Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / December 24, 2023 | Christmas Eve 2023

Transcript

December 24, 2023 | Christmas Eve 2023 · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Merry Christmas, everybody.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I have one of those core memories about Christmas.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Jeremiah.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it's we would start um Christmas Eve at one of my grandparents' house, and we have these plates uh that were my great-grandmothers that each one of them is slightly different.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're China, and and they they tell uh the story of uh sort of the Christmas carol, if you will.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we would have soup on these these plates, and it was a soup and south sandwich buffet, and then we would stay up very late, and then we would that night go to another grandparents' house in town, and that's where we would go to sleep.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I remember waking up that morning, Christmas morning, in that grandparents' house, um, so excited because I knew that uh the presents were in the living room, right?
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so I can still picture it, right?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I walk out and I take a right, and there's just this straight line uh out to her couch, this like emerald green couch where normally the presents were kind of stacked.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so I have these wonderful core memories about Christmas.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, a Christmas is a great time for us to have these kinds of memories.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that you have some of those too.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: It could be, maybe it's not like mine, but it's family, or maybe it's great food or or time together.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it is the presents, maybe you're one of those like few families who have the endurance to do elf on a shelf every single day, right?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever your family's relationship with Santa is, the idea of giving presents to kids, though, is the one thing that I think endures for all Christmas, which is that little kids, um, and I'm just gonna say little kids because I don't want to, you know, include any of us in the excitement of presents, though that may be the case.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: But little kids opening up gifts on Christmas morning, it is one of the most present and obvious ways that we see joy.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, when it comes to the Bible, it talks a lot about joy.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: God likes to talk about joy and the way that we get it, what it sounds like, what it looks like, how we would receive it, and how we would keep it.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the apostle Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, he includes joy as one of the fruit of the Spirit, meaning that those who have a relationship with God are people who show joy all the time.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: But the relationship with God that we can have is a kind of joy that doesn't just sort of come and go on Christmas.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's a joy that is able to last forever.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is actually a message that an angel proclaimed to some shepherds outside the in the fields near Bethlehem about 2,000 years ago.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: The angel came to them and in the same region, right, these shepherds.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: They were staying out in the fields and keeping watch at night over their flock.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: But the angel said to them, Don't be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Today in the city of David a Savior was born for you, who is the Messiah, the Lord.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: This will be the sign for you.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: You will find a baby wrapped tightly in cloth and lying in a manger.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: So we we have skipped over the part where Jesus has been born.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: That was earlier in Luke chapter 2.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so, baby Jesus is in a manger, and he's lying there, and Mary and Joseph are fawning over him, as well as all the animals that might be nearby.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this sweet child, uh, though most might not recognize it at that point, the greatest event in human history has just occurred.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And outside of Mary and Joseph and the sheep that were in the inn or the donkeys or whatever they were, the first individuals that get to hear about this message of the Savior are these shepherds.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let's talk for a second about the shepherds real quick.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, traditionally, shepherds, uh, when this message is talked about, they're normally, you know, discussed in a true way in that they were not necessarily, it was not the most envious job in the world.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was dirty, they're sleeping out in, you know, just the fields.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: They're watching the sheep to make sure that they aren't taken by any predators or thieves or things like that.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, let's just say that in order to get one of these jobs, there wasn't a lot of competition.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the individuals who might have been there maybe didn't have the best reputation.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so, because of that, the shepherds, sometimes this message is shown, and there is a truth to it, that God, look, goes, comes to the humble.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: He comes to the low, he comes to those who really should have been, according to the world, the last people to hear about the message of a Messiah.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: But instead, God goes to them first.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: But there's another side to the shepherds, which is the fact that God loves talking about shepherds in his word.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: You have, in fact, even King David, Jesus' ancestor, who was a shepherd himself.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: He was a shepherd, and he was out in the fields when he was called to the front lines to go be with his brothers in their battle against the Philistines when he goes to fight Goliath.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it's a shepherd's weapon of a sling and a stone that he uses to fell the giant.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you can talk about that.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: You could also talk about all the different ways that God uses the idea of a shepherd to be the way that he describes himself.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: God is the one who cares for his people.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: He walks with them, he loves them, he protects them.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: God loves to call himself a shepherd.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, later on we'll look briefly at a moment when this little child, this Christ, the Messiah, when he grows up, and he ends up calling himself the good shepherd.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: So it's to these shepherds, it's to this low group of people that have great significance that God values highly because of what they're doing, that the message first comes.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: But as this message comes, the shepherds weren't ready for it.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: You can only imagine you're out there in this field and uh you're falling asleep at night.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're staring up at the dark sky, you can just see all of the stars, you can hear the sheep, you can smell the sheep, and as you're laying down, just a megawatt, you know, light pops on about 10 feet away from you, and coming straight from an angel of the Lord.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: You would be shocked too.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: I would be.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And apparently they were scared what they saw, but this angel comes and gives them a different kind of message.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Says, Don't be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Today in the city of David, a Savior was born for you, who is the Messiah of the Lord.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: This will be the sign for you.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: You will find a baby wrapped tightly in cloth and lying in a manger.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: You might not know this, but the word gospel literally means good news.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is the first time the gospel message is shared.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so these shepherds they receive something that is good news.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this good news, though they don't get all of the details at that moment, they're told a number of things.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: They're told that in the city of David, this child has been born, and he is the Messiah.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, right?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: The Bethlehem is where King David was from.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: But now they also hear that there's a Messiah, and he's just a couple miles away, and he's laying in a manger, kind of an unassuming place for the Savior of the world to lie, very humble, not exactly what you would expect for a king being born, but the Messiah is wrapped in a cloth and a feeding trough just a couple miles away.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: But these shepherds, they hear Messiah, right?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And what do they expect?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if they were like anybody else during that time, they would have expected the Messiah to be one that was going to rescue them from the Romans.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: He was going to change their world and was going to lift them up out of oppression like God has done for his people so many times before.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: But what they didn't realize is that the victory that Jesus had in mind was a little bit bigger than that.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was not just true joy, freedom from oppression from the Romans.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: It'd be temporary.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, some other group, sadly, would probably oppress them once again, would put them into hard circumstances.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: No, the victory that Jesus had in mind was one for the entire world.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: The angels say that this is true joy that is going to be present.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so, roughly 33 years from that night, in the manger, Jesus sacrifices himself on the cross to die for the sins of the world as a substitute for the punishment that we deserve.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so, this gospel that the shepherds are receiving, this good news about true joy, it's not the kind of joy that they might have anticipated, or frankly, they might have even hoped for at the time.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: How could they even imagine what it would be like to say that you can have true joy forever?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Not just a temporary freedom, but an everlasting freedom.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: So these shepherds, though, what's kind of funny is they end up becoming the first evangelists.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: So they go later on in the story and they go into Bethlehem and they find the baby.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently it wasn't too difficult.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: There weren't too many babies and mangers at that time.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And they go in and find this baby.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And they're amazed.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And they fall down and they begin to worship him as their king.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Not understanding, right, the message that is truly going to be proclaimed later on, but at this point, just knowing that he is the savior of the world, as an angel from the Lord said.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: So these shepherds, they know that he is the Messiah, but they also know that this message is for all the people.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was not just for the shepherds that night.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so what they do is they leave the inn, they leave the manger, they leave Jesus behind, and they begin to go and tell everybody else.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: These shepherds, right, presumably near the darkness of night, are going out and saying, Don't you know?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you know that this Messiah has been born and he's just over there?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the people go, Where?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: In the hay?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, Yes, that's exactly where he's at.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Our Savior is over there.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And there's great joy that they get to have.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And this great joy has come because not only to them, but to the world it has been revealed that God's plan is coming to fruition.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: His plan for all time to redeem his people, to save them out of his love for them.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: The proof has come forth this night.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus was a sign of God's faithfulness to the world.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: John 3.16 says that God so loved the world that he sent his son.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so this little baby, it is where we receive our true joy.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: But it is not just for the shepherds.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: The shepherds are not the only one who gets to go and find this baby in the manger.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it's for you and I as well, for you and me.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: We get to go and look upon this baby.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because the truth of the matter is just as the shepherds were in need of a savior, so are we.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: You and I, we've uh we've messed up.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: We have sinned.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're rebels in God's kingdom.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: No matter which way we want to cut it, we have fallen short of his standards.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: We were created by a just and good God.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And again, no matter which way you want to cut it, at points in our lives we have not been just and good.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so, because of that, because we he is righteous, we have been separated.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Our relationship with God has been broken, and Jesus was the sign that all of those things were coming to an end.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: That anybody who would trust in Jesus would be able to experience life, and in fact, life to the fullest.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: It is not just about salvation.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Too often Christianity just becomes about how you might be saved.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: But in fact, if we go back to the idea of the shepherds, it's Jesus later on who talks about being a good shepherd.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is what he says in John chapter 10.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: He says, A thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: I am the good shepherd.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is the section in John 10, obviously, where Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And what the Good Shepherd does, like all good shepherds, is he protects the flock.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: He makes sure that they're safe.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: He lies down with them, he puts their interest before his own.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: He guards them against any thief or predator that might be coming their way, and he makes sure that they are able to move on safely without any worry.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is what a shepherd does, and this is also what Jesus does as the good shepherd.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny that the message first given to shepherds, right, that they would understand more than anybody else later on what Jesus is saying about his own work.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus is not just here to keep people safe.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: He's not just here to make us comfortable.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: He's not here for a get out of jail free card.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: He is not just here to make us feel peace, though all of those things are true in their own way.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: What Jesus also provides is life.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And as he says here, he wants us to have it in abundance.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus came so that we might have this life.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: That we would, like I said, not just be saved, which is amazing and astounding and shocking in its own way, that God would ever love us enough to send us his son to die for us so that we would not have to experience the pain of loss.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: But also that when we trust in Christ, that this joy that the angel was talking to the shepherds about is something that we can have in our lives as well.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need to wait to have true joy.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And listen, there are a lot of things that we pursue in this life that we think are going to bring us so much joy.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And they do for a time, but it is not ultimate, it is not everlasting, it is not the kind of joy that is going to persist.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Only the true joy of Jesus.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Talk about him, baby lying in a manger, it seems improbable, but it's true.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: He represents and is the founder and perfecter of our faith, and he is the one who draws us close to God so that we can experience this true joy.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: The reason why you can have true joy when you think about Jesus is because you were made, you were designed, you were created by God to have a relationship with Him.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And because of our loss, because of the mistakes that we have made, that relationship has been broken.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's only through Jesus that we can have not only safety, but we can also have this abundant life.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the question becomes do you know the true joy of Christmas?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, tomorrow morning we have a one and a half year old, and uh you better believe I'm looking forward to him opening presents, right?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to pull out tissue paper, he's probably gonna shove some of it in his mouth, right?
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: He's gonna be running around, he's not gonna be paying attention.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: The world is just chaos and excitement to him at this point.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I am so excited to look forward to I'm looking forward to that, I'm ready for it.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: But listen, uh his joy, which will be present and active, is only going to last for a little bit.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: When we talk about kids and the joy that they have on Christmas, right?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's say they're older than my son.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: What is it?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, two hours until the joy of opening presents begins to fade a little bit.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Two days before they put down their favorite Christmas toy for the first time, two weeks, and still they've kind of forgotten that Christmas happened at all until two months later that they begin asking for next year's Christmas present, right?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: There's it's natural, it's not anything against them, right?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's a beautiful thing to experience the happiness and joy of Christmas morning or Christmas Eve, however your family celebrates it.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: But what is absolutely true is that it will eventually fade.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because there are many things in this life that don't satisfy us fully.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: There are many things in this life that are wonderful and fun and beautiful.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking forward to some food too, right?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Looking forward to some family time.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking forward to seeing all of these things, but eventually it fades.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: So here I am, Tristan Green, not trying to be the Grinch, right?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: But simply trying to say that we can both celebrate Christmas and all of its wonder and all of its magic, if you're into that, and all of the feelings of joy.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't help that it's raining right now and be a little bit better if it was 30 degrees colder and there was snow coming.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: But regardless, we can still celebrate all the wonderful things about Christmas while also understanding that the only way that we are ever going to experience true joy is by accepting Christ as our Savior.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: As a final thought, this is what I leave with you, right?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: That there are many things in this life that are going to satisfy us temporarily because they are temporary things.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually they fade.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: The only way that you can have a joy, a true joy, that is everlasting, that does not fade, is by trusting in something that is everlasting and does not fade.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And what is everlasting and does not fade are the promises of God.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the promise of God is that you might be saved, and that you would be saved if you trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior, that you would repent of your sins and you'd say, I've messed up, I've made a fool of myself, I've been a rebel in his kingdom, just like everybody else.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that you would turn to him and accept the gift that was promised to those shepherds on that Bethlehem night 2,000 years ago.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Who could have imagined, right?
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: They were tending sheep earlier that day, and then later on they are told that they are the first witnesses outside of the parents and the angels to see the greatest event that the world has ever known.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing to think about these shepherds.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're in many ways low life, at least the way that people would have thought about them.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: But the greatest Christmas gift that could have ever been given was receiving the gospel first.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it is those shepherds then who go and tell other people, and it is those shepherds who would understand later on the words of that angel.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Presumably, they lived the life of Jesus and later saw the one that they witnessed in the manger dying on a cross for the world.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, This is what true joy is.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's the message that God has for us today.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: His joy endures.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: It is a good news of great joy that was for all the people.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope you'll do that this Christmas.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: That you would celebrate all the wonder and beauty that God has given to us just about the holiday that we get to celebrate.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: But that most of all you would, I guess I would say, lay the foundation, that you would focus on what is most important and understand that you too can have a joy that lasts all year long, not just during Christmas, by trusting in Christ.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Would you bow your heads and pray with me?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we come before you today.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: God, we thank you for Jesus.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you for that baby in the manger.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you for his death on the cross later on.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for how you have blessed us, how you have saved us, how you have given us the opportunity to experience true joy all year long.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we ask that you would give us these things.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, and you would help us to understand that by trusting in you we might experience these things.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: God, I pray that everybody would have a fantastic Christmas.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: They would be able to celebrate, enjoy time with family, good food, celebration.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: But Lord, that you would help us all to know the true joy that comes from Christ.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's in his name that we pray.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.