It's great to see all of you here this morning. What a wonderful time that we have had of worshiping God together and, and today feels something like a homecoming. You're seeing a number of familiar faces from the past. just a warm welcome to, everyone that's here today, thank you for choosing to worship, with us this morning.
For a time of study and the word this morning, we're gonna be looking at the part of the Christmas narrative that is found in Matthew chapter one. And verse 18 through 25. So if you have your Bibles, I would encourage you to Turn there and we'll try to look at these verses this morning and if you wanna give a title to the message today, it would be a greater Dream, a greater dream. Now I'll start my message off today on a very non-Christmassy note, if that's OK.
this past Monday, the Los Angeles Lakers retired. Kobe Bryant's 2 jerseys. And during halftime of the Lakers-Warriors game, They had a ceremony honoring his 20-year amazing career as a Laker and with great fanfare, they retired his number 8 and his number 24 jersey. And at the end of the ceremony, they gave him the microphone.
And gave him the opportunity to speak and near the end of his speech, he began to talk to his three daughters. And I want to read to you just a, an excerpt of what he said to his daughters. He said to them, hopefully, what you get from tonight. is the understanding that when you get up early and you work hard, when you stay up late and you work hard, when you don't feel like working, you're too tired, you don't want to push yourself, but you do it anyway....
