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This morning we're gathering together to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

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You know, there's no other event in all of human history that is quite as impactful as this one,

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because without Jesus there would have been no perfect life lived.

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And without that, there would have been no death to atone and then to attribute that perfect life to us.

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And without that, there would have been no resurrection.

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And with all of that comes salvation.

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But without it, none of that would be.

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And so this event is the single most significant event, the most significant gift mankind has ever received.

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And we have all heard the stories, the Christmas stories,

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and one of the ones that we often hear is the story of the wise men who came to see the child Jesus.

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Now, no, they weren't at the manger scene as classically told.

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They were likely there, you know, between birth and two years old.

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But when they did arrive on the scene, they asked a very important question.

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They said, where is he who has been born the King of the Jews?

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Now, we know the story of how they followed the star to where he was,

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the house where he and his mother Mary and his earthly father Joseph were at.

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And the first thing scripture tells us that when they saw Jesus, they fell down on their knees and worshiped him.

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And then it was after that they presented their gifts to him, the gold, the frankincense, and the myrrh.

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And that order of coming to Jesus is always the correct order.

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When we come to that place of recognizing who he is, that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh,

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that he is the creator of everything, he is the savior of all,

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when we recognize that and respond to that, the very first way we should respond is in worship, praising his name, glorifying him.

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And then after that, we come with offering our service and our obedience and the gifts of our lives yielded to his lordship.

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Now, the gifts that these wise men offered, they were all offered in recognition of who this baby was.

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And what he would do. The gold that they offered, that was obviously a very valuable material.

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It was the alloy of royalty. And it was a very prized and precious gift to offer one who would be king.

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The frankincense spoke of his role as our high priest because that frankincense was commonly used in the tabernacle in the temple

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as a part of the priest duties there in the temple.

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And it spoke how he was going to be both our king and also our high priest.

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And then they offered the myrrh, which was actually an embalming fluid.

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It was something used in preparation of the dead, which was looking prophetically forward to his death on the cross for our sins.

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Now, these gifts, these treasures, as the scripture calls them, it came from their means.

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It says that it came from their treasure specifically, meaning that these wise men gave sacrificially, of which was very valuable to them.

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And they offered that to Jesus as a child.

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Now, but still, we have to understand that those gifts that the wise men offered, they were from men to God.

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As valuable as they were, they paled in comparison to the gift. The gift from God to man.

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And all that came through and because of God being born as a man in this world.

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Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of you and me, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, and the gift of all gifts is who we're here to celebrate today.

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Let's pray. Father, we're so grateful that you sent your Son to die for us in this world.

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And Lord, this was the first step in that whole process, God, that you came, God in the flesh.

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You were born as one of us, that you would be tempted in every way we're tempted and experience life in the ways we experience it, Lord,

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so that you can identify with us and sympathize with us, Lord, but you did it without any sin.

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And God, you ultimately went and gave your life for us, and that was why you came, Lord, to ensure us that God, through faith in you,

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our sins would be forgiven, that we would have the hope of heaven when we would leave this earth, and God, there's no more valuable gift we could possibly receive.

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And so, God, we want to worship you this morning and praise your name this morning to say thank you, to say thank you for loving us so much.

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That you would come and die for sinful man. God, it's a gift that we don't deserve. It's a gift we could never possibly pay back.

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And Lord, all you ask us is to receive it. And God, for those that have received it this morning, we celebrate you, Lord.

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Any that are here today or watching online that have not yet received the gift of Jesus Christ, Lord, I pray you'd speak to their heart this morning.

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That through all the trappings of Christmas and gifts and trees and presents and food, Lord, that they would hear your still small voice.

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That it's about you coming to be born, to live, to die for them. That they would have the opportunity to be saved.

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God, we glorify you. We praise your name, Lord. Receive the voices of your people, God. We love you so much and we thank you.

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It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

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You know, so much of Christmas in our modern world revolves around gift giving.

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Some people really, really enjoy giving gifts. Others enjoy receiving gifts.

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You know, but there's so much that is wrapped around that in our culture.

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Our modern culture, and it has been for a while, has turned gift giving, especially at Christmastime, into the largest retail marketing time of the year.

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Some of us are good gift givers. Some of us are bad gift givers.

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I have been eternally grateful for the invention of gift carts because it makes it really easy.

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Some are put off by the secularism of modern gift giving, especially, again, around Christmastime.

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But instead of being put off by all of that, I want to encourage all of us to look at gift giving, especially at Christmastime,

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as a great opportunity to think of it as being a reflection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,

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to reflect the character, the love and generosity of God Almighty.

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You see, it tells us in his word in John 3.16, I'm going to shorten it, God loved, he gave.

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That's the gospel. That is the gospel.

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A large part of love is giving. And so, look at gift giving as I get to reflect the love of God in this very simple gesture of giving a gift.

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Because that's what God has done for us, demonstrated his love, so much love for us that he gave.

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I actually want to read John 3.16 to you. We're all familiar with this verse, but it says this.

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For God loved the world in this way. He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.

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So it says there God's one and only Son, the second person of the Trinity, God who became flesh,

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named Jesus Christ, the Savior who was born into the world through Mary.

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He is the gift we celebrate today. He is the gift we remember today, the gift all other gift giving recalls and honestly honors.

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He is the gift given even though we didn't ask for it. Most of us at the time the gift was offered to us didn't even want it.

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But it was a gift we needed more than anything we have ever needed in our entire lives.

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So I want to read today what might be considered an unconventional portion of scripture this morning to highlight what it is God gave us

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when he came to this earth and was born as a human.

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Because again without Jesus being born there was no perfect life.

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If there was no perfect life there was nothing to attribute to us through faith.

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If there was none of that there was no death. If there was no death there was no atonement.

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And if there was none of that there was no resurrection.

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And what that means is if Jesus wasn't born there was no salvation, no grace, no mercy, no hope, and definitely no heaven for any of us.

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But he was born and so this is what happened. Romans chapter 5 verses 12 through 16.

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It says when Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam's sin brought death so death spread to everyone for everyone sinned.

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Yes people sinned even before the law was given.

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But it was not counted as sin because there was not yet any law to break but still everyone died from the time of Adam to the time of Moses.

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Even those who did not disobey an explicit commandment of God as Adam did.

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Now Adam is a symbol, a representation of Christ who is yet to come.

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What that means is Adam is one man who did something that affected everybody.

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And Jesus is also that as well. In verse 15 it says but there is a great difference between Adam's sin and God's gracious gift.

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For the sin of this one man Adam brought death to many but even greater is God's wonderful grace and his gift of forgiveness to many through this other man Jesus Christ.

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And the result of God's gracious gift is very different from the result of that one man's sin.

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For Adam's sin led to condemnation but God's free gift leads to our being made right with God even though we are guilty of many sins.

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This is what Christmas is all about.

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You know hopefully as we looked at the gifts of the wise men earlier you could see the contrast, the difference between the gifts that they gave and the gift that is being talked about here in this passage in Romans.

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The gold frankincense and myrrh as I stated earlier was gifts given by men to God.

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But the gift was given by God to men.

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The gold frankincense and myrrh was given when Christ was just a child and they all reflected or represented his future that he would be king and priest and that he would be the atonement.

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But the gift was given when Christ was full grown and had everything to do with our future.

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The gold, the frankincense and myrrh were physical gifts with monetary value and they had worth but that worth was only really worth on earth and I just rhymed.

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But the gift through Christ was spiritual, eternal and priceless with unending value both in heaven and on earth.

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The gold, the frankincense and myrrh was very expensive but it didn't cost the wise men everything they had.

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But the gift cost Jesus everything.

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He humbled himself, he left heaven, he emptied himself the word tells us, he set aside his divinity, he set aside all the rights due to him as God Almighty, as the creator of all things.

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And he took the form of a servant, the likeness of humanity and ultimately suffered in our place on the cross.

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You see the gift is all about a contrast between Adam who we're all descended from and Jesus who is utterly unique from all of us.

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When Adam sinned we all inherited that sin nature.

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We're born with it, we can't do anything about it.

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But as Adam sinned Jesus saves.

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When Adam sinned death came to all mankind.

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That physical death was now introduced into all of it and we all die, right?

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You've heard the greatest statistic ever, right?

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Ten out of ten people will not make it out of here alive.

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We all face death one day.

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But when Jesus died he brought freedom in life to all who would call upon his name.

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Adam disobeyed God his creator, Jesus obeyed God his father.

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When Adam sinned all were declared unrighteous again because of that nature, that sin nature we're born with.

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But when Jesus paid our fine and our penalty by dying on the cross and then offered the results of that to us as a free gift,

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all people can now be declared righteous before God Almighty.

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The gift, the greatest gift, salvation through the one born of a virgin, a son who is Immanuel, God with us is everything.

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It means everything.

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One of the things that this gift of Jesus means is that we are loved.

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There are so many people in the world today that need to know they are loved.

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Because people have been hurt by sin, they've suffered abuses by friends or family members,

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they've had what they would call bad luck as everything has just fallen apart around them.

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And they feel like nobody loves them, nobody sees them, nobody hears them.

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But God does and we need to share that message with them.

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You see normally when giving a gift you're giving it to someone you care about to express your love for them.

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This morning we got to get up early and open gifts and my grandson James,

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he just was excited getting all his dinosaurs and things that roar and all that.

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And I was really excited because I got him a Harley-Davidson tricycle.

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And I was so excited because it has a little knob on it when you turn it, it goes,

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and starts it up like a motorcycle.

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It has a song button that plays good writing music.

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It's got blinkers that work.

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I was so excited.

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You know his dad rides a motorcycle, I have one, I don't ride it very often.

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So I don't know if mom was super excited about us encouraging the motorcycle life,

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but it was so exciting, I was so overwhelmed with joy to be able to give it to him.

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And that's how God is with us.

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See I believe we all innately know that true love can't be passive.

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True love isn't a passive thing, it's an active thing.

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Love likes, love loves to demonstrate itself from one to another,

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and that's why we like to express our love to those that we care about and love deeply.

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God sent his son all the way down to the earth, wrapped in the simple wrapping of a human.

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And if you've ever been tempted to doubt God's love,

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if you've ever had that moment, that time where you said,

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I don't know if God loves me or he can't love me or whatever those types of thoughts are

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that come through our minds, just repeat John 3.16 and insert your name into it,

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and it'll tell you everything you need to know.

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We looked at it already, John 3.16, right?

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For God loved the world in this way.

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But replace the world and put your name there.

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For God loved Nathan in this way, that he gave his one and only son.

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All of us should put our name in that verse and think about it and repeat it to ourselves daily,

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especially in those times where we're doubting.

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Because everything this day is about and everything it leads up to through Good Friday

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and Easter and on for the rest of our lives is because God loves you.

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The Bible tells us that God is love, and that could be a little hard to understand.

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John the apostle, he was so overwhelmed by that reality.

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He says this in 1 John 3 verse 1,

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Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us.

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That word behold is I'm overwhelmed just considering the love that God has expressed to us and lavished on us.

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This love is so different than what we can truly understand or ever accurately express here on earth

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because it's a love that's not object oriented, it's subject oriented.

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See a lot of times when we express love it's object oriented.

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We'll say I love pizza, and I do.

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We'll say I love my car.

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We'll even say I love this person because they make me feel so good.

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But the love is based on the object of the love.

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But God's like I'm not loving you because of what you do for me or how you make me feel or what you look like.

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God's love is subject oriented.

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He says I love you simply because I created you.

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You're everything to me.

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And His love is just that, it's His nature.

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He is love.

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Everything He does and says is an expression of true love.

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And the gift of Jesus Christ demonstrates that love in a very, very profound way.

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The gift of Jesus also means that we can be forgiven.

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Now notice I said can be.

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The gift of Jesus doesn't automatically save anybody.

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Just because Jesus was born doesn't mean that your sins are forgiven.

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See in the beginning in the garden, mankind, we all had an unlimited capacity for love and joy and peace.

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In fact, in the garden before sin, we were created to live forever in perfect fellowship with our God and union with Him.

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And we had one rule, one rule.

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Don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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For the day you do it, you will die.

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Now there are people in this world today that say look, if God just gave me the rules, I would be a righteous person.

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I don't need to trust Him and depend on Him.

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Mankind has already proven we can't follow one, let alone a list of rules.

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And so God doesn't give us a list of rules to say follow this and you'll be saved.

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Quite the contrary, the Bible tells us that He gave us the Ten Commandments simply to show us how bad we really are.

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You want the rules? Don't ever tell a lie.

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We all failed.

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You want the rules? Honor your mother and father.

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I failed that one massively in my teenage years.

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He says don't take the name of the Lord in vain.

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They simply point us to Christ, the fact that we are hopelessly lost and we need a Savior.

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And it's all based on the fact that God loves us.

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But when man sinned in the garden and we broke that one rule, it tells us that physical death entered into the universe, that humans would no longer live forever.

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That creation started to decay and we started to decay and we would eventually physically die, which we all do.

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But there was also a spiritual death that became an instant reality for both Adam and Eve.

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Now death spiritually is not referring to ceasing to exist, it's referring to separation.

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That perfect union that they had with their Creator.

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That perfect fellowship that they had with God to wake up every day and say, hey God, let's walk together in the garden and let's enjoy.

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And God was like, hey I created all this for you, enjoy it, just love it, it's so great.

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That was broken. That was separated. That was sundered.

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And in the time when we chose to sin against God, our spirit died irreparably cutting off our connection with our Creator.

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The result? Well you don't have to look far in the world today to see the result.

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Evil, wickedness, perversion, selfishness, we see it all over the world today.

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And we can't blame it on the media as much as we might want to.

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We can't blame it on our government as much as we might want to.

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We can't blame it on this party or that party or this person in Congress or that person in Congress.

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We can't blame it on our schools.

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All of those things are symptoms of the real issue.

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The real issue is a sin issue.

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It's an issue that every single human being is born with.

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The problems we see in the world today are mankind's fault.

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We are all complicit. We are all culpable.

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Adam sinned in the beginning, he passed that sin nature down to every human sense.

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And when that happened, that perfect image we were created in, for the Bible tells us we were created in the image of God,

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that image was corrupted and marred.

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But because Christ was born, it means mankind can be forgiven of all their sin.

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It means we could be set free from the shackles of sin and death.

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It means that we could have the hope that yes, when this physical body dies, because it will,

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we will live forever in eternity with God in heaven,

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restored into that perfect fellowship and that perfect joy that was originally intended for us.

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The gift of Jesus also means that we are loved.

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We are loved. It means we are forgiven.

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And then it means that we can live forever in perfect peace.

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Forever is a long time.

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You ever tried to contemplate forever?

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Sure, you've been to the DMV, right?

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We've all contemplated forever there.

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Forever is a long time.

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We see, we use words like eternity to try and comprehend what this is.

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Being saved, because Jesus was born and lived a life and died and resurrected,

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when we put our faith in him, we can know that we're going to live forever.

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But it's forever in peace. It's forever without sin.

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It's forever with our Lord.

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And finally, because it's a gift, it means that it has to be received.

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As I said, nobody is saved just because Jesus was born.

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Nobody has the hope of heaven just because Jesus was born.

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You have to receive a gift.

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You know, those that have been to church at Christmastime over your life,

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we've all heard the stories, right?

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We've all heard God came out of heaven to earth.

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He was born in a manger.

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He grew up, died on the cross, rose from the dead.

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And sometimes we could, you know, kind of have this like, yeah, yeah,

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it means God loves you. I've heard it. I get it.

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But the reality is, is if you don't receive it,

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you don't get to experience the fruit of any of it.

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It'd be like getting a gift on Christmas morning,

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and it's all wrapped and putting someone hands it to you and says,

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this is for you, and you just go, cool, thanks.

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And you set it off to the side.

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No, you're supposed to open it up and see what's inside.

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You see, when it says receive,

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that word receive means more than just to acknowledge that it's real.

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It means more than just to hold it and look at it and go,

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okay, that's interesting. I'll think about that.

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To receive something in the way that we're talking about here

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means to open it, experience it, apply it, understand it.

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See, if you never unwrap the gift and look inside and take hold of it,

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then you never get to experience what the gift is.

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When I was a kid, we had these toys called G.I. Joes.

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They were little action figures,

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and they had all the different military tanks and jeeps and stuff.

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You know, I'd spend so much time in the store

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gazing at the boxes of these G.I. Joes toys,

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longing for them because if I just had them, my life would be complete.

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And so come Christmas time,

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with eager anticipation, I wonder if those G.I. Joes toys are under the tree, right?

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And then you unwrap them, and there's so much joy. There it is!

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But the greatest part of Christmas Day was ripping those boxes open,

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pulling the toys out, putting them together, sticking the stickers on,

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taking the action figures, sticking them inside, and then crashing them into each other.

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So much fun. So much fun.

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You see, when this gift of salvation,

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through the gift of God being born as a human in the major, came,

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the gift of Him living a perfect life and dying on the cross

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to pay the price for our sin against God,

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Him being buried and then rising from the grave,

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alive forevermore at the right hand of the Father in heaven,

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it means nothing for you if you don't receive it,

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if you don't open that gift, if you don't apply it to your life and experience it.

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And if you look at the gift of salvation,

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the gift of Jesus and say, well, that's not what I wanted.

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Well, it's not your birthday anyways, is it? No.

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Salvation is often not what someone wants.

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Salvation is very rarely the gift that someone is looking for.

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But regardless, it is a gift that we all need.

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Every single human needs this gift. We need forgiveness of our sins.

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We need a changed heart to be changed people.

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We need hope that things could be different.

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And all of that is available through Jesus Christ.

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All of that is available because God came to this earth and was born as a man.

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Now, if you never have taken that gift, received that gift and opened that gift,

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I encourage you to do so today.

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As I've said many times, there is no greater gift

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that has ever been offered by anybody to anybody

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than the gift of eternal life,

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to know that your sins are completely forgiven,

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that everything wrong you've ever done, ever thought, everything you ever will do

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is forgiven,

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that you could be a different person, not the hateful person or the hurtful person

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or the selfish person that has characterized your whole life maybe.

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But you truly could be like God, kind, faithful, patient, loving.

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You see, when you receive that gift, you get that complete pardon for all the sin

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you have ever done and ever will do.

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You receive a complete renovation of spirit,

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that you would be a new person, the Bible says, with a new heart,

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a new set of values, good and honorable things,

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like being able to love truly because you've experienced true love,

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being able to forgive truly because you have received true forgiveness,

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being able to reconcile with estranged loved ones

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because you have received reconciliation with your Creator.

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When you receive what God has to offer you, you know true peace,

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you know true happiness because you have received the Prince of Peace,

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God Almighty who came to this earth, born of a virgin, born a son,

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and his name is called Emmanuel. He is God with us.

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And when you receive him as your Lord and Savior, you receive that gift forever.

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You receive the promise, the promise that your sins are wiped clean,

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that you are a brand new creation, and that you will one day be with God in heaven forever.

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If you don't know Jesus Christ, you need to receive him today.

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If you're watching online and you don't know Jesus Christ,

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you need to receive the gift today as well.

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So we're going to pray in a moment.

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And if anybody's in here and you're like, I need to receive Jesus, I never have,

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maybe you thought you have and God has been like, uh-uh.

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If you're watching online, same thing.

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I want you to pray this prayer with me.

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This is a prayer of receiving what God has done for you.

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And if you do this sincerely and you pray this from your heart,

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the Bible promises that you are saved.

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The Bible promises that your old heart has been replaced with a new heart.

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The Bible promises grace and mercy and forgiveness.

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Let's pray.

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Father, we thank you so much for sending your Son.

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God, I know at this time of year there's different types of people, Lord.

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There are those that know you as their Lord and Savior and celebrate who you are

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and celebrate your birth, celebrate what you did for us.

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And God, there are people who don't know you,

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who maybe still think Christmas is about snowmen and reindeers and coke, polar bears.

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Lord, they think it's just a holiday created to sell things.

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And Lord, they participate.

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But Lord, in and through a lot of that there is hurt, there is selfishness.

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There are some, Lord, who really hate this holiday because it reminds them of so much wickedness

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and evil and sin that has been perpetrated in their life.

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And God, maybe there's some here in this room this morning or watching us online

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that for whatever reason decided to come to church this Christmas morning

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or to watch this service Christmas morning.

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And God, your Spirit is speaking to them.

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You have been speaking to them this whole morning.

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You've been speaking, Lord, that you are the light of the world,

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that you are the only hope, that you are the only way, the only truth, and the only life,

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and that nobody comes to the Father but through you.

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That, God, you've been speaking to their heart about their need to believe that you are God,

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that you died for their sins, that you paid their price,

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that they could forever know that they are forgiven,

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that they can experience a joy and a peace they never have before.

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And so, God, speak into these hearts this morning.

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If you're here in this room or watching online and you want to receive Christ,

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I just want you to pray this prayer with me.

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Say, God, I believe in you.

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I believe in who you are.

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There are some things I still don't understand,

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but, God, the reality of who you are, I believe it in my heart.

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And so, God, I ask you to forgive me this Christmas.

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Lord, I want to receive that gift that you brought into the world.

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I want to receive that gift that you brought into the world for me.

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That, God, through faith in Jesus Christ,

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that I would be forgiven of all my sin, God, please do that in my life.

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Lord, I trust your word that says you are,

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that I confess you with my mouth and believe in you with my heart.

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Thank you for loving me so much.

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Thank you for giving me the gift that is greater than all gifts.

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Change my life, Lord.

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Help me to be a different person than I've always been.

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Help me to love truly and to forgive truly and to reconcile truly.

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Thank you for being my God.

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Thank you for being my Savior.

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It's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

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For the rest of us, I encourage us all to reflect,

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keep reflecting on what this day really means.

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And take the opportunity, if you're going to see people the rest of today

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that maybe are family you don't normally see,

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or they're family you see all the time, but they don't know Jesus,

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pray that God would give you the opportunity to lovingly

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and kindly but boldly and confidently share about the gift of Jesus Christ,

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the gift of salvation, the gift of hope.

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Share with them how He has changed your life,

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what He has done with who you are,

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that they would see the truth and believe the truth.

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And maybe this Christmas you would get the opportunity

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to even lead them in a prayer where they would receive the gift of all gifts.

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God is awesome. God is great.

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And I just love praise in His name.

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And we're going to close today by singing to Him again.

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God bless you guys.