Love

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 Open your Bibles to John chapter 1.

Just a reminder, today, we know it’s going to be a little bit louder, because we have our children in here, and that’s beautiful. We love that. We’re celebrating that. Uh, if they’re screaming, tell them to stop. But beyond that, we’re good. We’re gonna make this work today. Well, Merry Christmas, everybody. If we haven’t met before, my name’s Trey.

I’m one of the pastors here. And every year, we go, uh, kind of like what a lot of the church does throughout the world, and throughout history, is we go through Advent. It’s just this meditation on these four ideas. Uh, that Jesus has brought in the first coming of Christ. It was the hope, the peace, the joy, and the love that was purchased because Jesus came down here on earth.

But also in Advent, there’s a tension because we’re also longing for the fullness of that experience. And that’s why, in Advent, we also look to the second coming. So Jesus came once, and because of that, we know he’ll come again. And when he comes again, it’ll be the full experience of hope, peace, joy, and love.

And we always leave love at the very end because the Apostle Paul says to the church of Corinth the greatest of these is love. So we’ve been really building up to this moment today and this is always the hardest passage or topic to preach because it’s on love. Because it’s very difficult for us to fathom and to understand.

And here’s a few reasons why love is important. It’s typically kind of difficult for us to grasp. Number one, especially in our culture today, love has become cliche. Uh, we say love all the time for all sorts of things. And if you grew up in the church, you’ve heard that God loves the world. And so you, maybe you, your eyes are even rolling.

I’ve heard this sermon before, uh, kind of, yes, but also hopefully you’re going to hear it from a different angle. The second reason love is always difficult, particularly in our culture, is it’s been redefined in our culture, just the word love. And it’s hard to get those definitions. Outside of our heads and our brains.

For example, the easiest example for me to think of is love doesn’t always mean tolerance. We’ve kind of created that today. Now, I think tolerance is a beautiful gift for society to have, if it’s rightly defined. However, to love means we don’t say all things and all ideas are all equally good, true, and beautiful.

Tolerance would say we need to say that, but love would say, no, some things aren’t as good as others. As other things, it’s easy example, it’s loving of me, or my lack of tolerance in telling you heroin, stop heroin and it will kill you. That’s loving for me to say, although it feels like I’m not tolerating someone.

Another idea that we have when it comes to love is we think love just means being nice. This is why I do love hearing from newcomers, man, your church is very loving, and I love to hear that. And notice how often I’m saying love in so many different ways here. But to be nice is a loving thing to do. But it’s not really love.

If you were just to experience our church just on a Sunday morning, and for those two minutes, for the introverts who are cringing those last two minutes, you experience love to some degree. But that’s not love. Love is when you disappoint someone, or they disappoint you, and you still stick it out. That’s love.

Lastly, love isn’t lust. That’s usually what we mean when we say we love. One pastor, Agent Rogers, I grew up listening to, he said, lust wants to get, love wants to give. For me, I love raspberry bundt cakes. Anybody with me? Those things. I’ve had like 10 this month alone to the glory of God, and I have a lot of working out to do in January.

Um, but I love that. But I also love my wife and it’s her 33rd birthday today. Happy birthday to you. All right. Now, what I, hopefully, my love for that cake is, doesn’t match to my love for my wife, and yet we still use the same word, which is why it’s so hard to talk about love. Lastly, of course, love is the hardest gift to receive because many of us don’t feel like we deserve it.

And so when we hear a Christmas message on love, that’s great, they should hear that over there, but man, you don’t know what I’ve been through, you don’t know what I’ve done. And here at Christmas, we say with full assurance, he loves you. But we need to hear that in many different ways and in many different fashions.

So today, what I’ve decided to do is to go through all four Gospels. We’re going to look at Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These are the first four. We’re not looking at all of it. Don’t worry. You’re going to get out here before lunch. We’re going to be fine. We’re going to look at verses in each one.

Essentially what I want us to do is paint a picture from different angles of the gospels of what the love of God is at Christmas. We’re going to look at it by looking at a poem, a prophecy, a purpose statement, and a parable. It’s going to be perfect. You ready to pray? All right, let’s pray. Father God, we love you so much.

Thank you for your kindness and thank you for your love. Jesus. Thank you that you came down to us to save us because we could never save ourselves. And God, I just pray that we’d offer you all of our baggage this morning, our ideas and notions of what love is, the disappointments we’ve experienced from those who we thought were supposed to love us.

We just ask you to open up our hearts and show us your love, a love that is so good that it saves our souls. It’s a love that we’ll enjoy for the rest of eternity. In Jesus name, I pray. Everybody says Amen. All right. Let’s start with a poem. A poem of God’s love for you is found in John’s Gospel, so if you haven’t churned there go ahead to john chapter one now john is a poet He’s an apostle, but he loves poetry.

All of chapter one is verses 1 to 18 is poetry It’s a beautiful poem now. We know this about john because he’s also the one who wrote revelation I love just asking this question because we’ve grown so much since then but two summers ago We went through revelation raise your hand if you were there for that series Looks like I have to preach it again.

Alright, so, John, we learned a huge part of understanding Revelation is that he is poetic. He’s using vivid imagery, uh, to communicate metaphors and ideas. And so, we also see that same energy he has in John chapter 1. What he’s doing is he’s starting John 1 to mirror Genesis 1. If you know Genesis 1, the very first words of the Bible, it says in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

John recognizes this moment, and he starts a little bit like the same way. He says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. You’ll notice this is a capital W for Word. This is the Logos. This is referencing Jesus. And so John does this for a few reasons. One, he’s starting out that way to tell you and me, Jesus is God.

So since the beginning, this person I’m talking about, he’s always existed. But the second reason, he’s announcing an inauguration of a new creation. So Genesis 1 is the beginning of the story of creation. John 1, uh, John is saying, look, because Jesus has come to earth, we now have a new creation, or a new birth.

Found in Christ Jesus. So there’s so much to go in John 1, but let’s just zero in together because we have other Gospels to go through in just verse 14. Verse 14 says,

Full of grace and truth. There’s a lot to unpack here, but let’s just look at the first four words. The word became We’ve established who the word is. That’s Jesus, God himself. But then it says became flesh. Now this word flesh or body has two Greek words that we can be using. And that gives us kind of an understanding of what kind of body it is.

John is talking about. The most common phrase would be soma. You would assume John would use the Greek for phrase soma, because soma is a positive word when it comes to the body. Think about when you are an athlete or a warrior. This person has a soma. It’s a body filled with nobility and strength and resilience.

It’s the best picture of what men and women can be. So you think, okay, if God’s going to come down, he’s going to have a soma. Instead, John decides to use the word sarx. Sarx is a negative word. Sarx is this implication that because you have a body, you have odor. Because you have a body, you have bowels.

Right? Because you have a body, you have bad morning breath. Sarx is this idea that because of sin, our bodies are weak. And they are decaying, and they are on a track towards death. Merry Christmas, everybody. Aren’t you excited you came today? So John is saying, actually, God came down to take on Sarks. He’s saying, until Jesus is one, he’s not gonna walk.

And then he’s not going to string together sentences because he has a sarx until he’s about two And because he has a sarx god himself is going to hit puberty at 12 13 or 14 this is Unbelievable this almighty god if you read the old testament, this is a god We can’t even see his face or else we will die his presence his holiness is so far beyond us including When the Jews would write Yahweh, they wouldn’t write the vowels.

They would remove them. They had to treat God’s name as such honor. They wouldn’t say it out loud because they held it with such reverence. This God took on a sarx. Took on flesh. And this is where we get our doctrine. He’s fully God and fully man. Which has all sorts of implications. Dorothy Sayers, she’s meditating on this reality.

She puts it this way. She says, quote, The incarnation, this is, in other words, God becoming flesh, means that for whatever reason God chose to let us fall, to suffer, to be subject to sorrows and death, He has nonetheless had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself.

He himself has gone through the whole of human experience from the trivial irritations of family life. I know you guys are about to experience that in a couple days. Amen, right? And the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death.

He was born in poverty and suffered infinite pain all for us. And thought it well worth his while. In a world that wants to avoid the pain and the weakness that we have and experience, Christmas is good news for the weak. Jesus not only is willing to confront this flesh, he’s willing to put it on himself.

And since Jesus is fully man, He sees you in your weakness. He understands you in your pain and your suffering. All year we’ve been talking about making friends and loving other people. That’s been our main idea, and I love C. S. Lewis line, talks about friendship. He said the best way to describe friendship is two words.

You too? You guys ever had that before? Oh, you’re a Suns fan too? Oh, you like the Lord of the Rings too? Right? You love churros from Disneyland too? Right? And it’s this, this, oh my gosh, we have so many similarities, and we start these friendships. And the beauty of the Christmas message is that Jesus comes down on the flesh, and he can honestly look at you and me and say, you too?

You’ve been betrayed too? You have suffered too? You’ve gone through sorrow too? Jesus can relate with you, and can relate with me. What a beautiful love. And at the same time, Jesus is fully God. Which means he can sympathize with us, but also that same sarks that he put on, he can resurrect and bring new life to what we once were mortal.

Now we can live with him for eternity. So this is one angle of love. He became like us so that we could become like him. And that’s from John’s perspective. Let’s now turn to Matthew. For some of us, if you’re like me, man, shout out to the amazing wives in the room. I’m that kind of husband where I have to, like, hear from my wife a million times how much she loves me and the different ways she loves.

It’s, I’m insecure, pray for me, right? So you love to hear, are you sure I’m loved? Did I mess up? And so I want to show us the many different ways God loves us through these gospels. So let’s look now at Matthew 1. We just looked at a poem. Now let’s look at a prophecy of God’s love for you. Matthew, if many of you, I hope you do, uh, you’ll start your Bible reading plan.

I would suggest if you’ve never read the Bible before, let’s start in Matthew and do the New Testament first, before you go to Genesis. That’s just my recommendation. But then, on January 1st, you’re going to open up Matthew, you’re going to be so pumped. I got this. I’m going to love you, Lord. And you open it up, and it starts with, Genealogy.

This guy, we got that guy, we got this, we got that. And you’re just like, wow, this is boring. It’s actually not boring at all. When you understand the significance of genealogies in ancient times, this was essentially like your linkedin profile. I don’t know how many of you have a linkedin profile, but it’s just your way of saying this is my resume and you tend to not include the jobs that didn’t go well.

And you only talk about how great you are in these certain areas. Most people have genealogies that do the same. They hide the crazy uncles, right? They don’t talk about that. Aunt who tries to assassinate somebody and let’s just talk about all the good people. I’m kind of related to Thomas Jefferson That’s what we do.

So this was common in this time But what’s fascinating is jesus’s family line is full of people. You would never want to mention Because they believed in this time your family line predicted your future Do you have royalty running through your veins or do you have robbers and thieves that will determine who you become?

and jesus Has such a crazy family line You Matthew, he starts to write down Gentiles, sinners, and women, which we all know today are great. But in this time, you would not include women in your family tree. Praise the Lord, we’ve advanced, alright? Because it’s so much shame. Let me give you a few examples.

Jesus family line in Matthew chapter 1 includes Tamar. Now, Tamar is a Gentile woman. who posed as a harlot because Judah’s sons never, uh, were able to impregnate her, they failed her, and so then she covered and played to be a harlot in order to get her father in law, Judah, to give her a child. That’s all sorts of shame.

And yet Jesus comes in that family line. You also have Rahab. She’s also a concubine. She’s the one from Jericho that helped the spies of Israel come. And so she’s a great story, but also her profession was still a concubine. But then you also still have Jewish men that have a lot of shame in the family line.

One of them is Jeconiah. Jeconiah was the last king of Judah. And as he was king, his wickedness and sin was so built up and he refused to repent that finally through his reign, Babylon took over and they now became exiles. He is the shameful king who didn’t listen to God. And now all of the people of God are suffering as a result.

And Matthew includes. Him in that line Jesus comes you would think this perfect messiah would come from a perfect family tree But he has a family tree like yours and like mine and it’s in that context. We see this prophecy verse 23 c the virgin who’s mary Will become pregnant and give birth to a son and they will name him emmanuel which is translated god is with us Matthew wants us to do though He wants us to remember Remember that family line?

God’s with that. God is with us in our wickedness. God is with us in our shame. And that’s the good news. Christmas is good news for not just the weak. Christmas is good news for the wicked. If Jesus, hear me, was willing to enter into a family line filled with that much wickedness, how much more is he willing to enter into your life and meet you exactly where you are at, no matter your past.

If we were to keep going, I’d love to preach Matthew 1 just as a whole. We don’t have time for that. But if we kept going line by line, we would see people that were filled with addiction. You see people who were abused and abusers, those who struggle with anger, lots of family dysfunction, anxiety, loneliness, marginalization, oppression, shame, wounds, manipulation, and all sorts of immorality, just to name a few.

So Tyler Staton, a pastor, puts it this way. The family Jesus came from. It tells us everything we need to know about the family Jesus came for, and if you’re willing to receive it, you can be a part of his family as well. So I want us to see love. He came to love the weak. He also, this is hard for us to fathom, he came to love the wicked.

But maybe you’re like me and you need some more convincing. Let’s keep reading. Let’s look at a purpose statement of God’s love for you in the gospel of Mark. So just go over one more book, Matthew, and then Mark, Mark chapter 2. Now, Mark is typically never read during Christmas because he doesn’t give a birth account.

That’s mainly with Matthew and Luke. And so, he just is an adult right away and gets baptized and does ministry. And right away, you’ll see Mark is trying to paint this picture. Jesus came to be a healer. And so they’re bothered because the people he’s healing are not the greatest people. They’re sinners and tax collectors and they’re now interrogating this Jesus saying, Why are you hanging out with these terrible people?

What’s your why in business parlance? And he starts with why. Look at chapter, uh, two, verse 16. When the scribes who were Pharisees saw that Jesus was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples, Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners? When Jesus heard this, he told them, It is not those who are well, who need a doctor, but those who are sick.

I didn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners. Notice this, Christmas is good news, not just for the weak, not just for the wicked, but Christmas is good news for the wounded. For too long, we’ve skipped over this part of the gospel. I think in our American culture, God is here to heal you and to save you, to salve you.

You as the scripture says This leads us to need to talk about sin The whole reason jesus came is because sin entered into this world and we need saving from it Now if you’re around passion creek for any length of time, you’ll probably hear us say this often There’s three dimensions to sin sin done by us sin done to us and sin done Around us you’re better than the first service.

Bravo. Okay Don’t tell them that uh So, sin done around us. Another way we like to talk about sin, three dimensions, is sin of omission, sin of, I’m not even going to ask because I don’t think you know this, sin of omission, sin of commission, and sin of imperfection. Let me explain those quickly. Sin of omission, we usually don’t think of this, is sin to not do the right thing.

So, all the things you should have done and didn’t do, that’s a sin. You’re like, oh no, I now feel more guilty. Because most of us think sin of commission. Sin of commission is doing the things you shouldn’t have done. So that’s a lot of sin. Not only are those two categories of sin, but we see in scripture the sin of imperfection.

Sin of imperfection is doing the right thing, but with the wrong motive. Very common sin within the church. We’re not actually loving God and loving people. We’re doing the church thing in order to be praised and get our own agenda fulfilled. So that’s a lot of sin. And that sin, the scripture says, brings about heartache and depravity and sickness and death.

But there is yet another three dimensions to talk about sin. And that’s what I want to talk about today. Number one, the scriptures are pretty clear. Sin is a choice. You and I rebelled against God and we have chosen our own path. We want to be gods of our own life, but it always results in corruption, separation from God and each other, and ultimately death itself.

So the good news of Christmas, and certainly the good news of Easter, is that Jesus came to forgive you of that choice and rid you of all of your guilt. But that’s just one piece of the good news. The second is that sin is a curse. Because sin is a curse, we’re stuck under the power of sin that enslaves us.

This is why you and I are often sinning, even though we don’t want to. It just seems like it’s just what we were bred to do. Um, everyone The scripture says, who are from Adam’s seed, if you’re a descendant from Adam, you are entered into a world of sin. You are born in sin. This is why theology is so important during Christmas time.

This is why Jesus had to be of a virgin birth. Because he had no earthly father. Adam’s seed was not passed down to Jesus. Which is why Jesus was not born sinful. He was still perfect. Okay, very important. So because of that though, Jesus came to free us from the curse. Jordan, can you give me water? I’m trying to get like subtle hints here.

I’m dying. Okay. Happy birthday. Thank you. All right. Lastly, sin is an infection.

We are filled with a contagion that spreads to every area of our life. So yes, we’re wicked. And we deserve punishment for that, but at the same time we’re also wounded and we’re weary because of this world of sin. So we need a savior, but Jesus also comes as a great physician who looks at you with compassion and with care.

So Jesus came to forgive us. He came to free us, but let us not forget he also came to heal us. So yes, the gospel is that we plead for the mercy of the judge of the living and the dead, but we also Come to this great physician and open our wounds to him so that only he can heal. That’s another element of his love.

Jesus loves you so much. He became like you by taking on sarks filled with pain, brokenness, and decay. Jesus loves you so much that he meets you right where you’re at, in the middle of all of your mess, dysfunction, and sin. And Jesus loves you so much that he came so that he can heal you. from sin, corruption, and death.

And yet, this is still hard for us to believe. I’m not crying, I’m just struggling. But why? It’s hard for us because we often equate God’s love with man’s love, and mankind’s love doesn’t hold a candle. Man, women will fail you, but God never will. But it’s hard because our only conception, if we’re not in the scriptures and understanding who God is, we can only imagine earthly love.

And mankind’s love, write this down, is conditional, reciprocal, and occasional. A quick word on each. I think this is why love is so hard for us, because first of all, we’re in a world where love is conditional. We may not say it out loud, but many of us have relationships. It’s predicated on our performance.

If we don’t perform, we know they won’t love us, like they say they do. And that lack of trust. It’s hard. I know for me. I don’t know why, but I blacked out most of my childhood and I don’t think anything bad happened to me. I just think I’m hoping right. But my brain, I don’t know. Read psychology, maybe. Um, but I just kind of don’t remember like anything pre junior high.

And but one thing I do remember is right before junior high. I went and I was in a basketball competition. Three point contest. My name is Trey. I was destined for this, right? And so drove all the way to Phoenix. My mom drove me. My dad was at work. And I was so pumped. I was doing great in the trial, like the trial time.

I thought I was going to beat everybody. I couldn’t wait for the trophy and, uh, The horn goes off. It’s my 30 seconds and I like tunnel vision blackout. I don’t do well. I get second place and I remember two things and it just shows like just My parents didn’t do this to me. It’s just like how our brains work.

I remember saying one, Hey mom, let’s tell dad we won. Okay, let’s just act like, can we go to target and buy a trophy? Everything’s fine. And the second thing I remember is I literally cried the whole way home in shame, not wanting to see my father for being a second place loser. My dad’s a good dad. I promise.

Um, and it was just this, nobody had a train, nobody had to teach me that, but I just kind of felt inherently, I need to perform in order for me to be loved. And we bring that same energy to God. You know, we just assume his love for us is good as long as I’m good. But if I fail him, he will leave me. quickly in our world.

Our love is typically reciprocal. We know this. We have friends. I’ll love you as long as you love me and vice versa. We scratch each other’s backs. But the moment I stopped reaching out, they’ll probably stop reaching out. And it’s how most of our friendships are. And it’s so sad in the same way. We think, God, if I am, Reading my Bible and going to church.

Of course, you love me, but if I go a few weeks in a row or if I have the season of life where I’m not pursuing you, of course, you don’t pursue me. And that’s just a lie from the pit of hell. And of course, most of us are conditioned to experience love. It’s occasional, something I finding in my own fatherhood is I love to promise my kids the moon, but sometimes I don’t give it to him, right?

I want it. I over promise and under deliver. And I recognize what I’m creating, even within my own Children. And they’re here, and I have to give them a dollar every time I mention them. But every time I want to promise them something I can’t deliver, I am training them that my love is occasional. My gifts are occasional.

I might pull through, I might not. And how many of us bring that same energy to the Father? Yes, those promises are great, but you might not give them to me, at least not today. And so we have to wrestle with this, and Christmas is supposed to be designed where we’re honest about these failings, and we’re honest that love is so hard for us to grasp, but then we remember it is a gift that has come down from heaven, and it’s something that you and I can receive.

So, so far, we’ve seen love from a poem, a prophecy, and a purpose statement, but let’s end with the parable. Lastly, turn with me to Luke chapter 15. This is a parable of God’s love for you. This is probably the most famous parable of all Jesus’s stories. The context is a group of Pharisees were hanging out and could not believe that Jesus was hanging out with so many sinners, not only seeing them, but eating with them.

And so then Jesus teaches them three parables to teach him a lesson. He talks about the lost sheep, the lost coin, but then it goes to the lost son, or what most of us know as the prodigal son. We don’t have time to read the whole story, but let me catch you up. You have a younger brother who wants the father to die.

But because he won’t die, hey, just give me my money as if you died. Give me my inheritance today. So he gives him his inheritance. He goes and spends it on worldly living. He squanders all of it. Parties so hard he winds up with the pigs. He’s eating with the pigs. And he eventually, Scripture says, he comes to his senses.

And he says, I don’t deserve to ever be a son of my father, but I can be his slave. Even his slaves eat better than this. So he decides to get a speech together and he heads back to his dad. Now we find where the story is in verse 20. So he got up this son and went to his father. But while the son was still a long way off, his father saw him.

Notice this means the father kept looking. And he was filled with compassion. And he ran through his, through his arms around his neck and kissed him. The son said to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father told his servants, quick, bring out the best robe and put it on him.

Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then bring the fattened calf and slaughter it. Let’s celebrate with the feast because the son of mine was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. So they began to celebrate. Many church fathers point to this story when they think about Christmas, because there’s so many similarities.

Many of us assume because we’ve sinned, the only way we can remotely get back into God’s presence is to become his slave. But we have a Father who loves us so much that He ran after us. God ran after us by coming down to earth in the form of a servant. the form of a child in order to bring us back into the fold.

In the same way, you and I, we often don’t feel like we’re worthy, and so we think, I’ll work my way back to heaven, but God says, no, no, no, all you have to do is to look towards me, and I will be running after you. I love one gospel writer puts this this way, and he says it to a crowd of people. He says, you can take a thousand steps away from God, but because of Christmas.

We know for sure it always only takes one to come back to him, because we have a God who’s pursuing us every step of the way. And this is the God that we’re celebrating. Friends, Christmas is good news for the weak, for the wicked, the wounded, but it’s also good news for the empty handed. Christmas is a reminder for you and me that we have nothing to bring.

We are like the prodigal son who has wasted it on worldly living, and yet, in his compassion, God is not asking us to slave away and to earn our salvation. Instead, he puts us, he gives us a robe of righteousness and he gives us a ring to signify that we are sons and daughters of the King. This is the Christmas message.

So I want us to actually participate in a meditation. So if you can close your eyes, if that helps you meditate more, Holy Spirit come. I want you to imagine. The day in the hour where you felt most unworthy of God’s love. Maybe this was this last week, maybe it was this morning, maybe this was a decade ago, but it was a time when you had no answers, you had no place to hide, you were caught in your shame, and you were left empty handed, and you felt like there was no way out.

Remember the shame you felt. Or maybe the exhaustion.

Christmas calls us to take that scene and now imagine, in that moment of your deepest shame, imagine God running after you in love.

That’s the gospel. That’s Christmas. It’s not just a metaphor, it’s reality.

Jesus left heaven not because he wanted to get to a bunch of people who could earn their way. Jesus left heaven because he sees you in your shame and he wants to meet you right where you’re at and bring you back up and put on you a robe of righteousness. So if you’ve never done it before with our eyes still closed, I just ask you to invite the Father in.

Some of us we’ve never actually made that moment personal in our lives and today can be the day.

Where you tell the Father, God, I’m weak. I’m tired of this facade of strength. Let the love of Jesus cover you. You tell God, God, I, I’m wicked. I’m, I’m, I’m so tired of hiding in my shame, brother, sister, let the love of Jesus cover you. Or maybe you’re here and you’re wounded because of sin done to you and all around you.

Quit letting that wound fester and grow in the darkness. Let the love of Jesus expose it and then cover you with love and grace.

And if you’re in the room and you feel empty handed, quit being embarrassed. That’s exactly what you need to be. God has come for those who realize they have nothing. And in turn, they can receive everything. Have you received the love of Jesus? Amen. May today be the day. God, I pray for the rest of this room who has experienced your love, but maybe it’s been a while since we’ve truly experienced it.

We just asked for that Christmas miracle. God, I know it’s easy for us to imagine you loving a sinner, but how can you love a saint who it still keeps on sinning? The parable goes on. The older brother also experienced the love of the Father, even though he had done many good things. And God, we just ask you, we come to you, all of us, weak, wounded, wicked, weary, and empty handed.

And we just say, love me in my worst moment, God. I surrender to you and to you alone. King Jesus, I just pray that this would be a holy moment, that this Christmas would be different. Because people in this room have finally made that decision to open to your love. God, thank you for loving us so much that you sent your son into the world so you can bring us back to you.

In Jesus name, I pray. Everybody says, amen.