We all get those Christmas letters, and have probably sent some, in which there are nothing but glowing reports of how wonderful everything has been that year.  Our children are Rhodes scholars in the making, our marriages the model of heavenly bliss and our careers on the fast track to success.  But, children tend to report the world the way they see and experience it, not so much the way they wish it was.  The cards I got from some of our 1^st through 6^th graders this past week were more, shall we say, straightforward.

One 6^th grade boy wrote, “Most of the stuff that you talk about I can apply to my life.”  That was helpful.  The “stuff” I preach he’s able to use.  I’ll take that.  One fifth grade girl wrote, “I like Sunday School.  I hope I can go to church but I can’t go because we have to go out to eat every Sunday.”  Oops, busted!  I worried about using that one but figured that family wouldn’t be here to hear it anyway.  Another fifth grade girl wrote something just as poignantly honest.  “I usually get what you’re trying to say but sometimes I don’t and I know my friends don’t get what you’re trying to say sometimes either.  If it’s possible could you please try to write sermons that kids understand?” 

So, boys and girls, this morning, for Christmas, I wanted write a sermon just for you.  Of course, I need to put some “stuff” in here for your parents and other adults, too.  Mostly, though, we’ll just let them listen to what I’m going to tell you.  It’s very important to me that you get what I’m trying to say because what I’m supposed to do is to tell you what God is trying to say.  That’s why we read the Bible in our worship services.  The Bible is God’s word to us.  After we read his word, my job is to tell you, as best I can, what I think the God is trying to say to us through his word.  So, now that we’ve read God’s word this morning, let’s see what he’s trying to say. 

Before you were born, your parents started talking about what name to give you.  Some of your parents named you after another person in your family.  Some of you were given the name of a very close friend of your parents.  My oldest son’s middle name is McKinley.  We gave him that name because that was my grandfather Schmucker’s middle name.  And, he was given that name because, when he was born, the President of the United States was President McKinley.  Do you know where your name came from?  Do you know where Jesus got his?

The Bible tells us that before Jesus was born, an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him to name the baby Mary was about to have “‘Jesus.’”  Just like your name is special, Jesus’ name is, too.  The angel said he wanted Joseph to name the baby “Jesus” because God had a very special purpose for this baby.  Jesus’ name means, “Savior.”  God sent Jesus to save us from our sins.  That’s what his name means.  The Bible goes on to say that people would also call Jesus, “Immanuel.”  “Immanuel” means “‘God with us.’”  So, in Jesus, God has come to be with us to save us from our sins.  Do you know what that means?  That means, for one thing, that we don’t have to afraid anymore. 

Christmas is just two days away.  Are you excited?  Christmas means getting presents and being with family and eating special food.  It also means that we have special opportunities to help others who don’t have as much as we do.  We do all of that because we are celebrating the birth of Jesus.  And, we are celebrating Jesus’ birth because the Bible tells us that God loved us so much that he gave us Jesus to take away our sin.

You know what sin is, don’t you?  Sin is when we do what God doesn’t want us to do, when we break God’s rules.  There are no perfect people in this world.  The Bible tells us that all of us have broken God’s rules.  The Bible also tells us that sin takes us away from God.  And, when we’re away from God we make God sad and we hurt ourselves and sometimes we hurt other people, too.  Doing those kinds of makes us feel bad and dirty, like we need a bath on the inside.  Jesus came to take away our sin, to take away from us what takes us away from God.  When he does that, he makes us clean on the inside. 

What’s sad is that most of us spend a long time hiding from God hoping he won’t find out what we did wrong and then punish us for it.  When Adam and Eve sinned against God in the Garden of Eden, do you remember the first thing they did?  They ran and hid from God.  They were afraid.  God doesn’t want us to be afraid of him anymore.  That’s why he sent Jesus.

Even as parents and adults, we know what it’s like to hide from God, don’t we?  We’re so afraid that God will find what we’ve been hiding, what adults call skeletons in our closets.  George O’Leary reminds us that what Adam and Eve did we all still do.  Just five days after being named the new head football coach at Notre Dame University, he had to resign.  Someone found out that he had put lies on his resume’.  Children, your resume’ is the record of what you have done with your life.  It’s kind of like a report card for adults.  It shows everyone where you went to school and what kind of jobs you’ve had so they will know how good you are for certain jobs you may want.  This man wanted everyone to think he was better than he really was.  So, he lied.  He claimed he had done things he hadn’t so he could get better jobs than he deserved.  Kenny Cheshier suggests that someone must have done some snooping around and found out the truth and told everyone else. 

This man had lived with some of these lies on his resume for over twenty years.  That’s a long time to hide.  He’d made it all the way to the head coaching position of Georgia Tech by telling lies.  Someone yanked on the door of the closet where he kept the truth hidden and some really scary skeletons fell out.  It made me wonder.  What would happen if someone yanked open the door of our closets?  What skeletons might fall out?  Truth is, we’d probably be stumbling over the piles and piles of bones just trying to get out of here so we could find some place to hide.

What God is trying to say to us by naming his son Jesus’ is that we don’t have to be afraid and hide from him anymore.  Some of us are so frightened by those skeletons that we haven’t looked in the closet where we keep the truth hidden for years.  But, Jesus has come to take away our sin.  Do you know what that means?  If we were to open that door where we’ve kept the skeletons of our past sin hidden, we’d find Jesus in there, just waiting on us.  He might say something like, “I’ve been waiting on you.  Don’t you think it’s time we cleaned out this closet?”  We don’t have to be afraid of God.  He has come to take away our sin, even the stuff we’ve kept hidden for years.

Boys and girls, when I was a little boy I thought the neatest kid on the block was the paperboy.  He rode his bicycle up and down the street every day and threw newspapers to all the adults.  So, one day, I decided to play paperboy.  I got my dad’s newspaper and rode up and down the street on a bicycle throwing it into other people’s yards.  Then, I’d pick it up and ride to the next house and throw it again.  But, one time, when I threw the paper, a man came out and got it and went back into his house.  I felt terrible.  It was wrong to take what wasn’t mine.  I had taken my dad’s paper and thrown it away.  I was so afraid of what my dad would do.  I started crying and ran home and told my dad what I’d done and how sorry I was for throwing away what was his.  And, do you know what he did?  He picked me up and hugged me and told me he forgave me, just like the story of the Prodigal son that Jesus once told.  I can still feel my father’s strong arms holding me close.  There is a very special verse in the Bible that says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and (make us clean) (1 John 1:9).”  God is our heavenly Father.  We don’t have to hide our sin from him.  If we tell him about our sin, he will take it away and we will be clean.  That’s what Jesus’ name means.  That is what Christmas means.

Do you know how God takes our sin away from us?  The answer to that question is found in one of the other names Jesus would be called, “‘Immanuel.’”  Immanuel means, “God with us.”  God came to be with us in Jesus, his only son.  By letting his son be called Immanuel, what God is trying to say is that he wants to be with us.  He doesn’t want to leave us alone.  He has come to be with us to take away our sin.  The promise of Christmas is that God will never leave us alone to face our sin by ourselves.  Every week, boys and girls, I write an article for our church newsletter called, “Passages.”  This week, I wrote about something that happened a long time ago, long before you were born. 

When I was about six, my parents took my two sisters and me skating.  This was back before in-line skates and before anyone did anything like grinding.  All we had were these big heavy boots with two rollers on the front and two on the back and we thought it was fun to just ride in circles on a wooden floor called a skating rink.  At skating rinks, even today, lots of parents just sit on the side and watch their children skate.  But, that day, my dad decided to get out there with us and give my little sister a ride on his shoulders.  But, when he put her on his shoulders and started around the rink, he lost his balance and started to fall. 

He knew he had two choices.  He could throw my little sister off his back and put his arms out to keep from getting hurt.  Only that would have caused my little sister to be hurt very badly.  My dad’s only other choice was to use his hands to hold my sister tightly on his back and fall face first on the floor.  That would hurt him very badly but it would save my sister.  So, do you know what my dad did?  Sure you do.  He loved my little sister, his daughter, too much.  So, he made sure that when he fell, he hit the floor first and took her pain for her. 

The Bible tells us that Jesus did the same thing for us.  A very special verse of scripture says that, “God made (Jesus) who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become (what God wanted us to be) (2 Corinthians 5:21).”  What God is trying to say to us is that he loves us too much just to throw us away when we sin.  He wants to be with us and us to be with him.  He wants to take us in his arms and keep us safe from what sin would do to us.  When we sin, Jesus doesn’t want to throw us away.  He loves us so much that he took our sin, our fall, for us when he died on the cross so that we would not have to.  Listen to what the Bible says will happen when we trust Jesus to forgive us for our sin.  “To all who received (Jesus) . . . who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God (John 1:12).”  To trust Jesus’ name means to trust him to do what his name means, to save us from our sins.

My big sister is here this morning.  When I was in first grade she was in third grade.  Judice Elementary was a big school and I was only five.  Every day at recess, I’d go and find my big sister and make her get out of the water fountain line just so I wouldn’t be by myself.  Christmas means that God loves us so much he didn’t want us to be alone.  But, instead of making us go looking for him, he came looking for us.  And, when he found us, he took our sins away. 

Fred Craddock says that, when he was growing up in rural Georgia, he and his brothers and sisters liked to play hide and seek.  One day, when his sister was “it,” he went and hid under the front porch.  He just knew she wouldn’t look there.  Sure enough, when she finished counting she started looking everywhere.  Down by the barn, everywhere.  She ran right by him more than once.  Fred was so excited.  He kept saying to himself, “She’ll never find me under here!  She’ll never find me under here!”  Then, all of a sudden, he said to himself, “She’ll never find me under here!”  So, do you know what he did?  The next time his sister ran by, he stuck his big toe out from under the porch just so she’d see it.  Even as a little boy, he knew that the only thing worse than hiding was never being found. 

We don’t have to be afraid.  Immanuel!  God has come looking for us and we have been found!  God is with us.  Jesus!  He has saved us from our sin.  That’s why God gave his son those names.  

That’s what he’s trying to say.