God Did

Austin White · Tidal Church Moncton · December 7, 2025 · Who Needs Christmas series

Austin White teaches from Galatians 4:4-5, Romans 5:8 and the Christmas story in Matthew 1. God sent Jesus at just the right time to make His love personal and believable, and he invites listeners to respond by going all in for Him.

More from Austin White · The Who Needs Christmas series

Topics: Love, Discipleship, Christmas

Transcript

[0:00] How many of you would say in your life, whether it's a friend, a colleague, or perhaps a family member, how many of you would say you have a high energy to the max person in your life? High energy to the max, the type of person that if they were to have a coffee, you'd be kind of worried that it was a little too much? Okay, high energy to the max. I've got a colleague from quite a while ago who was the epitome of that. They brought the energy, they brought the spunk, they brought a lot to the table. And at that time, it was around Christmas time and the snow was starting to fall, and naturally Christmas music was playing. On top of that, there was all kinds of conversations being had around Christmas.

[0:47] And I asked this very simple question to this colleague. I said, "Are you excited for Christmas?" She looked at me and she said, "No." In this moment, I was kind of weighing my options. I was like, "Well, first and foremost, do I call the authorities?" Secondly, should I ask her if she's planning to steal any presents from Whoville? Third, is she a Jim Carrey fan from the Grinch Stole Christmas? Like, what's the move here? Do I just avoid the conversation until Christmas? But we eventually had a lovely conversation where she loves the spiritual side of Christmas, but for her, she's not a big gift giver. And maybe the same is true for some of you. But as I was reflecting on that conversation, it reminded me of this series that we're in right now.

[1:36] Who Needs Christmas? Who Needs Christmas? And I wanna unpack from this title or from this idea, who needs Christmas? God did. Who needs Christmas? God did. Let me unpack that as we continue on in this series of Who Needs Christmas, Pastor Pat did an amazing job unpacking the history and the background of Christmas last week. If you haven't heard that sermon, I would highly encourage you to make sure that you go back and listen to that, whether online or video or podcast or whatever's best for you. But setting up this idea that there was this long awaited Messiah, this long awaited gift, thousands of years of waiting, and this one moment that changed absolutely everything this Christmas season.

[2:29] And my challenge for you is as we go throughout this sermon and go through the Christmas season, can we not let this Christmas just be another tradition, not just another Christmas series, not just the same old, same old, but perhaps God wants to reframe the way you Christmas. Perhaps He wants to take you deeper in your relationship with God. So that's my challenge for you here today. God needed Christmas. And why is that? Because I would argue that we needed a demonstration. We needed to see it in order to believe it. We needed to understand the fullness, the breadth, the depth of God's love for us.

[3:15] And Christmas was God's answer to that question. We're gonna start off in Galatians chapter 4, verses 4 through 5. So that'll be our starting point, but we're gonna continue on in a couple other scriptures and land at the Christmas story. This is God's Word, Paul the Apostle writing to the church in Galatia. He said this, "But when the set time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship." I wanna put your attention at that verse, line, at that first line. But when the set time had fully come, when the time was right, when the moment was perfect, lemme go ahead and pray before we continue on in our sermon and in our talk.

[4:02] Father God, thank You so much for this opportunity to open up Your Word. Lord, it's powerful. It's not just a text, but rather it's a living Word. And Lord, I thank You for the promise in Scripture that says, when Your Word is shared, it does not come back empty. So Holy Spirit, I just ask that it wouldn't be my words, but rather it would be Your truth that we walk away from today. Lord, we thank You that You desire a personal relationship with us, that You know each and every single one of us by name, You've got purposes and plans for us. Help us to walk out of here different because of Your Word, because of Your presence, because of Your Spirit. And Lord, we pray this in Your powerful name. Amen. Amen. So our idea for today is that God needed Christmas to stage a demonstration.

[4:51] A demonstration. The world needed an illustration. We needed to see it in order to believe it. And I would argue as we read the Christmas story, I would argue that the events of Christmas would be unbelievable if it weren't so remarkable. Lemme say it again. The events of Christmas would be unbelievable if it weren't so remarkable. We see in the Christmas story and through Jesus' life that He fulfilled not 100, not 200, but 300 Old Testament prophecies, 300 Old Testament prophecies. If you have never read The Case for Christ, he unpacks all of the different Old Testament prophecies that Jesus fulfilled with His life. And what we see is as we read the Old Testament in these moments, people have been waiting.

[5:38] They've been saying, "God, You've promised these things, You've said all these things. We've got these prophecies. We hear what Abraham went through, and that there would be this nation of God. God, when's this gonna happen?" And we see 2,000 years ago that we got this amazing gift and Jesus fulfilled 300 prophecies. It is so remarkable what God did in the life of Jesus. God wanted to bless this world and He thought that the best solution, and He knew the best solution lies in the Christmas story. Pastor Pat unpacked that over thousands of years, God laid out these promises, spiritual forefathers.

[6:24] He said to Abraham that one day there would be this promise, there would be this promise. Messiah. In Judges, in the Prophets, we see all of these foreshadowings up to this specific moment. But I wonder if God, in His power, in His might, in His omniscience, He said, "How am I going to get the word out? What's this gonna look like for me to share my goodness and my grace and my kingdom with a world that so desperately needs it?" Going back to the passage we just started in Paul, a Pharisee, a Pharisee who had heard these ideas, he had messianic expectations, gets converted to Christianity and writes these words.

[7:15] But when the set time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. We could just park on that scripture and stay there, adoption to sonship. We were lost and then we're found through Jesus Christ. But what I want to kind of put our attention into is that first line, when the set time had fully come, This was the perfect moment. God planned it, He purposed it. This was the perfect moment. We had this Roman Empire back in the day that actually had its own Great Commission, different than the Great Commission that churches adhere to today. Their Great Commission was to Romanize and civilize the entire world. They wanted to spread out as an empire.

[8:00] It wasn't God's kingdom come and God's will be done. It was the Roman Empire's Great Commission. They were trying to establish themselves all throughout that region. However, this is what happened. What they did is they left a common culture, a common language, a highway, a port system. And God knew this was the perfect time to spread His gospel. This was the perfect time to establish His church. Now, on the flip side of that, we have this perfect opportunity with the geography, with the political situation, with everything that was going on. But on the flip side, what do we have with the Jewish religion and the temple system? It was broken. It was broken. Cleanliness was better than compassion.

[8:48] In this temple system, God was valued. But those who God valued weren't emphasized. The Pharisees were all about looking the best, but not doing the best. It was a temple system that was advantageous for the rich and the wealthy and the famous, but not for the least of these. They had lost the script. They had lost what God's heart is all about. Because ultimately, to believe in God is to put feet to your faith for it not to be all about you, but rather to go out to serve those who are broken, to serve those who are needy. And can I just pause here for a moment and say, that is why we are so blessed to be here at Tidal Church, because we're a church that puts feet to our faith.

[9:35] We believe in going the distance, that it's not just something where we gather here, have a good time and walk out unchanged. But church isn't something that we attend, but the church is who we are. And Moncton, Riverview, Shediac, Miramichi should be different because this church is in it. What a powerful truth that we for decades have believed that we've gotta put feet to our faith here. For me, specifically as a teacher at Moncton Christian Academy, it is so amazing that because of the generosity of this church, because of everything that's happened here over the years, we have got 300 students every single week who are praying with one another, getting devotionals together, going to chapel every week. Do you know that in this region, we're the only school that gets to pray for our kids?

[10:24] It is powerful what God's doing in this space, in this place. And I wanna pause there and say that while the temple system had lost the script and their compassion was nowhere to be seen, it's different here in this church, in Tidal Church. And I'm so thankful for Pastor Jim and the vision he has for us to be a huge positive influence in our region. So they had lost the script. Compassion wasn't the currency of the day, but rather it was all about status 2000 years ago. It was about the Pharisees being better and the temple system was not doing what God had intended to do. So we've got this empire that's built on violence, but had created this common culture.

[11:10] We've got a temple system that had lost the script. But again, our verse: when the set time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law. Why did God choose this time? But not only choose this time, why did He send His Son? Why do we have God? Why do we have Jesus fully human, but fully God? Why did He have to show up like us? Why did He have to be accountable to the law? Why would God send Jesus? I would argue that not only did we need God to come down and save us, we needed God to show us what it meant to be fully human. What did it mean to live and say with every breath, with every iota of our being, to say, God, Your kingdom come and Your will be done.

[12:01] Jesus needed to show us how it was done. Why was this demonstration necessary? Why did God need Christmas? God needed Christmas to do what the law couldn't do, what the judges couldn't do, what the prophets couldn't do, what the warnings, the exile, the punishment, and even the sacred text in the Old Testament couldn't do. God wanted to make it personal. So number one, why did God need Christmas? Because God wanted to make it personal. God wanted to make it personal for me. And for you, He could have sent down just a script. He could have just said, "Hey, this is this is what I want you to know. Read it. Be better, do better." No, He made it personal. Jesus came down. God came in human form.

[12:49] You know, if we had waited a couple thousand years, maybe God could have sent us a FaceTime, right? Maybe God could have done a Zoom meeting. How many of you are happy that there's less Zoom meetings nowadays than there were in 2020 to 2023? Is anybody happy about that? In their jobs that we have less of those? God could have used different methods to get His truth out, but He wanted to make it personal. He wanted to make it personal. He wanted to show us what it genuinely means to be fully human as God intended it. He wanted to correct what went wrong in the garden with Adam and Eve. He wanted to correct that sin problem so that we could understand what God's will is for each and every single one of us.

[13:34] Because following Jesus doesn't mean just reading about Him in the scriptures and doing nothing. It means following in His footsteps. We know what we're supposed to do. We've got the script, we've got our marching orders. So we know that God wanted to make it personal in Jesus Christ. Through this, He removed any obstacle so that we could have unrestricted fellowship with God. This was personal for God. So because of that, He became a person. And I would argue that how would we know where we stood with God if God did not come to stand with us? How would we know where we stood in our relationship with God if Jesus didn't come to stand with us?

[14:21] So at just the right time, He gave us a personal demonstration. He didn't want to leave any fuzziness or any unclarity about His love and His desire to have relationship with every single one of us. You know, it kind of reminds me about that text or that email that many of you who are adults in the room might have received. It's that text or that email from your boss that said, "Let's chat." And that's all. Is this a good chat or a bad chat, right? That's the type of email or the text that kind of makes you want to run to your boss's room and say, "Hey, can you gimme a little bit more context on what this looks like?" In those moments, something's being communicated, but we don't get the heart and the emotion and the why behind it.

[15:07] through the birth of Jesus Christ. God wanted to leave no doubt of His love for you, His compassion and kindness, the way that He has purposed and planned each and every single one of you, the fact that He calls you by name, the fact that the Scriptures say that you are knit together in your mother's womb, that God knew you before you were even born, that God cares about you. He wanted to leave no doubt that you matter. Paul says this in Romans, he says, "Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

[15:53] God wanted to make it crystal clear where you stand with Him. God wanted to make it crystal clear what He was willing to offer to you. That's the meaning behind Christmas, is that Jesus didn't just come to this earth to come to this earth. He came to this earth not just for Christmas, but for Easter, to die on that cross so that you do not have to. In this passage in Romans that we just read, the word demonstrate in Greek is synistemi. S-y-n-i-s-t-e-m-i, synistemi. It means to provide evidence of a personal characteristic or claim through action, to demonstrate, to show, to bring out. The prophets had hinted at Christmas, the sacred text foreshadowed Christmas, but at Christmas, God demonstrated it and documented it and made it personal because you were worth it and always will be worth it.

[16:50] You are worth it. Because while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And what fascinates me about that demonstration, not only did He make it personal, but as He made that demonstration, He lived, He died. He made that demonstration before we even decided to follow Him. He lived His life. He died on that cross before we even made the decision to follow Him, before His church was established. But I wanna pose this question as we consider His death and what that means for us this Christmas season: Why did He die? Why such a violent and public demonstration? Why couldn't Jesus have just come down and proclaimed to everybody, "Your sins are forgiven"?

[17:37] Just imagine, if you will, 2000 years ago, Jesus coming down with His disciples, He's doing His thing, He's teaching, and He just says, "Heads up, everybody. My dad says your sins are erased." Why couldn't He have done that? What? Why did He have to die a sinner's death? I'd argue there's two things. Number one, who would have believed Him? Who can say that? Who can make that claim? But more importantly, we had a tax. There was a cost for our sin. There was something that separated us from God when we have sinned. And if God is the author of your life, then He wanted to solve that chasm of sin. If God is the author of your life and He made it personal in Jesus Christ, He wanted to solve your sin issue, He wanted to close that gap, close that chasm of sin.

[18:31] Psalm 139:14 says, "You are fearfully and wonderfully made." I constantly am telling my students this because it's so important that we realize that we have a price, we matter. God has a purpose and a plan for your life. And if we don't truly grasp that, that will impact our day to day. If we don't understand that we're fearfully and wonderfully made and other people are fearfully and wonderfully made, then how are we gonna go about treating them with the honor and the love and the kindness that they deserve? So we know that through sin our lives were forfeit. We know that there was this gap, this sin problem that we couldn't bridge.

[19:16] But that Christmas, 2000 years ago, God decided He was going to do something about that. Romans 5:8, "But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us," in our place. Period. We see the disciples as they were proclaiming the good news, as they were sharing the gospel, they understood this. Peter, Andrew, John, they stepped into the streets of Jerusalem to preach after the resurrection, after Jesus had died, He was resurrected. And they said this in Acts chapter 3, they talked about the price that was paid. They said, "You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. You killed the author of life, but God raised Him from the dead.

[20:04] We are witnesses of this." They had seen the demonstration. It had been personal for them. They had lived, they had breathed, they had eaten with Jesus. They understood the sacrifice that it took this Christmas season. And I would argue that if it weren't for Jesus' death, you can't demonstrate love without sacrifice. You cannot demonstrate great love without great sacrifice. That's how much God loved us, so that He could send that ultimate sacrifice, making it personal so that you and I can celebrate Christmas this Christmas season, knowing that Christ paid the cost of our sins. So God needed to demonstrate Christmas, or God needed to demonstrate and document His love for this rebel race.

[20:52] Otherwise, how would we have ever known? So He made it personal. But second, why did God need Christmas? Because God wanted to make it believable. God wanted to make it personal, but He also wanted to make it believable. God didn't want any clarity, any confusion, any doubt about His love for you. And you know, sometimes if we just hear it, it's possible that we can mix up the communication. Sometimes it's possible that we can misunderstand if we just hear it, but we don't see it. It reminds me of a story with my dad and I, a number of years ago we were at Camp and Conference Center. That's a conference center that we do our district ordination stuff at as the Wesleyan Church.

[21:37] So all of the Wesleyan pastors all over Atlantic Canada go to camp every summer. But it's also a space where people vacation. So there's about a thousand people that go there every single summer. So this was when I was about four or five years old. And my friends and I, we loved the playground. We were there every single day. And we just had a blast. And what we decided the fun events of the day would be that we are going to slide down the slide, not the normal way, but by running down. Okay? We decided that that was the idea of the day. My dad happens to be driving by on his four wheeler, and he looks at me and he says, "Austin, that's not smart. Use your head." I said, "Okay, dad. I get it. I get it, I get it." Okay. So anyway, I get back up on the slide and I stop running down the slide.

[22:27] But instead, I put my head on the slide and slide down on my head. Just because he said it doesn't mean that I got it. Similarly, I would argue that God needed to show us how it's done. He needed a great sacrifice in order for us to understand the great insurmountable, unimaginable level of love that He has for me and for you, just because God said it doesn't mean we got it. Let's think back to the Old Testament. For those of you that have spent some time there in the Old Testament, we see over and over and over again that God is sharing His truth with His people. He says, "Follow Me with all of your heart. Love Me with all of your heart." And what do we see?

[23:12] The Israelites are constantly going the other way, constantly straying away. I don't know if, for some of you who have read the book of Judges, there's times where I'm reading the book of Judges and I see God raising up a judge. Israel starts following. Israel falls away. Couple chapters later, God raises up a judge. The Israelites start following God. The Israelites fall away. There's times where I almost start rooting and saying, "Man, I just, I just wish there was a different ending to this," right? I wish that they got it. They had a forgetfulness problem, the Israelites did. But if I can challenge each and every single one of you, I think modern-day Christians have the same forgetfulness problem. We stray away from God. Instead of that commitment to Jesus being an everyday and every morning thing, we start to drift.

[24:04] We start to get into a routine. We start to get into a space where all of a sudden we're just coasting and your relationship with God starts to slip. Your passion is gone. Your devotional life maybe is suffering. It becomes the same old, same old, and just like the Israelites had a problem with straying away, so can we. So in this moment, God not just wanted to make it personal, but He wanted to make it believable and show us how it is done and allow us to be dedicated to His demonstration to be all in. I think that the truth that each and every single one of us need to grasp is that our faith, this religion called Christianity, it demands an all-in type of sacrifice.

[24:56] If Christ went all in and we're called to follow Him, then we are called to the same thing. As I look at other religions and I have friends who have different faith backgrounds, so I have so much respect for them. But as I look at other religions, I see how wishy-washy it can get, especially in 2025, where it's your truth is your truth. My truth is my truth. But we see that in the Word it actually talks about something radically different than that. John 14:6 says, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." Full stop. Period. Jesus wanted to make it believable and lay down what it was.

[25:41] He said, "If I am worth anything at all, then I'm worth everything. Be all in." We see in other religions that it's a bit vague. Buddhism says that truth can be found in an eightfold path. And if you strive for all of your life, maybe one day you might reach it. And Buddha, he said himself, at the end of his life, "I'm still searching for the truth." The Hindu scriptures say that truth is very elusive and you'll probably never find it. It can elude you. Others say truth must be searched for by purifying yourself or maybe your good deeds will get you there. Or your truth is your truth. My truth is my truth. Even Muhammad said, "I'm a prophet, I'm simply pointing towards the truth." But my Jesus, He said, "I'm the truth, the way and the life."

[26:28] No fuzziness, no lack of clarity. This is not vague. This isn't an old set of practices or an old religion. Rather, our religion hinges on God making it personable, believable, and Jesus dying on that cross all those years ago. So we see in the Christmas story, there's been waiting. The judges, the prophets, the scriptures, everything's pointing to this moment. So when the set time had fully come, a Jewish carpenter discovers his fiancée is pregnant. And while he's trying to decide what to do, God sends a messenger to say this. In Matthew 1:20-23, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid.

[27:14] Take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you are to give Him the name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet Isaiah. "The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call Him Emmanuel," which means, don't miss these three words, "God with us," God with us. Oh boy, what a powerful promise. God with us. God staged a demonstration. He documented it. He made it personable. He made it believable. We needed to see it to believe it.

[28:01] And in this moment, if we know that God demonstrated it, documented it, my question for you is, will you dedicate your life to it? And not just wishy-washy, half in, half out, but will you dedicate your life to it? I said it a couple minutes ago that if God is worth anything at all, and we believe His scriptures, we believe the Christmas story. If God is worth anything at all, then He is worth your everything. He is worth you being all in, full send. He wants you and all of you. Just a couple weeks ago with my homeroom at Moncton Christian Academy, we were talking about Matthew 16:24-25, and it talks about being all in for Jesus.

[28:47] It says, "Anybody who wants to lose their life will find it in Me. And anybody who wants to gain their life will lose it. And if you want to follow Me," Jesus said, "pick up your cross and follow Me. Die to yourself." And as we were talking about being all in for Jesus, one of my students, just this 12 or 13-year-old, she raised her hand and said, "How do I know if I'm all in for Jesus?" And I love that question and I wonder if that's a question we should each be asking ourselves because it is individual. But I said, there's a number of ways we can approach that. But I specifically said, if you could rewind the clock and track everything that you're doing for 48 hours, how much of that is dedicated to God? And I'm not just talking about Sunday morning church, I'm talking about that Monday through Saturday in between.

[29:36] How much of your life is dedicated to Jesus? And I'm not saying you need to quit your job and pray 24/7, but rather, how do you invite God into the spaces that God has called you to be? How much of your time is dedicated to God? Are you in a small group? Are you serving? Are you spending time around other Christians as iron sharpens iron? Are you emphasizing that? What about your attention and your focus? How are your daily devotions? What does your prayer life look like? How can God call you into a deeper relationship with Him? How can the rubber hit the road? And this just not be another sermon, but rather something where you walk out and you are changed by the power of God's Word? How is your focus? Are you focused on Him? Are you praying without ceasing?

[30:22] Are you trying to check in with God throughout the day? How about your resources? Pastor Mark referenced this earlier, that it's more blessed to give than it is to receive. Are you generous with your time, your talents, and your resources? What does it look like to trust God more in that area? Love is expressed in the time that we give to those around us. How much time are you giving to God? How is your relationship with Him? And how can you be all in? My encouragement for you this Christmas season isn't to just let it be the same old, same old, but look at it fresh and ask yourself, if God is worth anything to me, then He's worth everything to me.

[31:08] Let me pray for you. Father God, thank You so much for this opportunity to open up Your Word. Lord, I thank You for the fact that we don't need to wonder what Your will is. We don't need to wonder what Your feelings and Your thoughts are towards us. We can dive into the Scripture and know that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, that we have plans and purposes for our lives because of Your power and Your call. But Lord, I thank You for how You've been challenging me through this sermon, through this time in Your Word. Lord, help us all to go deeper in our relationship with You. Help us to not be half in, half out, but help us to just be all in for You.

[31:53] Jesus, Lord, You're so good to us. We thank You for that sacrifice on that cross, and we give You praise for everything You're doing in this church and everything that You will do in us. We pray this in Your name. Amen.