From Transition to Triumph: Mary and Joseph’s Journey || Pastor Adam Mesa

Well, if you have your Bible today, we're about to

jump into the message. You can either follow along on

your phone, physical Bible, or we'll have it up in

the screen in just a moment. But would you join

us back in Luke chapter nineteen if you were with

us last week we read this first. We're going to

re reflect on this first, and then we're gonna jump

back to Luke chapter two. Last week we were in

Luke chapter one. This week we'll be in Luke chapter two.

But we're gonna reflect once again on Luke nineteen because

it really embodies the Christmas story, even though Jesus is

an adult at that time.

But before we do, I.

Just want to share with you something that if you

haven't heard yet, but as of this year twenty twenty four,

they're in all recent known years. This is one of

the highest selling Bible years kind of in recent history.

And so this year, in twenty twenty four, more Bibles

have been purchased in America than any recent year. In

twenty nineteen, right before we went into COVID, at that time,

in the whole year, less than ten million people bought

a new Bible. As it stands, last year fourteen million

people bought a new Bible as of October. At the

beginning of October, it had already reached thirteen point seven

million people had bought a Bible, and they're projecting that

it's going to end this year with sixteen million people

purchasing a new Bible.

It's so important to know for a few reasons.

The first question we may ask is why are they

buying bibles? Why are people buying bibles? Well, could be

a couple reasons. The first reason could be is someone

may lack hope and so they're going to God's word

to discover God's hope. Or a person could be so

full of hope that they're starting to meet Jesus.

They started to go church, to go to church.

And they thought to themselves, I'm missing a Bible in

my life, and that may be why. But a lot

of these individuals are first time Bible buyers, and they're

buying from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and all the publishers,

whether it's Tom and Nelson, Zondervan, all the people who

publish bibles.

They've said this.

One published sure of the Bible told The Wall Street

Journal it has seen a surge of interest from Gen

Z and young Americans. That's the majority of who's buying

new Bibles. So, if you're in the room and you're

about twenty seven, twenty six and younger in your generation

right now, believe.

It or not, there is a hunger to know more

about God.

And so usually I hear at things, Oh, those people

in their twenties, they don't want to know about God.

They're far away from God, they're far away from spiritual life.

Actually, it appears as of this year, there's.

A large interest from the next generation wants to know

about God's purpose for their life and their plan of life,

so much so that they're right now they are over

eight million posts on TikTok about the Bible, not about church,

not sermon clips, but about the Bible itself, as well

as slew of videos about Bibles to buy, what kind

of buy, what translations to buy, with some of them

even having over a million likes.

So what does this mean? What does it mean for you?

And what does it mean for me?

It means that if right now this is a highest

year of Bible interest in recent years, it means chances

are someone that you know that doesn't go to church

or doesn't read their Bible, is interested in what God

has to say about their life. They may have not

taken the step to buy a new Bible yet, but

if fifteen to sixteen million Americans are going to be

buying a new Bible this year, and majority of them

being new Bible owners, then the reality is you know

someone today who has not been yet met with Jesus,

who is hungry to learn about who God is. You

may say, well, I can't think of someone that comes

to my head. Well, they don't announce themselves over their head.

They don't wear a shirt that says, if you're a Christian,

invite me to church, please, I have nobody to go

to church with. They don't have those shirts. I don't

think those are sold. We definitely don't have them in

our bookstore. We definitely don't sell shirts that say I'm

a Christian. If you want to be invited to church,

just ask me. We don't have those either. That is,

if people are hungry and they're wondering who God is

and what He has to say about their life, you

and I have a great opportunity to start inviting people

to the House of God. A lot of people are

not only reading God's word. But the place when we gather,

it's also a place where we learn about God's word

and we discover God's purpose for our life, and we

discover who God is. And so I encourage you this

holiday season and going into the new year, as you

encounter people look for opportunities to invite them to church.

Did you know that eighty five percent of people will

not step foot into church unless a friend that they

trust invited them. You could think about yourself. Many of

you are here today not because you came across one

of our Instagram videos, which some people are sometimes, not

because you saw a sermon, or not because you saw

a flyer somewhere or believe it or not not because

you saw a Hulu ad of us inviting you to church.

The reason why many people are here in church today

is because someone you respect or someone that you you

know discovered you were in a season where you were

wondering what's next, or you were wondering about who God is,

and they said, hey, you should come visit my church,

and you said yes. And so only fifteen percent of

people go to a church outside of their friend inviting them,

which means the likelihood that your community will meet Jesus.

Believe it or not.

It kind of rests on your shoulders. Are you going

to invite them to the House of God. It don't

eve even be our church. They can live an hour away,

they can live ten minutes away. I've met someone before

that lived down the street and said.

The church was too far. I said, well, hey, there

are churches between me and you.

So pick one. It just could be as simple as that.

But there's always a starting point for somebody. So just

look for opportunities this new year that you could invite

someone to the House of God, because you may be

the very person that God wants.

To use to share the love of Jesus.

And that's what the Christ's message is all about, is

that if you aren't willing to be the mouthpiece for

the grace of God, then God will cause something else

to do that. That's where we're at in Luke chap nineteen.

So if you're ready, would you stand for the honor

of reading God's word once again? We're gonna reflect until

we had this etch in our mind. What Jesus says

Luke nineteen, verse thirty to forty says this, This is

Jesus speaking go into the village in front of you

we're on entering. You will find a cult tied, which

is an unridden donkey on which no one has ever sat.

Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you,

why are you untying it, you shall say this, the

Lord has need of it. So those who were sent

away and found it, just as he had told them.

And as they were untying the cult, its owners said

to them, why are you untying the donkey?

The cult? And they said, the Lord has need of it.

And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks

on the on the colt, they set Jesus on it.

And as he rode and he say, rode along, they

spread their cloaks on the road. As he was drawing

near already on the way down in Mount Olives, the

whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise

God with a loud voice for all the mighty works

that they had seen, saying, blessed is the King who

comes in the name of the Lord, Peace in heaven

and glory in the highest And some of the Pharisees

in the crowd said to him, Teacher rebuke your disciples.

They're praising you out loud, and Jesus answered, I tell you,

if these were silent, the very stones would cry out,

you may be seated. There is value in this passage

to reflect over and over and over.

The reality is that when Jesus came.

To this earth born of the virgin Mary was he

was born with a purpose and a plan for his life,

and that purpose and plan for his life was to

live thirty three years in which he would commit his

life into the hands of the people who would cry

out for Jesus to be crucified. Three days later, he'd

be in a tomb and he would resurrect to show

all of humanity that his sacrifice was accepted by the

Father and truly, if we rest our faith in him,

we'll be saved.

The birth of Jesus.

Started the momentum of the move of God to redeem humanity.

So when we look at the birth of Jesus, it's

not just the fact of this beautiful baby that was

born in a miraculous moment, but it's also the fact

that God's called you and I today to make a

decision to follow Jesus, but not take that moment as

a secret that we put in our pocket. But to

share with the world what God has done in your life.

That's what God's called us to do. This moment where

Jesus is entering Jerusalem, when in just a few days

he'd be put to death, the disciples are worshiping Jesus

for all the things he had done. And when people

try to silence the disciples for worshiping Jesus, his response

is is if you silence these disciples, God will cause creation.

To worship me.

He said, rock, the very rocks will cry out. So

in this passage, Jesus shows us that God will use

anything for his glory. He'll use some rocks for his glory.

He'll use a donkey for his glory. He'll use Mary

for his glory. He'll use Joseph for his glory. But

he'll also use you for his glory. But he could

also use your car for his glory. He could use

your couch for his glory. He could use your kitchen

for his glory.

The question is is if.

Jesus has need of something that you have, are you

willing to open up your life if God has need

for your time, would you open up your life? If

God has need for your gifts. Would you open up

your life? God had needs of your treasure? Would you

open your life? What God not only looks for when

he given us the gift of humanity and the gift

of Jesus. God's looking to challenge us to say, Hey,

there's gonna be times in your life where you're gonna

be dretched and challenge.

To get out of your comfort zone.

And so for Mary and Joseph, as we look back

in our Bible, we're gonna jump back to Luke chapter two.

Last week we saw Luke chapter one, and we reflected

a little bit on Mary. Today we're gonna reflect again

on Mary and Joseph, because what happens is is God

has approached Mary with a task that seems impossible, which is,

will you say yes to hold the child Jesus with

a miracle? Would you'll give birth to this miracle? But

also when you say yes, well, you also accept the

responsibility of having culture outcast you. Will you accept the

responsibility of having King Herod be jealous of your son

and try to kill your son, so much so that

in all of Israel we often forget this. He killed

the firstborn of every parent's child hoping to kill Jesus.

We often overlook that.

I mean, there was a lot of demonic activity happening

while Jesus was coming to earth. We look at Christmas

and we see this beautiful nativity scene, and we see

these little shepherds, and we see these little magis.

But what we.

Forget is there is a civil war behind the scenes

of a king who's killing children trying to get rid

of Jesus.

And Mary and.

Joseph feel that on the back of their neck everywhere

that they go.

Is today going to be the day that the enemy

might win?

And sure enough we see that even though they're headed

down an impossible journey, God has them.

Covered every step of the way.

And so we're going to share a little bit today

through the passage and their story that while Joseph and

Mary are in the process of transition, and you and

I will always face transitional seasons, what we have to

see is in transition, sometimes there's trauma, sometimes there's pain,

sometimes there's difficulty, and sometimes there's uncomfortableness. But I want

you to see in the first point what happens when

Mary Joseph is when God creates transition in their life.

It also creates momentum or movement.

And see this movement that happens with Mary and Joseph.

In Luke, chapter two, verse one to three, it says,

in those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus.

That all the world should be registered.

This was the first registration when Quinarius was governor of Syria,

and all went to be registered, each to his own town.

So here's what happens. Mary and Joseph.

They say yes to the call of God, which for

Joseph is to adopt Jesus into his home and continue

to be married to marry, even though Jesus is not

Joseph's son. And then Mary says yes because now in

her entire culture and her society, they're going to seize

her as someone who cheated on her betrothed husband. She's engaged,

she's a fiance, and she's having someone else's child. That

alone is difficult. But then steps in Caesar Augustus, who's

the emperor of Rome, and he says, you know what,

across all of my land, everything that I rule, I

want everyone to go back to their home town because

I want to do a head count.

Because when kings want to do counts.

What they want to do is they want to compare

it to other kingdoms and say no, no, no, no, no no,

I have a bigger kingdom than you.

To sign of arrogance.

If you read the Old Testament, God forbid any king

to take a census because he didn't want any king

to think that his people was the king's.

But it's actually God's.

So Caesar thinks himself, I want a census so that

I could show off how big my kingdom is.

And it's also so that I can.

Charge the right taxes to each community the right way.

Bigger cities, bigger taxes, Smaller cities, smaller taxes.

And so he does this, and.

So now Mary and Joseph have to do multiple day

journey from Nazareth all the.

Way to Bethlehem by foot. Now you may say, okay,

that's not bad byfoot.

Well, their version of byfoot is not your version of

walking down foothill a couple miles. Their version of by

foot it's through mountains, valleys, deserts.

There are people waiting to.

Rob you, mug you cheat, you swindle, you wait for you.

By night time.

And so it's not so easy just to be like

Oh yeah, let's go on this walk on top of this. Remember,

Mary is seven to eight months pregnant. So if you've

ever been pregnant before, or fellas you've ever been married

and your wife was pregnant at about seven and eight

months of pregnancy, the ankles start to swell, the toes

don't look the way they once looked, The calves don't

feel the way that calves have always felt. And so

now Mary, at this late in her pregnancy, has to

travel that far to give births to Jesus. That's a

transitional period. And a lot of times we think to ourselves,

marry and joseph'ld be like, hey, God, we said yes

to you. How about an easy road? Like why can't

Caesar do this census? After we have Jesus, God, you're

all powerful, could you make this a little easier. Could

we not have heard out here killing every firstborn child?

Could we not have Caesar Augustus not wanting all of

us to go to our hometown. Oh, and then guess

what she finally, after all of that journey, makes it

to her hometown, it's so packed no one has room

for them for her to even give birth. So no

Kaiser permanente availability. There's no opening her family. They got

no space in any of the houses, cousins, no one's available.

And then all there is is this room. Edition it's called.

The inn because it's the inside of the house. And

oftentimes what would happen for farmers is because people could

steal your animals, or the cold could kill your animals,

and so in the summer sometimes you left your animals out,

but in the winter you actually had to bring your

animals inside your home so that they could stay warm.

And so there is all of a sudden a person

in Bethlehem who says, you know what, there's not really

room for you to give birth. It's not that there

was no space, it's the fact that to give birth

to a child in that day, it's very messy, and

it's very loud, and it takes multiple people to give

birth because of how dangerous it is. So there was

no space for all the chaos of birth to happen.

So he says, I got this place where we put

my animals at night.

You could give birth there. We'll make some room for

you there.

Now, in transition, if you said yes to God, you

would think to yourself, Jesus you would think to yourself, God,

I'm okay with my friends not liking me. I'm okay

with my family questioning whether God's really active in my life.

And I think I'm okay with the government coming after me.

But now you got me out here walking with these

pregnancy and now you got me in a city that

I've never been before. Remindery it's Joseph, city of his birth,

not hers. So she don't know nobody in that city,

and so she go, you have me out here and

all this difficulty, where are you? Because a lot of

times we'll start to say yes to the things of God,

but there are moments we start.

Saying, where is God in this?

I got government over here, I got friends over here,

I got my job over here.

Where is God in this?

And the beauty is what happens is God is getting

Mary and Joseph to somewhere. And what often happens is

when God gets you through a transitional moment in your life,

the reality is more than likely God is trying to

create movement in your life.

He's trying to propel you somewhere forward.

The problem is, when we're in the moment of transition,

we're trying to make sense of where God has us.

But Mary and Joseph they didn't stop in the middle

of track and say, God, we're not going anywhere more

until you tell us there's blessing on the other side

of this.

Yes.

No, every day they woke up and they kept walking.

They got in that city and they just kept knocking

on doors. They just kept looking for who was available.

And a lot of times, in transition, that's where we

give up the most. That's where we walk away from

God the most. There was a time when I was

eighteen years old. I had just graduated high school and

I had planned to do an internship for my mentor,

Pastor Jerald Brooks, And still to this day, Pastor Gerald's

one of our overseers. He's one of our board members.

He speaks here at our church twice a year. And

when I was seventeen, he had invited me, Hey, we

have this internship program when you graduate high school. Because

I wanted to go to full time ministry by then,

he said, come to my church and do an internship

in Dallas, Texas. It's in Plano, so it's about thirty

minutes north of Dallas, and so I said, okay, So

My thinking was our, all right, I'm gonna go to

this internship and relatively in a few weeks, they're gonna

notice how gifted your boy is, and so they're gonna

start asking me like, hey, can you start preaching?

Are you sermons? Hey?

You know, Pastor Gerald isn't feeling good this Wednesday. You

think you could get up there and share a sermon. Hey,

can you take over look at my sermon notes and

make them better?

At them? Like that? Just you know, like this is

just my thought. You know you ever have.

A dream and you think, oh, if I just get

the front door, and then you create in your head,

this is how all the pieces are gonna come together.

Well, well that's my expectation.

I show up to the internship and one of the

first jobs they have me to do. And I signed

up for two years to do this internship. One of

my first tests. There was about eighteen of us in

the internship, and every person got divvied different responsibilities. My

responsibility was one of the worst responsibilities that the interns got.

Here was my job on Monday. Normally took me about

six hours to do this job. I was in charge

of the children's church wing and so not only kind

of tiding the children's church wing up which had about

fourteen to fifteen classrooms. I was to make sure that everything,

you know, bookshelves didn't get moved or anything from Sunday

or whatever. But also, you know, this is in the

late two thousands, so we didn't really use technology for

the children's classrooms. So back then, every classroom had a

bunch of tables where kids would get crafts, they would

get scissors, and they would get glue, and they would

get markers and krans and they would learn Bible lessons

through that interaction. And so it was my job on

Mondays that every classroom had two big buckets. One big

bucket had a bunch of krans, like hundreds of krans,

and another big bucket had hundreds of markers. It was

my job every Monday to go to all of those

fifteen classrooms and I had to get the bucket of

krans out, and I had to pull out every kran,

and if a kran was missing the tip or broken

in half, I had to throw it away. So I'd

go through and I'd one cran after another go cause

those little pieces of crans that are broken, they don't

announce themselves. So you got to get in there and

you got to you gotta clear it out. So sometimes

I would just get annoyed. I'd dump it on the

table and just try to, you know, boo boo, put

it back in and then my and then my second

job with that was then to pull out the marker bucket.

And they gave me a little stack of computer paper

and I was supposed to take that little stack of

computer paper and I would take each marker, I would

uncap it and I had to draw a line in

the computer paper if the if the marker was fresh

and it and it drew a very clear and bright line,

then that was a keeper.

If it drew a faint line or it was dried out,

I had to throw it away.

And so I had to go to every single classroom

and I had to check every marker every week.

I had to check every kran and it took me

about six hours.

And I thought to myself, they are drastically misusing the

good potential talent that they have in this internship.

I genuinely thought that. I thought what happened.

Is is because I was a big deal at my

church that I came from. Because I was the pastor's son,

so therefore they're gonna recognize that. And it's almost gonna

be like when you guys transfer in the same company

to just a different location.

It's like, Oh, the.

Same standard prestige I had there, I'm gonna have it here.

And sure enough, oh, bottom of the totem pole at

that point. And so my thinking is they just don't reckon.

So I need to create value. That's what I gotta do.

If all of a sudden they recognize my potential, then

they'll promote me. Then I'll start preaching the youth sermons.

Then I'll start doing teaching in children's church. Then I'll

start doing X, Y and Z. So I think to myself, oh,

I got to solve problems. If I solve problems and

I create value, then they'll move me up and I

don't have to do this dumb thing anymore. And so

I go to Pastor Jesse, who now is the lead

pastor of that church today, who's Pastor Gerald's son in law,

And I said, Pastor Jesse, I have a great idea

for the children's church classrooms. As you know, I have

to check every marker, and I have to check every

kran and it's very tedious and it's very time consuming.

Here's my idea.

On Sundays, when the children's church workers are having the

kids do things, when they notice a cran is broken,

or when they notice a marker's dried out, they should

just throw it away themselves. You should tell them, don't

put it back in the bucket. And by doing that,

it'll like cut my work in half. And also it'll

just you could use me for other more valuable things

to do. And so I think to myself, he's gonna say, Adam,

this is genius. I've been thinking about it, and I

need you to preach this weekend. We really need you

to run. We need you to run up here and

handle things. And in said Pastor Jesse looks at me

and he says the reason why, Pastor Gerald, and my

thinking too was like everyone else, they're like done within

an hour with their task. Mine takes like six hours.

So like you, you have your best guy on the

worst job. You know, that's my thinking. So Pastor Jesse

says this. He says, you know, Adam, Pastor Gerald does

this on purpose, because what happens is is if we

teach you the excellence for markers and krans and the

value of markers and krans, then when you get the

opportunity to care for the children that if you exercised

care for krans and markers, you will even more so

care for the children that God has placed you in.

And if you care about the excellence of a dried

out marker, then if you meet a child or a

person that's dry of God's spirit, then you understand how

much care God takes. If as humans we care for markers,

you can know God cares for people. Now I'd love

to say that is genius. I'm on board. Instead, I said,

that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I could

care about children without having to care about markers. And

so you want to know what I did in response

to that is I quit the journey. Six months into

the internship, I thought they're not utilizing me the way

that they should have. And so six months in I

called my parents. I said, hey, I don't want to

be in this program anymore. I don't want to do

these things that they have me doing. They're tedious, they're boring,

and I don't think it has anything to do with

ministry as a whole.

You know, and so I said, I don't want to

do it anymore. So my parents said, okay.

We talked after weeks and weeks and weeks, so I

flew back out and I joined Bible Squad.

I went to Life Pacific University at that time.

When I quit, for years, I was not good with

Pastor Gerald and Pastor Jesse. When I would see them,

they were extremely disappointed with me. They were extremely discouraged

by when I quit because I even affected the attitude

of other kids that were there that they then started

showing them, Oh yeah, I think we're all better than this.

I think we all shouldn't be cleaning out closets or

cleaning out refrigerators, and so it kind of started this

coup that affected the whole internship. So when I got

to my early twenties and I actually started doing ministry

now full time, I started realizing how much value Pastor

Gerald was trying to place in my life. I started realizing, Oh,

my goodness, I remember, because now I'm a youth pastor.

And then I walk around and I see some of

my team. They're just leaving stuff that's broken. There's staplers

that don't have staples in it. There's papers that are

bent and not presentable nice, And I'm.

Thinking to myself, if you guys knew.

The crans that I had to search for. But then

I thought to myself one day, but Adam, you quit.

You keep referencing the discipline that you had in Texas,

but you quit it.

You didn't finish the two years.

So I remember one year I called Pastor Gerald and

I said, Pastor Gerald, I just want to say I'm

so sorry for quitting early. I made a two year

commitment and I didn't stay true to that, and I

hope that you can forgive me because what you did

teach me has been invaluable now that I'm in ministry.

And Pastor Gerald's at the response was, Adam, I've always

loved you, and I've always believed in you. The reason

why I had you doing the work first job was

because I believed you had the most potential. And if

I could take a person who has the most potential

and I can give them the worst job and they

can obediently do it, then God will trust you with

where he wants to take you. And they said that

moment I learned, I thought they made an air asking

me to do what they did, but they knew exactly

what they were doing. And guess what that quitting took

me on a journey where God humbled me for years.

God put me in my place so hard. Many times

I thought I belonged. Many times I thought, oh, I'll

be a shoeing and I was overlooked. I was told, hey, no,

this isn't for you. I would try to go to

a new church and serve and they'd be like, no,

you've heard it before that. I was at a church

for two years and my job was to watch the

donuts and make sure no one stole them. That was

God taking me through a wilderness experience. That was God

sending me to Bethlehem. That was God saying, Adam, is

a little bit too much pride in you, a little

too much arrogance in you. You're not recognizing that I

gave you gifts. You think you earned these gifts. And

a lot of times transition and will be moments that

God is making us more humble. I don't look at

my wife and think, oh, she did the best marrying me.

She could get no one better. I slightly believe that,

but at the same time I also recognize how blessed

I am. I also recognize how blessed I am to be

a father and a husband. Why do I know that

because I don't deserve anything that I have. It's God's

grace that He allows us to have the things that

we have and to do the things that we do,

even on the toughest days, even on hard days, like

Mary and Joseph, even when you're on your way to Bethlehem,

God's creating movement in your life.

And what happens is when movement happens.

Here's the second point we'll do these fasts, is momentum

is created. Not only does God want you to get moving,

he also wants you to continue to move, not to stop.

Luke Chapter two, verse four to five says this, and

Joseph also went up to Galilee and from the town

of Nazareth to Judaeum to the city of David, which

is called Bethlehem because he was of the house and

lineage of David to be registered with Mary, his betrothed,

and who was with child. So what happens is is

in this moment, Caesar is the one who wants everyone

to go to their hometown. But there's a prophetic verse

in the Old Testament that says the Messiah will be

born in Bethlehem. And so even in a moment that

doesn't make sense, God is creating movement and momentum because

God is even using an unrighteous ruler named Caesar to

get Jesus to Bethlehem to fulfill a prophecy. And there

will be times and even in unrighteous motives, unrighteous people,

unrighteous places, that God will use that to get you

to somewhere that He's trying to get you to. And

this is what exemplifies is that God is sovereign over

all creation and all rulers. God doesn't just operate within

the confines of believers and his church. God also operates

in areas and corners that are dark, areas and corners

that are far from him. God is in those things,

and God is orchestrating moments that will bring him glory.

You think about moments that you and I were far

away from God. God use those moments to bring us

closer to him. God will use any moment to draw

people close to him. He uses Caesar to draw Jesus

to Bethlehem. Mary and Joseph are part of God's plan,

and there yes starts the transitional period, and you and

I we often come to church because we're in transitional

periods of our life. It's very common that people first

start to come to church because they're in tough transitions

in their life. Their experience a marital crisis, they're experiencing

a financial crisis, they're experiencing a parenting crisis, they're experiencing

a health crisis. And a lot of times that's where

we find ourselves first engaging God. So sometimes the first

we start saying, well, where is God. I'd love to

get to know him. I'd love to see what God

has to say AboutUs. Or you need a miracle, so

you think to yourself, I think the only person who

could provide.

It is God.

But it's often in those moments God is trying to

get something out of us, Just like with Mary and Joseph,

God is trying to show something.

He's trying to.

Allow people to see how good he is and how

great he is. There was a moment where, not too

long ago, I got to play golf with a group

of pastors. This pastor's golf outing first started by a

famous golfer named Arnold Palmer. I don't know if you've

ever heard of Arnold Palmer before, but he's one of

the world's most famous golfers in history. He golfed in

the fifties, sixties and seventies. Really when the television started

to become popular, that's when he became That's when he

was golfing, and so he was one of the first

televised golfers in the nation. So he grows to fame

very fast. He's also famous for the Arnold Palmer drink.

So the half iced tea and the half lemonade thing,

you know, and you just call it an Arnold Palmer.

That's where I like to go to Chick fil A

and I like to get the sweet tea.

And that I like to get to their lemonade.

My wife was she likes to do it because she

counts her calories. She gets the unsweet tea with the

diet lemonade.

That's terrible. Don't ever do that, Okay, if you're interested

in Arnold Palmer, just get it the caloric way.

Okay, just get the calories, get real lemonade and real tease,

the sweet kind and mix them together. You're gonna have

one of the greatest experiences of your life. Well, that's

who Arnold Palmer is. And so for about close to

forty years, probably more closer about twenty five thirty years,

while he was still live, him and two pastors would

host in his golf club in Orlando, Florida called Bay Hill.

He would host for two days.

A pastors gathering where he would golf with pastors and

he would tell stories about his professional golf career. And

one of the days, one of those pastors who hosts

it ask Arnold. Arnold, you're the most famous golfer in

all the world. You could host people and anyone would come.

You could host politicians and they would come. You could

host business people and they would come. There's all types

of people groups that you could host. To do this

for two days, why do you choose pastors? Why pastors?

And he told him a story. He said, Well, when

I was a boy, my father used to be over

a golf course. He was the golf manager and his

job was to, you know, when people came, he would

charge them the green fee. He would take their payment,

and he had a deal with the golf oigners that

he got a percentage of every green fee he's sold.

It was to incentivize, So he would never allow anyone

to play golf for free.

And so he was incentivized by it.

But the only people that he would ever let play

for free was always pastors. And he said, one day

I went to my dad and I said, Dad, why

do you let all these pastors play for free?

Doesn't make any sense.

Everyone you charge, but when a pastor comes from a

local church, you let him play for free. And his

dad answered Arnold Palmer, and he said, well, son, because pastors,

when you really get to know them, one of their

main jobs is to see people every day on their

worst days. People rarely go to a pastor when they're

having their best day. Most people go to a pastor

or even a Christian on their worst days.

Just think about it.

When you have a friend and they're going through something,

they're coming to you for prayer, not coming for a

high five. So oftentimes people are first going to God,

not just a pastor, because they're having the worst day

of their life. And so he said to him, son,

if I could give a pastor four hours of a

good day when the most of his day is going

to be helping people with their bad days, then I'm

just going to do that.

So when he said that, I thought, all that is powerful.

And as I think about it, yes, ninety percent of

the people that I encounter on a daily basis, whether

it be through my Instagram, DMS, my emails, or even

out in the foyer, it's mostly people sharing with me

their worst day. They're sharing with me a divorce, they're

sharing me with me a problematic child, They're sharing with

me a sickness or an illness. And a lot of

times we come into this room because it serves as

a place for us where we say, God, i'm having

a bad day.

I'm having a terrible day.

And while I thought to myself, yeah, that's true, a

lot of times we gather and we're here on our

worst days, and we go to our Christian brothers and sisters,

and we go to our pastors because we're having a

terrible day.

It doesn't stop there, and we should never let it

stop there.

Because for Mary and Joseph, they could have stopped their

journey at the fact that there was no space for

them to give birth, and they could have just said, well,

it's just a bad day, you know, We're just gonna

have to go off to the side of the road

and just figure this thing out.

But no, they kept knocking on.

Door after door after door after door until there was availability.

And so what happens is what I've realized is though

even though the church sees people on their worst days,

it's also our job to see people and prepare people

for their best days. That's the point of the church.

It's not just to walk alongside you on you or

worse days. It's to remind you that God has better

days and that God has a plan for your life,

and that God is moving in your life and he's

not forsaken you, and he's not walked away from you.

And you may feel like you're on a journey to Bethlehem.

You may feel like you're in an animal feeding area

and you're giving birth. You may feel like that Caesar

is after your head. But the reality is is God

has a plan and God has beauty on the other

side of it. And your yes to God's plan and

your obedience to God in your life means that.

You shouldn't quit.

And if you could look at Jesus's journey and transition

to birth, and the reality is we can look at

our own life and we can say God, if you

were moving in those moments, you can move in my moments.

And if Mary and Joseph didn't have a street paved

with gold to give birth to Jesus, then as a

person who's following Jesus, if my life reflects the journey

that Jesus walked and praised God that God would choose

me to carry my cross, then God, that God would

one refine me in a way that I needed to

be refined.

Here's the last point as we close. If we will

allow God.

To create movement in our transitional life, if we will

allow God to create momentum, then what often happens is

God will do a miracle in your life. God can

do the miraculous in your life. And God did a

miracle that day in Mary and Joseph's life when they

gave birth to Jesus.

It says this in Luke two six to seven.

And while they were there, the time came for her

to give birth, and she gave birth to their firstborn

son and wrapped him in swaddling cloth and laid him

in a manger because there was no place for them

in the end, so there was no place for them

on the inside of the house, and so they were

on the exterior side of the house where the animals

would go.

And this is the beauty about God's plan because.

We could easily look at this moment and be like, God,

was there some type of accident or mishap that happened here?

I mean, we know you're all powerful, we know you're

all knowing, But did you not know that the king

of this earth, the one who would redeem all of humanity? Like,

can Mary at least get like a cushion? Like like yeah,

I mean, can she get like maybe a fireplace? Like

can like a really wealthy Jewish person open up one

of their seven homes to them to not only give

birth to Jesus, but to raise Jesus. Can someone sponsor

an educational scholarship for Jesus? I mean, like, if this

is your plan, can like there'd be some perks. But

God knows exactly what he's doing. Here's how we know

God knows exactly what he's doing because according to the

Jewish religion, if you've sinned and you want to atone

for your sins, you have to murder an animal, a sinless,

spotless animal, and it was oftentimes a lamb, and you

had to take a lamb, and you had to put

the lamb on an altar. A priest would take it

to the altar and they would kill that animal and

they would say a prayer on behalf of your family.

Because what God was teaching people was if you sin

something in someone has to pay for your sin. If

you can't say oopsie, uh oh sorry, it's not like

my three year old and six year old they break

things holes, blah blah blah, and they just say sorry,

Dad didn't mean to. And you know, as a dad,

I want to get mad and sometimes, but most of

the time it's like, all right, man, just get it,

get out of my hair. And we think that's sin. No,

that's not sin. Sin requires sacrifice. And so in Jesus's day,

and according to the Jewish religion, when you sinned, you

had to sacrifice an animal because someone had to pay

for that sin. So here comes God in all of

his knowing and all of plan and here comes Mary

and Joseph.

Where God didn't give them the.

Play by play of how this would play out. All

he required of them was obedience and a yes. And

here's God. They're knocking on every door. No availability, no availability,

no availability, no space, no space. They knock on a

home and they say, well, there's no space on the

inside of the house, but you can have the spot

where the animals are. And so here's Mary who gives

birth where the animals are. To Jesus, who would be

the lamb of God who would be murdered on humanity's

behalf and his sins are not his sins, Our sins

would be placed on him.

And what would happen is he would be.

The perfect sacrifice where no other animal would ever have

to be murdered again, no animal would ever be have

to be killed again. Oh, here's God in his ultimate plan,

and he's saying, my son is going to replace all

the animals.

So what better way for him to.

Be born amongst the animals, because he is the perfect

sacrifice for humanity. So where it looks like a downgrade,

and it seems like a downgrade when it seems like

Mary and Joseph had quote unquote bad luck, when it

seems like no one was giving them favor or no

one was giving him opportunity, what it really was God.

Was saying, I'm doing something in this story.

And what he's saying is he's saying I'm proving a

point to humanity that the king doesn't have to be

born in a palacious palace. A king needs to be

born where sacrifice happens. A king needs to be born

where death happens. So not only should we look at

Jesus and say, oh, he's so humble and modest for

being born in a manger, which was an animal feeding

troth and placed in a manger, it's also the reality

say thank you God that you know what you're.

Doing more than we're doing.

Because if I gave you a piece of paper and

I said plan Jesus's birth, I guarantee you this, none

of us would have farm on that paper, not one

of us.

But it is on.

God's paper because God has meaning to everything. And if

God has meaning to even the point where Jesus was born,

and not only the point that Jesus was born, the

thing that held Jesus, which we're going to talk about

on Christmas Eve, the manger that held Jesus. If God

has point to the very bed that Jesus first slept on,

he's got point to your life, he's got point to

your transitions, and he's got point to the times that

you feel like God, are you in this journey? Are

you in this road with me? Believe it or not,

He's more involved than you would ever imagine. He's more

involved in your life than you would ever think. And

so if you're here today, as we close and we

leave here together, if you've never made Jesus Christ your

personal lord and savior, I encourage you to reflect from

moment that one day you and I will stand before

God and we will know God as someone who either

we gave our life to Christ, or we will know

God as somewhat of a stranger. And Jesus will look

at us according to his word, and he'll say, if

you follow him and you trust in his death and resurrection,

then when you and I stand before him, and he'll say,

well done, good and faithful servant. But if we reject

him on earth, he says that he will reject us

on heaven. All of us remember our first birthday. If

I asked everybody here in this room, what's your birthday?

Everybody?

Somebody may say nineteen sixty, this, nineteen seventy, that, nineteen

ninety two thousand, whatever it is, we all know our

first earthly birth. I've rarely met someone where I'm like, hey,

when's your birthday, and they go, I don't know. We

all know our birthday, and we all love people to

sing happy birthday to us, or we love presence or

whatever it may be. We love to do birthdays for

our children. But the reality is there's only one birthday

that God cares about in your life.

It's not your first birthday. It's your second birthday.

The Gospels talk about a moment that when you say

yes to Jesus, it creates.

A new birth.

It's called born again, where when you're born into this earth,

you're born into sin, you're born into distance with God.

But when you and I say yes to Jesus were

born again into right.

Relationship with God. And so one day when we go

to heaven, what.

Will be recorded in a book, according to Revelation called

the Lamb's Book of Life, will not be your first

earthly birthday. It'll be your second birth It'll be the

day that you committed your life.

To Jesus Christ.

And so, in the same way that we know our

first birthday, I encourage you in this place today you

should know your second birthday. You may not know the

exact day, you may not know the exact month or

even year, but you know, for me, I know it

was two thousand and seven. It was in December of

two thousand and seven. I don't remember the day. It

could have been the eleventh, could have been the twelfth,

could have been the ninth. But it was in December

of two thousand and seven that I gave my life

to Jesus Christ. I was born again. And one day

you will stand before God and it'll say yep. For me,

it'll say Adam December two thousand and seven, he was

born again. My question to you is do you have

your second birthday? Have you said yes to Jesus? Because

for you today it could be in December twenty twenty

four that you could have your second birthday, or maybe

you once had a birthday, second birthday, but you look

at your life and say, man, I'm not really been

following Jesus. I haven't been trusting God, I haven't been

walking with God. And so you're saying, today's the day

that I'm gonna I'm gonna really go all in, I'm

gonna sell out, and I'm gonna give my life to Christ.

I encourage you today, let's celebrate a birthday in your life. Today,

let's celebrate your second birthday, because when we celebrate it,

Heaven celebrates it.

So, if you're in this place, would you join me

right now.

Wherever you at the courtyard, cafe or in this room,

would you bow your head and close your eyes, because

some people are gonna commit to a second birth today,

and they're gonna say, this is the day that I

commit my life to Jesus Christ. The prayer is not

the thing it saves you because you can't for salvation.

You can't pray for it, you can't pay for it,

you definitely can't work for it. All you have to

do is respond to the goodness and mercy of God.

So when we pray right now, all we're doing is

affirming what the Holy Spirit is already doing. Would you

join me right now, all of us together, as some

people are going to mean this for the very first

time in their life, could we all say, Dear Lord Jesus,

in this moment, I confess my sins. I believe in

my heart that you died on the cross and you

rose three days later. From this day forward, I commit

my life to you, and I call upon your name

in Jesus' name.

Amen. Can we celebrate those that may have said that to.

The Hey, welcome to the family. We believe you are

brother and sister in Christ. Our church name Patria means family.

You become family, true family of God when you say

yes to Jesus and you become a son and daughter

of God. Encourage you that if you said that prayer today,

no matter where you're at. Up on the screen is

our website. If you'd like to know what next steps are.

We'd never want you to leave this place and say, yeah,

I said a prayer and I committed my life to Jesus,

but I don't know what to do next. Well, the

best way we can get this in your hands is

if you go to our website www. Dot Grow dot Faith.

We're going to get a book into your hands that

will help you. It's very short, you could read it

over one cup of coffee. But also our team is

going to be able to connect with you should you

need anything in this faith journey at all. At this time,

Pastor Nathan is going to come and get ready to

dismiss us. We can all stand on our feet right

now as we're about to leave together.

As I've shared before.

Please be praying for tonight in Alameda, that God moves

and the Holy Spirit dwells in that space and we

just can't wait to see you at next service. Pastor Nathan,

would you dismiss us?

Amen?

Can we give a hand again for all those that

accepted Christ for the very first time, the greatest, greatest miracle.

Talk about a Christmas miracle in your life.