Peace

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 Well good morning! Great to be here with you. Like Caleb said, my name is Chase. Uh, I serve as the, uh, lead, lead and planting pastor of the Corners Chapel in Macedonia, Ohio, which is near, uh, Cleveland. And so we are glad to escape the weather from up there and spend the, spend the weekend down here. Um, I’m here with my wife and we’re not here with our two children.

There should be a, a picture of our family. Uh, and so we planted the church, uh, up in Cleveland. About four years ago, uh, right in the heart of COVID. And so perfect timing to plant a church, right? Uh, no, but it’s been great to see, uh, God’s faithfulness through the years. And, uh, one of the ways that God has been faithful is by, uh, allowing me to meet and get close with several different other church planters all over the country.

And one of those is, uh, Pastor Trey. And so, uh, you guys know this already, but you are blessed, uh, to have him as your pastor. He’s a blessing to, to many, uh, pastors, not just in the, um, this area, but all over the country. And so it’s been great to get to know him better and, uh, and yeah, so I’m, I’m just humbled to be here to, to fill the pulpit for him this morning.

If you have a Bible, go ahead and turn to the book of Mark. That’s where we’re going to be. I’m going to pray in just a second, but one other thing I just want to, uh, share with you all. So, uh, I want to just, uh, thank you all on, on Pastor Trey’s behalf for being a part of a church plant. I meant to do this in the, the earlier service and, and I didn’t, but, uh, those of you who have been coming here for a while know that it can be difficult to, uh, set up and tear down and, uh, you know, when you rent out of a school, there’s certain times you can’t be here and all that sort of stuff.

And so, uh, it’s amazing that you guys are doing what you guys are doing, uh, as being church planters as the congregation. And so our church, we meet in a school just like this. And so. Um, I just want to thank you guys for the kingdom work that you all are doing. Uh, we’re going to start in the book of Mark, but before we read, I’m going to pray, uh, and then, and then we’ll, uh, dive into what we’re talking about.

Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for, uh, these stories that we’re about to talk about that were written, uh, over 2, 000 years ago, but speak directly to us today. And so, Lord, I pray in this moment that you will speak through me, that I would become less, that you would become greater. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

It’s in Jesus name I pray. Amen. Well, on April 14th, 1912, at 1140 p. m. in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg. Uh, the lookout tried to warn them to steer away from the iceberg, but it was too late, and they scraped across the side, and soon five of the ship’s watertight compartments, uh, became filled with water.

And it soon became clear that the ship that was once labeled as unsinkable was indeed sinking. One of the most famous stories from the Titanic, is about the band. Maybe you’ve heard this story, that as the, uh, ship began to sink, the band continued to play. They were trying to keep the passengers calm, and so they continued to play on the deck, even when it became apparent that the ship was sinking.

And according to some of the survivors, the last song that they played on the ship, uh, as it was going down, was Nearer, My God, to Thee. In James Cameron’s, uh, adaptation of that tragic night, I think that’s one of the most powerful scenes. Right, as people are running around, and the captain’s area is filling with water, and people are running all around, and the parents are comforting their kids, there’s elderly couples laying in bed, and in the midst of it all, the band is continuing to play.

The words to the song, Nearer My God to Thee, go like this, Nearer My God to Thee, Nearer My God to Thee, even though it be a cross that raiseth me, in other words, even though it feels like I’m about to die, still my song shall be. Near my God to thee, near my God to thee. So again, picture the scene. As the ship’s going down, the band is surrounded by current and impending death, and yet they’re singing a hymn about drawing near to God.

I don’t know about you all, but for me, when I watch the news, when I read the newspaper, when the headlines come scrolling across my phone, And I look out at the brokenness of the world and see all the chaos that surrounds us both in our country and all over the world. I don’t have to give you examples, all you need to do is look at the latest headlines and you’ll see just tragedy after tragedy and it can feel like we’re on a sinking ship.

And to make it worse, all of these difficulties and, and tragedies probably will end up as just mere footnotes in the year that is 2024. It can feel like difficulty surrounds all of us, yet as the waves of frustration and fear and confusion are crashing all around us, we as believers gather regularly.

You here in the Phoenix area and us up near Cleveland, we gather week after week on Sundays alongside millions of believers from all over the world. And each week, someone stands up on a stage like this and says, Let’s talk about Jesus. In a way, it can be easy for us to feel like we’re just a band on a sinking ship.

But here’s the deal, here’s what I want you to know. What the Bible teaches us, and what the Bible tells us over and over again, is that the more that we keep our eyes on Jesus, the more the problems of this world fade away. The more that we draw nearer to him and seek after his face, it’s not just Not just seeking his hand and what he can give us, but seeking his face.

The more we seek to know him better and grow closer to him, then the more that we find ourselves praising him and even finding peace, even in the midst of life’s unknown circumstances. Uh, we as a church in Ohio and in here and all over are in the middle of Advent season. If you didn’t recognize the, the, by the sign behind me, Advent, uh, are the four weeks leading up to Christmas.

And so each week we talk about hope and, and peace and, and joy and love. And, uh, we talk about that’s what the Christmas season is all about. Because focusing on, on Jesus and focusing on what He did and how He came and became one of us, that’s the only way we can have hope and peace and joy and know what true love is.

But can I be real with you guys for a second? I know we just met, so I don’t know you that well, but let me share something about myself. Uh, you know, and maybe I’m not supposed to say this as a pastor, but I really can struggle around Christmas season. Uh, and that’s because Uh, while, while we’re supposed to be focusing on the most important thing to ever happen is as God became human, we find our affections torn between that truth and the superficial, uh, aspects of the holiday as we go into stores and hear Christmas music and, and, you know, every commercial on TV and, and I’m not saying I don’t like that stuff, I love that part of Christmas.

I told the first service, I said, don’t tell Trey you brought the Grinch to preach there. To preach. Right? Like, like, like I, I, I love that part of Christmas as well, but I, I feel so conflicted during this season because we’re supposed to be primarily focusing on the truths about Jesus. And the reason I bring that up is just to let you know, there’s no lasting piece that comes with all of the other holiday aspects of the Christmas season.

So, so the question that I, I, I want to, to answer today, if there’s no peace found in all of that other stuff, then where do we find true peace? How do we know that our songs that we sing on Sundays and the words that you hear preached are not just the dying tunes of a ship that’s sinking? How do we find peace in every season of our life?

That’s what I want to answer today. And so here’s what I want you to know, and this is the main overarching point for today. When we marvel at the incomprehensible reality of the Incarnation, we’ll never understand that that word Incarnation means God becoming flesh. When we, when we marvel at the incomprehensible reality of the incarnation, we can find true peace and rest in every area of our life.

Let me read that one more time. When we marvel at the incomprehensible reality of the incarnation, we can find true peace and we can rest in every area of our life. That’s what I want to break down this morning. And so, uh, to do that, I have three points, so let me just give you my three points ahead of time.

Here they are. We can have peace. because of the power of Jesus. We can have peace because of the presence of Jesus, and we can have peace because of the purpose of Jesus. We can have peace because of the power of Jesus, the presence of Jesus, and the purpose of Jesus. I know Pastor Trey likes to make things rhyme.

I couldn’t make those rhyme, but hopefully the alliteration is helpful there. But what I want to do to kind of illustrate these points is to look at two stories from the life of Jesus. Uh, two fairly well known stories, if you grew up in church, and both are found in the book of Mark. So if your Bible is open, uh, to the book of Mark, Mark chapter 4, I want to read, uh, and this is the story of Jesus calming the storm, okay?

And what I want to show in both of these stories is that there are principles that we can apply to our lives, but we have to be careful about immediately or over allegorizing these stories, because they’re meant first and foremost to teach us about Jesus. Okay, so let me read the first story and then we’ll break it down.

So Mark chapter 4, starting in verse 35. It says, On that day, when evening had come, Uh, just for context, Jesus had just been teaching them a whole bunch of parables. So after he taught them the parables, He said to them, Let us go across to the other side. And leaving the crowd, They took him with them, They took him with them in the boat, Just as he was.

And a great windstorm arose, And the waves were breaking into the boat, So that the boat was already filling and he was in the stern asleep on the cushion and they woke him and said to them, teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, peace, be still.

And the wind cease. And there was a great calm verse 40 and he said to them, why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith? And they were filled with a great fear and said to one another, who then is this? That even the wind and the sea obey him. Okay, before we break this down, just, just again, let that sink in.

Like, like, again, many of us have probably heard that story many times if we grew up in church. We heard that Jesus made the waves stop, but, but, but think about it. Okay, picture yourself out there on the lake. Like, these are, many of these are men who are professional fishermen. They’ve dedicated their lives to being out on the sea.

And so this isn’t just a little kind of storm that might make us nervous. No, this, this is a storm that’s terrifying those who are professional sailors. Right? My wife and I have had the privilege of going to, uh, Israel, and we, and we got to go to the Sea of Galilee, and, and if you go to the Sea of Galilee, you see that it’s all in a valley.

It’s surrounded by mountains, and so even to this day, there’s a lot of sudden storms that just pop up because the wind is just rushing down the mountains into the sea. Uh, and so, uh, even to this day, there’s a lot of sudden thunderstorms and, and tumultuous storms that pop up, especially in the middle of the night.

But the point of this is not to focus just on the storm. But, but I do want you to know that it was terrifying and that it’s real. There are a lot of lessons that we can take from this about Jesus being with us in the storms. And again, we’re going to get there in just a second, but as of, uh, as is true of all of Scripture, we don’t want to jump straight to the allegorization of the text.

Because if we do that, then we can miss the main point. And so let me just say it, let me just say it plainly. If we read this and we simply walk away from this story, With the fact that Jesus can, uh, is with us in the storms of our life and he can make those storms go away. You know, that, that can be comforting and it’s, it’s true, but we have to get to the why behind those truths.

See, so often when we go through storms of life, what we need is a foundation that’s not just simply rooted in church sayings, right, that Jesus is with us in the storms. We need to understand the why, like what is true about Jesus that causes us to take comfort In those storms. And when we approach the text like that, then we see that this story, the point is actually to point us to the identity of Jesus.

And that’s why in the last verse, they’re like, who is this guy? We’ve seen him do miracles, we’ve seen him talk in riddles and go up against the religious leaders, but who is this? The wind actually listens to him. And so, uh, again, in this story, Jesus is on the sea, it’s a storm, Uh, he’s on the sea of, of Galilee, but the storm is not the main point.

What we’re supposed to focus on is the fact that he’s in control of this real literal storm. And so, uh, I, I was helped in my preparation for this by theologian, uh, Mike Winger. And as he took a deep dive into this particular story, he emphasizes that what we need to understand as we approach the story is the ancient Jewish way of thinking of storms and who’s in control of the weather and, and, uh, the, the whole Old Testament.

Uh, but especially in the Psalms, is reminding us over and over again that there’s an emphasis that God and God alone is in control of the weather. And not just any God, but Yahweh God, the God of the Old Testament, the covenant God of Israel, He alone can control the weather. Let me just give you two Psalms, uh, that show this, and they should be on the screen.

Psalm 65, verse 5 through 8, says, By the awesome deeds You answer us with righteousness, O God of our salvation. The hope of all the ends of the earth and the furthest seas. The one who by his strength established the mountains, being girded with might. Who stills the roaring of the seas? The roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples.

So that those who dwell in the ends of the earth are in awe of your signs. You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy. So, so the psalmist here is just saying, hey look, God is in control of everything. There’s, there’s nothing that happens in nature that’s outside of God’s control.

Psalm 89, verses 8 through 9. O Lord God of hosts, who is as mighty as you are? O Lord, it’s a rhetorical question, right? With your faithfulness all around you, you rule the raging of the sea. When its waves rise, you still them. Okay, now that’s just two of the Psalms where it’s explicitly saying God alone is in control of the weather.

And we could look at several other examples in the Old Testament. Job emphasizes this. The, the, um, as they look back on how it was God who parted the Red Seas, not, not Moses. Sometimes that drives me crazy. People say Moses parted the Red Sea. No, that would have driven the Israelites crazy. It was God through Moses.

God alone is in control Of the, the, the weather and the, and the seas. But check this out, Psalm 107, I love the book of Psalms because there’s a, a psalm for every area of life that we’re going through, right? Every season of life, whether we’re going through a joyful season or a season of loss or a so a season of anxiety or whatever, we can find a psalm that’s comforting us.

But the best part of the book of Psalms is that just like the rest of the Old Testament, the book of Psalms points straight to Jesus. And so let me read Psalm 107. Verse 23 through 31, and I, and I want you to listen to this Psalm with the story from Mark, chapter four, on the background of your, of your mind.

Here we go. Psalm 107 verse 23. Some went down to the seas and ships doing business on the great waters. They saw the deeds of the Lord, his wondrous work from the deep for he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. They mounted up to heaven. They went down to the depths, their courage melted away in their evil plight.

They reeled and staggered like drunken men and were at their wit’s end. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad that the waters were quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven.

Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man. What does that psalm sound like? It sounds just like what Jesus did in the book of Mark. And so the disciples, they’re like, man, there’s something about this guy. He’s not just a man. That’s why Mark, in Mark’s passage, we see that when the storm was raging, they were afraid, but then after Jesus calmed the storm, then it said they were greatly afraid.

Have you ever noticed that? They were more afraid after the storm was calmed. Why? Well, because they realized that they were in the presence of God, and that even the seas obeyed him. So what can we take away from this today? Well, this is the why behind the application that’s often drawn from this, right?

Jesus can calm the storms of our life, and that should bring us peace, but here’s the why. It’s because of his power. See, the disciples, in seeing his power, they realized that God is with them. They realized that Jesus wasn’t just someone who was close to God. Right, Jesus didn’t have to go to the edge of the boat and say a prayer so that the, that it would stop.

No, he just looked at the waves and said, stop. Stop doing what you’re doing, and the waves just stopped. And so, that realization should bring peace, but it should also bring reverence, right? That’s the kind of fear that they feared. It wasn’t the kind of fear that’s terrified, like, oh, this guy’s gonna kill us.

It’s reverence and awe in the presence of who, of the one who, who they’re in his presence. And so, I have to ask, do, do you have A holy reverence for God, right? Do we have a holy reverence for God? See, our faith cannot just be casual when we fear God. And with that righteous fear should come peace. And the reason that it should bring peace is because he’s also present.

He cares about us. And so let’s jump over to the second story in Mark. This is Mark chapter six. And uh, and we’re going to look at when Jesus walked on the water. Right? Anybody ever try to do that when you were a kid? You’re trying to run out into the pool and see if you can walk on the water. And, uh, obviously it doesn’t work because we’re not Jesus, but that’s what he did here in Mark chapter 6.

And so I’m going to read starting in verse 45. Here’s what it says. It says, Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to Bethesda, while he dismissed the crowd. So Jesus is, he had just done the feeding of the 5, 000. If you know that story, the loaves and the, and the fish, and, uh, he, he made it multiply.

So he goes over to do more miracles, verse 46. And after he had taken leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray. And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea and he was alone on the land. And he saw that they were making headway painfully for the wind was against them. And about the fourth watch of the night.

So that’s between three and 6 a. m. About the fourth watch of the night, he came to them walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them. But when they saw him walking on the sea. They thought it was a ghost and cried out, for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.

And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased, and they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened. And then he goes on later in the passage to go do a bunch more miracles, but what we see here is a great display of God’s power, right?

He’s walking on water, he’s doing The impossible. Now, there’s so much that we can take away from this story, and there’s so much that we can miss if we just read it quickly, but I think that there’s an important lesson about God. Okay, so check this out again, verse 46. Jesus leaves the crowd, he goes up to the mountain to pray.

That’s a whole nother sermon in and of itself that, that Jesus, who is God, prays, right? The prayer life of Jesus, He prays, we should probably pray more. And so he’s praying, and And then it says in verse 48 that it was, again, the fourth watch of the night, so this is between 3 and 6 a. m., but, but catch this.

And about the fourth watch of the night, he came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them. Okay? This is one of my favorite Easter eggs in the Bible. This, this is incredible. And we don’t have time to walk through the entire book of Mark, but, uh, so you’re just gonna have to trust me on this one, but the whole book of Mark Mark is constantly, from chapter 1, verse 1, he’s trying to get people to see the divinity of Jesus.

Right? He’s trying to get people to see this, this Jesus guy is the promised one from the Old Testament, and, oh, by the way, he’s actually God himself. And so, uh, he’s showing how Jesus is forgiving sins. Only God can forgive sins. He’s, uh, showing how Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath. He controls the winds and the waves.

He rebukes demons. He’s showing all throughout the, the, the book of Mark that Jesus is God. And just like there’s Old Testament prophetic imagery that God alone can calm the seas, check this out, Job chapter 9, verse 7 and 8, this should be on the screens. It says this, this is Job talking, and again, he’s asking rhetorical, uh, rhetorical questions.

He says, Who commands the sun and it does not rise? Who seals up the stars? Who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea? Okay, now we’ve already established that God alone, the God of the Old Testament, Yahweh God, is the only God that can control the seeds, but this phrase, that God alone tramples the waves of the seas, in the Greek, it’s peripetan epithelesis.

You say, so what? That means absolutely nothing. Well, the reason I bring that up is because in Mark’s gospel, when it says that Jesus was walking on the water. It’s the exact same phrase in Greek, peripetan epiphthalesis. Now you might say, that’s an interesting coincidence, but again, Mark is building a case for the fact that Jesus is God.

And then two verses later, in that same passage in Job, Job chapter 9, verse 11, it says, Behold, he passes by me, and I see him not. He moves on, but I do not perceive him. Okay, what’s going on here? Follow me here. We’re gonna dive into the weeds just for a second, but I think this is important, and this will springboard us to our, our final point.

We’ve seen Jesus’s power on display, but check this out. In the, in the Old Testament, when God would use the phrase, uh, that, that he would pass by, or when someone say, when, when someone would say that God passed by them, this was a way of saying that he was revealing his glory to them. If you remember the story of Moses.

Right, when Moses was up on the mountain for the second time, and he’s up there, and he says to God, he says, God, I want to see your face, like, show me your glory. And God’s like, no, I can’t do that, like, it would kill you. And so God covers his face, and then it says he passes by him. He was revealing to him his glory.

So what does that have to do with anything? Well, here’s the deal. If we think of this story of Jesus walking on the water, It’s just like Jesus was a little bit late because he had some extra prayer time and he needed to catch up to them. So, so he just needed to walk on the water to get to the boat real quick.

If that’s all that’s going on here, then we’re missing the point. Because what Mark is showing us and telling us is that Jesus wanted to pass by them. Okay, let me, let me read this quote from theologian Sam Storms and then bring it out of the weeds. Sam Storms says, In saying that Jesus walked upon the water.

Mark isn’t saying he wanted to sneak past them unnoticed. He intended to be seen. He intended to be revealed. He intended to be disclosed in the most marvelous and glorious way as the very God who passed by Moses in Exodus and was made known as the one true God, the great and majestic creator of all mankind.

Okay, so this story, walking on the water, is a direct tie back to the Old Testament. But there’s one more thing. Okay, do you, do you remember what God said to Moses, when Moses was talking to him in the burning bush, and God is like, hey, go tell Pharaoh to let my people go, and Moses is scared, and Moses says, but what am I gonna tell them, like, when they say, who sent you, what am I gonna say, who’s your name, what’s your name?

And, and Moses, uh, and God from the burning bush says tell them I am sent you, right, I am that I am. It’s such a wonderful, like, the, the, the name of God I am just gets me so hyped all the time. Like, if you’ve studied philosophy, and you learned about Rene Descartes, right, and he says, I think, therefore, I am.

Well, in other words, he’s saying, the fact that I can form a rational thought proves my existence. But God is saying, no, just my existence proves my existence. I just am. Back to the book of Mark. Jesus is walking on the water. Uh, which is, again, wild, right? He’s above all, he made everything, and he’s walking on the water that he made.

So they’re afraid. They think he’s a ghost, but look at verse 50. He says, but immediately he spoke to them and said, take heart, it is I. I won’t bore you with the construction of the Greek, but here’s what I want you to know. The Greek behind the English it is. I could easily be rendered. I am, but, but he doesn’t stop there.

He says, I am. Then he says, do not be afraid. And then verse 51. And this is incredible. This is what we miss. If we just turn this into an allegory and say, Jesus can walk on the messy waters of your life. Jesus wants to pass by them. He wants to show them his glory. And then he says, I am, don’t be afraid.

Verse 51. And he got into the boat with them. Brothers and sisters, this verse wrecked me when I was preparing this. And this is why I can get so frustrated and disheartened if we only focus on the superficial aspect of Christmas. Because what this verse shows us and what this story shows us is that the God of the universe.

Didn’t just come down to earth to flex his power on us, but he came to offer us his presence See in the Old Testament because of man’s sin There was no direct access to God People had to go through the priests and even Moses wasn’t able to see the glory of God on display or it would kill him That’s why Job says like when he passes by me when I see his his glory.

I still don’t see him But what did God do? Did God just say there’s no hope? Just try harder, right? Did God say, I’ve tried, I’ve given you all the prophets, and you still didn’t get the lesson, I’m done, figure it out on your own? No, He came down to be with us. The creator of the world came down to us.

That’s what the word Immanuel means, right? God is with us. When Jesus ate, and drank, and nursed, and scraped his knee, and as he fell, and as he grew taller, like, all of that stuff was happening in the way that he designed the world to work. And that God who is all powerful, he’s ever personal by giving us his presence.

Why? Well, this leads to our final point. Our first point is we can have peace in this crazy world because of Jesus’s power. He controls everything. We can have peace because of his presence. He’s with us. He got into the boat with them. But true peace comes from understanding his purpose. Because the stories kind of end kind of weird, don’t they?

Like the first one, it just ends with them saying, who is this guy? And then the next one, it’s like, they say at the end of the second story that their hearts were hardened, that they still didn’t understand what was his purpose. But let me read this final quote. And then we’ll land the plane here. This is from Edward James commentary on Mark.

He’s talking about Jesus using this phrase, it is I and how that means I am. And here’s what he says. It is a divine epiphany and answer to their earlier bafflement when he calmed the storm. Who is this? In Mark, one must like the disciples be in the boat with Jesus and enter into the drama in order to behold who Jesus is.

The one who calmed the storm is the one who now appears in the storm, the I Am of God. What does this mean? Well, what it means is that in order for us to truly grasp the significance of this, in order for us to understand the purpose of Jesus, we have to be in the boat with Jesus. You say, what does that mean?

How are we in a boat with, with Jesus? Well, what I’m saying is we, we, we need to be on his team. We need to be saved by him. See, what Mark is trying to get us to see, and specifically his original readers, but all of us, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is he’s trying to get us to understand what the disciples would ultimately understand, but don’t get yet.

And that’s that this Jesus guy was God himself, and that we need to be saved by him. Because what the Gospels will show us later is that the baby, the newborn baby in the manger was born to die. But that it’s through his death that we can have life. Because he didn’t stay dead. And not only did he not stay dead, but then he ascended back into heaven, and he’s coming back again.

And Mark is showing us all through this gospel that as the power of God is on display, that he controls all, that even though he’s all powerful, he’s offered people his presence. And that through all of it, he’s showing us the purpose of Jesus is that God became man, so that regardless of what happens in the life That we live, if we’re in Him, we can have peace.

Some of you I’ve met, uh, a couple times, in person, or, or digitally, but, most of you, uh, this is the first time I’m meeting, and so I don’t know your stories. Right, we don’t, we don’t really know each other, but, uh, I, I know that you’re human. And being human means that you’ll go through storms. You go through difficulty, all of us, right?

And the only way that we’re gonna have peace

It’s not by just coming here out of obligation, not by trying to, you know, set up our Christmas tree and think about Jesus just during Christmas season. It’s by focusing wholeheartedly on the fact that the God of the universe, the God who the Bible says dwells in unapproachable light, came down and became one of us, which brings us back to our overarching point.

When we marvel. At the incomprehensible reality of the incarnation, we can find true peace and rest in every area of our life. So that’s my question to you. Is this your primary frame of mind this Christmas? But again, I’m not saying you can’t enjoy the songs and, and the presence and the nostalgia. I love all of that, but none of that will get us through the storms of our lives.

So here’s where the allegory comes in. Because all of us again, we go through storms and God is with us in those storms, but not less. Let’s not jump straight to the allegory that we miss the why. Why is he with us in those storms? Because he’s the king. And when we operate with this in mind, when we keep our eyes focused on him with who Jesus truly is, then we’re filled with a peace that passes all understanding.

We realize that our praises are not just the dying toons on a sinking ship. But the confident reality, expectation of a reality that is yet to come, that Jesus will return and wipe every tear away. Do you have that hope and do you have that peace?   I want to pray for you all, and then Caleb’s going to come back up here, but I want to pray that this Christmas season the Lord will allow you to focus on those things that ultimately we can’t fully wrap our minds around.

And maybe a unique way and that you can experience his presence in a unique way. Father, thank you for this group of people that gather here week after week. Lord, you are building your church here in Queen Creek and you in, in all of your sovereignty have chosen to build your church through imperfect people.

You give us a part of being, you give us the option and the, and the ability to be part of something that we’ll never fully understand. And It’s being part of your body, Lord, all of these truths of scripture, the incarnation, what the church actually is, all of this, Lord, would you make that real to this church here?

Would you bless this church as they pursue to make disciples, not just attenders, but thank you for the ministry. That’s going out through these doors into the world week after week. We love you. We praise you. It’s in Jesus name. We pray. Amen.