Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / December 4, 2016 | Adore - O Come, All Ye Faithful

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December 4, 2016 | Adore - O Come, All Ye Faithful · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: So my microphone's on now and um because I because I had to turn it on.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's great, uh it's great to be here.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um on Tuesday or Wednesday, I called uh the arrow nose throat guy, Iron O'Shroat Doctor, Dr.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Grendel Tyler, who comes here, and I said, I'm desperate.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: I want to preach on Sunday.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's the first week of our Adore Christmas series.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I I was just whispering or scratching then.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: So he gave me some steroids, and so I'm really strong right now.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: And uh some other miracle drugs.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm so happy.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: But I'll it's a shorter message this morning because I've had to save my voice.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I'll speak, try to speak slowly and clearly and not, you know, wipe you out.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I've got some special drink here.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: And my wife is this belief, she's gonna kill me.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't mention this in the other services, but she she read this like 19th century story where if people have bad colds, they put a little whiskey in their drink.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: She found some whiskey, and I've been drinking hot tea all week long, morning, noon, night, hundreds of cups.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: She slipped some whiskey into my tea one night.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: I slept like a log.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: She laughed and laughed and laughed.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, it didn't help my cold at all.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: It just, you know.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: So um can't believe I told you that story.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: So this is uh let me let me share with you, by the way, one more thing.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: I want to make something clearer.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: We have this great Christmas project where it's sort of split between Topeka and Haiti.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And Topeka side, the rescue mission is especially for the Christmas gifts.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're building this new children's palace, and it's not done yet, but and so we'll have money that we can give to them because we're gonna split the money we get between this Haiti village, which we're gonna really bless, because um, not just with a well, but there's a there's a huge family there, ten children, the father just died, so we're gonna bless that.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: They have no idea how we're gonna help that village.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be great.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: But here in town, rescue mission, they need these Christmas gifts uh, you know, in the next 10 days or so.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: So so we're just gonna we're gonna put out boxes.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to bring actual gifts, like they love jeans, if uh we'll we'll put a list of the kind of gifts that they want.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't get their their rescue mission bulletin and you haven't seen it, uh you bring nice toys, you bring stuff like that.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll have boxes here.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: You can bring them by during the week this week.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: It'll just be next Sunday only for the boxes.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: But then we'll also give them money that'll help them with Christmas gifts and other things.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to make that clear about the boxes next Sunday only.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: So uh back to a door.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Some of you have a word for the year, you do that, which is great.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, but I want to give all of us a word for um for Christmas, for December.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that's gonna be the word, the theme word for our church for this month, which is the word adore.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, it's uh it's the word that's going to be the theme of our Christmas extravaganza, our musical extravaganza, the theme of our sermon series, it's the theme of everything.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, by the way, aren't aren't these decorations I mean, aren't this amazing?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh we had 17 guys, 17 guys came in on Monday, spent the day putting up 2,500 lights.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Tony came up, worked, you know, built these things.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate it, Tony.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I just I just love it.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I'm going to end the message here today by telling us to move beyond decorations, music, and everything else to true adoration.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: So um I want to talk to you a minute about the word adore, since it's our word for the month.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's a word that we don't use very often once we pass our teens or twenties.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's a word that's often associated with how a boy feels about his mother or uh a little girl feels about her schoolteacher.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: There has never been, nor ever will be, anything quite so special as the love between a mother and a son, is a famous saying.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: A boy adores his mother.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: And we use it when we're in love, you know, when we're 18 or 20 or 22.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, that's that is me and Millie.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and and we use it when we're engaged and when we're in love and so forth.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: But and and you just you just your heart just adores the other person.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: Not a word, though, that you think of later in life so much.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: You use other words.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: You think of other great words.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but this is an interesting word because it's such a unique word of love.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: But when we use it at Christmas, uh, it's a word that we remind ourselves also is in another family of words.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's in the family of worship words, or worship words, or religious words.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's in there with venerate, it's in there with idolize, it's in there with revere, as in reverence.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I would submit to you that of all the words, all the love words we use, darling and so forth, love is the one word of the love words that has most, that has the the that also has worship in it, and that is all that is the most spiritual, the most reverent, the most religious.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: And of all the worship words, that love is the most tender and the most warm and the most full of love.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so I want us this month to have one foot in the family.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: I I love words, and so forgive me for my wordsmithing here, but I have one foot in the family of love and one foot in the family of worship and combine those two things, especially at the end of this service when you're taking the Lord's table and you have the bread in your hand and the cup in your hand, with one foot in the world of worship and the other in the world of love.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: I want you to adore Jesus Christ the Lord.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in this series that we're gonna do, a Christmas series, what we're going to do, Tim Collins and I, is we're going to uh take four of the great traditional Christian Christmas hymns, and we're gonna go through them and most appropriately in this first week, I'm gonna introduce you to a special look at O come all ye faithful.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, come all ye faithful, because the chorus is perfect for us.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh oh, come let us adore him.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to look it up in your hymnal, it's page 178.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: Here's uh, you know, my little cell phone picture of it uh last night.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh come all ye faithful is an old hymn.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: You can see it right above the song in your hymnal.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: It um it's a Latin, it's originally written as a Latin hymn, we think in the mid-1700s.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Some folks think it was written much earlier, but we know uh uh we think that it was an Englishman uh who wasn't it was just a layman who wrote it in Latin and combined it with other Latin hymns that he wrote uh seven years later in a little uh booklet called uh various hymns that he put out, that he published.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it was written in Latin as a deste fidelis.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Are you familiar with that?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: You've heard that, haven't you?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you've heard it sung.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Latin is so it lends itself.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go through this in Latin, by the way, because so many of the words are carried over into English.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Adeste Fidelis, O come or be present, you faithful ones.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Laeti triumphantes.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: There's the word triumphant, is in joyful and triumphant.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Winite, if you're familiar with I came, I saw, I conquered.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Weeni widi wichi.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: This is I came or come, come in Bethlehem.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: Natum is from, you know, nativity, birth.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: We day, video, right?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: See his birth, behold him born.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Regum like reg uh regal, king, king of angels, ungelorum.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: We need adoramus, come let us adore.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: We nite adoramus, we need the adoramus, dominum the Lord, come let us adore the Lord.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: It was translated into English 100 years later, during the days of uh Abe Lincoln, and uh and it came to be then.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, come all ye faithful, as in our hymnals.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And what I want to do is walk you through the three stanzas of this hymn this morning in the next 15, 20 minutes.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you notice that the first stanza is a call for all the faithful to do something, to come.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: The imperative is used four times in that first stanza.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh come, oh come, oh come, come and behold him.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Come is a very common command we use, especially when we're speaking to our children.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh say it to a child when she's just learning to walk.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you're a returning veteran, you hold out your arms and you say it to your boy who runs to jump into your arms.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: If you're training a dog, you train him to come.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And this command is a command that is given not to children, however, but it is given, as you work your way through the song, it is given to you and to me, to the faithful, to people who are believers, to people who are Christians, who are this is a sort of a word that sort of describes all of those who love the Lord, who have come to him in saving faith, and then who are faithful to come to church and join with God's people and worship him.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, if you work your way through this stanza, it answers four questions.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: The second question is, how should we come?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the answer is with two attitudes.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: The first is happy, joyful, and the second is triumphant.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Why triumphant?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the answer is that now that God has come to earth as a babe, his victory is assured.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Triumph.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: It will be ours.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: We weren't sure about it all these thousands of years.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: It appeared the other side was winning.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: But now we know that God will break in and he will win the victory in the great battle of the ages between darkness and light.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the third question is where should we come?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, come ye to Bethlehem.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: And you say, uh, too much money, can't get there.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you say, it must not be literal.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think it is literal.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think, I think that, you know, um, it's literal and it's figurative that we we come in our mind's eye to Bethlehem.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: But this was literally a call by someone to other people to come to Bethlehem.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: To behold him born the king of angels.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden we know this is a reflection, it's drawn out of an actually historical event that happened on Christmas Eve, right?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: When the angels came to shepherds in the field, and a story recorded for us in Luke chapter 2.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: And the angels basically said, Come to Bethlehem, and before, behold him who's born our king, king of us, king of the angels.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: So let's look at this passage.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: It has three scenes in it.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: The famous Christmas passage.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: The first scene is in the fields here on earth, Luke 2, 8 and 9.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: This is the new King James version.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, a single angel, and the glory of the Lord shone round them, and they were sore afraid, is the old King James, greatly afraid is the new King James.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Verses 10 and 11.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Then the angel said to them, Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which will be to all people, for there is born to you this day in the city of David.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: What's that city?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: Bethlehem, a savior who is Christ the Lord.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: And this will be the sign to you.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: You'll find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: I love those words swaddling cloths.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's changed from clothes in King James to cloths.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Newer translation, like New American Standard, taking out the word swaddling.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'll never take out that word again ever since the Christmas morning I awoke with uh a bus full of people on the Greyhound headed from Dallas up to Portland, Oregon.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: And we were just uh in Northern California, the dawn came, it was beautiful, people started talking.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: I walked up from my seat and went to the bus driver and said, You think it'd be okay if I read the Christmas story?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's Christmas morning.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Sure, handed me the mic, turned it on.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I said to everybody, I just thought it's so appropriate Christmas morning.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'd read the Christmas story.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: And here's Luke 2, 1 through 14.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I started reading and I got down to that verse.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: You'll find a babe wrapped in claws, I read since I was reading from the New American Standard.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: And a shriek came out of halfway down the bus at that point.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: He's a cult, he's a cult.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Don't listen to him.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: I know the verse.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't say that.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: It says swaddling clothes ever since then.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, the bus driver just put out his hand at that point, took the microphone back.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: And ever since then, I vowed I would never read the Christmas story in public without reading it in King James or New King James.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we have swaddling claws lying in a manger.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Now the second scene is the sky scene.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts, praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so when the angels went away from their heaven, shepherds said to one another, What would you say?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'd say, hey, let's go knock on.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta tell my cousin Jared, I gotta tell him we what we just saw.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: These angels are awesome.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: We just saw some angels.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: Fortunately, they didn't do that.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: They said, Let us go to Bethlehem and let us see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: And now the third scene, the manger.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the babe lying in a manger.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Next verse, by the way, says that when they beheld him, when they saw him, then they went and told all the neighbors what they had seen.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the story behind stanza number one.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Except that stanza number one isn't addressed to the shepherds.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: It moves from the shepherds to address it to us.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, in a sense, it's a combination of that first night, angels saying to the shepherds, Come to Bethlehem, come and behold him.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: But it's really moving forward and saying to you and to me, you know what?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: You and I need to, in our mind's eye, come to Bethlehem.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: And we need to see him, we need to behold Jesus in our mind's eye.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's an interesting phrase.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Come and behold.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's not exactly what the angels said to the shepherds.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think that maybe the songwriter brilliantly picked that out because he knew the gospels.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: He knew them well.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you know the gospels well, you know this phrase, come and see, or come and behold, is used two important times in the story of Jesus' life.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Not at his birth, but it's used at the beginning of his public ministry and at the end of his public ministry.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's used in John chapter 1.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus has just come out of the water where he got baptized by John the Baptist.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: John the Baptist said to his followers, see him, that's the guy you should be following.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so they turned a number of them and they started following Jesus.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: And one of them said to Jesus, Where are you staying?
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus said, Come and see.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that phrase at the beginning of Jesus' public life was picked up at the end of his public life at the tomb.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus has now died.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: And the Mary and the other Jesus followers have come to the tomb.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: And they say, We want to go in, but nobody can roll it away.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the angel says, Listen, he's gone, he's risen.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Come and behold, come and see the place where he lay.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: That first story, Jesus, when the words are found on the lips of Jesus Himself, spoken to Jesus' followers, that happens in the afternoon.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: We're told it was about four o'clock.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: In the afternoon, at the beginning of his public ministry, come and see where I lay my head.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: The second time happens here in the early morning dawn.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: Angels to Jesus followers, at the end of Jesus' public ministry.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Come and see where he used to lay his head.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then in the song, the song pictures it happening back up the time a little bit into the middle of the night when it's dark on earth.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: Before Jesus has had his ministry, and now an angel speaking to shepherds at the beginning of Jesus' life.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Come and behold.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: Come and see the Savior.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Where he lays in a manger.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that neat?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: How the first stanza grabs hold of that.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: But then it takes a strange turn because instead of the angels saying, Come and behold him, Savior of the world, or come and behold him, God, come as a baby, they say, Come and behold him, born the king of angels.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Why do they say that?
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: I say that because they're angels and they're acknowledging he is their king.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe they're thinking of a future day, when he, who was their king up until now in heaven, will return and he will lead them as the king of the angelic armies, the angelic hosts, who will come, this baby, born the king of angels, who one day will return as the king of angels and conquer the earth and bring his kingdom to earth.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: All of that in the first stanza of O come, all ye faithful, which concludes with the chorus, Oh come, let us adore him.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: Come, let us adore him.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: The trifecta of commands in this song to you and to me, the faithful.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Behold, adore.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then we move to uh stanza two, in which the writer, following the text of scripture, moves us up into the sky.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: It says though invisibly we are carried up, and we overhear Gabriel or whoever the choir director is calling the heavenly host to join that lone angel.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the single command is sing choirs of angels.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: Sing in exaltation, sing all ye bright hosts of heaven above.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: What are we to sing?
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we ask the questions as we work through this stanza.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Who is to sing?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: The choirs of angels or all the bright hosts of heaven above.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: How?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: In exaltation, in joy.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: And what are they to sing?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they're to sing exactly what they sang.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, they sang glory to God.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: Glory to God in the highest.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that's stanza two.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: We've joined, we've joined the call to the angels to sing.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: And we conclude, oh, come, let us adore him.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Let us adore him.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Come let us adore him, Christ the Lord.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Stanza three wonderfully follows the text into the manger room.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: We actually do it like the shepherds do.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: We actually come and adore him.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: We actually sit at the communion table this morning.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: And we move from simply commanding everyone to adore him, or actually going to adore him.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we do it in this way.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: We say, Yea, Lord, we greet thee, born this happy morning.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry I have to laugh.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'll bet not one of you in the friendly greeting this morning looked at the next person and said, Greetings.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Not one of you gave the, I can, you know, you can sort of imagine Amish folks looking at each other and saying, We greet thee.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: I must confess to you something personal.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: My father, a wonderful college professor, had a 19th century personality, but he lived in the 20th century, born in 1918.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: And even in front of his 12 children, he had a heart.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Time ever saying hello.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: He had a hard time with really, you know, sort of down home.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, how are you?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't do that.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: So in the morning, even in the when we'd got to join him at the barn with chores, or when he'd come home from college as a professor, I kid you not, he would open the door, we'd run to him, and he'd say, Greetings.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: He would.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I had, as we grew up, I had a brother one year younger than me, a red-headed rebel named Steve.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: And Steve would always start making fun of me.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: Dad would say, Greetings, which is just his way.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: A man with a 19th-century pal personality in a 20th-century world.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: And my brother Steve would always turn to us and he'd say, Greetings and salutations.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: My dad meant well, but I would guess that during communion, when I urge you to have one foot in the world of worship and the other foot in the world of love, as you come to adore him, I don't encourage any of you, unless you have a 19th century personality in the 21st century, to say to the Lord, We greet thee this happy morning.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: But you have to understand that these words were written, were translated out of this 18th century Latin in the 19th century during Abe Lincoln's time, when people did, in Abe Lincoln's day, walk up and not say hello, they said greetings on this happy morning.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: So these are 19th century words.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then they move, by the way, to an amazing theology.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus to thee be all glory given, Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: One of the great verses in the Bible, the heart of incarnation theology.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Read it with me off the screen.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: John 1 14.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the third stanza when we come to actually adore him.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: In simple language or with the deepest theology, we adore him.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: This babe in a manger in Christ with the Lord.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: And we are going to do that this morning at the Lord's table.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: And all through the month, as this is our word for the month, we will adore him.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: We will adore him.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: We will adore him in Christ, the Lord.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: But there's something working against us all month long, fighting against us.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: There is sort of a canine mentality.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: At Thanksgiving, I was at the thing, our Thanksgiving feast at our house with all the kids there.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: And perched to the right of my foot, between me and my son Craig was his dog, Petra.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: A wonderful uh large dog sitting there.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: And because I love dogs, and because I like to worm my way into their heart, having gotten permission uh from his masters, Craig and Emily, I would occasionally toss him some turkey or a bit of pork.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: And he became very friendly to me.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: But occasionally I would toss him a piece of meat and he would be staring elsewhere, such as at Craig or Emily, and he wouldn't notice.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say, Petra, and she would look at me and I would point at the meat.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'd say, and Petra wouldn't look down my finger at the meat.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: Petra would just stare at my finger because that's the way of dogs.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: I sort of confused the pointer for the destination.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so you found that to be true if you've had a dog that plays fetch and you throw something, a ball, and they bring back a stick or the ball, but you throw it when they're not looking and you point at it, fetch.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: They just look at your hand.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: And C.S.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: Lewis made a wonderful point about this years ago.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: He said we often find people deliberately and inducing upon themselves this dog-like mind, looking at what they're studying, but unwilling to look along it.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the danger at Christmas, isn't it?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because the pointers at Christmas are so beautiful.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: The beautiful Christmas lights are a pointer toward the manger.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: The Christmas music.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: I listened to one or two of those wonderful music specials that's on television at this time of year this week.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Christmas pointers of Christmas gift buying and gift giving, which can be so much fun and so joyful at Christmas.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: Just a pointer.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Those wonderful Christmas movies, again, a pointer, not the destination.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: The danger is that we will be canine, we will be dog like this Christmas, and like so many other millions, that we will look at the pointer and never look at the destination.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: The key to adoration, dear friends, this morning and all month long is to keep your eye on the destination and to allow those pointers to always move your eye to the manger.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: To the manger.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: Where with one foot in worship and with one foot in love, you speak out and adore the Christ of the Lord.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we will do during the Lord's table right now.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: Right after we sing three stanzas.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, O come, oh come me to bat him for the king of angels.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh come let us adore him.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh come let us adore him.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh come let us adore Gorin.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh this shop.