You, Me, and the Christmas Tree

Welcome to Gateway Churches Podcast.

Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

Well, I've been saving a Christmas joke for you.

Stop me if you've heard it.

No, don't stop me if you've heard it.

This father who lived in Miami called his son who lived in New York City just a few days before Christmas.

Said, son, I know it's a bad time for me to give you this news, but after 45 years, your mom and I, we're done with each other.

We're splitting up.

The son said, Oh, Dad, you can't do that.

You can't do that, not after 45 years and not in December.

Let me call sister.

So, brother who lived in New York called sister who lived in Los Angeles.

Said, Sister, you're not gonna believe it.

Mom and Dad are splitting up.

She said, they will not.

So she called dad in Miami from Los Angeles, said, Dad, brother just told me what you're saying.

You just hold on.

Don't you do a thing till we get there.

We're both getting on planes tomorrow.

We'll be there tomorrow night.

The dad hung up and he turned to his wife and said, It worked.

And they're paying their own way.

Well, it's that time of year, isn't it, when Christmas trees are being pondered?

Maybe you already have one, maybe you've not looking, started looking for one, or maybe you just remembered.

Am I supposed to get a tree?

Whatever.

Families are entering the tents, they're patrolling the sidewalks, they're lifting the limbs, they're examining the needles.

You know what they're looking for?

They're looking for the perfect Christmas tree.

Can't be too tall, can't be too short, can't be too dense, can't be too dry.

They've got a place in mind where they want it to go, and so they're looking carefully for the correct tree.

After all, a tree has an important job.

A star sits upon it, and balls and tins will hang from it.

And those gifts, uh, that tree is the depot for Christmas gifts.

The Locato family is well aware of the annual trek to the Christmas tree tent where we pay overpriced prices for the smell of pine, a few needles on the rug.

And just that wonderful moment in which you set the Christmas tree in the Christmas tree stand.

It's quite a moment, and not everybody is up to it.

I don't know if you know this.

Many, many people fail when it comes to setting a tree in a stand.

It's hard work.

And if you're responsible for it in your house, let out an amen.

It's tough, isn't it?

I mean, all year long we take courses.

We train.

Only a few people make it through the Navy SEALs, only a few people make it win the U.S.

tennis open.

And even fewer, even fewer, my friend, are able to successfully place a Christmas tree in a stand so that it doesn't tilt, right or wrong?

And is there anything worse than a tilting tree?

One year I barely escaped.

We brought in that tree and we positioned it in the Christmas tree stand, and we stood back and looked at it and we sighed.

It had a lean to it.

So I crawled back under and I adjusted all those bolts and did all those things you do.

And we had it straight, and then I climbed back up and we decorated it, put the balls on it, put the tinsels on it, put the angel on it, and then all of a sudden, guess what?

It started to tilt.

And I didn't know what to think.

What do you do when a Christmas tree begins to lean?

It didn't work.

Is it moving?

Is it moving a little bit?

Just not much.

There's the lean we've been looking for.

I couldn't figure out why it was leaning.

So I pulled all the stuff off the tree, pulled the star off the tree, I lowered it to the ground on its side, and you know what I found?

The trunk was bent.

It was bent in the forest.

That tree, hidden by other trees, had been a leaner.

I bought a leaner.

And unbeknownst to me, I brought a leaning tree home and I set it up, and my wife saw it, my kids saw it, everybody saw that leaning tree.

What do you do?

I realized that the trunk had a bend in it, and so as I was walking out the back door to borrow a saw from my neighbor, it occurred to me, I'm not the first one who has ever had to fix a leaning Christmas tree.

Well, maybe not.

Maybe everybody else just leaves it alone.

And then it occurred to me, you know, God is always having to deal with our bents, our leans.

He's always having to adjust circumstances to help us learn to be straight in our convictions and stable in our stance that maybe we have a lot in common.

Because don't we come to God with a lot of unattractive bents?

And doesn't God spend a lot of time straightening us up or even straightening us out so that He can decorate us, even present gifts to others through us?

So I began to chew on this a little bit.

So here's our topic for today.

You, me, and the Christmas tree.

How about that?

You, me, and the Christmas tree, let's see what we have in common.

I've thought of two or three things.

Number one, we're picked.

We're picked.

When you go to the Christmas tree lot, what do you do?

Do you just grab the first tree you see?

Of course not.

You walk up and down the aisle.

You lift them up, you turn them around.

You lean them forward, you lean them back.

You know why?

Because not just any tree will do.

Not just any tree will fit.

You've got a place in mind.

And a perfect Christmas tree has to be found, not just any tree.

God had a place in mind when he saw you.

Did you know that some of the great teachers in history have been those who had a sense of their even pre-birth calling?

You remember this passage from the book of Jeremiah?

Jeremiah heard God say, Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.

Before you were born, I set you apart.

I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.

Before he was born, Jeremiah was called.

And he sensed that calling.

The apostle Paul heard a similar calling, didn't he?

From Jesus.

He told the church in Galatia that he was set apart from his birth.

His commission came even prior to his conversion.

Jesus said to him, I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me.

It was as if God reached down and he picked Paul up and he turned him and looked this side and then that.

I know just the place I want to use you, and he picked him.

He knew just the corner of the world in which Paul would serve.

Please hear this.

He knew just the corner of the world in which you would be placed.

You just thought you chose your zip code.

You just thought you chose where you're living.

You need to talk to God because our sovereign Lord saw you before anyone saw you.

And he said, as that person walks in concert with me, that person will fulfill the commission that I give them in this location, in that place, in this way.

You are the only you God made.

And if we don't get you, the world doesn't get you.

So when he made you, he created a certain set of gifts and abilities, and he coupled those with situations and circumstances.

He knew that your neighborhood, that your workplace, that your school, that wherever you are, he knew you would be there.

He knew he needed you to do this.

Do not think of yourself as an accident.

The most hideous lie of the devil is you're just a coincidence, a collision of molecules.

You were chosen by God and you were assigned this generation.

It's not by accident that you and I are alive right now as the world seems to be teetering and falling into chaos.

For some reason, God thinks you and I have what it takes to be men and women of faith in a faithless generation.

Or he wouldn't have placed you here.

So while everyone else seems to be retrieving in anxiety, let's press forward in faith.

We have everything we need.

We have everything we need.

We may not know exactly what's about to happen in Israel and Gaza, but we do know that the great God Almighty is on the throne and he hasn't budged.

And what our world needs right now are people who are gonna lean into him in faith and move forward in confidence.

Isn't that amazing?

It's a shift of our view.

Oh, okay.

You mean I just didn't happen to be born in this generation?

No.

I didn't just happen to be born with this inclination, this ability.

No.

I just it's just not a coincidence that I get chemistry or I get math.

No, it's not.

For many of us, that is an amazing thing that you do.

But the fact that you do says something about who you are and what your assignment is.

What do you do well?

And where do you have a passion?

At the intersection of the answer to those two questions, dear friend, you'll find much about the reason you're on this earth.

What do you do well?

What are people always wanting you to do again?

You say, well, it's easy.

I know it's easy, and that's because God made you that way.

And what's your passion?

What causes you to pound the table?

What causes your eyes to moisten with tears?

What's that one cause, that one drive within you?

You answer those two questions.

And you, like the Apostle Paul and the prophet Jeremiah, will say, Oh, I was picked.

I was picked, I was called, I was chosen.

He made you with a job in mind.

Not only were you picked, but you liked a Christmas tree.

Well, you were purchased.

We are purchased.

When you go to the Christmas tree lot, do you just grab one and walk out to the car?

Not without getting in trouble.

You got to pay for that thing.

And you don't ask the tree to pay for the tree.

You don't ask the owner of the tents the tree distribution place to pay for it.

You don't ask the guy who's gonna tie the tree to your car to pay for the tree.

You might give him a tip or her a tip.

But you got to pay for it.

That's just how it works.

We pay the price to take the tree home.

The Apostle Paul reminds us that God has paid a price to take us home.

1 Corinthians 6.20 says, God has bought you with a high price.

A high price.

God was aware of what it would cost you and me to go home with him.

He was aware of it, and he paid it anyway.

God's plans have not changed.

What he decreed in creation is now being declared in the heavens, and he will have his paradise.

He will have his people.

We will indwell that perfect place with him.

That's our destiny and that's our calling.

Yet to do that, God has to pay a price to bring us home.

When you think of heaven, what word comes to mind?

I think the word that works the best is the word perfect.

It's just perfect.

I cannot wait, can you, to inhale that perfect atmosphere, to see other people made perfect.

Oh, I can't wait to see the heaven version of you.

It's gonna be perfect.

You're gonna have a perfect body with a perfect mind.

Now your understanding is dark and limited, but you're not far away from an understanding that's perfect.

Heaven is a perfect place for people made perfect.

Problem is, right now, as you look at me and I look at you, I don't think I can say perfect.

Sorry.

I can say decent, you know, kind.

But the fact of the matter is, we're not perfect.

We never have been.

Raise your hand if somebody had to teach you how to throw a temper tantrum.

You just knew, didn't you?

How did you know?

Nobody had to teach you how to snatch a cookie out of your sibling's hand.

You don't go through training for that, toddler training stealing cookies.

That's not a course that has to be taught.

We just know it.

We never attended a class on passing the blame, but every single person just instinctively points a finger at someone else and plays the Adam card what he said about Eve.

She made me do it.

We've been doing it, we all do it.

You'd almost think that we entered the world bent with a tilt, just a little crooked.

God's house is perfect, but his children are not.

So what's he gonna do?

Abandon us and start over?

Maybe go find another Christmas tree lot on planet Saturn?

Maybe he'll tolerate us.

Maybe he'll just populate heaven with people who are imperfect.

Maybe we'll take all our bad habits and bad attitudes and tendencies.

We'll just all take them to heaven.

That doesn't sound heavenly, does it?

So what's he gonna do?

Well, I can tell you what he did.

He became one of us.

He entered our world.

And God became a baby.

He was placed in the womb of a teenage Jewish girl.

He pressed against her tummy from the inside.

Yes, there was once a woman who felt God kicking against her ribs.

And then he descended a birth canal just like you did.

In his case, he descended a birth canal into the callous hands of a Jewish carpenter.

Or he was taken into a home.

And he grew up again, just like you grew up.

And not everything was always in proportion.

Maybe his feet were big, maybe his ears were big, maybe he had pimples.

He was human, just like you.

The scripture says he was in all points tempted as we are.

Look at this.

Yet without sin.

He was just like us in every single way, except he never sinned.

No word he regretted speaking, no thought he regretted thinking, no conversation he wanted to undo or redo.

Never a time that he was out of line, never a time that he was inappropriate.

He never ever rebelled against his heavenly father.

He never said, I'm doing it my way, no matter what you say, Father.

He was submissive even to the will of the divine.

He was sinless.

Sinless.

And because he never sinned, he could die as a savior.

So here's what happens.

He never sinned, but he died to bring you safely home to God.

In the manger, God loves you.

But on the cross, God saves you.

He buys you.

He purchases you.

He spreads his arms and has his hands nailed open so that when you ask, Lord, how much do you love me?

you can see the answer.

And then at his feet drop the most precious commodity that the universe has ever seen.

And that is the blood, the sinless blood of the incarnate one.

And he trades places with us.

He says, I know Lakato's imperfect, but I love him so much, I want him in my kingdom.

But my kingdom is perfect.

So here's what you punish me for Lakado's sins.

And you give Lakato my perfection.

He does for us what a group of rescuers did for a group of children in Colombia last May.

You may have seen this story.

On May 1st, 2023, a small aircraft with a group of seven passengers crashed into one of the most desperate, forsaken places on our planet, the Amazon Rainforest.

The small Cessna was flying from one village to a slightly larger one just a few hundred yards, I'm sorry, a few hundred miles south of Bogota, Columbia.

Evidently the single-engine prop plane failed mid-air, causing a forced meeting with the dense canopy of the jungle, and then eventually crashing into the jungle floor.

All seven passengers of the plane were presumed dead.

Odds of survival were minimal.

The search area was a hundred miles long and twenty miles wide.

It would take Colombian Special Forces more than two weeks, but they finally found the airplane.

And they were saddened to find within the plane the deceased bodies of three adults.

But they were puzzled to look for and not find the four children who were traveling, ages 13 all the way down to eleven months, siblings were nowhere to be seen.

The pilot, two adults were in the plane.

The plane was there, but the children were nowhere.

So Columbia ramped up the rescue efforts.

They sent 150 soldiers.

They sent rescue dogs.

They sent volunteers.

Every so often they would find a tiny clue of hope.

They found a baby bottle.

They found a toy.

They even found a used diaper.

The older children had been raised near the jungle's edge and had been taught what bugs to avoid, what snakes to avoid.

But who in ever could imagine that these four children could survive in the Amazon rainforest?

Days turned into weeks and desperation grew.

Rescuers dropped food, they dropped water, they even dropped whistles into the jungle, hoping to empower the children to survive.

After more than a month, after more than a month of efforts, somebody finally raised this possibility.

What if the children don't want to be rescued?

What if they're hiding from us?

Turns out that was the case.

On more than one occasion, the rescue party was within 50 feet of the children.

But the children didn't know if the rescue party was there to hurt or help.

They didn't know how to respond.

And so they ran from the very one who was trying to save them.

Any chance that might serve as a parable for humanity?

How many times have we turned from the very one who has come to help us?

You know, Adam and Eve hid from God.

You remember their story, the creation story?

And remember that after they had disobeyed God, God came looking for them.

The scripture says, when they heard the sound of God strolling in the garden in the evening breeze, the man and his wife hid in the trees of the garden.

They hid from God.

They hid from God.

I'm really sensing in my heart that the Holy Spirit is speaking to somebody who's been hiding from God.

You're not quite sure even why you're listening to a preacher.

And I'm here to say that's God.

And he orchestrated this moment because you've been hiding from him.

Maybe pretending that you have it all together, or maybe assuming that you've fallen so far that he wouldn't want anything to do with you.

Well, either extreme is unhealthy.

And right now he's saying, quit hiding.

Come out of hiding.

Come out of hiding.

That's exactly well, not the words, but that's the sentiment that he used with Adam and Eve.

God called to the man, Where are you?

Not that he didn't know, but he needed Adam to reflect on where he was.

What if you were to turn right now and say, God, I'm coming back?

And when you hear him say, Where are you?

What you're saying to yourself is, Well, I'm a long way from you.

I'm sorry.

And your heavenly Father is so ready for you to come back.

He is on a rescue mission to rescue you and me.

The whole narrative of Scripture is the story of God inaugurating in one garden what he's going to complete in the final garden.

He began in the Garden of Eden.

What we will see happen in the garden of heaven.

He will finally have all his children together in one place.

And he has been endlessly creative to get our attention.

Wouldn't you agree?

A word of scripture overheard here, a sunrise witness there, the stars there, crisis in the world, sometimes burdens, sometimes blessings, all intended to be messages, messages, messages, messages to get us to look up and say, Oh, you have a place for me?

You mean I've been picked, I've been purchased.

You know, the Colombian army never gave up.

They just kept looking for those kids.

They were determined to find them.

And they came up with a plan.

You're gonna love this.

They lowered speakers down into the jungle from the helicopter.

And this detail is key.

Through those speakers, they played over and over an invitation recorded by a beloved grandmother.

A brief message that said over and over, stay in one place.

This is a rescue team sent to help you.

And on day 40, all four children, emaciated, insect bitten, weak, and most of all afraid.

They were all found.

And they were taken home.

The grandmother's voice called them out of the shadows.

They just needed a voice they could trust.

So do we.

For that reason, God became flesh.

He became a regular guy.

He became a carpenter.

And he didn't take up residence in some chalet in Greece, but he lived in a one camel matte dot of a town called Nazareth.

And whatever you felt, he's felt.

There is not one emotion or fear that you and I have felt that would cause him to hear you express it in prayer and then walk away saying that they never get it together.

He knew you're in from the beginning.

All your days were made and designed before one of them came to be.

And he came to talk to you.

And the reason he came to talk to you is because he has such high plans for you.

Such a destiny for you.

A destiny that includes you in a perfected body, in a perfected place purchased by our perfect Savior.

That's your destiny.

You are not defined by the number of bucks in your bank or cars in your garage or followers on your account or clothes in your closet.

You are defined by the fact that the God of the universe knows you by name.

And he will not give up until you say yes to him.

Amen.

But has he taken us home?

We would like him to some days.

But not yet.

Not yet.

And there's only one reason.

And that is because he's not through using you.

But in order to use you, he needs to do one more thing that you and I have in common with the Christmas tree.

You're not going to like this one, but here it is.

He prunes you.

We are pruned.

Remember that crooked Christmas tree I was telling you about?

I mean, the only way I could get that tree to stand straight so we can enjoy it was with a saw.

A couple of branches had to go, the trunk had to be cut before we could get serious about, you know, decorating the tree.

We had to straighten the tree.

Say amen if you can relate to this sentence.

God prunes us too.

Well, scared me for just a second.

I thought this is one sanctified church, brother.

I've never been pruned.

I better get out of here.

Because God's pulled his blackened decker out on me many times.

Did you know the scripture teaches us that Jesus said, My father is the gardener.

He trims and he cleans every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce even more fruit.

And when a tree has a lean, he knows how to get the tree straightened up again.

And once he stabilizes us, you know what he does?

He begins to decorate us.

He begins to wrap us in wisdom, with insight, with vision and hope.

In a world that's full of fear.

It's not that you're without fear totally, but you're certainly without more faith and fear.

And so you carry that faith with you.

Everywhere you go, you become a gift, a Christmas tree, a light.

You become a giftgiver.

Some of you give the greatest of gifts because you tell people about Christ and they receive the gift of salvation.

Some of you receive give great, but not quite as exciting gifts, but they're every bit as important, that word of encouragement.

When you put your hand around your coworker and your arm around your coworker who's discouraged.

When you stay up late, husband, so your wife can get sleep.

And we become then this like a Christmas tree, a depot where God can store his gifts.

And people know when they come to us, we're not gonna chew them out, we're not gonna judge them, we're not gonna belittle them, we're gonna give them gifts.

And we're just gonna love them with this curiously inexplicable love.

And if they were to say why, we would say, Well, I met this one who died for me.

And since he died for me, I can at least give you a parking place, a kind word.

Here's what he tells me.

Here's what I think he's saying to you, and we become these.

We have more gifts than Santa, and we take them everywhere we go, and we give them freely because we know we didn't earn them to begin with, and so we'll gladly give them to others.

What a work he does! He selects us, he pays the price to take us home, he takes us to our place of service, he roots us in his love, he decorates us with kindness, he enraps us with gift.

My goodness, he festoons us with garlands of beauty.

Our task is just to let him do his work and to trust him.

Here's where my little analogy with the Christmas tree, though, it it my little parable doesn't work.

I thought it was gonna work, but then I realized there's a big difference between you and me and the Christmas tree.

A tree doesn't have a choice.

We do.

We do.

Yeah.

I don't want you to buy me.

I'll figure this out on my own.

Thank you very much.

And God, who is nothing, if not polite, says, I'm gonna keep knocking at your door.

But it can only be open from the inside.

And so God keeps knocking.

But there are vast, vast populations of people who have not said yes.

Don't be among them.

Don't be among them.

At the end of today's service, you'll be given an opportunity to pray with someone, to talk to someone who can help you take the next step.

Don't miss the greatest gift ever offered, and that is the gift of eternal life.

It certainly seems to me, I'm not a prophet, I don't know when Jesus is going to return, but folks, things are moving fast.

They're moving very fast.

They're like birth pains.

And I have it on good authority that in the end times, the signs of the end are gonna be like birth pains, more frequent and more intense.

I've never experienced a birth pain, but my wife told me what's gonna happen.

And as we look at the world today, do we not sense that things are happening?

I don't know when.

I do want you just to sense that there's an urgency now, more than I've ever experienced in my life.

The players described in end times passages just seem to be circling around God's people.

Let's pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

Let's pray for the people of Gaza.

Let's pray for God's perfect will to be done, protect the innocent, and let his plan play out.

But I do not think, dear friend, this is a time that I would want to be unsure or insecure about my eternal destiny.

That much I know for sure.

So if you're unsure or you're insecure, I ask you to make this the Christmas that you turn not just to that Christmas tree, but you turn to the greatest tree, and that is the cross of Christ.

You know, we don't know why scripture writers often referred to the cross of Christ as a tree.

Maybe the earliest crosses really were trees, or maybe since crosses were carved from the tree, maybe the name stuck.

But for whatever reason, the scripture writers often called the cross a tree.

Peter did.

He said, Jesus himself wore our sins in his own body on the tree.

Yeah, somewhere on the timeline between the tree of knowledge in creation and the tree of life in heaven is the tree of sacrifice near Jerusalem.

And if a Christmas tree is a place of gifts and beauty, then doesn't the cross qualify as the greatest of Christmas trees?

Because it was upon that cross that God placed the fairest one who has ever lived.

And it's at the base of that cross we see the greatest gift.

Dirt made crimson from the blood of Jesus.

That's our gift.

He paid the price to take us home.

So this year, as you open many, many gifts, I hope, as you enjoy a Christmas tree, may you reflect upon or may you receive for the first time the greatest gift of all.

The gift of Jesus Christ, the one who decided that he wouldn't have heaven without you.

So he came to find you, to pick you, to purchase you, and if needed, to prune you, to make sure you get home safely.

Amen.

Lord, we thank you for the message of Christmas.

And we're so ready for Christmas this Christmas.

We need a bunch.

Have mercy upon us, Lord, now as we allow your Holy Spirit to speak to us about whatever it is you want us to know.

Let your blessings, Lord, continue to be upon this church.

Thank you that Pastor Robert is able to be here today.

We pray continued healing upon him.

And yes, Lord, again, we pray for Israel.

We pray for this world.

We pray for all our leaders.

Most of all, we pray for you to return.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Through Jesus we pray.

Amen.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you'd like to connect with us, text Connect to 71010 or visit gatewaypeople.com.

We hope you have a great week.