Obedience Like Joseph
Transcript
Well, good morning. How are we doing this morning? Yeah, it is good to be with you guys. I love that song. I got the privilege last week of getting to preach at our church that I'm at right now, Midtown, Downtown. And we played that right before I walked out.
And so to get to walk out and preach following that song again is just such good. Good for my heart. Hopefully good for your hearts. That beautiful mystery of the gospel, right? That Jesus, the Savior of the world, the Lord of all creation, would humble himself and come as a child. So we celebrate in this season.
Excited to be opening God's Word with you this morning. If you have a Bible, go ahead and get to Matthew 1. We're going to be in Matthew 1 and 2 a little bit today. Like Chet said at the very beginning, my name is Tim. I'm currently on staff over at a church downtown called Midtown Fellowship. And they are sending myself and my wife and a team of about 40 individuals out to the east side of Charlotte, North Carolina, to plant a church called Citizens Church next summer.
And so we're really excited, really grateful. Some of them are sitting front and center this morning. So I'm trusting they'll bring the amens for me. But really, really glad, really grateful for you guys for making us one of your Give projects, for caring about us, for wanting us to see us be launched out well as a brand new church. But more than anything, I'm excited to open up God's Word with you this morning.
Now we just prayed, but let me pray one more time for us before we dive in. Father God, thank you for your Word. Thank you for Jesus. Thank you for Jesus as a baby in the manger, helpless, clinging to Mary and to Joseph. God, thank you for Jesus on the cross, who appears helpless, but in the same moment is claiming victory over Satan's sin and death. Thank you that we worship that King.
That we serve and give our lives away for that King who first gave his life away for us. Would you be with us this morning as we open your Word? Would you help us to see what it is that you have for us, to apply what it is we need to apply, to know what it is we need to know, to love what it is we need to love. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.
So we're in the second Sunday of Advent, the middle of this Advent season. The season where we look back and we remember and celebrate Christ's first coming. And we look ahead. We look forward to and anticipate the second coming of Christ. This time not as a baby in a manger, but as a King. A risen and ruling and reigning King for all eternity.
And so to do that this year, you guys are looking at different themes from the Gospel of Matthew in the Christmas narrative. And so I have the privilege this morning of talking to you about Joseph. Not colorful coat Joseph, but standing next to Mary in all of your scenes of nativity, Joseph. That's who we're talking about this morning in Matthew chapter 1. So growing up, my family had a tradition where every other Friday night, we would sit down and watch movies together.
So we would order pizza and we would sit down, usually watch some kind of great American film or great American classic. On the other hand, my wife's family was not really big into movies. So they just didn't really watch TV a whole lot. That wasn't their thing growing up. Didn't watch a whole lot of movies. And so when we got married, I found out pretty early on that she had never seen some of the American classics.
I mean, just the films you need to watch if you are going to be a part of this culture and this society. Films like Star Wars. Films like Harry Potter. Lord of the Rings, which I'm told are also books, can neither confirm nor deny if they're books or not. But she'd never seen the movies and that's what I cared about.
And so being the spiritual leader of our family that I was, I decided this had to change, right? And so we sat down over the first year or so of our marriage and we watched through every single one of these movies. And what happens is when you watch through these movies back to back to back to back to back to back to back is that you notice two things. Number one, you notice that all of the plots are basically the same. Hot take. You can argue about it later.
All the stories are the same. They all tell the same story. Hero, villain, kill the villain, you win, right? That's how the story goes. But the second thing you notice in all of these movies is that there is always some secondary or third, some other character that seems like they're not really that important.
They're kind of in the background, kind of off. You're wondering what their deal is, but then you get to the end of the movie and you realize, hey, this person played a pivotal role in the story of the lead character. They're not the lead. They're not the main character. They're not the one that the story is about, but they do something, some sacrifice, some act that helps serve the purposes of the lead character. So in Harry Potter, you have Hagrid, right?
In Star Wars, you have Han Solo. In Lord of the Rings, you have Samwise Gamgee, right? In Chronicles of Narnia, you have Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. I mean, even Anna has her Olaf, right? There's this secondary character that is helping serve the purposes of the lead.
Well, this morning in Matthew 1 and 2, that's what we see with the person of Joseph. So we get when we get to Joseph. Joseph, this man who is not the lead character. The Christmas narrative is not about Joseph. We don't sing all these songs about the risen Joseph. He's not the one in the manger.
He is just a secondary character, but he plays a hugely vital role in the Christmas story. His Acts of sacrifice and obedience to God are huge. He is set to protect Jesus. Baby Jesus, helpless newborn Jesus. And so he has a vital, crucial, wildly important role to play, but he's not the lead character. And that's what we're going to see in the story of Joseph.
We're going to start in verse 18, Matthew chapter 1. And what I want to show us this morning is a pattern. So we're going to look at three different little stories from Matthew 1 and 2. And I want to show you a pattern from the life of Joseph. We're going to start in verse 18, Matthew chapter 1. Here we go.
Scripture reads, Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. So reading this story, there might be some confusion, right? Are they married? Are they engaged?
If they're just engaged, why does he have to divorce her? What is, what's going on? So in verse 18, it says that Joseph and Mary were betrothed. So betrothal in this time period is a part of the Jewish custom called kiddushin. And kiddushin means that what would happen is a man and a woman would get legally married. So they would be bound together.
And then they would enter a period, usually a year, of what was called betrothal, where they were set up to be married. By all legal circumstances, they were married, but they weren't married yet. So what would happen is a groom's family, in order to arrange a marriage, that's how it worked in that custom, they would pay a large amount of money to a bride's family for the right for their daughter to marry their son. And so they would pay this large amount of money. And so what they would do is they would enter a betrothal period, a year, a period of about a year, basically to wait and make sure that this woman, who they paid a lot of money for, was morally pure, that she wasn't pregnant, that she was fit to marry in their culture, fit to marry their son.
And so what would happen is they would be set up for this year period, where they were legally married, but they weren't allowed to live together, they weren't allowed to be alone together, and they weren't allowed to sleep together, which my opinion is no thank you to that tradition. Right? So they were married, though. And so in order to break it off, they had to be divorced. So what happens is during this betrothal year, Mary shows up pregnant.
Whereas the text says before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And I don't know how that conversation goes between Mary and Joseph. Right? Would have loved to be a fly on the wall for that one. Right? Mary, who in Luke 1, we know that she was told by an angel, you're going to conceive, and you're going to give birth to a son.
This is God's son. You're going to call him Jesus. So it's found that she is pregnant. She's pregnant by the Holy Spirit. And so she maybe rolls up to Joseph and is like, hey, Joseph, by the way, I'm pregnant. And Joseph's response is, what?
Say it again. And she says, don't worry. Don't freak out. Be calm. It's God's baby. Which if you're Joseph, you shouldn't believe her.
Right? So we think, oh, yeah, people in that custom, people in that culture, they're so superstitious. Of course, he believes her totally. He doesn't believe her. Right? He believes in the supernatural, but he doesn't believe in the superstitious.
He's not just some blind, oh, yeah, totally. God got you pregnant. Totally. Yes. He doesn't believe her. He's thinking clearly.
Verse 19. And her husband, Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. So here's what I want you to notice. Joseph is both just and gracious. Right? So he's just.
He can't just say, Mary, it's not a big deal. He can't just say, you know what? Let's slide it under the rug. No big deal. Let's move past it.
Let's move forward. He can't overlook Mary's sin. He's a just man, but he's also gracious. So he doesn't want to put her to public ridicule, to public shame. Legally, in that time, Joseph has the right to have Mary killed. If he really believed that she was guilty of idolatry, of having this sexual relationship, he could have her killed.
But he's gracious. So he wants to send her away quietly. He's just and gracious. We actually get a beautiful little picture into the character of God here through Joseph. Right? God is both just and gracious.
Right? He's just. He can't let sin go unpunished. He can't go. He can't let sin be swept under the rug or ignored or pushed aside. But he's also gracious.
He doesn't treat us as we deserve. He treats us as he treats Christ based on what Christ has done for us. So Joseph is a just man and a gracious man. And so he resolves to divorce Mary quietly. Verse 20. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
So I don't want us to move past this. Right? One of the dangers of preaching or hearing stories that we're so familiar with from Christmas is that we kind of put this Christmas filter on it. Right? We kind of know, okay, this is what happens. The angel shows up, tells Mary she's going to get pregnant, going to have a baby.
Of course, then the angel shows up to Joseph. He believes her. They go to Bethlehem happily ever after. Right? Let's sing some Christmas carols.
Let's light some candles and have some hot chocolate. Right? That's kind of what we do with Christmas stories. So I want to help you just for a second try to put yourself into the story. So imagine this is happening in 2019.
Right? Imagine this is happening today. Right? Here's this teenage couple from out in the woods, out in this backcountry town, out in the sticks, in the boonies. If I was preaching this at Midtown, I would say, imagine they're from West Columbia. It's a joke.
All right? It's a joke. It's a joke. Imagine they're from Shira, right? Or maybe Gaston or, I don't know, Edgefield. Right?
So imagine there's this teenage couple and they come up to be pregnant. Right? The woman is pregnant. And she has a dream. And she says, guys, don't worry. It's not Joseph's baby.
It's God's baby. And you're like, okay, that's kind of weird. And Joseph, her fiance, doesn't believe her. And so he's like, no, we're not getting married. No way. This is done.
But then he goes to sleep. And he has a dream. And an angel shows up and says, Joseph, you should marry this girl. You should marry her because this is my baby. This is from the Holy Spirit. And so he goes around town and he's like, we're having the wedding.
The wedding is on. This is God's baby. We're doing it. So imagine you're hanging out Friday morning at, I don't know, Hardee's. Right? Getting your bacon, egg, and cheese.
And you hear these people at a table next to you talking about this couple. Mary and Joseph. Joseph, right, these teenagers, right? She's pregnant. She says it's God's baby. What?
He believes her. He says he had a dream where an angel showed up. And what is going on here? Now, take a step further. Imagine you're Joseph. Think about it.
Take a second. Think about it. Imagine you're Joseph. Here's this woman who you're waiting a year of betrothal, of waiting time to enter into marriage together, and then she ends up being pregnant. What's going through your mind? What hopes and dreams of a life that you've built up for yourself with this woman alongside of you?
What pictures of that? What glimpses of that? What dreams of a future that you have for yourself are suddenly shattered in an instant? Every story you had written? Every scenario you had played out in your head? Here's this woman.
You're waiting. You're anticipating this season. And if any of you have been engaged before, you know that season of waiting towards marriage is agonizing in some senses. Right? You're waiting to be united together with this person. And here is Joseph.
And she winds up being pregnant? And she says it's God's child. And I don't believe her. But now I've had this dream. And this angel has showed up to me and said, No, this is from the Holy Spirit. What does he do?
What step does he take? What agony and turmoil is he going through? No wonder the angel shows up. And in verse 20, he says this, Joseph, son of David, do not fear. I love that. Do not fear to take Mary as your wife.
There's so much for Joseph to be afraid of here, right? There's so much at stake. His reputation is on the line, right? Even if he believes her, even if he believes the angel, who believes him? Who believes Joseph, right? Either he's a liar and he's making up this whole it's God's baby thing to get himself out of trouble, to get himself out of the circumstances he's caused, or he's a fool.
And everyone says, how could you marry this woman even after she betrayed you? Even after she was found to be pregnant? If he believes her, if he believes God, who believes him? His good standing in the community. Any good name that he has is on the line. His relationships are at stake.
Rejection from those in his family. Rejection from those in his hometown. His hopes and his dreams are at stake. This life that he has written for himself, whatever that looks like, is totally thrown out the window. He is signing up. If this is true, if this is real, he is signing up to be the stand-in father of God's baby.
His life is never going to look the same. He's giving up his hopes. He's giving up his dreams. He's giving up his reputation and his relationships. But the angel tells him, do not fear.
Do not fear. Have faith that what you're being invited into is from God. It's an invitation for him to step out in obedient faith. Keep reading verse 21. Angel continues. She will bear a son.
And you shall call his name Jesus. For he will save his people from their sins. This is important. I want to make sure you don't miss it. For Joseph, naming Jesus would give him legal rights to being Jesus' father. So that's how it worked in this culture.
The one who names the child is the one who claims legal rights, legal fatherhood, legal authority over this child. And so what the angel is saying is you are to name him. And in other words, for Joseph to name Jesus is for Joseph to claim Jesus. So what the angel is saying is you don't get partial obedience here. That's not an option for you in this scenario. You don't get to just kind of play fill-in.
You don't get to have one foot in to this whole fatherhood of Jesus thing and one foot out. You don't get to just be Mary's husband. You have to jump all in. Obedience requires you saying, no, I'm here. I'm in. You have to step in fully.
For him to name Jesus is for him to claim Jesus. He has to step into full obedience. Verse 22. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son. They shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.
When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus. So here's the pattern I want you to see. God shows up to Joseph. He calls him to do something costly and weighty and that might not make a whole lot of sense.
He invites him into obedience. Joseph obeys and a prophecy is fulfilled. Meaning the purposes and plans that God has move forward. Meaning what God has designed for the world to go, what he has orchestrated, what he has said should happen, does happen. God shows up, calls Joseph to obey. Joseph obeys and God's plan moves forward.
That's the pattern of Joseph's life. I want to show you two other areas, Matthew 2, two other ways we see this playing out. God calling Joseph, Joseph obeying, God's plan moving forward. So the first one is in Matthew 2, verse 13. So Chet talked about this last week.
Jesus is born in Bethlehem and King Herod, King of the Jews, hears there's this child who has been born who is supposed to be King of the Jews. And so obviously he wants to protect his kingdom. He wants to protect his throne. So he's going to have him killed. Wise men show up. We three kings bring the gifts, yada, yada, yada.
Keep going. Verse 13. That's where we pick it up here. Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, Rise, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you. For Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him. And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remain there until the death of Herod.
This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Out of Egypt I called my son. Same pattern. God shows up to Joseph, right? Calls him to do something costly and weighty. Tells him, Herod's trying to destroy this child.
He's trying to kill your child. So take Mary, take Jesus, flee to Egypt, which is about 90 miles or so away. So it would have been about a five to seven day journey by foot and by donkey. So let's stay on the Imagine You're Joseph train, right? Keep yourself in this moment, right? God shows up.
He tells you that this woman who you are about to marry is pregnant, but not to worry. It's his child. Do not fear. Take Mary as your wife. Raise Jesus. This is from God.
Right? So if you, imagine you say yes to this. You're like, all right, God, this is changing my whole life, but I'm going to be obedient to you. And so I'm going to step in and I'm going to go for it. If you're anything like me, you would imagine that your life is going to be good from here on out. Right?
After all, you signed up to be the stand-in father for Jesus. Right? You signed up to take this role, to obey God. You said yes to God's plan. He should work everything else out, right? Right?
If I'm going to be the adoptive father of Jesus, I need a couple mil in the bank. I need a big house. Right? I need the latest whatever. I need everything in my life to be good. Right?
I'm taking care of Jesus. We should be protected. We should have angels flying all around all the time. Like, we should be okay. And here you are now finding out, hey, I said yes to God. I said yes to being obedient to him.
And now somebody wants to kill him? Somebody wants to kill my son? Wait a minute. I said yes to God's plan. Why is my life not getting any better? You ever think that way?
You ever have those kind of thoughts? Wait. Wait. Hold on. Hold on a minute. I said yes to you, God.
Like, I obeyed you. Why are you not working things out how I want them to work out? Wait. God, I said yes to your mission. I stood out in faith. I took a chance because I felt like you were calling me to do it.
Why are my circumstances not getting better? In fact, why are they getting worse? We think back on those decisions. Why would I do it again? God, why would I obey you when last time I obeyed you, you didn't turn things out the way I wanted them to turn out. I said yes to you and you made this happen.
You let this happen. You let that person get sick. You let us lose how much money? We do this, right? We think, okay, yes, if I say yes to God, he should just work everything out for me. Joseph says yes to God and now they're on the run.
Right? Somebody's trying to take out Jesus. But Joseph obeys. God's plan moves forward. Let me give you one more. So if they flee to Egypt, Herod has every male child in Bethlehem and the surrounding region under the age of two killed.
Then we get to verse 19. Matthew 2, verse 19. But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel. For those who sought the child's life are dead. And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. When he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there.
And being warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene. Same pattern. Right? God shows up to Joseph, calls him to take Jesus and Mary to Israel. All right.
They get to go home. Right? Finally, maybe they get to settle in. They get to have a life. He obeys. They start heading that way.
God shows up again and says, nope, not Israel. You've got to go to Galilee. Really? Galilee? So they head to Galilee.
They end up in a city called Nazareth. We notice again God's plan moves forward so that his plan would move forward so that Jesus would be called a Nazarene. And this is really the last we see of Joseph in the story of Matthew. This is kind of it. We get a little glimpse of him in chapter 13 where it's kind of a little quick reference. But that's it.
This is Joseph. Right? This massively, wildly important character in the story of God who serves God, obeys God, sacrifices so much to protect the baby Jesus. Right? Wildly important. And yet he's there for two chapters.
That's it. He plays his role. He plays his part. And then he steps out of the way and Jesus gets put into the forefront. The actual lead. The actual one that we worship and serve and give our lives away for.
And so what I want to show us this morning with our last little bit of time, what I want to show us is that Joseph is not just a character with great historical influence. But he's not someone we just put in our nativity scenes. He's not someone we just mention in a few Christmas carols. He is actually a wildly important example for you and for I of what obedience to God looks like. He's a great example of what obedience to God looks like. And I want to show you three ways.
Three ways. His obedience is an example to us. Three ways. Joseph is an incredible example of faithful obedience to God. See what we can learn from this. Three ways.
Number one, obedience when it doesn't make sense. Obedience when it doesn't make sense. Mary's pregnant with God's baby. What? Flee to Egypt? To Galilee?
Where? What do you want from us? It doesn't make sense. An angel showing up, right? Telling Joseph this stuff doesn't make sense. Doesn't it feel that way sometimes when God calls us to obey him?
Like, hold up. Wait. God, I'm reading your word. And I'm praying. And you want me to do what? You want me to say yes to what?
You want me to say no to what? Now, chances are, right, none of us are going to go home tonight and go to bed. And none of us are going to have a dream where an angel shows up and says, Hey, the woman you're engaged to is pregnant with a baby from the Holy Spirit. Marry her. Call him Jesus. That's not going to happen.
Right? If it does, go back to sleep. You heard it wrong. All right? That's not going to happen. But there are going to be times in our lives where God calls us to step out in faith, to step out in obedience.
And it's not going to make sense. It's not going to make sense. So maybe for some of you, that looks like God calling you to give up that promotion. Or to say no to that raise so that you can actually stay in this city and build deep roots with your church family. For others of you, sacrifice that doesn't make sense looks like, hey, I'm really tired tonight and I would much rather watch Disney Plus or Netflix. But instead, I'm going to go and I'm going to invest in my community group.
I'm going to open up God's word with them. I'm going to love them. I'm going to serve them. For some of us, it looks like, all right, this doesn't make sense to give away money with zero financial return on my investment. But God's kingdom is bigger than me.
So I'm going to use what he has given me. For some of us, it looks like, wait, I'm supposed to parent my kid that way? I'm supposed to make that sacrifice for my family? I don't get it. I don't understand. And for some of us, obedience, when it doesn't make sense, looks like finally opening up and sharing that deep part of us that we would never tell anyone about ever.
Because we know God invites us into freedom. He invites us to be fully known and fully loved by him and by his people. Obedience doesn't always make sense. God calls us to do stuff that our rational minds would butt up so hardly against. Right? And say, why would I do that?
Why would I say yes to those things? Why would I say no to those things? God, why would you ask me to do that? Why would you ask me to step in in that way? Because this is how obedience so often works. I've been getting a firsthand glimpse of this with our Citizens Church core team.
This is not a story to set us up as the hero. I would rather talk about Jesus the whole time, but I feel the need to talk about it. So our team, our team with Citizens is a group of about 40 or so individuals. And they are the most normal folks. We are the most normal folks you've ever met in your entire life. You can meet them.
A lot of them are sitting on the second row. And you'll know, yeah, they're really normal. Like they're really average. We have baristas. We have some college students. We have some future pharmacists, some future nurses.
We have people that work in insurance. It doesn't get any more normal than working in insurance, right? It just doesn't. And there are people that believe that God has called them to something. That God has said, hey, would you step out in faith? And for most of them, 99% of them, it doesn't make sense.
Right? So in our culture, in our society, we move somewhere new for one of three reasons. We move for family. We move for a new job. Or we move for cheaper cost of living, right? That's generally the three reasons why we move.
A lot of the people on our team are actually moving away from family to go to Charlotte. They're giving up jobs that they like with no guarantee of a job. None of them have jobs right now. And for a lot of them, they're going to move into more expensive apartments and more expensive houses because Charlotte is way more expensive than Columbia. It doesn't make sense. It makes zero sense.
And yet they believe that God has called them to something. So they're trying to step out in faith. They're trying to be obedient to the mission of God. And what we see with Joseph is that faithful obedience to God doesn't always make sense. Secondly, obedience when it's costly. Obedience when it's costly.
Joseph ruins his reputation. Just ruins it. Totally derails any plans he probably had for his life. Any hopes and dreams he had. Just totally goes off the rail. Right?
He is signing up to be the stand-in father of God's son. Life is not going to look the same. And Joseph willingly steps into the sacrifice. His reputation, his relationships, his hopes and dreams. He steps out even when it's costly. Here's the reality.
And if you've been following Jesus for any amount of time, you probably feel this. Obedience to God is going to cost you. Just is. Right? Matthew 16. Jesus says, if you want to be my disciple, if you want to follow me, take up your cross and be willing to die.
That's what it means to be a Christian. It means to follow the way of our Savior, which the way of our Savior is one of continual sacrifice upon sacrifice upon sacrifice all the way to the cross. So to follow Jesus is to have sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice. The call of obedience from Christ is one that is going to cost you. It's going to hurt. It's not always going to feel pleasant.
And that rubs against us because we think, God, I'm following you and you control all things. Why isn't my life getting better? Why aren't things magically just working out for me now? Because the call to obedience is the call to come and die. To give up our lives. To give up what's easy and what's normal.
To sacrifice for the mission of God going forward. Gets us to number three. Number three. Obedience when you don't know the outcome. Obedience when you don't know the outcome. We know the whole story of this, right?
We know the whole Christmas narrative. We're on this side of the Bible. We know who Jesus is. We know the miracles that he does. We know that he goes to the cross. We know he dies but doesn't stay dead.
But he gets up out of the grave. We know all that. Joseph doesn't. When Joseph says yes to the angel in the dream. When Joseph says yes to marrying Mary. He doesn't know how it all works out.
He doesn't know the miracles that Jesus is going to perform. He doesn't know feeding the 5,000. He doesn't know the walking on water. He doesn't know the cross. He doesn't know the empty tomb. Joseph doesn't know any of that.
He is just a dad. Trying to be faithful to the call of God on his life. He's just trying to take one step at a time. Little step by little step by little step. He's just trying to be obedient. He doesn't know how it all works.
And if you're anything like me, that could be one of the most frustrating parts of obedience to God. Right? Because I'll be reading God's word or I'll be praying and I feel like God's called me to something and I want to know, all right, I'll totally say yes. God, I am in on the plan as long as you tell me what the next five steps are. Right? As long as you tell me where we're going when we get there.
Give me the ending. Tell me how this all works out and I'm totally in on your plan. Meanwhile, in the back of my mind, I'm going, all right, let me make sure I like it first. Let me make sure if I say yes here that it's going to work out how I want it to work out. Let me make sure that everything's going to be okay. God, show me the whole plan.
And I'm about as type A as type A comes. So God, I need 50 step by step. Do this, do this, do this. And an invitation for me and my Christian growth is, no, Tim, little step. Little step. Take a little step.
Take a little step. I tell our core team all the time that we don't know if this is going to work. I tell them all the time, like we're going to Charlotte. We're trying to plant this church. We think God's called us to do it. I don't know if we're going to fail or not.
We have a process that we take our people through before they join our core team, our first group of members. And I tell every single one of them, I'm not a salesman, I'm a pastor. So I tell every single one, I don't know. We could have a thousand people and plant 50 churches or we could have 10 people and not be able to pay our bills and close our doors within a year. I don't know. And for a lot of these conversations, I actually go back to a conversation I had with Chet, one of your pastors back, I think 2012, 2013, something like that.
We were hanging out at Cafe Strudel. And I remember that because he taught me about all you can drink coffee, which is wonderful. Glad for that. And so we're sitting down at Cafe Strudel and Mill City's just kind of really starting to get rolling at that point. I think we were kind of talking church planting. He knew that's what I wanted to do eventually.
And so I remember him asking me this question and it still stuck with me today and I still share it with our core team all the time. But he asked me, he said, Tim, how do we know if Mill City is a failure? Like, how do we know if we failed? Then he asked me some, I think, rhetorical questions, but I might have answered them. He said, Tim, if 10 years from now, if we're huge, if we've blown up, but we've never planted another church, we've never reproduced ourselves as a church, have we failed? I'm like, all right, I don't think so.
It doesn't feel like failure. He said, all right, let me give you another one. If three years from now, we've reached 500 people and we're huge and we've blown up, but we haven't baptized a single person or a single person hasn't come to faith. Not a single person's met Jesus. Are we a failure? Maybe, I don't know.
These are tricky questions, Chad, I don't know. All right, let me ask you one more. If in a year from now, we have zero money in the bank, nobody comes. We close our doors and come crawling back to Midtown. It's what seems like failure. Are we a failure?
All right, this one I know. Yes, yes, you're a failure. Got it. I know this answer. And he looked at me and I still remember this to this day. He looked me in the face and he said, Tim, we are stepping out in faith to what we feel like God has called us to do.
So it actually doesn't matter. We're already successful. It doesn't matter. 100 people come to know Jesus. Nobody comes to know Jesus. We have stepped out in faith and what matters in the kingdom of God is faithful obedience.
So I tell my team all the time, I don't know. I don't know. This could be the worst thing we've ever done. This could be a terrible decision, but we feel like God has called us to do it. And so we're just going to be faithful. We're going to work really hard.
We're going to evangelize like crazy. We're going to serve the poor. We're going to love our neighbors. We're going to do semi-decent gatherings and sing and preach God's word. And we're going to talk about Jesus and we're going to invite people to respond. But God does all of it.
And we just try to be faithful. So the invitation for all of us this morning, Mill City Church, all of us this morning is God is inviting you into faithful obedience. And I don't know if for you, it's one specific thing. Maybe that one thing in all of your prayer time, you just keep wrestling with God about that. He just keeps saying, do this, do this, do this. And you keep, I don't want to.
That feels scary. That feels weightier. Maybe it's that one thing he keeps calling you to give up, to say no to, to push away. Maybe for you, it's just a general call towards maturity, a general call towards, you know that when you read scripture and you look at your life, they don't match up and you don't care. So maybe for you, the invitation to obedience is to love God's word and to ask the Holy Spirit to bring conviction over your life, to step in, to speak.
So I don't know, I don't know if it's a specific thing, I don't know if it's a general thing, but here's the good news for us this morning and here's where I want to, I want to land us. Here's the good news for all of us. What God invites us into, Christ has already done. What God invites us into, Christ has already done. That's the story of Christmas. Right?
God himself stepping out into humanity. Right? Taking on flesh, becoming a child, born of a woman, born in a manger, willingly stepping and lowering himself all the way to go lower, even still to the cross. And that doesn't make sense. Right? That doesn't make sense.
On a surface level, that does not make sense. No other worldview or world religion has God stepping down to man. Every single other one has man trying to get themselves to God. But here's God, God himself, creator and controller and ruler of the universe, taking on flesh and lowering himself to become a man. It doesn't make sense. It's costly.
Right? It's costly. Jesus gives up his life, faces an agonizing, brutal, torturous death, physically, emotionally, spiritually, being forsaken by the Father. He experiences such a cost. Grace is free, salvation is free, but it was costly. It cost Jesus his life.
But here's the difference between him and us. Jesus knew the outcome. Right? Jesus knew the outcome. Jesus knew that the cross was not the end of his story. Jesus knew the cross was not the end for him.
He knew three days later he was going to get up out of the grave and be risen and ruling and reigning forever. So what that means for us, church, what that means for us is that every act of faithful obedience, every step of faith, every act of sacrifice actually makes perfect sense in the kingdom of God. Right? Because as we think about, as we learn to fall in love with, as we are changed by the power of the Holy Spirit in light of the person and work of Jesus, it actually makes every sacrifice in light of his ultimate sacrifice make perfect sense. So why wouldn't we give our lives away?
Why wouldn't we step out in faith? Why wouldn't we obey? It actually makes it all not that costly. It hurts. It's weighty in the moment, but we know we anticipate and we expect an eternal reward. Right?
That one day Christ is going to return and he's going to make all things new. That is a guarantee. And we know that. We know the outcome. We might not know it here. We might not know how this specific scenario or this specific circumstance turns out, but we know that one day Christ is going to return and make all things new.
And we get to worship him and celebrate him forever. Here's where I want to end us. None of us are the heroes of the story. So that's the beginning. Mill City, you're not the heroes. Citizens Church Corps team, not the heroes.
I'm not the hero. None of us are the hero. Joseph's not the hero. Jesus is the hero of the story. He's the one we sing about. He's the one we worship.
He's the one we proclaim. He's the one who gave it all away. And so in response, we give it all away in return. He is the one who is worth it. All we're called to do is to step in and play our role of faithful obedience, however small it might be in the kingdom of God. We're called to step out in faith because he's worth it.
He's worth it. He makes it all worth it. Let me pray for us. God, thank you for Jesus. Thank you for the manger, for him lowering himself, taking on flesh, becoming a human. Thank you that, and in one sense, it doesn't make sense at all.
Why would you lower yourself? Why would you take on flesh? Why would you go to the cross, the cross that we deserved? And on the other hand, we see the bigger picture, that you are accomplishing our salvation. that through the sacrifice of Christ, through his life, death, and resurrection, we have been given a way to know you and to love you and to walk with you, to celebrate you forever. God, so would you help us every step of obedience you're calling us into, every act of faith you're calling us into, big or small, in every way that it feels uncertain, in every way that it doesn't make sense, in every way that it feels costly, and that it hurts and that it's burdensome.
God, would you help us? Would you help us remember, and not only remember cognitively in our minds, not only remember as a fact, but remember deep inside of our souls that love of Christ that took him to the cross, that makes every sacrifice, makes every act of faith, makes every act of obedience totally worth it, and make total sense. God, we only love because you loved us first. We only follow you because you sent Jesus first. God, it's all you. We're just responding.
I was to remember this Christmas, this season of Advent, how beautiful and wonderful and crazy it was that Jesus came. that never ceased to be good news for us today, in this season, and every day. We love you. Praise things in Jesus' name. Amen. As the band's coming back up, we're going to move into a time of communion. This is a time of response where we actually get to celebrate each and every Sunday what Christ has done for us, to remember his ultimate sacrifice on the cross, on our behalf.
And so, take a piece of bread, which represents his body, we dip it in juice, which represents his blood, remembering and celebrating that if you are in Christ, if you are a believer, if you trust him, that this is for you, that he has died to make a way for you to be ransomed to himself. If you're not a believer, instead of taking communion, we invite you to take Christ, to believe and trust in his sacrifice for your forgiveness of sins that you can live forever with him. So let's take a second and we're going to pray and then we're going to respond through singing and communion. Matthew Chouclette Buckingham