2018-12-24 Christmas Eve

Here we are. Christmas is a few hours away. We gather to remember. We remember what God has done. He has put on flesh and blood and came into our world. He experienced life just like we have.

He had joys and celebrations. He had struggles and challenges. There were times when he was disappointed. He lived life like we did and yet without sin.

Instead, he remained in his father’s will. God sent him into the world and his will and purpose was to fulfill God’s mission for him. He did.

Sometimes we can get so caught up in all of the Christmas decorations, events, preparations that we lose sight of God’s mission.

We may even get distracted by the wonderful story of Jesus birth. We look at the manger with romatic eyes and forget that Jesus was born in a stable, not a palace. Jesus wasn’t born somewhere that was appropriate for a birth, but he was.

We may forget that the shepherds were outcasts. They were on the bottom rung of society. For some of these men, this was their last chance. They had used up all of their options and this was their final hope at providing for themselves.

Mary and Joseph were ordinary. There wasn’t anythning special about them other than their willingness to be used of God for this amazing rescue operation.

Yes, I said rescue operation. You may not know it and you might not believe it, but we do need to be rescued.

You see, we are all prisinors. Sin has taken hold of our heart.

We see how suble sin is when we take a look back at Genesis. That’s where it all started. That’s where Adam and Eve decided to take matters into their own hands rather than trusting God.

As I said yesterday morning, Jesus’ mission was a rescue operation. He was sent into the world to rescue us.

God had given them everything they would possibly need, but that wasn’t enough. They wanted what was off limits. They wanted what they wanted. As Woody Allen said, “The heart wants what the heart wants” even when what the heart wants is out of bounds.

You see, we are all prisinors. Some of us don’t realize it though, but we are.

Yes, we are just like Adam and Eve. God gives us good gifts, he provides, but we want more. We want what we want.

Instead of trusting God to give us what we need, we decide to take matters into our own hands. We strive. We struggle. We sin. What we don’t know is, all the things we believe that bring us freedom, actually makes us prisioners.

We are prisioners of sin and death.

There. i said it. Because we are prisioners.

One of my fondest memories growing up was spending some of the summers at my sister’s who lived in Illinois. She was 20 years older than I was, so when I was in Jr. High, she had a couple of young daughters, married. I would go to Freeport and spend my time hanging out with new friends and golfing.

Since she was my sister and not one of my parents, I had more freedom than I did at home. There were also a lot more kids in her neighborhood than mine at home. These two things melted together making a great opportunity to play capture the flag.

Hopefully you have all had the opportunity to play captuer the flag. THere are at least two teams, but there can bre more! Each team has a territory. There are boundaries. The team takes a flag and hides it in their territory and the object of the game is to capture their flag and bring it back to your side.

However, if you are caught, you have to go to jail. Jail wasn’t fun. You’d just have to sit there. Sometimes you could see what was going on and sometimes you couldn’t. There would usually be a jailer too. This person was to guard the jail.

You have to stay in jail until the game is over, or someone, some brave, brave soul, risks capture, crosses enemy lines, makes their way to the jail and tags you, bringing you over to the other side. THe problem was, the guard would be by the jail and any attempt to free people would probably end up causing them to be caught and have to spend time in jail. I saw it many, many times. So, very few would attempt to cross over.

Capture the flag has taught me alot about Christmas. Actually, that game has taught me a lot about what Jesus has done.

You see, we are all prisioners. We are imprisioned by our passions and our sins. What we believe would bring us fulfillment has actually locked us up. We can’t do the good we want to do. Instead, we do the very thing we don’t want to do. The thing that destroys us, our relationships, and our lives.

Jesus said in that the enemy comes to still kill and destory. Yes. That’s what the enemy does and the enemy does it through sin.

Jesus like Adam and Eve we have gone our own way. We have taken matters into our own hands and the result has not been pretty. From time to time it seems like we get away with it…but then there are other times when the result of our sin is far too evident.

I hate to say it my friends, but we are prisioners and we need to be rescued.

The good news is that Jesus is the brave one who had gone through enemy lines to come and find us. He finds us no matter where we might be. Broken. Dying. Alone. Happy, etc. He finds us and he reaches out his hand so we might be released. So we might find life.

It’s hard to believe as I look at the nativity to realize how significant all of this is. It’s hard to believe that God owuld operate this way, but he has. Jesus has come to rescue us.

Will you????