Full Service

“This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.”

(Lk 2:34, 35)

Pt. 1 Do you hope in sin or do you hope in God?

Pt. 2 Do you fight against, ignore the truth, or are you on the side of truth?

Have Christians made up Christmas because we need it to be true?

If people made their own honest Christmas fairy tale, their Christmas god would…

1. …give them the place and position they want; he wouldn’t be a servant who would ask them to be everybody’s slave. (Mk. 10:37, 43-45a)

People want to dominate and be god – people aren’t seeking to serve and relinquish power and position.

The real story is a God who sets out to rescue you from yourself.

• Be first to be great at being a slave.

2. … make sin legal so they could indulge in their own fantasies even more deeply; he would be as competitive, capricious and cut throat as them. (Mk. 10:33-34, 44-42, 45)

People want to be freed to sin – not freed from sin (except the sin that hurts them).

The real story is a God who lays down his life as the price for freeing slaves of sin, rebels at heart, vying for glory and under cutting God to get it.

You have been died for, so that you can be freed from your sin.

• Be zealous to trade your slavery to sin for slavery to God

Key Christmas message: In praise of our self-giving God and the privilege of radical service.