Good afternoon, everybody. Goodness, there's a lot of you. Thanks for sitting in the middle and behind the pole and all the things. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making grace a part of your Christmas Eve. I hope that where you go from here, you'll have a good time spent with family and people that you love and that this season is a good one for you. I know it's cheesy, but very quickly, I just want to acknowledge I get paid to do this. I have to come to both services. It's part of the contract, and so does Gibby. We don't care about him, our worship leader, but everybody else up here volunteered their time, and they're doing two services today, and they did a rehearsal for this, and it's the best part of the service. So we're very grateful to them. This afternoon, I almost said this morning. I'm going to say that a couple times. This afternoon, I realize that there's something different about the audience. Yeah? So let's just acknowledge what's true. In the room, there are plenty of church people. And when I say church people, I mean people who make it a habit to go to church. That's all I'm saying. I'm not assessing your salvation or lack thereof. I'm just saying you're a church person or you're not. Some people are church people. You prioritize it, you come regularly. Other people, I'm going to call you not church people. Church is not a regular part of your habit. You're here because you acquiesced to your spouse who said they wanted to be a church person for Christmas, and you said okay. Or your mom asked you to come, and you're a good kid, so you came, all right, because you're nice. So whatever reason you're here, this is the service of the year where as a pastor, I have an opportunity to talk to the most not church people that I have at all. So I'd like you to close your eyes and raise your hand if you want to accept Jesus Christ as your Savior. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. But here's what I am going to do. If you're a not church person, I'll just be up front with you. I'm talking to you today. Okay? I have some thoughts that I want to share with you. One of the reasons is your mom asks me regularly to talk to you. Can you talk to my son? Can you talk to my daughter? Can you talk to my husband? Can you talk to my wife? I feel like if they could just talk to a pastor, then they would believe. And what I have a hard time telling them is, I ain't your guy. They're not going to believe me. I don't have anything to say. And here's what I'll say, not church people. I'm not trying to convert you today, okay? Take it easy. Here's the other thing I'll say. I'm going to be brief, like 10, 12 minutes tops. Normally, last week, I went 40 minutes, and I was talking so fast at the end of the service that people were making fun of me for it afterwards, as well they should have. But not church people, I have a thought for you today. If I could talk to you. If we did get coffee. If we did grab lunch. And we talked about spiritual things. This is probably where I would go. We've been in a series where we're looking at Christmas carols. And we're looking at the biblical meaning behind them so we can understand them more deeply. And I knew when we started this series that the one that I wanted to focus on on Christmas Eve was my favorite, not Christmas carol, my favorite song ever, which is O Holy Night. And not, where's Jordan? Jordan, right there in the red. Jordan was singing right here, not to put any pressure on you, pal, but you singing Oh Holy Night is my favorite song of the year every year, year after year. And she's going to do that afterwards, and you're going to forget everything I said, because it's really wonderful. And I think Greg plays the keys or something. Yeah. Nobody cares, Greg. I love Oh Holy Night. It's my favorite song. It's so well written. And there's these two lines within the song that I think are maybe the most powerful words in any song that we get to sing. And you might not think that, and you don't have to agree, but I want to tell you how I get there. There's this line in the song, long lay the world in sin and error pining until he appeared and the soul felt its worth. I love that line. Particularly the concept, long lay the world in sin and error pining. Now, I'm not here to convince you of sin and error. But that word pining, long lay the world pining for what? Longing for what? It's this implication within that word that our souls, and maybe you're here today and you don't believe in a soul. Fine. Your heart, your person, your psyche, however you would describe it, longs for something more than what this world has to offer. It acknowledges long lay the world in sin and error pining. Pining for what? Pining for more. Pining for more than what this world has to offer. We feel, I think, it's common to the human experience, whether you're a Christian or not, whether you believe or not, whether you consider yourself spiritual or not, that we do have this innate longing for more. And it can't be found in a promotion. It can't be found making a little bit more money and taking a little bit better vacations. I hope in the upcoming year to discover whether or not it can be found in buying a new Honda Odyssey because I really want one. And maybe there I'll find true happiness and satisfaction with automatic sliding doors for Jen and the kids. But we have within us this longing that isn't solved in marriage. It wasn't solved by your career. It wasn't solved by that adventure, by that climb, by that hike, by that vacation, by that experience. There's something within us that longs for more than this world has to offer. As I was preparing, I was reminded of the story, this famous story of Brett Favre, the quarterback for the Packers. I know that he was the quarterback for the Vikings and the Jets, but we're going to forgive him that. He was the quarterback of the Packers. And in 96 or 97, he won his first Super Bowl. This is the apex of athletic achievement for a quarterback, for any athlete. You grow up playing Pop Warner, you play Little League, and your biggest dream is to play for your high school. And then you play for your high school, and your biggest dream is to play special teams at NC State, right, Zach? That's right, baby. Your biggest dream is to play college, and then you play college, and you hope beyond hope, maybe I can play in the pros, and then you make it in the pros, and you think, maybe I can win the Super Bowl, the championship. It's the apex of athletic achievement. It is the thing to which Brett Favre gave his entire person for his entire life, and after they won the Super Bowl, a journalist goes looking for him to talk to him about how it feels to finally win this thing that he's been chasing his whole life, and they can't find him anywhere in the locker room. They find him in the bathroom, in a stall, curled up crying. And when they could pry out of him, what are you doing in here? His sentiment was, this is it? This is what it feels like to win the Super Bowl. I thought there would be more. I thought it would be better. Long lay the world in sin and error pining. So to my non-church friends, I'm just going to call you friend, I don't know you. To my non-church friends, I'm not asking you to agree with all the premises of church. What I'm asking is, can we agree that there's something within us that wants more? Can we agree that there's something within us that is not satiated with job, with career, with money, with experience, with relationship, with parenthood, with marriage? Can we agree that there's something more that we want? Maybe we can, maybe we can't. But if we agree to that, then these lines long lay the world in sin and error pining, longing until he appeared and the soul felt its worth. They're worth exploring. When I was thinking about pining, I was reminded of this old story that I've heard a few different times. Excuse me. Kurt Vonnegut, famous American novelist of Slaughterhouse-Five and other things, and James Heller, author of Catch-22, were at a party in the Hamptons, supposedly. And Vonnegut leaned over to Heller. It was this extravagant party. And he said to Heller, you know this guy makes more money in one week than you made on your last book deal. And Heller says, yeah, but I have something that he doesn't. And Vonnegut says, what's that? And Heller says, enough. I have enough. And when I was thinking about this sermon and what to say, talking to my non-church friends, I locked in on this idea of we can never have enough. We're pining. We cannot be sated. We cannot be satisfied. And I was talking it over with Jen, my wife, who is my best sermon editor. And she said, I'm not sure if that adequately covers what pining is. Because there is this desire for restoration as well. There is this desire to be whole. It's not simply enough. That's too small of a definition of that word. It's to be satisfied with enough and to not need more and to be satisfied in the moment and to be at peace and at rest, but it's also to be restored to our God. One of my favorite teachings of Jesus in the Gospels is when he says, come to me all ye who are weary and heavy laden for my yoke is easy and my burden is light and in me you will find rest. Church people, non-church people, would you like rest? Would you like to be at peace? Would you like to have enough? Would you like to feel restored? Are those things that your soul pines for? I know that it is. And we seek it in myriad ways. Therapy. Narcotics. Relationships. Adventures. Experiences. The next thing. But what if we could just experience enough? What if when he appears, our soul feels its worth? You've seen the power of that language? Long lay the world in sin and error pining until he appeared, baby Jesus, until he appeared. And the soul felt its worth, felt something. It felt what it was supposed to feel. And so here's what I would posit to you, my non-church friends. If it is true that your soul longs for something, is it possible that it's your creator? Is it possible? I'm not trying to convince you. I'm just asking you and I'm asking you to consider. Is it possible that you were created by a creator who created you to intentionally long for restoration to him? Is it possible that there's a God who made you, who as scripture says, knew you before you were knit in your mother's womb, who knows the very number of hairs on your head. Is it possible that there's a creator God and that that creator God created you to long for him so that your soul could only find rest in him? And that if you come in here pining today, wanting more, wanting something, there has to be something different, something more than what I'm experiencing. Is it possible that it's God? Is it possible that you were created to long for your Savior? And that the thing that you can't satisfy is that longing for Him. Church people. Now I'm talking to you. Non-church people. You're off the hook. Take a break. Church people. Now I'm talking to you. Non-church people, you're off the hook. Take a break. Church people. If you've struggled this year, did you take your eye off the ball? Did you forget what your soul longs for? Did you forget what you were created for? Everybody, here's my invitation to you. Here's what I'd ask you to consider and think about. If your soul, if your inner being, whatever you would use to describe it, is unsatisfied, is unsated, is unhappy, and you find it pining. Could it be that there is a creator who made you on purpose to long for him, and he's calling to you now. Listen. I'll say this too. My non-church friends, here's what I know. If church isn't a regular part of your life, if spirituality isn't something you think about a lot or consider very often, here's the benefit of the doubt that I'll give you. You have a good reason for that. The church complex stinks sometimes. We, followers of Christ, have let you down. And we've been jerks. And we've spit the bit. So if you're here today and you're here, you're acquiescing to a spouse or you're being kind to your mom or whatever it is, this isn't your deal. I bet if we could talk that I would find out that you have a good reason why not. Fine. But let me invite you to consider the concept that you were created by God to long for him. And that the latent unhappiness that you experience and the latent longing that's low simmering no matter what experience is going on in your life was put there on purpose to point you to him. I'd like to invite you to consider that as we celebrate Christmas together. Now I'm going to pray, and when I'm done praying, Jordan and Greg, and we do care about you, Greg. Jordan and Greg are going to come up, and Jordan's going to sing O Holy Night over us. Stay seated. Listen to the words. Read them on the screen. Consider whether or not they're true. Non-church people, I'm not asking you to make any decisions at all today, but I'm asking you to consider the possibility that you were created by a God who longs for you and created you to long for him. And if you think that's possible, if you think that might be true, isn't it worth the investment of your time? I'm not trying to get you to come to Grace next year. There's way better churches than us anyways. I don't care where you go, but I do care that you would engage spiritually. I do care that you would seek out this Jesus that created you to long for him. So maybe just consider that as you go from here. Yeah? Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for this church and this church body and the opportunity to celebrate you. Thank you for the miracle of Christmas and for sending your son Jesus. Thank you for allowing him to live the perfect life and die the perfect death so that we might know you. God, I pray that we might consider the idea that we were created by you to long for you. And that maybe today we might allow you in so that our soul might feel its worth. This worth that you assigned at the cost of your son. God, I pray that there might be some people here who haven't considered you for a while that will. I pray there might be some people here who didn't really care to hear the sermon, but maybe they'll consider you. Maybe they'll consider your son, and maybe they'll take a step towards you. Father, for those of us who know you, who are church people, and who do follow you, maybe we would take a step closer to you today to satisfy the longing in our souls that you created. We praise you and we thank you and we're grateful for you and we pray these things in the name of your son. Amen.