Rejoice

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Good morning, everybody. My name is Aja. I'm one of the interns here, and we are in week two of our series of Wonder, and I'm going to be reading from Matthew chapter 2, verses 1 through 12. Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, Wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. So they said to him, In Judah, in Bethlehem, for thus it is written by the prophets, But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not least among the rulers of Judah, for out of you shall come a ruler, who will shepherd my people Israel. Then Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men, determined from them what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go, and search carefully for the young child, and when you have found him, bring back word to me that I may come and worship him also. When they heard the king, they departed. And behold, the star which they had seen in the east went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. And when they had come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down and worshipped him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to him, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Then, Being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed to their own country and went away. Well, welcome to Thrive. It's good to have you here today. And welcome to our students as they are back in school. Woohoo. Aren't you excited? Spring semester has started. And welcome to our winter residence. Some of you have just arrived. Some have been here a couple of weeks. It's great to have you all here. Like James mentioned, there is a hangout at our house tonight at five o'clock. You can get directions outside at the Welcome Center. We'd love to have you join us. There's always plenty of everything, OK? And we'd love to have you just hang out with us, be community. There's a lot of intergenerational things that have been going on, and we just love that. So, we are in week two of this series called Wonder, and you might wonder why. No? Why would you have a series called Wonder? it fits in with, I think, this was the text when I was reading it. We know every year after Christmas we usually celebrate what's called epiphany, which is epiphanos. It's a Greek word that just means light from above, like boom, the light shines. It basically brings light to places that are dark, right? You've bumped around in the middle of the night at times. You know how difficult that can be, right? But it's light in the darkness. And so that whole idea of staring out at that night sky and just being in awe and wonder, I don't know when the last time you've done that, but I think it's important. And then I was reading a book by Abraham Heschel, He's a Jewish rabbi, actually, but has some great things in it. And he's talking about that it isn't curiosity that really starts the faith, but wonder, awe, amazement. That that is the basis of our faith. And if we don't have wonder, well, it's like what G.K. Chesterton once said, he said, The world will never starve for want of wonders. but only for want of wonder. And I think we're there. This world, we think we know it all, have it all, figure it out, put an equation or an algorithm to everything. We know everything. We don't even wonder anymore. We're just kind of like, whatever. And I know, students, it's the grade, not the learning that you care about, right? I know, but I hope in some of your classes, sometimes you'll also wonder and be amazed and learn something that's not just for the grade, okay? Or for the job. I hope we all do, that you are all lifelong learners, explorers, kind of journey with these magi that we're going to be looking at. By the way, I dare say you don't know as much about the first Christmas as you think you do. We could do this. I did a Kahoot, that is this kind of poll online, with the students in the New Testament class where I teach at FGCU last semester, okay? In December, so it's right by Christmas, right? Do you remember this? Were you there? You were there. And right? How many did you get right, Dale? Do you remember? Only a couple. These were just basic stories about the Christmas story from Luke chapter two and Matthew chapter one and two. And there was a pastor's kid in the class, okay? He's a pastor's kid who was shocked that he only got like four out of 10 right. This is one of...