You know, that simple word is a word of Christmas in manual, and what the word means is God with us,

God with us. And you know, I think that as we are finishing up these three weeks of Advent,

we put over the top of these messages the word anticipation, because that's what Christmas is

all about. I mean, the kids are already wired up. Some of you've already opened a few gifts that

were wrapped under the tree and wrapped them back up. Come on. It's time for confession. Let's hear it.

Who's gone in the closet, looked under mom's bed, been up in the attic, been down on the basement,

who's looked in the trunk of the car, trunk of the car. You didn't think about that one. That's a good

place always. Kids always look, their Santa likes to leave the presents with mom and dad early,

in the trunk of the car. Sometimes mom and dad are like, wow, that's great. Thank you very much. I

got to get out the parking lot early and rearrange some things. Anticipation is a part of Christmas.

It is from the very first memory that any of us have of thinking that some guy and a jolly red

suit's going to come down the chimney, which we didn't have when I was growing up. So that was

where he came through the sliding glass door of the back patio where I come from. But anticipation is

a part of Christmas. And we talked about how a lot of people are going to miss it and miss Christ.

And then last week we talked about hope and the fact that it's never too late with God.

And today I just want to talk about the simplicity of Christmas. This story is so good that if you

mess this up, you need to retire from ministry. If you mess up the story of Christmas, you'd have

no business really proclaiming truth in the first place. The story really needs nothing but to be told.

And it's a story of backwards grace because nothing happened at Christmas the way you and I

would have expected. Christmas was an accidental. It wasn't an emergency plan. It wasn't put together

to last second. There was no rushing around in the kingdom of God. Christmas had been on the books

for century after century after century. And God had a plan that he'd been unfolding literally

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