Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / November 26, 2017 | Holiday Fremdschämen - Our 10 Embarrassing Relatives

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November 26, 2017 | Holiday Fremdschämen - Our 10 Embarrassing Relatives · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Five four three two one zero Oh my goodness six thousand three hundred and twenty two dollars and ninety cents Oh my goodness Are you serious?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_04: The amount that we were going to raise uh at Camp Catapult for the Trash Mountain project uh to build this house in Honduras was three thousand dollars and we hoped with the match that we would get close to building a house.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_04: And in fact, when we when we did the reveal, we ended up raising over six thousand dollars.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_05: Well, it was actually a little challenging to get the figures entered before we were supposed to present because money kept pouring in.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_06: It was the looks on the faces of the kids who brought in the little Ziploc bags, or even just their fists clamped around handfuls of change, knowing that what they were doing, no matter how big or small, was going to make a significant impact for someone else.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_06: Well, I think it's important for the kids to learn to think globally because these are our future missionaries and pastors.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_03: And we were trying to raise money to do what?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, build a house.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_03: Build a house.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_03: Do you remember where the house we were building it is supposed to be?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Honduras.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_03: Honduras, that's right.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's important to help them because um we want to help people that are homeless and help them to know God and then help them to have food and stay healthy.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_04: All told we were able to raise over$9,000 at Camp Catapult that week for Trash Mountain Project to build houses in Honduras.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that is episode one of a three-episode video that we'll be showing this week, next week, and the following week.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it's our uh it's it's a way to remind you of our holiday project, our Christmas project, half of which is to help the A Fey, that is Amor, uh Fey, which means faith, and the E stands for hope in English.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: So uh this organization that pulls kids, 180, are pulled off the trash dump and they're educating them.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And when we were there, uh a team of us, uh Chris and the rest of us, a couple of months ago, I was shocked to find out through a translator their money had stopped.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: They'd received no money for a couple of months, and their school teachers, their leaders were just keeping on going.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they had such a heart for this.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And and that money has started up.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: The the the the blockage in the in the artery has been removed.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so some funds have started up to have a$30,000 a month budget.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, I want to help out these school teachers who are teaching for very little and sacrificing for these kids.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, so uh half of our project, half of the money we get in this month, uh will go to these school teachers to give them a bonus and so forth.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the other half, by the way, which I explained last week, is to establish a rescue house in outside of Topeka.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: It'll be a secret place.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Over a hundred of girls and women have been rescued so far by the rescue mission, Barry Feeker, and so forth, here in the Topeka area who were in slavery.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, they need a place, as they sneak them away out of slavery, need a place for them to stay for a month before we can find a place for them to live in another state.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so we've got this house, needs to be renovated, and I promise that with the money we get in, we'll pay the utilities, we'll hire someone to be a house parent, and so forth.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm really excited about our Christmas project.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hope you'll give generously to this, though you always do.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: You just you you just you're just great.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, that's our project, and so that's why I'm gonna we're gonna show this video at three straight weeks.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh um so I want to talk to you today.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is a one-off uh Sunday.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, it's between a series, it's before our Let There Be Light Christmas series, a four-part series that starts next week.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so whenever there's like a one Sunday and I get to preach whatever I want, uh uh so I picked something a little weird uh that I'm really excited about, even though you may think it's disgusting.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: But uh my my kids will not be surprised that I have this warped sense of humor.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I I had uh I had six years of German when I was growing up, but there was a word I just learned a half a dozen words ago, a German word that can't be translated into English.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: It has to be translated with a whole sentence.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: The word is Fremdschaman.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Say that with me.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Fremdschaman.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you're uh from a different part of Germany you may say, you may say uh Fremd Schemann, that umlaut over the A.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: But this refers to the feeling of cringing in embarrassment for someone who is oblivious to how embarrassing they are, right?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and can I get an amen from every husband here who knows that his wife has felt this feeling about him down through the years, right?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because of the way you eat, or because of the stupid things that you say sometimes.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, every few months, someone comes up to me after a service and and she'll, sweet lady, and she'll say, I couldn't hear a word you said.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: I was so embarrassed for you because your cough was up and I could see your leg or something else.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's worse if it's my zipper.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, it's, and you know, this is the feeling you have for someone who doesn't know they should be embarrassed and probably should know, and you feel embarrassed for them.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it sounds like that you're embarrassed or you're shamed for a friend.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's what the word sounds like, but the word's not friend.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's frimmed, which actually means a foreign.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's not your own.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: You're not embarrassed because of your own faux pas.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: You're embarrassed because of someone else's, you know, faux pas.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so it's a holiday frimm shame, and we're gonna talk about 10 embarrassing relatives.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you've already come through one sort of, you know, holiday gathering.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what yours was like.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Mine was a little unique.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Melody and I drove up through the night on Monday night, 25 hours up to Portland, Maine, to meet our daughter Adrian and her two youngest girls who drove eight hours south from Halifax.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we spent the week in the Ramada Inn, thank God for Ramada.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And on Thanksgiving, we found ourselves in the in the little room, uh, the five of us, pulling apart a roast chicken from we bought at the grocery store and enjoying every moment of it.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's how we spent Thanksgiving, but but we didn't have one embarrassing relative in that room.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was so fun.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now, uh uh I'm gonna expand Fremshame, and not just are these ten going to be embarrassing relatives, but uh they'll be some of them will be a little more unpleasant.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: There are ten reasons to buy Tums, stock up on Tums for the holidays, all right?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And these ten, I was limited to some extent by uh by biblical figures, because all ten of these are biblical characters.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the first one is the Scrooge who isn't having fun and doesn't want anyone else to either.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, someone's defined Scrooge at Christmas as you know how sometimes you buy a toy for the kid for your kid and it has a little notice in there, no batteries and batteries not included.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is Scrooge is defined as the person who buys batteries for his kid and writes a little note, no toy included.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a person who is a wet blanket, it's a person the grump, the sister-in-law, the grandpa sits over in the corner and has a bad attitude and tries to spread their misery to everyone else.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh every party has its fooper, that's why we invited you, but you can't say that out loud.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this person is uh in the Bible, uh, this character is sort of the answer to a trivia question.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: The trivia question being, what three leaders were involved in Korah's rebellion?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Korah was one of these whiners and complainers.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Moses had led the children of Israel out of Egypt, and all of the children of Israel were whining and complaining, which is partly why they had to wander 40 years in the wilderness.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: But during those years it got worse and worse, the whiners and complainers, and the organizers of the whining and complaining was a guy named Korah and Dathan and Abiram.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so we read in uh, and most of my references today will come from the Christian Standard Bible.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Numbers 16, 12 to 14, Moses sent for Dathan and Abiram.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: He's gonna confront them because they're fomenting, they are stoking the whining.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: And they said to him, We're not even gonna come.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: And now we find out the three sort of complaints they've been stoking throughout the congregation of Israel.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is it not enough that you brought us up from a land flowing with milk and honey?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine how Moses felt when he heard them describe Egypt as a land flowing with milk and honey?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine how God felt when he heard those words?
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: From a land flowing with milk and honey to kill us in the wilderness?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have to appoint yourself as ruler over us?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: They whined about the leadership.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And third, furthermore, he didn't bring us to a land flowing with milk and honey as you promised.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's no vineyards here.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: We will not come.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you to the Scrooge who isn't having fun and doesn't want anyone else to have fun either.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: His name is Dathan.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what his name is in your family.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you don't have one in your family.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: But uh problem is sometimes if they're highly intelligent and a little younger, like college age, then they're more of a cynic.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're sort of the cynical Scrooge, you know, the guy who you know drops one-liners in there, always making fun of people.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, the butterfly who lives for the moment with a little thought for the future.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is uh more of a young person who's in your family gathering, who is uh the difference between a butterfly and a bee, you know, is the butterfly flits from flower to flower, sucking the nectar and drinking it up right then and flitting to the next pretty flower, right?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Lives for the now, lives for the moment.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: The bee, on the other hand, gathers the nectar, saves it up for the future in the beehive.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you have a butterfly here who lives for the moment, could care less about the future.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: In the Bible, his name is Esau.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Esau grew up in a homeschool family like all of those families in Genesis.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: He'd come out of the womb just ahead of his twin brother Jacob, but that made all the difference in the world.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: It meant that Esau got the inheritance, two-thirds of it, the property and everything.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: But Esau wasn't the kind of a guy who thought about the future.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't care about it.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly he didn't like being homeschooled, and so he would just, even as a kid, would just leave home, disappointing, making his mother sad constantly, because he'd go out and he'd go hunting and then he'd stay overnight and he'd live out on the heath and so forth and hunt and living from experience to experience.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Coming home occasionally, but he was a butterfly.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And once when he came in, Jacob, his younger brother, who would stay home and was learning his mathematics, let's shall we say, arithmetic and his Hebrew.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Jacob was cooking his stew.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And Esau, the butterfly, came in from the field exhausted and said to Jacob, Let me eat some of that red stuff.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: I wish you could read Hebrew.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is really funny in Hebrew because it's sort of like an animal grunt.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Esau had turned into the animals that he likes to hunt.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, Give me some of that red stuff.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, as a result, uh his name, which means red, uh he founded a kingdom called Edom, which means basically red stuff.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, because I'm tired.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And Jacob said, Clever Jacob, goes, this guy doesn't care about the future.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't care about leading the family and the next generation.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so he goes, sell me your birthright.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Look, says Esau, I'm about to die.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: What good is a birthright to me?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: So he swore to Jacob and sold his birthright to him because he was a butterfly who had little thought for the future.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's sad.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: I uh bless him, but if you have someone like this in your family, then you find that you really can't talk with them about the future.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: You're glad they came back for Christmas, but you you don't want to try to get them to plan for next Easter or Christmas because they don't want to plan for the future.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Third, the manipulative, this isn't as funny as I think it is, but it's the manipulative bully who plays the victim.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is the person who, you know, who is going to get you know their own way because they're clever and they're deceitful and they're and they're manipulative.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And if you ever confront them about it, then they go, you know, they counterattack or they play the victim.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then in the Bible, his name is Laban.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Laban was Jacob's uncle, and Jacob had to run for his life from his brother Esau.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Shortly after this, Esau realized what he'd given up.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: So Jacob runs and he goes runs hundreds of miles northeast to his uncle Laban's place.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: When he gets there, he uh he sees his cousin Rachel, and he goes, Poxy lady, I want to marry her.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Talks to Laban.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Laban says, Listen, listen, I gotta be sure you're gonna be, you know, loyal and all that stuff.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: You stay around and work for me for seven years, I'll give you Rachel.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'll let you marry her.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: So Jacob goes, sure.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of seven years, which it says seemed like just a day to him, he walks down the aisle with this veiled girl, which he assumes is Rachel, but Laban had pulled a switcheroo and substituted Rachel's ugly sister, uh Leah.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now she wasn't really ugly, but she was plain and she wasn't the one Jacob wanted.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Substituted her, wedding in the evening.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Jacob never sees this girl.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: They go into the tent, and the verse is just remarkable.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: When morning came, there was Leah.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in Hebrew, I'm sorry, but it's really funny.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: It pictures it from Jacob's viewpoint.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like three words in the in Hebrew.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's like morning and behold Leah.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's sort of how Jacob felt.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: He opens his eyes.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so he goes to Laban.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: What is this you've done to me?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: I served you for Rachel, didn't I?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Why have you deceived me?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a few years later, and so and so Laban goes, Oh, I had to marry off Leah first.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry I didn't tell you.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: And and so Jacob goes, I want Rachel.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Laban says, Work for me for another seven years, I'll give you Rachel.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he does it.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: He does it.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: And makes Laban super rich in the meantime, because God's blessing Jacob and everybody else who's around him.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: And after seven years, so so Laban's now getting wealthier.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now Jacob has two wives, which is a problem because they don't like, they fight each other, of course.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so after a few years, Jacob and the wives go, we gotta get away from here.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so they sneak away in the night, knowing that Laban's not gonna let them go easy.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so they sneak away.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: It takes Laban a week to catch up with him.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And notice when Laban catches up with him, notice how this manipulative bully plays the victim.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: He says to Jacob, Whoa, what have you done?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Why did you run off secretly and deceive me?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Why didn't you tell me so I could send you away with joy and singing?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Balderdash.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: So the manipulative bully who plays the victim.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to confront this person, don't you?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because this is the person who's gonna get his own way, unless you confront him, but you confront him, he'll uh counterattack and then play victim.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Number for the sister who smiles to your face, but do you find out later?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: They talk behind your back.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Hope you don't have a Miriam in your family.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Miriam was the sister of Moses, and she was really one of the three leaders of Israel.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Remember when Moses brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, it was sort of the Moses family that led the children of Israel.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Moses, he was like the lead pastor, and his brother Aaron was like the worship pastor, and Miriam was like the women's pastor, okay?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the three of them led, and all seemed to be going well.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Moses did not see it coming.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: But they're wandering now through the wilderness, and it turns out that Miriam and her brother Aaron, though Miriam's clearly the leader of this in the way that God ends up responding and punishing her, that Miriam spoke against Moses.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Here was their excuse.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because he'd married an Ethiopian woman.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Ethiopian, Ethiopians are beautiful, most beautiful people in Africa, but they're very dark-skinned, very black.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses, Aaron, and so forth, like Middle Easterners, are brown.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so, being racist, they picked this opportunity, Miriam did, to talk against her brother.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: He'd married a black woman.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: And and they said, listen, has the Lord spoken only through Moses?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, he's he's the boss man, limelight, he gets all the limelight.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Hasn't God also spoken through us?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord heard it.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: And she paid a heavy price for that.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, um, unfortunately, some of us do have relatives who smile to our face but talk behind.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you don't have one who stabs you in the back, maybe just talks you in the behind your back.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: The um, next we have, we have Samson.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: We have the man child, the man boy, the Peter Pan who won't grow up and thinks he's a player.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: What I mean by thinks he's a player is he thinks he's, even though he's, even though he's 30 years old and not going to school and still lives at home, he still thinks that picking up chicks is is cool, and that he is super attractive to chicks.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And and he's got women on the brain, and and and and chase's skirts, and that's who Samson was, right?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Samson's uh Samson's the last judge mentioned in the book of judges, and and the trajectory of judges is that the best judge of all was the first one.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then we go from off nail, we go downhill, downhill, downhill, downhill, we get all the way down.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Samson, he's the worst judge because he's a he's a man boy.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's grown up, but he acts like a kid.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: He acts like an eternal adolescent.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, there's loads of articles out there today which indicate that there's never been as many grown-up adolescents in the Western world as there are today.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there are just so many of these, bless them, sweet guys, but but and oftentimes too they think that there's something special with the chicks.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's the way Samson was.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: He was in Timnah one day, and a Philistine woman caught his eye.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Timnah happened to be, and the Philistines were were the sworn enemies of Israel.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: They're persecuting Israel, and so he sees a woman who's actually part of the enemy troops who have got them under their thumb, but he likes her and he says, get her for me.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: She looks good to me.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how really?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, get more romantic than that, please.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: But and so they do get married, and it doesn't work out well at all.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then we find two chapters later, Samson's somewhere else, and he falls in love, clearly love at first sight, with a woman named Delilah.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And as you know, that's not gonna work out well.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the this is the kid you just love, uh, but he's he's irresponsible, and he won't grow up, and he thinks he's a player.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you don't have one in your family, but there are a lot of them around.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh, last person from the Old Testament, this will be number six of our ten, is the insecure ninny.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Melody and I talked, should this be doofish, should this be nitwit?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: We chose ninny.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: I like ninny because it indicates this kid is an approval addict.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know how the butterfly was a pleasure addict, Esau?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: This guy is an approval addict.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: As growing up, he or she just desperately wanted approval, wanted to be popular at school.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what Rehoboam was like.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And and and he was insecure, and he happened to suddenly inherit a great kingdom, the kingdom of Israel.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: His father's name was Solomon.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: That was the golden age of Israel.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, Solomon's so smart, all this money, Solomon didn't end well, and suddenly he's gone, and the kingdom passes to his ninny of a son, Rehoboam.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Rehboam is insecure, Rehoboam is heading into the throne, and he gets this retinue, this cortege of Israelites who come to him and say, listen, your dad was great, your granddad was the best, David, but but your dad just got worse and worse with the taxes.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: And this corvete thing where he we every one of us guys was required to leave home and work on one of his building projects three months out of the year, that's insane.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we had to leave our jobs and do that, and the taxes, it's killing us.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Lower the taxes.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Please, would you pretty please lower the taxes?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, so first we find what happened is Rehoboam consulted with the palace counselors.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: They actually had, you know, a group of people that are called Zikunim, elders, who were the counselors, and he consulted with them.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, Listen, we loved your dad, but this was a huge problem.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you'll just lower the taxes and do what the people that are asking you to do, they will love you forever.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: But Rioboam sees over in the corner the young buddies that he's grown up with, that he's rode motorcycle with or whatever, and that's who he really wants to be most popular with.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: So he sends out the old folks and he asks the young guys, what's your advice?
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: And they say, Oh man, you don't want to be a wuss, you don't want to be a wimp, you got to show me you have a backbone, you got to tell the people, are you kidding me?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: My dad was easy compared to me.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, am I you know it was you know, he was he was like a thin strand, like a fifth finger, but I'm gonna be like a full muscle.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: And and so he did, and as a result, the kingdom split.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's like today we talk about ten lost tribes.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're lost because they got lost in 1 Kings 12, and Rioboam did his stupid, you know, thing.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: So uh if you have this person in your family, they're not so much the pleasure addict as the approval addict.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: And parents and grandparents get so frustrated with this kid because he or she rejects their advice.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Just because they're older and really wants to be popular with the crowd they shouldn't be listening to.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's move to the New Testament and to someone you may have never heard of, named Diotrephes.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Diotrephes is related a little bit to Laban, who's the bully.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is the tank who rolls over everyone who gets in his way.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: You want to you want to eat Thanksgiving dinner between the first and second football games?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna eat it between the second and third football games.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you get the feeling that this person just simply has to get their own way.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: You guys want to go to the Star Wars movie?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, we're gonna go to the, you know, whatever.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the this is the tank who rolls over everyone who gets in his way.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's a described.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't know him, it's because he's only described in one book of the Bible, but you ought to know this book at holiday season because this little book is the book about the most important holiday virtue.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: The holiday virtue is hospitality.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: Opening your home to people that maybe you would rather not spend time with, right?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's called hospitality.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't have Ramada ends back then, and so people, as they traveled, were utterly dependent.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Christians, utterly dependent.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Apostle Paul, utterly dependent on people opening their homes.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so John writes this one-chapter book about hospitality, about how important it is to God and to people.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, I wrote to the church, but Diatrophes, who loves to be first, loves to have first place, he knows he's the most important person in the room, doesn't receive our authority, slanders us with malicious words, and he's not satisfied with that.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Here it comes.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: He not only refuses to welcome fellow believers, but even stops those who want to do so and expels them from the church.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you can understand that in the church.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: He feels like, you know, he's he's the king and this is his kingdom, and he's in control of his kingdom, and if new people come in, then he may not be in control.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so he kept, keeps the people out.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if you try to invite someone new into the church or in your Bible study or Sunday school class, he'll he'd he'd get so angry he'd like to kick you out of the church.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have this person in your family gathering, of course, they want to be in control and they really don't want anybody else coming in.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is the tank who rolls over everyone who gets in his way.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: Bless him.
• 26:00
  unknown: Okay.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now we come to three more.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: We have a uh, this is a very different.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: His name starts with a letter D, and again, you may not have heard of this guy, at least he's mentioned three times in the New Testament.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: His name is Demas.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: He's that dreamer who spurns family and friends for bright lights, big city.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, uh Demas grew up uh in uh in Asia, and Demas grew up always loving, you know, the stage and limelight.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: He just so he was uh he loved rock stars, he loved hero worship and so forth.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: So when the apostle Paul came through, he glommed onto him, for the apostle Paul had hobnobbed with rich and famous people.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: The apostle Paul had stepped into the limelight, the apostle Paul was somebody cool, and so he glommed onto the Apostle Paul, he hung on his everywhere, he began following him around, and then he attached himself to Paul's retinue and traveled around the Roman Empire with him for a while.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: But something's happened.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Notice 2 Timothy 4.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: What had happened was, of course, as long as it's pulsted in the limelight, then Demas was sort of at least on the edge of the limelight, but then Paul got thrown into prison.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Paul's no longer in the limelight, stretches into one year, stretches into two years.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: You visit Paul, you've got to go into a dungeon.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to go where there's rats and it's dirty and there's no limelight, and he's not a rock star anymore.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I take it that a friend of Demas's came in from out of town and says, Wow, wow, have you heard of Thessalonica?
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Today it's called Thessaloniki, and it's the first town that Melody and I will be in leading our Greece tour the last two days of next May, and it's really a cool town today, town of about a million, and it is Bright Light's big city.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's on the seacoast, and it was Bright Light's Big City, the capital of northern Greece back then as well.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: A cool town, but it's sort of like going to LA, you know, or going to Hollywood, or going to New York City, because that's where the action's happening.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's where the limelight is.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a kid who's attracted by the stage.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is the dreamer who spurns family and friends for bright lights, big city.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so they may come back home for your holiday, but as they sit there, you can tell that they're thinking, eh, this is flyover country.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: These are a bunch of rednecks here.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, so so so you love them.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: You love them.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: But this is a person that makes you want to go in the back room and take a roll age.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: So next to last, the Grinch who doesn't want to hear about Christ at Christmas.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's always sad.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: But many of our families have, and our extended families, I'd say we all have someone like this who grew up in the church and knows about the church and now has graduated to better things and now understands, and they come, and it's okay if you pray over Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas dinner or whatever.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: And but there's something in you, you know, that maybe wants to stand around the piano and sing Christmas carols or kneel down, have devotions or something.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Read the Christmas story, and you know, you know that person over in the corner is going, uh, get me through this.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: And they're making excuses, maybe, you know, go to the bathroom or whatever, because they don't they don't really care to hear about Christ at Christmas.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in that way, in a small way, they are like King Herod, aren't they?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, King Herod in Jerusalem was there after Jesus being born in Bethlehem, five miles down the road in the days of King Herod, those wise men from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who's been born, King of the Jews?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: For we have come to worship him.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: When King Herod heard this, he was deeply disturbed.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't want to have competition.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: He would much rather that the Christ child disappear.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: So Herod, when he realized he'd been outwitted, this is later, by the wise men, they didn't come back and tell him where the Christ child was, flew into a rage, gave orders to massacre all the boys in and around Bethlehem.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: Gotta get the Christ child out of Christmas.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: And admittedly, this person in your extended family wouldn't, isn't murderous, but they certainly would feel much more comfortable, right?
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: If Christ wasn't in Christmas.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: And you gotta love them and you gotta pray for them.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, the person that you've been waiting for, the person that you can most easily identify, the person that you most often feel frimmed shaman for at the holidays, the motor mouth, who keeps putting his foot in it, the person, however, that you love inviting to your Christmas party.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is the most fun.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: But you know how last week I had that video, it was awful, it made fun of your senior pastor.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: But in that video, in that video, you know, there there was that Mark Buckles, you know, put his hand down and go, thank you, Lord, for the NFL, which delivers us from those awkward silences after Christmas dinners.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you'll just invite Peter, you won't have that problem.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: No awkward silences.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because Peter's this lovable, heartful guy who sucks all the air out of the room for the next 17 minutes.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, because he talks and he talks and he's funny and he's loud.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: Problem is, of course, he has a foot-shaped mouth.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he keeps putting his foot in it.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Peter of the Gospels, am I right?
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's every chapter or two.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: Mark chapter 8.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: Peter took Jesus aside and began to reprimand him for saying that he would die.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Peter, that's a good move.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: Reprimand the Son of God.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Smart.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's Mark 8, Mark 9.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, Peter gets the inside invitation with James and John to go up and see the transfiguration at Mount Hermon.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: And as Peter's there, Rabbi, it's wonderful for us to be here.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: Great, Peter.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: Just shut your mouth.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a cliche.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Let's make three shelters as memorials, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: Would you just shut up?
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: And which is exactly what God then says out of heaven.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: God speaks out of heaven and says, Peter, would you just shut up and listen to my son?
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: And several chapters later, remember the night before he died, Jesus said, I gotta tell you, all of you guys are gonna, my disciples, you're gonna all desert me.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: And Peter declared emphatically, even if I have to die with you, I'll never deny you.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Four hours later, I don't know the game.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: So Peter is the motor mouth who keeps putting his foot in it.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: He's the one who, if you're the host or the hostess and you see, you know, everyone else there is looking at their watches and they're counting down and getting ready to gnaw off, you know, gnaw off their leg so that they have an excuse for getting out of the room.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's, you know, you've got to say, oh, can I interrupt you?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: I can I have a similar story, you know.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um and everybody in the room, of course, feels Frim Shaman for this sweet person who you love, who you really do want at your family gathering.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: So those are my ten, and and so I asked myself the question: how do you survive holiday gatherings with ten relatives there, and maybe you only have one or two of these, who who give you a feeling of friend shaman.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I have four pieces of advice.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, beware lest you be the friend shaman guy.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you don't know who the friendshaman guy is in your uh extended family, since everybody has one, I hate to tell you, but it's probably you.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like the friendshaman guy, we're driving back uh, you know, uh overnight from on Friday night from Portland, Maine.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just those roads out east.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we were going down to West Virginia first to pick up uh a piece of wood.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: And uh felt like the Frim Shaman guy, because you know, I got my cell phone and it's late at night and so forth, and uh, and I was fine until the car passed with that really bright you know, bumper sticker on it saying, honk, if you love Jesus, keep on texting if you want to go meet him.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I go, you know.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Not real smart.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, we drove, uh we're driving through all these major cities uh, you know, and no nativity scenes that I saw in Washington, D.C.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then I realized why, you know, they couldn't find three wise men in Washington.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, sorry, sorry.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is all that's all off topic, but beware lest you uh be the Frim Shaman guy.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, number two, forgive, forgive.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: Overlook, cut some slack, okay?
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because you yourself have been the object of Frim Shaman a number of times.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you just ask your wife, uh guarantee it, okay?
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: And third, shoot up a flare of prayer, pray.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: Shake your head, yeah, go ahead and shake your head at her or at him, but then then pray for him, Lord, bless him.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't realize that he's been talking for 17 minutes and we're all ready to kill ourselves.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, Lord, please bless him.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, and most important, blink your eyes once and take another look at that person.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: Look again and see them as they will be one day.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is best expressed by C.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: S.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis in The Weight of Glory.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to this.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's a serious thing, he says, to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: By this, he's speaking about you and me.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: Small G.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Possible gods and goddesses.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: To remember that the dullest, most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: Or else, a horror and a corruption, such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: All day long we are in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then even more famously, Lewis concludes there are no ordinary people.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: You have never talked to a mere mortal.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: It is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: Immortal whores or everlasting splendors.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we can say there are no, really no friendsham, not long term, because one day those people who embarrass us will one day be gods and goddess, be astounding people.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: They will be changed completely into the all the way into the image of God, will be absolutely radiant, or else they will be immortal horrors.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we're we are important because we're helping people every day become more like one or more like the other.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: How do we survive holiday gatherings?
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, beware lest you be one.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: Forgive because you have been one.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: Pray.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: Pray for them.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: But finally, and most important, look again at those people and realize how amazing they are.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: They bear the image of God Himself.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: Join me in a word of prayer.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for our relatives.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we don't thank you for them, but this morning we are.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: We crouch between two holiday gatherings, Thanksgiving and Christmas.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we know that we are going to rub shoulders to be in the same room with relatives who give us feelings of wanting to cringe, feelings of embarrassment.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: Deliver us from being giving other people those feelings, Lord.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: Help us be forgiving toward those and and pray for them and then see them as you see them in heaven.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.