November 9, 2025 • 21 mins
Hope doesn’t float in from nowhere; it’s built, stone by stone, by people who believe God is still with them. We open a season of preparation by reframing Advent as more than countdowns and carols. It’s a deliberate reset, a way of clearing space in our lives and communities to encounter Jesus with fresh attention and a steadier hope.
To anchor that hope, we head into the world of Haggai. After division, conquest, and exile, a scattered people return home and face the rubble of what used to center their life with God. Haggai’s charge is deceptively simple: rebuild the temple. Not to recreate a museum piece, but to rediscover a living Presence. He insists the new can be even better than before because God is with the builders now, just as God was then. That ancient story hits home today as we look at our own “temples” under stress—public trust, shared truth, and the bonds that hold neighbors together.
We talk candidly about the anxiety fueled by polarized media and algorithmic echo chambers, and how easy it is to slip into blaming “they” instead of risking the brave work of “we.” Along the way, we remember modern markers of progress that defy cynicism and point to movement—evidence that change, though uneven, is possible. That memory becomes more than nostalgia; it becomes proof that presence transforms seasons of loss into seasons of rebuilding.
Advent invites us to practice that kind of hope. Curate what shapes your attention. Rebuild a small altar of community with conversation, hospitality, and shared projects. Pray simple prayers that keep you grounded in God’s nearness. If you’ve been waiting for a reason to believe that tomorrow can be “even better than before,” this conversation offers language, story, and steps to begin. If it resonates, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs courage, and leave a review to help others find the message. Your voice helps us build.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Pastor Darren (00:00):
Yeah, we're talking a little bit of hope
today, and our passage uses thephrase, the days are surely
coming, says the Lord.
Are those comforting words foryou?
All right, because they'resupposed to be comforting.
The days are coming.
They are on their way.
You know, God is coming.
God's going to get things setright.
(00:22):
So be hopeful.
Be hope-filled for gosh sake.
And in that spirit, we'regetting ready for Advent, right?
Advent, that the four Sundaysthat lead into Christmas Eve,
the season of preparing andgetting ourselves organized and
maybe even building something upso that Christmas Eve, the
(00:43):
birth of Christ, meanssomething.
So this series is going to beliving into that spirit just a
little bit, anticipating it.
So I hope that you are up for aseries that essentially a
season of preparing for a seasonof preparing.
We're preparing to prepare,friends.
(01:04):
All right.
I hope you're ready for that.
The hope is that Christmasitself can mean much, much more.
Advent, Christmas Day, morethan just the cultural pieces
that we work with, right?
The presence, the family, thefood, uh, but that it means
something more substantial.
(01:25):
That's our hope.
Uh, it's also our season ofdeepening in our understanding
of who Christ is and what itmeant that Christ came to be
with us.
So I hope that you are readyfor that journey.
And now that I've got you allgeared up, let's dig into some
Old Testament for some hope.
(01:46):
Who's ready?
All right, all right.
Me and Gary are ready.
All right, the rest of us.
All right, here's how we'regonna start.
What I need is your list ofyour top ten prophets.
All right, top ten prophets.
Let's start with number 10.
Who's your tenth favoriteprophet?
(02:06):
Jeremiah?
Okay, why are you ranking himso low?
Oh, he's just he was alwayswhining.
Is that what you said?
I mean, a poor guy.
It was there when the templegets torn down, right?
He has a reason to bedisappointed and all that.
(02:27):
Top five prophets?
We do we have our favorites?
I'm kind of joking.
I know not everybody is deepinto their Old Testament
prophets.
We start with the gospels, wedo some Paul, uh, you know,
maybe we get into Genesis, butafter that it's uh so how about
(02:48):
a favorite prophet?
A prophet you like?
Yeah, Gary?
Isaiah, right?
Isaiah, a lot of his uh uhprophecy is what we understand
to be the coming of Christ, andso we do a lot of it at
Christmas time and and in Adventtime.
You know, some people likeDaniel in that lion's den.
Uh some people have fun withJonah, uh, some people are deep,
(03:12):
deep people like a Job.
Heavy, heavy.
All right, yeah.
Anyway, uh today we're talkingabout a prophet we don't
generally get into, Haggai.
Have you read Haggai?
All right, all right, then thiswill be good.
Hey, the good thing aboutHaggai, really, really short.
(03:36):
You know, you can get it donein 10 minutes, maybe 15 minutes.
So, in order to understandHaggai, you have to know some
history, you have to know someancient history.
And I know how much you loveancient history, he said
sarcastically.
(03:56):
And so, in order to get thathistory out, I have made some
slides and I'm giving myselfthree minutes to get it all out.
Are we all agreed that's fair?
Three minutes of ancienthistory is okay.
I can do this.
All right, I'm starting now.
(04:18):
All right, we're gonna startwith the United Monarchy.
You probably have heard of KingDavid, right?
He's sort of famous from theOld Testament.
Well, he was an effective king,which is probably why a lot of
our Old Testament is committedto his story and his writings in
the Psalms.
He created a lot of stabilityin the kingdom, and his son came
(04:41):
behind him and did the samekinds of things and was able to
really get something grounded,right?
So you're seeing David andSolomon, right around 1,000
leading up to 931 BCE.
By the way, BCE before theCommon Era.
A lot of folks are using thosewords instead of BC and AD.
(05:01):
So they get it started.
It's a pretty healthy time forthe Jewish people.
All right, next slide.
Then after Solomon dies, theyget into some division.
Sometimes nations will divide.
I don't know.
You'll hear about it sometimebecause it's certainly not
happening today.
(05:21):
Divided kingdom startshappening right after Solomon's
death.
We end up with a northernkingdom which is called Israel,
right?
And then we have a southernkingdom called Judah, and you
can see kind of where they setup camp, each of them.
Judah is where uh David andSolomon were, though.
And it was a much more stableuh kingdom than Israel became.
(05:45):
And you'll learn here in thenext slide that eventually,
after some years of coexistingnot necessarily well, uh the
Assyrian conquest comes, and theIsrael part is taken over.
And when they take over, theseAssyrians they take all of the
resources, not only uh thestuff, but they take the people.
(06:08):
Right?
So you can imagine if if wewere conquered and then they
took all of our smart folks, allour people who are innovating,
and they were just gone.
And now we were trying tofigure it out.
Not too much later, althoughlonger than you might think, the
second kingdom goes down.
Judah is destroyed.
And in the midst of that, thetemple that Solomon had built,
(06:31):
this massive temple that was ashe was a beauty.
This is what we understand.
Really did a good job on thetemple.
It gets broken down really uhjust in the conquering and uh
the desire to quash theIsraelites, the desire to quash
the Jewish people.
And so even more exile happensat that point.
(06:53):
The Babylonian exile, you mayhave heard of in some Bible
study and all that.
And so all of their resources,all of their intelligence, all
of their innovation again getstaken away.
And then there's just thisperiod of the Jewish people
living oppressed, those who weretaken away lived in oppression
(07:16):
in that way, and then those whowere left left in, you know, to
be sad in a sense that theircountry had been conquered and
that all their people had been,or so many of their people had
been taken away.
Then finally, in the nextslide, the uh uh Babylonians are
overtaken by the Persians, andCyrus, the king, Cyrus the
(07:37):
Great, offers to let theIsraelites go back home.
Right?
So they get back home andthey're given permission to
resettle and to figurethemselves out.
And part of that resettling isthat they're gonna build the
temple again, a second temple.
This is where uh Haggai comesin.
(07:59):
He is a prophet who is doinghis ministry at the time of them
resettling and looking torebuild what they had, rebuild
that temple.
I think we can skip that lastslide.
Oh, dang it, 355.
Oh, I'm one minute over on thatthing.
(08:20):
Yeah, yeah.
When you're having a blast.
Not too bad, though.
Four minutes?
You know, you can eat oatmealone morning, right?
Ay, ay, ay.
All right, yeah, this lastslide.
That's a little more of thehistory that takes us into the
time of Jesus.
But the point is, Haggai, thisis when he is doing his
(08:41):
ministry.
This is when he is preaching uhhis message from God.
And we assume he was prettyeffective because the the uh um
the temple does get rebuilt.
And part of his uh technique,well, and I talk about the title
of my message here today iseven better than before.
(09:04):
Because that's kind of how hepreached about building that
second temple.
It is going to be even betterthan before.
And how did he get this messageacross?
Well, some of it was nostalgia.
He said, Some of you werearound when the other temple was
here.
You remember how great thattemple was, that thing we got
(09:24):
built with God, and it was thisglorious thing.
Well, guess what?
God is still here.
God is still working with us tobuild this temple, this new
temple.
And because God's with us, thisnext one's gonna be even better
than the one before God,because God was with us then,
(09:49):
and God is with us now.
So it's an interesting passagein my mind, this passage for us
given today's context, becausewe don't necessarily have a
fallen temple.
We aren't a people who gotconquered and then taken away
and then are now getting to comeback and try to figure things
(10:12):
out.
And even if our church here gotdestroyed and taken down, we
wouldn't necessarily see that asa weakness from God, right?
That wouldn't say to us, oh,God must be really weak.
That temple got broken down,God should have protected it.
We would think, oh no,something else happened.
We weren't doing our work totake care of the building, or we
(10:35):
just uh there was a journeythat was happening here that we
weren't really taking that weshould have.
But we wouldn't blame it on Godif that fell.
But we do live at a time inwhich our positivity, our hope
for the nation, maybe even forthe world, is a little bit in
(10:56):
check.
Our anxieties about the futureof the world, our anxieties
about our own nation are alittle bit high.
Maybe it's because of ourcommercialized news, maybe it's
our politicized news.
It just, it's always bombardingus with the things that make us
(11:16):
afraid, the things that make usanxious or angry, right?
And we just we get them comingto us all the time.
Why?
Because that's what we watch,and that's what they want to
give us, are the things that getus to watch.
Maybe that's why we're anxious.
Maybe it's social media, theselittle uh echo chambers that we
(11:37):
fall into, all right.
And obviously older folksaren't always in there as much
as maybe younger folks, butlet's not kid ourselves.
We're in those echo chamberstoo.
That's information, the way itgets delivered to us, it's
almost unavoidable.
So I would argue that our senseof hope for the future is a bit
(12:01):
hindered these days.
And what's even moreinteresting or maybe
disappointing is the sicknessthat we have of the they, right?
If only they would do this,everything would be fine.
Right?
We rarely kind of look andthink, we don't use that word
(12:21):
we.
We need to.
It's always about they.
And I wouldn't want you to hearme saying, oh, it's really us,
we're our own problem.
We aren't truly the wholeproblem, but we never get
anywhere when our conversation,when our communication is using
(12:41):
those words they, you, you'renot getting it done.
That's kind of what we live ina little bit.
And even more complex for us,maybe even more uh pessimistic,
I would say, is we largelydisagree on who the they are.
If only they would do this.
(13:04):
Well, one group has theirversion of they, and then the
other group are probably thosethey, and they're gonna got
their their think they are thethey.
You get what I'm saying.
We are all kind of pointing andpointing, pointing.
So I wouldn't say we have atemple per se, but a
metaphorical temple, maybe, as apeople, as a country, as a
(13:30):
nation.
And we're a little concernedfor this temple.
A lot of people would say it'skind of crumbling.
We'd have different uh beliefsabout why it is crumbling.
And in the midst of thatconcern, that anxiety, we really
aren't creating the uh um theenvironments, the arenas for us
(13:54):
to have good communication tosolve some of the things that
we're concerned about.
So when we're talking about atemple following or falling,
there is a way the passage mightbe talking to us.
There may be a passageway intothis passage as we talk about
(14:20):
the temple of our existence inour community, maybe being at
threat a little bit orconcerning a little bit.
And hey guy's message this isthe turn.
Hey guy's message is toencourage us.
Hey guy's message is to give ushope.
(14:40):
And what is that message?
Well, hey, God is with us.
God is with us.
I wonder I wonder if we believethat message.
Do we believe that God is stillwith us?
(15:03):
Well, amen.
We got some people of faith outthere.
Good, good, good.
And sometimes, even when webelieve it, then we have the
next question.
Okay, well then how?
Where is God?
What is God doing?
How do we know that that'sactually happening?
And I was wrestling with thatthis week, and uh I happened to
(15:26):
be listening to a podcast, andit had uh former president uh
Barack Obama on there.
Um, I don't want to get intopolitics, so I will just say I
hope that uh we can all respecta good human being and a good
representative of being a humanbeing uh that led our country
(15:50):
for a while.
But I remembered my story withBarack Obama, especially when he
got elected.
I remember that evening justfeeling kind of elation, not
necessarily because of what hewas going to be standing for or
what he might do, but because Istill had memory of environments
(16:17):
of some pretty significantprejudice, discrimination.
I remember looking in a historybook when I was in middle
school and seeing a reallyhorrific picture.
I'll let you guys guess whatkind of picture it might have
been about prejudice anddiscrimination, and being
shocked that the picture camefrom 1968.
(16:41):
For me, I was alive in 67.
It was so easy to say, oh yeah,we were prejudiced, but it was
in the past.
And then I had to go, oh shoot,that wasn't that long ago, and
it wasn't just bad words oranything, it was it was well, it
was murder.
(17:02):
And I remember sitting there in2000, well, it would have been
uh well 2008, but then theparade in 2009 thinking, well
shoot, we we've moved.
We've gone in what some mightcall a generation, generation,
(17:22):
maybe two generations, fromgiving ourselves well, you what
you might say is legaldiscrimination to a point where
somebody from that discriminatedcommunity was now by a vote
allowed to be president.
(17:42):
To me, I in my heart, in myspirit, I was celebrating that
because it meant to me that we'dwe'd taken a journey, a pretty
significant journey.
And to me, I like to think thatGod was with us on that
journey.
(18:03):
We can believe that God is withus in our challenges because
God was with us in our previouschallenges.
God walked with us through thisjourney from legal
discrimination to electing apresident from whom we
discriminated from group wediscriminated against.
(18:24):
And God was with us on thatwhole journey.
It was a journey that started,by the way, not in 1968, but way
back when when one culturalgroup decided it had permission
to grab people from anothercultural group, to kidnap them
and enslave them, allowingthemselves to believe that their
(18:47):
race was better than anotherrace.
Can you imagine the darknessthat has to go on in someone's
mind to allow them to treatpeople like that?
And on that day in 2008, we hadthis moment of saying, okay, we
have moved.
God has walked with us.
(19:09):
There is hope in that.
Even the darkness that ourcountry has had in slavery, we
were able to rise above it, atleast to the extent that we have
today, and hopefully evenrising above it more and more.
We know God is with us becauseGod has been with us.
(19:34):
From our passage today, God waswith us in the time of kings
when everything was going prettygood.
King David's writing Psalms anduh really informing generations
about the relationship withGod.
God was with us in that time ofdivision, Israel and Judah,
when we were living uneasilywith each other, despite all
(19:58):
being people of the Jewishfaith.
God was with us in that time ofbeing conquered.
When all of our resources, allof our intelligence was taken
away, when we felt hopeless andpowerless and vulnerable, and
God was with us in that time ofrebuild, of getting that temple
(20:20):
going again.
This is the hope that that wehold as Christians.
This is the hope that we lookto a time of Advent for.
What are we doing duringAdvent?
What is it we wait for?
We're waiting for thispresence, this hope to be made
(20:43):
real in the birth of God's Son,whom God sends that we might
know God intimately, and that wemight know a deep, deep hope
for ourselves and our worldbecause of that relationship.
I invite you on that journey inthis pre Advent to Advent.
(21:10):
Amen.
Amen.
Yeah, we're talking a little bit of hope
today, and our passage uses thephrase, the days are surely
coming, says the Lord.
Are those comforting words foryou?
All right, because they'resupposed to be comforting.
The days are coming.
They are on their way.
You know, God is coming.
God's going to get things setright.
(00:22):
So be hopeful.
Be hope-filled for gosh sake.
And in that spirit, we'regetting ready for Advent, right?
Advent, that the four Sundaysthat lead into Christmas Eve,
the season of preparing andgetting ourselves organized and
maybe even building something upso that Christmas Eve, the
(00:43):
birth of Christ, meanssomething.
So this series is going to beliving into that spirit just a
little bit, anticipating it.
So I hope that you are up for aseries that essentially a
season of preparing for a seasonof preparing.
We're preparing to prepare,friends.
(01:04):
All right.
I hope you're ready for that.
The hope is that Christmasitself can mean much, much more.
Advent, Christmas Day, morethan just the cultural pieces
that we work with, right?
The presence, the family, thefood, uh, but that it means
something more substantial.
(01:25):
That's our hope.
Uh, it's also our season ofdeepening in our understanding
of who Christ is and what itmeant that Christ came to be
with us.
So I hope that you are readyfor that journey.
And now that I've got you allgeared up, let's dig into some
Old Testament for some hope.
(01:46):
Who's ready?
All right, all right.
Me and Gary are ready.
All right, the rest of us.
All right, here's how we'regonna start.
What I need is your list ofyour top ten prophets.
All right, top ten prophets.
Let's start with number 10.
Who's your tenth favoriteprophet?
(02:06):
Jeremiah?
Okay, why are you ranking himso low?
Oh, he's just he was alwayswhining.
Is that what you said?
I mean, a poor guy.
It was there when the templegets torn down, right?
He has a reason to bedisappointed and all that.
(02:27):
Top five prophets?
We do we have our favorites?
I'm kind of joking.
I know not everybody is deepinto their Old Testament
prophets.
We start with the gospels, wedo some Paul, uh, you know,
maybe we get into Genesis, butafter that it's uh so how about
(02:48):
a favorite prophet?
A prophet you like?
Yeah, Gary?
Isaiah, right?
Isaiah, a lot of his uh uhprophecy is what we understand
to be the coming of Christ, andso we do a lot of it at
Christmas time and and in Adventtime.
You know, some people likeDaniel in that lion's den.
Uh some people have fun withJonah, uh, some people are deep,
(03:12):
deep people like a Job.
Heavy, heavy.
All right, yeah.
Anyway, uh today we're talkingabout a prophet we don't
generally get into, Haggai.
Have you read Haggai?
All right, all right, then thiswill be good.
Hey, the good thing aboutHaggai, really, really short.
(03:36):
You know, you can get it donein 10 minutes, maybe 15 minutes.
So, in order to understandHaggai, you have to know some
history, you have to know someancient history.
And I know how much you loveancient history, he said
sarcastically.
(03:56):
And so, in order to get thathistory out, I have made some
slides and I'm giving myselfthree minutes to get it all out.
Are we all agreed that's fair?
Three minutes of ancienthistory is okay.
I can do this.
All right, I'm starting now.
(04:18):
All right, we're gonna startwith the United Monarchy.
You probably have heard of KingDavid, right?
He's sort of famous from theOld Testament.
Well, he was an effective king,which is probably why a lot of
our Old Testament is committedto his story and his writings in
the Psalms.
He created a lot of stabilityin the kingdom, and his son came
(04:41):
behind him and did the samekinds of things and was able to
really get something grounded,right?
So you're seeing David andSolomon, right around 1,000
leading up to 931 BCE.
By the way, BCE before theCommon Era.
A lot of folks are using thosewords instead of BC and AD.
(05:01):
So they get it started.
It's a pretty healthy time forthe Jewish people.
All right, next slide.
Then after Solomon dies, theyget into some division.
Sometimes nations will divide.
I don't know.
You'll hear about it sometimebecause it's certainly not
happening today.
(05:21):
Divided kingdom startshappening right after Solomon's
death.
We end up with a northernkingdom which is called Israel,
right?
And then we have a southernkingdom called Judah, and you
can see kind of where they setup camp, each of them.
Judah is where uh David andSolomon were, though.
And it was a much more stableuh kingdom than Israel became.
(05:45):
And you'll learn here in thenext slide that eventually,
after some years of coexistingnot necessarily well, uh the
Assyrian conquest comes, and theIsrael part is taken over.
And when they take over, theseAssyrians they take all of the
resources, not only uh thestuff, but they take the people.
(06:08):
Right?
So you can imagine if if wewere conquered and then they
took all of our smart folks, allour people who are innovating,
and they were just gone.
And now we were trying tofigure it out.
Not too much later, althoughlonger than you might think, the
second kingdom goes down.
Judah is destroyed.
And in the midst of that, thetemple that Solomon had built,
(06:31):
this massive temple that was ashe was a beauty.
This is what we understand.
Really did a good job on thetemple.
It gets broken down really uhjust in the conquering and uh
the desire to quash theIsraelites, the desire to quash
the Jewish people.
And so even more exile happensat that point.
(06:53):
The Babylonian exile, you mayhave heard of in some Bible
study and all that.
And so all of their resources,all of their intelligence, all
of their innovation again getstaken away.
And then there's just thisperiod of the Jewish people
living oppressed, those who weretaken away lived in oppression
(07:16):
in that way, and then those whowere left left in, you know, to
be sad in a sense that theircountry had been conquered and
that all their people had been,or so many of their people had
been taken away.
Then finally, in the nextslide, the uh uh Babylonians are
overtaken by the Persians, andCyrus, the king, Cyrus the
(07:37):
Great, offers to let theIsraelites go back home.
Right?
So they get back home andthey're given permission to
resettle and to figurethemselves out.
And part of that resettling isthat they're gonna build the
temple again, a second temple.
This is where uh Haggai comesin.
(07:59):
He is a prophet who is doinghis ministry at the time of them
resettling and looking torebuild what they had, rebuild
that temple.
I think we can skip that lastslide.
Oh, dang it, 355.
Oh, I'm one minute over on thatthing.
(08:20):
Yeah, yeah.
When you're having a blast.
Not too bad, though.
Four minutes?
You know, you can eat oatmealone morning, right?
Ay, ay, ay.
All right, yeah, this lastslide.
That's a little more of thehistory that takes us into the
time of Jesus.
But the point is, Haggai, thisis when he is doing his
(08:41):
ministry.
This is when he is preaching uhhis message from God.
And we assume he was prettyeffective because the the uh um
the temple does get rebuilt.
And part of his uh technique,well, and I talk about the title
of my message here today iseven better than before.
(09:04):
Because that's kind of how hepreached about building that
second temple.
It is going to be even betterthan before.
And how did he get this messageacross?
Well, some of it was nostalgia.
He said, Some of you werearound when the other temple was
here.
You remember how great thattemple was, that thing we got
(09:24):
built with God, and it was thisglorious thing.
Well, guess what?
God is still here.
God is still working with us tobuild this temple, this new
temple.
And because God's with us, thisnext one's gonna be even better
than the one before God,because God was with us then,
(09:49):
and God is with us now.
So it's an interesting passagein my mind, this passage for us
given today's context, becausewe don't necessarily have a
fallen temple.
We aren't a people who gotconquered and then taken away
and then are now getting to comeback and try to figure things
(10:12):
out.
And even if our church here gotdestroyed and taken down, we
wouldn't necessarily see that asa weakness from God, right?
That wouldn't say to us, oh,God must be really weak.
That temple got broken down,God should have protected it.
We would think, oh no,something else happened.
We weren't doing our work totake care of the building, or we
(10:35):
just uh there was a journeythat was happening here that we
weren't really taking that weshould have.
But we wouldn't blame it on Godif that fell.
But we do live at a time inwhich our positivity, our hope
for the nation, maybe even forthe world, is a little bit in
(10:56):
check.
Our anxieties about the futureof the world, our anxieties
about our own nation are alittle bit high.
Maybe it's because of ourcommercialized news, maybe it's
our politicized news.
It just, it's always bombardingus with the things that make us
(11:16):
afraid, the things that make usanxious or angry, right?
And we just we get them comingto us all the time.
Why?
Because that's what we watch,and that's what they want to
give us, are the things that getus to watch.
Maybe that's why we're anxious.
Maybe it's social media, theselittle uh echo chambers that we
(11:37):
fall into, all right.
And obviously older folksaren't always in there as much
as maybe younger folks, butlet's not kid ourselves.
We're in those echo chamberstoo.
That's information, the way itgets delivered to us, it's
almost unavoidable.
So I would argue that our senseof hope for the future is a bit
(12:01):
hindered these days.
And what's even moreinteresting or maybe
disappointing is the sicknessthat we have of the they, right?
If only they would do this,everything would be fine.
Right?
We rarely kind of look andthink, we don't use that word
(12:21):
we.
We need to.
It's always about they.
And I wouldn't want you to hearme saying, oh, it's really us,
we're our own problem.
We aren't truly the wholeproblem, but we never get
anywhere when our conversation,when our communication is using
(12:41):
those words they, you, you'renot getting it done.
That's kind of what we live ina little bit.
And even more complex for us,maybe even more uh pessimistic,
I would say, is we largelydisagree on who the they are.
If only they would do this.
(13:04):
Well, one group has theirversion of they, and then the
other group are probably thosethey, and they're gonna got
their their think they are thethey.
You get what I'm saying.
We are all kind of pointing andpointing, pointing.
So I wouldn't say we have atemple per se, but a
metaphorical temple, maybe, as apeople, as a country, as a
(13:30):
nation.
And we're a little concernedfor this temple.
A lot of people would say it'skind of crumbling.
We'd have different uh beliefsabout why it is crumbling.
And in the midst of thatconcern, that anxiety, we really
aren't creating the uh um theenvironments, the arenas for us
(13:54):
to have good communication tosolve some of the things that
we're concerned about.
So when we're talking about atemple following or falling,
there is a way the passage mightbe talking to us.
There may be a passageway intothis passage as we talk about
(14:20):
the temple of our existence inour community, maybe being at
threat a little bit orconcerning a little bit.
And hey guy's message this isthe turn.
Hey guy's message is toencourage us.
Hey guy's message is to give ushope.
(14:40):
And what is that message?
Well, hey, God is with us.
God is with us.
I wonder I wonder if we believethat message.
Do we believe that God is stillwith us?
(15:03):
Well, amen.
We got some people of faith outthere.
Good, good, good.
And sometimes, even when webelieve it, then we have the
next question.
Okay, well then how?
Where is God?
What is God doing?
How do we know that that'sactually happening?
And I was wrestling with thatthis week, and uh I happened to
(15:26):
be listening to a podcast, andit had uh former president uh
Barack Obama on there.
Um, I don't want to get intopolitics, so I will just say I
hope that uh we can all respecta good human being and a good
representative of being a humanbeing uh that led our country
(15:50):
for a while.
But I remembered my story withBarack Obama, especially when he
got elected.
I remember that evening justfeeling kind of elation, not
necessarily because of what hewas going to be standing for or
what he might do, but because Istill had memory of environments
(16:17):
of some pretty significantprejudice, discrimination.
I remember looking in a historybook when I was in middle
school and seeing a reallyhorrific picture.
I'll let you guys guess whatkind of picture it might have
been about prejudice anddiscrimination, and being
shocked that the picture camefrom 1968.
(16:41):
For me, I was alive in 67.
It was so easy to say, oh yeah,we were prejudiced, but it was
in the past.
And then I had to go, oh shoot,that wasn't that long ago, and
it wasn't just bad words oranything, it was it was well, it
was murder.
(17:02):
And I remember sitting there in2000, well, it would have been
uh well 2008, but then theparade in 2009 thinking, well
shoot, we we've moved.
We've gone in what some mightcall a generation, generation,
(17:22):
maybe two generations, fromgiving ourselves well, you what
you might say is legaldiscrimination to a point where
somebody from that discriminatedcommunity was now by a vote
allowed to be president.
(17:42):
To me, I in my heart, in myspirit, I was celebrating that
because it meant to me that we'dwe'd taken a journey, a pretty
significant journey.
And to me, I like to think thatGod was with us on that
journey.
(18:03):
We can believe that God is withus in our challenges because
God was with us in our previouschallenges.
God walked with us through thisjourney from legal
discrimination to electing apresident from whom we
discriminated from group wediscriminated against.
(18:24):
And God was with us on thatwhole journey.
It was a journey that started,by the way, not in 1968, but way
back when when one culturalgroup decided it had permission
to grab people from anothercultural group, to kidnap them
and enslave them, allowingthemselves to believe that their
(18:47):
race was better than anotherrace.
Can you imagine the darknessthat has to go on in someone's
mind to allow them to treatpeople like that?
And on that day in 2008, we hadthis moment of saying, okay, we
have moved.
God has walked with us.
(19:09):
There is hope in that.
Even the darkness that ourcountry has had in slavery, we
were able to rise above it, atleast to the extent that we have
today, and hopefully evenrising above it more and more.
We know God is with us becauseGod has been with us.
(19:34):
From our passage today, God waswith us in the time of kings
when everything was going prettygood.
King David's writing Psalms anduh really informing generations
about the relationship withGod.
God was with us in that time ofdivision, Israel and Judah,
when we were living uneasilywith each other, despite all
(19:58):
being people of the Jewishfaith.
God was with us in that time ofbeing conquered.
When all of our resources, allof our intelligence was taken
away, when we felt hopeless andpowerless and vulnerable, and
God was with us in that time ofrebuild, of getting that temple
(20:20):
going again.
This is the hope that that wehold as Christians.
This is the hope that we lookto a time of Advent for.
What are we doing duringAdvent?
What is it we wait for?
We're waiting for thispresence, this hope to be made
(20:43):
real in the birth of God's Son,whom God sends that we might
know God intimately, and that wemight know a deep, deep hope
for ourselves and our worldbecause of that relationship.
I invite you on that journey inthis pre Advent to Advent.
(21:10):
Amen.
Amen.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Are You A Charlotte?
In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.