#277 Ugly Christmas Sweater Series# 1

Ugly Christmas Sweater Series# 1
By: Pastor Cheryl Thomas

History of Ugly Sweater- Sweater came about late 19th century, but the ugly Christmas sweater was a trend begun in the 80’s by sitcom star Mr. Huxtable/Bill Cosby, and Chevy Chase in National Lampoons Christmas Vacation… They lost their popularity after the 90’s but have for some unknown reason made a resurgence…there are actually whole websites devoted to Ugly Christmas Sweaters.

But for our purpose today the Ugly Christmas sweater will represent something more sinister, whose beginnings happened long long ago in a Garden.

Illustrate This by:
1. Explaining how we got that ugly clothing
2. That there is Grace in the mess
3. How Jesus Frees us from that clothing

A. Ugly Sweater

God created man mutable yet not evil. God made man holy, righteous, and innocent. He was created in the image and likeness of God enjoying sweet fellowship with his Creator. He was clothed in glory.

But Adam was not confirmed irrevocably in holiness, he was free to choose his station… If God is love and he created Adam out of love… Here is the stickler about love…it requires choice… perfected love risks rejection.

In no way, could this state be described as evil; it was manifestly good, for everything that God has made is very good, but he could change from a state of goodness to a state of depravity and sin.

Now God had placed many trees in garden that where good for eating, he also placed a tree called the Tree of Life and one called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil… The one was good and they could eat from all day long the other was not good and they were prohibited to eat of it.

Why did God not want them to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

The vast complexity of the world is no problem for God. With perfect clearness and perfect character, God knows good and evil. When we clutch the divine prerogative of knowing good and evil, we appropriate the urge to be omniscient without having the divine capacity to be omniscient. We attempt to act like God in declaring judgment, but we do it without God’s perfect clarity and character. We also do it without God’s fullness.

“Out of love God placed the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in garden, it was as Boyd says, “God’s No Trespassing Sign” reminding us that we should never imagine we have the right or capacity to judge God, others and even ourselves by our standards of good and evil.” Greg Boyd http://reknow.org

Then the evil tempter comes along, an intruder and interloper whose solel enterprise was to devise a way to destroy God’s creation and final intention. Paradise Lost page 979

Satan took a loving act of God and put his own evil spin on it, and painted a picture of God that was trivial and disloyal. He made it seem that God would be threatened by their participation in the knowing good and evil.

The act of grasping for “the knowledge of good and evil” implies an attempt by humans to define and experience and know good and evil on their own terms—apart from God. It is an effort to exercise moral self-government, self-rule, and self-sufficiency… an exercise of sovereignty apart but appropriate to God only.

Rebelling from God and seizing that otherness of God we habitually see and experience the entire world through a filter of our self-serving judgments of good and evil.

Humanity has from that moment on lived unlawfully trying to become what God had originally made us to be. The world has become an arena in which we continually judge things and people as good or evil, through on our own skewed lens.

After-effects of the fall

The moment they ate the fruit, they stopped being the wonderful, God-centered, God-dependent human beings the Creator intended them to be and became empty human doings—continually trying to acquire what they already had been given.

Adam’s disobedience ushered into God’s creation the “demonic virus” of sin, causing trouble for the whole human race, and creation itself; a socializing force of corruption was set into place that has defined all of humanity from that time. We are not guilty for what Adam did, but what Adam did does affect us. Stated another way, “It’s not our fault, but it’s our problem!” Greg Boyd http://reknow.org

What happened to the one has affected the whole and what happens to the whole affects the one?

The effects of the Fall

BLINDED–2 Corinthians 4:4-b
“…In whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

DARKENED— Ephesians 4:18
They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.

ALIENATION—Colossians 1:21

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.

1. Creation was plunged into a prison of contamination
2. The corruption of man’s own nature- a wound that struck at our very nature and a poisoned, tainted us and wounded us at the core.
3. Man’s intellect is used perversely, instead of being used to admire and worship God.
4. The guiltiness of man before God- certainty of punishment sending us to clothe ourselves with the most ill-fitting attire… shame, blame, fear.
5. Separation from God- inability to communicate as they once had, before Adam had no cause to doubt or argue with God but as soon as God questions him on his actions … we hear blame and accusation… the woman YOU GAVE ME.
6. And it tainted every relationship going forward with blame, shame, fear,
7. Imprisoning us in the futility of defining ourselves outside of the goodness of God
8. Dead in our sin, and following the ways of this world which had come under the rule of an evil and diabolic tyrant…
9. We became aliens and foreigners outside of God’s household
10. Resulting in toil, sorrow and death

An evil ruler reigns, the planet is darkened, and we are in captivity.
We lost dominion, harmony, freedom, his image, perfection, likeness, innocence. Resulting in, separation, and the propagation of fallen humanity.

Not only so with Adam, but with all his descendants by natural procreation. Genesis 5:3 “Adam had a son in his own likeness.”

Galatians 3:22 But the Scriptures declare that we are all prisoners of sin, so we receive God’s promise of freedom only by believing in Jesus Christ.

Romans 11:32 “For God has imprisoned everyone in disobedience so he could have mercy on everyone.”

ILLUSTRATION- Clothe Self in the Fall

Now top all this off the LAW was added to the burden of separation

NOW DON’T DESPAIR THERE IS GRACE IN THE GARDEN

How must the Lord have felt… compare with an illustration- Karly 3rd birthday- bad girl, disobedient and recalcitrant.

HOW IS THERE GRACE IN THE GARDEN?

1. God prevents us from living eternally in a fallen state- Genesis 3:22- 23 “He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and live forever.” So, the Lord banished him from the garden.”

The tree of life, referred to in Genesis, is the symbol of immortality. Of all the trees that were in the Garden of Eden, two were named for their great importance, the tree of life—was a blessing to Adam and Eve, the other was to become a curse for all posterity.

By barring access to the tree of life, God showed compassion in His omniscience. Knowing that because of sin, man would live in an eternal state of being fallen; experiencing pain, disease, heartache, toil, and grief and endless agony.

2. God announces an End to our enemy-Genesis 3:15 “And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers: He will crush your head.” Genesis 3:15

The “He” that will crush his head is none other than Christ

There is a overabundance of OT scripture fore telling how God would of his own volition would reclothe us.

Isaiah 61:3
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners,[a] 2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.

Zechariah 3:4
He spoke and said to those who were standing before him, saying, “Remove the filthy garments from him ” Again he said to him, “See, I have taken your iniquity away from you and will clothe you with festal robes.”

B. The New Sweater

“Just like Adam created a socializing force of corruption for humanity, Jesus Christ created a socializing force of healing and reconciliation for humanity.

Jesus came to begin a “New Humanity.” God wants us to live in the reality of the New Humanity right now as we give ourselves completely over to Christ. Greg Boyd

Galatians 4:4-7English Standard Version (ESV)
4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

That phrase fullness of time always gets me… what exactly was God waiting to be full up…prophecy, environmental circumstances, sin???

the terminology means, is that when God has said the time is right, something like a glass of water slowly filling up as the time rolls on until when the glass is full it has reached the time for the designated event to occur.

The condition of the Roman empire at the time when Christianity appeared has often been dwelt upon as affording obvious illustrations of St. Paul’s expression that the “fullness of time had come.” (Galatians 4:4) The general peace within the limits of the empire the formation of military roads, the suppression of piracy, the march of the legions, the voyages of the corn fleets, the general in crease of traffic, the spread of the Latin language in the West as Greek had already spread in the East, the external unity of the empire, offered facilities hitherto unknown for the spread of a world-wide religion. www.biblegateway.com

Jesus would become the resolution for our ugly sweaters…
He clothes me, he make me capable, he makes me complete…

1. Christ Clothes Me

Romans 3:25 (NKJV) – [Jesus] whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed

Hilastērion – (hē-lä-stā’-rē-on) propitiation, a means of appeasing, to cover & protect from wrath

He made him who know no sin to become sin that we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21

Therefore, if any man be in Christ he is a new creation, the old is gone. 2 Corinthians 5:18

Galatians 3:27
For all of you who were baptized into Christ [into a spiritual union with the Christ, the Anointed] have clothed yourselves with Christ [that is, you have taken on His characteristics and values].

Ephesians 1
In Him we have been made blameless
In Him we have forgiveness and redemption
In Him we have be recreated as God’s good works

We get all this by imputation, which is counting, accounting, or reckoning of us as righteous by Christ.

“ALL THIS IS FROM GOD WHO RECONCILED US TO HIMSELF THROUGH CHRIST.”2 Corinthians 5:18

2. Christ is capable in me.

Philippians 4:13 – I can do everything through (Christ) who gives me strength.

Romans 8:37 – …we are more than conquerors through (Christ) who loved us.

2 Corinthians 3:4-5 – Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves…but our competence comes from God.

3. Christ makes me complete.

2Peter 1:3 – His divine power has given us everything we need…

Col 2:9-10 (NLT) – For in Christ the fullness of God lives in a human body, & you are complete through your union with Christ…

We’ve been made into a new creation, given the very nature of God, and the mind of Christ.

Clothed, Capable & Complete

Take Off the Prison Clothing

NOW I AM DEAD TO SIN ALIVE TO GOD AND CLOTHED IN LOVE, SALVATION, FORGIVENESS, ACCEPTANCE, UNION, RIGHTEOUSNESS, HOLINESS, ROYALTY, NEWNESS

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