Father in heaven, this Christmas season,

I would just say a special thanks for Jesus who came to the Virgin Mary, Lord.

You sent Your perfect, eternal Son

to be clothed in flesh and to be among us and to love us where we are in all of our sin and all of our suffering and to make us new and give us new life, Lord. So we pray that, Lord, our Christmas experience this year with whatever may be going on, Lord, good things that happen, tough things that happen, Lord, we thank You that we all have the same reason to celebrate the birth of Jesus and it is the evidence of Your love for us.

Lord, we pray for those who are struggling with sickness. Lord, I know sickness is just going around a lot right now. Lord, we just pray especially for the chuns. Lord, I know they’re having a very hard time with their families. I just pray healing over them. Lord, we ask You to touch us in a special way and through all things we would endure. Lord, we give You our tithe, our offering, all that You’ve given to us. Lord, we pray with open and generous hands, Lord, we would give to the work of Your kingdom or the work of the church. Lord, that You can multiply what small things we have and continue to work in us and through us for Your glory.

We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, good morning and Merry Christmas.

If you would turn with me in your Bibles to Titus chapter 2.

Titus chapter 2.

With me in verses 11 to 14.

The Apostle Paul writes, For the grace of God, God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession who are zealous for good works.

It always feels, you know, the older you get, people say it more, it feels like years go by. Years go by faster. It’s hard to believe that Christmas is, you know, just a couple weeks away, you know, life moves on and it goes and it goes.

And I’ve been thinking about that more, you know, as I’ve had opportunities at the pregnancy center now where I am, and even some things that we said when we got back from our Mexico mission trip. And you find a lot of people who time moves just as fast, in Mexico as it does in America, and time moves just as fast for you as it does someone across town or on the other side of the world. And it’s terribly unfortunate and sad people who know something about Jesus, they know something about God, but they don’t know enough for it to be meaningful for them. I’ve talked to a great many people who say, oh, of course, of course, I’m a Christian, of course, I’m a Christian. And you say, well, great. Well, tell me about what that means for your soul eternally. Well, I don’t know. Well, tell me if you died right now, where would you go? What would happen to you? I couldn’t say really. And I think there’s this huge gap for a lot of people,

I suppose across the globe and right here in our city, who know something about Jesus, but they don’t know enough about Jesus, for Christmas to truly be Christmas, for it to mean what it should mean, to give the hope that it should give to us, for us. So we’re all waiting, whoever we are, wherever we are, we’re all waiting, not to sound gloomy this morning, but we’re all waiting to die in one way or another. It’s going to happen. But I want to say to you this morning, there’s a special kind of hope for us as Christians that while we wait, we can hope and we can have a certain rest, we can have a certain gift of joy as we talked about last week, and peace as we talked about it before that, because of who Christ is, if we truly know Christ and the hope that only He brings. So while you wait, do you have the hope of Christmas? Do you have the hope of Christmas?

Paul says in verse 11, Now, I want you to think about just for a moment what Paul had been talking about in the previous verses in this chapter. And what he had been talking about is highly practical things for Titus to take care of when he goes to Crete to get the church in order. He tells him, you need to get elders in order. You need to tell older gentlemen and older women in the faith, this is how you need to live. This is how younger people are supposed to live. This is what marriage couples are supposed to look like. This is what everyday, life looks like for Christians. So it was a very practical mission for Titus. And that’s what he talks about. And that’s a good thing, because your Christian faith and my Christian faith, it should manifest itself in practical ways, because human life on planet Earth is just highly practical. It’s not a bad thing. It’s life. You get up and you pick your clothes out and you get dressed and you sit in traffic and you work. And some days are good. Some days aren’t. You deal with people. That’s sometimes good, not good. You deal with problems. That’s always bad. You have decisions to make. You have financial struggles. So you just, you live your life. And it’s highly practical, isn’t it, on most days.

But in the everyday normal course of life, God desires that you and I enjoy that experience. Because when we do it God’s way, there is an enjoyment for us in it that also brings us joy. There is God’s glory.

Christianity, it would really just be for the elite few if what it was, was nothing more than a body of really lofty theological truths, a bunch of dudes sitting around speaking in prose about all the stuff they know, because that wouldn’t really have a bearing on life for you.

If it was just this lofty stuff and only a few people could grasp it and you had no idea what it had to do with you, had to do with you and your life, it would be useless. And I think God in His wisdom, He leaves that person in His palace made of books to kind of rot away there while Jesus says He reveals truth to the child. So we need good theology, and we should do good theology, but we should always be asking, why do I want to know theology? And that question always has to be because God wants it applied to my practical everyday life. So I don’t want to say, aha, look at me, look at what I know. I want to say, aha, look at what treasures of Christ I’ve found so that they can be worked throughout my whole life. And just because biblically rooted theology is possible, it doesn’t mean it’s easy. And just because the Spirit will take Christ and produce Him in your life, it doesn’t mean it’s an easy process, but it’s possible. The reality of Christ, the Lord of heaven, is living, alive, and at work in you. As difficult as it can be, it’s worth it. And if I truly know God, I’m not going to be content with knowing as little as I can know about Him or obeying as little as I can obey. I want to know more so I can obey more. So what Paul does after those practical exhortations then, he moves into that lofty theology that’s kind of like the engine under the hood for why the practical plays out. And it’s not a bunch of stuff that only, Titus has this special spiritual capacity to understand. Not at all. This theology is the very heart and motivation for why Titus would do what he does, but it’s also the very heart and motivation for why the church in Crete would get on with the practical obedience stuff. So I would go as so far as to say, one’s practical obedience is limited by their knowledge of God and your theology. And a failure to integrate good scriptural doctrine and Christianity, into your life, it’s a failure for a church community because that community and how they love and live together is going to be impotent compared to what it could be in Christ and built up in His truth. So it’s good and it’s worth it. And it’s worth knowing because it plays out magnificently in the practical and the everyday life. First thing I think Paul shows us here is this. While you wait, you need to remember what Christ has done. While you wait, you need to remember what Christ has done. And he says what? The grace of God has what? It’s appeared. It did happen. And I want you to think about that phrase, the grace of God, with me for a moment because Paul’s not speaking conceptually. This is not an abstract idea. Grace, it just kind of floats around in the air. Grace is not at all some abstract concept. What Paul’s showing us in this passage is that grace very much is embodied in a person. The loftiest ideas of theology, the deepest wells of knowledge, wisdom, power, the supremacy of God in the heavenly places, it’s all in the person of Jesus. So when Jesus came as a babe in a manger, there was the fullness of God there in the manger. There was to us, for us, grace. The fullness of God. God incarnate. There, the loftiness of heaven met us in our very practical everyday lives.

It’s a redemption we did not deserve, but we’re freely given. We’re given the person of Jesus. Jesus appeared. And this is really important, this word appeared, because it’s the exact same Greek word that Luke uses in Luke 179. In Luke 179, it says, to give, to give light to those who sit in darkness. So what is that giving? It’s that same idea of Christ having been manifested. It’s an epiphany. The Greek word sounds like that. Epiphany. It’s a spiritual revelation and realization of something high and lofty that’s come to you, that’s come to yourself. Very much so a Christmas idea that Luke’s getting at there in his first chapter.

So God, from the beginning of time, has been showing himself to you and to me. Hasn’t he? And Paul talks about this in Romans chapter 1. It’s called general revelation. Alright? And Paul says in Romans chapter 1, everybody everywhere knows there’s a God because there are trees outside. Because there’s a blue sky. Because there are sunsets. And there’s waves that crash on the ocean. And everybody goes, huh, somebody did this. Now, I think people suppress that. And that’s what we’re doing. That’s what Paul’s getting at in Romans 1 when a society and people become greatly wicked. But from, you know, the Aborigine tribe to whoever you want to go, someone’s worshiping something. The sun God. Everyone knows there’s someone there. So that general revelation, though, is not enough. And this is why Christmas is so amazing. Because in Christmas, what does God do? But he gives you and I a very special revelation. It’s a special insight of who he is. And what he’s willing to do for you and me. So if you get a hold of the theology of the manger, the manger will get a hold of you. That Christ has not come for judgment. He’s come for salvation. He’s come to make you brand new. And I want you to see that that theological diamond shines brighter yet. Because Paul says there, he has appeared bringing salvation for all people. More practically and particularly what that all people means, it’s speaking of types and categories. Okay? So you can’t say, well, Jesus came for people but not my kind of people. He didn’t come for people with brown skin or he didn’t come for people with white skin or black skin. He didn’t come for people that come from the kind of town I’m from. He didn’t come for people who don’t have very much smarts like me. He surely hasn’t come for people who have made as many errors and mistakes and sins in their life. Surely I’m not the kind of people Jesus is referring to. And yet the apostle Paul says, the grace of God has appeared for what? All kinds of people. All kinds of people. That’s how bright the gospel shines even in the manger. Is that Jesus has come to say to all people,

I’ve come for you and I love you. So Mary, I love you. Merry Christmas. Jesus has come for you. He has showed up. A very real Jesus in our human history, in this universe, on this planet. Jesus came to save all kinds of people and he did it so that godliness that you and I were helplessly detached from would be reintegrated and reoriented in our lives.

Now, if you and I are truly Christians, we can’t deny it. We can’t deny that. But you know what we often do is we live apart from it. We often take it for granted. Think about the Israelites when Moses goes up the mountain, right? And they say to Aaron, what’s become of this Moses fellow? We don’t know. We don’t know. So make us the golden calf, Aaron. You see how quick they went from being God’s people to being their own kind of people again. Now hadn’t they just seen the Red Sea parted? Hadn’t they just had manna fall from heaven, the cloud by day and the fire by night to guide them? Hadn’t they seen these mighty works and all in a moment they say, ah, we can’t even think of a reason about why we should wait any longer here in this moment. That they immediately just say, we don’t know. So what did they do? They took their eyes off of their theology and in turn it ruined their practical obedience.

Church, we can only live for Christ today if we choose to keep our eyes on the light of who He is and what He has done for us. It’s the only way to constantly live in the moment of the cross and let it hang as a banner over each of us. You lose the preciousness of grace in the person of Jesus, you won’t deeply desire to live as a person filled with Christ every day. Showing up at church won’t do that. Religious activities won’t do that. But encountering the grace of God in the knowledge of the person of Jesus will. Look back. It’s a key to faithfulness and longevity for the Christian life today. And so much begs for our attention, doesn’t it? And we’ve got to give it sometimes. Kids sick. Got to go to the hospital. You know? Work. I’ve got responsibility. I’ve got things going on. You know, chimney’s rotten. Got to get the wood replaced on the chimney. I’ve got to cut the grass. Oh, we’ve got to go out of town for such and such. Oh, we’re supposed to go to that wedding. Like, ooh, I’d like to get on Amazon and shop for a minute. There’s both things needed and wanted and you and I are pulled in a million directions. But there’s a conscious choice that needs to be made. Will Jesus be the governing force over my whole life so that my whole life is lived for Him?

From your waking to your sleeping, does the theology of Jesus incarnate inform and shape your life? Live to remember it. Live to preach it. Desire greater love and grasp of it. I might be a preacher by trade, but if you’re a Christian, you are a preacher. And you know the first person you must preach to is yourself. Is yourself. You don’t even have to verbally open your mouth. You must daily remember, remember all my sins, my dirtiest, nastiest ones. The grace of God is far superior and I know it because God put His Son on a cross and three days later, He was raised up out of the grave and if I trust in that Jesus, my whole life is washed away and Christ’s life is made manifest. You live in that reality.

The second thing that the apostles, Paul says, while you wait, remember what Christ is doing. Remember what He has done, but we must remember what He is doing. He goes on in verse 12 to say that the grace of God that’s appeared, it trains us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives. When? In the present age. So the grace of God then, it’s not an abstract thought. Okay? The grace of God’s a real person. Which means what? I need to deal with, or rather, I need to be dealt with, with this person. I need this person and all his perfect theology and his perfect understanding of how that works out in a human’s life. I need to know him. I need to walk with him. Because I want you to think about that. If Jesus is far off, okay, you and I are just kind of like religious kooks going on about what we believe and these stories and this stuff, but what does it have to do with me today? Nothing would be the answer.

Jesus lived that we may live and Jesus died that we would not die. So you see, Jesus’ resurrection then is so important because of Jesus the person, is resurrected and brand new and that is grace. That means what? Jesus is with me now. Jesus’ spirit is bearing witness to my spirit. Hey, I’m here. I am with you. Grace isn’t a story just about, and it is, praise God, about what Christ did. But the story of the gospel is this wonderful story about what God is doing in you right now. So don’t let your theology stop at the cross and at the empty grave. It’s got to work. It’s got to work itself out in you today.

If Jesus is a real person, I want to know him now so that practically I can be like him. He’s changing me now. The Christian gospel does not just tell me about what Jesus did. It tells me about how what Jesus accomplished is being applied to me right now. I have been saved. And what? I am being saved right now as the spirit works more and more of Jesus’ spirit. And Jesus, guess what? He’s been doing that for the last 2,000 years. And until the end of time, what’s Jesus going to be doing in the spirit? He’s going to be producing himself, putting his image on his saints.

Continually growing you. Continually changing you. How could Jesus say to his disciples, I am with you always. And then what happened when he went back to heaven? Bye. Well, hold on. How can that? How can that both be true? How can you say you’re with me always and then say bye and float up into the clouds? Because Jesus said, I’m sending someone to you and it’s better that I go away, actually. Because the kind of nearness that Christ, you know, is with us now is far greater than if he was bodily with us at this point in time. And what Jesus meant was this. When the spirit comes, oh, the spirit’s going to reveal to you the fullness of who I am. The spirit has power to apply the accomplishment and the victory of Calvary in you. And the spirit is going to complete and finish that work. If he starts the work, what’s Jesus going to do? He’s going to finish that work in you. And he does it all the time. He does it when you’re watching TV and there’s that little voice that goes, I don’t think Jesus would be watching that. Or, I think we need to keep our spending habits in check. Or, hey, you’ve been rushing around a lot. Lately, and you’ve not been on your knees before the throne of God lately praying for the things you ought to be praying about. Oh, you know, you haven’t done devotions with your family lately. Or, oh, man, I need to share the good news with that guy. The spirit is good. It’s literally moment by moment. Every moment, Christ with you, Christ in you. Jesus died for you, but Jesus is with you. Jesus is with you. And, you know, and we would have, wouldn’t we, great anxiety and despair if you and I were only living in light of what Jesus did. And there were these external helps. You know, even the Bible. What would the Bible be? What would even the local church be if there was no Holy Spirit within? You see, it would be a great attempt to live up to what Christ did. But that’s not Christian theology. Christian theology is far more comprehensive. The accomplishment of Jesus is far more comprehensive. God’s salvation plan for human history is far more comprehensive because He doesn’t leave us to say, here, you figure it out. You take it from here. That’s not happening. Jesus said, I will build my church. In other words, Jesus is in us showing us the truth, working in us, working in the community of the local church. The power of the gospel is that great. And, you know, that’s really good news. Maybe not for you. It’s good news for me because I happen to sin post-salvation. I don’t know if you have that problem.

And there are times when I look in the mirror and you know what I see? I see an erring, failing, wayward, gross sinner. I see someone who’s made the same mistake 10,000 times. And yet, what do I do? I remember, ah, Jesus is the author and the perfecter. Ah, it’s not me living up to Christ. It’s Christ who is, is in me the hope of glory, Paul says. Christ in you the hope of glory. So I want you to reframe your sin struggles this way. It’s not Christ is here and I’m trying to get up there. I need to work harder, do more right, do less wrong. That’ll get you nowhere fast and it’ll exhaust you. If you reframe your sin struggles more as, ah, I’m sinning, I need to surrender to the person of Jesus more. You don’t need to try harder. You need to surrender more. So I’ve been crucified with Christ, right? Buried with Him and raised to new life. In other words, I need to take my hands off my life, say, hey, old man who died with Jesus, you died with Jesus. No, Jesus is going to have His way in me. Jesus in me. Jesus through me. That’s sanctification. That’s God making you holy as He is holy. So you have been saved, but believe in your sin struggle, believe in your suffering. You are being saved. You are being saved.

Remember when Elijah was up on the mountaintop and he was having the world’s greatest pity party.

And God comes to Elijah and He says, Elijah, what are you doing here? What are you doing here? And Elijah says, I’m the last faithful one and everybody’s trying to kill me. And it’s, it’s all over with. That’s what happens. And God said, Elijah, I got, I got all these faithful people you don’t even know about hiding out. Go anoint this king, get on with the work. And God is at work in you, especially when you don’t see it. God is working because He said He’s working. Right?

I can’t be passive about that. If it’s true God is at work, what does Paul say to me in Philippians? He says, well, then you must work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. He says, I struggle with all that God mightily works within me. In other words, if you have been shown the grace of God in the cross of Christ and you love that as you should love it now, it means you will spend yourself to do all that you should do because God has given you the power to do it. So I’m greatly skeptical then of someone who, yes to the past thing, Jesus, Jesus did. Amen. I don’t want to go to hell. Yes, faith Jesus. Amen. Let’s all go to heaven. But they have no concept of commitment. They have no concept of suffering. They have no concept of sacrifice. No intention of doing anything like that as it relates to the gospel, as it relates to the local church. Buy-in. Your buy-in doesn’t seem as high as your words. So we long for it truly. We’ll suffer in our sanctification because it’s through that. What? Jesus is perfecting us. He’s growing us up. And again, I want you to take from that great encouragement in your discouragement with sin struggles. If you haven’t read that book by Dane Ortlund yet, Gentle and Lowly, I put them out, and you struggle with that at all, please read it because it’s a wonderful healing balm about how Jesus loves you and your deepest sin beyond what you think. Do you think your sin is a mountain? Okay, Jesus’ love is the galaxy and the universe. Like, you can’t even begin to grasp the love of God if you would turn to Him. Jesus is working in you. Jesus loves you.

Third thing. While we wait, remember what He did do. Remember what He is doing. But here’s the last thing that Paul really, I think, crowns this really momentous, wonderful passage with. He talks to us about what Jesus will do. What Jesus will do.

He says, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ. The appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. I want us to be especially mindful this Christmas that you, you and I, as Jesus’ people, we’re awaiting people.

Because of the cross of Jesus, because of the gift of the Holy Spirit now, we are not what we once were, but we are not yet what we will be. The sureness of Christ’s life, death, resurrection, the gift of the Holy Spirit. Friends, it’s a daily testimony that the image of Christ is not on us what it will be. So, so God does not want you to be satisfied with how much you know Him and are obeying Him in this life. Not because it’s not enough and satisfying for the life we need to live for God. Now, He doesn’t want you to be content where you are because God wants you to have a satisfaction, a holiness, perfection in Him that will be at a future time. He’s saying, hey, is it really good? It’s bad English, but it’s going to get gooder. It’s going to get better as much as you, as much as you rest in the gospel, as much as you feel forgiven, as much as you have joy in those moments of just victory and triumph over sin and you see the gospel work in someone’s life and you see somebody grow up in Jesus and you see this wonderful victory for Christ. He said, you don’t even know what it’s going to be like when Christ returns. It’s going to get so much better.

And if you lose that precious joy, that precious truth, we will not, hear me say it to you this morning, we will not wait as we ought to wait. Now, this waiting here is not passing time. Like we would say, I’m waiting around. You know, you have a layover at an airport and you wait in the generic sense. What do you know? I guess I’ll go buy a cup of coffee. I’ll read something. I’ll stare out the window bored to tears because you don’t have anything to do. Right? You’re literally just waiting. Wasting time. Some translations say looking towards. So this waiting is not at all just a kind of passing of the time. Your waiting means you’re looking to. You’re looking to. It means you’re sure of a coming event. You know, little kids, they wait for Christmas Day. And it’s annoying.

Christmas is coming. They know it’s coming and they’re looking for it. And they can’t count because every day they ask again, how many days till Christmas? How many days till Christmas? How many days till Christmas? And what is it? It’s this huge anticipation of this thing that’s coming and your whole life is about this coming thing. That is a kid’s experience when Christmas comes.

But it’s not different. It’s not different.

It’s better for us in Jesus.

Because Paul says what we’re waiting for, church, is a blessed hope. A blessed hope. Now blessed, it means there’s a divine favor on it. Christian hope is not the kind of hope the world does. It’s like, I hope this sickness goes away. I hope I have a job. I hope I can pay my bills. I hope I’m healthy late in life. You know, I hope that, you know, they have my pant size at the store. I hope I don’t have to special order this Christmas gift. I hope. It’s kind of really just a wondering, isn’t it? It’s just a wondering.

But with Christ, we have a hope. It’s not rooted in just desire of what we want to see come to pass. It’s a sureness that it will come to pass. It’s a sureness that it will come to pass without a shadow of doubt. Christian hope is a very certain expectation of what will be.

Now, it would be so despairing again, wouldn’t it be? If it was like, well, there is a 98% probability that Jesus will come back. I think we’re at 98. Or is it 97? That is not encouraging. Probabilities are scary. Why? Why? Because there’s a potential and a probability it will not end up being as you hope. It’s a may happen thing. So what discouragement again is there for you and I to stay the course in the Christian life all based on a probability?

Because sin struggles are difficult. Having joy and suffering is difficult. Resisting temptation is difficult. Satan is very strong. And the world is very good at pressuring you and making life hard as a Christian. And your own sinful flesh is constantly warring, the Scripture tells us, against the Christ in you. Life is very difficult as a Christian. And Paul is saying to you, you can endure through it all. Why? Because you have a very certain expectation that Christ will appear and He will make all things new.

If it were not, if it were not so, our theology as Christians would not be authoritative enough to command practical obedience. It couldn’t do it. You want me to live like that when you can’t assure anything one way or the other about tomorrow? It would be silly. It would mean God is impotent and God’s theology and God’s cross has a deficit as to whether or not it can save.

But friends, God is good and God always makes good on His promises. We have that sure hope as Christmas. Christ did do a thing. Christ is doing a thing. And Christ will do a thing. He will return. From manger to cross to the return of Christ, you and I have a sure, blessed hope. And it keeps us faithful in what Paul calls, these light, momentary afflictions. In the midst of a foul world, in the midst of it all, Christ will return and He will make all things new. And outside of this one, I think John in his first epistle says it beautifully in 1 John 3, 2-3. He says, Beloved, we are God’s children now. And what we will be has not yet appeared. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him because we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself as He is pure. What a wonderful truth. So he says, when Jesus breaks through the clouds and we see Christ, Christ’s will in our seeing and beholding Him, it’ll make us brand new. It’ll make all things brand new. And if that’s really your hope, what are you doing? You’re living now to be sanctified for that day because Christ, Jesus did a thing on the cross. He’s doing a thing now. And you know He’s going to complete it when He breaks through the clouds. We shall be like Him as He is. We shall be like Him as He is. This is our Christmas hope in a manger. This is our Christmas hope in a manger, friends. And we sang it earlier. He would be pierced through. I think I say it every Christmas now, so I won’t not say it. But it’s hard to talk about Christmas and not talk about Easter, isn’t it? It’s real difficult. It’s real difficult.

See, in verse 14,

who gave Himself for us to redeem us. There’s your really great theology.

But here it comes practically that we would not be a lawless people and we’d be a pure people. We would belong to God and we’d be zealous for good works. In the person of Jesus breaking through the clouds, there’s the fullness of lofty theology and the practicality of humanity coming to draw us back into God again.

What kept Noah building that boat? You ever thought about that? Because that’s, I mean, decades and decades of dryness.

Decades and decades of what did he say again? Again? Because I can’t get this joint right in this corner of this boat and I want to throw something or burn this thing down. Like, do I need to keep building this boat because it’s hard and I don’t like these joints and I got splinters, you know, and I’m tired. My hands are calloused. He was old. I mean, did he have arthritis? You know? But what did he do? Noah kept working because he took God at His word and Noah had a sure hope of what God would do.

There are a hundred families in the state of Kentucky who will not have a Merry Christmas.

They will not have a Merry Christmas with their loved ones. They will not enjoy their family feast. They will not enjoy the family opening presents.

What could possibly be their hope?

It’s that Christ came in a manger and He’s coming again. That’s their hope. That all things will be made right. So church, look forward in your suffering and sin. Let the blessed hope strengthen you. Can I say to you this morning, we ought to be weirdly optimistic people.

Weirdly optimistic people. We should see always the glass half full because there’s always a good, there’s always something to celebrate and what is it? Jesus is coming back. Jesus is coming back. Use your hope to speak the truth of Christ into so many people who need to hear it. And maybe you need that awakening this morning. You sit next to Him at work. You live next to Him at the house. Let me tell you something. They need hope. People have things going on in their hearts and minds, problems, struggles, and they need to hear about this Jesus. And you’re the one to speak it. You’re the one to speak it.

So while we wait,

let’s live in light of what He did do, what He is doing, and what He will do. Jesus is our living hope. Amen? Let’s pray together.

Father, just to glimpse the goodness of Your Son, just to glimpse the goodness by faith of Your Son, what will be. Oh Lord, Your Word assures us that it will keep us. There’s enough power in just encountering You in the Spirit, Lord, that we can in all things endure. We can in all things worship You. We can in all things be victorious in Christ Jesus.

Lord, so we’re only asking for what You’ve promised to give. And that is a constant awareness in the Spirit of the goodness and the power of the Spirit. In the power of Your Son, Jesus.

Let Jesus not be some name we know about, some religion we’re affiliated with. Let Jesus be the person that we love dearest. Let Jesus be the person we’re following with our whole life. Let Jesus be our Lord and Savior. That’s my prayer. And we just pray it all this Christmas in His name. In Jesus’ name.

Amen. Amen. Well, would you stand and worship with us?