Can we talk about Christmas presents this morning? You know, think about some of your memorable Christmas presents you received as a kid. I remember, I got a lot of cool stuff when I was a kid for Christmas, but one year I got something that was just not on my radar whatsoever at all. I got this like, not gigantic, but a pretty big Lego castle set.
You know, I didn't do Legos when I was a kid. This thing just like showed up, Santa Claus decided I needed some Legos. But it had like all the little Lego men had like good nights and bad nights, had little Lego horses, had all sorts of pieces. And I mean, I had a little bit of Lego, but not like, but anybody here at Grobock a Lego kid, like, yeah, you see, like my cousin was one of those, like the big huge tubs.
But this thing was awesome. Like on the big box, there's a picture of this castle and you could follow the instructions and all the pieces that you needed to build a castle were in the box. And you know, the Lego thing was cool. I kind of built some stuff with it supplemented my GI Joes supplementing a He-Man.
I was really big into He-Man. And so now I had like a third army of peoples, you know, I had my G.I. Joes and I had my Lego guys. And so you had like Castle Grace Galen, one corner of my room and you had like the G.I.
Joe base made out pillows and stuff. And then you had the Lego guys, like three little armies that could fight each other. But I never built the castle. I tried to a lot.
But I never could get the castle built. I can't take too long or I would understand what was going on. Or maybe it was like, since I didn't like do Legos a bunch, I didn't understand how some of the weird funny parts of it worked. But I got really cool toy, but I never built a castle.
And last week we were down at my parents house before we left for a short vacation with my family. And my mom had a six-year-old nephew. He's awesome. And my mom decided she was going to put together the Lego castle for him.
Now, my mom has not Lego at all either. And she'd, like eight months ago, she started working on this Lego castle. And I go up to, she recently had convinced my dad to go up in the attic. And he pulled down Castle Grace Cole and all the key man's.
So my sexual nephews. But we watched a human on Netflix on an airplane together. He didn't know there was a TV show too. But my mom still had to build a castle either.
She couldn't get it together. I had this thing. It was a cool toy. It was fun.
But I never built it. I never finished it. I flirted with its promise and potential as a kid. But I never finished it.
And today I want to talk about finishing things. We're going to talk about this. Finishing things has turned into really big business. Is we chase through life, especially since our culture has changed so much from an industrial economy to a thinking economy.
We don't make things as much as we think about things now. Is our whole culture has shifted and changed our idea of finishing things has gone away. Our vocation or our job, it doesn't provide the satisfaction of finishing things. Like our heart needs to finish things.
Our bodies work with our minds. We sleep better when we finish things. There's an article I read in Harvard Business Review that said the difference between a good day at work and a bad day at work. And they did the six months long test in an office and they put like trackers on people, like they're checking their blood pressure and their heart rate and they allow them to self-describe at the end of the day.
It was just a good day or a bad day. You would figure a good day. It's like when you don't get holled at by your boss or you don't have conflict with co-worker or all these sorts of things. And what they realized is that actually doesn't have anything to do with it's a good day or a bad day.
The people with self-report that it was a good day regardless of the stress that it happened at work. It was a good day when they accomplished their task list. They finished things. Our bodies want to finish things, but our life is stacked up against us with the concept.
The satisfaction of stepping back to see an end result is something we have in natural desire. So what if I told you that finishing things is an emotion that is wrapped up in the character of God? That's part of who he is. That's part of the story of Jesus, that's part of the story of Jesus' birth.
That's the part of the story of us. So when our Bible is up Matthew chapter 2, we're finishing out the nativity story in the Gospel of Matthew. That's the story of Jesus being born of his parents and the dreams that they had and the way these dreams interact with their lives. The last part of the story, Matthew chapter 2 verse 19 through 23, this is what we read.
When Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt. Get up the angel said, take the child and his mother, go back to the land of Israel because those who were trying to kill the child are dead. So Joseph got up and returned to the land of Israel, Jesus' mother. When he learned that a new ruler of Judea was Herod's son, Archulus.
He was afraid to go there. Then after being born in a dream, he left for the region of Galilee. So the family went and lived in a town called Nazareth, and this fulfilled what the prophets had said. He will be called a Nazarene.
This isn't the first time that we experience this concept or this understanding of fulfillment is part of the story of Jesus. It comes to Joseph in a dream as well way back in chapter 1. We read this in verse 22. All of this occurred to fulfill the message through his prophet.
Jesus and his life and his death and resurrection. Every single thing that he was in this world, the person of Jesus is wrapped up in the idea of fulfillment. It's wrapped up in the idea of God finishing things and wrapped up in the idea of God keeping his promises. If we look across scripture, this word fulfilled, the idea of fulfillment, it means a lot of different things.
It's a big concept in scripture. If we look back in the Old Testament about what they mean of this idea of fulfillment, it says there's no room for anything else. If we begin kind of pulling the word back to its most root sense, it's the same word for handful. You know when we talk about something or somebody being a handful, we're not talking in the positive, are we?
The very bottom line of this though is that the hands are full to full the hand. The Old Testament fulfilled at as much basic sense means to be trusting in the sufficiency of the promise and the actions of God. God's ability to bring something to completion. In the New Testament, we see this idea expanded out even more, and it means to accomplish what has been intended since the beginning.
It's just the very beginning. God has a plan and a promise that he has been running out. He uses people to provide inside of that. He's people to work it out and that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the apex of his promise and plan.
The time is fulfilled. The Kingdom of God is at hand in a world full of forgotten honeydew's passive ignoring sometimes. What is it? I have a word.
I call it directly. I'll do it directly. That pretty much means I'm going to put this off until I feel like doing this. Or the loss of finishing things just due to what some call the tyranny of the urgent.
Jesus's life, his death, and his resurrection serves as the most complete thing ever. I want to read a short story from the Gospel of Luke. The very first time that Jesus taught in public in his hometown of Nazareth, as a young man at the synagogue, this is the story tells us. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me for he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim the captives will be released at the blind. We'll see that the oppressed will be set free into time when the Lord's favor has come from the prophet Isaiah. He rolled up the scroll. He handed back to the attendant and sat down.
All eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently that he began to speak to them. The scripture you've just heard has been fulfilled this very day. That Jesus knew that he was part of a plan that he wasn't just doing his own thing under the blessings of God. It's so much of the Gospels.
That's all we've been reading and talking about on Sunday mornings this year. That's so much of the Gospels. It's about this relationship between the Father and the Son and Jesus understanding what he was doing and what he was a part of. He said this has all been fulfilled now.
So I want us to think this morning kind of about what is prophecy mean. What is fulfilling me and why does this matter to me and what do I have in this whole plan? I told you last week I wasn't here. I was with my parents.
I was my sister and husband and their six year old and we went with my parents to New York City for a quick short vacation together. Somebody saw me on Facebook. Oh, you're wearing camouflage in New York. It was like country came to town.
I don't do big cities very well. But when the last night we were there, my brother-in-law decided he wanted to go to a nice dinner. And so we ended up at this nice dinner and he booked it through the internet and his anniversary date was part of his data of the app he used to book it. And so we kind of got a little bit extra special treatment that not to give us a private room.
It might have been a six year old and eight year old at a nice steakhouse in Manhattan. I've had nice dinners before. We sat down probably what was one of the most nice dinners I've ever had in my entire life. You get to a nice restaurant.
The menu is the exact opposite of the cheesecake factory. It's one sheet. You can tell every single thing has been crafted perfectly and completely for you to have a very unique design experience. We think of that menu.
You can look at those menus and restaurants like that. You can tell that there's a plan that they have for you already. You might not even know it, but they've kind of got this plan done already. The servers are in on the game and it can make suggestions.
And you know we think about what is fulfillment? What is prophecy? What is the plan of God? I kind of learned a lot about that.
I know that menu is the word of God. Not word of God as we talk about just kind of sometimes generic of this, but the actions of God speaking creation into existence, the action of God personally revealing himself to us. Revealing himself to the deepest yearnings of our heart. Like that's that menu.
That's this plan. You know, nice sit down dinner and I sit down banquet. You also have appetizers. Now, not like you've gone to Chili's and got the awesome boss.
Okay, it's like multiple episodes of the office where you went to Michael Scott Los Chili's. And I did some research on this that appetizers are just the same word as an English version of the French word hors d'oeuvres. Not to me hors d'oeuvres are extremely fancy, right? Like this is an hors d'oeuvre in French what it means is off the course or outside of the course.
It's things that are uniquely designed to complement, but not to overwhelm the actual dinner that you will be having. They're meant to match, they're meant to pair. And if we kind of continue this analogy of looking at just this plan of God as a meal, we see this as hope. Like the things in our life that allow us to just dream and yearn for the future, the faithfulness that we've experienced previously in our life to where we know something is coming really good and we see glimpses and have pieces of it in our life now that allow us to stand firm to stand secure.
What God is doing. The second, the last part of this room, if you think about it, you might be wondering why is Chad talking about a meal so much this is this but in scripture, what we see constantly is that the end of all things and advent and in a way is a season for us to reflect on what does it mean to be with God and attorney. One of the main pictures we read in the book of Revelation is the wedding feast of the lamb is the banquet that we have with God is an analogy that Jesus talks about multiple times inside of parables in the gospels is this is just what is this this time at the end. It's possible my favorite piece of scripture ever across the entire Bible is Revelation chapter 21 verses one through four.
This is what it says about that that in that last that permanent time. I saw a new heaven in the old heaven the old earth had disappeared. The sea was also gone and I saw the holy city the new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud shout from the throne saying look God's home is now among his people he will live with them and they will be his people God himself will be with him and he will wipe every tear from their eyes there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain.
All these things are gone forever that verse right there that God himself will be with him he will wipe away every tear that shows up a couple of times in Revelation. I was saying that the things that characterize the old world are now gone. They're stopped. Some of us need things to stop.
Some of us need things to change the hope that we have in the eternal life with God is all the things of this earth will be gone. But they will be passed away that they will be no more that they will not be in existence. We look at what are we hoping for. We're hoping for this God with us part of as we sing a manual Emmanuel Emmanuel means God with us.
And we hope for the future is the hope of eternity of God with us here in our space and all the things that we need relief from. And our actions of faithfulness is one moment we have in life right now we realize God is at hand and amazing things are happening that those are just giving us waypoints of the journey giving us things to attach ourselves to to find security or giving us place of God's life. I've never ever grown. This is where God has been faithful and then is what I'm clinging to right now in the present because I'm hoping for something in the future hope is very unique thing.
Jesus is the fulfillment of all the Old Testament expectancies but the essence of the prophecy is hope and it's not optimism for a lot of us we lean on optimism. is going to be all right. We think we're going to hold on for what's going on in life right now. Hebrews 11-1 says that faith is the reality of what we've hoped for.
Are we hoping or are we optimizing? It's not going to work. You know optimism is us finger crossing that things will go our ways. Just a look.
You know a lot of us we've relied on a look for our life. A lot of us relied on skill. Sometimes we're lucky enough to be skilled. Sometimes we're lucky enough to go a decent distance on our own.
Some of us, you know, luck is not on our favor. But are we relying on faith? Or are we relying on luck? These are two self-governing systems.
And as Christians we are called to be 100% behind one of them. Our God is a God of faith. Our God is a God of fulfillment. Our God is a God of hope.
Optimism is what we insert into the story when we don't have enough faith to listen to them. You know, to trust in Him means to truly live in hope. In the total fulfillment of Jesus. You know, sometimes it's hard for us.
We can understand Jesus at a big level. We struggle with Jesus at an individual level. If you know, He probably doesn't love me enough. He probably can't take care of what I've gotten myself into.
We can't live in two different systems at the same time. Michael Kelly says this, the future has to be more than the present situation of our suffering or incompletion. Some of us are suffering. Some of us that revelation passage sounded really good to you.
You're like, I need no more tears or crying or mourning or pain. I need things to pass away chat. I need things to be gone. I need things to be done.
Some of us live a life of suffering. But some of us also live a life of incompletion. Incompletion because we are driven. Incompletion because we are worried about success.
Incompletion because we have anxiety over performance. Anxiety over proving ourselves. We suffer from incompletion because we are going so fast. We can never finish things on our own.
We can't rely on what God has promised and what God has offered us. And the life of Christ is the opposite of ambiguity. The time is fulfilled because every effort to explore the ultimate things in human life finds its queerest focus in Jesus Christ. That's how he can fulfill everything.
All the query that we are seeking for is found inside of the person of Christ who brings us back into the presence of the living God. And not only does Jesus have an end goal vision and an end goal for this creation. He has a vision for what our lives are to look like. What our lives can be like as well.
We come into this store because it's up to our obedience. It's up to our discernment. It's up to our attention to him and his presence. The awareness, the promptings of our heart to reveal these things to us.
So as we finish up this Advent series, really just a question. How are you doing living in a false sacred ambiguity? How will you do trying to make things well for yourselves on your own? That's the plot line to every hallmarks we have ever.
Things aren't right. This person comes to this massive amount of personal awareness. Someone sweeps in and fixes everything and then we sing Christmas songs together. But really, how are you doing with an ambiguity this year?
How are you doing living in both a world and a faith world? How's that worked out? It's way differently for each of us. But how have we been waiting on Jesus to fulfill our desires instead of us being obedient and letting him fulfill us at the most personal level?
If you've been around Foundry for any length of time, we have these things called the four Jesus assumptions we work off of. We assume that Jesus is here. We assume that Jesus is doing things. We assume that Jesus invites us to do those things with him.
And then we also assume that our greatest fulfillment in life will be found as we participate alongside of Jesus and his mission. Jesus says those who lose themselves will find themselves. That Jesus offers us the most personal clarity we can have and we can experience in this life. But what happens when we begin shifting to a hundred percent faith life instead of living in a world of ambiguity.
If we believe God affects our earth at a personal level, we have to trust in a step that means our actions are the active points of this fulfillment. It's through us. God fulfills his mission through his people. That's the life that he invites us.
That's what it means. So how we do this, you know, this is just through a regular life with God. You know, it means us realizing that God acts and changes us in exceedingly normal ways rather than extraordinary ways. We have a couple of those extraordinary moments in our life, but our regular just attentiveness to who God is is, is what draws us into this one.
One of the reasons we're doing that when you're Bible together, regular normal routine ways that we put ourselves in the presence of God. Do we expect God to show up when you're doing this reading and it's like March and you've been in Leviticus for three weeks saying God, you know, no matter what, I know you can show up and show something. I'm just placing myself with you today for just this brief moment. I'm trusting that by my regular orientation and my regular orientation to just focus on you is a game changer.
And that's what really can change in my life. The last night I was, we're not gonna have this on the screen because this happened after everything got done and turned in. I was just kind of afraid about it. How do we actually just finish this thing up?
What's the final word on this that we need to have? And I was wrapping up my devotional readings for the night. I came across this verse. Psalm 138 says this, the Lord will fulfill his purpose for me.
You're steadfast love, O Lord, and doers forever and do not forsake the work of your hands. Saying, God, you are taking me to where I need to be. And I'm going to be attentive to that. So, your work does not go void.
I realize that my faithfulness and my holiness is part of a much bigger plan. And I simply yield myself to you to use me. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for believing in us.
For though the world changes and shapes and shifts in all of these things, God, the world is yours. That we are your agents as part of it. That we are serving in your life together inside of it.