Love
Notes
Transcript
Christmas Eve Morning Service- 4th Theme of Advent, Love
Christmas Eve Morning Service- 4th Theme of Advent, Love
This past week and the next few days have been a week full of family, anticipation, reflection, joy, sorrow.
You could literally run the gamut of human emotion.
On last Sunday we had our Kids and Youth Christmas programs with music and drama and laughter! Then on Thursday we held a Blue Christmas Service, or a longest night service. Giving God the opportunity to meet us in our grief and loss, depression and sorrow and allow him the opportunity to turn our mourning into dancing and fill us once again with his joy.
Then tonight we are celebrating the Season with a special Christmas Eve service with candlelight.
And its all because of something magical and so easily overlooked. The simplicity of the Christmas story found in Luke 1-2
It was my hope with this teaching series to truly unwrap the true gifts of the Christmas Season. Because we can get so caught up in the shopping, the wanting, the baking, the parties. We can get so bogged down with unhealthy expectations and feelings of insecurity. We can be made to feel less than if we are struggling financially to get our kids what they want for Christmas, and you are barely able to buy the groceries for a Christmas meal.
It’s times and seasons like this when we need to go back to the simplicity of our good news. So even if you are in a position where you are struggling with the worlds expectations and you know there will not be loads of presents under the tree, or you won’t be having a big meal with lots of family surrounding you…you can still experience all that God has for you, and know and understand that it is enough. In fact, it is more than enough.
Because the simplicity of the good news is that God came to be with us. And he didn’t pick the most extravagant or even the cleanest place to enter into our mess… no he entered into our mess a helpless baby, wrapped in cloth. Laying in a feed trough. Born in a stable with animals surrounding him.
No fan fair…no extravagant parties but yet He came.
He came to Mary and Joseph after they were given a promise but suffering under an unfair government and who had been rejected by their own family.
He came to the often overlooked Shepherds in the field, who were keeping watch over their flocks.
He came in simplicity and he did it because he loves us.
Today we are talking about the fourth candle of advent…the candle of love.
Love is all around us during the holiday season.
Its in our music...
4 of the the top 5 streamed Christmas Songs of 2023 are all about love. - All I Want for Christmas- Miriah Cary, Ariana Grande’s Santa Tell Me, Sia’s Snowman- And the most popular streamed Christmas Song- WHAM’s - Last Christmas.
it’s in our movies...
Just turn on your favorite streaming app or the Hallmark channel and you will find hundreds of movies about love.
Here’s the typical plot. Big City girl has to go home for the holidays, or to a small town for business, sees a guy wearing flannel, they smile at each other…she hears about his tragic life and how he is taking care of a young kid, or his family, she falls for him, he falls for her, she never moves back to the city…the end.
it’s on our minds...
Do you know what the #1 day to get proposed on year after year is?
In fact, all five of the most popular engagement days fall within proposal season. Christmas Day is the most popular day to propose, followed by December 24. New Year's Eve, as well as New Years Day, is also included in the list, as is December 22 and February 14 (Valentine's Day). - According to theknot.com - a popular bridal website
Love is in the air and on the airwaves… .
Love…we experience it. We feel it…but where does it come from? How do we know when we are in love, or are being loved?
Because love is a word we can just throw out there. Let me give you some examples.
I love Jesus. He is my everything.
I love Amy. She is truly my better half.
I love Elizabeth and Bailey. They are the reasons I strive to be the best Father I can be.
I love hunting.
I love pizza.
But wait, I just used love to describe how I feel about God almighty as well as a baked piece of bread with sauce and cheese on it.
What is love?
Love fills us with feelings of hope. Love leaves us broken and torn to pieces when we lose someone who we held dearly in our hearts.
Love? What is love? How are we going to experience this gift from God unless we know what it is, what it means, and how to receive it from Him.
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
God’s very nature is love. From beginning to end. He does not change, he does not lie, he is love.
Love DOESN’T just define what God does…it is who He is.
He is perfect love.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
You might ask the question then. “Pastor, if God is love, then why is there so much pain and suffering in the world?”
I’m glad you asked…
C.S. Lewis Quote.
“I suggest to you that it is because God loves us that he gives us the gift of suffering. Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. You see, we are like blocks of stone out of which the Sculptor carves the forms of men. The blows of his chisel, which hurt us so much are what make us perfect.”
God desires Children, not robots.
In the June 1965 issue of Christianity Today, Henry Derooy penned these words…
“Which one of your children would you exchange for a robot? Suppose it were possible today to produce a perfect facsimile of the human body. Would you want to trade?
Visualize a robot that is an exact copy of your child. Because he (or it) is a robot, he rises exactly at the preset time, brushes his teeth, eats a tidy breakfast, hurries to the school bus, efficiently digests all that his teachers tell him, and returns home clean and unscarred. He is perfectly obedient. Under his shirt is a panel containing electronic controls. To activate the “child” you need only set a number of dials and throw some switches; and to program him for the entire day is also simple: you just thread the appropriate tape in the tapedeck.
Who wants a robot for a child? We prefer a thousand times the not-so-perfect children we now have. They may have contrary notions, and their development may sometimes seem tortuously slow. They may now and then frighten us. But they are our own children and we’ll keep them. They are real; they are humans, not robots. And by the grace of God they may some day be men.
In creating, God faced this same choice. Children or robots? Should he make a creature with a mind of his own and the ability to choose for himself? Or should he crown his creation with an elaborate robot? Of robots he had enough. There were the creatures already crowding the air and the seas and covering the face of the earth—robots all. They were completely programmed; the switches had all been thrown, the dials set, the magnetic tape of their instincts recorded and put in place. They would learn more, as an IBM learns. And they would act as a computer acts—by conditioned response.
And so “God created man in his own image; in theimage of God created he him.” The divine daring gave life to a creature that was intelligent, pure, yet self-determining. The divine greatness created within its own territory, yet outside its perfect control, a free agent. You choose your own child rather than a robot—your own child, an individual with a will of his own—because you are made in the image of God. This was his choice, and so it also is yours.”
God desires children because he is love.
1 John 3:1 reads…
“See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are!”
Listen. If we are to experience and unwrap the greatest gift of the Christmas season we have to see it!
See how very much our Father loves us.
Do you see it?
How much does God love his children? Who even though they have sinned and fallen short of His glory. Even though we have disobeyed him. Even though we have chosen to love the world and the things of this world more than him…he still choses to love us first.
Do you see it?
Have you seen it?
Do you want to see how much he loves us?
Romans 5:8 says that,
“But God demonstrates his love towards us in this, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
The greatest gift of Christmas is seeing that God loved the world so much, that he was willing to send his only begotten son to this world. That whoever believes in him would never perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world….no but to save the world through Him.
Do you see that love?
Do you see why God had to send Jesus into this world? To be born of a virgin so that He was divine. He didn’t inherit the sin of Adam, but still born of a woman so in ever way he was fully God and fully man. In his humanity he lived a perfect life. And offered himself freely to death, even death on a cross.
The lamb who was slain to pay the debt of sin for me and for you…but not just for me and for you…His sacrifice paid for the sin of the whole world, for all who would believe in Him.
Do you see that love that God has lavished on us?
As Psalm 139:1-18
1 You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. 2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. 3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. 4 Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. 5 You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. 7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” 12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. 13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. 17 How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand— when I awake, I am still with you.
The God who knew you. Who formed you in your mothers womb. The God who knew every sin and knows every sin you have yet to make. He still choses to love you. And he made a way, where their is no way to make you right in his sight. So that you can be called his child. His beloved.
He loved you so much that through the blood of the perfect and spotless lamb he has removed your sin as far as the east is from the west.
That’s how much God loves you.
For God loved me so much that he sent Jesus to die for me. Though I am the one who deserves to die for sinning, he saw me…and now I see him clearly.
That is love.
Have you unwrapped that love yet? Do you see it?
Let me tell you how to unwrap it if you haven’t yet.
God said, “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved.” Romans 10:9-10
Because we are loved and are now adopted as children of God…we are called to share Gods love. Because this is a gift that is too good not to share!
1 John 3:16 reads,
“We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister[f] in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person?
18 Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions.
1 John 4:17-19
We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.
God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. 17 And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.
18 Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. 19 We love each other[b] because he loved us first.