Well, good afternoon. It is good to see you all here
on this incredibly beautiful Christmas Eve day here in
Arizona. If I don't know you, my name is
Brandon. I serve as the pastor here at
Saint City. And I am so thankful that you
would choose to come here on your holiday and to hear what
God has to say for your life. And I've been waiting for this
day for a long time as a church planter.
Like the first Christmas Eve service feels like a rite of
passage. You know, I feel like I got like
a, a new belt. I didn't do karate or jiu jitsu
or any of those things, but I feel like I got a new belt, you
know, that like, I graduated a bit as a pastor today.
Having a Christmas Eve service and waiting is a hard thing.
Kids, I need your help with this, kids in the room.
I need you to participate in the serum right now so you're not
interrupting. You're actually helping me out.
Kids, what is your favorite Christmas tradition?
Kids room? Shout it out, kids presents is a
good thing to wait for. I like that.
What'd you say? Favorite Christmas tradition?
Kids is probably like watching movies, baking cookies, going to
grandma's house. We all have favorite traditions.
One of mine growing up going out with my family was going to see
the lights and I think not. One new favorite Christmas
traditions is Papa Preston sitting in a chair right here
reading to us. It is.
It is good to have traditions, but one of my least favorite
traditions growing up was waiting for my turn to open the
presents. Now, I don't know if you had
cousins or if you went to the family party and if you were one
of those chaotic families that ordered opened up all the
presents all at once. That was not my side of the
family. We went from youngest to oldest
and I was the second oldest cousin, which meant I had to
watch my baby brothers open their presents and my cousins
and there was 17 of us. So I would sit there on
Christmas Eve night or Christmas Day depending on the year,
right? I was sitting there agitated on
Christmas. Why?
Because I had to wait to open my presents.
And it was always funny because my grandpa would be sitting next
to me and he would, he'd be the oldest.
So he didn't care though, because it was his house.
So what he would do is he would just open up his presents while
everybody was paying attention to the little kids, you know.
And I just love watching him not wait while he was forcing me to
wait. And I learned something even at
a young age, those days that it's, it's actually hard for
someone to relate to a wait. And what I mean by that is if
you didn't experience the wait for yourself, it's really hard
to imagine just what it felt like to have to wait for that
thing. And there's lighter weights that
we have in our life. Maybe it's waiting for presents.
Maybe it's waiting for our table at the reservation at PF Chang's
after service tonight. Maybe it's waiting for something
like that. But I'm sure there are heavier
waiting rooms here, things for healing, things for like
relationships, things like relief that there's something in
your life that you've been waiting on or waiting for and
you felt the sting of having to wait.
And on Christmas, we are actually celebrating.
We are actually commemorating and reflecting upon waiting for
God to come to earth, that there was a waiting period, a holding
pattern that happened that we on the other side of the cross, on
the other side of Jesus coming to earth.
We don't quite feel. And if you're new to church and,
or if you're even thinking about Christmas, you're, you're
familiar certainly with the themes of family, you're
familiar with the themes of keeping, you know, the spirit of
Christmas or what not. But there's a seriousness to
Christmas that Christians feel that we embrace, that we're
pumped about, that we have joy for.
And if you're asking yourself like, why so serious Heath
Ledger style? Well, it's because of this.
It's because Christmas makes sense.
Once you understand the weight that Jesus stepped into, it
makes sense. Like why do we celebrate a baby?
Why is there a whole holiday? And why do people take it so
spiritually serious? Because God stepped into the
wait on that day. I'm in Luke chapter 1.
I don't just want to share my thoughts with you today.
I want to share with you God's words and God's thoughts.
And here's what happened when Mary found out that the wait was
over, that this is what happened when we found out that Jesus
Christ was going to cross the horizon of this world and encase
himself in human flesh. This is the story of one of
Jesus's friends helping catalog for us just how it went down.
We're Luke chapter one, verse 26.
And it says this in the sixth month of her relative
Elizabeth's pregnancy, the Angel Gabriel was sent from God to a
city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man
whose name was Joseph of the House of David.
In the virgin's name was Mary. And the Angel came to her, and
he said, greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you.
But she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern
what sort of greeting this might be.
I mean, she wasn't having regular occurrences and
interactions with angels. You know, a very common
experience for for Mary. So what happens next?
And the Angel said to her, Do not be afraid Mary, for you have
found favor with God, and behold, you will conceive in
your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High,
and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father
David, and he will reign over the House of Jacob Forever, and
of his Kingdom there will be no end.
And Mary said to the Angel, How will this be, since I am a
virgin? And the Angel answered her, The
Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High
will over shadow you. Therefore the child to be born
will be called holy, the Son of God.
And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has
also conceived a son, and this is the 6th month with her who
was called barren. For nothing will be impossible
with God. And Mary said, Behold, I am the
servant of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word.
And the Angel Gabriel departed from her.
Now I don't have all night and neither do you.
It's a holiday. But I want to give you 3 quick
things, kind of summarizing what God is doing inside of this
story that I think are helpful for you and understanding
Christmas. It is the weight, the work and
the will. The weight, the work and the
will and God's activity inside of all of them.
First, the weight. You see right there in the sixth
month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, we meet this virgin named Mary.
And what we don't have necessarily is all the context
of this part of your Bible. There's a whole lot of Bible
before Luke chapter one, right? And that's one story, though,
leading to this very moment. Now it is 400 years between the
book of Malachi, which ends the Old Testament, and Matthew which
begins 400 years of silence, of darkness, of the world waiting
for God to speak again. 400 years is a long time.
I did a few math things with ChatGPT for you on this.
You see, 400 years would be 12.6 billion seconds.
OK, it would you'd have to listen to Mariah Carey's All I
Want for Christmas Is You 52.4 million times.
Press play 52.4 million times in a torture chamber.
You would arrive at 400 years. Historically, you would have to
go back in American history to Jamestown.
So if you're at Jamestown when America is found and started
counting one year after after another after another, that
would be 400 years. And that's where Mary's coming
into the story is There was 400 years of darkness.
That Isaiah 92 actually helps us see this prophetically, that the
world was trapped in deep darkness, waiting, waiting,
anticipating the most pregnant of pauses from God.
And in the midst of that silence, there was people
waiting for God to work, waiting for the God of Abraham and Isaac
and Jacob to deliver on his promises to fulfill the
prophecies. The wait was happening.
And now we meet this teenager, Mary, who now has to wait for
the arrival of a baby. Now, it's significant that Jesus
is born of a woman because we needed Jesus to be a human being
to save us. Now you might be wondering
yourself, like, OK, we need him to be human.
Why did he have to come as a baby?
Like, did he, like, know Ricky Bobby was going to be a thing in
love? Sweet baby Jesus?
Like, is that why Jesus came as a baby?
No, no, no, that's not why Jesus came as a baby.
Jesus came as a baby. For this reason, Jesus cannot
save what he does not assume. That God had to be born of a
woman. He had to be a human like us in
every way, but without sin. That for God to be just, for him
to be the loving God that He is, that God the Son had to be a
human being to represent us in judgment before God the Father.
He cannot save what He has not assumed.
It's like a currency, that there is a real and royal and eternal
currency with God, and He only takes payment one way.
That if a human being sends in a human being has to be perfect in
a human being's place, that my dollar bill wouldn't work the
same way overseas in the same way.
We needed a human being to represent us before God.
And so Jesus is born of this Virgin Mary, and he is a human
being. He has feelings, He cries, He is
a human being, He needs sleep. He is a human being in every
way, yet without sin. And Mary in this story has begun
her wait for this baby to arrive.
What she doesn't know is 9 months from now that he won't be
delivered in a royal hall. But this king of kings, this
king of David, he's going to be born in the most humblest of
ways in a Manger that the second person of the triune God, Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, was going to take a demotion from
heaven's throne to a cradle and a dirt.
And Mary was waiting for God to work.
I imagine some of you are in that very spot right now,
waiting for the work that kind of summarizes the whole
Christian life. We wait, God works.
We keep waiting actively in faith, going about the mission,
worshipping him, and he continues to work.
He does what only God can do. Verse 35 And the Angel answered
her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the
Most High will over shadow you. Therefore the child to be born
will be called holy, the Son of God.
It is not enough for God the Son to encase himself a few human
flesh. To Incarnate himself is a fancy
theological word for it that He took on flesh.
But God the Son had to still be God for the power of His
salvation to take any hold on human beings.
That God the Son had to be conceived by the Spirit because
he was conceived by a man. He would have inherited a sin
nature like you and I did that God the Son had to be conceived
by the Spirit. Now this fulfills a prophecy of
Jesus. Isaiah Chapter 7 verse 14 says
that Jesus will be born in this way.
Now Jesus fulfills depending on the count, around 40 prophecies.
You know, three to four dozen depending on how you count them
or if you double. But I just want to give you a
little math equation for you that Jesus even fulfilling one
of those prophecies would be like this.
Imagine if I were to cover the entire state of Texas with
pennies 2 feet deep and I were to paint one red, cover the
entire square mileage of the state, and I were to paint one
red and leave it in the dirt somewhere in Texas.
I was going to blindfold you. I was going to drop you in the
state of Texas. I was going to say, hey, guess
what? You need to go find the red
penny. The odds of that happening would
be miraculous. You stand no chance.
Only God could do that. Now in every world view there's
some form of a miracle that has to take place, either the virgin
birth of the earth or the virgin birth of the Christ.
That something came from nothing, that it took a miracle
for it to happen. And God the Son takes on human
flesh. He becomes a baby.
He doesn't become less than God in any way, but instead he shows
us the face of God because he loves us, because he wants to be
there for us, because he wants to save us from the Father
through the Son by the Spirit. Jesus Christ, Son of God, became
a baby conceived by the Spirit. And if Jesus is not a man, he
can't represent us. But if Jesus is not God, he
can't save you from your sin. That the deep darkness, you're
still waiting. You're still waiting for a
Savior to save you from the exile from God.
Who is going to get you back in relationship with God if not God
himself? You are without hope, waiting in
darkness still if not for Jesus entrance into the world that if
he doesn't come this way there is no savior to believe in.
There is no hope for eternal life.
This had to be this way, and it is only grace and the love of
God that prompted God the Son to step into a Manger and go to a
cross for us. This is the story of Christmas,
that God the Son became a baby and needed a mom to wipe his
tears and his behind. Like God the Son did that.
How humiliating, how humble. That's how God works.
That he didn't come to earth to be served, but rather to serve
and to give his life as a ransom payment for many.
That he didn't count equality with God, a thing that he had to
hold on to, but he emptied himself by taking the form of a
servant. And now at the name of Jesus,
every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that he is
Lord to the glory of God the Father.
Because there is no other name by which we can be saved.
That He works for you and I on our behalf by going to a Roman
cross, dying the death we should have died, paying for the sin
that we have committed, having no sin of His own to pay for.
He does it so that you and I can have the hope and the love of
God in our lives. It's the wait, it's the work.
And I want you to see the will of the Father.
Look back at the text with me, verse 30 through 33.
And the Angel said to her, Don't be afraid, Mary, for you have
found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in
your womb and bear a son. You shall call his name Jesus.
He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.
And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father
David, and he will reign over the House of Jacob Forever.
And of his Kingdom there will be no end.
And then Mary in verse 34 asks a question.
Then how will this be? Because I'm legally bound to
Joseph. And we have honored the reality
that we have not slept together. I am still a virgin.
So how are we going to do this, God?
Because I've never seen this done before.
You're going to have to tell me some of the logistics of this.
This doesn't make much sense. Listen to what he says.
The Angel answered. The Holy Spirit will come upon
you. That word will is there 11 times
in just this little section of Scripture.
And here's what I want you to see.
When Mary asks how will this be? You need to know something about
God that when God says He will, there is nothing that says He
won't. When God says He will do
something, it's as good as done. When God speaks it's done.
In Genesis 1 he said let there be light, there was light.
When he says here in Luke chapter 1 he will be great,
guess what done? How will this be?
Because God said it will be that simple.
The question is, is what will you do?
What will you do with what God has done?
That's the question of Christmas.
This isn't an argument of whether or not you understand
everything about the Bible. It's will you believe that Jesus
is the Christ, the Son of God, the one that you need?
Will you believe it? Will you take God at his word?
That is the question of Christmas.
Will you believe Mary season verse 37 this, that for nothing
will be impossible with God? Some of you are here today as an
invitation from a friend. You are here and you are hearing
for the first time that there is more depth to this, more
reality, to Jesus Christ. And you could have ever dared
believe never, and never even understood just how grave it is,
how much darkness is in your life, and that there is no
antidote, no solution apart from Christ.
But I have good news for you today, that the love of God, it
was demonstrated for you, and that while you were at your
worst, at your darkest waiting, guess what?
God came for you to die. The death you should have died
paying for, the darkness in your life, the sin you committed.
And he had none of his own to pay for.
He did it so you and him could be in relationship once again
that God in his perfection and holiness, He saw your sin and he
said I will be the substitute for it.
And if you would just believe in me, that you would believe in
why I came at Christmas. It wasn't just for your family.
It wasn't so you would have purpose.
The primary reason Jesus came was that you could be forgiven
of your sins. It was the only hope you had.
And if you would trust in him, if you'd repent of your sins and
believe in Jesus Christ by faith and take God at his word, you
would have life and life eternal starting right now.
That's the hope and the message of Christmas, that God would
call you not to a cradle like His Son, but to an altar.
Mary's very last words were this, Let it be done to me.
As you have said, I am your servant.
I'm your servant. That's what it means to be a
Christian. It's not just going to church on
Christmas and Easter. It's not just having an
understanding that Jesus Christ was a real person.
It's believing and putting your faith in full trust in a
reality, the reality that you are a Sinner in need of his
grace and his power that you, like Mary, this mother of Jesus,
needed God's grace. You needed him to look at you,
to see you for all that you are, see the doubts and the struggles
and the hurt, and say I love you.
I loved you in this way that I gave my only Son, that you would
not perish but have eternal life.
It's good news of great joy. And that is the hope and the
message of Christmas. Now, here's what I want to do.
I'm going to invite the worship team out and we're going to
respond to worship in just a moment before we close our
service. But here's what I want to do.
If you are here today and you are seeing, you are seeing
Christ for all that he is for the first time or for real, I
want to give you the opportunity to respond physically to what's
happening in you, to give you the opportunity to respond
spiritually what's happening to you.
Which means this, the faith in Jesus is what saves, not the
prayer that you're going to pray, but if you would look to
Christ and he would run to him and say, save me from my sin, he
will do it. And so the team is going to sing
a song over you, and I want you to reflect on the words and the
reality of your life with Jesus and your relationship with him.
And if he's somebody you want, if his grace is what you know
that you need, would you cry out to him to save you?
And I'm going to lead you and response to that in just a
moment. So for now, the team will sing,
they will worship, and I'll be back up to respond in just a
moment.