The Church of Eleven22 - Christmas from the East - Unwrapping Christmas: Wk. 3

Episode Date: December 17, 2023

From the cradle, Jesus was being prepared for the cross. "She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." -Matthew 1:21 We invite you to join us in celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ this Christmas season! Go to coe22.com/christmas for all of the details on Christmas Eve services and how we're celebrating this year! - The Church of Eleven22™ is a movement for all people to discover and deepen a relationship with Jesus Christ. Eleven22 is led by Pastor Joby Martin and based in Jacksonville, Florida, with multiple campuses throughout Jacksonville and the surrounding areas. To support The Church of Eleven22 and help us continue to reach people around the world, visit https://www.coe22.com/donate

Well, Merry Christmas family. How are you all doing? Good. All right. Some of you, that's okay. You'll be better after I introduce you to some of my friends. This is Spencer Bolter, president of Costa Rica. And founder and president of 6-8 Ministries.

And listen, if you have not been on a mission trip, a short-term mission trip, and 1122 is your home, you need to go on a mission trip. We have a bunch of them for the new year. and if you're not quite sure where to go, you should go down and go to 6-8 with this crew. We've been down a few times. I've taken our kids down there, and so we'd love for you to be a part of that. And, man, just thank you for the way that 6-8 has disciplesed my son,

has disciples us as a church, allowed us to be a part of the mission of God around the world. So thanks for being faithful and stepping into that. Yeah, man. Hey, this is Callie down here at the end. Callie runs all of our long-term sending. And so if you feel like, hey, maybe I'm supposed to kind of put my yes on the table and let God send me somewhere in the world long-term as a missionary, you should talk to

Callie. She will train you. She will walk with you. She will help you figure out what that looks like in your life. And then next to her is one of our elders here, Barry Chandler. So you guys say thank you to Barry. It's part of the team that leads us, guides us. and then right here in the middle this is this Dalton and this is Amy and yeah all right and

here's this this is a really special almost solemn occasion of what we're about to do and it's because Dalton and Amy said Lord send us here we are and they are going to go and serve as long-term missionaries they're leaving in a few weeks they're going to go serve as long-term missionaries in the country of Malawi, which is in eastern southern Africa. We have church plant partners there, and so Dalton is going to be a part of helping run their church planter training school that they have, and then Amy has a background in education, and so she is going to go and walk alongside of them. They have started a school there, and they're not just going to run training and help kids

read books and do math, though that's great. What they're doing is they're going to equip generations to share the gospel around the world. And I heard there's like a connection for you to 6-8, and the first trip that she went on was to 6-8, and so just watch out. If you go to 6-8, you may end up in East Africa after Christmas. But it's also really special because Amy grew up down at the end of the street that we live on. And so I've got a chance to watch her grow from a kid on into an adult and a woman of God. and she babysat our kids, and so this is super special for us. But we're going to pray for them.

We're going to commission them. We're going to lay on hands over them as they kneel down. If you all want to reach out and pray as Elder Berry leads us, so why don't you all guys kneel down? We'll lay on hands. Now, Pastor Adam should know better than to give me a microphone. It's all yours. So thank you, Pastor Adam.

I wanted to read some scripture over this sweet, sweet couple. This is from the Apostle Paul in the Book of Romans. Chapter 10, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they've never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? as it is written how beautiful are the feet of those

who preach the good news. Father God, I thank you for the call on the life of every believer in this place and for believers worldwide. But I specifically today thank you for the call on this sweet couple.

Not only as individuals, as a married couple, but also the call of you on their lives as believers and then that extra special call. They have taken it literally and they are literally going to the ends of the earth. God, I pray that you would provide a hedge of protection around them as they travel, as they locate. I pray that you will create relationships there for them, strengthen them way beyond what they thought they could ever do. I pray that you would strengthen their marriage, help them to remember God that their marriage comes before the church

because you ordained marriage before the church. God, I pray that you would create a bond between the two of them with you and that that cord of three strands will never ever be broken or weakened in any way. Any problems that they face help them to come to you first because you are the author and finisher of our faith. I pray for your direction in their lives, your protection over them. God, we look forward to hearing reports, and who knows,

but what the entire country of Malawi becomes saved by your saving grace because of this couple. Who knows the leadership that will come out of their group that might lead the entire world to saving knowledge of you? forward to what you're going to do in them and through them and to them.

And we thank you for blessing each and every one of us and for blessing this couple. In Christ's name. Amen. Did you guys show them some love? Love you guys. Thanks. Love you. Hey, they're going to be out in the lobby here at San Pablo and Spencer will be out there so you guys can go out and say hey to them, slip them a $50 bill.

And you laugh like I'm. I was joking, but I'm not, I'm serious. So it was Christmas 1991, and I got this gift, and not this wrapping paper, because this has got our series on here, but I got what was in this, in this. And so it was Christmas morning. I have two younger brothers, just three boys in our house. Christmas morning usually involved all of us at dawn running downstairs, tearing into all the gifts, and then Christmas is over in like 45 seconds.

This one was a little, this was a little different, though. My dad, we came down and my dad started handing out Christmas presents, like one by one. So he handed my mom a Christmas present, and then she opened it, handed my brother Alec Christmas present, and my brother Peter. Then she went back and handed my mom a Christmas present, and my brother Christmas presents. I'm sitting over there like, what the heck? Finally, after a couple rounds, my dad hands me this present, and so I open it, and I go tearing into this thing, and there's a box inside like this.

and you have to throw the wrapping paper away. You can't be nice and neat with it. So I opened it up and I look at it and there's my Christmas present. Now listen, I'm a 16-year-old boy and I'm like, cool, a wooden doll. Thanks. And then I just set it down and put it to the side and my mom and dad look each other and just kind of like, okay, whatever. They go on passing out presents for the rest of Christmas.

I don't have another gift. and I'm starting to like pout and be like what the what is going on like this is a I'm getting jipped here like what finally my dad came back at the end and he's like hey Adam you you didn't you didn't unwrap the president the whole way I'm like what are you talking about it's a wooden doll and he's like do you not know what that is and I'm like no I don't know it is but you know what this is don't you it's a Russian nesting doll and he's like go ahead I mean so open it so you know I open it and I'm like, all right, awesome. Another doll.

Thanks. That's super cool. He's like, no, you've got to keep unwrapping it, so I keep unwrapping it, and there's another, all right. So I unwrap it again. There's another one. He's like, keep going, and finally I unwrap it all the way down to the bottom, and you know what was inside?

Yeah, it was awesome. It was a car key. It's actually a Jeep key. I don't know why they would give me a car with no doors to a 16-year-old boy. It was awesome. But here's the thing. I think most of us with Christmas do what I did with this nesting doll. I think we look at it.

We unwrap it a layer or two and we go, great, Christmas, some presents, great. Maybe we peel it back a little. We unwrap it a little bit more, peel back a layer and we go, oh, okay, family. we peel back a little bit more and then we just kind of settle for Christmas and we don't get all the way down to the heart of what Christmas is with the meat, the middle, the very core

of what it is really all about and what it's really about is about Jesus but I don't think it's enough to really say it's about Jesus because it begs the question what is it about Jesus that would make angels

appear, heavenly hosts declare, virgins become pregnant, kings try to kill off a whole generation of baby boys. Like, what is it about Jesus that would cause that to happen? So what we're going to do is we're going to look at Matthew chapter one. If you've got a Bible, go to Matthew chapter one. We're going to start in verse 18. And in the account of Jesus's birth in Matthew chapter one and chapter two, we're going to see some absolutely stunning things about who Jesus is at the core of himself. So starting in verse 18. It says, now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband, Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to

shame resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife. For that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken to the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus. And after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king,

behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw a star when it rose and have come to worship him. But Herod the king heard this. He was troubled and all Jerusalem with him and assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people. He inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, in Bethlehem of Judea,

for so it is written by the prophet, and you, O Bethlehem in the land of Judah are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. Now, I think it's so easy for us to read that story because if you've been around church or been around Christmas much at all,

you hear that and you go, oh yeah, okay, that sounds really familiar. And you kind of read right over it. But inside what Matthew is writing are some really remarkable things about who Jesus is, that if we can unwrap it and get down inside of it, we'll see something really stunning about him. And the first thing that Matthew wants us to see about Jesus

is that Jesus is God. Look what it says in verse 18. For behold, before they had come together, meaning before they had had sex, she, Mary, was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. verse 20 that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit then in verse 23 the virgin shall conceive a virgin shall conceive and bear a son in then verse 25 but knew her not Joseph knew her not they did not have sex until she had given birth to a son over and over again Matthew wants

us to know this baby is from the Holy Spirit this is no normal average pregnancy It's miraculous because Jesus is fully God. Look at verse 21. It says, she will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. When he says that, it's a little bit of a quote of Isaiah chapter 40. And in Isaiah chapter 40, it says, God will save his people from their sins.

And so what Matthew is doing is he's intentionally putting Jesus into the place of God. And he's saying, just like God will save his people from their sins. Jesus will save his people from their sins. Why? Because Jesus is God. And then he says in verse 23, you're going to call his name Emmanuel. And the little EL at the end of Emmanuel, that means God.

You'll call his name Emmanuel, for he will be God with us. Why are you to call him God? Because Jesus is God. God. Jesus was not a normal average baby boy that grew up and then took on God status. He didn't grow up and have lots of Godlike characteristics, Godlike integrity. No, Jesus was from all time, he always has been, currently is right now, and will forever be fully God. We started this series in John chapter 1. and the gospel of John starts this way.

In the beginning was the word. That's the way John is going to talk about Jesus. In the beginning was Jesus. And he was with God and he was God. Colossians chapter one, Paul starts his letter. And he says Jesus is before all things, meaning he's existed forever. He's before all things. And all things hold together in him that in all things he might be.

be preeminent. Why? Because Jesus is fully God. Jesus himself will say in John, he'll say, before Abraham was, Abraham lived 2,000 years before Jesus. Before Abraham was, I am. And that I am is Yahweh, the covenant name of God. He's saying, I am the eternal God. He'll go on and say, and John, the father and I are one. Why? Because Jesus is fully God. And it was it was to his divinity that Jesus added humanity. He's fully human. He's a baby crying, wetting his diaper, getting hungry, doing all that. And he is fully divine. And so when you peel back the layers and unwrap who Jesus is, what you find that is so special, so stunning is that Jesus is God, And what that means is that Jesus is unlike any other religious figure in all of human history.

There are lots and lots of religious figures that had said, you know what, I can show you the way to God, or I am a spokesperson for God, or I'm a really good example for God, but nobody else could claim I am God. And what that also means for us is that when you read the rest of the account of Matthew or any of the Gospels and you see Jesus do things like perform miracles, heal the blind, raise the dead, and you think, how is that even possible? Like, you know, there's a thing called the Jeffersonian Bible, and what Jefferson did was he went in and cut out all the miraculous out of the Bible, literally with scissors, cut out anything that was miraculous. because it's so hard to believe, except if Jesus is actually God, you would go, well, of course he could do that.

Or you look at the resurrection. You think, how does Jesus just get up out of the grave after three days? Because he's fully God. So Matthew goes on and he tells us the second thing about Jesus. It's not just that Jesus is God, but that He's God with us. Right?

It says, call him at us. Emmanuel, which means God with us. So when I proposed to Kristen, we're coming up on our 25th wedding anniversary soon. When I wanted to propose to Kristen, here's what I didn't do. I didn't call my best friend Ben up and say, hey Ben, I bought a ring. What I'd love for you to do is come over to the house, get the ring, drive over to Kristen's, pick Kristen up, drive her from Atlanta, up to the North Georgia Mountains, take her on a hike.

and then when you get next to this really pretty stream up in the North George Mountains, I want you to stop and I want you to get down on one knee, and I want you to open the ring up, and I want you to say, Adam loves you so much, he would love to marry you. That's ridiculous. Nobody would do that. If you did that, you shouldn't do that. Why don't you do that is because in matters of love, you don't send a surrogate, you go yourself. And that's what God does.

He doesn't send just a messenger. send another prophet. He comes in the flesh to be God and to be God with us. Listen, we can romanticize the heck out of Christmas, can't we? I mean, we can make it silent night, bright, all is calm. But this first Christmas when Jesus was born was anything but calm and normal. You can't really romanticize the first Christmas because the first Christmas, the Jewish people were under the Roman boot of oppression and we don't even have categories for how oppressive and brutal the Romans were to that group of people. It was terrible. And then you take this teenage girl, this little young teenage, sweet, innocent little girl and she's pregnant? Think about everybody

would have looked at them and think of the way the Rumors would have gone around and all the things they would have talked about in this little town. And then Joseph, he's a good man, but he's going to divorce her, but says he's going to do it quietly, but he's still like, I don't know, that's not my baby. And he decides to stay and just gets more scandalous. And then they have to get on a donkey and ride while she's nine months pregnant. And then she's going to give birth in this kind of cave barn that's usually tucked up under a house. And we think of a little wooden stall, all sweet with cloth.

It was probably this big stone feeding trough or water trough. And she would have taken her newborn baby and laid him in there. We love to romanticize it, but it was really raw, messy, real life. And it was into that that Jesus came. He's God with us in the middle of that. I don't know if you were here a few Christmases ago. It was Christmas of 2021, Christmas Eve. Joseph was coming back, Pastor Jobb is coming back from sabbatical,

and he was going to preach the Christmas Eve services here. And right before the Christmas Eve services, he calls and says, hey, listen, I think it was double pneumonia or double bronchitis. He's like, hey, I can't speak. I am hacking up a lung. I need for you to preach Christmas services. And I was like, okay. And we were talking about how Jesus came in the middle of the mess.

And I said to you, hey, what I'd love for you to do is go home, and take all your type anus and put it away. And then as you unwrap gifts, just leave it a mess. Leave all the paper out, leave all the ribbon out, leave it a total mess. And then what I want you to do is I want you to take pictures. And I want you to hashtag a middle of the mess. And some of you guys did this. And it's cute and it's fun to see all your pictures.

But the point of it was to remind us that Jesus doesn't wait for us to get our whole act cleaned up. He doesn't wait for us to become. perfect to look right, to act right, to do right. Because if he waited for that to happen, we would never be with him. We can't be perfect enough. And the good news of the gospel is that Jesus is not just God, but that He is God who came to be with us. And so when you peel back and unwrap who Jesus really is, he's God with us.

you know i keep this little note stuck in my bible and this little sticky note and it says buddha's final words do you know what buddha's final words where his dying words were strive unceasingly think about that you get to your deathbed and the thing you last say is you work as hard as you can work every day your life and you strive and strive and strive and strive and strive and strive and maybe you'll please the distant deity. And then it says, Jesus's final words. You know what Jesus' final words were?

It is finished. Those are two completely different ways of looking. Jesus said, I'm not waiting for you to strive unceasingly, to show me and prove to me how good you are. Instead, what I'm going to do is I'm going to come to you and I'm going to live the perfect life on your behalf, and I'm going to finish everything the law requires for you, and I'm going to do it while I'm with you. And I'm going to come into the messiness and the realness and the rawness of your life,

and I'm going to do it for you. And what, yes, amen. And what that means, listen, what that means is right now, right, like right this minute. Because some of you are thinking, yeah, but Adam, you have no idea how messy my life is. and I mean this with all love, I don't care. Because God's coming is not dependent upon how less messy your life is. It says at just the right moment, meaning God had planned from all eternity when peak messiness occurred, he went, now's the moment. I'm coming into the middle of that one.

And so he's not waiting on you to get it right. He's coming to you while nothing is right. While you are messed up, while you drank too much last night, when you said, I will never do that again, and you did it again. And God is saying, I'm coming to you in the middle of that. I'm coming right now. And so you don't have to wait to be with him. Third one is this.

Jesus is God. He's God with us. And he is God's eternal plan. and God's eternal promise. Look this says in chapter 1, verse 22 and 23. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. And then he quotes Isaiah chapter 7. If you go down a little bit further in chapter 2 verse 5, it says, so it was written,

it is written by the prophets. And then he quotes Micah 5 too. It's one of Matthew's favorite things to say throughout his gospel. It's something 10 times he says, some version of it is written or the prophets had said. And the reason he says that is because he wants you to know that Jesus is God's plan. He himself, all the promises. Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 120, all of God's promises are yes in Jesus Christ.

All of them. Every single promise God has ever made is fulfilled in the person of Jesus. There was a study that was done, I don't know how long ago, a few years ago. It was not at a Christian university, it was just at a Rayleigh University, a statistics professor. Went to students and he said, I want you to figure out the probability of Jesus fulfilling all of the Old Testament prophecies. And he said, I'm not going to tell you how many there are. You just pick how many you think there are. You go through them, read them, look at them, and see what you think Jesus did and which ones he fulfilled.

and then you tell me the probability. So they did this. A group came back and they said, we think there were eight prophecies in the Old Testament that Jesus fulfilled. Do you know what the probability of Jesus fulfilling only eight prophecies is? It's one in ten to the seventeenth.

That's meaning one, and then there's a one in one followed by 17 zeros. That's a hundred quadrillion, one in a hundred quadrillion chance. That's like taking the state of Texas, filling it with quarters two feet deep, and then me marking your initials on one of the quarters, tossing it into the middle of those quarters in Texas, blindfolding you and saying you get one shot, wander around, reach down, pick up one quarter, when you find that one quarter, what are the odds that you've picked up the one that's yours?

It's that with eight. another group came back and they said hey we don't think there's just eight of these things we think there's actually 48 prophecies that Jesus fulfilled the probability of eight is one in 10 to the 17th the probability of 48 is one in 10 to the 157th here's the thing though there's not just eight there's not just 48 there's 456 prophecies and every single one of them is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. All of God's promises are yes in Jesus Christ. And so when you unwrap who Jesus is and get down to the core of it, what is so stunning is that every single one of God's promises are yes in Jesus. I love this quote, Pastor R.C. Sprole, he's passed away now,

but he writes this. He said, God's promises do not depend upon my feelings. they rest upon his integrity. That's good news. That's really good news that God's promises are not dependent upon whether you and I feel them right now. It doesn't matter whether you feel them. Do you know what matters as to whether God keeps his promises? God's integrity. And God never changes.

He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, which means every single promise he ever made. he is keeping and will forever always keep. Kristen and I've been doing this Advent devotional together. It's by Paul Tripp. It's called Come Let Us Adore him. And Tripp writes this. He says, the surety of these past prophecies and the specificity of how Jesus fulfilled them

is also your guaranteed future hope. The story that the prophets of old pointed to has not yet come to its final conclusion. This means that today, in your life and in mind, God is still working his unstoppable plot. And he will not relent, he will not rest until all that the prophets predicted is fully realized in the lives of every single one of his children. If you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ, you don't have to live in hopes of God's promises. from the fact that God has already made all of his promises and he is keeping all of them in Jesus Christ. A few years ago, I was really sick and I had a friend of mine and it was prolonged and I had a

friend of mine who I called and I said, hey, I would love for you to be praying for this with me. And in his sweet way, he said, I'd love to pray for you, but Adam, I'm actually, I'm not going to pray for your sickness. I was like, okay. He said, in said, I'm just going to pray the promises of God for you. And I went, yeah, do that. That's much better than praying my problems. Pray the promises of God. And the reason he could do that is because he knew,

he knew that in Jesus Christ all of God's promises are yes and amen. Fourth thing that Matthew wants us to know about Jesus is that Jesus is Lord. He's king. He's ruler. Chapter 2, verse 2, it says, Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? And you, O Bethlehem in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah.

For from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. He said, Jesus will be king. He will be ruler. He will be Lord. Actually, the confession Jesus is Lord is the oldest confession in Scripture. it in Philippians 2, you find it in Romans

chapter 10, verse 9. And the thing about it is though, Jesus is king. Like, he is in total, complete, sovereign control of every molecule in the universe. But he's not just king. He's a shepherd king.

And shepherds love their flock. They love their sheep. And sheep are not lovable. They're dirty. mangy, nasty, animals. You and I are sheep. That's not a compliment either. And Jesus as king, shepherd king,

what shepherds would do is they would lay down their life in the doorway of the sheep pen. And they would be the gate. And their sheep would come into safety by way of the shepherd. And the shepherd would block that doorway from any predator that would come after them. and Jesus as shepherd king lays down his life for you and me who are his sheep and he says I will give my life for your protection I will be the way that you can come in to safety and provision and protection and love and care and guidance and leading I will be your shepherd king because I love you and I care for you and so when you unwrap

Christmas all the way down to who Jesus is. Yes, he's king. Yes, he's in control. Yes, he sits on his throne. But he's not some far-off distant deity. He's the shepherd who gets down in the middle of his sheep and walks with him and guides him and leads him and lays his life down for them.

And what this means for you and for me is that when life spins out of control, and I don't mean like five years from now. That's true five years from now, but I mean like this week when it spends out of control. Like when your in-laws get crazy at the dinner table and start talking politics. Or you get crazy and start talking politics.

Or you get the call from like your mom and she says, hey, I know it's six, seven, eight days before Christmas. Could you go buy all the Christmas presents? Which is the phone call we got the other day. Like when it is like, oh no, it's going out of control. What you can remember is Jesus is king. He's got it. He's got the whole world in his hands still, right now.

He's got your whole world in his hands because he's not just king. He's your shepherd king. And he's guiding and leading and present and with you every step of the way. And then the last one is this, that Jesus, is the Savior. Look at chapter 1, verse 21. She, Mary, will bear a son, and you shall call his name

Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. In verse 25, and Joseph, he, Joseph, called his name Jesus. His name is Jesus because he saves. He is a savior. A few weeks ago, I was on a flight from

Jacksonville out to L.A. And we're almost L.A. We're out over the desert. It's about an hour from LA is where we were. And all of a sudden, over the intercom, like, everybody's just kind of, you know, headphones on, doing their deal. Over the intercom is like, is there a doctor on the flight? And I, like, half caught it, took my headphones out, kind of looked around, nobody moves. And again, they come on, they're like, excuse me, is there a doctor on the flight? And the woman sitting next to me reaches back and starts, like, smacking the man behind us, her husband. And he,

takes his headphones off. He's like, what? I'm watching a movie. She's like, they called for a doctor. Get up. He's like, fine. He puts his stuff down. He gets up. There's a medical emergency, two, three rows right in front of us. And when he gets up, another guy gets up. There are two doctors. They get up, they go up front. And what had happened is the guy had had a massive heart attack right in front of us and died. They start doing chest compressions on this guy, in his seat, as we're hurling through the air. There's nowhere to land. We're in the middle of the desert.

They just have to keep on going. These two guys work on this guy for about half an hour. If you know anything about CPR, it's just supposed to keep the blood flowing. It just, that doesn't actually bring you back to life. They're working on this guy. And then all of a sudden, after about half an hour, all of a sudden the guy goes, and he sits up. Everybody on the plane went, whew. They sit him down in his seat.

They put oxygen on him. they're kind of working with them, the flight attendants are doing, they all go back to their seats. I put my headphones on, I go back, you know, doing whatever I'm doing. I look up about a half an hour later, we're almost into L.A.

I look over, he's got the oxygen mask off, and he's just talking to his wife. Like nothing had happened. We land. They're like, hey, stay in your seat. We're going to have the paramedics come on. The paramedics come on. They walk over to him.

He's like, nah, I don't need you, reaches up, gets his bag, and walks off the airplane. You know, the two guys that were doctors, the guy behind me was a cardiovascular surgeon, the other guy was an ER doctor. Yeah, praise God is right. Here's the thing, though.

Do you know what that guy needed when he had the heart attack and died? I'll tell you what he didn't need. He didn't need some people come over and go, hey, man, could I give you some advice on the next flight, before your next flight when you're in Atlanta, don't stop at Mickey D's

and get the double cheeseburger and French fries. Don't biggie size it, man. Maybe you wouldn't be in this spot. You know what he didn't eat? While he's dead, somebody to come over and say, hey, could I show you a nutritional and workout plan so that you could live a healthier life?

That's pointless. That's useless. That is of no help. What that guy needed was to somebody to come and save him from death. He needed somebody to come and arrest death, to stop death and bring life back to him. Listen, that's you and me apart from God. You and I are dead in our trespasses and sins.

And we don't need tips and tricks for a better version of us. Sin doesn't make us bad. Sin makes us dead. And we can't do anything dead in our trespasses and sins. I mean, the good news of the gospel is that you and I are created in the image of God. Male and female, he created them. But like Adam and Eve, what you and I do, their story is just our story. Every single one of us made in the image of God, perfect relationship meant to have with God,

we look at God and go, thank you very much. I would like to be king of my own life, Lord of my own life. I would like to be God over my own life. I think I can handle my life better than you. So I'll take the reins from here. You go over there, God. I'm going to live my life, my way, the way I want it. and what happens in that moment is we fracture our relationship.

Our relationship with God dies. Scripture says the wages of sin is death. And you're like, Adam, that's really severe. Yeah. Because God is a God of justice. God doesn't look at sin in our world and kind of sweep it under the rug and ignore it and act like it's no big deal. And you don't want God to do it. that. Here's how I know you don't want God to do that. Because you would want God to intervene with

justice when it comes to human trafficking, wouldn't it? Wouldn't you? And God does not ignore sin, no matter how big or how small it is. God is a God of justice. He will bring justice to sin and rebellion. And God is a God of holiness. You want God to be holy. Because if God isn't holy, then God isn't perfect, and then God isn't God. So you want a God of perfection. But the problem is you and I are not perfect on our own, and so we can't just roll up on God. We're dead in that moment. So God is a God of justice and God is a God of holiness, but God is also a God of perfect love and mercy and grace.

Now, how do you reconcile those things? how is God a hundred percent justice, a hundred percent holiness, and a hundred percent love and mercy and grace? He's not like those things all add up to a hundred. We just sang it a minute ago that he comes full of grace and full of truth. He's a hundred percent just and a hundred percent holy and a hundred percent loving and merciful and gracious to us. The only way you can reconcile those things, is that Jesus comes fully God, adds humanity to his divinity, lives the perfect life,

satisfies the holiness of God. And then on the cross, he dies. But he dies not because he has sin, but he who knew no sin became sin on our behalf. He satisfies the justice, the wrath of God that is due against you and I for our sin. and he bears that on the cross in our place, in our stead, and in that moment pours out love and grace and mercy. And it's only in Jesus and at the cross of Jesus that you see justice and holiness and love and grace and mercy all in their abundance, fully satisfied and fully given. And he's buried. And then three days later, he is raised by the glory of God.

to new and everlasting life. He conquers death, the last enemy for you and I. And then he spends 40 days walking the earth. And what his message was is if you would receive that grace that I just bought for you on the cross, I will breathe new and everlasting life back into you. I will restore your relationship with God. And all you have to do is receive it.

trust me that what I did was for you. And this is why Jesus is our Savior. Now listen, we're going to have a little grammar lesson for a minute, okay? Can we do that? Is that okay? We go grammar? No, you're not excited. We're going to do it anyway. It's fine. You're going to love it. It's going to make your heart explode. Okay. Verse 21, look at this. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save. his people from their sins. Those two little words will save. The verb in there, it is a future

active verb. Yeah, you're like, oh, that's cool. That's sweet Adam. Okay, here's why this is so amazing. It's future, like Jesus is living 2,000 years ago, and he's saying, I will. I'm going to do something in the future. And what he's going to do in the future is he's going to save. And it's active, meaning it will always be happening. It will never stop happening. And so when it says Jesus will save, better way to phrase it would be, Jesus will always be saving his people, which means right now, right now, Jesus is saving in this room, in our campuses, Jesus is saving.

The reason why you feel like this thing inside of you and you're like, I don't know why, I just seem to believe. I can't help it. I've never felt this way before. You know why? It's because Jesus is currently saving you. That's what he's doing. And he's taken your dead heart and he's pulled it out and he's put his living life inside of you. And he's not just making you a better version of bad you. He's making you new, a new and everlasting life. And so what do you do with all that? What do you do with Jesus is God? and He's God with you and He's Lord and He's God's God's eternal promises and plan and He's Savior What do you do with that thing? Look at what the wise men do. Down in verse 9, after they've gone to King Herod

and Herod says, I want to worship Jesus, go find him. He doesn't want to worship Jesus. He just wants to kill him. It says after listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. And when they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.

Literally, they rejoiced exceedingly with mega joy. They come face to face with Jesus, and they have exceeding rejoicing with mega joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary's mother, and they fell down and they worshipped him. And then opening up their treasures, they offer him gifts of gold and frankincense. and Mur, and being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way. What do you do with Jesus?

You rejoice with mega rejoicing. That's what you do. If you think of Jesus and mega rejoicing doesn't well up in you, I would just say you're looking at the wrong Jesus. He's God. He's with you. He's a shepherd king caring for you, taking care of. you. All of God's promises for you are yes in him and he is and will always be saving his people

and that should cause joy to just well up in us. And then it says they fall down. That's a sign of surrender and they worship him because he's God. You only worship God. And then it says they lay these gifts before him. One of them's gold. Do you know who gets gold? The only people that had gold at that time were kings. They put gold in front of Jesus because what they're saying is you are the king. And then they put frankincense down in front of them. Frankencence was this incense that was used in worship and what it represented was the prayers and the worship of people going up to God. And they lay that down before him because what they're saying is you are the only true God that is worthy of worship. And then they take Mur and they lay Mur down before him. The next time you see

my is Jesus on the cross and they're offering him mur. And the next time you see it is they've buried him. And what happens is they would bury you and they would pack all these spices on you, sort of mummify you. And what they did was they would have used mer to seal Jesus' body after he had died. And what they're saying is, Jesus, you're going to die. You are a savior for us. So they're filled with joy.

they surrender they worship they declare him king and god and savior and then i love what this says and then they departed for their own country by another way like having come encountered with who god is they unwrap who jesus is and seeing that they can't go back the same their life will forever be different they are forever changed they will never return to their old ways again so the invitation to you to me right now this Christmas is that as we unwrap who Christ is and you see him for who he really is, would you surrender? Would you worship him as God? Would you be filled with this new life that comes with mega rejoicing? And would you leave changed different, not perfect, changed different. So what I want to do is if you have never received Jesus as your savor, as your God,

if your posture to him has been I'm king, but now you want to say, no, Jesus, you are my king. And you've never done that before. I want to give you the opportunity today to do that. That you would celebrate Christmas, not just for gifts, not just with food, but you would celebrate the way it was meant to be celebrated. as an act of worship to God. So would you bow your heads? And if you would like to receive Jesus, would you raise your hand? For the first time, you want to declare that Jesus is your Lord

and your Savior, your king, your God. Would you raise your hand right now? Raise them up high. Come on, amen. Heavenly Father, we love you. Thank you for your son, Jesus. God, we didn't deserve it. Our life is so messy. Lord, you had every right to just stay on your throne in heaven and let us come to our own senses and our own ruin.

But God, you were so full of love and grace and mercy. God, thank you that you fulfilled all the holiness we never could. You satisfied the just wrath of the Father and that you came to be with us. Lord, we look forward to the day, not that we go to be with you, but that you will return and forever be Emmanuel with your people in the resurrection, Lord. We love you. We worship you. We pray it in your name, Jesus. Amen. Would you stand and we're going to respond? The gospel demands a response. And so we're going to sing with mega rejoicing, okay? You can do it.

exceedingly joyful mega rejoicing and we're going to lay our gifts down before our king to declare him god and lord and savior and we're going to worship him let's worship jesus