Amazing Grace for Today

Christmas Eve 2025

Welcome & Opening Prayer - Jill Schnibben

Carols: “The First Noel,” “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”

Brief instructions about “optional” child care, Call Elders & Spouses for lighting of the Advent candles.

Lighting of the Advent Candle - Elders & Spouses

(READER 1) A reading from the book of John, chapter 1, Verses 14 and 16 through 17: 14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth… 16 Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.[1]

The Word of God for the people of God, (Thanks be to God).

(READER 2) Tonight on this Christmas Eve, we come together in adoration of Jesus Christ, the Light of the World who has come to bring salvation and light to us all. We celebrate this child born to us, a Son freely given by our Heavenly Father as the gift of everlasting hope, peace, joy and love for all mankind. Tonight we re-light the first purple candle again, revisiting our HOPE in Him. (LIGHT THE FIRST PURPLE CANDLE)

We light again the second candle, recognizing the PEACE we have in Him. (LIGHT THE SECOND PURPLE CANDLE)

We re-light the pink candle, re-igniting our JOY in Jesus. (LIGHT THE PINK CANDLE)

We also light again the third purple candle, keeping our LOVE burning brightly for Him. (LIGHT THE THIRD PURPLE CANDLE)

(READER 1) On Christmas Eve, we light the Christ Candle which is typically white and sits in the center of the Advent wreath. This candle represents Jesus, whose birth we celebrate on Christmas. The Christ Candle reminds us that in Him, our hope is fulfilled, our peace is secured, our joy is complete, and our love is made perfect. We light this Christ Candle, acknowledging our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ as the Light of the World has come. (LIGHT THE CENTER WHITE CANDLE)

(READER 2) Today we celebrate God’s Amazing Grace in sending His Son to the earth to die for our sins, an act which gave us everything we need for life and godliness. Hope, Peace, Joy, Love and the grace to apply each of them to our daily lives. As we pray, please participate in the call and response you see on the slide:

SLIDE:                 Call: “Christ has come” Response: “Glory to God in the Highest”

Let’s pray: Lord Jesus, You are the Light that no darkness can overcome. Shine in our hearts, our homes, and our world. May Your hope, peace, joy, and love overflow from us into every place we go. We thank you for your Amazing Grace which came at Christmas. We welcome You, Emmanuel—God with us. Christ has come; (glory to God in the highest). Amen.

Elders return to their seats

Introduction

Good evening, and thank you so much for coming to Cross Creek Community Church and our annual Community Christmas Candlelight Celebration. My name is Amanda Stiles, and as we like to say here to all our guests, “Welcome Home.” If you’ve found us online, we are streaming live on Facebook at @crosscreekfl, and you can find us on YouTube at @crosscreekflorida – If you would share the message you’ve heard here tonight with your friends and family online when you get home, we would greatly appreciate it!

If this is your first time visiting Cross Creek, we’d love to know more about you, please consider filling out a Welcome Card from the seat in front of you and dropping it into the offering box by the front door, or scan the QR code on the screen. Tonight’s service is our gift to you, but we want everyone to know that we are a missional church, and any offerings we receive allow us to continue our non-profit ministries including our Day School, the Hot Meals Program, Care Portal ministries for families and children at risk, and other ministries around the world through Dove Global Missions.

Tonight is a very special night and we’re so glad you’ve chosen to spend it here with us. We are celebrating the Advent (or coming) of God’s grace and truth which came to the earth through Jesus Christ. God’s Amazing Grace was given to us that very first Christmas when the earth least expected it, and we believe He still delights in making all grace abound to us today.

Pray

Message Part 1 - Hope & Peace for Today

I’d like to begin tonight with a question… what are you expecting this Christmas? No, I don’t mean just tonight from this service, or even tomorrow morning under the tree - but what are you expecting in your life? Expectation is the human condition whenever there’s something to hope for, little children know this feeling well especially on nights like tonight! Oh! to be young again, when the expectations of life are full of that “anything is possible” kind of anticipation. As believers in Christ, we’re told to receive God’s Kingdom like a little child - so, in truth, we should all be joyfully expecting good things for today! That’s called hope.

2,000 years ago, at the time when Jesus was born, the people had almost completely given up on expecting good things from God. In fact, it had been 400 years… that’s five generations, since they had heard anything at all from the Lord. We call it the intertestamental period because it represents the space between the Old and the New Testament. During this time, there was no prophetic insight, no miraculous signs, and no heavenly response to their daily sacrifices. It didn’t matter if the lamb they brought to the altar was spotless, it didn’t matter if the prayers they prayed were fervent… there seemed to be a great, dark, deep divide between God and His people.

One of the last things spoken by the Lord before closing the Old Testament was Malachi 4:5–6 promising He would send a prophet in the spirit of Elijah who would “turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents.” So, this is what the people hoped for all that time. They were careful to keep to the pattern of temple worship and religious duties prescribed by God. They went to Synagogue every week, and said their daily prayers...” But their hope had dwindled, and their expectations were low. Does anyone here know what that feels like? To be faithful, devoted, but unsure if God is even listening… or if He even cares?

That silent page in time turned very slowly until it was broken by an Angel named Gabriel who appeared to one of those faithful believers. Mary wasn’t the first one to be visited by an angel! Luke chapter 1 tells us it was an old priest burning incense at the temple named Zechariah (Luke 1:8-10). He was raised from birth to minister at the temple because it was what the Levi family was assigned to do more than a millenium earlier through the law of Moses. They worked at the temple because it was supposed to be the dwelling place of God, but no one had seen or heard from him there for generations.

So, on this particular day, at this particular time, when Zechariah went to burn incense for what may have been the three-thousandth time, he probably wasn’t expecting anything from God. Just the silent echoes of an empty room like it had always been for as long as He could remember. But as the sacrifice was being made at the altar and he lit his incense in the inner court, an Angel appeared to him and told him to change His expectations!

Gabriel told him that He and his wife, Elizabeth would literally be expecting... a child, a son named John (Luke 1:11-17) in their old age. The Lord had heard his faithful prayers and his son would be special. the Angel said he would be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he was born, and he would prepare the people for their long awaited Messiah. The Angel’s words mirrored some of the last words heard from God saying that “he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” (Luke 1:17)

And just like that, after 400 years of disappointment and unmet expectations, there was finally hope. This hope was not only for this aged barren couple to finally have a child, but for the savior who had been promised and spoken about for millennia. The savior of a world almost barren of hope was finally coming, and He would arrive in the most unexpected way. He would be a new dwelling place for God, where common people were welcomed without religious rites or rituals.

The Angel’s proclamation of hope marked the end of the silence. So, if you’re feeling far from God today, no matter how silent He seems, He is speaking. Through Jesus, God has established a New Covenant, one that’s not based on religion, but founded in having a relationship with Him. We can expect good things today because of the hope and peace found in Jesus.

Let’s stand and sing with the praise team, “Angels from the realms of glory”

Message Part 2 - Joy & Love for Today

Another couple, this one young and not yet married would also be visited by an angel and told to expect a baby. It would not be just any baby, but the Son of God himself. The Angel told Mary (Luke 1:31–33) “You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

This word from the Lord was confirmed when Mary visited her cousin, Elizabeth - yes the same Elizabeth who was the wife of our old priest, Zechariah. Elizabeth was further along in her pregnancy, and John was already filled with the Holy Spirit causing him to leap in her womb at the sound of Mary’s voice. It was just as the Angel said it would be, and Elizabeth recognized that it must be the Lord (Luke 1:39-45) that her cousin was carrying.

I find it so interesting that the Lord chose conception as the means of saving the world. Being a mother myself, I’ve read “what to expect when you’re expecting,” but I know there’s no book in the world that could prepare these two unlikely mothers for the precious future they were carrying. One being old; well beyond child-bearing years, and the other a virgin! If anyone wasn’t expecting to be expecting, it would be these two! Sure, there were complications - Joseph had some second thoughts, and I’m sure Elizabeth was a bit frightened about her physical capabilities. But this just demonstrates that nothing is impossible with God. With a little faith, God can take the tiniest of possibilities to create a future far beyond anything we can ask or imagine.

And this is how God chose to enter the world; the hope of a Savior was conceived, born to a virgin, and oh! What joy pierced the silent night with Jesus’ very first cry! Luke chapter 2 tells us that all of heaven rejoiced singing, “Glory to God in the Highest and on earth, Peace, goodwill toward all people.” His birth was announced to lowly shepherds, (Luke 2:8-12) outcasts, unseen and deemed unclean because of their work with animals. They weren’t expecting anything from God because they weren’t even allowed to set foot in the temple, but here they had been given front-row seats to His coming to earth! They rejoiced when they saw the baby and told His Mary and Joseph everything that the angels had said then they went to share the good news with others.

These young shepherds would have recognized the symbolism of the lamb of God being born in a stable, among sheep and other livestock. They spent their days raising animals whose purest and best were chosen as an offering to God. Sometimes a young lamb was wrapped in cloths and kept safe in a manger to protect it harm before being brought to the temple. And here was the lamb of God Himself, wrapped in swaddling cloths and placed in a feeding trough. It’s as if God were making an offering to us… saying, “Here is the one I love, pure and spotless as a sacrificial lamb.” The very heart of God sent down from His heavenly throne, all wrapped up in hope, peace, joy and love now placed in the most vulnerable state at the hands of mere human beings.

Let’s take this moment to consider the amazing gift God gave us through Jesus. Please enjoy this special song composed by our Worship director Troy, just for this special night.

Message Part 3 - Amazing Grace for Today

Thirty years later, when these two babies who broke God’s silence are all grown up - John and Jesus would come together again at the Jordan river. John had chosen to lead a life of solitude in the wilderness, instead of serving at the temple like his father, Zechariah, John’s ministry was marked by a call for spiritual renewal which contrasted with the religious expectations of the old covenant. That old covenant led to religion based on good works and ceremonial rituals that only cleansed the outside of a person. One of those rites was animal sacrifice, and being raised by a priest, John knew how to perform them - but he never did.

One day, when ministering to the people, John would see Jesus and proclaim, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) and then Jesus would ask to be baptized by John. “But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, not the other way around” but Jesus said it was the proper thing to do “to fulfill all righteousness.” This must have made the connection for John. He knew that the offering had to be cleaned before sacrifice, indicating that it had been set apart as holy before the Lord. He knew that Jesus did not need to be baptized because He was unclean, that’s why he protested… but it would be proper, as Jesus said, for the priest to prepare the lamb by washing it in water. And so, John baptized the one He called “the Lamb of God” in the Jordan river. (Matthew 3:13–15 ) fulfilling all righteousness according to the old covenant.

Faith in Jesus superceded all the do’s and don’ts of the priesthood. Serving the Lord through good deeds and being made clean through ritual was a system that God designed to fail. The fact is, eventually, we all fail at religion. God never wanted us to have to earn His love, and that’s why He sent Jesus. Jesus truly is God’s love letter to the world. He didn’t come to punish or demand obedience… He wasn’t the worldly conqueror the people had expected, but the bringer of love from God, and joy to the world because we can be saved without a long list of requirements. It was impossible for us, in our human state, to bring ourselves up to heaven’s standards with good deeds and actions alone. So our amazing, gracious God humbled Himself to our level and made himself lowly and small… weak and vulnerable… a baby in a manger. Born to live a sinless human life, and born to die as our substitute sacrifice.

Summary

People usually expect gifts at Christmas, but tonight I hope you’ve been reminded that Christmas celebrates the ultimate gift ever given to us, Jesus. Remember the scripture the Elders read in the beginning of this service? John 1:14 and 16-17, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” “Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

God made His dwelling place here among us, not in a building made with bricks, but in a baby who became a sinless man who died as our substitute and was resurrected on the third day. This replaced the old way of doing things, we no longer have to earn our way to God. He set himself apart from the world and the religious way of doing things, showing us how to have a relationship with Him instead. Jesus is our ultimate example of hope, peace, joy and love, and by the Amazing Grace of God.

When we believe in Him and receive the indescribable gift of His sacrifice on the cross, we receive grace through faith. That means not only do we not get the punishment we deserved, but we are given more than we could ever earn. Not only are we saved by Jesus’ sacrifice, we are filled with the Holy Spirit, His Spirit. The Holy Spirit enables us to be like Jesus, to demonstrate his hope, peace, joy, love and Amazing Grace to all people. Not by our own strength or power, but His! It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

Every time we face temptation, every test of faith, attack on our health, every doubt or fear that creeps in to turn us away from God, every time we feel weak and unable to face this life on our own… our hope in Christ gives us joyful expectation that we will make it through. In knowing Jesus, we know peace. Peace from God brings completeness, restoration, healing and reconcilation to every situation. He is the missing piece when peace is missing. We have joy that’s not based on our circumstances, but because of God’s love for us. The precious gift we’ve recieved of Jesus is good news that causes great joy! Finally Jesus is our example to love one another. We demonstrate the love of Jesus by choosing to serve, forgive, and show unconditional love for others, just like Jesus has loved us.

It’s the reason Christ came, to show us how to love God and love others and thereby bring His Kingdom to earth as it is in heaven. In Matthew 22:37–39 He told all those religious priests, pharisees and experts of the law, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” So, tonight in honor of this command, we are going to let our light shine and symbolically share the love of Christ with our neighbor.

Invite helpers forward. Make sure everyone has a candle.

While we stand to sing “Silent Night” please pass along the flame with the lit candle staying straight up and tipping the unlit candle to receive it.

Candle lighting - “Silent Night”

We love because He first loved us that Silent Night in sending His Son to bear our sins. Now, looking around the room, maybe you’re like I was, and think that if someone’s being nice or giving you something, they must want something in return, right? (raise hand). If that’s you, I believe the Lord brought you here tonight because He wants you to change your expectations. The greatest gift you can receive this Christmas is the gift of salvation through Jesus, but maybe you’ve never let your guard down long enough to believe it, right? (raise hand).

There's no strings attached - is not dependent on how good you are, how much money you give, or how many prayers you pray - Just as God’s love is unconditional, His grace is also unconditional. (don’t read) Ephesians 2:8–9 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” So, today, if you’d like to receive that gift from God and trust Jesus with your heart for the first time, would you please just put up your hand? Thank you

Let’s Pray together

Lord I pray grace upon those who have lifted their hands tonight, that in faith they surrender their hearts to you and ask to be reconciled to you by the grace you gave through your Son. Father God, thank you for your indescribable gift who was sent to us at Christmas with unconditional love, peace, joy and hope. I pray that the law of His love would be the ruling authority in our lives today and every day. I pray for those who are hurting tonight, the lonely, the hungry, the sick and the lost - may we be ambassadors of your amazing grace to them all.

Thank you for those who have let down their guard tonight and asked you into their hearts, Lord “I pray that out of your glorious riches you may strengthen them with power through your Spirit in their inner being, so that Christ may dwell in their hearts through faith. And I pray that they, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that they may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

Send off / Information

We’ve given you a prayer you can pray, either here or at home, just scan that QR code with the camera on your phone. If technology is not your thing, remember those prayer cards and contact cards in the seat pockets in front of you - we will be praying for you!

No service next Sunday - tune in on Facebook to hear a special New Year message from me

Please extinguish candles and place in the bins before you leave