[00:00:00]Well, hi everybody. I have already had a chance to say hi to the people that are in the room with me, but I want to say hi to you. Those of you who are on any of our campuses. Welcome. We're so glad that you're a part of us and the group from the online community, wherever you are in the world. In fact, I want to give a shout out to Val [00:00:34] from Illinois, from Illinois, Val, all the way from Illinois and Carol in Denver, Colorado. Hey, welcome to you guys. We love it that you're with us and you're online right now, as well as a bunch of other people. So anyway, we just want to welcome you guys. So listen, it's Christmas. It's hard to believe. It's like less than two weeks away, less than that. [00:00:54] And it comes so fast and here we are in the midst of this, and I hope you're prepared. One [00:01:00] little shout out. I want to give you. Is if it's at all possible for you to attend the services in person on our campus. Have I encourage you to do that. I think it's going to be a wonderful occasion. If you can't, we're going to do it online, but I promise you the online as good as we try to make it [00:01:15] it's not going to be as special as if you could get here in person. So I encourage you to do that. Encourage you to bring somebody with you as well. Okay. So here's what I need you to do. Open your Bibles to the book of Matthew. Matthew is to the very first book of the new Testament. So again, wherever you are, please, please find the book of Matthew we're in a series. [00:01:33] We started this a couple of weeks ago. We're calling it all I want for Christmas. All I want for Christmas is, and it's interesting, you know, the question, what do you want for Christmas? Or what do you want? Is probably the most often asked question during the month of December. You'd have to think about families and friends, you know, what do you want? [00:01:51] What do you want? In fact, it's one of the things that you could actually stress over because you don't want to, you know, if your parents ask you, you don't want to get it wrong, you know what I'm saying? [00:02:00] And so from the time you were little, you just, you learn how to answer the question and what you, what do you want for Christmas? [00:02:05] Oh, well what do you want for Christmas? I don't, I don't think as you get older, you don't think about that stuff. What do you want for Christmas? When you were a kid you used to use to sit down and you'd write a note to Santa. Oh, write a letter saying I tell Santa what I actually want for Christmas. And you try to persuade Santa. One kid, [00:02:21] I heard about this guy. He didn't want to waste his time. He knew the whole Santa thing was feudal. So he decided he was going to go straight to the source. He was going straight to Jesus. So he's going to write Jesus a letter. So he sat down to write Jesus a letter, he prefaced it with this. He said, dear Jesus. [00:02:34] I want you to know for the past six months, I've been really good and then he stopped and he started thinking about it and he thought. This is God.

Starts to scratch it out. He said, Hey, Hey Jesus, I want you to know for the past three months I've been really good. And then he stopped and he thought about it, scratch that out, start it over and say, Hey, dear Jesus, [00:02:54] I want you to know for the past two weeks I have been really good. And then he's [00:03:00] reflected on, he thought, how there's no way. Then he got an idea. He got up and he walked over to his family's nativity set and you know, the Mary and Joseph and he picked up Mary and he walked back over to the table and he sat down and started over and said, dear Jesus, if you ever want to see your mother again, [00:03:17] So here's my question. You've been naughty or nice? And I don't mean naughty in a good way. I mean, naughty, like you've been good or bad. It's a question that goes around Christmas. You don't even good or bad. Now, again, I don't want to trivialize this, but I do think that there should be times in your life where you pause, you think. [00:03:37] And that you just stop to reflect. You do this at funerals, by the way, if you don't know this, you think about your life. But I think Christmas is a time when you should think about your life and kind of how's it going? It's been an incredibly difficult year. Obviously. That's no surprise to anybody, but how are you doing? [00:03:52] Naughty nice. Of course you want to say nice because we just want to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, because we always know somebody who's been worse than we [00:04:00] are. We go on that like them. And so we're going to go. Yeah, I'm good. I'm really good. Now. We tend to grade ourselves on a curve. And so what I'm going to do, I'm going to do something I don't normally do. [00:04:11] So stay with me here. I'm going to, I'm going to, you got to brace yourself because I'm going to just dive in deep right now. I'm going to show you something from the Bible that is not easy to hear. All right. I'm just gonna preface. Prepare you okay. Brace yourself, but because we're so quick to let ourselves off the hook, the Bible doesn't do that. [00:04:32] I just need you to understand that for all integrity sake. In fact, let me read you a couple of passages. Just put your seatbelt on. Okay. This is going to like hurt a little bit, but let me just show you what scripture actually says now, is this not good news? This is bad news. And it's important you understand this bad news. [00:04:49] All right. So here we go. Romans three, 10, and 11 says this as it is written, there is no one righteous, not even one. There was no one who understands. There is [00:05:00] no one who seeks God. So I however great you think you are scripture is going, no, you're not. You're not now again, don't take personal offense from me. [00:05:08] I'd say the scripture. I'm just reading in the book of Romans. If you read a little bit more in the book of Romans, you read this line, there is no difference between Jew and Gentile for all, have sinned fall short of the glory of God. That's not a great positive statement. What it means is it's the idea of an archer aiming at a target. [00:05:26] There's a bullseye over here and he shoots his arrow in his arrow falls, fall short. It says, that's what we've all done. We've missed the mark. And that's literally what it means to sin is you miss the mark, you fell short, you go to Romans chapter six and we're blessed with this verse for the wages of sin is death. [00:05:43] So I dunno if you understand this, none of this is encouraging. None of this is uplifting. None of this is like, yay us. Because you see if Christmas had to do with, are you naughty or nice? Are you good or bad? Are you Holy? Are you unholy? You're doomed. I am too. We're doomed. And I think most of us truly [00:06:00] know that we're doomed. [00:06:01] There, there is something that, um, used to be a part of the vocabulary of people. And I would say people in America, it you'll never hear this outside of church. Okay. You ready for this? You'll never hear sin outside of church. Just won't.

Totally out of, out of our vocabulary. We, we don't, we don't talk about it. [00:06:24] We don't think about it. Now again, if you're in church, you might have a tendency to go, okay. At least I'm aware of this. Most people, it's just, you don't, you don't drop that at a dinner party. Hey, how's your sin life. How you doing? I see what we've done is right and wrong has totally been transformed by our culture. [00:06:43] In fact, I'll tell you three things that I think you could say about right and wrong. Or sin. Number one has been, it's been relativized. What does that mean? It means we've made it situational. It's relative to this. So we, well, yeah, I know what you did, but you'd [00:07:00] have to do that in that case. And there's no absolute wrong and there's no absolute, right. [00:07:04] It's just relative. It's what's the situation and yourself in. Second thing is it's been trivialized. It's been trivialized. When you look at you go, you know what you, but what I'm doing, that's small potatoes, man. There's nothing, you know what so-and-so's doing? You know what they're up to. And yeah, so I know, yeah, I probably shouldn't do that, but I don't really care because it's nothing compared to. [00:07:25] And the third thing is it's been justified, you know, the way I can compete in this business, the only way I can hold my own, the only way I stamd a chance, the only way we justify I have to do this, I have no choice but to, to do this. What's the effect of all of this on us? I think deep down, most of us know we've screwed up and now again, you might be arguing with me and that's okay. [00:07:47] But most of us know, you know, I just screwed this thing up. I've done wrong. I know that there should be some consequences to some of the decisions I made, but rather than deal with it, we just go dark. We just go [00:08:00] dark. We just go, I don't even want to look at it. I don't even want to think about it. I don't want to see it. [00:08:04] And I don't particularly like going to church when the preacher makes me think about it. So I understand your frustration, but there's something about, we know it's there. We just bury it. We numb our consciousness. Now, you know, it's interesting. Most of us, if we're honest would say, yeah, I really don't want everyone to know I did that or that I'm about that or that I'm involved in whatever. [00:08:28] Do you have any secrets? I want you to understand research has studied us, and this is not us as a church, but us as a people and research has discovered that the typical one of us is holding 13 secrets. And of the 13, there are five of those secrets, no other human being on the planet knows we've revealed that to no one. [00:08:52] No, I don't know how you hear that. I don't know how you process that on what you think if you're going, like, I don't know, you know, only 13 might be some of you going wow. [00:09:00] I got way more than that. Some of you might go and I have, I can't think of a single secret. Most of us understand what means that I'm keeping this thing. [00:09:07] And, and, um, I'm trying to keep it kind of away. And what is haunting about it is not so much the secret, but the effort that goes into keeping the secret, the secret. It's like if you've ever been in a pool with a balloon or with a pool, with a big old ball, and you try to shove the ball under water and you try to balance yourself on it and kind of keep it under the surface when nobody can pop up. [00:09:29] That's what it's like to manage secrets. You've probably have heard the expression. You're only as sick as the secrets you're keeping. Which makes you wonder what effect are the secrets having on your life? Because the truth is, as you're holding these things down, you, you start to forget that they're even there. [00:09:50] It's just been so it's, so the way you've dealt with life and just kept these secrets. Max Lucado tells us of a Chinese man by the name of Lee Fu [00:10:00] Jaan, who was having horrible headaches. And he'd gone to doctors and they couldn't give him anything. And so finally they put him through a, uh, x-ray machine, MRI, whatever, and they discovered something that he had a four inch knife blade in his head. [00:10:16] And when they figured out like, how'd that get there? About four years ago, he had been mugged and he'd been in a street fight and the blade broke up, but they didn't know what was in there. And Max Lucado goes. He had no idea why I was having such a stabbing pain. All right. But then Max Lucado said this listen carefully because this is powerful. [00:10:37] We can't live with foreign objects buried in our bodies or our souls. What would an x-ray of your interior reveal? Regrets over an earlier relationship, remorse over a poor choice, shame about the marriage that didn't work, the habits you couldn't quit. The temptation you didn't resist or the courage you couldn't find? [00:11:00] Guilt lies hidden beneath the surface [00:11:03] festering irritating sometimes so deeply embedded. You don't know the cause. Could it be possible that I've hidden this thing for so long it's creating major problems in my life, but I don't even associate the problems with the thing I'm hiding because I'm so used to hiding it. Now, if you go, what in the world [00:11:27] this has nothing to do with Christmas. I said, it's Christmas. Why are we talking about this? All this has everything to do with Christmas. Okay. So if you found Matthew chapter one, let me. Turn your attention to that. Okay. So here's what you need to understand. Again, I keep saying this because I want you to get this four biographers of the life of Jesus. [00:11:46] There's four guys that tell the story of Jesus. There's four books of the new Testament, which begins with the birth of Jesus. Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the four biographers. Jesus. If you want to know about the birth of Jesus, you've got to go to Matthew and you've got to go to Luke. [00:12:00] They're the ones that give us the detail. [00:12:01] When you blend it all together, you get the narrative that we understand. About Mary and Joseph and travel and the magi and the shepherds. You put all that together. That's the Christmas narrative. But what I want to do is I want to show you the beginning of the book of Matthew and I did this a couple of years ago, but I want to do this again right now, because point just as not to be missed. [00:12:23] In fact, if you read in the gospel of Matthew, You get to verse 18 of chapter one and you read these words, this is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about. And what I want to do is before he gets to that line, he's going to start with the setup. He's going to start with the backstory, and then he's going to tell you, and this is how the birth came about. [00:12:49] So you can't understand the birth if you don't understand the setup. So what I'm going to do in the next few moments is I'm going to read to you. I'm just going to read to you the first 17 verses of the book of Matthew. And if you have a Bible you can follow [00:13:00] along and I'm just telling you, man, hang on because this, this, I mean, this is like, you won't even believe what you're about to hear. [00:13:07] Okay. So you listen up. Okay. Don't don't go anywhere. Listen, I'll just read it to you. Okay. Well, Matthew is going to set the storyline. Ready? Here it goes. Ready? This is the genealogy of Jesus. The Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham Abraham was the father of Isaac. And Isaac was the father of Jacob. [00:13:25] Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers, Judah, the father of Perez and Zerah whose mother was Tamar. Perez was the father of Hezron has run the father of Ram. Ram the father of Amminadab. Amminadab the father of Nahshon. Nahshon the

father ofSsalmon. Salmon of the father of Boaz whose mother was Rahab. Boaz was the father of Obed whose mother was Ruth. Obed was the father of Jesse. [00:13:46] And Jesse was the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon whose mother had been Uriah's wife. Now Solomon was the father of Rehoboam. Rehoboam the father of Abijah. Abijah, the father of Asa. Asa of the father of Jehosaphat. Jehosaphat the father of Jehoram. Jehoram the father of Uzziah. Uzziah [00:13:59] the [00:14:00] father of Jotham. Jotham, the father of a has Ahaz. Ahaz father of Hezekiah. Hezekiah the father and Manasseh. Manasseh was a father Amon. Amon. The father of Josiah and Josiah was the father of Jeconiah and his brothers in the time of the exile to the Babylon. And now after the exile to Babylon Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel. Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel [00:14:17] the father of Abihud, Abihud the father of Eliakim, Eliakim the father of Azor, Azor the father of Zadok, Zadok the father of Akim, Akim the father of Ellihud, Ellihud the father of Eleazar Eleazar

the father of Matthan, Matthan, the father of Jacob. Jacob was the father of Joseph the husband of Mary and Mary was the mother of Jesus who was called the Messiah. [00:14:35] And thus, there were 14 generations in all from Abraham to David 14, from David to the exile. And. To Babylon and 14 from the exile to the Messiah. Awesome. [00:14:50] Matthew, that's the coolest

way you could have started that book. You know why you've maybe never read the book of Matthew. [00:15:00] Cause it starts like that. And you can go in there and you're like going, what in the world am I reading here? And what is its relevance? Well, let me point out just a couple of things. [00:15:11] The first, most relevant thing you need to understand is that Jesus has a lineage. This is important because he needs you to understand he's connected to some things. Number one, you need to understand he's connected to the captivity, that ugly chapter in the history of Israel, where they got carted off, over to Babylon. [00:15:28] That he's related to that, then you need to understand he's related to King David, and then you need to realize he's, he's a descendant of Abraham, which say he's given you his pedigree. He's trying to tell you this guy didn't come from nowhere. This guy is connected and this is his, his lineage. The second thing he's trying to tell you is that there's a precision of timing to all of this. [00:15:53] And it's very, very important. You understand it. There was 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 generations from David to [00:16:00] the exile, 14 generations from the exile to Jesus. A couple of weeks ago, I showed you a verse and then I showed it to you again last week. Let me show you this verse for the third time. [00:16:10] Let me show you something that now maybe you'll understand in a little bit different light than maybe you could have grasped before Galatians four. Verse four and five says this, but when the set time had fully come, this just stop right there. When the set time, 14, 14, 12, not right. 14, 14, 18. Well, not right. [00:16:34] 14, 14, 14. When the set time, when the plan of God was ready to be rolled out, when the exact precise moment for Jesus to come had come, he came. When this at time and fully coming, let's show the rest of this. God sent his son born of a woman born under the law to redeem those under the law that we might receive adoption [00:17:00] to sonship. [00:17:01] This is what we talked about last week. All I want for Christmas is to be wanted. I want to be a part of a family. I want to know that I'm welcome. And I, and I fit you. You, you just discovered Jesus, his family tree. And what I told you last week is if you receive Jesus, you get adopted into the family. Remember this? Which means this is your family tree. [00:17:24] This is your genealogy, your in this guy, really personal all of a sudden, because these are your ancestors, spiritually speaking. And in your you're in this, your are included in this. This is incredible. Let me ask you, let me ask you so last week we talked about your family of origin. Let me ask you something about your family of origin. [00:17:45] You have anybody in your family of origin y'all, don't talk about? You know, you know, who I'm talking about, you know, that crazy person in your family, that uncle, that aunt, that, you know, the one in prison. [00:18:00] The one that whenever you're together, it's the most polite thing you can do to not mention that because it's embarrassing to the family. [00:18:08] Do you have anyone that you just try to like, like you write that kind of out of the storyline because it's best kept, you know, this is just best kept secret. All right. Now let me show you what, let me show you why Matthew is doing here. And again, I'm going to do this very quickly. There's much more detail I could go into, but for the sake of time, let me just show you something. [00:18:28] The story starts off familiar enough. If you're, if you're aware of the old Testament, Abraham had a son named Isaac, Isaac had a son named Jacob. Jacob had 12 sons. One of them was Judah. And then he says, Judah, now look at this, okay. Look at verse three, Judah, the father of Perez and Zerah so he has two sons mentioned, but I want you to catch that little line whose mother was Tamar. [00:18:56] Now to get the detail of this, you've got to go read Genesis chapter 38, and [00:19:00] I don't have time to tell you the story, but let me just sum it up for you. Tamar was Judas daughter-in-law and she got involved with him in an, a horrific scandal because she dressed up as a prostitute and Judah hired her and got her pregnant and then discovered it was his daughter in law. [00:19:23] Okay. Well, uh, Should we talk about that? Wouldn't that be best excluded from the family tree? I mean, come on. I mean, let's look all, I want you to see something, look, look, you could easily take it out. Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah skipped the line whose mother was Tamar. Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah Perez. [00:19:44] The father of Hezron. You can just, what do you put that in there? Because Matthew wants you to understand something about your ancestors. Now you, you go, okay. Well, I'm glad there's one little thing in there. The one little problem they'll go down to verse five. Salman was the father of [00:20:00] Boaz whose mother was Rahab Rahab. [00:20:02] Right. You know who RaHab was? Rahab, we have was a harlot just prostitute. When the spies went over to Jericho before they conquered Jericho, Joshua sends this fight over. Remember they went over there and they scoped it out and then went and visited her. Just so you know, and she hid them from the people of Jericho and in return for the favor of not outing them. [00:20:30] They saved her when they conquered Jericho. And then she marries into the family, puts up a prostitute. Why did you mention that? What did you just keep that silent? Because you easily could a skip that. I mean, look at the verse Salmon, the father of Boaz. Boaz the father of Obed, just skip the line and we don't have to deal with that. [00:20:56] Oh, you can go on. Look at verse the next verse, verse six, David, the [00:21:00] father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife. You have to mention that? Who's Uriah's wife, you know, the story. Bathsheba. This is the David and Bathsheba scandal. Remember. He was on his roof. He saw a woman bathing on her roof. [00:21:18] She was naked. He wanted her, they go find out who she is. She comes in and he, they say to him, that's Uriah's wife, Uriah was one of his mighty warriors. He was a mighty soldier. And David goes, I don't care, man. I want her bring her over here. He ends up having sex with her, gets her pregnant. Tries to cover it up. [00:21:37] Can't cover it up. So she ends, he ends up killing Uriah. One of his soldiers has him executed. Oh, by the way, that was Solomon's mom. Why'd you have to mention that? Couldn't we have just skipped over that. Um, let's keep going here. Oh, verse [00:22:00] eight. Jehosaphat's was the father of Jehoram oh, man. Jehoram? I talked to you about Jehoram. [00:22:07] Jehoram was at King of Israel and it says this. I said, it's the saddest verse in the entire Bible. It says of him. He died to no one's regret. Remember this, this is Jehoram. He died to no one's regret. And they didn't even bury him in the, in the place of the Kings because he didn't deserve to be buried with the other Kings. [00:22:23] He was so bad that they just didn't even want him, nobody regretted the fact that he died. In fact, you get into that list between, uh, David and captivity. That's the era of Kings, which you could read about in first Kings, second Kings first Chronicles, second Chronicles in the old Testament. You know, of all those Kings mentioned only five of them are in any way remotely considered good. [00:22:45] Everyone else is corrupt, only five good ones in the bunch and you go, what? Yeah, Asa Jehosaphat's Jotham Hezikiah and Josiah, the rest corrupt evildoers. You can say they weren't lights [00:23:00] on the found the Christmas tree. There were the blights on the family Christmas tree. Why did you mention all of them? [00:23:07] So let me just conclude what Matthew told you. All right. And I'll just do this really quick. Here's what he told you. Abraham and Isaac were liars. Jacob was a deceiver. David was an adulterer and a murderer. Solomon was a womanizer and we have scandals, prostitutes and corruption in, in our family tree. [00:23:24] And by the way, folks, this is why I believe the Bible. As just why I believe that if you were trying to make a squeaky clean Jesus with a pristine past and nothing in his history, you would not put that stuff in there. If you're going to cook the books, cook the books. But Nope, this just going to tell you straight up. [00:23:46] Now, let me show you again. After we got all that. Now you understand the background, Matthew one 18. This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about. You'll never understand Jesus, if you don't understand his family tree, no secrets, no coverups, [00:24:00] no spins. Now let me ask you a question. If the scripture with Jesus won't cover up any of that, why do we try to keep secrets? [00:24:11] Why do we keep things that nobody else knows? Why do we play the game and try to bury this? Keep the ball under water. So nobody has to see our moral mess ups. Well, I can give you a couple of reasons because we have some choices we can make just quickly. We can choose to ignore what we've done. We can ignore it. [00:24:31] Well, what about your sin? Oh, I said the sin word. I'm sorry. I know it's not proper. I know it's not polite, but what are you doing with your sin? You can ignore it, you know, ignoring it is the same thing you do with the idiot light on your car. You know, the check engine light comes on, go out, must be broken. [00:24:49] You know, gotta get that light fixed. That's not urgent. Doesn't do anything. No, it's trying to tell you something. I remember years ago there was a [00:25:00] commercial for Fram oil filter. Some of you will remember this and it would be like, Hey, if you want to keep your engine, you've got to change your oil. And it was a commercial where someone goes, well, change the oil, but don't change the oil filter. [00:25:10] And the punchline was, well, you can pay me now or you can pay me later. The idea of against 10 bucks to switch that filter over. Now, it's going to be a thousand bucks to fix that engine. You can pay me now, or you can pay me later. It's just the idea. Kick the can down the road. I'm going to ignore this sin issue in my life. [00:25:26] The secret I'm keeping, I'm going to kick it down the road, deal with it later. That's one way you can deal with it. Second way would be to just conceal it. I'm just going to conceal it. I'm going to hide it. I'm going to pretend it never happened. I'm going to act as if, as if. And you're going to create a facade. [00:25:44] You're going to create a story. You're going to create a deception. Third thing you can do is you can deny it. You can absolutely deny it. It's very popular to deny your sin. And that is just a will it away. I'm just going to act as if it didn't even happen. Everyone asks me about it. I'm going to go. I don't know. [00:25:59] I [00:26:00] don't know. I have no knowledge of nothing. I don't know. I'm just going to deny it. You can minimize it. We have four thing you could do minimize. It is just. Bad. I mean, come on. I'm not that bad. I know God, he's got a great on a curve because we're bad. I mean, some point God's going to have to give us a break. [00:26:22] And so I'm going to count on the brake and I don't think what I've done. I mean, do you know what so-and-so did? And compared to so-and-so I'm much better than so-and-so, so I'm sure I'm okay. And then there's a fifth thing you can do, which incidentally is the thing the Bible says you need to do. And it's to confess it, to confess it, to own up to it, to admit it, to put it out there, to quit holding you, get under the surface and acknowledge it. [00:26:50] Now, let me say this about confession. There's two ways you can get a confession. There's a forced way in a volunteer way, a forced way. That is when a cop, you know that you've seen this on the TV. You know, the cop will [00:27:00] put you in a room and put these really bright lights on you. And they're going to try to get you to say something. [00:27:05] A forced confession is a questionable confession. I remember when I was a kid, uh, one day I came home and I'm having a second grade or something. I don't know. I came home from wherever I was and my mom was in bed and she, she did what she had never done. She said, Hey, come in here. I need to talk to you. [00:27:20] And I'm like, Oh no. And so she came in and I remember her patting her bed. She goes, why don't you to have a seat right here? Oh, no. And she said to me, she goes, yeah, anything you need to tell me? Yeah, [00:27:37] I'm not the brightest kid, but I know that's a trap. Like don't go down that road and she goes, um, anything you just need to get off your chest and I'm thinking as hard as I'm thinking, what does she know? What did she find out? And I've run in my head as fast as I can trying to figure out what is she on to? And I'm smart enough [00:28:00] [00:28:00] to know if all she's got me on is a misdemeanor. I'm not confessing to a feloney, I'm not doing it, but she presses me, and pressing me and pressing me. You sure don't want to tell me that it'd be okay if you just, if you feel better, if you just get that off your chest and I played stupid, played dumb, and then she told me what she had on me. [00:28:22] And you already did. Oh, that, Oh, that thing as if it were nothing. Cause this is what we do. A voluntary confession is a totally voluntary thing is you, you, you prompted it. You put it out there. You, you, you, you said, you know what? I just need to admit this and I'm choosing to get it out into the sunlight so that the sun can disinfect it. [00:28:45] I'm not gonna hold it under anymore. I'm just going to put it out there and I'm not gonna, I'm gonna agree with God. He said it was wrong. I admit it it's wrong. I shouldn't have done it. I'm going to hide it. And I'm going to pretend. Uh, by the way you don't what scripture says, [00:29:00] let me show you a couple of passages. [00:29:01] First, John, one eight says if we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Let me, that's very polite. Let me say it not so politely. If you say you're not a sinner, you're lying. That's not polite. That's what he's saying. You're just deceiving yourself. You're lying. But if we confess our sins, it will just own it and get it out there. [00:29:25] He is faithful and just, and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness, if you'll just but confess it, he'll forgive it. Um, Isaiah one 18. I love this verse. Come now. Let's settle the matter. This is God inviting you. And I love the way some translations say it. Come. Let's reason together. [00:29:48] Sit down. Let's talk this out. God says, though, your sins are like Scarlet. They shall be white as snow though. They are red as Crimson. They shall be like, wool. [00:30:00] That was, I got a solution to your secret problem. Let me just wash it away. And then, so I'm one Oh three 12, another fantastic verse. As far as the East is from the West, far as that is from that, your sins will be taken from you. [00:30:16] I mean, literally is removed them. Wouldn't you rather live a life without secrets to be set free from them. You see, I've titled this message. All I want for Christmas. See last week was all I want for Christmas to be a part of a family to be included, belonged to we wanted, but you got invited into a family, but now I got all this junk in my past. [00:30:45] All I want for Christmas in my family is to be forgiven. To be forgiven for my past. Can I tell you what Christmas is? Um, Christmas is the [00:31:00] gift that God's giving you that sets you free from your past that's Christmas. It's his way of saying you don't need to have this in your storyline anymore. You see, you got to get this. [00:31:15] The big deal was not that Jesus came to earth. I know we think it's a big deal Christmas. Awesome. Because we celebrated, Jesus came to earth. That's not the big deal. Okay. The big deal. So Jesus came to earth to live a sinless life, to die as a pure and Holy sacrifice to rise from the dead to ascend, to heaven, and then to invite you to come with him. [00:31:40] Pure and Holy and innocent as he is. You see, I don't know how to say this, but Christmas is just the setup to the solution, to your secret, just to set up, you can't have a resurrection until you have a birth because you can't have a resurrection [00:32:00] until you have a death and you can't have a death of someone who's not alive. [00:32:03] So Jesus has to come become alive. So we can die for your sins rise from the dead. So you can go to heaven without your secrets. Now I got to close. Tim Keller said we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe yet. At the very same time, we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope. [00:32:34] In, um, 2013 in France, an 86 year old man died. His name was Andre Castagna's when he was in his thirties, he developed, uh, a toy for, till he called it the magic screen in which he used aluminum, uh, a kind of an aluminum derivative, and he created a thing. Uh, you know, it as an etch a sketch. Okay. And I know everybody [00:33:00] here knows what the, I don't need to spend any time explaining this. [00:33:02] When I, when I was growing up, this was a very hot item. Okay. In fact, I had one of these, it was my original tablet right here, and it required no wifi either by the way. And I know that you understand that the principal, so I don't need to spend a whole lot of time, but there's these knobs. And as you turn the knobs, you, you can make things, they have to be right angles. [00:33:23] And so you're a little bit. It's kind of hard to, you know, you just try to turn both knobs at the same time. And if you've ever done this, you know what Lee was you spending a lot of time doing is screwing up. Right? And you go, Oh gosh, you know, but, but you know, whatever you do, whatever you make and you can fill the screen, you know, again, you know how this works, so I'm just turning the knobs. [00:33:40] Uh, but when you get done and you go, Oh, that's a mess. You know that inherently, um, you don't have to stay with it. You don't have to keep that. Cause you can just shake it and guess what? All that goes away. This is the gift. God wants to give you this Christmas. [00:34:00] Christmas is about taking away your past. [00:34:05] Some of us desperately need our past taken away. [00:34:13] I'm done preaching. I just have to say this to you. I'm saying this to you here, you there, and you guys online. In fact, let me just real quick, let me say this to those of you online. There's a number it's coming up on your screen. And if you'll just say forgiveness, you just on that number, just do that. [00:34:33] And it will happen is we'll contact you and, um, we'll help you. Okay. Cause you don't need to carry this stuff any further again, wherever you are. Illinois, wherever. All right. You don't need to keep doing that, but now let me say this to those of you on our campuses and in this room with you now, how long, how long, how much energy, how much effort [00:35:00] are you going? [00:35:00] All you got to do is just go, God, I screwed up. I really screwed up and own it and go, God, I got to do this differently. You know, th that idea of missing the mark. Is instead of saying it's good enough. You just admit to not, you go, God, I just screwed up and you repent, which means I'm not doing that. I'm not going to fail on that path. [00:35:22] Get it out at the conclusion in a few minutes, please don't leave if you want to get right with Jesus. And again, I'm talking to you and I'm talking to you. Um, but if you're in the house here, all right, you guys text forgiveness, you guys. When a prayer partners down front, why don't you come down and talk to someone? [00:35:44] Just go ahead. I got it. All right. I've been holding this thing under the water. It's fatigued beyond measure. I just got to get right with God. You know, his gift for you is to get right with you. That's what he wants [00:36:00] for your Christmas. Should take him up on that. Let me pray. So God help us right now to be honest, to be truthful. [00:36:08] Thanks for the story of the lineage of Jesus. Thanks for not hiding all that, that, thanks for helping us to understand. We don't have, this is not a game. This is not about pretend life. What about a second life or an avatar life or anything other than our real life and God, you love us. And you care about us. [00:36:28] You want to give us something which is a clean slate forgiven for the scripts of our past. And you want us to come into your family tree, perhaps to be lights to somebody else's life help us father in Jesus name. I pray. Amen. Thank you.