 For God so loved the world that he gave his own son. That whoever believes in him should not pay much but have eternal life. Well, good morning, radiant church. How's everybody doing? Christmas, you guys ready? Raise your hand if you are completely 100% ready, everything all set to go. Raise your hand if you're needing reindeer games and Christmas miracles to get it all done. Okay, we're praying for you. We hope that you have an amazing Christmas. How many of you are gonna be here tomorrow for one of our Christmas Eve services? Raise your hand. It is going to be beautiful and phenomenal, both here and at our Portage Campus as well. And so we really encourage you bring somebody and don't come to the 530 service because it's probably gonna be standing room only. So that might make you wanna come to it here at the Richland Campus or the four o'clock over at Portage, but we've got lots of different options and it's just gonna, it's our favorite service of the year and so we're looking really forward to it. If you have your Bibles, open it with me to John chapter three. John chapter three, this is part seven and it is the final part of our series entitled 316. As we have spent the last several weeks, if you're new, kind of going through John 316, the most famous scripture out of the New Testament of all time and we've been taking it almost word for word, at least phrase by phrase idea for idea for the last several weeks, because there's so much in this verse to mine out that will strengthen us and build us up and there's so much that we miss if we just kind of give it a cursory read, if we just kind of read it on the surface and kind of skim over it, we're gonna miss everything about the gospel. The entirety of the gospel is encapsulated in this one verse and so every week we've started by saying this verse together out loud together, so we're gonna put it up on the screens. Let's all say it together one last time. Ready, begin. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Hopefully you've got it memorized by now and the last portion of that verse says this. It says, if we believe should not perish but have eternal life. And so the title of the message this weekend is shall not perish, because that's what Jesus came. That's the gift of Jesus. Jesus came as the savior of the world to give us eternal life so that we should not perish or will not perish. The word perish is very interesting. It doesn't just mean kind of fade away. It means to be destroyed. It means to be overwhelmed and to die. And when the Bible is talking about perishing it's talking about spiritual death. The gift of Christmas, the gift of Jesus was given so that you and I would not perish in our sins but that we could experience eternal life and that's why Jesus came. Jesus came as the savior of the world and the greatest gift that was given was the gift of eternal life. It's important that we understand what the gift is really all about because if we get the idea or we misunderstand what the gift is all about then we won't understand what Christmas is about and we definitely won't understand what the cross and what the resurrection of Jesus are all about. How many of you have ever gotten a gift from somebody that totally just blew your mind? You didn't see it coming. You went to an office party. The spending limit was $25 and somebody bought you an iPod. How many have ever experienced one of those moments? Or just had somebody that you loved just give you a gift that just kind of blew your mind. Anybody gotten one of those type of gifts? You know, like when you were a kid maybe you got like a Nintendo 64. You know, that was kind of my era. I don't know what they are now, PS4s or whatever but you didn't see it coming and then you open it and it's like, it's a little red ranger BB gun, you know. You didn't know you were gonna be getting that because you've been told your whole life you'll shoot your eye out. You know, one of those things. So you got one of those gifts. How many of you on the opposite side of the spectrum have ever gotten a gift that when you opened it you're just like, oh, great. Anybody ever gotten one of those? Brute cologne from Walgreens. You're just like, oh, wonderful. I'll never wear this. It's wonderful. Thank you. It's exactly the opposite of what I like. Thank you. Or have you ever gotten a gift that the person forgot you gave them the year before and they re-gifted it back to you the next year? Anybody got one of those gifts? See, gifts say a lot about value. Gifts say a lot about value when we, you know, what does a gift card say to somebody? It's kind of like, hey, forgot to buy you something. Merry Christmas. No, maybe not. Maybe it's a really great gift card and I'm not a hater of gift cards because sometimes you just don't know what somebody wants and so you just kind of know the store or whatever. But, you know, sometimes you can receive a gift that's just kind of like, ah, okay, I'm not high on your priority list. Other times you get a gift that just blows your mind and it just expresses amazing love. What does Christmas express to us? It expresses the value that the Father had for us. God so loved the world that He gave and He didn't just give any gift, He gave His Son. He gave His Son the perfect atoning sacrifice, Jesus, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. God who stepped into history, took on humanity, died for our sins to change our eternity, our eternal destination. I mean, amazing love. If you've ever had a moment in your life where you didn't feel like you had any worth, if you ever wondered where you stood in God's eyes, all you have to do is look at Christmas. All you have to do is remember child in a manger. It was not just any child, it was God. Now, listen, being human is a pretty good gig if you can get it. It's better than all the other options. Being a human, being a man, being a woman. But when you're a God and you become a man, what a step down that is. It better be a good reason to humble yourself that low, to lower yourself to being an infant, a child, to a teenage mother and a stepfather in Middle East, in a place where nobody sees you, where nobody celebrates you. You're a king, you no longer have a throne, all you have is a manger. You don't have subjects bowing down before you, you have animals bowing down before you. Shepherds come to behold this sight. That's what Christmas is. That's the length that God went to demonstrate to you his great love. And the gift that he gave was not just his son, it is the reason why his son came and the reason why Jesus came was so that you and I could receive eternal life. What does that mean? It means Jesus came as the savior of the world. 1 John chapter four, verse 14 says, this we have seen, this we testified to, that the father sent the son into the world to be the savior of the world. Savior, unto you this day is born a savior. Jesus is a savior. Well, what does a savior do? A savior brings and gives salvation. It changes our destinies. It rearranges the access of power in our life. Our relationship with God, it changes everything. It rescues, it saves that which was lost. And if, honestly, if you go and you read the rest of John chapter three, we've read 316, but 317 says, God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Jesus came to save us. So the gift is not just Jesus, but it was the reason why Jesus came, which was to save us in order to give us eternal life. A lot of different people have a lot of different ideas of what salvation looks like and whatever you think salvation is. Salvation meaning change us, fix us, fix our broken world is the answer to the problem, the solution to the issues in our world today. We'll determine how you view salvation. If we're gonna figure out, if we're gonna know today what Jesus came to give us and what it really means to be saved, then we also have to understand what Jesus did not come to give us. Because sometimes we project our ideas of what salvation is and write relationship with God onto Jesus. But let me give you five things this morning that Jesus did not come to give us. Number one is Jesus did not come to give us therapeutic moralism. You may say, well, what in the world's that? Therapeutic moralism is actually a term that's talking about the primary viewpoint, religious spiritual viewpoint that people in American culture today have. When you ask them, do you believe in Jesus? Oh yeah, I believe in Jesus. Do you believe in God? Oh yeah, I believe in God. But then from there it takes a hard left turn because of our view of salvation. Here's what most people, when we're talking about therapeutic moralism, believe. It's got five tenets to it. And as I describe it to you, you might think to yourself, I know some people that think like this. When they think about Jesus, they think about God, they think about salvation, this is what they think. It might be, you might even think like this. But here's the five things. They start off pretty good. Number one is therapeutic moralism says that God exists and he created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth. Okay, check, we can check the box. That's pretty good, right? Okay, there's a God who created everything, he ordered everything and he watches over it. But it begins to go downhill from there. Number two, therapeutic moralism believes that God wants people to be good and nice and fair to each other as taught in the Bible and by all other world religions. Okay, well that's not bad because we wanna be kind to one another. That's pretty good. Fair, we're all for justice. And yeah, there's some universal things kind of across the board where we should all love one another. Okay, so, but number three is where it goes badly wrong because the third tenant of therapeutic moralism, which is the predominant American culture of spirituality says this, the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about yourself. The goal of life is to be happy and feel good about yourself. Don't shout me down, okay. Number four, God does not need to be particularly involved in a person's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem. See where this is going? In lastly, number five is all good people go to heaven when they die. That's therapeutic moralism. So there's a God, he created everything, he ordered everything, he wants us to be nice, wants us to be good people. What he really wants us to focus on is just doing whatever makes us happy. And if we have issues, call him. And if we're good when we die, we go to heaven. This is a predominant view of how people view God, Jesus, the Bible, spirituality, their own life and the need of salvation. They think, oh, Jesus came at Christmas. He was God's gift and he came to just kind of give us a connection with God but now we take it from there. Jesus did not come to give us therapeutic moralism. Number two, you ready for it? Second thing Jesus did not come to give us is behavior modification, behavior modification, change. Jesus did not come to just be a moral example of how to live better. He did not come to motivate us and demonstrate, hey, you can change your behavior. He didn't come for that. Behavior modification is a failed theory. How do I know? Because I still eat chips and salsa after 8 p.m. Even though I have resolved over and over and over, I'm not gonna do that anymore. I wake up in the morning, I eat oatmeal, I'm like, good, healthy, all right. Lunch, have a nice salad, some protein there, void all the carbs, I'm doing really good. Have a piece of string cheese at five o'clock in the afternoon, cup of coffee, I'm like, good, 8 p.m. Those chips and salsa are calling me. I'm not gonna eat chips and salsa. And all day long, I think to myself, I'm not gonna eat chips and salsa. I'm not gonna eat chips and salsa. I am not gonna eat chips and salsa. At 8.02 p.m., I am in the cabinet going just one more night with the frogs. Just one more night, Lord, with the chips. And I'm eating them and feeling guilty. Anybody ever done that? And then because you feel guilty, you eat more. And then because you've already crossed the line, you bust the queso out. Now it's going to a whole nother level of depravity. And then you start over because his mercies are new every morning. You say, you know what, tomorrow morning is a fresh new day, hallelujah, shun, die, shun, die. I'm eating chips and salsa until I hear that call. Hey man, why don't you come over here? We got some chess. What you focus on, you end up gravitationally being pulled towards. Behavioral modification fails because it is sin-centered. And Jesus came to save us from sin because the wages of sin is death. So when we focus on sin, we live sin-centered lives. Whatever you focus on, whatever your sin of choice is, if you focus on it to change it, you actually get pulled closer to it. I'm not gonna smoke, I'm not gonna smoke, I'm not gonna smoke, I'm not gonna smoke, I'm not gonna smoke, I'm not gonna smoke, I'm not gonna smoke. Man, cigarettes really sound good. Little nicotine, that warm feeling, exhale. I've never smoked a day in my life, but my dad always did and it was like an art form to him. I'm not gonna do it, it's terrible for me, I'm terrible. When you think about it, guess what you're gonna end up doing? I'm not gonna text him, I'm not gonna text him, I'm not gonna text him, he's bad for me, I'm not gonna text him, I'm not gonna text him, I'm not gonna text him. 12.30 a.m. in the morning, you're just like, hey, just thinking about you, what are you doing? Stop it, you can't, why? Because your hangup is, you got the wrong focus. Jesus didn't come to give us a better example and say, here's how you live a good life and stop doing the bad things, start doing the right things. No, Jesus knows that the only answer is not having a sin focus, it's having a savior focus. It's having your eyes on Jesus, the author and the finisher of your faith. Third thing Jesus did not come to give us is he did not come to give us self-help motivation. You can do it, come on, you've got what it takes on the inside of you, just dig down a little bit harder. Listen, that is fortune cookie theology and that is not Jesus. You don't have what it takes on the inside of you to save yourself, to make yourself better. If you did, there was no need for Christmas. There was no need for Jesus to savior. If you can save yourself, if you can fix yourself, if you can be a better version of yourself, if it's just a matter of motivation, God could have sent a courier. He could have sent an angel who was like, you're a champion, come on. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but we needed more than self-help motivation. We needed a rescuer, a savior to deliver us out of our slavery and out of our sin. Number four, Jesus did not come to give us capitalistic materialism. Contrary to what you may hear on television, Jesus is not your seven keys to financial success and prosperity. That's not why Jesus came. Jesus did not come so that you could get rich so that you could live the American dream so that you could have more things so that you could have a spiritual add-on accessory to your already good life. That is not why Jesus came. He did not come to give us that. Now, he's not mad if you have material wealth. He's just mad when material wealth has you. Because that slavery, that's the very thing that Jesus came to set us free from. And the fifth thing that Jesus came did not come to give us is he did not come to give us political militarism. What do I mean by that? Well, you know, there are a lot of people who think that the answer to the world's problems is revolution. You look at different revolutions, national revolutions that have taken place, whether it's the Bolshevik revolution in Russia or whether it was some of the revolutions in Central American nations or whether it was even a movement of people in Jesus' day called the zealots who thought when the Messiah comes, it's going to spark a military uprising and we're going to establish the kingdom now and we're gonna defeat Rome and that's why they were asking Jesus, when are we gonna get the kingdom? Are we going into Jerusalem? Because some of them had this idea that it was gonna be by natural means. Listen, Jesus didn't come to produce a military uprising or a political movement. Jesus came to save us. Where did he come to save us from? Came to save us from our sin. Because the problem that we have is we don't have political, well, we have political problems, but, our main problems are not political problems. Our main problems are not motivation problems. Our main problems are not behavior problems. Our main problems are not morality problems. You wanna know what our real problem is from which all those things branch off is we have a massive sin problem. Oh, I can't believe you used that word. Sin, I'm gonna use it 20 times. Sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin. Because sin is a destructive force that is eating away like cancer at our souls and our culture and our relationships and our nations. And sin is not just the fruit that's growing on the branches that we see. Sin is actually the disease that's deep inside embedded into our soul. That causes us to perish. The wages of sin, Romans chapter six says is death, but the gift of God through Jesus Christ is eternal life. Sin, sin is a violation of God's will. Sin is a violation of God's order. Sin is missing the mark. Sin is coming short, all have fallen short of the glory of God. And guess what, we all sin. We all have pet sins, but we all sin. If you've never sinned, would you raise your hand please? Don't wanna make it the first time by raising your hand, so. We've all sinned. We've all missed God's mark. See, our problem is a sin problem that produces a death problem. Have you figured out this that 100% of people that are born will also die? Nobody gets off this planet alive, but yet we spend a lot of time trying to fight against death, don't we? Sometimes we can be alive on this planet, but yet experiencing death every single day of our lives. Because death isn't just a physical death. In fact, physical death is actually the culmination of spiritual death, starts in our soul, but it works its way out. But 100% of people who live on this planet who are born will also, 100% of them will also die. Nobody gets off the planet alive. All of us have an expiration date. I know that that's positive and exciting. You came to church this morning thinking it's Christmas, it's gonna be happy, but this is a reality. And we spend millions and billions of dollars trying to fight against dying. You can take supplements. Oh, I'm trying to stay young, I'm taking vitamins. That's healthy, that's great. You can have essential oils, but they have not yet found any essential oil that will keep you from dying. Some people are, I'm going to the gym, I gotta stay young. Yeah, you can do it. You can be Jacqueline with your juicer at 95 years old, but you're still going to experience death. You cannot cheat it. People turn vegan. I'm like, that does not sound like eternal life. That sounds like hell to me. Hell is eating vegan. Now, if you're a vegan and people are like, I just feel like amazing eating all these vegetables. I feel amazing eating vegetables, but after they've been eaten by an animal and I eat the animal. So, if you are what you eat and I eat animals that are vegan, by definition I am a second degree vegan. But I enjoy my vegan diet in the form of a rib eye. Come on somebody, can I get, can I get a, what, what? All right. You can take supplements, you can juice, you can bathe, you can dip yourself in certain mineral waters, you can cryogenically freeze your body, you can download your personality into a hard drive on the cloud waiting for the day when androids and robots are able to animate your spirit once again and you can try and live forever. There are people trying to do all that by the way. You can't cheat death. Because the problem we have is a death problem. Where did death come from? Well, it didn't come from God. It was never God's design for human beings to die. C.S. Lewis says it the best. He says, the reason why we grieve so deeply at the death of a loved one is because there's something deeply and innately woven into the human soul that knows that death is not natural. It's not how it's supposed to be. When God created Abner and Eve, He didn't create us to die. He created humanity to thrive and to flourish. In Genesis 2, verse 15, it says, the Lord God took man and He put him in the garden of Eden in order to work it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat for the day in which you eat of it, you shall surely die. So God created mankind perfect. I want you to think about what it would be like to walk with God daily. I mean like no God as well as you know the person that you're sitting next to. To be able to talk to him, asking questions, to never experience a day of sickness, to have no idea what death is, no idea what fighting is. Can you imagine a world where there's no marital strife, where there's no arguments, where there are no enemies, there's no injustice? Can you imagine a day where we don't hate each other, where we don't hurt each other, where we don't wake up and experience shame or guilt ever? Because we don't know any of that. And to be able to walk perfectly with God, the Hebrew word for that that is used when it says all things were made and God said it was all good, it's this concept of shalom. It means all things as they're supposed to be perfect. Walking in a relationship with God. And in the middle of the garden, He puts Adam and Eve, He says it's all yours, you can have it all. Have it all! Every day I'm gonna come with you. I'm gonna come and relate to you, I'm gonna talk with you, you take care of it all. Oh, by the way, that tree over there, that's the only one I don't want you to eat. You can have everything else. Well, why God? That's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I don't want you to eat that. If you do it, the day you do it, you'll die. Now, some have asked the question, why would God put a tree in the garden that He knew could kill and let Adam and Eve have the choice? Why would He do that? If God knows all things and knows what He could do, knows what they would do, why would God do that? Why would He even put that tree in the garden? And here's the answer. The answer is because God's ultimate goal is love. The reason why He created it is because He wanted to have a family and a loving relationship with creatures that had a choice. See, if you can't choose love, it's not really love. Love is only expressed when you give it and it's reciprocated by choice. And God created Adam and Eve with free will, but unless free will has an option, then it's not really free will. If God put them in a perfect garden and there was absolutely no way that they could ever choose another path, that's not really love, that's automation. But the fact that standing in the center of the garden was a representation of God's word and God's ways and God's will. And every time they looked at it and said, I want that, but I want God more, and they reject it, they were expressing love and obedience to God. God said, if we do it, we'll die and I don't want to displease God. But when the tempter comes in and he says to them, no, no, no, that's not it. God's actually cheating you, he's holding out on you. He knows that if you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you'll just be like him and you won't need him anymore. You can be independent to make your own choices about what's good and evil, the knowledge of good and evil. He knows you won't need him anymore, you can make your own determinations about what's good and what's evil. And it says they looked at it, they wanted it, it looked good, and they ate it and ate it. And immediately when they did it, says that their eyes were open and they realized not that they were just like God, how many know they already were like God? They were created in Genesis 1 verse 26 in the image and alightness of God already. Now what they realized is that they had just separated themselves from life, eternal life. As long as they were in relationship with the Father and obeying the Father, they would live forever. They would never experience death, but as soon as they violated God's word and God's truth, he warned them the wages of sin, of transgressing God's word is death and that's experience. What is death? Death is separation from life. Adam did it and spun humanity from that point on into slavery to sin because the thing that we thought we had control of now controls us. And sin always produces more sin, which produces death and separation from God. The other day we watched as a staff at our Christmas party, my favorite movie of all time, which is the Return of the King. You guys ever seen Lord of the Rings? The Return of the King, it's my favorite all time movie. Gladiator's a close second. But in the Return of the King, it talks about the transformation that took place in a hobbit named Shmigel who becomes golem because of a ring. So they're fishing, his buddy's in the boat, catches it, goes, dives down in there, finds this ring and you guys know the, most of you know the story, it's one of the rings. The ring in Lord of the Rings represents the power of sin. And he brings it and then Shmigel wants the ring. He's like, give me the ring. And he kills his buddy and he takes the ring because he wants the precious. And he wants the ring and he is willing to kill for it. Once he gains what he thinks is worth everything, over the course of time, it actually begins to deform him and destroy him from the inside out. Until pretty soon, this normal looking hobbit turns into, the precious. He tries to steal it from us. It's coming with me. And he turns into this creature. Sorry, sorry I had to see that. He turns into this creature who's not in control of the ring. The ring now controls him and shapes him and is destroying him from the inside out. It's like this radioactive bomb that he has set off in his soul that has so diabolically destroyed what he was supposed to be, that he can never recover. That's what sin does to us. We think we have control of it. I know what God says, but I want this. And we all have our pet sins. And listen, it's not just about your behavior. You're chosen, we all have sins of choice. But the sins of choice are just the fruit growing on the branches. The real issue is not the fruit, the real issue is the roots. Because you can pick all the fruit off, that's behavior modification. You still have death in your roots. It's because we're holding on to this saying, I want this. I want the decision making of good and evil. We're still saying to God, God, I'm in control and what now has become, not a possession has possessed us. We become slaves to it and we hold on to it and we lose our minds over sin thinking we can control it and it actually destroys us from the inside out. You want to know what Jesus came to save us from? He came to save us from ourselves. He came to save us from ourselves and the sin that so easily besets us and he came to save us from hell itself. People have a hard time. They say, well, how could a loving God send anyone to hell? Listen, nobody goes to hell because God sends them there. Everyone who ends up in hell goes to hell. They perish because they reject eternal life. Because they reject the gift that is Jesus, who is the savior of the world, who came to save us from our sins. In the Christmas story in Matthew chapter one, verse 21, when the angel Gabriel appears to Joseph and is verifying Mary's story that indeed she is pregnant with the savior, the child of God, here's the words that says, she will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins. He comes to save us from our sins. Our sins that destroy us from the inside out and eventually cause us to perish. And when we die in our sins as enemies of God, there's only one place that we would ever wanna be. Why would we ever wanna choose God on the other side of death if we won't choose him on this side? Jesus comes to rescue us. Jesus comes to save us. Paul writes in Ephesians two, verse one, he says, and you were dead in your trespasses. You once walked according to the ways of this world following the course of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, that's us. Verse four, but God, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he's loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, he's made us alive together with Christ. I love that phrase, but God, because you can put anything you want to in front of it. You can say, I've messed up royally, but God. I have lived for myself so deluded, but God. I have failed him over and over and over again, but God. Because whatever you can put in front of you and say, God could save me, but I've done this, he says, yeah, but God, who's rich in mercy, gave his son so that whoever believes should not perish but have everlasting life. Let me conclude with this. Like I mentioned, we have a sin problem that leads to a death problem. We all have our pet sins. Here's the number one question I'm asked when it comes to the issue of sin. Pastor Lee, is there a sin that cannot be forgiven? And a lot of times what it's attached to is this phrase. It's my sin. Will this sin send me to hell? I'm asked that a lot. I was asked by the media a couple of years ago. I was talking about the issue of what the church's stance was on homosexuality. The reporter was standing right over there. He'd come down from Grand Rapids and he asked me. He says, do you believe that homosexuality will send people to hell? And I said, no, because heterosexuality won't get you into heaven. See what I did there? Believe me, I've tried. You don't get saved that way. I said, it's not particular sins themselves that send us to hell, but it's the radioactive effect of sin in general that ultimately lead us to perishing and destruction. But there is, and this is what I told them, there is one sin that will send you straight to hell. That will separate you from God for eternity, no matter what. And if you want to know what it is, you have to come back next week. No, I'll tell you, here's what it is. The sin that cannot be forgiven that will send you to an eternity separated from God is self-righteousness. It's self-righteousness. God can forgive. God will forgive any sin. I don't care what it is. There's one sin that will cause you to perish every single time. Self-righteousness. Here's why. It's because self-righteousness believes that we can be our own saviors, and I can continue to be my own Lord and Master. You see, standing at the base of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, just like Adam, here's what we say. I don't need you to tell me what's right and wrong, God. I'll figure it out. I'm good. I don't need a savior. I'm good. I'm a good person. I try hard, and I've only got a few issues. You know what that is that self-righteousness is saying? My righteousness is enough. If we reject the gift of God's righteousness found in Jesus Christ, if we reject that so that we can hold on to our righteousness, it will lead us into an eternity of destruction. And nobody is gonna show up in hell and say, I'm sorry, let me out. Again, quoting C.S. Lewis, he says this, hell is a door that's locked from the inside. It's because it destroys us from the inside to where we reject God ultimately. Here's the good news. Are you ready for good news? God didn't leave us in the state of spiritual death when he could have. Do you know what God could have done to Adam and Eve and all of us by virtue of that? He could have just said, I warned him. I told him not to do this. And they did it anyways. I told him on the day that they eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they will die. And you know what? It took 900 years, but Adam eventually did die. He could have just said, all of humanity, let them run its course. They're gonna do whatever they're gonna do. Let them have at it. I'm God. I don't need that. I'm worshiped by angels. I'm untainted and untouched by the destruction and the sin. And they just get what they wanted. But God, who is rich in mercy, did not do that. No, here's what God did. God said, and you can find it in Genesis 3.15. He's saying to the enemy, it's called the proto-Evangelium, which in Latin means the first mention of the gospel. In the aftermath of sin's destruction and devastation, staying there in the garden. And Adam and Eve's shame and the serpent, who is the devil, standing there before God. God said, there's gonna come a day when the seed of this woman is going to crush your head, Satan. In the process, you may bruise his heel, but he's gonna crush your head, the seed of the woman. 80 generations after Adam, a woman named Mary gave birth to the seed of the woman, who lived 30 years, who was God in the flesh, named Jesus, was tempted in every way that you and I are tempted, but never sinned. And he went to the cross, the only human being who's never sinned, but he went to the cross, and the enemy, the devil, thought he had destroyed him, but all he did was bruise his heel. But in the process of bruising his heel, Jesus crushed the head of your enemy. He paid the price for your sin, and he made it possible for you to have eternal life. God was not content for you to get what you deserve. God at Christmas gave you the gift that you could never have earned, never could have imagined that God would love you that much to reach out of heaven and eternity, to step into history, to alter your eternity, and change your destiny. And the gift that he gave, his name is Jesus. All the name of Jesus. Shepherds bow down, angels rejoice, wise men travel to worship this one named Jesus. You say, well, you don't really believe in Jesus? I believe him to the bone. I believe him in the morning. I believe him in the night. I believe him when it's day. I believe when it's dark outside. I believe it when I'm asleep. I believe it in my good days. I believe it in my bad days, because it has changed me as much as the sin can destroy you wherever sin abounds. Grace does much more abound. The power of the gospel of Jesus Christ has radically changed my life and millions of other people's lives turned the world upside down on its ear all because of a child born in a manger. I'm telling you, John 3.16, we need to live this, we need to shout it, and we need to thank God for it because it is good news of great joy for all people. It's the story of Christmas. Did you stand up with me this morning? It's what the angels declared. What would happen if we declared that this Christmas? I've got good news. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son whosoever should believe in him, not perish. You don't have to perish. You don't have to die. You don't have to be separate from God for eternity. You don't have to earn it. You don't have to impress God. You don't have to change your behavior and modify yourself. You don't have to find some cause and you don't have to pick out an enemy. All you have to do is bow your knee and say, Jesus, You and I surrender. Save me. Forgive me from my sins. Change my heart. Give me eternal life so that Heaven's my home that I'll live forever with You. I'll tell you what. To anybody who calls upon the name of the Lord, it's exactly what Jesus will do. He did it to me when I was 13 years old. He'll do it for you no matter where you're at in life. He's an equal opportunity saviour. Would you buy your heads with me all over this room? So I'll simply ask you this. If you're here today or you're watching and you're at the Portage Campus and you know in your heart of hearts I've been talking that you're not right with God. You know that today if you were to die Heaven's not your home. You've never surrendered to Jesus and received the free gift of salvation. Or maybe you have, but you've walked away from it and you're living in modification land or moralism or some of these other ideas but you need to come back to Jesus. You need to return. Today, the Spirit of the Living God is moving amongst us. And he's saying come home. Come home. He's calling to dead hearts right now. He's calling you back to life. No one can come into the Father unless the Spirit draws him but I know that right now it didn't sound in my voice the Holy Spirit of God the same Holy Spirit that hovered over the deep in creation the same Holy Spirit that hovered over Mary's womb is the same Holy Spirit that this morning is hovering over some of our lives and he's calling us out of death into life. Today if you say I know I need to come out of death into life I need to make Jesus the Lord of my life I need to repent of my sin be forgiven and become a child of God pray for me today I want to do that I just want to include you in this prayer we're about to pray but I want you take the step of raise your hand right now if you say pray for me pastor Lee tonight today I need to get right with God pray for me that's me I have a sin problem and I need Jesus to forgive me I need eternal life thank you thank you young man I see your hand who else, come on in this room wherever you're at you raise your hand I see that hand yes sir I see your hand come on come out of your death come out of death into life I see that hand who else is there in this room exchange your sin for his righteousness one more second if you've not raised it right now sir whoever you are I know that there's a gentleman you're in your 40s and right now you are resisting do not resist the voice of the Holy Spirit today he's calling you to repentance with the kindness of God if that is you and you have not raised your hand sir wherever you're at I want you to raise your hand right now come alive in Jesus thank you sir in the name of Jesus there's a woman at Portage she's watching right now you're a single mom and you've made some decisions in your life and you don't think God can forgive you today Jesus is calling you come home raise your hand right now Jesus is calling you can put your hands down I want to lead us all in a prayer and I want everyone in this room to say this is a prayer of confession and invitation we're inviting Jesus into our lives to give us eternal life say this with me say heavenly father I come in Jesus name and I believe that you are the son of God I believe you died on the cross as my perfect sacrifice I believe you rose from the dead victorious and I believe that you so loved me that you came for me Jesus come into my heart forgive me of my sins give me eternal life I turn away from my sin I turn my back on the world and from this day forward I surrender thank you for loving me saving me and rescuing me I will spend eternity with you because I am yours and you are mine in Jesus name Amen