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Bold faith can feel clearest in a crisis; the harder question is how to live when the rush is over and ordinary life must begin again. Matthew 2:19–23 meets Joseph at precisely that point: Herod is dead, God calls his family home from Egypt, and the road ahead still demands careful listening. What does faithfulness look like when obedience is clear, but the next step is not?
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
Tim opens with the “wrong kind of bowl” illustration—what “bowls” (good-sounding but off-target efforts) do we sometimes bring to God instead of genuine faithfulness, and how can we recognize the difference?
Tim repeatedly warns against using “cookie cutters” to shape Scripture to fit what we already believe. What are some specific ways you catch yourself doing this—selecting certain passages, seeking out preachers or content that affirm your existing views, or interpreting God’s word through the lens of what you want to hear?
Joseph obeyed God’s call to return to Israel yet still discerned the danger of Archelaus and chose Galilee instead of Bethlehem. Can you think of a time when you confused bold faith with reckless risk-taking? How might listening more carefully to God’s wisdom have changed your approach?
The Phil and the home-run ball story illustrates the value of patient discernment over quick answers. When have you been tempted to “take the boat”—accept an immediate offer or easy answer—instead of waiting and continuing to listen for God’s fuller direction?
Tim identifies three markers of shining Jesus’s light: centering on Jesus first, caring for both physical and spiritual needs, and advancing God’s kingdom rather than our own. Which of these do you most struggle to live out, and what would it look like to prioritize it differently this week?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
So let’s prepare our hearts for God’s word, shall we? May the Lord bless the sermon.
It feels a little empty, doesn’t it sometimes, up there? You know, that’s actually what we’re supposed to recognize at length: the emptiness of many of our pursuits. But really tonight, it’s all about bringing things, isn’t it? I mean, how many people have to bring the bowl, right? Because I understand it’s like the ultimate bowl tonight or the great big spectacular bowl or something else, spaghetti bowl, yeah. Don’t try to give me the right answer because I don’t want to get sued.
The cereal bowl? Yeah. So you bring a bowl, right? And so what should you do? You leave here and you want to go ahead and help your friends feel like you’re in the spirit of things. So you go over to their house and you say, “Where are all your bowls? I hear that you have the great big bowl happening at your house,” right? Is that how you do it? No? Well, what do you do? What is it about? It’s not about the bowl, you mean?
Well, actually, I mean, this is only half—I’m only half wrong, right? Because I mean, there’s an awful lot of eating going on tonight. And a lot of it’s in bowls, salsas and cheeses and so on, right? But this is not what that bowl is about, right? The bowl is about football. And so you’re saying, “Tim, you’re so clueless, you’re talking about bowls.”
If someone does that and not in jest, if someone does that, what do we think? You’re not listening. You’re not listening. You need to listen. It’s not about a bowl. It’s about a football. Come on. Are you American? I mean, you’re here in this country and you don’t understand what that bowl thing is that happens this time of year, Tim. Right? Well, I’m not listening.
Here’s the problem, though. Here is the problem for all of us, I believe, is that we show up to God’s big party and we bring in the wrong kind of bowl. And as we do that, God has every right to say, “You’re not listening.” Because if we turn to his word, we see exactly the kinds of things he wants us to do. He sees the way that he wants us to live, and yet what do we do? We say, “But I brought a bowl.” I don’t want us to listen to the thing that he actually wants us to bring.
It’s not good enough to be kind of close. It’s not good enough to bring something that sort of sounds the same. God wants us to bring genuine faithfulness. And we’ve been thinking about what a bold faith looks like. And as we wrap this up tonight, I really want us to search our own hearts—believe that’s what God wants us to do. Search our own hearts and ask God, “Show me what bold faith looks like for me.” Let’s go ahead and pray that right now, shall we? Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for your love and your kindness and your word that you give to us. Lord, would you help us as we come before you? That you’d help us to see where you’re calling us to be bold, where we should live faithfully. We looked at the wise men, we looked at Joseph. We’re going to wrap this up tonight, Lord—this example—and we see so many examples in your scripture of bold faith, but would you help us to understand what that means for us right now, that we would be those who live boldly for you? We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So we’ve seen the journey of the wise men arriving to worship Jesus. We’ve seen Joseph and Mary going off to Egypt with the baby Jesus so that Herod couldn’t kill him. And now we come to what’s next? And this is where we often get stuck, right?
Everything, you kind of have a lot of stuff going on. Maybe it’s good stuff, maybe it’s bad stuff, but there’s a certain comfort and very clear stuff happening because we know where to go next. And then we get to the point, but what do we do with the rest of life? How do we go on in the norm? And that’s where we find ourselves now if we look at Matthew chapter 2, verse 19.
It says, “But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.’” And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel.
So you have this rush. You have this compounding set of things. Now, as we’ve talked about, and the reason why we’re talking about the wise men, here we are in February, and we need to be very clear on this—not because we forgot to end the Christmas series, because wise men come later, but it’s still in relatively compact time, right? We’re talking in the first two years of Jesus’ life.
But keep in mind when we think about Mary and Joseph, then they raise the baby Jesus into the kid Jesus, which we don’t get very much insight into Jesus’ life as a child in scripture. We get just one little hint at the temple, right? Otherwise, we fast forward to year 30 as he’s going into full-fledged earthly ministry.
But there’s an awful lot of life that happened in between there. Mary and Joseph had to live faithfully in that time, spend a lot of time preparing for things. How in those times do we live boldly? What does that look like?
Well, sometimes it’s trying to just pick back up after everything goes wrong. We’ve seen a lot go wrong. And then be listening to God and taking care as we try to apply what we believe that God is saying. And those two are really, really important to hold together, and that’s what we see here is that those two are brought together.
Sometimes it’s a short period of time. Sometimes it’s a very long period of time. Scripture doesn’t promise that everything happens quickly. Consider when we look at our two Testaments we have here: the Old Testament, New Testament, in between those two, we have hundreds of years between when the prophet said Jesus would come and when he came. We’re about 2,000 years since Jesus came. There are times of long waiting, and God doesn’t promise otherwise, but what we do see is he calls us to live boldly even in those times.
Jesus’ life, as we talked about last week, is often patterned after the people of Israel. Why? Because God wants to say, “I am living the life of my people. I am going through the things that you went through.” And we talked in Sunday school about how that helps us to know that our God understands who we are, that God understands what we’re going through, that he’s not just sort of sympathetic, he actually understands. And we see a few more examples today.
For example, if we look here, if we were to turn back to Exodus 4:19, we’d find very similar wording to what we have here as they return from Egypt for someone else, for Moses. Now, if you recall, when Moses was 40 years of age, he had to flee Egypt because in a fit of rage, he killed an Egyptian trying to protect his people. It wasn’t what we say maybe is the most righteous way to help his people out, but Moses wants to help his people. He already is showing something of that calling that ultimately God’s going to bring out fully later on, but he has to flee because now he’s a murderer. Now he’s a wanted man.
And he flees out into the wilderness. He flees out into the desert and he stays there for 40 years. Has a long time of waiting. But eventually God said, “Okay, Moses, you’ve been out here. Now it’s time for you to live your bold faith. Now it’s time for you to go and do the work that I’ve always intended you to do.” And in this moment, here we see Jesus as a still infant or thereabouts. We don’t have the exact age here of Jesus when they come back from Egypt, but what we do know is that they come back.
And the language here is meant to echo that, to say just as Moses spent a time in exile and then came back for the preparation for the great exodus where God called his people together and gave his law and really formed the people of God as we see in the rest of scripture, so too Jesus goes out for a period and then comes back. He’s reenacting the whole story of how God works.
We talked last week about what if Joseph had said, “You know, I don’t really need to go. God’s not going to let anything happen to his son.” And imagine these beautiful echoes that God wants to make sure that he is living through the human form that Joseph would have been getting in the way of if he’d done that. But now he’s coming back, he’s coming back to Israel. That’s what God’s told him to do.
Unlike most of us, well, pretty much all of us virtually all the time, it’s very rare that God just makes it utterly clear. He puts a billboard up. I don’t actually know anyone that just regularly dreams dreams that are from the Lord, that you know, it’s clear, “Oh, go to Israel now” or “Go to Kentucky now,” whatever it might be. That doesn’t happen. God doesn’t normally work that way.
Now, as Hebrews says, we now have Jesus, and what do we have? We also have his word here. And so we read his word and we try to discern where he wants us to go. Let me study his word, and we try to live a faithful life, but the question is, are we actually hearing what his word says?
And I think the real challenge when we’re trying to hear since it’s not usually going to be in the way that it happened for Moses or for Joseph, is are we listening deeply enough to God’s word to allow his word to speak to us, to allow his Spirit to apply it to our hearts in the way that it’s actually intended to do? Because a lot of times, we have a bunch of cookie cutters, and we pull them out and we take God’s word, and it says lots of things, but we start taking the cookie cutters of how we already think things should be, and we start punching them through God’s word and taking out little bits to fit how we want it to be. We say, “See, I found this in God’s word. I found that in God’s word.” What do you know? There’s a gingerbread man in God’s word. There’s an Easter bunny in God’s word, whatever kind of cookie you like to make.
Right now, I guess I should tell you there’s a heart in God’s word. And well, actually, there is. There are lots of hearts in God’s word. God loves us. What an amazing thing that is. But we start to shape how we want it to be in the way that we wanted to be, when we wanted to be. And what do we do? We seek out people who will do the same.
How many people, when looking for a church, say, “Where can I find a church that’s going to affirm how I already think everything should be?” And you might say, “Well, but when I look for a church, I ought to find a church that affirms the truth of scripture,” and amen to that. Yes, you should. And that’s why we have our beliefs up and why we try to hold each other accountable. But on the other hand, are we willing to come to a church and be pushed out of our comfort zone?
It’s one thing I love about being here at Little Hills: we don’t all come from the same denominational background, the same church background. And so as we find ourselves here, we can’t just easily just fit into a perfect cookie cutter that’s already the way that we would have had it because the rest of us aren’t necessarily all cut out exactly the same way. I think that’s a very good and healthy thing, as long as we use the Bible to figure out how then do we go forward?
But so often what do we do? And we can do this easier today, I’d say, than probably any other time in history. We go and seek out people, find ourselves on God’s word that are going to affirm what we already believe. We listen to preachers online, we listen to reels or TikTok videos or whatever it might be online that speak in the way that we want to hear, speak about the things that we’re concerned about, and basically, usually, what do you know, arrive at the answers that we already have arrived at. Are we willing to do something bolder?
The spirit expressly says that in later times, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons. Though the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good and nothing to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.
Now, we look at that, and I believe if we took it out, if we took it out of scriptural context for a moment, you’d never read it before, we would probably think that could be easily describing today. Does that sound like today? What we do. People, we find people who are constantly molding and shaping things to a certain way, and it draws us in. Sometimes they say we should do things that we shouldn’t do. Sometimes they say we shouldn’t do things we should do. And what do we find? It draws us away from being centered on God’s word, being centered on prayer before God.
You may wonder, how do we approach the reading of God’s word the way that we do? What’s the way that works? And it works in a series of steps. A lot of times there’s months of conversation about different topics we need to address in the church. For example, our next series we’re going into. Jim and I were talking about some of the things that we’ve been seeing in our Sunday school class and talking about what the different catechisms say and so on. And Jim may mentioned: “You know, we really should spend some more time doing a series on prayer.” And as I was working through our preaching schedule, it just seemed like, you know, I think we really need to. That’s a great suggestion. We really should go for that, exactly what Jim was thinking there because it’s so important. We’re talking about a period of time to prepare.
Well, we’re going to use that time, those next six weeks before Easter, to think about how do we come before our Father in prayer? And the next series is going to be called Our Prayer. And you might say, “Well, Our Prayer, well, it’s what we often call the Lord’s Prayer.” But the thing that we miss on the Lord’s Prayer is it’s a prayer not of the things that Jesus needed to pray all the time, but rather Jesus is showing his disciples, of whom we’re the long, long down the line descendants of, spiritually speaking, how they should pray to God.
So we’re going to go through that step by step and step. And there’s lots of perfectly good different ways that people say, “Well, here are the things. There’s different mnemonics on how to remember how we should pray,” but we’re going to actually just go step by step through the Lord’s Prayer, through the prayer given to us, Our Prayer. And that way, we don’t miss anything that Jesus wants us to pray about.
And likewise as we’re going through each series, you may have noticed, for example, for the last number of weeks, we’ve been going step by step, verse by verse through Matthew chapter 2. Why do we do that? Because here’s the thing. I have hobby horses. I think if we really look at ourselves, all of us have hobby horses, things that we are passionate about, things we don’t like in the church, things we love in the church, things we like in life, things we don’t like in life, and we want to talk about those things.
But God, in his work, talks about all sorts of things. And so when we think about a bold faith, a bold faith is a faith that says, “Let’s just go and step through scripture inch by inch, step by step, and say, God, show me everything that you have in here.” That’s what we’re trying to do. It’s going to take us a very long time. But we’re going to go step by step. And we’re doing that in different ways.
I mentioned every so often I encourage you to consider our Tuesday night Bible study. We go slowly, surely, through the whole of scripture. It took us ten years the first time. It’s Bible study that’s been inherited into Little Hills now, and we’re part way through again. It’s never a bad time to hop on the train. We’re in Joshua right now, but we’re going to go through because here’s the thing: when you read the whole of scripture, you see a bigger picture of what boldness looks like. Because we go to our favorite book of the Bible. We go to our favorite chapter, verse of the Bible. We go to our favorite topics in scripture and what do you know? That’s what God’s talking about. And he does talk about those things, but oftentimes our bold faith really is, is where we’re confronted with the things God cares about that, if we’re really blunt, we don’t. We should, but we don’t.
If we truly want to respond to God, we need to allow him to speak into the areas that aren’t the areas that we’re currently itching to hear about. Nothing wrong with going into those areas for getting answers to those areas that we really do need. And like I was saying about that prayer series, this is something that we should address as the body of Christ here at Little Hills.
And every time we talk about a series, we’re trying to think, “Well, what would meet what needs to be addressed here at Little Hills at the moment?” But we’re also just trying to go methodically through different books of the Bible, jumping back and forth between the Old Testament and New Testament, making sure that we’re actually hearing from the whole council of God. Because if we’re going to have a bold faith, it can’t be what’s my hobby horses are, what Jim’s hobby horses are, what any of your hobby horses are, it needs to be what God cares about. And what does God care about? Well, it’s right here. Are we willing to say, “I’m your servant, Lord? Speak to me what you actually care about. Show me your heart and not just, let’s not just focus on what my heart is.”
Luke chapter 1: Mary, when confronted with the news that she’s going to give birth to the Savior, says, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” I’ve thought we’ve looked at the wise men and how they were responsive to God. We’ve looked at Joseph and how he was responsible to God. Look at Mary here. Can that be our prayer? The things that you say here, Lord. The things that you call me to, the situations you put me in. Let it be to me as is your will. I am your servant. Can that be our prayer?
It’s a scary prayer. It’s a bold prayer. It’s a hard prayer, but is that what we’re willing to do? Mary was willing to throw everything away to follow the Lord. She was willing to face rejection and hatred and possibly death because she wanted to follow what the Lord had to say. Are we willing to do that?
It’s challenging. I wish I could say I always was. I’m not always that bold. I’m a lot of times not that bold. So we’re going to help each other on this. That’s what we need to do. And as we think about prayer over the next few weeks, I think that’s going to help us a lot on that because you think about Jesus. Jesus is fully God. That’s something that we’ve been talking about. Jesus wasn’t just a godlike being with a lot of special powers. He wasn’t just a wise man. Jesus was God on earth. What did God on earth do? He spent time, he went away, and he prayed to his heavenly Father. God the Son prayed to God the Father. The mystery there that is incomprehensible and yet wonderful.
But what was Jesus showing there? What was he modeling there? He was saying, “Even I, as God incarnate in flesh, as a human being, and I am living a genuine human life, what do I need to do? I need to stop sometimes. I need to spend time just quietly in prayer with God, the Father.” He calls us to do that too.
And if we’re going to have a bold faith, there’s a reason why we keep coming back over and over again in this series to listening. So much of the boldness we see is compacted. I mean, this is an action-packed chapter of scripture here— all this amazing stuff, important dignitaries from the East, murder happening, worship of the Savior coming into the world, going to Egypt, coming back from Egypt, all this stuff happening. One of the key points, the key turning point over and over again is that someone is faithfully listening. Someone is willing to hear what the Lord is saying.
I think that’s so important that we are challenged that way because if we’re going to be bold, sometimes we just are bold for boldness’ sake. We’re just going to charge ahead, and we think that’s genuine faithful boldness. And praise God when we’re actually being active in going and doing things that God’s called us to do, but first we need to actually take some time and reflect and to listen and to be before the Lord.
And I thought as I was preparing this message, I thought, I’ve talked about listening several times over the last few weeks. They’re not going to want to hear me talking about listening again. This is what I mean about allowing God’s word to guide us. Because as I wrestled with that, and I thought about what I just said a moment ago, it was sort of convicting because I thought, well, I’m thinking, “I’ve heard enough about listening. I don’t want to preach another message on listening right now. I’ve already done that.” Oh, but wait a second here.
I was talking about letting God say what we need to talk about. And there’s some reason here is he inspired this chapter of scripture. It keeps coming back to the subject over and over and over. Why? Because a lot of times we show up with the wrong kind of bowl and we need to listen enough that we realize when someone invites us over to an incredible bowl party that we know what we’re going to go do.
Do we? Do we listen? I remember a number of years ago, it was actually, it’s interesting talking about ordination because it was just after I’d been ordained, and the church I was serving in, it was a very tumultuous time. I promise it had nothing to do with me, but shortly after I was ordained, by the time I had been ordained for, I think it was a month, all the other pastors had left.
And so, you know, here I am. I’m a part-time pastor of a church. I was supposed to be part-time. I was working another job as well. And so I was supposed to be part-time in this job. And suddenly, all the pastors are gone. I’m supposed to be the new young pastor that’s learning how to do stuff, and suddenly I’m the pastor. That’s a little intimidating.
And there was a very faithful seminary graduate who hadn’t been ordained yet since, actually came and preached here last fall, Patrick Weston. He was an elder at the time at the church before he was ordained as a pastor. And so he was volunteering tons and tons of hours. And so the two of us, the part-time brand new pastor and the man hoping to become a pastor, are plunging through, trying to figure out how to boldly run this church that has lost its whole pastoral staff. A bunch of people had left for various reasons.
All kinds of stuff was going on. I mean, this was intimidating. This was nerve-wracking. And we get to this point. Suddenly, we get to a weather forecast. You might say, “Well, weather forecast. What’s that really matter?” Let me tell you. Think of any pastor, and I can promise you, if that pastor lives in an area like St. Louis, that pastor has, at some point, stressed out about the weather. Because you know what inevitably happens, and I don’t know how it happens, but inevitably, if we’re going to have winter weather, the sort of weather where you don’t want people out on the roads is going to come in.
Well, back then, it seemed like it always came out on Saturday night because we had a Sunday morning service. Now it seems to be coming in the middle of Sunday afternoon. They’re like, “Okay, now what?” But that weather is going to come. And suddenly the question is, “How do I live a bold faith not wanting to cause a bunch of the members of the church to die in an ice storm?” I didn’t know that was going to be part of what I signed up for. But it’s there.
And I remember Patrick and I were talking on a Saturday night, looking at the storm. It was supposed to come in mid-afternoon on Sunday, and we looked at it, maybe it’d come in a little early. We weren’t quite sure. It was Palm Sunday. It was right before Easter. You know, it can’t be that bad. Canada. It’s almost Easter. They’re not going to be anything of significance.
So we went ahead. We decided, okay, we’re going to go ahead and have service, going to go ahead and have Sunday school, and then we’re going to go ahead and have our Palm Sunday dinner. We going to do all this because we’re going to be bold. We’re not going to tremble at this. And so we went ahead, told everyone, “Yes, we are having service,” sent out an email to remind people, “Yes, we’re really doing this.”
People show up faithfully. Ah, they figured this out. They know that this is what we need to do. And we’re sitting there in the service. I remember I’m sitting there looking out the window as the ice pellets come down like mad. And I thought, “Oh boy.” We didn’t have the dinner. We said everyone home with a loaf of bread that we gotten for the dinner and said, “Please be careful!”
And I remember pulling out of the church hoping that somehow we’d been not too bold and pulling out of the church and seeing people sliding off the road as we were pulling out of church thinking, “Oh no, what have we done?” And thankfully, thankfully, God was kind to us and that no one was injured. I think there was at least one or two accidents, but no one was injured. Praise Jesus, definitely. Praise Jesus.
But I remember thinking, okay, I need to listen maybe a little bit more next time I’m trying to be bold. And a lot of times we schedule things when we clearly shouldn’t. We go ahead and say, “Yes, that snowstorm is coming, but I’m going to go ahead because I’m going to be bold.” And sometimes God is calling us to, but sometimes we’re just being so focused on being bold, we’re not actually hearing what God is calling us to do.
If you ever look at, if you ever talk to me right before a snowstorm now and you wonder, “Why is Tim, why does he seem so tormented?” Now you know a little bit why I don’t want to do that again. I really don’t. And we sort of did it again actually last year. So I really don’t want to do it again. I really don’t.
But how do we, how are we bold? How do we listen? We’re bold as God wants us to be bold, but we don’t miss the signs when God’s giving us wisdom to be a little less bold. Here’s the thing: trusting is not the same as riskiness. I think that’s a really important thing for us to remember.
Chapter 2 once again, verse 22: “But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. This is Joseph, and being warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he, as Jesus, will be called a Nazarene.”
So what do we see here? Joseph has a dream. God says to him in the dream, “Hey, Joseph, it’s time to go back to Israel. You’ve been in Egypt long enough. Herod is dead.” But then we immediately learn something else. Yes, Joseph listens. He’s faithful. He’s bold. He’s going to do exactly what the Lord says, but He also is paying attention. He’s paying attention enough to realize you know, Herod’s son who has a reputation for not being a good man at all is exactly where we were before, and as appealing as it would be to go back to my hometown of Bethlehem, I don’t think we should. Maybe we should go elsewhere.
And that’s exactly what we read here as we look here that when he hears this, he actually, and he’s discerning this as he’s listening, then he’s warned further. Yes, he should go back to Israel, but he shouldn’t just go anywhere in Israel. He should go to Galilee, which is far away from Herod’s one son. There’s another son of Herod, but one the less risky one to live under for the time being. Up there.
Now, if Joseph were merely bold in the way that we often feel like we should be bold, he would have just plowed right on back to Bethlehem and said, “Ah, you know, it was so great to be here. I was glad when we returned to Bethlehem right before Jesus was born. I’m going to set up a carpentry shop here. It was going to be great.” And because God said to go back to Israel, it’s perfectly fine if I’m here. Nothing is going to happen to me. I am going to live by faith. I’m not going to be fearful.
Well, not Christian yet, but part of that group that eventually’s going to be known as Christians once my stepson grows up and starts his ministry. No, Joseph listens.
We need to listen. Are we listening? Sometimes it’s when we’re sharing the gospel and we don’t listen to how God’s heart speaks of the people that need to hear the gospel. We say the words, saying you need to believe in Jesus, but we’re forgetting to love the people. We’re not listening to what we’re saying, and we’re not listening to the heart of God.
And sometimes that means God just pulling us aside and saying, “You need to tell this person about who I am right now, and you need to do it boldly.” But sometimes he’s saying, “You know what? You need to go and sit and cry with that person.” But then he knows you actually care.
Now, God’s call to our lives as we listen is never going to contradict his word. Let’s be clear on that. So if he calls us, that person needs someone just to weep with them, he’s never going to say, “And never, ever tell them the gospel.” It’s going to be a time. And we need to be listening, we need to be discerning, we need to be ready to act, but he might not be saying, “This is not the moment to stick a tract in this person’s hand.” You just need to know you care.
And sometimes the boldest thing we can do looks kind of meek and mild, but it’s discerning. The snow is falling. You might not want to have the people drive in right now.
Now, another thing to praise Jesus over besides the fact that people weren’t hurt that day is the fact that we have technology now and we can do online services. So we can be together even when it is snowing. I love that. It’s so wonderful.
But there’s so many times when that metaphorical snow is falling around us, and we’re not paying attention. We need to listen. Joseph is listening. He sees the snowfalling and says, “I know God’s calling me back to Israel, but I need to listen more. I need to read his word more. I need to be willing to continue to discern where he’s calling me because what I don’t think he’s calling me to do is to go back to Bethlehem.”
That’s a really hard place. When we start to get a sense of where God’s calling us, but we’re not quite sure how he’s going to get us there yet, to be willing to keep listening and not to just seal it off. We pull out those cookie cutters and start to cut up the scripture so it can give us a nice clean answer right now because that’s what we want.
That’s what God calls us to.
And isn’t it amazing when you think about that? As Joseph is listening and discerning, he’s helping; he’s being used by God to actually bring forth this fulfillment that Jesus does. We saw a moment ago by going to Egypt, what happens? Jesus is living the life of the people of Israel. He’s exiled to Egypt. He comes back from Egypt. He comes as the ultimate prophet, but so much more, but the ultimate prophet, just like Moses does. He comes back from his exile to the place of ministry.
You see all these things being fulfilled. Here we see another. Because as Matthew wraps up this story, what does he say? He says it was foretold in scripture that he Jesus would be called a Nazarene.
Now, people have wrestled a lot over that last verse because you’re not going to find a verbatim prophecy in the Old Testament saying the Messiah will be called a Nazarene. What you will find, though, is it seems like it’s at least in part a word play on Isaiah 11. Many commentators think that. It also seems though that Matthew’s point isn’t that it was about what city the Messiah would be in, but rather his state.
When Matthew writes, “He’ll be called a Nazarene,” what Matthew’s saying is he’s going to be called one of those people that comes from the backwater area, from the rejected town, from the place no one looks up to. Because the Messiah is not going to be one that has status.
And so, in Joseph listening, and being willing to keep listening and keep discerning and keep applying the wisdom God had given him and the wisdom that God was continuing to give to him, there again we see a partial part of the puzzle, a part of the fulfillment coming together.
I think about that story. I bet at some point, especially, you know, I think it usually happens that when someone’s a new Christian, at some point you hear someone say, “Well, why hasn’t God answered prayer?” And inevitably you’ve read this story. We’ve all heard it, and I admit I have used this story at some point. I try to avoid it now, but we all know it. And it’s that story of the man who stuck on top of his roof during a flood.
You know this story? A man stuck on the roof during a flood and a boat comes by and says, “Hop on in. We’ll rescue you,” and the guy says, “No, God’s going to save me.” And then a helicopter comes by, and they lower the rope and say, “Climb on up. We’re rescue.” He says, “No, God’s going to save me.”
And finally, what happens? The house collapses, the guy dies, and he’s standing there at the gates of heaven and he says, “God, I had bold faith. Why didn’t you save me?” And God said, “I sent you a boat and a helicopter. How much more did you want?”
And why did we tell that story? Why does it have staying power? Because I’ve seen it for decades. It keeps coming back. It’s because I think we actually recognize that we all struggle with this. Trying to figure out that line between, “I am trusting what God’s doing, and I’m willing to use the wisdom that God gives me to see when God’s actually acting and calling me to do something.”
And if you imagine that as far as I know a true story. Well, because no one’s come back from the dead to report that. But if I think about that story and I think about all the times I’m in that kind of position, I’m waiting, “God, you have to do this thing that’s going to make everything okay.”
I think the reason we tell that story and the reason it sticks around is because we recognize that that’s a genuine struggle. The way it’s not helpful, though, is that none of us do a very good job of living it. And I can rattle that story off to someone, but the problem is I’m not doing a very good job of it either. I’m struggling too. And a lot of times God sends those boats right on by, and I just wait, “Bye, bye. Nice to see you.”
Why don’t we actually live it? But we think, “But I’m going to be bold.” But faith and carefulness aren’t opposed. Here’s the thing that happens when we actually use our God-given wisdom. Use times of contemplation and prayer and study of God’s word, and we actually absorb it and allow it to speak to us, not in a cookie cutter way, but in a “God, show me the fullness of what you’re doing” kind of way.
What does that do? It gives us a very different mix of boldness, but it gives us genuine boldness. It gives us the sort of boldness Joseph had to go into a town that wouldn’t be well respected. They knew his stepson wasn’t going to grow up with all the acclaim of being someone who was from Bethlehem. It’s the boldness that each of us is called to every single day to do the things that God faithfully calls us to do, and not the things that often sound so good.
I read about a man named Phil. His claim to fame, if you’re a baseball fan, maybe you remember this. Some of you remember this, at least when Mark McGuire was racing to break the home run record, and his 70th home run. It was an amazing, amazing event. St. Louis was just huge. It was so big. Surely bigger than the Super Bowl. I mean, way bigger. It was baseball. Come on.
And so here he breaks this record and then keeps speeding on through it, and the man catches the 70th home run ball. Well, of course, when there’s a significant ball like that, the organization tries to get it back from whomever catches it to give it to the player. And so they, but they don’t, the person who catches it isn’t required to give it back. Allowed to keep the ball that you receive. So it’s usually a process where they go to the person and say, “Hey, we’d like to give you some wonderful different souvenirs. Would you consider like a signed bat and a jersey?” That’s what they offered him, a signed bat and a jersey and a signed ball.
We’ll give you this if you’d give us that one ball back. Well, Phil had a simple request. Phil wanted to meet Mark McGuire. And so he said, “I’ll give the ball back. I just want to meet Mark McGuire.” And I think he was also willing to take that stuff, obviously. He wasn’t dumb, but he really just wanted to meet the player that hit the ball.
And for some inexplicable reason, McGuire didn’t want to meet him. He turned down the request to meet this fan. Now, when we’re negotiating something, trying to arrange something, sometimes maybe it’s even when we’re sharing our faith or we’re considering inviting someone to church, we kind of wonder when we’ve missed that boat. And we’re trying to figure out, “Am I sitting here because I’m listening and discerning? Am I sitting here because God wants me to sit here?”
And I wonder if it ran through Phil’s head as McGuire turned him down and he’s holding onto this ball, “Well, I could have at least had these different things of value.” So he held onto that ball for three months. But here’s what happened at the end of the three months. He sold that ball for three million dollars.
I think he made the right decision. I bet he had some doubt in the middle of that. Like, “Did I really need to hold out to meet McGuire? I should have just taken what was offered to me.” That would have seemed kind of bold, but he chose to wait. It seemed kind of, in some ways, meek and sort of like self-defeating. He’s not getting all this other stuff. He just has this ball, not even signed. Yes, it’s significant but it’s not even signed. But here it is.
He was able to sell that ball. And he was a graduate student at the time. He was studying the genetics of worms. And over the years, he’d been able to do all kinds of things with that money that he got, those three million dollars. He bought an engagement ring for his fiancé. He bought, he paid for his school. He bought different needs for his friends and family, helped his parents pay off some debts. He did all kinds of different things with that money and ultimately founded a program called WormBase, where it stores all kinds of genetic information that can be shared about his passion for worm genetics that continues on today.
So this ramification of listening and discerning and spending that time continues to have an impact. In his case, with worms. I don’t know what the impact’s going to be for you or for me, but what I can tell you is when we’re willing to listen to God, when we’re willing to hear, He’s going to use us. We need to be willing to act like Mary was. We need to be willing to act like the wise men were. We need to be willing to act like Joseph was, but we also need to be willing to listen like they were and bring that mixture together.
That bold faith that’s actually a wise faith, a bold faith that’s actually captive to the word of God so that we don’t do just anything, but we do what God has called us to do.
And here’s the thing that happens when we do that. God is going to turn us, his church, and has been turning us, his church, into stars, into lights that shine for him. And as we think about the wise men following that one star, they were a part of the story that made stars more innumerable than all the stars we can see in this world, from the sky in this world today.
He made stars. Lights that shine and show him to the world. When other people gaze, they see something that they can navigate by, something that they can hold onto. And if you’re here in person right now, you’re receiving a star. For those of you online, maybe cut out a star tonight. And ask each of you, would you consider taking one of these stars and put it someplace you’re going to see it every day?
And here’s my challenge to you as we’ve been thinking, how do we live boldly in 2024? Look at that star each day and say and make it a place, a reminder to pray to God. Start not anything special. It’s just a reminder that God has called us to be his lights in this world.
And as you look at that star, I think, “How am I going to do that today? God, would you help me to do that today? If I read your word, would you help me not just to read what I want to read? Would you help me not just to read the passages I want to read or hear only the things I want to hear? Would you help me to see the whole truth that you have, the fullness of your word? Would you help me to be the one that person, that star in someone’s life that shows the light of God?”
What does that look like? Well, it looks first and foremost—oh, thank you—it looks first and foremost, if we’re going to shine like Jesus, if we’re going to shine Jesus’ light in this world, the first thing is that we need to have that same dedication that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 2:2. We need to know nothing but Jesus. We need to be focused on Jesus, not on Christianizing our world, not on making sure that the church is spiffy enough. These aren’t necessarily bad things, incidentally. Not on getting ahead in our own lives. We need to focus on Jesus. Jesus needs to be the centerpiece right there, guiding everything we do.
That’s where we start. Paul used the wisdom of the world. Paul did. I mean, he wasn’t just living recklessly, but what Paul said is that, “I’m not going to focus on that. That’s not what I’m driving for. It’s not so that I can be important, not so I can be respected. It’s not so I can overthrow the Roman Empire and install a Christian emperor.” So I can shine Jesus’ light to the people that God’s going to put into my life today. That’s what Paul did, and that’s what we’re called to do.
So that’s where we start.
Second, we need to keep in mind both the physical and spiritual needs of the people that we shine light to. We can’t just think of the physical needs. Sometimes we see that error in churches over time where there are churches that quit really preaching the gospel. They still do a lot of good work in giving food or clothing to the needy. But on the other hand, we can fall into the trap thinking, “Well, I don’t want to do that, so I’m going to just shine Jesus’ light and tell people how much they need the gospel.” But James warns us, and we see that throughout James, that we need to care for both the body and the soul. And we do that, and that’s where sometimes we just, if someone’s starving to death, you hand them a bowl of soup; you don’t tell them the gospel first. Why? Because they can’t even hear the gospel while they’re starving to death. We shine light in both those ways.
Listen to what James says: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit widows and orphans in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”
And finally, and this ties into all of that, we advance the kingdom of God, not the kingdom of this world. We advance the kingdom of Jesus, not our kingdom.
Jesus challenges us in Matthew chapter 6: Are we going to store up treasures in heaven or treasures on earth? We’re going to shine this light. Let us quit storing up treasures on earth and store up instead treasures in heaven.
And we do that, we can be that guiding star because what we’re doing is we’re saying, “God, use me. Holy Spirit, direct me. Make me bold in the way that you call each and every one of us to be bold.”
And let’s make that a prayer right now. Would you pray with me, please?
Father, would you help us to be those who have a bold faith that are ready to care for people around us, that weep with those who weep? We feed those who are hungry. We clothe those who are lacking clothing. We share the gospel with those who are lacking hope. We understand that all these things are needed. Not part of this is needed. All of this is needed. People need to be cared for physically. They need to be cared for spiritually. And Lord, that is exactly what you’ve called us to do. You’ve called us to build your kingdom, to build it your way, not in the ways of the world, not in the wisdom of the world. You’ve called us to be bold but to listen to you. Lord, would you help us to do these things and keep you right at the center of it? We pray in your precious name, Amen.
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