Deo Gloria

December 24, 2021

Christmas Eve Message

Pastor Martin Bentz

Text: Matthew 1:22,23

Theme: He is Immanuel (“God With Us”)

It’s reportedly the most expensive mansion in the state of Minnesota, the Windermere Estate in Greenwood.  It’s located on its own private island just off the shore of Lake Minnetonka.  It features a 12-person movie theater, a fitness center and sauna, an outdoor pool, an eight car garage, and a glass elevator modeled after the one in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.  So what do you suppose a place like that costs?  Recently it was listed for $14.6 million.  Or if you prefer, you could also rent it for roughly $73,000 per month.  You heard me right.  $73,000 per month.  I guess I won’t be living there any time soon.

Is that what heaven is like, the greatest mansion of all?  Is heaven this really cool, fantastic place that I could never afford to live in?  Actually there are some similarities.  Heaven is a really cool place, a place of spectacular views and breath-taking beauty and fantastic glory.  In fact, heaven is so awesome and so spectacular and so beautiful that it makes Windermere Estate look more like the shed for the lawn mower in your backyard.

Heaven is also similar in that it’s a place I could never afford to live on my own—no one could.  Not Jennifer Lopez, not Alex Rodriguez, not Elon Musk, not Bill Gates—no one could ever afford to live in heaven on their own.  The cost to get in is far too high.

You see, the cost for a place in heaven is not $15 million dollars or $150 million dollars or even $15 billion.  The cost to get into heaven is perfection, to be absolutely perfect in everything you say and everything you do, to be holy.  That’s the qualifications God lays out in his Word, “Be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am holy”(Leviticus 19:2).  So who of us can claim to be holy?  I know I can’t.  I know you can’t either.  You and I have sinned.  We all have sinned.  We all have done plenty of things that were wrong and said plenty of things that were wrong.  As the Bible says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”(Romans 3:23).  So is there no hope then, no hope of ever living with God in heaven?

Ah, that’s the reason we’re here tonight.  That’s the difference Christmas makes.  Actually that’s the difference the Christ child makes.  You see, as we are rediscovering once again this evening, that baby who was born in a manger was no ordinary baby.  Oh yes, he was Mary’s son, no doubt about that.  But as Matthew also makes clear in the verses we just read, he is God’s Son, the very Son of God in human flesh.  He is Immanuel, God with us.

So why would the Son of God want to come here?  Why would the Son of God want to give up the mansion of glory in heaven to come and live in a world like ours?  Just to see what it’s like?  So he could see what Christmas cookies taste like or get a chance to go sledding or maybe make a snowman?  No.  He didn’t come for his own benefit.  He came for ours, to rescue people like you and me, people who could never make it to heaven on their own.  In love he came to live for us, to live the kind of life we could never live, a perfect life, a sinless life, a life of perfect obedience to God and his commands.  In love he also came to die for us, to suffer the punishment that we deserve on account of our sins, so that we might be forgiven.

And because of what he did, the doors of heaven have been thrown open for you and for me and for all.  You see, there is no cost of admission to heaven.  The price has already been paid—not by you or me, not by Elon Musk or Bill Gates, but by that baby who was born in a manger.  That’s why we’re here tonight: to celebrate the birth of a very special baby, the one they call Immanuel, the Son of God, who came to live with us so that we might live with him in heaven.  Amen.