Christmas at DPAC: 2015

The following is a short audio portion from the Christmas services at the Durham Performing Arts Center.

Watch the whole experience at summitrdu.com slash messages. Are you are you having a good time this morning? You having a good time? I bet when you showed up this morning, you were not expecting Silent Night Boys to Men edition. And when I was the little drummer boy, when I was in my kindergarten Sunday school play, I don't quite remember it being exactly the same way.

Theirs was still good, though, but it was all. Never wonder, by the way, how those two Christmas carols relate. Silent Night, Holy Night, all is calm, all is bright until the little drummer boy shows up to do his drum solo. Do newborn infants even like drum solos?

I'm not really sure it would work for my kids. Or I was at a Christmas production the other day where we did that song, We Wish You a Merry Christmas. And we did that third verse that nobody ever sings, the one that goes, now bring us some figgy pudding, that one. And then the next verse after that is we won't leave until we get some.

And my thought is like, well, first of all, who wrote this song? I mean, if your friends demand figgy pudding at Christmas time, they have bad taste. If they say we won't leave until we get some, they have bad manners. I feel like you've got bad friends and you should probably ask Santa for Christmas just for some new friends.

But that is just my opinion. My role this evening. My name is J.D., by the way, and I'm one of the pastors at the Summit Church and the pastor that teaches most often on the weekends. But my role this evening with you is basically to take just a few minutes and set up the very next carol that we're going to sing together. And that carol is Heart the Herald Angels Sing. Technically, this is the last installment in a short series on Christmas carols in which we have looked each week at the text of some of these incredibly rich, but often overly familiar songs that we sing at Christmas time.

Hark is a pretty old word. It's a word that we don't use a lot in normal conversation anymore, but all it means is simply listen. The writer of this carol is telling us to pay attention and listen to something that he is afraid that we are going to miss. He puts his message in the mouth of a shepherd.

You see, the shepherds were the only ones who actually saw and heard the angels that evening. And there are some things about what they saw that evening that the writer of this carol wants to make sure that we do not miss. The shepherd who sings this carol seems pretty overwhelmed by three things. And these three things give you the ability to understand the secret of the true meaning of Christmas.

And here they are. First, he is amazed that the angels chose to appear to him. I explained to our church a couple of weeks ago that the shepherds had to be the least likely people on earth to receive an angelic announcement about the birth of a king. Shepherds were considered to be the lowest class in Jewish society. They were the ultimate unskilled laborers. Shepherding was a job that you gave to children. If you were an adult and you were still a shepherd, that meant a total life fail. They were so lowly regarded in their society that their testimony was not even received in court.

It had no validity at all. And here is why the angels choice to appear to the shepherds out of all the people in Israel, why their choice to appear to the shepherds is so important for you and for me. And that is because while Christmas time is joyful for a lot of people, it's all calm and bright and songs and joy for others. It reminds them of how disappointed they are with where their lives are or how their lives have turned out.

It makes some feel like they are really alone. Everybody else seems to go home to their real family and their real friends at Christmas time and you stay alone. Or maybe this season reminds you of somebody who used to be in your life but is not anymore, a father, a husband, a child, a friend, maybe a girlfriend. Or maybe you forget how broken and dysfunctional your family is until Christmas time comes around. And for some of you, your entire goal over the next few days is simply for the police not to get called. That would be a good Christmas season for you.

I heard one guy say that happiness in life is having a large, close-knit family, all of whom live somewhere else in another city. Maybe this Christmas finds you jobless for one of the first times that you can remember and you're worried about the future. Maybe you're concerned this Christmas about your kids, the decisions they're making. Or maybe you're concerned about your marriage. Maybe you're concerned about your lack of marriage prospects for yet another year. Maybe you find yourself in trouble this Christmas, maybe in trouble at your job, maybe in trouble with the law. These shepherds who came into that first Christmas came into it not feeling like their lives were awesome either.

And maybe you are in exactly the same place. Well, see, the good news and what they want to make sure that you understand is that you are the very ones to whom the angels most wanted to give this message. So to you and to me and to all of us, they say, hark, hark. Second, the shepherd must have been amazed at all the celebration that was going on in the heavenly host about the birth of a baby. The angels proclaimed that evening, glory to God in the highest, which simply means that God deserves the greatest praise for the birth of this baby. The greatest praise, which is pretty remarkable when you think about what else these angels had seen.

These angels had been first hand eyewitnesses of creation where God spoke a word, spoke a phrase, let there be light. And billions of galaxies burst into existence. Astronomers tell us that there are a total of about 3000 billion trillion stars. That is a three with 24 zeros after it. And I know that numbers like that billion, million trillion after a while, they all just kind of run together and they don't mean anything to us anymore.

You're like, I just want to open up my bank account and see a number with three digits in it. That's kind of as big as I think. Three billion. What does that number even mean?

Let me see if maybe this helps you get your mind around what what size that number is. A million seconds ago, one million seconds ago from this morning was Monday, December 13th, about a week and four days ago. A million seconds. That's a million seconds. When do you think a billion seconds ago was? Maybe 4th of July, maybe New Year's last year. A billion seconds ago was April 15th, 1984.

April 15, 1984, the first CD player had just been released onto the market. The Jedi had just returned for the very first time. There's a bunch of y'all in this room that ain't even a billion seconds old yet.

If you were born after April 15th. Raise your hand if you're not even a billion seconds old yet because you got nothing under your belt. See, that's a billion seconds ago. OK, it's a billion. All right, that's a billion seconds. How long ago do you think a trillion seconds ago was? A trillion. You think, oh, 1492 in Columbus held the ocean blue.

Was that it? Maybe it was the very first Christmas. Maybe that was a trillion seconds ago. A trillion seconds ago was 31,688 years ago.

Rocky I had just come out if you want to date that. The universe, scientists tell us, contains about 3,000 billion trillion stars. And just about every single one of those puts out the amount of energy they say that would be contained.

Every second puts out the same amount of energy that would be in a trillion atom bombs. These angels had seen God create all of that with just a word. Let there be light and all those things burst into existence. But that is not what they thought gave God glory in the highest. What gave God glory in the highest that they sang about that evening was this. Veiled in flesh the Godhead see. Hail the incarnate deity, pleased as man with men to dwell.

Jesus our Emmanuel. The greatest glory they thought that God ever displayed was his decision to come and to die for sinners. To come and live among sinners. To come and identify himself with them and to take their place.

Why would God do this? They wondered. If you've been paying attention at all to the news right now you know there's a very controversial case involving a guy named Bo Bergdahl who was in our military. And he many say deserted his post and has committed sins against the United States and misbehavior before the enemy or conduct unbecoming of an officer in the military. Some have even gone so far as to say that he was a traitor. And what made it controversial is our government decided that they were going to trade five of the most dangerous Taliban officials that were held in prison in Guantanamo Bay were going to release them in exchange for Bo Bergdahl. And many people have said well you know does it make sense what if these five Taliban guys go on and they kill a bunch of other Americans. Here we've traded you know Bo Bergdahl which was a traitor and a deserter allegedly for the lives of good Americans.

Now y'all I am not in a place to be able to give any knowledgeable opinion about Bo Bergdahl or what he is or what he deserves. But what I do know what I do understand is this is that God knew for sure that we were traitors. He knew that we were traitors he knew that we were deserters of his glory and he traded not the lives of five terrorists to get us back. But he offered the life of his most precious son that is the gospel. The gospel is that you and I were hopelessly doomed and God the creator came to take our place so that we would not have to suffer the penalty of what you and I had brought onto ourselves.

That God's son Jesus was going to suffer it in our place. And for the book of First Peter the Apostle Peter says that the angels are amazed by this. They've seen God create the stars with a to put out enough energy every second to power a trillion atom bombs but that is not what blows their minds. What they long to look more deeply into the angels who see the face of God every day what they cannot get their minds around. What blows their minds is the mercy that God displayed towards sinful people in the gospel.

Toward you and toward me so they say hail the heaven born prince of peace. Hail the son s-u-n of righteousness light and life to all he brings risen with healing in his wings. The angels had seen God's power to create stars of immense energy and immense number. But what gave them unbelievable sense of wonder was God's mercy that he showed rebellious sinners and his power to heal them and to resurrect them from the curse of death. You understand that greater than God's power to create the stars is God's power to put back together the life of a sinful person who repents and comes to God through faith in Christ. You think that your sin is bad you think that you've messed things up you think that you're so guilty you can't be forgiven. God said there's more power in my ability to forgive than there was in the word that I spoke that caused the universe to spring into existence. You think sin is scarred your life you think it's messed up your heart you think it's destroyed your relationship. God says there is more power in my resurrection of Jesus from the dead and my ability to heal your life than there was in anything that I have ever created. Mild he lays his glory by born that man no more may die born to raise the sons of earth born to give them second birth. You see the gospel is that you and I were doomed in our first birth in our natural birth and so Jesus came to save us and give us a new birth. You see underneath all of your religious good moral makeup we're really just rebellious sinners. We're really just rebellious sinners when you strip everything else away I know that might sound harsh but look into your heart. Deep down have we not assumed always that we knew best how to run our lives as kids we thought for sure that we knew better than our parents. If I were to ask any 10 year old here and I know there's probably a number of you if you if I were to ask you just really what do you think?

Who knows more about life right now is it you or your parents every 10 year old that was honest to be like I know more about my life than my parents. As we get older we don't really I mean we grow up a little bit but we don't really change we still assume that we are the ones who know best how to rule our lives. Which is why our condition to God our obedience to God is always conditional. And we never really want to give him total control because ultimately I'm the one who knows best for my life and I know better than even God. Have we not preferred to make ourselves the focus and center of our lives rather than God. Isn't that why when we look at a picture at Christmas time we evaluate how good the picture is by how we look in that picture. Because life is just about us and we don't want to make it about the glory of God we want to make it about our glory.

We want to be the focus and the center. Haven't we always thought that our will ought to trump God's will when the two conflicted. The angels understand that that is moral insanity and it is cosmic treason. And the penalty for that cosmic treason is death.

I know that it is popular today to see ourselves as basically good people with a few blind spots and maybe some weaknesses or maybe we're misunderstood people with hidden potential that just hasn't been tapped into yet. But I have to tell you that is not what the Bible says about us. It says that you and I are traitors to God we're part of a traitor race and we are under the rightful curse of death. And you see there are only two ways that that curse can be resolved.

The first way is we suffer it eternally ourselves which means that we're separated from God forever in a place of eternal death called hell. Or Jesus in his mercy and his love would be born as a baby to live the life that we were supposed to live. And then die the death that we were condemned to die that he would absorb the curse in our place so that we could escape it. That was the cross. It was Jesus dying in your place. It was not his pride or his rebellion or his deceit or his immorality or his selfishness or his impurity that caused him to be nailed to the cross for he had none of those things. It was my sin, my pride, my lies, my exaggerations. It was my selfishness and my cruelty that caused those nails to go into his hands and those thorns to crown his brow. It was the creator dying in the place of the created. And the angels see this and they can't understand it.

Why wouldn't you just wipe out the human race and why wouldn't you just create another one from scratch? Mild he lays his glory by, born that men no more may die. I know that it's popular today to also say that whatever way you want to follow God is okay as long as you're sincere. God's like a mountain after all, right?

Many roads going up to the top of the mountain, different roads, they all lead ultimately to the same place. But I need to help you understand that as clear as the Bible says anything, as clear as Jesus ever said anything, that is not true. It is not what the Bible says. What the Bible says is salvation is found in nobody else. There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Jesus said, John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father unless he comes through me. You see, every other religion teaches you that you can save yourself. If you'll be good enough, if you'll practice enough religious observances, if you'll go to church enough, if you'll take communion, if you'll go to the mosque, if you'll pray toward Mecca, if you'll sacrifice to the Buddha and if you'll follow the eightfold path, then if you do that enough and you do it sincere enough, then you can be saved. But Jesus taught exactly the opposite. He said, you cannot save yourself.

You can never save yourself no matter what you did. So I did it for you. And you're going to have to humble yourself and receive that as a gift. And that is not the same message.

I see it like this. If I couldn't swim and I fell off the boat and there I am in the water struggling to keep my head above water and you're standing on the side and in your hand, you've got a life saver in the left hand and in your right hand, you've got a big old rock. And I say, save me. And you say, well, which one you want me to throw to you? And I say, it doesn't matter as long as you're sincere. Just throw one of them to me sincerely.

It does matter which one you throw to me. Religion says try harder, be better, swim a little bit more. Jesus' message is you're drowning. So I did it for you. I did what you could never do. I lived the life that you were supposed to live but did not. I died the death that you were condemned to die but could not suffer unless you did it eternally.

And I now offer it to you as a gift that you have to receive. So the shepherds say, hark, hark, this is your life saver. Lastly, the shepherds, this shepherd was probably amazed that he was the one that was chosen to announce this to others. The only thing about this, the only ones, the only ones who got to see the angels that night were the shepherds. Everybody else had to hear about this announcement from the shepherds. The shepherds got glory and songs and Noels and Hallelujahs and everybody else got smelly, barely literate shepherds. And honestly, that might disappoint us.

Most of us would probably prefer the angels, right? But see, this is a very important thing that you need to learn about God. Throughout Scripture, God's primary way of speaking to people is through broken and flawed instruments through shepherds. You see, the first time most people hear the gospel message, it's almost always from somebody that they know pretty closely. Most people hear the gospel message for the first time from a family member or a friend. And here's the thing about family members and friends. You know all of their flaws and you wonder, how could God possibly be speaking to me through my older brother? You know how he terrorized me?

He is the last representative of God on the planet. Or maybe you heard about all of this for the first time through that annoying neighbor who is seated right beside you right now this morning. And all you can think is their kids are totally out of control. They've got the worst yard in the neighborhood. How could they possibly grasp the mysteries of eternity and share them with me?

At least what my neighbors who are here this morning I think are probably saying. Listen, just because the messenger is flawed does not mean the message is flawed. God chooses as his primary mouthpieces shepherds.

That's how it was at the first Christmas and that's how it is today. There's a very famous Old Testament story that if you grew up in Sunday school at all, you are familiar with it. It's a kid favorite. It's the story of a prophet named Balaam. He's going to go do something that God doesn't want him to do. So God sends an angel to impede his path and as his donkey is walking down the road, the angel stands there in the path with a big old flaming sword. Balaam can't see it, but God opens the donkey's eyes so that the donkey can see it. And so the donkey won't go forward. So Balaam starts to cuss at the donkey. And the donkey still won't go forward so Balaam hops off and starts to kick the donkey then grabs a stick and starts to beat the donkey. And so God, in mercy, opens up the donkey's mouth and gives him the ability to speak. And the donkey says, look Jack, you better cut that out.

Because I'm trying to save your life. And the point of the story is God spoke through a donkey. The King James Version, of course, says an ass. And the point is if God spoke through a donkey, he can speak through your annoying neighbor. Well, let me say it like this, I'll use King James English. Just because the messenger is an ass doesn't mean the message isn't the truth. And you kids, listen, it's not okay to use that word unless you're quoting from the King James Version, okay?

So Charis, Ally, Ryan, and my kids that are sitting over there, do not use that word about your friends or your teachers or anybody else. It's only okay in the KJV. So this message, listen, this message to you from the shepherds and from me, and even from that annoying neighbor who invited you tonight is this, Hark, listen, listen. You see, God has been pursuing you. God has been speaking to you.

If you think about it, you know it. He's been trying to wake you up. He's been trying to draw you back to himself, and this morning is just one of a series of things that God has been doing in your life. And the question this writer of this carol asked you, that I ask you, is would you stop for a minute and just listen? Could you let the rush and the stress of the Christmas season just kind of fade away for just a minute?

Maybe even let your objections, all your but what about and why didn't and all those kind of questions, would you let them be put aside for just a minute and would you just listen? These angels are not trying to tell you to try harder. They're not telling you to be better. They're not telling you that you're not good enough.

You better clean your life up. God is telling you that you could never be good enough. But he loves you anyway so much that he left heaven for you. He did the work of saving you.

The same God who created the stars set his love on you and 2,000 years ago he appeared as a baby in a manger. So that he could live the life that you were supposed to live. Then he would suffer the curse of death that you've been condemned to suffer and do it in your place so that if you would just listen and just receive. He would do the work of saving you.

There's nothing that you need to do. Indeed there's nothing you can do, nothing except for listen to his voice and receive the gift if you never have. Are you ready to hearken? Are you ready to listen and receive what Jesus did 2,000 years ago that you couldn't do for yourselves? Why don't you bow your heads if you would over all three floors of this great arena with you.

Just bow your heads. Let me make sure you understand this. What is possible is that Jesus Christ is the Lord and that he came to do for you what you couldn't do for yourself. He paid for your salvation in full. So that if you will receive him as your savior and surrender to him as Lord he will save you.

If you've never made that decision or you're not sure that you've made it I'd invite you to pray a prayer like this. These are not magic words but if it comes from your heart God will hear it. God, I know that I'm a sinner. And I'm sorry for my sin and I surrender my life to you.

Say it to me in your own words. I receive Jesus Christ fully and completely now as my savior. Thank you Jesus for saving me.

Thank you for saving me. Father I pray for the many God by faith. I know many who right now for the first time or for the first time that they really understood it. Trusted Christ as their savior. God I pray that you would give them clarity in the days to come. That they would sense this new birth and a new life that will go on into eternity that you are calling them forward to. We pray in Jesus name. In Jesus name. Amen.