Thank you.

I'm in Isaiah chapter nine, verse six through seven.

Let me read it to you.

It goes like this, very famous Christmas passage.

For unto us a child is born.

Unto us a son is given.

So a child is born, a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders.

And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

And of the greatness of his government and peace, there will be no end.

Now the passage goes on.

But just in that first section, there's something that's very rich.

So far, we've gone down into the weeds of the Christmas story.

We looked at Matthew chapter 1 and 2.

We looked at the events surrounding the birth of Christ.

We looked at the genealogy.

What I want to do in this third part of the series called Inconceivable is take a step back and look at the overarching story, because if you think about it, our entire lives, not just the Christmas story, but our entire lives are inconceivable.

You know, one of the first gifts I got at Christmas wasn't quite a gift, I'll explain, but was a little Christmas puppy.

You see a photo on the screen here.

It's a full-blooded or bred collie.

And we had collies my entire childhood.

But this special collie on Christmas was such a great gift.

But the problem is I learned that I only got to keep it for two weeks.

We were actually house-sitting it for somebody.

So...

You can imagine how this went.

I'm a young kid.

I've got this beautiful puppy, my first puppy.

I fall in love with this dog.

And after about a week, it dawns on me, this dog, this puppy is leaving in seven days, then six days, then five days, then four days.

And every day I got closer to the puppy, I recognized I was getting closer to the end.

I want you to think about something for a moment in the context of the Christmas story.

There is a sense of loss that comes with life.

There is a sense of loss that comes with life.

It seems that we're always losing something.

And it permeates everything.

Robin and I, my wife, this past week, we decided to go on YouTube and watch an Andy Williams Christmas.

Now, you'll only know what that is if you're 50 or above.

Andy Williams was an iconic Christmas entertainer.

And he would do these variety shows.

Fantastic voice.

But when CBS would produce these Christmas specials, Andy Williams would always bring his entire family onto the stage.

His wife, I believe French, would also sing a few songs.

She was quite an entertainer herself.

And then he had his two, three lovely kids.

And over probably from 71 to 81, you saw these kids grow up.

And he always involved his family.

And they looked to be so together and so loving.

And so I decided while Robin and I were watching this, you know, you do these kind of things.

I thought, I wonder what happened to Andy Williams and his family because we're going back to the 70s.

So I did a little Google research.

He was only married to this girl for about nine years and now he's estranged from his kids.

That kind of made me depressed.

Wow, Andy Williams?

I mean, the together family and now divorced, estranged from his kids, doesn't even know where they are?

I began to think about my own Christmas memories.

I thought about...

in my 20s living in Zimbabwe in this old farmhouse.

And I would always put this boombox, some of you might remember what that is, this rather large stereo that you'd carry around.

You could either operate it through electricity or batteries, big, big double D batteries.

And I would listen to Christmas music as I would work on my putting, put down the long hallway.

And all those Christmas memories and all those Christmas songs reminded me of being married, but we didn't have kids.

And I thought back to what life was like for Robin and me when we were in our 20s. And then I thought about Christmas in New Zealand.

And we would go up to a place called the Bay of Islands, a beautiful place.

And in New Zealand, everybody takes Christmas and basically most of January off.

So oftentimes you won't even have church during those seasons.

So I would take my family to this beautiful place.

And I thought about how Delaney and Siam, my kids, were very young, very small.

I thought about Delaney riding on the golf buggy with me as I'd play around the golf.

I thought back to Savannah, Georgia, when we were there for a couple of years.

And I thought that was the year that my daughter wouldn't talk to me because I had told her we're moving from Savannah to this place called San Dimas, California.

When your kids are young, sometimes you think, please stop talking.

And then when they get a little older, you're like, I'm not going to talk to you.

It changes.

Please say something.

Start talking.

I remember Christmas past with my own mother and my brothers.

I've mentioned many times the nostalgia of thinking about one of the greatest gifts I ever received was Rock'em Sock'em Robots.

And again, you see a photo on the screen right now.

A classic gift back in those days.

But my brothers and I played.

We got up at 5 a.m.

and played that game for probably three or four hours.

I visited my brothers just recently.

I remember coming back and saying to my wife, you know, I hadn't seen them in person for a while, and they all, they look older, and the realization that they're going to die someday kind of hit me, especially my older brother, doesn't look well at all.

I said to Robin, I said, man, they look really old, and she replied, so do you.

Now, I didn't think that was necessary, but it is true.

I am getting older.

Right now, I live with my grandkids, or I should say my grandkids are living with me.

It's a temporary setup until their own house is finished.

And I can't wait to see the looks on their faces, my grandchildren, on Christmas Day when they see the presents that grandpa or poppy has provided.

But then at the same time, as you get older, you look at them and you realize there's going to be a day and you never know how soon that I'm not going to be around anymore.

It may be 10 years.

It may be 20, 30.

It could be two.

You just don't know.

And this is the point I'm trying to make.

We all live with this sense that we're losing something at any given moment.

There's a sense of loss that comes with life that whatever we have, no matter how wonderful it is, it's temporary.

And even though we try to block that out of our minds, down deep inside, we know it.

Not only is there a sense of loss that comes with life, but there's a sense of frustration that comes with life as well.

And since we know that loss is inevitable and that many of our dreams and hopes in this life will remain unrealized, how is it that we can live with a sense of joy knowing that those two clouds hang over us?

Last Wednesday, so this would have been December 2023, A friend and I went over and I spoke at a Christmas event in Bel Air.

And of course, you know, that's not too far from Hollywood.

And my friend and I began to talk about the wealth.

It must be a different life, a different way of living.

But I wonder if they're nostalgic too, if they live with a sense of loss, if they live knowing that life brings you a certain sense of frustration.

I know I bring this up often because it's one of those quotes that has stayed with me for a long time.

And it's Cynthia Heimel writing for the Village Voice in New York City.

And she makes the comment, she says, you know, I've known many of the Hollywood elite.

She says they were so nostalgic.

at first, when they first started out, blue collar workers working their way through acting school.

And then she says they got what they wanted.

And I knew these people.

I was friends with so many of them.

And then they caught their big break.

And when they caught their big break, they became mean.

I kept reading.

She says before they were stars struggling to make ends meet and constantly playing the if only game, waiting for their ship to come in, they were, and I quote, occasionally stressed, driven, frustrated.

with common tendencies toward anger and even some hostility.

That's how people are, she says, when they don't have what they think will make everything all right.

They become irritable and discontent.

She goes on to say, when they finally get what they want, they become awful, unstable, angrier, manic, unhappier.

And she's the lady that wrote the piece on the fact that when celebrities finally get what they're reaching for, they become hostile.

And this is the quote I've kept.

She says, celebrities, and I quote, were once perfectly pleasant human beings, but now their wrath is awful.

They wanted fame, so they worked, pushed, and shoved.

Yet the morning after each one of these became famous, they wanted to take an overdose.

Because that giant thing that was going to make everything okay, make their lives bearable, give meaning and purpose to their lives, happened, and they were still them.

The dissolution turned them howling and insufferable.

And she says, I think when God really wants to play a rotten joke on you, he gives you what you so desperately wish for and then laughs when you realize you want to kill yourself.

Now that's tongue in cheek.

I realize she's not glorifying suicide.

She's simply saying, this is the way the human heart works.

You work all of your life to get something you think is going to give you everything that you're looking for.

And it doesn't.

And when it doesn't, you got to decide how you're going to respond.

Now, as a Christ follower, most of us would say, well, of course that makes sense.

There is a need that the human heart in the human heart that nothing in the temporary world can fill.

We know that.

The real frustration happens.

when we thought by gaining something that it would solve all of our issues, and then we get it, and one of two things happens, and I think it's important.

Number one, we get it, but we're still frustrated.

And at that point, counselors tell us that we turn to coping mechanisms.

Now, coping mechanisms are serious business in human psyche.

Coping mechanisms are defined like this.

Constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and or internal demands that are appraised as taxing.

In other words, I've got to find a way to deal with this devastating sense of loss.

Every person develops coping mechanisms to deal with.

the disappointments of their lives.

But there's one overarching reality that we all develop coping mechanisms to deal with, and that's this overarching issue of it's all going to end.

Even if we do manage to grab hold of something, we can't keep it, it's like that Christmas puppy.

It's nice while it lasts, but one day it will end.

I've mentioned before, I always like to go to Time Magazine's article, December, at the end of every year, because they list famous people who have died.

And this year's no different.

So in 2023, we lost some pretty famous people.

It was the death of Ryan O'Neill, and most of us may not know him, but we know his wife, Farrah Fawcett.

She was probably on most teenagers' door in the height of her career, a big poster of Farrah Fawcett majors.

Matthew Perry died this year.

Most of you know that story.

He was extremely wealthy.

Richard Moll, who, by the way, was in a show called Night Court, actually was born and raised and still lives or lived in Big Bear, passed away this year as well.

Suzanne Somers, Jimmy Buffett, famous for the song Margaritaville.

The reason I bring this up is there's a part of us that thinks, or that think, that celebrities and great athletes don't die.

That they have superhuman powers, and they've achieved so much, so surely their lives will not come to an end.

So when we hear of their deaths, we're shocked.

But I don't know why we're shocked, because all people go the same way.

All of us have those heroes that we believe will never die.

And so when we experienced the death here in LA of Kobe Bryant, there was a shock.

Yes, his life was taken far too soon.

But this year we also lost Brooks Robinson, Jim Brown, Willis Reed, Vida Blue.

These are great athletes known in this particular area.

And with the exception of Kobe Bryant, all of them passed away this year.

The question is, how can we possibly deal with that?

And how is this Christmas story in Isaiah related to it?

I've also mentioned numerous times, Ernest Becker, the denial of death who won a Pulitzer Prize, published in 1973, the same year incidentally as his death.

He was an agnostic, but he was very keen on social theory.

And here's what he said, human beings cannot live in the fullest awareness of the meaning of death.

If our death is personal extinction so that when we die, there's no continuance, nothing that survives or goes on, and the son's death is the end of civilization, then everything previous will be totally insignificant to the mass of years and years of dead time before and after so that no one will be around to remember anything that was done.

Now, if that's what death is really like, then no one can truly look it in the face and live with it.

If this is truly the way things are, life becomes unlivable.

Nothing has meaning.

Nothing really matters.

Everything is ephemeral.

Everything is passing away.

So in the past, let me reiterate, what we've said is man tries to cope with this reality of the death cloud that hangs over him.

Often we will turn to what we've discussed, and I'll do this quickly because it's not the primary point, but we need to be reminded.

Many of us will turn what we termed as the romantic solution.

The romantic solution states that the belief that if I can find the one true love, all my feelings of insignificance, purposelessness, and meaninglessness will dissipate.

So I am disintegrating, the universe is disintegrating, but if I can find one true love, somehow I can drown out all the noise of the impending doom.

If I can just get the girl, if I can just get the guy, my life will have ultimate meaning and purpose.

So romance and sex become the path to meaning.

But there are other coping mechanisms.

For instance, if the romantic solution doesn't work, most of us move to the creative solution.

And that means we try to separate ourselves from the herd.

We want to be distinct.

We want to be different.

We want to be valued.

We want to know that we can show ourselves and the world that we are a step above and beyond everybody else.

Our devil is mediocrity and our savior is our unique gifts that will eventually enable us to achieve immortality.

We're different from others.

We're better than everybody else.

We wouldn't say it, but we wanna prove to the world that it's true.

And this gives us the feeling of being substantial, of having meaning in a meaningless world.

That's why we have an entire generation who are addicted to their phones.

They're looking for followers.

That is their savior.

Facebook, Snapchat.

Instagram, all these platforms I can't keep up with.

This is the modern altar of worship because this is what gives me proof of that I am a step above, that people are interested in my life, that I am significant.

When that doesn't work, the romantic solution to the creative solution, we turn to the most popular one, which is the religious solution.

The gods of the modern world assist us in our attempt to drown out the noise of death with religious efforts.

So we participate in things that we deem are good, good as we define them.

We avoid evil, evil as we define it, in order to prove that if there is something after death, we belong there.

So when death is knocking at our door, we say, well, at least I've been a good person.

At least I'm going to last.

Whatever's next will surely include me.

And when you challenge people on their subjective conclusions about God.

They come out swinging because you're not only questioning their idea or worldview, you're questioning their assurance.

You're questioning their identity.

It is the manner, what they believe religiously about the world, what they believe is the way they have silenced death's constant knock at the door.

And if you hold that in view, if you question that, you're questioning their very existence.

And the point of all this is the closer that you and I move to death, the more frantic we get and the deeper we dive into the romantic solution, the creative solution, the religious solution.

This is the story of mankind, which is why Becker ends the book by saying, modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of the awareness or spending time shopping, which is the same thing.

Interesting, huh?

You're gonna have some distraction that blocks out the noise of the reality of death knocking at your door.

As modern man's need for heroic dedication has provided less and less by a culture that disbelieves in any moral, spiritual, or social heroism, the same society finds new ways to contrive to help him forget about the reality of death.

So again, as modern man's need for heroic dedication has provided less and less by a culture that disbelieves in any moral, spiritual, or social heroism, that same society finds ways to contrive to help him forget.

This is the picture of the modern or pluralistic world.

Again, You pursue something to drown out the sense of this quiet desperation that we all have.

And when you do, one of two things happen.

Number one, you get it, but you're still frustrated or you get it and you're sad because you know you can't keep it.

So quickly, almost done here.

The common man pursues wealth because he believes in placing a halo over what is unrealized that everything will be good.

or once he becomes wealthy and successful he's even more frustrated because he knows the death cloud is still hanging over him and he can't keep it or he pursues something like romance thinking that if he can find the love in this natural world that will feel like it's a love from eternity somehow the death cloud will dissipate in his life will have a sense of meaning and finally if none of those work He sits around or she sits around philosophizing abstractly about meaning and purpose, never really arriving at any conclusion, and they end up dying in gibbering insanity.

Think about the list of philosophers who go insane.

Nietzsche, Guy de Maupassant, Otto Weininger, Ludwig Boltzmann.

Plato himself said that death should be viewed as an achievement of life.

How is death an achievement of life?

Aristotle said to never come into existence is best of all, and to die is better than living.

This is the ultimate pursuit of philosophy.

Higher and higher up the ladder of abstraction, never arriving at any comforting conclusion.

Now, here's why we did that work.

I find it uncanny that the angels announced the birth of Christ to these three categories.

You with me?

First, the birth is announced to the shepherd.

Nothing is more common than the common shepherd in Jesus' day.

They are the blue-collar workers of the East.

and the announcement comes to them first.

I'm a big James Taylor fan, many hit songs, but back in the late 70s, he actually wrote a song for a Broadway play called Mill Worker.

Actually, I think the name of the play was just Mill.

But it was a story about a lady who had to work every day in a mill just to survive.

Listen to the words.

He writes, millwork ain't easy.

Millwork ain't hard.

Millwork ain't nothing but an awfully boring job.

I'm waiting for a daydream to take me through the morning and put me in my coffee break where I can have a sandwich and remember that it's me and my machine for the rest of the morning, for the rest of the afternoon, for the rest of my life.

Most men and women live lives of quiet desperation.

Monotony is a killer.

And somehow in the midst of living in this difficult world of trying to make ends meet in the workaday world of getting up, working, trying to survive and do it all over again the same day, somewhere along the line, all of us wanna just run away.

We wanna find a place that we can go.

We ask ourselves, what am I ultimately doing?

What is the meaning of all this?

Does it get better than this?

Am I gonna do this for the rest of my life?

And the reason is, is that mere work alone is not liberating and does not remedy loneliness, meaninglessness, and purposelessness.

Alienation still remains for the blue-collar worker.

Second, the news of the birth comes to philosophers.

In this case, they're the wise men from the East.

In my 30s and 40s, early 40s, I spent a lot of time debating philosophers.

And here's the very interesting thing about people who consider themselves to be experts in philosophy.

The end goal of philosophy is not to arrive at any answers, but to simply ask the questions.

And the more profound the question, the more proud the philosopher.

I'm reminded of Professor Nathan at the University of New York when one of his students asked him a simple question.

Professor Nathan, how do I know that I exist?

And Professor Nathan lowered his glasses and answered by saying this, and whom shall I say is asking?

Whom shall I say is asking?

Philosophy gives you no answers.

It glorifies in just asking the question.

But now here we have these wise men.

They're looking for something more objective.

A king had been born.

They travel this great distance to witness the event.

And the question is why?

And the best answer is that these men had grown up in a culture that had learned something from the greatest wise men of all, Daniel, during the Babylonian exile.

Daniel spoke of the one day coming of Emmanuel, God with us, spoken also about in Isaiah.

They would have been very familiar with the story of where Daniel was saved by Yahweh while he was in the lion's den.

They would have also been familiar with the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, where God appeared to them in the fiery furnace.

Passed down generation after generation, these wise men came looking for something more than abstract truth.

They came looking for something that was objective.

and they had hoped to find it in the king, Emmanuel, God with us.

The ideologies of our day are not working either.

They self-destruct under the weight of object reality.

I'm amazed at some of the conversations I still have with the next generation.

Now, if you get them on the right side of things, they are amazing people and can do amazing things.

But some of the questions I'm asked, I've had people ask me questions like, why can't you, Pastor Jeff, live with your truth and me live with mine?

And my response is usually something like this.

Okay, what if my truth is child trafficking?

And that always stumps them.

And then they'll say something like, well, wait a minute.

You can live with your truth as long as it doesn't hurt anybody.

And I will say, wait a minute.

What if my truth is it's okay to hurt somebody?

Philosophy often self-destructs because it's unlivable.

You have to have something objective.

And these wise men come searching for something.

While most philosophers have educated themselves into imbecility, these three wise men are looking for truth.

T.S.

Eliot said, Where is the wisdom we've lost in all the knowledge?

And where is the life we've lost in all the living?

2,000 years ago, the philosophers had come to the same sense of nihilism that is evident and prevalent in our culture today.

But these particular wise men, they refuse to give up.

They want to find objective truth.

Luke chapter 2, the third appearance, believe it or not, the news of the birth came to a religious man, a man by the name of Simeon.

In chapter two of Luke's gospel, verse 25, there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon who was righteous and devout.

Righteous and devout means that he kept the law.

He relentlessly pursued law keeping.

And I got to tell you, if you're going to try to keep the reams and reams of laws written by the Pharisees and Sadducees in Jesus' day, it's going to be laborious.

It's going to be tiring.

So he is looking for something.

different than law keeping.

Food laws, ceremonial laws, laws concerning the feast, laws concerning just about every aspect of life.

He needed relief, he needed consolation.

And that's why he refers to Jesus as the consolation of Israel.

He was tired.

Religion says do.

And it wasn't working.

He had no peace, just burdens.

Simeon is amazing because he's one of the few in the birth narrative that truly understands that Jesus has come as a suffering servant rather than a thundering dictator.

And he did so because verse 26 tells us, it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Messiah.

And it goes on to show us how he was moved by the Spirit as he goes into the temple.

He holds the baby Jesus in his arms and he says, sovereign Lord, verse 29, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you prepared in the sight of the nations, a light for revelation of the Gentiles.

This is uncanny.

In Luke chapter 2, there is a Jewish follower, someone who's anticipating the Messiah that already gets it, that the gospel is not just for the Jews, but also for the Gentiles.

Here's the point.

None of these above that I've mentioned were looking for something that could satisfy.

And somewhere along the line, Each group had recognized that they need something more.

I guess you could call it a blessed depression.

The same thing is true in our life.

There's supposed to be a sense of emptiness and loss and frustration in hopes that you will move past feeling into what is objectively true, at which point you can take those feelings and drag them by the collar to what is true so that your mind would actually change the way you feel.

Now...

I want you to take all that I just did, and we did it in good time, but I want you to place it over here, okay?

Just kind of wad it up, you know, put it into a big ball, and hold it right here.

We'll grab it in a second.

Because all of this, what I'm trying to say, is best exemplified in something that happened a few years ago.

It was the 1982 triathlon.

where muscle is tested against itself.

You think about what a triathlon is, a two mile swimming race, 112 mile bicycle race, and 22 or 26.2 mile running marathon.

I can't imagine.

I ran a marathon once.

I only did it once and I'll never do it again.

And this was when I was in probably the best shape of my life and making it just to the end of the running part.

was horrific.

But this is a person who swims two miles and then rides a bike for 112 miles.

And you're not just riding it, you're racing because you're trying to win the race.

And then you've got to run a marathon after that.

It's gruesome.

The finest female athlete in the event was a lady by the name of Julie Moss.

And 100 yards before the finish line, she had completed everything else, the swim, the bicycle race, and most of the marathon.

She only has 100 yards to go.

And her nearest competitor is a couple of miles away, so she's got plenty of time.

But suddenly, her body broke down.

She just collapsed onto the ground with the finish line in sight.

And it took her a full minute to gather her strength and get back on her legs.

People wanted to help her.

They came onto the platform, came onto the track, and the officials made sure no one touched her.

You cannot help her in any way.

Finally, she stumbled back up onto her feet.

She managed to go a few yards more.

25 yards from the finish line, she collapsed again.

It took another full minute to recover.

10 yards from the finish line, she collapsed completely.

Unable to cross over, she watched as her friends passed her and crossed the finish line ahead of her.

That is a great illustration to say this.

No matter how strong you think you are and how capable you are and how smart you are, no matter what strength you have within yourself, no matter what desire or willpower or coping mechanism you have, every one of us ultimately comes to a time, a point at which we can no longer go on.

We can no longer move forward.

Romance didn't do it.

Wealth hasn't done it.

Work and achievement won't do it.

Philosophizing education will not do it.

So then, Okay, how does the Christmas story help?

Let's bring this together.

Isaiah 9, for unto us a child is born, to us a son has been given and the government will be upon his shoulders.

A child is born.

What does that mean?

Mary delivered a child.

Jesus was born.

Nine months in the womb, Mary delivers.

But a son is given.

Well, who gave the son long before it was in the womb?

The son is a divine child of the father.

It was a divine night on which the Savior was born, a holy night.

Why?

Here's why.

You and I have drawn this before, but I want you to imagine that you're over here.

Okay, and God's over here.

And there's this wide chasm, there's a huge gap.

And you're separated from God and there's no way to get to God.

And the reason is because you know down deep in your heart and soul that to come into the presence of God would be earth shattering.

To come into the presence of such holiness and righteousness, we think we can just waltz on into his presence.

But if you were to ever be in the presence of God, you would be like Isaiah, woe is me, I am undone.

I am broken into billions of pieces.

None of us can stand before a holy and righteous and just God.

And down deep inside, you know that.

But the message of the gospel is that this is the very purpose for which Jesus was born and came into our world to give us a way to close the bridge, the gap.

Another story will help us.

In New Zealand, many years ago, it's a famous story.

A New Zealand sheep herder who woke up one morning in the midst of a dilemma.

He had two sheep, mother sheep.

One mother sheep gave birth to the lamb and then died.

So we have a lamb without a mother.

And then another sheep gave birth to a lamb and the lamb died.

So we have a mother without a lamb.

The shepherd was perplexed until he thought what he seemed to be an obvious solution to take the motherless lamb and the lambless mother and put them together.

hoping that one would nurse the other.

The problem is when the mother sheep came to smell the little lamb, she noticed it was a different aroma and moved away.

He didn't know what to do.

So he went to the little lamb that had died and he skinned its body and made sort of a coat and put it around the other lamb.

And when he placed it on the lamb that was alive, the mother at first was suspicious, but then upon smelling the familiarity, moved in to nurse and take care of the baby lamb and it was saved.

That, my friends, is why we can have peace on earth, goodwill toward men.

It is why the deepest needs of the human heart can be met.

It is the reason why the gap between us and God has been closed.

Because the Lamb of God came and was born to take away the sins of the world.

And that lamb, what God has done is he has taken the coat of Christ himself and put it on us so that we received a coat of righteousness so that we can move into close proximity with God the Father.

Not because we're righteous, but because someone else, we're wearing somebody else's clothing and it's the clothing of Christ who paid the penalty of our sins.

That's why when we put this up on a board and we say, this is you and this is God, we put a cross in the middle and it's on that cross beam that you and I can walk across.

and have fellowship and community with God.

That's why we can have peace on earth.

You say, wait a minute, there's not peace on earth.

The peace on earth I've always believed is much more than peace absent of war.

It's peace within the human heart.

We can know now that when we make our approach to God, that we are not clothed in our own righteousness and therefore can experience perfect peace internally, knowing that we are good with God.

And the Christmas story tells me that God was willing.

to send what was most precious to him so that he would not lose me to pay the penalty my sins deserve and then apply his death to my account.

So that when I come near to God, he smells the death of his son at first.

God has placed the garment of his son on me so that I could come near to him.

But that's not all.

Come on, let's put it together.

That's not all.

What is the Christmas story all about?

We're told he will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Not too long ago, I read a story.

Cannot confirm or deny, could be a legend, could be a myth, but the story still rings true when it comes to application.

It's a wealthy landowner who, expensive piece of property, rolled in and out of his gate every day, and he had quite an extensive art collection.

We're talking millions and millions of dollars.

There was a beggar that lived outside the door, outside the gate of his palatial home.

And every day when the son of the wealthy landowner would come out, the son was always cordial and kind to the beggar.

The owner, not so much, but the son always had a moment, always had food, always had something for the man who was homeless.

The time came where the wealthy landowner died.

And there was news all around that there was going to be an auction of all these expensive fine collection pieces of art.

A couple of weeks before the father, landowner died.

the homeless guy had taken a piece of paper with some crayons and drawn a portrait of the son and had given it to the gatekeeper to pass on to the father.

And he never heard back from the father, never heard anything, didn't know what happened to the painting or to the scribbling artistic work of a homeless person depicting the son that he loved.

Well, the day of the auction came.

And the homeless guy really wanted that drawing back because the sun meant a lot to him.

So he borrowed some clothes, cleaned himself up, and was able to sneak into the auction.

The auctioneer came forward and he said to a group of people who were just ready to spend some money on these fine pieces of art, and he said, before we began, there's a stipulation.

And that is, the wealthy landowner said that the first piece to be auctioned off would be this drawing of his son.

And it was that drawing painted and drawn by the beggar, by the homeless man.

And the crowd just, oh man, they'd waited for so long, for hours.

They wanted to get to the good stuff.

So he held it up and the only person who bid on it was the beggar himself.

50 cents he had found.

And he came up, took the sketch drawing of the master's son and began to walk to the back of the room when the auctioneer said, oh, by the way, there's a second stipulation.

Whoever buys the son gets all of it.

And the room was beside itself.

What I'm trying to tell you is, he who gets the son gets it all.

He who gets the son gets it all.

It is the greatest relationship.

Only Jesus answers the most deep penetrating questions of the heart of origin, meaning, destiny, morality.

Only Jesus can turn religion and obligation into opportunity and salvation.

He who gets the son.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but should have everlasting life.

One of my favorite Christmas songs, long time ago in Bethlehem.

So the Holy Bible says, Mary's boy child, Jesus Christ, was born on Christmas day.

Listen here, the angels sing, a new king born today, and man will live forevermore because of Christmas day.

Christmas reminds us that a savior has come, that we are saved from death, that what is lost in this world, yes, we are moving toward an end, but it's an end that offers a new beginning.

And when that resonates deeply in the human heart, everything changes.

Everything.

The common man finds that he comes close to God and the commonness of his workaday world takes on new eternal significance.

It has meaning because it has eternal significance.

The intellectual who finds bankruptcy in the intellectual world now sees the coherency of the story of redemption and how all things are not moving toward an end, but toward a beginning and life with God, a God who has come near, will last forever.

And only he, he alone answers the deepest, most penetrating questions of the existence of humanity.

There is a story that's being written, a story that comes to an end that has a beginning.

And then there's the spiritual man who's been trying to find God, now realizes that he doesn't try to, or he doesn't have to try to find God, that God has found him, that God reached down to him and has secured his salvation and now offers the ultimate rest.

And so here's the question.

All of this, let's take that big glob back and pull it in now.

Here's the question.

Which one are you?

What is your coping mechanism?

Love, marriage, you think your life will be perfect after that?

I can tell you from experience, it will not be.

You like to sit around.

You're the devil's advocate.

You love to sit around and have philosophical conversations and show everybody how smart you are, but you never come to any conclusion.

You think that just by talking about God is the same of giving your life to him.

It's not.

That's like saying that talking about or being sorry for something you've done is the same as repentance.

It's not.

Which one are you?

Are you the philosopher?

You love to talk about abstract ideas, but you have no commitment and you have no intention of ever following Jesus as Savior and Lord of your life.

Are you the common man?

You're trying to get everything out of your work, thinking that if you can just make this much money or get this promotion, that everything will change and your life will be perfect.

Can I tell you, it will not be.

No matter how far up the ladder you climb, it never will be enough.

Are you the common man?

Are you the intellectual?

Are you the spiritual man?

Are you the one that says, you know, I've been good.

I've done the best I could.

I've never hurt anybody, never killed anybody.

I don't lie that often.

And somehow you think that's gonna give you peace and rest.

None of those things will work until you, and we say this every Christmas, wise men still seek him.

And they do because they know that once you get the son, you get it all.

Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.

One more time.

When you get the son, you get it all.

What is stopping you this Christmas?

From coming to the foot of the cross and saying to Christ, I have tried everything else.

I'm trying you.

And when you get the son, you get it all.

Father, thank you for your goodness and mercy.

I pray in Christ's name that those who are able to listen to this message would see the difference between thinking about becoming a believer and making a commitment to give our lives over to Christ and allow him to fulfill the deepest desires of our heart.

that a child has been born but a son has been given so that the gap that exists between us and God can now be crossed through the beam of the cross.

Because of what the Son has done, we take him now into our lives and his righteousness has been accredited to us.

so that we have the power now to live and to overcome, so that the death shadow might fade and be overwhelmed by the light of the resurrection, knowing that we too will live forevermore.

In Christ's name, amen.