Matt Chandler - The Incarnate Lord

Hey, just so you know, you may have figured this out from last week. Rather than just attaching Advent to the historic themes, we are walking through the narrative of the Gospel of Luke. Normally, the reading of the Word before I come out is the text I’m using that day, but because certain weekends will have large blocks of text due to the narrative, I didn’t want the kids to have to read like 15 verses. So, you’ll just get that video each week, and in two weeks, it will actually line up perfectly. This is just how we’ve decided to do it; I didn’t want to say, «Hey, I know you’re eight, but could you read Mary’s Magnificat for us?» So, this is what you’ll see every week through Christmas Eve until Christmas Eve. There is a debate—a contentious debate—in the Western world; actually, that’s probably overstated, maybe just specifically in the United States. It’s a debate that can divide families, and there’s a lot of emotion and feeling in it. The debate is about when it is appropriate to start playing Christmas music and decorating for Christmas. There are those—no moral judgments here—who say, «I’m a grown adult; I’ll do what I want, and I’m putting it up at Halloween. I don’t care; I know Thanksgiving’s a deal, but this is a bigger deal. Maybe you’re trying to fight Halloween with your Christmas; I don’t know.» Then there are others who say, «Hey, no, Thanksgiving gets its day, so this will happen post-Thanksgiving, not pre.» So, listen, again, it’s okay to not be okay; no moral judgment. I’m just curious—how many of you are like, «I’m grown; I’ll do what I want, and Christmas begins when I want it to»? It’s like in October, right? I don’t care; get the tree down! Right? Okay, how many of you are, «No, Thanksgiving gets its day; as soon as Thanksgiving’s over»? All right, look at that. I probably shouldn’t have asked—I’m not trying to sow seeds of disunity among the body; I’m trying to build unity here, so maybe that was a foolish opening illustration. If you were here a couple of weeks ago, you understand that we give Thanksgiving its day. That’s a heavier day for us, and so we give it its day, and then I get to climb into the attic on Friday. I start pulling things down, and then I get to take those boxes up and pull more boxes down. The Chandlers—we love this season. I mean, my house right now, it’s tinsel and trees and stockings; it looks like Hobby Lobby exploded in my house. There are lights everywhere. The bedtime process has gone from like 10 to 12 minutes. I don’t know what Lauren’s doing with her face in there—don’t ask; I just get in bed. But now, I’ve got to go and turn off these candles. They look like candles, but they have to be manually turned off, so now instead of just locking doors, I’m unplugging stuff and turning these things off. We love Christmas; I’ve been listening to my Christmas playlist in my car when I wake up in the morning and playing it on the Sonos. I love this season, and yet, at the same time, no holiday in our lives carries with it as much propaganda as this one does. I was on a flight back from Jacksonville this week; I flew out there to meet with my Acts 29 large church cohort. I meet with a group of about 14 pastors, all large church pastors, some much larger than us—I think 30,000 is the largest—and we learn from and encourage one another. So I’m on the flight home, and I got upgraded, which is huge—right? Because that doesn’t happen anymore! I mean, the prayers of a righteous man get you about one upgrade out of 18 lately. And I’m 6'5», so the upgrade is a real deal for me. It means I can open my computer—which doesn’t happen even in main cabin extra. I love how they’re just cramming us in there. So, I got the upgrade, and I’m working. There’s a woman sitting next to me on the right; she lives in Jacksonville half the year and in California the other half of the year, and they were on their way to their winter home in California. She pulled out her iPad, propped it up behind her seat, and started watching a movie while I’m working. I can’t help but glance over, guys, and it’s that movie—you know what I mean by that movie. So, I look over, and it’s obvious this young, beautiful woman is in New York City, and she’s in some kind of conflict with her father. Then she goes to a small town; it seems like some sort of baking empire or something. She had to get back in touch with the magic of her early days. Her dad wasn’t sure who he was going to give the company to, and he was disappointed in her. Now, she’s in this little town, and her car breaks down.