Well, Merry Christmas. Merry. Oh, let’s try it again. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. All right. Can we all really quickly give a big shout out to our overflow groups that are all over the campus? Can you give them a big round applause?

So, so let me start with an apology of thank you and a promise. Okay? My apology is, if you are an overflow, I’m so sorry. That is not ideal. I know that it stinks to be an overflow. That was not our intent. So very, very sorry. Genuinely a thank you. Thank you for being in overflow and not just walking out and saying, Hey, forget that I’m going home. So thank you for being there. And then lastly, a promise. And that is that if you come on Sunday, we never have this problem. So come back on Sunday. Plenty of seats, plenty of seats, all the services. I love Christmas. And the reason that I love Christmas is because some of your best memories, alright, Christmas time, like if you think back over your childhood, you have memories from other parts of the year. But there is something about the Christmas season with the sights and the sounds and the music and the smells.

And, and part of what I’ve come to realize as an adult is that nostalgia is this longing for the things that I experienced as a child. I, I realized also that if you have nostalgia, it means you’re old. ’cause Kids don’t have nostalgia. It’s only those of us that have something to look back on nostalgia to, to remind us. This is what it means. It’s a longing or an affection for the past, typically for a period or event that is associated with positive memories. It often arises from a sense of loss change or a desire to reconnect with familiar experiences, places, or relationships from earlier times in life. So if you find yourself during a Christmas season with that sense of nostalgia and looking back, it could be that you’re in a season of change or a season of loss. Maybe it’s a first Christmas that someone that used to be there as a part of your Christmas story is not there.

And so you look back and you remember those things. One of the things that we do as parents, my wife and I, is we try and create experiences with our kids that were nostalgic to us. Things that we loved when we were kids. Like one of the things that we do, here’s a picture of us, not that long ago, but a month ago, going and cutting down our Christmas tree. Gimme a shout if you go cut down a Christmas tree like physically from a forest, alright? Alright, for those of you that don’t, you should. And, and while I’m done telling my story, you’re gonna be like, that sounds fun, maybe <laugh>. So every year we go and we cut down a Christmas tree. And so in Colorado you can get a permit for a national forest, and you go out to National Forest and you just pick a tree and cut it down.

Well, kind of you gotta get the right kind of tree. It has to be the right size of tree. But here’s the trick is that when you get out to the national forests, there is no cell phone service, which means that you have to look at the map ahead of time and you drive out, takes about an hour and a half, depending upon which national forest you get a permit for, and you drive out there. And my personality is that I always want the best tree. And so this year we’re driving out and you, you start to see pretty quickly where the park is because cars are lying on the side of the road. And my wife right away is like, Hey, there’s lots of cars. This is the spot. Let’s just go ahead and park. But my personality is now all the good trees are gonna be taken because all of these people are here.

So we’re gonna go to a spot that nobody else is parked. And so we find a spot no cars around, like this is perfect. So we get everybody out, it takes 15 minutes to get everybody outta the car and their gear on, their stuff on, and we start just trouncing through the woods and we get about a hundred yards from the car. When I look around and I realize this area of the forest burned down at some point, and that’s why there are no normal sized Christmas trees. And so my wife and I had decision, I turned to her and I said, should we go ahead and turn back and go to a different spot? And my wife leaned towards yes. And I was like, no, we’re fine, we’re good. So about a mile and a half later, we finally come out of the burned area of the forest.

And it was about that time that we started seeing that that’s where all the other cars were parked. And so at this point, you, you don’t really even care at this point. You’re just saying find this a bush, a shrub, something that’s green. We’re gonna cut that sucker down and get it back to the car. And, and your kids start to complain and whine and you turn to ’em and you say, we are having fun right now as a family. And I have found, at least in my experience, that when you have to tell kids that they are having fun, they’re probably not having fun just as a general rule. But, but here’s what I have found in those moments is that the thing is not the thing. And like I, I think sometimes when we do that, that the thing is the Christmas tree that we’re trying to find the perfect tree.

And, and spoiler alert the tree that we have at home, you can hardly hang ornaments on that thing. I mean, it makes Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree look magnificent. But the the tree is not the thing. The the thing is the experience. The thing is the family. The thing is creating a memory that hopefully someday they will look back upon with positive feelings. And the reason that I want to give that to my kids is because I had that. Here’s a picture of me as a kid. When my family used to go and cut down our Christmas tree. There’s, there’s cute Kurt right there except pictures back in the day looked a little bit different than the pictures do. Now, now you pull out your cell phone, you take like 15 photos, choose the best one back in the day, if you are under the age of about 35, I’m about to blow your mind. Cameras used to come in a purse and inside was this amazing, miraculous, just absolutely magical contraption where it opened up like this. What <laugh>.

And then what would happen is instead of having an instant photo, what you would do is you’d, you’d take a picture. I’m gonna actually take a picture. I’m gonna make it a selfie. ’cause Every time I’ve taken the picture this way and it was too dark. So we’re gonna do a selfie from 1985, right here, here we go. There it is. And then it just slowly starts to develop. And they say, don’t shake it, but what do you do? You shake it. That’s what you do every single time you do this. And it takes forever for that thing to get there. Those of us that are above a certain age, you naturally have patience because of this. The Polaroid taught you to wait and be patient. And eventually, if you wait long enough, guess what? You get a really blurry looking photo. But sometimes the thing is not the thing at Christmas time, oftentimes we can make a thing that is not the thing, the thing that at Christmas time, we can get so focused on so many other things.

And they’re good things. They’re not bad things. That you’ve got the presents and you’ve got the trees and you’ve got the lights, and you’ve got all these festivities that we do. But the thing that Christmas is all about is Jesus, that the gift, when we think about the gift of Christmas, the gift is Jesus. In the New Testament over 40 times, it refers to Jesus as the gift. Now look what Paul writes in second Corinthians chapter nine, verse 15. He says, thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift. That, that if we can really understand the thing of Christmas, Jesus, that he is a gift for all of us. It’s funny there, there’s a lot of things that we add to Christmas that really had nothing to do with the first Christmas. Like, like the tree that we add, the lights that we add, and those, those are great things that are fun things.

But sometimes we get other things wrong. Like here’s one of the, the ones that that probably is gonna blow your mind. It’s a little crazy. You know, that we, we pronounce Jesus’ name wrong. The Jesus in the first century, he did not go by Jesus, not how we pronounce it. If you could go in a time machine back to Jesus as a teenager, and you said, Hey Jesus, he’s not turning around to that because his Hebrew name was Yeshua. That’s how he would’ve pronounce it, Yeshua. And the reason that that has value is because in Hebrew it’s two different Hebrew words that are being combined together. So Yahweh is the Hebrew word for Lord, the personal name for God. And then that, that second half means to say, so Jesus’s name Yeshua meant the Lord saves. Then what happened is we transliterated it into Greek in Greek.

Jesus’ name went from Yeshua to Asus and Asus. It then gets transliterated into Latin, which still sounds pretty close to Asus. And then Ladin gets transliterated into English and it gets spelled J-E-S-U-S. And so the way we pronounce it is Jesus. But, but here’s the secret. It doesn’t matter how we pronounce his name. ’cause That’s not the thing. The thing is what his name means. The gift that Jesus brings is that he came to save us. Now, the God when he tells the angel Gabriel to tell Mary, you will call his name Jesus. It’s because he’s sent in a message to all of us that Jesus comes to save. What does he come to save us from? And I know we’re all coming in from different backgrounds. May maybe you’re coming in because you, you come to our church all the time. Maybe this is your regular church and you’ve come to Christmas Eve before.

And if that’s the case, we’re glad you’re here. Maybe you’re here and you’re in town from out of town, that you’re here visiting family. Colorado’s a great place to come visit at Christmas time. Maybe you’re here and your neighbor invited you, or a friend invited you, or maybe you’re here and you don’t want to be here. Shout out to the people in overflow right now. Maybe you’re like, see, I told you, maybe right now you do not wanna be here and you ended up here anyway. But I drew truly, genuinely believe that God has something for all of us. Because if we can truly understand the purpose and the meaning of Christmas, that it is about the gift of Jesus. That Jesus came to save us. Maybe you’re walking in today and, and you’re in a dark spot in life. The the Christmas is about giving us hope.

And hope sometimes is a thing that we don’t have a lot of in this world. That, that maybe over your life you’ve put hope into different things, you’ve put hope into people and maybe they’ve let you down. You’ve put hope into an institution. Maybe you’ve put your hope into the church. And the church at some point has let you down. Maybe you’ve put your hope into yourself when you look back over your life and you say, I’ve failed and dropped the ball over and over and over and over again. And see, the scary place can be when we lose all hope, it becomes dark. And the famous story, Dante’s Inferno at the gates of hell, there is an inscription entering into the gates of hell. And they read this, a abandon all hope ye who enter. The idea is that in hell, there is zero hope whatsoever.

It is only despair. And maybe this Christmas, you feel some of that, maybe you feel that you’ve lost your hope, that, that it’s just despair and darkness. And you wonder what what is it that Jesus is a gift to save us from? That is the thing that Jesus is the gift to save us from. In the book of Isaiah that you see throughout the entire book, there is this prophecy about Jesus. Over and over again, Isaiah is talking about the Messiah. Now, what’s interesting about the book of my Isaiah is it’s written 700 years before the birth of Jesus. But in that book, it, it is pointing ahead to the need for a savior. You see in the Old Testament, the nation of Israel had this habit where they would turn towards God and they would run towards God and they would focus on God, and then they would kind of get off, and then they’d turn back to God and then they would get off.

Like if you wanna sum up the Old Testament, this is a clip of a sheep. A sheep is something that the Old Testament used to describe us a lot. So here’s a video of a sheep that can summarize in about 20 seconds, the entire Old Testament. So you’ve got this sheep that gets stuck in a ditch. And so this boy has empathy on the sheep, and he’s trying to pull the sheep out. He even has taken off his belt and he wraps it around its leg. And then finally it’s like, yes, I’ve saved the sheep. The sheep is good to live. Oh yeah

Know. I mean, imagine if you’re the boy, you’re like, seriously, right now, I just got you out of the ditch. And and that clip pretty much sums up the entire Old Testament, that over and over again, the people of God, he would rescue them and save them, and then they would run, woo, we’re free. And then they’d go right into the ditch. And the truth is, sometimes that’s our own life. That maybe you’ve had different times in your life where you’re in the ditch and then you feel like you’re getting outta the ditch and maybe people are helping you. And then what do you do? You run right back into the ditch. And that is why we need a savior. The famous Christmas verse in Isaiah comes from Isaiah chapter nine, verse six. You’re probably familiar with it. It’s just for, to us, a child is born to us.

A son is given that. Now probably the, the challenge of familiarity is you hear that and you just kind of go through the motions of Yeah, I’ve heard that a lot of times. But, but the message behind it is powerful to us. A child is born that’s talking about Christmas, that Jesus would be born to the Virgin Mary, God would come in the flesh as a baby. But then look at the second part to us, a son is given that Jesus is a gift to us. And the Christmas story isn’t just for a select group of people. It’s not just for that group or that group. It is to us that you are a part of the Christmas story. I am a part of the Christmas story because it is to us that Jesus is given. And then it says, and this government shall be upon his shoulders.

And there’s two different things that, that, that phrase is meaning. The one is that Jesus’ kingdom is eternal. He is above any earthly government. And Philippians chapter two, Paul’s writing and he’s talking about the future. And he says, one day, someday in the future that every knee would bow and every tongue will eventually confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. And so Jesus sits above it all. But then there’s a second part to this verse that if you go up a little bit, you know, just two verses earlier in chapter nine, verse four, it says that the Messiah would one day lift the heavy burden from our shoulders. And so it’s this idea that, that yes, his kingdom is above us, but also he removes the burdens that we have on us in this life. And maybe you’re coming in and you feel weary. Maybe you feel like you have got a burden, that you are carrying the gift of Christmas.

What has Jesus come to save us from, from those burdens? It says, in his name shall be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, prince of Peace, a wonderful counselor. We, we tend to think of a counselor now in our current context. And my wife is studying to be a counselor, to have her LPC. And, and counseling is great, by the way. I, I encourage it, but that’s not the type of wonderful counselor it’s talking about. It’s not talking about going in and visiting with a counselor and that, well, Jesus would be really good at that. That in the Hebrew, when it’s talking about wonderful counselor, it’s this idea of wisdom that the perfect wisdom comes in the person of Jesus. That a full depth of understanding. How often in life are we trying to glean wisdom? We’re trying to understand. We’re trying to figure out what direction should I go, what should I do?

But this verse is trying to help us to understand that if we want to find true wisdom in this life, the source of that wisdom comes from Jesus. That he is a mighty God. And the Hebrew really, when that, that word mighty can be translated a handful of different ways. But one way to translate would be champion or warrior. That, that he is a warrior on our behalf, a champion on our behalf fighting for us and for our salvation. He says that he is an everlasting father. And I know we all have different father figures in our life. And maybe you had an amazing father. I had a wonderful father growing up. Maybe you had a terrible father. But here’s what I know in my experience, all of us know the difference between a good dad and a bad dad. We all know what a dad should look like.

If you go to the mall, especially anytime the last 10 days, you go to a mall and it doesn’t take long to spot some parenting that is bad and some parenting that is good, that when we think of a good father, we think of someone who is patient, who is loving, who is caring Jesus as a gift comes to be our everlasting father. That even if you have an amazing father on this earth, that Father is temporary, but Jesus is not. He’s everlasting. And then lastly, it says that he’s the prince of peace in Hebrew that word peace is shalom. The best way to understand shalom ’cause. ’cause The, the literal understanding would be wholeness or being complete. The best way is imagine at Christmas time, if you do a Christmas puzzle we, we always, I don’t do it, but my wife and kids do a puzzle at Christmas time.

It sits off to the side. And occasionally we will have a puzzle that our dog has eaten one or two of the pieces. And there’s nothing more frustrating in the world than to do an entire puzzle and have one or two pieces missing like you look at it. And then they start searching all over the place, searching in weird places like they’re looking inside the refrigerator for a puzzle piece because it’s frustrating when something is missing. So the idea of peace I is that we are like a puzzle that is missing pieces from it to, to be shalom, to have peace would be the completion of that something that is missing gets made whole. The message of Christmas, the message that Isaiah is trying to, to give us of what Jesus is coming to save us from the gift that he is, is in the most famous verse in all scripture.

John three 16, that God so loved the world, he so loved you and me, that he gave as a gift his only begotten son, Jesus. That whoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life. That Jesus comes to save us from the darkness, from the despair, from the sin, from the brokenness of this world. And we’re all just like that sheep born in a ditch. And Jesus has come to save us from that and our tendencies to jump back in the ditch. And Jesus is trying to save us from ourselves. About 500 years ago, a little over 500 years ago one of the most famous paintings in the world got finished. It was 1508 that Michelangelo was an artist. He’s most famous for us for the Sistine Chapel. But interestingly, when he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel he was primarily not a painter.

He was a sculptor and he wasn’t going to do the job. He, he thought it sounded terrible to paint a ceiling, but he needed the money so he went ahead and did it anyway. As a kid, I always thought it was the 16th chapel. It’s not. It’s the Sistine Chapel. And if you go in the Sistine Chapel is just absolutely gorgeous, it’s absolutely beautiful. But he specifically painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Oftentimes we think that he was laying down and painting, but that’s not true that the history tells us that he was in scaffolding and he would actually stand up physically. He had kind of a contraption that helped him to stand up. Took him four years to paint the ceiling. Probably the most famous piece of the Sistine Chapel is right in the center of the ceiling. It’s a piece called the creation of Adam.

You’re probably familiar with it, even if you’ve never been to the Sistine Chapel, you’re familiar with this image because as everywhere and what Michael was trying to convey with the image that you have, Adam, mankind, that is just sitting sort of relaxed, that he wanted to convey a sense of apathy in Adam. That Adam is in the garden of Eden, everything’s going pretty well for Adam and he doesn’t have to work. He’s got food he can rest and relax. On top of that, you can tell by the painting, dude is jacked. So he is got that going for him. <Laugh> looking pretty good. And so it’s hard for Adam to understand in his posture, Hey, why do I need God? I got everything. I am the center of my world and I’m doing pretty good. And so instead of straining or reaching for God, Adam is just kinda apathetic, hanging back.

But compare that to God, that God is straining and reaching and trying to get to his creation. He’s even pointing to Adam because the message that Michelangelo is trying to convey to us in this picture is that God wants a relationship with us. God wants to save us. God wants to redeem us, and he is reaching. And the question is how do we respond that if you wanna sum up the message of scripture, that image is the message of scripture from the beginning to the end. That it’s God wanting to be in right standing relationship with us. And oftentimes we are apathetic to that. You see, we cannot save ourselves. We think we can. We think like Adam and I don’t need God. Life is good. And yet here is what I have found from testimony after testimony after conversation after conversation, is that when we try and do it by ourselves, we might be happy for a moment.

But it is impossible to find that peace that only comes from Jesus. The gift of Christmas is that Jesus has come to save us a little bit earlier in Isaiah chapter nine, right before verse six, it says, the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness on them has light shown. It’s interesting when you’re in darkness, like in a room that is a huge room, that if we light a single candle and then if we turn off every light in the room, this single candle can become visible from everywhere. And it’s not big. It’s not like I’ve got a fireplace up here. It’s not like I’ve got a blowtorch up here. I mean, we’re talking about a single candle that no matter where you are in the darkness, you can see it. And that’s the message of Christmas.

And whatever darkness that we are born into in this place, that the light is in Jesus, the Lord saves. So I’m gonna ask you to pray with me. With every head bowed and eyes closed, my question for you would be, do you know Jesus? Have you ever received that gift to the greatest gift of all time? And that is knowing him. And if not, here’s what it means to become a Christian. It means that first you admit that you need him, you say, God, I’m sorry for the sin of my life. I’m sorry that I’ve messed up. I’m sorry for my own shortcomings. Then it’s believing in him saying, I believe Jesus, that you really were born, you really did die on the cross for my sins, that you really did raise from the dead. And then it’s choosing to say, Jesus, I want to make you the Lord of my life.

I want that peace that only comes from knowing you. And if you’ve never done that, then I wanna give you a moment right now. And and all you do is you just simply repeat after that prayer. If you want to make Jesus your Lord and savior you, you just quietly to yourself say, dear God, forgive me for the sin in my life. I want the gift of Jesus. I believe that Jesus came and died on the cross for my sins, and now I choose to make you the Lord and the Savior of my life. And here would be my challenge for you. If you’re someone that just said that prayer, maybe you’re someone that, that you are a Christian, but you’ve kind of been wandering away for a long time, that if you are in a place with no hope, if you would put your trust in Jesus, if you would give us this next year as we go into January and we kick off a brand new sermon series, the Bible is transformative.

And I know it feels like, well, it’s just this old book, but I promise every week there’s a message from God that he would ignite something fresh and anew inside your life. And so if you are just curious, I would encourage you and challenge you, come this next year, make a commitment to say, we’re gonna go to church, we’re gonna study the Bible together. And what you will experience will be life changing. Heavenly Father, we thank you for today. I thank you for each person in this room. I pray that the message of Christmas that Jesus has come to save will be clear in every one of our hearts. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.