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Christmas Is Christ · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:36
  Welcome to Faith Is.
• 0:37
  I'm Pastor Rick Stevens, and pleased to have you join us on this Christmas, or maybe we could say pre-Christmas edition of Faith Is.
• 0:47
  We won't talk again until after we've all celebrated the coming of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, Christmas.
• 0:54
  So we're going to talk about Christmas a little bit today.
• 0:56
  We're going to talk about some things related to my recent trip to Israel.
• 1:00
  Kind of wanted to catch us up on that a couple of things.
• 1:03
  And we want to talk about Advent.
• 1:05
  And of course, we've we've been walking through the four Sundays of Advent, and we're coming up this weekend on the fourth Sunday.
• 1:14
  And so we want to go through the Advent series again or sequence just to remind ourselves and further prepare ourselves for the celebration of the coming of Christ at Christmas.
• 1:25
  And then if well, I want to get into a very special service that we use and have refined and adjusted for our adapted, I guess I should say for our use, like a lot of other people.
• 1:38
  But I want to talk about the festival of lessons and carols and introduce us to that.
• 1:43
  Maybe you haven't heard of that, maybe you have, and maybe this is just another time to rethink that.
• 1:48
  And I want to talk about what that is and how we use it, what it means to people, and go through the scriptures, because that's the heart of it is the lessons, the scripture passages referred to as lessons.
• 2:02
  Well, let's start with the Israel stuff, shall we?
• 2:05
  And it came to my attention, and I don't know that it was directed at me.
• 2:11
  I just kind of heard about it.
• 2:13
  And I will have not been accused of any of this stuff, none of none of that, but I want to make it clear that on the recent trip to Israel, there are some people who have suggested that we pastors who were there were coerced or pressured or required to come back and say certain things that we were told a story that we were expected to believe and support and spread against our own judgment.
• 2:47
  Now, to be sure, I I thought about that and I wondered if there would be any attempt to coerce us.
• 2:54
  I mean, after all, when somebody offers you the kindness of a trip that they're paying for, you do wonder if they're up to something.
• 3:02
  Well, I only wonder that because that's just prudent.
• 3:05
  It's not because I had any doubts going into it.
• 3:08
  I just wondered.
• 3:09
  And I figured if I think about it, then I can pay attention to that.
• 3:13
  And if I think about it, I'm pretty sure other people think about it.
• 3:17
  But I want to assure you that when I talk about Israel, I talk about what I understand.
• 3:25
  Sometimes what I think is so, and I try to make that clear.
• 3:29
  Sometimes what I know to be true, and I try to make that clear.
• 3:34
  And I was talking to a few of my friends the other day and mentioning this idea of the possibility that we had been coerced, and several of them kind of smirked, thinking they don't know me well enough to know that they're not going to coerce me into telling something that I don't believe.
• 3:51
  Well, I didn't really think of myself as that kind of person, but I have made a commitment to myself that I want to tell the truth.
• 4:02
  I have made a commitment to my church that I will tell them the truth that the Bible says, whether they agree with it or whether they like it or not.
• 4:11
  My responsibility as a pastor is to tell the truth and to make sure I communicate God's message to God's people.
• 4:22
  So that's the way I've approached this trip to Israel, the things that I learned.
• 4:27
  And I want you to know that I am not being manipulated.
• 4:32
  I will not be manipulated, I refuse to be manipulated.
• 4:36
  I'm not going to tell a story that somebody else tells me to tell.
• 4:40
  I'm going to sort things out for myself and tell you what I understand.
• 4:47
  That doesn't mean that should be that controversial, but Israel is a kind of complex, certainly in some respects, controversial country.
• 4:57
  A lot of things go on that we from a distance sometimes have trouble sorting out.
• 5:02
  I'll give you an example of that.
• 5:04
  We generally think of Israel as the home of the Jewish people.
• 5:09
  And it is.
• 5:10
  But it's not the home of just Jewish people.
• 5:15
  All right, that's where sometimes people might get confused.
• 5:19
  And that's what I say is a complicated situation.
• 5:22
  I don't pretend to understand all of the nuances.
• 5:26
  There's that word again that keeps popping up by so many people.
• 5:29
  I don't understand all of the ins and outs of things or the competing tensions or anything like that.
• 5:35
  There are some of those, to be sure, and we hear about them from time to time, and you could observe evidence of that when you're visiting Israel.
• 5:44
  So let me give you an example of what I mean by that.
• 5:46
  Yes, we assume, and rightly so that Israel is the home of the Jews, but it's also the home of many Christians.
• 5:55
  Many Arab Christians.
• 5:57
  Well, not everybody realizes that, but we need to realize that they have been there for many years.
• 6:03
  They live in Israel, and alongside their Jewish friends.
• 6:09
  There is no apparent conflict that I know of going on now between Jewish people and Arab Christians.
• 6:15
  Doesn't mean they haven't disagreed on things.
• 6:25
  For crying out loud, we disagree with our own government.
• 6:27
  Why would we not expect to disagree with some other people?
• 6:30
  But that doesn't change our fundamental support for God's people and what God is doing in Israel and around the world.
• 6:44
  So, okay, so it's generally thought of as the home of the Jews, but there are many Christians there, Arab Christians, there are Christian villages, Christian towns, if you will, in Israel.
• 6:54
  There are also Muslim towns.
• 6:57
  As we drove from place to place, occasionally, one of our guides would point out and point to a city in the distance, or sometimes just right by the road we were driving out on.
• 7:08
  We were kind of on an interstate type road.
• 7:11
  And they would say that's a Muslim village.
• 7:13
  And they would point out to us how we could tell that and why they would say that.
• 7:17
  Now I'm sure they knew it, but they wanted us to begin to understand that if you see a mosque in a town, in a village, it's likely a Muslim town.
• 7:27
  Doesn't mean there aren't Christians that live there, doesn't mean there aren't Jews that live there.
• 7:32
  That's just kind of the flavor of the place and of the town.
• 7:37
  To further illustrate the complications, I'm continually amazed by this, but a governmental entity out of Jordan controls the Temple Mount.
• 7:51
  Access to it, what goes on up on the Temple Mount, all those kinds of things.
• 7:56
  Jews are not welcome on the Temple Mount.
• 7:58
  We who are not Jews can go up at certain times, but no one, the last I knew, no one is allowed to pray on the Temple Mount.
• 8:07
  Well, that's a curious thing because it's in Israel.
• 8:10
  How is it that the government of Jordan is involved in that?
• 8:13
  Well, I don't know all of the ins and outs of that, but there have been agreements over time because of the competing interests and the history of that area, uh, going back to the 60s during the Six Day War and the things that resulted out of that.
• 8:29
  So it's a it's a complicated place, and I say all of that to then mention this.
• 8:35
  I read an article that was reportedly telling the story of how things are in Gaza today.
• 8:43
  I'm not going to tell you the article.
• 8:44
  I didn't go back and reread it or take it all apart and all is complexity and whatever.
• 8:50
  But there were many things that the author of the article asserted to be true, and I kept asking myself, well, how do you know that's true?
• 8:59
  Because some of the sources, at least the sources that were acknowledged for the article, were people from Gaza.
• 9:08
  Now, at first glance, people might say, well, of course, if you want to know about Gaza, you ask the people from Gaza.
• 9:13
  Well, not so fast.
• 9:15
  This is another example of the complexity of things in that part of the world, and another reason that helps me not be manipulated into believing something.
• 9:26
  And I want it to help you, because you and I, if we are pursuing the truth of what goes on, we need to recognize that not everyone is, and how we can pick up on that.
• 9:37
  It's called critical thinking.
• 9:39
  And you're capable of doing that.
• 9:40
  Many people are.
• 9:41
  We don't aren't often trained to think that way because we, particularly, we in the United States, we tend to believe everybody's telling the truth because we by and large are not a country full of liars, although you could argue that that's getting worse, both on the national political stage and in other places.
• 10:00
  But among the regular folks like us, we don't tend to think of people as lying to us.
• 10:06
  But when I read this article and started asking myself, well, how do you know this?
• 10:10
  This doesn't sound right.
• 10:12
  How do you know this is true?
• 10:14
  And then when I saw them citing or even quoting a spokesperson in Gaza, the whole credibility of the article began to crumble.
• 10:23
  Now, why is that so?
• 10:25
  It's very simple.
• 10:27
  If there is a spokesperson in Gaza for Gaza about Gaza, you can be sure that spokesperson is speaking on behalf of Hamas, because Hamas dominates Gaza.
• 10:42
  There's just no doubt about that.
• 10:45
  If you see someone, for example, you may have seen this in the past, someone coming out as the head of a hospital, for example, to tell about something that's going on in the hospital around the hospital related to the hospital, you and I might tend to think, okay, well, this is the person just telling us the truth about the hospital.
• 11:03
  But if we assume that we would be wrong because you don't become the head of a hospital in Gaza unless you hold a high position in Hamas.
• 11:15
  Hamas controls what information is shared, how it's shared, uh, what the story is, whether it's true or not, doesn't matter.
• 11:24
  They're going to put out what they want people to believe.
• 11:28
  I say all that to say this.
• 11:30
  You and I need to pay attention.
• 11:34
  At best, the press reports that we see are just lazy on the part of many journalists.
• 11:40
  At worst, they're picking up a narrative to share because they have an ulterior motive.
• 11:46
  I don't always know which it is, but I do know this.
• 11:50
  You and I, when we read about, hear about, see on television, someone telling us a story about Gaza by someone in Gaza, we can be sure we are being manipulated.
• 12:05
  They're doing their best to propagandize us, and we need to resist that.
• 12:11
  You might read it, you might see it on television or hear it in some broadcast form.
• 12:16
  That's fine, you're going to hear those things.
• 12:18
  But what I urge you to do is to stop and ask a series of questions, like, how do they know that's true?
• 12:26
  Are they a hundred percent sure that's true?
• 12:30
  Because some of these things, it's it's immediately dismissible because there's no way to know how that person knows or if they even know.
• 12:40
  And related to that is if they're a Hamas related spokesperson, then we can immediately dismiss it because the assertion begins to crumble under the weight of their deceptions.
• 12:53
  That's what I'm trying to communicate.
• 12:55
  And absolutely no one has tried to manipulate me to tell you a story or to try to convince you to believe something a certain way.
• 13:07
  I am telling you what I have processed through my filters and how it has arrived in my understanding, shall we say.
• 13:17
  So I want you to be aware of that, and I want you to think really carefully about what goes on, especially as it relates to reporting from Gaza and from the people in Gaza, because Hamas dominates Gaza, 100%.
• 13:37
  Hamas dominates Gaza.
• 13:40
  And until that changes, if it ever does, and I don't know all that situation, the um the things that come out of Gaza, we just cannot believe.
• 13:49
  We have to, we have to put aside until we can verify it some other way from a truly reliable, trustworthy source.
• 13:58
  And that's increasingly difficult.
• 14:00
  So please don't get sucked into that stuff.
• 14:03
  Don't just believe that because someone says it and you're a good hearted person.
• 14:07
  I'm glad you're a good hearted person.
• 14:09
  But we who are good hearted, we have to be smart, and we have to realize that a lot of people that are not good hearted, a lot of blackhearted people are going to try to manipulate us because they want us to tell their story the way they want it told.
• 14:25
  And when we do that, we become complicit in the blackhearted nonsense.
• 14:30
  So anyway, I think you get the idea, and I hope you do because it's really important that we that we who are committed to the truth are rigorous about getting at the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, as we say.
• 14:47
  All right, let's talk about Advent.
• 14:50
  Let's turn our minds and our hearts in the direction of the gift of Christ.
• 14:56
  I heard recently someone said he was given, he wasn't lent.
• 15:01
  And that's true.
• 15:12
  What he came to do and ultimately did a gift to all humanity.
• 15:19
  It's a gift to people who accept and receive the gift that God gave.
• 15:25
  It's a gift to people who refuse to.
• 15:27
  And God's going to have to sort all of that out.
• 15:30
  Uh I'm glad I don't have to, because I can understand the complications people have in believing in the coming of Messiah.
• 15:40
  Uh I will try to help explain why I think we can believe the story of Jesus coming, why there should be no doubt about the story of Jesus coming.
• 15:51
  But for people who are not convinced or who remain unconvinced, I want to respect them, want to keep trying to convince them.
• 16:01
  I want to lead with love toward them and let God sort it out later.
• 16:06
  It's not up to me to judge.
• 16:08
  I might have questions about how they could believe what they believe, but it's not up to me to judge.
• 16:14
  It's up to me to be faithful to what God calls you and I to.
• 16:19
  And that's summed up in the words of Jesus when he said, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.
• 16:30
  That's that's enough for me.
• 16:33
  That's hard enough for me.
• 16:35
  I can't get into other things.
• 16:37
  And I want to learn how, and it's an ongoing process to lead in that direction, to stretch in that direction, to accept people and to love them in the way Jesus calls us to.
• 16:51
  It is a very high bar.
• 16:53
  It is a very high calling, and we stretch to achieve that high calling, and just when we think we get a little closer, we often discover we're not nearly as close to that as we thought we were.
• 17:06
  And therefore, I, because I recognize that in myself, I can't judge someone else.
• 17:10
  I can just admonish and encourage and help.
• 17:14
  Now, uh, we want to get to Advent, but but I really should get to something else before we get to that, because I was reading this week about faith, and after all, this is faith is.
• 18:10
  But is it insightful and helpful?
• 18:12
  Absolutely.
• 18:14
  And so I was reading in Galatians, and it picked it up kind of in the middle of things, but as Eugene Peterson put it together in the message, it's the beginning of a paragraph, and listen to this.
• 18:23
  Galatians chapter 3, verse 23.
• 18:27
  Until the time when we were mature enough to respond freely in faith to the living God, we were carefully surrounded and protected by the mosaic law.
• 18:40
  Well, that really got my attention.
• 18:41
  That's only the first sentence.
• 18:42
  There's there's a little bit more, but that's that's really a lot being said there, until we were mature enough, until in other words, until we were able to respond to God in faith.
• 18:56
  We were protected, surrounded by the Mosaic law.
• 19:02
  Now, we don't usually think of law as protecting us.
• 19:06
  We tend to think of law as restricting us.
• 19:09
  But I think we all have to recognize that there is a very clear understanding that law protects us because while it does restrict us, it restricts all of us from harming each other.
• 19:24
  So when the law says, thou shalt not steal, and that restriction keeps someone from stealing, then that's protecting you from loss by their theft, and it's protecting you from becoming a thief, which is clearly something God says don't become.
• 19:43
  When the law says that we should tell the truth, then that keeps us from becoming liars.
• 19:50
  And we hope, and yet we know it doesn't always happen.
• 19:54
  We hope that it keeps other people from lying to us.
• 19:58
  The idea is that.
• 20:00
  I don't the law protects us because it makes lying in certain situations a criminal or civil, depending on the situation offense.
• 20:13
  And so it protects us from that.
• 20:14
  And I thought that's very interesting.
• 20:16
  We don't think of law as protecting us, but we should.
• 20:19
  But then we unpack that sentence a little bit more, and it says, until the time when we were mature enough to respond freely in faith to the living God, we were carefully surrounded and protected by the Mosaic Law.
• 20:34
  So once we were able to, then the law took a different position because we were able to respond to God in faith.
• 20:44
  We were to have absolute confidence in the trustworthiness of God.
• 20:49
  And when we trust God, when we love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves, that is a higher bar to achieve than the restrictions of law.
• 21:02
  And so when it says we were mature enough, I think that's what it's referring to.
• 21:06
  When we begin to realize that love compels us to behave certain ways, then law is less necessary because we are restrained because we have confidence in God, and we demonstrate that confidence in God by loving him, and we demonstrate our love for him by doing what he says, so that we avoid doing wrong, we concentrate on doing right.
• 21:31
  Well, I just thought that was a very helpful perspective on faith and a very helpful idea for us moving forward.
• 21:39
  Let me finish the section here just to kind of wrap up the further thoughts related to this.
• 21:47
  So let me start at 23 and I'll read a little further this time.
• 21:50
  Until the time when we were mature enough to respond freely in faith to the living God, we were carefully surrounded and protected by the Mosaic Law.
• 22:00
  The law was like those Greek tutors with which you are familiar who escort children to school and protect them from danger or distraction, making sure the children will really get to the place they set out for.
• 22:15
  But now you have arrived at your destination.
• 22:19
  By faith in Christ, you are in direct relationship with God.
• 22:23
  Your baptism in Christ was not just washing you up for a fresh start.
• 22:29
  It also involved dressing you in an adult faith wardrobe, Christ-like Christ's life, the fulfillment of God's original promise.
• 22:40
  So I just think that's a helpful understanding of faith.
• 22:44
  Faith is not something we blindly embrace.
• 22:46
  Faith is not something that just causes us to assume certain things.
• 22:51
  Faith compels us to a life that follows the teachings of Jesus that follows what the ball, what the Bible says we should do, and then it kind of keeps us in that relationship where we belong, and it gets us to the place that we set out for.
• 23:10
  You know, I often think when you hear someone committing some egregious act that that uh some criminal act of some violent act, something like that.
• 23:18
  I often think, you know, I I can't imagine very many people, men or women who make it their purpose in life to set out to become, and I've often used this expression to kind of wrap it all up, to become an axe murderer.
• 23:32
  Does anybody aspire to be an axe murderer when they're seven years old?
• 23:37
  Well, uh, it's possible someone might be so badly abused that they might be really tempted and begin to be formed in that direction, but almost none of us aspire to that.
• 23:46
  And so the law, before we're capable of having faith, protects us from that because we don't want to end up as axe murderers.
• 23:55
  And so we're surrounded and protected by that in the same way it describes children being escorted and protected on their way to school.
• 24:05
  The other thing that that jumps out at me as I think about all this related to law, is the writer of Galatians knew what law was all about.
• 24:14
  The Apostle Paul was a Pharisee.
• 24:16
  He understood the law, he understanded the uh understood the function of the law.
• 24:21
  He he grasped so many of the of the things that we would not quickly grasp because we were not in that environment in that culture at that time.
• 24:30
  But he certainly understood the law and its righteous requirements.
• 24:36
  And so when he says that the law protects us, that's a really big statement.
• 24:41
  And when he says that protects us until we were able, capable of faith, that's a really significant statement.
• 24:51
  And you and I, as we stretch toward God's high calling, should stretch toward absolute confidence in the trustworthiness of God.
• 25:01
  I don't think we will ever arrive fully at that ideal.
• 25:07
  Because as soon as we make progress, it feels like we need to make more progress.
• 25:12
  And then we make a little more progress and we keep stretching toward that ideal.
• 25:16
  And that should not discourage or dismay or or anything like that.
• 25:21
  That should compel us to think about look what God is doing and how he's shaping us into his likeness, how we are becoming all that he imagined we could become.
• 25:33
  Well, on to Advent and Christmas right after this.
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• 30:53
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• 31:00
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  Liberty and justice for all.
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  Welcome back to Faith Is.
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  I'm Pastor Rick Stevens.
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  So glad you joined us today.
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  And has anybody reminded you yet this year that there is nothing better than church at Christmas?
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  Yeah, that's right.
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  Nothing better than church at Christmas.
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  You know, I've noticed a lot of people seems to substitute a lot of things for church at Christmas.
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  I'm not entirely sure why people do that, but I've noticed that people seem to think, well, I should try this or I should do that.
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  And church takes a back seat.
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  But really, really, there's nothing better than church at Christmas.
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  And a lot of that has to do, um can we be honest here?
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  A lot of that has to do with our mindset, because we either make it what it is, and we understand the value of it, and we embrace that, or we, for whatever reason, resist it and run away.
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  And I suspect there's a couple of reasons people run away.
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  One is they really don't want to hear that a Savior came to deliver them from their sins and that they need to fly right in their life.
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  Do right.
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  They don't want to hear that that God calls them to change their lives and believe the good news.
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  That may be part of it.
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  Another thing might be, and this is the sad part, and this and if this is you, I'm here to give you assurance that there is hope for us.
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  Sometimes I think people get caught up in doing things, saying things that they really never wanted to get caught up in.
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  And they get to the point that they understand the guilt, they understand that they've done wrong, they understand God calls them to better, but for whatever reason they come to a point in their lives that they don't think there's any hope for them.
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  And if there's ever a time of year that we should recapture that possibility that God can change our lives, that's the point of Jesus' sacrifice at the cross.
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  He atoned for those sins.
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  Yes, even yours.
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  And Advent reminds us of what is possible, and that's why there's nothing better than church at Christmas.
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  See, Advent reminds us on the first Sunday of Advent that there is hope for us.
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  There's hope because Messiah is coming and has come.
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  There's hope for you.
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  If you've given up hope that your life can change, there is hope for you.
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  If you've given up hope that someone else's life can change, there's still hope, because as long as God rules and reigns, there's hope for you, there's hope for the world.
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  First Sunday of Advent reinforces that hope.
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  Second Sunday of Advent reminds us of peace, shalom.
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  Heard a lot of Shabbat Shalom or Shalom Shabbat while I was in Israel.
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  A lot of emphasis on peace.
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  And you may not have peace of heart and mind because well, because you know you're not where you need to be.
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  So come on home.
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  Come on home to Christ.
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  Come on home to the church at Christmas.
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  Find that peace.
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  The peace that you can't find any other place.
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  It's peace in spite of, not because all the circumstances are the way you want them to be.
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  The circumstances will never be the way we want them to be until that day we live in the new Jerusalem forever.
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  But there's hope today, there's peace today, there's joy today.
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  As someone recently wrote on a Facebook post, they believe joy is a choice.
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  Well, I thought that was very insightful of them and interesting of them.
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  I didn't know they were thinking that way, but I was encouraged.
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  Joy is a choice, and it is.
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  And again, we live in a kind of joyless world because of all the stuff.
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  I I'm not unaware.
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  But God comes to give us joy.
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  Return home to him at Christmas.
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  There's no place, nothing better than church at Christmas to find joy, and finally love.
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  People keep talking about love in so many contexts.
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  But you find Christ at Christmas, you'll find love for you, and you'll find the resources, the spiritual resources that make it possible.
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  Not easy, not as perfectly as we'd like most of the time.
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  But you'll find love possible.
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  Love for you, and you can love even the unlovely people in your life.
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  Because Christ came and he is the light of the world.
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  So four sudden days of advent remind us of all of the things we want.
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  Hope, peace, love, whoops, hope, peace, joy, love.
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  Ah, you got that.
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  Because Christ came at Christmas.
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  And there's no place that you'll find that, except at church.
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  There's nothing better than church at Christmas.
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  Well, I want to turn now to this festival of lessons and carols.
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  We do this every year at our church.
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  We don't make a huge elaborate deal out of it, really.
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  It's uh involves a little bit more planning of one kind or another, but it's not meant to be a show.
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  It's meant to be an opportunity for people to embrace the scriptures, to embrace some of the songs of the season, to be reminded of hope, peace, joy, and love because Christ came at Christmas.
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  So I want to read the scriptures.
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  The service started in in 1918 at King's College, Cambridge in England.
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  It was designed to be a way to make the service more contemporary, to kind of improve it a little bit, freshen it up, we might say.
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  They changed a few things the next year, but since then it's been largely unchanged there at King's College.
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  They changed the music, of course, but the the lessons, the scripture references are the same.
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  And we have been using those scriptures every year.
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  We change up the music, we use much different music than they do.
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  It that's a cultural context thing, and you'll find this service being practiced around the world in all kinds of different ways.
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  But our focus here today is on the scriptures, and I want to read the scriptures, and I want you just to take it all in.
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  Follow the flow of the story.
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  Let's embrace the good news that Christ came at Christmas.
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  The scriptures begin in the Festival of Lessons and Carols with Genesis chapter 3, verse 8.
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  And I'm reading from the New Living Translation.
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  When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden.
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  So they hid from the Lord God among the trees.
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  Then the Lord God called to the man, Where are you?
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  He replied, I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid.
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  I was afraid because I was naked.
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  Who told you that you were naked?
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  The Lord God asked.
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  Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?
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  The man replied, It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.
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  Then the Lord God asked the woman, What have you done?
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  The serpent deceived me, she replied.
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  That's why I ate it.
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  Then the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all animals, domestic and wild.
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  You will crawl on your belly, groveling in the dust as long as you live, and I will cause hostility between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.
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  He will strike your head and you will strike his heel.
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  Then he said to the woman, I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth, and you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.
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  And to the man he said, Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat.
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  The ground is cursed because of you.
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  All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.
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  It will grow thick.
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  Thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains.
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  By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made, for you were made from dust and to dust you will return.
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  That ends the first lesson, the second lesson fast forwards into Genesis chapter twenty two, where we have another hint that Messiah is coming, and this is a passage, a brief one from the story that you may remember that Abraham offered Isaac to his son, or Isaac to God, his Isaac his son to God.
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  This is a hint of that, and it reminds us of God's giving his son to us.
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  Then the angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven.
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  This is what the Lord says.
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  I will multiply your descendants beyond number, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore.
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  Your descendants will conquer the cities of their enemies, and through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed, all because you have obeyed me.
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  Now a little reminder about this passage.
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  It's quite an amazing story, but God had promised Abraham when they became covenant partners that Abraham would have many descendants.
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  And then God asked Abraham to offer his son back to him.
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  And Abraham was ready to do it.
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  And God said, Because you have obeyed me, and he goes on then to restate his promise of many descendants, and there are many descendants today.
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  Isaiah the prophet gave us amazing amazing hope that Messiah was coming.
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  For a child is born to us, a son is given to us, the government will rest on his shoulders, and he will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
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  His government and his peace will never end, he will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David for all eternity.
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  The passionate commitment of the Lord of heaven's armies will make this happen.
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  But hey, how many people want to dismiss government and pretend it's not there in so many ways, but here God says the government will rest on his shoulders on Messiah's shoulders.
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  Jesus will come, and he will run things, he will rule.
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  What else does Isaiah say?
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  He says in chapter eleven, beginning with verse one.
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  The fourth lesson, out of the stump of David's family will grow a shoot.
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  Yes, a new branch bearing fruit from the old root, and the spirit of the Lord will rest on him.
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  The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
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  He will debli he will delight in obeying the Lord.
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  He will not judge by appearance, nor make a decision based on hearsay.
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  He will give justice to the poor and make fair decisions for the exploited, the earth will shake at the force of his word, and one breath from his mouth will destroy the wicked.
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  He will wear righteousness like a belt and truth like an undergarment.
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  In that day, the wolf and the lamb will live together, the leopard will lie down with the baby goat.
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  The calf and the yearling will be safe from the lion, and a little child will lead them all.
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  The cow will graze near the bear, the cub and the calf will lie down together, the lion will eat hay like a cow, the baby will play safely near the hole of a cobra.
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  Yes, a little child will put its hand in a nest of deadly snakes without harm.
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  Nothing will hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain.
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  As for the waters, for as the waters fill the sea, so the earth will be filled with people who know the Lord.
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  Imagine that.
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  Isaiah paints a vision of a world delivered from evil.
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  Isn't that what you want?
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  You won't find that any place.
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  But at the cross of Christ, where he took care of evil once and for all.
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  And there's no place better to find that peace, that hope, that joy, that love, than at church.
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  Nothing better than church at Christmas.
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  The fifth lesson, fast forwards to the New Testament, the beginning of the story that's fairly familiar to us.
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  Luke chapter one, verse twenty six.
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  In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary.
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  She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David.
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  Gabriel appeared to her and said, Greetings, favored woman, the Lord is with you.
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  Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean.
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  Don't be afraid, Mary, the angel told her, for you have found favor with God.
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  You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus.
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  He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High.
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  The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David, and he will reign over Israel forever.
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  His kingdom will never end.
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  Mary asked the angel, but how can this happen?
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  I am a virgin.
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  The angel replied, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most high will overshadow you.
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  So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God.
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  What's more, your relative Elizabeth has become pregnant in her old age.
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  People used to say she was barren, but she has conceived a son and is now in her sixth month.
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  For the word of God will never fail.
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  Mary responded, I am the Lord's servant.
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  May everything you have said about me come true.
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  And then the angel left her.
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  And I'm going to read the sixth and the seventh lessons together because they are the familiar story from Luke chapter two.
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  At that time the Roman Emperor Augustus decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire.
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  This was the first census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria.
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  All returned to their own ancestral towns to register for this census.
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  And because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David's ancient home.
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  He travelled there from the village of Nazareth in Galilee, he took with him Mary to whom he was engaged, who was now expecting a child.
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  And while they were there the time came for her baby to be born.
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  She gave birth to her firstborn son, she wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.
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  That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep.
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  Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord's glory surrounded them.
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  They were terrified.
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  But the angel reassured them, don't be afraid, he said, I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people.
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  The Savior, yes, the Messiah, the Lord has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David, and you will recognize him by this sign.
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  You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.
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  Suddenly the angel was joined by a vast host of others, the armies of heaven, praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest heaven and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.
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  When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, let's go to Bethlehem.
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  Let's see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.
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  They hurried to the village and found Mary and Joseph, and there was the baby lying in the manger.
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  It was just a marvelous thing.
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  It's such a familiar story, and yet put yourself if you can in the shoes of those shepherds, or sandals if you prefer.
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  Imagine those events unfolding, and then coming to the conclusion, the Lord has told us about this.
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  Do you ever ask yourself how you're going to hear when the Lord has something to tell you?
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  Maybe he's talking to you even now and reminding you through this simple remembrance restatement of rehearsal of the Christmas story that you need to return to hope, to peace, to joy, to love to Christ at Christmas.
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  Maybe he's trying to get your attention to say to you, There's nothing better than church at Christmas.
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  Find a church that's closest to the Bible.
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  Get involved.
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  Follow Jesus.
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  Well, Jesus made a big impact on his world, and he made a big impact from a long way away because in Matthew we come to the eighth lesson, Matthew chapter two, beginning with verse one.
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  The arrival of some wise men from the east.
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  Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea during the reign of King Herod.
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  About that time some wise men from eastern lands arrived.
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  In Jerusalem asking, where is the newborn king of the Jews?
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  We saw his star as it rose, and we have come to worship him.
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  King Herod was deeply disturbed when he heard this, as was everyone in Jerusalem.
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  He called a meeting of the leading priests and teachers of religious law and asked, where is the Messiah supposed to be born?
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  In Bethlehem and Judea, they said, for this is what the prophet wrote.
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  And you, O Bethlehem in the land of Judah, are not least among the ruling cities of Judah.
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  For a ruler will come from you who will be the shepherd for my people Israel.
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  Then Herod called for a private meeting with the wise men, and he learned from them the time when the star first appeared.
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  Then he told them, go to Bethlehem and search carefully for the child.
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  And when you find him, come back and tell me, so that I can go and worship him too.
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  After this interview, the wise men went their way, and the star they had seen in the east guided them to Bethlehem.
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  It went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the child was.
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  When they saw the star, they were filled with joy.
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  They entered the house and saw the child with his mother, Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him.
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  Then they opened their treasure chests and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
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  When it was time to leave, they returned to their own country by another route.
• 51:31
  For God had warned them in a dream not to return to Herod.
• 51:43
  But I want you to notice their reaction of joy.
• 51:48
  And you and I, we live in a world that in many ways is joyless.
• 51:55
  And I want you to know that you can recapture joy in your life when you return to the Christ at Christmas.
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  Well, you can return any time, but this is the season.
• 52:09
  Why not return now and find joy?
• 52:13
  You've looked every place else, you can imagine.
• 52:15
  Why are you neglecting the source of joy?
• 52:19
  What sense does that make?
• 52:21
  Hello?
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  You know, I could risk being a little um bit like that guy and say, uh, you know, what's taking you so long?
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  Why are you so resistant?
• 52:36
  Find joy, find Christ.
• 52:39
  The ninth lesson comes from John chapter one, the classic passage from John chapter one.
• 52:46
  In the beginning the word already existed.
• 52:49
  The word was with God, and the word was God.
• 52:53
  He existed in the beginning with God.
• 52:57
  God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him.
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  The word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone.
• 53:13
  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.
• 53:20
  God sent a man, John the Baptist, to tell about the light, so that everyone might believe because of his testimony.
• 53:30
  John himself was not the light.
• 53:36
  The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.
• 53:42
  He came into the very world he created, but the world didn't recognize him.
• 53:48
  He came to his own people, and even they rejected him.
• 53:53
  But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.
• 54:01
  They were they are reborn, not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.
• 54:14
  So the word became human and made his home among us.
• 54:24
  The glory of the Father's one and only Son.
• 54:29
  Now through all of these passages, we've traced the scope of the beginning of sin entering the world in the garden of Eden to the hope that John gives us from chapter one of his gospel.
• 54:42
  And it talks about how Jesus, the Word, made his home among us, and he wants to make his home in your heart too, if you will turn and follow him.
• 54:54
  You know, we live in a world where people talk about rights.
• 54:57
  I have my rights.
• 54:58
  When people talk about justice, I want justice, and in Jesus, we see that God has delivered justice for the world, and we he has lived up to your heart's cry for rights.
• 55:11
  He has given you the right.
• 55:13
  Did you get that from verse 12?
• 55:15
  The right to become children of God.
• 55:19
  The right to become children of God.
• 55:22
  That's an amazing thought.
• 55:25
  It's not like, well, maybe maybe he'll let you in.
• 55:31
  Pardon me.
• 55:32
  He doesn't say that at all.
• 55:33
  He doesn't say, Maybe I'll let you into my kingdom.
• 55:36
  He says, John says, You have the right to become children of God.
• 55:43
  The right.
• 55:44
  Will you exercise that right?
• 55:46
  Will you pardon me again?
• 55:50
  Will you like the shepherds?
• 55:53
  Seek and find the Christ at Christmas?
• 55:56
  Will you let him move into your neighborhood?
• 55:59
  One English translation puts it that way, that Jesus came, he became human and he moved into the neighborhood, and he wants to move into your neighborhood too.
• 56:08
  So I hope you'll remember that you'll find hope, peace, joy, and love when you turn to Christ at Christmas.
• 56:15
  And there is nothing better than church at Christmas.
• 56:21
  Find a church.
• 56:22
  Follow Jesus.
• 56:25
  Exercise your right to be a child of God.