Good morning, everyone. I'll keep talking and you can turn that. Can you kill this monitor here in front of me? No, it's coming through this.
There we go. No, it's good. OK. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. Sorry about that blast. Yeah, it woke me up too. It's Merry Christmas to everybody.
I can't believe we're there again. Thank you, David. Appreciate that. And you may?
Merry Christmas, Warren. You're not going to pick it off one by one. So Merry Christmas, everyone. Thank you.
All right. Let's have a word of prayer. Father, thank you this morning for this time to sing these songs to bring glory to God in the highest. And we thank you for your son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
And this time of year when we sing of his coming to this earth as a baby and a man to grow up to be a man, to die for our sins and to be our Savior. What a deliverance you have given us. We thank you in his name, amen. Last Monday was a pretty historic day.
Now, does anybody remember what happened December 17, 1903? Very, very significant. In fact, John Wells would not be able to do his job if this did not happen. Yes.
The right brothers. Yes. I thought he was going to say the invention of the hardwood floor. But no.
Yes, it was the right brothers. The right brothers. They're from Dayton, Ohio. They went down to Kitty Hawk.
They kind of sanded him down there. And they got this little thing they called a lighter than aircraft. And so it was 115 years ago last Monday. And they flew for 12 seconds, 120 feet.
Now think of that. And that's not a long, long time ago. When you think about that? 150 years ago, man flew 120 feet in 12 seconds.
We've been to the moon. Yes, we have. We've been to the moon. We have been to the moon and back.
We have flown spaceships and satellites that have exited our solar system. We've, I can sit out in my yard on a clear night and watch the planes go over every single night and just be fascinated thinking, there's 300 people just flying right up over top of me right now in that plane. Oh, well, here comes another one. There's probably 1,000 people at a time just flying right over my house going to Europe.
It's an amazing thing. So when the right brothers flew, they sent a text to their sister back home in Ohio. It was called a telegraph back then. But it was a text.
That was the fastest way to communicate back then. They didn't have a smartphone. They went to an office, probably Western Union. And they said, we need to send to Catherine.
We need to send her a text. OK, what do you want to say? Good flight or we flew. We'll be home for Christmas.
She went down to the editor now. This is a story about this past week. She went down to the editor of the newspaper and he said, hey, Catherine, how are you? Good.
How are the boys? Good. Look, here's the telegraph I got from them. They actually flew their airplane.
And he looks at it. He says, oh, that's nice. The boys will be home for Christmas. So the headline in the paper came out, right brothers will be home for Christmas.
He missed the whole point. He missed the big news. And here we are at Christmas. And I often wonder every time we come to Christmas, how many people miss the big news of Christmas?
How many people miss it? How many people overlook the real meaning of Christmas? How many people overlook what the biggest news of all time is? We've commercialized it.
We have Santa. We have shopping. We have office parties. We have lights on our trees.
We have lights on our house. We have all kinds of stuff. And that's all good. I have them on my house.
I have a tree on my house. One of our kids made. And I went shopping and all of this stuff. I did all that.
It's all fun stuff. But we don't want to miss the big news at Christmas. The biggest news ever. The news, oh, yeah, good.
I can still use this because I'm going to say, if I have to most this, that's not going to be really good for any man when he's over here, right? So here's the greatest event in all history. And I took a page out of the image book last week. And I put it in the NLT as well.
It says, but when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. I'll read it in the NLT. But when the right time came, God sent his son, born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law so that he could adopt us as his very own children.
That is the greatest news in history. There is no greater news than that. I know, I remember watching people go and walking on the moon and thought, this is the greatest thing ever in history. It's not.
That pales in comparison to this. God sent forth his son. Jesus Christ has had huge influence in this world. No one, not one single person, has influenced this world like Jesus Christ has.
There were other great teachers in this world, and Jesus Christ was a great teacher, but he was a savior. That's why he came, not just a teach, but to save the world from its sin. Aristotle taught for 40 years. Plato considered a great teacher by some.
50 years. Socrates taught for 40 years. Jesus Christ taught for three and a half years. Yet, now this is really old data.
OK, so when I mentioned the word encyclopedia, you're looking at me going, what? But we do still have encyclopedia set our house. They're sitting there. I think we still have them.
I don't know. Maybe they're gone. But that's the way we used to get information. So the encyclopedia Britannica, which is like the queen of encyclopedias.
It dedicates on the article in Jesus Christ 20,000 words. That is more than Aristotle, Alexander the Great Buddha, Caesar, Cicero, Confucius, and the prophet Muhammad all put together. He's that influential. More can be said about Jesus Christ than any other person in history.
Someone once said that Christmas is the time when you think about the time when God came down the stairs of heaven with a baby in his arms. But here's the real story. Christmas is the time when God came down the stairs of heaven with a savior in his arms. It's not about a baby.
It's about a savior. He sent his son to save us. Now I have three points that I'm going to look at this morning. We'll get to it.
I had two the other night. And he might told me I have to have three. So these are the three points. But there's three points within some of these points.
You see, when Jesus Christ came, it was the perfect time. It says, when the fullness of time came, when the fullness of time, it's just the perfect time. It says, God sent his son, sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law. Why is it the perfect time?
Well, spiritually, it was the perfect time. There was a hunger in this world. You see, people observed Jewish monotheism and they said, there's something about that that's drawing us because the rule of Rome was over the whole world. And they had many, many gods.
But they were a cruel empire. And people were under the cruelty of the Roman Empire. And they're saying, well, wait a minute. Now we're praying to all of these gods, Jupiter, Mars, and so on, and so on, and so on, and all these gods.
And they're not delivering us. Is there a god? Is there hope? Is there a god out there?
So spiritually, it's the right time, the perfect time. Culturally, since the Tower of Babel, there had not been one universal language. Latin was the written language. Greek was the spoken language at the time.
There was one language in which to communicate the gospel. Greek. Politically, this time was called Pack-Tromana, which sounds like a good pasta dish, actually. But it's not.
It's what it is, is peace from Rome. This is the first time in history that there was no big military war going on somewhere. As cruel as the Romans were, they just had everybody under their iron rule. But it was peaceful.
There was no war going on. So what the Romans could do with all of their resources and all of their people was build roads. In fact, I was reading that they built in 200 years, when there was no military conflict. They built 400,000 kilometers of roads that 80,000 kilometers of paved roads.
What's that got to do with the fullness of time, the right time? How easy is it to spread the gospel when there's roads, to go to all the populated world? You see, God's time is the right time. God's on a timetable.
And he's always on time. He never misses a moment. God never says I'm going to do something and says, oh, forgot about that. How many times do I do that all the time?
Oh, I forgot about that. Oh, right. I'm supposed to be there. Oh, I can't believe it.
Then you race around the car and you try to get there. Or you miss a phone call or whatever. God doesn't miss phone calls. God doesn't miss time at all.
God's perfectly and always on time and perfect time. You see, God's time is always the right time. He lives in eternity. He's outside of our time and space that we're confined to.
And in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, it says to everything, there is a season, a time, and a purpose for everything under heaven. So this is the perfect time. And in this perfect time, we read, he sent a perfect person. He sent his son.
It says, when the fullness of time, God sent forth his son. Now, it says that he sent his son. It didn't say he caused a son to be born. He sent his son.
His son was with it. This implies that Jesus Christ was sent out, that he had a pre-existence before coming to this earth. The word that's used there is ex-Abostello, if I said that right, I'm not Greek. So I'll have to check that with my Greek friends.
It means to send out or commission. You see right in the middle of that, you see the word apostle. Apostles were ones that were sent out. So Jesus Christ was sent out or commissioned from heaven with a task to do.
Jesus Christ existed with God from eternity. He's the only one who has ever lived before he was born. He's the only one that could have an existence before he came to this earth. There's a few verses that we read in John chapter 17 verse 24.
He prays to the Father, he says, Father restore unto me the glory that I had with you before the world was. Jesus Christ existed in eternity, in the past. Isaiah predicted unto us a child is born, but a son is given. Not a son is born, a son is given.
The son of God was given by God. He pre-existed with God. Jesus said in John chapter 8 verse 42, I proceeded forth and came from God. He sent me.
I have come down from heaven, he says, in John 638. Jesus Christ, the only, the one and only God, sent by God, God sent his son. Now, you think about it and think, well, could somebody else have done this? Could somebody else have done this job?
No. You see, and I said this before, we're looking at Daniel, if our greatest need was information, I read this, somebody wrote this. If our greatest need was information, he would have sent an educator. If our greatest need was technology, he would have sent a scientist.
And if our greatest need was money, he would have sent an economist. If our greatest need was pleasure, he would have sent us an entertainer. But our greatest need was forgiveness, and he sent us a savior. So first of all, he was sent by God.
The second thing we read here, he was the son of God. He sent forth his son. He's the son of God. This is a real mystery.
How does God become a man? You know what? This is one of those things where I have to say, I don't know. It's hard to explain this.
It's hard to explain how God could come and become a man. Be confined to all the things that men are confined to. Yet still be God. Paul wrote to Timothy, he's as great as the mystery of godliness.
God was manifested in the flesh, first Timothy 316. Great is the mystery of godliness. It's a great and unexplainable mystery to us. But God did it.
God had to do it if we were to be saved. Does he deter son of God? When you see that in the singular in the Bible, it implies deity. It implies that not only is he from God, but he is God.
He is God. I have two sons. And one of them is here, the Montreal Canadiens fan, and the good one isn't here with us today. But I have two sons.
But you know what's interesting about my sons? Is they're my sons. They're from me. And they share my nature in a lot of ways.
They're different from me. In fact, I was reminded recently that when my son Sam worked with me at my job for a while, this is back a few years ago. And somebody came in and said, not hard to tell you two, or father and son, I said, why is that? You butter your toast the same.
So what? You both butter your toast the same. Well, how do people butter their toast? We just put it on the top and spread it around with a knife.
But the way we do it, it's exactly the same. So my children share my nature. There are things about me that they're like that. I can see my peaceful way being shared with one of them.
And then my, the other one. But you pass on some of your nature. So the implication of that is God's son is the exact same nature as God. He has the same nature as his father.
And he is God. They are both deity. Even Jesus, enemies knew that. In John chapter 5 or 18, they had a real problem with Jesus.
They said, because he's making himself to be God. He claims to be God. This is the unique son of God, Jesus Christ. He never became God.
He was God. Now, when he would be incarnation, what happened was Jesus, who was God, the son of God, he takes this position. He submits himself to the Father. It says in Philippians, it says, he didn't think it was robbery to be equal with God.
He understood that he is still God. But he came as a human being. He submitted himself to the will of the Father. And in the first chapter of John, I put these verses up for you to read.
In the first chapter of John, it really pulls all this together. It says, John chapter 1, verse 1, it says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. When you see the Word, it's Jesus Christ, it's speaking of. And the Word, Jesus Christ, the Word became flesh and dwelled among us.
And we saw his glory. Glory as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten God who was in the bosom of his Father, he has explained him to us.
So when you see Jesus Christ, you have seen God. He never became God. He was God from before he was born. And then this time comes when an angel comes to Mary and says, oh, Mary, by the way, you are going to have a child.
You're going to have a baby. How can this be? I've never had relations with my fiance. And Joseph and I have never had relations.
How can I have a baby? I mean, we plan to have children. No, no. This one's going to be born if he was going to be the son of God.
What? How's that going to work? And then it's explained that the Holy Spirit will come upon Mary and she will conceive a child. There is no man involved.
There's no father, but there's no mother. And the Holy Spirit came upon Mary. And she had born in her womb for nine months. And then gave birth to a child who was the son of God.
It's an amazing, amazing thing. We can't, with our minds, imagine what that took place in that time, how it all took place. It's the greatest miracle of the Bible, I believe. God becoming a man.
I remember Hilton. He'd be at many, many times. We sit around talking. He says, you know, I believe the greatest miracle is the incarnation.
And I couldn't tell you how many times he used to say that to me. And I never thought of that until he said it. And I can't stop thinking about it since he said it. The greatest miracle of all is God becoming a person, becoming a man.
Someone said that Jesus Christ is God sculling himself out in the language we can understand. You know, the ancient Greeks, they always believe that whatever gods existed, they had many, many gods. In fact, they had so many that they thought we might have missed one. So they actually made a monument to the unknown God.
They believed that all of these gods, yes, they're not knowable, though. There are so many of them, but they're not knowable. Plato actually, he said that God and man can never meet. But Jesus Christ said, if you have seen me, you have seen the Father in John 14 verse 9.
If you have seen me, you've seen the Father. So when you see Jesus Christ healing someone, you see a compassionate God. When you see Jesus Christ weeping over the city, as you see in Luke chapter 19, you see a God of broken heartedness. When you see Jesus teaching a crowd, you see a God who's concerned that people know the truth.
When you see Jesus dying on a cross, you see a determined God determined to do something about the sin problem that has plagued this whole world. We have a God that feels our pain. We have a God in Jesus Christ who has experienced our pain, who has gone through everything we have gone through in this life. We have a God who is compassion, who has love, who is concerned for us.
We have a God who is so concerned for us that he sent his son, it says, sent forth his son to die for us to save us from our greatest problem, which was our sin. Finally, he was sent by God, he was the son of God, and we read here, he was surrendered to God. But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son to be born of a woman under the law, it says, under the law, that he might redeem those who are under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons or as his children. He was born under the law.
This emphasizes the humanity of Jesus Christ. He was confined as God, even confined to a womb of a mother. In order to be your savior, he had to be both God and man. He had to be God for the sacrifice to have any infinite value.
If he was just a man, it wouldn't have infinite value to you. Secondly, he had to be a man in order to be a substitute for another man, to die for another. He had to be a man. He was born of a woman, not of a man.
He was born under the law. So under the law, I mean, he was a Jewish man. He went through all of the rituals and all of the programs of the Jewish people of that day. He would have been circumcised and dedicated to the temple.
He would have been raised reading the Torah and the Tanakh. He would have been raised in a home to pray to God of Israel. He would have attended synagogue services as a boy. He would have been responsible to obey God's law, and he did it perfectly, the only one who ever did it perfectly.
He was surrendered 100% to God. So I have something in closing here. God sent his son, a savior. He didn't send us a Santa Claus.
He sent his son. So I want you to consider your life at Christmas right now. I did that. It was right around this time of the year, this very week, a couple of days ago.
I got to a place where I was considering my life. And I was listening to Christmas Carols. I was listening to people speak about it. And I thought, what is my life?
Where is it going? And for me, Christmas up until that time, it was empty. It was very, very difficult. My dad drank too much of Christmas.
I hated it. I couldn't stand it. In fact, I remember one year I wanted to stay in university and stay in residence and be all by myself rather than come home. I didn't grow up in a home where we sang Christmas Carols and had great joy.
And many of you have the same thing. Christmas can be painful for some people. I know that. Sometimes it's because you come to the time and you remember a lost loved one and you think, I wish they were with me again.
I wish they were still here. Christmas is our hard time for people. I get that. We understand that.
We all go through that. I have loved ones. I wish they were still here at Christmas time. It just comes back.
I wish that they were here all the time. But Christmas just kind of brings it home when you see people with family. It's really hard for people. It's painful.
Sometimes the home environment, like I said, is not that good and it's difficult. And all of these things can be magnified at Christmas. But I want to tell you something. There's great hope.
There is great hope. And at Christmas time, we celebrate the birth of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. When He came to this earth as a Savior to save you and to save me and deliver us from our sins, our greatest need was met by the greatest gift we ever could have had, the Lord Jesus Christ. So I want to ask you to ask yourself, do I personally know Jesus Christ, the Lord of heaven and earth?
Do I know Him? Not just facts about Him. If you're here, you probably know facts about Him. You can probably say, yes, this first miracle, he turned water into wine.
Yes, he died on a cross. Yes, he walked on water. I know all that stuff. I know there's a story he comes to store him one time by just speaking.
You know a lot about Him. But do you know Him? Not just willing to come to church and learn about Him. You may come to church, but you may not have come to Christ.
Have you come to Christ? Do you know Him? You can come to Him today and have all of your sins forgiven. For me, it was the greatest Christmas gifts I've ever received.
Christmas has never been the same since. My life has never been the same since. It will change your life. You know, we don't go out on the streets and sing Christmas carols in the pouring freezing rain and then I know it was freezing and pouring rain.
I'll tell you. It was cold out there. We're trying to read them on the phone. I'm thinking, OK, I'm going to be like 700 bucks for this phone if I don't put it back on my pocket.
We don't go out and do that and give out just to have fun and fellowship. It wasn't fun. We had fellowship. It was great.
We do it because we have a message of hope for this world. And when it's not Christmas, we're handing out merry Christmas cards. But when it's not Christmas, we're handing out to everybody on the street. I put them in walkers.
I put them in washrooms and many others here do. Plain seats everywhere you can put them. The most important question that I can ask you this morning, do you know him? Have you been saved?
Have you come to him? Have you been redeemed? Do you know him personally? You know, it says, as we read, where the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son.
He sent him for you. Born of a woman, for you. Born under the law, for you. That he might redeem you from the law.
There's a verse now. You may not remember. A couple of years ago, I spoke of Christmas time. I think it was Christmas Day.
Maybe. Something like that. And the verse that I had for my theme that day, it keeps coming back to me at this time of the years. It's in Isaiah chapter 1 verse 18, it says, come now.
Let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are a scarlet, they will be white as snow. Though they're red like crimson, they will be like wool. The weatherman does not call for a white Christmas.
But I'll tell you about the Bible calls for a white Christmas if you will come to Jesus Christ and have the red blood of Jesus Christ wash away your sins. Your red crimson sins can be washed away and you can be as white as snow. Let us pray. Father, thank you this morning that you sent your son.
We thank you. It was your son that you sent. And we thank you that he surrendered himself to your will to go to a cross to die for us, that we might be free from our sin. Father, I know and I recognize that there are people here this morning that Christmas is a struggle sometimes because of the sadness that it might bring back because it just magnifies the things that have happened in life.
And sorrows are magnified and pain is magnified and difficulty is magnified sometimes at this time of the year because we get together as families and we talk about being together and we sing joyful songs and there's no joy in their heart. Father, I want to pray for each believer who was here, who struggles at Christmas time. Father, may they not be distracted by the pains of this world. But may they be attracted to the Savior of this world?
Read your word, spend time with you. You came as a man to be part of this world, to die for us so that we can have a relationship with you. And now in that relationship, as believers, everyone here, no matter how deep the pain, you can cry out to God and be heard. Can open your word and have a living communicating relationship with you.
Father, I know there's probably people here who have never come to know Jesus Christ. They have no relationship with you. They don't know you. They know about you.
But they don't know you personally. Father, I pray that today, just before Christmas that they receive the greatest gift that they could, the forgiveness of sins. Thank you for sending your Son. Thank you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen. We had a...