Restored: Wonder - Audio
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We're beginning our Christmas series today. It's called "Restored". Recovering the gifts of Christmas. I don't know about you, but I find this season to be exhausting. It starts right around Halloween, and then it just doesn't let up until the new year. And it's weird because I think that we're supposed to be enjoying and just really diving into the joy of a season of first Thanksgiving, and then the wonder and the excitement of the coming of our Lord. And yet it seems like every year a lot of Jesus gets crowded out. And this series, we're not going to let that happen this year. We're going to push back on this. This series is about recovering the things that this season is supposed to be about wonder, hope, joy, peace. And if we're honest, we think we know that there's not a whole lot of wonder, joy, hope, peace, etc. In the way that we do that. And honestly, I think that that's a work of the enemy. I really think that the enemy wants to steal that way. The enemy can't stop us from celebrating Christmas, but surely can suck the joy out of it. Suck the wonder out of it. Suck the peace out of it. Suck the hope out of it. So today we're going to start with wonder, and we're going to look at how Scripture thinks about wonder, and how that plays into the advent and the coming of our Lord. And so I'd like you to join me in one of the most exuberant, praised Psalms of the Bible. This is Psalm 65. We're starting about the middle of the Psalm to the end, but pay attention to this. This is all about wonder. It's all about awe, and where it's found and what causes it. Those who live at the ends of the earth are odd by your signs. Ah, in Hebrew is somewhere between fear and like blown away. In fact, it's kind of like blown away so much that you get a little scared, right? It's as if you're confronted with the majesty of something that you know is more powerful than you, and you're a little bit, those who live at the ends of the earth are odd by your signs. You make the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy. This is the sun and the moon. The psalmist is imagining those at the ends of the earth, seeing the sun rise and the moon rise and imagining them just crying out with joy to God, because they're so good in the way that they've been made. You visit the earth and water it. You greatly enrich it. The river of God is full of water. You provide people with grain for so you have prepared it. You water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, softening it with showers and blessing its growth. You crown the year with your bounty. Your wagon tracks overflow with richness. The pastors of the wilderness overflow. The hills gird themselves with joy. The meadows clothe themselves with flocks. The valleys deck themselves with grain. They shout and sing together for joy. This is an expression of what it's like to just be before God and be awestruck. Wonder. Let's take a look. This is interesting. It's interesting how the psalmist gets us to bring this about. Those who live at the ends of the earth are odd by your signs. This is very interesting, right? This is odd. It's the people that are far, far away. The way that Hebrew people think about the universe at this time is Jerusalem is kind of the center of the universe. And everything that is other is spread out from there. So the Jerusalem is the center and then the farther you go from Jerusalem, the closer you are to the end of the world. And what that means then is that the people who are not in Jerusalem is a city, right? And the people who are not in Jerusalem are farther and farther and farther from a city. They're rural folk. This is important because the Bible is very, very suspicious of city life. You may remember the Tower of Babel, right? And when human beings get together and they create great cities, they also tend to get real naughty. They do bad things. Notice, interestingly, where does Jesus come from? Is he born in Jerusalem, hailed as king of the Jews?
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When was the last time you truly felt awe?