Advent 2025: He Shall Be | Savior

You will remain standing for the reading of the teaching text tonight. Tonight's teaching text comes from Matthew chapter one, verses 18 through 23. Matthew one, 18 through 23. This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about. His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph, her husband, was faithful to the law and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet. The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Well, a very good evening to you. If you are here tonight, you have come for a Christmas service. The Christmas service is where followers of Jesus

celebrate the doctrine and the wonder of the incarnation. This is a claim that God has come in the flesh to save humanity, but I guess you knew that. I think most of us are so familiar with this message that it can get watered down, or it can lose its wonder, or we can just, it sort of is in the background of our lives. So what I wanna do tonight is I want to give us fresh eyes on why it is that we need a savior. For the past four weeks, we've been looking at different names that Christ has been given, and we come to this last one tonight. He will be the savior for our sins. So I just wanna answer this question, why in 2025, when we have AI and Ubers, do we still need a savior? First reason, we need a savior because the sentimental vision of happy holidays is just too thin for what we face as people. It's just too thin. There is a thinning out of the religious components of the Christmas season. It's basically been reduced to Home Alone 2 and hot chocolate. And it's kind of a sentimental, it doesn't really matter if it's true or not. Isn't it great in the middle of the winter to get some lights and some skating? I think a lot of people have reduced it like this. I was going through the New Yorkers' top cartoons

from the New Yorker of 2025, and in the top 10, I came across this one, and it said this. So the bread is my body, the wine is my blood, and the chocolate bunny is a fun springtime treat. And in essence, I think the New Yorker is onto something. They're onto the reality that for most people, it's like, yeah, Jesus died, Christmas, birth, whatever. Let the kids have chocolate. Let the kids get a present. This is enough. I don't know what percentage of you are married, and I don't know what percentage of you are married with children, but I just wanna tell you this. If you think the whole thing is about keeping your kids happy on a Sunday morning or a Christmas morning, all the wonder and joy is gonna wear off at about 10.45 a.m. when the toys are broken and you wanna go back to bed. We sort of reduce it to a sentimental holiday. We don't even know why we still do it. Every year, we need more money in the economy or whatever so the data gets celebrated, gets released a little bit earlier. But I just wanna say this. We need a Savior. What we're facing as a people is too much for a thin, disenchanted, sentimental view of the holidays. I was reflecting on the year we've had.

This time of year, I do tend to become pretty introspective and was looking through sort of, you know, in various media outlets, the 25 most significant images of the year. And I just wanna take you through a few of these. Trigger warning, lots of them. One, this is how the year started off. This is with California burning down, but not up in the hills, neighborhoods where people live. I have a friend who helps our church right now. And he loaded his family into his car with about a minute's notice and drove away through that. And everything he owned burned to the ground. Tell him happy holidays is enough. When you lose everything you own, you are shaken to the core of what matters in life. I came across this image. This is a Ukrainian soldier. We can forget because it feels a long way away that there is still a war that millions of people have been disrupted, impacted, displaced. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the middle of this. This man at some point would sit down with his grandchildren and they will say, what happened to your face? And he will tell them about the war with Russia. Earlier this year, there was flooding in the hill country of Texas. A camp washed away out of nowhere.

Young women's lives lost. These are the little artifacts that were left after the disaster. Hard year. This is a photo of a church in Nigeria that was burned down where people were martyred for their faith. We're sitting here with our candles and their church is burned down and they had martyrs for following Jesus. They're hoping for a little bit more than a hot chocolate. What about what's happened this year? In Gaza, here is a dad with a child who was killed in a bombing. This year, you look at how many people were displaced just in the trauma of war. Here's what I'm trying, I'm not just showing you these for shock value. What is the evil in the heart that wants to kill our neighbors? Charlie Kirk was killed this year. This was a generational death. What is in the heart of people in this generation when the best solution to someone you disagree with is to murder them in front of a group of people? The human heart has problems that sentimentality cannot solve. We need something deeper. Then in Australia, where I am from, we had the Islamic terrorists kill Jewish people

celebrating Hanukkah. Imagine this, a man escapes Auschwitz only to die on the beach in Australia at the end of his life because of terrorism. What is it in the human heart that says what I wanna give my life for is murdering people when they celebrate their tradition? We have an evil that requires deeper healing and transformation than a sentimental view of Christmas. I was thinking about refugees, immigration, the borders, a lot of talk about that. I was just, sometimes these can be big issues, but on a human level, I saw this image of just this family being ripped apart. There will be folks separated from those they love trying to figure out what to do this Christmas. And then lastly, here's an image from Brown University. We have a friend, a friend of our church, who pastors a community right near there, and this whole week they have been holding their hands against the bleeding hearts of people at Brown University. Can we have a day when you go to college to get an education without training of gun threats and active shooters? Apparently not, not in 2025. My simple point is this, there is a deep brokenness in the human condition and pretending that it's fine isn't helping. Jeremiah 6 says this, "'They dressed the wound of my people

"'as though it were not serious.'" That's a rebuke to the leaders of Israel. Just saying to people, hey, you're all good, man. You do you. It says, peace, peace, they say when there is no peace. Here's what Christmas tells us, that what is wrong with humanity is so bad that God Himself had to come and fix it. But it also tells us that God loves us so much that He was willing to fix it. We need a Savior because there's something fundamentally wrong with the human heart that plays itself out culture-wide, resulting in death, murder, heartache, devastation, and brokenness, and a sentimental song about the weather will not fix it. Number two, we need a saviour because the human solutions are temporary and the crowds are fickle. Got a new Pope this year if you're a Catholic. I'm not Catholic by theological conviction, but I have friends who are Catholics. I'm a Protestant pastor, it's self-evident. But a lot of times, like a lot of traditions, a lot of hope goes into religious leaders. I was in Rome, actually it was kind of a wild time, went to the Vatican and met with a Pope. And I do wanna say, you think celebrity pastor syndrome in the evangelical church is a thing, the Pope has, they sell a Pope's cologne. There's levels. Some Popes have led in the spirit of Jesus Christ

and beautiful things have happened through the Catholic church. And some have led through the spirit of the Antichrist and horrible things have happened through the Catholic church. My simple point is this, this year, people put their hope in a Pope in many ways. Sometimes people put their hope not just in religious leaders, they put it in politicians. The Atlantic did an article, it was a really fascinating article, when many, many folks were deconstructing their faith, they asked the question, where does the zeal of the post-religious go? The answer was to politicians and to politics. You get rid of a messiah and you swap it for a human leader and you get rid of the kingdom of God and you get human legislation now. And here's a photo of the president and you know what he's got on his desk? Executive orders. So in office, working president, getting into it, bring and change. Few years from now, another president is gonna sit in that chair with a bunch of other executive orders, but for the most part will undo these ones or do their own version of these ones. I don't pretend to understand the complexities, the intricacies and the things that happen

behind the scenes in politics. The Bible commands us to pray for our politicians as the first thing, not the last thing. But I wanna tell you there was a lot of people whose hope was in politicians. If we just get fill in the blank in the White House, then we'll have the America we want. We got Trump in the White House and then this is, you remember this exchange? This was like one of the most bizarre international political exchanges. You've got a former comedian with a former reality TV show host solving a war in another part of the world. I'm not being facetious, that's factual. I think a lot of times people are kind of going, how can we lead through this? We've got a new mayor here in New York. Some people think this will be the worst thing that's ever happened to New York City and other people think it's gonna be the best thing that's happened in New York City. And having lived here for a couple of decades, it's just gonna be another thing in New York City. Because the truth is most New Yorkers are so selfish, they're just thinking about themselves and the mayor is a headline they bump into occasionally if that's it. And I wanna say a lot of times when you don't have the eternal kingdom

and you just got now and the world is so broken, you're like someone's gotta bring some change. The troops rally, the crowds gather, the masses rise, the protestors pick up their signs and we think we can do the kingdom of God now. Where did all the crowds go after the peace treaty with Israel and Hamas? Just disappeared. Crowds are fickle. Ask Jesus, Hosanna to crucify Him in a week. My simple, and then you've got billionaires, not anti-billionaire, I just wanna say this. Billionaires are, it's weird to be a billionaire, I think in the modern world, there's some very godly billionaires really who God's blessed to steward their resources. And then you get billionaires like this bloke who I don't personally know, but he has got 100 boys only, boys only, boys only kids born through surrogate mothers using the eggs of supermodels. And he did this because he wants to build a dynasty of sons. He has 100 born in the US right now, currently born, being raised by nannies to go back to China and to build a dynasty. an empire on earth. Now, before we just throw the billionaires away, what would you do if you had a billion dollars and you weren't a person of faith? Here's my simple point. So often without God, without a vision beyond this earth,

if it's all now and you need change, you will start putting your hope in human leaders. It will disappoint you ultimately. I'm not saying we can't agree with things. I'm not even saying we can't support things. Of course we can, but I'm just saying when your hope, when your vision of life is connected to a leader or a crowd or a cause, you have a fragile Messiah who will let you down. Look what Psalm 146 says. Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground and that day their plans come to nothing. Blessed are those whose help is in the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord, their God. He's the maker of heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them. He remains faithful forever. He upholds the cause of the oppressed, gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free. The Lord gives sight to the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down. The Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the foreigner, sustains the fatherless and the widow, but He frustrates the way of the wicked. Every cause you care about, God cares about it more. And if you look through history,

you will find an increase of the kingdom of God on earth, not through political systems or leaders. I'm not saying God can't use them, but I am saying it is the influence and trust in the person of Jesus that brings that into being. We're singing these songs tonight, beautiful soul-soaring carols and hymns of the Christian tradition, but they all, you can miss it in the grandeur of the themes, that they all have one thing in common. Do you know what it is? You gotta let Him in. It is a voluntary submission. The Christian faith does not advance by the sword. It advances by a surrendered heart. Here's what the leadership of Jesus has done in history. Jesus didn't just change individual hearts. He reshaped the moral architecture of the world. In a culture where power defined value, Jesus placed dignity in the image of God and extended it to those whose society ignored. He welcomed children when they were seen as disposable, insisting the kingdom belongs to such as these. He spoke publicly with women, defended them from shame, entrusted them as the first witnesses of the resurrection, treated them as moral agents rather than property. He elevated the poor, the sick, the outsider, and the enemy, teaching that greatness is found in service

rather than dominance. Over time, these teachings became the seabed for ideas we now take for granted, the inherent worth of every human life, the protection of the vulnerable, the conscience of the individual, and the conviction that no one is beyond dignity or mercy. In all honesty, the UN probably owes an apology to the church or some sort of reparations for stealing the ideas that come from the person of Jesus, severing them like He wasn't. There's at least a plagiarism claim we can make for the Charter of Human Rights. We're happy to lend it, but we do like to point to its source. Many of the core assumptions behind human rights, child protection, abolition movements, and the moral equality of women do not emerge from raw power or philosophy alone, but from the slow, world-altering impact of a Saviour who taught that love of God, love of neighbour, and love of enemy are the measure of all things. Human leaders, politics, human systems, charismatic figures are necessary for culture to exist, but they are not sufficient for the kingdom of God to exist. We've got to put our hope in the right things. We need a Saviour because human leaders are insufficient and the crowds are fickle. Number three, now, I've been talking

about cultural brokenness, brokenness in our world. Now, I just want to talk to your heart. We need a Saviour because our shame is too great to deal with on our own. There's a psychologist who came up with this theory called narrative identity theory, and his name's McAdams. I've been researching it because I was doing these sort of just informal interviews with everybody I would talk with, just sort of about like, hey, tell me about your inner life. When you think about yourself, what view of yourself do you have? It's like the bloke at the coffee shop's like, yeah, flat white, thanks, mate. Also, tell me about your interior life, and when you gaze upon yourself in the mirror of your mind, what sort of narrative themes come up for you? Very helpful. Thank you. But you know what I kept coming across? The fact almost everybody, including Christians, even people in our church, had a shame-based narrative. The story they were telling about themselves internally was a story that I'm not lovable, I'm not worth loving, I'm a great disappointment, definitely to others, probably to God, certainly to myself. I know that God loves me theoretically, but it hasn't quite lodged into the formation of a new identity. And he talks about a narrative identity theory. There's only really two stories human beings have for their hearts. The first one is what he calls contaminated narratives that says the decision I made, the thing that was done to me, the history I come from, or the choices I've made define me, and these things, I will never again have a story that is not tainted, broken, or infused with the trauma and tragedy of what has happened. Then he talks about redemptive narratives, and redemptive narratives are the choice for those

things to be a part of your story, maybe even a redemptive part of your story, but they're not the controlling element. So that when you think of yourself, you view yourself as someone worthy of rescue. What narrative's in your heart? Shame comes, you know the story, we'll get to guilt in a minute, but shame doesn't say I've done something wrong, it says there's something wrong with me. How is 2025 in terms of shame for you? What if the worst thing you did last year, this year, was put on a screen and turned into a meme and the entire world got to watch it, like this? Why did everybody just pile onto this? You know, partly I think because we were like, at least it's them and not me. How would you handle your words? She was getting five, six hundred vitriolic calls a day. Now, I want to note something about this image. Image one, happy, caught. Image two, hiding. A lot of times people think that the book of Genesis is just a story. Well, I want to tell you, that is not a social media story, that is a Genesis story. You hide in shame because you're terrified of being seen for who you are. And maybe this is one of those years where you've experienced shame of some kind, and you are. If we were to turn the light on you, if you were to feel like Jesus would talk, your response would be, you don't know who I am, you don't know what I've done. And we live in a society today that doesn't have the resources we need to deal with the shame we experience as people. I want to say to this woman, I know someone you need to talk to. You're in a shame spiral right now. I got someone for you. Have you ever been at church? Has anybody ever told you about Jesus? Because nobody does for shame what the person of Jesus does for shame. So here's the New York Times article on this. I think this was in the Times yesterday. And I want to note what it says, the ritual shaming of the woman at the Coldplay concert down the bottom. She was drowning in the vitriol of strangers. But Jesus never shamed people. Look at Jesus and the woman at the well. The woman at the well carried such a shameful identity, she could not even participate in the normal functions of society for a woman in her day. And she was a Samaritan. They were already the outcast, now she's the outcast of the outcast. She has to get water in the heat of the day. And when Jesus sees her, what does he say? All he says to her is, do you want living water? And she said, sir, I want it. And then Jesus very graciously says to her, get your husband. She's like, you know, I don't have a husband. And he's like, you don't need another husband. A man cannot fix your shame. Living water will fix

your shame. And you know what ends up happening? She runs back to her village and says this note, come meet a man who told me everything I ever did. But the telling of her story, same story, is not a contaminated story of divorce and failure. It's a story of redemption and hope. And that same woman goes from being outside of the cultural system to being the centre of it. She now leads, by the grace of God, a three-day revival in the Samaritan village. Nobody can do for shame what Jesus can do. What about the woman who falls at his feet? This woman is a prostitute, a sex worker of some kind. Jesus is at the house of the Pharisee. You know this, psychologists tell us, every one of us has an emotional field to step into the presence of someone. Every person, like, okay, ready? It's just called vibes. Everyone has a vibe, okay? And when you get into their vibe, you get nearer. Some people you get around and you're like, oh gosh. Other people you get around and you're like, I love being around them. If you don't know which one you are right now, but who's, anyway, ask the person next to you what your vibe is. All of us have a vibe. We have an emotional field. And I just want to say this, the number one emotional field that Christ had was mercy. Mercy. Sinners loved Jesus. Broken people loved Jesus. They wanted to get around him because he was the first person they'd met in their society who didn't shame them for who they were. He was called a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Can I say this to you? If you've dragged some shame in here tonight,

please don't carry it into 2025. You're not gonna be able to do a new you for a new, you know, new you, new year. You're not gonna be able to drink enough green juice to a high rocks and put a few more hours in at work and reinvent yourself, because it's still gonna be you. You need someone to remove your shame. Woman caught in adultery, Jesus hitting with Zacchaeus. What about spiritual failure? Maybe you're a follower of Jesus, and this year you've just, you've blown it. You've compromised sexually in ways you never thought possible. Maybe you've got a stronghold of bitterness or anger that you've, on the outside, you're super sweet, and on the inside, you're full of hatred. You're sitting there going, how do I get this out? You feel like you've failed as a Christian. What does Jesus do to Peter when he fails? Peter with his good intentions. No, if anyone denies you, I'll die for you two minutes later. Who the heck are you talking about? Jesus who? Jesus mercifully goes and finds him, brings him back, restores his calling. Our culture says the way to deal with shame is to pretend there's nothing wrong with you. But we all know that there actually is. What we need is someone who sees what's wrong with us,

loves us in spite of us, and has the power to transform us. Only Jesus. Hebrews 12, for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame. I love what Brendan Manning says. He says this, grace is not a second chance. It's the first real chance we've ever had. The culture will not give you a chance. Your love for what you do, what you accomplish, either your looks or your money or your quirky personality or whatever it is, Jesus loves you for you. So I just wanna say this Christmas, you need a Saviour because no one can get rid of the shame but Him. Psalm 34, five, those who look to Him, what's that word say? They're radiant. And their faces are never covered with shame. Contaminated narratives, shoving your face in your mistakes. Redemption narrative, lift your eyes to Christ our Saviour. Radiant, never covered in shame. We need a Saviour because the sentimental vision of Christmas is not gonna get the job done. We need a Saviour because human leaders and human systems are not gonna get the job done. We need a Saviour because we can't get rid of our own shame and there's someone who would love to do that. Number four, we need a Saviour because being cynical is not helping. Maybe you're here, I spent a lot of time,

not I do, I spent a lot of time sort of reading atheists, people who hate God, secular people, people from other religions. I just wanna understand where they're coming from. And I think I get the cynical secular mind. Sometimes people say, you seem quite joyful, like I am quite joyful, it's a fruit of the Spirit, it is not my natural disposition. Do you know what tall poppy syndrome is from Australia? Americans worship their heroes. Australians cut them down. The concept of a mate, people love it, I love it when you call me mate. Well, a mate was the person that you were chained to as a convict in the outback. So the idea that you think you're better than me when we all have criminal origins, Americans are like, we fought a war for freedom. Australians are like, we got sent to Australia because of your war for freedom when Georgia, the penal colony was all clogged up and there was nowhere else to send the convicts. So it's my simple point. Trying to give you a little background to my cynicism. It's deep. It's personal cynicism, it's cultural formation in cynicism. And then I've been in New York for a while. What a dreadful combination, tall poppy syndrome, personality syndrome, couple decades. It's in Manhattan.

Got to guard our hearts against it. Jesus says this in Luke 21, be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down. See, when you get rid of God, there's primarily two views. Christopher Hitchens, the atheist, said when you get rid of God, you get rid of this divine dictator, this controlling, you think surveillance is bad now, imagine having a God who can read your thoughts and is with you everywhere when you sin. He's like, how terrible. So when you get rid of God, you get rid of a divine dictator. But Camus said if you get rid of God, you realize you're a cosmic orphan, no one's coming for you and you don't matter. And so here's what you get when you get rid of God, you don't get autonomy, you get slavery to anything, or you get heartache and abandonment because you're nothing. And that kind of cynicism feels great at first until it weighs your heart down. It'll creep up on the most sophisticated person. You may be in New York 15 years climbing, and then all of a sudden you don't make partner. And then all of a sudden you realize, what have I been, what is wrong with me and why has this not worked? You get all the way through the auditions

and you get right to the end of it and you realize this was your whole vision and you didn't make it. It's not helping. Pretending there is no God is not making the world any better. Just reading some poetry this week, came across a poem called You Were Tired I Think by E.E. Cummings, a lot of Christmas cheer in it. It says this, you have played I think and broke the toys you were fondest of and are a little tired now, tired of things that break and just tired. So am I. You've played with everything, you've broken it all and you're tired. And I think we feel this. In the book of Isaiah, you've got these beautiful promises of the Messiah, Isaiah 7, 9, 11, they're scattered through the book. We did a series a couple advents ago on the light promises of these passages. But between Isaiah 7 and between Isaiah 9, there is almost like a cultural biopsy. And here's what that means. A biopsy is when you got something in you that's not good and they go in, they extract a bit, put it under a microscope and then they let you get a deep dive. You don't need the whole thing.

By looking at a bit of it, you can see it. And in Isaiah, you get a cultural biopsy of what happens when you get rid of God. And the prophet brings into the light under the microscope, here's what happens to the human heart when God is excluded and you become a cynic. Look at it. When someone tells you to consult medians and spiritists and whisper and mother, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? Consult God's instruction and the testimony of warning. If anyone does not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn. Note that phrase, when you look to the horizon for hope. There is nothing. There's more political fights, there's more genocide, there's more murder, there's more heartache, there's more billionaires having 100 kids through surrogate eggs with supermodels. That's what you're gonna get more of without God. Distressed and hungry, they will roam through lower Manhattan and Brooklyn when they are famished. They will become enraged and look upward. They will curse their king and their God. Then they will look towards the earth. Note the gaze. It's not to God for radiance, it's the gaze of the earth. And they will see only distress, darkness,

and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness. I wanna note this. 59% of teenage girls report feeling perpetually sad. 46% of Americans will meet the criteria for a diagnosable mental health condition sometime in their life. And half of these people will develop conditions by the age of 14. Nearly one in five American adults will have a diagnosable mental health condition in any given year. Listen, I don't think this is because of sin that we're melting down like this. I think this is what society does to people when you get rid of God and tell them they have to be their own gods. It is a crushing existential weight they cannot carry over time. And so what does it do? You get rid of God, you have no longer these divine reference points of hopes. Here's what it says. You start consulting mediums and spiritists. This is escapism. And what are the medium and. Spiritists do it says they mutter and whisper I'm constantly amazed at seeing really but put together New Yorkers Sitting down getting the tarot cards done Why?

Why are people so prone to conspiracy theories in our world today? I hope you're looking forward to Christmas with your families there Why do we love them? Here's why we love them. You'll know why Because we can't believe that a kid's watching videos of Charlie Kirk and says I'm gonna kill him and that's it We with the human heart can't handle that life can be that simple cause and effect When you get rid of God God leaks into everything and you take the role God used to play and project it in a thousand different points of brokenness And so we start whispering whisperings mutterings there's got to be more to life than this And then people start looking for any kind of spiritual help. I got a friend that went and did Like mind-altering drugs in Peru because he was so very successful a lot of money Had a three-hour dinner with him talking about just like what it was like trying to access another realm as a hardened atheist Why? Because the human heart knows That there's more to this story than you're an accident. You came from nothing. You're here for no reason You'll be dead soon and not being rude. No one's gonna care in 40 years But you're really special Happy holidays The reason it's severe is because we know we need more than this listen, here's a picture. Okay. This is by Norman Rockwell He painted this in 1957. I live I live down the street from this. So does Sam. We live right here this is our neighborhood and This is st. Thomas's Church 53rd and 5th and I want you to note those New Yorkers Now someone's not a modern version of this reference got a phone in their hand But look at them all where is their gaze? Head down look into the earth now what's above them? What does that sign say? Lift up thine eyes There is another world breaking into this one at Christmas Christ The Messiah has come to do something about the shame you feel the brokenness of our human systems Lift up your eyes But they can't

This is 70 years ago in New York is still up their heads down thinking they can fix it themselves you need a savior because cynicism isn't helping Number five last point We need to save you because of the weight and guilt of our sin see that the ultimate problem is not education or psychology or trauma The ultimate problem is sin in the human heart Whatever the culture of your heart is is the culture you will create through your life and the lens that you will make your decisions Through and So Christ comes when you you hear these great songs Not to fix the world as a whole at first but to fix the whole that is in your world He has come for your heart Look at what Isaiah 59 says your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God Romans 6 23 the wages of sin is death now is that's partly talking about Physical death, but it also means this sin will kill anything good in your life slowly Got a healthy marriage introduce sin. It'll kill it got a great friendship Introduce it. It'll kill it got a great boss sin will kill your relationship with your boss sin is is a thief It's a murdering force. It's an agent of death That's why when it says in Proverbs 14 12, there is a way that seems right to man But the end of that way is death. I honestly wish Everybody had the privilege of being a pastor at some point in their life Because there is such clarity on how sin destroys things You get people on the downside of sin the city gets them on the upside tick tocks the upside of sin But you sit with people when when it's done when sin has had its way with you And what you get left with is heartache despair guilt Separation shame brokenness Seems good at first

leads to death And Christ came as the Savior Ephesians 2 says this for by grace you have been saved through faith. This is not from yourself. It's the gift of God, not a result of work. This is the beauty of why Christ has come. Christ hasn't come to give you a chance to fix your life. He has come to save your life. He didn't come to make salvation possible. If you do your best, Jesus will do the rest. God helps those who help themselves. I just, crap from our founding fathers. Sorry, that's Benjamin Franklin. God helps those who help themselves. Not true. God helps those who cannot help themselves. It's not a gospel of self-improvement. This is a gospel of salvation that is a free gift. It's hard to take free gifts in the modern world, isn't it? Just to say, hang on, let me get the story straight. I screwed the whole thing up through my rebellion. Out of your love, you have saved me, taken away the penalty of my sin. You want to bring me into your family. Forgive me like it never happened and give me a glorious new future where I'm a co-heir and I rule and reign in your kingdom. What's the catch? And the catch is like, the catch is you have to take it as a free gift. So hard.

The default state of the heart, Martin Luther said, is not rebellion, but religion. It's justifying ourselves. It's thinking, now let me, thank you. Let me pay you back a bit. How many of you right now, let's just do a test of the heart, are a little bit anxious and are adjusting your plans for the next four days because someone brought you a present and you didn't buy them a present back? And the whole time you're like, I gotta get them something. There may be a kind human element of that, but I just want to say, grace is not fair. You can't earn it. We're all laboring, getting paid the same thing and that wage is mercy, not death. John 1.12 says, so to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. All you gotta do is believe this story is true and receive it in your heart. Now, I want to close with this little phrase here because he's not just a savior. It's not a system. It's not just an accounting term in heaven. We go, oh, I gotta get up a new contract with God. Okay, I'm guilty. You want one that says I'm free. Great, let me get on with my life.

Glad I've resolved this. I'm free of my life. Glad I've resolved that. Sort of like an insurance policy. Anything bad happens, family will get some money and I'll get a legacy and that'll be good. Well, I can live how I want. If I die, I'll get to heaven and be like, I think I filled out a policy on that and I think I'm good. No, no, no, no, no, very different. God didn't send a system. He sent his son. God with us. Here's four things it gives us. First of all, it gives us comfort. It says you do matter and life does have meaning and that we're not cosmic accidents on a planet with no purpose. We're of such value to God that he became a one of us. This afternoon, I stopped by to see Pastor Tim's little baby, baby Beau. Strong little man. We're just sitting there going, look at this little kid, man. You guys, mate, you 3D printed a human being. Like, great work. This is incredible. Looks like both of you. How does this even happen?

Then we're like, oh, hang on a sec. The vulnerability. And yet God thought we were worth, remember I preached a couple weeks ago on the descent of greatness. Here is God being so vulnerable. He's entering into the story so that he can empathize at a primal level with our condition and then save us from it. You get that comfort. Then you get the chance to change. Real transformation. You get a new heart. He takes out the heart of stone and puts in a heart of flesh. He gives us a new identity. One that is a gift and bestowed upon us as children of the king. And then he gives us the grace of forgiving us our sins and enabling us to forgive other people. Then he gives us a new vision. You know that the culture of your heart becomes the culture of what you create and you get a chance to work and create different things and build a different world. And lastly, you get joy and community and eternity. I love, I love the vision of what's possible. Can I just say this to you? If you want that, take it. Reach out in faith and say, what does this, this is free.

Take that by faith, say, I choose that story. I'm sick of this contaminated narrative. I'm leaving a contaminated narrative. 2025, year of contaminated narrative. 2026, redemptive narrative. I'm gonna live into this Christian story if this is true, I receive this and I want this. Now, I wanna be clear here. It's my job to make the case for why you need a saviour. I'm trying to do it, but I don't wanna make a false promise. Following Jesus is complex. There's still a lot of mysteries and challenges in life. Okay? But instead of thinking that God is the answer for all of our questions, you need to see Him as the source of all of our wonder. It is a fundamentally different approach to life. Look how Jeff Cook puts this. He says, Becoming a Christian has not answered life's mysteries for me. It answers some of them. It provides as good an explanation as any other explanation. But it's a state of trust because there's an element of mystery to it. That would be far too easy. Jesus' death and resurrection give shape to them so that the mysteries are no longer terrifying.

Now the mysteries are worth plunging into. They're worthy not only of my sustained reflections, but also of giving all of myself to, body, mind, and soul. And to be honest with you, isn't that what falling in love is like? God doesn't have a prenup with you. He is plunging into the mystery of love. So if you're sitting here and you're like, I want to believe this, but I need like some sort of divine contract. It's like, no, that's a formula. That's not God. God is a person. And there is a risk of being in a relationship with a person. But I've got good news for you that is better than any human candidate for marriage. Here's what it is. God has a beautiful track record of coming through over time for the human race. So you, again, it's a mystery, but it's one that's worth jumping and it's worth trusting. There's no better candidate to give your life to than Christ who gave his life for you. Now, I want to get back to this picture here. I showed you Lift Up Thine Eyes by Rockwell, but this is only half of it. See, the tragedy is if we go to the whole picture here, what they're missing out on.

See, I love this so much. It's the custodian who's putting up the sign. And I don't know why New York's too busy living their own lives. They missed the invitation. But look what happens when you lift up thine eyes. See what that is? Those are the doves ascending to heaven. And in the Bible, the dove is symbolic of the Holy Spirit. And in Genesis 1, it says that the Spirit of God is hovering over the chaos, ready to create order and meaning and beauty in life. I want to say that I genuinely believe that tonight, if you're sitting here in chaos, that God is hovering over your life. And if you would just lift up your eyes to the beauty of Jesus, your chaos can become order. You can get out of the gaze of the earth, and your face will never be covered in shame again. If I had a message for New York, here's what it would be. Dear New York, lift up thine eyes. Behold Him. Behold the one who loves you. Behold the one who came for you. Behold the one who lived for you, who died for you, who rose for you, whose Spirit will come to you. Behold the one who can bring peace in chaos, joy in despair, and hope will be on the horizon of your life if you simply submit to Him. Jesus came to save us from a sentimentality

that is of no use in the brokenness of the world. He came to save us from the disappointment of misplaced trust in human leaders. He came to save us from our sin and our shame. He came to save us from our cynicism and our sin and our guilt. The only question is, will you let Him save you? That's really about surrender, surrender. So I wanna read a prayer here of how to surrender to God. Maybe you don't know how to do this. Maybe like, I wanna do this. I wanna redemptive, not a contaminated narrative. How do I do it? So I'm gonna read through this prayer, and I'm gonna read it slowly. You just say this like in your heart to God. And sometimes it's helpful to have a little prayer. I've prayed with people giving their lives to Jesus. My favourite ones are when people swear when they're doing it. They're like, I don't freaking, you know, they're just getting it out with God, I love it. But sometimes it can be really intimidating if you're in a moment of surrender. It's like, I don't know how to say it. So let me just give you, this is not a script or a formula. These are just some promptings to help you open up your heart. So if you want a redemptive narrative,

if you wanna receive this free gift, if you wanna be born again, if you want a new life that gets better and better, where you never stop living, you can have it right now. So let me read this. As I'm reading this, you say this from your heart to God. Jesus, today I remember that you came into the world for me and you came into the world for me. Not to demand perfection, but to offer grace. Not to stand far away in accusation, but to draw near. to me in love. I confess that I've tried to run my life on my own. I have rebelled against your truth, your words and your law. I've looked for meaning, security and peace in places that couldn't hold them. I need forgiveness. I need direction. I need you. I believe that you were the Son of God. You came to earth, lived a perfect life, died on the cross for my sin and rose again to give me new life. Today I receive you as a gift. I turn from my old ways and I give you my life. My past, my present, my future are yours. Jesus, forgive me. Make me new. Teach me how to follow you. Fill me with your peace, your spirit and your love. Thank you for coming for me. Thank you for saving me. From this day forward I choose to trust you. Amen. If you said that and you meant that from your heart, this is the beginning of a journey of freedom, healing, the removal of guilt, shame and condemnation and joy in the family of God. And we'd love to walk with you as a church as you figure out how to live in that redemptive narrative, not that contaminated narrative. Guys, what a joy that we don't have to just sing songs about the weather or become hardened and cynical and pretend that everything's fine. What a joy that we can look people in the eye and say and mean it, Merry Christmas. Christ has come. Hope has come. Life has come. Love has come. Let earth receive her King.