Pre-Decide: Part 2

Pre-Decide: Part 2 - I AM READY

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

If I haven't met you, I am Pastor Lauren, and we are on week two of our Pre-decide series. So we started this new series last week where we're talking about making a pre-decision for how we are going to head into 2024. And I don't know about you, but I don't know anyone who like plans to be 40 pounds overweight, or plans to file bankruptcy, or plans to, I don't know, bring chaos to their family. But I think there's some of us that don't have a plan not to. So we're gonna talk about that today. We're gonna talk about having a plan not to do these things. 'Cause you don't ever have a plan to wreck your life, but we wanna make sure we have a plan not to wreck our lives. Last week, we talked about the power of decision and pre-deciding and how the quality of your decisions determines the quality of your life. When you make decisions, which we do, we make thousands of decisions every day, those add up to a life. And so if you're not a great decision maker, that's gonna have a big impact on your life. When we harness the power of pre-deciding and making good decisions, it builds up and creates a good life. Pastor Chris had this kind of formula for us that when we are faced with, fill in the blank situation, we are pre deciding to take this action. When faced with this temptation, when faced with this obstacle, I have pre decided to do XYZ. And that's gonna be specific to each of us. we'll all have individual situations and fill in those blanks differently. But it's kind of this formula for us to pre-decide. So over the next few weeks, it's a six week series, and we're gonna talk about different aspects of this. We're gonna talk about being ready. I am ready. I am consistent. I am devoted. I am generous, I am faithful, I am a finisher. So, Fast Chris challenged us last week to be here. If you're online, what's up, hello, welcome. So glad you're here, but if you can be here in person, make that a priority. Be here every Sunday, because this is going to set us up for 2024, and maybe for longer. I believe that, I believe it's going to bring an impact beyond this year. But if you can be here, be here. Because as we go through this, we're gonna see that our decisions are not based on what feels good in the moment, but who we want to be for the rest of our lives. We should be making decisions just on momentary satisfaction or what feels good to us. This is the lesson I'm trying to teach my children right now. It is easier said than done. But when our values are clear, the decisions we make will be easier. Not always easy, but easier. When we are honed in on our values and we know exactly who we are, whose we are, and what those values are, if they are in alignment with scripture, it's gonna make the decisions so much easier.

Who has given into temptation before? Let's just be honest. Yep, mm-hmm, okay. Who has regretted it? Yeah, yeah, me too, mm-hmm. We've all been there. Why do you think that is though? Why do you think we knew we weren't supposed to do it, but we did it anyway. So why do you think we gave into that? Because we weren't ready. I'll just, spoiler alert. It was because we weren't ready. We weren't prepared. One of our main passages today is 1 Corinthians 16, 13. Paul is writing to the church in Corinth and he says, "Be on your guard, stand firm in the faith, be courageous, be strong, be on your guard." You gotta be ready. Matthew 26, 41 says, "Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." I think a lot of the time we have good intentions. Like I said, we don't plan to wreck our lives, but we're human. We make mistakes, we're weak. So we need to watch and pray. So that's where we're gonna pre-decide to be ready. We're gonna have our guard up. We're gonna be watching. We're gonna be praying. I got two main reasons why this is super important. All right? The first one, The devil is coming for you. Sound like a fire and brimstone preacher here. The devil's coming for you. But I think in our modern Western Christianity, we have significantly downplayed the spiritual realm. We kind of just go about our lives forgetting that there are angels. There is an enemy who is evil, who has schemes that his main mission is to steal and kill and destroy. That is his goal. He wants us to be distracted. He wants us to not be in relationship with God. He wants us to be living in sin. That is his goal. Again, Paul, but in 2 Corinthians this time, he says, "I wrote to you so that Satan "The man will not outsmart us, for we are familiar with his evil schemes." We're not unaware. We know he's out there, but I think sometimes we forget it. We let our guard down. But he's studying you. He knows you. He knows where you're weak. He knows where you're vulnerable. He knows what's tempting and what's not for you. He knows where you struggle. He is the father of lies, and he is going to lie to you and convince you that what you think is best or what your flesh wants is what is best. Paul, again, we're just BFFs with Paul today. Paul talks about the armor of God in Ephesians. He's writing to the church in Ephesus and he talks about armoring up. He uses the image of Roman soldiers armor to compare it to how we can protect ourselves spiritually.

Ephesians 6:10-11 says, "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power, put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes." Again, we know they're coming. It is not a matter of if the devil is scheming or if he's going to come after us. He is coming, so we might as well be prepared. Growing up every day, my mom would have us kids put on the armor of God. We'd go from head to toe. And so I do it with my kids in our family Bible time in the morning. We go helmet of salvation, breastplate of righteousness, the belt of truth, our feet ready to spread the gospel of peace, the shield of faith and the sword of the spirit every morning. Because it's a reminder, one, that we have the power from Holy Spirit to be ready for battle. We are given his power. If you are a follower of Jesus, you have the power to combat the evil schemes. And also it's a reminder to be on our guard, to be ready, to armor up, to be prepared. So number one, the devil is coming for you. Number two, you are not as strong as you think. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but same here, I'm not as strong as I think. We think we got this. I'm not gonna fall into that sin again. I'm not gonna be fooled by the enemy. It's fine, I got this. Well, it's funny 'cause God knew we'd think like this and he wrote, so if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall. If you think you are standing firm, be careful. Now there are times we are gonna be able to resist temptation. We are going to be able to stand firm, but it's only by his power and his strength. Let's not get cocky. Let's not get overly confident unless it's in him. Studies are actually showing that we are overconfident, that we overestimate our ability to resist temptation. restraint bias, meaning you think you can resist or restrain yourself more than you actually can.

This is not great news for us at the beginning of the year when we're all setting resolutions, I'm sorry. But there is hope, I promise. It's kinda like when maybe you're at the office and it's someone's birthday, which it seems like there's always someone's birthday, and someone brings in a cake and you're like, "No, I'm not gonna have the cake." And you sing happy birthday and you celebrate, and that's fine, but you say no thank you to the cake. and then someone comes by your desk and they're like, "Oh hey, did you get some cake?" Oh no, no, no, I'm good, thanks. And then you walk by the break room and they're like, "Dang it, there's still cake left." Nope, nope, I'm not gonna have cake. By the end of the day, you've had two pieces and you're like, "How did this happen? "I wasn't gonna have any." You thought you were stronger than you were. And why is that? Why do we think we're stronger than we are? It's because we have a limited capacity. for decision making. We overestimate because it takes energy to resist temptation. It takes energy to make decisions. So when you're making these positive decisions over and over and over again, your energies are being depleted. Your emotional energy, your mental energy, your spiritual energy, you're just getting depleted. And eventually the part of your brain that controls good decision making and willpower wears out and is just tired. And so we give in. And I use the cake example, but it's gonna look different for all of us. Maybe you fight the temptation all day long to not take your anger out on your coworkers and you come home and you take it out on the dog. Or you yell at the kids. Maybe you're spending all of your energy fighting the sweets and those temptations, you go home and you end up binging on whatever snacky thing you can find in the back of the pantry. Our self-control and our willpower are limited resources. So if we pre-decide, the more we pre-decide, how we are going to respond in those situations, the easier it will be. So the double is coming for you and you're not as strong as you think. Those are the two main reasons we need to be ready. So practically speaking, what does this look like? Okay, we know why we should be ready, but how? How do we get ready? Other than the armor of God we talked about. Well, we're going to do a few things. We're gonna move the line, we're gonna magnify the cost, and we're gonna plan the escape. Move the line, magnify the cost, plan your escape 'cause we have an enemy and he's coming and we're gonna be ready for him. So move the line, what does this look like? We got some tape here, all right? A little illustration for us today. Okay, so here's our line. All right, this side of the line is sin. This is where we don't wanna be, right? We fight it, we fight it, we fight it. We don't wanna be here. We know we're not supposed to be here. This side of the line is where we're supposed to be. Following the Bible, following God's will. We're not falling into sin. We're doing good. But what do we do? What do most of us do, right? How close can I get to the line? Can I touch it? We wanna get as close to the line as we can without going over, I'm not sinning. It's like the little sibling that's like, I'm not touching her, I'm not touching her, I'm not touching her. How close can we get to the line? You know, when Chris and I were dating, you know, we love Jesus, but we're also hormonal teenagers, so it's like, how close can we get to the physical line without crossing any barriers? Any boundaries we shouldn't cross, right? If you survived '80s and '90s purity culture, you understand what I'm talking about, right? Okay, yeah. How close can I get to the line? Maybe, again, the eating well analogy. Maybe you're like, I'm just gonna have the salad, but you go to Cheesecake Factory. Nothing wrong with Cheesecake Factory. I love me some cheesecake, but I'm just saying.

You get as close to the line. Maybe you know there's certain websites you shouldn't look at, or certain social media accounts you shouldn't be looking at. But you just scroll anyways, alone, maybe at night, when no one's watching. I'm not looking at those, but you're still scrolling. You're still getting really close. You're setting yourself up for failure. We shouldn't ask how close to the line we can get. We should ask how far away from the line can I stay? How far away from the line of sin can I stay? What barriers can I have in place to protect me? We don't do this with like really big things, right? Like when you're flying, you really hope your pilot is not like, I wonder how much fuel, Like how little fuel I can use to get there without killing us, right? Or like, how close can I get to that 2,000 foot tower without like nicking it? You really hope your pilot's not doing that. Or like my kids, you know, they like to ride bikes or do scooters or whatever outside. I don't tell them, okay guys, there's a car coming, you wait until it gets as close as possible and then you get out of the way. We're not playing Frogger here, like this isn't chicken, right? We're trying to keep them safe. You see a car coming, you hold tail and you get out of there. You stay far away, you go up in the yard, you go up on the porch, you get as far away, you set barriers. You move the line. I am putting distance between me and that temptation. Again, it looks different for all of us. Maybe it's spending, he got the spiritual gift of add to cart. So maybe that looks like you giving your Amazon password to your best friend and you cannot check out until you get your password back. Maybe it's scrolling social media and you gotta set some limits on there. Some timers, the app kicks you out or you got an accountability partner that checks in with you. Those websites, man, you can lock those down. You can set up accountability. Stepping on some toes today, I'm sure, but stick with me here. I'm just the messenger, I promise. We're creating barriers between you and this sin. And you might be like, "Lauren, this feels so restrictive. There's rules. I don't like rules." I don't either. Don't put me in a box. Don't give me restrictions. But I promise you these boundaries that the Lord gives us in His word, they're good. And there is so much freedom within the boundaries. There's so much freedom in here. The boundary lines, sorry, David, thought it was Paul again.

David says in Psalms, "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Surely I have a delightful inheritance." God's got a delightful inheritance for us. But if we're trying to live outside of his boundaries, we don't get to have that. We don't get to partake in that delightful inheritance. The boundaries may look restrictive. At times they may feel restrictive or inconvenient, but they are good. It is pleasant and delightful and there's so much freedom to be had there. When we are living within these pre-decided boundaries, we expend less energy 'cause we're not making the decision over and over and over again. And we already know exactly what we're gonna do. We're ready, we're prepared. So we're gonna move the line.

Number two, we're gonna magnify the cost. This is where you take whatever situation maybe you struggle with and you play it out, you magnify the cost, take it all the way. Maybe let's do health. You deal with gluttony and you overeat and you don't get it in check and you don't take it to God and you keep overeating and then it becomes an issue. Maybe there's strain on your relationships with your spouse or your kids or your family and then maybe you start having health issues and you start seeing your doctor more than you're at work. You get really, really sick. Maybe it's something like infidelity. No one's going to know. It's not going to hurt anybody. It's just between me and this other person. No. It could wreck your marriage. It could destroy your relationship with your kids. It could compromise your integrity, your job. So many repercussions. Take it out, work it out so you see what could happen. When you walk it all the way out, it puts it in perspective so that you are more inclined to fight that sin. Numbers 32, 23 says, "You will be sitting against the Lord "and you may be sure that your sin will find you out." and come out one way or the other. So magnify the cost.

Number three, plan your escape. We are not just sitting ducks. We don't have to just be waiting with nothing to prepare for. We can be ready with a plan. There's a story in Genesis, you might be familiar with it. the story of Joseph and his brother sold him into slavery. And he ended up going to Egypt and being sold to a man, his name was Potiphar, he was a very powerful man. And he was raised up to like the manager of his household. He was like very important in this man's household. Well, Genesis 39 says, "Joseph was a very handsome and well-built young man and Potiphar's wife soon began to look at him lustfully. "Come and sleep with me," she demanded. So apparently Joseph was a strapping young man that caught the eye of Potiphar's wife, and she was tempting him. But he knew that that was not okay. Now it would have been easy for him, you know, they were all alone, he had some sort of level of power in this house, no one would need to find out. He was young and single, why not? But he knew that that was not what was right. You know, something else I think we do that maybe we don't realize we do, is we justify our disobedience because of our disappointment. Maybe we blame God for the situation that we're in. We're like, well, he put me here, so I'm just gonna live it up. I'm just gonna do what I'm gonna do. My job doesn't pay me enough, so I'm just gonna put it on the credit card. My spouse isn't giving me what I need, so I'm gonna find what I need. It's God's fault, he put me here. And we blame him. But we can't use our disappointments to justify our disobedience. Joseph said, "No, yes, I was sold into slavery. "I'm not in my home country. "I don't know, or I am not near my family. "I don't know how they're doing. "I'm all alone here in this foreign land." He could have blamed God. He could have said, "Forget it. "Why should I keep following you? "Why should I keep doing things the way you want me to?" But he had a plan of escape. It goes on to say, or sorry, day after day, she hit on him. And so one day she grabbed his coat and said, "Come to bed with me." And he said, but he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house. He knew that if he stuck around, he might not be able to continue to fight the temptation 'cause the devil likes to wear us down. He's gonna keep coming at us and we're gonna maybe get that decision fatigue. But if we have a plan, it's gonna be a lot easier. And he had a plan. If she grabs my coat, I am out of here. Better to have a good name than a good coat. He knew what he was going to do. Back to 1 Corinthians, it says, "And God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted," not if, when, "When you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it." The key to that though is the first part, it says, and God is faithful. He's the one who's going to give us the way out. He's the one who's gonna give us the strength because of his faithfulness. He's not trying to set us up for failure. He's not trying to see us steeped in sin and struggling. He is faithful. He is good. He is going to provide a way out.

So we gotta pre-decide that when the devil attacks in whatever area is specific to us, we have an escape plan. No one plans to fail, but few plan not to. So be honest about it with yourself. Be honest where you're vulnerable, where there's weak spots and cracks in your armor that the devil could get into, 'cause those flaming arrows are coming. figure out what those barriers need to be. Where's the other line you need to draw? And what barriers can you put in place between you and the temptation? Kind of a silly illustration, but I think it proves or illustrates the point. Last year, I had been doing some research on gluten and the effects of wheat and on our bodies and such. and I thought, you know, I should try gluten-free. I should try that diet. Should see how it does, how it impacts my body. But for those that don't know, I was pregnant for most of 2023, and so changing your diet drastically when you're pregnant is not easy or fun, so I didn't. But I tried, I will say that, I tried. There were some times I'm like, you know what, I'm just gonna lessen the amount of gluten I'm eating, just to kinda see how I feel. Doesn't really work that way. Or, my favorite, is I would say, okay, I'm gonna try gluten-free. I'm gonna see how it goes. But I make our own sourdough, and sourdough's like, it processes all the gluten, and so like, or most of it. So like, I'm just gonna have just the sourdough. I make it at home, it's fine. Like, I'm just gonna have the sourdough. That's it, that's the only gluten I'm gonna have, okay? But then what happens? You say, okay, I'm gonna have the sourdough. But then I go to an event, and I'm like, oh, there's dessert there. Okay, I'm just gonna have one dessert, since I already have the sourdough anyways, it's fine, but then I'm gonna get back to it. But then Friday night rolls around and it's family pizza night, and the place we're getting pizza doesn't have gluten-free crust. Well, of course I'm gonna have the pizza. I already have the sourdough and the dessert, so I'll just go gluten-free tomorrow, it's fine. Do you know what happens when you're on a gluten-free diet and you keep making decisions to eat gluten? You're not on a gluten-free diet anymore. You're just not. It didn't work. I needed accountability. I needed to say, I'm not doing the sourdough. I'm not having the desserts at the event. I'm gonna find gluten-free pizza crust. I'm gonna have it in my house ready to go.

I had to set up those lines. I had to draw my line over here because I was trying real hard to be here and I kept stepping over. There's a pastor that shared, he wanted to just be clear and above reproach and that he was married and he was faithful and he didn't want any temptations to cause him to stumble. So he had his technology was locked down, password protected. He didn't travel alone, he didn't stay in hotels alone. You know, he always had like some sort of companion to go with. He said it was to the point that it was inconvenient and annoying. One time he went on a search engine to book a hot air balloon ride for his teenage son. He couldn't do it because his search engine was locked down to the point he couldn't Google the word hot. It was a little inconvenient, right? But it was worth it to him. He didn't want anything to be in his way. He's like, I wanna be as far away from that line as I can. The inconvenience is worth it to do it God's way. Why resist temptation over and over again in the future when you have the power to eliminate it today? Now we can't eliminate it altogether. We can't plan for every scenario we're going to face, but we sure can make it easier on ourselves. We can limit it. we can reduce the likelihood that we'll give in. The devil is going to attack and you're not as strong as you think you are. We are not as strong as we think we are without the power of the Holy Spirit. When your values are clear, your decisions are easier. Be clear on those values. Know what the word of God says. If you don't know, get in the word. Check out the Psalms, check out the Proverbs, check out the Gospels where Jesus is literally walking the earth and teaching his disciples how to live. When we're tired and we're overwhelmed or we're discouraged or we're just going through a really hard season, our barriers are down, our guards are down and it's so much easier for the devil to attack. So be aware of that. Know that that is the case. Be on your guard. And when we're on our guard and we're ready, the decisions won't be based on the emotions in the moment, but on the values that God has given us. Amen. Say be ready. I am ready.

All right, pray with me. Jesus, thank you for your word. Thank you that you have given us these boundary lines in pleasant places, God, that you have given us so much freedom within these boundary lines to live and worship and play and love and you are so good to us. You give us these things for our good and for your glory. God, may we make a plan. May we have a plan of escape. May we set up roadblocks and move our lines so that we aren't tempted to fall into sin. Help us to be ready. Help us to armor up. 'Cause we know there is a real enemy out there who wants to come for our souls, God. Remind us that we have your power within us to fight those battles. We can't do it on our own. We weren't created to do it on our own, but we can do it with you. The power that you have given us, that you have put in us, that raised Jesus from the dead, lives in us. May we be ready. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Pre-Decide: Part 1

Pre-Decide: Part 1 - Take Your Life Back!

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Well, hey, I'm excited. Happy new year, everybody. I, it's felt like it's been, I don't know, like months almost since I've been able to see you guys. And we've been here, all the different schedules and Christmas flew into New Year's that flew into, I can't believe we're a week into the new year already. Can you guys believe it? This is crazy. 2024 is almost over. So thanks for being here. 2025, no, I'm just kidding. But we are excited today. We're gonna kick off a series here. This is kind of a big, big intro to kind of our focus the next six weeks. And Pastor Andre and I, we have been praying about what this next year looked like. We've been thinking about how can we get off on the best step forward as we can in 2024?

I don't know about you, but I feel like since 2020, life has just kind of been there. You know what I mean? Life has just kind of been flowing. Life is just kind of happening. we're kind of sitting back watching and responding. Maybe some of us were still hoping for some of the things pre-COVID to come back. They're probably not coming back. I'm sorry to tell you. I've held out hope for three years. I don't think it's happening. But this 2024, Andre and I, Pastor Owen, we were praying and we feel like there's something special. We feel like 2024, God is doing something. We know that we serve a God who is always working, always moving, always redeeming, always restoring. And I don't know about you, but I feel like almost God's been a little bit quiet. I don't know if that's how it is in your life. I feel like for me, God's kind of been quiet and he's just been like, I need you to trust me. I need you to wait and I need you to be ready. And I feel like 2024 is the year that God's gonna go now. Now is the time. Now is the time for us to step forward. Now is the time for us in our personal lives to step forward in Jesus. Now is our time for our church to step forward in Jesus. Now is the time for the kingdom of God around the globe to step forward in the name of Jesus. And so Pastor Andrei and I prayed and prayed and prayed, and we came to this conclusion, this idea, and this is where this series came from called Pre-Decide. And we are, after this week, gonna dive into six different ways that we can now make a decision for our future. That we can, in this moment where we are today, January 7, 2023, make a decision of a situation that we may face December 2023. Maybe, sorry, excuse me, December 2024. See, I'm still catching up there.

But we began to think about what is the difference between people who are really fulfilled in life? Those that have great relationships, maybe they're strong financially, they're generous with the people around them, fulfilled in life, they have meaningful relationships and experiences and life and everything going that way, and they love their life. What is the difference between those people and the rest of the world? What's the difference? Those who are maybe struggling relationally, those who are barely trying to hold their marriage together, they're trying everything they can to keep their kids out of trouble, they're struggling financially, they don't know that they can even be generous even in the midst of their situation. There's something more and they can't quite figure it out and there's this feeling of emptiness inside. What is the difference between those who are fulfilled and the rest of the world that's struggling. Well, I can tell you what it's not. It's not what people think. It's not intelligence, it's not talent, it's not even appearance. How do we know that? Because we've seen smart people who are miserable. We've seen talented people who are broke. And we've seen very attractive people who can't hold a relationship to save their life. What do you think the difference is? Those who are really making a difference, Those are fulfilled versus those, the rest of the world. I would say this, it boils down to decisions. It comes down to decisions, incredibly, incredibly, indescribably important decisions. I would put it this way, the quality of your decisions determines the quality of your life. I'm probably not saying anything new to a lot of people in this room. But for some of us, maybe you're thinking, huh, something's starting to percolate here. You make good decisions and your decisions end up making you. You make bad decisions and your decisions end up making you. The problem with the most of us is that we're not good at making decisions, right? We're not good at making decisions. We want to eat right and we try so hard and yet we end up eating the wrong stuff. We want to love those around us and our family and our friends and we end up doing something really, really dumb and we end up hurting other people. We want to be wise with our words but we end up saying things we regret. We want to make good financial decisions with our money. We end up buying things we can't afford. We make bad decisions.

Can I tell you of a story of a time I made a really bad decision? You know, you guys don't wanna hear it. Okay, all right, here we go. I'm being real vulnerable today. Yours me multiple times. There was a moment, Lauren and I had just been married. My wife and I were still in college. And we had come off of, school had started and we're having a Thanksgiving break. And we found out that the one state over, we were in Indiana, over in Illinois, we were gonna be gathering together with Lauren's uncle and their family for Thanksgiving. And we found out everybody was coming. Family from West Coast was flying out, family from Ohio was driving over. It was just gonna be chaos in this house with like three different brothers and cousins upon cousins and friends. It was gonna be fantabulous. It was gonna be a wonderful time. We were super excited. So we drive over there and one of Lauren's older cousins, 'cause her dad is the youngest of three brothers, older cousins who had kids, they brought some four wheelers with them to Thanksgiving. And I'd only ridden on them a couple of times and I was excited. I was like, this is gonna be sweet. And Lauren's uncle's house was awesome because it opened up to like just cornfield and just absolutely nothing. It had already been harvested, so everything's just down to the ground. So we had, there was like cornfield, and then cornfield, and cornfield, and cornfield, we had just acres to just get on these things, and just fly. So much fun. Well, a couple of days of riding a four-wheeler, you start getting a little bolder, you get a little more gutsy on these things. And we find this spot where there's this big rut that went down and then there was a lump and we thought, we're gonna get some air. We're gonna do it. And so we're out there fooling around, we're all, we kind of slow up to it and we kind of feel, okay, yeah, I feel it. And we're doing circles and Lauren's brother, Shay, he goes first and voila, yeah, this was awesome. It was amazing. He got air, he looked like he was going to the X Games the next day, like he was all in. He looked fantastic. And then Chris is up and he's like, all right, here we go, baby. This is time. Now, mind you, I was told when I was younger, you have one boy by himself, he has a full brain. You put two boys together, they now have a half brain combined. You put three boys, four boys, five boys, and that brain IQ drastically drops exponentially to where they don't have any brain left. That was us in the middle of a cornfield in Illinois. We had no brain left, but we thought we were the king. And so here goes Chris, hits it, punches it, I'm flying. The fast I'd driven on this thing in three days and I thought, this is it, I got it. Somebody better be recording, this is just gonna be glorious. I hit the jump, I'm flying through the air, life is grand. I'm like, yeah, here we go. You forget how hard it is with gravity coming back down from being in the air on a piece of equipment that weighs a few hundred pounds, plus the weight of yourself. Yeah, I hit the ground. I did not brace myself on the handlebars. My face goes smack dab into the front of that. In the air, I forget to get my feet down. I go Superman with my legs out behind me. I land, my whole body smacks on top of this four wheeler and my brother thought I died. My brother thought, there goes Chris. It was a good run there in the middle of a cornfield in Illinois. There is no video, unfortunately. But here's the other kicker. In the middle of this, since we had just been married, we had just come off a small supplemental insurance and I'd been working at Starbucks, but hadn't been there long enough to have insurance kick in. And it was a one week window where neither of us had medical insurance. And the first thing Lauren said to me on that first day I went on that four wheeler is, "Don't be stupid." And there I was. Somehow by the grace of God, I did not break anything. They were amazed. I had these fat bruises across my thigh from the rack on the back of the four wheeler. Somehow I didn't break a nose, Bust a nose, bleed a nose, get black eyes or anything. I probably had a concussion. My head in the inside was just like jello. I felt fine. I never threw up, which is the number one indicator of a concussion. But let's just say that was the last time I've been on a four wheeler. And in that moment, in the middle of a cornfield in Illinois, central Illinois, I realized I don't make good decisions.

And I think some of us are there as well. We are not good decision makers. We've all done something we regret, right? You've made a dumb decision. Well, here on these next few weeks, as we walk through this series, we're gonna talk about the power of our decisions. And to answer this really good, big question of why do we struggle to make good decisions? I'm gonna give you a really long intro today, and then we're gonna look at some of God's word in this next coming weeks to really deep dive in, why we struggle to make good decisions. But I see three reasons. If you're writing notes, you can write these down this morning. Here are the three reasons I see why we don't make good decisions. The number one is we are overwhelmed with choices. We are overwhelmed with choices. Studies say that we make upwards of 35,000 decisions a day. 35,000. From the moment we wake up, we think about what we're gonna eat, what we're gonna wear, what our day looks like, what our appointments are. We pick up our phone, those decisions explode with, do I comment, do I scroll, do I open this app, do I look at my email, do I follow them on social media, do I comment to that really dumb post that someone just said on my Facebook page? Do I reply back, do I call this person, do I do that? Then we go to work, I have to have all these decisions at work, we do this at work, we do this, we do that. Maybe you go to school, you're sitting in school and you're making decisions about classes and papers and books, maybe you're just a stay-at-home parent and you're living at home and you're thinking about everything that you have to do that day. Maybe you got stuff to do in the house, maybe you got errands to run, maybe you have to cook dinner, maybe you have to do this, you have to do that. And we get to the point where we go over and over and over and over again and we literally get to a point where our decision-making muscle is literally exhausted. Or in our house, we would say we are poop-a-ded. There is actually a technical term for this, not poopated, but a cognitive scientist have created this term called decision fatigue. And that as the amount of decisions increase in our life and in our day, the quality of those decisions decrease because you're making decision, multiple decisions, every single moment of every single day. That's why maybe during the day you're at work or you're out or whatever, you can make some really hard decisions and you make them very wisely. Maybe you're at work and you have some intense decisions that you have to make and you just kill it. You knock it out of the park and you make exactly the right decision in the right moment at the right time and then you get home and what happens? You plop down on the couch, you turn on Netflix and you start eating ice cream. Because you are literally exhausted. That's why when you strive, maybe at the beginning of the year to go, "Hey, this is the year financially I'm gonna lock things in. I'm gonna set up my budget. I'm gonna pay off debt. I'm gonna stop using the credit card. And I'm gonna start saving money and investing for my future and doing everything you're supposed to do." And you stick with it. You're week after week after week. And all of a sudden you just make a really stupid impulse buy. and you're like, how could I do this? You're exhausted from trying to stay right there and you're overwhelmed with the choices in your life. You try everything that you can to make good decisions, but as the quantity of them increases, the quality of them starts to decrease.

Second thing I see is that we are afraid of making the wrong choice. We are afraid of making the wrong choice. I think this is extra true for us Christians who follow Jesus because we don't want to miss God's will. We sit there and we think about, well, if I take this job, then is that God's will? Or if I go to this school, is this God's will? Or if I take this person, is this God's will? Or if I decide to move to this place, is this God's will? And you get to this place where you're just so afraid and you get so worked up that you don't even make a decision whatsoever. This is a real challenge. I wanna tell you today, someone wiser than myself once told me that indecision is the enemy of progress. That even no decision is actually a decision. That choosing not to act is in itself a choice than a decision in acting. We struggle to make good decisions. We're overwhelmed with how many decisions and choices we have to make. We're afraid of making the wrong choices.

And I think it really drills down to this one right here is that we let emotions overrule logic. We let our emotions come to this point where they overrule logic. This one is really, really interesting. On some of our decisions, we spend way too much time analyzing. You might spend more time analyzing all of the series that you can binge watch than you would just choosing a series and binge watching it because there's so many options out there. And you might look at everything and we'll over analyze a lot of decisions that really don't matter, right? I'll tell you, I'm a researcher down to my heart. I will spend, Andre's over here laughing. I will spend way too many hours researching something before I make a decision. Usually this is associated with like a purchase of something. Maybe it's appliance. I could tell you way too much information about appliances before we bought our washer and dryer last year. It was actually ridiculous. I could tell you when I went to buy a vehicle, I would research everything about it. Even when I would go to Amazon and search for something simple to buy, I'm over analyzing it. I'm sitting there, I'm looking at reviews. I don't wanna see your product photos because those are never really the actual product when I receive it. I wanna see real people reviews. I wanna see real people photos. I wanna see real people videos. I wanna see real people's comments. I wanna see people who not only just got the item and said, "This is great. "I wanna know six months down the road "is this thing still working?" I wanna know if I'm gonna spend my hard earned money on something I want to know every single detail about. I'll tell you, I bought thousands upon thousands upon thousands of things, researching them to death and they're just sitting in my closet. Used them three or four times, especially if it's like a tool for like a project to fix something. I'm like, I'm getting a specialty tool. And then I use it once. Where is it? It's in my garage, in my toolbox, just sitting there. But I did the research on it. I caught myself yesterday, you're gonna laugh, searching right angle adapters for drills. drills and I watched a 20 minute video on YouTube of a guy destroy eight different right-angle adapter drills did the research for you go with Milwaukee that's all I'm saying okay go with Milwaukee sorry if you're DeWalt fan out there go with Milwaukee it survived everything and guy even took lug none off of a car with a right-angle adapter you never need it but it's there ready to go if you do okay that's my problem I research things to death because I let my emotions of wanting to make sure I get the most money with my bang in my buck and all that I could have had the project done and moved on and I'm still sitting there on forums and research and YouTube and looking at all these things it's absolutely ridiculous but the worst part about it is I'll do all of that research for a tool and then the next day I'll have a really big decision I'll That's what we're doing right there. I let the big decisions be influenced by my emotions in the moment. And it overrules the logic. Have a moment with our kid and they're yelling their head off. They're frustrated. They're angry. And everything inside of me says, "Just be calm and talk to them." But what do my emotions say? "Just get louder than they are "so they can finally hear me." Doesn't work like that. Just if you wanna know. We faced ourselves in a place of temptation and we say, "This is not good. "This is dangerous. "I don't wanna do this. "I shouldn't go down that path. and our emotions said, let's party, it's time to go, right? We let our emotions overrule our logic and we get caught in these places. Someone else wiser than me once told me this, says, do not make permanent decisions based on temporary emotions. There was one piece of advice that I would encourage you to walk through with your life, the rest of your life that you have left here on earth. Don't make permanent decisions based on temporary emotions. Don't make decisions that is gonna impact your life for years to come based on an emotion you feel in a moment, no matter how hard it is. Don't do it.

But why do our emotions, Like why do our decisions matter so much? See the quality of our decisions determines the quality of our life. We make our decisions and our decisions make us. One of the best things, or sorry, one of the best ways that we can live, we're thinking new year, right? We're thinking fresh start, new year, You're thinking about all the goals you're gonna make, all the things you wanna change, everything you wanna do this next year in 2020. We were thinking about that. One of the best ways to live a forward facing, people loving, God glorifying the life is to decide now what you will do later. This is the power of pre-deciding. This is the power of pre-deciding and where we're headed with this series, I want us to decide ahead of time what we are going to do in the future. I love what it says in Proverbs, it says, whatever you do, whatever you do, commit to the Lord, whatever you do, and he, being God, will establish your plans. What does this look like? This looks like no matter what you are doing, commit it to the Lord. If you're mowing the lawn, you commit that lawn to the Lord. If you're out running errands, you commit those errands to the Lord. If you are at work, you commit your time, you are clocked in at your job to the Lord. When you are out driving around, you commit that time driving around to the Lord. If you are married, You commit your marriage to the Lord. If you find yourselves parenting, you commit your parenting time and your kids to the Lord and everything that you do, you commit everything to the Lord. And what does scripture tells us? That when we follow the leading of the Lord, he being God will establish those plans. When we seek first his kingdom, Jesus tells us, we seek first God's kingdom, his righteousness will be added to us. Everything will be added to you. Now this doesn't mean we just commit to the Lord whatever we wanna do, right? There's a little caveat in there I want you guys to hold on to. We don't just say, "Hi, I commit to the Lord to make a million dollars in owing all the Bitcoin in the world. And He will establish your plans. It doesn't work like that. But when we commit to the Lord the calling He's placed on our lives and the path that He's called us to walk, He will establish those plans in our life.

Maybe let's put it this way. When we are faced with a certain situation and a moment of time, I have pre-decided to take this action. That's basically what we're talking about here. That we have, when faced in a certain situation, whatever that looked like, What should I buy? What should I eat? What should I reach out to? How do I respond? How do I yell, not yell? I have pre-decided to take this action ahead of time with the Lord's help by the truth of God's word in any given situation. So you find yourself at the store. You find that item you want to buy, and it is 10% off. Lord's will. (congregation laughing) We pre-decide that we will wait three days before we make a purchase after we think about it and see it, okay? Or you're in a situation like this. You get worried about life, it's coming at us fast. We don't know where it's at, the economy around the globe, inflation, interest rates, what's gonna happen, employment. There's so much that can come at us and worry us. Instead of getting anxious and stressed out and giving ourselves ulcers and acid reflux and destroying our health and running off to somebody else who just helps us spin in this pit of misery, we say, in that moment, when I'm faced with worry and anxiety that I see in my life, I have pre-decided to go to God in prayer and go to his word and to study and put it in my heart and to trust in God that he is good and that he has the plans for my life. Find yourself in traffic. Somebody cuts you off. When faced in that moment, I have pre-decided that I will pray for that person to go to heaven instead of telling them to go to H-E Double Hockey Stick and telling them they're number one and giving them the California salute. All right? See, you guys know. But this is what I'm talking about. That we are going to pre-decide how we are going to respond in the moment that's gonna happen in the future.

When I look at scripture, I love this. We see this all over scripture. Couple of quick examples for you. First would be in Genesis 22. God tells Abraham, "Hey, I want you to sacrifice your son Isaac." You think, how in the world could he do that? That is the most idiotic thing that Abraham could ever do. But even before, long before Abraham even was blessed with Isaac by the grace of God. He determined and pre-decided that God is a trustworthy God and he is a loving God and that I will put my full trust into him that no matter what he asks me to do, I will obey and I will honor God. And God provides a way, right? You guys know that story. He doesn't sacrifice his son. God provides an animal to be sacrificed to glory Him. But God had his back, right? We just finished a study last year in Ruth. There's an incredible story of a daughter-in-law and a mother-in-law with Naomi that has family die all around them. And Naomi has this daughter, Ruth, and says, "Just go back to your family. "We're only in-laws. "It's not that big of a deal. "Just go back to your family." And Ruth says, "No. "I make a pact with you where you go, I will go, "that your people will be my people "and your God will be my God. "And because of it, Ruth finds herself "in the lineage unto Jesus." We commit and make a plan. Daniel, you could talk about almost any story in the book of Daniel on this, and we're gonna talk about that more. But this is the guy who is the king of pre-decision. Daniel at the beginning of the book finds himself being captured into slavery and shipped off to an unknown world that the superpower in that area was taking over the entire globe. And they are captured because they are the elite of the elite and they're brought in and they're brainwashed and they're told how to think and they're educated and they get to this point where they're told, you're gonna come into the king's presence and this is the food that you are going to eat. But Daniel knows as a follower of God, of Hebrew descent being a Jew, that he knows that that food is not honoring to God. And so even before he finds himself in the king's dining room, he pre decides, he commits and says, "I will not defile myself with the king's food, but I will honor God even with what I eat." Daniel 1a, he says, "But Daniel resolved," he pre decided, "not to defile himself with the royal food and wine. Why is this important? This was important because Daniel knew what he valued and he valued honoring God.

So then my question for you, what do you value? What is the most important thing in your life? What do you wanna be known for? What do you want people around you to say about you? What on the day or the after you pass away from this earth and people are gathered, hopefully to celebrate your life, what do you want people to say about you? This person lived like this. This person loved like Jesus. This person was unbelievably generous like I've never seen in my life. What do you want to be known for? What do you want to be characterized by? What do you value? Some say you might value integrity. I really hope you do. Some people say you value faithfulness. You want to be faithful to God, faithful to your friend, faithful to your spouse. Some of you value purity. In the world that we live, a filth and lust, you wanna say, I wanna honor God with a life of purity. You say, I value generosity. God so loved that he gave, I wanna be a giver. I wanna be like God. I want to give a way in ways that doesn't make sense to people around me and only makes sense to God because God gave everything for us, amen?

When you clearly determine your values, your decisions then become easier. They don't become easy, they become easy-er. So again, let's go back to this. When faced with certain situation, I have pre-decided based on what God has called me, how to live my life, what the Bible tells me, what scripture tells me, what Christian disciplines I practice in my life, I have pre-decided to blank. How does this play out? Well, this plays out in ways that our decisions determine our direction and our direction determines our destiny. That as we make these decisions, it changes our direction and then our direction then is our destiny. Unwise decisions tend to lead to negative places. Good decisions tend to lead us to good places. God honoring, God loving places in life. When you look at your life, think about your life for a moment, where you are right now, January 7th, 2024, you look at your life. Is your life moving in the direction of your decisions? And do you like the direction your decisions are taking you? Simple question, layers upon layers of reflection. If your life is moving the directions of your citizens, do you like the direction the decisions are taking you? We have to be honest with ourselves to pre-decide what we're going to do. Because if we find ourselves just in the moment going, "Ah, I'm gonna make this decision." We're back to that emotions, right? There is something so powerful, incredibly simple about this, that when we pre-decide what we're going to do when placed in a situation, the studies have shown that it is just exponentially more likely, we still mess up, right? We're still earthly people, we're still struggling, we're still trying to figure things out. But you are setting yourself up for success to make the right decision in the moment, in the time, in the space, even before you're actually placed in that situation.

Can I be honest with you? When I've thought about this, I've prayed about this, I've really asked God, what do you wanna do in my life this year? God opened my eyes to six things that I really don't wanna talk about in front of you guys. But I think that's how we learn and we grow, right? So when I say things, I think like negative qualities in my own life. I'm a pastor, I'm not perfect, okay? That's where I'm in. Just because I'm up here talking doesn't mean I got it all figured out. It means I'm working just alongside of you as much as we're just trying to figure out life. But it's six things. Real talk here, I'm inconsistent. I'm inconsistent. I want to be consistent and I start doing the right thing, but sometimes I get tired and I end up doing the wrong thing. I'm just, I'm inconsistent. Second thing, I'm often unprepared. You may think, oh, he gets up there, he looks good, He's got his iPad. He's ready to go with all that stuff. No, no, no, no, no, no. The reality is that we have a spiritual enemy and his name is Satan. And Satan is attacking and I often have my guard down and I am unprepared when he attacks. Third thing, I'm also unintentional at times. Instead of being proactive and prayerful and intentional about my decisions, Sometimes I'm just hands off, I'm laissez-faire. I let life come at me rather than coming at life for the glory of God. I hate to say it out loud, but by nature I'm selfish. I am. I don't know what to say, but that's who I am. When there's a photo of eight people, I ain't looking at seven, if you know what I mean. I'm looking at myself, I'm thinking, how do I look? How's this gonna affect me? How's this gonna impact me? What am I gonna get out of this? What's it gonna cost me? By nature, I'm selfish. Another problem is I'm shortsighted. I will often do what feel good in the moment and not think about long-term consequences. And I don't know about you, but I think for most of us, when things get tough, we tend to quit. We make up the greatest excuses in our mind. "Oh, that just didn't work out." And we walk away. So over these next six weeks, I wanna try to compel you, to convince you, to beg you, to be a part of this series week in and week out. That together we're gonna make six predetermined resolutions about who we are. And when you know who you are, you know what to do. And when your values are clear, your decisions are easier.

This is what we're gonna cover in these next six weeks. You guys can throw it up on the screen. We're gonna start here on the left next week. And the reality is, we're gonna say, "I'm ready." When the devil's attacking, we're not gonna be unprepared. We're gonna be on our guard. We're gonna be on our watch. We're going to pray and we're gonna be ready. Somebody say ready ready When we live in a world where it's so easy to be inconsistent When one day on one day off two days off three days off one day half on one day off With the help of God we are going to be consistent. Somebody say consistent. Where we often know people in our lives and even ourselves sometimes stray away from God. We lose our passion. The devil tempts us and we take him for granted not to be students of his word, not to be glorifying God. We end up living the lives that we want to live ourselves and we become not devoted to God. We're gonna learn about how we be devoted to God. What are you? Devoted. In a world that tends to be selfish, where we're gonna be God honoring, we're not gonna choose, we're going to choose ahead of time that everything we have belongs to God. That I am going to be generous with whatever I have, whether it's a lot or it's a little, that doesn't stop my generous. Somebody say, what are we? Generous. in a world where we are going to decide ahead of time when unfaithfulness around us seems to be the norm, right? That we followers of Jesus are not the norm. That we are different because God has called us to be different, but we are faithful. What are we? Faithful. And finally, the words that Jesus said on the cross when it was all said and done, it was complete. The world was redeemed. He took on all of our sins. He said the word telestai and he said, it is finished. We honor God with excellence. We don't back down. We don't back off. We don't walk away. We are finishers. What are we? Finishers. I want you to declare this aloud with us. We're gonna say this again. We say that I am what? Ready. I am consistent, I am devoted, I am generous, I am faithful and I am a finisher. This is who we are. And it's not because we say this is who we are, but this is who we are because this is who God says that we are. Scripture tells us the old thing is gone, the old thing is in the past, God is doing something new, God is doing something fresh, God has something special for your life in this next year in 2024. And it starts with us, pre-deciding what we are gonna do in these moments to choosing to say yes to God, yes to Jesus, yes to His truth, yes to His word, yes to gathering together to worship Jesus, yes to being here, yes to loving one another, yes to seeing our community saturated with the glory of God through making disciples and everyday stuff of life.

This is 2024 for you. But the question is for us, will we pre-decide for 2024? I want to invite our worship team out. We got a song we want to close out with today, but I want to invite you these next six weeks to step in, to press into the goodness of God, to let his word go deep in us, to burn inside of us who he is and what he wants for our lives. It's gonna be different for all of us, but we're all gonna be journeying together. We're all gonna be working this together. We're all gonna be figuring this thing out. We're all gonna be giving grace to each other. We're all gonna be loving one another. We're all gonna be encouraging to one another, not putting anybody down because they're falling behind 'cause they're hitting through some hard stuff. And some of us are just gonna charge forward because by the grace of God, he's already grown some stuff inside of us. But some of us, we're gonna struggle through this. And that's in that time, in that moment for us to come along in the southern state. It's all right, let's go. We're not giving up. We're not backing down. We're not slowing up. We're still gonna keep pressing forward. Why? is real, guys. And I'm tired of feeling just kind of sitting around just going, "Okay, God, whenever you kind of make things happen," God's like, "I need action from you, man." God's like, "I want you to step up. I want you to push forward. I don't want you to care what the world around you says, 'cause it don't matter." All that matters is what God says. All that matters is what God is telling us we need to do. We're not We're not giving up, we're stepping forward. We live in a time and a space right now where it ain't cool to be a Christian. We're living in a world where people look at this building and coming in as part of God. What a bunch of bozos in that room. But the reality is we know God's truth, right? We know God's true. We know his peace. We know his love. We know his grace. We know his mercy. We know everything that he bestows upon us, who he tells us who we are. And we sit back and go, cool, thanks God. We wake up Sunday morning and go, "Hmm, not today." You know that one of the greatest decisions that you can make in this is to be here committed 52 weeks a year. 52 hours, that's one hour a week on Sunday. This ain't the end of the week, it's the beginning of the week, guys. This is where we come, this is where we refill, this is where we get encouraged, this is where we get built up, this is where we get armored, This is where we are strengthened to walk out that door for the next six days to come back in here ragged and beat up and tired and worn out. And the God go, I'm gonna refill you back up. This ain't something that just is at the end of the week. This is so crazy. If you did one thing this next year, you say, God, I am committing to be at church every single Sunday. Even when I wake up and I don't feel like it, even when I've had a week that has gone to H-E Double Hockey Stick, even when I can't even think about Monday, oh my gosh, the tidal wave that's coming for me, even when I can't even seem to have the energy to just even roll over and put my feet on the ground on Sunday morning, get your butt here. It will change your life. And this isn't for Pastor Andre and myself to be like, woo-hoo, we had a full house today. How amazing are we as pastors? No, when we make that commitment, when we say to God, you are my top priority, that I will give you my first time of my every single week, every single Sunday, I will be here. God honors that and it's gonna blow your mind. You guys have no idea. And Andre and I during the week pray and we mourn when we miss people on Sundays 'cause we know a lot of you are going through life and it's hitting you hard. And we just think, how can we get them here on Sunday? How can we just get them in this room that they would feel loved and encouraged and cared for because the world out there is just sucking all that out of them. And we know you're running on empty. We want you to be here to know that you are seen, you are loved, you are cared for, and that Jesus has a calling and a passion for your life like you've never known or experienced ever before. And it takes a moment now saying, I'm going to be there. I don't care what it costs me. I don't care what happens. I'm gonna miss out on a couple of hours of sleep. I don't care if I'm gonna roll in and my clothes are gonna be wrinkled and I didn't get to brush my hair perfectly. We don't care about that. We want to see you in this place to be built up, to be loved, to be encouraged and to be sent out because you know you're hitting it out there. And so this is what we want to start 2024 with. I wasn't even going, this is my notes.

We want you to be loved and cared for and seen as God sees you. And so I want us to pray right now. Jesus, thank you for who you are. Thank you for your outpouring of your love through Jesus on the cross that came over us that has given us a new name of Christian, a disciple of Jesus, has given us a new life, has given us a new calling, has given us a new perspective on life. And you would say, Jesus, thank you. that it doesn't matter what the world says we are, doesn't matter if the world thinks we're a failure, doesn't matter what anybody else around us says, but what matters is what you say who we are and that we are a child of God. And that even though we face a real enemy, there ain't nothing that's gonna stop it. There ain't nothing that's gonna be able to overcome that. There ain't nothing that's gonna keep us from your grace and your mercy and your presence when we finish our life here on earth, that when we wake up from that moment of death, we will see you in heaven and you will say, you are my child, you are my son, you are my daughter, welcome to eternity, you are loved. And for the first time in our lives, we will experience love like we have never even thought or imagined before. And so Jesus, when I think about this next year, I think about 2024, I want to encourage us over these next six weeks to make a commitment. Just starting with six, don't think about 52. Just think about six to be able to go, I am going to be there every single Sunday for the next six weeks, barring I get sicker than a dog, that I will be in that place to be encouraged, to be lifted up, to be cared for, to be held up in those weakest moments that these next weeks, we will find out how we pre-decide for 2024 to be our best year ever. I wasn't gonna do this, but I wanna do this right now. If you would say right now, you go, "Pastor, six weeks, I'm in." Raise your hand right now. And don't just say it because you're emotion and you're in the church and you're in this space, but you're just saying like, "Everything that I can right now, six weeks, I'm all in. I'm here, I see you, praise you, amen, let's go. I'm excited, God's got something special for us." As we keep praying, I don't wanna let this moment go. 'Cause I feel like we need to take a moment to share the good news. I've been talking about this Jesus thing all morning. And maybe you would say in this moment, pastor, I don't fully know this Jesus thing. I don't fully understand this love that you're talking about. I don't fully understand everything that you're saying that I have value and I have a calling and I have this purpose on my life. I don't fully understand it. If you would say that today, I want to intentionally say yes to Jesus. I want to step forward to asking him to make these plans for my life. Would you just look up at me right now and say yes? Yeah, look, just nod. You don't say anything, just nod. Say, yeah, that's me right now. I'm doing this. It's really simple. Nothing crazy or strange or weird. It's just simple prayer. And right now, like, this is the good news, guys. This is why we're here. I want to lead us, and I don't want anybody to pray alone, okay? So if you made this commitment before, you're saying yes to this commitment right now, I want you to pray this out loud with me right now, following law and heavenly Father, you can all pray. Forgive my sins. Jesus save me. I trust you. Fill me with your spirit so I can pre-decide to follow you, to show your love in all that I do. Thank you for my new life. I give you all of mine. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen, amen. Let's celebrate God today, amen? Come on, let's celebrate God. You guys are making some of the best decisions that you can for this next year, and I am so excited. I'm so excited what God is going to do in and through your life, in your family's lives, in our church's lives, and in God's life, in His kingdom, amen!

The Message of the Manger: Part 4

The Messiah of the Manger

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Man, this Christmas season is flying by. I know last week, Pastor Lauren got all of us thinking about the Christmas traditions that we do. She had mentioned donuts in her family, which I thought was awesome. I don't know if you guys are in the midst of carrying out all your traditions. We have Christmas cookies going, and then we have some movies on, and we love it. We still have to do the Christmas lights, and behind Bel Air here, we haven't gone through yet. We're looking forward to doing that. And so, hopefully you guys are enjoying those things. I know it goes by fast, and so we want you to enjoy that. But yeah, the season is, 2024 is just around the corner. And today, speaking of things going fast, our series is coming to an end. We're wrapping up our Christmas series, The Message of the Manger. We've had, three weeks ago, we talked about the mystery of the manger. That was the incarnation, how Jesus is fully God and fully man, and wrapping our heads around that to the best of our ability. We also talked about the miracles, all the impossible things made possible by God for the birth of Jesus. And then last week, Pastor Lauren talked about the majesty of the manger and how people were awaiting the coming heavenly king.

And so today, we're gonna shift our focus from this moment around the manger. I don't know if you know this, by the way, we have a manger up here. Did you guys see this throughout the, it's been there? I love it, Pastor Chris built a manger for us. But we're shifting from the scene directly around the manger around Jesus' birth, and we're gonna look forward to what he's gonna do in his life. We wanna answer the questions, why was Jesus born? Why did God send his only son to earth? In other words, why do we have Christmas? In order to understand that fully, I wanna take us back a bit and help us understand why we needed Jesus to descend from heaven, why we needed the incarnation, why God had done all these amazing things, all the miracles, and why people were waiting for a king, the majesty around the manger. Because God didn't just do this for fun. He didn't just say, "Hey, this is a good time in history." They just kinda like, "Let's put Jesus in the story right now. "This works out, this would be a good time." Or, "Hey, it's getting kind of shady. "I think we need Jesus to kinda help it out a little bit." No, there was way more intention and purpose in the arrival of Jesus. There was a need for him. And this moment at the manger is a culmination of so many other moments. This was anticipated and prophesied and waited for, for years upon years, generations upon generations. And so I wanna start briefly at the beginning.

Now let me ask, how long do you think humanity was in need of a Messiah, of a Savior? Well, it's all the way back at the very beginning of our Bibles, thousands of years ago, in Genesis in the Garden of Eden. You may be wondering, this is Christmas, Why are we talking about Genesis right now? Well, without understanding what happened here at the beginning of the Bible, we won't fully grasp and appreciate what is happening when Jesus is born. You see, we believe that the Bible is one coherent story, all leading us to Jesus and God's plan of salvation. It's important that as we read scripture and try to understand what God is doing in the midst of different people and different scenarios, that ultimately it's driving us to the arrival of Christ. The moment where Jesus the Messiah arrives. And it's gonna point us to what will happen in Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection. So, to go all the way back, just a brief refresher for some of you, or maybe something new. We're gonna go back to the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. And back then, everything was perfect, right? God had created this Garden of Eden. He had put Adam and Eve in there to be partners with him, and everything is great for a time until it isn't. Until Adam and Eve, and we know of the fruit and the tree, and they choose to separate themselves from God, and sin is inserted into the story. They choose to try to do life apart from God. And all of humanity from that point on has a sin problem. And that sin problem is a separation from God. Instead of being destined to be with him forever, humanity is at risk of never being with God, and apart from him for eternity.

So that is the sin issue, and it's an issue that God wants to correct, but in his perfect and beautiful way, and it's gonna take time. And he alludes to his plan when speaking to Adam and Eve and the serpent in the garden. After everything goes down, God is debriefing with each of them. The big moment happens, sin enters, and God, I'm going through this so fast, but God is talking to Adam, and he's like, "Hey, this is how life is gonna change." He talks to Eve, "Hey, this is how life "is gonna change for you." And he talks to the serpent, the enemy. And he says this, in Genesis 3.15, he says, this is God speaking to the serpent, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, "between your offspring and hers. "He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel." The "He" in that verse is foreshadowing to the coming Messiah, Jesus. Jesus will defeat the enemy. And so everything in our Bibles, everything, up until we get to here, right around here, Jesus' birth, everything in between is God's plan unfolding about bringing about that Messiah. From the moment that sin enters the story, everything else is pointing and leading to Jesus entering the story. It's from this moment on that we know that God has a plan of salvation. Someone is going to come and rescue humanity. Like I said, sin has corrupted humanity and driven us away from God, and there's nothing that humanity can do on its own to restore that broken relationship. The human situation because of sin is hopeless and chaotic and despairing and void of any love.

But Jesus brings love and peace and hope and joy to humanity, as he is the source of all those things. And he brings restoration for our relationship with God. Jesus is born to confront the issue of sin. This is why we need Jesus. This is why God has sent his son to earth. And this is how the manger points us So what Jesus the Messiah will do. So there was our brief Bible lesson from the past and now we're back in Jesus' time. There are many references to Jesus being the Messiah in helpful passages in Scripture and they all describe a little bit about who He is and what He does. We don't have time to go through them all but I would encourage you this week and up until Christmas and this season to maybe do a Google search in your personal time and you know Bible passages Messiah and see what you learn from that. But today I want to focus on one, and that's in Luke. We'll be in Luke today, chapter four. And in this scene, this is Jesus, grown up by the way, we're far past his birth, we're gonna come back to the birth, but we're far past his birth. He's a grown man, he's starting things, he's starting his ministry. And so he's coming from the wilderness, where he spent significant time being tested and tempted by Satan. And he succeeds through that temptation and testing by resting on his purpose, his mission, that he came to be the Messiah. He's a part of the rescue plan. He is the rescue plan. And so he comes back from the desert and he's like, "I gotta let people know who I am now." He's kind of been under the radar. He's just been Jesus living his life.

And so he goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath and he reads from a scroll of Isaiah. Isaiah's a book in our Bible. It's full of prophecy. And this is an epic moment of Jesus sharing who he is. So if you guys wanna follow along, I'm gonna read from verse, starting in verse 16, chapter four of the book of Luke. It says this, "He went to Nazareth, "where he had been brought up, "and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, "as was his custom. "He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah "was handed to him. "Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, "because he has anointed me "to proclaim good news to the poor. "He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners "and recovery of sight for the blind, "to set the oppressed free, "to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. And the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, "Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." This is, I mean, amazing, thinking of how long people have been waiting for the Messiah, how long generations after generations and the people, this wouldn't be the first time they've heard this passage before. So they know everyone's anticipating at some point there will be someone to come rescue us. And they recognize as Jesus is reading this, like that's him. This is the guy that we've been waiting for. All their eyes are fixed on him. So what is Jesus gonna do? Let's find out what the Messiah is all about. I just wanna go line by line here and break down what Jesus is saying by reading this scripture.

So the first part says, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me "because he has anointed me." Well, anointing symbolizes holiness and authority. In the Bible, kings, prophets, and priests could all be anointed to signify that they had been set apart and selected for a specific role. And the Hebrew word here that Jesus is using when he says "anointed" is also the word for Messiah. So he's saying, "Look, it's me. I am the anointed one. I am the Messiah, the one you've been waiting for." So we know that Jesus, as the Messiah, has been anointed, he's been purposed, he's been selected for this role by God. To redeem and to rescue, to sacrifice and to be king. The passage continues to proclaim good news to the poor. Jesus as the Messiah brings good news, brings the gospel. John 4, in the Gospel of John, there's a different scene that's a little bit more explicit in explaining this role of the Messiah. There's a conversation between Jesus and a woman, and the woman says to Jesus, "I know that the Messiah, called Christ, is coming, and when He comes, He will explain everything to us." says to this woman in this passage, "I, the one speaking to you, I am He." And so we know that Jesus brings truth. He brings perfect understanding and explanation to the Scriptures, to the way that we are supposed to live according to God. His purpose was to reveal truth and to... He has the power and clarity of sharing God's perfect Word. This is the role of Jesus as a prophet, being the voice of God. And he would do this throughout his life by teaching in synagogues, by having conversations with his followers, parables, more conversations with his disciples, explaining what scripture really means and what God is actually calling people to.

The end of that verse says, "To the poor." And why "to the poor"? Well, Jesus would teach on the on the Sermon on the Mount, that the poor in spirit are blessed, because the kingdom of God, God himself, values those who the world may see poor in their eyes, God sees value in them. And so he's speaking the gospel to everyone, not just who the world would think, hey, the good news should come to those who have earned it, who have lived a certain life. No, Jesus came to give good news to absolutely everyone. The passage continues again, it says, He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind and set the oppressed free. So it's not just that the Messiah reveals truth, he does that, but he also has come to do things. He's come to rescue and to redeem. Now the Israelites for a long time had this idea of what that rescue plan would look like. They thought an earthly ruler, an earthly king, that would help them rise up against their oppressors, thinking of the Roman government, and we're gonna establish this new kingdom here on earth. That's what all of Israel thought. But Jesus is not talking about an earthly nation or kingdom. Jesus came to rescue, to save lost people, and to give freedom, but freedom from sin. Rescue from that eternal separation from God that they were dealing with. That people would no longer be bound by the oppressive sin and darkness in their life, but would have the light of Christ and have freedom in him. Jesus came to free sinners and to give new life, eternal life to those who believe.

And then it ends with, “to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” Now, this is referenced to an old Israelite tradition that every 50 years, any slave would be freed and any borrowed land would be returned to its original owners. And Jesus is not saying, "Hey, that's what's happening this year, everyone." He's saying, "I'm now ushering in a new era of salvation." This is an era where the work of sin can begin to be undone, where people were once separated from God, and now that relationship can be restored, not fully, like it will be in heaven, but we can once again commune with God the Father through Jesus. So this whole passage, verses 18 and 19, when Jesus is reading this, he's saying, this is what I'm bringing, what the Messiah brings, is an era worthy of celebrating, of anticipating, of getting excited about. This is what the Messiah will do. This is why God sent his only son to earth. This is why Jesus is born, and this is why we have Christmas. Jesus was born to save, to share God's truth, and to redeem the lost, to free humanity from their sin. And so in our scene, Jesus says all this, rolls back up the scroll, gives it to the attendant, and all eyes were on him. And it was clear that he was saying this about himself.

And in verse 21 it says, "Today the scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." Jesus has announced that he is the Messiah. And he's alluding to what will happen, God's plan that's gonna be carried out in the coming years of his life. Now today, our series is around the manger. We're approaching Christmas Day where we often think of baby Jesus, and that's appropriate, we can do that, we can celebrate that. But it's important to know that thinking of Jesus in the manger is to think of what that baby, the Messiah, will do in his life. While we celebrate the birth of Jesus, we truly celebrate the birth, what that birth brings, what the Messiah brings. You see, Christmas means less if we think we aren't in need of rescuing. Christmas means less if we don't think we need a savior. And Christmas means less if we aren't looking forward to the Messiah doing work in our own lives. The passage in Luke continues in a very unfortunate way. We won't read it, but let me just tell you what happens. Jesus says all this, and I wanna compare it to what we're doing today too. So Jesus says all this, he's at the synagogue on the Sabbath, which is what they would do at that time. We're today at church on a Sunday, which is what we do. And Jesus comes unexpected and claims to be the Messiah. And at first people were in awe. They're amazed at what is happening. But then the people wanted proof. They didn't take Jesus at his word any longer.

And so Jesus has some harsher words for them, telling them that prophets are not accepted in their hometowns and the people are offended. As one scholar says, it says, "People are more ready to see greatness in strangers "than in those that they know well." And that's what was true of the people in Nazareth. And so I just want us to pause and think about that. If you know Jesus, if you've been walking with Jesus for most of your life, are you at risk of being numb to the greatness that he's doing around you and in you and through you, especially in another Christmas season? Are you numb to how amazing the birth of Jesus is? Well, that's kind of what Jesus is saying to these people. He's saying, "Hey, I'm saying all these truths and you want more. You don't need more, but you want more." And they get angry. And they get so angry that they want to push Jesus off of a cliff. I'm not making that up. That's in the Bible. They are pushing him. This crowd, this angry mob, is forcing him to this cliff. They want to throw him off. They're so offended. But in verse 30, this is what happens. "He walked right through the crowd, and he went on his way." He just left. He walks on and continues with his purpose, with his rescue mission, because he is the Messiah. And they missed out on experiencing more of the Messiah in their lives.

And so what is our response to the Messiah today? Are we amazed, hearing amazing things, seeing amazing things from God? And sometimes we're in awe and we're like, "Yes, God, you are so good. "This is incredible." Or are we more offended and angry? Jesus, you wanna do what with my life? Jesus, you're asking me to change in what way? Jesus, you want how much of me? You want all of me? Sometimes these things offend us. They stir us up. We don't like that. And maybe we identify with both these groups if we're honest with ourselves. Even in the same day, we can be, at one point in the day, we're amazed at God. In the next moment, we're really offended. "God, I don't like what you're doing in my life right now." But verse 30 is a warning to us. He walked right through the crowd, went on his way. Our Messiah is on a mission. He's got things to do in our lives, and we don't want to miss out. If we reject or ignore the Messiah, we'd be missing out on being freed from sin, or seeing light in the darkness, or being rescued completely. So I wanna invite the worship band back up as we close. We're gonna close our sermon this morning and really our whole series with this. The Message of the Manger, that was the title of our series. And so I wanna make sure that we all know what that message is, be very clear. The message of the manger is one of salvation. It's about how the incarnation of God in the person of Christ came down through miraculous means and circumstances. Jesus came to be our King, came to be our Redeemer, our Rescuer, our Lord and Savior, our Messiah. And so will you this Christmas lean into God? Will you worship Him? Will you give him your entire life? And as you celebrate his arrival and you celebrate what his arrival means, don't let Jesus pass you by this Christmas.

Let's pray. God, thank you again for Christmas, for sending your son. Thank you for what that birth means and the fact that we get to have an opportunity to experience everlasting life with you. That through your son that you would bring salvation, that you would correct this sin issue that all of us are dealing with. So God, our prayer this morning is that in today, in this next week, and through Christmas and beyond, that you would draw us closer to you. And if that's by focusing on your birth, on the birth of Jesus, then so be it. If that's on focusing on what Jesus would do later on in his life, great. In whatever ways, God, I pray that you would draw us closer to you, that we would come to this point of surrendering, giving our lives over to you, worshiping you with all that we have. I pray that we would all, however we're feeling, at some point in this Christmas season, we would experience your joy, your peace, your hope, and your love. God, you are so good. We give you all the praise. We pray this in your name. Amen.

The Message of the Manger: Part 3

The Majesty of the Manger

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Welcome! I am so glad to be here with you today. Last time I was up here, I was very pregnant. So hopefully my lung capacity will be a little bit better this time. If I haven't met you, I am Pastor Lauren, and I am so excited to be with you today with our third week of Advent. Real quick, unrelated, I know you heard it from the guys, but I wanted you to hear it from me. Thank you so much for your generosity as we have transitioned with a new baby and just, we have not bought diapers yet because of you all. You guys have blessed us so much. I think we saw months worth of diapers left in our garage. So we are so thankful for that and for meals and gift cards. And then right after that, you guys have been so generous with Pastor Appreciation and just loving on our families. And so I just wanted you to hear that from me, completely unrelated to the sermon today, but thank you. Thank you for those that have given and sacrificed and served to fill in spaces when I was missing this the last couple of months. So thank you. Just wanted you to know that you are appreciated and you are so loved. And I just love the culture of generosity we have here in our SVC family.

Well, we are on week three of the message of the manger series. Pastor Chris started us off with the mystery of the manger and talked about Jesus coming and being fully God and fully man and how we can maybe grasp that on some level, but there's still so much mystery there. And it's a wonderful mystery. If we could figure God out, I would be concerned. So I'm glad there is still some mystery and that I am not God and I do not fully understand Him. And then Pastor Andre talks about the miracles last week of the manger and the multiple miracles surrounding the birth of Jesus and His incarnation and Mary and Joseph and Elizabeth and Zechariah and even the wise men coming. And then today we are going to talk about the majesty of the manger. So something you should know about me is I love Christmas. I know that is not the case for everybody. I know this time of year can be really hard for a lot of people, but I am so grateful that I just love it. I love, it's just magical to me. I love the music and the twinkle lights and the presents and the songs, just the movies, just all of it. Give me all of it, I want it all. And I get it from my father. Now I'm a pastor's kid, so he's used me in a lot of sermons, so I have the microphone this time, so I get to use him.

But my dad loves Christmas, and growing up, the first-ish weekend of December, he would make homemade donuts, and a big breakfast, we'd have like our nice Christmas dishes, and he'd play Christmas music, And that was our way of ushering in the Christmas season. And as a tradition, we carried on with our kids. In fact, my parents are in town. And so he made donuts with my kids yesterday to help us continue that tradition. But when I was a freshman in college, I was not going to be home in time for Christmas donut day. But I went to college about, we went to college in Indiana. My parents were here in California. And I was so bummed I was gonna miss it. And we looked forward to it every year. But I went to college about 15 minutes from my grandparents. And that Saturday morning that my family was doing Christmas donut day in California, I get a phone call that my grandma is at the front door of my dorm. And I go downstairs and she has a plate of homemade donuts. 'Cause my dad called her and said, "You gotta make my kid donuts." That to me is the magic of Christmas. I want all of it. I love it.

But we're gonna talk about the majesty today. The majesty of Christmas, I've come to appreciate it more and more. I've always known Jesus is the reason for the season. You know, we know that that's why we celebrate. The older I get, the more I appreciate what it truly means that our God came to earth as a baby. And truly, appreciating the majesty of Christmas makes it that much more magical. It just enhances the magic of Christmas for me. So what do I mean about, or what do I mean when I say majesty? Majesty is one of those words that I know what it means, but to explain it, I'm like, oh, what's the definition of majesty? So I did what we all do and I Googled it. And some definitions that came up were impressive stateliness, dignity or beauty, Royal power, a title given to a sovereign. All of these accurately describe Jesus. He is impressive and beautiful and he is sovereign and has royal power. So today we're gonna focus on his majesty and specifically his kingship. His kingship isn't necessarily something we talk about super often, but diving into this, I found it is just, it is an attribute of Him that I think is really important and it impacts our daily lives. So how do we know that Jesus is King? How do we know that? What does it mean for us practically to have a King?

Well, the Bible talks about Jesus is King and there are many prophecies of the coming King or coming Messiah. And Messiah means anointed one. And in Bible times, prophets would anoint the next king as a symbol of their kingship. So Jesus is the Messiah. He is the anointed one. And it was foretold in the Old Testament, thousands of years before Jesus's birth, that he would be king and that he would sit on David's throne forever. So we're gonna be kind of jumping around in scripture today. So if you wanna follow along, great. pleased you, we got Bibles in the seats. You can pick it up on your phone or we'll have it on the screen for you. But our first passage today is Isaiah 9, six through seven. And it says, "For to us, a child is born, to us a son is given and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing it and upholding it with justice and righteousness. From that time on and forever, the zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this." This is just one of many prophecies of Jesus's coming King. The Israelites in the Old Testament, they wanted a King. They were struggling to follow God and his way for them. They saw the surrounding nations had kings and they wanted a king. They wanted a ruler and a warrior to help them conquer other lands. They wanted a protector. They wanted a king. The problem is their only options for kings were humans. So there was not going to be a perfect king. There were good kings and there were a lot of really bad ones too. David is one example. He was a good king. He made a lot of mistakes, but the Bible also says he was a man after God's own heart. So he was a good king, but he wasn't a perfect king. And he wasn't going to live forever, so he couldn't sit on his own throne forever. Someone else had to come. Only Jesus could be that perfect king. We know from the first week of our series that he was fully God, and so therefore he could be perfect. He could fulfill this prophecy. But we also know that he was fully man. And so he had to come from a family line. Specifically, he came from David’s.

Isaiah 11:1, couple pages later says, "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse." Jesse was David's father. "From his roots, a branch will bear fruit." Branch here is capitalized, meaning it will be a person. Jesus is the branch. So here again, we have another prophecy of Jesus's royal lineage. And then in Matthew one, we see his whole lineage laid out for us. I think sometimes at least growing up, I was like, why do we need all of these names? Why do we need to know his family history all the way back to Abraham? But it shows us where he came from. It shows us that he is in the royal line. He is the one to fulfill and sit on David's throne forever. The Israelites begged for a king. In New Testament, the Jewish people were looking for a king. We, even today, need him to be our king. We need him to redeem us, to restore us, to protect us. but only Jesus can do that. Only He can do it perfectly. Author and theologian Amy Gannett writes, "Jesus is the true and better King who came from the line of David, who would lead His people only in righteousness, who could ever be trusted to guide them in the pathways of Jesus." They were good Kings, but there was no one like Jesus. The thing about having a King though, is that a King has subjects and the subjects must bow down to their king, must honor and submit to their king. So when we, as human beings, choose to follow Jesus, we are essentially saying, you are my king, you are my Lord. I submit to your authority, to your sovereignty, to your majesty.

Philippians 2:9-11 says, "Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledged that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. He is Lord. Everyone take a deep breath, 'cause that's really hard to acknowledge sometimes, that we are not the king or queen of our own life, that we are not the Lord of our lives. We like, as humans in general, we typically like to have control. We like things to go our way, or is that just me? Okay, I like to have control. I like things to go my own way. And it can be really hard to let that go, to submit to Him and acknowledge that He is King, He is Lord, and His ways are better. When we look at the Christmas story, we see someone who also had difficulty submitting to Jesus's kingship. Pastor Andre talked about this last week and talked about King Herod and how he was, he heard of this baby king and was threatened by him. He did not want to humble himself. He refused to acknowledge his authority and even went so far as seeking him out to kill him and kill thousands of other baby boys just to make sure he had his bases covered. It's interesting though, because in stark contrast to that, we have the wise men. They went and searched for Jesus at great personal sacrifice. They went to find Him because they knew He was King. They knew He was the one that they had been looking for and waiting for. They wanted to worship Him.

Matthew 2:1-2 says, "After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the East came to Jerusalem and asked, 'Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews?'" They hadn't even met Him yet and they knew who He was. "We saw His star when it rose and have come to worship Him." We know from different studies that the wise men took about two years to get to Jesus. So he was about two years old. He was a toddler. And these wise men came and bowed down and worshiped a toddler. Now we all know enough two year olds to know that that's humbling in and of itself, right? But they were willing to submit to him because they knew who he was. They were so convinced of his kingship that it didn't matter if he was two, 20 or 25, 80 years old, it didn't matter. He was their king. Many years later, around the time of Jesus's ministry, the Jewish people were under the oppression of the Romans and they wanted their king. They wanted someone to come save them. They were on the lookout of this king that had been prophesied in the Old Testament. They knew the scriptures, they knew that He was coming. They expected the Messiah to be an earthly king, to set up an earthly kingdom and to save them, to free them, to bring them redemption from the Romans. Unfortunately, that wasn't, or fortunately, that wasn't Jesus' plan. They didn't realize that Jesus would set them free. He would redeem them. He would save them from their sins and the consequences of their sins. He had so much better planned than anything they could ask or imagine. So although he was king, he wasn't what they were expecting. And because we're on this side of Jesus's death and resurrection, and we have the Bible, We know the end of the story. We know that he didn't come to set up an earthly kingdom, but an eternal kingdom.

Revelation 17:14 says, "They will wage war, they, his enemies, "will wage war against the lamb, "but the lamb will triumph over them "because he is Lord of lords and King of kings, "and with him will be his called, chosen, "and faithful followers." We get the spoiler alerts. We know what's coming. We know we have a king and he is gonna win. We're told that he will be triumphant. He will be the king of kings eternally. We have the opportunity now to make him the king and Lord of our life while we wait for that eternal kingdom. but it requires something of us. How do we do that? How do we put Jesus on the throne of our heart and our life now while we wait for eternity and take ourselves off of it? Well, I got a few ideas for us to help this process. The first thing is that we have to remember that our king wants a relationship with us. I don't know many kings that want a relationship with every single one of their subjects. Our king is different. He is good, he is loving, he wants our best and he wants to be in relationship with us. Does he want us to submit to him and to surrender to him? Absolutely, but he wants to be our friend too. He wants to be in relationship.

John 15:15 says, "I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends for everything that I learned from my father, I have made known to you." So the first thing is remember, he wants a relationship with us. Secondly, we must submit to his kingship. We must surrender to him, just like the wise men did. We have to choose his way over our way. And I do not stand up here as someone teaching this because I have it figured out. I promise you I do not.

The Lord typically gives me a word or a phrase for the coming year to focus on in my study, in my just everyday life. It's just something that I can be intentional with throughout the year. Well, this time last year, the Lord gave me the word surrender. And I'm just gonna tell you, If the Lord gives you the word surrender, buckle up. And I knew something was probably coming. If I needed to work on surrendering more to Him, there was probably something coming down the pike. And there were, there were so many opportunities this year for me to practice surrender. We had our fourth baby. There were some professional things that were opportunities for me to trust Him. There were things that didn't go my way that required me to pivot. And I'm still pivoting. Like don't, I do not have it figured out, but it was lots of opportunities for me to say, or to ask myself, do I trust him as my king more than I trust my own ways? That's a hard question to ask. And there were some days, if I'm honest, I wanted it to be my way. I had to surrender my plans, my will, my timeline. I wanted it to go the way I thought it should. But these opportunities to surrender and these situations throughout the year grew me deeper. They took me deeper in my relationship with Jesus and my faith in Him and to grow my trust in my Lord and my King.

Next, we must choose humility. Being humble, like I said, can be so hard 'cause it's not necessarily our natural inclination. But if the wise man can bow down to a toddler, we can bow down to the risen King. I wonder sometimes if it's easier for us to focus on some of the other attributes of Jesus, like savior, friend, shepherd, because they kind of make us feel good. You know, baby Jesus at Christmas time is cute and cuddly and makes us feel good, right? It benefits us in some way. But Jesus is King? That requires us to humble ourselves and acknowledge that He is King and we are not. Humility. We have to practice humility. And lastly, we must keep an eternal perspective. Jesus isn't just king right now. He's not just an earthly king that will pass away. He is an eternal king. And so when it's hard to submit, when it's hard to be humble, when it's hard to go His way or choose His will for your life, Keeping that eternal perspective that it is not just about right now, it is about eternity, makes it a little bit easier. Here's a secret sauce for you though, okay? Here's what makes this work. We make that choice to submit to Him over and over and over again. When you choose to follow Jesus as your savior and you make that choice, that's a one-time decision. You don't have to keep asking for salvation. He's given it to you, it is a gift. But our part, our submission sometimes require us to do it over and over again. Sometimes day by day, we have to keep submitting minute by minute in some occasions. We have to keep choosing Him to make Him King over and over again. So all of this is the majesty of Christmas. It's the majesty of this manger that when a baby came to earth, he was the fulfillment of so many prophecies and promises. He was the answer that we were looking for that we all need. Fully God, fully man. came as a miracle, not only to create the coming physical kingdom, but an eternal one, and to be the King and the Lord of our lives right now.

So my prayer for us this Christmas season is that we would celebrate the magic of Christmas. Go to the parties, eat the food, make the donuts, Have presents, do it all, go see the lights, celebrate with your people, enjoy the magic of Christmas, but let that magic be even better by remembering the majesty of who was in that manger. Remember that he came to have a relationship with us, to identify with us as humans, to be the perfect King that no one else could be for us, to save us, to redeem us, to protect us. And as we leave today, I just have a question for us. You can just kind of take with you and maybe think about this week and answer for yourself. I gave you some ideas of things that can help, but we all have to answer this for ourselves. What would it look like for you to trust Christ alone, to be your king and keep him on the throne of your heart? What does that look like for you personally? How do you practically live that out? Worship team's gonna come up and I'm gonna pray us out. But I pray that you are encouraged to not forget that even though he came as a baby, he was still our king. He's still the Lord of our hearts. And if you don't know him as the Lord of your heart, as the king in your life, please come talk to us. Let us share that with you. If you have questions, we'd love to answer them. But for those of us who've already made that choice, what an added part of Christmas we get to just celebrate even more.

Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you for this time. We thank you that we can fellowship together and celebrate the Christmas season with all of the fun and the magical things that come along with it. But help us to never forget the majesty, the grandeur of Christmas, because you are King. You sit on the throne right now, God. You are King eternally and in our hearts today. We praise you that you are King. We praise you that your way is better. May we submit and humble ourselves before you, our King and our Lord in Jesus' name, amen.

The Message of the Manger: Part 2

The Miracle of the Manger

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

So far, I mean it's December, it's finally December, I feel like Christmas was being pushed off and pushed off and now it's here we can all you know go full in. I love this time of year I've always loved Christmas. It's a season for many things it's a season of giving as we're talking about with this outreach. It's a season of special food I know this Christmas food kind of like Thanksgiving only comes around once a year unless you guys are having stuffing all the time which that's awesome but for us it's only around Christmas time. Christmas movies those are awesome and again just all these things that only happen during this time the decorations hopefully family, hopefully also a season of rest or break, whether from work, there's some time off, or school, but we just love this season.

And it's also a season of miracles. Miracles, we think of miracles, or maybe some of us experience something, but this year, this time of year, they just kind of come to the forefront of our mind just a little bit more. I want to remind us that each week in our series, "The Message of the Manger," we're looking at different aspects of Jesus's birth, trying to highlight God's plan, His providence, and His provision in the arrival of our Savior. We're striving for a better understanding of the true story, the true message, and the true purpose of Christmas. And Jesus's birth is a pinnacle moment in history. We want to have it on on the forefronts of our hearts and minds every day this season. And so this week we're gonna be focusing on the miracles of the manger. Last week was the mystery, this week we're doing miracles, and it's because the circumstances surrounding Jesus' birth have God's fingerprints all over them. I wanna start by defining what a miracle is. A miracle is an act or event that occurs outside the bounds of normal or natural means and demonstrates God's involvement. So it's something that is outside of human possibility where God is intervening. And I have today three miracles, three small stories, vignettes, and when we put them together, they help us see even more the work that God is doing around this very first Christmas. So are we ready to dive into these three stories? Okay, good. Are you ready at home, all those at home? Okay.

The first miracle of the manger might be the most obvious, and that is the birth of Jesus. How was that possible? You start off, many of you probably know this story, of with a young woman, probably in her late teens, who is betrothed to be married to a man, and her name is Mary, and she is approached by God through a messenger, an angel, letting her know that her life is about to change forever. Now, anytime there's a pregnancy announcement, that is some kind of recognition that life is about to change in a drastic way. And I don't know about you, but seeing some of these pregnancy announcements recently, they're getting pretty extreme. They started with just like, hey, leaving the pregnancy test out on the counter for the husband to come home to and like, oh, what's happening? And then, you know, now it's like cake and then you open it up, you slice it open and it's pink or blue. And then there's balloons that pop in the air. I don't know if you guys have seen these things. Some of you are like link stairs, but others of you know that these viral trends of pregnancy announcements are getting very, there was just a huge fire that happened because of a pregnancy announcement that went wrong. So, careful with pregnancy announcements. But they're going, they're huge. And all that to say that a pregnancy announcement signifies a big change in life. And this pregnancy announcement would have gone viral today, if it happened today, but it's extreme. And so I want to read for us, and you guys can follow along, we're going to be in a couple different scriptures. We're going to start off in Luke chapter 1, and this is a conversation where the angel is approaching Mary. So I'm going to start in verse 20. You guys can read along in your own Bibles. I love that, or you can read it on the screen.

But it says, "The angel went to her and said, 'Greetings, you who are highly favored,' speaking to Mary, 'the Lord is with you.' Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son. you are to call him Jesus. He will be great, and he will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever. His kingdom will never end." "How will this be?" Mary asks. "Since I'm a virgin," the angel answered, "the Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.”

Mary's having this conversation with this angel who tells her she's gonna have a child and she's engaged and so she's she might be wondering like is this gonna be like my future child with that guy or is this something different and the angel says oh it's very different this is going to be the most different thing ever to happen when it comes to a pregnancy you're gonna have a child that comes from God through the work of the Holy Spirit this is going to be a miracle this is God getting involved outside of human means in the most personal way by sending his Son. This is, and I love this phrase, this is the author of life inserting himself into the story. This is God intervening in human affairs for the sake of bringing salvation to the world. This miracle birth is more than just bringing life into the world through miraculous means, it's about bringing eternal life through the only way possible, Jesus. So Mary is going to give birth to Jesus, who is human, is a child, but is also something more, who's God. We talked about this last week, the mystery, and she's going to do so remaining a virgin. And this is the first of our major miracles. So what does this miracle mean? Well, the miracle of the virgin birth signifies that this baby is unlike any other ever born. The The miracle of the birth, this divine causation behind Jesus lets us know that this life and death of this child is going to be deeply divine and purposeful and missional. The miracle of the virgin birth shows just how powerful God is. For us in our finiteness, in our limited power and capability, the virgin birth is truly a miracle because it's something that is impossible happening.

But for God, I want us to realize this, this is nothing extreme. In the realm of what God can do, this is effortless. He's not straining to make this happen. That's how powerful He is. From the miracle of healing a blind man, to turning water into wine, to the virgin birth, this is not hard for God. And it just shows how amazing, how capable, how powerful our God is. The significance of the virgin birth is this, that Jesus is truly man, but also truly God. And it signifies that the divine initiative in salvation, that means that salvation does not come from man, but from God. And so this miracle, think of this miracle as absolutely life-changing, world-changing. And I love if we think of this as the news of this miracle, starting small, just started with Mary and the angel, and then to Joseph, obviously. And then as time went on, it maybe grew and the circle became large and maybe her extended family knew about him, I'm pregnant, it's not Joseph's and here's what's happening, here's what the angel said. And so now we fast forward thousands of years later and now the whole world can know about this birth. It's a miracle. All right, the second miracle, we gotta go fast 'cause a lot of miracles to get through.

The second miracle of the manger is found earlier in the same passage and it has to do with Elizabeth and Zachariah. Now Elizabeth is Mary's older relative. And God is absolutely purposeful in this miracle. I want to say that from the forefront. This is so intentional by God and what he's doing. Imagine Mary, not yet married, and the possible shame and judgment that she would face in society as she is having a child out of wedlock. And she's saying these things like, "Hey, it's of God." And people are like, "Sure, sure it's of God, trying to hide whatever you want to hide." but the shame and judgment and how that would test her faith. And so God was thinking of that, knew of that. And we have the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah. So I wanna read from Luke chapter one, you guys can follow. I'm gonna be jumping around here, but I'm starting in verse five. It says, "In the time of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah. His wife, Elizabeth, was also a descendant of Aaron. Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord's commands and decrees blamelessly. but they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive and they were both very old. If that sounds familiar, hold on to that thought.

Verse 11, "Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him, 'Do not be afraid, Zechariah. Your prayer has been heard. Your wife, Elizabeth, will bear a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth. for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He was never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go on before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. Zechariah asked the angel, "How can I be sure of this? I'm an old man, my wife is well along in years." And the angel said to him, "I am Gabriel. "I stand in the presence of God. "I have been sent to speak to you "and tell you this good news. "And now you will be silent and not speak "until the day this happens, "because you did not believe my words, "which will come true at their appointed time." I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. During the part where the angel is talking to Mary, the angel says this to Mary as a way of encouraging her. Says in verse 36, "Even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age and she is said to be unable to conceive and she's now under six months for no word from God will ever fail.”

And then later in the chapter, we won't read it, but their baby is born, Elizabeth and Zechariah. They have their baby. And again, as Scripture says, Zechariah during this time was unable to speak because he questioned Gabriel, said, "How can this be?" And Gabriel says, "It's going to happen, but by the way, you can't talk for the whole pregnancy." So for ten months, this guy cannot speak. I'm sure Elizabeth is just having a great time making all the decisions. What are you... Okay, I'm going to go ahead and buy all this stuff for the... Yeah. But the baby is born, and they're trying to decide a name, and it should be named something in the family line. But in that moment, to everyone's astonishment, Zechariah can speak and says, "No, the angel said it was going to be named John. This baby is going to be named John." amazing, amazing story.

So where is the miracle here? Well, in the life of Elizabeth and Zechariah, this is a huge miracle. They were unable to have a child, and now God has given them a son. And, as I said, if that sounded familiar, is there anything else that happened in the Bible? I'm glad it did. And if it didn't, that's okay. Let me tell you how amazing our God is, and how He links things, and how He uses those references to encourage people. So, If you guys thought of Abraham and Sarah, then good. That should, the way this is written, what was happening, even Zechariah and Elizabeth would have been reminded of Abraham and Sarah, who were also past childbearing years, and God gave them a child to fulfill a covenant that God made with Abraham, to be the father of God's people, and that the promise of the Messiah would come through Abraham's descendants. And now we have Elizabeth and Zechariah, who are going to have a child, and that child's entire life will be focused on announcing the coming Messiah. That reference, again, would have been in Elizabeth and Zechariah's mind, and I think it would have been of great encouragement to them to think of. I know in our great history of this nation of Israel, there was another couple who prayed and wanted a child, and God gave them a miracle baby. And we too are about to experience a miracle baby. So this is God intervening in ways that were not possible by human means. And how does this, again, miracle tie in with the miracle of the manger? Well, the lives of John the Baptist and Jesus are linked together from even before they were born. And again, there's no doubt in my mind that Mary is facing this new ordeal of being pregnant as a virgin, that seeing her relative Elizabeth, who is elderly and now pregnant, going through her own miracle would be of the greatest source of encouragement to Mary.

If ever there was moments of doubt, and maybe there were in Mary's mind of, "God, is this really happening? Can I do this?" And then she sees Elizabeth, who is experiencing her own miracle, and so clearly God is intervening in Elizabeth's life. How encouraging is it to Mary to say, "God is intervening in my life. God is in control over what's happening." Mary can hold God's Word strong in her heart, that she would believe and have faith in her own pregnancy. It's God's way of saying to Mary, "I'm right here with you. I've got you. Don't worry. I've got things under control." And we also know that John was born first, and so she could see that whole miracle through its entirety, and again, be a source of encouragement, empowerment, and peace, as Jesus will soon be born. So what does this second miracle mean? Well, it conveys that sometimes we need help. Sometimes we need some encouragement and some evidence that God is at work, and God knows that. He sees that, and He meets us where we're at. At the same time, this miracle also shows that God is not holding back from doing whatever is necessary for the the birth of the Messiah. God's pulling out all the stops to make it happen. Even these references to the Old Testament, and keep in mind that would have been a huge boost to their faith, God is doing everything to make sure that Jesus comes into this world and the purpose, the plan of salvation is going to come to fruition.

All right, the third miracle is one that truly foreshadows greatness and God's redemptive plan. It's going to bring everything together. And this one actually happens after Jesus is born. If you're in your Bibles, we're going to be flipping over to Matthew 2. But I'll just kind of summarize where we're at. You guys have heard of the three wise men or the three magi? Well, they've come from the east. God is doing his own work over there and brought these three wise men to go visit Jesus. And along their way, they come to Herod, the king of that area, and they say, "Hey, Herod, we're on our way to see the new king of Israel, the new king of the Jews." And he's like, "Uh, what? I am the king of the Jews. This is news to me." And he does not like this. He's threatened. But he plays it coy, and he's like, "Oh, yes, you as well? Well, let me know if you find him so I can also go and worship him." He's lying. He doesn't want to worship Jesus. And so the magi go and they follow the star, but they're warned to not return the same way. God's intervening, God's protecting Jesus, and He's guiding the wise men's path. And so they go to Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus, and they deliver their three gifts. Do we know their three gifts, by the way? Yes, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Good. And then they leave, and they go a different route.

And the angel comes to Joseph and gives him a message. And so I'm going to read from Chapter 2, starting in verse 13, "When they had gone," that's the wise man, "an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. 'Get up,' he said, 'take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for King Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.' So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night, and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet, 'Out of Egypt I called my son. When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious and gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem in its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time that he learned from the Magi. If that rings familiar, then hold on to that thought. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled. A voice is heard in Rama weeping in great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because they are no more. After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in the dreams of Joseph in Egypt and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who are trying to take the child's life are dead." Herod, again fearing for his reign, commits an awful atrocity by commanding that the newborn babies, two years old and younger, be killed. And as much mourning as that takes, there's also a miracle in this.

God intervenes outside of human possibilities, God sends a messenger via angel to Joseph, telling him to take his family and baby Jesus and to flee to Egypt. Now, if you know your Bible, and this part sounds a little familiar, and you're thinking, "Where have I heard a ruler trying to kill baby boys two years old and younger, and you got to Moses, then I'm proud of you. Good job." And if you don't know your Bible, that's okay. Let me tell you again How amazing our God is that he would do this so purposefully. Again, for Mary and Joseph, this would be very much on their mind. These are all, when he does this, when we come across this from the stories, this is purposeful by God. This is God trying to say to us as readers and also to the characters at that time, to the people at that time, "Hey, I'm up to something. If this sounds familiar, it's because I am doing something great that maybe I've done before in a similar vein." He's trying to give them a heads up. He's trying to give them encouragement, some foreshadowing. So again, Egypt, Pharaoh, Moses, this was the same similar situation that Pharaoh, when Israelites were in captivity in Egypt, Pharaoh, fearing of what could happen in the future, orders baby boys to be killed, and miraculously Moses is saved in the basket. We all know that story in the basket in the Nile and is rescued. And Moses would grow up to become the leader of Israel, bringing salvation to them by delivering them from slavery in Egypt by the power of God. And Moses would become their first, Israel's first prophet and priest. Well, in our passage today, under similar circumstances, Jesus is being saved from certain death, and he's going to bring salvation to the world, from people's slavery to sin, and he's going to be our perfect prophet, priest, and king.

So, I love this. I love when God does this. I love when the Bible makes this apparent to us that God is up to something big. What's the significance of this miracle? Well, God was telling them, "I am at work right now. I'm doing something amazing. This is crucial to my plan, to my people, to the world. And even as we read this today, a couple thousand years later, from when this all happened, we can still be reminded that God is the bringer of salvation. His heart is to save what is lost, to redeem what is broken, and to bring life and true freedom where sins' bonds are tight. The miracle of Jesus being saved from death affirms that nothing is going to stop God's plan of salvation. Absolutely nothing. And so we have these three miracles, and these miracles help us see that the birth of Jesus is the most central point of all of history. The birth of our Savior is the most important birth of all time, because the birth of this Messiah, God's plan of salvation, was being carried out through this child. Jesus' birth is absolutely a miracle, and it's surrounded by other miracles. Even though the situations for these people seem dire, improbable, or impossible, we see that God is in control. He cares and He provides for them, looking out for them. And church, I know you know this, but He does the same for us today.

And so I want us to know some messages for us from the miracles of the manger. I want to ask you some questions as you reflect on these miracles. The first one is this. What impossible situation do you need God to show up in this Christmas season? For Mary, it was having a child as a virgin. For Elizabeth and Zachariah, it was having a child in their old age. And then for Mary and Joseph and for the baby, it was being saved from having Jesus be killed as a baby boy. What situation are you in where you desperately need God to show up and and intervene in your life. You know, as happy as the holidays can be, they're honestly, they can be a mixed bag of emotions and situations. And, you know, we could be missing loved ones. We can be reminded of deep hurts and wounds that we have in our hearts. Finances can be tight and maybe we don't get to celebrate in the way that we want to, or give in the way that we want to. As happy as this time is, it's also true that the enemy doesn't take a break at Christmas. You may have areas in your life that you're facing challenges that are even getting harder as we speak in this time of year.

So where can God be at work in your life? The miracle of the manger helps us to recognize our need for God's intervention. We need to ask God for help. So I encourage you in this time, with whatever's coming to mind, whatever situation or person the Spirit is putting on your heart right now, to cry out for God and ask for a miracle. Ask for God to intervene. Maybe you've tried all the human ways to fix the issue or to address whatever's going on, and now, God, in your own way, in a way that is beyond normal means, please intervene. Pray that prayer this week.

Second question, what is God trying to draw your attention to? We saw in our passages how God was cluing people in to the work that he is doing. Elizabeth and Zechariah experiencing a similar situation to Abraham and Sarah, Mary and Joseph and Jesus going through a similar experience to Moses in the Old Testament. And these were all God's way of saying, I'm up to something, I'm here, I'm present, I'm working. So what might God be trying to get you to see that He's doing? The miracles of the manger help us to expect God to show up. All these signs are that there's something big happening, God is on the move. So I want to say to you, don't miss God trying to get your attention. Is it through, is He trying to get your attention through relationships, people close to you that have influence over you, and they're saying something to you? Maybe God is speaking through them. Or maybe it's through circumstances that something is lining up, or the way that things are happening in your life, it seems that maybe God is pulling you in a certain direction. Or maybe it's in the silence, it's in the quiet, it's through the lack of all those things that God is trying to speak to you, trying to get a hold of your heart. Whatever it is, expect God to show up. Expect God to be at work in your life. You may not know all the details, you may not know how he's going to do it beyond the next step in front of you. You may not even know that. But you can still expect God to be at work, to be present and engaged in your life.

And the third and final question, what are you expecting of God? What are you expecting of God? Praying for miracles, we can all, I'm guilty of this, we can often think of something glamorous or over-the-top, amazing. "God, if you could just answer my needs in this amazing way." But God, it's not that God can't do that or doesn't do that, but look at the story of the manger. When Mary and Joseph didn't have a place to go, did he send them to a five-star hotel or the most amazing birthing center in Bethlehem? He was like, "Don't worry, I got you. This doula was off, and so she's perfect for you." No. They were in a stable and Jesus was put in a manger, a feeding trough, right? Like, we have, we can, we tend to have expectations. But just because God chooses to intervene doesn't mean it's going to be exactly what we expect. It's not going to be necessarily the nicest or prettiest or most expensive thing, but will it help us? Yes. If God is sending it, then yes, it'll help us. Will it point to us to God? Yes. Will it provide for our needs? Absolutely. So, check your heart and your expectations of what you expect of God. The miracle of the manger helps us to accept God's provision, whatever it may look like. If it means fleeing certain death, then we have to run. If it means not being able to talk for 10 months, but then getting to celebrate a new baby boy, then we'd be silent. And if it means doing whatever is necessary, that may not be desirable, but it's what God's calling you to do, then we do it out of obedience and thankfulness. So accept God's provision, whatever it may look like. I'll ask the worship man to come back up right now. I want to close with this. I hope this week that you are encouraged in in this Christmas season, that when you think of Jesus, when you think of the manger, that you're reminded that it can be a season of miracles, of God intervening in your life, in a way that's outside of human possibility, of human means, all with the purpose of drawing you closer to Him. And let us remember this, that the greatest miracle is Jesus' birth, and that it also brought the greatest gift. That's the gift of salvation, which we'll talk about more coming weeks. But if you want to talk more, I want to put this out there too, if you want to talk more about this miracle, the miracles of the manger, or the fact that Jesus brings salvation, we'd love to do that with you. And so if you want to talk to myself or Pastor Lauren or Pastor Chris, please come see us afterwards or email us throughout the week. We'd love to answer these questions during this Christmas season. So this week, let's have joy and peace in our hearts as we keep our hearts and minds on Jesus.

Would you guys pray with me? God, thank you again for sending your son in the most miraculous way to the Virgin Mary and for all the other miracles that happened during that time to encourage Mary and Joseph to save them, to save Jesus. God, we see as we read these stories, we see that you are so clearly at work in ways that aren't always recognized at the time. And so we take that today and pray that that be true too, that even though we may not see it, God, we want to trust that you are at work, that your fingerprints are all over our lives. And God, we pray for miracles. There are things that are on people's hearts right now where they are desperate, that they see no other possibility beyond your intervention. And so we pray in your perfect way, however glamorous or unseen it is, that you would intervene, that you would be at work in each of our hearts and in our lives. And God, we pray that someday that you would make that appearance to us so that we could give you all the praise for what you're doing. We're so excited to worship you with everything that we have. So we pray this in your name. Amen.

The Message of the Manger: Part 1

The Mystery of the Manger

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Yes! Let's go! - So Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year. So glad you guys are here. Welcome. Thank you everybody who's joining us online. I know we got a lot of people out that are sick and we love you, but we love you from afar. We don't want that sickness here, amen. But we pray that you restore health and get back to 100%, be back here as soon as you can. We miss you. We're not the same without you. So we are this morning gonna kick off our Christmas sermon series. And this year we're going a little different. I know we're not technically taking the traditional Advent route, but don't worry. This Advent will come back, we promise. But we wanna do something a little bit different this year. Pastor Andre and Ari had taken some time earlier in the year and really prayed through kind of, what does God wanna share with our church family this Christmas? What does God wanna teach us this Christmas season? And the more we talked about it, the more we focused in on what Christmas is about, we just kept getting drawn back to the manger and get back to this place where Christ first came that first ever Christmas and was placed and laid in that manger. And that changed the trajectory of the world. And Christmastime is awesome. There's so much excitement and joy and fun that happens at Christmas, whether it's presents on Christmas morning, and maybe it's a favorite food that you cook or bake only at Christmas time, or maybe it's a family tradition that you have wrapped around Christmas that you only do during that Christmas season. And I love those. And they can be so much fun and excitement in that with lights and music and food. But it's important for us to even in the midst of all of that, to still celebrate when Jesus came, what that meant for the savior of the world in Jesus Christ. And I think for us, unfortunately, we live in a world where there's really two polarizing opposites when it comes to Christmas, right? Either you have on one side, maybe it's all about just the stuff. And you don't necessarily hear about Jesus. You hear about the North Pole, you hear about Santa, snowmen, elves, reindeer, you fill in the blank and they miss Jesus. And sometimes on the other side, for those of us who have been in the church, it seems like forever, we hear the story of Christmas and go, "Oh yeah, I remember Christmas. The wise men and the shepherds and the manger scene and the donkey and Mary and Joseph and everybody else, the angels. Yeah, I remember Christmas.

But I think even there it gets lost because we forget truly what Christmas is about. And this awe and this majesty, this mystery that we're gonna talk about this morning that comes with the manger. And I want to encourage you this year, that as you walk through Christmas, now through the next 30 days until Christmas morning, that you might have fresh eyes. You might have a renewed perspective, a renewed outlook maybe on what Christmas is about. That in the message of the manger, there's mystery, there's miracle, there's majesty, there's Messiah. And as we look at the manger scene and baby Jesus that was wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in the manger, that in that very moment, the world changed. Let us not forget that, that when we look at that baby in the manger, we look at the savior of the world. So we're gonna be in John chapter one this morning, and we're gonna go deep today. We're jumping into some deep, deep theology. So I want you guys buckle up. It's gonna be some heavy stuff. I actually took a course, a class in college. It was all about Christology, which is just the study of Christ. I've never had a class in my life hurt my head so much. The book that was involved in this class was one of the thickest books I've ever owned in my life. And I remember times sitting in my dorm room reading this and I would just have to stop and I would literally start to have a headache because these theologians and these people that had giant IQs, way smarter than myself, would take paragraphs upon paragraphs upon pages upon pages to just take one little sliver of who Christ was and try to explain it in normal people terms. And you still couldn't fully understand. It was just like, oh my gosh. So this morning, if you walk away and going, I don't even know what Pastor Chris said today. Hey, you're in common company. I don't know what I'm saying today either. So it's all right. And if you walk out of here going, that makes sense. I understand it all, you're preaching next week. So you come and tell me.

No, but we're gonna start in John chapter one this morning And we're gonna start all the way at the beginning. It said, "In the beginning was the one who was called the Word. The Word was with God and was truly God. From the very beginning, the Word was with God. And with this Word, God created all things. Nothing was made without the Word. Everything that was created received its life from Him, and His life gave light to everyone. The Word became a human being and lived here with us. We saw his true glory, the glory of the only Son of the Father. From him, the complete gifts of undeserved grace and truth have come down to us. Jesus came that very first Christmas. And in that, John here starts his gospel account on talking about this Word. And this word translated, if you were to dive a little deep into this, is translated as logos. And that word in the Greek means basically God. This logos, this word, this God came. And that term, if you wanna write something down this morning, big term here would be incarnation. And the incarnation here is God becoming man, fully God still, and yet at the same time, fully man. And we at Christmas time are invited by God to further understand this mystery. It's something that for centuries, the church has talked about and yet still doesn't fully understand. That's how big God is. I love that about God, that we can sit here and talk about it and try to understand it and to learn about who he is. And yet we still kind of fall short. 'Cause that's who God is. And we on our humanity are limited. And that this mystery is okay. Because this mystery pulls us in. It draws us in to see the miracle of Jesus. It pulls us in to point to his majesty of who God is and truly shouts that he is the Messiah. That's what this mystery does. And when we come into this place of seeing Jesus coming to earth, we're faced with this struggle of two. Of Jesus being fully the person of God, and yet fully a human. And so we struggle in this because sometimes we sit here and we try to wrap our minds around this thing and go like, okay, he's fully God, but he's fully human. He's fully human and he's fully God. How does all of this come together? And John here is pointing us in the direction of helping us to understand.

So let's unpack this a little bit here. Unpack this. It says in the beginning was the word. What is this beginning? Well, this beginning is actually even before time came into existence. This is pre Genesis 1, 1. This is time before when there really was no time when God was there. There was no world, there was no creation, there was no night, there was no day, there were no nothing out there and yet God existed. And at that time, all things were originally created. This logos was already in continuing existence. Clear as mud? This term here, I'm gonna have a four of these. I'm gonna call them the four essentials of Incarnational Christology. Okay, we're gonna have four of these this morning. The first of which is this, yes, good word. This first one is one eternal person, the logos, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit have always existed and will continue to always exist. And this is what John here is saying, "In the beginning was the Word." God has always been, will always be, and will forever always continue to be. That's how God is. John continues on, he said, "The Word was with God." The Logos was already in face-to-face relationship with God. They were close, tight relationship with one another. That's where God being there with the Logos, with the Son, with the Holy Spirit, all together have this incredible relationship that you and I get to have just tiny glimpses in our earthly relationships. This is where we say God is an incredible relational God. This is his nature, this is who he is. And we see that even before time began. And the word was God, John continues on. The Logos was already existing with the same characteristics of God itself. John talks about this, talking about the deity of the incarnate Christ in verse 18 of John that says this, "No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son who is himself God and is in closest relationship, remember, relationship with the Father, has made him known. Paul also talks about this in the words of, not Paul, John talks about this. When Jesus has died and he's risen again and he appears before the disciples and Thomas shows up, and Jesus says, "It's me." Thomas, come touch my side, touch my hands. I am here, I am risen. And Thomas literally says, my Lord, my God. These are the same words that are used in the original manuscripts that talk about Thomas at that moment going, Jesus, you are God. You're not some separate entity. You're not some lower thing. You are God. And there was a never a time when this word that John talks about that was separate from Jesus, they have always continued to exist. And then John says, the word became a human being. You might remember it as the word became flesh. And this is Jesus. That very first Christmas, the word became flesh. This logos changed his way of living to be fully conformed to concrete humanity, just like Adam and Eve. And this is what we call the incarnation. The word literally means in flesh. God entered the world as a human man, Jesus Christ. So that's Christ divinity. That's his God side.

And then we have Christ's humanity, his human side. And it says this in Philippians chapter two, who being in the very nature of God, do not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name. And at the name of Jesus, every niche about in heaven and on earth, under the earth and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to glory of the God, the father. So God himself emptied of him, his own plans, his own agenda, his own desires. I'd be curious to see how that conversation went in heaven. God walks over to Jesus and goes, "Hey, I got a plan." And Jesus goes, "Yeah, I know. "I gotta leave, don't I?" And God goes, "Yeah, it's gonna be tough, "but it's gonna be worth it." Finally, to the point, the plan of redemption, of salvation for the entire planet, is gonna happen and it's gonna be through you, Jesus. And Jesus empties himself. It says in verse six and seven, see this existence in the form of God that Jesus had is translated as morphe theo, a God form or a God being, a person. Is it an essence? Anybody drinks sparkling water? You have those cans where it's like the essence is like they just rub the fruit on the outside of the can and hope that something tastes like it. (congregation laughing) Or they had the giant batch of water and some guy with like a spray gun went, "Psst, psst, psst, all right, bottle that." You guys know what I'm talking about? This isn't what God here is, is with Jesus. This isn't just a man that has a little spritz of divinity over him. This is a whole divine lifestyle. one that is in lockstep with God. We just finished a series in Romans. I thought about getting them this morning. All right, turn your Bibles to Romans 1, one. It'd be like, oh, just kidding. But Romans, I gotta go back to Romans. It's just so good, right? The power of the gospel. Romans talks, Paul talks about this in chapter 12. He says, "Do not conform to the power of this worm, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what's God's will." His good, His perfect, His pleasing will. Jesus has a morpheiau with God. It is in lockstep with who God is. And so God then, He humbles Himself in Jesus and takes on the status of a human. But this isn't a thing where Jesus is now separated from God, if you're taking notes, our second point of our super deep theology, essentials of incarnation Christology, is God and Jesus has the same eternal deity as the Father. So when Jesus took on the form, as it says in there in the Greek, morphandalo, the form of a bondservant, Jesus did not walk away from his divinity. Jesus wasn't just a good guy here on earth who performed some tricks and pulled the great escape artists after his death on the cross. Jesus was and continues to be to this day, God. He takes on this form of a bond sermon Another way would be saying that Jesus then devoted to another, to the disregard of his own interests. Jesus took on the calling and accepted God's great salvation plan in him and became a servant to come here to earth, to go to the cross for you and for me so that our biggest problem in life, our sin problem would be put away with and our relationship with God could be once again restored with him. Amen. That's what we celebrate at Christmas. That is the mystery of the manger. And so Jesus takes on this human likeness, this homatoia, a forefront, and this brings on himself these physical traits of a human person. Jesus looked like an everyday ordinary dude in Israel in that day and age. I'm sorry to tell you, Jesus didn't have long blonde hair, wearing a white robe with the blue sash. If you grew up in church, you knew that flannel graph figurine. Jesus looked like a normal person in that day and age. You wouldn't have been able to go, "Oh, there's God." He looked like a regular guy. And yet what? He was God. He was God. Our third incarnational Christology point is Jesus then had the same temporal humanity as us. The same temporal humanity as you and me. And yet what? He was still God.

So how does that work? How does all of this work? How does all this come together? Well, these two natures are united in what we call Christ's fullness. These two natures are pulled together. A big term for this, you ready? Is hypostatic union. I told you you're getting some good stuff today. A hypostatic union. This is the union of Christ's human nature and divine nature. See, they don't just merely coexist and take turns leading from time to time, nor are they blended together to create a third nature. The human and divine are united as one. Jesus had one fully divine nature and fully human nature. They were not mixed and they didn't create something new. Instead, they coexisted in perfect unity while retraining full attributes of both. This is important, okay? This is super important because the reality here is remember that Jesus' human nature was not a fallen human nature. That's where this born of a virgin Mary comes into play here is that Jesus comes through a sinless line. He was free from sin. He was free from any corruption. And yet he lived as a human with divine nature. There was no transfer of one to the other. So if we were to say it like this, another way would be the divine, if you were to take divine godly deity attributes and put them onto a human, the human would cease to exist, right? And if you were to take a human and to give it character and nature of God to make it a God-like figure, it would cease to be a human. God brings this mystery of this unity together to where God walks this line that no other human has ever walked. Perfect, blameless, full step of God's will. of God's will and yet not losing his divine character. The scriptures teach us that the human nature of Christ remained in its integrity after the incarnation and that the divine nature remain divine. Our fourth point of incarnational Christology would be full unity of the person of Jesus. a perfect harmonious being, fully God and fully human. And this union was incredibly personal. Again, reflecting this nature of God, incredibly relational. God, Jesus did not have a split personality. Some might say he had split personality disorder. That was not who Jesus was. It wasn't like when miracle time happened, The God side took over and da, da, da, da, da, da, da, bread and fish, water into wine. But then when Jesus was hungry, which says in scripture, when he was tired, when he was worn out from travel and being with people, it wasn't like the God side went away and he never experienced some of our physical struggles that you and I face every single day. He was still God, even in those moments and yet remain blameless. The two natures didn't take times being in control over him. He was one whole person with two natures that were perfectly united with him.

I love this quote from Dr. Jerry Bercheres. Maybe this will help bring some understanding here to this. He says, "The Logos, the second person of the Trinity, who was fully equal with God in every way, emptied himself of the divine role and lifestyles and prerogatives, I'll get there, and took a fully human nature, living as a perfectly spirit-filled human, submitting himself to the will of the Father and the leading of the Holy Spirit in order to reveal the Father, redeem the world, and become the Messianic King.”

This is the of the incarnation. This is the purpose of Jesus coming that very first Christmas, to be laid as a babe in the manger, to redeem, to reveal the Father, to reconcile the world, and to become our Messianic King. So all of this to say, we could take weeks and talk about this. You just got the speed version. But all of this to say, as we look at the manger, I don't want you to get frustrated and go, I don't understand this God. I don't understand how this perfect union coming together fully God, fully man, born without sin, born as a baby, not as a human coming together. I don't want us to get frustrated with that, but rather might we stand back and marvel at this mystery. To stand back and to look and to hear this message of the manger that even from the beginning, when the heavens and the earth were not even created before time even existed, when there was nothing but God, the Word, the Logos, existed and it was there. And the Word came to us and made flesh and dwelled among us. This isn't some fairytale that we tell every Christmas. Jesus, God, deity, walked among us humans on earth, as a servant, to love us, to show us there's a better life to live, to show us that this feeble, fragile thing that we think we know as love isn't really true love, but a fraction of the real thing that God wants us to experience, that fake peace that the world tries to sell us isn't true peace, that fake hope isn't the true hope that we have in the cross. And that grace and mercy that we might try to share with each other isn't the full picture of what God desires for our lives. And that this message from the manger is a mystery. Pastor Andre and I have studied this for a long time and we still don't fully get it. But that makes us step back and go, "God, you are incredible." That you somehow fixed a problem that we didn't know we had and yet you figured it all out to the tiniest detail. And you did it through a baby in a manger? That's incredible. And that God took on flesh and he dwelled among us. We'll invite our worship team up. We're gonna close in the song this morning. But as we think about Christmas this season, we think about the manger and the baby. Don't get caught up in this mystery, but to remember what God did, that the Word became flesh, the Word was God, and the Word dwelled among us. It's not something we can fully understand. I feel there's days when I wake up and I understand it a little bit, and then the next day I can wake up and go, I have no clue what happened. (laughs) But let's marvel in that this Christmas. So when you look at a manger scene, you look at a manger, you see those throughout the season, these next 30 days, let's marvel at this mystery. Let's marvel at this idea of how God came that very first Christmas and changed the trajectory of the world. And let that grow our faith. and let that flow over us and consume our heart with this beautiful picture of what God did.

Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you. Jesus, to come in the way you did that very first Christmas. God, we are so grateful of how you gave up your rightful place on the throne in heaven and came and took on flesh and dwelled among us, God. May we revel in that mystery this Christmas season to hear the message of the manger with a new perspective this year, that Jesus, you would be reminded us of your Messiah person that you are. God, don't let us get caught up in the hustle and the bustle of Christmas, but to focus back on what you did that very first Christmas. We thank you, Jesus, we love you. In your name, we can only pray this. Everybody said, amen.

Thanksgiving: The Power of Gratitude

Thanksgiving: The Power of Gratitude & Baptisms

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

I've told this joke before, but I'm gonna jump in and say it again. I think I need to share it this morning. It was Johnny's first Thanksgiving that he felt old enough to be able to want to pray before the meal. And so the family all gathered around, he got ready to pray and he asked mom and dad, he said, "Hey, can I pray for the meal?" And he said, "Sure, sure, Johnny, go ahead and say the prayer." And so he starts thinking Jesus for his friends and for his family and for the turkey and the mashed potatoes and the mac and cheese and all the stuffing and the pies and the desserts and everything. And he gets to the end and he kind of pauses. And you're in that mall where you're like, "Is Johnny still here? Did he leave?" It's like that awkward pause. And then he turns to his mom and says, "Mom, if I thank God for the green bean casserole, do you think God will know that I'm lying?”

We love Thanksgiving around here at Spring Valley. It's one of our favorite times of the year. And this year we just like supercharge it with baptisms. And it's gonna be a great Sunday. I'm not gonna talk long 'cause I know everybody can smell the food. Everybody's hungry. Everybody's excited to see the Jesus jacuzzi get used and to get going here today. And so Thanksgiving is this amazing time. And I love it because I think God specifically created it for us to pause before the holidays. For us to take this moment, and I already have neighbors that got decorations up, it's decorations I feel like have been in the stores since like 4th of July. Like I think 4th of July got passed up with Christmas decorations this year. Like it is crazy. But Thanksgiving is this moment for us to pause. Before the chaos of parties, before the chaos of presence, before the chaos of family drama, Oh, before the chaos of life that is the holidays, Thanksgiving just sits here and it causes us to pause.

And I got a couple of things I wanna share this morning on gratitude and honestly, the power of gratitude. Gratitude is actually one of the most healthy emotions we can experience. There is so much scientific study on the physical effects of being grateful. the physical effects that honestly nothing is better for our health than gratitude. Studies have shown that almost 90% of all doctors visits are linked to stress and gratitude is a stress buster. Gratitude causes us to pause in a moment and to reflect on what's really happening in our lives. Not what we think is happening, not this perspective we've put together in our own minds, but for us to truly pause and to look at the world around us and to see how amazingly blessed that we are. Even if we might feel like we aren't as blessed as the neighbors or the other person down the street or someone else that we know in our life, we are still blessed, right? We are so, so blessed here in our life. And gratitude is actually even linked to being an immune booster. Studies have shown that people who are grateful on a regular basis had a higher number of blood cells to help protect their immune system. That those who were recovering from surgery or fighting a disease or a sickness, they actually had better outcomes when they had a heart of gratitude. Gratitude actually rewires our brains. Studies have shown this where they've literally hooked up all like that cap with all the wires and the gizmos and the gadgets, and had people think on things that they were grateful for. And they literally saw the brain being rewired down to the molecular level, the neurons, and things actually changed our physical brain when being grateful. That's pretty powerful. And I don't think that's a coincidence. I think God created that for us and this way that our brain works better and our life is better and we're healthier and we have a greater perspective and all of this is brought together through the power of gratitude. It's pretty amazing. Self-help author and addictions behavior writer, Melody Beattie says, "Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life." I don't find it a coincidence that the Bible talks over 200 times on thankfulness, being thankful, gratitude, and having a mind of thanksgiving. It is throughout scripture from the moment you open your Bible in Genesis, all the way through the end of Revelation. There is gratitude all throughout scripture. And I wanna run through four key verses today that talk on gratitude and how the power of gratitude actually changes who we are.

Philippians 4,:4-7 says, "Rejoice in the Lord always, I will say it again, rejoice. Let your gentleness be evident to all, the Lord is dear. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation by prayer, petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understandings will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." I love this word, guard. The Greek here actually for guard is, how do we say it? Through AO. And it's actually translated as protect by a military guard to either prevent hostile invasion or to keep the inhabitants of a besieged city from flight. When I think of that, I think of the top of the top. Whether that's the secret service, whether that's a Navy seal, maybe that's the Green Beret, I think of this elite military force bringing protection. And this is what Thanksgiving does to us. Thanksgiving guards our hearts and our minds in Christ. But that's external. What about the internal? Is there still protection? Is there still a guarding of our heart internally? I was reading a book recently, I haven't finished it, so if the book ends bad, I'll let you guys know. But this book is by John Eldredge, He's a great Christian author. And the book is about getting your life back. And there's this book that it talks about all the things in life that are clamoring at our attention, that are trying to take our lives away from us. And I'm going through the book and it's really good. They're like all this external stuff. I'm like, oh man, yeah, I need to work on that. We're gonna fix that, I gotta figure that out. And then he goes, you're not gonna like this next chapter. And I was like, what? He goes, "The greatest enemy we have "of anything in our life is ourselves." And he shifts into this chapter that's all about the self. And he goes on and he says this, and this hit me like a ton of bricks. The self is the greatest enemy of our own gratitude or thankfulness in our hearts and our minds. The enemy has a secret hold on each of us. an access point from within. The devil doesn't particularly care what your personal sins are or what gets you to stumble or how you fail in life. What the enemy delights in is his unfettered internal access that he has through ourself. Whoa. I think one of the greatest enemies to our gratitude is ourself.

I hear so many people will say, "Well, pastor, you don't know what they did to me. You don't know what happened there with all this other stuff. You don't know what went down in my life." You're right, I don't. And we can't control that, can we? No, there's no way we can control that. But what we can control is who? Ourselves. We can control ourselves. we can control how we respond in our choices. We can control how we respond to those moments. Will it be one with gratitude or without? And if scripture is true, which we believe that it is, it says that God will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus with gratitude. So it's for us, as we're walking around this world with a real enemy that is out to try to get us, not just a cartoon or a figment of our imagination, but an enemy that wants us to forget our blessings, to forget our forgiveness, to forget the financial gifts we've been given, to forget the food that is on our table, to forget the freedoms we have in life, to forget the blessings of the family that we have and wants us to focus on what we do not have. That's how he gets at us. We have to keep our attention on Christ and to keep ourself in check. Because if not, we'll get caught in the spiraling cycle of envy that only causes pain and suffering. And when we get caught in this comparison game, it is just a dark, dark trap that strips any hope of gratitude in our lives away from us. But Christ Jesus guards us, protects us, has a special forces unit of angels for our lives with us 24/7 through the power of Jesus Christ.

The second thought on thankfulness is that it aligns our souls. First Thessalonians 5:16-18 says, "Always be joyful, always keep on praying. "No matter what happens, always be thankful. "For this is God's will for you "who belong to Christ Jesus." Have you ever been driving in a car at fast speeds that needs an alignment? You might be okay going through the neighborhood, 25, 35, down the road, 40 max, but you cross over that 65 mark and you can barely hang on for life, right? That's life for some of us right now. Life's coming at us so fast and you're just looking down the road going, here come the holidays. Oh, Lord Jesus. Thankfulness realigns our hearts and our minds in Christ. Thankfulness and gratitude is actually a spiritual language. It's the language of heaven. There's no complaining in heaven. There's no asking for stuff in heaven. There's no, well, I hope that this would work out this way. No, no, no. It's just worship and gratitude to Jesus and God on the throne, right? And so here on earth, God wants us to learn this language of heaven. So when we get up to heaven, we don't sound like a newbie walking and going, I don't know what this is all about. God wants to align us into His language, His culture, His life, His world, and His eternal world through gratitude and thanksgiving. Some of us need an alignment in our lives. Some of us really need to get into alignment with who God is, not who the little God that we think we are in our own lives. Everything in life is trying to pull us in different directions at all times. Frustrations, struggles, horrible attitudes, things happening in life that we don't expect to ever happen to us are happening, and it is pulling us out of alignment with God, and gratitude puts us right back into the place where we're supposed to be.

Thankfulness understands that God redeems everything in our lives. This idea of redeeming, to make right, the original intent, original design and purpose. If you wanna hear anything this morning, I want you to hear this. Listen to me. God can redeem anything in your life right here, right now, today. I want you to hear that. 'Cause some of us have walked in here carrying some heavy burdens. We walked in with so many things on our shoulders that we are so tired and worn out, and we're thinking, I don't even know how I'm gonna make it through the holidays. And I want you to know that God is ready to step into your life and redeem that for his glory. We're gonna hear some stories today of redemption and God's glory in some of our lives and our family today through baptism. It's gonna be amazing. But I love what it says in Isaiah 51. It says, "The Lord will surely comfort Zion "and will look with compassion on all her ruins. "He will make her deserts like Eden, like the garden, "her wastelands like the garden of the Lord. "Joy and gladness will be found in her thanksgiving "and the sound of singing." Another translation of the original Hebrew puts it like this, it says, "Likewise, I, God, will comfort Zion, "comfort all of her mounds of ruins, "all transform her dead ground into Eden, "her moonscape into the garden of God, "a place filled with exuberance and laughter, thankful voices and melodic songs. Some of us got dry places in our lives, right? Some of us got some dry, dry places in our lives and we're walking around, we feel like we're just lost in the desert.

But God wants to restore that. He wants to redeem it. He doesn't wanna just like bring back some greenery here and there. He wants to turn that desert into like a greenhouse with all the beautiful flowers and the succulents and the trees and everything amazing that comes along with that. God wants to redeem that in your life. Where are you dry? Where are the waste places in your life? Maybe it's school, maybe it's work, it's relationships, it's a spouse. These are often filled with struggles and suffering and burdens. But what if God would bring redemption to all those dry areas in your life? What would your life look like? Look different, wouldn't it? It would look completely different than it does right now. And this transformation that wants to take place, God wants to redeem our lives. He wants to turn our struggles into an opportunity for His glory. He wants to transform our weakness into moments for His strength. He wants to change our failures into spaces for his triumph. He wants to overcome our battles into spaces for his victory. That's what God wants to do in your life. We create opportunities for him to be glorified and to redeem everything in our lives. 'Cause I feel like we're the ones that hold God back.

One final thought if you're taking notes this morning, thankfulness reveals Jesus everywhere. Psalm 69:30, I love this verse. “I will promise God's name in song and glorify Him with thanksgiving.” Another translation says this, “Let me shout God's name with a praising song. Let me shout God's name with a praising song. Let me tell his greatness in a prayer of thanks.” Or maybe this way, “I will praise the name of God with a song and I will magnify him with thanksgiving." I love that image of magnification. This idea of taking something that might be small or might be minuscule or maybe less significant than we think and just blowing it up. Really, really expanding that in our lives. This idea of magnify to enlarge, to boost, enhance, maximize, increase, augment, extend, expand, amplify, intensify, blow up. It is impossible to make God any bigger. Let me say that right here, right now, okay? It is impossible to make God any bigger than He is. However, it is so easy that every day we forget how big God is. 'Cause what happens? This big, big God starts shrinking down when our problems start getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, right? It's the scale. As our problems get bigger, God gets smaller. God wants to go the other way with it. God wants to take these big, big problems and smash them back down to their proper right size. That is probably mostly minuscule, if we're gonna be honest here, right? He wants to smash those down because he wants to get bigger. He wants to get bigger in our lives to a place where we go, man, I didn't think God could get that big. And God's like, you ain't seen nothing yet, man. That's what he wants to do. And the gratitude in that is like the supercharger of that.

Supercharger, it makes me think of Tesla. I saw a Cybertruck on the road the other day. It was kind of cool. Elon Musk, his new Cybertruck thing, it looks like a floating tank. It's so weird. But their superchargers that they have for these cars is phenomenal of how quickly they can recharge a battery. It's mind boggling. I feel like he somehow bent the laws of physics. That's what God wants to do in our lives. He wants to take what we think who God is in our lives and bend those laws of physics to go, this is who I am. This is who I am and this is what I want to do in our life. He wants to take our distractions, our busyness, our life that happens and make it all itty bitty tiny, minuscule to where it just don't matter anymore that we completely even forget about it because all that we can see around us is God moving and transforming our lives. That's what he wants to do. And when we do that, we're left, but the only response is to worship. There's nothing else that you can do in that moment, except to turn our thankful hearts back to God in what I would call thanks singing. And you say, well pastor, you know, I just, I can't sing. I can't carry a tune in a bucket. That ain't no problem. God's got auto-tune as you sing. It fixes itself on the way up to heaven and it's just a beautiful sound. Amen. That's it. That's what it's about. God's got it fixed. That's not for us to worry about. It's for us just to praise Him. That's what we're supposed to focus in on. And when God minimizes these problems that are alive and He expands who He is, we have no other response, but to start singing a song and live a life of gratitude.

Do people hear the song of Jesus in your life? Do people hear you sing that song? Okay, you don't gotta be singing all the time. You can be, got some theatrical people in the room that love singing at all times. Exactly. “I'm doing the dishes” It's like, okay, just you're doing the dishes, just calm down. We don't need to sing about it, okay? But the idea of singing a song of gratitude in our life is our witness, is our testimony. You're gonna hear some testimonies this morning of what God has done in people's lives. And they here today want to tell you that Jesus is Lord and leader of their life, that God has saved them from their hurt and their pain and their sin and their lost struggles. And He has redeemed them. And He wants you to be the witness to that. He wants you, they want you today in front of God, in front of heaven to share what God has done in their lives. But for those of us who aren't getting baptized today, what does God want to redeem in your life? What does God want to restore? How does God want to realign your hearts and your minds in Thanksgiving today? How will you to survive these holidays tap into God's supercharger to keep our spiritual batteries of gratitude fully charged so we don't turn into that person every single holiday that we know. How will we do that? Will we begin to be filled up with the language of gratitude, with the power of gratitude, with the language of heaven, with thankfulness, how will God's power of gratitude be shared with those around us this holiday season? That's my challenge for you today. I wanna pray, I wanna invite the worship team up, and we're gonna move into our time of baptisms this morning.

Jesus, we thank you for today. God, we are so grateful. We are so thankful for who you are. God, for your power that came that very first Christmas that we're gonna celebrate starting next week, God. That ultimately led to a place on the cross where we were able to have this broken relationship with you that all hope seemed to be lost was restored through your son, Jesus Christ. God, we're gonna hear these stories of what you've done in people's lives today, God, and we worship with gratitude with them. We worship with thankfulness. We worship with just this outpouring of praise, God, for what you did in their lives, reminding you what you've done in our lives, reminding us of this amplification, this magnification of gratitude that needs to happen through each and every one of our lives. Because if we don't share God, who will? So Jesus, we're so looking forward to this moment and this time. God, we praise you, we worship you, we thank you for who you are. Everybody said. Amen.

Romans - Part 24

The Final Chapter - Romans 16:1-27

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Sermon Transcript

Do you guys remember a time in your life when you finished some sort of project or maybe a season of life? So maybe it was school or that's your undergrad or graduate and that just came to an end or maybe it's some project at home, a renovation of sorts, but you just, there's the end of a culmination of time, energy and effort and you can look back and be like, man, that was good. I put all that work into it and now it's over. And I'm very thankful. Do you guys have anything in life that you can think of and draw upon? Well, I think that's us in Romans today. We're tying it up. We're in the last chapter, and I just love that we'll be able to look back in this year of church life and say, "Man, we went through all of Romans, and that is no small feat." And so I just want to congratulate all of us together. Pastors and us, we all did it. In about half hour, we'll have done it.

This series in Romans was Paul's fullest explanation of the Gospel. We learned the good news all about Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. We went verse by verse, chapter by chapter, to unpack the layers of Paul's words as he wrote about who Jesus is, his death, resurrection, and life, and his ultimate sacrifice to us, And also about how Jesus' life was so, and who he is, was so life-giving to all of us believers. And so through this series also we've better understood our humanity's state of sin, and because of that state of sin, how we so desperately are in need of a Savior. And today we're wrapping it all up by ending by seeing evidence of the power of the gospel. Paul's gonna end just kind of laying this out of saying, "Given all of this, all this better, this is evidence of what this can look like, what this life looks like. So we want to start by going and reading, you guys can follow along on the screen or there's Bibles in seats in front of you, chapter 16, starting in verse 1, it says, "I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae. I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me." Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my co-workers in Christ Jesus, they risked our lives for me. Not only I, but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them. Greet also the church that meets at their house. Greet my dear friend Epenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in the province of Asia. Greet Mary, who worked very hard for you. Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been imprisoned with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was. Greet Ampliatus, my friend in the Lord. Great Urbanus, our coworker in Christ, and my dear friend, Stachys. Great Apellis, whose fidelity to the Lord has stood the test. Great those who belong to the house of Aristobulus. Great Herodon, my fellow Jew. Great those in the household of Narcissus who are in the Lord. Great Tryphina and Tryphosa, those women who work hard in the Lord. Great my friend, Persis, another woman who has worked very hard in the Lord. Greet Rufus, chosen the Lord and his mother, who was a mother to meet you. Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, and the other brothers and sisters with him. Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus, and her brother, or her sister, his sister, Olympua, and all the Lord's people with them. Greet one another with a holy kiss.

That was a gauntlet of names. A little trick. Don't stop, just keep going. Confidence, right? Just confidence. Just confidence. You just walk right through everybody. No, it's great. I love this part of the chapter in Romans. And so this book in Romans actually is like an extra part that might not have been always distributed with the letter to all of the churches. This was a very personal part of a section of this book in Romans, Romans, because Paul here is mentioning some incredible people in the church in Rome, and he's telling them this list of people who are gospel people. This whole series has been on the power of the gospel and how that changes who we are. It affects our everyday lives. It changes what we do on a daily basis, and it changes us down to our deepest level. And Paul here is wanting to end this to go, this is you, church. This is you, church in Rome. You are these people. Remember what he said back in chapter 15, verses 14? He said, "I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another." Paul knows this church in Rome is an incredible, special group of people. And Paul here takes time out of his travels and his scribing and his writing to go, "I want to make sure I let them know how amazing they are.”

Some of these people, we really don't know what they did. Some had huge jobs, some might have just been cleaning toilets. But Paul wanted them to remember that we all have a part in the role and the body. Paul talked about this in chapter 12. He says, "Remind us to not think higher than ourselves that we all have a function in the church. We're a key component, we're a key member in God's family and we all have different gifts. Some of us serving, some of us teaching, encouraging extreme generosity, leading, showing mercy. Paul here is making sure that the church in Rome and those key people don't forget their roles. You and I have a specific role in this church Spring Valley family. God has brought you here through, some of you I've heard your stories through miraculous moments, to be in this place for a purpose. And it's for each of us to fill our role and to use the gifts and talents, abilities, the way we've been created in Him for a specific purpose. And Paul here is making sure that they understand the same and without it the church cannot function. Pastor Andre is amazing. But he can't do everything. He can't do it all. He tries. Actually, that's probably me. I overreach my boundaries a lot of times. But we all have a function and a role, and when we don't do that, we're missing pieces. We don't have the full, beautiful picture that God has for us.

Paul mentions specifically people by name with their gospel impact. Priscilla and Aquila, we don't know much about them, but they risk their lies for the gospel. That's like, they put it all out there. But then there's also Urbanus, Apelles, Herodion, Rufus, and I find it extremely awesome that Paul here mentions a handful of women. In that culture, that day and age, women were just to do whatever. They weren't regarded as anything special or something amazing, which is unfortunate, but Paul here sees the greater picture, right? He talks about them. And some of them have some incredible things behind them. Mary, who worked very hard for you. I can see Mary, this one that's just going around the church. Like anything that needs to be done, Mary's on it. It may not be pretty. It may not be in front of people. It'll probably be behind the scenes that no one will ever see, but Paul knew about it because he understood what it took to lead and grow a church. Tryphena, Tryphosa, these women who work hard in the Lord. Perseus, another woman who works very hard in the Lord. I'm finding a trend here that the women are working hard. What are the dudes doing? Like Rufus, bro, get off your butt, man. Mary's running around. Do something, bro. No, but seriously, these ladies are showing up. They're putting in the effort. And again, we don't know what they did, but what's amazing is that we know that they are giving everything they have for the church and that's awesome. What a legacy.

We see so many characteristics in this short section of verses of what it means to live and be in the church, to be present, be willing, be caring, to love one another with total disregard for self. The way Jesus loved, right? And because of this, the gospel spreads. And we all probably have people through this church we know have come and gone and we've heard stories. But these stories at this moment haven't stopped here in Rome. They've traveled all the way to where Paul is. He is hearing these stories of these people in this church and he is rejoicing with them. And because of their hard work, their commitment, their persistence, their Their legacy echoes through the halls of history here in Romans as church after church, Christian after Christian reads these names. They will never be forgotten for their care for the church and their commitment to the gospel. That's legacy if I've ever heard it. That is incredible. And church, I want to encourage us. May we be like these people. May we be gospel people that, like the church in Rome, like the comparisons of Paul in this letter that we see, that his heart is so appreciative. Pastor Andre found this incredible nugget that if you were to add up all of these people's legacy and time in the church, it is over 25 years of service, just right here in these verses. How amazing is that? Can we be people of the gospel that partner with God, work with the Spirit, and shows the power of the gospel in community.

Yeah, so he's in his first 16 verses, he's turned his attention to the people of Rome and said, "Thank you for your service. We're partners together." And he also wants them to have a rich history that it started now. There's 25 years of evidence of the gospel, but he wants it to continue. And he knows what they need. He knows that they need to prioritize the gospel in order for that to happen. So let's go ahead and read the next part of our verse starting or chapter starting in verse 17. It says, "I urge you brothers and sisters to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. For such people are not serving our Lord Christ but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people. Everyone has heard about your obedience so I rejoice because of you. "But I want you to be wise about what is good "and innocent about what is evil. "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. "The grace of your Lord Jesus be with you." Do you remember the focus of our first 11 chapters? They were just, they're very dense, and it was all about the truth. Paul was kind of laying out argument after argument about what the gospel is about, going back explaining the Old Testament, unpacking that to make sense in light of the person of Jesus, the Messiah. And it was just, this is the truth, over and over and over again. Before he got to the practical application of the letter, he said, "I want you to know what the gospel is. I want you to know it inside and out." He wanted that to happen because he knew that division amongst the church is possible over what is the gospel. So he says, "I want you to know it. I want you to know it. I don't want you to be divided. I also don't want you to trip up over false gospels. I don't want you to be distracted by what you think may be the gospel, but really isn’t.

Pastor Chris and I were talking this week and he brought up this great point about how the early church had, when it was functioning as it should, being all about the gospel, loving each other. It's a body of people that has this gravitational pull. It draws people in. When people see a church being a church the way we should be, people are attracted to that. They want to be a part of a group of people loving each other, sacrificing for each other, caring for each other, all focused on the love of Jesus. But that can bring in some different types of people. And some people may not understand the gospel, right? They may not understand it. And there's a difference too. When someone comes in who doesn't understand the gospel, sometimes they just don't understand, but they generally want to. And so over time, you see that their heart is learning and they're trying to understand who Jesus is, what this life is about, it also can bring in people who don't understand the Gospel and don't care to. And sadly, if you're in church long enough, you just come across these people who are contrary to the Gospel for whatever reason. There are people who maybe misunderstand it and they're just fixed on it. There's no room for learning in their minds or in their lives and they just say, "No, this is it," and it's wrong. They interpret Scripture in a wrong way or Or maybe they understand the gospel but they add to it. Kind of what Paul was trying to explain. You don't get to add to the gospel. It's not this and all this, this and this. It's simply that Jesus died for you, that he loves you, and you have to give your life over to him. You don't have to do a bunch of things after that. But some people have this misunderstanding of the gospel, and some of those people love to share it. I don't know if you've been around those type of people who are all about their own gospel. "Hey, I know you believe this, but I actually know the truth, and I know it's actually this. No one else understands it, but I do." And you're like, "I don't think you understand what the Bible's about. I don't think you're getting it." But sometimes those people love to share, and Paul is saying, "Avoid those people. These people can trip you up." Maybe in the context of a church, and again, if they're willing, if there is a genuine part of them that wants to understand, maybe they can start to understand who Jesus is and what he does. of those people, it's just better to say, "Okay, I need to have some boundaries, I need to have some space, because you clearly are not drawing me to God, you're drawing me away from God." And Paul says, "I don't want that for you.”

I love what he says in verse 19, when he says, "I want you to be wise to what is good and innocent about what is evil." So what's the remedy for this? How do you avoid division and not get tripped up by false Well, the answer is to know the truth inside and out. Know the gospel. I think I used this example months ago when we were in whatever chapter this was about, but this example of counterfeit money. For those in the FBI who study counterfeit, do you think that they spend most of their time studying the counterfeit bills? Do they spend most of their time studying what's out there that is false? Or do they spend most of their time studying and knowing the real currency? The answer is they spend all their time, all their time studying real currency. They know the feel of it, they know all the different details, all the look of it, so that when something false comes by, they can automatically know, "This isn't it. I know the feel. I know where something should be. This is not real." And so we need to have that about the Gospel. We need to know the truth, focus on the truth, so that when something false or not aligned with the gospel comes in front of us, we can say, "Nope, I know what the Bible says, and that's not it." The problem when we start to put too much attention on things that aren't true, when we focus on... and sometimes our heart is in the right place, like, "I want to know what's false so that I can steer away from it." And maybe it's good to just be aware of what's out there, but when we spend too much time focusing on that, what it can do is it can breed fear within us, it can breed hatred, it can breed a desire for division. We no longer want to have compassion or kindness or generosity or a desire to see those people who think they know the truth but really don't. We don't really want to see them come into the family of God.

When focused on the truth, we'll know the truth through the Spirit of God in our hearts, and we'll better live out the truth and live out the gospel and better be Jesus for the people around us. So know the gospel inside out. And church high souls want to tell us that this is a lifelong pursuit. We have Bible studies and maybe if you've been in the church long enough, you've done the same Bible study over and over again. And that's okay. It's okay to, you don't have to say, "Oh, I've already gone through that book. I'm good." No, we are lifelong learners of the gospel because there is so much in here that we could could spend our whole lives studying it and still not know everything there is to know about God. There were these rabbis in the Old Testament and even now there's rabbis who spend all their life focused on maybe a chapter, just one chapter. They know the rest but like this is my focus, this is my emphasis, I know this chapter. And over a lifetime they are still learning things. They could have been rabbis for 50 years and said I know whatever it is, Psalm something, inside and out. I've studied it and meditated on it for 50 years, and I am still getting new truths out of it in my lifetime. And so I just want us to have that perspective, that as we know the truth, just have that expectation that this is going to be a lifelong journey of continuing to know more and more and more about Jesus. And so we see that Paul cares for the Roman church and for their souls, and he knows what they need, and it's most importantly to know the gospel. But he also brings up the point that we shouldn't be alone in knowing the gospel.

Yeah, and this leads us to our next section, where Paul here actually shifts back to talk about a few more people. He's going to give a few more shout-outs here, but what we have here is actually on the other side of the letter. This is actually Paul's personal crew. This is his team. And so he says, and starting in verse 21, "Timothy, my coworker, sends his greetings to you. So does Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, my fellow Jews. I, Tertius, who wrote down this letter, greet you in the Lord, Gaius, whose hospitality I and the whole church here enjoy, sends you his greetings." Wait a minute. We've been talking this whole time that Paul wrote this letter. But then this one bro shows up like right at the end and he's like, "I actually wrote it down." So what do we got going here? Well, real quick, just a little rabbit trail here. Tertius is actually what we call a "amanuensis," which is actually a secretary who's assigned to an employer by taking verbal dictation, copying, and writing on their behalf. So basically, in short, Paul is just teaching and talking and saying this, and this bro is just trying to write down as fast as he can. I think some of these sections in Romans, he would be like, "Okay, time out! Pause, Paul! I gotta catch up here real quick. Say that one more time for me. I wanna make sure this is right.

But what we see here are more gospel people, more gospel people, and this is Paul's personal team, his team with accountability. And what I find most interesting about this is that Paul wasn't solo. We think about the apostle Paul, we think about this superhero, super giant Christian that he was, and he's out there just doing all this stuff. He's trailblazing for the gospel. He's on the forefront of church multiplication and church planting and making new churches. And we sit here and we go, "Wait, Paul had people? Paul needed people? One hundred percent." Paul here in himself is saying, "You guys can't do this alone. I can't do it alone." And if Paul can't do it alone, yeah, you and I, we ain't doing it on ourselves. We ain't doing this alone. Like, there's no way that we can do this on our own. And this is incredibly encouraging for me. I don't know about you, but this is incredibly encouraging for me because the world tells us that we have to do it all, carry it all, make it all, be it all alone. And Paul here is saying, "No. That's not how you do it. Nobody can do this alone. We need a team. We need support.

We need a church family. And this is Paul's church family that are with him at all times, traveling, helping, supporting, loving, caring for him. We are not meant to live life alone. That's just not how we were created. This is a core value of who we are here at Spring Valley. We are meant to live life in community. That's why we have these events like Friendsgiving and chili cook-offs and Memorial Day barbecues. It's for us to be with each other and hang out. We run semesters of doing community groups. The name is literally in the title of what it is because we wanna be with one another. 'Cause when we gather together on Sundays and we're not all here, we're missing part of who we are. We're missing part of our family. And it is our desire to have everybody present every single Sunday. Let me say that again. It is our desire for all of us to be here present every single Sunday to hold it a priority, to protect it, to be here together. Why not to make Pastor Andre and myself feel great about ourselves? The house was packed today. We're such great pastors. No, because we know so much life happens in passing with each other. You're grabbing a muffin, a cup of amazing coffee, to hanging out after church to go, "Hey, do you want to go grab lunch? Let's grab lunch." There's a group in the church that started just meeting on Fridays at Pete's Pizza. And there's nothing that Andre and I started. It was just like, they're like, "Hey, we're going to meet Fridays at Pete's, and just can you let the church know about it? We just want want to hang out. Yeah! Let's go! That's what life is about, is this community together. And Paul sees this, and without us here present every single week, we're missing God's beautiful picture. And I think it's hard because in our world we've accepted minimal commitment as full commitment. We've allowed that culture to kind of seep into our lives and I think it's this audacious lie that Satan has allowed Christians to believe. That minimal commitment is actually full commitment. If we would think about this, tell this to Paul. If he didn't have full commitment of his crew, without Tertius present, we wouldn't have this full letter to Rome. There's another dude in here by the name of Timothy. I don't know if you've heard of him. There's two letters written to him in the New Testament. He was at the forefront of the gospel in Asia Minor. Without Timothy fully present, we wouldn't have the church in Corinth, we wouldn't have the church in Thessalonica, we wouldn't have the church in Philippi, and the church in Asia Minor would not have ever existed. This is huge.

Paul reminds us in Romans 12, 1 through 2, "Therefore I urge you brothers and sisters, in view of God's to offer your bodies as living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing and perfect will. Church, we can't behave like the world and live like a Christian. Those are contradictory to each other. Can we be in the world, around other people, hanging out with them, eating pizza, having a good time, laughing? Yes, absolutely, 100%. Being a Christian doesn't mean you isolate yourself from everybody in your life. I can only hang out with Christians. No, that's opposite, true. But our actions should be different than the world. Our commitment should be different than the world. Our priorities should be different than the world. The way we live our lives, our calendar, our day-to-day actions need to be different than the world. And Paul here shows us how to step into accountability and responsibility and sacrifice and humility. Paul could probably tell every single one of those bros how to live their lives. He knew it all. And yet, he surrounded himself with other people to speak truth into his lives. We should do the same.

The scripture gets quoted a lot, but I always come back to it, of Proverbs 27:7, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” We have a dull blade epidemic in the church. We have a dull blade epidemic in the church today. We were walking around as dull Christians and we wonder why we don't fully commit to being in church community. And we wonder why when we walk through Christ that it isn't different in our lives, it isn't acute, it isn't effectual against this world around us. Church, we're just gnawing. Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw. Just, you ever use a dull blade on anything? It is the most frustrating thing in the world, right? You try to slice a tomato with a dull blade, you end up with tomato sauce, okay? There ain't no slicing of tomatoes for your sandwich anymore. And we're going around trying to hit back at Satan with a dull blade and we're like, "Ah, Christianity doesn't work." Well, if we had our lives sharpened in Christ by being around each other daily, weekly, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, then we would have this effective tool that God has given us. We're not sharp. And Paul here understands that so well. And the best way to live in community, to be focused in the truth, to have a team and to surround ourselves, yourself, with like-minded community of faith, making each of us stronger and stronger in the gospel.

And Paul has shown evidence of the power of the gospel by listing all the people whose lives have been transformed and are partners with him for the gospel. He shared the need for the gospel to be a priority in everyone's life, and now he hasn't done it alone. And so let's read now his final words of this letter to Rome. It says, "Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writing by the command of the eternal God, so that all Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from faith, to the only wise God, be glory forever through Christ Jesus, amen.

Little side note, I'm very thankful that you got all the hard names, and I got like none in the whole chapter there. Was that planned? I don't know.

So, in this final section, Paul is blessing them. He's blessing the church, and this is a form of a doxology, which from previous chapter, we know that doxology means words of praise. And so he is wrapping up this doxology with themes that are all throughout the letter to Rome. He's talking about the mystery revealed in the work in the person of Jesus Christ. He's mentioning that the Gentiles are now a part of God's kingdom. They can be, they can, yeah, they need the gospel, and they are welcome in the kingdom of heaven. And he's also talking about the need for our obedience to God. Paul's giving his blessing to the Roman church and he's telling them to live missionally. You need to live with intentionality in your life.

I had a recent conversation about this desire in my own life, to live more intentionally, live more missionally, be more prayerful over people that I come in contact with, praying for them by name, that God, you would help me be a part of their story. If that's your will, God, if you want to use me as a tool for your gospel in that person's life, it's so easy to be passive. It's so easy to say, "God, if you want this to happen, great, but you've got to make that happen. If the door opens, sure, I'm just going to stay here, though, until you really force me through that door. I'm very comfortable where I'm at with my faith, but God, if you shove me through that door, then sure, I'll do the work for you." And that was me, if I'm being honest, if I'm confessing that right now, that was me. When I get comfortable or when I'm stressed out in life, I tend to just kind of take a step back and be more passive in my faith. And I want to be intentional and say, "God, no, where, I'm looking now. God, where can I be a tool for your gospel? Where can you use me? God, is this it? God, I'm talking with someone. Should I bring up you right now or is there a way to steer this to church, to the gospel?" That's what Paul wants. He wants focus on the gospel. He wants the church in Rome to be living missionally, to be living in their everyday life, looking for opportunities to spread the gospel.

And he knows this because the gospel, once you read and understand and live out the gospel, it means action. The gospel does not, it does not yield passivity or inaction. It's not something that once you learn it, you're like, well, that's great. And now that is something in my life and my status has kind of changed, but my life continues the same. No, it means something different. And Paul is saying, "Hey, now that you know church in Rome, now that I've had 11 chapters of what the truth is, you've had other chapters to know what this life should look like, now here's your blessing, go and do it, go and live it out." He's saying, "Church in Rome, go, go spread the gospel." And he's saying to us today, Spring Valley Church, Go, go and spread the gospel. Live out the gospel. So as we wrap up, I just wanna ask a few questions from our chapter today. Where are you seeing the evidence of the gospel at work in your life? Paul just presented those first 16. Here's the evidence of the gospel in my life. Here's all these people. This is evidence of God at work.

And so if you pause and reflect on your life, where are you seeing the evidence of the gospel at work in your life? Are you pursuing the gospel? Are you committed to knowing it inside and out? The lifelong journey of knowing the gospel. And then do you have that team around you? Maybe you're looking around this church and this is your team and I love that. Hopefully we're on your team. I wanna be on your team. Pastor Chris and I wanna be on your team of people who are encouraging you, supporting you, sharpening you. And we want you to sharpen us too. Do you have that team around you? And then are you ready to live missionally? Are you ready to not be passive in your faith, but to be active, to be praying to God, God, where can I work? Where's an opportunity for me to be of use for your kingdom?

So there you have it. The Book of Romans. Give yourself a hand. - Good job everybody. - You made it! - Good job everybody. - Proud of you guys. The book of Romans, as we stated at the beginning, is all about the power of the gospel. The power of gospel in Jesus, the power of the gospel in his death on the cross, his burial, his resurrection, the ascension, and how this miracle, 2000 something years ago, changed our lives, changed who we are. This isn't a something where you just, you pray a prayer and you check the box and you're like, sweet, I'm in.

The gospel doesn't stop there. God wants this gospel to change who we down to, like our cellular and molecular level of our lives transformation. That's the power of the gospel. And as we live our lives, this power of the gospel should just ooze out of us. It should change the way that we think, the way we act, we live, the words that we use, how we interact with other people here on this planet earth. It should change us. And it is a miracle that we even have the ability to even talk about this power of the gospel. I don't want us to forget that. So the question for us, might add more questions. - That's great. - I need the questions, they're good. - That was like a sermon question.

Here's my book of Romans question. - Serious questions. - Book of Romans question. Will we truly embrace and live in this power of the gospel for our lives? Will this version of the gospel just stop at a prayer or will it change us through the power of Lord almighty and change our lives, change our families, change our church, change our community? Really, the choice is ours. I know what I will choose. The question is, do you know what you will choose? Let's pray.

Jesus, we thank you so much for your servant, Paul. God for his faithfulness and willingness to take the time not only to detail, like down of the smallest piece of the gospel, just to explain it to the church in Rome, God, but to continue on with all that he did for the gospel. Jesus, we're so grateful for him. And Jesus, we're grateful for you. God, thank you for your power of the gospel. Thank you that it's bigger than who we are. It's more complicated than we can fully understand. It's something that is only something as big as it can come from you, God. Not some story some person made up or some fairy tale, but that God, you came down from heaven, you gave your life for us so that our broken relationship with God would be able to be restored through the power of the gospel. Jesus, let this transform who we are, the way that we live. Let it transform where we live, where we learn, where we work, where we play. God, that we would see our community saturated with your power of the gospel to change this world. God, give us gospel appointments where we get to show up in people's lives and just to share love with them. We don't have to have all the answers. We don't have to have the perfect pitch. We don't have to have all this salvation stuff memorized, but just to show up and to show them love the way that you showed us love on the cross, God. I pray that for each of us this week in these coming weeks. God, we're grateful for who you are. We thank you time and time again. We love you, Jesus. Amen.