The Ghost of Christmas Past

Got the lead clapper in the front. It's okay to clap in church, guys, you know. We're that kind of church, so if you come from another church tradition, I apologize that we're kind of loud and we like to rejoice a lot. But we're beginning a new series called A Christmas Carol. Glad you're here with us today.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, isn't it? Are y'all excited about Christmas? Are you excited about the joy that Christmas brings? We're going to talk about a little bit some of the things that we deal with in Christmas. And the title of this particular message is The Ghost of Christmas Past.

We're going to kind of roll through different thoughts about, you know, what we may be experiencing in the Christmas season. Now, let me ask you this. What do you think when you think of a Christmas carol? What do you think of when you think of a Christmas carol? There may be a few of you oddballs out there like, I hate it.

I'm turning it off. I'm going to cut the radio. You're going to turn the radio off and you're kind of a Scrooge, right? But for most people, you think of warmth. You think around the fire, right?

You think about the piano playing and the fires going and people are singing together. It's family. It's joy. It's happiness. The cares of the world are gone.

Isn't that what you think of when you think of a Christmas carol? One of the most famous Christmas carols, when I think of a Christmas carol, I mean, some of you probably think, what do you think of when you think of a Christmas carol? You may think of Deck the Halls or Old Christmas Tree or whatever it might be. But when I think of a Christmas carol, I think of White Christmas, one of the highest selling singles of all time, actually, and of Christmas music. White Christmas.

I think of everybody dreaming of a white Christmas. We're all dreaming of a white Christmas, which was made popular by a movie called Holiday Inn. And later on, they made that movie with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney. And we all know that. I remember when I was a kid going to Grandma's house and White Christmas was playing on the TV in the background and all the family was around.

So this was a part of my Christmas. So when I think of a white Christmas, I think of this movie and I think of the joy of a white Christmas. of being with family and being in the holidays with warm, exciting, fun, entertaining, all those things that just make Christmas so wonderful and beautiful. But for many, and I would say more than we even think, a lot of people don't see Christmas as white. In fact, they see it as, it's just a dream.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas because, let's be honest, Christmas is messy. Christmas is weird. When you get families together, when you get different personalities together, there's a lot of mess. There's a lot of baggage. There's things brought in from the past.

There's all kinds of things going on, right? I mean, we got a lot to deal with on Christmas. You know, Uncle so-and-so's doing that again. He's talking about politics, or she's talking about somebody across the street, or somebody's fussing in the back. I don't know what's going on, but a lot of you may not see Christmas as that white.

Because it's very complicated. And maybe you associate yourself with Ebeneezer Scrooge, which, you know, we're doing the Christmas Carol. So, a lot of you are thinking, when I hear a Christmas Carol, I'm thinking of Ebeneezer Scrooge. You know, and maybe you're that Scrooge. You're like, I just don't like Christmas.

I don't want to have anything to do with it because there's past memories. There's messiness. You're thinking about something that may have happened in your childhood. You're thinking about something that either you did or somebody else did. And it's hard for you to forgive.

It's hard for you to let go. And maybe you have a hard time experiencing a white Christmas. But God wants you to have a white Christmas. He wants that dream to come true for your life. He wants you to sing that Christmas Carol once again.

He wants you to sing a Christmas Carol in your heart. And he talks about making something white in Scripture. You know, there's a Christmas Carol in Scripture in Isaiah. If you're following along with me, you can open up your Bible apps or you can follow along here on the screen or on your notes. It says, Come now, let us settle this, says the Lord.

Though your sins are like scarlet, meaning they're in poor condition, and you're in poor condition, and maybe you're tainted. Maybe it's tainted red. I will make them white as snow. I will make it white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, what are they?

Those relationships that you're dealing with. That past sin that you're dealing with. That hurt that you're dealing with. That addiction that you're dealing with. All those problems of life are there.

They were so red. I will make them as white as wool. I will give you a Christmas Carol. I will help you sing white Christmas and experience a white Christmas once again. And it says this, it ends with this, If you will only obey me.

God's like, If you will only obey me. If you would only listen. I can give you an experience. Your experience can transcend all the things that you're facing. anything you're facing.

In this world, God puts it out there. He says, you know, if you give me an opportunity, if you just give me an opportunity this Christmas, I can change your world. I can change your life. But it takes a choice to obey God to get the God kind of things. We have to obey God, which is contrary to what we want to believe or what we think that the experience should be.

See, God gives us a lot of things that He says is counter to anything that we think. It's kind of weird. Why? Because we operate on feelings. And when we don't feel good, we don't want to obey God.

We want to obey ourselves. We want to do what pleases us. And God's like, it's not about feelings. It's about what I have. It's about the truth of what I have.

It's what I have available to you. You can have a white Christmas. You can transcend all those things that you're facing in this world. If you want things that are white and right, obey God. You've got to change your thinking.

You've got to change your thinking about what God says about what you're experiencing and how you're experiencing it. And what we find is the hardest thing to do is forgive. And I want to talk about forgiveness today, whether it's forgiving someone that's around you or maybe you can't forgive yourself. I think that's really the deepest part of it. Are we able to forgive ourselves?

Maybe you've got something in your life because you keep revisiting these past situations, these past things, these past events. You revisit them over and over and over again. And when you think you've found some freedom in your life, you come back to that thing. It's like a haunting. It's like the haunting of a ghost from Christmas past.

I thought I got through this. Maybe it's that habit. Maybe it's that memory of something that happened. And I think of being a child, you know, a young child and seeing a horror movie or seeing a clip from a horror movie. My parents didn't let me watch horror movies when I was a kid.

But when I was, I would see a preview of one. It would scare me to death, you know. And you would sit in your room all night like looking up at the ceiling because you're afraid that something's going to come in and scare you. You know, people deal with that every day in their lives, in their hearts. They're fearful that that thing that has been plaguing them and oppressing them for so many years since they were children, it just comes back.

The past comes back and reminds us that I'm not forgiven, that I'm not forgiven. Because deep inside ourselves, everybody needs forgiveness. And when I think of ghost, there is the word, the word that that originated from was wreath. Wreath, which are W-R-A-I-T-H is how you pronounce that, which we render the word wreath from, which we've got here on our stage. And it means simply a twisting, a twisting.

See, we twist a wreath around and form a circle. And what that means is literally... It's literally a twisting of our thoughts, a twisting of our mind, a twisting of the way we think. And the enemy wants to twist your thoughts. He wants to twist your mind.

And we are haunted from our past. Our mind plays tricks on us because we look back to our past and we cannot get past our past. So what do we do? There's a lot of things we can do. There's a lot of options that you'll choose.

We can bury it for one thing. We can bury it. We can bury the past because, after all, if we bury it, it'll go away, right? I mean, if we just don't hear about it or talk about it. Because time heals all wounds, right?

I mean, that's what it says. That's what the saying says. But the truth is, does time really heal wounds? I think we could ask a lot of people that and say, you know what? Maybe time doesn't heal wounds.

It doesn't. It doesn't really. Only the Holy Spirit can heal those wounds. Only the Holy Spirit can bring true healing. Like Proverbs 28, 13 says it like this.

He who conceals a sin does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy. They find mercy. And that's why we have people. That's why we have a church family. That's why we have groups in the church that meet outside the church.

That's why we have teams of people that work in the church. That's why we meet for coffee. That's why we meet for meals. That's why we do all the things we do together as church family. Not just a Sunday morning worship experience, but what we do throughout the week with people.

We share and we talk about the things that are hardest so that we can find mercy, so that we can be healed. Another thing we can do, we can beat ourselves up. A lot of people just beat themselves up. They look back to their past and they're like, I can't believe what I did or what I experienced. And they just can't get past it.

That we blame ourselves for the things that are, frankly, out of our control. They're out of our control. We feel this thing called guilt. We have so much guilt in our hearts. We have so much guilt in our lives.

It might be, you know, I blame my father, you know, but is it really my father's fault? I mean, that he left me. Maybe it's something. Maybe it's me. Maybe I was a burden or I should have been there with my mother.

She passed away. And if I was there, if I was able to help her and be with her or my best friend, I should have been there when he was found dead in his room of a drug overdose. You know, if I'd only been there, if I'd only had that opportunity, maybe it's my fault. Maybe it's my fault. Maybe it's my fault that I have this addiction or I have this sin and you just focus on that.

And the truth is some of it is your fault, right? And we look back to it, but we wear it all the time. That dark sin, that dark thought, that dark place that you just want to keep away from everybody possible, that place that just hurts. It's deep. Thank you.

And . . And we beat ourselves up because of it. King David said it like this, and you know, David was a murderer and an adulterer. He was probably the worst of the worst.

And he said it, he says, I'm drowning in the flood of my sins. And that's what sin does, it drowns you, it floods, it's deep, it hurts. When you're in sin, especially secret sin and dark sin, it ain't a good place to be. It ain't a good place to be. And he was there, and they say, they are a burden too heavy to bear.

I can't bear those burdens anymore, because I have been foolish. I'm utterly worn out and crushed, and my heart is troubled. When we hold on to the past, when we hold on to the sin of the past, we are crushed. We are heartbroken. We are burdened.

We are heavy. We cannot live a white Christmas. We cannot sing a Christmas carol when we're living like that. Another thing we can do, we can blame others. That's really good.

We see that a lot, right? I'm just going to blame someone else. It's not my fault, you know? And so that's the flip side. That's the spectrum.

You know, you've got that over here, and you know, I blame myself, and then you've got to blame others thing. I'm just going to point the finger and just put it on anybody else I possibly can. In fact, I'm going to just blame the devil, because the devil made me do it, right? The devil made me do it, and y'all go back to our series, our last series. We talked about that one week.

The devil made me do it, and that's exactly what Eve did, right? Adam blamed Eve, right? God said, why did this happen? Why did you eat of the tree? Adam blamed Eve.

Eve blamed the serpent. And that's what we do. It's easy to just pawn it on my father. It's easy to pawn it on my mother. It's easy to pawn it on my friend, or that situation, or that church I was a part of that made me feel this way, or pushed me out, or whatever.

It's easy to hold on to those regrets. It's easy to hold on to those past thoughts. It's easy to hold on to my addiction if I can just pawn it on someone else. If I could just say, it's their fault. The serpent deceived me, and I ate of it.

I ate it. And some people are just eating it with the blame game. I'm just going to eat that sin. I'm just going to wear that sin. We could do all those things.

But there's another thing we can do. We can also believe God. We can believe God at what He says. We could trust God. Hey, maybe He has the best interest in mind.

Because if you're going to get past your past, you need to see things a new way. You need to see things differently. You need to see your past differently. You need to see your problems differently. You need to see the way you think differently.

You need to change the way you think. Your thinking is twisted. Why? Because we don't believe God. That's why our thoughts are always twisted.

2 Corinthians says it like this. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ... Here it is. If anyone is in Christ... This is the way we need to think.

If anyone is in Christ... See you guys. He is what? A new creation. The old is gone and the new has come.

That's what he says about our sins being conquered, that the old person is gone and the new person comes in. The old has faded away and the new. We're not just refurbished people kind of putting it back together, you know, like barely and just kind of walking along. We are new people, but what people often think is that, you know, God just fixes me a little bit when I come to know him, when I get saved. You know, he just fixes a little bit of me, but for the rest of my life, I'm just going to, you know, work it out and try to figure it out.

We got a lot of miserable Christians, a lot of miserable Christians walking this world without freedom because we have focused, our hearts and our minds and our thoughts are twisted, are twisted. And God wants to make you free. He wants to make you free indeed. He wants you to have a life of freedom. Amen.

He wants you to have a life of hope. Amen. He wants you to have a life of joy. Amen. Okay, okay, okay.

I want to make sure that y'all are getting that. He wants you to have a life of hope. He wants you to have a life of joy. He wants you to have a life of freedom. And we can get past our past.

So my question is, are you stuck in your past? My question is, are you dealing with past things that have come back to haunt you? How do we beat those things? How do we beat those things? Well, the first thing is, we need to look to Paul.

And what we know about Paul is that he was a blasphemer, he was a persecutor, and he was a violent man. Really, Leon? Yes. And the reason I believe that is because Paul said he is a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a violent man. And 1 Timothy, if you look there, 1 Timothy 1, 13 through 15, even though I was once a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and a violent man, I was shown mercy.

I was shown mercy for my sin, right? Because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. There's the key word unbelief right there. I didn't believe. The grace of our Lord has poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus, that faith and love.

Now, here is a trustworthy saying that deserves all acceptance. So get ready, guys. Paul's saying lean in on this. This is what you need to know. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.

That's why he came to the world. That's what Christmas is about. The advent of our Savior is about saving sinners. And what kind of sinners? Ones like Paul, of whom I am the worst.

He says, you think you're bad? You think there's no hope for you? Some of you don't think you can have a white Christmas because, Pastor, you don't know how bad I am. You don't know how bad I was. You don't know how bad I was.

You don't understand the things I'm still dealing with, Pastor, because you just don't... Well, you know what? Paul said, I was the worst. I was the worst and God showed me mercy. So the first thing we need to do is stop trying to earn forgiveness.

Stop trying to earn forgiveness. Stop trying to work your way to heaven. Stop trying to figure it out. We think that God is like a Santa Claus. Oh, well, he's weighing out or naughty and nice.

A lot of people believe this. They believe this about God. God is just this cosmic Santa Claus that's looking at the naughty list and determining whether he's going to bless somebody or curse somebody. And he's waiting with lightning bolts up in heaven to blast us out. And a lot of people believe that about God.

And they're weighing out everything. But Ephesians 2, 8, 9 says like this, For it is by grace you have been saved. What is grace? It's getting something that you don't deserve. That's what it's all about.

That's what... It's by grace through what? Belief, through faith. And this, not from ourselves, it's not about a self-help book. It's not about finding inner peace in myself.

It's not about being rescued by my own thoughts and my own self and doing the right things or chanting the right things. It's not about any of that. It is the gift of God, not by works, that no one can boast. It's not about how good I am so I can walk around and say, Man, I really made it to heaven by how good I am. God doesn't do it like that.

Because the root of unforgiveness is unbelief. It's unbelief. It's not believing in Jesus Christ. And He paid for all of our sin, our past, present, and future, all of our sin. And He even paid for the sins of those who don't know the Lord.

He gave it all. It's available for all. It is a gift. That's why it's so important to understand it as a gift. It is something that is available to anyone and all who will receive.

And we no longer have to hold on to our past because we have God who has given us a gift. He wants us to stop trying to earn forgiveness. That guilt in your heart. See, people don't go to hell because of their sin. They go to hell because of their unbelief.

Because they don't believe in Jesus, what He says, and what He did, and what God the Father said when Jesus was being baptized. Listen to my son. This is my son who I am well pleased. Listen to him. And what did Jesus say?

Jesus said, I came to this earth to give my life as a ransom for many. He came to give a ransom for this world. That He came to this world so that none should perish, but all should have eternal life. That's why He came. And no scripture.

You can look. You can comb scripture. I don't care what religion or tradition, Christian tradition you came from. Comb all of scripture. Look through all of scripture.

And you'll find no scripture that says stop sinning and you will be saved. You don't find that anywhere. It says believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Amen. That's how you're saved.

You are a Napastin in the person. That is how you're saved. That's how you're saved. Through Jesus Christ and Him alone, not by how good I am, not by how much sin I commit or don't commit, and not based on Santa Claus's naughty list and nice list, it is through Jesus Christ. And then the working out of your freedom comes from salvation.

You're working out of your freedom, the freedom comes on the back end when you really put that ground down first, that Jesus Christ is the only way, He's the only hope, and He paid it all. He was the perfect Lamb of God who was shed for the sin of all mankind. And if you haven't been forgiven, you can't forgive anybody else. You can't live a life of forgiveness. You can't experience, because freely you have received, freely you give.

When you've received forgiveness, you give forgiveness. So if we don't get this part, we can't talk about anything else, about the people in your lives, about how to practice reconciliation. None of that means anything until you've learned what true forgiveness is. That's what the gospel is all about. See, people simply don't understand the gospel.

The gospel is that you are free and free indeed through Jesus Christ, and it is a free gift. Which leads me to my second point. There is some bad news, okay? You have the past. You have that ghost from the past.

But that ghost from the past doesn't just come one time. That ghost from the past just doesn't, oh, okay, that didn't work. It's going to continue to come back. You're going to be screwed in your bed at night, and you thought you dealt with it, but it comes back again. So you need to learn how to battle the lie, and here's how you do it.

Defeat every lie with truth. Defeat every lie with truth. Many say, help me forget it. Help me forget these things. Pastor, help me forget.

People, help me forget. Friends, help me forget. But the truth is you're probably not going to forget. But instead, it's how you deal with it when it comes your way. How do you deal with it?

You need to arm yourself with God's Word. Every truth about who you are, every truth about God, every truth about His promises is found in that book, and we have everything available to us, every word that we need when we are attacked in any direction by the enemy. We need to get into the Word of God. We need to get it in us and let it permeate in us and work out of us and spread it out of us as well. John 8.

44 says, when he lies, this is Satan, he speaks this native language for he is a liar and the father of lies. And when you hear things from the past, it is lies straight from the enemy. I know what it's like. You know what it's like when you're alone, when you're dealing with sin, when you're dealing with past sin, when you're dealing with hurt, when you're dealing with shame, when you're dealing with all these things. You get by yourself and it just feels like, oh, if I can't.

I just can't break this addiction. I just can't break this thought. It's back again. What do you do? What do you do?

What do you turn to? You turn to the Word of God. Because here's what 1 Corinthians says, Christ made us right with God, and He made us pure and holy, and He freed us from sin. See, there it is right there. You don't have to be held down by those thoughts.

In fact, you know, Satan is sitting, Revelation says, Satan sits in the courtroom of God and accuses you. And you know what God does? He turns back and His Word says, No. No. Don't accuse my child, because he and she is covered by my son.

The blood is all over them and can't be touched. And that's what Jesus proclaims, and that's what He did on the cross, because Christ made us right before God. When God looks at us, He no longer looks at our sin. He no longer, past, present, and future, He no longer looks at those things, and He makes us pure. He makes us holy.

We are holy, pure people, and He freed us from our sin. We no longer are held down from our sin. And number three, you've got to allow God to turn it around for good. Allow God to use your past for good. It doesn't matter what spectrum, place on the spectrum you are.

You might be over here, maybe you were a goody-two-shoes your entire life, and somehow, you know, you did good works, and you were a good person, and you were raised in church, and all those things. I went to Sunday school since I was five years old. And some of you are like, I just don't have a story. You know, my friend has this other story, and it's incredible. I was out of church.

I was away from God. I was doing drugs. You know, you hear these testimonies. You're like, how can my testimony be that? But God, we all have a testimony.

God has given us a testimony. God has given us a story because there's goody-two-shoes. There's a lot of people out there that believe they're going to heaven somewhere, whatever they believe about it, by doing good works. And you need to share with them, look, I was good. I was all these things.

I did the right things. I gave a lot of money to charity. But something in me said that something was missing. I needed forgiveness. And I was really not there.

And they're going to relate to that. So whatever side you're on, you need to use your story. You can use, and some of you here today, you're like, I have such a painful past. I have, you know, God always uses it for His glory. Everything that we go through, highs and lows, the deepest places to the highest heights, God uses them for His glory.

And we believe that God is good no matter what. And He uses our story to tell the world about Him. That's what Christmas is about, the story of Jesus through our lives. By us gathering together, by doing communion and candles on Christmas Eve. It's not just tradition.

There's a joy in our hearts because God has been so good. And Jesus Christ gave His life, and we had nothing to do with it. All we had to do is reach out and say, give me that gift, Lord. Alright. Let's go.

I need that gift. I need that gift. Romans 8, 28 says we and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. Joseph understood that in the Old Testament. He was sold to slavery by his brothers.

In fact, his brothers wanted to kill him and one of the brothers talked him out of killing him. Let's just sell him into slavery. I don't know what was worse and going into slavery and bondage and being going through all of that or just dying and going to heaven immediately. I mean, what was better, right? And here he is years later and he had the opportunity to get back to his brothers, get back his brother, you know, for what his brothers had done to retaliate.

I'm now prime minister of Egypt and here's these guys who treated me like they did. So if you put yourself in that situation, how would you react? How would you react? You know how he reacted? God intended it for good.

You intended it to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done. The saving, I love this last part, the saving of many lives. You know, that's prophetic. That narrative is actually a prophetic statement of what Jesus has done today. Joseph was emblematic of a Jesus figure that went and went through the persecution and then gave the opportunity for many people to come and be rescued out of the bondage, out of the famine and be saved.

The saving of many lives. That's why Christ came to save lives. And we all need forgiveness. We all need forgiveness. But here's what it does.

It takes faith. It's not forgiveness on its own. We can we could say, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me. But you got to believe in Jesus Christ. Faith to believe.

Do you believe? Romans 4, 3 says what Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Credited to him as righteousness. In closing, let me let me just show you how important this scripture is. Abraham believed and it was credited to him.

Y'all know what a credit is, right? Y'all know y'all know a credit like when you go into your bank account and you get a credit. That's good news, right? Hey, hey, hey, where did that credit come from? Especially when you got that government credit just not long, not long ago.

We were on our way to Florida and we were like we were taking a little family trip a couple of months ago. And and we were on a real, real thin budget because we had a lot of things happen and medical bills and stuff like that. And we opened up our bank account. Wow. Where did that come from?

OK, thank you, God. Thank you, Jesus, that I have a credit in my account that I wasn't expecting. It means that God has credited. God credits you with righteousness. Not on your own doing.

It's like going into your account and seeing that money that you didn't expect. He believed. He believed. God deposits into the account. And that's what Christmas is about.

Jesus Christ. Accounting for our sins. Taking our sins and placing it on Him. He came to this earth as a humble servant and gave His life and He was sinless. He was the sinless Lamb of the world.

And He is the God of our past. He came into the past to meet the problems of our past. And you can be freed today. You can be freed right now just simply by what? Faith in Christ.

By grace. What is grace? Grace. It's getting what I don't deserve. That's the beauty of Jesus.

That's why we share this good news with everybody because all of us have a sense of unforgiveness. We have guilt in our life. Would you make a decision to know Jesus today? Would you give God an opportunity to give you a Christmas carol to sing? Would you give God an opportunity?

Would you give God an opportunity to give you a white Christmas this year? That you can look at a snow globe and the awe that you get from that beautiful snow globe can actually not just be a snow globe. It can be your life. Would you give God that opportunity? Let's bow our heads.

And I want anyone under the sound of my voice who wants to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior. If that's you today, would you just lift up your hand and say, I want to make God the Lord of my season. I see some hands going up. Put those hands down. And there are others of you, maybe you want to recommit today.

Maybe you want to make it even, you just can't get past that pass. I've been a Christian for a long time, Pastor, but it's just been too hard. Would you recommit and rededicate your life to Jesus? It's okay to recommit. It's okay to give God another chance.

It's okay because He is such a gracious God. And like George said earlier, one more chance. I'll give it one more chance. He says, come on and give me one more chance. He wants to change your life.

If you would pray this with me, Lord Jesus, I'm sorry I've made it about me. I know that I'm a sinner. I know that I mess up all the time. I know I have these things in my past that just won't let me get to where you want me to be, Lord. And I've tried to do it on my own.

I've tried every self-help book. I've tried every philosophy. I received you as Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior, who gave His life. I believe that you are the one, that you were the perfect Lamb of God, that you died on the cross and rose again. God, I give you my life today.

I make you Lord.