Avior, if you have your Bibles, I want to read from Luke chapter 2. In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Corinus, the governor of Syria, and all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betro, who was with child.
And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. She gave birth to her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord." And this will be a sign for you. You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased." When the angels went away from in when the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us."
And they went with haste. And they found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen and has been told to them. This day we celebrate the birth of our savior.
He was born for the purpose of saving his people from their sins. What a joy it is to gather, to read the word, to sing glorious praise unto his name. And we're going to do that with special music this evening. We're going to do that through us Pastor Joe giving us the word of God. And so, as we begin, would you bow with me in a word of prayer? Heavenly Father, what a glorious joy it is this evening.
We get to gather to sing praises unto your name. For you sent your son to be born of a virgin. He was born for the purpose of saving his people from their sins. Would your glory be on our lips this evening and in the days and the months to come. For you are worthy of all glory and adoration. It is in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
This evening we're going to do a few things. We're going to sing some corporate songs together and we're going to hear some special music for some folks. And so we are going to start by singing Joy to the World and then we will have the Martell family come up and do song one of two for us this evening. So would you stand and sing Joy to the Worlds? Let every heart you see everything you see.
To sing. To you my savior that may sing while feels We join the sounding joy. Free lesson his blessings for the Christmas to the glory
Of his righteousness. Excuse me. What child is it to rest on Mary's lap is sleeping.
Whom angels ge while shephers watch our keeping. This is Christ the king whom shephers guard and angels sing. Days to bring him the baby son of Mary.
What I see in such meanest where rocks and sheep are feeding. Good Christian fear for sinners. The silent word is bleeding. Your spirit shall pierce him through the cross be for me for you. H the word made flesh the babe the son of Mary.
>> So bring him inense golden compare. King to him. The king of kings salvation brings. Let loving enth raise the song on high. The virgin sings her lullaby.
Joy, joy for Christ is born, the baby, the son of Mary. >> Yes, this is Christ the King whom shephers angels sing. Stays to bring him the quite amazing that the angels were the ones who heralded the birth of the savior and we have a few songs that we that we know common Christmas carols about this angelic announcement of the newborn king.
So let's stand together and sing those songs together. Sing glory to the newborn sing joyful all ye nations joy The triumph of the skies Christ is born in angel sing.
Christ by high in flesh the blood and sea. Harden deity Jesus all H the heaven prince of the Jesus and all the risen worthy while he lays his glory.
For the men for me to raise the second Excels. Yes.
Expresses We sing. Excelsious by your joous.
Sing your Heat. Heat. Jesus sayior. Heat. Heat. Jesus come to My heart is Heat. Heat.
To see with him. Jesus Mary Sior. To see. You may be seated.
>> On bended knee, Christ the Lord, the newborn king. He's born king. What a glorious truth that we serve a king of kings. It's at this time and you can see them getting ready. We're going to have a special music from the Bartell family and then followed that we're going to sing O Little Town of Bethlehem and then shortly after that we're going to have Martell 2.0. And so Bartell's Thank you, Martell girls.
We're going to be singing that song a little bit later, so they've wetted our appetite for it. That was great. Awesome. Let's stand together and sing, oh little town of Bethlehem, before the Martell come to sing for us. All we see the sun shine.
Go. Everlasting life. My hopes and fears all the years are good to Christ is born and gather.
Watching stars together. How silently how silent gift is there.
We march to you and the blessing the dear Zamb usage today.
Be at Christmas to the thy seated. Holy night, the stars are brightly shinarior.
Long the world in sin and he appeared and the soul felt it. The wey world rejes for yonder grace. A new and glorious morning.
Oh, no. Divine when Christ was born. All night divine. Oh, night divine.
Truly he taught us to love one another. His law is love and his gospel is peace. Chain shall he break. For the slave is our brother and in his name all oppress shall cease.
Sweet of joy, >> grateful course reigns, we let all within us praise his holy name. Christ is the Lord. Praise his name forever. Ever his power and glory glory.
Oh, ever more on your knees. Oh, he angel voicees. Divine >> when Christ was born.
>> Oh, divine. Oh my dear. Fantastic. Thank you for that, Martell.
We're gonna sing Oh, come all Are all You faithful. You wetted our appetites for it before. We're going to sing it now. We're going to start with the chorus just with our voices and then we'll get into the song. So, let's stand together and sing Oh, come all you faithful and then after that, Pastor Joe will lead us in the word of God. Oh come let us adore him. Oh come let us adore him. Oh come let us adore him Christ the Lord.
Oh come all ye joyful triumph. Help me. Come and be holy for the king of let us adore.
Come let us fight for you. Come let us see our sales. Sing exaltation. See all you s glory to God.
Glory in the highest. Come let us adore him. One blessing Jesus to Take me home with I bless my adore.
You may be seated. Well, merry Christmas everyone. Every every year the government of Alberta, at least I think it's the government of Alberta, Alberta, releases statistics on car accidents every year. And as you can imagine, a lot of these car accidents are caused by distracted driving.
We pretty much everyone has either a cell phone holder or their cell phone holder is their hand and they drive with that out. However, cell phones, eating while driving, those types of things are not the only thing that cause distractive driving accidents. These could be anything from fender benders, hitting a mailbox, anything like that. One of the things on those list of that list which causes around 18,000 accidents every year is Christmas lights. It is so easy to get distracted at Christmas.
And so I want to today to take time away from all these things that demand our focus and focus back in on Christ. When our hearts get pulled in a thousand different directions, it's crucial that we take this time to look at Christ because he is the reason that we celebrate Christmas. He's what's truly important during Christmas, the birth of the Savior. And not only that, but also his gospel because his birth has power because of the gospel that it leads into.
So, if you have your Bibles today, let's turn to Galatians 4. In this book, Paul is the author. He is writing to the church in Galatia, and he is already laid into these Galatians pretty hard. They're not doing well. They have been distracted. They're being pulled in a bunch of different directions by these false teachers. And so, Paul has already taken the 2x4 to them. And now he's going to give them the good news, the good news of the gospel.
So, we're going to dive in right at the good news. And tie that into Christmas. So, I'm going to be reading Galatians 4:es 3 to5. In the same way, we also when we were children were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who are under the law, so that we might receive adoptions as sons. So in verse three here, Paul gets right to the bad news.
Says, 'In the same way also when we were children were enslaved to the elementary principles of this world. He points the readers backwards to a time that they've already come through when they were children. Now, there's a lot of children out there. I imagine a lot of you have children. If you know anything about children, you can't expect them to act like adults. You can't tell your two-year-old to do their taxes. You can't ask them to be responsible. You can't ask them to do that because they're immature.
They're not adults. But you can't expect them to act their age. You can expect them to draw on the walls. You can expect them to make a mess. You can expect them to be loud because they are immature. These readers were immature spiritually. This was before they knew Christ. We know this because of what he says next. Because they were enslaved to the elementary principles of this world. Now, that's a fancy sounding saying. So, what does it mean? Well, it's not hard to discover what the elementary principles of this world are.
You could just turn on the news, take a little bit of a scroll through social media, and you will see what runs this world. You'll see what governs it. You'll see that sin is what governs this world. And these principles of sin are temptations of the flesh. These wicked things that the world has to offer us. The things that draw us in. These sinful things that constantly pull us in all different directions. But not only that, the term principles gives a sense that there's purpose and organization to it.
These are principles. These are rules. These are things that the world abides by and holds to. Everyone, everyone in this room, everyone in history at some point was bound by these principles. Going all the way back to Genesis 3, Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, they are perfect. It's a perfect world. They disobey God and immediately they're shackled by these principles of the world, by sin, and it rules. Because of sin ruling over them, we have inherited this sin nature.
We are fully enslaved to it. The word enslaved doesn't give a sense of leniency. You know, you're not enslaved to something, but you get weekends off. You are enslaved to it fully. Every single day, we are enslaved to sin. You can't walk away from that relationship. It is your master. This is the bad news. And it's very simply establishing that we have sin and this sin is a problem and we require saving from it. But the saving can't be done from ourselves. A slave cannot save itself.
It requires someone else to step in and help us. But doesn't all good news start there with but thankfully someone did step in to save us out of our slavery. And it starts in verse four. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son born of a woman born under the law. Verse four is where the good news really starts.
But what does when the fullness of time had come mean? That's is an interesting statement. This means something along the line of when it was the exact time that God intended. You know, we talk about how this is the s the principles of sin that it seems purposeful. Our God is even more purposeful. He's not random. He's not chaotic. He sent Jesus at the exact time that he wanted because there were a lot of things that needed to be in place. He needed the right political climate.
He needed the right people to be alive. He needed the disciples there. He needed to have the right people in charge. God did not take a dart and throw it at all of time and hope it landed in the right place. God sent Jesus at the perfect time. The perfect place. Right when he intended it to happen. So God sent forth Jesus, his son, to be born of a woman. And we all know this story. This is the Christmas part of the story. God sent Jesus through Mary, born in a dusty stable in Bethlehem.
But how easy is us is is it for us to just gloss over that reality? Because Jesus, the king of the world, the one who would save the world from sin, didn't derive in a palace, didn't derive to a royal family, didn't derive to luxury and wealth and the things that we expected it. He was born outside in a dusty stable in a laid in a manger, animals around, visited by shepherds, not nobles, not anything. He came humbly into the world.
Philippians 2:es 5-9 talks about this how Jesus came down because he he didn't describe equality with God a thing to be grasped. So Jesus took on the form of a servant humbled himself. God himself came down to our level so that he could save us at our level. He was born under the law because we are also under the law. He came and lived a perfect life. The life that we couldn't. We're immediately sinful.
Jesus never was. He came and lived that life so that we could be saved from it. He did it perfectly without sin. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin. So that in him we might become the righteousness of God." But then we get to the question of why. This is awesome news. But why would the king and creator of the universe come down to live along the mice in comparison?
Why would the king come and live with the peasants? Why would God come down to our level? Says in verse 5, to redeem those who are under the law. The word redeem means to buy back. God had to purchase us out of our slavery. The slavery we found ourselves in to those who are under the law. That's us. It's It's not complicated. We were under sin. And he bought us back at a hefty price.
He bought us back with his own life. But it didn't end there because Jesus died on the cross, but he rose again. And this is why we in a few months are going to celebrate Easter. And it's important to keep that in view because his birth is amazing and worthy to be celebrated. But it's just the beginning of the story. This story comes to its conclusions when he would die, but then defeat death by rising again. Death had no no hold on him and he would seal that victory by ascending to heaven.
Death isn't going to take him anymore. Is because of this that we receive adoption as sons. We're brought into the family. Think about that. We were on sin's team. We were enemies of God. And God said, "I'm going to buy you out of that and bring you into my own family." What a change. This is the reason that God sent Jesus, so we could have all the benefits of being a child of God.
Would get adopted into his family, gaining an inheritance of being brought into fellowship with God. And the reason he even considers doing any of this in the first place is because of God's immense love for us. A love so deep that full good attempts to describe describe it leave us, you know, absolutely just dumbfounded and floored at the love of God. Yet, it is just a fraction of what the true love of God looks like.
We can never comprehend how deep that love goes. And that love is aimed directly at his people, his creation, those who would call upon him as Lord and Savior. Romans 5:8 says, "But God shows his love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." So this Christmas season, don't lose focus. Keep your eyes pointed firmly on the Christ, on Jesus that he has come and remember that he has saved you from your sin and he's coming again.
But if you don't know Jesus, if you are sitting here and you are not in his family, I beg of you, do not go to sleep tonight without thinking about where you stand with the Lord. Because if you're not in his family, you're his enemy. And there are serious consequences to this. You're still a slave. I need to tell you, you're still a slave, but there is freedom available in Christ.
You are still bound to the ways of this world, but you don't have to be forever. That sin will be your demise and your destruction, but there is freedom in Christ. So come to him. Jesus is waiting with open arms to bring you into his family. Let's remember this this Christmas as we look to keep our eyes focused only on him, not on the things that can distract us and pull us away.
Dear God, I thank you so much for this day. I thank you for everyone here and I thank you for the Christmas season. I thank you for your gospel and the joy that it is and that it can be the source of our joy this Christmas season and the reason that we can celebrate Lord, I pray that all those here would be either encouraged or challenged to think through where we are, where we stand with you. And I ask and pray that you would be turning hearts all over the globe to you tonight.
Thank you so much for your you're sending your son. And you're sending him to be born in human form, but also that he paid the ultimate price to buy us back, to redeem us from our hopeless situation. Thank you, Lord, for your grace and your love and your mercy. Be with us tonight. Help us to worship you well. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. >> That's that's gospel truth right there. We're going to close in song here in a moment.
But a couple things when we're concluded because we have another service coming up pretty quickly. I will ask you to just when you're done, we'll we'll turn your candles off, which you're going to turn on here in a moment, and just put them right back where you found them. And then if when we're done, when you leave, just if you could make sure everything's as clean as possible for the turn around for our next service, that'd be great. Now, in a I'm going to have you take those candles and just you're just going to tighten the bottom, and that will light them up. And the and then we'll have a little candle light time together minus all the heat that real candles bring.
So let's stand together and we're going to sing Away in a manger and silent night to close for a The little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head.
The stars in the bright sky looked down where he lay. The little Lord Jesus asleep for the day. The cattle are longing. The baby wings the Lord Jesus. No crying. I love the Lord Jesus.
Down from the stair and stay by my cra forever and love me I pray bless All the dear children in thy tender us for heaven to live with holy All is all is bright around your virgin mother and child.
Holy so tender and sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heaven. Holy night. Sh my name Christ the Savior is Oh Christ the silent Holy night
Of love with God Jesus. Amen.
He was Lord at his birth and he remains Lord today. Merry Christmas. God bless you. Test. Ah, I can hear myself now.
Transcribed automatically from YouTube captions, so names and words may be misheard.
