Seeing Jesus in Matthew: Author New Creation, Keeper of Ancient Promises

To have you here. Thank you for coming out on this holiday weekend.

I know you guys are probably exhausted.

You probably socialized, which is really nice. So you could probably,

you probably won't mind if I just talked for a really long time.

So I'm going to go ahead and do that.

No, actually, I'm not planning on going too long this morning.

We are starting something new this morning.

We are going to begin to make our way through the gospel of Matthew.

And much like we did, like when we went through the book of Acts,

we're going to just spend, we're going to do this in little spurts.

We're going to spend several weeks going through the Gospel of Matthew,

chapter by chapter, verse by verse.

So consecutively through the Gospel of Matthew to the point where eventually,

once this is all over, we'll get all the way to the end, to Matthew 28.

But we're not going to do that consecutively.

We are doing it consecutively, but we're going to break up every couple weeks

into different sermons series, topical sermons series.

So my plan as we get into the Gospel of Matthew here is we're going to spend

about six weeks going through.

We'll get all the way through chapter four, and then we'll just take a break from Matthew.

We'll do another series, TBD series, getting into something else,

just to keep the variety, you know how it is.

But eventually we will be making the whole way through the book of Matthew.

Now, I realize this is kind of a unique approach, depending on your tradition,

tradition to just kind of continuously move through a book like this.

And so you might not be used to the approach or the way of thinking about scripture,

teaching through scripture.

And truth be told, there are some problems with it. Some people are like,

like the thing is like when you go continuously through a book,

you have to pay attention to the boring part.

And today, I mean, we're in some really boring parts. The beginning is a little

bit boring. So like, you know, so like, just prepare yourself.

The reason that I wanted to do this, despite the fact that, you know,

there's some difficulty with this style of preaching, is that there are some

unique benefits to this kind of sequential, expositional, which means just paying

attention to the text, seeing what it says.

That's kind of style of preaching. There are two distinct ones that I want to

point out that I think are really, really important.

First is going through a book this way, you'll begin to notice things that you

would have otherwise missed by slowing down and taking time and just saying, hey, look, it's in here.

We're going to read it. We're going to ask, what does it mean?

We're going to begin to notice things that we would have otherwise missed.

I mean, I think that's important when we're reading Scripture,

when we're approaching Scripture in general, because when we take care,

when we slow down and when we pay attention to the whole text in its context,

then we, we just, we just pick up on things.

And we, as people, me in particular, like we, we don't do a good job of paying attention to things.

We are naturally, and I particularly am prone to pick out things that speak

to me, you know, which is, which isn't bad.

Like it's, it's, it's always good to have things that are comforting in scripture.

It's always good to have things that like, oh man, this is really just,

this is is my home base in terms of where I think the Lord talks to me,

either books or verses or whatever.

That's good. But the thing is, if we only pay attention to the things that speak

to us, then we're just going to be in this confirmation bias kind of loop.

Because the thing is, there's lots of stuff in scripture that doesn't speak

to us, and yet it is still God's word spoken to us.

It's still God saying, hey, you pay attention to this thing.

There's something important in here.

And so if we only pay attention to the things that really speak to us,

that pop like pop out on the page, then we'll never find the other stuff in

Scripture, and we'll just continue on confirming our own biases.

And so by going through the whole text, kind of just slowly and sequentially,

the goal is to listen to Scripture and listen to the writer of Scripture that

through the Holy Spirit is instructing us and telling us something that we ought

to know, to let them tell us what's important,

to allow them to illuminate to us the character of Jesus, particularly in the

gospel of Matthew, and the conflicts that he endured, and to present to us the

significance of his ministry.

Because I can do this thing where I say, well, Jesus is important because of these things.

But if I open up scripture and I look at what Jesus has meant to people throughout

history, throughout 2000 years of church history, there's so much more to him.

There's so much more to him. And we're gonna see that here in the book of Matthew.

See, because Matthew was the writer of this book. It was a guy named Matthew,

and he was one of the 12 apostles that hung around Jesus.

He shared life with him. He did the boring stuff of life, including the exciting things, you know?

He was there when Jesus fed the 5,000s, and he was there when everybody deserted

Jesus and said, hey, you're too weird for us, Jesus.

Matthew was in the midst of all of it, and he recounts everything that went on.

He hung around Jesus, And so he is well positioned to paint a full and vibrant

and accurate picture of who Jesus was and what Jesus was about,

which is really important.

And it brings me to my second point. This approach is helpful because you may

have noticed we live in a really divided world.

But the one thing everyone in our world can agree on, whether they're politically

left or right, or you're more traditional, or you're more progressive,

or whatever the divisions are, everyone can agree that Jesus agrees with them, right?

Everyone wants to lay claim to the legacy and teaching and ideas that Jesus

expounded because they have so shaped our culture and so shaped our world.

And so everybody says, yes, I'm with Jesus and Jesus is with me, right?

Which, of course, becomes very difficult. It becomes very difficult.

But if we look at Jesus and we let those who knew him best, who have been empowered

by the Holy Spirit to reveal to us a picture of who Jesus is,

as we take him as a whole, as he is presented in Scripture,

what we find is that if we're honest, yes, Jesus agrees with me and I agree

with Jesus about something.

And yet also, Jesus challenges me on some of my deepest held convictions and

values. there are things that I believe and think should be right and should

be fair and are the way the world works. And Jesus says, that's not how the world works.

And everybody experiences this. If we come to Jesus, honestly, he had a unique way.

And we're going to see this as we get particularly into his teaching.

We're getting into the Sermon on the Mount. I'm really excited about that.

And beyond his engagement with the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the other

religious leaders of in time.

He had a unique way of both compelling people.

People would flock to him because they're like, this guy has something to say,

and yet also repulsing them at the same time.

Compelling them and yet also upsetting them. He had a way of just attracting people.

People said, no, Jesus has some valuable, he understands so much.

And yet he was also such an enigma.

He was a difficult person to just like embrace.

And we find that throughout his ministry, that so many people wanted to want

Jesus. They wanted to love Jesus. They wanted to follow Jesus.

And yet they found so many difficulties along the way. And so as we just let

scripture speak for itself, then we'll wade into those difficulties.

Because the fact is, there are lots of things that Jesus teaches that are are

difficult for me to understand.

And so, you know, all that is to say, as we come to Scripture in this way and

we just let it speak for itself, I believe it's really an exercise in humble listening.

And so that's what I hope that we can do. I hope that we can,

as a church, we can have this spirit of humility and just ask the Lord to just show us who He is.

You know, I've called this little sermon series, Seeing Jesus,

because that's it. That's what we want to do.

We don't want to have a mascot Jesus or put Jesus on like a sock puppet on and

just agree with us. We want to see him for who he is.

We claim to be people who want a relationship with God, which means like dealing

with the fact that the person in whom we're relationship has their own character

and their own personality and has their own intentions.

And so, you know, like we want to see Jesus for who he is.

And so as we start off, I just actually want to pray for us I want us to prepare

our hearts, and then we'll jump into the text here, okay? So let's pray.

Lord, we're just setting out the way we do when we come to church here.

Lord, we are hoping to hear from you.

And God, I don't want to, preachers always say, Lord, let it not be my words, but your words.

And you know, inevitably we live our lives, Lord, and we speak and we observe,

and we're a part of the process of knowing and seeing God. And so here we are.

And so Lord, we can't just say, we can't just get past ourselves,

Lord, but we can humble ourselves to the point where we would just say,

Lord, we want to want you.

We want to love you. We want to value your views and your opinions of our life

and what things are more than we value our own.

And there's so much sin in the way. And there's so much that clouds us and so

much that we just don't understand that's in the way.

And so we give you that whole big mess, Lord, the things that we can't comprehend.

And we just ask you as, as many came seeking you, Lord, we want to see you, Jesus.

We want to see you for who you are, Lord. We want to see all your love and all

your grace and all the things that you challenge us in.

Lord, we want to, we want to know you more. And so we set ourselves to that

work this morning, Lord, and we ask you, God, to speak to us by your word,

by your spirit, in Jesus' name. Amen.

All right, so we're just going to go ahead and jump in.

I had mentioned about there's some boring parts along the way,

and Matthew famously begins with a genealogy, which is obviously exciting. right?

It's a long 28-generation accounting of Jesus's, where he came from, his family tree.

But fascinatingly, there is so much more to this little introduction than meets the eye.

Yes, in a lot of ways, it's sort of a boring little thing, but I think the way

that Matthew few frames, it brings a little bit of fascination,

a little bit of interest to it. This is how he begins.

He says, an account of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Pretty straightforward introduction. But this little phrase,

particularly the beginning one, an account of the genealogy of Jesus,

it's a really interesting little phrase because there's actually quite a bit

of debate among Bible scholars about what it means or how we should translate it.

The common way it's translated is just like this, an account of the genealogy.

It's really straightforward.

It's basically presenting that there is a genealogy, and it's what follows in these next 12 verses.

But Frederick Dale Bruner, who's a really top-notch New Testament scholar, says this.

He's presenting us the options of how we can understand this.

He says this, The first two words in Matthew's gospel in Greek,

which we have translated as the account of the genealogy, are biblos geneseos.

And I know it's annoying when pastors do Greek, but it was his fault. He did it.

They are Biblos Geneseos, and they have been understood in three main ways.

One, as a short title for just the genealogy that immediately follows,

as a medium-sized title for the Christmas and Epiphany stories of Jesus in the

next few chapters, or as a long title for the entire gospel.

So we're wondering, like, what is Matthew doing here, right?

And biblical scholars have said, well, there's a few different options.

He is either just introducing these couple verses, this little genealogy,

because it would be strange to just start with the genealogy.

You have to say something about it to lead your reader in.

Or he's introducing the first three chapters, you know, the Christmas story, the birth of Jesus.

And so it's kind of a backstory, an origin story of Jesus.

Or it's this little tiny phrase is particularly the Biblos Geneseos is an introduction to the entire book.

And in this little phrase, there's more than meets the eye, and it is,

in fact, framing the entire story.

Now, before you fall asleep, I think this is fascinating.

It's fascinating because right here at the beginning, we see in the writer's

choice of words something amazing about Jesus.

On the one level, like the beginning of the book of Matthew is just the story

of Jesus's birth. It's his backstory.

It's his relationships. You have something like that. You have a father and

a grandfather and you have a backstory.

Everyone has that. He can trace his line back through the generations just like

many of us can or could if we actually spent the money and did the work and

went and did the research.

Although what we see here is that his story is pretty exceptional.

His story is pretty exceptional and we'll talk about that in the second half of the message here.

But his life begins in a very just kind of normal context, in a very normal context.

He had a father, he had a grandfather, he had a great-grandfather, etc., etc., etc.

And yet, at the same time, we see throughout this book, there's so much more to Jesus.

In this little introduction, which could, in fact, it could be just a way to

set up the genealogy, it can also be understood to be a lot more.

And see, that little phrase that we translate as an account of the genealogy,

or in the Greek, it's biblos geneseos, it's pretty significant.

Significance so i mean that phrase again biblos genoseos do

those words sound familiar to you biblos what english

word does that sound like the bible and genoseos what english word genesis look

at that okay so that little phrase an account of the genealogy are these words

which are which which are significantly they are familiar words to us biblos

it's a it just means book or particularly particularly a religiously significant book.

Genesis is where we get the first book of the Bible title, the words Genesis. It means origin.

And it was definitely a word used for genealogies. And so it makes sense that

it would be translated as genealogy.

And yet it is also a word loaded with kind of a double meaning.

It is also a word like used for the book of Genesis, which has a significance

to people who would understand the Bible.

One particular set of translators say this, there is a formidable case for reading

Matthew 1-1 as a general title that could be rendered like this,

the book of the new Genesis wrought by Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.

So Jesus had a genealogy, right? And certainly, the writer of Matthew is using

his words to present that genealogy, to present the backstory,

but I think it makes sense that he's choosing these particular words.

Touch on something else, because these words mattered to them.

It would be a mistake, I think, to just read this story like just another birth

story in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago.

In fact, what Matthew is hinting at right out the gate is that Jesus' story

is bigger than just this little ancient localized story localized in Bethlehem.

He's saying this book that we are are going to read is actually,

it's about a new Genesis.

It's about a new creation. It's about a new beginning that Jesus has brought about.

Just like the Genesis accounts for the origins of the world and explains what

God was up to in creation, it helps us to understand God's purpose and God's

design and God's intention in bringing about the world.

What we understand in the book of Matthew you in this account of Jesus is God's

intention to do something new and to bring renewal into the world.

We have a recreation of all things in and through Jesus Christ.

And so we don't just have a simple, oh yeah, just another story in history,

another character in history.

We have a new beginning presented us right here in the book of Matthew.

And what we see is that by God sending Jesus into the world,

by Jesus coming down, taking on flesh, God himself coming into the world,

Jesus is bringing about a renewal.

And this, as we go through the book of Matthew, we're going to find this theme

over and over and over again, that Jesus is the author of new creation. And this is like...

Oh, you can actually see it. That's good. I was worried that pink wasn't going

to show up. We're going to see this. Jesus is the author of the new creation.

It is a by and through him that renewal is effected.

And so we have this right in the first phrases that introduced this book,

that yes, this is a story of a man who was born, and yet it is the story of something so much more.

And that's what Jesus remains to people today.

You know, you go around and talk to people about Jesus and they say,

oh yeah, I mean, Jesus, he was probably a good guy, you know,

just another good guy, right?

And he was, there's no, you can't doubt that. But the thing that we find about

Jesus is that he was so much more than that.

And I'm just like, just going to lay that out there that this is going to be

the unfolding theme that we find throughout the book of Matthew.

So we have that right here at the top. And yet we also see right at the top,

a second major theme introduced, and that is this.

Jesus is also the keeper of ancient promises.

He's the author of new creation, and yet he is also the keeper of ancient promises.

So if we look at that verse, verse 1-1 again, we see it's rendered an accounting

of genealogy of Jesus Christ, or something greater, the new genesis of Jesus Christ.

And then there is some history. history we

dive into some history genie do we have a doorbell oh no okay i thought we had

a doorbell hidden somewhere i was like i've never heard the doorbell go i'm

so sorry aaron i didn't mean to i would just i was genuinely thought we had

a doorbell wouldn't that be amazing.

I'm so sorry i feel bad for aaron okay keeper of ancient promises okay okay

here it is okay So there's an account of the genealogy of Jesus Christ,

the son of David, the son of Abraham.

And so you'll notice he begins to present the character of Jesus Christ,

and yet he begins immediately to relate Jesus to David and Abraham.

But you'll notice that these are not like close relationships.

Jesus didn't hang out with Abraham and David very much.

I mean, I guess there was that one time, the epiphany, but we'll talk about that later.

There's a ton of distance between them. In fact, in verse 17,

after the genealogy, it kind of sums up the genealogy.

It says this, So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations,

and from David until the exile to Babylon, fourteen generations,

and from the exile to Babylon until the Messiah, fourteen generations.

And so David and Abraham are mentioned here specifically, well,

because they are such a well-known part of Israel's story, right?

Because we have to understand that the book of Matthew is written primarily to a Jewish audience.

Matthew was Jewish. Jesus was Jewish.

Many people who are reading this book are Jewish. And yet not only,

not only, but there would have been a deep understanding among the readers that

these characters of David and Abraham were really important to Jewish people and to their story.

They are a well-known part of Israel's story, specifically because each of them

had a very particular and close relationship with God that we read about in the Old Testament,

where God made certain promises to them to keep to them and to their offspring,

promises specifically that God would, through their offspring,

through their line, through their children, their children's children,

that God was going to accomplish some big things. We read about those promises.

First, the promises to Abraham we can read about in Genesis 12 or Genesis 17

and a few other places actually in the book of Genesis as Abraham's life is accounted to.

But the first promise that Abraham receives is right when God calls him out

and he says, come to a land that I'm going to show you.

And he tells him this, I will make you into a great nation.

I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing.

And I will bless those who bless you.

So right at the outset of Israel's story, Abraham,

really the founder of Judaism, the founder of Israel, the one who is first called

by God, receives these promises that he's going to make him a great nation,

and then through him, through his people, through his descendants,

God is going to bless the entire earth.

So there's a great promise that Jesus here lays hold of that Matthew says is

related to Jesus right here, this promise to Abraham.

And there's also promises to David. David, the famous king from Israel's history.

We read about God's promise to David in 2 Samuel 7, and this is what God says to him.

He says, the Lord himself will make a house for you. When your time comes and

you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up after you your descendant who

will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.

He is the one who will build a

house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

And I will be his father, and he will be my son. And when he does wrong,

I will discipline him with a rod of men and blows from mortals.

But my faithful love will never leave him as it did when I removed it from Saul,

whom I removed from before you.

Your house and your kingdom will endure before me forever, and your throne will

be established forever.

So for ancient Israelites, the kind of first audience of this book of Matthew,

they would have had a very strong understanding of who David was and who Abraham was,

and they would have understand that they as a people had promises from God through

those figureheads, through Abraham and through David,

promises that they would be a great nation,

that they would bless the whole world, that they would have a king enduring forever.

Who God would always be faithful to.

And so their whole story, the story of Israel, their whole identity is tied up,

anticipating and waiting for and hoping in these promises,

that everyone around Jesus' time in Israel, at least those who were trying to be faithful,

they were living in a strong and cultivated expectation that God was going to

make good on these promises.

And so as Matthew comes and he begins to tell about the story of Jesus,

telling us who he is, how he is significant, he reminds us of these ancient promises.

And he retraces the family line all the way from Abraham to David and then on to Jesus.

And the point he's making is that Jesus is the one in whom all these promises are being fulfilled.

God has made promises to Israel, to Abraham, to David, and and they're going

to be fulfilled in Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ, Jesus Christ.

And it's really the consistent take on Jesus throughout the New Testament.

There's something unique about Jesus. Right here at the outset,

we see that there's something unique about Jesus, that he is the one in whom

all these promises are being fulfilled.

I like how Paul says it in 2 Corinthians.

He says this, for jesus christ the son of

god does not waver between yes and no he is

the one whom silas and timothy and i preach to you and as

god's ultimate yes he has

always does what he says for all of god's

promises have been fulfilled in christ with a resounding yes and through christ

our amen which means yes ascends to god for his green what matthew makes very

clear clear if you're paying attention intention right off the bat is that there's

something particularly special about Jesus.

In him, there are these new promises.

And in him, all these old promises are being fulfilled.

It's interesting too, if you look back here, you look at these names and they're

right there in Genesis 1.1.

Many of them don't mean anything to us.

Some of them though mean a lot because there There are some really heavy hitters

in Israel's history. Obviously, Abraham is a big deal, right?

Obviously, David is a big deal, right?

But you have some other folks here. I mean, you got Zerubbabel.

If you know your Old Testament, these are important things.

Hezekiah, Uzziah, Jehoshaphat. Jump in Jehoshaphat.

From Looney Tunes fame. That's what I'm talking about, right? Boaz, right?

You've got Judah, you've got Jacob, you've got, this is a loaded list.

And as you go through in each of these generations, if you were a really good

scholar of the Old Testament, like most ancient Israelites were,

you would just have immediate connections being made between these stories and

the stories that you were told in your upbringing and Jesus Christ, right?

What Matthew is doing is laying hold to a long heritage of faithfulness in Israel.

These are a series of faithful people.

And yet also, interestingly, in the midst of this genealogy,

in the midst of all these faithful people, people who have Old Testament stories

written about him, there's also some head scratchers.

There's some where you're thinking, huh, these really don't seem to fit with

the list. I mean, look at verse 3.

We talk about Judah fathered Perez and Zerah by Tamar.

Now, not to get into the whole story, but if you were to go back and look at

the story of Judah and Tamar, Judah is Tamar's father-in-law.

Icky, right?

So there's a lot of scandal around this. So here we have God is sending his

son, and we're laying hold of this genealogy and saying, all of God's promises are fulfilled in here.

And also there's some pretty gross stuff going on.

I mean, look, verse five, we see Rahab, the mother of Boaz. Rahab was a prostitute

right here in the middle of the genealogy.

And then look at verse six.

I mean, this is like probably the biggest black eye in Israel's history.

We see verse six, David fathered Solomon by Uriah's wife, which Uriah's wife

would not be his wife, right? That's someone else's wife.

And if you know the story that's being referenced here from the Old Testament

is that David, who was this man after God's own heart, who loved the Lord,

we have right here brought up the fact that he had a son, Solomon,

by another man's wife, a man who he conspired to have killed,

used his power, abused used his power, had this man killed, and then slept with the man's wife.

And it's through that kind of story that God is fulfilling all his promises.

It's quite interesting. If you actually go back, it's funny.

There's kind of two Old Testament books of history, right?

There's 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, which is kind of really one long accounting

of Israel's ancient history.

And in that story, that's where we, in 1 and 2 Kings, we read about David in

particular in 1 Kings and what he did and how it all went down here when he

killed Uriah's husband and slept with her, right?

And it's a moment of huge shame for Israel.

And there's another book of history that's later that was written after the exile.

So like probably 800 years after Kings.

And it's called Chronicles. And in Chronicles, it's funny, it retells the story

of Israel and all these important figures.

And it talks about David, but you

know what? doesn't happen in the book of Chronicles, this whole incident.

Because what was happening, this is a point in Israel's history where they were

really trying to get hopeful and excited.

And for whatever reason, the writer of the book of Chronicles, they weren't lying.

They didn't say it didn't happen, but they just left this little story out of

David conspiring to have somebody killed and then sleeping with his wife,

which is kind of nice to David, isn't it?

It's It's nice to kind of just clean up his legacy, but I love it here that

Matthew says, hey, we shouldn't forget that this is where Jesus comes from.

And we shouldn't forget that David's worst day, this guy to whom God was so

faithful, that his worst day is built right into the heart of God's promise.

And that in the midst of all of what David did, God is still being faithful.

I don't know about you, but life is hard because sometimes I experience hard days, right?

If I look back in hindsight, I can look at my life and I could say,

you know, it's been good. Like things have been, I've been blessed.

There's been a lot of joy. But when I have hard times, when I get negative,

when I get down, when I get discouraged, what I usually is happening is like,

I just have like two or three or four bad days.

Or maybe you have a bad week or a bad month or even a bad year.

And I let the experience, those experiences, just kind of override all the goodness

that has been surrounding everything.

Anyone else experience this? And just me? Okay.

I really think it's interesting here,

that right in the midst of this big presentation of all this new Genesis,

this beautiful story of Jesus recreating all things in the midst of claiming

Jesus Christ as the one who would fulfill all the promises that we are reminded

of the unfaithfulness of people along the way and reminded of their worst days.

And yet still, this is the story of God's promises and his faithfulness.

That's what's going on here. These things are just little blips,

little blips that we can read on, just one little line, David fathered Solomon

by Uriah's wife, and we can just keep moving on past them because those things,

those failings, those shames, and those difficulties are in the context of a much greater,

much more beautiful story.

In the midst of all that failure, in the midst of all that difficulty,

there is a victory and renewal happening.

I think so oftentimes we think that in order to feel good and in order to be

persistent in faith, we have to just write out the bad days.

We have to act like the pain and the difficulty of life is not happening and

just ignore it and just be so positive and upbeat if we're going to feel good about life.

And yet here in the midst of the presentation of who Jesus is,

we are holding the the good and the beautiful, the faithful and the right amidst

with all the failings and all the pain and all the difficulties.

And we're just saying, this is just a part of one list. And the midst of this

list, we are able to see the fact that Jesus Christ has come into the world.

For me, it's a good reminder because I don't know, like I've had a bad like three days.

I've had a bad three days preparing this message, which is not very long or

very difficult, has been like pulling teeth.

And that just happens. Probably it's something I ate. It really comes down to something that simple.

And yet in the middle of all of that, it feels so difficult.

And you're going through and you're doing these things of you're feeling shame,

you're feeling discouragement, you're feeling like, well, what if I change this?

Or what if I did this? Or what you're going through this whole list.

And yet, as I was kind of waking up this morning and just thinking about this,

still feeling quite bad about life, I just had to remind myself that I've been

in situations just like this before, and still God showed up,

and still God was faithful.

Still God was able to look past these things and have these moments and just

have them be little moments in time.

And so all of that is to say is that right here, as Matthew is getting set,

he's laying the backstory and he's beginning to present Jesus to us,

he isn't giving us the sanitized version of the backstory of Jesus.

And you might not have a sanitized version of your story with Jesus.

Maybe your story with Jesus looks like a lot of pain and a lot of shame and a lot of difficulty.

And yet the promise of Jesus Christ is that he's bringing a new beginning in

the midst of all that stuff.

And he is redeeming the difficulties that has come.

And he is even being present with us even as this story is unfolding,

withholding, even as there's still like sore spots.

That's what I see going on here, okay? So I just want to, worship team is going to come up here.

We're just like introducing, like there's going to be a lot to get into.

Next week, we're actually going to have Christmas in July. So really excited about that.

So bring your Santa hat out. I'm going to turn the air condition down to 62

and we're just going to bring a jacket.

No, you don't have to do that. that, we're going to continue to see where Jesus came from.

We're going to see some amazing things about who Jesus was, the fact that he

was born of a virgin, whatever that means.

We're going to look into all this stuff. But I wanted to just leave you with this one thought.

At the end of 2 Corinthians, right, we looked a little bit in 2 Corinthians,

what Paul goes on and he goes on and he says this, He says, it is God who enables

us along with you to stand firm for Christ.

He has commissioned us and he has identified us as his own by placing the Holy

Spirit in our hearts as the first installment that guarantees everything that he has promised us.

You know, in the verses just before that, there's verses that we talked about,

about just the yeses of the fulfillment of all God's promises are in Jesus Christ.

And how are those things fulfilled?

They aren't fulfilled because of our great strength, because of our great character,

because of any personal qualities that we possess.

What Paul says is we have these promises of victory and yes in Jesus Christ,

and it's all about what he is doing in our midst, right?

And he brings that out here. He says, who enables us? It's God who enables us.

He says, along with you to stand firm for Christ.

He has commissions. He has identified us.

And he's put his Holy Spirit in our hearts, in your hearts, as a first installment,

as a guarantee of everything that he's promised us.

What Paul is reminding the Corinthians here who are going through a difficult

time is that even in the midst of difficulty, they can still hold on to God's

faithfulness and his resounding yes.

We can still be reminded that God has sent his Holy Spirit into their hearts.

And that is just like a down payment or a layaway plan as some have explained it.

It's like God has put you on layaway.

He's gonna come back. He's going to complete the things that he has begun.

And so in the midst of, you know, reading and looking at the difficulties of

life, the challenges that you're in the midst of,

you can understand that God is not yet done and that his promises are going to be yes.

And this is, I think, just like the really hard work of faith.

Faith, it's just waking up in the morning, taking account of how bad you feel,

taking account of the shame that you might feel.

A lot of us are feeling, and I feel this a lot, a lot of generalized shame and anxiety.

Shame and anxiety about nothing in particular, right? But it's just in our midst,

like we feel like we can't measure up.

And so much of our life is dealing with the fact that we We feel condemned.

And yet the work of faith is saying, look, I believe in this person, Jesus Christ.

He's doing a new thing. He's forgiving sin.

He's come and he's revealed himself to me.

And in fact, I have a relationship with him to the point where by faith,

he saves me and he's put his Holy Spirit within me.

And the work of faith is just waking up each day when you feel bad in particular,

when you feel distant in particular and just reminding yourself that what is true is not how you feel.

What is true is what God has promised to be true.

And I don't know, I just want to encourage you guys as you step out and you try to do that work.

And it's funny because it takes time.

God's gonna fulfill his promises. He will do it in the end, but he's gonna take

his time. He's gonna do it in his own time.

And so we can stand on his promises. Yeah, you know what? That's all I gotta

say for now. I think I'm gonna have more to say in just a little bit.

We're gonna leave it there for now.

And here's what I like to do. you. I'd like for us to just worship and enter into a time of worship.

And I just want to, let's just pray.

Let's just say, Holy Spirit, like you say, you're here with us.

You're in our hearts, Lord.

You're the down payment or the guarantee that what you've said is going to happen.

Lord, you're faithful. You're good. Lord, we stand on your promises.

And so, Lord, as a church, Lord, Lord, we just, but we want to do the work of

kind of reestablishing the foundations of our heart.

That's what we do, Lord. That is spiritual maturity, Lord.

It is going deeper and finding the bedrock of your faithfulness and your goodness

and building our life upon those promises, Lord.

And there's so many different people in this room. I don't know,

there's probably 50, 60 people in this room.

And so, Lord, each of us, we have different discouragements.

We have different pains. We have different stories, Lord. We have different

things that we feel bad about, Lord.

We have different contexts and backgrounds and different struggles and even different joys, Lord.

But our calling is the same. God, our calling is the same.

It is to look to your promises to understand what it is you've said,

how good you are, and Lord, to just begin to direct our love and our affection

and our desire upon the things that you have wanted and to look past,

Lord, the things that we're discouraged by.

And so, Lord, we can only do that in your strength.

And so, Lord, we invite you right now to strengthen us, Lord,

to build up our faith, to give us more of faith, Lord, Lord,

more of that gift of faith.

Lord Jesus, would you establish our hearts?

Lord, would you come and remind us of how much you care for us, Lord?

Holy Spirit, would you be present here among us? We welcome you, Lord.

Come, Holy Spirit, Lord, remind us of your goodness. Remind us of your grace.

Remind us of your promises on which we stand.

Even in this moment, Lord, we ask you that in your name. Amen.

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