SPEAKER_00: 1:06

Hi, my name is Evangeline Gugisberg and I'm in sixth grade and go to Venetian Middle School. I will be reading Philippines 2, 5 through 8. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. This is the word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_01: 1:47

That was just one of many uh verses we're gonna go through today. Uh, like Meg just mentioned a little bit earlier, we're into our Christmas season. It's only three Sundays from today that we're having Christmas Eve services. So, for those of you who aren't planners, this is your warning. For those of you who are planners, we're ready for you. Uh, our tickets are live. Um, and the reason we do tickets, if you're new with us, uh, is because we want to make sure you actually have a seat in the room because I know you got dressed up, you got everybody together, you made it happen. We don't want you to all show up at the same time and be like, where are we gonna go? And then you're angry at me. So we do tickets, but they're free tickets. And when you take them, you take them from everybody else's ability to get them. So here's kind of the caveat to this. And we do this every year. Get whatever you need. And I want you to plan like you're in, this is one of the best opportunities to invite your friends, your family, your neighbor, your coworker. Um, our service is all aimed towards that, and that you can be proud of this and you know what kind of message you're gonna get that I'm not hiding anything from you. Um, and then um, if you're not gonna use those tickets, return them because then somebody else won't have the ability. So, what we don't want is a bunch of empty tickets, seats, because you're like, I'm bringing 20 people. And I'm like, Yes, that's awesome. And then you brought two, and then you got all these empty seats next to you. So uh, if you know which service you want, we're doing five this year. Our Sunday morning services on the 21st are exactly the same as the other three services. So you don't need to go to Sunday morning and the other ones. Some of you are like, praise God. Did you hear what he just said? Um, you just get to pick the one that works for you. So it's nine and eleven on the Sunday. Then we're gonna do a Tuesday night, and then we're doing two on Christmas Eve. And for those of you who have friends who maybe have not gotten to experience um Christmas at Northgate, which I don't think you experienced Christmas until you did it here. Um, we're offering something kind of fun and different this year. And so you can just know this as a tool and a resource. At the nine o'clock service on the 21st, we're gonna have ASL translation. At the 11 o'clock, we're gonna have Spanish translation. And at the Tuesday night, seven o'clock one, we're gonna have Tagalic translation. So we wanted to kind of get rid of any kind of borders or walls to let someone or someone you may know that that would be a hindrance for them to be experienced Northgate, uh, Christmas at Northgate. Got it? All right. Uh the little tap things, you guys can get tickets there. You can go online out in the lobby. But we're hopping in, Christmas. I'm gonna go through a bunch of scripture today. Uh, this is a series called Love Came Down. This is the what Christmas is all about. And we tend to live in a world that is obsessed with hype, like how many followers, how many views, who's trending this week? And we chase up, we level up, we glow up, we status up. And yet, every time someone finally makes it, we realize that fame rarely equals death. How many of you have ever met somebody important and it surprised you um by them being normal? I I once bumped into a well-known athlete, Kirk Cousins, in an airport. Um, and I was ready for the cold nod, like the no photos vibe. Uh, but he looked me straight in the eye and said, Hey man, how's your day? And that small human moment stuck with me. It's refreshing when someone with influence acts like a person instead of a brand. Uh A.W. Tozer said, What comes into our mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us. Because how you and I picture God determines how you approach life. If you think God is distant, you'll hide. If you think he's angry, you'll flinch. If you think he is uninterested, you'll give up trying. But if you discover that he is near, kind, and fully present, everything changes. And that's why Jesus came. He didn't just come to erase sin, he came to reveal God. And in fact, in the Gospel of John, John 1:1 says, In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. Then in 14, he drops the miracle. He says, The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. In fact, I love how the message translation puts it, he moved into the neighborhood. That's literally the heart of Christmas. That God didn't like shout instructions from heaven, he showed up on our street. Uh Philippians 2, 6, 8 says that though he was in the very nature God, this is what our scripture reader read today, he did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing, taking on the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. The infinite became an infant. The creator of gravity learned to walk, the one who holds atoms together let soldiers put nails through his hands. And he didn't come flexing power, he came expressing love. To put it another way, Jesus didn't show up to flex, he showed up to be with us. And if you look at every other religion that's out there, it's about people actually climbing up to reach God. But the gospel is about God climbing down to reach people, love coming down. And he didn't wait for us to get it together, he came right into the chaos. No throne, no PR team, just straw, breath, and a promise. Uh Hebrews 4:15 says that we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weakness, but one who has been tempted in every way just as we are. And yet he did not sin. What that means is he he gets it. He gets you, he gets me. That's the incarnation, not God in a costume here. It's God in our condition. He didn't pretend to be human, he became human, fully God, fully man, heaven's perfection and human skin. And the deal is then that we get to understand that when you pray, you're not talking to a God you can't relate, who can't relate to you. You're talking to one who's actually felt, felt hunger, felt heartbreak, betrayal, fatigue. Uh the one who's walked the same roads and still said, Follow me. That's the God who came down. And that's the God who's worth worshiping. I think it's fun. Let's talk about where he came from, like his family tree. If you've ever felt like your family is complicated, buckle up, right? Uh, you ever notice uh every family has like that one person? Come on, we just did Thanksgiving. Let's go. You got an uncle who argues at the TV or the cousin who shows up late with like a new business opportunity, and you're like, what? A sibling who suddenly like remembers ancient grievances on Thanksgiving? You're like, Can we just do turkey? Like, and if you can't think of who that is in your family, it might be you. Now, speaking from where you come from, has anyone ever fallen down the ancestry.com rabbit hole, right? Where you swab your cheek, you send it off, and two weeks later you find out you're 8% Viking and 92% other, and you're like, whoa, I never knew. People are obsessed with their roots, right? I had a buddy who found out through 23 and me uh that he had a half brother living two states away, and then met for the first time at age 61. Another friend discovered that she had an identical twin sister that she had never met. And when they finally saw each other, they had the same haircut and were wearing almost the same outfit. Like you can't make this stuff up. Family's messy, it always has been. And apparently, God wasn't afraid of messy families because when Jesus entered human history, he chose a genealogical circus. Uh, the Gospel of Matthew uh in chapter one lists the family line. It reads like the credits of a reality TV show. First, you have Abraham, he's a faith giant, yes, but also lied twice about his wife. You have Isaac, favored one son and alienated another. You have Jacob, who lied, cheated, and conned his way into a blessing. Then you have Judah who sold his brother out of jealousy. You have David who abused his power, slept with another man's wife, and orchestrated the cover-up. You have Solomon, wise on paper, wild in practice, 700 wives later, still restless. Every generation had dysfunction, and Matthew doesn't hide it. He could have like curated this resume and he could have said, like, let's just highlight the good branches, right? But the Holy Spirit said, No, let's show the whole tree. And here's the beauty out of the great mess came the great Messiah. And it's not just history, that friends is hope. Because if God can weave salvation through that mess, he can work through yours. And here's something revolutionary for the first century. Matthew included women. Nobody did that. But God wanted the full story told. Let's walk through just a few of them. First, you have Tamar, betrayed by her father-in-law, forgotten, left without a future. She takes a desperate step to survive. And somehow God still threads redemption through her line. Then you have Rahab, trafficked as a child, labeled prostitute. But when spies came to Jericho, she believed in the God she had only heard rumors about. And Hebrews 11 actually lists her as a hero of faith. Then you have Ruth, a widow, an immigrant, poor and grieving. And she chooses loyalty to her mother-in-law and ends up in the lineage of David. And some of you maybe heard of Bathsheba, objectified by a king, victim of power and silence, yet God still names her in the line that leads to Jesus. And then, of course, we have Mary, a teenage girl from a back road town facing whispers, rumors, you know, the side eyes carrying the hope of the world. And I'm just going to tell you, their stories scream grace, where God exalts the forgotten, heals the used, includes the excluded, and redeems the wrecked. In fact, it's the kind of people Jesus came from, are the kind of people Jesus came for. And that's not just poetic, that's prophetic. God had told Abraham, he said in Genesis, through your offspring, all nations on earth will be blessed. And then he promised David. He said, Hey, your throne is going to be established forever. And between those two promises lies centuries of failure that God keeps his word in the midst of. That, my friends, is covenant love. And then in the New Testament, Galatians chapter 3 says, if you belong to Christ, Paul's telling us this, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. And what that means is his family tree just extended to include you and I. This means that every person who ever thought, my story is too messed up. Welcome to the club. Grace doesn't skip broken branches, it grows right through them. And Matthew himself knew that firsthand. Why? Well, Matthew was a tax collector. He basically was a traitor of his people working for Rome, and he was despised by everyone. And then Jesus walks by and says two words. He says, Hey, follow me. No conditions, no background check, just an invitation. And that one encounter rewrote Matthew's life. And maybe that's why he starts this gospel with a family list that no one expected because he wanted you and I to see the grace that found him can find you. From Abraham to Bathsheba to Bethlehem, God keeps weaving redemption. Every name is a receipt that says God kept his promise. And what that means is that he can redeem your story too. That awkward family text thread, that broken relationships, the years you think he wasted. Because God's not afraid of what you call too far gone. He builds salvation stories out of the wreckage. And God is inviting you home. You ever get lost driving and refuse to admit it? Like you're like, I know where I'm going. And Suri's like, you've been rerouting for 30 minutes. My wife, Michelle, once got lost like that. She's the sweetest person on the planet, but she is directionally challenged. She knew I was going to say that today. She was like, it's true. Just don't tell everyone. It just happened. She called one time and said, Hey, I'm headed home. And like 45 minutes later, like, no, Michelle. So I called back. I'm like, where are you? And she's like, I don't know. And that's the thing about being lost, right? You don't always feel like lost right away. You just realize landmarks don't look familiar anymore. And you just keep driving, hoping they'll start to make sense again. That, my friends, is humanity. We've all been driving on fumes thinking we can navigate life without the map maker. And the Bible says in Isaiah 53, 6, we all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each one of us have turned to our own way. Essentially, we've wondered. Like the GPS keeps saying, reroute, reroute. And that's why Jesus came. Not to scold the lost, but to find them. Luke 19 says, For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. Think about this, not just save, but seek. I love this because he goes looking. And every religion in history and humanity is reaching up to find God. And Christianity is God reaching down, seeking to find humanity. In the book of Romans, chapter 5, it says, You see, at just the right time, when we're still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. God demonstrates his own love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. We don't have to wait for us to fix ourselves. He came while we were still scrolling through wrong priorities, still nursing grudges, still pretending that we're fine. Jesus didn't come to make bad people better, he came to make lost people family. And that's why grace wrecks religious people. Why? Because religion says, get your act together, and then you can come. Grace says, come as you are, and I'll handle the transformation. Welcome to Northgate. That is so important to us. You don't have to wait until you got it together to show up here. You get to come as you are and he'll start to handle the transformation in you. Ephesians uh chapter 2, verse 8 reminds us it's for us, for by his grace, you have been saved through faith. And this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one else can boast. If um salvation was about performance, then heaven would be full of braggers. Instead, it's full of grateful people who know they did not earn a thing. And the Bible doesn't say that we're tolerated by God. It says that we are adopted by God. Romans says, the spirit you received brought about your adoption. I'll tell you what that word means in just a second, to sonship. And by him we cry, Abba Father, and the Spirit Himself testifies that we are God's children. So that Greek word right there, adoption, is weothesia. Weothesia means full legal status, that there's no probationary period, there's no like prove you belong, that when you come to Christ, you don't start like an internship, you immediately join the family. If you pick adoption in the ancient world, it's like a wealthy Roman man could illegally adopt an adult and give him everything name, inheritance, future, instantly. And that's what God does with you and I. So when you feel like you're on the spiritual trial, remember you've already been signed, sealed, and brought home. That's why Paul also wrote in Ephesians chapter one, he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will, not reluctantly, not out of obligation, out of pleasure. And I think some of you just need to hear that word today. God actually likes you. Now, what a year we have had. He'd have dinner with the atheist who's angry at church. He'd ride in an Uber driven by a guy who says, I used to believe. He'd sit with the influencer who's crushing it online but can't sleep at night. And he'd post stories from people everyone scrolls past. Because that's who he is. The down-to-earth God who moves towards the mess. And maybe that's why John calls him the true light that gives light to everyone. Light doesn't avoid darkness, it invades it. And light doesn't just expose it, it guides it. And the same God who said, Let there be light, now says, Let there be you redeemed, restored, and repurposed. Let me just give you a few quick contrasts of this. Where religion says, versus Grace says, religion says, do more. Grace says, it's done. Religion says, earn your spot. Grace says, you already have one. Religion says, hide your flaws, and Grace says, bring them into the light. Religion says, God will love me if Grace says, God loved me first. And religion says, climb up, and Grace says, He came down. God isn't into leniency, he's into liberation. It it doesn't excuse sin. It replaces shame with sonship, daughtership. But we can easily still feel a bit lost in all of this. Lostness today doesn't always look like super dramatic. It looks like a packed calendar and an empty soul. It looks like scrolling endlessly and feeling nothing. It looks like saying, No, I'm good, while quietly breaking down. And we are a generation drowning in information and at the same time starving for meaning. I mean, it's wild if you think about it. We have more connection than ever and less community, if you're really honest with yourself. We've got more data about God than any generation in history and less intimacy with him. And that's why Christmas still matters. It's the reminder that when we couldn't climb our way to heaven, heaven climbed its way to us. Imagine with me for a moment an image of a long wooden table where there's laughter, there's warmth, there's music, there's a smell of something good in the oven. And around that table set people that you would never expect tax collectors, outsiders, recovering addicts, former skeptics. You. God's table always has room for one mare chair. Jesus says, Um my father's house, it has many rooms. I'm actually going to go there and prepare a place for you. Well, you know what that means? It means there's space for you with your name on it. And that you don't have to stand outside looking through the window anymore. And maybe today is the day you actually walk through the door and you realize the father's not waiting, you know, with crossed arms. He's running towards you. Just like the picture in Luke 15, it's the prodigal son that comes home. He's like rehearsing his apology, but the father interrupts him with a hug. He doesn't even let him finish his speech. He just says, Get the robe, get the ring, fire up the grill. My kid has come home. And the gospel is that exactly in one picture. God is not interested in your resume, he's after your return. And John, it says, To all who believed in him, accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. And that means that you don't have to wonder if you're invited. You already are. And if you've ever thought, yeah, but come on, you don't know about my past. I'm just gonna tell you right now, he does, and he still can't. And if you ever said, like, ah, I don't like I don't really think I fit the church mold, uh, good news. Neither did he. And if you've ever whispered, ah, I think I'm too far too gone, you're exactly the kind of person that he specializes in bringing home. So today, if you feel that tug, I'm gonna tell you right now, that is not emotion, that is an invitation. Uh Romans chapter 8 says, For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. That means nothing. Not your mistakes, not your doubts, not even your own resistance. You can keep running, but here's the deal He'll keep pursuing because love always comes down. Now we just wrapped up Thanksgiving, and now we're entering into the holiday season. And so there's something I want you to remember. Grace runs deeper than your family drama. Some of you just need to take a picture of that, put it on your screen, savor. It's deeper than regret, it's deeper than an argument last year, deeper than that ache that still stings when you hear their name. Grace doesn't erase history, it redeems it. Because every family has something. That nobody talks about, but everybody feels. Maybe it's resentment that's calcified into silence. Maybe it's an addiction that's never been healed, just hidden. Maybe it's a story you tell as a joke, but it still hurts every time you tell it. Here's the good news. Grace goes there. It goes right there. In Psalms 103, it says, from everlasting to everlasting, the Lord's love is with those who fear him. That means grace doesn't just run out when the conversation does. It's everlasting. You can't out sin it, you can't outshame it, you can't outfamily drama it. Jesus' family line literally was filled with betrayal, with abuse, with scandal, and yet that's the very family through whom salvation came. Which means your family story is not too broken for God to redeem. It's just raw material for him to begin to work with. And grace doesn't deny that it happened, it just redefines what's possible next. And grace doesn't pretend that pain isn't real, it just promises that pain isn't final. And maybe the most radical thing that Grace does is it invites you and I to stop repeating the story you were handed. You start writing the one God's been waiting to tell through you. Romans 5 says, where sin increased, grace increased all the more. In other words, every place that you see a fracture, God sees foundation. Every place that you feel cursed, God sees a chance for blessing. Every place that you've said it it just runs in my family, God says it ran in mine too. Grace runs deeper than your family drama. Because grace runs all the way to the cross, and then back through every branch of your story. No angels on standby, no royal parade, just a teenage girl with a borrowed stable, no palace, no press release, just livestock and straw. The infinite became an infant. The author wrote himself into his own story. Love put on skin, and heaven took a deep breath of earth, where he cried real tears, bled real blood, walked dusty roads, healed broken people. He touched the untouchable, forgave the unforgivable, and called the forgotten by name. He's a king with no ego, a celebrity with no entourage, the God who doesn't wait for applause. His strength for the weak, refuge for the anxious, and rest for the weary, and hope for the hopeless. He is not the God who shouts at a distance, he is the God who whispers, I am with you. And as we celebrate this season, this baby in a manger, remember the truth that changes everything. Love did not stay in heaven. Love came down. Love came down to your guilt. Love came down to your grind. And love came down to your grief. Would you stand as we respond in worship?

SPEAKER_00: 30:16

Alright, this morning we're going to worship before we leave here.