God has got a purpose on his heart. And that purpose is to make the name of Jesus known, to bring Jesus to the whole world, to bring Jesus to those who we might call lost, or others might prefer a different term to describe the who have yet to come to a place of believing in Jesus, but there is a peace and a deliverance and a freedom that our God wants to bring to every man, woman, boy, and girl on the face of the earth. That freedom is coming through the person of Jesus Christ.
When we think of Bethlehem, it was a really a relatively small town. And yet it had become a boom town because of the census requirement of Caesar Augustas. I'm not sure what this inn looked like that Jesus and Mary were basically refused entry because there was no room, but I can guarantee you, it didn't look like one of the comfort ends down here on 94.
Every single one of us has incredible significance. And many, many times God's work is associated with the birth of a child. The fact of the matter is God had a purpose in mind when you were born, regardless of how your or origination happened. See, there is a lot of people today that think if a child wasn't wanted, or it was the product of some kind of abuse and what have you, that that child doesn't have significance. But let me tell you something; only life comes from God and no child has insignificance in the eyes of God, regardless of how they began and how they originated.
There are some more, what I would call, classic Christmas songs that Carol's like, oh, holy night. One of my favorites is I heard the bells on Christmas day. That song was written by a man who had suffered a lot of loss during the civil war. He was really discouraged and he heard the bells ring out on Christmas day and it reminded him that God's love is greater than all the hatred and all the killing. Oh little town of Bethlehem: I've always liked the melody line of that song. Ark the Herald, and of course, silent night; we know the story behind silent night with a mouse eating the organ bellows and the organ didn't work. And so the padre had to write a Christmas song for the Christmas Eve service, and he wrote a silent night. It has probably become the most favorite Christmas Carol of all time.
Faith is our absolute confidence in God. There is no way that during tribulations that you will gain patience and hope if there is something that you are not pointing that to, or depending on. And that's something that you have to point to or depend on is God. It's not something blind is because through whatever you are going through, you can look back and you can see that there is one thing that was constant. Even when you failed, even when you made the wrong step, even when you said the wrong thing, there was one thing that was constant that God was always there and God fulfilled what he said he was going to do.
We are going to talk about worship. That's not an unheard-of topic. And for many of us who have, uh, spent much of our lives in the charismatic culture of worship, a lot of this is not new. The Lord just awakened some new thoughts about the value of corporate worship. We are in a season where a lot of a lot of the church has exited the church. They haven't stopped loving Jesus, but they are done with church. In fact, there is a name for those kinds of people. It's called the doners: done with church, but now with Jesus.
Jacque: Jesus gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people. He also divided the two fish among them all.
Brian: I wonder if the fish that he divided were cooked.
Jacque: Oh, that's a good question.
Jacque: I don't think they were eating sushi; I think it was cooked.
Brian: That's even a greater miracle if he can create it cooked.
You hear that? God is love. God is love. He had a motivation to have a relationship with his creation. You know what that motivation was? Love. What does the scripture say For God so loved the world. He didn't say he hated the world. He didn't say he condemned the world. He said for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that you and I can be sitting here today, calling ourselves believers in the savior Jesus Christ.
At one time, when Christ was rather young, there was an execution of over 2000 people at one time in the vicinity of Jerusalem. This was always done publicly. Our executions today are always done in a sense privately in a prison, but these were done publicly on the roadside so everybody could see it. It was intended to bring fear into people. When we think of the cross, I just had this thought that there was a lot of things that died at the cross that day, not just Jesus.
The only thing that I am beginning to realize is that in Western culture, we interpreted differently than God does because as Francis Schaeffer said, "Our, our focus tends to be on our personal peace and affluence, our personal happiness." And so what I'm starting to understand is that God's wonderful plan for our life is not about our personal happiness, but if we let Jesus bring us into his wonderful plan, we will be completely happy, but we won't be completely happy because we have all the things that we want. There will be something deeper and richer that he is going to bring us into.
Not all people who are unemployed spiritually are so because there is nothing to do or there are no jobs available. Our call to salvation included a call to service. I really appreciated Pastor Robert's message last week about just a place for all of us not just to belong, but to also a place to serve, and we have a community that is a need of knowing Christ.
The fact of the matter is no service to God is small. Not all services as visible as others. Obviously, my place of service is much more visible than somebody else's. All service to God is important and no service to God is small because it all matters.
What are we really expecting in our lives? And you know what, life isn't always fair. How many of you know that? I don't think it's fair that Bob died. I don't think it's fair. Now you might say, well, you better take that up with God, but from my perspective, it's not fair. A lot of things from our perspective isn't fair. Jesus tells us that very statement in a rather unique way.
How many of you know that at times there are more than one road to go? Sometimes we will pick the road of, shall we say, least resistance, but that isn't necessarily always the road that God has for us. This particular road, God led them on the road— God did not lead them on the road that was going to go through the Philistine country.
Sometimes the way we have followed Jesus hasn't truly represented who Jesus really is. Sometimes we begin to forget the promises of God even to the point of no longer looking to the word of God for encouragement and faith. We fill our lives with other items and other things to mask our pain and to help us get through the day. We find ourselves watching more and more and more television. We sometimes take alcohol or drugs and other things into our system to just get us through the day, get us through the night, get us through the week, and we no longer look to the word of God for encouragement.
