The Fullness of Time

Merry Christmas everyone!

I know that most of you have celebrations planned - you may be hoping that I’m going to keep this short - and I will!

Or maybe you don’t have any family to celebrate with and this is your celebration time!

Whatever your situation may be- we want to take some time to remember the reason for our celebration-

It’s Christmas - Christ - mas - it’s the gathering or celebration around Christ.

There are lots of things that we love about this season.

Maybe its the decorations - or the music.

Maybe its the food or the presents.

Maybe its being together with family or specific traditional things that you do together.

I want to encourage you to remember Christ and keep Him at the center of whatever you are doing.

After all - He is what Christmas is all about!

Galatians 4:4–5 CSB

4 When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

This verse summarizes so well the points that we have been repeating throughout this advent season.

Jesus came at just the right time, when many where anticipating, but in a way that no one expected.

He came to redeem, to turn what had become death and bondage into life and freedom.

And He came to transform us from slaves to sin into sons and daughters of God.

That is the Christmas story in a nutshell.

We have spent this year reading through the gospel of Matthew, but we are going to leave it for this evening and focus on a theme that comes our of our study of Matthew.

As we have been going through advent - I have identified a pattern that occurs in each of Matthews accounts.

Do you remember the three words?

Surprise

Redemption

Transformation

Surprise means that something unexpected happens.

In the sermon on the mount, Jesus tells us that the good life is just the opposite of what we think it should be.

Or last Sunday we talked about the wise men - something like the wizards of fiction books - rolling up to a little house in Bethlehem and throwing a big party.

Or in Jesus’ genealogy, there are women and gentiles and other people whose stories include having messed up badly - but they are part of Jesus’ family.

Their stories become illustrations of God’s redemption.

Redemption is the next word - it means that God turns bad things into good things.

God is in the business of turning things around and making things right.

God did that with Mary and Joseph - he turned what was surely a really awkward situation into blessing and honor - they just has to be willing to accept what God was doing.

Redemption is seen in the miracles of Jesus, people literally and physically healed and restored just by putting their faith in Him.

Another redemption story is Matthew, the writer of the gospel - he was a tax collector, a traitor according to most of his people - but Jesus made him a disciple and showed him how He is making all things new.

And speaking of making all things new—- that leads us to transformation.

Transformation is the evidence that God is restoring all things.

That is the whole purpose of the renewed life - it is why we want to live like Jesus.

Jesus was born into humanity to show us what it really means to be human.

Jesus didn’t gravitate toward positions of power, like most people do.

Instead - he showed us how to have compassion, how to identify with the lowly and how to love unconditionally.

He didn’t fight back when they arrested Him, and He even let them crucify Him - because He knew that by doing so, He would conquer death for all of humanity.

And its because of Jesus’ death and resurrection that we too can live a new and transformed life.

It’s part of a divine exchange - when we accept what Jesus has done for us - we receive a new kind of life - eternal life!

It goes like this:

We first recognize that we are sinners - we messed up and we can’t help ourselves.

We repent - that means we make a decision to turn around - maybe you can’t stop what you are doing - but you can rely on Jesus to help you.

Then we commit to living our lives, not for ourselves, but for Him - He becomes the thing that we live for!

And we spend the rest of our lives growing to become more like Him.

Transformation is a process - an ongoing process - one that we embrace every day.

So remember these three words - Surprise, Redeem, and Transform.

Look for these elements in your own life and in your own celebration this Christmas.

Look for these elements in the Christmas story s you put Jesus at the center of your celebration.

Speaking of the Christmas story - we are going to have some of our young people act it out for us.

The story goes something like this...