Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome

1st Time guests

Dismissal

4 years to 5th Grade

Nursery

Improving our check-in / check-out process

Will need a care giver to check-in and check-out

Maybe that’s a parent, maybe it’s a grandparent

Announcements

Men’s breakfast

Caroling

This evening

Christmas Eve Service

Birthdays

Any other announcements?

Sermon

A Tradition of Celebration

Throughout our Christmas Traditions teaching series we’ve been exploring the spiritual meaning behind many of our most cherished Christmas traditions – in a way that we hope reveals the real Jesus and helps deepen our faith this Christmas.

Today – we are looking at the tradition of celebration.

Now, on the Christmas calendar there are feasts and fasts.

Times of celebration and times of somberness.

Jesus himself says in the Bible that there are times to fast and times to feast.

In the book of Ecclesiastes it says that there is a time to cry and a time to laugh…a time to grieve and a time to dance.

Life isn’t just all about celebrating and having a good time – but it’s not about crying and grieving all the time either.

I know people who live their lives just doing one or the other.

Always celebrating – but they don’t know when to mourn.

And some always sad – the don’t know how to enjoy the blessings.

But the Bible says that there are appropriate times for both.

In some churches, they observe lent.

I’ve never observed lent in the “official” way that you’re “supposed” to observe lent.

If you’re like me, you might even have questions about what lent is.

First, it’s not what you dig out of your belly button.

That lint is L-I-N-T lint, and L-I-N-T lint is gross.

This other lent is L-E-N-T lent and that Lent is a fast.

A fast is where you willingly abstain from or reduce your food and drink, or both, for a period of time.

Lent is observed during the 40 days leading up to Easter.

For some believers, they make a sacrifice and fast for something - it may not be food or dink at all - for 40 days.

It’s a time of somberness.

But Christmas is a feast – a celebration.

Just look at all of the things we do at Christmas to celebrate.

We get together with family we don’t see any other time of the year.

We eat feasts together.

Our favorite Christmas movies nearly always include a memorable Christmas dinner scene.

We share presents with one another.

Santa Clause comes.

We laugh.

We hug.

We kiss.

One of the truest expressions of celebration on Christmas is singing Christmas carols.

The idea is to sing to God out of the joy that is within us at this time of the year.

And most of the songs we sing are songs of celebration – like “Joy to the World.”

It is praise for our King.

The tradition of celebrating by praising God dates to the very first Christmas.

So, why were the shepherds and the angels celebrating the way they were at the first Christmas for that seemingly insignificant baby boy?

Why do we celebrate at Christmas?

A celebration is a time when you honor someone or something.

And if I were to go hang out at the Marketplace today and ask people what it is we are celebrating at Christmas, I bet I would get a lot of different answers.

At Christmas we celebrate getting presents and Santa Clause.

No.

We celebrate family.

That’s good, but no.

We celebrate good will, harmony and generosity.

Good, good and good.

But no, no and no.

If we are in tune with the real spiritual meaning behind Christmas – we know that none of those is real reason for the celebration.

At Christmas, we celebrate one person: Jesus.

We celebrate Jesus because of the HOPE He gives those who believe in Him.

Look at what the Gospel of Matthew says:

Jesus is the hope of the world.

The entire world.

The Bible says that the entire world was lost and without hope – completely separated from God because of sin.

And no matter what the world tried – there was nothing we could do to overcome that separation from God and the resulting emptiness and meaninglessness of our lives.

But God saw our hopelessness, and out of love came Christmas.

God stepped out of heaven and came to earth as an innocent and completely vulnerable baby.

And it is through believing in Him that we can have life.

It does not matter how good you have it.

How much money, how much family and friends, how much possessions or how good you have been.

If you sit here today without Jesus in your life – you are without hope.

And it doesn’t matter how crummy your life is right now.

How many things seemed messed up.

If you are here today with stress, anxiety, worry or depression.

If you sit here today with Jesus in your life – you have all the hope in the world.

Because you belong to God, you have hope.

At Christmas we are reminded of the hope that we have in Jesus.

And today I am going to share with you 4 practical ways that you can really celebrate the hope we have in Jesus this Christmas.

4 WAYS TO CELEBRATE MY HOPE THIS CHRISTMAS

· H AVE A TIME TO FOCUS ON JESUS .

Let’s revisit a verse we read earlier out of Luke 2.

Remember that the “they” in this verse are the shepherds and just like the magi we studied last week, these folks are folks gave their time to come face-to-face with Jesus.

Look, here’s the reality of the situation: it’s not like these guys didn’t have anything to do.

They were busy working.

They had busy lives just like all of us do.

But they made a choice to set aside some time to focus on Jesus.

Look, here’s what we have on our plates: some of us still have Christmas shopping to do.

Some of us still have Christmas feasts to prepare, some of us still have travel, some of us still have family arriving, some of us still have our jobs to show up for.

For this being the most wonderful time of the year, it’s seemingly the most busy time of the year and sometimes that does not feel so wonderful.

It feels stressful.

Our patience will be running thin and we will be lashing out at the very ones we love the most.

Let’s imagine something for a second.

Our shepherds in Luke 2 were in the middle of their jobs.