Christmas Eve Service

Good to be with you tonight. I was just thinking, it's been 24 years since we left you as pastor to end up with New Tribes Mission in Bolivia.

And your love for us, your care for us, your generosity to us all of these years as one of our major sending churches has been an encouragement and continues to be.

We thank you and we thank the Lord for you. And we're glad to be back with you. Now, I've typed out a couple of pages of notes here, and it is my intention to actually follow them so that we can be out of here by 10, 30 or 11 as advertised.

All right. And it's not as bad as it looks. The older the eyes get, the bigger the print gets.

And some of you young guys could probably do this with half a page of notes, which would be the same. Well, we're gathered here tonight to celebrate the condescension of the

Almighty God to a feed trough. I want to park on that word condescension for just a moment.

Condescension generally is negative. In John Grisham's latest novel, Sycamore Row, it's a typical

Grisham story. The city slicker lawyers come to rural Mississippi to pull the wool over the eyes of the country bumpkins, the local yokels there.

And, of course, they are not successful in doing that. But one of the lines from the novel is this.

The city slicker lawyer is making his opening statement in court. And Grisham writes, his statement was condescending.

We know right away that this is one of the bad guys. And that word condescending, condescension, all of that generally has a negative connotation for us.

When you are condescended to, it's not a good thing. Our politicians do that. They condescend to the little people, okay?

We send them off to the state house or we send them off to Washington to pass laws, which are intended to keep us from harming each other or intended to protect all of us from outsiders who would harm us.

And the next thing we know, they are passing myriad laws to insert themselves into our lives.

And we are told they do that to protect us from ourselves.

Laws that go like this. If you go to New York City, you shall not drink more than 16 ounces of soda at any one time.

And certainly not in styrofoam. And little people, we are doing this for your own good.

So that you, because you do not have enough sense to know that you ought not to do these kinds of things.

Or they say things to us like this. We are passing a law for you, for your children, so often for our children, for you.

And it's a wonderful law and you're going to love it. But of course, we'll have to pass it so that you can see what's in it.

So that you little people can appreciate all that we are doing for you. And when they come across like that, they are condescending to us and we don't like it.

And so I want to look at today, what's the deal with that? Why don't we like it?

Why does condescension have that negative thing? Well, here's why. The closer the condescender is to the condescendee in equality, okay, in level, the more obnoxious is the condescension.

You know, in Grisham's novel, the local yokels, they were as bright as the city slicker lawyers.

They knew as much about the laws as the city slicker lawyers. And so right away, when the city slickers condescend to the local yokels, we all know this is not a good thing.

And of course, in Grisham's novel, they don't get away with it. Okay, not giving the ending of that thing away.

All right, okay. Our politicians, same deal. They are our fellow citizens.

They are our equals in town or in the state. We send them off to the statehouse. We send them off to Washington.

The Declaration of Independence declares that we are all created equal. And the next thing we know, they're behaving like kings and queens and condescending to us and telling us that what they're doing for us is all for our own good and for our protection, because we do not have sense enough to care for ourselves as we ought.

And the condescension of that kind we find particularly onerous, and we don't like it.

So when we talk about the condescension of the Almighty, maybe we ought not to use that word.

No, quite the opposite. Quite the opposite. I said that the closer the condescender is to the condescendee, the more obnoxious is the condescension.

Well, let me tell you, there's a huge gap in this case between the condescender and the condescendee.

Consider the power, the knowledge, and the presence in the creation of the universe. The sublime words that begin the

Scriptures, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the Spirit hovered over the waters.

And then that stunning small phrase, Let there be light. And all of the material in the universe sprang into being.

All the matter and energy that ever would be sprang into being at His Word out of nothing.

Ex nihilo, we call it, sprang into being out of nothing. A demonstration of power and knowledge and presence that is stunning in the extreme.

In fact, it's so stunning that it's unimaginable to our peanut -sized brains.

And so many have concluded that because it is unimaginable to us, there must be no

God. Or it can't possibly be true. Well, is that the case?

I will not condescend to you to go through the chemistry and physics of let there be light, except to say this.

There cannot be light without all of the material universe. We won't do the test or anything like that tonight.

All of the matter and energy that is in the universe.

You chemistry kids, you know the first law of thermodynamics, don't you?

There is a constant amount of matter and energy in the universe. It may change and transform, but there is none added and there is none taken away.

All of that happened with this phrase, let there be light by a God who is unimaginably powerful outside of the revelation of Scripture.

Who is unimaginably knowing without the revelation of Scripture. Who is present everywhere.

Who continues to sustain and be active in every molecule and atom of the creation.

Paul declares to the Colossians, speaking to the false teachers in Colossae, that we're saying this

Jesus Christ could not possibly be God. Paul blurts out, by Him all things consist.

By Him all things hold together. And the idea in that passage is that every atom, every molecule, including yours, including mine, they are all held together by the active superintendents of the

Lord Jesus Christ, who is the mighty God climbed into human flesh. And that is what we celebrate tonight.

He is not part of the creation, but is everywhere present in it, actively sustaining it and directing it, and that includes the dirt from which you and I are made.

The unimaginably all -powerful, all -knowing, everywhere present

Creator climbed into weak, ignorant, finite human flesh.

That's what we celebrate. The stunning difference between the

Creator and the creature makes condescension exactly the right term to describe where we are tonight.

Well, that begs the question, so what is this all about? To what end is the condescension of the

Almighty? The Scriptures declare the testimony of the eyewitnesses. Don't forget, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ tonight, that you have believed on the basis of the testimony of eyewitnesses.

You haven't believed a tradition. You haven't believed, well, that's what the family all believe, so that's what

I believe. If you are a believer in the Lord tonight, you have believed in the testimony of eyewitnesses.

Their testimony is this, the Word, referring to the One who created everything, the

Word became flesh, and we beheld His glory. The glory is of the only begotten

God, John writes in the beginning of his Gospel. Sadly, he also writes in that first chapter, he came to his own creation, to that which he had spoken into being, which sprang into being in an instant.

He came to his own creation, but his own people did not receive him. Now, the

Scriptures tell us that the angels called it glad tidings of great joy. I say maybe yes, maybe no.

Good news, glad tidings of great joy. The Gospel, good news, requires an understanding of the bad news.

And that's one of the problems that we face in the United States today, as we proclaim the Gospel. Everybody's interested in the good news.

And you know how it comes out when there's no bad news to contrast it with? It comes out, here's what

God wants for you. Next week is God's week for you. He wants you richer. He wants the car bigger.

He wants the house paid off. He wants all of that. And if you just buy into that, that's what

Jesus is all about. Nothing could be further from the truth than that. But the glad tidings of his coming, the glad tidings of his dying, the glad tidings of his burial, the glad tidings of his resurrection mean nothing if you don't know the bad tidings first.

As you may know, many of you may know, we have just returned from the North Pole wedding at which

Andrew Bowman and Kerry Jones were joined in marriage by me, their grandfather.

Now, Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Bowman. When we learned that the wedding, and I have to say, just sort of parenthetically, the wedding originally was going to be in Myrtle Beach.

It ends up in Minnesota in December. I mean, you know?

Well, as you may know, Chris is kind of the default Bowman family weatherman. And so, when we learned that we were going to Worthington, Minnesota, that popped up on his radar very regularly.

And one morning, he calls me. And he says, I have good news and bad news.

What do you want first? And you know, you moms and dads, you all know when they say, I got good news, but you go, oh, now what?

Okay. And so, I said, well, I don't care. Just give it to me however. He said, well, I'll give you the bad news first.

He said, it's nine below zero in Worthington, Minnesota. And that's what it's predicted to be the week of the wedding.

I said, oh, and what's the good news? The good news is that it's going to warm up to five below.

Oh, that is exciting. Good news, you see? Now, if he had started out the other way, if he says it's going to be five below in Worthington, Minnesota, that would have not been good news.

But when he came from nine below to five below, the good news became apparent, you see?

You have to know the bad news before you can know the good news. So, as I close tonight,

I'm going to rehearse the condescension of the

Almighty and the good news. I'm going to start with the bad news.

Here's the bad news. The bad news is we're all going to die. That's bad news.

I noticed that funeral directors, we listened to a radio station out in Portland, Oregon.

They have a funeral director there that advertises, and he's no longer doing funerals.

He's doing transitions of life. And I say, that's putting lipstick on a pig.

Because the fact that we are all going to die is not good news. That is bad news.

All right? Well, that begs the question, why are we going to die?

Is that the new norm we're told these days by media outlets and so on? We have a new norm in the

United States. It's higher unemployment, less money, all of that kind of thing. It's the new norm.

Get used to it. Embrace it. Love it. Like it. Seems to us, though, like death is the norm in this world, doesn't it?

But it wasn't intended to be that way. But it's sort of become the new norm.

And we know that even though there will not be a wedding in everyone's life, there will be a funeral in everyone's life.

And so, that's the bad news. That's not good news. That's bad news. How'd that happen?

It's already been read to us from the Scriptures. The creature, the man, assaulted the

Creator, the Almighty God. Paul puts it this way to the Romans, by one man.

Sin entered the world. And through sin, death. So, all died because all sinned.

Now, sin's not big in the United States. Okay. We have boo -boos.

We're all a little neurotic. Some of us are psychotic. But we're not sinful.

Okay. You don't say this, this, this, this, this. You know that word. Okay. And there may be people even sitting here tonight that have joined us to say, wait a minute, let's not get into this sin thing.

I have not sinned. And I certainly have not assaulted the Almighty. Well, it works this way.

The sin kind of boils down into roughly two categories. Okay. Some people are defiant.

I think of the late spear -throwing atheist, Christopher Hitchens, who was defiant, shook his fist in the face of God.

That's not the usual manifestation, though. The usual manifestation for people that don't want to deal with this is, the usual manifestation is simply to behave toward God as if He is not there.

You ever walked into a crowd of people that ought to know who you are, and they look right through you, and they have no understanding, apparently, that you are there at all?

That's an insulting, hurtful thing. Indeed, it's an assault upon your person.

Now, in the garden, which has been read about tonight, Adam and Eve assaulted the

Word of the Almighty. God had told them, the day you assault Me, you're going to die. Some folks might say, well, it's just a piece of fruit.

Was that any big deal? It was a big deal. It was an assault on His character. It was an assault on His Word. It was an assault on His person.

And He had told them, the day that you assault Me, you're going to die. And they did.

They died physically, finally, but they immediately died spiritually. They were separated from their

Creator. And Paul says, all people experienced death since then.

Why? Because all sinned, all have assaulted the Creator. We come factory -equipped doing that.

There's not a mom or a dad in this congregation that has ever said about their little child,

I just wish for one time that Susie or Johnny would just stop saying, yes, mom, yes, dad, yes.

And they don't come factory -equipped that way. They come factory -equipped this way. No, I'm not going to do it.

Whatever it is, we all come factory -equipped that way.

And that is why we all die. We will all die physically.

But we will all exist eternally. We need to be clear about that.

The Bible never speaks of death as the end of existence. Death is a separation. Physical death is a separation of you from your body.

Spiritual death is the separation of you from the Creator who gave you life. Okay, and it uses two terms to describe those two modes of existence after our physical death.

One is eternal death. The other is eternal life. Now, what is eternal death?

Well, the Bible describes it in several ways, but let me boil it down quickly here. Eternal death is terrifying isolation.

If you ever sat around with the guys who said, well, you know, that's right, we're probably all going to hell, but we'll all be there together and it'll be a great time.

Sorry, you got that wrong. It's going to be terrifying isolation. That's how the

Bible describes it. It will be not only terrifying isolation, it will be an intense consciousness, conscious awareness of the disaster that you might have avoided.

You will be aware of the fact that you have messed up big time. But it'll be eternal should you end up there.

And finally, Paul says to the Philippians, the day comes when every knee bows, every knee on earth and every knee under the earth.

That's biblical talk for hell. Every knee bows and every tongue confesses

Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. The God who had your fist shaken in his face or the

God whom you politely ignored and would not submit to by polite ignorance, that God will one day see your knee bow to him and confess that he is

Lord as the Scriptures reveal to us. On the other hand, eternal life is an all -enveloping, warm, intimate fellowship with the

Giver of life. You see a little insight into that in the 17th chapter of John where the

Lord Jesus begins to pray for his disciples in their presence. Jesus says in the book of Revelation, to everyone who overcomes, that is to everyone who stands in my presence, to everyone who can say when we see him, we shall be as he is,

I will give a white stone. It'll have a name on it known only to him and to me. I have to tell you, as a young person particularly,

I often thought, you know, a lot more people are in heaven than are here believing and going to heaven.

I think when I get there, I probably will be back about the 3 ,973 ,632nd row, and the

Lord Jesus will be way up there somewhere. That's not what the

Scriptures say. The Scriptures say when I get there, when I stand in his presence, when you stand in his presence, believer tonight, that there will be a name, a little sacred secret between you and the

Lord. It'll be so intimate that it'll be a name known only to him and only to you. And there will be warm, intimate, enveloping fellowship, the likes of which we cannot imagine here.

There will be no regrets. And there will be willing, rational submission of the creature, that's us, to the

Creator. And not only that, sublime pleasure, celebrating his goodness, his grace, and his mercy.

Well, all of that begs what I call the universal question. It's a question that everybody asks.

When you're young, you don't ask it. You're indestructible. There are a lot of things you don't do when you're young when you're indestructible.

You don't buy health insurance. That's a big problem for some folks now. Okay, you don't think about dying and all of that.

But as you get closer to the end of life, the universal question looms larger and larger and larger.

And the universal question is this. How do I get out of here alive?

That's the universal question. And the answer is expressed in many, many ways in the

Scriptures. But it's expressed this way by the Lord Jesus himself. I am the resurrection and the life.

He that believes in me, though he dies, yet shall he live. Let me read to you from 1

Corinthians 15, not the whole chapter. I deliver to you as of first importance what

I also received, that Christ died for our sins, that is, in our place, in accordance with the

Scriptures, that he was buried in our place, that he was raised on the third day in our place so that we might be in him, and we might get out of here alive.

That's the answer to the universal question. That he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.

Paul was saying to these Corinthians, who were people like you and me, they'd never seen Jesus in person. He was saying to them, you go look up the eyewitnesses.

They'll tell you all about this. And he, Jesus, is the way that you get out of here alive.

So the end of this has to be, what must I do? If you're here tonight and you don't know Christ as Savior, the question is, what must

I do? Peter talked about this fifty days after the Lord was crucified. He was talking to the crowd that crucified him.

They were cut to the heart when they heard that he had died in their place, that he was buried in their place, that he rose again, that they might have eternal life.

And they blurted out, what must we do? And Peter used one word that the

Scriptures use repeatedly to describe this. He says, you must repent. You must change your mind.

You say, well, change my mind about what? You must change your mind, first of all, about your sin.

You're not just neurotic. You don't just have a few boo -boos. And even though you are better than the

Baptist down the street who yells at his snowblower, kicks the dog, and maybe even his wife, okay?

Your sin is worthy of the death penalty meted out there in Genesis chapter 3.

It's not just little boo -boos. And then you have to change your mind about who the Savior is,

Jesus Christ. And you have to own Him as Savior. Of course, we invite you to do that tonight.

Now, I haven't answered all the questions by a long shot. But you may be sitting there thinking, I get it.

I am the rebel. I am the one who has assaulted the mighty

God. May I say to you, the mighty God has condescended to climb into human flesh so that you might be saved.

Maybe tonight, wouldn't that be a grand Christmas? Lord Jesus, we pray that should there be anyone here tonight that does not know you as Savior, that you would grant to them repentance, that they might change their mind about who they are and about who you are, and embrace you and own you to be their personal

Savior. We're grateful for the encouragement, the rehearsal of your condescension is to the saints.