4min chapter

Tech Won't Save Us cover image

How Israel Uses Occupation to Develop Military Tech w/ Antony Loewenstein

Tech Won't Save Us

CHAPTER

The Importance of Veterans in the Military

David Frum: Israel is a country that has traditionally kind of pink washed itself, right? We're good for LGBT people. They're welcome here. But then you see which gay and queer people are they actually okay for? And which ones are they just taking advantage of as much as possible? It's really disgusting. He says unit 8200 developed some very sophisticated surveillance technology and tools. One of the aspects of that unity is to funnel that into then the private sector.

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Speaker 1
Now, I've given quite a few Christmas sermons in my time as a pastor, and my favorite part about these type of sermons is that most of us, I believe probably all of us Christians here, just want the simple truth. We don't want a hot take. We don't want any fluff. You don't want me to try to come in from like this unique angle of like, have you ever thought about seeing this from the devil's vantage point? Like whatever it is, like I'm not doing that. Just give me the story of the shockingly domestic event that broke the world. So because of that, I'm just going to operate as a tour guide through Luke chapter 2. I'm going to stop here and there, make small observations, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, but we're just going to walk through Luke 2 very slowly for the next three weeks. Does that sound good? Do you care? All right. Slowing down, like I said, to make observations like C.S. Lewis once said, where he says, once in our world, a stable had something in it that was bigger than our whole world. That's what we're here for. Let me remind you, that's what we're here for, because it's in these words of Luke 2 which contains the supernatural allure. Not the music, although fun, so enjoy your like Mariah Carey drug. I don't know if anybody, whatever, enjoy that. It's not the food, it's not the films, not the season, although festive and wanted. Christians, Christians every year must trade their nostalgia and walk into Bethlehem having their hearts pound with the truth that God throws open the doors of this world and enters in as a vulnerable baby. So let's again, let's hear the story. And again, I don't know where we're at, just like the prayer I just prayed. But I do hope that this truth jolts your spirit. And for some here, I hope that it cracks a heart of stone, because what we're about to read literally changed the course of everything. Okay, so Luke 2, verse 1. In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole empire should be registered. So if you have that, you want a circle to be registered, that just means officially recorded. In a government registry for the purposes of Roman census. Verse 2, the first registration took place while Cornelius was governing Syria. So everyone went to be registered, each to his own town. Joseph also went up from Nazareth and Galilee to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and the family line of David. So keep that in mind. Joseph has a royal bloodline. David is from Bethlehem. Jojo is from Bethlehem. King David now, the truer King David, Jesus is now from Bethlehem. Verse 5, to be registered along with Mary who was engaged to him and was pregnant. In verse 6, while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. The story of the incarnation is shockingly domestic. I'm going to say that 400 more times. When God comes to earth, our king places himself not in a palace, but in a family. He's not on a throne, but in a manger. He's not surrounded by angels, but animals. And there is no power to be found, only vulnerability. Please think about this, that God engages with us on creation's naturalistic terms. As God for the first time was subject to need, temperature, physical pain, fear, diapers, bedwetting, sickness, mistakes, and hunger. Like I said, the incarnation is shockingly domestic. As theologian J.R. Packer said so profoundly, the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. And there was no illusion or deception in this. The baby in the manger was God-made man. And yet for thousands and thousands of years and waiting for this fulfilled promise, it happens in the dark of night unbeknownst to anyone except a mother and a father. As if the world didn't know, somehow its designer had stepped upon it. Pastor Eugene Peterson was once asked, what is the main storyline of the entire Bible? You know what he said? The incarnation. Jesus. The incarnation. Jesus. Incarnation meaning incarnate. So in meat, in flesh, in carne asada, is the central event in the history of us. That is the central event. We must think of this midnight invasion of God on earth as the hinge of the entire Christian faith. As without it, there would be no atonement, no resurrection, no salvation, no Holy Spirit, no hope, no church, no second coming without the first coming. And yet the incarnation, the main storyline of the Bible is shockingly domestic. Verse 7. Then she gave birth to her firstborn son. Then she gave birth to God. To God. And she wrapped him tightly in cloth and laid him in a manger because there was no guest room available for them. Please marvel at this collective church. Don't let this Christmas season go by without letting your hearts be challenged or comforted by the world altering wonder that what had just happened. Philippians 2 tells us that Christ did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing. Nothing. My concern with the narrative of the nativity, I believe a lot of people probably chalk it up to inspiring, but not influential. Meaning we have to understand that this birth we just read about is for you. We have to understand that this birth is personal. It is personal. As it underscores the reality that God does not remain distant from you or from me. Or removed from the human experience but enters it. God chose to make himself nothing for you and I. God becoming so vulnerable as an infant shows that he wants what? Unimaginable vulnerability with you. Do you have that with God? Do you want it? Name one religion ever which had its own God choose nothingness. What God ever became so small that you could touch him? God and Jesus became so fragile you could break him. And we did. So vulnerable that his beating heart could be hurt. The only one who loves you and I to allow him to the point that that heart would be speared. This is why his name, Emmanuel, God with us, should feel like lightning in our life. Because if God came in a shockingly domestic way and God is with us, what does that do to our domestic life? Eugene Peterson, after being asked what is the whole point of the Bible, he went on to explain and critique what he saw as the modern tendency as a disembodied or abstract life.

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