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Welcome to Mariners Church Weekend Message Podcast, inspiring people to follow Jesus and fearlessly change the world. Discover your purpose and get connected by visiting MarinersChurch.org or click the link in the show notes.

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That's how we're going to kick off the New year and I'm excited about teaching a new season of on the Table and eight new questions. And what we're going to find is that God meets us right with our questions, that he's not intimidated by the big questions that you have, and that he loves you and meets you in your questions with his grace and his truth. If we haven't met My name is Eric. I'm the Senior Pastor here at Mariners. I want to welcome those who are on the lawn and also who are watching in different overflow environments throughout the weekend, throughout Christmas week here at Mariners. I'm excited about 2025 and all we'll learn together, but this today I'm excited to walk through the magnitude, the beauty, the weight of the Christmas message. Christmas is an announcement that Jesus has arrived. Jesus, God the Son, arriving here to be with you. It's an announcement of an arrival of Christ. The child who entered this world didn't stay a child. He lived perfectly in our behalf and then would die a death on our behalf and then rise from the dead victoriously. But he enters this world with the announcement of Christmas and you have lived in the season we live in now through lots of birth announcements and gender reveal parties. In fact, gender reveal announcements have become a big deal in our culture. You may not realize that actually began in Southern California and LA in 2008. There's a woman who's a very popular blogger and she was having a child, she was having a daughter and she threw a party together and decided to announce the gender of her child with this cake that she put a picture of on her blog. She had no idea that this would kick off this massive trend. She since has said she regrets doing this because the number of gender reveal parties have just grown astronomically and some of the things People have attempted are crazy. But gender reveals have become a big thing in our culture. And because they're such a big deal, they. There's often a lot of misses when people announce the gender of their child. We just aren't unable, we are unable to pull off all of our plans perfectly. Like this guy, he was gonna announce the birth of his son, but he just doesn't. He misses. It's a big miss right here. That is not how you want to announce the birth of your. Of your son or this dad to be. He's supposed to hit the ball. You gotta hit the ball, bro. But watch the catcher. Oh, just big miss, big miss. We all have a friend like this who volunteers to drive the four wheeler, bro. Let me do it. Let me do it. Let me show you how to drive a four wheeler. But he just goes overboard. Things get a little bit out of hand at the gender reveal party. So all of the funny gender reveal fails. There's lots of them that you can watch online and on social media. Here's what they show us. We cannot flawlessly pull off all the plans that we have. We can't even pull off an announcement sometimes correctly. But God perfectly pulled off the announcement of Christmas and the announcement of the arrival of God the Son into this world. In fact, I want to show you one of the announcements and let you see the beauty and the weight of Christmas. With this announcement, an angel appears to Mary. She's the teenage virgin who brings Christ into the world. And this angel named Gabriel announces this to Mary. And I want you to read with me God's word. I'll read aloud. You follow along. The scripture is in the bulletin that you were handed, or you can follow along on the screen as well. This is God's word. Luke, chapter 1, verse 26. The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man named Joseph of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came to her and said, greetings, favored woman. The Lord is with you. But she was deeply troubled by this statement, wondering what kind of greeting this could be. Then the angel told her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Now listen. You will conceive and give birth to a son. And you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and. And his kingdom will have no end. This is God's word. Now, there's so much depth and beauty in this passage. I want to lift several phrases out of this scripture to help you understand the beauty, the majesty of Christmas. Notice the angel says to Mary, you will name him Jesus. So the angel doesn't announce to Mary, hey, you're going to have a child. And it's up to you and Joseph to decide the name of the child. You can watch the end credits of a movie and pick out the name you like, or you can go to Barnes and Noble and get a book of baby names. This is not at all what the angel says. The angel says his name is going to be Jesus. You are to name him Jesus. Very important, because the name Jesus actually means salvation or Savior. His name is not only his name, his name is also what he's come here to do. He is God, the Son who has always existed. Yet he enters this world, arrives here with what we celebrate at Christmas, and his name is his mission. He is salvation. He is the Savior. In fact, when Jesus grew up and became an adult, he announced that about himself. He said in Luke, chapter 19, verse 10, the son of man has come to seek and to save that which is lost. So you do not understand Christmas if you don't understand it as a rescue mission. That God loves you so much that he enters this world. God the Son does. To seek after you, to save you, to rescue you, to save you from your foolishness, from yourself, from your sin, from your shame, and to save you for himself. Christmas is beautiful. I'm so thankful for Christmas. It is not an announcement of Eric. Here's all the things you have to do to find your way to God. No, it's an announcement that God the Son came here to find me and to find you. He came to seek and to save. He's the Savior. Notice what else the angel says. He is the Son of the Most High. So not only is he Savior, but he's also. He's different from us. He's the Son of the Most High. He's God, the Son. He's not just a person like we are, though. He entered this world the same way we entered this world, through the birthday of our mothers who brought us into this world. Jesus birth was different. And an angel announced the birth of Jesus. Jesus is born of a virgin. This is different from how we were born. No angel announced my birth. I wasn't born of a virgin. Jesus is not like us. He is the Son of the Most High. I have two daughters, Eden and Evie. And when they were Born. Nobody said of them, she's the daughter of the Most High. They just said, yo, Eric had a kid, bro. Did you hear? Eric had a kid. That's crazy. That's what people said it was. It is their normal. But Jesus is not. Jesus is different from us. He's the Son of the Most High, and he entered this world through the womb of a teenage virgin. This is God, the Son, also the Savior, who comes here for you. Also notice what the angel tells Mary. His kingdom will have no end. Now, this is a fulfillment of a promise that was given to an Old Testament king of the Jewish people, David. But people wondered if the promise was ever gonna come to fruition, because David was told, david, your kingdom will have no end. But David died. In fact, the people at this point in history could look to where David was even buried and they would say, our kingdom having no end. This doesn't make any sense, because the Romans actually occupy our territory. That's what was happening at this point in history. And so what is this promise? Your kingdom will have no end. What does this mean? This means that Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, the son of God, the Savior of the world, is the promised king. He is in the lineage of David, and he's beginning a kingdom that will not end at all. I mean, this is a bold statement. Jesus is launching a kingdom that will have no end. That he will never have his crown removed from him. That no one will unseat him. That he will never forfeit the throne. That he is free forever. The king. I mean, come on. That is such a staggering statement. I grew up in the New Orleans area, and we played some rough games in the schoolyard as kids. Games that have since been removed from public schools. Like Red Rover, Red Rover, Send Eric on over, or King of the Hill. Did any of you play King of the Hill growing up? Some of you. Some of you were sheltered. You have no idea the glory of King of the Hill. Those games have been canceled. Red Rover. I don't know what he did wrong, but he got canceled. I don't know who is they who canceled him, but he's no longer with us. These games have been canceled. But King of the Hill was my favorite as a kid. King of the Hill. It was rough. I grew up and we didn't. It was flat in New Orleans where I grew up. But there was one mound in our schoolyard, and at recess we would play King of the Hill. To be the King of the Hill, it's really simple. You just had to get to the top of the hill, Push other people off. And you would then be there only for a couple of seconds, though, because somebody else is immediately coming after you. But all of recess, it is about getting to the top of the hill, to being the king of the hill, and then doing all you can to stay there. Now, how we played where I grew up is when the school bell rang, if it rang and you were still on the hill, then you would be king of the hill for the rest of the day. So the best part, this didn't happen a lot of times, But I remember a couple of times that I made it to the top of the hill and the bell rang. Ah. And I was king of the hill for the rest of the day. I made it to the top. Boom. Now, even then, the next day, recess starts over and someone's trying to take me off of the hill. When you study history, you realize that history is one long game of king of the hill. Kings come and kings go, Emperors rise and emperors fall. They make it to the top of the hill. Some for only a few days, some for a few weeks, some a few years, some just very few make it a few decades. But none stay as king of the hill. Either death or defeat, they are removed from the top of the hill. And yet here's an announcement that Jesus is going to be king of the hill forever. And when you understand when this announcement was made, it's even more bold. It's almost crazy if it doesn't turn out to be true. I mean, do you understand when this announcement was made, Caesar Augustus has become the Roman emperor, the first emperor in Rome. According to history and according to the scripture, he's who's ruling the Roman Empire. When Jesus is born, he is the emperor of Rome. And Israel is one of the many groups of people that the Roman Empire oversees. And this announcement given to the Virgin Mary happens to someone, this teenager who lives in Israel, and she hears that she's going to bring one into the world whose kingdom is never going to end. If you lived in the Roman Empire, if you lived in Rome, with all of the influence and all of the affluence, and you heard that there was a teenager on the backside of nowhere in Israel who was saying that her child's gonna be the king who never gives up his throne, you would have laughed. That would be like a junior high football team saying, we're gonna win the super bowl this year, and we're gonna win it every year, forever. There's no way. If you were in Rome, you would have thought that was laughable if you heard it, but you probably never even heard it, because no one really cared much about what happened outside of Rome. But here we are, 2,000 years later, and nobody this weekend is gathered around the birth of Caesar Augustus. And here we are gathered around the birth of King Jesus, whose kingdom never ends, whose kingdom lasts forever, because he is our everlasting and eternal king. He is. So this is significant for us, but it's also really significant for you. Jesus announcing that he is your forever king. Because life for you, for me, has often been one long game of king of the hill. Life has. We try to put things as the king of the hill in our lives, thinking that if we will have this as the top of our lives, that then we'll be quenched and satisfied. We look for something in our life to give us meaning and significance and purpose, something that's going to make us feel alive. For some. You have made your career the king of your hill. And the longer you've lived, the more you realize that your career is unable to carry the weight of the crown. It can't sustain you. It can't deliver for you what you thought it would deliver if you got the promotion or got the title or got everything you wanted, you thought you wanted, you got it, you got to the top. But the crown, your career, it can't carry the weight of being your king. And so we trade things out. We put something else as the king of the hill in our lives. For some, it's a relationship. We move from the career to a relationship. And we think, if I can only get a relationship with him or, or with her, then everything in my life will be at peace and I'll have joy, I'll be satisfied. But when you make him or her the king of the hill in your life, you actually ruin the relationship because he is unable to carry the weight of the crown. She's unable to be that for your soul because he or she is created, not the Creator, not God. So we spend our lives moving different kings off of the. The top spot in our lives, and none of them have been able to deliver what we've wanted them to deliver. They haven't brought us true life. And then Christmas is the announcement that Jesus has come here to be your king, to be the one who can deliver for you true satisfaction, true peace, true life and joy. And the one who longs to bring you into his kingdom, to give you real life, to make you his forever son and his forever daughter. Now, some of you are thinking perhaps many of You. Okay, Even if all of that is true, that Jesus is the everlasting king, would he really want me in his kingdom? And you would have to wrestle with. I think this is probably true because the announcement that his kingdom would last forever, this. It's been 2000 years and so many other kingdoms have risen and fall, but the kingdom of Jesus, it just keeps growing and expanding. But maybe you're wrestling with this. Would he want me to be in his kingdom? When you look at the genealogy, the account in the scripture of Christmas, you get clear understanding that Jesus does indeed want you. The genealogy of Jesus is very different from the genealogy that the Roman emperors and the other kings would try to chlorinate with a perfect genealogy. They use their genealogy as propaganda to basically say, you can trust me as your king. Look at this pure line that I came from. Look at my background, look at my ancestors. So Caesar Augustus, the one who became Roman emperor, who was the emperor when Jesus was born. He tried so hard to present himself as deity, as someone you, the people could trust. His father, his adopted father was Julius Caesar. You've heard of him. On the Ides of March, when Caesar was assassinated, the Senate, the Roman Senate, got together and read Caesar's will, Julius Caesar's will. And it said that he was adopting Augustus to be his son. So Caesar Augustus becomes the first Roman emperor. And because the people then deified Julius Caesar, they made him a God. After his death, Caesar Augustus tries to present himself as the son of God. In fact, if you look at Roman history, you see there's coins where Caesar Augustus announces himself, presents himself as the son of God. Trying to show that you can trust me. I. I am deity. But he wasn't. He couldn't keep his crown. He's long gone. But it wasn't only him. The emperors who came after him, they did the same thing via adoption or via marriage. They tried to connect themselves to the family of Julius Caesar. Even though their past were shady and blemished, they tried to present themselves as these perfect people that you could trust. But then you look at the genealogy of Jesus. And though he is God the Son, and though he is perfect, he actually gives this very raw and honest genealogy of where he comes from to show you who he comes for. See who Jesus comes from helps you understand who he comes for. And unlike the Roman genealogies that they try to. They manipulate and try to give you this impression that everything's perfect, Jesus comes from a long line of imperfect people. To show you that he's pulling imperfect people into his perfect kingdom that he's seeking and saving you. So real quickly, here's the genealogy of Jesus. This is part of the Christmas story in Matthew's Gospel. Matthew, chapter one. This is the family tree of Jesus. Matthew, chapter one. I won't read all the names. Let me pull out several for you to see where Jesus came from, who he came from. Because who he comes from gives you a sense of who he first, you see the name Abraham. Abraham was a man of faith, but he wasn't perfect. In fact, Abraham, in the scripture, he lied multiple times about big things in his life. His wife, her name was Sarah. There were multiple kings, twice in scripture that Abraham lies to a king of a foreign nation, saying, no, no, no, she's not my wife. She's my sister. She's not my wife. Because Abraham feared that this king would kill him and marry his wife. But no, no, no, she's not my wife, she's my sister. Which was half true, because Abraham and Sarah were actually half brother and sister, which means, according to historians, that they were from Mississippi. Abraham and Sarah, they were from Mississippi. Not really. Not really. That part's not true. But the part that is true is that Abraham was a liar. So in the family tree of Jesus, the first name mentioned is a liar. Who he comes from is who he comes for. He comes for liars to pull us into. The next name mentioned is Jacob. Jacob was. Or one of the next names mentioned is Jacob. He's a deceiver. He deceived his dad to cheat his brother out of the blessing of being the firstborn so he could take all of that blessing for himself. So in the family tree of Jesus are liars and deceivers. You may wrestle, okay, Jesus is king, but would he want me in his kingdom? In his family tree are liars and deceivers. You keep looking down the family tree and you get to Judah. Judah was a betrayer. He actually betrayed his own brother. A man named Joseph had Joseph thrown into a pit. And then when a caravan of people go by, sells his brother into slavery, betrayed his own brother. You wonder if Jesus wants you in his kingdom. Jesus comes from a long line of liars and deceivers and betrayers. This is the family from who he comes from, because this is the family that he's pursuing for himself. You keep reading down the genealogy, you get to David. David, what an amazing service. To tell you about all of the crazy things. David did a Christmas service. I won't tell you right now, but David was. His story's really shady. There's a lot of adultery in the story. There's murder in the story. Jesus comes from a line of adulterers and murderers because he came to pursue, to seek and to save adulterers and murderers for himself. You keep reading. David has a son. His name is Solomon. Solomon started out really wise, but he didn't live his whole life filled with wisdom. At the end of his life he. He imports little G gods into his own country and starts to worship them. Instead. He becomes an idol worshiper. And so in the family of Jesus are idolaters, which is all of us, because all of us have put something else other than God as the king of the hill in our life. Now the genealogy gets really scandalous. This will be normal to you. Here we are 2024, about to be 2025. Normal for us, but it wasn't normal back then. 2,000 years ago. There's women listed in the genealogy of Jesus. Shocking, because at this point in history, genealogies did not have women listed in them. But Jesus elevates women. Women were viewed as second class citizens. But Jesus insists that in his genealogy he includes people who are often viewed as outsiders in that culture. Because the women listed in this genealogy aren't even Israelite, they're not even Jewish. They're from other people groups. Because Jesus is going after people from every tribe, tongue and nation from, from every walk of life to pull them into his kingdom. You see Tamar in the genealogy of Jesus, she was a Canaanite and she had a shady past. You see Rahab in the genealogy of Jesus. And Rahab was also a Canaanite and a prostitute before God rescued her. You see Ruth in the genealogy of Jesus, she's a Moabite. You have Canaanite and Moabite. These are not Jewish people. In the genealogy of Jesus, the savior of the world. And then you see Uriah's wife, we know her as Bathsheba and she's a hethite. So in the genealogy of Jesus are people who the Jewish people viewed as outsiders. And Jesus is making it very clear that he's bringing people from the outside into his family. That he came from a long line of messed up people to come and pursue people who realize they're messed up. That he came from a long line of imperfect people to pursue imperfect people into his perfect kingdom and give them his perfect forgiveness and perfect righteousness. Jesus is not looking for perfect people to enter his perfect kingdom. He's looking for people who realize they're imperfect, who will receive the perfect forgiveness that Jesus our Savior brings to bring them into his perfect kingdom. This is what Jesus does. And so if you've wondered if Jesus wants you, if you're like, I don't know, I. I've got a bunch of this in my life. Jesus came for you, longs for you. This is what Christmas is about. He loved you before you thought of loving Him. He came to seek and to save, to go after you with his grace and his love. And Jesus is not like any other king. Every other king has to earn their way to the top spot of the hill. They have to climb and climb. Jesus has always been the king of the hill because Jesus has always been God. He did not have to ascend to the top of the hill. Jesus is God, the Son, the forever King. What he did that is different is he descended from the hill. He came down from the hill. He removed his royal crown, he removed his royal robe, stepped into this broken world that we broke with our sin and our foolishness, and he took on human skin, was born into our culture, descended the hill to enter this world only so he could ascend another hill, so that he could ascend Calvary, the place where he would be crucified on a cross, a Roman cross that he submitted himself to, so that on the cross all of this would no longer be on you, but would be placed on Him. Jesus is the king of the hill who descended here to ascend another hill, to place Himself on the cross to remove your sin and your shame, to make you his forever. Jesus is not merely a gift under the tree. Jesus is the gift on the tree. He placed himself on the tree on the cross so that those of you who believe in him, all of your sin, all of your shame is taken off of you and it's placed on Jesus. And you are now forever his son and his daughter. He is the forever king who started a forever kingdom, who looks for broken, imperfect people, who will call out for his grace. And he then pulls you into his perfect kingdom and makes you perfect by his grace and his righteousness and his forgiveness. Jesus is the perfect king. There is no king like Jesus. There's nothing you can put in your life as the king of the hill who will do for you what Jesus will do for you. There's nothing else that will be the the king of your hill that you'll give the crown to that will deliver for you what Jesus will deliver that will satisfy your soul, that will give you joy and peace. And there's no one who loves you like Jesus loves you, who Entered this world to seek after you, to search for you, to save you, to be with you forever. There is no one like our Jesus. And Christmas. Oh, the glorious announcement that this Jesus has arrived here for you. Does He? Does he want me? Look what he's done for you. Would he want me in his kingdom? I've got so many things in my past, so much brokenness. Jesus specializes in pulling broken, jacked up, messed up people into his forever kingdom. In fact, the only people who get in are those of us who realize we're messed up, those who think we got it all together. His kingdom's not for you. It's not. You have to realize you need Jesus to get welcomed in. But if you'll realize you need Him. Oh, he welcomes you. He runs to you. Eric, how would you say he welcomes me and runs to me. He came all the way here for you. Christmas is not him up in heaven yelling at you to fix yourself up for him or given you a long list of things you can do to make your way to Him. No. Christmas is the glorious announcement that he descended from the hill to place himself on top of another hill where all of your sin and shame would be placed on him. He is the gift you need, the only gift who will satisfy you. And the only gift that you will be satisfied from is here. His name is Jesus, the Savior of the world, who is for you. The apostle Paul wrote one passage in scripture that I believe sums up Christmas so well on the lawn and in the worship center. I want us to stand and read this passage together aloud. Will you stand with me? This is God's word. First Timothy 1, verse 15. Will you read this with me? Aloud. This is Christmas right here. This sums up Christmas. This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and I am the worst of them. The apostle Paul was filled with awe for God's grace because he understood that he needed Jesus to rescue him. And when you understand that Christmas then is beautiful for you. He is the light who came into your darkness. He is the Savior who stepped into your brokenness to remind us that he is the light of the world and he is the one who is Lord at his birth. All right. Extend your hands, please, and let me pray a prayer of blessing over you as we go. Jesus, I pray you'd bless your sons and daughters this week, that you would remind them that you are gentle and approachable and that you love them, cause your face to shine on them. I pray they will experience your mercy and your joy this new week. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Go in peace. Have a great week.