Advent | Christmas Eve Eve

Good evening to you. How are we tonight?

Good. It thrills me to be with you all

this evening and for a time of singing and hearing a choir

sing, and reading the scriptures together, having the scriptures

read to us, but also hearing the word of the Lord taught, and all

of these things. I want to draw your attention to

one thought tonight, as you hear the word red, and as you hear

the word sung, and as you hear the voices of others who you

call brother and sister in Christ singing alongside you,

and as you hear the word of the word of the Lord proclaims even

now I want you to understand that all of this makes it clear

that God loves you. Amen.

He loves you. And this gathering, anytime the

Saints are gathered together, is great evidence of the love of

God. Now I want to recognize as well

that some of you, myself included, may be struggling at

times with the concept of love. How can a loving God allow such

pain? Or how can a loving God allow

loss? Or how can a loving God allow

misery? Or how can a loving God allow

suffering? All of those things shape our

lives at different times, right? But it's especially heightened

at a time of year where we're talking a lot about joy and

peace and happiness and mirth and being merry, right?

Not Mary the mother of Christ, but Mary MERRY, right?

I think the the reason for that and and I don't want to take a

ton of our time tonight, but I I did want to lead you through

this thought process. The reason for that is that we

live in a Dark World, you know, we don't want to overlook that

at Christmas We're constantly attacked by suffering and

deception and violence and lies and death and so many of the

other fiery darts of the enemy, the darkness of sin and death

and their effects on our world cast a very long shadow over our

lives constantly. As the prophet Isaiah says, he

speaks for the Lord. He says and writes for us in

Isaiah 822. It says there, and they will

look to the earth, but behold, distress and and darkness, the

gloom of anguish, and they will be thrust into thick darkness.

And yet, because of Jesus Christ, the immortal Son of God,

who puts on mortal flesh to dwell among us, yet because the

infinite becomes an infant, yet because the Lord of all creation

chose to be born in a lowly Manger in Bethlehem, because of

all of that and so much more, words fell us as we try to

describe the wonders of the incarnation.

But because of the incarnation, because of what we celebrate at

Christmas, we celebrate the fact that we have seen a great light.

That light has dawned, and this light cannot be overshadowed.

Rather, it cast out the shadows. It eliminates shadows.

In John One verse five, we see there as we read that the Word

became flesh and dwelt among us. In verse five it says that he is

the light of man. This light shines in the

darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

You see what I'm saying? There's a light that has shown

in Christ that the darkness cannot over shadow.

Now in John chapter 3, if you have your Bible, you can turn to

John 3 · chapter mention

John chapter 3. I'm going to read 16 through 21

John 3 · chapter mention

here in a moment. We're going to look at 16

through 21 more closely, but we're going to spend just a

moment in John 3. What I want you to know about

John chapter 3 is that we meet a man here whose name or who's

John 3 · chapter mention

called Nicodemus. And Nicodemus was a Pharisee.

He was a ruler of the Jews. I don't have a ton of time to

explain what all of that meant, but I need you to know this.

This means he spent his whole life working to gain those

statuses. He devoted himself to studying,

to working, to teaching for years, for years to reach his

goal and for these things. These things were the height of

the religious world at the time He climbed the ladder, And if

anyone was was going to have a guarantee, we might say to get

into heaven, it would be a man like Nicodemus, one who is a

Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews, at least on the outside.

As we look at it, we say this is a man who is near to God.

He has to be. And yet John says this about

Nicodemus, says now there was a man of the Pharisees named

Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, verse two.

This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know

that you are a teacher, come from God, for no one can do

these signs that you do unless God is with him.

So he's making just a general statement about the works that

have been observed, that Christ has done the miracles, the signs

that he has performed thus far, early in his ministry.

But I want you to pay, and typically we catch that.

But what I want you to catch tonight as you think about this

passage is that he came to him by night.

John is not leaving out that detail because he wants us to

know the detail. John is not adding the detail,

just simply as a way for us to understand what it might have

looked like when Nicodemus showed up.

John adds the detail. The description of literal

darkness colors for us a picture about the condition of

Nicodemus's heart. He came to Christ in darkness.

He's he's full of darkness. How do we know this?

Well, Jesus makes the assessment himself.

He says, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again,

he cannot see the Kingdom of God.

And when Nicodemus questions this, how could a man be born

again, Jesus buckles down on it and tells him once again.

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of spirit and

water, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.

What's the assessment that Christ is making about

Nicodemus? Well, it's nothing short of

this. Nicodemus.

Your heart is far from you. Assume that you stand in great

light and you come here to question me.

But I have some questions for you about the state of your

life. You must be born again.

You must start over, is what he say.

Now again you think about a man who has worked the totality, the

entirety of his life to achieve, becoming a Pharisee,

high-ranking Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews, a teacher of God's

word. And yet now he's being told you

can't even see the Kingdom of God unless you are born again.

That's a crushing thing to hear, isn't it?

To be told that your whole life's work, all the morality

that you have built up, all the cred that you've built up among

the religious elite, is nothing in the eyes of Christ.

Why? Well, because your works will

not save you. Your works.

To be sure, I'm not a I'm certainly not against faithful

works. The Bible commands us to do good

works, but the Bible never commands that we do good works

unto salvation. The Bible commands that you do

good works from salvation, from a heart that's been transformed,

from a life that's been changed by the spirit of God, from a

life that has been regenerated, that is given new birth by God's

spirits. In that way you go, brothers and

sisters, and you tell the world of Christ in your actions and in

your words. But you best not trust your

works to get you into heaven, or you too will arrive in darkness

to see the Messiah. You'll arrive in darkness.

Darkness. The problem with darkness.

The problem with things like what Nicodemus is experiencing

and coming in darkness. The issue with this is, if you

ask Nicodemus, he has the most light available already on him.

He thinks he suspects that he stands in bright light and that

there is no darkness within him. You understand the deception

that comes through things like your good works.

They will make you think that because of my morality, because

I do believe that there is a God in heaven, and I do believe that

he had a son who existed and who came to be like man and to die

for us. I do believe those things.

And yet you never yield your life to His Lordship.

You may think that because there's morality and some

general belief in Christ or in his name, that this is enough.

But it just it is not enough. You must possess faith.

Well, what is faith? Faith is not only saying I

believe with my mouth. It's not only confessing with my

mouth that Jesus is Lord, but it's believing it in such a way

that I stake my own life on it, and that I give up the desires

of this world and the things that I want.

And I run after Christ and I submit to him, to His Lordship,

to his desires for me, to his will for my life.

In that way you dwell in light. But darkness appears as light by

Satan's very design, and therefore it always crushes us.

Very few people wake up saying I'm going to live a life for the

darkness. We're going to live a life unto

the glory of evil. And yet, because our hearts are

far from the Lord, we serve evil every day, even in our morality,

because even those good works are selfish works.

Jesus goes on to explain though that the new birth comes by the

Spirit of God when the Son of Man is lifted up in the

wilderness and the people will believe in him and receive

eternal life as the bronze servant was lifted in the days

of Moses. What's Jesus doing here was

drawing out a teaching from the Old Testament that Nicodemus

would have been very, very familiar with.

He spent his life studying the Old Testament.

Again, they didn't have a New Testament yet.

He spent his whole life studying the Old Testament, and Israel in

this particular story is wandering around in the

wilderness. Israel often sinned against God,

and in one instance God sent venomous snakes to bite them as

punishment, and so many died. It was a dark time in the life

of Israel. They had sinned against God.

God is judging them rightly for their sin, and many are dying.

And yet Moses pleads with God on behalf of the people.

And so God instructs him to raise up a bronze serpent in the

wilderness. And when anyone is written, so

it's a serpent raised up on a pole, and when anyone is bitten,

they could look unto it and be healed.

Nicodemus would know the story of these Israelites very well.

And so when Jesus says that the Son of Man will be lifted up,

Nicodemus is understanding. Wait a minute, he's talking

about himself. So not only is he saying I've

come from God, he never denied that we know that you've come

from God because the works that you do.

He's not only not denying that, he's now saying more than that,

He's saying I am the Son of Man. I am the promised Messiah, is

what this would mean, and anyone who looks to the Son of Man, who

will be lifted up and believes in him, will receive eternal

life. But why?

Why would this happen? What's the motivation for it?

How would that put away the darkness that is in Nicodemus's

life? Well, remember that John

introduced Jesus Christ as the Word.

In John chapter one, he introduces him as the Word who

became flesh, that he was with God in the beginning, and that

he was God, and he becomes flesh, and he is the light of

man, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness

cannot overcome it. Now, in this report of

Nicodemus's meeting with the Messiah, John is going to flesh

this out for us. He's going to report to us what

Christ goes on to say. What does it mean that the light

shines into the darkness? Well, it means this.

That the light of God's love has shown in Christ Jesus.

That's what's revealed here. Look at verse 16, a verse you're

all likely very, very familiar with.

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

whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal

life. For God did not send his Son

into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the

world might be saved through him.

Jesus is simply here in verse 16 and 17 explaining further the

story of the Bronze Serpent, that that bronze serpent was a

type. It was a shadow in the Old

Testament of the Messiah to come and the work that he would do.

Then It was the serpent that meant the healing for the Jews,

but now it's the Messiah that marks a healing for the nations.

It's a welcoming of all peoples for God's.

So love just simply means that God loved the world in this way

that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him will not

perish but have eternal life. See, Jesus was not sent to

condemn the world, rather that the world might be saved through

him, meaning that the nations might come.

As the bronze serpent reconciled the believing Israelites with

God, so does Christ. Reconcile all who believes in

him with God. And this is the height of love.

This is the foremost work that God can do for us.

To show that he loves us is to send a Messiah.

You and I are destitute. Without it, you and I are

hopeless without a Messiah. You and I have.

We're guaranteed hell forever if Christ never comes.

You understand? It's not God sitting in the

heavens looking at us, saying, all right, I've given you the

law. You've proven that you can't

hold the law. You can't keep the law.

But I'm telling you, if just one of you could finally keep the

law, he'll be saved. She'll be saved.

Well, guess what? No one can keep the law except

Christ, and So what does God do? He looks into the darkness of

sin and death, a world marked by sin and death.

And rather than God remaining, I would call it transcendent

rather than distant, He becomes imminent.

He moves into the darkness himself in the second member of

the Trinity, Christ, Christ puts on flesh.

The Word is born of the Virgin, and he becomes the Messiah by

giving his own life. This is the height of love.

It's dying for those who hate you.

You say, well, I've never hated God.

Well, your brother and sister, as the great theologian Oscar

Meyer says, baloney. Apart from Christ, you can do

nothing but hate. God may might love the concept

of God, but you'll never love God's justice because you are

unjust. You'll never love the concept of

God's righteousness because you are unrighteous and those,

therefore judgment must be executed on your head on that

day but Christ. But Christ marks the love of God

for his people, the saving of his people.

And so Christ dies for those who hate the Father so that they

might be able to love the Father.

You understand Romans 5-6 and eight For while we were still

weak, meaning while we were still helpless, while we're

still bound to our sin, while we were still dead in our

trespasses at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person.

Meaning you might be good enough that you would give your life

like some of us men in here. We would say, yeah, I would

gladly give my life for my wife, right?

And so there's there's a scarcity to this that you might

scarcely die for someone that you think is worthy of dying

for, but you're not going to die for sinners, he says.

For one, we'll scarcely die for a righteous person, though

perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die.

But God shows his love for us, and that while we were still

sinners, Christ died for us. How does he show his love for

us? And that while we were still

sinners, Christ died for us? Again, He's not saying I need

you to do all of these things to check all of these boxes.

If ever there was a man who checked the boxes, what's his

name? Nicodemus.

And yet he still must be born again.

He still is a Sinner whom Christ dies for.

Ephesians 2, One through three we read it.

Set this way. And you were dead in the

trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the

course of this world, following the Prince of the power of the

air, the spirit that is now at work, and the sons of

disobedience. This is a long form way of

saying, Satan, among whom we all once lived in the passions of

our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the

mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest

of mankind. So there's no one exempt from

this. And so I understand that in a

room like this, of people gathered like this, such were

some of you, such were some of us, and yet such are still many

today. Potentially, even in this room

there is someone here who has not yet surrendered their life

to the Lordship of Christ Jesus. They're still trying to get in

by their good works. They're still trying to say, if

I build a life of good works, if I assemble this castle of good

works and I present it to the Lord on that day that it will

stand, I'll be the king of that castle.

But the problem with that thinking is that castle's made

of sand. It's going to come a cart and

it's not going to stand. And you must learn to build your

life now on the words of Christ Jesus, to turn from your sins

and to submit yourself to His Lordship.

And this is the God you'll come to find.

Verse 4. So I read that this you were

this way. Look at verse four.

Or you can hear it read. Sorry, Ephesians 2, verse four.

But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with

which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses,

made us alive together with Christ.

That sounds a lot like Romans 5, doesn't it?

By grace you have been saved and raised us up with Him and seated

us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

So that in the coming ages, the age in which you and I now live,

in the ages beyond us, and the ages that have preceded us,

became after the 1st century, so that in the coming ages he might

show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us

in Christ Jesus. Listen to the way the Apostle

Paul, once a murderer of Christians, once a persecutor of

the very people of God. He's now encouraging them, and

he's saying, such were some of you.

But look, God is rich in mercy, and He's filled with great love.

And it's this great love which He's lavished upon us.

Though we were dead in our sins, He's made us alive together with

Christ. You were dead.

It's not that you were drowning. It's not that you were hopeful,

hopelessly swimming in an ocean, and he's cast out a life net for

you to hold on to. You were dead, and he's raised

you up and his love, and he's made you alive together with

Christ, and He's raised you up, and He's seated you with him who

is in the heavenly places. So very much so even now you

possess eternal life, and you live here and now, But your

place, your home, your residence is in heaven.

Brothers and sisters, you reside with Christ because God has

loved you, unlovable as you are. He's loved you and He loves you

now, and He wants us at Christmas to remember this great

love you see without the coming of Christ Jesus as a child in a

Manger who was born to die for the sins of all who believe in

Him. Without that, and you and I

would not know the first thing about God's love, wouldn't

understand it. We couldn't know him.

We couldn't be reconciled to God.

We could have no peace with the Father.

And yet in Christ. In Christ, the love of God

shines for eternity, and it will never be overshadowed or put out

by the enemy's attacks. Though we are people who walk

amid great darkness even today, and though we sense great

darkness creeping in and seeking to over shadow us through our

persecutions and our pains and our sufferings and trials, and

through death and you name it, we feel this.

And yet the truth is, you've seen great light.

You've not been left in darkness, have you?

The light of God's love, through the coming of his own son has

shown on you. He sent Christ to die so that he

may save his people from their sins.

We read it early. I'll read it again.

She will bear a son. Matthew 121.

And she and you shall call his name Jesus.

Now this is being spoken to Joseph, who's having a little

bit of trouble understanding how his betrothed, soon to be wife

could be pregnant. And he's wondering, how do I

just divorce her quietly and let this go?

And yet an Angel says to Joseph, you shall bear a son, you shall

call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

And this took place, Matthew writes, 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

Emmanuel, which means God with us.

You see, God has put on flesh in Christ.

The second member of the Trinity was born, and has resided with

mankind, and gave himself up, and will one day greet us in

glory. And yet he has not left us

alone. He has left His Spirit with us

to bear witness to the truths of who Christ is, to bear witness

to the truths of who the Father is, to transform us from 1° of

glory into the next, so that we bear the image of Christ in

ourselves. It's done this work for us

because God so loved the world, and so no matter what darkness

may come, though the shadow of trials and despairs and sins and

sufferings and deaths may rise, and that shadow may lengthen

over you. And around you the light of

God's loves withstands. All of it.

So I heard you come to Christ in your darkness, just like

Nicodemus, and understand that you will receive eternal life

with the hope and the joy there of this day.

In verse 18 I want to draw your attention to John 318, because I

think we must also receive this warning from Christ.

He says whoever believes in him and is not condemned.

Sorry, whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever

does not believe is condemned already because he is not

believed in the name of the only Son of God.

You see, Christ didn't have to come to condemn because you

stood condemned already. The condemnation shows up when

you refuse to believe that Christ is Lord when you

blasphemy his name. And this is the judgment.

Verse 19. The light has come into the

world, and people love the darkness rather than the light

because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked

things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his

work should be exposed. But whoever does what is true

comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his

works have been carried out in God.

And so I urge you, I ask you, I want you to see this.

If you love the false light of the world, those things that

seem as though they are light but are truly the deception of

Satan, their darkness. If you love that more than the

true light of God's love, the true light of what God has done

for you, the true light of what God commands of you this day,

that I implore you to repent this evening, to not go on

living this way, to be reconciled to the Father through

Jesus Christ, by the power of his Spirit, which is drawing you

even now. Or maybe you're a believer.

You've trusted Christ as Lord. You've submitted to him, but

you've allowed the the pomp and circumstance of the season to

cast a shadow in the light of God's love on the meaning of

Christmas, the wonders of the incarnation of God's Son through

the Virgin conception of Mary. And so I ask you, during this

time again, maybe the season brings about remembrances of

loved ones that you miss, and you just find yourself thinking

what a dark, horrible place this is.

Or maybe it highlights just the the way you get stressed out

over the season, the way you you focus so much on all the things

that have to get done or the things that need to get bought.

Or maybe you see in your heart a desire for stuff and you

realize, Oh no, I covet I want things.

I'm not content, right? I mean, the season can draw out

all sorts of all sorts of things.

And so I ask you, will you turn your eye to Christ?

Will you turn your eye to the love of God this evening?

Will you forget those busy things?

Will you submit those painful things to the lordship of Christ

and to his sovereign design for your life, to his providential

rule of your life, and say, Lord, it hurts, and I don't

understand it, but I submitted to you, and I trust that you're

good tonight. I trust that you love because I

see in the incarnation the love of God for me.

And so I have no reason to doubt that you love me even when I

don't understand. We forget those busy things,

those things that are seeking to distract you as Satan seeks to

tear your attention away from Christ.

And will you steal your heart and will you quiet your mind

before the Lord tonight? For God loved you in this way

that he gave his only Son. Whoever believed in him will not

perish but have eternal life. We're going to sing a song here

in just a second called He Who Is Mighty.

And I Want to Read to You the chorus and I guess it's a

bridge. Not very musical.

I'm not. But it says this.

It says He Who is Mighty has done a great thing.

He's taken on flesh, conquered deaths, Sting.

He shattered the darkness and lifted our shame.

Holy is His name. Now my soul magnifies the Lord.

I rejoice in the God who saves. I will trust his unfailing love.

I will sing His praise all my days.

Amen. We're going to invite the choir

and the team to come up. I'm going to pray for us.

And then we'll stand together and sing when I'm finished

praying. Heavenly Father, we thank you

for tonight. We thank you, Lord, for your

love for us. We ask, Father, that you would

help us tonight to fix our gaze on Christ Jesus.

To see He who is mighty, to see the One who has done a great

thing, to see the immortal become mortal, to see the

infinite become an infant, so that he might save his people

from their sins. My God, I understand there may

be all manner of of dark shadows hanging over our lives.

Maybe it's the darkness of our own sins.

Maybe it's the darkness of our failures and our frustrations.

Maybe it's the darkness of sin and death and its effects on our

lives. Or maybe it's just distractions

and the busyness of the season. But Lord, we would be amiss

tonight if we do not fix our gaze on issue.

We praise you, We thank you for your love for us, for your

kindness toward us. Lord, it is our hope now to lift

up the One who is mighty to sing the praises of Christ Jesus.

As our hearts soar with hope and joy, which we have given to us

in Christ, They are ours. Love you, Lord, we thank you for

your love for us. Christ Name, I pray.

Amen.