We sang two Christmas carols yesterday during church service. Angels We Have Heard On High for praise... and the surprise was when for worship, instead of launching into a normal worship song, the first worship song was "O Come All Ye Faithful"... but come to think of it, it's indeed a very apt worship song. Bringing us back to the heart of worship - O come let us adore Him, O come let us adore Him, O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord...

And Ps Jeff talked about the meaning of confessing Christ as Lord. During the first century, in the Roman Empire, its citizens were supposed to acknowledge the Roman Emperor as a god... "Caesar is Lord," was the requirement. The Jews were officially recognized by the Romans as a separate religion, so they didn't have to make that odious declaration, but the Christians weren't recognized at all. And they not only refused to say that "Caesar is Lord,"... they went on to say that "Jesus is Lord." Of course the Emperor was none too pleased, and the Christians were fed to the lions, burnt, decapitated and so on.

But nowadays when we say Jesus is Lord (Greek: kyrios), we tend to say it as a matter of form, without remembering the revolutionary meaning behind such a statement. To say that one is Lord means that person has power and dominion, supremacy, control, authority... wow. It would be good to refresh our memory of this powerful word: Lord. Think of Lord as in... say, Lord Vader in Star Wars... think of Lord of the Rings... think of the Roman Emperor inspecting his vast legions... Napoleon inspecting his troops... think of all those epic fantasy movies, where you see powerful lords, well, lording it around...

And now, think of Jesus as Lord over them ALL. LORD OF LORDS. Whoa.

What do we mean when we say that Jesus is LORD?