YOU ARE A GIFT TO JESUS

It will matter to but few, but I must attach a spoiler alert to this blog. This below comes straight from Sunday morning’s message I will preach later today. I was so stunned by an amazing truth as I prepared an exposition of a section of Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer in John 17, that I set aside the blog I was working on to jot this down. Never do I fail to be amazed at the truths that I have missed in the Bible, though I have been reading and studying it for over fifty-five years. Here is one of those truths. And it is incredible. And it has such ramifications: We get it, or should get the Good News that Jesus is the Father’s gift to us—“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” It is stunning! The Father gave His Son to us to save us. Jesus is the Father’s gift to us. But—here’s the truth I missed, Jesus as He prayed revealed that it’s not just that Jesus is the Father’s gift to us, we are the Father’s gift to Jesus! Think about that. Don’t believe it? Here it is. Here is what the disciples heard Jesus say about them as they listened to Him pray to the Father: “I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and THOU GAVEST THEM ME, and they have kept thy word.” (Joh 17:6). The disciples heard Jesus say that the Father had given them to Him. They were the Father’s gift to Jesus. There’s no way they could not at that moment have felt loved. Valued. Treasured. Not for anything about them. They knew they were frightened. Flawed. Failing. Foible ladened. Yet, the Father had given them to Jesus! They were a gift to Jesus! They were valued both because of Who had given them and because of to Whom they were given. Gifts may not have a lot of intrinsic value. But, if they are given by someone of importance, or to someone of importance, they are valuable because of that. Recently, I heard a pastor friend of mine exhorting his congregation using, as an illustration, a guitar he had. He said, “I wouldn’t take a million dollars for it. Why?" He answered his question. "Because my father gave it to me.” It was valuable because of who had given it. A father gave a guitar to his son, and its price became more than a million dollars because of how much the son valued it. The Father gave the disciples (and by proxy every believer ever) to the Son. That makes them, to the Son, of inestimable value. Wow! Believer, You are the Father’s gift to Jesus! There is something else amazing about this: Jesus is the Father’s gift to us. But the Father had to pay an exorbitant price to give us that gift. And the Son had to pay the ultimate price to receive us as a gift. Think of the contrast: We had to pay nothing to receive Jesus as the Father’s gift to us. However, Jesus had to pay the high price of His death to receive us as the Father’s gift to Him. The Father pays for Jesus to be His gift to us. Jesus pays for us to be the Father’s gift to Him. In both cases, it is we, and not the Father or the Son, who are the beneficiaries. In both cases, God pays and we benefit beyond imagination. Not to mention we can walk about life thinking, “I am God’s gift to Jesus.” We have this expression to describe someone intoxicated with self-importance: “He thinks he is God’s gift to humanity.” That type of hubris is nauseatingly repugnant. But there is only a humble gratitude and a meaningful affirmation in hearing and repeating, “I am God’s gift to Jesus.” We know we are a gift for nothing we have done and for everything He has. So, those of my dear flock who read this today and listen to this morning’s message will have to hear it twice. But—and it is worth hearing twice--an amazing, mindboggling truth for each believer is this: You are a gift to Jesus. --Pastor Clifford Hurst