Give Him the Glory
January 1, 2023 • Tyler Burns • Philippians 2:1–11
Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston in our neighborhood churches or donate to this ministry, please visit http://mosaicboston.com Happy New Year. It's great to see everyone all together at one service and especially to have the families, kids and parents together. This is fun. This is exciting. I love this. This is great. So happy New Year everyone. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Tyler. I am, as pastor Randy mentioned, the youth, the teens, and the hospitality director here at Mosaic. And it is my honor and privilege to be able to be up here preaching God's word to all of us today. And over the Christmas holiday break, I had the opportunity to go down to visit my family in Virginia and attend church with them on Christmas. And that was fun. It was exciting. It was great to be able to fellowship and worship with another gospel preaching and faithful church. And it's just fun. It's fun to be able to worship God together in unity. And so today, because we have kids in the service with us, I'm going to do something a little bit different that I'm taking from that church. What we're going to do is, I'm going to start by reading our text. And while I'm reading, we're all going to stand. I'll tell you when, you don't have to do it yet. And then when I'm done reading, I'll say, "This is the word of the Lord." And I want everyone to scream as loud as you possibly can, "Thanks be to God." Amen. Amen. And the idea of this is that we should be thankful for the word of the Lord. It is good, it is glorious. It is something we should appreciate that we have. And so I want everyone, parents included, to shout, "Thanks be to God." After I say this is the word of the Lord. And kids, I want you to be louder than your parents. And parents, I dare you, I bet you can't be louder than your kids. And so we'll see how much praise we bring to the Lord through the noise. So if you will stand with me and we'll read from Philippians chapter 2, verse 1 through 11. It says this, "So if there is any encouragement in Christ and any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind amongst yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God. Amen. You may be seated. Thank you. Kids, I hope that was an opportunity for you to get a little energy out because I am not known to preach for a short while. I'll do my best, but hopefully that'll sustain you through the whole sermon. But we are in Philippians chapter 2, verse 1 through 11. As you heard, and we've been going through this text the last two weeks, pastor Andy has been preaching on them and we've been seeing the divinity of Christ, the incarnation and humanity of Christ. And today we're going to be talking about the exaltation of Christ, that Christ is high and lifted up. And even just from that opportunity where everybody was willing, I've watched most of you, some of you were a little quiet, but most of you were willingly shouting out. We all know how to worship. We all know how to let our emotions out and give praise to someone or something. I was thinking about my junior, or sorry, my sophomore year of college was a year that the Red Sox won the World Series. Now for those of you who don't know, I am a New York sports fan. So that was a day of morning for me. But my college roommates were Red Sox fans and they were celebrating, and they were joyous. And they went out into the streets after the last game and everybody there was singing and chanting, "Let's go, Red Sox." People were taking it a little too far climbing street lights and jumping off of them and people catching them. It was a little insane. But I bring that up to say that even in a city like Boston that we talk about a lot as the reserved intellectuals and bookies, we still know how to worship. And what I hope this sermon does is that it allows us to all freely worship God as he deserves to be worshiped because of who he is, because he is exalted and worthy of our praise. And so we are going to focus on the last few verses of this text on verses 9 through 11 in our time together. But before we do that, will you pray with me over the preaching of God's word. Heavenly Father, Lord, you are good and you are glorious. And your son Jesus Christ is seated at your right hand in power and honor and glory and we praise you for this. We thank you that you are sovereign ruler, King over all the world, over all creation. Give us eyes to see your majesty. Give us hearts to humbly praise you and love you and give our lives and submission to you, our King. Speak through your word to all of us today, humble us so that we can praise you, exalt you, lift your name up and know that you promise to exalt us in your righteousness as well. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, we will be spending our time in three points today. First point is that He, Christ Jesus is exalted. Second, so bow and confess. And third, and give him all the glory. So first point, he is exalted. This is from Philippians 2 verse 9 where it says, "Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name." First, there are two things that stand out to me in this one verse. First is the phrase, highly exalted, exalted means lifted up, raised up, high above. But it's not just exalted. Jesus is highly exalted. This is one of my favorite things that Paul does. Paul makes up words. It's not really making up words, but this is something common in Greek. He would combine two words to make an emphasis or a new meaning of that word. So he combines the word over and exalted. So the idea is that he is highly exalted. He is overly exalted as high and worthy of honor and praise as Jesus is. He is even above that. He is more exalted, more honorable than anyone or anything ever would or could be. My question when I heard this is, why? Yes, he is exalted, he is worthy of praise, but why so emphatic on his exaltation? And the verse that was brought to mind is from Isaiah, chapter 52, verse 13 through 15. And for those of you who don't know, Isaiah 52 is a prophetic passage about Christ, about the coming of Jesus. And in verse 13 it says this, "Behold my servant shall act wisely. He shall be high and lifted up and shall be exalted. As many were astonished at you, His appearance was so marred beyond human semblance and his form beyond that of the children of mankind, so shall he sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths because of him for that which has not been told, they told them they see. And that which they have not heard they understand." So why is Christ highly exalted? It says because he acted wisely. "He shall act wisely." Okay, what does that mean? And this is the foundation of the gospel. This is why we are talking about Christmas even after Christmas. And why it's so important is that Jesus Christ came and lived a life here on earth in reality, in historical fact, Jesus did that. And he lived a life of perfection, complete total submission and obedience to God the Father's will, that's who Jesus is. And in his life on earth, his wisdom in his action was the faithfulness to God's will. It's not about Christ's intellect, though he is the smartest man to ever live. It's not about His understanding, excuse me, His understanding, His ability to teach or preacher any of that, even though He was the best at all of those things, it was about His complete and total submission to the will of God, even to the point of a gruesome death. It says that He was marred beyond human semblance. This is a prophecy about Christ's death on the cross, His beating beforehand and the crucifixion where He was so brutally injured that He didn't even look human anymore, that he looked more like a monster than a man and that He was willing to follow the will of God, even to that extent. Even to that point, nothing would shake him from the will of God. And so He is highly exalted, so He is worthy of our praise and our honor because of his obedience to the Lord no matter what. And the second thing that stood out to me from verse 9 is it says that, "God has highly exalted Him." Right? We see here in Isaiah that he acted wisely, and that might tempt us to think that Christ's action made himself worthy of praise and that he exalted himself because of the things he did. So if we want to exalt ourselves, we just need to be really good people. But know God is the one, God, the Father is the one who lifted Him up, exalted him and put Him in a place of honor. And this is an important distinction because it reflects a teaching of Jesus in the book of Matthew. It's actually in most of the gospels, but in Matthew chapter 23, Jesus teaches verse 12, whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. And so yes, it is about Christ ultimate submission and fulfillment of the will of God. But in order for Him to do that, He needed to be humble. He needed to be a man of ultimate humility, submitting again to the will of God. And as He humbled himself, made himself lowly, He exemplified this throughout His whole life. But one of the most famous in our minds is when He washed the disciples feet, a place of a servant and of a slave. He was willing to do that humbly. And as He humbled himself, as He recognized, I'm just doing the will of the Lord, God honored Him and exalted Him. Christians, do you know that it's not our job to exalt ourselves? We live in a world that is all about credentials and ideas, and who is the smartest, who's the best, who has made the most impact in this world. Christians, that's not your job. Make a great impact in the world for Christ, for the kingdom of God, but not by earthly standards. The way we do it is by being the most humble we can possibly be, by submitting fully to who God is to Christ and His exalted place at the right hand of God, the Father seated on the throne ruler of all things, king of all things. Scripture tells us, "All of existence is held together by the power of Christ. And it continues to exist because of the power of Christ." And because of that, we need to recognize He is there and I'm not. He is there and I'm here. I am a sinner. I am a man. I am a woman. I am a child of God. I need forgiveness. And when we recognize the position of Christ, that should change the way we view everything in the world. Everything in the world is under his authority. Everything in the world is under his rule and reign under the rain of a good sovereign loving God. How come the world doesn't look like it then? How come we see sin? How come we see pain and hurt and suffering? Well, the book of Hebrews tells us clearly chapter 2, verses 8 and 9. It says this, "At present we do not yet see everything in subjection to Him, but we see Him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death. So that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone." "At present we do not see everything in subjection to Him," because why? Because of the fall, because of sin. And because of Christ's promise coming again, His second coming, the second Christmas you could say where he will make all things in subjection to Him. But in this in between time, what are we to do? It says that we are to first recognize the position of Christ that He is now presently crowned with glory and honor because of the work he did on the cross. But then we should also be thinking about things in the world as not, I like this, I don't like this, I would change this or that. But the way we should view things on earth is either in subjection to Christ or not in subjection to Christ, either in the kingdom of God or not in the kingdom of God. And I know a couple weeks ago, about a month ago, we were in the book of Romans and we talked a lot about how each of us has a call placed on us by God. And there was a lot of talk in community groups about, well, what does that mean for us individually, for us as a group and things like that. And that's great, continue to discuss those things. And I want to point out something here that wherever God has called you to be in your life right now, make it your aim, make it your goal to make that part of your life in subjection fully to Christ. Can you imagine a world where modern medicine was in subjection to the authority of Christ, to the loving, merciful, gracious God who heals and desires for the health and wealth of his people? That would be amazing. Can you imagine a world where the justice system was just and merciful like our just and merciful God? I can go on and on about example and example. But think about wherever you are called, wherever you are working, wherever you're in school, whatever you are doing in your life right now, how can you do it? How can you live it out in a way that is fully, completely in subjection to the kingdom of God, to His rule and reign and authority and say, "Lord Jesus, I'm following you in this realm and not society, not people." Now we do still submit to the authority of the governing authorities. That's in Romans, you could rewatch that sermon that's there too. But our focus should be exalting the name of Christ, wherever we are and making everything we do fully submitted to Him. And in life where we see things that are in submission to him and are bringing praise to his name that should result in greater praise of God. We should rejoice over that. We should praise his name for it. And where we see things that are not in subjection to God's will, His kingdom, our heart should be broken a little and we should be moved with compassion to see those things brought into the kingdom of God, not by force or not by selfish motivations or because of anything in ourselves, but because we know the real reality of Christ as King. And we don't want anyone to be his enemy. We don't want anything to be in opposition to him. And I said anyone, because this mostly applies to people. Every single person you're here today, even if you're not here today, every person is either in submission to Christ or not. Everyone is either recognizing the reality of Christ's rule and reign and submitting our lives to Him or we're not. And if you're here today and you say, "I'm not a Christian, I do not submit fully to Christ as Lord and savior." I urge you to do so because he is a good, powerful, loving king who wants to help you, wants to save you, wants to bring you into His kingdom. And if you're here today and you're not a Christian, maybe you're here today because a friend invited you or someone you know who cares about you, invited you. I want to tell you that person loves you more than you could ever understand because they want you to understand the gospel of the one true King and Lord. And even if you disagree, if they believe this is true and I believe this is true, and they invite you, want you to hear it, how greatly they must love you to invite you to hear the gospel of God. Now Christians, do we share the gospel of God with people? Do we love people enough that we know do not know the gospel, that we are willing to share it with those who do not know because we want them within the kingdom of God? We want their prosperity, their health, their wealth, yes, but not here on earth but an eternity under the sovereign rule of Christ. And when I think about this idea, this concept, I just want to read from the book of Acts, doing a lot of reading today because other people are smarter than me and I was working on my humility. But in the Book of Acts, Peter gives one of the greatest presentations of the gospel on the day of Pentecost. And it's a powerful thing that we should all remember and be reminded of. And I just want to read it for us now. So in Acts chapter 2 says, in verses 22 to 33, I'll read it in sections and we'll break it up. So it's not going to be so long, but, "Men of Israel hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty who works and wonders and signs that God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves know..." Pause, Peter is writing to people who are eyewitnesses of the life of Christ. He is writing to people who saw him, who knew him. They were not fooled by stories of old. They saw the things that Christ did. And Peter is appealing to them saying, God attested, God said that he is the Messiah, the coming one by the works that he did and by the signs that he has done in your midst. You know it's true. You know it's the reality. You cannot deny that these things happened. One of my favorite things is that historians who are not Christians affirm that these events happened from the modern, sorry, the current day from the first century, they affirm, "Yeah, these things happened." They might not believe that Jesus was real. They not believe that he did them by any power, but they admit that they happened. And Peter is saying, "You cannot deny the reality of the works and life of Christ." Continues in verse 23, "This Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and for knowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosen the pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it." We'll pause there. So this Jesus, the real historical Jesus who lived for Christ or lived for God the Father, in complete submission to his will, He was delivered up to be crucified because of the total definitive plan of God, but also because of us. Yes, Peter is speaking directly to people who had a physical hand in the crucifixion of Christ, delivering him over to the Pharisees, delivering him over to Pilate. But the reality is the same that each and every one of us is responsible for the death of Christ on the cross. Why? Because that is the penalty our sin deserves. Anything that we do in rebellion to God, sin, rejection of His rule and authority as king of our lives. Scripture tells us the penalty for that sin is death. But Jesus died to pay that penalty for us. And he did not only die, he was also raised. Why? I love this part. Because it was not possible for him to be held by it. This is the power of Christ of our God. That death itself has no power to hold Jesus in the grave. This is the power of our almighty exalted king. Death itself cannot hold Him. And He did this to prove His power, to prove His authority, prove His divinity, and to save us from our sins and prove that He is worthy of it. And this has been the case through all of history. And here Peter appeals to David and in the Old Testament brings in some of the prophecies about Christ. And I'm going to read it so that we can see that this has always been the plan of salvation throughout all of history. In verse 25, for David says, concerning him concerning Christ, "I saw the Lord always before me for He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken. Therefore, my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced. My flesh also will dwell in hope for you will not abandon my soul to Hades or let your holy one see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life. You will make me full of gladness with your presence. Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us today. Being therefore a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that He would set one of his descendants on His throne, He foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption." Even back then. God was making it clear to his people, this is the plan of salvation, that his holy one, the Messiah, Jesus Christ would come, would die, but would not be abandoned to death because death has no power over Him. And He will raise proving His power to save us from our sins. Praise be to God. He has the power to do it. And this is a reality that we can live in if we recognize that Jesus truly is Lord, He truly is king. He is sovereign ruler of all things and we submit our lives to Him. This is why he continues. Peter continues in verse 32 saying, "This, Jesus God raised up..." He raised him from the dead. "And of that we all are witnesses." If you ever wondered what church is, it's a gathering of witnesses in a sense. It's that we are witnesses to the resurrection of Christ, not literally as Peter was saying, that they literally saw the resurrected Christ. But I'm here as a witness to tell you I've seen the power of the resurrected Christ in my life to save me from my wickets sin, to save me from my heart that has been warped into sin and desired that. And God saved me from it to give me a new heart, to a desire to serve Him and love Him, even though I'm not perfect, nowhere close. But He's changed my heart. And every single one of you who's here today bearing the name of Christ that is true of you, you are a witness to the power of the resurrected Christ in your life to change you, to sanctify you, to make you more like Christ. How? Through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is what Peter says in verses 33, "Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God..." Now that Christ is there at the right hand of God. "And having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing." So Jesus at the time of Peter is at the right hand of God, had received the promise of the Holy Spirit was pouring it out on the apostles. And this is the day of Pentecost where they are preaching and proclaiming the word and gospel of the Lord so that every person can hear them in their own native tongue so that all can understand that's powerful. And while may not look the same today, it's still true today that Christ has poured out the promise of His Holy Spirit upon all who bear the name of Christ. So that way we can live in a way that exemplifies to the world around us, that we are in the kingdom of God. If you're here today and you're not a Christian, what you are seeing and hearing today is the power of the Holy Spirit to change my life, to change this church's life, to bring honor and praise to His name because He is worthy, he is loving, he is deserving of it all. It's nothing to do with us, it's all about Him. Praise be His name. And the only natural response for us is to bow and confess. For those of you who are like, we're just getting to point 2, don't worry, two-thirds of my notes were point 1, so we're we're coming along. But he says in verses 10 and 11 in our text in Philippians, "So that the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." Praise be his name. Our natural response when we understand the position, the reality of Christ as king over the universe, but also over our lives is that every knee is going to bow. What does that mean? It's a position of humility. It's a position of total submission and recognition of the authority and power of the one you are bowing to. This was something that has been done throughout history, but especially in the Old Testament. It was a sign of saying, "I come with no arms. I come with no weapons. You can see I'm bowing before you. My head is before you. I cannot defend myself. If you want to kill me, you can. I can do nothing to defend myself because I am not worthy. You do with me whatever you wish." That should be the posture of the heart of a Christian saying, "Lord Jesus, you do with my life whatever you wish and I will follow and I will obey whatever it is you can do it." And this is a phrase about position and about relation. One of the things that I want to point out is that it's all about our relation and position according to Christ, not according to each other. This is something that we talked about in Romans. And actually in the book of Romans chapter 14, Paul quotes the same verse that he is quoting here in Philippians to make a similar point in Romans 14 verses 10 through 12. He says this, "Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written as I live says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess to God. So then each of us will give an account of himself to God." We talked in Romans about how this means we shouldn't be judging one another, we should be focusing on the Lord and praising Him and recognizing our position before Him. And that's true here. And Paul's point in Philippians is the same referencing this verse that our position is not to look at each other and say, "I'm better than them or I'm not as good as them, or I fall somewhere in between on the hierarchy." No, God doesn't care about that. God cares about your relation to Him. We don't look at each other and say, "I am humble because I'm not as good as other people. Or I am not humble, I'm boastful and proud because I'm better than other people." God doesn't care. We all need to be humble regardless of our lives here on earth, regardless of what we say or do, it doesn't matter because we are nowhere near the power and authority and might of God, of Jesus Christ, our Lord and king. So we bow before Him, we are humbled before Him. But there's good news here. I know that that sounds a little like we are humbled, we are low in it. But that's good news. That is good news. And one of the greatest news that I don't know if everyone here knows this, but that Christ promises to exalt you, to exalt me to anyone who is in his kingdom, who has been in submission to his rule and authority, He says that He will exalt, He will lift up in honor and praise. How does that happen? This is from James chapter 4, verses 8 through 10. It says, "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts you double-minded be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you." It's all so intense. "Cleanse your hands, you sinners." Wow, that's powerful language. But the idea is that we are all sinners. We all have sinned, we've all rejected God. So how are we saved? How are we cleansed and purified from that? We draw near to God, we run to him. When we sin, we don't hide it. We don't keep it away and say, "Oh, it's too shameful to talk about." No, we bring it to God and say, "God, forgive me. I repent. Save me. Cleanse my heart. Make me more like you so I won't keep doing it." When we are in states of mourning, when life is hard and things are depressing, we go to God, we draw near to Him. We don't let those things get in the way and keep us from Him and say, "Life's too hard. I don't feel like talking to God right now. I'm going to stay away." No, we run to Him. We draw near to Him and He promises He will draw near to you. And as we bow, as we humble ourselves before the Lord, He says He'll exalt us. Why? Because again, it's the same teaching that Jesus taught that we talked about for his exaltation, is that those who humble themselves before the Lord will be exalted. This sounds a lot like I'm talking to people who don't know Christ or maybe just know Christ. And I want to be clear, this is for all of us who are Christians. And no matter how long we've been Christian, our goal is to be more and more humble, to be more and more like Christ who was the most humble, who has ever lived to be able to fully submit to the will of God. And as we are humbled, it's not a depressing, woe is me. It's a recognition of the greatness of God. And the more we recognize the greatness of God, the more we recognize how not great we are. And then the more we are lifted and exalted by Christ where he says, "Yeah, but I saved you." By Christ's righteousness, He saved us and we can partake in His power, His glory, His honor in heaven for all of eternity because of Him. Praise be to God. And so we bow in humility and we confess with our mouth that he truly is Lord. We are unashamed of that reality, that He is Lord of our lives. And as we bow and confess this reality, naturally we give Him the glory. We give Him the glory. This is the end of verse 11 where it says, and every tongue confessed that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father. We are bestowing honor and praise and glory to His name. When we recognize the greatness of His salvation, when we recognize how great of a gift that is to us. We're talking about this on New Year's Day while kind of talking about Christmas still. And it's like, what's going on here? Christmas, New Years? What are we talking about? Well, New Years is a time to look back, to look back on our lives of the past year and say, "What went well? What do I need to change?" And then make changes for the future? And what we are doing today is we are looking back at Christmas, that just happened, but we're looking back at it and saying, "This is the reality of Christ coming. This is true. He came. He was born as a baby. This is great. This was the impetus for all that we've been talking about today." Now, how is that going to affect how I live from now on? We cannot lose sight of that. And the reality is that we need to give God more glory. We need to be more humbled. We need to give Him more glory. We need to give Him more and more constant praise. This is done by, as I talked about, giving all of our lives in submission to the will of God, doing everything that we can to Him, but also being thankful in all seasons to God. No matter what is going on in our lives, we can say, "God is still in control. So I am thankful to Him." And so we should be growing in thankfulness for the Lord and His work in all seasons of our lives. And I take this from Psalm 107 versus 1 through 3, and I find it funny that this is basically a command to us as Christians. It says this, "Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. Whom he has redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south." If you are a child of God, if you have been saved by God, no matter where you come from, no matter how far east, west, north or south, it doesn't matter if you are a child of God, give thanks to the Lord. Why? Because he is good. It has nothing to do with our situation. It has nothing to do with what's going on in the world around us. It's just because he is good and his steadfast love endures forever. Praise God. Give Him the glory. And I love to talk about worship through song. If you listen to me preach, I talk about it every other time that I preach because I love it. But also scripture loves it. There's a whole book of Psalms, of songs written to God in praise. But also throughout the Old Testament, as major events happen of God's working they write songs. After the Exodus, they wrote multiple songs of phrase to God because of his goodness. There is something intrinsic about Christians worshiping God through song. And I bring that up to say, let's sing to the Lord. We're going to do that in a little bit, but let's sing. Let's praise him and not be ashamed of what we think about each other or what's going on around us. But just praise him because he is good. And I bring it up to say that sometimes when life is hard, that's the times it's hardest to sing. It's the times where it's hardest to lift your voice in praise. Because songs most of the time are joyful, upbeat things. And if we're sad, we don't want to be joyful and upbeat. But even then, this is from real experience. When you don't want to sing, sing and God will soften and change your heart and help you give Him more glory. Two things before we close. First we will be partaking of communion after this, but then after that we are going to sing some Christmas songs. And I say that to prepare you because I know we live in a divisive culture. Where can we listen to Christmas music after Christmas or not? It's still a worship song, so we're still going to sing it. And I want us to really just focus on that. Not to be thinking of it as a Christmas song, but to be singing it as a song of praise to God. And the second thing, I'm going to read a section from S.M. Lockridge sermon, That's My King. I don't know if anyone knows who S.M. Lockridge is. If you think I'm a passionate speaker, and preacher, I've heard that said about me. If you think I'm passionate, comes nothing close to this guy. S.M. Lockridge, you know his family loved the Lord because the S.M. stands for Shadrach, Meshach, so they really wanted him to be faithful. But he was an African American Baptist preacher in California and he died in 1993. But he has this sermon that's called, That's My King. And I'm going to read less than a third of it. It's a very short sermon, but I cut out a lot. I just want to give you guys a taste of it because it's a song, well, it's a sermon that gets put to music a lot that I listen to every year on Easter. On Easter I listen to him preach this. And on Good Friday he has another sermon called Sunday's Coming. It's also great, listen to that. The idea is how dark and depressing the world is on Good Friday, but Sunday's coming, so we have a reason for hope. Anyway, great sermon. I'm just going to read a section of That's My King, to try and stir up our hearts, to praise and recognition of the true authority of Christ. And then I'll pray and pastor and will come up after that to lead us in communion. "But speaking of Jesus..." He says, "He's the king of the Jews. He's the king of Israel. He's the king of righteousness. He's the king of the ages. He's the King of heaven. He's the king of glory. He's the King of Kings and he's the Lord of Lords. Now, that's my king. I wonder, do you know him? There's no means of measure that can define His limitless love. He's enduringly strong. He's entirely sincere. He's eternally steadfast. He's immortally graceful. He's imperially powerful. He's impartially merciful. That's my King. He's God's son, the sinner savior, the centerpiece of civilization. He's unparalleled, unprecedented supreme. He's preeminent. He's the loftiest idea in literature. He's the highest personality and philosophy. He's the fundamental doctrine of true theology. That's my King. He's the miracle of the age. He's the superlative of everything good that you choose to call him." "Well, he's the only one able to supply all our needs simultaneously. Well, I wish I could describe him to you, but he's indescribable. He always has been, and He always will be. You can't impeach Him and He's not going to resign. That's my King. Great is the Lord. That's my King. Thine, thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever and ever. How long is that? And ever and ever and ever. And when you get through it with all the forevers, then amen." Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, you are glorious. You are good. And we praise you that your son, Jesus Christ, saved us from our sins and that he is now seated at your right hand, in all power, glory and exaltation. Help us lift Christ as the one true king and ruler over everything in our lives. Help every aspect of what we say and what we do. Bring honor and glory to your name in submission to your kingdom. Lord, humble us. Give us humble hearts to bow before you and recognize that we are not worthy of your salvation. Yet you are so good and glorious and great that you give it to us anyway. Help us to confess to all those around us of your greatness, of your love, of your goodness, and bring praise to your name because you are good. And we know your steadfast love endures forever and nothing in this world can change that. Give us passion and desire as we leave here today to live in honor and glory of your name so that when the world sees us, they see your power and glory. Amen.
Infinite Glory Becoming Intimate Glory: Part 2
December 25, 2022 • Andy Hoot • Philippians 2:1–11
Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston in our neighborhood churches or donate to this ministry, please visit http://mosaicboston.com Today we're thrilled to celebrate Christmas. Merry Christmas to you all. I forgot to say that at the beginning. Merry Christmas. Thank you. And we are going through a series, we started it last week, in the book of Philippians; Philippians 2:1-11. And this is not necessarily a traditional Admin or Christmas series, in that we're not going through the themes of hope, love, joy, peace. We're not walking very closely in the birth narrative of Jesus Christ. What we're doing is gleaning from this section of scripture that really consolidates the whole Christian message within a small, beautiful, concise statement. And we're pulling out themes around the realities, the spiritual, the historical realities of Christmas that you cannot quite dig into as much while going through the Christmas season in those more traditional methods. If you want to dig into the birth narrative of Jesus, want to go through hope, love, joy, peace as you go through this holiday week, feel free to go to our website and we have several years of those traditional series for you. So this last week I painted a big picture about God, generally. We talked through how Jesus was in the form of God, but did not count equality with God to be grasped. I tried to draw unity around who is God, by talking about Isaiah 6:1-8 a lot. Today we're going to talk about God a little more specifically in the person of Jesus Christ, but there's going to be a lot of overlap because I think the overlap is really good. My mind has just been taking off. I think a lot of people really enjoyed the thorough description of God and his glory, but I don't think quite as many people took whom the idea that his infinite glory has become our intimate glory. And that's where the gold is. So I'm going to repeat that next week. Tyler Burns, our teens director and hospitality director here at Mosaic, will walk us through the infinite glory, the exalted glory that Christ has and what that means for us today. So please join me and listen as I read the word of God from Philippians 2:1-11. So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love being in full chord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus Christ, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. This is the word of our Lord. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you for who you are. We praise you that in the person of Jesus Christ, we can look upon him and know your glory, not just generally, but personally. We pray Holy Spirit, that you would enliven our eyes to see the heart of God more and more in the person of Jesus Christ today. We pray, Lord, that as we reflect upon the humility shown by him, that our hearts would in turn be changed, that as we live and go forward in his glory, we would reflect his humility and power to the world. Holy Spirit, just wake up our hearts. Let us grow our expectations for this season that we would not just expect a season, a moment, a period, couple days or weeks of good tidings, but a lifetime of comfort and joy in the Holy Spirit of God by our faith in Jesus Christ. Lord, awaken our hearts and fill us that we may go and serve and be your lights in the world from this day forward until eternity. I pray, Lord bless this, the reading, the preaching of your word, may you be glorified in all that we do. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Amen. So if you weren't aware, last week, there was a big event in world history at 10:00 AM in Qatar. It was the World Cup final. Last week, I preached both services and I tried to ignore the fact that it was taking place because I didn't want any of you to pull out your phones and check the score. It fell perfectly in between both of our services. But what took place? Lionel Messi, who has statistically proven himself over the last 16 years to be perhaps the best soccer player in history, the most popular sport in the world, perhaps the best player in history. Lionel Messi got the crowning achievement. He led his country, his band of teammates; all guys who grew up just worshiping as their idol, to victory in his fifth World Cup. And he got player of the tournament and he just had moments of just holding that trophy. I honestly just got chills thinking about it. I grew up with a coach from Argentina, played a lot of soccer myself. And praise God. I got home, I worked till 6:00 PM last week. I somehow got through the whole day without anyone telling me the result of the final. So I got to really enjoy the moment in the right way. Watched it with my son, didn't realize it went into extra time and he stayed up till about 10:00 PM, going into Monday. We felt that all week. But as I watched Messi, I just was rejoicing for him. I said, "Wow, look at the immortality that he has. The rest of his life, no one's going to doubt him. No one's going to question him. All of his critics are silenced. Look at the piece that he has. No one can count anything against him in his career." And furthermore, that internal, that battle that he had, that question of his worthiness, his greatness is taken away. That voice in his own head. Look at the love that he has. Look at the adoration of the fans. Look at the adoration of his wife and three kids, sitting there, just snuggling the trophy together. Look at the joy, just the pure exuberant happiness in a guy who is generally very mild mannered. And honestly, I looked at him and I said, "I want that. I want that now." And the little boy inside of me said to my 34-year-old self, "It's not too late, Andy. Dig in, go out and train. Practice. You're 34 years old, but you can still get that with soccer." And I believed it for a moment and then I stood up and my back hurt, and baby number three started crying. And very quickly, that goal was put away. But in all seriousness, for a moment, watching Messi just kiss that trophy, the most liked Instagram picture in history, watching him get paraded around the stadium in front of thousands of fans and then having that peaceful moment of just rest with his family, I really wanted what he had; the immortality, the peace, the love, the joy, the status, the guaranteed riches. This was even right after I preached last Sunday, which shows how quick we can stumble, how fickle we are as humans. I genuinely got caught up in the moment and really desired what Messi had, but after preaching my sermon from last week to myself, I realized that through Christ, I have what he has and so much more. And why does this matter this week? To restate myself from last week, because Christmas is all about understanding that God's infinite glory has become our intimate glory. And last week I painted this picture of God's infinite glory and brought us pretty quickly, to the end, how... Sorry. How his infinite glory becomes our intimate glory. But this is really what happens at Christmas. Beneath the details of the birth narrative, beneath hope, love, joy, peace is the reality that upon Christmas, the infinite has become intimate. I want to build off this today. Our great God, in all of his exhausted holiness, who would be fully just to leave man in the predicament before him in his state of sin, faces his sin and sends a messenger from heaven. And not just any messenger, God sends himself. Heaven itself reaches down, touches the sinner. The light of heaven breaks through the darkness caused by man sin. When the infinite glory becomes intimate for us, we realize that the greatest... There's actually an even greater glory than God's transcendent glory. It's God's transferred glory. Christmas is the season that should bring us to our knees in absolute awe as we reflect upon the holiness, glory and character of God and see that he is graciously reaching down from heaven to touch our lives and not just cancel our sin, but to graciously give us a right, a new nature in Jesus Christ. And we talked about this last week. I sped through it, but too often churches preach a half gospel. It only talks about the removal of the debt of sin. They preach as if when someone's made right before God, that it's like going to a bank and paying a debt. And you get a zero sum balance between you and God. And when they preach that lives are not actually changed, it soothes people's conscience for a period of time. But the true gospel says that when God saves people something greater than forgiveness of debt happens. God doesn't just forgive our sins when he saves us, he graciously gives us his own righteousness, his holiness, his glory, the power and presence of his Holy Spirit as we go forward through all of life and eternity. How is this possible? Our passage from Philippians 5 says, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. When the passage says, he, Christ was in the form of God, it traces Christ's preexistence before creation as the only holy begotten son of God, a member of the Holy Trinity of God, the Father, God the Son God the Holy Spirits. Christ existed with God in the heavenly of heavenlys. He was infinite, eternal, unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness justice, goodness and truth, just as much as God the Father and God, the Holy Spirit. He was fully satisfied within the Trinity, fully joyful, fully loved. He did not need worship from man. And yet he, Christ took on flesh that he might save man and give him the chance to worship him. Scripture says of Jesus, in Hebrews 1:3, he is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. And when he walked the earth, though truly tempted to sin, he retained his perfect righteousness throughout his life, walking blameless before God's law. But on the cross, he positioned himself intentionally to receive the wrath of God, due to man, for his sins, his unrighteousness, his imperfection before the law. The gospel of Jesus Christ teaches that because Jesus Christ, God himself, took on flesh and lived the sinless life before God that we could not live, when one turns away from their sin and turns to God once and for all, all sins of past, present and future or are forgiven. And once for all, the righteousness of Christ is applied to them by God the Father, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Once truly in Christ by faith, the Father promises to never leave or forsake his children and gives them esteemed status as heirs of his eternal glory, with his firstborn child. So 2 Corinthians 5:21 captures this gospel in a concise statement, for our sake, he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God. So that's for our sake. He, God made him, Christ to be sin on the cross, who knew no sin in heaven and on earth, so that in him, Christ we might become the righteousness of God. And so what I'm talking about is typically called double imputation, in the theological world. By faith, our filthy, sinful record is applied to Jesus and his perfect, right, holy record before God is applied to us by his Holy Spirit. If you just pause and take in what I said, this is a deal that works so much for our benefit and just is not very fair to God. This is something that you have to pause and meditate. If Christ came from infinite glory in heaven and took on flesh as a baby in Bethlehem, to live a life with the lowliest of people for the primary purpose of going to the cross, that should wow you. That should make you in awe of God. That should make you in awe of Christ. And when you pause and think about who you are in your sin before a holy God, the only way you can justify why God would do such a thing, send his own son to go to the cross in your place, is you find that it's only love. There's no reason that he loves you in his holiness. He loves you because he loves you because he loves you. That is a freeing love and that's what we get offered to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ. But we want to see this. I want to press upon you and just keep building off of what I said last week, that Christmas offers us so much more than the chance of getting a right balance before God. It's not just a chance to receive a shot of jolliness or nostalgia that powers us through a few days or a few weeks. Christmas is all about this transfer of glory. That light in the distance that we foresaw in the prophets, in the symbolism of the sacrifices and the temple and the tabernacle, that light far off, that's God's light coming into history and man are no longer left to toil. Peace on earth, goodwill to man, praise be to God. The gospel is now going to be transferred and offered to the world, not just a single people, the Israelites. That's the beginning of what is happening. And so some verses that describe the transfer of glory from God's manic Christmas and scripture are Ephesians 1:3-1, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. 1 Peter 29, he says to Christians, Peter says, "But you are a chosen race." Christians, we are a chosen race. We're like a new form of immortal being, "a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." Going further, scripture talks about God's gracious transfer of glory to his children in the church is something that angels, even in their present heavenly glory long to look at in wonder and amazement. And the Christmas story verses mention this. Luke 2:8-13, and in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. This is close to where Christ was born. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shown around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people, for unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you. You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger." And suddenly, there was with the angel, a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace among those with whom he is pleased." This is legions of angels, lighting up the sky to look upon God's taking on of human flesh and they are brought to worship to see this taking place. 1 Peter 1:10-12 mentions how prophets of old and angels further long to look ahead to Christ's life on earth in this gracious salvation that it garnered. Concerning the salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours, Christians, searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them, the prophets, that they were serving not themselves, but you in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. The angels, long to look at the gospel of Jesus Christ being played out, his taking on of the flesh, his righteous life, his going to the cross in our place, his rising from the dead, his ascension to the right hand of God the Father. And they're also waiting with us for his pending return. And when you pause and think about the prophets who prophesied about this grace that was to be ours, that says the God of the Old Testament is not a mean God, who wants to punish us and hold his authority over his head. This is a common myth about Christianity. The God of the Old Testament and New Testament is the same. He's a God of grace. Going back to the Garden of Eden. All he wanted to do was to walk in the garden and enjoy life with man. This relationship where God is creator, man is the created one and man finds his ultimate joy and freedom walking with his father, with his creator. And man breaks that relationship. And so there's a few confusing things. But even in Genesis 3, the gospel is first preached. When it says the serpent will bruise the heel of the man, the seed of the woman will crush the serpent's head. God all along has been planning for this gospel to come forward and we're seeing it take place at Christmas and Jesus Christ being born. This is the middle of history. This is why history's called his story. It's Jesus' story coming to this earth to be our savior. In Ephesians 3:7-10, the apostle Paul once said, of this gospel, as made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me though, I am the very least of all the saints. This grace was given to preach to the Gentiles, the unsearchable riches of Christ and to bring light for everyone. What is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities, and the heavenly places? Isn't that amazing? The rulers and authorities in heaven, they already have access to God in all of his holiness, at least greater access than us. And they're even more excited to look into this gracious transfer of glory to man on earth through the Son of God. The gospel for them, it gives them a deeper understanding of God's heart, his heart of love for his created children. So at Christmas we celebrate the gracious heavenly glory becoming our intimate glory. And this should cause us to take a view of the life that Christians get to live. At one point during the World Cup celebrations, while still on the field, there's a moment where a great Argentine soccer legend and world soccer legend who's retired, Sergio Aguero, lifted Lionel Messi onto his shoulders while he held the trophy and carried him around the stadium as Argentine fans cheered and sang and cried in celebration and worship. It's this beautiful picture, but the grand picture of our life as Christians is even greater than that of Messi being paraded around the stadium on another soccer legend's shoulders. The grand picture of our life is one of Jesus himself, the son of God, parading around with us, not with him on our shoulders, but with us on his shoulders. That's the life we get to live and the power of the Holy Spirit of God, all thanks to faith. Scripture talks about life as a Christian, as a triumphal procession, like the parade taken by a victor of war who is then given dominion to reign in the conquered territory by his Lord. In 2 Corinthians 2:14-17, it says, but thanks be to God, who in Christ, always leads us in triumphal procession and through us, spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one, a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God, we speak in Christ. Do you view yourself, your life as a triumphal procession, as one commissioned by God, as a righteous victor over sin in Jesus Christ who God uses to call other people, living in the domain of darkness and death, into his kingdom of heavenly light and resurrection power? Do you? How many of you feel like you're just limping through life, feeling bad for yourself because you have to face the challenges that come with walking through life in this world as a Christian? Living in Boston, perhaps three or 4% evangelical Christian that's in four or five years old now? Being of the extreme minority? How many of you are just feeling bad for yourself? Are you forgetting that the very Holy Spirit who raised Jesus Christ from the dead is in you? Some of you who just come here at Christmas and Easter, we are very glad you're here. But are you just ashamed of being Christian in a day where it's not popular or are you too busy? You're not understanding all that you have in Jesus Christ. Christians who know what a blessing it is to be saved and made righteous in Jesus Christ, to have his glory should look at Messi and realize that he has nothing on us. We know a greater glory in our salvation. We have a greater glory living within us. We have a greater joy, love, peace, and true eternal hope of victory. Do you know this? Do you know that Christ's glory is already yours today if you're in him? Or that it can be yours today if you receive his invitation to follow him? Or are you stuck pursuing your own glory or watching other people pursue earthly glory, living vicariously through them while rotting away on the inside? Can you look upon earthly heroes, those athletes, artists, musicians, those people who live in the neighborhood next to you who have multi-million dollar houses... or if you have one, there's the ones who have bigger houses than you, and say that I have more in Jesus? Or are you caught living vicariously through people or trying to catch up with them? I met this one guy. It was the weirdest thing. He tied his peaks and valleys and development in life to the peaks and valleys of the career of the famous tennis player, Roger Federer. It was just the weirdest thing. His whole Facebook, social... multiple social media profiles were him with, not Roger Federer, but pictures of Roger Federer; pictures of him with the TV, watching him. It sounds crazy, but a lot of us practice such functional ideology. One thing that I don't understand is America's obsession with the British royal family. Why does the media make millions and millions by telling us about this royal family? What's our fascination with them? Why are we living through life through their experience? Didn't we say goodbye to them a while ago? But if you think about it, the Kardashians, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Hillary, Obama, anyone else who is known by only one name, your soccer team, football team, basketball team, baseball team, social media influencers, Jesus Christ took on flesh that we might take on an infinitely greater glory than any of those people or groups. One of the things that Christians who really understand the glory that they have in Jesus can actually say with confidence is that life in Christ is just better. That's one of the things that I say in my evangelism. Just life... I've tasted some things of the world and I wish I never even tried to because life in Christ is that much better. A lot of us Christians are afraid to go too close to a prosperity gospel and say this, but even in suffering with Jesus, it's better. Life with Christ is better. It's the most rich and glorious life to live in this life and in eternity. And so the apostle Paul, he knew this, that our writer of Philippians, and that he commented on his knowledge of his present glory with a really just powerful statement in Philippians 3:7-16. He said, "But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I've suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. That by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I've already obtained this or I'm already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Jesus Christ has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God and Christ Jesus. Let those of you who are mature think this way. And in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained. Paul, perhaps the most influential Christian, aside from Christ, renounce all spiritual, ethnic and professional privileges. And he had many, he was the Jew of Jew, the Pharisee of Pharisees, the top at the top PhD program in his course of study and he gave it all up for the sake of knowing Christ and becoming more and more conformed to his glory and likeness as his life went on. Will you leave your vice grip on those things to which you desperately cling in order to conjure up your own glory, your own righteousness before God and man? Your own faux hope, fake hope, peace, love passing riches in order to receive something far better? That's the offer of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And so with all of this, I think I've made myself clearer in trying to get you to realize that the greatest glory of Christmas is realizing that God's infinite glory has become intimate glory. But I want to expand on what I've said to say how we make this glory our own today. How can we continually increase our experience of this glory in our lives today? I had one sister say to me this week, "I'm really captivated by the idea of that infinite glory becoming my intimate glory. But what does that mean for my day-to-day life?" This is what Philippians 2 is all about. Have this mind among yourselves. This is an active thing. We're to take on this mind of Christ when he in humility, took on flesh. This is what the whole book of Philippians is about, if you want to explore it further in detail this week. Paul, as he talks about in the quote that I just read, this making his identity in Christ's own, pressing on, holding true to what we have attained. Our lives as Christians should be marked by continual progression in making Christ glory our own. So how do we make Christ's infinite glory our own intimate glory on a day-to-day basis? And so first, we have to believe the gospel. We have to really want the glory of God, the righteousness of God in our life. Do you really want that? Then we repent of our sin, of living for our own glory and trying to conjure up our own righteousness, before our heavenly Father and see that it's only in Jesus that we can be made right before him and receive a new nature and glory. And then we do this on repeat, every day, every hour, every time you begin to slip again. And if we cannot see, we ask God to help us see his glory and our sin before him. And then very quickly, the grace that he offers to us, the glory that he offers to us in Christ. And once we believe, the way that we make God's infinite glory, our intimate glory in a sense that it becomes personal to us and changes us, is by realizing that we're given such a gift of glory in order to live for God's infinite glory. And this is where I want to expand on my statement of the past two weeks. The most glorious part of Christmas is understanding that God's infinite glory has become intimate glory for his infinite glory. God's infinite glory has become intimate glory for his infinite glory. And so it has become our intimate glory for his infinite glory. So we don't get saved and then continue to live for ourselves. We don't become Christians and then continue to live as Johns and Joes and Marys and Amys, trying to use God's power to get that better job or bigger house, or more friends or spouse or children, or retirement nest egg or whatever it is that we believe will make us happy. We become Christians. What does Christian mean? Little Christ. We follow in his way. The original Christians are called the way because they lived like Jesus, for his glory. So how did Christ live? Philippians 2 says, being born in the likeness of men, he humbled himself to the point of death, even death on the cross. How did Christ live? He continually died to himself and ultimately, died on the cross. Christ showed great humility. The Christian life is the glorious life. But the paradox of Christianity is that the way we access that glory personally, and the way we bring more glory to God is by dying daily. And that's something really hard. The world wants us to be firm, be proud, be strong in our own strength. The Christian life is one where we step out constantly to the ends of our own strength so that we get to see God's power at work in us and through us. It's a constant cycle of extending yourself, praying that God would work in you and through you and serving others beyond your capacity, stretching the limitation of your gifts and saying, "God, use me." So how can you have the best Christmas? How can you have the best life from here on? Believe in Jesus, take up your cross daily and follow him. Live for his infinite glory, not your own. And this should not be a forced dying. It shouldn't be a drudgery to follow in the way of Christ, but a joy to do this. In Philippians, Paul calls the church of Philippi to rejoice over and over again. He says, "Live in this way and rejoice. I say, rejoice." And he says, "It will be the source of my rejoicing to see you live and die like this." That's what we should want to see when we do evangelism, when we make disciples and we invest in people. We want to see people who don't just adhere intellectually to the faith, but take that information, learn how to use it for wisdom and just in their daily dying. We want the Lord... We can't feel bad, we can't nurture our babies, spiritual children in the faith. We can't nurture our own physical children. What do I want with my children? I want them to grow up and I want them to lay down their lives for Jesus. And I have to accept that that's going to be a life of risk taken, not following the way of the world, but standing on the word of Christ and laying themselves down to get his truth, get the lord's heart and character across to people. And as Christian, in living in this way, all of your life becomes a song that you sing with dally life. A song that you sing by laying yourself down like Jesus, with the hope of being used by him to draw more and more people into his flock. And historically, this section of Philippians 2:5-11, it's been called the Hymn of Christ, the Song of Christ. And in the original language, there's some elements that would suggest that Paul wrote it to be a song. As you reflect on how great God's glory is, how amazing it is that he offers you glory, your life becomes a song, a form of worship as you joyfully lay yourself down for others as Christ did for you. That's the view we are to have of this life. Not sitting around feeling bad for ourselves. Even in modern day Boston, our life can be this song. We can have joy to die to ourselves. Hebrews 12:1-2 says, let us lay aside every weight and sin which sings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfector of our faith. Who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. In other words, Christ's joy and life song to take on flesh and endure the cross for us. It should be our joy and life song to take up our cross daily in this life so that others might get to experience the glory that we know. And who do you lay yourself down for? That's a really important question that Christians need to ask. And it's more confusing than ever with just the amplification of social media, the existence of the internet, the way to engage in life in a variant, impersonal way, essentially without human, people incarnate in front of you. But who do you serve? Who do you lay yourself down for? The people that God has placed right in front of you. And that's probably the people that you are going to celebrate Christmas with today. And you know what? They're probably the hardest people to lay yourself down for in life because you know them. You know their sins, you know their shortcomings and their stubbornness, and it's really hard to love them sacrificially. And I say this about my family. They're great, they're lovely, my wife is incredible, but every day I say, "Lord, fill me up. Give me your power to love her well, as Jesus Christ did, to lay myself down as Christ did for his bride, the church." So who do we lay ourselves down for? For your wife, your husband, your kids, your roommate, brothers and sisters in the church, physical neighbors, parents, in-laws, siblings, coworkers, friends. And probably that order, especially when you gather together at Christmas. And I just want to close with a reading from Ephesians chapter 1. I actually don't have the verses in front of me. My Bible doesn't have verses here, but where do you get the power to keep loving? You look to the Lord. You look upon his infinite glory and see that in Christ, he has given you his infinite glory. That's how we continue to lay ourselves down. That's how his glory becomes more personal. That's how it grows in us, and we grow more into the likeness of Jesus Christ with our lives. So this Christmas, my prayer is that which the Apostle Paul has here for the Church of Ephesus, very much like he had for the Church of Philippi, just with grander language. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him. Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you. What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints? And what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also into the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head, over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that you would give us your fullness. Give us the fullness of your joy. Give us the fullness of your love, your mercy, your grace, your humility. Lord, light a fire in our souls whose source is your heavenly glory so that when we just go out and spend time with our family, our neighbors, our friends, those people who are to believe, we can begin today properly serving you. Lord, we know that you want us to be your children. We know that your power is what truly saved us. Help us to know how we can walk in it. Let your joy, your light, your love just grow in us. And we pray that as we do so that other people would see you in us. Lord, let us go forward with confidence that we have greater glory than the greatest champions, the greatest icons, the most influential people of history. We have greater power than them. You have called us to be your ambassadors in this world and let us take to the world your love, hope, and grace today. I pray this in the name of Jesus' holy name, amen.
Hope
December 5, 2021 • Shane Sikkema • 1 Peter 1:3–12
Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit http://mosaicboston.com. I have a problem. Every time I preach, the worship is so awesome. By the time I get up here, my voice is already shot. And so, thank you band and thank you Jesus for being worthy of such praise. If you're new, my name is Shane. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic, and we're so glad to have you with us. We mentioned this earlier, we would love to connect with you. We do that through the little connection card in your worship guide. You can fill that out and turn that in either at the little white box there at the back of the room or at the Welcome center. And we have a gift that we'd love to give to you to thank you for being with us this morning. As we begin, would you please join me in prayer over our sermon today? Father, we thank you for Advent. We thank you for Christmas, for sending, for giving your son. And we thank you for putting this season into the rhythm of our year, this time where we can slow down and remember that Jesus Christ was born, that you didn't just make us and leave us. You actually wanted to be with us. You wanted a relationship with us. Even when we were unworthy, even when we were too sinful to be with you, you sent your only begotten son to come to be our manual, to be with us, to die for us, and to deliver us from the wrath that we deserve, to lead us back to you. And Father, we thank you for this unsurpassable gift of grace, from which true hope and love and joy and peace continually flow. And I pray that in this Advent season, we would receive those gifts with glad and grateful hearts. And that they would transform us from the inside out to be more like our Savior, more like your Son, Jesus Christ. It's in his name that we pray. Amen. Well, Happy Advent. It is hard to believe that we're already five days into our advent calendars. And I say, "calendars," plural, because this year we have two advent calendars in our home. Owen and Nora each get their own. I made a decision that this year, that the sadder of the world gets around us, the harder our family is going to celebrate Christmas together. So, we're going all out this year. We got a real tree, which is not usual for us. We went out to the tree farm. We picked, we just bought this massive Fraser fir, brought it home. And the first thing I put it up, I was like, "It wasn't big enough." Next year, we're getting an even bigger one. It's awesome though. Our apartment smells like a pine forest. We have a fireplace, our landlord doesn't let us use it. I know most of you can relate to that, but we decked it out with wreath and the garland, all of that. And here's just a little pro tip. Cedar incense bricks. You can get them in Amazon, instantly makes your home smells like a campfire. Instantly fills the air with Christmas spirit. I'm really excited for Christmas. We had an awesome Christmas Members' Party last night, joyful, jolly Christmas party last night. Thank you again to all the volunteer who put that together. Next Sunday, Mini Mosaic is going to be up here singing a special Christmas song. You're definitely not going to want to miss that. But as we begin this Advent season, I want to just take a moment right now to reflect. And here's the question that I want you to reflect on as we begin. What is Christmas to you? Visualize it in your mind, in your heart. What is the ideal Christmas look like? What comes to mind when you picture the perfect Christmas? For me, growing up, Christmas was combing through the JCPenney catalog, looking for that perfect piece of plastic mechanized, electronic joy to satisfy my greedy little heart on Christmas day. Christmas was hiking through the fields of a tree farm to find that perfect tree, coming home all sticky and covered in sap. Christmas was sledding with my friends. It was snow days, snowballs, and snowmen and snow forts in the church parking lot. Christmas was playing outside until you were frozen and wet, and then coming inside for some hot chocolate and some Super Mario Bros. 3 in my cousin's Nintendo. Christmas was lights and decorations. It was food and fellowship. It was Sunday school pageants at church. It was candlelight caroling. It was opening presents at grandma's house. Christmas was great. And for many of us, Christmas is it's just that, it's something that was. And now, it comes and it goes, and it's maybe just not quite the same. Why is that? When did we stop looking forward to Christmas and settle for just looking back? What changed? Here's my diagnosis. Christmas didn't change. We changed. We grow up, life knocks us around. We get calloused by pain, we calloused by our own sin. We get scared. We get scarred. We get proud, and our childlike hearts get hard. They get cynical. And at some point, we all start taking ourselves a bit too seriously. And here's the problem. Jesus Christ is born, but it's hard to joyfully run into a smelly, dirty stable when you're taking yourself too seriously. It's hard to bow down before a baby lying in a manger when you think that you're all grown up. It's hard to kneel before a child, unless you have the simple, pure, humble faith of a child yourself. The other day, my son, Owen, he randomly asked me a question. He says, "Hey, dad. Is Christmas getting too commercialized?" I'm like, "What are you talking, you're 10 years old. Too commercialized? What have you been watching?" They've been watching Charlie Brown Christmas. When I first became a Christian, I used to rant about the commercialization of Christmas. "Ah, it's not about the parties and the presents and decorations. Christmas, it's just about Jesus. Jesus is the reason for the season. You can't spell Christmas without Christ." Now, the problem with that is it's true. When you take that too far and in your attempt to avoid becoming Santa, you turn into Scrooge. You turn into the Grinch. You become the Christmas curmudgeon. And so, you got the Santa over here on one side, and you have the Scrooge over here on the other. The Santas are all about the celebration, but there's no Jesus, and it is kind of a sad and empty party. And the Scrooges are all about the idea of Jesus, but it's a Jesus with no joy. And it's kind of a sad and empty party as well. They're both missing the point. It's like an awkward middle school dance. You got one side over here, one side here. How do you get these two parties to get over themselves and meet in the middle so that we can all start having a good time? The answer is Jesus, but it's the real Jesus. Because, the Scrooges are right. Christmas is all about Jesus, but because it's all about Jesus, it's all about joy. It should be a season of great joy. So, sing and decorate and throw parties and give gifts and have fun. Luke 2:9, "The angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shown around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, 'Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ The Lord.'" Christmas should be fun. Christmas should be a party. It is good news of great joys so we should make at a party, because let's face it, most of life is not a party. Most of life is pain. And Christmas isn't about sticking our heads in the clouds and pretending that the pain isn't real. It is about joyfully bowing our heads to the ground before the manger of our maker, because here lies the Christ, the one who was born to make everything better. And so, this Christmas, this is what I'm saying. If you're feeling a bit Scrooge-ish, and I'm preaching on myself here because I'm not the most naturally happy joyful person. Christmas is an invitation to be a kid again. Not to be childish, but to be childlike in a humble faith. If you're having a hard time with Christmas, I invite you to be born again, and then come with that childlike faith, come with wonder and adoration before the manger of the newborn king. What I'm saying is the life of the party is here. Hope has been born, and we have a reason to celebrate during this season. If you have your Bible, open up to 1 Peter chapter one. We're going to be walking through verse three through 12. We're going to be focusing on God's gift of hope that was given on Christmas day. And I want to talk about the foundation of our hope. I want to talk about the substance of our hope. And then, finally, I want to talk about the power of our hope, as our three points for our sermon today. This is 1 Peter chapter one, beginning in verse three. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls." "Concerning the salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ in the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look." This is the reading of God's holy word for us this morning. Point number one is the foundation of our hope. "What a time to be alive." We've heard that phrase lot over the last couple of years, not always in the most positive sense. But the point of these last four verses, I'm not going to spend a ton of time in these last four verses, we're going to spend most of our time in the beginning of the passage, but you get the point in these last couple of verses, that it is an amazing time for us to be alive. We live at a privileged point in human history, that for thousands of years, God's people we're longing, we're waiting in anticipation for the Messiah to be born. They were eagerly looking forward into this mystery, wondering how it was that God was going to put all of these pieces of his plan for salvation together. And we now live at a place where we don't have to look for that anymore. We have the privilege of looking back. We're not hoping for hope to be revealed. We can build on the hope that has already come through the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we're standing on this foundation. Peter says, "Even the angels long to see these things." The hope has come, the foundation has been laid and nothing can destroy that. And so, what is the foundation of our hope Peter tells us in verse three? It says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." And notice that there are three things there that Peter mentions that we did not do and that we cannot change. And this is why we know that this foundation is firm. First of all, he tells us that the Father has caused us to be born again, that we didn't give birth to ourselves, that the Holy Spirit sovereignly regenerated our hearts and made us new creations in Christ. We didn't do that. We can't undo that. Second, he says the Father has caused us to be born again according to, what? According to our great merit? No, according to his mercy, that this is rooted in the eternal, unchanging character of God, the Father. And then, finally, he says the Father causes to be born again according to his mercy through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that is surely as Christ is alive, our hope lives. We're standing on a foundation of his finished work and atonement. The basis of the gospel is our hope. We know that, but we need to start there and we need to stay there because this is the hope that our hearts were built for. Until we rest on this foundation, our hearts are always going to be fearful. They're always going to be anxious. They're always going to be restless until we rest on this foundation. And so, the question I want to ask you right now is are you anxious? Are you an anxious person? A better question is how anxious of a person are you? Because, we all have fears. We all have cares and anxieties. And the problem is most of us spend way too much time worrying about the little things, because we put way too much hope in the little things. When I was in college, I struggled with anxiety in a pretty intense way. There were times I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I'd be up all night worrying about things. And it was a constant struggle for me. I started college in the year 2000 to study graphic design. At the time, the whole world was changing. The internet was coming to be this thing that we know it today, was something that I didn't even grow up with at the time. And the design world, there was this shift taking place where the workforce was shifting from designing things by hand on paper, to doing all of these things on computers. And so, there was this huge need for new people to learn the skill and rise up and enter this workforce. And so, I was told this is a great career to go into. And so, I started off college, and then by the four years later, when I graduated, apparently those needs had been met because there were no jobs left. And I was one of a very few people in my graduating class that actually managed to have a design job lined up after graduation. And so, the week after graduation, started this great job at a small ad agency, moved to a new city. I got my own apartment, started paying my own bills for the first time. Kelly and I, we were engaged at the time, had started going back to church together. Things were going great in a lot of ways, but I still struggled with a lot of anxiety and something still hadn't clicked with the gospel in my mind. And forward about six months later, I'm in my new career. Things are going well. And one day, I come into work and my boss calls me into her office and closes the door. I'm like, "Ugh, this is not good." And she tells me that our agency had just lost their biggest client, which made up the majority of our work. And that because of this, the last three people who had been hired on staff were going to be fired. We're going to be laid off, and that included me. And now, looking back, this seems really silly, but I started freaking out. I was devastated. I was crushed. I felt humiliated. The whole world was crashing down, and I started catastrophizing everything. "I'm never going to find another job. Kelly's going to call off the wedding. I'm going to run out of money. I'm going to lose my apartment. I'm probably going to spend the rest of my life homeless and living in a gutter." That was what I was thinking. Maybe not reasonable, but those were the real thoughts that were going through my mind that day. And I remember this so vividly. That night, I was walking through my living room, and all of a sudden, I just fall to my knees and I just started crying. And I cried out to God and something clicked, because I didn't cry out to God and ask him to give me my job back. I didn't cry out to God and ask him to change my circumstances. For some reason, I cried out to God and I just said, "I don't care. I don't care if I lose my job. I don't care if I lose my apartment. I don't care if I lose everything. I just don't want to lose you. I need you, so don't leave me." Where did that come from? I'd never had that thought before. For the first time in my life, I wanted God for God. I truly saw my sinfulness and my need for a savior. And all of a sudden, everything clicked. I confessed. I repented of my sin, of my pride, of all of the ways that I had been trying to rule my own life. And I don't know how to describe this, but there on the floor of my living room, it was like something reached down and just pulled me. I felt physically this weight of anxiety lifted off of my back. And I stood up. I felt life, and I felt this joy. I felt peace that I had never experienced in my life. I had so many misplaced hopes, and the basis for those hopes had always been myself. And you can only live that way for so long before that will crush you. I needed to learn that losing my job was not my biggest problem, money wasn't my biggest problem. None of that, didn't matter. My biggest problem was me. My biggest problem was my sin. My biggest problem was my soul hadn't been reconciled to God, and I'd been trying to build my life with no foundation, a foundation of sand. I opened my Bible that night and I read through the Sermon on the Mount. You get to Matthew 6:31 and Jesus tells his disciples, he's like, "Therefore, don't be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all of these things will be added to you." We're going to talk about the substance of our hope as Christians, but we can't talk about that until we talk about the foundation of our hope, because hope without a foundation is just wishful thinking. We need something real. What I'm saying is don't assume, as I had done for so many years, that you're okay just because you grew up going to church, or because mom and dad are a Christian. Have you personally experienced Christ for yourself? Do you long for his kingdom and his righteousness? Do you hunger for his word? Are there signs that you indeed are born again, a new creation that the Spirit is working, bearing fruit in your life? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. In other words, do you bear the family resemblance? Are you growing to look more like your heavenly Father, more like Christ, your brother? If so, rejoice, because you have been born again, born again to a living hope, to an unshakable foundation. And once you have that foundation, now we can begin talking about the substance of that hope. Because, what we see is that with this new birth comes a new Father, a new family. And in this new family, you have a new inheritance. This is point number two, the substance of our hope. This is what Peter talks about next. And going back to verse three, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is in imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." There are these two really dangerous apps that you can get on your phone. One of them is called Red Tree, and one of them is called Zillow. Now, I've never done this, I'm sure you've never done this, but we've heard about people who have done this. They get sucked into these apps. Begin looking around like, "Yeah, why not? Why shouldn't I increase the filter? Let's see what can you get for half a million dollars, a million dollars, $2 million, $4 million, $8 million." You start looking at all these big, beautiful mansions in Brookline. And then, you see the price of a studio apartment, and you delete the app and cry yourself to sleep. Wouldn't it be nice to find out that you have a rich uncle and he died... And that part's sad, but you didn't know him. And before he died, he wrote you into his will. And he left you a mansion in Brookline, or even just a house with a yard and a washing machine that doesn't take quarters. I'd be happy with that. The bad news is you don't have a rich uncle, or maybe you do. I don't. The good news is you have a generous Father and you have an inheritance that is so much better. Imperishable, undefiled, unfading. It's guarded, it's secure. It's kept in heaven like a treasure in a safe, ready to be given, ready to be received at that last day at the revelation of Jesus Christ. The Apostle John in the book of Revelation, he has a vision that kind of helps us just grasp a little bit of what this inheritance will be like. Revelation 21, beginning in verse one, he says, "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.' And he who was seated on the throne said, 'Behold, I am making all things new.' He said, 'Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.'" "And he said to me, 'It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. And to the thirsty I will give from the spring of water of life without payment. To the one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.'" And he goes on to describe the completeness of this city, the perfection of this city in verse 22. He says that, "And I saw no temple in this city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no sun or moon to shine on it for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day and there will be no night there." "They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life." If you've been born again, and your name has been written in that book since before the foundation of the world, and nothing can erase it. Now, imagine an eternity where everything is as it ought to be, where heaven and earth become one, where the battle has been won, and where those who conquer will dwell with their God and see their Savior face to face. The night that Christ was born, the shepherds ran to see the face of their Savior, gentle and lowly swaddled in a manger. The day that Christ returns, we will rise to see the face of our Savior, beaming with power and glory and seated on his throne. This is our inheritance. This is our hope. This is important. Because we are hope-fueled creatures, without hope, we can't survive. But with the right hope, we can do almost anything. Hope gets us out of bed. Hope sends us on our way. Hope keeps us pushing forward until we reach our destination. When you combine the right foundation of hope with the right substance of hope, you get the unstoppable power of hope, power to persevere, power to do the hard things that we are called to do as we ultimately wait for the fruition of our hope to come. And this is point three, the power of hope. Peter continues in verse six, says, "In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." Theologically, the basis of our hope is our justification. The substance of our hope is the glorification. That's the easy part. Right now, we're in the hard part in between. Justification, glorification, for us, those come easy. The hard part is our sanctification, and this is why we need a hope that gives us power. Because, the question that we're tempted to ask in the hard part is does this cost really outweigh the benefit? Is this worth it? And obviously, we know in our minds that it is worth the pain. But when you're in pain, it's easy for your heart to forget. And you need that reminder. And so, think of it like this. Justification is like conception. You find out you're pregnant, everyone's excited, there's joy. There's celebration. Glorification is like birth. You're holding that little bundle of joy in your arms. Sanctification, it's like all the stuff in between. It's the pregnancy, there's groaning, there's suffering, there's discomfort. It's the morning sickness, the mood swings, the contractions, the pains of labor. And it's not the most fun, but you get through it. And at times, you're even able to make it fun. Why? Because, you know that the pain is temporary and you know the joy that is coming. Peter puts it more like this. Justification is like our cradle. We're newborn babies, born again. We didn't give birth to ourselves. We're just happy to be here. Glorification is like our inheritance. We didn't pay for it, we didn't build it, but our Father has left us this epic mansion. And then, Peter switches metaphors a little bit. Sanctification, it's not just like the demo and the renovation. The metaphor that he uses, he describes it as a crucible, where you're thrown into the fire, where everything that is unholy needs to be burned away until all that is left is pure gold. When you think about suffering like this, this completely changes the way and you think about the trials of this life, that our suffering is not random. It's not meaningless. It's doing something. It can produce value. It can result in things that impact our eternity, that we are going to be rewarded with what we do with it. Peter says that the tested genuineness of our faith will, what? It'll be found to result in praise and glory and honor in the revelation of Jesus Christ. And so, have you ever thought about suffering as stewardship? We all know that if God gives us wealth, if God gives us blessing, if God gives us talents, that we should not let those talents go to waste. What if God gives you suffering? Would you let that go to waste? When faced with suffering, we have a choice. We can be faithless and grow bitter and let those flames burn us up until there's nothing left. And that's no advantage to us. It's no advantage to anyone else. Or, we can face those flames with faith. Not to grow bitter, but to get better, to let them refine us. And to do so, knowing that we will receive the praise of our King and we will hear those words, "Well done, my good and faithful servant. Come, enter into the joy of your master." This is why James, the brother of Jesus, he begins his letter, James 1:2, he says, "Count it all joy, my brothers, when..." What? "When you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." Romans 5:1 says, "Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who's been given to us." Have you ever thought about suffering as an investment, with a return both in the long term and in the short term as well? Like, we know we'll be rewarded in the future, but there's something to be gained here right now. James talks about steadfastness. Paul talks about endurance. What is endurance? I'm not a runner. I don't run. Fun run, oxymoron, I don't get it. But, I understand some of you do. And we used to have a woman in our community group who loved to run. She was actually a professional runner. If I were to run with her, I would not have a very good time. I would be keeled over, passed out, gasping for air. She would just be getting warmed up. And in some sick twisted way, she'd be having fun. Miles in, and she'd still be having a good time, not winded, enjoying her run. Why is that? Well, she had endurance. She had run so much in the past that she had grown her capacity to run faster and farther in the present. The question is how do we do this spiritually? And there's two things that you need to do to grow in this kind of endurance spiritually. You need to run, and you need to remember. First of all, you have to run. There's no way around it. You have to go through suffering. And as you go through suffering, you need to remember, to remember God's faithfulness to you. In your walk with Christ, you are going to be faced with trials that seem impossible to endure. And sometimes, they're going to come to you through crisis. Sometimes, they're going to come to you through calling. Crisis is the unexpected. Something happens, your whole world gets flipped upside down. Calling is God's going to ask you to do something that from your perspective seems terrifyingly impossible. And so, here's a little life hack for when you're faced with these trials. You need to run, you need to remember. In order to remember, you need to start writing things down. First of all, you need to write down every time that God has been faithful to you during trials in your past. Our community group had an opportunity to do this this week. And everything inside me wants to share this story, I'm not going to because the people who went through it are going to do a much better job with some day. But, all I want to say is we began a trial last week that ended in a testimony by the end of the week. And that in between, God had done a miracle and showed us again his faithfulness. I'm going to write that down. I'm going to remember. Remember the day that I lost my job? That was a crisis. But, you know what? I think I got saved that day. And following that day, things didn't get better right away. It took three months of constant job searching before I even got a response. Since I had just gotten saved, I would spend my mornings, the first part of my day, finding any job that I could and applying for it. And when I ran out of that, I would spend the rest of my day reading my Bible for hours at a time. I'd never read the Bible before. This was new to me. By the way, there are three really important pieces of evidence that you need to look for that will tell you if you have truly been born again. First of all, you're going to love Jesus in a real way. And that's going to click for you what that means. Second, you're going to love the church. You're going to stop making excuses for why you don't want to go to church, and you start looking for opportunities to go to church, to serve, to worship, to gather with the body of Christ. And then, three, you're going to get hungry for the word of God. You're going to want to just start devouring scripture. And that's where I was at this time. This is a true story, by the way. Three months go by, I'm running out of money. My bank account is about to hit zero as I'm writing my last rent check. The week that I was writing that check, I finished reading the Bible cover to cover for the first time. And I'm not kidding, that week, for the first time in three months, I got three calls and I got two job offers. And by the next week, I'd started working a new job. God was making it obvious that my biggest need was not my job, that my biggest need was him. But, also, that he orchestrated this entire thing from the beginning. It didn't feel good, but he was using it for my good. And looking back now, I wouldn't trade it for the world, but what I needed to learn is that if I'm going to follow him, I need to actually trust him. And so, I wrote that down, I remember that, so that the next time when you're tempted to freak out about something, you count your blessings. You remember, "God loves me, that he was faithful to me here and here and here in the past, and he'll be faithful again." And so, first of all, write down every time that God has been to you through trials in your past. Secondly, write down any evidence of God's providence, of God's present activity in your life right now. I told you about a crisis, I want to talk to you about a calling. In 2012, God called my family to move to Boston to join the mission at Mosaic, and we were so excited. It was the honeymoon phase. We were pumped. We're ready to move to this big city and be part of this amazing thing that God was doing at Mosaic. And that excitement lasted right up until the day that we started looking at real estate in Boston. In the Midwest, we had a four-bedroom house, two-car garage, beautiful yard, privacy hedge. We had a deck with a hot tub right outside of our bedroom, a grill. And we had an escrow, mortgage taxes, insurance, thousand dollars a month. "All right, Zillow, let's see, Boston, Massachusetts, thousand dollars a month. That gets us almost the parking spot in Austin. Oh, it's going to be like that." We started freaking out. "Oh, I don't know, maybe God's not calling us to Boston." What did we do? I made a list. I started writing things down. And I've been thinking about this because after Mosaic's 10th birthday party a few weeks ago, I went back and I found that list. It's still on the notepad on my laptop. I'm not going to read it all for you, but I want to give you a few examples of things that made the list. The first one is kind of silly. We started researching Boston. We want to learn everything about the city, and we started researching the different churches in Boston because we want to know what is the spiritual landscape going on. We came across this church called City on a Hill. You're probably familiar with it. We know them now and we're friends with them, but I had never heard of them before. Seemed like a good church. We're looking at their website, and on the homepage of their website is a picture of my deck. When we moved into the house, I painstakingly, I sanded it down. I stained it. And then, we put these nice little lights up all around the deck, and Kelly took a picture of it and posted it on Splash. And they had found it and they'd used it with their website. I was like, "Huh, that's weird." Secondly, we knew that if we were going to move here, that Kelly was going to have to work, and we kind of assumed she would have to find a new job. And so, she scheduled a meeting with her boss to let her know like, "Hey, we're going to be moving and I'm going to have to step down for my job." And he asked her in that meeting to not only keep her job and work remotely, but in the process, she was offered a promotion. And he said, "If you work an extra hour a day when you know would be commuting, you can stay on a hundred percent full time and only work four days a week." And so, those first couple years, we were able to stagger our days off and only pay for three days of childcare. And if you know, you know. That's a big deal, that saved us a ton of money. And so, I'm like, "Oh, that it was encouraging. I'm going to write that down." I remember the day called Pastor Jan to tell him we are in, we're moving to Boston, it was actually the day before the Boston Marathon bombing. The next day was a little bit like, "Oh man, what did I get myself into here?" But, I called Pastor Jan. We talked on the phone. And after we were done, I called Kelly and I let her know, "Hey, I talked to Jan. I let him know we're going." We hung up the phone, and Kelly's iPod randomly shuffled to the song called The City is Yours. So, we say we're going to take this city because God told us we're going to take this city. But, that's weird. Was that a coincidence, or was providence? "I'm going to write that down." And then, the biggest one was Mosaic couldn't afford to pay us for the first year. That one actually was not a great sign, but by God's grace, we were able to sell our house and raise all the money that we needed for that first year of ministry here in the city. And we did it all in six weeks. And despite never having any experience doing any kind of fundraising before, there were all these signs that, yeah, God was with us and we needed to write them down. And some of them were big and some of them were small, but we put them in a list so that when those fears and those doubts crept in, because it was like a nine-month period of time, and there are so many times we were doubting. "Are we doing the right thing?" We'd pull that list out, we would read it, and we would remind ourselves. "Oh, that's right. God was faithful here and here and here. And we've seen providence here and here. Why would we start to doubt him now?" Psalm 9:1 says, "I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds." The power of hope for our crisis, for our calling, we're recounting God's faithfulness in the past, and we're believing his promises for the future so that we can press on and persevere through our trials right now. Romans chapter eight, we all probably know and love this passage, but we have to go there because it's just so beautiful. It's so powerful. Romans 8:28, "And we know that for those who love God all things are working together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. It says good is done. "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" It doesn't mean that things are always going to turn out the way that we want them to in this life. It means we can march forward with faith, knowing that no matter what happens, God is in control, that he loves us. He's working all things together for our good. Peter concludes in verses eight and nine. "Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls." At the start, I mentioned that we have the benefit of looking back at the gospel, of seeing the things that even the angels long to see, but we don't see everything. There's still a lot that we don't see. We don't see Christ right now, not face to face. We're not always going to see the purpose in all of our pain. We're not going to get answers to all of our questions, but we've seen the love of Christ and we know the power of his resurrection, and therefore, we can rejoice and we can have hope. Hebrews 11:1 says, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Awhile back, Kelly and I started reading, we read through The Hobbit with our son, Owen, and a few weeks ago, we let him watch the movies for the first time. Since then, we've kind of been slowly working our way through the Lord of the Rings series with him. And there this quote early on in the first book. Frodo, he's lamenting the crisis in the calling that has been thrust upon him. That the whole world is on the brink of darkness and doom, and the weight, the hopes of the world is kind of resting on their shoulders. And he says to Gandalf, "I wish it need not have happened in my time." "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to these such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what we're going to do with the time that has been given to us." And my prayer for you, my prayer for us, as a church, is not that we would never see such times, but that when we do, we would suffer well, that we would never suffer in vain. I pray that is when we do suffer, that our suffering would produce endurance, that our endurance would grow our character, that this character would result in hope, and that this hope would fuel us to change our lives, to change the city, to change the world to the glory of Jesus Christ. At the first Advent, Mary suffered well. Through the pains of labor, she gave birth to the son of God. Jesus suffered well through the pains of crucifixion, gave new birth to the sons of men. And may we suffer well the labors of our life and calling so that at that second Advent, when Christ returns, the tested genuineness of our faith may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. So that in this time in between, the world would see and know and experience for themselves the reason for the hope that is alive in us. We are celebrating communion today. And like Advent, communion is a time where we look back and we look forward. We look back to the cross of Christ. We remember his sacrifice. We remember the atonement that was made, but in 1 Corinthians, Paul tells us that it's also a time where we look forward and where we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes again. The way that we celebrate communion, hopefully, you're able to grab one of these on the way in. If not, there's some in the back, or better yet, you can just raise your hand and one of the ushers will bring one to you. The bread inside represents the body of Christ that was broken for us. The cup represents his blood that was poured out for us. If you're here today and you're not a Christian, or if you are a Christian and you're walking in unrepentant sin, we would ask you to refrain from this part of the service. It's not going to do anything for you. It's not magical. Scripture tells us that we need to examine ourselves to partake in a worthy manner. But, if you...
Advent 2020: God's Wisdom Revealed
December 13, 2020 • Andy Hoot • Matthew 2:1–12
Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit http://mosaicboston.com. Good morning. My name is Andy. Welcome to all of you who are here in person and those of you who are online. I'm just thrilled to be here. I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic, along with pastor Jan and pastor Shane. I just want to plug it as we always do. If you just arrived and you're new, or you're just chiming in online, you can fill out a connection card. This is the best way for us to get to know you and for you to get more information about us. You can fill that out in person, put it in the white collection box in the back here, or fill it out online, or on our connection card on our app. Today, we are continuing our Advent series. This is a time of the year where we spend extra time meditating on what Christ's first coming means for us: his birth, his life, his death, his resurrection, and ascension, and how it gives us hope in him as we await his second coming. We're going to continue in the book of Matthew and I'm going to be reading from Matthew 2:1-12 12 today. Matthew 2:1-12. And I just want to start off by jumping right into the text. And then I'll jump into my message today. Please follow along as I read the word of God. Matthew 2:1-12. "Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the King, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem saying, 'Where is he who has been born, King of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him." "When Herod the King heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. And assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet. And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people, Israel." "Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem saying, 'Go and search diligently for the child. And when you have found him, bring me word that I too may come and worship him.' After listening the King, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was." "When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts: gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way." This is the word of God. Please join me in prayer. Heavenly father, we just praise you that we live in a day where we are less prone to turn to follow signs, to seek stars, to seek messages from you that are given to us by nature, by the whims of the world. Lord, we come in a day where we have seen that Jesus Christ has come into this world. He has revealed your true nature. He was the exact imprint of your nature in this life. He was the man, the God man to whom all the scriptures pointed and in whom all of them are fulfilled. Lord, we praise you that we get to be in this day where we get to look back. The victory is secured. We're just waiting till you come and you consummate your kingdom. You establish it in its entirety in our bodies, in our souls, in the world. And Lord, we pray right now, meet us in the way that you came and met us in the form of the baby, Jesus. Lord, meet us right now. Give us wisdom to be able to discern the ways that the world wants to deceive us and give us wisdom to walk forward in a way that's faithful you. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. I shouldn't have closed my Bible after I read it. Number one rule to break, according to my seminary preaching professor. I will be preaching from the Bible this whole sermon. So for all those who were forced to be in Christmas pageants with the three wise men as children and loathed it, this one's for you. I've waited for this day my whole life. I was the shyest kid. I hated those things. To all those who loved the pageants, I'm sorry not sorry to give you this message. To all those who don't know what I'm talking about, it's okay. You didn't miss out on much. I'm joking. Those dramatic displays of the birth of Christ can be beneficial, especially for a child. This is a passage that's really well-known. Christians and even non-Christians, people outside of the church will have a lot of familiarity with it. And it has a lot of details that are just really important to cover. I think many of you probably know a lot less about this passage than you think. For example, I want to begin with a question, how many wise are mentioned in the text? It's three, right? No. The text mentions three gifts given by the wise man, but it does not say that there were three of them present. Next, were the wise men kings? What does the text say? It calls them wise men. They're not called kings. Baltazar, Melchor, Gaspar. The song We Three Kings, I love it. One of my favorites to sing in this season. It's crushed. These are wise men. What is meant by wise men? The Greek word could be magi. These men were astrologers. They were magicians, diviners. They're interpreters of the sky, interpreters of dreams, most likely from Persia. And they were doing exactly what God told the Jews not to do that. They were trying to find a way, find guidance through life on just the whims of their thoughts, the whims of their flesh, apart from him. Next question, were are these men believers? Some people insert into this text that these men at the beginning of the story are believers. They know who this King of the Jews is, what he represents. They kind of have an understanding of the theology of the Messiah that they are going to see. The text says they come and they're looking for the king, the one who has been born King of the Jews. There's something right about that. He was born king. The text says that they want to worship him, but that doesn't mean that they're believers coming to worship their savior and Lord with a humble and contrite heart. The word used for worship might better be translated here as pay homage, pay honor to this king in the same way that they would show reverence to a man of honor. You have to think, it was literally the business of the magi to try to get to know the kings, the rulers, get their foot in the door of the courts of the troyal and ruling classes, find a source of income, get that per diem. And one can only imagine just the extra favor you might get when you stumble upon and you find a ruler and are the first to pay homage to a king. We can't really insert into the text that these guys were believers of Jesus as the Christ. So at this point, many people might begin to ask, so why can we trust this account? Why would scriptures mention pegging men from the East coming to pay homage to the King of the Jews? And why does Matthew present them in such a positive light. Old Testament scriptures, New Testament scriptures, they would have blatantly condemned the magi for their practices, for their beliefs, probably for some of their cultic ceremonies that were immoral. So why is this a part of the revelation of God? These are reasonable questions to ask. And I just want to speed through some of the details that tap into the details of the text. There's a lot of reasons to make it plausible that this is actual history that Matthew is chronicling. First, no Christian writer could have made this up. This story would have triggered a negative response to the Jewish or a Christian reader of Matthew's day. And if Matthew is really trying to convince this Jewish audiences, as we touched on primarily in the past couple of weeks. Pastor Jan's first sermon in the series. Matthew is writing to Jews. Why would he put it in the text unless it actually happened? If he were trying to fabricate a story to try to convince Jews to believe, why would he incorporate these guys into the story and put them in a positive light over Jews? Second, just the star stuff. I just want to tap into it. In many places of the ancient world, the intellectuals were astrologers. They believed astrology. Did you know that in history, it's preserved that in 44 BC during the funeral Julius Caesar, there was actually a supernova that appeared in the sky, some form of sudden star-like brightness that appeared. And this was great for the business of astrology. For a long time it lead to a belief that the birth and death of great kings, great leaders were marked by appearances of stars in the sky. Also history has preserved and modern science has confirmed that a conjunction of planets Jupiter and Saturn, they aligned in the sky at three different times to the naked eye, given the appearance of a really bright, single light in the year leading up to Christ's birth. We mark the year of Christ's birth and tie that to King Herod's death. That's preserved throughout history. And the 5 BC, beginning of 4 BC. There are a couple of dates, the specific dates that are thrown around, but May 29th, October 3rd, December 4th, and the year leading up to Christ's birth are the most popular dates. This could explain why the magi had to make the final call for where to go once they entered Israel. They might've had this natural phenomena in the sky that triggered them. There's this unique light in the sky. There's these rumors of a king born that would come out of Judea. And just to elaborate, there was a widespread rumor and first century BC in the Mediterranean region that a great ruler would come out of the region of Judea. Tacitus, Suetonius, Roman historians, Josephus, a Jewish Roman historian, all of the first century AD, they mentioned that these were common rumors. These were common expectations. This rumor was proven influential when Vespasian, a Roman who actually put down a rebellion in Judea in AD 66, part of his platform for his campaign while running for the office of Roman emperor, and he won, was his claim that he was the great leader that was anticipated in this day. And so you have these phenomena in the sky. The non-believing world has these expectations for a leader that would come out of Judea. Perhaps the astrologers of the day, they would have been studying different ancient texts, different ancient scriptures as part of their vocation. Perhaps they had exposure to Numbers 24:7. Remember, Israel was exiled to Babylon, who then came on control of Persia. The prophet Daniel was alive and very influential in Babylon and Persia. During the exile, it's likely that the magi, the astrologers, the intellectual elites of that day would have been talking, had exposure to multiple scriptures. Number 24:7 says, "A star shall come out of Jacob, and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel." Just this kind of randomly placed prophecy in the Old Testament, spoken under the spirit of God by a Gentile prophet, Balam. There's a chance that these astrologers of the day were influenced by this text. So you have all the rumors flying around amongst the astrologers. You have actual phenomenon in the sky, maybe some influence from this Numbers text. And there's a lot of reason to believe that this actually happened. That magi guy from the East, a caravan of them showed up saying, 'Where is the King? Where's the King of the Jews? Where is he?" With assurance that he was born or that he was about to be born. There's a lot of reason to believe the credibility of Matthew's texts from the scripture, from outside of it. All of this information is really intriguing. You can just get lost in this text and in the history, the resources that come out. But in order to get something from this text, we have to stay focused. Matthew is not a true historian. He's a pastor. Scripture talks about there's not enough space to talk about the miraculous, the amazing things that Jesus Christ came and did in his life. So why does Matthew, most likely writing with a pastoral perspective to engage his Jewish audience, primarily Jewish audience, why does he include this specific story of the magi traveling, saying, "Where is he? Where is this king born of the Jews?" And today, by focusing on these actions, the story of the magi, I want to suggest that Matthew is making a comment to his audience about the wisdom of that age. Taken further, Matthew is making a comment about the wisdom of any age. So why is that? The wise men were the intellectuals. They're the leading thinkers. The intelligence here. Thank you AP European History for giving me a chance to use that for the first time in 15 years. The wise men were the lead thinkers of their day. They would have been appointed to presidential councils, overseeing the life and worship of their respective countries and kingdoms. These are people who would have been writing the textbooks while having tenured positions at the top universities. These are the people who would give the most stimulating Ted Talks as well. And Matthew, in this episode, during the events leading up to Christ, he puts their knowledge, their wisdom to the test. It's in their pursuit of the poor baby King of the Jews that their wisdom is turned upside down. The apostle Paul once said in 1st Corinthians 20 and 21, "Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world, for since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom. It please God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe." This text from Matthew has that same message. Paul's question to the philosophers, the learned, the top thinkers of the day. Remember he goes into the talk of the logos, how the Greeks looked for the principle that guided everything and explained everything in life. Matthews chipping into that for his audience. So I want to make the claim, this passage teaches us about the wisdom of the world. It shows us that Christmas puts to shame the wisdom of any age. From Matthew 2:1-12, we can say that the wisdom of the world is cyclical, superficial, and insufficient. Those are going to be my three main points. The wisdom of the world is cyclical, superficial and insufficient. I'll explain the big vocabulary words. Point one, the wisdom of the world as cyclical. What do I mean by cyclical? It's prone to change due to circumstances, discoveries, innovations, needs, trends. Many times it repeats itself. I get this simply from the text by meditating on the fact that the wise men, the magi, the astrologers, the lead thinkers of large powerful countries for likely a couple of centuries derived their wisdom and knowledge and counsel from phenomena and the stars. That's a laughable to us. That's something that we scoff at in this day. But how many of you know your sign? How many of you when you come across a horoscope you can't help. You're tempted to look into what it says. What's on your agenda? What's coming up for you? It's laughable. It seems superstitious. And as Christians, you should not be doing that. I'm going to say that plainly. We don't have to dig into that. That is just dabbling with idolatry. But it's laughable. This is something that is rooted in beliefs of 2000 years ago. But at some point it came back. It influenced our age. It influenced our society, especially in the 20th century. I still remember seeing horoscopes in the newspaper growing up. I don't really know where people go to get it today. You can just find a million websites, I'm sure. But there's a cyclical aspect. It's the wisdom of the world is dated, it's trait. It repeats itself. Let me give you another example. In the mid 19th century, what were all the academics and elite saying was going to solve man's problems? In the fifties, sixties, seventies, the thought of Sigmund Freud reigned. People would go to cycle analysts multiple times a week, for years, spending hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars to figure out their conscience with little results. This was actually horrible for the church, just FYI. After millennia of Christians going to the scripture for wisdom, instead of talking to their brothers and sisters in Christ who are pastors, who were guided by the Holy spirit, people needed an expert to solve their problems. Freud had his day in secular society. Freud infiltrated the church. But by the 1980s, he was ruled obsolete. What do these examples suggest about other systems of thought by the elites, the academics, the thought experts of our day, supposed thought experts of our day? What does it say about the previous ages and their experts? Think about the fluctuations in what universities have said about gender and sexual identity and desire. They're once genetically not fixed. They were learned. And then a decade or so later they were fixed. Is there ever anything proposed to solve and deal with the problems of man by the world? Are any ideas ever new? Do any of them last? Just wait five, 10, 15, 20 years and our kids and grandkids will be laughing at us for many of the things that we believed in our day. My grandmother... Just a couple of practical examples of how this can happen. My grandmother went to the grave thinking that smoking was not detrimental to her health. She started smoking as a teenager, probably went 40 years or so. I think she had another health problem that caused her to drop smoking. But for the rest of her life, when she went out with her friends, she was sneaking cigarettes. We just laughed at that. She insisted. She went to the grave believing that because that's what they impressed upon her in her day. And football fans think of the option offense. It apparently rose to prominence in the 1970s. It's gone in and out of fashion. Bring in Tim Tebow, bring in Michael Vick, it rises to prominence again. That's how wisdom and philosophy of this world has fluctuated throughout history. C.S. Lewis once said, "All that is not eternal is eternally out of date." All that is not eternal is eternally out date. What does this mean? And he thought principles, ideas that are not rooted in the revelation of God and the inspired scriptures given to man are worn out. Once an idea has its day, it is immediately kicked out the door. Immediately on its way to be kicked out the door. That's how the wisdom of the world works. The reality is that every generation of elite thinkers believe that they know best. C.S. Lewis taps into this in this talk of chronological snobbery. Every generation thinks that man has ascended to greater knowledge, evolved beyond its shortcomings. We know better about the differences between men and women. We know best how to treat racial and ethic differences. We know best how to talk about sexuality and relational dynamics. We understand the self better than there rest. But where is the evidence of ascent to greater understanding? Where's the evidence of emerging consensus of thought? In 2020, do you see that evidence? The world says, "Christians, you have to get with it now." And yes, we should have a heart to learn. We should be able to admit that we just might personally have blind spots. Science is figuring out how some things work. But do we follow the philosophies, the teachings of this world and its imperatives when they contradict scripture? God's special revelation. As a church, do we follow them, as individuals? And just thinking about those answers, let me ask you what has happened in your own life when you've blended the teachings of scripture with the teachings of the world? I did that for about five years, four years of college, one year out before I found Mosaic in August 2011. It's only by the grace of God that brought me out of the darkness in which I was walking and the despair. What has happened when churches that you're a part of blended the instruction of God word and the world? Some of you come from great churches, great hometown churches that are faithful to the word. And I'm jealous of you. A lot of you come from these churches. Their intentions, they mean well, but in order to try to attract people, they've watered down the word of God. And the reality is that they're laughable. It's painful to think about it. Pulling from the world and picking and choosing from the Bible. Life apart from the word of God or life in which one blends the word of God with the wisdom of the world, it correctly leads one to confer with Ecclesiastes that all is vanity. Ecclesiastes 1:8-11 says, "All things are full of weariness. A man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done. And there's nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, 'See, this is new.' It has been already in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after." We do forget, and that's why we repeat a lot of the worldly wisdom. Christmas tells us, where is the wise man? Where is the philosopher? Where is the debater? He's already received a boot in the rear end out the door. He might be let in again for a little while, but then he'll be booted back out again. The wisdom of Christianity is different than that of the world. It is eternal. Isaiah 48 says, "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of God will stand forever." Believe this or just the abide in me, the song, the prayer. That was perfect. That's where our life is. That's where wisdom comes from, day-to-day wisdom to March forward in faithfulness. Abide in God's word. It's sufficient for your situation. It's sufficient for the church. The beauty of Christianity is you can read the Bible. You can read the greats from the past 2000 years: Agustin, Luther, Calvin. There's universal appeal because they're pulling from the word of God that appeals to all of us as image bearers of God. Adam and Eve were created not just to walk the garden and tend to it alone, they were supposed to do it with God instructing them and guiding them along the process. Point two, Christmas teaches us that the wisdom of the world is superficial. What do I mean by superficial? It's shallow. It leads one to the same path, saying that prosperity will satisfy. Prosperity, power, closeness to the nobility will heal. Go to the centers of power to find what you're looking forward, to make a difference, get access to the resources that you need. But God set up Christ's life so that he didn't have access to any of those things that worldly wisdom says we need. Verse one and two, "Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the King, behold, wiseman from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, 'Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews, for we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him." Based on the magi's own study, on their own volition, the influence of the wisdom of the world on them, of course Jerusalem is where the King of Jews will be. "Where is he?" They say when they show up with confidence. They're thinking it's superficial, it's shallow. A town like Bethlehem, any other small town, insignificant place, doesn't cross their mind. Furthermore, we get a sense that they're not really going there to truly worship him. They're going there to honor him. Their motives are questionable at this point in the text. The study and volition of the wiseman led them to Jerusalem. They were probably going in their best dress. So maybe those three wise men pictures with them in the very colorful robes and head dresses. There might be some accuracy, just there might be more than three of them. They show up only to be redirected to a birthday party. This is where the wisdom of God begins to supplant the shallowness of the wisdom of the world. "Where's the party? In the courts of the king? In an area like the Back Bay, with chef Salt Bae serving the lamb?" No, they don't land in Jerusalem. That's not where the party is. It's in Bethlehem in a barn or probably more of a crowded house at this point. At a party with who? A super poor family, shepherds. These guys where the social outcasts, the unlearned of society and sheep. Do you see the wisdom of God bringing to light and undermining the shallowness of the wisdom of man? It really should cause us to laugh. 1st Corinthians 1:25, "For the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men." That's what the Christmas story shows us. Everything about the Christmas story is wrong according to the wise men, according to the prideful Jews, who Matthew is writing to. The people are outcasts. The magi themselves were just ethnically not the right people. They shouldn't have been there. The people from the right bloodlines, social background, economic background, they're not there. Jesus' family, Joseph and Mary, are the poorest of the poor. When they go to the temple, probably after they use the money from the gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh to flee to Egypt, they go to the temple to dedicate Christ. They pay the poorest fee for the sacrificed. They offer a sacrifice allowed for the poorest of the poor. Other parts of the gospels tell us that Christ was raised in Nazareth, a place of ill repute. He went on to work as a carpenter. When he began his ministry, most of his followers were not just the leaders in the region, but an eclectic mix of misfits, rejects. Scripture talks about how there is nothing special about the appearance of Jesus Christ. As you read this, you have to really ask yourself, how would you have planned for Jesus to become what he became in the eyes of the world? I don't want to say campaign manager or hearing and say election trauma. But what if you were the campaign manager of Jesus Christ? Would you have really come up with what is in scripture to put Jesus Christ to the place of prominence, where he is in the history of the world? God's plan is radically different than what any of us could come up with. All the things of the world that the wisdom of the world tells us that we need, Christ didn't have. Power, influence riches, political authority, academic positions, Christ avoided all of them. With his Christmas presentation, the Holy spirit, through Matthew, is teaching us the shallowness, the superficial reality of all things that the wisdom of the world says we need. The king, the son of God, the promised Messiah, the fulfillment of all the scriptures is born in a stable, surrounded by a bunch of misfits with all the smells around. And that is why is worthy of our worship. He is altogether wise, wholly different, sovereign. God's power is glorified in how he can work through such a circumstance. In the context of Matthew, this is the specific point that Matthew is trying to make to his Jewish audience. Don't be like Herod, who was a professed Jew. The priests, the scribes, they missed this when the magi came into town. Those Jews, they were able to quote the scriptures about where Jesus was to be born. They were able to even say that this Jesus, this king would be a shepherd of his people. He would rule with righteousness. He would be just, gentle, kind. They're able to say that while under the reign of Herod the great, a powerful tyrant who sucked the money in life out of the people, yet they missed it. Matthew's audience, they're Jews. They're looking for Christ, for God to reveal himself in a profound worldly way. And Matthew is saying don't miss it. He came. He was born in a manger. And that is why he is more worthy to worship than any other king you can think of. We have to shed our earthly expectations. For us, the command is to be aware of the grip of the world's wisdom on our hearts. Now, we don't realize it when we come to Christianity just how strong it is. It took me to go to seminary to just see the influence of the thinking of the world on my heart. You don't have to do that. You can just abide and every step of life appeal to God's word, fend it off with prayer. When you start thinking about the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of the way of God, the wisdom of God working through these broken hopeless circumstances, just simply believing in a God who works like this. You might think you'll be laughed at or mocked in pursuing faithfulness to him. The reality of this text is that it's not might. You will be laughed at and mocked by the world in following God's wisdom and not the worlds. But we have to heed the wisdom that Matthew used to expound upon these teachings in chapter two. Chapter five, we're going to continue in Matthew. After the admin season, the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, a teaching of Christ that blatantly turned the wisdom of the world upside down, says, "Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." "Blessed are those who mourn so they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets before you." We have to trust the Lord's wisdom, his ways, his commands. And that is the means to blessedness and fullness in this life. Point three, Christmas teaches us the wisdom of the world is not just cyclical, superficial, but it's also insufficient. What are the wise men of the world supposed to do? They tell us how life works in its entirety. They're the ones who are supposed to find things and explain things for us, find that principle, that thing that explains everything. But scripture in this story from Matthew, it tells us that the wisdom of the world can only take us part of the way. How is that shown? The magi can't quite make it to the destination that they seek, the location of the King of the Jews. By their own knowledge and volition, they make it pretty far. They get to Jerusalem, but they don't quite make it. The wisdom of the world is insufficient. We have longings for something that cannot be found in this world, longings for a sovereign, righteous, glorious king on our hearts. But the wisdom of the world can't take us there. Romans one. Romans is called Paul's gospel. He begins his gospel with... It's really an epistle. But he begins, what's perceived as his gospel, with unaided reason, we know that God exists. We can look at the world. We can look within ourselves and know that there is a creator. But without special revelation to us from God through his word, through the preaching of the gospel primarily. The gospel is the power an through righteousness to the Jew first. The power of God and through righteousness to the Jew first and also the agree that we can't gain access to God apart from the preaching of the gospel, apart from special revelation from God. Science captures this. A Harvard School of Public Health professor, Tyler VanderWeele, and a journalist John Siniff, they wrote a USA Today op-ed entitled Religion May Be a Miracle Drug. They outline mental and physical benefits correlated with religious participation for most Americans who go to church. Just some of the benefits. Mortality rates are reduced by 20% to 30% over a 15 year period for those who go to church. Those who regularly attend services are more optimistic. They have lower rates of depression. They're less likely to commit suicide, have greater purpose in life, are less likely to divorce, and more self-controlled. Science and research in our day, they can quantify the value of religion, quantify the value of Christianity, but they can't take us to the Lord Jesus Christ, who brings us those benefits. The peace of heart, the experience of the love of God, the peace with the father that we get through Christ. Man by his wisdom could not find God. That's the point of Christmas. God comes to us. How do the wise men find Jesus in the story? It's not until God gives them the specific paths through the reading of the scripture, by the scribes know. To begin their journey, maybe they had this background where they heard Numbers 24:7-17, this text that a star and Sceptre shall come from Israel. And that would be the special revelation from God given to them. But we can't really discern where they just fall in the suspicions of the magi of their day. We can't discern that. But in this text, it's the quoting of the scriptures that redirects the magi from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. It's what gets them to their destination, where the king, whom they desire to see and to meet wise. This is in Matthew 2:3-6. Furthermore, in verse nine, we get the sense that the final appearance of a star was of a different sort of appearance. It says that the star appeared for a short time. It came and stood over the house. Is this a supernatural star, a special star, or just a special act of providence arranged by God for them in that moment? We don't know. But verse 10 talks about how they felt at that moment. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. There is no elation about them because they know that they're being guided by God himself. They've been looking for wisdom their whole lives, and they know that they have found it. It's coming from the source of all wisdom of true wisdom. They haven't seen Christ in physical form yet, but they know that they're being guided by the right spirit because God has spoken to them. The scripture that this brings to mind is 1st Peter 1:8-9. It says, "Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls." This is Peter writing to people walking with assurance that wonder is under the care, the guidance of God who has sealed their salvation even though they can't see him. And the magi have that. Before they see Jesus Christ, you get this through the language, through their response. When they go to Christ, they worship him. They lay down. They bow. They worship him. They offer him gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh that would have been gifts fit for a king. And the word offer is used primarily in a sacrificial way. This is what Matthew is trying to tell his audience. You, first century Jew, you might not see him. In your circumstances, you might not see God at work in your day to day life and your toils and your troubles dealing with the vines, the thorns and thistles of life. You might not see him. But in order to get there, read his word. You have it, just like the scribes, the priests. He's speaking to you directly. You have the source of wisdom and you can rejoice. He has spoken to you through his word in the person of Jesus Christ. There's assurance that God is with us, that God is guiding us, that he will always be with us, regardless of our circumstances. There's a knowledge that we have that separates us from non-believers. It's the source of our hope that we will persevere to the end of our journey as the magi I did. This knowledge, it's only given to us God. True faith that God loves one, is guiding one, is what drives us to true and sacrificial worship of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's what gives us the ability to endure the hardship. Do you want to worship God? Do you want this assurance that is the Holy Spirit who is guiding you instead of the whims of the wisdom of the world? Do you see the cyclical nature of the wisdom of the world, the shallowness of it, the insufficiency of it? If this is your position, the apostle Paul instructs you look to the cross of Jesus Christ. For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. But those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men. It's at the cross that a holy God wisely retains perfect justice by shedding his wrath for man's sin on his own son, while also exhibiting infinite mercy and love to those who are saved by such an act. It's there that you'll find the nuanced, glorious wisdom that will satisfy your heart. It's there where you'll stop clinging to the shallow wisdom of the world. You'll lose the rigidity of mind that comes with it. It's where your sins will be forgiven. It's where you'll truly know God and yourself. Let bow in prayer. Lord, we praise you that we are not people who have just seek desperately for you. It is by your grace that you have called us your children. It's by your grace that you have revealed yourself to us while we are wandering; not just wandering, we're enemies against you. We did not desire a relationship with you, but you called us, you spoke to us, you showed us your holiness. You gave us a taste of your spirit. We know it's different than the wisdom of the world, the spirit of the world. And Lord, I pray, give us faith that we may trust you going forward. That your word is sufficient to guide us. That we don't have to look for the church to rise to earthly prominence. We don't have to rise to earthly prominence ourselves, but we can be made complete and whole in you. I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.
Advent 2020: Jesus Christ is Born
December 6, 2020 • Shane Sikkema • Matthew 1:18–25
Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston in our neighborhood, churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit http://mosaicboston.com. Welcome. My name is Shane, I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic, and we're so glad to have you with us today. We would love to connect with you, and if you would like to connect with us, we do that through the little connection card. You probably grabbed one of those on the way in, you can just fill that out and drop it in the little white box at the back of the room on your way out this morning. You can also do that online. There's a link to that on our homepage. And if you fill that out for us, we would like to just follow up with you this week and also just send a small gift to you in the mail, to thank you for being with us today. One quick announcement before we get started. Tonight, we're having our final prayer service. It's going to be here at 5:00 PM. You're all welcome back for that. And then next Sunday afternoon at 3:00 PM, we're going to be having our final members meeting of the year. So if you're a member of Mosaic, or if you're becoming a member at that meeting, look forward to seeing you there. Advent is here, Christmas is coming. We are spending Advent this year in the gospel of Matthew, taking a look at his account of Jesus' birth. And so last week, Pastor Jan took us through the first half of chapter one. We looked at Jesus' family tree, his genealogy. Next week, we're going to be looking at that famous story of the wise men who followed the star to Bethlehem to worship the newborn King. This week, we are looking at the birth of Jesus itself, and it's, it's an amazing story .for those of you who have children, you probably have a birth story, especially with the first child. That experience is so crazy and surreal that it gets seared into your memory. We had that with our oldest son Owen. With our daughter, Nora, Nora was born just a few minutes before Valentine's day. And I tried and I tried it and tried to talk to my wife, Kelly to just told out for a few more minutes, but she was being totally unreasonable. And so Nora was supposed to be born on Saturday the 14th, which was Valentine's Day. Instead, she was born on Friday the 13th, which explains a lot, if you know Nora. And so she's born on Friday the 13th. The next day, I go home to stay with our older son, Owen and overnight Boston gets hit with the most massive snowstorm that we have seen in all the years that we lived here. Everything, the next day was shut down, there was a travel ban. We were snowed in. And Kelly and Nora were stranded at the hospital, ended up having to stay there an extra day. Finally, the next day, we're able to dig the car out. The roads are somewhat cleared and we're able to go to the hospital and bring them home. And if you've ever driven a newborn home from the hospital, it's one of the most terrifying experiences in your life. For some reason, you get them down to the car. You triple check every buckle, every strap of their car seat. And as you're pulling out of your parking spot, it feels like you've never driven a car before in your entire life. And so here you are. You've just been given this massive responsibility. You've got to take this tiny, fragile, little human being, who's only like two days old, and get them home safe and sound. But to do that, you have to drive through the minefield of Boston drivers. And so things are going well. We're about two blocks away from home. We're in the home stretch. We're coming down Beacon Street. And all of a sudden the guy in the lane next to us just decides he wants to be in our lane and just smashes into us. It was like, "This can't be real. This can't be really happening. We're getting in a car accident on the way home from the hospital with my newborn daughter." Everybody was fine. She was fine. She was new to the whole driving thing, so she didn't know any better. This was normal for all that she knew, but things didn't go the way we planned. And at times, they were stressful. But now we look back on this as a fond memory, a story to tell. And oftentimes, the things that are most memorable in life are those times where things didn't go as planned, where they didn't go the way that we expected, or maybe hoped that they would. And the Christmas story, the story of Jesus' birth, it's a lot like that. You read through the accounts and it's such a almost shocking and unusual story. It's very unexpected, but it's also very memorable. And what Matthew, I think one of the things that he wants us to do, as we read through his account of Jesus' birth, is to understand that while yes, these things are unusual and they were maybe unexpected to us and maybe were even unexpected to Mary and Joseph, that they really shouldn't have been unexpected. Because actually all of these details, the circumstances surrounding Jesus' birth, had been prophesied hundreds of years before and were recorded in scripture. And they were put there to prove, and to show us that this truly was the Messiah. That all of these details that were outside of Mary and Joseph's control, they were not outside of God's control. And actually God was sovereignly orchestrating these things to answer clearly that question that we sing at Christmas time, What Child is This? And the answer is that this is no ordinary child. That Jesus is the child of the promise, the child of the prophecy, the Messiah. That he was the son of Mary, and yet he is also the Son of God, Emmanuel. Fully human, fully divine. And so our text today, we're going to be looking at the second half of chapter one, Matthew, beginning of verse 18. If you have your Bibles, you can follow along. The passage is also going to be up here on the screen. And the three points that we're going to be looking at today is first of all, Jesus Christ is born. Second, we see that Jesus Christ is loved. And third, we see that Jesus Christ is named. And so I'm going to read our text verse. This is Matthew chapter one, beginning in verse 18. "Now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband, Joseph being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, "Joseph son of David do not fear to take Mary as your wife. For that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." All of this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us." When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife, but he knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name, Jesus." Would you please pray with me for today's sermon? Father, we thank you for speaking to us today and we thank you for your written word. Your word is powerful. It is authoritative for our lives. And we also thank you for sending us your living word, your son, Jesus Christ. And as we examine the accounts of his birth today, I pray Holy Spirit, that you would impress these words upon our hearts. To know them, to love them, to learn, and to obey them, to walk in them. And as we do, to become more and more like your son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It's in His name we pray. Amen. So point number one today, Jesus Christ is born. This is verse 18. Now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. Christmas is a good time to slow down and to reflect on life. And I think one of the most important things we need to slow down and reflect on this time of year is this very simple, and yet profound statement, that Jesus Christ was born. And think about what that means. That the almighty, eternal, creator of the universe was born. We can't fully appreciate even that title, Almighty Creator, because we can't even begin to appreciate the scope and the power of the universe that this creator created. I'm not an astronomer, but I have watched the entire, How the Universe Works docuseries on Amazon prime. So I'm basically an expert. So I'm going to take you on, on just a little drive through our universe. We started off with home sweet home, planet Earth. And do you remember the first time that you flew in an airplane? It's easy to become jaded by air travel when you do it a lot, but that first time when it was still awesome, when it still caused you to wonder. As you're lifting higher and higher into the air and you see everything below is just getting smaller and smaller, small, you realize just how tiny and insignificant you are compared to just the vast magnitude of the planet that we live on. And we live in an age where, with the help of modern telescopes and in satellites, we're just beginning to understand that as big, as huge as our planet seems, it's relatively tiny and insignificant compared to the magnitude of the universe that it's found in. And so you look even to our own solar system, the planet, Jupiter, this is earth next to the planet. Jupiter, the great gas giant of our solar system. Jupiter is so large that the planet Earth could fit inside it's great red spot. It's a massive storm that has been raging across the surface of the planet for over 300 years. You could fit 1300 Earths, inside Jupiter. If you zoom out even farther to the largest object in our solar system, the sun could fit 1 million Earths inside. And yet we know that the sun is a a relatively small star compared to most. And so even within our galaxy, you have stars like what was for a long time, the reigning champion. I think it's been dethroned and this is maybe the seventh or eighth largest star in our galaxy, VY Canis Majoris. If you look at the picture there, you may not be even able to see, there's a little blue circle down there. That circle represents the orbit of Earth around the sun. And the sun itself is just like a speck of dust compared to this massive, massive star. You zoom out farther, and at the center of most galaxies are believed to be these things, we call some of them super massive black holes, are something like 40 billion times the mass of our sun. And a small percentage of these super massive black holes developed things around them called quasars ,where incredible amounts of energy are swirling inward, with tremendous speed. And then for some reason, are violently ejected outward at near light speed, reaching temperatures in the billions of degrees. Powerful enough to eclipse the entire combined brightness of all the billions of stars within its own galaxy. The jets from these quasars can fire particles out beyond border of their galaxies, into intergalactic space. They're trillions of times brighter than our own sun. And we've discovered thousands of these quasars among the billions upon billions of galaxies in the universe. The size and the complexity and the terrifying power of the forces within our universe, they boggled the minds of physicists. Not like armchair physicists like me, but those are the ones who actually spend their lives studying these things. They appear to be completely paradoxical. They far exceed our ability to perceive and understand. And yet the almighty creator of the universe, for whom, and through whom all things were made, simply spoke them into existence. The God who did that chose to come down and visit a tiny town, on a tiny planet, orbiting a tiny star, and the way he chose to visit us was to be born a tiny, defenseless, dependent baby. Entrusting himself to two terrified teenagers. We mustn't underestimate how profound a statement Matthew makes when he tells us that Jesus Christ was born. The hopes and fears of all the years were met in him that night. Now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. "When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit." Verse 22. "All of this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us." Jesus' birth was prophesied. Jesus' birth was miraculous, and Jesus' birth was proof that the Messiah had truly come at last. That this son of Mary was in fact, the Son of God, fully human, fully divine, and he'd come to save his people from their sins. So we see that Jesus Christ is born. Secondly, we see that Jesus Christ is loved. Verse 19 says, "And her husband, Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your way for that, which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. For she will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. And all of this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us." And when Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife, but he knew her not until she'd given birth to a son. And he called his name, Jesus." If you're familiar with Luke's gospel, Luke gives us a little bit more information about Mary and Matthew gives us a little bit more information about Joseph. And we see when we read this, that Jesus was loved by Joseph. And you might ask, "Well, how do we see Joseph loving Jesus in this passage?" And to answer that, we really need to set the context. We're told that Mary was betrothed to Joseph. That in that culture, marriage was a year long process. It usually began when the parents would actually arrange the marriage and it would begin with the betrothal. And then after a 12 month waiting period, there would be the wedding and the consummation. And so for those 12 months, the betrothed were legally married. It was binding, but they didn't live together. They couldn't sleep together. The wife would remain in her father's household and the husband would go to prepare a place for them, to prepare a home for he and his wife, so that at the end of the 12 months, they would have the wedding ceremony, and then the wife would be brought to her husband's home, to consummate the marriage. Jesus actually alludes to this, when he's talking to his disciples in John 14. He tells them in verse one, :Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself. That where I am, you may also be." That we, as the church, are in a sense, betrothed to Christ. We are legally united to him by grace, through faith. But now he is also gone to prepare a place for us, and that we are awaiting the advent of his return when he comes, with the new creation, to bring us home to himself. And so, put yourself in Joseph's shoes for a moment. You're a young, godly man. You have done your best to live a holy life, according to the law, according to the word of the Lord, you've remained pure to the Lord. You've remained faithful to your wife. You are making moves. You're making sacrifices. You are working hard to prepare, to spend the rest of your life with this woman. You are so excited as you're anticipating your wedding day. And then one day shows up and says, "Hey, Joseph, buddy, we got to talk. I've been thinking. Maybe I'll weave some curtains for that house that you're working on. We can put one of those live, laugh, love things up above the mantle. And oh, speaking of laughter, funny thing happened, funny thing, you're going to find this hilarious. I've found to be with child." And Joseph's like, "What does that mean?" It's like, "I'm pregnant, Joseph. I'm pregnant. But don't worry. I didn't cheat on you. There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. It's God's baby. And this angel came and he told me that I'm favored. And that you me are going to raise the son of God together right Joseph?" But that's not in the text. You can read between the lines. In all seriousness though, this would not have been funny. Joseph would have been heartbroken, humiliated, devastated, betrayed. And so what is Joseph going to do? According to the law, this was adultery. According to the law, Joseph would have had every legal right to put Mary to public shame, even to have her stoned for what she had done, or what she seemed to have done. And so what is Joseph going to do? Scripture, It doesn't tell us a whole lot about Joseph. Joseph likely died when Jesus was young. We see him when Jesus is 12 years old and we never see him again. He probably died when Jesus was maybe in his late teens. We never really hear Joseph speak in scripture, but his actions speak. And his actions say a lot about his character and about the kind of man that he was. And we see that Joseph was a man who loved God, who loved Mary. And because of this, he had the faith to love Jesus and to take him as his own son. Verse 19 says that, "Joseph being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, "Joseph son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit." And when he woke, he obeyed, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded. And so how was Jesus loved by Joseph? We see that Jesus was loved by Joseph in three really important ways. First of all, we see that Joseph loved Jesus, by loving Mary. It's easy to gloss over this, but even before the angel appears, even when Joseph is utterly heartbroken, humiliated, we can see that he still clearly loved Mary. He didn't want to do her harm. He didn't even want to put her to shame, though he may have had every reason to do so. Instead, he resolves to divorce her quietly, to not make a big spectacle out of this. And then when he learns the truth, he follows through. He takes Mary as his wife. He takes responsibility for caring for her and for the child. He adopts Jesus as his own son. And then we'll see in the stories to come that really, he shepherds and he leads his wife and his family with incredible courage and compassion. And fathers, one of the best ways that we can love our kids, is by loving their mom. And mother's, one of the best ways that you can love your kids is by honoring their father. Everyone wants to have a mom who is cherished and a father who is honored, who's honorable. And just as Christ is the head of his body, the Church, Ephesians five tells us that husbands are the head of their wife and they need to, just as Christ did, they need to cherish her, nourish her, lay down their life for her, just as Christ did for the church. And that's what Joseph does, even at incredible cost to himself. And as a result, Jesus grew up with the security of having a mom and a dad who not only loved him, but that clearly and sacrificially loved one another as well. So Joseph loved Jesus by loving Mary. Secondly, Joseph loved Jesus by submitting to God. Then Matthew tells us that Joseph was a just man. He was a devout, godly man. He also seems to be a very humble man. Even when he was faced with extreme disappointment, he doesn't respond in anger, or rage. And when he learns that Mary is pregnant. He's not vengeful. Instead, he seems thoughtful. Scripture tells us that he spent time, and considered how to respond. He wasn't hardened or bitter, he was humble. He was meek. And this meant that he was teachable enough to receive God's messenger and to submit to God's message when it came to him, even though it was going to cost him dearly, Joseph loved God, and the proof that he loved God was found in his willingness to obey God. Now, Jesus told his disciples in John 14:15, that, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And as fathers, we can not love our children. As Christians, we cannot love our neighbors if we do not first love and obey God, the father. The command to love our neighbor as ourselves, is the fulfillment of the entire law, because the entire law is instruction on how to love God and love our neighbor. And so Joseph loves Jesus through his obedience to God. And as Jesus' earthly father, he understands that he was merely a steward serving under the authority of Jesus' Heavenly father. Third, we see that Joseph loved Jesus by leaving a legacy of faith. Kids are very good at sensing hypocrisy. And so is everyone else around you. Jesus got to grow up with a father who clearly believed what he said that he believed. And he held to his convictions, even when it was costly. And as a Christian, if you really believe what you say you believe, if you live by faith, not by what is seen, but by what is unseen, some people are going to look your life and they're going to look at your decisions, and they're going to think that you're crazy. "You give how much money to church? You read your Bible and you pray every day? You intentionally deny yourself, earthly pleasures, and seek to live a holy life?" Some people are going to look at you and they're going to think that you're nuts. They might even despise you for it. Others, however, are going to look at you and they're going to see maybe there's something to this that your witness is going to be compelling. And now without faith, Joseph would have divorced Mary and gotten on with his life. Instead, his faith leads him down a difficult path. In a culture of honor and shame, Joseph for the rest of his life is going to bear the reproach of those who accused him of marrying an unfaithful woman and fathering an illegitimate child. And this was going to follow him for the rest of his life. We see hints of this in the gospels. The Pharisees in John 8, accused Jesus of being born out of sexual immorality. The people in Jesus' hometown referred to him as the son of Mary, because clearly he was not the son of Joseph, let alone the son of David. And no one certainly didn't believe any of this nonsense about him being the son of God. Why was Joseph willing to do this? Why was he willing to bear this humiliation and this shame? It's because he had faith. Joseph had faith that God would one day vindicate his name and the reputation of his family. He had faith that the truth would one day be exposed. He had faith that no matter what anyone else said about him, or his wife, or his son, that God was pleased with them. And he had faith that even if he was to be scorned by all the men on earth for all of his days on earth, that he was going to be honored by God for all of eternity. Matthew 5, one of the first things that Jesus taught his disciples was that their witness in their faithfulness to him, it was going to have this dual effect on people, where some people were going to reject them and hate them for it, while others would glorify God because of them. This is Matthew 5:11. Jesus says, "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you, falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. You are on the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It's no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people lay a lamp and put it under a basket, but on its stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father, who's in heaven." Joseph loved Jesus by being a good husband to Mary, by being an obedient servant to God, and by living a life of faith. Trusting God and doing what was right, even when it was hard and sacrificial. Third, we see that Jesus Christ is named. Verse 20 says, "As Joseph considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, "Joseph son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. And she will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." And all of this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they should call it his name, Emmanuel, which means God with us." And when Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife, but knew her not until she'd given birth to son. And he called his name, Jesus." The name Jesus simply means the Lord, Yahweh saves. It was not merely his name, it was his purpose, and his identity. That Jesus was born, a messianic savior king. He's not a king who would come to kill for his people, as many in Israel had hoped, but a king who was going to die for his people. He was not a king who had come to deliver them from Roman occupancy, he had come, instead, to save them from their sins. Jesus was born to save. Jesus was born to die, to offer his life as an atoning sacrifice for sin. And he lived up to this name perfectly. And as a result of this, God, the Father raises him up and gives him a new name. This is Philippians 2:5-11. It says, "Having this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ, Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, by being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." Joseph gave Jesus a great name, and then God, the Father bestows on him, a greater name, the name that is above all names. But then we see that Jesus also gives Joseph and Jesus also gives us a new name as well. We see this from the prophet Isaiah and in the book of Revelation. Isaiah 62:2 says, "that the nation shall see your righteousness and all the kings, your glory, and you shall be called by a new name, that the mouth of the Lord will give. Revelation 2:18. "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. "To the one who conquers. I will give some of the hidden manna and I will give him a white stone with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it."" God promises in Isaiah 56, that to all who serve him, he says, "I will give in my house and within my walls, a monument, and a name better than sons and daughters. And I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off." Revelation 3:12. "To the one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out from it. And I will write on him, the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven and my own new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." There's a lot in a name. Names are important. Our parents name us when we're born. Our friends, maybe give us nicknames, maybe people who have names, terms of affection for us. Some names are good. Other names are painful. I'm sure that Mary and Joseph were called a lot of names throughout their life. And many of us have been called a lot of names. We've been given labels, labels that have left deep wounds on our souls. And as followers of Jesus, Jesus tells us that we should expect to be called a lot of things. A lot of names, a lot of slander, and some of it will hurt, some of it will cut, but there's only one name that truly matters. And God looks at Joseph. This lowly, scared, heartbroken teenager. And I love how he addresses him, through the angel. He says, "Joseph son of David, remember who you are." God looks at us. He calls us his own, his saints, his people. He calls us a royal priesthood. He calls us beloved children. He calls us a treasured possession. He knows us by name. He calls us by name and he will give us a new name. More than that, we're told that he will give us his own name, a name that will eclipse the pain and the shame and the reproach of every slanderous name that we've ever been called here on earth. A name that will leave us glorified and vindicated and redeemed. And we experience this blessing in part right now, as we bear the name of Jesus and what an honor it is to be called Christian. You think about that. And we must be careful to walk in a manner worthy of the name of Jesus, and so not to take the name of our Lord in vain. A day is coming what we now experience in part, we will then and, and whole, as the children of God. Romans 8:13 says, "For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God, are sons of God For you to not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. But you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba Father." The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit, children of God. And if children then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. For I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing, for the revealing of the sons of God." Advent is a season of suffering and celebration. On the one hand we suffer. We live in a dark and a fallen and a sinful world. And on the other hand, we celebrate that the light of Christ has broken into this darkness and that the darkness will not overcome it. And we celebrate that through God's Messiah, we have been justified by grace through faith that Emanuel has come, fully God, fully man, and that his sacrifice was fully acceptable and sufficient to save us from our sins. And we celebrate that Emmanuel is still with us, that the Holy Spirit has been poured into our hearts and he is sanctifying us. He is keeping us, he is holding us fast and he's preparing us for that day when our justification and our sanctification are consummated in our glorification. And so Advent is a time when we celebrate what has been accomplished. It's also a time when we anticipate the future. And this is why we sing, "Joy to the world, the Lord is come." Not just that he has come, and he has come, but he is with us now, and he is coming yet again. And we eagerly long the day of his return. Today, we're not sure only celebrating Advent, we're also celebrating communion. And in the same way, communion is a time for us to remember Christ's sacrifice. It's also a time for us to anticipate his return. This is 1st Corinthians 11. Paul writes that, "I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you. That the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it. And he said, "This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way. He also took the cup after supper saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me."" And then he says, "For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." And so we do this in remembrance of Christ. And we also do this in proclamation that he has died. He has risen. He is seated at the right hand of God, the Father, and he will return again in glory. And so, as we transition into communion, if you are here today and you are a Christian and you have examined yourself before the Lord, and you are walking in repentance, then you are welcome to participate in communion with us today. If you're not a Christian, we are so glad that you're here with us. We do ask that you would just respectfully refrain from participating in this part of the service. It's not going to do anything for you. There's nothing magical about this. Communion is a sign of the covenant between Christ and his people. Now, if you've made that decision to become a Christian today, if you're ready to repent and put your faith in Jesus Christ, you're welcome to join us in this celebration as well. And then finally, if you are a Christian, but you are living in unrepentant sin, scripture warns us about taking communion in an unworthy manner. And the very next thing that Paul says in Corinthians 11, verse 27, he says this. "Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks, the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, will be guilty concerning the body and the blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself." And so before we begin, I'm just going to give us a moment for you to just sit in silence and spend some time in prayer, examine yourself, discern the body, discern what we are about to participate in, as we take communion together. If you didn't grab one of these on your way in, feel free to go grab one, or just raise your hand, and I think one of the ushers can bring one to you where you're at. We'll just spend some time in silent prayer, and then I will pray for us. And then we'll all take communion together. So let's pray, Father, we thank you for Jesus. We thank you for sending us, your son, Emmanuel, God with us. Jesus, we thank you for saving us from our sins. We thank you for your sacrifice. You were willing to leave the glory of heaven. You were mocked, mistreated, you were abused and murdered. You came in love and we responded in hate. And God, only you can save us from our sins. There is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved. And so we thank you for the gospel. We thank you for laying down your life, for taking up our cross, for bearing the punishment that we deserve, so that we could share in your glory. And so Father, as we examine our hearts, we see so much sin and we repent and we ask your forgiveness. We pray Holy spirit, that you would sanctify us, that you would empower us to live lives worthy of the name of Jesus Christ, worthy of the gospel. And we thank you for this time of communion when we can be reminded that while we are great sinners, that you are a much greater savior and that your grace is sufficient for us. There's nothing that we can do to be saved on our own merit, but that we are justified freely by grace, through faith in our Lord, Jesus Christ. God help us to grow in our love and our obedience to you and our love for our neighbor, that our lives would leave a legacy of faith, that shows the world that you are our God and that we are your people. And we pray all this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Advent 2020: Welcome King Jesus
November 29, 2020 • Matthew 1:1–17
Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit http://mosaicboston.com. Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic. If you're new, if you're visiting, welcome. We're so glad you're here. We'd love to connect with you either through the physical connection card in the worship guide or the one on our website or in the app. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy Word. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are king. We thank you that you the great king of the universe came down in humility and took on flesh in the incarnation that you were born a baby, you were born a child. We thank you, Jesus, that you were fully God, fully man, lived a perfect life, the life that we should have lived, but wouldn't because of our rebellious nature. And then you went to a cross, you hung on a tree, absorbing the curse that we deserve for our rebellion and also presenting a perfect sacrifice on behalf of us, absorbing the wrath of God that we deserved to be poured out on us. We thank you, Jesus, that you died, that you were buried, that you rose. And because of the gospel, by grace, through faith, through repentance, we can turn to you, ask for forgiveness, accept your grace, accept the reconciliation and be drawn into a brand new family, a family of God redeemed through the blood of Christ. We thank you for that. We thank you, Lord, that you died for rebels in order to change our hearts. As we see you the God of the universe dying for our sins, it melts our hearts, when we turn and we realize that you did that for us, to make us yours, to make us your children, to save us from your wrath. We pray, Lord, that you today remind us that you are king, that you can tell us what to do, and that we are called to accept your sacrifice as a Savior but also to follow you in obedience since you are our king. Jesus, we thank you for your First Coming and we long for that Second Coming. In the meantime, let us do by your Holy Spirit the things you've called us to do, which is go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. We pray all these things in Christ's holy name. Amen. Well, Happy Advent. Advent, we celebrate every year at Mosaic. It's the four Sundays prior to Christmas. We do it every year, but it feels more special this year, to take four Sundays and meditate on Christmas. Why? Because Christmas is amazing, and it should be longer. So for the next month, I'm going to be telling everybody, "Merry Christmas," anytime I see you. The reason why we celebrate Advent is because the church has historically celebrated it during this season. As Lent is to Easter, Advent is to Christmas. The word Advent comes from the Latin Adventus, which means coming. It's the coming of Jesus Christ. We remember the First Coming of Christ, and we anticipate the Second Coming of Christ. We are to remember that He's come and that He will come. Jesus with communion said, "Do this in remembrance of me." It's a reminder to remember Christ. Today, we're going to look at Matthew 1:1-17, which is the genealogy of Jesus Christ. We're remembering Jesus by remembering those who brought Jesus into the world. Here is an important question that every single one of us needs to ask is, "How will you be remembered? After you pass, what will you remembered for?" Then to clarify the question you got to ask yourself, "Remembered by whom? By people or by God?" Well, not many people have such a profound impact on world history that they're remembered for generations. Many of us won't even be remembered 100 years from now even by our own family. Case in point, what is the name of your great grandfather? John. That's really good. Chicken wing. I think many of us struggle. For me, I had to ask my dad, it's Ilya Vezikov, that was my great grandfather. Hardly many of us will be remembered by our family generations from now, how many of us will be remembered by others? That's not even that important of a question because, honestly, we're dead, we're gone, and who cares if someone remembers us? What really matters is, how will God remember us? What will God remember us for, describe our life impact? Here, today, we have a list of people, we have a genealogy. It's a family tree of Jesus Christ, people who are remembered for bringing Christ into the world. Genealogy seem pretty boring, most of us probably skip this page in scripture, "Okay, what happens next?" Not many of us are fans of genealogies or family trees unless you have ever done the http://ancestry.com test or 23andMe. Over 30 million people in the United States have. Congratulations, now the FBI and the NSA, they have your information. Genealogy is boring, but this genealogy is different. It's important. This genealogy binds together the Old and the New Testaments. Why? Because this is a genealogy of a king, of a promised king. Here we have His lineage, that He has legal, regal right to the throne. Obviously, this genealogy is true, it's not fabricated, because no one would fabricate a genealogy like this one. If you were presenting a Messiah, a king to the world, you wouldn't include some of the more scandalous people. Examples, it's a family tree, but it's a very naughty family tree. In this family tree, we have adulterers and murderers. We have examples of incest and prostitution. Oddly for Jewish genealogy, we have five women, three to four of them were gentiles. So this is actually a story of Jesus' ancestors who were sinners. It's a family, but it's a dysfunctional family. It's actually good news for us because many of us come from less-than-perfect families. Many of our families do have skeletons in the closet. The good news of Jesus is that He is from a dysfunctional family, and He redeems that family and He offers us a place in the new redeemed family. He welcomes us into it. Today we're in Matthew 1:1-17, the Words of the Lord given to his people after 400 years of silence. Would you look at the text with me, Matthew 1:1-17? "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, and Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king." "And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asaph, and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, Joram the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah the father of Jotham, Jotham the father of Ahaz, Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon." "And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, Abiud the father of Eliakim, Eliakim the father of Azor, Azor the father of Zadok, Zadok the father of Achim, Achim the father of Eliud, Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. So all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon 14 generations, and from the deportation of Babylon to the Christ 14 generations." This is the reading of God's holy and infallible authoritative word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Six classes in Hebrew produced that. Praise God. Advent theology, three points we're going to cover today; point number one, you will die, point number two, you are a sinner, and point number three, you need a Savior. It's very jolly, merry Christmas message today, we're starting with death. Why? Because you will die. This is a list that we just read of dead people. That's how the New Testament starts. All of us will die. All these people lived for a short time and they died. It doesn't matter how many vegetables you eat or how organic they are, it doesn't matter how much you exercise, it doesn't matter how pure your water is, it doesn't matter how many precautions you take, they all died, we will all die. The recent statistics say that 10 out of 10 people die. We all die. Ancient philosophers had this idea called the memento mori, to remind themselves that I need to remember that I will die. It's inevitable, we are mortal. It's good and healthy to meditate on this fact. We live in a culture that's very death adverse, adverse to talking about death, but it's good to think about it. It's good to visit cemeteries. It's good to visit the graves of your loved ones or friends who have passed. Second century Christian writer, Tertullian, he writes that the ancient Roman generals coming back from victory, as they proceeded into the town to the city, they had a servant stand behind them, holding the crown over their head whispering, "Respice post te. Hominem te memento.” Look after you and remember you're only a man. Look after the time that you pass, remember that you are mortal. Life is short and shortly it will end. You will die. I will die." But we weren't meant to die, that's why we have such a problem. We have such a hard time accepting this reality. It's natural but it isn't, because we have an eternal soul. The most important question before us every single day is, "Where will my eternal soul, where will I, the real me, my essence, where will it spend eternity?" We're conditioned to always prepare for the next season. We see that with sports. We see that with education. We see that with careers. What's the next season? What's the next season? We see that with retirement. What about the most important season that is coming, and that's eternity? You will die. Why do you die? Because you're a sinner, and that's point two. Why are you going to die? Because of sin. We're all infected with sin. The infection fatality ratio of sin is 100%. Sin came into the world and through one man and death through sin. What is sin? We talk about sin often in church. We talk about it often in community groups. It's in scripture, all over the place, what is it? Not being or doing what God requires, doing what God forbids. Not doing what you're supposed to do and doing what you're not supposed to do. As defined by whom? As defined by God. Not by people, not by government, by God in His law, in His commandments. It's rebellion against God to get rid of His commandments, to say His commandments don't matter. It's like saying, "God I have my own rules. You don't get to tell me what to do. My life is my own." But God created everything. He created you. Every single heartbeat right now is a gift from God. Every breath is a gift from God. You, your body, your essence, your soul, everything about you is a gift. You are not your own. God created everything, so He's sovereign over all. He gets to make the rules. He gets to decide what He permits and what He prohibits. There are lines that are not to be crossed. I remember when I was younger, I had to always know why God said something. "Why is this good and this is evil? Why?" It always had to make sense to me. If it did not make sense to me, then I didn't have to follow it. I didn't have to submit to it. If you do that, you make your mind god over God. It's the same rebellion as Adam and Eve saying, "It doesn't make sense to me that we can't eat from this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it's a forbidden fruit. But it's just an apple." It's not even an apple, it was a fruit. I don't know, I think it was pomegranate, who knows? "It doesn't make sense to us, so we don't have to obey." If you look at the Old Testament, there's ceremonial laws about dietary stuff. We don't have to do all that because Jesus fulfilled all of that. But I think God threw in some random stuff just to see if people would submit. "Don't eat shrimp. I don't want you to eat shrimp. That's it." "Why not?" "I just don't want you to." Does God get to be God in your life even when it doesn't make sense to you? Because I'll tell you something, our desires, they control our sense. Our desires control our minds. That's why you bought all the stuff on Black Friday that you didn't need. "I want this thing. I want this thing. That's it, I want it." God can do whatever He wants. That's the first thing that we need... If you don't like that idea, I'm exposing to you your own sin, your own rebellious thing, "I don't like it." God could have said, "Thou shall not eat ice cream. No ice cream." And then you're like, "Okay." "No premarital ice cream. No ice cream before you get married. I define whom you have ice cream with by defining what marriage is. It's between one man and one woman for all of life. Before that, outside of that, no ice cream. No ice cream by yourself. No ice cream watching people eat ice cream. No ice cream with animals. No ice cream with children. Once you do get married to a person of the opposite gender, made a covenant commitment, you are actually commanded to have ice cream. Thou shall have a lot of ice cream. If you fast from ice cream, make sure you don't fast for too long." That's in the Bible too. Does God get to tell you how to live your life? In terms of the strongest desires, does God get to command your desires? That brings me to a more important point, sin isn't just what you do and what you don't do. Sin is deeper than that. Sin is deeper than actions, deeper than behavior. Because we do what we love and our desires control our actions. Sin is placing yourself above God. Sin is saying, "I am God, therefore I will do what I want to do." That's what Satan did. Scripture teaches that God is love, that's His essence. Therefore, when He gives us His law, the law flows out of His love. So actually, God's law is God's definition of how to love. The first commandment is, above all else love God. Love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. Only then you will be satisfied. When you love God like that, He fills your heart with joy, He fills your heart with His presence, with His fullness, and sin is any feeling, thoughts, speech, action that flows out of a heart that doesn't love God above all things. What's the penalty for that sin? Yes, the part of the penalty is consequences of sin and deep dissatisfaction, harm that we bring to ourselves and others. But ultimately, the penalty for sin is God's judgment, condemnation. Scripture talks about God's wrath. Every single person on this list, every single names that we just read, they all have something in common, they were sinners. Moments in their life, they loved something more than God, and shirked God, tried to usurp His throne. Whether these people were relatively good or notoriously bad, they were all sinners in need of a Savior. We're all sinners. We all transgress God's law. We all fall short of the glory of God. Everyone needs a Savior. Even the godly Virgin Mary needed a Savior. If she needed a Savior, how much more do we need a Savior? Luke 1:46-47, "Mary said, 'My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.'" She looked to Jesus, a child, to say, "You're my Savior." She goes on to say in Luke 1 that through the one in her womb, God has remembered His mercy to Abraham and descendants." We all need mercy. Good people don't need mercy, but there's no one who is good. Not one of us, only Jesus Christ. And that's point three, is you need a Savior. Matthew 1:1, "The book of genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." Verse one is the most important verse here. Verse 17 is the second most important. They're bookends to everything that happens in the middle. The word for genealogy in the Greek can be also translated genesis. In the Greek it says, "Βίβλος γενέσεως." It's the same word to translate genesis from the Hebrew into the Greek in the Septuagint. So Matthew is deliberately playing on words here. He's paralleling Genesis 1:1, in the beginning of the story, the genesis, with the story of Jesus. He uses the same phrase. The same phrase is used in Genesis 5:1, "This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made man in the likeness of God." The generations. so in the beginning, God spoke everything into creation by His Word. In the new beginning, that's what Matthew's saying, "In the new beginning, in the new genesis, God sends His Word to redeem that creation." It's a new beginning of God's ultimate work of redeeming a broken, bruised, groaning creation. It's a new genesis. It's a new beginning. It's a new Adam, a new head of humanity. God created Adam in the likeness of God and then God Himself comes, God incarnate in the likeness of man. What's the difference? 1 Corinthians 15:45 tells us, "Thus it is written, 'The first man, Adam, became a living being'; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit." First Adam rebelled. The second Adam obeyed God in everything. Jesus Christ lived a perfect life. Why? So that he can give us this life-giving spirit to transform us from the inside out, to take our hearts of rock and stone and numbness, the hearts desensitized to God by perversion, by sin, by pride. Jesus comes and He reigns on earth primarily now through our hearts. That's what makes the new Adam so much more powerful, it's the life-giving spirit. Matthew 1:1, "The book of genealogy of Jesus," Jesus, it's Yeshua or Joshua, which means Jehovah is salvation. Yahweh, God is salvation, that's His name. That was highlighted in the birth narrative as the angel instructed Joseph and Mary, Matthew 1:21, "She will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins." That's the purpose for Jesus coming. Jesus came not just to make our lives a little better or bring a little cheer or consult us when we need it or provide therapy for us or listen to us when we need an open ear. Jesus came to save us. 1 Timothy 1:15, "The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost," says St. Paul. Matthew 1:1, "The book of genealogy of Jesus Christ." What does Christ mean? Was it Jesus' last name? A lot of people, "Yeah, Mary Christ and Joseph Christ, they got married and then there's Jesus Christ." No, that's not what it means. Christ means the anointed one, the anointed one that was promised in the Old Testament. The Old Testament prophets and kings and priests were anointed. What's important here is there's two genealogies like this in the New Testament. There's Matthew 1, and then Luke has his own and it's longer. Luke traces it back to Adam, because he's writing for a gentile audience, a Greek audience. Matthew locates Jesus firmly in the story of God's relation with the people of Israel because he's writing to Hebrew people, Jewish people. The point is that he wants to show that Jesus is the fulfillment of all the promises that God gave to the people of Israel. Jesus is the Christ. He is the Messiah, which is emphasized again in verses 16 and 17. Jesus is the culmination of God's redemptive work. Everything that came before Jesus reaches its climax, its pinnacle, its perfection in Jesus. He is the ultimate prophet. There were prophets in the Old Testament, the greatest of which was Moses. But Moses said, "God's going to send a law-giver greater than me, because I can't produce obedience. I can tell you what's right and what's wrong," but Moses could not produce it from the inside out. "There'll be a greater prophet who transforms hearts." Deuteronomy 18:15, "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me," says Moses, "from among you, from your brothers. It is to him you shall listen." He's a greater prophet than Moses. He's also a greater king than any other king, a king to whom every knee shall bow. He's also the greatest priest who offers not the blood of bulls and goats but offers His own blood at the cross of Calvary. Matthew 1:1, "The book of genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." Why are these two highlighted here when they're going to be mentioned later? The reason is that God gave very particular promises about the Messiah coming to both Abraham and David. God promised to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3, "Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.'" From you Abraham, I'm going to send a descendant that will offer blessing to everybody. In Genesis 22, this is where Abraham is bringing his son Isaac in sacrifice, because God was testing whether Abraham fears God and loves God. Abraham was obeying God, angel stops him, and God at that moment sends the promise again. The angel says in Genesis 22:15, "And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, 'By myself I have sworn,' declares the Lord, 'because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of the heaven, as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring,'" singular, "'shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.'" St. Paul, the great theologian that he was, inspired by the Holy Spirit points to this text in Galatians 3:16, "Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, 'And to offsprings,' referring to many, but referring to one, 'And to your offspring,' who is Christ." God promised to Abraham, "I will send a Messiah who will save all of those who turn from sin to Him. He will come from you." God made that promise to Abraham. He also made a promise to King David that on his throne he will have a descendant that will rule forever. Psalm 132:11, "The Lord swore to David a sure oath from which he will not turn back: "One of the sons of your body I will set on your throne." 2 Samuel 7:12-14a, "When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish His kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of His kingdom forever. I will be to Him the father, and He shall be to me a son." Forever? David died, and Solomon died, and every single one of the kings after died. How can this descendant rule forever? It has a descendant who overcomes death. The promise is expanded in Isaiah 9:6-7, "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over His kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The Zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this." So Abraham represents that Jesus Christ is part of the people of Israel, David represents the hope of the future kingdom. The line of Abraham places Jesus in the nation, the line of David puts him on the throne. Why is all of this important? It's because for centuries, in the Old Testament for centuries, the Jewish people hoped and they hoped and they longed and they longed, "God, when will you fulfill your promises?" And then there were 400 years of silence. "God, why are you so slow in keeping your promises?" Jesus finally comes, and He's a fulfillment of Israel's hopes for restoration of her kingdom. Just is ultimately the culmination of all of our hopes. It is important to note that Jesus is Jewish. My daughter, Elisabeth, I said, "Did you know Jesus was Jewish?" "I had no idea, I thought Jesus was Christian." Jesus was Jewish, this is important to know. The Old Testament was important. His lineage comes from the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through a royal line of King David. I don't know if you've studied this chapter, that's why the number 14 is so important here. He gives us three stats of 14 generations, and why does he do this? If you actually look at the history, he's omitting four kings who were cursed in the Old Testament from the second session. But Matthew presents this session because the number 14 highlights the numeric value of David. In Hebrew, they didn't have vowel points originally, and every single consonant had a numeric value. The D is four, the W is six, and D, Dawid, D, W, and then D again, four, six, four, it's 14. It's to show us, to highlight the fact that Jesus isn't just a Savior, He's a Savior who is a king. This is crucial. A lot of people want Jesus as my Savior, to save me from sins so that I can sin again. And then you just keep going back, "Okay, got dirty, okay, save me. Okay, got dirty, okay, save me." Jesus is also king who gets to tell us what to do. The reason why He's offering us salvation is because we didn't do what He said to do in the very beginning. So I'm going to save you from that condemnation, but also repent and turn into the King Jesus. I want to submit. It's hard. I struggle. I need more grace. But I do, I long to follow you, Jesus the king. Jesus is the son of David who is king. He's the might warrior king who has come to defeat our ultimate oppressors. In the first century, if you read the gospels, the first century Jews who knew the Old Testament, they couldn't believe that Jesus was the Messiah. They were expecting this great political king, this great king to come on a stallion and destroy the Roman Empire. And yet the king comes as a suffering servant of Isaiah 53. They couldn't reconcile Isaiah 9 and the promises of this king who the government will rest on His shoulders with Isaiah 53. Jesus was the king, but not the king that they had expected at that time. Jesus's standing before Pilate, Pilate has asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" And Jesus says, "It is as you say." The mocking soldiers jeered at Jesus when He was on the cross, "Hail king of the Jews." Words nailed on the top of the cross, "This is Jesus, the king of the Jews." The only way that Jesus, the mighty warrior king could come and offer us ultimate salvation is to defeat our ultimate enemies. And our ultimate enemies aren't political. Our ultimate enemies are sin, Satan, and death. Jesus Christ comes, the king of the universe, and He's crucified by people. Why? What is He doing there? What's going on the cross of Jesus Christ? It's not just a Jewish rabbi getting executed in excruciating pain, capital punishment by the Roman Empire to humiliate Him. That's not just what's going on. Jesus is God and He allowed this to happen. Why did God allow this to happen? Why did God the father allow God the son to die on a cross? Because Jesus Christ was at that moment paying the penalty for our sin. He was bearing the weight of our condemnation. God's wrath was being poured out on Him. That's why He said, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" God turns from Christ. God the father turns from Him. Because God is holy and Christ at that moment became our sin. He died and He was buried. He rose on the third day as proof that the sacrifice was accepted. God promised in the very beginning the seed of the woman would come crush the head of the serpent in Genesis. The promise was expanded to Abraham, that through his descendants all the nations would be blessed. The promise was then repeated to Isaac and Jacob and Judah, the promise extended to King David that one of your descendants will be enthroned forever. The promise expanded again through Isaiah to include He will come through a virgin birth. The promise expanded by Micah to describe the place of that birth, which is Bethlehem. God kept His Word, that's the point of Matthew 1. God kept His Word, sent His long-promised Messiah, who is the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham, and the seed of David. Why is this good news? It's good news because we're sinners and finally a Savior has come offering us overwhelming grace. We see grace that's given to all these people in this list, Matthew 1:2-6. I won't hit all of them, but I just want to point out two things. God pours out His affection on these people through election. He chooses them. Not because of anything in themselves. You look at Abraham, Abraham was a great guy for the most part. But he also was a coward a couple of times. He goes to the land of Philistines and he's afraid. Apparently his wife was really good-looking, and he was afraid that they would kill him and marry his wife. So he said, "Baby, let's take off our wedding rings, and I'll tell everyone that you're my sister." Which is terrible. That's terrible. "Bro, take one for the team, man. If you're going to go you're going to go. Put up a good fight. You can't do that." He doesn't just do that once. I can't believe Sarah forgave him by the way. Sarah, she must have been great, but she forgives him, and then he does it again. He's a liar. His son, Isaac, does the same thing. He goes to this land, apparently his wife is really good-looking and he did this thing, "Baby, let's just tell them you're my sister." Liar. Then they have a kid, Jacob, also a liar, lies to his dad that I am Esau, the firstborn. Liar, he's a sinner. Judah, we're going to get into this guy. Okay, let's get into this guy. Judah who's connected to Tamar, and there's four women here, we'll go through this whole session. There's Tamar, there's Rahab, there's Ruth, there's Bathsheba. We know the first three are definitely gentiles, Tamar, Rahab and Ruth. Bathsheba was married to a Hittite who also was a gentile. Maybe at least by marriage she was also a gentile. So the story of Judah and Tamar, it's one of the most scandalous stories in all of scripture, and it's there because it happened. This is Genesis 38. Judah had three sons with a Canaanite woman. The first son marries Tamar, also a Canaanite woman. The first son heir was so evil that God kills him. But according to the tradition, the Torah, if there were brothers and one of your brothers died, you had to marry his wife in order to continue the family name. So the second son was supposed to marry Tamar, conceive an heir for his brother, dodges his responsibility. Was fine sleeping with Tamar, not marrying her. Just wanted to use her instead of serving her. Didn't fulfill his responsibility so God kills him as well. Judah promised Tamar that the third son would grow up, would marry her. He either forgot or he ignored the promise, and Tamar gets mad and disguises herself as a prostitute and then sleeps with Judah. And then she gets pregnant and Judah in one of the most egregious acts of hypocrisy in scripture, he says, "Oh, she sinned. We need to punish her, et cetera." She's like, "Hey, by the way, Jerry Springer surprise, let's take a paternity test, you're the dad and the grandpa." Which is very sordid. You're like, "Cue the country... I don't know what's going on here." This is in the Bible, and this is one of the ancestors of Jesus Christ. And then there's Rahab who was a prostitute. She distinguishes herself by faith and converts. There's Ruth who's a Moabite, and the Moabites were people who descended from Lot's incest with his daughters. And then there's Bathsheba who sins with King David. But those aren't even the worst sinners. The worst sinners were Judah and then the ultimate king, King David, who's a murderer and an adulterer and did a lot of other stuff too. Why is Matthew writing this to the Jewish people? Why? Why include these painful points from their genealogy, from their story? It's to humble a proud people. "You think you're so great. You think you're descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. You need grace." No one, not even the greatest doesn't need the grace of Jesus Christ. No one, not even the worst can fail to receive the grace of Jesus Christ. Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future thanks to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ comes in order to redeem. One of the great lessons that we can draw from this whole story is that God is so good that He can take our greatest evil and redeem it and use it for good. By the way, the most sordid stuff here is all sexual sin. Why? Because that's one of the biggest idols of our lives. It's not just today, it's always been the case. That's why this is in the story of Jesus Christ. So have you committed sin? What kind of sin? Get specific. Have you committed premarital sex sin, fornication, adultery? Have you had children out of wedlock? These are all sins. Addiction to porn, these are all sins, sins that take... They take control of your heart, and they push God out. And also these people, they are sinners, but they testify to grace. When you turn to God, you repent of sin and you cry out to God, "Lord, you are Lord. Lead me in the ways of righteousness." God does forgive and He brings us into His family. Galatians 3:28-29, "There's neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there's no male or female, for you're all one in Christ. And if you are Christ, then you're Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise." The other thing I want to point is Matthew 1:16. The formula has been so-and-so is the father of so-and-so, so-and-so is the father of so-and-so. Why is that important? Well, because dads are important. We live in a culture that pushes against that, like, "We got to get rid of the patriarch." No, dads are important. Dads are crucial, crucial to children's development but also their spiritual lives. If you a father, well, you are called to disciple your child, to raise them up in the faith. Dads are crucial to be present, to bless their kids with words from truth and also a walk of truth. But the pattern chances. Verse 1, "Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary of whom Jesus was born, who was called Christ." So now we're not talking about Joseph, we're talking about Mary, whom is feminine, the Greek, so Joseph's not the physical father of Jesus Christ. Why is this important? Well, if Jesus had been physical descendant Joseph, then he would have been barred from the throne of David by the curse on Jechoniah. This is Jeremiah 22:30, "Thus says the Lord: 'Write this man down as childless, a man who shall not succeed in his days, for none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David and ruling against Judah.'" So only because of the virgin birth, Jesus escapes the consequences of that curse. So Jesus doesn't descend physically from Jechoniah, but remains the legal heir. In this you see God's overruling sovereignty, that He takes the curse and He circumnavigates it, overrules the curse and turns it into a blessing, just like He did with the cross of Jesus Christ. Christ on the cross, the cross in the Old Testament is called the tree, "Cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree." Here we have the family tree of Jesus Christ. Jesus came to hang on a tree, bearing our curse, and that curse was flipped. God turns the ultimate curse into a blessing. It's a blessing for us because He became sin for us, so that we might become His righteousness. At the greatest moment of despair, when all seem lost, God's son dies. Well, He dies in order to come back from the dead, in order to give us the greatest blessing that there is. What are these numbers all about in Matthew 1:17, "So all the generations from Abraham to David were 14. Generations from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations. And from the deportation of Babylon to the Christ 14 generations." What's going on here, three sets of 14? The first 14 is two sevens, one, two. The next 14 is two more sevens, three four. The next 14 is two more sevens, and you get five, six. And then Jesus Christ comes as the seventh seven. It's to show us that Jesus Christ is the ultimate Sabbath. God sabbathed on the seventh day. Every seven years the land of Israel is supposed to rest lifestyle so it could replenish its nutrients. The year of Jubilee was every 49 years, seventh seven year. What happens in the year of Jubilee? All debts are forgiven, all slaves are freed. Jesus Christ is our seventh seven. Then we can find our rest, our satisfaction, our blessing in Him. We can take a rest in the fact that Jesus redeems us, slaves to sin, and He pays our debts, and that we can find the deepest longings of our souls fulfilled in Him. Matthew 11:28-30, the words of Christ, "Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, I will give rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." The only thing that these people are known for other than sin, the reason why they're included in this text, they're remembered for bringing Jesus Christ into the world. Part of the marching orders that we can never forget as Christians, we have been given marching orders from our king, and the marching orders before Christ ascends to heaven after His resurrection, He gives in Matthew 28:18-20, "Jesus came and said to them, 'All authority in heaven on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age." Let's not forget, Christians, our marching orders. Let's not forget that Jesus is king. Also, if you're not a Christian, if you're not part of the family of God or you're just not sure, Jesus welcomes you into His family. He came from this sordid, dysfunctional family to redeem it, and then He offers that redemption to us. He knows those people by name as he knows us by name. It's a list of people who are imperfect, people who have sinned, people who have rebelled, but people who have been redeemed because of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. So no matter what you've done, no matter what your family history is, no matter your sins that you've committed, come to Jesus. Join His family. We do that through repentance and faith in Christ. "Lord, forgive me, I have sinned. I am a sinner by nature and choice. Please give me your grace. Please give me your forgiveness. I want to follow you. Give me the Holy Spirit." Just asks for it, He gives it to you. After you become a Christian, we lead a daily life of following King Jesus, taking up our cross, following Him. Do we do it perfectly? Of course not. We're still sinners, we still need Jesus. Praise God for Him. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for your first Advent. We thank you for your First Coming. When we pray Lord for that Second Coming, but until we're there or until we pass from this life to the next, Lord, give us the power of the spirit to follow you on a daily basis, to follow you as faithfully as we can. And when we are faithless, you are faithful, and you give us more grace and pick us up and continue to lead us in the ways of righteousness. Lord, continue to bless each one of us and bless us in this incredible season of Advent. We thank you for it, and we thank you for the gospel, and we thank you for Christ. We pray this in His name. Amen.
Jesus Our King
December 29, 2019 • Tyler Burns • John 18:33–38
Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and her neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry. Please visit http://mosaicboston.com. Good morning church. Welcome to Mosaic Boston, Brookline. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Tyler. I'm the teen director here and I am really excited to be worshiping with you this morning. And I say that partly because I was real nervous coming up to this. I always get nervous before I preach, but as amazing as our worship team is, even they could not have planned how perfectly those songs line up with what we are talking about today. Each and every verse in those songs, I was like, "Oh, I'm talking about that. Oh, I'm talking about that." And so it is clearly moving of the Holy Spirit and I'm encouraged by that and I hope you're encouraged by that too. But before we begin, will you pray with me over the preaching of God's word? Heavenly father, Lord, we come to you and we thank you and we praise you that you are king, that you are the ruler over all the universe, but you are also the ruler of our lives. We pray that if we have not yet, we will give you. We will help you reclaim your rightful throne as the king and ruler over our lives and that we will proclaim the truth of who you are to those who don't yet know. And this time come and speak to us through your word and reveal your majesty, your greatness and awe of you through your kingship. We pray all this through your wonderful son, Christ Jesus. Amen. I'm very excited and happy to be concluding our advent series through the different roles of Jesus Christ. Pastor Shane started the first week going through Jesus' role as Messiah, what it means for Jesus to be fully God, fully man, and to come and to deliver his people. Pastor Andy talked to the next week about Jesus as prophet, Jesus coming proclaiming truth, proclaiming the word of God and giving meaning to our lives. And last week, Pastor Yann talked about Jesus as priest, Jesus as Emmanuel, God with us, the sacrifice of bringing us, reconciling us with God. And today we're talking about Jesus as king. And I think for me personally, thinking about a king can kind of be fantasized because we don't really live in a culture with kings right now. We can't really think of very many kings in power today. And most of our thoughts about kings come from storybooks or from fantasies. But one of the things that I think is consistent with our understanding of a king is that they are powerful, that they rule. And when people come to them, they are in awe of the majesty that is around them. And part of my goal today is to have an awesome sermon. And when I say that, I don't mean that I do a good job. I don't mean that you leave here thinking, "Oh Tyler, he was great, or I remember that sermon so well." No, what I mean is I'm going to the dictionary definition of awesome, which is profoundly reverent or inspiring awe. What I want this time to be is a time where we grow in reverence for Jesus Christ in his role as king and to be inspired to be in all of his greatness and his majesty. And the reason for this is because this idea of awe I believe is inherent to Christmas, is inherent to the holidays because this is something we are all waiting for. For me as a kid, I would wake up super early Christmas morning so early that my parents had a rule. I wasn't allowed to leave the bedroom until at the earliest 6:00 AM. But they hoped to it was more like eight or 9:00 AM because they knew that I was up at three or four every Christmas morning and I was ready to go. And so instead I had to take the action figures and the stuffed animals off my shelves and I had to play games with myself and it seemed like an hour would pass. And I'd check the clock five minutes, could play another game, make up another scenario, continue going another five minutes. And it seemed forever. But the reason was because I was so excited for Christmas and in the newsletter I explained about a particular present that my parents gave me that inspired me to awe. But the reason why I was so excited about Christmas was because of this feeling of all that came with the day, not because of presents themselves, but the feeling of awe. And it's not always presents. For some of us, it's that holiday meal, holiday ham. For my dad, it was a holiday steak and potato latkes and it was a beautiful meal. But then the biggest thing that I could think of when I think about what inspired me to be in awe at Christmas was a Christmas light show. I don't know how many of you have ever been to a Christmas light show, but I grew up in a neighborhood where everyone decorated their house for Christmas lights everywhere. And when my parents said, "We're going to drive to a different neighborhood, to a different house to see a light show." This was intense. "I've seen light shows. All these houses here have lights. What is so great about this show that we're going to be driving to?" And as we drive and we get there, I'm a little kid, I'm looking up and this house is covered every inch plastered with lights. Not only is the house covered, the lawn is covered, they have a front lawn and a back yard, and they actually let you walk into the backyard. And there's different paths in the back yard that you wind in and out of seeing different Christmas light displays in different shows of Christmas. But that's not even the best part. The best part is that the lights, they change colors, they flash and they're synchronized perfectly to Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Carol of the Bells. Oh wow. And as a kid, and as I'm standing there being in awe of the bright lights, the flashing colors, the precision in the synchrosy, the powerful chords that are being played, the brisk air around me so that my fingertips are starting to lose feeling. I can't feel my toes. And the only warmth is coming from that sweet cup of warm, hot chocolate with many marshmallows. That's important that I'm holding awe, amazement and this comes not because it was Christmas or because it was lights, but specifically because of the greatness of the thing I was experiencing. I was overwhelmed by the greatness of it. And so when we're talking about awe and we're talking about awe involving Christmas, the point is that we are to be overwhelmed by the greatness of Jesus' role as king specifically as it relates to Christmas. So today we're going to be spending our time talking about three different points. The first point is a question, are you the king? The second point is awe of the king and the third point is align to the king and we're starting with the question, are you the king? Because the people of Israel had been waiting centuries for the promise of a king. This is what Pastor Shane addressed in the first week going through Isaiah nine specifically in the text verses six and seven that promised a king that would be born, whose government would be forever and that government would bring peace. And then we told that we will know that this is the king. When a Virgin conceives and bears a son and is called Emmanuel. This is what Pastor Yann talked about last week explaining how Jesus is Emmanuel. Jesus is God with us. If you haven't listened to the sermons, I'd encourage you to listen to them. They are great. They're encouraging and they're uplifting and they're important to what we're talking about today as well. And so when Israel sees, when Mary specifically gives birth to a son and sees, wow, I'm told that he is the one fulfilling this prophecy of being Emmanuel, he's fulfilling the prophecies in Isaiah. We see in the last few weeks how he has fulfilled the role of Messiah, prophet and priest. He should also be fulfilling the role of king. So as Mary gives birth and watches her son grow, as Joseph watches Jesus grow, as the people of Israel are listening, he gains disciples, they're watching him grow. The thought in their mind is, when are you going to take this mantle of king? And this isn't an idea that I'm placing in their minds. To be clear this is an idea that was inherent to the people at that time because when the wise men came to visit Jesus as an infant, they go to Herod and they say, "We are looking for a king. We are going to worship the king." And Herod is so frightened by this idea that there is a king that he seeks to put Jesus to death because he understands what it means if there is a king in Israel. And so as we see Jesus grow, the Pharisees and the religious leaders at the time are threatened by Jesus. They say he is teaching with authority, he is teaching with more authority that we have. And so they seek to put Jesus to death. And in the Roman Empire occupied nations such as Israel were allowed to convict people of crimes, but they were not allowed to convict people to death. That was part of the Roman Empire's job. And so they delivered Jesus over to Pilate saying that we want him to be put to death. And this is where our main text is today. In John chapter 18 we see that Pilate is going to meet with Jesus and in chapter 18 and verse 33 he says, "So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, are you the king of the Jews?" And this is the question we're starting with because this is the important question. "Jesus, you say that you're king. These people are condemning you saying you are king, but are you? Because honestly Jesus, you don't look like any other king I've ever seen. Jesus, where's your army? Jesus, where's your crown? Where's your robe? Where's your sword? Who is fighting for you? Jesus, are you a king? Are you specifically the king Isaiah prophesied about?" And Jesus responds saying, "Do you say this of your own accord or did others say it about me?" Pilate answered, "Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?" Again, it's clarifying that the charges that are being brought against him is that he is a king. He's claiming to be a king that could potentially overthrow the Roman Empire. So they want him to be charged with that and Pilate's saying, "I'm not convicting you. Your own people are convicting you. What have you done that these people say that you're a king? What have you done?" And Jesus' response is bookended by two statements and this is a rhetorical device he used to make sure that you remember. This is the important thing. If you take anything away, remember this? And Jesus says, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I may not be delivered over to the Jews, but my kingdom is not from this world." And Pilate said to him, "So you are a king." And Jesus answered. "You say that I am the king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice." Pilate said to him, "What is truth?" You see Jesus' response starts and ends with my kingdom is not of this world. My kingdom is not from this world. And if you're looking at Jesus in this situation, you're saying like, "Well Jesus, couldn't this just be like a little cop out? I don't see your army. I don't see your men fighting. I don't see your crown. Your kingdom's from a different world. What does that mean? What is the proof that you actually are a king?" And the proof is what comes in the middle. It's only one sentence because he doesn't need much proof to prove he is king. But he says, "My servants would have been fighting that I may not be delivered over to the Jews." He's saying, "This is common sense. If I was a king of this world, if I was the king you expected me to be, I would have trained my servants to be fighting to protect me. I would have trained them to defend me so that I wouldn't be so easily captured and overthrown and brought to you." And we actually see Jesus actively do the exact opposite of this. In the same chapter in chapter 18 in verse 11 as Jesus is being arrested, his servant, Peter pulls his sword from his sheath trying to defend Jesus, attempts to kill the servant of the high priest who's arresting Jesus. And because Jesus didn't train them to be a soldier, he missed and he cut off his ear and Jesus then heals the man's ear and he commands Peter saying, "Put your sword into its sheath. Shall I not drink the cup that the father has given me?" You see, Jesus' kingdom is a completely different type of kingdom than any other person had ever expected. And he proves this by saying, I am not training soldiers to fight in the way you expect. What kind of king actively tells his soldiers to put down their weapons and not just for any reason he says, "So that I can drink the cup of my father." This is specifically God's cup of wrath of judgment that Jesus bears when he dies on the cross. So not only put down your weapons, you need to put down your weapon so that I can die. Jesus, I think you misunderstand what a king is. A king is supposed to take a throne and sit in power first, live a long life, rule well and then maybe they can die of old age or in battle. You're not supposed to die first. Jesus' kingdom is completely different than anything else, but he says that he does have a kingdom. He confirms he is a king. So Pilate's response, "So you are a king." Jesus answers kind of puzzling. He says, "So you say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice." And then Pilate asks the question, "What is truth?" And we often make this question some high philosophical claim as to there's no such thing as truth. What is truth? That could be part of it, but the primary thing is this is actually a legitimate question, a logical question to have. Jesus says, "I am bearing witness to the truth." Pilate's saying, "What is this thing you are bearing witness to? What is truth?" And thankfully Jesus gives us a very dictionary definition like a tale, a story, definition of truth. He says earlier in this book in chapter 14 when he's teaching, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my father also from now on, you do know him and you have seen him." Jesus' primary role as king was first and foremost to bear witness to testify to the truth of who he is, that he is the only way, the only way to the father, the only way to enter into the kingdom of God and that also he is one with the father. He says, "If you have seen me, you have seen the father. If you have known me, you have known the father." And this is really, really important as we are thinking about an understanding, this idea of what it means for Jesus to be a king because he is saying, "I am equal to my father who all of Israel will rightfully say is sitting on throne in heaven. I am the rightful king of the Jews. The answer to the question, Jesus, are you the king of the Jews is a resounding yes because I am divine, I am God and my father and I are one." And this is well and good for us to sit here or stand here and say, Jesus is king of the Jews. Yes, that's awesome. But to the people of Israel, to God's chosen people, this statement means something so much greater than we can really fathom and so I'm going to try my best to help us understand this because in order to understand this, we need to go back to 1 Samuel chapter eight to see the very first time a king is put into place in Israel and why this happened. In verse four it says, "Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to them, behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations. But the things displeased Samuel when they said, give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed to the Lord and the Lord said to Samuel obey the voice of the people and all that they say to you for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. According to all the deeds that they have done from the day I brought them out of Egypt, even to this day forsaking me and serving other gods. So they are also doing to you. Now, then obey their voice. Only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king shall reign over them." They have rejected me from being king over them. You see God never designed or desired for there to be a king over Israel in the way that we have seen throughout history. Why? Because God himself is the only rightful king of Israel, the only rightful king of the Jews. And so when we're here saying that Jesus is the rightful king of the Jews, this is calling back to this. This is a position that only God is able to possess. And this is why in the prophecy in Isaiah that we have mentioned already today and that Pastor Shane preached about in chapter nine verse six says, "For us a child is born to us a son is given." This is Jesus. The child is born, a son is given. "The government shall be upon his shoulders. He is a king and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." See, in order for Jesus to be able to fulfill the rightful role of king, he has to be God. He has to be able to be called mighty God. He has to be able to be called everlasting father. This is why it's so important that Jesus was testifying to the fact that he and the father are one, and so when we're talking today about Jesus's role as king, we're not just talking about him as a king. We're talking about him as this king. The king rightfully reclaiming his throne as the Lord and king and ruler over his people. See, Israel rejected God. They said, "We'd rather rule over ourselves. We want to do this on our own. We want someone like us to rule over us." And God didn't force them to be obedient to him. He allowed them to choose to be the own rulers of their lives. But when Jesus Christ comes and when he's fulfilling the role of king, he is rightfully reclaiming his throne as king of our lives. When we understand the role of king in this way, and Jesus says this king, the only accurate response is awe. And it might be easy for me to stand up here and say that the fact that Jesus is the rightful king over our life should inspire awe. But honestly, history of kings has slightly jaded us to this idea because just because someone is the rightful king doesn't mean that they are a king deserving of awe, doesn't mean that they're a king that we should worship. So much so to the point that as I was preparing, I was trying to think of good kings throughout history and I was like, okay, we're obviously not talking about Jesus and let's say not David, let's not use the biblical examples. Even the most biblical examples are evil kings. Who's a good king in history? My first thoughts were Azlan and Aragon, both of which are fictional characters, one of which is a lion and not even a person. And this is because throughout history and history classes and school, as we study kings, the kings we know the most are the kings that have wielded their power for destruction, that have wielded their power for evil. And it's hard for us to imagine just the fact that a king is the rightful king, that that also means they are a good king. So the question then is, Jesus, what kind of king are you? Sure you're the rightful king, but what type of power do you hold and how do you wield that power? Because good kings needed to have power. A good king if you had no power, you couldn't protect your people. You couldn't protect your country, your kingdom, so you couldn't be a good king if you had no power. But also if you wielded that power for evil, you cannot be a good king. So Jesus, what type of king are you? And in Revelation chapter 19 we see this image of how Jesus rules from heaven. "Whoa, Tyler, Revelation in an advent series, what are we doing?" This is important because it displays to what power Jesus really is. And so in Revelation 19 starting in verse 11 it says, "Then I saw heaven opened and behold a white horse, the one sitting on it called Faithful and True." Truth, Jesus came to bear witness to who he is the truth. "And in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire and his head are many diadems and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood and his name by which he is called is the word of God. And the armies of heaven arrayed in fine linen, white and pure were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepresses of the fury of the wrath of God, the almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written king of kings and Lord of Lords." The questions I asked earlier, Jesus, where's your crown? Here it is. Jesus, where's your army? Here it is. Jesus, where's your followers? Where's your sword? Here it is striking down the nations. And when it says that the sword is coming out striking down the nations, what that means specifically is it's striking down the kingdoms that are opposed to him and that is specifically the kingdoms of darkness, the kingdom of sin, of death, and of Satan. Jesus completely destroys them and this is an imagery meant to be intimidating. It is meant to be. It's meant to strike fear in anyone who dares oppose this king, but it's also meant to rally and galvanize the troops that are on his side fighting for him to have confidence. This is the king we serve. He is powerful. He is great. And I was trying to think of some examples to sort of make it more relatable today because honestly not many of us have followed a king into battle or even a commanding officer into battle and that's just not something we experienced as much in our culture. And if you have served in that way, we are thankful for you and for your service. And so the closest thing that we honestly have in our culture is sports. And I say that because sports are designed for this purpose. The creation of sports started because they needed men to do things besides fight each other. And the greatest, I think sport that relates to this is any of this fighting sports because you are actually fighting. And I chose specifically boxing because there's a character in boxing history that I think we can relate to and understand, and that is specifically Cassius Clay or Muhammad Ali. And I actually changed this example this morning because as I was thinking about it, one, I need to be clear that no one can come close to a comparison of the greatness of Jesus. This is an example that it's not even scratching the surface. It might be barely rubbing against it, but not making a dent in the comparison to Jesus. But this is a person that he was equivalent to boxing to what Tom Brady is to football, except even more so. And I say that, and I'm not a Patriots fan. I just know most people here are. But, however great you think Tom Brady is, even more so was the greatness of Muhammad Ali. And if you're on Mohammed Ali's corner, if you're in his corner, you're supporting him. Oh, you have confidence. You know the power that he has. You go into it knowing and expecting to win. And if you're standing in the opposing corner going up against him, there's fear struck in your heart because you know his greatness as well. You don't deny his greatness, but you don't want to have to face it. And the reason why I chose this because in the basement of my parents' house, there's a picture of Muhammad Ali specifically when he knocked down Sonny Liston. I don't know if you've seen this picture. You probably have, even if you don't recognize it, but there's this man muscular laying flat on the ground and over top of him is towering another man, Muhammad Ali standing firm, flexing his legs, showing his muscles, but he's also flexing his arm in a bicep, standing down over him, staring him down and screaming, just a blood curling power, intimidating. And this is sort of the idea, this is a glimpse into the imagery we're seeing here in revelation that's supposed to galvanize us and encourage us because when Jesus is showing his power, he's not just standing in a boxing ring fighting a person until they get knocked out and then saying, we're all good. No, he's up in heaven in the throne room of God and he's not just standing there. He's riding a horse into battle bolder. How many men do we know today that can even ride a horse? And when I say ride a horse, I'm not saying sit on it and walk around as a trainer leads them around. I'm talking about riding full sprint, full gallop into war and Jesus isn't just standing over staring at them. He is riding forward with fire in his eyes and he isn't wearing that thin little satin robe that boxers put over their head as they walk into the ring dancing as they go in. No. Jesus is wearing a royal robe, the robe of a king. And as he's riding the horse, his leg comes out and it shows his thigh and it's even more muscular than Muhammad Ali's. It makes his leg look like an infants and on his robe and on his thigh are his name, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And the greatest thing about this, I like to imagine that it's probably written in Hebrew or Aramaic or some foreign language because other languages are just inherently more cooler in tattoos than English, but unlike our friends that get tattoos in different languages and don't actually understand what it means, Jesus knows what it means and he owns it and he is the King of Kings. He is the Lord of Lords. The words Kings of Kings and Lord of Lords, we often get desensitized to because it's so common during the holidays, it's something we say a lot, but this idea of King of Kings is sort of two fold. It means that he is king over everything. Everything is in subjection to him but it also means he is the greatest king that could ever exist. He is the greatest. We would say he is the GOAT and when we are following Jesus, we can have this image of his greatness and of his power in our mind, understanding that this is the king we are following. This is the king we are serving, but the difference is Jesus isn't just powerful in imagery, he isn't just powerful in the way he goes to battle conquering. He is powerful in character. In the book of Hebrews in chapter one verses two through four it's described, Jesus is saying he, Jesus is the heir of all things. Everything in creation belongs to him. Why? Because through him he also created everything. Jesus doesn't just own everything. He created everything. And it says that he is the radiance of the glory of God. Muhammad Ali in that picture standing over, he's sweating a little bit, so there's a little bit of a glimmer that's nothing. Jesus is a radiant. He is a shining sun brighter than any sun or star that has ever been in the sky. He is radiant. He is the exact imprint of the nature of God. He is divine. He is God, and then this is the one that always gets me, that always gets me. He upholds the universe by the word of his power. Jesus not only creates, he sustains. The very fact that the chairs that we are sitting in have atoms that are holding them together that exist is because of the power of Jesus. The very fact that we exist here today, that we have skin, we have organs, we have blood, we have air in our lungs is because Jesus chooses to use his power to sustain us, to sustain his creation. And then it says he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high claiming his rightful toner and he's ruling over all creation. So we get the power, we see the power, we see the majesty, we see the might. How does this king wield his power? How does this king wield it? He wields it by bringing about Christmas and this is why Christmas is so awe, inspiring and why Christmas is so great because this all powerful king ruler of everything. Nothing can get in his way. Nothing can stop him from accomplishing his goals and bringing in his kingdom. What does he do? He leaves it all behind. He says, "I'm willing to put that down and come to earth, be born as a baby, an innocent, vulnerable, helpless baby lying in a manger. This is not what we expect of an awe, powerful king. But the reason he did this is because of his character of loving you and loving me. He came to earth as a human. So that way he could live a perfect life. Proclaim the truth of who he is. Bear witness to his identity, die on the cross. Taking that wrath of God, taking the wrath that we deserve, the punishment for our sins and saying, that's on me. I'm taking it. And then defeating the kingdom of sin when he died on the cross and defeating the kingdom of death, when he rose from the dead so that we can now enter into the kingdom of God. So the question is, are you a citizen of the kingdom? You see, Jesus has done this to bring you into his kingdom. He wants you to be a citizen. Join him. This is the great king that we serve. But if you're here today and you haven't confessed that, I have wrongfully taken the throne of my life and put myself on it or put someone else on it and I need Jesus to reclaim that rightful place on his throne over my life. I need him to save me from my sins, from anytime I've rebelled against God. Anytime I was disobedient, anytime I put myself on the throne, Jesus rightfully deserves, I would urge you to confess and ask him to take the throne of your life today. And I urge you not because I want you to do it out of me urging you or out of compulsion or out of fear. I'm doing this because I want you to understand what we were talking about, about how great this king is. He is powerful, but he sacrifices all because he loves you. Join his kingdom, become a citizen. And part of the role of king that Pastor Yann mentioned in the sermon last week and has to do with what we're talking about today is that a king brings order and Jesus first raw order by realigning the priorities in order of our life that he is king. He is first and foremost in our lives. We are not. But then he also brings order by giving decrees, right? When I was studying what makes good kings, the first thing that came up consistently in all the different sources I found was they make strong enforceable laws. Well, Jesus said he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill the law and he has given us his decrees. We have 66 books with his decrees, but the greatest thing about this, the greatest thing about how good Jesus is as king, he doesn't just give us decrees and then say, "Do it or else." He says, "I lived it, I lived it." And this is what we mean when we say align to the king because the king lived it out. And so we can try and strive to align our lives the way we are living after the model of what Jesus did for us. He didn't just force us, he showed us. And we can now align ourselves, prioritize God is on the throne for our lives. And now I can align myself to the way he lived. And as we were talking about this, I was thinking about what is one of the most important roles of a citizen of a kingdom? And one of the things that makes the kingdom of God unique to many different nations and kingdoms we've seen in the world is that every citizen of God's kingdom is also a soldier. And when I say this, I want to be clear. We're not talking about fighting, we're not talking about violence. We're not talking about fighting with swords. Remembering that Jesus in John 18 stopped his servants from fighting with swords. That's not what we're talking about. But we are soldiers. And in order to understand this, I want to draw some comparison to the US soldiers because we have some notion of what they are. We have an understanding. And this is a little bit more relatable to us. And as we do this, I want to also be clear we have gratitude and we have utmost respect for the men and women who sacrificed their time and their lives to serve and protect this country. And as we're drawing comparisons and noting some differences, this is not a commentary or a reaction to the US soldiers. This is just to help us understand what it means to be a soldier better. And so if you go to the US Army's website, they say that there are three different types of soldiers, active duty, army reserves and army national guard. And here's a little quote from their website to find what these are. "Active duty soldiers are part of the army 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Army Reserve soldiers are part time and are able to work a civilian career, go to school and live where they want. Army National Guard is an essential element to the US military protecting communities across the US while serving part-time. These three roles are vital to our army in this country today. However, God's kingdom only has one type of soldier. God's kingdom only has active duty soldiers. It's a 24 hour a day, seven day a week job. It's not just the job though. It's a commitment. It's something that we have committed to. We have enlisted ourselves into when we have put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ, and so this job, it's not a reserve job. It's not a job that we can say, "Hey, Jesus, I'm enrolled. I enlist, but I'm going to continue doing everything the way I've been doing it before." It's not a job we get to say, "I'm going to continue to live my life and do everything the way I wanted to. I'm going to continue to party the way I wanted to. I'm going to continue to date the way I wanted to. I'm going to continue to live life exactly as I wanted to, and then when something dire happens, when you really need me or I really need you, then I'll be enlisted." All right? Because we like to do this right. We'll say, "I'll get serious about my faith or my commitment to Jesus when I get married because then it's not just me, it's someone else or I'll be serious about my faith and committed to my faith of Jesus when I have kids because we all know that kids are just evil on their own and so they need to be raised with some sort of God or some sort of help." Or we say, "When I have my career in order, my finances in order and I'm out of debt, then I'll be serious, but right now I need to focus on my job." Or the one that is the most stereotypical. But I have actually heard many times when discussing this idea with my family and with my friends is that, "Oh, when I'm on my death bed, when I'm about to die, then I'll be committed to Jesus then." Don't we? Jesus calls us to be 24 hours a day, seven days a week Active Duty soldiers. It's not a reserve job and it's also not a part-time job. It's not a part time job in the sense that we are scheduled certain times where we are to work and serve and scheduled certain times where we're not. It's Christmas season right now. So this is the time we're all scheduled. Yeah, I understand. I'm scheduled to serve Jesus now. I'm scheduled to go to church to read scripture, to sing songs about Jesus. We sing the good Christmas songs, the type that Mosaic has on their EP, not the type that are about Santa and things like that. No. That's not what we're talking about. You see, you can't do that and then say, "Oh, it's February, it's cold. I'm tired. I've forgotten about new year's resolutions already. This is my schedule to break. And then Lent will come and then Easter and that will be my schedule to break back on. And then summer will come and I just want to go to the beach and have a good time. So that'll be my scheduled break again." And it's cycles year after year, after year. No, it's not a reserve job. It's not a part time job. It's a commitment each and every day. And part of what it takes is to be committed every day. It's hard to think about the long-term of the year and be committed for the whole year. That can be hard. But what is easier is to wake up each day saying, "I'm committed today. Today's the 24 hours I'm serving." And you wake up the next day. "Today is the 24 hours I'm serving as a soldier." So what do we actually do as soldiers? Also from the US Army, they say that each soldier has three different roles and these three different roles I think are really helpful in us understanding what it means to be a soldier in the kingdom of God. The first point that every soldier in the US Army has to do is protect themselves. So my challenge to you guys today is are you protecting yourself spiritually? Are you spending time in God's word, understanding his decrees so that you can be rooted in the truth of who he is, but not just rooted in truth. Using that truth to galvanize yourself, to stir up that love and that awe for the king that is on the throne and reminding ourselves why Jesus is on the throne, why he deserves to be the rightful king. Are we Sabbathing? Are we taking rest from work and saying, I am taking a day. I am committing my day to prove to you, Lord, that you are more important than my job. You are more important than my career and I can figure out the work. I can trust you that the work will get done if I'm committed to you first. Ephesians six is a whole sermon on itself, but it talks about putting on the armor of God. And so when you leave here, I'd encourage you to read it and to think about what that means to put on the armor of God, but it's rooted in truth and putting on the helmet of salvation, leading with the salvation that is in Jesus Christ, covering ourselves with his grace and with his mercy. And as we talk about protecting ourselves spiritually, it's also has to do with protecting ourselves mentally and emotionally. A lot of times we'll have thoughts that we are just, "Whoa, where'd that come from? I wasn't thinking about that thing, or that's not me. I don't think about those things. Where did that thought come from?" And this happens to me all the time honestly. And part of my job as a soldier of protecting myself is to speak truth to those things. Not let those evil thoughts fester. Not let those things continue and to dwell on them. But to tell myself, no, I am not being obedient to these thoughts. I'm being obedient to Christ first. Then also protect yourself emotionally because we often have emotions. We feel hurt, we feel pain when things happen and it's real. It's honest. It's okay to feel that way. But there are times when we have these very real emotions and that's not the best thing to be feeling at the moment. Sometimes we have to speak truth to our emotions that yes, I feel this way. It is true that I feel this way, but I don't have to feel this way. I can trust Jesus to protect me from this. And are we praying regularly? Because the whole point of the second point of the awe of God is to show how great of a king he is. And so if we are praying to this great king, we are trusting him to protect us as well. And so we need to be praying consistently. If he is powerful enough to ride a horse and a sword to come out of his mouth and defeat all of his enemies, he is powerful enough to protect you. He's powerful enough to help you. The second role of a soldier in the army is to protect each other, protect others. As Christians the reason why I come up every time and I say good morning church is because we're all in this together. We need each other. We are one body in Christ and part of the role of soldier is to protect each other. Are we actively seeking out our brothers and sisters in Christ and figuring out how we can pray for them? And when a prayer request is brought up in your community group, do you pray for it then and say, check, done or do we say, no, this is real, this is important. Let me spend time throughout the week praying for them and then check up and follow through with them again and say, "Hey, how did this thing go? What happened? How are you doing? How are you feeling?" And this is something that is convicting me because I like checks. I like to be able to say done. I did the thing and so it's easy for me to say, "Oh, I prayed. I said I was going to pray. I prayed, done." No. We are called to constantly be encouraging each other, pray for each other regularly. And when a friend comes to us and says honestly I'm still struggling with this thing or I'm still hurt by what happened or I don't know what to do in this situation. We should still be praying and encouraging them. Do we speak truth to each other in these times? Do we just say the things we think that they want to hear or do we say the things that they should hear? This is obviously done in grace and in truth and with patience, but are we willing to say the things that need to be said? Are we willing to instruct and give guidance, but also are we willing to encourage, are we willing to build up and to have patients and bear with each other as we struggle and are we willing to let others do that to us? That's the hardest part. It's easy to say that I can do this for someone else, but why I don't need help. We do. We need help. Are you willing to let other brothers and sisters in Christ protect you? And if you see a brother or sister in Christ in need and you have the means to meet that need, do you actually do it or do you put it off to someone else or the church in general? If I'm in a situation where I see a brother or sister in need and God has put in my heart that I have the means to meet it, it is my duty. It is my responsibility to meet that need. Doesn't matter what I feel, what my pride is. God's kingdom is more important than my own. And lastly, the way that a soldier is meant to serve, they say in the US Army a soldier is to protect the United States, we would say is to protect the kingdom of God. And this one's the easy one, I think. And I think this one is the most fun because again, this, remember the imagery of the great king who is going and protecting his kingdom. He does an excellent job. We really don't need to do that much when it comes to protecting the kingdom of God. Really all we need to do is expand it. Is to bring it to places where it is not yet been or to people who do not know it or not part of it. And to be clear, again, this is not by force. This is not by coercion. By strong language saying, "You must believe me." As I said, when I urge you to let Jesus sit on the throne of your lives, that's not going to convince anyone. It's only the Holy Spirit that changes lives, and so we are called to expand God's kingdom, God's way. How did Jesus expand his kingdom? He bore witness to the truth. He testified to who he is. That's our job as Christians. That's our role in protecting the kingdom of God is to declare to others the truth of who Jesus is and to declare to them why we know it's true. If you are a Christian, if you have already put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, your testimony is a powerful tool to proclaim the gospel to other people. It's one thing for people to hear these stories about Jesus and to read scripture. It's another thing for someone that they know, for someone that they love and someone that they trust to proclaim to them why? Why they believe. And with all of these things, and as all of these things build as we strive to be good soldiers, as we strive to be obedient to the decrees of the king, what we can always go back to is the awe, the greatness be overwhelmed by the greatness of Jesus Christ as king coming and saving us. The act by which he deemed and showed that he loved us. Will you pray with me? Heavenly father, Lord, we ask in this time that if we have put ourselves on the throne of our lives and kicked you off of it, we ask that we repent. We ask that we say we're sorry, and that we invite you to reclaim your rightful place in the throne of our lives. Lord, we ask you that as we strive to be soldiers in your kingdom, as we strive to live for you, that you are galvanizing us. You are reminding us of your greatness, that we can be inspired by who you are, the type of king you are, the loving, all powerful king. I pray all this through your wonderful son, Christ Jesus. Amen.
Jesus Our Priest
December 22, 2019 • Matthew 1:18–25
Audio Transcript: You're listening to audio for Mosaic Boston church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston, and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit http://mosaicboston.com. Heavenly father, we thank you that you are God of love, and you have proven your love to us by giving the greatest gift that anyone has ever given to anyone else, it's your son, Jesus Christ. God the son, we thank you so much for the incarnation. That's what we're celebrating today, that you took on flesh, that you veiled yourself in flesh in order to tear down the veil that stood between us and you, you a holy God, and us an unholy people, and Jesus, you came to reconcile that breach, and thank you for the life that you lived, a perfect life. You lived perfectly, you died shamefully, and you rose victoriously, and now you reign supremely. We thank you Jesus, that even now you're at the right hand of God, interceding for each one of us and Lord, we need that intercession, we need an advocate, because we have an enemy who wants to pull us away from the living God, and Lord keep us in your hand. We thank you for the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, come now and fill us, every single one of us, and continue to transform us into the image of God the son, and allow us to image forth the God of the universe to the people around us. Jesus, we thank you that you're the great high priest, and just sacrifice an animal, you sacrificed yourself, the all sufficient supreme sacrifice. Bless our time, the holy word today, and we pray this in Jesus name, amen. Did you get a Christmas tree? Anyone a real Christmas tree? Anyone? For the past nine years, we have a family tradition. There's a parking lot right across from The Draft bar in Allston on Harvard Ave next to ACE Hardware, and every single year I've taken my daughters, and we go, we pick out a tree, and I snap a picture with them next to the tree, and I've got a whole collection of these pictures that I'm going to put together into a slide show, and I'm going to show it at their weddings, or graduate, or whatever in the future, and this year, I was away last week, and I was visiting some family in Estonia and Finland, and my wife texts me, and she says, "Can we go get the tree without you?" I was like, "Sure, go to the same place that I go to, but you got to know they haggle, you've got to haggle, or they inflate the prices." And she said, "Well, how much do you usually pay?" I was like, "They usually say 65. I bring it down to 55, because I'm a hard negotiator." She texted me with a picture of a beautiful tree in our living room, all decorated, and I said, "How much did you pay?" She said, "$35." I said, "How'd you pull that off?" She said, "I showed up and I told them I'm only spending $35." It's the Ukrainian way. She knows, that's the way you got to do it. We like the Christmas tree in our household, and we like the gifts. We do that, and the symbolism behind it is that God has given the greatest gift, and that's his son, but also, there's a symbolic nature in giving gifts to the Lord. We see in the very beginning of the Christmas narrative that the Magi, or the wise man, they came to Jesus, and they came with gifts, and they came with gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and that those are incredibly symbolic gifts. Why? Because the Magi understood that Jesus Christ was the embodiment of the three great offices in the Old Testament, the prophet, the priest, and the King. The king, the priest, and the prophet, so they bring gold, which was a gift given to majesty, precious metal given to kings, and Jesus is the king above all kings. Frankincense, they brought frankincense, incense is in that same word, that it was symbolic of the incense that was burned in the Holy of Holies in the temple as a sign that we're bringing our prayers to the Lord, and Jesus was the ultimate priest. He's the king, he's the priest, and he's the prophet. That's what the myrrh symbolize. Myrrh was the anointing oil with which prophets were anointed, and prophets would then anoint both priests and kings. Jesus is all three. How do the Magi know this? They knew this from the prophetic passage of the Old Testament. Moses promised, he said, "God will raise up from amongst you a prophet greater than I am. Listen to everything that he says." The Magi knew that text from Deuteronomy 18. They also knew the text where David says in Psalm 104, "You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek." They knew that, Daniel promised a king above all kings is coming. King David promised an eternal king is coming, and that's Jesus Christ. He's the King above all king. The Magi knew this. That's why they brought the gold, the frankincense, the myrrh, and that's why this advent season, that's what we're focusing on. The offices of Jesus. Jesus is the ultimate prophet, the ultimate priest, the ultimate King. Last week we talked about Jesus as the ultimate prophet who tells us the way, he tells us the way that we have gone away from the Lord, that we are sinners, and the king comes to tell us that our lives are disordered, that we are to reorder our lives, but the message of the prophet is not good news, and the message of the king is not good news until we have the message of the priest. The prophet tells us we're sinners, the king tells us how to live righteously, but it's not until the priest comes, and says, there is atonement for your sin. There is someone who takes your guilt away, who takes away the corruption from your heart, and that's what we're focusing on today. The heart of the sermon is that Jesus Christ is the ultimate priest, the high priest, and to focus our time in the word we're going to look at Matthew 1:18-25, this is the beginning of the Christmas narrative. Would you look at the text with me? Now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit, and her husband, Joseph being a just man, and unwilling to put her to shame resolved to divorce her quietly, but as he considered these things, behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke from sleep he did as the angel of the Lord commanded, he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus." This is the reading of God's holy and infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. We're going to focus on the passage where the angel says, "His name shall be Jesus. His name in the Hebrews Yeshua. Jesus is the Hellenized or Greekinized version. It comes from two words. Ye means Lord, and shua means save. Jesus saves. This is his identity. What does he do? He's with us. He's Jesus and he's Emmanuel, so that's what we'll focus on. His name, Jesus, and Emmanuel, God with us. How is he with us? Today, we're focusing on the role of Jesus Christ as the high priest, and as the high priest Jesus does four things, and this is our outline for today. Jesus saves, Jesus knows, Jesus prays, and Jesus sends. Jesus saves, knows, prays, and sends. First of all, Jesus, the great high priest he saves. What made Israel different from all the other peoples on earth was not that there was something special in, and of themselves. It's that God had chosen them, and specifically, chosen to be with them. He allowed his presence in a very palpable, tangible way to manifest itself amongst them, so when he leads them out of Egypt into the wilderness, he tells him them to build a tabernacle. In the middle of the tabernacle was the Holy Place, and God's presence descended like a cloud, encouraging that God is with us, that God was with them, but also, terrifying. They knew who God was, that he was a Holy God. God had a given him them a law by which to live, and they understood they could not by themselves keep even the basic laws, so if they're guilty, and God's presence is with them, it's terrifying, how do they live with God in his presence? Well, God made provision. The sacrificial system as administered by the priests, and for the Jewish people the high priest was central to their worship. The high priest would offer gifts and sacrifices on behalf of the people at the temple and in the tabernacle. Why? Because this is how they mediated between a holy God, and unholy people. Why? Because our God is a holy God, and our God because he's a holy God he opposes evil. He cannot be in the presence of evil. This is why he's worthy of worship. There's nothing wrong in him. He's never sinned, he's never done anything unrighteous, and the priest would stand in the place of the people satisfying God's judgment through an animal sacrifice, simultaneously demonstrating both God's mercy and God's judgment. The judgment that we deserve for our sin. When the temple came, this is how the priests brought the sacrifice once a year on the day of atonement Yom Kippur. The high priest would enter the Holy of Holies, only he could enter. If anyone else entered they died right on the spot, and he entered after a very meticulous preparation process through special washings and ablutions. He would put on special clothing, and bring burning incense in order to cover his own eyes from the presence of God, and he would bring a sacrifice of animal blood to sprinkle it on the judgment seat of mercy. What's important is the Holy of Holies was square-shaped. Why is that important? Because the book of Revelation tells us that new Jerusalem when it comes down onto earth, is also square shaped, so the Holy of Holies was a foretaste of heaven that is to come, and symbolically that no one can enter heaven unless there is a blood sacrifice, unless there is preparation, and the Holy of Holies was separated from the people through a thick curtain, and the curtain was made out of fine linen, blue, purple, scarlet yarn, and embroidered on it was a cherubim, which is an angel ,and the veil was 60 feet high, 30 feet wide and four inches thick. Why? Because it shielded God's people, a sinful people from a holy God. There's a picture that you can't just trifle with God's holiness, that we can't enter God's presence carelessly or irreverently, and this is why Christmas is such good news, that Jesus is Emmanuel. Jesus is God with us. Jesus comes to be with us, and to save us as the great high priest, to mediate between us and God. Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and man because of his ransom for our sins. Jesus Christ enters the Holy Place on the cross. He enters the Holy Place, and doesn't just bring a sacrifice of an animal, he brings the sacrifice of himself, the all sufficient sacrifice. If Jesus were just a prophet he would come and say, "All of you are sinful." If Jesus were just king he would come and say, "You need to reorder your lives." We're ignorant, we need a prophet to tell us the way. We are corrupt, we need a king to tell us how to order our lives. If that's all that Christmas was a prophet and a king, it would not be good news. What we need is someone to come, and not just tell us that we're sinners, and we need someone to come and say that your guilt has been dealt with. Your shame has been dealt with. Your sin has been dealt with. The God of the universe has borne in himself. We don't just need instruction, we don't just need consulting of how to live better a life. What we need is someone to come and take our sin from us. What is sin? Sin is cosmic treason against the supreme sovereign of the universe. It's the act of ultimate ingratitude to the one to whom we owe everything. It's saying, I'm better at being God than God. God has no jurisdiction over me, and Jesus Christ comes and he says, "I'm not just telling that you're unholy. I'm not just telling you that you're a sinner. I'm not just telling you how to make yourself righteous. I've come in order to be the high priest and the ultimate sacrifice to reconcile you with God." Jesus comes and he does something that no other religion can do. Other religions come, and they tell us this is how you can make your way to God. This is how you can be righteous before God, be accepted before God, be justified before God, every other religion. This is the path, this is the way. These are the steps. And, it can do one of two things. If you follow the steps, and you do all the prayers, and you do all the traditions and the rituals, you get really proud. I'm a much better person than anyone else, or if you don't, if you can't do it, you get really despondent and despair and Jesus Christ comes in and says, "No, Christianity doesn't make you either proud or it doesn't lead you into despair. Christianity comes and says to be righteous before God you got to fulfill the whole law." No one can do that, not one of us can do that. That automatically humbles you, and then, Jesus Christ comes, and says, "I fulfilled the whole law." And, brings us out of despair. How? Because Jesus Christ took flesh, lived a perfect life, died shamefully on a cross, and he's risen victoriously. Lived the life that we should have lived, couldn't, wouldn't, and he dies the death that we deserve to die. Where did Jesus die? On the tree? On the tree, and that's what the cross is called in 1st Peter, it's called the tree. 1st Peter 2:24, "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin, and live to righteousness by his wounds you have been healed." The cross is the ultimate tree of Christmas. It's the ultimate Christmas tree that Jesus Christ, the ultimate gift of the universe is hanging on that tree in order to give us gifts. What gifts? As soon as you believe in him, as soon as you repent of your sin, as soon as you follow him, he gives you the gift of justification that you are acquitted. All of your sins of forgiven, all of your guilt, all of your shame is removed. You have peace with God. This is what the angel said, "Glory, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace." There's no more enmity between us and God. He also gives us access to God. What do I mean? The very moment that Jesus Christ died on the cross it says that he said his final words, "It is finished." What's finished? The process of salvation is finished. You don't have to add anything else to your salvation. It is finished, it is completed, it is efficacious, and at the very moment that he said it is finished, the veil that separated us from the Holy of Holies was torn, and it wasn't just torn from the bottom up. It was torn from the top to bottom. This incredible veil, 60 feet wide, 30 feet high, four inches thick. This is like a dictionary thick, this is a phone book thick torn from the top down. Who could do this? Who would do this? Only God himself, and what does he do at that very moment? He's saying now because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ we have access into the very presence of the Holy of Holies. We have access into the presence of God. We have access to the ultimate source of love, of hope, of joy, and of peace. Jesus Christ made the ultimate offering for us as the great high priest. He literally went through hell absorbing the wrath of God for our sin so that we could enter the Holy of Holies, so that we could enter heaven. Jesus comes to the great high priest to save, but Jesus also knows... what do I mean here? Here I'm going to look at his name, Emmanuel, that God is with us, and isn't this strange? God is with us. I thought God is always with us. I ask my daughters all the time. I'm like, "Where's God?" My youngest always say, "He's in heaven." Like, that's nice, but MiniMo needs to add a little more theology, a little depth. Yes, he's in heaven, obviously. Jesus in our hearts by grace through faith, but also Jesus is everywhere. The transcendent God of the universe, he's omnipresent, so what does it mean that Jesus is Emmanuel, that Jesus is with us? Something changes when Jesus was born, the God in the form of humanity choosing to be with us is with us entirely different ways, so much so the change is so dramatic that Jesus needed another name. In Israel, God was with them in the Holy of Holies. He was present with them, but he was not necessarily with them. He wasn't with them relationally, he wasn't with them intimately. They knew he was there. They knew he was holy, but they navigated his presence. They walked around him as we would navigate a nuclear plant. We understand the power, but we need a few buffers of protection between us and until the issue of sin was completely dealt with, God was quarantined from us so that his presence wouldn't kill us. More specifically, we were quarantined from him. When Jesus came, he was literally with us, no longer separation from us, though he was completely separate from sin. Hebrews 4:14-16, "Since then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the son of God. Let us hold fast our confession for we do not have a high priest who was unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in the time of need." Though he was transcended, he's passed through the heavens, he's imminent. He is with us, he's no longer removed from us. He's a sympathetic high priest and the word for sympathy here is deeper than just the English word, sympathy. In English you have two words that are almost synonymous, sympathy and empathy. Sympathy, when you know that someone's going through a hard time, it's a feeling of pity, or of sorrow for them. I feel bad for you. I'm sorry for you. Please accept my condolences. We simplify and sympathize with those with whom we do not share a history. Empathy is deeper. Empathy is a shared experience. Empathy isn't just, I'm sorry for you, I'm sad for you, but I'm sad with you. I'm despondent with you, I feel what you feel. I share your feelings. It's the nod of a veteran when they see another veteran. It's the same feeling that siblings feel when they've lost a parent. It's when a mother who has miscarried meets another mother who's miscarried. I'm not sad for you, I'm sad with you. Scripture says that Jesus isn't just a sympathetic God, that he's above and beyond our pain, and our sorrow, and our agony, our temptation. Jesus is with us in that, he is empathetic. He's gone through it. He didn't just feel sorry for our play, he came and became part of our plight. He wove himself to the fabric of the story of humanity, he too was tempted, he too was weak, and feeble, and hungry, and thirsty, alone and rejected. He slept, he learned, he was glad, sad, angry, grieved, troubled, disappointed, he prayed, he sighed with an aching heart, he felt the full spectrum of human desires and emotions. Why is Christmas good news? It's good news, because God knows whatever it is that you're going through, and he knows that at the same level that you do, if not more. He's been lonely, he had family that didn't support him, he had friends that turned their back on him. Lies and rumors were spread about him. He had a close person to him die and he mourned. Jesus knows exactly what you're going through. The weakness here isn't just physical weakness. He's with us in our moral weakness, and temptation. He's overcome it. Therefore, he can overcome it. The other way, and this is really important, he had to be with us in order to bear the weight of our sin. 2nd Corinthians 5 says that he actually became our sin, meaning that whenever we sin, whenever we follow the darkness that's in our hearts, whenever we hurt ourselves, and we hurt others by sinning that Jesus is with us, he's right there at that moment, and because of his death, his burial, his resurrection, he can forgive us of all that guilt. He could forgive us of all that shame. In the Old Testament, God's presence was in the Holy of Holies. After the veil was torn, God's presence is still with us, because Jesus is with us, but now it's with us by the power of the Holy Spirit where the very moment that you repent of sin and you turn to Christ, God is in your heart. Your heart becomes the Holy of Holies in order to do what? It's not enough that God just knows what we're going through. The fact that he knows what we're going through gives us power to be transformed. This is the theology of the image of God, we're created in the image of God. His image in us is marred. Jesus Christ comes as the perfect image of God, and at that moment, when we believe in him, he begins to transform us, re-transform us into the image of God. Let me give you an illustration. I'm sure that you've heard of Grace from Boston. Grace from Boston, her husband got her a Peloton and there was a whole brouhaha, like that's the most terrible gift ever. I think he just got it for himself, and he had to justify it. The whole thing with Pelotons, I don't have a Peloton. I've watched the commercials. I've been really intrigued with Pelotons, because you got to pay $2, 500, then you've got to pay another 40 bucks a month, just whatever. It's a stationary bike with a TV. It's a 22 inch screen television, and on the screen you can have live spinning classes piped in for your workout. So, you're working out in the comfort of your mansion, and as you're working out you have this person on the screen. The person is part motivational speaker, part DJ, part mentor, part drill sergeant, and they're right there, they're screaming at you, and they're getting you pumped to be enthused. As you're working out, you look down on the screen and the screens is designed so much so that you barely see your reflection, but what you see is that person, and after a while you begin to emulate this person, and the more that you follow this person, the more that you will prentice this person, the more that you obey this person you become like this person hopefully, or else it was a waste of $2, 500. That's the, perhaps, the illustration. It does it for you? Perhaps not. This is kind of what happens when we follow Jesus. It's not enough that Jesus knows our plight, Jesus also knows how to get us out of our plight, because he's been through it. The more you believe in Jesus, the more you stare into the gospel, the more that you worship him, you become like him, so Jesus saves, and Jesus knows, and also Jesus prays. Jesus makes continual intercession for us. Perhaps you don't know this. Romans 8:34 says, "Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us." Right now at this very moment, Jesus Christ is praying for you, he's interceding for you if you are a Christian. 1st John 2:1, "My little children I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one." The risen, and ascended, the divine, and the human great high priest, Jesus Christ at this very moment is praying for you dear Christian, 24/7, 365 and because he's eternal, he never has to renew this office. He never has to take a break. He never falls asleep. Death will never prevent him from executing his duties. He's a great high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, is a royal priest king whose priestly reign never ends. How does Jesus intercede for us? I think it's similar to how he interceded for Peter. Jesus tells Peter, "Peter, you are going to deny me. Not once, not twice, three times. You are going to deny me." Peter says, "Never, even if I go to the death, never." That's how sure he was of his faith. That's how resolute he was in following Christ, and Jesus tells him at that moment, Luke 22:31,32, "Simon, Simon, behold Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat, but I've prayed for you that your faith may not fail, and when you have turned again strengthen your brothers." Satan demands to have every single one of us, and the great high priest is interceding for us. He's praying for us. I'm not sure of my faith. I'm not sure of your faith, but I'm sure in the sacrifice, and the prayers of Jesus Christ, he's praying for us. I love being prayed for. There's something really special about someone praying over you, someone laying a hand on you, praying for you. My wife and I, we pray with, and for our daughters every night, and we pray for them by name, and I change up the order every time. I don't just pray for one, two, three, four. I mix it up so that they feel special, and the other night I was praying, and I started with my youngest. I started with Milana, "Lord bless Milana." All of a sudden, huge smile on her face, and she has massive cheeks, so it's not that easy to smile. It takes a lot of effort. She's cheezin' and just staring at me, and I'm like peeking at her, and I'm praying for her to start obeying. She's like, "I will." I'm praying for her to go to sleep. She's like, "Yeah." I'm praying for her to stop being a drama queen, she's like, "No." There's something special about someone praying for us, and I don't know about you, but the more spiritual person is, the closer they are to God, it feels like the prayers are stronger. James tells us that the prayer of a righteous person availeth much. It's got more power. I remember one time was at a pastors conference, and at this conference there's like thousands of pastors. This is early on in my ministry, and I'm by the door, and Rick Warren comes in, the patron saint of the Evangelical Church. Rick Warren walks in, comes right up to me, and says, "Hi, my name is Rick. What's yours?" I was like, "I know it's Rick." He's like, "No, what's your name?" I was like, "Oh, it's Jan." He's like, "What are you doing?" "I'm planting a church in Boston?" He's like, "Can I pray for you?" "Yeah." And, he's like, "Lord, I pray that you fill Jan with the spirit, and that you give him a double of the anointing that you've given me." Wow, praise God. At that moment I felt fire come down from him. I don't know. And then, I was like, "Thank you Pastor Rick." I took a selfie with him of course, and then, I see him walk up to another pastor, and he's like, "Hi, my name is Rick. Can I pray for you?" I was like, "Come on pastor Rick, you can't cheat on me." He prayed the same thing, "May you give a double anointing." I know God has all the anointings in the world, but still I look at that moment, I'm like that that was special. Imagine how much more special is that the God of the universe is praying for you. Jesus Christ our great high priest, and what is he praying? We get a glimpse of it in John 17:20-24. He's praying that we have unity with God, and that we have unity with one another. The words of Christ, "I do not ask for these only..." His disciples, "... but also for those who will believe in me through their word..." That's us, "... that they may all be one just as you father are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them that they may be one even as we are one, I in them. And, you in me that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me, and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me maybe with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world." Practically, what does it mean that Jesus prays? It means that you can come, and take all of your prayers to Jesus, and Jesus intercedes for you, confess your sins to Jesus primarily. Jesus is our great high priest. We don't need to go to a priest to confess our sins. We can go directly to Jesus Christ. It's a great hope of Christmas. You don't need to go to a priest for spiritual direction. Go to Jesus, take your sin, your guilt, your shame, everything that you've done, take it to him, and look, we all feel guilt. Every single one of us, Christian or non-Christian, we all at some point, maybe even daily feel guilt. We have these rules that we have set up for ourselves, or the culture has set up for us and when we don't meet that law, meet those standards, we feel guilt. Perhaps it's for try things like being late. I always feel a little guilty when I'm even like a minute late, oh, I lied. Apparently, you feel guilty when you've forgotten your kid's birthday, that's bad. Perhaps you feel guilty when you forget your marriage first anniversary, that's bad too. Don't do that. Perhaps you feel guilty about being impatient with children, with people. Perhaps you feel guilty for not recycling correctly, for procrastinating, for eating your kid's chocolate. I don't feel guilty about that. If we feel guilt for not meeting our own standards for our lives, how much more guilt is there when we don't even take into account God's standards for us? God's law, morality is written on our hearts, every single one of us, and it's not subjective. It's objective. It's an objective law. God's given it to us through the 10 commandments. Jesus, summarized the 10 commandments like this, love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. Love your neighbor as yourself. Who's done that? Nobody, so this is our sin. We take it to Jesus, our great high priest. Hebrews 3:1, "Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus the apostle and high priest of our confession." Focus on him, focus on Christ. His prayer is efficacious. It helps, it comes to our aid. Hebrews 2:14-18 says, "Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death..." That is the devil, "... and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it's not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become a merciful, and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered, when tempted he is able to help those who are being tempted." Jesus saves, Jesus knows, Jesus prays, and finally, Jesus sends. Jesus the great high priest, when he forgives us of our sins, he gives us a new calling. He gives us a new name, a new identity, we're now his, we are a kingdom of holy priests proclaiming the excellencies of Christ, kings, prophets and priests. In the Old Testament, the priests had two jobs, and we see the jobs in the Old Testament. The first job was they could actually come to the presence of God, pray to him, worship him, and know him. It was a great privilege and responsibility. The second of which was to represent God to others. They could know God, and they can make him known. 1st Peter 2:5 says, "You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to be a royal priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." We're a holy priesthood. That's what we are dear Christians, this is our job to know God, and to make him known, and when Jesus Christ comes, he separates, he takes away the separation between us and God. We can know him, we can make him known. But, the way that we do this effectively, dear Christian, is by continuing to pursue holiness. A lot of people think of grace as a cheap grace. I come, I get my sins forgiven so that I can go and sin more. Scripture says no. When God forgives you of your sins you're given a new identity. You are now a holy priesthood, by holy scripture means that you are set apart, that you now are to be a counterculture, that you are to be distinct, completely different, separated from the world, and when we're separated from sin, from folly, separated from following the enemy of the world, we can be useful to God. Here's an illustration. What's the most holy thing that you own? It's your Bible, of course. That's always the first answer. The second, what's the second most holy thing that you own? For me personally, I think it's my phone. If separated from everyone else, don't touch it. That's mine. It's always with me. It's there. I think the third for me, it could be second for you, the third most holy, distinct, separated from anything else thing that I own, the object in my life is my toothbrush. It's holy. It's used only for one purpose. If it's ever used for another purpose, cleaning sneakers, cleaning grout, used to clean my kids' teeth. I love you, but no, it's getting tossed. Now, it's become unholy. It's no longer useful, desecrated, it's an abomination in my eyes. When we're saved God gives us a purpose. We're to be a holy priesthood proclaiming the excellencies of Christ, and the reason why we are not fulfilling, perhaps our full purpose that God has for us is because we have taken ourselves a holy object, and we're using it for unholy things. We don't lose our salvation. Well, we no longer fulfill our purpose. We become vessels for dishonorable use as 2nd Timothy says, therefore the priest of Jesus Christ is such a gift. We can come to him every day on a daily basis. Repent and believe, Lord, forgive me, Lord, I trust you that your sacrifice is effication that you've forgiven me, and I pray Lord, redirect me, fulfill the purpose that you have for me, and that purpose is to minister to one another. Yes, Jesus is our only priest. We only need to come to him, but at this point a lot of people might say, "I don't need the church." This is where we need to minister to one another. We need the church, we need Christians in our lives to pray for, to minister, to use our time, talent and treasure, and we need unbelievers in our life to minister to them. Whenever people hear the word evangelism, a lot of times people would just get frightened at the challenge that evangelism is. Here's a great definition for evangelism by J. I. Packer, evangelism is a Christian living as a Christian in the world. I love that. It's a Christian living as a Christian in the world that we image forth God, reflect God, show the world God, help the world know God by loving, and serving, and sacrifice, and speaking because we are distinct, separated, we're a counter culture. You're holy, we're to live holy lives not perfectly, but separated, so live out your identity. In conclusion, Christmas is full of joy because the world often isn't. Jesus came to live here in this world where we do, where everything breaks, where everything beautiful at some point turns ugly, where nothing lasts, where everything precious dies and Jesus knows what it's like, because he, the most beautiful person to have ever lived, he too died, and God took the ugliest act in the history of the universe, the death of Christ on the cross, his death, he resurrected him and turned it into beauty and this is the beauty of Christmas. That God is with us, that Jesus, the great high priest he saves, he knows, he prays, he sends. Everything else passes, all of our gifts that we buy one another it'll all pass, and only Jesus Christ can meet our greatest need. He can fill our doubtful hearts with hope. He can fill our lonely hearts with love, he can fill our restless hearts with peace, and he can fill our saddened hearts with hope, love, joy, and peace. The gifts of Christmas. Let's pray. Holy God, we thank you that you made a provision for us an unholy people to be reconciled with you, that you have made a way for us to enter heaven, the Holy of Holies, where you are, that we can approach the throne of grace boldly to receive mercy and grace. I pray if anyone has not done that, has not received mercy and grace, I pray, Lord, give them a gift today of repentance, and fill their hearts with your presence, your hope, love, joy, and peace. I pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
Jesus Our Prophet
December 15, 2019 • Andy Hoot • Acts 3:17–26
Audio Transcript: You're listening to audio for Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit http://mosaicboston.com I'm going to read from Acts 3:17-26. This is not the most Christmas-y passage, but it comes in the time of Pentecost after Jesus has died and resurrected and ascended into heaven. The spirit descends upon the apostles and they begin teaching about God. Where do they go first? They go to the Jews, who missed that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, the anointed one. The apostles heal a man who's been lame his whole life and he begins leaping and walking and it's drawing attention to the crowd, so this is the sermon that Peter delivers to that crowd. Acts 3:17-26, "And now brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers, but what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent, therefore, and turn back that your sins may be blotted out. The times of refresh may come from the presence of the Lord and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his Holy prophets long ago. Moses said, 'The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him and whatever he tells you. And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people. And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaim these days. You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, "And in your offspring shall all the families of the Earth be blessed." God having raised up his servant, sent him to you first. To bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.'" Please, this is the word of God. Please join me in prayer. Lord, since the fall, it's inherent in our nature to question your authority, to question our need for you in our lives, to question just the use of your word, your direction, towards us. We want to be independent from you, Lord. Even those of us who know we're saved by grace through faith, we have a tendency to want to stray, to lean on our own strength, to push forward to find meaning and things that are not you. But Lord, we realize that that is impossible and today we repent of the tendency to just want to be autonomous, to be separate from you, to take pride in our own actions and strength. Lord we pray, Holy spirit, convict us of our need for your word in our life. Let it fill and satiate our soul. Bring us refreshment today through your word. I pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Today, we are in our second week of advent. We did not make it easy for ourselves as pastors and staff this year. We're doing some theology, some Christology. Every year that we choose a theme to cover for advent. We're talking about just the man, Jesus Christ. Last week we talked about Jesus, how he was the Messiah and he needed to be God and man, and what that meant for us. This week we're talking about Jesus as prophet, next week, priest and the week after, King. The name Messiah, the name Christ, has requirements to it. And that's that Jesus, it says Jesus was the fulfillment of the scriptures and he fulfilled these roles as prophet, priest, and King. And so, today, I want to explain to you, what does it mean that Jesus was our prophet, and what does that mean for our lives? To start, I want to just emphasize, what is advent? I think this is a good starting point. I grew up in church. Every week we lit four candles, at the center was the Jesus candle. That's about all I remember. I didn't learn much about the meeting, so advent is a season where God's people, Christians, wait for the return of Christ in glory to consummate his eternal kingdom. Why do we do this? We do this because, the church is in a similar situation to Israel at the end of the old Testament. We're in exile, we're waiting and hoping and expect prayerful expectation for the coming Messiah to come back to make all things new. Why do we do this? Israel looked back to God's past actions when he freed them in the Exodus from Egypt while they looked ahead for the first coming of Christ. In the same way that church during advent, we've looked back upon Christ first coming, his incarnation, and we do celebrate that, but at the same time we look forward in anticipation and longing that he is going to fulfill those promises, that he's going to come back. Advent is a period of tension. The song that really captures it is, "Oh come, Oh come, Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here until the son of God appears. Rejoice, rejoice, Emanuel shall come through thee, oh Israel." On one end, it's a solemn period in the sense that, we are waiting for Christ's return. If you just can think of the old Testament community, those faithful, the remnant Jews just waiting, "Is God actually going to deliver on this promise?" The prophets have stopped speaking, the presence of God is not at the temple. Is the Messiah ever going to come? They had said, "Okay, he came, he freed us from Egypt." Now, we as Christians, we look back. Christ didn't come. We're waiting for him to come. The hard part about celebrating, acknowledging the advent in our culture is that, we have Thanksgiving and then immediately Christmas starts. I think I heard Christmas music actually in October this year and, the whole period, instead of this period with a bit of solemnity mixed with joy, there is hope, it just becomes this busy season of party after party. Church gathering after church gathering, work, our jobs celebrate Christmas and the new year. A lot of time we're busy, we have a lot of excitement. By the time we get to Christmas, Christmas is supposed to be that point, the solemnity goes away. Jesus Christ has come. We sing joy to the world with full authority but, ironically, Christmas is that time where we feel the most loneliness. We feel isolation. Joy, peace on earth, Goodwill to men, are you serious? I have to spend the week with my in-laws. I have to spend the week with my parents who are going to remind me of my singleness and my childlessness. Cousin Eddy and his kids and his RV are going to be here freeloading for a week. God, help me more than ever. Give me your presence more than ever in this period. And so, we kind of have reverse. Advent's full of hype, full of emotion, full of excitement. Christmas, just the way it tends to go. We feel this deep isolation. What does that look like for some people? Some people don't actually get to take off from work. They look at everybody else celebrate and they don't get that. That's really isolating. Some people don't have friends or family and they see everybody else gathered. They feel the loneliness. Some of us are crippled on the holidays just thinking of just people that have died recently that were close to us, relationships that have ended. Even if we have time with our large families, a lot of us when we spend that time, we realize we don't even know the people that were spending time with. How do I not know my parents anymore? I used to spend all this time with them. Even spouses, you get to a point where you are spending time with each other in an extended fashion for maybe one of two or three times throughout the year, and you're like, "I don't even know you. What do we do together? How do I interact?" It's just, you either just ignore it or there's a lot of explosion and just that feeling of isolation. Contrastingly, the holidays can be great. We do spend that time with others. We feel this sense of joy just being surrounded in a community of love, of talking, being heard, knowing and being known. What I want to emphasize here is that, there's something inherent in our nature that the holidays bring out. That we want to be heard and we need somebody to talk back. That's a part of our nature. It's a part of the way we were created. That's essentially what Christmas is about. Man needs God. He needs God's direction in life. Adam walked in the garden, he needed God to guide him, to help him to interpret the world around him before he fell and Adam sins. We need a means to have that connection with God again. How does God do that? He comes in the form of a baby and provides that. But just thinking about the tension, whether the extreme loneliness and isolation you associate, the extreme joy and bliss that you feel at Christmas. It tells us something about ourselves and I'd argued today, this is, these emotions that are exacerbated by Christmas, they show us our need for Jesus as our prophet, somebody who talks to us and somebody who we need to respond to. I'm going to make three points today. Jesus, our prophet, is the source of truth, source of meaning and the source of freedom. Just very simply, I want to speed through Jesus as our prophet. He is the source of truth. Verse 18 and 22, tell us that Jesus is a prophet, "They tell us that Jesus is a prophet, but what God we're foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ would suffer, he's thus fulfilled." Moses said, "The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him and whatever he tells you, and it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people." So Jesus is a prophet. All the prophets were pointing to him. I just want to clarify from the front, we're not going to get into mystical prophecy talk today. Just basic definition of a prophet. Pro, for me, it means, the roots of the word means before speak. We're not talking necessarily about something that will happen in the future in detail today. A prophet, before anything, was a spokesman before God. An example of this from scripture is, that just clarifies my point is, it comes from Exodus seven. The relationship that Moses and Aaron had, that God appointed. God told Moses, "See, I've made you, Moses, like God to Pharaoh and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of this land. Aaron was the prophet that spoke with the authority of Moses. Moses got everything from God himself. And so, prophets, they did tend to have a foretelling meaning, a prophetic ability to speak about the future, but they also had this forth-telling in a similar sense that they were like preachers of their day. They're inspired by the Holy Spirit. One thing to think about prophecy is that they didn't just speak from their own minds, their own opinion, their own state of consciousness, they spoke from, the way they finished or began their words were "thus sayeth the Lord." What they said was what God says. And so, Jesus came into the world and he did function as a prophet. He represented the father, John 15:15, "But I've called you friends for all that I've heard from my father. I've made known to you." Jesus gave us the scriptures in order that we might believe and have life. But these, the scriptures, are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. We need, going back to Adam in the garden, God gives us general revelation. All people are image bearers of God. We can look at the world around us and we can discern through beauty, through majesty, through the way of simple equations, explain how the world works. We can know that there is a God, but we need special revelation. We need God to speak to us, to tell us the means to have peace with him, and that was the way in the garden. Adam always had a communication or relationship with God. Jesus is still prophet, just to finish the theology of it all. Jesus is still serving in this office. He provides for the building up of the body of the church today, and he sends the Holy Spirit to equip the church to do the work of the ministry. This is Ephesians, "And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all tend to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son God. "To mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. So that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes." So Jesus came, he was a prophet, he is our prophet, and he spoke with the same authority as the prophets of old. Said thus sayeth the Lord. This is the word of God and just this idea that this is the word of God, Christianity says we have the source of absolute truth. Why do I need to harp on this right now? Because, there's a lot of people you talk to, even in our church, that say like, "This truth, I like that it's good for you, maybe not for me." I talked to a girl recently who was in a religion 101 class and she had to interview a religious professional and she said this, "Thank you for telling me about this. I'm glad that this is the truth for you." As Christians, we don't have to fight back, but we should explain, we don't view ourselves as one truth. One means to God amongst many other. We believe that Jesus came and taught us the truth and he speaks to us through scripture and he, in fact, spoke in his physical presence to us. There is, I just want to dig into it, there are a lot of different forms of opposition to this stance that Christians have, that we have the absolute truth and we don't hold it over other people in disrespect. But we need to know how to engage these arguments and just locally, two of the primary just challenges to the authority of God's word are science and new age spirituality. Science, This isn't something new. It says, we've learned more and more about the natural world. We don't need religion anymore to fill in the spaces. We just accept that we are formed by a random crash of molecules and we take what we learn from it. We take those laws and we just accept our state of meaninglessness. But the challenge of science is weakening. There's a new book, Rebecca McLaughlin wrote it called, Confronting Christianity. She gives a whole list of current MIT professors who are Christian. She goes in detail about Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, the National Institutes of Health, his conversion to Christianity after not growing up Christian. Basically, there is a lot of people in science saying that science is limited. It can only speak into things pertaining to science. A quote from Rebecca says, "Science has a place, a vital one in modern society. We can all benefit from the knowledge we have gained through the scientific method, first devised by Christian scholars." Of Christians. Were not saying, "Stop listening to science." We're saying, "Look at it from the proper lens. Science is good." At Mosaic, and if you go through the books of our members, a huge percentage of people are scientists. "But if we elevate scientific truth above all other kinds, and believe that the scientific script rules out other stories, we have no grounds for morality and no basis for rebelling against our genes. We are bags of cells and waste with an expiration day, and it doesn't mean anything. And so, we as humans, we believe in these ideals of love and justice and mercy, and it doesn't check with our nature to view ourselves in the way that science does." So the argument of science has shaken, but there's a new challenger here and, especially here in Brookline and Boston, that's new age spirituality, this consciousness movement. It's starts with the opposite. God is in all of us. Bring out the God within you. What can one do to obtain different levels of consciousness and perspective? What are those spiritual-physical experiences, yoga experiences, chemically-induced travel and intellectual experiences of which you post photos of on social media. That help you become or ascend the better version of yourself. It's just confusing. We live in this age of science, but now there's this trend towards spirituality. Pew Research Center released the results of a survey in 2017 that concluded that about a quarter of U.S. adults, 27%, now say they think of themselves as spiritual but not religious. That percentage is up eight percentage points in five years. That's quite a leap. How do I know that this is a movement, and it's dangerous to Christianity because there's a spirituality, but it's still rejecting the authority of a sovereign God. We have two yoga studios, three to four blocks this way, three up the road at Coolidge corner. There's six in Brookline village. I don't know about, you when I drive here in the morning, there are just people pouring through those doors, and it's all day into the evening. The church I grew up in, I get Facebook invites for yoga classes there. Is the challenge on Christianity as blatant as science? No. Here's what this challenge typically sounds like. I'm quoting from a website for January 1st, "Kick Off Your Year Right event. After staying out late on New Year's Eve, sleeping in and going to the brunch in the South end, at two o'clock you can attend an event called Renew To Be You: Connect, Inspire, Uplift. The workshop. We'll begin with a reflection on what has passed to release old ways of being and tap into untapped potential. We will then flow through a heart-opening vinyasa class, incorporating pranayama mantra to connect and unite the breath, mind, body, and spirit. We will end with a guided visualization to help you see and realize the dreams in your heart. Following this movement practice will put pen to paper and set some intentions for the new year to come." It's talking about this practice of emptying yourself to allow for new, as you ascend to a different level of consciousness or try to force yourself to that point, this new vision for your life. That's the opposite of what scripture says. Scripture says, "Be filled with the spirit." Open your Bible every day to try to know the will of God. Be careful when you open your heart, open your mind, to be filled after you empty yourself. You are susceptible. Christianity says, "Susceptible to spirits that are antagonistic." That know God and reject him and they're trying to recruit you to his side. We live in this age where truth is being attacked on all fronts, and we have several sermons on this if you dig the Mosaic history. The confusing thing is that both of these do attack just this idea that, when I wake up in the morning, I answer to somebody. I answer to God. It's rarely just one of these two. I think there's science and then there's this mysticism, the spirituality, coming from Eastern influence on our society. And the movie Avengers, Endgame, shows this. If you haven't seen the movie, you've had enough time, but Thanos, the villain, who at the snap of fingers has the ability to decide who survives and who does not. He seemingly beats the Avengers and, what does he do after this big fight that lasts several movies? He goes into a garden and lives in a shack with a nice fireplace that takes us back to the imagery of the garden of Eden and all of a sudden the Avengers do show up. It's mutated animals. It's scientifically, genetically-modified humans. It's these better versions of ourselves that show up and they take Thanos down in that moment. That doesn't give away the whole movie, but it's not just the scientific influence, it's Dr. Strange, the Eastern mystic, was crucial in taking down Thanos. And so, this is creeping into our society. This view that science, that mysticism can fill this hole for a gap of truth. But Christianity just says, no, to that. We get applications to Mosaic saying like, "I want to become a member because this is the truth that is for me." That is not the Christian stance. We say this is the truth for everybody. Everybody, the greatest news they could hear is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The prophets, you think of the prophets back in the day. Elijah faces the prophets of Baal. Did he just say, "Oh, you guys are right. Let's sit down and have a Ted circle"? He said like, "Let's throw it down, my God versus yours." Now, we don't do that in an active sense. We're not there walking on the streets fighting people, trying to call God down to bring fire on people. We trust in the Holy spirit. We trust in God's great justice that he will bring when he comes back to make all things new, but we stand on this truth, and Jesus stood on this truth. There's no way around that, and just, I want to emphasize, truth is not something that is inside of us. It's outside of us. It's not this New Age Movement that says that we have it within us, we just need to bring it out. This need for truth outside of us has been the case since the garden of Eden. Theologian Richard Gamble says this, "Well, Adam was dependent on God for his understanding of general revelation before the fall. Pre-lapsarian, pre-fall Adam, was not to understand God's creation by observation and experimentation alone, but was to work in conjunction with God's supernatural communications to him. Like us, Adam was not merely to observe and interpret the world. Unlike us, however, Adam was able to receive the precise meaning of all creation directly from the artist and architect himself. Today, we also turn to the artist to interpret his beautiful creation, but must turn to God's self-revelation in scripture to accomplish this task. God was present with Adam from the very beginning. Adam's first experiences were connected to hearing God's word. God's command, his law to Adam and Eve, was meant to determine the course of their lives. It gave them their understanding of themselves." So the Bible doesn't talk about truth of scientific facts. It doesn't talk about subjective experience being the determining factor of truth, it talks about absolute truth that comes through embracing that we are created beings in need of direction, the source of truth, our creator. And so, Jesus Christ is the prophet that preaches that truth. He did that in his life. Point two though, Jesus was more than just a prophet. I want to build on this. Jesus our prophet is the source of meaning, and so just want to look, emphasis is on all in these verses. "But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. And all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and those who came after him also proclaim these days of Christ." The emphasis is on all, all of the prophets spoke of this coming, this Messiah, this man Jesus Christ. There's something special, God is speaking in a way through Christ that he never spoke before. I want to go through a couple of verses that also emphasizes and explain a little bit more. Hebrews 1:1-3, "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son whom he appointed the heir of all things through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. He used to speak through the prophets now, but now he speaks through the son again." I just want to read one more passage. John 1, "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life and then the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it." Verse 14, "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the father full of grace and truth." A lot of verses. These are to emphasize, Jesus doesn't just bring the word, he is God's word. And there's something special about him coming. It's not just the words that he said, it's the way he lived his life, who he was, was an expression of who God is. To understand this, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God, we can use it to explain, Jesus was the creator. Part of the Trinity was with God when he created the heavens and the earth, but John here, he's also in a day influenced by Greek thinkers. In the beginning was the word, logos. Logos is a word that had implications for people of that culture at that time. Greeks were looking for centuries for this principle of the logos. Logos would be the thing, it was the central principle that all of life was going towards and it would explain meaning. It would give life meaning if we could understand it. John here, he knows that. He's not saying Jesus ... The Greek culture, they fluctuated. How do we find meaning? You look at the history of their culture. It was through asceticism, living mystical lives, seeking wisdom, trying to understand the soul on one side, and they had generations of that. They had other generations that said, "Eat, drink, be merry like true materialists," and they didn't find satisfaction. Ultimately, you see, they were able to accomplish a lot to civilize the world, but ultimately, their power structures fell down. They didn't have God to clarify, it's the unity of the spiritual and the material that we both need and Jesus Christ provides meaning for both. He is the unity of the spiritual and physical. He is the logos, and he's the exact imprint of God's glory in this life. And so, we have these abstract standards of love and joy and mercy, and they are without definition until we actually see Jesus came and he was the embodiment of those things. So, how do you find logos? How do you find meaning in your life? We place our faith in the prophet, verse 18, "But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent, therefore, and turn back that your sins may be blotted out. That times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus." This author's saying that the Greeks, their culture never settled. They never had a reason to promote that asceticism, never had a reason to promote that materialism. Actually, both the material and the spiritual matter and the way that we find meaning is living for this creator, Jesus. He's the one we were created by, the one we were created for. And so, when we place our faith in the fact that he suffered for us, we can have meaning. We can have purpose. We can see God for who he is, see the world properly. And so, the best way to really understand this though, is to think of the ... For those who are skeptics, who are atheists, who are true materialists, all that we have is this world. This material, and we're sacks of cells. You're saying you do not have a logos. There's no source of meaning. Your world is unintelligible. If you're not an image bearer of God with a soul as different from all of the animals around us, God breathed life into men, you don't know who you are. You don't know where you came from, how to get rid of the guilt that you have or even understand why you experience guilt in this life and, how do you get rid of that guilt? You can do that by trying to create your own logos, create your own meaning and relationships and looks, money, accolades, children, whatever it is, but everything is going to crumble. They're not substantial grounds to stand on. Also, your position says, we can't speak to each other. What does that mean? Like John Lennon, some people might think all we need is love. What is love if not defined by an absolute standard? And so, you spread this message of love and you get that message in some experience that raises your consciousness. Maybe someone else has an experience that raises their consciousness and they say, "In order for the world to have peace, for the world to flourish, for us humans to have joy, we need to eradicate the lands of this specific people group." Your communication has no meaning in the sense that you have no standard to appeal to. Neither side can say what is right and what is wrong. And so, CS Lewis, he took this view. He was an atheist before he became Christian and he wrote about where he was. "My argument against God was that the universe seems so cruel and unjust, but how had I got this idea of just an unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. "What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show is bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be a part of the show, find myself in such a violent reaction against it? Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own, but if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too. For the argument depended on saying the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus, in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist, in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless, I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality, namely my idea of justice, was full of sense. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning. Just as if there were no light in the universe and, therefore, no creatures with eyes, we should never have known it was dark. Dark would be without meaning." Some of you just resist Christianity because you take the sense, you think about suffering and evil and death in this world and you view them as, you say, "It's not fair. It's cruel, but you're appealing to standards and understandings of what is good and fair and just that are your own. If you don't have a God, you don't have a basis to express this anger, this frustration towards God. But Christians, we do have a reason. Jesus is our rock and we normally talk about that in an emotional sense. Like, he gets us through those hard times, and that's true. We need to turn to Jesus. We need to listen to worship songs when our emotions are pouring out, but Jesus is also as our prophet who comes in, not just brings the truth, but as the truth. He's our grounds for having confidence that we can stand on being Christian intellectually. We can say what is right and what is wrong and not being consistent with our beliefs. We can preach the gospel with confidence. We can hold each other accountable. We find our meaning, our logos, in serving the one who created us. We serve the church. We love those in the church. We have a reason to do all of this and, you get rid of God, there's no point doing it all. If God's ever proven false, we shouldn't be here. But if you don't have this view, you have no reason to hold anybody accountable to any form of morality. People in Boston are really difficult. The locals, you've survived this cold, you've survived these rising rental prices, you've built up resilience. You say like, I don't ..." You resist this need, this pull towards God that is on your soul. If life is meaningless, like, "I'm okay." Transplants, you are people who made it somewhere. You've been able to just climb the different echelons in your career. You've had success, you've had relationships, you're building the family and you're saying like, "If life is meaningless, it doesn't matter. I'm okay." But scripture says you take that view, eventually, Christ is the rock you need to build on, all other ground is sinking sand. If you really are a child of God and you start placing any of these experiences, these relationships, these things to give you meaning, he's just going to be painfully strip those from you until you give him the worship that he desires. So Jesus gives us meaning. Finally, Jesus, our prophet is a source of freedom. Verse 19. "Repent, therefore, and turn back that your sins may be blotted out. That times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus." I love that word, refreshing. That's like, who here needs refreshment today? If you live in Boston, you need it all the time. This is such a good word. If I could describe my life before I became Christian, it would be, "I'm tired." it was five years of living in an inconsistent manner as a "Christian." The question was like, "Andy, how are you?" "I'm tired. I'm tired. I'm just tired." This is the talk of people in despair. I'd went through every method. In college, I went to the counselors. I tried to build my identity, find fulfillment, find meaning as an athlete, as a student, through relationships, through accomplishments, nothing landed. The last thing I wanted to do was to actually, I knew the gospel. I knew it well enough. The last thing I want to, like when I'm mad, I want to get mad at ... When I'm bitter in a bad mood, not filling my mind with the word, I want to look at my church that I grew up and say, "Man, you didn't teach me that gospel good enough." But I knew it. What I resisted was submitting my ... While I tried out all those other methods, I just didn't want to submit my life to God, submit my life to his word. I knew he offered freedom, but I didn't want to give up the sin in my life. These idols I had in my life. So, we get refreshment when we come, we say, "God, I believe your word. Jesus, You are my savior." We get refreshment when our sins are blotted out, when we realize that Jesus dying on the cross, he washed our sins white as snow. That's what refreshment is. And so, some people they, the truths of scripture, Jesus appeals to them, but you're just resisting. You don't want to give up those things that you're clinging to. You know God is going to ask you to repent, turn away from some things, turn towards some behaviors and actions. He's going to ask you to spend time in community to share your fears, share your worries, share your triumphs, share your failures, share your sins, spend time with the stinky people and people who look different than you, and you're just resisting. God offers us refreshment. Proverbs 3:5-8, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and turn away from evil." Here's the best part, "It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones." I want that. Who does not want that? Why resist? Does that simple short-term pleasure, is that worth this healing to our bones and human to refresh, or refreshment to our bones? Is that not better than just that thing that you're clinging to? A famous author of the 20th century was, he was at least honest. He said, "For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of the system claim that it embodied the meaning, the Christian meaning they insisted of the world. There is one admittedly simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt. We would deny that the world had any meaning whatever." Now, I don't know if he was taught a poor presentation. The Bible says sex is good within the confines of marriage between a man and a woman. I don't know if he ever learned that view in several periods of the last century where sex was taught wrongly, but he's an extreme example of somebody who has clung to, clung to something. He knowingly pushed against the word of God, and so, what is it for you? I asked, what is freedom? Freedom is typically viewed as the lack of any restraint. To be able to do what we, want when we want. That's how it's defined in our world, but just look at the world. What is freedom? When I write my sermons, I have a public room in the building I live in, I live downtown. I just see, literally a minute after minute, these giant airplanes taking off and they're coming towards the skyscrapers of downtown and they're turning and they're veering away. And it's just thousands of pounds of metal in the air with just chemicals that could just explode if not handled properly. I'm like, "How does that work?" Somebody observed the laws of aerodynamics and that's what enables the plane to take off. We as humans are no different. We find freedom when we live under the structures that God created us to live under, and that goes back to Adam in the garden. Adam, you have freedom to live in the garden of Eden. Do what you want, but don't eat from this one tree. Adam had to give it to God that God was God, Adam was the creature. Adam was dependent on God's instruction, God's word in his life. Freedom, as a Christian, when we live under God's design, we live under his word. We treat it as the absolute truth that we should follow. We don't do it in spite, not religiously, not Pharisaically. We do it out of gratitude for what Christ has done for us. When we understand that, we get to become the person we are created to be. People ask me, "Why would you go to ministry?" Honestly, I just think I'm doing the thing that God created me to be. I saw myself, as I took different steps in the church, I saw myself fulfilling my potential, and other people were affirming that. like, "What is that for you?" If you're not submitting your life to God, you can't see the world properly. You can't see your life properly. Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire, regarded as the best sports movie ever by many. He said, "When I run," his sister is yelling at him for not going to China, not leaving Scotland to go to China after he's qualified for the Olympic games. He eventually goes on to win a gold medal. He responds to his sister, and he says, "When I run, I feel God's pleasure." When we submit to the Lord in gratitude and thankfulness for the fact that we had a single problem, our sin, that prevented us from getting access to God. We believe that God came into this world as a baby and he lived the life we didn't live, died the death we deserve, conquered the penalty for sin once and for all, we can have freedom in him. Some of you push, you're pushing against just God's truth. You're trying to define it on yourself. Your journey towards becoming a person you were created to be was taking God's truth and seeing them. This is the truth that I need to surround my life around. Some of you are just, again, you're angry at God. You think, "This is not right. There's suffering, there's evil. Now, God, how could this be a part of your plan? This is unjust." You want to shed this influence of God on your life, but you have no means to do that. There's no meaning to your argument if there aren't standards given by God. We might not ever understand why things in this life happened the way that we do, but the fact that God came into this world to care for our problem of sin, to address it, to give us access to him, to be able to receive his instruction, it shows us that the answer can't be that he doesn't care. Some of you, you want freedom. You might come to church and you come around the holidays. Every once in a while you read a spiritual book. You pray when things get hard, but you've never said like, "God, I submit my life to you. Thank you for sending Jesus. Thank you for taking the punishment I deserve. I submit my life to you." You just don't know this freedom. You have to surrender all of yourself and, how are you sustained in this life, you go to the gospel each day. This Christmas story, my struggle with Christmas is that we feel this tension. We need to be waking up every morning and just filling our minds with the word of God that we needed. Our sin was so bad that he had to send a baby to come save us. I don't understand the holidays because, I was so convicted of my sin at one point, and my need for Christ, and resounded in the freedom of that, that I just don't ... Fortunately, by God's grace, I'm growing to the point I don't need the holidays for that strong reminder. That should be all of us. How are we sustained? We wake up, we fill our mind with the gospel. The message that the prophets proclaimed in the old Testament and on throughout the new. Jesus is the means for our salvation. We have this free gift of grace from God and one day he will return to come and make all things new. We need to fill our minds with that every day, "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free." Please join me in prayer. Lord, we repent of attempting to assert our authority from you. We repent of saying we don't need you. We repent of anger and angst towards you that was baseless and not justified. Lord, we know that in coming in the form of Jesus Christ, you do care for us. We know that Jesus Christ was given all authority on heaven and earth and his promises will be fulfilled. He will return one day. Lord, as we live in this tension where you've already won the battle to establish your kingdom, Lord, sustain us as we wait the day that you return and just reign in full. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
Jesus Our Messiah
December 8, 2019 • Shane Sikkema • Isaiah 9:2–7
Summary: Why do we long for a hero? Why do our heroes always let us down? This Sunday, we will begin a new Advent series, and look at how all these longings point to Jesus. He is the quintessential hero, the chosen one, the Messiah. Who He is makes Him the only hero who can truly save us, and what’s He’s done proves He’s the only hero who will never let us down. Audio Transcript: You're listening to audio for Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit http://mosaicboston.com. We are starting a new sermon series today. I'm excited. Advent is here. Christmas is coming. We've got our first snow day in the books, and I love December in Boston. It is that like one magical time of year where everything slows down, people chill out a little bit. You might even have someone smile and say hi to you on the T as they shove you out of their way. I don't know. I'm not a particularly sentimental guy, but I can appreciate the sentiment around Christmas, and a lot of us have a lot of nostalgic, cherished memories of Christmases growing up. For me, one of my things that I always look forward to as a kid, and this might make some of you sad because I don't think this is even a thing anymore, but I loved, I waited. I couldn't wait for that massive JC Penney catalog to come in the mail, just page after page of pure plastic joy. It always got my greedy little heart like right in the Christmas spirit. I'd take that thing and I would just comb through it and I'd assess the inventory, and I'd very carefully make my decision. I'd find a big red marker and I'd go through and I'd circle everything that I wanted on my list. The strategy was you had to first circle a few little things, like a few practical things, because then grandma would see how humble and pure your heart was and your odds would just be that much better when it came to circling that ridiculous thing that was like way over priced and out of your league. Grandma always came through though. It's hard to talk about Christmas without talking about gifts. And we can bemoan, right, the materialism and the commercialization of the holiday season, but the reality is at the center of the Christmas story is a gift, an unimaginably costly gifts that God loved the world to such an extent that he gave his most valued treasure, his beloved, his only begotten son, Jesus Christ. Over the next four weeks, we are going to be looking at four distinct ways in which Jesus is God's gift to us. Next week, Pastor Andy is going to be talking about how God gave Jesus to be our prophet. The week after that, Pastor Jan is going to be talking about how God gave Jesus to be our priest. And then the week of Christmas, our Mosaic Teen director Tyler Burns is going to be talking about how God gave Jesus to be our king. Prophet, priest and king. Jesus is not just a prophet, priest, and king, but he is the prophet, priest, and king that every other prophet, priest, and king points toward and finds their fulfillment in. So remember those three titles, those three offices, prophet, priest, and king. We're going to be talking about those over the next couple of weeks. Today though, we're going to start by looking at how first and foremost God gave Jesus to be our Messiah. Now, I don't know what comes to mind when you hear that word, because it's not a word that we really use very often in our modern vernacular. You might hear it has almost like a mystical, a mysterious sound to it, but it's actually a very meaningful title. We're going to be looking at it today, and as we do it, we're going to be looking at a passage of scripture found in Isaiah chapter nine. Isaiah nine was a prophetic passage written about the birth of Jesus Christ, but it was actually written hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus Christ and it communicates the hope, the hope that ancient Israel had as they longingly waited for the Messiah for that first advent, the Adventist, the Parousia, the unveiling of the Messiah to be born. To really get us in the Christmas spirit, we're going to be framing up our time with three familiar points this morning. Point number one, Long lay the world in sin and error pining. Point two, a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices. And point three, his law is love and his gospel is peace. We're going to be in Isaiah chapter nine. If you have your Bibles, you can follow along. Otherwise, you can follow along on the screen as well. Isaiah nine starting at verse two. "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in the land of deep darkness, on them light has shown. You've multiplied the nation. You've increased its joy. They rejoice before you as with the joy at the harvest as they are glad when they divide the spoil, for the yoke of his burden and the staff of his shoulders, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the trampling warrior and battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire." "For to a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this." Would you please pray with me before we get into the sermon? God, we thank you for your Holy inerrant, inspired, and authoritative word, and we pray today that by the power of your Holy Spirit, you would write these words, these truths on our hearts. Help us to understand them. Help us to not only that, but help us to believe and to love and to obey them. God, we pray that as we do, the hope, the love, the joy, the peace of Jesus Christ would come to rule in our lives and in our church. We ask this in his name. Amen. Just to set the context, of the prophet Isaiah, this is a prophet writing in the Old Testament to the nation of Israel, and he's writing to a people who are on the brink of doom. The Assyrian empire, this massive war machine, is looming on their horizon ready to strike, and it is going to come down and it's going to crush them at any moment and carry them off into exile. It's hard for us to relate to their context of what it would be like to live in such a dangerous and volatile place. While we might not be able to relate to their specific context, all of us can relate to one degree or another of what that those feelings of fear and anxiety are like. The prophet, he describes this. He paints this vivid picture of the land. It's a land that is covered in deep and constant darkness. Even that, the weightiness of that, it's easily lost on us. We live in a world where the light is always just a flip of the switch away. Now, they lived in a world that was lit only by fire, and it's hard to imagine the despair, but we need to try to feel what he wants us to feel here. The feeling that he's trying to convey is that of hopelessness, of lostness. We need to understand this, because to properly understand this prophecy, we need to understand this is not just about Israel. He's also talking about us. One of the things that you need to understand when you're reading scripture, and particularly when you're reading prophecy in scripture, is that prophecy in scripture almost always has a threefold fulfillment. What that means is there's usually an immediate fulfillment that happens within the same historical context of its original audience, but if you really look closely at these prophetic passages, you realize there's something deeper going on, that there's the immediate fulfillment, but there's also this greater fulfillment. We see that greater fulfillment often being fulfilled by Jesus Christ, either through his birth, through his life, through his ministry, through his death, through his resurrection, or through his reign over the church. Then even beyond that, there is an ultimate fulfillment that we see in many of these prophecies that will not take place until Christ returns in glory. We see the prophet Isaiah. He's writing, and on the one hand, he is addressing the contemporary political climate of his day and he's trying to warn the people of Israel. He's trying to prepare the people of Israel to see how God's sovereign hand of judgment and of redemption is working through their circumstance. But when you really look closely at this passage, you see there's something deeper going on as well, that the physical oppression of the Assyrian empire, as bad as it was going to be, and it was going to be bad, it was merely a temporary manifestation of the spiritual oppression that all humanity faces from Satan, sin, and death. The reality is that the crisis of humanity is, when properly understood, even greater than the crisis of Israel, that all of us, we have an inward enemy of sin. We have a sinful nature. Our hearts are these darkened battlefields, enemy occupied territory. Most of us might even be afraid to really take a hard look inside, because when we do, we see these desires that are twisted, that are perverted, that are sometimes even evil, and it can scare us. Even at our best, our motives are tinges with selfishness, with pride, with greed. We understand we have this inward enemy. We also have an outward enemy. Scripture talks about there's demonic powers at play in reality that are against us, that Satan, he's described as our adversary, our tempter, our accuser. He roams around like a roaring lion seeking who to devour. We have an inward enemy, an outward enemy, and then we have the ultimate enemy of death, completely inescapable, always looming on the horizon, able to strike at any moment. Pastor Jan did a great job. He talked about this in detail last week. These are enemies that we cannot defeat, that we cannot battle on our own. We know this about death, but it's true about Satan and sin as well. We need something from outside ourselves to save us. One of my favorite Christmas carols, it puts it like this. It says, "Oh, come though rod of Jesse," referring to the Messiah. "Oh, cones are out of Jessie. Free thine own from Satan's tyranny. From depths of hell thy people save and give them victory over the grave." We need something to rescue us from these three enemies that we face. You've probably thought about this before. If not, just take a moment to think about the stories that we tell through books, TV, movies, comic books, whatever. Why are we so obsessed with heroes? Why are we so fascinated with superheroes? Why do we have so many tales of a chosen one, born for the sole purpose of fulfilling some great destiny on behalf of mankind? You think about Beowulf, King Arthur, William Wallace, Aragorn, Luke Skywalker, Neo, Link, my favorite Goku. As I was writing this, it was Tuesday and our kids were home from school because they had a snow day. My wife and I, we both worked from home, and so the great thing about working from home is when your kids don't have school, you still have work, and so you've got to try to figure that out. They get to watch a lot of movies. Disney+ is a great babysitter and relatively inexpensive. I'm sitting there writing my sermon, they're sitting next to me and they're watching The Lion King. What is The Lion King? You think about it, a chosen son, born to be king, celebrated at birth, fighting for his rightful throne. He falls at the hands of evil, oppression. All seems lost. He's presumed to be dead. Then he comes back. He saves his people. He establishes a kingdom of justice and peace. It's as if we cannot even help ourselves from telling these messianic tales. They're written on our hearts. We tell them to our kids. We're inspired by them ourselves. But the strange thing is we always want to keep them confined to that realm of myth, of legend, of fairy tale. Like something inside them screams out that there's something inherently true about them, yet we're on the other hand a little bit afraid to believe them. We all have these longings for a Messiah impressed into our being and yet feel it's maybe just empty, optimistic sentiment to believe in such a thing. That's for children, but not really for adults. I would submit that part of the reason is because we're right, that these stories really are in a sense too good to be true, that such a one could not actually exist. The Old Testament is packed with prophetic announcements and descriptions of a Messiah who would come. And actually the earliest of these happens right in the very beginning of the opening pages of scripture in Genesis chapter three. Immediately after the fall, as God is pronouncing the curse upon the serpent who tempted Eve, Adam and Eve, God says this. He says, "I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. And he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." This is known as the protoevangelium, meaning the first gospel, that a child would be born, an offspring of Eve who would be destined to crush the serpent's head and save humanity. Now, we read that and we immediately want to jump to Jesus, but like hold on for a second. Think about what is said in the very next chapter, the very first verse. Genesis 4:1 says this. It says, "Now Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain saying, 'I've gotten a man with the help of the Lord.'" What are they thinking? Maybe this is the one. This is the offspring that God promised. He's going to come. He's going to crush the serpent's head. He's going to bring us back to Eden. He's going to restore our relationship with God. And then you read the story, and not only does Cain fail to crush the serpent's head, he becomes enslaved by the serpent to crush his brother's head instead. He murders his brother Abel. Then following that, you read through the rest of the Old Testament and it's just failed Messiah after failed Messiah after failed Messiah. Even the greatest of the prophets, priests, and kings, they all sinned. They all fell short, and none fulfilled that promise. This is the paradox, that only an offspring of Eve can stand in the place of humanity to pay the price of our redemption. Only a human life could be a substitute for humanity's sin. But the only person worthy to do such a thing would have to be perfectly innocent and perfectly powerful. In order to pay for the sins of others, they would first need to be guiltless of sin themselves, and then in order to bear the weight of that redemption, they would need to do so without being crushed and destroyed by it themselves. What we see is that the curse of Adam in the sinful nature that we all inherit, it on the one hand puts us each in dire need of redemption, and on the other hand it makes us completely unable of attaining it. We have to sit in that darkness and feel that despair, that hopelessness, or we're never going to experience the thrill of hope that we're meant to experience in verses six and seven. That brings us to point number two. Looking again at Isaiah, he starts in verse two. It says, "The people who've walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in the land of deep darkness, on them has light shown." Jumping down to verse six, "For to us a child is born, unto us a son is given. The government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it in uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore." I mentioned earlier that it's hard for us to relate to what it would be like living in a world where light was not readily available, to face darkness. About the closest I've ever come to experiencing this was in college. Some of my friends from high school and I, we used to like to go caving. When I say go caving, I don't mean like a commercial cave where you pay money, and you have a guide, and you walk through a path, and the cave is all lit up and beautiful. I mean you go to a forest, you find a hole in the ground, and you'd go into it, and you'd just explore. There were times ... First of all, to do this, you're wearing knee pads. You're wearing a helmet. You're going down, and sometimes you're your army crawling through tunnels. The reward at the end, you'll crawl for 30, 40 feet and all of a sudden it will open up into this massive cavernous room, and it's just amazing. It's a breathtaking experience. But you only need to go about 50 feet into a cave before there is absolutely zero light, zero natural light, complete pitch, black darkness. And at that point, you become completely orderly dependent on this tiny little lamp strapped to your helmet. We would walk for hours sometimes, no idea how much distance it was, but probably up to a mile underground in the darkness. Now, imagine you're an hour into a cave and the lights go out. Maybe even just close your eyes for a moment. I hate it when pastors do this, but I'm preaching today, so try it. Just close your eyes. Imagine this. You're an hour in and the lights go out. You have no sense of direction. You can begin groping your way through the dark, but you really don't know if you're getting closer to escape or if you're getting further away. Minutes turn into hours. Hours turn into you lose track of time. You're hungry. You're cold. You're tired. You're lost. Now, imagine the thrill of hope if far off in the distance you swear you see a glimmer of light. Isaiah says there is a light that is coming into the darkness. Hope is coming. Rescue is coming. You can open your eyes. This hope is coming through a king with a massive army that's going to crush the Assyrians... No, he says it's coming through a baby. It's going to come through a child that will be born to us, a son that will be given to us. It's like why should that bring any hope at all? And the reason that this child is going to bring hope is because there's going to be something about this child that is utterly different from every child born before him and every child born after him, because Isaiah says that this child will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. I know it's Christmas, and we all kind of want to just show up and hear a nice sermon about little eight pound, six ounce, beautiful baby Jesus, but I want to do some like theology today. I want to teach some doctrine today. I want us to think about this for a minute, because this is really important. We're going to do some Christology. Isaiah chapter nine is a Christological prophecy about something that theologians call the hypostatic union of Christ. What this means is that the Messiah would have a truly fully nature. A child would be born. And the Messiah would have a truly fully divine nature. His name would be Mighty God. These two natures would be perfectly united in one person. Not part God, part man, but God-man, fully human, fully divine. A couple chapters earlier, Isaiah 7:14 says, "Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel, meaning God with us." Micah 5:2, another prophesy says, "But you, O Bethlehem Ephratah, who were too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from old, from ancient days." Paul says in Colossian 2:9 that, "For in him, Christ, the full, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily." Hebrews 1, "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son whom he appointed the heir of all things through whom he also created in the world." And John 1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God and all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." Verse 14, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of the only son from the Father full of grace and truth." Why does this matter? Why bring in the hypostatic union of Christ? What's the point? I mentioned earlier that the curse of Adam and the sinful nature that we inherit, it puts us in need of redemption and also incapable of attaining it. That on the one hand, only a truly human person can stand in humanity's place to pay the price of their redemption, but it would take only a truly perfect divine person who would be able and worthy to do such a thing. And only Jesus is both. He had to be both. I don't know if you're familiar with the Heidelberg Catechism, but it's a very useful discipleship tool that the church has used for generations. They come to this doctrine and they frame it by asking and answering two questions. The first question they ask is, why must he, why must the Christ, the Messiah, the Redeemer be a righteous man? The answer is that he must be a true man, because the justice of God requires that the same human nature which has sinned should pay for sin. He must be a righteous man, because one who himself is a sinner, he cannot pay for others. So then why must he be God? That's the second question. So that by the power of his divinity, he might bear the weight of God's anger in his humanity and earn for us and restore to us righteousness in life. A slightly modernized version of this comes from Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City. They put together what they've called the New City Catechism, and they frame it with these questions. First, they ask, why must the Redeemer be truly human? That in human nature, he might on our behalf perfectly obey the whole law and suffer the punishment for human sin, and also that he might sympathize with our weaknesses. Why must the Redeemer be truly God? That because of his divine nature, his obedience and suffering would be perfect and effective, and also that he would be able to bear the righteous anger of God against sin and yet overcome death. Jesus had to be fully God and he had to be truly human, because there is no other possible scenario through which he could have fully redeemed us from sin and from death. It is only because of his full humanity that Jesus is able to suffer and to sympathize with us, and it is only because of his full divinity that he is able to satisfy God's wrath and secure our salvation. In his divinity, he is perfectly united to the Father so that by grace through faith we may be perfectly united to him and his humanity, and therefore united to the Father, to the Spirit as well. This is what we're talking about being adopted into the family of God, that we become children of God through Jesus Christ. C.S. Lewis, he put it a lot more succinctly like this. The son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God. That's the hypostatic union. Doctrine is important. We shouldn't be afraid to study a doctrine and to apply our minds to scripture, but we can't just let that live up here in our minds. We need to take the delight of that truth and we need to work it down into the darkness of our hearts. And this brings us to point three. It's important for us to understand who Jesus is in order to satisfy the reason, the logic of our minds. It's also important for us to understand what Jesus did to satisfy the longings of our hearts. In Isaiah, he gives us a glimpse of who the Messiah would be at the beginning of his book, but then he goes into vivid detail about what the Messiah would do at the end of his book. In Isaiah chapter 53 it says this, "That surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken and smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds, we are healed." "We all like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." The world watched with bated breath to see if Cain would crush the head of the serpent, but he crushes the head of his brother instead. Jesus Christ is born, and he's willingly crushed for his brothers. And in doing so, he crushes the serpent as well. In doing so, he finds a way to slay the serpent and save the sinner, to save all those who would repent and believe in his name. And so we see that who Jesus is makes him worthy, but what Jesus did makes him lovely. This is where it begins to go from our head to our hearts, and we need to fight for this every day. We need to take that truth, and armed with that truth go into that dark battlefield of our hearts and do battle to not only know it, and to understand it, and to agree with it, but to believe it and to love it. Whatever you're going through right now, whatever pain, whatever suffering, whatever despair, whatever darkness it is you're facing, don't miss this. The God of heaven left his throne. He left paradise and stepped down into a cold, dark world. He took on flesh. He bore our griefs. He carried our sorrows. He was crushed and wounded for our healing and peace, and he did this compelled by his love for us. Because often when you're in the dark and when the darkness seems overwhelming, we're all tempted to ask these two questions. Is it that God is not powerful enough to give me justice and peace, or does he not love me enough to care? When you look at the light, when you look at Jesus and what he has done for you, you might not get a clear answer as to why God allows the darkness in your life, and you might not see you exactly what that answer is, but you do see what that answer cannot be, and the answer cannot be that God is not powerful enough to give you justice. He has taken the single darkest moment in human history, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and redeemed it to such an extent that he used it as the source of greatest light. He used it as the source of the greatest good, the resurrection of Christ and the redemption of God's people. Do you believe that? Do you believe that he can do that for you? His word promises that he will. The answer cannot be that God's not powerful enough to give us justice, but it also is not, it can't possibly be that he doesn't care, he doesn't love us enough to care, because God loved the world to such an extent that he gave that which he valued most, his beloved son, his only begotten son. Jesus loved to such an extent that he gave his life. The Christmas season should be a joyful time, but for many it's a very jarring time. It can be a painful and isolating time of year for a lot of people. Typically what you see is on the one hand, there's a lot of us who are running to the past. We're chasing after some sentimental nostalgic feelings, and we put all this pressure on Christmas to give us these feelings of peace, of joy, of hope, and we're so romanticizing our memories of Christmases past that we are not even able to enjoy the present. That we put these crazy expectations on other people around us that hurt them. Ultimately, we just feel this dissatisfaction, this emptiness as Christmas comes and goes. Some people are running to the past. A lot of other people are running away from the past. Just get me through the holidays. Just keep me from thinking too much about how jacked up my family is, and how messed up my circumstances are, and from dealing with the pain of my woundedness and of my sin. Maybe your life is not turning out the way you want it to. Now, we can easily use the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season as a distraction to avoid dealing with the woundedness, with the sin in our life. But if we do, we run the risk of missing the true power of the Christmas season, because the true power of Christmas is not that Christ is able to give us a seasonal distraction from the pain of real life. The true power of Christmas is that Christ has come down into the darkness to redeem that pain, to use it for our good, that the light is shining in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it. Deep down we're all still just children afraid of the dark, waiting, longing for someone to come and to tell us that everything's going to be okay. Christmas is a reminder that the Word became flesh to do just that. That 2,000 years ago, a child was born into a cold, dark night to offer hope, love, joy, and peace to all people who would repent and believe in his name; that Christ appears in the darkness of our lives today to offer hope, love, joy, and peace to our present; and that Christ will return in glory to bring hope, love, joy, and peace to perfection. If you have not experienced that today, this is not something that you have to go out and earn. It's not something that comes through your good work, through your righteousness. It is truly a gift to be received. Scripture says that to all who would receive it, to those who would believe in Jesus' name, he gives the right to become children of God, and you can do that today. We pray that that you would. Now would you please join me in prayer before we continue in worship. God, we thank you for the gift of Jesus, our Messiah. Lord, I pray that if there are any here today who have not received that gift, that they would do so now. For those who have received it and who have believed in your name, God, remind us again that by grace through faith we have become your children, your beloved, and that you as a good father are working all things together for our good. God, when we wander, when we doubt, I pray that you would lead us back to the cross and remind us again of your great love and the price that was paid so that we can be set free from Satan's tyranny to live lives of joyful obedience to you. For your name, for your glory, and for your kingdom, we pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen.
Advent: Peace
December 23, 2018
In Isaiah 9, Jesus is prophecies to be the "Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore." Despite the lack of Shalom in the world, we can still experience Shalom in our hearts, as "the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:7).
Advent: Joy
December 16, 2018 • Isaiah 35:1–10
Even in the most ecstatic moments of happiness, there's always a caveat or asterisk–there's always a catch. There's always the deep awareness that this delicious moment will come to an end, and we're sad about it. We're sad about our happiness ending, because it isn't happiness that we're after; we're after everlasting joy. Do you have this elusive everlasting joy?
Advent: Love
December 9, 2018 • Isaiah 9:1–7
The best part about the Christmas season is the Christmas spirit. The Christmas spirit infuses the air with generosity, grace, and love. Everyone seems to be a little nicer–even in Boston. People don't push quite as forcefully on the T. They don't lay on the horn quite as long. They don't tailgate quite as closely. Why? What is it about the Christmas Spirit that changes people? And why can't we live like this year-round?