Christmas Blessings

Hey, this is a great song that just reminds us of what happened that night when the angels appeared to the shepherds and said, "Behold, today in the city of David, a savior is born." The savior is born.

Sing it together. All right. Great singing. Hey, before you sit down, why don't you turn around and say Merry Christmas to at least five or six people tonight. And you know what? As you're sitting down, could you squish as close together as your wool coats and scarves will allow, please? We still have folks who are trying to get in, so if you can squish, squish, squish as much as you possibly can, we would greatly appreciate it. This is basically a Twin Lakes tradition squishing in at Christmas.

All right. Well, thank you very much and Merry Christmas, everybody. Merry Christmas. All right. One more time. With this many people, I should have my hair blowing back. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. All right. Now, that's what I'm talking about. My name is Val. I'm on staff here at Twin Lakes, and we are thrilled to have you with us at our Christmas Eve candlelight service this late afternoon.

In just a moment, we're going to take our offering, which is I know why you all came, but I just want to give you a heads up. The ushers will be coming in a moment, but before we do that, I want to let you know about some things that are going on here at the church. First of all, you may have noticed, if you could see beyond the crowds as you came in, that we've got two large cards out in the lobby. We want to send a note to the people in Newtown, Connecticut letting them know we care.

And we figured this is a great way we're going to have about 6,000 people at church this weekend. Let's get 6,000 signatures on a card and let them know we care. So you can sign that at either part of the lobby as you head out tonight. And I have a question. How many of you that are squishing in right now were at our Christmas concerts last weekend? Let me see. All right. Very good. That was really fun.

You were part of about 17,000 folks who came out to see the concert. It was a lot of fun, and I got to tell you, first of all, there's DVDs available. If you want to show your friends what your church is like, you can get a DVD out in the lobby. But it was an amazing time. We had a blast, and we have some folks on stage that are back after 10 concerts. They're now doing these. We've got our worship pastor Dan Baker, Tim Beverly, our music director, a lot of orchestra members, Adrian Moreno, Allie. They are back again doing this, and we are so grateful for them.

And by the way, you're going to meet some new musicians from Twin Lakes even tonight. We have a brother and sister team who grew up here, Native sibling Ryan and Kaylee Williams are with us, and you are going to be so glad you got to know these folks. You can find this card out in the lobby, and it tells you how you can connect with them and their music, and we are thrilled to have them with us tonight. They are super talented.

We have got some cool things coming on. We continue on next weekend with a new series called Your Castle, Your Home. Get it? Your Castle? Your home. When you have a large castle on stage, you've got to think of something to do with it, because we built this thing in here, and frankly, we don't know how we're going to get it out. So look forward to a lot of castle and night themes in the coming year.

So, but seriously, this is going to be a series that is going to focus on how do we build the relationships inside our homes with our friends and with our family. And that's what we're going to do. By the way, okay, I'm out of breath from running around trying to find seats. I'm just going to take a second here. There. Probably a lot more of you need to just take a deep breath too, like I just did, because you've been running around too.

But we go back to our regular service times next week, which are Saturdays at 6 p.m., which is also when Casa de David, our Spanish language service, meets. And then Sunday mornings at 9 and 10:45, and at 10:45 we have a venue service that also meets over in Munski Hall. We resume all those times next weekend.

And finally, I want to talk a little bit about what Twin Lakes is doing, both in our community and around the world. First of all, I want to thank you for your generosity bringing in presents for Salvation Army and folks in Rest Homes. One really quick story that I just love. Our third grade class here at Twin Lakes Christian School decided they wanted to buy a bike for somebody, a little kid in our county who needed a bike.

So they decided they were all going to do extra chores to raise the money. Well, by the time they did all their extra chores, they raised enough money to buy six bikes. And that is so awesome. And they even got Santa Cruz Bike Shop to come down and help them put them together, and it was a great thing. And then also we've got 65 folks from Twin Lakes heading out the day after Christmas. They're going to go down to Mexico for three and a half days. It's called Club Dust, and in those three and a half days they're going to build ten homes as a team for folks in Mexico. And so we are really excited about that too.

Please pray for them. And I'm going to ask the ushers to come forward now, and we're going to take our offering this afternoon. Thank you. If you're a regular part of Twin Lakes Church, thank you so much for your generosity. We appreciate so much your giving all throughout the year. Let's have a word of prayer before we take our offering.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for the chance to get together and to remember what Christmas is about. Thank you for sending your son to earth. Thank you that that very thing is a thing that gives us hope and joy and peace and confidence going forward. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.

And as we take the offering, let's sing that great carol together. Angels, we have heard on high. Sing it out. Angels, we have heard on high. Sweetly singing o'er the plain. And the mountains they reply, echoing their joyous strength. Glory up in excelsis day. Glory up in excelsis day.

And shepherds cry this jubilee, Why your joyous strength's prolonged. What the glad sometimes be, Wishes by your heavens and glory up in excelsis day. Glory up in excelsis day.

Come to Bethlehem and see Him whose birth the angels sing. Come adore your abandoned knee. Christ the Lord, the newborn King. Glory up in excelsis day. Glory up in excelsis day.

And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world and everyone went to his own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth and Galilee to Judea to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.

While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in claws and placed him in a manger because there was no room for them in the end. Beautiful singing everybody. Well good evening and Merry Christmas. That is beautiful.

Now we've done it in English and I figured since we've already sung a verse of a Christmas carol in Spanish, let's try that in Spanish. Are you ready for this? Feliz Navidad? Wow, you're a multilingual crowd. How about this? In Swedish, Godjul. Okay, in my first language, which was Swiss German. Are you ready for this? For-vien-ah-cht.

Forget about it. You know, my name is René. I'm one of the pastors here at the church. I'm so glad you guys are with us. And I think we should all, just like Valda during announcements, just kind of take a deep breath because you're here at the candlelight service. Ready? Let all the stress go. You made it. The gifts are about.

How many of you are done buying Christmas presents? You're all finished. Yeah? How many of you are not all done? You're going out to Target after this. Uh-huh. I know. Did you notice it was all guys that raised their hand, every one of them.

Well, I want to talk to you tonight about one of my favorite things to do at Christmas. And I am so glad that we have so many kids in our candlelight services. For one thing, when you hear the babies crying on cue, just like that, I want you to think to yourself, "This is just like the first Christmas." That was the soundtrack to the Nativity.

Yeah, the song says, "Little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes." That's a lie, folks. He was a baby like every other baby, and he cried as well. So, for many of you here in the auditorium tonight, that sound will be a gentle reminder of the Nativity, unless you're sitting in that row right now. And so, you're going to wish they knew about the cry room, which is available in the lobby to your left.

I want to mention to you one of my favorite things that I used to love to do at Christmas time when I was a little kid, and that was this. I'd sneak into the living room at night when all the lights were out, and I would make sure nobody was watching, and I would go to the bottom of the Christmas tree, and I would try to figure out what was inside my presents.

Now, I got a question. Honest show of hands here, how many of you have ever done that, ever in your lives? Look at this. How many of you would admit you have done it this year already? Okay. Well, we got a lot of experts. I'm going to have Val put a box of Christmas presents here, and let me just see how good you kids are.

Some of these are going to be kind of easy. What do you think this present might be? That's right. It is a basketball. Very good. I had a little boy about eight years old ask me before our first candlelight service on Saturday night, "If we guess it right, do we get to keep it?" Well, guess what, kids? In fact, no, you don't, because I need these props for the next service.

But, you know what? If you do something for me, you just might find something like this under your tree tomorrow morning if you're very quiet during my sermon. Okay, now next, what do you imagine this might be? Exactly. A stick shift for a fiat. Now, next, let's see. Oh, this one, some kids just might know what this is. Any guesses? It is a skateboard.

Now, some of these aren't just kid gifts. Your mom and dad might appreciate seeing something like this under the tree. What do you think? Exactly. It is Martinelli's from Watsonville. What did you think it was? That's very good. Now, there's some other things. Here's something that I kind of hope is under a tree. How many of you can guess what this might be by the shape? Wow! We have a lot of Schweitzer-Schokolade fans here tonight. That is very good. Toblerone, yes, I can't wait.

Now, a couple of these you can't tell by the shape of the box. You have to kind of pick them up and rattle them a little bit. For example, who can tell me what this might be? Yes, somebody yelled out, "Seize, Candy, if this is Seize, we are all in serious trouble." And so is Seize. The unmistakable, beautiful sound of Legos. Now, this is very similar to the sound of this next package. What do you think this might be? It is a jigsaw puzzle, exactly. So, you guys are obviously experts, right?

Well, my sister and I knew that one another were doing this, right? And so we would always try to disguise the presence that we would give to one another in unusual shaped boxes. In fact, I remember one year when I was about 12 years old and my sister, Heidi, yes, we were an actual Swiss family, Heidi, and she was 10. To fool her, I actually got a refrigerator box from the appliance store and I wrapped it all up in Christmas wrapping paper and I put newspaper inside and inside of all that newspaper was one single tiny Polly Pocket doll.

How many of you remember those Polly Pockets, right? Well, I was thinking about this and what if you could do the opposite? What if you could wrap up the smallest Christmas present ever? We wrapped up the smallest box we could possibly find here. And what if you could wrap up the most giant Christmas present, somehow magically, in a tiny little box like this? Well, I remember when people opened up the box like a full-size street legal race car would pop out. Wouldn't that be amazing?

Well, in a way, yes, it would be. Well, in a way, this is exactly what we celebrate tonight because that very first Christmas present was the biggest, most amazing gift you could possibly imagine and yet it was wrapped in the tiniest package. Examine and then unwrap that present by looking through some verses about Christmas that are in your programs. They look like this under the title Unwrapping the Greatest Gift.

For example, the Bible says this in Matthew 2:1 and I'd love for us all to read this verse out loud together. Let me hear you, especially you kids. Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea during the time of King Herod. Now you might say, "Yeah, I knew that already," but you are probably not picturing what the people who first read this verse pictured when they saw the words Herod and Bethlehem together in the same sentence.

There was something that instantly came to their minds because King Herod had built something on a mountain just above Bethlehem, a magnificent castle on top of this volcano-shaped hill. Now we talked about this a little bit during our Jesus Journey series here at church this fall, but this mountain loomed over Bethlehem. Actually, its shadow covered the village in the early morning. This is called the Herodium named after King Herod.

And just a few years before Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, Herod had thousands of slaves scrape the dirt off of a neighboring hill and they poured fill dirt on a small hill and literally made a mountain out of a mole hill just to prove he could do it. And they wanted to impress and overpower everyone from this fortress looming above the village of Bethlehem.

Now you're just seeing the ruins here, but in its glory there was a castle on top. In fact, I love how we have on stage the castle set from the concert last weekend because you can imagine this whole scene a lot better. Herodium was kind of like the giant box under the tree that doesn't have very much inside. King Herod had impressive palaces, but he was a man that people hated and feared.

Herod wanted to stay king so badly that he would kill anyone who even thought that he was trying to steal his throne. And we'll cross this with the tiny village of Bethlehem. The Bible says it was the smallest village in the land, the least of the cities of Judah, and near that tiny village were dark little caves and these were what was used as stables by the shepherds back in the first century just like in modern Bethlehem today.

And it's only in a dark, stable cave like this that that baby was born. What I'm pointing out here is that the Bible is making a deliberate contrast between the castle of the king and the humble cave of the Christ. In fact, don't miss this. There is a single detail that is repeated and it's at the end of all three of our scripture readings that we heard the kids read tonight. And by the way, didn't the kids do a wonderful job with those scriptures?

Let's thank these guys. They were awesome. But I want us to read the last verse of those three readings again out loud together, for example, Luke 2:7. And let's read all three of those verses out loud together. Let me hear you. "Pleased him in cloths and placed him in a manger." Now Luke 2:12 again, "And this will be assigned to you. You will find the baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger." And then Luke 2:16. "And hurried off and found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger." Shout it out. What is the last word in every one of those verses? "Manger."

Apparently a very important detail to this Bible writer. But we can totally miss the importance of this because of the way we tend to imagine the manger. Well, this precious moments picture, right? A manger, well, it's apparently like a bassinet for babies. It's just a crib. But it's not. A manger was a feeding trough for animals. But we sort of prittify it and we cutify it.

So to help us understand what a manger might have looked like or felt like, I asked a friend of mine, Daniel Kraft, who's really into 4-H, to give me a modern feeding trough. And this is it. He literally went up to a goat pen and took this off the wall. It's aluminum. It's rusty. It's filled with old damp hay. And I'm getting tetanus just touching it. But this is the kind of sacrifice I make for you people.

Here's the point. Mangers, well, they could have been kind of gross. In fact, we get our modern word mangy from the word manger. No, that's probably not true. But that makes the point. Okay. What I'm trying to get at is that Jesus Christ came not to the castle on the hill just outside of Bethlehem, but He came all the way down into a cave and He was laid in a feeding trough. This was such a strange thing to do.

You know, He was probably born so fast that Joseph, or maybe one of the midwives said, "Where are we going to put the baby so He's not going to be on the ground?" "Let's not put Him in the manger. At least that's not on the ground of the cave. But let's wrap Him in cloth so that the hay won't hurt Him." And that's why the angels said to the shepherds, "This will be a sign to you. You're going to find a baby in a feeding trough." Because that was crazy. That was so weird.

And so you've got to understand this contrast that the Bible is making from the plush castle of the King to this very unusual tiny gift wrapping you could say. Now, what was inside that gift when we opened it up? Well, something bigger than the universe. The Bible says this about Jesus in Colossians 2:9, and let's all read this together. "For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily." That means in Him, in Jesus, God lived in a human body. God came down right there.

And when you read of it like this, on October 14th this past year, Felix Baumgartner broke the world freefall record. How many of you were following this when it happened? That's kind of a stunning thing. It was amazing. He took a space capsule carried by helium balloons all the way up into the stratosphere. And when He was right on the edge of space, 128,000 feet high, He jumped out.

And He dove all the way down into our planet again. I mean, the whole world kind of held its collective breath as He plunged down to the earth's surface. How many of you are afraid of heights? Can I see a show of hands? And you're just freaking out right now, right? I love how He hits the ground and He just drops to His knees and says, "Thank you, God, because I'd be feeling like that too," right?

Well, I watched this and I thought, in a way, Christmas is really about how God made the ultimate leap to earth from far higher than Felix Baumgartner, right? From as high up as you can go from the heavens that He created, and He dove all the way down into our world and plunged right past the plush palace all the way to the poor people and all the way into a feeding trough in a cave. As a tiny little baby. Talk about an unlikely wrapping for the greatest gift ever.

Now, why would God choose to do that? Here's the point to the whole Christmas thing. The Bible says, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself." "Reconsiling" is such a beautiful word. It means to bring somebody that's far apart back close again. Christmas is the story of God coming near, this near, to find us, to find you when we were far away. In fact, He went even further. He even paid for our sins. He died on the cross and then rose again so He can be with you right now.

It's important because you and I, we tend to think that we need what Herod had up in his castle when all we really need is what God offers in the manger, His love. And so how do we receive this? The Bible says, one final verse here, John 1:9, 12, "The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. You received Him to those who believed in His name. He gave the right to become children of God." This is how to open that great little Christmas present. You receive Him.

It's the same with any Christmas gift, really. I mean, these Legos are probably awesome to play with, and I can appreciate the gift, but I'm never going to receive the benefit if I don't personally take and open the present. It's the exact thing with the Christ of Christmas. You can kind of appreciate that God did that. That's a beautiful story, but are you opening, unwrapping the gift, and personally receiving that?

How do you do that? One final story and I'll close. There's a pastor named Jess Moody, who in one of his books wrote about meeting Rose Kennedy, Rose Kennedy, the mother of President John F. Kennedy. He was one of the Bible studies that he read, and at the end of his Bible study he said, "I'd like to close with an invitation to everybody to receive Jesus into their hearts." And he wasn't sure what she would think about this, but Rose Kennedy came up to Jess Moody after the Bible study and said, "You know, I have done exactly what you were just talking about."

And she told him this story. She said when she was younger, Rose Kennedy, well, she was a little bit like a king or a queen in a castle like King Herod. Rose Kennedy was into the Kennedy family power and prestige and money, and she said, "I tended to look down on everybody and be very self-centered." But that all began to change when Rose Kennedy had a little baby girl who was beautiful but was born with severe developmental disabilities.

Rose Kennedy had really devastated Rose Kennedy, and she found that anger consumed her, especially anger toward God. She would shake her fist in prayer and say, "God, why did you do this to me?" It got to the point where one December evening, Rose Kennedy and her husband were invited out to a Christmas party, and they were going out the door. They were all dressed up, and she stopped at the door and said, "I can't go. I'm so full of anger and darkness that I'm not going to be any fun to anybody. I'm staying home."

And her husband went off to the party, and she walked back in the house, and at that moment, her personal maid said, "Mrs. Kennedy, can I say something?" She said, "I have watched this anger consume you, and if you don't do something, it's going to ruin you, and I think you ought to pray this prayer tonight. O Lord, make my heart a manger where the Christ child can be born." She said, "Your heart may be dirty, it may be diseased, but so was the manger."

And you know what Rose Kennedy did when she heard that? She fired the maid on the spot. Actually, that's a true story. But later that night, she couldn't sleep. Tossing and turning, she couldn't get that simple prayer out of her mind. And finally, she got up, and she knelt by her bed. And in an act of deep surrender, she prayed, "O Lord, make my heart a manger where Christ can be born." And she said, "In that moment," she knew God heard and answered her prayer.

She said, "The funny thing is, I've always been religious, I've always believed in Jesus, but this was different. That night, I opened my heart to Christ." And she said, "Love flooded in and replaced the anxiety and anger that had gripped her soul." And by the way, part of the rest of the story, she rehired the maid who stayed with the family until Rose Kennedy died many, many years later.

Well, I want to invite you to unwrap that greatest gift and pray that prayer tonight. Maybe like her, you were raised in church, and you've kind of always believed in Jesus, but maybe that belief has never led to a moment of personal surrender, or maybe it's been a while. So this is the Christmas present from the Lord to you. A small prayer of surrender like that is like opening up a tiny Christmas present that ends up having inside of it the biggest gift ever.

And let's pray together right now to our great God. Would you bow your heads in a word of prayer? Dear Lord, thank you for the gift of Christmas. May we all think more deeply of what happened that night you plunged into our planet. And now we ask, dive into our hearts, make my heart a manger where Christ is born. My heart may not feel very ready or very clean or very soft, but I want Jesus to live inside of this heart, light of the world, come into my life, and make this night a holy night. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.

O holy night, the stars are brightly shining, it is the light of our dear Saviour's throne. Long plays a world, insane and terrifying, till He appeared and the soul felt its truth. A thrill of hope, love will reward rejoices, for young death makes a new and glorious Lord fall on your knees.

O hear the angel voices, O night divine, O night when Christ was born. O night, O holy night, O night divine. O holy night, O night divine, O night divine. The angel, the breaking, for the same is our brother, and in his name all oppression shall cease. Sweet hymns of joy, in grateful chorus, praise He let all within us praises all the day.

O hear the angel voices, O night divine, O night when Christ was born. O night, O holy night, O night divine.

You know that dark night became a holy night when Christ was born, and you might feel like your world is kind of dark right now, but God can make this evening a holy night for you too. Take out your candles that you were given when you came in, and parents of course supervise your children, but I pray that this will be a beautiful symbol right now of you praying that little prayer.

God, let the light of Christ come into my heart so that with that light from God I can in turn be a light to the whole world. As we light our candles, I'm going to light my candle from one of these candles here on stage, and then every other candle in this whole building is going to be lit from one candle, signifying how the light of Jesus Christ can come into our world and transform every single one of us, and then we in turn can transform the world.

And as we light our candles, let's sing that great Christmas carol about that first night. Let's sing "Silent Night" together. Let's sing. Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright, round, young, virgin, mother and son. Holy infant, so tender and more, sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.

Silent night, holy night, shepherds crave at the sight, glory stream from heaven afar. Heavenly hosts sing hallelujah, Christ the Savior is born, Christ the Savior is born.

Silent night, holy night, Son of God, love's pure light, radiant beams from thy holy face. With the dawn of redeeming grace, Jesus, Lord, at thy birth, Jesus, Lord, at thy birth.

As the candlelight gets just to the furthest reaches of the auditorium, look down at your candle and pray this prayer to God. God, make my heart that manger where the Christ y'all can be born. I don't even understand exactly what it means, but I want the light of Christ in my life so that I can in turn feel light to others. Thank you, God, so much for what you did. The greatest gift ever wrapped in the tiniest package.

Thank you, God. Now that we've all received this light, think about the fact that it all came just from one flame up here on stage. And now as the house lights come down, I want you to raise your candles high and take a moment to look around the room. We are now in a room lit only by candlelight. All the high tech lighting that's all turned off.

You might think, I know that they say the best way to fight the darkness is to light a candle, to be a light, but what difference can one life really make? Well, you know what? When we are all shining the light of Christ, it makes a big impact. Let this image be something that sticks in your mind for all of 2013 and say, God, I want to be that kind of a light to my dark world and really make a difference. Amen.

Well, let's cautiously blow out our candles. But don't blow out, of course, the light of Christ in your heart, I pray. You know, the first time that Jesus Christ came, as we've been talking about, he didn't come to a castle, but the Bible says the second time he comes, he's going to come in power and his kingdom is going to conquer all darkness once and for all. No more when, will thorns infest the ground? No more curse on earth? And that's something that we look forward to as the second Advent.

And that's something that's the same as Christmas carol, all about that, that we're going to sing right now. Stand up and sing Joy to the World, the Lord is come. Joy to the world, the Lord is come. Let earth receive the King. Let every heart prepare Him room, as Heaven and nature sing, as Heaven and nature sing, as Heaven and Heaven and nature sing.

Sing together Joy, oh, and Joy, unspeakable time. And all flowing well, no tongue can tell. Joy, unspeakable time, rises in my soul, never lets me go. He rules the world in truth and grace, and makes the nations prove. The glory is done, His righteousness, and wonders of His love. Unspeakable time, and all flowing well, no tongue can tell. Joy, unspeakable time, rises in my soul, never lets me go.

Great singing. Thank you for coming tonight. Hey, as you leave, if you wouldn't mind taking that candle with you and giving it to an usher on the way out. Merry Christmas, everyone. Have a great day.