The whole point of Christmas Is that Jesus came for those who don't have it together? He came not for the healthy, he said, he came for the sick, for people in darkness. See, that means you don't need to pretend with him. He comes into your darkness to find you where you are and guide you home. Hey, thanks for hanging out with us here on the Summit Life podcast.
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Start your new year anchored in God's Word. In today's message, Pastor JD reminds us that God is the promised light that the prophet Isaiah spoke of so long ago. Even when the darkness feels loud and this world feels worn thin, we can rejoice because the light of Jesus has come. And his light, it's the kind that no darkness can ever put out. Luke 2, 1-20 says that, in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.
This was the first registration when Quernius was governor of Syria. and all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who is with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger.
Because there is no place for them in the end. And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field. keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the LORD appeared to them, and the glory of the LORD shone around them. And they were filled with great fear.
And the angel said to them, Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you was born this day in the city of David a Savior. Who's Christ the Lord? And this will be a sign for you. you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.
And suddenly there is with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest. In honor of peace to those on whom his favor rests. When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, Let us go into Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the LORD has made known to us. and they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child.
And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things. pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
So right now, would you join me in rejoicing with the angels? Let's all say this together, out loud. Ready? Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those. whom his favor rests.
And all God's people said? Yeah, I think it's a good idea. Over the last several weeks at the Summit Church, we have looked at a handful of images that the Bible associates with Christmas that help us understand its meaning. And for our last one, we are going to talk about light. Life, how many of you have packed all your family in the car and gone out and driven around and looked at Christmas lights this year?
Raise your hand. That is a Greer family tradition as well. Luke chapter 2 is filled with all kinds of images of darkness and light. There's, of course, the literal darkness of the shepherd's field at night when the skies suddenly burst ablaze with myriads of angels proclaiming glory to God in the highest. And there's the literal brightness of the star as it guides the wise men through the dark Arabian desert to the place where Jesus had been born.
So there's literal darkness and light, but there's also the more figurative darkness of the condition that Israel was in when Jesus came. You see, for several decades, Israel had been living under the darkness of Roman oppression. They were supposed to be God's people, but they were impoverished and abused and oppressed, and it had been 400 years, 15 generations. since God had last spoken to them through a prophet. They felt abandoned.
Many of them asked, as do many of us today, God, if you care. Where Are you? In describing that first Christmas night, the prophet Isaiah prophesied in 720-something BC. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. And those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness on them A light has shown.
I want us to think for just a few brief moments this afternoon about what Isaiah meant when he said: the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, light of the world. Is one of the primary descriptions given to Jesus in the Gospels. The Apostle John refers to Jesus that way more than 30 times in his Gospel alone. Why? Let me suggest a handful of reasons.
First, He said that because Jesus was a light showing us. that we are not alone. Perhaps you've seen the Netflix special about the Thai middle school soccer team who went exploring in a cave one afternoon after practice when a sudden torrential rainstorm flooded the entryway to the cave and trapped all 13 of those boys inside the cave more than two miles down into the earth. The Thai government made several brave but failed rescue attempts. And those poor boys stayed trapped down there in total darkness for 10 days.
If you've seen it, the best moment in the documentary/slash movie is when these two British divers finally make it to them. And suddenly, into this dark, cavernous room, a small light appears up out of the water. And those boys who had given up hope start cheering because that light meant you're not alone anymore. You've not been forgotten. Maybe this Christmas finds you in a place where you feel.
Alone. A recent study done in 2021, in fact. Reveals that 61% of young adults in our country now say they feel lonely almost all of the time. 51% of young mothers say they feel that way. Nearly half of today's teenagers say they feel persistently sad and hopeless.
The Surgeon General of the United States in an 80-page advisory just released a few weeks ago named this, loneliness, as the single greatest public health threat in America today. More dangerous to your physical health, he said, than obesity, diabetes, or smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Maybe that's you. Alone in your pain. Alone in your marriage.
Alone in your singleness. The shepherds in the field there in Luke 2 certainly felt that way. You know, the little figurines of the shepherds and our nativity sets seem so quaint now, but shepherding was the lowest form of manual labor available in Israel. a job usually given only to migrant workers or to released prisoners. Shepherds were considered to be so low class in Israel, in fact, that their testimonies would not even be considered in court.
And yet, and yet of all the people in Palestine, That God could have chosen to announce the birth of His Son to, God chose the shepherds. The lowest class of the most oppressed people. It wasn't even an efficient choice on God's behalf. Luke 2 says that these shepherds went out by the command of the angels and told everybody what they'd seen. But nobody listened to him.
Because again, remember, shepherds were considered so low class, their testimony wasn't even considered in court. We don't have a single record of a single person leaving their home that night to go and see what the shepherds were even talking about. They were wholly ineffective as messengers. Last night, my Kids and I and a couple friends. of their friends.
10:30 a night. We got stuck in the elevator in that parking garage between the second and third floor. For an hour. If you were trying to use it today and you couldn't use it, our family is to blame. And eventually the fire department had to come get us out.
And so I, you know, when it freezes there, I started making, trying to call. I couldn't get the fire station, whatever.
So I called Curtis Andrusco, Pastor Curtis. And I said, Curtis, we are stuck. And so Curtis, you know, did what he does, and an hour later, you know, we get out of it. And so that happened at 10:30 last night. This morning.
When I walked, you know, like eight o'clock in the morning, when I came here, I promise you, no less than 150 people came up to me one by one and said, We heard about your escapade last night in the elevator. And I was like, How did you hear about that? They're like, Curtis told us. That's the kind of guy you want to be a messenger when you have something to announce. That was the opposite of the shepherds.
Why would God choose them? It wasn't an efficient choice. What was he communicating in revealing this to them? It wasn't because he was They were the best. What he was saying was, I see you.
Others may not, but I see you. And see, from that point onward, Jesus' whole life would be spent with moral failures and societal outcasts. People that nobody thought he should be hanging out with. His enemies even called him the friend of sinners. A term they meant not as a compliment, but as a slight on his character.
You know, one of the ironies of Christmas is that for many of us, This is a season where we feel an enormous pressure to present. Like we have everything all together. We want the house to be perfect and the family to be perfect and the marriage to be perfect. And maybe you've been trying to pull all that off, but you know it's just not working. You're like Clark Griswold in Christmas vacation.
Such high hopes, but the money's tight, the family's dysfunctional, your parents are insane, and cousin Eddie just showed up in your driveway with plans to stay for a month. You got such high hopes, but all this season does is reveal how not together things are in your life, how lonely. How messed up, how unhappy you are. And then you start getting all the Christmas cards where everybody else's family just looks so amazing, and their kids are doing awesome. And you know that your life is not like that.
Well, first of all, I want you to know that everybody is lying on that card, okay? I know that because the picture on our Christmas card looks fantastic. But I promise you, five seconds before we snap that pick, two of my kids are like, you know, strangling each other and Veronica are threatening. And then the photographer says, okay, smile. And we all like, you know, kind of adopt the pose.
But more importantly, y'all, the whole point of Christmas. Is that Jesus came for those who don't have it together? He came not for the healthy, he said. He came for the sick, for people in darkness. See, that means you don't need to pretend with him.
He comes into your darkness to find you where you are. And guide you home. Which leads me to the second thing. When Isaiah said to people who sit in darkness, A great light has come. He meant that Jesus was a light that guides us home.
Off the east coast of North Carolina sits one of my favorite places in the world, Cape Hatteras. World renowned. As the graveyard of the Atlantic. They call it that because as ships approach the shore, the ocean floor suddenly juts up with all of these rocky shoals that impale and sink ships. They estimate nearly 5,000 shipwrecks in the few miles off the coast of the Outer Banks.
And so, all along the coast out there sits one of the greatest concentrations of lighthouses in the world. Tour them sometime, and what you'll read is story after story after story of some boat lost in a storm, tossed this way and that, with no bearing anymore about where they are, no knowledge of how to get home when they see the light from one of those lighthouses that says this way to safety. This way to home. Jesus was the light showing us the way home. He showed us where we had come from.
and how to get back there. He showed us that what we were missing from our lives was not something. or some experience or even some person. What we were missing, he showed us with the love of our Heavenly Father. You see, most people in our country live with the awareness that something's not right in their lives.
But they're just not quite sure what it is. The philosopher Blaise Pascal said all the way back in the 1600s that it's like each human heart has this gigantic void in it, a great hole. And we spend all of our lives trying to figure out what goes into that hole when you're young. You try things like fun and friends and athletic success or sex. As you get older, you turn to things like marriage and family and career success and tenure and financial stability.
Some even turn to extreme things like drugs or alcohol, but see, it's all just a quest to figure out what's missing. None of it ever quite works, Blaise Pascal said, because that hole is a God-shaped and God-sized hole. The coming of Jesus showed us that what we've been missing. Was the embrace of our heavenly father that standing in heaven was a father with outstretched arms. Saying what you're looking for in that far country.
What you've always been looking for. It's me. It's always been me. The arms you saw in romance were really my arms. The significance you sought.
Through success. Actually, this comes from me and my son or my daughter. Jesus is the light that guides you home. He shows you where you came from. what you're missing and how to get back there.
Listen, maybe you are completely turned off by organized religion. And quite frankly, maybe you should be. Yet. Yet I bet there is still something about Jesus. That captivates your attention.
At least it's been that way for a lot of people I know. Turned off by religion, but still intrigued by Jesus. And see, that's because he is the light of God shining through the darkness, showing you the way home. To people who sit in darkness, Isaiah said, Jesus. Is number three a light that illuminates everything else.
A light that illuminates everything else around us. One of the greatest things about light. Is not just that you can see it in the darkness, but by it you can see everything else. In fact, most lights we don't. stare directly into.
You don't typically stare straight into the ceiling lights in your home. We don't typically stare directly into the sun. You ever play that game when you were a kid of who could stare at the sun the longest? You ever play that? Raise your hand.
If you played that when you were a kid, all the people with glasses on right now, it's not a fun game. It's not a fun game. You don't stare at the sun, but because of the sun. You can see everything else. If you're walking up a mountain in the dark, the terrain could feel daunting, forbidding, even life-threatening.
But in the light of the sun, that same terrain is inspiring and breathtakingly beautiful. In Psalm 36:9, King David said, You are the fountain of my life. You are the light by which I see everything else. You see, the world around us often feels like darkness and chaos. Bad things happen to good people.
We see injustice often prevail. The guilty walk away seemingly unpunished. The rich get away with all kinds of stuff and are able to buy their way out of it. And it makes us wonder how there really could be a good, loving God in charge of it all. By the way, maybe those questions for you are not philosophical.
Maybe they're really personal. God, why didn't you save my marriage this year? Why didn't you heal my wife's cancer? Why haven't you brought home my child? God, if you love me.
Where are you? The people in Luke 1 and 2 had all those same questions. And the birth of a baby was God's answer to them.
Now, hear me, that birth did not explain all the whys behind everything that was happening. But see, it showed them the one thing that all the chaos and confusion couldn't mean. It couldn't mean that God had abandoned them. I mean, here was God entering into their poverty and their shame and their pain.
So obviously, He hadn't forsaken them. This baby would grow up to show power over everything that terrified them. He could heal their diseases and call them the most violent storms and cast out their demons and even raise the dead.
So obviously, he had the power to help them. And then he would voluntarily go to a cross to suffer not for his sin, but for theirs.
So obviously he cared about them. And then he would do something that no other would-be savior in human history has ever been able to do. And that is, he walked out of the grave by his own power.
So obviously, he hadn't abandoned them. They may not understand all the whys behind everything God was doing, but they could understand that. You see, faith, I've heard it said, means, listen to this, accepting what you cannot understand. based on what you can understand. And what God was saying through Jesus' birth, death, and resurrection was something they could understand.
Jesus' coming was a light that shined into their darkness, that changed their perspective on everything else. The birth, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus will not likely answer all of your questions. But see, it will show you the one thing that your questions do not mean. It does not mean that God is not real or that he does not care. The late Tim Keller.
Used to say, he's many people in our society today pride themselves on being skeptical. We are. Children of the enlightenment, by the way, that is especially true in a hyper-educated place like Raleigh-Durham. You take nothing at face value. You doubt everything.
You question everything. Great, Dr. Keller said. But have you ever doubted your doubts? You say doubt your doubts.
What do you mean by that? I mean... Consider that maybe your doubts are are not the definitive argument against God that you think they are. Maybe your unanswered questions just mean that there's some things you can't quite understand yet. The problem with most of us, Dr.
Keller said, is not that we're skeptical. The problem is that we're not skeptical enough about the one thing we should be most skeptical of. And that is our own hearts. and our own limited ability to understand things. The miraculous birth of a baby, a bloody cross, and an empty tomb are a reason to doubt your doubts.
You say, oh, but JD, that's the thing. How do I know all of that even happened? How do I know these are not just quaint, made-up stories invented by people who wanted to feel better about life, legends that grew up over time? This is not the place where I can go into a full-scale defense of all that, but let me at least invite you to begin considering the two things the Bible most consistently points to to show you it's not a made-up fairy tale. The first thing the New Testament writers always point to is fulfilled prophecy.
Through his birth and his life, Jesus fulfilled more than 300 specific messianic prophecies, mostly historically verifiable stuff, and most of which he had no control over, including the year he was to be born. That's revealed in Daniel 9:26. The place he was to be born, which would be Bethlehem in Judea. That's Micah 5:2. What family line he would be from?
The line of David. That's 2 Samuel 7:12. That John the Baptist would precede him. That's Isaiah 40, verse 3. That Jesus's ministry would be characterized by deliverance.
That's Isaiah 61:1. That he would be misunderstood and falsely accused. That's Isaiah 53, 3. That he would be betrayed by a friend for 30 pieces of silver. That's Zechariah chapter 11, verse 12.
That he would die by crucifixion, but without a single one of his bones being broken, as onlookers around him shook their heads, claiming he was forsaken by God, and his soldiers divided up his clothing and gambled for it. That's Psalm 22, verses 12 through 18. That he would be buried in a borrowed. Rich man's tomb, that's Isaiah 53, 9, and then resurrected from that tomb. That's Psalm 16, 11, and 290 others.
Oh no. A quick break here to let you know that God is still multiplying the gospel through this ministry and your generosity is a huge reason why. Because you've stepped in, people are growing deeper in the gospel and the message is reaching farther across the world. With the year winding down, we're asking God to do even more. New broadcasts, new resources, and new stories of salvation.
Would you consider joining us in that work? When you give this December, you're not only helping plant churches and send disciples, you are also sending a Bible to someone incarcerated who's searching for hope. Every delivery is an open door for God's word to take root where few of us will ever go. To give, visit jiddygreer.com. Thank you for standing with us.
We're seeing fruit. New leaders rising, churches reproducing, and everyday believers equipped to bring the gospel near and far. What began with a handful of disciples is still moving forward, and you're helping to carry it. Again, you can give your generous year-end gift at jdgreer.com. And now let's finish up today's teaching.
You sounds like that's all contrived. Go back and read it. It's quite overwhelming. What you'll find is that the Bible is one gigantic story. Written by 40 different authors over 1,500 years across three continents that tells the story of the coming of one enigmatic and very unexpected Messiah.
All these prophecies and pictures in the Old Testament create this silhouette that Jesus suddenly steps into in the gospels and fulfills perfectly in ways nobody expected. And you realize that he'd been hiding in plain sight the whole time. Second thing the Bible writers point to Is Jesus' resurrection. Again, this is not the place where I can go really deep into proving that, only to tell you. That many who have studied the resurrection, even from a place of skepticism, arrive at the exact same conclusion as German theologian Wolfhard Ponnenberg.
Who says, and by the way, when he started out, he wasn't expecting to find this. The evidence for Jesus' resurrection, he says, is so strong that nobody would question it. Except for two things. First, he said, it's a very unusual event. Second, if you believe it happened, he said.
You have to change the way that you live. Don't believe him? All I can say is go study it for yourself. Maybe that's why you're here, is to launch you on a process of exploration. My point is: if God really was born as a baby, He's the light by which we see everything else.
He's the reason for you to consider doubting your doubts. And if you struggle to believe that. If you feel like this is all just wishful thinking on my part, could I ask you just to consider what the alternative is? Is it to say that the darkness of our world really is the reality? That this world is just one gigantic cosmic accident, that nothing times nobody equals everything, that things like consciousness and love and meaning, those are just useful fictions arising out of our genes to trick us into propagating our species.
I don't think it is too bold to say that in our hearts we sense that love points us to something real, something beyond survival of the fitness. We sense that our internal drive to find meaning points to something real. You see, those senses are the first witnesses of the light in us, and they point us to the light of the world, who coming into the world illuminates everything else. By your light we see everything, David said, forth to those who sit in darkness. Jesus was a light that reveals our need for a Savior.
One of the negative things about light, if you want to call it that. is that light reveals imperfections. A couple of Sunday mornings ago, I was getting ready for church, and because I have to go in, Early, I will sometimes get dressed in the dark so as not to wake up my wife Veronica. Hashtag amazing husband.
Okay, so. This particular morning, I'm trying to get dressed with the light of my phone, and I grab a light-colored pair of jeans that I was very familiar with. And a shirt, jacket, combo to go with it. And in the dark, my outfit looked amazing. But then I got to church, walked on stage where it's not darkness.
And you could see plain as day that there was a big grease stain down my left pant leg. I don't know what it is about grease and my pants, but they love each other and always find a way to come together. And of course, our stage is extremely well lit, so there's no hiding it up there. Of course, it's too late to change outfits by that point.
So I had to stand up there in front of 12,000 of you guys and hope I could just move around fast enough that you wouldn't notice. Have you ever looked into one of those lighted, up-close magnifying mirrors? And thought, dang, my face looks like that. I mean, y'all, it is not fair. My wife is aging like a fine wine.
I'm aging more like a gallon of milk. Meaning, every year I get whiter and chunkier. That's what I mean. The Apostle John said in John 3 that Jesus coming into the world revealed. Our imperfections.
He was a light that showed us what a life pleasing to God was supposed to look like and how far we were from measuring up to that. And a lot of people hated him for that, John said. You see, most of us have spent our lives trying to prove to ourselves and to others. But we're basically good people. And our standard Our standard for what a good person is, or whether we're good, is how we compare to others.
We just instinctively assume that God grades on the curve. And we're like, as long as God grades on the curve, I'm going to be fine. You're like, I may not be perfect, but I am not on the bottom of that bell curve. I mean, first of all, everybody that's the opposite political party view, they're on the bottom half of the bell curve in your head. But you're like, as long as this guy breaks on the curve, I'm going to be fine.
The problem is that you are comparing yourself to the wrong standard. Jesus was the light that showed us what goodness was, He showed us what the glory of God was, He's what we compare ourselves to.
So the Apostle Paul said it like this in Romans 3:23: All have sinned, and all fall short, not of each other, but of the glory of God. Fall short was an athletic term. It just means you missed the mark. Imagine we all went down to Atlantic Beach and we all tried to swim to England.
Now I can swim. But I'm not a great swimmer. I might make it a mile. Maybe you're a much better swimmer than me, and maybe you can make it 10 miles. Right amazing, right?
That's 10 times farther than I got. But in the end, your 10 miles compared to my one mile doesn't make that much difference, does it? Because we both fell short of England by about 4,300 miles.
Well, see, for all of us, Paul says our sin puts us miles and miles and miles and miles away from the glory that God deserves and the life of Jesus. Revealed that his whole life screamed, You're not worthy of God's glory. And a lot of people hated him for that. And ultimately, that's why they killed him. But see, that leads to maybe the best news of all.
The light of Jesus was not just a revealing light, it was also a healing light. If you read the Gospels, one of the most remarkable things about Jesus was that whenever his perfection touched somebody else's imperfection, rather than the perfect thing becoming imperfect, the imperfect thing became perfect. Israelites were obsessed with ritual cleanliness. According to Jewish law, if you were ritually clean and you touched something unclean, it made you unclean and you had to go back and purify yourself all over again. But whenever Jesus The epitome of clean.
Came into the presence of something unclean rather than the unclean thing making him unclean. He, the clean thing, made the unclean thing clean. Is that confusing? It felt confusing. Let me switch the metaphor.
It works the same way for us. When I sit by somebody on the plane, Who has a bad cough? I'm not like hey. You're obviously sick. Lean over here with your sick self.
I got health to spare. And maybe my excess of health can just sort of spread out on you. No, I lean the other way. Because when the unclean thing, which in this case would be them, comes into contact with the clean thing, me. I don't make them healthy, they make me sick.
But see, here's the most amazing thing. When Jesus, the ultimate clean thing, came into contact with the unclean things, rather than the clean thing becoming unclean. His touch made the unclean thing clean. And if you're not confused, just say amen, okay? And see y'all, that's because Jesus came merely.
Listen. Jesus came not merely to expose our darkness. He came to take it from us. He came to absorb it. The light shines in darkness, John said, and the darkness could not overcome it.
2 Corinthians 5:21 says that on the cross, God made Jesus the light of the world, who knew no sin. To become sin for us. That means that our darkness went into him. Jesus, who knew no sin, who was himself the very brightness of God's glory and the very brilliance of his perfection, became the darkness of my sin. The light of the world.
was reduced to a bloody corpse on a cross. And then it was laid into the darkness. of a grave and the light of the world temporarily. went out. But But But see, not even the darkness of the grave could contain the power of that light.
And on the third day, the light of the world walked out of the darkness of the grave. Again, John said, the light shined in darkness, and the darkness couldn't overcome it. Death could not hold him. The veil tore before him. He silenced the boast of sin and grave.
He pulled up the curse of sin by its roots. And see, that means... For those who sit in darkness, Jesus has a light. that assures us of future hope. Imagine again those Thai boys, how relieved they were to see a ray of light suddenly pierce the darkness of their cave.
Or imagine someone adrift on a life raft in the middle of the ocean, how overjoyed they would be to see the light of an approaching ship on the horizon. Hope is here. Rescue is on the way. We're soon gonna be out of this darkness. The people sitting in darkness.
or loneliness. or pain or guilt or shame this Christmas. The birth of Jesus shows you that your pain is not forever. That Paul called the resurrection of Jesus the first fruits of salvation. The first light?
to promise that all the darkness is coming to an end and soon all the sad things will come untrue. The psychologist James Dobson tells a story. About an elderly woman named Stella Thornhope, whose husband of 50 years. had just died in October from a slow-growing cancer. And so she was going to have to spend her first Christmas in 50 years.
Alone. She was so heartbroken at his loss that she couldn't even bring herself to decorate the house for Christmas. Everything felt so dark and so cold.
So alone, and to make matters worse, the week before Christmas, a terrible, terrible snowstorm blanketed the area she lived in. The airports were closed and the roads were closed and she was snowed in.
Well, Christmas Eve, as she sits there in the darkness of her house, her doorbell rings. She was surprised because she didn't think anybody was even able to. To get out on the roads, but standing there on her front porch was a delivery boy that she'd never seen before with a box. And when she answered the door, he said, Mrs. Thorne, hoping.
She nodded and she said, Yeah, and he said, sign here, man. She took the pad and Started to sign it and she said, what's in the box? The delivery boy laughed and he opened up the lid of the box, and inside was a little puppy. Little golden Labrador retriever, all bustling and jumpy. The delivery boy picked up a squirming puppy and he said, He belongs to you, ma'am.
He's 12 weeks old, almost completely housebroken. Young puppy was wiggling and squirming and tried to lick his face and. Mrs. Thornhope said, but who is this from?
Well, the young man set the puppy down inside her house and handed her an envelope and said, It's all explained right here in this envelope, ma'am. This puppy was bought last July while its mother was still pregnant with her. It was meant to be a Christmas gift to you. The boy then turned to leave, and she said again, but who sent this? The delivery boy turned around and said, your husband, ma'am.
Merry Christmas and Eve. Walked away. And so there in the quiet darkness of her home, she opened up a letter from her late husband. He'd written it three weeks before he died, and he'd left it with the kennel owners to be delivered along with the puppy. It's his last Christmas gift to her.
The letter was full of love and encouragement and admonishments for her to be strong. He told her that. You know, she hadn't really lost him. She just lost contact with him for a little while. He told her that he would be anxiously awaiting the day when she could join him in heaven.
But until then, he said, until then. You've got this little puppy. You've got this little ray of sunshine to keep you company. And obviously, by the way, he chose a puppy, not a cat, because he wasn't trying to say, I hate you, okay? But I digress.
Ms. Thornhope wiped away the tears. She put the letter down. And then remembering the puppy at her feet. She picked up the furry little golden ball of energy and she held it to her neck while he licked her and squirmed excitedly.
Then she. She looked out of the darkness of her house. At the window of her neighbor, two or three of her neighbors, he saw the Christmas lights and. their houses and From the radio in the kitchen, she could just hear the faint strains of joy to the world, the Lord has come. And suddenly she said she felt the most amazing sensation of joy.
Just wash over her a joy and a wonder. And a sense of anticipation that was even greater than the grief and the loneliness that she had been living in for the past few months. And so she turned to the puppy and she said, We gotta hurry. We got just a couple hours to get this house decorated for Christmas. The birth of Jesus doesn't immediately take away all your pain.
But see it's a ray of light. That tells you you're not alone. You're not forgotten that you're loved. That ray of light is his promise to abolish death, to wipe away every tear and to heal every hurt. He's the first light of the new creation.
Joy to the world. The Lord has come. Let earth receive a king. No more let sins and sorrows grow or thorns infest the ground. For he's come to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.
Joy to the world. The Lord has come. But see that leads me to the last and maybe Most important thing that you got to understand about the light of the world. This light is a gift. And that means you choose whether or not you allow this light to come into your life.
Luke 2, 11 says, unto you is born. This day, a Savior who is Christ the Lord. Unto you is the language of a gift. And see, like every other gift, you have to choose to receive it. A gift for you that you leave wrapped under the tree never becomes yours, even if it was purchased for you and even if it has your name on it.
The Apostle John said it like this in John 1.12. to those who received him. To them, he gave the power to become the children of God. To those who received him, you have to receive him personally. Here's the question.
Have you ever done that? Have you ever done that personally? Receiving Jesus means turning away from your sin and acknowledging Jesus to be the Lord of your life. No longer are you going to be your own Lord, He's your Lord. And then you say yes to His free offer to save you.
Have you ever done that? personally. Listen, this is not something you can just be born into. It's not something you get by having Christian parents or by going to church. Or getting baptized, or going to a confirmation class, or taking the Eucharist.
Those things are all fine. But see, you've got to personally decide to receive Jesus as your Savior. We always say at the Summit Church that going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to McDonald's makes you a hamburger. We're going to Dunkin' Donuts makes you a the cop. Right?
Just means you go there. I've got permission from my policeman friend to say that, okay? Going to a place doesn't make you whatever they do at that place. You have to personally choose to receive Christ as Lord and Savior. Have you ever done that?
And if not, do you want to? See, I want to give you a chance to do that right now, right now if you need to. Right now.
So we asked that every head be bowed and hear every head. Every eye closed. If you're not sure you've ever received Jesus personally, ever surrendered your life to Him. You can do it right now. You can use these words to do it.
These are not magic words, but if you say them from your heart, they got to come from your heart. Jesus will hear you. Say to him, Jesus, I want to receive you as my Savior. Just from your heart, say that I want to receive you as my Savior. I surrender to you right now as my Lord.
By the way, maybe you're one of those people filled with doubts like I was talking about. Maybe right now you're willing to say, Jesus, I don't know. The answers to all my questions, but I trust you. Could you say this right now? I believe in the Son of God.
I believe you came into the world for me. And I'll trust you with my unanswered questions for now. Could you say that to him? I'm ready to trust you as my Savior. and follow you.
even with my unanswered questions. Let the wonder of Jesus spill into every corner of your life. That's the challenge today from Pastor J.D. Greer on Summit Life. The most important gift you give this season may not be wrapped at all.
When you support Summit Life in December, your generosity sends a Bible to someone in prison, someone searching for hope. Your gift puts scripture where it's needed most. Visit us at jdgreer.com and we'll see you next time. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries. Yeah.
