Audio Transcript:

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I'm going to read from Acts 3:17-26. This is not the most Christmas-y passage, but it comes in the time of Pentecost after Jesus has died and resurrected and ascended into heaven. The spirit descends upon the apostles and they begin teaching about God. Where do they go first? They go to the Jews, who missed that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, the anointed one. The apostles heal a man who's been lame his whole life and he begins leaping and walking and it's drawing attention to the crowd, so this is the sermon that Peter delivers to that crowd.

Acts 3:17-26, "And now brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers, but what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent, therefore, and turn back that your sins may be blotted out. The times of refresh may come from the presence of the Lord and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his Holy prophets long ago. Moses said, 'The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him and whatever he tells you. And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people. And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaim these days.

You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, "And in your offspring shall all the families of the Earth be blessed." God having raised up his servant, sent him to you first. To bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.'" Please, this is the word of God. Please join me in prayer. Lord, since the fall, it's inherent in our nature to question your authority, to question our need for you in our lives, to question just the use of your word, your direction, towards us. We want to be independent from you, Lord. Even those of us who know we're saved by grace through faith, we have a tendency to want to stray, to lean on our own strength, to push forward to find meaning and things that are not you. But Lord, we realize that that is impossible and today we repent of the tendency to just want to be autonomous, to be separate from you, to take pride in our own actions and strength.

Lord we pray, Holy spirit, convict us of our need for your word in our life. Let it fill and satiate our soul. Bring us refreshment today through your word. I pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Today, we are in our second week of advent. We did not make it easy for ourselves as pastors and staff this year. We're doing some theology, some Christology. Every year that we choose a theme to cover for advent. We're talking about just the man, Jesus Christ. Last week we talked about Jesus, how he was the Messiah and he needed to be God and man, and what that meant for us. This week we're talking about Jesus as prophet, next week, priest and the week after, King. The name Messiah, the name Christ, has requirements to it. And that's that Jesus, it says Jesus was the fulfillment of the scriptures and he fulfilled these roles as prophet, priest, and King. And so, today, I want to explain to you, what does it mean that Jesus was our prophet, and what does that mean for our lives?

To start, I want to just emphasize, what is advent? I think this is a good starting point. I grew up in church. Every week we lit four candles, at the center was the Jesus candle. That's about all I remember. I didn't learn much about the meeting, so advent is a season where God's people, Christians, wait for the return of Christ in glory to consummate his eternal kingdom. Why do we do this? We do this because, the church is in a similar situation to Israel at the end of the old Testament. We're in exile, we're waiting and hoping and expect prayerful expectation for the coming Messiah to come back to make all things new. Why do we do this? Israel looked back to God's past actions when he freed them in the Exodus from Egypt while they looked ahead for the first coming of Christ. In the same way that church during advent, we've looked back upon Christ first coming, his incarnation, and we do celebrate that, but at the same time we look forward in anticipation and longing that he is going to fulfill those promises, that he's going to come back.

Advent is a period of tension. The song that really captures it is, "Oh come, Oh come, Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here until the son of God appears. Rejoice, rejoice, Emanuel shall come through thee, oh Israel." On one end, it's a solemn period in the sense that, we are waiting for Christ's return. If you just can think of the old Testament community, those faithful, the remnant Jews just waiting, "Is God actually going to deliver on this promise?" The prophets have stopped speaking, the presence of God is not at the temple. Is the Messiah ever going to come? They had said, "Okay, he came, he freed us from Egypt." Now, we as Christians, we look back. Christ didn't come. We're waiting for him to come. The hard part about celebrating, acknowledging the advent in our culture is that, we have Thanksgiving and then immediately Christmas starts.

I think I heard Christmas music actually in October this year and, the whole period, instead of this period with a bit of solemnity mixed with joy, there is hope, it just becomes this busy season of party after party. Church gathering after church gathering, work, our jobs celebrate Christmas and the new year. A lot of time we're busy, we have a lot of excitement. By the time we get to Christmas, Christmas is supposed to be that point, the solemnity goes away. Jesus Christ has come. We sing joy to the world with full authority but, ironically, Christmas is that time where we feel the most loneliness. We feel isolation. Joy, peace on earth, Goodwill to men, are you serious? I have to spend the week with my in-laws. I have to spend the week with my parents who are going to remind me of my singleness and my childlessness. Cousin Eddy and his kids and his RV are going to be here freeloading for a week. God, help me more than ever. Give me your presence more than ever in this period.

And so, we kind of have reverse. Advent's full of hype, full of emotion, full of excitement. Christmas, just the way it tends to go. We feel this deep isolation. What does that look like for some people? Some people don't actually get to take off from work. They look at everybody else celebrate and they don't get that. That's really isolating. Some people don't have friends or family and they see everybody else gathered. They feel the loneliness. Some of us are crippled on the holidays just thinking of just people that have died recently that were close to us, relationships that have ended. Even if we have time with our large families, a lot of us when we spend that time, we realize we don't even know the people that were spending time with. How do I not know my parents anymore? I used to spend all this time with them. Even spouses, you get to a point where you are spending time with each other in an extended fashion for maybe one of two or three times throughout the year, and you're like, "I don't even know you. What do we do together? How do I interact?"

It's just, you either just ignore it or there's a lot of explosion and just that feeling of isolation. Contrastingly, the holidays can be great. We do spend that time with others. We feel this sense of joy just being surrounded in a community of love, of talking, being heard, knowing and being known. What I want to emphasize here is that, there's something inherent in our nature that the holidays bring out. That we want to be heard and we need somebody to talk back. That's a part of our nature. It's a part of the way we were created. That's essentially what Christmas is about. Man needs God. He needs God's direction in life. Adam walked in the garden, he needed God to guide him, to help him to interpret the world around him before he fell and Adam sins. We need a means to have that connection with God again. How does God do that? He comes in the form of a baby and provides that.

But just thinking about the tension, whether the extreme loneliness and isolation you associate, the extreme joy and bliss that you feel at Christmas. It tells us something about ourselves and I'd argued today, this is, these emotions that are exacerbated by Christmas, they show us our need for Jesus as our prophet, somebody who talks to us and somebody who we need to respond to. I'm going to make three points today. Jesus, our prophet, is the source of truth, source of meaning and the source of freedom. Just very simply, I want to speed through Jesus as our prophet. He is the source of truth. Verse 18 and 22, tell us that Jesus is a prophet, "They tell us that Jesus is a prophet, but what God we're foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ would suffer, he's thus fulfilled."

Moses said, "The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him and whatever he tells you, and it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people." So Jesus is a prophet. All the prophets were pointing to him. I just want to clarify from the front, we're not going to get into mystical prophecy talk today. Just basic definition of a prophet. Pro, for me, it means, the roots of the word means before speak. We're not talking necessarily about something that will happen in the future in detail today. A prophet, before anything, was a spokesman before God. An example of this from scripture is, that just clarifies my point is, it comes from Exodus seven. The relationship that Moses and Aaron had, that God appointed.

God told Moses, "See, I've made you, Moses, like God to Pharaoh and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of this land. Aaron was the prophet that spoke with the authority of Moses. Moses got everything from God himself. And so, prophets, they did tend to have a foretelling meaning, a prophetic ability to speak about the future, but they also had this forth-telling in a similar sense that they were like preachers of their day. They're inspired by the Holy Spirit. One thing to think about prophecy is that they didn't just speak from their own minds, their own opinion, their own state of consciousness, they spoke from, the way they finished or began their words were "thus sayeth the Lord." What they said was what God says.

And so, Jesus came into the world and he did function as a prophet. He represented the father, John 15:15, "But I've called you friends for all that I've heard from my father. I've made known to you." Jesus gave us the scriptures in order that we might believe and have life. But these, the scriptures, are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. We need, going back to Adam in the garden, God gives us general revelation. All people are image bearers of God. We can look at the world around us and we can discern through beauty, through majesty, through the way of simple equations, explain how the world works. We can know that there is a God, but we need special revelation.

We need God to speak to us, to tell us the means to have peace with him, and that was the way in the garden. Adam always had a communication or relationship with God. Jesus is still prophet, just to finish the theology of it all. Jesus is still serving in this office. He provides for the building up of the body of the church today, and he sends the Holy Spirit to equip the church to do the work of the ministry. This is Ephesians, "And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all tend to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son God. "To mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. So that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes."

So Jesus came, he was a prophet, he is our prophet, and he spoke with the same authority as the prophets of old. Said thus sayeth the Lord. This is the word of God and just this idea that this is the word of God, Christianity says we have the source of absolute truth. Why do I need to harp on this right now? Because, there's a lot of people you talk to, even in our church, that say like, "This truth, I like that it's good for you, maybe not for me." I talked to a girl recently who was in a religion 101 class and she had to interview a religious professional and she said this, "Thank you for telling me about this. I'm glad that this is the truth for you." As Christians, we don't have to fight back, but we should explain, we don't view ourselves as one truth. One means to God amongst many other. We believe that Jesus came and taught us the truth and he speaks to us through scripture and he, in fact, spoke in his physical presence to us.

There is, I just want to dig into it, there are a lot of different forms of opposition to this stance that Christians have, that we have the absolute truth and we don't hold it over other people in disrespect. But we need to know how to engage these arguments and just locally, two of the primary just challenges to the authority of God's word are science and new age spirituality. Science, This isn't something new. It says, we've learned more and more about the natural world. We don't need religion anymore to fill in the spaces. We just accept that we are formed by a random crash of molecules and we take what we learn from it. We take those laws and we just accept our state of meaninglessness. But the challenge of science is weakening. There's a new book, Rebecca McLaughlin wrote it called, Confronting Christianity. She gives a whole list of current MIT professors who are Christian.

She goes in detail about Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, the National Institutes of Health, his conversion to Christianity after not growing up Christian. Basically, there is a lot of people in science saying that science is limited. It can only speak into things pertaining to science. A quote from Rebecca says, "Science has a place, a vital one in modern society. We can all benefit from the knowledge we have gained through the scientific method, first devised by Christian scholars." Of Christians. Were not saying, "Stop listening to science." We're saying, "Look at it from the proper lens. Science is good." At Mosaic, and if you go through the books of our members, a huge percentage of people are scientists.

"But if we elevate scientific truth above all other kinds, and believe that the scientific script rules out other stories, we have no grounds for morality and no basis for rebelling against our genes. We are bags of cells and waste with an expiration day, and it doesn't mean anything. And so, we as humans, we believe in these ideals of love and justice and mercy, and it doesn't check with our nature to view ourselves in the way that science does." So the argument of science has shaken, but there's a new challenger here and, especially here in Brookline and Boston, that's new age spirituality, this consciousness movement. It's starts with the opposite. God is in all of us. Bring out the God within you. What can one do to obtain different levels of consciousness and perspective? What are those spiritual-physical experiences, yoga experiences, chemically-induced travel and intellectual experiences of which you post photos of on social media. That help you become or ascend the better version of yourself. It's just confusing.

We live in this age of science, but now there's this trend towards spirituality. Pew Research Center released the results of a survey in 2017 that concluded that about a quarter of U.S. adults, 27%, now say they think of themselves as spiritual but not religious. That percentage is up eight percentage points in five years. That's quite a leap. How do I know that this is a movement, and it's dangerous to Christianity because there's a spirituality, but it's still rejecting the authority of a sovereign God. We have two yoga studios, three to four blocks this way, three up the road at Coolidge corner. There's six in Brookline village. I don't know about, you when I drive here in the morning, there are just people pouring through those doors, and it's all day into the evening. The church I grew up in, I get Facebook invites for yoga classes there.

Is the challenge on Christianity as blatant as science? No. Here's what this challenge typically sounds like. I'm quoting from a website for January 1st, "Kick Off Your Year Right event. After staying out late on New Year's Eve, sleeping in and going to the brunch in the South end, at two o'clock you can attend an event called Renew To Be You: Connect, Inspire, Uplift. The workshop. We'll begin with a reflection on what has passed to release old ways of being and tap into untapped potential. We will then flow through a heart-opening vinyasa class, incorporating pranayama mantra to connect and unite the breath, mind, body, and spirit. We will end with a guided visualization to help you see and realize the dreams in your heart. Following this movement practice will put pen to paper and set some intentions for the new year to come."

It's talking about this practice of emptying yourself to allow for new, as you ascend to a different level of consciousness or try to force yourself to that point, this new vision for your life. That's the opposite of what scripture says. Scripture says, "Be filled with the spirit." Open your Bible every day to try to know the will of God. Be careful when you open your heart, open your mind, to be filled after you empty yourself. You are susceptible. Christianity says, "Susceptible to spirits that are antagonistic." That know God and reject him and they're trying to recruit you to his side. We live in this age where truth is being attacked on all fronts, and we have several sermons on this if you dig the Mosaic history. The confusing thing is that both of these do attack just this idea that, when I wake up in the morning, I answer to somebody. I answer to God. It's rarely just one of these two. I think there's science and then there's this mysticism, the spirituality, coming from Eastern influence on our society. And the movie Avengers, Endgame, shows this.

If you haven't seen the movie, you've had enough time, but Thanos, the villain, who at the snap of fingers has the ability to decide who survives and who does not. He seemingly beats the Avengers and, what does he do after this big fight that lasts several movies? He goes into a garden and lives in a shack with a nice fireplace that takes us back to the imagery of the garden of Eden and all of a sudden the Avengers do show up. It's mutated animals. It's scientifically, genetically-modified humans. It's these better versions of ourselves that show up and they take Thanos down in that moment. That doesn't give away the whole movie, but it's not just the scientific influence, it's Dr. Strange, the Eastern mystic, was crucial in taking down Thanos. And so, this is creeping into our society.

This view that science, that mysticism can fill this hole for a gap of truth. But Christianity just says, no, to that. We get applications to Mosaic saying like, "I want to become a member because this is the truth that is for me." That is not the Christian stance. We say this is the truth for everybody. Everybody, the greatest news they could hear is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The prophets, you think of the prophets back in the day. Elijah faces the prophets of Baal. Did he just say, "Oh, you guys are right. Let's sit down and have a Ted circle"? He said like, "Let's throw it down, my God versus yours." Now, we don't do that in an active sense. We're not there walking on the streets fighting people, trying to call God down to bring fire on people. We trust in the Holy spirit.

We trust in God's great justice that he will bring when he comes back to make all things new, but we stand on this truth, and Jesus stood on this truth. There's no way around that, and just, I want to emphasize, truth is not something that is inside of us. It's outside of us. It's not this New Age Movement that says that we have it within us, we just need to bring it out. This need for truth outside of us has been the case since the garden of Eden. Theologian Richard Gamble says this, "Well, Adam was dependent on God for his understanding of general revelation before the fall. Pre-lapsarian, pre-fall Adam, was not to understand God's creation by observation and experimentation alone, but was to work in conjunction with God's supernatural communications to him.

Like us, Adam was not merely to observe and interpret the world. Unlike us, however, Adam was able to receive the precise meaning of all creation directly from the artist and architect himself. Today, we also turn to the artist to interpret his beautiful creation, but must turn to God's self-revelation in scripture to accomplish this task. God was present with Adam from the very beginning. Adam's first experiences were connected to hearing God's word. God's command, his law to Adam and Eve, was meant to determine the course of their lives. It gave them their understanding of themselves." So the Bible doesn't talk about truth of scientific facts. It doesn't talk about subjective experience being the determining factor of truth, it talks about absolute truth that comes through embracing that we are created beings in need of direction, the source of truth, our creator.

And so, Jesus Christ is the prophet that preaches that truth. He did that in his life. Point two though, Jesus was more than just a prophet. I want to build on this. Jesus our prophet is the source of meaning, and so just want to look, emphasis is on all in these verses. "But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. And all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and those who came after him also proclaim these days of Christ." The emphasis is on all, all of the prophets spoke of this coming, this Messiah, this man Jesus Christ. There's something special, God is speaking in a way through Christ that he never spoke before. I want to go through a couple of verses that also emphasizes and explain a little bit more.

Hebrews 1:1-3, "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son whom he appointed the heir of all things through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. He used to speak through the prophets now, but now he speaks through the son again." I just want to read one more passage. John 1, "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life and then the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it."

Verse 14, "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the father full of grace and truth." A lot of verses. These are to emphasize, Jesus doesn't just bring the word, he is God's word. And there's something special about him coming. It's not just the words that he said, it's the way he lived his life, who he was, was an expression of who God is. To understand this, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God, we can use it to explain, Jesus was the creator. Part of the Trinity was with God when he created the heavens and the earth, but John here, he's also in a day influenced by Greek thinkers. In the beginning was the word, logos. Logos is a word that had implications for people of that culture at that time. Greeks were looking for centuries for this principle of the logos. Logos would be the thing, it was the central principle that all of life was going towards and it would explain meaning.

It would give life meaning if we could understand it. John here, he knows that. He's not saying Jesus ... The Greek culture, they fluctuated. How do we find meaning? You look at the history of their culture. It was through asceticism, living mystical lives, seeking wisdom, trying to understand the soul on one side, and they had generations of that. They had other generations that said, "Eat, drink, be merry like true materialists," and they didn't find satisfaction. Ultimately, you see, they were able to accomplish a lot to civilize the world, but ultimately, their power structures fell down. They didn't have God to clarify, it's the unity of the spiritual and the material that we both need and Jesus Christ provides meaning for both. He is the unity of the spiritual and physical. He is the logos, and he's the exact imprint of God's glory in this life.

And so, we have these abstract standards of love and joy and mercy, and they are without definition until we actually see Jesus came and he was the embodiment of those things. So, how do you find logos? How do you find meaning in your life? We place our faith in the prophet, verse 18, "But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent, therefore, and turn back that your sins may be blotted out. That times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus." This author's saying that the Greeks, their culture never settled. They never had a reason to promote that asceticism, never had a reason to promote that materialism. Actually, both the material and the spiritual matter and the way that we find meaning is living for this creator, Jesus.

He's the one we were created by, the one we were created for. And so, when we place our faith in the fact that he suffered for us, we can have meaning. We can have purpose. We can see God for who he is, see the world properly. And so, the best way to really understand this though, is to think of the ... For those who are skeptics, who are atheists, who are true materialists, all that we have is this world. This material, and we're sacks of cells. You're saying you do not have a logos. There's no source of meaning. Your world is unintelligible. If you're not an image bearer of God with a soul as different from all of the animals around us, God breathed life into men, you don't know who you are. You don't know where you came from, how to get rid of the guilt that you have or even understand why you experience guilt in this life and, how do you get rid of that guilt?

You can do that by trying to create your own logos, create your own meaning and relationships and looks, money, accolades, children, whatever it is, but everything is going to crumble. They're not substantial grounds to stand on. Also, your position says, we can't speak to each other. What does that mean? Like John Lennon, some people might think all we need is love. What is love if not defined by an absolute standard? And so, you spread this message of love and you get that message in some experience that raises your consciousness. Maybe someone else has an experience that raises their consciousness and they say, "In order for the world to have peace, for the world to flourish, for us humans to have joy, we need to eradicate the lands of this specific people group."

Your communication has no meaning in the sense that you have no standard to appeal to. Neither side can say what is right and what is wrong. And so, CS Lewis, he took this view. He was an atheist before he became Christian and he wrote about where he was. "My argument against God was that the universe seems so cruel and unjust, but how had I got this idea of just an unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. "What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show is bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be a part of the show, find myself in such a violent reaction against it? Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own, but if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too.

For the argument depended on saying the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus, in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist, in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless, I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality, namely my idea of justice, was full of sense. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning. Just as if there were no light in the universe and, therefore, no creatures with eyes, we should never have known it was dark. Dark would be without meaning." Some of you just resist Christianity because you take the sense, you think about suffering and evil and death in this world and you view them as, you say, "It's not fair. It's cruel, but you're appealing to standards and understandings of what is good and fair and just that are your own.

If you don't have a God, you don't have a basis to express this anger, this frustration towards God. But Christians, we do have a reason. Jesus is our rock and we normally talk about that in an emotional sense. Like, he gets us through those hard times, and that's true. We need to turn to Jesus. We need to listen to worship songs when our emotions are pouring out, but Jesus is also as our prophet who comes in, not just brings the truth, but as the truth. He's our grounds for having confidence that we can stand on being Christian intellectually. We can say what is right and what is wrong and not being consistent with our beliefs. We can preach the gospel with confidence. We can hold each other accountable. We find our meaning, our logos, in serving the one who created us.

We serve the church. We love those in the church. We have a reason to do all of this and, you get rid of God, there's no point doing it all. If God's ever proven false, we shouldn't be here. But if you don't have this view, you have no reason to hold anybody accountable to any form of morality. People in Boston are really difficult. The locals, you've survived this cold, you've survived these rising rental prices, you've built up resilience. You say like, I don't ..." You resist this need, this pull towards God that is on your soul. If life is meaningless, like, "I'm okay." Transplants, you are people who made it somewhere. You've been able to just climb the different echelons in your career. You've had success, you've had relationships, you're building the family and you're saying like, "If life is meaningless, it doesn't matter. I'm okay." But scripture says you take that view, eventually, Christ is the rock you need to build on, all other ground is sinking sand.

If you really are a child of God and you start placing any of these experiences, these relationships, these things to give you meaning, he's just going to be painfully strip those from you until you give him the worship that he desires. So Jesus gives us meaning. Finally, Jesus, our prophet is a source of freedom. Verse 19. "Repent, therefore, and turn back that your sins may be blotted out. That times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus." I love that word, refreshing. That's like, who here needs refreshment today? If you live in Boston, you need it all the time. This is such a good word. If I could describe my life before I became Christian, it would be, "I'm tired." it was five years of living in an inconsistent manner as a "Christian." The question was like, "Andy, how are you?" "I'm tired. I'm tired. I'm just tired." This is the talk of people in despair. I'd went through every method.

In college, I went to the counselors. I tried to build my identity, find fulfillment, find meaning as an athlete, as a student, through relationships, through accomplishments, nothing landed. The last thing I wanted to do was to actually, I knew the gospel. I knew it well enough. The last thing I want to, like when I'm mad, I want to get mad at ... When I'm bitter in a bad mood, not filling my mind with the word, I want to look at my church that I grew up and say, "Man, you didn't teach me that gospel good enough." But I knew it. What I resisted was submitting my ... While I tried out all those other methods, I just didn't want to submit my life to God, submit my life to his word. I knew he offered freedom, but I didn't want to give up the sin in my life. These idols I had in my life.

So, we get refreshment when we come, we say, "God, I believe your word. Jesus, You are my savior." We get refreshment when our sins are blotted out, when we realize that Jesus dying on the cross, he washed our sins white as snow. That's what refreshment is. And so, some people they, the truths of scripture, Jesus appeals to them, but you're just resisting. You don't want to give up those things that you're clinging to. You know God is going to ask you to repent, turn away from some things, turn towards some behaviors and actions. He's going to ask you to spend time in community to share your fears, share your worries, share your triumphs, share your failures, share your sins, spend time with the stinky people and people who look different than you, and you're just resisting.

God offers us refreshment. Proverbs 3:5-8, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and turn away from evil." Here's the best part, "It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones." I want that. Who does not want that? Why resist? Does that simple short-term pleasure, is that worth this healing to our bones and human to refresh, or refreshment to our bones? Is that not better than just that thing that you're clinging to? A famous author of the 20th century was, he was at least honest.

He said, "For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of the system claim that it embodied the meaning, the Christian meaning they insisted of the world. There is one admittedly simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt. We would deny that the world had any meaning whatever." Now, I don't know if he was taught a poor presentation. The Bible says sex is good within the confines of marriage between a man and a woman.

I don't know if he ever learned that view in several periods of the last century where sex was taught wrongly, but he's an extreme example of somebody who has clung to, clung to something. He knowingly pushed against the word of God, and so, what is it for you? I asked, what is freedom? Freedom is typically viewed as the lack of any restraint. To be able to do what we, want when we want. That's how it's defined in our world, but just look at the world. What is freedom? When I write my sermons, I have a public room in the building I live in, I live downtown. I just see, literally a minute after minute, these giant airplanes taking off and they're coming towards the skyscrapers of downtown and they're turning and they're veering away. And it's just thousands of pounds of metal in the air with just chemicals that could just explode if not handled properly. I'm like, "How does that work?" Somebody observed the laws of aerodynamics and that's what enables the plane to take off.

We as humans are no different. We find freedom when we live under the structures that God created us to live under, and that goes back to Adam in the garden. Adam, you have freedom to live in the garden of Eden. Do what you want, but don't eat from this one tree. Adam had to give it to God that God was God, Adam was the creature. Adam was dependent on God's instruction, God's word in his life. Freedom, as a Christian, when we live under God's design, we live under his word. We treat it as the absolute truth that we should follow. We don't do it in spite, not religiously, not Pharisaically. We do it out of gratitude for what Christ has done for us. When we understand that, we get to become the person we are created to be. People ask me, "Why would you go to ministry?" Honestly, I just think I'm doing the thing that God created me to be. I saw myself, as I took different steps in the church, I saw myself fulfilling my potential, and other people were affirming that. like, "What is that for you?"

If you're not submitting your life to God, you can't see the world properly. You can't see your life properly. Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire, regarded as the best sports movie ever by many. He said, "When I run," his sister is yelling at him for not going to China, not leaving Scotland to go to China after he's qualified for the Olympic games. He eventually goes on to win a gold medal. He responds to his sister, and he says, "When I run, I feel God's pleasure." When we submit to the Lord in gratitude and thankfulness for the fact that we had a single problem, our sin, that prevented us from getting access to God. We believe that God came into this world as a baby and he lived the life we didn't live, died the death we deserve, conquered the penalty for sin once and for all, we can have freedom in him. Some of you push, you're pushing against just God's truth. You're trying to define it on yourself.

Your journey towards becoming a person you were created to be was taking God's truth and seeing them. This is the truth that I need to surround my life around. Some of you are just, again, you're angry at God. You think, "This is not right. There's suffering, there's evil. Now, God, how could this be a part of your plan? This is unjust." You want to shed this influence of God on your life, but you have no means to do that. There's no meaning to your argument if there aren't standards given by God. We might not ever understand why things in this life happened the way that we do, but the fact that God came into this world to care for our problem of sin, to address it, to give us access to him, to be able to receive his instruction, it shows us that the answer can't be that he doesn't care.

Some of you, you want freedom. You might come to church and you come around the holidays. Every once in a while you read a spiritual book. You pray when things get hard, but you've never said like, "God, I submit my life to you. Thank you for sending Jesus. Thank you for taking the punishment I deserve. I submit my life to you." You just don't know this freedom. You have to surrender all of yourself and, how are you sustained in this life, you go to the gospel each day. This Christmas story, my struggle with Christmas is that we feel this tension. We need to be waking up every morning and just filling our minds with the word of God that we needed. Our sin was so bad that he had to send a baby to come save us. I don't understand the holidays because, I was so convicted of my sin at one point, and my need for Christ, and resounded in the freedom of that, that I just don't ...

Fortunately, by God's grace, I'm growing to the point I don't need the holidays for that strong reminder. That should be all of us. How are we sustained? We wake up, we fill our mind with the gospel. The message that the prophets proclaimed in the old Testament and on throughout the new. Jesus is the means for our salvation. We have this free gift of grace from God and one day he will return to come and make all things new. We need to fill our minds with that every day, "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free."

Please join me in prayer. Lord, we repent of attempting to assert our authority from you. We repent of saying we don't need you. We repent of anger and angst towards you that was baseless and not justified. Lord, we know that in coming in the form of Jesus Christ, you do care for us. We know that Jesus Christ was given all authority on heaven and earth and his promises will be fulfilled. He will return one day. Lord, as we live in this tension where you've already won the battle to establish your kingdom, Lord, sustain us as we wait the day that you return and just reign in full. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.