One little town, a bed and a hand, looks like another time of night.
We're walking deep and dreaming asleep, the giant sun lights up the sky.
While you're hiding in the dark, may it shine from heaven right in your eyes.
Oh the king has left his throne and is sleeping in a manger tonight, tonight.
Oh Bethlehem, won't you admit that you were sleeping, but God became a man and stepped into your womb to bring.
Oh Bethlehem, you will go down and hit your grave and sin you with no remorse for your king while you're sleeping.
While you're sleeping.
Mary shivers in the cold trying to keep the Savior warm.
Oh my, the animals were seen by the waves because there was no room for them in the world they came to see.
Oh Bethlehem, won't you admit that you were sleeping, but God became a man and stepped into your womb to bring.
Oh Bethlehem, you will go down and hit your grave and sin you with no remorse for your king while you're sleeping.
While you're sleeping.
United States of America looks like another Saturday night.
As the sun will set by the land of peace, save the trees and kill the children.
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.
America, what will we miss while we are sleeping? Jesus come again and leave us all for weary days.
America, we will go down and hit our grave as the nation with no room for the king. Will we be sleeping?
Will we be sleeping?
United States of America looks like another Saturday night.
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.
The topic of the essay was, why is it that God doesn't do miracles anymore?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I happily relate some of them to you because God is an awesome God and he still intervenes in the lives of his people.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That if somebody doesn't accept Christ, if they don't repent from their sin, then you excommunicate them.
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.
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.
Which of course is not what we believe that text is about and it's not what I preached that sermon on.
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.
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.
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.
I didn't have to do anything in between there and the actual walking ceremony.
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.
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?
I'm like, oh no. He's like, it's been awesome and God's moving and it's been great.
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.
This is the guy who said, you have a strange take on things, but still gave me an A.
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.
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.
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.
Compared to what I thought he was going to say to me, I was greatly relieved and I walked out very pleased.
He is the one who handed me my diploma when I graduated from Bible College, which was abnormal.
He stepped up, normally another person would, and he stepped up and took it from them.
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.
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.
You've heard the story, even if you've never read the text, you've heard the story.
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.
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.
I personally have never looked at it from this angle before and I have never preached it from this angle before.
If you sat on my preacher for a long time, I've never done this before. This is something new to me.
I'm not apologizing. That is not an apology. I'm just asking you to go into it with your thinking caps on.
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.
Or God may want to show you something completely different. Let's go together.
Maybe give me a little hoot or holler of amen as we go to Luke chapter 2.
Amen. This is God's word. This is the story of the living word born in flesh who was Jesus Christ.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If that's something you're doing.
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.
Technically it's not all the inhabited earth, but Caesar saw himself like that and Rome ruled just about everywhere that they could reach.
At that time there was still war on their borders and so on.
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.
This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.
And all were proceeding to register for the census, everyone to his own city.
And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem.
Because he was of the house and the family of David.
In order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him and was with child.
So the first thing I want you to see is right here in this text.
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.
That journey for them was going to mean overland on foot 90 miles.
90 miles. Now as the crow flies distance is about 70 miles.
But they had to follow the roads and go over hill and over dale.
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.
It's like that. This literally was up and down hill.
And they had to walk. Mary is very pregnant.
And they covered a lot of ground.
A lot of times you see she rode on a donkey.
You know, whatever riding on a donkey for 90 miles is probably more uncomfortable than walking for 90 miles.
Especially when you're pregnant. I'm told, though I've never been pregnant.
So the bottom line is this. They had to go a really long distance.
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.
It is the love of God still. It's the love of God.
But it looks like sometimes a long journey full of potential hardship.
When I got saved, I said to my wife, she said, what is this going to mean when you get saved?
And I said to her, I don't know. But I know it's going to change everything.
I didn't mean it's going to be cake and beautiful. Right?
Checks are just going to be flowing in the mailbox.
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.
I had changes to make. I had things to overcome.
So some of that was to let God overcome those things in me, even as a non-Christian just about to accept Christ.
I knew that. Sometimes the love of God looks like a long journey full of potential hardship.
But I submit to you, it's more likely to look that way if you are far from home.
Mary and Joseph were not journeying to a place unknown to Joseph.
They were journeying to a place that was their ancestral home.
Not hers technically maybe, but his. Right?
So he was going home. Now that might have been better on another occasion.
Because now he's bringing home his wife that he's not technically married to, but only betrothed to yet.
And she's very pregnant. Right?
So he's going home with his not yet wife, very pregnant.
That's not the best way. Right?
It's like when you have Christmas dinner and you don't know it and your daughter brings home her boyfriend.
And you've never met him before. Never knew she had a boyfriend.
And all of a sudden he walks in the front door and you're like, who is this? Right?
But this is worse than that because she's a teenage girl, pregnant, unmarried.
By the way, the normal result of that is stoning. Right?
But they only have to go 90 miles to his ancestral home because it's 90 miles away. Right?
If they lived near Bethlehem, they wouldn't be traveling nearly so far.
And you can imagine the implications to that for us.
Our love of God looks like a long journey full of potential hardship.
Is more likely if you are far from home.
And the truth is, we are far from home.
Now, home is for us. It's prepared for us.
God's taking care of it. We're going there. Right?
If you're a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and you're in this room.
If you're a Christian, you're in this room. You're going there.
The author of Hebrews writes this.
So let us go out to him outside the camp bearing his reproach.
That means let's go outside the camp. Let's go outside the lines.
Let's go outside where it's safe. Let's go risk ourselves. Right?
You could say on a journey full of potential hardship.
14. For here we do not have a lasting city and we are seeking the city which is to come.
Sometimes what you're going to go through, the love of God and God loves you.
You may go like, I don't know Jesus. I don't know that God loves me.
God loves you even if you don't know Jesus. He loves you.
He's waiting. He's just our Savior. Not just the Savior for the church.
That's the whole message. He's the Savior for the church.
But he's the Savior of the whole world. Right?
God loves you just the same.
And you may go, I don't even know if God loves me.
But the truth, and it looks like a really long journey.
But when you realize that this is not your place.
This is not where you're going to wind up.
You're not going to go in the ground and stay there.
No one does that. Right?
You go to heaven or hell. Those are your options.
Nobody stays in the ground. Goes to sleep and just stays in the ground.
We are seeking a city which is to come.
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.
Jesus said it this way. He answered and said,
My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world,
then my servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews.
But as it is, my kingdom is not of this realm.
Jesus himself realized his kingdom was not of this world.
There was no taking over everything and ruling everything and bossing people.
That's not the image of Christ. Right?
God does not give authority to people the way God gives authority,
the way man gives authority to people.
God gives authority to people so that they can serve others and care about others.
And so sometimes God's love looks like a long journey full of potential hardship.
The story goes on.
Verse 6 says,
And it came about that while they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth.
And she gave birth to her firstborn son, and she wrapped him in clothes and laid him in the manger,
because there was no room for them in the inn.
Sometimes the love of God looks like less comfortable lodging.
There's times in life where I've been extremely uncomfortable.
I remember when I was a young Christian, I was working at Pizza Hut,
and my boss there decided that she had a vendetta against me,
that she would come in my restaurant and try to find anything wrong
and make me look bad in front of my employees,
and she would go through the restaurant and cuss out,
and then she had a man who worked for her, who was technically my boss,
but she had usurped his authority.
And so she would send him in, and he would go through, and he would cuss out my employees,
and I would go behind, and I would smooth ruffled feathers.
Good employees, hard-working employees, guys who work eight hours nonstop,
bust their butts and make that restaurant successful,
and they go through and cuss them out, and I would go through and smooth it.
And one day she pulled me in the walk-in closet, and she said,
You know what your problem is?
And my heart's kind of beating, my palms are a little sweaty,
and I'm like, I don't know, but...
I read the Spirit, and I said, I don't know, but I know you're probably about to tell me.
And I said, Go ahead!
And she said, Your problem is you're not afraid of me.
And in that moment I realized I was not afraid of her.
She could have fired me on the spot, cut off my paychecks like that.
And this was the career I thought I would retire from at that time,
but at that time I didn't know God was calling me into the ministry.
Sometimes God's love looks like less comfortable lodging.
Where you are is not always going to be comfortable.
In your body, it may not work the way you want it to.
In your mind, it may not work the way you want it to.
In your relationships, they may not do what you want them to do.
Sometimes God's love looks like less comfortable lodging.
But it's more likely to be that way if you are still far from home,
even near your earthly roots.
Even when you are fairly settled in and things are pretty comfortable,
when the TV's playing the thing you like to watch,
or the music's in the background, the song you like to hear,
or somebody's bought you the thing you like to get or whatever,
and yet you're going to feel a certain lack of comfort,
a certain uneasiness.
If you start getting everything you want and you feel uneasy,
it may be that you realize that you're not close to God
just because you're close to your earthly roots.
Jesus said it this way, He said,
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife
and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life,
he cannot be my disciple.
Jesus is not master of your circumstances alone.
He is master of your circumstances.
But not only that, He is master of your eternal existence.
He is master of heaven and earth.
He is master of all.
And so sometimes you're going to be in places where you feel like,
well, I ought to feel comfortable here.
This ought to be fine.
And yet you don't feel comfortable.
Sometimes the love of God looks like less comfortable lodging,
and it's more likely to do so if you are still far from home,
even when you are near your earthly roots.
They traveled 90 miles, they got there, and there was no room for them.
Now, it's a pretty terrible thing to be in the stables and to lay in a manger.
But what a lot of people don't know about this story is that inns in that day
quite commonly offered one type of accommodation, the common room.
So you slept with everybody else.
You pay just a little coin, a very little.
And the biggest place and the most available place,
only the wealthy could truly afford a private room usually.
And so they went to the inn thinking they would spend,
and maybe it could afford or maybe out of charity receive an inn,
and there was no room for them.
And there was no room for them in the common room,
which wouldn't have been good anyway,
because who wants to have a baby amongst 30 other strangers
on bedrolls on the common room floor?
So the stable was a form of provision.
The manger was a form of provision.
The swaddling clothes were a form of provision.
But yeah, we see it.
We realize they were uncomfortable,
and sometimes the love of God looks like less comfortable lodging.
Sometimes the love of God looks like being asked to surrender your few treasures,
the little bit that you've got going.
So there they are.
She's wrapping her baby in swaddling clothes and laying him in a manger.
She's probably 17 by now.
She's not married, betrothed, but not married.
She's never laying with a man, but she's giving birth.
She lost literally everything that she could possibly,
she lost her reputation, she had to give up her pride,
she lost the value of her virginity, not her virginity,
because she is a virgin, but she lost the value of it.
In the community, people know that she's having a baby,
and so they look at her and go, you can't be a virgin having a baby,
even though she actually was a virgin.
She could possibly have given up her life.
When Mary says to the angel,
Behold, the bond slave of the Lord may it be done to me according to your word,
and then the angel departed from her,
when that happened, that was in response to God telling her
what he was going to do, and that he was already doing something amazing in Elizabeth's life.
And the last thing the angel says to Mary before she says,
So let it be, is, nothing is impossible with God.
And the angel says, Nothing is impossible with God,
and she says, Behold, your bond slave of the Lord may it be done to me according to your word.
I submit to you, if we would have that attitude about the things in our life when they are uncomfortable,
about the lodgings of our life when they are not going the way we would like them to go,
we would handle things with a lot more peace and grace.
Do you not understand that sometimes you're going to be uncomfortable?
And it's more likely that you'll be uncomfortable if your home is far away,
even when you are near your roots and things seem to be going well for you.
In fact, if you get too comfortable here, you may not want to go there
because you don't know how awesome it's going to be in comparison to what we have here.
Oh boy, that would be a mistake.
Jesus said to God the night of his arrest, Thy will not my will be done, Matthew 26, 39.
And Jesus taught us to pray similarly every day in the Lord's prayer.
Thy will be done here on the earth as it is in heaven.
Jesus said, for whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?
Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
Understand that sometimes the love of God looks like discomfort in your lodgings.
And the earth is not the way you would want it to be.
And that is much more likely if you are still far from home, even near your earthly comforts.
A little further in the story then.
We've gotten as far as there is no room in the inn, and now we're going to change the scene.
Cut scene. Let's go out into the middle of nowhere.
Verse 8. And in the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields,
and keeping watch over their flock by night.
And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them,
and they were terribly frightened.
And the angel said to them, Do not be afraid, for behold I bring you good news of a great joy,
which shall be for all people. For today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior,
who is Christ the Lord.
We'll stop at 11 for a moment.
Understand that sometimes the love of God looks like a grand message powerfully proclaimed in your life.
I can't tell you the number of times I've been sitting under preaching, or studying a sermon,
or writing a lesson for a Tuesday night, or coming here and somebody else is teaching on a Tuesday night,
or coming here and somebody else is preaching on a Sunday morning,
and God goes, Dan, listen up, I've got a word for you.
And I go, ah.
And I'm stricken, like a sword through my heart, that then empowers me,
and I rise again from the ashes like the phoenix, and live brightly after God delivered a grand message
powerfully proclaimed in my life.
But notice, that is more likely if you are of a lowly station, humbly willing to hear and believe and respond.
And whether you are of a lowly station, and humbly willing to hear and believe and respond like those shepherds,
that is up to you.
We don't have any doctors in our church,
but if we had a doctor in our church who was medically trained,
and making a couple hundred grand a year maybe doing brain surgery, or open heart surgery, or whatever,
that doctor would have to make, whether it be a man or woman, would have to make an intentional decision
to come to God humbly, willing to hear and believe and respond for what God's saying,
and if that person does that, then they are more likely to receive God's grand message powerfully proclaimed in their life.
If you would say, well I never have, then I ask you, what are you doing?
Do you not understand that the Word of God is exactly that?
Every time you pick up your Bible, God may just speak into your circumstances,
that the God of heaven who spoke into creation everything that ever was created,
might speak into our lives, that is grand in and of itself.
Would you be humbly willing to hear and believe and respond like these shepherds?
In Luke 5 Jesus answered and said to them, it's not those who are well who need a physician,
but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.
Alright, listen now, this is what you will not hear me say often, I'm going to say it very clearly.
If you're in this room, and you have never sinned, you don't need the Jesus I preach.
You don't need it. Why are you here? If you are righteous, if you walk well,
if you do everything right and you never get it wrong, saved by your own admission or not,
if you say I believe in Jesus and that's why I walk rightly and I no longer have sinned,
you don't need Jesus. Jesus did not come for those people who think that they are perfect,
they are complete and they've got it all together. No, they've got their own physician.
It is their life, it is what they are going through, it is their own talents or abilities,
also gifts from God, I understand, but they've figured out a way and they don't need Jesus.
But if you would first recognize that you need Jesus, and the word says very clearly by the way,
that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
John wrote that if you say you have no sin, you make God out to be a liar.
You best decide where you stand, because if you don't need Jesus, then you can't have Jesus.
And if you can't have Jesus, you can't go to heaven, you can't have abundant life,
you can't have forgiveness of sins, for without Jesus, there is no other sacrifice for sins.
Sometimes the love of God looks like a grand message, powerfully proclaimed in your life,
but it's more likely to do so if you are of a lowly station, humbly willing to hear and believe and respond.
Romans 3.23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
And Romans 6.23, the wages of the sin is death, you are separated from God because of your sin,
but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
That's the second half of Romans 6.23.
David wrote it this way, this is a longer text, this is Psalm 51,
and a lot of scholarly experts believe that he wrote this after he had killed,
had Uriah the Hittite killed, to steal his wife and the baby,
and the baby dies or either while the baby was dying or after the baby dies or whatever, he wrote this.
He said, Be gracious to me, O God, this is Psalm 51,
according to your loving kindness, according to the greatness of your compassion,
blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin,
for I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.
Against you, you only have I sinned.
Interesting, that phrase right there, and boy, a lot of time has been spent studying it.
All sin is against God, even if it's against your fellow man, it is against God first and foremost.
He says, Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are justified when you speak and blameless when you judge.
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.
Behold, you desire truth in the innermost being, and in the hidden part you will make me no wisdom.
Purify me with Hisop and I shall be clean.
Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.
Make me to hear joy and gladness.
Let the bones which you have broken rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence and do not take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will be converted to you.
Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation.
Then my tongue will joyfully sing of your righteousness.
O Lord, open my lips that my mouth may declare your praise, for you do not delight in sacrifice.
Otherwise I would give it.
You are not pleased with burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a broken and a contrite heart.
O God, you will not despise.
Now whether he sang that song, wrote that song, prayed that prayer,
because he realized that only God could forgive his sins,
or because he realized that he had truly sinned, it's all in there.
What his reason was, the truth is that later David would be called a man after God's own heart.
Have you sinned against God?
Then hear this truth.
Sometimes the love of God looks like a grand message, powerfully proclaimed in your life,
Here is Jesus, he will save you.
But it's more likely if you are of a lowly station, humbly willing to hear and believe and respond
as these shepherds were.
Oh my goodness, something is happening in this story.
Something incredible, never seen before.
Verse 12 says, And this will be a sign for you.
You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.
And suddenly there appeared with angels a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
Glory to God on the highest and on earth, peace among men with whom he is pleased.
And it came about when the angel was gone away and them into heaven,
that the shepherds began saying to one another,
Let's go straight to Bethlehem then, and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us.
And they came in, they found their way to Mary and Joseph and the baby as he lay in the manger.
We'll stop there for a second.
Sometimes the love of God looks like something completely new and unexpected.
Something completely new and unexpected.
I submit to you, my salvation did that to me even though I sat in the church pews for six months
and digested everything that pastor was saying.
Everything that he said, everything that he wrote, he broke down the text just like I do for you,
just like we talk about in here, right?
And I said to myself, I'm thinking about this and he would say, this is true.
And I would say, I don't know if that's true.
And I would make a note and I would go back and study it later.
I was like, you know what? I think it is true.
And I tried to debunk everything that he was saying.
I tried to break it down.
I knew eventually in my heart of heart that I was going to surrender my life to the Lord.
It was going to look totally different.
Something crazy was going to happen.
I didn't know I wanted to do crazy.
I mean, I knew I was crazy, but I didn't know that I wanted to do a new kind of crazy.
You know what I'm saying?
I didn't think that was really what I wanted to do.
And so I was trying to debunk everything that he was saying.
I was not that humbly willing to hear and believe person.
I was not.
But when I come to salvation, when I said, I'm going to give my life to the Lord,
by that time what I was hearing really wasn't new.
I mean, the Gospel was in almost every sermon.
It was pretty clear and obvious.
It really wasn't new.
It wasn't a new message, per se.
And truthfully, it wasn't really unexpected when I said to Sherri that everything is going to change.
When I went that morning to try to walk down the aisle and I turned out my foot like this,
I'm like, oh, I'm going to try it.
I'm like, I can't possibly walk forward, but I know I have to.
I can't possibly say no to God again.
And I turned my foot out like that.
And I was suddenly at the front of the room.
I didn't expect that.
And I was nose to nose with the pastor who had exactly three hairs between his eyebrows.
I remember that.
They were very big, very vivid hairs.
I could see them very closely.
I could smell his breath.
I don't do that here, by the way.
So if anybody's freaking out about this, like, if I'm going to give my life to the Lord later,
Pastor Dan's going to breathe in my face.
I don't do that.
But that's what was going on.
Maybe I was too close to him because I was so scared.
I don't know.
It was unexpected.
And then as God changed everything, it became unexpected.
All of it is new.
When God said you're going to preach, I'm like, oh, no, I don't think so.
And then here I am.
Sometimes the love of God looks like something completely new and unexpected.
But that's more likely if you are at the next step in a long process authored and guided by God.
The birth of Jesus was prophesied in the Old Testament that it would be in Bethlehem.
You know, when they go to Herod and Herod wants to know where and he consults the prophets and the seers.
And they say, well, according to the Bible, according to the Old Testament, it's going to be in Bethlehem.
And then later when the Magi come, over 300 or more prophecies.
And some of them are about his life, not just about his birth.
But the bottom line is this is not really new.
It seems like something completely new and unexpected because while Mary might have hoped,
she might have deigned to think it might be possible, while sinners the world over were hoping for some kind of a Messiah
or a savior that could make a difference in them going to hell.
While all that was true, it's a hard thing to expect.
It's a hard thing to expect God to come in the flesh and become that sacrificial lamb to die for our sins.
Even when the disciples were walking with him, they had a hard time expecting it.
Right?
So it's more likely for us to see God's love like something completely new and unexpected
when it's the next step in a long process that he has authored and guided to bring us where we are.
That's what Jesus' birth was. That's what the historic Messiah was.
That's what the prophecies were. And Gabriel had already told her.
And the angel had already told Joseph that it would be okay.
Even now, Mary had treasured up in her heart the things that previously had been said about the coming Emmanuel.
So she was already getting it a little bit.
But this night in a stable, she surely didn't expect that.
Wrapping a babe in swath and clothes, laying in the manger, she didn't expect that.
Shepherds to come in and now say, guess what we just saw in the sky?
You won't believe this, because that's never happened before.
This is maybe 17 years old. That's just never happened before.
And God's love sometimes looks completely new and expected.
But the truth is, God's been working His plan.
The person who shared the Gospel with you, or if you're hearing it for the first time today,
that person received the Gospel from somebody else.
We got it from somebody else. We got it from somebody else.
Going all the way back to, you guessed it, Jesus.
Who, by the way, heard the prophecies of His own birth, life, death, burial, and resurrection from people before Him.
This isn't a new thing. It's the same thing.
But it seems new, because God has authored and guided the process all the way along.
His love looks like that sometimes.
And the Church, Jesus said it this way, He said a new commandment.
And He said a new commandment, although as He said it, I always read this,
I go, well it's not really a new commandment, so what does He mean?
I'm going to tell you what I think He means.
He says, the new commandment I give you, that you love one another even as I have loved you,
that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples,
if you have love for one another.
It's John 13, 34, and 35.
So is it a new commandment of Jesus that He's saying right then that they love one another?
No, not really. So what does He mean?
He means that sometimes God's love looks completely new and unexpected
when it is the next step in a long process authored and guided by Him.
And then of course we have the Great Commission,
which says, I therefore make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I commanded you,
and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
And that looks new, because the Holy Spirit came and took up residence
and believers starting at Pentecost, we get the Holy Spirit,
and when we get the Holy Spirit, we are new.
It looks new because we are new, but the truth is it's not new,
it was God's plan all along.
We'll finish the text and go to the conclusion.
I'll start reading again in 15.
And it came about when the angels had gone away from them into heaven
that the shepherds began saying to one another,
let us go straight to Bethlehem then,
and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us.
And they came in haste and found their way to Mary and Joseph and the baby
as he lay in the manger.
And when they had seen this, they made known the statement
which had been told them about this child.
And all who heard it wondered at the things which were told them by the shepherds.
Yeah, me too.
Verse 19, but Mary treasured up all these things pondering them in her heart,
and the shepherds went back, glorifying and praising God
for all that they had heard and seen, just as had been told them.
We can go on and talk about what God's love sometimes looked like,
but it suffices to say that sometimes God's love looks like a wonderful story
that some have a hard time believing or an easy time dismissing,
while others know with certainty it's true
and that it quite reasonably requires a response from us.
Those shepherds, my goodness, they had to come to a stables in Bethlehem
and tell Mary and Joseph, I doubt they told Jesus,
I'm sure the talking was going on around him, but he was asleep probably.
It's quite an ordeal to be born.
And everyone else that was there, and probably anybody in the village,
it was a pretty crazy thing, it was things going on,
a sleepy town of Bethlehem, yeah, until that, right?
And the shepherds said, let us tell you what we saw.
And everybody was hearing them going, if there was just one of you,
we'd be thinking you liar, because that's a crazy story, what you're saying.
But there wasn't just one of them.
And they weren't known for lying.
In fact, in their culture, it was a very bad thing to bear false witness.
And everyone was like, wow, this really happened.
This is really happening.
It was a story that people would have a hard time believing
and an easy time dismissing.
But others knew with certainty that it was true.
Even Mary, she had to know absolutely in her heart
that what they were saying was almost certainly true,
because she'd met an angel, a thing that she never thought would happen in her lifetime.
And Elizabeth had born a child in her old age, which had left at her coming
and meeting Mary's son, who was still in the womb.
A story like that, that's certainly true, requires a responsible response, don't you think?
What are you going to do about it?
The shepherds knew.
We've got to go tell right now.
That's what we're going to do.
What a great message we have.
We're going to go tell right now.
Well, but they had come humbly and being willing to respond.
They saw God's love as an amazing, powerful message to be delivered to you.
And if you do, you see God's love as a story that some will find it easy to dismiss.
You realize that people who are living in their sin and they're comfortable with it,
they probably really don't want to hear about Jesus.
They really don't need to hear about Jesus.
You're saying, I shared Christ with a drug dealer, and he's like,
I hear what you're saying.
This was at the Life Station about 10 years ago.
I hear what you're saying.
But if I accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior as you're proposing,
I said the very next day, there are 12 families, 12 families that I completely support with my trade.
He meant selling drugs.
And they will suddenly all have to go get jobs.
They won't have anybody to pay their rent next month.
Because if I accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, I'll have to stop selling drugs.
And I said, yeah, I suppose you would have to do that.
I said, but I don't think I would look at it that way.
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.
God can provide for those 12 families, can't He?
And he goes, yeah, I guess.
That man did accept Christ, by the way, and he stopped selling drugs.
And all 12 of those families broke off connection with Him and disowned Him.
They wouldn't talk to Him, wouldn't take His calls or His texts.
And He's still living for Jesus to this day.
But He had so many enemies in town that He now lives out in, I get this right, Wauseon with His mother.
Who was, by the way, very pleased with me.
Very, very pleased.
Because we shared the Gospel with Him.
And He accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and got out of the drug trade.
Sometime later, probably about five years ago, He went to jail for old charges.
And so right now, He lives completely with a clean record.
He doesn't sell drugs, doesn't have a criminal record, He's not running from any warrants.
He lives a normal life.
I submit sometimes He's probably uncomfortable with His lodgings.
I submit sometimes He is very grateful that He came humbly willing to hear and respond.
And I submit to you that because you don't know that man,
the story I just told you to some people is considered fanciful and wild and hard to fathom.
At one point in time, there was no less than four church planters,
three of them in Toledo and one of them in Cleveland who were in our association or attached to New Heights,
some of them, who were ex-drug dealers.
All had stopped dealing drugs.
One of them is still there.
He's not attached to New Heights anymore, but he's in our association.
Their churches established themselves, hope of glory.
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.
Perry Graves, who comes to New Heights, he's not a member right now, but he comes to New Heights all the time.
He spent, I think it was 21 years in jail.
Again, I get the numbers confused.
He's an ex-drug dealer.
They were very violent men.
We used to have a biker outlaw, biker gang enforcer who gave his life to Christ.
The list just goes on.
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.
They don't want to be healed from their sin.
But it's available for everybody, this grand conclusion.
Jesus says it this way in Revelation 22.
The Spirit and the Bride say come, and let the one who hears say come, and let the one who is thirsty come.
Let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost.
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,
we may begin to think that love doesn't exist at all or possibly worse, that even if love exists, people cannot know it.
You realize that if you can't accept that sometimes the love of God looks like a grand message,
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.
If you can't accept that sometimes God looks like those things,
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?
How can anyone believe that God loves mankind with the wars and the terrible things that have happened?
How can it be so?
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,
anyone's inconvenience, anyone's treasures, anyone's personal preferences more than anything at all.
Jesus Christ did not come to earth to make the church comfortable.
Jesus Christ did not come to church to solve your daily problems.
Jesus Christ was not born to make you feel better.
Oh, He'll do that.
Jesus came that we might have life and life more abundant.
His words, and life and life more abundant, sometimes looks like uncomfortable lodgings, giving up treasures, releasing preferences,
sometimes looks like terrible sacrifice.
The love of God looked like terrible sacrifice when Jesus Himself went to the cross.
But somehow along the way, the church began to believe that we do not need to be united with Jesus in the tough things,
only in the easy things, only in the comfort, only in that which makes us feel prideful, only in happiness.
But sometimes God's love looks more like this story.
What about you?
Are you prepared to join me in recognizing that sometimes the very things that we say suck are actually God's love displayed?
When you look back at the worst moments of your life, can you say,
that suffering that I endured, that thing that I went through, that problem that I experienced, that actually could be the love of God?
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.
Where are your comforts in there?
Where are your bills paid?
Where is your health?
This is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
God wants to bring us home.
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.
But you can and you must believe in the end of the story.
And when and if you do, you will see the love of God everywhere.
Indeed, he will teach us to be his love embodied everywhere.
That's what he said.
Paul wrote it this way, who will separate us from the love of Christ?
Will tribulation, that means when things go wrong, or distress, that means when you're under attack,
or persecution, when you're under attack for your faith, or famine, when you're going hungry,
or nakedness, when you don't have what you need, supplies, clothing, whatever, or peril, when you're at risk,
or sword, when you're under physical attack by enemies.
Just as it is written, for your sake we are being put to death all day long.
We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered, but in all these things we are overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God,
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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.
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,
that which you do not expect?
I confess to you that I have struggled with this sermon series, and I don't know if you realize it was a series,
I called it the Advent Series, basically I began talking about peace, and I talked about hope, and I talked about joy,
and today I'm talking about love. Those are the four themes of Advent leading up to Christmas.
I'm saying to you that the last several weeks my peace has been under attack. My joy was under attack.
This week I had a moment in time where something went wrong and it was unexpected.
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.
I got real mad, like, peel your tires mad. I actually did peel my tires.
I stepped on the gas too hard and peeled my tires out of my driveway as if that mattered to God.
I got mad, and I began to pray, and I said, Lord, I need my joy.
And I pictured in my mind my joy as I preached about last Sunday, rising up like a beast,
and consuming the anger that was in my heart, the frustration that I was experiencing.
And once that was done, joy was in place and I was beyond it, feeling a little stupid for what I had done.
But while I was in the process, I remember having thoughts like, you shouldn't be preaching.
You're doing exactly what you're failing to do, exactly what you're telling people to do.
Yeah, you understand the word, but understanding it, you know, means standing under it, and you're not standing under it.
See how angry you are over this silly thing?
Ultimately, that mistake I made, by the way, cost me $11.99, and for $11.99 I got mad enough to break something.
Mad enough to peel my tires for $11.99.
Do you believe the grand story of God?
Do you believe that He's willing to be with you through the stuff that you're going to go through?
Because that's exactly what Immanuel means, God with us.
Do you believe that when you got saved, the Holy Spirit came and took up residence in you,
and part of the fruit that He produces is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness?
Yeah, come on.
Or are you a little more like Herod?
Under the right circumstances, you too would kill the babies,
so as not to have your kingship of your life threatened.
The prophets came and they told the story, and everybody was amazed, and now you've heard the story again today.
And it's a pretty amazing story.
It's a story about how sometimes God's love doesn't look the way we would want it to.
But trust me, it looks exactly like it needs to, for us to repent and turn to Him,
and serve Him daily, and suffer as by necessity we must,
and go without when by necessity we must,
and deliver a message that people need to hear, because they're going to hell.
And they may or they may not accept it, and as we talked about on Tuesday night,
our job isn't only to testify to human beings,
but to testify to the angels, and evil spirits, and demons, and all the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.
And I say this, I'm not going anywhere.
I may screw up time and again, and God will convict me out of His Word time and again.
Can you say the same? I can't say it.
Can you say the same? That you're here, that you're humbly ready for God to work in you,
that you're willing to respond, even when God's love doesn't look the way you want it to.
Well, Mary and Joseph were, and thank goodness Mary was, and Jesus was, and thank God Jesus was,
because it's through Him that we can be saved, and He invites us to do the same for others,
as others have done for us.
This time I ask the praise team to come forward and lead us in our final hymn of the service,
and this is your opportunity to respond, the Lord has spoken your heart.
Have you not accepted that some of the things that you're experiencing in your life
the way that you want them to could actually be God's love?
Every bit of discomfort that we experience can certainly be testimony that there is a better place.
Every bit of pain and suffering that we go through can certainly be testimony that our Savior,
and who are much worse, paid a price for our sin,
that you surrender your life to the Lord and let Him love you the way He wants to love you.
If He loves you the way He wants to love you, you'll be eternal.
As we sing, if the Lord is speaking in your heart, when you respond,
I'll be here to receive you, I will not breathe on your face,
and I don't think I have any hair between my eyebrows, so we'll be all good.
You come, check the Lord.
You stand with me and sing this song, and the Lord speaks in your heart, and when you respond, then you respond.
As little children we would dream of Christmas morning,
and all the gifts and toys we knew we'd find, but we never realized.
The day before we blessed the night, gave us the greatest gift of our lives.
We were the reason that He gave His life.
We were the reason that He suffered and died.
To a world that was lost, He gave a warning again, to show us some reason to live.
As we sing, if the Lord is calling you to act, either to accept Jesus as your Lord,
then you come and pray again, or to be baptized, or to enter the church,
or to embark on some mission for Him to undertake something that He's calling you to,
then you respond to the Lord's will, and He needs you to respond to Him personally,
hear from God, and do what it is that God will have you do, whatever that is.
As the years went by, we learned more about this, and hearing of ourselves,
and what that means, on a dark and cloudy day,
a man hung crying in the rain, because of love, because of love.
We were the reason that He gave His life.
We were the reason that He suffered and died.
To a world that was lost, He gave a warning again, to show us some reason to live.
We're going to stop the singing at this time, but if standing right where you are,
or you have a word you want to say, or you feel like the Lord is calling you to speak up,
now would be your opportunity, and then after that, we're going to pray,
and end our services, and continue to recognize that today is Christmas Eve.
We are going to be embarking, if you will, upon the great journey of salvation,
as Jesus came from heaven.