In the last couple of weeks, you might have seen that I've been doing some top five lists for the Christmas Advent season. I actually saw off as a joke where I tested on microphone to the person in the new building and I had to keep on talking. After a while, you don't have to talk about it once I started making top five lists. But what's interesting in every year, it seems to be there's a new Christmas song that people are hating on.
And it kind of goes through several things. I'm about to pop in a tweet from a guy named John Acuff about Christmas shoes. Now, a family has this contest every year about who's the last one to get to hear Christmas shoes. That's why I want people to think strong argument about a little drummer boy among many folks here at Foundry.
Madeline, I don't have different sides of it. We sang a little drummer boy last week. But there's a new one that I've not seen to have heard so much ruckus over until this year. But there's a lot of folks that really don't like the song Mary Did You Know.
And I was a little surprised to see this. But it's just interesting. I'm just kind of going through and walking through the comments. And a lot of people don't like Mary Did You Know.
They're trying to analyze the song lyrics. That sort of thing. But it really does kind of make you think of something different. That's what I've been thinking about so much.
Because this week we've read just that story, that kind of classic introduction to the Christmas story from Loops Gospel. And I think a lot about Mary. Mary's one of those figures. I talked about this some last week.
But we've learned a lot about who Mary is in the Magnificat in the way that she shows her the thankfulness to God. But I just wonder, I'm pretty sure Mary did know. I guess that's one way to put it. But you kind of wrap in this whole idea of I'm about to have my first child.
I'm traveling on the road in this whole weird, unique situation with me and Joseph. But then also the fact that I'm carrying this baby that is so much bigger than just this baby. And the questions and the apprehension and that sort of thing that Mary probably had going on. So this Sunday is going to be a little different if you're not caught by now.
I'm not going to preach the whole sermon in my book. But what we're going to do in just a moment is we're going to pop over to a conversation I had this week with two people. One of the little ones who lives in Killit who's our Director of Administration and Foundry. Her and her and her will just had their second child.
A few months ago, a little boy named Jack Henry. He's awesome. He's cute. He brings him to staff meeting.
Always want to hold him. And then we're going to have a conversation as well with Crystal Coleman. She's one of our board members. Her and her and her husband Clint are expecting their first daughter, a Conley Ray, in the next few months.
So I've never had a baby before and I don't know what that feels like and I know that a lot of people watching this. All the guys we've never had babies. So I want to get the perspective from my new moms and from that thing is we kind of jump into this conversation about Mary and how we see the Mary story as this example of re normally. We look at her behaviors and her thoughts.
But today we're going to talk about is what does it mean to know that something bigger is all in the horizon. We're going to pop into that conversation. I see all back in my office. We'll finish things up.
We'll be like in the house. Very not knowing that you're going to go into labor anymore, but not knowing not having any kind of plan. You don't know if you're going to stay. You don't have a doctor.
You don't have anybody to help you deliver a baby. You don't have you don't have anything. You got. Joseph and you don't get.
Not only just having a baby, but she's like having the son of God. Like I can you imagine. So what I'm really kind of thinking about is having people kind of attached to the emotions that Mary might have had. Yeah, I want to do everything right and and being solely responsible for another life.
That's a responsibility that it's very scary, very humbling also, you know, that you get to get to mold and teach and create and. Oh, it's just it's amazing just watching watching them grow. You know, it's like me and Clinton, you know, decided to start trying right. So I was thinking about that.
We started talking about it. I already had no other be wrong. It happened faster than anticipated. So there was still a lot of shock factor, but I mean, from Mary's perspective, having it be a complete surprise.
You know, I can't even imagine because this is a whole new world. A lot of feelings, even when you're, you know, you're ready, even when you planned it, you know what I mean? But to have to kind of be a complete surprise like that, I can't, I just personally can't imagine. But so for me, the there's been a lot of different feelings and of course I'm so excited to meet her and I'm so I can't wait to hold her and all the things.
But this is a new season. I don't know what it's going to be like to be a mom. I cannot imagine feeling involved, you know, so it's very, I mean, there's a lot of anxiety in it, you know, really, even I prepped for it. I wanted it, but there's still so many emotions that go through your head like, I don't know how to do this.
This is, I mean, this is something I've never, I've never done before. How am I going to, how am I going to be at this mom thing? You know, so it's, it's so exciting and I can't wait, but on the other hand, you are, there is a part of you who is just like, I'm so nervous about that. And being a boy mom, just and knowing the rest of the story also, you know, seeing, you know, she, she has this boy, and then as a boy mom, I know the rest of the story also and knowing that this boy is going to be brutally murdered at the end of the story, just is heart wrenching, you know, but knowing all the good that he would do in the world is just seeing it from her point of view.
There is a proud sadness about the insider thing. Like I can you imagine the pressure, I mean, you know, I mean, really, you know, and so, but so for me, I mean, I think I do look at it like, this has been trying to figure out a word that's not really easy. This has been something that, you know, most women just like can't wait for the, you know, this is like the moment you can't wait to be pregnant, can't wait to mom. Knowing like now all the things you don't know going into pregnancy going into like this transition, not only on your body, but you just how it takes like an emotional toll on you.
I can't imagine her going through that and being a complete surprise. And just like the whole, the whole thought process behind it does change like looking at the Christmas story is different this year in that now that I'm going through what the physical part of it and the, the, the transition of my mind of going from being just me and Clinton to I'm going to have to take care of this person like this person's coming to work that I'm responsible for forever. That is a whole transition. So to think that, you know, now I'm looking at almost from her perspective, which I don't really know that I've really ever looked at the Christmas story from Mary's perspective before, because I hadn't walked it, you know, and everything that you, you know, you experience in your life, I feel like you have so much more empathy for somebody when you've walked that situation.
And not that, you know, don't be wrong. She still wins. I'm just saying like, you know, just being pregnant with your first child in general, going through that in the season really does make you think to how that must have been for her, like how much really honored she was I'm sure, but stressed and anxious she was about it at the same time, you know, that's. And then knowing that you have to give birth in a dirty form, like I did want to have more control over my birth plan after thinking about it this way.
Yeah. I want to thank Crystal and Lindsay for popping on with that. Because like I said, I've never had a baby before. I don't know what this thing of anticipation is like, but what I want us to do is for a moment, you know, just kind of get inside of the mind of what Mary might have been thinking about.
We read earlier, our main passage for the day, Luke, chapter two, one through five, but I want to read something else to you. And it's a prophecy from a guy named Micah. And I think this might have been one of the things that Mary was thinking about is she rode into Bethlehem. This city that she might not have ever been to before.
And then the name of Bethlehem is just a short journey away from Jerusalem. It's like five or six miles. In many ways, you could call it like a suburb of Jerusalem. It's further than you'd want to go in one day.
But let's pop into this prophecy from Micah chapter five. We will read verses one through five. This is what we read. Mobileize Marshall, your troops, the enemy is laying siege to Jerusalem and they will strike Israel's leader in the face with a rod.
But you, O Bethlehem, Frath, are only a small village among all the people of Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel, whose origin is in the distant past, will come to you on mine by half. The people of Israel will be abandoned to their enemies until the woman in the labor gives birth. And then at last, his fellow countrymen will return from exile to their own land.
And he will stand to lead his flock with the Lord's strength and the majesty of the name of the Lord, his God. And there his people will live undisturbed for he will be highly honored around the world. And he will be the source of peace. So think about this, Micah.
It's kind of funny because Micah is a forgotten prophet. And you know, the prophecy in Micah, he was a contemporary of Isaiah. He was there at the same time. But I know his prophecy is small.
It's almost forgotten about. Except for he's the person that names Bethlehem as the place that the Messiah will come from. So imagine Mary with all of the other preparation thoughts and stuff that she has going on. It's now riding into this town.
Now imagine she might be thinking back to the visions, to the dreams, to the angelic encounter, to the situation, and her with her cousin Elizabeth, all of this. And thinking, you know, is this the story that is coming true? Is this prophecy happening inside of my very womb right now? Just imagine what that looks like.
Imagine that level of preparation going on in her mind. So a couple of things about this prophecy that really help us to understand what might be going on in verse 5 1. Really Micah puts this inside of the version of the story saying, you know, it can't get any worse. The enemy is at our gate.
So then he references some other things that happened. There was a king named Joe Hoecken and it was an embarrassment. Because he was drug out of Jerusalem while he was being destroyed by the Babylonians. And he was ridiculed in the face of the city defenders that were left.
And they carted him off to Jerusalem. And then say, you know what? You have this king and you say that he has power and you say that his family is anointed by God. But we're going to take this guy back to our own place.
This this root of embarrassment, but also this awareness of the absolute lack of depth in their leadership that's going on. And part of the prophecy begins bringing things out. But it starts off in verse 2. It speaks of insignificance.
You know, Bethlehem means house of bread. Ephraeth means place of plenty. You know, the role of Bethlehem and this whole region of Jerusalem was just there to make sure food was in the city. And we know that food is essential, all that sort of thing.
But think about the way that a lot of like urban city dwellers might think of those who live outside the city and responsible for their agricultural economy. You know, they're kind of down on their scene as country folks. I think at the Tom Petty song, Southern Accident. And this is kind of like, you know, you might think I'm dumb, but I'm necessary.
Like this whole thing, Bethlehem was this sleepy little forgotten town. It was almost worthless except way, way, way back long ago is where David came from. King David, the beginning of the royal line of the house of Israel, a man after God's own heart that people had been yearning for a king like David. In fact, if you open your Bibles up and you read 1st and 2nd Kings and 1st and 2nd Chronicles, they compare every king to David and what David did.
And so this town is known for this is where David came from, this insignificant last son who the prophet Samuel came to see the sons of Jesse, which he was told by God that one of them would be king. He got to the end like, hey, this isn't all of them. Do you have anybody left? Because this isn't the one that God wants.
And Jesse said, oh, yeah, I've got my youngest son. He's like back with the horses making sure the baggage is all right. They go find David and bring him out. Think of also the story of Ruth.
The story of Ruth takes place in Bethlehem. Boaz was David great-grandfather, I think. And so in this tiny little forgotten sleepy insignificant town, big things have happened before. I wonder if Mary's thinking about that.
She just kind of goes down into Bethlehem. Then this last thing in verse 5, 4, it speaks about the peace, speaks about the rule of this person. And it doesn't use the normal word for a king. It has its own little language it talks about inside of this prophecy.
But this is a ruler that will be qualitatively different from what has come before in the past. Instead of faulty leadership that led the people astray. Instead, now we are going to be having good leadership. We're going to be having proper leadership.
We're going to be having the type of leadership that we actually need in order to bring God's reign and peace about with everything we do. It also speaks that he will be the source of peace. It's from him, all of these things spring forth. And it brings this idea of prosperity, but it will also put the people back inside of a relationship with God, but also within God's righteousness.
What does that mean for God's people to be reunited with him and what he has been doing? Because God's people for that in his prophecy in my cup, but also in Mary, they knew they had been separate from God. They had not been hearing from God. They had felt abandoned.
These things still, and Mary's experienced hundreds of years in the future, but these things still haven't come to pass. They still are there. They're still problems. And I think really the whole crux, the thing for us to begin thinking about is we look at this story and we begin prayerfully engaging in our own lives.
We've been talking about re-normally. We've been talking about how do we see Advent, this historical and traditional beginning of the Christian year as a way for us to hit reset and for us to truly experience a different life in 2021 than we might have. And so much of this is inside of this story, this prophecy, the way that Michael lays it out. And it's this statement right here on what you think about is this, that your best past isn't even adequate enough for God's future.
Your best past isn't adequate enough for God's future. That we really see this story telling the way that this prophetic Messiah, this ruler, this leader, this king, that is riding inside of Mary's belly is they're coming up into the hill country of Judea from Galilee. This king is inside of her. And what's going on in her mind?
Your most adequate vision that you have of your, it's not even good enough. Even everything that we can imagine is just simply not there. Our best past isn't even adequate enough for God's future. And that really just drives us to ask him some questions, and like we've done for the last few weeks, I just want to encourage you to go to my foundry.life.
Now, click on those message notes if you're watching this live. Some dialogue about where to get this should be popping up in the comment bar. But these are some questions I want us to ask ourselves today, but also ask, is we engaged in this whole idea of the whole life? We engaged this whole idea leading up towards Christmas Eve in just a few days.
But this version is this, how do we step into an envisioned future with the reality that Jesus Christ has given us? You know, we know these things. We know he loves us. We know that he died for us.
We know all the truths in the promise of scripture. What does it mean for us to own them in a different way that leads us to a different experience with him? You know, what do we need to just go ahead and call out the bankrupt practices we have in our life? You know, I'm really bad at email.
And ever since Gmail came out over 10 years ago, you don't have to worry about your inbox size anymore. So I had this horrible habit of, I will look at emails. I will check them. I will most likely respond to them.
But I'll just leave them sitting in my inbox. And every few months, I'll get to my inbox has hundreds, if not over a thousand emails just sitting right there. And only like 10% of them matter. And so what I have to do is I have to declare email bankruptcy.
I know that I've engaged with stuff at the level I kind of need to, but in order to clear my headspace to move forward. And it's kind of like this productivity hack I've found in my life. I just select all archival. I know if I need them in the future, I can find them in the archives, the search functions there.
But I will declare email bankruptcy. I'll say, you know what this just no longer is adequate enough for me to work out of. I need to clear my head. I need to clear my to-do list.
I need to clear the way that I am seeing what my daily routine needs to look like. So I declare email bankruptcy. I'm doing my best inside of this. I'm responding to things for the most part in the ways that I need to.
But it's just gotten sloppy. It's no longer working. We're just crowded and cloudy. And just, I have to delete them all.
You know, what are the practices that we have in our life where we just need to declare bankruptcy? And you know what? I've been trying to do that for years and it just doesn't do anything. It doesn't fix anything.
This is a behavior that I always fall back into. And you know what? It never actually makes anything better. I just see myself.
It's a sloppy. It's a lazy practice. You know, these are the things that I just say, this is not going to propel me into this indigent future that Jesus has for me. I'm going to ditch that.
I'm going to get rid of it. The second thing is this. Our best past is not adequate enough for God. So we said that already.
But I want to think about that a little bit. You know, how have we forced Jesus to settle in our life? And a lot of this just goes back to the age. I'll think, well, I want to do things my way.
Let me do things my way. Hey, let me take care of this. I want to do this on my own. Jesus loves us.
Jesus is never going to abandon us. But how have we just locked him into our jankiness because we're forcing him to settle. We're forcing him to deal with our inadequate lives and response and ideas and visions. You know, our king has been taken outside the city gates, has been had his pants pulled down and got whooped in front of everybody.
He's got an embarrassed and ridiculed, has carted off. But we're still trying to claim to that king and say, Oh, we just need him to come back. We just need him to come back. What are the practices in life that actually have embarrassed us?
The ways that we've acted, the ways that we've behaved, and I'm saying, you know what, I'm going to finally realize that those things are just not going to move me forward. And the last thing is this, how can we be riding into Bethlehem with this prophecy in mind? As we prepare for Christmas Eve, and I've got a wild Christmas Eve message. I told Matt on about it, and she's like, Are you seriously going to do that, Chad?
I've got one of those planned. But as we just prepare for that, let's prepare by writing into Bethlehem. We know what's been going on. We've had encounters with the living God.
He has spoken to us. We've talked about thankfulness. We've had this conversation today about getting rid of things that we need to get rid of. But what is we are riding into Bethlehem?
Where do we need to see peace? Where do we need to see the source of peace in our lives? Where are the places where we need to absolutely declare the power and the possibility in the presence of Jesus Christ right there? You know, where the spaces in our life were we are pregnant with anticipation and I want to identify those things, but I also want us to practice the biblical action of yielding those things over and saying, God, these are the spaces I'm excited about.
These are the places I see possibility. I see a future. I see good things for and I want to give them over to you because I want to see your future and not my future. Because I know that my future is not adequate enough to live in your world.
And because of your son, Jesus Christ, coming in our world, I have the ability to live in your world. To become holy, to be faithful, to trust you, all of these things. This is what I'm excited about and now I want to give those things over to you. Remember your best past isn't adequate enough for God's future.
Let's pray, Father. We sit here and we think about these things as we contemplate just this emotional state that Mary was in where we want to prepare ourselves as well. We want to prepare ourselves for what is best. We want to prepare ourselves for an exciting encounter with the living God.
God, we also come to you just needing things to be irreversibly different. God, we want that to happen and we know the best way for us to do that is to flip the practices that we might have been leaning into for years instead and say, This is what I'm excited about or this is what I'm good at. This is what I'm hopeful about and now I give that thing over to you. For you to do your work in a cotton.
Because even as talented as you have made us, the person you've made us to be or you're still bigger than us. Or just as we offer right now. Let me pray. Amen.