All Because of Love / Luke 1:26-2:20

Welcome to the Well

It is so good to hear you sing. One of the great treats of being up on stage is getting to hear all of your voices united together. It is good to be with you and good to worship the Lord together.

Just by way of introduction—especially because around Christmas we tend to have some folks who are visiting or new—you are at The Well Community Church. If you thought you walked into NorthPointe, New Covenant, or CrossCity, you are in the wrong building! We are one church in multiple locations. We have our campus here, and we also have a campus over at Fig Garden Village at Palm and Gettysburg. We also have a teaching team, which is a unique thing here in Fresno. Shay Sumlin, Mike Sladen, and myself make up the three teachers on our team. What is so fun about these guys is that we have been sharing God’s Word together for twenty-two years. We have known each other since we were just pups.

We are a very Christ-centered, simple church. We are just trying to point people to Jesus. The purpose of our church is to help people connect to God, because we believe the highest joy and love in life is found in relationship with Him. We want to help people connect to each other, because everything in life is better with friends. And we want to do that in every neighborhood, everywhere. It is not about the building; it is about the people.

We are concluding a three-week run-in to Christmas Eve, talking about Advent and the idea of Immanuel—God with us. A couple of weeks ago, Shay challenged us to raise our sights and our affections to Christ, reminding us that in the presence of God is the fullness of joy, so let’s not get distracted by lesser things. We talked about Jesus being fully God, and that the greatest expression of God’s love is Jesus Christ.

John 3:16 (NASB)

’For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

Last week, we focused on Jesus’ deity clothed in humanity. No one else in the history of the world is like Him. He is not merely a religious teacher or just another prophet; He is fully God and fully man. Through His finished work, He invites us directly into His love.

As I was preparing for this message—having done this for fifteen years now—I pulled up my notes folder. I looked at Christmas 2002, 2003, 2004, all the way through to the present. I thought, Lord, how do I approach this gathering with a fresh perspective? Over the last several weeks, the sheer concept of the love of God has completely fascinated me. I have been walking with the Lord since late in my college years, so it hasn’t been just yesterday, but this concept of God’s love has hit me in a brand-new way. Christmas is the ultimate expression of His love—Immanuel, God with us.

The Grand Narrative of God’s Love

God is, by definition, love. If you take the grand narrative of the entire Bible, it is a story about God’s love. We often get lost in the weeds and details of individual stories, but the overarching summary is love. God fashioned creation in love. He created mankind in love to enjoy creation, but ultimately to enjoy Him. He created us as His image bearers to reflect and represent His love to the world.

Everything in Scripture pivots around that design, with one major catastrophic problem: sin. When we talk about sin, I know some of you might be thinking, Great, Grandma dragged me to church, and here’s the guy talking about sin. I can remember having to go to church only on Christmas and Easter as a kid, and I hated it because I knew the preacher was going to talk about sin, and I had plenty of it in my life.

We are not merely talking about bad deeds. The root issue of sin is not primarily what you do; it is why you do it. We were created for a love union with God—to receive His self-giving love and delight in a mutual love for Him. Sin enters when self-love takes over. At its root, sin means we love ourselves more than we love God.

The Problem of Self-Love

Have you noticed how easy it is to love yourself and how difficult it is to love someone else? That is the root of sin: self-love. Because of this inward obsession with self, we desperately chase satisfaction, meaning, fulfillment, and purpose in lesser things. But those things were never designed to satisfy our souls like the fullness of God’s love.

It should come as no surprise, then, that we are the most hyper-connected generation in human history, yet the most depressed and lonely. We are the most materially successful, yet deeply unsatisfied. We are the most financially affluent, yet relationally bankrupt. If you have a teenager or young person in your home, you know this is the most medicated generation we have ever seen. Teen suicide has increased dramatically over the last fifteen years. Why? Because as a culture, we have rejected God to pursue self-love, tirelessly chasing satisfaction in lesser things that can never deliver. We are exhausted from trying to fill an infinite void with finite things, so we medicate or fall into despair.

Now, you might be asking, What does any of this have to do with Christmas? It has everything to do with Christmas. When we talk about the Advent season, we are talking about a Heavenly Father who saw our endless, empty pursuit of self-love and loved us anyway. While we were still desperately in love with ourselves, seeking life in everything apart from Him, He pursued us. He made us alive together in Christ. That is the depth of God’s love.

Christmas is not ultimately about Santa Claus, or Burgermeister Meisterburger in Sombertown, or Rudolph and the Island of Misfit Toys. It is not about Buddy the Elf telling someone they sit on a throne of lies, and it is not about Cousin Eddie and the Griswolds. I love having fun with Christmas traditions and movies, but the true story is infinitely deeper and more meaningful.

1 John 4:10 (NASB)

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son [to be] the propitiation for our sins.

The beauty of Christmas is that God made the first move.

The Unsanitized Nativity Story

I want us to refocus our hearts by reading directly from the Gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus.

Luke 1:26-33 (NASB)

Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the descendants of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming in, he said to her, ‘Greetings, favored one! The Lord [is] with you.’ But she was very perplexed at [this] statement, and kept pondering what kind of salutation this was. The angel said to her, ’Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. ’And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. ‘He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.’

Luke 2:1-5 (NASB)

Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth. This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. And everyone was on his way to register for the census, each to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, in order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him, and was with child.

Joseph went from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the City of David. The Hebrew word Beit means “house,” and Lechem means “bread”—so he traveled to the “House of Bread.” There is rich preaching to be done on Jesus, the Bread of Life, being born in the House of Bread, but notice the sheer humility and raw reality of this story. Matthew’s genealogy includes scandalous, broken people, and Luke shows us a teenage girl who has to explain to her betrothed husband that she is pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Imagine that real-life conversation. How do you even begin to explain that? Yet Joseph and Mary walked forward in faith.

Luke 2:6-14 (NASB)

While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. In the same region there were [some] shepherds staying out in the fields and keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened. But the angel said to them, ’Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. ‘This [will be] a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.’

Luke 2:20 (NASB)

The shepherds went back, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen, just as had been told them.

In Matthew’s Gospel, we also see the arrival of the Magi, the wise men from the East.

Matthew 2:7-10 (NASB)

Then Herod secretly called the magi and determined from them the exact time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, ‘Go and search carefully for the Child; and when you have found [Him], report to me, so that I too may come and worship Him.’ After hearing the king, they went their way; and the star, which they had seen in the east, went on before them until it came and stood over [the place] where the Child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.

King Herod felt threatened by the birth of this King and plotted to destroy Him, but the Magi followed the star, fell down, and worshiped the child with great joy.

This nativity narrative displays the staggering humility and love of God. God did not leave us abandoned in our self-love. He did not discard us. Instead, He came near through Christ—perfect deity wrapped in fragile humanity. Jesus was born in love, lived a sinless life for us in love, died on the cross for us in love, was buried in love, rose triumphantly from the grave in love, ascended to the Father, and promised to return for us in love. That is the good news of the Gospel.

Forsaking the Lesser for the Greater

We are not asking you to forsake something great to settle for something lesser. The Gospel invites you to forsake the empty, lesser things that can never satisfy so that you might lay hold of the infinitely greater One. It calls us to set aside exhausting self-love and discover real, lasting satisfaction in the provision of God.

Colossians 1:19-22 (NASB)

For it was the [Father’s] good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, [I say], whether things on earth or things in heaven. And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, [engaged] in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach–

The beauty of the Gospel is that God offers to us freely what came at the highest personal cost to Him. It cost Jesus the agony and suffering of the cross, yet He offers His grace as a free gift. You cannot earn it. You do not have to perform for it. For the students who just finished finals, this isn’t about making the grade. You don’t have to try out or make the cut. Jesus offers Himself freely as the ultimate expression of love.

Breadcrumbs of Grace

This truth hits close to home for me. I did not grow up in church; this was not my family’s background. I spent years trying to medicate my way into finding love. For me, that meant pursuing intoxication, relationships, success, and an endless striving to be more. It was thoroughly exhausting and completely fruitless.

That lifestyle was just self-love in action—trying in my own strength to fill the massive cavern of my soul. But living that way never satisfies. You will always need another high, another relationship, another achievement, another rush.

I am not pointing a finger at anyone here. My story is simply an invitation. Thankfully, people who understood my brokenness left breadcrumbs of grace along the trail. They pointed me toward the ultimate satisfaction found in the love of God through Christ, and I followed those breadcrumbs. Now, I am leaving those same breadcrumbs for you. If you can relate to the exhaustion of trying to find life apart from God, I invite you to step into the only place of true rest. Nothing else can do for you what Jesus can do, because nothing else represents the redeeming, transforming love of the Creator.

A Complete Reboot

There is real substance in Jesus Christ that goes far beyond a sentimental holiday display. When you encounter Him, it is so life-giving that you want everyone to wake up and see it.

I am not asking you to become religious. We have plenty of religious people who try to wash the outside of the cup while ignoring the state of their heart. We do not need more of that. What Jesus offers is total heart transformation. When you place your trust in Christ, He begins an internal renovation. He deals with the brokenness of your past and rebuilds your life from the inside out.

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NASB)

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, [he is] a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

We are not talking about a slightly improved version of you; we are talking about a complete reboot, a total spiritual reinstall that begins and ends with His love.

God loves you. He has given you the greatest gift you will ever receive, and nothing else will ever satisfy the longings of your soul.

Matthew 11:28 (NASB)

’Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.

If you are weary and fatigued from striving to impress people and make life work on your own, come and drink freely from His love. Once you taste the goodness of Christ, lesser things will lose their grip on your heart.

This message is for you personally, but it is also for the people around you. This season, you will gather with family and friends—some of whom are wearing festive sweaters and carrying heavy, hurting hearts. They are in desperate need of seeing something real. Let us embrace the love of God ourselves, and let us look for every opportunity to point the people we love to the beauty of Jesus. Let Christmas move beyond holiday pageantry into the life-changing reality of Immanuel.

Prayer

Let’s pray together.

Lord, I am so thankful for this Christmas season. I am mindful of the junk in my own past, and I am deeply humbled by Your grace and Your steadfast love toward me.

I pray for every person here today. Father, it is so easy for us to get distracted and settle for lesser things. Raise our sights and lift our affections to see Jesus in all of His glory. Thank You for making the first move, pursuing us, and drawing us into a real relationship with You.

We want to rest in Your love, delight in it, and celebrate the incredible gift of Christ. Thank You for our Savior, who was born for us, lived for us, died in our place, rose from the grave, and will one day return. We thank You for the fullness of Your love revealed in Jesus. In His name we pray, Amen.