Inland Empire: Riverside
Christmas Message - Audio
I can't help when I see one of these programs but being a little bit nostalgic when I was about six or seven years old, I was invited by a friend to participate in their church's Christmas program and I had not been to church prior to that and so it was kind of an exciting time for me and I got to be a shepherd boy and it was encouraging to be invited but halfway during the program I was also invited to go back home so it brings back all kinds of memories. For nearly 500 years prior to the birth of Jesus we have no record of God communicating with man. There was a period of absolute silence because during the period prior to that God's people had stopped appreciating God and God had almost become a burden term to take time out to worship Him, to bring offerings to Him, to communicate with Him, had become more of an obligation and God was hurt by that because He felt so strongly about His people and you can imagine as a parent what it would feel like for your child to just utterly reject you or to at the very least be dismissive of you and it grieved God and so there was a period of time for God just allowed man to be by himself and during that period of time God's people had gone from being the favorite people that experienced so much blessing to becoming a completely conquered people who were literally living out every day the consequences of their choices for treating God with contempt and like so many of us when like this words just beating you down there came a period of time of people longed again for a relationship with God and it was during that period of time the Bible said that just the right time God allowed the events that were here to celebrate to take place so that we would remember God in Luke chapter 1 verse 26 says in the six month God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth a town in Galilee to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph a descendant of David the virgin's name was married the angel went to her and said greetings you who are highly favored the Lord is with you that statement alone is a very profound statement because there had been such an absence of the feeling of the presence of God that for Gabriel to literally come to Mary and say Mary God is with you it's a reminder if they promise it's a pledge Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be but the angel said to her do not be afraid Mary you have found favor with God and I hope and I pray today that you feel like you found favor with God you may not feel that for life you may not feel like everything's going the way that you would like it to go but the message of Christmas is the same message that Gabriel brought to Mary that is that God is with us God loves us the God wants a relationship thus he wants us to recognize the importance of having that communion with him but then he goes on he says you will be with child and give birth to his son and you are to give him the name Jesus he will be great and will be called the son of the most high the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever his kingdom will never end Mary was a teenager who was not married and she was living in a society when that was not an acceptable thing for a young woman to be pregnant with the child outside of marriage and so it had to be a little bit confusing to her that God was with her the God was blessing her and yet the way that that was coming about was not a way that she would have ever imagined or desired on her own and yet there was a purpose behind everything it got there God wanted it clear that Jesus was from God and Matthew chapter 1 verse 18 says this is how the birth of Jesus came about his mother Mary was pleased to be married to Joseph but before they came together she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit because Joseph her husband was a righteous man did not want to expose her to public disgrace he had in mind to divorce her quietly but after he had considered this an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said Joseph son of David do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit she will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said to the props the virgin will be with child will give birth to a son and they will call him a manual which means God with us when Joseph woke up he did with the angel of the Lord had commanded him took Mary home as his wife but he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son and he gave him the name Jesus what an extraordinary event but sometimes because it happens so long though it is easy for us to not really recognize what that means for us what Christmas from God's perspective was meant to communicate to us it was literally God trying to re-establish that connection that had been so severed by our lack of appreciation from them and the most important thing to God was that God wanted us to know that God loves us that to God we are without that the most precious thing in all of creation more than all the heavenly hosts more than everything else got created you are God's most precious gift and sometimes we lose sight of that to understand what it means to have God love you John chapter 3 verse 16 says for God shall love the world that he sin is one and only son to communicate to you to communicate to me the inherent value we have to God that everything that's done in all of history in all of creation through all time has been to bring you and I to this moment in time where we can recognize God loves us God's not here to punish us he's not here to condemn us to judge us our own lives may condemn us our lives may judges but that's not God's desire God's desire is to love us and to communicate that love in whatever way that he can but the next thing that God wants us to understand is that literally as his name says a manual that he wants us to be with him just as on a Christmas morning parents love to watch their kids come out to see the excitement in their eyes as they begin to see the presence that are underneath the tree the joy that you feel to see their excitement and their fulfillment is what God feels for us and God wants us to be with him he wants us to care about him the way that he cares about us but God also wants us to know he knows that our lives can sometimes be hard this time of year is an interesting time of year because there are so many things that we see on television you you hear on the radio that create an idyllic picture of what Christmas is supposed to be and for most of us Christmas isn't like that most of us don't live like a wonderful life most of us have all kinds of struggles and burdens and and it becomes a time when instead of being a celebration it is the time where more people are lonely are discouraged or depressed or contemplating and thinking about what they don't have rather than what they do have and God wants us to know he hears our cries I don't know how you feel sometimes I know when things are going difficult in my family or in my life I can try out the God and sometimes I feel like the prayers aren't getting any further than the ceiling and it's easy for us because we don't see God physically to sometimes think that God does just this nameless faceless being that's not interested in us but God hears you God knows the desires of your heart he knows what you need he knows what your dreams are and God wants us to know that he's not just an absentee parent but he's right here he loves us and he wants that relationship that when you are sad and discouraged or defeated God hears you and it moves God because God cares for us we try every Sunday to take time out of our week to participate in communion and part of the purpose of communion is to remember the cross yes but more than that you remember what the cross symbolized it was the extent that God was willing to go for you and for me because there was nothing else he could conceive of the author of creation couldn't think of anything else they would communicate better to you and me the depth of his love for us than to send his one and only son to pay the price for the consequences of our sins but in that one moment as Jesus willingly went to the cross that was God communicating to you just how far he'll go to have that relationship reestablished with you and God is faithful God is true to his promises that if you and I will cry after him if we will turn to him in the night God will embrace us he will bring us from all the places where we've been scattered he will bring us home back to the promised land not to punish us not to hurt us but to give us hope in the future because that's the kind of God that we serve so this year as we go into the holidays I really pray that we can all take some time to not just take stock of our lives and the blessings we've got but to remember where those blessings come from to remember the price that was paid to bridge the gap of silence to bring a relationship back into our life with God where we can experience on a daily basis what it means to walk with the Savior we're going to be taking part in communion right now and as we take the bread that is symbolic of the body that Jesus gave up for us it's also symbolic of the suffering that he went through there's not a whole lot of people in my life that I believe are willing to suffer great loss for my sake but god is and Jesus was he was willing to do that for you and for me and the wine the fruit of the vine that we drink is to remind us of his blood that was shed not only the sacrifice but more than that the cleansing power of the blood God doesn't want us to leave here feeling more depressed and more guilty he wants us to leave here feeling set free and Christmas is about the link that he was willing to go so that you and I would have hope that we would have a chance at a life that is far better than anything that we could ask for or imagine on our own so as we pray and as we begin to take part in the communion I want to encourage you to do with the gladness and seer heart because Christmas means joy to the world because God loves us that much let's pray father it is even hard to comprehend sometimes your presence personally in our life it's sometimes hard to comprehend that out of all the millions and billions of people on this planet you care about each and every one of us and yet father we believe that you do we believe that you desire that relationship to submit to communicate that Jesus was willing to come and to live on this earth and to die for our sins and my prayers that as we take the bread that we would consider the kind of love that was expressed by allowing his body to receive just punishment for all of our sins and as we take the fruit of the vine the God it would remind us of the cleansing power of his blood that can set our conscience free from any act of sin as long as we're willing to turn to you and trust that you love us so much that your desire is not to judge not to condemn but your desire is to set us free we love you we ask all these things in Jesus name amen . . . [ Silence ]
Sunday lesson by Mike Rock.