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Merry Christmas, everybody. How you doing? That sounds all right. You're like,
Thanksgiving was kind of mediocre. I'm not sure I want to do this again. Hey, today kicks off Christmas.
And at the Flint household, we started Christmas after Thanksgiving when you should.
We put up our tree. Yes, you can applaud. That is right. After Christmas, not Bah, Humbah. Give it its due in its right place.
And, yeah, we put up our tree. We decorated Christmas lights. We fought.
a half dozen times. It was awesome. Today starts Christmas, not only Christmas season,
but today starts our Christmas series called Behold Our King. And the series is about,
there's a big word called Christophanes. And it's just that term, if you've never heard it,
just comes from two words that means Christ appearances. And there are times in the Bible
where Christ appears, not fleshly like born, but before that throughout the Bible,
Jesus appears. And the definition of Christophany, if you look it up, and we'll put it up here on the
screen for you, is this, it's an appearance or a non-physical manifestation of Christ. What that means
is a Christophany is not the birth story of Jesus. Christophany is not a vision. It's not a dream
about Jesus. A Christophany is not a hallucination about Jesus. A Christophany is not a metaphor.
It's not an allegory. It's not any of those things. It is Jesus.
Jesus,
appearing and acting,
not in a fleshly, bodily way
in the Bible.
And so what you're going to need,
you're going to need to put on your big boy theological pants
for the next couple weeks,
and we're going to kind of dive in.
It's not confusing.
It's just one of the things that,
honestly, I've heard series preached
about how to manage family dynamics at Christmas.
I've heard series preached about how to handle money at Christmas,
how to have joy at Christmas.
I preach series about the names of Jesus or the genealogies of Jesus or the prophecies of Jesus and all those are great.
I never heard a series on Christophonies and never heard one at Christmas.
But as I dug into this, I love that we're going to get a chance over the next few weeks to look at this because it's not just that it's interesting.
I mean, they are, they're fascinating and they're interesting and you'll see over the next few weeks why they're fun to look at.
but it's not just that.
What is so important about Christophanes is that they point to Jesus,
that they show us that everything in the scripture is about Jesus.
The whole story is about Him.
And I think that they have the power to take Christmas, which can often, like,
I love gifts and I love the food and I love the music and all of that sort of stuff.
And that's great.
But we can sort of get fixed on those are the things that Christmas is about.
out. And Christophanes have the power to pull our eyes back to Jesus and fix our eyes on Jesus
and transform Christmas and transform our life. And so we're going to dig in and we're going to
start and we're going to start in Genesis chapter 32. So if you've got a Bible, grab Genesis
chapter 32. Genesis is the first book of the Bible, flip a few pages. If you don't have a Bible,
grab one out of the seat back. There's one there for you. We'd love for you to have it.
So here's how Genesis 32 starts in verse 22.
the same night, he arose. Now, the he in this story is Jacob. And Jacob's name is really important
to understand Jacob's life, to understand the story of Jacob and to understand what's happening
here today. You have to understand what Jacob's name means. Jacob's name means to seize or grasp,
to strive, to connive, to manipulate. And his name, he lived into his name. Like he fully
lived into the name as Mama gave him. And the story, what's happening here is it says that same night.
So that same night is that Jacob is traveling and he's traveling through the desert and he gets
close to where his older twin brother, Esau, is living. And he sends Esau a bribe. Now listen,
if you bribe your brother, your family is jacked up. Okay? Like, I don't know about you. I didn't
bribe anybody on Thanksgiving to get them, you know, made my kids to get them to bed.
cave or something like that. But listen, he bribes his brother because there's been this rivalry
going on between the two of them since before they were even born. That when Jacob and Esau
were in the womb together and Esau was being born, Jacob actually grabs his heel as he's being
born, that he's trying to not be second to anybody. From the womb, he was striving and he was
conniving and he was manipulating. And then from there, the whole family dynamic,
goes bad because Jacob's mom loves Jacob and sort of plays favoritism with Jacob. And Jacob's
dad loves Esau and plays favoritism with Esau. And then Jacob and his mom get together when
Jacob's a little kid and they manipulate and they deceive and they connive a plan in order to
steal his older brother's inheritance in the entire family business. And they succeed. And for the
rest of his life, he's trying to grasp and hold and connive and to manipulate to keep the life that
he's connived and manipulated to get to that point. And so this night, he's traveling. And as he's
traveling, the people around him go, hey, you've got a little too close to your brother. And he's like,
uh-oh, this might not end well. And so he sends a bribe over to his brother to try to appease his
brother and try to keep his brother from killing him and taking everything back. And so that's where we are
in this whole story. And for some of us, this is not a thing we have to like imagine far off as a messed up,
jacked up family. We live it. We've tried to keep it at bay. We've tried to like work it,
especially for Thanksgiving or you're thinking at Christmas, oh no, here it comes. And so they're
staring this thing down the same night, he arose and he took his two wives and his two female
servants. Now, this has nothing to do with the message. This is just free. And you should
take it. Just because the Bible says he has two wives does not mean that the Bible says you should
have two wives. Big difference. All right? The Bible clear from cover to cover, God's design for marriage,
one man, one woman for one lifetime. All right? It's just saying this guy had two wives,
which one is great and enough. You should stick with one. Same night, he rose, took his two wives,
his two female servants, his 11 children, 11,
and crossed the ford of the Jabok River.
And he took them and sent them across the stream
and everything else that he had.
Now, here's what he's doing.
He's diversifying his assets, right?
He got a little too close to his brother.
He's afraid his brother's going to come and get them back,
so he bribes his brother,
and then he sends everybody across the stream.
And as he sends him across the stream,
it says then in verse 24, and Jacob was left alone.
In the middle of the mess of his life and in the middle of the hecticness and all of the jacked-upness of his family,
here's Jacob.
He sends everybody else and he's alone.
And I get it, right?
Two wives, two female servants, 11 kids, like can a brother just get a minute to go to the bathroom without fingers under the door?
Right?
Mom, I need more Cheerios.
Mom, can I have more Cheerios.
Mom, can I, you know.
I don't really think that's what he's doing, though.
I don't think he's just wanting some peace and quiet for a minute by himself.
I think what he's doing here is not trying to get a minute alone.
He's not trying to get a minute alone and peace and quiet with God.
Get a little quiet time in.
What he's trying to do is he's trying to continue to manipulate the situation and connive and strive
to keep the life and preserve the life that he has manipulated and,
strive to get to this point. And in the middle of doing that, God makes it so that Jacob is left
alone, that he's there by himself in the middle of all of this mess. And Jacob has worked so
hard. He spent a lifetime to make it all about himself. And now he's at the end of himself. And all
he's got is himself. I mean, we've all been there, haven't we? At some point,
in our life, maybe you're there now, we look around and we think, I've tried to make this all
about me. And when we make it all about us for all of our life, eventually all we have is us.
Then when we try to make everything about us, eventually it all comes down to all we have is us.
And this is where Jacob is. He's sitting there, and he's all alone. And I'm telling you,
you can either get alone with God and go to work on making it all about you,
or you can have God make you be alone, and he can go to work on you.
Both of them are the grace of God.
And God will get you alone, and God will go to work when we make everything all about us.
It's just when we get alone with God and we invite God to get alone with us and go to work with us,
it just goes a whole lot better for us.
And so here he is, he's alone, and God is going to go to work on him.
And there are some things in your life and some things in my life that God wants to do.
Some things in your past that God wants to deal with.
There's some things going on right now in your life.
There are things that God wants to do in your future, in your family, in your kids, in your marriage, in your relationships, in your business, whatever it is that God wants to do.
and he's going to do it by getting you alone.
So Jacob's alone.
Everybody else is across the river.
So Jacob was left alone.
And a man.
Now that's this word right here and a man.
The Hebrew word is isesh.
And it means man.
That's it.
It means man.
It means what it says.
Not an angel, not a vision.
It means a man.
And so Jacob was alone.
and a man
wrestled.
Again, this is not
metaphorical.
This is not like God.
He was wrestling with God and his soul.
No, a man wrestles with Jacob.
Like MMA gets him,
pins him, right?
He's wrestling with him.
And there's a little bit of wordplay
that's going on here.
Because the word for wrestled
sounds a lot like Jacob's name.
And if you'll remember where Jacob is,
he's by the J-Box.
So Jacob is getting Jacobed by the Jabok.
That's what's going on here.
It's a little Bible nerd humor.
You're welcome.
So it says the man was left alone and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.
When the man, Eish, saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket.
Now listen, I have broken a lot of bones.
I had a dirt bike accident, compound fracture.
the bones came out of my arm. I was trail running. I broke my shin one time. I have broken
probably every finger on my hand dislocated them. I have more stitches all over my body.
Like if I took the stitches out, if they fell out, my body would fall apart.
Every single one of those has occurred because of a violent impact in my life.
This, when it says that he touches his hip socket, this is not like to a tagaviola getting like
sandwich between two giant other football players and knocking his hip socket out. This is a light
touch. And it should be a clue to the power of the one that he's wrestling with, that he can just
reach out and just touch him. And so he saw they didn't prevail and he touched his hip socket,
and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Now, we know this is not a vision, and we know
it's not a dream because at the end of the story in verse 31, it tells us that Jacob walks with a
limp in his hip the rest of his life because of what happens tonight. Listen, I'm 44 years old.
I have to like pregame Advil before I go to sleep at night some days, right? You're like, why do I
hurt? I'm like, I think I slept. That's it. That's not this. He didn't just sleep wrong and then
he gets over it and works it out and stretches it, takes a little Advil. This wrestling match goes
down. Whoever he's wrestling with just barely touches him, knocks his hip out of socket,
and the rest of his life he walks with his hip out of socket. Now listen, all we know at this
point is that Jacob's on the run. He's trying to avoid his brother. He's bribed his brother
to not kill him. He sent all his family away. He's alone. A man shows up, wrestles him to the
ground and injures his hip. Now, if you grew up and you've read this story, you went to Sunday
school or you've done Bible study before, your mind is going to want to jump to where this goes.
But at this point, that's all we know about this. Now, here's where it gets interesting.
Then he said, let me go for the day has broken. But Jacob said, I will not let you go unless
you bless me. When I read that, you know what I had pictured in my mind?
You know in Monty Python where the guy's fighting on the road and he's like, none shall pass
and he cuts his arm off and he's like, come back here. It's a mere flesh wound. And he comes,
like, that's what I see, right? This guy has gotten pinned and he's like, I'm not letting you go.
Like, really? You're really in control of this. Just a little insight into my brain.
And he said to him, what's your name? And he said, Jacob.
The guy's wrestling with looks at him and says, who are you?
And he says, I'm a schemer.
I'm a connivor.
I'm a manipulator.
Have you ever confessed who you are?
Have you ever been honest with you?
Have you ever said that not just these are some things I've done, but this is who I am.
Jacob, what he's saying here is, I am.
Who are you?
I am a conniver.
My identity is a manipulator.
My identity is a grasper.
My identity is I try to make everything all about me all the time.
And now all I have is me.
And then he says to him,
your name shall no longer be called Jacob.
You'll no longer be a conniver.
You'll no longer be a manipulator.
You'll no longer be a striver.
You'll no longer be a grasper.
you are Israel.
And Israel means, it kind of has this little other play on words,
it means you struggled with God and that God prevailed on you so you will prevail with God.
And so he says to him, you're no longer a conniver.
You are now somebody that has struggled with God and God has prevailed upon you
and you will prevail with God for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.
Listen, the man that Jacob wrestles with, the isesh that Jacob wrestles with is God.
Do you see what he says?
He says, you have striven with God.
This man that he wrestles with is God.
Now here's a little Bible quiz.
When I say there's one that he wrestled with that is fully man and fully God, what comes to mind?
Jesus, that's right, not just because you're in church, but all sorts of bells ought to go off in this.
That Jesus is fully God and fully man.
He has always been and always will be fully God and fully man from all eternity to all eternity.
And so the one that he's wrestling with is Jesus.
And then the God that Jacob wrestles with, the word that it says you've striven with,
God, that word is Elohim. It's, L is sort of the name or the word for God, and it's the singular
God. And then they tack on this plural ending to it. It's a really weird thing to do grammatically.
He's saying the one, this God man that you've striven with, this God is the single God in a
plurality. That God is singular, but he comes to us in this plurality, that God is Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. The word that we used to describe that.
is the Trinity, that this is who Jesus has always been, is and will forever be fully God.
And then I love this, the result of the encounter.
The Jacob wrestles with this God man, and then coming out of this encounter, this God man looks at Jacob
and he says, you're no longer Jacob.
You're no longer a conniver.
You're no longer a manipulator.
you're no longer that thing you used to be.
The old is gone.
You are now Israel.
You have a new identity.
You are a new creation.
The old is gone and the new has come.
And Jesus is the only one.
Jesus is the only one who can forgive your past,
free you in your present,
and give you a future full of life.
of purpose. He is the only one that is on the cross of Christ that you have your past forgiven.
It's the only place that that can happen. And that Jesus says, I will take your old identity,
and I will give you a new identity. I will make you a new creation. And just like Jacob now
gets to be called Israel, you and I, the only place we find our new identity is in Christ.
And when he says you're going to be Israel, it isn't just a new name. It doesn't just a new name. It
gives him a new purpose in the kingdom of God.
If you go back to Genesis chapter 12,
God looks at Abraham and says,
Abraham, I'm going to make you as many as the stars in the sky.
And I'm going to bless you in order to be a blessing.
And what he's talking about is what is beginning to happen here.
Abraham has a bunch of kids,
and then these kids start to have kids, his 11 kids,
and eventually a nation will be birthed.
and that nation is Israel, the people of God.
And so he's forgiving his past,
he's getting him free in his present,
giving him a new identity,
and he's setting him up for a new purpose in his future.
And the reason that this is such good news to us
is that it means that God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
That God has always made provision to forgive us of our past,
and it's always been in Jesus.
and the way that we get a new identity has always been and will always be in Jesus.
And the way that we find a perfect purpose in the kingdom of God has always been and will always be in Jesus,
which means you don't have to wonder, is God going to change his mind?
Is God going to act one way, one time and another way, another time?
No, God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
And his plan has always been through Jesus.
verse 29 then jacob asked him please tell me your name but he said why is it that you ask my name
and there he blessed him and so jacob called the name of the place piniel saying for i have seen god
face to face now there's a problem here jacob says that he has seen god face to face but the bible
cover to cover is clear. We cannot see God face to face. Listen to some of this. Paul writes to Timothy
as kind of as protege. In 1 Timothy 615, he, talking about God, who is the blessed and only sovereign,
the king of kings and lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light,
whom no one has ever seen or can see. Paul's writing to Timothy and he's saying,
God the Father, no one has ever seen him and no one can see him.
Jesus says in John 424, Jesus said, God is Spirit.
And then he continues on in chapter 5.
His voice, you have never heard.
And his form, you have never seen.
Jesus is saying, you have never heard.
You have never seen the form of God.
No one has.
John, when he sort of writes the beginning, the intro to his gospel in John chapter 1, verse 18, he writes this.
No one has ever seen God.
The only God who is at the father's side, he, he's talking about Jesus, has made him known.
John says nobody sees Jesus, but Jesus is God at the right hand of God, and he's the one that makes him known.
Paul in Colossians 1, verse 15, says this, he, Jesus, is the image of the invisible God.
There is somebody in the Bible sees God.
Do you know who they really see?
They see Jesus.
Jesus is the one that makes God the Father, who has never been seen and cannot be seen visible to us.
He's the one that makes the invisible visible to us.
And then Jesus actually says this thing is about him.
In Luke chapter 24, he writes this, verse 25.
Jesus said to them, oh, foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all the prophets,
talking about the Old Testament, what they have spoken.
Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?
And beginning with Moses and all the prophets he interpreted to them in all the scriptures.
He's talking about the Old Testament, the things concerning himself.
Jesus is saying all these things in the Old Testament, they're all really about me.
And then I love what he says in John chapter 5, verse 46.
He gets really specific.
He says this, for if you believed Moses, you would have believed me.
For he, Moses, wrote about me.
Do you know who wrote this story?
Do you know who wrote Genesis chapter 32?
Moses.
Moses is the one that records the events of this thing.
And so Jesus is saying, hey, when Moses wrote that stuff, see Genesis 32, he was writing about me.
And Jesus believed all of it was about him.
So when you see what you think is God, what you're really seeing is Jesus.
Now what happens next, what he says next, should just floor you.
Because Jacob says this.
He says, for I have seen God face to face.
face. And yet, I've been delivered. It's not just that Jacob says, man, nobody's ever
seen God. Nobody can see God, but I've seen God. What he's saying in here is nobody has
seen God, nobody can see God because if we were to see God, it would go really, really bad for
us. You take God's holiness and our sinfulness and you put those together, and it never ends well for us.
you take God's perfect justice and our perfect injustice and you marry those things you've put those things face to face and God's justice is always exacted upon us
in Exodus chapter 33 Moses says this Moses writes this he says please he's talking to God please show me your glory and he said this is God I will make all my goodness pass before you and we'll
proclaim before you my name, the Lord, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will
show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But he said, you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me
and live. We can't stand on our own face to face with a holy, righteous, perfect, and just God.
We can't do it. It either means that God. It either means that God.
is going to allow kind of our sinfulness to slide, which makes him unrighteous and unholy,
or God is going to let our sin slide, and that makes him unjust, and any of those things,
disqualifies God from being God.
So the question is, how can Jacob stand before God and say, I have seen God face to face,
and yet, and yet I've been delivered?
And it's because of Jesus.
Jesus is the one that allows us that mediates our relationship with God, the Father.
The only way you and I can have a relationship with a holy, righteous, and just God is that we would have someone that would step in who is holy and righteous and just in our place.
So that when God looks at us, what he sees is his son.
And then it says this in verse 31.
Then the son rose upon him.
And he passed pinnual limping because of his hip.
Jacob has this encounter with the God man, the mediator, Jesus.
And it leaves him limping forever.
Listen, you have an encounter with Jesus,
and you will walk with a limp and not a swagger.
An arrogant Christian is an oxymoron.
A prideful Christian is an oxymoron.
The two do not go together.
You encounter that you can't stand face to face for God,
and then God provides the way for you to be with God.
And the only response is, God, none of me, all of you.
And it arrests all the pride and arrests all the arrogance in every single one of us.
And yet this thing, this limp that Jacob walks with,
when I read that, I thought, is the limp really about him?
should I be thinking so much about Jacob's limp?
And then I thought, you know what?
I think his limp points to somebody else that limped.
The scripture said that Jesus took our beatings.
That by his stripes, we are healed.
That when they took Jesus on the last day of his life
and professional executors whipped him within an inch of his life
that he would limp away from that,
and that he would limp his way all the way up to Calvary.
And they would nail him on a cross.
And then he dies, and they bury his limp body in a tomb.
And three days later, by the Spirit of God,
he's resurrected to new and everlasting life.
And then when he appears to the disciples,
you know what he does?
He goes, look right here.
See the signs.
See, look at my hip.
that you and I have a savior, a resurrected savior, who I imagine in heaven is still walking around with the limp because he's got holes in his feet and in his hands and in his side.
That he's limp so that we can stand before the Father.
Now listen, all this just raises a question for me. So what?
Like, why does this matter? Why do Christophonies matter? They've got to be more than just interesting things to go.
go, oh, look, there's Jesus.
He appeared before he was born in the flesh and all this.
What is this?
I want to give you four words why I think it matters.
The first one is love.
The first one is love.
That God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Trinity.
God has always been in a perfect love relationship with himself.
From all eternity.
And do you know why God does everything that?
he does every way God acts is an overflow out of the love that he has for himself. So if you go all the way
back to Genesis chapter one and you see why God created, the reason God creates is because it's an
out of an overflow. He didn't create because creation was worthy. We didn't exist. We had nothing to be
worthy of to be created. Listen, I love my kids. Gavin, Sophie. Even if
as teenagers, I love them. If you have little kids and they're becoming teenagers, I'm just telling
you, it's great. Don't be worried. They're awesome. But listen, as great as they are, do you know what
they did to deserve to be born? Nothing. They didn't do squat. The reason they exist is because
their mom and I love each other. Their relationship is an overflow of our love. In fact, after Gavin
was born, we had a lot of reasons to not have another one.
sleep, money, freedom. So it's not based on their good works that they exist. And it's not, we are not
loved because we are so lovable. We are so lovable because we're loved. That the reason you are
loved by God, the Father, is because God has existed within himself as love for himself for all
eternity. And it's spilling out over to you and to me, which means this.
you can just stop striving and conniving and manipulating and manipulating and grasping for acceptance.
You don't have to post another post on Instagram and get a bunch of likes to feel accepted.
You can accept the love of God, the unconditional love of God.
except the love.
And not only is it love, the other part is that it's grace,
that these Christophanes point to Jesus,
and they don't just point to Jesus as some sort of ethereal figure.
They're pointing to Jesus,
who would one day be born in the flesh to a teenage girl?
They point to Christmas.
Do you know why we love Christmas?
Yes, the gifts and yes, the food,
And yes, the music, we love Christmas.
Deep down our soul, what we love about Christmas is that God made the first move,
and God took the initiative, and God moved towards us when we could never do anything to ever get our way to him.
That's why we love Christmas.
That's why we give gifts.
That's why we look at undeserving, ill-deserving little kids who have been on the naughty list for every moment of their life.
And we go, here's a gift.
Because it's a reflection of our Heavenly Father towards us.
that these Christophanes point to Jesus and they point to the fact that God, while we were in our sin,
we could never do anything to earn our way and fix our way and strive and connive and manipulate our way to God,
that God made the first move and he came into our life, which means God is a God of grace,
which means you and I can just stop striving and conniving and earning, even our best,
religious efforts are dirty rags.
And the invitation is just put them down.
And accept my love and accept my grace,
the unmerited favor of the father.
The third word is this, power.
Christophonies are only recorded in the Bible.
We don't have Christophonies anymore.
But you know what?
We have something way better than Christophonies.
You have God the Holy Spirit in you.
God has given you something better than a vision of Jesus or Jesus appearing.
There's something better than wanting Jesus to appear to you, and that's to have God in you.
That God has given you his power in His Holy Spirit and said, here I am.
Here is my power.
And you can have me.
And if you want to hear God speak, if you want to see God move, just read your Bible out loud.
You'll hear him speak.
And what is so great is you don't need more than the Word of God.
You just need more of the Word of God.
God has provided everything that you and I need for life and for godliness.
That's what the scripture tells us.
And the way that He's provided at all is through the Spirit of God and the Word of God.
in the spirit of God and the Word of God, you have everything.
God did not leave us lacking.
We're a thing to live the life.
He's called us to live in Christ.
And then lastly, the last word is this.
Mediator.
The good news is that you and I were created for a face-to-face relationship with God, the Father.
If you go back and read the accounts of the creation in Genesis,
the way it was intended was that God would breathe life into us and we would wake up and we would
see them face to face and that's what happened in those first couple Adam and Eve they see God
face to face but then they connive and they strive and they manipulate and they make everything all
about them and the order all breaks and the separation between us and God just grows wider and
wider and wider with every day.
And no matter what we do, no matter how hard we try,
nothing can put that back together again by our efforts.
And because of that, we can't look God in the face.
But the good news of the gospel is that Jesus came,
and Jesus was born in the flesh,
and that he lived the perfect life face-to-face with our,
heavenly father, not a moment of separation, not a reason for any separation. And they lived in
perfect unity to one another. And then on the cross, Jesus laid all of that down. Can you just
imagine when he hangs on the cross and he cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
he never knew a moment of separation from his father.
And on the cross, he traded his perfect relationship with his father
for our broken relationship with the father.
That if Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior,
if you trust him in his love and you trust his grace,
and you trust that the spirit comes into you and works in you,
what you are saying is that Jesus, you are my mediator.
You are the one that brokers the relationship with the father for me.
That when God the Father looks at you,
he sees you as he sees his perfect son.
That everything necessary for you to have a relationship with God,
the price that needed to be paid was fully paid and God is fully satisfied.
And when God looks at you because of the work of Jesus Christ,
He's fully satisfied in you.
And the invitation is this.
Do you want the love of God?
Do you want the deep-seated need to be accepted
that is buried deep in your soul to be met?
Do you want to know that you are accepted,
not based on your efforts,
but on the free, unmerited, unearned grace of God?
Do you want to know that you don't have to wonder,
is God with me,
but you can actually have God in you and in your life at every moment.
Do you want the assurance sealed in the resurrection of Jesus
that your relationship with God the Father is restored and put back together?
That you can see God face to face and yet live now and forever with him.
And that can be yours today.
That offer is for you.
So what I wanted you to do is I want you to bow your heads.
And if you have never trusted Jesus to be the one to bring you to the Father,
to be the way for you, then would you raise your hand right now for the first time you want Jesus to be your Savior,
to be your Lord, to be the one that mediates, would you raise your hand up high and say,
Jesus, make a way for me?
I can't make a way on my own.
Heavenly Father, thank you.
Thank you that you sent your son, Jesus Christ,
at just the right moment to be born in the flesh,
to live the perfect life, to die the death we deserve,
to be raised to new and everlasting life,
and to offer that life with you to us by grace through faith.
Thank you.
we're so grateful that you would do that for us.
We don't deserve it.
And we love you for it.
And we adore you for it.
And the affections of our heart explode to you because of it.
And so, Lord, I pray in the Christmas season,
in the midst of all the hurriedness and all the busyness,
that you would keep our eyes by the power of your spirit fixed on Jesus,
the pioneer and the perfector of our fission.
faith. And you would assure us that we can know you forever and always. And we pray it in Jesus
name. Amen. So we're going to celebrate communion. Communion is a celebration of that love and that grace,
of that power, the work that Jesus did to bring us to the Father. And on the night that Jesus was
betrayed, he took bread. He's with his best friends, celebrating a
meal that the Jewish people had celebrated for generations called Passover. He took the bread and he broke
it. And he looked at him and he said, this is my body. I came into the world born in the flesh.
This is my body which is broken for you. I died so that you don't have to. I was forsaken
so that you could be loved.
And then he took a cup
and he said, this is the cup of the new covenant.
Not the old covenant.
Not a covenant of works, not a covenant of earning,
not a covenant of striving,
not a covenant of grasping
to try to get it right with God.
This is a new covenant.
And covenant is a one-sided promise.
It's a unilateral declaration.
It's grace.
and he says this is a new covenant
sealed in my blood
for the forgiveness of sins
that in Jesus Christ
the power of the spirit when we break this bread
and we drink from this cup
what we're declaring is that Jesus
you are the one
that provides forgiveness from my past
gives me a new identity
and sets me into a new future
And so when you're ready, you stand up, come out your right, come down, rip off a piece of bread, dip it in,
and then as you eat it, you eat it declaring faith that Jesus is that for you.
So would you stand and let's worship by sharing communion and singing together?