|giv| Week 3
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
I am one of the pastors here. We are going to be in the book of Ecclesiastes today, specifically Ecclesiastes 5, as we are closing out week three of our Give Series. We pause every year for our Give Series because this is a season in America that gets quite overwhelming with materialism and consumerism. And we want to pause every year and be reminded of what biblical generosity looks like, what a biblical approach to money looks like with the backdrop of a culture and a time that is very much the opposite. So we're in week three of this.
We'll be in the book of Ecclesiastes, which is a book that speaks about the vanity of life. So vanity meaning vain, which is empty, conceited, worthless, pointless. It is a book that talks about how vain putting hope in this life is, and specifically Ecclesiastes 5 is the vanity of riches. How vain it is to put a hope and to get your life towards wealth and riches. And as I was preparing for this, there's a vivid picture from a novel that I read years ago that I just wanted to read that paints a very vivid picture of what it looks like to live your life for the sake of riches. It comes from The Testament by John Grisham in the very kind of opening scene of that book.
And it's a man who is very wealthy, has lots of money, and is on his deathbed. He is narrating what a life spent pursuing riches looks like. So I just want to read from this. So he says, on his deathbed, I'm an old man, lonely and unloved, sick and hurting and tired of living. I'm ready for the hereafter. It has to be better than this.
I own the tall glass building in which I sit, and 97% of the company housed in it, below me and land around half a mile in three directions, and 2,000 people who work here, and the 20,000 who do not. I own the pipeline under the land that brings gas to my building from my fields in Texas. And I own the utility lines that deliver electricity. And I lease the satellite unseen miles above my head from which I once barked my commands to my empire flung around the world. My assets exceed $11 billion. I own silver in Nevada and copper in Montana, coffee in Kenya, coal in Angola, rubber in Malaysia, natural gas in Texas, crude oil in Indonesia, and steel in China.
My company owns companies that produce electricity and make computers and build dams and print paperbacks and broadcast signals to my satellite. I have subsidiaries with divisions in more countries than anyone can find. I once owned all the appropriate toys, the yachts and jets and blondes, homes in Europe, farms in Argentina, an island in the Pacific, thoroughbreds, even a hockey team. But I've grown too old for toys. The money is the root of my misery. I had three families, three ex-wives who bore seven children, six of whom are still alive, doing all they can to torment me.
To my knowledge, I fathered all seven and buried one. I should say his mother buried him. I was out of the country. I'm estranged from all the wives and all the children. They're gathering here today because I'm dying and it's time to divide the money. And you hear that and you see a man that had everything that you could want in this life.
He had all. He had the hockey team. He had the thoroughbreds. He had the farm in Argentina. It's worth $11 billion. And at the end of his life, he's looking at everything that he's worked for in this life.
And he's showing how vain it is, how meaningless it is. Now, most of us are not going to own farms in Argentina. We ain't rolling like that. We're not going to own stuff like that. But I would argue that many of us have some financial goals, right?
Those financial goals involve building an amount of wealth so that one day you can have the security and the comfort, maybe the adoration that comes with that. There are reasons why we're building this wealth for our lives. And I want us to reckon with a picture like this this morning of someone who put all their hope in the riches of this life and realized it wasn't worth it. That we're in danger of falling into the same type of regret at the end of our lives if we spend it pursuing riches for riches' sake. So, we're going to look at Ecclesiastes and really sit in that picture of what it looks like to pursue riches and how vain that picture is.
And then I want to look at a better picture for us that paints a better life that does not worship the things of this world. So, let me pray for us and then we'll walk through this together. Heavenly Father, I pray that you would help us buy into the biblical vision, the biblical approach to money, that we might see you as better for our sake. I pray you'd help us as we're in the midst of listening to this and thinking through our budgets and all the things we're doing in this Give Project, that we would listen and receive the word and respond how you would desire. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Alright, so, we're going to look at two experts today. Two expert opinions. The first is Solomon's. So, Solomon wrote the book of Ecclesiastes. And Solomon, in this section, is talking about the vanity of riches. And if anyone, if there's any expert on riches to listen to, it is Solomon.
Solomon was one of the richest men, one of the richest people that ever lived. They have done some calculations up from looking at the scriptures and seeing what his net worth would be in today's dollars. And it's anywhere from one to two trillion dollars. Trillion. One to two, that's, the state GDP in South Carolina is around 230 billion dollars. Okay, so Solomon was worth upwards of ten times the state GDP.
That's bonkers. That's a lot of money. And he had about anything you could possibly want in this life. So, we should heed the wisdom of his expert opinion. Because he had all the riches. And he's going to explain to us why it is so empty and worthless to bank your life on this.
He's going to give two overarching reasons for this. And the first is that wealth never satisfies. Wealth never satisfies. We're going to pick it up in verse 10. He says, He who loves money will not be satisfied with money. Nor he who loves wealth with his income.
This also is vanity. He comes out and says, Wealth is never going to satisfy. It's never going to satisfy. You'll come back to it over and over again. And it's never going to quench your thirst. It's like being on the open ocean.
Thirsting. And believing that the ocean water is below you. If you just drink of it, it will satisfy you. And it never will. It will leave you longing. And coming back for more and more as it dries you out.
Wealth never satisfies. But we believe that a little more might. If I just had a little bit more. I feel this, y'all. When my wife and I, we first got married. We moved to Louisville, Kentucky so I could start seminary.
And I think our first year's tax return was like $20,000. That's not a joke. It was like $20,000. I remember in that period thinking, man, if we could just, if we just made like $23,000. If we just brought in like $23,000 or $24,000, something like that. I just, you know, we're paying our way through seminary.
We might be able to do this. If we just made a little bit more, we'd be okay. And then the next year, we did make more. And the next year, we did make more. And the next year, we did make more. And what happens is every year you make more, you think, if I just had a little bit more.
Just, not a lot, but just a little bit more, I'd be okay. And that's never how it works. Because wealth never satisfies. You can want more and more and more. It's a bottomless pit. You will never get enough of it.
Some of the most miserable people that you'll ever meet are people that have lots of money. They've got it all. Everything that you think you could possibly want in this life, they've got it. And they are not happy. Wealth never satisfies. And he goes on further and unpack how it doesn't satisfy.
In verse 11, he says, When goods increase, they increase who eat them. And what advantage has their owner but to see them with his eyes? He says, you know how unsatisfying it is? The NLT says, the paraphrase says, the more you have, the more people come to help you spend it. There's one commentator that says that wealth attracts human leeches. Which I really appreciate the bluntness of that commentary.
And that's true. If you read biographies or watch biopics or documentaries of athletes or musicians who make it big, their stories are all the same. As soon as I got money, the people came out the woodworks. And they came to take because they had the object that everyone wants in this life. And they're coming for it. That's why in the NFL when they train rookies, they put rookies through these classes now.
Some of the classes they put NFL rookies through is you're going to have uncles and cousins and friends and that guy from high school that come out that want to start a business, that want to start a restaurant, that want to start a record label. You need to understand they're coming for what you've got. And we might think, well, I don't think I'm ever going to be on that level. That anyone's going to want what I have. But the principle still applies, right?
Because what happens is, is even the middle class life, is that you level up. You level up to a bigger house. And what happens when you level up to a bigger house? Things come in to leech the raise that you got to buy that house, right? You got a bigger power bill. You got to fill that house with more things.
You're now in a neighborhood where your neighbor is really, really particular about his yard. And your yard looks like a scrub, so you got to put money in that yard so you can compete with the neighbors. Like, that's life. You buy the car, and then you got to buy the things that come with it. The more expensive tires that come with that truck. They're things that continue to siphon off little by little to where you're finally saying again, oh, if I just had more, I'd be satisfied.
At the end of that verse, he just says, what's the advantage of when you finally get those things? You'll just look at them. Think about all the things that you accumulate every time that you so loved on Amazon, which is why you hit buy an hour. You're so saved up for it again. You end up just looking at it as it wastes space in your home. It doesn't satisfy.
He goes on to say in verse 12, sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep. That's a poetic way of saying that you can go to bed with a full stomach, with a comfortable life, and still be wanting sleep that you cannot get. It doesn't bring the peace and the rest that you so desire. And some of us who are having trouble, you know, making sure that we're trying to pay our bills and save up for the things that we want to, we're like, we're losing sleep over what? Over money, over paying bills, over this, over that. And I think if I just had, if I just had a little more, I would not be so worried at night.
I'd just be able to go to sleep. It's all I'm going to sing. Wrong. No. I was once at a lunch with two businessmen who were worth eight figures plus. So these guys had ten plus million dollars.
And I listened to them both for about five minutes talk about losing sleep. I mean, they were like, yeah, I know, I've tried this, and I've tried this product, and I've done this, and the other one's like, yeah, no, I think I've tried that too. I want to try. They went back and forth for five minutes talking about how they're losing sleep. Why? Because the more you have, the more you have to worry about.
The more that you're going to lose sleep over. It does not satisfy. It does not bring the rest and the peace that you so desire. And Solomon continues to share the vanity of it. He says, verse 13, there is a grievous evil that I have seen under the sun. Riches were kept by their owner to his hurt.
Or as the paraphrase in the NLT says, hoarding riches harms the saver. But there's this, what happens in life is there are objects and there are things that we so want. The things that we say, what are the things you've been saving up for? The things you've been wanting. It's the first couple things that come to mind. And once you get them, you grab hold of them.
Those become the most glorious objects in your life. The most beautiful, wonderful things that you've desired. You lay hold to them with a death grip. Not releasing your hands before the Lord saying, do what you want with it. But you just so badly want those things.
And it's to our own demise. There are people that catch monkeys for a living, which has a job. And one of the ways they catch monkeys is they find tree holes and they put shiny objects in those tree holes because monkeys love shiny objects. They put a little apparatus outside the hole. So when the monkey sticks his hand into the tree and grabs the shiny object, tries to pull it out and it can't because his hand and the object are too big.
But monkeys won't let the shiny object go. They won't release it. They'll let their hand out. The same works on children. They see them drop a toy behind the couch. They sit there for like a minute.
Just like, I can't get it out. And it's like, well, you've got to let it go. But that's us. Like to our own demise. We'll grab hold and lay hold to the object. Because we work so hard for this.
Do you know how hard I work? How many hours I put in? How much I sacrifice to finally get this life? And we cling to it thinking that's what's going to satisfy. But it's actually to our own demise.
Wealth never satisfies. Solomon drills that home. It never satisfies. And then he shifts into another major reason that we should not put our hope in riches. Why it is so vain. And the second reason is you're going to lose it all anyways.
Not only does it not satisfy. You're going to lose it all. In verse 14 he gives the first way. And those riches were lost in a bad venture. And he is the father of a son, but he has nothing in his hand. A lot of people make money and then they lose it.
That's life. It happens over and over and over again. There are a lot of young men across the world who this year has been a very bad year. Because they lost everything in the crypto markets. I mean they went hard. They put all their savings, their story after story.
And those markets crashed and crumbled. And they lost everything. That's life. Real estate. Businesses. Bad investments.
It's fleeting. You're going to lose it. And if you don't lose it in a bad business deal, you're going to lose it when you die. And that's the second point on that. It says in verse 15, As he came from his mother's womb, he shall go again naked as he came, and shall take nothing for his toil that he may carry away in his hand. So if you don't lose it in bad business deals, you will lose it when you die.
Naked you came into this world with nothing. And naked you will leave this world with nothing. The old adage about a U-Haul. You don't see a U-Haul behind a hearse. Right? It's played out.
You hear it a lot. But it's true. We live our lives like that's not true. We live our lives for the things that we can accumulate on this earth. You cannot take it with you. And we're in danger of being just like that man in John Grisham's The Testament.
Working so hard for everything in this life and realizing what was it for. It's vanity. And Solomon closes out the section. And this, also verse 16, is a grievous evil. Just as he came, so shall he go. And what gain is there to him who toils for the wind?
Like a person outside is just trying to grasp the wind. And it's like, what are you doing? It's like, I'm trying to, I'm toiling for the wind. I'm going to harness it. And I get it. And it's like, you look like a fool.
Trying to grasp what will never actually satisfy him. And what you cannot take with you. That's Solomon, our first expert, giving us advice. And we need to heed his advice, y'all. We need to heed his wisdom. I mean, listen.
We will find expert opinions everywhere else, right? You will find mom blogs and Instagram pages, things. Where people, like my wife's Instagram, she's just going through it sometimes. It's just like the next one. Here's the next way to change your life and do this. And here's the next thing.
You want to build this. Next thing you want to, it's just like, or bro podcast or bro YouTube pages. Or it's just, I mean, there's advice and advice and advice and expert opinions and expert opinions. And we'll go everywhere else to find expert opinions. But the scriptures, when Solomon, who lived the life of having everything, and it's telling us it's not worth it.
It's vanity. It is striving after the wind. And it will not ever satisfy. And you won't take it with you when you die. So, that's the first expert opinion. Then we get to the New Testament.
We get the second expert opinion for today. And it's Jesus. And he builds on that vanity argument to give us some really good news. In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6, verses 19 to 21, he says this. Jesus says, Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. So, very reminiscent of Ecclesiastes.
Don't spend your life building treasures that will fade, that will rust, that can be stolen. But then he inserts the good news. But, verse 20, lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. That we would be a people that don't work and strive to build wealth and treasures in this life. But we would look into the next life, into eternity.
And we'd send all of our treasures there. That all of our life is spent aimed towards eternity. Saying, that's what we're living for. I'm going to store up treasures and riches there. I'm sending it all forward. That's what Jesus is trying to paint for us.
Don't live looking down in this life. Look forward to the next and live your entire life in light of that. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. Those treasures do not fade. They do not rust. They are timeless.
They are kept for you, guarded. They will not be stolen. And then he ends with, For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. That if your treasure is there. If your heart is, if your treasure is there, your heart will live in light of eternity. Because that's where your heart is.
It's not in the things of this world. It is with Christ in eternity. So the way that you live your life in light of that looks different. Noticeably different. There are two different lives. There is a life that thinks that the here and now and the material that we have in front of us is it.
So you buy an American dream. You get stacks and stacks. You build it up. You maximize to live your best life out of this. And then there's a different life that lives with the light of eternity. It looks radically different.
It seeks to grow in generosity and obedience to God and what he calls us to. Those are two different lives. Now, if you've been here a few years, that doesn't sound unfamiliar. We say some version of that every year at Give. Some of you have been here one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight years. Which means you've sat through one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight different Give series.
Matthew 6 has shown up probably every other year. And some... None of this is new. We hear this over and over and over again. But there is a difference between hearing this and doing this.
James 1 will be hearers of the word, but doers of the word. And I feel this, y'all. I feel this as we prep every year to preach these sermons. That I just... I just... Okay, yep, we're doing Give.
Which means I've got to reorient my soul. Okay, I've got to look at my budget. Ugh. What can I do? Can I do just enough to get the Holy Spirit off my back? It's one of the things that Chet was hitting on last week.
Is that we... We hear this... But if it doesn't radically actually change our lives... If you've been through one, two, three, four, five, six different Give series. If you've heard sermon after sermon... That talks about the approach to money.
And your life has not grown in generosity. Your life has not changed. That's a problem. It's possible you're hearing this and you're not actually believing this. That it might live that out. But I feel this, y'all.
I feel this in the prep. Every year we do give... There's a part of me that's like, I don't want... I've got to do the tough soul work of looking in... And figuring out how I've got to repent. How I've got to grow in this.
And I also personally... I know the American church is known for talking a lot about money. So I don't want to fall. And it's like, no. Jesus cares immensely about this. It is so unbelievably important because our hearts are so tied to this.
And so captured by riches. That we need to actually release our hands before Him and say, what do you want to do with this? Because those are two different lives. Randy Alcorn in his book, The Treasure Principle, talks about how he visited two graves in Egypt. He went to King Tut's tomb. To that display.
And then pharaohs back then, they were buried with all of their riches. So they buried them underneath the ground and stored the riches with them. And there must be some part of Egyptian belief that you could take those with you into the afterlife. But King Tut's tomb has all his riches. And you can see the faded riches that over time that he had. But then he also visited a different grave.
He went to the grave of a man named William Borden. William Borden was the heir to a large family fortune and family business in the Midwest in the early 1900s. So he was set to be able to take over millions and millions of dollars. And he heard the gospel and he believed. And he said, no. Much to his family's dismay, he said, no.
I'm actually, I want to go on the mission field. Specifically, he wanted to go and reach Uyghur Muslims in China. Which if you've followed international news the last few years, you've heard a lot about the Uyghur Muslims because they're some of the most oppressed people in China at the moment. But 100 years ago, he said, I want to reach those people. I want to reach the Uyghur Muslims. And much to his family's dismay, he left that family fortune and business behind.
And he moved to Cairo, Egypt to learn Arabic so that he could take the gospel to China. And after a few months of learning Arabic, he contracted cerebral meningitis. And he died at the young age of 25. And he left. He didn't have his whole family's fortune, but he had $800,000, which is still a lot of money back then in today's dollars. And he left that all to Chinese missions.
And when you look at that life, it doesn't make a lot of sense. It doesn't make a lot of sense unless you know who he did it for. And that's why one of the things that's written on his tomb is this. Apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation of such a life. What a powerful message to Mark your life. That apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation for that type of life.
It doesn't make sense at all that you would leave the comforts of an American family fortune. All the comforts and things that went with that. To go to another country and die at 25. It doesn't make any sense. It's inexplicable. Unless you know who he did it for.
Unless you know his Savior. Unless you know Christ. Because with Christ, that absolutely makes sense. That's the most reasonable thing you could do. If you understand the gospel and what Jesus sets us apart for. And you understand this message that he teaches in Matthew 6.
And the message that Paul in Philippians 4 teaches. Paul in Philippians 4 is at the end of his letter in Philippians is raising support. He's raising support for the mission. And this is what he says in 417. He says, Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit. Not that I seek the gift.
That's not the main point. I want to seek the fruit that is credited, as the NIV says, to your account. And when you put that up aside, Matthew 6. This idea of storing up treasures in heaven. And storing them to a future credit. When you understand those side by side.
It absolutely makes sense. With Christ, that's 100% understandable. We are called to live our lives with a future mindset. To believe that there are riches that we can store up for us in eternity. And I know when I say that, that some of us are like, oh man, I don't. Aren't we supposed to just want Christ?
Like, isn't it just enough that we want Christ in eternity? That we should live in light of that? And Jesus says no, actually. Which pushes back on something that for me is hard. No. There's a reason why he says, Store up for yourselves.
Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. There's a reason why Paul says, To store up these things to be credited to your account. There is this mysterious future reward. We don't really know what that is. We don't. We know what it's not.
That these extra riches in heaven, It's not the vain riches of this life. It's not gold. It's not jewels. It's not material things like that. The new heavens and the new earth, The picture that you get in the book of Revelation, The streets lined with gold. It's not that.
So I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's extra face time with Jesus or what. I don't know what that is. But that's held out in front of us. And it's certainly seen as unbelievably good. Jesus calls it treasure.
Whatever that is with Christ that we gain with Him, It is wonderful. And it comes to first believing the gospel through faith. Believing that Jesus died for our sins and our rebellion. And that He rose to new life. And gained us a new life in Him. And that it is every step of the way believing what Jesus says.
It is trusting Him at His word. When He says, Live your life in light of eternity. And store up riches there. It's believing that. And actually doing that. And it is the reason why, In this gift series, It's the reason why we're doing a gift project that we're doing.
It's the reason why we're getting behind Jamie Kerm. One of our church members who decided to leave the comforts of America. To go to Lebanon. A country that is falling apart right now. That has the highest inflation rate in the world. And is falling apart.
To go and take the gospel to the Kurdish people. To be a help. And to be a missionary. To learn the language. There's a, Y'all, She, One of the things, We talk about once a week. And it was just, About a month or so ago, She was talking about, How she, She left, When you're over there, You leave, Because you don't have long term permanent residency there.
So you gotta leave. She went to Cyprus, Which is an island nation right next to it. Went to Cyprus for a couple days. She'll have to do that in the future. To keep her visa renewed and what not. She went there.
And we talked about it. She's like, It just was wonderful. To go to Cyprus and to like, Take a hot shower. And to like, Have electricity that doesn't turn off in the middle of the night. And to not feel like I'm on edge all the time. Because Lebanon and Beirut right now, It's really intense.
And it's, It's not the safest. And, She was just good for a couple days, Just not experienced that. And she's saying, I want to go back to that. I want to be there. I want to help the church. I want to help make disciples.
I want to help disciple women. I want that. That's unexplainable without Christ. Now, She's believing in something that's more eternal, That's more valuable, That's more valuable than anything this world has to offer. And we're saying, Yes, Amen. And we're going to get behind that.
And as Chet opened up this morning, She got to raise about $2,500 a month to stay on the field. She's at $100 now. So we get to come behind that, And partner with her for something that is bigger than ourselves. Because this life, And the things in this life, And the things that you would give up in your budget, To get behind something like that, It's not worth it. It's two different pictures of what your deathbed could look like. You'd be on your deathbed, Thinking about all the things that you've worked so hard for.
The life that you put blood, sweat, and tears into, That you're getting ready to leave behind. Or, You could be on your deathbed, A few breaths away, Giddy, Excited. Because everything that you've worked for, Is just a few breaths away. Those are two different lives. And I so badly, As a Christian, I want to press into that second life. And I so badly for our church, Want us to press into that second life.
Because that life is truly better.
|giv| Week 2
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We're in the second week of our Give series. And every year around Christmas, we have, since we first planted this church in 2013, we have taken the time, 2012, taken the time to intentionally try to give some money away around Christmas to push back some on the, just kind of the cultural tone of consumerism that we're handed in life. And so we want to intentionally try to rally ourselves to be generous.
And last week, I got to say from the stage, one of the most exciting things that we can say as a church, which is a young lady from our church has committed her life to the call, at least committing for the next year. But she's devoting herself to mission work among an unreached people group in Lebanon amongst the Kurdish people. And so we are excited to get to support her in that and get to rally around her. Earlier this year, we showed you all this map. And we said that we live right now where there are more unreached peoples on the globe than ever before. At any time in history, there are more people who do not know Jesus than ever before.
And that the red is a bunch of unreached people groups. There has been no gospel penetration into their culture. And that's a problem. But that we're distinctly set up as a church to be able to participate in the work the Lord is doing. Because there are three, not one, but three mission organizations that actually are on the third floor of our education building over here. That are in the 1040 window and working among unreached people groups.
And this summer, Jamie Kern, who you all might know in life or you might recognize from this slide that you've been seeing, if you show up early enough to sit in here and see it. So all four of you know about that slide. And she did an internship between us and 1040 Hope. And she. Sorry. Do I have like a boom thing going on constantly?
Is it just getting on my nerves? Can you have your hand held? She. Oh, thank you. No, this is Spencer Carey. Thank you, Spencer.
Everybody give Spencer a hand. Is this better? All right. So I'm going to have to keep this on my ear because it's going to dangle and get on my nerves. So I'll just keep it on my ear.
And I'll have two mics. It's going to look awesome. All right. She. She did a joint internship between our church and 1040 Hope over the summer. And then she went to Lebanon for the past three months where she's been trying to learn the Kurdish language, where she's been working among the Kurdish people.
And she's been investigating the call to be a full time missionary. And she has committed to that. And so we get to support. And so what we said we're going to try to do is raise fifteen thousand dollars for a vehicle. There's a picture of her doing some work. Yeah.
Oh, there we go. For a vehicle. There we go. No, it's I don't know. Things are happening now. All right.
So we're going to fifteen thousand dollars for a vehicle for her to use for the next year while she's there and a year's worth of support. So we're wanting to raise fifteen thousand dollars now to buy a vehicle and we're wanting to pledge twenty nine thousand two hundred and twenty five dollars for a full year of support for her. And so we're going to get to talk more about exactly how to do that. But we're excited to get to do that, to get to participate in what the Lord is doing amongst the unreached people. And for her to be able to be over there and help get more missionaries over there. So it's an encouraging thing for us.
And so at in our gift series. We want to push back some by intentionally giving our money away. We want to push back some on what our culture tells us about how to think about money, because there's a couple of things that our culture gives us that it's just assumed. One of them is one of the ways to tell how well you're doing in life is how much stuff do you have? How nice is your stuff? So that when we picture ourselves in the future, a lot of times there's no like personal growth.
I just picture me, but richer. And that's like, yeah, look, I'm doing well. Like if you let me look ahead into the future, is my house bigger? I'm doing great. Like that's kind of how we've just been taught to think through life that we ought to have more money, more stuff, and that if we have more money and more stuff, then we'll be happier. This is like a cultural agreed upon reality.
The other one is that we are that what we consume defines who we are. So that this type of person wears this type of clothes. Real men drive this. Real men eat red meat. That there's some sort of like consumption turns us into things. Like real moms like you buy GIF or whatever.
Like we just have this. If you partake in our product, you make yourself into a certain type of person. As if somehow eating and wearing things turns us into a thing, develops our character. But we just have this as a cultural thing. And so what we do in our gift series is we say let's open our Bibles and let's see what the Lord has to say about how we handle our money. So grab your Bible and go to Luke chapter 3.
We're going to read a passage that I think you're probably familiar with. If you've read the Gospel of Luke, you certainly are. It's John the Baptist preaching. And I think in general we read this and we just keep on moving. It's like John the Baptist is the forerunner to Jesus. So run through what John the Baptist says and let's get to Jesus.
And I think there's potential for us to have read this, for you to have read this, for you to have heard this before, and for us to have missed one of the things that he says that I think is very important for us to see. So we're going to read through this. We're going to walk through it today. And we're going to stop in this section that I think maybe we've read before but haven't considered. And hopefully it's corrective and challenging and encouraging to us as we consider our finances and joining together to be a part of God's mission and giving some money away. So let's pray.
Father, we thank you for how good you are. Lord, we thank you for the love and the grace and the kindness that you've shown us. We thank you for your word. We thank you for Jamie Kern and the work of your spirit in her and all those like her who surrender to your call to go to hard places to deliver wonderful news. And so, Lord, we pray that you would bless her work, that you would bless our endeavor to raise support, and that you would call more people to go wherever you send them and surrender to you so that more people might proclaim the name of Jesus. And love you and be loved by you for eternity.
In Jesus' name, amen. We're in Luke chapter 3. We're going to go through the first 18 verses. In the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee and his brother Philip, tetrarch of the region of Iteria and Trachonitis and Lysanias, tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas. Okay, all of that is just to time stamp exactly when this happens. It would be like if you were talking to a Carolina fan a couple weeks ago and you asked them, you weren't familiar with the Carolina-Clemson rivalry, and you asked them, is Carolina any good?
Like, do y'all usually win this? And they had to answer, the last time we won this game was at the beginning of the second Obama administration. Like, you just time stamp things. Like, I remember what gas was during the Reagan administration. It's that sort of thing. And so, I don't, but people do.
That sort of thing. And that's what he's doing. As he's saying, it was during the reign of all these people at this time. And then he gets to what he's wanting to say, which is, the word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah, in the wilderness. Meaning that John becomes a prophet. He begins to speak God's word.
He begins to proclaim this. And he does this in the wilderness. He doesn't do this in a well-populated area. He just starts proclaiming it in the wilderness, which I always wondered how that started. Like, he's in the wilderness. Was he just going for it and then someone heard it and was like, I'm going to go get more people?
Or did he just find the first person he saw and start proclaiming the word? I don't know. It doesn't tell us. But he's in the wilderness. He begins to proclaim the word. But then people start to come to him.
And it says this. And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. So they had baptism. They had the idea of baptism as like an initiation, right? The Pharisees would baptize people. You would actually baptize yourself.
So you would go in. You would wash yourself. It was a baptism where you basically washed yourself and you said, I'm committing to this. But he does a baptism where he's baptizing people. And it's a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And this is new.
And it's wonderful. Because the Pharisees, who were the primary religious teachers in this area, their message was, be good. And if you're good, here's how to be better. Here's how to be intentional with your being good. But if you've been bad.
If you've sinned. If you've run away from the Lord. Sorry. It's over with for you. There was no real. Here's how to come back.
Here's how to get out from being cursed. Here's how to repent. Here's how to turn from that. And so when John begins to proclaim, have you messed everything up? I've got good news for you. You can repent.
You can turn from that. And you can be forgiven. And this is good news. And this is new. Not new. The Old Testament had times like this.
But this is new for these people. For them to begin to understand that what God wants from them is that they can turn away from their sin. And they can turn to the Lord. And so he begins to proclaim this baptism of repentance. And repentance is saying, what I've been doing isn't working. What I've been doing is sinful.
And I need to be changed. I need the Lord to forgive me. I need to. Basically, what I have is a bunch of mess. And I need that taken away. And I'm going to turn from it and start doing what I'm supposed to.
But this is opportunity for forgiveness and repentance. And so people start coming to him. That they could be forgiven of sins. It says, as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet. So this is the fulfillment of prophecy that John's doing.
It says, the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his path straight. Every valley shall be filled. And every mountain and hill shall be made low. And the crooked shall become straight.
And the rough places shall become level ways. And all flesh shall see the salvation of God. So John is proclaiming a baptism of repentance and forgiveness of sins. And he is the forerunner to Christ. And when Christ comes, he's going to proclaim repentance. And he's going to call people to faith in himself.
That he is the Christ. He is the one to come. And he's going to call people to believe and have faith in himself. And then Jesus is going to die to seal our forgiveness. And he's going to rise. So that he secures for us what John proclaims.
Which is that you can be forgiven of your sins. Jesus accomplishes that in his death. In his burial. In his resurrection. So that when the message of repentance and forgiveness makes it to us.
It's confirmed. And sealed. And made possible by the work of Jesus. Jesus. So that today.
If you have not repented. And been forgiven. You can be. The message still applies to us. That you can say. I've made a mess of things.
I am a sinner and deserving of wrath. And justice. If God brought justice down on me. It would not be good. It would be harmful to me. In my sin.
And I need forgiveness. And it's offered to you. The message of John is offered to you. And accomplished through Christ. So that's what John's doing.
Verse 7. He said therefore. To the crowds that came out to be baptized by him. You brood of vipers. Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Which is bold strategy when you're preaching.
Maybe we should start starting off. Instead of when we stand up and say. We're so glad you're here. We believe Jesus is better than everything else. We say. You snakes.
Why are you here? Who told you to come here? It's like. And I feel like if I was there. I almost wonder if someone was like. You did John.
You're the one telling us to flee from the wrath to come. Right? Like that's why we came to you. But it seems as if there are some people. Who are coming out to see the spectacle. That there are people who are just showing up.
To see what he's doing. We know from other gospels. That there are Pharisees showing up. Just to kind of question him. Like hey what are you up to? And they're not actually there.
To flee from the wrath to come. They're not actually there repentant. They're just there to see what's going on. And so it says. That he says this to the crowds that came. Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
And then he's going to give them. Two commands. One reason. He says this. Verse 8. Bear fruits in keeping with repentance.
And do not begin to say to yourselves. We have Abraham as our father. For I tell you. God is able from these stones. To raise up children. For Abraham.
So his command is bear fruit in keeping with repentance. So bear fruit would be. Have. Have. This show up. In your life.
So if you said. I've been working really hard. At learning a new language. And it's just now starting to bear some fruit. Or we've been really trying to crack into this new market. And it's just now starting to bear some fruit.
Or I've been working out and exercising for a year. And it's just now starting to bear some fruit. What you mean is. It's just now starting to show up. You can tell. It's beginning just like if I planted a tree.
And it's just now starting to bear some fruit. It's now doing what I wanted my apple tree to do this whole time. And so what he says is not bear fruit period. He says bear fruit in keeping with repentance. Meaning that. They genuinely turned from their sin.
Asked for forgiveness. That comes first. And if that is real. Then all he says is. Look like it. Look like you've actually surrendered to the Lord.
Look like you've actually asked for him to work in your heart. Look like you've actually turned away from your wickedness to him. Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And then he says. And do not say to yourself. We have Abraham as our father.
I tell you the truth. God is able to from these stones raise up children for Abraham. He says. No. You repent. You turn from your sin.
And then you grow in light of that. And don't try to recount your record. As to why you're okay. So if we're bearing fruit in keeping with repentance. What we're doing is we're looking to God. And we're saying.
Because of who he is. Because of the forgiveness. Because of the grace. Therefore I live this way. But. If they're looking and saying.
Well I'm a son of Abraham. So I'm fine. I'm already in. Then they're looking at somehow their track record. Their place in life. And they're saying.
This is what makes me okay. And he just says. No. So. I think one of the ways that this might translate. To southern culture.
Is. I'm a Christian. I grew up in the church. I'm a Christian. I was baptized when I was like 11. 10 or 11.
But there's no. Evidence of. The work of Christ in our heart. There's no fruit. In keeping with repentance. I've had people.
Say before. Oh yeah. I'm a Christian. My dad was a deacon. Okay. Show me that passage.
I was talking to a guy. I played football. I was in high school. I said. We were talking about something. I said.
Are you a Christian? He said. Yeah man. I'm black. It's like. I might be in trouble.
But are we basing it off of something other than. I've surrendered to the Lord. And then. Out of that. It shows up. That's what he's saying.
So don't bank off of something else. Don't lean into something else. Other than. Looking to the Lord. And his grace. And his forgiveness.
So he keeps going. He tells them why. Verse 9. Even now. The axe is laid. To the root.
Of the trees. Every tree. Therefore. That does not bear good fruit. Is cut down. And thrown.
Into the fire. All right. He says. You don't want to get this wrong. And here's what we need to understand. This morning.
As we consider this. We are saved. By grace. Through faith. Not our own works. So that no one may boast.
That's our memory verse. This. This month. As a church. We're saved by grace. Through faith.
It's not our own works. So that nobody would boast. So what we have to understand is. It's not bear fruit. So that you might be saved.
It's surrender. And then look like that's happened in your heart. And that matters. It matters that we don't get that out of order. But it does matter.
If you remember us walking through 1 John. It does matter that it shows up. It does matter that it's actually real. It's not just something we say happened. Because if it actually happened. It begins to show up in the way we live.
And so one of the ways that we can know. Whether or not we're really in the faith. We can't get in the faith by bearing fruit. But we can know whether or not we're in the faith. By seeing are we bearing fruit. Am I growing?
Is my love for the Lord growing? Is my love for other people growing? And that's what he's saying. Don't trick yourself. Don't say well I'm saved by grace. Therefore I can act however I want.
Do whatever I want. It never has to show up. He's saying that's not how this works. Alright. They ask what I think is a very reasonable question to ask. Verse 10.
The crowds asked him. What then shall we do? Fair question. He says bear fruit. And I'm telling you if you don't. It's going to go bad.
If this isn't showing up in your life. If you're not actually repentant. This is going to go bad. So they say well what do we do? And he answered them. This is verse 11.
Whoever has two tunics. Is to share with him who has none. And whoever has food is to do likewise. Tax collectors also came to be baptized. And said to him. Teacher.
What shall we do? Which by the way. Tax collectors coming. Gives you an indication of how wildly wonderful this news is. Tax collectors are hated. They've committed treason against the people of God.
And repentance is open to them. It doesn't just mean people didn't like to have to pay taxes. It's way worse than that. They were helping the Romans occupy the holy land. The promised land. They were enemies.
And they're coming and being able to be forgiven. So if you've told yourself I'm too far gone. That is incorrect. This is wonderfully good news. Tax collectors also came to be baptized. Said to him.
Teacher. What shall we do? And he said to them. Collect no more than you are authorized to do. Soldiers also asked him. And what shall we do?
These are Roman soldiers. Getting to partake in repenting. And he said to them. Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation. And be content with your wages. Now.
Did y'all catch that? They ask. What does repentance look like? And he says. Let's talk about your wallet.
And I know some of you are like. Just like a preacher. But see. John knows something. As he's empowered by the spirit. That Jesus is going to say later.
Jesus says this in the Sermon on the Mount. This is Matthew 6.21 and 6.24. For where your treasure is. There your heart will be also. And no one can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one.
And love the other. Or he will be devoted to the one. And despise the other. You cannot serve God. God. And money.
So they asked John. What does repentance look like? And he knows this. If you've actually surrendered your heart to the Lord. If you've actually turned from your sin. If he's actually going to work on you.
It's going to show up. In the way you handle. Your money. And your stuff. Because your heart has changed. Your treasure has changed.
Your allegiance has changed. John says. Faith. Shows up in your finances. Belief. Is in the budget.
Repentance. Has receipts. I had fun writing this. Just trying to help you remember it. That's what John says. That it's going to show up.
In how you spend your money. And what you do with your stuff. So all of these marks of repentance that he gives. Are possession based. So let's walk back through them.
And let's consider. What John is telling us. Crowd said. What should we do? Verse 11. He answered them.
Whoever has two tunics. Is to share with him who has none. And whoever has food is to do. Likewise. John says. Genuine repentance.
Genuine faith. Shows up in you being open handed with your possessions. That you would not. Accumulate a bunch of stuff. And that you would actually be intentional. About finding ways.
To get rid. Of a lot of your stuff. That's repentance showing up. That that's true belief showing up. Whoever has two tunics. He doesn't say.
You're not allowed to own a tunic. He doesn't say. You're not allowed to eat. He says. If you have enough food. Good.
Eat. And be generous to those who don't have enough food. If you have enough clothes. Good. Be generous to those who don't. Have enough clothes.
That. In some ways. You need to understand. That. You might be blessed. Beyond your ability.
Beyond your need. And that isn't so that you might have. More that just sits around. That's so that you might deliver it. To those who need it. That you've been entrusted to something.
That actually isn't yours. It's not for you to keep. It's for you to deliver. The. The grub hub guy. Is not supposed to eat your sandwich.
On the way to your house. The. The pizza guy. Can't be like. Here's your pizza. And thanks for the breadsticks.
That's not how it works. You're supposed to care for it. And deliver it. And there are things that you own. Part of your paycheck. Things that are in our closets.
That aren't ours. Aren't meant to be. That's what John's saying. That. As we believe. We'd set aside portions of our budget.
To just walk out the door for others. I think Jesus is going to talk about. That as our treasure moves. That we would care about the kingdom. And we care about the kingdom first. So I think this is generosity of the poor.
I also think it's. Intentionality in kingdom things. That Christians would find ways. To support missionaries. Christians would be supporting. Their local church.
But also. Christians would be. Helping things like. Goodwill. And his house thrive. Goodwill helps people get jobs.
They help sell things. At a lower cost. Because all of the. Stuff they get is free. Same with his house. His house helps.
Men in our area. Get over alcoholism. And have a place to stay. And so that. These are the sort of things. That we would be intentional.
About. That's his response. To everybody. He says that. Then he.
Verse 12. Says tax collectors. Also came to be baptized. By him. And said teacher. What shall we do?
And I love that. Because it's genuine. It's a genuine repentance. And a genuine. What should this look like? What do we do?
Not a. What do I have to do? But what. What does it look like for me? Have y'all ever been in a situation. With a new believer.
And you're just talking to him. And they're like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
What next? What else are we supposed to do? Hey. I was hearing this thing. I read this thing about. I'm not supposed to do that.
Is that true? Yeah. Okay. Cool. I'll stop. It's wonderful.
And that's what these tax collectors are doing. Okay. What does this look like for us? If I actually get to be forgiven. That's wonderful news. And what does that look like?
How does that show up? He said to them. Collect no more than you are authorized to do. Soldiers also asked him. And what should we do? Or by false accusations.
So I want to hold those together. Because I think they're kind of similar. He says. One of the ways that repentance shows up. One of the ways that faith shows up. And how we handle our money.
Is that we aren't doing things that are wrong. To get it. We should not be gaining money by sinful means. We shouldn't be greedy. We shouldn't be lying. We shouldn't be cheating.
Don't extort people. And I think in general we're like. Right. Yeah. Okay. Makes sense.
But I think one of the ways that we need to consider this. Is what are the things. In your industry. That are common practice. Because I think tax collectors would be able to say. Well that's just how collecting taxes work.
I collect the taxes I'm supposed to. But I also collect my own revenue. And I think the soldiers might go. Yeah but that's just how all soldiers. Make sure they can pay their bills. It's just normal.
And I know that every Job I've had. There were things. That to me seemed iffy. And everybody said. Oh no. That's just how it's done.
And I think that you ought to consider. Prayerfully. What are those things. I used to work in sales. I don't know if y'all know this about sales people. They lie to you.
If you meet a salesman. Who knows every answer to every question you've asked. It's likely that they are a liar. But you sell more stuff if you do that. He used to work in sales. And people ask you questions that you do not know the answer to.
Because the people whose product you're selling don't tell you that. Where is this steel manufactured? What's the horsepower on this Kenmore dryer? Was this Kenmore dryer made in Pennsylvania? I don't know. I work part time here.
But if you just say yes. Do you have family in Pennsylvania? Yeah. Well it's probably made right near where they live. Boom. Sold.
How are they going to look it up? If you don't know how to look it up. And you work here. What are the things? Does it have to do with how people clock in and clock out? Does it have to do with some sort of honesty thing?
Some sort of integrity thing? Is there something that everybody goes. Well that's just how real estate works. Oh that's just. Everybody knows that's how retail works. That's all the waiters and waitresses do that.
Everybody in finance does this. Because I think all soldiers did that. And all tax collectors did that. And John says if you're repentant you don't do that. And I think it's worth considering. Because I think a lot of it has snuck up on us.
You were trained to do it by the people who taught you how to do what you're doing. And you actually have to consider what are the things that are common practice that are normal that I actually can't participate in. But he says this to the. He adds a thing when he's talking to the. Soldiers. Verse 14.
Soldiers also asked them what shall we do? And he said to them do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusations. And be content with your wages. How much money do you make? Good. Be happy with that.
Are we all ready to go home and do that? Just how much money do you make? That's a good amount of money to make. Live off of that. Be content with it. Be thankful to the Lord for providing that amount of money to you.
Find a way to be generous inside of it. But. I think. We are trained in and all accept some level of perennial discontentment. I need. I need a little more.
Honestly. Most of us. And this was going to work better when I wasn't holding a microphone. I have to do it like this. Most of us make this amount of money. And if we're doing what we're supposed to.
As we're taught by. Everybody around us. We spend this amount of money. If you are currently spending this amount of money. We have a financial team that we'd like to let you talk with. They will help you with that.
But most of us. Make this much. Spend this much. We figure it out. You live here. Sometimes it's tight.
Sometimes it's harder. Sometimes there are things you go without. But you. In general. We live. Every once in a while.
You're in a spot where you can't. And inflation has been hurting us. And if that's for you right now. We also have. People in our care system. That will help you walk through that.
And we can actually help provide. And we ought to. As a church. It's not a bad thing to come and say. Hey I need some help right now. But in general.
Under normal circumstances. This amount. This amount. And what usually happens is. Over time. We start making this amount.
So we start spending this amount. Then we start making this amount. So we start spending this amount. And that's normal. And we're like. That's good.
That's how you're supposed to do it. He says. Be content with what you make. Not to say. I don't think this means. Christians shouldn't take promotions.
Or Christians should never swap jobs. But if that's all you're ever wanting to do. And if you're only content with a new promotion. For three months. Or five months. And then you got to get to the next one.
You got to get to the next one. And there's this general idea. That I'm supposed to just keep going. He says. Be content with your wages. Live inside your means.
And be fine with it. Now. What if. Because we're Christians. And we were making this amount. And we were spending this amount.
And we were living. What if. When we started making this amount. We just stayed here. Maybe moved up. But let me say.
I think it's okay to buy stuff. The Bible says you can't. It's not like you can't enjoy things. But what if. There was this gap. Where we were just freed up to be generous.
I think one of the questions. For us as we look at this. Is does all my income. Terminate on me. Does it all just come back here. Or did I set an amount of generosity.
A while back. And I just like. This is how much I'm going to give away. And that's just kept going. But my income has gone.
Way up. And my generosity level. Just kind of stayed the same. I hadn't. Taken advantage of the Lord. Giving me more.
So that I can give away more. It's just kind of. Been set. Does most everything just come back to me. Is it mostly just lifestyle upgrades. Every time the Lord blesses.
So I think we look at this. And we say. Okay. If my repentance is supposed to have receipts. If it. If belief is supposed to show up in my budget.
Then I think as Christians. We should sit down. And there's a couple of things. That should come out of this. I think we should review our budgets. I don't know when the last time you did that was.
I think you should look down. And try to actually figure out. How much money do I spend? What does that mean I really value? What does that mean I really love? I think we ought to.
Excitedly start making some decisions. And going. You know. Instead of getting in a $600 car payment. I'm going to get in a $300 car payment. Instead of getting in a $300 car payment.
I'm going to get in a. $200 car payment. Or I'm just going to keep the car I got. I'm going to pay to fix it. And then I'm going to use that gap. And I'm going to be a part of. Reaching people on the other side of the globe.
I'm going to get in. I'm going to take advantage of that gap. That I've created intentionally. And I'm going to help people sleep. Inside in downtown Columbia. Who this winter wouldn't have been able to.
I think we need to review our budgets. I think we need to revisit our closets. I think we need to just go in there and say. How many tunics. Is a reasonable amount of tunics. For me to own.
How much stuff should I really have in here. And resist the American urge. To when we've cleaned it out. Go. Ooh. Now I can put some more stuff in here.
But intentionally try to think through. What. What can I get rid of? What can I live on? How can I simplify some things? I think we need to consider.
How much money do I spend on entertainment? How much money do I spend. On extra things that I don't need. How much money was given away this past year. Versus how much money. Was just.
For me. To enjoy. So I think we should review our budgets. I think we should revisit our closets. I think you should ask. What are the common practices in my industry.
That I'm not allowed to participate in. That I ought not to. And I think we all need to check our contentment level. I think we need to take seriously. To be content with your wages. Take our heart before the Lord.
And go Lord. I make enough money to survive. Help me. With the fact that I don't feel like that's enough. Help me with the fact that I. I actually.
Inside of this should survive. And should give some things away. But I'm. I'm frustrated. All right.
Verse 15. As the people were in expectation. And were all questioning in their hearts. Concerning John. Whether he might be. The Christ.
John answered them all. Saying. I baptize you with water. But he who is mightier than I. Is coming. The strap of whose sandals.
I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. And fire. His winnowing fork. Is in his hand. To clear his threshing floor.
And to gather the wheat. Into his barn. But the chaff. He will burn. With unquenchable. Fire.
When he says. He'll baptize you with the Holy Spirit. And with fire. I think. As he describes that further. That he'll gather the wheat.
Into the barn. And he'll throw the chaff. Into unquenchable fire. I think we're meant to understand. That we will be baptized. Either with.
The Holy Spirit. Or. With fire. That the eternal reality. Is one of those. For everybody.
And so. For Christians. Who know Christ. Who have repented. Of our sins. Who have been forgiven.
And who are filled. With the Holy Spirit. How much more. Generous. Should we be. Than just the tax collector.
Who walked away that day. How much more generous. Do we get to be. Than just the soldier. How much more content. Do we get to be.
Than the person. Who at that moment. Did not yet have the spirit. Who was getting. Only the beginnings. Of this.
How much more. Do we get to say. Lord. Work in me. I think there's a danger. For us as a church.
Because we do this. Every year. For us to start. Developing a pattern. Of paying the Holy Spirit. Hush money.
Around Christmas. Well. How much do I have to give. To get the conviction. Off my back. So that I can go.
Right back. To forgetting about this. And operating. Like all my neighbors. And the truth is. We're missing out.
On bearing fruit. That lasts. And enjoying. The gracious. Generosity. Of our God.
And getting to participate. In what he's like. As he gives to others. Through us. And how much joy. Do we miss out on.
And he says. His winnowing fork. Is in his hand. To clear his threshing floor. And to gather the wheat. Into his barn.
But the chaff. He will burn. With unclenchable fire. I think you need to hear this. If you believe. You are a Christian.
And that has not. Touched your wallet. You might not be a Christian. If you believe. You are a Christian. And that does not show up.
In how you handle. Your finances. You have to believe. That the Holy Spirit. Is at work in you. Because you're a Christian.
But he has no desire. To work in that part. Of your life. But I don't think. You can back that up. From the scriptures.
And if you have. 15 reasons. Right now. Why you don't have to give. To anybody. Well I give of my time.
I give of my energy. You know. I did this thing last year. Or I do this. Or things are tight right now. The reality is.
That if you talk to anybody. In America. Most everybody says. Things are tight. Because of how we do our budgets. We keep it tight.
And if we've gotten in the habit. Of just figuring out. Right around now. How much do I have to give. So that I don't have to feel bad.
And so I can participate. In whatever the thing is. And it's cool. And I'm excited about it. But really.
I don't really. I wouldn't do this. If it weren't for this. And if we weren't really. And I think we need to consider. The work of the spirit.
In our lives. And consider whether or not. Our hearts have actually been. Surrendered to the Lord. Because I think that's what John's telling us. Verse 18.
I love this verse. Verse 18. Verse 18. So with many other exhortations. He preached the good news to the people. I love that.
Because as an American. I kind of am going. What was the good news? Because that all sounded really intense and rough. And then the Bible says. Isn't that good?
And it actually is. It's wonderful news. That there's a savior coming. Who forgives sinners. It's wonderful news. That there's a savior coming.
Who will bring justice on the wicked. And it's wonderful news. That rather than him. Just bringing justice on you. He offers you repentance. And forgiveness.
And it's wonderful news. That he is then willing to use us. To be his agents in the world. To see wonderful things. Continue to take place. That's good news.
That we have a savior. Who will redeem sinners. Rather than crush them. And we have a savior. Who will crush. Sinners.
So that ultimately. We either receive grace. Or we receive what we deserve. And that there's an offer. Of grace to us. And then we get to participate.
In something that is eternal. And glorious. And beautiful. And last. And we actually get to bear fruit. That lasts.
That's good news. Let's review our budgets. Let's revisit our closets. Let's consider the things. That take place in our industry. That we probably should not participate in.
And let's see if we can get our hearts. To rest in the Lord. So that we might be content. With what we have. And look like absolute freaks. In the United States.
To the glory of Christ. And his eternal kingdom. Let's pray. Lord. Lord. Lord.
We pray that your Holy Spirit. Would go to work in our hearts. That we would bear fruit. In keeping. With repentance. To the glory of your name.
And your son. May you be at work in us. In Jesus name. Amen. Band's going to come back up. And we're going to sing.
And by the band. I mean. Raz and Isaac. Thank you. I mean. карт x dev. Greaks, that's true.achi, of zach.
Hand neg, the church. And I love you. Before this, I love you. I love you. And I love you. Yes.
So I love you. I love you. Well, you've got to like, this is a little bit of an anchor. I love you. Great to share you. Real laughter What a new thing or up. generator.
I love you. Ruby. I love you. Good. It's a little bit of passion. It's a little bit of emotion.
It's a little bit. It's a little bit easier.
|giv| Week 1
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. Excited to be here with y'all this morning. We are in the first week of our Give Series. And every year, right after Thanksgiving, we pause in whatever we're normally doing and we begin our Give Series.
And we live in a place that is overwhelmed by consumerism. It's just that it's the air we breathe. So that as Christians and American Christians, it's possible for us to push back on some of the tides of our culture that are coming at us and things that we look and we say, no, scripturally, this is wrong. We can't participate in that. We can't live like that. And for us to completely miss consumerism.
For us to just walk along perfectly normal. Everything's fine with consumerism, but push back in other areas. And so we want to intentionally take this time every year to just say, hey, let's remember that we're eternal people and that our hope is not here. That the the American concept of I'll be more happy if I have more stuff is incorrect. Correct. And so let's pause and intentionally seek to be generous at this time.
Last year in our Give Series, we were able to give away twenty five thousand dollars. Yeah. And able to give away some man hours and some work to try to help at Bethel Christian Camp as they renovate as we help renovate space for a new family to move in as the director over there. And I'm excited to get to announce what our gift project is this morning. Later, turn to Matthew chapter 13. We're going to be looking at a very short parable in Matthew chapter 13 this morning.
On Christmas morning at my house, we have our bedrooms are on one side of the house and there's a hallway that leads to the main part of our house. And I build a barricade in the hallway and tell my sons on threat of death and the cancellation of Christmas that they are not allowed down the hall past the barricade. And this is done because I think it makes good sense. And also because my wife and her older brother every Christmas got up at three a.m., went and looked at everything they were getting. And then on Christmas morning, we're tired and unenthused. There's actually home videos of their parents looking at each other like the kids got a bicycle and they're looking at each other like, I don't know, I guess they don't care.
And it's because they they did care at three a.m. when you weren't there. And so we set this up and what I'll do is I'll get on the other side of it and I can see them and I can see into our living room area and I can and I'll stand and I'll go. Oh, oh, oh, oh, there's some stuff out here. Oh, it's going to be pretty good. I think, oh, I think we're going to have a good morning. I just try to play it up a little bit and make them wait a little bit and get them a little amped up.
And the passage we're going to read this morning, in some ways, I feel like Jesus is doing that, that he's standing in a position where he can see something we can't see. And he's trying to help us understand if you could see if you're in my vantage point and you can see what I can see. This is how you would live. This is how you would behave. This is how you would feel. And so Jesus, because he can see what we can't see, is trying to help us wrap our heads around something this morning.
So we're going to read just a very short parable to one verse. Matthew chapter 13, verse 44. The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Let's pray.
Lord, this parable is simple, but it's profound. And Lord, I ask that by the work of your spirit, you would help us to believe this this morning. That this would go beyond a truism that is in our mind, but it would become rock solid truth that is in our hearts and that guides the way we live. And work and labor and spend our time and our money. And we ask for your help and your grace in the name of Jesus this morning. Amen.
Let's read that again. The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. All right. So the first thing I think we need to answer.
Is what is the kingdom of heaven? Because he says the kingdom of heaven is like and he's going to tell us some aspect of the kingdom of heaven, but it would help us to have some understanding of the kingdom of heaven. And Jesus in Matthew has been talking about the kingdom of heaven nonstop. So I'm going to give you a quick definition and then we'll expand on it briefly. The kingdom of heaven is the effective rule and reign of Jesus. Or the kingdom of heaven is the applied rule and reign of Jesus.
So if you just think about heaven and your kind of concept from that, and hopefully it's got some biblical groundings, but if you think about heaven that you've got a good start. There's no sin. There's no pain. There's no death. There's no sorrow. There's joy and delight.
Love, pleasure, forgiveness, hope, love, relationship, grace. That it's the application of the work of the cross. It's all the good things that Jesus came to purchase on our behalf. So that when Jesus, we celebrate Christmas and we set up nativities and we see mangers. There's this picture of Jesus coming. He's God in the flesh coming to rescue us.
And what he did was he came to bring the kingdom. The first thing he preaches is repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. That God's kingdom is in breaking on the world. And so the kingdom of heaven is certainly our eternity. But it is also breaking in on us now.
And so what Jesus is saying is if you understand the kingdom, what I've come to accomplish, what my rule and reign is like, this is how you'll behave. Okay. So that's the kingdom. He says the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. I love the word treasure. Because it just, do you want treasure?
Yes. Like it just encapsulates. Like one of your goals forever has been to find some buried treasure. Or a map to buried treasure. Like ever since you watched the Goonies, you were like, this would be great. I want in on this.
I want some buried treasure. And you may be, as a child, were convinced that it was more likely to happen and that treasure was more likely to be found. But this is a thing, this idea that we want treasure. And that's what he's tapping into. He goes, you want treasure, right? And the answer is, yes, I'd love some treasure.
That sounds great. He says, well, that's what the kingdom of heaven is like. It's a treasure. So here's what he says. It's like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and he buys that field.
So there's this picture of this man. He's traveling through a field. It's not his field, but they didn't have the same kind of like trespass laws. He's allowed to walk through the field. He just can't be tearing things up or stealing things. He's walking through the field.
Maybe he's got a staff and he's walking and it's like sand noise, gravel noise, sand noise. He says, dunk, dunk. And he thinks, maybe this is treasure because that's what you think, right? If you find something buried, there's this moment. I don't care if it's in your backyard or whatever. There's this moment where you're like, treasure.
That's what he does. His little heart flutters. He lays the stick down. He starts digging. Wood. Wood.
It's a good sign. You know what you hide in wood? Treasure. He starts working his way around. He finds the edge of like a chest. What kind of chest?
Probably a treasure chest. He works his way around. He keeps digging. Now, at some point, he was like early, he was a little bit like he's, you know, trying to act a little nonchalant about it. As soon as he starts getting to the corner and this, I mean, this man's, he looks like a cartoon dog. Like he's digging.
He gets this, he finds it. It's the top of this thing. And now he's going to try to get to open. And it is a chest. And you know, his heart is beating because this is either the beginning of the rest of his life where he finds treasure or it's the beginning of law and order special victims unit. There's something, something's happening though.
You don't bury a box for no reason. Y'all, he opens it up. It's treasure. Gold. Gems. A lamp.
He rubs it. Nothing. Still expensive though. Treasure. And it apparently can kind of tell like this is some old treasure. They don't probably know this is here.
So what's he do? He stares at it. Is captivated by it. And then he slams it down, closes it up and buries it again. And like tries to Mark where it was, but also tries to, you know, he's like sprinkling like leaves and stuff on it or little bits of grass. Like nobody's been here.
Nobody dug. He goes over here and like scuffs up the ground. So it looks like this is just a thing people do around here. There's just spots like this, but he marks his spot and he hides it again. He leaves and we don't know. I don't know if he walked out and saw a for sale sign in front of it and was like, or if he just was like, I'm going to find out who owns it and I'm going to put an offer on this.
Just going to see if they'll take it. He has to try to maybe play it cool. Hey, I saw your trashy garbage field you had over there. And I'm assuming you're not doing anything with it or any crops over there. It doesn't seem like anything could grow. And I was thinking maybe I'd buy it from you to be nice to you.
And the person's like, I'll sell it. He sells all that he has. And how does he sell all that he has? In his joy. Now, if you knew him, he starts looking kind of crazy. He sells his house.
He sells everything in his house. He sells his little piece of property. He sells his new donkey he just got. He sells everything. Everything. Everything.
Like I almost picture this man barefoot walking over there with the stuff that he's going to buy this with. He sells everything. And if you knew him, you'd be going, what are you doing? He's like, I'm buying that field. That field? In this market?
You know why that's been sitting there, right? That field? But he knows something that they don't know. He knows that that field is worth everything. Because there's something there that they don't know about. And so in his joy, whistling, skipping, he goes down and he buys that field.
And Jesus says, if you knew what the kingdom was like, that's what you look like. If you could imagine what the kingdom is like, well, that's what you'd look like. Because the kingdom is worth everything. certainly this is salvation. Certainly it means that anything that would stand in the way of you surrendering your life to Jesus, get rid of it. This is not a call to earn your salvation. It's not at all.
And we understand that because Jesus came to earn our salvation through his death. But it is a call to value what Jesus has accomplished as the ultimate treasure. and to live our lives in such a way that the kingdom is advanced. That more people come to know Jesus. From the moment that man dug that treasure up and buried that treasure again, do you know what he thought about? That treasure. That was it.
He didn't go to work. He did not show back up and do his normal duties. Why would he? He has a treasure. What he did was he leveraged everything he possibly had towards that end goal. It captured his heart.
It captured his imagination. And the truth is everybody in this room has something that's captured captured our imagination. It's captured our heart. You have something this year that you daydreamed about that you look forward to. You have something that drove you forward to work, to labor. I don't know what it was.
I don't know if you dreamed about romance this year and you just kept thinking if I could just get this to work out, if I could just get in this type of relationship, if I could just have this happen for me, then I'd be okay. I'd feel good. I don't know what you treasured this year. I don't know if it was a promotion or just the idea of progressing in life. Just so y'all know, that's something that America has sold us and we have bought it wholesale. If you've ever said the phrase, I should be farther along by now and you are not talking about following Jesus, that's something America has sold you on.
I should have a little bit more money. I've been in this house for a while. I'd probably be in a bigger house by now. I've had this car for a while. I should probably have a new car by now. I should probably have learned how to make my clothes match by now.
Like, I should have just done some things by now. Should have just moved forward a little bit in life. I don't know. I don't know what you dreamed about, what you longed for. Some of you work really, really hard, but it's just because you love resting. I'm going to work so hard, I'll never have to work again.
I'm going to take so many naps. I don't know. But what Jesus says is, as he stands with a vantage point we don't have, he says, oh, if you knew what the kingdom was like, it'd be hard to think about anything else. If you knew what the kingdom was like, you'd give everything for it. And it's such a simple picture. If you thought, what would I do this week if I found out there was treasure buried in my backyard, but it was 20 feet deep?
Tell you, I'd figure out how to dig a 20-foot hole. Coming to work? I'm at work. There's treasure here. And no, not the job you're talking about. Like, that's how we would be.
Like, that's the concept he's getting after and he's saying, no, no, no. And I know I'm not supposed to say that because I'm a preacher and I'm supposed to treasure this more, but I'm just telling you, like, that's how it works with our hearts that we would want to find that. And that's what he's saying. That if you really knew what this was, you would give everything for it. You ever seen the show Storage Wars? Yeah, no battle in it whatsoever, just for the record.
It's people who bid on storage units, which is, again, a nice little American hallmark of consumerism. We don't have enough room in our homes to hold all our stuff. So we buy, we rent closets from people so that we can put our stuff in there and visit it from time to time. And it's a good industry. It's booming. But people periodically don't go back for whatever reason to get their stuff.
And after a while, they haven't paid for their units. It's forfeited over to the storage unit people and they have a TV show where they auction off storage units. Now, in the show, you're not allowed to walk into the storage unit. They just roll it up. It's an invisible barrier that you're not allowed to pass, but you can peek in there. And they can try to guess what's in there.
Is that the kind of stuff I'd like to sell? Is there going to be any? And these people are modern day little treasure hunters hoping that there's something in that box that's worth something. And the reason the show is fun is because we like treasure hunting and we're hoping that they bought either something amazing or nothing at all. That's the point of the show. I want you to open a box full of shredded paper or a Fabergé egg.
That's why I'm watching. But they're peeking in and they're trying to decide is this worth buying? And they put a valuation in their head and then they put where I'm willing to bid and then they auction it off. Now, the show would be ruined if they all got to show up with appraisers, walk into the storage unit and appraise everything. I think the whole process would be ruined, not just the TV show. This wouldn't work anymore.
But let's say you and I go on the show and we decide to cheat because we're like that. And we smuggle an appraiser in the night before, you know, like Ocean's 11 style, but it's like Ocean's 3 because we didn't have that many people. And we sneak them in, our appraiser appraises it and then hides in their forest and then we just peek in and they're just going to give us a little signal to let us know how much to bid. And let's say, no matter what the auctioneer's doing, our appraiser just keeps going. It's worth it. Can I get 200?
Yep. That's why you got to make noises. You can't just, you got to say, oh yeah, like that. I'll do that part because it's the funnest part. But they keep doing it and every time we look, he's saying up.
And y'all, that's what Jesus does with the kingdom. If you looked at him and said, is it worth this? He goes, more than that. If you looked at him and said, let me ask you a question, Lord. Is the kingdom worth instead of me treating my home like a retreat from the world, figuring out how to get to know my neighbors, even though I hate that? More than that.
Absolutely. Is the kingdom worth me showing up to work earlier or staying later so that I can get to know my coworkers? Is it worth me actually eating lunch in the break room instead of in my car listening to true crime broadcast? More than that. Is it worth me setting aside money every month and trying to work to increase that every year so that more and more of my money goes away to bless the poor and to work towards kingdom causes and to support missionaries and churches and wherever I see you at work? Is it worth that?
Yeah. More than that. Lord, if you call me to serve you and I've got to go overseas and I might not ever be able to get married, I might not ever get to live out what I thought my life was going to be, is it actually worth that? More than that. Lord, what if I have to give up on my career? What if I end up not really looking like a success?
What if I give away so much money or so much of my time that we live in a smaller house in a smaller place if I don't get to keep up with my peers? Is it worth that? More than that. Jesus is saying if you could see the kingdom it's worth everything and you'd give up everything for it. And so the two questions that I think are helpful for us to consider after we've thought through what has captured my imagination? What's captured my heart?
What am I actually pursuing? The two questions I think we need to ask is what stands in the way of me pursuing the kingdom? What stands in the way? I've had people before tell me I'll follow Jesus but I'm not going to give blank up and they'll pick a sin. I'm not going to give that up. I've just said well you're not going to follow Jesus.
This is not how it works. He's the king. You are not. The kingdom is his kingdom. You don't walk in and dictate the rules. What stands in your way?
Because if there's something that stands in the way of you following Jesus it's not worth it. Second question is what do I have that I can leverage for the kingdom? Because maybe you have relationships. Maybe you have some social capital. Maybe you live in a neighborhood and nobody knows Jesus. Instead of moving out of that neighborhood you just need to use your home as a beacon for the gospel.
There are some people who are medical doctors that need to not make a bunch of money in the U.S. and go overseas to be missionaries as Jesus commands. And there are some people who are medical doctors who need to be godly, Christian, humble, generous medical doctors here. Who love and serve and know their coworkers. Who share the gospel with them. Who share the gospel with those who are hurting and dying here. And who give away their money generously for the sake of the other people who need to go.
So what's in the way and what do I have that I can leverage for the sake of the kingdom? And y'all there's no blanket answer to that. That's submitted to Jesus. But you go to him and you say I value you above everything else. I value the kingdom above everything else. What do you want?
I had a pastor one time said that it's like you took a piece of paper that was a contract and you signed your name at the bottom of a blank sheet of paper and you slide it across the table. To Jesus and you say fill in the terms. My name's on it. I trust you. Fill in the terms. I want to read a quote.
It's one of my favorite quotes. If you've been around a while you've probably heard me read this before. If you stay around for the next five years you'll hear it again. This is a there was a missionary named John G. Patton who accepted the call to do mission work in the New Hebrides Islands. This was right around 1900s right before and there were some missionaries that had been sent to the New Hebrides that had gotten out of the boat were immediately murdered and eaten by cannibals within minutes of showing up.
And this was well known that the first missionary expedition to this set of islands had gone very poorly. There were some other islands around where things had been working and John G. Patton felt called and said I'm going to this island. And when he was talking it through some of the leadership in his church there was a man named Mr. Dixon who was an older gentleman in the church and one of the leaders in the church and he just at some point as they were talking it through he got overwhelmed and he just said the cannibals you're going to be eaten by cannibals. It was like he couldn't get through to John G.
Patton like this is what's going to happen to you. You're going to be eaten by cannibals. Like this is not safe. You cannot devote your life to this. This will just go poorly. You are going to be eaten by cannibals.
And we have John's response in a letter that he eventually wrote to Mr. Dixon. And I'll read this quote from his letter. He said Mr. Dixon you are advanced in years now and your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave there to be eaten by worms. I confess to you that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus it will make no difference to me whether I'm eaten by cannibals or by worms.
And in the great day my resurrection body will rise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer. I love that because I think John Patton understood what Jesus was saying in Matthew chapter 13 verse 44. it's worth everything. There's the kingdom is a treasure to be valued above everything and if I can but live and die honoring and serving Jesus what else is there? If you don't know Jesus then whatever stands in the way of that you need to get rid of it because his kingdom is wonderful and glorious and his forgiveness and salvation are graciously freely offered to you and if you know Jesus you will spend eternity loved welcomed cared for in a place where there is no sin and there is no pain and there is no discomfort and there is no relational strife we have a treasure and it's the kingdom and we're to live now leveraging everything for it earlier this year we stood up and we said that we thought we had rightly as a church we had rightly identified and understood the idea that we're missionaries wherever we are that if the Lord has placed you somewhere he's placed you there with intent and that you should not think that missionaries are only people who go overseas but they're there that you are to be a missionary in your neighborhood in your job and we're we're fine with that we believe that's true and we've said that over and over and over and over again but what we said earlier this year was that we had not done a good enough Job of helping our church understand that some of us are meant to be missionaries somewhere else that some of us are meant to surrender as John G.
And over and over again but what we said earlier this year was that we had not done a good enough Job of helping our church understand that some of us are meant to be missionaries somewhere else that some of us are meant to surrender as John G. Patton surrendered and go and that right now we live in a world where there are more unreached people groups more lost people than ever before and we showed you this map and we said that that red
Is bad that the green areas are reached areas the yellow areas are kind of in the middle and that the red is unreached areas and the reason the red is red is because it's hard to get there it's hostile to the gospel but that we're supposed to go because we have an eternal treasure that cannot be taken from us there was a young lady in our church Jamie Kern who began doing an internship with us this summer trying to discern
The call to mission work what we had said was that we were uniquely positioned as a church to try to get to that red area to that 1040 window to that section of the world that is hard to get to because there are three mission organizations that office in our building and so we said God by his grace has given us an on ramp to that area and that we need to take it
And there was a young lady who did a joint internship with our church in 1040 Hope during the summer and then she left and went to Lebanon for three months to prayerfully discern the call to missions she's been in Lebanon for three months and Lebanon is a more advanced country over there but is in turmoil right now their financial system has fallen apart American money
US dollars still do okay over there but everything else is millions of dollars to buy bread like it's there's rolling blackouts it's in a very bad state she went and spent three months there crimes on the rise it's a difficult place to be right now she went and spent three months over there prayerfully discerning am I supposed to be here learning Kurdish because she's been serving with a Kurdish church Kurdish speaking church in Lebanon
And the Kurdish people are an unreached people group that means there's almost none no no gospel witness among those people at all and so she's trying to learn Kurdish so that she can help this church that's trying to plant among the Kurdish people that church is a few years old it has like 150 people 100 of them have been baptized in the Kurdish that are Kurdish
People's placing faith in Jesus and Jamie Kern has committed felt called by the Lord and committed to stay in Lebanon at least for a year holding open handed to the Lord as what he has next and she's sorted through some of this we've had conversations through some
Of this I think I'm having to give this up I think I'm having to give this up and she keeps circling back around to I think it's worth it and so what she'll be doing for the next year in Lebanon is she'll be working with and for 1040 Hope continuing to learn Kurdish which by the
Way her Kurdish teacher is a Muslim and she's been able to build a great relationship with this lady and her family and be praying for that that she would have an opportunity as she learns Kurdish to share the gospel with this lady but she's going to continue to serve this Kurdish
Church and she's going to be a liaison for 1040 Hope to do in the field coordinator for internships and for missions teams so that when internships go and missions go and
Mission teams go that she's going to help them get on the ground figure out where they are get to the right place and
Help them overseas so she's going to serve the Kurdish church while she's there and internships because she said that she was praying through Lord what do
You want she just got stuck on the passage where it says the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few she said okay
Lord if I can be here and help get more laborers here that's what I want to do so our gift project this year
Is two fold the first thing we want to do is raise $15,000 right now for a vehicle we've been renting vehicles for her right
Now while she's been there originally we weren't but the state of Lebanon has gotten worse and worse and there have been more abductions
For people who are using Ubers and ride shares there have been more crime and stuff for people who are walking on the street
There's been some hairy situations when she's on the street for 1040 hope that she will be able to drive and that car will
Look something like this that's a car for sale in Lebanon right now I've been told to not guarantee you that we will buy
That car because we gotta get the money first and get it to Lebanon and buy a car and that might not still be
In that parking lot ready to sell but if you google it is about $15,000 to buy a vehicle in American dollars and so
We are trying to raise that amount of money to buy that car right now and this is for a couple of purposes it's
One so that she has safe transportation all the time it's also so that when interns go and missions teams go they have automatic
Transportation that's why we're buying something bigger than what she needs so that she can help get people around and use her car for
Some ministry while she's there and then it also helps the 1040 hope team because if after a year the Lord leads for her
To come back or to go somewhere else they still have a vehicle there that they can continue to use for the same purpose
And so that's our first thing that we want to do missionary in the Kurdish church and so among this unreached people group there's
A southern baptist pastor with them and she's able to serve them as well through 1040 hope so we're excited to be able to help
Her do this the second thing we want to do is fund her mission work for a year which is $29,225 that is for housing
All the necessities that she will need that's her salary she will have some basically like get out of the country money that's sitting there ready for
Her to go if she needs to be able to leave quickly so that's already built into how they fund and that's her insurance
That will be given in pledges so that we will commit to build it into your budget to raise support for one year for
Her to do the work that she's going to be doing that's our hope is that we will give $15,000 right now and $29,000
For one year of missionary support and that's a lot but we're trying as we follow Jesus to submit our lives to him whatever he
Asks and we're trying to intentionally in this moment take our wallets press on our heart a little bit and remind ourselves that our
Treasure is not here but that we have an eternal hope and an eternal home and it's worth everything and we're just trying to
Collectively as a church say we believe you we believe Jesus when he says that so let's follow him and we're excited to get the
Opportunity to do it and we'll celebrate however the Lord leads for us to be generous in this season let's pray Lord thank you
Thank you for the hope of salvation that we have we thank you Lord that your kingdom is truly valuable and that you came
To rescue and to redeem and to purchase us out of our sin and Lord we ask that we would live with eternity set
In our hearts so that our normal life would look crazy to the people who don't know the treasure but that it would make
Perfect sense to everybody who knows what your kingdom is like may we be a church that values you above everything else and in
Our joy gives up everything we can for your kingdom in Jesus name amen band is going to come back up we're going to
Sing and in a moment Spencer will give a few more specific instructions on how we get to participate in our gift project this year
But I'm excited for us to get to step out in faith in this way
Genealogy of Jesus: From Fall to Redemption
Transcript
Good evening. Man, what a way to close out the evening. What a way to close out our time here at Glen Forest. I'm so thankful for our worship team and how they lead us. We're going to be celebrating Christmas tonight by looking at Matthew 1, the genealogy of Jesus. And here's why.
Jesus was born into a family. He was born into a family history, a family tree. And that matters. So we're going to take a look at that. A few years ago, I got interested in our family tree. And I learned something.
We moved, my family moved from Germany in the 1600s to Pillion. And for the last 400 years, we've kind of stayed in the same spot. Pillion, Lexington, West Columbia for like 300 plus years. This is where we've been. And I've looked at our family history because it's pretty extensive. And there are some people in it that are admirable.
Like I look at my grandfather who was a titan of a man. He's such a bright spot in our family's history. And there's some other people that do some kind of crazy things. It's a mixed bag because when you're born into a family history, there's good, there's bad, there's moments of brokenness, there's moments of hope. But that's family histories.
And Jesus was no different. He was born into a family. And what we're going to see as we walk through his genealogy, we're going to see as we walk through his background, we're going to see hope and how it meets brokenness. And that really is the story of Christmas. Christmas is a season where we celebrate that hope entered into a broken world. So we're going to be in Matthew 1.
You don't have to follow along because we don't have Bibles out at night, but we'll have it on the screen. So you can follow along there. Verse 1, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Okay, that is a heading. This is not Ancestry.com. He's not about to go this person and this person and this person.
Matthew is retelling the genealogy of Jesus differently. He's telling it thematically. He's sending a bunch of 14 groups of names and he's skipping generations because he's trying to tell a story. By telling Jesus his history. And he starts off by saying, son of David. And that's significant.
David was the king in Jewish history. Everyone looks back to the time of David. That was the glory days. He was the savior type king who brought the nation together and established them as a people. This is the king that slaughtered Goliath as a boy. That helped defeat the surrounding enemies.
That made Israel a light to the surrounding nations. Everyone looks back to David. So when you say son of David, that says something. In the same way that if I said I was the son of George Washington, which I'm not. We're in pillion, y'all. If I said I was the son of George Washington, that would say something.
That would speak volumes about my history. So it says son of David. But what we're about to see is he doesn't just highlight the good moments, the moments of hope, the moments of the bright spots. Matthew's going to go out of his way to highlight the brokenness in the line of Jesus. So he starts off with son of David.
Verse 2. Abraham was the father of Isaac. Isaac, the father of Jacob. These are the patriarchs. These are where the people of God come from. The Israelites look back to father Abraham.
They look at their three patriarchs with joy looking at their history. This is the formation of their people. They look back at this with so much hope. And then it fades into brokenness fairly quickly. It says Jacob, the father of Judah and his brothers. Now, we walked through Genesis in the past year plus.
It was a long time in Genesis, y'all, but it was good. When we got to Judah, I just kind of said, y'all, God could have chosen any of the twelve brothers to bring about the Savior of the world. But he chooses Judah. Who I'd argue is the worst. His stories are not great. Judah sold his brother into slavery.
Pretty much all the highlights we get of him aren't great. And Matthew doesn't skip over this. He says, Judah, the father of Perez and Zerah. And he could have just kept going. But he says, Ba-Tamar, which highlights the brokenness of his past.
That's the worst moments of Judah when his daughter-in-law, Tamar, her husband dies. And he doesn't make sure that she's taken care of. So she, when he is drunk, they sleep together. It's incestuous. It gets weird. And he wants to have her burnt alive.
It's a messed up story. It's a broken story. And Matthew doesn't skip over it. No, he leans into it and says, no, Ba-Tamar. Keeps going. And Perez, the father of Hezron.
Hezron, the father of Ram. Ram, the father of Aminadab. Aminadab, the father of Nahshon. Nahshon, the father of Salmon. Salmon, the father of Boaz by Rahab. And again, he could have just mentioned Boaz, but he mentions Rahab.
Rahab is a bright spot in one respect. She was of the people of Jericho and helped the people of God enter the Promised Land. She was a hero in that regard, but also she was a prostitute. And he doesn't skip over that. No, he mentions the brokenness and the hope that is in this line. He keeps going.
And Boaz, the father of Obed. Obed by Ruth, which is a beautiful story in the Old Testament. If you have not read it, go to the book of Ruth. And Obed, the father of Jesse. And Jesse, the father of David, the king. Now, that's the first set.
The first set of names. Leading up to David. And then we get to David. The bright spot. The king that everyone looks back to with joy. And he gets to David and he says, And David was the father of Solomon.
And he could have stopped there, but he doesn't. And he says, of Solomon by the wife of Uriah. And what he just did, was he referenced the worst part of David's history. The moment that he looked at Bathsheba, Uriah's wife. And he took her. And he slept with her.
And they conceived. And to cover it up, he had Uriah sent to the front lines and killed. He highlights David, not just as king, but also as adulterer and a murderer. Keeps going. And Solomon, Solomon, the father of Rehoboam, which could not be two different types of kings. Solomon, the philosopher king.
The wise one. Wrote the book of Proverbs. Ecclesiastes. Everyone looks back to his wisdom. And then you get to his son, Rehoboam, who was a fool. Who, when setting up the kingdom at a very touchy time, listens to his young friends for counsel.
Rejects the counsel of older, wiser men. And the kingdom breaks into two. And it is never the same. Then we get a mixed bag of kings of people, good and bad. Rehoboam, the father of Abijah. Abijah, the father of Asaph.
Asaph, the father of Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat, the father of Joram. Joram, the father of Uzziah. Uzziah, the father of Jotham. Jotham, the father of Ahaz. Ahaz, the father of Hezekiah.
By the time you get to Hezekiah, this is a good example of a king in their history. A good example in the line. Took down Adosh. All kinds of things. But his son could not be any different.
Hezekiah, the father of Manasseh. Manasseh was the most insidious and evil king in the history of the people of God. He sacrificed his own son, burnt him on an altar to a foreign God. This is who the Savior of the world comes through. Manasseh. Manasseh, the father of Amos.
Amos, the father of Josiah. Josiah, the father of Jehoshaphat and his brothers at the time of the deportation of Babylon. Now, I'm not going to read the last ones. I'm just going to give you the highlights of what happened. They spread across the Babylonian empire because of their sin, because of the rebellion. Eventually get back.
They establish themselves again in the land. And there's a 400 plus year period of waiting. A 400 plus year period of darkness. Waiting for someone to come. Waiting for a Savior to bring them out of their situation. As one nation at the other rules over them.
Just as the people of God waited 400 plus years in darkness in Egypt. Waiting for a Savior to come and rescue them. They are waiting. And then finally, finally, on a night in a small town in Bethlehem. Skip down to verse 16. And Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.
Finally, on a dark night, hope enters the broken world. What I love about the genealogy of Jesus is that He comes from a broken line of messed up people. Because He comes for a broken, messed up people. This world is broken and marred by sin. But the God of the universe doesn't look at the world and say, I'm going to destroy you.
He doesn't look at the world and say, I don't care about it. He comes and He rescues us. He loves us so much that He comes in the form of a babe on a night in Bethlehem. The God of the universe humbles Himself of becoming a baby. And He grows up. And He obeys the Father perfectly.
And He takes that perfect record with Him to the cross. Where our brokenness and our rebellion and our sin is paid for on the cross. And when He steps out of the tomb on Resurrection Sunday, hope, eternal, beautiful, unending, unfading hope is born and is offered to anyone who would believe. That is why I love the story of Jesus. He comes from a broken people for broken sinners like you and me. And that is the hope of Christmas.
That is what we celebrate every single year. We pause and remember that God loved us so much that He came from heaven and He sought us. That's the good news of the Gospel. And as we go through the next few days of celebrating, whatever traditions you do as you exchange gifts, as you listen to your uncle talk about politics ad nauseum, whatever it is that happens in your family, may we not forget this. May we not forget while we sing these songs, while we gather here. Because there's a loving God who came for us.
May we remember that He comes for the broken. I know that some of you, that this is a difficult season. Some of you have been wrestling with some serious suffering. Maybe some serious sin. Maybe this year brings up all kinds of painful memories. I want to say very clearly to you that this season is because God loves you.
He loves you so much that He sent His Son to die for you. So that you would believe in Him. And for eternity experience this hope. For eternity you would taste and see and Savior this King.
The Three Wise Men
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Ben Johnson, and I'm a member here and a leader in training here at Mill City. And I'm so thankful for this opportunity to speak to you today. And we're so excited about the new year, the beginning of the year. I'll be co-leading our community group with Patrick Harding. And we are so thankful for that opportunity and looking forward to that.
And for those of you who don't know me, I would just like to talk a little bit about who I am. I'm originally from Augusta, Georgia, born and raised. And I am a Georgia fan, unfortunately. We can't clinch any championships, but we're still pretty good. And we're going to get to go to a bowl game. But when you think about it, the one game we lost this past regular season was to the Gamecocks.
I mean, how does that happen? I was in Lebanon when Spencer told me. And I was like, is the world turned upside down? What is going on? But unfortunately, it did happen.
But I know y'all were happy about that. When I was 23, God called me to move to the Middle East. But before I made that move, I would take several short-term trips, a few to South America, a couple to Africa. And when I got back from Brazil in 2008, my grandmother called my mom and asked, well, where's Ben planning to go on his next missions trip? And my mom goes, well, he's thinking about moving to the Middle East. And my grandma goes, well, where's that at?
And my mom goes, you know, where all the crazy people are, shooting everybody. And my grandma goes, well, why does he want to go there? Tell him to come to my house and I'll shoot him if that's what he wants. My grandma really did say that. She was a blessed person. I loved her so much.
But before I moved to Beirut, and I have a picture of where Lebanon is. Beirut's the capital of Lebanon, north of Israel, surrounded by Syria. I started 1040 Hope Missions with the vision and purpose to reach the 6,000 unreached people groups in the 1040 window. The 1040 window is a part of the world where the least amount of missionaries, the least amount of churches, the least amount of resources are sent. And I went with the mission to do something, to help resource churches, to train leaders, send new leaders, send out new laborers. Because we have to do something, because that's 3.5 million people who would die and spend an eternity without Christ.
So I was there for 10 years and doing this mission, doing that work. And during that time, I met my beautiful wife, Patricia, where most of my friends, when they saw her, said, Ben got an upgrade. And I did. And God gave us beautiful children. But towards our 10th year, we started to realize we made all these connections, all these networks, got all these leaders trained and ready to go.
But we have no resources to help them. So that's when the Lord put on our heart last year to make a move back to the States to begin working towards this. To getting more people on board, getting more churches as partners, doing what we can do to make the awareness of the needs of the 1040 window known. And getting more resources so we can send more laborers into the harvest to reach the unreached. And that's what we are all about. And I'm so thankful for this church.
You are our home church. And you guys have met such a need in our lives. But I'm so thankful that we're partnering together on one of these projects in 1040 Hope to reach the unreached, the unlovable, the outcast in Egypt. And I'm so thankful that we're doing this together. And when I think about how God brought us together, it just it blows my mind because God loves to use small events or strange events or insignificant moments in our lives to bring about his sovereign and holy will. And that's what we're going to be talking about today in Matthew chapter 2.
God is going to use an event, a star, appearing of a star to bring foreigners from the east, unexpected people to come and be the first ones to worship the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's an uninteresting story. We're going to talk more about that. But it makes me think about how even he connected us because I was working on my computer one day and it crashed. And if you know anything about me, I hate buying a new computer. I don't know why.
It's just it's something in me. I don't want to pay the money to buy a new computer. So I do what I do best. I take my wife's computer and start using it for work. And she loves when I use her stuff for work. But guys, I kid you not.
Two days later, it crashed. I'm like, what is going on? Do I need to rebuke some kind of computer demon? What's going on? So then what do we do?
We go to Best Buy and we're at Best Buy on Sunset Boulevard and we're taught we meet Josh and Josh starts showing his computers. And he talks about how this computer was used by his wife at their church. They go, oh, you go to church. So he told us about Josh Church. And then we start talking about how we're missionaries. We started talking and then Josh starts giving his testimony.
And then Josh starts giving some real deep details of his testimony. And we're like, bro, it's OK. You don't have to share all this stuff right now. We just met. But you know what?
We really weren't weirded out. We actually just he left a good impression on us. And even though he did not make any commission off me because I still walked out of there without buying a computer. Because he talked me into doing their total tech program and fixing my old one, which actually it did last till just this past week. It crashed this past week and I took my wife's computer again. So though he didn't make any commission, he has a spiritual ward because we came to the church and here we are.
And you guys have been our home church and we are so thankful. And y'all have been such a blessing to our lives. But this is what God does. He takes small, insignificant events, things that seem strange and bring about his will and his purpose. And this is what he does with the wise men. He brings foreigners, outcasters, outsiders to the covenant to be the first ones to come and worship the Lord Jesus Christ.
And give him the worship that he is due. And this story is so important because here at the beginning, Matthew is revealing the heart of God for all nations. Not just his people, but for all nations. And the mission of God. That this message of good news would go out to every corner of the earth. So that's what we're going to talk about now.
So let's go to Matthew chapter 2 in your blue Bibles. Verse 1, Matthew chapter 2. And I'm going to pray before we start. Father, I just thank you so much for this opportunity to be here with my church. And I thank you that we're partnered together. Because we're able to accomplish things that we couldn't on our own.
But together we're able to do so much more. And fulfilling your mission. Fulfilling your purposes. And bringing that those who are outside of the covenant. Those who have no hope of salvation. Into the fold.
Into your fold. And into your covenant, Lord. So I thank you together. We're partnered in this mission. Help us now, Lord. See this from this text.
Your heart for everyone. In Jesus' mighty name I pray. Amen. Verse 1. Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem and Judea.
In the days of Herod the king. Behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem. Saying, where is he who is born? King of the Jews. Matthew is purposely using this phrase. Wise men from the east.
And we as readers have to stop and ask. Who were these wise men? Why does Matthew make known of them? Well, we know that they were spiritual advisors. To the kingdoms and palaces they came from. Most likely from Syria, Iraq, or Iran.
Somewhere from that region. We have an old song about singing the three kings of Orientar. They were not kings. They were religious leaders from their courts. So they were very prestigious men.
We know that they were astrologers. So as religious leaders, they studied the stars and studied the heavens, studied the signs. They were Gentiles. Meaning they were outsiders to the covenant people of God. They were not part of the covenant. But yet, they did have some knowledge of a Jewish Messiah.
Western tradition tells us there were three. Three wise men brought three gifts. Eastern tradition tells us there could have been up to twelve. Regardless, we just know it's a large caravan, a large party, coming from the east to pay respect to this new born king. King of the Jews, Matthew says. And he's being so strategic in this phrase.
Because just as Chet and Spencer have been walking us through this book this past couple of months. And showing us that the whole purpose of Matthew writing his book is to show who the king of the Jews is. What this kingdom is going to be like. And how different it is from what they expected. And the current king is ruling. And this is what Matthew is telling us.
So let's keep reading in verse two. So the wise men said, For we saw his star when it rose. And we have come to worship him. Now the church for the last two thousand years has not come to an agreement exactly on what this star was. Some say that it was a star, just as the text says. And that God being God can do whatever he wants.
Uses this star in a miraculous way to lead the wise men from the east directly to the place where Jesus is. Others say, because the Bible has been known to call angels stars. That this star is actually an angel who has appeared to the wise men. Just like in the occasions with Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds. Regardless of how it really is. God is miraculously using this event to bring unexpected outsiders to the place where Jesus is.
So that they can worship him. And the phrase worship him is so important here. Because these wise men are doing something that's common in their day. Coming to pay respect to a king that has been born. And we know because of the Old Testament. And because the Jews have been scattered all over the ancient world.
That there formed a rumor that was circulating during that time. That a great king would rise from the Jews and rule and establish an empire. So we know that this was circulating. And the wise men have heard of this rumor. And they believe with the showing of this star that this king has been born. So they leave everything.
They pack up. And they come to pay him respect and worship. Even if they fully don't understand who he is. They are coming to pay worship to this new born king of the Jews. I'm sorry. Oh.
I thought, where did it go? I'm missing a page. Did not see it. Thank you guys. Y'all are helpful. So Matthew is clearly making the point here by this phrase worship.
Is that Jesus, who is God incarnate. Who is Emmanuel, God with us. Is the one who can rightfully receive worship. For he is worthy. And in reading in verse 3. When King Herod heard this, he was troubled.
As all Jerusalem with him. Because they thought they might die too. Because he never knew what Herod was going to do. And assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people. He inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. And they told him.
In Bethlehem of Judea. For so it is written by the prophet. You, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah. Are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. Matthew is quoting the scribes telling Herod from the prophecy of Micah chapter 2.
They are using the Greek translation of the Old Testament. So if you were to go to Micah chapter 2. It is not a word for word translation. But the point of the prophecy is made clear in this translation here given in Matthew. That the promised king of the Jews would come from Bethlehem. Though a small city it is not least.
And he would be the shepherd king of Israel. And Matthew is clearly pointing a contrast here. Because Herod. As Chet told us. Caesar said it is better to be his pig than his son. Would kill his own sons.
To cling to his power. Matthew is making sure we know that Jesus will be the shepherd king. That was promised from the Old Testament. Who will lay his life down for his subjects. As a shepherd would lay his life down for his sheep. Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly.
And learned from them what time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem saying. Go and search diligently for the child. And when you have found him. Bring me word. That I may come and worship him too.
Now Herod clearly has crafty and evil intentions here. But I laugh when I read this. Because it is such a Middle Eastern thing to do. Say one thing but mean another. Chet told you the story when I went into a restaurant one time. And I order my sandwich.
And I eat the sandwich. And I walk out. And I did not pay. And I am halfway down the street. Like oh my goodness. I did not pay.
So I run back. And I talk to the man. I am so sorry. He is like Habibi. Which is my friend. What is ten dollars between you and me and friends?
What is ten dollars? He did not mean it. As soon as I took out my money. He took my money. And there were many times like that. Where somebody would tell me something like that.
And I have to look at my wife. Do they mean that? She is like nope. I was like okay. I remember one time one of my good friends told me. He said I learned with Ben Johnson.
Not to ask him anything. Unless I really want to give it. Because he will take it right away. I did not know. Nobody told me you are supposed to ask three times. Say no.
Ask three times. I did not learn that until about a year after. I offended a lot of people. But they forgave me. Verse 9. After listening to the king.
They went on their way. And behold. The star that they had seen when it rose. Went before them. Until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star.
They rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house. They saw the child with Mary his mother. And they fell down. And worshipped him. Now put yourself in their shoes for a minute.
You're. Imagine yourself in that time. You're of an average family. Average income. Average house. Nothing spectacular.
And all of a sudden. A large motorcade shows up. And president advisors get out. And come into your house. You'd be shocked. Right?
Yeah. This is what's happening here. I imagine they are very surprised. Now their culture is already very hospitable. And they. They will give you anything.
If you are a guest. And I remember this would happen to me. When I would go into the. The Syrian refugee camps. When the war just broke out. And we knew ISIS was there.
And we had to be careful. We worked with our leaders. And when our leaders would say. That guy's ISIS. We'd go the other way. But the army.
Lebanese army protected us. But when we'd go into these camps. And we'd sit on their floor. And they were very very poor. But what they had.
They gave to us. One. Because it's just in their culture. To be hospitable. But two.
I'm an American. That has come into their tent. And has taken the time. To sit with them. So they gave up what they had.
So I imagine Mary and Joseph. Are probably trying to do the same. Like what do we give these. Prestigious men. But they did not come to be honored.
They did not come to be served. But to serve. And to honor. The king of the Jews. That has been born. So I imagine.
They are very taken back. By this event. And then it says in verse 11. Then opening. I'm sorry. Then I was talking about.
When they saw the child. They fell down. And worshipped him. And we know. That later on. By the story.
That Herod. Learned from their time. Of when he told them. The star appeared. That the baby. Was either one or two.
Years old. So the wise men. When they come. And worship baby Jesus. He's not a baby. He hasn't just been born.
At the stable. But he's either one or two. Somewhere. Somewhere around there. So. But unless you're like.
My family. We still worship. With a nice. Nativity. Nativity scenes. You know.
We put it up. In front of the Christmas tree. And we have the wise men. Present with the sheep. And the shepherds. And Mary and Joseph.
But then maybe you're like. Patrick Hardy. Who he decides to come. To my house. A couple weeks ago. He sees a nice little.
Wooden nativity scene. Nativity scene. That we have. That my children. Love to play with. And he starts taking out.
The wise men. From my nativity scene. Because he says. They were not historically there. And I'm like. Really?
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe you're like Patrick. And the suggestion. I have for you. Is take your wise men.
From your nativity. Find the corner. Far. Western corner. Of your house. Eastern corner.
I'm sorry. Because Jesus is in the west. The wise men are in the east. So go to the far corner. Of your house. Place the wise men there.
Make sure they're facing west. Because that's where Jesus was. And you'll be like Patrick Harden. And be historically accurate. So yeah.
So he's around. Two years old. When they come. To worship him. And when they worship him. In verse 11.
They open treasures. They offer him gifts. Gold. And frankincense. And myrrh. And being warned in a dream.
Not to return to Herod. They departed to their own country. By another way. These gifts that they present in worship. Were gifts fit for a king. Gold was the currency of kings.
Frankincense was not used by normal everyday people. They were used in palaces. By expensive people who had a lot of money. They were very expensive. It was. Myrrh was also used to embalm those who had died.
It was not a regular thing that was used. Not very common. These foreigners. These outsiders to the covenant. To the covenant people of God. Bring gifts fit for a king.
Bow down. And worship baby Jesus. But then they are warned by a dream. Of Herod's evil intentions. And they choose to go by another way. Which I imagine would have been very difficult for them.
Because they are a large caravan. And we know Herod had roots all over his kingdom. And outposts. But it seems that they are obedient. To the heavenly dream they are given. And they escape.
And we know from the rest of the story. That Jesus will escape to Egypt. And here we are at the end of the story. And we as readers must pause and ask. Why? What is the purpose of the story?
Why has Matthew. Who is the only gospel writer. To give us this story. To give us this information. Why has he chosen this story? Because think about it for a moment.
John the apostle said. If all the things that Jesus did. Were written down in books. Not all the books of the world. Can contain them. Imagine that.
Wow. So Matthew. Is purposeful. In choosing this story. And we as readers. Have to ask.
Why? And the reason is. Here at the very beginning of his book. Matthew is revealing. The heart. And the mission.
Of God. Not only for his own people. The Jews. But for foreigners. Outsiders. Men from the east.
Who have no hope of salvation. No hope of being part of the covenant. But God draws them. With this miraculous sign. To the place where Jesus is. And even if they fully don't understand.
What they are doing. They give him worship. And express that through the gifts. That they bring. And this shows that God desires. All men.
To have relationship. And fellowship. With him. And Matthew. This is what his whole book is about. About the kingdom of God.
Jesus. God longs for all people. To be in part of his kingdom. And Matthew. All the way. Is going to be talking about this kingdom.
And what it looks like. Up to the very end of his book. Where he. This risen Lord. The Lord that. Died for our sins.
This God. Who became flesh. And died for our sins. And resurrected. So that me and you.
Could no longer. Be outsiders. Because unless you were born Jewish. We had no hope. Unless you had a Jewish ethnicity. Sorry.
We are outsiders. To the kingdom of God. But he came specifically. So that you. And I. Could be grafted in.
And become insiders. Of the covenant people of God. And that. Is good news. And so Matthew. At the end of the book.
Has this risen Lord. Telling us. Now go out into all the world. And take this good news. Take this message. To the ends of the earth.
Until I return. And that. Now we are co-laborers with God. Co-laborers with Christ. Co-laborers in this mission. Of spreading the good news.
And the gospel message. Of Jesus Christ. That those who are outsiders. Can now. Be insiders. No matter what your background.
No matter what you come from. No matter what's happened. You can now be an insider. If you. Answer. Answer.
The invitation. So how do we respond today? Let us respond. As the wise men did. That they may not fully understand. Even who Jesus was.
But they left everything. And they came to where he was. And they bow down. In reverence and respect. And give him expensive gifts. Today we know who he is.
He is Emmanuel. He is God with us. He is. Jesus is the word. Who became flesh. So let us leave all.
The distractions. And all the things of life. That grab our attention. And let us bring our lives. And lay them down. At his feet.
Because it is the least that he deserves. Because he gave up everything for us. For God so loved the world. He gave his son. I can't even imagine. Giving one of my children up.
For someone that I don't even know. But God did that. For me and you. So that we can no longer be outsiders. But insiders.
And part of his kingdom. So let's take that message. Whatever we do. Whatever we have to do. Let's get this message out.
And that's going to play out. In different ways. For different people. Because we all have different gifts. And talents. But we need to respond.
And I've got some examples. I think. And how we can respond. And maybe some of those. God's going to call you. To pray a little bit more.
Jesus said. Pray for the labors. To be sent to the harvest. For the harvest is huge. But the labors are so few.
I have seen this. We don't have all the labors we need. We need more labors. Pray for the labors. Pray for the labors. That we do have.
For their safety. They give up so much. For the gospel. We need to pray for our brothers and sisters. Around the world. The bible tells us.
That are being persecuted. Or that are sitting in prison today. Because they are believing in the hope. Of the good news. Some of you. May need to respond more.
Are called to respond more. By giving. Paul said. Those who have more. Should give more. To further the kingdom of the gospel.
Don't give to where you put yourself in a bind. But if you can give. There's no guilt or pressure here. Give. To further the gospel. Do exactly what you are doing.
As we are doing as a church. As participating in this gift project. Giving to Citizens Church in North Carolina. So that people here. In the United States of America. Can hear about the good news.
Because we still need more churches. In this country. Continue giving. To this gift project. As we're partnering with Pastor Georges. And his ministry.
This ministry. That is reaching out to the nine million people. In his country. That are disabled. Or handicapped. And seen as a curse by God.
Because of their handicap. But they're going to them. Saying no. You're not cursed. You're not an outcast. God did everything.
So you could be an insider. So that you can be loved. And you as a church. Are helping make that possible. Because supporting one of these events. These events.
Where they go out. And proclaim this message. To the multitudes. You are allowing for people to come. And know that they can. They are loved.
And that they are not cursed. Or outcast by God. And I'm actually going to show a video. Of one of the events. That you're going to be help sponsoring. And there's going to be some.
It's a three minute clip. And there's going to be some parts. Where he speaks in Arabic. And I'm just going to give a slight translation. During those points. But let's go ahead.
And watch that video now. And there's going to be some. With our hearts set on glorifying God. We can stand against oppression. And force failure to stand down. We can introduce and bring hope.
Back into our world. Jesus is going to give happiness. To everyone that is present here today. We thank you Lord. For being over this work. And completing it.
We thank you Lord. For always letting us feel your presence. In every second of every day. We thank you Lord. For touching everybody. That called on your name today.
By giving $4,500. You are helping. Make one of these events possible. And reaching people. That feel cursed. And outcast.
And unloved by God. Because we found people in Egypt. That were put in a room for 40 years. Because they were handicapped. And the family didn't want. Other people in the community.
To know. That they had a handicapped person. In their family. For fear. That they would not give their sons. Or daughters.
Into Mary. And into their family. Which is a big deal. In their culture. So people who have been in rooms.
For 40 years. Can you imagine. Thinking that they are unloved. Outcast. Outsider. Jesus died.
For those people. And you by giving. Are partnering with them. So when you get to heaven. People will come to you. And say thank you.
Because the sower and the giver. The reaper. Are one and the same. In Christ. We work. In Christ Jesus.
And all the glory goes to him. You are making this possible. Some of you. May be called to respond by going. First going. And being an everyday missionary.
In your community. Going to your work. To those in your family. To those in your neighborhood. To those all around us. And when possible.
Going. To those who are far. I remember when I was 20 years old. Sitting in my Bible ministry class. And the teacher started walking through the book of Genesis. And he got to the place of Ishmael.
And he stopped. And he looked up. And he said. Ishmael. Who has 300 million descendants. Who are deceived.
And dying. And going to hell. And no one is going to them. And that just pierced my heart. Because I came from Georgia. Like my grandma said.
Just come over here. I'll shoot you. If that's what you want. I heard from Georgia. Everybody say. Blow them all up.
Why do we need to send our troops over there? So I never even thought about going. Or even thought about saving the Arabs. Until this moment. That God pierced my heart so bad. That I could not stop weeping in that moment.
And I knew God had called me. That I had to do something. And he actually specifically called me. And told me to go. It took me three years to get on the field. And I lived there for ten years with them.
But I knew I had to do something. And that may. That's not going to happen with everybody. Practically that. That just can't happen. We can't all go.
We need people to pray. We need people to say and give. We need people who can go. But there might be some here today. Who the Lord might actually put on your heart. To pack it all up.
Like the wise men did. And go to another land. To worship him. In that way. Of going and taking the message. Of good news.
So it's going to look different for each of us. Some of us are going to pray more. Some of us need to give more. Some of us might need to go more. And as the band comes up. In this moment.
We're going to pray. And we're going to take communion. And I want the Lord. You want. I want you to ask the Lord. Lord what part can I play?
In helping bring outsiders. Like these wise men. Into your kingdom. With the message of good news. So that they become insiders.
Because you allowed me to become an insider. And now I'm a co-worker. And laborer with you. So ask the Lord. What specifically part. That you can play.
In fulfilling his great commission. So that all people can hear. The gospel of good news. And have a chance. Of salvation. And entering this kingdom.
That Matthew. Is talking about. Let us pray. Father I thank you for this church. I thank you for my family Lord. And I thank you that we're partnering together.
And bringing your gospel. And your message. To outsiders. People who seem. To be outcasts. And unlovable.
But Lord they're not. You gave up everything for them. So Lord pray. I just pray you speak to everyone's heart. Right now in this moment. Of Lord.
What part they can play. There's no guilt here. There's no pressure. Father we do it. Because we love you. We do it.
Because we were outsiders. And we had no hope of salvation. We had no hope of being a part of your kingdom. But you left up the glory. And the riches of heaven. For me.
For us. So that is our motivation God. We love you. With all our hearts. With all our mind. With all our soul.
We desire you. And to make you known. So reveal to each and every one of us Lord. What can we do? What part can we play? You know.
By ourselves. We can't do that much. But together. As one people. As one voice. We can accomplish a lot.
So I thank you Lord. Use us. Use this body here in Columbia. South Carolina Lord. To do your kingdom work. To spread your name.
And to go after those that are outsiders. And outcasts. And unlovable. And bring them in. And make them insiders in the kingdom of God. We give you all the praise.
And all the glory. In Jesus name. Amen.
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
Two Kingdoms
Transcript
It's good to see y'all this morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. This is the first week of our Give Series. And so every time around this time of year, as soon as Thanksgiving's over, we have a Give Series where we intentionally give money away. So Merry Christmas.
This is a wonderful time of year. Here we are meant to celebrate well. We're supposed to. One of the things in the Old Testament that I was thinking about a good bit from Thanksgiving and into this time of year, one of the things about the Old Testament that God commanded His people to do was to save money so that they could help the poor, so that they could take care of the priests and the temple who did not have an inheritance among them, but they were supposed to take care of the Acts of worship and what they were supposed to do as a nation, and they were supposed to save money so that they could celebrate.
There were times where they were supposed to spend money to feast, to enjoy the good things that God had given them, to celebrate how He had blessed and provided. And as we go into Christmas, this is one of those times where we get to do that. And Christians ought to celebrate, well, we should have some of the best food and some of the best parties. You should gain some weight. You'll lose it in January. I believe in you.
Look, I'm a Carolina fan. Good things always happen in the future. We'll get it together. It'll be nice. January us is going to crush this. Right now, let's eat some food and celebrate.
We're meant to do that, but the danger for us is that we would get so caught up in that, so caught up in the things that are right in front of us, what is tangible, what we can see, that we would lose the thread. We would lose that our celebration is meant to help us look upward. It's meant to roll up in praise. It's meant to help us see beyond the horizon. It's meant to celebrate something of great significance that has an eternal aspect to it. And if we lose that, then our celebration becomes very dull.
It's very earth-centered. It's just here and now, and we miss the point. And so in that tension, we always as a church have had a gift series where we intentionally try to celebrate well while reminding us and remembering together that we are eternal people with an eternal purpose and we want to give some money away. Rather than just having it all terminate here, we want to send some on ahead. We want to live as eternal people. And so we ought to celebrate well and we ought to be generous and give and remember the eternality of this season.
And so that's our hope as we do this, that we would help walk that tension well and that we would celebrate well and walk generously, live generously. And I didn't mean to just give all those t-shirts a shout out, but we would live as generous people as we move forward together. So I'm going to pray and then we're going to talk about this section of text we're getting to look at today. Lord, we pray that you would bless us as your people, that we would take this time to celebrate well. This would be a season of joy, of welcoming one another, of hospitality, of enjoying the good food, the good time that we get to have.
And we pray, Lord, that it would be a season of generosity, that we would not get so focused on what is right in front of us that we would miss the point. And so may we celebrate well and may we live well in generosity with an eternal hope in mind. We pray that as we study this scripture today, that you would help us grow in that and that you would bless this gift project that we're going to get to focus on this year. In Jesus' name, amen. Turn to Matthew chapter 2. So what we did, we're working through the book of Matthew.
We just skipped Matthew 1 and 2. When we started, we started in Matthew chapter 3 and we're going to look at Matthew 1 and 2 for the next four weeks as we celebrate Christmas because these are more Christmassy type passages. They deal with the birth of Jesus. And so rather than doing them first and then hitting Christmas again, we just said, we'll save that. We'll start. We'll do it out of order.
Some people probably appreciated that and some of you are probably frustrated by it. But now, Matthew 1 and 2 for the next four weeks. Today we're going to look at King Herod. Then we'll look at Joseph. Then we'll look at the wise men.
And so we'll read through some of the same passages together, repeatedly focusing on different areas. And hopefully it'll help us celebrate well and push us towards generosity. In C.S. Lewis' book, The Silver Chair, there's a prince named Prince Rillion. And he is captured by a witch who can also turn into a snake or a snake who also turns into like a beautiful enchantress witch lady. He's captured and she takes him underground.
So he was supposed to be the prince. He was eventually going to be the king over this wonderful kingdom that is joyous and welcoming and at peace that has good relationships between all the people. He was going to be the king over this kingdom. But he's captured and she enchants him so that he no longer knows who he is and he begins to serve her and she takes him underground and they begin to build an underground army. And the plan is with the underground army, dig a big tunnel, pop up in the middle of the kingdom that he would have been king over and overtake it. So he's actually working to try to conquer a kingdom that would have been freely given to him because he's lost who he is.
And there's this tension between this kingdom of darkness, this underground kingdom that's trying to conquer this kingdom of light, this kingdom that lives out in the sun and this story unfolds. They have to send some people to go try to find him and get him back. And as I read this, I realize that this has a lot of similarities to the actual world that we live in and what we meet in the scriptures as the Lord tells us what this was supposed to look like, that we were meant to be sons and daughters of the king, that we were meant to live at peace with one another, that he was going to freely give us all good things to enjoy and that we've been tricked. That the enemy of God, Satan, has blinded our eyes so that we only focus on what we can see and we actually fight, claw for what God would freely give us.
And we try to, as best we can, defend our own little territory and claim our own little kingdom. We're blind, we're living in a kingdom of darkness, and we're fighting for what God has openly, freely invited us into. And there's these two kingdoms that are at war. There's this kingdom that can only see what's right in front of it, and there's this kingdom that's meant to be more. And we're actually getting to look at some of that play out today as we look at two kings and how they interact with one another. So, Matthew chapter 2.
We're going to look at these two kingdoms and these two kings. And hopefully, as we look at this together, we will see that we get to make a choice, that we get to choose which kingdom we're going to live in and which king we're going to follow. Verse 1. Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men came from the east, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem. All right, so they come to Jerusalem where the king is.
Jesus is born in Judea in the area that the king Herod had jurisdiction. It's really interesting. He's born into the Roman Empire under the jurisdiction of the emperor and king Herod. Now, king Herod was ruthless and very politically savvy. He's one of the only people who in the Roman Empire gets to have the title of king. Most of them get titles like governor.
They get a title that clearly says they're underneath the emperor Caesar. And Herod gets the title king because he's politically savvy and he's ruthless. And the Jewish people were hard to manage and so the Romans were capitulating a little bit because they were having consistently difficult times with the Jewish people. And so, King Herod was an Edomite related to the Jewish people but not fully Jewish. So, when he wanted to make his run for king, he wanted to get this power from the Romans, he married a lady who was from the Maccabees. None of this is in the scripture.
I'm just giving you some background on here. When he did, when he married her, he got rid of his current wife and son. Just got rid of them so that he could move forward. after a time of being married with this lady, married to this lady, they had sons. She was well-liked, was growing in power. The sons were well-liked and were growing in power and so he eventually, over time, had her put to death and had his two sons put to death because he did not want to have anyone try to take away from him his position and he felt like his sons were a threat. Now, can you imagine that?
That he so could only see what was right in front of him that he had no desire for his sons to have a throne after him or for him to manage that well. He just saw everyone around him as a threat. He killed two of his sons. As he got older and sicker, seven days prior to his death, he had another one of his sons put to death. So he eventually killed three of his sons.
The emperor Augustus actually made a joke and it's funnier in Greek because it's a play on words. But I don't know Greek and most of you don't either. So I'm going to say it in English where it's not a play on words. But he says it would actually be better to be Herod's pig than his son. Because Herod's Jewish so they wouldn't have eaten a pig. But his sons were in danger.
So he said he'd rather be his pig than his son. Those words are similar in Greek. So he was ruthless. And so they come to him. And this is the king that Jesus is born under. They come to him.
The wise men come to him. They come to J. And it says, verse 2, saying, Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and we have come to worship him. Okay, so it says wise men from the east. These weren't just like smart people.
Wise men was kind of this class of people that would have been kind of around a throne usually that would have given a consult to a king. So they're probably wealthy. They bring very good gifts which indicates that. So they most likely rode up on horses or camels. They were an entourage. They show up.
They go to the palace and they say, Where is the king who has been born? And Herod's like, You're 50 years late. Here I am. It took you a long time to get here. I'm the king. Like, he's the only king he knows of.
And so he, it says that they come to him and they say, Where is the king who's been born? King of the Jews. We saw his star when it rose. Meaning they studied the sky and they're saying creation has actually put on display that this king has come. Now if you know anything about Herod, you can imagine how excited at this news he was.
When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. I think had they had a better king, Jerusalem maybe wouldn't have been troubled. But when Herod's troubled, everybody's going to be troubled. But all of them are stirred up. What does this mean? Herod's troubled.
And it says this, And assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. So he calls the people who study the Old Testament and he says there are prophecies about this. They said they've seen his star. They've said the king of the Jews has been born. Where is he supposed to be born? His immediate assumption is this is the Christ, the Messiah, the promised one, the one who God's been saying over and over would come in the line of David who would set up a kingdom that will last forever.
This is the one who's coming. So he calls together his book reading, Bible studying friends says, tell me where he's supposed to be born. They told him in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet, and you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people, Israel. Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared and he sent them to Bethlehem saying, go and search diligently for the child and when you have found him bring me word that I too may come and worship him.
That's surprising. That's an excellent response. So King Herod hears that the Messiah has been born and he gets together. The scribes, the people who have studied the Bible said, where is he to be born? He tells the wise men, go find him. When you find him, come let me know because I want to worship him too.
That's how a king ought to respond if you're the king of the Jews and the Messiah is born. You ought to understand who he is, understand who God is and say, my role now is to help facilitate this and make this go well. Seems very out of character for Herod but good for him. Verse 9, after listening to the king they went on their way and behold the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy and going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother and they fell down and worshipped him.
They saw the child with Mary his mother and they fell down and worshipped him. Then opening their treasures they offered him gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod they departed to their own country by another way. So God steps in and says don't go talk to Herod. Now when they
Had departed behold an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph that's Jesus' adoptive father we'll spend some time talking about him next week 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. I knew it!
When I went to college my younger brother got really into the TV show Mari and my parents had Teva and when I would come home he would have saved sections of his highlight reel of Mari shows and he would like have written down and he would have certain ones he wanted me to watch and so in college I got really into the TV show Mari I couldn't just say
That I had to blame it on my brother first but in Mari they do two things they do paternity tests which are always delightful to watch and they also do lie detector tests and so he'll read the results and so when Herod says this you can almost hear Mari saying the test confirmed that was a lie you had no intention of worshipping Jesus he just wanted to know where he was so that he could destroy him
Now follow the logic here let's think with Herod here for a second wise men come from another country and they tell you that the stars have moved and said king of the Jews has been born maybe you don't understand how they go about figuring that out I wouldn't but that's what they say we've come because we saw a star we're here to worship the king of the Jews
Now you don't know anything about this you don't know that there's been a king born you have no desire for this Herod's thinking okay I don't want another king I want to defend my kingdom I mean he wants to defend his kingdom so much so that he'll kill his own children like he then he thinks okay well if creation's involved probably
The promised Messiah from the Old Testament that God creator of the world has been telling us forever he was going to send so he calls together the scribes he says where is the Christ supposed to be born and his plan is kill the Messiah that's his plan it would make sense to me if he just thought this is nonsense like if it just said
He thought no don't know who that is like it would make sense to me if he just rejected it but he actually believes enough to say search the books tell me which city the Christ is supposed to be born in he understands enough to say this is actually the Christ this is actually the Messiah if the stars are involved it's him and then his plan is to defend his kingdom against creator of the world
Not a good plan that's his plan that's surprising to me but that's what he comes up with that's what he's going to do 14 and he rose that's Joseph and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained 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 just a quick tag we're going to spend more time on Joseph and the wise men in the coming weeks so I'm skipping a lot of things here because we're just focusing on Herod so if you're really interested in that come back we'll talk about it in the next couple weeks then Herod when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men became furious I mean it is in their name
They're wise so you should have seen it come and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and all that region who were two years old or under according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah a voice was heard in Ramah weeping in loud lamentation Rachel weeping for her children she refused to be comforted
Because they are no more so he sent to Bethlehem and the surrounding area and anyone any child that had not hit their third birthday any male child that had not hit their third birthday he had executed in our church family that would be eight children that area is not Bethlehem was not a big city it was not a huge area that it was covering but we're talking probably
In the 30 range and I can't even imagine someone coming to my home by presidential decree hand your son over I got a son who hadn't hit two yet he would be included in this he sent through an entire area and just slaughtered infants to protect his kingdom that's heinous it lines him up with Pharaoh who was doing this
To the Jewish people it's wicked but all he can see is the defense of what is right in front of him the enjoyment of what is right in front of him holding on to his power holding on to his position and having what he can see and touch and feel and he'll go to any length he can to keep it verse 19 and on says that when Herod died an angel came told Joseph they could go back
And they go back and there's two kings in this story and there's two kingdoms in this story and we've been reading ahead so we know what Jesus is going to be like and the type of kingdom he's going to have we've got King Herod and his earthly kingdom that he's doing anything he possibly can to defend and we've got Jesus who's a much better king with a much better kingdom Jesus comes and he starts to teach his disciples
About the kingdom of heaven and he talks about who's welcome who's brought in the weak the mourning those who are broken and hurting and far from God they're welcomed they're brought in we actually see as Jesus goes to the cross that he who was king who was ruling gave up his throne
So that we might have life and you have Herod who will take your life so that he might have his throne we have Jesus who will give up his position so that he can join us be crucified for us to welcome us in and Herod who will
Defend his position no matter what it costs you see Jesus consistently talks to his disciples and tells them to look beyond the horizon tells them to look to what they cannot see what is not right in front of them because
He is the king of heaven an eternal kingdom where there's joy where there's hope where there's life where there's fullness where there's all the good things we were meant to have and Herod's just fighting for what he can have right now and we get to
Choose because it's easy right now the kingdom of Herod and the posture of Herod see I read this and I think I'm not like Herod because that's the easiest thing to think I'm not like that I wouldn't do those things
But the reality is I'm closer and you're closer to being like Herod than we'd care to admit because it's very easy for us to be caught up in what affects me what do I enjoy what harms me what will mess with
My life and the good things that I have and let me defend it I think if you'd look back at some of my prayers and some of your prayers they're pleading with God to not mess with our territory to not
Take from us what we feel like he owes us to not encroach upon us that at some points we're actually talking to God and fighting against God in some ways the way that Herod was whoa whoa whoa whoa
Don't mess with that this is my zone that it's really easy for us to get caught up and worried about what we can grab and what we can have now and to miss what we're invited into to go back
To the story I told at the beginning we're we're the prince who can be tricked into fighting for what would be freely given to us who can be tricked into
Living a small underground life in the darkness with the hopes of tooth and nail clawing out what Jesus came to offer life joy hope position freedom fullness it's what Jesus talks
About one of the places Jesus talks about this a lot is money it's our gift series surprise do you know I was going to get the money do you see it coming Matthew Jesus talks about this in Matthew 6 he's talking about money he's talking
About possessions he's talking about how we treat what is in front of us how we treat our lives and he says this do not lay up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal alright how much
Are we told daily lay up for yourself treasures on earth how much are we told daily through advertisement through our own thoughts as we see other people enjoying things the goal of life the good life the hope of life the way to win at life
Is to lay up treasures on earth earth I know I sing that sweet tune to myself all the time look at somebody oh that'd be nice wouldn't it be good if one day one day I'm gonna have
One day we'll we'll get one day that's the hope treasures on earth I could just have this Jesus just flat out says don't do that moth and rust destroy herod was was the
King of this because he did not even want to leave a legacy or a lineage to his children we at least can see beyond our last
Breath most of the time most of the time people who are laying up treasures for themselves are like my kids can have it when
I'm gone here is like nope because I think they're going to try to enjoy it while I'm here I just want everything to be
Great until I'm gone I read this week studying up on Herod and one of the last decrees he gave was that his military
Would go through the area of his jurisdiction when he died on the day of his death would go through the area of his
Jurisdiction and kill every first born son because he thought it was likely people would be happy if he died and so he said
Go kill every first born son he died they did not do that because it was crazy but that was his plan but we
In the spirit of Herod can get caught up in what can I have now what can I enjoy now what makes life good
Now that's the point Jesus says don't do that isn't it refreshing how clear Jesus is on stuff were you thinking about doing that
Yeah don't do that all that stuff is going to fail you you ever get something new you ever have like a really old
Ratty couch and the only thing that bothered you about it was that it looked gross maybe like it was real gross and you were
A little embarrassed by it you ever get a new couch and now you're stressed out over defending your couch like it's like either way like I have a ratty
Couch I don't want my guest to sit on that now I have a new couch well you can sit on it but you
Better sit on it right and don't go plopping down on it and put that a new TV you also probably need to go ahead and
Get a fire stick or a Roku or whatever because it was fine to have the little antenna sticking up behind your old TV I bought
My wife some mums and after I bought her some mums mums are flowers people seem confused I bought her some mums and after I
Bought some mums she was like we need to get a stand book there's a book called if you give a mouse a cookie
And it's about how said I'm gonna write a book called if you buy your wife some mums because I bought some $10 mums
It cost us like $60 it was the craziest thing that's how it is those mums are dead in my backyard now it's okay to have
Some enjoyment of things I'm not saying that it's wrong but he's saying don't have your treasure here that's some king hered stuff but
Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys where thieves do not break in and steal for where your
Treasure is there will your heart be also can I tell y'all a beautiful story a better story king hered finds out that the
Messiah is born and he says I'm king for such a time as this let's pave the way for the messiah let's do everything
We possibly can let's find him let's protect him let's get him ready if he's going to be the king of the Jews let's
Make a plan here and he moves out of the way and then one day when Herod dies he's welcomed into that messiah's kingdom
And he's offered freely everything he would have fought for that's a better story it's not the one we get but right now we're getting to
Decide where are we going to be which story are we going to be a part of are we going to lay up treasures here that are nice here they're nice
No doubt about it probably nicer in our day and age than any other time I read about King Solomon in the Old Testament it
Says that the Queen of Sheba came and visited him and it says there was no other time in Israel's history where there were
Spices in Jerusalem like when Solomon was there after Sheba came and I'm like I can get on every once in a while I
Sit at my house and I think Solomon would have loved to have these digs they're nice and we can enjoy them and they're
Meant to be enjoyed as we look at a good God who is above us at a horizon that is beyond the one we
Can see we're meant to see an eternity and put some hope in an eternity and be welcomed into the place where our heart
Has been all alone you're supposed to give your heart to Jesus give it to his kingdom and when you die meet Jesus and
Meet the king who owns your heart in the kingdom where your heart has been all alone that's what he says lay up for
Yourself treasures in heaven because where your treasure is there your heart will be that's true and we can send things ahead through sacrificing
Not in the way that we used to have to appease the way the sacrifices worked where you were appeasing to try to atone for your sin no but just giving
Some things up he talks in this section in Matthew 6 he talks about praying where nobody gets to see you he talks about
Giving where nobody knows about it he actually says it messes it up you're getting treasure on earth when you give and everybody knows
About it I'd love to see a hospital building that says hospital and you're entering in the east wing and not just the McDaniels
Owens wing because whoever does that whoever gets to give all the buildings that I went to school every building had somebody's name slapped
On it because that was the person who paid for it would be nice if it was girls dorm number two somebody was generous
Just for the sake of generosity but do you get to give without anybody knowing about it so that you're not elevated so you're
Not held up high you get to serve you get to pray you get to labor he says not even a cup of cold
Water that's given to somebody because if cold water counts kid city counts I mean that we get to serve so this time of
Year when money feels tight when there's a desire to use our finances to make everything around us good we say yeah do that
As you celebrate who Jesus is and we say don't forget we're citizens of a better kingdom and send some money on ahead move your
Treasure out from under the tree move your heart so when you meet Jesus that's where your heart will have been the whole time
We get to write a better story than King Herod wrote I get the honor of introducing our give series projects this year they're
A little bit different and we get to do something a little bit different this year than we've done in the past so I'm excited we've got a lot
Going on right now with us trying to move to Casey and so this is even more fun for us because there's a real
Part of me that was like we got a ton of things going on with Casey and a lot of things to pay for y'all been
In that building it is beautiful that we are getting to move to a facility where there's a roof and where there's space and
Where the Lord has just in some ways just promoted us elevated us because how long would it have taken us to actually pay
For a place even like that but you walk in there and you are like we got some work to do some cleaning some
Painting for those of y'all who miss the green carpet that used to be in here I have got good news for you that
Place is green green and for those of you who maybe are color blind it's brown it's nice brown but they've everything over there needs
Work part of me was like why don't we just put our efforts there and then it was like no why don't we do
What we're always supposed to do just give some stuff away just send something that doesn't have anything to do with us that we just
Get to bless and not really get to partake in we get two projects this year we don't usually do two we're doing two
And we're going to give some money a church one Sunday they are planting a church in Charlotte so we just went to them
They're part of the grassroots network we help train and send church planters they've been over at midtown getting trained up they're about to
Go out they're taking 37 people with them which sounds awesome that are going to move to Charlotte to help plant a church that's a
Way better way to plant a church than the way we did so I hardly encourage doing that method than the one we went
With worked out but it's not the best one 37 people already moving up there getting jobs trying to be missionaries in that area
And we just went and said hey how can we help you out and they said well we're going to move we're going to be groups
That's the grassroots network does that we send in leaders we send in groups people to just be missionaries in the area we're going
To do groups first and then at some point they're going to want to gather and we said okay can we help with the gathering
And they said yes so here's some gathering costs here's our plan for them like I said we got two this one's happening in
Charlotte the cool thing we're here's the plan if we can raise fifteen hundred dollars we will give them an iMac we'll give them
Fifteen hundred dollars they'll buy an iMac for their gathering so they'll be able to run some of the stuff they're going to do so
They're already being in groups on mission but when they gather together there's a few things they want to get and so if we get
Three thousand dollars we will get them an iMac and a sound board so that when they get started they already have that they'll
Be blessed with that from our church so that they can just get started and worry about spending their money in other places working
On some other things if we get five thousand dollars they will also get speakers so everything is included if you hit five thousand
It's iMac sound board and speakers because at three thousand dollars they got a sound board but nothing that sends out sound so at
Five thousand dollars that sound board does some stuff and if we're able to do seventy five hundred dollars they'll get all the music
Equipment they need we said what will it take for y'all to do a gathering and they said seventy five hundred dollars I love
That I love that they're way more worried about having groups be on mission having people be missionaries and they said when we get
Together we'll need some stuff but not a ton of stuff you'll notice they left off the lasers and the fog machine so it'll be
Good worship it won't be great but they'll have maybe they smuggled it in they just said all music equipment maybe it's in there
Maybe they got things that will shoot glitter I don't know so if we can do $7,500 you'll have the opportunity to give to
Give directly to this we can do $7,500 from our church family we will send them off with everything they need to as they
Get started and when it makes sense they'll have to find a location they'll have to pay some rent but they'll have the equipment
They need to gather together and make much of Jesus together in Charlotte and I think that's a really cool thing we get to
Do and we'll get to as we give money away give to the kingdom give to some speakers we'll never hear sound out of
Possibly that we'll never get to be a part of but we'll just get to know there's some people worshiping Jesus just like we'll
Get to worshiping all together later and we're going to help them do that that's the first one first ones in the U.S. it's
In Charlotte we're helping send out a church plant the second one is in Minya Egypt so we worked with 1040 Hope last year
To sponsor a church plant in Minya and we were actually able to raise their entire year budget plus buy tuk-tuk they came back
Later and said since we got all this covered can we get some money from our people and instead of doing a tuk-tuk can
We do a van or a bus and we said sure sounds great so they did that then we sent a team to Minya
A handful of our church family to help do a conference over there to help train and equip and encourage their the beloved of Jesus also if
You speak the language it's called habib yes nailed it it means the beloved of Jesus or those whom Jesus loves what he does
Is in Egypt it's very stigmatized frowned upon to have any kind of physical deformity anybody to be a paralytic or have any kind of
Physical deformity a lot of times Spencer was telling us this in a sermon recently that they're actually they just kind of keep them hidden family
Doesn't talk about them it's it's kind of a bad Mark on your family because people might assume that you have some kind of
Genealogy issue some kind of genetic issue and so that it's harder for you to marry off your children and it's very they're poorly cared
For and so what he does is he actively tries to find them share the gospel with their parents share the gospel with them help
Them see that they're loved by Jesus and get them to where they are cared for out in the open known about that's his
Ministry so if you show the next picture this is actually while our team was there they got to be a part of one
Of his small groups where he is they gather together they worship they share the gospel they enjoy being a part of life together
Cared for loved prayed for and the Lord is doing some really cool things there so here's what we're going to do they do
Quarterly gatherings four big events a year it is very hard for people in this situation to get around they often don't go out
They have a difficult time traveling so what they do is they do four a year where they have 3,000 to 5,000 people they
Feed them a meal they give clothes away they worship Jesus their hope is those who already know and love Jesus would have a
Place to get together and worship to get to praise out in the open together with a large group to make much of Jesus
Together their hope is they will help de-stigmatize having a disability so that more people will come out in the open and be welcomed
And get to share the gospel with them and their hope is that people who are not believers will come and they'll get to
Share the gospel with them and they're seeing some really great things 5,000 people their budget is $4,500 to get the space to have
Everything they need to have people come preach the gospel to have things to give away to welcome so we thought if we could
Pay for one of these so one time next year 3,000 to 5,000 people in Egypt would gather to praise Jesus and not have
To worry about the cost they would gather to worship Jesus they pay for two of them if we get $13,500 they'll pay for
Three of them if we get $18,000 they'll pay for four of them let's do $22,000 and tell them they gotta do an extra one
Our hope would be that we can give $4,500 to Pastor Jurgis so they can have one of these where they gather and our
Church family just got to tag in our hope would be that citizen church would gather go out send out as missionaries and when
It came time to gather they'd already have the money in the bank or they'd already have the equipment sitting somewhere they'd be ready
To roll they wouldn't have to worry about it that's our hope that's what we're praying for you're going to have the opportunity over
The next couple of weeks be here let's send our heart and our money on ahead let's pray God we thank you for your
Grace thank you for your love we pray that you'd help us to be generous as you have been generous to us that you
Gave up your life that we might have hope and forgiveness in the gospel and may all of us who are citizens of that
Kingdom live as if that were true