Unraveling the Divine Tapestry: Exploring the Genealogy of Jesus and Our Role in Faith's Narrative

Discover the intricate threads connecting the genealogy of Jesus to our everyday lives as Stephen Feith guides us through the Gospel of Luke with the precision of a historian and the passion of a storyteller. Our journey through scripture reveals more than a lineage; it showcases the transformative power of faith across generations, and the inclusivity at the heart of Christianity. From Zechariah and Elizabeth's moving narrative to the angel Gabriel's announcements, and the unexpected placement of Jesus's lineage, we find that every name, every story, is a deliberate stitch in the tapestry of God's grand design.

Feel the weight of history and the personal touch of redemption in the stories of Biblical figures like Rahab, whose life is a testament to the fact that our origins do not confine our destiny. As we trace Jesus's ancestry back to Adam, we embrace a shared identity that transcends all human divisions, affirming that we each have a role in the unfolding story of faith. Listen closely as we explore the long-awaited promises—from Abraham to the Messiah—and consider the endurance required to witness their fulfillment, paralleling our own experiences of anticipation and hope.

Finally, let's reflect on the divine choreography of our own paths. Sharing my personal voyage from Chicago to Iowa and the serendipitous events that shaped my life's mission, I aim to illuminate how each of us is strategically placed within our communities. Our collaboration with the Lussier Community Education Center to provide a Thanksgiving meal exemplifies the profound impact of local outreach. As you tune in, be inspired to recognize your neighborhood, your workplace, as the mission field where you are called to forge connections and fulfill your part in a larger narrative—a narrative where every encounter holds the potential for significance.

Chapters

• 0:00 Genealogy of Jesus in Luke
• 13:21 Relatable Stories
• 20:59 God's Divine Timing in Community Outreach
• 32:39 Mission Field in Everyday Life

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Well, good morning, welcome to Madison Church, if you're joining us online. My name is Stephen Feith, I'm the lead pastor here and we hope that you can join us in person soon. We are in part two of what I think will end up being like six or seven parts, going word by word through the entire gospel of Luke, and so this is part two, but this is like message 10, I think. And so if you're joining us for the first time in 2024, watching or listening online and you're like how is any of this going to make sense, I'm going to make it make sense real quick with a very fast recap, and then you're going to wonder why I didn't just say this all in one message six months ago, why it needed to be seven, eight weeks.

Speaker 1: 0:43

The Gospel of Luke is written by Luke. If you didn't know that, in this case it was written by him. Luke was a physician. He was a medical doctor in that era. He was a traveling companion with Paul, and so if you're wondering why Luke gets authority to write something that goes in the Bible, it's because he traveled around with Paul.

Speaker 1: 1:02

This gospel was explicitly written to Theophilus. Theophilus is a guy who, just like you, wants to know if what we think about Jesus is true. Theophilus says I've heard all of these things about Jesus, but how do I know it's true? Can I believe in it? We have all of these other gods Greek gods, roman gods, all of these other gods how do I know Jesus is this God? And so Luke sets out on an evidence-based research project to show Theophilus that what you have heard and what you believe is true. And so that kind of resonates with us when you say why are we doing the gospel of Luke and not maybe Matthew or Mark? For those of us living in Madison, wisconsin, in 2024 or 2023, when we started this series the next year, as we're going through this, we are people who want to know that what we think and what we believe is right or at least on the right track. Right, I mean, you have friends and family who probably have if they're Christians, if they're like you, if you're a follower of Jesus, but they have different ideas about things than you do. Right, and they're Christians. But then you probably have other friends who are on the other side of the spectrum and they're atheists or they're agnostics. They don't believe anything. And then you have other friends still who practice Hinduism or they're Muslims, right, and you hear all of these things and you're like, well, and then I come to Madison Church and they say Jesus is Lord and they're pretty unapologetic about that. What do we do with that? How can I know that what they're saying is true? And that's what Luke set off to write and that is why we're going through it.

Speaker 1: 2:30

Luke starts off with the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth, an elderly couple. They couldn't have kids. One day Gabriel, angel of the Lord, appears to Zechariah and says hey, you're going to have a kid. Zechariah doesn't believe him, so Zech loses his ability to speak for a little bit. Elizabeth is old, she gets pregnant. She later has the kid Around. The same time that Gabriel appears to Zechariah, he appears to Mary. He says hey, you're going to have a kid. Mary didn't doubt, so she gets to continue to speak throughout the pregnancy and she is pregnant with Jesus. And then that gets us to the Christmas story when Jesus is born in the manger. And then that is kind of where Sarah started to pick up last week. So we get the.

Speaker 1: 3:09

How we closed the last series was that Luke kind of gives us this transitional thing. He tells us one story about Jesus's childhood and what he did here in the first century. These guys who were writing like this, they use one story to kind of show you this was kind of like his whole childhood in one story. So instead of writing all of these other stories, I said this basically sums up his childhood. So then the next time we hear from Luke writing about Jesus will be Jesus is 30 years old now. So from 12 to 30, we've missed the last 18 years of his life. I like to joke apparently nothing really like substantial happened in that time. So if you're 22 and you feel like there's not a lot going on in your life worth writing about, hey, you and Jesus.

Speaker 1: 3:48

But we pick up and Jesus is baptized, he's filled with the Holy Spirit and then all of a sudden Luke does something weird. Did anyone look ahead to what we were going to talk about today? Perfect, you can go to Luke, chapter 3. Because after Jesus is baptized, you might be remembering the story that he goes into the wilderness and he is tested there. Yes, and that's what we'll talk about next week, because you probably didn't know, or you forgot or weren't aware that Luke actually goes into his genealogy beforehand. Isn't that weird. We've got the whole Christmas story. Jesus is a kid, now he's an adult, he's been baptized, and Luke says timeout, sidebar critical details here, let's go into the genealogy of Jesus.

Speaker 1: 4:34

And so that is where we are picking up today in Luke, chapter 3. If you want to follow along, I do have the words on the screen for you this week Now. I would imagine that most of you you're like when I do my Bible reading in one year, the app, or you got the actual book, the Bible, in a Year you're probably like I skip over these sections. It's kind of like a day off for my Bible in a year. That's okay, me too, me too Okay. But this actually is important and it's important for us today, and if I do my job well, I will show you why it's important for us to not skip this part of the text. And I've not actually taught on the genealogy of Jesus at Madison Church. I've taught on the table of contents and I've taught on footnotes, and today I get to teach on the genealogy, and so we really do cover everything that's written in that book here.

Speaker 1: 5:24

And so the genealogy presented in chapter three appears like a list of names, but it's essential for grasping Jesus's legitimate place in history. That is what Luke is trying to do at this point. Remember, it's evidence-based, it's research. So Luke goes and says this is Jesus angels baby is born virgin baptized. At which point Theophilus will Jesus angels babies born virgin baptized. At which point Theophilus will say well, you know, if he is the Messiah, the Jews have been talking about this for hundreds and thousands of years. So there should be stuff in the Old Testament that says stuff about Jesus and then that Jesus should actually fulfill that Critical detail is that the Jews believed that the Messiah would be from David's line, from David's family, and so henceforth, if Jesus wasn't from David's line, well, jesus, it doesn't matter what we thought or where we're going with this, we have to know. And so Luke is going to start to say hey, the reason you can also believe Jesus is the Messiah is because, yes, the Jews were talking about this guy hundreds and thousands of years ago and we can show you how and why on their text that it came through today. But also it underscores maybe a little bit of a sidebar here.

Speaker 1: 6:35

Part that I'm excited to talk about is how many interesting people end up being in Jesus's family tree. A lot of interesting people pop in there that you might not otherwise think of. Now, a couple months ago, somebody wrote a question to me on the connection card and they said why and this is somebody who's obviously gone to Sunday school because they've read the genealogies but they said why are Matthew's genealogy and Luke's genealogy different? And if you actually read them Matthew and Luke they are a little different. You're like whoa, is this a mistake? Can we just throw out Matthew and Luke and just throw out the gospels and the New Testament? Because it's wrong? That would be wrong. Matthew is Jewish. Matthew wrote his gospel to Jewish Christians. So Matthew, when he is writing, is highlighting the Jewishness of Jesus to prove he is a Jewish Messiah. Luke, if you'll remember, is not Jewish and he is not writing to Jews. He's a Gentile. So if you're in the room and you don't have Jewish heritage, he is writing to you and he is like you and so for him it's less important to cover the Jewish aspects of Jesus's heritage. Important to cover the Jewish aspects of Jesus's heritage.

Speaker 1: 7:49

Now here's the thing You're from the 21st century, you're used to Ancestrycom and you want to know every single cousin who's related and you want to see every single name. 2,000 years ago they didn't give a rip about that. Okay, pen and paper, that stuff, that was expensive, okay, and it took a lot of work, and so we were just going to we're not going to do every cousin, every third cousin, people who didn't contribute anything, no story people you wouldn't even care about if you read the names. And so when Luke and Matthew get together and they're picking names, they do skip on purpose, because they're just like you. Today they're saying who cares about our third cousin, jim Bob Cooter, right, that about our third cousin, jim Bob Cooter? Right, that's what they're saying. And so they're gonna focus on what's important. And so, because they have different agendas, it's gonna show up different, but that doesn't mean that they're lying. It doesn't mean they're lying. Now you can exhale here, because I'm not gonna read through all of the names today, all of I couldn't even do it anyway. It would be a joke. You know, we actually don't do this in seminary when you're studying the New Testament. They don't make you learn all these names. They don't even give you kind of a guiding of how to say them. We just guess and act confident, and that's kind of what I'm gonna do today. So if you're following along, we're at Luke 3, but go to verse 31, and you're taking notes circling, circle, david.

Speaker 1: 9:03

David is a pretty big one, pretty important one. You guys know David, david and Goliath, david, the greatest king of Israel, these kinds of stories. But don't forget where David came from. David was one son of many. He was also the last son of many, and in that culture, if you were the first son, you were it, you were the guy. And if you're the last one, you were it, you were the guy. And if you were the last one, you were the least important. You got the least amount of heritage when mom and dad died, and so in his own family, david wasn't even important. David wasn't a seasoned warrior. As a matter of fact, when he comes out to fight Goliath, he was like out tending the fields. And he comes out and he has this rise to the king of Israel.

Speaker 1: 9:47

His story, if you're kind of catching on here, his story inspires us to trust in God's plans for our lives. It's a reminder that wherever you are today or wherever you came from, that's not the defining part of your story, that God defines your story. It doesn't matter if you're so-and-so's daughter, so-and-so's son, that you came from this place or you live in this place, it doesn't matter. What matters is that God is guiding. He can take the youngest son of this family and raise him up to be the greatest king in Israel's history. And so as we're reading through the genealogy and we're looking at Jesus and we're saying, wow, the Messiah. And where does the Messiah come from? We think the great King David. Let's not forget his humble beginnings.

Speaker 1: 10:32

David was known as a man after God's own heart. It wasn't because he was perfect. David did some really messed up things. He made a lot of mistakes, but he was still a man after God's own heart. His enduring legacy challenges us to build lives that exceed our present situations. You no longer need to define yourself by where you came from. You can define yourself by where God is leading you. It's a big perspective change, but once we stop living in yesterday and looking back and saying, well, god can't use me because of X, y, z, then we can begin to step forward into what God actually has for us.

Speaker 1: 11:16

Go to the next verse, verse 32. You're going to see that Boaz is in there, and for some of you, you know that Boaz was married to Ruth, and so I want to talk about Ruth for a little bit. Ruth was a Moabite widow, so okay, once again, this is like there's a non-Jewish person in Jesus's family tree. Here Ruth, a Moabite widow, exemplifies bravery of breaking away from her family narrative to pursue a new destiny. So if you're unfamiliar with the story, she leaves her homeland to remain with her mother-in-law, naomi, and they go into a new culture, a new society with a new religion, and she takes it all in.

Speaker 1: 11:59

Ruth's story underscores the importance of stepping beyond our comfort zones and family expectations to be obedient to God's call. I know some of you grew up in the church and it wasn't this church and it's not like this church, and I know that some of you if you grew up with a Catholic background because I've talked with a lot of you about this you're watching or listening online I might have talked to you about this, but there's a lot of pressure right from your family that you don't go to a Catholic church anymore. It's almost like you're not a believer anymore, you're walking away, and so that kind of pressure is hard and it might not be that you might have grown up in just an ultra-conservative church or an ultra-liberal church, or you grew up in a family that isn't Christian, that's atheist, and now you've really, like, sold your soul to this weird ideology. But Ruth reminds us, her story shows us, that when we step out to what God has for us, big things happen. And so we can be encouraged when we have the voices of, maybe, friends and family. What are you doing? How can you believe that? Why would you do that? You're not right. The bickering the over Thanksgiving meals type of thing. We can be encouraged. The bickering the over Thanksgiving meals type of thing. We can be encouraged. And remember that if Ruth didn't have the courage to do so, she wouldn't have been in the family line of Jesus and I'm not like super scientific here, I want to get into detail, but David probably wouldn't even been born either. Right, just something to think about.

Speaker 1: 13:21

We go back. Actually, boaz was the son of let's call him Sal. Boaz was the son of Sal. You know who Sal's wife is. You might not know this. Rahab Rahab the prostitute, was his wife. She was the prostitute in Jericho. And the Israelites are coming into Jericho and they want to take over Jericho and they needed help and Rahab helps them. For a lot of us.

Speaker 1: 13:51

Rahab is relatable because Rahab was a sex worker. She had regrets and in that era she probably was not a sex worker because she wanted to be a sex worker. She had regrets and in that era she probably was not a sex worker because she wanted to be a sex worker. Okay, let's just throw that out there right now. If she's doing sex industry all these years ago, it's forced on her. She probably has regrets. She probably feels gross, she doesn't feel beautiful. Her identity has got to be all warped and for some of you that's how you feel.

Speaker 1: 14:21

You've done things you're embarrassed about. You've done stupid things. You know what's worse is, you probably did stupid things on purpose. You probably got angry, probably got sad, frustrated. You got in your own head. I do that all the time. And then all of a sudden my ideas become facts and I don't challenge what my ideas are, because I just assume that they're facts. And then I make mistakes. You guys can relate, I'm sure, to some point. Here.

Speaker 1: 14:47

Rahab shows us again if we continue to define ourselves by the past, we're going to miss out what God has for us in the future. Whatever you've done, that might change how you see yourself. I'm not denying that that happens. It doesn't change how God sees you, though. So, then, the question, as we're looking at Rahab, the question to ask yourself is who am I going to believe? How am I going to see myself? Am I going to believe my narrative of myself or God's narrative of myself? Because I may see myself as shameful or guilty, but God doesn't see me that way. And so Rahab challenges us believe what God says about you. Your past doesn't define you, and, again, as we walk into that future, god can do some amazing things, going down to verse 34, another name that's really familiar Abraham.

Speaker 1: 15:44

So we get all the way down to Abraham, the father of Israel. This is the patriarch. This is where God makes his promise, because we're now really deep in the Old Testament. Here, at this point, they're wondering like sin is in the world. Has God forgotten us? Does God care about us? And God makes a promise to Abraham, and the promise is Jesus. That's why this is an important point here, important connection God promises Abraham this is what's going to happen. I am sending Messiah. I've not forgotten about you. I am going to be there for you Now, if God came to you today and this is part of the story that we can learn from.

Speaker 1: 16:20

If God came to you today and said, hey, I'm making you a promise, you're probably thinking later today, next week, next month, you're probably going to get angry with God if in five years, he hasn't delivered on that promise, in 20 years, you're like God is dead, like because he promised me and he didn't Now think about this. Not only did God promise Abraham this, but, like Abraham, lived his entire life and died and didn't see the promise fulfilled. So did his sons and their sons. And if you want an exercise to do this week, read through the entire genealogy all the way to Jesus. All of those people lived and most of those people had died before God kept his promise.

Speaker 1: 17:06

Now, the point here is that God has promised you things, but the timing of that, when it happens, and even how it happens, it's up to God, and you don't have to worry about that, because God has way better ideas than us anyway. Because, as a matter of fact, when they're making this promise and we're going to send you a Messiah, if you read through the Old Testament, they really thought Jesus was going to be a warrior. I mean, they thought this guy was going to be a military warrior, david 2.0, coming with the sword, overthrowing the Roman Empire. Jesus was going to sit on the throne, the Messiah was, and all of the Jewish people were going to rule, just like the Roman Empire did. Okay, god made a promise, but that was not the promise. The promise was the Messiah. And so if you're here today, you're watching, you're listening and you're heartbroken. Where is God in this situation? God, I thought you told me. God, I thought you would do this. God. What's my next step? God, why didn't you prevent this from happening?

Speaker 1: 18:02

It's important that it's okay to acknowledge the pain and suffering that occurs with that, but it's important to remember that in this genealogy, god proved that he kept his promise over centuries and different people, through Rahab and through Ruth, and through David and through a Virgin Mary and Joseph. And then we end in Luke 3, 38. His lineage goes back to the first human, adam, who was the son of God, and Luke ends here because he's trying to show that Jesus is just like you and me. I mean culture, race, ethnicity, those are all important things. Those are important part of your identity. I don't want you to deny those.

Speaker 1: 18:42

But in this moment, luke is saying what supersedes race, ethnicity, culture all of that is being human being, a child of God. This supersedes it all. This is what Jesus is and this is what you are. Supersedes it all. This is what Jesus is and this is what you are. Adam represents a shared heritage that transcends race, culture and every individual's story, and by extending this lineage of Jesus all the way back to Adam, luke highlights the inclusive nature of Christianity. Jesus didn't just come for the Jews. Jesus didn't come to overthrow the Roman Empire. Jesus came for everyone, including you here today. It's inclusive, it's an offer for every one of us.

Speaker 1: 19:25

Now you might be wondering I'm not a descendant of David or Abraham. Jesus didn't have any kids. So what does this mean for me practically today? That's a good question and Paul solves it. He says in Galatians in Christ's family, there can be no division into Jew or non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among you, among us, you are all equal and just sidebar how radically progressive that was for 2000 years ago. I know like nowadays we're like sophisticated and we're like really like, mature and wise, and we look at Paul's writings and we think they're archaic but understand. Up until like 200 years ago, this was probably one of the most progressive things written in ancient literature. Among you, you are all equal. Doesn't matter if you're rich, poor, slave, not a slave. You're all equal in the eyes of God. That is, we are all in common relationship with Jesus Christ. Also, since you are in Christ's family, then you are Abraham's famous descendant heirs, according to the covenant promises Paul is saying if you believe that Jesus is who he said he is, and if you follow Jesus, you are in the family, you are adopted. Now you are a part of the family tree. If Luke was writing another gospel today and he's writing the genealogy since Jesus, your name could be on there, not because of blood, not because of your blood, but because of Jesus.

Speaker 1: 20:59

You know what I was thinking about it this week and the genealogy, and just how crazy it is. You have Rahab and you have Ruth, you have these outsiders becoming insiders and then getting all the way to Jesus. And I was thinking I was born outside of Chicago. I was born in Elmhurst Hospital, lived in Villa Park until I was about 10. And then my dad's bank got absorbed by another one and he got laid off or fired and we had to move. We had to go find a new job and that led us to Iowa and we're living outside of Iowa City and that is where I meet a girl. You guys know the story.

Speaker 1: 21:29

I start going to church and it's at this church in Iowa. My dad gets another job in Illinois so we're going to move back after I graduate. But this church that I found Jesus at started following Jesus. There was a volunteer there. I said oh, you're moving to the DeKalb area, you should try this church. This is a youth leader that I trusted very much. I said, okay, when I go to this, move to this new area, I'll go to this church. Wasn't the same denomination? So it wasn't like I Googled Baptist churches and you could go to another Baptist church. This was a completely different denomination.

Speaker 1: 22:00

I live in DeKalb for two years. I go to that church in that two years and it's at that church. In that two-year window I meet my wife, megan. Okay, isn't that crazy. I was born outside of Chicago, moved to Iowa, moved back to Illinois. I get recommended to go to this church. Go to this church. I meet my wife, the mother of my kids, from there, megan and I go to Springfield to get educated. We field the call to start a church we're praying and that call leads us to Madison, wisconsin, and in 2014, we start this church and some of you have been here since the first year and some of you have been here since the first year and some of you are relatively new to the story, but we're a 10-year-old church. We're all still babies here in terms of the age of churches, and just think about how wild this is for a second, because you were born somewhere. Might've been Madison. You didn't have far to go. You're here, but for some of you you're born really far away and you think about the journey that got you to the point where you're typing in churches near me on Google and now you're here and we're here together.

Speaker 1: 23:10

It makes me think about this passage again in Galatians, where Paul's talking about how critical time and space are. Paul says when the right time came, god sent his son, born of a woman subject to the law, when the right time came. What does that mean? There were wrong times. It meant every time before the time he actually came was the wrong time. It means that every time since then was the wrong time. God, in his infinite wisdom, picked the right time, the most ideal time for Jesus to come to earth when the right time came.

Speaker 1: 23:50

Stephen was born in 1988 outside of Chicago. When the right time came, jeff was born. When the right time came, chrissy was born. You see, god has strategically placed you not just in a specific time, but now a specific place. And as we gather here in Madison, it's crucial to recognize. You're not here by chance. It's not a fluke that you are here. God has a deliberate plan for this city. God was working in the city before I showed up. He called in reinforcements. I showed up. He's called you here. God has a deliberate plan for our church community. God has an individual plan for your life and your family. And just as Galatians 4 tells us that, when the right time came to send his son, we too are placed in Madison, wisconsin, at this time for a purpose.

Speaker 1: 24:47

This passage reflects the divine timing of Jesus's mission and our calling to be mission-focused in our own daily lives. So to get prepared. I know it's like. I don't know if you buy you, I'm fired up. I'm like I want to do it. I don't know what we're going to do, but we're going to do it. And what do we do? Well, the first thing we need to do is we need to understand the needs of our city. We, you know, a long time ago, or not even that long time ago, but a lot of churches, they'll come in and they'll say we know what the problem is and we know how to fix it. And when you kind of have that attitude, one, you don't, we don't know what the problem is, a lot of times, like we, we assume we're experts at everything and and we're not. And then we kind of come in and we mess it up and then you get the is. We've tried to be very different in Madison and it started with me but it's kind of gone outward.

Speaker 1: 25:38

Now we went to the Loser Center that's the first place we started meeting at and I sat down at the Loser Center and I said what do you guys already do and what do you feel like is missing, like how could we help? And they said well, what are you bringing to the table? They always love the next answer. I've given this answer a lot. I say people and money and they're like yeah, we want people and money. I'm like I know we all do right. And so I said people and money. And in the case of the Loser Center, I remember them saying well, you know, we do this gratitude dinner, this Thanksgiving meal, but we need more volunteers. It's such a big thing. I was like, yeah, we can do volunteers.

Speaker 1: 26:16

And I remember, as we were planning for that first gratitude dinner, we were looking at the menu and I was like, oh, this is great. And I noticed like pies were missing. And not that like I don't love pies, I don't really like desserts we can talk about that later but like I noticed that desserts were missing, like you can't have Thanksgiving without desserts. And they said, oh well, that's just not in the budget. I said, well, we have money. And so we went out to Costco, we bought pumpkin pies, we brought them in, did whipped cream and everything, and everyone thought that was great. They're like we love the freaking pies.

Speaker 1: 26:42

And this was an example of us understanding our community and making it better. You see, god was already at work at the Loser Center, he was already doing things and we got to come in and make it better. And that's how then we went to the middle school across the parking lot. We said same conversation hey, I'm Stephen Fieth, pastor of Madison Church. We'd love to partner with you. They said, well, what do you bring to the table? People and money. I said, all right, we'll be a partner with you. I did that across the street for the Section 8 housing there at Wexford. Went across the street Hi, I'm Stephen Fee. You guys get to sell. Now what do you bring? People and money. And that is how we began to do that and to spread out.

Speaker 1: 27:16

And so in your own neighborhoods, where you live, where you work, don't assume that you know. Instead ask where has God been working before I came on the scene, where has God been working? Who has God been working through? And now that I'm here, it is for a purpose. But it might not be to start something new, it might just be to contribute what God has already been doing. And so we look for that. We ask good questions what's already going on? What is lacking? Where can I fill in the gap?

Speaker 1: 27:47

But it's not just that. We have to stay connected as a community. It's so easy for us to become lone rangers with this mindset that I'm talking about that. I'm going to go back into my neighborhood and I'm going to be the missionary and it's going to be great, and then I get disconnected from my community. I get disconnected from other people. It's really important that we stay connected, not just on Sundays. Look, I think Sundays are great. I think it's centering at least for me to come here, exhale like love, being here with you all. I think it's unifying. We get to all come and pray and sing the same songs, we hear the same message that's written for this community and we get to go out together on mission. I love that. But small groups are also really, really important. We got to get to know each other, and not just that. But then we got to go beyond small groups and we get together, you know, initiate conversations and go to bars and play golf and drink coffees and do all of that. Stay connected with each other To actively participate in God's mission for Madison. We should be on the lookout for opportunities to serve and influence our community in the city of Madison, and this might mean volunteering. We have opportunities to do that.

Speaker 1: 28:53

Yesterday a group of us went out to DACE, the Domestic Abuse Intervention Services, and we did landscaping. And you know what I found out yesterday? I really don't like pulling weeds. I don't enjoy that at all. My head got sunburned. I put a lot of lotion on, so hopefully you can't see it, but like I did not have fun. But you know, as I was sitting there thinking about it because I wasn't working, I was sitting on the ground next to two people who were working and I was sitting there thinking about how much I don't like this, it was like God nudged me and said Stephen, you've worked years for this, because a long time ago I reached out to Dace and they weren't interested in working with us because we were faith-based. And then, through a series of weird circumstances, I knew and know someone who works there now and they kind of like me, and so that's how I got us in the building and then we did it. So I'm sitting there thinking how much I don't like weeds and thinking this was the vision, this is it. So volunteering can sometimes look like getting sunburned and pulling weeds to help make a space more beautiful for people in the city that we are called to love.

Speaker 1: 29:55

We did not hand out tracts, we did not share the gospel with anyone, but you know what we did do? We loved like Jesus, we served like Jesus, and that is incredibly important and that's kind of the benefit of being at a small church like Madison Church. I worked at a church. That was huge before coming here and we would do these, give back events once a month and we would meet at the church and we would have 300 people show up and they would bus us and I can remember going to these places. We could make a huge impact. When you have like 300 people going, you make a huge impact in a short period of time. But I remember a lot of us were like standing around not doing anything because there were more people than there was work to do, right. Well, yesterday we could have had four times as many people show up and we still would have left with work not done. That's how it went and that's not to guilt or shame or try to like motivate you guys into helping next time, but like we could have, we could have, which meant that every person who showed up yesterday, that was a substantial impact that contributed. It helped and that is the benefit, I think, of being a part of a smaller community.

Speaker 1: 30:55

Also, here on Sundays there are a variety of things to do. We did that on purpose. We don't want to hire professionals to do the work of ministry. We think that you're gifted. I think you're gifted. We want this church to be served by and look like the community, and so we've strategically set up everything so people would volunteer here. And so you know I'm thinking about this year. We have high schoolers. Now we're going to need a high school ministry. That's how the middle school ministry started was. Oh my gosh. We have middle schoolers now we need to start a middle school ministry. And now it's very vibrant and going well. We got to do that again for high schoolers. We got to do that for middle school ministries. We need more volunteers.

Speaker 1: 31:32

You're here for a time and place. How has God put you here at Madison Church, whether you're here for two years or the next 20 years, to serve right now? Our presence in Madison is no accident. It is a part of a divine strategy that God has called each and every single one of us here at this point in time to execute his mission in Madison. Jesus came on a mission. He says so, as the Father sent me, I am sending you. He didn't ask. He told us. We are on a mission. Every interaction, every task, every day is an opportunity for us to contribute to that mission. And from Abraham to David, from Rahab to Ruth and culminating in Jesus, we see how God uses everyday, ordinary individuals just like me and just like you to do absolutely profound and remarkable things for His purposes. Today we live in Madison for a time like this calling for us to step up and engage actively in our collective mission.

Speaker 1: 32:39

You're not just here on Sundays, but every day when you go home. That's your mission field. That's where God has called you. Now. Maybe you thought you were there because that's the apartment you could afford, or maybe you thought you were there because it's close to your work. Or maybe you thought you were there because that's the only place that would accept your credit score Right, whatever it might be. But God has placed you there on purpose. Who are you not seeing? Who did God put you there to see? And does a name or face come to mind right now? It doesn't have to be weird. It doesn't have to be weird.

Speaker 1: 33:15

I invited my assistant football coach. I coach flag football now. That's my thing. I'm in that dad phase of my life. I invited my assistant coach last night because we were talking strategy, because we're two grown men and we have nothing better to do than to play with our flag football team, and so we're like talking strategy.

Speaker 1: 33:30

But this was it. Who do I need to see? Here's a person I never would have met anywhere else. Maybe someday he steps in here on accident because he's Googling a church. But here's somebody, because of flag football, we have a relationship with, and we didn't just talk about flag football last night. We talked about life and family and death, we talked about all of this, and it just happened in just an hour to get together. And so what I want to encourage you to do is who do you need to see? And it doesn't have to be a big thing. We sat in rocking chairs in my backyard drinking cheap beer. It can be just as easy as that. We are not here in Madison by chance or circumstance. Just as God's timing was perfect in sending a son, so is time, and placing us in the city, in this community, at this moment is intentional. So let's move together with confidence and commitment.