Sticks and Stones

Well, as I said, today we're starting something new.

We're gonna spend the next 11 months doing something that we're calling following Jesus.

Following Jesus.

Um it's funny, I someone asked me a few years ago why I never call myself a Christian, and I didn't realize that I don't do that.

But what I typically say from the stage or just in conversation is I'm a Jesus follower.

And it's not that I don't say I'm a Christian because I I am a Christian.

Christian means someone who follows Jesus, right?

But I think years ago I sort of learned that when people hear the word Christian, they don't always think of Jesus.

That word brings up all kinds of you know church experiences or views they have about the world or religion, and I just found it really helpful in conversation to let people know I'm a follower of Jesus Christ.

And yes, that's a Christian, but I'm following Jesus.

I'm not following a religion, I'm not following a way of life, I'm following a person.

And he's a person who I believe is God, and I believe he's alive, and I believe we can know him, we can have a relationship with him, and he can change our lives forever and on a daily basis.

So I'm a Jesus follower, and there's nothing that I can think of that's more valuable in life than to learn how to follow him better, how to follow him more closely.

And that's what our goal is for the next 11 months, to follow Jesus together.

And the way that we're gonna follow Jesus is by as literally as possible trying to follow Jesus.

And so I want to show you guys a map.

Um, get used to maps this year, and if you're like, that's boring, I hope it's not gonna be boring.

It's not my maps, by the way, are not boring.

I mean, the Indiana Jones movies use maps in an incredible way.

I'm actually gonna have a hard time not doing the like dun dun dun dun dun dun dun.

I'm gonna have a hard time not doing that this year because I'm gonna want to, I really do.

Um, so this is a map of the main regions of Israel at the time of Jesus.

And Jesus covers a lot of ground.

Like Jesus puts on a lot of miles in his life, especially in the three years that he's walking around teaching, and we're we're gonna follow along.

We're gonna follow Jesus, and we're really gonna lean into the world that he was part of and where he was and who he was talking to, and as many of those historical details as possible because we want to learn about him.

He's not, Jesus is not an academic subject.

He's not a subject to be studied, he is a person to be known.

But just like anyone in your life, the more you know about someone, the better you know them, and the easier it is to connect with them, and that's what we want to happen.

And so we're gonna follow Jesus this year by following Jesus.

And today we start our very first series in this year-long journey.

We're gonna be going through the entire book of Matthew this year.

By the way, parents, if you have children first grade and up, they're doing the same thing.

So our high school students, junior high students, elementary school students today, they're learning about the same stuff we're learning about.

When you get in the car, you can ask them questions, you can test them, you can grill them.

But they can do the same thing to you.

So, you know, just know that.

No, we're gonna be doing this as an entire church, which I think is super, super exciting.

Our first series is called First Steps.

We're gonna look at the earliest parts of Jesus' life and the earliest parts of Jesus' ministry, the first steps that he took, and so we're gonna be following along with those.

And the message today, it's got a little bit of an odd name.

It's sticks and stones.

Today we're gonna be talking about sticks and stones.

I know that seems odd, but it's gonna make sense unless I do a really bad job.

And that's possible.

Um every time I think about sticks and stones, like this phrase, this whole week, I've been thinking about my youngest son Eli.

So I've got four kids.

I talk about them all the time.

They give me a lot of material.

It's actually a real godsend in this role.

And they're all so different.

Some of you who have multiple kids, or maybe you have a lot of siblings, it's amazing how the same two human beings can combine to make such different people.

And Eli, my youngest, I don't, like when I think about all my kids, I can sort of see where my oldest is going in life.

I can see where my daughter is going and kind of how she's wired.

I think I'm getting my my third child figured out.

Judah, he's awesome, and I'm figuring that out.

But Eli, he is a roll of the dice.

Like, I have no idea.

This kid just thinks differently, he approaches life differently, he catches us off guard all the time.

He's not into the same things that his siblings are into.

Like what Liam is into, or rather what Eli is into, is sticks and stones.

He loves rocks.

Like he loves rocks in an odd way.

Almost every Sunday when we get home, we have him empty his pockets because he will have gone around and found rocks, and he just puts rocks in his pockets.

He's like, This is a rock, it's really shining, and he loves it.

And for the next week, that rock is vital, it is important, and if we lose track of that rock, it's it's awful.

He loves to climb rocks.

In fact, here's a picture of Eli with his two uh nearest siblings in age.

He's climbing, climbing some rocks, and uh they're not real rocks, you know, they're fake rocks, but that's Eli at the top.

That's Eli at the top.

He's five, he's fearless, he climbs things all the time.

I've told stories about the times that he's climbed trees and we found him 20 feet in the air, and we're like, what are you doing?

And he's just he likes he likes to climb.

He likes rocks, he likes stones.

He also likes sticks.

Our kids have a tendency to uh go outside in the backyard and get in these like little sword battles.

You know, they'll go find sticks.

And a few months ago, my daughter came yelling and she's like yelling for help.

And I'm like, what's going on?

She said, It's Eli.

We're we're doing sword fighting in the backyard, and he's cheating.

And I said, Well, what do you mean he's cheating?

And so she brings me outside, and this is what I saw.

I got a picture of this.

Um actually my wife did.

So this is what what we saw in the backyard.

So that's that's Eli.

And my daughter, you know, who's four years older than Eli, she's like, Dad, clearly, not okay.

And I said, Well, technically, that is a stick.

I will allow it.

I will allow it, right?

Never bring a stick to a log fight.

That's what that's what he taught them that day, right?

And so, Eli is all about sticks, he's all about stones, and if he were in the room today, he would be all about this message because this is Eli inspired, I guess, and at least Eli approved.

We're gonna learn today about all this commotion that happened in the early days of Jesus.

Jesus' entry into this world was a disruptive event.

From the outset of Jesus coming into this world, people paid attention.

There were people who were after Jesus.

There's a lot of commotion around Jesus, and we're gonna learn today why.

And the reason why has to do with sticks and stones.

But let's go ahead and jump into the book of Matthew together.

We're gonna look at Matthew chapter 1, verse 1.

Matthew 1:1

It says, This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus, the Messiah, a descendant of David and Abraham.

Now, if you keep reading the first part of Matthew 1, it's a genealogy.

And those are riveting to read.

Those are so exciting to read.

We actually did a series a few years ago called The People God Uses, and we went through many of the people in the genealogy of Jesus.

So if you want to go into a deep dive of those people, feel free to listen to that.

Very interesting.

But the reason Matthew begins with a genealogy is pretty simple.

Matthew is writing his gospel to the Jewish people.

We've got four Gospels, four accounts of Jesus' life.

You have Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Those are often called the synoptic gospels.

Sin means one, optic means I.

In other words, you can look at all three of those through one eye.

They are very similar.

Mark's is the most concise.

He probably wrote his first.

Matthew takes what Mark wrote, and he very much focuses it on a Jewish audience.

He leans into Old Testament scripture.

Genealogies were very important to the Jewish people.

Where did you come from?

You have to kind of prove your heritage.

Luke takes his, he doesn't so much write it to the Jewish people, but to just people in general.

He does a lot of interviews, he tries to give us as many details as possible.

And then John, it's kind of his own thing.

John wrote his gospel years later, did not need to rehash everything that Matthew, Mark, and Luke had covered, but being Jesus' closest friend, one of the three disciples that was the closest to Jesus, John gives us like the deleted scenes.

He gives us all these extra bits of information that the others just didn't have access to in the same way.

Matthew, though, is super focused on the Jewish people.

So he's going to lean into things like genealogies and the history of the Jewish nation and an Old Testament prophecy trying to show us that Jesus is the fulfillment of all of these prophecies that have existed for centuries.

And a lot of that has to do with the family that Jesus would come from.

And so you can read that genealogy, it's got a lot of interesting people in it.

If you know the history of those people, it'll blow you away, some of the stories of the people that are part of the history of Jesus and his life.

But what's most important is where Matthew begins, that Jesus is a descendant of Abraham, but also specifically of King David.

And we're going to get into that as we go further into our conversation today.

But we go into Matthew chapter 1, verse 18.

Matthew 1:18

It really starts to tell us how Jesus comes into the world.

It says, this is how Jesus the Messiah was born.

His mother Mary was engaged to be married to Joseph, but before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Joseph, to whom she was engaged, was a righteous man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.

In other words, Joseph did not believe her.

And you can't really blame him for that.

She says, I'm pregnant.

It was God, and he's like, Yeah, okay.

And so he says, Nah, I can't go through with this, but I'm not going to make a big spectacle out of this.

I'm not going to try to punish you.

I'm just going to divorce you quietly.

That's his plan.

It says that as he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.

Joseph, son of David, the angel said, Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife.

For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit.

She will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord's message through his prophet.

Look, the virgin will conceive a child, she will give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God is with us.

There we have Matthew quoting a prophet, right?

This fulfilled what the prophet said.

Now, quick aside, I have heard people say, wait a minute, why didn't they name him Emmanuel?

The prophet said they will call him Emmanuel, we call him Jesus.

Well, what I would tell you is there's a difference between what you're named and what you're called.

So if you hung out in my home, you would hear us yell the word beans a lot, and then my daughter would emerge.

And you would wonder for a moment, did you name your daughter beans?

And we did not, her name is Lily, but when she was born, she was bald for like three years, zero hair.

And she just looked like a little bean.

And so we started calling her Lily Bean, and that was our little cute nickname, our little Lily Bean, and then eventually we just called her bean, and then for some reason it became plural, and now we just yell beans, and there comes our daughter.

She's 10 years old, 10th birthday was yesterday.

And if you're in our house, you're like, why?

Yeah, okay, she's she's made it a decade.

Here we go.

Clapping.

Um, yeah, so that's what that's what she's called.

That's not what she's named.

Well, it says that Jesus will be called Emmanuel, meaning that God is with us, and actually, Jesus was called that all the time.

Even the enemies of Jesus unknowingly called him that.

I'll give you an example.

John chapter 3, Jesus is talking to a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus, who would become a follower of Jesus to some degree.

John 3 · chapter mention

But he was part of this group called the Pharisees.

They're the ones that opposed Jesus.

We're going to spend a lot of time with the Pharisees this year.

They're the enemies of Jesus.

But listen to what Nicodemus admits.

It says, There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee.

After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus.

Rabbi, he said, we all know that God has sent you to teach us your miraculous signs or evidence that God is with you.

He says, Hey, clearly God is with you, you are with us, we're in the presence of a God thing.

So Jesus is God with us.

He is God on this earth, bringing his fullest revelation of himself to us.

He's amazing.

That's kind of a quick aside.

So Mary is pregnant.

Joseph is going to divorce Mary, decides not to because an angel speaks to him in a dream.

Really cool experience.

And I want to go back to a map for a second.

I want us to look at where we are.

Because right now we are very likely, we don't know this with certainty, but near certainty, that they are in a place called Nazareth.

Now here's where Nazareth shows up.

It's in Galilee, okay, this kind of northern part of Israel, and it's a nowhere town.

Like it's a nowhere town.

It is the sticks.

Is anybody from the sticks?

You know what I mean?

Like you're gonna admit I'm from the most of us are from like the city, I guess?

You guys, how many of you are from Canton, Georgia?

Okay.

It's the sticks.

It's just grown up a lot in the last few years.

I'm teasing.

Alright, check it out.

So I have no judgment there.

Uh maybe this is a phrase that isn't translating.

Do you guys know that phrase?

The sticks?

Like you're from the boonies, wherever?

Okay, cool.

So, like, my family, if my mom were here today, she would have raised her hand.

She would have raised both hands, she would have stood up.

Because she is from the sticks.

She's from a place called Seymour, Missouri.

Seymour, Missouri has a population that is less than the attendance of our church today.

And it's been like that forever.

And I used to spend my time as a kid going to Seymour to visit my grandma, my grandfather, all of her siblings, and all my cousins.

Seymour is just, I mean, it's it's nothing.

And this is the crazy thing about Seymour.

Um, there's a McDonald's there.

That's like the newest edition.

It's a big deal.

There's McDonald's that got built there like 15, 20 years ago because it's near a highway.

And it's the only thing I've never seen this anywhere else in the world.

It's a McDonald's that has posts to tie horses to.

There is a huge Amish population in that area where my mom is from, and I have literally been in the drive-thru of that McDonald's behind a horse and a buggy of Amish people ordering Big Macs.

Like it's a surreal experience.

And I kind of want to say, hey guys, I feel like this is cheating.

I don't know a lot about being Amish, but apparently not.

Um so that is the sticks.

When you are in a McDonald's behind a horse and buggy, you're from the sticks.

All right?

That's my heritage.

Nazareth is the sticks.

I guess the sticks.

It's a small town.

It has no historical significance before Jesus.

In fact, later Jesus is going to call a disciple to him.

And when he calls this disciple, another one of his disciples has told this man, hey, you've got to come see this guy.

He's from Nazareth.

And this disciple says, Nazareth?

Can anything good come from Nazareth?

Like it's just it's the sticks.

And this is where Mary and Joseph live.

This is where Mary was likely from.

This is where they met.

This is where Jesus is going to end up, but he doesn't necessarily start there.

And so we find that right away we have some movement.

We've got our first sort of journey for Jesus while he's still in the womb.

And we'll bring this up because Mary and Joseph have to make a journey from Nazareth.

They've got to go all the way to a city south of Jerusalem called Bethlehem.

And so there's our Indiana Jones moment right there.

We're going to have a lot of those this year.

So they go to Bethlehem because, as Luke's gospel tells us, there's a census.

And it's decreed that everyone has to return to their ancestral home, and the ancestral home of Joseph is Bethlehem.

Same place that King David was from.

And so Joseph makes this trek to Bethlehem, and that is where Jesus is actually born.

We get there in Matthew chapter 2.

Matthew 2 · chapter mention

It says, Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea during the reign of King Herod.

And about that time, some wise men from eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem asking, Where is the newborn king of the Jews?

We saw his star as it rose, and we've come here to worship him.

King Herod, and this is a Herod known as Herod the Great, was deeply disturbed when he heard this, as was everyone in Jerusalem.

He called a meeting of the leading priests and teachers of religious law and asked, Where is the Messiah supposed to be born?

In Bethlehem, in Judea, they said, for this is what the prophet wrote.

Again, Matthew's always bringing up the prophets.

And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not least among the ruling cities of Judah, for a ruler will come from you who will be the shepherd for my people.

Then Herod called for a private meeting with the wise men, and he learned from them the time when the star first appeared.

And then he told them, Go to Bethlehem, and search carefully for the child, and when you find him, come back and tell me, so that I can go and worship him too.

After this interview the wise men went their way, and the star they had seen in the east guided them to Bethlehem.

It went ahead of them, and it stopped over the place where the child was.

When they saw the star, they were filled with joy.

They entered the house and saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him.

Then they opened their treasure chest and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and these all have very significant meanings as far as Jesus' life is concerned.

When it was time to leave, they returned to their own country by another route, for God had warned them in a dream not to return to Herod.

And so here's what's going on.

Herod the Great is not interested in worshiping Jesus at all.

He wants to get rid of Jesus because Herod the Great happens to be the king.

And he's he's like kind of a king.

He's kind of a king.

Rome rules everything at this point in history.

Rome has conquered pretty much every part of the civilized world, including this part of Israel.

But Rome was really good at keeping peace by allowing people to sort of feel like they were being ruled by their own people.

And so Rome would allow many kings, governors, whatever words you wanted to use, to rule the people of their own ethnicity.

That kind of kept people less likely to revolt.

And so Herod is, by proxy, the king of Israel, but really he reports to Rome.

And Herod was awful.

He's called Herod the Great.

He's called Herod the Great because he actually did some pretty amazing things in terms of his impact on society, especially like architecture and stuff like that.

But he was a horrible, horrible man.

In fact, when Herod died, he had it decreed that some of the most prominent and beloved men of Israel would be murdered and killed on the day he died because he was determined that people will mourn on the day that I die.

Seriously, like he did that.

He knew people wouldn't cry for him.

He's like, but people will cry.

That's the guy that Herod was.

And so here's Herod, and he has authority, he has reign.

And so when he hears about a newborn king, he's not happy, he's not excited.

That is a threat to Herod.

So he's trying to find out where this king is, this newborn king, so that he can take care of him and get him out of the way.

And so we continue.

Matthew chapter 2, verse 13.

Matthew 2:13

After the wise men were gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.

Get up, flee to Egypt with the child and his mother, the angel said, Stay there until I tell you to return, because Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.

That very night, Joseph left for Egypt with the child and Mary, his mother.

And they stayed there until Herod's death.

This fulfilled what the Lord had spoken through the prophet.

Again, another, this fulfilled what the prophet said, I called my son out of Egypt.

Herod was furious when he realized that the wise men had outwitted him.

He sent soldiers to kill all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, based on the wise men's report of the star's first appearance.

It's likely that the wise men showed up not on the night Jesus was born, as we kind of see in the Tivity scenes, but probably when Jesus was about two years old.

It says Herod's brutal action fulfilled what God had spoken through the prophet Jeremiah.

A cry was heard in Ramah, weeping in great mourning.

Rachel weeps for her children, refusing to be comforted, for they are dead.

And so now we have Jesus' next big journey.

I mean, he's two years old, and he's already covered so much ground, especially by those standards.

Now he's not just gone from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

Now Jesus has to go from Bethlehem all the way to Egypt.

And we're going to see this on the map here.

Egypt is to the south.

We don't know exactly where in Egypt that Jesus went.

The border of Egypt is about 40 miles from Bethlehem, at least the border of Egypt at that time.

It's 110 miles or so from Nazareth.

And so here Jesus is, two years old, and already he's covered all this ground.

He's made all these travels.

And then we come back to Matthew chapter 2, verse 19.

Matthew 2:19

It says, When Herod died, and this is about four years later or so, when Herod the Great died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt.

Get up, the angel said.

Take the child and his mother back to the land of Israel, because those who were trying to kill the child are dead.

So Joseph got up and returned to the land of Israel with Jesus and his mother.

But when he learned that the new ruler of Judea was Herod's son Archelaus, he was afraid to go there.

Real quick aside, a lot of history, then we're going to get to the point, I promise.

You guys are being great.

So when Herod the Great died, he left his rule in his will to three of his sons.

He actually had more sons that he had murdered because he thought that they were a threat to him, but these are the three that survived.

The emperor of Rome actually wrote, this is in history, it is safer to be one of Herod's pigs than to be one of his sons.

That's the kind of man that Herod the Great was.

But the three sons that he didn't kill, he divided his kingdom up, and he gave his son Archelaus the most important part of Israel, which included Jerusalem.

That would be Judea, that's the southern region.

He gave his son Antipas, also known as Herod Antipas, the northern part, which includes Galilee, and then he had another son named Philip, and he gives him sort of the northeastern part that's much less Jewish, much more Roman.

That son's name was Philip.

And so Joseph learns that Archelaus is in charge of Bethlehem, where they had come from, and he's like, We're not going back to Bethlehem.

Because Archelaus was exactly like his father.

In fact, within a decade of Herod the Great's death, Archelaus is banished.

He's kicked out by the Roman government, and that part of Judea is now directly ruled by Rome.

And that's where we're going to get a man like Pontius Pilate, who's the prefect of that area, by the time we get to Jesus as an adult.

Okay, again, a lot of history trying to learn stuff, but this all matters.

So instead of going all the way to Bethlehem, They've got to go further.

They've got to go further.

It says that so Joseph got up and returned to the land of Israel with his mother, but when he learned that the new ruler of Judah, Judea, was Herod Sonarchalaeus, he was afraid to go there.

And then after being warned in a dream, he left for the region of Galilee.

So the family went and lived in a town called Nazareth.

There we are, back to Nazareth.

And this fulfilled what the prophets had said.

He will be called a Nazarene.

And so now we have our final little journey of today.

Jesus and his family go all the way from Egypt, all the way to the south.

Okay, we'll see it on the map, and they go all the way back, all the way back to Nazareth.

And that was a journey.

At this point in time, Jesus is probably about six, seven years old.

So he's had a pretty busy first part of life.

His first steps were interesting to say the least.

And here's what I want to focus on now.

We've gotten all the information out of the way.

Okay, why?

Why in the world is Jesus such a big deal to everybody?

He's born, and people are after him.

Like the wise men, they're after him because they want to worship him, they want to honor him, they want to be in his presence.

Herod learns of Jesus being born and he's after him, but he's after him not to not to worship him, not to honor him, but to kill him.

You have Jesus being born, this child born to, frankly, an unimportant family in an unimportant place, and yet there's all this commotion.

He is a true disruptive force from the moment he's born.

And the answer as to why, like I said earlier, is all about sticks and stones.

I want to take a second and look at Nazareth.

Just think about Nazareth for a moment.

I said it's the sticks.

And you might be from a bigger place or you might be from the sticks, but Nazareth is literally the sticks.

In fact, the the word Nazareth means stick town, essentially.

There's this Hebrew word, Netzer, and Netzer becomes like Nazar, and that's what becomes the root word for Nazareth.

It means the sticks.

And it's so interesting, right?

Because at the very end of Matthew chapter 2, when it says that they went back to Nazareth, Matthew wrote, This fulfilled what the prophets had said.

Matthew 2 · chapter mention

Now, what's fascinating about this is that every time Matthew quotes a prophet, if you're reading it in your Bible, there will be a cross-reference to a direct prophecy from a specific prophet.

But there is not one prophet in the entire Old Testament who ever said what Matthew says here.

There's not a single prophet who said he will be called a Nazarene.

And some people have tried to use this as like a criticism and say, ah, see, Matthew, he's wrong.

There's a mistake in the Bible.

There you have it.

No prophet said that.

That's not the case.

No, no, Matthew, he knows the Old Testament.

He knows it so well.

He knows it much better than the critics who would try to say he's wrong know it.

He's doing something incredible here.

And it's an example of God catching people by surprise, which God does all the time.

His prophecies always come in ways that you don't necessarily expect.

And so this is the one point where Matthew says the prophets, plural.

He doesn't say the prophet, he says the prophets said he will be called a Nazarene.

I want to look at Isaiah chapter 11, verses 1 through 5.

Isaiah 11:1–5

This is a prophecy that the prophet Isaiah had about the coming Messiah, centuries before Jesus was born.

And he says, out of the stump of David's family will grow a shoot.

David's family were the kings, and that didn't last very long.

That dynasty was supposed to be the dynasty.

It ends pretty quickly.

It is a tree that has been cut down.

All hope is lost in the line of David.

But Isaiah says, No, no, no, even though that's happened, out of the stump of David's family will grow a shoot.

Yes, a new branch bearing fruit from the old root.

And that Hebrew word for shoot or for branch is netser.

It's stick, the very word that becomes the root word of the city of Nazareth.

Okay?

He goes on to say that the Spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

He will delight in obeying the Lord.

He will not judge by appearance nor make a decision based on hearsay.

He will give justice to the poor and make fair decisions for the exploited.

The earth will shake at the force of his word, and one breath from his mouth will destroy the wicked.

He will wear righteousness like a belt, and truth like an undergarment.

And so you have this prophet who says that the Messiah will be like a branch, like a stick, growing out of this chopped-down family tree.

And multiple prophets talk about this.

Multiple prophets affirm that the Messiah will come from the line of David.

In fact, Jeremiah chapter 23 says, For the time is coming when I will raise up a righteous descendant from King David's line.

Jeremiah 23 · chapter mention

He will be a king who rules with wisdom.

He will do what is just and right throughout the land.

And so, what Matthew's doing here, it's an incredible play on words.

It's brilliant.

And the Jewish people loved plays on words.

Psalms is filled with these.

He says, Hey, you know how you guys have been looking for this stick, this new growth, this root?

That this is the one you're going to put your hope in?

Well, he's here.

And he lives in Sticktown.

Like just God's trying to make it obvious.

Like Sticktown, here he is.

It's it's amazing.

Jesus is that new growth.

He is that stick, that new root that's growing out of this dead tree that's bringing hope to the world.

But he's not just a stick, he's also a stone.

And this is where it gets really interesting.

I want to look at another map, and this is a zoomed-in version of Galilee.

We're going to see Nazareth, but we're also going to see this really important city that's less than four miles north of Nazareth.

This is called Sephoros.

Sepphoris is the most important city in Galilee, but you will not read about it in the New Testament.

Jesus doesn't really seem to go there, but it's a huge city.

And it was a city that was in the process of being built during the life of Jesus.

And it was built to be the capital of Galilee.

It was built to be a spectacle.

It was built to almost be like a modern Roman city in that part of the world.

And it's very likely that this is where Jesus commuted to work on a regular basis growing up.

He lived in Nazareth from the time he was about six or seven until he was 30.

And many of us don't realize how much Jesus can relate to us.

And so, how many of you have a commute to work on a regular basis?

You're back and forth on a daily basis.

Anyone?

No one wants to raise their hand today.

Fine, whatever.

I don't need your hands to raise, I can do this on my own.

I do, I do, and Jesus did as well.

We often like to think about Jesus being a carpenter.

We know that.

And it's typical when you picture Jesus as a carpenter that he's like got a little shop, and the people in Nazareth are coming and he's making things out of wood, and he definitely could have made things out of wood.

But the word for carpenter in the Greek language that we have in the New Testament is tecton, and it just means a craftsman.

Literally, it means a construction worker, like someone that just builds things.

And in that time in history, and at that place in history, wood was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the primary method for building things.

There wasn't a lot of wood in Israel.

In fact, in the Old Testament, when they build the temple, they get their wood not from Israel, they import their wood from a place called Lebanon, right?

Because that's where the wood was.

No, no, everything was built out of stone.

In fact, in between Nazareth and Sepphoris, the city that was being built at the time of Jesus, where every craftsman, every builder, every carpenter, every tecton would have gone to work because that's where the work was.

Okay, in between Nazareth and Sephorus was this huge stone quarry.

And so it's historically likely that Jesus was a stonemason.

That what Jesus worked with primarily was stone, because that's the material that things were built from.

And this is fascinating when you think about it, right?

Here's this town that's being built, this huge city being built less than four miles from where Jesus lives.

That's where he would have been likely going all the time to be part of building projects, and that's where all the work was, that's where the money was to provide for your family.

And he's building things out of stone.

It's fascinating because Jesus talks about stones all the time.

And if you know the teachings of Jesus, things are gonna pop in your mind.

If you don't, don't worry, we're gonna cover all of it this year.

He talks about stones all the time.

For example, listen, Matthew chapter 21.

Matthew 21 · chapter mention

He says, Didn't you ever read in the scriptures when it says that the stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone?

This is the Lord's doing, and it's wonderful to see.

Jesus here refers to himself as a stone.

And a stone that has been rejected by the builders.

This is language Jesus would have known because he was building things all the time, likely out of stone.

He says, the very stone that you reject, as in me, is actually the cornerstone of your faith.

It gets even deeper.

Daniel chapter 2 has an amazing prophecy about the coming of the Messiah.

Daniel 2 · chapter mention

And Daniel is working for a king named Nebuchadnezzar.

Nebuchadnezzar is an ancient king of a dynasty that will fall and an empire that will fall, and he has this dream, and it gives him a panic, and God gives Daniel the interpretation of the dream.

And we see this interpretation in Daniel chapter 2.

Daniel 2 · chapter mention

This is centuries before Jesus.

In your vision, your majesty, you saw standing before you a huge shining statue of a man.

It was a frightening sight.

The head of the statue was made of fine gold, its chest and arms were silver, its belly and thighs were bronze, its legs were iron, and its feet were a combination of iron and baked clay.

Now, Daniel goes on to explain that each of these portions of the statue represent different empires that will come after the other.

And these empires represent the major empires of the ancient world, probably ending with Rome.

And it says this as you watched, a rock, a stone, was cut from a mountain, but not by human hands.

It struck the feet of iron and clay, smashing them to bits.

The whole statue was crushed into small pieces of iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold.

And then the wind blew them away without a trace, like chaff on a threshing floor.

But the rock that knocked the statue down became a great mountain that covered the whole earth.

And this stone that crushes the statue, it is a prophecy of the Messiah.

And essentially that when the Messiah comes, the ways of the world are going to go away.

And all of these ancient civilizations that at the time were like, I mean, as powerful as you can imagine.

You couldn't imagine a period of history where Rome wasn't in power if you had lived in Jesus' day.

These will just fall apart, these will crumble, they will blow away, they'll be nothing more than ruins.

But this Messiah and his kingdom and his movement, it will be a mountain that will cover the whole earth.

Nothing will be able to stop it.

And Jesus is that stone.

And this is why it's vital to understand the sticks and stones language, and why this helps us understand just why Jesus is such a big deal, why he's such a disruptive force, because it depends on how you see him.

He's either a stick or he's a stone to each of us, to the world.

See, to those who oppose Jesus, he's that stone and he's a threat.

Herod saw Jesus as a stone coming to crush him, and he had to get rid of him.

To the people that have a vested interest in the kingdoms of this world, the people who have put their hope into the rulers of this world, the way of this world, right?

The injustice, the greed, the idolatry, you name it.

Jesus is a threat.

They see Jesus as a threat, and they will do anything they can to get rid of Jesus, to kill Jesus.

They did kill Jesus, it just didn't work, backfired tremendously, uh, as we're gonna see.

To silence Jesus, to silence those who follow Jesus.

Guys, still part of our world today.

We see it all the time.

In fact, just recently, there was a there was a quarterback who was interviewed.

Some of you who follow football may know this, and uh, young quarterback performed incredibly well, had this amazing interview, and he starts off by saying, first and foremost, I just want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

By the way, football players seem to love Jesus more than other athletes.

I don't know why, but football, it's always Jesus gets a lot of love in football.

And so, you know, this is like he's on national TV, but then when every single major publication replayed that video, they cut that part.

Don't start with there.

So it just starts with him, like, I want to thank all my teammates, I want to thank my city, like cut that part.

I remember years ago I was watching uh a show, I think it was, I think I don't remember specifically, I think it was Dancing with the Stars.

My wife was into it, and I just love my wife, and you know, that's what you gotta do.

It's just you take your medicine.

So I was watching Dancing with the Stars, or may and one of the contestants, I think it was that show, but I could be wrong.

One of the contestants was an outspoken Christian.

And they were wearing a shirt and it just said Jesus on it.

But the shirt got blurred.

And I was like, what?

That's like, what else would they blur?

I was wondering to myself, what else would they blur?

This is one of my favorite clips of all time.

It's actually another football player who uh this is years ago during the kind of aftermath of Ferguson, Missouri, which not that far from where I grew up.

Um, Ferguson, Missouri, you remember there were riots there, it was it was a big deal, there was you know racial tension.

And this football player's name is Ben Watson, and he went on CNN and he kind of gave his take on it.

It was really amazing.

But I want you to watch what happens.

If you've never seen this clip, if you've seen it before, it's only 30 seconds long, you'll know it.

But if you've never seen this before, watch what happens and think about as we watch this the idea of those who are in power who want things to stay the way they are, who want the way of this world to remain, seeing Jesus like a stone, like a disruptive force.

We gotta get rid of it, we gotta get it away.

Okay?

Check this out.

Watch this real quick.

We are definitely making progress, but I think on the individual on a on a micro level, the issue is skin.

The issue is let's pause that for a second.

There we go.

We'll bring it back.

There we go.

The tech team works really hard, and it's harder than it looks.

Trust me, I've had to do it before.

Let's give them a round of applause because it's not easy.

Alright.

We are definitely making progress, but I think on an individual, on a on a micro level, the issue is not really skin.

The issue is sin.

And I firmly believe that the issue is that internally we are flawed.

Internally, we need salvation from our sin.

Internally, our sin makes us prideful, it makes us judgmental, it makes us prejudice, which leads to racism, it makes us lash out of people that don't look like us.

It makes us evidence to protect people that look like us.

It makes us do all those things.

It makes us lash out of an across.

It makes us point it it makes us our sin that's in us makes us do those things.

And the only the only salvation for this sin is the gospel.

The only way to really cure that was on the inside is understanding that Jesus Christ died for our sins.

And so to me, on a micro level, it's understanding just like that.

We lost him.

So they that's like the worst acting job I've ever seen someone have, like, oh, and he's gone.

I wonder what happened, right?

Here's this man, he's on national television, he's given a platform and he uses it to tell the world about Jesus.

And you can just tell.

You can tell on the anchor's face, and she actually makes noises of disgust.

She's like, oh, and she's like, and you know there's someone in that ear, like, get it off, cut it off, cut it off, and boom.

Oh, just like that, we lost him.

And you know what's funny is uh I didn't plan this, but like our tech team had a little issue.

It wasn't that hard to get the video back, you know.

It took like two seconds.

I imagine CNN could have gotten him back pretty quickly.

But they're like, oh, maybe a comet hit where he was.

We don't know.

Well, you know, more news later.

But it's just it's so clear, right?

Like you see that.

He's a threat.

Even the mention of his name is a threat to people that see the world a certain way, and so we've got to get rid of Jesus, we've got to oppose Jesus, we've got to silence Jesus.

He's that stone and he threatens what we've built.

He threatens what we've built.

And the truth is when it comes to the powers of this world, Jesus is a threat to what has been built.

Because as we see in his life, and we'll see this over and over again, he doesn't play the games.

He's not interested in money, he's not interested in earthly power.

He rejects it at every opportunity.

He's here to do something totally different, to build a kingdom that's totally different, that's upside down from every value system this world has.

And so, just like we'll see as we go through his story, there are many people that treat Jesus like that stone to be resisted, to be silenced, to be cut off, to be killed.

But there's also many people who see Jesus as that as that stick, as this new growth, this new life that offers us hope, that offers us the fulfillment of everything that God has promised us.

And we see people left and right in the story of Jesus.

We'll encounter them over the course of the next 11 months where there are people who are broken, who are hurting, who are struggling, they're everyday normal people with tragedy, with heartache, and Jesus to them is hope.

And when they're with Jesus, there's there's new life, there's restoration, there's healing, there's forgiveness, there's mercy, there's all the things that we deep down inside really need.

Right?

And so when it comes to why Jesus is such a big deal, and we see this evidenced in the earliest parts of his life, he's going here, there, and everywhere.

He's covering massive miles.

He's an outlaw.

By two years old, he's an outlaw.

Right?

Think about that.

Why?

Because he's either a stick or he's a stone.

And to the powers that be, he's a stone, he's a threat, get rid of him.

But to those whose hope is in the Lord, to those who long for God to do what God needs to do and wants to do in this world, Jesus, he is that stick, he is that new growth, he is that new life, and each of us have the opportunity.

At one point in our lives when we make an ultimate decision, but even on a daily basis, to say, Lord, I'm not gonna treat you like a stone who threatens what I've built.

I'm not gonna I'm not gonna shy away from you, Lord, when you challenge me, when you convict me because I've built something, and maybe what I've built you're not interested in, and you want it to change.

I'm not gonna treat you like Herod, and I'm not gonna treat you like CNN.

I'm not gonna try to cut you off, ignore you, or silence you.

Because, Lord, I don't see you as a stone who threatens what I've built.

I see you as that new life, that new branch that offers me something I could never build myself.

And this year we're gonna explore all that Jesus has to offer us, all that he has to teach us, all that he has to do in our lives, and my hope and my prayer for my own life this year is that I will see him more and more as he's meant to be seen, that he is the one that can grow inside of me what I cannot manufacture on my own.

And so the question for each of us today, and I think I know the answer for the vast majority of us, but it's good to be reminded, is how do I see Jesus?

He's a big deal, he's a disruptive force.

Make no mistake.

Like, Jesus is a disruptive force in your life.

One of the big lies of kind of modern American Christian culture, where we've sort of blended theology with Disney songs and created this sort of weird uh understanding of God, is like, I just know Jesus loves me exactly as I am, and he wants me to be who I am, and that's a lie.

Jesus loves you exactly the way you are, and he wants to change virtually everything you can imagine.

Right?

He does.

And constantly he's like, nope, every person he meets, he's like, life's different now.

You're not that old person.

In fact, sometimes he gives people a new name, a new identity, a new job.

Like, Jesus wants to change you, and that's a good thing because he sees you as more than you could ever see yourself.

And so he does love you exactly as you are, but man, does he have plans for you?

And it is disruptive.

If you give your life to Jesus, do not plan on things staying the same.

If you give your life fully to Jesus, do not plan on everything just going according to your plans.

Oh no, no, no, no.

Oh no.

No, he will make changes.

And if you see him like a stone that threatens what you've got planned, that's not gonna work out.

But if you see him as someone who can bring forth inside of you what you can never do, ooh, those changes are exciting.

Those changes are something you look for.

Maybe you're nervous, fine, but man, he's good.

And we've got a chance at the beginning of this year to see him that way and partner with him that way and say, Lord, bring the life in me, whatever you want to bring, change what you want to change.

And if you need to knock some statues down, knock them down.

But I want what you have in my life this year.

That's the opportunity that we have.

So, with that said, we're gonna wrap up.

We're gonna take Lord's Supper.

And if you're new to His hands, we have tables at the back with these little cups of bread and juice.

We do this every Sunday.

And it comes back to a moment that Jesus had with his disciples before he went to the cross.

And what I love about this for us, and just practically in our purposes every morning, is it gets our eyes on Jesus.

Now, admittedly, this whole year our eyes should be on Jesus, like all the time.

We are following him closely.

But every Sunday we get to have this moment.

And it's a chance for us to affirm who he is, what he's done for us, and who we are.

And in light of what we've talked about today, I think it's a chance to say, you know what, Lord, you're not a stone to me.

You're you're a stick.

Weird language, I know.

But I want you part of my life, and I want you to grow in me and produce in me what only you can produce.

And this meal, it's it's us kind of taking Jesus in.

The bread represents his body, broken, nailed on the cross, the juice represents his blood that was shed for us.

When we take this together, it is an act of receiving.

We are receiving, and we can reject it.

We can say, nope, I don't want it.

But when we take this in, we are receiving all that he's done for us.

And in a way, it's us admitting that we see him the way that he's meant to be seen, as hope, as new life, as new possibilities for everything in life that he has for us.

So, with that said, let's take the bread and let's pray.

Father, we thank you so much for this piece of bread for what it represents.

It represents you, Jesus.

This is your body.

Lord, you are that new growth.

You are that new life that's coming from an old cut-down tree that everyone had given up hope in.

But you don't give up on us.

We give up on you.

We definitely give up on each other, but you don't give up on us.

And when you're part of our lives, Lord, new things grow, things change.

You change us, you transform us from the inside out, Lord.

As we take this in today, we we want to receive that.

We want to be open to that in every aspect of our lives.

And we thank you, Jesus, and we pray this in your name.

Let's take the bread.

Now the juice.

It represents your blood.

And your blood was shed for us as a sacrifice to pay the price for our sins.

You've washed us clean, you've purified us, you've sanctified us.

That's a lot of Bible words that just mean you've changed us from the inside out and made us entirely new.

You've given us new life.

And in many ways, Lord, we were just like that tree stump describing King David's line.

Without you, Lord, we're just kind of broken.

We're dead.

But with you, Lord, there's new life, there's new growth.

As we follow you this year, help us see you that way.

Help us invite you into our lives and welcome the change and the new life that you have for us on a daily basis.

Amen.