Micah, Part 2 -- Judgement and Forgiveness

Merry Christmas, everybody. You guys are getting your coffee and you're having

fun and that's wonderful, but I'm just going to keep talking and eventually

you'll stop like that. Works every time. So predictable.

Oh, so good to see you guys. Glad that we're here today. We are going through the book of Micah.

So if you have a Bible, you can grab one in front of you. You can find Micah. Good luck.

It's in the Old Testament. I'll give you a hint, right? But you can get there.

You can find Micah. It's a short book.

Hey, before we talk about that, I want to talk about something else.

The last two weeks ago, I kind of let you know, I mean, we've been talking about

this intermittently for the last year, actually, maybe even a little bit more.

Just, okay. I'm going to give you some context. For those of you who don't know,

right? Because some of you don't know, whatever.

I-90 used to meet at another location over in Preston.

We have this building for a long time, but we didn't use it for a long time.

That was We merged with another church back in 2014.

And this building was such a godsend for us during COVID because we were meeting at a CrossFit gym.

And if you remember what happened to gyms during COVID, it was like,

well, you can't go into them anymore.

Or you just had to, I think it was like, the distancing was crazy and it wasn't gonna work for us.

And so this place was a refuge for us in the middle of that during a challenging season for this church.

I mean, so we moved here in COVID really just to regroup and figure things out.

And over the last year, year or more, we've been just praying a lot as the elder

team and just praying like, okay, where are we supposed to be?

Are we supposed to be here long-term? Are we supposed to be somewhere else?

And back in March at an elders retreat, we were praying and considering this

question and the elders felt like we should really start exploring the possibility of praying.

Being somewhere else. And there's a lot of reasons. And we'll talk about those

reasons increasingly over the next couple of months, because it's all kind of

tied up in this. But we've been exploring.

And we've recently, I talked about two weeks ago, we found a church,

a non-English speaking church, a Chinese speaking church that wants to purchase this building from us.

And so at this point, we are in a kind of a feasibility phase with that church.

And what that means is that there's no guarantees that that would proceed, right?

But they're doing their inspections and they're checking out this building to

see if it would work for them.

And so that's where we're at. I have a little timeline though,

because of course, this makes you wonder a lot of potential questions about

like, well, does that mean we have to move next month? And the answer is no, it wouldn't mean that.

So there's two questions. One just about timeline, right? Right now we've found this church.

They're interested. We're really thrilled that they're a gospel preaching church.

And so this building will continue to have a legacy of being a place where the gospel is preached.

Excited about that. But we're in this feasibility phase right now.

And if we make it through this phase and all the inspections and the church

wants to continue to proceed, then we'll move on to the actual contractual execution side of things.

I likened it to, we're sort of dating right now, but we might get married at one point, who knows?

Christmas time. It's so exciting. This romance is in the air.

So I'm pushing the analogy way too far. I apologize.

I feel awkward. You feel awkward. We all feel awkward. Let's acknowledge it. Move on.

So if we do get married, that'll happen like late January. But then what we

have is this. That doesn't mean at the end of January we would have to move.

We have negotiated a situation where we could rent this building back all the way to the end of April.

So because the question is, we're not going to cease to exist.

We're going to go find a new place to be.

We don't exactly know where that we have furnished several options and we continue

to have a collection of options that we're investigating.

And then as, of course, we get closer and as we can nail down the timeline,

we'll really start to talk through these in greater detail.

And so we have a long timeline. There's a lot of things to consider.

And we're still in this phase where there's uncertainty, right?

And I wish I could just give up here and say, this is going to happen then,

and this is going to happen then, and this is going to happen then,

but with real estate, who knows?

So I wanted to keep everybody apprised of that, and I'll keep talking about this.

And we'll talk about it a lot if it moves forward in January.

I mean, that probably is all that we'll talk about in January.

Just kind of the vision for why we think that this is important and why we think as a church,

we are called to position ourselves so that we can have the maximum impact in

our community for the gospel, because really this is the motivating factor behind that.

So we'll talk about that further. just want to make sure everybody is up to date on what's going on.

And yeah, I mean, there's still some ambiguity, but more than anything,

more than all of that, just beyond information, please pray, please pray.

We've been asking for prayer for this a long time. Just, just pray.

You know, this could just, this could all just fall apart. And then we have

a closed door and then we have to pray. Well, Lord, what does that mean?

You know, there's so many ifs and what could happen. So just please pray in

the middle of all of this.

Sound good? All right. Well, like I said, we're going to go to Micah now,

so you can go ahead and find the book of Micah.

It's towards the end of the Old Testament.

We are doing a short series through the book of Micah, and the reason that I

want to look at Micah, talked about it last week, is that, like many of the

prophets, Micah has a particular insight that is relevant for us here at Christmas.

Because Micah, along with many of the other prophets, sees into the future by

God's revelation, and he understands that something is coming.

He gives us several instances of messianic prophecy that he understands that

thousands of years from when he is at, hello, thousands of years from where

he is at, Jesus is going to be born.

And so he gives us insight into kind of like who Jesus is going to be,

what he's going to be like, what he's going to do, where he's going to be born.

Last week, we talked about how Micah heard from the Lord that there would be

born in Bethlehem. Who was born in Bethlehem? Do we know anyone?

Yeah, born in Bethlehem, a person who would come and be Israel's salvation.

We read about that. I've got it on a slide.

Micah 5.2, Bethlehem Ephrathah, you are a small among the clans of Judah,

and one will come from you that will be ruler over Israel for me,

and his origin is from antiquity, from ancient times.

So Micah foresees that someone is going to come, one who's going to be a ruler

over Israel on God's behalf. He's from ancient times, and he's going to be born in Bethlehem.

And as we looked at last week, Micah describes how this person will establish

Jerusalem and actually make it a place of peace.

And going into this vision that he has in the beginning of chapter four,

Micah just sees something that is so beautiful and so amazing.

He sees this picture of the nations being reconciled to God.

We read about it last week, but I'm going to read it to you again,

because I just love these verses.

What a beautiful picture of what Jesus is going to do.

Micah 4, 1-3 says, In the last days, the mountain of the Lord's house will be

established at the top of the mountains and will be raised above the hills and

people will stream to it.

And many nations will come and say, come, let us go up to the mountain of the

Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us about his ways

so that we may walk in his paths.

For instruction will go out of Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and he will

settle disputes among many peoples and provide arbitration for strong nations

that are far away and they will beat their swords into plows and their spears into pruning knives.

Nation will not take up sword against nation and they will never again train for war.

In the days that we live in, I find this vision of what Micah sees the Messiah

coming to accomplish to be so compelling and so beautiful,

because though we have a nation that has the privilege of a lot of peace,

we live in a world where war is just so normal and so common.

These are wild days of upheaval.

But what Micah sees in his day, which was also a time of great upheaval,

of great wars, of lots of threats for his people in his moment in time,

what Micah sees is that ultimately God God is going to do something in the Messiah,

in Jesus Christ. He's going to bring about peace.

Through Christ, all things are finally going to be set right.

And this warring, sin-struck world that we live in will have peace.

And it will be restored and it will be made new.

See, at Christmastime, we remember these really awesome parts of the Christmas

story that Jesus was born a child, that God came down. He took on flesh.

God himself left heaven for our sake, decided to subject himself to all the

vulnerability and weakness that comes along with being human.

He took on flesh. He took on a human nature along with his divine nature.

And we reflect on the fact that the infinite God came as a tiny baby.

And we remember that he would grow up and he would die on a cross to save us from sin.

But we oftentimes forget, like, and as beautiful as that is, right?

And as beautiful and wonderful as what we celebrate at Christmas is,

we oftentimes forget that he's not done yet.

The things that were foretold that he would do. There's still more to come.

Yes, he saves us from sin individually as we trust in him, as we repent, as we follow after him.

Man, we have a life in him, but God has a plan for all the nations.

He has a plan for this whole world, which will finally be established.

He's not done yet.

Jesus will renew all things. He is saving people.

He's bringing new life, but he is going to renew the entire earth.

Christians believe a giant story.

At Christmas, we celebrate the beautiful, small giving of the gift of this person,

God himself in the flesh, and that's awesome.

And we understand that it has such personal meaning to us because we're forgiven

of sin and how beautiful is that?

But we have to really understand that we are in the middle of a story that is

yet unfolding and it will become even more beautiful as God restores all things.

So we're celebrating at Christmas what he's done in sending his son,

the work of salvation effected through the work on the cross.

Thank you, God, for being a sacrifice for us. We celebrate all those things,

and yet we also anticipate and look forward to the things he will yet do.

This ultimate vision of peace that Micah has, that is yet to come.

When Jesus comes back, he will judge the nations, and then he will establish

peace, and there will be peace on earth, goodwill toward men.

These things that Isaiah talked about with such fervor and excitement,

They're coming and we hope in those things.

I mean, in Revelation, at the very end of Revelation, a John who is writing

the book of Revelation, he's another prophet.

He hears from God and God gives him a picture, a foretaste of what this new

heaven and new earth are gonna look like.

It says this, he says, then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first

heaven and the first earth passed away and the sea was no more.

I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven,

prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.

And then I heard a loud voice from the throne.

Look, God's dwelling is with humanity and he will live with them and they will

be his people and God himself will be with them and will be their God.

And he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more.

Grief, crying, and pain will be no more because the previous things have passed

away then the one seated on the throne said look, I am making everything new.

And he also said, right, because these words are faithful and true.

And then he said to me, it is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega,

the beginning and the end.

And I will freely give to the thirsty from the spring of the water of life.

Micah sees a long ways off what God is going to do.

John sees how things are ultimately trending towards this renewal in Jesus Christ.

And it's not the kind of situation where we live in now, right?

When this, there's a phrase that theologians throw around this, already not yet.

We have so much renewal and peace and joy as we follow Jesus.

We step into the kingdom.

We trust him with our lives and we have the assurance that he's forgiven us,

that he loves us, that he watches over us.

And yet still we are subject to sin.

Yet still we are subject to injustice and pain and grief.

One day when Jesus comes again,

one day when he makes the whole earth new, there will be no more crying,

there'll be no pain, there'll be no more grief, because Jesus will come and

he will make all things new.

Now, maybe you took up my challenge last week. I had encouraged you to go back

and read some of the book of Micah.

Maybe you spent some time reading Micah this week. I hope you did.

And maybe you were excited to see, as I am, how Micah paints such a vivid and

beautiful picture of what Jesus is going to do to bring peace and renewal into the world.

But maybe if you're a careful reader, you also read some of the parts of Micah

and you thought to yourself, well, that doesn't seem very peaceful.

Because if you get in there and you look at the things that he's talking about,

there's some things that are a little gruesome.

Like if we just keep reading in chapter four, right? Chapter four begins with

that vision of God making peace at Jerusalem.

But if we keep reading in chapter four, Micah depicts this time of peace,

right? And then he goes on and he says this.

He says this. This is Micah 4, 9.

Now, why are you shouting loudly? Is there no king with you?

Has your counselor perished so that anguish grips you like a woman in labor?

Writhe and cry out, daughter Zion, like a woman in labor. for now you will leave

the city and camp in the open fields. You will go to Babylon and there you will

be rescued and there the Lord will redeem you from the grasp of your enemies.

Many nations have now assembled against you. They say, let her be defiled.

Let us feast our eyes on Zion.

But they do not know the Lord's intention or understand his plan.

And he has gathered them like sheaves to the threshing floor.

Rise and thresh, daughter of Zion, for I will make your horns iron and your

hooves bronze so that you can crush many people and then you will set apart

plunder for the Lord, their wealth for the Lord of the whole earth.

Man, the Bible is weird.

I love that it's such a weird book. It defies expectation in every way.

And even within a single book, right, there seems to be these contradictions that are lifted up.

On one moment, Micah sees a vision of peace, of renewal, of a peacemaking God.

And in another moment, he depicts this.

They don't know the Lord's intentions or understand his plan.

He's gathered them like sheaths of the threshing floor. And then he depicts

his children, Zion, his people to be like, like they have bronze hooves and iron horns, right?

That's pretty scary. That's pretty scary.

See, God tells Micah, God does these two things, right? And they feel contradictory.

Just like contextually, what God is doing is he's telling Micah,

he says, he's telling Micah to the people through Micah that you're going to

be kicked out of your city and you're going to be carried away to Babylon,

really as a punishment for all your sin, which up to this point in chapters

one through three has just been a litany of the many sins of Israel.

Their failings, the leadership's failings, their selfishness,

their own like unfaithfulness time after time after time where God has been

exposing this stuff and asking them to repent, but they won't repent.

And so finally, Micah gets this vision of what's gonna happen.

Yes, kicked out of their city, kicked out of Jerusalem, carried away to Babylon.

But then God also says that he's doing this for a reason and it's to gather

your enemies onto the threshing floor.

So yeah, that doesn't really seem consistent with this mission of peacemaking.

So what do we do with that?

Look, this is honestly like a good little help for us in thinking about reading prophets in general.

If you spent some time in the Old Testament prophets, there is a challenge of

reading biblical prophecy and the challenge is It's the question of time.

How do we order things? How do we understand what comes first?

How do we make sense of what God is doing?

Question of time complicates this.

Unlike when I read a narrative, like Bible has lots of types of literature.

You didn't know you were coming to a literature class, right?

Bible has lots of types of literature. It has narratives. It has epistles.

It has a very kind of clear stuff that's trying to focus on chronology,

that's trying to focus on logic, but the prophets aren't really doing that same thing.

The prophets weren't really into precision when it comes to time.

And what we find is that the prophets, like they heard from God and they would

reveal things that were going to come to happen, but God doesn't seem to give

them clear indicators about the timing.

This image was helpful for me as I was first learning a little bit about biblical prophets.

The prophets were like people who could see a far-off mountain range.

I think I have a very great depiction of that.

I spent a lot of time on that one, guys.

The prophets are standing in their moment of time. God is revealing to them

a vision of what life is going to be like, and they see a far-off mountain range.

What Micah sees in chapter 4 is this giant, towering,

beautiful, last days moment when God is going to finally bring peace to the

world and resolve all things and renew all things. He sees the furthest mountain.

In the same book, only a couple of verses later, Micah also sees a nearer mountain range.

He knows that God is ultimately going to bring total peace.

Yes, he sees that far off mountain range, but he sees that before then,

God will be defending his people from their attackers, and he will strengthen

them and allow them to defeat their enemies.

I have another slide there, right?

Does this make sense? You ever see a mountain range like this?

Here, let me give you something that's a little more clear for you.

I have one more picture here.

Oh gosh, it's not, you can't really see it. Up in the left-hand corner of that

picture is a famous mountain. You guys know which one?

That's Mount Rainier, yeah. This is taken from the Olympic Peninsula in the

Olympic mountain range, right?

So in the foreground, we see very large and in charge, the Olympic mountains.

And in the background, far off, we see the vastly larger mountain,

but it looks so much smaller.

And if you didn't have an awareness of the geography, I know you all do because

you've hiked them mountains.

If you didn't have an awareness of that geography, you might say,

well, I don't know, that mountain back there is anywhere between 10 and 200 miles away.

You wouldn't be able to tell from where you were standing how far those things are off.

And so it is with Micah. He doesn't know.

He sees things. He sees a nearer mountain range, this immediate thing that God

is going to do to protect his people, to punish his people for their sin,

and then protect them and reestablish them.

But then he also sees this bigger thing, this further thing,

this towering plan of God to bring about ultimate peace and justice in the world.

And that's how it is with a lot of prophecy. This actually is really a helpful image.

I hope you carry that away when you go back and start to read all the Old Testament

prophets, which I'm sure you'll be doing very soon.

See, Micah has the ultimate plan of God to bring peace.

He understands that, but he also sees the nearer thing that God is going to do.

Micah sees that God is going to do something in the short term.

And he says it right here. He says, you will leave the city and the camp and camp in the open fields.

You'll go to Babylon, but there you will be rescued.

Because again, up to this point, Micah has been talking to these people.

He's been trying to reason with God's people, telling them to repent of their sin.

Over his lifetime, over his whole career as a prophet, he's been doing this.

He's continually talking, calling the people back to be faithful to God.

But over his lifetime, things have just gotten worse and worse and worse in Israel.

They continue to worship idols. They

oppress the poor. They don't have any respect for God or his covenant.

And they become just a violent, evil people, particularly in the north.

And Micah sees, he's been warning, but he sees that they're going to be judged.

At some point in his life, he sees, I mean, God is going to do this work.

He's going to make you camp in the fields. Babylon is going to come here.

But eventually you're going to be rescued. I mean, he warns them, right?

Yeah, that's the one. Thank you. He warns them, both the northern and the southern kingdom.

We talked about the divided nation last week. I'm not going to talk about that again.

But there are two capital cities in Israel, the northern and the southern kingdom.

In Micah 1.6, he warns the Northern Kingdom, whose capital is Samaria.

He says, I will make Samaria a heap of ruins in the countryside,

planting area for the vineyard, and I will roll her stones into the valley and

expose her foundations. He's warning the people, God, unless you repent,

unless you turn back to the Lord, this is what's gonna happen.

God doesn't wanna do this. You can avoid this, and yet here we are,

and this is what happens.

And again, he warns the Southern Kingdom, Judah, Jerusalem. He says,

before you, Zion will be plowed like a field.

Jerusalem will become ruins and the temple, the temple's mountain will be a high thicket.

He's been warning and warning Israel over and over again that unless they repent,

unless they turn back, there's going to be destruction. And that's exactly what happens.

If we look at the documented history of what goes on in Israel and in the ancient

Near East at the time, we see that in the year 722, the Assyrians invade the

northern kingdom, Samaria.

They destroy Samaria entirely. They flatten it. They carry all the people away.

They resettle them in the Samarian Empire. all throughout Mesopotamia.

And then we also see that a little more than a hundred years later,

in 586 BC, Jerusalem is destroyed by Babylon.

Babylon comes in, destroys the cities, totally, totally flattens it.

I mean, they do not leave one stone upon another.

All the walls are destroyed. The temple is destroyed. They loot everything.

They take everything and they carry off the people into captivity,

just like Micah warned them would happen.

Israel reaps the fruit of their sin and rebellion because after generations

of warning against wickedness and pleading for their repentance,

things finally catch up. And why is that?

It's because though God wants to make peace, he's not indifferent to sin.

He doesn't just sit and look at the injustice. He doesn't just sit and look

at us and just say, oh, you know, everything's just fine.

I'll just act like this isn't happening. Like he cares about his people and

he actually cares about their hearts.

He actually knows that it is bad for me and for you, for all of us collectively.

It is bad for us to simply go our own way and to pursue our own selfishness

and chase after our own desires.

And so God is not indifferent to sin.

Just to finish out the history lesson, we should know that God is not indifferent to his people's sins.

He's also not indifferent to the sins of Assyria and Babylon.

He recognizes that those wicked nations will be judged as well.

And that is exactly what happens.

That whole gathering together grain to be thresh, that's what happens.

After Assyria invades Samaria in 722, about 90 years later, Assyria is totally destroyed by Babylon.

Nineveh is invaded in 612. And then in 605, there's this giant battle with Egypt

and Assyria trying to conquer Babylon, and they're both totally decimated, totally destroyed.

And the Babylonians then become ascendant. They invade Jerusalem.

But like 47 years later, in 539, Babylon is totally destroyed by Persia.

Nations rise, nations fall. God judges his people when they sin,

but he also judges wicked nations.

And honestly, I just want to stop for a moment there because we have this idea

where we like to think of God's mercy and his grace and he telegraphs that so

wildly on the cross and we'll talk about that in a minute.

God is a merciful, kind God but do you really want a God who doesn't care about wickedness?

Do you really think it would be just and good that God who controls everything

just lets nations ransack and war and pillage and destroy other nations?

I know that we should and ought to care about God's mercy and his justice and his kindness. And we do.

And there's so much focus on

that here. But we also have to understand God is not indifferent to sin.

He's not indifferent to evil.

I mean, look at just this. What was it? Yesterday. Yesterday.

Bashar al-Assad, you know, his father was the dictator of Syria before him.

And for so long, I mean, he squashed the civil war about 10 years ago and just

has been repressing his people, stealing all their stuff.

And then just the thread was pulled in a week, right?

And now Syria has been taken over by people who are, I'm not sure that much

better, frankly. I don't know.

But judgment came to that man.

Because God is not indifferent to poor, hurting, broken people.

God actually super intends history and he doesn't do it maybe the way we'd like it.

And maybe in the timing, like it's a little bit of a struggle,

but God is at work in the world. We're assured over and over again and God cares

about sin and he will judge.

Yes, Micah sees this far off goal and this thing that is coming where there

will be peace, but he also sees that in the short term, God will judge sin until

God finally brings about this great reconciliation.

God is not going to leave his people alone. He's not going to be indifferent to their sin.

He's not going to be indifferent to the sins of wicked nations.

God cares about this stuff.

Okay, so all that understood. We've been talking about an Old Testament prophet,

but not to be too self-focused or too selfish for us.

What does that have to do with us, right? That's the question.

That's the question that we need to ask.

So you and I, we find ourselves in this indeterminate distance between the first

mountains that Micah saw, that there was going to be judgment on Israel,

Babylon was going to come in, destroy everything, carry them away,

but then they would come back.

That all happened, and yet what Micah saw, this ultimate vision of peace and

renewal in the entire world, that has yet to happen. And we live now in the

messy middle. We live in the messy middle.

I don't like that. We live in the messy middle in between these two things.

And honestly, it's messy in the messy middle. It feels uncertain in the messy middle.

We long for God to really come and set things right. We long for his justice.

We long for him to set the world and renew the world.

How beautiful will it be? We hope for that. But we also know he is not indifferent to sin.

He's not indifferent even to our own sin. He's a God who cares.

So where does that leave us?

It leaves us longing for peace, hoping for this ultimate restoration of all

things, and yet having to sit in this already not yet.

And yet there's something so important. It's not like we're just wondering,

will God care? Will God look after us?

Will God bring it about? We are told over and over and over again that we have

good news and we can actually have assurance because God has not left us to

just wander and grope about anymore, to just hope for peace.

But who knows if it's going to happen? We've been given assurance.

I think Micah knew this. He said this at the end of his book,

Micah 7, 18, it says this about God.

Who is like you, God, forgiving iniquity and passing over rebellion for the

remnant of his inheritance?

He does not hold on to anger forever because he delights in faithful love.

And he will again have compassion on us and he will vanquish our iniquities.

And you will cast all of our sins into the depths of the see.

See, we have a God who cares about justice. He cares about sin. Sin is consequential.

Sin is breaking the world. It is alienating people from him.

And yet we also have a God who intends to bring about peace and reconciliation.

And the cross of Jesus Christ, the fact that Jesus Christ came down,

was born in a manger in this little cute little baby, as a cute little baby, and grew up into a man.

He lived a sinless life, and he functions as he is an offering for sin.

That takes away our guilt and our shame and the penalty and the punishment for

sin that we are due because every single one of us is a sinner.

I am, you are.

But what Jesus Christ tells us is that he knows how to be both gracious and

forgiving and just to sinful people.

On the cross, Jesus is saying, yes, I will make peace. And in fact,

I will do all that is required to maintain my justice and also establish peace in the world.

Because God is both, he cares about justice, he is holy, and yet he is also forgiving.

He's faithful. He's compassionate. And he deals with our iniquities.

He deals with our failings.

He casts our sin into the depths of the sea.

Romans 5, 8 says, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

While we were rebellious people, whether we were rebellious like Israel or whether

we were rebellious like the Babylonians, who knows?

I don't know your story. But what I do know is this, is that God can deal with

sin, sin of just like religious fakeness, like Israel, right?

And sin of just total rebellion.

God's offer of salvation and peacemaking in Jesus Christ is for all kinds of people.

People who show up at church, who live pretty clean lives and yet have no love

for the Lord. They just know how to put up a front.

And people who are just living it up, don't care about God at all.

The offer of grace and mercy is for all people.

And God is going to great lengths to make peace right now by his offer of forgiveness in Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 5 says this, Paul's talking about how God is doing this great

work of peacemaking in the midst of a sinful world.

Says this, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.

Yeah, God's remaking the whole world. He's recreating all things.

He's reestablishing the nations. He's bringing about peace.

But right now, before all that happens, there's an offer of renewal for us as

individuals. If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.

The old has passed away and see the new has come.

Everything is from God who's reconciled us to himself through Christ and has

given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ,

God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.

And he has committed the message of reconciliation to us.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us.

And we plead on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.

He made the one who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God.

God is concerned about justice. He's also concerned about peace.

Jesus Christ is the one who can do both those things for us simultaneously.

He takes the penalty for our sin. He bears it on our behalf. Our debt is paid.

We're set free. But justice is not avoided. it.

Worship team is going to come up here as we just kind of close out here.

There's a pastor who he talks about grace and he always says this little phrase

and I love it. He says, God loves you on your worst day.

Can you think about your worst day? What was the worst day you ever had?

The day where you felt the most shame.

Because truth be told is that unless you've done something with that,

you're probably still haunted by that day.

The day you did the worst thing, the thing you're most ashamed of.

That's the nature of sin.

Look, I've done some things that I'm not proud of, right?

Things that I wouldn't talk about, things that I don't want to think about. And of course.

Pain of those things hasn't gone away. I've done some things and it's hurt people,

right? And you've done some things and you've hurt people.

There's consequence to our sin.

But what Jesus tells us is this, on your worst day, I love you to the point

where I will make you new and I will pay the price for that.

All that sin and all that brokenness that you absolutely did,

I will pay the price for that thing.

I'll bear the burden of it. And I will not cheat justice, but I will bring about

justice in the fullness of time.

Because God is bringing peace in a big, huge way for the whole world.

And yet right now he's reconciling people to himself.

And so we like sit here and we think about Christmas and it's cute and it's

cozy and it's delicious.

So many great things about Christmas. The best part is that God has sent his

son to take away sin, to bring forward his plan to bring about peace. And that is on offer.

It's on offer for us, everyone here right now.

And by the way, we are sent as ministers, as ambassadors of that offer,

that reconciliation to people in the whole world.

Your friends and your neighbors don't know. Your friends and your neighbors

don't know that God loves them on their worst day and that they can be free of the burden of guilt.

Friends don't know that there's something they can do with that,

that they can come before a God who will truly do everything.

Everything is from God. This new life, this peace, this restoration,

this reconciliation, it's all from God.

You did the worst. You did such a bad job.

You've done a terrible job of living your own life. Me too. We all have.

And yet God in grace is saying, I'm going to renew you.

And we are sent out as people who have that on offer, not on our own authority, but on God's.

And so that's what I want to say. Number one, I just want to remind us that that offer is for us.

And if we need that, if you need a reminder of that, or if you've never known

that, like truly, really and truly, you can lay your burden.

You can lay your sin before God.

He will take care of it. He has made peace. If only you would trust that.

If only you would just say, yes, Lord, I want that peace. It's yours.

And then also just to remind you, man, your life is not your own.

Your life is not your own. If you've experienced this, your life is no longer your own.

Now your life is in Christ and you are somebody who has had a glimpse,

like Micah had a glimpse of this giant, beautiful, wonderful plan.

And so don't go around this Christmas and just like shy away from talking to people about Jesus.

People are good with talking about Jesus right now.

I mean, this team went out in Snoqualmie and my wife went and she was like, just amazed.

They handed out hot chocolate and to those who wanted Christmas invites.

And like so many people were like, oh, great. I would love that.

Tis the season after all, right? And you think you, we have this idea.

Oh, I'm going to talk to people at Jesus. And they're going to be like, oh, you're weird.

And actually, no, they would just love, they would love an invite.

They would love someone to care about them.

Love to hear that there is a God who's created the whole world,

who cares about them, who sees them, who is forgiving.

He's just, and he has a plan for their lives. If only we would be so bold as

to do something as simple as being willing to talk to people about Jesus.

So I just want to encourage you guys in that. As we go out today,

would you just hear that for yourselves, like hear that gospel for yourselves,

that you can be forgiven, but also just be sent out.

Would you remind yourself that you have good news?

It's good news that deals with both justice and sin, with grace and peace.

God is bringing all things together in Jesus Christ, and it's so much bigger

and so much better than we make it out to be.

And so, Lord God, we just come before you, And God, we think about the prophets

and what do they do? They had a relationship with you.

They sought you and they listened to you. And so God, we just wanna humble ourselves

right now and we wanna listen to you.

Lord God, we want to just not account our lives as our own. We don't wanna be selfish.

We don't wanna hoard what we have, our influence and our comfort and just like make it about us.

But we realize that we're being adopted it into a big story that you're bringing

about, and it is still unfolding, and we have a part to play in it.

God, would you get us excited about what you're doing and what part we have

to play as ambassadors of that reconciliation, as people who are going on calling

people to new life in Jesus?

Lord, as people who are called to live in the joy of salvation,

God, would you restore us and renew us and get us excited this Christmas about

all that you've done and all that you are doing.

And God, give us hearts that break for other people.

Music.

When I think about our, we're here, we have family, we have friends,

we have neighbors, we have co-workers.

And God, so many times we care about our friends, but Lord, are we willing to,

to care about them with your care, with your word. Lord, would you embolden us to do that?

Send us out, we pray.

Music.