 Beginning at verse 9 in 1 John chapter 4 and reading verses 9 and 10, John writes in this, the love of God was manifested toward us, that God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. And so we gather tonight to celebrate Christmas Eve together as a church, as a church family. When we think of Christmas we might think of family and friends, we might think of gifts and a lot of food, and all of that's great, and all of that is part of the celebration of Christmas. But we need to obviously remember the true center of all of our celebration, and the center of our celebration will always be Jesus Christ. Billy Graham once wrote, during World War II, many a mother would take her son and try to keep the memory of the father who was away at war in the memory of that boy. And one mother I heard about took her son every day into the bedroom and showed him a large portrait of the father who was away. One day the little boy said to his mother, Mom, wouldn't it be great if dad could just step out of that frame? And that's what happened that first Christmas. The Lord God stepped out of that frame. The Bible tells us in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh, dwelt amongst us. We beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten Son of God, full of grace and truth. Christmas is a commemoration of God giving to us his son Jesus Christ. Christmas is a celebration of God drawing near to man in order to bring the gift of salvation. It is remembering that God himself took human flesh and that he dwelt amongst us. When we think of Christmas, we think of a young man, a young man who was engaged to be married, but had found that his bride to be was pregnant. The Bible speaks of this young man, Joseph, as being a just man, a righteous man. And the woman he was espoused to, the woman Mary, had been found with child. And now Joseph needs to make a decision. The Bible tells us that Joseph considered quietly breaking his marriage agreement. And as he did so, an angel of the Lord spoke to him. It's found in Matthew 1 verse 20. The angel said, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary, your wife. For that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. So Matthew made it clear that this miraculous event was actually foretold in the Old Testament. In Matthew chapter 1 verse 23, it says, Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son. And they shall call his name Immanuel, which has translated God with us. Immanuel, God taken upon himself human flesh, God dwelling with us. So the question obviously would be, why would he do that? Why would our God do something like that? Somebody wrote, humanity is lost, fallen. We were separated from God because of our sin. And our only hope of forgiveness was for someone completely innocent of any wrongdoing to take all the punishment for our crimes. Such a perfect life and a perfect love were impossible for any human to achieve. So God himself did it for us. He sent his son from eternity into mortality, from glory into flesh, from a throne to a manger. Ultimate hope was born in ultimate humility. That's the immense love that God has for us. And that's the love that was revealed in such an incredible way. God's son, Jesus Christ giving up the splendor of heaven to dwell with us, revealing the love of God toward us. Paul, when he was writing in 2nd Corinthians chapter 8 verse 9 said this, he said, you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake, he became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich. God came into the world he created to rescue those who rejected him. And as Christians, we realize the meaning of Christmas is wrapped up in one word. It's wrapped up in the word incarnation, Incarnate, in flesh. You see, the incarnation God taken upon himself, human flesh is something that we should meditate on and respond to. And yet the season can be such a hectic time. And because it becomes that way, it's good for us to take a moment to refocus, to gain our focus on what it's really all about. And Christmas is a time for us to remember that God loves us. That's what John is saying in this was manifested the love of God toward us, because God sent his only begotten Son into the world. So the central purpose of Christmas is to celebrate the fact that God demonstrated his love for us. And so it's a time for us to rejoice. We rejoice in the love of God because God has loved us and God has given to us the Son, Jesus Christ. If we look at the condition of our world, our nation, our state, our cities, or even our families, we can lose hope. We may very well be overcome with sorrow, a sense of helplessness and even hopelessness. And when Jesus becomes absent from Christmas, then Christmas has no meaning. Christmas becomes an excuse to have a party. It becomes just a time to get something for ourselves to give a little, perhaps, to leave work early, get out of school, spend some money, overeat, get frustrated, get stressed, and ultimately to complain. When the love of God is absent, it's often replaced with anger, disappointment and pain, tension, rejection, loneliness, hurt is experienced. As we all know, family tensions can actually explode during this season. And that's so foreign to God's intention in the birth of Christ. When you look in the Gospel of Luke in chapter 2, verses 9 through 14, that portion of Scripture records the heavenly birth announcement to the shepherds in the field. And in Luke chapter 2, verse 10, it says, the angel said to them, I bring you good news of great joy. The birth of Jesus, the Savior of the world, is intended to do something. It's intended to bring great joy. Why would it bring great joy? Well, God is with the people, and He's delivering them. And He's delivering them from slavery. And the slavery that they are slaves to is sin. God has come so that He might deliver us. And that's why the Lord Jesus Christ came. Paul on one occasion was speaking to Timothy through a letter in 1 Timothy chapter 1, verse 15. And he said this to him. He said, here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst. Christmas has a message of God's love. But it also carries with it in the love of God the message of forgiveness of sin. That is the heart of Christmas. And because God's love being manifested in the giving of His Son, so that man who is a sinner by nature might be rescued, because that's the heart of Christmas Satan has worked overtime to diminish that message. And so today we simply look at Christmas as a myth. It's a child story. And many have taken the heart out of the story of the birth of Christ. And as a result are simply empty. What is Christmas? Christmas is an open revelation of the love of God for us. Again in 1 John 4 9, that's what he said in this, the love of God was openly demonstrated toward us. How do you describe what cannot be described? How do you describe love? Well a simple fact about love to be understood, it needs to be demonstrated. And God's love was openly demonstrated. God's love was expressed visibly. God's love is demonstrated in the giving of His Son. In verse 10 he said in this, the love of God was manifested because that God sent His Son. Again, why did He send His Son? Well Matthew tells us in chapter 1 verse 21, as the angel of the Lord spoke to Joseph, he said concerning Mary that she will give birth to a Son. You are to give Him the name Jesus because He will save His people from their sins. The Bible says clearly that God sent His Son in order to provide salvation for man. Contrary to common belief today, the Bible makes it very clear that man in Scripture is revealed to be separated from God. We are separated by what is called sin. If you had a picture, we'll say with the word God on one side, and perhaps you had it like a cliff, you have God, and then you have man on the other side, and there's a cliff and there's a chasm between the two. You have God and you have man, but in that chasm you have the word sin. Sin makes a separation between God and man, and the Bible makes it very clear that man as a sinner is separated from God. Isaiah told us, behold, the hand of the Lord is not shortened that it cannot save, nor his ear heavy that it cannot hear, but your iniquities have separated you from your God. Your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear. Sin makes separation. There is none good, no not one, the Bible makes very clear. I'll have sin and fall short of the glory of God. The wages of sin is death, and so the Bible is very clear that sin exists. It is a willful disobedience, a rejection of the things of God. It separates us from God, and the bottom line is, is because we're separated from God, we have no hope. The wages of sin is death. The Bible tells us it's appointed unto men to die once and after this judgment. There are no second and third chances. There's only this life that we have, one chance, one opportunity, and we need to make the best of that. Man has sin, God is holy, man deserves God's judgment, but God did something for us we couldn't do for ourselves. He gave us grace through Jesus Christ and a way out. Paul said in Romans chapter 5 verse 8, God demonstrated His love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. And so there was a purpose in God's activity, and that was so that we might have a relationship with Him. That's why Jesus said if you hear what God has to say in that gospel message, you can have eternal life. And that's what John is saying. He's saying Jesus provided salvation for man. And what I love about this in 1 John 4-10, it makes it very clear that the one who initiated this love relationship isn't man, it's that God loved us first. 1 John 4-10 says, not that we loved God, but that He loved us. I don't know how many parents I have in here, I probably have a number of you who are parents and others who would like to be. You really don't want to be. And I share this quite often, or often enough over the years, because it's a lesson I learned as a young man when Marie, my wife, was pregnant with our firstborn, my daughter, Corinne. And when Marie told me that she was pregnant and as her body began to have telltale signs that she was pregnant and her little belly began to swell and all of that, I can still remember that I would get close to her little stomach there. It wasn't really little, but I'd get next to her stomach. I couldn't help but get next to her stomach, but and I would yell in it. I would grab her tummy and I would shake it. And I would say, baby, baby, this is your daddy speaking. And I would yell, this is a true story, and I would yell, I love you, I love you. And I would shake Marie so that Corinne would kick. And I did that quite often. And then the day comes. And off we go in July of 1977. And we go to the hospital. And Marie goes through 33 hours of labor. And she's going through this labor and I'm praying and saying, thank you, God, that I'm not a woman. And that baby's born. And they take her and put her under that little, they had a little, some little like an incubator kind of thing, they placed her under that her little fists were clenched in her face was all scrunched up and she was so angry. And they dried her off. And they wrapped her up. They brought this little burrito to me. And I remember looking at that ugly little face. You may be ugly, but you're mine. And I remember just holding her and kissing her and loving her for the moment I held her. But even before I held her, I already was in love with her already. And the day comes when they grow up and they begin to form words. And before you know it, you start hearing words like daddy and mama. And you start hearing words like, I love you. And every father can understand, we so would hope that when you hear your baby say, I love you, it just touches your heart. And you look back at them and say, Oh, and I love you too. I love you so much. But the day comes when they say, I'm mad at you. I don't love you. They start listening to their mom. I don't love you. And then they'll say, you never loved me. You never loved me. The drama. You never loved me. And you look at her and say, I've always loved you. Right now, I don't like you. But I've always loved you. And by the way, long before you were ever able to say or form the words love, I love you long before that ever happened. Even before you parted the womb, you were already love. You were already loved by your father before you knew what love was before I held you before I kissed you before I provided for you before any of that happened before you crawled before you stood up before you walked before you formed words before any of that before any of that there was already love for you. And that came from the heart of your father. So when I tell God, I love you. It's simply because he first loved me. He first loved me. I can't ever raise my fist into the hand of God and say, you don't love me. He says, I don't love you. Look at what I've done for you. I demonstrated my love for you by giving my son for you. How can you say, I don't love you? And this was manifested the love of God. He sent his son Christmas. We have a God of love, a God who loves us so much he gave. He sent his son to be a propitiation. The word propitiation is a powerful word. It speaks of the satisfaction or the satisfying of somebody's anger. Jesus satisfied the righteous anger that God has because of sin and in order for that anger to be satisfied God sent his son and he offers forgiveness and life freely if we receive that gift. There are a lot of gifts under the trees. None of them give life. Only one gift does. That's Jesus, the gift of God. So we celebrate Christmas not just by having family and friends over, meals, exchanging gifts. We celebrate Christmas because God gave to us the greatest gift, eternal life through his son Jesus Christ.