Christmas Eve Service

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Well, Merry Christmas, everybody. Merry Christmas. This is, I think, my favorite time of year.
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I love this time of year for lots and lots of reasons. I love Christmas lights and decorations.
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I don't really like putting them up, but I love to see the Christmas lights and to see the Christmas decorations. I love hearing
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Christmas music as long as it's December. And I love that during this season, we can openly talk about Jesus Christ.
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We can glorify his name without wondering what people are thinking or what they might be saying behind our backs as we turn around, because it's
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June. There's no religious holiday. Why would we be talking about Jesus Christ? And I have to admit,
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I do love gifts. I like to give them, and I like to get them. As a parent,
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I love to give gifts to my children and see that excited look on their face as they rip that gift open, as they tear off all the tape and duct tape or whatever.
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I've tried to make it as impossible as I can to open those things, but it's fun. It's the thrill of the chase.
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I like the look that I get from my wife when I pick the right thing to get for her. We have a lot of fun in our house during Christmas time.
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Our Christmas decorations are sort of this weird motley arrangement of homemade Christmas gifts or Christmas decorations and store -bought
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Christmas decorations. My kids seem to really like the old ornaments that I made when
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I was a kid that had goofy pictures of me that were supposed to be presents for my mom that somehow ended up in our Christmas decorations.
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They really like those. I don't know what that's about. If I'm really lucky, I can appeal to my
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Jewish heritage and beg my wife to make some latkes. See, you know.
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My daughter is the artistic one. She's the one who hand makes most of the homemade ornaments that we have in our home.
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And a couple of years ago, she made a diorama out of a shoebox, a nativity diorama. And sure enough, the first thing that she did when we took those decorations out was to ask me where they were and to carefully inspect all those little clay figures to make sure they didn't get damaged over the course of the year.
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We set those up, and so now those are on our side table. And as she was doing that, I looked at it and I looked at all the different pieces that, of course, she had made.
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And I thought about the symbolism of the nativity scene. You know what the nativity looks like.
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As you drove here, you might have seen maybe a nativity scene on somebody's lawn or in front of a church.
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Starts with that kind of half -stable thing, right? You know, that's set up a special way just so that people can see inside.
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And right in the middle, you have the manger. And of course, we hear the word manger and the only way that we think about manger is these days is in terms of Christmas, but that's a feeding trough for livestock.
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We see baby Jesus inside, wrapped in swaddling clothes. You see Mary and Joseph, the earthly parents of Jesus, the animals, and of course, the three wise men.
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Why is that? Why are there three wise men? That's kind of an interesting question. If you read the scriptures, it doesn't really say how many there are, but it does say in the book of Luke, talking of these men, and going into the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him.
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Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.
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These are the gifts that were given to the infant baby Jesus, and they're kind of strange gifts if you look at them and sort of think about what they're actually for.
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The first one, gold. In the ancient world, gold was the most precious of metals. It was fit for a king.
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You would give gold as a gift to recognize kingship. Frankincense was an aromatic resin that was commonly burned in Jewish temples when the priests were offering sacrifices to God.
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So there's a little bit of a symbolism there. It's associated with the idea of sacrifice in a priesthood, but the really interesting one is myrrh.
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Now, myrrh is commonly associated with ritual, but it's also associated with preserving the dead.
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It's a little strange. I mean, there've been a lot of baby showers at BBC this year, which
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I'm very happy about. But if you think about that, could you imagine that gift is opened up and there's like a coffee can full of embalming fluid?
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That would be a very weird baby shower gift. But as we look at Christ's life on earth, we know the obvious symbolism that that would represent.
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And so I want you to think about that tonight as we think about this Christmas season. I want you to think about three gifts.
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The wise men came and they gave three gifts to the infant Messiah. And I wanna share with you three gifts that were given to us by God.
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As Christ received three gifts, we too have received three gifts. And as we look at this, we can be comforted in knowing that if we are indeed children of the
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Most High, we will never be without these. The first of these gifts is the gift of the life of Jesus Christ.
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Now, Pastor Steve stole a little bit of my thunder, but you may be tempted to think that we're celebrating the beginning of Jesus Christ's life tomorrow.
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We're not. We're celebrating the advent of Christ coming to us on earth. But his story did not begin on Christmas 2 ,000 years ago.
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The book of John tells us that it began in eternity past. John 1 .1 starts off, in the beginning there was the word and the word was with God and the word was
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God. He, Jesus Christ, was in the beginning with God.
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Jesus Christ was God. Jesus Christ is God. In fact, it's only because he is
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God that his time on earth is something that can be celebrated from generation to generation.
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The book of Hebrews tells us about Jesus Christ on earth. It says, in the days of his flesh,
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Jesus offered up prayers and supplication with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death and he was heard because of his reverence.
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Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered and being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.
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Jesus Christ came into the world in a miraculous way. He lived a perfect and miraculous life. But of course, we ask the question, we know the
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Easter story, we know that Jesus came and was crucified and buried and rose again. So why didn't he just come to die?
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Why did he have to come as a baby? Jesus Christ came to be the perfect man. He lived a human life that was marked by righteousness.
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He had no spot and he had no blemish. And that is that gift. That perfect life is something that we need.
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It's something that you need. That first gift for us to remember tonight is the gift of the life of Jesus Christ.
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Now strangely, as we celebrate his birth, the second gift is the gift of his death. In the book of Matthew in chapter 27, we see this second gift in action.
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Starting in verse 45, as we come to this passage, Jesus Christ has already been crucified. It says this, now, from the sixth hour, there was a darkness over all the land until the ninth hour.
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At about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, Eli, Eli, lemme subachthani, that is, my
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God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Some of the bystanders hearing it said, the man is calling
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Elijah. And one of them at once ran and took a sponge and filled it with sour wine and put a reed on it and gave it to him to drink.
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But the other said, wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him. Jesus cried out again with a loud voice.
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And he yielded up his spirit. And the
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Bible tells us that death is a result of sin.
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In the Garden of Eden, there was no death until Adam and Eve sinned and broke their fellowship with God. We are all condemned to death because we are sinners.
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Adam sinned as our representative, as the representative for the human race. And as such, our nature, we are predisposed to rebellion against God.
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And we need to be reconciled to him, but that's impossible without a miracle. If the wages of sin is death, then once we die once, what about all of those other sins?
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What are we to do? And so God, being rich in mercy, sent his son to us.
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Jesus came and he lived the perfect life, right? This is the life that has no spot, that has no blemish.
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And yet we see in the story of the crucifixion, we see that he died. Now how, if death is a wage for sin, then why did he die?
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Well, our God, our creator is also our judge and he is a just and he's a perfect judge.
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Now we have that kind of George Burns kind of idea of God as this grandfather who just loves to forget about our sin.
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It's a comforting and warm thought. Maybe he just pretends that we disobey or he's absent -minded, but he's not like that.
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The Bible tells us that our God is perfectly just. And when we sin against him, we have, we will, there is a penalty for our sin.
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There is discipline for that sin and we cannot withstand that judgment, that wage for that sin.
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Psalm 130 says, if you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?
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But with you, there is forgiveness that you may be feared. There is forgiveness that can be found.
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How is that accomplished? Well, it's accomplished through the death of his son,
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Jesus Christ. Someone has to pay for the wages of those sins. They can't go unpaid. That transaction needs to be completed.
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And so God sent his son to us, born of Mary, to grow and live a perfect life and yet to still die even though he never sinned as a substitute for us.
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Book of Romans says, for while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
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For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die.
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But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
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And that death, that is our second gift from God. We have the life of Jesus Christ and we have the death of Jesus Christ.
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But there's a third gift. And that is the gift of faith, the gift of faith that we have in him.
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So we look at this and we find ourselves in a tough spot. We're sinners and God is perfect and we need this reconciliation, right?
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There is sadness and separation when Adam and Eve sinned. We heard that earlier.
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And so we too in our sin are separated from God. But at least with Adam and Eve, they knew it.
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They saw their sin and they recognized it. They recognized that they had disobeyed a holy God. For us, for many of us, our consciences are so seared against God, against this reality that we may not even realize that we are living a sinful life.
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That's really why I'm standing here to tell you that you are separated from God. You are a sinner. And it's not an individual thing that I'm pointing at you and saying, you shameful are a sinner, but we are all sinners.
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You individually have sinned. You are separated from God if you have not submitted to him.
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The Bible even tells us that we cannot seek after God. We are dead men walking.
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But God, perhaps my favorite two words in the Bible, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.
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By grace you have been saved and raised up with him and seated us at the right hand, and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
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So that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
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For by grace, you have been saved through faith. And this is not your doing.
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It is the gift of God. Faith is a gift from God.
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It is our response to the wonderful, amazing, and miraculous work of salvation that was wrought by God the
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Father in Jesus Christ, the Son. We were mired in our sin. The Bible says we were dead in our trespasses, and so Jesus was sent by God the
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Father to earth. He lived perfectly. He achieved a righteous standing with God the Father. And when the time came, he gave himself up for our sins, past, present, and future.
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And so what are we to do about that? This is a great story, Andrew, way to go. What are we to do?
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We must repent of our sins. We must turn away from our sins 180 degrees, and we must bow our knee to the
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Lordship of Jesus Christ. To receive forgiveness for our sins, we must turn away from our sin.
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Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. We're unable to do this without God working in our lives, but we must turn to Christ with brokenness for our sin, and confessing to God the
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Father whose righteousness is greater than that of anyone you can even imagine.
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And we must purpose to obey him, obey Jesus Christ and his commandments. We did a
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Yankee swap in our home group a few weeks ago, and in our home group, and I got this really cool build -it -yourself
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R2D2 thing, and my kids were super excited about it. And then someone took it, and I got this
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Boston Celtics iPad case thing. It was not a good gift exchange.
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My kids were literally in tears on the couch, by the way. But I'll tell you what was a worse deal.
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The most incredible gift exchange ever was the one where Jesus Christ paid the penalty for all of our sins and gave us the righteousness that can only be found in him.
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He paid for our sins on the cross. His death was a substitutionary death.
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He was buried, and he rose from the dead. Three days later, he was risen from the dead.
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He defeated death. He, as God, broke the power of sin, ascended into heaven, and is now ruling and reigning with his
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Father, always interceding for us. So as we think of this baby in a manger, let us also think of Jesus Christ, our
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Lord, the Lion of Judah, the victorious King. Our decorations and our
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Facebook memes, they all show a baby. But Jesus Christ is so much more than that. He is a risen
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King who has redeemed his people. This little babe, so few days old, is come to rifle
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Satan's hold. All hell doth at his presence quake, though he himself, for cold, do shake.
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Within his crib, his surest ward, this little babe will be thy guard. If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy, then flit not from this heavenly boy.
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So as we leave tonight, as we leave this place, this church building, and we're ready to enjoy an exciting time of gift of giving, remember our
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Lord. When you see those three wise men on your drive home, wherever they may be, or on the
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Christmas cards on your mantle, remember the three gifts that we have been given by God.
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If you will repent and put your faith and trust in him. Bow with me and pray for a moment.
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Heavenly Father, thank you so much for bringing all of us here tonight. I just give you glory and honor and praise that you would condescend to us, that you would send your son to us for something that we do not deserve.
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Just pray that you would use this service tonight to bring more people to you, that you would use it to glorify you.
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Help us, Father, to never forget the incredible gifts that you have given to us. In your name we pray, amen.