Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / November 25, 2018 | Prepare (for Disillusionment)

Transcript

November 25, 2018 | Prepare (for Disillusionment) · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_07: Good morning.
0:02
unknown: Good morning.
0:03
SPEAKER_07: Oh, good response.
0:05
SPEAKER_07: So, you know, there are five crowns in the Bible, like a crown of joy and a crown of life, and you know, for rewards that you get in heaven.
0:15
SPEAKER_07: If you came out this morning, I've been told that there's a crown of ice up there that's waiting for us.
0:21
SPEAKER_07: So congratulations.
0:23
SPEAKER_07: Welcome.
0:23
SPEAKER_07: I happen to know there's not many of us here, but there's e uh there are some people whose churches were not open this morning who decided to come over here.
0:32
SPEAKER_07: So welcome to you and uh hope that you'll be blessed by uh hope that you have been blessed by the music and the dedication of Derek and Gabby's baby, and uh you'll be blessed by what I'm going to say.
0:46
SPEAKER_07: Uh one of the things I'm going to do this morning, and I I'll probably do it again next week, is give you the reveal of our Christmas project.
0:53
SPEAKER_07: That last uh last year's Christmas project was amazing.
0:56
SPEAKER_07: It was divided uh between something a little bit like this.
0:59
SPEAKER_07: It was the uh dealing with human trafficking in Topeka.
1:03
SPEAKER_07: Uh we we helped open a new house for that and so forth.
1:07
SPEAKER_07: And uh so uh and the other half of it last year was Honduras with Trash Mountain and uh school down there we're helping.
1:16
SPEAKER_07: This year it's split between what we're calling community transformation in Topeka.
1:20
SPEAKER_07: Barry Fieker will be here in two weeks to speak uh on December 9th and share with us more.
1:25
SPEAKER_07: This is providing transportation and safe housing for victims of human trafficking with Topeka Rescue Mission.
1:31
SPEAKER_07: And down in Haiti with Haiti Lifeline this time and with the One Body Project uh transforming villages in Haiti by digging wells and building multi-purpose buildings slash churches with Haiti Lifeline.
1:45
SPEAKER_07: In fact, let me show you a video we just finished this weekend, completed.
1:49
SPEAKER_07: It's about a trip that some of us took down there about a month ago and about what our goal is here with community transformation.
1:56
SPEAKER_07: Watch this video.
2:26
SPEAKER_05: We are part of the one body of Christ with the Christians in Haiti, and so just as we care for our own bodies physically, we have the responsibility, but also the privilege, the joy, the honor to use some of what God has given us to build up the body of Christ today.
2:52
SPEAKER_05: The first way that we are transforming communities in Haiti is by building churches.
2:57
SPEAKER_05: Many communities in Haiti don't have church buildings, they just meet in rough, stick structures with holes in the roof and dirt floors.
3:05
SPEAKER_05: In October, we were able to interview some of the pastors who we have already built churches for and asked them, what difference has this church made?
3:13
SPEAKER_05: One of them smiled and told us, well, his average attendance has gone up every week.
3:18
SPEAKER_05: We asked why.
3:19
SPEAKER_05: He said, because now if it rains or if it's too hot, the people know that when they come to church, their new building will actually protect them from the elements.
3:28
SPEAKER_05: And so more people are in church in his community on Sundays just because they have a new building.
3:35
SPEAKER_05: For just$30,000, we transform a community in Haiti by building a church.
3:46
SPEAKER_05: As we talked to the pastors in these communities, they told us of another great need, and that was the need for clean water.
3:53
SPEAKER_05: Some of the pastors we've interviewed told us that the people in their community walked as far as three and a half hours each way just to draw water from a spring that was clean that they could drink.
4:04
SPEAKER_05: We believe every person deserves to have easy access to clean water right there in their community.
4:10
SPEAKER_05: And so for just$5,000, we're putting a well or a cistern in every one of these communities, transforming the lives of their people.
4:20
SPEAKER_05: We believe we can transform these communities spiritually by building into their spiritual leaders, the pastors of all of these communities.
4:29
SPEAKER_05: And so we go down once a year to encourage and teach and lead these pastors in a conference with teachings from discipleship to church leadership and giving them resources like Bible dictionaries and commentaries and hymnals just so that they can do their ministry better in their communities.
4:49
SPEAKER_05: This is what the One Body Project is all about.
4:52
SPEAKER_05: We want to transform communities in Haiti.
4:54
SPEAKER_05: Our goal is 25 communities in 10 years.
4:58
SPEAKER_05: We've already completed seven churches and we're finishing three more in January.
5:03
SPEAKER_05: We've already completed eight wells, and a ninth is under construction right now.
5:07
SPEAKER_05: God is doing a great work in Haiti, and we hope that you'll be a part of it.
5:16
SPEAKER_07: We're really excited about this and hope you'll get behind the project uh this uh holiday season.
5:21
SPEAKER_07: We're really pumped about it.
5:23
SPEAKER_07: So I want to talk to you uh briefly this morning.
5:26
SPEAKER_07: Uh appreciate you coming out about something really specific for Christmas.
5:30
SPEAKER_07: This is gonna hit some of you very close to home because as uh Josh Jones said up here a little while ago, this has been a rough week, a rough month uh for many of you.
5:40
SPEAKER_07: And I want to help us prepare for disillusionment, which is a really natural and has always been since the first Christmas, a very natural element of Christmas.
5:51
SPEAKER_07: Preparing for disillusionment.
5:52
SPEAKER_07: That's the feeling of disappointment that you get when life falls short of your expectations.
5:57
SPEAKER_07: You have some sort of an expectation, whether it's religious expectation of your wife, or of husband, of work, or anything else, of your church or of God, and then what happens?
6:07
SPEAKER_07: Reality fails to meet up with that, and that gap between expectation and reality leads to the feeling of disappointment or disillusionment, in which you say something like, is that all there is to Christmas, let's say, or I expected so much better from that person or that event.
6:26
SPEAKER_07: And it starts, of course, when you're when you're quite young.
6:29
SPEAKER_07: Let me just uh talk to you about disillusionment before I go to the to the Christmas accounts.
6:35
SPEAKER_07: You know, when you're young, two years old, three years old, there's no disillusionment.
6:39
SPEAKER_07: You're so excited, the lights are just amazing, right?
6:41
SPEAKER_07: And the music is so cool, and the and that's you know, the first time you watch the Charlie Brown Christmas, it's just phenomenal.
6:48
SPEAKER_07: I'm watching my six and seven-year-old grandkids, you know, we put that on for them yesterday, and you know, they've seen it before, and it's it's now boring.
6:58
SPEAKER_07: They're already disillusioned with Charlie Brown Christmas, unfortunately.
7:02
SPEAKER_07: So I told them they could each have a bag of candy if they would just sit there and watch it.
7:07
SPEAKER_07: No, I didn't.
7:07
SPEAKER_07: I didn't do that, but I was thought of that.
7:09
SPEAKER_07: So disillusionment happens then when you're five or six, and then all of a sudden you don't get the present you wanted.
7:15
SPEAKER_07: I remember the Christmas where I had asked for a BB gun, and my sister, older sister, had asked for a dollhouse.
7:21
SPEAKER_07: And so we fully expected we would get them.
7:25
SPEAKER_07: And then my parents brought out a gift for us to split between ourselves of a children's book encyclopedia.
7:36
SPEAKER_07: Disillusioned at age six.
7:38
SPEAKER_07: It was awful.
7:39
SPEAKER_07: We learned in that moment that if our parents, if you know, our parents were communicating a lesson to us, if we only have enough money to either make you happy or make you smart, we're going for smart.
7:51
SPEAKER_07: We don't care about that.
7:52
SPEAKER_07: But a few years later I got my BB gun, and who knows, maybe if I'd gotten it sooner I'd have put my eye out or something like that.
7:58
SPEAKER_07: So um and then and then you get a little bit older and and or maybe not much older, and uh, sometimes vacations, the things you look forward to are disillusioning.
8:09
SPEAKER_07: As a guy I know on the staff of Dallas Seminary professor who's an acquaintance, and he has a five-year-old, had a five-year-old boy named Ben a couple of years ago, and and they were building up the Grand Canyon.
8:21
SPEAKER_07: We're going to the Grand Canyon.
8:22
SPEAKER_07: The Grand Canyon is bigger than all of downtown Dallas put together, and it's just so huge and it's so amazing.
8:27
SPEAKER_07: And so they've been a little Ben was just quivering with excitement, and they drive across the country from Dallas and they get all the way to the Grand Canyon, they're standing there, and here's Ben, you know, they're looking at this incredible vista, it's a mile across, and so forth.
8:40
SPEAKER_07: And they look down at Ben.
8:41
SPEAKER_07: Here comes the moment.
8:42
SPEAKER_07: They go, What do you think?
8:45
SPEAKER_07: And Ben goes, but where is it?
8:48
SPEAKER_07: I say, it's right here.
8:50
SPEAKER_07: Look at look at the Grand Canyon.
8:53
SPEAKER_07: Oh, I thought it was a cannon.
8:56
SPEAKER_07: I was hoping they would shoot it off, a huge cannon.
9:00
SPEAKER_07: Of course, the little boy would be hoping it was a gun.
9:03
SPEAKER_07: Of course he was hoping they'd shoot it off.
9:05
SPEAKER_07: And then seeing his parents' disappointment, Ben said to comfort them, but it's a lot prettier than I thought the cannon would be.
9:13
SPEAKER_07: So you have these disillusioning moments as you grow up.
9:19
SPEAKER_07: And then you become an adolescent, and of course, you're disillusioned with all kinds of things.
9:24
SPEAKER_07: First and mostly, of course, you're disillusioned in your parents.
9:27
SPEAKER_07: And the higher the pedestal you had erected to put daddy and mommy on, you know, the farther they fall as you realize they're just normal people, and sometimes they're wrong, you know, and they're certainly not cool, right?
9:40
SPEAKER_07: Remember disillusionment in adolescence when you were young?
9:43
SPEAKER_07: And you're disillusioned just as much with yourself.
9:46
SPEAKER_07: A girl stands before the mirror when she's in medical, medical middle school, whatever, medical school.
9:53
SPEAKER_07: And you know, she always thought she might look like Elser, a little bit like Anna or like Cinderella or Barbie or something.
10:00
SPEAKER_07: And she realizes in this horrible moment of disillusionment, she'll never look like that.
10:07
SPEAKER_07: And then her brother is standing in front of the same mirror, and he realizes he's never gonna look like an NBA or NFL All-Star, or even like the guys on the video games.
10:17
SPEAKER_07: A moment of disillusionment with your body, you know what you look like.
10:23
SPEAKER_07: And then you get a little bit older, hopefully you're a little older, when you get disillusioned with your first kiss.
10:30
SPEAKER_07: Remember your first kiss?
10:31
SPEAKER_07: And remember how much you're so excited about your first kiss?
10:34
SPEAKER_07: I'm sorry if you didn't take your first kiss until after you're married.
10:37
SPEAKER_07: But anyway, let's just say that you're one of those evil children who got your first kiss earlier and so forth.
10:43
SPEAKER_07: Remember when you were expecting heaven?
10:44
SPEAKER_07: You know, and that and then you had the kiss, and you got instead of paradise, you got sloppy or you got dry and nervous, or something like I'll stop talking about that.
10:54
SPEAKER_07: But that was those love things.
10:56
SPEAKER_07: Your expectations are so high.
10:59
SPEAKER_07: Finally, then you know, you get married.
11:01
SPEAKER_07: Everybody knows about the disillusionment of marriage.
11:04
SPEAKER_07: Everybody who's married goes through a valley of disillusion.
11:08
SPEAKER_07: C.
11:08
SPEAKER_07: S.
11:09
SPEAKER_07: Lewis once said he felt like the reason that God had given the sexual urge so much stronger in young people, ages 18 to 22, or whatever, is in order to somehow motivate them during that period of disillusionment so they could get through it on the other side.
11:26
SPEAKER_07: Who knows whether he was right?
11:27
SPEAKER_07: He said that before he'd ever gotten married, so what would he know?
11:29
SPEAKER_07: But but anyway, marriage disillusionment.
11:32
SPEAKER_07: Every pastor has had the experience of a couple coming in or a wife coming in, complaining about her husband, and the and you know the pastor goes, yes, but you took him for better or worse, didn't you?
11:42
SPEAKER_07: And she says, Yes, but it's so much worse than I took him for.
11:45
SPEAKER_07: And there's this disillusionment that happens in in marriage.
11:50
SPEAKER_07: Maybe that's why.
11:52
SPEAKER_07: You know those those Hallmark movies we all watch now that we're all addicted to?
11:56
SPEAKER_07: Everybody watches the Hallmark romantic movies.
11:58
SPEAKER_07: Almost, almost every everybody.
12:00
SPEAKER_07: Maybe I'm the only guy in here who sits with his wife and watches the Hallmark.
12:04
SPEAKER_07: I think they're they're pretty good, but you know, there's a reason why they stop on the wedding day, right?
12:09
SPEAKER_07: Can you imagine if they went on, you know, showed a snapshot of six months later, a year later, what would they do?
12:15
SPEAKER_07: You know, they're yelling at each other.
12:17
SPEAKER_07: I don't know.
12:17
SPEAKER_07: I don't know.
12:18
SPEAKER_07: And then you go through life and there's all kinds of other disillusionments, some of them really famous.
12:23
SPEAKER_07: You remember, I remember uh I don't remember, 10, 20 years ago when the Rembrandt paintings, this painting was up, it was for sale in London for$8 million, the man with the golden helmet, this Rembrandt, this famous Rembrandt, and while it was up for sale, of course, came the revelation by the scholars that out of Rembrandt's 700-plus paintings, only half of them were done by him, the other half done by his students, including the man with the golden helmet, and immediately the price fell from 8 million to 400,000.
12:54
SPEAKER_07: Whoa.
12:55
SPEAKER_07: And imagine the disillusionment among a lot of owners of Rembrandt paintings.
13:01
SPEAKER_07: By the way, it was about the same time.
13:03
SPEAKER_07: Anybody else get disillusioned with the Bill Gates wants to give you money?
13:07
SPEAKER_07: Email and Facebook thing you got in 1997?
13:10
SPEAKER_07: Did anybody else fall for that where Bill Gates, a billionary, what, you didn't, Greg?
13:15
SPEAKER_07: You weren't on email yet.
13:16
SPEAKER_07: Or Facebook.
13:17
SPEAKER_07: So you know it was.
13:18
SPEAKER_07: If you will just click and forward this picture, you young people are gonna laugh at how naive I was.
13:25
SPEAKER_07: If you just forward this picture, Microsoft, Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, billionaire, wants to give away his money, and he is tracing the way these things go around the world.
13:34
SPEAKER_07: So if you'll click on this and send it to all of the people in your address book and it goes around the world, he wants to trace all this, he's gonna learn so much he'll send you a check for$5,000.
13:43
SPEAKER_07: Didn't stop to think, how's he gonna get my address or any of that stuff, but clicked on it, and then the disillusionment.
13:50
SPEAKER_07: I mean, we were planning a vacation to Hawaii based on it.
13:55
SPEAKER_07: So, not quite, but yeah, I suckered.
14:00
SPEAKER_07: And then, um, but there's all kinds of things like that.
14:03
SPEAKER_07: For instance, a year ago, Museum of the Bible opened in Washington, D.C.
14:06
SPEAKER_07: Sometime I'd love to take a bus of you, busload of us, uh, up to the Museum of the Bible.
14:10
SPEAKER_07: Opened in November last year.
14:12
SPEAKER_07: Well, this is one of their prize possessions at 15, 15 uh parchments from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the greatest archaeological discovery of all time in 1940 to 1950.
14:25
SPEAKER_07: Because remember, up until then, all the only evidence we had of what we're reading in the Bible dated from a thousand A.D., you know, and and so of course all the all the people at the universities were saying, Are you crazy?
14:40
SPEAKER_07: Thinking that this is accurate, a thousand AD?
14:43
SPEAKER_07: And and it was actually, you know, that that Matthew, Mark, and Luke and Paul, and they wrote these words over a thousand years.
14:51
SPEAKER_07: Are you crazy?
14:52
SPEAKER_07: And then all of a sudden the Dead Sea scrolls are discovered in the desert.
14:55
SPEAKER_07: These are these scrolls which cover so almost all of the Old Testament.
14:59
SPEAKER_07: And it turns out the Old Testament, written a thousand BC and so forth, that that these things pushed back the dating to a hundred years before, two hundred years before Christ, and word for word, letter for letter, exactly the same as in the Bible.
15:12
SPEAKER_07: That's how much the Holy Spirit had superintended the accuracy and the authenticity of our Bible and how carefully it had been copied.
15:19
SPEAKER_07: So amazing.
15:20
SPEAKER_07: But then scholars went through about a year ago to look at these Dead Sea Scrolls, and they were looking at them and they go, you know, I'm not sure about that letter there.
15:28
SPEAKER_07: That doesn't really look, it really doesn't look like a hundred years before Christ.
15:32
SPEAKER_07: I'm not sure they wrote it that way.
15:33
SPEAKER_07: And they suggested to the owners of the Bible Museum that they send off their Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts to Germany where the top scholars are who test the paper and everything else, and it just came back a couple of weeks ago saying, guess what?
15:46
SPEAKER_07: Six of your 15 are forgeries, are clever fakes and so forth.
15:51
SPEAKER_07: And so the other nine look good.
15:53
SPEAKER_07: And uh talk about disillusionment.
15:56
SPEAKER_07: Now, I think it's just fine for the Bible museum, because they're gonna start a whole new room on famous forgeries, you know, and they've got some of the most famous of all time.
16:06
SPEAKER_07: So that'll work out for them.
16:08
SPEAKER_07: But but this is when you when when reality does not match up with expectations.
16:14
SPEAKER_07: And sometimes then that happens in life, where your fame and your success and other things come to you, and you succeed in life, and you find that you're disillusioned with your success.
16:24
SPEAKER_07: This is none other than Tom Brady, one of the most famous ten athletes, perhaps in the world.
16:30
SPEAKER_07: Obviously, one of the best-looking two, and now he happens to be married to a model who makes, I think, 200 million a year, which is about five times as much as he makes a year.
16:39
SPEAKER_07: So you'd say he's got it made.
16:40
SPEAKER_07: He's won five Super Bowls more than any other quarterback.
16:44
SPEAKER_07: He's won four Super Bowl MVPs.
16:46
SPEAKER_07: He still plays quarterback at age 41 for the New England Patriots, and uh, and he's just the superstar.
16:53
SPEAKER_07: Okay, so you'd think he would completely have it made, but he was on 60 Minutes and uh was being interviewed by Steve Crawford, and listen to what Tom Brady said to Steve Crawford halfway, two-thirds of the way through their interview.
17:09
SPEAKER_07: Tom Brady says, so why do I have these Super Bowl rings and I still feel like there's something greater out there for me?
17:18
SPEAKER_07: A lot of people might say, hey, I've reached my goals, my dreams, my life is secure.
17:23
SPEAKER_07: But me, I think, Tom Brady's speaking, he says, Me, I think, God, there's gotta be more than this.
17:30
SPEAKER_07: And Steve Crawford was blown away, and he said, What's the answer?
17:35
SPEAKER_07: And Brady said, twice, he said, I wish I knew.
17:39
SPEAKER_07: I wish I knew.
17:41
SPEAKER_07: And of course, you and I are wanting to jump up and grab hold of him and say, What you need, you know, to there's something you're missing out on.
17:48
SPEAKER_07: You can have a personal relationship with the God of the universe, the God that created you.
17:53
SPEAKER_07: Through his son Jesus Christ, that's what you need.
17:55
SPEAKER_07: Amen.
17:56
SPEAKER_07: I mean, it's a so it's just another evidence of the of the fact that fame, fortune, success can leave you still feeling disillusioned.
18:06
SPEAKER_07: And then there's the then then there's comes the end of life.
18:09
SPEAKER_07: And you know what's what's really amazing is some of the people that have affected us most in life.
18:15
SPEAKER_07: I heard this last week of uh in fact I was at the bedside of a man who who died this last week, who who was saying things like, uh, I have been a poor father.
18:26
SPEAKER_07: I remember my mother, she was about to die.
18:28
SPEAKER_07: Most wonderful woman I've ever met.
18:30
SPEAKER_07: I've been a poor mother.
18:31
SPEAKER_07: In fact, last year my hero died.
18:35
SPEAKER_07: He was my mentor, he was the head of the preaching department when I was at Dallas Seminary.
18:39
SPEAKER_07: His name was Haddon Robinson.
18:40
SPEAKER_07: I had him up here to the church a couple of times.
18:44
SPEAKER_07: But the great privilege of my life was being able to teach alongside him when I was a junior and senior at seminary, and I would teach the Greek to the younger students, and he was teaching how to preach that Greek text and so forth.
18:54
SPEAKER_07: It was crazy.
18:56
SPEAKER_07: He could have taught the Greek as well.
18:57
SPEAKER_07: I was I was nothing, you know, compared to him.
18:59
SPEAKER_07: He was an amazing man.
19:00
SPEAKER_07: But I got to hang around him, and he was my mentor and he was my hero and so forth.
19:05
SPEAKER_07: And he went on, I left the seminary, and he left, and he became the president of first one Denver seminary, and then another Gordon Conwell Seminary in our country.
19:12
SPEAKER_07: Two great seminaries.
19:13
SPEAKER_07: But he died last year, and I was shocked that at his funeral, his daughter, Vicky, said this.
19:19
SPEAKER_07: She said, You know, the last year or so, before he died, I would go in to see my dad, and it caused me to cry because he'd say, I just don't think I've done anything in life.
19:30
SPEAKER_07: Here's the man, Time magazine named him one of the top ten preachers in the world today.
19:34
SPEAKER_07: I just don't feel like I've really had the influence that I wish I could have.
19:39
SPEAKER_07: I feel as though I've been a failure.
19:40
SPEAKER_07: And I and I think, oh my goodness.
19:44
SPEAKER_07: How can you have that feeling of disillusion?
19:46
SPEAKER_07: But but that's that's life, isn't it?
19:48
SPEAKER_07: We feel disillusioned even when we shouldn't.
19:50
SPEAKER_07: We have these expectations.
19:52
SPEAKER_07: And of course, we can feel that way about God.
19:54
SPEAKER_07: Philip Yancey, for a reason, wrote the book, Disappointment with God, about how we can have religious expectations, and when God doesn't meet those expectations, then we can be disillusioned with Him.
20:06
SPEAKER_07: That's why I preached this series that just finished when God doesn't make sense, because we expect God to do certain things, then God doesn't do those things, and we become disappointed with Him, don't we?
20:19
SPEAKER_07: So now we come to Christmas, and you know what's fascinating is it seems to me that you know we have this disillusionment at Christmas.
20:26
SPEAKER_07: Children don't get what they want.
20:27
SPEAKER_07: And even those of us who are grown up, we come into Christmas with that sense of nostalgia mixed with now this greater sense of responsibility for others, and then you know, Uncle Bob comes into town and he talks too much, and Aunt Julie sits there and complains about the food, and we can hardly and Christmas is so disillusioning for us that frankly it's a great comfort to me to notice that in the New Testament everyone who was involved with the first Christmas was disillusioned.
21:00
SPEAKER_07: Take Joseph, for instance, after Mary had been engaged to him, it was discovered that she was pregnant.
21:08
SPEAKER_07: Can you imagine how you feel if your girlfriend's engaged, turns up pregnant, and she says, Well, it was the Holy Spirit.
21:15
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, right.
21:16
SPEAKER_07: So he decides to divorce her secretly, and you know what happens next?
21:20
SPEAKER_07: The angel appears to him in a vision.
21:23
SPEAKER_07: Really?
21:23
SPEAKER_07: Can I believe I'm in a dream, I'm sorry.
21:27
SPEAKER_07: He has a vision within a dream with this with the angel saying, Don't be afraid to take her as your wife, for this really is of the Holy Spirit.
21:39
SPEAKER_07: But he obeys.
21:42
SPEAKER_07: And now, of course, he's embarrassed because now he's with Mary.
21:48
SPEAKER_07: They're not living together yet, but they're being accused of all sorts of things.
21:53
SPEAKER_07: Can you imagine the shame that he's suddenly under?
21:58
SPEAKER_07: And then, of course, they take that trip.
22:00
SPEAKER_07: South, how must Mary have felt on that 70-mile trip south, so pregnant?
22:05
SPEAKER_07: If this is really the Messiah in me, wouldn't God take better care of us?
22:10
SPEAKER_07: And then she gives birth to her firstborn capital letter son.
22:13
SPEAKER_07: If this was really the son of God and she wrapped him tightly in cloth and laid him in a manger, sounds great, but it's just a cattle trough.
22:22
SPEAKER_07: Because the only other place for him would have been the filth of that cave floor, because there's no room for them in the inn.
22:30
SPEAKER_07: Imagine the disillusionment of, isn't, isn't this supposed to work out differently if this is really the Messiah?
22:38
SPEAKER_07: Imagine the disillusionment of Joseph and of Mary.
22:43
SPEAKER_07: But it goes on.
22:44
SPEAKER_07: Imagine the disillusionment of the wise men in the days of King or wise men from the East.
22:49
SPEAKER_07: They're from Babylon.
22:50
SPEAKER_07: They are from the center of learning in the entire world.
22:54
SPEAKER_07: They're descendants of Daniel, the brilliant Daniel, five centuries before.
22:58
SPEAKER_07: They are the descendants basically of Solomon.
23:01
SPEAKER_07: They look at the stars, they know science.
23:03
SPEAKER_07: They are not just, they're the king makers.
23:05
SPEAKER_07: They're above royalty, and they come from the east, arriving in, of course, the capital city, saying, Where is he who's been born king of the Jews?
23:13
SPEAKER_07: For we saw it star.
23:15
SPEAKER_07: He's got a star.
23:16
SPEAKER_07: He's certainly going to be at the palace.
23:18
SPEAKER_07: There's certainly going to be streamers hanging from every lamppost in the city.
23:22
SPEAKER_07: There's going to be fireworks.
23:24
SPEAKER_07: There've got to be.
23:24
SPEAKER_07: I mean, this is the child, the next king.
23:27
SPEAKER_07: And we've come to worship him.
23:28
SPEAKER_07: And you know what happens.
23:30
SPEAKER_07: King Herod goes, don't know anything about this.
23:33
SPEAKER_07: Why don't you guys leave the room?
23:35
SPEAKER_07: I'll talk with my rabbis.
23:36
SPEAKER_07: He talks to the rabbis, calls the wise men, and the next thing they hear is, Well, they say maybe down at Bethlehem.
23:41
SPEAKER_07: You guys go check.
23:43
SPEAKER_07: Come back and tell me if you find anything.
23:46
SPEAKER_07: They go down and there isn't a little house.
23:50
SPEAKER_07: This baby.
23:52
SPEAKER_07: Well, because the star is over the house, they come in and they worship him.
23:56
SPEAKER_07: But can you imagine?
23:57
SPEAKER_07: I mean, they've got these jewel-encrusted cases with gold and frankincense and myrrh.
24:03
SPEAKER_07: Imagine them setting them down in this musty little house.
24:08
SPEAKER_07: It's almost like wearing a tuxedo and finding out you're going to a hayrack ride.
24:13
SPEAKER_07: It's so rustic.
24:16
SPEAKER_07: They had to leave disillusioned.
24:19
SPEAKER_07: And we could go on.
24:20
SPEAKER_07: The shepherds, you know, see this incredible panoply of angels in the sky crying out, Glory to God in the highest on an earth, peace among men of his favor, go and see him there in Bethlehem.
24:34
SPEAKER_07: And they go, and there's no glory.
24:36
SPEAKER_07: They're looking for glory.
24:37
SPEAKER_07: Wise men are looking for royalty.
24:39
SPEAKER_07: And they both strike out.
24:41
SPEAKER_07: And then how about the Jewish people as a whole?
24:43
SPEAKER_07: In the most famous chapter of the Old Testament, we find words that were spoken by Jewish people after they realized this person they crucified was truly the Messiah.
24:55
SPEAKER_07: And they're going, whoa, whoa, whoa, he didn't have an impressive form or majesty.
24:59
SPEAKER_07: We should look at him.
25:00
SPEAKER_07: We expected he would be like, you know, handsome or stunning or something if he was the Messiah.
25:09
SPEAKER_07: No appearance that we should desire him.
25:11
SPEAKER_07: He's like somebody people turn away from.
25:13
SPEAKER_07: He wasn't despised.
25:15
SPEAKER_07: We didn't value him.
25:16
SPEAKER_07: He didn't look like Tom Brady.
25:18
SPEAKER_07: He didn't look like a prince.
25:19
SPEAKER_07: He didn't, he wasn't, you know, how could we have known?
25:24
SPEAKER_07: We were told he was the Messiah, but we were so disillusioned we assumed we were wrong and we crucified him.
25:31
SPEAKER_07: So how then do we prepare for disillusionment this Christmas, which is so natural it's been a part of Christmas since the very first Christmas?
25:42
SPEAKER_07: And I would suggest that in order to get away from these feelings, is that all there is?
25:48
SPEAKER_07: I expected so much better.
25:50
SPEAKER_07: I would suggest from these Christmas accounts two things.
25:54
SPEAKER_07: First of all, that you adjust your Christmas expectations.
25:57
SPEAKER_07: Stop expecting the ideal Christmas.
26:00
SPEAKER_07: That was really only in your childhood mind anyway, right?
26:03
SPEAKER_07: You didn't know everything behind the scenes.
26:06
SPEAKER_07: Start expecting instead what God promises.
26:09
SPEAKER_07: No more, no less, no more.
26:11
SPEAKER_07: Don't be like cynics who reduce your expectations to absolute zero and it's all bah humbug and scrooge.
26:19
SPEAKER_07: That's not, cynicism's not the solution.
26:23
SPEAKER_07: But you do need to adjust your expectations to reality.
26:26
SPEAKER_07: And reality is what God promises, and God primarily promises.
26:31
SPEAKER_07: Not unbridled pleasure and joy, but he promises himself.
26:40
SPEAKER_07: And secondly, adjust your Christmas orientation from getting to giving, from yourself to others, and then when others disappoint you, from others to God himself.
26:52
SPEAKER_07: From getting to giving.
27:10
SPEAKER_07: You know, isn't it true, adults, that the only things you really want are things that can't be purchased, that can't be wrapped, that can't be put under a tree.
27:20
SPEAKER_07: The things you really want.
27:22
SPEAKER_07: We're not talking here primarily about presents.
27:24
SPEAKER_07: We're talking about getting pleasure, getting people to notice you and listen to you.
27:29
SPEAKER_07: It may not happen.
27:31
SPEAKER_07: So focus on giving.
27:33
SPEAKER_07: Move the focus from yourself to others.
27:35
SPEAKER_07: How can I give others joy at this Christmas and not worry about myself?
27:39
SPEAKER_07: And then when others disappoint you, move the center of your orientation up to God Himself.
27:46
SPEAKER_07: God, you've promised that you'll give yourself to those who look for you and desire you above all.
27:54
SPEAKER_07: Alright?
27:55
SPEAKER_07: So let me give you an illustration of how to attack disillusionment.
28:00
SPEAKER_07: This is a video I want to show you.
28:01
SPEAKER_07: Number of you have asked me, you said, you know, you talked a lot about the Jerusalem campaign that was going to happen in the early part of the summer over in Jerusalem, Jews for Jesus.
28:10
SPEAKER_07: And uh and I say it was the most successful campaign of the dozens and dozens and dozens of campaigns that we've done all over the world, where we mainly stood on street corners and witnessed to people.
28:21
SPEAKER_07: And I think part of it was that uh my Jews for Jesus leaders, friends, strategized really for a year about how they could expand their service to others and came up with a 10-pronged, a 10-pronged ministry to Jerusalem.
28:39
SPEAKER_07: One of my friends who I talked with last week over in Denver headed up a ministry that was entitled The Ministry to the Homeless, the Prostitutes and the Drug Addicts.
28:47
SPEAKER_07: The stories that came out, and there's loads of homeless prostitutes and drug addicts in downtown Jerusalem.
28:53
SPEAKER_07: The stories that came out of that were amazing.
28:56
SPEAKER_07: Another very athletic guy, you know, was in charge of a ministry to Israel, Israel is just sports mad to the to the sports teams, the soccer teams, basketball teams in Israel, had some phenomenal results.
29:08
SPEAKER_07: But instead of me telling you about how they attacked the disillusionment, which is could be the theme word in Israel, bunch of intellectual cynics over there.
29:19
SPEAKER_07: Let me show you a video, two-minute video, about how they attacked disillusionment and what God did about that, just as an illustration of what we can do at Christmas.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: I'm Dan Sarin, and I'm the Israel director of Jews for Jesus.
29:37
SPEAKER_00: We've mapped out Israel.
29:38
SPEAKER_00: We've noticed that there are 12 different geographic regions, and this is by far the most exciting outreach that we've employed here in Israel.
29:46
SPEAKER_09: We're here in Jerusalem with the University and Yeshiva team.
29:49
SPEAKER_04: Brought tons of cases of bottled water and hand them out, been able to talk to a lot of people.
29:54
SPEAKER_03: What's happening here is an event that we've called Art Never Stops, and it's a kind of jam, painting and sculpting.
30:01
SPEAKER_04: It's really fun to get a group of people together and to see how people really bond and build connections.
30:10
SPEAKER_09: I've been working on this show for the last year and a half.
30:12
SPEAKER_09: We have 11 artists who have dealt with these verses of Jerusalem.
30:17
SPEAKER_09: Jesus.
30:17
SPEAKER_08: We have been in the muck and mire of this little river, just cleaning out trash.
30:23
SPEAKER_08: Just love on the people of Israel.
30:25
SPEAKER_02: And the salvation stories of what God has worked during this month-long campaign.
30:31
SPEAKER_02: Russian speakers still are the most open to the gospel.
30:34
SPEAKER_10: We're gonna take you in and see a house we've been working on.
30:37
SPEAKER_10: It's a woman who's working as a prostitute and as part of our team to reach out to the homeless, drug addicted, and prostitutes.
30:44
SPEAKER_10: We're just fixing up her home to share the love of Christ.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: These Ultra Orthodox women are really suffering.
30:50
SPEAKER_01: And we're reaching into a community that for many years and in many ways has been unreached with the gospel.
30:55
SPEAKER_11: What does the shiach do then if we all said we need help?
30:59
SPEAKER_11: Mashiach you're praying for is the same one that Christians are praying for damn for return.
31:04
SPEAKER_01: How could we really impact a larger percent of the population?
31:07
SPEAKER_01: So we began to pray together, toss around ideas and do some design thinking.
31:14
SPEAKER_06: Never would have thought it happened this fast.
31:16
SPEAKER_08: Selling some of our handmade items and talk about what we are.
31:19
SPEAKER_06: Looking for opportunities to engage the community.
31:22
SPEAKER_06: We're hoping to see these kinds of stories change all across the city.
31:32
SPEAKER_07: By the way, for those of you who are interested, uh I was in San Francisco for meetings with Jews for Jesus a month or so ago, and I grabbed some of these uh adult, new adult uh coloring books called The Names of God.
31:43
SPEAKER_07: They're actually out of print except for the ones I have out in the lobby.
31:46
SPEAKER_07: You may want to grab that for a Christmas gift.
31:49
SPEAKER_07: Also, some Jewish calendars.
31:52
SPEAKER_07: So uh that's my message.
31:53
SPEAKER_07: How do you attack disillusionment with Christmas?
31:56
SPEAKER_07: Well, basically, you get out of yourself, you think about others, and you move up to God with our community transformation projects and with uh with with the attitude that if I ask God, he will come to me in a special way this Christmas, and that's a promise that he gives me.
32:12
SPEAKER_07: All right?
32:13
SPEAKER_07: Amen.
32:15
SPEAKER_07: Thanks for coming.
32:16
SPEAKER_07: Let's pray.
32:16
SPEAKER_07: Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your grace, for your love.
32:20
SPEAKER_07: I pray for these dear people who have braved the weather to come out this morning.
32:25
SPEAKER_07: Ask that you would bless them for doing this, for showing you how much they love you.
32:29
SPEAKER_07: I pray that you'd give us uh grace and strength as we are going to be part of Christmas celebrations and gatherings where people are unhappy, uh, where people are lonely, where people, uh some people uh are unable to sing the songs of joy this Christmas because their only songs have tears in them.
32:48
SPEAKER_07: Uh either because there is one less person at the table this year than there was last year, or because they've gotten bad news and uh and their their hearts are sad.
33:00
SPEAKER_07: We ask that you would comfort them in the way that only you can.
33:03
SPEAKER_07: In Jesus' name we pray.
33:05
SPEAKER_07: Amen.
33:06
SPEAKER_07: Thanks for coming.