A Christmas Invitation - Matthew 11:28 - Dec 24, 2023

Mount Zion Community Church

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You all can go ahead and have a seat Again, I know

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I said this when we first started But if I haven't met you or we haven't had the opportunity to speak yet, my name is

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Matty Fuller the pastor of Mount Zion and I Just want to say Merry Christmas to everybody and I'm so glad that you all have decided to join us for this

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This candlelight Christmas Eve service after I do this brief message We're gonna sing another hymn another carol and then we're going to light our candles

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Which hopefully you grabbed a candle when you came in I'll start it and we'll pass it through there And then we'll all sing silent night as we get ready to head out and and celebrate the birth of our

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Savior But I wanted to share this this story and these thoughts with you this evening

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So just a few days ago earlier this week I needed to Head up to an army base because I needed to pick up some stuff or something that I have coming up So we combined this

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Aaron with a couple of other things that we had going on and we headed north so we wound up going up to Fort Belvoir, which is up in Northern, Virginia and just like any base if you've never been you have to kind of drive through and head to a gate and there's

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People there with weapons checking your ID just to make sure that it's okay for you to come in But the guy that was checking

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IDs at the gate that day Was wearing a Santa hat and he was wearing one of those those crazy

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Christmas suits that they have at Target You know like the ones with the patterns on them the jacket and the pants they all match and they're super loud and there's a tie

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And everything that goes with it and then he had his body armor on over top of that with the camouflage pattern but I Was so I was so surprised to see him dressed that way at the gate and then when we showed our

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IDs and he sent Us on through he said Merry Christmas, and I was surprised at that too because this is a military installation

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This is a government function and at this point in our culture I'm almost surprised that it was legal for him to say

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Merry Christmas, and I said that to my wife and And she said something to me that I found very interesting and very profound is what she told me

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Was that basically there's two Christmases now? Our society has has come to the point

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Where we celebrate two different ways? We have the Christmas that we're celebrating right now

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We have the Christmas that is entirely focused on the fact that Jesus Christ was born that Jesus Christ The Son of God was made flesh and came to the earth for us and as the angel of the

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Lord told Joseph his name would Be Jesus, and he would save his people from their sins, so we have that Christmas, and we celebrate that Christmas But there's also a secular

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Christmas And and they call it Christmas But it's all about Santa.

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It's all about presents. It's all about all those other things and I know that a lot of you can remember just like I can that it wasn't that long ago

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That these two Christmases were very close to each other there was still Santa But there was also

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Jesus and the the farther we get down the road it seems like the less and less overlap there is in These Christmases, and I wanted to talk about this just for a couple of minutes even though That's not really it's not really the main point of what

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I want to discuss tonight but I Mean just just think about how how different these

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Christmases are think about the distinctions like For us

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I think about the movies that we watch Think about the movies that you watch at this time of year if you watch special movies

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And maybe I shouldn't be admitting this stuff, but here's some of the things that we watched We watched the

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Polar Express We watched Elf the other night with Will Ferrell And we also watched

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Rudolph the Red -Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman you know Rudolph with the claymation and Frosty the animated

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The animated movie when I was a kid I looked forward every year to when

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TNT played a Christmas story for 24 hours straight and I always watched a

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Christmas story and Maybe you have movies like that that That you watch as well.

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They're part of your Christmas tradition and again We don't necessarily separate these things because we're also here

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Worshiping Jesus at the same time in fact my wife took our kids to see a performance of a

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Christmas carol By Charles Dickens over in Stanton and pointed out that that was also entirely secular there was no mention of Jesus there was

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Christmas and the ghosts of Christmas past Christmas present Christmas future and Ebenezer Scrooge obviously developed his

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Christmas spirit, and he got into the swing of things but it was entirely about that secular

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Christmas, and those are some of the more tame selections, but but we consider all of them

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And which Christmas are they a part of? And it's not as though all the things that we do at Christmas are inherently bad

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Because one of the things that society does that we do is we gather we gather with friends

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And we gather with family and all that stuff is valuable and actually all that stuff is really good

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Because I know that for some of you This is one of the few chances that you get to see all of your family together at the same time

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And that's that's fantastic of course When you gather all of your family with different beliefs to do these celebrations and people have different ideas about what we're celebrating not all the behavior that happens is

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Becoming of the family of God if we're being honest with ourselves and The other things that we do things that I did when

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I was a kid we take our kids to see Santa And give each other gifts again.

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None of its inherently bad but think about which Christmas that goes with and As the two

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Christmases grow farther and farther apart in their emphasis It starts to take a toll on us

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And it starts to take a toll on us in ways that we don't necessarily expect and it affects different people in different ways for sure and It affects some more than others

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But it takes a toll on all of us because we have to figure out with all the things that are going on this holiday

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What are we gonna give our time and our energy and the vast majority of our effort to?

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Everything about our secular Christmas is focused on self gratification. It's focused on material things

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Even if we tell ourselves or if we tell our kids that it's better to give than to receive

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We're still focused on presents. We're still talking about material stuff We're still talking about the materialistic aspects of the holiday

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And I don't I don't want you to misunderstand One thing that I'm not doing right now that I'm not doing tonight is

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I'm not telling you to stop doing these things I would never tell you to stop gathering with your family. We're giving our family presents.

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I got stuff for my kids They've been looking at what's under the tree all week long and trying to figure out what it is

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But Speaking of these gatherings. I bet that for some of you they get kind of stressful sometimes, right?

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I mean Sometimes with certain family members, you got to be careful not to talk about certain things

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You don't want to talk about politics And for some of our family members, we also don't want to talk about God So it's stressful when they come over because it's almost as though we have to change who we are

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To fit what is going on with our family so that we don't alienate someone or we don't have have siblings children cousins aunts uncles

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Grandparents or whatever it is not want to come back and not want to see us for the holiday So we have to change those things and there's other stresses.

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I Know that some of you came here from your family dinner, and I greatly appreciate the fact that you did that When we talk about these family dinners somebody has to cook all the food right in my family, it's my wife and It's not an insignificant undertaking to have to do this to have to Make all these different meals for different people that are coming over, you know, you got

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Lunch on Christmas Eve and breakfast on Christmas morning and dinner on Christmas Day And maybe there's other stuff that happens in your family and that's a lot of stress for some people and then for others we just get to kind of kick back and enjoy it and then we get to eat the food when it shows up magically in front of us on the plate and There's more stress

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Even if it's more blessed to give admitted in the back of your mind

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Sometimes you're wondering if you've got the right gift You're wondering if you spend enough on the gift.

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You're wondering if you've got enough gifts You're wondering if the gifts that you got say the right thing to the person that you're giving them to Because heaven forbid you offend somebody by giving them a present, right?

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so there's just There's all the stress and then for other people

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While While some of us are celebrating and some of us are just rejoicing in what we get to do

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For some people there's sadness some of us get to gather with our whole family and then other people

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Have empty seats at their table And it could be for any number of reasons.

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It could be death, which is the most common thing we think of But it could be because of a divorce or it could be because You have a family member that has completely walked away from God and as a result wants nothing to do

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With your table at Christmastime There's any number of reasons and they're all sad and they all hit different people in different ways at this time of year

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And if you can cruise through secular Christmas Without a care in the world then frankly

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I envy you because you're probably one of the few people that can again,

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I know that sounds like a Downer of a thing but I always want to put in perspective the fact that there's a lot of a

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Lot of things that are just difficult. In fact There are some people and there are times when it's been me where I have just asked myself

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Could we just skip Christmas? Because this is really hard even the time we get off from work.

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It's filled up with other stuff So so you're you're off, but you're not off And then when you go back you have a whole bunch of other stuff that you have to deal with So all that time you took off you pay for it

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So it's stressful. It's exhausting. Sometimes it's a burden But if we think about the stress and we think about the sadness and we think about the things that we're facing

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Sometimes the loads that we have to carry it's right in the middle of that mess.

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It's right in the middle of the sadness or the Difficulty that you're dealing with The missing of family members

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That The other Christmas the one that's become the other

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Christmas that we celebrate Shows just exactly how significant it is.

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I Want to focus on one verse tonight and specifically

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What it means to those of us in the family of God in the body of Christ and the verse that I want to look at is

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Matthew 11 28 and What I called this message

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I don't always title these messages, but I called this one a Christmas invitation Matthew 11 28 says this

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Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest

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Some of you know that JC Ryle the Puritan pastor is one of my favorite authors one of my favorite pastors

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And he said this of this verse this invitation may be unlike any that you have yet received

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But it is of unspeakable importance. It concerns the eternal happiness of your soul and JC Ryle went on to ask four questions about this verse and I thought his questions were so useful and his questions were so good

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That we're gonna use these tonight for the next few minutes So as we think about this verse as we think about Matthew 11 28 here are the questions

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We want to ask question number one who is giving this invitation? question number two

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To whom is this invitation given? question number three

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What does the speaker ask us to do and question number four? What does the speaker offer to give?

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So if we look at number one who is giving this invitation This is probably

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Self -evident, you probably already knew this you understood that these are the words of Jesus These are the words of Jesus speaking to us and while Many of us have read these words so many times that they don't actually seem that remarkable to us anymore.

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I want to take just a few minutes to remind you that they are absolutely remarkable and This is owed entirely to the fact that it's a

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Jesus that's speaking this to us That is Jesus who calls us from the pages of Scripture Jesus the

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Almighty Son of God the one who sits at God's right hand The spotless

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Lamb Jesus came to earth not to be served as a king But to serve and he gave his life as a ransom for many

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Jesus who did not count equality with God as a thing to be grasped, but instead Humbled himself and took on human flesh.

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He made himself man just like you and me Jesus is the same yesterday today and forever.

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So that's a whole bunch of things that scripture says about Jesus and That's why the fact that Jesus is speaking.

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This invitation is significant Because I could tell you the same thing

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I could be like if you have something going on Please and I do tell you this, please do not hesitate to give me a call

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But guess what? Maybe two of you call me at the same time. I can't answer both of you

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Maybe I'm away from my phone and I can't answer or Maybe I'm not able to give you what you need in that moment

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I'm not able to tell you the right thing and even if it all works out and all the stars align

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You get a hold of me and I can say the right words or I can bring you the right scripture

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We can pray the right prayer eventually You're gonna have to leave

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We can't sit there together forever, right but none of these things are true of Jesus Just why it's so important that he's the one giving this so let's move on to question number two

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Because we don't want to be here all night number two to whom is the invitation given?

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Well, let's look at the verse again and see what he says 1128 Come to me all

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Who are weary and heavy laden? So let's get this part out of the way now to all means all

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And all means you So What I want you to do right now is

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Get the idea out of your head that you have strayed too far from God if that's something that you feel

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Get the idea out of your head that God has not heard your prayers Get the idea out of your head that you're not good enough

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Or you haven't done enough to earn the rest that Jesus is promising you in this verse And I want to put your mind at ease by telling you something

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I'll tell you that you have strayed from God Every single one of us has strayed from God But there's no such thing as too far

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There's no You have no ability No matter what you have done

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And I don't care what it is to stray so far that you are out of the reach of the saving work of Jesus Christ And let me tell you this as well the only way that God has not heard your prayers is if you stop praying them

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If you're not praying them or if you stopped because you weren't getting the answer that you wanted right away

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God has heard your prayers Now the last two I'll tell you this too

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And I'm starting to crack smile because what did we say you're not good enough and you haven't done enough

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You know what both of those things are true None of us none of us are good enough and none of us could ever do enough to earn our salvation from God There is not a thing that you can do and while that sounds like an insult and it sounds like a bad thing

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It is actually a good thing because it means that the only thing Necessary to happen for you to have eternal rest

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Is to believe in what Jesus did on the cross with his blood And that is exactly why we celebrate

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Christmas. That is what our Christmas is about It's about the fact that this baby was born for us

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So all that to say question number two to whom is the invitation given is given to you

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Number three What does Jesus ask us to do back to the verse 1128

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Come to me That's pretty simple. He asks you to come to him and that's all

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But not only that if you look at those three words, he doesn't tell you

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That you have to do something He doesn't tell you that you have to earn a certain number of karma points

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Or he doesn't tell you that you have to do a certain number of good deeds To earn the right to come to him

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Or he doesn't tell you that you have to go to some person and confess your sins and perform some kind of act

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None of that If you look back at this verse, there's no qualifications no prerequisites

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Given by Jesus, which means that you can take this invitation that is to you to come to him

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But maybe I'm not Telling you the whole truth here because there are things in Scripture that we do have to do

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There are things that the Bible tells us that we have to do mark 115

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Details the preaching of Jesus as he began his ministry on earth and that verse says this the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand repent and believe the gospel

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So there you go. Those are the only two things repent and believe the gospel

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Because there's nothing that you have There's no gift

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There's no good work There's no good deed.

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That's worth anything to Jesus for the sake of your salvation There's not none of those things.

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Do you have to do to come to him? The only thing you have to do is Truly in your heart repent of the sin that is in your life and believe in the fact that he died on the cross for you

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That's all that's all he asked us to do and to come to him so question number four

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What does Jesus offer to give to those who come to him? He offers rest that's exactly right.

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He offers rest and Rest is a pleasant thing, right rest is good rest is something that we all need

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But ironically, we don't value rest in the way that we should and when I say these things

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I'm talking about myself as well I don't ever mean to just hammer on you guys because all of these things apply to me equally to To you so we don't value rest the way that we should because we don't value rest

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We have this verse we have this promise from Jesus again I said Jesus is the same yesterday today and forever and he says come to me and I will give you rest

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And we're like, okay But then the world says

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Come to me and I will give you money or come to me and I will give you a house

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I will give you a car. I will give you stuff. I will give you popularity I will give you power and Secular Christmas takes all that and just pumps it up on steroids because it's

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Largely about the stuff and it makes the stuff the center of everything but the thing about all that stuff is

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That none of the things that the world has to offer you while they're all useful and we need a lot of them

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We need a house. We need money But they don't give you rest in fact, every single one of those things has a price tag even the money has a price tag and That's more work

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To earn it the stuff comes with a price tag the money that was pretty obvious you got to buy it and you got to keep it up and Using it might be fun.

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But even that's not rest. And so Instead of taking up Jesus on his offering

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We starve our souls for the sake of this stuff and Even the things that feed your soul even the time with your family the time with your friends

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Doesn't always come with rest like I talked about earlier. Sometimes it comes with stress Jesus provides the only true rest that we can have

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But there's something even more important here Even if you find rest in some of these things

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Everything on this earth Can and will be taken away

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Money can vanish in an instant Any kind of possession can rust or rot or go away or if we're being honest

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It just isn't as shiny and fun a couple weeks or months down the road as it was when we got it

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But the rest promised by Jesus is eternal the rest promised by Jesus is everlasting

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Even your family and your friends Can be taken away from you somehow

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They can be taken away from you by death They can take themselves away from you the salvation

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That comes from rest in Jesus Christ Once it is given to you It never ever

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Goes away. You cannot lose it. Hear me and understand me if you've been saved by Jesus you cannot

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Lose that salvation So I'm gonna ask you this tonight.

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Are you experiencing the rest that Jesus is offering you and If you're not why not and what can you do about it?

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So there's a couple of things that we have to reconcile before we close and I'm getting ready to wrap up here So I said the invitation is for all and that's true

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But Scripture also says this in John 6 44. No one can come to me unless the

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Father who sent me draws him but Got some good news in Romans 10 13 that says whoever calls upon the name of the

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Lord will be saved and This is where you find your rest

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So as we read those verses and know what we have to do This is my plea to you tonight, and it is a plea.

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It's not a suggestion or just just a recommendation Call upon the name of the

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Lord We celebrate Christmas because we celebrate Jesus and we celebrate

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Jesus because Jesus has come to provide Salvation Jesus has come to save his people us from their sins

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Secular Christmas feeds the senses it feeds the ego it feeds the flesh

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But ultimately it starves the soul and it steals your rest. So once again, I Urge you

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I urge you each and every one of you tonight call upon the name of the Lord and you will be saved But how do you do this

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I Want to give you a prayer and This is this is one that I gave a couple of weeks ago in church but I'm gonna do it again and I want you to know that this is not an altar call prayer because I Don't believe that Scripture shows us altar call prayers

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Because This calling upon the name of the Lord and asking to be saved.

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It's It's between you and the Lord. It's not between you and me

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I'm happy to answer your questions as best I can or to talk about it or anything along those lines

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But ultimately it comes down to you and God There is nothing that any person on earth can do to mediate your relationship with God It is only yours and yours alone

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So this is a prayer it goes like this Lord have mercy on me a sinner.

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I Need to be saved Please save me. I Call upon your name

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And it's that simple because Scripture tells us all who call upon the name of the

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Lord will be saved and Frankly Not a single one of us knows if we have another

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Christmas after this one Next year we'll do this again and this room will look different The people that are in it will be different and part of the reason for that is some of them will be gone

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It could be me so I I'll tell you call upon the name of the

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Lord do it tonight and don't wait This is this is the reason

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I keep saying this is the reason why we celebrate the reason we celebrate is because you have This opportunity if it's not something that you've taken advantage of to this point

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Go ahead and do it, but we celebrate the coming of our King We celebrate the coming of our

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Messiah our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ the only one

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Who can stand before our Father in heaven on our behalf? And he came for you

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We pray with me Father when we stop to reflect on The fact that you sent your son that you sent

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Jesus to earth that Jesus who was a king Sitting at your right hand humbled himself to become a man

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Similar to us, but not the same We we stand amazed and we stand in awe

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We thank you God. We thank you for the opportunity that we have to call upon your name and To partake of the work that Jesus has done for us on the cross

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God Christmas is a wonderful time for so many of us. It's a time for family.

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It's a time for friends It's a time for presence. It's a time for gathering. It's just a time for To sometimes a little bit slow down and enjoy our lives

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God and we thank you That you've given us the opportunity to do this Lord, it's my prayer that each and every person in this room

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If they don't know you if they don't know you as Lord and they don't know you as savior

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That they'll call upon your name this evening And they'll celebrate

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Christmas As you intended it as the birth of our

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Savior Jesus Christ the Lord We thank you We love you

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And we lift up all these things in your son's holy and precious name Jesus Christ Amen And to celebrate