December 21, 2025 - Mark Turman - Faith Is The Game Changer

00:00 Welcome and Christmas Greetings

00:25 The Game Changer: Faith and Christmas

01:51 Jelly Roll's Transformation

06:16 The Story of Two Babies: Jesus and John

08:41 Zacharia's Encounter with Gabriel

11:12 Mary's Encounter with Gabriel

13:19 Lessons on Faith from Zacharia and Mary

19:15 God's Personal Revelation and Faith

20:28 The Importance of Faith in a Complex World

24:25 God Uses Anyone Willing

32:37 Concluding Prayer and Farewell

Transcript

[00:00:00] Merry Christmas and good morning. We're back to a normal Texas uh, Christmas. Uh, after how, uh, Hawaiian Christmas yesterday, it may be Florida Christmas by the time we get to Thursday.

So, uh, just be ready. I don't think there'll be any kids in the pool like I saw yesterday. Um, that's just the way it goes around here. So, uh, I hope you have a great celebration, whatever the weather is. And, um, so this morning I wanna talk to you, uh, a little bit about how Christmas builds our faith. Uh, I'm talking this morning on the topic of how faith is a game changer.

Game changer is a term that all of us kind of instinctively and intuitively just understand when we hear it. Obviously a sports metaphor, uh, that kind of just comes into our general experience. Uh, the idea of a game changer, of course, is that, you know, we're in a certain situation or we're watching a certain situation [00:01:00] and something dramatic changes.

There is a new resource. There is, uh, an intervention. Oftentimes it's a person that comes into the game and because of their ability or just their opportunity in that moment, they kind of change the whole dynamic. Uh, if your favorite team selects a really high, uh, draft pick, you're like, oh, this is a game changer for us.

Next year, uh, at OU will be better, won't it, Steve? Maybe next year at Michigan will be different. If you get a coach and all these kinds of things, it's a game changer. All right, well, Christmas is in every way a game changer. Our friend Jim Denison was writing about this in some way, uh, earlier this week.

Uh, you may or may not recognize the name, Jason Deford. I've brought him up before. Uh, he is known professionally to those of us who love [00:02:00] country music as Jelly Roll. And I've been following Jelly Roll for about five years now, uh, as a music phenomenon. I mean, you have to pay attention to somebody named Jelly Roll, don't you?

And um, yeah, it just has been amazing to kinda watch his meteoric rise in the world of country music. Almost all of the songs that I am aware of that Jelly Roll Sings has some kind of significant spiritual connection and connotation to it. He's been pretty amazing, really, over the last five years. Uh, he's been, uh, the recipient of three, uh, CMT awards, country Music Television Awards.

His song, uh, son of Son of a Sinner, is a very popular song. Uh, he's also known because in the last four or five years he's lost 300 pounds, [00:03:00] so maybe he's not gonna be Jelly Roll anymore. I don't know. Um, but Jim wrote about him and I followed it because, well, he ended up in the last few days on the Joe Rogan podcast.

And if you're familiar with the Joe Rogan podcast, do not raise your hand. That's not necessarily something you wanna brag about, but I live in the podcast world a little bit now and I have learned, you know, various voices and in podcast world, that form of media, whether you've discovered it or not, there is Joe Rogan on the reach and national stage of podcasts.

There's Joe Rogan and there's all the rest of us. Okay. Which is pretty amazing because Joe Rogan will sit down and have conversations with people like Jelly Roll that last three hours. And so he was on the show, got into a conversation with Jelly Roll, and just right off the bat, Joe Rogan said, you're a completely [00:04:00] different person.

And Jelly Roll responded. Yeah, you're right. It seemed like the conversation was gonna be a conversation about weight loss, but it wasn't. It was about a deeper change going on in his life. Jim described this well in his article, how at the age of 14, Jason Deford was baptized, but not long after his commitment to Christ and his discovered faith.

He was introduced to drug use and as a 14, 15-year-old young man. He got sucked into that world of abusing various drugs, and over the next 10 years or so, would go deeper and deeper in that until he was finally arrested several times, several felony convictions, and really just destroyed his life, uh, in a very, very significant way, even as it was just beginning until finally at the age of 39, [00:05:00] he came back to his faith.

The prompting thing, the game changer that resulted in that was because his own 14-year-old daughter wanted to be baptized. And so when Joe Rogan says, you're a, you're a brand new man, he said, you know, I wasn't gonna get real spiritual with you in this conversation, but that's exactly what happened to me.

The Bible says that it's not about God restoring us, it's about God transforming us. By giving us a brand new heart, and he said, that's what's going on in my life. I have a brand new heart from God that has become the game changer in my life. That's what faith can be for any of us. The Bible warns us in one place it says this, watch out brothers and sisters so that there won't be.

Any, in any of you an evil [00:06:00] unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. One of the great reasons for celebrating Christmas is the way that it can remind us and help us rebuild and reconnect to the depths of our faith. And I wanna help you maybe do that this morning by looking at the story of not just one baby that we celebrate, but two.

Christmas is actually about more than just one. Obviously that one baby we ought to focus on, but it's not just a story of one baby, but of at least two. One of them is named Jesus. The other one I point you to today is named John, and I'm not gonna actually focus your attention on those babies so much as on.

A couple of their parents, one of them, the father of the forerunner and cousin of Jesus, John the Baptist is a guy named Zacharia. You know, part of his [00:07:00] story from Luke chapter one. And then we're also compare a little bit of his story to that of Mary, the mother of Jesus. I bounded into these stories a few weeks ago and just thought it strange that they sit side by side.

In the long introduction that Luke gives to the life and story and ministry of Jesus as our savior, and I don't think that that is by accident. There are some similarities between Zacharia the father, the priest of John, the Baptist, and Mary. There are some similarities. They're obviously both Jewish. Um, they both have encounters with the same angel by the name of Gabriel.

They have a very similar response, which is when they are encountering this angel. They are terrified as probably we would be, and they become the parents of [00:08:00] amazing sons, but that's about where the similarities end. Their sons will have very different roles. John will prepare the people for the arrival of Jesus on the stage of the world as the Savior, and obviously Jesus will do what only Jesus can do.

He will become the sacrifice for our sin. He will become the savior of the world that John has the privilege of announcing. But let me just give you a taste of how their stories. Both similar and especially how their stories of faith differ. So in Luke chapter one, it tells us that Zacharia was doing his priestly duties in the temple, and we'll just pick it up a little bit at verse 10.

It says this, at the hour of incense, the whole assembly of the people were praying outside, that is in the temple in Jerusalem. The people [00:09:00] have gathered and Zacharia has gotten the privilege providentially of leading worship and of going in and of doing his duty in the temple. It says in verse 11, an angel of the Lord appeared to him to zacharia, standing to the right of the altar of incense.

Then a strange comment, don't you know that Zacharia had a great time describing every single detail? Of this encounter with Gabriel, it says in verse 12, when Zacharia saw him, he was terrified and overcome with fear. But the angel said to him, do not be afraid, Zacharia, because your prayer has been heard.

Your wife, Elizabeth, will bear you a son and you will name him John. There will be joy and delight for you, and many will rejoice at his birth. He will be great in the sight of the Lord and he will never drink wine [00:10:00] or beer. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit while he is in his mother's womb. He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the Spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the disobedient to the understanding of the righteous to make ready.

For the Lord. A prepared people. Now listen to Zacharia verse 18. How can I know this? Zacharia asked the angel for, I'm an old man and my wife is well along in years the angel answered him. I am Gabriel who stands in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. Now listen.

You will become silent and unable to speak until the day these things take place because you did not believe my words, [00:11:00] which will be fulfilled in their proper time. Nine months of silence. What must that be like? Now the other story, you know, better. Same angel later on in the chapter, just a few verses down comes to Mary.

Let me just remind you very quickly of that part of the story. Verse 26 says this, in the six months, six months after Gabriel comes to Zacharia and says that he and his wife will have a baby that will have this unique role of announcing. Savior. Six months later, the Angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee of called Nazareth to a virgin, engaged to a man named Joseph of the House of David.

The Virgin's name was Mary, and the angel came to her and said, greetings favored woman. The Lord is with [00:12:00] you. Take note of verse 29. But she was deeply troubled by this statement, wondering what kind of a greeting this could be. Then the angel told her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

Now listen, you'll conceive and give birth to a son and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son of the most high. And the Lord God will give him the throne of his Father David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever and his kingdom will have no end. Mary, ask the angel, how can this be?

Since I have never had sexual relations with a man. The angel replied to her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will overshadow you. Therefore, the holy one will be to be born, will be called the Son of God. And consider your relative Elizabeth. Even she has conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who [00:13:00] was called childless.

For nothing is impossible with God. Mary's response. In the next verse, I am the Lord's servant, said, Mary, may it be done to me, according to your word, than the angel left her. What caught me about caught my attention about this is just how different these conversations go, how you have this senior adult being told he's going to become not a grandfather, but a father.

A young girl up in the the nowhere town of Nazareth getting a similar announcement and how the angel deals with each of them as the messenger of God. For me, I've just been pondering two or three truths that grow out of this comparison and out of this interaction between Gabriel and Zacharia, Gabriel and Mary, what do we learn [00:14:00] about faith from this experience?

Well, two or three things. One of those is. God gives you the re revelation that you need, but not the the revelation that you want. He gives you as much information as you need to make a legitimate response of faith to him. But you're always probably going to have a desire for more information than what God may be ready to offer you.

But there is enough we would all say, wouldn't we? In our best moment. That God knows what we need and is ready to res to respond with that, but it'll even go oftentimes a step or two further than that. He'll give us a lot of what we want, but he knows what we need better than we do, especially when it comes to faith.

Have you noticed how things have changed in the last 10 or 20 years in this way that. Have you [00:15:00] noticed that when young people, uh, decide to get married, that their engagements become almost as big a celebration as their weddings? I mean, my daughter got married about 13 years ago, and you wouldn't believe the extreme steps we had to go to to get this whole thing set up.

To surprise her to have photographers hiding in the bushes. Uh, I mean, it, it would, you would be not believe the party that had to go on just to get married or just to get engaged. When I got engaged, nothing, anywhere close to that. I didn't even have a ring when I asked Judy to marry me. That's how poor I was.

Have you noticed that when somebody has determined that they are going to have a baby, that [00:16:00] all of a sudden the parties have to go on the whole time? We now have what are called reveal parties. I believe all of this is the concoction of Hallmark. Okay. This whole thing in Luke chapter one sounds like kind of God's version of a reveal party, and he announces not just one baby that will become the savior of the world, but a second baby who will become the preparation for our savior.

We saw a little bit of this this week. Uh, we had our, our last staff meeting at Denison Ministries on Thursday, and all of a sudden we're going through all the reports and all this. We're celebrating one of our longest tenured, uh, employees who's retiring at the end of this year. And all of a sudden, right in the middle of our slide [00:17:00] presentation and celebrating our friend Susie and all that, all of a sudden there's boom.

A message that two of the young girls in our office are going to have babies. And that they're gonna have babies at the same time. One of our other workers, we're gonna have three babies in Denison ministry world in the next six months, and so all of the celebration broke out. Well, that's what's going on in this way.

God is announcing that there is something coming, that there is a game changer headed their way and headed our way. But you know what happens when people announce that a baby's coming? There are all kinds of questions. Oh, that's so great. When is it due? Is the the first question. Very soon after that, what are you gonna name the baby?

Well, that never came up in these two lives because the angel had already picked the names, and that's a part of the story that goes forward. Babies raise all kinds of questions with all [00:18:00] kinds of anticipation, all kinds of preparation that go on, and the angel comes and starts telling amazing things about both of these babies.

How would you like it if God or anybody else said to you, Hey, your baby. Your baby will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he's born. Your baby. Your baby will be great in the sight of God, your child. Your child will be the one to prepare the lives, the hearts and minds to receive the great gift of a savior that God is about to bring your child.

Your child will never, ever touch wine or beer or any other stronger. Your child will have an incredible in eternal role in the economy of God. Can you imagine hearing such things? [00:19:00] You can look at this story and appreciate just how challenging it must have been for both Zacharia and for Mary, that God was up to something new.

But God will always, always give us the revelation that we need, but not necessarily the revelation that we want. I was listening to a podcast by two really smart cultural commentators this week. They were talking about how do we describe this complicated world that we live in? How do we describe how everything seems to be moving all at once, all the time?

And they came up with a term. The term they utilize was the word poly scene. The word poly means many. The word seen means recent or current age, and they said, you know what? With AI and with technology and [00:20:00] with globalization and with everything going on in the world, it just is a world of many, many things, many sources, many voices, many factors all at once coming around us and I thought it was great the way they ended this one commentator said, here's the deal.

Faster and more complicated the world gets. The more that everything you learned at church matters. Think about that with me. The faster and the more complicated that everything in our world gets, the more that the of the things that you learned in places like this matter, God will give us enough evidence to believe.

Not so much evidence as to overwhelm us and to eliminate our choice to believe. The second thing that I'm pondering out of this story is the reality that [00:21:00] anybody, anybody at all, can be a fabulous example of faith if they want to be. Obviously you, you get the comparison of these two parents, right?

Zacharia and Mary are obviously different in age. They are different in location. One of them spends his life in the business of holy things in the temple. He's been doing this his whole life. The other is off in a small remote village in the northern part of Israel a hundred miles away. It would ultimately take Mary and Joseph about.

Four or five full days of walking to get from Nazareth all the way down, not just to Jerusalem, but a few miles further into Bethlehem. They're different in expectation. They're different in anticipation. There's a lot of things that are different about them. [00:22:00] Listen to the description of Zacharia's resume earlier in that same chapter.

Verse Uh, five says this, in the days of King Herod of Judea. There was a priest of Ajas division named Zacharia. His wife was from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. Both were righteous in God's sight, living without blame, according to all the commands and requirements of the Lord, but they had no children because Elizabeth could not conceive, and both of them were well along in years.

These are what we would call a faithful power couple. They've been living their lives full on for God for a long time. Even in the midst of an enormous disappointment, the disappointment of not being able to have family, but compare that to what we know [00:23:00] about Mary. Just one verse contains all of the fundamental information about her.

We know her name. And from her name, we imply and infer her gender, that she is a woman. Uh, we know that she is from this town that's not even listed once in the Old Testament, this little village of Nazareth, which even today, having experienced Israel four times, most of the tour guides are like, oh, as we're going by on the bus, there's Nazareth.

It's not really important. We're not gonna stop. It's still treated that way. Even in modern times, we know that she's engaged and you can imagine all of the things just go back in your mind when you got engaged. All the excitement, anticipation, expectation, all that goes with being engaged. And we know something about her private life in that she is a virgin.[00:24:00] 

Isn't it interesting that you would expect. God to do something special through somebody like Zacharia and Elizabeth, but you'd have no such expectation for a young girl living in a remote village, living a essentially invisible kind of life. It's kind of incredible to me, but there's a message here, at least there is for me, that God can use anybody.

Anybody that is humble, willing and trusting. It doesn't matter if you're a senior adult or a young teenager. Matter of fact, there's, there's a sense when I read this story every season of Christmas that we're like, [00:25:00] shouldn't zacharia have gotten this? Shouldn't. He had been the one who most epitomized faith, but he doesn't do that, and Mary is the one who becomes the hero of this moment.

Even in contrast to Zacharia, the message for me is God will use anybody who is willing to humble their heart, focus on him. And be willing to follow whatever he says. One other truth that helps my faith out of this story and that is that God grows each of our faiths in a personal kind of way. Zacharia meets this angel in the temple, which is where we would expect a person to meet an angel, and he is completely grip.

When he hears what Gabriel is announcing to him, [00:26:00] he can't help but say, have you lost it, Gabriel? This? Do you not know? Do you not see that I am an old man and you know that I am married to an old woman? You know that this is absolutely ridiculous. In my favorite part of the whole story is verse 19, because this sounds like Gabriel just gets amped up.

By Zacharia's disbelief. I wonder if we had actually been there, if we would've heard this angel say something like this. Do you not get it? I'm Gabriel,

because that's the way it reads to me. Zacharia, you're a priest of God. You know the stories of God, you know, the crossing of the Red Sea, you know the promise of Isaac to another senior adult couple. You know the truth that nothing is impossible with God. Why are you [00:27:00] questioning me? Are my wings too short?

Is my voice too low? I mean, just some. You gotta use some holy imagination here, folks. Gabriel just gets amped up over this and says, you know what? I think it'd just be a grand idea for you to not say another word for the next nine months. I wonder if the Holy Spirit is tapping Gabriel up. Hold on, bud.

Slow down. Don't get too crazy here. I understand he's not where he needs to be, but let's just just be graceful here. Does it sound very different to you when you read this story? Really honestly, folks, does it sound very different when you hear Mary say something very similar? Uh, how is this going to happen?

I'm not married [00:28:00] yet. I know how this works. How is this gonna happen? And Gabriel goes. Well, we're gonna get through these doubts, Mary. We're gonna get through these questions and this Holy Spirit is gonna come upon you in a way that even I can't explain to you and you're gonna become the mother of God's son.

I don't know about you, but I look at both these parents having lots of questions. Can holy imagination. You know the story. Zachariah comes out of the temple and the people are like, what took you so long? And he can't say a word, and he's hurrying around trying to find some kind of a tablet. I imagine that Elizabeth was probably there, maybe she [00:29:00] wasn't.

Maybe she was back in their hometown. I imagine. Can you imagine all of the questions that Elizabeth would've had? We're gonna what? And he's just scribbling all this down as fast as he can. You are going to have a baby. We are going. Can you just imagine how this goes for the first hour, for the first week, for the first month, for the all nine months, for Zacharia and Elizabeth, total silence from him.

Can you imagine how that conversation went for Mary with Joseph? Hey, in those days when you were engaged, you acted like you were married. You referred to each other as husband and wife, even in the period of engagement. Uh, Joseph, we are gonna need to have a talk. It's so disturbing to Joseph, as you remember from Matthew's telling [00:30:00] of it, that God has to give Joseph an encounter with an angel in a dream.

To get him to a place where he can believe all of these stories. All of these stories just remind me of the patience and the compassion, and the mercy and the gracefulness of God who will meet us where we are and help to move us to where he knows we need to be in faith. That's the kind of compassionate and loving God we serve.

Jim wrote about another person that I like to follow, a theologian author of a previous generation named Frederick Biner. Biner was an incredibly thoughtful and smart theologian. He taught at Harvard Divinity School about 80 years ago, and you met a student one day. He asked this [00:31:00] student, what do you believe in?

And he said, well, I believe in faith. He said, well, what do you, what do you mean by that? What, what faith do you have? You have faith in what? He said, well, I just simply have faith in faith. Egner said what he said, yeah, I just, I have faith in faith. Ner reflected on that later and he said, you know, it struck me that having faith in faith.

Is as barren and as empty as having, having love or being in love with love, or being in love with money that you only use to make more money. Having faith in faith is not necessarily a bad thing. It'll get you down the road some. The Bible tells us, you and I can you and I can even pray that God would, that we would have faith to ask for more faith.

That prayer from that father who was desperate and said to Jesus on one occasion, I believe, help my unbelief. [00:32:00] We can ask in faith for more faith. But here's the real question. The ultimate question is not, do you have faith? Who or what do you have faith in? Because just having faith in faith just gets you started on the road.

If you want game changing faith, you have to have faith in the right thing. You have to have faith in the right one, and his name is Jesus. Let's pray. Lord, we just thank you again for your love and patience and goodness toward us. Lord, it has been a great year here at PK Chapel, and as we come to the end of this calendar and get ready to start another, we pray, father, that you would strengthen and build our faith that you would show us, Lord, [00:33:00] how we can trust you more deeply the way Mary did.

Lord, we're grateful that you're patient with us. We're grateful that you are personal with us, that we can be, we can be challenged. We can be inspired by other people's faith, whether we find it in the Bible or we find it in each other here in the chapel. We can be encouraged by that. We can be challenged by that.

But God, we know you meet each of us right where we are. You give us the revelation that we need to move forward and deeper with you and God. Today in this Christmas season, we claim that promise of Philippians chapter one, where you said that you will complete what you began in us. Lord, I pray that we would be more willing, more available, more attuned, more ready.[00:34:00] 

To hear from you and to quickly, joyfully and eagerly follow you. Whatever you say in Jesus' name, we pray and everyone said together. Amen. All right, join us for lunch if you can. If not, merry Christmas. We'll see you soon.