[00:00:00] Well, hi everyone. And as always welcome, we're so glad that you're with us, whichever campus you're on or whether you're online and by the way, I want today to welcome those of you who are in our new community, our "Tempe-Tukee" campus. Uh, welcome. So good to have you guys along. And I hope that every one of us on every one of our campuses, every one of us, anywhere in the world online, wherever you are. I hope that you had a fantastic Thanksgiving and that you got a chance to be together. I know it's kind of crazy with the COVID deal, but I hope that you had a special memory with your family and you know, also, I just want us to thank you. Thank you. Those of you who came out on the Wednesday last Wednesday, before Thanksgiving to celebrate. And we have this celebration on each of our campuses, lit the Christmas trees and got the season going. So anyway, it's a great time of celebration. So anyway, it's good to have you here today, and I'm excited about what we're going to talk about today. [00:00:52] Now I want to begin. I want to encourage you to think on something and I'm going to put a passage up. It comes from the book of Ecclesiastes and it says [00:01:00] this. He God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also saved eternity in the human heart. Yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. [00:01:13] That makes me want to ask two questions and I'm going to ask them to bring these questions up. Question number one, what does it mean to have eternity set in our hearts? What, what is. What does eternity in our hearts actually like equate to when God's saying he put that there. What does that do? Okay. [00:01:32] Which brings me to the second question. If we had eternity set in our hearts, what would we long for? If God sets eternity in our hearts, which he says he does, what would be the result? What would we long for as a result of having that? I want to, I want to just pray right now. I want to pray that God's blessing upon all of us, again, everywhere that as we open up, uh, the word today, that just good things happen, that he shows us himself. [00:01:58] So God, [00:02:00] thank you for our time. And again, thank you for the past week that we got to celebrate both in our communities and then with our families. And, and then you bring us together this weekend as a chance to just. Uh, come together and just say, thank you for the many, many blessings you give us and God today, um, as we're kind of heading off in a new direction, uh, Lord, I just pray that you would bless the conversation. It's a special time of year. We love this time of year and we're excited to be here. So, uh, bless us, Father, as we gather in Jesus' name, we pray. Okay. Now, listen. If you've lived in Arizona for any amount of time, or you have visited Arizona for any amount of time, you have most likely heard the tale of the lost Dutchman's mine up in the superstition mountains. [00:02:42] Now the superstition mountains are located just East of Phoenix. For those of you who are not familiar with it. And we have a picture here that will give you a glimpse of what they actually look like, beautiful mountain range, and you can see this from pretty much anywhere in the Phoenix Valley. You just have to look East and it's out there. [00:02:56] And while perhaps not actually rich in gold. [00:03:00] Uh, the tale of the lost Dutchman's mine is rich in legend and lore, and it goes way back. Many of the names that you hear around the Valley have a connection to the story that happened in those mountains. In fact, the very name the Superstitions were named because of some of the stories that have come out of those mountains. [00:03:24] If you, if you hear the name Peralta that's about the history and the legend. If you hear the name Reavis, if you hear, think of other things, Kino, father Kino was involved in this, and of course the lost Dutchman whose mine it is that has been searched for all of that is, is just dated. It's come to us from the dates of the history of that mountain range. [00:03:50] Now. That mountain range itself was first actually explored by by Spanish explorers. Okay. And this goes back [00:04:00] to Francisco Vasquez Cornado who heard that there was gold in there. Well, when he went in there, he discovered that there were Apache Indians in those mountains. And so you hear the Apache trail, the Apache Indians considered the Superstitions, and they weren't called that at the time, but they call it, they considered them to be sacred ground. And when the Spanish came in, there was a huge conflict. Okay. And you've got to understand it's all part of the history of that mountain range, conflict arose. It was all the way back then that people both began to disappear in the mountains and to actually die in the mountains. [00:04:36] Usually very mysteriously. But while searching for gold. Now I don't have the time nor do I have the need to go into all the details. You just need to understand the hunt for gold was on and the legend was born. And, uh, and since then, I need you to understand a couple of things about those mountains, a number, uh, literally thousands of people now over the years have trekked into those mountains, looking [00:05:00] for the mine and the gold and the history. And, uh, interesting things have happened. A number of people who have gone into those mountains have disappeared. You might not know this. Others have been, uh, have died in the mountains or had been killed in the mountains. [00:05:14] Uh, some were actually victims of a sniper that was plucking people off in the mountains. But nobody has found what they were looking for. And that's what you need to understand yet to this very day, the search continues. Thousands and thousands have come because the legend has gotten out and they've come searching, but they haven't found it. [00:05:32] Now that raises for me two more questions. All right. Why? Why? Why are people still coming to these mountains still risking, uh, you know, finding this gold? Why? And the second question, the more important question is how long should you search for what no one else has been able to discover? How many more years into the future, uh, assuming Christ doesn't return, are people going to be searching the superstitions [00:06:00] for this mine that nobody's been able to find? [00:06:02] Now just set all that aside, because against that unlikely backdrop today, we begin our brand new Christmas series. And I'm excited that we get to talk about this. Our series is entitled as you've already figured out. All I want for Christmas is. All I want for Christmas is, and it's hard to believe that it's here again, but it is. [00:06:23] And I, you know, I was thinking about this, you know what, you know what? 2020 needs desperately. It needs a little Christmas. Amen. It needs a little joy. It needs a little presence of something. If anything can, could turn this year around, maybe Christmas can maybe only Christmas can. I don't know. I need you to understand that I'm going to spend a disproportionate amount of time today, setting up this message, setting up the series with this message. [00:06:47] We're going to get to the Bible towards the tail end. I'm going to show you a couple of things, but I really want to set up the series. And so if you'll understand, that's what I'm doing. That'll be, that'll be fantastic now. Let's talk about Christmas. So Christmas, [00:07:00] my guess is that most of us have a very definite feeling about Christmas. [00:07:04] I do. And I suspect that you do. Some would say, I absolutely love Christmas. You love Christmas. It is indeed your favorite time of year. If you say, Oh man, Christmas is about everything. It's everything important happens at Christmas. I mean, it's about, it's about family and it's about parties. It's about food. [00:07:21] It's about desserts. It's about decorations. It's about lights. It's about traditions and memories. It's about worship and it's about reverence. I love it. I can't wait for it to happen. I honestly am in that camp. That's where I, that's where I live. That's where my family is. Okay. We love Christmas now. [00:07:39] Other people go not me, man, I hate it. I hate it. You go, what do you hate about it? There was, ah, it's all about the crowds. It's all about the hassle it's stress. It's about expense. I hate the traffic and I don't know which of those two camps you fall in, but you do know. You know where you land there. [00:07:57] All right. But I do know [00:08:00] this. If you hate it today, I know you didn't use to, I know you didn't use to hate it. Uh, You grew, maybe the hate it, there was once a time when Christmas was the absolute highlight of your year. And just begin with this, you got out of school for two weeks. You didn't have to go to school and it was awesome. [00:08:23] And you look forward to that. You probably made a chain. A little construction paper, red and green. You made a chain, one link represented a day and it started like, you know, whatever, 30 days before 25, I don't know how many links or chain had in whenever you started. And every day you couldn't wait to pull off a link and shorten the chain. [00:08:42] Maybe you had a calendar and you put X's on the calendar and everyday you just couldn't wait to chuck, get rid of that day. Cause we're one day closer, but there was this incredible spirit of anticipation when you were young. If you have memories of going out and buying a real Christmas tree or cutting a real [00:09:00] Christmas tree, you'll never forget that smell. [00:09:02] And you know, whether it was a real tree or an artificial tree, man, when you got it decorated, you sat back and loved it. I love the lights and the look and all of that. You have memories of that. Maybe you have memories of singing Christmas carols and singing along and, and just getting into the words and trying to understand what those lines meant. [00:09:20] Okay. Because some of those lines were kind of confusing. Maybe you remember that. Perhaps you remember, like, so loving a longing for the Christmas cartoons that would come on that because gosh, Charlie Brown Christmas, It's a Charlie Brown Christmas and he can't do Christmas without a Charlie Brown Christmas, or maybe how the Grinch stole Christmas or Rudolph or any of those that you just grew up with and you go, that's what I remember. [00:09:46] Maybe it was a, maybe it was the specials at Christmas, you know, like when they would like, they would show movies. Well, you know, it's a wonderful life. You remember watching that or a Christmas Carol by Dickens or a Christmas story, you [00:10:00] know, the red ryder BB gun you grew up with that. Maybe it was, it was watching like, like concerts that famous people would sing and they'd have concerts and you would just go man, that's what makes this, I don't know what it is that you remember, but here's what I, I know is that it was a highlight. Okay. Now, The truth of the matter is behind it all, Christmas was the day of getting, it was the day of getting. You, you knew that you were going to get presents and you knew that you were going to hit the Motherlode on Christmas. [00:10:35] Yeah. Your birthday. That was awesome. That was good. But it wasn't quite like Christmas, Christmas. I mean, that was when really rained down presents. And, uh, the, the, the anticipation of the presents was so much a part of the highlight of the season. And yeah, before Christmas, she had to be strategic. And you had to be thoughtful about like, what exactly you are going to ask for for Christmas. [00:10:56] And perhaps you you're back in the day when you used to get catalogs [00:11:00] and you would flip through the catalogs and you pay attention, or maybe the flyers that would come in the mail and you would, dog-ear the corners of the, of the flyer so that you could show your parents. And then, and then maybe you go to the store and you'd walk up and down the aisles and you go, Oh, that would be, that would be, I want that. [00:11:15] I want that. But whatever it was, whatever you had made, your final selections, you would sit down and you would write a, a letter Santa and you send it up to the North pole and just say, this is what I want, Santa. This is it. And you, would you let your request be made known to Santa Claus. And, and in, just in case Santa dropped the snowball, you, you told your parents because Hey, if he didn't come through, maybe you'd come through because this is what I'd really like. [00:11:42] And then you'd wait and you'd wait. And you'd wait until finally Christmas came the greatest day of the year eventually would always arrive. You ran to your tree and you had one burning question. How many of these [00:12:00] are for me? And then you discovered not enough, but okay. Some and you were euphoric, you ripped through the presents, you shredded the wrapping like you, that like, it was like you were in the rainforest in Brazil and you had a machete in your hand. [00:12:15] You were just ripping in everything's going everywhere. You were so incredibly excited about being there and there it was. There it was. That thing you wanted so bad. You got it. You got it. Uh, everything you ever wanted, you could not believe how fortune had shown its light on you and you were given this incredible gift. [00:12:38] And man, it was so exciting and it was awesome. It was awesome to finally have this awesome. Uh, at least at first it was awesome, man. Maybe for a couple of hours. It was awesome. Maybe, uh, Maybe before morning passed, you started getting this sinking feeling in your gut [00:13:00] that maybe you'd chosen poorly because you imagined it would bring like more happiness than it was actually bringing. [00:13:11] And it was already not, I mean, it was not even past Christmas day and it was beginning to lose maybe some of its luster and. This didn't fulfill you. Like you anticipated you, you maybe remember discovering the box that that thing came in being more exciting to you than the box itself. You know, what went wrong, man. [00:13:31] And maybe you find yourself somewhat depressed. It was your earliest experience. And what a hangover was going to feel like as you got older, you're like, Oh my gosh, what happened here? It was going to take a whole additional year before you got another shot of getting it right. And, uh, you gotta be kidding me. [00:13:51] How could I have been so dumb to pick this? I should have chosen that. Okay. Well, now that I have thoroughly depressed you about [00:14:00] Christmas, I want to talk to you about Christmas. Why do we have so much stuff and so little joy in our lives? You know, it's interesting when you think about it and songs have been sung about this is. [00:14:16] Is this all there is, is this all there is, you know, we were promised that this stuff would make us happy. And I've said this many times, if stuff could make us happy, America Americans, we would be the most deliriously happy people on the planet because we got more stuff than anyone's got. And yet we go, is this all there is? It just doesn't seem to fulfill us, or it doesn't seem like it fulfills us for very long. It never really has. We, we experienced this as children and yet we thought somehow we would outgrow the discontent with not being satisfied, but it seems like it just grows up [00:15:00] with us. These days, we don't, we don't need Santa and we don't actually need our parents maybe. [00:15:07] To fulfill our wishes for whatever it is that's missing in our lives. We can just go out and buy what we want. We can even go in debt to buy what we want. And of course many do that. Yet we still tend to look at stuff as that, which will satisfy that, which will make us happy. And yet it just never does. [00:15:28] We buy new cars, we buy new houses, we buy new clothes. We buy new jewelry. We buy new adventures. We call them vacations. We buy and we buy and we buy new this, a new that. Our toys have changed shape and the price has gone up maybe, but we're still trying to extract the same exact meaning from them. And by the way, just so we're clear, it's not just stuff that we're constantly trying out new, you know, [00:16:00] you can do the same thing with relationships. [00:16:02] You're not as in that relationship with that didn't work out. So we got rid of that and then I tried this one. Yeah. And honestly, people would say the same thing. I tried that marriage and that didn't work. So I tried this marriage and there's just this overwhelming sense of man. It just doesn't measure up. [00:16:18] You might remember the song by U2, the band U2. I still haven't found what I'm looking for. And again, question why. Why is it so hard to find this thing I'm looking for? Could it be possible that we're trying to extract out of life, the wrong thing from the wrong people in the wrong places, the wrong thing from the wrong people in the wrong places. Historian Daniel Boorstin made these observations about [00:17:00] Americans in a book he wrote called The Image. Let me read to you. This is so interesting to me. He said of Americans. We expect anything and everything. We expect, the contradictory and the impossible. We expect compact cars, which are spacious, luxurious cars, which are economical. [00:17:19] We expect to be rich and charitable, powerful and merciful. Active and reflective kind and competitive. Well, we expect to eat and to stay thin, to be constantly on the move and evermore neighborly to go to a church of our choice and yet feel it's guiding power over us to revere God and to be God. Never have people been more the masters of their environment. [00:17:50] Yet never has a people felt more deceived and disappointed, uh, catch us for never has a people expected so much more than the [00:18:00] world could offer. Wow. Why do we long for this? Which doesn't seem to ever fulfill where did we get the idea that stuff or people is what's missing from the equation of happiness that we're looking for? [00:18:22] So we can look for this stuff in all the wrong places. And we can look for this in all the wrong faces. I love what Erwin McManus said. He said this, he says, you'll spend your life working through relationships, trying to understand your need for love your inadequacies in love, your desperation for loving all the time, you might miss the signs that your heart is giving you that you're searching for God. Could it be. That from the beginning, what was actually happening was that I was looking for something I never understood I was looking for. And I tried to fill that with all kinds [00:19:00] of things that couldn't possibly fill it. [00:19:02] Let me take you back to where we started. Ecclesiastes 3, God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart yet no one can fathom what God has done. From beginning to end. Could it just be, we just haven't figured this out yet, or it takes a long time in our lives before we figure it out. [00:19:24] We come to understand what we're looking for. CS Lewis famously said this and it's so good. If I find in myself a desire, which no experience in this world can satisfy the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. [00:19:48] Could it be that simple that I was not made for this earth. I was made for another world and everything on this earth that I come across is [00:20:00] less than what I was actually created for that I was made for more. I want to pop some more questions up. Because I, this is how I learn. I ask questions. I just think, think, think things through. [00:20:15] So let me put a couple of what ifs up here. What if we were all created to pursue, to chase after, to search for God and we've substituted other things for that, the end, which God put the means within us to pursue. What if. Uh, second question. What if, what if, what we learned so long ago was actually God's merciful and kind way of seeking to redirect our attention from the trivial stuff toward the important and the significant, what if that [00:21:00] discontent was actually put there by God to keep us from attaching our hearts to the wrong thing. And third question. What if we were all born with the desire for a relationship with God, but instead we've tried to fill it with stuff. What if, you know, it's long been said that in every one of our hearts, there's a God shaped hole. There's a, a place that only God fits only God can fill. [00:21:32] And if you reject God, there's an emptiness, there's a void. There's something, you know, is not right. And so what we do is we try to shove other things, other people, other relationships, other whatever, into that God-shaped hole, trying to figure out what's going on. But what if the yearning in our hearts, the dissatisfaction in our souls was actually put there by God. [00:22:00] [00:22:00] And it was it was there to help us understand that stuff can never do it. People can't do it again. We were made for more than that. Mark Buchanan in a book, he wrote things unseen living with eternity in your heart. He wrote these words, listen carefully. God made us this way. An unfulfilled discontent. [00:22:22] Maybe? He made us to yearn to always be hungry for something we can't get. To always be missing something we can't find to always be disappointed with what we receive to always have an insatiable emptiness that no thing can fill. What if God did this? And an untamable restlessness that no discovery can still. Yearning itself is healthy. [00:22:51] A kind of compass inside us pointing to true North. That nagging knawing [00:23:00] thing that's

inside us, he goes, none of this is doing it for me, causes us to think and look perhaps in another place. One of the most beautiful, uh, Psalms, Psalm 42 has just a fantastic image. And, uh, again, I, I just love this and many people love this image. [00:23:23] Let me show you. As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God, my soul thirsts for God, for the living God, when can I go and meet with God? Could it be possible that this isn't the words of a hyperspiritual man, a handful of people who actually long for God, could this be the experience that God wanted all of us to have? [00:23:51] To so desire him to so desire to be in a relationship with him to so want what he has that, like a, like a [00:24:00] deer is parched for water, we are parched and we are longing and looking and, um, God designed us to pant for his presence. Could that be possible? Could God have desired us to long for him? I'm going to put a couple more verses up here that just challenge you to ask yourself, why are these verses in the Bible? Why, why did God say things like this and Deuteronomy? But if from there you seek the Lord, your God, you, you will find him. If you will seek him with all of your heart and all of your soul. Well, why are we encouraged in scripture to literally pursue after God? [00:24:44] Why are we directed that direction? Like go toward God? Why does God do that? Jeremiah 29:13 is again, a very specific text to a very specific situation, but you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart. [00:25:00] Could it be possible that what God is doing in our lives is letting us be discontent with all these other things that we're trying to fill the empty hole with so that we actually are then focused upon him and driven as it were to pursue him. [00:25:14] And there's so many more, here's another one Jesus said this. So I say to you ask, and it will be given to you seek and you will find knock and the door will be open to you for everyone who asks, receives the one who seeks finds, and the one who knocks the door will be opened. You see folks, the gold, we were destined to search for isn't in the mountains, it's in the heavenlies and the desire to find, and to search that that came from God. [00:25:44] And, uh, he's literally trying to get us to look elsewhere for contentment, for fulfillment. The big idea of this message, and I'm going to close here with just one more story. I want you to understand this, though, the longing in our heart [00:26:00] for more was a gift from God for God. See what God did is he put a desire in us- eternity in our heart to turn us towards him, to look for him, to search for him and anything short of him will not fulfill. So I'm going to close with this story. Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish theologian of a century ago told a story that, um, I learned this long time ago, and I've never again, let this slip out of my mind. [00:26:32] Um, uh, very, uh, wealthy Prince was sent on an errand from his father, the King, uh, to the local village. And as he passed through the village, he went through the real poor section of town and looking out the window of his carriage. He spotted a very beautiful, very pleasant, young peasant woman. Who he was just like smitten by. [00:26:57] And he watched her, she was kind and she was gracious [00:27:00] and he, I wouldn't get his mind off of her once he passed her and he would come back into town and he would look for her and he'd see her and he'd watch her. And he discovered her heart and he was so drawn to her. He just loved it to be near her. And then he started thinking about, um, I really want to have a relationship with her. [00:27:21] Well, he could, he could go about it a couple of ways. You know, he's, he's the Prince, he's the son of the King. And so he literally could go to her and just order, order her to marry him, exercise his power, force the issue you will marry me and overwhelm her and make her. He could put on his Royal garments and and literally the rings and put all the pomp and circumstance out there. And so try to woo her and impress her. Then he thought if I did that, I mean, if I did the first thing, I would never know if she loved me. And then the second way is I never know if she loved me for the right [00:28:00] reasons or whether she just loved me for all this stuff. [00:28:03] And he then, he came up with another solution. I think you're probably going to figure this out. He could just give up his kingly robes and his rings and his pomp and circumstance. He could just give up his power. He could just don the presence of a peasant and literally enter the village and, uh, fall in love with her and try to get her to fall in love with him and build a relationship with her, which is exactly what he did. [00:28:33] And the girl came to love him and to know him. Yeah. Soren Kierkegaard told that story to say this, this is exactly what God has done for us. And that's what Christmas is all about folks. Now, now I want you to put two ends of a candle together. All right, we have this longing for God. We have a longing within us for a relationship with God and God has a longing for a relationship with us. [00:28:58] He put within [00:29:00] us a desire to find this fulfillment that can only come through him. And, um, yeah, he doesn't stay distant. He doesn't stay long. So we're searching for him. And here's what you need to understand. Christmas is a story of him searching for us and him coming, our direction. And it's a beautiful thing when you discover that you're deeply, deeply loved by God. [00:29:24] So all I want for Christmas it's to know what God has for me and to know him. And, uh, when we search for him with all of our heart, we will find what we were looking for. I can't wait for the series each week. We're going to build on this and we're going to have a fantastic time. Let me just pray God's blessing as we wrap the message up. [00:29:48] So God, thank you for what you've done at Christmas. Thank you for the story we get to tell and the memories we get to share in the traditions we get to make and all the fun we get to have. As once again, we come [00:30:00] back to your word, forgive us for all the things we've shoved into our hearts, hoping that they would fulfill not knowing they never would. [00:30:06] But knowing now that you put that in there, so we would become dissatisfied. So we would seek the one, the only one who truly satisfies. Thank you, father in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you all.