Christmas Unwrapped - Session 4: Love | Pastor Phil Holcomb

Welcome to ECB's Weekly Sermon Podcast. ECB is an international church in Bangkok, Thailand,

with dozens of nationalities worshipping together. We invite you to connect with us from wherever

you are through our website, ecb.asia, or our mobile app. And now we pray that you are blessed

by this week's sermon. Good morning. It is an intense season, right? We know this. There's a

lot going on. Companies are working with their budgets. There's a lot of events, parties. We

have things going on here at ECB as well. And I am reminded with an extra level because I have a

daughter who has a birthday right after Christmas. And so she lets me know every single day,

okay, we're going to get Jesus's birthday out of the way. And then it's me. But the reality is that

we have wanted to invite you into this season of thinking deeply and profoundly of pondering what

the wonder of Jesus coming actually means. It's not just an idea. It's actually a reality that has

come to impact us. And so we have focused our sermon series on unwrapping Christmas, on looking

what it means that Jesus came. And we've looked at hope, this certainty based on what God has said

and promises to do. We have looked at peace, the way he brings shalom and a wholeness to who we are.

We've looked at joy, joy that is not just a momentary happiness like a balloon that you can

pop, but instead it's something that lasts with us deeply there. And all three of these come and

flow out of love, which is where we're turning this morning. God's deep and profound love for you and

his deep and profound love for me. So I want to do something. I want you to, I know you've greeted

one another, but I want you to actually bless one another by saying, God loves you. So turn to the

person next to you and let them know that God loves you. You join me in prayer. Good Father,

I thank you that although in the beginning you were the word and the word was with God and the

word was God, and that all things were created through you, that you made a way to step into our

very existence, to bring your light, your light that is the life of the world. Thank you for this.

Thank you for bringing heaven back down to us. Your kingdom here on earth made known in and through

you, Jesus. This is a beautiful love. And so we welcome this. We anticipate your second coming

with great gladness. And we ask that you Holy Spirit would encounter us right now, that our

hearts would be open to what you desire to do within us as we unwrap and consider the beauty of

Jesus coming to show us what true love is. So have your way. May we willingly surrender in Jesus'

name. Amen. Speaking of love and Christmas, a number of weeks ago when we had our International

Food Festival, I heard this word love quite a bit during that time. So for those of you who are just

joining us, International Food Festival is a time where we represent all the different nationalities

with food. We come together and we have a wonderful party to launch off the Christmas season. What

context did I hear this word love in? It was this one. A number of you came to me and you said,

have you tried the chocolate cake? It's so good. Now, then you followed it up with I love it. And

then you said you should try it. My question for you is that love? So here's my invitation to you

this morning. I want you to pull out your most deeper inner empathy and take on the role of the

piece of cake in this situation. Is this a relationship that is one defined of love? So

think about you being that piece of cake. Do you feel loved by the ECB-er during IFF as you are

taken against your will, you are consumed, chewed up, expended? No, absolutely that's not love. I

love the differences between the two services. We had about 15 teenagers here at the front. Is

that love? Yes, they said. But here's what this represents. This represents the reality that love

is something that is, we're confused about. We may or may not know what love actually is. It's a very

confusing idea and everyone is declaring that they know what love is. So I want to provide a

helpful definition and then we're going to go to the person of Jesus Christ eventually who will come

and show what this love is. So a philosopher by the name of Dallas Willard says the following. He

says love is will to good or willing the benefit of what or who is loved. Now leave it to a

philosopher to make a sentence as clunky as possible, but there's some real beauty in this

sentence here. And what is it? It's finding another, desiring and acting upon their good. Not like you

did to the chocolate cake. That was desire for your own benefit. This is one that is a good for

another that brings up and benefits the other. So my question for you this morning is how do you

relate to others? But maybe it's better to start with this. Do you feel loved by others around you?

Well pick on an easy one. What about your boss? Do you feel loved by your boss or do you feel used?

What about your friends at school? What if you're having a down day? Do you feel loved by them? What

about your family? Now we're getting a little more close, right? What is the relationships like within

your family? Now if you visit me within my home, you are sure to hear this phrase floating around

the house and it would go something like this. I'm sorry that I did not love you well. And then it's

going to be followed up with something specific. Something like I prioritize myself over you or I

didn't listen well or I was impatient with you. But this isn't just simply expressing regret. This

is a confession. And what a confession is, is a confession says there is a standard of what is good,

right, true, and beautiful. There is something that we can know and I have not acted upon that.

There's a gap between these two. And so I'm confessing that I have acted in a way that doesn't

represent this up here. And this is going to be explained and expanded in Matthew's gospel. As he

recounts the coming of Jesus, he brilliantly tells the story by introducing three names for Jesus

that we're going to cover. And these three names are going to reveal the essence of what love actually

is. But to make this even more impactful, he knows that you and I fail in loving one another. And so

he's going to put at the backdrop of this whole story King Herod. And King Herod is one bad dude.

He is a guy who does not love well. And I presume that what Matthew is doing is he's putting these

two together not only to help us to see the beauty of who Jesus truly is, but also to help you

recognize the self-absorbed ways that we end up treating one another. The desire like the chocolate

cake where we end up consuming it within relationships rather than a genuine benefit of the other. So

let's take a quick look at Herod and the way that he has displayed distorted love. Now I'm just going

to recount these before we get to Jesus and we're going to get into God's Word there. But I'm going

to recount the story of Herod and some of the details about him. Who was Herod? Herod was a

king over Judea, over Israel and Judah. And he was known as Herod the Great. We'll get to the reason

why in just a moment. He ruled from 37 BC until 4 BC. So Pastor Rene ruined our Christmas last week

by telling us that there may or may not have been three Magi. I'm going to ruin your Christmas this

week by letting you know that our calendar in the West is off. Jesus was not born on zero. He was

born in the time of Herod which would have been before zero. So now we've got to go fix your

calendars at home. Herod is known as Herod the Great. His name Herod literally means hero,

hero song of the hero. Now why is he called this? Well his parents named him that. But it also

identifies that he thought he was the hero of his own story and that he got to make all the decisions

of what is good, right, true and beautiful. He was known as the Great because he had great impact in

the world around him. He rebuilt the temple. He had all these building projects that were on display

and were evident for people to see. So you might look at him and you say wow that's a good leader.

Look at the impact that he's making in the world around him. But how did this impact happen? This

impact happened at the expense, at the cost of others. He had slave labor to do his work and not

only that he was charging heavy amounts of taxes to crush the people in order to do this. To make

things worse he killed his own wife and then he killed a couple of his kids for fear that they

would take his throne. And he didn't stop there but he also killed some of his other family members.

And then he tried to kill God himself when Jesus came which we'll get to in a little more detail

there. Is this distorted love? Absolutely. This is a distorted version of the way that we might relate

to one another. Again he was treating others like Easy Beers were treating chocolate cake. But

Matthew doesn't just bring Herod into the story to say that's him, this is Jesus. He's also inviting

you to recognize how you are also found in Herod, how I am also found in Herod. So what was motivating

Herod? Herod was actually an Edomite. An Edomite was somebody from a different nation. He had come

in and this were between Israel and Edom they had this long-standing opposition to one another. So

he's a foreign ruler with the Roman rule and authority over him using him as a puppet king.

He doesn't care about those who he's serving. He's self-absorbed, self-protecting and self-promoting.

Now you may not have killed your spouse or your children, I hope not, otherwise we need to have a

serious conversation. But yet we do act in ways with one another where you recognize that something

within us naturally chooses our own self. My youngest four-year-old who is waiting for Jesus's

birthday to move out of the way so her birthday can come is a narcissistic way that's appropriate

for a four-year-old. Yet it continues on with some of us, right? And we live and act in this way. So

Matthew presents an extreme example to invite you to let your guard down so that then we can come and

see the beauty of who Jesus is. But we also want to ask why is that within us? Why is there this

me first mentality of interacting with the world? Well to do that we're gonna go back to the beginning,

actually back to before the beginning, when things broke apart. So before the beginning, God the

Father, God the Son, God the Spirit, three in one, were forever, for eternity, passed in a perfect

loving relationship in that unit, that triune God. I can't quite understand it, but we do know that

this is who God is. And it's out of this perfect love that he brought humans into the world. It

compelled him to create us. He wanted to share that love with you and with me. So he creates

Adam and Eve, he brings them into the garden, and we know the story, right? God's enemy sneaks in

and whispers, does God really love you Eve? Maybe he's keeping what is good, right, and true, and

beautiful from you. And so we read of the following words in Genesis 3, 6. When the woman saw that the

fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye. We could replace that. When the easy

beer saw that the chocolate cake was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and then goes on, and

also desirable for gaining wisdom. She took some and ate it. Seems innocent enough, right? But this

is an act of rejecting God's perfect love and exchanging it for the love of another. Now, what's

the impact of that? Well, God shows them through exile of the garden that this relationship is

broken. But immediately he promises that he's going to bring a rescuer. So that promise is there,

while at the same time Adam and Eve have two kids, Cain and Abel. What happened with Cain and Abel?

Cain murders Abel. You siblings know this well, right? The tension, the rivalry that happens

between you. And from there we've had little Herod's, King Herod's, continuing to mark our

history from then on out. Another one of my daughters is going through a history class right

now and she comes home just undone by the accounts of history, of the ways that people have broken

and treated one another in failed or distorted ways of loving them. But God, God in his goodness,

God doesn't leave things there. He knows that there is something that we desperately need,

and so he acts on our behalf. And he doesn't just do this by proclaiming something, he actually

steps into our world, into the material world and physically shows us what true love or what perfect

love is. There's another author, Kirk Thompson, in the Soul of Shame, and he uses this quote here

that my wife recently passed along to me. We talk about love as this abstract thing, but for humans

it's not abstract. It's part of the material world. There's all kinds of videos that you can watch

online of kids being asked what is love, and this begins to show the distorted ways. And there's

this one teenager where she goes, it's this feeling, and it's right here, just on the left side. Now,

what does she mean by that is the abstractness of what we generally consider love to be. But this

quote here says that love is something you can know, the essence of it. And so Matthew is going

to introduce us to Jesus and give us three names within just a few verses, chapter and a half,

three different names. And these three different names, Jesus, Emmanuel, and Nazarene, all three of

those names are going to get at the essence of what love truly is. So there's hope, because we

can know what love is. So Matthew begins with the following. He says, now the birth of Jesus Christ

took place in this way. So we're unwrapping Christmas, the arrival of Jesus comes, and we've

taken back the peeling, and we're looking inside, and we see what is going to happen with Jesus

coming. Now, the backstory to this is you've got Joseph promised to be married to Mary,

but then he finds out that Mary is pregnant, and he knows this was not his doing. So now he's

disoriented and he doesn't know what he's supposed to do. And God visits him, encounters him through

the presence of an angel who says the following words, Joseph, son of David, to not be afraid to

take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from who? The Holy Spirit.

She will give birth to a son. So God promised right back with Adam and Eve, hey, I'm going to

send this son, he's going to fix things. Here it is right here. She'll give birth to a son,

and you will give him the name. And all the Crosstown kids said, Jesus, right? This is the

answer for every Crosstown question, Jesus. Because he will do what? Save his people from their sins.

So here we have the name given, Jesus. Now what Jesus means is Yeshua, or Jehovah saves, God saves.

It literally declares what God is doing when he's showing up. God is the one who is going to be

the one to take on the cost of your benefit, of my benefit. That cost is not going to go to you,

that's going to be on his shoulders. And this first name declares that emphatically that God

is the one who is going to do this work. He promised it from the beginning, 300, over 300

prophecies all come true in Jesus. And he acts this out in a beautiful way. So God is the one who

initiates willingly sacrifices for the good of others. And what we have is in the Bible,

the first John here in the letter. John, by the way, is the disciple that was most closely related

to Jesus. He spent the most time with him, an intimate relationship. And he says this about

Jesus. He says this is love. Not that we loved God, but that he, this is that sacrifice,

that initiation on God's part, sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Jesus himself

describes love in the following way in the Gospel of John. He says, greater love has no one than this,

than to lay down one's life for his friends. Very different than the love that we generally

will speak about, or again, that chocolate cake that we saw. And then in an act of love to you

and to me, demonstrated to his disciples, the God of the world, the God of the world,

he bends down on his knee just before he's about to be betrayed and crucified, betrayed by his

own followers. And he bends down on his knee and he washes their feet. This is the way that God loves.

It is for your benefit. And he does so willingly. In the Gospel of Mark 10, 45, it says, Jesus did

not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for you and for me, for many.

This love is quite different than Herod's, isn't it? And this love is freely extended to you. So

when you recognize, I didn't really love well, you turn and you receive his embrace even in that

moment. But this is only one aspect of love. Jesus is going to introduce, or Matthew is going to

introduce another dimension through another name. And this other name is Emmanuel, which literally

means God is with us or God with us. Now here's where this comes. Joseph, after being met by the

messenger, Matthew continues by identifying Jesus and saying this. He says, all this took place

to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and they shall call his name what? Emmanuel. And then Matthew puts in here, or the translators do,

which means God is with us, God with us. I remember when my wife was first pregnant with our first

daughter. I remember as she grew inside of her, my wife would just kind of put her hands on her

belly, and she would proclaim and wonder, there's someone living inside of me. Now, us guys, and

for whatever reason, God chooses some to and some not to, but us guys will never experience this,

right? So we'll never know what it is like to have someone living inside of us. But Mary not only had

someone living inside of her, but had the God of the universe dwelling within her. You can't get

closer than that. That is the most intimate form of love that God has shown, and he has willingly

done this by stepping into the world to do that. In Philippians 2, we read the following. We read

that Jesus, who being in the very nature of God, so that's his divine nature, did not consider equality

with God as something to hold onto, something to grasp, something to be used for his own advantage.

Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

Here's what I'd like you to do. I'd like you to take your two hands and hold them out in front of you.

And your one hand is going to represent 100% divine nature of God. The other hand is going to represent

100% human nature. When we look at Jesus, when he comes as a baby, he comes as this. Put your hands

together, link them. Now, this is a broken illustration because I can see where one ends and one begins and

all of that, and I can take it apart. But the fact of Jesus, when Mary is holding little baby Jesus,

she's looking at God's intimate promise that he will be with you forever. He will never leave you.

He will never forsake you. And for those who have God, who can be against them? Now, some of you are

still holding your hands. You can release them or keep holding them and remember as we continue

forward in this. But that is union. But I want you to remember our friend Herod, our friend Herod who

sends people to try to kill Jesus in a way to promote and protect himself. He tries to end

Jesus's life. But last week, Pastor Rene introduced us to the Magi, the wise men that had come and they

come to worship Jesus. And then we have this passage in Matthew 2, where it says, when they,

meaning the Magi, had left, an angel, there's a lot of angels in these stories, of the Lord appeared

to Joseph in a dream. Get up, he said. Take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay

there until I tell you. For Herod is going to search for the child to kill him. So not only does

Herod try to kill or does kill his wife and some of his kids, but he tries to kill God here as well.

Mary and Joseph, they make a journey in the middle of the night, leaving in the middle of the night

for several hundred kilometers through a wilderness with a powerful king that is trying to destroy them,

trying to kill their baby. What do they have for this journey? This. At this moment, Jesus,

in his helplessness, doesn't look like he's going to accomplish much. But it's a promise that God is

with us, that God has bound himself forever with us. And our lives will have times of feeling like

they are in the wilderness, feeling like we are running for our own lives. King Herod is going to

look far more powerful. And the invitation is for us to look down and hold on to the God with us

promise, Emmanuel, that baby Jesus is actually with us. See, true love is not only sacrificing

for another, it is also intimately stepping into your world to understand and walk and journey along

with you. And God does that willingly because he loves you. It's two names, right? We've got a

third name and this one is a little less known. Nazarene, God for nothing. What is his name,

Nazarene? And why does the author, why does Matthew bring this up? Well, Matthew is going

to conclude the account and he's going to mention the following. He's going to say, and he, meaning

Joseph and Mary and baby Jesus, they leave Egypt and they come up to Jerusalem. And then they hear,

because they heard that King Herod is dead, but they hear that his son has now taken the throne.

Again, now we're in trouble again. So they flee to Nazareth where they were, was actually their home,

which is way up north in Israel. But what does Matthew say here? So was fulfilled what was said

through the prophets that he would be called a Nazarene. Now, most of you may not actually

dig into this to know well enough, but there is no prophetic mention of Nazarene, of Nazareth,

that God will be called the Nazarene. So has Matthew made a mistake here? No, he's actually

doing something profound. And here's what it is. We need to understand that Nazareth was a town that

nobody wanted to be from. Nazareth, we say this in English, it's the sticks or the podunk area.

Nobody wants to be associated. I should have gotten an amen from the Texas Life Group over

there for using that phrase, by the way. There we go. This is an area that you would not want to

be associated with. How do we know this? Well, history will tell that, but we also have an account

here where Philip, the disciple, comes to Nathaniel and he's calling him to come and follow Jesus.

And he says the following, he says, we have found the one Moses wrote about in the law, about whom

the prophets also wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. And this is where we get it.

Nathaniel responds, Nazareth? Are you kidding me? Nothing good is going to come out of Nazareth.

That's how Nathaniel responds. And it tells us how the culture viewed Nazareth. Now, what is

this getting at? Well, let's look at one of the prophetic connections that draws our attention to

this. And we see this in Isaiah 53, very well-known Christmas passage here. He, meaning Jesus, was

despised and rejected by mankind. He was not welcomed well. He's a man of suffering and

familiar with pain, like one from whom people hide their faces. He was despised and we held him

in low esteem. Now, if somebody comes to visit my home, if I keep them outside the door and talk

with them, that's kind, but that's not deeply impactful on my end. It's not a gift to them.

If I invite them inside and have them come and have a conversation, maybe a little bit of a

meal, and have a conversation, maybe some snacks, that's a little bit more. If I have a meal with

them, a little bit more. What if I and my wife move out of the master bedroom? We prepare it for

them and we give them this. We give them the royal welcome and we let them stay as long as they want.

They owe us now, don't they? We have blessed them richly and now they owe us. By Jesus being called

Nazarene, by Jesus coming and living in Nazareth, a place that nobody would consider him as somebody

to listen to because he's from there, he does something important. He does something by showing

that his love is unconditional. His love is unconditional. See, if I had welcomed you into

the home that way, our relationship now is constantly muddied in a certain sense by the

hospitality that I showed you. Large corporations, companies such as Nike, will ask their employees

to not accept gifts over a certain amount of money. Why do they do this? Because if I accept

a gift over a certain amount of money, my interaction with my clients is now muddied by that

gift. And by Jesus coming in Nazareth, where nobody could care less if he was there,

born to this little poor family, living in fear of being killed by the king, what he does is he's

coming and he's saying, you get me for nothing. And why is that so valuable? That's so valuable

because what we see here in Romans five that Paul says, you see, at just the right time when we were

still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person,

though maybe for a good person, someone might possibly dare to die. Here we get a human

transactional way of doing. If you're a pretty good person and you're of value to me, maybe I'll

sacrifice for you. But here's what Jesus did. But God demonstrated his own love for us in this.

While we were still sinners, Christ did what? He died for us. He takes it up a notch in the way

that he loves us. You get God for nothing. The arrival of Jesus as the Nazarene, the

Jesus as the Nazarene reveals that what unconditional love looks like. True love has no strings

attached. And this is valuable because it removes the constant fear that is between us and others

in relationship. What are we talking about there? Well, John says the following. He says, there is

no fear in love, but perfect love does what? Drives out fear. What is he meaning? If my

relationship with God has nothing to do with what I have blessed him with, then I can rest

completely insured no matter what he sees in me. He has received me. He has welcomed me.

And that's a confident love that we can hold on to. It's great news. Absolutely beautiful,

wonderful news. Perfect love is not an abstract idea. It doesn't just lead to a thousand different

definitions of this. Perfect love is willing the good or the benefit of the other. And Jesus has

come knowing that you and I, we do, we fail to love well. But he doesn't want you to hide in that.

He wants you to come forward to him and make that confession to him and one another in it.

And he came inviting you to taste and see that his love, his perfect love, is really good. And

it's about your benefit. The arrival of Jesus is the arrival of an unexplainable and rather crazy

love. Let me introduce you to some of our friends. These are some of my friends from Ecuador, where

we used to live a number of years ago. Juan Manuel and Shauna. Juan Manuel is Ecuadorian,

but he works for a multinational oil company and he was doing quite well. Shauna, on the other hand,

had two master's degrees and was a marriage and family therapist, was also doing quite well.

They had what seemed to be life in the palm of their hands, kind of like Herod's palace there.

They could make decisions and move things and cause that to happen. But something happened with

them that messed their life up in a really wonderful way. And that was that they encountered the

incredible love of Jesus that we just talked about. A love that is sacrificial, a love that is

unconditional, and a love that is deeply intimate with who they were. That love captured their hearts

and their story is told on their shirts there. We read out what is on their shirts. What does it say?

Chosen, loved, accepted, adopted, forever. Those words capture what it is that God had done for them.

Now why do they have these words on their shirt? I didn't tell you about one other person in this

story. That's Baby Janelli. Baby Janelli was, before she was born, the doctors knew that she had

a condition where she would never be able to do the things that most of us, that you and I can do.

She would never be able to speak. She would never walk. She would never be able to eat on her own.

She would never enjoy a relationship with another like a friendship. She would never go to school.

And actually she would live a very short life. She was unwanted. She had nothing to offer.

But that's if we're thinking in Herod's way of thinking about life, not in the way of Jesus.

The way of Jesus is one that transforms how we think. So Jesus loved Juan Manuel and Shauna

into a deep love that they gave towards little Janelli, knowing exactly what they were getting into.

They chose Janelli. They loved Janelli. They invited her into their home and at great cost to them,

gave her a benefit that she could never repay. That is what God has done for you.

That is what God has done for me. And so no matter what Satan tries to whisper within our own hearts,

God really loves you. Maybe he doesn't actually care for you. Maybe Herod is much stronger.

For those of you who have received the greatest gift, which is Jesus,

God is with you and you can hold on to that. And through the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit

that actually brought that life into Mary's womb, that same Holy Spirit dwells within you as a

follower of Jesus and shapes within you a love that does something like we see in this story here.

It's a radical and crazy love, a love that is unexplainable. So as Jesus, meaning God saves,

God has come to you offering you a love where he willingly and sacrificially does

what is needed for your benefit. He initiates that. Rest in it. He initiates that.

He initiates that. Rest in it. As Emmanuel, Jesus is so committed to life with you that he has come

to join you on whatever journey you may be in and he's bound himself to you forever. And you are

invited to live in that life with great joy. And as the Nazarene, Jesus offers you a love like no

other, no strings attached. God for nothing, an unconditional love that you can receive.

So I recognize that there's different groups of people here this morning. For some of you,

you may be visiting or you may not know Jesus, you're curious about him. And hey, I want to

invite you to just wonder at him. And if the Holy Spirit is nudging you, if you're drawn towards

this love of Jesus, please don't pass it by. Come up after the service and come and talk to either

myself or one of the prayer team. For the rest of you, no matter where you find yourself at this

point in your life, continue to meditate on, receive that love that he has given you.

Take this time of Christmas that we're going to continue to celebrate and recognize with wonder

what God has done. Good Father, I thank you for the gift of who you are. I thank you for the way

that you have encountered us in a profound, unexplainable, radical, faithful, generous,

and somewhat crazy love. We desire that that would flow increasingly within our own lives,

that we would be people who are loved into loving others well. Thank you for sending Jesus. Thank

you for the example, but also for the gift of his love. We honor you. We worship you for that.

We ask that in these next few days as we take time to recognize

the coming of Jesus and remember that, that we would give him the honor that he is due,

that we would worship him with all of who we are. We declare that you are worthy of this and we pray

this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for tuning into the ECB Sermon Podcast. Whether near or far,

if you are looking for community or are in need of prayer, we welcome you to engage by sending us

an email to office at ECB.asia. If God is calling you to support our ministries, you will find giving

options on our website. And remember to join us next week. God bless you.