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Amen.
You guys can be seated.
Good morning and Merry Christmas.
Okay.
All right.
There's a lot of us.
We can do better than that.
All right.
Merry Christmas.
That's what I'm talking about.
It is good to have you guys here with us today.
If you have your Bible, and I hope you do, I want to invite you to join me this morning.
We're going to look at two passages of scripture.
We're going to look at Luke, chapter two and Matthew, chapter two.
All right.
As you turn there, a couple of things that I want us to remind you of, or if you're visiting with us for the first time, to make you aware of how many of you thoroughly enjoyed all of the wonderful treats this morning.
Let's thank everybody who took time to go out and to do that.
I know at my house, was it Friday?
This Friday, it was just the aroma of goodness out of the kitchen all morning long with my wife and my daughter in there cooking.
And as good as today was with that, on our New Year's Eve prayer service that we're going to have that Sunday morning, we're going to do breakfast again.
We've got lizards.
Thicket is going to cater that for us.
It's free.
You don't have to pay to come to the breakfast.
But as we coordinate and as we plan for the crowd that we're going to have, if you could help us out, we've got these cards that are around in the rows there.
If you could help us by registering for that, we would greatly appreciate it.
Now, if you don't register and you wake up that morning and you're like, why didn't register?
I can't come.
Get that thought out of your mind.
We want you to be here with us.
We will have extra, but if you can help us out by registering, that would be such a big help for us.
And then also, as we go into the new year, we're going to wrap up our Christmas series this morning.
As we go into the new year, we're not going to jump straight back into Genesis.
Instead, we're going to take the month of January and we're going to walk through the book of proverbs together.
And so we did this several years ago.
And so a challenge that I want to give you.
All right.
There's 31 days in January.
There's 31 chapters in proverbs.
And so what I'd love for us to do as a church is commit to reading a chapter of proverbs a day as we work through.
And then I'll come in on Sunday morning.
And our Sunday morning's message will be based off of several verses that we've read throughout that week in proverbs.
So just January 1, proverbs 1, January 2, proverbs two, all the way through the book of proverbs.
And just a wonderful, wonderful time as we devote ourselves at the new year.
Right.
We're going to say that we're going to devote ourselves to working out and eating less sugar, less carbs, more asparagus.
Right.
But what we really want to make sure we commit to, and we're starting off this season for us in prayer and in God's word and would love for you to join us as we do that together as a church.
Well, in this series of what we've been talking about, we've been looking at what we call the gifts of grace, that through a relationship with Jesus Christ, that we are given gifts, and then we take those gifts and we do something with those gifts.
So we are given gifts, we receive those gifts, and then we give those gifts away as well.
And we've been looking at our focus passage has been John 316 through 17.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only son.
He gave Jesus that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Verse 17.
For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
And so we looked at different areas of this.
We talked about forgiveness and what it means to be forgiven and what it means to forgive others.
We talked about this in community, that we need others in our life to invest in us, and then in turn, we need to invest our lives into someone else.
It doesn't matter how long you've been saved.
You, whether you've been saved for 50 years or for five minutes, you have a story, you've got a purpose, you've got a reason that God allows you to come alongside and to do this.
We talked about our abilities, of what God has given us to be able to go and do and how we can use them for his name and for his kingdom.
And then last week, kind of a different way of looking at things.
We look at suffering that Christ suffered for us.
But if you're walking through this season, whether it be through calamities, through persecution, through sickness, right.
You suffer.
And that in that our suffering is not wasted, in that God is working and moving and using that in a very powerful way in our life.
And so this morning we're going to do something a little different as we talk about this concept of gifts.
And so, parents, I know dawn communicated this out to you.
If you did not see this, this may catch you off guard.
But what I'm going to ask here in just a moment is that if all of our kids could come down front and kind of have a seat down here on the floor with me and parents, if you're petrified of that in this moment that you're about to lose control of your kid, you are.
All right.
But if you want to come down and sit crisscross applesauce with them like you're invited to as well, if not, we're just going to have, like, five or ten minutes that I'm going to hang out with them.
So if I could get all of our kids, if you wouldn't mind coming down front, we're going to have some time together.
I appreciate that.
Now, parents, parents, here's what I need you to understand.
Adults in the room.
You probably said to your kid, hey, we're going into big church this morning.
We want you to pay attention.
Here's what I'm going to say for the next 510 minutes.
Hey, adults, I need you to pay attention right as we walk through this together.
You think that they can do that?
You all think they can pay attention?
You don't?
I think they can.
I think you guys can pay attention.
I think they can pay attention as we do this.
So let me ask you this.
I've heard this from some of you already this morning.
How many of you are excited that it's Christmas?
Are you excited?
All right, hey, I'm going to give you permission to do something, okay?
I'm going to give you permission to be loud.
All right.
So how many of you are excited for Christmas?
That was aggressive, right?
But that's what I asked for, and that's what you gave me.
So I have no one to blame but myself when I was a little boy.
And I'm going to be honest with you still to today.
I love Christmas.
I love every part of Christmas.
I love to decorate our house.
I love to eat Christmas cookies.
I love to watch Christmas movies.
I love to get together with family.
I love opening up presents.
Now I want to tell you guys a story.
So y'all look over here.
Y'all look right over here for just a second.
So you see right here, this gentleman on the end of the road, that's my dad.
Y'all wave to my dad.
Y'all call him Randy.
Say, hey, Randy.
All right.
That's my mom.
Her name's Donna.
Say, hey, Donna.
And then we got my aunt down here.
This is Susan.
Y'all say, hey, Susan.
I got a lot of stories about them, like growing up, right?
Lots.
Lots of stories.
But I'm not telling you a story about them.
But I wanted you to kind of, kind of meet them.
So after service is over with, you can go say hey to them.
So instead, what I'd like to do is I want to tell y'all a story of the greatest Christmas gift that I ever received as a little kid.
I got some great gifts as a little kid.
I did get a Nintendo, but this gift was better than a Nintendo a long time ago, in a day that some of your parents may remember, but probably more your grandparents speed.
There is something out there called an Atari, right?
And I was probably about five years old, and I woke up Christmas morning and I got Atari.
And that was great.
But that wasn't the greatest gift that I ever got on Christmas.
Another time I woke up, and this was, I think it was a couple years later, and there was a cartoon character out there, and his name was Heman.
And I got Castle, grayskull, and like the other castle, and I got all of the figures and it was great.
But you know what?
It wasn't the best gift that I had ever gotten.
The next.
Oh, Playstation.
Let me talk about that for a second.
All right.
Playstation came out when I was an old man.
Right?
Crazy, right?
I know you would think a guy in his 20s would know more about that, but I don't.
One Christmas morning, I don't know, I was probably seven or eight years old, I woke up early.
Now, let's talk about waking up early here for just a second.
All right.
I liked to wake up when I was a little kid at probably around 03:00 in the morning, and I would open my door because I knew I couldn't come out until there.
We got a question.
We're going to go with this.
What's up, buddy?
So here's what I did to wake up my parents.
Just.
There's all kind of ideas.
This is the idea that I would go with.
I would open my door because I couldn't leave my room.
That was the rule.
You can't leave your room.
So I would open my door.
I would stand in the doorway, which is technically in my room, and I would scream as loud as I can at 03:00 a.m.
To wake my parents up.
And you know what?
They loved it.
They loved it, and I bet your parents would, too.
All right, just run with that, kids.
Have fun.
Moms and dads.
I'm not real sorry about this.
Right?
This is what you're entrusting me with.
I was about seven or eight years old, and I woke up that morning, 03:00 in the morning, and I go, and I stand at my doorway, and I scream, mom, dad.
And they came out, and they were not quite as excited as I was.
And I came out into our living room, and right beside our Christmas tree was a black and garnet, because those are the two colors that matter the most.
I've got the microphone, right?
So this is what I can do.
Real life gas powered motorcycle.
I know, right?
It's crazy what happened in the know.
And I got out that day on that motorcycle.
I'll never forget it had a racing plate decal on the side with a number seven on it.
I had a racing helmet.
And we lived kind of in a home at the time where there were spots where I could go ride this motorcycle in the woods.
And I rode this motorcycle all over the place.
And then later on that day, remember, it was 03:00 a.m.
There was plenty of time.
We went to go have breakfast at my grandmother's house.
I got another aunt, not the aunt that's here with us this morning.
I had another aunt who was there, and she was going to visit.
She was visiting from Arizona.
And she said, we took my motorcycle over there.
And she said, can I ride your motorcycle?
Now, I know what I should say, which is, yes, but I know what I wanted to say, which was, no, this is my motorcycle.
This is not your motorcycle.
And she got on my motorcycle.
And I don't know if she knew how much, like, how strong the motorcycle was, but she took off on that motorcycle, and when she hit that gas, her feet went up in the air, and that motorcycle went right into a pine tree.
She was fine.
She was okay.
But the motorcycle got a couple of scratches on it.
It got a couple of dents in it.
I remember the number plate on the side just curved into the perfect slope of the side of that pine tree that she ran it into.
But it was okay.
It was okay because there was this gift that was given to me that I loved and that I cherished.
And I know you guys are really excited, because all of the things that are going to happen for Christmas.
You're excited about waking up at 03:00 in the morning.
You're excited to go out into the living room and see.
You're excited to be there with all of your family.
But what I want to do this morning is I want to read a minute.
I want to read a story to you.
Okay?
I want to read a story to you about the greatest gift, way better than Atari, way better than even a Playstation.
The greatest gift, even better than my Honda motorcycle.
And it's the gift of Jesus.
That's right.
So I'm going to read the story to you guys, and even to the adults out here, about the gift of Jesus.
The Bible tells us.
We start in Luke two.
Bible tells us, in those days, Caesar Augustus made a law, and it required that a list be made of everyone in the whole roman world.
It was the first time a list was made of the people.
While Cornelius was governor in Syria, everyone went to their own town to be listed.
So Joseph went also.
He went from the town of Nazareth and Galilee to Judea.
That is where Bethlehem, the town of David, was.
And Joseph went there because he belonged to the family, to the family line of David.
And he went there with Mary to be listed.
And Mary was engaged with him.
She was expecting a baby.
And while Joseph and Mary were there, the time came for the child to be born.
And she gave birth to her first baby.
It was a boy.
She wrapped him in strips of cloth and then placed him in a manger.
And that's because there was no guest room where they could stay.
There were shepherds living out in the fields nearby.
It was night and they were taking care of their sheep.
And the angel of the Lord appeared to them.
And the glory of the Lord shone around them.
And they were terrified.
But the angel said to them, do not be afraid.
I bring you good news.
It will be great joy for all the people.
Today, in the town of David, a savior has been born to you.
He is the Messiah, the Lord.
And here's how you will know I'm telling you the truth.
You will find a baby wrapped in strips of cloth and lying in a manger.
And suddenly a large group of angels from heaven also appeared.
They were praising God, and they said, may glory be given to God in the highest heaven, and may peace be given to those he is pleased with on earth.
The angels left and went into heaven.
Then the shepherd said to one another, let's go to Bethlehem.
Let's see this thing that has happened which the Lord has told us about.
So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph and the baby.
And the baby was lying in the manger.
And after shepherds had seen him, they told everyone.
They reported what the angel had said about this child.
But all who heard were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.
But Mary kept all these things like a secret treasure in her heart.
And she thought about them over and over.
The shepherds returned.
They gave glory and praise to God.
Everything they had seen and heard.
Was just as they had been told.
Then Matthew talks about another part in Matthew, chapter two.
Says Jesus was born in Bethlehem and Judea.
And this happened while Herod was king of Judah.
After Jesus's birth, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem.
They asked, where is the child who has been born to the king of the Jews?
We saw his star when it rose.
And now we have come to worship him.
When King Herod heard about it, he was very upset.
Everyone in Jerusalem was troubled too.
So Herod called together all the chief priests of the people.
He also called the teachers of the law.
And he asked them where the messiah was going to be born.
In Bethlehem and Judea.
They replied, this is what the prophet has written.
Behold you.
Bethlehem and the name of Judah.
Are certainly not the least important among the towns of Judah.
A ruler will come out of you.
He will rule my people, Israel, like a shepherd.
Then Herod secretly called for the wise men.
He found out from them exactly where the star had appeared.
He sent them to Bethlehem, and he said, go and search carefully for the child.
As soon as you find him, report it to me.
Then I can go and worship too.
After the wise men had listened to the king, they went on their way.
The star they had seen, when it rose, went ahead of them.
It finally stopped over the place where the child was.
When they saw the star, they were filled with joy.
The wise men went to the house.
There they saw the child and his mother, Mary.
They bowed down, and they worshiped him.
Then they opened their treasures.
And they gave him gold and frankincense and myrrh.
But God warned them in a dream not to go back to Herod.
So they returned to their country on a different road.
Hey, you guys did great.
I want to thank you for sitting here so patiently as I read this story to you.
But this story is about the gift of Jesus.
And who Jesus is.
And we're not going to outgrow Jesus.
We're not going to try to replace Jesus.
We have the opportunity to share Jesus and to live in this gift.
So I've got a gift for you guys as you go back to your seats here in just a moment.
And so if you'll see kind of around, some of our youth workers are here and they've got a basket.
And in this basket, it's an ornament, a special ornament for you.
And in this ornament, it shows the story of what I just read of Jesus and Mary and Joseph and the angels and the shepherd and the wise men.
But more importantly, and we'll talk about this in just a minute, this ornament is set in the shape of a cross so that we see the story of Jesus as we talk about in Christmas, that we're reminded that Jesus came and was born, but that his destiny that he'll go to is to a cross.
So thank you guys for being awesome.
Thank you guys for being so well behaved.
And remember, it's okay.
At 03:00 a.m.
All right.
It's okay.
Parents, any complaints, I need you to email David Allen@Willardgechurch.org he'll process all those.
All right?
So y'all can go get your gift and y'all can head back to your parents.
All right, so sometimes you get those things and you just have to say, well played.
As I'm walking up, Jack just looked over at me and he said, hey, don't worry, Bo.
I'm not going to email Dave.
I'm just going to call you.
All right?
So remember to cut my phone off.
Yeah.
Or Joel or whoever, just not me.
And that's what this season is all about, the gift of Jesus.
And so really quickly, before we go into our time of communion, I just want to talk to you guys, for all of us, from the kids up to all the way for our adults, about this gift of Jesus and this story that we just read.
The story, if you were in here and you noticed, I know some of the kids did, and I even saw some of us adults watching the story that drives the point of Charlie Brown's Christmas, which is the story of Jesus, that as much as we like the movies and the presents and as much as we like the lights and all of the things that come at this time of year, they're all secondary compared to Christ and to knowing him.
And so the first thing that this story reminds me of is this, that the gift of Jesus is simple and powerful.
The story of Jesus is simple and powerful.
When we think about the story of Christ, when we think about who he is, he came to this world humbly and through miracle.
He came to this world in a very common setting, but in a miraculous way.
He was laid in a manger, a vessel created so that animals could eat very plain, but through the power of God.
Born of a virgin, his first few days were not at a hospital, were not in a nursery at home, but instead kept with animals.
But yet he was sought by kings.
The story of Jesus.
We see Mary and Joseph very young, with no family to join them, but yet announced by angels, the simple but powerful story of the gift of Christ.
And we see somewhere around 30 years later, the simplicity of his life as he rode on a donkey.
Simple to die on a cross, humiliating to pay for the sins of man.
Powerful.
And walked out of a tomb three days later.
Miraculously, the gift of Jesus is simple but powerful.
The second thing that we learn and we're reminded of is this, that the gift of Jesus is for shepherds and wise men.
The gift of Jesus is both for shepherds and for wise men.
The shepherds were common men, uneducated, socially outcast, a little rough and really dirty.
They weren't looking for a spiritual encounter.
But God sent them a message anyways, in their invitation, caught by surprise.
They didn't come with a gift.
They didn't come with an offering, but yet they came anyways.
And they were welcome, and they were received.
Maybe you feel like that describes you.
The gift of Jesus is for shepherds, but the gift of Jesus is also for wise men.
Some translations translate that the Magi or the kings, they didn't come from a field nearby.
Instead, they traveled somewhere between 800 and 900 miles, not by airplane or train or car, but by foot or by animal, to see Jesus.
They were highly educated men.
When they walked into a room, they were the smartest.
There they were men of influence and men of power.
But they were searching for something.
They knew that there was more beyond what they could understand.
And they had been reading God's word and searching to find him.
And when it was revealed to him, they had gifts, they wanted to share their life, and they brought them in a sacrifice to the one who would sacrifice for them.
Whether you feel like you fall into that shepherd category or the wise men category, or, let's be honest, most of us in between the beauty that we're reminded of this Christmas is this, that the gift of Jesus is for you, for me, for everyone.
The last thing as we look at the gift of Jesus is the gift of Jesus demands a response.
The gift of Jesus demands a response.
When someone gives you a gift, you typically say what?
You say, thank you, you've taken the time to think of me, to sacrifice, to do this for me, and you give this to me.
And in turn, my response is to say, thank you.
As we read these stories, both in Matthew two and Luke two, we see these encounters that different people have.
And these different people respond to Jesus.
The shepherds.
One of the things that I think oftentimes we miss is that their response to this gift of Jesus was they went out and they told people this wasn't just a secret they wanted to keep to themselves, but they told people what they had heard, what they had seen, what they experienced.
The wise men, they respond in gifts.
We saw they brought three different gifts.
And I don't know if you know this or not, but these gifts, they didn't just run to the store and grab something last minute.
These gifts were valuable.
But more importantly, these gifts pointed to something.
These gifts would be something that would stand as a symbol as they were received.
They gave gold.
Gold was not a gift that you would just give to anyone.
Gold was a gift that you would give to a king.
And so as the wise men came and they laid down the gold before Jesus, they're saying, you're the king.
You're the king.
They came and brought frankincense.
Frankincense was something that you would burn, and it would create an aroma like an incense that would fill a room that was specifically used in the temple to be burned to remind people of the presence of God.
So not only did they bring their gold to say to Jesus, you're our king, they brought their frankincense before him in saying, that, you are God.
And then they brought.
And myrrh was an oil.
It was a very expensive oil that would be used on a body when a person had died.
And so they come.
They present this, because one day, Jesus will be their sacrifice.
He'll be their savior.
So they told people, they said, you're our king.
You're our God.
You're our savior.
And then everyone from the shepherds to the wise men, the Bible tells us they glorified and they praised him.
They worshipped him.
But there's one other guy in the story we don't talk a lot about.
His name's Herod.
He felt threatened by Jesus.
He felt that to acknowledge who Jesus was would to take away his power the way that he wanted to live his life.
And so what did he do?
He rejected Jesus.
The gift of Christ.
As you look at the ornament, and if you didn't have a kid who came down here, we have enough of these, I think for every family to get one.
So if you did have a kid, maybe save some of the others, but if you didn't want you to stop by and grab one of these on your way out the door.
And we're reminded in this that there's a story of a virgin who gave birth to a baby named Jesus, and that he is our king, he is our God, and he is our savior.
And he's the savior of shepherds and wise men.
And his story is so powerful, so powerful that it's announced by angels.
But I love that this isn't on like a Christmas ornament, like a ball or even just a squared picture.
I love that when we look at this story of Jesus, we're reminded of something and that we're reminded of the cross, because the gift of Jesus is not, do I just accept this story of a baby born?
It's, do I accept the story of a baby born who will die on a cross to pay for my sins, but who will raise himself through the power of God to walk in life?
And that in that when I acknowledge that he is my king, that he is my God, and that he is my savior, that that's what's for me.
We're going to go into a time of response, and in our time of response, we're going to partake in the Lord's supper together.
It's one of the things that I love of what we do every Christmas Eve, and many churches do, that we not only read the story and pay to mind the gift of Jesus that's found physically, that God stepped out of heaven, took on flesh and walked this earth, but that he paid the price for my sins and yours.
The question that I have for you today is, what will you do with the gift of Jesus?
In a moment, our worship team is going to come up on stage.
As they do, I would ask that you would check your heart and the preparedness to see if you are ready to take the Lord's supper.
First thing you need to ask yourself is, am I a follower of Jesus Christ?
Is Jesus my Lord and my savior?
And if he is, regardless if this is your church home or not, we want to invite you to partake in the Lord's supper with us together.
But we also ask, under the dependence of the Holy Spirit, that you evaluate your heart for your readiness to partake.
God's word calls us to evaluate ourselves, that we're not doing this simply out of ritual, but we're doing this as an act of worship and a response to who Jesus is.
To check our hearts for any unrepentant sin that we may have.
And if it is there, that we would repent and confess before the Lord, but also to check our heart for our relationships with other believers.
To see, do I need to forgive someone?
Or do I need to ask someone to forgive me?
And if you find today that your heart's not ready to partake in this, it's okay.
It's okay.
But our challenge to you would be that to make your heart prepared to do this.
If you're here this morning and you're not a follower of Jesus Christ, what I want you to know is that God loves you.
And God loves you so much.
He knows all the things you've ever done.
He knows all the good.
He knows all the bad.
He knows all the ugly.
And the Bible tells us that there's not one person that can earn their salvation.
And that what we're called to do is to put our faith, our hope, and our trust in Jesus.
And it's just as simple as that.
That we admit that we're a sinner.
That we believe in who Jesus is, and that we confess him as Lord and savior.
And that in that, you too will receive a gift that's better than Atari, a Playstation, even a motorcycle.
You will receive the gift of Jesus.
Would you pray with me, God?
We come to you this morning, Lord, as we prepare our hearts for this time of the Lord's supper.
Lord, I pray that we would reflect on who you are, Lord, and your call for us.
God, take these moments to speak to us, every single one of us.
Lord, I pray if there's anyone here who does not know Jesus Christ as their lord and savior.
And Lord, I pray that today would be the day that they find salvation in you and in you alone.
Maybe they're just a shepherd, just out doing their thing, and somehow today they ended up here.
Maybe they're a wiseman searching for answers and wondering what's there.
You've brought them here.
Lord, I pray that today would be the day that they receive the gift of Jesus.
Lord, for the rest of us, you are here, Lord, through the power of your spirit.
Would you work and move in us and bring us to the sweet place of repentance that we need to be?
Lord, we thank you for the blood.
We thank you for the body of Christ.
And it's in his name we pray.
Amen.
Thanks again for listening.
And be sure to check back next week for another episode.
In the meantime, you can visit us@willowridgechurch.org.
Or by searching for Willowridge Church on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.