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What Gives Scripture Authority? & Advent Musings · Red Couch Theology

• 0:00
  Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of the Red Couch
• 0:03
  Theology podcast. Hey, this week we covered a lot
• 0:06
  of ground because we had two weeks to sort of talk about in
• 0:10
  our preaching cycle. First, we talked about
• 0:12
  scripture. What is scripture?
• 0:14
  Where does scriptures authority come from?
• 0:16
  And what about that sermon where you preached from a passage that
• 0:20
  might not have been in the Bible?
• 0:22
  What do we do with that and how do we have confidence that it's
• 0:24
  helpful to us? And then we pivoted to Advent.
• 0:28
  And if you want to hear two guys nerd about, nerd out about
• 0:31
  Advent and how much they love it and all of that sort of thing,
• 0:35
  well, if you don't want to hear that, don't listen to this
• 0:37
  episode because that's what you'll get.
• 0:39
  Let's dive right in. Well, hello, hello, welcome to
• 0:44
  the Red Couch Theology podcast when Alex just made it in the
• 0:48
  nick of time. Had a meeting that just had to
• 0:51
  overrun for a few minutes, you know?
• 0:56
  Thank you, Siri for participating in the Right Couch
• 0:58
  Theology podcast. Oh man, the life of ministry.
• 1:03
  The first time you've ever been late.
• 1:04
  So I was like, did we, did we cancel this?
• 1:07
  And I just think I was just, yeah, working away here.
• 1:11
  Cancelled this week, We're starting to talk about Advent.
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  I know. I mean, we've got 50 Fleming
• 1:16
  Rutledge quotes to get through before the end of this episode.
• 1:19
  Yeah, and. Maybe you should just grab and
• 1:23
  try flipping Rutledge and just read it to people.
• 1:26
  That could have been your backup plan if I didn't turn up, yeah.
• 1:30
  Just pull up a chair, get a cup of tea and I'll read you a book.
• 1:34
  We got some. Rutledge to get through.
• 1:37
  Well, sorry, we weren't here last week.
• 1:40
  We were celebrating Thanksgiving.
• 1:42
  We're great together. You might be sad that we weren't
• 1:45
  here, but we were not. Although we could have actually
• 1:47
  done the podcast together on Thanksgiving.
• 1:51
  No, in that mad dash. Are you kidding me?
• 1:53
  That was insane at the end there.
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  Was nuts. We gathered with a couple of
• 1:57
  other families and cooked and created.
• 2:00
  And everyone needed oven space at the same time.
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  Yeah, so like the old, the old, whatever the phrases, too many
• 2:09
  cooks in the kitchen, We like decided to have too many cooks
• 2:12
  in the kitchen. Hey, how about we have 6 adults
• 2:16
  all who want to cook their own dish in the same kitchen at the
• 2:20
  why? Didn't you tell people about the
• 2:21
  danger of broiling dishes? There was only one casualty at
• 2:27
  Thanksgiving, and it was my one of my dishes that we warmed up
• 2:32
  in the grill, which worked great.
• 2:34
  But it's supposed to have that like charred, just cheesiness.
• 2:38
  On top. So last minute I threw it in the
• 2:40
  broiler and as many of you are nodding your head right now, you
• 2:46
  know you know you have to be on it with a broiler.
• 2:49
  Broilers are a dangerous tool. They are they they Rookies like
• 2:55
  me should not be messing with broilers.
• 2:59
  But. That's not what we're talking
• 3:00
  about. Yeah.
• 3:01
  So I am going to do a couple things here because I think all
• 3:06
  of our audio is messed up from last week or last time we met
• 3:13
  because I had it set up for other voices and I'm a loudmouth
• 3:16
  so. Oh yeah.
• 3:18
  You know, I have to turn me down because otherwise I'm just like
• 3:23
  in people's skulls. And that just sounds so scary to
• 3:26
  me that I would be just dominating the.
• 3:29
  Space, as I like to say, you have to deal with that all the
• 3:32
  time. Yeah.
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  So this week we are going to talk about the the kickoff of
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  Advent. I thought if it's OK, I could
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  reference. I made promises that we would
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  talk on the podcast about the previous Sunday sermon where I
• 3:43
  talked about a passage that isn't in the Bible.
• 3:46
  Oh Lord, we're gonna get through that as well.
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  Yeah, but I don't think no one wrote questions.
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  So I don't think it's as big of a deal as I made it out to be.
• 3:54
  Yeah. So I think we'd touch on it and
• 3:57
  then move on. And if people are upset, we
• 3:59
  don't cover it more in depth. And you should have asked a
• 4:02
  question about it. What do you do when something
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  isn't in the Bible? Exactly.
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  So those are so, so some of the things.
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  And we did have one question. I can't recall if it was from
• 4:10
  your Sunday or from when I preached the prior one.
• 4:13
  Let me pull it up here. Aaron.
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  I've seen positive growth in. Yeah, It's OK.
• 4:18
  Cool. So someone who said thanks for
• 4:22
  not being as bad of a preacher as you used to be, That's
• 4:24
  awesome about today. No, it was much sweeter than
• 4:28
  that. I apologize.
• 4:32
  Today's sermon. Yes, where's the guy?
• 4:36
  Oh, so this is someone who has a theory about where the man is.
• 4:40
  The. And they would like the our our
• 4:44
  listeners to know their theory. Let's go.
• 4:47
  All right, so you preached on John Eight one through 11.
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  Well, technically it was John 753 through 811, but before that
• 4:58
  I'm going to get back into the camera, but I got to fix our
• 5:00
  focus. Man, we are fixing everything.
• 5:06
  Well, well, well, well. I don't unfortunately have any
• 5:12
  jokes to tell. You're actually going to zoom in
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  like that? Is that part of the plan?
• 5:21
  Yeah, I'm going to try and capture Alex's nose hairs.
• 5:24
  The the the podcast where we are nothing but unprepared.
• 5:29
  I love it. Says the guy who walked in one
• 5:32
  minute after the show started. Wow, you know I was losing folk.
• 5:36
  That's my job for pairing. String people.
• 5:38
  This is pairing. Is your job.
• 5:41
  It's it is really hard to get annoyed at you when you're off
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  pastoring people. This happens every Sunday when
• 5:46
  we have our power, our prayer time as a team right before
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  service. So, so you preached on 1st John
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  Yes. Chapter 8.
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  What? What?
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  What was happening there? Yeah.
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  So for those of you who don't remember that far back, it's the
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  story of the woman caught in adultery.
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  As I said in the introduction, the message, I'm in my study of
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  the textual issue. So this happens occasionally.
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  And when you're studying Scripture is there'll be a
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  textual variant. And what that means is some of
• 6:25
  the manuscripts conflict with each other.
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  Most of the time that that pops up, we're talking like an accent
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  point or whatever like that. Or, or it's a lot of times it's
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  like a word that seems like it's in the wrong generation or
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  something like that. So it's yeah, those kinds of
• 6:50
  things. But in this case it's a pretty
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  large chunk of passage that doesn't exist pre 300 a day AAD
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  in the best manuscripts actually in any of the manuscripts.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah. From that time period.
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  Yeah. And so it's I'm pretty confident
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  in my study that it was not there.
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  So let, let let me just give maybe a, a way of understanding
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  that for people that would say, wait, I didn't come here for a
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  seminary class. Sometimes, especially in the Old
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  Testament, you see words appear that don't make sense.
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  So imagine if you went back to you found a book that said it
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  was from 1800, but that book kept using the word Coca-Cola.
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  Yeah, you'd be like, wait, hold on a second.
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  They didn't have Coca-Cola in 1800.
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  How can you be talking about Coca-Cola?
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  Sometimes some of the Old Testament books have words that
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  you like. Oh, that doesn't seem like a 6th
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  century BC word. It seems like a second century
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  BC word. That's one of the problems,
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  right? And then on the other hand, it
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  can be maybe bigger passages that that just when you look at
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  the best manuscript as you said and so.
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  Yeah. And so a New Testament, this is,
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  there's a whole field of study. That's not that's not unique to
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  biblical studies. It's it's a field of study for
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  ancient texts called textual criticism.
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  And it's a a science of trying to determine what the original
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  author actually put on a page and to see by.
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  And the way they do that, the, the very, very high level that
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  there's a tons of ways they do this, but the very, very high
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  level is they find all the copies of said thing and they
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  compare them. Yeah.
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  And then they have rules that they use to try and determine,
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  oh you know what, 800 of these copies, which is the, you can
• 8:54
  only use the word, the number 800 when it comes to scripture,
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  cause most ancient texts you get 2 or 3 tops, like Homer's
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  Odyssey, these kinds of ancient things.
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  Even Shakespeare. There are more tech manuscript
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  evidence that in for scripture than there are that Shakespeare
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  existed as a human. You're interesting, I've heard
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  that for Julius Caesar. Is that true of Shakespeare as
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  well? Yeah, I mean, there's just.
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  We actually have autographs of William Shakespeare.
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  Sure. Yeah.
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  Interesting. So it's like the quantity of
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  copies. That quantity of copies is huge.
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  So New Testament. So Old Testament.
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  Textual criticism is different. We're giving you a little bit of
• 9:33
  a seminary education. Old Text Testament textual
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  criticisms unique in that there are much fewer manuscripts, but
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  they're way higher quality. Like because the the people of
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  God were, they saw these as sacred texts.
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  They were really, really meticulous.
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  And so there's not very many variants, but there's not as
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  many manuscripts. New Testament Wild, Wild West.
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  Yeah, there's tons of variants because there's just every.
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  Day 25,000. Different manuscripts around
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  that number. Yeah, there's tons of variants
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  because it's like everyday people copying these things down
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  because they're like, they get a letter from Paul or they get a
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  letter from John who actually walked with Jesus, and it
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  becomes like they're just copying it as much as they
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  possibly can. We.
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  Got to share it with this church but we need to keep our copy as
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  well. We go and just send them back.
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  And so the the so Old Testament, not many things, but really high
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  quality copies. New Testament thousands and
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  thousands of copies, but the not as high quality.
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  And so the way they figured it out is they can just compare a
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  lot larger body of work for the New Testament.
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  And the long and short of it is the best manuscripts, the most
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  thorough, the most, the oldest, the closest to the original
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  author, all of those manuscripts, this doesn't exist.
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  So perhaps it's also helpful to say this if you are someone who
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  maybe has the King James Version Bible, the 1611 the Authorized
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  Version, depending on how you call it, that was written in
• 11:05
  1611, put together in 1611. The manuscript Aaron's talking
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  about hadn't been discovered yet, so the manuscripts that
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  King James has written on were the best manuscripts for its
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  time, but later we discovered other manuscripts.
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  Yeah. And yeah, there may have been a
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  few that were starting to pop up, but they weren't because
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  textual criticism was so young. They didn't know that they were
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  higher quality necessarily or something.
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  So, so I don't know if any of you out there have heard, I
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  can't, you can't, you can't respond.
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  Weirdly, our audience can't respond right now.
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  So I'm going to ask you a question that you can't respond
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  to. But have you, if you've ever
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  heard someone who's an atheist friend of yours who's debated
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  Christianity or whatever and says, how can you trust the
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  Bible was written 600 years after Jesus and da da da da da
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  da da da, That sentiment is very inaccurate.
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  Most of the New Testament, it was actually much, much closer
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  to the original author. And the textual criticism
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  evidence is really, really astounding.
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  But but but but in John eight, that is actually true.
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  This doesn't show up in the manuscripts until like the
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  earliest record of it showing up in the biblical manuscripts is
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  somewhere in the two to three hundreds AD.
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  And then by the end of canonization in the 600 ish time
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  frame, it's more widely in there and it floats around in a couple
• 12:50
  different places. Now with one caveat, it does
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  show up in earlier manuscripts, just not of scripture.
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  So this was a story that actually is pretty old.
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  It's just not in the manuscripts.
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  I don't know, I, I didn't get far into naming those things,
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  but it's like a letter or a story or someone, a, a sermon
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  that was recorded by a Chrysostom or, you know, these
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  kinds of things that weren't like a commentary or whatever
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  that no one saw as like a authoritative sort of document.
• 13:31
  This story was actually pretty old.
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  So the the weird part about trying to determine was this in
• 13:36
  the Bible or wasn't it is maybe the wrong question one because
• 13:41
  it it leads us into a whole conversation about what is the
• 13:43
  Bible and and how does canonization work.
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  But here's my hunch. It was a well loved story from
• 13:50
  really early on. And as time progressed, some
• 13:57
  scribes who were copying down the New Testament thought I'll
• 14:01
  be such a shame to just lose this to history, this
• 14:04
  interaction. So it's a really old story.
• 14:08
  It doesn't make its way into the Scriptures until really late.
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  There is my conclusion about it, which brings us maybe to a
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  different question which I would love for you to address, which
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  is, does it have the authority of God then?
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  And should we be preaching it in our churches?
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  Please say yes 'cause I did. Yeah.
• 14:32
  Yeah, it does. Cool.
• 14:34
  Moving on. Hopefully that satisfies
• 14:39
  everyone. Yeah.
• 14:41
  So all right, maybe a different question.
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  What what gives Scripture power? Does Scripture have power?
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  So it does. I think that one of the
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  challenges we have, and I think this is true in America more
• 15:02
  than anywhere else, is that because of how we talk about
• 15:06
  Scripture, we're always trying to what what we want it always
• 15:12
  to be doing the thing we think it does.
• 15:16
  So, so like if we say Scripture is authoritative, like to your
• 15:20
  question earlier, really this may be the unpacking of it.
• 15:26
  That means if we think Scripture's authoritative, we
• 15:29
  always want it to be doing authoritative things.
• 15:33
  And sometimes actually that just doesn't seem to be the thing
• 15:36
  that that portion of Scripture is interested in.
• 15:39
  So there are times absolutely where Scripture is being
• 15:43
  authoritative. It's telling you how to live
• 15:45
  your life. You know, it's saying this is
• 15:48
  what Jesus said, and this is what Jesus wants you to do, to
• 15:51
  follow him. There are other times where it's
• 15:55
  not doing that. It's being a faithful witness to
• 15:58
  what happened. So this this becomes a hard
• 16:03
  thing when you use language like all scriptures, the same.
• 16:08
  Well, in actual fact, when you start to be honest about that,
• 16:13
  is Matthew 2117 quite the same as John 316?
• 16:19
  John 316 says God loved the world, for God so loved the
• 16:22
  world, He gave his only Son. Whoever believes in him will
• 16:25
  have eternal life. Matthew 2117 says he went out of
• 16:29
  the city into Bethany and he lodged there for the night.
• 16:33
  Like on one hand, once this eternal truth about who God is
• 16:38
  and what he feels for the whole world, not just the people of
• 16:42
  Israel and what Jesus is doing as God on earth for us all.
• 16:47
  The other one is giving us a minor logistic movement that
• 16:50
  explains that Jesus didn't stay in the city, he went to Bethany.
• 16:55
  Which. Which someone would argue is
• 16:59
  absolutely necessary in order for an the interpretation of a
• 17:03
  of a later text or something like where is he located?
• 17:07
  Like the context, it's. Informational.
• 17:09
  Yeah, but it's not like if, if you're stuck on a stranded
• 17:15
  island, you'd rather have John 316 or John Chapter 3, one page
• 17:21
  of John chapter 3 than you would the other.
• 17:24
  So. And my guess is many of you
• 17:26
  listening have quoted John 316 for something that's probably
• 17:30
  the first time you've ever heard Matthew 2117.
• 17:33
  And when I said it, I bet no one was like, oh, he went out of the
• 17:38
  city into Bethany and he launched that felt like, why are
• 17:40
  you bringing that into this, you know?
• 17:43
  If that's you, if you knew exactly what he was referring
• 17:45
  to. Now I did because he's used this
• 17:48
  illustration for me a dozen times.
• 17:50
  But but if you were jumping all over like.
• 17:52
  Oh, the Bethany. Passage.
• 17:54
  Like that? Then you're brilliant.
• 17:56
  Yes. Would you like to join us on the
• 17:58
  show? Yeah, but there are there are
• 18:00
  elements to scripture, some that stand out.
• 18:02
  There's high points. Perhaps you'd describe it as
• 18:04
  that. I actually think that that like
• 18:07
  is a bit leading the witness. One of the things I often use
• 18:09
  for scriptures is have you ever seen a map of a subway system,
• 18:14
  especially in New York or London, a big city, There are
• 18:18
  some stations that track after track after track seems to run
• 18:25
  through. Yeah.
• 18:27
  You know, Grand Central Terminal or Green Park in London or
• 18:35
  Victorious in London, all these different stations that all
• 18:40
  these different lines that meet and converge in the specific
• 18:43
  station. And then there's other stations
• 18:47
  that are like in the middle of nowhere, the one line goes to
• 18:53
  every 30 minutes or every hour, and 1 train goes there every now
• 18:58
  and again. Yeah, yeah.
• 18:59
  Branch lines are what they call in England.
• 19:02
  Yeah. Some scriptures seem to be big
• 19:06
  stations that everything runs through, and others seem to be
• 19:11
  less central to what God is talking about.
• 19:14
  So the Exodus narrative like huge station for how we
• 19:19
  understand, I mean Genesis. 123. Genesis 1/3.
• 19:22
  Single passage in the Bible can be kind of like, you need that
• 19:27
  anchor. You do.
• 19:28
  Yeah. I'm just going to tighten this.
• 19:29
  For you. And so so those passages stand
• 19:34
  out. John 316 is another one of
• 19:36
  those. Romans 8 or maybe even the whole
• 19:38
  book of Romans is another one of those.
• 19:41
  Ephesians chapter 2 and chapter 3 another one of those.
• 19:44
  They are things that everything seems to flow through.
• 19:47
  Revelation 20 and 21 or another one of those like they just seem
• 19:52
  to be. You can pick the story of God as
• 19:56
  a whole out of those few passages.
• 19:59
  So I think one of the reasons why I think that there's some
• 20:03
  maybe some emotional tension around a topic like this is
• 20:07
  because what we. Crave as human creatures is
• 20:14
  clarity. Part of that's by design.
• 20:17
  Like our our brain wirings, all those sort of things.
• 20:21
  Like we're creatures who crave clarity.
• 20:25
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 20:26
  Yeah, good, bad, black, white, safe, not safe.
• 20:31
  And what we get with the Scriptures is we hope this final
• 20:38
  word from above that what it says goes and we don't have to
• 20:45
  have the anxiety of Gray space. And so that's why scripture
• 20:50
  it's, it's easy and why it's very satisfying to our, our
• 20:54
  emotions and our brains to say that scripture is really clear
• 20:59
  cut. And I think it is where it is
• 21:06
  and and. So and where it's trying to be.
• 21:09
  Yes. And so like the beauty of
• 21:13
  Scripture is like the Scriptures are are a gift to to God's
• 21:19
  church in that when you're new to faith, there's enough truth
• 21:27
  statements, black and white imperative statements in there
• 21:32
  to scratch that young faith self.
• 21:35
  Yeah. And when you dig deeper over a
• 21:39
  lifetime of journey with Jesus, you wait, like wait a minute,
• 21:43
  this is pretty Gray. And then later in life you start
• 21:47
  to realize the scriptures are actually deep enough and wide
• 21:50
  enough to handle the complexity of of real human.
• 21:53
  Existing. And that that that really is, is
• 21:55
  my point. Like it's dangerous when you
• 21:58
  take a document that isn't always trying to tell you what
• 22:02
  to do and assume it's trying to tell you what to do in every
• 22:06
  single space. So if, if, if scripture is
• 22:09
  always trying to give you something to do, well, then what
• 22:12
  is Psalm 137 verse 9 giving you to do happier those who take
• 22:17
  your little ones and smash them against the rocks.
• 22:20
  It's not trying to tell you to do anything.
• 22:22
  It's trying to tell you about how a specific person felt about
• 22:26
  a specific situation. You know, 3000 years ago now, it
• 22:30
  does give you something to do when you say, oh these are real
• 22:37
  emotions that someone was able to share with God and I can
• 22:40
  share my real emotions with. God yeah.
• 22:42
  So if he's not an instruction manual on how to deal with your
• 22:45
  enemies children. No, it's an instruction manual
• 22:47
  on how to be honest with God with your emotions.
• 22:50
  Yes. And so like the I was chatting
• 22:52
  with someone recently in our community and I said something,
• 22:55
  I don't remember exactly how I said it, but like, I think it
• 23:01
  actually weakens Scripture if we assume it's trying to accomplish
• 23:07
  something that it isn't. But I think I can say with a lot
• 23:13
  more confidence that every single passage in Scripture is
• 23:20
  successful at doing what it intends.
• 23:23
  Sure. But yeah, which is what exactly
• 23:26
  what you're trying to say. So like the Matthew passage, you
• 23:30
  said, it's really, really effective at transitioning your
• 23:34
  thought about spatial movement of the.
• 23:36
  Person, of course. And if you if you, but if you
• 23:39
  said, you know what I really, really want it to tell me about
• 23:43
  how I should feel towards my my spouse, that isn't in if that
• 23:49
  scripture becomes less effective as a tool to reach your
• 23:54
  marriage. And it even becomes ineffective
• 23:56
  if you use it as a guide about where to stay when you visit the
• 24:00
  city of Jerusalem. Yeah, if you read that and say,
• 24:03
  well, Jesus lodged in Bethany, I should probably lodge in Bethany
• 24:06
  as well. Yeah, meanwhile.
• 24:07
  Terrible way to use that scripture.
• 24:09
  Yeah. So I think to your point about
• 24:12
  authority, we want scripture to be a rule book, and it's a
• 24:17
  story. Now again, story doesn't mean
• 24:19
  it's not real, and sometimes that storybook has rules of how
• 24:24
  to live in it totally, but other times it doesn't and that is a
• 24:28
  big struggle in life. When is scripture giving me
• 24:32
  something to obey, and when is it telling me about the history
• 24:37
  of the people of God? And it's even more complicated
• 24:39
  than just a storybook. It is multiple books with
• 24:42
  multiple genres. It's actually a poetry book.
• 24:46
  It's a storybook. It's a rule book.
• 24:48
  It's a. It's a a music book.
• 24:52
  It's a a collection of letters from a pastor to their
• 24:57
  congregation. It's like on and on and on.
• 25:00
  So which is why we've used this term.
• 25:01
  It's been a while since we've used this concept on the show,
• 25:05
  but the Bible is advanced reading.
• 25:08
  It's like if you think you can just pick it up and instantly
• 25:14
  understand every text you read. I think it's useful to read
• 25:20
  without skill. Well, the the the.
• 25:22
  But it's it's a it's a book designed to shepherd your soul
• 25:26
  for a lifetime, and it is more advanced reading than the
• 25:30
  average American effort will do. Well, the example of that has
• 25:35
  always been the guy who says, God, I need you to speak to me.
• 25:39
  And he opens the Bible at random and sticks a pin in it.
• 25:42
  And he reads, Judas went out and hung himself.
• 25:45
  Yeah. And so he says, that can't be
• 25:47
  God. And so he flips over the next
• 25:48
  page and he puts it down again and says, so go do likewise.
• 25:52
  And he's like, wait, what? Like, no, that can't be God
• 25:54
  speaking. He flips it again.
• 25:55
  And it says, what you do go and do quickly.
• 25:58
  And he's like, what is going on here?
• 26:01
  Like if you just take it without thought, without process,
• 26:09
  without understanding the genre of what you're reading, it
• 26:14
  becomes a dangerous thing. When you take Job and read some
• 26:18
  of Job's friends talking about this is what God says and this
• 26:20
  is what God says. And then you get to the end and
• 26:23
  God says none of them spoke rightly again about me.
• 26:27
  Like suddenly you've now got a piece of text the is the
• 26:33
  translation. Yeah, that that and and and
• 26:36
  you've now got an authority piece of text that now is
• 26:39
  working to deal authoritize everything that you've just
• 26:44
  written from a certain group of characters.
• 26:46
  Like that's the complexity of scripture.
• 26:48
  Yeah, and like, This is why a lot of a lot of people struggle
• 26:52
  with the Old Testament, because you read even even the
• 26:55
  lightweight Old Testament stuff, like in the book, the books of
• 26:59
  First and Second Samuel, it's a lot of narrative that's you're
• 27:02
  like, these are just stories. They're easy to read.
• 27:05
  But then if you ask yourself, what am I supposed to do about
• 27:08
  this? Should I act like David?
• 27:11
  Should I act like Saul? Should like find the hero and do
• 27:16
  what the hero does not correct? No, no, that'll.
• 27:21
  Get you. That'll get off the rails.
• 27:22
  So like interpreting A narrative text in the Old Testament is
• 27:25
  actually like, really hard. Yeah, I mean, I mean, actually,
• 27:30
  some people read. And again, you could question
• 27:32
  the reading, but David's problem with Bathsheba, because he
• 27:35
  doesn't go to war with the other kings.
• 27:38
  Yeah, you're like, does that mean I should go to war?
• 27:41
  Well, not necessarily. Yeah, it's so, yeah, it's a,
• 27:45
  it's highly advanced reading, but.
• 27:47
  That's what makes it so funny. Oh man, it's the gift that keeps
• 27:50
  on giving best, it's such. A great and I, I had a New
• 27:54
  Testament professor once that said the risk Christianity takes
• 28:00
  is that they have acknowledged these tensions.
• 28:04
  Islam as a movement, as a faith has taken the Koran.
• 28:08
  And every time there's a disagreement, it crosses out one
• 28:11
  and another version becomes the approved version.
• 28:16
  And so it condenses down and down again till there's one
• 28:18
  official version. We don't have that Scripture is
• 28:23
  alive. You know, it's nuanced.
• 28:26
  It's it's incredible, and yet it does what it's supposed to do.
• 28:31
  It tells us the story of Jesus, leads us to faith and transforms
• 28:36
  us. Yes, that's the gift it gives.
• 28:38
  And that's the authority it has. It's it's the scriptures are
• 28:42
  highly successful at the goal that God has for them, which is
• 28:48
  transformation. And sometimes transformation
• 28:51
  needs to make its way into our cognitive self.
• 28:55
  Sometimes transformation needs us to feel something, and the
• 29:00
  Scripture plays all of those games really, really
• 29:03
  successfully. But when we want it to be
• 29:05
  really, really logical, follow our set of rules, be really,
• 29:09
  really black and white, and we get upset when it doesn't, we
• 29:15
  actually weaken the power of scripture for it.
• 29:18
  So if you're looking for a passage that actually says a lot
• 29:22
  of what Alex and I just chatted about, there's this famous text
• 29:26
  that talks about Scripture, Second Timothy 3.
• 29:30
  All Scripture is God breathed, and it's useful for teaching,
• 29:35
  rebuking, correcting, training, and righteousness so that the
• 29:38
  servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
• 29:42
  In other words, all Scripture does what it's trying to do,
• 29:48
  transform you. So this is what the Bible says
• 29:52
  about itself and when we want it to be the best science
• 29:57
  textbooked, the best psychological textbook, the best
• 30:04
  basic instructions before leaving Earth law book the the
• 30:09
  love letter from God to humanity and we it needs to be this for
• 30:12
  me today. Why don't we just relinquish the
• 30:16
  control to God to leverage this text by the power of a spirit to
• 30:20
  transform us from the. Inside of the magical things is
• 30:24
  that when you read scripture in book form, it's made-up of black
• 30:29
  parts and white parts. There's the black part that is
• 30:33
  what is written, and then the white part.
• 30:36
  Someone once, I can't remember which Mystic said this or which
• 30:39
  ancient said this. It was There's the written stuff
• 30:42
  and then there's the white part, which is where God speaks to you
• 30:45
  personally. That's all the extra stuff.
• 30:48
  That's like not the words. That's God taking words and
• 30:52
  bringing them to life to you. And so one of the gifts I think
• 30:56
  of understanding Scripture rightly is, is it's part of the
• 31:02
  process. But we still believe in a God
• 31:04
  that still takes those words and speaks to us individually,
• 31:09
  personally, that that's still part of our equation.
• 31:13
  And we have proof from church history and from the scriptures
• 31:18
  like this passage has read that God has decided to use scripture
• 31:25
  regularly. And most often for those types
• 31:28
  of things like that there is some sort of weird, confusing
• 31:36
  methodology that they that the Holy Spirit consistently
• 31:39
  decides. This is the medium I will use
• 31:43
  regularly Now. Talk about sola scriptura versus
• 31:47
  prima scriptura briefly and then we can move on.
• 31:51
  Yeah, so I, I mean, I grew up prima scriptura.
• 31:56
  So sola scriptura, scripture is the only basis for how we do
• 32:00
  things. It gives us everything that we
• 32:03
  need. Scripture alone is the
• 32:05
  definition, and then prima scriptura is the other strand.
• 32:11
  So generally sola scriptura comes through in the strongly
• 32:16
  Lutheran Reformed movements, and the Prima scripture tends to
• 32:21
  come through the Anglican Methodist non conformist track,
• 32:28
  if that makes sense. Again, you might have to do some
• 32:31
  some some reading to understand all of those different movements
• 32:34
  and if we have time for that. But these two tracks develop,
• 32:37
  one that says it's just scripture alone and the other
• 32:40
  one that says it's scripture primarily.
• 32:43
  That tradition is really informative for us at past
• 32:47
  stories, our reasoning, how God has given us minds to think.
• 32:52
  And then especially as it gets to the Pentecostal movements
• 32:55
  that come out of that second track, it's the Spirit speaking
• 32:59
  to us today. The Holy Spirit still speaks.
• 33:02
  So, and at the risk of at the risk of sounding one sided on
• 33:10
  the show that is I don't think that this is a one of them is a
• 33:16
  conservative, conservative theological track and one of
• 33:19
  them's a liberal theological track.
• 33:22
  I just think that to show my cards, one of them's actually
• 33:27
  more realistic and one of them's not actually possible.
• 33:32
  So if you say if you are a sola scriptur person, don't you dare
• 33:40
  read a commentary written by a sola scriptura pastor.
• 33:45
  Yes, yeah. Yeah.
• 33:46
  Why would you ever write a commentary?
• 33:48
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because all you need is the
• 33:50
  text. Don't you don't need sermons
• 33:52
  anymore. Like, it's just not.
• 33:54
  It's difficult to be completely consistent within that strand to
• 33:59
  say literally scripture alone, because you'll have people
• 34:05
  within that camp that conflict with each other in their
• 34:09
  commentaries that disagree about a textual variant or whatever
• 34:13
  and they're both within the sola scripture track and they
• 34:16
  disagree on a topic suddenly becomes untenable.
• 34:19
  You can't actually sustain it. But if you the other one is like
• 34:22
  no scripture primarily and we're and we can wrestle A dialogue
• 34:27
  and disagree without harming the text itself.
• 34:31
  That's actually just more realistic in my opinion.
• 34:35
  I know I'm I'm grossly underrepresenting.
• 34:38
  I'm making maybe of a little bit of a straw man argument against
• 34:41
  sola script. Sure, sure.
• 34:42
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 34:44
  And I grew up very sola scriptur.
• 34:46
  Yeah, you did. Yeah, highly reformed, highly,
• 34:49
  highly focused on on that sort of camp.
• 34:55
  But I think I'm more confident today that I read the Scripture
• 35:01
  the way God intended me to read it than I did then.
• 35:04
  And that's again, straw man. I apologize.
• 35:07
  You might disagree with me, but there's my cards.
• 35:10
  I wish I had time to read this thing.
• 35:13
  Frederick Beekner has a a blurb in one of his things.
• 35:17
  It's just called the Bible. And he goes off on this just
• 35:21
  beautiful mess of all the reasons not to read the Bible
• 35:24
  because of all the things people might tell you about.
• 35:26
  It's full of barbarisms and, you know, problematic passages.
• 35:32
  And he goes into the beauty of the the the scriptures and I'll
• 35:37
  read just this one part of it if I can find it again.
• 35:42
  Which book is this? This is just in one of his
• 35:44
  little It might be in wishful thinking, he says.
• 35:52
  Oh man, but we find something else in it too, apart from all
• 35:56
  those problems. The great Protestant theologian
• 35:58
  Kaabah says that reading the Bible is like looking out of the
• 36:02
  window and seeing everybody on their St. shading their eyes
• 36:05
  with their hands, gazing up towards sky, towards the sky,
• 36:09
  something hidden from us above the roof.
• 36:12
  They are pointing up, they are speaking strange words.
• 36:14
  They are very excited. Something is happening that we
• 36:17
  can't see happening, or something is about to happen.
• 36:20
  Something beyond our comprehension has caught them up
• 36:23
  and he's seeking to lead them on from land to land, from strange,
• 36:27
  intense and certain and yet mysteriously well planned
• 36:31
  service. To read the Bible is to try and
• 36:33
  read the expression on their faces.
• 36:35
  To listen to the words of the Bible is to try to catch the
• 36:38
  sounds of the strange and dangerous, compelling words that
• 36:42
  they see, that they seem to hear.
• 36:45
  That's the mystery we're hearing.
• 36:48
  Other people describe the mystery that God is and trying
• 36:52
  to capture that story for ourselves.
• 36:54
  When we limit God to what we kind of understand in our own
• 37:00
  minds, we miss it. They're trying to describe the
• 37:04
  one who is indescribable. If we can fully understand God
• 37:08
  on earth or then eternity becomes a particularly boring
• 37:13
  place. But imagine what it is to spend
• 37:16
  eternity trying to describe the God who is beyond comprehension.
• 37:21
  Yeah. So yeah, I, I Full disclosure,
• 37:27
  when this passage came up as I started studying this particular
• 37:31
  textual variant in Chapter 8, I was actually pretty distraught.
• 37:36
  Because it. Because there's a lot of safety
• 37:39
  as a communicator in for me in my exegetical process.
• 37:49
  I love being able to confirm in my heart that I'm I'm trying to
• 37:57
  stay in step with the voice of God.
• 38:00
  And when there's a textual variant that's as big as this
• 38:03
  one, I was just like a lot of my exegesis tools were wonky.
• 38:08
  Like, for example, I love context.
• 38:12
  Most sermons, it doesn't matter what's going on.
• 38:16
  I will go back. What's the author been trying to
• 38:19
  do since chapter one, verse 1 of this book of the Bible and it's
• 38:23
  building and building and building.
• 38:25
  And this passage is the next logical step in a, in a growing
• 38:29
  argument of an author, or at least in the growing argument of
• 38:34
  this chapter. Well, I'm I'm pretty sure it
• 38:37
  wasn't in this chapter. So the context before and after
• 38:41
  was unhelpful. So I'm like, how do I OK
• 38:45
  exegetically like the method of studying was weird.
• 38:51
  So that was just just some of these just moments were
• 38:53
  disorienting. And I think the reason why I
• 39:00
  after wrestling through that on my as a communicator, the reason
• 39:05
  I felt joy and confidence to continue to preach the passage
• 39:08
  is 1 The faithfulness that this text has had in church history.
• 39:12
  So this is a tradition, not it's a prima scriptura, but also
• 39:18
  tradition peace. So there's a legacy that this
• 39:21
  text has in among the people of God as being powerful and
• 39:25
  transformative. And then if you vet the
• 39:28
  character of Jesus in this story against other texts that have no
• 39:34
  textual variants, it, it just screams of the person of Christ
• 39:39
  and the character of Christ and the way he operates.
• 39:42
  And so I was able to like settle myself down and say, this text
• 39:47
  is useful to the to the church today.
• 39:49
  But I did spend about half of my time prepping the sermon, just
• 39:56
  processing the weirdness of the text for me as a as a
• 40:00
  communicator. So there, there you have it.
• 40:02
  I love it. And I think there's, you know, I
• 40:05
  had several. People say it was best sermon
• 40:06
  yet. I think it was brilliant, yeah.
• 40:08
  And I think one of the beautiful parts is there's a risk to
• 40:11
  preaching it and there's a risk to not preaching it.
• 40:13
  Totally, totally. All right, so here, one quick
• 40:17
  theory from Where's the Guy piece, and then we got to talk
• 40:20
  about Advent. Oh man, we're 41 minutes in.
• 40:23
  Yeah, we spent a lot of time talking about.
• 40:25
  That I'm sorry, everyone. Thank you.
• 40:29
  Today's sermon. So where's the guy?
• 40:31
  Why only one guy? I've always felt that the woman
• 40:35
  was a prostitute and that several customers, some of whom
• 40:39
  were standing before her and her accusers.
• 40:42
  My theory continues that Jesus was writing their names in the
• 40:46
  sand. Cool.
• 40:50
  I think that that's possible. There's literally no she.
• 40:54
  Wouldn't be convinced she wouldn't be guilty of adultery.
• 40:58
  Yes. If she was a prostitute.
• 41:00
  I mean, you can, you could be a prostitute, an unfaithful wife,
• 41:05
  'cause she could have. Been a multiple offended.
• 41:08
  Yes, so she could be a multiple offended adults were just like
• 41:12
  the story of Hosea, his wife. Yes.
• 41:16
  That's true. They're married and she's
• 41:17
  unfaithful to him. Yes, in a prostitution category.
• 41:22
  Actually, that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yep, yeah,
• 41:24
  yeah. So there's some.
• 41:25
  I rescinded my previous. Date but that you can hold that
• 41:30
  theory and this is the fun part about this narrative.
• 41:35
  We have no way of saying you're right and absolutely no way of.
• 41:38
  Saying you're right could be all sorts of things.
• 41:41
  I will mention one thing I don't If we need to know what he's
• 41:47
  writing in the sand, then this text is ineffective.
• 41:51
  Yes. Because there is no way of
• 41:54
  knowing. And so to spend too much time on
• 41:59
  what did he write in the sand is to miss the heartbeat of the
• 42:03
  text that whoever wrote this down intentionally withheld that
• 42:07
  information to mess with your head so that they get at your
• 42:11
  heart. Yeah, so cool.
• 42:14
  Might be a viable theory. Maybe the recommendation would
• 42:17
  be would would be to not lose too much sleep over what did he
• 42:21
  write in the sand And then say instead say something like, you
• 42:25
  know what? I The question I asked is what
• 42:27
  would he need to write in the sand for you to walk away?
• 42:30
  Fairly in question. So there you go, that could be
• 42:34
  true. Yes, yeah.
• 42:37
  Well done. All right, you.
• 42:38
  Advent answered the question. Advent.
• 42:42
  Advent what a what a season. I love your sermon, Sunday man.
• 42:47
  But you you already skipped out on half of it.
• 42:49
  I listened to it on the way to the wedding.
• 42:53
  I loved it and I felt like I personally felt like Alex
• 42:57
  preached the first at least third of that message just for
• 43:01
  me. Not true.
• 43:03
  I know he didn't. But it felt so satisfying to me
• 43:06
  because a couple months ago or maybe a month ago, I sent Alex a
• 43:10
  little message and said, can I do a seminar on the church
• 43:13
  calendar? Because I really want the
• 43:15
  congregation to understand it more thoroughly, for those who
• 43:17
  care about that kind of stuff, to understand it more
• 43:19
  thoroughly. And I've, I'm experimenting with
• 43:23
  some artistry in the worship, the musical portion, the of the
• 43:28
  service that I kind of would like to have a few people in the
• 43:33
  congregation understand the why behind the what so that they're
• 43:36
  not overly caught off guard. And he did all of that for me
• 43:41
  Sunday. No seminar needed.
• 43:43
  Knocked it out of the park. Well.
• 43:46
  Yeah, you've had a very happy worship, pastor.
• 43:48
  I love it. Listening to you.
• 43:49
  Online. Nothing else.
• 43:50
  That's a beautiful thing. But I love Advent as a season.
• 43:53
  I feel like Advent has to me been a big surprising gift that
• 43:57
  caught me off hand. Or, you know, is I find the term
• 44:02
  I I grew up Pentecostal, which we don't really have rhythms in
• 44:06
  the Pentecostal church. Like it's always Easter Sunday
• 44:10
  in the Pentecostal church, always Pentecost, I guess.
• 44:13
  Yeah. So even on our Good Friday
• 44:16
  services, we would have Good Friday and buy like 10 minutes
• 44:21
  towards the end, the pastor would be up on stage, like, but
• 44:24
  Sunday's coming guys, and we'd be singing like Easter Sunday
• 44:29
  songs. And somewhere internally for me,
• 44:31
  even as a teenager, there was some part that was like, what
• 44:34
  about Saturday? Like, isn't something like,
• 44:38
  like, do you not have to sit in that space?
• 44:41
  I don't think Pentecostals ever really believed you needed to.
• 44:45
  So to me, like discovering the liturgical church was a gift
• 44:48
  that happened in my 20s, where suddenly I started to be a part
• 44:53
  of other churches that really lived in that space, even from a
• 44:57
  distance. And you'd feel the beauty of,
• 45:01
  you know, I think the mantra that I use regularly now for the
• 45:04
  churches, you get out of Advent, get out of Christmas.
• 45:07
  What you put into Advent, you get out of Easter what you put
• 45:10
  into Lent. Those waiting times, those times
• 45:15
  of dissonance are key to getting to the other part of the story.
• 45:22
  And so wanting people to sit in Advent was a huge part of Week 1
• 45:27
  for me. I wanted people to have a marker
• 45:31
  where they could say, oh, it's different now.
• 45:34
  Yeah. We're back to the start of the
• 45:35
  year. Let's sit in this space.
• 45:38
  Let's wait in the dark together. Yeah.
• 45:42
  And I, I feel the same thing about Advent is that it's become
• 45:46
  the surprising gift to me as a, as a staff person, especially a
• 45:50
  staff person who's responsible for the corporate worship of the
• 45:53
  community or basically has platform responsibility.
• 45:57
  But a lead pastor, a worship leader, whatever.
• 46:02
  Frankly, most staff members at a church Christmas hat can become
• 46:07
  a play, a thing that you dread. It's really sad.
• 46:12
  Yeah, I can tell you when I took this job 14 plus years ago, the
• 46:21
  thing I was most scared about was Christmas.
• 46:25
  Yeah. Now, back then, the fear was, I
• 46:29
  don't know how to play any of those songs because it's the
• 46:33
  genre of music, so different. And I didn't have the skills as
• 46:37
  a musician to to play some of these carols with all these
• 46:42
  weird sharps and flat chords and like tons of chord changes that
• 46:48
  a hymnal does. I just couldn't even play them
• 46:51
  on the guitar. And I'm like, I'm going to have
• 46:53
  to put on this Christmas Eve service.
• 46:56
  And I hated the songs because they weren't Worshipful to me.
• 47:01
  They talked, they told stories about the little baby Jesus
• 47:05
  coming to the to the earth. They weren't saying we worship
• 47:09
  you God or Hallelujah or we praise you.
• 47:13
  They were just telling stories. And I was like, I don't get it.
• 47:17
  It feels dead to me. It feels like we're just going
• 47:19
  through these motions and on and on and on.
• 47:22
  And then Advent primarily through Fleming Rutledge like it
• 47:33
  re gifted Christmas to my soul as a pastor again.
• 47:37
  Totally. Because it felt like I was
• 47:40
  allowed to feel the angst of all the things I mentioned.
• 47:44
  I'm allowed to. Not only am I allowed to, I
• 47:46
  should. And then the narrative of the
• 47:49
  Carols woke up for me. Beautiful.
• 47:52
  And oh man, I I love, I love Advent so much.
• 47:57
  It's my favorite high church season of the year because of
• 48:05
  that contrast between dark and light.
• 48:08
  It feels like my actual world. So I, I think that the beauty of
• 48:13
  the darkness language that Fleming Rutledge uses at times
• 48:19
  that is all over Advent language across the church, is it gives
• 48:26
  us the feeling of being in the dark and the lights flicking on
• 48:31
  at some point and the anticipation of waiting for that
• 48:35
  moment. Like it's the anticipation of a
• 48:39
  sunrise that bursts out of the, you know, into the sky.
• 48:43
  Surprisingly, it's all of those things we know and feel and
• 48:48
  instinctively love. Like you must never meet people
• 48:52
  that are like, you know what? I hate sunrises.
• 48:54
  It's just they're not really out there.
• 48:58
  I'm sure there's someone, but there's not really anyone that
• 49:01
  I've come across that's like, that's my passion, I.
• 49:03
  Hate. You know what I prefer is High
• 49:05
  Noon. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 49:07
  Without any class. Or actually just dark or, you
• 49:10
  know, and, and, and so somewhere like we have a, we have a
• 49:13
  feeling that attaches to those things.
• 49:16
  And that's what Christmas is actually.
• 49:18
  It's a surprising burst of light in in amidst a steady darkness
• 49:23
  of the time. Like you put yourself in the
• 49:25
  story of those people in the first Advent.
• 49:29
  They are people that are living oppressed, difficult lives with
• 49:34
  a foreign ruler. They are moving town, heavily
• 49:39
  pregnant, one of them to go and participate in a census
• 49:45
  commanded by a unbenevolent ruler.
• 49:49
  There is so much darkness in that story that's that's
• 49:52
  invisible to us now that we miss.
• 49:56
  And then you imagine what it is for the light, surprisingly, to
• 49:59
  burst into being. Angels suddenly singing songs,
• 50:04
  all of these things taking place that capture everyone off guard.
• 50:08
  That's what happens at Advent. And.
• 50:10
  And that's actually, again, like, so important.
• 50:12
  That's what we hope happens again one day.
• 50:14
  Yeah. For us, sitting in the dark
• 50:16
  right now, wondering about the world one day, holding hope that
• 50:21
  the sky splits, that in just the same way as it happened once the
• 50:26
  stark light of God bursts onto a Dark World, Yeah, that's the
• 50:31
  hope of Advent. Now to tie our previous
• 50:33
  conversation about scripture to Advent is the church calendar is
• 50:37
  not scripture. Yeah.
• 50:38
  And yet it's been a faithful gift to the global church that
• 50:43
  participate in it to to draw out certain nuances about being the
• 50:49
  people of God. And so, but it seems like to me
• 50:55
  as I've been really trying to intentionally let Advent be a
• 50:59
  spiritual tool that God uses in my life.
• 51:01
  Each year there's like a new little nugget that he gives me.
• 51:05
  So like this year 2, there's two that jump into my mind that are
• 51:09
  like new discoveries about the fun of Advent and fun is is
• 51:15
  maybe the wrong word. 1 Is that this new language that I started
• 51:23
  using with the choir, for example, that Christmas is the
• 51:26
  down payment of second coming. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:29
  So Christ's first coming is proof that he's good on his
• 51:33
  promises, proof that he will redeem his people, and proof
• 51:38
  that his promise, his future promise of returning and
• 51:43
  finishing the project of restoration, is going to happen.
• 51:48
  We can bank on 2nd coming because of the 1st.
• 51:51
  So that's the language that I discovered this year by
• 51:54
  accident, that I'm just like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:56
  It's fun. The other one is that for
• 52:01
  several years when I first discovered Advent, I thought you
• 52:03
  had just feel angst. Just feel the angst of the
• 52:07
  world. Right.
• 52:08
  And This is why Flaming Rutledge is such a gift in Advent.
• 52:11
  And Lent is her. We're Alex and I were talking
• 52:15
  about this one of Fleming Rutledge's superpowers as a
• 52:18
  communicator is she's really good at highlighting the
• 52:21
  brokenness of the world and she you quoted another author to me
• 52:28
  in the hallway the other day that talked about the newspaper
• 52:31
  and. Oh, Billy Graham, Billy Graham
• 52:33
  said. I preach with a Bible in one
• 52:36
  hand and a newspaper in the other.
• 52:37
  Yeah, so that's Fleming Rutledge.
• 52:39
  She a lot of her Advent sermons, she quotes from the newspaper
• 52:45
  things that happened the week she's preaching those sermons.
• 52:47
  And there's just, and she even in one of the books, she says.
• 52:51
  I'm shocked every Advent how effortless it is.
• 52:55
  Totally. Effortless and I I took her up
• 52:58
  on the challenge during my silent retreat and I don't
• 53:01
  typically read a lot of the news.
• 53:03
  I opened up the news and found 10 illustrations.
• 53:07
  I had 50 things I could have used this week that I wanted to
• 53:10
  do that. I actually thought about it.
• 53:11
  I actually nearly added something in.
• 53:13
  I felt I didn't need it, but I was like, it was so.
• 53:15
  Easy, it was effort, it's effortless, just open the news
• 53:18
  and you'll find 5 great illustrations for Advent and the
• 53:22
  world is jacked up. You know it's like, and some of
• 53:25
  them are horrific, you know, abuse, just destruction,
• 53:30
  tragedy, you name it on and on and on.
• 53:33
  And then. But the new discovery for me
• 53:36
  this year is the Isaiah lectionary texts are really
• 53:40
  hopeful. Really hopeful.
• 53:42
  They are very candle texts. So in Advent, quite often
• 53:45
  there's a candle. We use one and it usually runs
• 53:48
  through a cycle of hope, peace, joy and love.
• 53:53
  And all of those texts land comfortably on their candle.
• 53:57
  Yeah. And so the fun part for me this
• 54:00
  year is like, as you've challenged me to not go only
• 54:03
  heavy with the music is that I felt more invitation from the
• 54:08
  book of Isaiah to do both heavy and light because the Isaiah
• 54:14
  passage was like, there's going to be an awesome day when God
• 54:18
  fixes all the stuff, end of text.
• 54:23
  And so while. Preaching in the dark.
• 54:25
  Yes. Well, I mean, he stood in the
• 54:27
  dark, declaring one day, one day.
• 54:31
  I mean, he's he's they'll beat the Spears into plowshares is
• 54:37
  like preaching nuclear disarmament in the middle of a
• 54:40
  nuclear war. It's like one day all of this,
• 54:44
  it's going to disappear. So I'll give one read a little
• 54:49
  bit of lyrics of one of the songs we did this first week to
• 54:52
  sort of illustrate that. But I love this so many years in
• 55:00
  Advent. We do this song most years
• 55:02
  because it's a great Advent, A Advent song, O Come divine
• 55:07
  Messiah, you know, O Come divine Messiah, the world is longing
• 55:10
  for a day. That's the sentiment of Advent.
• 55:13
  And there's a bridge in this version that we do that's that I
• 55:17
  often pull. I often withhold this bridge and
• 55:22
  it says there is hope today that God himself might shine upon our
• 55:26
  our souls and save unto you a Savior comes.
• 55:29
  Everything will change. Everything will change.
• 55:32
  Most of the time I remove that bridge because I thought for
• 55:37
  several years in my experimentation with Advent,
• 55:40
  that's too much Christmas. But if you compare it to the
• 55:46
  book of Isaiah, it's very Isaiah because if you look at the tents
• 55:51
  of some of these things, there's hope today that God himself
• 55:56
  might shine upon our souls and save.
• 55:59
  And unto us a Savior comes. He's kind of come again and
• 56:03
  everything will change. So it's still a future hope.
• 56:06
  And I was like, Oh my goodness, this is so Isaiah.
• 56:08
  So this year I sang that bridge. I sang that bridge with so much
• 56:12
  joy and. Excitement.
• 56:13
  I just, with every bit of my soul, I was like I, I felt like
• 56:17
  I was standing with Isaiah in the dark.
• 56:19
  Well, I feel like that around the other song we sang at the
• 56:24
  start of the service because one of my favorite Advent songs has
• 56:27
  become Lo, how are rose air blooms?
• 56:29
  Yeah, why's that? And that has a verse and it says
• 56:33
  Isaiah Twasford told it the Rose I have in mind with Mary.
• 56:37
  We behold it the virgin mother kind to show God's love, a right
• 56:41
  she bought him and a savior when half gone was the night and the
• 56:45
  picture that half gone was the night line gives is, you know,
• 56:50
  it's not the start of the night. It's the deep darkness.
• 56:54
  Yep. They're like it's been night for
• 56:56
  a long time. We've sat in the dark for a
• 56:59
  while and surprisingly at the wrong time completely, God is
• 57:06
  born. Like that's what happens in
• 57:09
  Advent. We sit and we wait and we are
• 57:13
  given faith to your point that God will come again.
• 57:16
  I think one of the things that might be helpful for people is
• 57:18
  1. Maybe a couple of resources we
• 57:20
  could suggest. Yeah, yeah.
• 57:22
  So Advent by Fleming Rutledge is a book I just gave to someone.
• 57:26
  It's not easy reading, but it's it's a gift.
• 57:31
  It's no Dallas Willard. Yeah.
• 57:33
  So it's way easier than that. Yeah, but it's, you know, it's,
• 57:36
  it's, it's from the 80s and it's slightly higher than text and.
• 57:40
  It's actually sermons. It's a collection of her
• 57:42
  sermons. So.
• 57:43
  So that's a great 1. Walter Brueggeman, who's an Old
• 57:46
  Testament theologian, has one I love called Celebrating in
• 57:49
  Abundance, which is an Advent devotional to run through the
• 57:55
  brilliance have an Advent album that we both love that you can
• 57:59
  find on Apple Music wherever you buy your music is a gift of
• 58:04
  songs for the Advent season. And then finally, like maybe
• 58:10
  something to watch out for. We already talked about this
• 58:13
  like jewel element to the services at South First half
• 58:19
  Adventi like think of Advent as Christmas's grungy cousin.
• 58:24
  Like it's got some angst and some some heavy and some and
• 58:28
  then a turning of the corner towards more Christmas.
• 58:32
  Yeah. Anything else?
• 58:36
  I mean, we didn't even touch your like the actual textual
• 58:39
  portion of the sermon. And so your particular Isaiah
• 58:47
  text this week, what was its role in the build of Advent, if
• 58:52
  you could summarize it briefly? So, so we were, I mean, I think
• 58:54
  I use this language of Isaiah writes in the dark, but sees the
• 58:59
  light coming. So Isaiah, Isaiah carries this
• 59:02
  prophetic voice, which is it won't always be as it is.
• 59:06
  And we get to hold, I mean, that's the beautiful part.
• 59:10
  We get to hold an Advent. Like we get to sit in Advent,
• 59:13
  but we get to begin to tell stories.
• 59:17
  Of Christmas about light, yeah. Yeah, which is is the fun part.
• 59:20
  And that's some of what the the weird tension about Advent also
• 59:25
  is some of what you did at the end of the message at the end of
• 59:28
  the service on Sunday, which is as the people of God, it's one
• 59:33
  thing to get all excited about the kings coming and lights
• 59:36
  coming. He's going to come again and fix
• 59:38
  it. And then in the midst of all of
• 59:41
  that excitement, he says, oh, by the way, church, you're part of
• 59:45
  the strategy of bringing light. And so when we had people in our
• 59:49
  church pray over the congregation saying, may the
• 59:52
  light of Christ dwell in you. It is part of his answer to to
• 1:00:00
  the the darkness light issue is he's asked us to be carriers of
• 1:00:05
  light even in the midst of Advent.
• 1:00:07
  Even in the midst of the darkness of the world and to
• 1:00:10
  deposit little moments of blessing where we bring light to
• 1:00:13
  a souls around us. And depending on where you are
• 1:00:15
  in your story, for some of you, I was just chatting to a great
• 1:00:18
  couple who would say, yeah, we had a thing that as soon as you
• 1:00:21
  said that we dotted over to someone because we would love to
• 1:00:24
  see God's light shine on a specific part of our journey.
• 1:00:28
  And others are like, yeah, I'm not sure, but there's always new
• 1:00:33
  ways for the light of Christ to unfold in beautiful ways.
• 1:00:38
  All right, well, you can tell we're both super excited about
• 1:00:40
  Advent. If you don't like Christmas
• 1:00:42
  carols like I used to not like Christmas carols, you're just
• 1:00:44
  wrong. So.
• 1:00:47
  And I got 1 little thing that I think is helpful for people to
• 1:00:50
  understand. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:51
  As you maybe invite friends and family.
• 1:00:53
  This is how I see how we plan Christmas.
• 1:00:57
  OK. So I think there were times
• 1:00:59
  where I felt we should do Christmas like new.
• 1:01:04
  We should try to find ways to make it all existential and
• 1:01:08
  like, you know, almost like postmodern ish, you know?
• 1:01:11
  Yeah, we should. And and, you know, like.
• 1:01:14
  Songs should swing in from the rafters.
• 1:01:16
  Nobody's heard before and stuff and all those different things.
• 1:01:19
  Yeah, and that's probably the wrong way to go.
• 1:01:22
  And then this switch from that seems like it's like, oh, we're
• 1:01:25
  going to sing the traditional songs, and that's right.
• 1:01:29
  But you don't just sing traditional songs in old ways.
• 1:01:34
  You get to bring them to life like they're sung differently
• 1:01:38
  than how maybe people remember them being sung as kids.
• 1:01:42
  So our dream for Christmas is tradition, but tradition
• 1:01:46
  enlivened by a deep passion for the songs that we're singing.
• 1:01:50
  Yeah. So for those.
• 1:01:51
  Of you that brilliantly. For those of you who are who are
• 1:01:54
  podcast listeners, a little sneak preview into this Advent
• 1:01:57
  season from the musical perspective of this is my hope
• 1:02:02
  for us as a church family is that our services feel a little
• 1:02:08
  bit different, maybe like we're almost in a foreign land of than
• 1:02:14
  our normal S family vibe. That's a feature that's by
• 1:02:18
  design, but have this grounding of like deeply familiar at the
• 1:02:24
  same time. And I hope that disorientation
• 1:02:28
  does something in our emotional selves as a church family that
• 1:02:32
  the cognitive portions of the sermons and stuff can't access.
• 1:02:38
  So if it feels a little strange, hopefully it's not so strange
• 1:02:42
  that it's really bothersome. But hopefully it's see that as a
• 1:02:47
  as a feature that go with it, with me.
• 1:02:50
  I love it. And then at the end we will find
• 1:02:53
  out whether it was a horrible experiment.
• 1:02:55
  Never do it again. We're good, we're good.
• 1:02:56
  All right, love y'all. We went a little over, but we
• 1:02:59
  covered two weeks pretty good. You guys didn't pull up the
• 1:03:03
  button so you guys going to wait till I pull up the button?