Having an Awe-Ful Christmas

The Cabin in the Woods, anyone like that? Yeah, look at their fingernails, they're kind of like ground down a little bit. Anybody in the city, any people that went to a city? Yeah, OK, you probably need therapy. Anybody that vacations, I mean, there's something really wrong with your childhood or something, but for that moment, isn't it wonderful to think of that place where you love to go? I mean, aren't our imaginations and our memories terrific, that you can recall, you can almost feel the warm ocean breezes and the waves breaking in, and you're walking, and you can almost relive it. Isn't that great? I mean, it's one of the gifts of God, isn't it, to have a memory, to have the ability to imagine something? I just think it's something that God created us uniquely with. I don't think animals fascinate about, oh, man, I remember my last picnic. I don't think they do that. It's just people. But what if I were to ask you to transport you to a different vacation spot than you normally go to? I'll name it for you. You tell me, you imagine what it's like. It's called Nauru. Nauru, what are you imagining right now? What are you feeling right now? Not very much, because you don't even know what I'm talking about, do you? But you know what Nauru is? It's a South Pacific coral island, the richest island in the world, and it is gorgeous. But see, you didn't know that, because your imagination wasn't working well enough, because you had no frame of reference to make it work. If you don't have any idea what something's like, it's hard to imagine what it would be like to be there. And folks, that is precisely the problem with the Christmas story. We really don't have a frame of reference. We really can't imagine it, because it's not like anything we've ever experienced. In fact, the apostle Paul calls the Christmas story a mystery. Who is that lying in the manger? Who is it that over one billion people will bow down to and pay homage to on this night around the world? Who is it that continues to pique the fascination of seekers around the world 2,000 years after his birth? What does it really mean? And I'd like to answer the Christmas story mystery tonight in just seven words. I'd like to simplify it. I know it won't satisfy everybody, but it may help this whole issue of imagining what God really wants to do at Christmastime. The seven words are these, and answers, by the way, the two great needs and desires of every person in this room. No matter how far you may feel you are from God, no matter how close you may think you are, no matter how deeply you've gotten entangled in sin, or no matter how holy you may think your life is, the meaning of the Christmas mystery is this. Christ in you, the hope of glory. Let's put that up, please. Christ in you, the hope of glory. You say, well, that's just as much a mystery as anything else I've ever heard. Let me explain it to you. First of all, let me go backwards. What is glory? I mean, what is glory? That's not a word that's very common in our vocabulary. We don't use it very often. We don't talk too much about glorious things. But John said, The Word became flesh, and made His dwelling among us, and we have seen His glory. When Jesus Christ came, as I shared with you last Sunday, there was something about His presence, like one candlewatt of glory. One little expression of it. John 17, verse 4, Jesus said, I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. But yet, what is it? Well, the definition of glory is this. Glory is the distilled essence. The Greek word means the essence of life. That's glory. Glory is what makes life happen. Glory has to do with life in its most concentrated form. Jeff, hand me those two bottles, please. How many of you ... You may not want to admit this, but you bought perfume for someone tonight. How many wives bought it for yourself, because you know you're not going to get it? Why is it that some of you paid $100 or $80, perhaps, for a little tiny vial of a quarter or a half ounce of perfume, and some of you paid $6 or $8 for a big bottle like this? Why? Ladies, help me. Why? Because this is concentrated. This is the real stuff. Just a little drop of this will stay on for hours, and hopefully get the job done, right? Whereas this you can splash on, and who knows? Five minutes later, nothing's there. My wife does. Here we go. You see, the distilled essence of life, Jesus was the concentrated, life-giving source of God. All of His omnipotence, all of His power, all of His omniscience was concentrated in that one little body that we call the baby Jesus at Christmas time. He brought life. John 1 verse 4 says, "...in Him was life, and that life was the light of men." And every person that I know, including you tonight, sir, every person I know, wants to know where they can find life. Not death, not destruction, but life. What's more valuable than life? Athletes these days are getting paid enormous amounts of money. I just read of someone today that paid $50 million to throw a football. Unbelievable! But you know what? It doesn't mean anything without life, and that $50 million won't buy life. And you know what? I've discovered that every human being has a strong will to live, to experience life. Every creature does. A while back, a bird flew into our glass doors over our deck, whacked into that thing. We walked outside, and it was fluttering and struggling. And you could tell it was scared to death. And it could have been the fact that Jonathan had the cat right there, just watching him. This bird, he really wanted to make it. But the force of the impact just was too much, and I watched it expire. But I watched that bird just struggling, because every creature wants to live, wants life. And it's true not only of our physical beings. It's true of our relationships. It's true of our careers. It's true of those things which are important to us, our dreams and hopes. We say, you know, breathe life into this thing. I want to make it work. Well that's what glory is about. Jesus Christ said, I have come that they may have life and have it more abundantly. See, Jesus didn't come to make your life miserable. He didn't come to bring about a diminishing of your personhood. He came about to bring life and bring life abundantly. And you see, that's what this glory business is all about. It's the distilled essence of God. But you know what? Despite the fact that that's why Jesus came, millions of Americans tonight will come to a service like this and totally walk by the source of life, sit politely and walk out the door and miss it. They won't understand glory. They won't understand life as God intended it. You know why? Because they've never seen that distilled essence exploded. They've never seen the perfume bottle opened up wide and the essence let out. The best analogy I can think of happened about 50 years ago. A group of scientists were working on what was called the Manhattan Project. And just a few of those scientists had in their mind a clear understanding of the potential power of an atomic reaction. They knew what, in essence, they were working with. And so for about two and a half years, they worked feverishly to produce what was called an atomic bomb. Some of you were alive then, and you know this story kind of firsthand. Some of you've seen the movies and so on. But about two and a half years after they started the project, two bombs, one, actually both of them about the sizes of this podium, expanded just a little bit, two bombs called Fat Man and Little Boy were dropped over two cities in Japan. And 50 years later, every one of you who's listening to me right now have a mental image of the power that was released as that bomb went up. And what do you see right now in your mind? Yeah, you see a mushroom-shaped cloud and a giant thermonuclear heat wave going out. Why? Because that power was exploded. That which was in its essence held in these two tiny little bombs blew open. And we all know the power of that destruction. Well, you see, in the same way, but for life's sake, when Jesus Christ is exploded in His glory, we'll all see life the way God intended it. We'll all understand what that little baby was about. It'll all make sense to us, because we'll see that He's the source of life. What I shared with our church just this past weekend is that the problem is that most people don't ever get to the place of recognizing His exploded glory. But John in the book of Revelation, the same apostle that saw the one little candle of power, says this. John saw Him when the glory was exploded. Here's what he writes in Revelation 1. He says, 1. His head and his hair were white like wool, as white as snow, 2. And his eyes were blazing like fire. 3. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, 4. And his voice was like the sound of rushing waters, 5. And his face was like the sun, shining in all of its brilliance. John writes, 6. When I saw him, I felt that his feet were as though dead. And he said, 7. I am the first and the last. I am the living one. I was dead. 8. And behold, I am alive forever and ever. And I hold the keys of death and hell. And that same apostle who had once seen the distilled glory now sees it exploded, and the Bible says he was overwhelmed by what he saw. That's the glory we're talking about. That's the life that we celebrate this Christmas season. Jesus, the glory of God, made available to you and to me. And what is the hope? The second question here, what is the hope of glory? Well, dear ones, is there anyone in the room tonight that doesn't hope for something, hope that somehow fear and death and destruction won't overwhelm something that's important in your life? There are some tonight who are concerned. There's fear. And you know what? Fear is the calling card of death. Fear is the calling card of death. Fear is what precedes death. I'm not just talking about physical death. Some of you tonight, I had a man say to me, you know, I worked in a particular company, a particular job for 21 years, and I found out last week, before the holiday, that they were terminating my position, and me. And he said, I'm afraid. You see, what he's afraid of is that somehow death and destruction will now be impossible for him to overcome in finding a new career. He's afraid, you see. The calling card was laid on his desk. And some of you here tonight, there's fear of a relationship that's gone south, and you're not going to be able to turn it around, a marriage perhaps, a son or a daughter. Some of you are experiencing physical fear, because something's happening in your body that's never been there before, and you're wondering, what is this? And you're wondering, is death at work? And you know what, folks? Bad news. Every one of us have that working in our physical bodies. But fear rises to crush the hopes that anything good will come out of these situations, unless we see the exploded glory of God in Jesus Christ, who came to bring life. And we hear His voice saying, No more will I allow death to rule in your life. No more need you fear that death and destruction will overpower my plans and purposes, because I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly. And you want to know when Christmas becomes really exciting, is when you know that the hope of glory, the hope of life, is inside of you. Christ in you. You see, this is the final point. What's so difficult today is, folks, that many people are looking for answers to life. They're looking for glory, if you will, outside of themselves. They're looking for an answer to what will make life make sense, and they can't find it. Man's attempts at glory always fade. Jordan, Johnson, and Byrd will 10 years from now be considered, by some young person, a law firm, instead of the three greatest basketball players of the 80s. I wonder if Michael Jackson really ever thought that his glory would fade as quickly as it has. You see, money doesn't bring glory. Fame doesn't bring glory. Power is not glory. All the values that we tend to cherish in this culture are only an illusion of real glory, of real life. In fact, I've discovered that money and power and fame are actually the opposite things to what brings the glory of God. In fact, I've found that when there's a power struggle, when there is an issue of who's going to be first, when there's an issue of who's got the most money, God is rarely there. He usually doesn't even show up in an argument like that. Rather, you see, that's what Bethlehem, that's what the manger and the stable are about. God comes when there's humility, when there's a laying down of power and fame and strength of self. God's saying, Life, glory, all of it doesn't come the way you think it would. It's never external. It's always on the inside, Christ in you, the hope of glory. And that's my final question for you tonight. What about your heart? Do you know tonight where life is going to come from for you? What's your hope of glory? What's your hope of life, if not Christ? It's very possible that another Christmas will come and go. Maybe it's your 10th. Maybe it's your 50th or 70th. Maybe you'll be able to walk out and say proudly, Well, I outlasted another minister, another message, another gathering of the family, making me go to church. And maybe you can leave tonight and feel absolutely nothing. But you want to know why that probably is? Because your heart is stone cold. You're not interested in changing. You don't really care very much about sacrifice or love or giving, because really your life is still just kind of circled around you. And when you think about God and holiness, it's all just religion and church, and it doesn't make any sense. Because you see, your only image of Jesus Christ is a baby in a box, not the exploded glory of the King of kings and the Lord of lords. One day you will stand in His presence. One day you will be able to see for yourself face to face that He is the glory of God, the essence of life. Dear one, I'm sure that you're just as mystified as everyone else in this nation. What's the answer to our problems? Is it more police on the streets? Is it more economic programs and taxes that will help to raise funds for more of this's and that's? Is it new social policies? Is it legalization of everything that's illegal, so nothing will be illegal anymore? No, I don't think so. I think the only answer to our nation's problems is spiritual. It's Christ in us, the hope of glory. And what you need tonight, friend, is this. You need to know in your heart that God is real. You need to know if Christ is there. Is He in you as the hope of glory? Are you real with Him? I'm not asking you, do you go to church? I'm not asking you, are you a good person? But is Christ real? Father Brennan Manning, who is a Catholic priest, tells this story. He tells of one night, rather late, a knock happening at his door, and a young woman came and said, Father Manning, will you come? My dad is dying. Would you come and pray with him? Father Manning says, Of course I will. And so he left his home, and he went with the woman, and he found the man in his bedroom, just a simple plain bed and a little wooden chair in the room, next to the bed. And as the priest walked to sit down in the chair, the older ailing gentleman kind of motioned him around to the other side of the bed. Then Father Manning began to talk to him a little bit and to converse. Here's what the man said. He said, Well, you know, Father Manning, I just wanted to talk to a priest, because I've been a Christian for a few years, but I've never seemed to be able to pray very well. And I wondered if I ever would get through to God. And he said, One day a friend of mine told me that maybe it would just help if I imagine God, Jesus, sitting in this chair. And so, Father Manning, for the last couple of months, I've just been sitting here in my bed talking to Jesus in that chair, just kind of telling him how I feel and telling him I'm lonely and I've been talking to him about my fears about dying. And Father Manning, I just want to know before I do pass away, is it okay to relate to God like this? And Father Manning looked over and he said, You know, I think God is very pleased with what you're doing. I mean, I think that's what it means to know God in your heart. Well, a few days later, Brendan Manning got a phone call from the young woman, and she said, My dad passed away. Father Manning consoled her and comforted her for a couple of minutes. And then she said, You know, just before I hang out, one last thing, the strangest thing, she said, When I found my father dead, he'd gotten out of his bed and he knelt down, and he was lying with his head on that chair. The strangest thing. Where is Jesus tonight? Are you close to him? Is he in your life? Is he the hope of glory for you? Do you know him? Can you lay your head on his lap and say, Daddy God? You know, our problem is that we just don't get it, because God didn't do it the way we would. He figured a way that man would never think of to save the world. I want us to pray now, and then listen as David McAfee sings a song that really says tonight, this is a strange way to save the world. Let's bow, please, in prayer. Lord, thank you so much for your presence in this place tonight. And thank you that we can know you inside as the hope of glory.