Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / November 29, 2015 | Home For Christmas

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November 29, 2015 | Home For Christmas · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've been wanting to do this so badly.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Is this a great set, or what?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I love this porch.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: I love this house.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: So um, and we've finally gotten to the sermon series for which that was built.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Series is called Home for Christmas.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Five weeks long.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is the introductory message.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad you're here.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: And we want to invite you the next five weeks not to just listen to or think about Home for Christmas, but experience it with us as we take you to places in the Bible for which this has great meaning.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And as I put on the bulletin, maybe more than any other Americans, we Kansans love the idea of home.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Home on the range is our state song.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the famous line, There's no place like home, comes from our state movie, Wizard of Oz.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And our state band, Kansas, led by TBCer Kerry Livgren, sang Nobody's Home and A Glimpse of Home.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we're inviting you for the next month to experience this with us.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I have uh three goals this morning in my introductory message about home.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Goal number one is that you know something.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Goal number two is that you feel something.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Goal number three is that if the Lord wants you to, you do something.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: The first goal is I want you, I want all of us to think more deeply and more biblically about home than we ever have before.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: I've spent the week doing that and I want to take you there this morning.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the second goal is that you'll feel uh nostalgic, warm feelings because I think God's put them inside you for this idea of home.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps some of you have had a home for which you feel those feelings.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: I want to engender, I want to evoke those feelings in you.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: I actually do, because that'll take us to point number three.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord may want you to do something with those feelings.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I want you to open your Bible to the number one home passage, I suppose, in the whole Bible, and that would be Luke chapter 15, starting at verse 11, the famous story of the prodigal son.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: We'll take the first part of this story, the story of the younger brother.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Luke 15, verse 11.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, There was a man who had two sons.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know the story?
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, the younger son said to his father, Father, give me my share of the estate.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because the younger son, filled with dreams, visions, ambition of wealth and pleasure, he wants to leave home.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: So the father divided the property between them, and not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: There, he squandered his wealth and while living.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And after he'd spent everything, there was a severe famine in that country, so he was in need, so he went and he hired himself out to a citizen to send him into the fields to feed pigs.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: He longed to fill his stomach with the pods the pigs were eating, but nobody gave him anything.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: And when he came to his senses, he finally said, How many of my father's hired men have food to spare?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Here I am, starving to death.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'll set out and go back to my father.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'll say to him, Father, I sinned against heaven and against you, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Just make me like one of your servants, your hired men.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: So he got up and he went back home to his father.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: But while he's still a long way off, his father saw him, was filled with compassion for him, ran to his son, threw his arms around him, kissed him.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Son said to him, Father, I've sinned against heaven and against you, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Father interrupts him, says to the servants, Quick, bring the best robe and put it on him, put a ring on his finger, sandals on his feet, fatten calf, kill it.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Let's have a feast and celebrate.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: For the son of mine was dead, is alive again.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: He was lost and is found.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So they began to celebrate.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Father, um, thank you for this story, story about leaving home, coming back home.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the concept of home, this idea.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that we would think clearly, deeply, biblically about this this morning.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: That you would uh that you would tweak inside us by your Holy Spirit those feelings, these desires, the longings that you have put inside us that uh swirl around this idea of home.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that then, Lord, that you would choose people and that you would move inside them by the Holy Spirit to do something about what they think and what they feel.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of interesting, isn't it?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: How you know little four-letter words like love or like home, you know, can can bring such strong feelings in us.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a four-letter word in English and in Spanish, five letters in Hebrew, five letters in Greek, this idea, this word, this word home.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and and and this word somehow is just always a good word.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we we will go to a restaurant and we'll be drawn to things in the in the menu that say on them, homemade.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you go over here to Cracker Brill, for instance, they got a whole line of breakfast called home style.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Or or if if you if you don't want to cook a meal for your family tonight, but you want to pretend like you are, then you sneak out to Olive Garden and you oh order one of their, it's called homemade meals.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Bring it home, stick it in the oven, pull it out, say, this is homemade, and you'll be telling the truth.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because Olive Garden lied and said it was first.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so home, home is a good thing.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: The reason I'm sorry, I have to go here again.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is part of part of our heritage.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: The Kansas City Royals won the World Series.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because they crossed home plate 27 times in the World Series, whereas the New York Mets only crossed home plate 19 times, right?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: But but especially, and and of course there's home court advantage, which is which which is a good thing.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: But especially this month, uh the next five weeks, we're gonna talk about uh coming home for Christmas.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays, Perry Como saying back in the 50s, because no matter how far away you roam, when you pine for the sunshine of a friendly gaze for the holidays, you can't beat home sweet home.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it was that way for you, but it certainly was that way for me when uh all my life when I've thought of home and Christmas, I've had these phenomenal feelings because on Christmas Eve, our family, which grew every year.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: When I was four years old, there were four of us kids.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: I was the second oldest, and when I was five, there were five of us kids.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: When I was seven, there were six kids, it just kept multiplying somehow.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: I have no idea how that happened.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, just kept bigger and bigger.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And Christmas Eve, Christmas Eve, we would sit around in the living room, and and and somebody would read Luke chapter two, one of the adult would, mom or dad, and then all of us kids, we'd act it out, you know, and as there were more and more kids, there were more animals involved, and because I was the oldest boy, I got to be the donkey, and they'd put Ruth on my back, and you know, crawl in, and the innkeeper just loved telling us no, and all that stuff.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then we'd sing all these Christmas carols around the piano, and it was so cool.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Then we'd hang up stockings, and then we'd traips on up to bed in our in our pajamas with the stocking feet, and it's so excited because we knew sometime in the night mom would get around, you know, to putting those stockings at the feet of our bed in the middle of the night, 3, 4 a.m.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: or something.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: One of us would wake up, we'd feel down there, and oh, there it would be, and we'd yell, and the lights would come on upstairs or out in the garage where I where I lived, and uh and so we would had to stick all those kids somewhere.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: So um so so and then we'd dump it out, we're so excited, and then of course we had to stuff it all in because of course you have to go in and show mom and dad what you got in your stocking, because they they they'll be so surprised.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we'd go in and we'd wake them up, and dad, of course, put the pillow over his head, completely try to ignore us, but mom would pretend as though she knew nothing about it.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, ooh, wow.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And and then we could hardly wait till chores, the only morning of the year where we were excited to run out, Steve and I, and milk the cows and feed the animals, because this was the guy just the happiest morning of the year was coming.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we'd kind of run back in with the pails of milk because we'd know at the breakfast table it wasn't that hot oatmeal we had to have every other day of the year.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: We got cold Cheerios on Christmas morning.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was so amazingly special.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Cold Cheerios with cream, it's still like the best thing ever for me.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, but you couldn't look in the living room, which is like Aladdin's cave of mystery and presents, because mom had hung a white bed sheet over blocking the living room to the dining room, so you couldn't see the packages, you know, and then we'd line up in the hallway, you know, and as every year, you know, I'd be farther back, farther back in the tiny little living room.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And by the end, by the time I was 12 years old and there were 10 kids, you know, I'd be underneath the kitchen table somewhere.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: That was my spot, because you for the youngest got first choice of seats.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then the opening of the presents.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just, it was just so much fun that when I left for college, when I left for seminary, I had such warm feelings about Christmas and just longed to get back there and sit around the Christmas tree.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you know what that's like.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Hardly waiting to get back home for Christmas, where the where the friends who are dear to you will be near to you once more.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean by that.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, and and that's why I think that song, which was popular back then by Perry Como, you know, hit us so well.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Take a bus, take a train, hop an airplane, put the wife and kitties in the family car for the pleasure that you're gonna bring when you make that doorbell ring.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: No trip could be too far.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I I must stop for a minute for full disclosure, for honesty.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because while we have warm feelings about home for Christmas, some of our feelings are also hot with anger or cold as ice.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, as you go on in life, all of us have had a brother or sister, somebody who's slandered us or said something about us.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so sometimes as adults, if you go back for union, you know, there's that there's hot acid that pours in your gut, you know, when you go back home.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's just part of it.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's part of it.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that coexists with the warm feelings, and then if it if it keeps pouring in your gut, then finally it turns into frost, like a black hole.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And there's and home engenders the coldest of cold feelings.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: But this morning, that's just being honest about it.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: But this morning I want you to remember back to the warm feelings, the warm feelings.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when you put on 3D, because when you go to the Bible and you put on your 3D Christmas glasses, as I did this last week, and look at the whole Bible, it does appear in a way that everyone in the Bible is either doing one of three things.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: They're either leaving home or they're coming back home or they're going to a brand new home.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're either leaving home, they're returning home, or they're going to a brand new home.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to share with you and remind you of the stories that you know about.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because when the Bible has these stories about leaving home, almost all of them are connected with pain and or sin.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: The whole Bible starts that way, doesn't it?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because Adam and Eve is basically a story about this wonderful couple who love their home, but because they are tempted and they're and they're just they fall into grasping greed, they are forced to leave their perfect home in the Garden of Eden.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: They leave home in sin and in pain.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if you continue on to the book of Genesis before long, you come across the story of Jacob, who is a twin with Esau, and Jacob's the clever and the grasping one, you know, and Esau's, he doesn't have the right values, and so Jacob takes advantage of his brother, you know, and gets the inheritance and so forth, and makes his brother so murderously mad that Jacob has to run from home for his life and doesn't even return for 20 years, leaving home in sin and in pain.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And before you leave the book of Genesis, it ends with another story.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know the story of Joseph, who's the youngest uh uh uh brother at that time, and his older brothers hate him for being like the perfect child, and so they sell him into slavery to Midianites, cut it down to Egypt, breaking their father's heart, and Joseph never, ever makes it back home.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: He leaves home, Joseph does, in pain because of their sin.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: And a thousand years later, you have the children of Israel who are conquered because of their sin.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: God gives them over to Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, and they their city is burned at 600 BC, and they see them leaving in pain and sin, heading off to Babylon.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And like Adam and Eve and Joseph and Jacob and the prodigal, and and how about the prodigal son?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: We just read this story, remember?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine the pain in his dad and his mom as he as he with his full billfold now with all the money?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: He he leaves, he says, I want to seek my fortune.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine the pain that he leaves?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Jesus, about whom the rest of the series, the next four weeks, will focus on Jesus.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus, of course, left his home, didn't he?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: In heaven.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because of pain and sin.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Whose pain?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Ours.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Whose sin?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Ours.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we're in pain.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: People on earth in pain because of their sin need to be rescued, need to be delivered.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: So Jesus left his home.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I have a question.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: In in literature and in song and so forth, do you find this theme of leaving home and pain and sin?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, of course you do.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: One of the favorite songs of Kentuckians, my old Kentucky home.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: You hear it all the time, od nauseum, if you're uh if you're not a University of Kentucky fan.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: But but but you know, sing this as though it's a sweet song about going back to Kentucky.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact of the matter is, this song is absolutely full of pain.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: The song was written by Stephen Foster seven years before the Civil War.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a song sung by slaves who love their Kentucky home.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Sunshines bright in the old Kentucky home to summer, the darkies are gay, the corntops ripe, the meadows in bloom, you know, we roll in the little cabin floor, we are all merry and happy and bright.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Slaves are singing, and then all of a sudden, what happens?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: The next words are that their owner, you know, poverty hits, and their owner decides to divide the family up and to sell them.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're all separated and they go to other homes and other states.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And now my old Kentucky home is a song, an anti-slavery ballad sung by northerners, sung by Kansas, sung by slaves during the Civil War, longing in pain, homesick for their old Kentucky home.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you've ever left home and there's been some pain associated with it, like when I left home for college, thousands of miles away, and see all my little brothers and sisters, you know, cry.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you've left home for college, or if you left home for the military, if you then you kind of know, you know what this is like.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: You can understand, you know, what is one of the three favorite pictures that Norman Rockwell ever did, entitled Breaking Home Ties.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: For here's a farm boy who's going off to college.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And his dad is clearly in great pain.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the boy is a farm boy, and so he's really uncomfortable in this white pressed suit.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he looks, he looks really weird in it, in this tie, he doesn't quite know how to wear it.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: He's going off on a train.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: You can tell because there's a, you know, as the train comes down the track, the dad's gonna have to wave the red flag and the lantern and stop it, and the boy has uh the train ticket sticking out of his pocket.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And his mother's love is represented by this thing he's holding in his hand, this little lunch that he's got.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's got a got a pink bow on it.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And his dad's holding two hats in his hand.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's not as though one's his hat and one's his son's hat.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Rockwell explained it.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: He says his dad's holding two hats, both belonging to his son.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: The one on the bottom is his son's farm hat.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he'll be taking that back home with him.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the other on top is his son's new college hat, representing his new life.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the son's so excited about his new life.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's looking off in the future.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: He he's he's he's so excited about it, but you can tell his dad, who can't express his feelings.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know how it was on those days, is looking the other way.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: But the dog can express the feelings.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: The dog, which uh Norman Rockwell said he got more comments on the collie dog than anything else in this picture that he painted.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: This this picture, which sold in 1960, six years after he painted it for$900, but sold a few years ago for over$15 million.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: But the collie dog has is expressing his sadness with his with his face, with his chin resting on his master's leg, expressing his sadness that he's going away.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the way the Bible presents us too.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when leaving home is oftentimes a scene of pain and sadness.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: But the Bible also has uh loads of stories about coming back home.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: And in general, these are not stories of pain or sin.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: These are these are stories of love and longing.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's a little picture in the middle, a little scene in the midst of the great flood story, the story of Noah of a little bird, beautiful little bird, a dove.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, the name of a dove is Jonah in Hebrew.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so little Jonah, little Jonah's flying around and getting tired and getting desperate, looking for land, has no place to set her little feet.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And finally spies the ark and desperately flies back to the ark, the home that she loves and longs for, and says, No, opens the window, reaches out his hand and brings the dove back inside.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a wonderful picture of returning to the home that we love and long for.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: You see that that picture played out with the children of Israel who are down in Egypt for 400 years.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: They've been, they're away from their ancestral home, the promised land, the land of milk and honey, and finally God miraculously delivers them in 1400 BC after 400 years of slavery, and so they make their way out of Egypt up north w northeast and then across the Jordan River.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, they return to the land that still, over 3,000 years later, still bears the same name, Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel, coming back to the land of their ancestors and forefathers, the land that they love and long for.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: And 800 years later, the same thing will happen.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, they got ripped out of their land, conquered by Nebuchadnezzar because of their sin.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: But seven years later, under Zerubbabel and then Ezra and then Nehemiah, they they get to return home, weeping to their hometown in Jerusalem, coming back to the home that they love and they long for.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: And in our story, the story of a prodigal son whose dream turned into a nightmare, and then he began to feel horribly homesick and realized that his home was not a place to get away from.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: The home was the place he loved.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so he he concocts this thing he's gonna say to his father, who won't let him even get through the story before he throws his arm around, arms around him and welcomes him back to this home.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: And for the next four weeks, we'll talk about Jesus, who remember left his home because of our pain and our sin and came and made this his temporary home, but finally returned back to his home in heaven and to the father that he loved.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: In our literature and in our songs, of course, we have so many songs about going back home.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's John Denver's signature song, Country Roads, Take Me Home to the Place I Belong.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: West Virginia, Mountain Mama, Take Me Home, Country Road.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: All my memories gather around her.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: My wife came from West Virginia, and so I had to listen to this song, Adnauseum.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: I wished I had some Oregon song that I could bore her with, you know, in those early days.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Painted on the sky, teardrop in my eye.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: I hear her voice in the morning hour.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: She calls me.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: The radio reminds me of my home far away.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we all know what that's like.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: We know how much we love our childhood home and how much we want to get back.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's a funny story.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: A little over 100 years ago, the Wright brothers, it was an amazing day.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was the day they invented the airplane.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was 1903 and it was December the 17th.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: Their home was back in Dayton, Ohio, but they were, as you know, in Kittyhawk, North Carolina.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: They were so excited on this day.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Four times they got off the ground and once 120 feet.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so Orville rushed down to the telegraph stations.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: This is a photograph of the telegram that he sent back home to his parents, telling them that he'd gotten the plane off the ground for the first time the flying machine, as he called it, had worked.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Close to the end, he says, Inform press.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: His last three words are home for Christmas.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: Coming home for Christmas.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, sister, after the parents leave, they're all excited and so she rushes it down to the newspaper.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: And to his everlasting shame.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: The editor of the newspaper looks at it, he reads it, somehow misses the message that the airplane has just been invented for the first time in history.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Man has left the ground, he has flown soap for the editor.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Headline Wright brothers coming home for Christmas.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: But still, you know, if you're family and your friends, that's as important.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's as important as someone inventing the airplane.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: And some of you have felt this way, the way I felt when I was away at college.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you understood there's something inside you.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is why it's partly our theme song for this series.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: You hear Jeremiah singing it.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Bing Crosby sang it to our soldiers in World War II.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be home for Christmas.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can count on me, please have snow and mistletoe and presents underneath the tree.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Christmas Eve will find me where the love light gleams.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be home for Christmas.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then suddenly that twist that grabs your heart.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be home for Christmas if only, if only in my dreams.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because all of us want to go home for Christmas.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's something that we love, something that we long for.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: We think of those great times around the table where we can sit and eat and those times of fact after first service today, a Vietnam veteran was telling me, you know, how Christmas was so hard over in Vietnam.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: And he was so lonely.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, Bob Hope came over there and brought Christmas over there to Vietnam and how that just transformed Christmas for him and for and for you know 100,000 of our fighting men over there in those Vietnam days because they got a little taste of home at Christmas.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we have leaving home, pain, sin.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: We have coming back home in the Bible, associated with love and longing.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: But listen, and this is the most important thing.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: The third thing, this theme in the Bible is going to a new home that's even better than your childhood home.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a it's a thing of promise and fulfillment.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: When you finally, you go, finally, this is what I've always wanted.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: You need to listen.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is the whole point of the home theme in the Bible.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you know this, these stories.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Abraham and Sarah in Genesis chapter 12.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: They leave the greatest city in the east.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Ur.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's God's just, it's it's like Manhattan, New York, and God tells them to leave, and he's a businessman, and they're clearly prosperous there.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, I'm gonna have you leave and go to the promised land.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna have to travel 500 miles west and live in Smith Center, Kansas, basically.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, I mean I mean it's it's like that.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Go into a rural setting.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Canaan goes to a new home, and it turns out to be better even than his home home, his childhood home.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know the story of Rahab.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, Rahab was a harlot.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: She was a prostitute, she lived in Jericho, she was a Canaanite.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Spies come and they spy and she helps them, and so the spies say, Listen, this the walls are gonna fall.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: This place is gonna collapse.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: You need to get your family, you need to be saved.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: We'll save you.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in the people ignore this part of the story.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: She gets her entire family, she calls her parents, her grandparents, her cousins, her aunts, her uncles.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: She crowds everybody into their little home, and then uh the Israelites march around, the walls fall, but this home just stands fast.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: This home stands fast, and then she marches them out, and she goes to a new home with the people of God.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: She leaves the home of paganism and goes to a home that's far better, far better than her childhood home.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's a story, not many years later, of Ruth.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know the story of Ruth who lives in the high plains of Moab where the weather is nice and it's not nearly as hot and it's beautiful, but she has to make a choice.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: And she goes with her mother-in-law, doesn't she?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: She goes with Naomi.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: By faith, she leaves her home and she ends up in a new and amazing home, the little town of Bethlehem.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: And her great-grandson, David, loves Bethlehem.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's his hometown, but then God has him move from that hometown to a brand new hometown five miles up the road to Jerusalem.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he loves Jerusalem so much so that in Psalm 84 and 87, David says, This is where my real and true birthplace.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, he tells us there, every true believer in God can put Jerusalem down as their birthplace as well.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the reasons I love, I love in my tours to Israel.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Every couple years, I saved Jerusalem to the last four days.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: It used to be, you know, a lot of people do Jerusalem first.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: But listen, Jerusalem, this is it's not only one of the top ten most beautiful cities in the world, by everybody's judgment, but when you come over the top of the hill and you look down on Jerusalem, there's something in the heart of every true Christian that says, that there, that that's my town, and it is.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: It is truly your town.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: When you trust Christ as your Savior, it's logged in in heaven, birthplace, Jerusalem.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you will live, in a sense, in the new Jerusalem forever and ever.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's your hometown.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a new and better place, better even than your childhood home.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: And this theme in the Bible is picked up in literature by one person, one writer, more than anyone else, and he represents it in almost all of his books.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: His name is Clive Staples Lewis, C.S.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: And when he wrote Until We Have Faces, the sweetest thing in all my life is the longing for home.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: He does not mean by that his home, his childhood home in Wales.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: He does not mean by that the home in Oxford where he's teaching, or the home in Cambridge, England, where he will be.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: What he means by that is the longing for a place that he's never been, what he calls at other times his true home.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: He loved his home, his childhood home.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: But in his book, C.S.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis says God has put inside of us, and he's really reflecting what I just shared with you from the Bible, God's put inside of us a desire, an idea of home that we all long for.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's a gap between, am I right?
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, just look at me for a second.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Is not there a gap between your idea of home, this nostalgic feeling you have, and what you actually really experience when you do go back home?
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's just a little gap between them.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: This one over here is perfect.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: And what you really experience is never, never quite perfect.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: It never quite satisfies the desire.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: And what C.S.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis says is this desire for our own far-off country, what I'm calling today home, which we find in ourselves is the desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Our experience is constantly suggesting it, the beauty, the memory of our own past.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: But they're not the thing itself.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: They're just the scent of a flower we have not yet found, the echo of a tune we have not yet heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: And in another book, Mere Christianity, he puts it this way: if I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, and I would change that this morning.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: If I find in myself a longing for home, which no experience that I've ever had in this world has satisfied, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another home, for another world.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: A place where when we finally get there, then we will say with Jewel the Unicorn in the last battle, the last book in the Narnia Tales, I've come home at last.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is my real country.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: I belong here.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is the land.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is the home I've been looking for all my life, though.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: I never knew it until now.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see it?
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: You see it.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: Leaving home, pain, sin, coming back home, love, longing, but something better than that, going to a brand new home.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's better even than your childhood home.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: The best home, best than that you can ever imagine.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can just glimpse that home for a moment, then in that moment, perhaps you will come to see that this is the Jesus Christ you want to embrace, that you want to become a Christ follower, that you trust Him to be your Savior because He's put this desire in you for something and you know it's going to be fulfilled.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: He holds it out to you.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's called forgiveness and salvation and eternal life and home and everything you can ever imagine.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: It transformed, that transformed the life of Carrie Livgren, our favorite son.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: Carrie was writing music as you know, he wrote in 1977 and so forth, Carrie On Waward Sud, Dust in the Wind, and so forth.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: But the Lord was working in his heart and he was going through all these religions and he was studying.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: In 1977, he wrote these songs to a new album called Monolith.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was published in May of that year in 1979.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: And and this album never became quite as popular.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was just had these religious themes, these searching religious themes.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: And in a book called A Glimpse, in a song called A Glimpse of Home, he has this wonderful line: Let the truth be known, let it be shown, he cries out in that song.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Give me a glimpse of home.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: And Carrie was on this spiritual journey, and just two months later, he would round the final turn.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: And God would answer his prayer, and God would give him a glimpse of home in the last week of July of that year.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: Carrie said, I saw it and I trusted Christ as my personal Savior.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: So when I say today that my goal is that I desperately want you to think more deeply and clearly and biblically about home than you ever have, but I want you to feel something that God's put inside you, that longing, that desire for home.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: What I mean is that I want you to move from that feeling and realize God put that desire in you because He holds out for you this home that he wants to bring you home to.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps He wants you to do something, not just know something, not just feel something, but do something this morning about that.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe do what Carrie did, maybe glimpse it and come to faith in him.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he wants you in your home this Christmas to try to reflect a little bit of his perfect home, as much as you possibly can.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: But for all of us, I am sure that the words to Amy Grant's Christmas lullaby are part of what he wants from you.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Or she's saying, Are you far away from home this dark and lonely night?
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: How gently, how tenderly he says to one and all, child, you can follow me, and I will lead you home.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: Bow your head with me in prayer, Heavenly Father.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: We are all people with deep feelings.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: We have some of our feelings are hot, some are cold, but we all have warm feelings toward home.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Lead us home.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: There are people here who are lonely.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: There are people here who are tired.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: There are there are people here who all of us who really would like to feel what we really think of and long for when we think of home.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Take us there.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Bring us there, Lord Jesus.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.