MK040 Sermons
The Gift of Jesus (Audio)
after my race last month, I decided it was time for me to take a little break from my running regimen, so I decided I need to do something to kind of keep myself, you know, in shape throughout the holidays, and so I found this workout program, and it had been recommended to me, so I thought I'd give it a try, and so I started using it, and I could do most of the things that most of the exercise that the instructor on the DVD was telling us to do, and so I was able to get through them, but then I started noticing that as he was giving instructions about these exercises, he was very precise about how you do the exercises, and I kind of missed that the first couple times through, so you know, instead of when you do a plank or, you know, a holding push-up, instead of your arms being way out here, he wants you right underneath your shoulders, right, like that, you know, and so, you know, when you do a lunge, you want your foot way back in the back, and when you do a squat, put your weight back in your heels, and so I started following these little instructions, and the workouts got harder instead of easier. I was like, how is that possible? When all I was doing was simply changing one thing, and it got harder, but because I was paying attention to the specifics of where my body was positioned when I was doing these exercises, now he's telling me it's going to pay off down the road, I don't know, I haven't felt the payoff yet, but paying attention to something very, very small has huge benefits or consequences, and I think we all know that to be true. I mean, for instance, what happens if you leave the price tag on a gift that you wrapped? You're either thought of as a tightwad, or the most amazing parent, sibling, relative, or friend that is out there, right? You know, what happens if you guess the wrong size for your girlfriend or your wife? Well, you all know what happens on that, you know? What happens as we saw in the video if you leave, swap, salt for sugar in your measurements? The recipe is ruined. What happens if you forget just one ingredient, one of the most important ingredients, the recipe, the whatever it is you're producing might not rise? What happens if you switch a few letters around when you're talking in public about a pit and a shed, your voice is being recorded? You know, public humiliation for the rest of your life. By the way, that did happen to me. What happens if autocorrect doesn't change the word, changes the words, and you don't catch it and you hit send, we've all been there, haven't we, right? We've all been there. And so one little word, one little action, one little thing makes a huge, huge difference. And this morning, we're going to look at a place that is seemingly insignificant in the course of human history, but one event happened there and it drastically changed everything. If you've been here with us over the last few weeks, the first week we talked about the gift of anticipation. And this was a gift in which we talked about how the holidays come and we either look forward to that with great anticipation or some of you dread this time of year. And my challenge for you was to look at this differently and not with anticipation or dread, but look forward to what God might do in your life, how God might show up in ways you're surprised by and you're not expecting him to show up. And then we talked about the gift of adoption, how God opens his arms and welcomes into his family, anyone who, as I said earlier, receives him. And my challenge each of us was to open our arms and say, "Who is it that God's calling us to open our arms to this Christmas season?" And last week we talked about the gift of reconciliation, about the fact that God loves us when we are not very lovable, when we don't deserve to be loved. And that gift that he offers to us challenges us and he calls us to do the same thing, to be willing to move towards someone who doesn't deserve it, who hasn't responded to us, who maybe has treated us with anything but love, and extend that to them this Christmas season. This last gift that we want to talk about is really the gift of Jesus and it's God showing up in small ways that make a big difference, in small ways that make a big difference. You know, God's always paid attention to little details, little things that seem to be insignificant. And that's to me one of the most amazing things is you read throughout the Bible and you start reading things that happened several hundreds, even several thousand years ago and then you see those same things resurface later and later and later again. And God's woven all of this together. It's kind of like the wise men who searched for this baby named Jesus. You realize the prophecy that was written by the prophet Mica about where this baby would be found was written in the land of Israel. But somehow these wise men on the other side of the ancient Near East and what we would now know as Iraq and Iran, that's where they were living. And somehow they got a hold of this prophecy and it got passed from one side of the known world to the other side of the known world and they read it and they decided this prophecy was so significant and it connected with a star in the sky that they would spend the next two years in a trip to try to find this little baby. And that's where the story takes place in Matthew chapter two and verses one through six. Listen as I read this part of the story. After Jesus was born in Bethlehem and in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, where is the one who has been born, King of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and we've come to worship him. When Herod heard this and was to serve knowledge Jerusalem with him, he called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. In Bethlehem and Judea, they replied, for that is what the prophet has written, but you Bethlehem in the land of Judah are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. This prophecy came over 700 years before it took place. It was a prophecy that came from Micah chapter five verse two. Look at the verses it comes on the screen. It says, but you Bethlehem Ephritha though you're small among the clans of Judah. It says, this is a small and insignificant place, a place that nobody really knows about. Kind of like five point though, they don't even have a zip code, don't even have a post office. It's just now four rows, not five rows that actually come together in one spot. Who knows about that place unless you live around here. And that's a little bit what Bethlehem was like. It was a small and insignificant place that hardly anyone knew about and didn't get any press or any attention. It says out of you will come from me, one who will be a ruler over Israel, whose origins are from old from ancient times. So one was going to come from this place whose origin went back before time began and they would rule over the land of Israel. Something big was going to come from some place small and insignificant. Somehow this was going to happen. And I want to trace the story even further back. If you have your Bibles, if you would turn to the book of Ruth, the book of Ruth, if you don't have a Bible, our guys have some and they're going to pass them out to you. And I want to tell you the story of Ruth. And as I tell you the story of Ruth, we'll see how this will all connect a little bit later. The story of Ruth actually happens during the time in Israel's history known the time of the judges. The time of the judges was a time in which the Bible says everyone did what was right in their own eyes. They didn't follow the law. They didn't follow. They weren't under the authority of a form of a foreign king. There were small little rulers in small places. But they basically did whatever they wanted. And as you read the story of the judges, there's some very horrific things that happen. Horrific. There's no other way to describe them other than that. But it was driven by people who simply did what they wanted to do. That was the only thing that motivated them. So the story of Ruth happens right in the middle of this time period. During this time period in the land of Israel, there was a famine. And that would happen from time to time. There would be have a bad season of crops. They would go somewhere else to get some work to try to live. And a woman by the name of Naomi probably likely along with a large group of other Israelites, Jews, they traveled down south to the land of Moab. While they're in Moab with her husband and her sons, her sons got married, the family was settling in, and then tragedy struck. Her husband died and her two sons died. Naomi concludes, "There's nothing left here for me. The famine had lifted." She said, "Maybe I'll just go back home and I'll be able to find some work and live amongst people that are my people." As she goes to turn and go back home, she discovers that her daughter in laws are following her. And she turns to them and says, "No, no, no. You don't understand. I'm going back to my home, but this is your home. You stay here. You're young women. You can still marry again. You don't need to follow me." Ruth then says some words that are very, very well known. And now let me read those words to you. She says this, "Don't urge me to leave you or turn back from you. Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God." You see prior to this time, Ruth was a Moabitis and they worshiped a whole bunch of other gods. But she saw something in Naomi and she said, "I want your God, the God of Israel, that you worship, that you follow. I want that God to be my God." And literally at that moment in time, Naomi began to follow the God of Israel. She was saved at that moment in time. She goes on to say, "Where you die, I will die and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me be ever so severely if even death separates you and me." When Naomi realized Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her. And so Ruth goes with Naomi back to the land of Israel and back to her hometown. And as they go back to her hometown, she really doesn't have anything. She's what we would call destitute. She probably likely sold everything she had when she moved down to Moab with her husband. It wasn't just a summer vacation. She got rid of everything. And so she came back, she didn't have a job, a house, food, nothing. Nothing. So she likely lived in the streets and then her daughter Ruth would go to the fields because it was harvest time and Ruth would collect, she would collect some extra grain and that's what they would live off of. And God had made provisions for this in the book of Leviticus, which was the law about how the people of Israel were to function, that when a farmer farmed his crops, he was to leave some crops at the very edge. It says on the screen here in Leviticus chapter 23, 22, "When you reap to harvest out of your land, don't reap to the very edges or gather the greenings," which is the stuff that would the leftovers, "leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the Lord your God." And so Ruth was going and collecting these extras, these leftovers that nobody could use, that nobody needed and taking them home to eat. She was doing what we would call today dumpster diving is what she was doing, you know. She was going in there and getting one. Nobody else wanted it, nobody else needed, but it would help her to survive. That's exactly what she was doing. And so as she's going this day after day and she's collecting for her mother-in-law Naomi, they're coming home and they have enough to live off of, enough to eat for the next day, one of the owners of the fields, his name is Boaz, he sees Ruth out doing this. And Ruth was a young woman. Likely she was maybe 16, 17, 18 women often married at the, or married by the age of 14 or 15 in that culture. So she had been married, her husband had died, she had come back, she was likely still a young woman and she caught the eye of Boaz, one of the field owners. And so as she was collecting her food, he gave her some extra and sent it home with her. Well as soon as Naomi heard that this name Boaz, it rang a bell and she remembered, "Oh yeah, that last family gathering. I remember that guy named Boaz." And the wheel started turning in Naomi's mind and she started giving Ruth some dating advice. Now often when we think of Ruth, who is the great-grandmother of King David and in the line of Jesus, we think of Ruth in a very puristic way. But if you think about the story of Ruth, it kind of leaves you scratching your head a little bit because Naomi says to her, "Why don't you go after she's been collecting out in the sun and the fields? Why don't you go bathe? Why don't you put on some perfume?" And while this guy's asleep, I want you to go and I want you to lay down on the floor at the foot of his bed. Now I'm telling you that it doesn't matter what culture or what century you're living in. If a young woman comes and lays at the end of a bed of a single guy, that's a little suggestive. We'll just leave it at that for right now. But that's literally what happened. It's literally what happened. Remember, they were living in a time where everybody did what was right in their own eyes. So this was what she thought, "Let's try to get this guy." So Boaz wakes up, realize there's a woman at the end of his bed, a little startling experience for him to realize. But he recognizes Naomi had told Ruth that this is someone who is potentially our kinsman redeemer. Say what in the world is that? Well, the word simply means kinsman means that means he's a relative. He's one of our extended relatives, not real cause, but extended relatives. That's what the word kinsman means. The word redeemer means someone that could rescue us, someone that could save us to deliver redeeming to buy it back after you already lost it. You buy it back again, you rescue it. And so he knew that there was this potential that Boaz could be her kinsman redeemer. Boaz puts the pieces together. He doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize he thought this young woman was kind of attractive, helped her out a little bit, and then come to find out, she shows up at the end of his bed and potentially this kinsman redeemer. You say how did that all work? Well, Boaz knew right away how it worked. The way it worked was this. Another part of the Old Testament law was that if a woman, her, if a woman's husband passed away, so that she would not be left out on her own, the law would give provision for that woman, that woman's brother-in-law to marry her, so that she would have a place to live and be provided for. That's what the law would provide for. And that individual was called a kinsman redeemer. He would rescue this person from being destitute and being without anything. And so Boaz knew that this was a possibility, but he remembered that on the family tree, there was someone else closer to the family than him who could serve as the kinsman redeemer. So Boaz has his own plan in mind. He goes to the city gates where all the guys would mean they would do business. And he ran into one of his extended cousins and he said, "Oh, by the way, did you hear Naomi's back in town?" No, I didn't hear Naomi's back in town. Yeah, she's back in town. Came back from Moab and terrible tragedy that she experienced. "By the way, did you know she had some land to sell?" No, we have no record of this anywhere in the scriptures that she had land to sell. But he said, "There's some land to sell." And he's like, "Oh, some land to sell." Well, that would be great to add that to my land and get a little bit bigger and I can provide for my family. He said, "I'm very interested in this land to sell." And Boaz says, "By the way, there's a little catch in the story. You also have to marry Ruth." And all of a sudden the guy backs up, he's like, "No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not going there. I don't need to create any more complications in my life." He said, "The land is a good thing. The land of the woman, not a good thing, not a good thing." And Boaz said, "So you're okay with stepping aside and letting me step in and marry Ruth." And he said, "Sure." And so in that day, what they did is they didn't do handshakes. What they did is they exchanged shoes as what they did. They would take off their shoe and give their shoe. Now, I guess the guy would walk around with one shoe till he had another deal and then he'd give his away as other shoe and get another pair. I don't know. But that's what they would do. You guys are looking at me like, "I'm making this up. It's really there. This is what they would do." So he gave him his shoe and after he gave him his shoe, then it was okay for Boaz to go and marry her. So if you're there in your Bibles, turn to chapter 4, chapter 4. And I'd like to take a look at a couple of the verses there that describe what happened there in Ruth chapter 4. And let's begin. Let's go back to verse 11. Let me find it here myself. Go back to verse 11. Look at the very end of verse 11. It says, "May you have standing in Africa and be famous in Bethlehem." I don't know if you knew this, but Boaz lived in Bethlehem. That's a town that he lived in. And he says, "Through the offspring of the Lord gives you by this woman, may your family be like Paris, whom Tamar bore to Judah." And then verse 13, "So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When he made love to her, the Lord enabled her to conceive and she gave birth to a son. The women, all of Naomi's friends, said to her, "Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you without a guardian or a kinsman, Redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel. He will renew your life, sustain you in your old age, for your daughter-in-law who loves you and is better to you than seven sons has given birth." Then Naomi took the child in harms and cared for him. The women living there said, "Nayomi has a son." And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David. You see what happens here? And as you go on, you can read the genealogy of David there. But what's happened here is this little town, this insignificant town that we discover in Micah 5 when he's talking about is one of the smallest towns, not a place that anybody would think of. But this just happens to be the place where Ruth and Naomi, when they came back from Moab, settled the town of Bethlehem. And Ruth met this man named Boaz and they were married and had a son named Obed, who had a son named Jesse, who had a son named David. And Ruth became the great-grandfather of King David. And then several hundred years later, a prophecy from Micah would say that out of this little town is going to come something significant, one from who has lived before time. And then when the wise men come to find Jesus, he's where? He's in the town of Bethlehem. But did you realize that Mary and Joseph were not from Bethlehem? They were from a town up north called Nazareth. And God had to get them down into the town of Bethlehem. And he did that through a census that was required by a Roman governor. And so you take a step back and you watch God orchestrating all of these events. So something that seems small and insignificant, like the town they would come and settle in, when they return from Moab, becomes a prophecy that is made which has fulfilled some 700 years later, which is where the wise men discover and come to find Jesus. Jesus uses small and insignificant things in significant ways, doesn't He? God's done this all throughout the Bible. There was a young girl by the edge of a river and she told some women about her brother who was floating in a basket and they took him in and he was named Moses and he was the one that God used to rescue the people of Israel. There was a small loaves and fishes that Jesus took from a little boy and he said thousands of people. There were stones that David took and put in a sling and killed a giant, a named Goliath, likely nearly twice his size that everyone was afraid of to remind the people of Israel that God was with them. And as you read the story of the Scriptures, you find over and over and over and over again, God using seemingly small and insignificant things, things that don't seem to matter a whole lot, seem that things that don't seem to make a lot of sense, but He uses those things to do something very significant. I often hear people when they share their story, especially when they're going to be baptized and I meet with them and they tell me their story about how they came to faith in Jesus. I'll say, where was the first time you heard about God? When do you first remember hearing about Jesus? And what got you thinking about your life and that you needed a Savior? And what happened when you realized that you needed Jesus as your Savior? And they tell me about a conversation with this person, a meeting with this person, or something that they heard on the radio, or something that they picked up and read, and you begin to see this trail that was woven through their lives, these small, seemingly insignificant things that God uses them to bring to them to the place where Jesus becomes their Lord and their Savior. Can you think about things in your life? Maybe it's about your journey to faith that we're seemingly small and insignificant that God used. Maybe it's something that someone said that impacted you deeply. As I was preparing this for this this week, I thought of a professor that I had in Bible college. His name was Gary Hauck. He was one of the first guys that taught the Bible in a way that made me want to read it and made me want to learn more about it, just brought the Bible to life. And I didn't know it at the time when I was starting college, but I had a sleep disorder. I didn't get diagnosed with that until I was in my mid-30s. Well, when you have a sleep disorder in college in a 7 a.m. class, guess what you're doing most of the day? I am very well skilled at doing that exercise. And so I would sit in the back of the class and I would fight to stay awake because Gary was so engaging in sight. I wanted to soak up everything you had to say, and I could barely keep my eyes open. It didn't matter how early I went to bed or how much coffee I had or what. It didn't matter. None of that stuff matters when I have. And I remember about a year or two later, Gary saying to me, he said, "As we got to become good friends," he said, "John," he said, "When I saw you in the back of that room," he said, "I didn't really know anything about you. All I knew was there was this guy sitting there trying to stay awake." He said, "I just had a sense that God was going to use you in some way." I didn't really know how. What Gary didn't know is that that was the first person who had spoken into my life in a way that gave me a sense that someone believed in me and saw something in me. Just a word, a few words, just a sentence, something I never forgotten. As we look at this story of Jesus, and you look at something small and insignificant like a place, but a place that became connected with the birth of our Savior, it reminds us that little things make a difference to God. Little things matter to God. And God in His sovereign control of this world and our lives can take something very small and do something very significant with it. It's a little bit like for Christine and I when we were finishing up grad school and we were deciding they were, it was being decided for us where we would go to do a year-long, a year of training. We wanted to go to Michigan. That's where our hearts were set on going. But our supervisor, he assigned us to this place called Geiger Town, Pennsylvania. You know, who in the world has heard of that place? Talk about an insignificant place. But as we went there, we discovered this church was interested in starting other churches and that's where our heart was. And we saw God sovereign control over the details of our lives that seem to be insignificant that set the course and pattern for our lives. As you think about this Christmas, I want to challenge you to think about doing something that may appear small and insignificant but God can use in a significant way. I've been encouraging you to do that these last several weeks, encouraging you to open your arms to someone that the way God opens his arms and welcomes us and his children when we choose him. I've been encouraging you to offer a gift of loving someone who doesn't deserve to be loved in the way that God has loved us and that we don't deserve to be loved. Maybe it's one of those two things or maybe it's something even more. You know, Tim talked a few weeks ago, last month, he talked about the investment of serving our children and our students here at CCC. Your sacrifice of your time with a child in K to 4 at their 56 or middle school or high school could make a huge difference in one of their lives. Your financial resources that you say, you know, God, I'm not sure how you're going to help me meet all of my needs but I want to trust you and give back to you first and that's something I want to do. And God takes that and he multiplies that in your life and meets your needs over and over and over and over again in ways you didn't know as you look back. Really, how did he do that? How did he do that? An invitation to someone to come to Christmas Eve might be the opportunity for them to hear about the message of Jesus and to hope that Christmas offers and maybe for the first time it clicks that Jesus is what I've been searching for. What if God this Christmas is inviting each of us simply to offer a very small gift? One that seems insignificant to us, that he and his sovereign control and his amazing power is able to transform that gift in the life of a person and do something significant that we never imagine possible. Have you ever been on the receiving end of that? Have you ever said something to someone or given a gift to someone and they are so amazed and grateful and you're like oh it's just something a little but it's huge to them because you don't know their story, you don't know what God is doing in their lives but it's what God prompted you to do. I was talking to someone after first service. He said he was down in Philly listening to someone on the radio and they encouraged him to, they encouraged people if you see someone in need, give something to them and he happened to be sitting in an intersection and some guy, you know, some homeless person on the street came over knocking on his window and he reached in his lunch box and he was going to give him his Clementine but that was already gone, he already ate that so didn't have anything there and just reached in his change dish and grabbed his handful of change and the guy, he rolled down his window and he asked the homeless guy, he said so you're going to give me some money and kind of flustered the guy, I didn't know what to do with that but then he proceeded to hand him this handful of change and he said to me he said do you think I shouldn't have given them the money, some people say don't give them money, you know, they're just going to spend on drugs and stuff and I said I don't know, I don't know, hopefully not but what God calls us to do whatever it is he puts in our heart to do and that's what he wants us to do and I think for each one of us, whatever God has put in your heart to do, whatever he's calling you to do, take a step and do it and then leave the results in his hands, you know, as we think about this sacrifice that Jesus made for us, his generosity on our behalf, it calls us and reminds us to be people who are generous givers, sometimes in very, very small ways that God's going to use in ways we can never, ever imagine. Would you bow your heads with me as we just close an order prayer? God as we close in prayer, for some of us we know exactly what you want us to give, you've been kind of giving us a nudge and kind of prompting us to reach out to someone in this way and we haven't had the time or we didn't know if it would do any good or weren't sure how they would receive it. God I just pray that you help us to push all of those excuses aside and just follow you, just do what you're prompting us to do. None of us know the outcome of that. Just like Ruth and Naomi coming back to this little town called Bethlehem, no one knew that that would be the birthplace of Jesus, some thousand years later. Lord, whatever it is you put in a heart to do, pretty help us to be obedient to your leading and do that. Lord as we do, may we be reminded of the gift that Jesus gave to us and whether it's with our actions or with our words that you might use us to point people towards Jesus. Lord that's really the prayer of our heart. We ask this in your name, Lord. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]