Heroic Surrender | Pastor Brandon Beals | Venture Church

Hi, and welcome to Venture Church Online. My name's Kelsey

and I'm our online campus pastor. We're so glad that

you're joining us. Drop a comment below of where you're

streaming from. We would love to interact with you. We

hope that you enjoy today's service.

Merry Christmas, Welcome to Venture. If I've never met you before,

I'm Brandon. I am the lead pastor of the church.

I'm glad you're here. If you're new, I'd love the

opportunity to meet you. I will be hanging out in

the lobby after the service. Please come up, introduce yourself

to me. Love the opportunity to meet you. As Die mentioned, also,

the video mentioned, Christmas Eve is coming on the twenty fourth.

I believe that's Wednesday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. This has been

one of those moments. We are going to give you

invite cards for you to hand out to people. We

have several hundred of them left. Statistically, eighty five percent

of people say they would attend to Christmas Eve service

if someone invited them. I mean that is amazing. Christmas

Eve is one of those opportunities on the calendar Christmas,

even Easter where even people uninterested in faith are willing

to check out church and hear. And we promise that

if you bring people, they will hear the story of Jesus.

They will hear the story of Jesus coming to our rescue.

Now your job is to invite them, So on your

way out, take some of these invite cards and invite

your friends, neighbors, coworkers, loved ones. We promise we have

room for them because we are opening our balcony for

that service. Only then it will be officially open when

we have our expansion grand opening on January twenty fifth.

But we're plugging along. It's starting to look really good.

I hope you guys are excited final push for our

final raise of money. We've raised three hundred and forty thousand.

We need to hit four hundred thousand. We are within

sixty thousand dollars of our goal by the end of

this year. You have been amazing, super generous, and it's

not too late to help us blow past that four

hundred thousand number. But we are getting close. And then

here's what we get to do. We did it. We're

done for bit On Christmas Eve, I want to give

you a heads up. People have asked me this a

ton what we are doing as a church to help

those in our community that are struggling with the floods,

all the flood damage. We are taking a special offering

for our partner, Convoy of Hope, who is on the

ground in our region helping to meet the needs of

those who have been impacted by the flood. We will

take a very special offering. One hundred of what comes

in in that offering on Christmas Eve will go to

help our friends and neighbors in our community. Just to

make you aware that that is coming. Last announcement from

me for the handful of you that have ever listened

to my podcast. I mentioned on the last episode that

I had decided to not get my shoulder surgery. Well,

unfortunately I wasn't able to reschedule it, so it's on

so December thirtieth. I am getting my left shoulder replaced.

If you've been around for any length of time, fourteen

years ago, I got my right shoulder replaced, Now they're

doing the left one. Two things. Number one, I admit it,

I'm a pansy, so I am nervous, anxious, afraid of this.

So if you're thinking about me, Pray that Brandon would

have some courage and face this, and that the doctors

sufficiently medicate me right when I get in. That's what

I'm believing for, But I'm also asking for some grace.

It's gonna be the beginning of the year. I'll be

kinda on the DL for several weeks. It's not because

I'm traveling around or anything. It's because I'm quarantined to

my house. But just be praying for me as I

go through that. But more than anything, pray that I'll

have the guts to actually drive to udub Medical and

not like run away somewhere because I'm gonna be tempted

just to keep driving south. But I'm gonna. I'm gonna

gonna do it. December thirtieth, all right, Luke, Chapter one,

verse twenty six. Last week we looked at the Christmas

story from the perspective of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Today we're

gonna look at the Christmas story from the perspective of

Mary and Joseph. And then on Christmas Eve we'll talk

about Jesus coming to our rescue verse twenty six. In

in the sixth month of elizabeth pregnancy, God sent the

Angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a

virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph,

a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The

Angel went to her and said, greetings, you, who are

highly favored. The Lord is with you. I want to

ask everyone to buy your heads, close your eyes, repeat

this prayer after me. Everyone say, Dear Jesus, speak to

my heart, change my life in Jesus' name. Amen. Now

we don't know exactly how old Mary was at this

point in time. Scholars argue it's anywhere from the age

of thirteen to the age of sixteen. But what we

know is this was a young teenage girl and what

you're gonna see in this story is that she models

how to respond to Christmas. She responds with courageous faith

and heroic surrender. It is amazing how much you and

I today can learn from this teenage girl. How do

you respond to Christmas? I think it's arguable that Mary

is now the very first person to ever hear the Gospel.

This is the type of gospel that we hear today,

the good News. And the thing about Mary first person

to hear the gospel She responds to the Gospel in

a way that God would want you and I to

respond to the Gospel. I'd even go as far to

say Mary might be the very first Christian ever. She

was the first to hear the gospel. She was the

first to believe the gospel, even though it was in

the middle of some very unique circumstances. And she responds

with courage when she hears and she believes. Mary models

what it means to be a Christian and how to

live a Christian life. I want to say this, I

know there are some of you here today. You aren't

a Christian. You're here. Someone made you be here. Maybe

you're here because you're exploring faith, you're checking out church. Well,

what you're gonna learn today from Mary is that this

courageous young lady, you're gonna learn what it actually means

to be a Christian. And if you are a follower

of Jesus, here she will remind us what it means

to embrace the Gospel message deep in our heart. We're

going to focus today really on two key questions. What

was the message that Mary was given? And secondly, how

does Mary respond to this message? So let's keep going

in The story in Luke, verse twenty eight says the

Angel went to Mary and said, greetings, you, who are

highly favored. The Lord is with you. Bible says that

Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what

kind of greeting this might be. But the Angel of

the Lord said to her, as we learned last week,

typical angel m o. First thing the Angel always says

when he shows up unexpectedly, don't be afraid, Mary, you

found favor with God. Then he tells her this, you

will conceive and give birth to a son you were

to call him Jesus. He will be great and will

be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord

God will give him the throne of his father David,

and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever. His kingdom

will never end. Mary's response, how can this happen? I'm

a virgin? Well, I mean the Holy Spirit. The Angel

answers in like the most rational way possible. He says,

the Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power

of the Most High will overshadow you. So, in other words,

the Father will be the Holy Spirit. There is something

called the lullaby effect. The lullaby effect happens when we've

been in church for a long period of time and

we're very familiar with the stories that we hear, so

we hear them so much that the shock of hearing

them the first time doesn't hit us anymore. Here is

a sweet, innocent, engaged girl looking forward to her wedding

to the man Joseph. She has been saving herself for marriage.

First angel shows up, kind of shocking, but then the

angel says, you're gonna have a son. Probably in Mary's mind,

you're right, someday I'm gonna have a son. And the

angel is like, no, you're gonna have a son in

the next nine months. And she's like, how, I'm a virgin. Well,

the Holy Spirit will be the father. Okay. We hear

that all the time, and we're just like whatever, this

would be shocking. And then it goes on and it

says the holy One to be born will be called

the Son of God. So not only are you gonna

have a son fathered by the Holy Spirit, you're gonna

name him Jesus, which means God saves, and he'll be

God's son. Okay. And Mary's response is verse thirty eight,

I am the Lord's servant. May your word to me

be fullfilled. Then the angel left her. Listen to the

message that Mary receives, specifically about the Gospel. She's told,

Jesus is the Savior. Jesus is coming to rescue us,

that he comes to save us from our sin, that

Jesus is going to be God in the flesh. Theologians

refer to this as the incarnation. It's this thought that

Christmas we celebrate that God is with us, that God

understands us, and not only that he's coming to be king,

and he's coming to rule in peace and kindness. Now

notice Mary's response, and I think it's similar to the

way that you and I should respond to Christmas this season.

She responds with courageous faith and heroic surrender. When you

understand the context of this. We talked about this last week.

Remember what was going on in the world. They were

under Roman rule. They were holding on to a promise

that God had given to Abraham two thousand years before

that seemed in their circumstances today absurd. Dozens of Jewish

people were walking away from the faith. God had not

spoke or done anything. He had been silent for the

last four hundred years and out of nowhere, angel shows up.

Teenage girl, the Messiah is coming through you. That took

some serious faith to believe that. Mary respect like a champ,

but she also has some really good questions. First thing

she says is, Uh, how's this supposed to happen when

I'm a virgin? I think a frequent criticism that people

have of Christians is they say, you people, you don't

ask good questions. You kind of come to church, you

check your brain at the door. You Christians, you believe everything.

You don't ask any questions. You need to ask questions.

I want to say, first off, if you come to venture,

we are not offended or threatened by your questions. We

don't want you to check your brain at the door.

We want you to evaluate and consider what you hear

and what you learn the same way that Mary does.

How does Mary respond? She doesn't just believe, she doesn't

check her brain at the door. An angel shows up,

She's like, WHOA, You're gonna have a baby.

Cool?

You won't even have a husband when you have the baby. Awesome?

How does it say? Mary responds? It says she was

greatly troubled. Other translations use she was greatly confused, or

she was greatly disturbed. Those words in Greek are actually

accounting words, so you're supposed to get this impression that

she's greatly troubled. She's beginning to use her very logical, rational,

intellectual mind, and she's adding up all the facts. You

get this, I'm gonna have a baby. Joseph isn't the father.

There really is no like human father. It's gonna be

fathered by the Holy Spirit. What the heck is that?

And she's like adding up all of these things, and

then she's thinking, I am a virgin, how can I

have a child? This is an angel? Maybe I'm hallucinating,

Maybe I'm having some sort of nervous breakdown. Mary understands

where babies come from. She's engaged mom and had the

talk with her. It's gonna be fathered by the Holy Spirit.

I'm supposed to name him Jesus, which means God saves church.

Mary had some very healthy doubt. Healthy doubt and questions

are an important part of our faith. She was like

many of us, and some of you are thinking, pebe

her doubts. They're different than mine. It was a simpler

time back then. People were superstitious people were inclined to believe. Well, frankly,

you're not right. If that's where you're coming from, you

are not smarter than Mary. She has the same IQ

as most of us. She was just as smart, just

as skeptical, just as able to reason. And Marry responds

pretty reasonably when she hears you're gonna have a child

who will save the world from their sins? Who's going

to be king? Now? You and I, especially those of

us that have gone far in school, we have been

trained in school with the scientific method, and it worked

something like this. The scientific method is we observe something happening,

We then theorize how that something happened. We then test

that theory, and then we attempt to see if our

synopsis of that theory can be reproduced again. So for

us who have been trained that way, it's complicated to

believe that things that are supernatural could happen, because everything

must be able to be logically explained by scientific theory.

In Mary's culture, it was impossible to believe and imagine

something like this happening. Equally challenging because of what was

going on in the world. They grew up believing something

that God had been silent about for four hundred years. Remember,

she's told your son's name is Jesus, which means God saves.

She grew up in a culture where they didn't even

say the name of God out loud. For her to

believe that God would become a baby in their reverence

in awe that they had towards yahweh, then it would

not only be a baby, but he would be her baby.

That he would take on humanity, human flesh for her.

Impossible to think, but Mary shows courageous faith. As you

head into Christmas, I believe that there's some of you

that God is challenging to believe some things too. There's

some of you God is really trying to get you

to hold onto the hope. Last week we talked about

prayers that we've been praying that it seems like God

has been silent. There's been no answer. You're heading into

this Christmas season and there's some things that you're wrestling

to believe too. It's okay to have questions, but it

is important how you ask those questions. If you were

here last week, If you weren't, you should go back

and listen to the message. It was good, but last

week I talked about Zechariah having this encounter with that

same angel Gabriel. And we know about Zechariah that he

was a professional Christian, he was a priest, he served

the temple. Angel shows up, thinks he's gonna die. Angel says,

you're gonna have a son. Zechariah is thinking I'm too old,

My wife's too old. Angel says, God has heard your prayer.

Your son is gonna be a prophet. He's gonna prepare

the way for the Messiah. And Zechariah, rightfully so has

these doubts and these questions. But the angel's response to

him was, needless to say, frustrating. He was frustrated with

Zechariah's stance. He says to Zechariah, you didn't believe You're

gonna be mute for the next nine months. Hey, I

didn't like your question at all. So for the next

nine months you're not even allowed to speak. So that's

how the angel responded to Zechariah. Now, six months later,

same angel appears to Mary, tells Mary this unbelievable story

that she's gonna have a baby. The Holy Spirit will

be the father. And Mary has some questions, and this

time the angel says, good for you, and he blesses her.

What is the difference. Did Zechariah catch Gabriel on a

bad day, not in the mood for questions, so you

end up mute? Did Mary find Gabriel on a good day?

You know, I'm feeling like a benevolent angel today. You're

blessed now. There is a slight nuance in the way

that they asked their questions, and that's what you need

to catch. It's important as you and I move towards

Christmas that we understand what courageous faith looks like. Doubt.

I've told you many times doubt is normal. But there

is healthy doubt and there is unhealthy doubt. Healthy doubt

is trying to understand unhealthy doubt is close minded. Zechariah says,

how can I know this is true? Prove it to me.

Give me a sign. Unhealthy doubt? Is this? It is?

We're heading into twenty twenty six. I don't have any

sermons planned to talk about this, so this is it.

This is the sermon about this topic. Start tithing in

twenty twenty six. There's the sermon. Some of you are thinking, PB,

You're right, holy spiritsmen dealing with me. But I made

God a deal. I've said I'll start tithing if I

get that raise I'm hoping for. I'll start tithing if

God blesses me with this promotion. That is unhealthy doubt.

That is demanding a sign from God. And that is

what Zechariah did. He said, I need more than God's

word to go on. I need a sign. I need

you to prove it to me. That is unhealthy doubt.

It is God do something so that I have more

of a reason to trust you. Trust always has an

element of courageous faith. Do you find areas in your

life that you're like Zechariah. We're like Lord, I want

to believe, but I need something tangible to hold on to. Well.

Mary she has doubts, but she has healthy doubt. She's like,

I don't understand how I can become pregnant when I'm

a virgin, and here's a poor teenage girl grew up

in the Middle East. She's confused, she's troubled, but she trusts.

I think that's the reason that God chose Mary out

of all the women in the world. He chose her

to be the earthly mother of Jesus. She had courageous faith,

doubts in question. She didn't totally understand, but she grabbed

a hold of God's promise. Church. That's what it really

means to be a Christian. You hear the gospel, you

have questions, but ultimately you trust and have courageous faith.

God also chose Mary because not only did she trust,

but she had heroic surrender. That word surrender, that's a

hard word today. Surrender is not a heroic word. In

twenty twenty five, Surrender is not a powerful word. Fight

is a heroic word. Outrage is a powerful word. Surrender.

Why losers surrender? We're American. We win. There are points

in your life where God wants you to surrender oftentimes.

I'm going to do this on Christmas Eve. I'll have

everyone saying, and I'll have everybody raise their hands, and

I will describe this as an act of surrender. Why

have everybody raise their hands when I do that? Number one?

There are people that do not want to do something

like that all at all. It makes them feel uncomfortable.

But this in itself, raising up your hands, it is

a sign of surrender. Jesus said this. He said, if

you want to follow me, you need to deny your self,

pick up your cross and follow me. And by the way,

you should do this daily. That's what it's like to

be a follower of mine. It is a life of

heroic surrender, where you daily deny your flesh, deny what

you want, deny your desires. That's what surrender says. Surrender says,

I don't totally understand everything, but I'll lay it down.

I don't totally understand. I don't know, Pebe. We raised

a million dollars last year, then we had to go

back and raise some more money. I don't understand. Well,

I didn't want to do that, but prices increase, stuff

costs more. Sometimes you just throw your hands up and

say I surrender. Sometimes God will say I want you

to trust me with your marriage. You got to throw

your hands up and surrender. Sometimes he'll say, hey, trust

me with your shoulder surgery, you Pansy Brandon. I gotta

throw my hands up and say, all right, Jesus, I surrender.

If you had any clue the links I went to

to try to reschedule this surgery, I called the surgery scheduler,

got his voicemail. My surgery schedule for December thirtieth and

this is what I heard. Sorry, I'm out of the

office on vacation till December thirty. First, I was like,

only God would do this to me. Now, sometimes you

just need to surrender and trust. That is a major

part of your faith journey. Look at Mary's response verse

thirty eight. Her response should be similar to ours. This Christmas,

she said, I don't get this. I'm afraid of the

consequences my reputation. I don't know what my fiance is

going to say, she said, but I'm the Lord's servant.

May your word to me be fulfilled. Mary surrenders everything

and her reputation. She knew it was about to be destroyed,

that her obedience in this moment might cost her her fiance.

I mean, think about it. Even if she's able to

get Joseph to believe all of this, how does he

protect her reputation. He could lie for her, and if

he lied for her, then they both had sex before marriage,

and that would hurt their reputation in their community. If

he was honest and said I am not the father

of this child, the whole community is gonna assume she

was unfaithful. Mary was in a can't win situation and

she still surrenders. I mean, really, you can't. I try

to tell your best friend, Yeah, I'm pregnant. No no, no, no, no.

Joseph's not the father. It's a miracle. Really, the Holy

Spirit is the father. I mean maybe maybe you could

get him to believe that. But then you got to

drop this one. It's God's child, Oh, Mary cuckoo. Mary

understands what she's getting into. She trusts God with heroic surrender.

Realize also that she didn't even get to name her child.

I mean, that is a parent's right to name your child.

She's told to name him Jesus. God saves with this

idea that he will be a savior, that he will

be her savior because people need a savior, that he's

going to come and save us from our sins, because

we need to be rescued. On Christmas Eve, we will

celebrate in a very short, tight, forty five minute service

that Jesus came to our rescue. That's what Christmas is

all about. These are the circumstances behind it, but it

led to what we celebrate on Christmas, that Jesus came

to my rescue. Mary shows courageous faith, heroic surrender. And

she didn't have the benefit of knowing what you and

I know, like we have this, we know the end

of the story. Mary didn't know that over the next

two thousand years, billions of people would put their faith

in and believe who wor Son is. She didn't know

that she was just a scared teenage girl that all

she could do is take God at his word and

trust him. What is God asking you to trust him

with as we move towards Christmas? What is God asking

you to surrender as we move towards Christmas? Some of

you this morning, he is asking you to trust Him

for the very first time. I want to ask everyone

to buy your heads, close your eyes. Those are the

people that I want to talk to first. There are

some of you. The Holy Spirit is nudging you, He's

poking you, he's prodding you. He is saying, this is

your moment. If you are here and you do not

know Jesus, but you want to say, Pastor Brandon, today,

I want to give my life to Jesus this Christmas.

I want to go into it knowing I am right

with Jesus, that I'm a Christian. If that is you

in a moment, I'm going to count to three, and

when I say three, I want you to raise your hand.

There are others of you. You've prayed prayers, you've gone

to church, but in this moment, you'd have to be

honest and say you are far from God. If this

Christmas you want to say, I want to be right

with Jesus. I want Jesus once again to be my

lord and savior, and I want to surrender my life

to him. If that's you, you're far from him and

you want to leave knowing you're right with him. When

I say three, I want you to raise your hand.

So here I go. No one hesitates. Raise your hand

when I say three, one, two, Raise them up now,

three hands up, all over, Put them up high. Our

ushers are going to run around and they're actually going

to stick something in your hand. Keep your hands up.

I'm gonna ask everyone to stand up on your feet.

I'm gonna invite every person that's here to pray this prayer.

If you're new to venture, I invite everybody that's watching online. Also.

I do this every time people commit their life to Jesus.

I have us all pray together. And I do that

because I want them to know they're not alone, that

they're family and we do this together. But specifically for

those of you that raised your hand, there's nothing special

about this prayer. But if you pray this and you

mean it and you believe it, you are making the

same sort of response to the gospel that Mary made,

and you leave knowing you are right with Jesus. So

I want to ask everyone to close your eyes and

to repeat this after me. Everyone say, Dear Jesus, I

stand before you today and I admit I'm a sinner

who needs to be rescued. And today I ask you

to forgive me, and I invite you to come into

my life and to rescue me. I choose from this

day forward to serve you with my life. Thank you

for forgiving me and for rescuing me in Jesus' name. Amen.

Briefly, I'm going to ask you if you will grab

a seat so that we can properly celebrate two couples

before we leave to engaged couples, Ezra and Emilia. Will

you stand to your feet somewhere in this room we

want to celebrate you. Congratulations and our very own pastor

Mike and Michelle part of our team.

Here where are you.

Hey? Before I send you out, I want to draw

your attention to our What's Next page of our app.

That's where you can get more resources. You can read

more about Advent and you can get our Bible for

reading plan for this week.

Hey, if you.

Are traveling this week, be blessed safe travels. If you're

in town, we hope you'll join us for Christmas Eve

three point thirty and five. Have a great day.

Thank you again for joining us. If you enjoy today's service,

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see future messages. If you'd like to learn more about

Venture Church, you can click the link that's in our bio.

We hope to see you again.