Before I start rolling, I want to say thank you very much to Marissa and Robin and everyone
else who's helped out today.
Can we give them another hand?
Okay, here's my embarrassing story.
There was one morning where I was preaching at another church and the worship leader and
the pianist called about an hour before service and said, we're sick.
And I had no other backup but a nice lady who played her guitar and sang.
It was funny to me because she was always asking to play her guitar and sing more.
But that morning when I called her up and said, hey, we need your help, she said, oh,
I don't know.
I'm so embarrassed.
I don't know if I can.
And so I said, I tell you what, I'll sing with you.
If that makes you feel better, I'll sing with you.
And so we stood out in the hallway before and she was playing her guitar and I was
singing a couple songs and she looked at me and said, oh, pastor, I think I'd be better
on my own.
So my thinking, you know, I was being helpful and supportive, which I guess it did give
her some confidence, right?
She was like, ah, I think I'm just going to be better on my own.
And I was okay with that.
I was humbled, but I was okay with that.
This morning I'm going to be sharing about a place called Galilee.
Our sermon series right now is talking about different places, different locations in the
Bible.
And today's a place called Galilee.
And one possible title for it, I thought about a few is where's Galilee?
What is it?
And why is it so bad?
Because what we're going to talk about today is that it was a place that didn't have the
best reputation.
And if we could start by putting up a nice picture of it.
All right, cool.
And I wish I had a laser pointer, but I couldn't think of where to put one.
Up there toward the top, do you see the red and the yellow?
All right, there we go.
Up there in the top in the yellow, red and yellow, those are two areas called Zebulun
and Naphtali.
Pretty weird names, but those were two places up north.
And what made them significant was that they were pretty geographically isolated.
You see that tan area down at the bottom?
It says Judah.
That's where most of the important stuff was happening.
That's where the major cities were in this country, which was Israel.
And up in the north was a more rural area.
The other thing about that area was, well, I'll stop for right now.
If you'd go ahead and take that back down.
I'm going to be skipping over some stuff.
This tells us how popular that northern region was.
King Solomon in first Kings nine tried to give it away.
Someone had helped him, given him gold and timber to build his temple, to do different
things.
So there's a king named Hyrum and Solomon said, you know what is a bonus?
I'll throw in Galilee.
You can have all of those towns.
Sounds like a nice thing to do.
Sounds generous.
But after the king went and looked at them, he came back and said, that was disappointing.
You can have them back.
Ouch.
Have you ever had someone give you something and they thought they were doing something
really nice and you really didn't want it?
That's happened to me at yard sales before.
You buy something and they're grateful.
So they decide that on your way out, they're going to give you something else, but you
really don't want it.
Thank you so much for buying those shirts.
I tell you what.
You can have this puzzle, this hundred piece puzzle that has 73 original pieces and 10
pieces in the box that are actually from a different puzzle.
And that's my gift to you for stopping at my yard sale and buying something.
You have to, you know, you have to put it in your car and leave and pretend like you're
grateful for it.
So you can go home and throw it away or put it in your puzzle pile that you never plan
to put together.
But it's really not that much of a gift.
And that's what Galilee was like.
It was up north.
It wasn't very well developed and it couldn't even really be given away.
The other problem with that territory up there is they were the closest ones to the biggest
enemy at that time.
It was an empire called Assyria and up there toward the north, that's where they were.
So when they came down to attack, the first place they were going to go through was Galilee.
And so they were constantly under threat.
And when Assyria did move down from the north, the first place that they took out was Galilee.
They were the first place to have their cities destroyed and the first place to be exiled,
which means that they were the first place to have their people taken out and sent to
different countries.
And then the empire Assyria brought other people in to live there.
So their language, their religion, their culture were wiped out first.
Then later Assyria came down and took out the rest of the country.
So it was a tough spot.
They were rural.
They were up in the north.
They were isolated.
Their towns weren't even wanted to be given away and they were under constant military
threat of being taken over.
And they were the first ones to go down when Israel was attacked.
Now that brings us to Isaiah chapter 9 verses 1 and 2.
And if you want to look up a verse today in your Bible, your phone, iPad or otherwise,
this is one of the two that are good to look up.
Now Isaiah was a prophet who knew what had happened to this area called Galilee.
And he knew that they didn't have the greatest reputation.
And so God gave him these words.
Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who are in distress.
In the past, he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naftali, which was the old
name for Galilee.
But in the future, he will honor Galilee of the nations.
By the way of the sea beyond the Jordan, the people walking in darkness have seen a great
light on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.
So he shares these words of hope specifically for that area of Galilee.
And he promises that eventually something great will happen there.
Even though they were the ones who were embarrassed first, they were the first ones who lost in
war.
They were the first ones taken over and they didn't have a good reputation or resources
to begin with.
That's the place where God promises he's going to do something special.
Now we're going to speed ahead to Galilee in Jesus time.
God was talking about Galilee seven hundred years before the time of Jesus.
Now there is actually a country separating Galilee from Judea.
My example I thought of, and it's not a perfect one, is when we think of Alaska and the continental
United States, you had to travel through another country to get here, to get from one place
to the other.
So it wasn't easy to get to.
Even more difficult, people didn't like to go directly through that country because they
didn't have a good relationship with them.
So it would actually go around, which means it was an even longer route.
There were long ways from Jerusalem, the capital city.
There are long ways from the temple, the most important religious area.
And they were also known as politically unstable and prone to rebellion.
In Acts chapter five, a Jewish leader talks about Judas the Galilean.
And what he's talking about is someone who started an uprising, tried to start a war
with Rome, which was a very bad idea, and it had bad consequences for everyone else.
So they didn't want to see them do that.
So Galilee was known as a place where there were uprisings, where it was not politically
stable, where there were problems coming from there.
Now I think of more friendly versions of what it would be like with Galilee and Judea today.
And I think of Michigan and Ohio.
There's a constant rivalry between the two.
It goes back a long ways when Michigan and Ohio actually couldn't become states because
they were fighting over the territory of Toledo.
They couldn't even get in the union because they were fighting over their boundaries.
And again, in friendly ways, that's continued today.
And it's especially manifested in the game of Michigan versus Ohio State in football.
The Ohio coach doesn't even like to refer to Michigan's school by name.
They call it the school up north.
And if you can't win that game from Michigan to coach, you're probably going to get fired
pretty soon.
It means more to Michigan and Ohio State fans than any other game the entire year.
There's that competitiveness between them.
And when we think of competitiveness or differences in culture, I think of different states, different
cities.
What are impressions that we have of people from New York City?
Maybe people who are more arrogant, people who don't really say hello, people who think
they know what they're talking about compared to what reputation do Midwesterners have?
Being more friendly, almost a little simple, things like that.
I know I had a certain impression of Canada.
I figured that it wasn't a very diverse place.
Because in my experience, the farther north you go, the less diversity there is.
At least it's that way in Michigan.
And I also couldn't imagine that people from Canada were really all that proud about being
from Canada.
Which was purely just a bias on my part.
Until I got to go to Winnipeg on July 1st, which is Canada Day, there were people from
all around the world that were gathered there.
It was a very diverse city.
And they were so proud to be Canadian.
There were flags everywhere.
There were parades.
There were festivals.
And so I realized, wow, this place is a lot more than I'd realized.
Now what about Galilee, switching back to Galilee and the Gospels?
In John chapter 1, someone says, nothing good can come from there.
In John 7, they said, how can the Messiah come from Galilee?
So again, the expectation was that nobody really special could come from there.
And they even had an accent.
We see that in Matthew 26.
You could tell what region someone was from just from the way that they would talk.
And yet in Matthew 4, 12 through 16, and you can switch back over to there if you'd like
to look it up in your Bible, we find out where Jesus did his ministry and why.
Matthew chapter 4, verse 12, it says, when Jesus heard that John had been put in prison,
he withdrew to Galilee.
Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulon
and Naphtali.
To fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah, land of Zebulon and land of Naphtali,
the way of the sea beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the living people living
in darkness have seen a great light.
On those living in the land of shadow of death, a light has dawned.
Can I switch out to a cordless mic, please?
Somebody could come help me with that.
And then Alex, if you could shut this one down.
Are we live here?
Perfect.
That other one keeps slipping down and I didn't have a very good hold on it.
All right.
That's a little bit more comfortable.
So I've tried to explain to you that Galilee was not a very popular place.
Did we understand that so far?
Okay.
It had a bad reputation.
Are we on that so far?
Okay.
And yet Jesus chose there to do his ministry.
When it was time for Jesus to start preaching, where did he go?
Galilee.
Now was that an accident?
Was that something that just happened by chance?
That that's where he grew up?
That that's where he called his disciples from?
No.
He chose a place that had a bad history.
He chose a place that had a bad reputation to do his ministry from there.
To bring hope to a people who had not had it.
To bring honor to a people who had been dishonored for centuries.
My next question is, are you from Galilee?
Do you come from a place where you might be embarrassed to tell others?
Do you come from a town where people might judge you for saying you're from there?
Do you come from a family where people make assumptions because of who that family is?
Do you have things in your past that embarrass you?
Things that you're not proud of?
Do you have characteristics maybe about you today that are places of shame?
Things about you that you're not excited to share?
It could even be a character, something to do with your job.
Have you had someone assume who you are because of your job?
Have you had someone assume your value or what your skills are because of how you work?
Is there something in your personal life again where people might decide what kind of a person
you are or what your history is?
Whether you're married or not married, whether you're divorced or single, who your parents
are or what kind of a family that was, how you grew up.
Those places could be a Galilee.
They could be a place where you carry with you that show your reputation in a way that
you might not like.
Or it might be something that people don't know about at all that you carry with you
and identify yourself with.
What's interesting about God, what's interesting to me is he does his best work where we are
vulnerable.
He does his best work where we feel shame.
He does his best work in the places we feel challenged.
He chose to work in Galilee because he chose to show that he can call his disciples from
anywhere.
He could choose to call disciples that were fishermen, not an esteemed vocation.
He could choose the women to follow him, the women to be his disciples who were not women
of good reputation, who were women who had been divorced, women who had been prostitutes,
men from all kinds of different backgrounds, even though some people judged him for that.
People judged him for his hometown, Nazareth.
He chose to grow up and he chose to come from a place that was easy for other people to
judge him for.
He chose to be around people with disabilities.
He chose to heal people who were sick, people who were bleeding, people who had things that
made others uncomfortable.
Often our assumption in our life is that the place where God can use us most, where he
can use us best, are the places in our lives where we are shiniest, are the places in our
lives where it's most easy to see our gifts, where we look the best.
But God shows us that that's not actually where he does his best work.
He does his best work in the places where we are the most challenged.
I'd like to give a couple examples and then we'll wrap up.
One place that I think you could call a Galilee that's been a beautiful place of ministry
in our church that I've gotten to see is our food pantry at Earl Hanson Elementary.
Earl Hanson Elementary, which I know some of you attend, so I don't mean any harshness
on it, but it's not a school in the richest part of town.
It's not a school that has the newest building.
It has people in that school who have families that have needs that are hungry.
The food pantry that we offer there during the school year, are we still doing, Michelle,
are we doing any food pantry here during the summer?
No, okay, that's what I thought.
I didn't want to say it's during the school year and then have you correct me later.
I've gotten to go a few times and the time that I went, we count by household how many
kids are in households and how many people serve.
There were 50 kids served in their households by the food.
20 different households that fed 50 kids and 80 people overall.
If you've been in the kitchen there, which is where food is distributed from, it's a
really small kitchen.
The food pantry area is a small area.
Yet, how beautiful that people are able to be fed from there.
When I'm sitting down there, I very easily would say, you could call it a Galilee.
There are smells of substances down there that you don't find everywhere.
There are parents who participate in cannabis.
There are kids who aren't necessarily from the households with the best hygiene.
One thing I love about down there is you hear different languages.
You get to see people from different cultures.
You see children interpreting for their parents, whereas there's difficulty in accessing resources.
You also see families who have needs that you wouldn't anticipate that from, who would
look for lack of a better word, what you might think of as normal.
There are even some staff people that help with the programs of after school where the
kids are fed that also participate in the food pantry and take some food home.
To me, it's a great example of a place that isn't the most polished, isn't the most heavily
advertised, but where God in our church is and are doing some of the best work.
Feeding those who are hungry, being a blessing, showing kindness.
I love to see how God is able to do that there.
My last example from my own life.
Before my injury in 2015, I was six feet tall.
I was about 190 pounds fit.
I loved to play basketball.
I loved to lift weights.
I drove a fast car.
My Lincoln with a V8 was one of my prized possessions.
I bought it used and it was 12 years old, so it wasn't something extra fancy to anybody,
but it was my great source of pride.
When I would go and preach on Sundays, I preached then.
I took a lot of pride in wanting to look well, my appearance, wanting to present myself well,
wanting to present the church well.
I did my best.
In many ways, it was effective.
I don't want to make it sound like I wasn't able to preach well before or that it didn't
reach people, but now after my injury, I find myself in a bit of a Galilee.
I have some limitations that I didn't have before.
There are a lot of things about me that if I would have seen before, I would have found
embarrassing.
I would have found very distracting.
And yet, God is able to use me in ways today that he wasn't able to use me before.
He's able to minister through me to people that I was not able to be the same witness
before.
He's able to use the fact that I'm not able to wear the same clothes that I used to because
of how they fit or trying to stay warm to change my appearance to probably something
more humble.
And yet, God uses that in a special way.
He uses that in a way to bless others that I couldn't do on my own.
I didn't choose, but brings him glory in a special way.
And so my question is, where is your Galilee?
Where is it that God wants to work in you and show his glory in you in a way that you
might not pick or choose?
It wouldn't be the first thing that you would offer up to others, but it's the place that
he might find most useful.
And where is that place in our community?
Those places in our community might not be the first places that we would expect them
to be.
There are quite a few churches in my area building, because it's a newer developed
part of town.
It's kind of where the population is moving out in northeast Bettendorf.
But it crosses my mind that means that there are fewer churches in the older neighborhoods.
That means that there are fewer churches where people already live and have lived for years.
And because they're moving farther out of town, it may be more difficult for people
to find transportation to them unless you have a car.
Where is the Galilee in our communities?
It could be in a school kitchen, during food pantry.
It could be in different places in town.
And so that's why we're so proud to be a part of the Green Bush community and we pray so
hard for God to work here.
Because we know there are areas in our community that are at Galilee that need God's special
work and where he desires to use us to do that work.
Let's pray.
Father, I thank you so much that you sent your son to a place that didn't have a great
reputation.
You sent your son to a place that had people with an accent, that other people judged,
that you chose to spend your time with people that weren't accepted by others, especially
religious people.
And I thank you in our lives that you call us, even though some of us might not expect
to be called by you, even though some of us might not feel worthy to be used by you.
In those places where we feel most disqualified, most embarrassed, help us to be reminded those
are the places you like to show yourself at work most.
That's where you want to show your love most.
In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.