Do You Hear What I Hear?

He came in the craziest form. I would have come in the form of a-, very established human being from a rich family, But he came into an average family, an average form. Yet God often chooses that which is average to do something special. He doesn't necessarily work through spectacle. He works through something that is subtle.

That's what we see, if nothing else, in Christmas, And your ability, my ability, to see subtlety is often the difference between seeing and hearing what God's doing and missing it. How many of you don't want to miss what God's doing? Come on somebody. I don't want to miss it. I want to experience him fresh every single day.

Father God, we thank you for today. We thank you for your goodness, We thank you for this crazy, weird, like feels, like it's almost fictional story of subtlety that God showcases all of the things you can do in order to bring us into connection to you. So, God, I pray right now that, as we celebrate Christmas, this wasn't, wouldn't be tradition. I pray that it would be something truly special. So, yes, we've got silent night, oh, holy night, candle light, all that stuff.

I know it's here, It's, it's what we like to do, but God, let it dive deeper than superficial. I pray that when we sing these songs over the next few moments, when we listen to this message, God, that we would hear the spiritual beyond what's shallow and superficial. So God be with us. Right now We pray these things in Jesus's name, And all God's people said, "Amen". You may be seated.

Is that my daughter? No, Is that my daughter? It is my daughter. Yeah, You be good to that. You know, be good girl, You be good sweetie.

She's so beautiful, Prettier than all your kids. I'm just kidding. Your kids are all beautiful in the eyes of Jesus, But in my eyes. Come on, Dad's in the room. You know your daughter's like the most beautiful person in the world.

She's not in here much, so I don't get to do that very often. Love you, Is my son in here? Love you too, buddy. You're handsome, Not, I mean: be beautiful soul, You and your beautiful soul. Okay, Anyways, we're going to dive into this.

We're going to be in Matthew, chapter 2 today. I've been really excited about this message. I can't, I can't tell who all is here. But you're here. I'm grateful for it.

Matthew 2 · chapter mention

We haven't really been going through a series. We just been calling it Christmas, right, And so, we've been kind of, you know, going through a few different song titles. I talked a few weeks ago from the narrative in Luke about the Christmas story. I talked last week in Matthew, chapter 1, and today we'll be in Matthew, chapter 2. We'll go through the first few verses in a little while.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention Matthew 2 · chapter mention

But as I was praying about what I wanted to deliver for you all today, there was just a thought or or a metaphor that came into my mind and I thought it would be cool, because Christmas in a lot of ways, is all about Christ, Amen, . But also it's a nostalgia too, right? Somebody else say "Yeah", Yeah, Nostalgia. If y'all are scared to say, I'm not going to judge you if you say there's a lot of nostalgia in Christmas. So if you love the nostalgia in Christmas, say "Yeah", Yeah, .

All right, That's why you're here. If you're a first- time guest, I'm glad that you're here. I get a little crazy up here sometimes. Don't judge me for it. The whole church is really cool.

I'm just like special, but the Lord uses it. You know what I'm saying. But I'm glad that you're here. But maybe you came because you like some of the nostalgia of Christmas. I swear to you- I've seen it enough times.

I've been in ministry 15 years- If I didn't do a candle light service, at the end of this someone will be like "Why didn't we do a candle light service". It's like "I didn't see any candles at the birth of Jesus". So I mean, I'm just kid, but we're going to do one cuz candle light. There's nostalgia in Christmas, And this is a little nostalgic for me. How many of you ever had, when you were growing up, like one of them, boom boxes Like?

You know what I'm talking about. The boom box It's got a CD player up top and a cassette player at the bottom. Maybe some of you real, not old, but you know, like you're, you're, you're at a different stage than I'm at, and you didn't even have a CD player up top, You just had the tape deck. What do they call that? Cassette, Cassette.

Yeah, that cassette, But some of y'all had them eight tracks too. You had this boom box Like that boom box at the end of that movie- Is it Breakfast Club? Yeah, the boom box at the end of that movie where he stands up there and he like serenades the girl cuz he can't sing, but he's got a boom box. He probably made her a mixtape and all that other stuff he used to do in the 90s.

You know, remember you used to play, play, press, play and pause at the same time in order to record the radio station: , Yep, And raise your hand. If you remember that, Put your hand down. If you didn't do that, though, I'll never forget. It was totally uncool. I was listening to two early 2000s music out in the middle of my neighborhood with a, a boom box out there, and I pressed, play and record.

The day that someone taught me how to do that, it was some girl who was listening to too much- Britney Spears. The day someone taught me how to do that, I was so excited cuz then I could save all of the songs, cuz my parents wouldn't take me to Walmart to buy that CD. You remember that? It's just, it's so old school, . But I was remembering those days because there was something that I learned pretty early in life that many of the young people won't even experience unless someone teaches them about it, like I do tonight.

You remember there there are two main frequencies on the radio. What are they? Someone say the first one, FM. AM FM- Now just for the kids in the room. So they know about it.

Older people tell them which one you typically listen to. FM You listen. We used to listen to AM. It was like Paul Harvey. He was on AM radio Rush Limbaugh for the longest time.

I didn't listen to it. That was my parents. Guys, Don't judge me. It was AM and FM radio and I never understood why they were different. So as I was prepping for this me message, I asked this question: why are they different?

And I started to look into it. The reason they're that way. And if you're a radar technician or you work with antenna or whatever field- that is, electronics of some sort, don't judge me for what I'm about to do. But if you're not in it, just enjoy what I'm about to do: FM. You see that there's a lot more stations on FM radio.

FM radio is one of those stations. It's got a high frequency or a semi- high frequency, Not in the grand scheme of frequencies, but in radio frequencies. It's got a higher frequency than AM And the beauty of it is, if you're close enough, you can get a lot of stations. Have you ever noticed, when you're driving out of a city, the FM radio stations start to dissipate a little bit. Anyone been on that long trip?

I'll never forget it was Christmas time of 2010 and I went up. I was accountant. An accountant at the time Got any accountants in the room Say, amen, See, Okay, All right. I was an accountant at the time and at the end of the year, you do inventory observations. Now, inventory observations are where you go, count sheep and pigs and whatever, to make sure that they have what they say that they have on their books.

That's all I'm about to tell you about inventory observations. But I had an inventory observation in a small town called Ames, Nebraska. Anyone know what? Ames, Nebraska? See, you don't even know.

Well, I flew into Omaha, Nebraska, and it took me about four hours to get there, And by the time I was out of Omaha, there really aren't that many big cities in Nebraska. They didn't tell me that. I learned that the hard way on December 31st 2010, . And they had a blizzard, And so I'm driving through. It's nighttime and it goes from about 32° when I landed at the airport to about -4° in my car.

I actually upgraded to a Toyota 4Erunner in order to make this trip. I said: "It's going to be a blizzard, I'm going, I'm going to charge my company a little more". And so I'm driving up there, I see it, and I'm starting to stress out. So I'm like, turning on the radio stations and there were no FM stations available. And for the first time in my life it was crazy.

I'd heard about AM but I jumped into AM radio And it was crazy because when I turned it on, there were different stations. There weren't very many were there, But there was a couple. Because there's a difference between FM and AM. FM, if you're up close in a city, there are a lot of different stations that you can go to. You can listen to pop music, you can listen to rap music, you can listen to country music, you can be a weirdo and listen to classical music.

You can do whatever you want on FM. And if you're in a big city around a bunch of those stations, it's going to be perfectly fine. But when you get out into the middle of nowhere, FM doesn't work, It's AM that works, because AM, different from FM, has a much, not stronger necessarily, but a longer reaching signal. Now, if you were to go to your AM station right now, you would go through it and you'd hear what's the noise? Static for the most part, And eventually you'd get there.

You just got to press seek on FM and you going to find a million station, Tons of signals, but they're weaker. But AM, you have very few signals, but they reach really far. And so what I realized in as I was, you know, just kind of studying this weird metaphor- You probably think I'm crazy right now. Why is this dude studying radio technicalities- I realized that a lot of times in our relationship with God it's very similar that there's a lot of signals broadcasting around us And God's also broadcasting a signal. But sometimes, because of all of the different signals, what God's putting out is a little harder to hear.

And I've learned over the years that he's always broadcasting. Someone say amen if they know he's always broadcasting. Always broadcasting. When he sent his son, he was already broadcasting. Why?

Why do I know this? Because when you read the story, you see it. The question is: are you going to pick up the broadcast or not? Are you going to align or attune yourself to what he's already broadcasting? Because the signal of God it reaches really far.

You might not call it AM, You might call it an ancient message. It reaches really far, But that familiar message keeps us stuck, with all the signals, Amen, . And so I want to give you my sermon title and I'll jump into the text today. Hey, I want to ask you this question that I think will prompt you to maybe think about this a little bit more. My sermon title, a song title.

Do you hear what I hear? Come on, somebody. I like that. I was proud of that. One Could have introed it better, I guess, sweetie, They didn't like it.

They, They really liked the whole. What was that one? Let the bodies, Let the bodies hit the floor. They like that one. But I do like a nice, somber, like Christmas song.

Do you hear what I hear? Whatever Boring, Okay, Do you hear what I hear? The signal is broadcasting in your life, but it might be getting mixed in with others And I hope today to help you understand that Christmas, while it's filled with tons of different symbols, signals, trees, activities, there's something deeper layered underneath all of these things. That's always been broadcasting, But it takes a, it takes a little bit of energy to tap into that frequency. So, again in Matthew, chapter 2, I'm going to read through this passage.

Matthew 2 · chapter mention

I may stop along the way. You're going to learn this about me time. I stop along the way to share something unique about the text, But what I see in this passage is multiple people heard the message, but they heard it differently. They were at a different frequency. Verse one after Jesus was born in Bethlehem, in Judea, during the time of King Herod.

This is King Herod the Great, probably about 4 BC, four years before Christ, which is interesting that he's born four years before he was born. Anyways, that's just how we did the dating, but most scholars say he was born about 4 BC. During this time, magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked: "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews". We saw- now you got to hear this for a second. We saw his star.

I don't know if you've been looking at the night sky. I can't even identify his star, And I've gone to seminary. It's just hard to notice some of these things. They saw a star and identified it. Hey, can we keep them sitting down And identified it, All these signals right here, like siblings.

They identified this star in the night sky and they followed it. You see this first group of people I'll talk about King Herod in a second. But they asked this: "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. I'm not saying there's a litmus test to hear the things of God.

In fact, the signal is always broadcasting. If you simply adjust your location a little bit, you might be able to hear and apprehend the nature of God. But when I look at these magi- now, magi are people from the east. You might have heard them as three wise men, three magi, three kings, any variation of the songs that you've sang over the years- but it's three groups of people from far off who were some level of royalty or a priestly class in the east. We don't know much more about them.

We can guess, but we don't know. We do know they liked astrology a little bit or astronomy, whatever you prefer, And so they looked up into the sky and one day they saw a different like. They saw a different congregation of stars, and there was one specific one. They said it rose. They didn't know how things work- We revolve around the sun- But they saw that the star had risen.

It was different than the stars that they had mapped out before. Now I don't know why they knew that it was the king of the Jews star. Maybe it was because they had interacted with Jewish people over the years, from the Babylonian exile, years before. I have no clue why they knew about the star, But they were so attentive to a signal that was farreaching, something distant like a star, even though the world is crazy. How many of you know the world's crazy, ?

I'm not just trying to sound like a preacher, I'll just tell you honestly: the world is crazy, . It's crazy. I don't know if you're on Tik Tok- You shouldn't be if you are, but I'm on Tik Tok, unfortunately. And on Tik Tok I just see. I just scroll.

Venezuela Scroll. Ukraine Scroll. China, Taiwan scroll. That's just geopolitical issues, guy Scroll. Trump did this Scroll.

Democrats did that Scroll. This person said something crazy Scroll. Oh, someone was hurt or harmed or killed or murdered. Like this world is crazy. And if you look at the news, there's probably a chance that's signal it's all over And you're not going to be able to see the things of God when you're consumed in some of that news.

The world's crazy, Your world's crazy, . Like you're lovably crazy. How about that. Like I love you. I don't even know some of you, but your world's a little crazy.

How many of you can't find time to sit. My world's so crazy. I got his school stuff, her school stuff, his sports stuff, her sports stuff, her job stuff, my job stuff, my spiritual walk stuff. Because my job requires me to have spiritual walk stuff. I do it anyways, Don't get me wrong, but it requires it too.

If I was up here- not spiritual- it'd be in trouble. I've got a lot going on in my life and you've got a lot going on in your life, And I just listed the small list of it. Not even the shows you watch on Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max- I can't even tell which one it is. Warner Brother just got bought. Heard about that.

That's crazy. Hope I get to go to the theaters in the future. Don't even need to worry about that. That's the wrong signal to pay attention to. SO MUCH STUFF IS HAPPENING.

If a star showed up in the sky- I live in Phoenix, Not going to see any stars, But the magi, the, the level of royalty they were- I don't think they were living out in the boondocks, I think they would have been in a city, but you know they didn't have electricity at the level that we do these days. So they got to see these stars and they were paying attention. In your life, If you want to hear the signal of God, are you? Are you listening Like? Are you trying to hear?

Like those who follow Jesus are trying to hear, Like the magi? Magi are trying to hear. I, I want to hear what they hear. Let's continue though Verse three. When King Herod heard this, he was disturbed.

Character number two here Now. When the magi saw the star in the east, they put together a theology, understood it. They thought they knew what was happening. They saw that the king of the Jews was born. They didn't know what fully that meant, but they came to visit.

I mean, you got to know a little bit in order to make that type of visit. So they came to visit and they go to the first person. That makes sense, the current king of the Jews. Now, Herod has an interesting backstory. I'm not going to belver you with that here, but suffice it to say he's not the person that would have been chosen by the Jews to be the king of the Jews.

He's kind of a good psy for Jews and Rome at the time. And so he's sitting in place constantly, insecure of his space. Now he might be king of the Jews, but the Romans could remove him. He might be king of the Jews, but, but because the people in Judea don't necessarily love him, they could come and, you know, take the kingdom from him at any point. So when Herod hears this message, it's not excitement about the long like, long spoken of king of the Jews, He's disturbed.

And I'm not saying you're like King Herod, but let's just entertain this for a moment, because I'm like King Herod very often where, when God gives me a message, if the message doesn't fit my conveniences, it's a little disturbing. Amen, somebody. I get disturbed quite frequently, frequent freaking disturbances quite, quite, quite frequently. When the Lord calls me to do something, often, like, the level of calling is often revealed by my level of discomfort, because if God called you to do something you're already great at, already want to do and already completely used to, you're already doing it.

So the calling is the difference between where you are and where God wants you to be. So that calling is filled not just with difference, not just with discomfort, but with, often, disturbance, Like if you were to go home tonight and say, "You know what? We haven't been revolving our lives around Jesus, So we're going to change some things up today. Change things up today. We're not going to open gifts.

I'm not saying you shouldn't- Gifts are great. I opened up early this year so I get to sleep and pray tomorrow. That's all I got to do. I mean but? But if God calls you to do it, he wants you to say: "We, we bought all the wrong gifts this year.

We're going to, we're going to give you something more special, something more helpful, something that is longlasting and helps you get closer to God. If you were to radically shift that, there'll be a bunch of people looking at you disturbed". I asked for an iPad, Mom. I don't know what they asked for this year. I don't.

Yeah, we're going to have to work on that. I asked. I asked for a bike. I asked for a. I asked for a camera.

I'm just going to list all his stuff now, since he's talking. I asked for a scooter. I asked for all this stuff And you got all of it, didn't you? You spoiled. You're spoiled, son.

I love you, though. God's called you to something big, But let's be uncomfortable by being quiet right now. You got this, And many of you. If you were to shift your patterns in order to honor the will of God in your life, you would be disturbed. No, you're not going to go put in place a plan in order to kill a bunch of people in your life, like Herod did.

I know. I don't think you're going to do it. I don't know you, though, But you're probably going to struggle to be okay and align to God's plan, because there's so many other signals telling you what's important. I've seen, week after week- and I say week after week, this isn't just Christmas- I've seen, week after week, God speaks something to people. I can tell, you know, when you can tell someone's pondering something.

It's just the way that they look. They get all like weirdfaced for a second, and I can tell when people are pondering, and I get so excited that I start to pray for them, and then, immediately, a new signal comes in. It's a familiar signal. It's one that's frequent. It's one that's hit them before.

It's one that they've been fixated on before. It's an addiction, It's a family member, It's something that derails the very thing that God called you to do, But I want to tell you this As soon as you find yourself in a difficult scenario. That short reaching signal is going to leave you high and dry. But there's a signal that stretches farther, takes a little bit to hear, and you've got to align your life to it in order to live it.

And it's this ancient message that the magi heard. But king Herod didn't Verse four. When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. Third group of people: here's what they say: In Bethlehem, in Judah, Judea. They replied: "For this is what the prophet has written, But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, For out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people, Israel".

Sorry, I missed that last word. It's the third group of people. It's the chief priests and scribes. Now they heard the message too. Herod probably told them the story.

Hey, this group of weird Eastern people from like they're called magi or whatever. They came over here to tell us about this weird star that they saw in the sky. They said the king of the Jews was born and they came here to visit. You need to tell me anything about that. Chief priests and scribes, And they're like "Yeah, here's what the Bible says".

And I found myself wondering. They knew the answer, but we didn't find them at the crib when Jesus was born. Isn't that interesting. They knew the answer, but they weren't present. It's because they heard the message, but they had a different signal broadcasting: Hey, let's keep the status quo, Let's do what's normal, Let's do what we're familiar with You.

You heard what Herod did with some of his other family members. You don't want to frustrate this guy. He killed him, by the way. That's what he did to him, And you don't want to frustrate this guy. So let's maintain status quo, Be self-protective rather than proactive about this prophecy we very clearly just heard.

It's is it's their desire to protect the self that prevented them from hearing the message. And one thing I would encourage you to do: I'm not trying to. I'm not trying to be too heavy on Christmas. I'll end very shortly: Not trying to be too heavy on Christmas, but at the same time, if I can be just enough heavy to get you from the place where you want to maintain status quo into the place where you hear the frequency of our creator and start adjusting your life to him. I would love to do that for you today.

I'd love to help you follow Jesus. But it came in a subtle message We all act like because we know now, what happened. We would have seen it. I wouldn't- I'm just speaking for me. I wouldn't have seen the star, I wouldn't have noticed what the shepherds noticed.

I would have seen a bright light in there and I'd have said, "What's weird happening in the cosmos today"? Angel? No, that's not. That's. That's not an.

I don't think it's an angel, It's probably not. No, my empirical evidence tells me that's not possible. That's what I would probably do in this context. Even as a believer, I am so consumed with familiar and frequent messages that I miss ancient messages all the time and I'm trying to align my thoughts and tap into a different frequency. Sometimes I have to get myself in a different position, like out in the woods or something, so that I could open God's word and hear it, understand it and then bring it to you guys, And I'm just trying to communicate to you what I've heard from the Lord And I want you to hear it and experience it.

Amen. Verse seven. Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said: "Go and search carefully for the child.

As soon as you find him, report to me so that I too may go and worship him". After they heard the king, they went on their way and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed On coming to the house. They saw the child with his mother, Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrr And, having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

I want to speak about Herod for a second. Okay, I wasn't planning this part, but I'm I'm going to say this part. It did. It's interesting that Herod really searched. I know the magi were searching Hannah.

The chief priests weren't. They were familiar with it and they're like: "Yeah, it's fine, We'll do when he, when he's born, We'll figure it out". You know whatever. But Herod's like "This is, this is crazy". And I want to speak to all the people in this room.

You're seeking, You're searching really, really hard, but you're not quite tuned into the frequency, that will give you life and abundance in this life and in eternity. I want to encourage you, tap into this Jesus message, start like listening to it and you'll see through, searching through his words, the very thing that you're searching for now. You'll find it in here. All the other things they're, they're old but they're not. They're not going to give you what this gives you.

And then what they did was they shifted. They heard in a dream another message. Again, we wouldn't listen to dreams- I talked to you about that last week- But the magi, they're tuned in, They're, they're locked in to the words of God, They're locked into the Scriptures, They're locked into this ancient, longlasting, far-reaching message. And so they hear it again. They actually meet the very one that they searched for, And I know that they didn't know a whole lot.

I know scholars will tell you what frankincense meant, what my meant, And I'm sure God retro, I mean like proactively- helped them understand what to bring, even if they didn't really understood what they were bringing to the Savior. I think gold, frankincense and myrrh is a weird collection of gifts. It's like if you have an aunt, Sally, who brought something but she ain't seen you in 2 years. She has no clue what to bring you and then you're like, what? But it's the thought that counts.

They brought them some. They didn't know anything. And when you seek God, when you try to lean in to this ancient message, when you try to tap into the frequency of your creator, you don't know most of what you need to know. But I need you to know this. When you tap into it, you start to become accustomed, to the voice of God, .

And I- I close with this- I talked to you about AM and FM radio And I was sitting there talking with somebody about it over lunch at Tacos Chalongo a couple weeks ago And I said "Huh, I wonder if one frequency is lower than the other" And I didn't know the answer. He looked it up really quickly on chat, GPT and he found out He's like "Yeah, it's a lower frequency". And as a pastor preacher, I'm like "Oh, it's a lower frequency". I' I've learned in my life it's not just ridding myself of distractions, trying to move away from familiar messaging or signals. There's also something that that has to happen in me in order to continue to apprehend the words of God.

Like, how humble did those magi have to be in order to go worship a baby? They had to be really locked in, cuz I love both my kids, but if you saw me bowing down in worshiping them, you know I'm crazy. But they were locked in to what God was saying when everybody else missed it. And today there's a level for you where, in order to hear what I hear, in order to hear what the person down the row who's like worshiping, like crazy, hears, in order to hear what we hear, it's not just removal, it's also adjustment. You, you see that God was so kind to us that he came from heaven, robed himself in baby flesh, in order to present to us a more accessible message.

But what he encourages us to do is to think on the things that are true, right, honorable, pure, lovely, of good repute, to use our ears. What does Paul say? If anyone has ears, let him hear. Even in Revelation, anyone who has an ear, let him hear. And I'm reminded of the prophet Elijah who, when he's in the middle of a difficult life situation, he can't apprehend the voice of God.

What does he have to do He? He goes out into the wilderness and repositions himself, Because sometimes when you reposition yourself, the static goes away and the message becomes clear. And even when he was out there, there were things that came. There was a whirlwind, There was loudness, There was excitement, There was craziness. But where did God speak?

He spotted. He spoke at a low frequency. It was a still small voice And there is absolutely nothing you have to do to experience salvation. That was paid for by Jesus And that message has been broadcast for 2,000 plus years. But receptivity matters, And so if you're in this room right now and you found yourself unreceptive at this point to the ancient message, I want to encourage you with this.

The Bible clarifies that if you believe that God sent his son, Jesus, to die on the cross to forgive us of our sins, and you believe that God raised him from the grave on three days later, Let's go further. If you believe that he came in flesh and spent time with us, if you believe that the ancient messages of the Old Testament are true, then receive salvation today. Don't just let Christmas be superficial. Let it be a spiritual awakening for you, But let's attune. And here's one of the ways we can attune.

We can bow our heads, close our eyes, get rid of all the static, forget all the familiar messaging and let's tap into this message. Let's talk to him, Say: "God, I believe that Jesus is your son. I believe he died on the cross. I believe he died on the cross, and rose from the grave. Forgive me of my sin.

. Forgive me of the static. And walk with me. Help me hear - your voice", . And we prayed these things in Jesus's name And all God's people said: "Heads bowed, eyes closed.

I want to give you a moment. The.