Christmas

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Title: God with Us - Christmas

Elevator Summary:

The reason for Christmas.

God created us, loves us, and wants to be in relationship with us. Jesus came to earth as an Atoning Sacrifice to remove the barrier between us and God (sin) so that the relationship with God can be healed. The Holy Spirit enables us to work on healing the other three.

Focus Statement:

Jesus is God incarnate, all man, all God, who came to earth to be with us, teach us, and save us from our sins, healing our relationship with God that was broken by sin.

Function Statement:

Put faith in Jesus as the only one who can save you from the sin that keeps you from a relationship with God.

Tweetable Phrase:

Scripture: Matthew 1:18-25

Main Text: Matthew 1:18-25

Supporting Text: Leviticus 1-7, Leviticus 16, Romans 7:15-20, Matthew 20:28, Matthew 26:28

Redemptive Closure (point to Jesus): John 3:16-21

Benediction: Matthew 20:28

WELCOME

Good morning!!! My name is Ryan Hanson and I have the honor of serving here at The Light KC as the lead pastor. I’m so glad you’re here with us.

Welcome to those joining us online. We hope your doing well and hope to see you in person in the coming weeks.

And a special welcome to those joining us for the first time. We’re so glad you chose to be here. As a special thank you, we’d love to give you a small gift. Just go to the info desk after service and one of our volunteers will be there to welcome you and give your your gift. It’s our way of saying thank you for worshiping with us and to let you know how much we appreciate you being here.

ME/INTRO - Tension

So...

How many people know what this is?

[picture of elf on a shelf]

Sorry, I had to find one playing Jenga :)

I personally don’t have one, but have heard about nothing other than elves on shelves for the last month. Apparently, each of my kids class rooms at school have elves that the teachers move around each night and have fun with.

I guess on the surface, that is all fine and good.

Wyatt’s teacher decided to integrate it into the “Holidays around the world” lessons they are going through right now.

Again, sounds fine.

EXCEPT...

Wyatt especially has gotten nothing out of the lessons. When asked, he can’t tell me anything about how other cultures celebrate Christmas. What he can tell me is that elves are real, they are magic, they watch him at all times to see if he’s good, and they personally report back to Santa what he’s doing so Santa knows if he deserves presents.

I THINK HE’S MISSING THE POINT OF CHRISTMAS.

He goes to a public school, so there is no expectation that they would teach about Jesus, and honestly they probably can’t, but to put so much effort into teaching a holiday module with an Elf and Santa as the stars of the show over the course of a month has Wyatt very confused. As parents we’re trying to help re-direct his understanding of Christmas, but for a 6 year old, the thought of magic and presents is pretty enticing.

WE - Tension

NOW...

I don’t know about you, but I can’t really blame Wyatt.

As much as I personally want to keep laser focus on Jesus and what He has done for me over the holiday season, it is very easy to stray. I can easily get sucked into

Decorating the house and enjoying the decorations of other houses in the area

Shopping for the perfect gifts for my kids, the nieces and nephews

Planning / going to holiday parties

Enjoying the great food in quantities I should never consider eating, but find myself enjoying guilt free from Thanksgiving through Easter

AND…walking down memory lane with all the great movies that are played every year at this time

If I’m honest, I’m not obsessed with Elves and Santa, but I can get distracted from the TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS just as easily as my kids.

Maybe you can relate???

That’s what I want us to discuss today. What is the reason for Christmas?

That’s the questions we’re going to answer today as we wrap up our advent series “God with Us”.

If you’ll remember back, the first week, we talk about how “God is with Us - In our Pain” and how we may Enjoy God in the mountaintops, we get to know Him intimately in the valleys.

The second week, we talked about how “God is with Us - In our Waiting” and how our Deepest needs become a gift, when it drives us to depend on God.

Last week, we talk about how “God is with Us - In our Anxiety” and how we should Never let the presence of a storm cause us to doubt the presence of God in our lives.

We’re going to bounce around in the Bible a bit today, but we’re going to start in Genesis 3.

We’ll have the scripture on the screen, but if you have a Bible with you, or Bible app on your phone, I’d encourage you to turn to the passage and follow along. There is nothing that replaces having God’s word in your hand.

GOD - Text

We need to start almost all the way back at the beginning of the Bible. In Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, God created everything, Adam named the animals, Adam and Eve were in perfect relationship with God, and life in the garden God created for them was great.

Until it wasn’t.

God had given Adam and Even one rule in Genesis 2:17, not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Well, in Genesis 3, tempted by the Serpent, Adam and Eve broke God’s one rule.

Genesis 3:6–23 (NIV)

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock

and all wild animals!

You will crawl on your belly

and you will eat dust

all the days of your life.

And I will put enmity

between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and hers;

he will crush your head,

and you will strike his heel.”

To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;

with painful labor you will give birth to children.

Your desire will be for your husband,

and he will rule over you.”

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;

through painful toil you will eat food from it

all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you,

and you will eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your brow

you will eat your food

until you return to the ground,

since from it you were taken;

for dust you are

and to dust you will return.”

Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.

The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

The problem that started in Genesis 3 is sin. The original sin of Adam and Eve broke the 4 main relationships we have

Genesis 3:7 - Our relationship with ourselves - They were ashamed

Genesis 3:10 - Our relationship with each other - Adam blames Eve

Genesis 3:17-19 - Our relationship with nature - God cursed the ground

Genesis 3:23 - Our relationship with God - Adam and Eve couldn’t be in the garden so God banished them from His presence

The rest of the Bible is God’s love letter to us. Like a good parent of a child that has broken all the rules, the Bible is the true story of a God that lovingly guides His children back into a relationship with Him. Because that is what God is, a loving father, who wants a relationship with you.

The Old Testament lays out 613 rules called the Mitzvot (or Commandments) that are God’s instructions for how to live in alignment with how He created us.

When the commandments were broken, God provided a sacrificial system to atone for (or make reparation for) the sin that we committed. Reparations needed to be made because God is Holy and by His nature cannot look upon sin.

The sacrifices outlines in Leviticus were designed to cleans the temple and the people of their sins so they could again be in relationship with God. They had burnt offerings, grain offerings, fellowship offerings, sin offerings, and guilt offerings.

BUT...

As you can guess, the Israelites couldn’t stop sinning, and to make it worse, they couldn’t even keep track of all the sins they committed.

In Leviticus 16, God outlines a Day of Atonement, a day set aside to cleans the people of all the sins that they had committed and missed during all the sacrifices throughout the year. They had two goats, one was sacrificed to cleans the priest. The other had hands placed on it, all the sins of the people confessed upon it, and led out to the wilderness where it would symbolically take the sins of the people away from them.

Whereas this was quite the system, again, the Israelites couldn’t stop sinning and the endless cycle of sacrifices continued.

The Old Testament served as a lesson that we cannot save ourselves through our action alone. We need someone else, to save us. We need a savior, who can live according to God’s will and who chooses to become the final sacrifice, repairing our relationship with God once and for all.

That savior is Jesus and His birth is the reason we celebrate Christmas.

Matthew 1:18–25 (NIV)

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

On Christmas, we celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Born of a virgin.

Born fully man, yet fully God.

Who loves us so much that He voluntarily chose to set aside the privileges of deity (MSG) and come down to be with us.

Philippians 2:6–8 (MSG)

He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.

Matthew, one of Jesus’ disciples writes in his gospel

Matthew 20:28 (NIV)

just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Jesus, in His own words, says

Luke 19:10 (NIV)

For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Jesus came to earth as an atoning sacrifice to remove the barrier of sin between us and God so that our relationship with God can be restored.

God, knowing that we could not do anything to “earn” our way back into relationship with Him, sent Jesus (His Son) to earth, who lived a perfect life, voluntarily went to the cross, took our sins upon Himself, served as our atoning sacrifice, and forever repaired our relationship with God.

All we need to do is believe in Jesus and accept the free gift of forgiveness that He offers.

YOU - Takeaway

Where is your head at this Christmas season?

Are you lost in the business of the holidays; decorating, shopping, partying, eating, etc.?

Or…Are you worshipping? Are you worshipping a God that loves you so much that He stepped down from Heaven to be with you, to save you from the sins that you can’t stop committing, so that you can have a relationship with Him now, and spend eternity with Him in heaven.

WE / JESUS - Redemptive Close - Call to Action

Most of us have heard John 3:16, but I want to read until V21.

John 3:16–21 (NIV)

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

My prayer for all of us today, is that, when tempted by everything the world has this season, we do not love any of it, more than we love Jesus, the Son of God, who came to save us from this dark world.

PRAYER

Will you join me in prayer...

SONG

As we enter into our final song, I want to open the steps up front as an altar to anyone who needs God this week. The steps are open for you to pray to the God who is with you, who loves you, and came to earth to save you from the sin that keeps you from an eternal relationship with God.

If today is your day, you are sick of trying to “do” all the right things and falling short, and you want to accept the free gift of forgiveness that Jesus offers us all. I’ll be standing down front and would love to pray with you. Don’t ignore the nudge of the Holy Spirit you’re feeling. I would love for today to be your day to start walking with Jesus; fully forgiven of your sins, loved unconditionally, and accepted exactly as you are.

BENEDICTION

John 3:16–21 (NIV)

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

This week...

As you celebrate Christmas, remember WHO we’re celebrating.

Jesus...God incarnate (literally God with Us),

who chose to come down to earth,

who was born of a virgin,

who is fully man,

who is also fully God,

who set aside the privileges of deity,

To...

come down to earth

To...

love us,

teach us,

and save us from our sins,

WHO…if we believe in Him

forgives us of our sins

heals our relationship with God that was broken by that sin

and allows us to live, eternally with Him, the life we were created to live

Quick reminder

Christmas eve service is this Tuesday 12/24 at 4 PM

If this is your first time here, we’re so glad you’re here and please don’t forget your welcome gift at the information counter in the lobby

I hope you have a great week.

Go in peace.

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