Christmas At Rock Point 2020

The big idea

Christmas isn't about what life presents you — good or bad — it's about the presence of Emmanuel, God with us, so turn your head and look to Jesus.

Even in a powerless, out-of-control year, real hope, joy, and peace aren't found in what life gives us but in the presence of the One who gives life. Emmanuel means God doesn't just watch over us from a distance — He dove into our darkness to be with us, so contentment comes from turning our attention to Him, not from our circumstances.

Point 1 of 6

Pastor Bill uses the disastrous, bald-spotted Rockefeller Plaza Christmas tree as a picture of the year, and shares his own embarrassing story of getting sick on stage mid-sermon despite trying to do the right thing. He argues the year revealed we believed a lie that we have control, and when that control is stripped away, we panic.

Point 2 of 6

He points out that Mary was a peasant woman and the shepherds were distrusted outcasts living under Roman domination with no power or say. Yet it was into that very powerlessness that something — not their circumstances — changed everything.

Point 3 of 6

Pastor Bill contrasts a distant, Santa-Claus-like god who merely tracks naughty and nice with the true meaning of Emmanuel: God dove into the darkness and joined humanity rather than staying at a distance. This, he says, is what the Jews had been waiting for in the Old Testament prophecies.

Point 4 of 6

He walks through Luke 2 and the shepherds' story, noting that after the angels appeared and the shepherds saw the baby in the manger, nothing about their actual circumstances changed — they went right back to the dark fields. The only difference was that they now went back praising and glorifying God, because they had seen Jesus.

Point 5 of 6

Using Isaiah 43:2, Pastor Bill explains that the promise isn't rescue from the deep water but companionship in it — Jesus joins us in the mess rather than removing us from it. He ties this to the gospel: Jesus was born at Christmas but came for Easter, dying to correct the lie that fulfillment comes from what life gives us.

Point 6 of 6

He tells the story of the baby owl found stuck in the battered Rockefeller tree, saved only because of the tree's brokenness, and then a personal story of a childhood Christmas photo where he ignored his father to stare at a gift he can no longer even remember. Looking back now, with his father having died in 2003, he says what mattered was never the gift but the presence of the one who gave it.

Take it into your week

Just turn your head to Jesus.