Episode 255: Celebrate the Word

Are you feeling it?

I mean, it's time.

The time is now to celebrate, right?

I mean, back at the end of September,

when you first saw the Christmas stuff at Costco,

you probably weren't feeling it then,

but you need to feel it now, right?

Like this is the time.

We are right in the heart of celebration season.

Do you feel ready to party or ready to celebrate?

(congregation cheering)

Wow, see, first and second did nothing.

At least there were a few of you that like did a few things.

There's so much to celebrate right now, right?

Like how many of you are celebrating

that it's almost time to open presents?

Anybody, are you celebrating that?

One, all right, pressure's on.

Those of you who know Jillian,

like you better step it up, right?

How many of you are celebrating

that the weather's a little cooler?

Anybody celebrating that?

Way more of you.

You care more about that than presents.

That's hilarious.

School's about to be out,

which means traffic will die down for three or four weeks.

How many of you are celebrating that?

Yeah, Merry Christmas to us all.

Election season's over, let's all celebrate that.

Looks like the 49ers will miss the playoffs,

so we can celebrate that, a lot of us, you know?

Lots to celebrate right now.

What are you celebrating in life?

Of all the things that we could celebrate

this holiday season, the main cause for celebration

is a baby that was born 2,000 years ago.

This weary world can rejoice.

We can celebrate because of the birth of Jesus.

And here's the thing, guys.

You, you are either gonna choose to celebrate Jesus

this Christmas season,

or you're gonna choose to ignore him.

You're either gonna choose to celebrate him or ignore him.

Which are you gonna choose?

Before you answer that question,

you probably have to answer this question.

How are you and Jesus doing?

How are you and Jesus?

Where are you at with Jesus?

What do you believe about him?

What are you feeling about him?

If I were to tell you that one of the things

we're gonna do this morning is I'm just gonna give you

five minutes right now just to be quiet and talk to Jesus,

how would you feel about that?

Would you be anxious about that?

Would you be terrified of that?

Would you be super stoked to have that time

to just talk with him?

How are you and Jesus?

I remember one year for Christmas, I was in first grade.

I got a magic eight ball, all right?

That was kind of a novelty back then.

And so I got this magic eight ball.

I was so stoked about it.

And so I went in my room and the first thing I asked

that magic eight ball as a first grader is I asked,

I shook it and I was like, I can finally find out

does Fallon Tanksley like me?

All right, this girl in my first grade class.

And so I shook that thing up and I said,

does Fallon like me?

And I flipped it over and it said these words,

without a doubt.

And I was like, yeah, that's all the validation I needed.

I was like, this thing must know, right?

As a Christmas gift, Santa, I mean, it's gotta know.

And so I Christmas break ended,

walked into Walker Elementary School, my first grade class,

brushed right past my teacher, walked up to Fallon

and I said, do you like me?

And she said, no, no, I don't like you.

So I went home and I took that magic eight ball

and I threw it under my bed, never to be seen again

until we moved when I was in fifth grade and I found it.

All right, it was of no use to me.

Maybe that's where you're at with Jesus.

You've tried talking to him, asked him for a few things,

but it didn't work out and so you've kind of thrown him

into a deep corner of your life and you're ignoring him.

Well, for a few weeks, we're gonna be looking

at these passages in the gospel of John

that lead up to Christmas and we're gonna all see

kind of where we're at with Jesus.

It's gonna help us to prepare to celebrate him well.

John tells us at the end of his gospel

why he wrote all of these words.

Like look at what he says,

why he did this at the end on the screen.

He says, "These things are written so that you may believe

"that Jesus is the Messiah," that means the Savior,

"the Son of God and that by believing

"you may have life in his name."

In other words, John wrote this whole book

for people who don't believe in Jesus.

Maybe that's you this morning.

Maybe you're here and man, that's great,

praise God you're here, but deep down,

you kind of feel like all this stuff is just a little silly

and you don't really believe it.

Or you haven't really given it much thought

to decide if you really believe

that Jesus is the Savior of your life.

Well, John says that he wrote these things down for you.

John was a guy who followed Jesus around for three years.

He was an eyewitness to everything that Jesus said and did

and he wrote down these words to say,

I want you to know what is true about Jesus

so that you'll believe in him too.

And so if you're here today and you haven't yet

put your faith in Jesus,

you haven't yet given Jesus your life,

man, this book is for you.

But it's also for those of you who have.

Like one of the things John wrote that Jesus said

was in John 8, it says this up on the screen.

Jesus talked to the Jews who believed in him

and he said, if you continue in my word,

you really are my disciples.

You'll know the truth and the truth will set you free.

Jesus is talking to people who believe

and he's saying, man, if you continue in my word,

if you continue to know the truth and believe the truth

then you really are my disciples.

And so John, he's writing this so that Christians,

Jesus followers would hear the truth again and again

and would continue to believe.

So if you're here today and you're a Christian,

this book is for you.

It's for you to hear the truth about Jesus again

and say, yes, I believe that.

That's what I believe about Jesus.

And so I wanna open our study of this book

just by praying for both groups that John is writing to

and then we'll dig into it.

So let's pray together.

And so Father, I pray again for everyone here,

anyone here who is not a believer in Jesus,

who hasn't given him their lives,

who hasn't believed that he's their savior.

God, I pray that this book was written,

you inspired John to write it so that people would know

Jesus and believe him, that he would be their savior.

And so I pray that you would cast out doubts,

that you would answer questions,

that you would open eyes to see beauty,

that people who don't know you would come out of this study,

rejoicing that they do know you,

that they have given their life to Jesus.

Pray for the Christians here in this room,

maybe those who are struggling with their faith,

maybe those who have wandered away,

maybe those who are just kind of ignoring you right now,

that you would wake us up to the truth and beauty

of who Jesus is and what he came to do.

And then we would run back to you.

We would keep on believing and celebrating

who you are and what you've done.

We pray it in the name of Jesus, amen.

Okay, let's look at John 1, verse 1.

John 1:1

In the beginning was the word,

and the word was with God, and the word was God.

He was with God in the beginning.

All things were created through him,

and apart from him, not one thing was created

that has been created.

What an intro, right?

Like John gets right into it,

making these incredible statements.

He starts out with saying, man, God exists, right?

And there's this word that was with God from the beginning

who is God and who created everything in the universe.

So we need to know who this word is.

Well, John doesn't keep us in suspense.

Look down at verse 14.

He makes it clear.

The word became flesh and dwelt among us.

We observed his glory, glory as the one and only son

from the father, full of grace and truth.

The word that was with God and was God took on flesh

and lived with us, the son of the father.

This is Jesus, right?

The Jesus we were studying last week, full of grace,

full of God's glory, all the glory of God,

all of God's beauty and greatness could be seen in Jesus.

And so the birth of Jesus was God's glory coming to earth

to shine into the darkness of our world,

which is why the angels at the birth of Jesus,

they started celebrating, man.

They started partying, they burst into song.

And the words of the song were,

glory to God in the highest heaven.

And so what happened was this, at the birth of Jesus,

God's glory came down.

And at that time, glory went up,

which shows us this, that the only right response

to the birth of Jesus is celebration.

It's praise, it's what the angels did.

It's throwing a party.

Celebrating who God is and what God has done.

But why?

Why?

What is there to celebrate about Jesus?

What's so great about him?

Well, John gives us a few things

in these first three verses.

He gives us three things, three reasons

that we have to celebrate that Jesus has come.

And the first is this, Jesus is God himself.

Jesus is God.

Look at verse one again.

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God

and the word was God.

First reason to celebrate here, Jesus is God.

John talks about Jesus, but doesn't use his name Jesus.

He calls him the word.

And he says that the word was God.

Jesus, but before he was miraculously conceived

in a virgin girl and became a zygote in her womb,

before that, Jesus existed eternally with God and as God.

What an incredible thing to say.

I mean, we're talking about some high level,

mind bending stuff.

To say that this man who was born in the world

like any other person, who had nothing special

about his appearance, who wasn't born to royalty,

that this son of a Jewish carpenter

isn't merely a human like the rest of us.

He is God come down to become one of us.

It's something that if you heard it now,

like if someone came up to you and said,

hey, God himself was born at Kaiser Hospital last night,

you'd be like, I don't think so.

That sounds ridiculous, right?

And yet the whole Bible, the entire Christian faith

depends on this being true.

Either Jesus Christ is God,

or we have no reason to celebrate.

But if he is God, then the only right response

is to celebrate.

You see guys, John says that because Jesus is God,

that means that he's eternal.

The eternal one has been born.

He was in the beginning, he was never created.

Jesus is God himself, eternal God,

who put himself into time when he was born.

He laid aside his omnipresence, this attribute of God

that only God has where he's in all places at all times.

Jesus laid that aside

to be put into a specific time with us.

John says that because Jesus is God,

it means that God is relational.

This is one of the clear places that we see the reality

of the Trinity, God the Trinity.

The Trinity is a word used to describe God's nature,

the idea that we see all throughout the Bible,

that although there is only one God,

this one God is very complex.

There are three persons in the one God,

the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

All three have existed eternally as one person.

It's this mysterious thing,

but it's filled with a beautiful truth.

And here's the beautiful truth of it.

Because God has always existed as Trinity,

he has always been relational in community.

Before he created anything,

before he created you and I,

a community of relationship existed

within the person of God himself.

And so when God created you and me in his image

to image him in this world,

he created us to be like him,

and that means he created us for relationship,

for community.

You and I were created to exist with each other

in loving, beautiful relationship

because that's how God exists in himself.

And so what John's saying is

that Jesus has always perfectly known

God the Father and God the Spirit,

and now Jesus has stepped into our world

so that we can know them as well.

God is not an impersonal force like in "Star Wars."

He's a relational being who we can know.

Because Jesus is God, we can truly know God.

That's why John calls Jesus the word.

Jesus is God's word to us.

We know each other through our words, right?

Like if you hung out with me, but I never spoke to you,

you could learn a good bit about me

just by being in my presence.

You could learn that I have a great fashion sense

just by kind of being around me, right?

But it would take me communicating and giving you my words

for you to fully know me.

Like for example, even my closest friends,

friends that I've known for decades,

some of them may be in the room right now,

there are things they might not know about me

because I've never told them.

I searched hard this week to think of one

that maybe I've never said.

There is something I play pretty close to the chest

where I'm like, all right,

I'm ready to come out with it to everybody.

You probably don't know this about me.

Some of my closest friends don't know about me

that I am an absolute art nerd.

I love art.

Like I pride myself on the fact

that I can distinguish a Monet from a Monet, all right?

My favorite book that I read last year in 2023

was a book about artists.

I love it so, so much.

I have this mobile app that I use sometimes

before I go to bed.

There's just a bunch of different paintings,

Renaissance paintings mainly, will come up

and I'll have to type in who painted it and I love it.

I get so excited about it.

And I wanna know who all they are.

On my birthday this year, which was just a few weeks ago,

my wife asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday.

And I told her that I wanted to go to a beach

up on the West side and I wanted to read this new book

I have about art and artists.

And I read a chapter about Rembrandt that made me cry.

I love art.

How many of you are learning this

for the first time about me?

Yeah, hopefully all of you.

If you knew that about me, like we need to talk,

like it might need a restraining order against you

'cause no one should know that about me, all right?

No one should know that.

My wife was the only person that I think knew that about me.

And that's because on one of our first dates,

I took her to the Honolulu Museum of Art

because there's a Van Gogh there.

Did you guys know there's a Van Gogh on our island?

It's the craziest thing.

And so I took her to see it and I told her,

I was like, I love this stuff.

And we just stood there and looked at that painting.

We probably looked at it for like 10 minutes.

I could have stayed for another three hours.

She was like, hey, I'm done here.

Like, can we move on?

We go get some food or something.

But I love it, I love it.

But the only reason you know that is because I told you.

Because I gave you the words that I just gave you.

Why are we like this?

Why is it that we can't just be in each other's presence

and know each other totally?

Why do we have to communicate words

to each other to be known?

Well, it's because our God is like this.

Our God communicates to us by his word.

He gives us his word so that we can know him.

We can get glimpses of God through nature

and through each other,

but God reveals himself fully to us through his words.

That's what the Bible is.

God's word to us so that we can know him.

But now there are things we can know no other way about him

than through his word.

And John's saying Jesus is the word made flesh.

Jesus being born, the word becoming flesh means this.

We can really, truly, deeply know God.

God has spoken to us in his word, the Bible,

and now through his word, Jesus.

And so here's what that means, guys.

God is not hiding from you.

God is not hiding from you.

Your life is not a big scavenger hunt

of trying to figure out how to find God.

And he seems to be hidden and mystic and mysterious.

God became flesh so that you can know him.

Look at Hebrews 1.

It says this, "Long ago, God spoke to the ancestors

"by the prophets at different times and at different ways.

"And one of those is that he inspired them

"to write the Bible.

"God gave them his word.

"In these last days, he's spoken to us by his son.

"God has appointed Jesus heir of all things

"and made the universe through him.

"The son is the radiance of God's glory

"and the exact expression of his nature,

"sustaining all things by his powerful word."

God spoke before and now he's spoken his complete,

total word.

He gave us Jesus, the word made flesh,

so that we can fully know who God is.

And so man, what is worth celebrating about Jesus?

The arrival of Jesus is the arrival of God himself,

not the arrival of the founder of our religion,

not the arrival of our co-pilot,

not the arrival of the one

who can take the wheel of your life.

Jesus is not your repairman,

your therapist or your homeboy.

The arrival of Jesus is the arrival of God himself

who entered into his creation to live with us,

just like us, so that we can know God

and have everything we're looking for.

Amen?

Oh, you're not ready to celebrate.

Amen?

Yeah, we can celebrate that.

And so how do we get to know Jesus, the word?

How do we get to know him?

Well, we get to know him through the word, the Bible.

The words of the Bible all point

to the word made flesh, Jesus.

Like look what Jesus said later in John five on the screen.

He's talking to some religious leaders of his time

who studied the Bible.

He said, "You pour over the scriptures

"because you think they have eternal life,

"you have eternal life in them.

"And yet they testify about me,

"but you are not willing to come to me

"so that you may have life."

Here's what Jesus is saying, man.

The whole Bible is about him.

If you wanna know Jesus, read your Bible and ask,

"What is this showing me about Jesus?"

Because Jesus knew that the teachers of his day

would spend their whole lives reading the Bible,

but they missed that it's all about him.

See guys, you can say that you know God or feel God,

but unless you study the Bible

and see how it points to Jesus, you've missed it.

You can say you love Jesus,

but unless you're digging into the Bible

to learn more about who he truly is,

who he himself says he is,

then you might not love the real Jesus.

You might love a Jesus you've created in your own mind.

When I started dating my now wife,

one of the things that she did,

she invited me over to her house

and took me out to a few restaurants.

And at her house and at these restaurants,

she's like, "Try this food, I love this food."

And she was having me eat all this unbelievably,

wickedly spicy food.

And you know in those early stages of dating,

the whole goal is like get through today.

Make sure she still likes me at the end of the day.

And so I'd get this food

and it would just be this color of red

that just like, I'm like, "Oh no."

And I would be dying.

I'd be eating it, literally dying inside.

She'd take a bite and she'd look around

and as she'd look around, I'd be wiping my sweat

and like just water, water, water, ice in my mouth.

I'd be dead inside and I'd be dead

for the next three days on the inside.

And I finally, you know, if He Jung had said,

"Man, I love Justin and I wanna be with Justin

because he loves spicy food."

Then she would be loving somebody who isn't real, right?

She would be loving a guy who doesn't really exist.

But I gave her my words.

I finally said, "Listen, I've gotta tell you something.

This is killing me, I'm dying."

Right, the spiciest thing I ate growing up

is sometimes we sprinkle just a little bit of pepper

on a casserole, you know?

And that's like the spiciest I can endure.

And so I am literally dying, we can't do this anymore.

And so thankfully she continued to love me

and I've grown and I can eat some spicy stuff now.

But now she knows the real me because I told her.

See, it might be that a lot of us love a Jesus

that we've created in our own minds.

We love a Jesus because, well,

this is who I want Jesus to be

or this is who I think Jesus should be

or this is the Jesus I want to love and worship.

But Jesus has said, "I've told you exactly who I am.

I've given you my words.

I've spoken, this is who I am."

It's in the Bible, the Old, the New Testament.

It's all about Jesus.

And so if you wanna know him, the real him,

if you wanna fall in love with the real him,

you gotta be in the word, gotta be in your Bible,

studying it, pouring over it, seeing who Jesus really is.

And man, we can celebrate because it's all right here for us.

We can celebrate by grabbing hold of it.

When the lights go out at your house

and it's utter darkness and it's terrifying,

when the electricity comes on,

you don't celebrate by staying in the dark.

You celebrate by flipping all the lights on, right?

That's how we celebrate the coming of Jesus.

Let's flip the lights on.

Let's not stay in the dark about who he is.

Let's celebrate by grabbing hold of his word,

by digging into it, by studying it, reading it, learning it,

and asking the question,

how does all of this point to Jesus?

That's how you can celebrate

the coming of Jesus this Christmas.

Get into God's word.

Dig into it, love it, prioritize it in your life.

There's some opportunities to do that

coming up here at our church.

If you're a lady, you can sign up for the women's retreat.

The women are gonna get together at our church,

they're gonna get together at a retreat center

and stay a couple nights,

and they're gonna dig into God's word, man.

They're gonna go through a book of the Bible

and just dig in and see, man,

here's what Jesus said about himself.

Here's who he is.

That's a way to celebrate.

Say, yes, I'm gonna prioritize that.

I'm gonna go to that.

If you're a middle and high schooler,

go to the youth retreat.

They're gonna do the same thing there.

Did you know there's two men's theology groups

that meet at our church weekly?

On Wednesday mornings, I think, and Saturday mornings,

they meet at a coffee shop or at Denny's,

and they're studying systematic theology.

They're studying some deep things that Jesus said

about himself, about who God is, and how he works.

Man, you could get involved in that,

and that's a way to celebrate.

You could commit to or recommit to a community group.

We have eight groups of people

that get together throughout the week

and they gather around God's word,

and they say, we're gonna study it together.

We're gonna look at it together,

because it is one thing, and it's a good thing

to study God's word quietly by yourself

in your own room, isolated.

But it's another thing to come in.

Yeah, a lot of times we have blinders on,

and we can only see and read and interpret a certain way,

but I come to a community group,

and I hear what God's teaching you and teaching her

and all these people, and I'm like,

oh man, I've never thought of it that way.

That's such a beautiful way to see this verse

and to see truth about Jesus.

And that happens at our community groups.

Man, God has given us his word so that we can know him.

How are you gonna celebrate it?

Or are you gonna ignore it?

How are you gonna celebrate it this Christmas?

We have more to celebrate.

Look at verse three again, verse three.

All things were created through him,

and apart from him, not one thing was created

that's been created.

John's saying, man, we can celebrate

that Jesus is the creator.

Jesus is the creator.

It was actually Jesus who created everything.

He made you.

You are not an accident.

You're not just the product of your parents

loving each other at one point in time.

Jesus is the creator.

He created you.

And even more than being the creator,

we read in Hebrews one how he sustains the whole universe

by the word of his power.

He's the sustainer.

He's holding every molecule of this universe together

by his powerful word.

If Jesus were to stop sustaining everything,

all of creation would unravel and fall apart.

Jesus is holding you together right now.

He's holding your life together.

We feel so much like we're in control

or like we want control, but man, praise God

that we can celebrate that Jesus is in control of everything.

Maybe you're like, yeah, but I actually feel

like my life is unraveling

and it's out of control right now.

Yeah, it may feel that way.

And you may have some really heavy things going on.

But the creator, the sustainer is right there with you.

Because you know that Jesus is the creator,

you can know that Jesus created you

to be exactly who you are.

Because you know that he's the sustainer,

you can know that he has you exactly where he wants you.

Because he became flesh,

the creator and sustainer became flesh,

you can know that he's gone through

everything you're going through.

You see, the word becoming flesh

means that we can know God, for sure,

but it also means that God knows us.

God knows you.

God knows you better than anyone else.

God knows you better than you know yourself.

He created you, he's sustaining you,

and he's lived just like you,

going through all the stressors and pains

and difficulties of this life.

And he, right now, is holding your life together,

which means he'll provide everything you need.

He knows exactly what you need

to be sustained in this world.

And so, how can we celebrate that this Christmas,

that this is who Jesus is?

We can celebrate by trusting Jesus in the stressors.

Trust Jesus in the stress and difficulty of your life.

The holiday season is notorious

for being unbelievably stressful.

And I read about this study last year,

and it shocked me so much

that I had to double and triple check it.

The American Psychological Association did a study,

and they found that 89% of adults

feel stress during the Christmas season.

89%, that's crazy high.

Normally, in studies like this,

you're like, oh, 58%, that's high, I can use that.

89, that's nine out of every 10 of us.

The holiday season is so stressful.

And the reasons that we're given here,

they asked, well, why do you feel so stressed?

Some of the reasons that they gave,

lack of time, financial pressure,

gift-giving, family gatherings,

lots of stress around this season.

So even though this season can feel super stressful,

we can be a people who celebrate

by trusting Jesus in the stress,

by leaning on him in the messiness.

And how exactly do we do that?

Through prayer.

We do it through prayer.

Prayer is an act of celebration.

It's an act of saying, all the stressors in my life,

everything that's going on, I should be crushed by it,

but instead I'm celebrating that I know the one

who's in control of it all.

Prayer is an act of celebration.

It's doing what we read last week in 1 Peter 5,

casting all of our anxieties on him because he cares for us.

Guys, you can talk to God and tell him

that you trust him because he created you.

You can tell him that you trust him

because he's sustaining you,

and he'll continue to sustain you.

You can tell him that you trust him

in everything that's going on throughout this season.

We can celebrate because we know the one

that we can trust in all of life

because he's our creator, our sustainer,

and he's lived just like us.

John gives us a third thing to celebrate.

Third reason, and it's that Jesus is the truth.

That's why John calls him the word

'cause we see the truth about God through Jesus.

And Jesus said this about himself in John 14.

Look at what he says.

Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life.

"No one comes to the Father except through me.

"If you know me, you'll also know my Father."

See, Jesus came to tell us the truth,

but he also came to be the truth

about who God is and how God acts.

Like we can read in the book of Exodus

how God is a God who wants to deliver his people

from slavery, but now in Jesus,

we get to see that God delivers his people

from sickness and bondage and slavery.

We read in Leviticus how God is holy,

but now through Jesus,

we get to see what a holy life looks like.

We can read in the Psalms that God is patient and kind,

but now we get to see the kindness and patience

of God on display through Jesus

and how he treats his disciples when they keep on failing.

Jesus came to be the truth about God,

but Jesus also came to tell us

and show us truth about ourselves.

In that verse, John 14, we just looked at,

Jesus said, "I'm the way, the truth, and the life."

Listen to this truth, he said,

"No one comes to the Father except through me."

"No one comes to the Father except through me."

That's a shocking truth about all of us.

Here's what all that means.

None of us can get to God on our own.

None of us can come to God on our own.

We can't be holy enough, good enough,

pious enough, religious enough.

None of us can do anything to get to God on our own.

Jesus came to tell us that truth,

but he also came to show us that truth.

Why is that?

Why is it that we can't get to God?

What's wrong with us?

Well, the entire Bible and Jesus came to show us

and tell us that it's our sin, it's our rebellion.

It's that we, humanity, looked at our creator

back in the garden and we said,

"We know you created us to live in beautiful relationship

"with you and each other in this world,"

but we turned our backs collectively on God

when we chose to walk away from him.

We rebelled, we sinned, and now that brokenness,

that sin, it infects all of us.

How bad is it?

It's so bad that when Jesus came,

when God himself was born into this world to live with us,

we rejected him.

Look down at verse 11 of John 1.

Jesus came to his own and his own people

did not receive him.

God gave his word to us, the word become flesh,

and we rejected his word.

But here's the amazing thing.

Do you know how God responded to our rejection of him?

He responded by giving up his life for us.

He responded by the cross.

We rejected God's word, we rejected the truth,

we rejected Jesus.

Jesus came and said, "I'm gonna tell you the truth,

"I'm gonna give you the truth."

Humanity collectively said, "We don't want it."

And Jesus said that, "I'm gonna lay down my life for you."

And Jesus went to the cross, a holy, perfect man,

the son of God, dying for our sin and rebellion

and rejection of him.

See, Jesus came to tell us a couple things about ourselves.

Number one, he came to show us that we are more lost

than we could ever imagine.

It took nothing less than the death of the son of God

for us to be rescued.

But Jesus also came to show us the truth,

that because of him, because he did it,

that our future is more bright than we could ever hope.

Because Jesus did it.

He loved you to death, and by his death,

he paid the price, the consequences,

the payment of our rebellion and sin and rejection of God.

So that now all we have to do is come to him in faith

and say, "I trust you."

And we can have life with God now and forever.

Jesus said, "No one can come to the Father

"except through me.

"I'll do it, I'll make it possible.

"I'll bring you to God."

And he did it.

We are more lost than we could ever imagine,

but our future is more bright than we could ever hope.

That's the truth.

So maybe you're here this morning and you're like,

"Man, the word just doesn't make sense to me.

"Like this Jesus thing, this church thing,

"it just, I don't get it, it doesn't really make sense."

But listen, if you ask him to,

Jesus will give you supernatural understanding

into him and his word,

and it'll change everything about your life.

We already read it in John 8.

He said, "You will know the truth,

"and the truth will set you free."

The truth, Jesus himself will set you free

if you accept the truth about who you are.

You are a sinner who needs forgiveness and healing.

And if you accept the truth about who God is,

he's the one who gives you forgiveness

and healing through Jesus.

And so what would be the best way

to celebrate this Christmas season?

The absolute best way would be to give your life to Jesus.

That would be the absolute best response

to the word become flesh,

is to say, "Yes, I give you my life."

Maybe for some of you,

you'd be doing that for the very first time.

You know you've never truly done that.

You've been kind of showing up and acting like it,

maybe faking it a little bit, or maybe just curious.

But today you're like, "Okay, if this is truly who Jesus is,

"man, I wanna celebrate by responding

"the way the angels respond.

"That glory came down, I wanna give glory up."

And the way you can do that is saying,

"Yes, I believe it, I trust you, I give you my life."

Maybe for some of you, it's kind of a coming back.

You're a Christian, you've done that before,

but you've been wandering away,

you've been in love with this world,

maybe this year, or for a few months,

or for a really long time, and you're like,

"No, I gotta come back.

"I gotta remember who Jesus is,

"how he's the main thing to celebrate

"in this life and in this world."

Here's the beautiful thing for all of us, guys.

God says that we don't have to clean our,

he doesn't tell us to clean ourselves up

to come to him and celebrate.

He doesn't say, "Get clean,

"and then come into my house and party."

No, he says, "Come to me as you are,

"and I'll clean you up.

"I'll welcome you into the party just as you are,

"and I'll make you clean."

And so let's run to him.

Let's know who Jesus is, let's believe who Jesus is,

and let's celebrate well by giving him our lives,

by trusting Him in all of life.

Let's pray together.