Surprised by Love | Surprised by Christmas | Rick Atchley

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Merry Christmas, everyone. Preacher Rick here, greeting our online family, everyone in person in North Richland Hills or Keller, West Fort Worth, or Dallas, and I really mean it when I say I hope you have a very merry Christmas. I want to begin with a couple of asks. One, as you've heard on every campus, we're having candlelight services, and I hope you've let some friends know, and here's why. It is the easiest ask to church you will have all year. Everyone loves a candlelight service at Christmas, so please come, and if your friend comes, no matter where they are on the faith spectrum, they will leave having heard good news. Here's my second ask. It is a great privilege for me to get to hear from people across the country and around the world who tune in to our services and are blessed by them, and some of the people that reach out to me are not going to be home for Christmas because they serve in our armed forces and they're blessing the world wherever they are, and I want you to know that we see you and we appreciate you, and I ask Hills Church, could we show some love to our brothers and sisters in the military who are serving our country right now? We really do hope that you have a very merry Christmas, and we appreciate what you do. Well, our children are grown.

They have married, and they live in the area, and their in-laws live in the area, so at the holidays, we typically see all of our kids and grandkids at some point. Some of you are not in that situation, and you've learned to navigate by saying, okay, this year, everyone at our house at Thanksgiving, and next year, everyone at our house at Christmas. I have a good friend who preaches in Oklahoma. He's got two grown kids who've married. They have two grandkids from each child, four total, and they were all together for Thanksgiving. It's the day after Thanksgiving. The son and son-in-law want to go play golf. The daughter and daughter-in-law want to go shop with their mother, and so my friend the preacher says, I'll watch the grandkids, four of them, ages four, three, two, and one. He had no idea what he was saying. I've got four little grandbabies. When we just had one, Jamie and I could do double coverage. When we had two, it was single coverage. When it was three, it was zone defense. When you get to four, you're in prevent defense, okay? You're just trying to keep them in front of you because if they get behind you, the house is going to burn down. So the boys just took off. They didn't wait, but the girls thought, no, we better take the baby with us, and they leave him with the four-year-old, the three-year-old, and the two-year-old. He said they were gone ten minutes, and I knew I was in over my skis, and this was not going well.

So he thought of a way to survive, and he took a movie on the TV. Do not judge him. I've been a desperate grandpa. I know that you have to do what you have to do. And it was a movie, an old Pixar movie called Bug's Life, a story about ants and grasshoppers learning to get along, and these children had never seen it. They are transfixed. They are on that couch with their snacks, watching this movie, being so well-behaved. Well, the women come back, and there's this four-year-old and the three-year-old and two-year-old, and they're mining, and they're quiet, and they're still on the couch, and Grandma is shocked, and she says, what has gotten into you? The three-year-old boy held up his sippy cup, and he was going to say Bug's Life, but in three-year-old enunciation, it came out Bud Light. What has gotten into you? This was a question the first... Christians were asked a lot. That's why Peter said, always be prepared to give an answer for the hope you have, because people were always asking them, what's gotten into you? And they had an answer, and

their answer is summed up in the words of Paul in Romans chapter 5. God has poured out His love to fill our hearts. He gave us His love through the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to us. It is an answer people of that day would not have expected, because at Christmas, the world was surprised by love. And we're talking about the ways that Christmas has surprised the world, and this was the biggest of all. Yes, creation testifies to Heaven's power and Heaven's wisdom, but it was the incarnation that revealed Heaven's love. And because we're 2,000 years on the other side of Bethlehem, it is hard for us to appreciate how revolutionary that idea was. The church was birthed into a world that did not expect their gods to have personal feelings of affection toward them. Humans were viewed as subjects

of the gods, and they existed only to serve the whims of the And the goal of all ancient religions in the 1st century was simply to keep the gods appeased with rituals and with sacrifices. The goal of religion was not to get to know your god or to fall in love with your god. The goal of your religion was not to find deep inner peace or The goal of your religion was not character transformation so that you could become a better person. The goal of your religion was just to stay on the good side of the gods so they would not make your life even more difficult. Let me put it this way. We have never discovered a single ancient artifact inscribed with the words, Zeus is love. No one thought that way about the gods. And so I'm about to make a surprising statement. And the surprising statement I'm about to make is this.

God is love is the most surprising statement ever made. At Bethlehem, a view of God was that no one saw coming. Again, 2,000 years later, we say of course God is love. We take it for granted. In that world, they took it as God or gods were aloof and ticked off and needing constantly to be placated. Christmas says God vacated heaven in order to pursue us. And the way that Christians would communicate this idea, they had what went down in Scripture as this most stunning thought. You're used to it. When people in the first century heard this, they were incredulous. No one had ever talked about heaven like this. You ready? God loved the world so much that He gave His one and only Son so that whoever believes in Him may not be lost but have eternal life. That was a completely shocking

new way to talk about God. Now, love must be shown to be known. And so the great surprise at Bethlehem is that God showed up in person. Because He loves people so much. See, Jesus did not come to change God's mind about us. He came to change our minds about God. And His birth gave birth to this stunningly surprising idea that God is love. Now, you and I have heard those words so many times that we don't pause. We accept them intellectually. But I have been a pastor long enough to know most people struggle to accept that idea internally. Because all the things that we go through in life and because of all the bad experiences we have with love, it is really hard for us to let God's love go from our heads to our hearts. And one reason is because we ask, does any commitment go that far? It's hard to grasp what perfect love would do because all our experiences of love are imperfect. You see, human love, and by that I mean love that is not empowered by the Holy Spirit, love that comes only from you and from your flesh and from your ability to will it. Human love is always sourced in something that you deem lovely in someone or something else.

It might be a painting or it might be a piece of music or it might be another person, but you deem it or you deem them to be lovely and you move in affection because of that. Now this is why human love, in a sense, is always conditional. Because what happens when that thing or that person is no longer viewed quite so lovely? And so the scandal of Christmas is the inclusion of scandal. And that is that Christmas introduced the idea that things that are not lovely are worth loving. No Jew would have thought foreign stargazers deserve love. And shepherds, they couldn't even testify in court. No one thought they were lovely. And you see all the scandal in Jesus' genealogy. Families did not get together at reunions and talk about that kind of thing. So many characters in the Christian narratives were not considered lovely. And Christmas birthed this idea that God's love could go anywhere to anybody. Now one way the Gospels try to get this across is the way Jesus deals with women. Because in that world, in Jewish and Gentile culture, women were less than. And Jesus is always moving to show dignity to women and not just lovely women. In John 4, he shows dignity to a woman who's been divorced five times and currently is living with a dude. In Luke 7, he shows dignity to a woman who came off the street. And I don't mean that's where she lived. I mean that's where she worked. And in John 8, he gives dignity to a woman who's caught committing adultery. Because God's love can go to anybody, anywhere. And the surprise of the Gospel is God's love isn't increased and it isn't decreased by how lovely you are in the moment. Listen to Romans 5. God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Okay, get this. Nothing about your life has surprised God. Here's why that's important. You and I have given love to someone or something and then we learn something. And all of a sudden, they're not so lovely and we start to draw back our love. That's never happened to God. Not one time has God said, I had no clue. I had no idea you were like that. This changes everything. God knew everything about you and he knew you were a sinner when he sent Jesus. Listen to Paul again. God's mercy is great and he loved us very much. Though we were spiritually dead because of the things we did against God.

He gave us new life with Christ. You've been saved by God's grace. You were dead. You were not lovely. Titus 3, when the kindness and love of God, our Savior, appeared. That means Christmas. That means when Jesus came. He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. And so the good news acknowledges we're all equally sinful, but insists we are all equally loved. This was such a shocking idea to the ancient world. No one is too to God. No one is too foreign. No one is too broken. No one is too fallen. No one is too sinful. No one is too rebellious. Some years ago, I heard a preacher tell a story about a pastor in St. Louis that went to visit a woman. Now, this was during the time when we were just hearing about this disease called AIDS. And this woman was dying of AIDS. She had contracted it from a very promiscuous lifestyle. And he went to see her to try to bring her some comfort, and she wouldn't have it. Said, no, pastor, there's no way God could love me. I have been too sinful and wicked. He noticed on her dresser a picture of a small girl. And he asked, who is that? And she said, that is my daughter. She is the only good thing my life has ever produced. And the Holy Spirit gave him words right at that moment. And he said, do you know that God has a picture of you on his dresser? You did not give God a reason to love you. And you can't give God a reason to stop loving you. And that's so hard to get from head to heart, because we've seen love stop so often. That's another big question we wrestle with. Can any affection last that long? We've all experienced pledged love that failed. I'm talking to someone right now who is not speaking to a parent or to a child. You will spin Christmas apart.

Someone listening to me right now stood in an altar next to someone who said, I will love you until death do us part. But they didn't. And it's hard to believe that love never fails when we have so many memories of times when it did. So here's what happens. We start drifting from God will love me no matter what to God will love me when. God will love me when I get my act together. God will love me when I figure it out. God will love me when I do enough to make up for what I've done. And so, at Bethlehem, God entered time to tell us there is no time when He has not or will not love us. Scripture says in 1 Corinthians that love never fails. It's not talking about human love. It's talking about the kind of love God inspires. God is love. And His love never fails. This is why the psalmist says 36 times, His love endures forever. God did not stay up in heaven and look down at our broken world and say, fix it. But He came down to earth and He said, I will forgive it. Now, we are wrapping up one more year of Dallas Cowboy ineptitude. By now, we're used to it. If you're under 40, you can't remember the Cowboys ever really mattering. But older people can. Back in the early 90s, the Cowboys were the best team in the world. They won three Super Bowls. They won two in a row. Both times, they beat the Buffalo Bills. Now, here's what's an amazing thing about the football world that most people forget. The Buffalo Bills went to the Super Bowl four years in a row. Any idea how hard that is? But they lost all of them.

Their first game was their best chance to win. It's 1990. They're playing the New York Giants. There's eight seconds left. They're lined up to kick a field goal that will win the game. Their kicker is Scott Norwood. He's very good. It's 47 yards. He makes this kick over 90% of the time. Victory is right there in hand. Buffalo are going to be Super Bowl champs. And Scott missed. It's hard to imagine how deflating a team in a city became in just a second. The team gets on the plane to fly back to Buffalo. There are 30,000 people waiting for them. Scott is terrified. He gets off the plane. He stands behind the team so that no one can see him. And then it begins, a chant from the crowd. Gets louder and louder. We want Scott. We want Scott. And he gave him the mic, and he stood in front of those people, and he said, I have never in my life known love like I know it right now. And God says, you can't miss enough kicks to get me to stop loving you. His affection lasts because it's not based on our lovability. It's based on His grace ability. Listen to my favorite part of maybe my favorite chapter

in the whole Bible. Can anything ever separate us from Christ's love? Does it mean He no longer loves us if we're in trouble or calamity or are persecuted or hungry or destitute or in danger or threatened with death? No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ who loved us. And Paul is getting so pumped up, he just starts piling on the ways to try to explain this. He says, I'm convinced nothing can ever separate us from Christ's love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today or worries about tomorrow. Not even the powers of hell can separate us from God's love. He can't stop himself. He just keeps going. No power in the sky above or earth below. Indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus, our Lord. This is the reality that Christmas came to announce and it's so hard for us. This is why Jude had this little line in his letter. Keep yourselves in God's love. He doesn't mean you better behave or God will stop loving you. What he means is keep yourself in this reality that God loves you. We've experienced so much polluted love in our life that it's hard for us to stay there.

And Jude says, stay there, stay in the reality that you are loved by a God who will never stop loving you. I have found people for the most part can believe in miracles easier than they can believe in this kind of love. Because if it exists, it would cost more than anything we've ever known. And maybe that's where we struggle the most. Is any person worth that much? I do a series every Christmas about Christmas because it allows me such an opportunity to remind us of good news. Christmas matters because the only explanation for the birth of Jesus is that people must matter to God. All people. And that's why just as surprising as the announcement God is love is its corollary. The implication, if God is love is this, then if God loves all people, every single person is worth as much as every single person. You say, duh, everybody knows that. No, no one knew that. We say we hold this truth to be self-evident. All men are created equal. No one in the ancient world believed that. Are you kidding me? It's not self-evident. Look in a room. There are slaves and there are wealthy and there are people with handicaps and disabilities

and there are people from other countries and there are barbarians. And what do you mean it is stupid to think just looking at a room full of people that everybody is equal? This idea that every single person has dignity and rights is a uniquely Christian contribution to society. The world had never thought this until Jesus came. Tom Holland wrote a ground-shaking book called Dominion. He's not a believer, although when I listen to him on podcast, he keeps getting closer and closer. He writes that every human being possessed an equal dignity was not remotely a self-evident truth. A Roman would have laughed at it. The origins of this principle as the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche has contemptuously pointed out, lay not in the French Revolution, not in the Declaration of Independence, not in the Enlightenment, but in the Bible. And Luke Ferry, who was a secular humanist philosopher wrote an acclaimed book. same book called A Brief History of Thought. He says, Christianity was to introduce the notion that humanity was fundamentally identical, that men were equal in dignity, an unprecedented idea at the time, and one to which our world owes its entire democratic inheritance. This idea of human equality may seem self-evident, but it was literally unheard of at the time, and it turned an entire world order upside down. You see, this view that I'm espousing today is completely inconsistent with a Darwinian

view of people. If we're just accidents and just cosmic mistakes, then the strong need to get rid of the weak in order to survive, to be consistent with an evolutionary viewpoint, the idea that all people have equal worth is foolishness. But that's not what we think. Christian or non-Christian, we've all bought into this idea, people are all valuable. And it came from Bethlehem. It changed the idea of what determines a person's value. So I was at a convenience store the other day, and the clerk gave me this dollar bill, and it's hard for you to see maybe, it's got some writing on it, the face of Washington's deface, it's got a tear here at the top. I went to the bank and I got a brand new dollar bill, clean and pristine. Question, which one of these dollar bills is worth more? Which one has more value? Answer, they both have equal value, because behind them both is a higher authority, the United States government that declares it to be so. What Christmas introduced to the world is this totally shocking idea that behind every single human being there stands the authority of the God who said, he and she is made in my image. This surprising idea led Jesus to do really surprising things, like go to parties with a bunch of tax collectors, because they matter to God. Or say things like, love your enemies. Now think about how foolish that is, unless every single person matters to God. And so, if someone cusses you, give them a blessing. And if someone is unkind to you, you pray for them. Christmas gave birth to the utterly surprising idea, everybody is somebody to God. From the womb to the tomb, it has been followers of Jesus that have championed the idea all lives matter. The child that's still in the womb, and the child who's down on the border, and the young man who has addictions, and the old woman who has dementia, and the person that doesn't

look like you, or talk like you, or vote like you. Everybody matters to God. I know a pastor who's done a lot of work in Haiti, and he told a story that makes this point. They have a practice in Haiti of a family with no means selling a child to a family with some means. It's basically child slavery. And that child is called a restavik. They have no rights. They're assigned harsh labor with just enough food to stay alive. There's often physical and sexual abuse involved. There's a 14-year-old restavik girl who's pregnant. Most likely sexual assault. She's about to give birth. She goes to an outhouse. I don't know how it could have happened, but somehow this poor girl had the baby slip through her hands. And the baby fell down this shaft 30 feet onto a pile of dung. She left, and a boy saw her leave. And he went and got some UN workers. And they recognized the baby was still alive. The only way they could rescue that baby was for someone to go down that shaft of filth. And someone did, and picked that little girl, covered in dung, and brought her to safety. And that man who rescued her named her Christella. And they took her to an orphanage nearby run by an American couple who were Christians who took in restaviks. And that couple had a son in America named Mark Stewart. At the time, he was lead singer of a popular Christian band called Audio Adrenaline. And he came to visit his parents. And he saw that little girl.

And his wife agreed that she needed to be in their home. They adopted her and brought her to the States, and have given her a life that no one in her culture said she deserved. And you need to know Christella means Christ was here. Why does an unwanted, dung-covered baby matter? Because Christ was here. And I don't know what you think about God, but I know what God thinks about you. He proclaimed it in a manger. He proved it on a cross. The God of Christmas loves you to death. And He came in person to say, you are worth it. But here's what I know. It takes divine help to get that truth from my head to my heart, because I have experienced so much polluted love in my life. It takes the power of the Spirit. This is why Paul prayed this prayer in Ephesians 3. I pray that Christ will live in your hearts by faith, and that your life will be strong in love, and be built on love. And I pray that you and all God's holy people will have the power to understand the greatness of Christ's love, how wide and how long and how high and how deep that love is. Christ's love is greater than anyone could ever know. But I pray you'll be able to know that love. Then, that's an important word, then, when it goes from head to heart, then you can be filled with the fullness of God. The most vivid personal illustration of this truth I've ever seen was my mother-in-law. Her name was Bobbie Lida, and you see her there just before she died with her daughter, Jamie, her favorite child. And Bobbie is probably the most selfless person I've ever known. She was an awesome mother-in-law, but she was raised in a religious tradition where God is aloof, and you obey rules so he won't be mad at you.

What it produced was a loyal faith, but not a joyful faith. I never heard my mother-in-law talk about her faith. I never heard her pray. But it's late in her life, she's a widow now, and she decided to attend a ladies' Bible class at her church. And the teacher had a daughter suffering a lot, so they're studying the book of Zob and talking about suffering in the world. And one day the teacher just quoted from Isaiah, where God said, can a mother forget the baby at her breast? See, I've engraved you on the palms of my hand. And no mother loved her kids or grandkids more fiercely than Bobbie. And the Holy Spirit took that moment, and something changed. And if you knew her, you'd start asking, what got into you? It was joy. She began to talk about her faith. She began to want to have family devotionals. Before you could go to bed at night, she would want to pray over you. My last night in her home, she prayed for me before I went to bed. And it was just a short time later, and Jamie is with her mother. One of her last memories. And essentially, she asked, Mom, what's gotten into you? And Bobbie's sitting in a chair with a blanket over her. And she said, Jamie, I always knew that God loved the world, but I never believed that He loved me. And she loved to talk with her hands, and she pulled her hands out from that blanket and said, but He does. And you know how you can cry? laugh at the same time. She started laughing and crying. But he does, he really does love me. She died shortly after. She experienced before she did the fullness of God. What about you? Have you unwrapped your surprise from God?

There is a love out there with your name on it. Could you give yourself the best gift you could get this Christmas and let God's love go from your head to your heart? You're going to need some help. And so if the prayer in Ephesians 3 is too long, just remember this one. May the Lord lead your hearts into God's love. Would you bow your heads every campus and online? Let's just pray that prayer. Take a moment and just say, Lord, would you lead my heart into your love? And so, God, we're a community of faith and almost everyone listening to my prayer believes the Christmas story. We believe that Jesus came. We believe that Jesus is the Son of God. We believe he had a sinless life and he died and he rose again. We believe all this, but we struggle to believe that you don't just love us corporately, you love each one of us personally. We've experienced so much defiled love in our lives, God. It's hard to let the teaching about perfect love live in our hearts. Holy Spirit, help us. Holy Spirit, lead us, lead our hearts into God's love. And Jesus, thank you for coming and for sharing such a surprising truth. Come quickly. We pray in your name. Amen.