All posts for the month December, 2025

Prince of Peace – Sermon Manuscript

-We’re back with my Christmas beefs. If this is your first Sunday, go back and listen to my previous sermons, but what I’ve complained about so far is: real Christmas trees that drop needles everywhere, flimsy ornaments that are given to kids but weren’t created with any kids in mind, Christmas songs that are either nonsensical or weren’t mean to be Christmas songs. This week, my Christmas issue is Christmas movies (and just so we’re all on the same page, Die Hard is absolutely a Christmas movie!). But if you think about all the Christmas movies, they’re all centered on some bad guy who has to learn the “Christmas spirit” (whatever that is). You’ve got Scrooge who needed to learn to be generous and care about others, you’ve got Buddy the elf’s dad who only hired angry elves, you’ve got the bully in The Christmas Story, or the movie that is literally named after the bad guy: how the Grinch stole Christmas. All these movies need some level of tension in them, some lesson that needs to be learned, otherwise they don’t seem to sell! Even the Christmas story itself has a bad guy: Herod, with his plot to kill all the boys under 2 years old.

-Today we’re going to look at Jesus being the Prince of Peace, and I bring up all those other stories because I tend feel like peace and Christmas don’t belong in the same sentence. There tends to be family tension that we feel that brings a level of apprehension and uncertainty, there’s the pressure of getting just the right gift for everyone on your list, the pressure of decorating your house in just the right way. Or maybe it’s trying to keep up with your neighbor’s decorations. I love the commercial that’s played this year that shows one incredible house, then it shows the neighbor whose lights spell out “ditto.”

-Church, did you know that because of Jesus taking on flesh (called the incarnation) peace is possible? Now, we have to talk about what that peace means, and what it looks like! But it’s no coincidence that Jesus is called the prince of peace.

READ/PRAY (pg. 607)

What is Peace?

-I realize this is a little before my time but think of some of the ways our cultural imaginations have been shaped around peace. There’s the peace sign that my parents grew up using, John Lennon wrote the song Happy Xmas does anyone remember the rest of the name? (War is Over) Where they sing “War is over if you want it.” Did these children of the era of peace summarize it?

-Or maybe I should (again, and I know I’m not the only one who does this) ask google what peace is. According to the google, it’s freedom from disturbance, or a time without war. But is that what Isaiah is getting at when he describes Jesus as the prince of peace?

-I thought I’d also go a step further, and instead of just looking at the AI summary, look at some of the links Google found (anyone remember when Google just compiled results for you instead of summarizing them for you? Anything to make our lives easier!) Link to United Nations. Calm, tranquility, absence of disturbance. Is that the goal of Jesus coming to earth? To prevent wars? On the one hand, yes! One of the biggest ironies of the book of Revelation is we view it as a bloody spectacle, of a big war. But there’s no war there. The battle lines draw up, and then they’re defeated without a fight, but with the Words that come from the mouth of Jesus. That’s what it’s talking about when it says there’s a sword coming out of His mouth (Rev. 19:15).

-So I thought I’d look at some Bible resources. The Hebrew word Isaiah uses is shalom, which has a more complete sense than the way we use our word peace. One commentary defines it this way:

-Wholeness, completeness, not lacking in anything. Do you know how when you feel like you’re missing out on things, or all your friends are always on vacation and you’re stuck where the cold hurts your face in MN. The biblical idea of peace is the antithesis of that. And look how it goes on: harmony across a wide assortment of relationships: God, the world (creation), others, and even yourself!

-If you attended the “Strands of Unity” class last week, this should sound familiar to you! We talked about how to reach out to our community, and it has to begin with the understanding that there are multiple forms of poverty.

-This is the way the world worked when God created it (Gen. 1-2). Everything worked, there was no conflict or turmoil, every relationship operating as it’s supposed to operate. Plants and animals coexisting (think about that, no worries about poisonous animals, no season allergies)

-The hard part is, this is the world we live in today: EVERYTHING is broken, everything is in conflict and turmoil. And this one talks about the different ways people can be living in poverty. But this isn’t what Jesus wants from us.

-We’ve just been reading from Isaiah 9 this month, but there’s some other passages I want to point your attention to now that get at what it means for Jesus to be the Prince of Peace.

-The first comes earlier in Isaiah, and look at how God describes what the outcome of His rule will be. He begins the chapter saying the nations of the world will stream in to seek the face of the Lord and ask how to better follow in His ways. Then He says:

-So Jesus coming means people won’t have any use for weapons of war anymore. Instead of looking to fight each other, they’ll turn their attention to creating food, and even the training of fighting will be done! People will be so at ease they won’t even feel like they have to prepare for any “what if” scenarios. It’s fascinating to me, I asked some guys to read a book that was written around 330 AD (yes, almost 1700 years ago!) with me this year that is titled “On the Incarnation” written by Athanasius, one of the most influential early church fathers, whose work paved the way for the understanding of Jesus being fully God and fully man, and he does a masterful job of weaving Scripture and contemporary (to him!) philosophy. But he quotes from this passage in his book! Where he says:

-Then he talks about “the barbarians” (those who don’t know Christ). He’s saying that this prophecy can take place even now! But we’ll get there.

-The next one comes after our passage, it’s another Messianic prophecy that you’ve probably heard read at church before! I’m going to read starting in vs. 1, and then we’ll focus on just a couple verses that paint a picture of shalom, of the kind of peace that God intends for His people.

-Notice that the predator will lie down with the prey, the animals will allow themselves to be led by children. The lion will become a vegetarian.

-Even children won’t need the same kind of training we have to do for our kids. Cara has told me stories of her growing up in Kenya and needing to keep an eye out for the mambas that would make homes in the trees or bushes outside their house. When I asked her about it this week, she said the worst was when a mamba decided to turn her favorite fruit tree into its’ home! Cara wasn’t living in the realities of this verse!

-Lastly, see the way God brings about this peace: it’s connected to the knowledge of the Lord. Just like peace is more than just the absence of conflict, here the knowledge that God’s talking about is more than just mental, it’s living out the truths that you ascribe to.

-These pictures are what God’s peace is meant to bring, not just a lack of conflict, but true unity. Some people translate this idea as wholeness or completeness, and in every area of life!

-We all know that Jesus focuses on the arrival of Jesus, of His coming to earth, taking on flesh. So if that’s the goal, how does Jesus provide peace?

How Does Jesus Provide Peace?

-To answer that, I want to read from Col. 2 (pg. 1044), we’ll start in the middle before we get to the implications of how to live a peaceful life. Remember what I said previously about everyone living in some kind of poverty? Paul goes a step further here.

-When you were dead. What can a dead person do? Nothing! But here, Paul is saying that when we were dead in our sins, God made us alive with Jesus and forgave us for all our sins. Now, can we sit in that reality for a minute? When we were dead, God made us alive with Jesus. I sometimes worry that we approach our faith as if we were somehow worthy or special enough to get God’s attention, and the reality is none of us could ever come anywhere close to approaching God in our own power and strength. Dead people can’t even hold themselves up, much less be able to reach God by themselves! I love a line from the old hymn “Rock of Ages” “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling.”

-But notice that there’s something more than just forgiveness that’s offered at the cross. It goes on to say that he erased the certificate of debt. There’s a whole host of discussion and debate about what this debt is, who the debt is to, and how it was paid, if you want to talk about that feel free to reach out to me and we can grab coffee.

-But there is some kind of debt owed because of sin, some payment needs to be made in order to even out the scales. Jesus, through his death and resurrection paid the penalty completely. Suddenly death itself had been defeated, sin no longer has power, Jesus has triumphed over Satan so we don’t need to continue trying to reach out to God, He has reached out to us. I love the way Augustine (4^thcentury church father) talked about this. Before the Fall, humanity was able to sin or not sin. After the Fall, humans were only able to sin. Through Jesus, humans are back to being able to sin or not to sin. Finally, someday when Jesus returns, humans who are alive with Christ will only be able to not sin, all because Jesus erased this debt that we owed.

-But it wasn’t just for us, look at what else He did: disarmed the rulers and authorities. I haven’t been able to work LOTR into my sermons in a while, but this is the perfect time to bring in another one of my favorite fantasy series: Chronicles of Narnia. After Aslan (main character, the Jesus figure), is killed and resurrected, he breaks the stone in half. And when asked why here’s how he answers:

-Friends, Satan has been defeated! Paul says that he has been disgraced by what Jesus did. What looked like defeat, what appeared to be the end was just the beginning of a brand new order in the world brought about by God taking death on Himself. Satan didn’t understand the way the world works, since just like the witch in Narania, his knowledge only goes back to creation, not before. God’s good plans for the world involved sending Jesus to the world, and Satan thought it was his opportunity to get destroy God’s plan once and for all! But instead of ruining God’s plan, he fulfilled it and brought his own destruction.

-Because of that, we have the opportunity to be alive, to live “in real life,” but it involves a complete transformation of the way we live, which is what Paul goes on to talk about. You ready to look at that?

How Should We Live as Ministers of Peace?

-Paul gives us 3 responses we’re supposed to have as people who are marked by peace: living (or abiding) in Christ, overflowing with gratitude, and dying to yourself. All of them could fit under the “In Christ” idea. And all of this is supposed to be descriptive of the way we engage with each other in the church.

-The first reality comes in vs. 6-7. If you have been saved, there is a new trajectory for your life. If God has raised you from the dead, there’s some things you’re supposed to pursue. Notice the action words Paul uses: walk, rooted, built up, established. So we have a path we’re supposed to follow, a foundation we’re supposed to build on, and it’s established, or prepared for us.

-But notice the means that God uses this to take place: in Him, twice, three times if you include the means by which we’re in him: in the faith. The miracle of the incarnation is that Jesus took on flesh (like us), to allow us to become like Him. In another one of his most popular books, Mere Christianity, Lewis says it this way:

-We talked about this last week, the fact that God is our Father means we have a family, a new source of identity. This new family of God gives us a new identity, a new purpose, a new direction to our lives, and provides us with others who are commanded to love and care for us, but notice that it starts with being in Christ.

-Finally, notice the outcome of being in Jesus: overflowing with gratitude. I know the joke: you have the spiritual gift of sarcasm. And even if you won’t admit it, I know some of you have the gift of complaining! But that’s not what the Bible calls us to. Here we see that we’re supposed to be overflowing with gratitude! If God has changed you, your natural instinct should be to give thanks. I know we already passed Thanksgiving, but friends every day is a new opportunity for us to give thanks to God for all his wonderful gifts!

-Paul goes on to start talking about the way we die to ourselves: don’t follow after the things of this world, the things that don’t come from Christ. You may have something in mind like I had when I was growing up: don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t chew, and don’t go with girls who do! That’s not what’s being talked about here (although the advice itself isn’t bad, but we’ll get there later).

-Paul’s asking us to look at the source of where ideas are coming from. And what’s difficult today is so many ideas that we take for granted are founded in Christianity. Things like equal rights for all people, fair treatment of workers, concern for the poor and the marginalized. None of that comes about apart from Jesus! And church, the world is starting to realize that! If you haven’t, look up the book Dominionby Tom Holland, he traces the impact of Christianity to the entire world.

-And Paul tells us how this comes about: circumcision of the flesh, that is the death of Christ, when He was cut off from the land of the living. And we follow along with that when we are baptized, it’s a way of us identifying with Jesus, reenacting what He did on our behalf. Because we have died and been raised WITH Christ:

-We don’t need to let anyone look down on us for what we eat or drink, for the things we celebrate, for our spiritual practices. Those things were given to God’s people in the Old Testament, but now that Jesus has come we have the Holy Spirit living in us. We take Jesus with us everywhere we go, there’s the potential for us to bring peace to the world!

-Similarly in the next section, even legalism isn’t what we’re called to pursue. It would be easier if it was, if we could just have a clear demarcation between what we’re allowed to do and what we’re not allowed to do. This is some of where our fights and tensions come from! We don’t extend grace to people who may struggle with different issues than we do.

-Reputation for wisdom, false humility – these have NO value in crucifying our fleshly desires, because it’s not a matter of what we do externally (up to a point, you can sin externally), but the focus God wants for us is in here. If our hearts are right with God, He’ll allow us to be reconciled to each other, AND from there we can be reconciled the world.

-But it takes effort that starts from being rooted in Christ, it comes from walking along the well-worn path that follows after Him, and it comes from loving and caring for others even more than we love and care for ourselves.

-If you feel a lack of peace in the world today, it may be because you haven’t truly put your faith in the Prince of Peace. Like the Grinch, your heart might need to grow even more than 3x its size, but it starts when you admit that you can’t do it yourself and put your faith and trust in Jesus.

-And if you have put your faith in Him, maybe there are areas where there’s a lack of peace in your life. Are there things you need to die to in order to have that peace in your life? Or maybe you need to work on being more grateful. At the very least, you can give thanks to God for breath in your lungs, for a church family, and for a Savior who loves you and welcomes you in as children.

Everlasting Father – Sermon Manuscript

-Christmas beef: we’ve done real trees, we’ve done flimsy ornaments. This week it’s Christmas songs. Did you know not all the songs we sing during the Christmas season were written to be Christmas songs? Joy to the World wasn’t written to be sung at Christmas. It’s a song about the incarnation, the reality that Jesus became a man, and that’s something that we need to celebrate all the time.

-And some songs that WERE written for Christmas just make no sense! One of my personal favorites (that actually has a message that I think is great) is ‘Little Drummer Boy.’ I’ve been in the room for 4 deliveries, and I can guarantee that the last thing Mary would want in the room with her after delivery was a drummer boy, especially a “little” drummer boy! If you’re wondering why I still like that song, the message of it is beautiful. A little boy sees Jesus, has nothing to give Him, so he uses the one thing he has to worship Jesus, and it says “I played my best for Him.” And just so we’re all on the same page, the For King & Country version is the best version of this song!

-When I was growing up, my family would sing Christmas carols each year, but specifically on Christmas Eve before we opened any presents, we had our own Christmas program. One year during the singing, my dad decided to create his own rendition of the song: Hark the Harold Saastad’s sing. It was only funny to us, because my grandpa’s name was Harold Saastad. But now I can’t sing that song anymore without hearing my dad’s voice booming about my grandpa.

-There’s something fascinating to me about this week’s idea about God being our everlasting father, actually there’s a couple things. The first is the reality that this means God has a family. By definition, a father requires children! That IS the requirement to be a father!

-But the second piece comes from a podcast I listened to a couple years ago that asked a question about the Bible that really stood out to me. The podcast host asked the question: can you think of any good examples of a father in the Bible? Since then, I’ve asked this question to more people than I can keep track of, and the only one I’ve heard has been Joseph, the father of Jesus. But that’s more of an argument from silence than explicit things in the Bible. And I wonder if what we’re supposed to take from that is that no dad, no matter how good they were, will be able to provide exactly what every kid needs, which means all of us are going to be looking for the perfect father figure until we understand that only God can be that for us, can meet us exactly where we’re at, know us perfectly, and still love us unconditionally exactly as God created us to be!

-Let’s read Isaiah 9 again, and then we’ll talk about what I just said.

READ/PRAY (pg. 607)

-We’ve worked our way through 3 of these names so far. Wonderful Counselor is what God provides through us by indwelling us with the Holy Spirit (who’s referred to as a counselor), last week we say that the Mighty God has been working out His plans in human history to accomplish His purposes. I think all 4 of these names are connected to each other, they build on each other, and it helps us to live as humans in the world as God designed us to live (hence IRL). One of the things we need to flourish is a family. Now, please don’t jump to viewing this through the lens of your nuclear family, when I talk about this I’m referring to something else, something that takes place spiritually, outside of our control. We talked about this pretty regularly this Fall as we worked our way through 1 Timothy. God’s plan for the church is to treat each other like a family! To be devoted to each other, to sacrificially care for each other, to come alongside each other and encourage each other to grow closer to Jesus each day. As we think about God being our everlasting Father, I’m going to work to answer 3 questions that are implications of this reality: what is a family, what is God’s family, and how does God’s family behave?

What is a Family?

-Is it those who live in close proximity to you? Is it those that are related to you through blood? So siblings, cousins, aunts & uncles. Is it 2 parents with 1.9 kids living in a house with a dog and a white picket fence? For some of you, maybe all you think of when you hear family is: trauma or tension! I thought it would be helpful to ask all knowing Google, and here’s what I got, 3 different options. I think we jump to the 1 definition anytime we hear the word, which I would argue starts to affect our view of the church, too.

-Another piece that I think is true is that in many cases the church assumes the nuclear family as the norm, and has inadvertently created an idol of the nuclear family, which has been harmful to the health of the church (broadly, not just South Suburban). I have 2 primary problems with this:

-1 is I think we misunderstand the priority of God’s family. The church (which is just another way of saying God’s family, I’ll use those terms interchangeably throughout this message), is meant to be a place where multiple nuclear families commit to helping each other flourish on this side of eternity, we’ll get there under the next question.

-My 2 problem is it either ignores or alienates anyone who doesn’t fit the mold of a nuclear family. We live in a broken and messy world, which means there’s going to be people who have suffered through divorce, or have never been married, or maybe people that have been married and have been unable to have kids. And friends, I can name people in our church family right now who fit each one of those categories. Is there a place here for them? Because what Jesus does is level the playing field for all to come find healing and A FAMILY in His body. I heard a single speaker onetime at a conference talk about singleness in the church, and the church where he was a member was hosting “Supper for Six” groups (assuming that it would be for couples). He went up to the table to sign up and asked if there was room for a “Supper for 5” or a “Supper for 7” and he got blank stares in response!

-I actually experienced this when I first started in ministry! I was single (which meant all the grandma’s tried setting me up with their granddaughters, that’s a story for a different day!), but when I arrived at the church the way the Lead Pastor described their church was a “Family-focused” church. What did that communicate to the singles (like me!)?

-Meeting where someone proposed doing a “family night” on Fridays for the whole church instead of the typical Wednesday nights, even saying “I thought this was supposed to be a family focused church, but it doesn’t feel like it’s focusing on my family!” I work here, and I don’t want to come to that! There’s a tendency for us to attempt to force the church to fit our family instead of working to apply our family to our church. I think we’ve flipped the ordering of what God intended us to be! I’m all for a “family focused” church, if it’s the church family!

What is God’s Family? (Galatians 4)

-So let’s talk about that! What is God’s family? How should we define it? I want to start with a couple things Jesus said, because I believe he laid the foundation for what comes up in Galatians, and for us I think we read it as pretty ordinary, but this was revolutionary in the 1^st century! In the 1^st century, family relationships were literally everything! We miss it because we view the world as a meritocracy: you have to “earn” whatever comes your way (which has a different set of problems!)

-One brief example. In the middle of the moment where Jesus asks Peter who people say He is and then turns to Peter and says “What about you?” Jesus calls him by his dad’s name (growing up this was transliterated to “Simon bar Jonah” and I was always confused about why Jesus called him a bar!). The translation we use fixes that confusion, what Jesus is doing is identifying Simon/Peter by his dad’s name. But it went beyond just a name, if your dad was a fisherman, that meant you were a fisherman. If your dad was a blacksmith, that meant you were a blacksmith. The individual was completely lost in the community. Make sense?

-The first example of Jesus shifting the focus of this communal from the nuclear family comes during His preaching ministry. This story is in a few of the Gospels, I’ll use Mark’s because I just used Matthew! And Mark adds a detail where he says why his family came to him: Mark 3:21 “When his family heard this, they set out to restrain him, because they said, “He’s out of his mind.”” Shortly after that story, Mark picks it up with Jesus being so surrounded by people that his family can’t reach Him.

-Word traveled through the crowd up to Jesus that his mother, brothers, and sisters were outside trying to meet with Him. That’s all well and good! You’d think Jesus would respond, particularly because of how family oriented this culture was supposed to be! And there’s even another story where we see how much Jesus cared about his family! So before we finish this part of Mark:

-One of Jesus’s last acts before He dies is making sure that His mother will be provided for after He’s gone. Around Jesus while He’s hanging on the cross is a group of Mary’s: his mother, wife, and Magdalene. Most scholars believe the disciple He loved refers to John (whom this book is named after), He tells Mary that she should view John as her new son, and John should view Mary as his mother, and the text tells us that’s exactly what happened. So we see that Jesus did care about His nuclear family, He didn’t just leave His mother to figure things out on her own! So keep that in mind as we go back to Mark.

-Remember that Jesus’s mother and siblings were trying to talk to Him, and look how he replies. He intentionally shifts the focus of family from biological family to: whoever does the will of God. That means Jesus is changing our allegiances from our biological family to the family of God, which means that just like in our biological families, in our church families we don’t get to pick who’s in! God does! We’re just called to love them like family!

-With that foundation from Jesus, now let’s look at Galatians 4.

-The right time, this gets to what we looked at last week, God is the author of history, which means He determines the times and places of our lives. The passing of time is in His hands, if He isn’t in complete control then he would stop being God. That includes the time that Jesus was sent to earth. Have you ever thought about all the promises that Jesus perfectly fulfilled? From the right lineage, from the right towns. Even the way God used a census from a pagan Roman, who wanted to make sure he was taxing the people enough, that little decision led to Jesus being born in Bethlehem. You can’t make up a story like this! At just the right time, God sent Jesus.

-Born of a woman. Friends, this is VERY important! This means that Jesus was completely human, he HAD to be. In a letter written in the 4^th century, St. Gregory of Nazianzus (Archbishop of Constantinople) defended the incarnation of Jesus in a letter where he said: This is another way of saying what Heb. 2:17 says, that Jesus became like us in every way, except sin. If there was any part of human that Jesus was not, that part wouldn’t be included in salvation. But because Jesus was fully, completely human He is able to completely redeem us!

-Because He came as a human, that also means he was under the law, the rules that God gave for His people to represent Him to the world. But where those laws were a prison for everyone else, for Jesus it led to complete freedom because He was able to perfectly obey every single one of those rules! (active obedience)

-And the outcome of that is redemption and adoption. Most translations, even the ones that work really hard to be incredibly gender inclusive still keep the word sons here, because it’s connected to a 1^st century tradition that an inheritance is only passed to sons. What Paul is saying is that through Jesus’s work, all of us are now worthy of receiving a heavenly inheritance, we’re all the favored children of God!

-So in response, we cry out to God as “Abba, Father” an affection way of talking about your dear dad who you know loves and cares for you. And do you see how we’re enabled to cry out to God? Through the Spirit who lives in us. Friends, this is the message of the gospel, the message of Christmas

-And that gospel is what unites us together, what makes us a family! The moment that we’re saved, we go from being strangers to family. And think about what that means. Even if we have the worst family in the world, even if we’ve been completely abandoned, we have a new family that is as everlasting as our Father. We have a family that we’re going to be spend eternity with! This all gets us to the last question:

How Does God’s Family Behave? (Matthew 6)

-The appropriate behavior begins with how we approach God, that has to be the starting point for everything we do. I saw a tweet from Tim Keller over 10 years ago now where he said this:

-Can you picture God that way? Maybe I should say DO you picture God that way? God has invited us to not only call Him Father, but to approach Him with everything we have, with anything we need, at all times! He never sleeps, He’s never grumpy, He’s never too busy, He’s always and perfectly present to every single one of His children.

-Not only is God available, but J.I. Packer says this may be at the heart of Christianity. If we understand God as our Father it changes everything else about our lives. It means we are accepted as His children, and there’s no takebacks! It means what He calls us to do and be come from being His children, from being called to represent Him, to image Him to the rest of the creation.

-But what stood out to me as I was preparing this week is how much Jesus talks about our Father in the Sermon on the Mount. Look at how pervasive this is:

-First is we’re supposed to shine before others so they see our Father (just like kids are images of their biological fathers)

-We are supposed to live differently than the world, we’re supposed to love everyone, even our enemies! Jesus says that’s how we demonstrate that we’re children of God. And then He goes even further and says we’re supposed to act just like our heavenly Father: perfect. No pressure, but that’s the standard that we’re supposed to be aiming for. How are you doing at that?

-Then He tells us that we need to ensure that our motives are right, that we’re not acting to impress people, because our Father will only reward those who are faithfully following after Him, which also affects the way we’re supposed to pray. Don’t pray to try to impress others, pray without worrying about others, knowing that God knows everything we need even before we ask Him. Which is also how we’re supposed to practice our spiritual disciplines: don’t do them to try to impress others, do them to draw nearer to God!

-Same thing with worry: God provides for the birds of the air, and He cares even more for us as His children! Which means we’re supposed to worry ourselves with pursuing the kingdom of God, that is living in such a way that people can see we’re citizens of heaven, not citizens of earth.

-And friends, the way God often intends to provide for us is through the church.

–Rom. 12:10 CSB: “Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Take the lead in honoring one another.” GRK: Show familial affection to each other (be devoted), prefer the honor of another. What are your preferences? What are the things you need to die to in order to be devoted to your brother or sister in the church? What might God be calling you to give up for the sake of someone else?

-This isn’t easy, just like being involved in a biological family isn’t easy! There’s things you need to give up or let go of so that someone else can be honored and cared for in ways that maybe only you could provide.

-One of the easiest examples is with music, and I can say that now because I’m not a worship pastor anymore! People used to think I was being self-serving when I’d say this! Friends: music isn’t for you to get some emotional “high” each week, we’re actually commanded to sing to each other! The early church took this idea literally, and each person was expected to sing some kind of encouraging song each week. What if, instead of only looking for the songs I like, we came to church looking for ways to encourage our brothers and sisters, so even a song I don’t like is an opportunity for me to encourage the person sitting next to me?

-One of the areas that I don’t think receives enough attention in churches is generational differences. I think this is because people tend to gravitate towards those who are similar to them: their own age. It’s more work to spend time with someone who views the world differently than you, but it’s also worth it. Because that’s what God has called us to pursue: a family comprised of people from all ages AND nations. It takes work to be this family, just like it takes work to be a healthy family.

-Story from When the Church was a Family

Mighty God – Sermon Manuscript

-Christmas beef: why are ornaments so flimsy? They know kids are going to be grabbing them, throwing them around, why do they use the most fragile pieces? We’ve already had some ornaments break because we have 2 2-year-olds who think the tree is their new toy! Our other kids are already starting to realize that these ornaments tell a story. My grandma got all her grandkids a new ornament every year, so all my ornaments have a history to them. My parents have started doing the same thing with my kids, each ornament they pull out their reminded of an event that happened that year.

-All of us have a history, memories that can be triggered by different things, right? The one that always gets me is the corner of MOA that has Cinnabon. I loved MOA when I was in HS (much less fondness as an adult), but that corner that smells like cinnamon gets me every time I walk by!

-God created us as storied creatures. We use stories to make sense of the world, and to make sense of our lives. We define ourselves by the stories we tell. And God is the same way.

-A few years ago, I came across a minimalist drawing of the various relationships we’ll have over our lives. I’m not saying they’re all the most appropriate (I think this was published in the New York Times), but it’s an interesting way to think about our various relationships throughout our lives, isn’t it? And each one of these tells a story. We’re going to read Isaiah 9 again, and this week we’re focusing on the second name: Mighty God. But as I read it, I want you to think about the story it’s telling.

READ/PRAY (pg. 607)

What is Your Story?

-We tend to focus on ourselves and our own lives and either neglect or ignore the lives that come before us. We do this as a country, and as individuals. There’s a tension here, because historically people were only connected to their family which means the individual was lost in the communal. But our culture has swung to the complete opposite of that, to the point that we have no room for anything communal! No one will commit to anything, no one will look out for anyone else, and no one else can tell anyone else what to do. The fact that we have something called FOMO should tell us everything we need to know about our culture!

-But the reality is we’re all products of our culture and our upbringing. We all came from somewhere (and someone) which affects all of us. And part of the problem with our world today is that people don’t take the time to know themselves, which means they also can’t truly get to know anyone else because they haven’t taken the time to know how God created them. AND if we don’t know the way God created us, we’re always going to be scared that someone will expose us as a fraud. It’s no wonder people church hop, and job hop, and house hop, it means no one can ever truly get to know the real you.

-But friends, the only way to find healing, the only way to have hope in the world, the only way to be truly loved is by opening yourself up to others. To know your story and be willing to share it with others so they can care for you. And what’s scary about digging into yourself is you’re messed up and broken. All of us have temptations and impulses that we wish weren’t a part of our lives! One of the best examples of someone who tried digging into his life is in a guy named Augustine, who lived in the 4^th century. Augustine may be the most influential theologian to live after the Apostle Paul. Augustine was an African who lived a life seeking nothing but pleasure until God saved Him, and one of his seminal works is titled “Confessions” which is Augustine processing his life and God’s work in His life. It’s an interesting look at the intersection of theology and testimony.

-Read a 13-point summary of the book this week that was really helpful, and it just reminded me that people who weren’t distracted by technology had time to think and process the things of the Lord in ways that we never will! You can find a LINK to the summary in my sermon manuscript online. Listen to how Augustine describes his life story.

-The staff here read a book over the past year that talked about how we can think and process our stories, how we can look at our family of origin and see some of the ways that continues shaping us today. The author has this fun line that has stuck with me: Jesus may be in your heart, but grandpa’s still in your bones! We can’t escape our histories, what we can do is bring it to the feet of Jesus and ask Him to help us process our history in healthy ways! More to come on this in the future!

What is God’s Story?

-It begins with knowing God’s story! There is a surprising amount of ignorance around the Bible today! Most people don’t even know the basic storyline, what it focuses on, the way it talks about history. Could you? I love the way Stephen, the first martyr in the church, is able to walk through the whole OT and talk about how it points to Jesus. He starts with Abraham, goes to Joseph and the patriarchs, then to Moses leading Israel into the promised land, then to the tabernacle and temple and ends with a focus on Jesus, the Righteous One, which leads to his death.

-If we look at Isaiah 9, we see a story! Referring to the past, that this day will be different. Looking to the future where a light will come. The promise of a coming kingdom where justice and righteousness will rule.

-If you were asked to summarize the entire Bible, how would you do it? There’s multiple proposals for this, and multiple ways that could describe it. One easy way is: creation, fall, redemption, transformation, and consummation. Another way I’ve seen is tracing the serpentine theme through Scripture – garden, Pharoah has a serpent on his headdress, Goliath is described like a snake with his armor, Jesus calls the Pharisees a brood of vipers, in Revelation the enemy is described as a giant snake (dragon). The one I think summarizes the storyline the best, however, is the idea of God’s kingdom. Coincidentally, the one thing that I would argue is missing from our denomination’s SOF is any reference to the kingdom. There’s reasons for it that I don’t have time to get into here, so if you’re interested in talking about that, let me know!

-How should we define God’s kingdom? Graeme Goldsworthy Gospel and Kingdom 53-4. The place/sphere that this takes place starts globally (tasked to spread the garden out), then narrows in focus, before going all the way out again to encapsulate the entire world. But God’s plan has always been global (dare we say cosmic) in scope. And I think it’s helpful for us to remember the whole storyline of Scripture, because if we just take Jesus out of context we miss everything that He came to fulfill, which means we miss His entire mission and reason He came to earth. God’s Big Picture by Vaughn Roberts

The Pattern of the Kingdom

-The goal of the creation is rest. If you didn’t know, the chapter and verse markers aren’t inspired and weren’t part of the original writings. The creation account actually goes into Gen. 2, after God has created everything, it says He rested. We shouldn’t think of this as God being tired and needing a nap (like us), it means He doesn’t need to do any more creating. It’s done, it’s correct, everything is ordered as it should be. This tells us that this is the picture of how God intended to interact with His creation. He would be able to meet in perfect harmony with everything He had created, no Christmas complaining ever! So we see the pattern of the kingdom is like this:

The Perished Kingdom

-But we know that’s not the way it ends, that’s just the first 2 chapters, because Gen. 3 tells the story of what’s often referred to as the Fall. And look how it begins. Remember the way God’s rule was demonstrated in the garden? Through His Word. What does the serpent question? His Word! And look at how the relationship the people have with God is affected. Where they used to be together, knowing God and each other without any hindrance, now there’s a barrier. There’s something to hide, so God calls out asking where they are. In the perished kingdom, this is what God’s kingdom looks like:

The Promised Kingdom

-The story continues with increasing corruption in the world resulting in a flood (intentionally worded as the opposite of creation, a de-creation of the world). Yet out of this corruption, God is still faithful, still wants a relationship with His creation, so He reaches out to Abram (later called Abraham), calls him to leave everything he knows and go to a new land where God would be with him, and he would be a blessing to the entire world. What’s amazing about this is that even though sin had led to complete corruption in the world, the world receives nothing but grace from God. Even though they had betrayed the king, God continues loving and blessing His creation. Here the Kingdom of God looks like this:

The Partial Kingdom

-And once again, these people listen to the serpent and follow after their own ways. The rest of the first 5 books are the formation of this new nation of Abraham’s descendants. Exodus tells how God saved His people from slavery, led them into the wilderness (where he continued providing for them anytime they needed food or water), and the need to obey God’s law, which is revealed through the rest of the books! Remember Micah’s overview of Leviticus, and the distinction between clean and unclean, holy any unholy? There are specific ways that God’s people are allowed to approach Him, otherwise they’ll be killed by his perfect holiness. Here we see the partial kingdom looking like this:

-A specific people group called out from all the nations of the world who are supposed to be an example to the world of what fidelity to the one true God looks like. But there’s still a separation because of sin, so God’s place is specifically located in the temple, and the only way to approach Him at the temple is through the elaborate sacrificial system. And notice how God’s rule is demonstrated: through the law and the king, who is supposed to serve as the example to the people of what God looks like. And the theme throughout this time period is: the nation is only as faithful as its’ king. As the king goes, so goes the nation. And they had some BAD kings leading to the land being split in 2: northern and southern kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and eventually even those 2 kingdoms no longer existed because the people were taken off into exile, which is getting somewhat into the next era of God’s kingdom in human history:

The Prophesied Kingdom

-God disciplines His people by sending them into exile. We often think of the prophesy coming through the prophets are future telling, but they do a whole lot more talking about events in their time where they plead with the people to repent, to trust God, and obey His plans for them. All the prophets focus on 2 themes: judgment and hope. Judgment for disobedience, and hope that God will be faithful to His promises to restore His people. The prophets also tell of a day in the future where God’s blessings will be given to all creation, where God’s original intent for perfect relationship with His creation with be realized, where everyone will desire to follow after God completely, obeying all His laws perfectly because they’ll be written on our hearts instead of stone tablets. God says my job will be redundant, I won’t need to tell you about God, because all of us will know Him perfectly! What a wonderful day that will be! Here’s what God’s kingdom looks like as a prophesied kingdom:

-And then we turn the page into the NT, which covers 400 silent years, years that included the beginning of one of the most impactful civilizations in human history: the Roman empire. And a census during the Roman empire is what led to the Christ-child being born in Bethlehem, the land of His father David. But think of His arrival:

The Present Kingdom

-Jesus preaches that the kingdom is here! It has arrived IN HIM! All the promises of the past are answered and fulfilled in Him. All the previous things God used were pictures that pointed us to the fulfillment of them in Jesus. Therefore, the present kingdom looks like this:

-Do you see how Jesus fulfills every single one of God’s promises? He completely changes everything! Jesus is the true and better Adam, He’s the true a better Israel, He’s the true and better tabernacle, He’s the true and better temple, He brings in the true and better covenant, and He alone offers us the rest we so desperately need. Where the world continually tells us we need to prove ourselves, Jesus tells us to find our rest IN HIM! Friends, this is the reality of the Christmas story, this is the reality of the gospel message, that because God became a man, we have hope to draw near to God once again. We can have a lasting relationship WITH HIM! This Kingdom has already begun, Jesus is already on His throne, the question is do you realize and recognize that?

The Proclaimed Kingdom

-After Jesus rises from the dead, a new era of human history began, what the NT calls “the last days.” The purpose of these last days is to share the reality of this kingdom with others. The Spirit is poured out on the disciples of Jesus, who immediately began sharing the story of what Jesus has accomplished with the nations who were in Jerusalem. Look at the way the disciples were thinking about this, though. They were still too narrow in their focus, only worried about themselves. And look what Jesus calls them: witnesses. They’re supposed to bear witness to this new kingdom, to proclaim it to others, and it’s supposed to take place across the world. This part of the kingdom looks like this:

-Notice that the current kingdom is in the church, which is comprised of individuals who make up a body! God now dwells with us once again, and it’s all centered and focused on Jesus. But even this isn’t the final stage of God’s kingdom:

The Perfected Kingdom

-God is in the process of making everything new, of redeeming it to Himself, and it comes through the proclamation of His people, from every tribe and tongue and nation. There’s a day coming when sin won’t have any more power, where everything sad will come untrue, where God will completely heal everything. The idea of shalom, lasting eternal peace is what God calls it, where everything is properly ordered, in its’ rightful place. A day where we don’t need preaching anymore, because we’ll all know exactly what God wants from us, and where our work will no longer be thorns and thistles. This final part of the kingdom looks like this:

-And if you want a picture of the whole storyline of Scripture, it looks like this: You can see it’s not a straight line!

-But that’s not where we should end this story, because this leads to another question:

What Happens When Your Story Meets God’s Story?

-I think we often view Christianity as a self-actualization project instead of complete self-transformation. I love the way Bonhoeffer says it: when Christ calls someone, he calls them to die. The moment we’re saved we’re brought into union with Jesus Christ. Paul says it this way in Col. 3. If we think back to those relationship lines I shared at the beginning of the sermon, our lives would like this:

-We’re operating by ourselves, until we come to the reality that we’re a sinner in need of grace. Then God brings us into His story, and our lives become hidden in Christ. That doesn’t mean it’s all easy, and you can see there’s times where the lines aren’t as close as they could or should be, but our lives are meant to be completely changed. Our story, which used to be completely dependent on us to figure out, has a new purpose and direction to it because Jesus is now supposed to be the driving force behind everything we do. I think there’s a great picture of this in John 9. A man born blind is healed by Jesus, then interrogated by Pharisees, and he answers, “Whether or not he’s a sinner, I don’t know. One thing I do know: I was blind, and now I can see!” Friends, Jesus wants to take all the burdens and concerns of your story and bring healing to them. This is God’s plan for humanity – to know and follow Him serving under His rule and reign wherever we go. What’s crazy (to me) is the Mighty God’s plan now relies on broken people like you and me to be His witnesses, to share the story of what God has done in history and in our story with others. To tell them about the kingdom of God that will last forever, and to invite them to participate in God’s plan, which takes place here every week.

-It’s not super flashy, it’s not super impressive, Jesus describes it like a little yeast in a bread dough. Just a little bit is enough to make the whole thing rise, and just a few Christians meeting together is enough to accomplish His plans for us!

Pastor Mike's Musings

All posts for the month December, 2025

Prince of Peace – Sermon Manuscript

Everlasting Father – Sermon Manuscript

Mighty God – Sermon Manuscript

This is Me

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories

Get My Writings in Your Inbox