Seeing Jesus in Matthew: Chapter 2, Commitment and Expectation

All right. Well, good morning. I'm going to test this, see if it works here, Ryan. It doesn't seem to. That's fun. It was working before. Oh, there it is. It's going just slow. All right. Well, good morning. Oh, now you're seeing all the slides. You're just like, I'm ruining everything. Here we go. Good to see you. And Merry Christmas. I told you. Yes, that's no one knows what I'm talking about.

I told you last week that we were going to continue on. We've been going through the book of Matthew, right? And we're continuing on getting into chapter two, which is the Christmas story. So Merry Christmas to you. Good to see you guys. We are going to be diving into Matthew 2, looking at Jesus's birth story. I mean, since you've all, I'm sure, lived through many Christmases, I will spare you the details, right?

So we're going to read them as we go along here, but I'm just going to assume that you know a little bit about what we celebrate at Christmas, and that's that we celebrate the birth of Jesus, and you know the details around it. But looking at this story, this particular birth narrative of Jesus, not in Christmas, I think is fun.

It's kind of a little bit of an opportunity for us because one thing I found as a pastor who has taught a lot of Christmas sermons, they're not really my favorite thing to teach because there's so much expectation about what the Christmas service needs to be. It's cute baby Jesus, and there's donkeys, which are not in the book at all. And, you know, there's all these things that we kind of expect from Christmas, Christmas.

And so, you know, I feel like those things take over. But we have this opportunity here to read the Christmas text, the traditional Christmas text without the expectation because it's July. You guys weren't you were thinking you had any any nostalgia here.

So that gives us the opportunity to pay attention to some parts of the story that we might not normally think about, because there's a lot in here in the book of Matthew that it's like every detail, all the stuff that goes on, especially early on in the narrative, it's setting the stage for the rest of the book. And that's, I think, what we're going to see today.

So we're going to jump in, right? Because right after the genealogy, which we looked at last week, we move into, in verse 18, Matthew 1, 18. So if you have your Bible open in front of you, you can look at it, or I'll put it up on the slides. We move into this narrative around Jesus's birth. So jumping right in, it says the birth of Jesus Christ came about this way.

After his mother, Mary had been engaged to Joseph, it was discovered before they came together that she was pregnant from the Holy Spirit. So her husband, Joseph, being a righteous man, did not want to disgrace her publicly, but decided to divorce her secretly. So we meet Joseph and Mary, right? These characters, again, you probably know them well.

Joseph was betrothed to Mary. And that means in ancient Hebrew culture, and in many ancient cultures, that they had entered into an agreement to be married at some point in the future. In their culture in particular, was just as serious or nearly as serious as marriage itself. It was a binding contract to enter into marriage with somebody, to be betrothed to somebody. And it came along with all the same expectations of marriage. It came along with the idea of exclusivity and faithfulness.

So Mary gets pregnant by the Holy Spirit, and we'll talk about what that is in a second here, but it's a big deal for a betrothed woman in particular who has not yet married her husband, not yet slept with her husband, to get pregnant because, of course, Joseph can only assume that Mary has, in fact, been unfaithful to him. And so, because he knows they didn't sleep together, but he knows that she's pregnant, And so he's just doing the math in his head, right?

And it's not a wild leap for him to assume that something has happened. And we see what he does. What does he do? Because they were betrothed, Joseph would have been well within his rights to break off the engagement, which he does. But not only that, according to the rabbinical law, it was almost expected that he would publicly expose her and explain to everyone why they were no longer going to be getting married. But he doesn't do that.

Instead, what he does is, and the text tells us he does this because he was a righteous man, what he does is he demonstrates mercy. And I mean, there's no question about how we're to feel about this. This was an act of righteousness. It was an act of mercy to not exercise his rights, the rights that he had according to the law, and instead just say, no, I'm not going to expose this woman. And it's not because Joseph is just like, hey, man, I get it. It's the twos, you know, or whatever.

That joke makes more sense in my head. It's like, Like it's, it's the eighties, man, you know, it's the twos. Like that's what I, that was the reference. It doesn't, it doesn't come across. It's not like he was just so with it and he was like very open-minded about this stuff. Right. He certainly believes, I mean, you could imagine how he feels. He's been wronged. He is only left to conclude that Mary's been unfaithful. And he's probably hurt.

I mean, he's probably hurt. Like to anyone who's ever been cheated on, right, knows the pain and how exposing this is. And so his hopes that he had of a life with this young woman are just dashed. And he probably feels betrayed. But what he doesn't do and what makes for him being a righteous man, he doesn't get angry, though he probably was angry, but he doesn't get even.

He doesn't get even. He doesn't go about this work of just embarrassing her publicly, which really is remarkable, especially because Joseph was taking risks himself, right? He was risking his own reputation. Because while certainly things could go bad for Mary in this culture that so valued chastity would be difficult for her to find someone else who would want to marry her, Joseph's reputation is at risk too.

But he doesn't let his defensiveness about his own reputation or his own self-perception or his own self-righteousness, he doesn't let his hurt lead him to a vengeful reaction. And for that, he's called righteous. I'm reminded of, by the way, I wrote this like last week. It's kind of appropriate for this moment in our nation, right? I'm reminded of James 1.20. Human anger does not accomplish God's righteousness.

And certainly Joseph would not have been familiar with that verse because the book of James is written, you know, a couple decades after Joseph's story right here. He wouldn't know that verse, and yet he demonstrates it. But he would, I mean, have known lots about God's character. And he would have, as a faithful Jewish man at this period of time, he would have known that it was so important for Israelites, in the expression of their faithfulness to God, to know this.

They are not to be, Israel was not to be agents of vengeance for God. The first verse that explains that is Deuteronomy 32, 35, where God says, "'Vengeance belongs to me, and I will repay.'". And that verse is repeated over and over again, both in the Old Testament and it's played upon and explained in the New Testament as we'll look at in a few moments here. But the point of that verse and God saying this, it's not God saying, watch out for me, I'm a vengeful God.

That's not, it's not what it's saying. It's not, watch out for God. He's got a temper. You never know what he's going to do. The point of this verse is that he's not quick to anger, but that if anyone's allowed to get angry and take vengeance. It's him. The place of vengeance belongs to God. And so God was making that clear to his people, Israel, so that they wouldn't think that they had to get up in arms when God was offended or people did bad things and made God angry.

God is saying to his people, look, I'm God. I can handle it. If there's going to be any vengeance, if there's going to be any revenge, why don't you delegate that to me and let that be my place and it not be your place. So this is a really important part in the Old Testament and in the Hebrew culture about faithfulness. Vengeance belongs to him. And part of their faithfulness is to exhibit that confidence in him to avenge and to defend them and to let him worry about their defense.

And the fact is that when you're hurt, when you're offended, when you feel ignored, ignored, when you feel taken advantage of, when you feel passed over, when you feel slandered, when you feel manipulated, when you feel underappreciated. It is normal for all of us to want to make someone feel the way that we feel. It's a common problem then. It remains a common problem today.

It is normal in the course of life for us to want to defend ourselves when we feel like people are, you know, just taking advantage of us. And that's why God says this then. And it's why Paul says in Romans 12, 19, never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine and I will repay, says the Lord.

Especially in the New Testament, the Old, the New Testament writers take up this Old Testament language of vengeance is mind, says the Lord, and they say it's super important as we live out our faith in God to just say, it's not us who are going to be this sort of vengeful, spiteful, tit-for-tat kind of people. We need to get serious about the fact that it's God who orders the world and it's God who is the just one and he can oversee justice.

The Old Testament is clear about this. The New Testament is clear about this. But it's one of these areas of faith, right? Which faith, we talk about having faith and practicing our faith and living our faith. And it usually is pretty abstract, but this is one area where it gets very real and it bites, doesn't it? Doesn't it bite in both senses of the word, the 80s sense, as well as the more and more common sense?

It really takes a bite out of us. It gets really real when we start to think about what would it mean for me to live as if God was the one who was going to defend me and I didn't have to worry about it at all? I mean, that's a way that something so abstract as faith gets very practical in the way that I go about my life and the way that I show up in wherever I'm at.

It's going to very quickly challenge me and how I just live and believe and act as if God is true. There's a pastor who I like named Evan Wickham. He's down in San Diego, and I've heard him on a podcast, and I've shown you this slide before, but he has this one that's, oh, thanks, Joel. You knew I was going to forget about it. Totally forgot about all. I haven't pressed this button. Oh, no, I'm like way behind already, Joel. I've already, I missed four slides.

Everybody knew that was going to happen. So this pastor, Evan Wicken, down in San Diego, he says this. This is kind of his, when he starts to feel defensive, which he, which, I mean, you feel all the time in life. Like, right, this is his every morning kind of reminder himself. He says, I've nothing to lose. I've got nothing to prove. My life is Christ. Nothing else matters. Because it's one thing to say, oh, my life is Christ. I believe in Jesus. I trust him.

And it's a whole nother thing, a whole nother level, I think, of expression and confidence in that to say, I've got nothing to lose. I've got nothing to prove. I can live my life in such a way that I'm not going to go about managing my image, which all of us are constantly feeling the very heavy burden to want to do that, to defend our own selves.

Ourselves, like when we're taken advantage of, when we're not considered, when we're overlooked, we all of us very much want to say, no, what about me? What about mine? What about the things that I'm owed, right? But to have a confidence that God is the one who oversees us, that he's the one who takes our revenge, it means this.

It means that we can go through life and just say, hey, I've got nothing to lose because everything I have is in Christ, and he can give me whatever he wants, and he can take from me whatever he wants. And so I can stand in kind of a confidence, whatever's going to happen. People are mean, people are rude, people take advantage of me. I can just say, hey, I really believe that God has seen today and he's seen

my pain and he knows everything that's going on. And so I can just say, it doesn't matter. When I feel like I have to prove myself, when I am bit by that very normal human desire to be impressive, I can just say, ha, God probably thinks that's hilarious because he knows exactly how unimpressive I am. him. And so I can totally go and just, just be who I am and just show up the way I want and try to just be faithful to him, faithful to him.

Just, just, just consider like, I'm just going to, when I, when I, when I'm at work, I'm just going to work unto him and I'm going to let that be enough. I don't need to prove myself to all my coworkers. I don't need to prove myself to my boss. I just need to be faithful and to just work hard and to do my best. And that's like, it bites, it's serious. It's real. It's a real expression of my faith, but it is so difficult. And imagine if Joseph had reacted in a, I've got, I've got a lot to lose.

I've got a lot to prove kind of way. All right. He would have exposed Mary. He would have said, this isn't me. I didn't do any of this. I wasn't partaking in any of this stuff. It's all her fault. Go get the stones. Like this This is not me, and my hands are clean in the midst of all of this. Imagine if he had reacted that way, but he didn't because he was righteous.

And funny enough, and I don't want to act as if this is like an equation, but what we see at least in Joseph's story is when he does that, when he decides in his heart, no, I'm just going to let the Lord decide. I'm just going to let him, just going to trust in him. When he decides that, then God shows up. once he's already said, no, I'm going to express that confidence to God. I'm going to live out my faith and I'm just going to be non-defensive.

Then God shows up and explains to him what's really going on in the middle of all of this. It says this going on in the text, after he had considered these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife because what has been conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you are to name him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.

Now all of this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet. See, the virgin will become pregnant and will give birth to a son and they will name him Emmanuel, which is translated God with us. When Joseph woke up, He did as the Lord's angel had commanded him, and he married her, but did not have sexual relations with her until she gave birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.

So Joseph has resolved as an expression of his righteousness, as an expression of his trust in God, that he's just going to let God handle his hurt. He's going to let God work out things the way God wants to. And not long after that, he gets this new perspective. An angel comes down and explains to him, oh, Joseph, you've misunderstood the situation. And of course you did, because this is a pretty unique one. In fact, Mary hasn't done anything wrong. She hasn't slept with anyone.

She's a virgin. She didn't cheat on you. And this child was conceived by the Holy Spirit. And I'm sure Joseph is like, I mean, okay, you're an angel of the Lord. I mean, I guess. I just would love to get into his head and imagine what that was like. And like, why is this? Well, the why at least that the text gives us is that this came about this way. This, this, the, the, Jesus was born to a virgin, as the text says, to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophets.

And as we go along here in Matthew, we find 10 occurrences of this phrase. It is an important theme in Matthew that things be done according to the way the prophets said they would be done, because it's like this theme that we talked about last week that recurs.

Occurs one thing that we know about jesus is that he is the keeper of ancient promises and so the writer of the book of matthew here in this instance is is saying look this happened this way to fulfill these promises because jesus is this person who is fulfilling all these old testament promises and so he quotes uh from isaiah 7 14 which is see a virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a. That's the quotation. And then Matthew explains, which is translated God with us.

So there's this miraculous sign that's meant to point the people who were waiting on, expecting God to fulfill his promises, this miraculous sign of a virgin birth from Isaiah 7.14, something that the prophet foretold was going to happen. And what Matthew says is that this is about Jesus. This thing that Isaiah saw hundreds and hundreds of years ago, it's about Jesus. It's being fulfilled now. because God is making good on all his promises in the Old Testament in Jesus Christ now.

And he explains to us that the name given to this child born of a virgin is going to be Emmanuel, which is translated God with us. And I mean, see here in this little part of this text, Israel's hope was that God was going to be showing up. That's what the whole Old Testament is. It is God interacting with people and making these promises that he's coming back. He's going to be with them. He's going to defend them. He's going to show up in the real world.

Eventually, he's going to make good on all these promises, promises given to Abraham, promises given to David, promises given to Moses. They're all going to come true. They're going to work their way out in reality. This is what God had been telling the people over and over and over again. And so here Here in Matthew, we get Jesus's names, right?

There's this Emmanuel, which means God with us, because he's reminding the people that this is the God who is going to be present, who's not going to be distant. He's going to be there with you. And he's told to name him Jesus, which is the Hebrew. Jesus is the Aramaic version of the Hebrew name for Joseph. Man, I have it written down. Hang on. I should know this. I'm like, this is like stuff should be in my head. Yeshua, thank you, Joshua. It wasn't Joseph, it's Joshua. Thank you. My wife.

That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeshua, God will save. Right? So Yeshua translated into Aramaic is Jesus, right? And so this name Jesus means this Hebrew word Yeshua. Coming together, God will save us. And so again, like these names, it's just reminding the people of all the things that God has said. God was going to save you. God was going to be with you. God was going to defend you. And here you have this child born of a virgin who is just screaming out in the

way that babies do. Look at me. I'm the one. I'm the one who's promised.

And Matthew isn't going to let us forget that Jesus is the one fulfilling all these promises to Israel. So we go on here in the text. After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod, wise men from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw his star, and it's rising, and we have come to worship him. When King Herod heard this, he was deeply disturbed, and all of Jerusalem with him.

So he assembled all the chief priests and the scribes of the people and asked them, Where the Messiah would be born? Well, in Bethlehem of Judea, they told him, because this is what was written by the prophet. There it is again. And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among all the rulers of Judah, because out of you will come the ruler who will shepherd my people, Israel. And then Herod secretly summoned the wise men and asked them the exact time the star appeared.

And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, go and search carefully for the child. And when you find him, report back to me so that I too can go and worship him. And after hearing the king, they went on their way. And there it was, the star that they had seen at its rising. It led them until it came and stopped over the place where the child was. And when they saw the star, they were overwhelmed with joy. And entering the house, they saw the child with Mary and his mother.

And falling to their knees, they worshiped him. And then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their own country by another route.

So this familiar story is playing out, you know, babies and wise men in mangers. And as the story moves on, we see kind of a snapshot. People begin to hear about Jesus. And this is after his birth, right? The wise men leave when Jesus is born. And so they show up months later. Who knows exactly how long? But they've traveled to Israel from the east, probably around the ancient remnants of Babylon. On and they show up there and they come and they ask about Jesus.

And the wise men are some characters here. We've met Joseph, but there's also two other groups of people that we read about here and their reaction, right? So it's the wise men or the Magi, there's Joseph, but there's also other folks who are interested in the story. There's Herod, right? He's involved here. And then And there's like all of Jerusalem represented particularly by the priests and the scribes who come forward.

And so it's interesting here because as we read the story, two groups are clearly presented in a pretty positive light and two groups or people in a less positive one. And surprisingly, one of the groups that's presented in a positive light is these wise men. And it seems right to us because, you know, they have their little hats and they have their little gifts and that seems cute, right?

But in an ancient Israelite context, wise men or magi wouldn't be a part of the normal story of life in Israel. In fact, quite the opposite. One commentator, Charles Quarles, says this about the magi. He says the term magi normally refers to those who mix Zoroastrianism. Astrology, and black magic. All right, they're into death metal. And Daniel 2, some references from Daniel, the magi are associated with diviner priests, mediums, and sorcerers.

The Greek term appears only one time in the New Testament in Acts 13 and describes Elymas the sorcerer, who is called a son of the devil and an enemy of all righteousness.

Righteousness the magi are thus the epitome of spiritual darkness of the pagan world right and so we we think oh the magi they're cute they're nice they're they're here but when they would have shown up at the in jerusalem everyone would be like what are those death metal witches doing here they've come to curse us they're icky they're evil not only are they gentiles gentiles but but they're the worst sort. They're sorcerers. They're doing all kinds of bad things.

And yet the Magi, as they come into Jerusalem, they're asking about Jesus. They're saying, where is this one who has been born King of the Jews? These pagan unbelievers who have no allegiance to God whatsoever. They maybe know about God, but then they just say, we're gonna go worship all this other spiritual power. They've traveled thousands of miles and they wanna see Jesus this and they go to Herod's palace. And Herod is probably super weirded out and has no idea what they're talking about.

This one born king of the Jews, he's like, I'm king of the Jews. I think you must be talking about me. And they're like, no, we're not talking about you, man. We don't know who you are. And his reaction is pretty serious. He is deeply disturbed because, again, he's the king, and someone is coming asking where the king is and saying, it's not you, someone else has been born. And then all of Jerusalem is disturbed with him. And that is also surprising.

Because if we're paying attention, we see something really interesting going on. This is what I was talking about in the book of Matthew. Because we see throughout the second chapter of Matthew, several reactions to Jesus. When people hear about Jesus, God's fulfillment of these ancient promises, the one who is called Jesus, who called God saved or a God with us, certain people have this kind of knee-jerk reaction. Some are excited about Jesus and some are pretty nervous.

And what we notice here is that Matthew is really messing with our expectations about who is good and who's right and who we would expect because our expectations are if you were if you were alive at that time, if you were a Jewish person who understood Jewish culture, you would expect. Yeah, okay, you can read it up there. I can't really read it there. You would expect that the people who would be excited about God showing up in

Israel would be, okay, Joseph, because he's a righteous man. Yeah, we expect that.

And you'd also expect the people in Jerusalem, by which we mean like this group of religious leaders, right, the political elites of Israel, the religious elites, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and all these religious leaders, you'd think they would all be super, super excited because they literally have devoted their lives to this idea that God's gonna show up on his promises So when he comes up and he does it, you think they'd be like, yes, finally, we've been waiting for this, right?

And you would expect that certain people would be not excited. You'd expect the Magi to be not excited because they're going to get judged because God doesn't like sorcerers. And he's pretty clear about that in the Old Testament. He does some stuff to them, right? So you think that they'd be like quaking in their boots. And yet here they are, they're showing up. They say, we want to worship him, right? And nobody wants them there. And it's weird.

And we all expect that Herod would not like this because we know about Herod, a little bit of background of Herod is like, he was basically a self-appointed king. He's half Jewish. He called himself king of the Jews. He's a political operative. He is just a puppet of Rome. And so if you were alive and you were a Jewish person in that time, you'd be like, Herod's going to have it coming to him. You'd be like, when the Messiah shows up, Herod's the first to go. So you'd expect that much.

But what we see here, again, is that Matthew is messing with our expectations. And what we see is that.

Actually things are presented differently. Those who are presented positively are the Magi and Joseph, and those who are presented negatively are Herod. And the people who are there, they're distressed. The Jerusalem, the religious leaders. They are deeply disturbed by this happening of this thing that they were hoping for for so long.

And I think it can only be, if it makes sense and it plays out in the rest of the book of Matthew, is that they were just so embedded in the status quo and in managing things that when suddenly God just shows up, they're like, we're not ready for this. Like this is going to lead to turmoil. while, if the Messiah shows up and kicks Herod out, then the Romans are going to come back and they're going to kill everybody. And so they need to manage this situation. They're disturbed.

They're distressed because this is going to lead to a political disaster. And funny enough, these magi are presented as heroes. They're overwhelmed with joy when they hear about God. Not only do they travel hundreds of miles, they bring him gifts and they worship him. And so what's going on here? Why upon seeing the Magi, upon seeing Jesus, are the Magi so excited? And why are the heroes of Jerusalem, why are they so disappointed?

Why do they miss Jesus? And I think it's really just because of this, because there's two things going on here, right? We normally think of those who see God, who engage with God as being those who are really committed, right? And And we could assess, we know that Joseph was super committed. Like he clearly expresses his faith. He knows about God. He has a lot of knowledge about God. And then he lives it out.

And those people in Jerusalem, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the scribes, all these people, like they know so much about God, right? And so because they know so much about God, we would expect them to be excited when God shows up, but they're not because something else is going on here. Not only is kind of faith, Christian faith indexed by commitment, It's also, I think, indexed by expectation.

And so what we see here is, it's a little helpful chart, I think, is that some people were expectant and some people were unexpected. Like Herod was uncommitted to God. He really didn't care about God. He just wanted to manipulate the political situation. And he also didn't expect God to ever show up. And so when there's all of a sudden these magi coming in and talking about this king born, he's pretty upset, understandably. Joseph is committed to God and he expects something of God.

And yet these two other categories of things, right? They're missing something. They're missing something, right? Those who are in Jerusalem, they're committed. They know all the right things. They believe all the right things. And yet they expect nothing of God. They expect nothing of God. They don't expect him to actually show up because

when he does, they're totally caught off guard. They're distressed even by the fact that God has come down and is born and is finally making good on his promises. And they continue to be that way throughout the book of Matthew. They continue to resist Jesus as Jesus grows old and has his ministry. These people cannot get over Jesus. They find him very disturbing. And yet we also have these magi who are by no means presented to us as an example of great faith, right?

In fact, they are just fully active pagans. And yet, because they are willing and expect something from God, they're included in the story and presented in not a totally negative light. Certainly, maybe not as the heroes, but certainly as people who are not cast off. They're not negatively represented.

And I think this is just an interesting way to think about it because we see right over here, like, just kind of the great great divide that we're going to see play out throughout the rest of the book of Matthew. There are people who have varying degrees of commitment and varying degrees of expectation, and they land sort of in these categories.

I just want to talk about each of them, well, at least these two other categories for a second, because I think there's some things that we can learn as we step out into here. And that's, first off, just thinking about those who were like like the religious leaders in Jerusalem. Here's what I want us to know. And I think as mostly people here who are Christians, we need to understand this. It is really easy to be committed to God and expect nothing of him in your day-to-day life.

It's really easy to say, I trust in God and yet be a vengeful person because you got to defend your own self, right? It's really easy to go through your life and say, oh yes, I love the Lord. I love, I go to church, I'm involved in my church, and yet in your day-to-day, in the day-in, day-out, Monday through Saturday type of your life, to really have no expression or no expectation that he's going to actually make any difference in your life.

And I think that what becomes clear throughout the book of Matthew and throughout Jesus' ministry is that he exposes the heart and he makes it clear that it's not enough to just say all the right things and know all the right things, that God actually expects you to exercise faith, which looks like expecting things from him. Because these religious leaders, not only in this instance, are they caught flat footed and they're not represented as the heroes.

In fact, they're just distressed. throughout this story, they have a big problem. They do not really want God to show up. And it is so easy. It is so easy for Christians, especially if you've been a Christian for a long period of time, to get into this place where you just feel like, I'm managing my life really well. I've ordered things in a right way. God isn't judging my life and I'm not doing a bunch of of bad things.

And so, so you just kind of put your life on autopilot and you don't ever expect him to show up. And if he ever does, if you start to feel conviction from the spirit, you say, Ooh, this is distressing. And it's just like the makings of like cutting God out of your life.

But I think that when thing becomes clear throughout the book of Matthew, and I think it becomes, it's clear in the old, in the new Testament is that Christian maturity is not indexed by what we know, but it's measured by faith, which is a combination of knowledge. Plus actually expecting things. We have to expect things from God. Because the thing about expecting things from God, it's not the way we normally think of it, okay?

Because I think what we normally say is, well, if you don't expect things from God, well, then you probably just won't see him move, right? So you won't have this great experience of faith. And that actually is a logical way for us to get kind of a little bit more excited about kind of arranging our life according to some other plan. But here's the thing, what I think is true, and I hope it disturbs you a little bit. It's that we don't live in this neutral space when it comes to expectation.

It's not as if I can expect nothing in life. My expectation, my hope, My love is going to be directed somewhere. It's going to be directed to God. I'm going to be looking for him and hoping for him and living my life according to faith and wanting to see him move my life. Or... I'm going to be hoping in myself and in my own performance and in my own abilities. And so I am the secure of my destiny, or I'm going to hope in politics or money.

The thing is, what we do with our expectation dictates what we worship. Tim Keller has said, and many people have pointed this out, that the heart is an idol factory. It's just always pumping out idols. and that's because no matter what, every moment of every day, you are putting your hope in and worshiping something and expecting something. And you can put your hope in God. You can worship God. You can expect him to be the one who looks out for your life.

Or, and if you don't do that, you will be putting your hope elsewhere. You will be functionally worshiping something that is not appropriate to worship. You will be putting your hope in something that's robbing you from a real, genuine, dynamic relationship with God. And what we see is very clear as Jesus goes along and he confronts the religious leaders of his day, is he's telling them, you guys think you know so much and you're so careful to obey all the rules, but you are worshiping idols.

You're worshiping your own rules. You've made your rule following into an idol. And you think by those things, by your hope in your rules and in your performance, you'll be saved. And Jesus says, no, it's not true. God is calling you to put your hope in him, to trust in him, to seek him out every day, to let him be the one who brings your nation and your family and yourself forward throughout your life.

You're making things into an idol. And so very seriously, I think we have to ask ourselves, if Jesus were to show up in our lives, are we going to be prepared for him? Are we going to see him for who he is? And it's not like a, oh, you better watch out. He's going to get mad sort of situation. But we are just leaving behind the good step of faith if we're not expecting him to show up in our lives and move.

And we can get into this place where our faith becomes very formalistic. Where we think the right things and we do the right things. And yet, if we don't have any expectation of God to move, then we're never going to move beyond head knowledge into actual fulfilling kind of a spiritual life. And we're going to miss Jesus in the midst of it. You know, the reason we're going into this text is because we want to see Jesus.

We want to see what he was like. We want to see what the invitations are for us. And we have great invitations and we have to expect something from him if we're going to know him. But being committed to God without trust or expectation, it's just a sure road likely to self-worship or to just like codependence, anxiety, trying to trust things, other things that will just lead you to a disappointment.

That's what we see here going on. And then there's this last category of the Magi, and I think they're really interesting too. Again, by no means are the magi presented like, oh, these guys are set, right? But they are presented in a positive light, probably even more so than the rest of Jerusalem, the scribes and Pharisees, because at least they're willing to expect something from God. At least they're willing to come and just recognize things and just say,

hey, maybe God is doing something here in Jerusalem. Let me go check it out. Let me go see who this God is. Sure, I'm into all this other stuff around here too, but at least I'm going to be open enough to the possibility that God could be real and that maybe he is in this person, Jesus, this coming king. And so they step out of their comfort zone, right? And they're led along. They're certainly not saved, you know, they're certainly not people who know about God or have trusted in Jesus, right?

But their openness and their willingness and their expectation for God to move something puts them actually in a more favorable light, at least as it's presented here in the book of Matthew, than the people who know all about God and yet expect nothing from him. Two just takeaways. Number one, if you're that sort of a person and you've never, you've never.

Made a commitment to Jesus. But you're willing to say, to be a little expectant, and you just say, okay, well, God, you say you're God, you say you're in charge, you saved on all these things. If that's really true, I'm going to be willing to listen. I'm going to be willing to see. I'm going to be willing to maybe test that theory out enough so that I could be a little bit uncomfortable so that I could step into your story and just see, hey, is this really true, these things that you claim?

If that's you, that's a wide open invitation. This path that the magi take, it continues to be an open thing. And then secondarily, if you have friends and you're like, these people are so far, so far off the mark. They're just continually living in sin, living this kind of life where it's just like, man, they've got problems, right? I think we need to understand this.

Expectation is the first step into faith for people like that. I think we oftentimes want to say, oh, well, when people clean up their lives a little bit or they get to the end of their rope, then we'll go ahead and have some ministry. We'll be able to do something with them.

But what I see in culture more broadly right now is that on one level, look at the statistics and think, oh, this is like a really unchristian time and the church is on its back foot, you know, and people are less involved in faith stuff than ever before. And it's sort of true, depending on how you look at the statistics. And certainly, I mean, where we live, it's a highly secular place.

But interestingly, like, as the world has become less formally religious, especially around here, less involved in church practices. There's a lot of openness. A lot of openness to really weird things. But at the same time, there's a lot of openness to true things. There's a lot of hope and expectation. People are looking to find out what's real. And so the question is, do you have something real to share with them?

And I believe all of us could say, yes, I believe that I have something real to share with them. And yet maybe you're like I feel sometimes, caught up in your life and you say, but the truth is that I'm really caught up in my own self-control and I spend so much of my time, like my faith is in my head, but it's not lived out. And so I feel really divided within myself and I feel like sometimes this isn't very real. And so how can I go to somebody who's looking for the real thing and give them

the real thing if I feel like I'm living in a divided way? and that's a really good question. But the thing is, you're the solution.

The Lord is the solution, and starting to live out your faith is the way that you do that. And I'm going to leave you, worship team is going to come up here now, but I just want to leave you with this one thing. We've talked a lot over the years about prayer, and we're going to talk about at it again. I think the greatest contributor to the fact that we don't oftentimes feel like we're expecting much from God is because we are not praying.

We haven't learned the discipline of like a daily structured prayer, but also this just day-to-day talking to God, expecting things from Him in our daily lives. And if we were to start to take some steps to heal that deficiency proficiency in our lives, I think we would find that we would have something to say to people who are on this journey far from God, but expecting. And we could start to have a ministry on day one with people.

If we were to say like, you know what? I realize that the way towards expecting something from God is to pray and talk to him and to have a relationship with him. And so then we could go to people who are far from God and say, hey, look, I have become really convinced that God exists and he wants to talk to me. And so we can talk to him together and we can start to pray because you have all these people around you.

They're so open to whatever, and they probably aren't going to be wanting to listen to you insist upon something, but they would want to know something real. And so you can just, when you have a conversation with them and they start to express a longing or a desire for something real, you can say, hey, look, I believe that God is real, and I believe that he hears us when he prays, and I want to pray with you right now. And you get really practical with people.

And I know that feels so awkward. And I know we feel oftentimes like, oh, I don't have the faith enough to do that. He says, but here's the thing is like, we can pursue both of these things. We can pursue the coming together of our lives and having a greater confidence in God and a greater expectation of him while at the same time, helping other people come to a confidence of God. We can do that together.

Like you don't need to fix your life before you go out and you pray with people and you share Jesus with people. You can start to share Jesus with people right now. You can start to pray with people. So this is just my challenge to you guys this week. You know, you guys, I'm sure you are not lacking for people in your life who don't know Jesus, who are uncommitted, and yet who clearly are longing for something and might be open to it. You know somebody like that. You know many people like that.

And so my challenge is, if you want to go ahead and start to reach out to people, is just start with prayer. Just pray with people for them. Come to God together with someone holding their hands as if he's real and as if he's going to show up. And then the nerve-wracking thing about that is you say, well, I'm going to pray with them. I'm going to say God's real. And then what if he doesn't show up? That's his problem. It's not your problem. That's his problem.

See, this is the thing, right? You see how that thought comes into my mind? I just say, but I have to make it happen. And what the Bible says over and over again, it says, no, you don't. Emmanuel, God is with us. Jesus Christ is God in the flesh. And so you might feel like, oh, I've got to pray the right prayers and act the right way and be super knowledgeable and present things the right way or else nothing's going to happen. And what.