1 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:40,000 One little town, a bed and a hand, looks like another time of night. 2 00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:54,000 We're walking deep and dreaming asleep, the giant sun lights up the sky. 3 00:00:54,000 --> 00:01:08,000 While you're hiding in the dark, may it shine from heaven right in your eyes. 4 00:01:08,000 --> 00:01:24,000 Oh the king has left his throne and is sleeping in a manger tonight, tonight. 5 00:01:24,000 --> 00:01:38,000 Oh Bethlehem, won't you admit that you were sleeping, but God became a man and stepped into your womb to bring. 6 00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:54,000 Oh Bethlehem, you will go down and hit your grave and sin you with no remorse for your king while you're sleeping. 7 00:01:54,000 --> 00:02:02,000 While you're sleeping. 8 00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:14,000 Mary shivers in the cold trying to keep the Savior warm. 9 00:02:14,000 --> 00:02:32,000 Oh my, the animals were seen by the waves because there was no room for them in the world they came to see. 10 00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:46,000 Oh Bethlehem, won't you admit that you were sleeping, but God became a man and stepped into your womb to bring. 11 00:02:46,000 --> 00:03:02,000 Oh Bethlehem, you will go down and hit your grave and sin you with no remorse for your king while you're sleeping. 12 00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:10,000 While you're sleeping. 13 00:03:10,000 --> 00:03:24,000 United States of America looks like another Saturday night. 14 00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:40,000 As the sun will set by the land of peace, save the trees and kill the children. 15 00:03:40,000 --> 00:04:06,000 While we're lying in the dark, as the shower comes to east and sky, for the bridegroom has returned, and the skin is dry and gray in the night. 16 00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:20,000 America, what will we miss while we are sleeping? Jesus come again and leave us all for weary days. 17 00:04:20,000 --> 00:04:38,000 America, we will go down and hit our grave as the nation with no room for the king. Will we be sleeping? 18 00:04:38,000 --> 00:04:44,000 Will we be sleeping? 19 00:04:44,000 --> 00:05:02,000 United States of America looks like another Saturday night. 20 00:05:14,000 --> 00:05:40,000 While in Bible college I had the opportunity to write a paper. It was an essay. It was supposed to be about five to six pages long. 21 00:05:40,000 --> 00:06:00,000 The topic of the essay was, why is it that God doesn't do miracles anymore? 22 00:06:00,000 --> 00:06:18,000 I thought about how I'm going to write for it. I wrote an essay that answered the question, why doesn't God do miracles anymore? 23 00:06:18,000 --> 00:06:33,000 I was in a class of 34 people and all the essays were turned in. The next day, when the professor was turning the essays back to us, he asked me to stay after class and didn't give me my essay. 24 00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:48,000 I thought, if I don't get a good grade because I didn't answer the question that was asked, it's okay. I definitely answered the way the Lord led me to. 25 00:06:48,000 --> 00:07:07,000 I walked up to him after class and there were a couple of students standing in the back and everyone else had been released. I asked him what he wanted to see me about. He said, if I understand you correctly, the thesis of your essay is that God still does miracles. 26 00:07:07,000 --> 00:07:22,000 I said, yes. It said that literally at the bottom of the first paragraph. Word for word, that's what it said. I said, yes, that's what it said. He said, I want you to know that out of 34 students in your class, you are the only person that wrote the essay that way. 27 00:07:22,000 --> 00:07:32,000 He said, you've seen actual miracles? You've seen miraculous things happen? I was a Christian maybe six or seven years by that time. I said, yes, I have seen actual miracles happen. 28 00:07:32,000 --> 00:07:39,000 I happily relate some of them to you because God is an awesome God and he still intervenes in the lives of his people. 29 00:07:39,000 --> 00:07:47,000 He said, you've really given me something to think about. You see this from a completely different angle and here's your paperback, which I had gotten an A. 30 00:07:47,000 --> 00:08:00,000 I left. That same professor, when I preach my closing sermon, as a senior when you graduate from Bible college and a preaching degree, you have to preach a sermon in front of everybody else, which is tough. 31 00:08:00,000 --> 00:08:06,000 This is a lot of people who are training to be preachers and pastors and you know you're being judged by everybody present and that kind of thing. 32 00:08:06,000 --> 00:08:15,000 I preached unknowingly from Matthew 18 and a lot of people that were there came out of the Church of Christ tradition and they preach Matthew 18 as excommunication text. 33 00:08:15,000 --> 00:08:22,000 That if somebody doesn't accept Christ, if they don't repent from their sin, then you excommunicate them. 34 00:08:22,000 --> 00:08:29,000 They're in the church, they do something wrong, somebody talks to them and then they don't listen. A couple people talk to them, they still don't listen and bring them to the church. 35 00:08:29,000 --> 00:08:36,000 After that you're not allowed to have anything to do with them anymore. You can't even see them on birthdays or holidays, you can't talk to them on the phone, they call, you don't answer, that kind of thing. 36 00:08:36,000 --> 00:08:41,000 Which of course is not what we believe that text is about and it's not what I preached that sermon on. 37 00:08:41,000 --> 00:08:51,000 When I was leaving that day, he and I got to the door at the same time and I tried to reach to hold the door for him to go out. 38 00:08:51,000 --> 00:09:01,000 He's an older gentleman, very respected in the community, whatever, and he scowled at me and pushed past me and slammed the door open himself because I had preached a text that he disagreed with. 39 00:09:01,000 --> 00:09:08,000 I thought, I'm in trouble. I left campus that day and I was thinking I would never go back. I didn't have to go back to graduate, except to graduate. 40 00:09:08,000 --> 00:09:12,000 I didn't have to do anything in between there and the actual walking ceremony. 41 00:09:12,000 --> 00:09:21,000 A couple weeks later I went back and I found out that I had really stirred the campus up and it was like a little revival going on. I didn't do it, obviously God did it, but that sermon really sparked things. 42 00:09:21,000 --> 00:09:32,000 They were talking about it, they were studying it and Bible study and everything and everybody was excited. One of my friends, a professor there, was super excited to see me and say, have you been back? Do you know what's going on? 43 00:09:32,000 --> 00:09:37,000 I'm like, oh no. He's like, it's been awesome and God's moving and it's been great. 44 00:09:37,000 --> 00:09:43,000 That day I returned my library books, which is why I had to go there and I was leaving and I ran into that professor. 45 00:09:43,000 --> 00:09:49,000 This is the guy who said, you have a strange take on things, but still gave me an A. 46 00:09:49,000 --> 00:09:57,000 This is the guy who slammed the door open angrily because I preached a text that I didn't preach it the way he necessarily would have or didn't believe it or whatever. 47 00:09:57,000 --> 00:10:11,000 He came up to me and he said, I want you to know that this much I've learned. He says, in every generation, sometimes in every place that we might be, there's somebody who's going to say, we need to look at this a little bit differently. 48 00:10:11,000 --> 00:10:23,000 That's what God used you to do with that sermon. He said, I believe in what God is doing here on our campus. I'm not everything that you said I don't necessarily agree with, but I believe that God used you to spark revival here. 49 00:10:23,000 --> 00:10:29,000 Compared to what I thought he was going to say to me, I was greatly relieved and I walked out very pleased. 50 00:10:29,000 --> 00:10:34,000 He is the one who handed me my diploma when I graduated from Bible College, which was abnormal. 51 00:10:34,000 --> 00:10:39,000 He stepped up, normally another person would, and he stepped up and took it from them. 52 00:10:39,000 --> 00:10:46,000 I don't think they planned that in advance or whatever, but he stepped up and shook my hand and hugged me and unleashed me upon the world. 53 00:10:46,000 --> 00:10:53,000 I'm telling you all of that to tell you that we're going to look at this text from a different angle today. This is a text that you've heard. 54 00:10:53,000 --> 00:10:56,000 You've heard the story, even if you've never read the text, you've heard the story. 55 00:10:56,000 --> 00:11:04,000 It's the story of Jesus's birth and the journey to Bethlehem and the shepherds, the night of the announcement and so on like that. 56 00:11:04,000 --> 00:11:12,000 This is a text that you've read. If you've been a Christian for a long time and Christmas is coming along, you've probably heard it preached a lot of different ways. 57 00:11:12,000 --> 00:11:17,000 I personally have never looked at it from this angle before and I have never preached it from this angle before. 58 00:11:17,000 --> 00:11:23,000 If you sat on my preacher for a long time, I've never done this before. This is something new to me. 59 00:11:23,000 --> 00:11:29,000 I'm not apologizing. That is not an apology. I'm just asking you to go into it with your thinking caps on. 60 00:11:29,000 --> 00:11:35,000 Let the Lord speak in your heart because I'm going to look at it from a different angle and God may want to use that in some awesome way in your life. 61 00:11:35,000 --> 00:11:39,000 Or God may want to show you something completely different. Let's go together. 62 00:11:39,000 --> 00:11:44,000 Maybe give me a little hoot or holler of amen as we go to Luke chapter 2. 63 00:11:44,000 --> 00:11:53,000 Amen. This is God's word. This is the story of the living word born in flesh who was Jesus Christ. 64 00:11:53,000 --> 00:12:03,000 We are grateful for everything that we are about to read. We are going to look at it in I think a fun and I hope engaging light today. 65 00:12:03,000 --> 00:12:10,000 What I'm going to do also as I preach this is I'm going to go through and as I preach the text I'm going to give you the points as we go through. 66 00:12:10,000 --> 00:12:14,000 Normally I do the text. I break it down and at the end I give you the points. I'm not going to do that today. 67 00:12:14,000 --> 00:12:24,000 That also is different. For the note takers in the room, I'll do my best to highlight the points and talk about them for a second so that you can get time to get it written down. 68 00:12:24,000 --> 00:12:26,000 If that's something you're doing. 69 00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:36,000 Beginning in Luke 2 verse 1, it says, now it came about in these days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth. 70 00:12:36,000 --> 00:12:44,000 Technically it's not all the inhabited earth, but Caesar saw himself like that and Rome ruled just about everywhere that they could reach. 71 00:12:44,000 --> 00:12:48,000 At that time there was still war on their borders and so on. 72 00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:56,000 But he wanted a census. He wanted all the people that were within his realm and he said all the inhabited earth as best as they could reach. 73 00:12:56,000 --> 00:13:01,000 This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 74 00:13:01,000 --> 00:13:06,000 And all were proceeding to register for the census, everyone to his own city. 75 00:13:06,000 --> 00:13:14,000 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem. 76 00:13:14,000 --> 00:13:18,000 Because he was of the house and the family of David. 77 00:13:18,000 --> 00:13:24,000 In order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him and was with child. 78 00:13:24,000 --> 00:13:28,000 So the first thing I want you to see is right here in this text. 79 00:13:28,000 --> 00:13:35,000 That journey for them, and this may not, when I say the number it's not going to sound like a huge distance to you, but if you had to walk it you would totally change your mind. 80 00:13:35,000 --> 00:13:41,000 That journey for them was going to mean overland on foot 90 miles. 81 00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:47,000 90 miles. Now as the crow flies distance is about 70 miles. 82 00:13:47,000 --> 00:13:51,000 But they had to follow the roads and go over hill and over dale. 83 00:13:51,000 --> 00:13:59,000 It was literally up and down hills. Like the old to the bus stop when my dad were a kid and they walked to the bus stop it was up and down hill both ways. 84 00:13:59,000 --> 00:14:01,000 It's like that. This literally was up and down hill. 85 00:14:01,000 --> 00:14:05,000 And they had to walk. Mary is very pregnant. 86 00:14:05,000 --> 00:14:08,000 And they covered a lot of ground. 87 00:14:08,000 --> 00:14:11,000 A lot of times you see she rode on a donkey. 88 00:14:11,000 --> 00:14:17,000 You know, whatever riding on a donkey for 90 miles is probably more uncomfortable than walking for 90 miles. 89 00:14:17,000 --> 00:14:21,000 Especially when you're pregnant. I'm told, though I've never been pregnant. 90 00:14:21,000 --> 00:14:25,000 So the bottom line is this. They had to go a really long distance. 91 00:14:25,000 --> 00:14:35,000 And I want to say to you that sometimes, this is the first point, sometimes the love of God looks like a long journey full of potential hardship. 92 00:14:35,000 --> 00:14:39,000 It is the love of God still. It's the love of God. 93 00:14:39,000 --> 00:14:44,000 But it looks like sometimes a long journey full of potential hardship. 94 00:14:44,000 --> 00:14:48,000 When I got saved, I said to my wife, she said, what is this going to mean when you get saved? 95 00:14:48,000 --> 00:14:50,000 And I said to her, I don't know. But I know it's going to change everything. 96 00:14:50,000 --> 00:14:53,000 I didn't mean it's going to be cake and beautiful. Right? 97 00:14:53,000 --> 00:14:55,000 Checks are just going to be flowing in the mailbox. 98 00:14:55,000 --> 00:15:00,000 I knew there was going to be work to do. I had work to do. I was a messed up dude with a lot of issues. 99 00:15:00,000 --> 00:15:03,000 I had changes to make. I had things to overcome. 100 00:15:03,000 --> 00:15:09,000 So some of that was to let God overcome those things in me, even as a non-Christian just about to accept Christ. 101 00:15:09,000 --> 00:15:15,000 I knew that. Sometimes the love of God looks like a long journey full of potential hardship. 102 00:15:15,000 --> 00:15:22,000 But I submit to you, it's more likely to look that way if you are far from home. 103 00:15:22,000 --> 00:15:26,000 Mary and Joseph were not journeying to a place unknown to Joseph. 104 00:15:26,000 --> 00:15:30,000 They were journeying to a place that was their ancestral home. 105 00:15:30,000 --> 00:15:33,000 Not hers technically maybe, but his. Right? 106 00:15:33,000 --> 00:15:37,000 So he was going home. Now that might have been better on another occasion. 107 00:15:37,000 --> 00:15:42,000 Because now he's bringing home his wife that he's not technically married to, but only betrothed to yet. 108 00:15:42,000 --> 00:15:45,000 And she's very pregnant. Right? 109 00:15:45,000 --> 00:15:50,000 So he's going home with his not yet wife, very pregnant. 110 00:15:50,000 --> 00:15:52,000 That's not the best way. Right? 111 00:15:52,000 --> 00:15:57,000 It's like when you have Christmas dinner and you don't know it and your daughter brings home her boyfriend. 112 00:15:57,000 --> 00:15:59,000 And you've never met him before. Never knew she had a boyfriend. 113 00:15:59,000 --> 00:16:02,000 And all of a sudden he walks in the front door and you're like, who is this? Right? 114 00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:08,000 But this is worse than that because she's a teenage girl, pregnant, unmarried. 115 00:16:08,000 --> 00:16:13,000 By the way, the normal result of that is stoning. Right? 116 00:16:13,000 --> 00:16:21,000 But they only have to go 90 miles to his ancestral home because it's 90 miles away. Right? 117 00:16:21,000 --> 00:16:25,000 If they lived near Bethlehem, they wouldn't be traveling nearly so far. 118 00:16:25,000 --> 00:16:29,000 And you can imagine the implications to that for us. 119 00:16:29,000 --> 00:16:34,000 Our love of God looks like a long journey full of potential hardship. 120 00:16:34,000 --> 00:16:37,000 Is more likely if you are far from home. 121 00:16:37,000 --> 00:16:40,000 And the truth is, we are far from home. 122 00:16:40,000 --> 00:16:46,000 Now, home is for us. It's prepared for us. 123 00:16:46,000 --> 00:16:49,000 God's taking care of it. We're going there. Right? 124 00:16:49,000 --> 00:16:51,000 If you're a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and you're in this room. 125 00:16:51,000 --> 00:16:54,000 If you're a Christian, you're in this room. You're going there. 126 00:16:54,000 --> 00:16:56,000 The author of Hebrews writes this. 127 00:16:56,000 --> 00:17:00,000 So let us go out to him outside the camp bearing his reproach. 128 00:17:00,000 --> 00:17:03,000 That means let's go outside the camp. Let's go outside the lines. 129 00:17:03,000 --> 00:17:07,000 Let's go outside where it's safe. Let's go risk ourselves. Right? 130 00:17:07,000 --> 00:17:11,000 You could say on a journey full of potential hardship. 131 00:17:11,000 --> 00:17:18,000 14. For here we do not have a lasting city and we are seeking the city which is to come. 132 00:17:18,000 --> 00:17:22,000 Sometimes what you're going to go through, the love of God and God loves you. 133 00:17:22,000 --> 00:17:25,000 You may go like, I don't know Jesus. I don't know that God loves me. 134 00:17:25,000 --> 00:17:28,000 God loves you even if you don't know Jesus. He loves you. 135 00:17:28,000 --> 00:17:31,000 He's waiting. He's just our Savior. Not just the Savior for the church. 136 00:17:31,000 --> 00:17:33,000 That's the whole message. He's the Savior for the church. 137 00:17:33,000 --> 00:17:36,000 But he's the Savior of the whole world. Right? 138 00:17:36,000 --> 00:17:38,000 God loves you just the same. 139 00:17:38,000 --> 00:17:40,000 And you may go, I don't even know if God loves me. 140 00:17:40,000 --> 00:17:43,000 But the truth, and it looks like a really long journey. 141 00:17:43,000 --> 00:17:46,000 But when you realize that this is not your place. 142 00:17:46,000 --> 00:17:47,000 This is not where you're going to wind up. 143 00:17:47,000 --> 00:17:50,000 You're not going to go in the ground and stay there. 144 00:17:50,000 --> 00:17:52,000 No one does that. Right? 145 00:17:52,000 --> 00:17:54,000 You go to heaven or hell. Those are your options. 146 00:17:54,000 --> 00:17:57,000 Nobody stays in the ground. Goes to sleep and just stays in the ground. 147 00:17:57,000 --> 00:18:00,000 We are seeking a city which is to come. 148 00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:07,000 And so it makes a lot of sense that sometimes God's love is going to look like us to a long journey full of potential hardship. 149 00:18:07,000 --> 00:18:11,000 Jesus said it this way. He answered and said, 150 00:18:11,000 --> 00:18:15,000 My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, 151 00:18:15,000 --> 00:18:19,000 then my servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews. 152 00:18:19,000 --> 00:18:23,000 But as it is, my kingdom is not of this realm. 153 00:18:23,000 --> 00:18:27,000 Jesus himself realized his kingdom was not of this world. 154 00:18:27,000 --> 00:18:32,000 There was no taking over everything and ruling everything and bossing people. 155 00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:35,000 That's not the image of Christ. Right? 156 00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:39,000 God does not give authority to people the way God gives authority, 157 00:18:39,000 --> 00:18:41,000 the way man gives authority to people. 158 00:18:41,000 --> 00:18:44,000 God gives authority to people so that they can serve others and care about others. 159 00:18:44,000 --> 00:18:50,000 And so sometimes God's love looks like a long journey full of potential hardship. 160 00:18:50,000 --> 00:18:54,000 The story goes on. 161 00:18:54,000 --> 00:18:56,000 Verse 6 says, 162 00:18:56,000 --> 00:19:03,000 And it came about that while they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. 163 00:19:03,000 --> 00:19:07,000 And she gave birth to her firstborn son, and she wrapped him in clothes and laid him in the manger, 164 00:19:07,000 --> 00:19:11,000 because there was no room for them in the inn. 165 00:19:11,000 --> 00:19:18,000 Sometimes the love of God looks like less comfortable lodging. 166 00:19:18,000 --> 00:19:21,000 There's times in life where I've been extremely uncomfortable. 167 00:19:21,000 --> 00:19:24,000 I remember when I was a young Christian, I was working at Pizza Hut, 168 00:19:24,000 --> 00:19:29,000 and my boss there decided that she had a vendetta against me, 169 00:19:29,000 --> 00:19:32,000 that she would come in my restaurant and try to find anything wrong 170 00:19:32,000 --> 00:19:34,000 and make me look bad in front of my employees, 171 00:19:34,000 --> 00:19:36,000 and she would go through the restaurant and cuss out, 172 00:19:36,000 --> 00:19:39,000 and then she had a man who worked for her, who was technically my boss, 173 00:19:39,000 --> 00:19:42,000 but she had usurped his authority. 174 00:19:42,000 --> 00:19:45,000 And so she would send him in, and he would go through, and he would cuss out my employees, 175 00:19:45,000 --> 00:19:47,000 and I would go behind, and I would smooth ruffled feathers. 176 00:19:47,000 --> 00:19:51,000 Good employees, hard-working employees, guys who work eight hours nonstop, 177 00:19:51,000 --> 00:19:53,000 bust their butts and make that restaurant successful, 178 00:19:53,000 --> 00:19:56,000 and they go through and cuss them out, and I would go through and smooth it. 179 00:19:56,000 --> 00:19:58,000 And one day she pulled me in the walk-in closet, and she said, 180 00:19:58,000 --> 00:20:00,000 You know what your problem is? 181 00:20:00,000 --> 00:20:04,000 And my heart's kind of beating, my palms are a little sweaty, 182 00:20:04,000 --> 00:20:06,000 and I'm like, I don't know, but... 183 00:20:06,000 --> 00:20:09,000 I read the Spirit, and I said, I don't know, but I know you're probably about to tell me. 184 00:20:09,000 --> 00:20:11,000 And I said, Go ahead! 185 00:20:11,000 --> 00:20:14,000 And she said, Your problem is you're not afraid of me. 186 00:20:14,000 --> 00:20:17,000 And in that moment I realized I was not afraid of her. 187 00:20:17,000 --> 00:20:21,000 She could have fired me on the spot, cut off my paychecks like that. 188 00:20:21,000 --> 00:20:24,000 And this was the career I thought I would retire from at that time, 189 00:20:24,000 --> 00:20:27,000 but at that time I didn't know God was calling me into the ministry. 190 00:20:27,000 --> 00:20:32,000 Sometimes God's love looks like less comfortable lodging. 191 00:20:32,000 --> 00:20:35,000 Where you are is not always going to be comfortable. 192 00:20:35,000 --> 00:20:38,000 In your body, it may not work the way you want it to. 193 00:20:38,000 --> 00:20:40,000 In your mind, it may not work the way you want it to. 194 00:20:40,000 --> 00:20:44,000 In your relationships, they may not do what you want them to do. 195 00:20:44,000 --> 00:20:50,000 Sometimes God's love looks like less comfortable lodging. 196 00:20:50,000 --> 00:20:54,000 But it's more likely to be that way if you are still far from home, 197 00:20:54,000 --> 00:20:57,000 even near your earthly roots. 198 00:20:57,000 --> 00:21:01,000 Even when you are fairly settled in and things are pretty comfortable, 199 00:21:01,000 --> 00:21:03,000 when the TV's playing the thing you like to watch, 200 00:21:03,000 --> 00:21:06,000 or the music's in the background, the song you like to hear, 201 00:21:06,000 --> 00:21:09,000 or somebody's bought you the thing you like to get or whatever, 202 00:21:09,000 --> 00:21:13,000 and yet you're going to feel a certain lack of comfort, 203 00:21:13,000 --> 00:21:15,000 a certain uneasiness. 204 00:21:15,000 --> 00:21:19,000 If you start getting everything you want and you feel uneasy, 205 00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:24,000 it may be that you realize that you're not close to God 206 00:21:24,000 --> 00:21:28,000 just because you're close to your earthly roots. 207 00:21:28,000 --> 00:21:30,000 Jesus said it this way, He said, 208 00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:34,000 If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife 209 00:21:34,000 --> 00:21:37,000 and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, 210 00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:39,000 he cannot be my disciple. 211 00:21:39,000 --> 00:21:43,000 Jesus is not master of your circumstances alone. 212 00:21:43,000 --> 00:21:46,000 He is master of your circumstances. 213 00:21:46,000 --> 00:21:51,000 But not only that, He is master of your eternal existence. 214 00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:53,000 He is master of heaven and earth. 215 00:21:53,000 --> 00:21:55,000 He is master of all. 216 00:21:55,000 --> 00:21:58,000 And so sometimes you're going to be in places where you feel like, 217 00:21:58,000 --> 00:22:00,000 well, I ought to feel comfortable here. 218 00:22:00,000 --> 00:22:01,000 This ought to be fine. 219 00:22:01,000 --> 00:22:03,000 And yet you don't feel comfortable. 220 00:22:03,000 --> 00:22:07,000 Sometimes the love of God looks like less comfortable lodging, 221 00:22:07,000 --> 00:22:11,000 and it's more likely to do so if you are still far from home, 222 00:22:11,000 --> 00:22:13,000 even when you are near your earthly roots. 223 00:22:13,000 --> 00:22:19,000 They traveled 90 miles, they got there, and there was no room for them. 224 00:22:19,000 --> 00:22:26,000 Now, it's a pretty terrible thing to be in the stables and to lay in a manger. 225 00:22:26,000 --> 00:22:29,000 But what a lot of people don't know about this story is that inns in that day 226 00:22:29,000 --> 00:22:35,000 quite commonly offered one type of accommodation, the common room. 227 00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:37,000 So you slept with everybody else. 228 00:22:37,000 --> 00:22:39,000 You pay just a little coin, a very little. 229 00:22:39,000 --> 00:22:41,000 And the biggest place and the most available place, 230 00:22:41,000 --> 00:22:46,000 only the wealthy could truly afford a private room usually. 231 00:22:46,000 --> 00:22:48,000 And so they went to the inn thinking they would spend, 232 00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:52,000 and maybe it could afford or maybe out of charity receive an inn, 233 00:22:52,000 --> 00:22:54,000 and there was no room for them. 234 00:22:54,000 --> 00:22:56,000 And there was no room for them in the common room, 235 00:22:56,000 --> 00:22:57,000 which wouldn't have been good anyway, 236 00:22:57,000 --> 00:22:59,000 because who wants to have a baby amongst 30 other strangers 237 00:22:59,000 --> 00:23:03,000 on bedrolls on the common room floor? 238 00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:05,000 So the stable was a form of provision. 239 00:23:05,000 --> 00:23:07,000 The manger was a form of provision. 240 00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:09,000 The swaddling clothes were a form of provision. 241 00:23:09,000 --> 00:23:11,000 But yeah, we see it. 242 00:23:11,000 --> 00:23:13,000 We realize they were uncomfortable, 243 00:23:13,000 --> 00:23:18,000 and sometimes the love of God looks like less comfortable lodging. 244 00:23:18,000 --> 00:23:26,000 Sometimes the love of God looks like being asked to surrender your few treasures, 245 00:23:26,000 --> 00:23:28,000 the little bit that you've got going. 246 00:23:28,000 --> 00:23:31,000 So there they are. 247 00:23:31,000 --> 00:23:35,000 She's wrapping her baby in swaddling clothes and laying him in a manger. 248 00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:38,000 She's probably 17 by now. 249 00:23:38,000 --> 00:23:41,000 She's not married, betrothed, but not married. 250 00:23:41,000 --> 00:23:43,000 She's never laying with a man, but she's giving birth. 251 00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:46,000 She lost literally everything that she could possibly, 252 00:23:46,000 --> 00:23:49,000 she lost her reputation, she had to give up her pride, 253 00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:53,000 she lost the value of her virginity, not her virginity, 254 00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:56,000 because she is a virgin, but she lost the value of it. 255 00:23:56,000 --> 00:23:59,000 In the community, people know that she's having a baby, 256 00:23:59,000 --> 00:24:02,000 and so they look at her and go, you can't be a virgin having a baby, 257 00:24:02,000 --> 00:24:05,000 even though she actually was a virgin. 258 00:24:05,000 --> 00:24:07,000 She could possibly have given up her life. 259 00:24:07,000 --> 00:24:10,000 When Mary says to the angel, 260 00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:14,000 Behold, the bond slave of the Lord may it be done to me according to your word, 261 00:24:14,000 --> 00:24:17,000 and then the angel departed from her, 262 00:24:17,000 --> 00:24:21,000 when that happened, that was in response to God telling her 263 00:24:21,000 --> 00:24:27,000 what he was going to do, and that he was already doing something amazing in Elizabeth's life. 264 00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:31,000 And the last thing the angel says to Mary before she says, 265 00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:36,000 So let it be, is, nothing is impossible with God. 266 00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:39,000 And the angel says, Nothing is impossible with God, 267 00:24:39,000 --> 00:24:43,000 and she says, Behold, your bond slave of the Lord may it be done to me according to your word. 268 00:24:43,000 --> 00:24:48,000 I submit to you, if we would have that attitude about the things in our life when they are uncomfortable, 269 00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:53,000 about the lodgings of our life when they are not going the way we would like them to go, 270 00:24:53,000 --> 00:24:56,000 we would handle things with a lot more peace and grace. 271 00:24:56,000 --> 00:25:00,000 Do you not understand that sometimes you're going to be uncomfortable? 272 00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:04,000 And it's more likely that you'll be uncomfortable if your home is far away, 273 00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:08,000 even when you are near your roots and things seem to be going well for you. 274 00:25:08,000 --> 00:25:13,000 In fact, if you get too comfortable here, you may not want to go there 275 00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:17,000 because you don't know how awesome it's going to be in comparison to what we have here. 276 00:25:17,000 --> 00:25:21,000 Oh boy, that would be a mistake. 277 00:25:21,000 --> 00:25:29,000 Jesus said to God the night of his arrest, Thy will not my will be done, Matthew 26, 39. 278 00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:34,000 And Jesus taught us to pray similarly every day in the Lord's prayer. 279 00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:39,000 Thy will be done here on the earth as it is in heaven. 280 00:25:39,000 --> 00:25:42,000 Jesus said, for whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, 281 00:25:42,000 --> 00:25:46,000 but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 282 00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:50,000 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? 283 00:25:50,000 --> 00:25:54,000 Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? 284 00:25:54,000 --> 00:26:04,000 Understand that sometimes the love of God looks like discomfort in your lodgings. 285 00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:09,000 And the earth is not the way you would want it to be. 286 00:26:09,000 --> 00:26:19,000 And that is much more likely if you are still far from home, even near your earthly comforts. 287 00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:22,000 A little further in the story then. 288 00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:27,000 We've gotten as far as there is no room in the inn, and now we're going to change the scene. 289 00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:30,000 Cut scene. Let's go out into the middle of nowhere. 290 00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:35,000 Verse 8. And in the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields, 291 00:26:35,000 --> 00:26:38,000 and keeping watch over their flock by night. 292 00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:42,000 And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, 293 00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:45,000 and they were terribly frightened. 294 00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:50,000 And the angel said to them, Do not be afraid, for behold I bring you good news of a great joy, 295 00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:55,000 which shall be for all people. For today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, 296 00:26:55,000 --> 00:26:58,000 who is Christ the Lord. 297 00:26:58,000 --> 00:27:01,000 We'll stop at 11 for a moment. 298 00:27:01,000 --> 00:27:09,000 Understand that sometimes the love of God looks like a grand message powerfully proclaimed in your life. 299 00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:13,000 I can't tell you the number of times I've been sitting under preaching, or studying a sermon, 300 00:27:13,000 --> 00:27:17,000 or writing a lesson for a Tuesday night, or coming here and somebody else is teaching on a Tuesday night, 301 00:27:17,000 --> 00:27:21,000 or coming here and somebody else is preaching on a Sunday morning, 302 00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:26,000 and God goes, Dan, listen up, I've got a word for you. 303 00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:28,000 And I go, ah. 304 00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:33,000 And I'm stricken, like a sword through my heart, that then empowers me, 305 00:27:33,000 --> 00:27:39,000 and I rise again from the ashes like the phoenix, and live brightly after God delivered a grand message 306 00:27:39,000 --> 00:27:42,000 powerfully proclaimed in my life. 307 00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:51,000 But notice, that is more likely if you are of a lowly station, humbly willing to hear and believe and respond. 308 00:27:51,000 --> 00:27:57,000 And whether you are of a lowly station, and humbly willing to hear and believe and respond like those shepherds, 309 00:27:57,000 --> 00:28:01,000 that is up to you. 310 00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:05,000 We don't have any doctors in our church, 311 00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:09,000 but if we had a doctor in our church who was medically trained, 312 00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:15,000 and making a couple hundred grand a year maybe doing brain surgery, or open heart surgery, or whatever, 313 00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:21,000 that doctor would have to make, whether it be a man or woman, would have to make an intentional decision 314 00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:26,000 to come to God humbly, willing to hear and believe and respond for what God's saying, 315 00:28:26,000 --> 00:28:33,000 and if that person does that, then they are more likely to receive God's grand message powerfully proclaimed in their life. 316 00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:37,000 If you would say, well I never have, then I ask you, what are you doing? 317 00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:40,000 Do you not understand that the Word of God is exactly that? 318 00:28:40,000 --> 00:28:44,000 Every time you pick up your Bible, God may just speak into your circumstances, 319 00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:49,000 that the God of heaven who spoke into creation everything that ever was created, 320 00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:54,000 might speak into our lives, that is grand in and of itself. 321 00:28:54,000 --> 00:29:02,000 Would you be humbly willing to hear and believe and respond like these shepherds? 322 00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:08,000 In Luke 5 Jesus answered and said to them, it's not those who are well who need a physician, 323 00:29:08,000 --> 00:29:14,000 but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. 324 00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:18,000 Alright, listen now, this is what you will not hear me say often, I'm going to say it very clearly. 325 00:29:18,000 --> 00:29:27,000 If you're in this room, and you have never sinned, you don't need the Jesus I preach. 326 00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:34,000 You don't need it. Why are you here? If you are righteous, if you walk well, 327 00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:40,000 if you do everything right and you never get it wrong, saved by your own admission or not, 328 00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:45,000 if you say I believe in Jesus and that's why I walk rightly and I no longer have sinned, 329 00:29:45,000 --> 00:29:52,000 you don't need Jesus. Jesus did not come for those people who think that they are perfect, 330 00:29:52,000 --> 00:29:57,000 they are complete and they've got it all together. No, they've got their own physician. 331 00:29:57,000 --> 00:30:01,000 It is their life, it is what they are going through, it is their own talents or abilities, 332 00:30:01,000 --> 00:30:08,000 also gifts from God, I understand, but they've figured out a way and they don't need Jesus. 333 00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:16,000 But if you would first recognize that you need Jesus, and the word says very clearly by the way, 334 00:30:16,000 --> 00:30:18,000 that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. 335 00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:24,000 John wrote that if you say you have no sin, you make God out to be a liar. 336 00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:31,000 You best decide where you stand, because if you don't need Jesus, then you can't have Jesus. 337 00:30:31,000 --> 00:30:36,000 And if you can't have Jesus, you can't go to heaven, you can't have abundant life, 338 00:30:36,000 --> 00:30:47,000 you can't have forgiveness of sins, for without Jesus, there is no other sacrifice for sins. 339 00:30:47,000 --> 00:30:51,000 Sometimes the love of God looks like a grand message, powerfully proclaimed in your life, 340 00:30:51,000 --> 00:31:01,000 but it's more likely to do so if you are of a lowly station, humbly willing to hear and believe and respond. 341 00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:04,000 Romans 3.23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. 342 00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:10,000 And Romans 6.23, the wages of the sin is death, you are separated from God because of your sin, 343 00:31:10,000 --> 00:31:14,000 but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. 344 00:31:14,000 --> 00:31:17,000 That's the second half of Romans 6.23. 345 00:31:17,000 --> 00:31:22,000 David wrote it this way, this is a longer text, this is Psalm 51, 346 00:31:22,000 --> 00:31:27,000 and a lot of scholarly experts believe that he wrote this after he had killed, 347 00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:31,000 had Uriah the Hittite killed, to steal his wife and the baby, 348 00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:37,000 and the baby dies or either while the baby was dying or after the baby dies or whatever, he wrote this. 349 00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:40,000 He said, Be gracious to me, O God, this is Psalm 51, 350 00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:43,000 according to your loving kindness, according to the greatness of your compassion, 351 00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:49,000 blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, 352 00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:54,000 for I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. 353 00:31:54,000 --> 00:31:57,000 Against you, you only have I sinned. 354 00:31:57,000 --> 00:32:00,000 Interesting, that phrase right there, and boy, a lot of time has been spent studying it. 355 00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:06,000 All sin is against God, even if it's against your fellow man, it is against God first and foremost. 356 00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:09,000 He says, Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, 357 00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:13,000 so that you are justified when you speak and blameless when you judge. 358 00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:17,000 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. 359 00:32:17,000 --> 00:32:24,000 Behold, you desire truth in the innermost being, and in the hidden part you will make me no wisdom. 360 00:32:24,000 --> 00:32:27,000 Purify me with Hisop and I shall be clean. 361 00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:29,000 Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. 362 00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:31,000 Make me to hear joy and gladness. 363 00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:33,000 Let the bones which you have broken rejoice. 364 00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:37,000 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. 365 00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:42,000 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 366 00:32:42,000 --> 00:32:47,000 Do not cast me away from your presence and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. 367 00:32:47,000 --> 00:32:51,000 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit. 368 00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:58,000 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will be converted to you. 369 00:32:58,000 --> 00:33:02,000 Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation. 370 00:33:02,000 --> 00:33:06,000 Then my tongue will joyfully sing of your righteousness. 371 00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:12,000 O Lord, open my lips that my mouth may declare your praise, for you do not delight in sacrifice. 372 00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:14,000 Otherwise I would give it. 373 00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:16,000 You are not pleased with burnt offering. 374 00:33:16,000 --> 00:33:22,000 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a broken and a contrite heart. 375 00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:25,000 O God, you will not despise. 376 00:33:25,000 --> 00:33:32,000 Now whether he sang that song, wrote that song, prayed that prayer, 377 00:33:32,000 --> 00:33:37,000 because he realized that only God could forgive his sins, 378 00:33:37,000 --> 00:33:40,000 or because he realized that he had truly sinned, it's all in there. 379 00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:46,000 What his reason was, the truth is that later David would be called a man after God's own heart. 380 00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:48,000 Have you sinned against God? 381 00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:50,000 Then hear this truth. 382 00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:53,000 Sometimes the love of God looks like a grand message, powerfully proclaimed in your life, 383 00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:56,000 Here is Jesus, he will save you. 384 00:33:56,000 --> 00:34:01,000 But it's more likely if you are of a lowly station, humbly willing to hear and believe and respond 385 00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:06,000 as these shepherds were. 386 00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:11,000 Oh my goodness, something is happening in this story. 387 00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:14,000 Something incredible, never seen before. 388 00:34:14,000 --> 00:34:17,000 Verse 12 says, And this will be a sign for you. 389 00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:20,000 You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. 390 00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:25,000 And suddenly there appeared with angels a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, 391 00:34:25,000 --> 00:34:31,000 Glory to God on the highest and on earth, peace among men with whom he is pleased. 392 00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:35,000 And it came about when the angel was gone away and them into heaven, 393 00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:39,000 that the shepherds began saying to one another, 394 00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:46,000 Let's go straight to Bethlehem then, and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us. 395 00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:53,000 And they came in, they found their way to Mary and Joseph and the baby as he lay in the manger. 396 00:34:53,000 --> 00:34:55,000 We'll stop there for a second. 397 00:34:55,000 --> 00:35:01,000 Sometimes the love of God looks like something completely new and unexpected. 398 00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:03,000 Something completely new and unexpected. 399 00:35:03,000 --> 00:35:11,000 I submit to you, my salvation did that to me even though I sat in the church pews for six months 400 00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:15,000 and digested everything that pastor was saying. 401 00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:19,000 Everything that he said, everything that he wrote, he broke down the text just like I do for you, 402 00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:21,000 just like we talk about in here, right? 403 00:35:21,000 --> 00:35:25,000 And I said to myself, I'm thinking about this and he would say, this is true. 404 00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:27,000 And I would say, I don't know if that's true. 405 00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:29,000 And I would make a note and I would go back and study it later. 406 00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:31,000 I was like, you know what? I think it is true. 407 00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:33,000 And I tried to debunk everything that he was saying. 408 00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:34,000 I tried to break it down. 409 00:35:34,000 --> 00:35:38,000 I knew eventually in my heart of heart that I was going to surrender my life to the Lord. 410 00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:40,000 It was going to look totally different. 411 00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:41,000 Something crazy was going to happen. 412 00:35:41,000 --> 00:35:43,000 I didn't know I wanted to do crazy. 413 00:35:43,000 --> 00:35:46,000 I mean, I knew I was crazy, but I didn't know that I wanted to do a new kind of crazy. 414 00:35:46,000 --> 00:35:47,000 You know what I'm saying? 415 00:35:47,000 --> 00:35:49,000 I didn't think that was really what I wanted to do. 416 00:35:49,000 --> 00:35:51,000 And so I was trying to debunk everything that he was saying. 417 00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:56,000 I was not that humbly willing to hear and believe person. 418 00:35:56,000 --> 00:36:00,000 I was not. 419 00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:06,000 But when I come to salvation, when I said, I'm going to give my life to the Lord, 420 00:36:06,000 --> 00:36:10,000 by that time what I was hearing really wasn't new. 421 00:36:10,000 --> 00:36:14,000 I mean, the Gospel was in almost every sermon. 422 00:36:14,000 --> 00:36:16,000 It was pretty clear and obvious. 423 00:36:16,000 --> 00:36:18,000 It really wasn't new. 424 00:36:18,000 --> 00:36:20,000 It wasn't a new message, per se. 425 00:36:20,000 --> 00:36:26,000 And truthfully, it wasn't really unexpected when I said to Sherri that everything is going to change. 426 00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:30,000 When I went that morning to try to walk down the aisle and I turned out my foot like this, 427 00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:32,000 I'm like, oh, I'm going to try it. 428 00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:34,000 I'm like, I can't possibly walk forward, but I know I have to. 429 00:36:34,000 --> 00:36:36,000 I can't possibly say no to God again. 430 00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:38,000 And I turned my foot out like that. 431 00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:39,000 And I was suddenly at the front of the room. 432 00:36:39,000 --> 00:36:40,000 I didn't expect that. 433 00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:44,000 And I was nose to nose with the pastor who had exactly three hairs between his eyebrows. 434 00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:45,000 I remember that. 435 00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:47,000 They were very big, very vivid hairs. 436 00:36:47,000 --> 00:36:48,000 I could see them very closely. 437 00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:50,000 I could smell his breath. 438 00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:52,000 I don't do that here, by the way. 439 00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:55,000 So if anybody's freaking out about this, like, if I'm going to give my life to the Lord later, 440 00:36:55,000 --> 00:36:56,000 Pastor Dan's going to breathe in my face. 441 00:36:56,000 --> 00:36:57,000 I don't do that. 442 00:36:57,000 --> 00:36:58,000 But that's what was going on. 443 00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:00,000 Maybe I was too close to him because I was so scared. 444 00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:01,000 I don't know. 445 00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:03,000 It was unexpected. 446 00:37:03,000 --> 00:37:07,000 And then as God changed everything, it became unexpected. 447 00:37:07,000 --> 00:37:08,000 All of it is new. 448 00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:11,000 When God said you're going to preach, I'm like, oh, no, I don't think so. 449 00:37:11,000 --> 00:37:15,000 And then here I am. 450 00:37:15,000 --> 00:37:21,000 Sometimes the love of God looks like something completely new and unexpected. 451 00:37:21,000 --> 00:37:28,000 But that's more likely if you are at the next step in a long process authored and guided by God. 452 00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:39,000 The birth of Jesus was prophesied in the Old Testament that it would be in Bethlehem. 453 00:37:39,000 --> 00:37:43,000 You know, when they go to Herod and Herod wants to know where and he consults the prophets and the seers. 454 00:37:43,000 --> 00:37:48,000 And they say, well, according to the Bible, according to the Old Testament, it's going to be in Bethlehem. 455 00:37:48,000 --> 00:37:56,000 And then later when the Magi come, over 300 or more prophecies. 456 00:37:56,000 --> 00:37:58,000 And some of them are about his life, not just about his birth. 457 00:37:58,000 --> 00:38:04,000 But the bottom line is this is not really new. 458 00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:09,000 It seems like something completely new and unexpected because while Mary might have hoped, 459 00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:15,000 she might have deigned to think it might be possible, while sinners the world over were hoping for some kind of a Messiah 460 00:38:15,000 --> 00:38:18,000 or a savior that could make a difference in them going to hell. 461 00:38:18,000 --> 00:38:24,000 While all that was true, it's a hard thing to expect. 462 00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:30,000 It's a hard thing to expect God to come in the flesh and become that sacrificial lamb to die for our sins. 463 00:38:30,000 --> 00:38:35,000 Even when the disciples were walking with him, they had a hard time expecting it. 464 00:38:35,000 --> 00:38:38,000 Right? 465 00:38:38,000 --> 00:38:43,000 So it's more likely for us to see God's love like something completely new and unexpected 466 00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:49,000 when it's the next step in a long process that he has authored and guided to bring us where we are. 467 00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:52,000 That's what Jesus' birth was. That's what the historic Messiah was. 468 00:38:52,000 --> 00:38:56,000 That's what the prophecies were. And Gabriel had already told her. 469 00:38:56,000 --> 00:38:59,000 And the angel had already told Joseph that it would be okay. 470 00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:07,000 Even now, Mary had treasured up in her heart the things that previously had been said about the coming Emmanuel. 471 00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:10,000 So she was already getting it a little bit. 472 00:39:10,000 --> 00:39:14,000 But this night in a stable, she surely didn't expect that. 473 00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:18,000 Wrapping a babe in swath and clothes, laying in the manger, she didn't expect that. 474 00:39:18,000 --> 00:39:22,000 Shepherds to come in and now say, guess what we just saw in the sky? 475 00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:27,000 You won't believe this, because that's never happened before. 476 00:39:27,000 --> 00:39:33,000 This is maybe 17 years old. That's just never happened before. 477 00:39:33,000 --> 00:39:36,000 And God's love sometimes looks completely new and expected. 478 00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:38,000 But the truth is, God's been working His plan. 479 00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:41,000 The person who shared the Gospel with you, or if you're hearing it for the first time today, 480 00:39:41,000 --> 00:39:43,000 that person received the Gospel from somebody else. 481 00:39:43,000 --> 00:39:45,000 We got it from somebody else. We got it from somebody else. 482 00:39:45,000 --> 00:39:51,000 Going all the way back to, you guessed it, Jesus. 483 00:39:51,000 --> 00:40:01,000 Who, by the way, heard the prophecies of His own birth, life, death, burial, and resurrection from people before Him. 484 00:40:01,000 --> 00:40:06,000 This isn't a new thing. It's the same thing. 485 00:40:06,000 --> 00:40:12,000 But it seems new, because God has authored and guided the process all the way along. 486 00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:15,000 His love looks like that sometimes. 487 00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:18,000 And the Church, Jesus said it this way, He said a new commandment. 488 00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:21,000 And He said a new commandment, although as He said it, I always read this, 489 00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:24,000 I go, well it's not really a new commandment, so what does He mean? 490 00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:26,000 I'm going to tell you what I think He means. 491 00:40:26,000 --> 00:40:30,000 He says, the new commandment I give you, that you love one another even as I have loved you, 492 00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:34,000 that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, 493 00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:37,000 if you have love for one another. 494 00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:39,000 It's John 13, 34, and 35. 495 00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:43,000 So is it a new commandment of Jesus that He's saying right then that they love one another? 496 00:40:43,000 --> 00:40:46,000 No, not really. So what does He mean? 497 00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:51,000 He means that sometimes God's love looks completely new and unexpected 498 00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:56,000 when it is the next step in a long process authored and guided by Him. 499 00:40:56,000 --> 00:40:58,000 And then of course we have the Great Commission, 500 00:40:58,000 --> 00:41:00,000 which says, I therefore make disciples of all nations, 501 00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:02,000 baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, 502 00:41:02,000 --> 00:41:05,000 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you, 503 00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:07,000 and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. 504 00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:11,000 And that looks new, because the Holy Spirit came and took up residence 505 00:41:11,000 --> 00:41:14,000 and believers starting at Pentecost, we get the Holy Spirit, 506 00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:16,000 and when we get the Holy Spirit, we are new. 507 00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:19,000 It looks new because we are new, but the truth is it's not new, 508 00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:22,000 it was God's plan all along. 509 00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:27,000 We'll finish the text and go to the conclusion. 510 00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:29,000 I'll start reading again in 15. 511 00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:32,000 And it came about when the angels had gone away from them into heaven 512 00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:34,000 that the shepherds began saying to one another, 513 00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:36,000 let us go straight to Bethlehem then, 514 00:41:36,000 --> 00:41:39,000 and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us. 515 00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:45,000 And they came in haste and found their way to Mary and Joseph and the baby 516 00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:47,000 as he lay in the manger. 517 00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:49,000 And when they had seen this, they made known the statement 518 00:41:49,000 --> 00:41:52,000 which had been told them about this child. 519 00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:56,000 And all who heard it wondered at the things which were told them by the shepherds. 520 00:41:56,000 --> 00:41:58,000 Yeah, me too. 521 00:41:58,000 --> 00:42:03,000 Verse 19, but Mary treasured up all these things pondering them in her heart, 522 00:42:03,000 --> 00:42:06,000 and the shepherds went back, glorifying and praising God 523 00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:14,000 for all that they had heard and seen, just as had been told them. 524 00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:19,000 We can go on and talk about what God's love sometimes looked like, 525 00:42:19,000 --> 00:42:26,000 but it suffices to say that sometimes God's love looks like a wonderful story 526 00:42:26,000 --> 00:42:31,000 that some have a hard time believing or an easy time dismissing, 527 00:42:31,000 --> 00:42:35,000 while others know with certainty it's true 528 00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:39,000 and that it quite reasonably requires a response from us. 529 00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:45,000 Those shepherds, my goodness, they had to come to a stables in Bethlehem 530 00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:49,000 and tell Mary and Joseph, I doubt they told Jesus, 531 00:42:49,000 --> 00:42:56,000 I'm sure the talking was going on around him, but he was asleep probably. 532 00:42:56,000 --> 00:42:59,000 It's quite an ordeal to be born. 533 00:42:59,000 --> 00:43:02,000 And everyone else that was there, and probably anybody in the village, 534 00:43:02,000 --> 00:43:06,000 it was a pretty crazy thing, it was things going on, 535 00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:10,000 a sleepy town of Bethlehem, yeah, until that, right? 536 00:43:10,000 --> 00:43:14,000 And the shepherds said, let us tell you what we saw. 537 00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:18,000 And everybody was hearing them going, if there was just one of you, 538 00:43:18,000 --> 00:43:23,000 we'd be thinking you liar, because that's a crazy story, what you're saying. 539 00:43:23,000 --> 00:43:25,000 But there wasn't just one of them. 540 00:43:25,000 --> 00:43:28,000 And they weren't known for lying. 541 00:43:28,000 --> 00:43:32,000 In fact, in their culture, it was a very bad thing to bear false witness. 542 00:43:32,000 --> 00:43:37,000 And everyone was like, wow, this really happened. 543 00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:41,000 This is really happening. 544 00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:45,000 It was a story that people would have a hard time believing 545 00:43:45,000 --> 00:43:47,000 and an easy time dismissing. 546 00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:49,000 But others knew with certainty that it was true. 547 00:43:49,000 --> 00:43:53,000 Even Mary, she had to know absolutely in her heart 548 00:43:53,000 --> 00:43:55,000 that what they were saying was almost certainly true, 549 00:43:55,000 --> 00:44:00,000 because she'd met an angel, a thing that she never thought would happen in her lifetime. 550 00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:04,000 And Elizabeth had born a child in her old age, which had left at her coming 551 00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:10,000 and meeting Mary's son, who was still in the womb. 552 00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:19,000 A story like that, that's certainly true, requires a responsible response, don't you think? 553 00:44:19,000 --> 00:44:21,000 What are you going to do about it? 554 00:44:21,000 --> 00:44:23,000 The shepherds knew. 555 00:44:23,000 --> 00:44:25,000 We've got to go tell right now. 556 00:44:25,000 --> 00:44:27,000 That's what we're going to do. 557 00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:29,000 What a great message we have. 558 00:44:29,000 --> 00:44:31,000 We're going to go tell right now. 559 00:44:31,000 --> 00:44:38,000 Well, but they had come humbly and being willing to respond. 560 00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:43,000 They saw God's love as an amazing, powerful message to be delivered to you. 561 00:44:43,000 --> 00:44:51,000 And if you do, you see God's love as a story that some will find it easy to dismiss. 562 00:44:51,000 --> 00:44:55,000 You realize that people who are living in their sin and they're comfortable with it, 563 00:44:55,000 --> 00:44:57,000 they probably really don't want to hear about Jesus. 564 00:44:57,000 --> 00:44:59,000 They really don't need to hear about Jesus. 565 00:44:59,000 --> 00:45:03,000 You're saying, I shared Christ with a drug dealer, and he's like, 566 00:45:03,000 --> 00:45:04,000 I hear what you're saying. 567 00:45:04,000 --> 00:45:06,000 This was at the Life Station about 10 years ago. 568 00:45:06,000 --> 00:45:08,000 I hear what you're saying. 569 00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:11,000 But if I accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior as you're proposing, 570 00:45:11,000 --> 00:45:18,000 I said the very next day, there are 12 families, 12 families that I completely support with my trade. 571 00:45:18,000 --> 00:45:20,000 He meant selling drugs. 572 00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:23,000 And they will suddenly all have to go get jobs. 573 00:45:23,000 --> 00:45:26,000 They won't have anybody to pay their rent next month. 574 00:45:26,000 --> 00:45:31,000 Because if I accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, I'll have to stop selling drugs. 575 00:45:31,000 --> 00:45:34,000 And I said, yeah, I suppose you would have to do that. 576 00:45:34,000 --> 00:45:36,000 I said, but I don't think I would look at it that way. 577 00:45:36,000 --> 00:45:42,000 I would look at it as what does God want me to do and just trust that God is going to take care of it. 578 00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:45,000 God can provide for those 12 families, can't He? 579 00:45:45,000 --> 00:45:50,000 And he goes, yeah, I guess. 580 00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:54,000 That man did accept Christ, by the way, and he stopped selling drugs. 581 00:45:54,000 --> 00:45:59,000 And all 12 of those families broke off connection with Him and disowned Him. 582 00:45:59,000 --> 00:46:03,000 They wouldn't talk to Him, wouldn't take His calls or His texts. 583 00:46:03,000 --> 00:46:08,000 And He's still living for Jesus to this day. 584 00:46:08,000 --> 00:46:18,000 But He had so many enemies in town that He now lives out in, I get this right, Wauseon with His mother. 585 00:46:18,000 --> 00:46:21,000 Who was, by the way, very pleased with me. 586 00:46:21,000 --> 00:46:23,000 Very, very pleased. 587 00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:25,000 Because we shared the Gospel with Him. 588 00:46:25,000 --> 00:46:29,000 And He accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and got out of the drug trade. 589 00:46:29,000 --> 00:46:34,000 Sometime later, probably about five years ago, He went to jail for old charges. 590 00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:38,000 And so right now, He lives completely with a clean record. 591 00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:42,000 He doesn't sell drugs, doesn't have a criminal record, He's not running from any warrants. 592 00:46:42,000 --> 00:46:44,000 He lives a normal life. 593 00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:48,000 I submit sometimes He's probably uncomfortable with His lodgings. 594 00:46:48,000 --> 00:46:54,000 I submit sometimes He is very grateful that He came humbly willing to hear and respond. 595 00:46:54,000 --> 00:46:58,000 And I submit to you that because you don't know that man, 596 00:46:58,000 --> 00:47:05,000 the story I just told you to some people is considered fanciful and wild and hard to fathom. 597 00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:09,000 At one point in time, there was no less than four church planters, 598 00:47:09,000 --> 00:47:16,000 three of them in Toledo and one of them in Cleveland who were in our association or attached to New Heights, 599 00:47:16,000 --> 00:47:20,000 some of them, who were ex-drug dealers. 600 00:47:20,000 --> 00:47:21,000 All had stopped dealing drugs. 601 00:47:21,000 --> 00:47:23,000 One of them is still there. 602 00:47:23,000 --> 00:47:25,000 He's not attached to New Heights anymore, but he's in our association. 603 00:47:25,000 --> 00:47:29,000 Their churches established themselves, hope of glory. 604 00:47:29,000 --> 00:47:37,000 And he was spent 17 or 20, I get the numbers confused because there's so many of the different guys that went through it, years in jail. 605 00:47:37,000 --> 00:47:42,000 Perry Graves, who comes to New Heights, he's not a member right now, but he comes to New Heights all the time. 606 00:47:42,000 --> 00:47:45,000 He spent, I think it was 21 years in jail. 607 00:47:45,000 --> 00:47:47,000 Again, I get the numbers confused. 608 00:47:47,000 --> 00:47:50,000 He's an ex-drug dealer. 609 00:47:50,000 --> 00:47:52,000 They were very violent men. 610 00:47:52,000 --> 00:47:58,000 We used to have a biker outlaw, biker gang enforcer who gave his life to Christ. 611 00:47:58,000 --> 00:47:59,000 The list just goes on. 612 00:47:59,000 --> 00:48:06,000 Those stories are amazing and they're easily dismissed because they don't want to do what it is that God wants them to do. 613 00:48:06,000 --> 00:48:09,000 They don't want to be healed from their sin. 614 00:48:09,000 --> 00:48:16,000 But it's available for everybody, this grand conclusion. 615 00:48:16,000 --> 00:48:21,000 Jesus says it this way in Revelation 22. 616 00:48:21,000 --> 00:48:28,000 The Spirit and the Bride say come, and let the one who hears say come, and let the one who is thirsty come. 617 00:48:28,000 --> 00:48:32,000 Let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost. 618 00:48:32,000 --> 00:48:43,000 If we won't accept these things, then when love sometimes looks like an evil king killing babies, and it will in just a couple years in the same story that we're reading, 619 00:48:43,000 --> 00:48:50,000 we may begin to think that love doesn't exist at all or possibly worse, that even if love exists, people cannot know it. 620 00:48:50,000 --> 00:48:55,000 You realize that if you can't accept that sometimes the love of God looks like a grand message, 621 00:48:55,000 --> 00:49:08,000 but at other times the love of God looks like less comfortable lodging or a journey full of potential hardship or the need to surrender all of your treasures. 622 00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:12,000 If you can't accept that sometimes God looks like those things, 623 00:49:12,000 --> 00:49:23,000 then when God's love looks like an evil king killing every baby under the age of two, you're going to go, how can God be love? 624 00:49:23,000 --> 00:49:31,000 How can anyone believe that God loves mankind with the wars and the terrible things that have happened? 625 00:49:31,000 --> 00:49:35,000 How can it be so? 626 00:49:35,000 --> 00:49:47,000 But you're more likely to feel that way, to believe that way, if you miss the fact that human souls bound for heaven matter more to God than anyone else, 627 00:49:47,000 --> 00:49:55,000 anyone's inconvenience, anyone's treasures, anyone's personal preferences more than anything at all. 628 00:49:55,000 --> 00:50:00,000 Jesus Christ did not come to earth to make the church comfortable. 629 00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:05,000 Jesus Christ did not come to church to solve your daily problems. 630 00:50:05,000 --> 00:50:10,000 Jesus Christ was not born to make you feel better. 631 00:50:10,000 --> 00:50:12,000 Oh, He'll do that. 632 00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:17,000 Jesus came that we might have life and life more abundant. 633 00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:27,000 His words, and life and life more abundant, sometimes looks like uncomfortable lodgings, giving up treasures, releasing preferences, 634 00:50:27,000 --> 00:50:33,000 sometimes looks like terrible sacrifice. 635 00:50:33,000 --> 00:50:40,000 The love of God looked like terrible sacrifice when Jesus Himself went to the cross. 636 00:50:40,000 --> 00:50:52,000 But somehow along the way, the church began to believe that we do not need to be united with Jesus in the tough things, 637 00:50:52,000 --> 00:51:06,000 only in the easy things, only in the comfort, only in that which makes us feel prideful, only in happiness. 638 00:51:06,000 --> 00:51:17,000 But sometimes God's love looks more like this story. 639 00:51:17,000 --> 00:51:21,000 What about you? 640 00:51:21,000 --> 00:51:37,000 Are you prepared to join me in recognizing that sometimes the very things that we say suck are actually God's love displayed? 641 00:51:37,000 --> 00:51:41,000 When you look back at the worst moments of your life, can you say, 642 00:51:41,000 --> 00:51:54,000 that suffering that I endured, that thing that I went through, that problem that I experienced, that actually could be the love of God? 643 00:51:54,000 --> 00:52:04,000 Jesus said this eternal life, this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 644 00:52:04,000 --> 00:52:07,000 Where are your comforts in there? 645 00:52:07,000 --> 00:52:09,000 Where are your bills paid? 646 00:52:09,000 --> 00:52:11,000 Where is your health? 647 00:52:11,000 --> 00:52:17,000 This is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 648 00:52:17,000 --> 00:52:19,000 God wants to bring us home. 649 00:52:19,000 --> 00:52:27,000 For that reason, love looks like a lot of things that we might not expect or want to accept because we cannot see the end. 650 00:52:27,000 --> 00:52:33,000 But you can and you must believe in the end of the story. 651 00:52:33,000 --> 00:52:41,000 And when and if you do, you will see the love of God everywhere. 652 00:52:41,000 --> 00:52:48,000 Indeed, he will teach us to be his love embodied everywhere. 653 00:52:48,000 --> 00:52:51,000 That's what he said. 654 00:52:51,000 --> 00:52:56,000 Paul wrote it this way, who will separate us from the love of Christ? 655 00:52:56,000 --> 00:53:01,000 Will tribulation, that means when things go wrong, or distress, that means when you're under attack, 656 00:53:01,000 --> 00:53:05,000 or persecution, when you're under attack for your faith, or famine, when you're going hungry, 657 00:53:05,000 --> 00:53:10,000 or nakedness, when you don't have what you need, supplies, clothing, whatever, or peril, when you're at risk, 658 00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:14,000 or sword, when you're under physical attack by enemies. 659 00:53:14,000 --> 00:53:19,000 Just as it is written, for your sake we are being put to death all day long. 660 00:53:19,000 --> 00:53:27,000 We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered, but in all these things we are overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us. 661 00:53:27,000 --> 00:53:35,000 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, 662 00:53:35,000 --> 00:53:41,000 nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God, 663 00:53:41,000 --> 00:53:44,000 which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 664 00:53:44,000 --> 00:53:56,000 That was written by a man who endured the kind of suffering that you and I don't have enough time left on this earth to experience. 665 00:53:56,000 --> 00:54:08,000 The question is, are you willing with me to accept that sometimes the love of God looks like that which you don't want to accept, 666 00:54:08,000 --> 00:54:12,000 that which you do not expect? 667 00:54:12,000 --> 00:54:17,000 I confess to you that I have struggled with this sermon series, and I don't know if you realize it was a series, 668 00:54:17,000 --> 00:54:23,000 I called it the Advent Series, basically I began talking about peace, and I talked about hope, and I talked about joy, 669 00:54:23,000 --> 00:54:29,000 and today I'm talking about love. Those are the four themes of Advent leading up to Christmas. 670 00:54:29,000 --> 00:54:37,000 I'm saying to you that the last several weeks my peace has been under attack. My joy was under attack. 671 00:54:37,000 --> 00:54:41,000 This week I had a moment in time where something went wrong and it was unexpected. 672 00:54:41,000 --> 00:54:47,000 I wasn't expecting it to go wrong. It was something I did, it was a stupid thing that I did, and it caught me off guard, and I got mad. 673 00:54:47,000 --> 00:54:53,000 I got real mad, like, peel your tires mad. I actually did peel my tires. 674 00:54:53,000 --> 00:54:59,000 I stepped on the gas too hard and peeled my tires out of my driveway as if that mattered to God. 675 00:54:59,000 --> 00:55:08,000 I got mad, and I began to pray, and I said, Lord, I need my joy. 676 00:55:08,000 --> 00:55:14,000 And I pictured in my mind my joy as I preached about last Sunday, rising up like a beast, 677 00:55:14,000 --> 00:55:22,000 and consuming the anger that was in my heart, the frustration that I was experiencing. 678 00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:33,000 And once that was done, joy was in place and I was beyond it, feeling a little stupid for what I had done. 679 00:55:33,000 --> 00:55:39,000 But while I was in the process, I remember having thoughts like, you shouldn't be preaching. 680 00:55:39,000 --> 00:55:44,000 You're doing exactly what you're failing to do, exactly what you're telling people to do. 681 00:55:44,000 --> 00:55:50,000 Yeah, you understand the word, but understanding it, you know, means standing under it, and you're not standing under it. 682 00:55:50,000 --> 00:55:53,000 See how angry you are over this silly thing? 683 00:55:53,000 --> 00:56:01,000 Ultimately, that mistake I made, by the way, cost me $11.99, and for $11.99 I got mad enough to break something. 684 00:56:01,000 --> 00:56:10,000 Mad enough to peel my tires for $11.99. 685 00:56:10,000 --> 00:56:14,000 Do you believe the grand story of God? 686 00:56:14,000 --> 00:56:18,000 Do you believe that He's willing to be with you through the stuff that you're going to go through? 687 00:56:18,000 --> 00:56:22,000 Because that's exactly what Immanuel means, God with us. 688 00:56:22,000 --> 00:56:26,000 Do you believe that when you got saved, the Holy Spirit came and took up residence in you, 689 00:56:26,000 --> 00:56:33,000 and part of the fruit that He produces is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness? 690 00:56:33,000 --> 00:56:35,000 Yeah, come on. 691 00:56:35,000 --> 00:56:41,000 Or are you a little more like Herod? 692 00:56:41,000 --> 00:56:47,000 Under the right circumstances, you too would kill the babies, 693 00:56:47,000 --> 00:56:52,000 so as not to have your kingship of your life threatened. 694 00:56:52,000 --> 00:56:58,000 The prophets came and they told the story, and everybody was amazed, and now you've heard the story again today. 695 00:56:58,000 --> 00:57:01,000 And it's a pretty amazing story. 696 00:57:01,000 --> 00:57:09,000 It's a story about how sometimes God's love doesn't look the way we would want it to. 697 00:57:09,000 --> 00:57:17,000 But trust me, it looks exactly like it needs to, for us to repent and turn to Him, 698 00:57:17,000 --> 00:57:23,000 and serve Him daily, and suffer as by necessity we must, 699 00:57:23,000 --> 00:57:27,000 and go without when by necessity we must, 700 00:57:27,000 --> 00:57:35,000 and deliver a message that people need to hear, because they're going to hell. 701 00:57:35,000 --> 00:57:39,000 And they may or they may not accept it, and as we talked about on Tuesday night, 702 00:57:39,000 --> 00:57:43,000 our job isn't only to testify to human beings, 703 00:57:43,000 --> 00:57:51,000 but to testify to the angels, and evil spirits, and demons, and all the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. 704 00:57:51,000 --> 00:57:55,000 And I say this, I'm not going anywhere. 705 00:57:55,000 --> 00:58:01,000 I may screw up time and again, and God will convict me out of His Word time and again. 706 00:58:01,000 --> 00:58:05,000 Can you say the same? I can't say it. 707 00:58:05,000 --> 00:58:13,000 Can you say the same? That you're here, that you're humbly ready for God to work in you, 708 00:58:13,000 --> 00:58:22,000 that you're willing to respond, even when God's love doesn't look the way you want it to. 709 00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:31,000 Well, Mary and Joseph were, and thank goodness Mary was, and Jesus was, and thank God Jesus was, 710 00:58:31,000 --> 00:58:38,000 because it's through Him that we can be saved, and He invites us to do the same for others, 711 00:58:38,000 --> 00:58:41,000 as others have done for us. 712 00:58:41,000 --> 00:58:46,000 This time I ask the praise team to come forward and lead us in our final hymn of the service, 713 00:58:46,000 --> 00:58:49,000 and this is your opportunity to respond, the Lord has spoken your heart. 714 00:58:49,000 --> 00:58:56,000 Have you not accepted that some of the things that you're experiencing in your life 715 00:58:56,000 --> 00:59:01,000 the way that you want them to could actually be God's love? 716 00:59:01,000 --> 00:59:09,000 Every bit of discomfort that we experience can certainly be testimony that there is a better place. 717 00:59:09,000 --> 00:59:15,000 Every bit of pain and suffering that we go through can certainly be testimony that our Savior, 718 00:59:15,000 --> 00:59:20,000 and who are much worse, paid a price for our sin, 719 00:59:20,000 --> 00:59:26,000 that you surrender your life to the Lord and let Him love you the way He wants to love you. 720 00:59:26,000 --> 00:59:33,000 If He loves you the way He wants to love you, you'll be eternal. 721 00:59:33,000 --> 00:59:36,000 As we sing, if the Lord is speaking in your heart, when you respond, 722 00:59:36,000 --> 00:59:38,000 I'll be here to receive you, I will not breathe on your face, 723 00:59:38,000 --> 00:59:41,000 and I don't think I have any hair between my eyebrows, so we'll be all good. 724 00:59:41,000 --> 00:59:44,000 You come, check the Lord. 725 00:59:44,000 --> 00:59:51,000 You stand with me and sing this song, and the Lord speaks in your heart, and when you respond, then you respond. 726 00:59:51,000 --> 01:00:05,000 As little children we would dream of Christmas morning, 727 01:00:05,000 --> 01:00:15,000 and all the gifts and toys we knew we'd find, but we never realized. 728 01:00:15,000 --> 01:00:28,000 The day before we blessed the night, gave us the greatest gift of our lives. 729 01:00:28,000 --> 01:00:35,000 We were the reason that He gave His life. 730 01:00:35,000 --> 01:00:42,000 We were the reason that He suffered and died. 731 01:00:42,000 --> 01:00:57,000 To a world that was lost, He gave a warning again, to show us some reason to live. 732 01:00:57,000 --> 01:01:02,000 As we sing, if the Lord is calling you to act, either to accept Jesus as your Lord, 733 01:01:02,000 --> 01:01:08,000 then you come and pray again, or to be baptized, or to enter the church, 734 01:01:08,000 --> 01:01:15,000 or to embark on some mission for Him to undertake something that He's calling you to, 735 01:01:15,000 --> 01:01:18,000 then you respond to the Lord's will, and He needs you to respond to Him personally, 736 01:01:18,000 --> 01:01:23,000 hear from God, and do what it is that God will have you do, whatever that is. 737 01:01:23,000 --> 01:01:33,000 As the years went by, we learned more about this, and hearing of ourselves, 738 01:01:33,000 --> 01:01:39,000 and what that means, on a dark and cloudy day, 739 01:01:39,000 --> 01:01:53,000 a man hung crying in the rain, because of love, because of love. 740 01:01:53,000 --> 01:02:00,000 We were the reason that He gave His life. 741 01:02:00,000 --> 01:02:07,000 We were the reason that He suffered and died. 742 01:02:07,000 --> 01:02:21,000 To a world that was lost, He gave a warning again, to show us some reason to live. 743 01:02:21,000 --> 01:02:24,000 We're going to stop the singing at this time, but if standing right where you are, 744 01:02:24,000 --> 01:02:27,000 or you have a word you want to say, or you feel like the Lord is calling you to speak up, 745 01:02:27,000 --> 01:02:30,000 now would be your opportunity, and then after that, we're going to pray, 746 01:02:30,000 --> 01:02:36,000 and end our services, and continue to recognize that today is Christmas Eve. 747 01:02:36,000 --> 01:02:39,000 We are going to be embarking, if you will, upon the great journey of salvation, 748 01:02:39,000 --> 01:03:07,000 as Jesus came from heaven.