Key points
- 1
1Most people — then and now — want God to fix their immediate, external problems rather than the deeper spiritual problem He actually came to solve.
- 2
2The 400 years of silence between Malachi and Matthew did not mean God was absent; He was moving His plan forward, even when people were not looking at the right thing.
Related passage“What Christmas should show us is we need to pursue the incarnate, not the immediate. When because I pursue the immediate, I will miss the incarnate. I'll miss God's plan”
- 3
3Joseph faced a choice between the easy, immediate path and God's more complicated, incarnate plan — and his willingness to trust God made all the difference.
- 4
4Jesus came as a baby rather than a warrior king because our greatest enemy is not any external circumstance but our own sin — the thing that separates us from God eternally.
“Instead of having easy circumstances with no real life, you'll have a real life that means something despite your circumstances”
“The biggest issue we have, our biggest enemy if you wanna know your biggest enemy, the biggest problem cause them, the one that is giving you the greatest issue of all eternity in your life is, look in a mirror. It's you”
“I would take terrible in this life for eternity with a God who loves me and created me in perfection than the other way around”
A story from life
The preacher's own account of spending four hours with a sawzall breaking apart a broken hot tub to make it acceptable for bulk trash, only to learn he simply needed to call the city for pickup
- 5
5Trying to break sin down into more manageable pieces to make yourself acceptable to God is futile; what is required is confession and calling out to God in faith.
- 6
6Salvation comes not by living for God's love to earn His blessing but by living from His love — accepting what Jesus did on the cross as a free gift.
“You call out to God and you take the sin that's hiding in your heart in the backyard that you try to make look like it's working to everyone around you and you put it in the front yard. That's called confession”
“Don't try to live for my love. Live from my love”
Illustration
The 1932 Mesa Christmas parade where a mannequin dressed as Santa was thrown from a plane with a malfunctioning parachute, traumatizing children and ruining the event John McPhee intended to bring hope
Application
Pastor Bill's call to action is direct and personal: stop trying to negotiate with God by breaking your sin into smaller, more manageable-looking pieces and presenting your effort as payment for what you want. Instead, bring the whole broken thing out into the open before God — that is confession — and simply call out to Him. Acknowledge that you are a sinner who cannot make yourself right with God, and accept what Jesus already did: He lived the perfect life you could not live, died on the cross to absorb God's just judgment against sin, and rose again. Put your faith in that. You do not live for God's love to earn His favor; you live from His love because He has already given it fully and freely. That is the only thing Christmas is ultimately about — and it is the only thing that lasts beyond your circumstances.
