Latest / REZ CHURCH Podcast / We're All Outsiders Until Jesus - December 21, 2025

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We're All Outsiders Until Jesus - December 21, 2025 · REZ CHURCH Podcast

0:00
Good morning. Merry Christmas.
0:05
Welcome to Resurrection Church. My name is Daniel.
0:07
I'm the lead pastor here. Hey, so because it's the holiday
0:10
seasons, I don't know if you know this, but Hallmark has been
0:12
cranking out the movies, man. You know the one, because they
0:18
all go about the same way. There's the big city lady who
0:21
somehow gets trapped in a small town over the holidays and then
0:24
accidentally, coincidentally bumps into that very roguish,
0:28
very handsome man, always wearing flannel.
0:34
And he sweeps them off their feet and reintroduces them to
0:37
love in some cheesy, predictable way that we can't seem to stop
0:42
watching because every single plot is the same with just
0:47
different character names. Well, last week in the Book of
0:52
Ruth, we kind of interrupted our love story at the end of Chapter
0:56
3. It was right.
0:57
It was like kind of building up into that tension.
0:59
And then it was like commercial break.
1:03
Oh, sorry for you younger people, a commercial break.
1:10
You'll figure it out. So quick recap if you, if you've
1:14
missed any of the last three weeks, we've been, we've been
1:16
reading through this love story in the book of Ruth, which is
1:18
also kind of a Christmas story, which we've been explaining
1:21
along the way, even though it took place 1100 years before
1:25
Christmas. And so there is a Moabite woman,
1:28
her name is Ruth, and she and her Jewish mother-in-law, they
1:32
had come back from the land of Moab and they're widowed.
1:37
And so as they come back and Moab is the is Israel's enemy.
1:41
As they come back to the town of Bethlehem in Israel, a God
1:45
provides for them substantially. During the barley harvest, they
1:50
end up with food to eat, even though they were destitute and
1:52
starving. And in this last chapter that we
1:55
covered last week, there's this man named Boaz.
1:58
He's the landowner in which they've gotten food.
2:01
He has shown Ruth kindness along the way.
2:04
And Ruth makes a very bold move. She goes to him and asks him to
2:08
be something called a Redeemer. And that word means, in their
2:12
culture, to marry her to, to take her in and protect her, to
2:16
provide for her. And he agrees and he says at the
2:20
very end of last week, I will deal with this today.
2:23
And chapter 4 is today. So welcome to what we hope to be
2:27
the the kind of culmination of this love story slash Christmas
2:31
story. Here's the big idea.
2:32
So if you if you've come today and you get nothing else out of
2:35
today, you have to, you have to leave with just one thought.
2:38
It's this love fixes what the law fails.
2:42
Love fixes what the law fails. And we'll explain that.
2:45
Join me in reading God's word, Ruth chapter 4, starting with
2:50
verse one. Give you a minute to get there.
2:56
Now Boaz, this is the landowner. Now Boaz who made this promise
3:00
had gone up to the gate and sat down there and behold, the
3:04
Redeemer of whom Boaz had spoken came by.
3:08
So Boaz said, turn aside, friend, sit down here.
3:13
Now in in ancient cities, the gate was where they did all of
3:16
the business transactions. The gate, because that's where
3:19
everyone would enter or or leave the city from was the was the
3:23
place they would do they would do business deals, they would do
3:26
court proceedings. Everything happened at the gate
3:28
of the city. And so Boaz in the last chapter
3:30
said, Hey, there's a, a Redeemer closer than I.
3:33
And what he meant was there's a relative to Naomi and Ruth that
3:38
is the closest relative. And in that ancient community
3:41
man family had certain obligations.
3:43
And so there's a a man that is closest in relation.
3:46
He needs to go talk to that man. And he says, hey, come over
3:50
here, let's sit down, let's have a conversation.
3:52
So he finds him at the gate. This is the by the way, this is
3:54
the day after harvest. So they've just been grueling
3:57
work for months. This is the next day.
3:59
It's like the first day off. And Can you imagine this guy?
4:02
He has no idea what's going on. He's just walking like finally
4:04
this thing's over. He's just like on his way to
4:06
work like us. He's going to go to Dutch Bros
4:08
and get a coffee. And all of a sudden it's like,
4:11
hey, Fran, come over here. What is this?
4:15
Sit down. Now.
4:17
I, I want you to catch something that I think is, is it's so
4:21
important. It's so easy to miss.
4:22
He says, hey, friend, come over here.
4:25
Now here's the here's the way that that's easy to miss.
4:27
In the Hebrew that this was written in, the word he uses
4:31
does not mean friend. It actually is really a vague
4:34
word. It means so and so, so and so.
4:38
Someone of no consequence, like so and so.
4:40
He goes, hey, so and so come over here.
4:43
That's a weird thing. That's a really weird thing to
4:46
say, actually. And, and I've been saying for a
4:49
few weeks now that the author of this story, this is a masterful
4:52
storyteller who's very detailed at certain things and very vague
4:54
about other things on purpose so that you will see and understand
4:58
and even feel this story. So this storyteller absolutely
5:03
knows the name of this man. This is the closest relation to
5:06
the protagonist in the entire story.
5:07
They know exactly who this is. In fact, in a few verses, you're
5:10
going to get a genealogy of 12 generations of people.
5:14
This is intentionally vague. This is purposefully vague.
5:18
This is the closest relative to the hero of the story or the to
5:21
the protagonist of the story. And yet you're not going to hear
5:23
their name mentioned at all. And so they're going to be named
5:26
in the story. So and so if the title of the
5:28
credits rolled at the end of the Netflix film, it would be like
5:31
so and so played by. So for our purposes, we're going
5:37
to call this person Joe Blow. So and so we got to pick a name.
5:42
They didn't give us one. So he says, hey, so so sit down
5:45
here and he turned aside and he sat down and Boaz took ten men
5:49
of the elders of the city and said, sit down here.
5:51
So they sat down. He's just put a a jury, a whole
5:56
series of witnesses. So this is about to get serious.
5:59
You can say this is getting serious like it's it's going to
6:03
be a legal procedure. It's going to it's going to have
6:04
witnesses. They're they're about to do a
6:05
transaction. Verse 3.
6:08
Then he said to the Redeemer, Joe Blow, so and so Naomi, who
6:12
has come back from the country of Moab, is selling the parcel
6:16
of land that belonged to our relative, her husband Elimelech.
6:21
So I thought I would tell you of it and say, buy it in the
6:24
presence of those sitting here. That's the way the witnesses are
6:28
there. And in the presence of the
6:29
elders of my people. If you will redeem it, redeem
6:32
it. But if you will not tell me that
6:36
I may know for there's no one beside you to redeem it and I
6:41
come after you and he said I will redeem it.
6:44
But you see how quick that that reaction was and I'll explain
6:46
why. OK, so this is a little weird
6:49
because we don't do any of this stuff anymore like this.
6:52
And, and even historians and, and, and commentators on this
6:56
section of Ruth are very split on exactly what's happening here
6:59
because it sounds like a legal proceeding and it kind of is.
7:02
The problem is it doesn't exactly match the laws that we
7:04
knew about for that time. So we're all a little bit
7:07
confused. There were some laws established
7:10
in, in, in the Judaic law in ancient times back in Leviticus
7:16
25. And according to that law, you
7:20
could never sell land forever. You couldn't sell land forever
7:26
because even if you thought it was yours, it wasn't really
7:28
yours. It was God's.
7:30
So the only thing you could sell is you could sell the right to
7:33
use it for a little while, but they would go back to whomever
7:35
God had granted it to originally.
7:37
It was called redeeming the land.
7:41
And so he's saying, look, this land when the limit like bailed
7:44
on Israel and ran off the Moab, like you shouldn't have.
7:47
He sold this land during a famine, but now it needs to be
7:50
redeemed. So buy it back because you're
7:52
the closest relative. So the losses, you have to buy
7:55
it back. Now, here's the interesting
7:59
thing. When it got sold, it was a
8:00
famine. It wasn't worth anything.
8:02
But now there are bumper crops. The land is producing
8:07
plentifully. There's food everywhere, so this
8:10
land now is worth a lot and he gets to buy it for pennies on
8:14
the dollar. Pretty good deal.
8:17
Sounds pretty good. In fact, sounds so good.
8:19
See how quick he agrees. Hey, if you want to buy it, I'll
8:22
buy it. Yep, got that dollar signs.
8:27
You ever seen a good deal? You're like, it's too good to
8:28
pass up. I know that there's a lot of
8:30
good deals because there's a lot of Amazon boxes on my front
8:33
porch. He's like, yeah, I'll do that.
8:40
I don't know if you've ever watched any of those courtroom
8:42
dramas on TV where one lawyer is trying to trick another lawyer
8:46
into admitting a piece of evidence because if he does, the
8:49
whole case breaks open. You ever seen one of those
8:50
things? You know what I'm talking about.
8:53
My daughter's in mock trial right now in high school.
8:55
And they actually go to the Superior Court and they have an
8:59
actual Kern County Superior Court judge in the room as they
9:02
they argue a made-up trial in front of a real judge, which is
9:07
both cute and comical at the same time, if you can believe
9:09
it, because they are on each other like, like you're like,
9:12
oh, these dudes are serious. They're like freshman in high
9:13
school and they're just doodles. They were like arguing up the
9:17
admissibility of a laptop and a thing.
9:19
I'm just listening and we're going.
9:20
But The thing is that they get points if they can catch the
9:23
other person, if they can impeach the witness or if they
9:25
can catch him. So they're always trying to like
9:27
jump on them. And sometimes they do it too
9:29
early. They're like, aha, objection.
9:31
And the judge is trying not to laugh because he, like, you got
9:33
that a little early there. But that's actually what's
9:37
happening in our story. You see, Boaz just set this guy
9:39
up to admit something that will then come with a secondary
9:44
obligation he's not ready for. And you're going to see that
9:47
unfold right now. And it's it's brilliant.
9:49
It's actually pretty cool. It's like you're watching suits
9:52
on USATV. What did he just do?
9:56
Watch what he does, Verse 5. Then Boaz says.
10:02
He's like, yeah, I'll buy it, I'll buy it.
10:03
I'll buy it, Boaz says. Well, the day you buy the field
10:10
from the hand of Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the Moabite, the
10:16
widow of the dead, in order to perpetuate the name of the dead
10:20
in his inheritance. Oops.
10:27
Then the Redeemer said I cannot redeem it for myself lest I
10:32
impair my own inheritance. Take my right of redemption
10:35
yourself, for I cannot redeem it.
10:37
Well, that's a, that's a 180. That's a pretty fast reversal.
10:41
He got out of that pretty quick. What just happened?
10:47
You see, Boaz hooked that guy with greed.
10:51
Hey, there's this land, really good land, producing a lot, and
10:55
you're the first relative to redeem it, and you're going to
10:58
be able to get it for almost nothing.
10:59
What do you think? I'm on it.
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Oh, but by the way, if you're really the closest relative,
11:03
then there's an obligation to care for these people.
11:06
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
11:09
That doesn't sound so good. So one law says in the Bible
11:13
says, you know, there's this right to buy back a family land.
11:16
But there's another law that says if your brother dies and is
11:22
married, it's your responsibility to marry their
11:24
widow. And so Joe Blow so and so is
11:29
fine with the one that makes him a lot of money.
11:31
He's not so fine with the law that's going to cost him
11:33
something. And So what Boaz has done is
11:37
he's tied these two laws together.
11:39
You want eliminates land. You're also on the hook for his
11:42
daughter-in-law. And that's really smart.
11:45
That's really smart because he does it in front of 10
11:48
witnesses. So there's no getting back out
11:50
of it. And I and I like I want to tell
11:52
you how how. How strategic Boaz is in the
12:00
moment. If you've been with us and
12:02
you've been listening to, you know, chapters one and two and
12:04
three and four, for two chapters, Boaz has been
12:09
overflowing with praise about the character of Ruth.
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Yes. I mean, he's been like, man,
12:16
everyone in town knows that you are a woman of good character.
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I mean, just compliment after compliment about the renowned by
12:22
which people see her, her loyalty, her integrity, all of
12:26
these things. He doesn't say a word of that
12:27
here. What does he say?
12:30
The Moabite? Ruth, where are all the
12:34
compliments? Where'd they all go?
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The woman of good character? The whole town knows I'm saying
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none of that. What does he say?
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The Moabite? You got to marry the outsider.
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You know what that is? Strategory.
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Pretty sure that's the word. And immediately Joe blows.
13:04
Oh, and so goes no, I can't, can't do that, lest I inher and
13:08
impair my own inheritance. Now, what in the world does that
13:12
mean? Why does he stop, reverse
13:13
course, and head out the other way?
13:16
Well, marrying and producing a child with Ruth, because Ruth is
13:21
a Moabite. Remember, a Moabite was an enemy
13:23
of God. He thinks it'll ruin his
13:26
inheritance. And that text is a little bit
13:30
vague because we, again, historians don't even agree
13:33
about it specifically. But let me tell you what I think
13:35
happened in that moment. I think what he's saying is
13:37
either I'm already married or a plan to be and I'm going to
13:41
produce an heir. And that that heir that I
13:44
produce with my wife, who's not named Ruth is going to be
13:47
considered, at least for me, pure Israelite.
13:52
And if I marry Ruth and produce an heir, now I have two
13:54
different heirs. And not only is there a, is
13:56
there a complexity to having two different heirs, but one of them
13:59
is going to be pure and one of them is going to be maybe not so
14:02
pure because now I've made an air with a Moabite woman, my air
14:10
will be mixed, not completely of the people of God.
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And in his mind and in a lot of Jewish minds, there would have
14:17
been two categories. There would have been a category
14:19
of an in crowd and a category of a kind of the out crowd.
14:25
See, we Israelites, we're God's people and everyone else is not
14:30
God's people. Therefore there's in and there's
14:32
out and Ruth is out. And so in essence, I believe
14:37
what he's saying is, listen, yeah, I know God can redeem some
14:41
people. I mean, he can redeem
14:44
Israelites, but I don't know about a foreigner in in this in
14:53
this moment of the story. I think what the author wants
14:56
you to see is this is so contrary to the gospel of Jesus
15:01
Christ, because you and I often times do this.
15:08
We'll look at a world and we'll say, listen, there's a good
15:11
crowd and there's a bad crowd. There are moral people and there
15:14
are immoral people. And in that we will judge the
15:18
world not on whether or not they know Christ, but rather we'll
15:21
judge them on their morals or judge them on their political
15:23
party, or we'll judge them on their political leaning, or how
15:26
they live or the way they dress or lots of things.
15:29
And we'll create in our minds an in crowd and an out crowd, a
15:34
pure crowd and an impure crowd. You know, there's kind of the
15:39
people I want to deal with and there's the people that maybe I
15:43
don't really want to deal with. The wonderful reason to come to
15:48
church in person and not just online is you have to deal with
15:52
both. You're welcome.
15:57
It's easy to avoid on your couch, not so easy on the Pew.
16:04
You see, to understand life and the world the way this job blow
16:09
so and so is looking at it is is to not understand Christmas.
16:13
It's to not understand the gospel of Jesus Christ.
16:15
It's to misunderstand Jesus himself.
16:20
Because there there is no in crowd apart from Christ.
16:25
There is no good and bad. We are all bad.
16:29
There is no moral and immoral. We're all immoral.
16:32
Jesus would say the same thing in Scripture.
16:33
Someone would come and go, good teacher.
16:35
He'd go whoa, whoa, whoa, why do you call me good?
16:36
There's no one good but God. At the root of our sinfulness is
16:42
a hypocrisy in which we justify ourselves and we think that
16:45
everyone else is immoral. Everybody else is the insider or
16:49
the outsider. But that's not the case at all.
16:52
The gospel of Christ says that everyone's bad.
16:55
Everyone was born into sin. Everyone was an enemy of God.
16:58
That's what the gospel says. You and I, every single one of
17:02
us, have rebelled against God. We, we chose our own way over
17:05
his. We've hurt people.
17:08
We've been selfish. We've lied to us ourselves about
17:11
who we really are. And left to ourselves, we are
17:16
spiritually dead, separated from the God who made us, with no way
17:22
to fix that on our own. So whether it's the religious
17:26
person who who looks down on others spiritually dead, or the
17:30
moral person who trusts in their own morality spiritually dead,
17:34
or the immoral person who knows they're spiritually dead.
17:38
And every single one of us needs a Redeemer.
17:44
And all of us start as a Moabite, an outsider.
17:51
That's the story of the Bible. But God being rich in mercy
18:01
because of the great kindness with which He shows up, steps
18:05
into the moment and begins to raise people from spiritual
18:09
death to spiritual life, from enemy of God to child of God,
18:14
from foreigner to a son or a daughter of the king.
18:17
Therefore there is no Greek or Jew, barbarian or Scythian, male
18:21
or female, slave or owner, Democrat or republican, moral or
18:25
immoral. There is either saved by the
18:27
blood of Jesus Christ and identify through the
18:31
righteousness of his robes, or there is lost.
18:42
And to understand the world and the gospel that way will mean
18:49
that no longer Christian do I get to shake my fist and all
18:56
those immoral people because they are you and I am them, but
19:02
for the grace of God. So instead of shaking our our
19:07
fists at those people that infuriate us, we open our hands
19:10
offering to serve them in hopes that we could call them to see
19:13
Christ and that they might enter into life from death.
19:21
That's the gospel of Jesus Christ.
19:24
That's why Christmas matters so much that every one of us,
19:29
foreigner, Moabite, destitute, starving widows, separated from
19:33
God, might be saved by God. And to know Christ changes
19:39
everything. So no, we're not in the in
19:42
crowd. We're not the Israelites who
19:45
don't want to sully our inheritance.
19:47
We're not the moral. We're the beggars who have found
19:50
the Savior who came from Bethlehem, the House of bread,
19:53
which is what Bethlehem actually means.
19:56
We're beggars who have found bread.
19:58
And our job is to find other beggars and tell them, hey, we
20:02
don't tell them, hey, I figured it out.
20:04
We tell them, hey, I know where you can find bread.
20:08
Let me show you. This is why Ruth, the Book of
20:14
Ruth is a love story. And a Christmas story, you think
20:21
about this, there has been these laws that he's, he's basically
20:26
rolling out today and talking about in our story, these laws
20:29
have been in place already. And yet for over 2 months wrote
20:32
Ruth and Naomi have been in town And conveniently Joe Blow so and
20:36
so has not seen fit to have any sort of obligation between for
20:41
these widows who have been hurting and alone and in need.
20:46
And you know, Joe, Joe probably has enough enough Gray area in
20:52
the law that he could argue that's not really my obligation.
20:55
You know, like there's some great, but the law that was
21:02
there to help them has not helped them at all.
21:07
So it's not the law that steps in and saves the day for Ruth
21:10
and Naomi. It's actually the sacrificial
21:13
love of Boaz stepping in to fix a hopeless situation with
21:17
hopeless people. And Boaz steps into Ruth's life
21:24
not because there's any legal obligation to do so.
21:28
He chooses to love her. He chooses to serve her.
21:32
He chooses to redeem her. He's not compelled to.
21:36
Love fixes what the law fails. This story, this concept is
21:42
actually a microcosm of the entire story of Scripture.
21:47
If you've read the Bible at all, especially the Old Testament,
21:51
there's plenty of law about what we should do right and wrong.
21:56
And and all of the stories of the Old Testament are about
21:59
people reading and going, yeah, sounds good.
22:00
I'm not going to do that. See, the problem in the Bible is
22:07
not that people don't know what to do.
22:08
It's that frankly, we just don't want to do it.
22:16
You know, the problem in my life, possibly the problem in
22:22
your life is not that you don't know what to do.
22:26
So we don't want to do it, and sometimes we want to do it.
22:30
We don't find ourselves compelled to actually get it
22:32
done consistently, which is the well, it's the same problem that
22:39
poor old Joe Blow so and so illustrates.
22:44
Just like Boaz is redeeming an enemy, Ruth is a Moabite and
22:52
making her his family. He's going to make her his wife.
22:57
Well, that that's my story too. I grew up a Christian.
23:03
I grew up in a wonderful home. I grew up with godly parents.
23:06
I knew what was right. I chose wrong.
23:11
It wasn't that I needed to know what right and wrong was.
23:13
I already knew. I chose to run from God.
23:15
I was an enemy of God and no amount of knowing the law, no
23:19
amount of knowing more moral things was going to fix my
23:22
problem. It wasn't a knowledge problem,
23:25
it was a heart problem. I knew what was right and didn't
23:31
want any part of it. I needed someone to lovingly
23:36
step into my life and fix the problem.
23:39
Not because they were legally obligated to do so, but because
23:42
they chose to. And that's the beauty of
23:48
Christmas. The one and only gift that can
23:53
save us would not be more laws. It would not be more social
23:58
programs. It would be an act of love so
24:00
radical and scandalous that we are still talking about it today
24:06
because it changed all of human history.
24:09
God's Son wrapped in flesh, willingly steps into our
24:17
hopeless predicament to redeem us, to make us His own, to
24:22
choose, to love us. That's the Christmas story.
24:25
It's no coincidence this this story is taking place 1100 years
24:29
before Christmas. And they're standing at a gate.
24:32
And if you actually look at where Jesus was born, it's a
24:35
couple 100 meters away, just a few 100 meters away from where
24:44
this redemption is taking place. There's going to be another
24:46
Redeemer who comes, and just like Boaz is an example of a
24:54
Redeemer, he's there to foreshadow the ultimate Redeemer
25:01
who will come for you and I. If you know Jesus Christ as your
25:08
king, that means that this season for us, this idea of
25:12
Christmas, we celebrate that we didn't deserve a single bit of
25:18
the grace and mercy that was extended toward us.
25:23
What do you, what do you do with that, with that truth?
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I would submit to you that we, we, we should use it to remind
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us that the only thing that makes U.S. special, the only
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thing that makes us any morally different than a lost in a
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broken world is that Jesus stepped into our situation.
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And therefore we can use that truth to shape us and to
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motivate us, to shape us and to motivate it, motivate us when it
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comes to living this out in this world, shape us.
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Here's what I mean by that we we should adopt A posture of
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grateful, foreign, hopeless, orphan, adopted and saved by God
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and motivate. We should wake up every day
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excited to tell people where the bread of life is and what he did
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for us and what he can do for them.
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Shape means that this week when I'm tempted to to look down on
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someone that that homeless guy outside Trader Joe's, the Co
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worker with different politics, the member, the family member
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you're going to, you're going to be meeting with over the
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holidays that has very different choices than you would agree
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with. We get to remember that without
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Jesus, I am no better. I'm just saved.
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And it should motivate us. Motivate, meaning sometime this
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week or over the next few weeks as you as you press into people,
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your family, your, your, your people in your carpools, your
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cubicle, your cul-de-sac, who you're looking for, who's
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hurting and who's searching. And instead of judging them or
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trying to fix them, we simply ask, can I tell you about
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someone that changed my life? That's Christmas and that's the
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gospel. And maybe you've been a
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Christian for years, decades, 30-40 years, and you've read
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Ruth a dozen times. And my question for you is, have
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you become a Joe Blow? So and so have you gotten so
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comfortable in your inheritance that you've forgotten you were
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once Ruth, an outsider, A foreigner with nothing to offer.
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I told you earlier that the author intentionally left out
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the name of this character and called them so and so, and there
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was a reason. Here's the reason, I think
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because legalism and self protection, right?
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You out of God's story he chose security over sacrifice and
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history forgot him. There's a movie I think it's
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Troy. There's a movie where someone
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they they go to the main character and they're like I
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can't believe you're going to you're going to fight him and he
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looks at me and goes and that's why no one will remember your
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name when you choose your own preference and your own security
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and your own comfort over obedience to Christ.
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I don't what are we even doing this for.
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Meanwhile, Ruth, Ruth the Moabite, Ruth the enemy of God,
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Ruth the foreigner, Ruth the destitute widow with nothing to
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author offer. That's Jesus, great, great,
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great grandmama. I want you to consider that God
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who ordained everything, who chose when Christ would come
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before the foundations of the earth intentionally chose that
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the grandmother, great great grandmother of Jesus would be an
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enemy of God. Would be a foreigner, would be a
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Moabite, would be destitute, would be a widow, would be
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someone that everyone wanted to exclude.
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So that you and I would look at this and have a realization that
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this is what God does. He redeems the lost and he uses
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them for his glory. Hey, God's not looking for
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religious insiders who protect their inheritance.
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He's looking for the desperate who will risk everything to
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follow him. I had someone come in my office
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for counsel this week and, and they were telling me about an
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opportunity that they see where they believe God is leading
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them. And it's radical.
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It means quitting their job means taking financial risks.
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It means all of this stuff, walking away from the
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comfortable and the safe. And, and, and so they finish
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telling me all this and they look at me with tears in their
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eyes, and they say I'm ready. And I started to, I started to
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cry, I'm listening to this and I'm like, because I don't even
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know exactly how God is going to use that person.
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But here's what I do know. I know that when your posture
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looks like that toward God, he does great things.
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He does great things, He moves. So I want to encourage you push
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into that Christian as God begins to lead you into those
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moments. I call them high dive moments.
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You ever stood on one of the big high dives at the end and put
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your toes over and went, I may have made it, made a bad
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decision and you're, you're genuinely thinking like, is it
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going to be worse to jump or or have the crawl of shame back
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down the ladder? And I just want to encourage
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you, when the Lord is leading you to something radical, jump
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in. The water's fine.
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You're going to love it. Why would you want to live this
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life any other way than radically going hard after
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Christ? What does that leap look like
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for you, Christian? What does that leap of faith
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look like in your life right now?
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Is it forgiving someone who you haven't forgiven?
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Is it addressing an addiction or, or an ongoing sin that
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you've just been tolerating and hiding?
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Is it some radical act of, of generosity or obedience that God
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is calling you into? Perhaps, perhaps today your leap
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of faith is a little different. Perhaps today you're you're here
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joining us for this Christmas service or you're watching
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online and you don't yet know Jesus Christ as your king.
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Maybe you've heard about him, but you don't know Him.
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And so as we wrap this service up for just just a moment, give
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me your attention. Maybe you came here today or
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you're watching online and you don't know Jesus as the Savior
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of your life. And I want to tell you, He came
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to offer you a new life, a new land, a new family to redeem
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you. You don't need more advice, you
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need a Redeemer and love fixes where the law fails.
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No amount of morality is going to fix the problem.
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If you look around our world and and the life that we live, all
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of human history points to the story of of evil and chaos and
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suffering and points to the need for someone to supernaturally
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step into this moment and intervene.
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It points to the need for a Redeemer because the world is
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broken. You and I were born broken into
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a fallen world, into sin, and at the first chance we had, we
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rebelled against God, choosing our own will over His.
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But God, being rich in kindness, has planned since before the
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creation of the world, to fix this problem.
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He sent his one and only Son in Jesus, born in flesh to live a
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perfect life. We couldn't live to die a brutal
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death on a cross that we should have died and to rise again
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three days later, conquering death, making a way for you and
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I to be saved and for our relationship with God to be
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restored. And so if you would like to
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accept the work of Christ on the cross, Romans 10 says this is
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what it looks like, that if you will confess with your mouth
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that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised
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him from the dead, you will be saved.
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For with the heart 1 believes and is justified, and with the
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mouth 1 confesses and is saved. And so if you'd like to
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surrender your life to God today, I want to give you that
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chance here at Christmas. Will you all please bow your
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heads and close your eyes and we'll wrap this service up.
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But I just want you to to focus on this for just a moment.
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If you're willing to ask a God for forgiveness and salvation
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with every eye closed and every head bowed, I just want you to
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to quietly or silently say this prayer with me.
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Jesus, I know I'm lost and I need to be saved.
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I want you to redeem me. I surrender everything to you
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and I receive your promise of redemption.
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Be my Lord. Please, Jesus, if you said that
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prayer for the very first time right now, would you be brave
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and raise your hand for me to see?
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Thank you, thank you. Put your hands down, Thank you
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in Jesus name, Amen. All right, real quick, Jesus
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loves you more than you actually can imagine or comprehend.
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And if you gave your life to Christ moments ago or recently,
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welcome to the family. In just a moment, we're going to
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sing some songs and we're going to respond to this sermon.
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And as we do, you have an opportunity.
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If you've given your life to Christ recently and not told
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anyone about it, we want you to go to the back where it says I
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raised my hand on either side. We would love to celebrate with
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you. We have a gift for you.
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We'd love to talk about what it looks like to follow Jesus.
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Will you stand? Our prayer team is going to come
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up. We're going to be on the sides
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today because we got a full band.
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So just look left or right. You'll find prayer members
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everywhere. We love praying with you and for
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you for any reason I want, I want to remind you that God
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loves you tremendously. And whatever it is that you're
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going through in this moment, you are not doing it alone.
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And so as we sing, you move as the Lord leads you.
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We would love to pray with you and for you.
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We love you church. Merry Christmas.