Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Sometimes our perspective on God is shaped by our hurts, by our disappointments. And maybe Christmas has some of that feeling for you. Maybe there's been Christians in your life who have said or done things that make you view God through that lens of hurt, disappointment, discouragement, loss.
[00:00:34] I hope a little bit today I can illuminate a bit more about the grace and mercy that God extends to each one of us. I hope that maybe I can help you see that God's loving attitude is really directed to to you, not to just the whole world, but to you by name. This season of Advent, the word simply means arrival. We're anticipating the arrival of Jesus. That's what this means. And Advent, though, is really the stages, the culmination of God's pursuit of us. He's after you. But if you have a bit of a warped view, a cynical view, a hurtful view of who God is, to hear that God's after you, it's kind of like, better watch out.
[00:01:29] But that's not his attitude. It's Emmanuel.
[00:01:33] God with us, the culmination of Advent. He wants to be with us. He wants to be with you. God loves you. He digs you. Turn to somebody next to you and just say, God's into you. He's just into you. That's okay. Go ahead. Galatians 4 says this. When the right time came, God sent his son born of a woman, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. Advent is God's adoption plan, unfolding the final stages. Adoption is deliberate. It's planned. It's complicated. It's often pretty darned expensive as well.
[00:02:16] Like an adoptive parent, God's pursuit is relentless, and it is, without question, immovable. He has made up his mind.
[00:02:28] He's for you.
[00:02:30] In John one says that the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth, not full of anger and judgment and rejection. It's super good news. God became a man. It's called the Incarnation, which really just means in flesh, God in a body.
[00:02:57] He came for you and I. In Psalms 18, it says, you have stooped to make me great.
[00:03:04] Now, scholars refer to that as the Great Condescension, which really simply means to come down to someone, but not to come down on someone, to come down with someone. It's like if you're going to talk to a child and you want to communicate, you want to connect. So you get down on a knee and you get down eye to eye and God comes down to us to come close.
[00:03:33] Angels announced the arrival. We heard the kids read a couple of those verses. When the time was right, God acted.
[00:03:43] And today he's still pursuing us.
[00:03:49] The point of Christmas isn't just that we would remember an event, but it would remind us that he is still active, he's still ready to act with us. And for us today, he's pursuing us. Today, it's time. The time is right for what?
[00:04:07] Well, I'm glad you asked. A couple of things. Number one, it's time to release my fears.
[00:04:13] Anybody have any fears, any worries, any concerns? Lots of phobias out there.
[00:04:21] Clowns, spiders.
[00:04:28] I hope I can say this one right.
[00:04:32] Arachbotrophobia. It's not right, but you don't know.
[00:04:39] It's the fear of having peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth.
[00:04:45] I had a dog with that phobia and it was very fun to watch.
[00:04:49] I had phobias as a kid, 6 years old, trying to pass my tadpoles swimming test. But I was afraid of heights and water and in order to graduate you had to jump off the high dive and swim to the edge. And I was frozen in fear in my little 6 year old Speedo on the high dive in Forest Grove, Oregon. Just literally I couldn't do it. I was that kid inching out and finally they just took one of those long poles and knocked me off.
[00:05:25] There was a long line of kids behind me and they had to keep it moving. They wouldn't get away with that today. But you know, we were playing on jungle gyms, on asphalt, so you know, that was nothing.
[00:05:38] There's plenty of fears to go around on that hillside outside of Bethlehem a couple thousand years ago and as there are today.
[00:05:49] What are you worried about? Global chaos. The economy, health, marriage, kids, terrorists. I kind of repeated myself. Kids and terrorists there.
[00:06:02] Luke 2. Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared to them, appeared among them and the radiance of the Lord's glory surrounded them. They were terrified. But the angel reassured them. Don't be afraid. That's where he starts. Don't be afraid. There are 365 fear not statements in the Bible, one for every day of the year. Now, hopefully you didn't like double up and you've used all yours already. At this point in 2024, God doesn't want to scare us into heaven.
[00:06:35] He doesn't want us to live with fear. He wants to adopt us. He wants to love us. That's his heart and attitude toward you today.
[00:06:44] First, John 4 says such love has no fear because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for the fear of punishment. And this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. If you're afraid of falling short of God's love, you need to experience his God love. But God's love, but we, we're afraid to maybe step into that. Will I be disappointed?
[00:07:11] Will I be let down? Is he really there?
[00:07:16] His perfect love evicts all fear. Maybe you've seen the movie Saving Private Ryan. Tom Hanks is Captain Miller. Matt Damon is Private Ryan. And by the way, spoiler alert, but you've had 26 years to see the movie, okay? So too bad at the conclusion coming last scenes of this movie, Captain Miller has led a team to go and find Private Ryan and get him off the front lines because his three other brothers have all been killed in action.
[00:07:53] And they've got to save Private Ryan from the same fate so that this family doesn't lose all their sons. Well, they get down to the end there. And now Captain Miller's dying.
[00:08:08] And as he's laying there, Private Ryan standing over him, and he looks up at him and he says, earn this.
[00:08:16] Everyone else is dead almost from the whole company to save this guy. And he says, earn this. And then the closing scene is an old man at a grave in Normandy, Captain Miller's grave. And he's, he's crying and he turns to his wife and he says, am I a good man?
[00:08:36] He spent his whole life trying to live up to and into this sacrifice. He was trying to earn it.
[00:08:44] We don't do that with this grace and mercy of God. We can't earn it.
[00:08:52] It's not earnable. For a long time as a Jesus follower, this has been kind of one of those big struggles for me, is really believing that God's unconditional love applied to me. I was always trying to earn it, good enough.
[00:09:12] And I still bump into it at times. And it's absolutely anti gospel to try and earn this.
[00:09:22] And you might think you're not worthy of God's love. Well, that's true.
[00:09:29] Sorry. You suck at times. Okay. You do.
[00:09:32] It's not about earning it. You're not going to be good enough.
[00:09:38] Okay, back to the angels in Luke 2. Don't be afraid.
[00:09:43] I bring you good, good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Savior, yes, the Messiah, The Lord has been born today. In Bethlehem, the City of David. The good news is you matter to God, as is right now.
[00:09:59] He knows what you did last summer, and he still loves you.
[00:10:03] He loves you right now. You can't do anything to cause him to love you more or less.
[00:10:11] He loves you fully and completely right now. He brings you good news, and it's for everybody. I don't care if you're Catholic or Jewish. Presbyterian, four square, Buddhist, Baptist, atheist. Jesus didn't come to bring religion.
[00:10:28] He came to love you.
[00:10:31] And it's not. He's not particular about who he invites. I mean, look around the room, look down your row.
[00:10:41] Everybody's in.
[00:10:43] Shepherds needed to hear this. They needed to hear. Everyone was invited in because they were considered unclean by the religious leaders.
[00:10:52] And yet they. They were the ones that heard this announcement of the birth of Jesus.
[00:11:01] God came down to come close. It's time to release our fears.
[00:11:06] It's also time to receive forgiveness.
[00:11:09] Today, a savior is born to you.
[00:11:13] How do I let Jesus save me? It's really simple. I admit that I need a savior.
[00:11:19] It's that simple.
[00:11:22] My friend Rick retired not long ago. He was the lieutenant of lifeguards in San Diego. And one time he told me, this can't save someone who's thrashing around trying to save themselves.
[00:11:34] So you swim out, and then you keep a little distance. You arrive, but you don't jump right into the rescue or they'll drag you down.
[00:11:45] And so you wait until they surrender and then you can save them.
[00:11:53] You know, I spent a lot of time trying to save myself, trying to earn it, trying to be good enough on my own when I needed to do was surrender.
[00:12:04] A religious leader named Nicodemus came to Jesus by night because he didn't want anybody to know. And. And he was asking about his teachings and what was happening and how does this whole thing work. And Jesus said this to Nicodemus, for this is how God loved the world. He gave his one and only son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him. Not to condemn, but to save.
[00:12:33] Jesus came to resolve our guilt, not load us up with guilt, so that we would do better.
[00:12:40] He didn't come to condemn you, but to transform you.
[00:12:44] And the only thing that is transformational is love.
[00:12:50] And the perfect love of the perfect God is the most powerful, unconditional, transformational love available.
[00:13:02] There was another guy he bumped into, guy named Zacchaeus. He was going through a town and this guy Zacchaeus was vertically challenged, couldn't see beyond the crowd, and he, you know, climbed a tree so he could get a view of Jesus. This guy was hated by his community. He was a IRS agent.
[00:13:24] And I love that Jesus. These guys show up occasionally because he knows that throughout all generations people will go, oh, I get it.
[00:13:32] They're hated.
[00:13:34] That's good.
[00:13:35] So when Jesus came by, he looked up at Zacchaeus and called him by name, Zacchaeus. He said, quick, come down. I must be a guest in your home today. Now pause. I must be a guest in your home. Everybody is going, what?
[00:13:49] He's going to go and hang out with that little tax collector.
[00:13:56] He's been ripping us off. And Jesus is going to go and hang out with. So they does that. There's all kinds of riff raff at this home. They're having a big party. And at some point in this, Zacchaeus makes a statement that says, I'll give half of what I have to the poor and anybody I've ripped off. He says, if I've ripped anybody off. Yeah, well, remove the if.
[00:14:17] I'll pay it back.
[00:14:20] And Jesus says, salvation has come to this home today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham. For the Son of man came to seek and save those who are lost, not those who are perfect.
[00:14:36] Heaven is not going to be filled with perfect people. It's going to be filled with forgiven people.
[00:14:43] Zacchaeus made room in his home and then in his heart for Jesus. The prophet Hosea spoke to Israel in about the 8th century BC and his words echo forward to the shepherds in Bethlehem and to the snowboarders in Bent. He says, this now is the time to seek the Lord that he may come and shower salvation upon you. It's called grace.
[00:15:17] You'll never earn it. You'll never deserve it.
[00:15:21] God isn't waiting for you to clean things up before he loves you. He's not waiting for you to get that habit under control. He's not waiting for you to make everything right relationally in your past.
[00:15:39] He's loving you now. And if we step into it, we'll actually have the power to do some of those things.
[00:15:50] But if we wait, it's never going to work. I mean, have you ever known somebody that cleaned their house before the house cleaners come?
[00:15:58] Don't look to your right or left.
[00:16:02] It's a lot of wasted effort.
[00:16:06] Don't clean up. Give up, surrender to God's grace filled pursuit of you surrender to that pursuit.
[00:16:20] We can respond by making room for Jesus.
[00:16:25] That's our part in this joy to the world. The Lord has come. Let earth receive her King. Let every heart prepare him room.
[00:16:35] It's the right time. It's the right time to receive forgiveness, but you have to receive it. You have to take that step in your own heart and receive forgiveness. Now, you may have been a Christian for a long time, but I've had so many conversations over so many years of people who have held on to their mistakes so tightly that they couldn't let Jesus get close to them because they just couldn't forgive themselves.
[00:17:08] This work of incarnation, death, and resurrection is more than enough to deal with your mistakes, your sins.
[00:17:24] It's time to receive forgiveness. And then we're empowered, and then it's time to rebuild relationships. There's an old Peanuts cartoon where Lucy says this to Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown, it's the Christmas season. I think we ought to bury our differences, forgive each other, and try to be kind and get along. Charlie Brown says, great, but why just this season? Why not all year? And Lucy says, what do you think I am, some kind of fanatic?
[00:17:54] We don't have to limit it.
[00:17:58] Not all relationships can or even should be rebuilt.
[00:18:02] But as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. As far as it depends on you. It doesn't mean you're going to make all things right.
[00:18:13] But you begin in here either forgiving or asking for forgiveness.
[00:18:20] Begin to mend some of those hurts.
[00:18:23] The angel said this in Luke 2. Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men.
[00:18:31] Have a good heart and attitude toward everyone.
[00:18:36] Unless they voted different, you know, unless they said something to you at Christmas in 2004.
[00:18:47] You know, there's all kinds of hurts that accumulate.
[00:18:51] They hurt us.
[00:18:54] It's like getting angry at other drivers.
[00:18:59] You know, it's amazing how they cut you off on a roundabout.
[00:19:04] And that's it. You're just so mad. And they're. You know what they're doing? They don't know. They're having a great day, singing praise songs in the car.
[00:19:19] Let it go.
[00:19:23] The worst Christmas gift that I have ever given was early in marriage. And you'll recognize it as early in marriage when I tell you what happened.
[00:19:37] I asked my wife what she wanted for Christmas, and she said, I don't need anything.
[00:19:43] And I believed her.
[00:19:48] And it was a big mistake.
[00:19:52] Mm. I can think I'm not the only one.
[00:19:56] I asked her what the best Christmas gift was, and she told me it was the year that I gave her her birthstone ring.
[00:20:06] And I gave it to her at Christmas dinner in 1995. And thankfully, her birthstone is not a diamond, so it was not that expensive.
[00:20:22] We'd had a really tough couple of years.
[00:20:27] She had been battling depression and we had been battling each other. And we had gotten to the point where we were talking about going our separate ways.
[00:20:39] Two kids in, like, junior high.
[00:20:43] And it was just. I mean, I know she was feeling very done and I was feeling very done. I mean, depressed. How could someone be depressed married to me?
[00:20:56] I wasn't connecting all the dots.
[00:21:00] Well, as it turned out, we had been seeing a counselor for quite a while, long enough to know that we had a lot of work to do still. And I gave her that ring at that Christmas in this process to just say. And I said, I'm not going anywhere.
[00:21:25] We're in this together.
[00:21:28] And it took a while to make room in our hearts for each other. It didn't happen quickly, but we made some choices. And it began by beginning again to make room in our hearts individually for Jesus.
[00:21:47] And as we drew close to him, we began to draw close to each other.
[00:21:56] James 4. 8.
[00:21:59] Come close to God and God will come close to you.
[00:22:04] That's his promise.
[00:22:06] If I'm willing to come close to God, he'll come close to me. And it begins to change things.
[00:22:14] As I draw close to God, I begin to have hope, peace, joy.
[00:22:24] Through the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus, let every heart fully experience God's perfect love. That's his will for you. That you would not hear about it, know about it, celebrate it seasonally, but that you would experience this love that he has for you right now. Today's the day, this is the time.
[00:22:52] Is there a point of forgiveness that you need to receive or extend to someone else?
[00:23:03] Are there some fears that have been mounting up in your heart because you. You've just been unwilling to release them, to trust them to God.
[00:23:16] Do not be afraid.
[00:23:19] Well, how do you do that?
[00:23:22] Admit you need a savior, and you might have done that long time ago, but you might need to renew that faith and let it be yours today.
[00:23:34] Not just in theory, but in your experience of Him. He's present.
[00:23:41] He's here right now.
[00:23:43] By the power of the Holy Spirit, God is here. He's Emmanuel. That hasn't changed. That didn't stop.
[00:23:51] And he wants to connect with you. He. He condescends. He comes down to come close, not to guilt. You scare you into better behavior with the threat of punishment.
[00:24:09] No, that is not the heart of the gospel at all.
[00:24:14] This Advent season, I hope that we will all use this as a time to continue to take our next right steps in drawing close to God.
[00:24:30] I want to pray for us in just a moment, but I would like to ask you to do is stand and then if you're willing, you don't have to do any of this, but if you're willing, would you just put your hands in front of you like this as a posture of either receiving or releasing whatever you need to do right now. Is there forgiveness to receive? Are there fears to release?
[00:25:05] Open your heart to brand new experience of faith or a renewal of faith in Jesus?
[00:25:15] Let's pray. Jesus, I believe today is the right time.
[00:25:21] I want to be free of my fears. I want to receive forgiveness. I want to extend forgiveness. I want to build healthy whole relationships.
[00:25:31] Jesus, today I make room in my heart for you. Help me to recognize my next right steps and follow you.
[00:25:41] In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
