grace abound to us so that in all things, at all times, having all that we need, we will abound in every good work.

Now, He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion. Why does God gift us with health and strength to make money? That we might be rich in every way, that we may be generous on every occasion. The whole thing is giving, not getting.

Through our generosity, thanksgiving will result to God. Paul goes on talking about the overflowing of these many expressions of thanks to God, the generosity of the Corinthians in giving a gift of money to alleviate people's need and his need in particular. Your generosity in sharing with those in need and with everyone else will result in thanks to God. Then he ends this passage with these words: "Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift." Unspeakable gift, the NIV has it. The King James has it "indescribable gift."

When I was thinking about what I wanted to say, I thought, "That's what I want to talk about." I want to talk about God's giving, His motive, His intent, His indescribable gift. Then I thought, "How ridiculous. How can you describe what's indescribable? His unspeakable gift. How can you speak about the unspeakable?" And yet, we must try.

We must try to speak the unspeakable, describe the indescribable, because Paul did. The apostles did. The church down the ages has tried to describe the indescribable and speak about the unspeakable. In the same way as I think about trying to talk about the incarnation, this indescribable, unspeakable gift of God, I feel so diminished in my ability to find the words, the concepts, the pictures, the illustrations to do justice to speak about God's extravagant generosity when He laid His Son in a manger, this indescribable gift of joy.

Joy is Jesus wrapped in swaddling bands. Joy is Jesus in Mary's loving hands. Joy is Jesus making sorrow sing, mending deepest heartache. What a gift to bring. For brought He from the heavens, knowing well His plan, laid Him in our hostile arms, precious Son of Man.

Knowing all before Him—the crib, the cross, the cost—He came to taste our Calvarys and seek and save the lost. That's you and me and everyone who's living on this earth. That's men and women, black and white, who need and want new birth. That's those of us with broken hearts and those who celebrate. It's those of us who love and laugh and those of us who hate.

If empty were the manger and empty was the cross, if tomb of Jesus occupied, then all of us be lost. But here lies heaven's treasure, God's precious dearest prize. In Him can all our future hopes and dreams be realized. So may the joy of Jesus fill you and the peace of God be known, till we celebrate our Christmases around our Savior's throne.

Where was Jesus going that first Christmas? You say to Bethlehem? No. You say to Nazareth? No. You say to Gethsemane, to Calvary? No. Or to the garden tomb? No. Where was He going? To His throne. That's where He was going. But on the way, there were a lot of tears. There was a lot of pain. There was a lot of heartache. Knowing where Jesus was going, God in His extravagant generosity gave the most precious person that He had, His own beloved Son.

It was not a few years ago now that I stood in front of a thousand refugees—and I've told this so often, perhaps because it had such an impact on me—wondering what to say to them. It was near Christmastime. I looked at my notes prepared at home in my safe house, where the police force guards me and grocery stores are full of food and my family is within reach. I realized that my little talk was not going to do it.

How could I stand up and say, "God loves you, and I do too"? That wasn't going to do it. What was going to do it? What I did was simply tell them the story of Christmas and Calvary and show them how, when Jesus was a baby, the soldiers came for Him like the soldiers had come for their babies, and how they'd had to run away to Egypt and become refugees. Yes, they understood. They linked into what I was saying.

Then we stepped through the gospel, and I asked the Lord to just help me spontaneously to remember all the things that they could identify with: His homelessness, nowhere to lay His head. Yes, they understood. His poverty. Yes, they understood. And the cross, hanging there naked. Yes, they understood. Many of them had been there.

Then I said, "You didn't have a choice. Much of this has happened to you. You didn't have a choice. Much of this has happened to your sons. You didn't have a choice. But this happened to God's Son, and God had a choice. He knew it would happen, and He allowed it to happen, and He sent Him anyway. Jesus knew it would happen, and He came anyway, submitting Himself to nine months as a fetus and a birth process that every human being on this earth has known."

Why did He do it? Why did He come? For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son. His only begotten Son so loved the world, He voluntarily came. The crib, the cross. Why? For the crown. For the crown, so that He could make a difference and bring Christmas into our lives.

The problem is Christmas has ceased to be a faith festival. It's now a fun festival, an opportunity to waltz, not to worship. In other words, it's a winter mass, not a Christ mass. It's winter without Christmas. I think it was a few Christmases ago I brought that thought to you from Lewis's Narnia, this children's fantasy, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. A wicked queen in this story of Lewis has invaded the land of Narnia and turned the lovely weather into winter.

It's a picture of sin coming into this lovely earth that God had made, this world that was perfect, and spoiling it all and turning the weather into winter. The situation in Lewis's book is explained as winter without Christmas. What an apt description of people's lives this is. Even as people go through the ritual of celebration over this holiday, their hearts are caught up in the icy grip of disillusionment, fear, sorrow, and despair.

In Lewis's Narnia, the only thing that can make a difference in the frozen situation is a lion's roar, or to be more precise, the lion's roar. Aslan, the king of Narnia, representing God. When He shakes His mane, the ice begins to melt. The wicked queen's days are numbered, and the promise of spring appears. So it was when Jesus, the Lion of Judah, makes His appearance at Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the King, that the lion roared, and our cold dark winter has a Christmas to look back to and the promise of a Christmas to look forward to in eternity.

May the joy of Jesus fill you and the peace of God be known till we celebrate our Christmases around our Savior's throne. There will be a Christmas for those of us that believe what Christmas was all about. So He came to save the world, a world of shepherds, innkeepers, Josephs, Marys, wise men, Simeons, and Annas. The incarnation: unspeakable, indescribable. But we must try.

Our God, contracted in a span, incomprehensibly made man. We must borrow people's words like the hymn writer's words: "Hark! The herald angels sing, Glory to the newborn King! Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; Hail the incarnate Deity!" Which of us can find the words? I certainly can't, but other people have, and we must try.

Divinity breathing in air with a boy's lungs. Eternity eating a meal with a boy's joy. The Trinity coming to stay in a boy's house, in a boy's pain, in a boy's world. Eminence contained. Immanence, that's immediateness, presence. Experienced holiness explained in a boy. Truth read clearly. Love loved dearly. God known nearly in a boy.

How can we get this over to people so that they don't have a winter mass and rather have a Christmas? Well, I'm glad it's all over for Jesus. I always know that I cry on Easter because it's all over for Him, and He's on His throne. But other people are busy in this world having their first Christmases. Their lives have been a winter. I want to look at a few of those people and bring some lessons from their lives to bear.

Mary. She'd never had a Christmas before, only winters, a winter of problems. She was teenage, she was pregnant, and everyone wanted the life of her baby. Some 2,000 years ago, Joseph, son of Jacob, faced with an unwanted pregnancy, had it in mind in order to avoid public disgrace to put her away privately—Mary, I mean. If Joseph had been faced with that unwanted pregnancy in the '90s, he might have had it in mind to take it away privately—the fetus, I mean.

Just think: then there would have been no Savior, no forgiveness, no hope of heaven, no one to listen to our prayers, no Jesus. Whatever would have happened to us if someone had aborted Jesus? Yet Jesus said, "As much as you have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto Me." Mary was a teenager, Mary was pregnant, and Mary was faced with the option of having her first Christmas.

People have the option of having a first Christmas, of having Christ be incarnated in them, of having Christ Child by the Holy Spirit come to live within their lives. Even as Mary physically had the Christ Child come and live in our life, we can spiritually have the Christ Child come and live in ours. Mary took the option, and she had her first Christmas.

God in her arms in the human shape and substance of a real live baby. When God became a baby, He knew He'd have to compress His vastness, glory, majesty into littleness. As Luci Shaw puts it—I don't know if you've discovered Luci Shaw's poetry. It's wonderful. Find it, buy it, give it. But as she puts it in her poem about Mary:

"In blue homespun, the bend of her breast keeping warm this small, hot, naked star fallen in her arms, Mary watched in awe. Quietly lies He whose vigor hurled a universe. He sleeps whose eyelids had not closed before. Charmed by doves' voices, the whisper of straw, He dreams, hearing no music from His other sphere. Breath, mouth, ears, eyes, He is curtailed who overflowed the skies. All years older than eternity, now He is new. Now native to earth as we are, nailed to our poor planet, caught that we might be free."

Marvelous poetry. How can any of us ever do justice to what happened at Christmas? Isn't it a long way away from the pretty sidewalks and Rudolph and the jingling bells? Yes. And we need a Christmas in our hearts to make sense of the past and the future and help us deal and cope with the present.

Guest (Male): More powerful teaching from the Briscoes is headed your way, so don't go anywhere. We've made a wide array of resources and content available to you online for free at tellingthetruth.org and on the Telling the Truth app.

There, you can listen, read, and watch powerful teaching from Stuart and Jill on relevant topics like the sovereignty of God, the importance of the church, and how to grow closer with Jesus Christ. You can also request this month's featured resource as thanks for your gift of support to help share the abundant life Jesus offers with more people around the world.

Visit us online or download the app today and experience life with Telling the Truth. All right, let's get back to Jill with more from her Christmas-time message, "Joy Is Jesus."

Jill, with all of the distractions of the holiday, how can a Christ-follower make Christmas about worshiping Christ?

Jill Briscoe: Whatever idea you have, use it. Everybody will have different ideas. Perhaps you want to read the Christmas story on Christmas Eve. We used to do that. If you open presents and you make them sit while you read the Christmas story, it's not a very good idea. We found that out. Their eyes were on the parcels about to be opened, and we made them sit and listen to the Christmas story before they were allowed to open their presents. That really didn't work.

So just be sensible about it. But somewhere over Christmas, it would be wonderful. Before you have Christmas dinner, get one of the children to read the story so that the focus is here and there and it isn't just one thing you do over Christmas. Keep pulling people back to remember what we're doing. And why not all go to church? Even if you've stopped going to church or you haven't been for a long time or even if you do go to church, make it a very special occasion to go as a family to sit together. Instead of the children off in the children's room and you in the sanctuary, but think of something a little different to do and make sure that your focus is on reminding your family and yourself, obviously, that Christmas is about Christ. Yes.

Guest (Male): Jill, what would you say to that person listening who has questions about the idea of having Christ being embodied in them?

Jill Briscoe: Well, it's a strange concept for people to grasp. We've grown up with it. It's very common for us to not even question the idea of Christ in us—"Christ lives in me by His Spirit." But it's strange to people that don't get it or have never heard it. Or "What is the Spirit?" I think the problem is when we talk about the Holy Spirit in this day and age, spirit has sometimes an evil connotation, and that's the thing that people are familiar with.

So somehow we have to explain who the Holy Spirit is, that the Holy Spirit is God Himself in another form. Christ was God Himself in another form, Christ as man. And so the Holy Spirit is, if you wish, Christ without His body. Christ's Spirit can come and live within us. And so make sure that you find a way to constantly think of different ways of explaining that, because it's a huge thing, especially for people who only have a concept of spirit as evil.

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us today. We hope today's message has encouraged you to know Christ more deeply and live in the joy of His truth. Right now is one of the most important times of the year for Telling the Truth. As we approach December 31st, generous friends have stepped forward with a special matching grant that will double your gift to help more people experience life in Christ.

That means your support will go twice as far to help share God's Word around the world through Stuart and Jill's biblical teaching, digital broadcasts, and global partnerships. Every day lives are being transformed as people discover the peace and purpose that only Jesus gives, and your year-end gift makes that possible.

So don't miss this powerful opportunity to make an even greater impact before midnight, December 31st, while your gift will be doubled through the special matching grant. Call 262-788-4648. That's 262-788-4648. Or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Thank you for helping others experience life in Christ through the unchanging truth of God's Word. Thanks for being with us today. Join us next time as the Briscoes share more powerful truth from God's Word. Listen in and experience life on Telling the Truth.