Christmas Eve Service - 4 PM

Merry Christmas, turn to your neighbor and say you look pretty

fancy tonight. If there was ever a night to be

fancy, it's tonight because we are celebrating the coming of

Jesus Christ and there is nothing more wonderful.

There's nothing more I would, I would just say majestic than

this kind of night. And so we hope for you tonight

that you would find yourself in a state of wonder, that you

would find yourself in a place where if you're coming in on E,

you're leaving on F. We hope that as we worship and

as we sing and as we pray and as we think about these things,

that God would do a special work in our hearts.

And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field,

keeping watch over their flock by night, and an Angel of the

Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone round

them, and they were filled with great fear.

And the Angel said to them, Fear not, for behold, I bring you

good news of great joy that will be for all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior who

is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you,

that you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and

lying in a Manger. And suddenly there was it with

the Angel, a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God,

saying, Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace

among those with whom he is pleased.

When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherd

said to one another, one another, Let us go over to

Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened which the Lord

has made known to us. And they went with haste, and

found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a Manger.

And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been

told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at

what the shepherds had told them.

But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her

heart, and the shepherds returned, glorifying and

praising God for all they had heard and seen as it had been

told them. May it also be for us.

Please stand and sing with us. Lord, we thank you so much for

this evening and all that it means.

And as we reflect on Your word here in a moment, I just ask

that You would help us to understand something new about

you, because this is an all too familiar story.

That from this evening we might go with haste, like the

shepherds in wonder and in awe and telling everyone what you

have done because it's pretty amazing.

And it's your name we pray. Amen.

They say not all who wander are lost.

I have found that when I am wandering that it's a high

probability that I am lost. And I can say that that maybe

I've only truly been lost maybe one or two times, like the scary

kind of lost, like you have Agps, but you're still lost,

right? And this was actually one of the

times where I was delivering coffee and water in Fayette

County a long time ago when I was in seminary and I was I had

to deliver to a construction site.

And those don't have addresses, but they had like coordinates.

And so luckily I had Agpsi had a Garmin, which as you will come

to know, I think is they are complete trash.

I mean, if you've ever used one, I'm sure that you've turned

prior to when the turn actually is because the voice says to do

so. Or actually maybe you don't turn

fast enough or maybe you would turn on a road that didn't even

exist on that map, which is what I did.

And so I am following this GPS and I am trying to find this

construction site and like I've delivered just things like this

before. So I'm like, it might be like a

trailer, right, 'cause sometimes they just drop a trailer and

say, hey, that's it. Like back when South Fayette was

building their school district, like that's, that was the

construction site, was the trailer on the GPS.

That's where I went. So I was like, hmm, all right,

I'll go. I'll try to find a trailer in

the middle of the woods in Fayette County.

So as I'm driving my windows down springtime, I thought I

heard banjos and I started getting nervous.

I'm like, why are there dueling banjos out here in the middle of

the woods? But I kept driving and I kept

driving and I'm following this GPS which is taking me further

and further into the woods. And I look up and I realize I've

been driving for about an hour, right?

I probably only really went 6 miles because down there every

Rd. is like a snake and all that kind of stuff but I am.

There was a moment where I went hmm I started calculating how

much time was left before it got dark and I thought I am not

making it out of here in time. So I'm driving and driving and

driving and I'm going down this at at one point it stops being

pavement and it starts being rocks and some sometimes it's

like mud and sometimes it gets down to one lane.

And that's where I'm taking this big FedEx sized coffee truck.

And so I'm doing things I probably shouldn't be doing in a

truck that big, almost getting stuck and stuff like that.

And then all of a sudden in my peripheral I see a trailer and I

go, yes, but it wasn't it, it was actually somebody who lived

there who is not very friendly or happy that I stopped at their

residence. And so I did what any delivery

person does, I look for dogs and I get out of there And so I get

back in the truck and I'm like, all right, this delivery, this

delivery may not happen. So I'm driving more and more.

It's another 40 minutes in and I go, you know what?

I'm not making this delivery because I remember the word, the

immortal words of my boss were like, there are no heroes in the

delivery business. And he used that usually to tell

us like, don't go down someone's driveway frontwards if you

should go down it backwards, right?

Because the whole idea with a delivery truck is it's not how

you get in, it's how you get out.

So if you can't do it, there's no heroes in the delivery

business. And so I did what I had learned.

I set my GPS for the closest gas station.

And so pro tip, if you're ever lost, no matter where you are,

go to your search and find a gas station that will likely get you

back to some kind of Rd. that you can then work from, whether

that's like you get directions from the person who's working

there or it pulls you out of wherever you are.

And luckily it pulled me out from wherever I was and I ended

up like down by Waynesburg, which if you've ever been down

by Waynesburg, you know, that's a haul back to our area.

And so I finally decided, hey, I'm not making this delivery and

I am getting back home. But this entire time when I was

in this, I was focused on just making this delivery and getting

out, right? It was all about getting in and

getting out. And I was also worried about the

state of my truck. I was worried about that banjo

music. I was also worried about like,

what kind of company lets you use a Garmin GPS anyways?

And from that day forward and, and at this point, Google kind

of became a map app and that kind of thing.

I didn't use the Garmin ever again.

I used my phone. I used the Garmin or not the

Garmin. I used my the Google map.

And luckily I never got lost after that.

So if you are a Garmin fan, I will get you a not Garmin for

Christmas. But I was so focused on getting

out. I was so focused on making it

home. Now, you probably are familiar

with the idea of feeling lost, but I would imagine that when we

are in a state of being lost, we are so focused on getting

wherever it is that we are going that we don't really understand

how lost we truly are. Like I went back and I looked at

the trip summary because my boss had the routing software and he

tracks the van. He was like, you went past the

same thing like 6 times. Like don't you have any

awareness? Did you notice?

I was like, man, I was just looking for a trailer.

I don't know what was happening, but I saw what I had done and I

was really lost. OK.

And the Bible is totally full of stories of people who go on a

journey and and they get lost, right?

One of the most famous is when Moses takes the Israelites out

of Egypt and they end up where wandering for 40 years.

I was lost for a couple subsets of 40 minutes.

The Israelites were lost for 40 years.

I would lose my mind. I would give up hope. 40 years.

There's another period of time. It's called the intertestamental

period. It's from like the end of

Malachi, which is the last book of the Old Testament, and it

goes all the way up through what we have, the Gospels, Matthew,

Mark, Luke and John in the New Testament.

Guess how much time elapsed in that space?

Roughly 400 years. So 40 minutes.

You know what? No sweat, right?

40 years, I would have already given up. 400 years, forget it.

Imagine being a group of people who have been waiting on a

promise and they just have to wait and wait and wait and wait.

So tonight, my hope is this, that no matter what state of

waiting you are in or what state of wandering you might be in,

that we would also kind of see something bigger.

And that's a sense of wonder. Now, did you know that in the

springtime in Fayette County, the honeysuckle was blooming at

that point and I missed it. I smelled it when I was driving,

but I didn't look for it. There was all.

There was a there was a stream that I kind of went by.

Beautiful thing. I missed it.

There were so many things that I was so focused on that I missed

what was right in front of me. I was so busy wandering that I

didn't wonder at all. So busy wandering that I didn't

wonder at all. And this, this, this evening, my

hope is for you that whatever your Christmas looks like,

whether you haven't wrapped your presents yet, whether you

haven't bought them yet, whether you are still trying to figure

out what you're cooking tomorrow, anything of that

nature, put it aside for 20 minutes and take a moment to

wonder. If we are going to wonder as we

are wandering, have any of you ever heard that OFT not popular

Christmas song I Wonder as I Wander?

It's in the hymnal. We sing it maybe every seven to

10 years. It's actually unbelievable.

If you go on the Internet and just look up the lyrics and you

see what's being said, I promise you it's incredible.

And so if we are going to wander with wonder, it takes our

attention. Now.

I have been waiting for Christmas to hit like the

feeling of awareness that Christmas is here because if I'm

honest, I'm limping into this holiday season.

I've even intentionally tried to slow down things and wrestle

with my awareness. Like I've listened to all the

music and if you think you have a playlist, you don't.

I do it. It's unbelievable the amount of

Christmas music that I have on all the time.

Ask my children, they hate it. I have watched all the episodes,

programs, and specials hoping for a little something.

Nothing. I have read all kinds of stuff

about this story and it wasn't until like 2:00 PM today that it

hit me. Because this entire time I was

looking for something. I was chasing after something as

opposed to someone. And if we're all honest, I'm

pretty sure we could agree that we've been doing a lot of

chasing some things. And what tonight is all about is

someone. The wise men that we hear about

all the time, though so many things about them are a

conglomeration of lore. They were absolutely fixated on

the person. So they followed that star with

everything that they had. That star was better than a

garment. The shepherds, they got an

angelic announcement, and here's what it sounds like.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby,

keeping watch over their flocks at night.

And an Angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory

of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

That's an extreme form of wonder.

But the Angel said to them, do not be afraid.

I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the

people. Today in the town of David, a

Savior has been born to you. He is the Messiah of the Lord.

And this will be a sign to you. You will find a baby wrapped in

clothes and lying in a Manger. All of this is awesome.

All of this we should be paying attention to.

But there's one thing that I learned this week that I never

knew, and it blows my mind. First, we have shepherds in the

fields. There are so many sheep to keep

track of. And so there's all kinds of

other shepherds who are trying to do the same thing, right?

Companies are shepherds all out there.

And the thing that I learned I actually caught by sitting in a

classroom as somebody with felt and wood figurines explained to

me what Advent meant. And what happened was they had

somebody visiting them from Bethlehem.

Now, right now, Bethlehem's kind of a, a hotbed of a place.

And so this person kind of came from there just to try to get

away from it all. And they, they make nativities

and things, and he's trying to sell some of the things that he

made. And so in the conversation that

he had had with the person who was talking to me, they told her

that like, this idea of a swaddled baby is actually a very

big deal. Here's why there are something

like 48 caves in that Bethlehem region, right?

And so shepherds are occupying many of these spaces.

So they they're out there. And so there's, there's 48 of

these kind of cave spaces, which I mean, the Manger is not like

this wood arc thing that we we all like to kind of envision.

It was likely that a cave was involved.

And so these shepherds. When they get this, this message

that this baby is going to be wrapped in clothes, they go, OK,

there's 48 caves for me to search.

And so this is actually really good information because as you

remember Jesus and his family, we're going back to Bethlehem as

a part of a census, as a part of being counted, which means

there's probably other young families who are involved that

fit the description. But when the shepherds are to

find this particular family and see this baby wrapped up, here's

what goes off in their minds. When they themselves were

keeping their sheep and their lambs in the sacrificial sense,

they would swaddle them so that they would stay clean, so that

they wouldn't become dirty and they wouldn't get mixed in with

anything else. That is how they were separated.

So this imagery is familiar to shepherds and what do we call

Jesus? Often times the Lamb of God,

right? So in your mind, bell should be

going off, whistles should be happening, that Oh my goodness,

look at the imagery. My entire life I have heard this

Christmas story and this is the first time I heard anybody talk

about this. Now, could it also be a part of

lore like with the wise men? Who knows?

But it's pretty good lore because when you think about it,

to have Jesus swaddled that way, that is one of the ways that

just the imagery of it, the perfect Lamb of God who will

eventually be the sacrifice for you and for me.

And it would make it a lot easier for them to find him.

So you have that space. Verse 13.

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the

Angel praising God, saying, Glory to God in the highest,

highest heaven and on earth, peace to those on whom his favor

rests. When the angels had left them

and gone into heaven, the shepherd said to one another,

Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened

which the Lord has told us about.

They took the terrified wonder and it became curiosity.

They went from being terrified to being curious, and guess

what? They took off.

They didn't wait. They said We're getting out of

here, we got to go. So they hurried off and found

Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in a Manger.

And when they had seen him, they spread the word concerning one

had been told about. The told them about this child,

and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds had said

to them. But Mary treasured up all these

things and pondered them in her heart.

Verse 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for

all the things they had heard and seen.

Terrified, curious witness, They actually heard it and went and

saw about it. Because to wander with wonder

takes intention, like the search that I have been on and the one

that I find myself on pretty much every year.

And, and to some degree, I wonder if you agree with me on

some of this, that every year we are looking for again, a fresh,

just kind of fresh something about this night.

Because since he came the first time, it's been a lot of years

and we don't know when he's coming back.

Because as you're not, you're not going to know the day nor

the hour. But when I come, you will know,

right? And so how can we keep up that

level of intention? How can we find ourselves in a

space where it just seems like year after year rolls on and on

and we are waiting and we are watching the world sometimes

crumble around us and we're like, when are you coming back?

I think having intention in this matter is is is probably the

answer. How you become unlost.

It's like making the decision to stop driving towards nowhere and

actually set your set your destination on a gas station.

And that's perhaps something that you and I need to do

tonight. Perhaps we have been driving the

wrong direction. Perhaps we are coming in here on

empty because we are more concerned about our current

destinations rather than who we are going to see.

And finally, to wander with wonder.

It takes reflection. Do not let another Christmas go

by where you do not take some time to reflect.

I don't get to do this every year, but roughly 10 years ago

somebody told me that this is what they did on Christmas Eve,

and I thought, that's pretty awesome.

So here's what happens long about two in the morning, I go

outside either on the back porch or on the front patio or

whatever, and it's dead quiet. Now, if it's raining, I don't go

out. I watch out my window.

But if it's snowing, it's even better, right?

I go out there and for a moment it's quiet, like silent night

quiet. And I just, I just sit.

Because I know at 7:00 AM or 6:00 AM or 4:00 AM, the boys are

going to come in and kick me and wake me up and it's time for

presents and that kind of stuff. So like this is a moment where I

simply just get to go. Do that however you can and one

of the greatest Christmas movies ever, Die Hard.

Some of the advice that John Mcclane is given as he gets off

the plane is to wherever he's going to take off his shoes and

ball up his foot into a fist. And it's really funny because he

kind of scoffs at the guy on the airplane.

But when he gets into Nakatomi Plaza and he's in his wife's

office and he's, he's like, oh, it's actually kind of nice.

You don't have to go outside at 2:00 AM.

But I do ask that sometime in the next 12 hours, you take 30

seconds to reflect. And one of those moments that's

kind of built in the Christmas Eve, which we are about to

experience in a few moments, is going to be when we light

candles and sing Silent Night. That is the perfect time to try

to reflect. And here's some questions that I

want to prompt you with when we get into that space #1 what

state is your heart in right now?

What is the state of your relationship with Christ like

right now? What are the state of your

relationships with others? Maybe you're dreading Christmas

dinner tomorrow, or visiting in laws or something like that.

And do you know, if you are wondering, have you taken a

moment to actually see where you are on the map?

Because even though we can be going in the right direction, we

think it's quite possible that we can become lost and not know

it. But know that no matter where

you have gone, Jesus can bring you home.

And so as we continue in worship this evening and as we kind of

watch an artistic kind of telling of the story of the

Bible here in a second, just marvel at the story of God and

know that you are in it. You are not the hero of the

story, Jesus is, but you are most certainly a part of the

story. So let us reflect at this time.