Good morning, everybody. I hope you're doing well. And I'm wearing red, not for the Georgia Bulldogs. I got a hand clap out of that and a lot of booze at the same time. Wow.

I know you're awake. Merry Christmas to every one of you. And I hope that you have a fantastic week, not just being with family, not just opening presents, but celebrating our Lord and master, Jesus Christ. And so I hope that you have a fantastic week doing that. As you came in today, you.

You were handed a lot of things. You should have received a study guide. You should have received a prayer card and a candle. So if you didn't receive a candle on the way in, don't worry in a little bit. When we're doing communion, you can take a moment to go grab a candle for the end of the service when we sing Silent Night and close out our service.

But I do want to point your attention to the prayer cards. The first full week of January, as we've already mentioned, we're going to be doing something new in Ebenezer called a week of prayer, or seven days of prayer. We're going to be here every morning, Monday through Friday that week, 6am to pray. Not to pray in the new year, not to commit to New Year's resolutions, but to pray. Why?

Because next year, we want to reach Stevens county with the gospel, and it starts with us, and we start with prayer. So what I want to ask you to do is each one of these cards, it says one request per card. I would love for you to give us your prayer requests. And so, I mean, don't think that you can only get one card either. There's plenty of cards that we'll have them next week and up to the day that we start the week of prayer.

But if you would today, fill this out. You can even do it when we do our communion time and come and lay it on the stage. I'm going to collect those. Keep those safe. And then during our week of prayer, we're going to pray over these.

But let's right now take a moment of prayer, and let me tell you why. We've got some folks in the hospital. Our friend Joe is there. Our friend James is there. Eli had surgery this week.

He's not here. Did you leave him on the Xbox? Julie? Okay, there's nodding yes. Hopefully he's watching, but yeah, also for Wilson, came through his back surgery and many, many others.

I'm gonna get in trouble calling out names, but can we take a moment to pray for them? Pray for those in Our church that are shut in, that can't be here for whatever reason, because we miss them and we want God to touch them where they are. Father, we love you. We ask for continued healing in the bodies of those that are sick and afflicted that can't be with us, whether that's from ailment, sickness, or whatever it may be, or because of age and can't get out. Lord, we want your presence to be with them.

We want them to have holiday cheer and joy during this season. So, Lord, I pray that you touch them this morning and continue to be with them in Jesus name, Amen. So the kids in the room wondered why I have this box, right? Does anybody want to guess what's in my box? It's my secret box.

Now, what is this? It's a present, right? It is. I got kids raising hands. This is awesome.

Y' all don't know how that lights my fire, but, you know, usually when we go and it's Christmas Day, we kind of like to take a peek inside the box because we want to know what's in there. We look for our name and we shake it. I kind of can guess my presence real easy because they usually sound like Legos, but we try to figure it out, right? Well, what makes a gift valuable? Like, if you get a gift, no matter what time of the year it is, like, what makes a gift valuable?

How many gifts you get? Or the price tag on the gift? Or is it gold or silver? Is it 10 karat, 14 karat? Is it a big old rock?

I mean, like, what makes a gift valuable? Did you know that this year the average individual will spend seven to eight hundred dollars on Christmas presents? And the National Retail Federation is predicting for the first time that holiday spending will exceed $1 trillion. We'll make Christmas great. Again, I apologize.

$1 trillion. I mean, you know, for those that watched Austin Powers, that's a whole lot more money. And some of y' all got that one, too. But does that make it valuable? I remember one of the guys in a previous church.

I'd go visit him. He was a widower, and he'd been widowed for about 15 years. And I've told some of you about Mr. John, and Mr. John always was smiling. He's like one of those guys that just. He just.

He. Even when he was sad, he was still smiling. And I went in to see Mr. John, and he began to tell me he grew up in the early 1900s, and he celebrated how at Christmas that his dad would drive up with a bag of navel oranges. And that was their Christmas. And he loved.

Was precious to him. It was valuable to him because it wasn't how many presents they got or how big those presents were. It was the thought. In fact, across America, surveys have shown that there's two reasons that rise to the surface that people value a Christmas present. One of those is the meaning behind the gift.

And the second is being surprised by the gift. In fact, one survey showed that 71% of people say that what makes a gift valuable is the thought that counts. So, you know, some of you, you may excel on the holidays, but there's other groups of you that give presents, like between holidays when they're unexpected. And that means a lot. Because that second thing, like, there's something to say about being surprised.

Unless your name is Laura Smith.

My wife can't stand the secret. Like, she's going, well, where did you buy it? How much did you spend? Did it come through Amazon? She looks at.

I mean, like, but you know what? But you know what that is? That's not impatience. That's joy. Like, I want to know what's in that box.

I want to know what I'm getting. And when you open that box and you see that someone has really personalized it. Like, we were talking about gifts, they were asking me about gifts, and I found this new T shirt company, and it's got Obi Wan Coffee Shop on it. I'm like, perfect, perfect. He has the high grounds.

That's what this shirt says. I can't tell you the other one I'm going to get. But, you know, that's the thing about gifts. But let me tell you what makes a gift a gift. A gift is the transference of ownership without compensation and without taking it.

Did you catch that? Like, if I truly am going to give a gift to somebody, I don't own it anymore. So if I give someone a gift back because they gave me a gift, it really isn't a gift.

Sometimes we feel so low about ourselves, we can't receive gifts. We feel like we owe it to somebody else. We got to buy the same thing they bought us. You following me? And it diminishes the gift.

Or the other side of that is if I take something that doesn't belong to me. What's that called? It's called robbery or taxes.

Just kidding. But a gift can't be attached to repayment, and it can't be something I just take for myself. A gift is something freely given to somebody else, and now they own it. Did Anybody get a car yet for Christmas? Is anybody getting a car for Christmas?

You know, a car doesn't belong to you until your name is on the title. A lot of us in this room don't own our cars. The bank does. And you'll soon. When you pay it off, you will have your name on the title.

So you don't own it. But that isn't the way a gift works. But I will say this. If your name is on the title and your daughters are driving the cars and they run under one of those cameras, you get the ticket. Because with ownership comes responsibility.

No, my girls have never. Wait a minute. I take that back. When Tallulah falls, put that camera in up there. I mean, it was a warning.

It wasn't a ticket.

I can't say anything right. Rick, he's shaking his head.

You know, God gave us a precious gift, and he had you on his mind.

It was a magnificent gift. The timing of the gift, perfect. Perfect. And the quality is beyond measure. David wrote in Psalm 139, how precious are your thoughts to me, O God.

How vast is the sum of them. And when Jesus sent his son, he had you on his mind. And that blows our mind. How can God have each and every one of us on his mind? But he does, because he's that big.

He had you on his mind. Paul wrote of the timing in Galatians 4:4. But when the fullness of time came, God sent his son. Perfect time. Paul later, in 2nd Corinthians, chapter 9, says, thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.

The thought behind it, the timing and the quality made it the perfect gift. And to you and me, today, he's given us this gift. I mean, Timothy's read this story, this. This narrative out of Luke 2. Wait a minute.

I need to quiz the kids. Kids, are you. Are you awake? I need to know the two books of the Bible that give us the birth narrative of Jesus, which is one of them? Matthew and Luke.

He went ahead and jumped to the second one, too.

All right, which two do not have birth narratives in them? The only two left, which is.

Yeah, y' all are so smart. You know, John gives us. I love this. We went to a concert where this guy pointed out how you've got the narrative in Matthew and Luke of Jesus coming into existence. John tells us how light has come into the world, and Mark drops us in the middle of the wilderness.

And that's where some of us have been living. We don't know the promises of God. We don't have the peace of God. And so therefore we don't have the joy of God. Can I share with you for a few minutes how this story brings us joy?

If you want to take some notes. I didn't really leave any blanks in there because I wanted you to worship today. I didn't want you scribbling. I didn't want you, like I do, dissecting Greek while I'm listening to other people. I wanted you to pay attention to the scripture.

In the first four verses of the book of Luke, it's pregnant, no pun intended. Pregnant with promise. Listen to what he said. Now, in those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus to that a census be taken of the inhabited earth. They believe it had been about 14 years.

Some scholars differ since they had done another census. And it was take the first census. This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. And everyone was in his way to register for the census, each to his own city. Now listen to it.

Joseph went up from Galilee from the city of Nazareth to Judea, the city of David, called Bethlehem. And because he was the house and the family of David. Guys, there's so much right there, so much right there that declares the specific promises of God being fulfilled. That they were under Roman occupation because they had broken the covenant of God and they were waiting for God to step in and do something. In fact, Warren Wiersbe says God had promised that the Savior would be a human, but not an angel, that he'd be a Jew, not a Gentile, that he would come from the tribe of Judah, the family of David, born of a virgin in Bethlehem, in the city of David, all in those first few verses.

And we'll gloss over that and not realize that this present that God gave us, this present was a declaration of the fulfillment of his promises.

Some of us in this room today, with precision, God brought the Savior into the world. And you know what? You're not here by accident today. God has drawn you to this place. He's speaking to your heart even now.

Some of you in this room, you've been a follower of Jesus for a long time. Some of you in this room, you don't know Jesus Christ, your Savior. And I'm telling you, the same God who orchestrated history to bring His Son in at the right time drew you here today.

And he has something to give you. He wants to give you a gift. And my question to you this morning, have you taken the gift that God has offered and made it your own in the first service I don't think she'd mind me saying this. I got to baptize one of my former students this morning, a young lady I met when she was five years old.

And you minister and you minister and you share and you share. And when they call and tell you, hey, I've accepted Jesus and I want to be baptized, will you do it? I didn't have to pray about it. I was ecstatic to hear that she had taken the gift and made it her own. Have you made the gift that God has given your own?

Because he's promised it. It's yours. But then you get down here and you get this scene with the shepherds and this angel appears and says, don't be afraid. For behold, I bring you good news of great joy. It's the same thing as if an emperor, as one scholars said if an emperor had an heir or someone was coming into the throne.

It's the same kind of pronouncement. Great joy. The Gospel has come. You see, not only do we have these promises fulfilled, we get this peace that's foretold. The shepherds were scared to death.

But I love, as we've talked about for weeks and weeks and weeks, how the shepherds bore witness to the shepherd coming into the world. Who better to come and witness the birth of Jesus? As you look at Matthew's story, this is a pet peeve of mine. When you look at Matthew's story, when the wise men, the magi, came to Herod, he looked at the scribes and the chief priests and said, can you tell me when he's supposed to come and where he's supposed to come? There is no biblical evidence that they got off their backsides and went to go find him themselves.

They were the ones that knew the promises.

Are we any different? And then you get to Luke, and this one blows my mind too. All of the descendants of David came to Bethlehem was. Where is Joseph's family? I have a theory and I'm saying it's a theory.

It's not in the scripture. But it sounds to me like they were all embarrassed because Mary got pregnant before she married Joseph. She was rejected and despised to the point that she had to go and get next to animals and have her baby. You ladies in this room, if there was a speck of dust on the room, in the floor of the room where you've birthed your babies, you'd have freaking out.

And God brought peace. 75% of the world says that peace is something to be desired and looked for. But how many of us would say in this room that there's peace in this world. I think 100% of us would say no. You know why there's not peace in this world?

Because it hasn't been conquered by the real king. Jesus came once as a baby. He's coming again. No, no, no, no, no, no. He is coming again.

And when he comes again, he will be seated on a horse according to revelation, and on his thigh will be written, king of Kings and Lord of Lords. And he will put his enemies under his footsteps, and then he will cast death, hell, sin, and the devil into the lake of fire. Hallelujah about that one.

You know how I know that? Because he promised. In fact, I love this verse. I got to go back in my notes. Warren Wiersbe said this.

If God's word controls our lives, then the events of history only help us fulfill the will of God. As he said to Jeremiah, God said, I am watching over my word to perform it. He's already spoke it, and he's bringing it to pass. And in that promise, he made peace. And so my question to you today is this.

Are you at peace with God? Are you at peace with yourself if you're not experiencing the security of the peace that you have that's outside of this world? I don't care what the president of this United States does. I don't care what world leaders are doing. I don't care about the crime around this world.

You. It will not stop until Jesus comes back. My confidence is in the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords is yours. Because that helps me that when I start getting anxious because of the things going on around me, I've got security. Knowing Jesus Christ conquers all.

How do I know that? How do I know that Jesus conquers all? Where in the world would I come up with that? Because he's the only one I know that was crucified, buried, dead, and came back to life. And because he came back to life, guess what?

He gives us the precious gift. And you know, because of that, because I have peace with God. You know what it gives me? It gives me joy. It gives me praise.

It says in there that the shepherds came and they saw Jesus and they went out and they started telling everybody.

They went out and started the first evangelist Steve might have been the shepherds. They went out and they started telling everybody, here's what happens with us. When we forget the promises of God, we lose the peace of God. My joy diminishes. And so therefore, why would I want to tell Anybody about how good God is, because honestly, in my mind, he's not.

But when I rediscover Jesus and I see how precious this gift is, how much he thought of me, to give me this gift, it will erupt joy in my life because I know that I have peace with God. And I know I have peace with God because. Because he promised. That's the Christmas message this year, and he told us how to do it. How can I have peace with God today?

How can you have peace with God today if you don't have peace with yourself? You need to start with God first. He said, if I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and I believe in my heart that God raised him from the dead, I would be saved. Saved from what? From my sin.

He said that if I listened to the message of the truth, the gospel of my salvation, and having believed that I'd be sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, very essence of the new covenant. The jailer in Philippi, after the jail cells came open, was going to take his own life. And Paul and Silas come out and say, no, no, no, no, stop. And he says, man, what must I do to be saved? And they said to believe in the Lord Jesus.

If you're not at peace with God today, if you can't find where. Where your praise and thankfulness can come, start with the gospel. Now, I'm going a little bit long. I'm going to wrap this up. I want you to look at verse 19.

Bless you.

I wonder if it was Luke sitting there with Mary. I wonder if they were sitting there. She was doing the interview because it's almost like an editorial injection right here. But Mary was treasuring all of these things. That's the word.

It's imperfect. Imperfect in grammar means that the action hasn't stopped. Was treasuring these things, pondering them in her heart. Those two words in the original language, both begin with a preposition that means with. With is an inclusive preposition.

It's an inviting preposition that as she was sitting there, she was making mental effort, treasuring to put within her treasure trove all of these tidbits about what was going on. And for you and me, what's in your treasure trove, what treasures are in your heart, what's in your storehouse, because that's the things that you then draw out of and ponder to make implications about. Well, you know the song says, mary did you know? I don't think she did.

I don't know how she could. Do you think that Mary we get these pictures on that verse where Mary's sitting in a chair and she just had a baby. She ain't sitting in no chair glowing. She in pain.

I wonder how could she sit there and think that? You know what? I'm going to watch this little boy grow up.

I'm going to watch him become a teenager, going to lose him in the temple one day. And then one day, he's going to pop up and disappear for about 40 or 50 days and come back and call all these guys to follow him. And one Passover, I'm going to watch my son get beaten to death and drag a piece of wood up on a hill, and I'm going to stand there and watch my son die. Do you think she knew that as she was treasuring and pondering things? I don't think so.

But we know, don't we? We have no excuse that God has come to offer us this gift. And my question today is if Jesus truly is the gift that was promised that would bring peace to my life, and based on that, I can have joy knowing my soul and is saved. And no matter what happens in this world, I am secure knowing that. Does it make a difference?

I bet you want to know. Kids, y' all want to know what's in my box? Anybody? Yeah, these boys over here, they've been dying to know what's in my box. Because as I said, this is the most precious gift that's ever been given.

The night before Jesus was crucified, he sat in front of his disciples as they were taking the Passover meal. And he took bread, And he said, this is my body that's broken. His body was broken. And therefore my body needs to be broken. My flesh needs to be broken.

The source of my sin needs to be broken.

And then he took the cup and he said, this isn't just any cup. This is the blood of my new covenant, my new promise that I'm making with you. That when they would sacrifice lambs, especially on Passover, they would sacrifice the lamb, and they would take that blood into the Holy of Holies and. And sprinkle it on top of the Ark of the Covenant to cover sin. And I'm telling you, the blood of Jesus doesn't just cover sin.

It washes it away. And today he's offering to you and to me, as he said in John chapter six, he says, if you abide in me and I abide in you, he says, eat my body and drink my blood. Now, we're not like other denominations. We do not believe there's anything mystical about this, but this is our declaration that we understand what Jesus did on the cross for you and for me. What?

Great. Can you tell me a present you got under your tree right now that compares to the body and the blood of Jesus? Because this is life. And outside of this life, the only thing that's left is death. So I want you to bow your heads with me right now as we get ready to serve communion.

Pam, if you want to go ahead and start playing, you won't hurt my feelings. Our pastors and deacons are going to come and get at their tables. We're going to do communion a little bit different this year, but I don't think I need to ask you to come and take communion without asking you. Do you know Jesus Christ as your savior? Do you recognize that you are lost and incapable of saving yourself?

You can't do enough, good enough. There's no righteousness in and of yourself. You can't do it. Only Jesus can. If you're here today with every head bowed, eyes closed, our guys are moving, but I'm watching.

If you're here today and you don't know Jesus, would you just put your hand up and put it back down? I just want to see. Are you sure? In your confidence, in your salvation this morning? Because if you're not, don't leave this place until you come see one of us.

Now, as we get ready to take communion, I want you to prepare your heart. Confess your sin to him first. John 1:9 said, if we confess our sin, he's faithful and just, to forgive us of our sin and cleanse us from unrighteousness. I don't want it stuck to me. I want to stand before God, clean and pure.

I can't do that. Only Jesus can. So, Father, as we're reflecting right now and we're pondering in our heart the treasure of the gift of Christ, Lord, would you speak to us in Jesus name?

So while they're taking care of the elements, is there anybody who did not get a candle? Anybody who did not get a candle? Okay, let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for the gift that you've given us. And I do.

I beg you, Lord, if somebody online or in this room has never settled that sin problem, they don't have the confidence that their sin is forgiven. They don't have peace with you, peace with themselves that erupts in praise and joy. God, I pray that today they would settle that before they leave this place. There's no greater gift that they can receive on the face of this planet than to know you in the free pardon of sin, to be saved, to be reborn again. So, Lord, we pray that you would work.

Speak to hearts, bring understanding in Jesus name. Amen.

Jesus said that he was the light of the world. He brought light into this world. He brought that not just so that we could be illuminated to know him, but to guide us and to direct us. And so as we look around, we see beautiful lights. The lights are strung in here.

These little lights are just like us. We're all just little lights displaying the true light. So I invite you to stand with me as we get ready to sing Silent Night. And if you have these prayer cards after service, would you mind just bringing them up here? Put him on the nose of the stage.

But as we sing, I want you to reflect and know that this light, the light of the world, Jesus Christ, makes the biggest difference ever. So we're going to light, we're going to pass it around and sing Silent Night in worship.

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SILENT NIGHT SING ALONG...

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Say Merry Christmas to one another. Blow your candles out on your way out, put them back in the bins, and I hope that you have a fantastic week. Thank you guys for being here.