Waiting for Christmas | Are You Using the Blessings God Has Given You?

Pastor Greg Laurie recommends a great film about the 40th President of the United States. We have a movie that's going to tell you the story of this man who changed the world. Ronald Reagan was a man who believed in Jesus Christ. You're going to be inspired by it in this brand-new film starring Dennis Quaid. It's called Reagan, and it's our gift to you for your gift of any size.

Available on DVD and digital download at harvest.org. The promises of God are a lot like gift cards, but we have unused gift cards. Talk about leaving money on the table. Every gift card we have is money waiting to be spent. Pastor Greg Laurie says there's an important lesson here. There are billions of dollars of unused gift cards out there, but it's just like the promises of God unclaimed, uncashed, unutilized.

God has made promises to you so claim them. Every once in a while, we hear a story of an elderly person who lived like a pauper right up until they passed away. And then shortly thereafter, it's discovered they had millions of dollars stuffed in an old mattress.

Everybody has the same question. Why didn't they put that money to use? Well, today on A New Beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie asks the same question of the blessings God has given us. Are we saving them for a rainy day?

We'll get some good encouragement to put those blessings to use. Grab your Bible and turn to Luke chapter two and the title of my message is Waiting for Christmas. Well, it's only hours away now. Now let me take a quick poll. How many of you have finished your Christmas shopping?

Nothing left to raise your hand up. All the packages wrapped. Good.

Good. You know, sometimes friends and especially family members will tell us what they want. I always want to get a person what they want for Christmas, not something I think they want. Now my grandkids, they send me links to things to get for them. And we had all of them over the other night.

Four girls, one boy. And so we had a little pre-Christmas event at our house and we gave them everything they asked for. And then some were saying, can we get the receipt? We want to exchange it. Wait.

You sent us the link. Now I'm not going to say anything about girls changing their minds. But you know, it does happen occasionally.

Right. But you know, sometimes you can drop a hint and the person won't get it. I heard about a wife who said to her husband, honey, last night I had a dream. And in my dream I received a diamond necklace for Christmas.

What do you think the meaning of that dream is? He said, okay, I see what's happening here. You'll find out on Christmas Eve. She was so excited. Christmas Eve came. She opened up the little box, a very nicely wrapped box under the tree.

And it was a book from her husband titled The Meaning of Dreams. Okay. He missed it, unfortunately. Then there's the big letdown. I hate it when we have to pretend to like something we don't like. Right. So we have to effectively lie at Christmas.

Oh, amazing. Really. And pretend or pretend we're seeing it for the first time when we knew you got it for us all along.

Right. So there's all these things happening at Christmas. And I think sometimes we put too much focus on the opening of the present. I find the in-between moments are the greatest moments of Christmas. You know, just sitting around talking, laughing, telling stories.

Of course, reflecting on the greatest of all stories. Now I think if you can't wait for Christmas, if you can't wait for Christmas morning, you're probably a kid. And if you can't wait for Christmas to be over with, then you're probably an adult.

So I want to talk to you in this message about two people who were waiting for Christmas. Some of us are waiting for family members to show up. Some of us are hoping certain family members don't show up. By the way, every family has them. That weird person that everyone hopes doesn't show up. And I have to break this to you.

Some of you are that weird person. So there's a lot of waiting, a lot of anticipation. I'm going to look at two people who are waiting and what Christmas meant to them. I think the problem with Christmas is, well, you know, it can't live up to the hype. Christmas cannot live up to its promises, if you will. But Christmas really is a promise of something greater. It's not just a promise of an event.

It's a promise of Christ Himself. And ever since I've been a little boy, I believed in that promise of Christmas. I didn't have a lot of great Christmases growing up.

I've tilted this story before. But I was a little boy. And I got up and I found my mother passed out from a night of drinking. There was our artificial Christmas tree with a little color wheel slowly turning still on this little artificial tree.

The room smelled of tobacco and drink from the partying of the night before. And as a little kid, I just looked at this scene and I thought to myself in my little kid mind, it's got to get better than this. And it did.

It did for me for sure. But because I believed that there was something in Christmas that was special. And after time passed, I realized it wasn't merriment I was longing for. It was the Messiah. It wasn't presence under a tree that were going to fill that hole in my life.

But it was God's presence in my life. And that's really why Jesus came. Jesus was born so we could be born again.

C.S. Lewis put it so succinctly when he said, quote, the Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God, end quote. Jesus left his home so we could have a heavenly home. Jesus left his home in heaven to make a home in our hearts. And you know the church is a home too because we're a family, albeit a dysfunctional one. And I know people say, well, you know, I don't like to go to churches, hypocrites.

Hey, there's always room for one more. No, we're not perfect people. We're imperfect people serving a perfect God. But there's something special that happens when we gather together for worship. Even when we were singing those Christmas carols together, I was standing out there worshiping with you. And I just thought this is so unique because God inhabits the praises of his people.

You're not going to find anything like this anywhere else. I actually read a study that was done on the physical and emotional benefits of going to church. This study revealed that people who go to church have a mortality rate that goes down to 20 to 30%. In other words, they live longer lives. They live healthier lives. And if you attend church regularly, I might add, you're more optimistic in life. You have lower rates of depression and you're far less likely to divorce. You have more self-control and a greater purpose in life. Interestingly, they compared this to people that go to other things like a country club or belong to something else.

And the benefits of that are not anywhere close to being in the church. It's about home. It's about coming home. And I want to talk to you now about two people that were waiting for Christmas in the Bible. You might say they were waiting for Christ. And no, it's not Joseph and Mary. It's two people that are not talked about enough in the Christmas season. And those two people are Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

I want to do an in-depth study on, no, I really don't. No, these two people you may have never heard of before, but they're very much a part of the Christmas story. Their names are Simeon and Anna. They don't appear in any nativity scenes, but they were there. They were waiting for Christmas as well. In fact, they preceded the wise men. I hate to mess with your nativity scenes that you have, but the wise men did not come for probably two years later visiting the young boy Jesus in his house, not the newborn Jesus in the stable.

But eight days after Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph took him to the temple to be circumcised. And so these two characters enter the story at that point. So let's kind of pull the camera back, get the big picture, establish a timeline, and then we'll see where Simeon and Anna enter our story. Pastor Greg Laurie will have the second half of his message in just a moment.

Well, let's continue with Pastor Greg's message now, a study called Waiting for Christmas. And it was also sort of an unknown place out in the middle of nowhere. So Mary was effectively a nobody living in the middle of nowhere where the most known event in human history was about to unfold. Gabriel comes. Now when an angel shows up, it's a big deal.

When Gabriel or Michael show up, it's a super big deal. But this is a special message to announce to this young woman probably around 14 years old that she was going to fulfill Bible prophecy. She was going to be the very mother of the Messiah. But of course Joseph wasn't buying the story. They were espoused, engaged, and he thought that Mary had been unfaithful to him.

He was going to put her away privately. But then an angel was sent to Joseph to reveal to him that this was all done by God. But now we have Caesar Augustus entering the narrative because the prophecy said the Messiah would not be born in Nazareth but in Bethlehem. You Bethlehem, though you be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth one whose origins have been from everlasting, Michael 5 2 says.

And so God needed to move Joseph and Mary from A to B. So Caesar Augustus gives a decree. Caesar Augustus is the first of the Caesars to declare himself a deity. The word Augustus means of the gods. Funny little thing about Caesar Augustus. His history tells us that actually he was a little bit on the short side about five feet seven inches. I'm sorry.

I'm not criticizing you if you're five seven. But he was probably that high. So it gives new meaning to the words little Caesar. Right. And you've heard of his pizza. Little Caesar. Pizza pizza.

Right. So so little Caesar a relatively small man who was big in his own mind gives a decree that all the world should be taxed. Not realizing he was merely a pawn in the hand of God almighty to bring about the fulfillment of Bible prophecy.

So Mary and Joseph make the difficult journey as Mary is late in her pregnancy to Bethlehem. Now the Savior is born. Now the announcement must be made. Who will the announcement be made to? Seems to me you would want to make the announcement to Caesar in Rome. The man who thought he was of the gods. And say to him there is born in this city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. But the announcement was not given to Caesar. Or the religious leaders perhaps.

No. The announcement was given to shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night. Now we tend to romanticize the shepherds and we don't understand their role in society. Back in this day the lowest person on the social ladder was the shepherd.

It was so bad that the testimony of a shepherd was not even allowed in a court of law. So if we were to update it instead of saying shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night it would be used car salesmen watching over the car lot at night. Or telemarketers calling people late at night. I am not criticizing telemarketers or used car salesmen.

Actually I am. But you know these are not professions we hold in high esteem. And the same is true of a shepherd. But God came to the lowest of the low to give the greatest of all messages. There is born unto you this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And that is who the message was given to. Now Jesus is eight days old and so as the custom is Mary and Joseph go to the temple to have him circumcised.

And they meet the two people who are waiting for Christmas. Starting with Simeon. Simeon was a godly man who was eagerly waiting for the arrival of the Messiah. God had revealed to Simeon that he would not die until he personally laid his eyes on the Messiah.

So he's living this godly life. And this was not a godly time. Roman effectively bludgeoned the world into submission. They had the most powerful military of all time up to that point. They ruled a good part of the world. They had established a Roman road system.

A common language that people now spoke. And you better submit to the power of Rome or you will die. They established something called Pax Romana.

A forced peace on the people. And they conquered the Jewish people living in Judea. Now sometimes as we look at the conflict in the Middle East today we hear it described as Palestine. Palestinian or Palestine is not a biblical word. God called it Judea. When the Romans conquered it they changed the name to Palestine which is derivative from the root word of Philistine. So they actually as an insult to the Jewish people took their name away Judea and made it Palestine or like under the rule of the Philistines.

So that's where that word came from by the way. So now the Romans have conquered them. The people are living in a time of conflict. A time of corruption. It was not a great time to be alive.

It was a dark bleak sad tragic time. And it's in this place that the message was given of the arrival of the Messiah. It was all in God's timetable. I love the way Galatians 4 4 sums it up. When the time was just right God sent forth His Son born of a woman made under the law to redeem those that are under the law that they might receive the adoption of sons whereby we cry Abba Father.

So here's old Simeon. He's just waiting. Waiting for it to happen. Hanging on to the promise of God. The last book of the Old Testament Malachi gave these final words and the words were simply this. The son of righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. But it had been 400 years since God had spoken. 400 years since there had been a single Hebrew prophet speaking for God. 400 years since there had been an angelic appearance. 400 years since there had been a miracle. But old Simeon believed God's promise to him that he would personally see the Messiah. You know I think sometimes we wonder why God doesn't speak to us more.

Maybe it's because we always have our headphones on or we're always looking at our phones or we're watching the TV or preoccupied with other things. I think you need to unplug electronically and plug in spiritually. You might be amazed by how much God will speak to you starting with opening this book. The Bible. Open it up and say Lord speak to me today and he will. He'll make the scriptures come alive in your life. I think sometimes just getting outside too.

You know take a walk by the ocean or by a lake or in the forest. Somewhere in God's creation say Lord I need to listen to you because God has things that he wants to say to each and every one of us. I don't know if you read this headline the other day. It really intrigued me. The headline was scientists claim they had a 20-minute conversation with a whale. Did you see this?

This is surreal. So this article says that some scientists broadcasted greeting through underwater speakers and a whale approached and responded with its own greeting. So the whale adjusted to the frequency they were communicating on and this lasted for 20 minutes. Scientists have a conversation with a whale for 20 minutes. I read the article.

It's not answering my real question which is what did you talk about? I want to know the thoughts of a whale. I'm very interested. How did that conversation go? Scientists said hello whale we are humanity and it's good to finally speak with you. What do you have to say to us whale? The whale might respond like yo what's up with all that harpooning in the 18th century. You know that did not go over well in the whale community. And by the way we don't like it when you refer to our weight as blubber.

We call that fat shaming okay. By the way did you know we could just eat you if we wanted to? We did eat a dude named Jonah once and we didn't like the way he tasted and we spit him out.

Maybe some wasabi and soy sauce would have helped. We don't know. But what would they even talk about?

That's not even mentioned. Well I'd like to have a conversation with a whale. But even better I'd like to have a conversation with the God who created the whale. And he wants to speak to each and every one of us. Jesus said my sheep hear my voice.

So here's old Simeon. He's close to God. He's waiting on God. He believes God is going to keep his promise. And by the way the promises of God are true and trustworthy. 2 Peter 1 says he's given us great and precious promises. 2 Corinthians 1 says all of God's promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding yes. You know someone pointed out there are 8,810 promises in the Bible to the believer. Now I've not counted them.

I cannot say that figure is certainly true. That's a lot of promises. Over 8,000 promises. The promises of God are a lot like gift cards. Do any of you receive gift cards or have you given gift cards for Christmas? I can't use all the gift cards people have given me. I have quite a few gift cards for In-N-Up Burger and Krispy Kreme Donuts. I think it's because I reference those two places in my sermons. If I were to cash in all those gift cards I would be the guy you call blubber for sure.

Right? But we have unused gift cards. I read recently that there are billions of dollars, 45 billion dollars of unused gift cards out there.

I think the whole industry probably builds their business model on that premise. But it's just like the promises of God unclaimed, uncashed, unutilized. God has made promises to use to claim them.

You say well what are they? Well how about this one? God has promised to supply all of your needs according to his riches and glory in Christ Jesus.

That's a good promise. How about this one? Romans 8 28. We know that all things work together for good to those that love God and are called according to his purpose.

How about this one? Jesus says I'll never leave you or forsake you. And then in Matthew 28 he says lo I am with you even to the end of the age. Another translation combines those two verses to say this. Jesus speaking I will never leave you never and I will not loosen my grip on your life and be sure of this I am with you every day to the completion of the age.

I like that. The promises of God. So Simeon and Anna patiently waited for Jesus. Pastor Greg Laurie with a little sampling of the thousands of promises God has made to us. Today on A New Beginning we're focusing on a few key individuals who had a part in the biblical story of the coming of the Christ child.

And there's more to come in this study. You know one of the most important promises God makes to us is that if we confess our sins to him he's faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Have you ever come to the Lord to wipe the slate clean? Pastor Greg tell us what someone needs to do to make that change today. Here's what the Bible says whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved so you need to reach out to God. Not just think about it not just say one of these days I would like to just do it. In fact you can do it right now you say well how do I call out to the name of the Lord? You do it through prayer.

God is just a prayer away. He desires a relationship with you. He wants you to know him.

He wants to reveal himself to you. So you just need to call out and say Lord save me and help me. How about if I lead you in a prayer and you could pray this prayer after me. You can pray it out loud if you like. You can pray it quietly in your heart but direct this prayer toward God and you could pray it after me right now.

You ready? Pray this after me. Lord Jesus I know that I'm a sinner but I know that you're the savior and I want a relationship with you. So as your word says I'm calling on the name of the Lord. I'm asking you to save me from my sin and I'm asking that we begin a new relationship today.

Thank you for loving me and sending your son Jesus to die on the cross for my sin and then raising him from the dead. I now put my faith and trust in Jesus Christ and I ask this in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. And if you have just prayed along with Pastor Greg and you've meant those words sincerely let us be the first to welcome you into the family of God. And we want to help you get started off right in this new daily walk with the Lord. Pastor Greg would like to send you his New Believers Bible. It's a special edition of God's Word for those who are new to the faith with scores of helps for new believers written by Pastor Greg.

So get in touch and ask for the New Believers Bible. We'll send it your way free of any charge. Just call us at 1-800-821-3300. That's a 24-7 phone number even today.

That's 1-800-821-3300. Or go online to harvest.org and click the words, Know God. And then thank you for partnering with us to help these daily studies continue.

Your investments have eternal benefits. Why not make this a part of your personal ministry to partner in an effort that's making a real difference with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thank you for your prayers and for prayerfully considering how God might lead you to help tangibly. Online you'll find us at harvest.org, and there you'll see the way we'd like to thank you for your donation right now. That's harvest.org. Or write us at A New Beginning, Box 4000, Riverside, California 92514. Or call us at 1-800-821-3300. We're here around the clock to take your call. Again at 1-800-821-3300. Well, next time, Pastor Greg comes back with more insight from his holiday message called, Waiting for Christmas. Join us here on A New Beginning with pastor and Bible teacher, Greg Laurie.