Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / December 27, 2015 | Home For Christmas - Finally Home At Christmas

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December 27, 2015 | Home For Christmas - Finally Home At Christmas · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: I am so gonna miss that theme.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: That is so good.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Not Jeremiah and Amanda, they're no good, but Sam Reed, the way he edited that is just super.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, it's uh two days after Christmas, and I love the way uh uh Jerry Seinfeld described the week after Christmas.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: He said, you feel like you know the whole week long you're at a mob hit.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Cars slow, doors open, Christmas trees tumble out.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: I liked it anyway, and maybe in 20 minutes you'll get it.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: But um so uh usually the Sunday after Christmas is more than two days after Christmas, and so you feel more like New Year's.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so I usually last couple years, for example, I've given a talk which uh it's more New Year's y talk, urging you to pick one word.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone remember the one word thing?
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: And some of you have talked to me uh this month about are you gonna do one word again?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Are you gonna do, you know?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: And and I said, no, you didn't do your word last year.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not doing it this year.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, uh next week, January the 3rd, uh I've picked your word for 2016.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: So unless you're a rebel and want to pick your own word, I'm picking your word for 2016.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: I've got it picked out already, so it's uh don't even worry about it.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you want to pick your own word, fine.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: So uh but this Sunday decided um we still got the house up, you know, home for Christmas, still got the lights up, and it's only two days after Christmas.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I decided to do a fifth week, a final week of the Home for Christmas series theme.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: And remember, this series started uh four weeks ago, the last Sunday in November, and we we said, you know, home is such a, you know, such an emotional four-letter word.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's no place like home for the holidays, 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.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so we've uh we've opened the Bible the last four weeks, and that would be Tim Collins and Hunter Roo and I, and we have looked at different themes in the Bible.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus leaving his home, Mary and Joseph leaving, you know, Nazareth, detours from home and so forth.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Looked at different homes.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this morning it's it's after Christmas, and so I'm gonna talk about finally home at Christmas.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna talk to you about our future home.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: And my text, if you have a Bible, feel free to turn to the most emotional of all of the epistles.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: That would be 2 Corinthians chapter 5, uh especially verses 1 and 6 through 8, those.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'll read a few more here since I have the Bible in front of me, and uh this is the NIV.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's I just grabbed one of those pew Bibles.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: So if you don't have one at the pew in front of you, it's because I stole it.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, what is he talking about when he talks about the earthly tent in which we live?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: What is he talking about?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, your body.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we have a building, and and and mine is looking more like a tent all the time, unfortunately.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Very interesting, a very C.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: S.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Lewis type theme here, that when you groan because you have bodily aches and pains, though you may not know it, your body, like the whole earth, Romans chapter 8, unconsciously, when it groans in pain, is growing, groaning for a better place, groaning to have a better body, groaning, you know, for that final day.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, we groan, longing, whether we know it or not, to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, and then on and on, when we're clothed, we won't be found naked.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: While we're in this tent, we groan and are burdened, and so forth.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Verse 5, it's God who's made us for this very purpose.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Verse 6, therefore, or on the screen from the Holman translation, so we are always confident and know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: For we walk by faith, not by sight, and we are confident and satisfied, or in the NIV, we prefer to be out of the body and at home with the Lord.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I'll come back to this, which is my key text, but I want to wrap up the Home for Christmas theme with a reprise of how I started it four weeks ago, where I looked at the theme of home in the Bible.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I mentioned to you that wherever you go in the Bible, it's as if you're watching, you're looking at stories, reading stories of people who are one, leaving home, or two, returning home, or three, going to a brand new and better home.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Those three themes.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I trace those through.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna review those three themes very quickly and then add on to it two more themes from the New Testament.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's my sermon, okay?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: So remember the first theme in the Bible, always seemingly surrounded by thoughts of pain andor sin, is this theme of leaving home.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you find it some of the stories that we reviewed in the Bible four weeks ago, Adam and Eve, of course, kicked out of the Garden of Eden because of their sin, in pain, they have to leave home.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about how Israel, because of their sin, God sent the Babylon down upon them in 600 B.C.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: And they were exiled, having to leave their Jerusalem home.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about the story of the prodigal son and the pain of uh when he wrenched, took the money and wrenched his way out of the home and upset everything because of his sinful desire for pleasure.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: We said that this is a really a cultural theme that's that we know very well in our lives that people run away from home and it's painful.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: We talked of, you know, we mentioned the second most famous painting of um of whatever his name is.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, always forget.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, breaking home ties.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you got this college boy who's going away, you know, to college.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: His dad can't even express his his long and the pain he feels, so he's looking the other way, can't even look at the train coming down the track, though his son's excited about it.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: But the collie can express it really well, the collie resting his sad head upon the boy's knee.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about you know the pain and the sin of that song, My Old Kentucky Home, that Civil Wars uh song of slaves who lived in Kentucky, and then but then during the Civil War days, you know, they would be sold and the families would be broken apart, this very sad song as they would sing about their old Kentucky home.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Leaving home is often surrounded in culture as in the Bible with pain and with sin.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: The second theme, the first theme is the sad theme, the theme of leaving home.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is the emotional theme, the theme of returning home, coming back home.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: And in the Bible, just as in life, it's surrounded by love and longing.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, how much as a college student you just long to return home for Christmas.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: That same longing in the Bible.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Israel returns home to Jerusalem in five after seven years of captivity, 500 BC.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Or the prodigal son, you remember how much he longed to return home, and his father longed to see him.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: And and so many of these Christmas songs that we love so much, the one we just sang, I'll be home for Christmas, is a is a even if only in my dreams, that's what I really long for.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I came across a video I want to show you because it I think expresses the emotion of this biblical theme so well.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Expresses the emotion of a God who really longs for us, like the prodigal son's father, to come home.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it's a sort of a Christmas video that juxtaposes two stories.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: So let me show you let me show you this this this this this video clip here.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: The story of Josh in rehabilitation who longs to go home with his therapist will let him for for Christmas, and his mother looking out the window waiting for him, and then and the other story of um the girl who's left home and playing guitar and cold street sidewalks for quarters with her dad, hoping she'll come home.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: I see in those two stories such an ideal picture of God's heart, and it is amazing, isn't it, that we have a God like that who feels so deeply and so emotionally about us to catch a picture of that emotion in the prodigal son story.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then throughout the whole Bible is reading a actually an academic study this week about the difference between Christianity and Islam, focusing really on this on this theme, this theme of the emotion and the uh loving emotion of uh of the God of Christianity.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, that's the emotional theme in the Bible, and and it touches me as it should touch you every time you see it.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: The third theme that we mentioned was this happy theme of going to a new home, even better than your fire five your childhood home.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And this theme is always surrounded in the Bible with with overtones of promise and fulfillment.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Loads of stories in the Bible, of course, Abram and Sarah, who are uh called by God to leave the greatest city of that day, Ur, this city, great Ziggurat, he is a businessman we know uh from Jeremiah, and and to go to a rural place way west.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: But they're going to the promised land.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, the story of the Rahab who goes to a much better place as she leaves her her little you know harlot hovel hooked onto the wall of Jericho, and she takes her entire extended family and they get to move into God's people, into Israel.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: And the story of Ruth, who leaves the high plains of Moab, and Shemosh, the God who demands infant sacrifice, and moves to Bethlehem, where she becomes the great grandmother of David, and in the lineage of Jesus.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: This this is the happy theme of this future home.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to add to this two subpoints this morning that come out of the upper room discourse, uh, the story of Jesus.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that is number four, that Jesus longed for this future home as well.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: He l it's one of the subplots that we overlook in John 13, 14, 15, and 16 and 17.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to just dump on you uh on the screen here and and read for you some of the verses that show how Jesus was transfixed the last night of his life by the thought, I'm about to get to go, you know, I'm gonna get to go home.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: He seems to have been homesick.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: He says in John 13 to the disciples, at the Last Supper, children, I'll be with you only a little while longer.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: And Simon Peter says, Lord, where are you going?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus said, Where I am going, you can't follow me now, but you'll follow later.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: John 14 is part of this talk.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to the Father, he says.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: The world will see me no more.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Notice he doesn't say I'm going to heaven.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: Very interesting in all of these verses, uh uh he talks about the person he's going to see.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's really true, isn't it, that that your desire, your longing to go home is connected, is dependent really upon the people that you will see there.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, my I I I used to have this longing to go to 16539 Northeast Halsey Street, Troutdale, Oregon, right outside Portland, Oregon, because my dad was there after he passed on.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: My mom was still there, but now they both passed away in this decade.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: And and there's just really nothing nothing in that shell of a house, though, though it's been in our family for 60 years.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing really that draws me like it used to, right?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's the people and and the love between Jesus and his father.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus refers to his father's love for him in John 3, John 5, John 10, John 15.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: He just keeps talking about the love that the Trinity has for each other.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's why I think he doesn't say, Oh, I'm going back to heaven.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's not so much that he likes the, you know, mansions.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's that he gets to go back to the Father.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: John 14, 28.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: He says to them you heard me say, I'm going away and I'm coming back to you.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: If you love me, you'd be glad that I am going to the Father.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: He can hardly wait.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: John 16, now I'm going to him who sent me.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to the Father.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: John 16, 28.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: I came from the Father and entered the world.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm leaving the world and going back to the Father.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I hope this is becoming clear.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I feel like I'm hitting you over the head with a hammer.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, each one of these, a yellow hammer, notice.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: And going back to the Father.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then right after that, remember, they go to the Garden of Gethsemane and in his high priestly prayer, John 17, I'm coming to you, he prays.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Holy Father, protect the disciples while I'm gone, but I'm coming to you now, he says in verse 13, this incredible theme.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus longing for what was about to happen, for his return home.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now, connected with that theme is the fact that he wants to take us there with him.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: And this is my final point.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus will give us a home forever.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: He invites us into that home, okay?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: And he says this very in a passage you know so well, right in the middle of these others.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Don't be troubled, let not your heart be troubled by the fact that I'm leaving.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: In my father's house, there are many dwelling places.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: There's room for you.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going there to prepare a place for you, and I'll come back and take you to be with me.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, so I really want to go there, Jesus says.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: I can hardly wait to get home.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then he says, and by the way, I really want all my brothers and sisters there too.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: I want anyone who's and I'm sure you've you've heard this before, but but to become a brother or sister of Jesus, son or daughter of the King of God the Father simply requires in the Christian faith in the Bible, does not require that you beat yourself or that you, you know, uh give your body to be burned.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: It simply requires that you that you that you do the will of God.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: And the will of God is that you believe on the person that God has sent, that you believe the Lord Jesus Christ died for my sins on the cross and rose again to give me eternal life.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I believe that.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: I believe his promise that he'll give me heaven, he'll give me eternal life.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: The moment I believe that.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's he's Jesus wants you there.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: He wants me there.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: And in his in his prayer, he even says that.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: He says, Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: We've got this love thing going on.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: I love you.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: I can hardly wait to come back and see you.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I love these people too, and I want them with me.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: So there are the themes.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: There's the sad theme, leaving home.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's the emotional theme, returning home.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's a happy theme, going to a much better home.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then we zero in on Jesus.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm longing for that home, he said the last night of his life.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm really also longing for you to go there and be with me in that home.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that cool?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: And let me remind you of some of the words of C.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: S.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: Lewis and add a few more, because this was such a major theme for him.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: The sweetest thing in all my life, Lewis said, is the longing for home.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he didn't mean Wales, and he didn't mean the home of his dad and mom, and he didn't mean Cambridge, and he didn't mean Oxford, it didn't mean Scotland.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: He was talking about home, home.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: He was talking about home in heaven.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then he says, if I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: And one of his major themes is that no matter who you are, no matter if you're Buddhist, no matter if you're Muslim, no matter if you're you know uh Hindu, no matter if you're a Protestant, a Catholic, no matter if you have no religion at all, that you'll find this desire in you, you'll find this longing in you.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: And we oftentimes find it at Christmas.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because at Christmas, you oftentimes have high expectations.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I had a great Christmas, my four kids all home, the seven grandchildren had a great time.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, it never does.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Never meets up to the perfect expectations, does it?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it just never does.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: You're easily satisfied?
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think so.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: No, you know there's something, and it's just not perfect.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what is that?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And Lewis pointed out no matter who you are, where you live in the world, there is this longing.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: He loved to use the German word Seinzucht, S-E-H-N, which means seeing, such, which means S-U-C-H-T, which means to seek.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: He said there's something inside us, uh, a sort of a that seeks something that we that we've never experienced, that no experience in this world can satisfy.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's proof that we were made for another world.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's proof that there is another world.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, he says in the weight of glory, and it's too late for stocking stuffers, but this is the best one ever.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's like only 80 pages, probably now costs 80, no,$12.95.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: It used to be like$2.95, but this is The Weight of Glory is this great little book about heaven and rewards.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: You need to read this if you're not a C.S.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: Lewis lover already.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Notice this quote from it.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: This desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves, every one of us finds it in ourselves, is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Our experience, though, is constantly suggesting it.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: The beauty, the memory of our own past are not the thing itself.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: They're only the scent of a flower we've not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we've never yet visited.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: So he says, when you smell a flower and you go, oh, that smells amazing.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's put there to remind you there is another country, there's a world where all the flowers smell like that.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: You hear it.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Tune that you love and it and it sets your heart to longing.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: That tune is a tune that comes from a far country that you haven't yet been to.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's a desire inside of us.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so he has Jewel the Unicorn in the last volume of the Narnia Tales express it.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: I've come home at last.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: This is my real country.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: I belong here.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: This is the land I've been looking for all my life, though I never knew it until now.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: And Lewis's thought is that you and I and he will be saying that very thing when we finally pass through the gate into heaven.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: This desire inside all of us, I had a couple come up after first service this morning, and I frankly didn't really know them.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: They were telling me they like to sing.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: They sing and they go around places and they sing, and they sometimes like to sing, talk a little bit about heaven, and you know, and the crowds that they sing to are not religious crowds.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so they said the song they like to sing for that, and and I said, Yeah, I remember that song.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's the song song, I'm sorry, by Gonzo in the Moppet movie.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I know this is not typical, but I'm sorry.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember close to the end, you know, how that sad, melancholy song that Gonzo I mean it was a religious moment.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Come on, folks, get with it.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: This is better than Star Wars.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Forget Star Wars.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: This is Gonzo.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to so uh but but I was looking up the words after first service, and they're really, they're it's like Lewis.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: Sun rises, night falls, he sings.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes the sky calls.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: Is that a song there?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: And do I belong there?
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: I've never been there, but I know the way.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to go back there someday.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: Come and go with me, it's more fun to share.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: We'll both be completely at home in mid-air.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: We're flying, not walking on featherless wings.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: We can hold on to love like invisible strings.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: Just another illustration, I think that our culture has these little hints of this place that we've never been to that is a longing inside each of our hearts.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so that brings us back to our text for the morning, 2 Corinthians 5, in which almost clinically, it's so surprising because it's not emotional at all.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: The great theologian Paul just says, okay, there's two options, home and the body here on earth, or home with the Lord.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if I ask you about the home and the body part, and I'll be home for Christmas, then like me, you'd probably wax a little bit romantic.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you'd say, yeah, and I long for heaven, but you know, love being here in the earth when things are going well.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: So interesting that Paul, um, he's what you'd call a party pooper when it comes to romantic songs about life on earth.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because he goes, eh, home in the body, we're away from the Lord.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's a bummer.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: So we're preferred to actually be out of the body in a home with the Lord.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, come on, Paul, don't you like home in the body a little bit?
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you go over to Philippians 1.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, he said, you know, I would really prefer to actually be with the Lord, but I gotta hang around here longer for you guys' sake, you know.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I I'm just I've loved it.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was praying with a woman after last service, and she's uh going for through her fourth fourth treatment for major cancer, and she doesn't have long to live.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: And she's caught a picture of this a little bit, and she just says, you know, I it's not that I'm resigned to it, I'm actually looking forward to it.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking forward to I've I've fought the fight, and I'll be going to heaven soon.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm so fine with that.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: And Paul was fine with that.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Paul's idea was, you know, heaven's just around the next turn, and it's really what I'm longing for.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, I've got two takeaways from this uh a little bit shorter message.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: And and they're really simple takeaways.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the first one is that I think the Lord's Lord's first call to us to become home.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: His first call to us to be, listen, I want you to make sure that you have a reservation.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I don't know if you remember, but four four weeks ago, I our favorite son, Carrie Livgren, uh, was surprised I used this.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mentioned that as Carrie was uh just about to trust Christ in June 1979, in May, he wrote a song called Give Me a Glimpse of Home.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: His longing was to find this, and God gave it to him.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, several years before that he sang a more famous song that you've heard, Carry on My Waward Son, but which I think captures the same sense really well.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: Carry on my wayward son.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: There'll be peace when you are done.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: Lay your weary head to rest, don't you cry no more.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: And at the end of one of the choruses, heaven waits for you.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: This is when Carrie was still searching.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: If you've ever read his biography, it's a great biography, I'll loan it to you if you need it.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: But he was going through all these religions and searching, and he felt this intense desire and longing inside himself that caused him to be searching for God, and he had put a name on it.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was heaven, you know, it was something out there, some, you know.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: And he captured, I think, the feeling that so many of us have had, that is, that we're wayward and we're longing for peace, and our weary head is looking for a place to rest.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: We'd like to have our tears wiped away, and and carry is singing with that same longing and saying, just carry on, hang on a little longer, heaven waits for you.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that the first takeaway from this, God would say, listen, heaven does wait for you.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm preparing it for you, but I want you to make sure, make sure that you're gonna get there.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: And the other takeaway, you know, for those of you who have reserved your place, is to be heavenly minded.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: When I was growing up, oh, so many, you know, moons ago, uh, in Portland and my daddy was a Bible professor and sometime pastor, and we were going to a little Baptist church, and I used to hear this line.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you even hear it anymore, and the line went like this don't be so heavenly minded that you are no earthly good.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: You've heard that.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I think back then I knew a couple of old biddies who may be qualified.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but I haven't met anybody in like 80 years.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know anybody, I don't know anybody in all of life who's so heavenly minded they're no earthly good.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't, I haven't known anybody like that for decades.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're all pretty heavenly, we're all pretty earthly minded.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, for good reason.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, I mean, there's cars and houses to take care of and kids and grandkids, and we're gotta figure out what we think about ISIS and Donald Trump and everything.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: Don't let me go.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, I shouldn't have even brought that up.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now you're gonna be all distracted.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, we're no longer so heavenly minded.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, we're so, the truth is that we are so uh earthly minded that we're not much heavenly good.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think the other takeaway this morning would be listen, if Jesus could long for heaven, why shouldn't you?
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Why shouldn't I?
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: Shouldn't our mind be set on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, let's be heavenly minded for earthly good.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that would be the other takeaway.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I could have picked a lot of uh quotes, uh, A.W.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: Tozer, Charles Spurgeon to illustrate this, but since I'm using C.S.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: Lewis this morning, I'll use one of my favorite quotes of his, where he says, if you read history, you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were those who thought most of the next.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'll fill in what I left out here.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: The apostles who turned the Roman Empire upside down, and then he says uh the stalwart Christians who who who buttressed the Middle Ages, and then he says the English evangelicals who abolished the slave trade all left their mark on earth precisely because their minds were occupied with heaven.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this one.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: So let's be heavenly minded this year.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: If you're gonna be rebellious and pick your own word, then maybe pick heaven.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we sing we sing something like this in one of the great old Christmas songs, which is hundreds of years old.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: The final stanza in our hymnals, though there's a like 34 stanzas in the original song, final stanza in our hymnals captures this longing, O come, thou key of David, come, and open wide our heavenly home, where all thy saints with thee shall dwell.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Oh come, O come, Emmanuel.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: Stealing that phrase from Isaiah 11, that the Messiah is the key of David, who unlocks the door of heaven, so all of us may go in.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: And why then should we not set our thoughts, thoughts there?
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: This morning at uh 6 30, I snapped a picture of my little red-haired granddaughter Beatrice, who's just over one year old, came down from uh Toronto.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: She likes to get up early in the morning, and um she had eaten her banana and then reached out her arm for the favorite, strangely, the favorite toy of my two one-year-old grandchildren, Beatrice and Reuben, this last week.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: When someone brought out the uh what I'll call the door, just simply a sort of a gate with a door, a swinging little door in the middle that one-year-olds can crawl through and push with their head and get through the other side.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: If you'd told me that we could set this thing up on the hallway, and then all of us adults could take our apple cider into the living room and chat for an hour while two little one-year-olds, ankle biters, didn't bother us because they were so transfixed with crawling back and through the door.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe it just shows the low IQ of my family, of my grandchildren.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: But but but little Beatrice started going back and through the door at 6:30 this morning, and I thought, what a great picture.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: The longing of the joy that she finds going through this door is the kind of longing that Jesus had to return home, and the kind of the kind of longing that we should have, for he has unlocked the door to heaven.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: The key of David unlocked the door so all of us who believe in Jesus have assurance that we will go there and can set our hearts upon it.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that great?
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: Let me share with you two stories in an end.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: Story number one is an old story, as old as Tom Sawyer, and the key character in it is a boy about Tom Sawyer's age, fishing on the banks of the Mississippi River.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: And as he's fishing in the afternoon, an older man comes and sits down nearby and begins fishing as well.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: And they're both chatty and they sort of become afternoon friends.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and uh as the dusk begins to set in this story, the Tom Sawyer age uh character uh is looking, and around the corner, down in the Mississippi, comes a big river boat, and he stands up and he begins to yell and he begins to wave.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, his his his his the older man says, Don't don't waste your strength.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: That boat's not gonna notice you, it's not gonna come over here, it's not gonna do anything.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the boy just keeps jumping and waving and yelling.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the man thinks, well, got to learn sometime.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'll just let him do it.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then to his astonishment, he sees that the boat is actually turning, and this big boat is coming toward the shore, and sure enough, comes up to the shore, uh, throws down a gangplank, and the boy starts walking up and turns around and says, uh, this is my dad's boat.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: He's the captain, and we're going up upstream to make our new home.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that story captures, I think, a little bit of what of what I'm trying to tell you this morning.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: That that here we are, and uh and the you know, as the river runs through it, we're making our way through life, and that boat will stop and it'll pick us up, and it will take us to a new home.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it's okay if you and I not only make sure we're going there, but if if we think about going there and long for that place and the people there.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the other story comes out of the newspaper, The Portland, Oregonian.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: A few years back, uh I was there over Christmas, and I was shocked, really startled to read a most wonderful story.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: Came out uh actually it was a two-part story.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: First part came out Christmas Eve morning, and the next part came out uh one week later.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's a story about a woman named Leela Palmer.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: Leela Palmer lived in an apartment, lived in an apartment for decades, who had two children who had made it pretty good in life.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: One, Sally, was an investment banker out east in New York City, and the other one, Kip, lived down in Bend, Oregon.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: And and uh and Leela just a homebody.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: She loved doing gardening, and she had a little home business, you know, so she worked out a little office.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Sally and Kip had gotten together and decided they wanted to buy their mother her own first home for Christmas, wanted to buy her a home.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: So Sally flew out in August staying with her mother and is sneaking out.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: She's saying she's visiting old high school friends.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: She's sneaking out to spend time with a realtor.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: And she's looking for a house.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: She knows her mother loves social things.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: She needs to be on a street with a lot of families and stuff like that.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: She needs room for a guard, you know, for a garden.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: She needs a little home office and so forth.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: One morning, one morning she says, you know, uh, mom had just brought out breakfast.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: We're sitting there, and I get a call from the realtor, and he says, immediately, pretend like you're going for a run.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'll meet you at the top of the hill.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so she said, Mom, I got to go running.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: What about breakfast?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'll be back really quickly, which she wasn't, but she runs up, and so they got, look at it, and they find the perfect house in Tuallaton, which is a suburb of Portland that I know well, and very family-oriented, house at the end of the street.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so they buy it and secretly begin decorating it and putting in furniture.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: And on Christmas month, they she and Kip put up all these lights and everything else, and they put up a sign on the garage.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome home, Mom.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so, so, but they plan everything, and so then Kip and Sally on Christmas Eve in the afternoon, the same day that this article comes out, and then she says, You better not call and ruin the surprise.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, to all of us reading the Oregonian.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: So they're in the apartment and they say, Mom, let's let's go out looking at Christmas lights.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: And mom says, You guys go, I'll just put an apple pie in the oven.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: And Sally says, Oh, well, we'll be back before the apple pie's done.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, so, oh, okay.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: So they walk out and they have lined up a silver and black stretch limousine out there, you know, with everything, uh, everything in it, and uh stuff to drink and cushion and everything else.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then Sally runs around back and in the back door and turns off the oven, you know.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so they get in there and they're looking at Christmas lights, and mom Leela is saying, This is the best Christmas ever.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: I can't believe you did this.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is so special and so much fun.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then Kip goes, wow, you know, I hear there's some great Christmas lights into all of them, you know, let's let's go over there.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: So they go and they go to the street, and the and the and the people on the street know all about this.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: So you have all of these families that are out and they know there's a limousine coming, and they're all standing out there, you know, and here comes the limousine, but Leela doesn't notice.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: She she doesn't even notice, she's she's just kind of she just doesn't notice.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, and they get down to the end of the street, and there's this beautiful lit-up house.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's so pretty, she says.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: And oh, isn't that nice?
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, somebody's mother's coming home for Christmas, you know, and so forth.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the chauffeur stops the car and opens up the door, puts his hand in his as Leela gets out of the car, he says, Welcome home, Mrs.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: Palmer.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: And she stands there and it suddenly hits her and she begins to cry.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: And they take her up to the door where there's a card where the grandchildren have written messages, and now she's crying so hard they have to help her across the threshold of the house.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: The article in the Portland, Oregon Indians, and finally Mrs.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: Palmer, Leila Palmer, was home for Christmas.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's such a great picture of what is going to happen to us one day, that they'll be welcoming parties, all these people that we know and love, and they'll be waiting on the side, and there's this home.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says, I'm going to prepare this place for you.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I hasn't seen, ear hasn't heard, mind, your mind can't conceive the things that God is preparing for those who love him.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so excited about surprising you with heaven.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: And no matter how deep the desire in your soul, you've never seen anything like this, but I hold it out to you.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I encourage you to make sure you're going there and then think about it once in a while.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: Let me pray for you, and then I'll have Jeremiah sing a song about this.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: Heavenly Father, I pray for us.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for how much you love us, how much you love your son, how your son loved this idea of spending forever with his father there in heaven, and how much he wants all of us to be there too.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: We thank you that one day we'll be finally home at Christmas in Jesus' name.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Are you far away from home this darken?
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me what best with how to ease your mind someone to give direction for this unfamiliar road or one who says follow me and I will lead you how beautiful, how precious the Savior to love so completely lonely so how gently, how tenderly he says to one and all child you can follow me and I will lead you.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: Trust me and follow me, and I will leave you.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I will leave you whole be near me, Lord Jesus.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: I ask thee to stay close by me forever and love me, I pray, bless all the dear children in thy care and take us to heaven to live with thee there.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: Take us to heaven to live with thee there dismiss.