Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / December 3, 2017 | Let There Be Light - Christmas Dawn

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December 3, 2017 | Let There Be Light - Christmas Dawn · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I love light.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you love uh Melody will tell you I'm sort of a fanatic on light.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I love, I have more flashlight, far more flashlights than I need.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I have more work lights.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm light bulbs cannot be burned out for more than 27 seconds at our house.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's against the law.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I love Christmas light.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: One of the reasons I love Christmas lights, I love the Christmas lights.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I love traveling around.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: I love the fact that, you know, uh we have these beautiful lights right in the auditorium.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks to those of you who put them up.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I love Christmas lights.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: We've uh got Christmas lights up at our house up both up both sides of the driveway, and those old colored lights, my favorite.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, it's not really and by the way, we got this light show coming up.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I hope you're gonna be part of that.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, our house really isn't worth coming to see for those lights.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a, you know, just an ordinary, ordinary old house.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, this house, the Kingman house, is always the 30,000 lights.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's up there on Northwest Polk, north, north Topeka.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: But we always uh take a trip in our car, go around and look at houses like this and look at Christmas lights.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: We just love Christmas lights.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so our theme this month is all about light.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I like that theme.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: But it's kind of a metaphor for how people are doing at Christmas because light and darkness are such opposites, and some people are full of light, and other people, you know, are struggling not with, you know, they're struggling with some depression.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: I know that some of you are doing really well and you're waking up with a song in your heart, and there's light that's filling even the darkest crevices of your life, because either you're in love or you're doing well at school or or on your job or the baby was born healthy or something.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I also know that there are people uh that I'm talking to right now uh who are more who are going into Christmas with more shadow or maybe just outright darkness because the school is not going well, or the job's not going well, or the love has broken down, or the baby wasn't born healthy, or maybe, or maybe your Christmas lights inside your house are going to shine this year on a rocking chair that's empty, or a place at the table that was full, filled last year and will not be filled this year.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so, and so Christmas will be darker for you this year.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things about Christmas is it's so involved with family.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And family, you know, most of your family, their extended family, they're sort of in the shadows all year long, which is hooray for some of them.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, for others of them, you know, uh, you know, they're like light bulbs, and they're gonna come to your house, and that's really a positive thing, but then the others are gonna come too, and so the whole thing is kind of complicated.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Christmas is really complicated, right?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: When it comes to family, and it's sort of a mix of light and dark, and it's all shadowy.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm excited that this month, as we're focusing on light as a church, that we're gonna address, you know, how God speaks into your heart and into my heart.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Both to those of you who feel full of light right now and those of you who are struggling in the shadows.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: And this sermon series is going to address those of you with the four passages, four key passages in the Bible that speak of Christmas light.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And four different Christmas lights we're actually gonna talk about because there are four different lights in Scripture that have to do with Christmas: the dawn and night lights and sun rises and Christmas star.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: You go, ha, I know that one.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so that's what we're gonna talk about.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: And and and to start out this series and to move into Christmas, uh, why don't we do two things?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't we just all take a deep breath, a cleansing breath, and go to prayer?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Father, um we uh we we we are in uh we are in a complicated place, as always, this season, because Christmas is a complicated thing.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's complex, it's always a mix.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: It always feels like there's some really lit up stuff, and then there's some dark stuff, and we find ourselves sort of in the shadows at times.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're open.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: We'd like you to speak to us and help us during this month.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: We would like to be really great for you and and the best of ourselves, and and and we'd like to be the best of Jesus this month, and in his name we pray.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, Christmas dawn.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: There are actually there's actually a passage in the Bible that talks about Christmas as dawn, and it comes from the most famous prophet in the Old Testament, the greatest prophet, his name is Isaiah, lived about 700 BC.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: The passage starts chapter 8, verse 20, the last three verses of chapter 8, first two verses of chapter 9.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible, you may want to turn to it.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: But if you don't have a Bible, I'm gonna use the Christian standard Bible up here.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And Isaiah 8 is a prediction by the prophet to his people that if they keep on keeping on the way they're keeping on, which is which is running away from God into the darkness, that unlike Tom Baudet, who says, I'll keep the light on for you, God's gonna shut the light off and they're gonna live in darkness.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the prophecy goes like this Isaiah 8, 20.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Go to God's instruction and testimony, get back to the word.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if they don't speak, speaking of Israel's leaders, if they don't speak and live according to this word, it's because they have no dawn.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: They will pass through the land hard-pressed and famished, and when they're hungry, they'll be enraged and curse God as they face upward, really.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Israel will do that?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Just after Isaiah wrote, God finally had a belly full and he allowed Assyria to bring the mightiest army, most violent army in the world, and they came and they swept through Galilee in the north, and they absolutely burned everything and slaughtered thousands of Israelites, burned up all the food.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thousands of Israelites began starving.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: We read in the books of Kings and Chronicles that in Jerusalem, shut up and trapped for a year or more, they had no food.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: They were so hungry.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: We have evidence from archaeology, by the way, that they ate dirt and they ate weeds and they ate whatever they could get, and they ended up, the Bible says, eating some of their own children.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, and then they cursed God.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: So this really happened.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then after facing up to heaven and cursing God, they will look down to the earth and behold four words here: distress, darkness, gloom, and anguish.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Two of those words have to do with darkness.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And they'll be driven away into darkness, and they were driven away into darkness.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: The northern ten tribes driven away permanently, never to be heard from again.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: The southern two tribes just simply then stripped bare and struggling for another 150 years.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the prediction.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: That was the warning to Israel forever night and never dawn.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: The lights are gonna go out in Israel.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the prophecy.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was plunged into darkness and it stayed there.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: A lot like uh, you know, when Lucy visited the land of Narnia in the lion, the witch in the wardrobe.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, and she agonized when she heard uh Tumnas or whoever say, it's because the witch rules over us, it's always winter but never Christmas.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And for Israel, for hundreds of years it was always darkness and never dawn.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: That blank page in the middle of your Bible between the Old Testament and the New Testament, that blank page which represents 400 years with no revelation, 400 years, it's called the silent years, it could be called the years of darkness.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: They were years in which it looked as though Israel would never have any light.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Again, years of captivity.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's something called SAD.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you, I'm sure, have it.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: We had a, for some reason, I was stupid enough to have people raise their hands in first service, and we had a number of people.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: SAD is a legitimate disease seasonal affective disorder, and you can have it in all four seasons, but especially people have it in the winter when it gets dark and gloomy, and you actually take pills for it, or you get under, you know, sunlamps and so forth.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Melody and I at times have had, Melody especially because she came from Texas, you know, have symptoms of that when, you know, you don't see the sun, day after day after day, it sort of weighs on you, and you feel a kind of ennui and depression, a darkness in your soul.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: No, don't.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, it's a it's it's a hard thing.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure many of you have symptoms of it, but Israel not only Israel had full-blown SAD for centuries.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: And out of his grace, God did something.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, he said, I couldn't make this permanent.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: You deserve to be permanently in darkness, but you know what?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And now this is the next verse, chapter 9, verse 1.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I'm gonna end it.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Just out of my grace, not because of anything you deserve.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so he writes, the prediction goes, now, the gloom of the distressed land will not be like that of former times.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, it'll end.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: In the future, he will bring honor to the way of the sea, to the land east of the Jordan, and to Galilee of the nations.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's as though God has a map and he says, I want you to know where I'm gonna have the dawn hit.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: You understand, by the way, that dawn is not the same as sunrise, that sunrise is when the sun rises.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: But dawn starts in Topeka about half an hour earlier.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: At the equator, it's about 20 minutes earlier up in the North Pole.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: You have the dawn without the sun for like a hundred hours, you know, or 17 days.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh, dawn is when the first rays of light start coming, but the sun hasn't risen yet.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's that period of time that could be called twilight, lasts for about a half an hour, and that's that precious period of time that they weren't getting to see in Israel.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, but I'm gonna bring the dawn one day to a certain part of Israel.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: He says, by the way, in the next verse, the in a prophecy, as if it's already happened.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: The people walking in darkness, that's Israel, have seen a great light.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: A light has dawned on those living in the land of darkness.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, exactly where will that happen?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Well, here's where it's gonna be on the map.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's the way of the sea, land east of the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: The way of the sea was a technical term.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone in those days knew that it was the most significant highway in the world that they knew of.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: The Romans later called it the Via Maris, Via meaning the way, Maris meaning sea in Latin.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: And what it was was a highway that stretched all the way from Mesopotamia, cut down and went through Galilee, went right next to a town called Capernaum, right at the north of the Sea of Galilee, headed over to the coast and then went down by the Mediterranean Sea down into Egypt.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's where, you know, everything passed by there.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Almost 2,000 years before the Midianite traders had passed by there, and Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: That way of the sea was where all the commerce went by.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it went right by Capernaum, interestingly, and God decides he's going to mention that highway, the sea highway we'd call.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you have been down, Melody and I enjoyed it.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: We marveled at the sea highway in Florida.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, it's oftentimes called uh the uh the highway to the sea.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's the southernmost hundred miles, a little more than a hundred miles of Highway One down there where you leave the Florida mainland down there at the very bottom.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And this highway continues on over the Florida Keys, over these little humps of coral and little islets and so forth for over 100 miles, and you're going, wow, I feel like we're in the middle of absolutely nowhere, but it's it's gorgeous, and it's called the highway to the sea.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what this was.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, I'm putting my finger on the map, that's where it's gonna dawn, there at this highway.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, the land east of the Jordan, third to Galilee of the nations.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it's gonna all start in Galilee.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you're going, hmm, that's interesting.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus was born down in Bethlehem of Judea, but after he ran from Herod down to Egypt, when he was about three years old, he came up and he grew up in Galilee, right?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then when he was about 30, he moved down to Capernaum.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the light began to dawn in this dark place, and the people walking in darkness saw a great light.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: A light dawned on them.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, New Testament writers, both Luke and Matthew, said, listen, that's a really cool verse.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And they wanted the readers of their books to understand that's one of the coolest prophecies in the whole Bible.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: So Luke writes, because of our God's merciful compassion, the dawn from on high will visit us.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is a prophecy.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, Zachariah, Elizabeth prophesied in Luke 1 before Jesus came.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: The dawn from on high will visit us to shine on those who live in darkness, in the shadow of death.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Matthew did one even better.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: He actually quoted chapter 9, verse 2 exactly.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because remember, Matthew was a tax collector who set up his toll booth there next to his hometown of Capernaum.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: He turned the highway of the sea into a turnpike, you know, and he built people for lots of money.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: You couldn't get by him.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And he was a tax collector who Jesus called, who turned into a Jesus follower.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so Matthew's thinking, wow, the people who were sitting in darkness saw great light, those who are sitting in the land in the shadow of death.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so he quotes that because this is, he goes, This is my verse.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is my passage.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is about my highway.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: So you have this wonderful prediction that darkness will turn into dawning.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the question is, how will this happen?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: What's the explanation of how this will occur?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is Isaiah says, Well, hang on, and he tells us just a couple verses later, in one of the most famous verses in the Bible, you've heard of Isaiah 9.6.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, some of you probably know it by memory.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just all say it out loud together, okay?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 9.6.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: The government shall rest on his shoulders, and he shall be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: What a wonderful statement.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, realizing that God's going to change darkness to dawn, not by turning on some lights or bringing in a new mighty, powerful army to wipe out the Romans.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to send a child.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Child refers to Jesus, baby Jesus as a human son, unto us a son is given.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: That in the Old Testament is always a word referring to deity, the Son of God.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: So he's going to be both human and divine, and then the government shall rest on his shoulders, and he's not going to be any ordinary young babe.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's not going to be even an ordinary royal child with the DNA of David.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Look at these titles, which of course, no, they weren't used of him when he was on earth, just like Emmanuel wasn't used of him.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: They will be used of him one day, but they were true of him when he came.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: First title, wonderful counselor, literally a wonder of a counselor.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Unfathomable, mysterious is what the word means.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Wonderful is the word used.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: We just slop around and we use of everybody.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's wonderful.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, it's only used of God and refers to him being inscrutable and unfathomable and mysterious.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: A wonder of a counselor.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: That Jesus who came, who gave the sermon on the mount, that was a wonder of a counselor.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: The Jesus who spoke to the woman at the well was a wonder of a counselor.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: The Jesus who spoke to the rich young ruler was a wonder of a counselor.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: The Jesus who told us that if we would simply believe on him, we would have eternal life was a wonder of a counselor.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: But he's not only the wonder of a counselor, wonderful counselor, he's mighty God.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to be omnipotent, the creator of the whole universe.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to be God, a very God.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't think that's amazing, he's going to be everlasting father.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: No, not the first person of the Trinity in that way, but he's going to be the eternal father to his children.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to be fatherly.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: The first two things had to do with his wisdom, wonderful counselor, his power, mighty God.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: And as a result, he's going to be able to be your father and my father forever and ever.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then the only one of these descriptive titles used of humans in the Bible, Prince of Peace, Sar Shalom.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's Jesus.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to be the ruler that brings peace to people who are alienated from him and from his father.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's why it's going to dawn, because this child is going to be born, this son from heaven, and he is going to embody these amazing qualities on earth, and that's going to bring dawn to the Galilee.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: And starting in the Galilee, it's going to spread through all the land and then the whole world, even Titopeka.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Thank the Lord.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's how it's going to dawn through the Christ child.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: I have a friend who I went to college and seminary with, who I brought in here, that he spoke about about 10 years ago here.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: He's written commentary, he's been a professor, Ray Ortland.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: And his commentary on Isaiah, my very favorite passage is right at this point where he makes this comment about Isaiah 9.6.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: God's answer to everything that has ever terrorized us is a child.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: The power of God is so far superior to the Assyrians and all the big shots of this world that he can defeat them by coming as a mere child.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: His answer to the bullies swaggering through history is not to become an even bigger bully.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: His answer is Jesus.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Look at Jesus.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: As the wonderful counselor, he has the best ideas and strategies.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Let's follow him.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: As the mighty God, he defeats his enemies easily.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Let's hide behind him.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: As the everlasting Father, he loves us endlessly.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Let's enjoy him.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: As the Prince of Peace, he reconciles us while we're still his enemies.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Let's welcome his dominion.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Amen?
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I have a friend who's uh retired, uh stepped down from the pulpit from a megachurch in Virginia uh last month.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: And just to honor him, I'm gonna do what he's done every every sermon for 40 years.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: He gets halfway through his sermon after talking about the passage, he has everybody yell out two words.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: So what?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Are you ready?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: One, two, three.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: So what?
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: So the question is why?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: So what?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Big okay, so we've got Galilee, the Gentiles, and we have the dawn is gonna come for Israel and so forth, and God is this, and you know, and so forth.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: So what?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so what, it seems to me, is answered in part by answering the question Do you remember the last time you longed for the dawn?
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: One of the first times I can remember longing for the dawn was on Christmas Eve.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember how much you just couldn't?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: You'd wake up in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve, like when you were eight years old, and you're going, oh, how long will this night go on?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: I want to see.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and now when you were six, you were behaved and you stayed in bed.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: But when you were eight, am I right?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you did what I did, and you'd you'd you'd you'd lean down and you'd feel around and see if mommy had already filled the stocking and put it at the foot of the bed.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if she had, then you faced an even bigger temptation.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then, well, if you're eight and not six, you flipped on the light and you dumped out the stocking, and you were so excited.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you didn't like the orange much.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: But the rest of the, I mean, it's a waste of space, like my like you're going, the things they could have put in here, they got that super big orange.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: So moved to a tangerine.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Mom finally, I talked to her about this.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: She moved to tangerine, say it helped.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: So and and so, and then you try to get them all back in.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you couldn't.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's a miracle of packing there.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was astounding.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you were worse, if if you if you were maybe nine, whatever, maybe you didn't stay in bed.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Guy told me this last week, he was the younger brother, and his older brother.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Used to compel him to get up in the darkness and tiptoe into the living room and open up packages, feel around, figure out what was in those packages, and come back and report.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And basically, he said, my unwrapping skills were lots better than my rewrapping skills.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know how the tape just doesn't fasten as well when it's coming back.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so in the morning, yeah, Mom, you know, you couldn't hide it.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Mom look at him and go, you're not gonna be surprised.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you're going, yeah, bummer.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: But it was sure fun at 3 a.m., you know.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, but but the problem is that the night just takes forever when you're that age.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: You remember the last time though, you longed for the dawn?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: For Melody and me, it was uh Friday night, a week ago, Friday night.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're driving back from Thanksgiving on the East Coast, and finally at 10 o'clock, we had to go straight south for about half a dozen, eight hours or something, to get down to Charleston, West Virginia, where Melody was born.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: We were gonna get something.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so we visited this sweet older couple in their 80s and we got it and so forth.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: And by about 11:30, we were leaving, and we're already going.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we're so tired, but we have to get back.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's last Saturday.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: I have to get back because I have to, I can't get back by 9 o'clock at night or whatever to preach and so forth.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: So we can do this, we can do this.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so we got to get gas about midnight.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're leaving Charleston.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're going, we can do this, we can switch back and forth, and we get coffee, and we get no does, and we got all this stuff.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: We got this, we got this.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, as we leave, as we leave Charleston at midnight, I mean, I was waiting, I was ready for the dawn right then.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, you start driving, and then at about two o'clock, you hit you pass by Lexington, Kentucky, and about three o'clock, you pass by, you know, uh uh Louisville, Kentucky, about 3:30, actually.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Louisville, Kentucky, and about five o'clock, you're going, where's the dawn?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're looking for it.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: You're passing close to Evansville, Indiana, and you're and you're going, and suddenly you realize you're running away from the sun.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're going the wrong way.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're headed 75 miles an hour away from this, and you're just so, and you know, your eyes are, lids are getting heavy, and you keep picking up the coffee cup, and it's been gone for an hour, but you really, you know, and and and all you can see is your eyes are just riveted on that spot on the highway, right?
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Where the headlights are hitting, and you're so bored with that, and you're so longing for the dawn.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, as we approach St.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: Louis, you know, the darkness sort of turned into gray, and you look in your rear view, and you can see a couple of rays of light.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, the dawn, it's dawn, it's real life.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: I can look at something other than a, you know, dark highway.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: I tell that story, but I know good and well that there's some of you whose longing for the dawn is much more serious.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've talked to some of you just in the last couple of weeks.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: You've had the longest night of your life recently.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: A baby, a child that spiked the temperature at 98, 100, 102, 103, 104.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you found yourself in the nighttime rushing to the hospital and waiting, longing for day to come, longing for the temperature to break.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Or there was what seemed to be a heart attack, and you rush to the hospital, and it just seems so long.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Or teenager comes home, or no, they didn't come home.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was a phone call from the police.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe she did come home, but her eyes were glassy and her speech was slurred, and she slammed the door in her room, and there you were alone, left in your bed, staring at the ceiling the rest of the night, just praying for dawn to come.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: That really happens.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, what does a message like this?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: What does a passage like this have to say to us?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it has to say that the dawn is here, that Jesus has brought the dawn, and Jesus lights up our darkness.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Let me give you two applications.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, that the dawn is here.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: It came 2,000 years ago, and your response, and my response to that is we need to faith it.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't mind me changing a noun into a verb, you and I need to faith it.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: That is, we need to believe that it's happened and we need to believe in him.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: On the longest night of his life, a jailer in the town of Philippi in Greece said, What must I do?
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: What can I do?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's an earthquake, my life is over.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he heard this voice coming back from the apostle Paul from the dungeon, Paul and Silas saying, Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Faith it.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: On the darkest night of your life, understand that the dawn has come, came to Galilee, and lived for you, and died for you.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: And as a result, the dawn shines upon all who will believe in him.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sometime in your life you need to do that.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing, uh, for those of you who are believers, who faith it, and who have trusted Jesus as your Savior, and the problem is, of course, that there are people in churches all over the country this morning who think they've faith it, but they're they think that they're going to heaven secretly because they're good people, maybe been baptized, come to church regularly.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer to that, dear friends, is not to act better, to prove that, yeah, you're really a person of faith.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: The answer to that is not to go to church more often or to give more money.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's to realize that God doesn't want any of that stuff.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: What he wants is your trust, what he wants is your faith.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: What he wants is for you to truly and totally believe in him alone for salvation, to look to the dawn and let him shine on you.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if he's done that, and yet you're still in the darkness today, as so many of you are, I know.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: I know some of you are.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Then what you need is the other part of it.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: The dawn is coming, it's still coming.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: Keep faithing it.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is what you learn in the second year maybe of seminary or Bible school.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: You start learning that the New Testament is an already not yet book.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: That the New Testament is full of, it's already happened.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus has come, and when he came, he was wonderful counselor, almighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Not publicly, not displayed that way.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody didn't know it, but he really was that.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: He's always been King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's already happened.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can believe on him, you must believe on him, right?
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's the already, but there's a not yet.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's not yet happened that he'll reign in Jerusalem and we will know him publicly as the wonderful counselor, Almighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Lord of Lords, and King of Kings, and every knee will bow.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's coming one day.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: And dear friend, if you're in the darkness, even as a believer, then the thing to do is to look forward to that day, to believe that it's coming.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: As I tried, sat and tried to think of what that means for a person who's in the dark today, for a believer, my conclusion is this: when it seems that the darkness will never end in your life, dear Christian, faith.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Faith sees the first rays of dawn.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a Catholic mystic, a poet who's written some wonderful stuff in the last century, Thomas Merton, and I guess maybe my favorite thing he's written is on this topic entitled How Long We Wait, written, How Long We Wait with Minds as quiet as time, like sentries on a tower.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: How long we watch by night like the astronomers, heaven, when will we hear you sing, arising from our grassy hills, and say, the dark is done, and day laughs.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Paul said in Romans, by faith you need to realize the night is nearly over.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: The day is nearly here.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Dear Christian, struggling in the darkness, dawn never seeming to come, when it seems the darkness will never, ever end.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: Faith sees the first rays of dawn.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Actually older than most people know.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's called, it goes like this, the darkest hours just before.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: Have any of you heard this?
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: The darkest hours just before dawn.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you know it because Sherelle's using a song, or Mamas and Papas did.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Bob Dylan used it in a song.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think Crosby Stills and Nash used it in a song.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: And when they used it, what they meant by that is that is that even when is it you need to hang on because even when it feels really dark, the light is coming.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: People ask, what does that mean?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know whether it's really true.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'm sure it probably isn't literally, but I've got to tell you that that 5 to 6 a.m.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: hour driving west on Highway 70 last week.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: I really felt like this was real.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: As I'm gripping the steering wheel and biting my bottom lip.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: Just stay awake.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, this phrase is really spiritual.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: It comes from a guy named Thomas Fuller, a theologian, who was visiting Israel in the middle 1600s.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: And as he sat through the night, waited for dawn, he suddenly thought, you know, dawn is the coming of Jesus Christ, and the darkness is the moral darkness of this world.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he thought of those verses in the New Testament that say the world's gonna become darker and darker and darker before the return of Jesus Christ.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so he wrote, the darkest hours just before dawn.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: And spiritually, that's that's true.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: Those singers that I mentioned, Mamas and Papas, Bob Dylan, weren't thinking that, but Emmy Lou Harris was in 1980, with the help of Ricky Skaggs.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: She's saying, Darkness falls around us, and we must journey on.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: The darkest hours just before dawn.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: He's coming back to claim us.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: Will you be ready to go?
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: The darkest hours just before dawn.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: Lay down your soul.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: Let Jesus in.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: The darkest hours just before dawn.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Will you do that?
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: Will you faith it?
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Look to the past.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's come, the dawn has come.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: Believe in Jesus.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: Will you keep on faithing it?
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: Augustine, I'm sure, was right.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: When he said the whole life of the good Christian is a holy longing.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: A holy longing for the dawn.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: Look forward to his return.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's coming.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: Faith looks forward to it even out of the deepest darkness.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: Father, we thank you for the opportunity to look at the dawn and look at the darkness and then sit around your table and remember those dark hours on the cross when your son was all alone, abandoned.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then suddenly, as he died and brought us salvation, the light of dawn spread over the whole earth.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Bless us as we look for the dawn this week, and as we thank you for the dawn, taking the bread and the cup in Jesus' name.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.