LifePoint Church

The love of material things often steals our attention. This leads us to focus on growing our collection of possessions, even thinking that those items can somehow provide authentic, deep life satisfaction. And when our idea of Christmas revolves around a misplaced focus on material things, we get the wrong idea. In this message, we’ll see how God shows us that Jesus is overwhelmingly more valuable than anything else we could imagine.

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We generally associate Christmas as being a season of joy and celebration, but many of us experience deep feelings of grief and loneliness during Christmas. That grief and loneliness grows as we tell ourselves we should be feeling positive emotions instead. If that’s you or someone you know, you’re not alone in those feelings. In the Bible, we read the birth of Jesus is welcomed by the brokenhearted. This week, we’ll discover that while we may not always feel able to celebrate, we can always open our hearts to welcoming our Savior.

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The story of that very first Christmas includes chilling words for any family trying to deliver a baby: “There’s no room for you.” Truth is, that’s not the last time that sentiment would be spoken in Jesus’ direction. Life wants to crowd out Jesus. The pace. The noise. The distractions. All of it conspires to push Jesus to the fringe of our lives. Jesus is a gift to the world—or better, THE gift to the world. A gift that can easily remain boxed and wrapped if we become distracted by the noisy alternatives.

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In the second chapter of his letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul says that believers in Jesus are being built together into a holy temple in which God’s Spirit dwells. It’s a beautiful picture of unity and of believers bound together in peace. However, that unity is often marred by the walls of division we build between us. These walls are created for many reasons: family feuds, politics, race and more. Fortunately, Paul also illustrates the “tools” that can tear the walls down: humility, gentleness, love, and peace.

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Jesus is distinct from any other political leader. He is God in the flesh. He is a coming King. He will bring earthly powers into account. He will win the final victory. It’s not unusual these days to hear people ask, “Is this the end times.” Maybe. God tells us what will happen as human history draws to a close. And it’s worth being informed.

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More than almost anything else, Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God and that it was now available to everyone. He explained that those who trust Him become citizens of that Kingdom. Jesus also compared the Kingdom to a great treasure that someone would sell all they own to obtain. But what, exactly, is that treasure? We’ll discuss the treasure, what it looks like, how it affects us, and what we need to do to make it our own.

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The kingdoms and empires of this world are small compared to God’s kingdom. God’s kingdom is active now. It sometimes operates in obscurity and ordinariness. It is unseen but real nonetheless. And God invites us to participate in this kingdom—to make seeking His kingdom the priority of our lives.

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It seems clear that Jesus wants to shape culture. To ultimately transform the conscience and morality of a people. His disciples anticipated that Jesus was about to establish a political machine capable of toppling the Roman Empire. But that’s not what Jesus did. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords seems strangely apolitical. He has an agenda quite different from that of the world’s system. He is a perfectly loving and all-powerful, benevolent dictator. Vote for Jesus!

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Becoming a Christian and living as one are two different things. God refers to one as justification and the other as sanctification. We might also understand these two distinctions as finding Jesus and following Jesus. Blur this distinction between salvation and discipleship and you’ll inevitably be left with a salvation of works and many inconsistencies in understanding the text of the Scriptures. Realizing salvation is free, we are then freed-up to pay the cost of living completely for Jesus out of love and gratitude, not fear and uncertainty.

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Salvation is often viewed as a singular “event” or moment in our lives. By God’s grace, we receive salvation by believing in the death and resurrection of Jesus to save us. There is a sense in which this is absolutely true, from the moment of belief we are saved forever, but the gift of salvation is far too great to be contained in a mere moment of our lives. Salvation is meant to spill over into every facet of our lives and into the lives of those around us. It is a gift that we live in and that lives in us.

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