Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / November 29, 2020 | A Thrill Of Hope - The World’s Hope

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November 29, 2020 | A Thrill Of Hope - The World’s Hope · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Are you speaking to you who are here in the middle building and the College Avenue building?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: And most of you watching online, YouTube, Facebook, website, great to see you here.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Even some of you who come to Second Service are here at First Service.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we're starting a new series, a Christmas series called A Thrill of Hope.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And frankly, when I think of the Thrill of Hope and of Christmas at the same time, I think of when I was either seven or eight and had this supreme hope that I would get a red bicycle for Christmas.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a constant thrill during December.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And fortunately, my parents came through.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I don't know what the favorite Christmas toy is, yeah, favorite Christmas toys every year, the ones that are gonna be sold out, and it's hard to know what the hottest Christmas toy is going to be.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: This year's a strange year, and there's a lot of argument about it this year.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Some say it's gonna be one of the Barbie Fashionistas dolls.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's like 26 of them.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Or the Paw Patrol Jets, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, right?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Or perhaps, for a little bit older kids, the Crayola Ultimate Lightboard LED, yeah.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe the Space Blaster, which is really pretty cool, and we're getting more expensive all the time.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll just have to wait and see.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: But 70 years ago, in um 1950, that was a long time ago, uh, Christmas favorite toy was Fisher Price Little People.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Back then, the little people, you couldn't move them around, they were stuck in their machine, and uh, especially the looky fire truck was very popular back then.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna ask you to raise your hands if you ask for that for Christmas.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: That would seriously date you in 1960, which would be 70 years, 60 years ago.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, etch a sketch! How many of you had an etch a sketch when you're young?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and perhaps still do.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: They they're updated a little bit since then, 1970.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: 50 years ago, favorite toy, light bright.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Any of you here remember the light bright?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, wasn't that great?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: The most popular toy.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Forty years ago in the 1980s, actually the first Rubik's Cube, which is still extremely popular today.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, 30 years ago in 1990, it was the teenage mutant ninja turtles, these these figurines, you know, still the best figure outside of Lord of the Rings figurines, the best figurines perhaps ever made.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Did anybody?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: No?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: No, you weren't teenage.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the last one, year 2000, the Razor Freestyle Scooter.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know that one?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's 20 years ago.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Are you what 25, 27?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: No, okay.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually my grandson, and he's like 10.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, but they're still around, they're hand me downs.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, so the thrill of hope is oftentimes associated, of course, to Christmas, the thrill of hope that you'll get what you ask for for Christmas.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: But the phrase thrill of hope actually comes from the Christmas carol that here in the Mulvaine building we just sang a moment ago.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the song Oh Holy Night, uh, which was um written by it has an interesting story.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: So the song actually dates from France from the 1840s when uh a cathedral had just finished its organ, and the priest asked a man he knew, a wine merchant and a sometimes poet named Chapeau, first name uh has you know forgotten, Placide, that's his name, uh, asked him if he would come up with lyrics for a Christmas carol, uh, as I'll tell you later.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: He was quite an interesting choice.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: So on a st on a stagecoach en route to Paris, uh Chapeau wrote a song called uh he called Midnight Christians, and only with his left hand, by the way, just a little little uh a little bit of trivia here.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: His right hand had been shot off when he was a child.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, um so he wrote this song.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: He wrote the words, the original song, and the priest suggested that uh Chapeau bring that song, his lyrics, he liked the lyrics, that he'd take him to his friend, a composer, who was well known for for opera music and and ballets, including Giselle, and and and so he took it to him and he came up with the and his name was Adams, Adolph Adams, and he took it to him, and the song premiered at Christmas Eve 1847, and it was instantly popular, but then it got banned.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'll explain that more lately, but it took a nosedive for both political and religious reasons.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Politically, the third stanza, which you sang this morning about slavery, I don't know if you remember that, was extremely abolitionist, extremely in your face, it was extremely brotherhood of man, you know, slave as our brother.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a huge argument in all of the organized uh countries in that time, France, Great Britain, and America, about slavery.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, this is before the Civil War.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And Great Britain had actually outlawed slavery 15 years before in 1833.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: France outlawed slavery the year after this song was written in 1848.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: America wouldn't outlaw it, wouldn't ban it until 1865.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, but anyway, so uh that was one of the reasons this this song sort of got the kiosk put on it.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then fortunately, the song uh came across to America, the French song, and it entered the ears of a minister who knew French named John Sullivan Dwight, a musician and so forth, and he decided to translate it into English.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the resulting translation is what we just sang a little while ago.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, one more thing.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's some story associated with this.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: In 1906, the song actually became famous, especially among military people, because it was part of the first talk radio broadcast in America.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Took place on Christmas Eve 1906, and the ships in the U.S.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Navy were used to receiving Morse code messages over the wireless.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: But uh that night, an inventor who had studied under Thomas Edison, an inventor named Fessenden, told them to turn on their wireless, make sure they're listening.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: They gather around their wireless at 9 p.m.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: on Christmas Eve that night, and he was, he had decided that if you could combine not just uh uh one but two um frequencies together that you could actually broadcast your voice and so forth.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so sailors, American sailors by the thousands uh all over the Atlantic Pacific were stunned that night at nine o'clock when they suddenly heard a voice coming out of the wireless.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was Fessenden, and his words were that I am now going to play you, O Holy Night, on my violin, and then read you the Christmas story out of Luke chapter 2.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we are told that thousands of American sailors that night bobbing on the dark oceans were transfixed and wept to hear the soaring, transcendent melody as it came impossibly out of their wireless.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And and the truth is the melody is is remarkable.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there are two kinds of Christmas songs really.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: They're sort of the, you know, sort of the uh, shall we say, Christmas music is long a spectrum, right?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: At the one end you have baby, it's cold outside, you know, and uh you're sort of the won't go into those words, and and jingle bells, and that sits on one end of the Christmas spectrum, and on the other end of the Christmas spectrum, you have the song of choice for all Hallmark movies, which is Joy to the World, very religious and theological song, and Oh Holy Night and so forth.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the music is just epic.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's like Lord of the Rings almost, and with huge swelling chords and that, you know, with a little bit of darkness in it and a lot of beauty.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: So this is just basically a beautiful song.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: is the one that has that tape of the 1906 broadcast to the sailors.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, what I want to do this morning in the first of our series on the Thrill Pope is I want to take you through this song.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna have a zinger at the end, and I want to share with you this song that's so popular, children sing the song today, but I want to share with you one, two, three, four, five, six, quickly six points of its meaning.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And first, the first point is actually the title of the song itself, Oh Holy Night.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the question is, how can a night, how can a night be holy?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, that idea came from the American minister who translated it.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's not in the original at all.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: The original just was midnight Christians is the solemn hour when God, as man, descended to us.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: A pretty typical, right?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: A Christmas theological statement.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: But all of a sudden, this minister, and I'll explain why later, he calls that, he suddenly finds that night being holy.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's a beautiful idea.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: The stars are brightly shining, it is the night of our dear Savior's birth, and he calls that night holy, really.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then at the end of the song, you know, he goes, Oh night divine, at the end of each course.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh night when Christ was born, oh night divine, oh night, oh night divine.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: How can a night be divine?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: How can a night be holy?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how much that minister knew about it, but he was actually right on in biblical theology because whatever is associated with the holy child or with the holy God is holy, right?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, when Moses went to that burning bush because God was in the burning bush, what did God say?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Take off your sandals because the ground on which you are standing is holy.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever is associated with, connected with, linked with God or the holy child is holy, Bethlehem was a holy city.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: That little family we call a holy family, the night was a holy night, even the shepherds became holy that night.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the point, here's the takeaway.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: When you sing that song this Christmas, you should realize, you know, I, if I am a worshiper of that Christ child, I too am holy this Christmas.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: I am holy this Christmas, if I am a worshiper of the Christ child.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: So uh the second uh thing I want to get out of the song is is that in the first stanza tell you how these words, our dear Savior holy night is the night of our dear Savior's birth.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Long lay the world in sin.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Whoa! Oh our dear Savior, the world in sin.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the second concept.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the question, uh these are the these are the words of the song, is the night of our dear Savior's birth, Long Lay the World in Sin and Error pining.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the question we ask is, but hold it.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't Christmas about a baby in a manger who came to teach us how to love one another?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: A line which basically comes out of the later on in the song.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that what Christmas is about?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's certainly what the stores think Christmas is about.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's certainly what most of the movies think Christmas is about, right?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's a special magic about Christmas.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: We learn in the we learn on Channel 312 in the Hallmark movies, right?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing about sin and savior.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the truth, and that is that a holy child did not have to come.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: He was not compelled to come from heaven to be a teacher, to teach us anything, much less how to love one another.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Others could teach us.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: No, Jesus had to come, and and and others had taught us.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: God had continually sent prophets, right, throughout the thousands of years to instruct us, to give us law, and so forth.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, Jesus had to come.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: The reason he was forced to come out of the glory and beauty of heaven, down to the meanness of earth, is because the world was caught in the grip of God's enemy, sin.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, his three great enemies: sin and uh uh death and uh and hell.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: And only a savior could save us from sin and death and hell, dragging us down to hell with him, because that's what is eventually going to happen.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, we had to have the Christ child, God Himself, come down from heaven, to be our Savior, to save us from our problem, which was that we were full of sin.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: The world's been full of sin.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And notice, though, Christians about sin and a savior.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: And notice, by the way, how how thoroughly the original has this concept, much more than much more than the translation.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: To erase, right?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: To erase the original stain, this is speaking about the original stain of original sin from the Garden of Eden.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is Romans chapter 5.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is very theological.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: And for the son to halt the father's wrath.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're talking about theological concepts like propitiation and father's wrath against sin, the alienation between man and God because of sin and so forth.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is as theological as some of the most theological, come all ye faithfuls of Christmas, right?
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the English, shall we say, sort of cleansed a lot of that, but you still is still left in sin and error pining.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but we'll explain that second line later, uh, until he appeared in the soul felt its worth, because this, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with sin and a savior.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: This sort of moves in the opposite direction.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: But but but here's where both of these songs, both the French and the English song, tell us that Christmas is about sin and a savior.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Don't allow your children, don't allow your grandchildren, don't allow your friends to just stop and think that Christmas is about a baby in a manger and about someone come from God to teach us how to love one another.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: He wouldn't have had to come, certainly wouldn't have had to die for those purposes.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the second thing we learned.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: The third thing this song gives us is that wonderful phrase.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: It just rolls off your tongue, a thrill of hope.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Say it with me.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: A thrill of hope.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Did you let it roll?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Did you let it just sort of rolls off your tongue, a thrill of hope.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: I love that phrase.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: I love that phrase, even though I think about a red bike every time I hear it.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: A thrill of hope, right?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: And and that is one of the few lines in the original French that's actually carried over exactly into the English.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: The entire world thrills with hope, Chapeau wrote.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh John Dwight translated, a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: French can use on this night that gives it a savior, mentioning savior again, and then we have in the translation, in addition, because he's he really overhauled the whole song, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: But what is this thrill of hope?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, is this like how thrilled I'll be if I get the Christmas gifts I'm hoping for?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: What is this thrill of hope thing?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's some famous lines about about thrill and fear.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: One of them is that if the seas are calm and the sky is blue and so forth, and you're sailing, there's no thrill.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: That you need a little fear, you need a little danger.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Or another famous line, this actually comes from a Nora Roberts novel, is if there's no fear, there's no thrill.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Drowning far from shore, hopeless and terrified, if you can imagine yourself in that way.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: But then incredibly a boat appears, hope fills you, it thrills you.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: To know the thrill of hope, you must know your desperate situation.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: To know the thrill of hope at Christmas, you must know your desperate situation.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give you another parallel.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Forgive me for this.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: There are seven minutes to go in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl this year.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: The Chiefs have only managed to score 10 points against the mightiest defense in the entire NFL, the San Francisco 49ers defense.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: They have j they're on their own 35-yard line, they've just passed on second down.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: It looked like a first down, but the referee just overruled it, is now third and 15.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: They stand absolutely no chance, and because I'm sort of a weenie and scared and hate to see bad things, I left the room.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I hate pain.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: I did not want to cry in front of people, in front of my family.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: No, but anyway, it's seven minutes and thirty seconds, and it's third and fifteen.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and those of you that watch, I mean, I'm in a I'm in another room, and suddenly I hear screams and yells, and Papa, get in here quick, and so forth, and I go in, and somehow, somehow a miracle has happened when Patrick Mahomes has thrown the ball over 40 yards to Tyree Kill.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and somehow, at that moment, even though we're down 10 with less than seven minutes at that point, somehow a thrill of hope comes because the fear and the danger was so strong, it was certain that we were going to lose.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, ESPN at that moment before the play put up the number 95.4% chance that San Francisco would win.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when that happens, and then suddenly, suddenly there's a thrill of hope, and as you know, greatest team in history went on to score three touchdowns the next six minutes and 131.20.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's just happenstance that I would mention that.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: But but that's that's what we mean by a thrill of hope.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: But then the question comes, so what?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, what then is the fear that Christmas counters with a thrill of hope?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: What is it that's the danger and the fear in this song?
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the interesting thing is that the song, even though it's not super clear, it could have talked about, well, fear of going to hell or whatever.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: No, the song gives two hints if you look at it closely, because it says, long lay the world in sin, pining, and then it uses in the next line, you know, a weary world rejoices.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: So what's it talking about here?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's talking about the fact that when you've lain for so long in the bondage of sin, pining in the bondage of sin, you begin to wonder, is it possible that this will ever end?
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Can I ever be delivered from the darkness of this world and the sin in my own heart?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you grow weary, and you know what it's like to be weary when you wonder, will the weariness, will the exhaustion ever end?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Of course you know about weariness.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's all of what this world is about.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Headlines this week.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Pandemic weary health care providers.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Just sitting there exhausted as we now have more people in the hospitals than any other time.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Weary, there's that word again, from political strife and a pandemic.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Johns Hopkins Medical Magazine.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is well, this is uh Washington Post, World Magazine, pandemic fatigue is real and it's spreading.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: You feel weary, I feel weary.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: This actually on a show the other night, on uh on one of those evening shows, someone talked about how they could hardly wait for 2020 to be over.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: They were just so tired of it, and they got a standing ovation from the audience, just expressing what we all feel.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Will it ever be over?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Our Lord Jesus Christ said, Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, who are burdened, and I'll give you rest.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: So he is a Christ who's alert to our weariness and the fact that the song is about the fear that this will never end, is proven by this line.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: The promise, the thrill of hope that what we are going through right now will end, that there will be a new world.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Christmas thrills us with the thrill of the hope of a new world.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that new world is coming when our Lord Jesus Christ comes back a second time.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, change shall he break.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is the famous, this is the famous third stanza that provoked the minister, the abolitionist minister in America named John Dwight, loved the song so much because slavery was still legal.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: There was a big fight about slavery in America, as you know, in the 1850s.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: So So he took that, it's what motivated him as an abolitionist to translate that song and bring it over to America, this idea that the slave is our brother.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the original, yeah, the Redeemer has broken every bond.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's something about slavery.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: The earth is freed, heaven is opened.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: And in English, he he John Dwight went right at it.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Truly he taught us to love one another, his law is love, and his gospel is peace.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Chain shall he break, for the slave is our brother, and in his name all oppression shall cease.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: And in the original, he sees a brother where there was only a slave.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Love unites those whom iron had chains.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: So this really is about abolition.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And just 10, 15 years later, America would respond to the words of this song, which was extremely popular during the Civil War among northern soldiers.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: This song.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then 1865 and Abraham Lincoln would come, but we've got a legitimate question.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: What a broken chains have to do with Christmas.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, really?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: Go for July the 4th, but Christmas?
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: Christmas?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Ah.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Here's where you turn to the Bible and you see Luke chapter 4, 16 through 21, where Jesus was born in Nazareth, and in one of his first public speaking opportunities, he goes back to Nazareth and he goes to the synagogue.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: It says, as was his custom, of course it was his custom to go to the synagogue on Saturday.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: And what would happen is first they would have a reading from the law, the Torah, the first five books.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Someone would stand up and would read and would comment on it.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then there would be a reading from the prophets.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this is when the young Jesus said, I'll do that.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he stood up and he opened up, the book of Isaiah was opened, and he looked down, and it was Isaiah chapter 61, and he stood up to read it.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: To proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, to set the oppressed free.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then he sat down and said, The eyes of everyone are fixed upon him.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: He gazed at him.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're supposed to teach, you're supposed to talk about this, you're supposed to say something about it.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: And he sat down.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he looks at them and he simply says, Today the scripture is fulfilled in your ears.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's about slavery and freedom.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's about the year of Jubilee.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what's he saying to us?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what he's saying is really, yeah, I've come to save you spiritually from sin, but I've also come to save you socially, save us, save the world socially from oppression.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now the first is most important because the first is what leads to the second.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Spiritual deliverance is that's that's when you begin to release your slaves right there.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what Jesus is saying here.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Chains shall he break, because Christmas is about stopping oppression and breaking chains.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's about stopping the oppression spiritually of sin and breaking the chains of sin in your life by trusting Christ as your Savior.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: But by the way, there's so many of us Christians that still find that there are chains that we need to break.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Am I right about that?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we all have what are called in Pilgrim's Progress besetting sins.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: We have the sin has this way of worming its way into our lives so that God, we're never perfect.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: We always have something to work on, whether it's our tongue or whether it's our eyes or our feet or our hands or whatever it is.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Chains that bind us.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Christmas is about stopping that oppression and breaking chains.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: But then it moves on socially, right?
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Moves on to, you know, things like, you know, setting the prisoner free.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, slavery in America doesn't look like it used to, but if but there's, you know, we're told that there are 27 million, over 27 million people around the world that are enslaved today in two ways.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: One, enslaved has slave labor, and you think that's only overseas, and pretty much it is, but some of you will remember about 10 years ago a horrible case at a restaurant, you know, downtown here where an Indian was being held.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: And in order to stay in the States, he had to do slave labor, and he died, and the owner was caught and sent to jail.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's slave labor where you're forced to do labor, where parents actually sell their children for money to do slave labor.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: But then, of course, there's the better known, it's our Christmas project.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's human trafficking, sex trafficking, 27 million total cases of oppression in this way, of this kind of trafficking.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: We've been involved in it for some time.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: As I told you last week, Terry Thompson went off to Cambodia as a missionary to help with the sex trafficking there.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then we've been working with the rescue mission and their sex trafficking efforts, and they're one of the top in the nation at that.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Barry Fieker getting, you know, going to the FBI to tell them what he's doing.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this year, we've started our own project of building a house, a restoration house for victims of human trafficking, sex trafficking.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Project to Restore, in case you're watching or you weren't here last week.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: I recommend you get involved in that.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, I mean, isn't this something?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Christmas is not only about salvation from sin, it's also about stopping oppression and breaking chains wherever they may be found.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Fifth, and this is brief.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: What do I have to do?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh the song ends so wonderfully with, oh, praise his name.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, wonderful line, oh, praise his name forever.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: In the original, who will tell him of our gratitude for all of us?
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: He is born, he suffers and dies.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Notice a crucifixion here.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: Sweet hymns of joy and grateful chorus.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: Raise we let all within us praise his holy name.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Christ is the Lord, oh, praise his name forever, his power and glory evermore proclaimed, depending on whether you're listening to Mariah Carey or whoever else sing this song, this last line will be different.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but uh notice the old the old song, people stand up, sing of your deliverance, Christmas, Christmas, sing of the Redeemer.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so you have this contrast in the song between, remember, fall on your knees and humble worship, and stand up to sing with joy.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: What do I have to do?
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: There are two bodily actions that are opposite of each other, one of them full of humility and worship, fall on your knees to adore.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: Do that at least once this Christmas, right?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then stand on your feet as you've done this morning to praise.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's what believers, that's what Christ worshipers do at Christmas.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: So let me wrap this up.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Here are the lessons.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you say, you said there were six, you've just given us five.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's the twist.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: I am holy at Christmas.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Read it with me.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Christmas is about sin and a savior.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Third, Christmas thrills us with the hope of Christ's return.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Fourth, Christmas is about stopping oppression and breaking chains.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Fifth, fall on your knees to adore, stand on your feet to praise.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: And a sixth.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: Christmas draws a lost world to the Christ child.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the proof of that is in the song itself.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: And what I haven't told you about the song.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: For some reason, when the priest called, got hold of that wine merchant, sometimes poet named Chapeau, and asked him to write the lyrics, for some reason he decided to choose someone who was a rank atheist.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Someone who had gone public with his how much he despised the church of that day, the Catholic Church and their bishops and cardinals, someone who spoke out against religious authority, someone who thought that the whole thing was not true, an atheist.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then the priest recommended, why don't you talk to your friend Adams and ask him to, he's very good at music, why don't you ask him to write the music?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: And Adams was a Jew both racially and religiously.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: He did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah either.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Non-Christians.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then when this song came across the water and came to America, that minister that I mentioned, whose name was John Dwight, that minister was not what we would call a Christian minister.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: He was actually a minister in what's called the Unitarian Universalist Church, which even then was considered heretical.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: Unitarian, all are one of all religions, the household of salvation just has different rooms for Buddhists and Hindus and Christians.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: Universalist means everybody's going to end up in the same place.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: And not only that, he was a well-known leader of the transcendental movement.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: The transcendentalists believed that everything in nature, including you and me and trees and rocks, everything was divine.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: So you have one, two, three people, the writer, the composer, and the translator.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: None of whom would be happy sitting in this room singing this song this morning, but they give us the number one Christmas carol.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: How does that work?
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes Christians argue about whether we ought to celebrate Christmas at all.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: They say there's just so much hoopla.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't we just why don't we just stop it entirely?
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't we just give the thing over to the stores?
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's way too commercial.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, what I'm saying to you now is I'm going to be saying on the radio 106.9 this Wednesday.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: But my view is just the opposite.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think that because Christmas draws a lost world to Christ, because it's a magnet, because I work for Jews for Jesus, and I have learned that a huge percentage of Jewish people come to Christ because they're jealous of what Christians have at Christmas.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: They can't keep their kids away.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: They listen to the music, they hear the Christmas story, they come to the manger and they trust the Savior.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think that Christmas is something to be saved and something to be celebrated.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: And just stay at home if you don't like the hoopla.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: But for me, it reminds me of the wagon train in the old days that was going west.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they came to the Grand Canyon, and as they stood there in front of the Grand Canyon with that gap 18 miles across and a mile deep.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: The silence was broken by a child who cried out, something big must have happened here.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what happens at Christmas.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: The entire world, whether it's Hindu or Buddhist or atheist or Jewish, sees all the hoopla at Christmas and says, Something big must have happened here, and something big did happen here.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's when God came down to earth to become man to save us from sin and death and hell at Christmas.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: Christmas draws a lost world to the Christ child.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Don't give it up.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: Use it.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's an opportunity.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's a holy night.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: Father, we thank you for uh this beautiful, beautiful song.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: And despite its cleansing and the fact that seven references to God were dropped out of it, and the cross was dropped out of it, and so forth, still, it has so much to say to us, and it is so beautiful, and it does bring people to your son, and the proof is the very people who wrote it.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Give us a great Christmas and keep us, Heavenly Father, alert for those around us who don't yet understand what we understand about the baby in a manger.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Give us opportunities to draw them to the manger with us so they can see who's really there.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great Christmas.