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Christmas at Rock Point 2022 | Full Service · Rewind

Rock Point Church

73 min

Pastor Bill Bush · Dec 25, 2022 · 4 min read · 73 min listen

The big idea

Christmas hope isn't found in fixing our immediate circumstances — it's found in the incarnate Jesus, who came to rescue us from our real enemy: our own sin.

In this message

The big idea
Point 1 of 7Christmas is supposed to bring hope despite our circumstances, not because of them.
Point 2 of 7The story of John McPhee and the Santa parachute disaster shows what happens when we lean on the wrong source of hope.

Point 3 of 7We often treat our relationship with God as a contract: be good, and God rewards us with the immediate things we want.
Point 4 of 7After 400 years of prophetic silence, God's people expected a political rescuer, but He sent a baby instead.
Point 5 of 7Joseph's story shows the choice between pursuing the immediate and trusting God's harder, incarnate plan.
Point 6 of 7Jesus came as a baby because our real enemy is our own sin, not our external circumstances.
Point 7 of 7We can't make ourselves acceptable to God by managing or minimizing our sin — we have to hand it all over to Him.
Take it into your week
Transcript

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Scripture in this message

Matthew 1:24

Rewind AI drafted the Big Idea and some point headings shown here from the sermon transcript. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Pastor Bill Bush · Dec 25, 2022 · 73 min watch · 2 min read

Christmas at Rock Point 2022 | Full Service

In this message

Big Idea
Key points
Application

Scripture in this message

Matthew 1:24

Big Idea Key points Application

Big Idea

Christmas hope isn't found in fixing our immediate circumstances — it's found in the incarnate Jesus, who came to rescue us from our real enemy: our own sin.

Christmas is meant to give us hope that goes beyond our circumstances, but many people look for that hope in the wrong place — in fixed relationships, jobs, or politics. The real hope came as a baby, not a warrior king, because our biggest problem was never external; it was our separation from God through sin, and only Jesus could rescue us from that.

Key points

1
1Christmas is supposed to bring hope despite our circumstances, not because of them.
Pastor Bill notes that even though people expect joy at Christmas, it's often a season of depression, and many are chasing hope in their circumstances instead of finding a hope that stands apart from them.
2
2The story of John McPhee and the Santa parachute disaster shows what happens when we lean on the wrong source of hope.
In 1932, during the Great Depression, Mesa newspaper editor John McPhee wanted to give the town hope by having Santa parachute into the Christmas parade. When the stunt went horribly wrong and the parachute failed, it became a disaster remembered for decades, illustrating a right desire for hope built on the wrong thing.
3
3We often treat our relationship with God as a contract: be good, and God rewards us with the immediate things we want.
Pastor Bill describes people who serve, attend church, or try to be good, expecting God to fix their circumstances, and who grow bitter or doubt God when He doesn't deliver on that unspoken deal.
4
4After 400 years of prophetic silence, God's people expected a political rescuer, but He sent a baby instead.
Pastor Bill walks through Malachi's promise of coming justice and rescue, and how the Jewish people filled that silence with hopes of a warrior king who would fix their government and oppression — only for the sign of the Messiah to be a baby wrapped in cloths.
5
5Joseph's story shows the choice between pursuing the immediate and trusting God's harder, incarnate plan.
Pastor Bill retells Matthew 1: Joseph could have quietly divorced Mary to avoid disgrace and keep his life easy, but an angel told him not to be afraid and to trust God's plan, even though it would make his life more complicated, not less.
6
6Jesus came as a baby because our real enemy is our own sin, not our external circumstances.
Pastor Bill explains that the angel told Joseph to name the child Jesus because He would save His people from their sins — the deepest problem is that we are all separated from a perfect God, and only Jesus, living the perfect life and taking God's justice on Himself, could fix that.
7
7We can't make ourselves acceptable to God by managing or minimizing our sin — we have to hand it all over to Him.
Using the story of sawing his broken hot tub into small pieces to make it look acceptable for bulk trash pickup, Pastor Bill shows how we try to break our sin into manageable, excusable pieces instead of simply confessing it and letting God take the whole burden away.

Application

Pastor Bill's charge is to stop trying to manage your own sin and instead call out to God, trusting His plan over your own attempts to make life work.

Stop pursuing the immediate over the incarnate
Recognize when you're chasing God for fixed circumstances (job, relationships, politics) rather than trusting His actual plan for your life, even when that plan is harder.
Confess your sin instead of managing it
Like breaking a broken hot tub into acceptable-looking pieces, stop minimizing or hiding your sin — bring it out into the open before God honestly.
Call out to Jesus in faith
Pray and put your trust in Jesus, admitting you are a sinner separated from God and accepting His offer of love and rescue through the cross.
Learn to live from God's love, not for it
Whatever your circumstances going forward, trust God with more areas of your life not to earn His love, but because He has already loved you completely.

Take it into your week

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Scripture in this message

From the transcript
“But Joseph trusted and it says when Joseph woke up in verse 24, he did as the angel Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife”
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Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

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Day 1

Related passage

Four hundred years is a long time to wait. Between the last word of Malachi and the first chapter of Matthew, there was silence — no prophet, no burning bush, no parting sea. From the outside, it could look like God had stepped away. But the sermon reminded us this week that silence is not the same as absence. God was moving His plan forward the entire time, even when no one recognized it. That is worth sitting with. We tend to measure God's activity by what we can see and feel right now. When circumstances are hard or prayers seem unanswered, the temptation is to assume He has gone quiet on us personally. But Malachi 4 closes with a promise still in motion — the Sun of righteousness rising with healing in His wings. God was not stalling. He was setting the stage for something the world had never seen: His own Son, wrapped in human skin. Christmas begins here, in the waiting. And the waiting itself is part of the story. If you are in a season where God feels distant, that feeling is real and it is human. But the history of Scripture says His plan does not pause when our circumstances get complicated. He is still moving, still faithful, still working toward what is eternal — even when you cannot see it yet.

For reflection

Where in your life right now does it feel like God has gone silent, and what would it mean to trust that He is still at work?

Pray

Pray for the faith to trust God's faithfulness during seasons of waiting and silence.

Day 2

Put yourself in Joseph's position for a moment. He had a plan, a fiancée, and a future that made sense. Then everything got complicated in a way he did not choose and could not control. The easy path was right in front of him — a quiet divorce, a return to normal, a way out of the mess with his reputation mostly intact. Nobody could have blamed him for taking it. But God's plan required something harder: staying in the complicated thing, trusting what he could not fully understand, and saying yes to a role nobody had ever been asked to play before. The angel's message did not make his circumstances easier. It made them more demanding. And yet Joseph chose it. The sermon pointed here not to hold Joseph up as a hero but to show us how the incarnation actually arrived — through ordinary people who were willing to trust God's way over the comfortable, immediate fix. That same tension shows up in our own lives. We want God to smooth things out. He often invites us instead into something harder and more meaningful. The question Joseph had to answer is the same one the Christmas story puts to us: will you trust what God is doing even when it does not resolve your circumstances the way you hoped?

For reflection

Is there a place in your life where you have been reaching for the easy exit instead of trusting God's harder, better plan?

Pray

Pray for willingness to trust God's direction even when it asks more of you than you expected.

Day 3

One sentence in the angel's announcement carries the entire weight of Christmas: 'You are to name Him Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.' Not from their enemies. Not from poverty or occupation or illness. From their sins. The sermon landed hard on this. People in Jesus's day wanted a warrior king who would fix the external, political, immediate problem. They got a baby in a manger whose mission was aimed at something much deeper — the one problem that outlasts every circumstance: sin and its eternal consequences. That sounds abstract until you feel it personally. Every broken relationship, every moment of shame you cannot shake, every time you have known the right thing and done the other thing anyway — that is the problem Jesus came to solve. Not to improve the surrounding conditions, but to deal with what is actually wrong at the root. Christmas is not a story about God making your current situation more comfortable. It is the announcement that God became a human being to absorb the judgment your sin deserved, so that nothing — not your worst failure, not your deepest regret — has to separate you from Him forever. That is not a small thing. That is the only thing that lasts beyond whatever you are facing today.

For reflection

How does knowing that Jesus came specifically to deal with sin — not just circumstances — change how you think about what you actually need from Him?

Pray

Pray for an honest, clear-eyed sense of what Jesus actually came to do — and what that means for you personally.

Day 4

His name would be Immanuel — God with us. Not God watching from a distance. Not God sending instructions through a representative. God Himself, present, in human flesh, living the life we were made to live and could not manage on our own. The incarnation is one of the most staggering claims in all of Scripture. The God who spoke the universe into existence chose to enter it — to be born, to grow up, to get tired, to feel hunger, to experience grief. He did not come close to human life; He became it. And He did that without any sin, which is precisely what matters for what comes next. Jesus lived the perfect life you and I could not live. That is not a vague spiritual compliment — it is the foundation of salvation. Because He was fully human and fully without sin, He could stand in the place of sinners. Because He was fully God, that standing had weight enough to cover every sin, for every person, for all of time. Immanuel means the distance between you and God is not infinite. It was crossed — not by your effort but by His arrival. When Christmas feels like decoration and tradition, come back to this name. God with us. That is what was announced in that stable, and it changes everything.

For reflection

What does it mean to you personally that God did not just send help but came Himself?

Pray

Pray for a fresh sense of wonder at what the incarnation actually cost and what it actually means.

Day 5

Related passage

The sermon's most direct challenge was about what we do with our sin. The temptation Pastor Bill named is one most of us recognize even if we have never said it out loud: we try to break the broken thing into smaller pieces — manage it, minimize it, present the tidier version — hoping that effort will be enough to make us acceptable. But that is not confession. Psalm 32 describes what that kind of concealment actually feels like from the inside: bones wasting away, a heaviness that will not lift. And then it describes what happens when we finally stop managing and start being honest — 'I confessed all my sins to You and stopped trying to hide my guilt.' The response is not anger. It is forgiveness. Confession is not a performance of remorse designed to earn God's goodness. It is simply bringing the whole broken thing out into the open before the One who already knows it and has already provided for it. You are not telling God something He does not know. You are agreeing with what He already sees — and in that agreement, the weight lifts. If there is something you have been carefully managing rather than honestly confessing, today is a good day to bring it out into the light. Not to feel worse about yourself, but because that is the way through.

For reflection

Is there something you have been presenting to God in smaller, more manageable pieces rather than bringing the whole thing honestly before Him?

Pray

Pray for the courage and humility to confess honestly — bringing the whole thing before God rather than a cleaned-up version.

Day 6

Related passage

The heart of the sermon's application was this: 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. Romans 5:8 says it plainly — 'God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.' Not after we got better. Not after we proved we were serious. While we were still in the middle of the very thing that separates us from Him. That is the difference between a religion of performance and the gospel. Performance says: clean yourself up, bring something worth accepting, and maybe God will meet you. The gospel says: God moved first, while you were still in the mess, because the problem was never your effort — it was your need. This changes how you come to God every day. You are not approaching Him as someone who needs to re-earn their standing. You are coming as someone already loved, already forgiven, already accepted on the basis of what Jesus did — not what you did. The invitation today is not to try harder but to receive more fully what has already been given. Live from that. Let it be the ground you stand on rather than a finish line you are still running toward.

For reflection

In what areas of your life do you still find yourself trying to earn what God has already freely given?

Pray

Pray for a deeper, more settled confidence in God's love as the foundation you live from — not a reward you are working toward.

Day 7

At the beginning of this week, we stood in the waiting — 400 years of silence, a plan moving forward unseen. By the end of it, we have walked through the whole shape of what Christmas actually is: not a seasonal comfort, not a story about God fixing your immediate circumstances, but the announcement of the most consequential arrival in history. God became flesh. He lived without sin. He died to absorb the judgment that sin deserved. He rose again. And He offers the life that flows from all of that — freely, to anyone who stops negotiating and simply receives it. Joseph's yes — messy, costly, obedient — made room for that arrival. Your own yes, whenever it comes or has already come, is your entry point into the same story. Not because you cleaned yourself up first, but because He came for exactly the version of you that exists right now. As Christmas arrives this year, let it mean what it actually means. Not just warmth and tradition, but the moment God solved the only problem that outlasts your circumstances. If you have never placed your faith in what Jesus did, this is an honest invitation to do exactly that. And if you have, let this week be a reminder of the ground you stand on — loved, forgiven, and free.

For reflection

Looking back over this week, what is the one truth from the Christmas story that you most need to carry into the new year?

Pray

Pray for the grace to receive — and keep receiving — what Jesus freely accomplished, and to live from that truth into whatever comes next.

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

The Christmas story is familiar to almost everyone — but this message pushes on something we might not expect: what if the thing we want God to fix at Christmas isn't actually the problem He came to solve?

Discussion questions

1
In Matthew 1:18-24, Joseph has a clear, socially acceptable way out of a very complicated situation — and he chooses the harder path instead. What do you think made that choice so difficult, and what does it tell us about what it looks like to trust God's plan over an easier one?
2
Matthew 1:21 says Jesus came to save His people from their sins — not from Roman occupation, poverty, or other immediate hardships His people were experiencing. What does that gap between what people wanted and what God actually did tell us about how God sees our situation?
3
Pastor Bill made a distinction between living *for* God's love — trying to earn His favor — and living *from* His love — receiving what Jesus already accomplished as a gift. How would you describe the difference between those two postures in practical, everyday terms?
4
Pastor Bill described a tendency to break sin into smaller, more manageable-looking pieces rather than bringing the whole thing before God — and he called bringing it all out into the open "confession." What do you think makes that kind of honesty before God so hard for people?
5
The message points out that 400 years of silence between Malachi and Matthew didn't mean God had stepped away — He was still moving His plan forward. How might that reframe the way we think about seasons when God seems quiet or slow to act?
Related passage
6
Pastor Bill's central point is that Christmas is ultimately about God solving the one problem that outlasts every circumstance: our sin and its eternal consequences. How might holding onto that change the way we approach God — especially when we're carrying something hard?

Pray together

Gratitude that God didn't wait for us to get it right — that He came to us, as one of us, to do what we couldn't do for ourselves

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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