Well, here we are. It’s December … again. And isn’t it amazing how on the one hand, we kind of head into Christmas wanting it to be full of peace and rest – yet so often there’s turmoil…what’s going on?

The lead up to Christmas is always a bit of a funny time, it’s a mixture of being rushed and pressured, presents to buy, things to finish off at work. There are all sorts of distractions and for some people there’s a sense of desperation or loneliness. I don’t know many people who associate peace and rest with those few hectic weeks and yet that’s what Christmas is all about, the coming of the Prince of Peace but peace from what? So many people have a sense of turmoil and unrest in their lives but what’s the cause of that? And well, if God sent us the Prince of Peace, Jesus, if that’s what Christmas is all about then exactly how does that first Christmas present bring us peace and peace from what?

December is a funny time isn’t it? It’s that rushing and work and presents and parties and anticipation. I always think of December as a month of pre-occupation with other things, with something and you get to that Christmas time and often we’re so exhausted that the Christmas experience which should be a celebration, which should be family, which should be remembering the wonderful thing that God did for us through Jesus, ends up being empty and hollow and it doesn’t live up to expectations and we look back and go, “Why did I do all of that? Why did I buy all that food and buy all those presents? What’s this Christmas thing all about?”

Have you ever felt that way? I just would love to work our way through that given that we’re at the beginning of the month now and maybe we can do something to really think about what Christmas is in the hectic lead up time. Sometimes there’s turmoil where there should be peace, there’s unrest. We can feel so far away from the whole peace and goodwill to all men thing that Christmas is supposed to be and that is what Christmas is about. Christmas is when we celebrate God’s declaration of peace with us. Peace from what? From turmoil, from war, the mother of all wars, a war between us and God. Maybe you’ve never thought of it that way but Christmas is the time when we celebrate the coming of the Prince of peace into our lives, into lives that are so often full of turmoil, lives that so often feel like war zones that we need peace but peace from what? From the war between God and humanity, the war that began at our initiative, no surprise to God but it began with our rebellion.

It’s interesting when you look at a book in the Old Testament called Ezekiel, it’s written by a prophet and his job was to go to God’s people and say, “You know, you people have rebelled against God.” And that’s exactly what he told Israel. Israel was God’s chosen people, God took them out of Egypt and took them through the desert and put them in the Promised Land, He gave them this land and they rebelled against Him. God has such a heart for His people, God’s cry for His people; you can read about it in Leviticus chapter 26 if you want to.

I will be your God and you will be my people.

It’s what God’s cry is to us today, it’s what God’s cry is to us in Christmas time yet Israel rebelled against God as so God brought the Babylonians and destroyed Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple and so many of His people were killed and those that were left were taken as slaves into exile in Babylon. Ezekiel was writing to God’s people in those early years of their exile when they were wondering, “what’s gone on here? Where’s God?”

And this is what Ezekiel wrote, he said this is what God is saying: “Jerusalem, I’ve set you in the centre of all these nations with countries all around you but you rebelled against me, you turned away from me, you were more turbulent than all those nations and instead of following my commands you actually acted like those nations that I put around you. You don’t look like my people at all, you look like them and so I’m coming against you and executing judgement against you in the sight of all the nations, because of all your abominations I’ll do what I’ve never done before and I’ll never do again and I’m going to bring famine and pestilence and war on you and you’ll be destroyed and I’ll unsheathe my sword after you. My anger will be spent on you; I’ll vent my fury on you.”

You might say, “Berni, that doesn’t sound much like a Christmas message, I mean what are you talking about this stuff for in December? I’ve got enough problems in my life without you telling me about some God who’s going to come up against me.” But you know unless we understand this bit, unless we understand that when we rebel against God, ultimately God is going to bring His judgement against us. We don’t get Christmas because God has no heart for doing this, God’s heart is to be our God, God’s heart is for us to be His people but you and I, we’ve rebelled. Israel did it, Adam and Eve did it before them and you and I have done it after them.

We’ve all sinned, we’ve all fallen short of the glory of God and God doesn’t want to bring that judgement on us. That’s why He always planned on Christmas, not turkeys, not wine and food and holidays and sure they’re all lovely things, I mean, hey I have a rest over Christmas and it’s fabulous but that’s not the main thing. The main thing is that God planned Christmas to be an end of the war but before we can accept that, before we can say, “You know this Jesus that God sent for me at Christmas.” Before we can really, really accept this present that God gave on that first Christmas we’ve got to admit something. There’s a war happening, there’s turmoil in our lives, we wonder why our lives are a mess sometimes and yet at the same time we’re ignoring God.

Come on, wake up, I’m not being rude I just really feel that to get in your face today and say, God’s got a plan for your life and that plan, right at the top of the list is this. “I will be your God and you will be my people.” That’s the cry of God heading into Christmas this year; it’s the cry of God for you, specifically for you. It’s no coincidence that you and I are together today, God is reaching out to you, will you let Him be your God? Will you be one of His kids, one of His family, one of His people? Or are we going to spend the rest of our lives rebelling against Him like Israel did. The way is open, the door is open, the path is open through Jesus, this Jesus who cried out for that first time in Bethlehem on that night a couple of thousand years ago for peace, peace with God and there’s no other peace like it.

We’re going to be looking at that peace for the rest of the week on the program, but today I just want to implore you, I want to encourage you to admit the turmoil, to name it for what it is, to say, “You know something, this joker that I heard on the radio today, he’s talking stuff for me.” Because your God wants to reach out to you today so much, your God is aching for a relationship so deep and so wonderful and so vibrant with you that we can scarcely imagine. That’s what today is all about, Christmas is coming. Christmas is God’s declaration of peace, my prayer for you is that in these days and weeks leading up to Christmas, you just stop and pause and think and reach out and say, “God, I want your peace.”

We’d all kind of want to think of God as a loving, gentle God…and of course He is.  But God is also a God of anger and ultimately of judgement. And that, as we hurtle towards Christmas, is an unsettling, a conflicting thought. 

When we think of God we love to think of Him as kind of a gentle and loving Dad and of course He is those things, but there’s another side to God and if we don’t get that side we miss the point of Christmas. Jesus taught us to call God Dad and of course Dads are kind and loving, but there’s also another very important side to every good Dad and sometimes that involves tough love and so it is with our Father in Heaven. God has a great plan for us to have an eternal and wonderful relationship with Him but when we rebel ultimately that invokes His anger and His judgement. It may not be how we want to think of Him but He’s not some soft cuddly toy, He’s God and unless we get a handle on that side of our Dad in heaven, my hunch is we can’t begin to understand what Christmas is all about.

Christmas is preoccupation and presents and pressure and parties and all that stuff that we do in December in those days and those weeks leading up to that big celebration. And you get there and it can be really quite an empty and hollow experience, so exhausted we can’t enjoy even our family let alone celebrate what it is that God did on the very first Christmas. So many people seem to lead a life without peace, without that real peace and contentment, that deep thing that brings us joy and satisfaction in life; you know what I’m talking about.

Yesterday on the program we had a look at why that was, because God’s kind of made us and hard wired us to have a relationship with Him and when we rebel, when we turn away, when we go our own way and we say, “I can actually live my life without God.” We declare war on God, we ignore Him, we turn our backs on Him. You can even say you believe in God and you believe in Jesus and yet still live a life of rebellion against Him. He has this awesome plan, “I will be your God and you will be my people.” God has a plan which puts us in this awesome creation for us to have a relationship with Him and we rebel.

Adam and Eve did it, Israel did it, you and me, we do it. The name Israel literally means ‘to struggle with God’ and way back in the Old Testament Ezekiel, one of the prophets of the Old Testament, was sent by God to explain God’s judgement on His people and it was a real judgement. Israel rebelled against God, God put them in the Promised Land, the land of milk and honey, He blessed them He gave them enough food, He gave them safety, He gave them a beautiful place to live and they went off and worshipped other Gods. They went off and instead of obeying God they looked like all the other nations around them and God was a patient God, He let this go on for centuries but there came a point, when He’d sent prophet after prophet to call them back into a relationship with Him and He said, “That’s it.” So He sent the Babylonians to destroy Jerusalem, to destroy the Temple, to kill many of His people and to take the rest, the remnant, the rump into slavery in Babylon.

This isn’t some parable, this isn’t some story. I encourage you if you have a Bible go and grab it and have a read of these first 20 odd chapters of the Book of Ezekiel, it makes really sad reading. It was real judgement, people were killed and then God departed from them and left them alone because they had rejected Him. Now you might say, “Man that’s not the sort of message I want to hear leading up to Christmas. That’s not the sort of God I want some joker on the radio telling me about.” But let me tell you something, that’s a part of who God is and unless I tell you about Him I’m not doing my job. This sort of soft fluffy toy image of God is not where He’s at and knowing God as He truly is, we’ve just got to do that to really get our hearts around the enormity of His gift at Christmas time.

Being a Dad is a funny thing, there are all sorts of different bits to the role, kind, loving, gentle, encouraging, absolutely, our kids need that; they need to grow up in a house where they know they are accepted and that they’re safe, a place where they can make mistakes and learn. But being a dad is also about setting boundaries, it’s about establishing an understanding of right and wrong through what we say and what we do. It’s about taking our kids and letting them grow in responsibility and it’s such an important part of those teenage years where they learn, sometimes painfully, to take on more and more responsibility for themselves and sometimes being a Dad involves anger, sometimes it involves punishment.

I don’t know about other Dads but I’d rather not have to go there but neither will I shy away from that for our kids benefit. If I’m some soft cuddly toy type of Dad then my kids aren’t going to learn some of the hard lessons they have to learn. It’s not easy some days but there you go and as they grow into young adulthood and they’re more responsible for themselves, so long as they live under our roof, Jacqui’s and mine, they have to play it by our rules whether they like it or not. Now we love them, we want to have a relationship with them but ultimately if they don’t want to submit to our authority, as young adults it’s time to find somewhere else to live. It’s part of a tough love of being a Dad and I think that’s the picture of our Dad in heaven.

The cry of Gods heart is that, “I will be your God and you will be my people.” From the beginning of the Bible to the end, God keeps saying that, He’s got this passion to have a relationship with you and me. In the Old Testament it’s called The Covenant; it’s a binding promise between God and His people. You can read about it if you have a Bible, go to Leviticus chapter 26 and you can read about the rewards and the punishment in that promise. God says:

If you want to be my people, I’ll be your God and here all the blessings I will pour out on you but if you want to rebel against me this is the punishment that’s going to befall on you.

The whole history of Israel in the Old Testament is about them trying to obey God and rebelling against Him and Ezekiel speaks God’s judgement, God’s horrible judgement to them in the midst of their exile which came as a result of their rebellion. You and me, we’ve rebelled against Him too, does He want to judge and punish us? Is that the main thing on His heart? No, I’ll be your God and you will be my people but He’s God, He’s Lord, He’s Father and there comes a point when enough is enough.

The truth is we all have sinned, we’ve all rebelled, we all fall short of God’s glory and our rebellion is our declaration of war against God and Christmas, Christ Mass, is God’s pro-active declaration of peace. Not just a judicial peace, not just forgiveness although it is that and that’s really important but a relational peace, a fellowship. Anger, judgement, punishment are God’s last resort but at the end of the day that is where we’re headed and He sent Jesus to pay the price, to suffer the punishment and the judgement that you and I should have. That night in Bethlehem He gave us His Son, His declaration of peace for anyone who would accept Him. The decision is yours and mine, I can’t make that decision for you, we can rush into Christmas and pretend like it’s about credit cards and presents or we can hear God’s cry, “I will be your God and you will be my people.”

The only way you really get to know someone is to live with them.  Problem is that today, that can just mean shacking up together.  But God has an amazing plan to make His home in us – and it’s so much more than what the world could ever offer.

Christmas is a time when we celebrate the fact that God sent Jesus, His Son, to this planet to make peace between us and Him, Jesus the Prince of Peace. Our rebellion was our declaration of war against God, Jesus is God’s response, an eternal declaration of peace for anyone who’ll accept Jesus as their one and only way back into a relationship with God, but rebellion can seem like a very strong word, ok I know I’m not perfect but I’m not that bad. So let’s unpack that just a bit, what does our rebellion look like and is it worth sending Jesus to this planet to die for?

Over the last few days on the program we’ve been looking at a little part of the Bible called Ezekiel, it’s a book in the Old Testament and it was written by a man called Ezekiel who was one of God’s prophets. And his job was to go to the nation of Israel and say, “Listen, you know something, the reason that you’re being punished right now is because you have turned your back on God.” And they were being punished, Israel had been taken out of Egypt and through the Red Sea and they spent forty years in the desert with Moses and then God put them in the Promised Land, the land that He promised them through Abraham many centuries before.

And they lived there for century after century and God so wanted to bless them, God so wanted them to have peace and abundance and blessing and a relationship with Him but instead they turned their back on God and the Book of Ezekiel is God speaking to them after He sent the Babylonians to kill many of them and to take the rest into captivity and destroy Jerusalem and the Temple and everything that they held dear to them and explained to them, that you are my people. This is what it says in chapter 5:

This is what the Lord God said, “this is Jerusalem, I’ve set her in the centre of many nations all around her but she’s rebelled against me, she hasn’t done what I’ve asked her to do and therefore because Jerusalem was more turbulent than those other nations and didn’t follow my statutes or ordinances but acted more like the other nations around them I, myself.” says God, “Am coming against them and have executed judgements amongst them and because of all of the people’s abominations, I’ll do what I’ve never done before and I’ll never do again.” And then He goes and lists all this pain and judgement that He visits on them and He says, “My anger will spend itself and I’ll vent my fury on my people and satisfy myself and they will know that I the Lord God have done this to them.”

You think, “Wow, I don’t think of God that way,” it’s a pretty ugly picture of God, Israel was God’s chosen people, but they rebelled against God and they just left Him, they behaved more like the other nations rather than being Gods people. God had set them apart for goodness and blessing and instead they had become more like the nations around them than like God. Isn’t it easier to do that? Isn’t it easier to have some sort of faith in God, you start off believing in Him and it’s wonderful and passionate and little by little, compromise creeps in, the light dims a bit and stops shining and the salt loses it’s flavour and it ends up we don’t look any different than anyone else and maybe we keep up appearances but on the inside, in our hearts, our thoughts there’s some ugly things, it’s a gallery of horrors. We think no-one sees and yet we wonder why there’s turmoil in our lives. When we rebel against God there’s war and there’s turmoil.

It’s interesting in that part of Ezekiel, just a few chapters on, God says to Ezekiel about the leaders of Israel, He says, “Have you seen what the elders of Israel are doing in the dark, each in his room of images? For they say the Lord doesn’t see us, the Lord’s forsaken the land.” And God said to me, “You’ll see still greater abominations that they’re committing, the room of images.” The inner most parts, the part that we think no-one else can see can be a gallery of horrors. Imagine going into an art gallery and it’s dim and you look around the walls and you have a sense that there are some paintings there but you can’t really see the detail and then all of a sudden God turns on the light and we discover a gallery of horrors, a picture of you and me snarling at someone we love, a picture of us scheming or a picture of our hatred, a picture of our dishonesty or sexual immorality or a gallery that we don’t want anyone else to see. A dark place that we think no-one else knows but God sees, God sees that rebellion and He’s got a name for it, it’s called sin.

God’s plan, God’s heart, God’s cry is, “I will be your God and you will be my people.” And God wants to bless us and then we turn around and rebel like Israel, we go our own ways and think no-one notices and yet we wonder why there’s turmoil and on top of that we kid ourselves. While all this was going on in Israel and Ezekiel was prophesying to Israel saying, “You people have forsaken your God and there is no peace and God is going to bring judgement on you.” There were false prophets wandering around saying, “Everything’s ok.” This is what it says in chapter 13 in verse 10:

Because in truth these false prophets are misleading my people, they’re saying there’s peace when there is no peace, they’re whitewashing things.

We do that in our society, we say, “adultery … no problem!” Divorce your husband or your wife because its no longer convenient, well that’s just a valid lifestyle choice really. Eat, drink, be merry for tomorrow we die, there are no consequences, no-one will notice, it doesn’t matter. But God does and God will tolerate that stuff only to a point but ultimately there is judgement because sin is sin and rebellion is rebellion and one day you and I will stand before God and He will judge us and on that day there will be two sorts of people only, those who believe in Jesus, those who believe what we celebrate as Christmas is God sending His son to be a man and ultimately to die to pay for our sins, mine and yours.

I know sin’s not a popular word, people say to me, “Berni, you shouldn’t use the word sin on radio.” And I wouldn’t use it without explaining it, sin is when we rebel against God and it just doesn’t ruin our life here and now, it robs us of eternal life. There are two sorts of people on that day, those who believe in Jesus, who put their faith in Him and say, “I know Jesus died for me and I have forgiveness.” And those will have eternal life.

The other sort are those people who said, “No, no it doesn’t matter. Eat, drink, be merry, tomorrow we die.” On that day they will suffer eternal judgement; on that day the decision will be made for them to spend eternity apart from God. There’s a name for that, it’s called hell. We all have fallen short of God’s glory and just today I know its coming up to Christmas, I know you’ve got a lot of things on your mind probably, I just felt God wants to say something to you, we’ve all rebelled, today God’s calling you home. Wherever you are, whatever you believe, today God is calling you home to Him. “I will be your God, you will be my people.” That is what Christmas is all about.

Well, Christmas is almost upon us – and the whole idea of what it is that we celebrate at Christmas, at least from God’s perspective, is that Christmas is supposed to be a declaration of peace.  But peace from what?

Have you ever had an argument with somebody? Somebody that you really care about. You do something stupid or inconsiderate or hurtful and so the closeness that you once enjoyed is gone and its replaced with a battle. It’s an awful feeling and then you go to them and apologise and they just forgive you and they hold you close and that relationship is intact, in fact it often ends up stronger than ever. That is a fantastic feeling, peace, so when we rebelled against God and we all have, God’s way of opening the door was His declaration of peace. Jesus, that’s what Christmas is, God’s declaration of peace.

Actually God talks a lot about peace, it’s in the Bible over 230 times but you and I talk peace and it’s like the end of war, the end of hostility but the Hebrew concept of peace, shalom, is not just a cessation of hostility it’s something much more. It’s a sense of completeness, it’s a sense of safety and soundness in our bodies, it’s a sense of welfare and health and prosperity and peace and quiet and tranquillity and contentment and friendship. Shalom, peace is that wonderful state of saying I’ve a wonderful life, it’s safe, it’s blessed, it’s abundant, it’s full of wonderful relationships with people and with God. So many times Jesus says to people who he helped and he healed, “Go in peace.” Jesus says, “Shalom.”

The heart of God is for us to have that sort of peace, a peace that surpasses all understanding. I’ve tried in my life to find peace in so many places, peace in having a big house with gold plated taps, peace in having a brand new wonderful car with that wonderful smell of new leather, peace in having a career path and plan laid out for the rest of my life. Peace in having recognition and status with other people yet all of the time running away from God, I knew deep down but I chased it everywhere else and I’m an expert in looking for shalom all the time hurting other people, all the time treading on them, all the time belittling them. I’ve got some news for you, there’s no shalom in any of those things; zip, none.

Why is that? Why is it we chase after those things and yet really deep down we know that there’s no peace, there’s no joy, there’s no fulfilment, there’s no satisfaction in those things. It’s because you and I, incredibly have been made in the image of God, we’ve been hard wired for a relationship with God in our DNA and rebellion ain’t where we’re going to find it.

God is so good, open the window and stick your head out, have a look, look at creation, look at life. Every morning when I sit down to pray I just think the sweetness of the air, just the ability to breathe in for another day and live another day of the life that God planned for me. I’ve been in some of the poorest and darkest places on this planet, some awful places and everywhere you go you can’t help it, somehow, somewhere you discover the goodness of God. No matter how awful people are to one another God created humanity and He put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and we made such a mess of it, we’ve hurt people, we’ve abused people, we’ve killed people, we’ve poured, belched smog and pollution into the world but God is still God, He still yearns for you and me. He’s still aching for us to find Him and to know Him. It doesn’t matter what we’ve done to the world, doesn’t matter what we’ve done to each other it doesn’t change God, God is still God, God still aches for us.

It’s interesting, over the last few days on the program we’ve been looking at the early chapters of the Book of Ezekiel, it’s a book in the Old Testament. Ezekiel was a prophet and it was at a time when Israel had been exiled by the Babylonians. God had brought Israel into the Promised Land and into Jerusalem and into the land that He’d given them and yet they rejected Him so God allowed many of them to be killed, He allowed Jerusalem to be burned to the ground, He allowed the Temple to be destroyed, He departed from His people and those that were left became slaves in Babylon. It was Gods punishment for their rebellion and that’s what we deserve, it’s certainly what I deserved. I look back on my life I think, “I’ve done so many bad things.” I’m not a chainsaw massagist but you know what I mean, we’ve done so many bad things, it’s what we deserve and Christmas, Christmas is when God cries, “ENOUGH!”

Christmas on that clear still night, a baby, Yeshuwa, Jesus, God’s salvation, a cry pierced the air, it was the cry of God; ENOUGH! Christmas is the day when we remember that God stepped into our quagmire, into our dung heap, into the mess that you and I have made of things. Christmas is the day when God, through His son, whispers into our hearts, “Shalom, peace.” Why does the world find it so hard to accept this gift? Why do we take a love so pure, so simple, so wonderful, so generous and ignore it, misunderstand it, pretend it’s not for us?

Christmas is first and foremost God showing His love, it’s a declaration of peace, a cessation of hostilities, its Gods declaration of peace. The question is, have you embraced that? I mean really, with your life, with every fibre of your being, with everything that you are, with your heart and with your soul because without that there can be no shalom. Without that there can be no peace. Maybe you’ve never done that, I’m going to pray a prayer right now, if you want to accept Jesus Christ as your saviour why don’t you pray this with me?

Father, I know that I’ve made so many mistakes in my life, I’m sorry for all of them. I’ll just turn away from them now and I ask you for your forgiveness because I believe that Jesus died for me, that He came to this earth as a man, to be here, to show me what you’re like, to go to the cross, to die for my sins, to pay the price and to rise again. Father, today I accept Jesus Christ as my lord and my saviour and I know that you have forgiven me for my sins. Father put you Holy Spirit in me, change me, make me new, give me a new life and a new start and show me how to live my life for you. I pray that in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

If you prayed that prayer today can I really encourage you not to leave it there? Can I encourage you to find a Church somewhere near you of people who believe in Jesus like you do? Of people who read the Bible, of people who worship God, go and become a part of that family and grow in your relationship with Him. Christmas is when God gave us that very first present, His Son. What an awesome Christmas present if you’ve just given your life to Him. God bless you.

Even though we all want peace in our lives – I certainly do and I’m sure you do too, that peace can be just the most elusive thing… especially at Christmas time – sitting down with family as we almost always do. And let’s face it, you can pick your friends but you can’t pick your relatives. And yet peace, is what Christmas is all about.

Peace is the recurring theme of Christmas, even in today’s society which doesn’t, by and large, know that much about Christmas. Christmas cards are bound with white doves and the message of peace. People talk a lot about peace but the more we talk the less peace people seem to have in their lives, it’s so illusive these days. Whether it’s the war on terror or the sky rocketing divorce rates or the abuse of children or just our own everyday brand of dissatisfaction, you don’t meet that many people out there with the kind of deep joy and peace shining out of their lives do you? But Gods promise through His Son, Jesus, was peace, real peace, a peace in our lives that goes beyond any human understanding.

I’m 48 years old, almost half a century, the first 36 years of my life I lived as an enemy of God. Now maybe that sounds a bit harsh but I was in the game for what I could get out of it, everything, money, status. In fact status was really important to me, what other people thought of me, the clothes that I wore, the ties that I bought, the way I spoke, what I drove, what I drank, what I ate, where I dined at restaurants, where I lived and I hated it when other people succeeded. I couldn’t praise other people or give away the glory to other members of a team, nothing.

Berni Dymet was in the centre of the universe, full stop, end of story, everything else had to revolve around me and the biggest paradox of life, for me, is that doesn’t bring peace. The more we try to be at the centre and to stuff things into our lives and to build ourselves up and strut around like peacocks, the less peace we have because we’re always comparing, we’re always trying to get more and there’s no peace in that. You have to believe me, I am the expert at trying. I fully spent 3/4 of my years on this planet earth so far, trying. Why? Why is it like that? Why don’t those things give us peace? Because you switch the telly on, you switch the radio on or you read a newspaper or a magazine, everything is telling us to fill up ourselves, buy, buy, buy, buy and you will have joy and you will have peace and it doesn’t work.

As I said yesterday, it’s because you and I are hand crafted in the image of God, we’re not like animals, there are majestic animals around, there are whales and deer and you look at them and they’re majestic but there’s something very different about us, we’ve been made in the image of God, by God himself and He has hard wired us, right down in our DNA, right down in who we are for a relationship with Him. Okay, so why doesn’t God just have a relationship with us then?

Why this whole Christmas, send your Son Jesus to become a Jewish carpenter and die on the cross shtick. Over the course of this week, we’ve been looking at God, Dad is what Jesus taught us to call Him, loving and gentle and kind and wants the best for His kids but God is also a Holy God, a perfect God, something that we’ve all fallen well short of by design. God knew what He was getting when He made thee and me. God knew all the blunders and the failures and mistakes and all the horrible things that we’d ever do, think or say and when I look back on life on the bloopers, the hurts, I wonder if I were God whether I would ever had bothered breathing breathe into Berni Dymet. What about you?

The only way to a relationship with the holy, perfect God is Jesus. Now that’s not a popular thing to say these days because we all want to go into this global group hug thing where every road leads to Rome where it doesn’t matter what you believe, we’ll have peace and we’ll have eternal life. Jesus doesn’t give me the option to tell you that, Jesus said to His disciples,”I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life, no-one can come to the Father except through me.”

Why? Because Jesus was the Son of God, because He was God who was born as a baby who became a man, who showed us what God was like, who died on the cross to pay for my sin and yours, to pay the price, who rose again, who has victory over death. We can’t work our way out of our own quagmire of sin into Gods favour anymore than we can flap our arms and fly to the moon. There is no other way except putting all our trust and believing in Jesus. That’s Gods plan, it’s a plan of grace.

A couple of thousand years ago the Apostle Paul was sitting in a Roman dungeon on death row. He was there because he’d been out telling people about Jesus and he wrote to some friends in Philippi. He wrote this, he said, “The Lord is near, don’t worry about anything but in everything my prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, make your request known to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Why is that? Because when we have peace with God, that becomes the most important thing in our lives, after years of chasing around after peace and stuff and stuff, expending all this energy and money and emotional pain and not finding it. One day He came to me and I said, “Yes.” And ever since that day I’ve had peace. He places His spirit inside of us, He makes His home with us, He has a personal, deep, intimate relationship with us and that is only possible when we put our faith in Jesus Christ His Son and He puts His peace in us.

Peace is trusting in Gods power and His love and His sovereignty. Sure we have ups and downs still, some days are still difficult, it happens in everyone’s life but Paul, this apostle, had no right to be feeling that peace on death row. I understand that, often in situations where I have no right to be feeling peace, in difficult tough situations and yet I am so deeply at peace. It doesn’t make sense, it surpasses all human understanding. God gives us a deep joy, I can’t put it into words, I can’t explain it except to point at Jesus and say, “It’s Him.” Just like Paul on death row, he said, “This peace which guards our hearts and minds happens in Christ Jesus.” Christmas is when Jesus came to give us that peace. Do you want that? Do you want to wrap your heart around Him and know His peace? Because I’m going to pray for you right now.

Father, I pray for anybody who is listening here today who desperately, desperately wants your peace. I pray that you would reveal yourself to them through Your Son, Jesus Christ, I pray right now Father God that you would pour Your Spirit over them and in them and through them and by doing that Lord God, I pray that over the next few minutes, hours, days, weeks and months they will come to know the peace that surpasses all understanding. I pray that in the mighty name of Jesus Christ. Amen.