Christmas At The Met - 2025

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to the Met Church podcast. Here at the Met, we are all about connecting people to God and one another. If you have any questions or want more information about what's happening here at the church, then head to our [email protected] we would love to stay connected with you throughout the week through social media, so be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Now. Enjoy the message. [00:00:24] Speaker B: Well, Merry Christmas, everybody. I'm so glad you're here. Want to welcome all of you who are watching online. We're live streaming this service and I'm glad to see a lot of you who are are new to our church. Many of you are visiting. Some of you are family members in town to visit your families. And I really want to thank you for spending part of your Christmas Eve with us tonight. And I hope the service will be meaningful to you and be a blessing to you. I'm glad to see all of you here. Now, I asked last weekend, how many were all finished with their Christmas stuff. I mean, you were done. You, you've. Everything's wrapped. You have nothing to stress about. The food is purchased, it's all put away. How many of you would say, I'm done, I'm ready, we're ready to go. I mean, all systems are go. How many of you have a few more things you gotta do? Some of you. Okay, well, what I want you to do is not stress about it, all right? Like, I talked to this weekend, I asked some of Em, I said, how many of you have not even started? How many of you not. I was shocked at how many people raised their hand. I told em, I said, man, are you waiting till Mary's water breaks? I mean, what are you. What are you waiting on? I mean, I hope you don't stress yourself out too much, and I hope this is a great Christmas for you. My grandkids are pumped about it. My grandson is 9, and he's really ready for Santa Claus. You kids ready for Santa Claus out there? Yeah, he's coming, man. Santa Claus is coming. And he was all excited about it. And I was asking about the naughty, nice thing. I said, are you on the nice list? The naughty list? He said, I think I've been a little bit on both of them. You know, kind of bounce around. He's kind of honest about that sort of thing. And so I heard about this little boy who went to see Santa Claus and he shared with Santa Claus everything he wanted. But he really got bothered because his mom told him, she said, now, son, you've been on the naughty list a lot this year. So I hope. I hope Santa gets you what you want. And he got the. That really started getting his head. He started thinking about it. I don't know. I don't know if I've been, you know, or bad or which is kind of outweighing the other. And so he decided what he would do. This is brilliant. He decided he would go over Santa Claus head and write a letter to God. Wow, what a smart kid. And so he sat down in his room and he began to write this letter. He said, dear God, I've been a pretty good boy for most all of the year. And then he thought, you know, God knows everything, and he knows that's not true. He said, dear God, I've been a pretty good boy for most of the month. And then he thought, nah, that's not even true either. He said, dear God, I've been a pretty good boy for most of this week. And then he thought, no, that's not really right either. He's just really bothered. And then he finally said, you know, God, I've been a pretty good boy all day. And then he said, well, that's not true. Cause I'm in timeout upstairs right now. So finally he had this great little epiphany. He goes downstairs, his mom had this beautiful Nativity in the family room. And he grabs a little figurine out of the Nativity and goes back upstairs and he wrote this letter. Dear God, if you ever want to see your mother again. Smart kid, I hope you don't have to go to extreme measures kids to get all the things that you want this Christmas. But I read an interesting survey. I wanted to share it with you. When people were asked, these are religious and irreligious people, they were asked the question, if you could have anything in the world that you want, not materially speaking, but anything beyond the material wealth and goods of this life, what would that be? And the preponderance of the responses was overwhelming. When it came back. The thing that most people said they would like to have this coming year more than anything else in the world is love. They would like to feel that they are loved completely. They would like to know that they have someone they could love with all of their heart. And they said, that is probably the missing element of their life. And I read that and I thought how significant that is for a Christmas Eve service. Because the story of Christmas is the story of God sending his love in the form of Jesus into this world. In fact, in 1st John 4:16. When the Bible describes Jesus, the Bible describes him this way. It says God is love and Christmas morning love sent love into a world that needs love. And so when God describes himself there in Scripture, he says, I'm a God of love. Now our new testaments are written in the Greek and the Greeks were much more explicit in how they describe things. We in the English language, we're pretty simple in how we describe things. And when we talk about love, that could mean a lot of different things depending on the context. You might say I love peanut butter, for example. And then you might say I love my kids. Well, we know you don't mean you love your kids like you love peanut butter. We get the nuance and we get context. But in the Greek they had a much different way of thinking about this word love. There were at least four different words they used to describe love. And this is important in understanding Jesus coming into the world as love. For example, the first word that the Greeks would use to describe love is erosion, eros, the lowest form. We get the word erotic from that love. It's a physical love and it's important and it's something God has given. But that's the type love. Most people when they're searching for love, that's the love they settle for a physical connection with someone. And oftentimes, more really often than not, if that's the only connection is the physical connection, it's so not satisfying, at least not for the long run. You think about Solomon and Solomon talked about his exploration into Eros and trying to find that level of love to satisfy the deepest need of his life. He wrote about it in a book. Probably it's stuck together in your Bible, the pages of it anyway, the book of Ecclesiastes. Then he wrote about it and he said that he married 700 women. Can you imagine, fellows, that's 700 mother in laws. Isn't that incredible? And not only did he have 700 wives, he had 300 concubines. Somebody says it's good to be king, but at the end of the day, man, when he writes about that, he said it was empty. It didn't do what I thought it should do for me in that I was looking at Eros to satisfy the deepest need of my life and it just didn't work. The Greeks had another word. They used the word storge. Storge means a fondness for, an affinity for someone else. It might be a co worker, a neighbor. It's someone you know, but you don't know them that well, you would help them or they would help you. And so you have this relationship, but it's not deep and it's not, you know, meaningful. It's storige. And then the third word they would use is the word phileo. Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. Philadelphia. Phileo comes from that idea that means a friend. That's a friend. And man, if you've ever stopped to think about the friends God has given you in your life and the friends you formed in your life, you're really a wealthy person. If you have some really good friends. Seems like the older you get, the more you want to hold on to those friends. And then you realize you don't have time to invest in a lot of new people to make new friends. But friendship is so important. The Bible says you're going to have friends, you have to show yourself to be friendly. And so that's an important element of love. But a friend is not that self satisfying love and not even the perfect description of God's love. In fact, the fourth word is the word that was used in First John 4:6 when it speaks of Jesus and it speaks of God and his great love. It's agapeo. Agape. It is a love that is without merit. It is a love that is unending. It is a love that does not say to someone, I love you because of what you have done or because of what you can do. It is not a love that even says I love you if you do this or love you provided you do that. It is a love that says basically, I love you in spite of everything. I love you regardless of everything. Sometimes in Christian world we begin to think that Christianity is behavior modification. What I mean by that is God has to change a person before he can then love a person. But in Romans 5, 8, the Bible says, while we were yet sinful, Christ died for us. God does not change a person so that he might love them. Get this. He loves them so that he might change them. God accepts us as we are. He accepts us where we are. He takes us as we are. We just come to him with nothing. We come to him just as we are. We just simply say, lord, here I am. I'm messed up. I'm not perfect. I don't. I'm on the naughty list, right? And there's nothing I can do to remove myself from that. I just throw myself on your grace. And can I tell you something tonight? There's not one thing in the world you could do tonight for God to Love you more. And there's not one thing you could do tonight for God to love you any less. He loves you completely. And when Jesus came into the world, it was God who is love, sending his Son who is love, into a world that desperately needs love. And I think about how he announced his birth to the world. Remember in Luke chapter two, as it beautifully describes it, says, there's shepherds who are out in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night. And all of a sudden there's this cacophony of angels. And the sky just lights up brilliantly and beautifully. And the angels are saying, for unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior who is Christ the Lord. Think about who that birth announcement came to. It came to the shepherds. They weren't sophisticated, they were not educated, they were not wealthy. The shepherds were overlooked by most of society. They're not people you would hang with or try to befriend. They had very colorful language. If they used the name of God, it was probably in their cursing. They were just not known for being honorable men. And yet Jesus, when his birth is announced, is announced to the shepherds. And what struck me about that is the providence of God working in the lives of. Of those men that God knew where they were. He knew who they were. He knew how desperate they needed to know him. And so he reveals himself to those that most of society had completely forgotten. It was his providence at work. Think about where Jesus was born. Born in a stable. A stable. A place where there's mice and manure. A place that's dirty and dusty. And that's how Jesus came into this world. He came into this world to be one of us. And he came into this world to relate to us. And God has been at work in the lives of those shepherds, preparing them for the moment when they will encounter the Christ child. Have you ever thought about the providence of God that's at work in your life? What does that word providence mean? That's kind of Christianese, isn't, Requires some explaining. Providence comes from these two words, provideo. It's the idea of being able to see ahead. I don't have that ability. You don't have that ability? I see life as it comes. A day, at a time, moment of time, a frame of time. But God sees the beginning from the end. He's the alpha and the omega. He's the A and the Z. He's the engine and the caboose. And he sees all the little cars in between. God does everything with purpose. And God does everything on purpose. And God does everything for purpose. God is a principal providential God. Someone as well said, has it ever occurred to you that nothing has ever occurred to God? God is at work in everything in my life. He's at work in the good stuff, and he's at work in the bad stuff. God does not cause everything that I experience to happen. He allows the things that happen into my life. I know. And God can take anything that happens in any of our lives, According to Romans 8:28, and make it work ultimately for our good and for his glory. So my point is, God providentially was moving those shepherds from the hillsides, reaching out to people society had forgotten about, reaching the unlovable and making Himself manifest, making Himself known to them. Think about the wise men who would come along a little later. How did he appear to the wise men? A star in the east. Well, who were the wise men? They were Chaldeans. They were stargazers. They studied the skies and they studied the stars. And this providential God, he was speaking the language they could understand, and he was coming in a form that they could acknowledge. And so he appears in the sky, and he draws them providentially to himself. And think about those two spectrums. You have the very poorest of the poor and the very wealthiest of the wealthy. You have these wise men who were sophisticated, highly educated, incredibly successful, and very wealthy. And the poor and the rich alike are being providentially drawn to the manger. Because Jesus came into the world not just for all of us, but for each one of us. See, God just doesn't love everyone in the room. He loves each one in the room. God loves you. And he would have come into this world and gone to the cross and he would have shed his life's blood if you were the only single person on this earth to redeem. He loves you that much. And I'm just suggesting to your heart tonight on this Christmas Eve. I know we got a lot of our church folks here. We got a lot of families from out of town here. We have a lot of guests that are here. We have some people who are just checking the church out. You're just here kind of kicking the tires and you don't know where you are. But let me tell you where I know we all are. I know we're here by a divine design. I know the providence. God brought us here for this hour because God had something to say to our heart. He just arrested our attention and he slowed us down in this hectic time of the year, this busy time of the year, just to slow us down long enough to remind us of the reason, as they say, for the season. And Jesus coming into the world and the way he did and the way in which that was announced reminds us of the providential work of God. But the second thing that I thought about as I considered this, not only was it the providence of God at work, but it was the personhood of God. They were brought to the manger to meet a person. They didn't come to the manger to get a religious lecture. They didn't come to a manger to learn about doctrine. They didn't come to the manger to learn about anything. Religious rituals of that day. They came to the manger to meet Jesus. Doctrine is important. I think there's rituals in the church that are important, significant. I'm not minimizing it, but I'm just simply suggesting the most significant thing is not what church you attend. The most significant thing is not what religious ritual you follow. The most significant thing is not how much money you give or how good of a person you are. All of that's great. The most significant thing that will determine the difference between heaven and hell is what did you do with Jesus? That's the most important thing. And these guys were brought to the manger. And that nativity reminds us that he's the centerpiece. It's all about Jesus. It's all about him. It's not in a religion, it's in a relationship. Jesus said in John 14:6, I am the way, the truth, the life. And then he clarified even more. He said, no one comes to the Father except by me. They were drawn to a person. A person that loved them more than they could comprehend. A person that knew them better than they could understand. A God that loved them and a God that had been seeking them and a God that had been drawing them. Because the greatest desire. Listen. The greatest desire of God is for the people that he's created to know him. See, it's pretty simple. The enemy has a strategy. It's twofold. The first part of the enemy's strategy is to keep you away from God. And that's what he's been trying to do since the garden. Keep you away from God. And if he can't keep you away from God, then he wants to keep you from doing anything for God. He tries to sideline you, put you in the stands to make you feel that your life has no purpose and no meaning and no value. And once you Know Jesus and you're connected to your creator. All of a sudden you're realizing, my life matters. I have a purpose. God has a reason for me being here. There's something he has for me to do. When my wife Cindy went to heaven, one of the verses that helped kind of help me navigate through that experience was that verse in Ecclesiastes 3 where he says, to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven. And I realized that when Cindy's time on this earth, when that time was, when that time was up, it was connected to her purpose. And when God was finished with her purpose on earth, her time ended and God called her home. I wasn't ready for her to leave. Her brother and cousin and aunt are here tonight. They weren't ready. None of us were ready. I had grandbabies in the previous service. Normally Cindy comes out and closes a service with me, with my grandkids, our grandkids. None of us are ready to say goodbye to her. But once God's purpose was ended, he called her home. And ladies and gentlemen, I'll tell you tonight, you are immortal. I am immortal until God is finished with us. It's all about him and his purpose for us on the earth. So think about it. A providence drew them there, A person met them there, and there was a power that changed them there. Many scholars have studied what happened to the shepherds after they left. And there's not a lot that's known. There's some speculation that's made, but one of the things when you read the rest of the record in Luke chapter two is they left the manger. The Bible said, singing and giving praise to God. Now that's not how they came, that's how they left. They came broken and they came sinful, and they came questioning and they came not understanding. Providence brought them. But when they met the person of Jesus, his power changed them. And they walked away from the manger giving him praise. When those wise men came and they offered those gifts and they worshiped at his feet, scholars say, and many who followed the life and the journeys of those wise men said they returned to their cultures and they returned to their countries and they began to talk about this child, this Christ child that they encountered. And they say they began to spread the message of Jesus in those countries to the point that two of those wise men died martyr's death because of their belief in Jesus Christ. What's the point? What? The point I'm making is when you encounter Jesus, your life's never the Same God has the power to change anyone. Listen, there's not a sin, not a sin that he cannot forgive. I have people from time to time say, well, Bill, you don't know what I've done. You just don't know what I've done. In fact, let me share some of the things and always say, hey, that's not necessary. You don't have to. I know some people's tradition, they feel like they can talk to the pastor slash the priest or what. They can, you know, that I have somehow a power to absolve them of. I don't have that power. I'm a sinner, saved by grace, like you. I can point you to one that can absolve you. His name is Jesus. He has all power. But it's still. And I respect their tradition. So when somebody says, bill, I just need to share with you some of the things that I've done. I'll try to sound pastoral. And, you know, well, okay, then. You know, Cheryl. And I've learned if you want people to feel comfortable and keep talking, never look shocked. Sometimes they're talking to me and I, you know, I kind of have my one eye open like what? Like a puppy that heard a siren, you know, listen to them talk. And I'm thinking, you sick puppy. No, I don't say that. I don't say sick puppy or. You don't say this. You don't say you buried him. Where? What happens? No, that's never happened. Never happened. But the point is, I try to impress upon people, the point is, there's no sin that you've committed that God will not forgive. In fact, he said, those who come to me, I will in no wise cast out. When Jesus died on the cross, all the sins of the world were laid upon him. He who knew no sin became sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God. And in him, he took my sin and he took my shame. And when you come to Jesus and you confess and all confession means is agreement, you just say, God, you were right, I was wrong. That's confession. And you bring that before him. He has promised to forgive you. You say, well, Bill, then why do I struggle with guilt? I'll give you an opinion. It's free, like the rest of it. I think people struggle with guilt because once God has forgiven them, they can't forgive themselves. Or let me change that. They won't forgive themselves. Now can I tell you if God has forgiven you? He said, I placed your sins as far as the east is, from the west. Never to be brought against you again. Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself. You see, when the Bible describes the enemy, he calls the enemy the accuser of the brethren. The work of the Holy Spirit is to deal with me about sins I've not confessed. What the enemy does and traffics in the area of guilt. He deals about sins that I have already confessed. I mean, when the Holy Spirit deals with me and I confess in First John 1:9, if I confess and forsake, God will forgive me. I name it and nail it. Anything I uncover before God, he'll cover. Anything I cover before God, he eventually uncovers. So I bring it to him and I confess it. And then he simply covers it. And then the enemy comes alongside me and says, who do you think you are? You know what you've done, you know where you've been, you know all this kind of junk. And all of a sudden, man, all that guilt starts coming, man. Once God's forgiven you, forgive yourself. There's not a sin you can bring him that he will not forgive. Get this. Secondly, there's not a problem that you have that he cannot solve. He's the problem solver. He's the sin forgiver. I mean, I don't care what you've got. Some of you may have gotten yourself into something so complex and convoluted. You just wonder if there anybody out there that understands and anyone out there that can help you. Let me tell you, there is a God. He gets it. He gets you. No one has ever brought something to God that He couldn't handle. There's not a place in the Bible where he ever says, go easy on me. You're asking way too much of me. He's never said, I'm gonna have to get back to you on that one, Ben. That is a problem here. I'm gonna have to meet some people. Never has happened. Corrie Ten Boom used to say, there's no panic in heaven. There are only plans. So when you bring your problems to God, know you're going to the problem solver. When you bring your sins, know you're going to the sin forgiver. Here's the third thing I tell you. There's not a burden that he cannot lift. Some of you guys are carrying burdens this evening. God didn't design you to carry. I shared this with the church a few weeks ago. When you look at bridges in the country, if you've ever gone across a little country bridge, if you'll notice on the end of the bridge there's a little brass plate that says Load limit. Load limit. And the engineer that designed the bridge designed it in such a way that it can handle so much weight and it can't handle anymore. And once that weight is established, the bridge can lose its integrity if you put more weight on the bridge than it's designed to carry. And I talk to people all the time. They got a lot of weight on the bridge. They're stressed. You know what real stress is? Real stress is when your teeth grind all night and they're in a jar. That's from stress there. And I deal with people that got that kind of stress. Have you ever got on the elevator, for example, one of those Otis elevators, and you look over there and there's a load limit. If you look, there's a load limit. Have you ever got on there in a crowded elevator like a clown car and everybody. You got that one old guy that's squeezing in there and I mean, he is a big old boy. And then all of a sudden you look at that. Have you ever done the math in an elevator? Be honest. Now you're in church. Don't lie. I mean, I've done the math. I'm going, okay, I know what I am and I know what that boy is. And that's pretty good sized old gal over there. So I mean, I'm just looking around the room, doing the math. And I know that thing is designed by. Look, did you know you have load limits? God said I won't put on you more than you're able to bear. In other words, he's designed you to handle so much. And what happens when the needles start pinging and your load limit starts screaming? It's because you're carrying some stuff he didn't design you to carry. Now, some of you in the room are not doing that. Some of it might be a burden of a relationship. Some of it might be just financial pressure. Some of it. And probably one of the heaviest loads that you carry, especially at this time of the year, is some grief. Grief. I navigate that. I've got friends here tonight. That, that too. I mentioned my wife in heaven. I got a little granddaughter. She's in heaven. I mean, all of us will have those moments. With all the joy and all the activity and all the fun and the memories we'll make, we'll still have those moments of somberness and sadness because someone we love dearly won't be with us this Christmas. I get that that's normal. If you didn't have those feelings, it wouldn't be normal. So that's Normal. But I'm saying when you feel like that needle is getting you to that point of stress and you're feeling overloaded, you can go to one who said, I will not leave you as an orphan. I will not leave you comfortless. I'll send the Paraclete, the comforter we had in the one o' clock service. One of our sweet families whose precious wife and the mother of these children was tragically killed. Her husband was here at the 1 o' clock and their 17 year old daughter along with their 12 year old daughter, along with their 9 year old son. And this will be the first Christmas that little family's had without that sweet mama. So it's heavy. It's heavy. But the Bible says we don't have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities. He was in all points tempted and tested, as we are, yet he without sin. John 11. The shortest verse in the Bible is the verse that says Jesus wept. Well, he called Lazarus back from the dead. As I shared a few weeks ago, he didn't weep because he wanted to convey that or he wanted to know and convey to us what it feels like when you lose someone you love. He didn't weep so he would know how that feels. He wept so that we would know that he knows how that feels. You see the difference? He's God. He knew. But he stood at the grave weeping so that he could stand with us when we weep and say, I get it, I've lost somebody I love too. And I'm just saying, as I close this evening, there's not a burden you're carrying tonight that he cannot lift. I would tell you, man, if you don't know Jesus, I highly recommend him. If you'll come to him as you are, bring your broken self, bring your confused self. Bring your questioning self. You come to him just as you are. Jesus said. Jesus said, those who come to me, I will in no wise cast out. He brought you here for a reason, Providence. He brought you here to meet a person. His name is Jesus and he has a power that can transform your life. Let's pray. Father, in the name of Jesus, I thank you for these precious people who are here tonight. Thank you for so many more who are watching online and others who will watch this service at some point. And Lord, the most significant thing about this baby being born in the manger is that this little one who's now the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, needs to be born again in our hearts. So I pray for my friends who may never have trusted you. I pray that this might be the moment. You said, today is the day of salvation. Now is the accepted time. So Father, I call on them to humble their heart right where they are in this moment to pray a simple prayer like this and say, Lord Jesus, with everything I know about me, I now trust all that I know about you. Come into my heart, forgive my sin, be a reality in my life, and I'll give you thanks and praise. In Jesus name I pray. Amen. [00:29:49] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions or prayer requests, please contact us by visiting metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. We look forward to seeing you next week.