2024 Christmas Messages

Over Christmas Eve and Day, we had four services and I preached three different messages. Instead of writing and posting each one, here’s a summary of what I said…

Christmas Eve – ‘Revealed Grace’ (Titus 2:11)

Sometimes Christmas can seem to be like a Where’s Wally? picture. These are pictures with lots of detail which depict many people doing various activities. The challenge is to find key characters, such as Wally, by looking very carefully at each person and what they’re doing.

Christmas can seem like that to me because it’s a very busy time of year for many people. With everything going on, it can be difficult to find the person at the heart of Christmas. While Christmas means different things to different people, the central reason for Christmas from a Christian point of view is to celebrate the birth of Jesus. He is our Wally in the middle of the hustle, bustle, and craziness of this time of year.

It is very easy for Jesus to get hidden in all the busyness and obscured by everything that happens at this time of year such as shopping, preparations, and celebrations. Even from a church point of view, we can get preoccupied with the traditions, customs and expectations that come with this time of year and the birth of Jesus can get crowed out or lost.

When we find Jesus at Christmas we find God revealing his grace and salvation to all people. Finding Jesus shows us God’s grace as he gives us all of Godself, along with his goodness, love and life. He gives with no strings attached, no fine print and no conditions. In Jesus we find God giving us everything for life in this world and the next, even though it costs him everything.

We also find salvation in Jesus. This is more than going to heaven when we die. Jesus saves us from despair by giving us hope, from brokenness by giving us peace, from sorrow by giving us joy, and from hatred and emptiness by giving us love. God gives us everything we need for an abundant life filled with his goodness in this world and the next by giving himself to us in Jesus so we can find life now and forever through him.

That’s what makes Jesus worth finding.

Christmas Eve – ‘Peace On Earth?’ (Luke 2:14)

Years ago, I took a group of students from the college I was working at to a Jewish synagogue. One of the students asked the synagogue leader why they didn’t recognise Jesus as their promised Messiah. He answered that the Jewish scriptures say that when the Messiah comes, there will be peace on the earth. He continued by saying that the conflict we can see in the world tells him that the peace the Messiah will bring is still coming.

When we look the world, he seems to make a good point. We regularly hear about the brutal conflicts in Ukraine, between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and in many other regions around the world. Closer to home, we see people struggling because of floods and storms, broken relationships, problems with physical and mental health, or grieving the loss of someone we love. It’s understandable to wonder where is the peace God promises us?

The peace the angels proclaimed when Jesus was born (Luke 2:14) is a different kind of peace from what we might expect. It is a spiritual peace which we find through faith in Jesus. We find this peace in the angel’s promise to Joseph that Jesus is our Immanuel (Matthew 1:23). God is with us in all the messiness and brokenness that goes with life in this world. We find this peace in the promise of God’s unchanging love for us in the gift of Jesus life to us in his birth, as well as the gift of his life for us on the cross. Jesus’s death on the cross helps us find peace when we see God’s unconditional and never-changing love for us. We can also find peace in the resurrection of Jesus. His victory over sin, death, and everything that’s wrong in the world gives us the promise of a better tomorrow. Jesus’ resurrection tells us that his love is stronger than anything in this world, and the day will come when he will make everything that’s wrong right again through Jesus.

As people who encounter God’s peace through faith in Jesus, God wants us to be the way that his peace continues to flow through the world. We do that by living in peace with the people around us, by forgiving those who wrong us, reconciling with those with whom we might be in conflict, and accepting others in the same way that Christ accepts us. When things are out of our control, we can find peace through faith in Jesus and share that peace with others by being people of peace in their lives.

This Christmas, I pray that God’s peace will be with you as you trust in Jesus, so you can bring his peace into the lives of others everywhere you go.

Christmas Day – ‘Full of Grace & Truth’ (John 1:14)

An important part of Christmas is the giving and receiving of gifts. Of course, giving and receiving are like two sides of the same coin. However, when I look at our society, especially at Christmas, it seems to me that what we get seems to be much more important generally speaking than what we give (although I would be very happy to be wrong).

God’s gift of himself to us in the birth of Jesus shows us a very different way to live. John says that Jesus is God’s Word in human form who comes to us ‘full of grace and truth’ (John 1:14,17). These two very important words point us to God’s gift of Godself to us in his Son.

The word ‘grace’ basically means ‘giving’. The Greek word the Bible uses is very close to the words which mean ‘gift’ and ‘to give freely’. When John writes that Jesus came in ‘grace’, he tells us that Jesus came as God’s gift full of his goodness and love to us. In Jesus we meet God who gave himself to us as a human baby, gave himself for us by dying on the cross, and who continues to give us Jesus’ resurrection life through the Holy Spirit.

When John says that Jesus came in ‘truth’ it is important to keep in mind that there are different kinds of truths. For example, a mathematical truth such as 2+2=4 is different from an historical truth such as Australia became a federation in 1901. When John says that Jesus came ‘full of … truth’ he is pointing us towards the spiritual truth of God’s sacrificial love for us. Later in John’s gospel, Jesus identifies himself as ‘the Truth’ (John 14:6). We can see in Jesus the truth of God’s giving nature and the gift of his life for us and to us.

Trusting in Jesus as God’s expression of his grace and truth to us leads us to live as giving people. Following Jesus means turning away from a ‘getting’ mindset to a ‘giving’ posture in life as we trust in God’s giving nature to us in Jesus and we embody that same nature towards others. As the church, the body of Christ and God’s physical presence in the world, when we give to others in the same way God gives to us in Jesus, people encounter God’s giving nature in us as they receive God’s grace and the truth of his love for all through us.

As we unwrap our presents this Christmas, we can find joy in the gifts that are freely given to us. They can also point us towards God’s giving nature which finds its fullest expression in the gift of his Son to us and for us. As Jesus’ followers and members of his body in the world, God calls us and teaches us to be giving people and giving communities of faith, so others can meet our giving God through us.