It’s Bad, But It Ain’t That Bad

He worked, works all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. Spoiler alert: we are all called according to his purposes. Amen, somebody, amen. You probably believe that if you came here today, there might be a few of you in here who didn't want to come here today, but that's okay. God's going to speak to you as well.

I'm excited as we enter into- we're in the Christmas. We're in it. We're not entering into it like, have y'all noticed that we're entering into the Christmas season the whole month of December. We're in it. Like I put up my tree back October 32nd.

You know what I'm saying. It's off thee cuff joke. I thought it was funny. CP of y'all laugh. I appreciate the front quadrant of this left section.

The rest of yall we going to work on it today. But we're in the Christmas season and we got so many things coming down the pipe. I just want to let you guys know about it really quickly. On Tuesday, everybody say Tuesday, Tuesday it's Christmas Eve and I don't know what your tradition is. Most of the time Christmas Eve, you either have a tradition to do your thing or maybe you have a tradition to go to church.

If you have a tradition to come to church, come to this church. If you have a don't have a tradition to come to church. Consider it, see what might happen. I think God's going to speak something powerfully. It'll be a different message, different worship set than today.

It's going to be fun and we'll keep it short, I promise. I promise, like I've been known to, I'm scared to tell them. It'll be under an hour. Is that cool with y'all? Be under an hour.

There's going to be cookies out here and, they told me as an ology, I always tell people ask forgiveness, not permission. And so they told me after they bought them that they like doubled the expense and did cake pops and cookies. So it's going to be cake pops and cookies and I'm totally fine with that. Now, I'm just kidding guys. It's going to be fun.

They're going to. They're going to taste good. I'm excited about it. Personally, I need you guys to come and prevent me from getting off my diet too much. So come, hang out.

There's going to be worship, a message: we're going to have kids up to kindergarten, Kaye or whoever. Yes, up to kindergarten. They wrote it down, not me, I don't memorize stuff. You know what I memorize the Bible. Y'all get ready, .

Y y ain't seen me in the evening. Unless you came to last year's Christmas, this is It's Full Circle for us guys. The first service we ever did where we did worship and teaching together was Christmas Eve last year, so I'm excited about it. We had just over 150, just under 200, last year. We averaged more than that every week now.

So I'm excited to see what God might do this weekend as you bring your entire extended family and their friends. It's going to be a good time and we're all coming together in one service, so you're going to see people you don't know that like sit in the other service. It's going to be a great time for us to come together and that's all fun, happy, exciting and I'm thrilled about it. So y'all make sure to attend. And we also have church next week, the 29th.

I know this this day and age. Thank y'all for clapping you like church in Jesus. It's good. Y'all the rest of you might too? I hope so.

Next weekend. It's weird because when I grew up, just church was every weekend, but as, as we've gotten more into like you have 50 million Christmas services. Churches maybe give their staff a break on the week after Christmas? So just want to be clear: we are having church this coming Sunday and it's going to be a fun time. Well, we get to ring in the New Year.

Is it bring in or ring in, ring? Ring in doesn't make sense. Like what ring bring? We're bringing it in. I don't know that.

You know those things that you've said your entire life. Like I heard someone say recently: I won't take you for granted, and I was like what it's granted? Some of y'all just learned that today. But you know those things you just say your whole life. Have no clue what they mean or why you say them.

I just did that and I apologize. But again, as a reminder of all that comedic, accidental humor just a second ago, we have church when next Sunday it's going to be fun. Same service times next Sunday, and that's all happy. Because I'm going to talk to you guys today about bad stuff. It like bad things happen.

In fact, my sermon title- they'll toss it on the screen- is: it's bad, but it ain't that bad. Come on, look at your neighbor, say: it's bad, ain't that bad, but it ain't that bad. How many of y'all was that the first time you said ain't? Everybody says ain't. Now you don't have to be from Arkansas like me to say ain't.

Amen, I'm excited about it, but bad things do happen, right, just say right, right, right, bad things happen. I, I, I tend to be, one of those who tries to avoid, talking about maybe the, the bad stuff. Why? Because there's a perspective that God wants us to have. This perspective is that, even when bad things happen, God is still working.

But often that'll come when we're being positive and flipping it all for the good and talking about what God's going to do, even though he hasn't quite done it yet. Maybe he's going to answer your prayer, but in a way that you're not expecting. And so, while you're frustrated about the fact that he hasn't answered your prayer, the way that you anticipated he would, you're frustrated and then the pastor or the, the super spiritual friend you have, is looking at you saying it's going to work out, and all you want to do to them is like punch them because you're not in the mode to feel that you never been there once or twice. No, dude, sometimes I'll say: man, today was just terrible and someone looks at me and they're like: bro, here's all the reasons. It was good and I love them, I'm grateful for them.

I'll put that in my Pipe, smoke it later, but right now I feel like being frustrated because sometimes things stink, sometimes things are bad. You know it's going to work out. When you lost your job, you know it's going to, but right now it's stin. You know it's going to work out eventually, cuz God's going to do something with your kids, but right now your neck, you don't do that and don't call. I don't do that to my kids either.

Just want to be super clear, abundantly clear of I don't ring my kids' necks. They're still here. They're not here today. CU, they were struggling this morning. They were like one of them had really bad.

They were sick. I'm not sick, though I got myself into a really qurum qu quandry right here. Well, I said that my kids were sick, but I'm here right now, in front of everybody else, and I don't want anyone to think that I'm sick. I'm not sick or contagious. I feel super great.

This is good stuff, but my kids are home sick and we don't want to get any other kids sick. Anyways, let me get out of that situation. Things are, things are bad. Sometimes I just got myself into a bad situation. See, y'all don't try to talk me out of it.

It was bad. I shouldn't have said that things are bad. Look at your neighbor say it gets bad. Sometimes it really does, and I don't want to negate how that feels. I've been struggling my entire life to be empathic.

I put it in quotes because I think I am sometimes right. Hannah, all the time I've learned- now I'm fully grown- I'm perfectly emotionally intelligent. Every time you got something you're dealing with that you didn't tell me about, I perfectly perceive it, and then I accommodate for it every time. Sure, she said, sure, see, no, I'm figuring this stuff out. And as a pastor, you get brought into- and this is an amazing aspect of my, my job is you get brought into conversations where people are in the deepest levels of pain.

I had a conversation with someone who was in the last service. They asked me if I could come chat with someone. I don't currently know them, but they asked if I could come chat with someone who's in stage four, started out as colon cancer, but now it's all over their body and they're about to go into hospice. When you go into a situation like that, you want to be a pastor and help them understand that there are greater things around the corner, but you also want to be an empathic Pastor who's like man. This stinks, I know it stinks.

It's terrible and at at the same time, God's going to do something, but it's it's also terrible. So I titled the message: it's bad, but it ain't that bad, because I think there is this weird tension that we have to manage as people who are followers of Jesus in this world where things do get bad, the rainfalls on the righteous and the unrighteous. What does that mean? It can mean abundance of blessing, but it can also mean the abundance of pain and flooding and difficulty. It happens things are bad, but in every bad situation they're never that bad.

Paul would say it this way. He would say: even in the midst of all his weaknesses, God's grace is sufficient for him. What is he telling us? He's saying that, no matter what is happening in your life, there's still that silver lining of the fact that you have, if you've trusted in Jesus, received Grace that was undeserved, which gives you a Holy Spirit that, like it's, is powerful and that brings you into an eternity in heaven with God that we didn't work for or obtain by our own Merit. That's Grace, that's good.

So in the worst case scenario, things are bad, but even then they're never that bad. What do I mean by that bad? What I mean is often, when we're in the midst of our felds, it's the end of the world. We're struggling, and I know I've talked to you guys enough about how your problems, like they could be worse, and I want to empathize with the fact that you've got problems, but for me, I'll get to the end of the day sometimes, and I'm sitting here. Let me just tell you the things that I'm grateful for, that I forget that I'm grateful for once in a while.

I've got a wife who I've been married to for almost 13 years. Almost 13 years, should y'all should be impressed, everybody. Almost 13 years. I got two kids. I got a boy and a girl, so I got to stop it too.

You know, like I, I Got a Boy and I got a girl. I get to be a girl dad and I get to be- you know- a boy dad, whatever that turns into, whether it's video games or or like super high levels of sports. I don't know what it's going to be yet. We're going to figure that out. I get to Pastor a church that has hundreds of people, many of whom didn't ever go to church beforehand, are now interacting with Jesus and revolving their lives around him.

I get to do these things, yet at the end of some days I look at what somebody else has that I don't have and I'm like, I don't say it's the end of the world, but I'm like, why me, Lord, and I want to be very careful here. I'm not telling you not to feel a certain way. What I am telling you is that while it may be bad, it's never the end. While it might get difficult, you might suffer through like trials or tribulations or sickness or just, you know, bad situations at work. While you might struggle with those things, there's still a silver lining in Christ Jesus, not just in his, his grace, but also in what he is lavish on you.

It is bad sometimes, but it's never that bad. It's never that bad. So I'm going to move up here, so my notes moved all the way down. I'm going to be in Luke, chapter 1 today. So if you have your Bibles, please turn there.

Luke 1 · chapter mention

I'm learning to use my iPad. Peoples, here we go. Awesome. Now Luke, chapter 1. We're going to start in verse 5.

Luke 1 · chapter mention

Now I want to catch you up. This is Luke writing. We don't know the exact audience, but what we do know is that Luke is writing on purpose, collecting the evidence of all of Jesus's Ministry and interaction. Now this is a two-part thing that Luke is writing. He writes Luke first and then he writes the book of Acts.

These probably would have been compiled together. So Luke grabs all the information from Paul, from Peter and as many disciples as he can get interaction with and he puts together this account. And the first part of that account doesn't start with the discussion of Jesus. That is our real Christmas passage. It starts before Jesus talking about the birth of John the Baptist.

So I want to read you guys the first three verses. It says this: in the time of Herod, King of Judea, there was a priest named Zachariah. He belonged to the Priestly division of abijah. So he's a priest. He offers Temple service about two times a year and then periodically they would cast lots and he would be required to do more intense version of services.

And this is what we're going to see in a few moments. His wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron, so we've got a Priestly line here in Matthew. We talked about the kingly line last week when we talked about that genealogy. Here what we have is Luke talking about the Priestly line. He's in the line of abijah, but also his wife Elizabeth is in the line of Aaron.

These are the people who would be conscripted as levitical priests to perform Temple services. This is significant. If you want, type into chat GPT, ask why it's significant and you can get all the answers you want. But I got 25 minutes to give you guys a message today. Verse six: both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord's commands and decrees blamelessly.

Now there are a lot of questions that open up there. Didn't you say that Jesus was the only perfect one that ever lived? That's what I heard my entire life. These people were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord's commands and decrees blamelessly. This is according to Luke and anyone he chatted with.

These people were considered by Israel as righteous. But everyone say: but when you see a butt in Scripture, you got to stare at it for a second to understand it, verse 7. But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive and they were both very old. Everybody say it together with me: it's bad, it's bad. It's bad back in the ancient world if you could not bear children, it was bad.

I know many of you have been in church and you've heard this statement before. It is bad. I mean this day and age. I think there's a huge empathy toward people who struggle to have children, and so we understand it differently than they did in a lot of ways. There are a couple things that Elizabeth would be thinking about, and it was mostly social, but partially.

When it comes to the Priestly bloodline, her not being able to have children prevented a line from continuing in her family. It also prevent it made for some very interesting conversations with all the other people. Can you imagine the years from 15 or 16, all the way until her current age, that she'd be having in her little village? That was likely not very, very large way, smaller than Buckeye, probably- sitting around, all the women with their babies like, oh Elizabeth, how are you doing? And, you know when?

When Zechariah going to, going to, when are y'all going to have your baby? How many times did she have to have that conversation to become an older person and still Barren socially? It didn't necessarily turn you into a pariah, but it did have wide and varied social implications for you. If you could not have children, it would definitely be the Talk of the Town. A lot of people in the ancient world would equate her inability to have children with sin that happened in her family or with her.

That's, that's bad, and we know that she didn't do anything wrong. Necessarily, they're righteous in the eyes of God, right, but that's a bad situation. Many of us find ourselves in various situations that impact Us in different ways. It's not like those things aren't bad, God's going to use them, but they're bad. You might help yourself out a little bit many people when I will identify something as not optimal, I'm scared to even say bad sometimes because I don't want to be the pastor with a bad perspective.

Sometimes things are bad and to identify them as bad is okay, and we're all fearful of saying it because we don't want to be the complainer or the Debbie Downer or the person who speaks negatively about things, and I'm not telling you to go complain. Look, woe is me. All these bad things are happening to me. I've got the generational curses in my family, just addiction passing through. I don't want you to go around doing that, but it is helpful to have an awareness of the things in and around you that aren't good, like that's just good awareness.

Many of us are trying to avoid the reality of the bad things and we tell ourselves something is great when it's not great. The Bible, I think, has an adequate assessment. It says both of them were righteous, but she was Barren. The Bible, Luke, when he is compiling information that he has to put on a limited piece of Papyrus to give people so that they would hear and understand who Jesus is, decides to tell this entire story and where he could have saved manuscript or Papyrus. He writes verse 6 and seven: they were blameless, but they were childless.

I think it's meant to remind us of certain situations in the Old Testament. In fact, some Scholars would even say to connect it to the Old Testament. You have Abraham and Sarah, or Abram and Sarai, who were Barren into Sarah's old age. God provides them a child of promise. You have later a situation that we'll be reminded of when it comes to, when it comes to- oh my gosh, why am I blanking on his name right now?

Samson, sorry, I can gonna say Daniel, but Samson's parents. He is blessed and- and this is meant to remind us and make contiguous the Old Testament and the New Testament- it says both of them were righteous in the sight of God, but they were childless. Let me get going and toss in my first point and I'll say it this way: bad things happen to good people. Bad things happen to good people. That's a question we get a lot right.

So why do bad things happen to good people? How can God be good if bad things still happen? I'm not going to address the second one in this sermon today, but here's just a reality. Bad things happen to good people, and I'm not even talking about you, because I don't know if you're good or not, but the Bible tells us that Elizabeth and Zechariah were good. Bad things happen to good people.

Now let me address something that Paul addresses with this room. He addresses the idea of bad things happening to good people and he addresses it this way: he says there's not one good, not one righteous. He says this in the Book of Romans, and when he says that, he's saying that to a group of people who would say, hey, we're righteous according to the law, and Paul, he beats, like he beats that down and he says, no, no, there's no one righteous, there's no one good. So here's what I'll say to you: bad things do happen to good people. According to the Scripture, most of us, all of us, we all sinned and fell short of the glory of God.

We were not righteous according to the law. We were not righteous according to a moral law that many of us can kind of understand from a young age. We were not righteous, none of us were good. The only reason we can claim any type of righteousness is not because of our righteousness, but because of the righteousness that covers Us by the blood of Jesus. So no one is good, no one is righteous.

But you know, it says the Bible tells us right here: both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord's commands and decrees, blamelessly. And then they're going to have John the Baptist, who God says is the, the, the, the best man that ever lived, and then you know, Jesus follows him right. So we've got a good situation here, but it's also bad because she's Barren. Bad things happen to good people. Now, if I were to just tell you about Elizabeth and Zachariah and how they had a bad situation, you could identify with that, but let me- let me break this outward a little bit more and tell you about what's happening in Israel.

At the time, things were bad. Things were really bad. At this time in Israel is about 4 BC. It says Herod was King, so sometime between 4 BC. This is Herod the Great, who was a, a guy who had some really weird family upbringing situations.

Long story short, really short. He is installed as the governor of the region of Judea, you know, before Christ was born, and he rules for a while. So he is a half Jewish leader who's also Roman, who was installed by the Roman Emperor to govern the land of Judea, who was prone to Rebellion. That's who this guy was. In other words, Israel was in subjugation to a greater Authority in another country.

That's bad and I know all of us Americans we don't. We don't quite understand this. We've had freedom, freedom. We're red-blooded Americans, right, we don't understand what that's like, but that's what's happening for them now. Rome was not known for just being cozy, lovely, nice and, you know, moderate in their leadership.

Rome was known for like kind of that peace through strength. The reason we have Pax Romana, which is Roman peace back in the ancient world, is because they fought their way, conquering country after country, enslaving tons and tons of peoples, until there was peace around the mediterran terranean sea, and Judea was one of those areas. Israel was one of those countries. So we've got people who believe in Yahweh, Elizabeth and Zechariah, who are situated in a context where they are being ruled by a pagan country and their local or their governor, who's ruling at the time is also Pagan, but kind of Acts Jewish once in a while, but doesn't understand why they do what they do. You've got a guy who's supposed to be performing Temple services in the new Temple who's being ruled by someone who has zero comprehension of what it means to be an Israelite.

That's bad, but let's let's add to the bad, . You don't not only have King Herod in leadership, you not only have the Roman Empire, in Authority. You've got a priesthood at that time with probably 880,000 people, all of them keeping track of their bloodlines. Most of them probably just doing ritualistic Temple service just to do it, without any expectation that God would do anything. Why?

Because he hadn't done anything for about 400 years. There had been no prophetic utterance. There have been no very clear, obvious Miracles like you would see in Elijah and Elisha back in the Old Testament. God, in a lot of ways considered by those people he was silent. So you've got Elizabeth and Zechariah, who were Barren during a silent period from Yahweh under Roman Authority, who if they did anything out of line, would go in with the hammer and demolish them.

It's bad. And it says also they were old. It was not a joke, but in my head it kind of potentially. So that's not bad, that's good. Old age brings wisdom.

Amen, somebody. That's right. Here's my point. Sometimes it is bad. Bad things happen to good people.

And let's be real, we're not as cool as Elizabeth and Zechariah. Like, bad things happen and I know I'm talking to a room. Last service it caught me off guard because I was looking around and I would see faces of people that I know what they're going through and I'm starting to say, hey, bad things happen, and every face that I'm looking at and I know the bad thing that's happening to them right now kind of stressed me out and got me off a little bit, but I want to say to you, bad things happen. I always struggle to decide how vulnerable that I want to be with you guys. But like my life this week has been weird.

Like I in my up- not my upbringing- in my genetics or something I deal with-, the, the like, the propensity to depression, or at least kind of some light, moderate dysfunction, mentally right, y'all y'all seen it up here. I, I, I struggle with the ADHD once in a while or every while, whatever, and like it's, that's a real thing, that's a real thing. And then I could go further. I have kids, you've got kids. That's a struggle.

I love my kids, but sometimes my kids are are struggle trying to help them develop socially, trying to help them develop academically, trying to help them, you know, start a sport and do that Sport and keep doing that sport, because games are so easy to default to right, like it is, so like it's bad for all of us in some form or fashion. And while we might know that that's not it, that that's not the end, we should recognize bad things happen. You're not going to escape bad things, but the beauty is- my second point is that good things can happen in bad situations. Let me let me continue reading for you. In Luke, Chapter 1: 5 through 17 says: then an angel of the Lord appeared to him.

Now I want to pause real quick before I read it, because a lot of us just read Scripture like it's a bunch of 2D characters who are written in a fairy tale. No, this is a real story. It was a historical account, by Luke, who some consider a lawyer, some consider a doctor. All we know is this dude's clearly smart. Look what he put together on Papyrus 2,000 years ago.

He's a cool dude, right. Luke wrote this down on purpose with limited space, which means he- if he included it- he wants you to understand and look at it at a deeper level. So hear this story as if they're human beings. And it says: then an angel of the Lord appeared to him. Anyone here seeing Angels very clearly?

Please don't raise your hand because if you did, we might have to talked to you. Most of us- I'm not saying you haven't, most of us- have not seen an angel. So when you jump into this story, this is a significant theophany. Theophany is kind of a Revelation about who God is in some form or fashion. Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him standing at the right side of the altar of incense.

Now let me give you some context, cuz I jumped from verse 7 to 11. The angel of the Lord appeared to him while he was in the temple. Specifically, he was in the Holy Place. Why was in the? Why was he in the Holy place, you might ask?

He was in the Holy place because, as a priest, often what would happen is they would cast lots a few different times of the year, so that certain people would go in and perform very specific Temple Services. One of those was to, burn the incense in the Holy place. Now, the most holy place is right next to it. That's where the presence of God desides. So, for some reason, by the will of God Zechariah, when they cast lots, he was the one chosen to go in and burn incense, which was an act of worship on behalf of the Jewish people.

And so he's standing in there just lighting himself a little fire, lighting those little sticks for incense, maybe some candles for fun. He's standing there. It's a worshipful moment. You know how you are when you're worshiping. I know some of y'all.

I wish some of y'all would do this if you feel comfortable to do it, but most of us are like this is how we're worshiping. So picture arah going in normal Temple duty, but there's a blessing that he gets to go do incense. He lights it, he's praying, he's worshiping. Maybe he's singing a song, Maybe sing Holy, Holy, Holy. I'm in the Holy place.

That's so cool, is Lord Almighty? I screwed that one up. I didn't sing hyms. I didn't grow up in church. Forgive me, sweetie, forgive me my mother-in-law too, who knows those hyms like the back of her hand.

It's great. But he's singing, he's worshiping, he's processing- not everyone gets the chance to do this- and all of a sudden he feels wind behind him or so- I don't know how it happened- an angel of the Lord appeared to him. I don't know about you, but if you're laying in bed at night, it does have to be an angel of the Lord. To startle me, it could be my four five-year-old daughter. She turned five this week.

Guys. My 5-year-old daughter walking in the middle of the night very silently while I'm in my R sleep or Rim sleep, and then she Taps on me, wakes me up and all of a sudden it's like she's lucky to be alive. After that. You know, I am startled, I'm stressed out. It's dark, she looks like a ghostly figure, and I had to remind myself that it's my daughter and not an angel of the Lord.

But none of us have actually seen an angel of the Lord, and in the middle of a worship session, if someone big and scary came up, felt the brush of wind, and then I heard what the angel said in verse 13o: not be afraid, Zechariah, your prayer has been heard. This is why, when Zechariah saw him, he was startled. But Luke doesn't stop there again. I keep emphasizing: Papyrus was hard to come by in the ancient world, and so in order to write this right, or in order to keep within it, he only wrote what he needed to write. Luke wants you to know he wasn't just startled, he was gripped with fear.

So I don't know what angels look like, but they don't look like my 5-year-old daughter, sweetie. This dude must have been, I don't know. Six, 20 eyes like no Halos. It one, this white, pretty angel. This wasn't John Travolta back in that '90s movie that I saw.

I can't remember the name too. I think it was called angel or something. I don't know what it's called Michael youall. Remember that movie. I don't remember anything about it.

I was like 5 years old when it came out, but he looked nice. This angel must have looked scary. I digress, I told you I got ADHD. Get over it, all right. But the angel said to him: do not be afraid, Zechariah now.

Now, hear this. Your prayer has been heard. I love that we don't have tons and tons of context. We get a little bit in a second, but we don't have tons of context. Here's a point that I want to give you.

It's kind of a subo within the idea that good things can happen in bad situations, Elizabeth and Zechariah, of all people, had no reason to anticipate anything great from God. Yet we find out here that they'd been praying. We find out here that they'd been consistent. We find out here that while he was performing Temple Services, while he was Barren, while they were in subjugation to another Authority, while Herod was in charge, who was a king that really never should have been king in Israel, while bad things were happening and there was perceived Silence from God, for some reason Elizabeth and Zechariah kept praying. And what I want you to know is that the reality that good things can happen by God through bad situation should cause us.

It should prompt us to keep praying Amen to God. Some of these situations you're dealing in, yes, you can go get some self-help. You can read a couple books, you can practice, you can change your habits. You can go talk to somebody. Maybe they'd give you some good advice.

You can do a lot of things to improve, but there are some things that that really you can't fix. God can fix it. God is the only one who can orchestrate scenarios. He's the only one that can flip bad things and make them good. We can make arrangements, we can manipulate outcomes a little bit, but we can't do at the level that God does.

So we should look at Elizabeth and Zachariah here, who had no reason to expect anything good from God because they hadn't seen it in their lifetime, yet they still prayed. No matter what happens in your life- and I already said it- bad things happen to all people. So whether you lost your job, whether there's been sickness, illness, maybe even death in your family, maybe you're going through something that we don't know about because you don't want to share about it. Maybe there are people in your life who are struggling with something, something that you wish, that that you could help them with, but for some reason they won't. Let you all that.

There are some things we have to give to God. We have to right like I can't control outcomes for my kids. I can't, like even in my marriage. We have a great marriage, but there are some things I've just got to give to God because if I were to try to control every scenario, it would not work out. And this is something I think that made them righteous is the fact that they remain consistent in their prayer for themselves and maybe for the nation of Israel, because they knew that even when they hadn't seen anything, God could work good things through bad situations.

Remember that this Christmas- and I know it's a simple message, but hopefully it'll be a good reminder- God can work good things from Bad situations. But let's not stop with Elizabeth and Zechariah. Let's go back to some of the bad things that were occurring, because God has the power to take something that the enemy meant for evil and turn it for good. I'd mentioned to you guys that they were in sub subjugation to the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire had conquered a huge portion of the known world through its brute strength in military battles.

And when they created that peace that we call Pax Romana, there were some other things that occurred that I find extremely interesting, that we would not have predicted, anticipated or even put into the equation. The first of which is: during this Roman peace, there was a Common Language. It's Greek, right, because Alexander the Great conquered a bunch of places and forced him to learn the language. Greek was the common language, at least in the eastern part of the Empire, but even when you go over to Rome proper, which is in present day Italy, they would speak, speak Latin, but they would understand or be able to read or write Greek. If you go to Judea, most of them would speak Aramaic, but they would read, write and understand Greek.

We have a Common Language now. Before Alexander the Great went on his little conquering tirade, there was no common language. Every tribe had a different tongue, a different way of understanding things, and while it was bad for Israel to be subjugated to other rulers, it wasn't just Rome, it wasn't just Greece, it was also Babylon, it was also Persia, it was also the Assyrians. All of them had conquered over those four to 500 or 5 to 700 years before this moment, and it was bad, like even habac, tells us that these people are not godly people, that while God might use them, he's going to turn around and they're going to have their day of judgment. But God can use something so bad as several Nations conquering Israel to produce a Common Language so that the Gospel can be spread more effectively.

But then you've got something else that occurred when you've been subjugated for that long: an anticipation starts to build. You've seen it in movies like Spartacus, but you see it in the Old Testament. There are some books that are written in between the Old Testament and the New Testament. You might have heard them as, extra biblical literature, the Apocrypha, whatever you want to call it. But there are books that are written.

We don't consider them biblical, but we do consider them mostly historical. And when you read these books you see that there is building in Israel. An anticipation of this would be Messiah. Now they viewed the Messiah, all wrong, but there's anticipation built up. That anticipation doesn't build when everything's going perfectly.

That anticipation built through this hard situation, but not only that. Because of this persecution and conquering of other countries, you have what we would call a forced migration, and so several times, over 700 years, the people in Israel were forced to migrate to different locations. Now, the reason for that was because when you conquer a country, you want to split up all the people so that it don't rebel against you. And during this time, Jews from Israel would take their religion, they would take their writing, they would take their understanding, their own philosophies, and utilize it in those new geographies. And you find in the early church that some of the most Jewish places, like Antioch or Alexandria, or even Corinth and some other places, were the first places that we saw Christianity spread outside of Israel.

So you, the Bible's telling me that God utilized bad Earthly situations to bring about his long-term, better vision for the future of the world. Wow, we see this in Scripture and in history, but it's hard to see it in our own life. But what I promise you is this: I don't know how far that corner is from you, but just around that corner is God working something on your behalf, because he loves you and has called you according to his purposes. And even though you don't see the end of it, he's working something because we're on one plane. This plane is the plane that we can see, but God works on a different plane.

He works on in an area that we can't see, and, while it might be impossible for you to fully predict, if you can operate in some way similar to Elizabeth and Zachariah, then when his plane interconnects with our plane, you might actually see it. That that's what. That's why I think Zachariah and Elizabeth had this opportunity is because, while they prayed, while they were consist, while they remained faithful to God, even though they didn't see the results they might have been looking for, like while they were doing that and they could have been stuck in frustration and pain because what they anticipated never came to pass- they just, they just kept being faithful and eventually. Everybody say eventually, eventually. I don't know how long it's going to take, guys.

There's some problems that take more than a week. You know, like for me, when I trusted in Jesus back when I was in eth grade, y y'all might not believe it, but I had a potty mouth. I did. I don't anymore. You ain't never heard me cuss.

Last time I cussed was when I saw a bear in, Grand Tetons back in 2013. That the last time I cussed, guys, I think, unless I accidentally did it some other time during an argument and I forgot about that. Sorry, sweetie, if I did. I don't remember doing it, though that was something that God, like immediately took away when I trusted in him. It was like, hey, just change your language.

But there's some things that I still war against to this day. But regardless of the bad, some that's easy to extract from my life, some that remains as a thorn in my side, regardless of that, God is still Faithfully reworking on a different plane, and whether I see it next week or whether I see it on the other side of Heaven, the difficulty of trust is knowing that he's working, whether I see it or I don't. I think we should be like Elizabeth and Zechariah. I think it's cool, you know why? Because they had John the Baptist.

I think it's their faithfulness that John the Baptist gets to stand on. And then John the Baptist became a man who obviously helped people repent of their sins, and turn toward God, and Jesus refers to him as the greatest man that ever lived, and John the Baptist refers to Jesus, who would be his, the person following him, his successor, if you will. He looks to him and says: I'm not worthy to untie, the throng of his sandals or the thong of his sandals. I'm not worthy. And what do we see with them?

We see the same thing to be true: that, just like Elizabeth and Zachariah, bad things happen to good people, but God works them out for our good. John the Baptist did an amazing thing that blessed so many people. But, you know, bad things happen to good people, and by the hand of not Herod the Great, but Herod Antipas, who was up in and around the Galilee area, was it, yeah, Antipas, ? He was beheaded by him because bad things happen to good people. Now, God utilized that for our good.

Even today, many of his followers followed Jesus. Many of his followers, like Andrew, were people who followed John, Then followed Jesus, and they were people who spread the good news throughout the, the Roman Empire. And then, after John, you have Jesus, who you know: man and God, God robed in flesh, dwelling Among Us, the Incarnation, as we celebrate around Christmas time. He is God's gift to the entire world that would offer us forgiveness of sins and salvation. But that thing he worked out for our Salvation started with a bad thing happen happening to the best person.

So Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate, died and was resurrected by God three days later, because not only do bad things happen to the best people, but God works good things through bad situ situations. And then, after Jes, that Jesus hung out with his disciples, ascended to be with the father but Sent His Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Him ascending to the father became a blessing, for all the disciples and they started to do ministry, first with Peter, in the area around Judea, and then you got Paul taking up the mantle and utilizing all of the things that God had already worked together: the common language, the roads that Rome had built, the aqueducts, all the infrastructure within the cities that Paul performed, the Jewish diaspora, where you find people who had been forced, migrated to different parts of the Roman Empire, had built synagogues, which was the first place that Paul went to communicate the good news of Jesus. And then eventually, Paul, doing his entire Ministry, gets arrested, put in prison, gets on a ship, gets Shipwrecked but then gets rescued from that shipwreck and then taken straight to cust in Rome. And eventually, bad things happen to good people: he was, according to church tradition, beheaded.

Even Peter, according to church tradition, was crucified upside down. The truths that I know are: bad things happen, but God takes what the enemy meant for evil and turns them for good. So, while you might not see it, my encouragement to you this Christmas is this: no matter what you're dealing with, God has a plan in a process that he's using to deal with your pain, your trial, your struggle, your suffering. I don't have the answer for when, but I do have the answer for who, and so let's be like Elizabeth, Zachariah, John the Baptist, Jesus, Peter, Paul, the rest of the disciples, that person in your life who Faithfully prayed for you, and now you've shown up as a result of their prayers, but they never saw it. Let's be like that.

Let's keep praying, let's keep opening God's word, let's remain faithful in attending to the things that God has called us to, be that church attendance itself, or be that through embracing the calling that he has on your life. That takes trust, and so I want to give everyone in here an opportunity who has never trusted in God to trust in God, and because God's been convicting me to be more bold, I'm going to invite you to take an immediate step. So here's what we're going to do. If everybody would bow their heads and close their eyes, we're going to pray a prayer together out loud: . What we believe according to Scripture is that if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved.

Some of you have trusted in Jesus and you're not in need of this prayer as an initial step into your walk with God, but there's some in here you've never trusted in Jesus. You've never prayed to him, talked to him, invited him to rule your life. Today is an opportunity for you to choose to trust him, even though everything's not all together in your life. And what I want to do is, as we pray that prayer everyone together out loud, those who have done it, for the benefit of those who are doing it for the first time and trusting in Jesus. Today, at the end of that prayer, I'm going to give you an opportunity, as I count to three people will be celebrating, but I want you, if you trust it in Jesus, at the end of this prayer, to shoot your hand up at the count of three to let me and anyone else in the room know that you're ready to take your next step toward God.

But here's- here's, the caveat to that, everybody. It's hard to take that step of boldness. So I want to invite everyone else to keep their heads bowed and eyes closed, so that people would feel inclined to let us know about their decision today. Does that make sense? Say Amen, all right.

So let's pray this prayer together out loud. God, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I believe he died on the cross and Rose from the grave from the father. Forgive me of my sin, make me a new creation, make me a new creation and I will follow you. I will follow you for the rest of my life.

It's in Jesus's name that we pray, and God's people said amen. Heads bowed, eyes still close. If you prayed that,