When You Listen to Jesus

Exodus

I was reflecting, recently, on the education that I have been blessed to have in my life. I've been very, very fortunate. I remembered, as I was thinking about the different times and places and professors and schools and other stuff, that from time to time — and maybe some of y'all can relate to this — a professor would be talking, or maybe it would be a book I'd be reading, or whatever, and there would be a moment where a light bulb would go off. I would see something that I hadn't seen before. I loved those moments. Those moments also frustrated me, at times, because I was like, “How did I miss this? I've read this, and I missed it.”

Sometimes it was that, but there was always that sort of like, “Wow, this is significant.”

Oftentimes, I would think, “Man, I'm not cut out for this. I don't know how these people see this. I think I've read this, and I don't even know where I was at.”

Sometimes I felt like I was the worst person in the class. There were other times where the light bulb would be even brighter, and it typically happened when some sort of Old Testament theme I would see in the New Testament, and it was like, “Whoa, that is so cool.”

It reminded me, “Man, you need to learn the Old Testament better. There was a lot of things that went on.”

But I remember, one time, talking to someone, and I said, “What I just saw, seeing how the hand of God is in the Word of God, the themes that are here are here, oftentimes, I felt like I had been living in a house my whole life and, all of a sudden, somebody introduced me to a room in the house that I didn't even know existed.”

It was like that's the way I felt, like I've been living here in this book, but I didn't know that existed. It was transformative, it was meaningful, and it made me appreciate scripture, but it also made me love Jesus more. I always said that if I ever pastored or if I ever got to teach, one of the things that I wanted to do is I wanted to make those light bulb moments, as much as I could, happen for the people of God because I really want you, as your pastor, to love scripture. But the reason I want you to love scripture is because it testifies about our Savior. What I really want is I want you to love Jesus more. I want you to understand how awesome Jesus is. Because of that, most of the teaching and preaching that I do, I try my best every weekend to come in and put something together where you go, “Oh, wow. Okay, that's sort of cool. I didn't see that.”

I’m not trying to do that to be cool or that you’d say, “Oh, man, Chip does this,” or whatever. I'm doing it because I really, genuinely want you to go, “Wow. Man, this is a really cool book. This is awesome.”

And it’s so awesome that you get into it and, all of a sudden, you really start realizing, “Man, this is all about Jesus,” and you fall in love with our Savior more and more. That’s my heart.

So, at the beginning of the series, I told you that what I was going to do is I was going to make a turn, at some point, to the book of Matthew. I told you that you would read Matthew differently than you've probably read it. That’s what we're going to do. From this weekend, we're going to hit it, and then we're going to do it next weekend, and we're going to do it next weekend. And then we have our candlelight service on the 24th, and we'll talk a little bit more about it. And then, on the 25th, you'll get a video from the church that'll put it all together. So, we've got quite a bit of time, but I also don't have as much time as I would like. I never have as much time as I would like because, really, if I was going to develop this rightly, I would say, “Why don't we just spend all of 2023 on the first four or five chapters of Matthew?”

Most of y'all would say, “Yeah, I'm out.”

So, I don't want to do that. But what we're going to do is — this is the pros and the cons of this weekend. I’ve got to get the background. I’ve got to get you seeing where Matthew's coming out of the book of Exodus, Moses and all of that. So, this is going to be a lot more teaching, this weekend. There's always a negative when it's teaching because people are looking for, maybe, a preaching. It’s going to be more of a teaching, so I don't want you to fall asleep. You’ve got to pay attention because it's going to be like a Bible study. But I’ve got to do this because if I do this, and we do it right, the other stuff will just sort of explode and make sense. So, can I just get some grace for this weekend, that you'll at least give me a little bit of time to go through? Okay, good. I appreciate that.

So, let's look, here, at what I've been talking about. We’ve been talking about Exodus, we've been talking about Moses, and we've been talking about all these great things that we've seen. If you remember, not so long ago, I had read a scripture to everybody here out of Deuteronomy 18:15. This passage sort of reverberates through all the Bible. Have you ever seen one of those muscle guns. Do you know what I'm talking about? Do you understand? I don't know what they are. They're like hammers, but they're electric. If you put it on somebody's back, you can see it reverberate all around. The love handles will jiggle, the back of the neck, because it's like — well, this passage sort of reverberates all through the Old Testament and through the New Testament. We talked about it several weeks ago.

Moses had written this: “‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers — it is to him you shall listen.’”

So, what Moses has said, and what he's written here, is that there will be somebody that comes along, at some point, that’s going to be greater than Moses, and you need to listen to him. This is the guy you're going to listen to. And this passage reverberates so much through because when the people meet Jesus, they're always thinking, “Is He the one that's going to come? Is He the one that Moses talked about?”

And then, at the Mount of Transfiguration, what does God say? He says, “Listen to him.”

This is a powerful known passage to Jewish people that would've lived in the first century. They would've been very aware of this, that there was somebody coming that was greater than Moses. So, Matthew — and he's not the only one. This is developed throughout the New Testament, but in Matthew, more than most, he really focuses in on Jesus and how He is the greater Moses. It's a theme of Matthew. It's a theme in other books, but it's a theme. He's drawing out of what we've been reading out of for a long time.

Now, he's not making it up. He's not saying, “Oh, well, Jesus was like Moses, but this is all — I'm making this up so that He looks like Moses.”

No. Matthew realizes that Jesus is the fulfillment of all of what has gone on. God, in His providence, in ways that we don't know, in His sovereignty that is beyond us, Jesus is actually fulfilling all kinds of stuff. He’s a greater Adam, He’s a greater David, He’s a greater Moses. All the New Testament writers are seeing this in Jesus, that the Lord has done such incredible things in the way everything has been put together, that when Jesus comes, He’s just fulfilling all kinds of stuff.

So, Matthew, when he writes his gospel, is wanting us to see Jesus is the greater Moses. He's wanting us to see that He’s the one we should listen to. Now, in Matthew's gospel, most people don't listen to Jesus. Matthew writes it that way so that we have to interact with the text, going, “Are we going to listen to Jesus?”

But he’s writing that Jesus is the greater Moses. Let me show you how he does this. It’ll make sense when you see. First of all, the narrative, you could say from, Matthew 1:18 through Matthew 7, and through the rest of the gospel, too, but really focused on Matthew 2 through Matthew 7, what he does is he retraces Moses.

Now, again, he's not making it up. He’s not acting like Jesus did something that Moses did, but Jesus didn't really do it. He did it. He just realizes, “Man, Jesus is fulfilling everything. So, when you read the gospel of Matthew — go home and read it this week. It’s only 28 chapters. I mean, it's really not that long. You'd be surprised how quickly you could read it. But when you read the word “fulfilled” in Matthew, circle it. You’ll go, “Man, I'm circling this word a lot,” because Matthew is seeing Jesus fulfilling everything. So, he retraces Moses. As children, both Moses and Jesus faced death from a wicked king. You have Pharaoh who was trying to kill the babies, and then you've got Herod who wants to kill the kids that are two years and younger. They both are under that decree from a wicked king. They’re facing death.

Not only that, but both go to Egypt. Jesus flees to Egypt because of Herod wanting to kill the babies. They both go to Egypt, and Matthew highlights this. Nobody else is highlighting this because they have other reasons they're trying to show you and me. John's got a whole other thing he's doing, Luke's got a whole other thing he's doing, and Mark's got a whole other thing he's doing. But Matthew is saying, “Hey, pay attention because this dude that Moses talked about that we need to listen to, this is Him.”

Not only that, but both are called out of Egypt. This is profound. We'll see this in the text. It's interesting where Matthew places the “out of Egypt I have called my son.” He doesn't place it when Jesus is being called out of Egypt in the text, where you would think it should be. He places it somewhere else, which is a literary device to make a point. We'll see that when we get to the text.

What he says is, “Out of Egypt I've called my son,” and we'll read this in the text. Well, in the Old Testament, to the Jewish people, God's Son was Israel. Matthew's going, “Actually, Jesus is the one that's the Son. He's sort of Israel. If you're in Jesus, you're the people of God.”

He's saying things that are, theologically, really challenging, especially for Jewish people, because he's probably writing to a lot of Jewish people. He’s saying things that are like, “Whoa, this is crazy stuff.”

Both go through the water. Moses goes through the Red Sea and Jesus goes through the Jordan. Not only that, but both go to the wilderness. Moses goes for 40 years, and Jesus goes for 40 days. Moses and the children of Israel, they don't do very well in the wilderness. They just walked in circles. I think the only thing they really established was NASCAR. You know? But Jesus goes for 40 days. That’s not a throwaway term, but Jesus doesn't give in. He stands firm as the greater Moses. Not only that, but both go up on a mountain to deliver God's Word. Moses goes up to Sinai and Jesus goes up on the Sermon on the Mount. Not only that, but when Moses comes down — I’ll just to show you how this continues on.

Moses comes down, he can put his hand in his pocket, pull it out, and it’s leprosy. Jesus, the first person He heals coming off the mountain is a leper. I mean, there are so many parallels. We could just go on and on and on and on and on. It’s incredible. But it's not only that the parallels are there that. The whole idea that Jesus is greater is seen not only in Matthew, in the New Testament — it's in spades in Matthew. Just to give you some things to be thinking about, Moses was born a slave and adopted into royalty, but Jesus, who's the eternal king, royalty to infinity, became a slave to save His people because He is a greater Moses. Moses turned water into blood. You can't drink it. But Jesus turned the water into wine. Not just wine, but the best wine because He's greater than Moses. Moses reflected the glory of God. Jesus is that glory because He’s greater than Moses. Moses fed the people with manna, but Jesus was the true bread from heaven.

I want you to see, here, because as we enter in, read this text, and go through it, I want you to see these themes that are being said. They're not just to be missed. Oftentimes, we can get into reading things and miss them. Moses' law commands perfect obedience, but Jesus perfectly obeyed the law for us.

We just had the Lord's table before service with the tech team and the worship team. We do it before service on the weekends that we do Communion. I said to them, “I just want you to know something that's so great. The obedience of Christianity that secures our salvation is not our obedience. It was the obedience of Jesus that secures our salvation.” I don't know how grateful you are for that, but you should be incredibly grateful that Christianity doesn't start off with what we do. It starts off with what Jesus has already done.”

Okay? He's greater than Moses. Not only that, Moses was a faithful member of God's household, but Jesus, as God, was the builder of the house. Not only that, Moses could take us right up to the promised land, but it took Jesus to get Moses in because, on the Mount of Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah are standing in the Holy Land because He’s greater than Moses.

This is powerful, powerful stuff. That's why, when we read this, that there's someone coming that we should listen to, Matthew is keenly aware of that. He's started off the gospel with retracing Moses so that you can't miss what he's saying. He starts off his gospel with something that you and I, as a general rule — and it's okay. You don’t have to feel bad about it. You don't need to go home in the car and feel guilty about it, but let's just be honest. He starts off with something, in the first 17 verses of Matthew, that none of us like. We just don't. We usually don't want to read through it. We really don't want to pay attention to it. We don't even know why it's there. You probably wouldn't tell that to anybody in church, but deep down inside — you can talk with me, I'm cool — you just go, “Why in the world is this thing in here?”

It's a bunch of stuff. He starts with the genealogy. Right? Come on, now. It’s not like y'all go home every night and go, “Man, I can't wait to get into a genealogy.”

There's just no way.

“Man, I just want to spend the evening in Numbers, just reading all those lists.”

No, you don't. Okay? I don't have time to develop the genealogy, per se, but it's awesome. Women are in it. Like, “What? Women are in a Jewish genealogy? What?”

They're gentiles.

“What?”

It's crazy. I mean, it's so profound. Actually, like 5, 6, or 7 years ago, I preached a sermon on Matthew's genealogy. Some people were like, “Whoa.”

It's really that cool, but I can't develop it that much. I just want to show you what he's doing, though, in a large way so that I can set up the gospel of Matthew. So, in Matthew1:17, what he does is he summarizes. He gives you a summary of what he's just said in this genealogy. If we're honest, most of us, we open up the book of Matthew, and we go, “Oh, Matthew 1:18. ‘Now the birth of Jesus…’” — and we start there. If you've done that, that's okay. The Lord's good. He’s okay. He gets it. You go, “What? I don't know these names. Who would name their kids these names?”

I get that. So, here's the summary of what he says. He’s doing something here. These are not throwaway lines.

He says, “So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations,”

Now, he's not so worried about getting every certain person, right? He's worried about the larger fourteen, fourteen, and fourteen to make a point, theologically. So, remember that. Abraham to David. Take a snapshot. Abraham to David, fourteen generations.

“…and from David to the deportation to Babylon…”

You read about that in Jeremiah, Daniel, and Isaiah, when the Babylonians conquered the Jewish people and destroyed the temple. They went to Babylon for seventy years like Jeremiah said that they would.

“…and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations.”

What's he saying here? Here's what he's saying. This is the visual I want you to see. He says, “From Abraham to David.”

He could have chosen Adam, but he's like, “No, Abraham.”

Abraham's where this whole promised thing really started to kick in. Genesis 12. You’ll going to be a blessing to the nations. Abraham went all the way to David, and David was the great king of Israel. He was the greatest king that Israel had ever had. That's the first line. The next one traces from David to Babylon. Now, why is that important? Because Abraham was called out of the Ur of the Chaldees. That's Babylon. What Matthew wants you to know is the greatest king of Israel didn't get them any further than where they started because what's needed is a true king. That’s why he says, “From Babylon to the Christ,” because Christ is the true king who can lead His people to the promised land. He's greater than Moses. He’s greater than David. He’s the King. He's the one to listen to. All of that's in there. He’s setting it up at the very beginning. Before you even get to the birth, it's set up to say to you, “Listen to Him.”

Then when you pull back and see the way Matthew has structured his gospel — which all of the books of the Bible have structure. They're not just thrown together. Most of the books of the Bible were told, or the words were spoken, to what we call an amanuensis, a scribe. These people were trained. They knew how to write on the expensive paper to get it right. They knew exactly what they were doing. They were trained in writing. In the first century, the way that they wrote was what they had been doing for hundreds of years because they didn't have books, they didn't have iPads, the printing press and all this. The way you normally had to know something was to remember it. It was an aural tradition. Not oral, but aural. A-U-R-A-L. Through the auditory, the ear, people had to be able to recite something.

So, the ancients, the way they wrote, was what we call chiastic writing. The best way to understand that, the best way I can teach it, is what I would call an inverted V. So, if you take a V and flip it upside down, this is the way a lot of the literature was written way before Jesus. Go all the way back to Plato's Republic and that stuff. They knew how to write. They knew what they were doing. Wherever they started, you would go up. When you got to the center, that was like the apex. That was like, “Pay attention to the center.”

And then when you came back down, coming back down would mirror what was going on the way up. It wouldn't be the exact same thing, but it would be similar to it so that you could remember back down. So, the beginning and the ending of a book would have similarities. If you go to Plato's Republic, the Myth of Gyges at the beginning, the end of the Myth of Gyges, and the dead center is the philosopher kings. The Myth of Gyges is where J.R. Tolkien got the Lord of the Rings and whole idea of the ring. Okay? They know how to write.

That's why in the book of Luke, Zechariah is praying in the temple at the very beginning, and the very end, what's going on? The disciples are praying in the temple. That's not just coincidence. It’s not just coincidence that at the beginning of Luke, you've got Mary and Joseph wrapping Jesus and linen cloth, and at the end of Luke, not the same Mary and Joseph, a different Mary and Joseph, but when they take Him down from the cross, they wrap him in a linen cloth. They know what they're doing. Romans 1:4-6 starts off bringing about obedience of faith to the nations, and at the end of Romans 16 it's bringing about obedience of faith to the nations. They know what they're doing. They know how they're writing.

The direct center is important. If you go to John, Revelation, 1 John, John 12, the center of that book, what's happened? The ruler of the world gets kicked out. What's the center of Revelation? Revelation 12: The dragon or the serpent is kicked out of heaven. What's the direct center at 1 John 3:8? Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. It's just not throw-away. Genesis’ middle: Jacob's ladder. Exodus: Ten Commandments. Numbers: Aaron's rod buds. All this stuff. There’s stuff going on here. So, Matthew, when he writes, because he's writing about Moses and bringing in all of that stuff, goes back and he remembers Moses has gone to Sinai seven times, up to the mountain, and done his stuff and everything. So, he structures everything in his gospel around seven mountains. This is important to know because it's super important to see how he's brought this to the center and what he's trying to tell you and me who read it.

So, just to give you an idea of how this looks so that you can visually see it, mountain one, mountain seven, mountain two, mountain six, mountain three, mountain five. Mountain four is the center. So, one and seven will correspond. They won't be the same exact thing, but they will correspond.

So, let me show you how this works. In Matthew 4, we have the first mountain in Matthew. That mountain is where Satan takes Jesus up on a mountain. He says, “If you will fall down and worship me, I will give you all the kingdoms of the world.”

Matthew 28 is the seventh mountain. Jesus takes the disciples up on the mountain after resurrection, and He says, “All power and authority have been given to me.”

See, there's the correspondence. He didn't shirk His responsibilities. He didn't. He's got the power and authority because He died on the cross. Listen to him. Matthew 5 and Matthew 23 are mountain two and mountain six. Matthew 5. You know what Matthew 5 is? Matthew5-7 is the Sermon on the… Sermon on the… there we go. Good. We're okay. You’re like, “I'm going to sleep here.”

So, Matthew 23 is the Mount of Olives. Now, if you remember, and if you've read — if you haven't, it's okay, but Matthew 5 starts off with, “Blessed are you, blessed are you, blessed are you, blessed are you.”

Matthew 23, Jesus talking to the religious people, says, “Woe to you, scribes, Pharisees, and hypocrites. Woe to you, scribes, Pharisees, and hypocrites. Woe to you, scribes, Pharisees, and hypocrites.”

What he's done here is he's reenacted Gerizim and Ebal where Moses has taken the 12 tribes and separated them into six. One went to the Mount of Blessing, and one went to the Mount of Cursing. See, this is all about Jesus being the greater Moses. Listen to Him. Not only that, but the third and fifth mountain are mountains where it's Jesus only. In Matthew 14, Jesus goes up on a mountain by Himself. It's the Mount of Solitude. Okay? In Matthew 17, which is mountain five, it's the Mount of Transfiguration when the clouds come in and everything, and there's no one there but Jesus alone. The Lord says, “Listen to Him.”

This is not just thrown together. This is intentional. This is to make a point to the readers.

And, of course, the center of the mountain. How many chapters does Matthew have? Twenty-eight. They're not perfect. They have different verses, but if you combine and look at everything, run it right into the center of the book, this is what you get. This is mountain four. Let me read it to you. Let me read the text to you. I want you to see if you hear anything. If you don't, I'll make sure I flip the switches for you so that you get the light bulb experience. Okay? But just listen and see if maybe, just maybe, the light bulb goes off on its own.

“Jesus went on from there and walked beside the Sea of Galilee. And he went up on the mountain and sat down there.”

Mountain number four in the gospel of Matthew.

“And great crowds came to him,”

That should maybe be a light bulb. When Moses went to the top of the mountain, who could come to him? Nobody. Everybody's coming to Jesus because He’s the greater Moses. In fact, the passage in 1 Thessalonians 4 that talks about the clouds, the trumpets, all of those things, and coming to the Lord, that's all reminiscent of Exodus, as well, where there were the clouds and the trumpets up on the mountain. Nobody could go to Moses, but you can come to Jesus. All of this is pregnant with meaning. The crowds came to Him. They were able to come to Him on the mountain.

“…bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others,”

That's just powerful. There's this obscure passage that anybody who ever reads it in Exodus 4 goes, “What's that all about?”

When the Lord says, “I'm the one who makes people blind, I'm the one who can make them deaf, and I can make them whatever I want.”

And you go, “Whoa, God, why would You — that doesn't make sense.”

See, when you read, here, these people are coming and they're being healed, what you see is that God knows what He’s doing. Even the infirmities and the problems and the difficulties that we have, I'm telling you, in Christ, every single deficiency and problem finds some sort of meaning, in some way, that God can use, whether it's in this world or the world to come, because God doesn't waste anything.

See, that's the great hope we have. Some of us have afflictions, some of us have problems, some of us have difficulties in this life, but they're there because God is working in us, doing things that we can't even imagine. Sometimes you look back and you go, “Whoa. I can't believe this.”

“…bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and they put them at his feet, and he healed them, so that the crowd wondered, when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame walking, and the blind seeing.”

Listen.

“And they glorified the God of Israel.”

Who's the God of Israel? Is it the guy on the mountain? Matthew wants you to struggle there. They’re glorifying the God of Israel. That's what he wants us to see, that Jesus is greater. So, two quick things to just decompress and get us ready to hit Matthew running, next weekend, and to see all the beauty of how he's written.

First of all, in Jesus — listen to me. This is important. In Jesus, all the Old Testament and Israel's promises find their fulfillment. You read in Matthew that He fulfilled, He fulfilled, He fulfilled, thus He fulfilled, thus He fulfilled. You see it here. The promise to Abraham to bless the nations? Matthew says, “Hey, listen, do you know who came to Jesus? It was the Magi; people from afar; people that were gentiles from afar. They're the ones who came to Jesus. That’s why he records that, because he wants you to know that the blessing to Abraham, to the nations, in Jesus' birth, the nations are coming in and they're bringing gifts. All of this is going on in Jesus.

Not only that, but Jesus is revealed as the true Israel because He’s now the Son that is called out of Egypt. He now reconstitutes the twelve tribes with twelve disciples. See, the New Testament writers get this because here's what they say. This is what Paul says. Paul says, “All the promises of God — not ‘some,’ not just the New Testament ones, but all the promises of God…” — to Paul, that would've been primarily the Old Testament — “…find their ‘yes’ in Him.”

If you say, “Well, here are some promises. Where’s the fulfillment?”

It’s in Jesus. That's where the promise is fulfilled. It's in Jesus. That's why, in the New Testament, you hear, “In Him you have this. In Him you've been forgiven. In Him you have life.”

In Him. Because Jesus is — and what's the response to understanding that Jesus is the fulfillment? That's why through Him we utter our “amen” to God for His glory. That's why Jesus, on the road to Emmaus, says, “Hey, all that Old Testament stuff, it's about me. That's who it's about.”

Jesus is the fulfillment. We’re going to see this as we read Matthew. It's overwhelming. Jesus is everything. He is our life. Not only that — and this is the shocker. This is the real shocker when people read Matthew. Hear this and understand this because this is crazy stuff. I mean, it is written to Jewish people. They would’ve been like, “Whoa. Hold on. What are you saying here?”

We're going to see that Jerusalem is the new Egypt and Herod is the new Pharaoh. You're going to see that all the way through. You're going to even see that when Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden,” in Matthew 11, that's Egypt language. Burdened. He says, “All of you that have been so burdened by this religious system, you need to come out. I'm going to deliver you. I'm going to give you the real Exodus.”

Because Jesus didn't come to start a new religion. He came to take over. So, you see that there’s a despotic and deranged ruler in here. We'll see him. We’ll meet him. The babies are being murdered. We’ll see that the religious people are likened to vipers. John the Baptist says, “You brood of vipers,” in Matthew 3. He's likening them to the snakes in the wilderness that would come and bite the people. The only way they could be saved is by looking at the bronze serpent. Jesus has come for something different. He’s not come to bring a system and sacrifices and religion and performance and all this stuff. He's come to save God's people who are crying to Him, saying, “God, I need help. God, I need deliverance. I'm in a bad place, God.” See, that's us. That may be you right now. See, that's the message of the gospel. That's the good news. Jesus didn't come to tell you can't do this, can't do that, can't do this, can't do this. Jesus came to give you and I a relationship with God. It's not a religion. It’s a relationship. He came in our form and related to us in the mess of the world because He wanted you and I to know the great love that He had for you and I, that He was Emmanuel, God with us.

So, next weekend, we're going to hit the text, we're going to go through it, we’re going to see the majesty of this text, and we're going to see these things again and again. What I said to them was, “I want to do ‘Christ Be Magnified.’”

We're going to do that song this weekend. Now, for all of you who love Christmas songs, let me tell you something. Next weekend, every single song we're doing is a Christmas song. The weekend after that, every single song is a Christmas song. On Christmas Eve, every single song is a Christmas song. I think there might be one Van Halen song. I'm not quite sure. But you'll get Christmas songs. So, you're going to get all the Christmas that you want, okay? But I wanted us to start here, singing this song, “Christ Be Magnified” because I want you to get your heart prepared to go into the Advent season to magnify the Savior. I want you, as your pastor, when we're done with the series, to love the Word of God more than you've ever loved the Word of God, and I want you to love the Savior more than you've ever loved the Savior. I want you to see the majesty of Jesus’ coming to our world.