In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the need for churches to prioritize the presence of the Lord and reflect the holiness of God. He expresses concern about the entertainment and social aspects that can distract from the true purpose of the church. The speaker also criticizes the use of fleshly music and man-centered words in worship. He shares his disappointment in a televised performance of Handel's Messiah, where some of the singers were not even saved. The sermon concludes with an invitation to receive Jesus as Savior and a reminder of the significance of his birth.

Well, we welcome you again to O'Neill's Wings. You know, we read Isaiah 41 almost every time when we start off. We trust that you would understand the importance of the Word of God in placing it first in your life. The Lord thinks a lot about His Word. This is why we read Isaiah, excuse me, it wasn't 41, it was 40. When we start out and we say, Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of His understanding. He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint. This program on Eagles Wings is designed to be an encouragement to you. Pastor, local church, believer, and also to encourage you to receive Christ if you haven't done that. We want you to understand, but if you'll wait upon the Lord, He'll meet your need. He's all you need. Is He all you want? Christ is sufficient. We celebrate His birth, this is the time of year, we call it Christmas time. It's His birth that we're celebrating. It's His birthday, His coming into this world, not ours. Like the poem I read you last week, Mary's poem, what about the gifts? Do you have a gift for Jesus, or does He get left out? Well, the Scripture says, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which, being interpreted, is God with us. We trust that He's with you. We trust that He is in your church. We trust that He is present, that He would be felt, and that those that come your way would sense His presence. We have so many things in our churches today that knock out the sense of the presence of the Lord. It's an entertainment system, it's a party, it's a social system. The church is to be a place, I believe, where the holiness of God is manifest, where the godliness of the saints reflect the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. I would hope that your church would not be a place where someone would come in and hear some gossip being told in a corner, or to see people moving about disrespectfully during prayer time or the reading of the Word of God, but there would be a sense of waiting on God and watching, a sense of joyfulness. So many times we have music that is fleshly, and we have beat that drums out the message of the words, and then we have words that are just so man-centered and not God-centered. We need to be careful. On His birthday, we don't know for sure if this was the date that He was born. The scholars have debated on that. The important thing was that He came and He lived, and He died and was buried and rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures. My friend, He came for you. He came to set you free. That's what He said. He said, The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me. He said, I came to relieve your burdens, to set you free. I like Chambers. In his little book on December 25th, entitled His Birth and Our New Birth, Isaiah, reading from Isaiah 714, Behold, a virgin shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is God with us. Matthew quoted from Isaiah, actually. There is His birth in history, and then there is His birth in me, and I hope there's been His birth in you. If you haven't yet received Him as your Savior, what a wonderful time to do it. Even right now. You say, What's it take? You're driving along. You're sitting in your living room. You're walking. You're doing the dishes. Have you really come to the end of yourself at some point in your life and recognized that you are a sinner? And even deeper than that, the Scriptures would just say that we are sin. Paul, when he got saved, came to realize that there was no good thing that dwells in him. But where you're at, you can receive Christ as your Savior. You're driving down the road. You can just pull over somewhere, pull into a parking lot, pull off the interstate, off the edge, and just bow your head. Confess to Him that you know that you're a sinner, and then thank Him for dying on the cross for your sins, and then ask Him to come into your life to save your soul, to set you free. Wouldn't you want to do that? And this could be your spiritual birthday. My friend, that was God in a manger. You were born probably in a nice, clean hospital, or maybe at home if you're older. He was born in a stable. That reminds me of a story that I'll tell you a little bit later on about three trees. I almost forgot about this story. I'll share it with you a little bit later on, the story about three trees in relation to Christ's birth. There was His birth in history. Luke 135 says, Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. Jesus Christ was born into this world, not from it. He did not evolve out of history. He came into history from the outside. Jesus Christ is not the best human being. He is a being who cannot be accounted for by the human race at all. He is not man becoming God, but God incarnate, God coming into human flesh, coming into it from outside. Do you understand this? His life is the highest and the holiest, entering in at the lowliest door. Our Lord's birth was an advent. I was watching on TV the other day. I don't know what program it was. I just flipped it on, and there was this great big choir, and this great big orchestra, and some celebrant, I can't even say that word, some famous people, singers, singing. And everybody was just singing with all this gusto, Handel's Messiah. And I had to turn it off. It was just like the Spirit of God in me was grieved by all these people. And I know, unless something's happened recently, that some of those singers, those famous ones, were not even saved. They're pushing for another movement to get rid of Christians. I couldn't understand what they were even on the platform for, singing that song, some kind of money-raising thing, I guess. Are we doing things in the Spirit? Our Lord's birth was an advent, a great advent. He humbled Himself, took upon Himself the form of a servant. No reputation. When they saw Him, when He was walking down the streets years later as a man, they didn't look at Him as God, but He was. He was God in the flesh. His birth in history. They keep trying to get rid of Him out of our schools in this country, and now they're having real problems in the schools. Because Christ has been put out, the Word of God's been put out, well, something else is going to take that void. And, of course, Satan has filled it up. The cultists have filled it up. And now they're having real problems. When John Musser, Evangelist John Musser, of whom I'm working with him, he's the director of Gospel Revival Ministries, I'm the field representative, crusade coordinator. When he was down in Mexico last year making a mission trip down there, and he came back across on this side, and he got into the high schools, and he was sharing because John was saved out of drugs. The schools began to come to him and asking him to help them because they're having an epidemic of suicides down there. The kids are getting into the Satan and the rock, and they were killing themselves. It was like a tidal wave coming down the valley. And they said, You can even preach. We don't care what you do, just help us. You can preach Christ in the public schools. I don't know how far we'll have to go before we'll be broken to see that we've made some bad mistakes in our land. I hope we turn before it's too late. But amidst all of the sorrow and the pain and the sadness, we've got this gaiety of Christmas around us, sort of a mockery celebrating his birth. But yet, who cares about Jesus? As you go to church today, I'd hope you'd go with a new fresh love for Jesus. You'd look into the eyes of those that you meet, and you'd look to see if there's life there. Even as you go to church, look to see if there's life there. Maybe you've just been putting on a facade. Your life is just like a Christmas package. If they take the pretty wrapping off, there's nothing inside but emptiness. His birth in me, Paul said, of whom I travel in birth again until Christ be formed in you. He was concerned about the Galatians, that some of them had not really been saved. I think one of the problems in the church today is we haven't been willing to realize or recognize and accept the fact that we have dropped our standards so much that our membership consists of those that are saved and not saved. And it's a mockery to the community around us because we don't do anything about it. I pray that God would give you courage to do something about it, Pastor, Deacon, to at least start praying for revival in your church and your life. And we at this ministry of On Eagle's Wings, if we can help you, we want to. You can write to me here if you want, On Eagle's Wings, Box 1100, Web City, 64870, and try to make some contact with me, and I'll pray with you, meet with you. And if you're desperate for revival, that's the point to begin, to get desperate. Just as our Lord came into human history from outside, so He must come into me from outside. Has He come into your life? When He came into mine, He changed my life. Have I allowed my personal human life to become a Bethlehem for the Son of God? What about it? Mary, Joseph, their lives became a Bethlehem. There was shame. To bring the Lord Jesus Christ into the world was shame for Joseph and Mary. The reputation of them was that she was like a harlot, and He married her. Of course, their marriage didn't take place until after the birth. But there was the talk, the sly remarks. To bear Christ, it's going to cost. Count the cost. Many people go out waving the flag, but they're not carrying a cross. Have you allowed your personal human life to become a Bethlehem for the Son of God? Bethlehem is the place of birth. Let Him take your Bethlehem. He'll burst out into a new life, new radiance, new testimony. I cannot enter into the realm of the kingdom of God unless I am born from above by a birth totally unlike natural birth. You know, this was the thing with Nicodemus, the leader of the Jews, the top religious leader. He came to Jesus at night, and he said, Lord, Master, what do I have to do to get to heaven? And Jesus said, You must be born again. And let me emphasize the must. You must be born again. You see, if you were baptized in your church, that's not good enough. That's not being born again. If you joined your church, that's not good enough. You must be born spiritually. When we're born into this world, we're born spiritually dead, and you must be born spiritually, and you do that by receiving Christ as your Savior. But as many as came unto Him, to them He gave the right to become the sons of God. When you receive Him, your sins are forgiven, and the Holy Spirit comes to live within you. And you cannot enter into the realm of the kingdom of God unless you are born again. You must be born again. This is not a command. It is a foundational fact. You can't get around it. You know, one of the deceptiveness of Satan is he likes to get us to think that we're good enough, that somehow or another we'll get into heaven, that we're not that bad. But the Bible says that our works aren't going to save us, not by works of righteousness which we have done. No. You must receive Him. For by grace ye are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is a gift of God and not of works. You must be born again. The characteristic of the new birth is that I yield myself so completely to God that Christ is formed in me. Immediately Christ is formed in me. His nature begins to work through me. Many people have had pseudo-conversions, stillbirths I call them. You see, when Jesus comes in, there's going to be the evidence of the Spirit in your life. The fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace and long-suffering and gentleness and kindness, faithfulness, temperance. These type of things are produced by the Holy Spirit. You can't drum them up. They're the evidence of Him being in your life. So when Christ is formed in you, His nature will begin to work through you. God's birth in history was in a stable. His birth in me was in my heart. God manifests in the flesh. That is what is made profoundly possible for you and me by the redemption. You see, the purpose of His coming wasn't a cradle. His purpose for coming was a cross. The devil tried to keep Him away from the cross, as he'll try to keep you away from the cross too. But if there's no cradle, there's no crown. There was the cradle for the Lord Jesus, and then there was the cross, and then He had the crown. He's ruling. He's the Lord. He's the King of kings, the Lord of lords. That's what radio station KKLL means, King of kings and Lord of lords. Is He the King of your life? Is He the Lord of your life? As you're getting ready to go to church today, will it all be over at 12 o'clock, and then you'll come back and be yourself? For me, Sunday is just, I love the Lord just as much on Monday as I did on Sunday. I dress up a little bit fancier on Sunday, but it's not to impress the Lord, mostly because it's our custom. I've been in places where you came with what you had. If you just had old clothes, that's all you came in. I've been in places that would not accept me if I came in old clothes. I was raised in a place that was pretty affluent, down in the south, a lot of culture. Maybe I could have used a little bit more of it, but I saw so much hypocrisy, it turned me off, and almost turned me away from Jesus. Don't let something turn you away from Jesus. Trust in Jesus. Do you trust Him? Are you struggling? Son, we want to pray for you, that God has set you free. Father, I just pray for those that are listening. If they're struggling, that they learn to trust in Jesus and let Him take it. You didn't design us to bear the burdens of life. You said, come unto me, all of you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Set the captives free. Thank you, Father, for coming. Lord Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for us. In your name we pray. There's a poem written by A.L. Fink, The Rose Still Grows Beyond the Wall. Jesus was a rose, the beautiful fragrance of God in the human body. And they tried to crush Him. They didn't like Him, because He exposed their sinfulness. And the poem goes like this. Near and blossomed in God's free light, watered and fed by morning height, it came to a crevice in the wall through which there shone a beam of light. Onward it crept with added strength, with never a thought of fear or pride. It followed the light through the crevice length and unfolded itself on the other side. The light, the dew, the broadening view, were found the same as they were before, and it lost itself in beauties new, breathing its fragrance more and more. Shall claim of death cause us to grieve and make our courage faint or fall? Nay, let us faith and hope receive. The rose still grows beyond the wall, scattering fragrance far and wide, just as it did in days of yore, just as it did on the other side, just as it will forevermore. The rose still blooms beyond the wall. Your life may be dark, the days may be dreary, the discouragements dangerously discouraging and depressing. Would you let Jesus Christ shine in your life? Let Him break through the crevice of the wall of hardness, of unbelief. Give Him a chance. Let Him lift you up. Let Him lift you up on eagle's wings. Let Him bear you. If He's not your Savior, would you receive Him right now? Pastor, encourage your people to love the Lord Jesus Christ. Let Him lift you up on eagle's wings. God bless you. You've been listening to On Eagle's Wings. Trust that God will richly bless you.