12-17-2023 Wpg Christmas Service 2023

Welcome & Partnership

(Pst. Corey & Olga)

WELCOME SLIDE

(PC) Good morning and welcome to Cities Church! If we haven’t met yet, my name is Corey and this is my lovely wife Olga (hi everyone), we are the Pastors here at Cities Church and in celebration of this special season we want to wish each and every one of you a Merry Christmas!

(OP) We are so happy you have all come today to celebrate Christmas with us, especially if this is your first time to Cities Church! Its such a privilege and honour to have you here with us today! Church fam, please join us in giving a very warm welcome to all of our first time guests this morning!

(PC) We have a wonderful Christmas service prepared for this morning but before we go on, we want to share a few announcements about what is coming up for the rest of the month here at Cities Church.

FAMILY DAY SLIDE / VISION SUNDAY SLIDE

(OP) Next Sunday is December 24th, which is Christmas eve and we will not be having our regularly scheduled service next Sunday, so please go ahead and enjoy this day at home or with family & friends and get ready to come back and join us here for our Vision Sunday service on Sunday December 31st at 11:00am!

CHRISTMAS STUDENT DINNER SLIDE

(PC) If you are a student here in Winnipeg and you do not have any plans on Christmas day, we want to invite you to come spend Christmas with us. We are hosting FREE Student Christmas Dinner right here in this room on Christmas Day, Dec. 25th at 6PM. We are going to be a Italian lasagna dinner, we will be playing games, singing songs and its going to be a great time together!

(OP) So Students, if you want to join this FREE Christmas Dinner you’ve got to signup, and to to do that just head to cities.church/winnipeg and you’ll find all the details to signup under our upcoming events. We cant wait to see you on Christmas day!

PARTNERSHIP SLIDE

(PC) Here at Cities Church, our calling and purpose as a church is to help people find greater life and we believe that greater life exists in Jesus Christ. It’s a privilege for us to have the opportunity to share the message of Jesus with as many people as possible so that they to can experience that greater life we are all experiencing here at Cities Church.

Your partnership makes it possible to have services like todays Christmas service, or our Student dinner on Christmas Day possible for our community, and sharing the message of Jesus with all.

If you’d like to partner with the mission of Cities Church and help lead others into greater life in Jesus, you can do that by giving online at cities.church/give. We have credit card & e-transfer options for you there. And you can give here in the room by heading to our new here booth to give by cash or cheque. Thank you for partnering with the mission of Cities Church!

(prayer)

(Olga) And with that we are going to continue on with our Christmas service this morning, so please sit back and enjoy!

Messgage

(BAND EXITS STAGE - MUSIC LOOP CONTINUES FOR THE DURATION OF THE SERVICE)

Welcome

Thank you so much for joining us for our Christmas celebration. This morning it is my privilege to have a few minutes to share with you the meaning of Christmas from the Bible.

I don’t know how you feel about Christmas; maybe like many people you enjoy the Christmas season and you don’t mind getting a bit of holidays.

Or maybe you are one of those true Christmas lovers that doesn’t just enjoy Christmas, you love Christmas- for you it is truly the most wonderful time of the year. You can’t wait for thanksgiving and halloween to be over so you can get your Christmas decorations up.

You might be one of those people who loves Christmas so much you judge people who don’t have their Christmas tree up prior to November 15th, and you look down on people who watch less than 15 Hallmark Christmas movies during the season; maybe you’re one of those Christmas lovers who for you, anyone who listens to anything other than Christmas albums from Michael Buble, Bing Crosby and Mariah Carey just isn’t celebrating Christmas properly- you love Christmas.

Or maybe you’re the opposite of a Christmas lover- you’re a bit of a grinch, and you just want the whole thing to be over so you can get back to real life.

Or maybe for you, the Christmas season carries some sadness with it. It brings up painful or even tragic memories.

Or perhaps you’re the kind of person who feels that you’ve simply outgrown Christmas. You’re not a kid anymore, you don’t believe in fairies, elves or round bellied men from the north who creepily keep track of every child’s behaviour, and reward them by yearly breaking into their house to bring gifts; and you certainly don’t believe in a baby in a manger who was born of a virgin, and is actually God in human flesh.

Whatever your feeling of Christmas may be, what I find amazing as a pastor, whose job it is to study and teach the Bible, is that in an age where many people don’t believe in the Bible as the Word of God, and where more and more people are simply unfamiliar of the Bible- in a time when many Canadians identify themselves as non-religious— what I find fascinating is that Christmas is still so beloved and celebrated.

After all, Christmas is a religious, Christian holiday. The word Christmas itself literally means a festival celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Its a religious festival, not just a holiday. But even the word holiday originally meant holy day- a day set aside for observance of a religious occasion- such as Christmas. Christmas is an inherently religious season.

I find it curious that while our society has self-consciously pursued secularization, Christmas remains a staple of our culture. In fact our own prime minister recently declared in parliament that his party stands for Christmas- which is a curious thing for the leader of an intentionally secular society to say.

And this is not an isolated anecdote; this month, all over our city and our country, and the world actually, many non-Christian and non-religious people will take part of Christmas festivities- in their workplace, their schools, in their homes, with their friends and with their families. Some will even sing explicitly Christian songs such as silent night or o holy night.

Now why is this? Why is Christmas still so loved and so celebrated even by those who don’t believe in Christ?

My hypothesis, my theory is this- that though we are rational creatures, living on a natural planet, something within us longs for the supernatural- or what we might more commonly refer to as the magical. That’s why we love books and movies that allow us to escape to magical lands like Narnia or Middle Earth; that’s why you may have watched all the star wars movies multiple times, or why you may have binge-watched Game of thrones, or why you may love to immerse yourself in role-playing games like dungeons and dragons. We love to escape the natural and immerse ourselves in the supernatural or the magical.

You may have even experimented with new age philosophies, or eccentric spiritual experiences. In fact many of those who call themselves non-religious still identify as spiritual. Why? Something within you, something within us as human beings longs for a world of the supernatural, the wonderful- something beyond our natural, earth-bound, mundane lives. Something transcendental.

And the Christmas season brings that out of us- Christmas brings out our longing for the transcendental- perhaps more than at any other time of the year. I actually think the search for transcendence is why we honour family traditions during the Christmas season. We come together- children, parents, grandchildren, grandparents, uncles and aunts, cousins and in-laws- often under one roof to take part of traditions that are years, decades, sometimes even centuries old- why? Because those traditions that stretch far into the past and reach further into the future connect us both with those who have gone and those yet to come- to transcend our normal, mundane, everyday experience.

The word transcendence comes from two words: trans, which means across and ascend which means to climb. Transcendence is climbing across or moving beyond the normal, beyond the physical, beyond the earthly- into the supernatural, the above-normal, the spiritual or the eternal. It’s what we as human beings have always done and will always do; we search for, reach for, meaning and purpose beyond the natural and the normal. Whether we do it through philosophy, religion, spirituality, fantasy or family tradition, its just what we do because God has created us with a built-in awareness that there is more.

The Bible puts it this way:

Ecclesiastes 3:11 (AMP)

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He also has planted eternity in men’s hearts and minds [a divinely implanted sense of a purpose working through the ages which nothing under the sun but God alone can satisfy], yet so that men cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

This verse begins with the proclamation that God Has made everything beautiful in its time. God is a God of beauty; He is essentially beautiful and He makes beautiful things. Because God is beautiful He created a world filled with beauty; we see beauty all around us, in majestic mountains, in overflowing waterfalls, in spectacular sunrises, in the smile of a newborn, in the laughter and joy of marriage; God has made everything beautiful in its time. When God had finished creating the world in Genesis 1, He looked at it and said this is very good, it was beautiful. And as human beings we are capable of observing beauty; appreciating beauty; differentiating between the beautiful and the not beautiful- between a Botticelli (baa·tuh·cheh·lee) or Picasso masterpiece and a garbage dump where waste accumulates- we do this precisely because we are made in the image of a beautiful God who makes beautiful things.

But even with all this beauty around us, God has created us with a sense, that this earthly beauty we see and experience, is not enough. That simply seeing this beauty, enjoying this beauty is not enough- He has created us with a sense that there must be something more.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 (AMP)

11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He also has planted eternity in men’s hearts and minds [a divinely implanted sense of a purpose working through the ages which nothing under the sun but God alone can satisfy], yet so that men cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

Along with this beautiful world, God has planted a sense of eternity within us that continually tells us that nothing under the sun, nothing in this world alone will satisfy us. It doesn’t matter how much more money we make, how much more security we attain, how many more vacations we take, how physically or sexually satisfied we become; no matter how much fame we achieve, not matter how many accomplishments we accumulate; and listen to this, no matter how much we love our families and our families love us- there will always be something deep within us that says I. AM. NOT. SATISFIED.

I wonder if that describes you this morning. Maybe you have achieved success in your career, but you’re not satisfied. Maybe you have a loving husband, and beautiful children, but you’re not satisfied. Maybe you have youth and energy, opportunity is everywhere around you- you should be happy, and it’s not that you’re not, but you’re not satisfied. Maybe you have security- your future is laid out before you, an of all people, you know you really have nothing to complain about; maybe you even give to charity in order to give back, in order to feel connected to a cause greater than yourself; but something is gnawing on the inside- you’re not satisfied.

Let me help you; you’re not crazy, you’re not going through a mid-life crisis; you’re not even necessarily bored- you’re simply human, and every human has eternity planted within them. And listen, you don’t need another vacation, you don’t need another trip, you don’t need another mental health day, you don’t need another holiday, you need God.

Your heart is crying out, and only God will satisfy it.

Saint Augustine put it this way:

YOU HAVE MADE US FOR YOURSELF, O LORD, AND OUR HEARTS ARE RESTLESS UNTIL THEY REST IN YOU- SAINT AUGUSTINE.

If you’ve been wondering “is there more?” Yes there is.

If you’ve been thinking “does life get better than this?”. Yes it does.

If in those rare quiet moments, those silent times too many of us try to avoid, in those too infrequent instances of introspection- when the tv is off, when the phone is down, when the kids are asleep, when the noise is hushed- if in those moments when your soul is finally able to speak- if in those moments you find yourself wondering if there is something beyond all these things- the answer is yes.

But you’re not going to find it on your own.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 (AMP)

11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He also has planted eternity in men’s hearts and minds [a divinely implanted sense of a purpose working through the ages which nothing under the sun but God alone can satisfy], yet so that men cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

God has planted a sense inside of us, a longing for a purposeful life, a life that matters beyond our fickle feelings and our fleeting lives- and it is what we will always want most, but there is something within us that doesn’t allow us to find out what the meaning of it all is.

There is a fundamental flaw in humanity. I mentioned earlier that God has made the world beautiful, and human beings are drawn to beauty, we even create beauty. But we also create chaos, don’t we? We create wars, and thousands, and even millions die. We create pollution, and stain the beauty of the world God made. We create division, not just in our politics but in the most precious place- our homes. We break things. We break marriages, break our children’s or our spouses, or our parents’ hearts. We break our bodies through lust and greed and a lack of self-control. There is something fundamentally, inescapably wrong with us- and it is this fundamental flaw that also makes us completely incapable of finding true rest, true peace and true connection to our eternal purpose.

This flaw, this defect that breaks the beautiful, that destroys the divine and keeps us from ultimate fulfillment in God is called sin. And listen to this; Christmas is all about God’s plan to remedy this sickness called sin; Christmas is all about God’s plan to heal and repair the defect of sin; Christmas is all about God’s strategy to save us from our sin; to enable us to transcend sin.

This is the Christmas story in a nutshell- or you might say in a chestnut shell.

Matthew 1:18–21 (NASB95)

18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.

19 And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly.

20 But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.

21 “She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”

The name Jesus means Saviour- and the whole Christmas story, is about the coming of the Saviour to earth to save us from the defect every human being shares, the defect of sin. This is why real Christmas songs are always full of real joy; not the childish of joy of Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, not the sentimental joy of a white Christmas (by the way, those of you who prayed for snow, you got your wish), not the fleeting joy of an expensive gift, not the emotional joy of happy family times- none of those things can compare with the real joy of the reality that we can be saved from our sins. We can be saved from the fate of watching sin destroy our lives though addiction and violence, we can be saved from the fate of seeing sin kill our relationships through selfishness and pride, we can be saved from a life of meaningless and empty earthly experiences that have no eternal purpose or value, we can be saved from the powerlessness that comes from watching our world descend into chaos- Jesus was born so that we can transcend sin and find real meaning, real joy, real hope, real peace, real purpose. Jesus was born to be the hope of the whole world! This is the joy of Christmas.

That’s what made it a holy night; that’s why the herald angels sang; that’s why He is worthy; that’s what Christmas is all about.

It’s about the fact that God sees you. My brother my sister, He sees you. He sees you trying, and He sees you failing. He sees you reaching, and He sees you falling. He sees your disappointment. He sees you wanting to give up. He sees you wanting more, He sees the hidden desperation you harbour, the hope that there might be more to all this, more than simply all this. But He doesn’t just see you, He saves you.

He comes to where you are, and He saves you. I don’t know if you know this, but the Christmas story actually gives Jesus two names. One is Jesus, which points to Him saving us. But there is another name

Matthew 1:20–23 (NASB95)

20 But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.

21 “She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”

22 Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

23 “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which translated means, “God with us.”

I started this Christmas sermon by talking about transcendence. Our longing to transcend our earthly lives and to touch eternity, to experience the purpose for which God made us. But the reality is that we could never actually transcend our earthly, sinful selves, to experience the meaningful, the eternal and the purposeful lives Gods has for us.

But God loved us so much; that knowing we could never transcend our sin, knowing we could never ascend to Him, God descended to us. This is the message of Christmas- Jesus, God the Saviour- is also Immanuel- God with us. Put those together,

GOD IS WITH US TO SAVE US.

If there’s one thing I want you to know this Christmas it is this; God is with us, right here and right now, and God is with us, to save us, right here and right now.

Whatever your circumstance is, God sees it and understands it to a level you could never imagine. He is with you.

If you are here this morning and you don’t know that, and you are not living your life with an awareness that God is with you and with you to save you, that is the good news of the message of Christmas.

(BAND COMES ON STAGE)

ALTAR CALL

Connect / Dismissal

Dismissal

Stage Host: Pst. Corey & Olga

(Band crashes out on ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’, Olga starts speaking as soon as band is finished crash out)

(OP) (Thank God, Praise God)… It’s been a great morning together! If you are joining us for the very first time, we are so glad you spent your morning with us! If you just prayed that prayer with Pst. Corey to place your trust in Jesus and receive greater life, we are so happy for you! That is the best decision you could ever make and as a church, we want to celebrate with you and help you with your next steps in your discipleship journey of following Jesus.

CITIES.CHURCH/BELIEVE SLIDE

(PC) If you prayed that prayer today, please do not leave today without heading to this link cities.church/believe and leaving us your name and info- by doing that our team is going to give you a call this week and help guide you with your nexts steps of faith. If you are unable to head ot the link, stop by our new here booth located at the exit of this room and you can leave that same info there with our team members.

FIRST STEPS SLIDE

(OP) And your next step today is to come join us in 15 minutes for First Steps. You probably have questions and we are going to help answer those questions about faith, this church and what your life will look like now during First Steps, plus we have some snacks for you & provide child care if your kiddos are with you.

(PC) For all of our new guests today, if you would like to learn more about Cities Church or be added to our regular newsletter, please stop by our ‘New Here’ booth after you grab your hot drinks because we would love to meet you, help answer any questions you may have, before you leave.

(OP) If you enjoyed today, we want to invite you, your family & friends to come back on Sunday December 31st for our VISION SUNDA Service, at 11 am!

We have free hot chocolate at the Cities Cafe, so please don’t be in a hurry to leave after the service, stick around, make a new friend & join us in Fifteen Minutes for First Steps.

(PC) Thank you for joining us and we wish you a very merry Christmas! (smile)