Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Today, as we light the third Advent candle, the candle of joy.
As we do this, we consider a few passages from God's word about joy.
First Peter 1, 8, 9. Though you have seen him, though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Psalms 118, verse 24. This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Isaiah, chapter 7, verse 14. Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name. Immanuel.
Let us pray.
Dear Jesus, it is because of you that we can have joy. Though we do not see you in the flesh, we know with confidence that you came in the flesh. God with us. Emmanuel. It is because of this and your work on the cross that we can experience a deep and fulfilling relationship with the Father.
As we enjoy this season, keep our eyes fixed on the work of reconciliation that you did in the midst of hardship, sadness, turmoil or pain. We thank you that our joy in you can never be taken away.
Amen.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: Through this Christmas season, we've been walking through this series good news of great what is it? Joy. Joy.
And today we're going to spend some time being reminded at the power and the work of Jesus as our Savior.
What I want to do, just because it's really helpful for me and I think maybe hopefully helpful for you as well, is is there's many more things that I'll say in a minute. But just to give us a big idea with where are we going? What are we talking about here in the few minutes that we have as we look at God's word as we. You can flip your bulletin over on the back side of it, there's a three points and I haven't done a three point sermon in a while.
So three points that you can write in as we go through our time today and see what God has for us here. But give us kind of a synopsis, a big idea of where we're going. So the next slide on the screen kind of points us in that direction. The big idea here to rightly. As we think about Christmas, to rightly. And the message here, to rightly celebrate the coming Savior, we must realize the reality of humanity's brokenness. Can you say brokenness?
Right. What a great way to start. And hopelessness. Can you say hopelessness? Awesome. Even better. We're going uphill.
And it is after realizing these two realities that we can move to experience the great joy. Can you say joy with me? Joy of Jesus the Savior being born. And lest we conform to the popularity and innocence of the manger, we find Jesus is not acting as Savior, which is our focus today, is not acting as Savior and at the cradle, but rather at the cross. He came as the Savior. Right? That's the angelic announcement unto you today. This day is born a Savior. But we often, we focus on this cradle moment here. But Jesus came as the Savior of the world, and he did that when he died on the cross and rose from the dead, conquering the power of death and sin. So this big idea is where we're going to kind of navigate our way through, through today. So in this time, I want to share a story and I want to caution even myself and those listening here when I use the term story, because the stories that we often tell in the world today, and I have a couple little kids and maybe you might as well, we have lots of books that have stories.
Many of those stories aren't true. There's many fabled, like there's many fake stories out there. But when I use the term story here today, I want to be really clear. The story that I'm going to tell is completely true, 100% true, grounded in much discovery, even, that we have made today, and logic and facts. So it's not just a story that. That's a nice story at Christmas time. That sounds lovely. But the story I want to share today is something that's grounded in truth.
That's something that we can bank our life on. Now, I also want to let you know that this story is not altogether unfamiliar to many here today, but I want to share it in a way that's different perhaps than many of you have heard before.
And also as we walk through this story that's not fake, but it's true.
Knit together key aspects of God's Word as we journey through God's Word here together and bolster each of the points that you'll see on the back of your outline. In the end, here's the goal. To show. Show us the necessity of the Savior of the world that was sent. So beware, though many Christians and even unbelievers know parts of this story, but have never put all of them together in a way that can be clearly articulated to either their own hearts or to the people in their lives. And so what I hope to do today in this Story that is not fake, but that is true. My goal here is to help you understand and articulate in a memorable way both, maybe even in your own life, the power of Jesus being the savior of the world, and most definitely in the lives of people around you, the real reason for Christmas.
That's what we're celebrating here today. But I want us to make sure that we don't miss the power, the truth, the story of Christmas, why Jesus came.
Pray together.
Lord, we need your help as we walk through your word. As we spend time here this morning.
We want you to work in our hearts and lives. And I know that maybe here today there's people that don't know you, that have heard bits and pieces of the story of Christmas, but their life is perhaps far from you or struggling in significant ways, maybe in their relationship with you or relationship with other people.
This season of Christmas, though, we sing and announce joy all over the place and sing songs about it, this can also be a hard hope.
And so we ask, Lord, as we spend time here today in the minutes that we have, that you would show us how great your love is for us, the power of your grace as we trust in you, and that you truly do have an incredible plan for our lives as we entrust our lives to you, that you want to do great things in and through us as we surrender our lives today to you. So I ask that your spirit would move in us. The things that I say would be honoring to you would be grounded in the truth of your word. In Jesus name, Amen.
The first point on your outline, if you have a pen or pencil, you like to write things down or take notes, is the brokenness in a land far, far away.
Is that how a story begins?
A long, long time ago, there was a garden.
And in this garden God placed his very good creation. Can you say that with me? Very good, very good. That's going to be important. We're going to come back to that. His very good creation called man. God enjoyed spending time with these first two people, Adam and and watching them enjoy the things that he had made. They had a whole and perfect relationship with God. That was. Remember those two words we said earlier? That was very good then, as many stories do. But this story should grab ahold of our attention and our lives through the deceptive work of.
Something bad happened, these two perfect people chose to reject God's very good command and receive the quote unquote advice of a serpent who promised them a better life by rejecting God's very good command.
So you have Something that's very good. And then you have evil that steps into the world.
What happened after that?
Brokenness.
Deep permeating brokenness. At first it manifested itself in distance from a very good God. And then after that it manifested itself in people hiding these two perfect, very good, I should say, people hiding from this perfect God. And then after that it manifested itself in the death of God's creation. And after that it manifested itself in God having to set his very good creation from his presence.
Brokenness.
Brokenness.
A broken relationship with a perfect God because of man's disobedience.
It led not just to brokenness out there, but brokenness within us. And this meant that we are no longer perfect creations.
The very nature that God made us with is now flawed.
Now were those two words, Remember those two words, what God created. What's the two words? Very good in Genesis chapter two was soon.
Particularly in Genesis chapter six, a few chapters later was soon wickedness.
Genesis six five says this. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man. It's on the screen.
Earth. Remember just a few chapters earlier, it was very good.
And that every intention of his thought, thought of his heart's was only evil continually brokenness. Right.
The Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him. Wow.
So then we ask this question as any good and right story. Should we have something good? We have brokenness. And now how are we going to solve this particular problem? Would perhaps destroying everybody on the earth who is wicked, would that solve the problem of wickedness?
Well, we might know the answer now because we can look back and see that God tried that he knew what was going to happen. But we go forwards a little bit and God shows us the answer to that question. If we destroy, here's the question. If we destroy all the wicked people, will that make the wickedness go away? God answers that question. God then goes and destroys all of the wicked people on the earth except one man and his family. What's that man's name? Noah. Genesis chapter 6 a little bit further. Verses 9 and 10 tells us that Noah was blameless, that he was righteous and he walked with God. So then after destroying the whole earth with water and only some animals and Noah and his family alive, God says, I'm going to start over.
Right? Good. Brokenness, wickedness. God says, let's do this again. Let's start over now. Follow me here.
This is why we see almost the exact same command in Genesis 9 that we do in Genesis 2. Look on the screen with me there's this particular command here that God gives both Adam and Noah. And it's this, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. It's like, let's do this again. And really God knows the answer. He knew that destroying wickedness, that is the manifestation of wickedness in mankind. He knew that destroying the wicked men would not solve the problem, but perhaps for us. He needed to show us something.
He needed to show us something.
We find now that the wickedness of man is not just on the outside.
It's on the inside.
It's on the inside.
Destroying the bad people doesn't make good people stay good. Why?
Because the very heart of mankind has broken.
Jeremiah 17:9 tells us this. The heart is deceitful above all things. It's on the screen and desperately sick or desperately wicked, who can understand it?
So in this first part of brokenness, we see perfection. We see that God made everything. What's the two words?
Very good. And then brokenness happened.
And if that's not enough, we hope, then what is the solution then, right? God knows all things. Is there a solution that moves us to point two on your outline? And it's this. We have the brokenness, then we have the hopelessness.
The hopelessness. The story goes on. And again, this is not a story that I just made up or that somebody made up a long time ago. We know this is.
This is 100% true. If the brokenness that we have can't be fixed by getting rid of the bad people, what is the solution?
Do any of you know that there's wickedness in the world?
God created a way, because God knows all things and loves us, cares about us, and he knows what's going to happen. He knew what was going to happen. He created a way for mankind to experience him.
But it would come at a cost.
Sin is a crime against a holy God. And when a crime is committed, as with us today, when a crime is committed, somebody has to pay, right? Have any of you gotten, maybe don't raise your hand, a speeding ticket, right?
You do something illegal, you have to pay. Depending on the severity of the crime, we see that there is particular maybe levels, if you will, of punishment that has to be. Maybe it's a fine that's paid. Maybe somebody goes to jail for a while. Maybe it's prison for a while, depending on the level of the crime. Now, here's the thing, friends. We have a tendency to say, as humans, there's different levels to sin in life. And here's what God says, yeah, there's sin. And there's some sin that causes more damage and more damage than other sins. But the reality is this all sin is crime against God.
And the consequence for that crime against God, there is one payment.
And it's not $5 for some and $30 for others. It's one payment and it's this.
It's the life of that sinner.
That's how we pay the price.
Death must happen.
So then what is the way that God provided for man to experience him through death. But then if we die in our sin, we're apart from God. Remember the beginning, Adam and Eve, they were walking with who?
God. There was this perfect relationship. God wants that back again.
So God is holy and he can't be in a relationship with sin.
How then will this work? And it's this. We see this through from Genesis, chapter six. Basically through thousands, we see God says, I have a plan for you. Watch this. Here's his plan. He says, all right, I'm gonna knit through the story of the Old Testament a plan for a Savior to come. But in the meantime, I want you to know me. I want you to experience my love and my mercy and my grace. But this problem of sin, that's significant right now. So what are we gonna do about that? Here's God's solution.
There will still be death. It just won't be yours.
We'll let animals die in your place.
And the blood of the animals will cover you for a short period of time.
And through that period of time, you'll be able to experience my love and my grace and my mercy.
And that people did that for so many years.
Starting in the 12th chapter of the first book of the Bible, God begins this 2000 year plan of saying, all right, animals can die. They're going to cover your sins for a little while. Not wiping it away, just covering it for a short period of time. And in that period of time, God is going to bring about something wonderful.
He's going to bring about a promise for someone greater than an animal to cover the sin of man.
So animals die. If you've read through parts of the Old Testament, if you know anything about the sacrificial system where animals would die and they'd take an animal and they'd kill it and all of that was going on, you're like, why did God let so much of that happen? It was because he wanted people to experience his grace and his mercy before Jesus came.
He wanted people to say, look, I've made a way for you to know me because that's my desire for you to have a relationship with me.
It's not all about these rules.
God knew the rules couldn't make people right.
You all know that too, don't you? You can list a bunch of rules. That doesn't change somebody's heart. That may change their outward activity for a while, but it doesn't change the heart. And God knew that.
So how are we going to be in a right relationship with God? Is it through animal sacrifices? Is it through, if you will, my own work? Is that how we get to be in a right relationship with God?
Well, even the beginning of this story, in chapter 12 of Genesis, the beginning of this crafting of the people of Israel, there was a man named Abram. Can you say Abram? Abram. And here's what we find in Hebrews chapter 11. That Abram doesn't is not right with God because of the work that he did. He's right with God because of his faith in God. Look on the screen with me. Hebrews 11:6. It says this that without faith it is impossible to what?
Please God. Now, at the very beginning, Adam and Eve were in a right relationship with God. They were pleased with God. God was pleased with them. Then brokenness happened.
And now it's impossible to please God. Rules cannot please God. No matter how hard you try to be a good person or a good Christian, you can't please God by yourself.
Doesn't this, even this verse, echo back to the angel's announcement at Jesus birth, Peace on earth, with whom he is what pleased.
Wait a minute. That's what this verse is talking about. Without faith, it is impossible to please Him. And also the angel said you can please God. How can you do that? Through the work of the Savior alone, not through anything that you can do by yourself.
God wants life and light for mankind. But because of Adam's sin and death and darkness, and because of how much they spread without delay, because of the power of sin, the relationship with God that we had was broken.
And the effort that man goes through to try to be right with God again, really, it just won't work. We just can't do it by ourselves.
So what does this all point to? Right, that's the next consideration. What does this all point to? God's plan for the restoration of mankind. If you read through the Old Testament, as you look over and over at the sacrificial system, animals dying, you see promises of Jesus coming. We see something that God has not abandoned us.
God has not abandoned us. Over and over again, we See through the hopelessness, through the efforts of mankind that were felt through the whole Old Testament, wishing for a way to be right with God.
God saying, hope is coming.
Hope is coming.
No matter how hard you try, you can't do it. All right, But I have a way. And he is coming. And his name is what?
Jesus. The brokenness that you have felt, the striving, the efforts that you're going through to be right with me is going to be someone who comes in the person of Jesus Christ.
In the midst of our striving, God says we can rest in the work of the coming Savior. This is why, for example, Abram and others in the Old Testament, they had faith. And that faith made it so God was pleased with them. Because they had faith that Jesus was coming. There was a solution for the problem of sin. The there's an important verse, Romans 6:23, that bridges these first two points with this last point that we're going to look at in just a minute. And it's this. For the wages, the consequence. Remember we talked about the payment. The payment, the wages of sin is what? Death. Death. That is not a new reality just because it's the book of Romans. Much further on in the New Testament, that reality is true even in Genesis. In Genesis, the wages, the payment of sin is still what?
Death. And that's why man was separated from God. That's why animals died over and over and over again to cover for a short time, mankind so that they could experience the grace and mercy of God.
But the.
What's the cost for this gift?
Nothing.
The free gift of God is eternal life. Now, there's conversation many amongst Christians today. Why is God so different in the Old Testament? Right? He's this big mean guy in the Old Testament. And I like Jesus of the New Testament. I like the God of the New Testament because he's nice and sweet.
He's not any different.
Even in the Old Testament, God is gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love and saying, I need to show you that you can't save yourself. Can we say that together? You can't save yourself. That's so much of the Old Testament. That's what it's telling us over and over again, even in the Ten Commandments. Like I'm gonna follow the Ten Commandments. You can't.
You can't save yourself.
But the free gift of God, the God who is in the Old Testament, who is gracious and kind and merciful, is eternal life.
Not by our own works, but in Christ. Jesus. Our what?
Our Lord that is submitting to him. It's not just good enough to say that, yes, I believe that Jesus lived 2000 years ago and he was born. That's great. And even if he died on a cross, but he's my Lord, Here is my life.
That's how we can experience this free gift that God has for us. Point three on your outline, you could write this in.
We have this brokenness, we have this hopelessness. And now, to no surprise, the Savior.
The Savior. Out of about 400 years, if you look in your Bibles, you might know that there's an Old Testament and there's a New Testament.
In between that Old Testament and New Testament, there's about 400 years of silence from God.
That's people going, uh, uh, I'm in this waiting room. Have any of you been in a waiting room for a really long time? And you're just wondering, did they forget about me?
And then we see that God did not forget.
He did not abandon his promise of a Savior. He knew that we were broken, and he knew that we were hopeless. And he said, I will bring a Savior, and God keeps his promises. Amen.
So out of the darkness and 400 years in this waiting room near the city of David, a man who was named after said to be a man after God's own. You know this, A man after God's own heart. That's the phrase that's used at times for David, the King David. From many years before Jesus, this announcement came.
God's heart is now incarnate.
God became flesh.
The wait, this waiting room, the wait is over. As Galatians Chapter four, it's on the screen. Galatians Chapter four speaks about the fullness of time has come. That is, God knew what was going to happen, but it wasn't time for Jesus to come yet. It wasn't like Adam and Eve sinned and then Jesus showed up. God said, I'm gonna show you my faithfulness. I'm gonna show you my kindness over and over and over again. And I need to show you something. And it's really important.
It's important for us here today, thousands of years later. And it's this. You might think that you can get to heaven by yourself.
And over a course of thousands of years, especially as we look through the Old Testament, here's God's answer. You can't.
You can't. That's why the Savior had to come. And when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman. What was the woman's name?
Mary.
Born of a woman. This is what we celebrate at Christmas. Born under the law to redeem, that is, to free those who were under the law, that is mankind, so that we might receive adoption as sons. One portion of the Bible says this, that people, because we had broken God's law and because we were broken and because we were hopeless. Here's what the Bible says about humanity, about you and me before Jesus.
It says that we were God's enemies.
We were his enemies. And here's what Jesus did. He said, I'm gonna come at Christmas, right? This is what we celebrate. And when you put your faith and trust in me, you then can move from being enemies of God to being. You know what he says? Sons and daughters of the King.
Isn't that good work?
Imagine yourself floating around in the middle of the ocean. You had no one to save you. You've tried and tried and tried to swim somewhere, and you get nowhere. And then someone comes along and his name is Jesus. And he says, I can save you from that.
I can take you from being someone who is drowning to someone who can breathe and rest again.
That's what much of humanity is doing. Trying to swim in the middle of the ocean, trying to get somewhere. How does that go for you?
It's not going to work. And Jesus is the one who shows up. That's what we celebrate at Christmas. He says, I'm the Savior, but the person who is saved from the ocean is not. The person who looks up and says, I see Jesus.
The person who is saved as they're floating around in the ocean is the one who takes his hand.
He's strong enough to pull you out.
But the Savior, he is there and he's calling us today to take his hand.
And that's what the angels announced. They said, the Savior is here. But the reality is this. We rejoice knowing that he is the Savior. Yes, at the cradle, but he does the work of saving at the cross. And the work of salvation in your life happens when you take a hold of Jesus and say, I need him.
It's not good enough to be floating in the ocean, swimming and saying, that's good. He's good for other people.
Salvation happens for us when we take a hold of. Of Jesus as our Savior. This proclamation of peace by the angels about how we can have peace with God is one we should pay attention to. Because the angels knew that for thousands of years, mankind has been running away from God, has been desperately wicked. And he says, hey, the angels Say, hey, by the way, everybody, need you to hear this. For the first time, you can actually have eternal peace with God. This is good news, isn't it?
This is really, really good news.
And so now the story kind of comes to its conclusion.
Peace with God has not been experienced since Genesis chapter 2.
And in the 927 chapters since then, the angels show up on the scene and say, we have good news.
There's been this waiting period, this hopelessness that you have felt and now hope.
Finally, here at Christmas, we rejoice knowing that Jesus the Savior has come.
But you and I can experience the joy personally when we reach out our hand and say, I need your help.
I'm tired of trying to swim and swim and swim and swim.
It's nice to celebrate that you've come, but really for me to experience the joy of Christmas, friends, it only happens when you've actually taken hold of the Savior.
You can be happy for other people. That's great. But most of the time, if you're just swimming by yourself, you're not experiencing joy.
You're exhausted. Christianity is exhausting.
Do you know people like that? Have you felt that before? Where Christianity can just be exhausting, that's not joy. And that's why Jesus came, so that we could experience great joy.
And the way that you and I experience great joy is by holding tightly to Jesus. Now, there's lots of other religions out there. Do any of you know somebody who believes something other than Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? There's lots of other religions out there, and here's what those religions say. It's this fundamentally, you want to have peace, do it this way.
You want to have peace, do it this way.
You want yourself to feel better about what's going on or feel confident about the afterlife, do it this way. That's the epitome of what they're saying. And here's what God's word says, which we know is not a fake story, which we know is completely true. In the book of Acts 4:12, it says this. You want salvation. You want to find peace. For all the striving that you are trying to do, here's how you find peace.
There is no salvation.
There is salvation on the screen here. There is salvation in no one else. That is no other religion, no other name, including your own name. There is no in no other name. For there is no other name under heaven given among men, by which we must be saved.
There is no way in all the swimming that you do to try to get across the ocean no one else. No other friends next to you, no other good works that you do can get you to be in a place where you can say, I can rest or, things are hard and I am hopeless.
How do I have joy? Jesus says, hold on to me and you can experience this joy on the screen.
Romans 10, 9. Here's what it says.
If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is. Do you know this verse, Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be what?
Saved. That's not. I'm swimming in the ocean. I'm calling out to him, and he's like, maybe, maybe. I'm not sure. Oh, you're not good enough. You messed up too much.
He says, call out to me as the Savior, and I will save you.
Now, as we kind of come to the conclusion of this entire story, we have brokenness, we have hopelessness, and we have salvation. We have. We come back to the big idea. You can put that on the screen again. And that is something that we need to just kind of hold tightly again to us in our minds as we consider the Christmas story. To rightly. You could look at it just on the screen. I'll just read through it again. To rightly celebrate the coming of the Savior, we're gonna. Tonight we're gonna sing songs. We sing all sorts of Christmas songs, which is great. To rightly celebrate the Savior, we have to realize the things we looked at today. We are broken. Then we were hopeless, and then what happened? There was a Savior.
We have to realize the first two realities, though, in order to properly rejoice in the fact that Jesus came. And lest we conform to sweet little baby Jesus, the manger, we realize also that he is majestic.
He is powerful.
The manger only makes sense in the shadow of the cross.
The infant wrapped in swaddling clothes is the same Lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world. Luke's Nativity account is tender and it's beautiful. We love those pictures, right? But it's written by the same author who later records another account saying this about was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer and these things enter into glory?
Jesus can't be restricted to just the manger. The cradle. He came for the cross. The wood of the manger can foreshadow, perhaps even the wood of the cross. The swaddling clothes of the manger can perhaps foreshadow the linen that would wrap his body when he died. And we love candles lit. We love the glow of Advent candles and the silent night. We're gonna sing that. Come on Christmas Eve.
Sing Silent Night together. We love these songs, but scripture refuses to let us stay there.
Horrible things also happened in the Christmas story. Did you know that there was a king named Herod who was terrified at his kingdom being taken away from him, and so he brought death.
Horrible things happened. And even in the midst of our Christmas celebration, we recognized the hard things happen. And Jesus said, I've come to make all things new. Amen.
The true Christmas joy isn't found in pretending the world isn't broken.
We do that, don't we? Joy to the world. Yay. There's brokenness out there.
It's found in staring unflinchingly at the wreckage of sin and guilt and the punishment that we deserved, and then hearing the announcement that the angels made unto you.
This day is born in the city of David. A what?
A savior.
The reason we can rejoice the Savior was born is because we look directly at the brokenness that our sin caused. We look directly at the hopelessness of us trying to do it ourselves, right? The swimming and trying to get some and not getting anywhere. And then the angel's announcement saying, a savior's here. You couldn't do it by yourself. You realize that. But don't strive any longer. He's come to make you new. He's come to heal inside of you what you couldn't do in yourself.
Here's a couple application things, and then I'm gonna pray. We're gonna stop and sing another song. As we think about those three big ideas that we looked at today. The brokenness, the hopelessness, and the Savior. The brokenness. Store this away somewhere. Maybe write it down somewhere. Brokenness is all around us, friends, isn't it? It's all around us.
As you see the brokenness in the world around you, I wanna encourage you to do this.
Let not your response be one of anger, but one of grief, compassion and prayer.
So often we watch the news or we look at people who aren't doing what we want them to do, and we get angry at them for it. But if we believe what the Bible says, the reality is there is brokenness and there is blindness, isn't there?
And so, like Jesus as he sat above the city of Jerusalem before he goes to his death, he grieved, didn't he? He didn't shake his fist at the city saying, you don't believe in me.
He grieved. Friends, we want to display the heart of God for a world that is broken. We realize there is brokenness and there's blindness. And we want to love them well.
Secondly, as we consider the hopelessness word, hopelessness isn't something people often confess about themselves. I don't know when the last time I told anyone that I'm feeling hopeless is.
But in reality, there's times that I might feel it, there's times that you might feel often looks like us striving for security. Financial security, relational security, emotional security, physical security.
No matter how much we try that, striving just doesn't stop. We're never content. At times, we always want more. The key to contentment and joy in our life is rooted in our confidence of our salvation.
It's saying, I know that in the midst of a broken world, God's got me. Doesn't that give you some hope?
God's got me.
And lastly, that third point, the Savior. We, you and I can rejoice knowing that whenever we stop taking breath, God's got us. That should bring joy, shouldn't it? And even in the midst of a broken world, we can say Emmanuel, which means what?
God's with us. So while we take breath, God is with us. And after we stop taking breath, God's got us. And that can cause for rejoicing this Christmas season. And maybe you're here today and you don't know Jesus. You can't say with confidence, God's with me or God's got me. I wanna encourage you right now and today to be that person who doesn't just look at the manger scene or look at Jesus or look at a cross and say, yeah, that's cool for some people as you're swimming and trying to be good enough by yourself.
But today you would say, I'm ready to hold on to him. I'm ready to take his hand and trust him for my salvation. Whatever age you might be, no matter how much you might already know, Jesus is the Savior. Not you, not anybody else, not the church. And that's what we can celebrate this season. Let's pray. Lord, thank you. That you are a God of grace.
That no matter where anybody is here today, that you are a God of grace. You see us and you say, I love you and I want to be in relationship.
You have given us incredible riches in the person of Jesus coming to this world.
And so as we consider the story of God's word, of your word, the Bible, how it shows us how we were once broken, how we are still broken and we can't solve the problem ourselves. Lord, I pray that we would rejoice today.
In your coming and your work on the cross. For our sins. You died in our place.
You did the work that we could not do, so we could have peace with you.
And as we go through all the seasons, of all the activities and all the planning and everything, Lord, I pray that you would remind us over and over again that you've got us, that you are with us. Your spirit abides in us. For those here today who don't know you, Lord, I pray that you would do a work that only you can.
And show them your beauty.
Show them your love, Lord, that through your love and your grace, that you show us.
Lord, we know that our lives can be transformed from the inside out. In Jesus name, amen.
