Ungrateful for the Gift of Christ?

On Christmas morning, gifts will be opened that will be ungratefully received. They will be taken, but without gratitude.

Perhaps the recipient will have wanted something else. Perhaps the value of the gift is unknown, or perhaps it is known and considered "inadequate."

This same Christmas season, people will be presented with the gift of Christ and will reject Him in similar ways and for similar reasons. In his sermon, "Jesus Is the Horn of Salvation," John Piper identifies why that is true.

If someone would have given me a guaranteed super-duper mousetrap for Christmas last year, I would have felt very little appreciation. We never had any mice in our old house. If someone gave me a guaranteed-to-catch-'em mousetrap this Christmas, I'd really feel appreciation because now we have got mice and I can't catch them all. If you offer me a quick ride after service to the emergency room at Metropolitan Medical Center, I'll think you are strange unless I see the gash in my arm or feel the severe pain in my abdomen. Then I would love you for the offer. If a police car screeches to a stop beside me on my way home from church some night and a man hollers for me to get in, I'll think he is putting me on unless I see the armed gang lurking ahead around the corner.

And so it is in all of life: we do not appreciate gifts that meet no needs or satisfy no desires. We do not value or love an offer for help unless we know we are sick or endangered by some enemy. Vast numbers of people look upon Jesus and the Christmas story of his coming as a useless mousetrap, a crazy trip to the emergency room, a bothersome pickup by the police, because they don't know that they have a terminal illness called unforgiven sin, and they don't believe in the fearful enemy, Satan. For them, the "horn of salvation" is a useless toy. For me, it is my only hope of recovery from this deadly disease of sin that infects my soul and my only protection from Satan, the most dangerous external enemy.