OK, I want you to imagine you're growing up now and it's
Christmas Day. What was Christmas Day like in
your childhood? For some of you, it was a very
happy time. You remember opening presents.
You remember that excitement coming down in the morning and
seeing what was underneath the Christmas tree.
You remember seeing family members who you've not seen in
such a long time. Your grandparents, perhaps
cousins, aunties, uncles, all of that time together.
It was a time that was very precious to you.
But for some of you growing up, Christmas was the complete
opposite. It was a time when all of your
problems were sort of magnified. You're broken home.
Perhaps your parents didn't have enough money to buy you presents
and they felt embarrassed at this time.
Maybe. Maybe just growing up or or as
you're a little bit older, you realise you're lonely and you're
alone. Maybe it's a time because there
was just a lot of drama that happened or something went wrong
around Christmas and every year you remember I can't enjoy
Christmas like everyone else because that was when that
terrible event happened. Now, before I tell you what
Christmas was like in my home, I want to say if it's your first
time on this channel, welcome. This is my cup of Joe podcast
where if you see my main channel Off the Curb Ministries, I
produce sort of highly developed, sort of sometimes a
little bit sensational videos all about the Bible and they're
very, very edited. These videos aren't edited.
It's just literally me, you, a nice cup of Joe and some coffee.
And if you can see faces just up in the corner.
These are my friends who have bought these off the curb mugs.
This isn't a money making scheme.
I want to emphasize this. I make 0 profit from this.
It's just kind of a little reminder if you'd like to pray
for us. And it's just kind of nice to
have something physical because everything I do is kind of
digital. But I want to assure you I am a
real person. Sometimes people say that when
they meet me in real life, just a very, very average Joe.
So it's just nice to do that. So if you buy one of them, I'll
send you an e-mail and we'll put your face up here.
If you would like to be there, you can send a photo over or
your mug doing something cool, some kind of cool activity.
So what was Christmas Day like in my household?
Well, for us, it was a bit of a military operation.
You see, here we are. We're put to bed and my parents
are like, do not come downstairs.
They were wrapping presents up till midnight and nothing's
changed. As I've got kids, I'm not
organized either. I'm wrapping presents very late
into the night. You know, we're getting ready
for church. We're putting our clothes on.
We've got all of these different things to do.
And then it comes to the Christmas dinner.
Now, the Christmas dinner, that really is a military operation,
isn't it? You know, you've got to deploy
the carrots. You've got to make sure the
Brussels sprouts aren't overcooked.
No one likes soggy Brussels sprouts.
You've got to loosen the cranberry sauce jar because if
it's too tight then Aunt Mildred can't open it.
You've got to put the roast potatoes in and the Turkey and
all of these different things. And then you've finally got all
of your roast dinner put together.
It's all there, the Turkey, it's all there.
And you sit down to eat. You start eating and you're
thinking, I'm sure there's something missing it.
Alan, is there something missing here?
Steve, is this, Am I missing something here?
We've got the gravy. It's not too thick.
It's not too thin. Everything seems right.
But there's something missing. You eat the whole meal.
You go into the kitchen to start getting the Christmas pudding
ready. And then you look in the
microwave and there in front of you, glaring at you are the peas
that you forgot to defrost. Guys, there's always some kind
of missing ingredient at Christmas.
It doesn't matter how much we try try to prepare, it doesn't
matter how organised we are, we as humans, we always sort of
miss something, don't we? But here's something I want to
ask you, particularly if you've never watched on our videos
before, here's what I want to ask you.
Are you missing the key ingredients, the biggest
ingredient, the huge ingredients of Christmas?
Who am I talking about? Jesus Christ.
Now what are we doing at Christmas time?
Although we know Jesus wasn't born on the 25th of December,
what are we actually doing here? We're celebrating his birthday.
Now can you think of anyone in the world who is not invited to
their own birthday party? Can you imagine if all of your
friends got together, they had a nice meal, they got hats on,
they had all of this party, got dressed up all nice and then
didn't invite you to your own birthday party?
You think that's bonkers, That's crazy.
And yet that's what millions do all around the world.
They love the presents, they love the Christmas tree, they
love the food, they love all of these things and yet Jesus
Christ isn't welcome to to his own birthday celebrations.
He's not even welcome. If you try it with your non
Christian family members. You start talking about Jesus
around the Christmas table. I can tell you right now that
conversation will be shut down straight away.
But why is it such a big deal? I mean, why do we celebrate
Jesus? After all, there's one baby born
every minute, as the phrase goes.
There's babies all the time that are being born.
What is the big deal about Jesus Christ?
I'll tell you what it is in that Manger, in that little Manger,
in that house, in that stable, as we sometimes refer to it.
If those cattle there breathe in the condensations in the room,
it's smelly, it's not glamorous. Mary and Joseph are there.
They're stressed out again. It's not like the Christmas
cards we see. But what was there in that
Manger? That was God in that Manger.
Here is the God of the universe who's so big, he's he's flung
stars into space. There are millions of galaxies
with millions of stars into them.
And yet this universe, as vast as it is, it cannot contain this
huge God. And yet here we've got the God
of the universe and he confines himself into a span.
Here is the God of the universe and he's encased in flesh, skin
and bones. And there he is in that Manger.
Here he is. Why?
Why is that such a big deal? Because so many people have got
it wrong about God. So many religions say that that
God he's, he's too great, he's too holy, he's too wonderful,
and he is all of those things. But they say he could never
condescend. He could never bring himself
down to to be amongst people. Oh, those people were were
horrible. Oh, imagine God living amongst
us. No, God needs to be away from
us. But that's not the God of the
Bible. That's not the true triune God.
This God came down and he took on a skin.
He took on a flesh and he dwelt amongst us.
Why? Because you and I, we've got a
skin, we've got a flesh, we've got hands, we've got feet, we've
got this body. And yet this body has sinned.
So we needed someone to come into this world, to take on a
body, to bear our sin and to be the sacrifice for our sins, but
not anybody. It has to be the Lord Jesus
Christ, God in a flesh who never did anything wrong, who lived a
righteous life and as you know, went from the crib to the cross.
Let me let you into a secret. If I could spend Christmas Day
or the Christmas season anywhere in the world, you know, I'd like
to spend it New York. Now I know what some of you are
thinking. You're thinking I cannot think
of anywhere worse to spend Christmas Day in New York.
I mean, it's so busy, all these people, all these lights, all of
it. Well, for me, myself and I, I
would love that. I love being around people.
I love the lights. Maybe it's from watching Home
Alone. When I was a kid, people used to
say me and my brother look like Macaulay Culkin.
So I don't know. There's something about New York
and, and all of that and, and, and, and Christmas there.
It just really appeals to me like a fairy tale, as they say.
But come with me if you don't want to celebrate there.
Will you just come with me for a second and let's go to the
Empire State Building. Picture this vast building, if
you like, wrapped around in tinsel.
Now, don't quote me on this, but I think there's 103 floors to
the Empire State Building. So I want you to imagine we get
into the elevator and we go ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, all the way
to the top. OK.
Now I want you to imagine that the Empire State Building is a
morality scale. It's a goodness scale of how
good you are. I wonder what you would say.
Where would we put people? Who would we put in the
basement? Maybe we'd put, you know, Adolf
Hitler, all those criminals on death row, all those naughty
people would put them in the very basement.
All them people that oh, you know, they, they send chills
down our spine. They'd be in the basement.
Who'd be at the top of this morality scale?
Maybe you might say Mother Teresa or in my country there
was a guy called Captain Tom who did a lot for the country and
just inspired a lot of people. Maybe he would be at the top.
You know, you've got these kind of people, maybe a neighbor down
the road who does a lot of lovely charity.
They would be at the top. But where would you put yourself
on this morality scale? I think if we're honest, most of
us would say, you know, somewhere in the middle.
I'm not down in the basement, but I'm, you know, I know, I
know myself. I know I've got sort of
skeletons in my closet. I'm not perfect.
Well, do you know where Jesus would be?
He'd be on the moon. His, his morality, his goodness,
his righteousness is in a different realm, a different
world, if you like. He's, he's completely above us.
And let me tell you something else that's kind of shocking.
He also, for us to get into heaven, we also have to be on
the moon in righteousness. We also have to have that golden
standard of perfection. But that's a problem for me and
it's a problem for you because we can't meet that in of
ourselves. And that is exactly why Jesus
came into this world. OK, let me put it another way to
you. So, OK, some of you will be
saying I'm not on Santa's naughty list.
I do try and do my best, OK? I try to be a good person, but
you know you can't meet that standard.
So let's think about this. I don't know what country you're
in. I'm in the UKI need to imagine
my Prime Minister Keir Starmer decides it's Christmas time.
We want to spread a little goodwill to the world.
We want to spread a bit of positivity.
The Christmas is a time where we do nice things.
Let's open all of the prisons in in the UK.
If you're in America right now, imagine Donald Trump says it's
Christmas time, goodwill for everyone.
Let's open all of the prisons right now and let all of the
prisoners out on the streets. What would you think of that
decision? Now, some of you might be
thinking some of those guys in there, they're innocent and I
agree, or some of them have done their time and they truly are
repentant for what they've done. But I'm saying, should we,
should we open the prisons and let everyone on the streets,
even those criminals who aren't sorry for what they've done,
even those criminals who if they get the chance, they do it
again. You say, I'm not sure it's a
good idea at all. Joe, let me take it one step
further for those who think it is a good idea.
Would you let those unrepentant, those criminals who don't care
at all, would you let them come into your house?
Would you leave them alone? If you're a man with with your
wife, with your children, would you let them come into your
house on Christmas Day and stay at your house?
What would you do? I think most of us, if we're
truly honest, would say I'm sorry, there's no way.
There's no way I can let you into my house.
So if you've got rules about who enters into your house, why
can't the God of heaven, the God of this universe, why can't he
have rules about who enters into His house?
And you know what his rule is? You've got to be washed.
You've got to be cleansed by the blood of his Son.
That is the only way you can get into his house, into his heaven.
We're going to come to that in a minute.
But first, I've got another question for you.
So what is my question to you? Well, if I've never asked you
before, I want to know what is your favorite Christmas song?
Perhaps you love a good Carol, Silent Night or In the Bleak
Midwinter, maybe you like Mariah Carey.
All I want for Christmas is you. Or Wham do you remember that
song Last Christmas? I gave you my heart.
Maybe you like The Pogues. I don't know.
What is your favorite Christmas song?
Shall I tell you what mine is? Well, one of my favorite, apart
from the carols. I like this one.
Finish it for me. I'm dreaming of a white
Christmas. Now let me ask you, what do you
think the chances are that we will have a white Christmas this
year? I mean, what do you think the
odds are? I'm not a gambling man.
But imagine we put a bet down. What do you think the chances
are we'll it'll snow this Christmas for some of you?
If you're watching this in Alaska, there's a very strong
chance maybe you're watching it in, I don't know, Minnesota.
Is it quite snowy up there? I'm terrible with the States of
America. Maybe even in Scotland, up in
the Highlands, there's a good chance it'll snow.
But what are the chances? Well, I want to tell you that
every single one of us, everyone watching this right now, we can
100% be guaranteed that you will have a white Christmas.
But it's not in the way you think.
There's a verse in the Bible and it goes like this.
This is the prophet Isaiah, and he's talking through inspiration
of the Lord and he says, come now, let us reason together.
Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white
as snow. You see, snow has a sort of
cleaning effect, doesn't it? I've told you about this before,
I think, but in the street that I used to live on, when I used
to live in a little town called Wigan, as we lived there, it was
our literally our front door as we stepped out.
There was no pavement, there was no driveway.
It was just literally the streets, you know, we had no
way. Everyone just walked on and and
my door was open there. You know, if I open my door, I
didn't know if there was going to be a person right in my face.
And people used to walk their dogs there and you can imagine
what they left. Those dogs left a little, a
little bit of a Christmas present for us all, shall we
say. And some days, me and my wife,
we had to, it was like running the gauntlet.
We didn't know what we were going to step in.
Sorry if this is putting you off your coffee, by the way, but
we're running around, you know. And the other side of it with
this street is people used to drop rubbish.
And at night you'd hear the rubbish collecting in at the
bottom of the street with the wind just turning around.
It was all. Yeah, very classy.
St. And actually, believe it or not,
I miss that house more than any of the houses we've lived in.
It was a lovely time, but when it snowed, this very St. that
was so dirty. That was so, you know, not the
nicest St. It looked like a Christmas
postcard. Why?
Because snow has that cleaning effect.
It makes everything look pristine.
I want you to imagine you go to your local Skip or your rubbish
heap or your junkyard, whatever you call it.
And here you can see, you know, diapers, nappies as we call them
over here. You can see baby toys, you can
see Coke cans, bananas, all this rubbish just piled up in this
big pile here. And you look at it and it smells
and it's horrible. What happens when it snows?
When it snows suddenly, this, all of this rubbish, It looks
like Mount Everest. It looks like this beautiful
mountain. Because snow does that.
It cleans things. Can I ask you, is there anything
cleaner? Is there anything whiter?
Is there anything more pure than snow?
And yet, what does the Bible say?
That the very blood of the Lord Jesus Christ can do that for
you. My wife was an atheist.
I met her actually when I was in a state where I wasn't following
Jesus and I fancied her and we got into a relationship.
But there came a point when I realised we couldn't stay
together. And actually at the same time
God was doing her work on Emma's heart where he was drawing her
as as I brought her to church, something was moving her.
I gave her a Bible and I showed her some passages to read.
And one of them was Psalm 51. And here in that passage, you've
got King David and he's this king.
And if you think you've made a mess, he really botched up, you
know, he took another man's wife for himself.
You know, he had an affair. And then not only that, the same
man, because he wanted to marry this woman, he had him disposed
of. He had him taken out.
He did some terrible things and for years he, I don't know, I
don't understand the story fully, whether he did feel a
sense of guilt. So he was completely guiltless.
He just didn't care at all. But there came a point where
finally the guilt did come upon him, when the prophet Nathan
said, you are that man. You are the one who's done evil.
You are the one who's taken from that man, Uriah.
And suddenly this overwhelming guilt of sin that I've sinned
against the holy God, it came upon him.
And in Psalm 51, David writes these words, Wash me and I shall
be whiter than snow. That is the very verse that
convicted Emma and was the very prayer she prayed out to God,
Wash me and I should be whiter than snow.
I wonder if someone today would pray that very prayer.
Lord God, I've made a mess. Lord God, I'm a Sinner.
Wash me and I should be whiter than snow.
But why is he the one who can wash us whiter than snow?
Because on the cross here we've got this baby, the God man,
Jesus Christ, and he grew up into a man.
He taught amazing things. He fed the poor, he healed the
sick. He he, he was a person that the
common people heard gladly. He said incredible things that
would just just blew the the culture out of out of the world.
He said things like love your enemies.
I mean, imagine if all the the world leaders loved their
enemies. Would we have any wars anymore?
He said things like love thy neighbor as thyself, incredible
things. And yet what did this world do
to him? They took that innocent one and
they put him on an old rugged Roman cross.
There he was crucified between two thieves.
That's the message of Christmas, that here God in a skin was put
on a on a cross for my sin, your sin, the weight of our sin, the
wrongdoing, the things we're so embarrassed of, the things we
cringe at. All of that evil was laid on
Jesus Christ and there God crushed Jesus in our place.
There God poured out all of his wrath, all of his heat, all of
his anger that was directed to us.
He turned it away from us and he confined it.
He poured it out on Jesus Christ.
Why? So that you and I can be
forgiven? Because that blood that was shed
at Calvary that can wash us clean.
The Bible says without the shedding of blood, there can be
no forgiveness of sins. And the one who shed his blood
was Jesus Christ. The Lamb of God died in our
place so that you and I can be forgiven.
And then there is a third part to this act.
You've got the birth of Jesus. You've got the death of Jesus
and then we've got what? The resurrection of Jesus
Christ. This is why we believe he was
God in in that Manger. This is why we believe that he
alone can wash away our sins and wash us whites and snow.
Why? Because he went into a grave and
there he blew death apart. He blew the grave apart.
He did the impossible. He came forth triumphant and
he'd conquered the grave. And that is so important for you
and I perhaps, perhaps this very Christmas, you've heard some
terrible news, you've heard the worst news, and you don't know
if you'll be here next Christmas.
Well, I would say to you, trust in the one who has conquered the
grave, Jesus Christ. Because although things might
look sad, although things might look grim from an earthly
perspective, if you've got your trust in Jesus Christ, you've
got nothing to fear. You've got hope beyond the
grave, and you've got eternal life that waits awaits for you
forever. Trust in him.
Now you can probably tell this message was a little bit
different. It was aimed at non Christians.
Maybe you'd like to e-mail this video to someone in your family,
someone who's not a Christian but perhaps would be open to
listening to the Christmas message at this time.
And I've still got loads of coffee left.
So I just want to give you a little update for those of you
who are sort of friends of the channel and the ministry.
So as you know, this year has been a very difficult year for
us. The Lord's taught me a lot at
the beginning of every year in 20, you know, at the end of the
year, sort of in between Christmas and New Year, I write
out goals. I write out different things
that I want to achieve. I can literally see all of my
goals just behind the camera there.
They're just written on the wall there.
And the Lord taught me, and I knew this already, but but don't
be presumptuous. As the book of James says, you
do not know what a day may hold. You don't know what a year may
hold. Don't say we're going to go this
place and that place and do all of these things.
And the Lord showed me that. I thought I was going to make
loads of videos. I thought I was going to do lots
of different things, exciting things, learn different things.
But I spent a lot of time with my wife grieving and just trying
to get by. So it's been a difficult year.
And so I just want to say a few things in this coming year.
Do pray for us. I've sort of learnt one thing
that's been you might have noticed, I don't know if anyone
has noticed, but if you do watch Off the Curb Ministries, you
might remember I used to cover a lot of kind of more out there
topics, should we say conspiracies and I had good
reason for it. I'll give you an example.
I was in Manchester St. preaching about a year ago and a
young guy called Nick came up to me and said I love your videos.
I watch them so much and actually I believe your videos
are what's leading me to the Lord Jesus Christ.
That very day I was, as I was chatting to him, I said, but
have you committed yourself to Jesus?
Have you done it yet? And he said, no, I haven't.
So that very day we, we said, said a prayer and he asked the
Lord to wash away his sins, to forgive him.
And he, he committed his life to Jesus.
I then stayed in touch with him through Facebook and I told him
about something called Victory Outreach.
Now, what I've not told you about Nick is that he had
terrible dependency issues with the biggest things, the Big H,
you know, he struggled with that.
That's what he really, you know, he kept going back to that over
and over. And he'd had 20 years on this
stuff, OK, And stayed in touch with him and he'd send me
messages like, I just don't know if I'm ready yet.
And I told him about Victory Outreach in Manchester anyway,
about 3 months after meeting. He then did get in touch with
Victory Outreach and just recently.
So the maths isn't right. I don't know how long ago it was
when I met him, but he sent me a message just a week ago saying
Joe, it's been 11 months and I've been totally clean.
I'm being baptized, I've been set free.
It'd be great to meet up again. And I say praise God.
And you'd be amazed at the amount of people who you
wouldn't normally get coming into a church.
They wouldn't have a suit and tie.
You know, people sometimes do. The world would just not even
look at even the people of the world.
They would just walk by and they were coming up to me and saying,
I love you videos. So I've got a reason why I made
these kind of more conspiracy videos because they were drawing
a different audience. And as an evangelist, what I
love to do is get people who've never heard the gospel and share
the gospel with them. So I was doing that, but at the
same time as we've been through this tough year, it's not very,
you know, you can talk about, I don't want to name names, but
you know, there's a lot going on at the moment in that world.
And I could mention these things, I could talk about these
things. But when you've gone through a
period of loss, when you're going for a tough time, you
don't want to be filling your mind with that.
At the same time, when I was filling my mind with all of
these things all the time, it was a distraction from the word
of God. And it was, you know, making me
think in a way that was making me a little bit, you know, just
not enjoying life or we've seen everything so negatively.
And it was it was time that I could be spending in the word of
God. And so I've been thinking a lot.
I don't know how long the Lord will grant me on this earth, but
for the time that's remaining, do I want to feed into people
conspiracies and different things, even if it is to to
preach the gospel or do I want to put good into people, even if
they don't reach as many get as many views, even if they don't,
you know, you know, have as much excitement to them.
I believe the word of God, of course, is the most exciting
thing, but that's what I'm kind of focusing more on.
So where does this all come to? Why am I telling you all of
this? Well, when I started this
channel, it was very much this was my Christian channel and
then off the curb was the channel where I reached
unbelievers. Well right now I'm kind of
thinking should I just stick all of these coffee videos on the
off the curb one? Because really I'm just trying
to hit both non Christians and believers, but I want the focus
to be the Bible. I want it to be just Christian
good stuff because I do believe people will get saved by just
hearing the Bible unpacked. I think that's going to be one
of the greatest ways to do it. And as I said, I want to be
putting good into people and not be a distraction.
Like I will have to give an account before the Lord God.
And if people have suddenly gone off on all these rabbit holes
because I've been telling them about them, that's actually a
very serious thing that I hadn't really considered.
So Long story short, this year's been a difficult year, but God's
taught me a lot of different things, many different things.
And I'm really sort of finding the old Joe again, more St.
preaching, not as bothered about views and subscribers, just
finding the old Joe. And just pray that the Lord
keeps, yeah, just keeps me humble, keeps my feet on the
ground and just guides me in this coming year.
I really do love all of you guys so much and I'm so grateful for
all of you who've had the coffees with me.
As I say, this is my favorite channel, so there is a partner
that just wants to keep it over here and have this little
community here. I just love you guys and you've
been so encouraged and so kind to me and you really did keep me
going in this tough year and then helped me to be strong for
my wife Emma, who was, as you can imagine, has carried this
heavier burden even more than me.
If you would like, if some of you have said I've never even
heard of off the Curb Ministries.
Well, if you would like to see some of these sort of long form
Bible documentaries we've been making and you can click here.
And if you've never subscribed to the channel and you want to
see more to this channel, please do subscribe.
But do let me know your thoughts in the comments section.
I'd love to hear from you. God bless you all and thank you
for your time with me today. And Merry Christmas, I should
say.