Imagine, I hope you'll turn with me in your Scriptures to Isaiah. We'll be looking in chapter nine and then a little bit later in Isaiah chapter 11 today. And that's in your Old Testament. A little around halfway through the Scriptures. Isaiah was a.

A prophet that spoke during the lifetime of four different kings. So his, yeah, know, his tenure was a long one. I've met some folks in church that said, well, I've had this many pastors, you know, that I've sat through. You know, I've been at this church for, for seven different pastors or something like that. And part of me wants to say, well, I served at a church where they went through seven pastors in 17 years.

So, I mean, you know, that can go both ways, I guess. But Isaiah, the other way, he was the. The prophet of the nation for the tenure of four different kings. So he kind of had this idea, like, I've seen a lot. I've seen more than you and you, you know, I was here when you got here, and I'll be here after you're gone.

So that's a little bit about who this guy Isaiah was. But he speaks from the, you know, he kind of shares the words of the Lord. And we're going to read this section that's very, very beautiful at Christmas time because it talks about. It talks about two realities. It talks about a reality that they faced in their land at that day.

But it also has this beautiful way that God would speak through him to talk about something that would still yet come in the future. And so while it had a present reality, and we'll look at that for a few minutes, it also points to the coming Messiah. So I'm going to read Isaiah, chapter 9, verses 1 through 7. Now it says this. The gloom will be dispelled for those who were anxious.

In earlier times, He God, humiliated the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali. But now he brings honor to the way of the sea, the region beyond the Jordan and the Galilee of the nations. The people walking in darkness see a bright light. Amen. Light shines on those who live in a land of deep darkness.

You have enlarged the nation. You give them great joy, and they rejoice in your presence. As harvesters rejoice or as warriors celebrate when they divide up the plunder for their oppressive yoke and the club that strikes their shoulders, the cudgel the oppressors use on them, you have shattered them, as in the day of Midian's defeat. Indeed, every boot that marches and Shakes the earth, and every garment dragged through blood is used as fuel for the fire. For a child has been born to us, a son has been given to us.

He shoulders responsibility and is called Extraordinary Strategist, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace. His dominion will be vast, and he will bring immeasurable prosperity. He will rule on David's throne and over David's kingdom, establishing it and strengthening it by promoting justice and fairness from this time forward and forevermore. The Lord's intense devotion to his people will accomplish this. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you today that not only did you care about the children of Israel in that day thousands of years ago, but that you still care about us today, that you're still speaking to us today through your Word. And that not only did you bring this prophecy to fulfillment in its. In its initial installment, if we will, in those days, but that you brought it to fulfillment in Christ. And later, as we look at chapter 11, we'll see that there's still yet one piece. And Lord, we look forward to that.

Lord, thank you for Christmas this season that so many times perhaps we get it wrong, we get our focus on the wrong things, but truly it means the birth of Christ. And so, Lord, we thank you for that. Lord, show us your will and your way in our lives. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

See, the birth of Jesus brings the single most important thing to human existence. We had been at odds with God. I don't know if you've ever thought of your life as working against God. I don't know if you've ever looked at it that way. I would say if you look at your life and, and, and give an honest appraisal and say, I'm really working against God.

In other words, I don't want God to be in, in charge of me. That's kind of a sketchy place to be. That's, that's a dangerous way to live life, right? Like, even if you don't really like the guy, he put us here. He.

He's in charge of it all, and I don't want to work against him. And yet so often that's exactly what we do. We, we say, you know what? I'm good with receiving the nice things from God. I like getting the gifts from him, but I don't really want to obey Him.

So if I can just kind of keep him at arm's length, then, then that's fine. And really what we're, what we end up doing is saying, God, I really want Your stuff, but I don't want you. Can you imagine having your loved ones that way? Maybe a child, a spouse, a, you know, somebody that you're close to? And they say, you know, I really would like it if you would give me nice things and bless me.

I just don't really want to spend time with you. Maybe some of your kids have done that. Maybe you were the kid that did that to your parents. Who knows? But I can't imagine saying to God, you know, I really.

I want nice stuff from you. Like, I want you to be kind of my cosmic vending machine God. I want you to give me the stuff that I want. I just don't really want to get close to you. And yet that's how historically, as human beings, that's how humanity has lived.

The very first people in our story, when we turn to the first pages of Scripture and we see God placing this. This family, this couple in the Garden of Eden, this paradise that he created just for them. And he says, okay, now you have dominion over this. In other words, this is. This is your realm.

I've created Earth for you to live in and to kind of have charge over it, and yet I'm giving you all the provision you could ever ask for. But just, there's one thing. You see, there's this one area, this one tree, and that belongs to God. That belongs to me. He's saying, so leave it alone.

It doesn't belong to you. And he says, in fact, it's not made for you. Now, we might look at that and say, why did God even have to put the tree there? I don't know. Okay, like, there's theologians that have spent probably, like, hours and hundreds of hours discussing that.

I don't care. The thing is, the tree was there, and it was simple. Don't. Don't eat it. Don't eat the fruit of that tree.

It's not made for you. It's God's tree. It's not your tree. And what they end up doing, though, is they fall prey to the temptation to see what they're missing. Have you ever wondered, like, what you're missing out on by not following Christ?

By. By not. By not leading this Christian life. Have you ever wondered what fun might have been had if you had just chosen a different path? Some of you lived that path and said, I don't want to do this anymore.

And you turn to God and you yield your life to him. I'm the guy that grew up in church. I never broke. I didn't break many of the rules. Like, I did some, but I didn't break most of the rules.

And so I'm like, what is it that perhaps I could have done? You know, I could have lived, like, some of these people, gone off, done some, had some fun for a while, done all the wild and crazy stuff, and then get stuff right later on. You see, that's the mentality that so many times that a lot of folks have. And so what God is saying, though, is you weren't created for those things. Those things aren't for you.

And yet we decide to do it anyway. So, God, what he said was, even though you're living your life against me, you. You set up your life to lead it in a way that I didn't design you to live. I'm still going to fix it. The other day, I didn't plan to say this, but it happened in our home.

Our. One of us was upset about something and decided to throw a tantrum. No, this time it wasn't Amy. It was our daughter. It's a good joke.

And. And so she had this little necklace thing with lights on it, and. And she ripped it off of her head. Well, it ripped the wires. Then she starts crying.

Now she's mad that she broke her little thing with the Christmas lights that she's had for a few years. And so yesterday we went to three stores trying to find one to replace it. And part of me as a father was like, she broke it. Just, that's it. She needs to learn her lesson.

Amy, as a loving mother, wanted to get her a replacement one. And it hit me. Oh, that's how God treats us sometimes. He's like, I know you broke it. I know we can call it sin.

We can call whatever we want. I know you messed it up, but I'm going to fix it. I'm going to take care of it now just. Just to, like, redeem myself a little bit. I did, like, take it apart, see if I could fix it.

And it needed to be soldered back together. And if you know what soldering is, it's like a miniature version of welding, as far as I care. It heats up metal and it sticks them together. I've never been good at either one. So, like, my best way of welding is to really just stick a bunch of welds in there and then grind it a little smoother and then fill it with JB weld, which is a liquid compound of an epoxy thing, and then paint over it so it looks like I knew what I was doing.

It doesn't hold at all. It's terrible. Like, it's just not good. And so you're going to end up paying somebody else to fix it later anyway. And I'm the same way with soldering.

And so I was just like, you know what is. I'll just throw it in the trash. I can't fix it. So, sorry, kiddo. Amy the next day, though, she's like, I'm gonna replace it.

Now. Here's. Here's the way this looks and what we see. And I wrote it in my notes here so I wouldn't forget the three words, because I'd be like, sitting there like, what in the world? Which word was I trying to say?

There's one thing that happens. The first thing that happens is God redeems us after sin. He brings redemption. Now, what sin naturally does is it brings us into slavery. In other words, it begins to own you.

You can't play around with sin and be uninfected by it. As soon as you start messing around with sin, and by that, what I mean is, as soon as you start deciding to do things against how God has created you to live, it begins to own you. And you can't get free of that on your own, you begin to be indebted to it, owned by it. It. It has taken mastery over you.

The very world in which God told human beings to have mastery or dominion over it, now they are mastered by something that he never intended us to live for, to live against God, to live for the sinful desires of the flesh. And now those things own us. So what God did was he says, I'm going to redeem you from that. I'm going to provide redemption. So the first thing in the birth of Christ, like I said, is the single most important event that could ever have happened in human history was Jesus Christ being born.

Because that was the first step in God's plan of redemption. He wanted to redeem us from sin and say, I'm going to. I'm going to get you out of that. Now, what sin does, and I can't tell you exactly how it works any more than I can tell you how, like, bitcoin works. If any of you have ever heard of these things, these electronically traded.

It's not real money, but it's money. It doesn't make much sense. I keep trying to learn about it. I've invested in it. Not much.

It's 10 bucks a week that I just. It automatically goes into buying bitcoins. One bitcoin is worth, like, I Don't know. A hundred thousand dollars. It keeps fluctuating.

So I don't have one bitcoin. I have, like,.0009 of one bitcoin. And if you're like, what's a bitcoin? Agree, I'm the same way. All I know is the number that I have in there, it keeps growing.

And so I'm happy with that. Like, I put money into it and that money grows. Like, some of you invested in retirement funds and stock markets and all that stuff. You didn't know anything about that either, so don't judge me. But all I can tell you is I put money into it every week, $10 a week, and it keeps growing.

And that's good stuff. I can't tell you exactly how bitcoin works, or the stock market for that matter. I also can't tell you how it is that you get owned by sin and how it is the redemption of Christ dying paid that off, but somehow you are in debt because of sin, and God paid it off with the purchasing price of the blood of his son, Jesus Christ. Jesus had to be born as a human being who was fully divine and fully human. And that had to happen in order that he could live in our place as a human being, but he could bear the cost of it as the divine Son of God.

We can talk about that in Sunday school. That's the beauty of our class that we have after the service and the reason that we record it and post it online later. So that if you heard this and you're like, I want to hear more about it, perhaps we got to it in that class and you can look that up and listen to it. That's the beautiful thing about what we do here. And if you're like, pastor Nick, this doesn't make sense, we can start to make some sense of it, but not right here.

That requires a conversation. I don't know exactly what you're thinking and what your questions are. That's why we have class afterwards where you can bring those questions up and talk to us about it. There's rarely been any dumb questions in there. Rarely.

You know? So anyway, that wasn't worth a laugh. Okay, I apologize for that one. I apologize. There's another thing that God does, though.

He begins to bring about restoration. Now, just picture if you had owned an old vehicle and that car got impounded, and now it's at a towing lot and that towing lot. What happens there is not only does the debt keep growing more and more every day, they charge you more and more if you wanted to bring that car out of there to redeem it from that tow in lot. But also, let's just say one of the tow truck drivers got a little rough, a little rambunctious as he's loading up more and more cars in this lot. Because they're so happy to tow a car that was parked in the wrong spot.

They make so much money off of that. I got towed one time when I was about 22 years old. And now I am nervous every time I park somewhere, some kind of an event or something. If I don't clearly see a sign that says I can park there at that time of day, I, I won't park there. I'll walk a mile before I pay somebody $200 to ransom my vehicle that they towed a block and a half away from where I illegally parked it.

Like that was frustrating. Those guys love to tow cars and they just start filling up their lot with cars. And let's just say your car was parked there for a few weeks because the longer it went, the more the cost to get it out of there. And you had this debt that you could never get paid off. Then they start banging other cars into it, and now your car is damaged.

So not only do you have to redeem your car from them and pay them their exorbitant fees on their towing lot, but now your car needs to be restored. If you want it to be drivable and look the same as it was, the way it was intended to be, you have to restore that car. It needs to go to a body shop, needs to go to a mechanic, whatever it might be. See, what Jesus did was he redeemed us from the debt that we had in sin, but he also has provided for our restoration. Now I want to tell you, what he's doing when he restores us is not anything that you've ever known in your life.

In other words, you don't know how you were created to live. You might have, in my example of that car, you might have seen that car for, for, you know, before and after. And you know what the before picture looked like. So that you would say, I want it fixed up like it was back there. But you see, we don't know how our lives were originally intended by God to be.

So what he's doing in restoration is he's showing us through the way his son Jesus lived. He's showing us how we can live that restored life the way he had originally intended human beings to live. See, God said when he created mankind it says he created them in his image, in the image of God or the likeness of God. But we wonder, what does that look like? Sin has messed us up for so long that we don't even understand how that should be.

And so it's only when we see the life of Jesus Christ the way he lived it on earth, that we can understand what it means to be living this restored life. But there's one other thing, and this is something I don't usually think about in terms of what the salvation that Jesus Christ offered us is. You see, there's this other idea that, that's, that's. That's beyond redemption. It's beyond restoration.

It's this idea of recompense or, or reparation. And I know that in a country like ours, there's talk of certain people, they believe, oh, this group or that group needs reparations for something that were done to them. But that's not what I'm talking about. You see, what God offers us when he talks about reparation. The best example I can come up with is in our Old Testament, there's this.

There's this time where a prophet. And this is in. I think I wrote it in my notes. I don't even remember second kings 8, 1 6. There's this time where a prophet goes to.

It's actually the prophet's servant, and he goes to the king and he says, hey, listen, there was this widow that used to really help out my master, prophet Elijah. And she was really helpful. But then there was this famine in the land, so she and her son, they left and they went and lived elsewhere for a while. And now they're back and their land has been taken. Now, presumably the one who would have received that land would have been the king, the kingdom itself.

And so what he's saying is, you have received her land while she was gone. And that land did have some kind of a harvest in it or some kind of an income that it should have been producing. And now she's back. She needs her land so that she and her son can be provided for. And so is there a way that you could possibly restore that?

And so the king is interested in that. And it just so happens, by the providence of God, that while the servant of the prophet's sharing this with the king, that the. The woman happens to show up to plead her case before the king. And so as it's happening, the king meets her and he says, not only am I going to restore her land to her, but I am going to give her back all of the earnings that that land might have made in, In a. If it had been a healthy year and healthy growth, I'm going to give her back, with interest, what her land would have produced.

Now, when we talk about what. What reparation or recompense looks like, we don't use the word recompense much in our society, but when we talk about what recompense means, that's exactly what it is, is giving you back something that would have been owed. So my example of this towing lot, this car lot, it would be if you went to the car lot and you said, you know what, that tow, tow truck place, you said, you know what, can I not afford to pay the towing and storage bill that I have? But, but you've also damaged it. So could you just give me my car back, pay for it to go to the body shop, and then pay me for the days that I wasn't able to drive my car at the reimbursable mileage rate that I would have been driving anyway?

Can you pay me back for everything that I lost, even though it was my fault for parking in the wrong space? That's how God has treated us. You see, we were the ones that sinned. We were the ones that got ourselves into the debt of sin and into slavery by sin. Through the birth of his son, Jesus.

Not only does he purchase us out of sin, slavery to sin, but he also restores us to how we were created to live as human beings created in God's image. And then he offers to give us back that which we lost to sin and a life of sin. Are you getting this? Are you understanding what this looks like in our lives and what this could mean for your life?

So here's the deal. We find ourselves reading the scripture in Isaiah 9, Isaiah, like I said, he ministered during the lifetime of four different Kings. And one of the things that he saw in the times of his ministry was Israel had split. Now there was what we call the twelve tribes of Israel. And so they each had their tribal allotted lands.

And the, the two, the, the nation, those tribes split into two different nations. The southern kingdom was called Judah. And then you had the rest of the tribes in the northern kingdom of Israel. They're all Israelites, but it's Judah and Israel. So the northern and the southern kingdom, one of the things that happened was in both of them, they both had their ups and downs of following God, not following God, worshiping idols, turning back to God, et cetera, et cetera.

And the northern tribe of Israel seemed to really lead the way in sinning and rebelling against God. And so through the mouths of his prophets that spoke to them, he warned them what would happen. And he says, if you keep this up, you're going to be captured by another nation. You're going to be taken into exile. The land will be kind of given away during that time.

It will not be your homeland anymore. And what ends up happening is in the year 722 BC, 722 years before Christ, in the year 722 B.C. the Assyrian army comes in, attacks. It takes a little while, but they eventually do it. They overthrow different cities at a time, and they overthrow the whole kingdom in Israel.

And one of the northern areas, if you were to look on a map that shows some of those tribal areas, two of the northernmost tribes was Zebulun and Naphtali. That was the names of these guys that had been two of the patriarchs of the tribes of, in Israel. And Zebulun and Naphtali were beautiful lands. Historically. They were.

They were gorgeous. They were well watered. They were good for raising crops and, and grazing animals. They went. Part of it stretched all the way to the sea.

Part of it stretched all the way to the Jordan River. You might have heard today in some of the. Some of the different protests that go on in, like, college campuses and stuff, where people say, oh, Palestine will be free from the river to the sea. Well, literally, that was Israelite land back then. And from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea.

That's what it's talking about. That's what they talk about when they have those protest chants. And that was the land of Israel. And so the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali kind of touched from both of those areas. But then the Gentiles begin moving into that, especially as God was shrinking down the territory of the Israelites.

And so it became known not only as the Land of Galilee, but now it was Galilee of the Gentiles. So Gentiles, non Jewish people had begun living there over a certain period of time. And of course, it was increasing more and more over time. So by the time Jesus is born in the land where he grew up, in the village of Nazareth, it was actually quite culturally diverse because there was a lot of foreigners or Gentiles that were non Jewish people that lived there. And so people think that Jesus was just this, like, Jewish guy that didn't really know anything or really see the world.

In fact, just a few miles from where Jesus lived his entire life, he could literally climb up a Kind of a. A tall hill or a small mountain nearby where he lived. And he could see this road that connected the entire world. It connected all of what we would call modern day Europe all the way down to Egypt. It connected the Middle east, would come across the top and come south through there, down along the way by the sea.

It was called this, this highway that went down through there. Jesus was literally less than 10 miles from the entire world. If you consider that way with all the trading caravans and things like that that would come through there. Jesus saw it all. Growing up, Jesus was familiar with the ways that the world lived.

He wasn't just some. Even though he grew up in Nazareth, which was considered a backwater hick town, he. He was familiar with the world. He's a little bit of a conundrum perhaps. And so when Isaiah writes this, these words in here, and he says, in earlier times, Zebulun and Naphtali had been humiliated, but now he brings honor to the way by the sea and the region beyond the Jordan and the Galilee of the nations.

What he's talking about is saying this area that formerly had been in disgrace, now God was bringing a hope to it. Now in this time, Isaiah is speaking to their people that were alive in that day. He's speaking a message that was quite relevant to them because they believe that at the time he was writing this, one of the kings that was maybe aging a little bit had a son that was born to him. And they knew that this king would be the successor to his father on the throne. And so therefore that through that king that maybe there would be some new hope that would be born to the people in the land of Israel.

And for sure, that did happen to a degree. But Isaiah is also speaking over the future. He's speaking of what Christ would do in the future, that Christ would come and the hope that they might have in him. Now, I don't know if we can even quite understand the world in which they lived. You see, we're a nation that we've been attacked a couple times by outsiders, by foreigners, and we.

We almost never forget that. We say, we'll never forget. We say it's a day that we'll live in infamy. We say things like that, we take it personally that a couple times somehow somebody has attacked our nation. And we say, we're not going to let this happen again.

We're never going to be that kind of people. In fact, we can't even fathom what it would be like for our land in whole or in part to be conquered by an invading army. They made a few movies about it. I'm thinking of, like, you know, there was. There was, you know, one when they remade it, at first it was Russia invading.

Then later it was an unnamed Asian country that invaded. Because we can't even make our movies so politically incorrect as to say that maybe perhaps China or North Korea or something like that would try to invade. But. But they make these movies about what would it look like if that happened, or what would it look like if. If.

If World War II hadn't gone as planned and Germany had actually kind of become more powerful and won some of their battles. And now everything was a German influence or rulership over the entire world, and what would our country look like? And they make TV shows about it. But in reality, most of us can't imagine what it would look like for our nation to be invaded by a horde of soldiers from a foreign nation, and that they would actually subjugate us to be ruled by them. We just can't imagine that.

We can't imagine it. And I don't want to imagine it. I want us to be victorious. I love our country, and I. I love what it's been and what it can continue to be.

In fact, we look at the times where we are about to inaugurate a new president in about a month. And so many people are happy about that, some aren't. But there's always this hope whenever there's a new president that perhaps something good will happen, something new will happen, or. Or a return of something that we once held dear will come back into play. And there's that hope that at least half the.

The nation shares or more at any given time. And there's this. This possibility welling up within us that says, maybe this is the time that something turns around. Maybe this is the time of the next era of prosperity in our nation. Those who care about it in a religious sense say, maybe this is the time that people will start listening to God in their positions of authority and that they'll finally start to say, okay, God, we want you to guide this late, this nation in this land.

And then in the midst of that, we look at all of that and we say, there's so much good that could happen right now. It might be peace on the horizons in the na. In amongst the different nations, or peaceful relationships between our country and those countries. It might be that we're looking for better tax structures or healthy changes to our food and drug supply, healing for our nation's soul. And yet we realize that that's not where our hope truly lies.

See, our hope doesn't really lie in those politicians and those leaders, governors, senators, presidents, representatives. Our hope doesn't really lie in these folks because so many times they've lied to us just to get our vote and to get into office. So who knows? The track record doesn't speak well, so many times. And yet we still have that bit of hope in it.

And yet here we are at Christmas and we recognize that the only true hope for our future, the only hope of redemption, restoration, and yes, even reparation truly comes from Jesus Christ. And as those leaders will bow their knee to Jesus Christ, and as you and I bow our knees to Jesus Christ, is the only true way that we have hope in this world and in this country. It's the only way that you have hope as an individual. Because if you've put your hope in any other thing, it will fail you at some point. But through the hope that we have in Christ, we've experienced peace and joy and love.

I want to read to you Isaiah chapter 11, because what we saw in chapter nine there shows that not only could that the hope of that prophecy come true in their day, but it also spoke to the eternal dominion of the one who would sit on King David's throne. And we saw that fulfilled in Jesus Christ. But also we see In Isaiah chapter 11, just a couple pages later, where he speaks of this a little bit more. But we see Christ in this. So much says this.

A shoot or a little, little growth will grow out of the stump of Jesse's root. A bud will sprout from his roots. The Lord's spirit will rest on him. You remember when Jesus was baptized and the heavens opened up and the Spirit of God descended and rested on Jesus. The Lord's spirit will rest on him.

A spirit that gives extraordinary wisdom. A spirit that provides the ability to execute plans. A spirit that produces absolute loyalty to the Lord. He will take delight in obeying the Lord. And he will not judge by mere appearances or make decisions on the basis of hearsay.

He will treat the poor fairly. Oh, we need that in our land. He will make right decisions for the downtrodden of the earth. And the earth cries out for that still today. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth and the order of the wicked will be executed.

Justice will be like a belt around his waist and integrity will be like a belt around his hips. A wolf will reside with a lamb and a leopard will lie down with a young goat. And an ox and a lion will graze together as a small child leads them along. A cow and a bear will graze together, and their young will lie down together. A lion, like an ox, will eat straw.

A baby will play over the whole of a snake, and over the nest of a serpent, an infant will put his hand. They will no longer injure or destroy on my entire royal mountain, for there will be universal submission to the Lord's sovereignty, just as the waters completely cover the sea. You see, in Advent is the season of hopeful anticipation. It's anticipating that God is going to do the things that he promised that we anticipate that God had said that he was going to make things right. And they believed that for hundreds or thousands of years before Christ was born.

But yet there's still prophecy that's as of yet left open. You see, we've seen some of that fulfilled, and yet there's parts of it that we say that's not happened yet. That's true. See, Jesus did say that he returns. And when he returns, he brings a new dwelling with him, a new way of living, a new heavens and a new earth.

He says he's been preparing that while he's away, he's making a perfect home for us. And he says, one day I return with that that you may dwell with me where I am. See those things that we read in the end of those verses in chapter 11, about just this extreme peace, not just between nations and peoples and tribes and tongues, but between even the animals that are vicious, animals of prey, animals that would attack you, animals that would attack one another. He's saying, that's not really how I designed it to be. Sin truly has messed up everything in this world.

And yet God is saying, I am going to bring it to fruition that there will be peace. It'll be the way that I intended you to live. It's no wonder that when Jesus was born, the angels came and announced it, and they said, peace on earth. The good will of God is on those upon whom his favor rests. Today, the favor of God rests upon you.

The favor of God is right there available for you. And all you have to do is receive that gift. You see, it's like we can have all these presents that we might put in stockings or under a tree, but if they don't get opened, they don't matter. If they don't get opened, you can't utilize that gift. You can't live out the experience of having that gift.

Jesus Christ came bringing the gift of himself in. Christ we see redemption in Christ, we see restoration, and in Christ we also see reparation. See, there's this other verse, it's in Joel, chapter three, verses 23 through 27, where it essentially talks about God is going to restore to the people something that had happened during a time of famine and drought where he sent locusts in to eat the crops, the little bit of crops that did grow. He sent locusts in to destroy them. It was a type of corralling punishment.

It wasn't just to penalize them, but it was to corral them to the truth that God had called them to live. He was calling them to say, this is how I want you to live. And if you won't do it, I'm going to kind of guide you this way, I'm going to herd you this way, and I want you to move to these greener pastures of following him and living his way. And so what had happened was God sent these locusts, but he says, going to restore to you for all the years those locusts have been eating your crops, the years that the locusts destroyed your crops, I'm going to restore that to you. In other words, I'm not just going to cause them to grow again.

I'm actually going to cause them to grow so much that it makes up for what was lost to the, to the Locust for all those years. And the interesting thing was God was just in sending the locusts, He. He was justified in doing that, and they had earned every bit of it. And yet he said, even though you earned this punishment or these consequences, I'm going to repay you. I'm going to give you recompense for that which was lost, even though you lost it rightfully.

So, see, this is what God is doing through Christ and it's the gift that he's offering you, but you must receive that. You can't just say, well, cool, it's Christmas time and Jesus came, and so therefore I'm blessed. It's true, you are. There's this thing called common grace. It's the grace of God that's available to everyone just because you're alive on this earth.

It's essentially the fact that this earth was fine tuned for you to live in it as a human being. It's the fact that he causes his sun to shine on the wicked and the righteous and his rain to fall on the wicked and the righteous. It's the fact that God gives us air to breathe and gives us common gifts that everybody is able to live in that we're able to receive the common grace that he gives, but the grace that he gives us for salvation, for redemption, for restoration, and for reconciliation. All those things that he gives us, that gift, but you must open it. You must receive it.

It's a step that you have to take to say, lord, I receive your gift. I want that gift to be applied to me. If. If you don't take that simple step and say, God, I want to live that way. I want to.

To live the gift that you have for me, it'll never be open. It's like you just leave it sitting there. You could take down the Christmas tree. January, February, March, every month could go by, and that gift is still sitting there unopened. As long as that gift sits there unopened.

That gift of not just we call it salvation, but salvation encompasses so much. And that gift of salvation from Jesus Christ, as long as it's sitting there unopened, it's not applied to your life. Your life is not changed. But as soon as you begin to open that, Jesus Christ shows us that he has so much more than we've ever imagined. So much more for your life.

Because we thought maybe if we could just get right with God, if we can get saved, we call it, we get saved. We, we. We have forgiveness of sin. So I don't have. I don't have this heavy weight, this, this.

This burden that I'm dragging behind me knowing that I've messed up. Because we all know that, right? We all know that we've messed up along the way. And we just like to be free of that. And we think maybe if I just receive Christ's salvation, that I can cut loose that anchor and say, okay, there, I'm forgiven.

But you see, Jesus says, no, I've got more than that. If that's all you imagined my salvation was. I've got so much more because I want to. I want to make you into something good, something better than you dreamed. That's that restoration how we had created us to live.

But then there's that final thing of being not just restored, but being, getting restitution, getting recompense for everything that we could have been living if we'd been living right with God this whole life. See, God wants to recompense you for everything that was missing in your life that you lost due to sin.

More than anything. We see that God has offered us so much more than we ever imagined, so much more than we ever dreamed. My prayer for you is that you would receive that today and throughout the next couple days. Through Christmas that it would become real to you. My fear for you is that you would say, I'm good, thanks, I'm here.

That's good enough. You're missing out on everything God has for you. I want you to live life to the fullest that God created you. And I believe none of us have gotten there yet. Those who say, I'm walking with God in such a beautiful way in my life, it's things I've never experienced before, he's going to keep giving you more and more and more.

He's going to keep blessing you in spiritual ways, in physical ways, more than you could ever ask or imagine. Don't let the sun set today before you've spent some time talking with God and say, God, is there more that I'm just haven't walked into that yet. I haven't. I haven't taken the step of faith to say, I want to commit my life to you and to live out everything that you've ever offered to me. Don't let the sun set today before you've had that conversation with God.

And don't fool yourself into thinking, oh, I'm good. Today is the day of salvation for each and every one of us. Amen. Merry Christmas. If you're joining us online, but you have never attended in person,