Christmas According To Paul

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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we are growing in faith, community, and service. This is a three -part series for the

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Christmas season called Christmas According To, by Pastor Don Filsack, where he takes some of the lesser -known

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Christmas passages and talks about the greatest gift of all, the incarnate Jesus Christ.

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If you'd like more information about Recast, visit us on the web at recastchurch .com.

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Well, good morning, welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsack, I'm the lead pastor here, and glad that you're here with us this morning, that you slid on in on the roads.

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Were they pretty rough on the way in, or? No, not too bad, starting to get cleared out there? Supposed to be a lot more snow on the way throughout the day.

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Encourage you to check out the worship folder that you received when you walked in. It's just got some different activities and events that are going on.

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There is also a connection card you received. If you fill that out and turn it in in the black box back there, and especially if it's your first time here, you can take a free coffee mug, just our way of saying thank you for joining with us.

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And remember that there's a place for you to put prayer requests on the back of that, but primarily that registers that you're actually here, so we know, and then also there's a place for you to put your email address.

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If you do give us your email address, we do send out a weekly email, just our way of keeping you in touch, and you can unsubscribe from that at any time, but that is the primary way of connecting with the information of what's going on at the church is through that connection card.

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And any offerings you would choose to give, go in the black box back there as well. We don't pass an offering plate. We really don't want anybody in that stunned moment, like, oh, there's a plate in front of me, what am

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I supposed to do with this thing, or feeling compelled to give like you have to. That's just an act of worship between you and your

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Lord, and so if you choose to give, that's available back there. Remember that anything that's marked expansion fund does go towards our eventual hopes of busting out of this facility and moving to a place where we can accommodate some more.

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And so anything that's marked expansion fund. We are going to hopefully be getting something, some more information to you in the near future.

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I'm saying like in the next couple of weeks. Our goal has been to get a firm number of what it is that we need to raise.

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So we've got this fund available that's open that's just called the expansion fund.

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But how many of you think it might be helpful to know how much do we need in that expansion fund before we could build a building? Does that sound like it would be helpful to know?

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And so we're actually trying to get that number figured out, and we've got it pretty much, we're getting it refined to the point where the leadership's feeling more and more comfortable getting a number in front of you, maybe within the next week or two to say, this is what we would need in hand before we could break ground with a loan.

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And so the loan is a secondary question. We have not yet voted as a congregation whether or not we're willing to incur debt to build a building.

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So that comes down the road. But at this point, the bank that we've been working with, the lending agency is basically saying, we're getting this number to you of what you must have in hand before you can even break ground.

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And so that's coming, and it's actually looking pretty favorable, actually. It's looking like we're doing well as a church, and I'm very grateful for the way the

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Lord has blessed us in that way. On a different note, and I think probably many of our thoughts throughout this weekend and throughout this week have turned to Tim and Amanda Cook.

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I'd encourage you to please be continuing in prayer for them. Tim and Amanda's son,

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Preston, went to be with the Lord this past week. Just four and a half months old, and so obviously they need your prayers.

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They have actually said that they sense and feel your prayers, and so I just encourage you to continue on for them.

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As their pastor, having been connecting with them off and on over the last few days, I just wanna pass along to you that they are doing well under the circumstances.

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Their faith is holding firm, and their trust is placed in Christ. I'd ask that you continue to pray that their faith would remain firm during this time ahead.

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Today, visitation from two o 'clock to five o 'clock at Langlands Funeral Home on Ninth Street, and then tomorrow, 11 o 'clock funeral service, memorial service tomorrow morning at Langlands on Ninth Street as well.

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So everything's kinda going on over there, but come out, let them know your support, and just continue to lift them up in prayer.

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I think probably the hardest days are ahead of them, not behind them in this regard, and so I know that a lot of times we go to the memorial service, we go to the visitation, and then we think that everything is okay from that point on, and they need us more after that than even now, and so I appreciate it.

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By the way, I am so proud of you as a congregation in the way that you have come alongside of this family, providing meals, providing prayer, providing encouragement, and they're experiencing your love, and so I'm grateful for that.

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There's no mysteries in God's plan, and we have a kids' program. We have a kids' program this morning after that announcement, and so just an opportunity for us to kinda hear our kids play some bells, sing some songs, quote some scripture, a time for us to celebrate

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Christmas together, and just think through these things, and I wanna point out that here at Recast Church, on any given

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Sunday, we have between 100 and 150 kids in programs down there. Now, just to put that into perspective, there are 150 seats set up here, so that's how many kids are down there every week between the two services, and we have a wonderful, amazing, gifted staff of teachers and volunteers.

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Well, they're all volunteers. We don't pay our teachers either, so they deserve it. So, and all the helpers, and the registration team, and all of that stuff that goes into making sure that we've got a good program, and these are people who are using their gifts and using their talents for the kingdom of God in training our kids, and how many of you are glad, you just kinda look around and you go, man, it might be a little distracting if we had 150 kids in here every service.

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That might be kinda hard to focus a little bit on the word of God, and so I'm very grateful from that aspect, too, that they take our kids down there and work with them.

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So they're gonna be coming in here in just a couple of minutes. Before they come down, let me introduce the message we're gonna be looking at this morning.

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I'll pray, we'll sing a couple songs, and then the kids will filter in, and we'll go, oh, they are so adorable, and watch them, and it's super cool.

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But the birth of Jesus is a pretty big deal. I mean, if we think about it in the global scope of things and the cosmic history of what is going on on this planet,

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Jesus was God who came to us as a human through birth, and that's what scripture is. Scripture is clear in that revelation.

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The word incarnation, we use that as applied to Christmas. The word incarnation is a word that we use for this concept, and it simply means to be put in flesh.

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So it's a pretty basic word whereby God himself came and was put in flesh for us and became a man.

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Many authors throughout scripture spoke of this amazing and deep mystery of God. And this morning, we're gonna be looking at just a short passage from the apostle

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Paul, where he's gonna explain the significance of the timing of the incarnation to us and kind of pull out some of the significant things about the incarnation.

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So what we're looking at is Christmas according to Paul, and we're gonna find it in Galatians 4, 4 through 5.

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So you can open your Bibles there. If you just take the paperback Bible out from the seat in front of you, you can turn to page 834, and boom, it's there.

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It'll probably take you longer to find it than it's gonna take me to read it. It's a short passage, but it is helpful for you to look down and see that these are the words of God.

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And remember, if you don't own a Bible, don't have a copy of the word of God at home on your nightstand or whatever, take that paperback one with you.

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We've got boxes to replace the ones that are taken here, so feel free to take that one with you. Galatians 4, two verses, four and five.

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But when the fullness of time had come, listen to that again. But when the fullness of time had come,

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God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.

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Let's pray. Father, we come to this day with an opportunity to learn from you, to be challenged by your word, to take it as true and to believe it.

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Father, I pray that for each one of us that as we walk in these doors, we've got a lot of different things on our minds and a lot of things on our hearts, but we really need to hear from you.

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We need encouragement from you. We need correction from you. We need challenge from you. And so,

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Father, as we contemplate and consider the incarnation according to Paul, the way that he worded it and the things that he had to say to us,

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I ask that you would move in our hearts with joy and with gladness that you provided a way for us to be redeemed, to be bought back, to come into your family by adoption through your

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Son, Jesus Christ. And I pray that you would receive our praise and these songs as worship to you in Jesus' name, amen.

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Amen. Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated. I'm very thankful to the band for leading us and also just for all the workers with the children.

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It's great to see them down here and a chance to see them being cute and all.

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I'd encourage you to have your Bibles open in front of you, too. Remember at any time during the message, you can get up and get coffee, juice, maybe some donut holes still left there.

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And I know we just took a break, but you might just need to tank up or whatever before it's over. And then remember to be open to Galatians 4, verses four and five.

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I know it's a short passage, but it's good to just see it right there in front of you to be able to glance down at it. And if you lost your place in the shuffle, it's page 834, so you can find that really quick.

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Most of you who are here regularly maybe notice something different about the passage I'm taking, and that is that it's pretty short.

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Did you notice that? Anybody kind of like, yeah, I noticed that. That's a short passage. You may also have noticed that I preached on this passage before.

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Did any of you notice that? Like I've preached through the book of Galatians before, but you know that it's my tendency to take larger chunks of scripture, and that's part of the way that kind of my mind works and I see the flow.

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I mean, in all honesty, scripture holds together with a full story from Genesis to Revelation.

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So I could preach one sermon on the entire Bible, Genesis to Revelation, and just talk about the flow of God through history.

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Or we could take a whole book of the Bible and just preach one sermon on that, or take half of a letter and talk about what the flow is of that or something like that.

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But I'm actually intentionally taking a smaller chunk to show that there's different methods of study. There's different ways, and it's not just taking a big chunk that somehow that's extra spiritual or something.

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We do get the flow of it well through doing that. But there are times where I would be encouraging you to be just taking a smaller chunk of scripture and meditating on it and letting it flow over your mind.

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Well, the apostle Paul did not write large chunks of his letters about Christmas, okay?

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But he sprinkles it in from time to time here or there. So we're just gonna be looking at this one text where we see

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Christmas according to Paul. And so that's kind of the focus and why I picked this.

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It's a pretty tightly knit focused explanation of what Christmas is according to Paul.

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But this short passage, I always have to do this. I wanna put it in its context because it's one of the dangerous things about biblical interpretation is when you just take a verse, ignore everything that's going on around it, ignore what the author meant by all the stuff around it or how it fits in, and just kind of interpret it on your own and take it and run with it.

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Like, there's one verse, there's a good example that eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. And so if you were to just take that verse out of context, out of the understanding of where that is, whoa, party, right?

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And that would just be it. But that's really not, there's a context here. So this short passage, verses four and five, occur in a bigger context in which throughout the entire book of Galatians, Paul is making an argument that the

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Christian life is to be won based on grace and not based on law.

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So what is it that he's trying to communicate to us? That when as you are walking with Christ, if you are his child and you are with him and you've given your life over to him, that your life is gonna be characterized by love and relationship with God and not just merely by following rules and regulations.

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That's the point of the book of Galatians. Now, the world out there, your friends who know you attend church that have never been to church or do not know anything about church, assume that you are here getting a list of rules for me.

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Did you know that? I mean, that's primarily in our culture, what they out there think that we're doing in here. Is that right or wrong?

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I mean, for the most part, they think that I'm here beating you guys over the head with a two by four saying give more, do more, be more and all of that.

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And I hope that that's not what you feel like recast church is about. I hope you recognize that it's about relationship and love with God and God loving you.

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And that's what Paul is gonna use Christmas here as one of the points in his argument about a grace -based life.

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And he has some pretty awesome things to say about the incarnation of Jesus Christ in the process. First of all, the very first thing that Paul's gonna say here in the text is something about timing.

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He's gonna talk to us about the timing of the incarnation. Now, how many of you recognize that there are things in your life that timing matters for?

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Would you agree with me on that? Okay, timing the traffic lights. Maybe you have some things at work that pertain to timing, like getting that memo out on time would be good for your boss.

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He'd be happy to see that or getting that project done in time. Timing matters in everything from baking a souffle to me beating you in ping pong, right?

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I mean, timing matters in all of those areas. Yeah, ping pong. I just,

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I bring that up because there's nobody at the church yet that I've played that I haven't had an opportunity to beat yet, and I'm just throwing that down.

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Maybe we ought to talk about timing with humility as well. But maybe the sermon isn't the time for me to be talking about my ping pong game, but I would love to take any challenges just after the service, okay?

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Not right now. And by the way, I'm not saying that some of you have beat me. Right, Rob's beat me a couple of times, but I've beat

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Rob too. Nobody that I've played here that I haven't beaten yet, yet. There's a right and a wrong time for things.

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Stopping to wave at your parents during a 100 -meter dash. Good timing or bad timing? Okay, that would be bad timing.

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Trying to plant a maple tree in Michigan in December. Good timing or bad timing? Bad timing, okay, good luck.

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Texting while I'm preaching. I'm gonna leave that up to you guys, but I wanna make sure you guys all understand,

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I can see what you're doing while I'm preaching, okay? Just let you know, okay? There's at least one set of eyes watching.

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And God sees too. The first thing that Paul says, ultimately, in this text, is that God has impeccable timing.

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He has perfect timing. But when the fullness of time had come, the word fullness there is a

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Greek word that often translates to idea or the concept of pregnancy. It's like time was expectant to give birth to the

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Messiah, and it's when the time was right, the nine months were over, and she was just ready.

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Can we just get this going? And at that right time, the baby came.

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When the fullness of time came, then God sent forth his son. God has perfect global timing.

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At the point when we were finally grasping our ineptitude, there was a point where the human race was finally starting to get, hey, this whole law thing, we're not getting it.

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It's not working for us. It is not getting us better or closer to God.

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The laws, the rules, the Old Testament, we needed the 2 3rds of the Bible and epic eras of history in order for us to get our minds around as a human race, huh,

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I think we might need a savior. I think we might need somebody else to take care of this because we're not cutting it.

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We are not gonna get this right on our own. We need somebody to come from outside of this system to come in and redeem us, to buy us back, to solve this problem.

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We finally came to the point, there was a point in history where we were beginning to realize and recognize our trouble.

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God had been patient with humanity, giving us ample evidence that we cannot keep his laws and rules.

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And by the way, when you read the Old Testament, read the Old Testament, folks. Get in there and dig in. It's rich and I think a lot of Christians are afraid of the

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Old Testament because like, I don't get it. And there's like these sacrifices and there's these laws and uh. And it is like awesome to get in there and dig in and read about these real life people who wrestled with God and tried to figure him out and tried to understand him.

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And it's rich and it's deep and it's in the notion of our depravity. I mean, there are no perfect characters aside from the

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Messiah, the Savior himself. I mean, everybody's just like you and me. I read it and I'm like, I can relate to Jacob.

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I can relate to Peter. I mean, sinking in the water, like all of a sudden, can you relate to Peter like that flash faith?

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Like sure, oh, Jesus is walking in the water. He's calling to me. I'm stepping out. Oh my goodness, I'm sinking. Like, can you relate?

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Does that relate to you? Like, can you, are you kind of like, I see myself in that. Like super enthusiastic in the beginning, sinking and drowning in like five minutes.

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And yeah, I think a lot of us can. So I see myself in these, the Old Testament characters and the New Testament characters throughout the

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Bible. I can relate to David. I can relate to Saul. I can relate to trying to do things on my own.

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Have you ever considered that God is sovereign? I'm sure you have, that he's sovereign over human epics and eras.

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So like the flow of history, like the Roman Empire, okay? Like in our history, you know, like this massive empire, that was no mystery to him.

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Like he kind of had that whole thing going on for a while, said, okay, we're done there. And we're going to move on to another epic era of history.

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And we're going to go into Persian. We're going to do this and the Ming Dynasty in China. And I think sometimes we have almost kind of like a chronological dissonance in our minds.

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Like, okay, there's this ancient document that was for ancient times and God moved and worked among his people then.

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And now we've got technology. Like, have you ever thought about God in terms of like, did God know the iPad was on the way?

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Did he know about the combustion engine? Did he have plans for the airplane? Or was that just like something we stumbled on on our own?

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Like he understands the era and the time that we live in and he still connects with us even in this modern age.

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I mean, it's interesting to note that just the ancient text, I mean, where Jesus says, you know, Jesus talks very directly on the

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Sermon on the Mount. I mean, ancient times, we're talking about, you know, a couple thousand years ago and he's talking about lust and we invent internet porn.

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Like, I mean, is that any mystery to him that that's going on in our culture and our society? And he was talking about it.

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And this book addresses where we live as ancient as it is, it still deals with stuff that we face every day.

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That's the glory, that's the beauty of this book. Isn't it amazing? And it addresses this modern age just as equally as it did their time and their era where they lived.

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God is a God of perfect timing and he holds these epics in his hand.

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But not only that, but consider the way that our clock is set.

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You're about to begin writing on your checks if you ever write a check. I don't know if you write checks anymore, but you're about, if you're gonna write a check in several, a couple weeks, you're gonna be writing 2014 at the end of that check, right?

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When you put the date down. 2014 what? What's that number mean? What is the significance of that number?

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2014 is 20, 2014 years from what? The birth of Jesus Christ.

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He is the pivot point of human history. He is at the apex of human history.

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At the fullness of time, God sent forth his son. And people down through the ages have recognized that by keeping, by marking our years, every time you write down the year, consider what it is that you're writing.

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2014 years since the birth of our Savior and Lord and King.

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It's a glorious thing. I mean, it's just a simple thing to just kind of keep your mind focused towards God and what it is that he is doing.

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With the birth of Jesus, God was saying humanity now has enough history of law, enough history of sacrifice, enough history of religion to convict them of their need of a

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Savior. Let's praise God together for his perfect timing as revealed by Christmas according to Paul.

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The second observation is what happened at the fullness of time. So what is it that sits there at the apex? God's great timing, great timing, but what was the event itself?

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And the text tells us, it's the second thing in verse four, but when the fullness of time had come, comma,

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God sent forth his son. God sent his son,

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Jesus. Jesus is the perfect representative of God. He is the ambassador of the

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Trinity to the human race. He was sent by the will of the Father, and it's important to remember and reflect on all that Jesus surrendered at his coming.

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As a matter of fact, I struggled with which text, there's two primary texts where Paul addresses Christmas, where it comes up in his argumentation and in his thinking.

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It's this one in Galatians, and there's one in Philippians. I'm gonna read the one in Philippians to you. I chose to talk about this one, particularly in Galatians, but this ties in with understanding what was it that Jesus surrendered when he came to be with us?

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Philippians 2, six through eight says this. You can just write down that reference. You don't need to turn over there. I'm gonna read it to you,

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Philippians 2, six through eight. Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.

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The word grasped there means something to be hoarded for himself or something to be clung to, but he emptied himself.

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How did he empty himself? How does God empty himself? Well, the way that he emptied himself was by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

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How much did Jesus condescend for us? I don't believe we can overstate the humility that Jesus undertook when he came and stepped out of heaven into that manger 2 ,000 years ago.

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We cannot overstate it. It's not just the glory that he gave up, but to actually receive for himself pain receptors, nerve endings, to actually come and endure suffering with us, to experience in real time on this planet pain, betrayal, loss, mourning, suffering, torture, and death.

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He who had every privilege of God in heaven, creator, author of all that we see, the creator of the tree that the wood came from that he would be hung on, and he came to us.

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That's a pretty amazing thing. Anybody think that's pretty awesome? God sent forth his son, and praise

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God that he did so this Christmas. Praise God that he sent forth his son.

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The third observation about this incarnation is that the son of God was born of a woman. Okay, thank you,

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Paul, for that clarification. Raise your hand. Raise your hand if you were born of a woman.

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All right, what's going on over here? We have a couple aliens here with us.

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We were all born of a woman, and so you kind of go, well, Paul, what are you getting at here? When you see something that's just that, like, okay, we get that,

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Paul. Like, did you really need to take up some ink on a scroll to mention to us that Jesus was born of a woman?

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This is not the birds and the bees according to Paul, but that this one sent by God, being born of a woman, this speaks to two things that I think

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Paul wants to make sure that we're abundantly clear about. Number one, he was indeed human, okay?

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There were some people arguing during the time and the era that Paul was writing, saying he wasn't human, he was just divine, and he had no physical form, and if he walked on the beach, he wouldn't leave footprints because he didn't have a body, you know, and you'd just pass right through him or something, he was just kind of like an apparition of God or something.

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No, he was a human, and Paul wants to make that clear. The son of God became a true, living, breathing, developing baby, but being born of a woman is not merely a statement about his humanity.

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I don't think that's the extent of what Paul wants to communicate. Paul being steeped in Old Testament tradition, he was a student, he was a

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Jew among Jews, educated by one of the most prominent Jews of his day. I don't think it would be lost on him that what he is saying is tying back to the very most ancient promise that God ever made to humanity, the most ancient.

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In Genesis 3, verse 15, okay, Adam and Eve have just, they've already taken the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that God forbade them to eat, they hid themselves,

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God comes down in the garden to walk with them, they're hiding behind the fig trees, like, come down, where are you?

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They're like, just trying to hide here, God, can you go away? I don't know how the conversation, you know, we got some detail of the conversation.

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He rallies the two of them together, we're gonna have a sit down, but Satan, you get over here too, we're gonna talk with you.

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So the serpent, Adam, Eve, God kind of taking them to task here for a minute, like, what's going on here?

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I see, I caught you guys in the cookie jar here, and so he has this conversation with them.

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And this is what he says, this is, by the way, I wanna be clear, I believe this is firmly a promise to humanity, even though God is speaking to Satan.

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Remember, Adam and Eve are there with the privilege of listening in, and it's kind of like, it's a promise to Satan, but that we got to hear it is a pretty glorious thing.

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This is what he says to Satan in Genesis 3 .15. I will put enmity between you,

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Satan, and the woman, Eve, and between your offspring and her offspring, singular.

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He, singular, shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his, singular, heel.

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I put those singulars in there, that's not in the text, that was, it's not an advertisement for singular. But it's to say that this is one, okay?

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And it's clear in the Hebrew text that there is one, and the pronoun used for him is masculine, there is one male descendant of woman, and he's speaking to Satan, and he's like, and he's gonna crush your head.

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So there, have at that, Satan. There's gonna be one child who is born of the woman who is going to crush your head.

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Certainly, you're gonna get a chance to nip at his heel. You're gonna injure him, you're gonna wound him, you're gonna hurt him, but he's gonna crush you once and for all.

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We're gonna see that next week in our Christmas text about the crushing of the dragon, but that's in the book of Revelation.

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So, but for now, just, I do believe that Paul intentionally saying he's born of a woman is tying us back to that promise, saying yes, and he is the one who was promised to be born of a woman.

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Well, there's something different. He was born of a woman just like you or I were born of a woman, right? Except there's a way in which he was born of a woman that you and I were not, and that's that he was born only of a woman, and I think

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Paul alludes to that here as well. That's a pretty glorious thing. The virgin birth, is that mind -bending, any of you?

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Any of you kinda go, I believe it by faith, I trust it. I don't exactly understand how that works, okay?

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God can do what he wants to do. It's his will, it's his desire, and that's what he chose to do for his son.

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But the fourth thing, it was not just the timing of his birth, but the lineage of his birth also matters.

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So he was born at the fullness of time, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, but fourth, born under the law.

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His lineage is that he was born to a Jewish family at a time where the law was still enacted.

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That's important. The law, he was born in a culture that was under the law in order to fulfill the law for us.

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I mentioned that we couldn't keep that law, right? We couldn't match it up. We could try all that we wanted, but we were not able to meet the demands of the law that was set out by God, and so Jesus came to fulfill that law.

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God didn't send Jesus to abolish the law, to do away with it as if to say, I guess that didn't work.

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I guess the law didn't work, so I'm gonna just try something else. I'm gonna scrap the law. Well, the law expresses the good, perfect, awesome, honest character of God.

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It's a glorious expression of the way that life is to be best lived, especially when we understand the spirit of community, the spirit of righteousness, the spirit of love that undergirds all of those

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Old Testament laws. Now, how many of you, if you're just being honest, you've gone to read the Bible, and you got hung up somewhere in Leviticus, and just kind of, okay,

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I'm done. Like, Leviticus, you get into some of those Old Testament laws, and I think if we're honest, sometimes we're just like, wow, this is a lot of law.

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This is a lot, boy, there's laws about laws in here. This is a lot, and at the same time, if you really research them, you study them, you understand that the spirit under them is righteousness, is set apart to God, is holiness, is a glorious community of love for him.

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And the cool thing is, Jesus didn't just live a sinless life in a society where the standard was pretty low.

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It's not like he just came and lived a really awesome, mediocre life. Like, if you think about the standard of the law in America, how many of you think, you know, or the standard of the rule in America as far as our society and our culture goes, how many are like,

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I think I can do that? I think I could do pretty well in regard to the standard of civil law in America, right?

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Like, I think I could be a Messiah if that was the standard, right? You getting what

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I'm saying? But that's not the standard that Jesus fulfilled. Jesus didn't come and just be a good citizen, just be a good neighbor.

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He came and he fulfilled every part of the law of God Almighty.

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That which no person in history was able to accomplish, Jesus came and fulfilled it for us.

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The Mosaic law, the law given in the Old Testament. His birth under the law allowed us to see what a life lived for God really looks like.

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It's not insignificant that he was born as a Jew. I mean, you kind of think, could he have been born Pennsylvania Dutch?

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Could he have been born in Australia? Could he have been born, you know, in all the hypotheticals? Could he have been born in Germany or whatever?

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It was significant that he was born as a Jew under the law, and that's pretty awesome.

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Praise God that he was born under the law and fulfilled it for us, and I would just especially encourage you as you get an opportunity to eat bacon over the holidays, praise

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God that he fulfilled the law. When you get that water chestnut with the wrapped in bacon and the crunch and the salt and the mm, when you get bacon, just think, thank you,

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Jesus, for fulfilling the law for me, okay?

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Anybody know what I'm talking about? I mean, crispy, yes. I'm getting, getting hungry.

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His birth under the law, second to the last thing here, number five. So, look at verse four with me for a second.

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But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth a son, born of a woman, born under the law. Now, the next statement is gonna be an answer to the question, why?

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Why did he do this? To redeem those who were under the law. Why did he come and fulfill it? Why was he sent forth?

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Why was he born of a woman? Why did he do all this? He did it to redeem those who were under the law.

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He came at the perfect time in history, for the purpose of buying us back. When you see the word redeem anywhere in scripture, think this phrase, buying back or bought back.

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It's a word that if you were to take the usage of that word or the way that it's translated into multiple languages over the course of history, it's a word that actually goes back to slavery.

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Now, there's two different types of slavery. There's the Roman slavery that Paul would be tying this word to redemption, even during Paul's time in Rome was tied to slavery, okay?

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And then ultimately there is this horrible blight on humanity in American slavery in our history and in our past that's just horrible.

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And one of the most deplorable things about slavery in America is that was racially motivated. In Rome, it was not.

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I wanna be clear about that. There's a difference when scripture talks about slavery and when we talk about American history slavery.

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Any kind of slavery is horrible. Would you agree with me on that? Any kind of slavery is bad, but when it really comes down to it to actually subjugate a race and make them slaves is ultimately one of the most deplorable things that has happened on the face of this planet.

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But there's a concept of redemption that comes out of that, that entire slave trade mindset that is a beautiful, glorious thing.

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Jesus came to buy us back from slavery to sin and the law.

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That idea of buying back, that idea of redemption, the word redemption comes from that in Paul's mind, anybody reading this would have thought slavery when they heard the word redemption that's used here.

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And then we cheapen the word redemption by applying it to coupons.

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I mean, if you were to ask anybody who doesn't attend church, anybody who's unchurched, when's the last time you used the word redeem and in what context?

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It probably had something to do with a coupon or a ticket or something like that, right? Really lame. Just prior to our civil war, there were occasions where Northerners would go to slave auctions in the

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South and redeem slaves. So what does redeem mean? They would go down to the slave auction, win the auction, pay the full price, bring the slave to the

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North and set them free, set them up and set them free. Jesus came to do that for us.

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That's what Jesus has done for you and me. He's bought us back. His arrival signaled the start of the redemption of his people.

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Came to buy us back from slavery to what? What does the text tell us? Something that might be surprising to us.

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He came to buy us back from the law, from the law.

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Wait a minute. We were slaves to the law, the law over us.

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The law gives us the knowledge of sin. The law has no power, no authority in our lives to correct us.

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I mean, well, it has the authority to correct us. I mean, tell us what's right, but not to fix us. So in other words, when we see the speed limit sign out here, it tells us to set our cruise control just five over, right?

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Right, 10 over, whatever you guys roll with. Does it force you when you see that sign to go, does it, it governs your,

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I know it governs your accelerator and as soon as you go past that, it just slows you down, right?

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Because the law fixes the problem of speeding or road rage or any of that stuff, right?

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Takes care of it for us. No, it doesn't. The law just points out when you are in breach of it or not.

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That's all that the law is ever able to do. The point that Paul is making is that whether you were raised to live for yourself or raised in a religious rules -based family, you need to be bought back.

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Every person needs to be redeemed. Nobody can rest on your upbringing and say, but I was raised in a religious family.

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We had rules and I kept the rules and I followed them and I'm a good person because I keep and follow the rules and I'm kind and I'm nice and that's why

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I'm okay. Some of us needed to be redeemed from non -religious idolatry.

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Our parents were the parents who bought the booze for the party. They just let us do whatever we wanted and they were like, party every day and you just go do what you want to do.

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Just stay out of my hair. Some of you were raised in that household where you need to be redeemed from you sitting on the throne of your life in the sense of I've always learned to just please myself and just do what

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I want to do and it's always been that way for me. But some of us need to be redeemed from religious idolatry.

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Religious idolatry. Some worship themselves through overt sin and live in the world of La Vida Loca, right? Others worship themselves through piety, pride and self -control and they are still on the throne of their lives.

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Neither one of those puts God at the center. Both of them maintain self at the center of your life.

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One is unto making yourself look awesome. The other is unto making yourself feel awesome.

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Both are yourself sitting on the throne. Both lifestyles need redemption. It's ironic,

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I think it's ironic that humanity has developed two very opposite strains of idolatry that leave no room for God at the center.

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One is religious and one is not. Both are idolatry. Both are opposed to the way of God.

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The only hope for us is redemption. Praise God that the birth of Jesus initiated redemption for us.

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And lastly, Christmas according to Paul, all of this comes down to this one awesome thing.

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Christmas, the birth of Christ, the incarnation is about providing adoption for you and me.

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It ends up in relationship, us being welcomed into the family of God.

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The son of God came to redeem us into the family. He didn't buy us, bring us up north and say,

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I've brought you this far, I paid full price. The rest is up to you. Good luck, there's an alley. Hopefully you find some clothes and some food.

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Okay, you know, that would be, okay, great, thanks for my freedom, but I don't know what to do now. Right, great, and now it's up to you.

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That's not what God has done for us in Christ. He has brought us into the family.

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Jesus brings us home to his father and introduces us to his father. And his father says to you and I, you with my boy, welcome in, a friend of my son is a friend of mine.

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Welcome to the family. Bedroom's already set for you. Anything that I have is yours and you are welcome to stay forever and ever and ever and ever.

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And then it gets weird if I keep saying ever. Isn't that a glorious thing?

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Adopted into the family of God through his son. Hanging out with Jesus.

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He says, hey, let's go to my dad's house. We meet his dad and dad says, you're in, welcome.

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Glad that you're here. Incarnation, salvation, redemption.

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In the end, there's some legal transactions that have happened there. There's some accounting in the mind of God.

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Those types of things really happen to the person who gives their life to Jesus Christ. Like things like he has justified us, that is he has declared us holy before him.

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Camp on that one. The idea there is that you have stood before the judge of the universe and he said, holy, righteous.

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Is that mind blowing to any of you? That he would declare us righteous? But it's more than just a courtroom term that we're driving for here.

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It's not merely a commercial transaction. It's not merely God's accounting.

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He certainly has purchased us in a commercial sense with the blood of Jesus Christ. He uses commerce to talk about it.

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It's awesome. He has indeed credited righteousness to our account using accounting terminology for it.

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But the final outcome that Paul wants to identify and declare that the coming of Jesus brought to us is adoption into God's family forever.

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That's the final picture he wants to leave us with at Christmas. We've been welcomed into the family of God.

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We are heirs together with Christ. The core of incarnation is relationship. And I think sometimes hypotheticals are dangerous.

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Sometimes they're helpful. Sometimes, I'm just gonna throw one out here today. Could God have devised a plan to save us without coming down and sacrificing so much in relationship with us?

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And just because he's God, I'm gonna say yes, okay? I think he could have come up with another plan.

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So what I wanna point out is that he chose to come down and save us relationally.

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He chose to enter our world. He chose to suffer with us. By his own volition and by his will, he said, this is how

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I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna become one of them. I'm gonna come down and I'm gonna feel pain with them.

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I'm gonna experience betrayal with them. I'm gonna experience hunger. I'm gonna experience suffering.

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I'm gonna experience what it feels like to have no home and no place to settle and feel like I'm moving all the time.

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I'm gonna experience what it feels like to have the crown of thorns. I'm gonna feel, I'm gonna go down and experience what it's like to have people mock me.

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I'm gonna experience torture. I'm going to experience death for them.

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Relationship. And all of that is by his initiative.

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All of that is him deciding to do it this way.

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He entered this busted world to relate to us, to come under the law and fulfill it, to model, to demonstrate, and to exercise compassion amongst us.

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And in the end, to experience betrayal and death. And he did it all so that by faith, we could be included in his family.

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Christmas, according to Paul, is about God's perfect timing, about God's perfect gift,

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God's perfect fulfillment of his promises, he would be born of a woman, God's perfect completion of the law,

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God's glorious redemption, his buying us back, and his amazing adoption of his people.

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This morning, we have an opportunity to take communion together, and in taking this piece of cracker and this juice, we're remembering that Jesus came with a purpose.

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He redeemed us with his very blood. He redeemed us by being broken in the place where we deserved breaking.

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And if your faith is placed in the son of God this morning, if your faith is placed in the son of God who was sent to die for your sins, then feel free to join together with God's people in this celebration of hope this morning, as we remember what

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Jesus Christ has actually sacrificed for us. And let's go out from this place, celebrating

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Christmas according to Paul this year. Let's pray.

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Father, I thank you so much for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. I think of, Father, just all that he left behind in his eternal home with you to come down to be one of us, and to learn what it is to develop, and to learn, and to grow from a baby to a man.

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And Father, just the awesome reality of his death for us.

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Father, I pray that as we come to communion this morning, that we would recognize that we're not worthy of this.

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In our sin, the cross is made clear by our sin, and the cross makes clear how evil we actually are, that we needed the death of your son to cover us, but equally to recognize that you love us so dearly, that you went through it for us.

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And so, may the cross be for us the place of wholeness, the place of completeness, the place of pointing to your great love for us, and equally, the reality that we should be humbled before you because we're sinners that required the death of your son for salvation.

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Father, open our eyes this Christmas to celebrate in the way that you desire for us to. Father, certainly, there's gonna be all kinds of things of good food, and fun with family, and gifts, and giving gifts, and receiving gifts, and Father, just all of the excitement of the holiday season that's gonna be coming the next couple of weeks, and continuing, and I pray that you would help us to not leave you out, not in some cliche way, but that we would just genuinely take the time in our family celebrations to contemplate and consider this great gift.

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And Father, as we have an opportunity to rub shoulders with those in our family who do not know you, Father, I pray that you would move in us to share with faithfulness the trust that we have, and the hope we have in Jesus Christ, and it's in his name that we pray.