Good celebration, right? Food and friends and fun and
confetti cannons and all that good stuff.
I can't wait for a good Turkey and sugar coma tomorrow.
It's going to be awesome. Christmas is rich with so many
traditions, isn't it? But what brings us together
tonight is far more than a tradition.
It is something that is truly life altering.
See, Christmas is the celebration that everything, our
hearts, our lives, our souls have always waited and longed
for because it has come. If you were alive and living in
Israel 2000 years ago, you would have heard the stories of a
Messiah that was coming, a savior who was coming to rescue
the Jewish people from oppression.
It was a story that had been told for hundreds and hundreds
of years, passed down from one generation to the next in the
same family. And maybe after all those years
of hearing the same stories passed down, maybe, maybe you
started to doubt if it was ever going to happen, if anything was
ever going to get any better. But if you held on to that hope,
if you held on to that promise, if you kept waiting for the
Messiah to come, it was a lifeline to your soul.
Sure, the human struggle was real.
Life was hard. You were living under Roman
oppression. You would experience the normal
challenges of humanity, human relationships.
You may have struggled with financial hardship or a sense of
loss because your dreams weren't becoming a reality, but because
you held on to that promise that you believed the Messiah was
coming, you still had this sense of hope and peace.
You still had joy even in the hard places of life.
And you knew in your heart there was a real God who loved you and
he, he would follow through on his promises.
And then one night in the small village of Bethlehem, located in
modern day Palestine, a baby is born.
And as he cries out his first cries, it pierces through the
night and through the darkness that you have been living in.
It pierces through the night to announce the arrival of a new
king. There is something really
special that happens when what you're hoping and expecting to
happen actually takes place. Too many times we hope for
things and we expect things, but then we get let down in the end.
But man, when you open up that gift on Christmas morning that
you've really, really, really been hoping for and waiting for,
it just feels so good, doesn't it?
Or those dreams that you've always had for your life, the
things that you plan for and worked for and dreamed of, and
you imagined exactly what it was going to be like and then it
happened. It's amazing when your
experience meets your expectations, but every once in
a while there's a rare moment where reality is even better
than your expectations. It's that moment where if you're
a parent, you always imagine what it would be like to hold
your first child, and then you hold your first child in your
arms and you go, man, this is way better than I ever imagined.
It's that moment where you plan to go see something spectacular
in nature, the mountains of the the Rocky Mountains of the Grand
Canyon. And you get there and you go,
man, this is way better than I ever expected it was going to
be. And that's exactly what the
story of Christmas is like. The arrival of Jesus was better
than anyone could have expected. See, we don't merely celebrate
an event that took place in a Manger, we celebrate a child who
is still a gift to us 2000 years later.
The Gospel of Luke takes us into the scene of the birth of Jesus
and shows us why Jesus is still worth celebrating even today.
In the same region, shepherds were staying out in the fields
and keeping watch at night over their flock.
Then an Angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of
the Lord shine around them, and they were terrified.
But the Angel said to them, don't be afraid, for look, I
proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all
the people. Luke tells us that Jesus is the
sign that God cares for all people.
The Angel says to this group of shepherds, don't be afraid
because I've come to proclaim good news to you.
Now think back to the last time you got some good news.
May have been a while for some of you, but think back to the
last time you got some good news.
The smile that came across your face, what it did to your heart
and your soul when you received that news.
Good news comes at us in all kinds of different ways, doesn't
it? Sometimes it comes very
unexpectedly, like we don't even know we need the good news until
we hear the good news. It's that moment when someone
sends you an encouraging note you didn't even realize you
needed to hear. Sometimes good news comes at us
when we're sitting in the middle of the unknown, those difficult
places where it could go either way.
We might get good news or bad news.
But man, when the good news comes, it feels so good.
It's. It's that moment where you're in
a health crisis and you're waiting for some test results
and the doctor calls you and says everything's clear.
That's good news. Sometimes good news comes to us
when we're living in the pain. We're at rock bottom of our life
and we're waiting just for someone or something to change
the story. Well, the birth of Jesus is not
just good news. It's good news that God cares
for all people. Not just people who live 2000
years ago, not just Jews, but for all people.
And He cares for you today, that whoever you are and whatever
brokenness you are feeling and facing in life, whatever heart
breaks or challenges 2025 has brought for you, God cares about
you. He doesn't sit at a distance.
He shows His care by entering into the chaos and sending His
Son Jesus to become one of us, to live the full human
experience. The birth of Jesus is good news
for anyone who is sitting here today.
And you're in that waiting in an unknown situation because not
only did God become a human take on flesh, but he comes to be
with us. That the God of the universe
walks with us even in the waiting.
And it's good news for anyone who doesn't even realize that
they need this good news. God's care is for all people,
including people who could care less about God.
See, the birth of Jesus is the sign that God cares.
But it's even better news than that because God shows his care
by sending his Son to fix what's wrong.
In verse 11, it says, today in the city of David, a savior was
born for you. Who is the Messiah, the Lord?
When you have a problem that you can't fix, what do you normally
do? Now, I know some of you are
thinking there isn't a problem I can't fix.
I've got this. And I know if I were to ask your
spouse or your kids, they would tell me a different story.
There are problems you can't fix.
If you're like most people, you go and you if there's a problem
you can't fix, you start to look for help.
There's got to be somebody out there who knows what to do.
So you go to YouTube or you go to whatever your favorite AI is.
If you're really old school, you go to Google and you say like,
what is this? How do I fix this problem?
And then what do you do when you realize you still can't fix the
problem? Well, that's when in theory,
you're supposed to call the experts in, right?
It's why we go to the doctor. It's why we go see our mechanic
or we call the repairman in. But what do you do in a
situation when nobody can fix the problem?
See, if we're honest, we look at life and we look at the bigger
picture of life and history. And our own experience tells us
that no matter how much money or how much expertise humanity
throws at some problems, there are just some things we cannot
fix. I asked Chachi BT this week how
can Kirk fix the problem of human suffering?
And here's what it told me. You can't.
There is just something inside of us that feels all the wrongs
of the world. And we wish, we hope, we dream
that someone could fix them. And so we try to be our own
savior. Or we look for someone with lots
of money or lots of power to come in and save the day.
We long for a reason to have hope.
We long for a reason to be happy.
We long for someone to give us a reason to be at peace.
We long to know that we are loved, even though we know we're
deeply flawed. From God's perspective, the
biggest problem that you and I cannot fix is the problem of
sin. And our sin has done more damage
then all the diseases in the history of humanity combined.
Our sin has created so much chaos in this world.
Our sin has created a separation between the most important
relationship we were ever supposed to have, our
relationship with God. Our sin is something that we
have lived in day in and day out.
All of us have been sinned against and felt the impact of
sin on our lives. We've had other people and
things do things that hurt us and cause us stress and harm.
And the truth is, we've also done our fair share of things to
create some problems for other people as well.
We've also contributed in some way to the chaos of the world.
And when the Angel shows up and announces the birth of Jesus, he
announces that not only does God care, but Jesus is the Savior
who's born to rescue us. See, this baby isn't sent just
to fix one part of what's broken.
He's not coming just to fix the one problem in your life.
He's come to fix all the problems of life.
He's arrived to fix everything. We celebrate the birth of Jesus
because Jesus is the one who brings the promise of heaven to
earth. Suddenly there was a multitude
of the heavenly hosts with the Angel praising God and saying
glory to God in the highest heaven and peace on earth to
people he favors. This is the reason the birth of
Jesus is better than anyone could have expected.
Jesus did not come simply to make life just a little bit
easier for us or to remove the one thing that's making our life
difficult. Jesus is born so people like you
and me can experience the peace of heaven.
Heaven. The place where there is No
Fear, there's no sorrow, there's no pain or suffering, there's no
tears. Where God is the place where
there are pleasures that last forever.
A place of complete peace where all things are in order, where
all things are in right relationship with each other and
with God. The ancient Jews would have
understood this to be the idea of Shalom.
God's peace is far more than just a lack of conflict in the
world. It's the presence of complete
Wellness and wholeness. Think about all the money and
energy that gets spent in our culture today on Wellness.
Think about all the energy that we put into an entire industry
that brings in billions of dollars for the sake of the
Wellness of people. Why?
Because there's something deep down inside of all of us, at the
core of our being. We long for this idea of Shalom,
of wholeness. And Jesus is the gift that God
has sent to bring peace on earth.
That's the story of Christmas. Jesus is God's gift to us, to
bring the promise of heaven to earth.
And just like any other gift, you have to receive it in order
to enjoy it. If you're here today and you've
already received Jesus as the Savior and Lord of your life,
you can celebrate. You can be like a kid on
Christmas morning opening up the most remarkable present ever.
Now I, I recognize that there may be some people in the room
today and you're not feeling this idea of celebration because
life's hard and it's difficult and you're looking at it and
you're saying, Kirk, I, I think Jesus failed in his mission.
It's been 2000 years and I don't see peace on earth.
It's been 2000 years and I don't see the rescuing and making of
all fixing all the problems that we face as humanity.
So why? Why can we still celebrate?
Because the story isn't done yet, that's why.
See, the birth of Jesus is simply the beginning of the
story. The life of Jesus is bookended
by two announcements from an Angel.
It starts with an Angel announcing glory to God in the
highest and on earth peace. But just after Jesus finishes
the final moments of his life, another Angel shows up on the
scene. The Angel says to people like
you and me who are sitting there going, well now what happens?
That Angel says to that group of people, that same Jesus, he's
coming again. And when he comes again, he is
coming to make everything right and finish the mission that he
started. God kept his promise once to
send the Messiah and God's going to keep his promise to send him
again. And for those of us who have put
our faith in Jesus, this is is why we can celebrate and sing
that we are a joyful and triumphant people even while we
still see some of the hardships of life.
Because the end of the story, it's, it's already written.
We celebrate that Jesus has come and we celebrate because we
can't wait for him to come again.
Let's sing together.