Well, good evening, guys. It's good to see you guys.
I'm excited about Christmas on the Palouse.
How many guys are staying here for the whole Christmas break?
You'll be here Christmas. Yeah, there they are.
Man, I love the Palouse.
I love college students.
Don't hear me wrong on that,
but I kind of like them when they leave sometimes.
So yeah, I like getting to hang out here.
In our family, it's become our tradition.
All the rest of our extended family are most of them are back in Texas.
We like staying here over Christmas and not traveling back and just getting to hang out,
just our immediate family and resting.
So tomorrow I'm sleeping in and I've got some chores around the house,
some projects I've been putting off until the break and so looking forward to that.
But I love Christmas. Excited about Christmas and I've been ramping up over the last month.
I'm a guy that waits for Thanksgiving to start the Christmas music.
But after that, I go, yeah, there we go. Thank you guys.
After that, man, I'm all in and so I've got on my favorite Christmas sweater for you guys here tonight.
And I've been working on growing this Christmas beard for you guys.
Yes, man, we have an enthusiastic crowd here tonight.
This was a Thanksgiving beard and then Thanksgiving came and went.
I didn't want to shave it yet and my wife hates it.
So I keep having to come up with new names for it.
So now it's my Christmas beard.
It'll soon become the New Year's beard and maybe if I can hold out a little bit longer.
And then we'll see. Yeah, Easter beard. I doubt it.
So, but yeah, excited for Christmas and excited to get to be here with you guys tonight.
I think every year, it seems like I get older and older.
I enjoy Christmas more and more every year and for completely different reasons than what I used to enjoy it about.
Obviously, when I was a kid, it was all about the presence and I loved getting a stash on Christmas morning
and I just pile it up and look at it and look at all the stuff I got.
And and revel in all my all my loot.
And as I've gotten older, mostly as you get older, you get kids.
Nobody buys you cool stuff anymore.
And so I don't do that as much.
But but honestly, as I've matured more and more in my relationship with God,
and especially I would say over the last 10 years, my understanding of Christmas every year, man,
it is a celebration in my heart of a God who loves us.
And every year I'm more and more convinced of that.
And I enjoy the story so much, love the story so much.
Part of it is because I like to hang out here in the police.
I get to preach the sermon a lot, the Christmas sermon.
So so that's helped me foster a real appreciation and love for the Christmas story and what God has accomplished in this story
that many of us are very familiar with, with wise men and shepherds and stars and angels and all the stuff that we're going to talk about some tonight.
Something else I've been thinking about a lot lately is marriage, actually, had the chance yesterday to go and perform and officiate a wedding for Christian and Haley Moke.
I got married to some of our own resonators, got engaged last spring and got married yesterday.
And I actually chatted with them some and talked with them when they first started dating and I kind of walked with them through some of that stuff.
And so it was a joy to get to stand there with them yesterday and pronounce them husband and wife and and see them kiss there in front of all their friends and family and celebrate that reality.
And so but I had a four and a half hour drive down to Northeast Oregon on Friday and came back late last night.
And so during that time by myself, just thinking about the sermon and thinking about spending time with you guys and reflecting on marriage and the sermon that I delivered to them and and thinking through all of this stuff.
Man, I've just been bombarded with these thoughts of both marriage and Christmas and and really how these things come together in many ways.
And we heard from from Keith last week and some of the Moscow folks two weeks ago, where he talked about the Christmas story in our legendary series and this legendary reality is legendary God who who God who became man, who came Emmanuel be God with us.
And we talked about the CS Lewis quote, how it's the greatest miracle ever.
The the central miracle in human history or everything leading up before that was leading up to God becoming man, God becoming human and walking among among us.
And everything since then in history looks back on this moment that we celebrate every Christmas that God became one of us.
And we talked through that reality last week of if it's as if God were to make himself a worm or if we were to make our self a worm to go and be with worms, God made himself human to come and be with us.
And the gap between us and God is that great.
And Keith talked about some other things along those lines.
He also, if you didn't see that sermon or the one that he preached here last week, I think he's saying Jesus loved and it was it was pretty good.
I listened to it and I was like, wow, Keith can sing.
That's not bad.
So if you haven't had a chance to hear that, you should go listen to it and enjoy that.
So but tonight as we look into this and we think about, as I said, I've been I've been processing through marriage and Christmas and and and really how how there's some similarity.
Between marriage and this Christmas story in many ways, if you if you have your copy of scripture, I want to look at a passage of scripture in Ephesians chapter five, Ephesians chapter five, and we're going to start and just look at a little segment in there and 26 through 30.
And we'll put it up here in just a moment.
If you have the Resonate app, you can open that up and have all the scriptures for tonight on there.
But Ephesians chapter five is sometime a controversial scripture talks about the roles of husbands and wives within within the home or within the family and what it looks like for a husband and wife really become one.
And how do they do that and how they interact with each other in a beautiful passage of scripture when when rightly understood of how this beautiful picture of a husband loving his wife and a wife loving her husband in their own unique ways.
And but in that what we see is a picture and this is this is what Paul communicates in this passage in Ephesians, a picture of what marriage is meant to represent.
And so if you have your scripture, let's read that real quick.
Ephesians chapter five, I'll start in verse 26 and it says this.
So I think that's actually verse 25.
Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her a holy cleansing her by the washing with water through the word and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish.
But holy and blameless.
In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies, he who loves his wife loves himself after all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body just as Christ does the church for we are members of his body.
So broader broader perspective here, Paul's talking to this church in Ephesus and saying, Hey, this is what it looks like to live together as Christians.
Let me give you some specifics of what it looks like.
Those of you who are married, you'll know this and this is what it looks like. So he begins to talk to the marriage relationship because in other relationships that a lot of people would have in that context in that church.
He talks about parent and children and just after this, he talks about the relationship between how they phrase and look at it as slave and master, which would be applicable to our employee-employer relationships today.
Relationships that everybody has.
What is he talking about?
The specific one, the marriage relationship.
He says it's like this.
It's like how Christ loves the church.
He looks to the church to be his own bride and he pursues her and he comes after her and he says, I want to take care of you.
I want to wash you.
I want to get rid of any blemish.
I want to present you with holy and blameless.
You're going to be the perfect bride for me.
And it's kind of this almost if you're not looking for it kind of thing, you're like, whoa, that's that was it took a big turn.
The Christ is pursuing us like we are his bride.
And so as we look at this and we think and put this into the Christmas story, we see that when God is putting this together, you read through the Old Testament account and you begin to see that God's relationship with his people and he would call them and give them instruction and even go back all the way to the garden.
He said, this is what life looks like.
Let's live life together and follow me and obey me and we didn't.
And Adam and Eve didn't do so well with that and it became an issue between them.
Sin came in and it affected the relationship with God and from that moment on, God was all about pursuing us, pursuing humanity.
He began to provide for humanity.
He began to provide way back in the garden when he gave them their first set of clothes.
He gave them animal skins and they put those on and they wore them to take care of them, provide for them.
And then you see this continuous process of God's pursuit and provision throughout the Old Testament.
He looked at many of those through the legendary series over the past couple of weeks.
He provided them the law and instruction on how to live life as he created them to live it.
You look at the Ten Commandments and see those things, this consistent pursuit of them.
And then as you continue to follow through the Old Testament, there's these roughly 500 years of silence between the last words of the Old Testament until you get to the Gospels and Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
And then it's like God says, all right, it's time to go into action.
It's time to execute plan A.
It's time to execute our rescue of them, of our love, of the ones that we are in pursuit of.
And Jesus says, ready to go meet my wife.
I remember when I was, my wife and I, before we were husband and wife, when we first started dating, we were living in the Portland area.
And I was living our first six months of dating.
I was living near downtown Portland and she was out in one of the suburbs in Gresham, if you guys know the Portland area, you're familiar with that.
It takes about 25 minutes to drive.
And so I remember, we'd hang out and we'd work together, we went to school together and we'd spend all of our time together.
And at the end of the day, I would head home.
And so she was living with a family in Gresham and so I'd say good night and then I would drive.
And I remember, man, as the relationship was getting good.
And I remember having all these feelings of like, I really like this girl.
I'm very interested in her.
And I remember leaving her house one night and at that time I was really into, I'm not a huge music buff.
Sometimes when I like find an album I really like, I'll just listen to it over and over and over and over again.
And that whole year I'd moved from Texas to Portland that year and somebody introduced me this album that James Taylor's Greatest Hits.
You guys know that album?
Man, it's so good.
And the first song on there is the song called Something in the Way She Moves.
And I love that song. I thought, man, this is a great song about a guy who loves a girl.
And then I remember playing that song as I was driving home from April's house one night.
And I began to sing it and I was like, I'm singing this about April.
I'm singing about this girl.
And I remember seeing at the top of my lungs something in the way she moves.
Looks my way.
Kind of like screaming it.
Like it was as I was like worshiping to this song and thinking about this girl.
I was all in.
I remember if someone were to pull up next to me at the stop, I'd be like, what is wrong with that?
Something's wrong in this car next to me.
And I remember thinking, I don't care.
I'm just singing it.
And I remember being overwhelmed and taken with this girl.
And my pursuit of her became real.
And we dated for a while and got engaged.
And I remember those moments.
And when we look at the Christmas story, and again, 500 years of silence from God,
no one had heard from Him, no prophets have heard from Him, the people of Israel began to say,
what's going on?
There was all these rumors of a Messiah coming one day.
A Messiah was going to rescue them and bring them out of oppression under the Roman government
and free them and bring them back to their glory days like they were back in David's day and what have you.
So they were looking for this and hoping for this and praying for this.
And it was beginning to stir.
And in those moments, just the right moment, God said, all right, let's do this.
And I always enjoy the picture, this thought of God, the Trinity rubbing His hands together.
If God has hands, I don't know how that works.
But of Him being ready and this expectancy and this excitement of, all right, we're ready to do it.
All right, Jesus Christ, Son of God, are you ready?
You ready?
All right, let's do it.
And they execute it.
And God becomes man.
And He does it in the craziest way.
He becomes a baby.
And I think it's the same way.
If we can attribute these emotions to Jesus of Him saying, I'm ready.
I'm ready to go meet my wife.
I'm ready to go meet my future wife.
I'm ready to begin to prepare her for our life.
I'm ready to draw her to myself.
I'm ready to pursue her.
And really, that's what we see as we look at this passage in Ephesians chapter five.
We see that that's who we are to God, that that's who we are to Christ, that He's ready to come for us.
He's ready to rescue us and bring us back to Himself, to wash us clean of all our blemishes,
to wash us clean of all of our unrighteousness, to take care of that sin issue between us and Him
and blast it out of there and say, ah, now you're perfect and you're ready for me.
And you're white and you're ready to be joined together.
And so it's this picture that we have that we get to experience in marriage.
As I watched unfold some of you guys over there yesterday, weddings you guys have been to,
some of you have been married, you know what that's like, that wedding day when we come together.
And this is preparations for this.
It's as if this was the engagement.
This is the engagement story.
I remember when I got engaged, when April I got engaged, it was May 3rd.
And we were, again, still living in the Portland area.
We'd been dating for a little over a year.
And I'd wrestle with, kind of going back and forth, is this the one for me?
Is this the person I want to marry?
And had these really strong desires that had continued to grow.
And there's something about mature love and immature love.
Mature love, or immature love is sometimes, it's full of the emotions.
It's full of, sometimes you could call it infatuation.
And maybe when I was singing in my truck that night at the top of my lungs,
maybe there's a bit of infatuation going on there.
But even in that, immature love, it ignores flaws.
And sometimes it's ignorant to the bad things.
And so it looks past them or pretends like they're not real or pretends like it's not good.
Immature love, this infatuation, this, it's very full of emotion.
It doesn't see everything right.
And you hear the ideas of not seeing things clearly when you're in love and that whole thing.
That describes it.
Whereas mature love, it begins to say, no, I recognize the flaws.
I recognize the imperfections.
And yet I am going to pursue this person.
And that's true for marriages.
It's true for any time that we begin to love someone sacrificially
and give up ourselves for the betterment of someone else.
It's God type love, mature love.
And so within this relationship with April,
I began to move from this immature love to recognizing that neither of us are perfect.
But I can't not do this.
I want to pursue this person.
I want to love her.
I want to sacrifice for her.
I want to give for her.
And God began to do this work in me.
And so I began to say, okay, I'm in.
I'm going to do this.
So I began to shop for jewelry and began to formulate a plan.
And this is my advice to guys.
I'll give you some to you, those of you guys who,
if you're not married here tonight, if you're not engaged.
Man, when you have the opportunity to get engaged,
should you be given that opportunity?
Man, go all out.
Go all out.
Make it awesome.
Because I guarantee you everything that everyone,
when your future fiance, when she walks around showing off that new bling,
her girlfriends are going to ask, how do you do it?
Tell me the story.
And this is your time to shine, okay?
So you need to think through this.
You only do this once, hopefully.
So go all out.
Make it awesome.
And so that was my goal.
That was my hope.
And so I began to put plans into this and think it through.
And so just outside of Portland, Oregon is Mount Hood, beautiful mountain.
It's like the most picturesque mountain, perfect peak that you can see on a clear day from anywhere in the area.
And so at the base of Mount Hood, there's several lakes.
And one of those is this lake called Trillium Lake.
And so I had gone and scouted it out and took some buddies of mine and went up there and hiked up there and walked up to this lake.
And in the summertime, you can drive right up to the lake, but it was still, there was still snow on the ground.
And so they had the park kind of closed and you had to walk in.
And so I went and scouted it out and kind of figured it out and then devised this whole plan.
And so on E Day, Engagement Day, I called my friends, Keith and Paige Weiser,
and a few of our friends that lived there.
And April was spending the night with one of them that night.
And I said, okay, well, this is what we're going to do.
And we got all the things together and then we executed it.
It was time to go.
And so they got her up early and I got up real early and drove up the mountain and they woke her up and told her to get dressed.
And they told her to get redressed because the clothes she put on initially weren't appropriate for the things she was going to be doing that day for pictures and what have you.
And then they got her in the car and she began to realize something was up.
This is weird why all my friends are taking me somewhere in the car and won't tell me what we're doing.
And so, you know, began to, since something was up and they began to drive her up Mount Hood and about the last three miles up,
they put in this song, something the way she moves by James Taylor.
And so they began to play that and they pull into the parking lot.
And then in the back of the back of the car, they give her her snow boots and her warm jacket.
And they tell her to begin to walk down this trail.
And so along the trail, I placed letters for her and letters I'd written out that communicating to her my desire, my love for her,
communicating how much I loved, how she made me feel, what she did for me.
And then began to communicate to her how much I wanted to love her sacrificially and communicate to her the joys of our relationship together and how I wanted that to last.
And I left a dozen roses mixed in with daisies because those were her favorite flowers.
They're about midway up the trail with another letter.
And then a little bit further at the top of a hill, I left a bottle of water because it was a little further than I thought it was going to be.
And we went back in the summer and clocked it off. It was actually two miles.
And so I made her walk two miles through the snow uphill to get engaged.
Yeah, I didn't really think that through.
I was pretty excited when I was walking and I was like, man, this is like, took no time at all. This is great.
And anyhow, so yeah, she like at one point she's just like, she tells me she stops in the middle of the trail and just starts crying.
She's like, where are you? Another mile, babe, keep coming.
So anyhow, finally the trail comes along and opens up into this dock that goes out into the lake in the shadow of Mount Hood.
And I'm waiting there on this blanket spread out with a cup of hot cocoa, which she didn't want.
She was like hot and sweaty and I'm there and I've got my favorite red shirt on and I'm looking awesome.
And I'm ready. And so she got there and I had another letter written out to her and I read it to her.
And then I got down on one knee and very carefully opened up the ring box and placed her and asked her to marry me.
And she said yes. And it was awesome and had this little like wind up camera that we set up there.
They had a timer on it and snapped a picture and I couldn't find it.
We lost it in the move. I think it's still in the garage somewhere.
But I wanted to show it to you guys. I was pretty, pretty sad about that.
But anyhow, so this beautiful picture of us there in the shadow of Mount Hood, newly engaged.
And then about a minute after that, these two fishermen walked up and like, you guys using this pier?
It's got to ruin the moment. But they're just open to that moment. It was awesome.
And it was so good. And this beautiful moment where, I mean, I went all out.
I did everything I could to woo her and show her how much I loved her to set up this moment where she understood how much I loved her.
And I presented this ring to her to show her how much.
And I said these things and read these things to her and I asked her this question and it was beautiful.
And I always look back on that moment and think, yeah, that was good.
What a beautiful way for us to start off.
And three months later, we got married and we've lived happily ever after. It's been beautiful.
Right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
It was good. It was good.
And when we look at this Christmas story, it's a really good story.
This is God's engagement story for us.
This is insane. All right, guys, I'm all in. I'm all in. I'm going to become one of you.
I'm coming to get you.
All right. And this is how I'm going to do it.
And we look at this story and you guys are familiar. We'll read here in just a moment.
But we look at this story and it is, it is a crazy story. It's almost unbelievable.
And so if you have your scriptures again, I'm going to read this and you're probably pretty familiar.
I'm not going to read every bit of the two segments out of this that you're somewhat familiar with it.
It's a bit lengthy and so get comfortable.
If you want to break open your copy of scripture, you can read long if you want to look up here on the screen.
Actually, it's not up here on the screen.
If you want to close your eyes and just think about the imagery and think about what's going on here.
If you want to reflect on what the parts are familiar, listen for things that you've never recognized or realized were there before.
And let's read this together.
I'm going to start with Luke's account of the birth of Christ.
Luke chapter two, I'm going to start in verse eight and read through verse 20.
And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.
And an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shown around them and they were terrified.
But the angel said to them, do not be afraid.
I bring you good news that will cause you great joy for all the people today in the town of David.
A savior has been born to you.
He is the Messiah, the Lord.
And this will be assigned to you.
You're going to find him.
You're going to find a baby wrapped in clothes, lying in a manger.
Then suddenly a company of heavenly hosts appeared with the angel praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest heaven.
And on earth peace to those whom his favor rests.
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherd said to one other, let's go.
Let's go to Bethlehem.
Let's see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.
Verse 16.
So they hurried off and they found Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying right there in the manger, just like the angels had said.
When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child.
And all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherd said to them.
But Mary, Mary treasured up these things and pondered them in her heart.
The shepherd's return, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.
Matthew chapter two, verses one through 12.
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem and Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi or Wisemen from the east came to Jerusalem and asked,
where is the one who has been born, King of the Jews? We saw a star when it rose and have come to worship him.
When King Herod heard this, he was disturbed and all Jerusalem with him.
When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born.
Bethlehem and Judea, they replied.
This is what the prophet had written, but you, Bethlehem and the land of Judea are by no means least among the rulers of Judah.
For out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people, Israel.
Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared.
And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, go and search carefully for the child as soon as you find him.
Report to me so I too may go and worship him.
After they had heard the king, they went on their way.
And the star they had seen when it rose ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.
And when they saw the star, they were overjoyed.
On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary and they bowed down and worshiped him.
And then they opened their treasure and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
And having been warmed in a dream, not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
A brief segment, the story is even bigger than that.
You go back and read chapters one of both Bathia and Luke.
And then you continue to read on after these and the story just gets more and more rich of all the details.
We see different characters show up, characters you're familiar with.
You've seen them in the nativities, maybe all your life.
There's the shepherds there. There's the magi, the wise men.
There's a bright star over the stable, over the home where they were living.
There's angels showing up to the shepherds.
There's angels throughout the story appearing to Joseph to Mary.
Joseph, sorry, Mary's cousin.
All over the place, there's angels showing up.
In Jesus' engagement story,
he incorporates all these different characters very much on purpose.
We see the supernatural happen.
We see the star that shows up out of nowhere.
They guides these wise men.
We see these angels show up out of nowhere that speaks to these shepherds.
A multitude of angels filling the sky, praising God.
We see again angels showing up to Mary to the members of this family,
communicating what's happened, giving them guidance and speaking into this.
Things like this hadn't happened in a long time.
In just the right moment, God said, all right, let's do it.
It's time to execute it. Let's pursue them.
Let me pursue my bride.
And so he's supernatural.
But at the same time, he's uncomfortably natural.
Uncomfortably natural.
The shepherds, I don't know if you know this about the shepherds,
but first century Israel, shepherds were not, they were not awesome.
They were not considered the cool people.
In fact, they were considered really shady.
Nobody wanted to hang out with shepherds.
They were considered unclean because they lived out in the fields with animals.
And so they couldn't participate in worship in the temple.
They couldn't participate and be with the religious leaders
or with anyone who wanted to be considered clean and worthy
and available to be able to worship God in the temple.
And so nobody wanted to hang out with them and be around them.
Not only that, there was a stereotype that started somewhere,
probably as most stereotypes do, from some truth somewhere,
that they were not to be trusted.
That they were thieves.
They had a pattern of stealing from people and of stealing sheep from people.
And so they lived out in the bushes, out in the fields.
They were unclean. They were untrusted.
They were outcasts.
Nobody wanted to hang out with them. Nobody trusted them.
And yet this is who God shows up.
Uncomfortably natural to these people.
God says, all right, I'm coming and this is who I'm going to tell.
This is who I'm going to tell it about.
The first people I tell the world that the Savior is here
is going to be the ones that nobody wants to hear from.
The ones that nobody trusts, the ones that nobody likes.
They get to be the ones that hear this supernatural birth announcement.
And so these are the first people that come and show up to Christ's side
and worship Him and sing praises to Him.
The shepherds, the untrusted, the outcasts.
These are the first evangelists. These are the first missionaries.
As it says right there, as they left that place, they go out
and they began to proclaim the glory of God.
They began to proclaim what they have heard and seen
and say, you guys are not going to believe what happened.
Everybody's saying like, yeah, we don't believe you. You're a shepherd. You're weird.
Get away from us. You're gross.
Mary, she treasures all of these things and ponders them in her heart.
She's enjoying it and she's like, this is crazy.
I didn't say what Joseph is doing, but I'm imagining he's like,
oh, why are there shepherds here? What are you guys doing?
Like, he's getting bowed up. He's like, hey, there's my family. What are y'all doing in here?
And then there's animals there, assuming they're somewhere where there's a feeding trough.
And there's manure. And Jesus is wrapped in cloths,
whatever they could find swaddling clothes.
And they placed him in a feeding trough.
He's at the bottom of the bottom. He's at the low.
Right after this, it talks about eight days later, they go to the temple
to give sacrifices and to worship.
On behalf of this new child they've been given
and for him to be circumcised and to do that ritual.
And the scriptures say that if you can't afford to bring a lamb to sacrifice,
you can bring two turtle doves.
You can bring two doves, and that can be the sacrifice.
Jesus' family, that's what they bring. They didn't have a lot.
He was born into a very poor family.
This is how God said, yeah, this is my birth. This is my engagement story.
Isn't it awesome, guys?
And there's the wise man, the Magi.
These guys, they weren't even from around there.
These guys were outsiders.
So back in those days, astrology was essentially considered a science.
A lot like astronomy, looking at space, looking at the stars,
looking at the planets and watching these and following them
and seeing what they do and from that and go beyond science
or whatever, but for them this was considered legitimate.
They would look for signs from the heavens.
They would look for signs from God. They would look for omens.
They would look for things.
There were many people who were considered wise people who would study these things
and they would try and look for information that they could communicate to leaders.
And you see this throughout the Scriptures, especially in the book of Daniel.
You see actually Daniel learning to do this and learning these ways
as he went into exile, into Babylon, and this is what they did.
And so probably maybe that's where these wise men came from, somewhere in the east.
And they show up. They've been following the star.
And if you catch this, they knew something more just than,
hey, there was a star and we thought it was weird so we followed it.
There was a star and we knew it was the star of the king of the Jews.
There have been rumors throughout and you can see this in other historical documents
in other places that stars often, as they understood, communicated the coming
or going of a great man or great person or great leader, a great king.
When Julius Caesar died, there happened to be a supernova at that time.
They look back and astronomers, they look back and they see this
and it happened at that time and people have written about it.
And so, man, something great happened. Look, a great king died.
And that gave them some clout for a little while, I guess.
But it carried on this idea that astrologers knew it was up.
And there was this idea that out of, there was this ancient prophecy
that out of the Near East, out of the Middle East,
a great ruler would rise up from somewhere.
And these guys, these wise men had heard this, knew this
and they were looking for it.
And this something happened in the heavens, whether it was a random star shows up.
Maybe there's another supernova, other scientists,
there's some thoughts of like, at that time in history,
I think it was Jupiter and Saturn or something were in alignment
and got super bright in the sky.
And so, they began to follow this and they show up and, hey,
we're here to see the king of the Jews.
We saw a star.
Clearly, there's something going on here.
Herod's like, wait, what?
There's another king.
I'm King Herod.
I didn't hear about this. Yeah, tell me all about that.
Tell me all about it.
You guys go find him.
Report back to me.
I'd love to meet this guy.
And if you continue to read on, he wants to kill this guy.
Jesus had just been born.
There are already people that hated him.
There are already people that wanted him dead.
And these magi show up.
And while the chief priests and the people, the consult that Herod consults,
they're already, they're not the ones who show up to worship their king.
But these outsiders, these guys from another place,
are the ones who show up with these precious gifts,
these really high dollar gifts, gold, ringing, sense and myrrh,
stuff that smells good and you know what gold is.
And so, they present this to him and they worship him.
They fall down on their knees and they worship.
These outsiders, these outcasts,
this is part of, this is part of God's,
this is part of Christ's engagement story to us.
What does this mean?
It means something.
I promise you it means something.
Here's what you need to know.
This is what it communicates about our God.
This is what it communicates about our Christ.
This story communicates that our God is not afraid to get dirty.
He's not afraid to set aside the glories of being God.
Beautiful passage in Philippians chapter 2.
It communicates how Jesus did this, how he did it.
He didn't give up the essence of God.
He was still very much God, but he chose to forgo utilizing those powers,
utilizing those gifts to put on humanity.
And he walked among us so that he could be with us,
so that he could pursue us, so that he could woo us.
And he walked among us and he did things,
but he did it just like we're called to do it.
And complete obedience to the Father through the power of the Spirit.
That's how Jesus did what he did.
When he did amazing things, when he taught amazing ways,
when he accomplished miracles, when he saw into the hearts of men,
it was through the Father speaking to him and the Spirit communicating to him
and working through him.
And as he did that, he pursued us.
And the things that he did reveals to him, reveals to us who he is
and what his character is.
And so as we look at this, the people that he chooses to be,
he chooses, he comes not, he could have done this multitude of different ways.
He could have just showed up and said,
Boom, I'm here guys. I'm the Messiah. Let's do this.
And like a big shiny light or whatever.
And so everybody could see it, but he doesn't know.
He just, very quietly, not a whole lot of people hear about it.
In some manger, somewhere where there's animals,
because there's no room for him in anyone's guest house or any inn in town.
There's no room for him in their lives.
And he shows up quietly some night.
And the only people that hear about it are the ones that nobody trusts,
the ones that are outcasts.
They get to be the first ones to come and see.
What just communicates to us is that God loves the humble
and he's not afraid to be humble.
What just communicates to us is that God loves the outsider.
The ones that nobody expects to be blessed.
He says those are the ones that are blessed.
And one of his first initial teachings in Matthew chapter five,
the Sermon on the Mount, it's called.
He says all of these people are blessed.
You look at them and say, they're not blessed.
The ones who are broken hearted, the ones who are sorrowful,
the ones that are beat up, the ones that are outcast.
He says, yeah, those are the blessed ones.
And they're day and age.
And if you or I were to say, hey, all right, let's execute a plan
that's going to put someone into human history.
It's going to literally change the world at 2,000 years later,
a third of the human population going to follow this guy.
It's going to change governments.
It's going to change entire nations.
It's going to, he's going to be one of the, the greatest person
to ever walk the face of the earth.
If you were in charge of that, if you were running that PR campaign,
you'd make it a big deal and you'd want all the powerful people
and all the people with the money and all the people who with clout
for that birth. No, God says no.
Let me show you the people I care about.
The ones that nobody expects, the ones that nobody wants.
And the outsiders, the ones, they don't,
it doesn't seem like they belong here.
Should they be here? I don't know if they should be here.
God says, yeah, they should be here.
Those are the ones that should be here.
Those are the ones I'm after.
The ones that think that I'm not good enough.
I'm not in the in crowd.
I'm not blessed at those are the ones I want.
I'm pursuing them. I want to woo them.
What this says to us is that he's okay if we have issues.
He's okay if we're not perfect.
What this says to us is that we need to be okay with that reality.
To recognize I've got issues. I'm not perfect.
Sometimes I'm the outcasts.
Sometimes I'm the one that doesn't belong.
And really we all need to take it one step closer
to the place we're able to say to look at God and say,
God, I recognize I have an issue. I have sinned.
I have been disobedient against you.
There is separation between you and I,
and you are calling me back to you.
And you've done everything you can to come before me
and said, hey, are you in?
To extend an invitation and engagement.
Do you want to be a part of my family?
Do you want life? Let me wash you clean.
Of all your blemishes, of all your sins,
let me present you as holy and blameless.
But you never get there if you don't realize you have issues.
Sometimes Christianity gets a bad rap in the world today
and, yeah, Christianity, that's for those people
that don't have it together.
That's those people with all those issues
that they screwed up their life and now they got trying to figure it out
so they go find their religion or whatever.
That's not for me. I'm doing all right.
I'm in college. Let me look at my life.
I'm a college graduate. I've got a solid job
and things are together,
and my friends like me sometimes,
and my life's under control.
I don't need God. That's for those other people.
As long as you think that,
as long as that's the real that's going on in your head,
as long as those are the thoughts that you're processing through,
you won't be blessed.
You won't be invited in to meet your Creator.
You need to come to, we need to come to a place.
You need to come to a place where you recognize you have issues.
You need to recognize that you're a shepherd,
that you are dirty, that you are not trustworthy,
that you are an outcast.
Because in your heart, if you were to be honest with yourself,
in this moment, you would be able to say,
yeah, I've got issues.
I put on a good front and I fake it a lot.
I've fooled some people in life.
They think I'm a good dude. I think I'm a good person.
In your heart of hearts, you recognize,
yeah, that's not true of who you are.
Sure, you can always compare yourself to someone else
and say, well, I'm better than him. I'm better than her.
Yeah, that's not what you compare yourself to.
Unfortunately, what you compare yourself to is a holy God who is perfect.
Who you compare yourself is this Christ who did it right,
who lived the human life without sin,
without any separation from the Father.
He did it right. He did the human life as it was meant to be done.
That's who you compare yourself to.
When you do that, you don't stand a chance.
You're the shepherd. You're the outcast.
You're the wise man who doesn't belong here.
And God says to you, yeah, that's who I'm after.
When you come to the place where you're willing to humble yourself,
as Christ did, following His example,
saying, look, I don't have it together.
I know I've got a sweet sweater on, but this beard is sweet.
That engagement story was awesome.
But I've got issues.
This Christmas story is meant to get your attention.
It's meant to get our attention.
Look, when I tell my engagement story,
when I'm talking to a guy and I'm telling, hey,
all right, you're thinking about getting engaged,
you got to do it right, man, you got to do it up.
Why? So that people think you're awesome.
This is your chance to shine and to woo your wife.
And for her to be like, I'm proud of my husband
and I want to marry him and spend the rest of my life with him.
Sounds arrogant, sounds weird, but essentially that's what God's doing.
He's saying, guys, I'm after you.
I'm pursuing you and I want to woo you and I want you to know
that I'm going to do everything I can to come to you
to make you holy and blameless and draw you to myself
that you may have life and have it to the full
and have it eternally that you may live in the light
no longer in the darkness.
I'm coming to rescue you, he says.
And he's waiting for you to say yes.
Yes, I will respond.
Here's the deal, as we look through Scripture,
this comes out of a book that I was reading this week
and a guy named John Stott, Basic Christian,
and he says there's three responses to Jesus.
As you look through the accounts of Jesus,
as he interacted with people, people were either terrified
and they wanted to run away with him, run away from him.
Or with him, no, not with him, run away from him.
So they were terrified, he would say crazy things like,
hey, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood,
you can't be a follower of me.
And they'd be like, what? That's weird, I'm out.
And others would be like, okay, that is weird,
but I'm intrigued.
But the ones that would run, they'd say, yeah,
this is too, I don't get it.
Or the guy like the rich young ruler when Jesus said,
you need to give up everything, you need to humble yourself
and realize you don't have it together, you have issues,
you need to give it all up.
And he said, I don't know if I can do that.
And he takes off.
So either they're terrified and they're not in, they run away.
Or they hated him and they wanted to kill him.
Again, it started off the moment he was born.
King Hare is like, another king, I'm going to smash him.
I'm going to kill him.
The rest of his life, there were people trying to kill him.
So the moment he starts his public ministry there,
those are like, what's he saying?
That's not okay, he's messing stuff up.
It's not okay, it's not okay, let's kill him.
And now his followers, beginning in Acts chapter seven, eight,
Stephen, he's the first martyr.
And since then, the followers of Jesus have been being killed
for the last 2,000 years.
So either they're terrified of him,
you hate him and you want to kill him,
or you worship him and you believe him.
And you believe that he is who he said he is.
The fact that those early disciples believed who he said he was
and they were willing to go to their own death
because they believe this truth
communicates that there's something to this.
There was something to this man, there was something to this person.
He was more than just a teacher, but he is who he said he was.
And so our response is either you need to recognize
that you're not okay with that and walk away,
or you're going to hate it.
You may spend your life trying to destroy him and his message,
or you worship him.
Let me tell you what is not a reasonable response.
A reasonable response is not, I guess,
a tepid, unenthusiastic halfway.
Like, yeah, it's interesting. Christmas, yeah,
it's the old Christmas story. Yeah, it was fun.
Got to hear it again. Yeah, all shepherds and wise men.
Yeah, that's not okay. That is not reasonable.
If your response to Christ and his engagement story to you
is like, yeah, that's whatever.
Shoulder shrug.
That is unreasonable. You need to check your heart.
The God of the universe is in pursuit of you.
He's calling you to make a decision.
Yes, will you say yes to his pursuit?
Will you be engaged?
Or will you say no?
Will you turn away? Will you hate him? Will you be anti him?
What I love about Christmas break in our environment
is that we're in college town.
I know many of you are working, but even you get a few days off.
You may take a few days off.
For many of us who are students,
maybe you're students, you have some time off.
You have a time to break.
We have the opportunity to respond to God's engagement towards us.
As we come back to this story every year,
and we think about God as pursuing after us,
you have an opportunity to respond.
You may have said, oh, I did that.
I responded when I was 10 years old.
I responded three semesters ago.
I've already become a Christian. I'm good. I'm all set.
This needs to continue to stir in your heart.
I don't know what my engagement story does for you,
but every time I tell it, man, I get excited.
It stirs up this greater and greater love for my wife.
Last night, I was driving back,
and I put in that CD or played that song,
Something in the Way She Moves.
I said, just for old times' sake, I'm going to scream this out.
I did, man. I'll let it go.
In fact, I've been a little hoarse today because of it.
I was excited. I was remembering all these thoughts.
And that should be as you hear this Christmas story.
This needs to do something in you.
You need to respond to God's engagement to you.
And here's what you do when you respond.
You don't just go like, oh, man, what a good story.
Well, on to New Year's.
Wonder what I'm going to get for Christmas?
No, no, no. This needs to stir in you.
This needs to bring you as He's done everything He can
to take steps towards you.
You need to respond by taking steps towards Him.
So as you have time over this break,
I want to encourage you to take some steps towards God's engagement to you.
Maybe it's making that initial statement,
saying, okay, God, I'm going to say yes.
You've been pursuing me all semester.
You've been pursuing me for years.
It's been made clear to me now that you are after me.
I've got issues, and you've shown me through this story,
even or through something else that He's speaking to you in.
And He's after you.
You recognize that you have issues,
and He says, yeah, that's who I want.
You recognize you have issues, and you need me.
And maybe you need to respond to Him for the first time ever.
Maybe you need to do that here tonight.
You have the freedom to do that here tonight.
Or maybe here tonight, you need to say,
God, I'm going to engage you this break.
I don't have anything to study for.
All I've got to do is watch movies and veg out on Netflix
and hang out with family.
And He's saying, yeah, that's fine. Do that.
And why don't we spend some more time together?
Why don't you get into His specific revelation, His word,
where He has communicated this story of His pursuit of you.
Just spend some extra time in His Scriptures.
Just spend some time in prayer over this break.
Just set an alarm on your clock
that every day at this time I'm going to pray,
even if it's for five seconds or five minutes or an hour.
I'm going to commit to praying and engaging Him
just as He's engaged me.
I'm going to humble myself and realize my time is not so important
that I need to waste it over the next two weeks.
But I'm going to allow Him to pursue me
and I'm going to engage Him.
So what is God calling you to do? What is He saying to you?
What are you going to do about it?
We've gathered here tonight.
There's this small group of resonators here.
They're on the Palouse for Christmas.
And God is saying, hey, I want to pursue you.
I'm wooing you. Come to me. I've got some things to show you.
We're going to come and we're going to sing a few more songs.
We're going to sing some Christmas songs.
And maybe, again, very familiar with these songs.
But I encourage you to look at these words.
To ask God, God, woo me.
Stir in me.
Remind her how much you love me.
And if God is saying, respond to me for the first time ever tonight,
I'll be in the back.
If you want to chat, you can do that.
If you have another friend or a family member
or someone else that you want to talk to that you're here with tonight,
talk with them.
Be willing to respond to God's voice in your life here tonight.
Let's pray.
God, we thank you for your pursuit of us.
Thank you that you are a good God who's not willing to leave us on our own.
That you are a good God who knows that we need a rescue.
God, we thank you that you have pursued us.
That you've broken into our times, you've broken into the darkness through this amazing story,
this crazy story.
That you've communicated that we are just the ones you are after,
the ones who are broken, the ones who need a savior,
the ones who don't have it all together.
God, bring us to that place.
Stir in us.
Worship, Father.
Worship of you.
May we experience life as is intended to be experienced as we worship you here tonight.
God, we thank you and ask these things in the name of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
