SPEAKER_00: Hey, I'm Pastor Forrest, and welcome to the Multiply Church Podcast.
SPEAKER_00: Each week we open God's word together to help you meet God and multiply good in your everyday life.
SPEAKER_00: We're so glad that you've taken time to join us for this week's sermon.
SPEAKER_00: And if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and follow us on social media so you never miss a message.
SPEAKER_00: Now, let's dive into this week's sermon.
SPEAKER_01: There was a lot of joy in many in this house who, in an act of faith and generosity, if you weren't here last week, if you're new with us last Sunday, we had an over and above offering called the Plenty offering.
SPEAKER_01: And for those of you who stepped out in faith, I'm praising God and grateful for you.
SPEAKER_01: And also, I want us to celebrate in particular, there was a number of families who gave for the very first time here at Multiply.
SPEAKER_01: And let's put our hands together right now for the faith of those families to trust God in this season, to trust God with their finances, with their life, and to step out in faith.
SPEAKER_01: And it's a beautiful time.
SPEAKER_01: I know last year a large percentage of giving to our over and above offering, year-end offering, happened actually after the official give day.
SPEAKER_01: And so if that's you and you're still uh in a place to take the step of faith to give, you can continue to give now and through the end of the year, December the first.
SPEAKER_01: There's stations at the back where you can grab a plenty card and give, or you can also continue to give online as we are uh stepping into this series that we started last week in this Christmas season, this Advent season, about Advent in particular, and this word Advent is just church word, it means the coming, the arrival.
SPEAKER_01: And today's message is long expected peace and joy.
SPEAKER_01: And as I was thinking about preparing this message, this week there has been a lot of grief in our city over the senseless shooting at K-State.
SPEAKER_01: And I prayed with grieving students and with faculty, and we've showed up.
SPEAKER_01: And as I was thinking about preaching on peace and joy in the midst of the week that we've had, and not just those grieving at K-State, but other people who've been grieving and in hardship, I was reminded of the fact that peace and joy come directly from our relationship with God.
SPEAKER_01: And if we're gonna grieve, we ought to grieve well, letting the God of peace minister to our hearts and provide to us what the Bible calls a peace that surpasses all understanding.
SPEAKER_01: Because we need that peace, we need that joy.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just something that we need occasionally, it's something that we need continually.
SPEAKER_01: We need it all of the time.
SPEAKER_01: And so as we press in, as we talk about peace and joy today and what that looks like for our faith, there's been faith moves that have been happening all through the last week or so.
SPEAKER_01: Last week with our offering that we took, I want to share a story with you.
SPEAKER_01: There's a couple in our church that last week was uh deciding what they were going to give last Sunday, the plenty offering, and it went all the way up to Saturday night of this couple talking about what they would give and deciding on what they would bring.
SPEAKER_01: And so on Sunday morning, they gave sacrificially and cheerfully on Sunday morning, and then Monday went to the mailbox and received an unexpected card with double the amount that they gave.
SPEAKER_01: It was an unexpected gift from the God of peace and of joy, the God that we have that's faithful, isn't He?
SPEAKER_01: Our God is faithful.
SPEAKER_01: But what about a long-expected gift?
SPEAKER_01: Not one that's unexpected, but one that you've been waiting on.
SPEAKER_01: Something that you know that is coming, something that is a gift, or something that's a promise that you're expecting to happen.
SPEAKER_01: And there's an opportunity in that for anticipation and for excitement about what's expected, but also the frustration of this question: how do we live while we wait?
SPEAKER_01: In this time of advent and of awaiting the arrival, how do we live in the in between?
SPEAKER_01: I've done a lot of premarital counseling, and oftentimes when I do premarital counseling, I like to ask, how did the proposal happen?
SPEAKER_01: And oftentimes it's it's it's like almost every time that the bride to be that she normally has this story about how she was expecting him to propose at this perfect time that she thought was perfect in her head.
SPEAKER_01: Out to the dinner or on the trip.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and she had it lined out of like this was the time that she thought that he was gonna do this, but bro was just not on the same wavelength at all.
SPEAKER_01: Nothing was going on up here, nobody was at home.
SPEAKER_01: They totally missed the moment and ended up the proposal ended up being in a different way than what she expected it to be.
SPEAKER_01: I feel like I hear that story all the time.
SPEAKER_01: Because in this time of waiting, where you're waiting on the promise, there's an excitement, there's nerves, and then we know what comes from our Heavenly Father during this advent season is showing us that joy and peace are gifts from God while we wait on what He's promised us.
SPEAKER_01: These are the things that are the gifts that are delivered to us, that we would be confident in our Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And the joy that we have is a confidence that God is near to us.
SPEAKER_01: This is where we're going in.
SPEAKER_01: Peace is a confidence that God is faithful to us.
SPEAKER_01: Last week we learned that hope is a confidence in what God has said.
SPEAKER_01: And joy and peace gives us confidence while we wait, but most of the time we aren't waiting in joy and confidence.
SPEAKER_01: Most of the time we're waiting in impatience.
SPEAKER_01: Now nobody's impatient in this room, are you?
SPEAKER_01: Not one of you.
SPEAKER_01: One in it all right now.
SPEAKER_01: And that impatience robs us of peace.
SPEAKER_01: The peace that trusts in God's timing for our life.
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe as you're coming up on Christmas, maybe the thing that is weighing you down and holding you back from joy and peace is just emotional exhaustion.
SPEAKER_01: You just, you just are like, I just don't have it in me right now to rejoice.
SPEAKER_01: Y'all know Christmas is supposed to be fun, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's supposed to be fun.
SPEAKER_01: It's supposed to be a time where we're feeling the glory of God, and we're giving praise, and some of you feel like you could be cast as the Grinch right now, ahead of Christmas.
SPEAKER_01: It's impatient feeling, or maybe it's angst and anxiety.
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's no shortage of the opportunity for anxiety and angst in the Christmas story that we see in the scripture.
SPEAKER_01: We saw last week about how an angel comes to Mary, this young girl, and tells her that she's going to give birth to a child in the name of Jesus, and that he be the savior of the world.
SPEAKER_01: And she responds with this beautiful song of worship.
SPEAKER_01: And also in the middle of that, her cousin Elizabeth is also in the middle of this miraculous pregnancy.
SPEAKER_01: And then her old age, that she was going to give birth to the one-day prophet John the Baptist, Jesus' cousin.
SPEAKER_01: And we're going to see in the scripture that we look at today that actually threads right in between the two things that we saw last week.
SPEAKER_01: Of the announcement of the angel coming to Mary, and then her giving this worship song and the smashed right in between them is this story about her going to see her cousin Elizabeth and what happens there when she enters into her house.
SPEAKER_01: And we're going to see the response to God's presence.
SPEAKER_01: In Advent, the weeks of peace and of joy center in a lot of ways around John the Baptist and what God was doing with John the Baptist that will one day have a ministry that pointed completely to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Right in the middle of Luke chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: So we're in Luke chapter 1, we're starting in verse 39.
SPEAKER_01: It's just a couple of verses here.
SPEAKER_01: And so if you have your Bible, please turn there with me.
SPEAKER_01: If you have your phone, you can pull it out.
SPEAKER_01: So you can take a look at the Christmas story in Luke chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to be in verse 39.
SPEAKER_01: It's also on the screen.
SPEAKER_01: Let's read it.
SPEAKER_01: A few days later, Mary hurried to the hill country of Judea, to a town where Zechariah lived.
SPEAKER_01: She entered the house and greeted Elizabeth.
SPEAKER_01: At the sound of Mary's greeting, Elizabeth's child leapt within her, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Elizabeth gave a glad cry and exclaimed to Mary, God has blessed you above all women, and your child is blessed.
SPEAKER_01: Why am I so honored that the mother of the Lord should visit me?
SPEAKER_01: And when I heard your greeting, the baby in my womb jumped for joy.
SPEAKER_01: You are blessed because you believe that the Lord would do what he said.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's the fact that you've heard the Christmas story a million times, but you have forgotten that it's a story that is a solution for your soul.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just a story, it's not just a kid's book, it's not just something that we read once a year.
SPEAKER_01: But it's showing us that in the presence of God, what we experience is the joy in having God's closeness and nearness to us because the scripture tells us God is near to the brokenhearted.
SPEAKER_01: No matter what we're going through, no matter the hardship that we're experiencing, the grief that we're going through, God declares to us and says to us that He is near to you if you're brokenhearted.
SPEAKER_01: And what that means is that that makes it to where every single one of us, we're not allowed to act like we're abandoned when we're not.
SPEAKER_01: We're not allowed to act like we're abandoned by God because the Lord tells us that He's never gonna leave us, He's never gonna forsake us.
SPEAKER_01: And what needs to happen for us to have joy overwhelming in our hearts is that joy happens when you stop neglecting that God is near to you.
SPEAKER_01: When you recognize the fact that God's not going anywhere, he's not moving anywhere, he's near to you, he's close to you, you just have to receive it, you have to walk with him.
SPEAKER_01: And we look at a story like this that we just read, and maybe you think, well, you know, for us, this Christmas story, this nativity story, this is just a story for children.
SPEAKER_01: No, this is a story to make you a child of God, to rest in his joy, to rest in his peace, and for you not to be deceived that God is distant from you right now, but instead to receive the promise of what it's like to be in the presence of God, which is an overflowing joy that we see this verse in Psalm 16, 11, that's an anchor, anchor verse when it comes to the joy of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: You will show me the way of life, grant me the joy of your presence and the pleasures of living with you forever.
SPEAKER_01: I recently or a few years ago heard a story about uh a group of Christians who were arrested in the country of North Korea.
SPEAKER_01: North Korea is an authoritarian country and Christianity is illegal, the Bible is illegal.
SPEAKER_01: There's a group of Christians, there's been there's been an effort for decades to get the Word of God over the borders into North Korea.
SPEAKER_01: And so a group of North Korean Christians who had got access to a Bible were then arrested and thrown into deplorable conditions in a prison.
SPEAKER_01: And this group of Christians, one of them somehow were able to smuggle a Bible into the prison.
SPEAKER_01: And as the story goes, this group of believers began to take the Bible and tear it into small pieces and hand it out to them, and they hid it on their person as they tore the little pieces of the Bible just so that they could just be, just have God's word be near to them as they were in that jail cell.
SPEAKER_01: Just to be able to read just a few verses of the living, active, powerful word of God that would bring truth and love into the situation where they were being tortured and in despair, but they wanted just the closeness to the word, closeness to God.
SPEAKER_01: And we have Bibles in the U.S.
SPEAKER_01: that just sit on shelves and collect dust.
SPEAKER_01: The word of God is living and active and near to us, and God is near to us in and through his word that gives us the life of this living and active word that it changes our hearts and it cuts us to the marrow deeply as we know more and more about who God is and understand who he is and are transformed more into his likeness.
SPEAKER_01: And the scripture also gives us this amazing millennia centuries of prophecy fulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: And the father of John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_01: When he heard the news of this miraculous pregnancy of Elizabeth, the angel made him mute.
SPEAKER_01: And when he was able to speak again, he drops this incredible prophecy that ends in this mic drop statement just a few verses later in Luke chapter 1, a few verses down in verse 66.
SPEAKER_01: Everyone who heard about it reflected on these events and asked, What will this child turn out to be?
SPEAKER_01: For the hand of the Lord was surely upon him in a special way.
SPEAKER_01: And Zechariah's prophecy was this in verse 67.
SPEAKER_01: That his father, Zechariah, who was filled with the Holy Spirit, gave this prophecy.
SPEAKER_01: Praise the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has visited and redeemed his people.
SPEAKER_01: He has sent us a mighty Savior from the royal line of his servant David, just as he promised through his holy prophets long ago.
SPEAKER_01: Now we will be saved from our enemies and from those who hate us.
SPEAKER_01: He has been merciful to our ancestors by remembering his sacred covenant.
SPEAKER_01: The covenant he swore with an oath to our ancestor Abraham.
SPEAKER_01: We have been rescued from our enemies so we can serve God without fear and holiness and righteousness for as long as we live in you, my little son, will be called the prophet of the Most High.
SPEAKER_01: Because you will prepare the way for the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: You will tell his people how to find salvation through forgiveness of their sins.
SPEAKER_01: But it's because of God's tender mercy that the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death to guide us to the path of peace.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know about you, but for me, I usually, especially around Christmas time, I don't feel like I'm on the path of peace, but instead I feel like I'm on the inner state of insanity most of the time.
SPEAKER_01: Anybody else?
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe for you, maybe you feel like you left your peace on the beach at your summer vacation and you haven't seen it since that time.
SPEAKER_01: Can I tell you that the peace that we have from our Heavenly Father, it's not dependent on our circumstances, on everything going right and going smoothly, but instead, peace is not the absence of problems, but God's presence in the midst of them.
SPEAKER_01: It's my second point.
SPEAKER_01: Peace doesn't mean that everything is just scot-free and life's just so easy and everything is just smooth over, but instead that we know that we have the Prince of Peace.
SPEAKER_01: When life royally stinks, we have the Prince of Peace that is advocating for us and showing us his love and with us every single step of the way, and we can serve our God without fear, knowing that he is faithful in the middle of it.
SPEAKER_01: A few months ago, Terrence Turman, Pastor Terrence, who comes and is a friend of mine who preaches every once in a while.
SPEAKER_01: He said this statement in a message that he gave.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Hawaii is still Hawaii in a thunderstorm.
SPEAKER_01: And Emily and I have said that to each other so many times over this year.
SPEAKER_01: We've just looked at each other and said, Hawaii is still Hawaii in a thunderstorm.
SPEAKER_01: Because it is, even on our darkest day, we have the light that shines in the darkness.
SPEAKER_01: We have the one true king that has been prophesied for thousands of years, for centuries, from the book of Isaiah that we saw last Sunday, 700 years before Christ, Isaiah prophesies, and we saw last week a prophecy about Christ, and in Isaiah 40, there's a prophecy about John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_01: And verse in chapter 40, verse 3 through 5, Isaiah writes, Listen, it's the voice of someone shouting, Clear the way through the wilderness for the Lord, make a straight highway through the wasteland for our God.
SPEAKER_01: Fill in the valleys and level the mountains and hills, straighten the curves and smooth out the rough places, then the glory of the Lord will be revealed.
SPEAKER_01: And all people will see it together.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord has spoken.
SPEAKER_01: This prophecy about John the Baptist that then is spoken over him and comes to fruition just two chapters later in Luke chapter three.
SPEAKER_01: And for me, as I think about the centuries and the millennia of prophecy to be fulfilled, and the Christ child and John the Baptist and this whole story of Christmas is so easy for me to forget that Christmas is bigger than my busy calendar.
SPEAKER_01: It's the story that saved the world.
SPEAKER_01: And maybe for you, maybe you're so focused on what's right and wrong with the end of this year that you're missing the fact that God is revealing Himself to the world again by the arrival of the king, the Christ child.
SPEAKER_01: This glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: Not the hardships, not the difficulties.
SPEAKER_01: But God's glory it shows up in the waiting when God's people refuse to quit, refuse to give up, refuse to give in, refuse to have a life detached or distant from God when He's near to the brokenhearted, and is just wanting and waiting to bring joy and peace to us no matter the circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: The story that I told earlier about the couple with the unexpected check was actually Emily, Emily and I.
SPEAKER_01: And here's the card that the check came in.
SPEAKER_01: The card was actually post-dated a few days earlier.
SPEAKER_01: But as Emily and I were praying about what we were gonna give, we had to catch up with the blessing that God had for us because the blessing was already in the mail.
SPEAKER_01: The blessing was already in the mail.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus has already been sent to us, and he is sending us a life of blessing.
SPEAKER_01: No matter the circumstances that you're in, in hardship, we can have joy and suffering, we can have peace because it's already promised and it's already postmarked, it's already in the mail.
SPEAKER_01: Will you receive the joy and the peace that Christ has for us?
SPEAKER_01: No matter what life throws at you.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not just talking about just a fake happiness.
SPEAKER_01: Happiness is conditional, happiness is an emotion.
SPEAKER_01: Joy is a fruit of the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Peace is a fruit of the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: What that means is if that you're a follower of Jesus, if you claim to follow Jesus, then one of the two things that are gonna mark your life as a follower of Jesus is a fruit of the spirit, is that you would have peace and joy that would be overflowing out of your life.
SPEAKER_01: As a fruit of, as a as a as a testimony of, as a witness of the fact that you have the Holy Spirit in your heart.
SPEAKER_01: You know what's not a fruit of the Spirit?
SPEAKER_01: Complaining.
SPEAKER_01: Being a curmung Christian, a crusty Christian, it's always got something to say and always got something wrong.
SPEAKER_01: And acts like their God isn't real.
SPEAKER_01: And he's not just waiting for us to walk in the confident hope that he's given to us.
SPEAKER_01: So what in the world do we do while we're waiting?
SPEAKER_01: Well, as we saw last week, we we have a confident hope in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: That we can go boldly before the throne of grace.
SPEAKER_01: As we're believers in the waiting, we should have a joy that Jesus is just by our side.
SPEAKER_01: And have a patient peace.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know about you, but I I I just wonder what Christmas could look like in a few days.
SPEAKER_01: If you have the joy and peace overflowing in your heart of God's faithfulness to you.
SPEAKER_01: And that might that might just look like one small decision for you, one small decision to you that this week you're gonna refuse to be impatient.
SPEAKER_01: You're instead gonna walk in the peace that God has for you.
SPEAKER_01: Knowing his promises for you this life and into eternity.
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe for you, you just need to, at some point in this week, you gotta voice a prayer.
SPEAKER_01: One prayer.
SPEAKER_01: God, give me awareness of your nearness to me in my life right now.
SPEAKER_01: Don't let me be deceived.
SPEAKER_01: Don't let me be blinded to your nearness.
SPEAKER_01: So we can step into the life that God has for us, as we said last week, worship before it all works out.
SPEAKER_01: And so as we prepare to then go into the celebration of Christmas, the birth of Christ next week.
SPEAKER_01: Let's be people who are marked by joy and peace, overflowing from our hearts.
SPEAKER_03: We're so grateful you joined us for this week's message.
SPEAKER_03: At Multiply, we believe life was never meant to be lived alone.
SPEAKER_03: If today you made the decision to follow Jesus, we'd be honored to walk with you on this journey.
SPEAKER_03: Visit multiplyky.com to let us know.
SPEAKER_03: We love you and we'll see you again soon.