O Come All Ye Enthroned with Pastor Tony Albano

Welcome to the MetaCurch podcast.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the pastor at MetaCurch, and I hope that today's message is inspiring and enlightening and really builds you up wherever you're at in life.

MetaCurch, how y'all doing?

Good to see you guys.

Good to see y'all.

Thankful to be here.

If you're on the other side of the camera, watching online or at a Holotus venue, want to welcome you guys in.

For some of y'all that don't know, if you've been if it's your first time here or you've been coming for a couple times, we're a multi-site church.

And uh what that means is we meet across multiple venues and we have one mission, one vision.

We all hear the same message every single Sunday so that we're unified.

So on the other side of this camera, y'all got some long-distance cousins, some friends over there in Helotus, not too far away, but man, I love them over there.

There's some great people, some great servant leaders.

Uh, and we're doing a lot.

Every time I get a chance to be here, I want to share with you like God is moving in the same way he's moving here, he's moving over there.

And um, you should be proud of that because us here, like we just heard, like we're gonna be generous, and it takes resources in order to do what we do.

And the whole point of this big mission that we have is to continue to break ground for the kingdom.

Holotus, y'all were that first venue, and we're gonna continue to expand beyond because that's what we're called to do.

Jesus called us to go into all of the world, and um, it's just the start.

I really am excited as we go into 2026, believing that God is gonna do something big in our lives here, and it's gonna use us in massive ways.

But before we get to 2026, we gotta recognize the month of December and just how quick it goes.

We're already seven days into December.

Christmas is right around the corner, and we're just starting our Christmas series, O Come All Ye.

And every single week, we're gonna be filling in the blank with some kind of felt need or expectation that we go into with the Christmas season.

And we're gonna be looking at scripture and actually trying to get a new perspective of what we can actually take into this season.

Because if you're like me, it goes too fast.

You wake up and you realize either you prioritized the wrong thing, missed something, maybe you got some family drama going on, and that becomes like what it's circled around and centered around.

And we just have to recognize that this moment in time is important every single time that Christmas comes back around.

We have to ask ourselves, what is Christmas really about?

What we saw in the past couple months as we've been in this Luke series, we've been studying the book of Luke, and what we've been looking at, we've been in this subseries called The Chosen King.

We've been learning about this king.

And for some of us, we don't really know what that means.

And when we think about Christmas, maybe you think about like world peace or like giving joy.

And all those things are true, but Christmas is actually about a king.

Today my message is called, Oh, come all ye enthroned.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we're thankful for your son.

We're thankful for your presence.

And Holy Spirit, I ask that we would feel a tangible sense today of your presence.

As we get into the tension of this message, God, I pray that by your Holy Spirit you would reveal things in us.

That you would challenge us, remind us.

We ask that you would shape our mind, you'd counsel us, teach us, convict us even.

We're thankful for this chosen king.

We're thankful for this season, reminded about Jesus coming into the world.

And God, we just give you this time.

We're thankful for you.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

So, like I said, this Luke series we've been in, it showed us that Jesus came to be king.

And if Christmas is a reminder that Jesus is king, then that should be like forefront in our minds.

But if we're actually honest, none of us really want a king.

Like, let's be like, like, yo, I don't want a king over my life.

Like, let's just be honest.

Some of us we feel uncomfortable with the idea of Jesus as king.

We love the idea of a God who blesses us, forgives us, comforts us.

But the idea of a God who rules, the idea of a God who says no, idea of a God who, like, when I have my plans, he might have other plans, and my plans now need to be changed.

It gets a little bit uncomfortable when you think about Jesus as king.

To a lot of us, Christmas is just cute, right?

It's a postcard, it's a nice family gathering, or in some families it's crazy, it's drama, but in reality, Christmas is about a king.

We all want God involved at some level in our life.

But the idea of him ruling, of God actually in charge of our life, that's what we have to wrestle with today.

So before we get into Jesus as king, because we need to talk about that.

That's what Christmas is.

Jesus enthroning himself here on earth as king.

Before we talk about that, what we need to talk about is why you and I are trying to sit on his throne.

Who is sitting on that throne?

That's the question I want to answer today.

That's the question I want to wrestle with today.

That's the question that I've been praying for the Holy Spirit to reveal to you.

I'm gonna do my job to like list some things that I think we need to all like collectively rethink, reprioritize.

But my prayer has been that God would reveal to you what is actually sitting in the place of Jesus in your life.

Because Jesus is king.

That's a matter of fact.

He overcame the world.

But before we talk about that, we have to wrestle with why in the world we would replace him with something else.

And one of the hard things is we're in a world right now where we're being sucked in in every direction, and we actually don't need a physical kingdom.

Like we don't need kingdoms when our kingdom's in our pocket.

We don't need servants when we got algorithms serving every need you could possibly want, good and evil.

We don't need physical crowns when we have these highlight reels of our lives that we're depicting to the other world.

This is actually a pretty dangerous place to be in.

These crowns, these algorithms, these kingdoms that we have sold ourselves to.

And even just talking about it like I know this, and it's like homie brought out his phone, like, dude, we get it, and it's like, we get it.

I know you get it.

But just knowing about it and hearing about it continuously, somehow, someway, and I know we're all smarter than this, we're still sucked into the trap.

We're still sucked into the kingdom of this world.

Even when you recognize it, like y'all know this feeling.

You're trying to go to bed, you got this light on your face, three hours later, you're in a documentary of like a raccoon, and you're like, bro, I have a presentation in the morning.

What am I doing?

But it's the easiest thing to fall into every single time.

Even when we know about these false kingdoms, even when we know about these things that are taking us away from God, somehow, someway, we still get sucked in.

And it's easier than ever, and it's normalized.

2026, that is normal, that is the normal thing to do.

This is the rhythm to be in.

And if you're not in the digital age, you're a weirdo, right?

Things are harder.

You can't pay some places.

Like things get more difficult.

So the fact that we know about these kingdoms, we've given ourselves, we've bowed to these kingdoms, we've replaced it with Jesus on the throne, we have to ask ourselves why we continuously do that.

And the world trains us to bend every single time, to adjust to us, that everything should orbit around us.

That's the picture we're continuously painting with all of these personalized algorithms that, man, my preferences should be met, my feelings should be met, and that is not a healthy world to be in.

We know that our desires, our personal desires are elevated when we know that the heart above all else is deceiving, and we give into these ideas, we give into these kingdoms.

And it's like, I think I said this last year at our Christmas series.

The generation coming up is the generation with the most anxiety, depression, fear.

It's like, bro, you keep saying this, and it's like it's getting worse.

And we have to be the generation, us raising kids, us who are parenting, us who are thinking about having kids and dating, like we have to model this out.

Us in the older generation, we have to model this out correctly because all the younger generation is looking up, they're learning from us, and we're all in this loop.

And I know the throne is active in me.

I know it.

When I'm inconvenienced, when things don't go my way, when people don't respond the way I want to, or as quickly as I need them to, when things don't get done, I know that's the throne talking in me.

We all know this.

When I feel the need to escape and I give into it, it's the throne talking.

It's not Jesus.

What I want to do is real quickly just go over five small king, five huge kingdoms, actually, five kingdoms that I think touches every single person here.

You might be touched by all five of these kingdoms, but I guarantee you, every single one of us at some level wrestles with one of these kingdoms.

So, real quick, let me just go through them.

The first one is the kingdom of the digital escape.

Some of us know this one too well.

Life confronts us, things happen, we feel a little antsy, we feel a little depressed, we're bored.

We run straight to this kingdom.

We run to screens, we run to shows, we run to digital worlds that never ask anything of us.

So many young men that I talk to are stuck in false realities like video games, and they're drawing them in, and they get this false reality of what life is like, or they realize the pattern that every time something happens in their life, they go and escape in it.

And it's the same thing for all of us Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whatever that is, we are escaping, and we're dethroning Jesus, and we're not putting him in the rightful place that he deserves, and we're deciding that we can handle it on our own.

Then there's the kingdom of hyper-individual rights, and we all know this: my truth, my boundaries, my identity, my preferences, my decisions, my fulfillment.

And the crazy thing is, all these things sound empowering.

All the progressive, these like liberal ideas that sound amazing at one side, but all of them fall short.

Every single one of them.

There's cracks in these kingdoms, there's cracks in these thrones.

Some of us have built our entire life around the idea that if you don't agree with me, you're toxic and I get rid of you.

That's what these kingdoms do.

They don't allow another human being to come into you and to actually give and have a dialogue of a conversation of some kind of disagreement that you and I may have.

And then there's the kingdom of personal algorithms.

And I don't know if you realize this or not.

Your entire digital world is curated to serve you.

Maybe you looked at something a little too long, maybe you searched something.

Some of us we looked a little too long at something, and that's the thing that pops up in your page, and it's evil, it's destructive, it's trying to suck you in.

Some of us we have not heard an opposing opinion into our lives online at all because we dismiss all of it.

We put not interested, we don't watch it.

So all that we get fed over and over and over is my identity, my belief, my truth.

And what we're doing is we're becoming small gods, and we're dismissing the authority that God has.

And we've put this kingdom in the rightful seat on the throne where Jesus, who came on Christmas, showed us he's the true king.

These next two kingdoms are pretty personal and they look healthy.

They look like they're optimizing us, they look like they're making our life better, and they can be.

They can be tools.

Some of these things can be used in rightful ways, but what we're seeing is it's sucking us in.

The next one's the kingdom of self-optimization.

And this sounds good.

It's like, bro, optimizing my life, bro.

Like, I'm tracking macros.

If I eat a peanut, I know what's up.

I know if I'm running, I know if I'm breathing too much before I go to sleep because my whoop is telling me I have no idea.

And it's like we we honor, we go around our lives like trying to think through ways to optimize our sleep, and we do that.

And maybe you got a perfect morning routine.

Like you'd be watching some of these people who got routines online.

It's like you wake up at three in the morning, I don't know, polar bear plunge, ice bath, whatever, and you do your thing, you do your sauna, then you go and you listen to a six-hour podcast and you meditate or whatever, you have your great breakfast, you tracked your macros, perfect morning.

But you can't get up to 9 a.m.

without exploding on your kid.

And it's like, man, if I could just have this perfect life here, it's gonna be this perfect life here, and we realize we're not fully surrendered, and we're prioritizing the wrong thing.

And it's, I'm just saying, it's the fruit of this.

Look at our world, it's the fruit.

The fruit doesn't lie.

The next kingdom is the kingdom of an AI-enabled autonomy.

Some of y'all know what this is, some of y'all grandma's got Chat GPT on their phone, they're figuring it out, they're asking you questions, but if we're honest, AI's coming into the world and we don't have a full understanding.

The people creating it, they don't even fully understand what the product actually is.

It's free to us at some level, so guess what?

You're the product.

It's if you read OpenAI's like mission statement, it's ridiculous.

Don't Google it right now, please.

I don't want to try.

Like, delete me.

It's ridiculous.

And some of us, we've not written an email in six months.

We haven't formatted anything in six months, we haven't come up with a unique creative idea ourselves in months.

And maybe you're like, bro, it's optimizing my work, and it's like, cool, maybe for a moment.

Or you're people are gonna perceive you as smarter than you actually are because they're not talking to you, they're talking to your AI.

And the lie that we're doing right now, the lie that we're buying into is that like at a click of a button, typing, swiping, I can solve every problem.

I have wisdom at my fingertips, I can do anything.

Sounds like God.

Sounds like God, and it sounds good.

But it's actually robbing us, it's robbing us of everything.

We are created beings made in the image of God who were meant to co-create alongside God, and the fact that we're putting something in the place of even the fact the idea that it's going to create for us is ridiculous.

And what I want you to know today is like I am in here with you.

This isn't a message just like Tony's got this figure out, bro.

He's a nomad living on the hills, he don't deal with the internet.

It's like, no, bro, I got kids.

I know what it's like to pull my phone out and go, dang, I shouldn't have pulled my phone out.

Like, my kids watching me.

I shouldn't have ran to this.

I should prioritize.

I know what it's like, and I know all of us here know exactly what that's like.

And the crazy thing about all of these kingdoms, and it's it's heartbreaking because every single one of them works for a little while.

Just for a little bit.

And we cope, we bend our knee, and we put it on the throne in place of Jesus.

And control feels comforting until it doesn't, until it breaks.

And even feels like empowering, like, man, look, I haven't actually logged on my job.

I've been out here hanging out on the beach or whatever, I got my AI running this, and it feels empowering until it feels until you actually learn that you're being isolated, until you actually learn that like you're no longer using your brain.

And all of these little things start creeping in and creeping in, and escape feels soothing until you get back on the other side of it, needing more, feeling empty.

We know what that's like.

Feeling empty, binge watching something for two, three hours goes by, still no peace.

Even less rest.

If you would have given it to God and gone to bed, if I would have given it to God and gone to bed, I would have got more rest the next day.

So we're losing our sleep, we're losing our real rest, we're giving everything that we have away, and I promise you, the enemy wants us to do this.

And if you're reminded about the story of Scripture, is that Jesus came down to be king?

And if he's not king, then who is?

This is the collision of Christmas.

This is the story of Christmas.

This is like the moment where the true king comes and every false king is exposed.

Jesus said to build your life on the rock, not on the sand.

All of these things are sand.

They will be washed away when a storm arises.

I promise you, they feel good, they work sometimes in the short term, but in the long term, we are robbing ourselves.

We are giving away our power.

And Christmas, like I said, it feels cute.

The baby in the manger sounds gentle.

But this baby, he carries a couple titles Savior, Christ, and Lord.

We all love Savior.

We all love the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior.

We love that anointed one.

But the Lord?

The one who says no, the one who actually like has guidelines on how I should live, the one who like puts others before myself?

I'm how do we wrestle with that?

I love the idea of a savior, I love the cute Christmas, I love it.

I love the baby in the major.

But Jesus as king.

The angels announced the arrival of this king the first Christmas.

They said that a savior will be born.

Good news for all people, and it is good news, it's great news, it's life-saving news.

But the story is that Jesus came into the earth.

And when Jesus came into the earth, there was a king on the actual throne, King Herod.

He was the king over Judea, he was king of the Jews in that area.

And scripture tells us the wise men said, Where is the one-born king of the Jews?

to Herod.

They didn't say, Where is this future king?

Where's this baby who, you know, one day is gonna grow up and be?

They said, Where is this king now?

And Herod, he wasn't like crazy, like, you know, disrauded about like a baby.

He wasn't thrown off about a baby.

He was thrown off because someone said another king was born.

Someone was coming for his throne.

And what we see is that this evil king, if you read history, you'll find that Herod, that he was like vicious, jealous, a murderer.

He murdered his family members and friends, all to keep power.

And then we see the same pattern in his life trying to protect this kingdom that he had power over.

And what does he do?

He orders a decree that any baby under the age of two would be killed.

That sounds evil, that sounds crazy, and it is.

Sounds insane?

That is insane to go to that length to try and save yourself, to try and save your throne.

But this is how I wrote it, and I want to read exactly how I wrote it.

Listen, if we're honest, Herod is not just a villain we judge.

Herod's a mirror.

Herod is the extreme version of something that lives in all of us.

The part that doesn't want to surrender control.

We know this.

Everything seems cool about Jesus until you feel threatened when he gets too close to your throne.

What is that in your life?

What is the thing that you throw ups in arms about when you're confronted and you realize the king doesn't agree with that?

Or there's a different way of doing it in his kingdom.

We want God to bless all of our kingdoms, all of our endeavors.

But we don't Want him to replace it.

And we see at the highest level of what evil looks like: someone taking life in order to hoard power and position.

And really, that's all of us.

You and I are protecting something.

There's something wrong.

What I want to do is get a picture of what the true king actually is.

And Paul gives us a description.

He gives us a model in Philippians 2.

He talks about how Jesus existed in the form of God.

He had full authority.

He had full glory here on earth.

And he had all right to stay on his heavenly realm throne.

And instead, he chose to come into our broken world.

In Philippians 2, verse 5, it says, Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus.

Philippians 2:5

This is the model, is what he's saying.

Jesus, who existed in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited.

Instead, he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity, and when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death on the cross.

And this is why this matters.

His descent into our world confronts this idea of our attempt at self-rule.

The oldest lie in history.

That we could be God.

We're in control.

And what Jesus shows us here is the power of the true King.

Every movement of Jesus in this hem is downward.

He steps lower and lower and lower and lower.

He gives a power, he gives a privilege, he gives a position.

And we see that this king does not come to take and hoard.

And he had all power and all authority, and yet we see is he gave.

Christmas is a rescue mission.

And it's been the rescue mission since the beginning of time.

It was always the plan in order to get you and I back into relationship with God since the garden, since we bought into the lie, and since we built these kingdoms here on earth, and we've replaced the king with something else.

It's always been the plan for Jesus to come back, to rise up and take his throne back.

But the thing about Jesus, he's a good king, he's a powerful king.

His kingdom is like no other.

It's upside down from ours.

He doesn't force you into this submission of him as king.

Unlike what we saw with King Herod, Christmas is costly.

It cost him everything, it cost him his life.

Christmas starts off with the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, in a feeding trough.

The one who spoke galaxies into existence is now being held by the very hands in which he formed.

He formed and created Mary and Joseph, and now you have a baby all dependent on them, laying in their arms the King of Kings, Lord of Lords.

Instead of hoarding power, he gave up everything.

Everything to the point of death.

That's our King.

That is our Lord.

That is our Savior.

That's sacrifice.

The model is humility and sacrifice.

And when you and I we actually understand and see this humility, it dethrones every single worldly kingdom and it makes it embarrassedly small.

They never had any power over us.

We gave them power.

And Paul continues in verse 9, he says, For this reason, the reason that everything we just read, God going lowly, giving up his position, his authority, and dying to the coming to the point of death on the cross, for this reason, God highly exalted him and gave him the name above every name.

So the name of Jesus, every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

Every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord to God, to the glory of God the Father.

Because Jesus humbled himself so completely, God exalted him completely.

The King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, who died a brutal death on a cross for you and for I, and the whole time he had all the power and all the authority.

At any moment, he could have seized and took his power.

Any moment.

When the crown was pushed into his skull, he could have removed it.

When they tied him to the post and they whipped him for you and I and they continuously ripped out his flesh, they didn't have to tie him there.

He would have stayed there for you and I.

When they hung him on a tree and he gave up his spirit, they did not have to keep him there.

He would have stayed there and gave up his spirit.

He had all power and all authority and he chose you.

Even the fact that we didn't choose him, he chose us.

In our sin, he still came and rescued us.

That is the king we follow.

That is the Lord we follow.

Amen?

And God raised him and God enthroned him.

And then scripture tells us that every knee will bow on heaven, on earth, and in the lowly, so the living and the dead.

Everything will bow and confess his kingship.

That is the story of Christmas.

It's not optional, it's not hypothetical, it is inevitable.

He is king.

Thank you, Lord.

And we've replaced him with something.

And I just want to ask, what is it in your life that you have put in the place of God?

Who's sitting on the throne?

That's the question of this entire message.

Who's sitting on that throne?

Who's robbing you of everything that God has for you?

Joy, peace, love, self-control, kindness.

Who's robbing you?

And Jesus is king.

Jesus, when he ascended, he gave us the keys to the kingdom.

He said, Go into the world.

All power, all authority has been given to me.

God gave him all power, all authority.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was God, and the word was with God.

And everything that was created came through this God.

That person of Jesus.

He created everything, he owns everything, he has authority and power over everything.

And every single Christmas is a reminder that he is King.

Christmas is a reminder, it's an invitation to bow before the King.

What's on the throne?

And I'm telling you, it's easy.

This is not judgment.

I'm not condemning you.

It's easy.

Something is ruling your life.

Multiple things may be ruling your life.

And Jesus wants to heal you.

He wants to take it back.

He's the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords.

And what you realize about power, about kingship in Jesus is the moment you and I surrender, we don't lose power.

We lose the illusion that we ever were in control.

The crown's weight was never meant to sit on your head.

You and I could never handle that power.

Ever.

That's not how it's meant to be.

And when we look at our lives, our lives say something else.

We're trying to seize control in every area of our life.

And I'm just telling you, it's robbing you.

And you have the power to make the decision that Jesus is Lord.

He's the Savior.

He's the Christ.

And he is Lord.

I'm not asking you right now if you believe in Jesus, if you admire him, if you love him.

I'm asking you if he's king.

It's a dark world out there.

It's a dark world on some of our feeds, some of our lives, some of our relationships.

And it's gonna take a king.

It's gonna take a group of people who are gonna stand for something else, who are not gonna bow, who are not going to live the way that the world lives, and say, I have a king.

He humbled himself to the point of death, and this upside down kingdom is me now losing my life.

If I try and keep my life, I lose my life, but if I lose my life, I find life.

That's a teaching of the kingdom of God that Jesus told us.

The moment you and I give away the power and we surrender to him, the illusion of all these kingdoms disappear.

He is in charge.

Amen.

Herod clung to the throne with fear, jealousy, you name it, evil, murderer.

And Jesus did the opposite.

Jesus built his kingdom about giving his life.

Herod refused to surrender, and Jesus surrendered everything.

And the question becomes who are we following and what kingdoms are we building?

We just bow your heads, close your eyes, want to create some room just to just to reflect.

I've been praying for this moment.

I know the Holy Spirit's gripping someone's heart, multiple people's heart.

Like I know what it's like.

I wrote a lot of this message for myself.

Because slowly this stuff creeps in.

Who's ruling your life right now?

And at different times, when time when life presses, when anxiety comes, when fear comes, who do we surrender to?

Who do we run to?

Who are we enthroning?

I know God wants to do something.

I know he wants you to do something in your life.

I know it.

It's not how he works.

He continues to redeem everything, every part of our life, and he wants to use your brokenness.

He wants to use this perspective that you had about the world and how you get power and how you find joy, and he wants to flip it on its head the same way that the enemy had no idea.

The enemy thought he won when Jesus went to the cross.

But little did he know that he had no power the whole time.

And our God raised him.

And our God exalts.

Search this, God, know our hearts.

Point out anything in us that offends you.

Test us and know our anxious ways, God.

We want to be led by you.

You are Lord.

Lead us, lead our path.

Lead us, God.

We weren't created for this weight.

That frustration you have, the burnout you feel in this busy season, you weren't meant to carry the weight.

You weren't meant to create, to control everything.

It's an illusion.

When you and I die and we pick up our cross and we follow him, we take back our power.

Some of us here today, you're wrestling, and you've never had a moment in time to surrender to the king.

Some of us here today, we're believers, and we need to surrender.

Hear me, you need to surrender, get off the throne, replace whatever's on the throne, and put Jesus back there and live with him as Lord of your life.

Some of us, though, we've never had the opportunity to even say who this king was, to put our faith in this king.

And the paradox is that the moment you surrender, you may think it's the end, but it's actually the beginning.

I want to give, if there's anyone here in the room or anyone in the Hilotus or watching online, an opportunity to put their faith in Jesus today.

If that's you today, you've never had a moment in time, and today you say, Jesus is king, I know who he is, he is God, he raised from the dead.

Would you just raise your hand for me?

I want to know who I'm talking to.

Amen.

Amen.

Praise God.

Praise God.

God is moving, He's on the throne, He's King.

Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, Jesus.

By raising your hand today, you are putting your faith in Jesus.

Nothing can take you from the hands of Jesus.

You are forever saved by the King.

He sees and accepts your faith.

You have eternal life, friend.

What I want to do is just simply walk through a prayer out loud just to help you acknowledge what you're saying internally.

And everyone here in the room, everyone online, would you just repeat this prayer with me?

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe that you were God, that you came to earth, that you died for my sins.

I believe that you rose again.

Thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

So glad you joined us for today's message.

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If you want to know more about MetaCurch, go to our website, metachurch.tv, where you can find out about all things MetaCurch.

And if you feel led, you can contribute to help push this movement forward.

We hope that you'll join us next week on the MetaCurch podcast.