Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / December 18, 2016 | Adore - O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

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December 18, 2016 | Adore - O Come, O Come, Emmanuel · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Good morning, Tabika Bible Church.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: Again, I don't have a full voice, but there's no pain on this side, only on your side, as you have to listen.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: Listen, you know, it's um cold morning outside.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: Why don't you take a moment and walk as far as you have to to find somebody, but greet somebody, find out if their whole hand is colder than yours, okay?
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: Take a moment to do that.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: And uh really appreciate this.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: In the Mulvane building, um, I hope all of you will sometime this month avail yourself of a chance to walk up the stairs uh to my left and see the nativity set, which uh some of us saw on one of our trips to Israel.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: We saw it in Bethlehem, uh, carved by uh uh a craftsman.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_02: There's nothing like it.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's all out of solid pieces of olive wood, and it costs as much as a small car, but but uh through the help of generous people, it got purchased.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: And and sometime go up there and take a look at that beautiful, beautiful nativity set.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: So we're in a series this month called Adore, just like tonight's uh Christmas program.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's our theme this month.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: And like Connie said during the announcement, if you if you do a thesaurus, a Google search on synonyms uh for love and synonyms for worship, you'll find that the word adore appears in both.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: But in the circle of love words that you'll find there, a several dozen of them, you'll you'll you'll look through those and you'll realize that adore is the most worshipful, most religious, shall we say, of all of the love words.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: And and when you Google all of the worship words, the synonyms of worship, find that it's the most, that adore is the most loving and tender of all of those words.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: So adore sits at the juncture, sort of the junction of both worship and love.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's what we're doing this month.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: We're coming to the Lord where worship meets love.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: And that's our theme for the month.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: And what we decided to do is since this is captured in Christmas carols and Christmas hymns more than almost anywhere else, we decided to take four of those this month.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so we've done O Come All Ye Faithful, two weeks ago.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: Last week, Hark the Herald Angels sing.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: And today we're gonna take one of the oldest songs in our hymnal, one of the oldest songs you and I sing.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's called O Come, O Come Emmanuel.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: I hope you'll come this Saturday or Sunday for the fourth of these songs, this coming Saturday, Christmas Eve, 3, 4, 5, and 6, or Sunday at 10 a.m.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: as we finish this series.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: Now, this song uh dates, I mean, the words actually are closer to the time of Christ than they are to us at the end of 2016.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: The words date from the days of you know King Alfred the Great, approximately back in the Dark Ages, the ninth century, when they were in Latin.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: The tune is about 500 years old, and it's a minor tune.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's a strange for a major holiday, right?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's a pun.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: But Strange for a Holiday is so positive, where we wish each other happy holidays, and this is a song sung in the minor key.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: But the the fact is that that's perfect for the 40% of Americans who answer surveys stating that they dread this holiday season.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: And there are a number of reasons why people are depressed at Christmas.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: There are a number of reasons that psychologists and psychiatrists and counselors and pastors find when they see that spike in the number of clients or patients who come to them complaining of Christmas blues.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: One reason may be just the Grinch.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: But there are other reasons.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: There are reasons like the high expectations that some of you know that you're gonna have this coming weekend as you meet with people perhaps that you haven't seen since last Christmas.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: Or the fact that you know that perhaps you've disappointed them this year.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: Or maybe it has to do with the with all of the Christmas commercialism, and perhaps you're in debt and there's expectations for spending money on gifts.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: Or for many people, like the sweet uh TBC girl who wrote me last night, long story about how this Christmas is just super depressing for her because she lost.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: She lost her dad this last year.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: And and when you've lost someone, you miss them more, right, at the holiday season than any other time.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so this song is especially perfect for you if you have, if you suffer from a little bit of the blues this Christmas season.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: But it's good for all of us.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_02: So let's work our way through the four stanzas that are in our hymnal.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: This is a this is a great old hymn that has dozens of stanzas written over the years, but the four that are on page 171 of our hymnal uh start with the most famous one: O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: Nearly every Christmas, someone asks me about that word Emmanuel.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: And they usually ask, what's the difference between Emmanuel with an I and Emmanuel or Emmanuel with an E?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: And the answer is pretty simple: that Emmanuel is the Hebrew word.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's the word transliterated from the Old Testament, the Old Testament, they pronounced it Emmanuel.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: And Emmanuel's how you say it, how you spell it in Greek.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's the word that appears in Matthew chapter 1.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: But both of the words mean the same thing.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: They mean uh God with us.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: God is the last two letters of the word El, as in Elohim, and Emanu means with us.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's the person we're praying to or calling upon in desperation as we cry out, Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: For many of us, this was a sad week.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: Because on Monday there was a sudden accident on Highway 24.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: And a 36-year-old boy who grew up in our church named Dustin Gillespie was suddenly killed.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: And yesterday, this room was full of people from Kansas City who knew him from his Gambinos, pizza parlors, and uh lots of friends just packed this place out.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: It was a wonderful, wonderful celebration, memorial service.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: But I noticed that Hank, in his opening prayer, as we're all you know in agony and crying, his first three words were come, Lord Jesus.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: Because that's what you cry out when you're in desperation and when you're hurting.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the way this song begins.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, come, oh come, Emmanuel, God with us.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: And ransom is the next line, captive Israel.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: All of a sudden, you have this picture of the Jews who are captive to Rome in the first century and even before Jesus was born.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: And you know that those godly Jews, those Israelites, such as Joseph and Mary, on their five-day slow trip south to Bethlehem, as they prayed, they were praying as all of as all of the Jews did.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: Please set us free.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: We're captive, set us free from the bondage of Rome, captive Israel.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: This was the cry, and in fact, this was the cry that was fulfilled when baby Jesus was born.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: We know from Luke chapter 2, the interesting story of the old man Simeon and the baby.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: The story goes like this, just to remind you.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: There was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: He was righteous, he was devout, looking forward to Israel's consolation, that is, Israel's deliverance, Israel's salvation, Israel in captivity, looking for redemption and freedom.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: And the Holy Spirit was on him.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he saw the Lord's Messiah.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: So when the parents, when Joseph and Mary brought in the child, Jesus, to be circumcised, Simeon took him up in his arms and he praised God.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: And notice what he said.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: He said, Now, Lord, I can die.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: Now, Lord, you can dismiss your slave in peace as you promised.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: For my eyes have seen.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: What had his eyes seen?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: Here it is, your salvation, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory to your people Israel.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: No wonder his father and his mother were amazed.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: But that's the prayer.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's as though we're there just before the birth of Christ, praying this.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: But all of a sudden in line three, we realize we may have misinterpreted what the author is writing because he next says that mourns in lonely exile here.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: You go, Israel wasn't in exile at this time, they're in their land.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: And you suddenly go, you know what?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: He's thinking of us, Christians.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: He's calling us Israel.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: And we're foreigners and strangers far from our real home.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: And you may say to me, but hold it, we're not Israel.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: We're not that political nation of Israel.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I say, well, yes, you're exactly right.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: We're never called Israel.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: Church is never called Israel.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: But maybe the author was thinking, probably was thinking that we are the spiritual descendants of Abraham if we've trusted Jesus Christ.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: We are called the seed of Abraham.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: So let's let's just cut him a little slack for a moment and say, yeah, he's thinking about you and he's thinking in about me, captive Christians that mourn in lonely exile down here on earth until the Son of God appears.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: Do you ever feel trapped?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: Do you ever feel like you're a captive?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: Do you ever feel like you're in exile?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there are a lot of Christians around the world who are literally trapped and imprisoned and captive.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: I think of Zhao Wai Liang, who's now today been held 908 days, arrested at choir practice at his house church in China in 2014, with his wife and his two little children, but he's been kept in prison there because China hates Christianity, especially genuine Christianity.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: And he's sitting there in jail today.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: You know his heart is crying out, oh come, oh come, Emmanuel, and ransom me, please, for I mourn in lonely exile here.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: But listen, there's something in each one of us that feels trapped, a tiny part of you, a tiny part of me that cries out, Lord Emmanuel, come and set me free.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: Stanza 2.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, come, thou rod of Jesse, free thine own from Satan's tyranny, from depths of hell, thy people save and give them victory over the grave.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: Now the oppressed cry for rescue.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: And who are they oppressed by?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my goodness, they're oppressed by Satan.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: They feel like they're in the depths of hell.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: They feel terrified of death.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: Have you ever known anyone like that?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: Every counselor and psychiatrist, psychologist would say yes.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: Especially when I counseled young people more often, collegians and so forth.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: You'd find those, especially those who'd taken drugs, who feel at times oppressed by the devil.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: And you picture this Satan, hell, death, tyranny.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: And you see it clearly in William Blake.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: 200 years ago, the famous English uh uh artist made this illustration for Milton's Paradise Lost and entitled it Satan, Sin and Death.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: Satan comes to the gates of hell.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes you'll meet up with a person, or they'll come to you and say, I feel as though I'm I'm in hell right now.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: I feel as though I'm oppressed by Satan, as though I'm in bondage and I can't get out.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: Can you help me?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: And please, please say to them, Yes, I can help you.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, there is deliverance.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: And that deliverance is found only in the babe who came at Christmas, only in the Lord Jesus Christ, who in this stanza is titled The Rod of Jesse.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, says the prophet Isaiah, the songwriter, whoever he was, the word writer over a thousand years ago, had read that verse.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: And what later was the King James Version.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: And he wrote down that Jesus was the rod of Jesse, because Jesus was the prophecy here.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: Now, we now know in more modern translations that the word shouldn't be rod, that the picture was that the descendants of David sort of died out, and the Messiah sprung as the descendant of David, like a she a shoot, a twig, a sprig.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, the baby Jesus, and will grow up and become strong and will deliver us.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's the Messiah.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so this stanza says, We're oppressed.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: Please rescue us, Rod of Jesse.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: And now we move to stanza three, and we find out that part of us that feels depressed at Christmas for whatever reason, that piece of you that feels like this is not like the Christmases past.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: It will never be like the Christmases past.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: Never, because that person is not here.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: Or it's just not like it used to be.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: Stanja three is for you.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, come, thou day spring, come and cheer our hearts, our spirits by thine advent here.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, drive away the shades of night and pierce the clouds and bring us light.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: Charles Schultz of Peanuts Cartoon Fame was a lover of Christmas, but he always pictured that Charlie Brown was a little depressed at Christmas.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so he'd always, you know, have these little cartoons where, for instance, Charlie Brown would go to the mailbox and find no Christmas cards.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody sent me a Christmas card today, goes one of those cartoons.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: I know nobody likes me.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: Why do we have to have a holiday season to emphasize it?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: And that cute and then in another cartoon, as he muses over Christmas, he says to Linus, I always end up feeling depressed.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's you.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: Merry Christmas in heaven.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: And this stanza is for those of us who are depressed, and you'll notice that it ties in depression with darkness.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, drive away the shades of night and pierce the clouds and bring us light.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a happy person.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: I don't suffer from depression, thank the Lord, generally, but I've been depressed.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so I know all of you have too, because if if I score out psychologically as super undepressed, and I've been depressed, I'm sure you've faced depression.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: And you know that depression feels sometimes like darkness, like a dark tunnel that never ends with no light at the end.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's highly appropriate that we're coming up on the winter solstice, that is the longest night and the shortest day of the year, this Wednesday.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: Both here and since Jerusalem is the same latitudes in the northern hemisphere as Topeka.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: Also in Jerusalem and in Israel, this Wednesday, the 21st, will only have about 10 hours of day, and it'll have 14 long hours of night.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's at this season that the Lord Jesus is born.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: And he's called in this song the Day Spring.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: You say, What is the Day Spring?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, again, the writer from long, long ago picked the words of the old uh of the old translations in Luke 178, where it says, Because of God's tender mercy, Zechariah, the priest, is prophesying with the Holy Spirit on him.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: And he prophesies in Luke 178, because of God's tender mercy, the sunrise, but in the old translations it says the day spring, the sunrise will break upon us from high.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: Those of you who've been with me to Israel will probably recognize this sunrise over the Sea of Galilee.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_02: And that was the prediction in the Old Testament that the dawn would break in Galilee as Jesus was born and lived his life up there.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: And the prediction is for all of us who are dark and depressed and have Christmas blues, that the coming of Jesus is like the sunrise which floods our hearts and our spirits with cheerful light.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: The fourth stanza is the deep displaced crying for home.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: Those who are locked out, those who are far from home, those who've never felt like they're really home.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, come, thou key of David, come and open wide our heavenly home, where all thy saints with thee shall dwell.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: And again, the writer has picked a verse that we're not familiar with.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: Isaiah 22, where the prophecy goes that, or God prophesies that the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder, the shoulder of the Messiah, so he shall open and none shall shut, and he shall shut and none shall open.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: And the book of Revelation picks it up in the letter to the church at Philadelphia.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: These are the words of him who's holy and true, the Messiah, Jesus, who holds the key of David.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_02: What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts, no one can open.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know anybody who knows for sure what the key of David is.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: That just appeared from nowhere.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, maybe it stands for the fact that David was the great king, and so he could, you know, the golden gate would open when, you know, when he came into town.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: But whatever it is, the Messiah holds that key now.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: And the songwriter decided that the Messiah himself should be called the key of David.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so he says, Oh, come, thou key of David, come and open wide our heavenly home, as though we're we're outside our home.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: And no matter where you've been, it's never home, home.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that you love being home for Christmas, but it's never, you know, home home.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: As C.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: S.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: Lewis says, the fact that our heart yearns for something urgent.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Can't supply proof that heaven must be our home.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: And that cry of our hearts for home, home, for something more than even exists in your home is proof that there is a home that we long for to be unlocked and opened to us.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: So, friends, we cry out.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: We cry out because we're trapped and we long for freedom.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: We cry out because we're oppressed and we long for rescue.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: We cry out because we're depressed and we long for cheerful light.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: We long because we're displaced and we long for home.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so we cry out in our hearts and we cry out to Emmanuel, God, come be with us.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: We cry out to the rod of Jesse to set us free.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_02: We cry out to the day spring, the sunrise to come on earth and give us light.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: We cry out for the Messiah to unlock our heavenly home.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: And all of a sudden we come across the chorus of this very sad cry, this sad prayer, and we find that the chorus tells us to rejoice, rejoice.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: When will that happen?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: When will he come to us?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: We ask that question of the song, and we find out that there are really one, two, three answers to the Jews who are crying this prayer, to Joseph and Mary and Simeon.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: The answer came in 4 BC when baby Jesus was born in Bethlehem.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: He came, he was born.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: Emmanuel was there on earth among us.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: Thank God he came and the angels cried out, Come and worship, rejoice, because Emmanuel has come to earth.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: But that prayer still flows out of our hearts, for we are still trapped and oppressed and depressed and displaced at times.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: And we find that we have an answer again in the future.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know when it will happen.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: I suspect it will come soon in this century.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: But the answer is that he will still come, and this is our prayer, and the answer makes us rejoice, for he will come.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: You know what?
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: When you compare the Christmas carols, in fact, all of the congregational songs that we sing in our church in the last 40 years, in our hymnal or even the worship songs, and you compare the songs we sing now to the congregational songs that were sung in the first 100 years of America's existence, of our nation's existence back in the 17 and 1800s, and people have made that comparison.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know what the most startling difference is between the songs they sang back then in church and the songs we sing today?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: And that is the relative paucity, the fewness of the songs that we sing today compared to back then, the songs we sing today about the second coming of Christ.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: They constantly sang.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: A high percentage of their songs were these pleas, whether they were Negro spirituals, you know.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody knows the trouble I've seen.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, come, Lord Jesus.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_02: All of those songs about the coming of Christ and the songs today, even in your hymnal, the hymnal in front of you, there's there's a small percentage of songs about the second coming.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: That may be because we don't long for it as much, because we live much happier lives today.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: We're not as oppressed as the people used to be back in the early days of the church, or in 800 or 900 A.D.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: or in 1500 A.D.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: or in 1800 A.D.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: But there is a huge difference.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: And there's also a huge difference, right, between how much we think and talk about the second coming of Christ and how much the New Testament does.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: Where Paul said it was the desire of his heart, where Philippians he longed for it.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: In Corinthians, it was that blessed hope that he constantly had.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: It was his greatest desire.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: Not only that, it's called our deepest encouragement, Paul says to the Thessalonians.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: Wherefore, encourage one another with these words.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: And in the book of Revelation, you have the Lord Jesus saying, It's your final hope.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: I am coming soon, he says.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: And the final words of the whole Bible in Revelation are, Amen.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: Come, Lord Jesus.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_02: I would call upon you to make that cry.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: Oh come, oh, come, Emmanuel.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: More the cry of your heart this Christmas.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: I love the fact that my mommy always wrote a Christmas letter, end-of-the-year letter, and she always ended, you know, this narrative of what all of her kids were doing with this little poem that she wrote, and the last line of the poem always rhymed, but it was always something like, and may he come back in 2017.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: It was always the last line.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: It was always the cry of her heart.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: Now she's with him in glory.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: But it should be the cry of our heart, and I would urge you to pray the second coming prayer more often than you do.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: And you say, but I'm depressed right now.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm feeling oppressed and depressed and trapped and displaced.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why I say to you, you know what?
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: This prayer gets answered even in the here and now.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's a prayer for the here and now, for those who are trapped and oppressed and depressed and displaced.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: You cry out to Emmanuel and you find that that prayer gets answered.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: He does bring you rescue.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_02: He does bring you freedom.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: He does bring you joy, a miraculous joy.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: You can tell your friends this, those friends that you know that you're talking to.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I love the fact that so many of you here are spending time with high school or college students or kids over in the high crest area.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: You're talking to people who need Jesus and who have hard Christmases.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: And you can tell them that Jesus is there for them and would like to move into their lives in a special way this Christmas to meet their deepest need.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: My darkest Christmas.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure I've shared a little bit about it with you before, but my most depressing and darkest Christmas was when I was 24 years old.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: I loved going home for Christmas.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: And even in seminary, I'd always go home for Christmas, down in Dallas, but I'd always go home to Oregon for Christmas, because there would be 12 children and dad and mom and that little plastic Christmas tree of the old lights, and everybody had to buy all the other 11 children a Christmas gift, even if you were three years old.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so even if it was a little piece of paper with the words, I love you.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: And there's hundreds of gifts under the tree and lots of food and lots of laughter.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: And in our tiny little house, crowded, filling the living room, hallway, and dining room, and there we all were.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: And it was so much fun.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: But this Christmas, I called home and crying, said, I can't come.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: Why not?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: I said, I have a 150-page master's thesis.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: I have to write that's due in three weeks at the end of Christmas holiday.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_02: I can't come home.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: And my two roommates left the house to go home.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: And there I was with three weeks by myself, layered in that cold house.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: No money for little money for heat.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: I hear Dallas at 16 degrees this morning.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: It reminds me of those days.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: And there I was in a hardbacked chair in the living room with a table, the books all over, everywhere on the floor, and so forth, a little typewriter plunking out my master's thesis, feeling so sorry for myself.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: It was incredible.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: I played the victim big time.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_02: I'm alone.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: I'm lonely.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: I was almost happy.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_02: I worked myself up into an ulcer.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know what it was, but I was laying on the floor for hours just in such pain.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: So I drove myself to the emergency room.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_02: And it was so fun to see all those people there.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's been 10 days since I saw anybody.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: I was just breaking open cans of soup, you know, all alone.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: I went to the emergency room and they they treated me for my ulcer and uh came back in type.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: I take it back.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: I did see one other person.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_02: I'll tell you about that later.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: But but but during that dark time, you know how it is when you're depressed and when you're alone, when you're in lonely exile?
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: Jesus comes to you.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: He comes to you in a way that he doesn't come to you any other time.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_02: He comes to you when you cry out to him.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: When you cry out to him and you're down at the bottom of a well and you're looking up, it's all dark, and all you can see is the stars.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: He comes to you in a special way.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_02: That Christmas is unforgettable to me because of how uniquely, how uniquely I celebrated Christmas with no tree and no gifts that Christmas.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there was one gift on Christmas Day.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: There was a knock on my door, and I went to the door.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: There was a high school girl I hardly knew.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: And she was holding out some chicken and a and a coffee cake for me.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: She said I heard you were here alone.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_02: Thought you might want something to eat.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Melody, right?
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: She said, Yeah, I'm Melody Smith.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that's how I met my future wife, basically.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: Now I I can't promise to you, singles, that that's that that's what'll happen for you.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if you cry out to God and you're lonely at Christmas or depressed, but it happened to me, and for that reason as well.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's an incredibly memorable Christmas.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_02: But I am here to tell you that you can rejoice this Christmas because Emmanuel can come to you at this time of year, even if you feel trapped, especially if you feel trapped and oppressed or depressed or displaced this Christmas.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: Let's sing those words right after I pray.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: Can we do that?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: Heavenly Father, I pray for these dear folks, all of whom have a little corner of their heart that has a longing in it that is unfulfilled this Christmas.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: Heavenly Father, would you come to them as they cry out to you today and this week in Jesus' name?
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: Amen.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Until the son of God reached.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: Have a blessed week.