Micah, Part 1 -- Micah's Global Vision

Glad to have you guys here. Oh, man. And hello to everyone online.

I know people are still traveling for Thanksgiving, so that happens.

But it's good to be here. Okay, so you may have noticed by our awesome decorations

that it's Christmas season.

Thank you to everybody who showed up on Monday last and got everything ready.

And I really think it's really beautiful.

And it's going to make the Christmas season all the cheerier, all the more exciting.

Speaking of Christmas season, we are starting a short series in the book of Micah.

And if you actually remember last year around this time, right leading up into

Christmas, you might be thinking, what does an Old Testament prophet have to do with Christmas?

It has a lot to do with Christmas. Last year, we did the book of Malachi,

looking towards Christmas.

And Micah is, for those of you who are not familiar here, it's a book.

It's written by an Old Testament prophet, a short book in the Old Testament.

And it's in a part of the Old Testament that we call the minor prophets.

So there's two prophetic sections of scripture in the Old Testament.

There's the major prophets and the minor prophets.

And the minor prophets weren't like less important. They just wrote shorter books.

That's why they're minor, right? If you read like Isaiah and Ezekiel and Jeremiah,

the major prophets, they're like, you have to be really devoted,

but you can get through Micah in a couple of weeks.

So that's what we're planning on doing today.

So they're not minor because they're important, because they're unimportant.

They're just minor because they were shorter. But what we're going to find about

the minor prophets and the major prophets, really prophets in general,

is that they're super important for us to consider and especially appropriate

as we prepare ourselves for Christmas.

Christmas is coming up in a few weeks, and they're appropriate because the prophets

foretold the birth of Jesus Christ.

If we read the Gospels talking about Jesus' birth and his ministry,

over and over again, there's this resounding thing that Jesus did all these

things as foretold by the prophets.

There's a strong sense that Jesus didn't come out of nowhere.

He wasn't out of left field.

Actually, he and his ministry as the Messiah, he was anticipated in the Old Testament.

And the prophets will help us, getting into the prophets will help us kind of celebrate Christmas.

And they'll help us particularly because they will help us to see Christmas in a new light.

In a new light. They'll help us to see Christmas and pay attention to the bigger

vision for what God was up to in sending his son.

Because, you know, I love the vibes around Christmas,

which are you know cute the baby in the manger and

we got some wise men we got the donkeys and you know

we have this whole aesthetic around christmas that

feels cozy and and nice and

like it's awesome we see this little baby born into

weakness and he's vulnerable but like and and i'm not saying that's bad i really

am not i'm not trying to i had a friend who used to say i'm not trying to yuck

your yum okay so if that is like that is yum to you don't i'm not not trying

to bash that in any way whatsoever,

But it can be easy, oh, I wrote this down. I'm embarrassed to say this.

It could be easy to miss the forest for the Christmas tree.

Oh, so bad. I was so proud when I did it, and then I said it was so bad.

The prophets remind us that Jesus is the fulfillment of God's promise and that

he's going to do remarkable things through Jesus Christ.

Things that are not only, and I think the way we normally think about Christmas,

we think about Christmas is, oh, Jesus is born.

And that's like personally relevant to me because he's my savior.

And yes, and that's beautiful and true.

But the prophets had a much more expansive, a global and cosmic vision of what

God was doing in sending his son.

He was a deliverer and a savior, not just of individuals, but of the whole world.

Not just the world made up of you as people, but nations and this earth being renewed.

The prophets considered what God was going to be doing in sending his son,

and they were like, oh my gosh, you're going to have to be a mind blown by having a huge one to do.

There's a global and cosmically significant thing coming as Jesus Christ has

come, and his mission, which is ongoing to be a savior and a deliverer and a

messiah, is still unfolding.

And we have not even seen or glimpsed the magnitude of what is yet to come.

When Jesus Christ comes again, we're going to see all of his fullness and all

of his beauty, and he will just do some radical and beautiful and awesome things eternally.

And so as we get ready to jump in, let's think about the prophet Micah for a second, right?

Because when we're studying scripture, particularly when we're studying the

Old Testament, We have to understand that there's a lot of distance between us and the text.

And so in order to understand and interpret the scriptures well,

we need to understand the context, the person who wrote them,

the context in which they wrote them. And so let's do that.

Let's think about that as we jive here into the Old Testament here.

So if we want to learn a little bit about Micah, we can just look at the beginning

because there's a little introduction in Micah 1.1, introducing us to who Micah

is, when he was alive and where he was prophesying from.

So Micah 1.1 says this The word of the Lord came to Micah the Moreshite And

what he saw regarding Samaria and Jerusalem In the days of Jotham,

Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah So that's very clear.

No, it's not. So the first thing that we can know from this little introduction

is a little bit about Micah.

Micah was from a small town south of Jerusalem. He was a Moreshite,

which means he was from the town of Moresheth Gath, about 20 miles southwest of Jerusalem.

And he was in a rural place, which is kind of significant. It's significant

because it means that he was an outsider to the centers of wealth and power, Jerusalem and Samaria.

He was not a part of those places, and yet he prophesied towards those places.

He saw things regarding Samaria and Jerusalem.

He was an outsider to these capital cities of Israel.

David Pryor, a commentator, says about Micah that he had a simple heart of a countryman.

He was not lured away by the glittering facade of the new culture,

the fine houses, advanced fashions, the get-rich-quick businesses.

He kept a firm grip on the moral realities that make for true national greatness.

Micah has therefore been called the conscience of Israel.

So Micah, he was an outsider, and as an outsider, he preserved his ability to

look at Israel and not get caught up in the culture and the myth of Israel that

had been replacing the true story that God was bringing about.

So he realized that these people were getting caught up in their wealth and

their power and their self-preservation and their own kind of press that they

were creating for themselves. But he was an outsider.

He didn't get into that stuff.

If you spend some time reading through the first three chapters of Micah,

which I'm going to highlight a few things in those, but we're going to kind

of pick up going into it in chapter four.

But if you spend some time reading the first three chapters of Micah,

and I encourage you to do that when you go home, you'll see that Micah is bringing

an accusation against his own people.

And there's serious things. He says in Micah 1, 2, it says, listen,

all you peoples, pay attention, earth and everyone in it.

The Lord God will be a witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple.

Look, the Lord is leaving his place and coming down to trample on the heights of the earth.

The mountains will melt beneath him and the valleys will split apart like wax

near a fire, like water cascading down the mountainside.

All of this will happen because of Jacob's rebellion and the sins of the house of Israel.

What is the rebellion of Jacob? Isn't it Samaria? And what is the high places

of Judea? Isn't it Jerusalem?

So Micah is looking as an outsider to his own people, and he has some stern

words to say towards them.

There's something really surprising about Israel's prophets.

Like if you ever go back and spend some time in the major and minor prophets.

It's really surprising because sometimes they're speaking God's words to other

nations and other people.

They're talking about things that are going to happen to Israel's enemy,

but more often than not, their target is internal to Israel, which is really unique.

If you go back and you kind of look at ancient Near Eastern archaeology and

the remainders of Babylonian and Assyrian and Egyptian religion,

because we have a lot of archaeological evidence,

their prophets were always prophesying against their enemies.

And we don't have any really records of their prophets targeting internally.

And yet Israel's prophets were more often than not saying, you guys are being a bunch a doofus.

And God is going to be really, really upset.

Because in this introduction here, Micah declares that to all the nations, right?

It's a broad, total, total expansive world.

The judgment is coming. He's declaring it to all nations. But he says,

he says, the Lord is going to leave his place. He's going to come down.

He's going to trample the heights of the earth.

This is serious stuff. God is showing up and he's doing God's stuff.

He's judging things. But why is God going to do that? At least according to this text.

According to Micah, it's not because of all the wickedness of Assyria and Babylon

and Egypt and all these other surrounding nations.

According to Micah, it's because God's people have failed.

Don't get me wrong. I mean, Israel is surrounded by truly wicked empires and nations.

Not just people who are idol worshipers, but who are violent and cruel and oppressive.

Who are just the worst sorts of people, but God is not coming down and Micah

is not proclaiming that judgment is going to come because of those people.

According to Micah, God is going to come up and punish the rebellion and sins

of Samaria and Jerusalem, his own people.

Own people. God is showing up because his own people are in rebellion.

And that is, again, particularly unique when we consider what was typical in

ancient Uriah's religion.

Now, I want to clarify, there were plenty of false prophets in Israel who would

just say, oh, everything's going to be great. We're going to be fine.

God's really happy with us right now in the midst of all of this, right?

But the records that we have, the prophets that we remember,

the prophets that Israel says, we need to not forget about this.

This is part of our story.

Are these prophets like Micah who were calling out the sins of the people?

Look at Micah 3, 5 through 8. It says this,

this is what the Lord says concerning the prophets who lead people astray,

who proclaim peace when they have food to sink their teeth into,

but declare war against the one who puts nothing in their mouth.

Therefore, it will be night for you without visions. It will grow dark for you without divination.

The sun will set on these prophets and the daylight will turn black over them.

Then the seers will be ashamed and the diviners disappointed and they will all

cover their mouths because there will be no answer from God.

As for me, however, I am filled with the power of the spirit of the Lord with

justice and courage to proclaim to Jacob his rebellion and Israel his sin.

There were false prophets all over Israel, but Micah, who we remember,

who is lifted up and passed off and made a part of the canon,

Israel's story, he says, no, look at all this falseness, God sees through it.

You have people who are just trying to curry favor, trying to just stay in the

favors of leaders, right?

Micah, the true prophet, the one who's filled with the power of the spirit,

he has justice and courage, and he is proclaiming that Jacob and Israel is in rebellion.

See, Micah understood, and the prophets understood, and Jesus understands that

when God's people fail to live up to their calling, it actually matters.

It's consequential. We're called to purity and to worship the Lord with a pure heart.

It really matters. See, they understood. Israel understood themselves to be

in a relationship with God that required purity and sincerity and genuine response,

worshiping them with their whole heart, loving God with all their heart.

They understood this was part of their calling.

But over and over again, we see that Israel gets caught up with its own stuff,

with its own power, with its own image, with its own plan.

And Micah comes along as an outsider and he says, Look at, it's easy to do all

this stuff, but we have to be honest about what this is. This is unfaithfulness to the Lord.

Micah comes as an outsider and he says, it really matters that we return to

God and we do things in his way.

Second thing to know about Micah, and I just point this out because it's relevant

to the times that we live in, is that he lived in politically fraught times.

I mean, if you look at ancient Near Eastern history,

where Israel sits, you know, where modern day Israel is today,

it is surrounded by several large empires, the Babylonian,

Assyrian, the Egyptian empires, and then a few other minor powers who are just

like kind of playing ping pong with Israel.

Just they get bopped back and forth, invaded in different times,

oppressed in different times.

And so there's this strong sense in Israel's history of they're being threatened.

And that threat from outside, the political threats in their day are really

causing a lot of division and strife and anxiety.

At this point in Israel's history, Israel, which was unified under King David,

made one nation, well, Saul and David, and stayed unified through Solomon's reign.

But after Solomon's death in 931 BC, Israel fell into civil war.

And at the time that Mike is prophesying, Israel has been divided into two separate

kingdoms for like 200 years.

And they really don't like each other. The Northern Kingdom and the Southern

Kingdom do not get along.

Judah was in the south. Its capital city is Jerusalem.

And the northern kingdom, which is sometimes called Israel, and Micah oftentimes

calls it Jacob when he's referring to Jacob, he's talking about the northern kingdom of Israel.

Its capital was Samaria, and they are just constantly butting heads.

If you read 1st, 2nd Kings, and books of Chronicles, you'll see the history

and the infighting that happened between these two nations.

And not only was Israel divided, it was like fighting amongst each other,

civil war within the nation, but also surrounded by these other kings, right?

It says in Micah 1.1 that he lived in the times of the kings of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.

Those are southern kings who each didn't really reign for a super long time.

Jotham's reign in Israel was like pretty good, but was always fighting with the northern kingdom.

The northern kingdom was really corrupt. It was worshiping false idols.

There was a lot of corruption socially going on, a lot of.

Repression of the poor, right? And so Jotham did all right, but then his son

Ahaz took over upon his death.

And Ahaz was just this terrible king who introduced Babylonian worship into

Israel and just did anything imaginable.

He just tried to model himself off of a bunch of wicked empires.

And then once Ahaz dies, he's kind of gotten them into an alliance,

a dependency upon the Assyrian empire and Hezekiah comes along and he is a good king.

And he says, no, we're going to worship the Lord. We're going to trust in the Lord.

We're going to kick out the Assyrians and the Assyrians don't like that.

And they surround Jerusalem in 701 and they're about to destroy it.

And God just delivers the people, which is an awesome story,

right? But that's how it ends.

And there's, you know, decades throughout Micah's life leading up to this point

where God finally shows up and and miraculously saves Israel where everyone

is just pulling their hair out because they're so nervous.

They're thinking, oh, we've got to build a bigger army.

We've got to fill up the treasuries. We've got to secure Jerusalem.

We've got to make things stronger and we need to figure out a plan.

And what we see is that Micah calls them out because what's very obvious to

him is that they're willing to trade faithfulness for security and prosperity.

And Micah says, that is not what God calls you to.

That is an unfaithfulness. You are God's people.

It matters what you do. It's consequential that you trust in God and you order

your whole lives around faithfulness, around obedience, financially,

militarily, politically.

Micah calls all of this stuff out throughout his book.

But Israel was in so much anxiety to preserve themselves that they would just

kind of squint at their covenant with God.

They would say, oh yeah, we know God's going to take care of us,

but we're actually going to take care of ourselves.

We're going to provide for ourselves. And the political and religious leaders

in particular were very willing to subvert justice and dishonor God in order

to secure their futures.

And Micah calls that out. He says in Micah 3, 9 through 12, he says, listen to this,

leaders of the house of Jacob, you rulers of the house of Israel who abhor justice

and pervert everything that is right, who build Zion with bloodshed and Jerusalem with injustice.

Her leaders issue rulings for a bribe, her priests teach for payment,

her prophets practice divination for silver.

And yet they lean on the Lord saying, isn't the Lord among us.

No disaster will overtake us.

Therefore, because you, Zion, because you, Zion will be plowed like a field,

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

So, I mean, like, I don't know about you. I spend too much time on the internet reading news.

That's what I do on the internet. Apparently, that's what it's for. I don't know.

But, I mean, especially lately, just my anxiety is very high.

Anyone else feel that way?

If you are blissfully unaware of what's going on in the world, continue to be that way.

But if you're like me, like, you just look out and you're just like,

man, it feels like we are in a moment of true uncertainty.

Where not only just like internally, like what's going to happen in this country?

Like, I don't know. Like some days I feel really optimistic and some days I

don't. Like, I don't know what's going to go on.

I'm sick of the whiplash. That's for sure.

Just depends on who you listen to or, you know, what you think is going to happen.

No one knows, right? And then you just look at globally what's going on.

I mean, just this week, right? So we've already had an ongoing war in Ukraine

And now Syria is, you know, back in the midst of a civil war,

which on one level, you're like, good.

And then you look at who's the people who are doing it. And you're like,

oh, that doesn't seem so great.

And, you know, again, you can look it up if you want. I don't want to talk about it too much.

But I can't remember a time in my life where there's been so much going on.

And I can't remember a time in my

life where I feel like just this kind of collective anxiety just going on.

And we live in times a lot like Micah's. We live in times a lot like Micah's.

And Micah's word to God's people then was to recall them to faithfulness.

He asked them to remember who God is and what God has called them to.

And, you know, it's not like he says, he hasn't called you to be the biggest

and the best, the most powerful thing in and of yourself.

He's called you to depend upon him, right? He's called you as his people to faithfulness.

And for Israel, it was very clear that faithfulness was enough.

God made it so that faithfulness was enough for them.

To worship him and to seek him and to order their lives around trust and obedience

and honoring him was to be enough. They were a people called to faithfulness.

And God keeps telling them, he says, like, out of your anxiety,

out of your desire to build up your strength in the midst of all these things,

you are ending up sinning.

So he tells them, he's like, you don't need to squeeze the poor.

You don't need to extract all this wealth so that you can build up your power

and build up your military.

He says, you don't need to make alliances with wicked people to protect yourself.

You don't need to chase after foreign gods and false gods consistently throughout

Micah's lifetime. and this is over the course of 30, 40 years,

you know, Mike is just saying, remember, turn back.

God has such a better thing for you.

But then as now, people, myself included, are challenged when things are difficult.

We are challenged when we get worried.

We are tempted constantly to take the reins of our life, to circle the wagons,

to get things done instead of trusting in the Lord and waiting upon him to exercise

our strength, if we have it, to, you know,

to flex our muscle instead of allowing the Lord to be our defender.

This is the persistent sin of Israel over and over and over again.

And it's such a problem because God had a plan for his people,

a unique plan for his people, where he was going to be their strength.

And through his influence among them, he was going to be drawing all people as a light to himself.

He was going to be setting things right through Israel.

I mean, we remember the promises from Genesis 12, when Abraham first hears from God,

God calls him out and he says, and I'm going to make you a blessing to all the

God has always been intending to use his people in a massive way to bring about

blessing and renewal and restoration of all things.

But it requires participation as faithful people.

And then, as in now, God's people are challenged. They want to get things done

instead of waiting on the Lord.

And what Micah does consistently is he reminds them. He reminds them why it

matters that they continue in faithfulness.

And that's because God has a plan to transform the world through his people.

He did then through Israel, and he still does now through Jesus Christ.

It's still the same plan worked out in different ages.

And in the midst of all the rebellion and unfaithfulness, Micah looks to the

Lord and he sees what he's wanting to do.

You know, the Lord just speaks his word to Micah and Micah just says,

oh my gosh, all of our unfaithfulness, we have no idea how good God's plan is.

And starting in chapter four, he begins to speak out this vision for the good

and beautiful and mighty works that God wants to do through his Messiah.

So starting in chapter four, he says this, 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.

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 God of Jacob.

He will teach us about his ways so we may walk in his paths.

For instructions will go out of Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

He will settle disputes among many people 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.

So in the midst of threat and concern.

Generation upon generation, worrying about all the nations around us,

he says, I see God wanting to do something, and it is so much bigger than you

could possibly imagine.

It's not just a military victory. It's not just Israel being strong and mighty.

It's that Israel will be lifted up, the house of the Lord,

the temple of God on top of this mountain in Jerusalem will be lifted up and

it will be like a light to the nations to the point where all these strong people

will come and seek wisdom from God.

And in the wisdom that he reveals, they will walk away saying, we can have peace.

We can put down these weapons. We cannot train for war anymore.

We can beat our swords into plows and spears into pruning knives.

Micah sees all the way off of what God intends to do.

He sees its beauty and he declares it to them, even in the midst of all their

unfaithfulness, even in the midst of them chasing after all of these crazy things.

And Micah reminds them that even as they are surrounded by dangerous nations

and they're anxious for what will come and they're tempted to compromise.

That God has them right where he wants them.

I mean, look at this beautiful prophecy needs strong, warring nations in order

for God to bring about this peace and this instruction to the whole world.

God has a plan for his people, for his city, Jerusalem, for his church today.

And one day, Jerusalem will live up to its name as the city of peace.

Because one day, the nations will flock there.

They will seek God's counsel and God will be ruling there as a peacemaker to

the point where the people will beat their swords into plows and their spears

into prunes and they will not train for war anymore.

See, God has a plan for his people. He has a plan for us today.

And that is that we would sit squarely in all the problems and pains of life

to go through the anxieties and being surrounded by hostilities and the worries

of life and trust him and continue to trust in him,

to wait upon the Lord and to be delivered.

And fascinatingly, there's this thing that's going on here.

Their salvation is not some big plan.

Their salvation is coming about because of a person.

Someone is going to come who will bring these things about.

Micah skipping ahead a little bit talks about who this person will be.

Sound like anyone you know? Here.

Now, daughter who is under attack, you slash yourself in grief.

A siege is set against us. They're striking the judge of Israel on the cheek with a rod.

Bethlehem, Ephrathah, you are small among the clans of Judah.

One will come to you to be ruler over Israel for me.

And his origin is from antiquity, from ancient times.

If we wonder how everyone knew that Jesus was the Messiah, this is one of the

pieces that comes together to proclaim that he's the one who he's been waiting for.

He was born in Bethlehem, the place where his parents went to go back and to

be registered when the census was happening, born in Bethlehem.

And when I think about, you know, how I make plans, well, I come up with strategies, right?

I come up with a way of making myself stronger and better and in a better position

to get what I want from my life, right?

And Israel is told by Micah, he says, quit it with that.

Because the plan for your salvation, the plan for your redemption is not for

you to become stronger. It's not for you to come up with a great, better, cunning plan.

It's that someone is coming, and you can trust in him.

His origin is from antiquity, from ancient times.

He's qualified and able to be ruler over Israel for me, to enact God's plan.

And we notice this about him because this kind of pinnacle, beautiful picture of peacemaking, right?

It's not this guy's going to come and he's going to have the biggest army and

the most weapons. And he's going to do all this stuff.

It's he's going to come and he's going to sit in Jerusalem and the nations will

just be compelled. held.

They'll flock to him and receive his counsel.

And in his counsel, they'll walk away and they'll realize, oh my gosh,

we've been fighting for peace through domination, through our own plans,

through our own strength.

And yet we've come and we've heard the truth that we can just trust this person who's to come.

This person who will be born in Bethlehem, whose origin is from antiquity,

from ancient times, who will make peace in all things. He is a peace making kind of gods.

They don't need a conqueror. Israel doesn't need a conqueror. They sort of miss this.

I mean, throughout their history, they think, oh, yeah, God's going to send

somebody. He's going to be so strong.

He's going to be the strongest, most violent person in the world.

He's going to bring us peace by destroying everyone. But actually what Micah

says is, no, you are going to have peace.

Those warring nations that are surrounding you are actually going to come,

and then they're just going to lay down their weapons because a peacemaker is coming.

He's not going to overwhelm the nations with force, but with his grace and with

his wisdom and with his kindness and with his mercy.

That's who we wait for still. Well, that's who we've seen and we've enjoyed

and who, when he comes again, he will bring all of this about.

That's the one we continue to hope for now.

We just know his name. His name is Jesus.

He was born 2000 years ago and he was then and will be and is now a peacemaker.

He doesn't compel us through violence, through threat.

He opens up his kingdom, opens up the gates, says, come near to me,

all the people, all the nations of the world, make peace with me.

And you'll walk away and you'll think, oh, I don't have anything else to store up for.

I don't need any more strength. I don't need to hoard anything else for myself

because I've known the one in whom I can trust to the point where I can just

throw all this stuff away.

All my defenses I can cast down at his feet because that is his nature.

He does that to nations and he does it to people.

We read about his peacemaking in Ephesians 2, 12 through 22.

He says, at that time you were without Christ.

You were excluded from the citizenship of Israel and foreigners to the covenants

of promise without hope and without God in the world.

But now in Christ Jesus, you who were far away have been brought near by the

blood of Christ, for he is our peace.

He came and he proclaimed the good news of peace to you who were far away and

peace to those you who were near.

For through him, we both have access I skipped a little bit,

sorry. We both have access in one spirit to the Father.

So then you're no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with

the saints and members of God's household built on the foundation of the apostles

and the prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.

In him, the whole building being put together grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

In him, you are being built together for God's dwelling in the Spirit.

See, in the midst of all the anxiety, Micah had from God a vision of the beautiful

future that was coming at the end of days, what God was finally going to do.

And as Jesus Christ has been born, he goes, he lives a perfect sinless life.

He dies as a sacrifice for sin.

He's raised again to demonstrate his power.

And he sends out his church to proclaim this gospel, the gospel of peacemaking,

where all those who are at war, far off, those who are outside of God's plan,

not God's people, can come in and be made citizens, parts of the covenant promises.

They can be God's people, recipients of his peace, of his blessing.

Why? Because this person has come the peacemaker has come.

And so that promise is for us now.

And God will continue to do that work through the nations into the future.

But for us in this moment, in 2024, as we're celebrating Christmas,

this is what we have to consider.

That our God is a peacemaking God.

And that we're sent out as messengers of that peace.

Like Israel's, it mattered that Israel would obey and be faithful because they

were a living demonstration.

They were to be a living demonstration of what it looks like for people to trust

in God so that the other people surrounding them could just be amazed,

not by their great faithfulness,

but by the one in whom they are putting their faith, by the person,

God, among them.

And now we are sent out in the same way, with the same kind of message,

that one has come who is making peace.

One has come who's worthy of trust. He's not holding people to the fire.

He's not come as a vindictive, punishing, threatening sort of God,

but as one who is opening up the kingdom so that all people, enemies of God.

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

We have been enemies with God.

Maybe you in this room, you've done so many things and you think,

how could God ever love me?

I bear the weight of the guilt that I hold. And yet God says,

I know everything about you.

I have looked at violent people throughout the world and I'm opening up the

gates of the kingdom and I am a peacemaker. care.

I will bear the weight of your sin, the punishment that you're owed.

I will take it away from you to the point where you'll just say,

Lord, how could I ever have not known your goodness?

He came and he proclaimed good

news and peace to you who were far away and peace to those who are near.

His grace is on display in Jesus Christ.

And because of what he's done, we're no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens.

And our response is what Israel's was supposed to be.

What ours is supposed to be is to

look at what he's done, look at his deliverance and just say, thank you.

To respond with love and joy and excitement and to let him continue to provide,

put his spirit within us and do remarkable things.

Worship team can come up here I was oh no it wasn't that short felt short,

not like usual.

Lookit, we're getting into these prophets and we'll continue on at least for

one more week, maybe two weeks. I'm not quite sure.

But we want to, like maybe you're here and you think you know what Christmas is about.

Christmas is about Christmas cookies and presents and stars and stuff.

Lookit, we need to recover the wonder of what this season is about.

That we are in the midst of a story that God is the author of this story.

And it's a story about the person of Jesus Christ and the grace,

the peacemaking, the kindness, the love, the redemption that is found through just trust in him.

And it's for all people. That's the thing.

It's all these nations come, come at the end, they're going to come and they're

just going to say, oh yeah, we're not, we're not Jewish. We're not Israel.

We're not in Jerusalem, but we find our peace in this place.

God has peace for you.

That's what we're considering today. That's what we're considering in this season.

And we're just going to keep thinking about that and thinking about the dimensions

of peace that God is bringing about in his Messiah.

So I look forward to that. But you know what, guys, the response is simple.

It's just to like, like we would with a gift, We just receive it and we're thankful for it.

We're thankful for what's been given to us. And so I'm just going to pray for

a minute and then we're going to worship the Lord together. We're going to practice that thankfulness.

Lord Jesus, you are holy and righteous and good.

Lord, you're the ancient of days, the alpha and the omega.

There are so many ways that we can describe and think about who you are and

how awesome you are and how beautiful.

Music.

And you God you you don't ask us

to um roll out the red carpet for you

you actually just ask us for our hearts

Lord the hearts that you've won you ask

us for for faithfulness not the performance of faithfulness but the faithfulness

that comes from a simple response to your goodness and your kindness to us Jesus

Lord we thank you for all that you've done Lord Lord we we we recognize that

we bear burdens that we ought not to bear.

And so God, we just want to lay those things before you, God.

If we're anxious for our future, if we're anxious to preserve ourselves,

Lord, we want to come back to you and entrust ourselves to you yet again.

We have adoption because of what you've done, Jesus.

We have peace. We have a new life. So God, would you fill us with that?

With your spirit yet again, Lord. Would you remind us, Lord, fill us with joy,

the joy of being accepted and cared for and loved Jesus because you've opened

yourself up to us and you've adopted us and you've made us a nation.

You've given us a future and a hope.

Lord, we stand upon all of that, Lord.

And so as we get into the Christmas season here, Lord, would you remind us over

and over again about all that you've done, Lord. We want to celebrate you.

So prepare our hearts. We ask that in Jesus' name. Amen.

Awesome. Hey, why don't we just stand up and worship the Lord together.