Everlasting Father

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

We have a few holidays established in America, and specifically they are established to remember history. So Veterans Day, for example, is celebrated November 11th, and that is the day that World War I ended. Independence Day. It's an obvious example, right? July 4th, that's whenever the Declaration of Independence was signed. Even Thanksgiving itself has this kind of nebulous historical event that it points to, this dinner that was shared among the programs Native Americans, right? But these holidays, the ones that I listed and more, they also have a present-day component. These These holidays have a present reality, right? So Independence Day and Veterans Day, in many ways we are still celebrating the fact that we live in the freedom that Independence Day and Veterans Day gave us, right? For Thanksgiving, we continue to be thankful for what we have.

We continue to be thankful for the fact that we can be united, right? So it's a historical event. It's also a present day reality. We feel both the history and the present reality of these holidays. However, when it comes to Christmas, culturally, we kind of miss the mark. We don't really grasp these and we miss it in two different ways. The first way we miss it is that we only connect Christmas to the present reality that we are in. And the best way to illustrate this, and I love these movies, I love watching them with my wife, but the best way to illustrate this is with Hallmark movies, okay? All right, Hallmark movie titles. Just look at the titles, right? Crashing Through the Snow, Santa's Steak Out, Gingerbread Miracle, My Christmas Family Tree, Making Spirits Bright. Raise your hand if you've seen one of these movies already. Okay, all right. The Brave Few.

Thank you for being honest, Bob Crabtree. Thank you for being honest. These movies, the idea of these movies is to feel Christmas. And so if we're going to feel Christmas, we need to connect it to all of these icons of Christmas, right? Santa, gingerbread, presents, family, fireplaces, snow. These are all of our icons that we kind of wrap around. These movies really, really get on those icons, but you don't see movie titles like, you know, Forgiveness at Christmas, a repentance story. Like, that's not going to make the Hallmark Channel, okay? Or like, When Santa Met Jesus. That's not a Hallmark movie title, okay? You might find that on Vid Angel or something, but you're not going to find that at Hallmark.

And it's precisely because, the reason you don't find that at Hallmark, and I don't want to to vilify Hallmark, but the reason that you don't find those kinds of titles, those kinds of movies on Hallmark's annual is because it's too heavy for Hallmark. That's not really what the message that Hallmark is trying to get at. We miss the history of Christmas because we focus too much on the present day icons. Those present day icons are fine. They're not terrible. You know, Hallmarks, not Satan. It's cool. But we miss the history by only focusing on the present day. We miss it in a second way too. That's the first way we miss it. Second way we miss it is that we connect Christmas to a very thin history. So we take classics like Towards the Night Before Christmas and The Christmas Carol, which is what that's from. That's Tiny Tim dancing. There's Scrooge

watching him kind of dance around. We connected back to a very thin history going all the way back to the 1800s. And when we do that, anytime you do that, what these movies, what these books are trying to do is they're trying to reinforce the virtues of Christmas. So the virtues of Christmas would be generosity, forgiveness, hope, belief in something miraculous. It's a Christmas miracle is kind of the thing that you're going for, right?

And so whenever we connected back to this history, this Victorian era history, we are as, and I'm speaking generally, we as a culture, we are trying to capture these virtues. But without the deeper history of Christmas, without really taking it all the way back, even those virtues are just, they're too thin, They can't carry the water generosity becomes transactional forgiveness. It's really impossible. Hope is just wishful thinking and So whenever you try to connect to these virtues, you just get another version of try really hard at Christmas You don't get a real hope you don't get something to put your heart into you don't get something to anchor into Christmas is just a time to really try hard and be nice my wife and I went out to eat last night and

You know, it's tipping, so it's always a sensitive subject. But, you know, when it's just at the register, I typically only tip a very little bit or I don't tip at all. When it's just this transaction, I get my food and I go sit down. Like, if somebody comes to my table, that's usually whenever I'm tipping. And so, Christie was paying last night, and so she paid for our food and was just at the register. And Christie's the same as me. She typically won't tip in that scenario, but she tipped. She tipped 15 percent. Okay? So now you can know. I'm bragging on my wife. And as we're sitting down, I kind of caught her eye and I was like, 15%, huh? And she goes, it's Christmas. She said, I probably tipped too much to the guy on the border when I went there with my mom. It's Christmas, right? You're just, it's just on the brain. For Christmas, we do, we feel these virtues, right?

We want to tip better, okay? We want to be nice. We want to hold the door open. We want to do those things at Christmas. And, but the problem is if we're, if we're, if they're not anchored in something real, if they're not anchored in a deep history, something that actually happened, not a Victoria era kind of extended metaphor or, or a fable to, to help us, I don't know, remember not to be a Scrooge. It's just too, we have to connect Christmas to a deeper history. The last few weeks we have continued our series on the Messiah, this week's our last week. I mean, we've been looking at how Jesus is the wonderful counselor. He's the Prince of Peace. He's the mighty God. Mighty God was last week. But there is a way to look at those three in particular and really to look at Jesus' life generally. There's a way to do that in a very thin way and to just say, yeah, Jesus was a

great guy. Jesus was a, an exceptional teacher. He embodied the virtues of generosity. He was hopeful. He was really spiritual. He was a peacemaker. And all those things are fine. All those things are true. But all those things together are not, they aren't exactly what Jesus is. They're not the core. They kind of miss the mark. The claim of Christmas is much deeper than Jesus was a peacemaker. A good guy showed us the way. The claim of Christmas is that the Messiah, Jesus, is the everlasting Father Himself. He is God made man. There's not a theologian I know that can explain that very well. And I know some pretty smart guys. I've read wide. It is difficult to explain how Jesus is fully God and fully man. And yet the Messiah is not just the wonderful counselor, the Prince of Peace, the mighty God. He is the everlasting Father.

He's the creator of the universe. And somehow, somehow in Christmas, he's going to take human form and he's going to live forever. And if this is true, it changes everything. So on this last Sunday before Christmas, let's discover Jesus, the everlasting Father. And let's connect this to the deeper history of Christmas. And to do that, we're going to begin in Matthew chapter 1 verse 21. That's where we're going to start. Matthew 21, 21 through 23, and where we find an angel telling Joseph what his child's name is going to be. And even this name points back to the deeper history of Christmas. Matthew 1, 21 through 23, and I'll read aloud. This is the angel talking to Joseph. She, Mary, will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. So we have two names there. If you're keeping score at home, two names. First is Jesus, Yeshua. It's the exact same name as Joshua. So Joshua in Hebrew is Jesus in Aramaic. And Yeshua means the Lord's saints. Salvation comes from the Lord is what Yeshua means. And that's great, that's cool. But still the angel points further back, right? That he's saying that Jesus is God with us and he quotes the angel, the angel quotes Isaiah seven.

Right? And the reason that Emmanuel, right, that second name that we see Jesus given right there, so he's named Jesus, he's named Emmanuel. In Jesus, we see what the Lord is going to do. The Lord is going to save. But when we see that Jesus is Emmanuel, that he's got with us, he's describing what kind of God he is. Not just what he's going to do, but who he is. Jesus' birth is historic because it is a new way

that God is going to save his people. In the Old Testament, God's spirit rested on people, but Jesus is something new. In the Old Promise, God said that he was near to the broken heart of it. Jesus is God with us. Jesus is the everlasting Father. But it wasn't just contained to his birth. So we see this at his birth, that the angels naming him Emmanuel, which means God with us. But if you look at the very end of Matthew's gospel, you don't need to turn there, you can look it up later to verify. Matthew 2820, it's the last verse in Matthew's gospel. It's actually the last line. Jesus says, I am with you always until the very end of the age. I'm with you always to the end of the age. In Jesus' birth, then we see a way that God relates to people, the way he relates to people is fundamentally changed. It doesn't work the same anymore. Jesus coming to earth ushers in something new because the everlasting Father, the eternal God,

is now and forevermore going to be with us like never before. This is what Jesus' birth is about. This is what Jesus' ministry is about, is to see that God is with us in a new way. In Christmas, so we see this in Christmas with both the deep history and the present reality. In Christmas, we have the deeper history because it's a new way that God comes to us. It's an historic fact that Jesus came and he was the God-man, but also it is a new way of God being with us today. the present reality of Christmas. Both of these matter, the deep history and the present reality of Christmas, they both matter. And if we're going to connect Christmas to its true meaning, as Jesus, the Messiah, the Everlasting Father, then we need to look at both. And I wanna look at those quickly. And first, I wanna look at deep history, the deep history of Christmas.

Christmas's deep history begins way before Jesus's birth. And to find it, we need to look at Isaiah. Okay. Isaiah was written 800,000 years, somewhere around there before Jesus's birth, a long time, a couple hundred years. I might be getting that date wrong. I'm going to go 600 at least. Okay. So 600 to a thousand years before. Okay. Isaiah 53 is describing the Messiah. We read about the coming Messiah and Isaiah 53 8 through 9. It's up here. It says, it says, by oppression and judgment, he was taken away and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of living, stricken for the transgression of my people. And they made his grave with the wicked and with the rich man in his death although he had done no violence and There was no deceit in his mouth. Okay, so the Messiah is coming Isaiah is writing about this hundreds of years before it happens Messiah is coming

And this is where we begin to see the the deep history of Christmas It says it it made it his grave with the wicked although he had done no violence The Messiah was coming to die an unjust death on behalf of God's people. The Messiah was coming to do that. When the wise men are looking at the star and they're like the Messiah is coming, they know Isaiah 53. They know this. They know that when they start talking about the Messiah that there's gonna be some cataclysmic event they don't quite understand what's going on but when When they read 53 verses 8 and 9, they're like, he's going to die. In fact, and we've already talked about this a little bit, many people thought there were multiple messiahs. One to come and die for people, one to come and rule and reign. That wasn't just like two or three Jews around the first century. That's widespread. A lot of people thought there were multiple messiahs, even people in Jesus' day.

And so when they read this, they know something's going to happen to this messiah or to one of the messiahs. Somebody's gonna something's gonna happen. He's gonna die this unjust death, but this is not the end We keep reading verses 12 verses 10 through 12 yet Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him He has put him to grief when his soul makes an offering for guilt He shall see his offspring. Let's hang out there for just a second. So So what Isaiah is saying is that the Messiah is going to come, He's going to die, and it's not going to be some, like God's not going to be up in heaven gasping because He didn't anticipate this, right? He's not going to be saying, oh no, I need a plan C. He's going to say, no, it was, this is going to happen according to plan. I'm going to crush this Messiah. I'm going to crush Him. I'm going to put Him to grief. He's going to see his offspring kind of the same way Abraham saw his offspring right way in the future

Didn't really only saw one son, but didn't see his whole nation. Nope We keep reading he shall prolong his days The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Let's keep going out of the end of the day He shall prolong his days He shall prolong his days He shall prolong his days The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand." Let's keep going. Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied, present tense, by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, the Messiah, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Verse 12, therefore, therefore, in other words, when that has happened, after that has happened, therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoiled with the strong because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors. Even though the Messiah

dies, the Messiah, even in Isaiah 53, continues to do things in the present tense. He shall I'll see his offspring. God will prolong his days. He will make intercession for the transgressors. The deep history of Christmas begins here. It points to the fact that Jesus came to be everlasting. Jesus didn't come to just die. He came to be everlasting. Jesus didn't just come to be crucified on the cross. Jesus came to defeat death, to die, defeat death. And then as Isaiah 53 says, to make many to be accounted righteous. Jesus did not come just for us to feel the magic of Christmas, although that has its place. I'll watch a homework movie. No shame, little shame, but I'll watch it. I can do that. I can celebrate the icons of Christmas. It doesn't take away from the birth of the cross or the resurrection or anything. I can do that. But Jesus didn't just come for the magic of Christmas.

He did not just come to show us how to be forgiving and to be hopeful and to be grateful, although He is our model. Jesus came for more than that. He didn't even Jesus didn't even come to announce salvation. Jesus came to be that salvation by dying and rising. Jesus is the everlasting father. And this is how Jesus is our salvation. In Revelation 1 17 and 18, this is Jesus talking. He says, I am the first and the last. I am the living one. I died and behold I am alive forever more and I have the keys to death and hell. Jesus the eternal one, Jesus the Messiah the everlasting Father faced down death and found it lacking. He conquered the grave. And I realize like we celebrate that at Easter. But all that is starting at Christmas. Right all that is the deep history of Christmas Jesus didn't come and then decide it would be a good idea to be resurrected After he died later that was the plan the whole time we see that in Isaiah 53 it was the plan the whole time and

It's not just the fact of Christmas. It's it's actually what makes us Christians The deep history brings us It doesn't just stay in the past. It doesn't just stay in Isaiah 53 or even in Matthew 1. It continues with us to our present reality. The present reality of Christmas. Hear me on this. The present reality of Christmas is more than having yourself a very merry Christmas. Okay. And like I said, it has its place. But if all you do is simply have a wonderful Christmas time, that's all you've got, that's all you're doing. Maybe you're missing the point. Maybe there's something that you're having trouble celebrating. The present reality of Christmas is to celebrate the Messiah as the everlasting Father. He didn't just conquer death generally. He didn't just defeat the grave, you know, non-specifically.

Jesus came to conquer your slavery to sin and death. He didn't just come to be salvation generally, although he did. He came to be your salvation. He offers you and me personally new life, new resurrected life in Him. This is Christmas. This is the present reality of Christmas. It's not a it's not a cheap gratitude. It's not a cheap thankfulness. It's not a hope in something. It's not wishing on a Christmas star. It's not that. It's a fact. It's something that we can put everything into. We can ground it all in the fact that Jesus came to die and was raised to life for us. Because Jesus faced death and found it lacking, there's nothing in our lives, nothing that we need to fear. You know how amazing that is? There's nothing you need to be afraid of. There's no uncertainty, there's no unplanned event that you need to freak out about? This is our present reality. We have an an undefeatable hope that goes

beyond the grave. So now that I've done Christmas past and I've done Christmas present, it's only fitting that we should do Christmas future. What will be your Christmas this year? You get to decide. Christmas is full of routine and And routine is not bad. But the danger in routine is that it can lull you to sleep. You can forget to pay attention to the words in a Christmas carol.

You can forget why you're with your family for Christmas. You can forget why you give gifts. You can forget why you have a tree. You can forget why you put ornaments on a tree. You can forget all those things. And a Hallmark movie will not remind you. And a Christmas carol will not remind you. It might kind of harken to something, but it won't quite hit where it needs to go. Maybe this Christmas, this Christmas. We can connect all the rituals that we have, all the routines that we have. We can connect that to something more substantial. Maybe this Christmas, we can celebrate the Messiah who is the Everlasting Father. I want to encourage you, if you don't do this, I would recommend it to anybody. On the morning of Christmas or on Christmas Eve, either way, my encouragement to you is to read the Christmas story. Pick Luke or pick Matthew, either one. Don't look forward to Mark or John, it's not there, okay?

Just pro tip. Matthew or Luke, that's all you got. Read the Christmas story. Read about Mary and Joseph. Read about the wise men, the shepherds. Read about these people who were longing for a Messiah. Read about Anna and Simeon. Man, you want to get your mind blown. Anna and Simeon were in the temple for years. They were old, so at least 50. Maybe in that day, 50 was old. I don't know. I don't know how long they lived in first century, okay? Just, it's all relative. Don't get your feelings hurt.

They were old. The Bible says it. I don't need to make that up. They were old. They had been there a long, long time, and they had waited for what the Bible called the consolation of Israel. Waited for relief, for hope to come out of a hopeless situation. Israel at the time was occupied by a foreign enemy. And you just need to read a little bit of the Old Testament to understand that when you're occupied by a foreign enemy, then you are not receiving God's blessing. You have not walked in a manner worthy of the Lord, right? You have not followed him, you have not obeyed him. And so as a nation, then you are facing judgment. And this is the mindset of the first century Jews here. We are facing judgment because we are occupied by a foreign enemy. And when they saw Jesus, they had no idea. They didn't know if it would be the end of occupation. They didn't know if it would be any kind of uprising.

They had no idea, but they knew when they saw that baby in the temple and the Holy Spirit said to them, there's the constellation of Israel. Both of them broke out in a hymn. I would encourage you to read the Christmas story, either on Christmas Eve or on Christmas morning. And when you do, man, remember that the everlasting Father came to us. Let that shape, let that deep history shape your present reality and let it shape your future. We're gonna have a time of invitation. I'm gonna call Dan and save you up. We're just gonna pray. We're just gonna sing one song. And as we sing that song, I'm going to be up here, which is about halfway back in the sanctuary. I'm going to be right up here. And if you are interested in making any kind of decision for the Lord, if you need prayer, if you want to be baptized, if you want to join the church, I'm going to be right here.

And so we're I would just encourage you while we're singing make that decision While we're singing Think about what the Lord is asking you to do and respond appropriately This Christmas take hold of what the Lord has already done and what the Lord is doing and what the Lord will do Take home. Let's stand and sing I hear the Savior say Thy strength indeed is small Child of weakness, watch and pray Find in me Thy knowledge and all And Jesus paid adore And all to him I owe. Sten had left a crimson stain, He washed it what is snow, Did I find thy power and thine alone, Can change the leper's spots, And melt the heart of stone. And Jesus paid it all, and all to Him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it what is soon the throne. I stand in Him complete. Jesus died my soul to save. My lips shall still repeat. And Jesus paid it all, and all to Him I owe.

Sin had left her crimson stain, He washed it white as snow. O, under the dead, O praise the one who paid my debt, And raised his life up from the dead. O praise the one who paid my debt and raised his life up from the dead Jesus painted all and all to Him I owe. Then had left a crimson stain He washed it white as snow