It was Christmas Eve In Korea. A young woman labor walked through the freezing snow down a country road to the home of a missionary friend where she knew that she could find shelter and help. Along the road there was a gulley. and spanning the gulley was a bridge. Just as she arrived at the gulley, she was overtaken with labor pains and crawled beneath the bridge to find shelter. There, she gave birth to a baby boy. She was too weak to move and though she called for help, no one passed along the road. The night was cold and so she took off one article of clothing after another and wrapped it around the baby in an evergrowing tight cocoon. When she had no articles of clothing left, she pulled branches and leaves over herself and fell asleep. The next morning, Christmas Day, the missionary drove his car into town to deliver food baskets to the needy. When he was on the way home, just as the car approached the bridge, the motor sputtered and stopped. The missionary got out, planning to walk the rest of the way home. As he crossed the bridge, he heard a baby crying. He crawled under the bridge to investigate and there he found the infant, tightly wrapped in a cocoon, warm but hungry.

And there, too, he found the frozen body of the young mother. He took the child home and adopted him Into his family. Twelve years later on Christmas Eve, on the boy’s birthday, he told him for the first time the story of how he came to find him. The next day, the boy asked the missionary if they might visit the grave of the mother. It was a freezing cold day as they walked up the hill to the little cemetery. The boy asked the missionary if he would stay there and let him go alone to his mother’s grave. The missionary waited and watched, as the boy stood before the grave shivering with the cold.

And then he saw the boy, article by article, begin to remove his clothing and to lay his clothes on his mother’s grave. He waited for awhile and watched the boy as he knelt there shivering and crying. And then the missionary went up to him, just in time to hear the boy say, “Mother, were you colder than this for me? Were you colder than this for me?” And then the boy fell into his father’s arms, crying. I think of that story when I think of how on that first Christmas Eve, Jesus stripped Himself of every royal garment and handed over the sceptre of cosmic authority and entered into our cold world of hatred and indifference and greed and pride and war. His coming to dwell among us was real.

The angel said, ‘You shall call his name Emmanuel. which means God with us. It is an old, old story and we would hardly expect that anyone in our modern sophisticated age would still believe it. And yet this old, old story is as modern as the latest polls. This past year, George Gallup published some surprising statistics. He found that thirty-five percent of all Americans believe themselves “born again.” Sixty percent of all Americans described their religious beliefs as “very important.” Seven out of ten Americans say they are church members. One out of five Americans meet at least once a week in a prayer group or Bible study. It is an old, old story and yet it is as modern as Time magazine which features in its Christmas issue the evangelical resurgence in America within Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Time magazine called last year “The Year of the Evangelical.” The same magazine in 1966 asked the question on its cover, “Is God Dead?” The Time article points to such notable evangelicals as Billy Graham, Charles Colson, the righthand man of former President Richard Nixon; Eldridge Cleaver of Black Panther fame; and of course, the most famous evangelical of them all, the President of the United States, Jimmy Carter. It is an old, old story and yet it is as modern as today’s newspaper. The Suburban Trib of November 28, headlined: “DuPage is the Capitol of Born Again Christians” and pointed to the fact that more than 30 evangelical organizations are headquartered here in the county.

Wheaton, Illinois is known in evangelical circles around the world. The story is told of two Wheaton College graduates who went to Africa as missionaries. They spoke about Wheaton College. Their mission organization was headquartered in Wheaton, Illinois. The printed materials they used were published in Wheaton, Illinois. And one day, two of the national pastors were invited to attend a seminar on world missions at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College. They landed at JFK airport. They had never been out of their village before and they had not heard of New York City But when they saw the skyline, they were impressed. And one said to the other. “If this is New York City, what must Wheaton, Illinois look like?”

And yet as we say all of this, we have to ask the question, “What difference does all of this religious renewal make?” For George Gallup concluded from his findings, “Religion is not greatly affecting the lives of those who profess it.” Now we have to ask the question, “Why is this so?” In the past, religious resurgence has always affected both men and women and their society. In the Great Awakenings of the past, hundreds of Christian organizations were formed to work toward such’ goals as the elimination of the slave trade, labor and prison reforms. There were great social reform movements to care for the welfare of the poor and the needy. In 1904, when a religious revival broke out in Wales, within a matter of months court dockets were cleared and the police complained of rising unemployment in their ranks. But not long ago, a foreign correspondent asked Billy Graham the question, “We read all about everybody in America being ‘born again,’ that this was the year of the evangelical. We read and hear where thousands, perhaps millions are coming to Christ. Yet we also see in America abortion on the increase, deterioration of the family structure, the crime rate increasing, and other indications that your society is in the advanced stages of moral decay.

How is it that so many are born again and yet the society is still sick?” Now there is no more critical issue facing the church than the question posed by this foreign correspondent. The church is faced with many issues — the inerrancy of the Bible, whether or not we are living in the last days, what the church’s stance will be on the homosexual and on the ordination of women — but there is no more critical question than this one.

This brings us to the importance of our gathering here this morning. This gathering represents the meeting of the business, political, educational, judicial, and religious leaders of the county. And this question is not just of importance to the church, this question is important to all of us. Why do we see in America abclion on the increase, deterioration of the family structure, the crime rate increasing, and other indications that society is in the advanced stages of moral decay?

There are 1400 people present here this morning at we would give many different answers if we had time to open this up for a discussion. But I would like to call your attention to an answer given by Jacques Ellul more than ten years ago in his book. The Political Illusion. He says, “Anchored in the heart of modern man is the conviction that ultimately all problems are political and are solvable only along political lines. We expect, and we have been taught to expect, far more from government than government can possibly produce.”

It is interesting to note how many government figures themselves remind us that we cannot lean this heavily upon government. Government has its limitations.

Chief Justice Burger within the week suggested that people are becoming too willing to depend upon the courts to resolve their differences. And more than sixteen years ago. President John Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Look at the great issues facing mankind today. Issues such as energy, food, water

There is a more alarming crisis than we would like t admit. The new Department of Energy, even before opened its doors last fall, had 18,818 employees and a budget of 10.5 billion dollars. That is more than the total profits of all the major oil companies combined.

The tangled webs of law, regulations and bureaucracies controlling the energy resources is so hopelessly complex that hardly anyone can understand it, let alone devise political solutions. And yet we look to the government for solutions when even the President of the United States points out that in the energy crisis, Charles Mueller is pastor of Trinity Church in Roselle.

As my friend Paul would say, your friend. too, Peace be unto you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He was concerned about things like that. He knew his world. He saw the government from a direction you and I don’t often see it. He was one of those who are pushed around, who suffered under the hands of all kinds of oppression. One of the most interesting things is he didn’t fight it. He decided to use it, and he went to the government, he walked the way of the government, and he made that government serve him, and, in serving him, serve his Lord. Grace, mercy and peace. That’s not just religious language. Grace means that we have received what we don’t deserve. Mercy means that we do receive what we do deserve. And the peace of God is that whole business of God putting our lives together and making them whole.

I want to talk to you about Jesus Christ this morning. What a man! That was one of the first things that the Christian church had to wrestle with. Was He a man? Was He really human like you and I are human? Did He weep, did He care. was He interested. was He concerned, or was He just some sort of a spiritual entity floating around? And so the Christian church, over a period of time, nailed it down solidly. Born, suffered, died. That’s the way you and I are going to be, too. Born, suffered, died. That’s the way He was. But He wasn’t just a man. He was a man like no other man that ever was.

I was reading about the temptations of Jesus one day with a man who was a psychiatrist. I’m sure you all recall them very well; He was in the wilderness at the beginning of His particular ministry, this Jesus Christ. and had been forty days without food, and then Satan came to Him. And he began with, “Turn these rocks into bread.” And then he said, “Go to the top of the temple and dive off and let God take care of you. – And then he said, “Look at the world.” He took Jesus to a high mountain and showed Him the whole thing–everything, right out there–and he said, “Look at the world. I will give it to you. – And as we were reading that, my psychiatrist friend said, “I know what that means. – Well, I. in a little interested in things like that, particularly since I thought I knew what that meant. And what he said was. “That means Jesus is really a man.” I said. “Oh?” This is always a very safe response if you have nothing else to say–try “Oh?” And he said, “Just look at that–those are the three steps of growing up.” The first thing you’ve got to learn is to postpone pleasure. You can’t just have your food when you want it. You can’t have everything in the moment. We who have just come out of. we hope, the ‘ now’ generation, begin to realize that people aren’t accustomed to waiting for anything.

Want it? Charge it. That’s the least you can do. And now comes God speaking to us, and we’ve got to learn how to put some things aside. We’ve got to do some planning; we’ve got to realize that this year we’re going to do this, and next year were going to do that, and next year we’re going to do that, and the next year we’re going to do that. And realize that that’s the way life’s got to go. One of the reasons we have so much difficulty with our young couples who get married is they all want to start where their mothers and daddies have gotten to, and we have to say to them,

“You’ve got to start somewhere else. – The only people I know who buy white rugs are kids who are just getting married. After you’ve been married a while, you know you can’t have those things around. But that’s the way it is in life.

The second thing is. you’ve got to learn that you don’t go diving off the tops of temples expecting somebody else to pick up the pieces. That’s not the way it is. I don’t know how many hospital beds I’ve gone to where someone is lying there after an accident. I remember one particular incident: the kid had been driving about 50 miles an hour at night on an icy road, and the car had smashed against a tree, and he was lying in the bed saying. “Why did God do this to me?” I said, “God got out around 45.” You can’t go ahead in life always expecting other people to bail you out. One of the things the Lord Jesus is trying to say to us is. “Look out.”

Angels will take care of us, but God expects you and me to be responsible, too. Again, one of the reasons God gives us government, good businessmen, good parents, and pastors and others, is to help us to recognize there are sensible and there are non-sensible things that we do.

Finally, you’ve got to learn there’s no inherent value in things. Folks, it ain’t gonna fit in the box. You’ve got to know you really cannot take it with you. Absolutely , you cannot take it with you. There is no way that you can get it moving on the other side. You have to understand that and realize you’ve got a precious moment right now. You can do things with things. The only purpose that we have for all this material wealth around us is that we can do something.

That’s the way Jesus went at things. He was so human. One day He was looking into a crowd of people and they were hungry. They weren’t really hungry unto death: they were just hungry, They had some sort of an inner need. They’d been there all day listening to Him preach. And He turned to a group of people and said, “How am I going to feed these people, here in the wilderness?” Man. that’s the question we have to deal with. always. He didn’t say, “What do you think we ought to do?” Should we be responsible for people who have been irresponsible in their own planning? Shall we say to ourselves, if they’d have had any sense, they’d have brought lunch? How are we going to handle it in that way?

The first guy. who probably qualified–I always call him a Lutheran–he goes like this: five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twentyfive, thirty. and counts to 4,999, 5,000 and says, the average person likes two sandwiches, that requires four slices of bread, bread is 79 cents a loaf, there are 32 slices in a loaf of bread. Let’s see, there’s got to be a little bologna in there. Bologna is $2.29 a pound–you get fourteen slices to a pound. How much money have we got? Two hundred dollars–we can’t do it.

I want to tell you right now at the beginning what Jesus Christ would say to you: Anything you don’t want to do can’t be done. That’s true. If you want to say to yourself, “It can’t be done, it can’t be done.” You cannot get 1200 reasonably intelligent people in DuPage County up for breakfast this early on a semi-snowy day in December. It can’t be done.

Behold! That’s the way life is sometimes. And the next man had a little sense. He found a boy who had some sandwiches. He must have had a Lutheran mother, because no kid walks around with that many fish and that many loaves of bread except that a mother’s concerned about the child. And the man begins that great sentence in the King James Version: “There is a lad here…” I wonder how much redemption there’s been, will be this Christmas. How many of you are going to be approached by your children saying to you, “Daddy, Mom . . ” and begin talking a little sense to you. That kid could have said, “Oops. wait just a minute. I caught the fish. I cleaned the fish. I smoked the fish. I wrapped the fish. I brought the fish. I eat the fish.”

But Jesus took that lunch and began breaking it and the miracle of miracles happened. That wonderful Lord spreadit around, and someway, somehow. it got out to everybody so that everyone was fed. You talk about the sense of humor of Jesus; He’s got a great sense of humor. When it was over. He took all those guys and said, “Pick up the pieces. – And they came in–twelve baskets full of pieces. A good friend of mine says, “One basket for every pastor who said it couldn’t be done.” That’s the way it went. And that’s the kind of Lord He is. He cares about the hungry. We’ve really got to care about the hungry.

Jesus came to a man who was sick for 38 years–and asked a dumb question–or was it? I was told in the seminary, never go to a hospital and say to somebody. “How’re you feeling?” Wouldn’t it be terrible, lying in bed for 13 days and no one ever says to you, how are you feeling? Give you a chance to complain, give you a chance to say, “Feeling much better?” Jesus came to a man and said. “Do you want to get better?” The man had been sick so long. he had rehearsed all of the stories: “The reason I can’t get better is everyone else around here has got someone to throw them in the water, and I don’t have anyone to throw me in the water.” And he kept on rehearsing his whole story. And finally Jesus just said, “Get up.” And he got up. But Jesus cared about him: he cared about that particular individual.

A little man was having trouble finding Jesus. Zaccheus couldn’t see Jesus because he was so short. Oh, no, that isn’t what the Scripture says. The Scripture says there were people in the way. He couldn’t see Jesus because of the people.

He couldn’t see Him because there were so many individuals who were living a lie. I suppose we would say today, they were conducting themselves in such a way that he couldn’t see Jesus. And so Jesus went to that man. He went to him. That’s the kind of guy He was. One by one by one by one by one. Oh, a marvelous individual.

I’ve often thought of that night when the storms were great and when the disciples finally had something they could manage. They couldn’t see the 5,000, so Jesus said. “I’m going to send the crowd away. You guys can’t even handle that. But you row to the other side. – And all those big fishermen said, “That’s our job.” And as the night went on and the strokes got tougher and the waves got higher and the winds began to blow stronger, everything was really coming apart. Things were really, really coming apart. They couldn’t even handle their craft. Accountants who couldn’t add up numbers, that was the problem. Salesmen who couldn’t sell. Governors who couldn’t govern. They were out in the middle of this stormy thing. Here comes Jesus.

The audacity. Couldn’t He have at least rowed out? Couldn’t He at least maybe swam out? But in one lordly sense of indifference He simply came out. I suspect most problems in government, most problems in business. most problems in our lives, get settled that easy. Kids ask me, and I talk to kids all over the United States, “How do you stop sinning?” I say, “Quit. – “How do 1 break this affair that’s immoral?” Quit-How do I quit lying?” Stop. It’s that kind of thing. You really don’t need 47 lessons. You just simply need a commitment to say, let’s stop it right now. And here comes Peter again saying, “Lord. I want to do that, too.”

And Jesus says. ‘Step out: let’s go.” And he steps out. We always talk about the Peter who sank in the water. Let me talk for just a second about the Peter who walked. In one great. glorious moment he did what you can’t do. what I have never done: he walked on the water until he forgot to look at Jesus and began looking at the waves and then kerplunk, down he goes. But he had the desperate sense to cry out. “Lord, save me or I perish.” Jesus then said. “Oh. come on.” And He reached down and He picked him up, and the most interesting thing is. He put him in the boat and then He got in there with him.

I want to tell you if you’re having trouble with some problem, if there’s something mulling around in your mind right now, let me tell you how to solve that. Take Jesus with you. Take Him into your office with you. Take Him to the problem. Hand it to Him. I suspect you’re going to find very quickly that the solution is there.

Jesus has such a sense of humor. If you read the 21st chapter of the Gospel of John, its after all this is over, after the  great reading that Sandy has given here, the disciples were desperate for something to do, because He hadn’t given them a plan. He didn’t say, “Now, do this and do this and do this.” No perk chart, none of that stuff. He just simply said, “As my Father sent me. so send I you.” And they didn’t know what that meant So Peter said, “I’m going fishing.”

The other guy said. “Me, too,” and there they went. All night long they were out there, fishing. These experts. They decided to do something they understood.

Have you ever figured out that usually when you can’t figure out anything else to do, you go back to doing something you think you’re an expert at? You may be looking at the wall. That’s a possibility. All kinds of things like that. It gets kind of lonely. It’s like returning to the womb again, going back there again. And here comes Jesus on the shore.

When you read it in the King James Version, it doesn’t work. I was up at Lake Geneva with a bunch of pastors, and I had them read that. It says that they were 200 cubits out.

Well, 200 cubits is a long way. It’s a football field. is what it is. A football field away. And Jesus stood there in His own cute way, and He said, “Children do you have any fish?” Try speaking your voice a hundred yards. And over the morning mist came the haunting and somewhat taunting voice of an unsolicited observer asking fishermen, “Do you have any fish?” I was on Lake Michigan fishing. and I want to tell you whenever anyone asks that question and you haven’t any, we always say. “No.” That’s what they said. Jesus pushed His luck He said, “Try the other side,” to these experts now. Of course, they had been there all night long.

There’s always some smarty … but fishermen are that way. When they aren’t catching fish, they’ll try anything, absolutely anything. That’s why they have tackle shops with these hundreds and thousands of little hooks up there with all kinds of weird things, and they even name them and describe them. They have an understanding of them.

“Try the other side.” And they did. And the grin on Jesus’ face must have been enormous, absolutely enormous.

John was sitting in the boat when all of a sudden things happened and he turned over to Peter and he said, “It’s Him.”

HI show you what happens when you meet Jesus. It says that Peter was in the boat naked. He’d been out there all night long: I guess in his skivvies, we’d say. He put his clothes on, and jumped in the water. You don’t put your clothes on and jump in the water. You take your clothes off and jump in the water. Arid Peter went to shore and came to that Jesus. He was standing there with fish already cooked, and fresh bread. Well, that’s the kind of man He was-a caring man, a tender man. The women loved Him. Children.

One time He picked the children up and put His hand upon them and blessed them. Try that sometime. See if you can pick up some child; or try being a Santa Claus and see what happens as you reach out for the child. Jesus had the capacity to communicate.

What a wonderful man that Jesus really was! He talks to you and me about being human. Your name is your name. People call me Pastor, and kids call me Charlie often. I say, “My name isn’t Pastor. Charles, that’s my name.” When I get to heaven, the Lord isn’t going to say, “Well, now, Pastor Mueller…” He’s going to call me by my name. And you all have a name, too, and someone calls you, “my little boy.” someone called you children, just like Jesus did. and He wants the same thing for you, to call you back to your roots, to your human roots.

But you see. I haven’t told you the most important thing about Him. The most important thing about Him is not that He was a man. I mean, the important thing about Him is that He was the Saviour of mankind. Let my friend Paul talk to both of us just a minute. “If you want a mind that’s turned around; if you want a mind of something new and different. let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God” — and the angels couldn’t hold themselves back that night. They had to pull back the whole wonder of heaven and get their two cents in, too. Glory to God in the highest–“who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God and made Himself of no reputation and took upon Him the form of a servant (the only form His people have ever decently claimed). And being found in the form and fashion of a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him a name which is above every name. – Just a little indicator. We’re all standing around worshiping, thinking, preparing, abusing sometimes. but it’s Christmas. “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and every tongue [declare and confess] that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.-

The best news I can tell you is that Jesus Christ was the world’s greatest man. Why don’t you be like Him? If you can’t do that, that’s why we need that grace. mercy and peace. He’s the greatest Saviour, and He’ll take you and He’ll get you through today and tomorrow and all the other days until we stand before the throne and we look at each other and say, “By golly. He was right. He has been elevated. He reigns. The Lord God Omnipotent reigns.

Halleluiah!” That kind of stuff could get this day going right couldn’t it?

God bless you.