Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Do you know the message of Christmas?
Now, I know you all know the story because we read about it, we sing about it. The angels and the shepherds and the mangers and wise men.
But do we know the message of Christmas?
Friends, the simple essence of the message of Christmas is that God wants you.
God wants you to know who he is, and God wants you to understand what he is like.
And so to accomplish that, God became a man and he entered into the mess that's the message of Christmas. He entered into the mess that is this world that we live in. And he was willing to enter the mess of our individual lives.
Over this Advent series, we've been working through Philippians chapter two, where the apostle Paul tries to explain theologically the great lengths that Jesus went to to enter into the mess. Philippians chapter 2, starting in verse 6, says this. It says who that who is referring back to Jesus previously. So it's saying Jesus being in very nature God.
Jesus is God.
But it says he did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.
Rather, meaning in contrast to that, he made himself nothing.
Nothing.
By taking the very nature of a servant and being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death. Death on a cross.
The message of Christmas is that the king, the king entered into our mess.
And when the king chose how he was going to reveal himself, what medium did he use?
He used humanity.
He used a humble human body.
He became one of us in every way.
Think about it, friends.
When we read about those hands that touched a leper and healed them of their disease, those hands. If you looked at those hands, those hands would have dirt underneath the fingernails. He became.
We read stories about his feet being anointed by a sinful woman. She anointed his feet with oil. Her tears covered his feet. She wiped her tears with her hair. Those feet were calloused. Those feet were dusty.
The message of Christmas is that God entered into our mess as one of us.
And here's what I find interesting.
2000 years ago, when God shows up on the scene, most people missed it.
They completely missed the message of Christmas.
This is what John says to us. John, chapter one, starting verse nine, it says, the true light, speaking of Jesus, the true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
He was in the world. And though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.
He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
And today, 2,000 years later, most people still miss it.
They can miss the message of Christmas. Why? I've got to ask the question. Why? What would cause us to miss the greatest message ever announced?
I think that sometimes we can miss the message because we believe my mess is too big. The mess of my life.
When I think about my faults, my. My failures, my brokenness, my sin, I think the guilt and the shame that I carry around that creates distance between God and me.
We look at our mess and we think, I'm probably not the recipient of God's kindness and grace. In fact, God is probably looking at me and my mess and he's thinking, disappointment, frustration. Oftentimes we can think our mess is too big.
But that's not the message that we see in the life of Jesus.
With Jesus, the people that had the biggest messes in his time, they were the ones that were in the front of the line coming to him.
They knew and they wanted to be close to him. And you know what? He let them.
People that were social outcasts of his day, those that were religious outcasts of his day.
And you know what they found?
Those ones with the big messes, they found that the bigger my mess, the more beautiful the message.
Because it didn't matter how big my mess was. Jesus was willing to meet me in that place.
No one, friends, no one was reluctant to approach him because of fear of rejection.
We need to remember that.
We need to remember that when we are focused on our faults and our failures and our brokenness and we sense that there's distance between us and God.
If you are feeling like there's distance between you and God, you need to understand that distance is created by us, not by Jesus.
That distance is created by us. Jesus did everything to come to us, to close that distance, to build a bridge.
No mess was too big for him.
And it was interesting, though. Jesus consistently attracted those who maybe would have, the world would think, would have expected rejection.
And somewhat ironically, he offended and he frustrated people that felt really secure in their religiosity.
People that would say to the world around them, I don't have a mess.
I don't have a mess to deal with.
The world will always be full of people that think, my mess is smaller than everybody else's.
My mess is more manageable, it's more respectable. It's just minor.
And maybe even those messes are hidden.
Nobody else sees them.
Why do we think that we don't have a mess, friends? Oftentimes we don't think we have a mess because we don't compare our mess to the holiness and the righteousness of God. We compare our mess with each other.
And I don't care who you are, you can always find somebody in this world that's got a bigger mess than you.
And we can say to ourselves, I don't have a problem. I could tell you all the messes that I've made in my life, and I can make you guys leave here feeling much better about yourselves.
But when we come to that place where we think, I don't have a mess, we miss the message of Christmas because when we realize that we've got a mess, we realize that we need someone to help us. We know that we need a savior.
And when Jesus was combating these people that were secure in their religiosity, he told this parable to help them understand how his kingdom works. And he told this parable about two men that were coming to the temple to pray.
One was an upstanding, righteous religious person, and the other person was a notorious sinner, a tax collector.
But this religious person, he stands up to pray in the temple and he's addressing his words to God, but he's not looking at God at all. He's looking at.
He says, God, I am so thankful I'm not like them, those evildoers, those robbers, those adulterers. And God, thank you that I'm not like this one, this tax collector. See, he was comparing himself to people, not to the holiness of God.
But then this tax collector, he couldn't even lift his eyes to heaven. He was so aware of the magnitude of his mess that he had made in life that all he could say with his head down was, God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
And then Jesus closes the parable in this way so that there would be no confusion, there'd be an understanding of how his kingdom works. He says, I tell you that this man, meaning the tax collector, the broken one, I tell you that this man, rather than the other, the religious, righteous, upstanding person, went home justified before God, meaning in right relationship with God, close with God.
And this was the last thing he says for all those who want to exalt themselves in this life will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
That's how his kingdom works. That's the message of Christmas.
For many people, their greatest barrier to the redemption that's found in Jesus, it's not their mess, it's not their sin. Their greatest barrier to redemption is their self sufficiency.
And thinking that my Mess is manageable.
I got this.
A third thing that I think can cause people to miss the message of Christmas is that Christians can be a mess.
Merry Christmas. Glad you came. Now here's what I'm saying.
As followers of Jesus, even in our best efforts, we do not always and consistently live out the values of God's kingdom.
And as we do that, as we don't live out those values and other people look at our life, it can create confusion for them because it seems like our lives should be different.
I'm kind of skirting around a word that we don't like to hear a lot. It's hypocrisy.
Hypocrites.
We are all hypocrites. We don't consistently always live up to the values that we know to be true. This church is full of hypocrites. Journey Church.
And if I'm understanding our org chart correctly, that makes me the lead hypocrite of this whole outfit.
Here's what I know, friends, is that there are people in this room that have been deeply wounded by the hypocrisy of others.
They've been deeply hurt by people who claim to be followers of.
And I'm just gonna say me too. Nobody has hurt me more in this life than people inside of the church.
And some of you are sitting in a place right now where you are turned off to Christianity because someone who claims to be a follower of Jesus and maybe even is desperately trying to follow Jesus has lived a hypocritical life.
And you've been hurt and wounded. And a couple things I just wanna say to you. One is that I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry that that has happened to you.
And I want to ask you a really honest question.
If someone tries to play Beethoven, but they do it really, really poorly, who do you blame?
You don't blame Beethoven.
If someone is seeking to follow Jesus, but they're doing it really, really poorly, who do you blame?
You don't blame Jesus, friends. Don't let the faults and the failures of people that are trying to follow Jesus keep you from seeing Jesus who for who he really is. Just because my life isn't always true and pure doesn't mean that the life of Jesus is not true and pure.
And I would go so far as to say, friends, that hypocrisy. The fact that hypocrisy exists in and around those that are trying to follow Jesus is not a disqualifier for the message of Christmas. It's actually the reason for the Message of Christmas. We know.
We desperately know that we need Jesus to enter into our life and help us deal with our mess. We need a Savior.
And lastly, some people miss the message of Christmas because they look out and they just see that this world is a mess.
When I say this world is a mess, this is what I'm trying to say. We see evil, we see pain, we see suffering, we see death in this world that we can't explain.
We see this out in the world.
Yes. I don't have to try to convince you. Just read a headline or two. You know that there is evil and brokenness in this world. You know what else is true is that there's evil and brokenness in our life. There are people in this room right now that are experiencing incredible pain and suffering.
And we can ask the question, if God is so good and God is so powerful, why doesn't he do something about the evil in this world, about the brokenness in this world? And we can take those questions in a couple of different places. We can either blame God for not doing something about it, or we can just actually assume that there is no God.
But here's what I want to say, friends. I believe the message of. Of Christmas actually answers the mess of evil in this world.
Because I know as you look out at the world, you would say, this is not the way this world was intended to be.
You know that it's in your gut. This is not the way that things should be. And you know who agrees with you?
God agrees with you.
Absolutely. This world is not the way that it should be. And that is why Christmas.
That is why Jesus was willing to enter into the mess of this world so that he could redeem it.
But he didn't just enter into the mess of this world. He actually experienced the mess of this world.
He experienced the loss.
He experienced pain. He experienced suffering.
He experienced rejection and betrayal of those that were closest to him. He experienced mocking and cruelty.
And he experienced one of the most cruel and painful deaths that this world has ever seen so that he could redeem, so that he could destroy evil in this world without having to destroy us. He took upon himself the guilt and the shame and the suffering and the penalty for sin so that we wouldn't have to. That, friends, is the message of Christmas.
Now, I can just talk to you about redemption and how Jesus wants to bring redemption, but I just wanted to show you how God can do that.
Some great friends of mine, some great folks around here at Journey, I just asked them if they would share their Story of how Jesus entered into the mess of their life and brought redemption to them. Let's listen to Scott and Amy's story.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: So I was raised as a pastor's kid and a middle child, and I really lived both of those stereotypes to a tee throughout most of my life.
I joined the military when I was 17, went straight from there into civilian law enforcement.
And so we got married pretty young.
First few years of marriage were great, and at some point in time I decided that I missed my chance to sow my wild oats, whatever that phrase means.
So I started turning to alcohol, which almost always led to an affair.
And so this started a.
A many year long roller coaster ride of just these ups and downs throughout our marriage. So life would be going great and I would get into alcohol, which almost always led to an affair, and then I'd be kind of sitting in the bottom of a valley.
One phrase that I adopted pretty early in my life was, if you want something done right, do it yourself.
The problem was that I inadvertently carried that on into my walk with God, which can be a very dangerous thing.
So my analogy that I use is, I'm driving this car. I had a relationship with God at the time growing up in the church, but when I would get into those valleys, I knew that we had to push through and get to the top of the mountain peak again. And so it kind of looked like I'm like, all right, God, will you jump in the car? I'm driving. I know you want me to go this way. This is where we need to go. But I also know I need you in my corner corner. So jump in. Here we go.
And for years, it was just a roller coaster ride of these ups and downs.
Life would be going great, mess up again, get into a valley.
One year I hit a true rock bottom.
Amy said, I don't think I'm going to do this anymore.
And I knew that something needed to change.
It was either put up or shut up time for me.
And so God really got ahold of me and I had to get to the point where I physically had to say out loud, God, I'm completely incapable of doing anything good without you.
And when that happened, that was a true surrender moment for me in my life. If you had asked me before then, have you ever surrendered to God? I would have said, yeah. I knew Jesus. I knew who he was, wasn't following him, but I learned what true surrender meant at that point in time.
I had to get out of the driver's seat and get in the backseat and say, all right, God, you drive this car. I was at the end of my rope.
So at that point in time was when I saw relationships really started to improve.
And then over the coming years would get a lot better. I was coming up out of one of those valleys, but just wrecked with guilt and shame because I had let my sins define me.
I had let the enemy say, you are what you have done.
And those are powerful tactics that the enemy uses to keep us from a right relationship with God. And it wasn't until years later that I kind of started dealing with that. But I really feel like the thing that brought me up out of that, that guilt and shame was the fact that I had to get my heart to the point where I realized that what God did on the cross was for me.
He died so that I could be free of my guilt and shame.
[00:21:33] Speaker C: I grew up in the church. I have great parents. I have loved Jesus.
But I'm also type A perfectionist. Make a list, get the work done. And so my initial response to all of this was, well, there's work to do, and I will fix it. You know, I was doing it in an attempt to control the situation, to manipulate. You know, like, if I do everything right, Scott will change. Scott will be better. My efforts to fix the situation by my own power did not work. And so I got bitter. I got really bitter. And I took that seed of bitterness and I just nurtured it, and I watched it grow. And I didn't care if it hurt Scott. I wanted it to hurt Scott. I wanted him to suffer the way I had suffered.
And so I was okay with my sin in that aspect.
But my kids were suffering, and I wasn't okay with that. And so I was begging God to help me be a good mom.
Then I was mad at God because I thought, you gave me these kids. If you gave me these kids, you intend for me to be a good mom. So I don't know why you're not helping me. And I couldn't just direct it at Scott. I couldn't make my bitterness just be at him. It came out whenever it wanted.
And I felt like it was my right to be bitter. I had earned it. And the only reason I was willing to get rid of it was because of my kids. It wasn't for some holier spiritual reason. It was because I didn't want them to be wounded. But I read this article, and it was about the parable of the unforgiving servant.
The master forgives the servant this huge debt, and then the Other servant turns around and won't forgive his fellow servant a very small debt.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: And.
[00:23:27] Speaker C: And for the first time in my life, I understood the story.
And I was broken over my sin.
And I realized that my bitterness was, like, not offensive to God. I mean, it is, but it was. It hurt him.
And I knew he loved me and I didn't want to hurt him.
I had to repent of my bitterness. And I experienced God's grace. And once you experience the grace of God, it's so much easier to give it to somebody else. And so I was able to actually love him in the crap.
And, like, instead of just being mean and hateful. And so I tried really hard to live a good Christian life in my own power, and I just couldn't do it, you know? And it's the story of humanity. It's the story of brokenness. And Christmas is the story of God coming into that brokenness, coming down to us and saying, I've got something so much better.
You know, like linking arms with us and saying, come with me.
If you taste and see, you will find that the Lord is good.
[00:24:53] Speaker A: The question for all of us is, what are we going to do with the message of Christmas?
We've all got a mess.
How are we going to bring that before him?
This is how the apostle Paul finishes Philippians chapter 2.
In verse 9, it says, Therefore God exalted him. That's Jesus. God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every.
Every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
That's the invitation of Christmas, that we would bring our mess to him as unworthy ones, and we would bow our knee to him. We would make him our king and acknowledge that he was who he claimed to be. And to say thank you for everything that he's done for us. Friends, that's invitation of Christmas. What are we going to do with this message?
Let's pray.
Jesus, we come before you and we just want to say thank you.
Thank you, Jesus, that you did for us what we could not do for ourselves.
That you actually made a way for our sin and our brokenness to be taken care of.
You took it upon yourself.
You took the punishment that we deserved.
And we just want to say thank you.
And Jesus, we come before you and we bow our knee to you and we say that you are our king. We acknowledge you before the world.
Jesus, you are our king.
And it's in your powerful and resurrected name that we pray. And all God's people said amen.
