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Immanuel Sermon Audio
The Story of Christmas: Part I
about Jesus, and so we have talked about this a little bit the last couple of weeks, but my challenge to you is for this season is to be further, to give generously, to give sacrificially, and to do a joy that we get to be a part in the giving. We need to be a part of what God is doing around the world and bringing people to faith in Jesus Christ. If you have your Bible, I want you to take it out this morning, and I want you to find the green passage. I'm going to look at the green number of passages this morning. I want you to find out I'd say it's six. I want you to find the revelation before, and I want you to find the mood, too, with him looking at all those passages, and I'm going to move you vintage back, so that I don't feel like a changed animal up here, and while I touch the little bit, I'd say it's six. We have been studying the Gospel of Luke, and we've just been going verse by verse, chapter by chapter. We have left off at the beginning of Luke 8, and we're going to pick up in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 8, right where we left off in a couple of months, but we're going to take the month of December to talk about the story of Christmas. The story of Christmas, and if you look on your outline, there is a subtitle to this sermon series, and the subtitle is what to tell your kids, parents, friends, neighbors, coworkers, and enemies about the greatest story ever told. My hope in this series, or you could say my goal in this series is really twofold. Number one, I want to remind you that Christmas is an ancient story. It is an old, old story. It's the most important story that's ever been told, and sometimes we get confused about the meaning of Christmas, and even in our better moments when we try to focus on Jesus, sometimes we leave out important parts of the story. And so on Sunday mornings, we're going to talk about what is the story of Christmas from beginning to end, and it may not go exactly like you think the story of Christmas ought to be told, but I hope that you see by the time we get done that all the parts we cover are important to what happens at Christmas. The second thing I want to remind you of in this series is that this is a story, not just to keep to ourselves and to cherish and to give us warm fuzzies around the holiday trees, Christmas trees as we celebrate with family, but this is a story we've been sent to tell. We have a mission as the church, and the mission is very, very simple, make sure that every person on planet earth hears the story. That's it. Go out and tell the story to every person who is living on the earth, make sure that they hear it, help them to understand what it means to be a disciple and to accept it and to follow Jesus, and then teach them, Jesus says, to obey everything He's commanded us until the end of the age when Jesus comes back. That's our mission. That means we need to know the story if we're ever going to go out and tell the story, and so we're going to talk about the story of Christmas. Let's just start with this. In the United States, we are confused about Christmas. Agreed? We are just in an interesting place as a society and a culture when it comes to Christmas. On the one hand, there are lots of places in our nation where you are not allowed to put out a nativity scene or even a picture like this on any sort of public property because that might infringe on the rights or the beliefs or the faith or the lack thereof of somebody else. You're not allowed to really talk about what we believe Christmas is really about in some circles. If you're going to put up a tree, you better make sure you call it a holiday tree. It is not a Christmas tree, but in these big cities this last couple of weeks they've been putting up their trees, and maybe we don't do it here in West Texas, but there's lots of places in the United States where they don't put up Christmas trees, they put up holiday trees. Lots of businesses. This has become controversial in the last couple of years. Lots of businesses tell their employees you cannot say the words Merry Christmas. You can say Happy Holidays. Hope you have a good December. Thanks for coming in today, but don't say Merry Christmas because you might offend somebody. So you have all these interesting things going on, and at the same time, let's just admit it. Everyone loves Christmas. You may love it for different reasons, but everyone gets excited at Christmas, and everybody wants to celebrate Christmas. And there's plenty of people who have no clue what they're celebrating or why they're celebrating or why Christmas is a big deal. All most folks know, the average person on the street maybe, is that Christmas is a good time to eat a bunch of food that you really don't need to eat. It's a good time to spend a bunch of money that you really don't have, and it's just an exciting time. We spend a lot of money. We give gifts. We put up decorations and holiday trees. But we are the people. We are the ones as the church who have a true reason to celebrate. And we are the ones as the church, as the body of Christ, that knows the story of Christmas. We're the ones that have a story to tell to the world, and so in this series we want to think about what is the story of Christmas. If we're confused about Christmas, and I think we are, we're also confused about God. And that's a problem, because we're going to talk about this morning. Part one of the story is that Christmas does not begin with baby Jesus. It does not begin with Mary and Joseph. It does not begin with the angels. Listen, it doesn't even begin with Isaiah in his prophecies in the Old Testament. The story of Christmas begins with God. Here's part one of the story. God is holy. If you don't start there, you don't get Christmas. You get maybe a twisted version of Christmas. You get maybe a variety of Christmas, but you don't get the true story of Christmas. Part one, God is holy. And here's the reality, just the simple fact. Our society is confused about God, and the result is we don't know exactly how we ought to approach Him. We have a misunderstanding, as a whole, of who God is, and the consequence is very serious, is that we just don't know how to approach God, is the Bible calls us to approaching. And I want to just present this before you so that we're all on the same page. You live in this country, you live in this context, and you need to be aware of the ideas floating around you. Sometimes we're not even aware of the ideas that we just sort of hear and adopt and accept is true. So I want to talk about confusion about part one in our society, people being confused about who God is and how we approach it. I'm going to give you a couple of pop culture examples. I'm going to give you a scholarly example. And then lastly, I am going to give you a theological example from just the average person in the pew. So first of all, pop culture. Most people in the United States are not hostile towards Jesus as long as he's just one of the guys. Very few people just have a visceral gut negative reaction to Jesus. In fact, Jesus pulls pretty well among Americans. How do you feel about Jesus? Most people give Jesus a thumbs up. They're comfortable with the idea of Jesus. And then you dig a little bit deeper and you press a little bit further and you realize what they're comfortable with is a Jesus who is just one of the guys. So for example, you can get on Google and you can type in on your search engine. Jesus t-shirt and you can get results that will blow your mind. The trivialness of what pops up just is shocking. So here's one example that you can show in church. Googling Jesus t-shirt. Jesus is my homeboy. There he is. He's looking good. He's got his hair fixed, beard neatly trimmed. He's got some muscles back there. He's got his hands up. He looks cool. Jesus is my homeboy. We put him on a t-shirt just like we would put Superman or Spider-Man or anybody else. If you have this t-shirt, I'm not trying to embarrass you or make you feel like a rotten person. I'm just saying to me, this just seems kind of trivial. It seems like you're taking the sinless eternal Son of God and you're just throwing him on a t-shirt and making a joke out of it. And I really wish, I really, really wish I could just stand up here and be the grouchy preacher and take a big old bony finger and say these people, they're just trying to make a buck and they put Jesus on this t-shirt and they don't love Jesus and they don't respect Jesus. Can I be honest with you? Christians are the worst. So here's an example. Don't put the picture up on the screen yet. Because I got the actual shirt. Terry, you're probably going to want to disinfect this piano because the shirt was sitting right there. In Kingfisher, we go to False Creek. False Creek is where you go to camp for children, for youth, for everybody. And it's a giant campground and all these churches in Oklahoma go to False Creek. And there's lots of different traditions, kind of quirky things at False Creek. One thing they do is your church designs a t-shirt. There isn't a camp t-shirt that everybody wears. Your own church designs a shirt, kind of has to fit with the theme and has the date on it. And then you enter your shirt in a t-shirt contest and they announce the finalists in the winter and it's a big deal. And a lot of people like to exchange t-shirts. And so, for example, in Kingfisher, we take however many kids to camp. We order extra shirts because we know kids are youth, teenagers, high school. They're going to come by the cabin. They're going to say, "Hey, can we switch shirts? Give us one of yours and we'll give you one of ours." And we kind of collect all these different shirts. So, 2013, I'm at Children's Camp at False Creek. And we have our little stash of t-shirts in the back extras and kids are coming in. "Hey, can we switch shirts? Can we switch shirts?" And a group of kids come in and they give me this. And they say, "Can we exchange shirts with you? Can we give you this one and you give us one of yours?" I say, "Absolutely. We switch shirts. Luckily for the kids, they leave before I unfold this shirt and they're safely away from the cabin." And I take the shirt and I know you can't see it, so now you can put it up on the screen. And this is what it is. The theme, and I cut the name of the church off the bottom so you won't send hate mail. But the theme was, "In the beginning, God created." And here's what they came up with. I guess that's God. And he's got a nice-looking beard. And for some reason, a Japanese stylistic son behind his head. And lost his flip-flops, so he's barefoot. And he's got a toga on. And it's arts and crafts time. And there he is with the clay and the Play-Doh and the paints. Oops, he spilled a little bit of blue paint there between his legs. He's going to clean that up later. That was an accident. And there he is. And you look at this picture and I say, "It just looks like he's on the verge." He's not there yet, but he's on the verge of frustration that the earth won't just get round and he's sitting there just. And I see this shirt and I just almost had a stroke in the cabin. And like I said, it's lucky that the kids were gone. They were out and there's 5,000 kids there so they're hiding among the masses. And I couldn't find them. But I'm looking at this shirt and I'm thinking, "Why would the world take God seriously?" We don't. Why do we expect anybody who doesn't believe in Jesus to take him seriously, or us seriously, or faith seriously, when we reduce the amazing, miraculous, mind-boggling miracle of creation and the God who spoke it into existence to arts and crafts time. That's just pop culture of how we are confused about who God is. Here's a scholarly example. I'll put a picture up of a guy. This is Christian Smith. This guy is one of the world's leading sociologists and he does all kinds of amazing, amazing research on faith issues. He lives out on the east coast and he's written the definitive book on what my generation, the millennial generation, what do they believe about God? The book is called Soul Searching. Fascinating book, talks about all his research, very in-depth. Basically, he sits down with thousands of people my age. He just asks them, "What do you believe about God? What do you believe about faith? What do you believe about this? What do you believe about that?" He takes all these answers and he compiles them into a conclusion. His conclusion after this massive research project, just saying, "What do people actually believe?" Not given the Sunday school answer, but what do they actually believe? Here is his conclusion. The default religion of young people in the United States of America is something that he calls moral therapeutic deism, moral therapeutic deism. He's not saying, "This is what the Bible says." He's saying, "This is what the average person on the street actually believes about God and the Bible and Jesus and all of it." You say, "Well, what is moral therapeutic deism?" He summarizes it with five ideas, and I didn't put them on your outline. You can find them online if you just Google "moral therapeutic deism." Let's just read them. Number one. A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth. Not a bad place to start, right? There is a God. He created. He's watching over everything. Number one. Number two. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other as taught in the Bible and most world religions. That's just the summary of what God wants from you. Be good. Be nice. Be fair. And really, this is no different than any of the other great faith traditions. You just need to be good. Be nice. Be fair. Number three. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. At this point, you're starting to see the train come off the tracks. But that's the central goal of life. Be happy, feel good about oneself. Number four. God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem. That's the deism part. He's up there. He made us. He got the whole thing going and you don't really need him. He's just going to kind of mind his own business. But when you have a problem, you call on him and he maybe possibly could intervene. Because remember, number three, the goal of your life is to be happy and to feel good about yourself. So when that doesn't happen, you call on God and then maybe he steps in. Number five. Good people go to heaven when they die. Good people. Obviously, bad people don't, but good people go to heaven when they die. That's it. That's the summary. So what do young people believe today? You may hear all kinds of statistics talking about how many young people are atheists and this and that. Christian Smith said they're not atheists. There's a few, but the vast majority believe in some sort of spiritual thing. Some sort of religious thing. And he says after asking them and compiling it is what they believe. Moral therapeutic deism. Can we just all get on the same page and say that is not biblical Christianity? It's not within a million miles of it. But this is the confusion that we're dealing with. Listen, part one of the Christmas story. God is holy. It's nowhere in moral therapeutic deism. Nowhere people are confused about who God is. And the result is they have no clue how to approach him. Here is a just real world you call it a theological example. I've talked about pop culture in the t-shirts. Talked about Christian Smith. Just everyday theology. I think the vast majority of Christians, if you line them up. People who say that they love Jesus. Line them up. You just go down the line and you ask them one question. You say what is the most important thing I need to know about God? You get a one word answer. What is it? The vast majority of them. I bet 90% would say love. God is love. Bible says that. He loves me. We sang that. Jesus loves me. I learned that in the nursery. He loves you. He loves everybody. God is love. That's the most important thing that you need to know about God. Is God love? Yeah. Bible has a lot to say about his love. He had one word to summarize God and to describe who he is. Is that the best word to pick? Not even close. There's confusion about who God is and it affects everything we do and everything we believe as people who claim to follow Jesus Christ. If you had to pick one word to summarize God, to summarize his nature, his character, his attributes, I hope that you would pick the word holy. He is loving and we need to talk about that and the world needs to hear that, but first and foremost, God is holy. And when you look in Isaiah 6 and you look at Revelation 4, both of those passages say he's not only holy, but he is holy, holy, holy. The only attribute of God raised to the third power and it's happened once in the Old Testament and once in the New Testament. And so here you go, if we learn anything else from Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4, we need to know that above all God is holy, holy, holy. So when the day comes and we line up all these people and my illustration comes true for some strangers and they say, what is the most important thing about God? You are not going to say love. You're going to immediately just say holy, holy, holy. You're going to say no you only get one word and you're going to say I got to use three. He is holy, holy, holy. Very simply read these passages with me. Isaiah 6, beginning in verse 1, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up. And the train of his robe filled the temple and above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings with two he covered his face and with two he covered his feet and with two he flew. And one called to another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called and the house was filled with smoke. And I said, Isaiah said, woe is me, for I am lost. For I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts. Flip over to the back of your Bible. Look at Revelation 4. Revelation 4, beginning in verse 8. We're getting a glimpse of heaven and we read, "The four living creatures, each of them with six wings are full of eyes, around and within, and day and night they never cease to say. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come. And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the 24 elders fall down before him who was seated on the throne and they worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne saying, worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power for you created all things and by your will they existed and they were created." Isaiah gets this glimpse of God and immediately he does what? He falls on his face and he's saying, woe is me. He knows he's in trouble. He knows he's not like God. He's separated from God. But it's not just Isaiah and Isaiah 6, is it? It's also the sinless angels who are covering their face and covering their feet in humility before God. And you look at this and you say, yes, Isaiah's sin separates him from God but the fact that an angel or a human or whoever is a creature separates you from God. There's a double separation because of your sin and because of your creatureliness. I don't know if that's a word but we're going to talk about it this morning. You're separated from God because of your sin and your creatureliness. This double separation exists and you see it in Isaiah and you see the same thing in Revelation. You see these same angels day and night they never cease to say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord and they're bowing before him in humility because of his holiness. And then you see the 24 elders. You see this picture of redeemed humanity and the church and they're around the throne and they're doing the exact same thing on their face in humility before God. Yes because their sin separates them from God but also because their creatureliness separates them from God. We're separated from God by our creatureliness and our sin. And when you look at these two passages and you look at creatures who encounter the God who is holy, holy, holy. You come away understanding this, the only appropriate response is fear, the only appropriate response is fear. Contrary to the religion of our culture, moral therapeutic deism, we should fear God. There is no category of this in moral therapeutic deism, none whatsoever. God is just a genie in the sky waiting for you to call upon him in the day of trouble so he can fix your problems and then quickly leave your life just as quickly as he came into it. And when you look at Isaiah in Revelation you say the most appropriate response to this God is fear. You say what does that look like? I've heard preachers describe it this way and that way you should be afraid, you should respect. What does that actually look like? Let me just give you one Bible example of what it looks like. When Jesus walked the earth he had lots of friends, lots of associates, lots of people he knew and spent time with. He had 12 men who were his closest friends, the 12 apostles and within that group of 12 there was sort of a top four, the four leaders, Peter, Andrew, James and John and within that group of four there was three that he was particularly close with, three that went up the mountain of transfiguration, three that went further in the garden of Gethsemane, it was Peter and James and John. Peter for some reason didn't make the top three and he never seemed to complain about that but there was a top three and even among the top three there was one who was known as the apostle Jesus loved and you say what didn't he love all of them? Of course he did but there was one that he was particularly close to. You know how we would say it? We would say they were best buds. Jesus was really a man and he had a best friend and that best friend was John. John served Jesus and he loved Jesus and he told people about Jesus after he died and went to heaven just like all the other apostles did. All of the other apostles died telling people about Jesus, John was the only one who lived to be an old man, the only one of the apostles who did not die for his faith but he kept telling people about Jesus and he got in trouble for telling people about Jesus, they couldn't shut him up so they sent him to an island, literally a prison colony and they said rot on the prison colony, tell all the rocks out there about Jesus, talk all you want but this is how we shut you up and so he's on the prison colony and he's sitting there one day on a Sunday, there's no church there so he's by himself and he's worshiping and he's reading the Bible and he's praying and Jesus shows up and I don't mean like warm fuzzies when you're reading your quiet time and you say that verse touched me today. I mean he really showed up in the room, physically he was there and here's Jesus' best bud, if I can use this word without you throwing tomatoes at me, his homeboy and all homeboy John is sitting there and he looks over and he sees Jesus in all his glory and all his holiness and do you know what he didn't do, what's up man I haven't seen you in decades, give me a big old bear hug man high five, you've been doing some awesome stuff among the churches, none of it. The Bible says this in Revelation chapter 1 verse 17, I think we have it we'll put it on the screen, when I saw him I fell at his feet as though dead, I thought I died when I saw him, I was so overwhelmed with his holy, holy holiness that I fell down at his feet like a dead man and you look at that and you say that is the most fitting right biblical thing that you could have done. That is the natural instinctive response when you encounter Jesus' holiness and the next part of the verse makes your head want to explode. He laid his right hand on me saying what, fear not, excuse me, do you remember what happened to Isaiah, he was terrified. Keep reading in Revelation, get to chapter 4, they're all terrified, go back and look at the old test, these people are terrified, they're fearful and you're saying to John who's fallen down like a dead man don't be afraid and if you keep reading, you go home this afternoon and keep reading what comes next in Revelation 1, 17 and 18. Jesus says don't be afraid because I'm the first and the last, I'm the living one and I died. When you read verse 17 and you read verse 18 you ought to go all the way back to Luke 2, look at Luke 2, we looked at this passage a few weeks back in our study of Luke but I want you to see that this was not the first time there was a heavenly message to somebody afraid that they should not be afraid when in all reality they had every reason to be afraid. Luke 2 verse 8 says in the same region there were shepherds out in the field keeping watch over their flock by night and an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and what happened when they saw the glory of the Lord they were filled with fear and the angel said to them although they're doing the exact right thing and feeling the exact appropriate emotion the angel said to them fear not, for behold I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people, for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord and when you look at Jesus telling John don't be afraid and look at the angels, now we're talking about the Christmas story telling the shepherds don't be afraid you understand something very very very important Christmas is the story of a holy God bridging the gap between himself and his people it's the story of a holy holy holy God bridging this separation that exists between him and his people this is the creator coming in the form of a creature bridging the separation this is the sinless one coming to live among those who had sinned against him and here's the best part he didn't just come to be homeboys he didn't just come to hang out and tell a bunch of neat stories and do a bunch of neat miracles he came to die Revelation 1 18 I'm the living one behold I died and I'm alive forever don't be afraid Luke 2 don't be afraid a Savior has been born who is Christ the Lord understand that if you miss the beginning of the story everything else in Christmas goes haywire you may have no intention of making Christmas all about you but if you miss part one eventually it becomes all about you the beginning of this story is God the God who is holy holy holy and the God who came himself to bridge the divide between him and his sinful creatures and he did it in the person of Jesus Christ this is the story we celebrate this is the story that we've been sent to tell our kids and our parents and our friends and our neighbors and our co-workers and our enemies and the people all over this world who have never heard the story of Christmas let's pray Father we are grateful for your word Father remind us today that the Bible is a book about you not just a how to manual for life it's not just instructions for how we can be nice and good and fair to other people is not like other religious texts of this world is a book that tells us who you are and Father in all the busyness of Christmas even as we are excited about Jesus and celebrate the birth in Bethlehem and the visit of the wise men and all of the things we remember at Christmas Father help us to remember that it begins with you in your holiness Father we are not holy we are small we are powerless we are sinful we are wicked and we are amazed that this story is true that you actually came to bridge everything that separates us from you our creatureliness and our sinfulness Father there may be people here this morning who have never understood that they have never accepted it they have never rejoiced in it they have never put their faith in Jesus as the Savior who was born Father we pray that they would do that today Father those of us who know Jesus and love him we want to keep you and your holiness in Jesus and his glory first and foremost in our hearts and our minds we pray that as we sing together you would be honored and we pray in Jesus name amen stand up and we are going to worship together these guys are going to lead us in one more Christmas