Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / December 13, 2015 | Home for Christmas - Joseph & Mary Left their Home

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December 13, 2015 | Home for Christmas - Joseph & Mary Left their Home · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Good morning, Topeka Bible Church.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: Nice and strong.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: So glad to see you here.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: You braved the rain and you came out anyway.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: So we're glad for that.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: And many of you came to the light show this weekend.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: My wife and I were there with our kids.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: The first show of Friday night, so it would have been, I think, six o'clock or seven, I don't remember what time it was, but we were there.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: And very, very fun to watch, especially we have a five-year-old and a nine-year-old, two little knucklehead boys.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: So they loved to sit in the car and not just see the lights.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: And it kind of added to our experience for the Christmas part of it because you see the light, you hear the music, and then behind us you hear them say an ooh and ah.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: So that was fun.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: And we also got to see the little bit of a delayed start because of the squirrel.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: We had a little squirrel predicament that showed up here.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I didn't know uh if maybe we were gonna have squirrel for lunch today, or I thought it would be neat if when they came up to talk about that, when the host did, if they brought the squirrel with them, right?
1:12
SPEAKER_00: But I think the squirrel is still missing in action.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: So Christmas is a magical time.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: Christmas is a lot of fun.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: Most of us love Christmas.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: Many would say it's their favorite time of year, it's their favorite season of year, favorite holiday.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: Uh, Christmas is about family, Christmas is about faith.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh, Christmas is about having a good time.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: It's okay to want to enjoy the blessings that God's given us.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, many of us can actually genuinely tell that people are nicer at Christmas time.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've noticed this.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it seems like even if you you have a couple of scrooges in your life, I'm not should no, I'm not gonna ask you to raise your hands, but we all have a couple of scrooges that we know in our life.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: And it seems like some of them uh at Christmas time, they kind of dial back the nasty just a little bit and they get a little bit nicer, which is always good.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: It's good to see people kind of get in a better mood.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: It's it's almost as if somebody just flips a switch sometime around Thanksgiving and they just become nicer people.
2:09
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: Uh and then on the kind of the other side of that, to me, even if everything is not perfect, uh we in the holidays we kind of tend to see things through these rose-colored, holiday-colored glasses, if you will.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we just believe that there's peace on earth and goodwill towards all men, and everybody's gonna get along.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: And those of us who who you know never can get along at any other time of the year, you know, K U and K-State fans just put their arms around each other at Christmas time, right?
2:39
SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm seeing some no's here, so I may have struck a nerve on that one.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: But Christmas is.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: Christmas is is is jolly and it's magical and it's fun and it's it's neat, and um, it's it's the most wonderful time of the year, maybe best evidenced by uh three.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: I want to remind you of three Christmas movies.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: You're probably familiar with at least one of these.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh the first one is a Christmas carol.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's been remade several times over the years.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: My wife and I actually got the chance to see this as a play in Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: It was pretty interesting.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh you've probably seen a play or the movie or some you know variation thereof.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: And you know, Scrooge is a horrible guy, but at the end of the movie, everything comes together, right?
3:26
SPEAKER_00: Scrooge is in a much better mood, and he just, I mean, he absolutely does a 180, just becomes this totally different person, which is phenomenal, great.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: He needed to be a different person, amen.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: And so he, and then you know, you have Tiny Tim at the very end saying, God bless us.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: See, you've seen it.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's the line.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: God bless us, everyone.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: And the camera kind of pulls back away, slow fade out, and they're all drinking eggnog, and they're happy to see each other.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: And everything worked out, right?
3:56
SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: That's why we watch Christmas movies.
3:59
SPEAKER_00: Here's another one that you're familiar with.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: It's a wonderful life.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: How many of you have seen It's a Wonderful Life?
4:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay, hopefully everybody, yeah.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: If not, you need to watch it.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: It's a phenomenal Christmas movie.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, George Bailey uh at the end, I love he he comes back to Bedford Falls.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you remember this scene.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: He's running through downtown, and people are throwing open their windows and screaming to him, Merry Christmas, and he's screaming, Merry Christmas, right back, as he runs through the middle of downtown.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're gonna do later tonight, right?
4:32
SPEAKER_00: We're all gonna run through downtown Topeka screaming, Merry Christmas.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: If you do that and people start opening their windows, they're not saying Merry Christmas back.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna throw something at you.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: But that's I mean, that's just and then he makes it home and he has all these debts, but he doesn't care.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: He's glad to see his kids and he hugs his kids and he kisses his kids, and he's just so happy to be there.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: Who cares about the debt?
4:56
SPEAKER_00: But then the debt doesn't matter because it's forgiven.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: Remember that?
4:59
SPEAKER_00: And then they just give him a pile of money.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: People are lined up to come and give him cash.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: And is that your Christmas experience?
5:06
SPEAKER_00: That's mine.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: Every year, people just stand in line, and then my wife and I every year go, what are we gonna do with this pile of cash on the kitchen table?
5:14
SPEAKER_00: No, right?
5:16
SPEAKER_00: But it's a fun movie, it's fun to watch.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: It's fun for a little while to feel kind of the magic and the spirit and the just the warm, fuzzy feeling that you get down deep inside.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing wrong with that.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: Third movie, uh, Christmas movie.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: It's a little more current.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: How many of you remember Home Alone?
5:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: Interesting movie.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: It maybe reveals to us how much our culture has changed over the 40 years in between those two movies.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, they left their kid at home.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: That's the movie.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh, big family, they jump on a plane and fly to France, and they're halfway across the Atlantic before they realize that one of their kids isn't there.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: Spoiler alert.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: And in your life and in my life, we go, What?
6:10
SPEAKER_00: You left your kid at home?
6:12
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, Kevin, who is the kid in this uh movie, he didn't realize what had happened.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: He just knows that he was angry with his mom and with his parents, and he really didn't get along with his family very well.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: So he prayed or just made this wish, he didn't pray.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: He made this wish and said, I don't want a family anymore.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: I wish my family would go away.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: Well, he wakes up the next morning and they're gone.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: So he thought he did that.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: So, fast forward through the movie, some slapstick comedy type stuff.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: Well, along the way, Kevin's heart changes, and by the end of the movie, he's saying, All I want for Christmas is to get my family back.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't know that they left him at home.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: He just thought they disappeared.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: So he's wishing I want my family back.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: You know, that that 180, like we described.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: What at the end of the movie?
6:57
SPEAKER_00: The mom comes home, that's the scene.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: She comes home and they hug it out, and oh, and then the other rest of the family, she had come home separate.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: The rest of the family comes in right behind her.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: They have this big kind of Christmas reunion, and the older brother who was mean to him, wasn't mean to him anymore, and it all worked out just great.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: It was just this magical thing.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you remember, but he also had a neighbor that he had kind of had this growing relationship with through the movie, and that neighbor also had some tension in his family relationships.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: So at the end of the movie, Kevin walks over and he opens the curtain to look out the window, and the neighbor is also hugging his estranged.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that great?
7:38
SPEAKER_00: Don't you wish Christmas worked like that?
7:42
SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: That makes a great movie, and movies sometimes can give us a little bit of an escape for a couple hours, but Christmas doesn't always work that way.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: Christmas doesn't always wrap everything up in a nice bow.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: That's not your experience often, and it's not my experience.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the baggage that we have throughout the year, relationship baggage or financial baggage or maybe health problems or whatever, sometimes those things carry with us right into Christmas.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: And Christmas can be difficult.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: Christmas isn't always fun, it's not always warm and fuzzy.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes when you and I are on our Christmas journey, we kind of take this journey every year.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: That's the theme of the series.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: We're going home for Christmas.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: We all go kind of on this Christmas journey.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, often we experience unexpected and very inconvenient detours.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: As we're on our Christmas journey, we're faced with these detours.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: We didn't ask for them.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: For some of us, it's relational.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh it may be that somebody that you have a relationship with or you've had a relationship with in the past is no longer there.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they've died, maybe they've passed away, maybe it's a spouse, maybe it's a parent, maybe it's a child or somebody that you're very close to, a family member or whatever the case may be.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: And so now maybe this year is your first year, or it's just been the first last few years, that you're forced to face a different Christmas reality, and you find yourself in your Christmas journey, you find yourself on a detour.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: For others of us, the relationship is a little different.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: It's not that that person's no longer there, but we have a hard time relating to them anymore, maybe because of divorce or because of estrangement.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you have kids that you were close to and you're no longer close to them anymore.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: You know, I think about a friend of mine who is a pastor on a pretty good-sized church uh in the South, and uh he he and his wife raised three children, and they're great parents, they're godly parents, and two of those kids turned out phenomenal, and the kid, these kids are all grown now, and they have grandchildren, and you know, whatever the case may be.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: Well, the the third one uh actually just for whatever reason, and he's a he's a nice young man, uh, but he is estranged from those parents.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: They literally have not heard from him in years.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: He's he's a drug addict, and there's just a whole lot of baggage that goes with that.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: And I think to myself, when I think about my friend, what does his Christmas look like?
10:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, I bet it's not the warm and fuzzy of the pan out of the Christmas movie and everything was resolved.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: I know for a fact his Christmases haven't been resolved.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: Now, he still celebrates Christmas and they still experience the joy and the peace of Jesus, but there's something missing for them.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: Christmas isn't just warm and fuzzy for them.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: They're on a detour and they're not sure how they come out of it or when they're gonna come out of it.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: For some of us, it's kids maybe who are still living with us, but we can feel a growing tension between us and them.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're getting into their teenage years or a little older, and there's just this separation of either beliefs or just the way we practice and want to live our lives, and we can start to feel distance growing, and that may really burden your heart as a parent.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: You see your kids getting older and you don't know how to navigate that.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: That's tough.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: For some of us, our health is deteriorating, or the health of someone that we love is deteriorating, and you have to, you know, what does that look like?
11:10
SPEAKER_00: How does that change your Christmas when someone's no longer physically able to do the things that they used to be able to do?
11:17
SPEAKER_00: Is that a detour?
11:18
SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, it really can be.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: Then for some of us, it's not so much about relationships or about things that's happened in the past, but it's maybe about a future.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: And it's a future that if you don't you don't know if it's gonna happen.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're single, you're a grown adult and you're single, and maybe your parents or other family members are asking, asking, asking, when are you gonna get married?
11:44
SPEAKER_00: When are you gonna get married?
11:45
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're in a relationship with someone, and you kind of get in this pressure and questions, and you don't know how to answer those, and you're not sure if you want to answer those.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: And for some of us, to be quite honest with you, and this was my experience, uh, you know, I wanted to get married, and I, but I also wanted to honor God in the process, and sometimes that takes a little longer for God to send exactly the right person.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: And I remember what it was like to be in my 20s, 23, 4, 5, 6, 7, and people are kind of asked, hey, when are you gonna get married?
12:11
SPEAKER_00: When you know you go to a wedding, they say, Hey, you're next.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: We don't think about that, you know, but that can be that can create tension for you if you're if that's your experience.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: Some of us would have a similar experience with children.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you and your husband or your wife have been trying to have kids and uh it hasn't worked for whatever reason, or maybe you've lost uh some babies, and that's there's a whole different kind of emotional package that all that's wrapped up in, and not everybody knows that, and maybe you've kept that private, and so well-meaning people will ask you, when are you gonna start your family?
12:47
SPEAKER_00: and it's like they just stick a dagger through your heart.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: Some of us find ourselves on detours on our Christmas journey.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: So, how do we navigate it?
13:02
SPEAKER_00: What does God have to say to us about it?
13:05
SPEAKER_00: Well, here's the good news.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: When we see adversity, God sees opportunity.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: When you and I see and experience adversity in our life, that's actually an opportunity for God to show up or for us to realize that God was there all along.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: And that God is in fact leveraging those things for our good and even more importantly, for his greater glory.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you ever thought about it or not, but the original Christmas story, the story of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus, is a story that's full of detours.
13:45
SPEAKER_00: In fact, that story wouldn't have been that story without the detours.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: How did they wind up in a manger?
13:57
SPEAKER_00: It's a less than ideal situation, right?
14:00
SPEAKER_00: It's a detour that they didn't ask for.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: How did they wind up having to travel about 90 miles?
14:07
SPEAKER_00: And here's Joseph traveling with a with his wife, who was, and I quote, she was great with child.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: If you ever had a pregnant wife, you know exactly what that phrase means.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: She was great with child.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: And so we're gonna, you know, travel 90 miles.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: That's not easy.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: That's a detour.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: The Christmas story itself was full of detours.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna dive in, if you want to turn with me to Matthew chapter 2.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna read a few verses from the Christmas story, or as I like to call it, this is the Christmas backstory.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
14:41
SPEAKER_00: Luke 2 is the Christmas story that everyone is familiar with.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: This and rightly so.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the passage that we read on Christmas Eve to our family.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: We read it in church, you hear it preached from, and that's okay because that does contain the bulk of the story.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 2 kind of gives us a little bit of background of what's going on behind the scenes, so we're gonna kind of look at a little bit different take on this.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: And along the way, as we talk about detours, we're gonna actually talk today about four road signs that are gonna be useful for us as we're on a detour.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: As you and I find ourselves on detours this holiday season, what are some road signs that we can carry along with us to help us navigate those?
15:22
SPEAKER_00: So, Matthew chapter 2, we're gonna begin reading in verse 9, and we'll give you a little bit of background.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: You remember the Magi, they had come from the east.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: We would call them, they've been called wise men.
15:31
SPEAKER_00: They're just, they were very important men, and we'd think there were three of them, and they show up and they actually, because they're following this star, they go to King Herod.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember this story?
15:42
SPEAKER_00: And they're talking to Herod and they say, Hey, we're here to worship uh a child that's been born who's gonna be king.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: Well, Herod didn't like that, but up front, you know, on the surface, he told them, Oh, absolutely.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: Hey, go find him and go worship him, and then when you've found him, you come back and tell me where he is so I can go worship him.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: But you and I know that Herod was a bad guy.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: If this was a Christmas movie, he was the bad guy, right?
16:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh unfortunately, he stayed the bad guy.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: There was no turnaround for him.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: But so he wants to kill this baby, so the magi kind of depart from meeting with Herod, and that's kind of where we step into this story.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 2 and verse 9 says, After listening to the king, they went on their way.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: Or as you and I sing, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy, right?
16:48
SPEAKER_00: This is what we sing because this is the Christmas story, and it's such a great story.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: And at this point in the story, it is kind of warm and fuzzy, and it does feel like things have worked out.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: And oh, you know, they had to, she had to give birth in most likely a cave.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: We would call it, you know, it says it's a manger.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, it worked out.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that great?
17:10
SPEAKER_00: But it's not the end of the story.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: Verse 11.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: Going into the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: They weren't just curious, they were worshipers.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: And does anybody remember what they were?
17:28
SPEAKER_00: Gold.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and there's been a lot of conjecture over the years about what those gifts were, that they were symbolic or that they stood for something, and I'm not gonna weigh in on that either way.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna tell you this: they were valuable gifts.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: These were very valuable gifts, starting with gold.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: As we're gonna see in the next few verses, that's gonna become very useful for this young couple.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: But at the time, all they knew was somebody had given them a very expensive gift.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: It's always fun to get expensive gifts.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
18:00
SPEAKER_00: It's okay to say amen on that.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: It's fun to get expensive gifts, right?
18:05
SPEAKER_00: Now, some of you maybe were thinking that your wife bought you an expensive gift, and in your mind you're going, well, I really paid for this either way.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm not talking about that.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe vice versa, right?
18:17
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about this kind of expensive gift.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: The Lexus with the bow on it, right?
18:22
SPEAKER_00: Because isn't that what you get every Christmas?
18:25
SPEAKER_00: And that's what I get every Christmas in the driveway?
18:29
SPEAKER_00: Right?
18:30
SPEAKER_00: No.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: That's not our experience.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it happens once.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: But their experience was that they had been given this incredibly extravagant, valuable gift.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: So verse 12, being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: And this is where it gets interesting.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: In fact, this is where the story kind of takes a little bit of a dark turn.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: Verse 13.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: When they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, now time out.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: Don't look up there, look right here.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: You know what the angel's gonna say.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: And I know what the angel's gonna say.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: But I want you and I, right now, to imagine that we have no idea that we were like Joseph, who's hearing this for the first time.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: Imagine how this must have affected him.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: Right.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: Take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: Egypt was south of them.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I think about that.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: They had come from the north.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: They had already traveled a pretty good distance south.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: And now God's asking them to go further south and to live there.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: Not easy.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: It's easy for you and I to dismiss it.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: That was not easy.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: This could not have been an easy thing to hear.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt and remain there.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: And you and I would be kind of leaning in going, well, for how long?
20:25
SPEAKER_00: Remain there when?
20:27
SPEAKER_00: Like two months, three months, is it six months?
20:30
SPEAKER_00: Can you can you guesstimate it?
20:32
SPEAKER_00: God, until I tell you.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: Think about it.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: How would you feel if you had just given birth?
20:50
SPEAKER_00: Or you had just watched your wife give birth to a beautiful baby boy.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: And then you heard that the king wanted to destroy your child.
21:03
SPEAKER_00: It was just part of the Christmas story.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: They didn't know it was part of the Christmas story.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: They were living it in the moment.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: All they knew was that God had dropped a detour right in their lap.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: And it's not fun, and they don't know how it's gonna turn out.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: I have to wonder, there's a part of me that wonders if they didn't have a conversation or at least have the thought, God, you're asking us to go south, but our home is north.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: That's the wrong direction.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: I have to wonder if maybe there was a discussion or just an attitude.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever prayed a prayer like that?
21:55
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever said that?
21:56
SPEAKER_00: God, I don't like where you have me.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: It's not that I don't trust you.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: It's not that I don't think you're in control, but this is no fun.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: So here's our first road sign.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: And it's an important one.
22:12
SPEAKER_00: You are not in your detour alone.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: If you're a child of God, and God has you in a detour right now, you can rest assured that God is with you in that detour.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I went back this week and I looked at the list that I have of the 35 miracles that are recorded in the Gospels that Jesus performed.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: And do you know I went miracle by miracle, story by story, and in every single one of those stories, somebody was in a detour.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: Think about the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: His sisters were in a detour, weren't they?
22:58
SPEAKER_00: In John 9, there's a story of a man who was blind, who was older, probably in his 30s, who had been blind his entire life.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: And when they encountered this situation, the disciples even asked Jesus, well, is he blind because he sinned, or is he blind because his parents sinned?
23:18
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said, and I'm kind of paraphrasing, Jesus said, neither.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: This situation exists so that God can be glorified through it.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: In other words, God is at work in this detour.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: You're not in this detour alone.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: So verse 14.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: He rose, took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I think.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes in Scripture you come across verses that you just kind of run right past and you don't pay much attention to.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's one of those verses.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: Because I just told you, I'm conjecturing about what their attitude was or about their conversation was.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: The truth is, we don't know any of that.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: What we know is, listen to this, that an angel showed up and told them they needed to leave.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: And the next verse says, they left.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: Don't miss that.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: Don't miss how powerful that is.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: Why?
24:25
SPEAKER_00: Because, here's your second road sign, sometimes obedience is a decision before it's an attitude.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you have this battle that's going on inside of you, and you know what the right thing to do is, but you also know what you feel like doing.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: And for some of you, you're going to encounter this situation over the next couple, three weeks.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: When that, you know, that nosy relative comes up and starts asking you questions that are really none of their business, and there's a part of you that just wants to let it rip, right?
24:57
SPEAKER_00: But then you also know that maybe that's not the best idea, maybe that's not what decorum would tell us to do.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: So we're faced with a decision.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: We're faced with a choice.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes obedience is a decision before it's an attitude.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: I told you before, I wonder if they were asking questions about why God had them going south, but the truth is it doesn't tell us what their feelings were.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: I find that interesting.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: It just tells us what they did, it just tells us that they obeyed.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: That was their response.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: How about this?
25:35
SPEAKER_00: If you're in a detour and you know that there are going to be difficult situations over the next couple, three weeks, and some of you you can almost predict what it's going to look like.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: The people you're going to have to be around, the questions you're going to be asked.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: What would it look like for you to obey in that situation?
25:53
SPEAKER_00: Right now, planning ahead, what would it look like for you to be obedient?
25:58
SPEAKER_00: What would it look like for you to do the right thing?
26:02
SPEAKER_00: To react with class or with maturity?
26:06
SPEAKER_00: What would that look like?
26:09
SPEAKER_00: Then the last verse, verse 15.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: They departed to Egypt and then they remained there until the death of Herod.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: We don't know how long that was.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: Probably somewhere between a couple months and two years.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it was longer than two years.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: I think history tells us that it wasn't longer than that, but we don't know how long it was.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: But the point of it is they moved to Egypt and they lived there.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: See the road sign here?
26:44
SPEAKER_00: Is it the duration of your detour?
26:48
SPEAKER_00: It's God's design.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: It's not your design.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: You might not get to decide.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: And for some of us, we get frustrated because we try so hard to manipulate and change things and talk to people and move things around and nothing changes.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: And maybe for us, the problem is we haven't acknowledged that we didn't cause the detour, and maybe there's nothing you can do to get out of it right now.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: Maybe this is just what God has for you.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: The duration of your detour is God's design.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes God delivers you from a situation, and sometimes he strengthens you in it.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: And then the last half of verse 15, which is where we're going to kind of wrap things up, they remain there until the death of Herod, and then you have this statement, which is just fascinating.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet from Haggai 11.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: Out of Egypt, I called my son.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: And this is a really deep quote, and that's good, and some of you you're really gonna like this.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: But then when we finish, I just kind of want to sum it up for you.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: So hang in there, okay?
28:15
SPEAKER_00: This is what Kevin says.
28:17
SPEAKER_00: Matthew can claim that this Hosea passage, which talks about the exodus of Israel out of Egypt, is fulfilled in Jesus because Jesus is the embodiment of Israel.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: In other words, when Hosea wrote that verse, everybody had in mind he was talking about the Israelites coming back from Egypt.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: And then Matthew kind of takes that and says, you know what?
28:40
SPEAKER_00: This was also a prophecy about Jesus coming out of Egypt, which is why they went to Egypt to begin with.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: Jesus would be the faithful son called out of Egypt, filling up what was lacking in the first faithless son, Israel.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: Listen.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the one who came to complete all that Israel was designed to perform.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: Do you feel the situation deepening?
29:12
SPEAKER_00: Do you feel maybe like the curtain's being pulled back on history?
29:15
SPEAKER_00: Whoa, you mean this is much bigger than just Mary and Joseph?
29:20
SPEAKER_00: Listen to this statement.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: God sent his son to do himself what his people could not do for themselves.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: That's a pretty good one-sentence definition of the gospel, I think.
29:37
SPEAKER_00: God sent his son to do himself what his people could not do for themselves.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: This is the meaning of fulfillment of Hosea 11 and the true meaning of Emmanuel God with us.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: What are you saying, Tim?
29:51
SPEAKER_00: Listen.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: I think that the reason they went to Egypt is because God was weaving their story, or continuing to, he had already done this.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: He was continuing to weave their story into the story of the nation of Israel.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: Here's the catch.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: I don't think they knew that.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm just guessing.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: But I think until the day they died, Mary and Joseph had no idea why they went to Egypt.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: And I think years after Jesus had died, Matthew connected the dots.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: What's the point?
30:38
SPEAKER_00: There may be a huge, overarching reason why you're in your detour.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: And it may be so much bigger than you.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: And you may not find that out until you step into eternity.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: You don't know who's watching.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: You don't know who's being affected.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: You don't know who's paying attention.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: You don't know who you're gonna bump into that this whole thing is for, and maybe you don't even know them yet.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: Mary and Joseph were part of a much bigger story.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: But it took years for that to develop.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the same thing's true for you.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: So here's some applications.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: Around these ideas, around these four road signs, here's some applications.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: I just want to ask you some questions.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: First one, where can you see God in your detour?
31:36
SPEAKER_00: Where can you see God in your detour?
31:39
SPEAKER_00: Do you have the courage to let go of your disappointment and ask Him to reveal Himself to you?
31:46
SPEAKER_00: I know when you're in a detour, it's easy to always feel bad.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: And it's easy to always feel sorry for yourself, and it's easy to always wonder why you're being treated the way you're being treated.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: Are you brave enough to push pause on that?
32:06
SPEAKER_00: Just for a minute, and ask God what He's up to in your detour.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: Second application.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: What would it look like for you to do the right thing in your detour?
32:22
SPEAKER_00: What would it look like for you to be as obedient as Joseph and Mary were?
32:30
SPEAKER_00: Could you decide that today?
32:33
SPEAKER_00: Could you decide today that when you're with your family on December 24th, you already know how you're gonna respond to questions and how you're gonna deal with people?
32:43
SPEAKER_00: Here's a little hint.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: It's much easier to be obedient when you decide ahead of time what that looks like, and you decide that you're gonna do it.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: Third question.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: What if your detour doesn't end soon?
33:05
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how long your detour is gonna last.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: Can you trust God in it if he doesn't deliver you from it?
33:20
SPEAKER_00: Can you not get bitter with God if he doesn't remove you as quickly as you want him to?
33:27
SPEAKER_00: If he doesn't deliver you as quickly as you want him to?
33:32
SPEAKER_00: If the tension isn't resolved, can you trust him?
33:39
SPEAKER_00: Fourth question.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: Is it possible that you've been perfectly positioned by God this holiday season?
33:52
SPEAKER_00: Is it possible that all the ingredients in the recipe of your life, which includes the pain and the difficulty and the tension, the struggles, is it possible that God's trying to make something beautiful out of that?
34:07
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, because of the tension in your life, you've been uniquely positioned to have a conversation with people that you maybe wouldn't have been able to have before?
34:18
SPEAKER_00: Is it possible that God wants to do something historic?
34:29
SPEAKER_00: It's an interesting question to ask.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: See, God was arranging circumstances, and he's still in that business.
34:40
SPEAKER_00: That's what he does.
34:43
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I would say this.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: The first Christmas didn't happen because everything was ideal.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: The first Christmas happened in spite of the fact that there were a lot of things that weren't ideal.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: The message of the Christmas story isn't that God shows up when you get everything just right.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: The message of the Christmas story is that God shows up.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes in your difficulty, sometimes in your mess, sometimes in your manger.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: And that's not the way you intended it.
35:24
SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: He's not nervous.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: And it may be a fragile situation, but he's not a fragile God.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: The Christmas story and the holiday feel that you and I have has to be more than just a movie where everything pans out and it all wrapped up nice and neat.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: The Christmas story, quite simply, is that God showed up.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: So what kind of story do you want to tell in January?
36:09
SPEAKER_00: When we make it through this holiday season, and you're sitting in January or February, and you're sitting and you're reflecting over everything that's happened.
36:18
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to tell a story of hurt?
36:22
SPEAKER_00: Victimhood?
36:24
SPEAKER_00: Of only sadness, where you miss out on the spirit of the Christmas season?
36:31
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to tell a story of responding in frustration or lashing out at people who got the best of you?
36:41
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't it be great if you and I in January could say it wasn't a perfect holiday.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a perfect Christmas.
36:55
SPEAKER_00: But God was with us.
36:59
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
37:02
SPEAKER_00: God, we are so thankful that you're with us.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: God, that you show up in the midst of our under misunderstandings and our difficulties, our confusion, the tension that's in our lives.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: God, you show up.
37:21
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you remove the pain and you lessen the pain, and then at other times you just sit with us through the pain.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: So God, I pray that if it's in your will, you would relieve and reduce our tension and our struggles and our difficulties.
37:37
SPEAKER_00: Some of us know that's not possible.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: So God, I pray most importantly, that you would be with us in those difficulties and in that tension.
37:51
SPEAKER_00: Give us the faith to trust you.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: And this Christmas, I pray that you would be our Emmanuel.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: God, accept with us.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: Amen.