[00:00:01] Welcome to the River Church podcast. We're all about bringing the life, hope and love of Jesus to everyone around us. For more information, check out our
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[00:00:18] Lots, lots of chatter, lots of chatter.
[00:00:24] I do want to get some answers very quickly, but before this, I'm going to say a little bit of a controversial statement we said about what Christmas is all about.
[00:00:32] I think controversial. I think Christmas is all about gifts.
[00:00:38] Oh, now, you might not expect me to say that. Okay, we're going to come back to it, I promise. Otherwise I'll get kicked out of the church and it won't be good.
[00:00:45] If you could have any gift this Christmas, what would it be? Go on, shout out. Nice and quick.
[00:00:51] Sleep. Yes. Amen, sister. Come on.
[00:00:54] Who else says that? Come on. Sleep, isn't it? What else?
[00:00:59] Early retirement. Hey, hey. If we can do it, let's do it.
[00:01:04] The grace of God. Oh, there's always one, isn't there? There's always one in the group and yes, yes, the grace of God. Absolutely. Kids, kids, you're here. What about you guys?
[00:01:17] Lego. Good shout. That was a very deep voiced kid there. But yes, Lego. Okay. Do you know what? Some people would go big. They'd have a holiday, they'd have a cruise, proper adventure. Maybe you'd have Lego, maybe a Ca camera or a Nintendo Switch. I think in our household, Ezra would be happy as long as it's got a box that he can work with. He's got Bluey, he's got Paw Patrol, anything like that.
[00:01:40] And as. Yes, yes. Oh, so true. A night's sleep would just be gorgeous, wouldn't it?
[00:01:46] When I was 6, I really wanted. In fact, the only thing I wanted more than anything, I wanted this.
[00:01:54] I wanted a Mr. Frosty. Yes. See, you know, don't you? You know, you feel it. I wanted that. I really wanted. I loved it. I wanted it so badly. I remember. Do you remember the song? Do you remember the song? Mr. Frosty is such fun. He makes treats for everyone now with new eye shapers. You know, just. It's born into my brain, that one. Now. I didn't get it.
[00:02:16] Thank you. Thank you for just acknowledging my feelings. I really appreciate that. That was really good. But don't be too sad. My parents are very generous. They got me other bits. I have healed now, but years later, Abby and I got together and this came up in conversation.
[00:02:31] And then one Christmas, that following Christmas, I got this lovely big box.
[00:02:35] I know. And I opened it and there it was, my Mr. Frosty.
[00:02:41] What a woman she is. What a woman. I think she's in question at the moment, so give her a big cheer if you want to. Yes.
[00:02:50] And we were in the middle of stuff, so I was like, okay, we'll put it aside for a little bit. We'll kit it out later. We'll make some nice frosting. I've been waiting 15, 20 years for this. We'll do that.
[00:03:00] Two years later, we were clearing out the living room.
[00:03:06] Under the sofa, unopened, still in its box, unused, completely forgotten. There was my Mr. Frosty.
[00:03:16] Awful. Absolutely awful. And, you know, I apologize to Abby, but I publicly repent of my shame, of my negligence.
[00:03:26] It was really, really awful. And yet, if we're honest, this is what many of us do with Jesus at Christmas.
[00:03:36] We admire the baby in the manger. We love the nativity, we love the lights.
[00:03:42] But if we leave Jesus in the manger, we kind of miss the whole point of the gift.
[00:03:47] Like I said earlier, I actually think Christmas is all about gifts. Well, maybe I'm being a bit cheeky. Maybe it's about one gift.
[00:03:54] It's about the gift of Jesus, the gift of God, something we were talking about all morning. And so today I want to spend a little time with, particularly if you're visiting today, to unwrap this gift, to move past the wrapping paper and see why Jesus is the gift that we believe. He is the one, actually, that we've all been longing for.
[00:04:13] And so to do this, we're just going to use one sentence, just one verse. It may be the most important or most famous verse of the Bible. It's John 3:16. Maybe you've heard of it. So let's read. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal.
[00:04:33] There we go. Good stuff. John 3:16.
[00:04:36] If you get this verse, guys, you get the heartbeat of Christianity.
[00:04:42] Let's unwrap it in three words. We're going to go with loved. We're going to go with gave, and we're going to go with believes. So let's start with loved. God so loved. Not just loved. He so loved the world.
[00:04:56] Every good gift starts with love.
[00:04:59] When someone knows you well, they give you something meaningful. They say, try to. I'm not very good at gifts, but I do my best.
[00:05:05] Which means they express how they love you, how they know you.
[00:05:09] You can see that when someone doesn't know you and they give you, like, I don't know, something rubbish. Anyway, it's Easy to love people that we're close to, isn't it? To love people who are nice to us.
[00:05:18] But God's love just takes it to another level. He doesn't just love people who love him back. You know, he loves rebels, he loves rule keepers, he loves skeptics and searchers, people full of questions, mistake makers, mixtakers, just plain fakers. His love is wide enough to include all those people, and it's wide enough to include you, whoever you are, wherever your story has been so far. God's first motivation is love towards you.
[00:05:48] And in the world where goodwill can depend on the time of year or whether we've had coffee yet or anything like that, actually, God's.
[00:05:56] God's love takes it to another level. It goes far beyond our wildest dreams.
[00:06:01] Do you know there is an infinite God who made the world. He created all things. Every good gift we were talking about earlier comes from Him.
[00:06:11] And he loves you.
[00:06:14] Do you know that today?
[00:06:16] Do you want that today?
[00:06:18] I don't believe it. Yes, God loves you, so we're loved. Number two, let's look at the fact that he gave.
[00:06:29] He gave his one and only son.
[00:06:31] Now, love gives. And giving, real giving always costs something. Often it's money, sometimes it's time, but always it's the heart.
[00:06:40] You know, Christmas, God didn't send us a rule book list of do's and don'ts or you better do this better. Don't be naughty, you better be nice.
[00:06:48] He sent Jesus someone to know, someone to trust, someone to walk with. You know, the reading we had MM speak so beautifully earlier, that was actually part of a prophecy that was prophesied 600 years before the time of Jesus. And it talks about one of his names being Emmanuel, which literally means God with us.
[00:07:10] Not distant, not separate, but with us.
[00:07:14] That's who Jesus is. It's God with us. And I get really sad when people think Jesus isn't interested.
[00:07:20] That's how I used to think about life. I was very, very anti God. And I walked through life thinking Jesus is just. If he's even real, he's definitely not interested in me. And then I had an encounter with God which just changed everything. You want to know more about that? Come and grab me later. I'll happily talk to you.
[00:07:38] Jesus came to show us what God is like. So think about compassion, joy, love, faithfulness, kindness, life, mercy, justice.
[00:07:49] We talked about things that we want most in life earlier. I mean, they're all on our lists, aren't they?
[00:07:55] Jesus wasn't a last minute Panic buy at the till. He wasn't our version of Black Friday deal. He was a costly and intentional gift to bring us back into relationship with Jesus, with God.
[00:08:08] If Jesus was in the room right now, what would you say?
[00:08:12] Do you know, you can pray, you can talk to God at any time. You haven't got to get the right wi fi signal, any of that sort of stuff. You can just talk to God. What would you talk about with Jesus right now?
[00:08:24] And then lastly, let's get on to believes that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
[00:08:32] And now we come to us.
[00:08:34] See, Jesus isn't actually just the gift that we've always wanted. He's the one that we've always needed.
[00:08:41] Like that giant mess of fairy lights that you pull out of the garage every year and have to untangle.
[00:08:47] The world has got itself into a bit of a state.
[00:08:50] It's a bit of a mess. And actually we can be the same at times, can't we? It's easy to spot on the news or in the comments section online. And again, even within our own lives, we can see where the mess happens. Sometimes it's what other people have done to us. Sometimes it's what we do to others.
[00:09:07] We carry things, don't we? Like regrets and shame and guilt. We can take the wrong turn or go the wrong path.
[00:09:14] When we see that in ourselves, what do we do?
[00:09:18] What do we do when we find our name is on the naughty list?
[00:09:22] Here's the good news, guys. Jesus doesn't look at us and walk away and say, off. Off with you. He comes close.
[00:09:31] He takes our tangled mess and all our wrongs. He takes it on his own hands on the cross. He tears up the naughty list. He wipes the slate clean. He sets us free. He separates from our sins so that we can come greatly back to God. Amen.
[00:09:45] Amen. We can't earn this.
[00:09:49] We can't earn this. There's no good work you can do that can earn this. It's only the gift of God, the generous love of God that does this and more. He doesn't just stay for a night, doesn't visit us once a year. He's the gift that keeps on giving. You know, Jesus rose again and showing us that in him new life really is possible. Kyle said earlier about how Jesus invites us into eternity with him.
[00:10:13] So that means that whoever you are, young or old, mature, even figuring out life or hanging on by a thread, this is for you.
[00:10:25] Do you believe that today?
[00:10:32] So God has given us the greatest Gift in Jesus.
[00:10:36] Christmas really is all about gifts.
[00:10:39] The question is, how will you leave it? Will you leave unopened or will you start to explore?
[00:10:46] For me, it took a lot of time, okay, I had this encounter with Jesus, but that was just the start of the journey. Start of months of questions and conversations and thinking and searching and more questions and annoying people. Because I wanted to understand. And actually we'd love to help you in any way that we can. And maybe we think there's maybe two ways we could do so. It feel really gift, really silly to talk about gifts and stuff and not have us as a church give you something if you're visiting. So we've got lots of lovely little books that are just out on the table there. They're called the Gift. Funny enough, they look a bit like this. Written by a great guy, one of my heroes, Glenn Scrivener, and he just talks about how in Christmas we can see Jesus through gift given through love.
[00:11:29] If you're a visitor, that's yours, go grab it. Make sure you take that as a gift from us. If you're from Christmas River Church, you come regularly. Think about someone over Christmas who you could think. Actually, I'd love to give this to them generously so they could carry on this conversation that we've been having today.
[00:11:45] But there's another way and we want to create space. We always want to create space for conversation, for insight, for learning about who Jesus is and what life is. But rather than talk about that loads, we're going to play a little video just to show you about an Alpha taster evening. We're going to run.
[00:12:02] Ah, quit playing.
[00:12:06] It was always at the back of my mind. I had these questions. Why is this so difficult for me? What is the meaning of life? I had a lot of doubt. I feel like I have to make sense of things.
[00:12:20] I don't know anything about this JC guy. I'm still not sure. I had no idea what a lot of this stuff was. I didn't really know what to expect. Contrar de que se TRA tava. It was so warm and light, the way they welcome, welcome me, make me feel comfortable. We'd chat about big topics. You can ask anything on this course. Alpha was a really great way of connecting the pieces for me. I felt like I was gonna learn something. Someone like me got another chance to have a relationship with God. I can see there's a light at the end of the tunnel.
[00:12:53] It's okay to be curious about what other people.
[00:13:05] Wonderful. It's okay to Be curious.
[00:13:08] It's okay to be curious. So we want to create some time and some space to. Whoa. Goodness. Jesus has just come back.
[00:13:16] Follow the star.
[00:13:18] No, we want to create some time and space just to be able to talk, to be able to ask questions. We've all got questions. And if none of us take the time, we won't get to where we want to go. So there's a lovely QR code up there. So if you want to get involved, if you want to carry on this conversation, if you know someone who you think actually they maybe really enjoy doing this, just get your camera, stick it up to the QR code and let us know. We'd love to plan in some time together. Over Alpha.
[00:13:45] Now, earlier, I told you how I finally got my Mr. Frosty and then left it under the sofa for two years.
[00:13:54] Maybe you've done something similar with Jesus. Maybe you've been to a service. You've been. You've chatted to a friend here, and actually you've. You just sort of left it. You left it be. Well, I. I guess for me, I think Jesus would simply call you to let yourself be curious, to get the gift, to open it up and to get out the gift God has given.
[00:14:14] Yeah. Come on. I'll try that. Go on. There we go. Okay. Thank you.
[00:14:21] Don't leave the gift unopened.
[00:14:23] Don't leave Jesus in the manger. Come. Come and see who he is and what he's done for you.
[00:14:30] Merry Christmas, everyone.
[00:14:32] See you soon.
