All I Want For Christmas is Grace

It's the Christmas season here at Cross-Connection Church, so we're starting a new series this week called "All I Want for Christmas." We will be looking at the things that we may not realize are our needs but truly are from God. These needs are only found in Him.

Open with us to the Gospel of John, chapter 1, as we discover these needs. We are going to start a short series today as we approach Christmas. If you would open up to the New Testament, which is about two-thirds of the way through your Bible, you will find the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and then the Gospel of John. Chapter 1 is where we are going to pick it up today.

In a very well-known passage of Scripture, the Gospel writer says in John 1:14, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." John bore witness of Him and cried, saying, "This is He of whom I said, 'He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.' And of His fullness, we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."

Father, as we consider this passage of Scripture and prepare over the next five weeks for a celebration of the Christmas holiday, we recognize that, even though it can be cluttered with all of the cultural trappings surrounding it, the essence of Christmas comes down to this: the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We beheld Your glory, Your glory revealed in the fullness of grace and truth that is found in You, Jesus. I pray that You would help us to remember that. There may be some here today, and in the next several weeks, who will need this reminder.

The first time they even realized and understood that, but Lord, the fullness of grace found in You. I pray, God, that we would remember that and we would share that. As we are inclined to give gifts at this time of year, I pray that we would not neglect that most important aspect. So speak to us, Lord. We invite You, Holy Spirit, to come and to lead us into all truth and teach us all things, for we ask it in Jesus' name. And all those that agreed said, "Amen." You may be seated.

In 1943, an experimental behavioral psychologist published a paper in a journal called the Psychological Review. The paper was entitled "A Theory of Human Motivation." The research and the writing of that paper have become the foundational framework for the last 75 years of much of the sociological research in the West. It is really the basis for a lot of the conclusions that come out of psychology ever since that point.

The paper laid out what has since become known as Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Maybe you've heard of that before. It's something that is obviously talked about quite a bit in psychological circles, but it's also spoken of quite a bit in business and commercial circles because it speaks about human motivation. Most of commerce is focused on what are the motivating factors that get people to buy things. Thus, Maslow's hierarchy of needs has been a central focus in our commercial culture here in the West.

Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs is often portrayed as a pyramid with five layers. At the bottom, the bottommost layer deals with just the basic needs that human beings have, and they build up the higher hierarchy as you go to the top of the pyramid. In his construct, Maslow basically said that for a human being to experience their fullest potential, they need to have these needs met. Most of our society has kind of been built around this concept and thinking, and there has been loads of research that has been added upon this over the last 75 years. Most of you, if you've not even...

Heard of Maslow's hierarchy of needs? You probably know about it in some sense because our society is geared around this concept. The first of the four layers of Maslow's hierarchy of needs deals with psychological needs, safety needs, the need to belong, and the need for esteem. In many ways, when you look at these needs and our affluent society living here in the United States of America in the year 2018, most of those needs are largely met. Certainly, there are gaps in our society, but when Maslow first wrote this in 1943, there had not been the very fast upward and to the right increase that our culture has experienced. This increase has influenced most of the world to the point where many people have more than they did at that time, especially here in the United States.

So, sitting here in the United States in 2018, most of our basic human needs that must be met for us to experience the fullness of potential within ourselves have largely been satisfied. When the hierarchy of needs is taken care of, we move from a hierarchy of needs to a hierarchy of wants. That's what we live in today. There has been a lot of writing, both in theological circles and in very secular circles, about this reality that we have shifted from a hierarchy of needs to a hierarchy of wants.

The problem with this shift is that when we transition from a hierarchy of needs to a hierarchy of wants, our wants begin to feel like needs. We have all experienced this. This leads us into a discussion of what is commonly referred to by sociologists and psychologists as felt needs. We all have these felt needs, which, at their core, are wants. A need is something that you must have to survive and thrive, while a want is like the icing on the cake; if you went without it, it would be okay. However, we have shifted significantly to where we think that our wants are our needs.

The issue with this is that when felt needs become our focus, the catalog of our felt needs becomes an ever-perpetuating list of basically insatiable desires—desires that cannot be satisfied.

The commercial culture that we live in is more than happy to produce more products to try and give you what you desire. We think that in those things we will find satisfaction, but of course, we know that we can't get no satisfaction. The reason that this is still a hit song many decades after it first came out is because it aligns with something we innately understand. Probably none of you—maybe about 5% of you—know the rest of the lyrics, which are terrible, so don't go look them up. But you know that line: "I can't get no satisfaction."

If you back up a little bit more from that, another big hit song is "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." This accords with something innocent that says, "Yeah, that's true." We think that we need all of the things that we ultimately want, and as we try to satisfy these wants that we think are needs, we find ourselves never satisfied. We find ourselves always wanting and very restless.

Now, Christmas is kind of the playground—and maybe I should say the battleground—for this whole discussion of desires and felt needs. Our culture gears itself around this holiday in such a big way because we live in a very commercial culture.

What’s fascinating is that Abraham Maslow, after he first published his paper in 1943, continued his research. He was 35 years old when he published that research and lived for another 35 years. As he did, he continued researching behavioral psychology, observing humans, and conducting all kinds of academic research and writing on it.

What he came to discover nearing the end of his life, in his later writings, was that those five basic needs for a human to experience or realize their fullest potential did not go far enough. He came to think that there was a top on the pyramid that was needed. He said that this top was something beyond the material, an area of what he called transcendence. He started to realize that man has more than just material needs; man has spiritual needs. He understood that if you ultimately do not meet that spiritual need, then you will never experience or realize your fullest potential.

Potential exists if all of our socio-psychological needs are met. However, we are still restless because there is something deeper. This reminds me of something that a theologian wrote over 1,600 years ago. Augustine, in his Confessions, stated, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." More than 1,600 years ago, Augustine came to the conclusion that Maslow reached in 1967: our hearts are restless until they rest in something transcendent, something bigger than the material.

We are more than just material beings. If we were only material beings, then material things would satisfy our needs and desires. This is particularly important to recognize because we are living in a time when a growing segment of the population in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe believes that we are completely material. These individuals are often referred to as materialists, and most of them are atheistic. Anyone you meet who does not believe in God and believes solely in science falls into this category.

If we were just material, then all the material things we can provide would satisfy us. Yet, we live in a society that has more material wealth than any other society at any time in history, and still, we are not satisfied. We have been conducting an ongoing experiment for decades here in the West, trying to cater to every possible material need, and we are still not satisfied. Why? Because we are more than just material beings. At our core, we are spiritual beings, and there are spiritual desires that must be met if we are going to experience our fullest potential.

I highlight this because we are now officially in the Christmas season here in the U.S. The Christmas shopping season officially began at about 6 o'clock p.m. on Thursday night, and it has already proven to be a commercial success. I was reading in Fortune yesterday and saw online that Black Friday sales, at least for online retail, were up 23.6 percent over last year, which was already a record year. In just a 24-hour period, online sales on Friday reached $6.22 billion.

Billion dollars. The tallies haven't come in for actual brick-and-mortar retail sales, but they are already seeing that this will be the largest Black Friday weekend that has ever been. So, business is good, right? This is all geared at wants that we think are needs, or at least we're told they are needs. We are told by our culture that if you get this thing, you will be satisfied.

Now, we know that's not true because by December 26, all the things that we bought to satisfy those desires will be obsolete. New products will come out on December 26, and immediately you're looking to go, "I thought this thing was what I wanted, but now I want that thing." We can't get no satisfaction. Our hearts are restless. We live in a society of restless hearts because there is something more than material possessions that we deeply desire.

Over the next five weeks, including today, leading up to our celebration of Christmas, I want to talk about some of these needs that we have, which we may not even acknowledge or recognize as needs. Without meeting these needs—just five of the things we find in the pages of Scripture—we will remain restless. What we discover, the more we look into these things, is that all of these transcendent values are only found in God through Christ. If we don't find God in Christ Jesus, we will remain restless because God has created us for Himself, and the heart of man is restless until it finds its rest in Him.

For us to experience true satisfaction and eternal potential, it must be found in Christ. The first of these needs that every single one of us has, which can only be satisfied in Christ, is actually found in the text we read from in John's Gospel, chapter one, verses 14 through 17. It speaks about the very thing that we are ultimately celebrating when we celebrate Christmas: the issue of the Incarnation, or what we might even refer to as Advent. Maybe you came out of a little bit more liturgical church that followed a liturgy and an annual calendar, and so this period of time leading up to Christmas is called...

Advent speaks about the arrival, the coming, or the Incarnation. This is exactly what John is talking about when we read from John chapter 1, verses 14 through 17. It brings us to point number one: Christ's Advent is the arrival of that which we deeply need and ultimately desire.

We are discussing two words that may not be used very frequently in our culture: Advent and Incarnation. We don't hear these terms used at all unless we are in a church context. So, what exactly is Advent? What is Incarnation? John is speaking about it, as expressed in verse 14 of John chapter 1: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." That is Incarnation; that is Advent. The title "the Word" is applied to this individual who came onto the scene 2,000 years ago, whom we later know as the Son of God or Jesus.

Before we knew Him as Jesus or the Son of God, He is described as the Word of God. The Old Testament prophets, the first two-thirds of the Bible, looked forward to the Advent, the coming, the arrival of this Incarnation. One of the prophets, Isaiah, wrote 2,700 years ago, and his words are found on many Christmas cards that will be sent this holiday season. In Isaiah chapter 7, verse 14, the prophet said, "Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call His name Immanuel," which is translated "God with us."

John speaks about this when he says, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Now, what exactly is the Word? If you look back to John chapter 1, verses 14, and skip back to the very beginning, John chapter 1, verse 1, we read a little bit more about this individual called the Word of God. It says, "In the beginning..."

The Word, the Lagos in the original language, was in the beginning. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. It is not a thing; it is a person. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him, nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

John gets down to verse 14, where we are introduced to the Word. The Word became flesh; it became tangible and was manifest. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. As a result of the coming onto the scene of this one called the Word, who is manifest or incarnate in our presence, we read in verse 14, "And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."

This individual, who exists before creation and is active in creation, came to the earth two thousand years ago in the man Jesus Christ. In Him, we come in contact with the fullness of grace and truth. Jesus is full of that which we deeply need and ultimately desire.

Now, that could be said of many different attributes of who Jesus is and His nature. He has fully what we deeply need and desire, which could be said of all kinds of different things. However, I want to zero in on this one aspect of His nature: that He is full of grace. Whether humanity recognizes it or acknowledges it, among all the things we think we need and ultimately desire, grace is central. Without receiving the fullness of grace in Jesus Christ, we will never experience satisfaction, and we will never reach our fullest and eternal potential for which God made us. We need what He is full of.

This brings us to a simple question: What exactly is grace, and why do we need it? Grace is, at its core, the merciful kindness of God that He has given to us in spite of our sin, as a result of what Jesus did on the cross. It is the merciful kindness of God given to us.

To us, without our merit, we don't deserve it. In fact, we deserve something quite the contrary. As you read through the pages of Scripture, we deserve, as the Scriptures reveal, judgment because of our own fallenness and our sin. Yet, in grace, we're given the merciful kindness of God in spite of who we are.

As a result, we see later on, as we go through the Bible, because of God's love. John 3:16 states, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life." He demonstrates His love towards us. The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 5:8, "He demonstrates His love towards us, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." That is grace.

But why do we need this grace? Why do we need this grace? Well, look at what John says in John 1:17. This is the answer for why we need grace: the law was given through Moses. The simple answer to why we need God's grace is because of the law. What exactly does that mean?

If you are in the book of John, turn to the right. You will pass a book called Acts, and then you will come to the great book called Romans. Turn to Romans 3. Why do we need grace? Because the law was given through Moses. What do we learn about the law? Look at Romans 3:19. The Apostle Paul is here writing, and he says, "Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who were under the law." Why? "So that every mouth may be stopped and all would become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin."

Now, here's an important thing for us to lay hold of: God, 3,400 years ago, revealed His law to humanity through a man by the name of Moses. The law was given to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You can read through the Old Testament; a lot of names are thrown out here, and we'll get to them on another date. But the law was given as revelation from God to Moses, and it says, "This is My requirement."

Now, the wrong way to read the law is to think that if I do all the things that the law prescribes, I'll be right. But that's not why the law was given. Why was the law given? We are told here exactly why God gave the law: He didn't give the law so that we could try really hard to keep it and be right before God. He gave the law so that we would become guilty.

The law shows you how pitifully guilty you are and provides the knowledge of our guilt. As we understand how fallen we are, we gain the knowledge of sin. The law readies us for something much more valuable and important than itself. The law is holy, just, and good, but it is not able to save you and me.

The wrong way to use the law is to set it up as a standard and think that if we can just jump over this hurdle, we will be right before God. The law prepares us for this understanding, as seen in Romans chapter 3, verse 21: "But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets." The law and the prophets looked forward to this righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, available to all who believe, for there is no difference. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Point number two on your outline is that there is no greater gift than the grace given to us in Christ. The law was given through Moses, and in the law, we find that we are desperately lost. However, the law prepares us for a righteousness that comes by grace through faith, not through the keeping of the law.

This brings us to another important question: How does Jesus bring this grace? Let's look back at the passage in John chapter 1. John chapter 1, verse 15, helps answer that question. John bore witness of Him—who is the "Him"? The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We beheld His glory as of the only begotten of the Father. John bore witness of Him, the Word, and cried out, saying, "This is He of whom I said, 'He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.'"

Now we encounter a challenge in the Gospel of John because it was written by a follower of Jesus, a disciple named John. That's why we call it the Gospel of John.

John, the disciple and Apostle who wrote the Gospel of John, writes about a guy named John who is not himself, which causes confusion. People wonder, "Which John are we talking about?" We are referring to John the Baptist. The Apostle John, the author of the Gospel of John, states that John the Baptist proclaimed or bore witness of the Word when he said, "This is the one who came after me, but he is preferred before me."

In verse 15, and if we skip down to John chapter 1, verse 29, we read: "The next day John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and said, 'Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, "After me comes a man whose preferred before me because he was before me." I did not know him, but that he should be revealed, manifest to Israel; therefore, I came baptizing with water.'"

Here’s the interesting story: two thousand years ago, there was this preacher who came preaching a message of repentance, urging people to turn away from all the bad things they were doing and leave that behind. The people responded, "Okay, that sounds good. What should we do?" He replied, "Come be baptized."

What does that mean? They would go down into the water, being immersed as a sign that they were turning away from their old life to walk in a new direction. People often ask, "Why did John baptize people?" John tells us why he baptized: for the purpose of revealing this one.

In verse 32, John bore witness, saying, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and he remained upon him. I did not know him, but he who sent me, God the Father, sent John the Baptist. He who sent me to baptize with water said to me, 'Upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.' And I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God."

I imagine the picture of John the Baptist as described in the Bible: this guy wore a tunic of camel's hair with a leather belt and ate locusts and wild honey. If you think your granola is healthy, he was the epitome of granola! This guy was out in the middle of the wilderness, preaching his message, and people were coming in droves, asking, "What should we do?" He responded, "Be baptized."

This is why God the Father revealed to John the Baptist that he would be the one to show people who the Christ is, the Son of God. How is that going to work? God said, "Here's what we're going to do. We're going to set up a test. You're going to baptize people in water, and whoever the Spirit of God descends upon and remains upon him, that's the one."

I imagined it like this: John the Baptist is in the water, and people are coming to him to be baptized. He dunks them in the water, they come up, and he goes like this, and he says, "Nope, next." Then this guy, Jesus, shows up. He baptizes him, and when he comes up, the Spirit of God descends upon him like a dove and remains upon him. John then declares, "That's the guy! Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."

From that point on, John the Baptist stopped baptizing. Why? He was done. We read in John's Gospel, chapter 3, that John the Baptist says, "He must increase, but I must decrease. My job's done. All I came to do was to show you that's the one."

Look at verse 35 in John chapter 1. The next day, John stood with two of his disciples, and looking at Jesus as he walked, he said, "Behold the Lamb of God! Don't follow me; behold the Lamb of God."

Point number 300 in the outline: Jesus gives grace by giving Himself to take away sin. This is what John the Baptist meant when he said, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."

Now, to us, from a non-Jewish background in the year 2018, these words don't have the same weight as they would have to a Jewish person 2,000 years ago. "Behold the Lamb of God"—what's that all about? Any Jewish person 2,000 years ago would have fully understood that because, in Jewish theology, the only way that sinful people—people who were wrong, unholy, broken, fallen, or whatever word you want to ascribe to it—could approach a perfectly holy God was to deal with their sin.

In Jewish theology, as given by God through Moses in the first five books of the Bible, specifically the third book, Leviticus, it is through sacrifice, and specifically a sin sacrifice, which was the sacrifice of a lamb. But here's the problem with a sacrifice.

The Old Testament showed that the sacrifices offered year by year could not take away sin; they could only cover it for a time. The problem with covering sin temporarily is that we all sin again, and then we have to offer another sacrifice, and then another sacrifice, and then another half sacrifice. For some fourteen hundred years, the Jewish people, in their approach to God, offered hundreds of thousands and millions of sacrifices.

For example, one Jewish historian by the name of Josephus writes that on one day of the celebration of the Passover Feast in the Jewish religion, they offered two hundred thousand sheep in Jerusalem. That was just one Passover, and they did that every single year for 1,400 years. Despite all these sacrifices, they could not fully take away sin.

What was the law of sacrifice doing? It was preparing people for the coming of the Lamb of God, who, as John says, takes away the sin of the world—the perfect, spotless Lamb of God. Jesus gives grace by giving Himself to take away sin.

Now, the next important question is: Who receives this gift of grace? Let’s look at what John says. In John chapter one, verse 16, it states, "And of His fullness we have all received." Would you circle that word "all"? Just lean over to your neighbor's Bible and circle it. We have all received grace for grace.

Does that mean that every human being, all people at all times, receive the fullness of God's grace through Jesus Christ? Some people think that, but no, that is not what John is saying. How do we know that? We can back up a few verses to John chapter 1, verse 11. It speaks about the Word becoming flesh, the one who dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, full of grace and truth.

He, the Word, came to His own people, to the Jewish people, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become the children of God.

There were some who did not receive Him, and there were others who did receive Him. Here's the awesome thing: all who receive Him received the fullness of His grace. As many as received Him, to them He gave the rights to be called the children of God.

This leads us to another important question: how do we receive Him? If there were some that did not receive Him and there were some that did receive Him, and those that did not receive Him did not receive the fullness of His grace, but those who did receive Him did receive the fullness of His grace and are therefore declared to be the children of God, how do we receive Him?

Well, John chapter 1, verse 11 states, "He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to be called the children of God, to those who believed in His name, who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God."

Point number four: God's grace is freely given to those who trust Jesus. This is, for lack of a better word, uber important because we cannot experience or realize our fullest and eternal potential apart from this deep need—the need for grace. We receive the fullness of this grace freely by trusting in Jesus.

Finally, how much of this grace do we receive? Look at what He says in verse 16: "And of His fullness, we have all received, and grace for grace." To understand this phrase "grace for grace," I think it's valuable and helpful for us to consider some other English translations.

I really want to encourage you, especially now, as it is so easily accessible with these little devices. You can get 25 different Bible versions for free and look at all these different Bible versions to get further explanation about what you are reading and what it means.

In the New Living Translation, it says, "From His abundance, the Word of God that is full of grace and truth, we have all received one gracious blessing after another." The English Standard Version states, "For from His fullness, we have all received grace upon grace."

The Bible says that we have all received grace upon grace from His fullness. When we give gifts this holiday season, and many gifts will be given, we do so from finite resources. I don't think any of you have infinite resources; maybe you do, but I don't. From these finite resources, we give gifts to whatever level we can. We are constrained and limited by depletable resources, and you will realize just how finite those resources are when you receive your credit card bill in January. You might wonder what happened, and then you will experience stress, which is the reality for most people during the other eleven and a half months of the year.

However, God gives from an infinite source of grace, the fullness of His grace. This means it is never depleted; it has never run out. Anytime you come to God for more grace, He doesn't say, "I'm really sorry, I gave the last of it to John about twenty minutes ago, and I don't have any more." The Scriptures say He gives more grace. This is why the author of the book of Hebrews, in Hebrews chapter 4, verse 16, could say that we should boldly come before the throne of grace to obtain mercy and grace in our time of need. Every time we have a need, we have free access to come to Christ for more grace.

The Prophet Jeremiah, 2,500 years ago, wrote about the mercy, grace, and compassion of God in the book called Lamentations, chapter 3. He said, "Through the Lord's mercies, we are not consumed. If it weren't for the mercy of grace, we would be consumed and destroyed." Because of the Lord's mercies, we are not consumed; His compassions do not fail. They are new every morning; great is His faithfulness.

Point number five on your outline is that the renewing resources of God's grace are poured out freely and abundantly upon those who believe. Without the fullness of His grace, we cannot experience or realize the depth of His love and provision.

Our fullest and eternal potential is what God has made us for, and we will be completely unsatisfied without it. Here’s the challenging thing: many of you have received, by grace through faith, the abundance of the grace of God, and yet you still live restlessly, trying to find more satisfaction. We do this because we have this flesh that still thinks we will find satisfaction in the material things that this world has to offer, even though it has been tried over and over again, resulting in emotional devastation every time.

We have seen this ongoing experiment in the United States of America, trying to experience total satisfaction through endless material wealth for the better part of the last century, or at least the last half-century. We are still trying for it, even though it is not working out.

Here’s the amazing thing: 3,000 years ago, a sociologist and anthropologist by the name of Solomon conducted a personal experiment to figure this out. He wrote his research paper, called Ecclesiastes, in which he lays out the fact that he experimented to see if he could be satisfied by pleasure, power, wealth, and all sorts of things. His conclusion at the end sums up the entire experiment: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

You may say, "I don’t know what that means." Another translation puts it like this: "Soap bubbles, all is soap bubbles." This reduces it down to a third-grade level. We are working so hard to grasp at the wind and remain unsatisfied.

So, what was his concluding remark after he states, "Emptiness, emptiness, all is emptiness"? He says the best thing a person can do is to remember his Creator in the days of his youth. When you are young, that is what you need to do. We need something more than material things to meet these deep desires; we need something transcendent.

The access to that transcendent fulfillment is found through the grace of God, which is found in Jesus Christ. In fullness, the transcendence that we deeply need, so that we may realize our full and eternal potential, is only found in God.

Grace comes in Christ. Christmas, though cluttered with many trappings, reveals this grace in the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ. That grace is only available in Jesus. This is the message that God has for us. Sometimes, we find ourselves running just as fast as people who don't know the Scriptures, trying to grab more stuff, thinking that this will satisfy us. It won't.

Don't get me wrong; many of these things—indeed, all these things—God has given us freely to enjoy, but they will leave you dry. So, He says, "This is my message for you: what you are truly desiring and seeking for is found solely in the grace of God."

Here's the other thing: that message is not for you alone. It's for those we work with, those who live next door, and those we are related to. This holiday season is a great opportunity, as we gather with friends, co-workers for gatherings and holiday parties, or family members, to share this great truth. We all understand that the things of this world leave us unsatisfied, and we will be restless and unsatisfied until we find our rest and satisfaction in God.

That's the message that God has for us. That is the message that God has given us to take to other people. We must be careful because there are so many distractions from now until December 25th. We need to be cautious not to miss this. I know it's the most cliché saying, and some of you probably still have that pen from 1992: "Jesus is the reason for the season." But it's so easy for us to forget the importance of that truth.

May we remind ourselves that what we truly need and desperately desire is the grace that is in Christ Jesus. There are some great benefits that come with that grace, which we will be looking at over the next four weeks as we consider what we truly want for Christmas—those things that bring satisfaction.

Amen. Would you stand with me as we close in prayer? Lord Jesus, I thank You that You came to this world to bring the fullness of grace to us who are in such desperate need.

I need your grace, and I ask that you don't hold back. As many as receive you by trusting in you, you give the fullness of your grace—not just one time, but every time we come before you. You pour it out, and you keep pouring it out. We still need it; we need it more today than we did yesterday, and more than we did five years ago. We will need it more tomorrow than we do today. We will always come and find that your mercy and your grace are new every morning. It is a renewable resource.

So, God, I pray that you would work in us who know this truth, that we would rest in your grace, no longer being restless. We would rest in the finished work of what you did on the cross for us to deal with all of our failings and shortcomings against sin. Not only would we rest in your grace, but we would also share that grace with others, because freely we have received, freely we ought to give.

God, work in us, your church, this holiday season to share the goodness of your grace with others. Now, as we're standing here in an attitude of prayer, I think it would be ministerial malpractice for me not to make this point. There are some of you standing here, with eyes closed and heads bowed, who have not received this grace by trusting in Jesus. He came to his own, and they did not receive him, but to as many as received him, trusting in his name, he gave them grace and the right to be called the children of God.

If you want to receive the fullness of God's grace and be made a child of God, behold what love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God. If you want to receive that grace and the forgiveness of Jesus, I want to give you a chance to put your trust in him by praying a simple prayer of trust and faith. Would you just lift up your hand if that's you? Is there anyone here today? I see you there in the corner. Anyone else? Lift your hand up if you say, "I want to receive that." It's a free gift, the greatest gift ever given. Just put your hand up high. Praise the Lord, I see you here in the middle.

I want to lead you in a very simple prayer, a prayer of trust. Prayer is simply talking to God. So, where you're at, standing there, just pray with me. You can pray out loud if you'd like: "Dear Jesus, I need..."

Your grace, I know I can't fix myself by keeping rules. I've tried to do that. I pray that you'd come into my life, pour out your grace upon me, forgive me of my sins, and help me to follow you by faith. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Praise the Lord! Welcome to God's grace. Now we're going to sing one more song to the Lord, praising Him for His grace. As I said last week, if you were here, let's sing ten times loud and crazy!