The Christmas Code - Christmas Eve - Christmas

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Are you open to letting God speak to you?

How many of you would say at some point in your life you've had an impression, maybe even a feeling, a sense about something, that there's no way you should have known.

I think it's the Holy Spirit is speaking.

And the more you're open to letting the Holy Spirit speak that way, the more he'll speak that way.

At The Road, our mission is to empower people to change the world.

For more information on The Road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

You know, when you think about Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol, when you think about Robin Williams in Hook, I love that movie.

I've seen it like a dozen times.

I love Hook.

It's old though, so okay.

There's a magicalness about Christmas.

And, you know, the Santa and reindeer and elves and all that stuff.

And uh I was thinking, I remember at eight years old, that the thing I wanted was a cowboy outfit.

And I can remember being at a candlelight service in our Lutheran church as a kid, wondering if I got that one.

Now, what we used to do back in the day was you had a Sears Roebuck catalog.

Anybody know what I'm talking about?

All right?

And what you did is if you were a smart kid and wanting to get stuff, which I was, was you cut out, okay, because you're not gonna need it again anyway, right?

That page.

So you cut it or you ripped it out and you took it to your parents and you said, Santa needs to bring this.

And then at 12, it was a 20-gauge shotgun.

It was a 20-gauge shotgun.

But I'm gonna tell you what it was at 16.

Powder blue bell bottoms.

Powder blue bell bottoms, man.

So some of you can't relate.

Hey, they're coming back.

Coming back.

But I think the magical nature that we kind of conjure up or feel about Christmas to the secular mind is actually the supernatural element to the Christian mind.

There's no doubt that there's no place, possibly in all of Scripture, that's more supernatural than the Christmas story.

I mean, we're talking about angels.

We're talking about Gabriel, and he doesn't show up hardly ever in the Bible, only a few times.

Only Gabriel and Michael are named as angels.

They show up twice.

You've got the heavenly host, you've got shepherds, you've got a manger, you got these, these, as Vince would say, we have these wise guys coming from the east, you know, and a star.

It's all supernatural.

And so the magical nature of Christmas is true.

Except that we would call it supernatural, others might call it magical.

And for the sake of a deeper understanding of what I think makes it magical or makes it supernatural, I'm gonna call the message today the Christmas code.

Christmas code.

All of us have combination locks.

Many of us have our phones, and on our phones we can lock and unlock our doors with our security systems.

So codes are important.

Codes are only known by those who understand the combination on the lock.

And when you get the combination on the lock right, something opens up.

And for some of you in this room today, Christmas has never opened up to you the way it was truly meant to be.

All it is is decorations and shopping and sales and giving gifts.

But there's actually something behind it, and that's the reason you're here.

I know you know this, but I want to emphasize there's actually an unraveling, a decoding that can occur as we get a hold of the code.

And let me just tell you, I've been working on this for weeks.

And I can tell you, all we we know this that at the end of the day, it's all about Jesus.

Right?

It's all, that's the starting point, and we could, in a sense, say, that's the code, Jesus.

But we could say that about a lot of things, but there's some unique aspects about Christmas.

But many of you know that the thing that makes Jesus so unique is, in my opinion, what he didn't do.

Not what he did do, but what he didn't do.

I mean, when we look at fame, when we look at what makes someone great, Jesus was about the opposite in every area.

And I'm reminded of that great poem, many of you would know it, by Dr.

James Allen called One Solitary Life.

Let me read it, and I think it captures the irony of Christmas, the irony of Jesus.

He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman.

He grew up in another obscure village where he worked in a carpenter shop until he was 30.

He never wrote a book, he never held an office, he never went to college, he never visited a big city, he never traveled more than 200 miles from the place where he was born.

He did none of the things usually associated with greatness.

He had no credentials but himself.

He was only 33.

His friends ran away.

One of them denied him.

He was turned over to his enemies.

He went through the mockery of a trial.

He was nailed to a cross between two thieves.

While dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing, the only property he had on earth.

When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen centuries have come and gone.

And today Jesus is a central figure of the human race and the leader of mankind's progress.

All the armies that have ever marched, all the navies that have ever sailed, all the parliaments that have ever sat, all the kings that have ever reigned put together have not affected the life of mankind on earth as powerfully as this one solitary life.

Men and women, the Christmas code, Jesus.

Over two billion, over two billion people are worshiping Jesus today across the globe.

There is a move of the spirit happening in China.

There's a communist China.

There's a move of the spirit happening in India.

There's a move of the spirit happening all across Africa.

It's been happening for the last 40 years.

There's a move of the spirit in Asia, in the former Soviet Union.

God is on the move, folks.

God's spirit is moving.

There is a kingdom revolution.

And God's going to do it in America too.

So what's the Christmas code?

Well, I'll tell you, there's about a dozen codes.

Okay, there's a dozen combinations.

Maybe part two will be the Christmas Eve 2021.

But let me give you the first three.

This is what I think is the first three, and this is all I'm going to do is 14 today.

No, only three.

Okay, first one is this.

Listen, listen.

God watches.

God watches.

You realize God's watching you.

You notice God's watching across the globe.

God understands everything that's happening in this presidential election.

God knows what's happening in our state.

God knows what's happening in your life and in your marriage or in your relationships.

God's watching.

And it was the fullness of time that God watched and brought forth his son Jesus.

Paul writing in Galatians said, but when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman and born under the law.

He was watching Zacharias and Elizabeth.

He was watching a bunch of shepherds.

He was watching.

And minute women, I think what he was doing is he was watching the difficulties because listen, don't miss this.

God's always doing interviews.

God's always doing interviews.

He's interviewing you right now.

You got interviewed by God.

You didn't know it by coming to the Christmas Eve service right now.

You were being interviewed.

You're being interviewed by how you talk about people behind their back.

You're being interviewed about how you handle money.

Stuff that nobody knows but you and God.

God is watching.

Now listen, I think God's watching the most closely during the most difficult of times.

It's been a really tough year.

It's been a tough year.

I don't know.

I've probably talked to six or seven people a week that talk about how hard it's been either financially, emotionally.

I don't hear about it spiritually.

How many of you would say you're more spiritually alive right now than you've been in a long time?

I know it.

So many of you.

This is a fired up church.

And by the way, if you don't have a church and you don't mind coming and showing up with a church like this, you ought to come on Sunday and make this your church because God's on the move around here.

People are getting saved every week, people get healed every week.

It's amazing.

It's phenomenal.

But God's watching, He's interviewing.

Now listen up, He's testing us.

God tests us.

And I'm going to just tell you, I'm going to go out on a little bit of a limb here, but let me say this.

I think that the reason God chose Zacharias and Elizabeth, for God to use Zacharias and Elizabeth to bring forth John, the forerunner of Jesus, might have been, and it's a mic because we don't know this for sure, but it might have been the fact that they had not been able to have children for all those years.

They were childless.

Remember that?

They were childless.

And I think how they processed the childlessness of their life, which would be considered a curse at that time in Israel, set them up.

Listen, it set them up for God to send Gabriel to them to make them the parents of the forerunner.

I believe that God was interviewing Mary.

And God was interviewing Joseph.

And he chose them through the difficulties.

Because remember, Mary is going to be an unwed mother in Nazareth who had about maybe 200 people at the time of Jesus.

You talk about not good for your reputation?

That's one of the worst things, and one of the worst titles you could have is someone who is who has a child and has no husband.

I know she was betrothed to Joseph, but there seemed to be some hanky-panky going on.

And at that time, probably no one believed it.

And yet God was working through that.

In church, God works through your hard times.

God's watching.

This Christmas, He's watching in our lives.

And that's why I love Hebrews 12.

Here's Hebrews 12, let me read it to you, from the Passion Translation.

As for us, we have all of these great witnesses encircling us like clouds.

So we must let go of every wound that has pierced us and the sin we so easily fall into, then we will be able to run life's marathon race with passion and determination, for the path has been already marked out for us.

We look away from the natural realm and we fasten our gaze on Jesus, who, Jesus, who birthed faith within us.

This is beautiful the way this is translated.

Birthed faith within us and who leads us forward into face perfection.

I love that translation because he's saying that as you're going through, I like what Winston Churchill said.

He says, when you're going through hell, keep going.

Okay?

When you're going through hell in your life, when you're going through difficulties in your life, instead of focusing on that, look up, focus on Jesus, who went through way more difficulties than us because he was sacrificed on the cross for our sins.

Beaten, bloodied because of his love for you.

God's watching.

To me, that's the first of the code.

God's watching.

Second.

Second.

I love this.

God speaks today.

God speaks.

God watches, God speaks.

Man, if there's anything about the Christmas story that is apparent to any of us that know it, is how much God speaks in the story.

And it starts with all the prophecies in the Old Testament.

465 prophecies.

465 prophecies.

The chance of one person fulfilling just eight of those prophecies is 10 to the 21st power.

I mean, that's impossible.

That's impossible.

That Jesus would fulfill 465 prophecies, hundreds of years before.

Where he would be born, who he'd be born to, what his titles would be, what he would be known for, why he came, all expressed in the Judeo-Christian scriptures called the Old Testament, the Torah, given to us in Scripture, prophesied about Jesus.

In the 8th century BC, Micah 5.2, born in Bethlehem.

But you, Bethlehem, Epipha, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to me the one to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from old, from everlasting.

Isaiah 7, 14, born of a virgin.

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign.

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and he shall be called Emmanuel.

Listen to this.

1400 BC.

Genesis 22.

I love this.

Then the angel said to Abraham, Blessings I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore, and your descendants shall possess the gates of the enemy.

Your descendants shall possess the gates of the enemy.

In your seed, not seeds, not plural, in your seed, singular, Christ, the Messiah, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.

You guys, every nation of the earth shall be blessed.

Every nation of the earth shall be blessed.

Any kind of response on that?

Maybe a little amen, just a little something real tiny like that.

So God speaks in the Christmas story, and he comes through prophecy, but he speaks to Zacharias, he speaks to Elizabeth, he speaks to Mary, he speaks to Joseph, he speaks to some shepherds, he speaks to some kings, some astrologers that come from afar.

This is all about this whole story.

God speaks, men and women.

He speaks through scripture, he speaks through his dreams, he speaks through visions.

We wouldn't have planted the road six years ago if it wasn't God speaking to us through dreams and visions.

God is on the move today and God can speak to you.

So he's watching you, but he also wants to speak to you.

And that's so clear when we read about 2 Chronicles 16.

For the eyes of the Lord look to and fro throughout all the earth that he might strongly support those who are loyal to him.

What's that mean?

Well, it means that the faith that God gives you as you walk and exercise that faith in your life, God sees that and he says, now here's somebody I can trust.

Here's somebody I can I can work through.

And so then he begins to speak to us.

Are you open to letting God speak to you?

How many of you would say at some point in your life you've had an impression, maybe even a feeling, a sense about something that there's no way you should have known?

I think it's the Holy Spirit.

He's speaking to you.

And the more you're open to letting the Holy Spirit speak that way, the more he'll speak that way.

And so God is on the move and he's speaking to us, and I challenge you that this year you'd let God speak to you.

And here's the third one.

So first, God watches.

Second, God speaks.

Third, don't miss this, God partners.

God partners.

He's looking for sons and daughters who want to join the family and partner with him for a great revolution.

The vision of this church is a kingdom of God revolution.

The mission of this church is equipping people to change the world, empowering people to change the world.

And so partnership began in this story when you read it in scripture with Zacharias in the temple.

God wanted to partner with him.

And remember, there was a little bit of a dialogue.

There were some issues.

Lost his voice for a while.

But God wants to partner even if we're not perfect, if we don't have it all together.

I mean, I believe God is in the business of taking people who actually not only don't have it together, but really don't have it together.

I mean, seriously, we were talking earlier today with several people in our church.

I'm not going to call you out, but we know your story.

And you come out of drugs, you come out of alcohol, you come out of all kinds of stuff.

And how God is using you now is flat amazing.

It's supernatural what God's doing.

You guys saw Esteban and Lisa on the video a couple weeks ago.

We showed, and they're doing the second chance by faith ministries to all those gang members and stuff.

It's just amazing what God's doing.

God wants to partner with us.

He's not going to get the job done through angels.

He's going to get it done through image bearers.

And you guys are image bearers.

God loves you.

He wants to work through you.

Will you open up your heart to him in a deeper, more manifest way, and maybe for the first time this Christmas?

That's why you're here.

Because that's what God does.

God could have taken Jesus and given us a full-grown man like he did with Adam.

No, he gave us a baby, a baby that was vulnerable, a baby that was weak.

He comes to a peasant girl who's weak.

He comes to a carpenter who is weak.

And men and women, if you're weak, you're a perfect candidate to be mildly used by God.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

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Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.