Lo Falso Siempre Falla | Encuentra La Verdadera Paz En Un Mundo Que Parece Falso

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Yeah. Nothing says Christmas like threats to get obedience.

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Am I right, parents? Hey, there we go.

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Merry Christmas again. My name is Kyle.

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If we never met before, I'm Lead Pastor here at Crossroads.

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We're joining us for this Christmas at the Movies series.

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This is actually week two.

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Last weekend it started and I was

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in the site I go to when I'm not here at Oakley,

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Crossroads East Side. It was awesome.

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I walked in and the atrium was all beautiful and decked out.

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There were red carpets and ropes that come in here.

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Everybody's munching popcorn. It's beautiful.

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And then within the first minute of her message,

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Alli Patterson, says, "This is the final season

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of this awesome thing we do."

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And I was like, "What? What?"

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So if you think this should not be the final season,

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I would just send Alli emails.

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I'm just kidding. Don't do that.

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Don't do that. Don't do that.

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This is a thing that we do at Crossroads.

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It's been so fun to do.

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I'm glad to get to talk today about Charlie Brown Christmas.

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Charlie Brown Christmas first aired on December 9, 1965.

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It's actually aired every single year since then.

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This year is its 60th anniversary, and so chances are,

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if you're in a room at Crossroads,

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if you're watching online, you've seen this movie before,

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but maybe not for a while.

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When I picked this movie to preach on this weekend,

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I actually hadn't seen it in years.

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And I like kind of sort of remembered the story

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as being like a nice Christmas story or whatever,

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but that's not why I picked it.

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I picked it because I loved the music.

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Vince Guaraldi Trio, Christmas jazz.

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If you come to my house anytime between

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like October and February, I am playing this album.

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I probably listen to it a hundred times a year, literally.

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It's amazing. I love it.

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It's just got this kind of like raw, natural feel to it.

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Vince Guaraldi actually told the sound engineers

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when they were recording it to leave the room noise in.

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And so you can hear all the imperfections and scratches

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and when the musicians move, it's not perfect,

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but it's real and I love it.

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It's actually the opposite of the music I hate the most,

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which is Pentatonics.

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I know, I know, some of you, I just.

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Oh! That's enough. Stop! We get it, we get it.

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I just saw -- some of you, my family loves Pentatonix,

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so if you like Pentatonix, that's fine.

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I just don't understand it. I don't get it.

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I don't get a cappella music.

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Everyone's like, "Oh, it's so cool.

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They're making all the instrument sounds

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with their mouths."

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I'm like, do you know what's more impressive

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than someone playing mouth drums?

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Someone playing real drums.

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Why am I supposed to like this?

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I don't, I don't get it.

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If you like Pentatonix, my only push to you

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is can you be consistent in your life?

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I think you should get into hobby horsing.

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You know, people ride the fake horses around, they pretend.

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You should also, you should not watch

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the Kentucky Derby when it comes on again.

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And you should watch that instead.

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Just be consistent, that's all.

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Because you like fake things, not real things like me.

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That's my only point. Everyone hates me now.

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Great. That's a good start to the message.

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Point was I picked it for the music

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because the music is amazing.

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But then something happened.

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I watched the movie and it's not what I remembered.

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If it's been a minute for you,

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here's the basic beats of the story

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just just to jog your memory.

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The main character, Charlie Brown,

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is a very discontent, borderline depressed kid.

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He's ruthlessly harassed by every other kid in the show.

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And the culmination of the entire story is when

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the kids send him out to buy a Christmas tree

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for their Christmas play.

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And what they sent him out to buy is a fake but perfect tree.

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And instead Charlie Brown buys an imperfect but real tree.

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When he gets back, they are not happy with him.

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This is their response.

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- We're back.

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- Boy, are you stupid, Charlie Brown.

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- What kind of a tree is that?

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- You were supposed to get a good tree.

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Can't you even tell a good tree from a poor tree?

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- I told you he'd goof it up.

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He's not the kind you can depend on to do anything right.

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- You're hopeless, Charlie Brown. Completely hopeless.

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- Rats.

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- You've been domb before, Charlie Brown.

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But this time you really did it.

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[laughter] - What a tree.

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[laughter]

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- I mean what? His own dog laughs and leaves.

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People were mean in 1965.

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If you made that today, that's like rated R,

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they would not let kids watch that. Way too mean.

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But that's how it goes, everyone laughs.

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And then after that Charlie Brown has the moment

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that we watched before of, "I don't think

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I even know what Christmas means.

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Isn't there anyone who can tell me what Christmas means?"

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And then Linus walks out and he reads a section

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of the real Christmas story from the real Bible,

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word for word, straight out of Luke 2.

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And I don't know if you remember what happens after that,

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but Charlie Brown understands the gospel for the first time,

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receives Jesus and gets baptized. It's --

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It's not what happens. That's not at all what happens.

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That would make sense.

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Instead, this is the real end.

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- First prize?

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Oh, well, this commercial dog is not going to ruin my Christmas.

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I've killed it.

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Oh! Everything I touch gets ruined.

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- I never thought it was such a bad little tree.

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It's not bad at all really.

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Maybe it just needs a little love.

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- Charlie Brown is a blockhead, but he did get a nice tree.

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[humming: Hark! [The Herald Angels Sing]

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- What's going on here?

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- Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown.

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- Aww, what do you mean aww? What do you mean aww?

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The mean kids come, magically transform the tree,

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Lucy throws one more pot shot at him,

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"Charlie Brown is a blockhead,

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but he did pick out a nice tree."

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No he didn't.

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And then he walks up, they yell Merry Christmas,

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and then they all sing Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.

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Roll credits.

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That's the whole thing.

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I just want to make one observation about that,

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just one observation. That doesn't make sense.

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That doesn't make any freaking sense at all,

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but it's the real ending.

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And so what can we actually learn from this,

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one of the most famous Christmas movies that's ever been made?

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Well, despite the ending, I actually believe

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if you found your way to this church,

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your story might just mirror Charlie Brown's story.

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It might feel like your own, because his story

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is about searching for real happiness and real peace

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in a world that increasingly just seems fake.

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In fact, his defining characteristic is that

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he just can't fake it.

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When everybody else puts on the plastic smile

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Charlie Brown can't.

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It's a story about searching and finding real things.

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Charlie Brown so much wants the real thing

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that he'll pick it even if it isn't perfect.

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And it turns out that's not just what you and I are looking for.

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That's what God's looking for, too. That's the good news.

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Let's pray before we go further.

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God, thank you so much for fun we get to have,

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thank you for movies we get to pick apart.

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Thank you for the truth of Your gospel.

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I'm asking that over everything, all the shenanigans

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and clips and everything, God, that Your gospel

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would be clear, that Your call would be loud,

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that we have the courage to believe the good news. Amen.

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Well, the real Christmas story and the real story

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the making of Charlie Brown, they have one thing in common.

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If you were to write a script about them,

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you would never write it the way that they really happened.

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See the beginning of A Charlie Brown Christmas

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it wasn't this like candy cane and gumdrop dream

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inside the heart of Charles Schulz, the Peanuts creator

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that he always wanted to make, though he wrote it.

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It wasn't some prayerful strategy of getting

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the Bible read in front of the largest live audiences

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in human history, though that happened.

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The beginning in the real story is that

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Charlie Brown Christmas was a marketing scheme

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dreamed up by the ad agency behind one of

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the largest corporate conglomerates on earth,

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Coca-Cola.

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It was very, very literally a scheme to make money.

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Their only goal was to commercialize Christmas

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in order to get more cash. That's the story.

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Some of you are looking at me like

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you just ruined Christmas, Kyle.

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Why did you have to tell us that?

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Sorry to pee in your eggnog, but that's the real,

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that's the real facts. That's the facts.

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Now, the ad agency that didn't go to Schultz first,

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they actually went to his producer friend

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Lee Mendelson to pitch the idea.

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Here's some of the story from

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a New York Magazine feature about it.

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It says: the show originally sprang from

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a failed documentary Mendelson had tried to make

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about Schultz. No networks wanted it.

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But after Charlie Brown and the gang were featured

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on the cover of Time Magazine, Coca-Cola's ad agency,

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McCann Erickson got the idea for a holiday special

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and approached Mendelson.

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Desperate after his documentary imploded.

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He lied and told the agent that, in fact,

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he and Schultz had discussed such a project.

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He called Schultz and told him

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they'd sold a Charlie Brown Christmas.

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"Schultz said, 'What's that?'" Mendelson recalls.

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"I said, 'It's something you're going to write tomorrow.'"

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That's the real story behind Charlie Brown Christmas,

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a lie tied to a marketing ploy to commercialize Christmas.

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That's it. Kind of puts scenes like this in a different light.

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- What's going on here?

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What's this? Find the true meaning of Christmas.

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Win Money. Money. Money.

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Spectacular, super colossal neighborhood

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Christmas lights and display contest.

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Lights and display contest> Oh, no!

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My own dog gone commercial. I can't stand it. Oh.

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- My own dog gone commercial.

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Yeah, Charles, your own dog, because you sold him out.

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Yeah, that's exactly right.

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You can almost hear him writing his mourning through it.

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But that's not the craziest part about the story.

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The craziest part is that the entire time

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they were making this feature,

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everyone working on it thought it was terrible,

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like awful because it didn't fit any of the scripts.

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You had this depressed main character,

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this gang of mean kids.

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The pacing was really slow.

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The music was weird.

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Who puts jazz music in a kid's show?

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In fact, halfway through the making of it,

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one of the executives from the ad agency

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actually flew out to check in on their progress,

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watched what they had made, and told them

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it was so bad if he went back home

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and he told his buddies at work

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what he actually thought about it, they would kill it.

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Now Schultz and Mendelson, they convinced

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the guy somehow not to do that, and so he didn't.

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He apparently faked it and lied that everything was going great.

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By the way, that guy was Ronald Reagan's brother, Neil Reagan.

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You can't make this up. This is true. It's crazy.

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Now, the time it got close to air,

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CBS finally got to watch it.

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The network finally got to watch it.

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And when they saw it, they thought it was doomed.

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And they would have cut it,

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except Coke had already paid for it,

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and they had already printed it in the TV guide,

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which you can't take back.

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It's not like the internet.

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You can't just change it. It's printed.

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And so they decided to go ahead and air it.

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And on the night it aired,

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half of the American television audience,

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some 30 million people, all tuned in live to watch it.

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And when it was done,

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the response was swift and conclusive:

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People loved it, loved it, raved about it.

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It won an Emmy. It won a Peabody.

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Mendelson and Schultz, they got a four movie deal.

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It's why we have the Great Pumpkin

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and Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, because they were, like,

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"More money. Make more things. We can sell more coke."

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That's it. This movie was a roaring success.

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And the question is: how? Why?

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Well, despite its obvious flaws,

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despite its imperfections, despite how it goes off script,

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Charlie Brown Christmas tapped into something deeply powerful:

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the desire that we all have for something real

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and the knowledge that none of us have quite found it yet.

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And that is where the powerful story actually starts.

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- [singing] Christmas time is here.

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Happiness and cheer.

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Fun for all that children call

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their favorite time of year.

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Snowflakes in the air. Carols everywhere.

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Olden times and ancient rhymes

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of love and dreams to share.

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- I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus.

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Christmas is coming, but I'm not happy.

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I don't feel the way I'm supposed to feel.

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I just don't understand Christmas, I guess.

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I like getting presents and sending Christmas cards

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and decorating trees and all that.

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But I'm still not happy.

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I always end up feeling depressed.

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- Charlie Brown, you're the only person I know

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who can take a wonderful season like Christmas

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and turn it into a problem.

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Maybe Lucy's right.

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Of all the Charlie Browns in the world,

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you're the Charlie Browniest.

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- Says Linus, who's supposed to be his best friend.

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I don't understand that scene either.

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There's something in there, by the way,

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the movie's really slow.

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I intentionally kept in that beginning part

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because I wanted you to feel the film.

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That's what I had to sit through watching it.

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I was like, "Wow, are we just killing time or what, guys?

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We don't need all this walking.

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There's a lot more, just if you watch the movie,

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just be prepared for that.

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Charlie Brown says something important, though.

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He says to Linus what he really feels.

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He says, "I don't feel the way that I'm supposed to feel."

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See, Charlie Brown recognizes

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there's a discontent in his heart.

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And I know when you get around church, it might feel like,

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"Well, that's not what God wants you to share.

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God isn't interested in that. God wants gratitude.

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We just came out of thanksgiving,

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and isn't that what God wants, and always be thankful?"

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And yes, there's an element of that,

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but that's not the entire story.

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See, according to God, the thing He wants from us

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is our real thoughts and our real feelings,

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even when they're troublesome.

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Psalm 142:2 is one place where Scripture makes this clear.

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It says: I pour out my complaints before Him;

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I tell my trouble before Him.

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Growing up, that's not the impression I had of God.

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I did not think there was a God up in heaven

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who was very interested in me pouring out my complaints

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and telling Him all of my troubles.

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I thought there was a God in heaven

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who was interested in me faking like everything was fine.

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Because when I went to churches, that's what I would see.

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Church felt like the let's fake it together club.

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Ever felt that way when you've gone to a church

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or been around a group of people,

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maybe not even a church, just just in social circles?

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Like the thing that we're all supposed to do

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is fake that we're fine. Everything's great.

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I mean, we're busy, don't get me wrong. Busy.

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But, like, you know, everything's good.

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Just fake like we're perfect.

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Fake that we got no problems.

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Fake like everything is good.

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Just plaster on a smile when you walk into church.

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"How's life?" "It's good."

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"Oh, yeah?" "Good. Real good."

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Okay. Like that's what we're supposed to do.

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No, that's not, that's not at all.

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That's not it at all.

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Schultz had that similar reaction by the way,

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when he walked into church he also felt like

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it was the let's fake it club too.

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And you might have heard that he was a Sunday school teacher,

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and that's why he put Luke 2 into the story.

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Which he did. He insisted on putting Luke 2 into the story,

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reading Scripture word for word.

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And he was a Sunday school teacher,

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but not at the time he wrote the movie.

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That was in his 20s.

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He was in his 40s when he wrote the movie.

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In his 30s something happened to him

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where he went to church over and over again,

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and he became disillusioned about how hollow

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and how fake and how phony and how similar it felt

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to this overly commercialized world he was experiencing.

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And he walked away.

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Later in his life he said this:

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I do not go to church anymore,

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but I still read the Bible every day.

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It's interesting, you could say that Schultz

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had given up on church, but not on God.

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That's a story for many of us, that same story.

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Not to read the Bible every day part willing to bet,

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like he was doing as he was searching for God.

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But that's the same story.

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There's something we've walked away from

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but we can't shake this thing, this feeling,

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this sense that there's something real,

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that real happiness, that real peace, that a real God

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is out there somewhere.

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That's exactly why we started Crossroads

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for people who are tired of faking it.

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30 years ago, we set out to tell people

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about this church that was being started.

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And a group of really smart people got together,

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and they came up with ways we could express

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what this church was going to feel like and be like,

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what it was going to stand for.

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And they came up with this phrase:

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a real place for real people.

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It was actually the first mailer that ever got sent out.

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This is it right here: Church done differently.

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A real place for real people.

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Also really bad colors, apparently.

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Purple and teal. Not sure about that.

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Now, what's interesting is the first time

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I came to Crossroads years and years ago,

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I was 19 years old.

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In those early days coming around,

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I came to a Crossroads service and it was about

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this idea of being a real place for real people.

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And Brian was on stage and he opened a beer

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and started drinking it.

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And I was like, "What is happening? What is happening?"

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Instantly, in my head I was like,

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"You can't do that in church. You can't do that."

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And what he explained next just changed my world.

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He said, "You know, I know that many of you are thinking this,

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"You can't do this in church."

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And the problem with that is it reflects your belief about God:

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I can't be the way I really am around God.

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When I approach Him I've got it pretty up,

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I've got to tidy up.

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I've got to put away the bad vices and the bad habits.

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I've got to pretend and fake like everything's good.

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It's good, God. I'm good, I'm good when I walk in here.

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He said no,

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I think what God wants is the real me all the time.

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I think God wants me to be the same person here

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as on my back deck.

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And it changed for me the way that I thought about God.

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And wouldn't you know it, by the way, 30 years later,

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when we go to launch new sites, we put together

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marketing stuff and we send out mailers,

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put them in people's mailboxes

00:21:41

and buy billboards and put them around.

00:21:43

And wouldn't you know we do some testing

00:21:45

on what do people respond to and what words work

00:21:48

and all that stuff.

00:21:49

Wouldn't you know that 30 years later,

00:21:51

the thing that still tests the highest is

00:21:54

a real place for real people.

00:21:56

When we launched our last campus, Dayton,

00:21:59

opened our Dayton building back in the spring.

00:22:01

This was the ad campaign: a real place for real people.

00:22:06

See, it turns out that throughout all human time

00:22:09

and history, all of us have always wanted this:

00:22:13

something real.

00:22:15

It's maybe true to say that we've never wanted it

00:22:17

more than right now in our culture,

00:22:19

when so much is fake

00:22:20

and it's so hard to tell what is actually real.

00:22:25

What's real? We want real.

00:22:27

We don't want perfect, but fake.

00:22:29

We want real, even if flawed. Even if flawed.

00:22:34

And I think that's the reason why 60 years later,

00:22:37

after its debut, A Charlie Brown Christmas

00:22:39

still has such a massive impact.

00:22:41

It's not perfect, but it's real,

00:22:44

Just like the real Christmas story.

00:22:47

That section that Linus reads from stage

00:22:50

is actually the second paragraph of Luke chapter 2,

00:22:53

the Christmas story in the Bible. Second paragraph.

00:22:57

The first paragraph starts this way Luke 2:1, it says:

00:23:02

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus

00:23:06

that all the world should be registered.

00:23:08

This was the first registration

00:23:10

when Quinarius was governor of Syria.

00:23:12

And all went to be registered, each to his own town.

00:23:15

And Joseph also went up from Galilee,

00:23:17

from the town of Nazareth to Judea,

00:23:19

to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem,

00:23:22

because he was of the house and lineage of David,

00:23:24

to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.

00:23:28

And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth.

00:23:31

And she gave birth to her firstborn son

00:23:34

and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes

00:23:36

and laid Him in a manger,

00:23:38

because there was no place for them in the inn.

00:23:42

Now, maybe you've heard that story read a thousand times,

00:23:46

and it's just kind of one of those rote like,

00:23:48

"Yeah, that says the details and that's the story,"

00:23:50

so we don't think about it.

00:23:51

But just so we're clear, every single detail

00:23:54

in this story also makes no sense.

00:23:56

Every detail in this story is not the perfect script.

00:24:01

Mary's maybe 13 or 14 years old. She's not married.

00:24:04

She's forced by a foreign dictator, Caesar Augustus,

00:24:08

to travel to a city she's never been to.

00:24:10

When they get there, they show up at the home

00:24:12

of her fiancé, Joseph, and the family says,

00:24:15

"You can't stay here."

00:24:17

That phrase, no place for them in the inn,

00:24:19

does not mean they rolled up to the local Holiday Inn

00:24:22

or local Motel 6 and it was all booked out. No vacancy.

00:24:25

Not what it means.

00:24:27

The word translated inn actually means guestroom,

00:24:31

something that every first century house had.

00:24:34

In fact, Luke, who wrote Luke later on, 20 chapters later,

00:24:37

he used the same word translated inn to mean guestroom

00:24:41

in Luke 22:11, when he's describing the room

00:24:44

that Jesus had the Last Supper in with His disciples.

00:24:47

He said, "And tell the master of the house,

00:24:48

"The teacher says to you, Where is the guest room

00:24:51

that I may eat the Passover with my disciples?"

00:24:55

It means there's no room in the guest room.

00:24:58

They show up to the house

00:25:00

and they're told there's no room for you.

00:25:04

Painful detail, by the way only Luke records.

00:25:07

In fact, I don't know if you know this.

00:25:10

All of the details about the actual day

00:25:14

of the birth of Jesus all come exclusively from Luke.

00:25:19

There are four biographies of Jesus:

00:25:21

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all hit different details.

00:25:23

Only Luke records the actual day,

00:25:26

which is not an accident.

00:25:28

It's because Luke didn't write his own version of the story.

00:25:31

He wrote someone else's.

00:25:34

Luke was not actually one of the 12 disciples.

00:25:37

He was not an eyewitness to Jesus's ministry

00:25:40

when he was walking around.

00:25:42

Luke was a physician, most likely from Antioch in Syria.

00:25:46

Syria and Antioch, we know, is one of the first cities

00:25:49

that was converted to Christianity.

00:25:51

We know about this from the book of Acts, which Luke also wrote.

00:25:54

He records in Acts 11 that Antioch was the first place

00:25:57

where followers of Jesus were called Christians.

00:25:59

And it's very likely that Luke was one of those Christians

00:26:03

when the disciples showed up to teach and to preach.

00:26:07

Now what he does with this gospel, he says in chapter one,

00:26:10

is to set out to find an orderly account.

00:26:12

And so he interviewed eyewitnesses

00:26:14

and then cross-examine them to try to figure out

00:26:17

what's true.

00:26:18

As a physician, he's analytical.

00:26:20

He's very literal. He's interested in facts, not fluff.

00:26:23

And that's what he writes into the story.

00:26:27

His most likely primary source of information

00:26:30

about what happened on the day of the birth of Jesus,

00:26:34

Mary herself, the mother of Jesus.

00:26:40

Some strong clues that point in this direction.

00:26:42

Only Luke records Gabriel's private,

00:26:45

the angel Gabriel's private conversation with Mary.

00:26:48

Only Luke records the song that she's saying

00:26:52

in only the presence of her cousin Elizabeth.

00:26:55

Only Luke records details about Jesus's childhood.

00:26:59

And only Luke records Mary's inner thoughts

00:27:03

that she never said out loud to anyone.

00:27:06

In Luke 2:19, Luke wrote:

00:27:08

But Mary treasured up all these things,

00:27:12

pondering them in her heart.

00:27:15

How do you find out what Mary was pondering in her heart?

00:27:20

You talk to Mary. That's how.

00:27:23

And so when we read these sections of Scripture,

00:27:27

what we're reading is the firsthand eyewitness account

00:27:30

of the woman who for sure knew exactly how imperfect

00:27:34

and off script the entire story really was.

00:27:38

But she told Luke the real version,

00:27:42

gritty details and all.

00:27:44

She told him about the pain of showing up

00:27:47

and there being no room in the guest room for them.

00:27:50

She told him about the pain of having to wrap Jesus

00:27:53

in swaddling clothes and to put him in a feeding trough.

00:27:57

We look back on these details like they're nice,

00:27:59

quaint little things that, no, these are painful,

00:28:02

scar making moments in Mary's story.

00:28:05

But she's real and she tells him what they are.

00:28:08

Please hear me clearly.

00:28:10

As long as you are part of the fake it club,

00:28:13

you will never find real happiness.

00:28:15

You will never find real peace. You just won't.

00:28:17

What you and I have to do is exactly what Mary did.

00:28:20

We have to find someone to be real with

00:28:23

about what we feel.

00:28:25

Yes, a person that would be great.

00:28:26

But you can start with God.

00:28:28

God says, tell Me your complaint.

00:28:29

Tell Me the trouble that's on your mind.

00:28:31

You don't have to fake it around Me.

00:28:32

I want the real you.

00:28:35

Don't settle for fake.

00:28:36

See, the problem with fake is that fake always fails. Always.

00:28:44

In the first sentence that we read,

00:28:45

Luke mentioned Caesar Augustus.

00:28:48

Caesar Augustus was the emperor

00:28:51

of the entire Roman Empire at the time.

00:28:54

He had succeeded his stepdad Julius Caesar.

00:28:57

And what Augustus Caesar did in hindsight is he said,

00:29:00

"You know what? Julius Caesar was actually a god.

00:29:04

And so that makes me the Son of God."

00:29:07

And what he did is he built things

00:29:09

all over the Roman world in which

00:29:10

he inscribed his own name as a god.

00:29:14

I was just in the town of Ephesus,

00:29:15

filming for a series that we're going to have

00:29:17

after Super Bowl of Preaching,

00:29:19

very, very excited about that, in the town of Ephesus.

00:29:21

And I came up to this gate.

00:29:23

This is in the ancient city of Ephesus.

00:29:25

And if we zoom in on the inscription, you can see

00:29:28

right up here his name, Caesar Augustus.

00:29:32

By the way, one of the reasons we can trust the Bible

00:29:35

as it being reliable is that it mentions

00:29:37

these historic figures that we can go back

00:29:39

and we can look up and we can find.

00:29:42

Named himself the Son of God, a fake name, by the way.

00:29:47

It's interesting to me that 2000 years

00:29:50

after the most powerful man in the world

00:29:52

deemed himself the Son of God, his inscription

00:29:56

is cracked and falling apart and had to be dug out of the dirt.

00:29:59

His kingdom is utterly irrelevant.

00:30:02

And yet Jesus, who he tried to crush,

00:30:04

Jesus who everyone tried to shove down,

00:30:07

Jesus's Kingdom is here and more relevant than ever.

00:30:11

For 2000 straight years,

00:30:13

nothing has ever been able to stop it. Nothing.

00:30:16

Why? Because it's real.

00:30:19

See, you know something's real when it lasts.

00:30:22

You know something's real when it sticks around.

00:30:25

You know something's real when 2000 years later

00:30:28

there's rooms of people just like this

00:30:30

still trying to understand, looking to have

00:30:32

an experience with the real God.

00:30:34

That's how you know.

00:30:36

In fact, in the book of Acts that Luke wrote,

00:30:38

in chapter five, he actually records

00:30:40

this really interesting scene that makes this point.

00:30:43

At this moment, what was happening is

00:30:45

the disciples were preaching

00:30:46

and they were healing people.

00:30:48

And tons of people in Jerusalem were coming to faith.

00:30:51

And the Jewish leaders did not like it.

00:30:53

And so they rounded up all of the disciples.

00:30:55

They put them in in the courtroom,

00:30:58

and they wanted to kill them.

00:31:00

And then one of the Pharisees, a rabbi named Gamaliel,

00:31:03

stood up and said this to them.

00:31:06

He said, "If this plan or this undertaking is of man,"

00:31:11

in other words, if it's fake, "It will fail.

00:31:15

But if it's of God, you will not be able to overthrow them."

00:31:19

He speaks the truth.

00:31:21

He says if it's fake, if Jesus is fake,

00:31:23

it will fail on its own because everything fake fails.

00:31:27

That's why you and I can't settle for fake.

00:31:29

But if it's real, nothing will be able to stop it.

00:31:34

The most remarkable thing about Charlie Brown,

00:31:36

I think, is that he knew what was real,

00:31:40

even when no one else can see it.

00:31:42

And he had the faith to pick it,

00:31:44

even when it wasn't perfect, just like this.

00:31:48

- What's the matter, Charlie Brown?

00:31:50

Don't you think it's great?

00:31:52

- It's all wrong.

00:31:54

- Look, Charlie, let's face it.

00:31:56

We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket.

00:31:59

It's run by a big eastern syndicate, you know.

00:32:02

- Well, this is one play that's not going to be commercial.

00:32:04

- Look, Charlie Brown, what do you want?

00:32:06

- The proper mood. We need a Christmas tree.

00:32:09

- Hey, perhaps a tree.

00:32:11

A great big, shiny aluminum Christmas tree.

00:32:14

That's it, Charlie Brown, you get the tree.

00:32:17

I'll handle this crowd.

00:32:19

- Okay. I'll take Linus with me.

00:32:22

The rest of you, practice your lines.

00:32:24

- Get the biggest aluminum tree you can find,

00:32:26

Charlie Brown, maybe painted pink.

00:32:28

- Yeah, I'd do something right for a change, Charlie Brown.

00:32:33

- I don't know, Linus. I just don't know.

00:32:38

Well, I guess we better concentrate

00:32:40

on finding a nice Christmas tree.

00:32:43

- I suggest we try those searchlights, Charlie Brown.

00:32:55

This really brings Christmas close to a person.

00:32:58

Fantastic.

00:33:10

Gee, do they still make wooden Christmas trees?

00:33:14

- This little green one here seems to need a home.

00:33:17

- I don't know, Charlie Brown.

00:33:19

Remember what Lucy said?

00:33:20

This doesn't seem to fit the modern spirit.

00:33:23

- I don't care. I'll decorate it

00:33:25

and it'll be just right for our play.

00:33:28

Besides, I think it needs me.

00:33:35

- Charlie Brown goes and he picks the tree

00:33:38

that is not perfect, but it's real.

00:33:42

Wouldn't it be great if God was like that?

00:33:44

Wouldn't it be great if God was the one

00:33:46

who wanted real over perfect?

00:33:48

See, you and I though, I think what we think is

00:33:50

that God's not like Charlie Brown.

00:33:52

God's like the girl in the orange dress.

00:33:54

We just watched her, but here she is again, right here.

00:33:57

- Get the biggest aluminum tree you can find,

00:34:00

Charlie Brown, maybe painted pink.

00:34:01

- Yeah, I'd do something right for a change, Charlie Brown.

00:34:05

- That's what we think.

00:34:07

We think that she represents God.

00:34:08

Do something right for a change, Charlie Brown.

00:34:12

That's what God is saying to us,

00:34:14

if you'd just do something right.

00:34:15

He's up in heaven just looking at our lives

00:34:17

and just judging everything and just putting us down,

00:34:19

seeing all the flaws and seeing all the failures

00:34:21

and all that stuff. And God says, no, no I'm not.

00:34:26

I think that we think that God calls us garbage.

00:34:28

He doesn't. God doesn't call anybody garbage.

00:34:30

And no one who follows Him says that about anybody.

00:34:33

No one applauds along with it.

00:34:35

God doesn't look at your imperfections and your mistakes.

00:34:38

God doesn't want perfect. God wants you.

00:34:43

You, exactly as you are, exactly right now,

00:34:48

exactly with your rough edges.

00:34:51

Exactly with the bumps in your life.

00:34:53

Exactly with the things you wish you could change.

00:34:55

He wants you. You know He had perfect.

00:34:59

If he wanted perfect, all He had to do is nothing.

00:35:05

Just stay where He was. But He didn't.

00:35:07

He left perfect because He wanted you more.

00:35:12

He wanted you more.

00:35:13

And I think that's the loud and clear gospel message

00:35:16

running through Charlie Brown.

00:35:17

It's the reason why millions of people

00:35:19

for 60 straight years have responded so strongly

00:35:23

and powerfully to it, whether they realize it or not.

00:35:26

God is like Charlie Brown picking the little tree,

00:35:29

picking us.

00:35:31

In fact, you know that in the Bible, God says that

00:35:34

He exclusively picks people that are

00:35:37

like this little imperfect tree. That's what He says.

00:35:41

Now, He doesn't use the imagery of trees.

00:35:44

He actually uses the imagery of stones.

00:35:48

That's because if you go to the Middle East,

00:35:50

what you'll notice is there are not many trees,

00:35:52

not even that size little terrible tree.

00:35:55

But there are lots and lots of rocks.

00:35:59

You've heard that Joseph, Jesus's stepdad,

00:36:02

was a carpenter. That's actually a mistranslation

00:36:05

if you've heard that.

00:36:06

The Greek word is tekton, which means builder.

00:36:09

And what we know from archeological records

00:36:11

and from observing the environment is that

00:36:13

everything, everything, everything was built of stone.

00:36:18

The houses and the amphitheaters and the roads

00:36:21

and the harbors, all built with stone.

00:36:24

If you were a builder back then in that area,

00:36:27

you were a stonemason.

00:36:30

And so Jesus is the son of the stonemason.

00:36:34

What's interesting is that while he had the skill to,

00:36:37

Jesus did not build Himself some big fancy arch.

00:36:42

Jesus didn't carve His name over the gate

00:36:45

like Caesar Augustus.

00:36:46

He didn't build a big fortress.

00:36:48

He didn't build a big palace.

00:36:50

But the boy born in a barn

00:36:53

because there was no room in the main house,

00:36:55

is making Himself, is building Himself a home out of stone.

00:37:02

This is what it says in 1 Peter 2:4, it says:

00:37:06

As you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men

00:37:12

but in the sight of God chosen and precious,

00:37:17

you yourselves like living stones

00:37:19

are being built up as a spiritual house.

00:37:23

It says you're chosen and you're precious.

00:37:25

You're a living stone.

00:37:27

Living stone doesn't mean a stone that's alive,

00:37:30

walking and talking and breathing.

00:37:31

A living stone was a building term.

00:37:35

Living stone is uncut stone. It's unhewn.

00:37:39

No chisel has touched it.

00:37:40

It's just natural out of the dirt the way that it was.

00:37:45

There's actually two types of stone you could build with,

00:37:47

by the way, there's that kind of stone,

00:37:50

living stone, imperfect stone.

00:37:52

Or you can take every piece of rock

00:37:54

and you could square it off.

00:37:56

You can make it the exact size, shape

00:37:57

and the exact -- you make everything perfect,

00:37:59

perfectly coplanar, top and bottom and side to side

00:38:01

and front to back at 90 degree angles everywhere.

00:38:04

And you can make everything the same size

00:38:05

and the same shape.

00:38:07

But Jesus says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

00:38:10

I'm not building a house with stones like that.

00:38:13

I'm not looking for people who can be cut

00:38:16

into the perfect, exact same mold.

00:38:18

I'm willing to build with living stones.

00:38:21

I'm looking for imperfect people.

00:38:23

What's fascinating is if you go all the way back

00:38:25

in the Old Testament, God gives instructions

00:38:28

for building altars to make offerings to Him.

00:38:31

And he very clearly says

00:38:32

to build it with the same kind of stone.

00:38:34

Exodus 21:25 God says, "If you make me an altar of stone,

00:38:39

you shall not build it out of hewn stone;

00:38:42

for if you put your tool on it,

00:38:44

you have profaned it."

00:38:47

What's that mean?

00:38:49

Friend, that means that God is not looking

00:38:51

to chop you into the same size standard shape

00:38:55

as everybody else.

00:38:56

God's not waiting to use you to build a home.

00:38:58

God's not waiting to be close to you

00:39:00

until you got everything perfect. He's not.

00:39:02

He uses imperfect people like you and like me.

00:39:07

He leaves perfection and He chooses us.

00:39:12

So good news is you might not fit the mold,

00:39:14

but you fit His plans perfectly.

00:39:17

That's the Christmas story.

00:39:19

All those years ago when Mary was telling Luke

00:39:23

the story, the real story,

00:39:26

she told him what Christmas really means.

00:39:28

See, it turns out that when Linus was reciting her words,

00:39:33

he had the real answer the whole time.

00:39:37

Lights, please.

00:39:44

- And there were in the same country

00:39:46

shepherds abiding in the field,

00:39:48

keeping watch over their flock by night.

00:39:50

And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them,

00:39:53

and the glory of the Lord shone round about them.

00:39:56

And they were sore afraid.

00:39:58

And the angel said unto them, "Fear not,

00:40:00

for behold, I bring you tidings of great joy,

00:40:04

which shall be to all people.

00:40:05

For unto you is born this day in the city of David

00:40:09

a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.

00:40:12

And this shall be a sign unto you.

00:40:14

Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes,

00:40:17

lying in a manger."

00:40:19

And suddenly there was with the angel

00:40:21

a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God

00:40:24

and saying, "Glory to God in the highest,

00:40:27

and on earth peace, goodwill toward men."

00:40:41

That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

00:40:45

- He's right. That's what Christmas is all about.

00:40:48

That's it.

00:40:51

A God who left perfection to come to you and to me.

00:40:57

That last line that Linus quoted:

00:40:59

Peace, goodwill towards men.

00:41:02

Another translation says it this way, it's more accurate.

00:41:06

It says: Glory to God in the highest,

00:41:08

and on earth peace among those with whom He is pleased.

00:41:15

That's the real Christmas story.

00:41:17

Who is he pleased with?

00:41:18

He's pleased with you, if you believe in Him.

00:41:22

He's pleased with you when He shows up to you,

00:41:25

you don't reject Him.

00:41:26

You don't push Him away because His story is strange,

00:41:28

because His story doesn't fit your mold.

00:41:30

He's pleased with you if you just embrace Him

00:41:34

and you tell Him how you really feel and what you really think.

00:41:37

That's the God that we love and that we serve.

00:41:40

He wants to change you. He wants to grow you. Yes.

00:41:43

But He's pleased with you right now.

00:41:47

That's the better ending.

00:41:48

That's the story of Christmas.

00:41:50

Before we run out of here, I want to take a moment.

00:41:52

Go ahead and stand, and we're just going to pause.

00:41:57

We're just going to pause for a minute.

00:42:02

And if you've got something you need to be real with God about,

00:42:06

you don't have to sing when we sing.

00:42:09

You just have a conversation with God.

00:42:11

Just say, hey, I'm not feeling great right now.

00:42:15

Hey, things aren't the way that I want.

00:42:17

Lay out your complaints and your troubles.

00:42:19

He would love nothing more than that right now.

00:42:23

Or if you want to, you can sing these words with us,

00:42:26

the classic Christmas song, O come, Let Us Adore Him.

00:42:29

Let's sing.

00:43:35

- God, thank you so much for the real story.

00:43:38

It's not what any of us would have written,

00:43:41

but it's true and it's real, God.

00:43:43

I'm asking that for all of us, God,

00:43:46

You would make Yourself more real,

00:43:48

that You give us the courage to believe

00:43:50

that You are pleased with us, God.

00:43:54

That we could experience the real joy

00:43:57

and the real peace and the real happiness

00:43:59

that comes from actually believing

00:44:02

the real story of Christmas, Your story.

00:44:07

You're good, God, and we love You. Amen.

00:44:10

Thanks for being here. See you next weekend.

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