Zechariah 8:1-23, Revelation 16:1-21, Psalms 144:1-15, Proverbs 30:29-31
Today is the 25th day of December Merry Christmas everybody welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is great to be here with you. We have worked an entire year to get to this place and now we commemorate with awe and wonder the reality that the Savior has arrived, that God would not tolerate the separation between he and us any longer and He came in person to rescue us. And may we respond with open hearted joy.
Song:
Joy to the world – Hillsong
Joy to the world
The Lord is come
Let Earth receive her King
Let every heart prepare Him room
And heaven and nature sing
And heaven and nature sing
Let heaven, let heaven and nature sing
Let heaven, let heaven and nature sing
Joy to the Earth the Savior
reigns
Let men their songs employ
While fields and floods
Rocks, hills and the plains
Repeat the sounding joy (repeat the sounding joy)
Repeat the sounding joy
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy
Repeat, oh darling, Lord
Repeat, repeat the sound, yeah
Repeat, repeat the sound, yeah
Let the heavens sing
He rules the world (he rules the
world)
With truth and grace
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness
And the wonders of His love
And the wonders of His love
And the wonders, the wonders of His love
And the wonders, the wonders of His love
Joy, joy, joy to the world (his
love)
Joy, joy, joy, singing
Joy, joy, joy to the world (sing it, sing it, sing it, sing it)
Joy, joy, joy, singing
Joy, joy, joy to the world
Joy, joy, joy, singing
Joy, joy, joy to the world
Joy, joy, joy, singing
Singing (singing)
Singing (singing)
Singing joy to the world now
Singing (singing)
Singing (singing)
Joy to the world now (joy to the world now)
Joy to the world now
Joy to the world now
Joy to the world now, now, now, now, now, now, now
Ooh yeah (oh yeah)
To the world
To the world
You reign, You reign, yeah
Joy, joy, joy to the world
Joy, joy, joy, singing
Even though it’s Christmas day, even though there’s a lot going on on Christmas day we have a rhythm here around the Global Campfire and so we should spend a portion of our Christmas day together hearing from God’s word, which is what we’ll do now. We’re reading from the New English Translation this week. Zechariah chapter 8.
Commentary:
Okay. So, today is Christmas day and I don’t know what time of day it is that you might be hearing this. Maybe it’s early morning Christmas morning before everyone’s awake or maybe everybody gets up at dawn and so there’s no time for that and it’s been festivities and now you’ve just kind of found a second to catch her breath. Maybe it’s Christmas night and this is how you’re kind of sealing Christmas, ending Christmas before falling asleep. And it’s been a good…well…it’s been more than a month now that all of the lights and trees and all of the festivities are all over the place all throughout our neighborhoods all throughout our communities. There is no celebration like Christmas. The world over in all of our cultures and customs throughout the earth. Billions and billions of people are observing Christmas for all kinds of different reasons and not all of them are religious, but regardless, everyone that is commemorating and observing Christmas in some sort of way is acknowledging the arrival of God in the flesh. And there is no celebration on earth like it. As Christians we…we might argue that Easter, resurrection day, the day where it is accomplished is more or equally as important. I don’t know. I guess it doesn’t really matter. But Christmas is a day of joy and celebration the world over, and the whole build up to its brings our hearts closer together in unity. We sense goodwill toward people around us in ways that we really don’t the rest of the year. And, so, the world is celebrating today, and we have either got in our cars and traveled across town or across the country to be with loved ones or we’ve gotten on planes. And it was a little more tricky this year than ever before, or maybe people have come into our town and they are with us, our friends, our family. We are surrounded by goodness and yet I know that some of you that I’m speaking to that’s not the story. I’ve learned that over the years. I know that some of you may be together with your spouse, but that's…that’s how you observe Christmas. That’s all there is right now. Or maybe nobody. Some of you are literally…have nobody today. You’re celebrating Christmas physically anyway, alone. I…I kind of grew up with a certain kind of Christmas. My mom she was determined to create a season around Christmas that she never really got to experience. And, so, it was really, really important for her to kind of build up the Christmas spirit. And, so, I just kinda grew up thinking that’s how it was for everyone. It wasn’t until I became older that I began to realize, no, not everybody even has a family. It wasn’t until I got into ministry, especially ministry here at the Daily Audio Bible that I began to realize when we get to December 25th every year it is tremendous and joyous celebration. The church, the capital “C” church around the world, we’re like…we are in full bloom celebrating the arrival of the Savior and it sets an example and sends it out into the world but not everybody is involved. Some have no one and nowhere and that’s always been a bit sad to me. So, every time we get here to the 25th of December here at the Daily Audio Bible certainly we want to jump up and down and celebrate the arrival of the Savior, we want to jump up and down and celebrate, but not everybody gets this traditional type of celebration. And I’ve become more and more aware of that. And, so, each Christmas day that we come to on the Daily Audio Bible I want to acknowledge that. I acknowledge that this time that we’re having around the Global Campfire right now centered around God’s word, knowing that, at least for these moments we’re not alone. Somebody else somewhere is connected to what we’re doing right now. I’ve found that for some of you this is your family Christmas, this is…this is the gathering, and this is one of those moments where I wish that the…I mean I’m so grateful for the Internet because it creates the community that we share but I wish that we could reach through it and actually be together. I guess it was maybe like six or seven years ago when reading through December 25th’s reading of the Daily Audio Bible, and of course we’re reading through the book of Revelation. I’m just reading out God pouring out bowls of wrath upon the earth and all the horrible things that are happening on the earth and earth’s people are suffering tremendously because of this outpouring of wrath and it’s like Christmas day. And I’m realizing that some of us are having joyful celebrations and some of us are completely by ourselves, and I just…I can remember like getting done with that reading and just going, “this doesn’t feel like Christmas.” And I am an introvert and I’m a creative person. And, so, I’ve got a bit of a melancholy personality and…at times…and I can brood and especially if things are disrupted, I can brood. And, so, just kind of brooding realizing that every Christmas always for some reason feels like somethings missing…I don’t know…missing. Even if its perfect somethings missing because I’ve felt like that at Christmas at some point or another long as I can remember. Like that…even today. We have festive joyous celebration with our family and we’re having a wonderful time together but there’ll be a point in the day where I’ll find myself somewhere alone whether I’m going for a walk or just finding a quiet place for just a little while…to let that sink in. And I used to call it like Christmas blues or something like that because…and I know I’m not the only one…and I’m not saying things that nobody else understands. I know that I’m talking to some of you directly, like I’m speaking your language right now. You’re feeling it and you don’t know how…I mean it’s supposed to be joyous and it doesn’t exactly feel that way. It feels like something’s still broken. It was just a handful of years ago, the year my mother died. My mother, she…she lived through Christmas of 2016, but she passed away in the first couple weeks of January 2017. And it was that year…my mom in the hospital…just really having lost…lost any kind of tethering to reality. I’m running back and forth to hospitals seven days a week, keeping the Daily Audio Bible going seven days a week, run in from the hospital, come into the studio reading Christmas days reading feeling the…the fatigue of it all, feeling the blues of it all, and then reading Revelation and the bowls of God’s wrath poured out on the earth and just feeling like this…this doesn’t feel like Christmas. And then I read Revelation again and tried to consider it and the concept of Christmas and then I realized what’s happening in Revelation for our Christmas day reading isn’t God just so angry at people that He’s had enough and wants to destroy them at all. It’s God putting an end to evil. It’s God putting an end to everything that has destroyed us all along. It’s difficult to read of but it’s God putting things right so that all things can become new again. And I realized kind of in that year in that particular reading this is what has to happen. This is why we are told so many times that we must endure until the end. Basically, what we’re reading in Revelation today is that baby Jesus all grown up eradicating the power of sin and death and the grave forever and ever. Amen. So, at least for me when I feel those blues kind of come, this kind of emptiness that something’s not right I realize that all I’m feeling is the longing of my soul. We are in the in between. We can jump up and down and celebrate wildly for the arrival of the Savior, and we should, and we are, but we are in between. We are waiting for the second arrival of the Savior, when all things will be made new and all things will be put right. And in the meantime, everything isn’t right, and we are here to endure and to share the good news and to be a part of the rescue for as long as we can, as long as we live. We are the living story of Christmas all year long through our very lives. It’s not how many lights we can put on our house. It’s how much of a light can shine out of our heart that’s gonna matter. And, so, no matter what’s going on, if you’ve got all kinds of festivities and it’s just crazy out there, if you find a moment to just sit with that to just understand this is the in between, that all things are being made new. We are being made new. The Scriptures have told us this over and over and over throughout this year. We are in process. It’s okay where we are right now. This isn’t where we’re gonna be 12 months from now. Think about Christmas day last year. We had no idea what was on the horizon for 2020. We were going into this year with the idea of seeing clearly and vision and just moving forward and finally getting our legs under us. And this was gonna be a fantastic year and we didn’t realize we were going to face some significant challenges that the world has never really seen before We were gonna find how divided we are. We were gonna get vision alright. The truth was gonna come to us. We were gonna see things as they really were and stop faking, stop pretending they were different than they are. And we got a good dose of reality. Last Christmas 12 months ago today we had no idea. So, in fairness, we have no idea what’s in front of us, which is not a message of ominous things to come. I don’t think that. I never think that. The truth is 12 months ago we did not know what we now know. We had not experienced what we have experienced together as humanity in the world in 2020. We’ve learned a lot, a lot about ourselves, a lot about each other, a lot about our cultures and societies, a lot. We aren’t the same people we were on Christmas day last year and we’re not gonna be the same people 12 months from today on Christmas day next year. We are in process. It’s okay. Because what we read in things like the book of Revelation is, even though there is a profound disruption to the status quo, a complete upheaval of things. The things that are being disrupted have to fall. They have to go away to be replaced by something new. And where this whole story is going is that all things will be made new again. And, so, let’s take some time today on this beautiful celebratory day to certainly enjoy our presents and certainly enjoy giving the presents and O the twinkle in the children’s eyes and the gratefulness and the thankfulness and the beautiful sense of family, yes to all of that. Let’s dive into it completely, but let’s also be aware of the deeper currents of what Christmas represents. This is all going somewhere and that somewhere is good. And, so, I love you guys. This is my 15th Christmas day doing this, being here behind this mic at Daily Audio Bible and I am profoundly grateful for the journey that we’ve been on and are on. And, so, from the bottom of my heart Jill and I wish you all a very, very joyous Merry Christmas.
Song:
O Come, All Ye Faithful
O come, all ye faithful, joyful
and triumphant
O come ye, o come ye to Bethlehem
O come and behold Him, born the King of Angels
O come, let us adore Him
O come, let us adore Him
O come, let us adore Him
Christ the Lord
O come, all ye faithful
O come, all ye faithful
O come, all ye faithful to Bethlehem
O come, all ye faithful
O come, all ye faithful
O come, all ye faithful to Bethlehem
O sing, choirs of angels, sing
in exultation
O come, o come ye to Bethlehem
O Come and behold Him, born the King of Angels
O come, let us adore Him
O come, let us adore Him
O come, let us adore Him
Christ the Lord
O come, all ye faithful
O come, all ye faithful
O come, all ye faithful to Bethlehem
O come, all ye faithful
O come, all ye faithful
O come, all ye faithful to Bethlehem
O come all ye
O come all ye faithful
O come all ye
O come all ye faithful
O come all ye
O come all ye faithful
O come all ye
O come all ye faithful
O come all ye
O come all ye faithful
O come all ye
O come all ye faithful
O come all ye
O come all ye faithful
O come all ye
O come all ye faithful
O come all ye faithful
O come all ye faithful
O come all ye faithful to Bethlehem
O come all ye faithful
O come all ye faithful
O come all ye faithful to Bethlehem
O come all ye faithful
O come all ye faithful
Born the King of Angels
O come, let us adore Him
O come, let us adore Him
O come, let us adore Him
Christ the Lord
O
come all ye faithful
O come all ye faithful
O come all ye faithful to Bethlehem