Too Good to Be True // Of Promise And Prophets // Read

Sin ruined everything. With one bite—one choice—it separated us from God, setting mankind on a path towards dysfunction and death. The days turned dark and evil...and the days turned into months, then years, then centuries. The glorious plan of a loving, faithful relationship between God and man seemed to be nothing more than a long, forgotten memory. Yet in the midst of the silence sin created, prophetic voices called out with a promise of hope. A hope that God hadn’t forgotten his people, and that He was crafting a bold, beautiful rescue operation to save the world from its sin. And the truly amazing thing? The same voices of hope beckon to us today—that no matter our sin, no matter our rebellion—we too can experience deliverance.

Every promise of God spoken through the prophets finds fulfillment in Jesus Christ. He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is the embodiment of every dream and every hope. And that Savior and King who was spoken of through prophets now speaks for Himself to every heart. King Jesus is ready to crush the Enemy in your life, fulfill every promise He has made, and usher you into a new reality of peace and hope that you never knew possible.

Feels like we just started this thing. Like it feels like it was just the first week of Advent. And now here we are in the final week. It's crazy how quickly time flies by especially around the holidays. But here we are final week of promise in profits. And what we've been doing all throughout this series is we have been looking at different prophets from scripture, people who, who God raised up to speak the truth and declare the truth about the coming future reality, specifically the coming of Jesus. And so we were three weeks and as our fourth week, we've been looking at the different prophets who have prophesied who have predicted Jesus is coming and what they said and what it means for us today. So week one, if you're with us, Pastor Brenda spoke, and she talked about the prophet Isaiah and the prophet Isaiah He prophesied, he predicted that when God would come, what it would mean is that God would become Emmanuelle, he would be a God who is with us, not a God who up to this point. Gods were far gods were distant gods were not personal. But with this prediction with what Isaiah was saying, he's like, No, this, this is going to be a game-changer. Because God is going to come and he's actually going to be with us. He's going to dwell amongst us, he is going to be with us. And so that's what we talked about in week one, week two, we talked about the idea and the prophecy of the man by the name of Micah. He prophesied that Jesus would be born in a small little town called Bethlehem. And this is a little, just tiny, insignificant town. But because Jesus was born in Bethlehem, because God moved to Bethlehem, it's a city that everyone remembers people who don't follow Jesus. People, who only know a little bit about Scripture about the Bible would be able to tell you that Jesus is born in Bethlehem, right? Because God did something in that city. And in the same way, we may feel small, we may feel insignificant at times and purposeless. But if God is allowed to move in us, he can bring something great out of us, just like he did in the city of Bethlehem, we've just got to be willing to allow him to move in us. And then last week, week three, we're talking about the prophet Jeremiah, and how Jeremiah predicted and prophesied that when Jesus would come, he would be a God, who fights for us, a God who is for us. I let you guys know last week, that one probably sticks out to me the most, because I need a God who fights for me because I'm so constantly fighting against me like I am. So constantly shooting myself in the foot. I'm so constantly messing things up on my own. And so I need someone who was looking out for me, I need a God, who is for me. And so God is with us. God is in us, and God is for us, which brings us to where we are today. And you just heard Pastor Donny read a moment ago from Isaiah chapter nine, verses six, and seven. I want to read those one more time as we start off today. This is what Isaiah predicted. For to us, a child is born for us a son is given. The government will be on his shoulders, and he will be called the Wonderful Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace doesn't get you excited, knowing that's who our God is of the greatness of His government and peace, there will be no end, He will reign on David's throne, and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice, and righteousness, from that time on till forever. Jesus is God-given to us. I love how Isaiah opens his prediction. He says, for us, a child is born to us a son is given. God has come and he has been given to us. And now one of the things we're really going to hit on today, we're really going to focus on this idea, and I love this is that we've been looking at all these prophets talking about Jesus, right? Isaiah, Jeremiah, mica, all of these people who have talked about Jesus spoken of Jesus, but what we're going to focus on today is that when Jesus came when he was born when he entered the picture, everything changed because suddenly God went from being spoken of to God speaking for himself. God was not spoken of anymore. When Jesus enters the picture. When he comes into our situation, God starts speaking for himself, he proclaims life in truth. He promises to crush the enemy underfoot. He gives us hope of a new reality of peace and truth, and that can be ours because of the gift of Jesus. So today, if you're taking notes, today's sermon title is too good to be true. too good to be true. That's something we can say about promises that people make, right? Sounds too good to be true. And unfortunately, a lot of times, that's the case, right? When people make promises, it's something we've discussed. Pastor Brenda discussed this a lot in week one of this series, promises are broken a lot. I think just our promises get boat broken time and time again. In fact, I think for me, one of the hardest kind of promises to take one of the hardest kinds of promises to be able to trust in and to be able to say, Okay, I'll believe you, I believe this is gonna come through is what I call telephone promises. Have you guys ever played the game telephone? Anybody ever played anybody online? You know, it's you give a message to somebody else they give to the next person, and it gets from start to finish. And by the time it gets there, it's crazy. And it's all muddled. I feel like that's how a lot of promises are. There is a person and the promise her, but in between the two, there's a lot of middlemen. A lot of people who muddy the message, who muddy the promise, and I see this happen a lot. This has happened to me. Anytime. If you work in customer service on a phone, I'm sorry, I don't this is not a personal attack. But man, let me tell you, just about every time I'm on a phone call with customer service. It's a bad experience. If I heard an amen, amen. Hallelujah. Right. But to get shouted down, that it's bad. It's just not good, right? You spend forever pressing buttons trying to talk to someone. In some of the worst ones. They don't even let you press a button. They're like, say yes or no, no. Yes. Okay. You said no, no, no, no, I didn't say no. You just said no. Again. No, I'm saying Yeah. Like, it's just so aggravating. And so after waiting forever, you finally talked to a person, you finally get a person you talk to them. You're explaining your issue. It's like spectrum or DirecTV, you're like this is can you please just get someone out? Please get this fixed. And you hear him? Do you hear that? Like you hear that? They're typing, they're clicking and clacking all over the keyboard, you're like, okay, they're, they're taking notes. Like, they're, they're listening to what I'm saying. And you get to the end of the call, like, sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm not going to be able to do this for you. I'm not going to be able to help you. But I'm going to have a supervisor get in contact with you. They're going to reach back out to you. We've got your callback number. And you're like pleading with them like please for love. Don't Don't hang up on me like I can't get off this call. Because I know what's going to happen. I know what's going to happen. All this stuff. I just told you all this stuff that I've just been relaying to you. And I've been trying to get you to help me all of these things that you've been taking copious notes on, is going to vanish. And I'm gonna have to do this whole process again. I know it, sir. I promise you. I promise you, sir. I've been taking notes, the next person who calls you, they'll be able to pick up right where we left off. And you hang up the phone, knowing that's not true. And sure enough, the person calls you back you answer like Hello, Mr. Young. This is so and so a spectrum. I was calling to reach out and help you I heard you had an issue. Like yes, yes, I did. I just spoke with you so and so. Yeah. So could you just share with me a little bit they feel is a little bit like no, they didn't? They didn't fill you in? You're like, why don't you tell me what my issue is like, let's see how good the notes were. And they have no idea what's going on. Right? And you can explain everything again. And it's so aggravating because the person promised they promised, right? Like I promise you to want to go through all this again, I promise will take care of it for you, I promise is going to happen. But the problem is that they're promising on behalf of someone else. They're promising on behalf of someone else. They're a middleman between you and the promise and it never seems to work out the way that it should. There always seems to be an issue the message always gets muddled. Anytime someone promises for something else or for someone else for something else. It just gets messed up. I love Amazon and I read the reviews, they helped me determine what to buy and what not to buy what to avoid. But even those as accurate as they can be messed up from time to time. We were getting ready to go on vacation. I mean, my wife and we ordered the supervisors he's like static cling on sun visors that are supposed to go on your windows. And so we got one for our two front windows. And then the back windows are kind of smaller, but they advertise, hey, we have ones even for those. So like, Oh, perfect. This is great because that's where the kids are going to be sitting and so it'll make sure it blocks it out. And so I looked it up and it said all the reviews, hey, this, these things run true to size. So whatever size you have, that's what it's gonna be like whenever it gets here. Don't worry about it. I'm like, okay, cool. So I've measured our back windows, order these things wherever they came, man, they were like the size of a big post-it note. They were so tiny. It didn't even make sense to put them on in the back windows like what in the world and all these people had promised all these people were vouched for saying these things run true to size, don't worry about it, you can buy them without worrying and like see that kind of stuff. It's that kind of stuff. It's the customer service phone calls, it's the Amazon reviews. It's the things that make it hard to take someone at their word because it's someone else getting In the middle promising for them that's one of the reasons I love my glasses, my glasses I got these are Warby Parker's anybody else have Warby Parker's know what Warby Parker's are right? Anybody, online there's an anybody online. I love these. The reason I love these glasses so much is because you can buy and order them online. But a lot of websites, what they'll do is like, they'll have you turn on your phone and turn on your camera. And they'll like using virtual reality superimposed the frames on your face. And this is what it looks like. And it just looks stupid. It looks it doesn't actually work. It feels like no, this is it's not going to look like that though. This is virtual reality. But with Warby Parker, what they do, is they have a free trial at-home kit. So you can go online, you can shop up to five different frames that you like, and then they send them to you for free and they get to your house pretty quick. So you can try these things on. See how they fit before you make a purchase. And it's free, which is awesome. You know, I love that so much. There is no middleman. There's it's just me. And the actual glasses me in the real deal. There's no one in the middle saying I know this is what the picture looks like. But I'm sure the work I promise the look good. Like, no, I can actually see for myself, they come directly to me. I can trust that. The thing that makes it hard is How can I trust someone or something that I can't see. I'm just taking someone else's word for it. How can I trust something when I can't really engage with the person or the thing or interact with the person or thing? I'm basically just taking someone else's word for it. And we don't do that with important promises, do we? I'll just take that person's word for it. When you got married, did your spouse show up? Or did a substitute show up? Like they couldn't make it? It's a busy day for them. I'm here in their place. Don't worry, I'll make all the same promises. It'll, it'll be fine. I'll, I'll promise for them that they will be here for better or worse, I'll promise. But no, we wouldn't put up with that. Because for the really important promises, we want to face to face interaction. We want the person to speak for themselves not through some intermediary, right? We don't want a middleman, we don't want a middleman to get in the way of everything. And as I think about that, I'm like, Man, I know. And I can admit, I felt that way about God before. Has anyone else ever been there with me felt that way about God felt like man there seems to be a lot of middlemen between me and God seems to be a lot of people getting in the way of me and what God has promised telling me exactly how things are going to go? I'm one of those middlemen. I'm your pastor, Pastor Jacob, I can be a middleman, who's telling you what God promises and tells you what God's going to do in your life and tells you how God's gonna come through for you. TV pastors, right online pastors that you love, and you listen to you, you get their podcasts, you listen to them over and over again, or maybe worship leaders or worship bands that you like listening to, and all of us advocate and push and say that God is promising X, Y or Z for you. And it can sound too good to be true. Right? I just talked with a guy last night at our Saturday service after it was over. And he's like, Man, I just, I've been burned. I have been so burned before by different churches that I've gone to. And he's like, and it's, I'm not even trying to say they're bad people. But I've gone there and they encouraged me to ties and to give because if I do that, then God will do this, then God will bless me and I can promise I'll not be able to make a bill. I don't know all this different stuff. And that just wasn't the case. And I'm frustrated and it's angry. I'm like, I don't blame you. Because you had a middleman between you and the promises of God and they sold you something that's not true. They told you I know you can count on he'll see that though don't worry about it.

That's a frustrating thing when trust gets broken. And seemingly it's God who is breaking the trust. If that's you if you've ever been frustrated feeling like Man, why can't God just speak for himself? That's why all the middlemen if he can raise people from the dead if he can park waters if he can create the universe, can't just talk to me. It's always got to be through some intermediary. It's always got to be through some middleman who's seemingly always has something to profit off of telling me a certain thing or another. Like really, I was talking with one of our MPs Wayne Simms in between services like yeah, it's a lot like a used car salesman, right? Feel like someone just telling you all the good stuff, and making all these promises about what God's gonna do for your life. And you're like, Man, I don't I don't want to hear that from the middle man. I want to hear from God Himself. I want to know that what God is saying he's backing up and He'll vouch for and he'll be able to see through. So if that is you, if you've ever felt like man, I wish God would speak for himself. I want you to know you are not alone. You're not alone. God's people that the nation of Israel, how they heard from God for years, was through prophets was through specific people that God would raise up and speak to them and through them, and they would communicate to the rest of the people and God would give incredible promises. Incredible things we've read about them these last three weeks, just the promises of Jesus, the prophecy of who he would be that he would be a God who is with us, a God who is in us, a God who is for us. These are amazing, incredible things. And even though all of those promises that we've read from Isaiah, from mica from Jeremiah, even though all of those promises are God, because that is God, God's word is God's word. That is God speaking through people. And even though that is God, it's still God speaking through someone. It's still God speaking through someone who isn't you.

It's still a middleman. Right? It's still someone else, it's still got speaking and making promises through someone else. And that can be hard to take. That can be hard to take whenever so many people who have claimed to be good, godly men and women have screwed up so royally. Right. I don't need to belabor the point. We all know the stories you've all seen the news break about scandals from a pastor from a church, or from some congregation who's doing things that they weren't supposed to do, abusing the position that they have, and speaking on behalf of God, saying things that God never said, making promises that God never made. That mistrust those broken promises, they hurt, they hurt and they hurt the way we view God, they hurt our trust in Him, which this is just a quick aside that I just want to remind everybody about because I can fall into this too. We all have. If you've been in the Christian world at any time, you all have pastors that you look up to, you have pastors that you listen to their podcasts, you watch them online worship teams that you love, and you get so much out of their music, and their lyrics. And they seem great, and I'm sure they are. They're great people. But let me tell you, they are not the hero of the story. No matter how great that pastor is, no matter how great you think I am, I'm not the hero of the story. Pastor Brenda is not the hero of the story. It has always been an only is Jesus. He is the hero of the story. Not even in our current day, when you read scripture, you may have named your kids after people in the Bible. And that's fantastic. Because there are some great people in the Bible. And guess what, they're not the hero. We've been talking about King David wasn't the hero of his stories God was. Moses is not the hero of his stories. God is God. Jesus is the hero of every single story. And thank God he is because that's who we want to be the hero of our story, someone who can actually see us through and actually fulfill his promises. Every other person will let us down except God, Jesus will always, always always be good. On his word, we can trust in Him, because He is a God, who is with us. He's the God who is in us. He is a God who is for us. And like we're talking about today, he is a God who wants to speak, who wants to work, and who wants to move through us, through you through every individual in this room, through everybody watching online. God wants to move, work and speak through you. He wants to fulfill his promises, every promise that he made, he wants to fulfill them through you, but don't take my word for it. Don't take my word for it. I want you to hear what Scripture says this is from the book of Hebrews, man, this, this set of verses, as soon as I knew we were going to be speaking on for this Christmas series, this idea of prophecy of all these people. Speaking of Jesus's coming, as soon as I knew that's what we were going to be talking about. I instantly highlighted this set of verses to be what we would end on because it's so good. And it's so true. This is what it says in Hebrews chapter one starting in verse one. In the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets many times and in various ways. So in the past, God spoke to us through the prophets. But in these last days, God has spoken to us by his Son, whom he is appointed the air of all things and through him, he also made the universe the sun is the radiance of God's glory, and he has the exact representation of his being sustaining all things by his powerful word. What that means is that when Jesus entered the scene, when Jesus came onto the scene, everything changed. Everything. Nothing has been the same. God went from speaking to other people, and that's how you heard his message to God is speaking through every single person. Again, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets, but in these last days, he has spoken to us He's spoken to me, he's spoken to you. He speaks to all of us through His Son, Jesus, no more middleman. No more people in the middle muddying up the message making promises on behalf of God. God speaks for himself now. And that has changed everything. My cousin Sarah, lives in California. And I hate it because I miss her. Whenever we were growing up, she was like another sibling, we hung out all the time, we're only two years separated, have a lot in common. So we love hanging out. And it's been hard having her so far out of town, right, like in California, especially during the pandemic, because they're so locked down. She's, like, not been able to come home at all. Like, we haven't seen her in a couple of years. And it's just difficult. It's very, very hard. But one of the cool things is how we're still able to keep in touch. Right? I mean, we've got FaceTime, which is great. I've actually had, she works at a church out there. And so I've had zoom meetings where I've gotten to be in meetings with her, which is kind of cool. Um, she sends, she's out there in Disneyland, our kids love Disney World, she sends us little like postcards from Disneyland and stuff to the kids, which is really cool. They love that. We text, we email, we do all these things. And that's great. But there's nothing like when we get to see her face to face, changes everything. It's a game-changer, being able to see her face to face up close getting to talk with her getting to hear her emotion, getting to see her and actually hug her and just have a good time with each other in person, it changes everything. And you see before Jesus came, essentially what we read about in the Old Testament time and time again, are people who had text messages from God, people who had postcards from God, just little slivers of what God was like just little shadows of what was coming. But when Jesus came, suddenly, God went from being postcards and text messages. And at the very best FaceTime calls. God went from all of that to suddenly being No, I am face to face, I am in person, and I am with you listen to me again, this is what it says. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son, the Son is the radiance of God's glory. And he is the exact representation of his being. The book of Colossians puts it this way, God allowed his entire form his entire deity, to exist in Jesus, everything. So when we look at Jesus, we see God, we see Him, Jesus is the perfect representation of his father. He is here, and he is with us. He's not a perfect representation that just comes to pastor Jacob. And then I tell you what God is like. He's not perfect. Jesus has come and he just speaks to pass to Brendan, Pastor Brenda gets to tell you what it's like, you get to experience it for yourself. You get to experience it for yourself, you can actually be in a relationship with God, he can be with you. He can be in you. He can be for you. And he can speak and work and move through you. So what's this mean? What's this mean? Whenever we look at the overall theme of this series about God making promises, well, it means don't take my word for it.

When it comes to all the promises that God has made, I don't want you to take my word for it. I want you to try it for yourself. I want you to just take me or any of the people else on staff or any other pastors here, don't take our word for it. Try God out for yourself. Me and Jessica, my wife, I just went on Friday night. We went and saw Spider-Man No way home. Absolutely, absolutely. We had our staff Christmas party and my mother-in-law and father-in-law was like, hey, all the kids can stay the night. So as soon as we found that out, we're like, Wait, we have a free night. told Jessica like find tickets like fine. I don't care where we got to go see this thing find tickets. And as long as we're not in the front row breaking our necks trying to watch it. Let's go. And so we went and saw it like nine o'clock. That night. So stinking good. As soon as it was over. I couldn't go I couldn't go to sleep. Like I'm a comic book nerd. I'm a nerd man. So I went home, the movies were over and I'm like, I can't go to bed. Like I feel like I gotta do something that was so good. It was like awesome is such a good movie. And when I've talked to people afterward about it, and reviews that I've read, I haven't I'm not spoiling anything. I see some people getting ready to be like, should I cover my No, I'm not spoiling anything to worry about. But whenever I've been talking to people about the movie, I'm like, it's just it's so good. I try to explain that a little bit. But every time I've talked about I end it was saying you just got to see it. Like you just got to go see it. People who've written reviews on it have been saying like, yeah, it's a movie but honestly, being in the theater watching it, it felt more like an event. It just felt like something you just got to experience. You got to try it out for yourself. I think that you know that the same thing is true to such a heightened degree about God in the promises that he makes. I can talk myself silly up here telling you about how faithful God is and how good God is and how He sees His Word. but it will just be empty words unless you try it for yourself. It'll just be a review that somebody wrote online and it may inspire you for a day may encourage you for a day. But until you have actually given in and said, You know what, I'm going to test God at His Word. I'm going to experience the promises for myself, I'm not just going to try to get close to this person, this middleman who tells me what God is like, I'm actually going to try to experience him for myself. And once you do, you will see that there is a God, who wants to be with you, who wants to be in you, who wants to work for you, and wants to work through you. He wants to prove his promises, every single promise that he has ever made. He wants to prove it through you, not through me telling you how good he is not through me telling you how great he is. He wants you to experience that for yourself. And no matter who you are, no matter where you've been, no matter what you've done. God wants to work and move and speak through you. You, not me, you, not pastor Brenda, you, not the staff, your cornerstone, he wants to work, speak and move through you, you do not have to be special, you have to be available. That's it, you work. This isn't. These aren't the days anymore, where the special middleman stands up and tells you exactly who God is. And you just take him at his word. Those days are over. Those days are gone. God has not spoken of he speaks for himself. Jesus has not spoken up, he speaks for himself, and he wants you to try him out for yourself. You don't have to be special, just faithful. God doesn't just speak through the chosen elect view. And let me tell you, cornerstone, we are trying our best to live this reality out every possible way that we can, you may have not even noticed it. But we have made little changes around here to help illustrate to help symbolize the fact that we put our money where our mouth is. And we truly believe that there aren't select special Christian people who are better than everybody else here. And we hold them in different regard. And if you get close enough to them, even close enough to pastor Jacob and you rub shoulders with me, maybe some of God's promise will fall on you. Maybe some of God's blessing will like to get passed off to you. We have tried to kill that notion. We do things like you may have not even noticed this, if you wanted to find out who was on staff at Cornerstone, what you used to do was go to Cornerstone Church dot-info, sign onto our website, click the tab that says about us. And then under there, there would be a little thing that says leadership. And you click on that. And then boom, there we are all of our beautiful smiling faces, right? Like a little, a little glamour shot, smiling on the website, trying to look, you know, trying to look appealing. And that's how you would know who was in leadership here at the church, who's the leaders, who the special people who are the people who are closer to God than everybody else around here, the ones who are up here and then the rest of the church is down here. Do you know how you find us now? Same thing Cornerstone Church, Dunn info, click on About us. And then now there's a tab that says, staff. Do you want to know why?

Because that's what we are. We're the staff. We're the people who are on the payroll here, to try our best to bring our church into the future that we feel like God is calling us to. But we are not special. We don't have some special access that I don't let me tell you, I don't have extra pages in my Bible that you don't like, Oh, your Bible is a revelation. Interesting. I've got some. Some of us have been blessed with a few other books. I'm sorry that you don't have those. But just let me be your middleman. Let me tell you what God's promising for you. And I'll let you know which way to go. Because I'm one of the specials. I'm one of the elect. We've done away with that. We don't want anyone thinking that same thing. Our board of directors used to be called our leadership board. And we change that our board of directors is called our board of directors because that's what they do. They help direct the overall mission of the church. They help give guidance and oversight. So we changed the name because we don't want anyone having the impression that there are certain people who are just better than everyone else. There are certain people who are just more godly than everybody else. No, we are a church that is full, including our staff, including our board of directors, including our pastor. We are a group of imperfect people who are trying our best to pursue holiness and follow Jesus the best that we can through the power of the Holy Spirit. That's what we are every single person in this church because there is no more middleman. There is no more middleman. God doesn't just work through the few select chosen people. God wants to work and speak and move through everybody. Everybody, he used to speak the prophets, but in these last days, he has spoken to all of us through His Son and He wants to speak through you and he wants to talk through you and he wants to work through it. You, in fact, do we have anybody in this room who's an MP at Cornerstone ministry partner? If you are, can you raise your hand anybody online, put it in the chat little raising, look around this room. See that right there shows you this is not a one-man or one-woman show like this is not that's not how the Kingdom of God is supposed to work in any church, I promise you, any church is making a difference for the kingdom of God, any church, that's making a difference, they would be able to do the same thing, have hands go up all around the sanctuary because there's not just a few select chose, perfect people who run this thing. It's all of us. It's all of us imperfectly trying to chase after our savior who is leading the way. That's what it is. Because God works through all of us. He works through all of us. So that means we don't have to take others at their word about God, we can check it out for ourselves. We can take God at His Word about himself. He speaks for himself, he makes promises for himself in delivers on them himself. I guys, I could talk the rest of our time I could talk the rest of the morning, I could talk to the Browns game kicks off tomorrow, five o'clock in the afternoon about how God has fulfilled his promises for me about all these different ways about how Romans 828 is true, that God truly does work all things together for the good of those who love Him, and who are called according to His purpose, that as I've followed God, as I've trusted him as best as I can, that he is proven faithful time and time again, His love has sustained me time and time again, his forgiveness has met me where I am time and time again, I could tell you all of these times where God's promises have come true. But I don't want you to take me at my word for it.

I don't want that. I want you to try it for yourself. I want you to try it for yourself. I don't want Sunday should not be your church day. You should be trying this for yourself all week, all week, getting into communion and relationship with God all week, and just allowing him to prove his promises to be true. Not trying to just snuggle up to him his promises on Sunday, every morning, and then get back away from him then come back next week. I know we need to be investigating and testing him all week. Like God, hey, I'm trusting you. I'm trusting you. You've made these promises. And I'm not taking the pastor's word for it anymore. I am actually going to trust you and step out in faith and believe you to be good at your word. And he's done it for me. He's done it for others, and he will do it for you. He'll do it for you because he wants to do it through you. He wants to work through you. God who used to be spoken of wants to speak for himself in your life. I'm going to ask the worship team if they would come back up. As they do, I just want to remind everybody what we're celebrating exactly at Christmas time. Just remind everybody what we're really doing every single Christmas what we are doing is we are celebrating and remembering the fact that Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise that God has made. Jesus is the fulfillment of every single promise God has ever made. It finds its fulfillment and finds its pinnacle, in the person of Jesus. You see God in the book of Genesis, we actually see God make the first promise. In the book of Genesis, Genesis chapter three, the first book of the Bible were only three chapters in, we already screwed things up. three chapters in and we sin we believe that we should be in the place of God that we knew what was best for us. And mankind we rebelled, we turned our back on God. And in doing so we brought upon ourselves sin and death. We did that to ourselves. But God is the God who leads with love, decided this is not going to be the end of the story. I'm going to bring a rescuer of Redeemer I'm going to rescue this situation. And God made a promise in Genesis chapter three, verses 14 and 15. That one of these days, the enemy the accuser, Satan, the one who deceived the world that one of these days his head would be crushed under the heel of the Messiah. He made that promise and then 1000s of years later, he fulfilled it. He called his shot. And then he knocked it out of the park. By sending Jesus at Christmas, Jesus coming, living a perfect life, dying a death that we deserved, rescuing us from sin and death by triumphing over on the cross and then rubber stamping and validating everything by three days later rising from the dead. That's the greatest promise there's ever been made the greatest promise that has ever been delivered on Jesus. It's Jesus and what he has accomplished. So the fact of the matter is, is that in Jesus, we have something better than a promise. Promises are great. But in Jesus, we have something better than promise we have a person, an actual person that we can follow, we have something better, we have someone. And we have someone that we can stake our life to, that we can follow through with no matter what life throws our way. And we can trust that he will be good on his word to see us through the as I said, we have to be available. We have to be available. That's, that's all God is looking for. He's not looking for you to be perfect. He's looking for you to be available. He's not looking for you to be holy, instantly, he's looking for you to be available. He just wants people who are saying, God, Hey, I am willing to take you at your word, I'm willing to trust in your promises. And I'm willing to follow you as my king. And so that's what I want to challenge all of us today, as we close out today's service is Are you willing? And are you ready to follow Jesus as your King, to truly trust him and take him at his word when he makes promises to us? I want to tell you, it's the only promise I'll make to you today. He's good on his word. I can promise you that. But I don't want you to take my word for it. I want you to choose to trust him. I want you to choose to believe in His word, I want you to choose to trust in His promises. And if you are willing to do that, and these next moments as the worship team leads us, I would like I don't want everyone to just stand up instantly. What I would like is if you are ready to make that commitment to follow Jesus as your King, to truly trust him and take him at his word and follow where he leads at that

moment, to stand up in worship. At that moment to say, You know what, I'm making my declaration today. That could mean you've already been following Jesus and you're just re-upping on that commitment today. That can mean you're making it for the first time ever, or that you used to follow but man, you've been training for a while and you're recommitting again today to following him to believing him to be good on his word. But wherever you're at, I cannot stress enough. It's time to trust in Jesus. Because we have seen time and time again. He makes promises and he delivers on them. There is no middleman anymore. You don't have to be worried, you know badly how bad you've been burned in the past. You don't have to worry about that anymore. God does not need to be spoken of God speaks for himself. And he's speaking.