Love | Advent: Week 4

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- Merry Christmas.

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I'm here today with my friend Chuck, our Oakley Community Pastor.

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- Merry Christmas. It's good to be with you, Lena.

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- It's so good.

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So, Chuck, you might remember the first time we met.

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- We were around a lunch table at my parents' house.

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You were not on staff yet?

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- And there was a fart machine present?

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- Underneath your wife Maria's chair.

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- Yes, there was. Yes, there was.

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Which that was her first time meeting your father.

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It wasn't my first time.

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And what a perfect introduction to Brian Tome, it really was.

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- That's right.

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And you stuck around and you've been on staff now for how long?

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- It worked. I've been around for 13 years now.

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- That's awesome. And you make our church so much better.

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- Thank you.

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- So we're so glad to have you.

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- Well, we're in this Advent series right now.

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And Advent purely means awaiting the arrival of Jesus.

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And so we've been in the Advent of Hope, the Advent of Peace

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and the Advent of Joy.

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What has this season or this series meant to you?

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- You know, it's brought back some freshness to Christmas.

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Christmas can feel like Groundhog Day oftentimes when you're a pastor.

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But every day with Advent, the things I've been doing with my kids

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and personally as my own study with Advent has been happening,.

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I really am excited about Christmas

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and about the meaning of Christmas this year.

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- That's great. Well, you did --

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We really enjoyed your week last week on Joy.

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You brought me lots of joy.

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- I'm glad to hear that.

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- Yeah. So this week we're talking the Advent of Love.

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And then it's Christmas Eve and we're talking all about Jesus.

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- That's exactly right, all Jesus all the time.

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So what's happening at the Oakley's site on Christmas Eve?

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Yeah, at Oakley we are going to have three services: 1:00, 3:00 and 5:00.

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And it is a family friendly experience, a great tradition,

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it always ends with a candle light moment.

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And honestly, for me, it's one of those things that just tells me,

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hey, you know what? This is the end of the year and I love it.

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I'm just looking forward to it.

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We have family coming in town. They'll be a part of it.

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I'm excited.

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Our Christmas Eve experiences across all of our sites

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and right here online are great for your whole family

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and your friends and your neighbors and your co-workers

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and anybody that you could get with you

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to experience church at Christmas time.

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Christmas Eve is the time for that.

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So 1:00, 3:00 and 5:00 here at Oakley,

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also 1:00, 3:00 and 5:00 live online.

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We'll be broadcasting from our Oakley location.

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And you could check out all of the other service times at Crossroads.net

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and find out when there's a service near you or join us right here online.

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So after Christmas Eve, we typically don't have services

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in our physical locations that New Year's weekend.

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- That's right. And we're doing that again this year.

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And so instead of having a physical service,

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we have a great online experience that everybody can be a part of.

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- Yeah. And why do we do that?

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- Well, we do it because this place runs because of amazing volunteers.

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When I say this place, whatever the physical location is and even online.

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There are a lot of people who make Crossroads what it is.

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And we just know, particularly at Christmas time, people are off

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and we want them to be able to maximize the time with their family.

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So we take off that we can give everybody a break

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and then we come back after it in the new year.

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- Great. So don't head to a location near you on the weekend of December 28-29.

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But join us right here online.

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We have a special service that you're going to be part of.

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- Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

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- It'll be you, Ali, Kyle, and BT.

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And it's a reflection on 2019 and looking ahead to 2020.

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-Yeah, it really is.

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We'll be looking back at some of the high points of this year,

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calling out things that were personal.

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We'll talk about some things that happened in our community

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and then really get a sense of where are we headed for 2020?

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So I don't want anybody to miss it and I'm excited to be part of it.

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- So join us online on Sunday, December 29 for an online only service.

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It goes On-Demand at 8:00 a.m.

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on Sunday morning on Crossroads.net.

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And you know, one of the great things about Christmas is

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there's so many traditions around it.

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And one of the traditions that we celebrate as followers of Jesus is communion.

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And so we're gonna be doing that later on in the service.

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So you'll want to get a drink and something to eat

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ready for later in service to take communion

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if that's a tradition that you want to partake in if you are a follower of Jesus.

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And without further ado, we're gonna get started with the Advent of Love.

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The world bound by darkness and sin cries out for a Savior.

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God sent His Only Son Jesus to rescue us

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in what seems like the unlikeliest of circumstances.

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He chose a virgin named Mary to bring the Savior into the world.

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When the Angel Gabriel was sent to deliver the message to Mary,

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she was scared.

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"The Lord is with you," he assured her.

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"His name is Emmanuel."

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The God of love, He doesn't stay distant and far away.

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He comes close.

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This is what the God of love says to us today.

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He lives here. He is with us.

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He wants a relationship with us.

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We are important to Him.

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Jesus, the unpredictable arrival of love.

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- I love Christmas.

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I love Christmas songs.

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I love the Christmas food.

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I love Christmas presents.

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I'm not ashamed to say that.

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I love presence.

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I love getting presents.

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I love giving presents.

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There's something actually really special about gifts.

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I think that we're wired to like gifts

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because God is wired to like gifts.

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He's a giver himself.

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You know, as a kid, I loved making my parents homemade gifts.

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My parents' Christmas tree is peppered

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with pictures of me at all ages and macaroni and sparkles.

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And, you know, the reason for that was because

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I wanted my parents to have something heartfelt.

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Well, another reason was probably because we made them in school.

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But let's be honest, you know, I got so excited

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to give my parents this homemade, cheap little thing on Christmas morning.

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I was cheerful about it.

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My parents loved receiving whatever I had for them

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because I was so cheerful.

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God wants us to be cheerful givers.

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He is a good dad who sees our heartfelt gifts that we want to give Him.

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And when we can do that out of the joy of our hearts,

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and we can do that cheerfully, it gives Him joy and He's excited about it.

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And so maybe this Christmas you want to be a cheerful giver.

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You want to give of what you have to God.

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You could do that by heading to Crossroads.net/give

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and consider giving God a gift of blessing His church this Christmas

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and do it out of a place of joy.

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We are heading into the last week of Advent right now, the Advent of Love.

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- Let me tell you what I love.

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I love this sweater.

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I do. I love this sweater.

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I love to Chipotle.

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I love black decaf coffee.

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I love Yuengling beer.

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I love motorcycles.

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I love overlanding.

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I love my dog Peanut.

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I love my wife as well, Lib

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I love my kids.

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I love this great country that we're in.

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God bless America.

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I love 50 degree days that have sunshine and are crisp.

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I also at the same time, I also love a fresh blanket of snow.

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I love happy greetings in stores where people are happy.

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I love cheeseburgers with bacon on it, well-done bacon.

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I love -- all these things I love, yet some of them

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shouldn't be necessarily in the same category with each other, should they?

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I mean, is my love of my wife.

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I love my wife, should that be the same word as I love Chipotle?

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I don't think so.

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We have in our country a major love problem, a massive love problem.

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We don't understand it, let alone do it.

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Christmas is the time to talk about things

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that aren't traditionally talked about

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because it's amazing to talk about Christmas.

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I like tradition.

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I love tradition in many ways.

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I'm wearing a tradition right now.

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I said, love this sweater. I'm wearing a tradition right here.

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This sweater, if you've been coming to Crossroads

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for about 17 years you've seen me in this sweater for at least 17 years.

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This was given to me by a friend of mine, Steve.

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He didn't want it anymore, he gave it to me

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and I said, hey, that looks like a good Christmas sweater.

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So every Christmas series, normally at least Christmas Eve

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or the last weekend before Christmas, I'm wearing this sweater.

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It's kind of like a tradition.

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I can't believe it still works for me.

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It reminds me that Christmas isn't about thinking of new concepts.

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It's about going back to the old concepts that simply work.

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The concepts of the transcendent meaning of Christmas.

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That Christmas has arrived.

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As we've gone through hope and peace and joy, we come today to love.

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And we're going to look at love through the lens of the story of the Magi

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or also known as the wisemen,

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or some people know them as We Three Kings of Orient Are.

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It comes the book of Matthew 2:7 and following.

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I'm going to read this and every verse or so I'm going to stop

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and I'm going to explain some things.

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So are we ready?

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Are you ready? Yes.

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Here we go.

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Let's understand who we've got working in this story here.

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We've got Herod.

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Herod is maybe the slimiest person alive on the planet at that time.

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Herod was somebody the Jews hated.

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Herod actually himself was partially Jewish from his heritage.

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And he leverages his Jewishness, his awareness of all things Jewish,

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of the holidays, of the family connections to squeeze more out of the Jews.

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He was the governor for Rome.

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Rome said, "Here is this Jewish territory.

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You take care of it. Here's what we need to get in taxes.

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You just need to get us this much, keep the peace and all's good."

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So of course, Herod would give them what they need

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and he would exceed it for himself.

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He would abuse his power.

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The jews hated him as a result of this.

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Herod gets wind from these people known as the Magi.

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Magi, because the original word here is Magus, there's multiple of them.

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It doesn't say that they're kings,

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but they're people who are from probably Persia,

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who have had a spiritual apparition.

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And they're following this spiritual apparition.

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They're following this light.

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And Herod wants to know exactly what they're doing

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and how he can get in on this.

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And it continues, it says:.

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Herod is a liar, amongst other things.

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He isn't interested in worshiping this child,

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this child who's supposed to be the king of the Jews,

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this child is supposed to be the great awaited one.

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He wants to find him so that he can kill him.

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So he's basically got spies.

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He's trying to commission these people who are into spirituality to be their spy.

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And it continues:

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They're following a star.

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There's a lot of conjecture as to whether or not this is an actual star,

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bright star that they're following.

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I tend to think that's not what's happening here.

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There's actually a star like light in the sky I believe

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that God's put there that they're following that star like light

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to find Jesus where Bethlehem is.

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Now, let's just all say, boy, Christmas is actually crazy, isn't it?

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Well, what are we talking about here?

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First of all, we're talking about virgin birth,

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a woman getting pregnant having never had vo-dee-o-dodo sex.

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Wow.

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Can't really believe that.

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We're talking about angels coming to shepherds and with swords and stuff.

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Whoa, wait, we're talking about Magi,

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these spiritual people coming from Persia following a light?

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What? What are you talking..?

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I know, it's pretty awesome, isn't it?

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It is, it pretty awesome.

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Friends, if God were to come to the world

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and it was the defining moment in human history,

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we should expect unusual, crazy things.

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And if there's not unusual, crazy things, God is probably not in it.

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We've got to check our rationalism at the door,

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because if all you want is what is rational,

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then all you have is right -- what you have right now.

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All you'll have is what you can get.

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There is something with Christmas, you can get things that only God gives you.

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And today, specifically love.

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Love.

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Verse 11:

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How many of us like Christmas decorations?

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Go ahead. Don't be bashful. How many of us like 'em?

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Okay.

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How many of us are annoyed by people who put up too many Christmas decorations?

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Come on, let's be honest.

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My wife just keeps this,

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be putting up more and more and more Christmas decorations.

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I'm not ready to say I'm annoyed at her by that.

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I am annoyed that they keep going up earlier and earlier in the year.

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I'm sorry, Christmas should not be going up before Thanksgiving.

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I think what I'm going to do is I when we come down

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for the tree on Christmas morning, I've already said

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I'm going to have a Valentine's Day heart hanging from the tree,

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like no, no, no let's celebrate Christmas.

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Let's get ready for Valentine's Day.

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No, no. Let's separate the holidays.

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Right?

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It's one of the back and forths that we have.

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But what's great about Christmas is the decorations actually.

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One of them that you may have in your house, many people do,

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is a little manger scene where you've got Jesus placed in a manger

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and you've got maybe a little cow, little dog.

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Maybe you've got Bob Ross putting little birds up there.

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You've got some shepherds there, leaning on their staff.

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And you've got a little kitty cat maybe over in the corner.

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And you have Mary and Joseph.

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And then what else?

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You've got the Magi, the wise men are there.

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And that's when the record should [ screeching sound ] What?

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Magi, wisemen.

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There's a lot of things we don't know about the Christmas story.

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One thing we know for sure is that when Jesus was placed in a manger,

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the Magi were not there.

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So if you got a little scene like that of figurines,

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just take the Magi and put them on another table.

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If you want to be accurate, put them on another.

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If you don't want to be accurate, you just want it to be cool looking,

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fine, keep the Magi there.

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But they weren't there.

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Why do I say that?

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A bunch of reasons. A few of them right here in this verse.

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First of all, it says this: And going into the house.

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Jesus was placed in a manger.

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He was born in a cave likely where they kept the livestock.

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And now Magi are going into a house.

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Wait a minute, house, cave, livestock, manger?

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Well, yeah, because by the time I got there, Mary and Joseph had moved on.

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They weren't in a manger anymore or putting their child in a manger anymore.

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That was not an ideal circumstance for them to place their child there.

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So as soon as they could, I don't know if it was the next day,

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two days later, they were gone.

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So they find other lodging, they're in a house.

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The Magi show up at a house and that says:.

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And they saw the child with Mary.Mary.

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Not the baby.

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They saw the child.

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Jesus here is a child.

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The Magi, yet another freaky thing that happens to them,

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they have a spiritual dream that Herod actually wants to kill this child.

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And so they leave another way and they don't tell Herod about this.

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Herod then what he does is he wipes out --

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he wipes out all the children in the area who are under 2 years old.

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All of them.

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Now, by the way, just because it's crazy to believe,

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does mean there aren't things that point to this actually happening.

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I've been to Bethlehem a number of times.

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I've been to caves, burial vaults for the dead in Bethlehem.

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And there is crazy, crazy, a bunch of children's skulls.

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That radioactive dating says this comes back to the first century,.,

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Of kids, infants, 2 years and under.

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Like perfect amount of skull's, perfect time period,.

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It's probably where it happened right here in this,

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some of the evidence of it.

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This is real, you can see these things

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You can till go over the Middle East and see some of this stuff.

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You're not going to see a star up in the sky.

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You're not going to be able to find an angel talking to shepherds necessarily.

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But this stuff, there's a big, big part of this history

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that you can see with your own eyes.

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Why does Herod kill everybody two years of age and under?

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It's because that's when the Magi left and didn't let Herod in on the idea.

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The Magi got there when Jesus was probably just under 2 years old,.

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A year and a half old or something like that.

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It really gives us unique perspective on this story.

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Now throughout this entire thing, we're going to see God's love.

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We're going to see that.

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Even though the word love isn't here,

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we're going to see God's love throughout this entire thing.

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I believe that the reason why Christmas.

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Is the favorite holiday for most of us,.,

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I believe the reason Christmas.

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Is the most commercially marketable holiday.

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I believe the reason why we as Americans.

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Watch more movies about Christmas than any other thing.

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Is because we are a very emotional people.

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We're actually ruled and run by emotion.

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And I don't mean this inherently negatively.

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I mean, it is very emotional.

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And Christmas is a warm, fuzzy, emotional holiday, more so than any other holiday,.

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more than Valentine's Day, more than Halloween, more than St.

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Patrick's Day.

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And it just keeps going and going,

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which is why we have so many songs around Christmas,.

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Because it makes us feel warm and emotional.

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It's why we have so many movies about Christmas,.

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Romance movies or whatever they are, because we like to feel as Americans,

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Christmas makes us feel.

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And some of these classic Christmas movies might just make you feel right now.

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- The TV's broke. What are we gonna do all night?

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- Celebrate the birth of Christ.

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- Does Santa really work in the North Pole?

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Oh, no, he don't work.

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He lays on the couch and he drinks all day.

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It's trying for me. I have to pay all the bills.

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Kind of like your mama, now bye. Next.

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- I'm up here, you morons. Come and get me.

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You guys give up, or are you thirsty for more?

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- No, I want an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action

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Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle!

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- You'll shoot your eye out, kid.

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Merry Christmas.

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Ho, ho, ho.

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[belches] Did you hear that?

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[chicken sounds]

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- Do you mind telling me what you do want to do?

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- Well, sir, someday I'd like to be a dentist.

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- A dentist?

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- They want you to say grace.

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The blessing.

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- I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

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And to the republic for which it stands, One Nation, under God,.

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Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

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- Amen. - Amen. - Amen.

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- I'm starting to get a bad feeling up here.

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- Merry Christmas.

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- If this is their idea of Christmas, I've gotta be here for New Year.

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- Hey, let's just really clear, Die Hard is a Christmas movie.

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Okay? I don't know if you know it or not.

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Die Hard is a Christmas movie.

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One of the best ones ever that's out there.

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And if you want to hear more about that actually in the Crossroads app,.

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Which I use regularly, I've got an article on that.

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You can check that out in there, if you like.

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Now, there was clips there that make us feel.

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I believe Christmas is our favorite holiday,

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not because all of us in our country have spiritual roots and ties to Christmas,

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because it makes us feel.

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Here's the crazy thing, three big ideas is this today.

00:34:36

If we're gonna talk about love, let's just state the obvious.

00:34:40

Culture says -- our culture says that love is what you feel.

00:34:45

God says love is what you do.

00:34:49

Our culture's understanding of love is all about feelings.

00:34:52

Oh, I feel nostalgic, I love this sweater.

00:34:55

Oh, I feel something when I have comfort food and chicken.

00:34:59

I feel something.

00:35:01

And so if I feel something for you, then I love you.

00:35:04

That's not love.

00:35:06

It could indicate, it could indicate that you're about to do some love.

00:35:10

It could indicate that you've done something loving.

00:35:13

But feelings are not love.

00:35:17

It is what you do that is love.

00:35:20

The Magi here are incredibly loving towards Jesus in this entire story,.

00:35:26

And yet we don't see the word love at all.

00:35:29

They sacrifice their time.

00:35:31

They are doing time.

00:35:33

They're spending two years seeking, in search of.

00:35:38

This is love.

00:35:40

They actually sacrifice and bring forth and do gifts.

00:35:45

They're generous bringing gold, frankincense, and myrrh,.

00:35:48

Which we'll talk about in just a moment.

00:35:50

They are incredibly loving because they are going to go the other direction.

00:35:55

And they're going to risk their own lives in not telling.

00:35:58

The most powerful person that they've encountered, Herod, where Jesus is.

00:36:03

They decide to disobey his plea.

00:36:06

This is love.

00:36:08

Love isn't what we feel.

00:36:10

Love is what we do it.

00:36:13

And we feel in our culture, if I feel it's love.

00:36:16

Think about it this way, we say, well, I'm just not feeling it.

00:36:19

What do we say? I'm not feeling it.

00:36:21

That's always a reason for us not to love, for us not to do something.

00:36:26

That's why many of us have an outage with love.

00:36:28

Is it is only feeling based.

00:36:30

It's only emotion based.

00:36:34

One of the perks of my job, I have a number of perks.

00:36:37

I'll tell you what the great perk of my job is.

00:36:39

It is that whenever I preach I get to live with that truth in a profound way.

00:36:45

For a whole week leading up to it.

00:36:48

It's not just that I have the content and stuff to think about afterwards,.

00:36:53

But when I come to a topic like this, which is love,.

00:36:56

That whole week like my mind has been marinating in love.

00:37:00

I've grown more this week in love because I'm thinking about it.

00:37:03

It's a huge perk and benefit that I get to go do a deeper dive.

00:37:08

On certain things because I've got to have enough to talk about.

00:37:11

Right?

00:37:13

So this week has been a week of love for me.

00:37:17

It hasn't been a week, by the way, where I've had a lot of feelings.

00:37:20

I must admit, I cry much less than the average person.

00:37:24

Now, as a male ages, he cries more and more.

00:37:27

He gets more and more, you know, emotional.

00:37:29

But I see some of you folks, like I'm jealous.

00:37:32

I don't know what that must feel -- it must feel good.

00:37:34

It looks like it feels good.

00:37:35

I don't know. I don't feel those things.

00:37:38

So somebody would think, well, you must not feel love.

00:37:41

No, I do love under the godly understanding of doing -- doing love.

00:37:50

So I decided to get a flu vaccination this last week.

00:37:55

How many of us get flu vaccination?

00:37:57

Just curious.

00:37:59

How many of us trust God and decide not to?

00:38:01

[laughter]

00:38:04

Well, I like getting a flu vaccine, so this week I was I was going to do it.

00:38:07

And when you do this, you've got to plan it.

00:38:09

Right?

00:38:10

So I'm going to go to this pharmacy and I know how lines are,.

00:38:13

So I'm going to go during the week day, it's another perk of my job,.

00:38:16

I have flexibility with my job.

00:38:18

So I'm going to go in the middle of a workday,.

00:38:20

Not the middle, actually the middle of the afternoon workday.

00:38:22

I'm going to go around two o'clock because that'll be past the lunch rush,

00:38:27

before people trying to get home.

00:38:28

And there should be nobody there, no lines to get my flu shot.

00:38:32

And sure, of course, that's exactly what happens.

00:38:34

I walk in. There's like nobody there.

00:38:36

I look behind the counter. There's three people with blue jackets on.

00:38:39

And I go and I say, hey.

00:38:40

I would get like a flu shot.

00:38:42

And then the woman says, OK, that'll be about a half an hour.

00:38:48

I looked around, like no one here, "Half an hour, what?

00:38:52

Why half an hour?"

00:38:53

"Well, the pharmacist is filling orders right now.

00:38:58

It'll be a half an hour before he can get to you."

00:39:00

So I guess there's one pure pharmacist and two other people

00:39:02

who are filling pill bottles or stuff.

00:39:05

I don't know how the whole infrastructure works out.

00:39:07

So, I'm thinking to myself, "Um, OK.

00:39:12

OK."

00:39:14

I look at my watch, thought I could do some work while I'm sitting there.

00:39:17

So in fact, work on this message.

00:39:19

Fine.

00:39:20

So, I go over and I sit and I'm waiting and same thing.

00:39:23

No one's coming in.

00:39:24

No one's there.

00:39:25

Maybe like two people in the next 15, 20, 25 minutes and time's going.

00:39:29

I'm thinking 15 minutes and I'm going, "Certainly they're going to get me in.

00:39:32

Because certainly they see I'm the only one here, a live person here.

00:39:37

Here."

00:39:38

15 minutes goes by, nothing.

00:39:40

20, nothing. 25, nothing.

00:39:42

30, nothing. 35, nothing.

00:39:44

40, nothing.

00:39:46

43 minutes I get up, I said --

00:39:53

Well, here's I wanted to say.

00:39:55

I thought about this. Right?

00:39:56

I thought about this.

00:39:58

I wanted to say this,

00:40:01

"Hey, I don't understand how it is you have a real human being here,

00:40:05

a customer, a real customer, that you don't want to satisfy.

00:40:08

You made me wait 30 minutes when nobody is here.

00:40:12

And not only 30 minutes, you made me wait 43 minutes.

00:40:16

I don't understand how you can't keep your word.

00:40:19

And it's a stupid policy that I have -- I've been here a lot.

00:40:22

I spent a lot of money in this store."

00:40:25

I wanted to say that, I really did.

00:40:26

But I'm talking about love.

00:40:28

Right?

00:40:30

So I go up. I go, "Hey, I just need a refund of the whole insurance thing.

00:40:36

Just cancel because I can't wait.

00:40:38

I have to leave."

00:40:40

And she starts apologizing, "Oh, I'm sorry.

00:40:41

He just--"

00:40:43

And there again it was like, "Well, you should have apologized.

00:40:46

That's good. You should. You should apologize.

00:40:48

You should have done even more than that.

00:40:50

And I don't know if you know it or not, I'm kind of a big deal."

00:40:52

You know? I want to I wanted to say all of these things, too.

00:40:57

But no, I wanted to give love.

00:41:00

And so, you know what it was, "No problem.

00:41:03

It works that way sometimes.

00:41:04

Hey, you have a great Christmas."

00:41:07

That was love.

00:41:08

They they were ready for it.

00:41:10

because they know that's what customers do.

00:41:12

Instead. I gave them love, but noticing it.

00:41:17

Go out to eat someplace and the service is less than ideal.

00:41:21

And I wanted to stiff the person and be rude to them.

00:41:25

But love -- love says maybe this person just lost a loved one yesterday

00:41:31

and they're not on their game.

00:41:33

And the last thing they need is judgment from you.

00:41:37

What you need to be is God to them and love them and tip them

00:41:43

and be kind and encouraging to them when you leave," which is what I did.

00:41:49

I went to the Awaited opening night with our family.

00:41:53

That was good.

00:41:54

And it was love to buy those tickets for nine family members.

00:41:59

It was an act of generosity to do that for all of them, to do that.

00:42:04

And I sat there and I watched it.

00:42:08

And I actually was overcome by emotion as I watched it.

00:42:12

As a normal audience member in the first row of the top balcony

00:42:15

at the Aronoff Center.

00:42:16

And by the way, in case you're not familiar with this backstory,

00:42:18

let me let me tell you a little bit about the story.

00:42:21

1999 I came out of a play in Cincinnati called a Christmas Carol.

00:42:29

And I'd watch it now two years in a row.

00:42:31

And I noticed a lot of people were there who'd been there the year before.

00:42:35

I thought, "Man, the city I live, Cincinnati,

00:42:37

they love Cincinnati traditions around the arts.

00:42:40

What would happen if we could create a show

00:42:46

that actually told the story of Christmas

00:42:49

and it could become a Cincinnati institution?"

00:42:53

That was an act of love.

00:42:55

And out of love for people hearing and understand that story,

00:43:00

understanding God, we embarked a couple of years later

00:43:02

on our first try, it was called Imagine and it was awful.

00:43:04

You can't imagine how bad it was.

00:43:06

It was awful.

00:43:07

But love compelled us to try to do anything possible

00:43:11

to help people understand the love of God

00:43:13

that comes in the form of Jesus placed in the manger.

00:43:17

And then love compelled us to try a whole new rewrite

00:43:20

and it was Awaited.

00:43:22

And love caused us to keep innovating over the first few years

00:43:26

when it was very, very mediocre.

00:43:28

And love caused us to endure on and endure through

00:43:32

even when someone died on an opening night one year.

00:43:36

And love caused us to keep spending money and spending resources

00:43:41

because we felt this message of God's love needed to be understood

00:43:45

to an artistic mind and we kept doing it.

00:43:47

And finally, for a bunch of reasons we've talked about before,

00:43:49

we had to end on its run at Crossroads and it went into the theater.

00:43:55

And I sat there having paid for a ticket, watching a very moving show

00:44:01

and seeing love on display.

00:44:03

Seeing people sing their hearts out

00:44:05

just like performers had sung their hearts out onstage.

00:44:09

And I was moved by what would happen -- what could possibly happen

00:44:13

if that story of love was done on stages in metropolitan areas

00:44:18

all across our city?

00:44:20

And I was moved because I was seeing the act of love.

00:44:24

It was love that was being done, not me feeling love.

00:44:28

It was love being done.

00:44:31

And our culture says that love is about feelings.

00:44:34

It's not friends, it's about doings.

00:44:37

And the reason why there's not a real love in our culture

00:44:40

is because we don't feel there's many people who deserve that kind of love.

00:44:45

But the second point: culture says love is for those who deserve it.

00:44:49

God says love us for the unworthy.

00:44:53

See if someone is making me feel bad, making me feel bad emotions,

00:44:58

then I certainly can't do any love to them, I can't give them any love,

00:45:01

I can't do anything nice for them because I'm not feeling it.

00:45:05

We only give love to people who deserve it,

00:45:09

but God gives love to those of us who don't deserve it.

00:45:13

Now I'm going to blow some of our minds.

00:45:15

You're not going to like what I'm saying right now, but it's so true.

00:45:17

I'm as sure of it as I am of gravity.

00:45:23

When we are opposed to God and when we are not on His plan

00:45:30

in right relationship with Him,

00:45:32

He does not have good emotional feelings towards us.

00:45:37

There's a lot of people here right now, hear my voice,

00:45:40

I want to tell you, God does not feel good about you at all.

00:45:45

At all.

00:45:47

And He still loves you, because He still does things for you,

00:45:54

even when we don't deserve it.

00:45:56

This is the gift of love.

00:45:58

Jesus comes to the Earth, not because we deserve His love,

00:46:03

because we need His love.

00:46:04

We need Him to do something because our rebelliousness

00:46:09

has put a wall between us and God.

00:46:12

And God is not feeling it for us.

00:46:14

He's actually doing it for us.

00:46:16

And He sends His Son to do for us what we can't do for ourselves.

00:46:19

He dies for us.

00:46:22

Those little pink hands that the Magi saw,

00:46:29

those little beautiful pink feet with no calluses on them at all

00:46:33

were going to have become adult full-grown hands and feet

00:46:38

and there were going be nails put through them.

00:46:41

That back that was so perfectly pure, maybe didn't have a freckle on it,

00:46:49

was going to be whipped and scourged

00:46:53

and was going to scrape up and down on a wooden Cross,

00:46:58

catching splinters as Jesus push Himself up and release

00:47:02

in order to inhale and exhale as He was hanging on a Cross.

00:47:05

That was love.

00:47:10

Book of Romans describes how crazy this kind of love is when it says:

00:47:20

What is it like when you're not on the page with God?

00:47:23

You're not God, you're un-God.

00:47:25

Whatever God is, UN is you, is me, was me, ungodly.

00:47:33

Every once in while someone will put themselves

00:47:34

in front of a train for a child that they love.

00:47:37

That seems to be pure.

00:47:40

Though, perhaps for a good person.

00:47:42

One would even dare to die.

00:47:43

But God shows his love for us,

00:47:46

and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

00:47:51

He shows us His love.

00:47:54

Now, while we were sinners, while we were unlike God,

00:47:57

while we were getting bad emotional vibes for God,

00:48:01

while God was not feeling anything for us.

00:48:04

I mean if you think that God is feeling happy, happy, joy, joy

00:48:07

about people who aren't about Him, gosh, not true.

00:48:11

Not true.

00:48:13

But if you think you've got to earn God's love, not true either.

00:48:17

That's the amazing good news of Christmas: God gives love.

00:48:22

He blesses.

00:48:24

He comes and He lays His life down for us when we don't deserve it.

00:48:29

That is crazy.

00:48:31

amazing, beautiful.

00:48:34

We're gonna celebrate communion a little bit.

00:48:37

And this is why communion is so powerful and profound.

00:48:39

We're celebrating the love that Jesus gave us.

00:48:42

Not the love that Jesus felt for us, not the love the God fell for us,

00:48:47

the love He gave us.

00:48:49

He broke His body for us on a Cross.

00:48:52

He spilled out His blood for us.

00:48:54

That is what His love is.

00:48:57

Tim Keller says this:

00:49:08

Grace means God doing something for you that you and I don't deserve.

00:49:15

Psychology Today every once in a while gets it right.

00:49:19

Sometimes our modern mindsets, we accidentally stumble on the truth

00:49:24

and there's something deeper right underneath that.

00:49:27

Here's what Psychology Today says:

00:49:49

Don't give expecting somebody to deserve it, love,

00:49:53

do something loving expecting nothing in return

00:49:57

and not waiting for somebody else to deserve it.

00:49:59

See culture says that love is earned.

00:50:02

God says that love is given.

00:50:06

Now, I want to show you, I just want -- I'm doing everything I can

00:50:08

to crucify this idea that feelings is love.

00:50:11

If you're feeling something, it's love.

00:50:13

It's not. It's not.

00:50:15

It's a feeling. It's a good feeling.

00:50:16

Your feeling might be going along with love, but our feeling is not love.

00:50:20

Check this out in Luke 6:35.

00:50:22

You've heard this many, many times before.

00:50:24

Even if it's your first time ever hearing anything in a church,

00:50:28

you know it: love your enemies, love your enemies and do good to all.

00:50:34

And it goes on and on, this is about love your enemies.

00:50:36

Can I just -- what does it mean to love your enemies?

00:50:38

I'll tell you what it does not mean.

00:50:39

It does not mean feel good emotions about your enemies.

00:50:43

It does not.

00:50:44

That is utterly impossible.

00:50:46

If love is good, positive emotions, then this verse makes no sense

00:50:53

because enemies means we have negative, nasty emotions.

00:50:58

If we could have good positive emotions about someone,

00:51:01

they wouldn't be our enemy.

00:51:03

What's it saying here?

00:51:04

It's not saying have good emotions, because you can't just change your emotions.

00:51:07

Just, "Oh, God says they have good emotions about the people who've abused me.

00:51:10

Oh, okay, I'll do that."

00:51:12

"Oh, God tells me to feel good and feel love to people who stole from me.

00:51:15

Oh, oh, Now I do and feel good."

00:51:17

No, it does work that way.

00:51:20

Loving your enemies means you do something that's loving.

00:51:25

It means you send them an encouraging text.

00:51:29

It means you give them a good reference if someone calls you

00:51:33

because they're trying to hire them maybe.

00:51:36

That means that you buy a gift for them maybe.

00:51:41

I don't know what it is, but that's love.

00:51:44

You can do those things and hopefully and maybe the emotions will follow.

00:51:50

But the emotions, the things we feel or our intentions,

00:51:53

even our intentions, that is not love.

00:51:57

And I'll tell you, our culture will be a lot better

00:51:59

if we would understand this, because then

00:52:01

if we could get off this emotional thing,

00:52:03

maybe we'd actually start loving each other

00:52:05

and we would actually feel something from each other.

00:52:09

Maybe our culture would start to turn the tide.

00:52:13

1 John 3:16 says this:.

00:52:27

How do we know love? He laid down His life and we ought to do the same.

00:52:33

We're gonna do our normal exercise here of taking this card

00:52:36

that we've done every week.

00:52:38

You got when you came in or a piece of paper wherever you are

00:52:42

at your coffee shop or your home, wherever you are.

00:52:44

And I want us to think about that first.

00:52:47

What would happen as we reflect on this

00:52:49

and we wrote down things we were going to do that was love?

00:52:54

What would happen in our neighborhoods, in our cities?

00:52:57

I'm telling you right now, if we have a high percentage of us

00:53:01

that actually started doing love, oh, my goodness, things would change.

00:53:06

So let's take a minute right now and see if God prompts us

00:53:10

with something we to write on this card

00:53:11

that we're actually going to do out of love.

00:54:19

I tell you what, if these things on here get done,

00:54:23

get ready for wherever you are to be different.

00:54:26

Because when love crashes in, things change.

00:54:30

When Jesus crashed into our world, when the Advent of Love came,

00:54:34

when Jesus came, this world changed.

00:54:36

When the Magi saw love, saw Jesus, they gave Him gold,

00:54:41

which is what a king would get.

00:54:43

They gave Him frankincense, which is what a priest would have,

00:54:46

a high priest, a smelling aroma.

00:54:48

They gave him myrrh, which is a really sick gift to give

00:54:53

because it's embalming fluid.

00:54:56

This is a child who is destined to die, who lays down His life.

00:55:01

When they blessed Him and they did love to Him,

00:55:07

the world started to change and yours can too.

00:55:12

Do what you put on that card.

00:55:13

God, as we get ready for lighting our candle and for communion,

00:55:19

we just want to very soberly say, God, we don't understand your kind of love.

00:55:23

It's a brand of love,

00:55:24

it's a depth of love that's beyond our comprehension.

00:55:28

But we want to act on whatever we know because we want to be more like you.

00:55:37

And God, I also think to myself right now

00:55:39

and as we do communion in just a little bit,

00:55:41

I think there's some of us in here right now

00:55:43

who are going to receive you for the first time,

00:55:45

-where this can be their first communion, who we can receive Your love

00:55:50

and give our life to you.

00:55:52

We pray that You would do that and hear these prayers today.

00:55:56

In Your name I pray, Amen.

00:56:00

- We're actually going to take communion together.

00:56:03

And so if you've received Jesus as your Lord and Savior,.

00:56:07

This time is for you.

00:56:08

And so I want you to grab some coffee or juice.

00:56:11

Or something to eat or drink near you.

00:56:14

So that we can do this together as a church from anywhere that you are right now.

00:56:19

Because, you know, the ultimate form of God's love was Jesus.

00:56:24

When God sent Jesus to die for us so that you and I could have life,.,

00:56:28

So that you and I could spend eternity with our Father,.

00:56:31

The God of the universe, who knows you and loves you.

00:56:35

It's worthy of remembering.

00:56:37

And so we're going to remember the sacrifice that Jesus made.

00:56:41

And the way that He's loved us by taking communion,.

00:56:44

The way that followers of Jesus have been remembering Him.

00:56:47

And celebrating His love for generations and generations

00:56:52

since He was on the earth with them.

00:56:54

And so grab your muffin and your coffee, whatever you have.

00:56:58

I, right now, have a piece of bread and a little bit of coffee.

00:57:02

And we're going to take communion together.

00:57:05

First, grab that food that you have in front of you.

00:57:09

This is Jesus's body that was broken for you.

00:57:13

Eat it and remember His love for you.

00:57:22

Grab your coffee, your juice, your water, whatever you might have right now.

00:57:26

This is Jesus as blood shed for you.

00:57:30

Drink it and remember how much He loves you.

00:57:40

We're going to light the final candle of Advent, this candle of love,.

00:57:46

To remember the way that God loves us and to remember the way.

00:57:51

That in Jesus breaking into the world,

00:57:53

it was the ultimate form of love for you today and for me today.

00:58:08

Well, hey, I hope you have a great week.

00:58:11

And that you experience the love of Jesus this week.

00:58:14

And we'll see you back for Christmas Eve at 1:00, 3:00, and 5:00.

00:58:19

Right here online or at a location near you.

00:58:22

Have you have a great week.

00:58:35

- Whoever said loserliness is next to godliness?

00:58:40

A loser, that's who.

00:58:42

You want to win this year?

00:58:44

I want to win this year.

00:58:46

God Almighty wants you and I both to win this year.

00:58:52

Are you ready to win?

00:58:54

I sure am. Let's win, win this year.

00:58:59

WIN!

	Worship	5:08
	Community Life	17:53
	Message	19:37

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