Gratitude for You This Christmas

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Mark Prater:

Hey everyone. Welcome to my podcast, the Mark Prader podcast. As you can see, my co-host Ben Kreps, is not with me. Unfortunately, Ben is sick in bed and he doesn't have much of a voice. So please pray for Ben. I texted Ben this morning and I said, "you know what, Ben? We can't disappoint our tens and tens of fans. And so the show must go on.” I'm going to try to do this podcast solo. Seriously, do pray for Ben.

I wanted to record this podcast because it's dropping into your inbox the week that we are celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. And it's for that reason I want to thank you. If you are a pastor of a Sovereign Grace church that listens to or reads this podcast, thank you for working hard this week. In particular, thank you for preparing sermons. You may have both Christmas Eve and Christmas Sunday messages to prepare.

Thank you for leading your church to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Thank you for the way that you pastor and shepherd the people that God has entrusted to your care. Thank you for being with your people at Christmas parties and other events that happen at this time of the year. In my opinion, my humble yet admittedly biased opinion, you are the best pastors in the world, and I thank God for you and I count it a privilege to serve Christ and to serve our churches alongside of you.

If you are a member of a Sovereign Grace church that listens to or reads this podcast, thank you, thank you for the way that you are involved in your church and committed to your local church. Thank you for how you serve your local church. Thank you for how you build your lives together. Whether it's families that you're building together or single life that you're building together, thank you for doing life together, a gospel centered life in the context of a Sovereign Grace church. And I want you to know that in my humble and yet admittedly biased opinion, you are the best members of the churches we have in this world. And I thank God for you. Sovereign Grace wouldn't be Sovereign Grace without you, and we are only stronger because of you. So to the members of Sovereign Grace Churches, please know my heartfelt appreciation.

If you are a listener or reader of this podcast, and you are not part of a Sovereign Grace church, but a part of another church, thank you. Thank you for the way that you are dedicated to your church. Thank you for the way that you do life together with others in the context of your local church. Thank you for the way that you serve your church. And if you're not a part of a Sovereign Grace church, the fact that you would even listen to or read this podcast, quite frankly, is stunning and is humbling to both Ben and me.

I wanted to thank you, each of you in the categories I just mentioned, because of what we are celebrating this week, we are the church of Jesus Christ because it is Christ who left his glory and came to this earth to redeem us from the slavery of our sins so that we might have eternal life in Jesus Christ. I was meditating on Galatians 4:4 this week. It's a wonderful advent passage: Galatians 4:4-5. Let me read those to you. "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.”

Jesus Christ left his glory to redeem us from the curse of the law. We say it this way in the Sovereign Grace statement of faith: in the fullness of time, God the Father sent his eternal son, the second person of the Trinity into the world as Jesus Christ. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, and born of the Virgin Mary, taking on himself a fully human nature with all its attributes and frailties, yet was without sin. Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man came to rescue us. And we can rejoice that God the Father at the right time sent God the Son, second person of the Trinity through the virgin birth that happened through the conception and act of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, to save sinners like us. And in other words, this Christmas, we are celebrating something that only God can accomplish and something we can't take credit for.

John Frame says this, in his discussion of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, he says, “the birth of Christ in which the initiative and power are all of God is an apt picture of God's saving grace in general, of which it is a part. It teaches us that salvation is by God's act and not human effort.” And we are reminded of that this week, that the birth of Christ is God's act at just the right time to come and to redeem us as Galatian says, from condemnation, the curse of the law.

We have a lot to be thankful for, obviously, which is why I thanked you. And we have a lot to rejoice about this week as we celebrate the birth of Christ. So as you go about your lives, as you serve your family, as you serve your extended family, as you serve your church this week, may we be people who do it with gratitude, and may we be people who do it with joy because that reflects the gospel of Jesus Christ. And it's that gospel that unites us as Christians, and it's that gospel that we are building our churches on throughout the world, in Sovereign Grace, all for the glory of God.

I know this is a subpar podcast because it doesn't have Ben, but I hope it conveys my heart for you. I thank God for you and I do wish you a joy-filled Merry Christmas.