Tis the Season // Feeling of an Unexpected Path

Christmas Eve candlelight services.

We're gonna be in a Matthew chapter two.

Matthew two for the message.

Have you ever experienced something in your life that was unexpected?

Something unexpected?

If you are breathing, the answer is yes, you've experienced something unexpected.

Last Sunday night, I actually experienced something very unexpected.

We had our volunteer Christmas party here, and it was a big time.

And Pastor Edgar said, Hey, um, I want you to play a game.

Like, would you play a game?

I'm like, Yeah, like I'll be down to play a game.

He did not tell me.

This is this was the Christmas party of most of our amazing volunteers, was a big time.

He did not tell me what the game included.

Some of y'all are laughing because you were there.

He did not tell me it included me getting slapped in the face with a tortilla.

I think we have a picture up of it.

Yes.

And some of you mean people, you laughed at me.

Amen.

It was unexpected and it was a blast.

It was fun and we had a big time.

And sometimes unexpected moments, they're fun, they're exciting.

You get a job promotion, you get a gift, you maybe somebody takes you somewhere like this was super cool.

But sometimes unexpected moments are difficult and hard.

And we don't expect them.

And we think, how did I get here?

Some of you know exactly what I'm talking about.

We're in a series right now entitled, 'Tis the Season to Feel Everything, How to Be Emotionally Healthy During the Holidays.

And what we're talking about today is what do we do when we have these feelings that come along with unexpected moments?

These moments can be disorienting, they can be confusing, where you're like, what in the world?

They can be honestly disillusioning, where you're like, How did this happen here?

Like, I'm just done with everything.

And unexpected moments, well, they're part of life.

And of the many things we learned during the Christmas story, we learn that the first Christmas story was filled with unexpected moments that put some people on an unexpected path.

And something we learn in the story is that the unplanned, unexpected path is often the stage for God's greatest works.

Now, if you're like me, when it comes to the unexpected, unplanned past that I don't enjoy, I resist those.

I don't want to get bad news.

Who wants to get bad news?

I don't want to go through hard times.

Who wants to go through hard times?

But what if the unplanned, unexpected places are actually the greatest stages for God to do his greatest work in your life?

Let's think about something.

The Virgin Mary, Virgin Mary was told she was gonna have a baby.

That's a little unexpected, y'all.

That ain't normal.

And that unexpected moment put her on an unexpected path that through Mary, the savior of the world that we just sang about, was going to be born.

When we look at the Christmas story, as Ella was saying so well, is the Christmas story not just about a baby being born, but Jesus coming to die on the cross for our sin.

Because we are all sinners in need of a savior, and it happened through an unexpected plan that Mary didn't see herself on.

And this is what we're gonna see today in Matthew chapter number two.

We're gonna see what do we do when we experience unexpected moments that put us on an unexpected path.

Because what we do in those moments when life is hard and life sucks, that determines a lot of things that we won't even realize until the other side of those moments.

So let's pick it up in Matthew chapter number two.

If you're ready for it, would you say amen?

Amen.

It says Matthew 2, verse number 13.

It says, and after they were gone, we talked about the they last week, they were the wise men.

So after the wise men, they were gone.

An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Get up.

I don't know about you guys, but I don't like when somebody tells me to get up.

Are any of you guys like me?

I I hit the snooze button almost every single day.

And I'm like, five more minutes.

I just give me God, just give me five more minutes.

The angel says, get up, take the child, this is Jesus, and his mother, flee to Egypt and stay there until I tell you.

For Herod is about to search for the child to kill him.

Now, Mary and Joseph had just been given incredible gifts.

We talked about it last week.

Gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

I want you to understand this context.

These were very poor people.

They had just been given great gifts.

We know they were poor because when they go to dedicate Jesus at the temple, they don't dedicate him with a lamb.

They dedicate him, Luke 2 tells us, with a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons.

A pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons.

Now you're like, what's the big deal about that?

The Old Testament law would say that you should dedicate your child with a lamb as an offering unto the Lord.

But if you're poor and you don't have a lot of resources, you can do it with a couple pigeons or you can do it with some turtle doves.

That's fine.

And what Mary and Joseph did is they did it with a couple of pigeons or a couple of turtle doves.

So we know they were poor.

So Mary and Joseph, though they were poor, they had just been given gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

So now this poor family had just been given some financial resources.

They're not eating PBJ anymore.

They're having tri-tip for dinner.

Somebody say amen to that.

Come on.

Mary and Joseph are settling into the normalcy of being a parent.

Jesus is several months old.

We don't exactly know how many, but we know he's several months old at this point, maybe more than a year old.

They're settling into a normalcy.

They have some resources, they have some things.

Life is finding some balance, and then all of a sudden, the angel appears to Joseph in a dream, and he says, Get up, go to Egypt.

One more thing.

Joseph, where he's from, he's from Nazareth.

That's the opposite direction of Egypt.

Joseph, no doubt, is planning on going back home, back to normalcy, back to comfort, back to where his people are, back to where he can get a flow of his job.

But the angel says, Nope, I want you to go to Egypt.

Because my plan is for you to go to Egypt so Herod doesn't take out the baby of Jesus.

Here's what we see.

Here's what this shows us is that God's plans often unfold through unexpected turns.

Through unexpected turns.

Sometimes what we expect God to do, because if we're honest, we we bring our expectations to God, and we have certain expectations for Him to meet.

Sometimes what He does is He says, forget those.

I have a different path and a better path for you.

Now, if you're Joseph and you find out that you have to get up in the middle of the night, because the angel tells you to go to Egypt.

If I'm Joseph, I'm like, let me sleep a few more hours, and I might do it.

I don't know if I want to.

You know what Joseph did in verse number 14?

This is what it says.

Check out these four words.

In fact, let's all say it together.

Ready?

So he got up.

He got up.

Wow.

Took the child and his mother during I should say the during the night.

During the night.

And escaped to Egypt.

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

So God spoke to Joseph.

He's knocked out.

He's sleeping.

God says, I want you to go.

He literally gets up in the middle of the night and says, Okay, Mary, we're going to Egypt.

Mary's like, well, what about like you're from Nazareth?

We're from Nazareth.

Mary, we're going to Egypt.

Go to Egypt.

Like that.

Now we read that.

We're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, that's not a big deal.

That's a big deal.

That's a big deal, y'all.

That's a big deal for Mary, too.

Mary's like, what do you mean?

Like, we just got some gold and frankincense and right.

Now we can have tri tip.

We're not eating PB and J anymore.

We're going.

Here's what we see from this.

Unexpected paths still call for obedience.

Mary and Joseph, they were not planning on going to Egypt.

For them to go to Egypt didn't probably make the most sense in their mind.

After all, yeah, Herod was after the child, but after all, he was the Messiah.

So of course God the Father was going to protect the Messiah, and he can do it however he wanted to do it.

If I'm Joseph, I'm like, I don't know if I have to go to Egypt.

Like, you can just blind the soldiers that are trying to take out all the babies.

I don't need to go to Egypt.

This doesn't make sense to me.

But what God wanted, God wanted Joseph to obey.

God wanted Joseph to obey on the unexpected path.

Also, even studying this out and talking about this, I just I feel like I need to say this.

Some of us are on an unexpected path for our lives, and it may or may not be because this was God's plan.

It may be because somebody stepped out of God's design and did something sinful or did something wrong and it affected you in a negative way.

And some of you are sitting in this room right now and you're on an unexpected path, and it's because of something that somebody else did.

You've been a victim, you've been mistreated, and maybe you've tried to spiritualize it, you've tried to rationalize it, you have been mistreated.

You have been done wrong.

And now you're here and you are disoriented and you are confused and you're like, God, is this what you wanted from me?

It is possible that this is not what God's plan was for you, but somebody went outside of God's plan and did something to you.

And now you're on an unexpected path.

But I want to say something very clear, and I want to say something very encouraging, is that we serve a God who redeems unexpected paths.

And this is what they told me.

They said, at that moment, I had no idea what to do.

But now I understand so much more because it's through this entire journey that actually brought me to Jesus, and I would not be where I am today if it wasn't for that thing that happened to me.

The unexpected path being redeemed.

Some of you right now, you're on an unexpected path because of something that somebody has done.

And you are wading through it right now, and it might be overwhelming.

What redemption might look like is one day you might come in contact and you probably will with somebody that's going through the same thing that you are going through right now, and you're going to be able to help them.

And though that doesn't make the thing you're going through good, what that does is it's a redemption that can happen because of what's happened to you.

And know this God can redeem the unexpected paths in ways that only God can.

This is what Romans chapter 8 says.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

And we so love this verse.

But it's we know all things work together for the good of those who love God.

It does not say that all things are good.

Sometimes we are like we so over-spiritualize things, we're like, oh, it's okay, that wasn't a big deal.

No, it actually was a big deal.

It doesn't say that everything is good, but it says that all things work together for the good to those who love God.

What is this saying for those of us that know Jesus?

Is that God redeems all of those things for the good.

Are we gonna obey God even when it's hard?

This is the exact choice that Joseph has to make in Matthew chapter number two.

He's got a young family.

He's feeling the weight of a newborn, and not just a newborn, but the savior of the world.

That's kind of a lot of weight to carry.

And what Joseph could have done is Joseph could have said, Are you sure I should do this, God?

He could have tried to barter with God.

You ever try to like barter with God?

Hey God, I'll do this if you do this over here.

Hey God, I want to make a deal with you.

He could try to do that.

He he he could have he could have justified.

We're good justifiers, aren't we?

He could have justified and rationalized the reason why he didn't go to Egypt.

He could have been like, God, there's a light that's going all around my room right now, and uh it just went out, and I don't I don't I don't know if I'm gonna go.

That light's gonna keep going.

But he didn't because you know why?

This is why because God spoke to him, and here's my question this morning is what do you do when God's word clearly tells you to do something, or God's spirit clearly leads you to do something?

Do you choose to obey, or do you rationalize and do you justify and do you barter with God?

I remember when I was in college, I had a I had a roommate that uh, how do I say this?

Wasn't my favorite roommate.

I don't know if you guys ever had a roommate like that before.

He uh wasn't the cleanest guy in the world, which I mean, college students, what do you expect?

He was immature.

He kind of got on my nerves.

You ever live with somebody that that gets on your nerves?

Don't raise your hand.

Don't raise your hand.

Your ride home will not go very well.

This was a roommate that you thought got on your last nerve, only to discover you had about 10 more nerves for him to get on.

And I got to the point, I don't know if you've ever been here with somebody, I got to where I was like, I'm done with this guy.

I'm tired of him.

I'm tired of his lack of cleanliness, I'm tired of his immaturity.

This dude needs to grow up.

So I just stopped paying attention to him.

Woke up, did what I needed to do, did my studies, come back in the room, pretty much ignored him.

Now, I knew I had some influence on him.

I was a couple years older than him, and I knew that if I wanted to, I knew I could have like encouraged him and helped him and kind of walked with him through some stuff.

But I was like, I'm done with dude.

I'm like through with him.

And the reason why is because I'm like, well, I'm studying to be a pastor.

So because I'm studying to be a pastor, I need to focus on my studies and study the deeper things of scripture.

I don't have time for his immaturity.

I don't have time for all the things that he's going through.

I need to focus.

It's pretty sickening.

And he ended up having a hard time.

He ended up dropping out of college.

And to this day, I was talking to another roommate.

We have no idea whatever happened to him.

Don't miss this.

Here's what I did.

I spiritualized my lack of care for him and my lack of love for him, which would be obedience to God.

I spiritualize it because I was studying the word of God to be a good pastor.

Don't miss this.

Here's what we can do, guys.

We can spiritualize our disobedience to God.

Can we put the next slide up?

We can spiritualize disobedience to God.

We can say, because of this spiritual thing, I it's okay that I'm disobeying God.

God wants me to have peace in my life.

He wants me to protect my peace.

I know I should go apologize to this person over here because I did something that I should have done and I should apologize, but I'm walking in God's peace, the peace that passes all understanding.

No, bro, you're walking in disobedience and you're spiritualizing your lack of obedience.

We can say, uh man, I'm just, man, I'm just I'm waiting on God.

I want to follow God's timing for my life.

I don't want, I don't want to get ahead of God.

Don't want to get ahead of God.

So I'll video about that.

That's bad.

When God has clearly spoken something in his word or his spirit has clearly prompted you to do something, and you've used waiting on God, which really you're just fearful, and you've used that as an excuse to not obey God.

We think in our life, we're like, man, God wants me to be a good steward.

Stewardship is so important.

I want to be a good steward.

We hear Pastor Cody talking about how we've had the Christmas offering, inviting people to give, and how literally, like, it is helping families significantly this year.

Like they are having Christmas because of our generosity.

And you feel something prompting you, you're like, I probably should give to that.

I probably should.

But you're like, no, I need to be a good steward of my resources.

And if God's prompting us to do something, we gotta do it.

And here's what we can do, guys.

We can spiritualize disobedience to God, and we can replace obedience with spiritual language that makes disobedience feel acceptable.

And here's what we have to do, guys, in our in our in our lives.

We have to normalize ordinary obedience instead of spiritualizing our disobedience.

And Joseph chose the path of simple obedience on the unexpected path.

And look what happens in verse 15.

It says in verse 15, he stayed there in Egypt until Herod's death, so that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled.

Out of Egypt, I called my son.

Now you might think, like, why is he going?

Why is he going to Egypt?

The old Greek military general Alexander the Great.

How many of you guys have heard of Alexander the Great?

Right?

We've seen some cool war movies about him and stuff.

Alexander the Great, years earlier, had established a city in Egypt called Alexandria.

What a coincidence.

Alexandria was a sanctuary city for Jews in Egypt.

Now, years later, fast forward the clock a few hundred years to this time period, the Roman Empire had kept that area as a sanctuary for Jews.

So what had happened is God tells him to go to Egypt because this is a sanctuary for Jews where they can find safety.

Also, this was fulfillment of a prophecy from Hosea, because the prophet Hosea said this was going to happen.

Then in verse number 16, look what Herod does when he realizes that Jesus and Joseph and Mary had gone to Egypt.

Herod, when he realized that he had been outwitted by the wise men, flew into a rage.

He gave orders to massacre all the boys in around Bethlehem who were two years old and under.

And keeping up with the time, he had learned from the wise men.

I think it's needless to say that Herod wasn't a very nice guy.

In fact, history tells us that there was a time where Herod had his sons and his wife executed because he was fearful they were going to take over the throne.

When Herod got mad, people died.

Verse 17 says that this is actually fulfillment of prophecy.

And maybe you're in this room, maybe you're skeptical about Christianity and somebody dragged you here, you're just checking things out.

Here's something that you owe it to yourself to research is there are hundreds, hundreds is a stretch.

There are scores and scores and scores, I would say, of fulfilled prophecy that 500 years earlier the Old Testament, the Old Testament said would happen, and Jesus fulfilled those prophecies with pinpoint accuracy.

And here's the thing that that really deserves our attention.

Verse 17 talks about another prophecy that Jeremiah had given about this.

It says, Then what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, like hundreds of years earlier, y'all, it was fulfilled.

A voice was heard in Rama weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and she refused to be consoled because they are no more.

After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, Get up.

It's not the first time we heard that, right?

Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, because those who intended to kill the child are dead.

So he got up, he took the child and his mother, and entered the land of Israel.

But when he had heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in the place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream, he withdrew to the region of Galilee.

Then he went and settled in a town called Nazareth.

To fulfill that what was spoken through the prophets, again, fulfilled prophecy that he would be called a Nazarene.

And here's what we see this morning finally is that simple obedience has extraordinary impact.

Joseph wasn't just obeying.

Joseph was preserving the life of the savior of the world.

Sometimes the hardest thing about obeying God is that we don't always see immediate results from it.

We want results right now.

We want things to happen right now.

It's like last night I was doing some Christmas shopping.

I know I'm so far ahead of the game.

But it's 2025, so I don't have to go anywhere.

I can just sit on my couch.

It's wonderful.

And I was on my phone.

And I was on all of our favorite website.

Favorite web?

Everybody, guess what the famous web our favorite website is on the count of three?

One, two, three.

No, no, it was Nike.

I was on Nike.

Come on.

No, actually, it was on Amazon.

I was on Amazon.

And I was I was looking and I was like, wait, wait, there are some things that it's gonna take like three days to get shipped here?

Three days?

I got time for three days.

Like I expect to come home from after the third service today, and I'm gonna go home, and there should be like a box right next to my front door.

I got time wait three days.

I wanna know.

Right?

Yeah, it's you got this thing called DoorDash.

You guys ever heard DoorDash?

That thing will mess up your bank account, y'all.

You get DoorDash, I don't feel like making anything, or I don't feel it's like okay, just pull up your phone and they just like bring stuff or whatever.

And I'm just like, wow.

Angela ordered something from Target yesterday.

Can we have to go to Target and fight all the traffic?

And I was like, it's been like an hour.

Where's this person at?

We kind of rob some.

We want immediate gratification.

We want to go right now.

Think about Joseph.

What's happening, Joseph?

Joseph, Angel said, get up.

He got up, he started going to Egypt.

And this was the immediate gratification.

Walk in the desert for dozens of miles.

Walk in the desert.

Oh, I forgot.

With like a newborn baby.

It was like an infant toddler at best.

In the desert with Mary.

That's the instant gratification.

Like no gratification?

If I'm jealous, I'm like, I wanna do this.

Like, isn't there a better way to like save the savior?

Like, can you, God, can you just like all of a sudden like transport us?

Like, you are no longer in Bethlehem in Jerusalem.

Like, you are now in Egypt, okay?

I'm bringing a holy helicopter that's gonna come and pick you up and take you over there.

And it's gonna have air conditioning and heated seats, and it's it's gonna be amazing.

Seafood buffet with sushi, anthrite.

No, no, no, it's uh they had a walk, they had a it was super ordinary, it was non-glamorous, and and this is so worth noting that God the Father chose somebody having ordinary acts of obedience to save the savior of the world and preserve his life.

That's worth noting that God could have chosen anything and he said, Here's what I'm gonna choose.

Joseph obeying me.

And obedience has extraordinary impact.

I want to give you an example of this in our church.

How many of you guys you follow our church on social media, or maybe you've seen our church on social media?

How many of you guys have seen us?

Okay, most of most of the hands went up, and years ago, this is the dark ages, this is like I think four years ago.

I used to do the social media, and it was really good back then.

Actually, it wasn't, it was bad.

And and I realized this, I realized that social media is a tool, not the most important thing, but it's a thing, a tool to help people know Jesus and make Jesus known.

So because it's a tool, we want to use all the tools at our disposal to move forward our mission.

And I knew that I was not the best person for this role.

So I started doing what I do, and I don't know what to do.

Start praying.

Lord help.

Lord, who can do this?

And I felt, I sense like the Spirit of God putting somebody on my heart.

I sense the Spirit of God putting Tyler McNeil on my heart.

Yeah, let's go.

I don't know if she's in the room.

So what I did was I asked her, and I just said, Hey, I don't know if you'd be open to this, but I just sense I should ask you, would you would you be open to doing our social media?

And we can give you some tools and resources and find some things.

And um, would you just pray about it and consider it?

And if that's not something you feel led to do, totally okay.

Not a big deal at all.

I said, but would you pray about it and think about it?

And she's like, uh I don't know if I can do this, but I said, I'm asking you.

Like, would you just think about it and pray about it?

She's like, Yeah, I'll do that.

So she prayed about it, thought about it.

We followed up and we talked later.

And she was like, I think I should do this.

Like, I think I I think I should.

Um, I'm gonna, I'm, I'm willing to do it.

So she was got some tools and resources and just spent a bunch of time learning and things, and and now she's doing our social media.

And now she's not just doing our social media, but now she's got a team of doing social media.

Somebody came to me in the lobby and said, Hey, can Pastor Nate, they had a camera.

They said, Will you go like this?

I said, What?

They're like, I'm making a video, yeah.

She got a team of people doing this, and doing social media is a lot of work.

You gotta like have the pictures and the captions and the videos and all this difference.

Like, it's it's it's a lot of work.

Like some of you, you see the pictures on our social media and you're like, Oh, that's cool.

You see yourself, you're like, Oh, I'm liking that picture.

And and you see that, and you might say, Man, doing social media is cool.

Her doing social media was not about social media, it was about her saying yes to obeying God.

And today at the 845 service, we saw the fruit of this.

Because at the 845 service, somebody was baptized here, and the way they first heard about our church was through social media.

And sometimes what we think is an unexpected path, and we're unsure, and we're like, God, I don't know if I can follow you there, I don't know if I can do this, I don't know if I should take that step.

If you will just obey, on the other side of your obedience can be extraordinary impact.

But you won't understand what's on the other side of your obedience until you first choose to obey.

There's a hymn that the old hymn says, Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.

Trust and obey.

And some of you right now you're in an unexpected path.

Can I just say trust and obey?

Some of you right now you're struggling with your flesh.

You're like, I don't know, man.

This is what everybody else is doing.

You know what God says?

Trust and obey.

Some of you in a season right now where life is overwhelming and you feel like giving up.

Friend, trust and obey.

And on the other side of your obedience, God can use it.

So I got two questions and we'll be done this morning.

And Judah's really excited about those questions too.

Here's our two questions, and we're done.

And we're gonna have some baptisms.

Is this question one is where have you spiritualized disobedience in your life?

Is there a place in your life where you know, you know, you know, God has called you to obey, but like me, you're spiritualizing disobedience.

That place.

And number two, what specific place do you need to obey God?

It's one thing for us to hear the story of Joseph, and we're like, oh yeah, that's great.

It's another thing when we just say, I'm gonna choose a step of unglamorous obedience.

Maybe nobody sees it.

Maybe nobody's gonna be like, Great job, you obey.

No, no, it's between you and the Lord.

God sees, and you're like, I just need to take a step of okay, of obedience.

Unglamorous obedience in the lives of followers of Jesus changes other people's lives.

Let's take a step and let's follow as the Spirit's leader.

Let's all bow our heads and close our eyes.