WEBVTT 00:00:00.040 --> 00:00:00.821 Good morning church. 00:00:00.821 --> 00:00:04.911 I guess I already was up here once, but it's good to see you again. 00:00:04.911 --> 00:00:09.570 You know this is an exciting time and it's a different moment, a different Sunday for us. 00:00:09.570 --> 00:00:09.891 Today. 00:00:09.891 --> 00:00:21.772 This is, as we've already mentioned, the final Sunday of the church calendar, and you may be here today wondering what are you talking about regarding the church calendar. 00:00:21.772 --> 00:00:28.492 Perhaps you grew up in a church or in a tradition where it wasn't recognized much. 00:00:28.492 --> 00:00:35.960 It's likely that you recognized at least Christmas and Easter, but perhaps that was it. 00:00:35.960 --> 00:00:55.993 Or maybe you grew up in a tradition that recognized the church calendar for all its facets and all its different bells and whistles, and you know a lot about what I'm referring to, no matter where you came from, no matter what your background is what I would like to do today? 00:00:55.993 --> 00:00:57.466 It's a little bit of a different sermon. 00:00:57.466 --> 00:01:00.000 I'm not going to be preaching from one specific text. 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:04.951 We normally, in our preaching, we will focus on one particular text. 00:01:04.951 --> 00:01:12.546 Often we will work our way through a book of the Bible and preach sequentially each week, but this week's going to be a little bit different. 00:01:12.546 --> 00:01:22.414 This is going to be more of a topical sermon and I want to do this particularly to help prepare us as we enter the Advent season. 00:01:22.414 --> 00:01:55.992 So in the church calendar, next Sunday will be the first Sunday of Advent, which is like the beginning, the new year of the church calendar, and so I want to take a little bit of time to talk about that today so that, as you join in with our church body and as we go through progress throughout the year, I want you to be able to be aware of why we do what we do and why it's important to us, and I want to give you a little visit that we enter into this church calendar idea in our worship. 00:01:57.000 --> 00:01:59.864 I brought with me today this mug right here. 00:01:59.864 --> 00:02:04.171 It doesn't have any coffee in it, in case you thought I needed both coffee and water at the same time. 00:02:04.171 --> 00:02:06.682 It's not a bad idea. 00:02:06.682 --> 00:02:08.127 I'm not opposed to the idea. 00:02:08.127 --> 00:02:15.707 Specifically, this mug here says Carlin and Ricky, october 18, 2008. 00:02:15.707 --> 00:02:23.866 So we just celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary back in October and this particular mug. 00:02:23.866 --> 00:02:28.000 We're going to have a wedding ceremony, celebration of vows, today. 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:30.824 So I got me all thinking about my wedding. 00:02:30.824 --> 00:02:42.000 I got me all thinking about when I got married and excited for our brother, calvin and Melania as they share their vows this morning with each other and with us and before God. 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:47.000 But this was a favor that we gave to all the guests at our wedding. 00:02:47.000 --> 00:02:59.050 So if we had guests at the wedding, they received a coffee mug, and we were very much into coffee so it was kind of the theme of the day and we wanted people to take this home with them. 00:02:59.050 --> 00:03:11.000 I think in every single year that we've celebrated our anniversary, I received a text from at least one person saying I'm drinking out of your mug today with your names, with the date on it. 00:03:11.000 --> 00:03:13.685 I'm remembering you today. 00:03:13.685 --> 00:03:15.348 It's very special to us. 00:03:15.348 --> 00:03:17.893 We keep it in here in our house. 00:03:17.893 --> 00:03:23.550 I think this year I was the one who drank out of this mug on that particular day. 00:03:23.550 --> 00:03:28.000 It's a great way of remembering that moment in time. 00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:32.830 I have other things from my wedding ceremony that I carried with me today. 00:03:32.830 --> 00:03:33.953 One is this wedding ring. 00:03:33.953 --> 00:03:48.295 I have a ring on my finger that reminds me and it signifies my covenant with my wife and the covenant that I made before God and the witnesses that were there. 00:03:50.222 --> 00:04:00.795 One of the things that we do as a couple is we every year for our anniversary, and at the beginning, when we first started this tradition, it seemed like it made sense and it was a good idea. 00:04:00.795 --> 00:04:05.960 Now that we're 15 years in it's a little much, but we're holding to it. 00:04:05.960 --> 00:04:10.872 Our wedding night we stayed in a bed and breakfast in Michigan. 00:04:10.872 --> 00:04:19.000 When it came around to our first anniversary, we thought what are we going to do to celebrate and commemorate our wedding, our marriage, our first anniversary? 00:04:19.000 --> 00:04:21.608 We decided let's stay in a bed and breakfast. 00:04:21.608 --> 00:04:23.704 We were in South Carolina at the time. 00:04:23.704 --> 00:04:25.269 We found this really beautiful one in Georgia. 00:04:25.269 --> 00:04:33.391 We went down to Georgia and stayed in this really nice bed and breakfast and we thought let's do this every year and not just do a different bed and breakfast every year. 00:04:33.391 --> 00:04:35.595 Let's do a different bed and breakfast in a different state. 00:04:36.019 --> 00:04:41.752 By the time we reach our 50 years of marriage, we'll have visited all 50 states. 00:04:41.752 --> 00:04:51.353 When you live on the East Coast, like South Carolina or we later moved to Baltimore you can travel four hours and be in five, six, seven different states Easy. 00:04:51.353 --> 00:04:56.211 When you move to California, you travel four hours in any direction and you're still in California. 00:04:56.211 --> 00:05:00.468 It doesn't make a whole lot of sense and so it gets very expensive. 00:05:00.468 --> 00:05:02.692 It gets very time consuming. 00:05:02.692 --> 00:05:04.182 So far we've done it. 00:05:04.182 --> 00:05:06.689 We have 15 states that we've checked off the list. 00:05:06.689 --> 00:05:15.593 We even had the crazy idea of when we get to 50, we'll go to Hawaii and celebrate big and I'm thinking, okay, I'll be 80. 00:05:15.593 --> 00:05:20.309 I don't know that I'll be celebrating and enjoying Hawaii the way that I ought to be. 00:05:20.309 --> 00:05:22.593 So we did it at 10 instead, and we had a great time. 00:05:22.593 --> 00:05:24.341 Sasha and Ann came with us. 00:05:24.341 --> 00:05:25.403 That was a great time. 00:05:25.403 --> 00:05:29.632 We got a bed and breakfast and they watched the kids or the kid, and we had a good time. 00:05:29.632 --> 00:05:30.252 It was fun. 00:05:31.581 --> 00:05:36.281 These are all things that we have done for us oh, losing this. 00:05:36.281 --> 00:05:50.755 These are all things that we have done to help remember this significant moment in our lives, this significant piece of our lives, who we are and what we've coveted to. 00:05:50.755 --> 00:06:01.793 It's a way that we've helped other people also remember not that they care to remember the date and time, but there are people that have actually reached out to us and said that they remember as well. 00:06:01.793 --> 00:06:20.656 There are significant things that we have in our lives that are important to remember, and so it's important that we schedule things memorials, if you will in order to be able to remember how significant they are. 00:06:20.656 --> 00:06:25.048 Now you might say do you forget that easily? 00:06:25.048 --> 00:06:28.096 Do you forget that you were married. 00:06:28.096 --> 00:06:29.718 Do you forget the date that you were married? 00:06:29.718 --> 00:06:30.000 Do you forget? 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:37.694 Well, I mean, guys are kind of known for forgetting those things, for one, but no, I don't personally forget those things often. 00:06:37.694 --> 00:06:46.514 But the reality is is that the idea of remembering is a little bit more than just like a cognitive way of remembering things. 00:06:46.514 --> 00:06:54.413 It's a little bit more than just saying, yeah, I know the date, I know what happened, I have those memories, I can tell you about them. 00:06:54.413 --> 00:06:56.682 It's a little bit more than that. 00:06:56.682 --> 00:07:14.454 So every year, when we go to our bed and breakfast to celebrate our anniversary, our wedding anniversary, we are reimagining, reliving, reentering into the story of that day, of that moment when we became husband and wife. 00:07:14.454 --> 00:07:28.833 And so each anniversary, we are finding ways to not just remember oh yeah, we did get married, it was on that day, it was at this time, but we are finding ways to go back and relive out that particular story. 00:07:30.483 --> 00:07:33.632 The same is true, and it ought to be true, with the church. 00:07:33.632 --> 00:07:45.000 There's a story of a man and a woman who were married for 45 years and after 45 years she decided that she wanted to divorce him. 00:07:45.000 --> 00:07:47.447 And they said why do you want to divorce him. 00:07:47.447 --> 00:07:48.569 You've been married for so long. 00:07:48.569 --> 00:07:56.413 And she said I have been married to this man for 45 years and he's never once told me that he loves me. 00:07:56.413 --> 00:08:01.949 And the mediator said is that true? 00:08:01.949 --> 00:08:07.146 He said well, I told you when we got married that I loved you and that if anything changed I'd let you know. 00:08:09.600 --> 00:08:17.432 The reality is is that just because we are told something doesn't necessarily mean that we always feel it or that we always understand it. 00:08:17.432 --> 00:08:20.362 They're always engaged in that particular thing. 00:08:20.362 --> 00:08:37.486 Just because you know about God, just because you can tell the story of the gospel, just because you understand the truths of Scripture, doesn't mean that we feel it, it doesn't mean that it inspires us and it doesn't mean that it engages us. 00:08:37.486 --> 00:08:41.634 So how do we, as a church, do this? 00:08:41.634 --> 00:09:01.135 Instead of just hearing things being taught to us and saying, yeah, I know that, I know that I can understand theology a little bit more, I can understand these verses a little bit better, how do we enter into these truths in such a way that it affects us to our core, because that's important? 00:09:01.135 --> 00:09:07.174 How do we engage in a way that we remember that we don't forget? 00:09:07.174 --> 00:09:11.801 You know, god's people had a habit of forgetting. 00:09:11.801 --> 00:09:15.815 They had a habit of not remembering Matter of fact. 00:09:15.815 --> 00:09:26.879 You can go, and throughout the Scripture, almost 170 times, the Bible records when God tells his people remember this, don't forget this. 00:09:26.879 --> 00:09:33.179 You did this because you forgot, you did this because you did not remember Matter of fact. 00:09:33.285 --> 00:09:34.498 Exodus 13.3,. 00:09:34.498 --> 00:09:45.534 Moses said to the people remember this day in which you went out of Egypt from the house of slavery, for by the powerful hand the Lord brought you out from this place and nothing leaven shall be eaten Again. 00:09:45.534 --> 00:09:51.453 In Deuteronomy, you shall remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt and the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, with an outstretched hand. 00:09:51.453 --> 00:09:53.340 Deuteronomy 8,. 00:09:53.340 --> 00:09:57.975 And you shall remember all the way the Lord, your God, has led you in the wilderness for these 40 years. 00:09:57.975 --> 00:10:01.378 Deuteronomy 16, you shall not eat leaven bread. 00:10:01.378 --> 00:10:12.015 Seven days you shall eat with unleavened bread, the bread of the affliction, for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste, in order that you may remember Judges, remember judges. 00:10:12.015 --> 00:10:13.714 They always turned and did what. 00:10:13.714 --> 00:10:15.078 They was right in their own eyes. 00:10:15.330 --> 00:10:21.712 The sons of Israel did not remember the Lord, their God, who had delivered them from the hands of the enemies On every side. 00:10:21.712 --> 00:10:24.380 Nehemiah, they refused to listen. 00:10:24.380 --> 00:10:27.495 They did not remember the wondrous deeds the Lord had performed among them. 00:10:27.495 --> 00:10:33.038 So they became stubborn and appointed leaders to return into their slavery in Egypt. 00:10:33.038 --> 00:10:40.115 But you are God of forgiveness, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, bounding and loving kindness, and you did not forsake them. 00:10:41.009 --> 00:10:43.692 And even as we get into the New Testament, the apostle Paul. 00:10:43.692 --> 00:10:56.456 He writes therefore, remember that you were formally, that you were gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised, but those that called themselves the circumcision which has been done by human hands. 00:10:56.456 --> 00:11:06.537 Remember that at the time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenant of promise, without hope and without God in the world. 00:11:06.537 --> 00:11:14.998 But now, in Christ Jesus, you, who are once far away, have been brought near with the blood of Christ, peter writes in his second epistle. 00:11:14.998 --> 00:11:21.438 So I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth that you now have. 00:11:21.438 --> 00:11:38.798 I think it is right to refresh your memory as long as I live in the tent of this body, because I know that I will soon put it aside and our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me and I will make every effort to see that after my departure, you will always be able to remember these things. 00:11:39.330 --> 00:11:41.938 We have a holy amnesia problem. 00:11:41.938 --> 00:11:48.774 We need to be reminded of who God is and what he has done for us. 00:11:48.774 --> 00:11:51.116 We need to be reminded of who we are. 00:11:51.116 --> 00:11:56.360 We need to be reminded of whose we are. 00:11:56.360 --> 00:12:06.596 We need to be reminded of what we have been saved for and where we have come from, because we often forget. 00:12:06.596 --> 00:12:18.575 We can understand theology, we can understand the truths and the commands of scripture, but we need to be embedded. 00:12:18.575 --> 00:12:23.921 We need to have our minds embedded in the story of redemption. 00:12:26.590 --> 00:12:33.960 There's a story that's told in a book called Worship like Jesus by a lady named Cherry Constance. 00:12:33.960 --> 00:12:48.677 She tells of a church similar to the situation here, where a church was preparing to enter into the new year of the calendar, and I didn't prepare the sermon based on this story, but I was excited to see this story. 00:12:48.677 --> 00:12:59.417 They were preparing this particular Sunday, as they went into Advent, to talk about the calendar year, the story of redemption, because that's what the church calendar is. 00:12:59.417 --> 00:13:13.258 We begin with the hope and the longing for the coming of Christ and then he comes and we celebrate his coming at Christmas time and then epiphany all the way to the Lent period and all the way to Easter, we celebrate the life of Christ on the earth. 00:13:13.258 --> 00:13:21.736 We reflect on his life and the work that he did on the earth and the places where God, the Father, spoke to him and said this is my son, listen to him. 00:13:21.736 --> 00:13:24.298 This is the one I'm in whom I am well pleased. 00:13:24.298 --> 00:13:28.841 We recognize all these things, these moments in Christ's life. 00:13:28.841 --> 00:13:36.393 And then we get to eat the Good Friday and Easter, and then we go through and celebrate his death and his resurrection. 00:13:36.393 --> 00:13:47.201 And then we go all the way to Pentecost, when the church was born and the disciples were gathered together and the Holy Spirit came upon them, and then we celebrate the season of Pentecost. 00:13:47.201 --> 00:13:51.480 That's a quick overview of the church calendar. 00:13:51.480 --> 00:14:00.817 But here this church was doing the same thing and she writes this Sunday our six year old this is from somebody that was writing to her. 00:14:01.350 --> 00:14:05.797 Sunday, our 60 year old grandson, william, was sitting with my wife, katie, and me. 00:14:05.797 --> 00:14:09.937 Usually, william is in the children's church, but today he chose to sit in the big church with us. 00:14:09.937 --> 00:14:16.173 He had declared a few months ago I have decided that I'm not going to believe in anything unless I can see it. 00:14:16.173 --> 00:14:18.956 Our conversation went more like this. 00:14:18.956 --> 00:14:21.056 So William said is God here? 00:14:21.056 --> 00:14:23.938 And he said yes, god is everywhere. 00:14:23.938 --> 00:14:25.375 William said I can't see him. 00:14:25.375 --> 00:14:30.212 And then the father said usually we feel God, we don't see God. 00:14:30.212 --> 00:14:32.774 We can't see God the way that we see each other. 00:14:32.774 --> 00:14:36.734 William said I have decided that I won't believe in anything unless I can see it. 00:14:36.734 --> 00:14:41.479 I heard resolve in his grandson's young voice. 00:14:41.479 --> 00:14:48.613 Even at such a young age I realized that something or someone had intentionally influenced his thinking in that direction. 00:14:49.169 --> 00:15:00.639 During the worship service William was sitting next to his grandfather and he noticed him reading the words that were on the screen and singing along with the songs. 00:15:00.639 --> 00:15:06.217 He was gauging throughout the service as the worshipers told the whole story of God. 00:15:06.217 --> 00:15:13.650 On the short drive home, william said when I get home I need a marker and a new piece of paper At home. 00:15:13.650 --> 00:15:18.416 Katie gave him the marker and he disappeared and they started their lunch preparation. 00:15:18.416 --> 00:15:23.899 Soon William came out with the paper on it he had written I big heart God. 00:15:23.899 --> 00:15:31.100 This didn't come out of a Sunday school or children's church, at least not in that service. 00:15:31.100 --> 00:15:38.577 This came to him as the church told the dramatic story of God's love in Christ. 00:15:38.577 --> 00:15:42.740 This was a wonderful new statement of belief. 00:15:42.740 --> 00:16:06.389 And then the writer Cherry goes on to say I would add that it wasn't only William's belief that was formed his affections were amended, his love for God was ignited, his church's liturgy was loaded with the ultimate story about who we are and what we're for. 00:16:06.389 --> 00:16:15.341 As a result, william's participation in worship bent the needle of his young heart, pointing him to the majestic or the magnetic north of Christ. 00:16:15.341 --> 00:16:21.779 He worshiped the context of the story of God and was moved from skepticism to love. 00:16:25.232 --> 00:16:27.841 Stories are powerful things. 00:16:27.841 --> 00:16:30.570 They're very powerful things. 00:16:30.570 --> 00:16:37.589 A good story comprises ongoing narratives that weave together like a masterpiece. 00:16:37.589 --> 00:16:53.400 So, whether it's a novel or a nursery rhyme intriguing characters, creating plots, subplots as the drama unfolds, eventually, the sequence of all the events are connected in a way that forms the texture of the great storyline. 00:16:53.400 --> 00:17:15.123 Once connected, the story can be told, because it has a beginning, a middle and an end, and so this is why we have to understand not just the truths and not just the theology, and not what just scripture says, but we need to understand everything within the context of the greater story of redemption. 00:17:16.450 --> 00:17:22.970 Theologians, philosophers like to call it the meta-narrative, the bigger narrative. 00:17:22.970 --> 00:17:24.958 There's a lot of different narratives. 00:17:24.958 --> 00:17:30.769 The word narrative has entered into our vocabulary on a lot of different places. 00:17:30.769 --> 00:17:38.769 We talk about the narrative that is speaking spun through politics, or we talk about this person is believing this narrative or that narrative. 00:17:38.769 --> 00:17:40.210 We use that idea a lot. 00:17:40.210 --> 00:17:51.078 The idea of narrative is something that is significant to the way that we believe and the way that we feel about the world that we live in. 00:17:51.078 --> 00:17:58.098 If you watch a particular news source, they have a particular narrative that makes you feel a particular way. 00:17:58.098 --> 00:18:07.319 If you watch the Hallmark Channel around the Christmas holidays, you have a particular feeling about the way that you understand and believe the holidays to be. 00:18:07.319 --> 00:18:13.164 It might only be one plot that's told 200, 300 times, but it's still a narrative. 00:18:13.164 --> 00:18:14.151 That is okay. 00:18:14.151 --> 00:18:18.361 I'm losing this altogether, I think, all right, I think it broke. 00:18:18.361 --> 00:18:18.701 There we go. 00:18:18.701 --> 00:18:42.627 I think it's a narrative that tells us how we ought to feel around the Christmas holidays, and so the narrative that we buy into, the stories that we listen to, that we understand, those particular stories inform our belief and our affections. 00:18:44.621 --> 00:18:49.015 I'm gonna give you an example of a narrative and a the meta-narrative. 00:18:49.015 --> 00:18:52.689 The story that we all know is the story of David and Goliath. 00:18:52.689 --> 00:19:05.654 Now, when I was a kid, I used to hear stories like the story of David and Goliath from First Samuel 17, where David was used as an example of a model that we could emulate. 00:19:05.654 --> 00:19:16.172 Just like he faced giants in his life and he chose five smooth stones to fight off his giants, even we can find stones to fight off the giants in our life. 00:19:16.172 --> 00:19:17.958 That's a great story. 00:19:17.958 --> 00:19:27.826 I can do that same sort of analysis with Hansel and Gretel or Jack in the Beanstalk, but does it point us to Jesus? 00:19:27.826 --> 00:19:29.916 Does it point us to something greater than that? 00:19:29.916 --> 00:19:42.821 The reality is is that we oftentimes enjoy this narrative of this little boy coming in with no armor and saving the day because of this great giant and all he used was stones. 00:19:42.821 --> 00:19:49.926 We enjoy the fairy tale-ism of that particular story and we miss the whole big picture. 00:19:49.926 --> 00:19:56.045 And the whole big picture is right there in the text, if you want to look there. 00:19:56.105 --> 00:19:57.347 First Samuel 17. 00:19:57.347 --> 00:20:03.728 First Samuel says this 17, david enters out. 00:20:03.728 --> 00:20:19.699 He says I can't wear this armor, I can't wear these particular things, but I'm gonna go out there because I've had success with killing a bear and a lion and I believe that God is gonna give this Philistine into my hand. 00:20:19.699 --> 00:20:23.747 First Samuel 17, verse 40 says. 00:20:23.747 --> 00:20:31.009 Then he took a staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd's bag, which he had, and his sling was in his hand. 00:20:31.009 --> 00:20:32.699 He approached the Philistine. 00:20:32.719 --> 00:20:37.622 Meanwhile the Philistine, with his shield bearer in front of him, kept coming closer to David. 00:20:37.622 --> 00:20:42.685 He looked David over and saw that he was little more than a boy glowing with a healthy. 00:20:42.685 --> 00:20:46.141 He was glowing with health and handsome and he despised him. 00:20:46.141 --> 00:20:50.075 He said to David am I a dog that you come to me with sticks? 00:20:50.075 --> 00:20:53.948 And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. 00:20:53.948 --> 00:20:54.851 Come here, he said. 00:20:54.851 --> 00:20:58.142 I will give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals. 00:20:58.142 --> 00:21:12.154 David said to the Philistine you come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. 00:21:12.154 --> 00:21:18.400 This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands and I will strike you down and cut off your head. 00:21:18.400 --> 00:21:29.140 This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. 00:21:29.140 --> 00:21:43.804 All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or by spear, that the Lord saves, for the battle is the Lord's and he will give all of you into our hands. 00:21:43.804 --> 00:21:47.295 And then David approached him and we all know the story. 00:21:47.295 --> 00:21:52.508 He hit him with a rock and he fell down and chopped off his head and killed him. 00:21:53.136 --> 00:21:55.384 But David tells us what's going on here. 00:21:55.384 --> 00:22:06.698 He tells us that this is a story of proclamation that God, the God who is represented by these people, is a God over all the earth. 00:22:06.698 --> 00:22:15.584 He is a God that, he said, everyone in this place is going to know when I'm done, that there is a God in heaven and that this God saves. 00:22:15.584 --> 00:22:26.741 That's the story that we need to understand, not the story of David being somebody who can find stones to kill his giants in his life. 00:22:26.741 --> 00:22:43.241 We need to understand that the story, the narrative that we carry with us, has this overarching message that God is a God over all things and he is a God who saves. 00:22:46.366 --> 00:22:57.548 And so, as we enter into the stories of our life and each one of us carry our own stories each one of us are living out and believing in the narrative of our own lives. 00:22:57.548 --> 00:23:08.224 We are all understanding about who we are and what we've been through and we live according to that belief, the way it makes us feel. 00:23:08.224 --> 00:23:11.659 Some of us have had horrible lives, maybe things that we've grown up into. 00:23:11.659 --> 00:23:16.548 We've been abused, we've been hurt and we just believe that the world is a horrible place. 00:23:16.548 --> 00:23:25.041 We might be some people it might be somebody who believes that all the worth of the world exists for me and I deserve everything. 00:23:25.041 --> 00:23:29.281 I deserve all the goodness and all the happiness and all the well. 00:23:29.604 --> 00:23:44.007 All of these narratives, whatever it is the narrative that you believe, it has to be understood within the context of the greater meta-narrative that is provided to us through the story of redemption. 00:23:44.007 --> 00:23:50.499 Another writer, robert Weber. 00:23:50.499 --> 00:23:53.703 Well, let me say this first. 00:23:53.703 --> 00:24:07.530 So, in order for us to be, to correct the way that we think and to under our stand, our narrative in light of the bigger narrative, we have to do more than just being told. 00:24:07.530 --> 00:24:11.560 Jesus came, jesus died, jesus rose again. 00:24:11.560 --> 00:24:17.541 For some, that's all that the Holy Spirit needs for us to truly believe and understand. 00:24:17.541 --> 00:24:33.732 But the reality is as, like I said already said, we are forgetful people, we fail to remember and even if we can tell the story, even if we can say the true things that are true, do we feel it? 00:24:33.732 --> 00:24:34.758 Do we believe it? 00:24:35.721 --> 00:24:39.738 I want to look at another passage here real quick before we jump into that Deuteronomy 6. 00:24:39.738 --> 00:25:06.895 Deuteronomy 6 is a passage where God has Moses has given the people the commands of God, the things that they are to listen to and obey, and he gets this very, very important text that is understood to be one of those most significant texts for the Jewish people, and rightly so. 00:25:06.895 --> 00:25:08.605 It is a text that matters a lot to us. 00:25:08.605 --> 00:25:31.442 Deuteronomy 6, 4 says this commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts, impress them on your children, talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 00:25:31.442 --> 00:25:37.675 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads, write them on the door frames of your house and on your gates. 00:25:37.675 --> 00:25:44.880 He had just given them these commands, deuteronomy all the way up to this point. 00:25:44.880 --> 00:25:47.348 He's given them these commands, and we know by Jesus' words. 00:25:47.449 --> 00:25:54.605 Later in the New Testament, when he was asked what's the most important command, he says to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul and all your mind. 00:25:54.605 --> 00:26:07.605 He goes on to say the second command is that you love your neighbors, yourself, and all the commands that have been given can be summed up or can be umbrellaed under those two commands. 00:26:07.605 --> 00:26:15.578 So everything that we are expected to do and be can be summed up in this idea of loving God and loving people. 00:26:15.578 --> 00:26:18.605 That's where the commands, that's why the commands exist. 00:26:18.605 --> 00:26:30.605 Ultimately, the ultimate purpose, the most important thing that we need to have in our lives, is to love God, and we love him because of what he has done for us. 00:26:30.605 --> 00:26:35.605 We love him because he loved us first, and so we are called to love God. 00:26:36.289 --> 00:26:38.020 And what does Deuteronomy share with us? 00:26:38.020 --> 00:26:42.719 How they are to go about remembering these things. 00:26:42.719 --> 00:26:44.605 Well, I just listed it off. 00:26:44.605 --> 00:26:47.555 He says you're to do this, you're to do this, you're to do this, you're to do this. 00:26:47.555 --> 00:26:57.605 Put them on your clothes, put them on your foreheads, put them on the posts of your house, put them on every, all over the place, so that you do not forget, so that you remember. 00:26:57.605 --> 00:27:00.192 And he goes on to even say this. 00:27:02.007 --> 00:27:14.118 He says in later on, in Deuteronomy 6, he says in verse 20, in the future, when your son asks you, what is the meaning of all these stipulations and decrees and the laws the Lord, our God has commanded you. 00:27:14.118 --> 00:27:21.507 Tell him we were slaves of Pharaoh and Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand Before our eyes. 00:27:21.507 --> 00:27:33.538 The Lord did signs and wonders, great and terrible, on Egypt and Pharaoh and his whole household, but he brought us out from there to bring us in and to give us the land he promised and oath to our ancestors. 00:27:33.538 --> 00:27:42.599 The Lord commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the Lord so that we may always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today. 00:27:42.599 --> 00:27:47.297 And if we are careful to obey the law before the Lord, our God, he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness. 00:27:47.297 --> 00:27:52.517 He basically they said when your kids come to you and say, dad, why do I have to obey all these things? 00:27:52.517 --> 00:27:56.605 Why do I have to pay attention to these rules and these stipulations? 00:27:57.667 --> 00:27:58.912 He says you were rescued. 00:27:58.912 --> 00:28:02.682 That's why you were redeemed. 00:28:02.682 --> 00:28:05.990 You were brought out, you were given new life. 00:28:05.990 --> 00:28:15.193 All the benefits of life that we have promised to us, that are given to us, are given to us because we have a Savior, we have a God who rescued us. 00:28:15.193 --> 00:28:16.847 This is why we do. 00:28:16.847 --> 00:28:20.576 It is because we have been given a new life, a new way to live. 00:28:20.576 --> 00:28:40.605 So in order for this belief and these affections, in order for love to be created in our heart, we need to be reminded of the stories of Jesus, we need to enter into the stories of Jesus. 00:28:43.875 --> 00:28:46.605 Robert Weber says this we are the people of the Christ event. 00:28:46.605 --> 00:28:59.605 The church now lives on the earth between the historic saving event of the death and resurrection and the future coming of Christ, when the transformation of the world will be complete. 00:28:59.605 --> 00:29:04.605 The church has been entrusted with the meaning of all time. 00:29:04.605 --> 00:29:09.755 The world does not know the meaning of its own history, but the church does. 00:29:09.755 --> 00:29:19.176 Through the discipline of the Christian year, the church proclaims the meaning of time and the history of the world. 00:29:19.176 --> 00:29:29.557 This is, we are the ones who know the truth about time and history, from the beginning to the end. 00:29:29.557 --> 00:29:34.455 We are the ones that inform what Christmas is all about. 00:29:34.455 --> 00:29:39.465 We are the ones who inform what Easter is all about, why? 00:29:39.465 --> 00:29:53.318 Because it exists, because it includes, or it was started by, the recognition, the observance of the life of Christ, the death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ and the ascension of Christ. 00:29:53.318 --> 00:30:02.304 You know, one of the things that we understand, that we see here, is that all of this includes time. 00:30:03.352 --> 00:30:04.058 What is a calendar? 00:30:04.058 --> 00:30:04.565 It's time. 00:30:04.565 --> 00:30:06.605 What happened in the beginning? 00:30:06.605 --> 00:30:10.795 One of the first things that God created or established was time. 00:30:10.795 --> 00:30:12.797 He said let there be light. 00:30:12.797 --> 00:30:15.390 And there was light In the evening, in the morning. 00:30:15.390 --> 00:30:17.255 It was the first day, so there's time. 00:30:17.255 --> 00:30:20.605 He established a sign in the moon to create time. 00:30:20.605 --> 00:30:25.585 After seven days of working, he created the seventh day. 00:30:25.585 --> 00:30:30.957 The seventh day was where he established the Sabbath, a seven day week. 00:30:30.957 --> 00:30:38.356 So already he is establishing the way that we measure the existence of time that we live in. 00:30:38.356 --> 00:30:41.451 And then we have the years. 00:30:41.451 --> 00:30:43.751 You can look at the moon or you have months. 00:30:43.751 --> 00:30:44.494 You can look at the moon. 00:30:44.494 --> 00:30:48.355 I mean, even peoples have called it so many moons ago. 00:30:49.105 --> 00:31:06.605 So there's reference to the way that he ordained this cosmic clock to keep time in a way in which we also are able to measure the things in our lives and the amount of time that the sun revolves and goes around the earth. 00:31:06.605 --> 00:31:11.457 I mean the earth goes around the sun. 00:31:11.457 --> 00:31:25.585 All of these things are this, like I said, a cosmic clock that help us understand the way that God intended for us to understand and know time, and we are the masters of that time. 00:31:25.585 --> 00:31:29.972 We are to understand and know how that time is to operate. 00:31:29.972 --> 00:31:35.605 So it helps us. 00:31:36.326 --> 00:31:46.605 And, matter of fact, if you go back to the Old Testament, you will see that the Old Testament calendar, the Jewish calendar, was built around the saving events of God. 00:31:46.605 --> 00:32:06.253 There were certain festivals and feasts and sacrifices that had to be made at different times throughout the year so that they would understand and know the important things that they shouldn't forget, that they would remember who God is and what he had done for them, the most significant of them being the Passover. 00:32:06.253 --> 00:32:16.079 And it's interesting that God clearly articulated for them this is how you're to observe the Passover, so that you remember who you were and where you came from. 00:32:16.079 --> 00:32:24.038 And when Jesus came to earth and the night before he was betrayed, he was taking the Passover. 00:32:24.038 --> 00:32:39.115 And in this Passover meal that the people of God had observed for centuries, he picks up the piece of bread that they've always understood to be the body of the lamb and he says this is my body, which is broken for you. 00:32:39.115 --> 00:32:46.157 This is my blood, which is the blood with the wine was to represent the blood of the lamb. 00:32:46.157 --> 00:32:48.573 This is my blood which is spilt for you. 00:32:48.573 --> 00:32:53.007 Do this, in what Remembrance of me? 00:32:53.007 --> 00:33:30.053 There is an engagement even in just a moment, we're gonna come up here and we're gonna take the table and we're gonna physically walk and we're gonna physically gauge, we're gonna get the broken bread and we're gonna taste it and we're gonna eat it, and we're gonna engage in the retelling of the story, even on Sundays I don't know, I know I've mentioned this before and I've said it before, but just to make you aware of it, every Sunday the arc of our worship service is shaped around the story of the gospel, the call to worship. 00:33:30.113 --> 00:33:34.675 Just as God spoke light into darkness, he speaks light into our darkened hearts. 00:33:34.675 --> 00:33:45.378 And so we remember, we reimagine, we re-understand God speaking and initiating his word into our life, and we respond to that. 00:33:45.378 --> 00:33:46.575 So there's the call to worship. 00:33:46.575 --> 00:33:56.799 We come in confession because once we acknowledge that God is as great and as awesome as he really is, we can't do anything else but say what Isaiah said. 00:33:56.799 --> 00:33:57.531 And woe is me. 00:33:57.531 --> 00:34:02.936 I am undone, I'm a man of unclean lips and I live in a people of unclean lips. 00:34:02.936 --> 00:34:08.173 And so we have to respond in confession, in humility to God. 00:34:08.173 --> 00:34:13.916 But then he grants us and he assures us in Jesus Christ, you are forgiven, now go and live this way. 00:34:13.916 --> 00:34:24.753 And so then we follow, we go from the fall, or we go from creation to the fall, to the redemption that is proclaimed to us through the assurance of our forgiveness and then the restoration. 00:34:24.753 --> 00:34:26.914 How are we to live now that this is true? 00:34:26.914 --> 00:34:29.536 And so we hear the preaching of the word of God? 00:34:29.536 --> 00:34:42.597 So every Sunday we feel the arc of the story of the gospel, and then we come up here and we engage in it, in the story of the gospel, as we remember the broken body and the spilt blood. 00:34:46.989 --> 00:34:53.257 The very Robert Weber goes on to say the very nature of the church is defined by the saving deeds of God in Christ. 00:34:53.257 --> 00:35:03.938 The church, as an extension of Jesus in the world, is called to be an incarnational embodiment of Jesus way of being. 00:35:03.938 --> 00:35:16.958 It is not just another institution in the world, although it allows itself to degenerate into that on occasion, but it is a sign of the historic redemption of the coming kingdom. 00:35:16.958 --> 00:35:28.099 The church witnesses to God's saving deeds not only by its very existence in the world, but also by its worship which animates its life. 00:35:28.099 --> 00:35:34.717 We can become there's two sides of this. 00:35:34.717 --> 00:35:41.757 We can say that all the practices and the rituals and the traditions of the church that many different churches practice. 00:35:41.757 --> 00:35:43.114 That just gets too traditional. 00:35:43.114 --> 00:35:46.099 It's all a bunch of ritualism, it's not true belief. 00:35:46.099 --> 00:35:52.496 Or we can go to the opposite side and say true belief is only experienced in these traditions and in these ways. 00:35:52.989 --> 00:35:59.615 The reality is that God made us physical human beings to engage and to understand. 00:35:59.615 --> 00:36:00.653 I'm drinking water right here. 00:36:00.653 --> 00:36:03.193 Right, I'm a physical human being. 00:36:03.193 --> 00:36:04.436 I need water. 00:36:04.436 --> 00:36:14.956 We look around and we sense things, we crave things, we desire things, and so the world that we live in was designed for us to enjoy and to immerse ourselves in. 00:36:14.956 --> 00:36:17.034 And we understand. 00:36:17.034 --> 00:36:21.621 Like I said before, we understand our lives and through the narratives that we believe. 00:36:21.621 --> 00:36:31.980 But because it's so easy to forget who we are and what we are all about, we need to enter into the big story. 00:36:31.980 --> 00:36:36.318 Now, how do we choose which stories are important? 00:36:37.610 --> 00:36:50.050 Well, I will just say this the historic church has practiced the calendar for many, many centuries, and so they, as they have developed what the church calendar is and how they go about it. 00:36:50.050 --> 00:36:59.367 They have chosen to specifically connect with and engage with those times where God has interacted with us. 00:36:59.367 --> 00:37:11.246 Think of it the longing of the advent, hoping and longing for the world that is broken to one day have its savior come, its rescuer come. 00:37:11.246 --> 00:37:15.304 And so Jesus come. 00:37:15.304 --> 00:37:25.389 As he puts on flesh, god takes on human flesh and comes into our world and lives, and so we celebrate the joy of that particular moment. 00:37:25.389 --> 00:37:38.250 We celebrate the joy of the incarnation, when God, who was separated from us from the beginning of time, when man sinned, when God took on human flesh and once again entered into our world. 00:37:38.250 --> 00:37:42.568 We celebrate his life and how he lived out everything, the way that we failed to live. 00:37:42.568 --> 00:38:01.280 He did everything perfectly and over and over and over, was identified as the promised one, as the Christ, as the Messiah, as the savior, and he declared that of himself and he was declared that by God and he identified the connection that he had with the Old Testament prophets. 00:38:01.280 --> 00:38:06.739 And then he goes and he's crucified, he's betrayed and he's crucified. 00:38:06.739 --> 00:38:07.827 All these things prophesied. 00:38:07.827 --> 00:38:22.269 So he dies on the cross, he rises again from the dead and again you might say I know this, but we need to enter into that so that we feel it, so that we understand it. 00:38:22.371 --> 00:38:25.947 And there are ways that we do it our own way. 00:38:25.947 --> 00:38:28.773 It's not always bad, there are times. 00:38:28.773 --> 00:38:30.199 Just I mean, you think about it. 00:38:30.199 --> 00:38:31.525 There's Christmas tree. 00:38:31.525 --> 00:38:36.360 There's a Christmas tree In my house right now and there's even a presence under the tree. 00:38:36.360 --> 00:38:42.706 Yesterday my mother-in-law already sent presents and you're wondering what's inside there. 00:38:42.706 --> 00:38:43.068 I don't know. 00:38:43.068 --> 00:38:51.230 I can't wait for whatever is inside there to be revealed, for it to be here, and then when I know when I open that there's going to be great joy. 00:38:53.496 --> 00:39:04.996 We find ways of anticipation and being able to experience life in a way that helps us to reimagine what it was like to wait for the coming Messiah. 00:39:04.996 --> 00:39:10.777 I love the way that CS Lewis does it and the wine, the witch and the wardrobe he creates. 00:39:10.777 --> 00:39:15.269 I mean they enter into Narnia where there's just cold, it's always winter but never Christmas. 00:39:15.269 --> 00:39:18.460 It's been this way for 100 years. 00:39:18.460 --> 00:39:28.262 But then, as the prophecies become, start being fulfilled and there's word that Aslan is on the move, he's coming. 00:39:28.262 --> 00:39:30.557 Everything starts to melt away and spring comes. 00:39:30.557 --> 00:39:34.940 Father Christmas even arrives and brings gifts. 00:39:34.940 --> 00:39:47.230 It's a way of being able to reimagine and understand that the story of redemption that we live inside of is the most compelling and the most amazing story that we understand. 00:39:47.891 --> 00:39:55.454 So the church calendar engages our senses, and not just our minds, but every part of us. 00:39:55.454 --> 00:40:11.594 The church calendar helps us to stimulate our imagination, it helps arouse our affections, and so, as we enter into this, I just want to encourage us as we enter into this new season. 00:40:11.594 --> 00:40:37.646 The way that we plan out our services, the way that we follow the year, the church calendar, all of these things are things that are intended for you, for your love to grow deeper toward God, deeper toward one another, for your affections to be engaged with who he is and what we have called to be, what we are called to be through Christ. 00:40:37.646 --> 00:40:49.760 I'm not going to go through and tell you all the things about Advent and why Advent is what it is and Christmas I've already alluded to so much of that. 00:40:49.760 --> 00:40:57.032 But as we go into and start next week and as we go through the four weeks of Advent, we're going to have candles up here. 00:40:57.032 --> 00:40:59.025 We'll light candles. 00:40:59.179 --> 00:41:07.487 We'll do a particular liturgy that we never do throughout the year, but we do it during the Advent Because as we light each candle, the glow of the light gets brighter and brighter. 00:41:07.487 --> 00:41:19.434 Just as the light of Christ came into the world, so it's our way of reimagining, through this tradition and this ritual, the coming of the light of Christ into our world. 00:41:19.434 --> 00:41:33.648 And we'll celebrate on a dark night here, christmas Eve, as we prepare for the light to come on Christmas Day, the coming of Christ, engage in these things, lean into them. 00:41:33.648 --> 00:41:45.454 The where we will go wrong is where we get all caught up in these traditions and these rituals and we forget about Jesus. 00:41:45.454 --> 00:42:05.054 That's where we go wrong and that's why we have to do what we do in worship through the context of the gathered body of Christ, through His ordained people, so that our hearts and our minds can continue to be stirred toward Jesus. 00:42:05.054 --> 00:42:08.369 Our hearts are affected by Jesus. 00:42:08.440 --> 00:42:20.385 Now, did we put the liturgy in the slides by chance that I had given no OK, I'd sent a liturgy that I was going to have us respond to, but I'm going to read it for us. 00:42:20.385 --> 00:42:34.746 There's a man who has written liturgies for every part of our life, the days of our lives, that we things that are ordinary things in our lives, and I wanted to conclude with this, so I'm going to read it for us. 00:42:34.746 --> 00:42:51.773 This particular liturgy is called a Liturgy to Mark the Start of the Christmas Season, and so I want to read this for us together, and I want this to serve as the beginning of our church as we enter into this new season. 00:42:51.773 --> 00:42:59.972 So listen as I read as we prepare our houses for the coming Christmas season, we would also prepare our hearts for the returning Christ. 00:42:59.972 --> 00:43:07.090 You came once for your people, o Lord, and you will come for us again. 00:43:07.090 --> 00:43:18.630 Though there was no room in the inn to receive you on your first arrival, we would prepare you room here in our hearts and here in our homes. 00:43:19.331 --> 00:43:29.853 Lord Christ, as we decorate and celebrate, we do so to mark the memory of your redemptive movement into our broken world. 00:43:29.853 --> 00:43:58.215 O God, our glittering ornaments and Christmas trees, our festive carols and sumptuous feasts by these small tokens we affirm that something amazing has happened in time and space that God, on a particular night, in a particular place so many years ago, was born to us, an infant king, our prince of peace. 00:43:58.215 --> 00:44:09.929 Our wreaths and ribbons and colored lights, our giving of gifts, our parties with friends, these have never been ends in themselves. 00:44:09.929 --> 00:44:19.974 They are but small ways in which we repeat the sounding joy first proclaimed by the angels on the skies near Bethlehem. 00:44:19.974 --> 00:44:43.052 In view of such great tidings of love announced to us and to all people, how can we not be moved to praise and celebrate in this Christmas season as we decorate our tree and as we feast and laugh and sing together, we are rehearsing the coming joy. 00:44:43.052 --> 00:44:50.791 We are making ready to receive the one who has already, with opened arms, received us. 00:44:50.791 --> 00:44:56.009 We would prepare you room here in our hearts and here in our homes. 00:44:56.108 --> 00:45:04.192 Lord Christ, now we celebrate your first coming, emmanuel, even as we long for your return. 00:45:04.192 --> 00:45:07.023 Oh, prince of peace, our elder brother, return soon. 00:45:07.023 --> 00:45:08.346 We miss you. 00:45:08.346 --> 00:45:27.208 So Amen, god, I pray that you would help us, help your church, as we enter into this story, as we are reminded of your word, reminded of the truth of the gospel. 00:45:27.208 --> 00:45:55.695 Help us to help our affections to be stirred, for our loves to be stoked towards you, and help us to be changed more and more into the way that you desire us to be, that we would be recreated into the image of Christ through the rhythms, through the rituals and through the truths of this year. 00:45:55.695 --> 00:45:58.072 God, I pray these things in Christ's name, amen.