Well, good morning.
You may be seated.
So we're in our fourth week of Advent.
Advent is the season, the church season leading up to Christmas.
And so it's the last Sunday before Christmas Day.
The other night we walked out of a friend's house.
We were there for a Christmas party, and we walked out of our friend's house.
It was really cold out.
I think it was about a week and a half ago or so where it was really, really got really cold, and it was really cold and it was really crisp and it was clear out.
And we get outside, we walk down the driveway, and I had not done this for probably two months is kind of what I figured.
I looked up.
Have you ever done that?
You know, it was at nighttime, by the way.
But have you ever done that where it's just been months?
It's just actually been months, you know, and you had just have not looked up.
And it probably had been two months, and on this night it was really cold, really crisp, and really clear out.
And we're just walking the car, and I just I just happened to look up.
And there's just there's just stars, just stars everywhere, right?
We tend to forget that they're all up there.
All of these stars, and I can't even see stars really where I live, thank you to Kennestone's really well-lit parking decks.
Um, but up there are all of these galaxies and nebulas, and I learned this week about the Eagle Nebula.
Anybody know about that Eagle Nebula?
No.
Okay, well, I learned, I'll tell you a little bit about it.
It's 7,000 light years away.
So a light year, well, just to understand how fast light travels to review, uh I had to review, Googled a little bit.
And so light travels one second can go around the earth uh seven and a half times, okay, in one second.
And so a light year is how fast light can travel in a year.
Not like a minute, you know, a minute would be 60 times seven and a half times around the earth.
And so we're going, oh wow, that's really far.
That's just a minute, not so we're talking hour, day, no, not a week, not a month, a year.
So how far can light travel in a year?
And so then 7,000 of those away is this nebula, and it's filled with 8,100 stars.
What's incredible about this, as I was reading about, is this nebula is actually creating new stars.
Like there's more stars coming out of this nebula that's that far away.
And then out of all the universe, there's somewhere around at 70,000 million, million, million stars, but there's more stars all the time going out, and then the universe in general is is growing.
Now, what it's growing into, I don't know, right?
Like, how is the universe what's the universe growing into?
What is space growing into?
Like, what is that?
What's on the other side?
Uh it's just but we know it is expanding.
All right, so you get all that, and then you read something like Psalm 33, verse 6.
He breathed the word.
So he breathed out the command, he breathed out the creativity, and all the stars were born.
So out of God's being and his creativity, yes, in the glorious process, we're yay science, we're not like anti-science, you know.
Out of the glorious process that's going on in the nebula, out of that, all those materials and that process, God breathed out of his intelligence and his creativity.
He breathed this process, this ability for this type of majesty to be occurring.
And I was amazed with myself.
Last week, I had a Duraflame log and a lighter, and it took me 10 minutes, and I started a fire, and I stood back like I had really done something.
I had really, look what I have done in my home.
I have provided fire for my children, and we will gather around and read a Christmas story.
You know, I was so so impressed, so impressed with myself.
70,000 million, million million stars, and there's more being added.
And then I read this week science writer David Blattner, sure you're reading a lot of science writing this week.
He was saying also, so that many 70,000 million, million, million, if you take 10 drops of water, not big drops, not talking big drops, we're just talking like little baby little little eye drop drops, tiny little drops, 70,000 million, million, million molecules inside of 10 drops of water.
See, we're sort of my point, we're surrounded by vastness.
Above us, around us, us, we we are incredibly designed.
We are, we walk in this brilliant design.
And this is just point number one before we get into this Matthew chapter one.
And this is point, God is beyond us.
We we can't always get our arms around around this imaginative, intelligent design.
The universe is growing and we don't know what's growing into.
I can't get my arms around that.
I have a hard time with that.
He is beyond us.
So there's some mystery here.
Can we just embrace a little mystery here?
Even if you're a mathematician, even if you're into science and logic and reason, I'm incredibly reasonable, but there's some mystery here that I can't quite get my brain around everything.
I can't Google everything, right?
Like I can't get everything.
And then we read this Matthew 1 that Rachel read to us about God coming into his design, Emmanuel.
So if there's something more than just the physicality of this world, if there is something more than just physicality, then can the designer choose to come into his design to reveal something, to help us with something?
And maybe this is how we can get our arms around a designer that can seem so beyond us.
Last week I was at home with my three-year-old little girl, just me, and it was her, just the two of us.
It doesn't happen a lot.
Asked her what she wanted to do, and I was thinking more like, hey, go color in the playroom and I'll do some chores.
Like I'll be productive and you'll color.
This was my idea of quality time.
It was not her idea.
She had already broken out this little guy here.
Oh, not that thing.
She'd already broken this out for us.
It's brighter than it used to be, Candyland.
It's a little bit brighter.
Same premise.
It's not real bright.
It's not it's not real smart.
It's not a smart game.
It's not risk, it's not trivial pursuit.
The peppermint pass is the big moment.
Like that's really the big moment of the whole game.
And it's right at the beginning, to tell you the truth.
Right at the beginning.
Either you hit it or you don't, and it's over.
That's it.
Peppermint pass, that's the big moment.
But in a miracle, in a miracle, I get on the floor and play Candyland.
And it's brainless.
I know, it's brainless.
She's convinced she's good.
She's pulling like double oranges, double blues.
I'm like single blue, single orange.
I mean, but she's killing it.
She is killing it after one after the other.
She's killing it.
And I'm slowly learning, what I'm slowly learning is in these moments, with my three-year-old, which by the way, yesterday, uh, she also is walking around the house uh cheerfully singing, oh, don't let us adore you.
Just as as sincere of a heart as you could.
Child number one, we would have taken her to a counselor.
Child number two, we would have had like Christy's mom's group come lay hands on her and her future and the covenant family of God, and is it secure?
Child three, we just laugh and she's walking around.
Don't let us.
We're not gonna adore him for Christmas, we're not gonna do it.
So we're playing Candyland.
She's killing it, double blue, double orange.
She's convinced she's so much better than me at this game.
I'm getting a little upset, I'll be honest.
I'm not liking this.
I'm not.
I would like to be at least even with her and then let her win just at the last moment, but I don't like being demolished.
Peppermint pass already occurred.
I don't get to have that break.
So here I am in this moment, and I'm learning.
I'm learning.
I need to sell out to these moments.
And I'm and I say learning because if this happened yesterday, me and Candyland with my little girl, it probably wouldn't have happened.
I was moody yesterday.
I don't know, it was rainy, I don't know, Christmas funk.
I woke up, I was moody, probably wouldn't have gotten on the floor and played Candyland yesterday.
But in this moment, I was on the floor and I'm learning, I need to sell out fully in.
No exit strategy, no cell phone on the side, like she doesn't see it.
You know, none of that.
Fully in.
And what I'm talking about is coming into her world.
That's her world.
Candyland's her world.
It's the same thing when I was 10 years old, and I'd ride my schwin down, schwin.
Anyone have a schwin?
It's just a fun word to say, by the way, schwin, if you're depressed, just say that a few times.
It'll spark you up.
All right, so I'd ride my schwinn down to the tennis courts, and my dad would play tennis several times a week.
And I'd ride down there 30 minutes before his match, and he would play tennis with me for 30 minutes.
And he was a grown man, and I was a 10-year-old boy, and he was so much better than me at tennis.
But he acted like those games were everything.
And to me, that meant everything, right?
Because for so much of my life, my dad's untouchable, right?
He's a grown-up in a grown-up world.
But this is incarnation.
This is what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about incarnation, candy land, tennis, whatever.
I'm talking about incarnation, coming into somebody's world.
Incarnation is the act of being made flesh for someone to know you.
And now I'm on the floor playing Candy Land, I'm accessible.
Or my dad's playing tennis with me.
He's accessible.
See, it's a movement of love, is what incarnation is.
And so verse 23 of Matthew 1, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.
Emmanuel, we sing it all the time, right?
We say it all the time around Christmas.
Emmanuel, which means God with us.
This is point number two.
Point number one was God is beyond us, but point number two is God is with us.
He breathed the stars.
I don't get it.
The whole universe growing, don't get it.
But Emmanuel is something I can get.
I can look at the person of Jesus and see how he loved people and treated people and what he did with his life, that he was our substitute on the cross.
He took all of our shortcomings, our sin and our shame, and it's on him.
And he gives us his righteousness.
We're made beloved and we're secure by his work and not my work.
So tomorrow I wake up free to honor him, free to honor him, and not tied into a moralistic religious thing, but just gratitude.
And if I screw up, I'm forgiven for it, and I can just, I'm right, I'm still secure as a child.
I can look at that, I can look at him, at Jesus.
So this name Jesus, by the way, is a common name back then.
It's the name Joshua.
Joshua is this guy in the Old Testament who helps the people become free from their slavery and from wandering.
Anybody need that?
Does anybody need freeing from slavery and from just feeling like you're wandering about?
And that's what Joshua did in the Old Testament.
And then Jesus gets the name Jesus, but there's lots of boys named Jesus.
There's lots of boys named Joshua.
This name Emmanuel is something different.
Nobody was given this name.
I mean, this is like me, this is like me having a boy in the name of Abraham Lincoln Masterson, right?
Like just like a little pressure, just a little, to live up to a standard of doing some good things with your life.
I mean, this is this is saying so much more of a child than anybody would dare to dream.
And what these names together they say to us about this child is that God is present and God is freeing.
And Mary would have heard this, all this, this story for her would have meant everything because for centuries prophets had been talking about how God would come amongst her people.
And the prophets are speaking for God all through the Old Testament.
You have all these, you have the minor prophets and the major prophets, and they're speaking out to this tribe, Mary's people, and they're telling how that one day God will come amongst them, and God will come for them, but also for all people.
And Mary's people weren't perfect, far from perfect.
That's the great thing about reading the Old Testament.
It's so far from perfect.
They complain, they worship other gods, they fight their own fights, they go by their own logic and their own reasoning, and they get captured, they get ran off by the Assyrians and taken, and they get Babylonians and the Romans, and then this little tribe.
They're beggars at times, they're in exile at times.
Through Cyrus and Ezra, they come back into their own land, they're taken over by Alexander the Great, taken over by the Greeks, taken over by the Romans, and they had a rough run of it.
And all the time the prophets are speaking to them and saying to them, hey, you're loved and you're precious, you're far from perfect.
You need to repent.
You're trying to self-save and run your own life.
You're far from perfect.
You screw things up big time.
You need to see it.
Do you see it?
That's what the prophets are saying.
I just summed up all the prophets.
There you go.
You don't have to read all of them.
That's what it is.
And these people have all this stored up in them, this history.
And then from Malachi, the last prophet in the Old Testament, to these words coming to Mary, 400 years.
They've been waiting.
No prophet.
Nothing.
Just distance.
Silence.
When, God, where will the relief come?
Anybody's ever felt like that?
Where would the relief come?
When will the relief come?
That's what these people have lived with for 400 years.
And then this happens.
You're greatly favored.
You're gonna have a son.
This is gonna be the rescue for your people.
It's gonna be the rescue for all people.
God with his people.
My grandmother granny died a few months ago.
It was a stressful week for us.
I have to talk some about it.
We hosted my whole family in our house, in a couple houses right around us.
And so that meant all the meals for about three or four days were at our house.
And so Christy's organizing, like where people are sleeping, is there's sheets there and towels there and food there, and then also food in our house, and all the meals at our house.
And then I'm I'm the minister for the week.
And so I'm you know planning the funeral and handling the funeral.
So I'm grandson, I'm son, I'm brother, and I'm doing the minister thing.
And I show up to the funeral on that day, and uh you're showing up as a all these different roles, it's it's weird sometimes, and but I got in my mind every I just have to execute.
I have to execute as a it's an execution type of day.
Like you gotta execute all these things to do, and I'm in charge to make sure it runs.
And so I'm showing up sort of in that mindset, and I get up on uh the stage there, the the funeral home, uh chapel, big holy chair up front, and she loves those holy chairs, and I get to sit in the holy chair, and uh you know, so separate from everybody else, we're different, and so sitting up there and just running through everything I need to do.
There's not a lot of people there, not a lot.
My grandmother was it was 93 years old when she passed away.
A lot of her friends had already passed.
So a lot of my mom's friends were there, a lot of some family friends, and I get up to do the introduction, and I stand and I look out, and and back in the back was my friend Brian and my friend Kevin.
They're indicator, 45 minutes from here, they're suited up.
They go 45 minutes, they barely know my grandmother.
Right?
And they're there and they're suited up to exist in a space with me.
That's incarnation.
To come into somebody's world.
Right?
This is the profound truth of Emmanuel, that God would come into your world.
And I told Christy after the funeral, I said, you know, I I never, I missed it.
I don't know, maybe I wasn't taught it, maybe I just I missed it.
I missed why you go to a friend's family member's funeral.
I never got it.
And you go because of incarnation is why you go.
Even you you might not even know, you don't know that person who passed away, but you show up for your friend because showing up, the incarnation, showing up means everything.
To play Candyland means everything.
Because to go into another person's space is an act of love.
This is why Christmas is the place where we know God's love is not abstract, it's not just a philosophy.
God makes it concrete for us to know in a person, in physicality, in Jesus, to reveal to you that in all things He's chosen to be present.
And Jesus, yes, he dies, he resurrects, and then we have the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit that lives in us.
And so whether the human emotion of the day is like feeling it and connected, or whether you're moody and you're sort of huffy or not, we don't always have to wake up every day and just take like the temperature, our spiritual temperature and our moral temperature, and then base our validation, our standing before God on that.
We get to base it on, oh, there's a concrete love that came toward me 2,000 years ago in the person of Jesus, and his work is what I base today on.
And I'll be moody and huffy today, but I'm secure by his work.
And you know what happens?
The heart gets freed.
Transformation starts to begin.
And sometimes you'll be moody and sometimes you won't.
But you're secure because God is always with you.
The Spirit of God lives in you.
Do you remember the story in John 4?
We talk about it a good bit here.
There's this poor woman.
This poor woman, and she's at a well during a day.
Being at a well during a day, and back in the ancient times, was it was an odd thing because it was hot.
You didn't go to draw your water during the day.
That's so the fact that she's there during the day, she's probably hiding.
Like she's she's she's ashamed.
She wants to avoid people.
And then Jesus, as a Jew, is there and she's a Samaritan, and these two races, the Jews were on the social status way above the Samaritans.
And so Jesus, when he speaks to her, this is a step of love toward her, and he asks her, he says, Hey, will you give me a drink?
And she's like, Hold on.
Like, first off, somebody's speaking to me, and he's a Jew.
Why would a Jew speak to me?
And she's going, Do you know who I am?
Do you know that I don't have it together?
I'm not religious elite, I'm the wrong race, I'm the wrong look, I'm the I'm the failure, I'm the ashamed one.
If you knew Jesus, you wouldn't move toward me because nobody would move toward me if they really knew me.
Right?
She speaks all of our fears there in John 4.
But he knew.
He knew everything.
And he knows everything about you how exhausted you are, how broken you are, all the way you cover up, you cover that up so people don't see it.
But he knows all that.
He knows why you cover up, and he knows the thing behind that.
He knows why you're a control freak or you're you're you're apathetic or you're an approval junkie or why you're considering that affair that's gonna cause so much destruction.
He knows about all that.
He he knows how and why I hold my cards really close to my chest with people, and I let people think they know me, but I'm I don't really let them know me, and I'm not sure if I want to let them know me.
And he knows how I do that and why I do that.
And he knows, and he stays because he manuel.
God is with us.
And point number three there in verse 21 God is for us.
He will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
Newsbreak, you and I, we're not perfect.
We are sinners.
Your sweet Nana.
Sweet Nana's a sinner.
Newsbreak.
Sweet, your sweet little baby, sweet little baby, sinner, okay, sinner.
Um Donald and Hillary, sinners.
Okay?
We're not gonna we're not gonna take sides just saying both.
Both are sinners.
Sorry to break the news.
Your liberal Facebook posting cousin, she's a sinner.
Also, your moralistic judgmental mother, sinner, both.
Both are sinners.
Truett Kathy, not a sinner.
Not, he's not.
Not a sinner.
Everybody else.
Everybody else is a sinner.
Except Truett.
Even Truett's a sinner.
We don't know how yet, nobody knows, but somewhere, somehow.
And Jesus takes us past our behaviors, and he takes us into our hearts.
And that's why it doesn't matter how how kind and great somebody looks, they're still a sinner because there's stuff going on in our hearts that are not honorable.
We act kindly to somebody, but in our hearts we're judgmental why nobody else is kind to that person.
Out of a hurting, scrambling, frazzled heart comes harmful behaviors.
Out of a sinful heart comes sinful behaviors.
And all of this is self-saving.
Whether we're self-saving by running from God and doing our own thing in a hedonistic way, or whether we're self-saving in a religious way, and we're going to build our own report of righteousness to hand to God, either way is rebellion from God saying to you, I'm the Savior.
And the good news is you don't have to work or achieve your way out of your shame.
The good news is you don't have to be your own savior.
It's an exhausting, it's a role you can't play.
And Jesus came to take our sin upon himself in that great exchange of humility and love toward us, where he fulfills all justice.
Fully just God.
And he's taking on all of our sin.
So there's no gap between us and God, there's no relational disconnect, that the Spirit of God can reside in us, and it's not by our work that's ever been done in the past or today or the future, but the work Jesus has done for us, so we are fully secure, righteous children of God.
So, my brothers and sisters, may you know that God is beyond you and He is with you and He is for you.
Jesus Emmanuel.
Let's pray together.
God, thank you that while we cannot move toward you, and we are dead in our sin and self-saving methods, you came and you continue to come toward us.
And that while we are still sinners, you died for us.
We thank you for Emmanuel, the incarnation.
That while you're beyond us, you chose to be with us.
Would you help us with our faith as we love to turn to our own word?
Would you help us do that?
Place faith in you greater trust in you with a greater word of Jesus.
Open our hearts.
In Jesus' name we pray.