Advent: Christmas Service

It makes sense because when you love

Good morning, church. So we've been doing pastoral

letters the whole Advent season, and I get the privilege to read

my letter to you all this morning.

So here we go. Frontier Church, Grace and peace

for my Lord Jesus Christ, who has been so gracious to call me

to pastor you out of all the responsibilities that I carry to

pastor you is among the most joyful.

Whenever I go before the Lord in prayer for you, one thing

continues to come to mind as I sit across from you at cafes or

in premarital counseling or listen to you over the phone.

One request from God continues to roll off of my lips, and it's

this. Lord, don't let them get dulled

even as I write those words. It seems pretty fitting given

what tomorrow is during the Advent season.

There's tons of anticipation, singing and lights, ugly

sweaters, great cocktails and amazing food.

And it all culminates on Christmas Day.

But something happens on the 26th.

Lights, singing and celebration that made sense yesterday seems

too much for today. If you aren't careful, this

could be your experience with Jesus.

The things that seem to excite you about him could become

dulled or even seem irrelevant. Today.

The beauty of his words may become dulled by the business of

life. The comfort of being in his

presence could turn into, could turn boring by the amusement

that the world offers. The great privilege of sharing

his good news and pursuing justice could become less urgent

as we become more consumed with our screens.

Lord, don't let them get dulled. The Lord has been really good to

us. He has.

He's grown our congregation. He's provided us with a good

bank account. He's given us this building.

But my prayer and my encouragement is to not let our

growing stability coax us into comfort.

Don't allow yourself to drift into the sea of dullness.

Pursue Jesus in his word because there is treasures of joy hidden

for you to discover. Don't stop asking God how you

could be used because remember, your life is a holy and

sanctified sacrifice to God that brings a smile to his face.

Never become satisfied with who God has become to you.

But like our forefather Abraham, wrestle with God until he

blesses you. Lord, don't let them get dulled.

This is my prayer for you, and I am confident that the Lord Jesus

won't answer that prayer. I'm confident because the work

to make all that and more and all that I've said possible has

been accomplished already for you.

This is the good news of the gospel.

It's not just that God will save you because He can and He will.

It's not just that God puts you in the right standing with Him

because you are justified in His sight.

It's not just that at the end of your life you you will be

glorified like He is because if you saw your future self, you'd

be tempted to worship yourself. No, the gospel is also the good

news that in the here and now, even after the lights go out and

the decorations come down and you find yourself in the daily

grind of following Jesus at work, at home, and in your

community, God is transforming you into the very image of Jesus

from the inside out. He won't let you get dulled.

I am confident in this because this is my experience too.

I too am distracted. I too am way too busy.

I too at times yawn in the face of God.

I too find myself ignoring my neighbors from time to time.

But if there's been one consistency in my life, it's

that God is fully committed to me and he is fully committed to

you too. And he will not let your hearts

get dulled. No, He will keep us until the

coming of our Lord Jesus, who will wipe away every tear from

our eyes, bandage up every womb that we have, and will kill

death itself. To Him be the glory in our

church and in our hearts forever.

He is worthy of all praise. Amen.

Jesus, we thank you. I thank you for this church.

I thank you that you have called me to pastor these people.

And I just pray, Lord, that you would not let our hearts grow

dulled. Lord, after tomorrow I pray that

you would just continue to remind us, Lord, that you are

here, that you have come and you will come back.

And so I pray for my brother Cole as he comes and preaches.

Lord, I pray that you would give him a very real presence, a very

real experience of your presence up here this morning.

I pray that our hearts will be softened to the gospel and to

His words. Lord and I pray, Lord, that we

would be forever changed by what this brother has to say for us.

We thank you in Jesus name. Amen.

Good to see you guys. If you have a Bible, go ahead

and get that open to John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

We're looking at verse 16. It's probably the the one spot

in your Bible you've got highlighted already, so go ahead

and get there. My name is Cole.

If we haven't met, I'm one of the pastors here.

I get to preach here on on most Sundays, but the Sunday before

Christmas, Historically, what the church has done has focused

on the love of God through the coming of Jesus.

And so that's going to be our focus this morning is the love

of God, theologically, practically, biblically, the

love of God. My goal is, I don't know what

your week looks like, but my goal is to sow, preach on the

love of God that we are filled so much with the love of God

that we just float out of church this morning and into our

Christmas plans. Wouldn't that be awesome?

So let me pray and then I will jump into it.

Heavenly Father, open. Open up our eyes to your glory

this morning as we think about just the wonders of Christmas

and the amazing particularities of the Christian story.

It's not it's it's not that we just believe in some distant,

nebulous God somewhere. That's that's not Christianity.

Christianity is the historical position that we believe that

God took on flesh in the person of Jesus Christ and came into

the darkness. And when that light came into

the darkness, that light gave us hope, and that light gave us

peace, and that light gave us joy, and that light drew close

to us to give us love. And that light's name was Jesus.

So in the midst of our darkness, in the midst of holiday

craziness, I pray that we would see the light.

So in Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Kids say the craziest things, especially when you have a four

year old who you just saw, who also acts and talks like a

teenager. We were.

We were at Chick-fil-A last week.

Like most weeks, we were at Chick-fil-A, having a good

lunch. I was talking with my

father-in-law, hanging out with Chloe's dad.

And so the kids, obviously, they're at Chick-fil-A, they're

right next to the play place. So they blast through their

meal, they blast through their lunch, and when they're finished

with the lunch, they run into the play place and they start

playing and making new friends. And so I'm sitting there, you

know, hanging out with Chloe's dad talking.

It's been a couple minutes since I've seen my kids in there, so

I'm like, maybe I should go check on them.

So I pitter patter on into the play place.

I open up the door. I look around.

I don't, I don't see my kids anywhere.

I see Russell somewhere. But then I see Della's shoes

just around the corner. She's she's hiding underneath

the playground equipment with a new friend that she just met.

And so I I go over and I peek my head under and I say, hey

sweetie, are you having fun? And rather than answering my

question, she looks at her friend.

And she doesn't just look at her friend, she looks at her friend

out of the sides of her eye. She side eyes me like this,

cocks her head this way like she's an embarrassed teenager.

Doesn't even look at me. And instead hey Della, how's it

going sweetheart? She looks at her new friend and

says, that's my dad. He always looks at my eyes like

that. It's like, ow, who taught you to

talk like that? Like a teenager in in a movie

who's already embarrassed by her father.

Apparently I'd looked at her with some sort of visible love

that she found embarrassing. Right.

My, that's my dad. He always looks at my eyes like

that. The truth is that I don't right.

She gets other looks sometimes. My loving, my loving gaze.

It it oscillates. It's here.

One moment, gone the next moment.

That's my dad always looks at me like that.

Wouldn't it be nice if God always looked at you like that,

With a loving gaze in his eyes? That's the message of Christmas.

Let's stand for the reading of God's word.

What is the basis of of this claim?

What's the root of God's love for us?

What's the sure foundation we can look at and be certain of

His love for us? Here's what John says for God so

loved the world that here's the expression of it.

Here's the surety of it. Here's the certainty of it.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that

whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal

life. So the advent of Jesus, the the

coming of Jesus according to John 316 is God's historical

objective expression of his love to the world.

So it's on this foundation that I can look at you as your pastor

from behind the word of God and say to you, God loves you.

He does. You can have a seat for God so

loved the world that he gave his only Son.

God loves you like he loves you a lot.

Like he really, really historically loves you.

He loves you abundantly. He loves you extravagantly.

He loves you with the love that is so over the top that if you

could see it clearly and comprehend it clearly right now,

it would make you blush and look out of the side of your eyes.

And what I want us to know this Christmas is I want us to notice

in the biblical text how we can be certain of God's love for us.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.

And so follow the flow of There's a flow of logic right

here that hinges on the word, that God's expression of his

love. God so loved the world that how

does he express it? He sends Jesus to us.

So the flow of logic here is that God expresses his love to

us. Not by filling our bank

accounts, not by making the pain go away, not by taking away the

depression, not by making life easy.

God expresses his love for us by giving us Jesus, which sometimes

feels like a cop out because we've heard that theologically.

It's like, yeah, OK, I get that. I was just hoping for a

different gift. But the deepest level of who you

are, it makes sense. It makes sense because when you

love somebody, you don't just give them trinkets or things,

you give them yourself, right? That's that's the highest

expression of gift giving, is to be able to give yourself.

And that's what we're seeing here in John Three is God the

Father giving God the Son to us so that we can have all of God

that's his Christmas present to us.

And the amazing thing when you read the Bible is this gift

comes packaged and wrapped up in such a way that it displays

God's love for us perfectly. I'm going to knock these over.

Let's get that out of the way right now.

The way the gift comes packaged and wrapped up to us is

theologically important. It displays God's love to us

perfectly. Here's Luke, chapter 2.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

You've read this, You've heard this.

But what I want you to notice as I read this really quickly is

that it describes not just the wrapping paper in the bow, but

the very box that the present comes in.

Here's here's Luke. He says quote and Mary gave

birth to her first born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes

and laid him in a Manger. Everybody say Manger.

Just the kids say Manger. A Manger.

God's presence comes in a Manger.

Want to know how much God loves you.

Jesus was born for you in a Manger.

It's not a crib. Sometimes you picture a crib but

the the old hymns make this clear.

Crystal clear right away. In a Manger, No crib for a bed,

right? Sometimes you picture a crib.

It doesn't make any sense. I didn't think Jesus got into

the inn. What's so the inn just has a

crib sitting outside? No, because a manger's not a

crib. What's a Manger?

It was ancient farm equipment. Specifically what a Manger was.

And everybody in Jesus's context would have pictured.

This is a feeding through for animals now to build feeding

troughs. 2000 years ago they didn't use sheet metal or really

expensive you know metal or tin or whatever they make them out

of now right? So a Manger in Jesus day and age

would have been cut out of jagged and rough stone.

So picture that rough stone with animal food in it.

Rough stone with a swarm of flies surrounding it.

Rough stone with rats crawling through it.

Rough stone with slobber from the farm animals covering it.

In other words, being born in a through in an ancient world was

like being born in a dumpster. Why?

Why? Why was Jesus born?

Why was it necessary, according to God's provision, for his son

to be born in a in a feeding through?

We'll picture it for a second, right?

There's Mary. She's just given birth to God in

the flesh. There's Joseph trying to fulfill

his duties as a dad. He can't get into the end.

So he's like, where am I? Where do I put this baby?

Right. So there's some farm equipment

over here. They walk on over, right to the

Manger cut out of stone and they lay God in the flesh.

God's gift to the world in a feeding through.

So picture Christ as an infant in the feeding through and as

you do. What you'll see is you can

already see Christ beginning his life of suffering for you.

The abrasive stone bruising, his tender newborn skin, the germs

threatening to give him a life threatening illness.

There were no baby wipes in the ancient world.

A bloodthirsty ruler, King Herod, already trying to kill

him. This is not, by the way.

This is not the way that kings were born in the ancient world.

In the ancient world, when somebody gave birth to a king,

it looked like the scene from Lion King, right?

All pomp and splendor and glamour and a crowd of people

and epic music and holding the baby up and everybody celebrates

it. Not Jesus.

Jesus is placed in farm equipment.

He's laying down in a feeding through.

Why is this the case? Why is it necessary that for God

to express his love to us, his gift has to be packaged in a

feeding through? And I think the answer is this,

because that feeding through foreshadows your heart.

God knows that you have a heart of stone.

God knows that your heart's infested with all of the wrong

thoughts. God knows that your heart is

infested with all the sinful desires.

He knows that it's filled with slobber and rats and flies.

And he wants you to know, through the gift of a son that

he's still comfortable being in there.

That's where he started his life, and it's where he's going

to spend eternity indwelling in his people, right?

Let me say it this way. The birth of Jesus proves to us

that the love of God is comfortable dwelling in a Manger

of stone and a heart of stone. God loves you so much they sent

Jesus to suffer from you, to save you for your sin, and then

he dwells in your heart of stone and makes it into a heart of

flesh. In other words, God loves you a

lot, and he wants to make that abundantly clear to you in every

imaginable way. That's the message of Christmas.

God loves you first by putting infant Jesus into a Manger, and

God loves you finally by putting King Jesus into your heart.

It's how God loves us through Jesus Christ.

He loves us through Jesus. God doesn't love you because

you're lovable. God doesn't love you because of

your morality. God doesn't love you because of

your spirituality. God doesn't love you because of

your works. He doesn't love you because he's

good. He doesn't love you because you

are lovable. And thank God because our

lovability oscillates, doesn't it?

And we are lovable when we've had our morning cup of coffee

and then we are not When we have our afternoon crash.

We're lovable with eight hours of sleep, and we are not with

seven hours of sleep. Our loveliness is it.

It's here. One moment it's gone.

It's Flash and Pam. If God loved us on the basis of

our lovability, there would be nothing to love.

And so God doesn't love us because we are lovable.

God loves us because God is loving.

It proceeds forth from who he is.

It proceeds forth from his eternal character.

And that means that if the love of God is not rooted in your

loveliness, then the love of God is unconditional.

And that's good news. Amen.

Because that baby in a Manger. Jesus grew up and he met every

condition necessary for the love of God.

Jesus was obedient. Jesus was sinless.

Jesus was righteous. Jesus checked off all of those

boxes for you. And that means through faith in

Jesus you get all of his accomplishments and you have to

meet zero conditions for God to love you.

It's unconditional love. And since it's unconditional

love, then God's love has rested on you from before eternity

began. Because God is love, which means

there's nothing outside of Him that dictates his nature.

There's nothing outside of him that changes his mind.

There's nothing outside of him that persuades him to love you

because God is love. His choice to love you happened

before the cosmos even existed. You have been loved longer than

the universe has even existed. It was set on you from before

eternity began, and if God's love was set on you from before

eternity began, then God's love will rest on you for eternity

past. To quote the old theologian

Gerhardt's Voss. And this is a sentence that I

can barely utter without shivering.

Voss said Quote The best proof that God will never stop loving

us lies in the fact that he never began.

Why won't God ever stop loving you?

Because he never started loving you.

It proceeds forth eternally from who He is and his very

character. There's not a date you can

circle on the calendar and say that's when God started loving

me, when I got my act together wrong.

There's not a date you can circle on the calendar in the

future and say that's when God is going to stop loving me.

Wrong. God's love has been set on you

from eternity past to eternity future, and that means that you

will always and forever without end or variation, exist in the

loving gaze of God. And the certainty of the love of

God resting on you has one fact holding it all up, that God so

loved the world He gave his only Son, Jesus.

For you. This is the very Jesus is the

very foundation of the love that we celebrate for Christmas.

It is the objective love of God historically expressed in God

sending Jesus for us. Come on.

Amen. It's Jesus.

That's how we know God loves us. It's Jesus.

It's always been Jesus. It always will be Jesus.

Jesus is God's public display of affection for us.

Jesus is God's love letter to humanity.

Jesus is God's DM in your inbox. Jesus is love covered in the

flesh. Jesus is objective evidence that

God loves you. Jesus is concrete data that God

loves you. And don't mistake what I'm

saying about the love of God as a newfangled or trendy

understanding of God. This is the historical and

biblical position on the character of God.

Consider these. Marie will have these on the

screen for you. This is this is Saint John from

2000 years ago. He said quote, God is, love is

or 400 years later, how about Saint Augustine?

Augustine came along in the four hundreds and said, quote, God

loves each of us as if there were only one of us.

There's only one cold, Ike, I'm going to pour all of my love

into him, right? Each of us as if there were only

one of us. Couple 100 years later in the

1600s, here's John Owen. He says, quote, the greatest

unkindness you can do to God is not to believe that he loves

you. You need some time with that

one. Or how about Ji Packer from the

1900s quote, God's love is like himself, unchanging.

He came once, 2000 years ago because he loves you and he's

coming back. You want to know why?

Because he loves you. Amen.

And so now, because of the gospel of Jesus, because of the

sending of God's very own Son for us, your Father, He always

looks at you like that, always without variance, without

shadow, without change. You exist in Jesus Christ.

You exist under the loving gaze of God always.

Even when God disciplines us, He looks at you with love.

Even when God corrects us, He looks at you with love.

In this moment, He looks at you with love.

Tomorrow He looks at you with love.

You could you could no easier escape the law of gravity than

you can escape his loving gaze. God loves you a lot.

A lot. And his love for you isn't a

cheap message written for you on a holiday coffee cup sleeve.

It's a message that's carved for you in the stone of a Manger

that holds the very love of God in human form.

So that every time we look this Christmas season at the Infant

Christ and a Manger, I hope we see a reflection of the love of

God being born once again in US. The fact that God loves me that

much. God loves you extravagantly.

God loves you abundantly. God loves you eternally.

God loves you so much that if you comprehended it, it would

make you blush. His love is set on you

permanently. Your Father, He always looks at

you like that. All because 2000 years ago He

sent Jesus Christ as His gift for us.

So let the weary world rejoice and Merry Christmas, Heavenly

Father, I pray that we would feel, experienced, know, believe

the love of God. For us, the love of God is not

just pure sentimentalism, although hopefully it does

include our feeling experience of it.

But the love of God for us is an objective fact.

And I know it's easy to sit underneath a message about God

expressing his love for us in the person of Jesus and think,

yeah, but I wish you would have expressed his love for me by

filling my bank account or by making my life easier or

whatever it is. And I understand that feeling.

But we also need to be people who look at the scriptures and

say who cares what our love language is?

God's love language is the gospel, and he has given us his

very own self in the person of Jesus.

He was born in a Manger, and that Manger prefigures the cross

that he died on. And so, Lord, I pray that you

would wake us up to the love of God that dwells in each of us

through the indwelling person of Jesus.

Jesus is amazing and we thank you for giving him to us.

So it's in His name that we pray.

Amen. What's up, dude?

Rocket and Spiderman? I'll feel like it.