December 7, 2025
All I Want For Christmas Is You
- Matt Nickoson
Sermon Notes
Have you ever been given a gift you needed, but didn’t know what to do with it?
Isaiah: a prophet of God from 739-681 BC.
A prophet is one who hears a Word from the Lord and communicates that on God’s behalf. Sometimes they are called “seers” because God gives them a revelation and they search out what God’s revealing to them.
2 Corinthians 12:1-4 NIV
I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.
Isaiah 6:8b NIV
“Here am I. Send me!”
Isaiah 6:9-10 NIV
He said, “Go and tell this people:
‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding;
be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’
Make the heart of this people calloused;
make their ears dull
and close their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”
Isaiah 6:11-12 NIV
Then I said, “For how long, Lord?”
And he answered:
“Until the cities lie ruined
and without inhabitant,
until the houses are left deserted
and the fields ruined and ravaged,
until the Lord has sent everyone far away
and the land is utterly forsaken.”
Even though Isaiah called the people in His day to believe in and obey the Lord, they hardened their hearts and refused.
Matthew 13:15 NIV
Even though Isaiah called the people in His day to believe in and obey the Lord, they hardened their hearts and refused.
“For this people’s heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears, understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.’
The power of the Christmas story is that Jesus came to bring healing to our troubled hearts.
1 Peter 1:8-9 NIV
Though you have not seen him (Jesus), you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
Q: Why would my soul need saved?
A: Because I have hardened my heart to the ways of God.
1 Peter 1:10-11 NIV
Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow.
Jesus’ earthly sufferings bring me eternal glories.
1 Peter 1:12 NIV
It was revealed to them (the prophets) that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.
Isaiah 8:21 NIV
Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land; when they are famished, they will become enraged and, looking upward, will curse their king and their God”
Isaiah 8:22 NIV
Then they will look toward the earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness.
Isaiah 9:1 NIV
Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan.
Isaiah 9:2 NIV
The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
a light has dawned.
Isaiah 9:4 NIV
For as in the day of Midian’s defeat,
you have shattered
the yoke that burdens them,
the bar across their shoulders,
the rod of their oppressor.
Until you realize that you are a slave to what controls you, you won’t accept that you need a new leader.
Isaiah 9:6 NIV
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.