Key points
- 1
1The gospel — the good news of Christ's coming — is the power of God that saves everyone who believes, and it is the true meaning of Christmas.
“I'm telling you, there is a hope, especially even the the deepest thing I talked about. I want I don't wanna beat it to death, but if you struggle with your gender, you struggle with your sexuality, you struggle with that, You feel like if I do what God says, I'm not gonna fit in. I'm gonna be alone my whole life, and there's no hope. But you're actually going to find life”
- 2
2Charge one against humanity is godlessness: though creation makes God's eternal power and divine nature obvious, people suppress that truth and live as though He does not exist.
- 3
3Suppressing truth leads to rejecting God and then replacing Him with idols — because we are built to worship, and if we will not worship God we will worship something else.
“You never are truly godless. You just worship a god that's not god. That's what idolatry is. We will worship something”
Illustration
Vending machine as an analogy for idolatry and legalism — inserting something to get what you want, remaining in control
- 4
4Charge two is wickedness: living as though we are God, following the heart's broken desires, which distorts everything God created — including sex, marriage, and identity — away from its intended purpose.
“your sexuality and your gender is not your identity. It's not who you are. Matter of fact, if you run down that road, you're gonna lose your identity, and you're never gonna find it”
“The current judgment for sin is more sin”
A story from life
Pastor Bill's wife gets a food-sensitivity test; he gets one too but admits he probably won't follow through, drawing a parallel to fear of trusting God through the pain of change
- 5
5God's present-tense judgment for sin is more sin — He gives people over to their chosen path — and the full list of that sin (greed, gossip, envy, quarreling) indicts religious people just as much as anyone else.
- 6
6No one is exempt: those who judge others commit the very same sins, so the only right response is to recognize our shared guilt and our shared need for the Savior.
A story from life
Pastor Bill at 16, a regional bowling tournament in Hawaii: he starts drinking with older bowlers, wakes up convicted, stops, finds a group who wanted to experience Hawaii instead, and has a far better second week
- 7
7There is real hope on the other side of trusting Jesus — whatever we are trying to find in sin, identity, or ideology, it is found only in Him.
“you'll never get the joy of why you need Jesus. You will never understand how awesome the good news is if you do not understand how bad the news was”
Illustration
The Titanic: passengers refused lifeboats because the ship still felt safe, not knowing it was already sinking
Application
Pastor Bill closes with a pointed but compassionate call to honesty: every person in the room — regardless of which sins feel most familiar — is guilty of the same root problem of living for self rather than for God. The invitation is not to clean yourself up first but to stop pretending the ship is not sinking. For those wrestling with sexuality, gender, addiction, greed, pride, or any other broken desire, he urges trust that life and real identity are found in Jesus alone, not in the thing that feels most urgent. For those tempted toward self-righteousness, he urges humility — because sipping on the world while judging those drunk on it is still drinking. The 'so what' of Christmas is simple: we all need the Savior, and the joy we are chasing everywhere else is waiting for us in Him.
