You got to hand it to them - they’re creative and a bit decadent about their food.

I mean the editors of The Insider’s Report. Many of you probably had one delivered to your mailbox in late November.
Listen to some of their products:

Chocolate lovers swoon over the intricate detail... their eyes are drawn to the exquisite quality, while the palate anticipates the intense pleasure to come. (p2)

Pretty in its sparkling raspberry-and-blackcurrent glaze, our 3-Berry Mousse Torte offers a breezy taste of summer... PC Tiramisu torte is a monument to good taste: coffee-soaked biscuit sponge topped with a rich tiramisu-style cream flavoured with brandy and dusted with cocoa powder.... (p.7)

Our new sugar pie is made in the style of the best Quebec bakers:... it’s rich! try a narrow slice served warm with unsweetened whipped cream - and a cup of strong black coffee..... luscious! (p.8)

If you’re not buying this stuff, chances are you’re probably baking it. Tasty treats that get put on platters and served at seasonal parties all over the region - in offices, missions, homes and halls.

Invitations go out –

                    Come, join us! Have a good time.
So we go. And we do have a good time; maybe even a great time. But soon it’s all over and fades into the background......

and then, really - when it’s all done, what are you left with?

The loneliness - that’s still there.

Frustration at work - hasn’t left.

Struggles in your relationship - as tough as ever.

The nagging sense that there’s got to be more to life than what you’re experiencing right now – in spite of gallons of apple cider and all that decadent sweetness..... still there!

What are your plans?

How are you getting ready?

Understand that filling our calendar with hour after hour of running from party to party, and feeding frenzy to buffet trough, hoping that it will gain us contentment is sort of like pouring water into a bucket hoping to fill it......

.... without first plugging the huge hole in the bottom.

What goes in will drain right out again.

There is inside of every human being what some have termed "a hole in the soul." A leak, a nagging something or other that somehow seems to suck vitality out of our existence, to leave life a dull drag until it gets plugged.

Something that pasta, shrimp and buffalo wings could never do.

While this paper is kind of fun to look through for a bit, there’s something much more substantial, deeper, lasting, being offered to us here this morning.

And so, we’ll put the Insider’s Report aside and turn our attention instead to a "Report From The Inside." I invite you to listen to a few words that come to us from the Halls of Heaven. They are God’s Words, infinitely true and reliable words, given to us through the Prophet Isaiah.

Listen, listen to me and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.

What Isaiah is offering is soul-food, nourishment that reaches deep inside, plugs the hole and fills us up in a way that lasts.

He offering something that, unlike Turkey Wellington and PC Decadent Chocolate Mints, is free. Not that it’s cheap. Rather, someone else has picked up the tab.

What is placed on a holy platter before us, that which can truly satisfy us and make our lives rich, hope-filled and eternally secure is mentioned in verse 3.

I will make an everlasting covenant with you,

The one speaking is God.

The one to whom He speaks is you.

The offering is a Covenant - everlasting, characterised by faithful love.
 
 

"Covenant" - we don’t understand that too well in our contemporary culture.

"Contract" we understand. You keep your end of the bargain. I’ll keep mine. We’ll each pay what is owed the other. And then we go our separate ways. No further obligations. I’ll give to you what I promise. Just make sure I get proper compensation for it.

Covenant, on the other hand, isn’t looking to the end of obligation or ensuring it get’s its proper share.

Covenant is not concerned first of all with getting, but with giving, with sharing.

If you want a picture of covenant look at a couple that’s been married 40 or 50 years. Think of all they’ve been through. How they’ve stuck it out with each other. Supported. Laughed. Cried. Shared. Cared. Enjoyed.

Simply been.

Together.

Think of that when you hear these bible words:

I will make an everlasting covenant with you,

The faithful love promised to David was a promise to never abandon him or his family; to be his God and the God of his descendants, to be with him always.

That faithful love is what brought about Christmas.

Children, teens, seniors - you’ve helped us focus on the birth of Jesus.

Jesus - the one known as "Son of David." His mother was Mary - a descendant of David. Jesus’ father was the Holy Spirit.

Jesus is the Son of David and the Son of God.

He is God come to earth to be with us. Live as one of us. Die for us.

Secure a place in God’s eternal home for us.

Send His Holy Spirit to live within us.

When God came to earth in Jesus, He came to stay.

He came to stay with you.

Always.
 
 

All the rich food of the season will pass through and be gone.

The stream of millennium parties will soon be over.

But if you have taken up God on His offer of a relationship, a covenant relationship -

- if you say "Yes" to Jesus -

You’ll have a gift that no one, ever, can take away from you.

Christmas is the Son of God become human - born in a manger, born to bring people back into a living, ongoing, eternal relationship with their Heavenly Creator.

And, as the Bible says in another place -

"If God is on our side, who can be against us?"

My friends, in the days to come, please don’t get all caught up in the grub and the gifts. It’s cheap tinsel compared to the greatest, most costly of gifts – the gift of God’s Son to take away your sin, to gain you an eternally secure place in God’s family, to grant you His Spirit.

God has paid the price.

All you need to do is reach out and receive this great gift.

If you do, then no matter what all or else happens, Christmas is complete.

The hole in your soul, the hole that leaves you incomplete

the hole that only God can fill

will be filled.

If you don’t, no amount of smiling, cheering, drinking or eating will cover up.

It will all have been, quite bluntly, a waste of time and money.

Jesus has come.

God is here.

Where are you?