Modern Worship | November 29, 2025 | Resurrection Online

34:50 And every year I enjoy hearing it sung on Candlelight Christmas Eve. It happens after the sermon and before the passing of the candlelight. And because I've been here 35 years, this will be my 36th Christmas Eve as your pastor. and I often will have eight or nine services that I preach and I've heard it over 200 times. It's etched in my memory and on my heart and the words and the melody, they just touch me. And so today we're going to kick off a series of sermons for Advent in which we're going to look at the Advent message through the lens of that song, through its lyrics, its music, and we're going to learn a little bit about the song today. We're going to learn a little history about Israel today, a little history of France, and then we're going to try to ask what is this message of Advent about hope and the message we hear from the book of Isaiah. What does it mean to us today? How does it speak to us today? I want to begin, however, by mentioning, as we said at the beginning of the service, some of you weren't here yet, the word Advent comes from the Latin adventus. It means arrival or coming. And we got that name for this season of preparation and, you know, reflecting and getting ourselves ready for the celebration of the birth of Christ and for His second coming from the Romans. So, the Romans, when the Roman emperor would travel across the empire and would go to a far-flung place in the empire to visit the people there. They called that his Adventus. They spoke about this as a special occasion. It was the Adventus of the emperor, and the people would get ready. You can imagine if the Roman emperor was coming to your town, you would paint all the houses, you would clean the streets, you would make sure all the garbage was swept away, you would prepare special celebrations and meals, and the townspeople would do their best to show off the best of their town because the emperor was coming.

36:24 If the emperor had gone away in a long period of time, maybe he'd led people in battle. And when he came back in the city of Rome, it would be known as the Adventus of the emperor. He would come back and they would celebrate that. And again, getting ready for the coming of the emperor. And even coins were struck sometimes in honor of the emperor's adventus to their town. Let me just show you one of these coins. This one is one that I own. This is a coin, this is Philip I. And this is from, excuse me, 244 AD. and the emperor here, and on the backside, you can see the emperor, and always the Adventist coins had the emperor on a horse riding back into town. He's got his hand upraised, waving to the people, and you can see it says across the top, Adventus, and then Og for Augustus. So this is the advent or the coming of the emperor. When Christians began saying, well, what should we call this season where we're preparing for the coming of Christ to celebrate anew his first coming and to prepare ourselves for a second coming, they said, well, he is our emperor.

37:20 He is our king. And so this is the, you know, this season should be Advent. It's the Adventus of Christ. And so this is about preparing, getting ready, our hearts prepared for the celebration of the Christ. All right, so when I think about this song, Oh Holy Night, I tell you, every Christmas Eve, I wait for it. I look forward to it. When we first began the church, it was a man named David Roberts would sing it every year. And more recently, it's Dr. Cameron Smith, who's one of our members. And last year, I just was waiting, you know, for him to, and he steps up, and the musicians begin to move their music around and they get ready. And this is what it was like in one of our services last year. Just the first verse, take a listen. Holy night The stars are brightly shining It is the night of our dear singer's birth.

38:24 Let's begin with a little history of the song itself. And by the way, if you're interested in taking notes, there's a little sermon note card in the seat back of the chair in front of you. And if there's anything you want to write down, grab that and write it down. So the song was written by a man named Placide Capot. And Placide Capot was a Frenchman. he had been, there he is right there, he wrote it in 1847, we think. It might have been, some say the lyrics were written in 1843. I think it was probably 1847. The song, certainly, the music was written in 1847, and it was performed for the very first time Christmas Eve, 1847. But Placide Capot was a, he was trained, he grew up in southern France, and that's where he lived most of his life. He went to Paris for education. He was trained as an artist, and then also trained in law. He was certified to practice law. But he came back to his hometown, and he became a wine merchant. And so he sold wine. But what he really loved was writing poetry. And the local parish priest in the Catholic Church knew that he liked writing poetry. And he said, Placide, would you be willing to write a Christmas song for us for the Midnight Mass this Christmas Eve? And he said, I'd be happy to do that. And so he wrote this lovely poem. It was not originally called O Holy Night. That's from the English translation of 1855. But in 1847, it was called Midnight Christians.

39:32 and that was setting off the song about what's happening at midnight on that particular Christmas Eve, 1847. Now, once he'd written the song, he approached one of his friends, Adolph Adam, and Adolph Adam was a composer who actually composed and produced, he produced opera and he produced ballet in Paris. And so he wrote the tune that you know, the Holy Night tune. And together they had created a hit. That Christmas Eve, it was sung for the first time by a female opera singer in that Catholic church. and the rest is in some sense history. That song from there spread across France. It became a national song for many of the French people. Then it was outlawed eventually by the Catholic Church. We'll talk more about that in a couple of weeks. But in America, it found a huge audience in America as well. And we'll understand why next week or the week after that, why it was so popular in America. In any case, that's a little of the background to the song in terms of when it was written, but that's really not what I want you to know.

40:29 I want you to know that in 1847, this was a year of, well, a revolutionary spirit across France. And by that, I mean a spirit of wanting to revolt against the leadership of France, the king of France. And France had gone through multiple revolutions since 1789. So 1789, the French Revolution, through 1799, you'll remember that Marie Antoinette, the queen, and King Louis XVI were both beheaded, and that was the end of the monarchy. Napoleon Bonaparte becomes the emperor then of France for a period of time, leads France into wars, multiple wars of conquest. And so the French are now conquering people. And then he's defeated in battle. And now the monarchy is restored. And there's one King Louis XVIII, I think it was, and then King Charles after that. And then in July of 1830, the French people had had enough. And they said, we don't want kings anymore. And they overthrew the monarchy and King Charles abdicated, went into exile, and they wanted a republic. But instead, they got another king.

41:29 This king's name was Louis-Philippe, and you see his picture here. So he's going to reign for 18 years, starting in 1830. Now, they get another king, and they find after a couple years, they're not very happy with him either. So there's another revolt in 1832. In 1832, it only lasted for a couple of months, and this is the revolt. If you've ever seen or read Les Mis, It's the 1832 revolt. Just two years after King Louis-Philippe had become king, the people rebelled. And that rebellion was put down. And if you remember the story of Les Mis, it ends with the rebellion being put down. And so Louis-Philippe continues to reign for another 16 years after that. By the 1840s, conditions in France are terrible for some people. For some people, they were awesome. The very rich were getting richer, and they were doing quite well. and the poor were getting poorer and further and further disenfranchised. At that time, only one in 170 men could vote in France, so most people didn't have a vote and they were frustrated by that and there were other things they were frustrated by as well.

42:28 The French king and the government were indifferent to the needs of workers and the working class and poor. The wealthy, however, seemed to be favored. There was financial crisis after financial crisis. There was bad harvests, the result of blights and droughts. There were dramatically higher food prices because of protectionism, which kept people from being able to import cheaper goods. And that led to hundreds of food riots in 1847, 1846 and 1847. So all of this is going on, and this is what's happening exactly when this carol is being written. And what people are saying is, we want another king, or we want someone else, or we want to get rid of these guys, and maybe somebody else is going to come in and make it right. And this was happening not just in France, it was happening all across Europe. So that one philosopher noted in France, we are sleeping together in a volcano. No, a wind of revolution blows. The storm is on the horizon. By the way, two years before the song was written, it was when Victor Hugo began writing Les Mis and describing the conditions in which somebody had to steal in order to have a loaf of bread to feed their family, and others had to prostitute themselves in order to survive.

43:26 I mean, this is what's going on. Charles Dickens is writing at the same time, you know, his Christmas carol about poverty, and later on, you know, the tale of two cities, and all these other stories about the horrible conditions in both England and in France and other parts of Europe. So one last little thing I want to tell you about these revolutions. So O Holy Night was written when this is going on, and when people began to sing this song after that first Christmas Eve, it was because it pointed to some deep truth that they needed to know. And what the writers, the composer of this song, and the writer of the song were trying to say is, yes, we all are yearning for that holy night for a different kind of king. We're tired of the kings we have, and we're looking for somebody who will bring justice to us, somebody who will help us to find light and love, and not what we're living under right now, under this repressive regimes. I wanna show you, this is a map of 1848 and 1849, and this is Europe, and all of these countries where you see red went through revolutions.

44:21 So they all overthrew their kings or tried to. I'll just show you some examples. This is 1848. This is about a month and a half after the song was sung on Christmas Eve in 1847, and this is the revolt in Paris, another image of the revolution in Paris. This is in Hungary, 1849. This is the Serbian Revolution of 1848. This is Copenhagen, 1848. This is Stockholm, 1848. This is Belgium. This is King Leopold offering to resign his crown to those who were revolting against him. This is, again, the barricades in Paris, 1848. The uprising in Prague. This is the throne room of the Tuileries Palace was seized, and the rebels are standing on top of the throne in Paris. You get the idea here that there was a whole lot of spirit of, you know, what's happening is horrible, and we've got to have something different. But what the song acknowledges is, you know, you can get another king, and it's going to be the same story eventually with the next one. So they overthrew in 1848. King Louis-Philippe was forced to abdicate, moved into exile, and they got Napoleon Bonaparte III. And he's going to reign for, I don't know, 20 years or something. And it's the same song, different verse.

45:29 And so the song was pointing out the fact that we have a yearning for a king, but a different kind of king than we've ever had before. All right, the first verse in the French. So if you read the song, a literal translation from the French, it sounds different than what we're used to singing. The ideas are there, but in 1855, there was a sort of looser translation, which is what we know. But here's the first verse in the French, translated more literally in English. Midnight Christians is the solemn hour when God as man descended unto us to erase the original stain and to end the wrath of his father. That is to get rid of original sin and all of its consequences and wars and oppression and injustice. The whole world thrills with hope on this night that gives it a savior. Kneel, people, await your deliverance. Christmas, Christmas, the Redeemer is here. And you hear the idea that until we've addressed the problem, the root problems in us, we're going to continue to see the same thing happen over and over. And you can revolt and revolt and revolt, and you're going to find it happening again. By the way, I thought you might enjoy hearing what it sounds like when it's sung in French, and so you're going to hear just the first verse sung by the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli. Take a listen.

46:43 It's what you're making. I just noticed the translation underneath is the English translation, but not of those words. They just put the one we know. But in any case, 1848, a year of revolutions, Europe saying we needed a different kind of king. Now, just as the French were continually disappointed in their kings, you know, we find here in America, we experience the same thing. So every four years, we elect a new president. This last time, half of the people liked this guy and wanted him, and half of the people weren't sure they wanted him. And some of the people who elected him have been a little disappointed, and some of the people who elected him think he's great and doing a great job, and they still put their hope in him. Before that, it was Joe Biden, and it was roughly half the people who voted for him, and roughly half the people who didn't vote for him.

47:39 And some people were excited, and some people were disappointed. Before that, it was Barack Obama. Oh, actually, Donald Trump. and then before that, Barack Obama. And there's not a president who's going to perfectly fulfill the hopes and dreams of people in America because no human being can actually do that. It requires someone more than just an earthly president. So just as the French were continually disappointed in their kings, so were the ancient Israelites. So you go back at history. Now I want to teach you a little biblical history. And as we go back in time, I want to remind you that Israel was founded as a nation state with its first king in about 1020 to 1030 BC. All right? And so up to that point, they were a tribal confederation and God was their king. But the people began to say, we want a king with skin, God. We want somebody we can see. You know, give us a king like everybody else has. And so God reluctantly gave them a king. His name was Saul. And he started off okay. And then after a short time, he turned away from God and continued to wage wars, oppress his own people, and he was killed in battle.

48:36 So God gave them another king. His name was David. David was the ideal king for Israel in many ways. he reigned for 40 years. And David, as he reigned, he wrote psalms to God. He was a lover of God, and he was a lover of people. And he sought to do justice and do the right things until he didn't. And then he began to oppress his people and did some horrible things to some of his people. And then after he died came King Solomon, his son. And Solomon started off well. He started off with, you know, with wisdom. And when he prayed to God, he said, I want wisdom, not power and wealth. But eventually he came to find the lure of power and wealth was just too much. And he again began to oppress his people. So by the time you get to the end of his reign, around 930 BC, the people who were living in the northern part of Israel said, we will not tolerate his son to be our king, and they revolted. And so there was, in essence, a civil war, but it was a bloodless civil war. And the northern tribes of Israel separated themselves from the southern tribes. Let me just show you what this looks like on a map. So let's see, there we go. So this is the little kingdom of Israel.

49:36 and this is what happens when Solomon's son tries to rule. Because of Solomon's oppression, all of these folks in the north rebelled and they became their own country. They continued to call themselves Israel. And in the south where they lived under the reign of Solomon's son, they became Judah. Judah had its capital in Jerusalem and Israel in Samaria. Let me just show you on a satellite image. So just to remind you, here's the Mediterranean Sea. This is today the country of Jordan. Here's the Sea of Galilee. The Jordan River flows into the Dead Sea down here. And this was the northern kingdom of Israel. and this was the southern king, actually comes right over here, the southern kingdom of Judah. So from this time on, they have multiple kings. And if you read 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles in the Bible, it's a report of all these kings. And so there are 42 kings starting with Saul going all the way to 586 BC when the southern kingdom of Judah was destroyed. The northern kingdom of Israel was destroyed in 722, southern kingdom in 586 BC. So you have 42 kings who ruled during that period of time, either together or over the north and the south.

50:37 You know how many of them were good kings? So they have this formula. It says, and this king did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and this king did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Here's the ratio. 37 evil kings to five good kings. All right, and even the good kings weren't so good. And so what you find is again and again, the people were disenchanted by their kings, disillusioned, disappointed in the kings that they had. So prophets would rise up, and the prophets, when they would rise up, would begin to speak to the kings, and the primary things they did wrong is they practiced idolatry. They followed the other gods or did the things that God didn't want them to do, and they oppressed their people. They practiced injustice or tolerated it. And so again and again, the prophets rise up, and they begin to say to the kings, if you keep doing this, God's going to remove his protection from you, and terrible things are going to happen. The big empires are going to gobble you up. They're going to destroy you, and sometimes they would repent, and sometimes they wouldn't. And eventually, after enough warnings, these other empires would come and destroy the people. They destroyed the kingdom. Let me just show you on this map. So here's an image of the Near East. And this is, of course, the Euphrates River here and the Tigris River here.

51:43 And this is the Assyrian Empire in 722. And they come over and they wipe out the northern kingdom of Israel. And they leave the southern kingdom of Judah, but make them pay a heavy tribute. and then let me just erase those lines and I'll show you in 586 BC here's still the Euphrates here's the Tigris River and now the Babylonians have conquered the Assyrians and they come over and they wipe out the southern kingdom of Judah I'll show you a little more is biblical history then the Persians who live over here come over and they wipe out the Babylonians and they tell the Jewish people they can go back home and re-establish their state and that happens in 538 BC anyway more than you wanted to know but these are really important things when you're reading the Bible, because these historical events shape everything that you find in the scriptures. All right, so when the prophets were speaking up during these times of challenge and the time when the empires were invading and the times when there was injustice going on, they would say, what you're doing is wrong and there's consequences, but one day God will raise up a king, an ideal king. And so they began to describe that ideal king, and these became known as the messianic prophecies. They would offer a prophecy about a Messiah, an anointed king sent from God.

52:53 And what you heard a few moments ago was from Isaiah chapter 9. And in Isaiah chapter 9, the Assyrians have come and they have conquered or are about to conquer the northern kingdom of Israel. And they're on the doorstep of the people of Judah. And God says to the people of Judah, you don't have to be afraid. I'm going to protect you for now as long as you keep trying to follow me. And then God says to the prophet Isaiah, here's what an ideal king would look like. The people, he says, who walked in darkness have seen a great light. So you're terrified and afraid and the people in the north have been obliterated. But the people walking in darkness have seen a great light. Those who lived in a land of deep darkness, on them light has shined. For a child has been born for us, a son given to us. Authority rests upon his shoulders, and his name is Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom and he will establish and uphold it with justice, that is fairness and righteousness, that is compassion for the poor and those who are in need, with justice and righteousness from this time onward and forevermore.

53:57 This is one of dozens of messianic prophecies, prophecies about a Messiah, an anointed king who would come from God, who would live the way God wanted them to live and lead the people the way God wanted them to lead. This is this ideal, this beautiful idea of what should be. and the prophets say someday, someday this will happen. And the people wait. O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel. They wait generation after generation. And that takes us to Christmas. So actually nine months before Christmas, the Annunciation to Mary, the angel Gabriel shows up in a little town of Nazareth, which is where the poor people live, outside of the wealthier town of Zipporah, not far away. And he comes to a young woman. She's probably 14 years old. 13 or 14 is when a young woman married at that time after she'd begun her first period. And so he comes to this young woman, and he says to her, Mary, you've been chosen by God, and you're gonna bear the Messiah.

54:54 And she says, how is this possible? And he says, the Holy Spirit will come upon you. The power of the Most High will overshadow you. And that which is conceived in you will be from the Holy Spirit. Therefore, he will be called the Son of God, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. And you remember on the night that he was born, the angels began to sing. They began to sing glory to God in the highest heaven on earth. What? Peace upon all those where his favor rests. The wise men came from the east to see this newborn king. There was a different kind of king that would come. So King Herod ruled over the Jewish people and he was a horrible king. And Augustus Caesar ruled over the empire in Rome. and sent his troops to occupy the land of the Jewish people and would ultimately, the Romans would ultimately murder a million Jews or more by the end of the century. But there was a newborn king who came, who captured all of the hopes and dreams put forward by the prophets.

55:52 All right, so Jesus, I'm going to fast forward 30 years, I'm going to go to his first sermon in Nazareth, his hometown. And you remember, this is what he said. He quotes from Isaiah the prophet, and he says this, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me. That's the word for Messiah. He has anointed me to bring, what? Good news to the poor. He has simply proclaimed release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. He was a very different kind of king. So when he came, you know, his throne was a crown of thorns, right? He was glorified. He was enthroned on a cross. Before that, he went and spent most of his time with people who were broken or alienated or disenfranchised or people who were made to feel small and insignificant. He was concerned for the poor and the people who felt like they didn't have a place anymore. And he was constantly showing mercy and grace to people. And then he called his followers to be a part of a kingdom, a kingdom that resided in the heart, not with any earthly boundaries. And he called them to conquer, not with weapons, but instead with the power of love. Love even your enemies, he said. And this became his message, this call to love. And he is the source of our hope. Not President Trump, not President Biden, not whoever comes next, not Congress, not the Supreme Court. They're not the source of our hope.

57:11 They're just broken people like us. But the source of our hope is Jesus. And the hope we have in him isn't that he's going to instantaneously make everything okay. It's that he's going to walk with us in the darkness. That somehow he has the capacity to redeem the darkness and force something good to come from it, that he's called us to live as his light in the world, to take hope into the world and to push back the darkness as citizens of his kingdom. He is the source of our hope. The French wouldn't find hope in Napoleon Bonaparte III. No, it was a king born in a stable who led a revolution of the heart, who brought mercy and compassion and care for people, who laid down his life for his subjects. All right, so when I think about what this looks like for us, he's called us to be ambassadors of hope. If you are a follower of Jesus, you are a follower of this crucified king, he's asked you, he said, these are your marching orders, is in part to be ambassadors of hope, to be ambassadors of light, to live as I lived in this world, and to bring light to people living in darkness. So I was thinking about that and what that looks like. That doesn't mean when you're bringing hope to somebody that you're saying to somebody who is in a dark place, oh, you know what, it's all going to be fine. It's going to be okay. You're just praying and you're going to make it all better. No, it's in the darkness. I'm here with you. I'm here with you.

58:27 I'm not going to leave you. And together we can stand and somehow we can make it. I was thinking about Colleen Allers. So Colleen and Craig Allers are members of our church. Colleen is a Congregational Care Minister, a CCM. So six or seven years ago, Ron was diagnosed, Ron Harland was diagnosed with cancer. And I shared a little bit of their story a week or two ago. Ron Harlan was diagnosed with cancer, and Colleen was assigned as a CCM. And so she would call upon Ron and his wife, Pat, who passed away just a couple of weeks ago. And then when Pat was diagnosed with dementia 18 months ago, Colleen would continue to call for six years. She's been a friend for these people. She just cared for them and showed up and ministered to them and just blessed them. And at the funeral, we had the funeral last Saturday for Pat, and Ron at the funeral spoke about his wife, but he also said, I want to recognize somebody who's sitting in the room. I want to recognize Colleen Allers and her husband, Craig, who have cared for us and loved us through all of this. And what was interesting is Colleen didn't show up for Ron and Pat and pray and his cancer went away.

59:29 No, she just showed up and said, I'm here and I see you and I care. And somehow that brought light and hope for them. And when Pat was diagnosed with dementia, it was the cards, it was the visits, it was coming by and saying, I love you and I care about you. that brought light and hope into that place of darkness. And that's what we're called to do. I mean, I'm pretty sure every one of you knows, some of you are walking in a dark place right now, and you need other people to come alongside you. But all of us know probably somebody who's in a bit of a dark spot, maybe not a terribly dark place, but a little bit of darkness. This morning, I was awakened at about 4.45 in the morning, thinking about two different people that I needed to reach out to, just to say, and I just felt like God put them on my heart to reach out and say, hey, I just want you to know I'm thinking about you today. I'm praying for you. However I can help, I'm here for you. You know, there's something, I got a note back from one of those people I texted, and she said, you have no idea what that meant to me, that before the sun rose, you'd actually reached out to us to say, you're thinking about me and you're praying for me.

1:00:25 I just felt like my spirit was lifted by knowing that you remembered that we were going through this. But I'm wondering who you remember, or you should be remembering, who's walking in a dark place, who needs you to reach out and just say, hey, I'm here, or to show up, right? It's just sometimes showing up, which is what we saw this last week. So this last week we had, I don't know how many of you, hundreds and hundreds of you who were serving people who were struggling and walking in a dark place. Like earlier in the month, many of you donated groceries. So we had 2,500 families. I want you to catch this. 2,500 families, Thanksgiving meal, including the voucher for their turkeys to go pick up a turkey, came from you. Now I don't know how many people are in an average family, but I'm gonna say at least four, and that's 10,000 people who had a Thanksgiving meal who might not have had a Thanksgiving meal, except you showed up. You went to the grocery store and you bought things and you brought them here and you became hope in a time of darkness for somebody.

1:01:20 And then it wasn't just that 10,000 people who ate, you know, had cooked their own meals that you brought the food for, but it was thousands of other people who you served meals to this last week. And not all of you, there were hundreds of you who signed up, but we only had so many spots and they filled up really fast because people are like, I wanna do that, I wanna do that, I wanna help with that. And so you, you know, you showed up and when you showed up, you showed up to places like Jewish vocational services that gathered together the families that you helped resettle here in Kansas City over the last 10 years, immigrant families who resettled here. And of course, we're not doing this anymore because we can't because immigrants are not coming in. But you resettled families from all over the world and gave to them and cared for them and met them at the airport. And you served a meal to them. And they had a Friendsgiving service. Thanksgiving doesn't mean much to them because the pilgrims don't really matter so much to them. They had a Friendsgiving service, right? And they had a wonderful meal. And you served it. Just bless them, right? And I think about, you know, for the homeless throughout the Kansas City area, there were shelters set up where you went and served meals to the homeless, and you provided packages with, you know, warmth supplies, gloves and coats and all kinds of other things that you shared with people in the Kansas City area.

1:02:21 And I think about Healing House, where there are folks who've been addicts, and, you know, they've come to faith in Christ, and there, you know, you had a chance to bless them and to care for them. I just thought you might enjoy seeing some of the pictures. Many of you sent me pictures this last week. Take a look. You taught us to love you. And his gospel is peace. But shall he break But the slain is a brother And in his name all oppression shall cease Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise me Let all within us praise His holy name.

1:03:20 I love that last picture. Now, you know what? We didn't break all oppression this last week. We didn't save the whole world. We just brought a little hope for people who are walking darkness. And, you know, there's in America something like 300 million people who claim to be followers of Jesus. What happens if we all remember the king that we're serving? And what does it look like if we're going out every day recognizing we are ambassadors of hope and light and pushing back the darkness?

1:03:52 One last story. This week, our granddaughter spent the night with us. She stayed with us because she was out of school and her mom and dad worked. So she stayed with us Sunday night, Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, and then left after Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday. And while she was there, I was working several of those nights, but she has a favorite series. She's in sixth grade. She has a favorite series of novels. These are the Percy Jackson novels. Anybody read those? Any kids in here read those? Okay. So they're stories about, well, the gods, the ancient Greek gods set in the modern world. And they have children who are demigods and where the god and the human came together, you know, a human came together and had babies. And so anyway, these great old stories built on the ancient myths of the Greco-Roman world. And so there's a TV series about this and also some movies, but a TV series. And she said, Papa, watch one of these with me. So I did. I watched one of the shows. It was really a fun show to watch. and when we were finished watching it, I said, you know, Stella, the people used to believe these stories.

1:04:45 This was the dominant religion for a long time in Europe were these stories about Zeus and Poseidon and, you know, all of these others. And I said, you know, this was how they understood the world. And she said, well, Papa, you know, Zeus and the other gods, they were jerks. I said, well, sometimes they were jerks. You know, they were capricious and they got drunk and they sometimes mistreated people and they were cruel. And I said, Stella, this is why I went out of the Jewish people, the story of Jesus, that God became flesh. And instead of being a jerk, he cared for people. He was concerned for the nobodies and the people who were made to feel insignificant and small. And he loved them and he blessed them and he called his followers to love and bless other people. And then he actually laid down his life for his subjects. That was a story that spread across the Roman Empire that people could believe it was a better story. And it's not just a story. It actually happened that God became flesh in Jesus to be a very different kind of king.

1:05:48 So we go back to this verse, the first verse of Holy Night. Truly he taught us to love one another. His law is love, and his gospel is peace. Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother, and in his name all oppression shall cease. Sweet hymns of joy and grateful chorus raise we. Let all within us praise his holy name for Christ is the Lord.

1:06:16 And since that's true, we should ever, ever praise him. His power and glory evermore proclaim. We live in a time not so different from the 1840s in France. And 10 years from now, it'll be not so different from the 1840s in France. and it's not so different from the ancient bronze or the bronze age and the iron age when Israel began to be formed. And what we need is a different kind of king. We'll have presidents, they'll disappoint us. Sometimes we'll celebrate them. But what we need is a different kind of king and a kingdom that's in our hearts that we might live as those who are ambassadors of hope. Let's pray. God, how grateful we are to you for your love and grace and mercy. How you came to us to show us the way, the truth, and the life.

1:07:12 How all of those prophetic words, the hopes and dreams of ancient Israel were met in Christ. And we pray, oh God, that you might give us strength to follow Jesus as our King, to serve him as our Lord, and to bear his hope and light in life to others in our world. And Lord, I pray for every person in this room that we might be, that you might make us mindful of the people in our lives and our sphere of influence who are walking in dark places. And that we might show up for them and be your light and your hope. We ask this in Jesus' name.