Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this message on December 14, 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Audio Transcript
Some, or even for most people. But if we are honest, the truth is that for many individuals, Christmas is a difficult time. It’s a sad time. It’s lonely. It can be disappointing, painful, and depressing.
You know, some among us today are going through a difficult time because of financial struggle or because of a job loss. There may be illness in your family or maybe you’re facing cancer. Some people are experiencing their first Christmas without a loved one that passed away this year. And there are some that feel extreme sadness just because of the short days, the long nights, and the cold weather. Christmas isn’t the most wonderful time of the year for everyone in our lives.
And when we look at the Christmas story, we see that the people of Israel, with the rest of the world before that first Christmas, they were also living in difficult and sad times. When that first Christmas came, not only did they have the same personal struggles that we have today, but the world was under the harsh rule of the Romans. Everyone everywhere needed some good news, and they needed a reason to be joyful. And that is exactly what the angels announced that first Christmas. Let’s read it together.
Luke, chapter two. It’s in your bulletin. There in the same region, shepherds were staying out in the fields and keeping watch at night over their flock. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, don’t be afraid.
For look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the city of David, a savior was born for you. Who is the Messiah? The Lord. Can we have the screen down and the PowerPoint slides?
And let me be able to see in the back where we are.
It helps me to know what I’m supposed to say.
And then, Bill, if we can have that back camera on so I can see on the back wall?
Okay, we will do without them.
The answer to their need was that they needed a savior. There was an expectation they were looking forward to a savior that would come. And when we talk about a Savior, they wanted someone who would set them free from all of their problems and their difficult situations. But they also had the expectation that they were looking forward to a messiah. And when they talked about the Messiah, they were looking for the one man that God would anoint to come and rule over the earth with justice, to rule over the earth with complete right motivations, to rule over the earth in love and truth and peace, doing it for everyone.
They had the expectation of a savior and they had the expectation for a Messiah. I’d like us now to look at this passage in Psalm 130.
That sounds like a promising note.
Let’s read through this psalm to better understand the longing and the sadness that the world had before Jesus came. The psalmist writes, out of the depths I call to you, Lord. Lord, listen to my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for help, Lord. Lord, if you kept an account of iniquities, Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness so that we may be revered. So that you may be revered. I wait for the Lord. I wait and put my hope in his word. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning.
More than watchmen for the morning. Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for there is faithful love with the Lord, and with him is redemption and abundance. The psalmist was in a period of desperation. He’s crying out to the Lord. He’s alone at night, and he’s waiting for his watch to be over.
He’s waiting for that first light of dawn. Desperate, in some struggle. He’s at the very bottom, in the depths. He’s depressed and he’s pulled down about as low as anybody can feel. He’s emotional and he’s crying out to God.
He’s pleading with God to listen to him, but at the same time, he is desperately holding on to the certainty that the light of the morning is coming. There’s this sense of desperation and need, and he’s turning to God to express that. What is this desperation based on? Well, it’s a complication that he has. In verse three, we read, Lord, if you kept an account of iniquities, Lord, who could stand?
Why is he so down? He’s thinking about the very largest common complication in his life. And it isn’t about his work. It isn’t about the sheep that he’s watching, or maybe he’s a soldier at night. But it’s actually the biggest complication that the whole world has.
And it’s not a complication that the world started with, because God created the world perfectly without disease, without evil, and without death. But Adam and Eve made a choice to live according to their own thoughts and desires instead of according to God’s commands. And when they made that choice in the Garden of Eden, the complication entered the world. And that complication is sin. Here the psalmist calls it iniquity.
And this is what the psalmist is so depressed about. He’s so down. It’s its most serious problem. It’s worse than cancer, it’s worse than depression, it’s worse than financial ruin, it’s worse than loneliness.
Why is it worse? It’s because sin, or iniquity as he calls it here, has produced a barrier between him and the Lord God Almighty, who wants to be his best friend, his Creator and the king of his life. Sin produces a barrier between man and God that cannot be overcome. It cannot be stepped over, it cannot be pushed over, it cannot be dug under, or it cannot be gone around because it is completely destructive, it’s completely deadly, and it’s completely enduring. That the complication of sin in our life is an eternal problem.
So we’ve had this expectation, we’ve got this desperation about this complication of sin. But the psalmist tells us that there is remediation, there is a solution, there is a fix, there is a cure for this problem that he has. And the psalmist encourages the reader that there is an answer to, to the great complication that we all have. And the only solution must come from God Almighty. And on that first Christmas, God sent Jesus to be the solution, to be the fix, to be the cure for the complication that we face.
The psalmist lists four needs here that, that all people have. And it’s interesting because to me, these needs, they have to be God given. Because evolution does not explain why we want these things. Evolution does not explain why people have these desires, but animals and the other created beings do not. And the four things that the psalmist is looking here are for forgiveness.
He’s looking for hope. He’s looking for real, faithful love, and he’s looking for redemption. Just think about it. Animals do things to one another and they don’t look for forgiveness. But if you hurt someone’s feelings that you love and you go and you say, please forgive me, you have this strong desire that is God given to you, that you want to be forgiven.
Animals don’t have any hope about the future, but hope is what helps us to get through difficult days and years and maybe even a whole life of problems. Animals aren’t looking for love, but it’s one thing that all of the world is looking for. And animals aren’t looking for redemption, but people do. All of these are placed in our heart to lead us toward the Lord God Almighty. And the Bible tells us that Jesus abundantly meets all four of these.
In Isaiah 43, we read about the forgiveness that Jesus provides. You have burdened me with your sins, you have wearied me with your iniquities. The Lord says, but God says, I am the one. I sweep away your transgressions for my own sake. And the wonderful thing is, he says that he will remember our sins no more.
There is an eternal internal desire in us not to be at odds with other people, especially those that we care for. When we ask for forgiveness, we feel terrible unless they say, yes, I forgive you. But we also need God in the same way to forgive us of our sins. And when we talk about sins, we’re talking about evil actions, but we’re also talking about having evil thoughts. And even when we’re doing good things, sometimes we have evil, wrong, selfish motivations about those.
And that too is sin. And all of these things, Jesus offers forgiveness for us to the point that God remembers them no more. Part of the remediation that Jesus offers also is hope. You know, we can live through difficult times, we can live through disease, and we can even live through the death of a spouse if we just have hope. And Jesus Christ provides that for us.
But without hope, people become despondent. They become depressed, depressed. They’re unmotivated to move forward and Continue. In Ephesians 2:12, 2, verses 12 through 13, we read about the hope that Jesus provides for us. He says, at that time, when you were without Christ, before Jesus came, before you understood him, you were excluded from the citizenship of Israel and foreigners to the covenants of promise, meaning that they didn’t know God at all.
You were without hope because you were without God in this world. But the answer is that now, in Christ Jesus, you who were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. And those of you that were without hope now have hope. And those of you without God now have him once again as your best friend and savior. Now, when we’re talking about hope, we’re not defining the word as just a strong wish or a desire.
Biblical hope is looking forward in confident expectation that God will provide hope to the world. Is like a homeless person on the street wishing for a meal, to ride, arrive. It’s just a wish. But when we’re talking about biblical hope, I want you to think of a hungry child whose parents are driving them to McDonald’s for dinner. Okay, Is that a good feeling?
They’re not just wishful that mom and dad are going to buy them a Happy Meal. They’re biblically hopeful because they expect without a doubt that mom and dad are going to do what, Provide a meal for them. And that’s what our hope is in God through Jesus Christ that we know for certainty. Because he is our loving Father, he will provide another. Part of the remediation that Jesus offers is faithful love.
How many of you like to feel loved? Be honest. This is your test. Okay, some of you are not passing the test. I don’t see your hand.
Okay. We all like to be loved. And we know what it means to be really loved. When people don’t expect something from us and we don’t have to pay for it, we don’t have to do anything. That’s the type of love that God offers us.
But the world, because it also wants love, is looking for love in all the wrong places. And the love that the world promises is always shallow. It’s self serving, it’s bleeding, it’s more lust than it is love.
But we know that Jesus love has no boundaries. We know that Jesus love is completely unselfish because Jesus love is costly, that he came and he died on the cross for our sins. Let’s read Romans 8 here. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing. And read the bold with me will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
If you want real love, it comes through a real savior, Jesus Christ. The fourth thing that the psalmist said that he was desiring was redemption. And Ephesians 1 says in him talking about Jesus Christ, we have redemption through his blood. What are we talking about when we say redemption? Redemption means to be brought back to the rightful place, to the rightful owner.
You know, if you go to a pawn shop because you need some cash and you give them some item, they’re going to give you some cash for that. And for a certain period of time you can come back with a piece of paper or whatever and you can redeem that item back to yourself. Now you’re going to have to pay them back the cash that they gave you and you’re going to have to pay them interest or some type of fee. But redemption means taking something back, paying for what belongs to you so that you can have the relationship established again. That’s what Jesus does for us.
Adam and Eve made the choice to sell all of us to the pawn shop. But Jesus came and he died on the cross to pay the price and to redeem us back to himself. And, and there’s a book in the Old Testament about the prophet Hosea. And his whole real life experience is a metaphor about God’s deep desire to redeem his people to offer them redemption. And just to remind you about the story, Hosea is about a very painful marriage where the prophet Hosea marries Gomer.
She’s a promiscuous woman. She repeatedly, over and over leaves Hosea to pursue other lovers. And if you’ve ever had a spouse that’s unfaithful, just that happening one time is devastating. For it to happen over and over can demean and destroy a person. But Hosea, out of his love for his wife and obedience to God, redeems her.
She’s gotten herself into debt, she’s gotten herself into slavery. And after all her unfaithfulness, Hosea goes and pays everything that she owes to redeem his unfaithful wife to him. It all symbolizes God’s persistent pursuit and forgiveness for his people. Despite spiritual adultery. God wants to redeem and restore sinful people to a right relationship with Him.
And that’s part of what Jesus Christ does for us. At Christmas, God gave the greatest gift. It was the first and the most important gift of Christmas. He gave us a manual. The name means God.
With us, Jesus Christ came in the flesh and he made Himself accessible to all of us. And he became a sympathetic savior. That he understood the difficulties of growing up in a poor community, of being ridiculed, of being spat upon, eventually being hated, even though he had done nothing wrong. And he did all of this so that we might have a new relationship with God. We go to John 3:16, a very familiar verse, and also read the two after that.
It says God loved the world in this way, that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who, and here’s the Word, believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life. It doesn’t say you have to pay money. It doesn’t say you have to do anything. You don’t have to be in a special place. You don’t have to be at a certain age.
All you have to do is believe in Jesus Christ in order that you will have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. And anyone who believes in him is not condemned. But anyone who does not believe is already condemned because he is not believed. In the name of the One and only Son of God, we close today with offering to you what God gives to us through His Son, Jesus Christ.
He meets our expectation. He provides for our desperation to be removed. He takes away the complication of sin that we have in our life. And he does this by remediating us by curing us, by fixing us. He gives us forgiveness, he gives us hope, he gives us faithful love, and he gives us redemption.
Today as we stand and sing, in just a minute, we’re going to have some prayer team members that are the back of the auditorium and they’re here. Maybe you’re going through a difficult time this Christmas and you just want somebody to offer you a word of encouragement and pray for you. They’re going to be there doing that. But maybe you have understood for the first time today that you have a complication of sin in your life that you need to get resolved with the Lord. And there’s going to be someone back there that will talk to you more about that and help you to understand how you just need to place your faith in Jesus Christ that you might have a restored relationship with the Lord.
So as David is coming forward to lead us in music, I just ask us all that we stand. Our prayer team members are going to make their way to the back and if you need to talk to someone as we’re singing, just step out and head to the back and someone will be able to assist you there today. May we pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that in Jesus Christ we have complete remediation. We ask that you would help us to be like the psalmist, that we would understand in desperation our great need for you, for forgiveness from our great complication of sin.
Father, speak to those in our midst today. Give them the gift of faith that they might come to a right relationship with you. And this Christmas season, maybe for the first time, have a right relationship with you like they’ve never had before. We ask that you move it in our hearts and in our midst. Give us comfort if we are experiencing loss.
Give us joy, Father, if we are experiencing sadness. Give us hope if we can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. We thank you that Jesus provides all of these things for us and it’s in his name that we pray. Amen.