Christmas Eve // Baldivis

Well, hello and welcome to the Rox Bell Divers podcast. We're a church that believes there are no perfect people allowed because when we look at the life of Jesus, we can't help but see that he spends the majority of his time with the imperfect people of the world and we want to be just like that. Here you'll find access to our weekly messages that happen specifically at our Bell Divers location. For more information about the rocks and what we're about, please head to the Rox dot church. Now let's get to the message. Well, good evening, good evening, hello, welcome. For any of you I've not met, my name is Alistair, it's my joy to serve as a lead pastor here and can we just give the team a massive round of applause for recovering so quickly? That was awesome, I'm very, very proud, very proud of these guys. I don't know what 2025 has been like for you. I know we talked about it a little bit on Sunday if you were with us, but if you knew with us, you didn't get to, so I just want to ask you today. I want to what you 2025 has been like. For us as a church has been really genuinely amazing. We've just seen so many people come in through our doors over the last 12 months as you can see the room is really full today and that's kind of been the story of this year, but it's been fascinating the types of people that have come through the door and it's been these people that have kind of been living life and experiencing life and then they're kind of asking the bigger questions like, is this all there is? Is there more to life than just going to work, wake up, you know, go to work, have my life and then come home. They're asking a question of like, is there something beyond just a physical and people come in through the doors and they're asking questions about, you know, does God exist and if God exists, what is that God like? Can I know that God? Is it a person? Is it a force? Is it a being? And what I love about these people that have come through our doors is a, is a feeling of wonder, a feeling of awe and I think, you know, for many of us at Christmas time, it's such a special time because it reminds us to embrace the wonder. You know, it's a really special time. You got the lights and the music and the gifts and the excitement and we kind of sometimes feel childish about it. You know, like we're going back to being a kid of getting excited for Christmas. Now I'm excited for Christmas morning, I'm a 32 year old man. But Christmas does this to us, right? And then we kind of feel, maybe I shouldn't feel so excited about it because I'm an adult. I just want to encourage all of us this Christmas season to embrace this feeling of wonder. Why do I ask you to do that? Because we're in a really interesting cultural moment. You and I are living in 2025 in the West and really we are in a strange time. Because in the first time in our history, we are what we would call pre-Christian. Now what do I mean by that? I mean simply that we were a Christian society and we have gone beyond the Christian society. And now we are at a point where people kind of don't really know about the church thing. Why do I say that? Because we're in a time where people, maybe like you today, are more spiritually open than we've ever been in the history of our country. Now people are seeking out and trying to understand what is the spiritual realm. You see this everywhere, people talk about this concept of manifesting, right? Like I'm going to manifest good will. I'm going to manifest something in life or it's engaging in crystal meditation or it's engaging in astrology or the star signs. Because we're trying to engage in the spiritual atmosphere we seem to exist in. I love the way Charles Taylor says this. He says that we are a culture of haunted secularists. This idea that we as a society have moved beyond the idea of God and yet we can't shake this idea that maybe we're not alone in the universe. And the more we think on it, the more we dwell on it, the more overwhelmed we become by this idea that we just cannot simply be alone in the midst of everything. I mean think about how big the universe is. Think about how many stars are out there. Are we really the only planet with life on it? Are we really the only living things in the entire cosmos? And this is the question we all find ourselves asking. And what I find beautiful about the Christmas story is that it meets us in the midst of that mystery. For any of us that are not familiar with the Christmas story, it's a really, really incredible moment in world history. And we have four different accounts of it. And the one we're going to read tonight is written by a guy called Matthew. And Matthew was one of Jesus' closest friends. Matthew was a tax collector. He was an enemy of the Jewish people and somehow found himself back in the circle with Jesus. And he was invited into the fold, even though he was not somebody that was lovable by the rest of Jewish society. And he writes this narrative. He goes back and finds out from the people who were there when Jesus was born, what happened? And so we're going to be reading today from Matthew chapter two. And it's a really gripping narrative. And then we're going to unpack some stuff. So this is what it says. It says Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea during the reign of King Herod. And about that time, some wise men from Eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem. And I just want to take a moment here for a second. I find it fascinating that in the biblical text, they could have made stuff up. If you're a skeptic today, you're probably wondering, is any of this real? The idea that it's actually related to a single human being in King Herod, which we can't actually trace back in human history, is fascinating. I think if you're going to make up a lie, you probably wouldn't start with that. Not the point of the talk, but fascinating. And they asked this question, where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star as it rose, and we have come to worship him. Now you and I might gloss over this. This is a three wise men. It's the classic in the Christmas story. But what's fascinating is where these wise men are from. They're from a nation called Babylon, which is not quite down the road. In fact, it's about 1,200 kilometers away. And at the time, most guys would walk somewhere between 30 and 35 Ks a day. And so we're talking a 40-day journey to go from where they were to, where they don't know how far you drove today. Maybe it was a six-minute drive, and you felt this could have gone a bit shorter. Some of you might have come from a little further north. These guys have come a long way. And fascinatingly, they see the star and they kind of worship him. King Herod was deeply disturbed when he heard this, as was everyone in Jerusalem. He called a meeting of the leading priests and teachers of religious law and asked, where is the Messiah supposed to be born? He's asking the Jews this question. You believe in this concept of a Messiah, this chosen one that's going to come in a human history and set the record straight for all of humanity. And I'm wondering, where does the prophecy say they're going to be born? And this is what's fascinating. In Bethlehem, in Judea, they said, for this is what the prophet wrote. And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not least among the ruling cities of Judah, for a ruler will come from you who will be the shepherd for my people, Israel. What is he saying here? The scribes are quoting a prophet who basically says, the chosen one, the being that will set the record straight for all of humanity will be born in Bethlehem. So what does Herod do? He would do what any rational person does. He calls the boys together for a chat. He called for a private meeting with the wise men. And he learned from them the time when the staff first appeared. And then he told them, go to Bethlehem and search carefully for the child. And when you find him, come back and tell me so that I can go and worship him too. After this interview, the wise men went their way. And the star they'd seen in the east guided them to Bethlehem and it went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the child was. And when they saw the star, they were filled with joy. They entered the house and saw the child with his mother Mary. And they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasure chest and they gave him gifts of gold, frankincense and mure. I mean, there's a very, very big Christian tradition around these three gifts. And the one I find most fascinating is this idea of frankincense. Frankincense for any of us that are unfamiliar was actually the only incense that was allowed to be burnt on the sacrificial altar for the nation of Israel. And so what this really is, is a prophecy for Jesus being the ultimate sacrifice for all sin, for all humanity, even when he's just a small baby. And when it was time to leave, they returned to their own country by another root. For God had warned them in a dream not to return to Herod. Absolutely fascinating story. I think there's so much we can pull from it. But I think the thing that I want to capture the most about the story is this wonderful reality of wonder. At the end of the day for you and I, our sense of wonder is mostly smothered. You know, we're not too dissimilar from many of the characters in this story. You've got Herod, who instead of being transfixed by this magical star that seems to have appeared in the sky. Wondering where does the star come from? What does the star mean? Herod finds himself smothering the wonder because he wants control and he wants comfort. And he is deeply troubled by what this might mean for him. You've got the scribes, you've got the Jewish leaders who are seemingly non-plus by this reality that they know the prophecy. They know what this means. They know that this means God has put on a body and has walked any human history. And instead of having their minds blown and their eyes open and their hearts express, they go, "Well, we think that's where He's going to be, but we're not really sure." Their sense of wonder has been smothered. And yours and mine is not any dissimilar. I mean, you look at your life today. When was the last time you just sat by yourself? Without a screen in front of you and got lost in the revelry of the reality of your life? I love the way my son described it this morning. Are we just bones with skin on? He's lost in the wonder. He's not smothered by a schedule, by a budget, by anxiety, by fear for the future. He's lost in the present moment because he hasn't bought into the buy that our society has sold us that if we can have more, do more, be more, we will experience the feeling of wonder. And or instead, what are we ended up with? Emotional apathy, numbness to the world around us. We're asking ourselves, "Why are any of us here and does life get any better than this?" And the problem for you and me is that we think this is a modern problem. We think it's a new thing that there's no other culture in human history that's dealt with this. The reality is this is the constant human narrative has been the narrative for millennia. Don't take my word for it, take Einstein's word for it. This is what he said. Look at this. "He to whom the emotion is a stranger who can no longer pause to wander and stand wrapped in awe is as good as dead. His eyes are closed." This is 75 years ago and you've got a man saying the same thing that if you are emotionally dead, if you are emotionally apathetic, emotionally fragile, you have lost the wonder and the sight of what life should be. And I wondered today, is your wonder, is your feeling of awe about the reality of life, feeling smothered? Now, why this is a problem for you and me is that wonder is the doorway to being present in a moment. It is impossible for us to be present in a moment unless we're enraptured by wonder. What do I mean by this? Wanda really is a verb. You can define it as much as you like, this idea of awe and anticipation and something that is beyond comprehension. But at the end of the day, all of these guys are enraptured by something other than the present. Do you think about you and me? We're actually just the same as these characters. It's going to be the constant refrain. You've got her it. What's he enraptured by? He's not enraptured by the wonder of the moment that there's a magical star in the universe and possibly God in a body. He is trapped in the future. And he's wondering, what does this mean for my life? What does this mean for my position of authority? What does this mean? What is really real? This will change everything about me. He's trapped in the future. You've got the scribes, the religious leaders who know the Bible back to front, who know all of the answers, all of the passages. And what are they trapped by? They're trapped in their own minds. They can't get past their own knowledge, past their own content. For many of us, we get trapped in our heads. We think things through over and over and over and we forget to live in the moment. But it's not a new problem. It's the same problem everyone's ever had and then you've got Jerusalem. The whole nation of Israel, two in ruptured in their schedule, two busy to pay attention and what's going on. You think about this for a moment. If there was a star in the sky that no one had ever seen before in a hung around for 40 days, would your schedule shift a little bit? I know that we like to think it would, but I think the reality is, is it? It isn't. A prime example would be right now. We have a power failure. What did we do? We turned it back on and we carried on and did nothing happen. Because that's what our world does. We don't get lost in the wonder. We don't get lost. We just go, what's next? What's the schedule say? What's next in the plan? So what am I trying to say to you all? I'm trying to say, hopefully this, wonder is a doorway to presence. We cannot be present unless we are lost in this idea of wonder. Now, where am I getting this from, genuinely not my own head. This idea of mindfulness is so common in our society right now and actually the national library of mental health in America actually came up with this study here. We conclude that mindfulness brings about various positive psychological effects, including increased subjective wellbeing. What do they mean by subjective? It means you feel better about yourself. Reduce psychological symptoms and emotional reactivity and improve behavioral regulation. What does the science say? The science says that those of us that can get lost in a moment, that can be present with their own emotions, presence with their own selves, and experience a little bit of that feeling of wonder and awe are more emotionally healthy, more behaviorally stable, i.e. more psychologically healthy than those of us that have our wonder smothered. And this is why I find the Christmas narrative so beautifully compelling because Jesus restores wonder by meeting us in the midst of the mystery. And now our cultural moment is basically begging you to have an answer for the problems of life. It is saying you need to be sure of the solution to your problem. This is the reality of hundreds of years of psychological development which basically says we must have an cause and then an equal effect and if we cannot draw a sure relationship between the two then we cannot trust this thing. And Jesus is completely different. Jesus does not come in saying be sure, know the answers, be content with what you know. Jesus instruction is simple it says come follow me. There is a star in the sky that people are desiring to follow. It's very whimsical, it's very wonderful but you know what's crazy is who actually follows the star because the prophets know what the star means. They know in their head what it is but they don't go. Who does go? These weird wise men, where are they from? Babylon who are the morsel enemies of the people of Israel which is God's original people. Now can you just let that settle in for a moment. The people outside of the fold were more captured by the wonder than the people who knew what it meant. The people who knew this was God coming to rescue humanity from all of our brokenness, from all of our mess, from all of our sin. They knew what it meant and they ignored it. The people who had a vague idea of what it might mean were enraptured by it, they were captured by it and they leveraged 40 days of their life just to find out what it might mean. This was so beautiful about Jesus. He meets us in the mystery. He doesn't ask us to come to him with all of the answers prepared. He doesn't come to us with all of the asking us to have all of the mess cleaned up. When we say no perfect people allowed it's because that's the reality of the story. Because that Jesus meets people in the midst of the mess and in the midst of the mystery. These guys had the wrong theology. They were astrologers. They thought that the stars governed the universe. They had literally the wrong practice. They worshipped demonic figures and star signs and all this crazy stuff. And yet those are the people that God chooses to invite into the family home. You think about this for a minute? You've got a vulnerable baby. You've put yourself in the vulnerable form of a baby's body. Who are you inviting into that house? You are not inviting into that house, your mortal enemies on any given day. And yet that is what God does. He invites those that were other, that were different, that believed wrongly, that behaved wrongly, that didn't do it the way that everyone needed them to do it. And he invites those guys in across the threshold into the family. And I wonder today, for some of us in the room, we've been following Jesus a long time. Have you lost your sense of wonder? Because you are for God, where God met you. And so what do you do with this? This Christmas, I want to challenge you in three ways. I would encourage you first and foremost, don't just be stirred by wonder. It's very easy to have an emotional response to the wonder of Christmas, that God would put on a body in the vulnerable form of a baby to come to humanity, to rescue us from our own sin from our own wrongdoing. But don't just be stirred by it, be like these wise men who are transformed by it. How would you do this? The first thing I think is you've got to stay curious. These guys are curious. They're wondering, where's the star go? What does it mean? What is it about? They're curious. Think about a child. Right? They're mixing paint. They're not wondering what the correct hex code is for turquoise. They're just wondering, I wonder what those two things do together. And I wonder in your life today, is everything so calculated, so scheduled, so programmed, that you've just lost the wonder of being curious. And wondering what might happen, what will happen? Stay curious. I encourage you to stay present. In this next few days, this next couple of weeks, it's going to be very easy for you to be thinking, 2026 problems or 2025 problems or maybe 2024 problems if it was a really bad year. I'd encourage you to stay present. One practical way that you could do that is simply by exploring your own emotions. Maybe you've got a quiet five minutes by yourself, maybe you just think inwardly or journal it out. What am I mad about right now? What am I sad about? What am I scared about? What am I excited about? Take a moment to just take an emotional check of where you're at. And then lastly, I just encourage you to stay humble. You've got these wise men, these mad jai, who, in the context of Babylon, know all there is to know. They're extremely well-learned. They're extremely philosophical. They are more educated than any common person would have been in Israel. And yet they are humble enough, think about this for a moment. They are humble enough to kneel before a defenseless baby. They are older than the baby. They know more than the baby. They've had more life experience than the baby. In their mind-sight, they would have greater perception than the baby. They would know better than the baby. And yet there is something in the moment when they cross that threshold that transforms they're in a heart that says it does not matter how much we know, how much we have done, how smart we are at the end of the day. This is God in a body. And they have no choice but to humble themselves and kneel before the king of the universe. And I just wanted today, for some of us in the room, is this the Christmas that you actually humble yourself? And you ask yourself this grand question of like, "Actually, am I the king of the universe or is somebody else?" And the reason I sail this to you, this Christmas is not because I'm trying to poke the bear. I'm not trying to be aggressive towards you. I just think there's a better reality for your life. So why don't we wonder? Why don't you want to do this? I think it's because our cultural moment has stuffed us feel with more content than we've ever had. Do you want to know the answer to something today? You can Google it. And an AI will summarize all of human knowledge in three or four senators for you to have a takeaway snippet of some of the most, think about this for a minute, some of the most complex things that human beings have ever discovered. You think about this for a moment, right? Putin is sitting under a tree and an apple hits him in the head. The rest of his life is invested in defining the concept of gravity. You and me today, we just jump on Google. What is gravity? And you will get a cliff note summary that is easy to understand and easy to digest. We have minimized 30 or 40 years of research in the two or three sentences. We have more content than any other group in human history. And yet we are a society that is starving for wisdom. And we are wondering, I know all of the right things and yet I can't seem to make the right call. Why is it? We resist the wonder because knowing is easier than going. The scribes knew the answer. Herod asks them, what's the prophecy? Where's the location? They go, here it is. Hosea chapter 2. It's going to be born in Bethlehem. They know the answer instantly. You and I know the answer instantly, but knowing is not the same as going, what happens to the Magi? They're curious. They're lost in the one that they're lost in the war. And so they follow the star 40 days. Do you think they had doubts in that 40 day journey? Do you think they started a question? Is this real? Am I really following a magical star in the sky? And then they get to the door and they've got the opportunity. Do we turn around or do we cross the threshold? And was the text says they chose to enter the house. They enter the house to present the gifts, they kneel before the King. And what ends up happening? This is powerful. You can't miss this. They go home a different way. They go home a different way because they've experienced something transformative in that room. You've got to remember these guys are more educated than you and I will ever be. They have more understanding than you and I will ever be. And yet in the presence of a baby, they kneel before a King and their life is turned around from then and forevermore. And I wonder today, this Christmas, would you wonder with me? Would you get lost in the war? And instead of being stirred by the wonder of Christmas, you would be transformed by it. That you like to imagine I would enter across the threshold. You'd encounter the wonderful reality of God putting on a body and you would not leave today the same as what you walked in, but you would leave today lost in the wonder and the majesty that God did not condemn humanity. God did not write humanity offered God put on a body, sacrifice His glory and His majesty and Hisself so that we would be sent free from our own pain and our own sin. Could you imagine what your life would look like? If you embraced a little bit more wonder, a little bit more awe, and instead of needing to be sure of everything, you could get lost in a present moment. So my challenge to you this Christmas, would you get lost in the wonder that God did not condemn you, He did not write you off, but He loved you so much that He came to earth in a form of a baby and grew up to become a man. And that man went to the cross to die on your behalf so that you would be set free from every mistake you've ever made from every time you have fallen short of who you were meant to be. And He opens His arms this Christmas and He says, would you enter the family house? Would you come across the threshold and leave forever changed? I'm going to pray for us then we're going to sing some more. Well Jesus, I just want to thank you so much that Christmas is such a radical reality that you put on a body in the form of a baby. And I just pray God, would you help all of our hearts be opened up to the wonder and the awe and the beauty of what Christmas means this year? We're good and we trust you, Amen. Thank you for listening to the Rock-Stealth Abyss podcast. We hope this message inspired you to follow Jesus just a little bit more. If you have any questions about the content or Jesus, head to the Rock-Stealth Church. [Music]