Christmas Eve 2014

For more information about Grant Crockway, visit grandparkway.org.

Just take a moment.

And do the hardest thing you'll do this entire holiday season, and that's nothing.

I just want to pick up on what Aaron said.

You made it.

Last year when we were here, oil was$103 a barrel, and we were all going to be millionaires.

Now it's 56 and going south.

And we're all gripping the seat like we don't know where the roller coaster is going to end up.

When it gets overwhelming, turn to the end of the book and read how it ends.

We win.

Doesn't mean it's not going to be hard.

Jesus is not some late-night TV preacher, con artist ripping people off of their welfare check.

He said, In this world, he said, I've spoken these things unto you so that in me you may have peace.

Because in the world you will have tribulation.

You will always not get a 22% return on your investment every year.

Stop being so greedy.

But don't miss the fact that in the midst of what Jesus says about tribulation, he says, In me, I've told you these things, I've shot straight with you.

So that in me you may have peace.

In me, you wake up one day in your marriage and you look at the stranger next to you and you think, I don't know if I want to be married to you anymore.

I loved you when we first got married.

We got three kids now and a mortgage and a minivan, and I don't feel sexy anymore.

You bat on my last nerve.

Jesus stands into that relationship and says, In me you'll have peace.

And he comes and says, Come to me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and you'll find rest for your souls.

Jesus uses big little words to make a big difference.

Peace, rest, come.

I just don't want you to miss before I pray that you made it another year.

May not have been awesome, may not have been a banner year, may not have even been a journal entry.

You may have been slouching to the finish line, out of ghast, thanking God that we're it's downhill in December.

We wouldn't have gotten here.

But you made it.

And so, Lord, we want to pray tonight before we go any further and say thank you for the perspective that the Bible gives us.

It doesn't give us a religious perspective, it gives us a realistic perspective.

It tells us what we so easily and so often forget.

That we're not always promised that we're gonna be millionaires, but we are promised that you're gonna be with us.

Some of us this year have walked through the valley in the shadow of death.

This is a beautiful time of year, and it's a painful time of year because it's the first without.

And so we're keenly aware of that today.

And so, Lord, we're also keenly aware of your presence in our lives today.

There's something in us that wants to do good for our fellow man during this time of year.

We don't want to just hoard it up for ourselves.

That's why people call up here, uh the great people of this church, and say, Is there anybody that needs help?

And the answer to that is always yes, of course.

And so, Lord, thank you that you're that kind of God and you make us those kinds of people.

We were born on third base, we didn't hit a triple.

We're mindful of that tonight.

And so now, Lord, say something to us that has our name on it, we pray in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

You can have a seat.

And uh let me just say this.

Uh I I will be very brief because some of you have told me you're going to eat steak.

And you should.

And some of you are going back, you have traditions.

But let me also say this: if your children, by at this point, your kids get a little squirrely and start warming away from you.

You don't have to leave.

Let them cry.

That's what they should.

That's what they should do.

Because here's why.

When Jesus came into the earth, it was not a silent night.

It was wet and it was messy, and there were animals, and the cattle will begin the lowing here in just a few minutes.

Uh you've dressed your kid up, and now they're pulling that dress off even as I talk right now.

They've got their shoes three rows away from you right now.

We'll reclaim them after the service, okay?

I want to just pick up on something that Megan, our reader, read, and it's the end of the uh it's a section of the birth narrative in Luke chapter 2, verse 14.

Luke 2:14

He says, Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace among those with whom he is pleased.

And here's what I want you to walk out of here tonight with, and I want you to lay in bed tonight, and I want you to think about this the possibility that God sets up the world where you and I can live with the realization that he's pleased with you.

That's a real unmanly word.

Have you realized that?

Men don't say that at each other.

We don't say that to each other on the golf course, or we don't say that at work.

How you how you doing today, Bob?

I'm good because God's pleased with me.

I'm here to tell you that that's what the angels announced.

They said, Glory to God in the highest on earth, peace among those with whom he is pleased.

You may be sitting there in the semi-dark room thinking, how do you know, dude, you don't know me?

I'm just here because my mom drugged me and made me come.

It's part of our ritual, so you just shut your mouth and get done, and you leave me alone.

I'll leave you alone.

I'm not gonna leave you alone.

I'm here to tell you that regardless of what you've done in your lifetime of this past year, the God of the Bible is a God who is pleased with you.

And how can he be pleased?

There's only one way he can be pleased with you.

You say, Well, I don't know what you mean.

I was having coffee with a friend of mine who is uh not religious.

I love my not religious friends because they're sometimes more honest than my religious friends.

Amen.

And he said, What's the big deal about Christmas?

I just don't get it.

And part of me was like, Hello?

Then part of me is like, oh yeah, I remember what you believe.

Nothing.

Okay.

Square one.

And I just said to him, here's the deal that that that that kind of makes this such a big deal.

And it's what I say to you, that God's pleased with you.

God set this up.

Glory to God in the highest.

And on earth, peace among men with whom he is pleased.

How do you how do you get to the point where God's pleased in you?

Just a couple of things you have to embrace.

Number one, you have to embrace forgiveness.

Forgiveness.

The Bible says that Jesus said, I came to seek and save that which is lost.

I came to forgive people of all the wrong they've ever done.

Now, forgiveness is a little word that makes a big difference.

Now, Jesus did not come to forgive your sin, he came to forgive you.

And there's a difference in those two things.

And so, the incarnation, the Bible tells us in 1 John 3 that the reason that the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work.

And so when baby Jesus comes in a manger, it's not innocuous and innocent as you've been led to believe.

It is the most threatening thing.

Matter of fact, I told my church this advent season, Jesus came streaking out of heaven like a meteor and hit the manger, and it's a wonder he didn't burn that thing down.

He didn't come just to kind of say, I'm here just in case you get behind on your mortgage and you need some financial counseling from a church in your city.

No, he came to say, This is what I came to be about.

I came to change history, which is why we talk about A D and B C.

Because he's the dividing line in everything.

And he comes and he says, Hey, glory to God in the highest.

Why glory to God?

Why so much focus on God?

Because his coming makes your forgiveness possible.

Or to say it a different way, he came, not that he came, but where he came from, he came from heaven to earth so that people on earth could get to heaven.

Because apart from forgiveness, you and I can't get there on our own.

So the first way, when you think about how is God going to be pleased with me, you're going to have to accept the forgiveness that comes in the gospel.

Second word I want to give you is just the word freedom.

The Bible says this He doesn't just forgive us for our sins, he gives us freedom from our sins.

Now think about that just for a second.

If you just forgive people for their sins, basically what you're saying is go out and try harder to not mess up again.

And it all kind of hinges on your determination.

But yet the Bible says that God just gives you forgiveness for your sins, but he gives you freedom from your sin.

That's why the Apostle Paul writes in Romans chapter 6 and says, What shall we say?

Romans 6 · chapter mention

Shall we keep on sinning so that grace may abound?

God forbid.

How shall we who are dead to sin continue to live any longer therein?

Don't you know that all of you who are baptized into Christ were baptized into his death?

So that, hear this phrase.

So that, for this very reason, so that we too may live a new life.

God's pleased with people when they come and receive the forgiveness that comes from a relationship with Him that's in the gospel, that's borne out in the incarnation.

It's the most threatening reality that's ever happened to this world because there's forgiveness for sin and then there's freedom from sin.

And how does that happen?

Well, it all has to do with trees.

I got asked, I get asked weird questions during the Christmas season.

One of the questions I started counting, I stopped at like six, six or maybe seven different people asked me, why don't you have Christmas trees in your church?

And I was like, I don't know, I've never thought about it.

Are you against trees?

And I said, actually, I gave the same manager to all six people.

I said, No, we're not against trees.

Matter of fact, trees are all through the Bible.

And they all looked at me and said, What are you talking about?

And I said, If I said, it's like a Sunday morning when I preach, you all don't know what I'm saying.

Uh but if you read the Bible early on in Genesis, there's a tree.

God tells Adam and Eve, hey, you can eat of any tree of the garden, but this one tree don't eat, because when you when you eat of that tree, you'll surely die.

You'll be separated from me spiritually.

See, you were made by God.

Humanity was made by God for a relationship with God, to live in close proximity with God.

That doesn't make you religious, it makes you real.

Okay?

And so they didn't listen.

And so they ate from the tree that God told them not to eat from, and they were expelled out of the garden.

And so the Bible begins with a tree.

And if you go to the last book of the Bible, it's Revelation, the last chapter of the book of Revelation, it ends with a tree.

Revelation chapter 22 opens up and it talks, it gives a picture of heaven, and it says there's this tree by the river of life.

Revelation 22 · chapter mention

And it refers to it as the tree of life.

It says its leaves are for the healing of the nation.

So you've got a problem that the Bible begins with a tree that presents a problem for humanity because not only did Adam and Eve sin, but because they sinned, all of us in this room sinned.

We were born by nature sinners and by choice, and we're separated from God, okay?

And the Bible ends and says, but heaven's a place where this tree reappears, it's this tree of life, it's the leaves for the healing of the nations.

And so there's going to be no sickness and no death in heaven.

And so you got a problem if we're because of this tree, we're all sinful and separated, and that tree says we all are healed and we're perfect.

What happens?

Well, that's the good news.

There's a tree in the middle of the Bible.

And it's a tree the Bible calls the cross.

Galatians says, cursed is any man that hangs on a tree.

And yet the Bible said that's exactly what God did.

He didn't put the gift of Christmas or Advent under the tree.

He put the gift on the tree in the place of people like me.

People who've sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

People who grew up knowing that they felt alienated and didn't measure up but didn't know what to do about it.

And so, if I'm not the only person in this room that's ever realized that, then the Bible says, and I don't think I am, because the Bible says we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

The Bible says that the gift is for you tonight.

Matter of fact, this man in the Bible, Peter, was preaching in the book of Acts, and he says the promise is for you and for your family and for all those who are afar off, whom the Lord our God will call.

That's why we don't beat people over the head with a with a guilt stick here.

We just say, hey, God speaks a language you understand, and he's going to call you if you'll just listen.

So I'd encourage you to walk out and just kind of listen and kind of, you say, hey, I'm not into this.

I'm like, that's great.

But just don't be into this tonight.

But at least if you're if you're against it, just say to God before you go to bed tonight, hey, I'm willing to listen.

If the promise is for those cats and for their family and for all those who are far off, whom the Lord our God will call, maybe he'll call you.

Maybe he'll say something in this next calendar year that'll just resonate, not in just in your head, but in your heart.

That's the way God does it.

He uses our kids, he uses circumstances, he uses our grandkids, he uses the economy.

God uses everything at his disposal, which is everything, to send the message.

One of the things that God used in the Bible were shepherds.

God's always used ordinary people to tell this extraordinary story of the gospel.

And so if you read later on in the book of Luke, the birth narrative, it says that certain shepherds were in the field.

That's who the angels appeared to.

And these shepherds came, and these shepherds all got together, and after they heard the announcement, they went and saw.

And then the Bible says these shepherds, these shepherds talked among themselves.

And so I've got some shepherds that are going to come and help me at this time.

Because what the shepherds did was they came and they saw, and it was just like the angel had said.

He said, Hey, this is exactly what's going to happen.

And so the shepherds came and they talked among themselves.

And one of the things they said was, Let's go see this thing that has happened.

And the thing that they saw that had happened was just like they had said.

And he came into his own, and his own received him not.

But to as many as received him, to them he gave the power, the capacity, the willingness, the desire to be the sons and daughters of God.

That's how the message is always spread.

And so as the light passes back, as yours is lit, just turn around and light your neighbors behind you, and just pass it back.

Stand to your feet if you would, please.

Amen, sister.

Look around.

When you leave here in about 40 seconds, make up your mind that you're going to speak what you understand of the gospel this year to somebody who doesn't understand it.

God uses ordinary shepherds.

He uses tool pushers in the oil field.

He uses executives in the corner office of the oil company.

He uses school teachers, stay-at-home moms, doctors, lawyers, firemen, teenagers, undecided, undeclared college majors, and broken down coffee hack preachers.

To spread the light.

Because Christ the Savior was born.

You can be forgiven and you can be free.

You were created to live free, depart now and live the life God came, lived, died, and rose again for you to live.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you.

You're dismissed.