Reading from Isaiah chapter nine and verse six.
If you have your Bibles, you're welcome to turn
to Isaiah chapter nine, verse six.
It'll also be up on the screen.
Isaiah nine and verse six reads,
for a child will be born for us,
a son will be given to us,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
He will be named wonderful counselor,
mighty God, eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
We are in a series called The Name,
and we are continuing in this study of these four titles
of the character of the Messiah King,
who was promised, as we talked about last week,
promised more than 700 years before his fulfillment.
More than 700 years before even the mother was born,
his mother Mary was born.
There was a promise that this,
the royal birth announcement,
which is what we're reading here,
of 700 years plus before the actual birth.
And we asked questions like,
what will this king's kingdom be like?
And what kind of king will this child be?
And what kind of king does humanity need
if he is to be the kind of king he's been promised,
the saving king?
What do we need?
And the resounding answer from Isaiah chapter nine is,
he is wonderful counselor.
He is mighty God.
He is eternal Father,
and he is Prince of Peace.
Now, humanity's problems aren't political.
The greatest problem facing humanity is not a political one,
even though you go through any election and you'll see,
it seems like an existential threat.
It seems like the end of the world each time.
It's not, our greatest problem isn't political.
Humanity's greatest problem isn't economic or social,
even though many of us in this room
come from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
Some of us may have grown up with much,
and some of us with very little.
Some may have much now, and some may have very little,
but our greatest problem isn't economic or social.
Many have promised to save humanity
through some better way of governing,
some better system of thinking, some new ideology.
An example of this would be the ideology of communism,
which sprung up in the late 1800s into the 1900s.
And we saw the devastation that communism brought
on the world as many hundreds of millions of people
were killed seeking the perfect world
that communism promised.
Communism had this idea of a free world,
free from all economic inequality,
free from, it was a classless society.
It would end exploitation.
Global peace would erupt.
An abundant provision, a coat for every man
was the communist saying, a coat for everyone.
The Marxist-Leninist ideology envisioned this idea
of a new man, a Soviet man,
someone that could be built through this ideology,
an individual thoroughly reshaped and freed
from all selfish desires and flaws
that they attributed to capitalist societies.
These are but one example of an ideology
that came upon humanity.
We see it maybe not expressed in the same ways,
but expressed even in our own political system
where we have different parties
that push different agendas and make them existential
as if it's the end of the world if this doesn't happen,
or the world will be better if this happens.
And all of these, many of them are great,
many of them are not, but they're very important.
Many of them are great, many of them are things
that I completely agree with,
but none of them are the greatest problem.
None of them fix the greatest problem that humanity faces.
These ideologies have a fatal flaw.
And it's the same fatal flaw that even Christians,
an ideology that Christians take on,
and that ideology is the ideology of morality.
If we just behave better, we can have a peaceful,
loving, thriving society, even within the church.
And so I don't know about you, how you grew up,
but I grew up in some of the churches that I went to
where there was a whole lot of, you can't wear that,
that's not Christian, you can't say that,
that's not Christian, you can't do that, that's not Christian.
You can't play drums, I don't know if you guys
grew up with that, drums are from the devil.
That was my wife on the drums, by the way.
Drums are from the devil.
If you have drums, well, you can't be a Christian church.
If you don't wear your skirts to the knee,
or below the knee, or around the knee,
or over the knee, or under the knee,
and we wouldn't talk about the things that were most important,
we would talk about morality or moralizing,
we would moralize everything, it was about behaving better,
and we would get together and we'd all be scared to death
that we would do something wrong
and the community would shame us.
And still not dealing with the greatest issue,
the greatest problem.
Because life is a life of self-created,
and we're not dealing with the greatest problem.
Because like morality, like communism,
like any political or governing system or ideology,
the fatal flaw is that it can only work from the outside in.
It can only work from the outside in.
A command, and then we try to modify our behavior.
Get in line.
It can only work from the outside in,
and it only can get so deep into a person.
It can't change the most fundamental parts of who we are.
It can't change our heart.
And we need something so much more than moral guidance
or inspiration or some new ideology to come along.
We need something that works from the inside out.
Humanity's greatest problem is sin.
And humanity's greatest need is a need for a mighty deliverer.
We need a mighty hero to deliver us
from an enemy that is within,
one that we could never conquer on our own.
And so we look today at the second title
of the character of the Messiah,
the first being wonderful counselor,
as we looked at last week.
And today we look at the Messiah who is the Messiah,
and today we look at the Messiah who is mighty God,
or El Gabor, the warrior king,
the divine deliverer, not just a compassionate counselor,
but also a king who wields absolute authority and strength.
And yet there'll be something very different
about the one who is described as mighty God,
this Messiah king.
His beginning will tell something about the way
in which he will deliver us,
and it will be completely and wildly counter
to the way of the world,
as we saw even with his wisdom and counsel.
The mighty, this mighty God comes to us first
as a humble meek and mild babe.
He's not a mighty man who was born and has some heroic story
of growing up to be a mighty hero.
He is mighty God, and yet he still comes to us as a babe.
That's not how mighty divine deliverers come as babies.
And yet this one comes humble, meek,
and mild, wrapped in a blanket.
Mighty God, humble in his arrival.
Isaiah tells us that Jesus who is the Messiah
will be our warrior king.
He will be the one who delivers his people
from the greatest enemy that faces humanity,
the greatest problem, sin and death.
And there are four ways that I wanna highlight
how Jesus is the fulfillment of this prophetic word
of many hundreds of years before his birth,
that Jesus is the prophetic fulfillment
of the warrior king.
The first way is in his power in creation.
Colossians, I apologize, see my voice may sound really funny
and I may squeak at times, so I'm not going through puberty.
I don't think so, at least.
I did have my 45th birthday this year, so.
But something's going on, I don't know what it is.
So if I get a little squeaky, I apologize.
Colossians chapter one has this beautiful doxology in it.
I love this passage because Colossians
is one of the early writings of the New Testament,
one of the earliest.
And in the first chapter, there's this wonderful doxology.
It's basically, you could think of it as either
a recitation that the church would have said
when they gathered together, or it is a,
thank you, darling, recitation or it very well
could have been a song that was sung.
You want to see what an early church,
first century church song would have looked like.
Look in Colossians chapter one.
And beginning in verse 15, we read,
he is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn over all creation.
For everything was created by him
in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities,
all things have been created through him and for him.
I don't know how to drink this without like
gargling sounds and okay.
Okay.
All things created through him.
All things created for him.
Colossians one five says that Jesus Christ
uniquely reveals God's nature and possesses
the ultimate authority over all creation.
He is the image of the invisible God.
And so in his incarnation, in this baby being born,
it is affirming that Jesus perfectly represents
and makes known to humanity the unseen God.
God is breaking into our reality.
And we can see the fullness of God in Christ Jesus.
And when it refers to him in verse 15
as the firstborn over all creation,
it's not saying that he was created,
but this is the idea in the first century
that the firstborn, once he was born,
the firstborn male, he was immediately
the inheritor of the entire estate.
The firstborn was the one who was heir apparent
or the one who already owned everything,
even if he didn't yet possess it.
And as Jesus, the second person in the Trinity,
a part of the Godhead, Colossians,
is describing him as the one over,
preeminent, the highest rank over everything that exists.
Why?
Well because he was, as the book of John tells us
in his prologue, the word through which
all things were created.
Apart from him, not one thing was made.
This mighty king who will be born as a baby
is the mighty one who through his word
created all things, seen and unseen.
Not just the physical realm, the spiritual realm as well.
The angelic beings, the cosmic forces,
the political structures, the nations, the peoples.
Nothing operates independent of Christ's sovereignty
and dominion.
And this mighty warrior king possesses the power
to create and sustain all things.
There's a story in Matthew of a time
when Jesus is with his disciples.
Some of you will remember this.
Jesus is with his disciples and they get into a boat
and they begin to cross over the lake.
And Jesus hops down and lays down and what does Jesus do?
Takes a snooze, right?
He's been ministering hard,
people are always talking back to him.
He's gonna take a little nap.
So he takes a nap in this boat on his way across the lake
and what happens?
A big storm rises up, right?
He's on the lake, a big storm comes
and the storm begins to batter the boat and hit it
and pretty soon the disciples are terrified.
And what is Jesus doing?
Sleeping.
He's perfect at peace.
Sleeping like a baby.
And the disciples are yelling and yelling
and the disciples are yelling and screaming
and calling and thinking this is the end of their life.
In fact, at one point to wake him up,
they yell, Lord save us.
We are going to die.
And what does Jesus do?
He gets up and he says,
why are you afraid, oh you of little faith?
And then he rebuked the wind and he rebuked the sea.
And there was great calm.
And it says the men, the disciples were amazed
and they asked this question.
What kind of man is this?
Even the winds and the seas obey him.
What kind of man is this?
Well he is the mighty God foretold before
who holds every atom in all of the universe
in its bright full place.
And by his will and his call can move anything
as he pleases.
He's the mighty God of creation.
But we also see his power in redemption.
His power displayed in redemption.
Jesus' might is not only cosmic
but it is also personal and redemptive.
Here we see a kind of power that before Christ
was wholly foreign to humanity.
Power that his lowly birth would foretell.
His power in redemption is not one of brute strength.
He is not the conquering king that even his disciples expected
who would ride in valiantly on a horse into the city
and have a massive army that he accumulated out in the desert
marching into Jerusalem to overthrow the governments
and establish his kingdom.
This was not his way.
His power was exercised in a wholly completely
upside down way.
It was through meekness.
The cosmic powers of the second person of the Trinity
harnessed and controlled and directed to one single purpose.
The purpose of saving God's creation.
This is power that could have commanded a hundred thousand angels
to descend as he was being abused,
as he was being whipped and ridiculed and mocked.
Instead he chose suffering in shame, humiliation,
and ultimately death by his own creation.
And why?
Why would he do that?
Because there was only one way to deliver his creation
from the grip that sin and the power that death held on them.
He would have to break the power of sin
by fulfilling all justice and all righteousness,
by paying the just penalty for the sins of all mankind,
past, present, and future,
by becoming obedient to death, even death, on a cross.
And this cross, it would become the symbol of God's power
and it would become the mockery of the world.
It was a kind of triumph, a kind of power
that could not even begin to be understood by the world.
It was called foolishness.
Stop talking foolishness.
That the mighty one, the warrior king, would come
and find himself on a cross.
And I don't think we understand.
If you've grown up in the church like me,
then the story of the cross has probably become somewhat
of a staple and you're either indifferent to it,
numb to it, or it's a beautiful thing.
But it's hard to understand in a culture
like the first century what the cross would have represented
when someone says, I worship a crucified Lord.
It would have been the laughing stock.
In fact, it was the laughing stock.
There was a disciple of Jesus called Alexiom Nos.
I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce his name,
but Alexiom Nos, Alexiom Nos, who,
he was a believer in Jesus.
He followed Christ.
And he was mocked and ridiculed.
In fact, this is one of the earliest depictions
of Jesus on a cross.
You know, if you go into a Roman Catholic church,
you will oftentimes see Jesus on a cross
in beautiful forms all over the world.
Well, the earliest depiction of Jesus on a cross,
an emblem or a picture, was hand-carved into the side
of a plaster wall in a house,
and it was intended to mock a disciple of Jesus
who worshiped a crucified Lord.
Nate, you have that picture?
Oh, it's white.
Never mind.
There you go.
For a second there, it was there.
I'll describe it.
There is what looks like a stick figure of a man on a cross,
a crude drawing of a man on a cross,
except his head has been replaced with the head of a donkey.
And Alexiomenos is standing down next to the cross
with the man who looks like a donkey on the cross,
and he's raising his hand up to it,
and underneath it it says,
Alexiomenos worships his God.
And it was a complete mockery of Christianity.
It was a complete mockery of a mighty warrior
who would end up dying on a cross,
which was the most shameful death anyone could endure
in the Roman world.
Oh, look at your God.
And yet God, in his perfect wisdom, said,
this is the way.
This is the way that I will break the power of sin and death.
In Colossians chapter 2, verse 14, we read,
he erased the certificate of debt for our sins.
He erased the certificate of debt with its obligations
that was against us and opposed to us,
and has taken it away by nailing it to the cross.
Amen?
The cross demonstrates God's mighty power
to break the hold of sin on all of humanity.
And the resurrection of Jesus
shouts that death is finally defeated.
You know, a defeated enemy doesn't need to be resisted anymore.
A defeated enemy needs no resistance.
This is what's amazing.
I mentioned this in the first service.
It's not in my notes, but yesterday we had a memorial service
here in our facilities for a man named Art.
Maybe some of you met Art.
Art was an older gentleman,
a really great friend of Junia and their family,
Kimberly and Kyle,
and clearly loved because the place was backed.
And Art was a believer, but he was...
The interesting fact about Art is he didn't put his hope
and faith in Christ until he was in his 70s.
And once he did, once Jesus became Lord and Savior,
his life was set on fire for Jesus.
He wanted to serve and love as many people as he can,
and people testified one after the other.
Sometimes he'd be in the grocery line,
and he'd be like, we gotta go, Dad!
And he'd want to share the love of Jesus with the person there
because he was so excited about what God Christ had done,
the salvation, unashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Amen, amen.
But here's the deal.
One of the things that I've observed in the many funerals
that I've seen here at our facility over the years,
Christian funerals are different.
Christian memorials are so different.
I have sat in here of families of other religions
as they wailed and screamed and clawed and cried
and talked about their family member who passed away
but with no hope whatsoever.
That's it.
All I've got is a memory.
But I've sat on Christian funerals
where people said, I'm hurting.
I'm hurting.
I miss them.
But I know they are with their Savior.
I know that they are with God.
And I am happy for them even while I hurt.
And we saw that with art.
Those in the faith who said, I will see you again, brother.
Just a matter of time.
See, death is defeated,
so death doesn't need to be resisted anymore.
For believers, you know, if you are a nonbeliever, man,
you want to squeeze as much time out of this life as possible,
right?
Because once it ends, it's over.
But for a believer, death isn't the end.
It's just a doorway to something so much better.
And so it doesn't need to be resisted anymore.
Death is defeated in Christ's resurrection.
The world views the cross as weakness,
views a mighty king who triumphs through humiliation
and weakness and shame as detestable, foolishness.
But the foolishness of the world is the wisdom of God.
God chose the cross to display his power and his wisdom
in an unexpected way.
The power of God is shown because what seemed like defeat
in the crucifixion was actually ultimate victory.
And the human heart lost to sin can now be reconciled back to God
through Christ Jesus.
The power of the cross is that it provides salvation to everyone
who will believe.
God's ultimate power is displayed not through crushing his enemies,
but by being crushed for them.
God's ultimate power displayed not by crushing or smiting his enemies,
but by allowing those enemies, the sin of those enemies,
to crush him.
But because he is mighty warrior God, it did not crush him out.
The resurrection proves that.
That Jesus won on the cross by losing, he conquered by being conquered,
and he will reign with love and humility over his people.
But we also see the power of God fulfilled in Christ Jesus
in his power in judgment.
This is number three of four.
There's a pop kind of psychologist out there named Jordan Peterson.
Some of you probably have heard of him.
He talks about how a virtuous man, a man of virtue, a man to be respected
is a man who is capable of harming,
but learns to control the capacity to harm and only use it
at its just or appropriate time.
Jordan Peterson says that a truly harmless man,
a man who couldn't hurt a fly truly, is actually not a virtuous man
because there are circumstances and justice, circumstances in this world,
circumstances with your family that require the ability, the capacity to respond.
And so some folks have thought of Jesus and his humility and his meekness
and they thought, wow, Jesus is a fluffy kind of caricature.
Jesus, the meek and mild.
And this is how he described himself in his first coming.
When he appeared, he came.
I mean, this is the Christmas story, right?
The Christmas story is that Jesus wrapped himself in flesh.
He is the babe that's talked about in Isaiah 9,
and he wraps himself in human flesh.
And what is Jesus on? He's on a rescue mission.
Jesus is on a rescue mission because his creation is all out of order
and it's in dire straits.
And so he came to seek and save those who are lost.
We're told that Christ didn't come to condemn the world,
but to save the world.
His mission in his incarnation was not condemnation,
but salvation and it's extended to anyone who will believe.
And we're told that Christ completed his work of overcoming his sin and death
by dying on the cross and going into the grave,
and three days later, by the power of God, rising up
and in his resurrection, proclaiming death defeated,
appearing to multiple people over the next 40 days,
and then ascending to heaven where he assumes his throne and rule
and where he has been since the day that he ascended,
ruling over the world through his church,
ruling over the world through his people,
ruling and reigning in the heavenlies.
But you know what? That's not the end of the story.
If you're at Campus Commons Bible study on Tuesday mornings
with me and the ladies here,
then you'll know because we've been studying Revelation
and there's more to the story.
The story is that he's coming back.
And the story is when he comes back, he comes back as judge.
He comes back as judge.
The time of salvation is now because the time of judgment is coming.
And there's no urgency for the time of salvation
if there's no time of judgment coming.
And when Christ comes, there's an imagery that's used in Revelation
that's drawn from the Old Testament.
There's this imagery.
In fact, we studied this last week in our Bible study,
the place was quiet as we talked about it.
The harvesting of the earth.
I think that was the heading of the Scripture in Revelation.
The harvesting of the earth.
And the Son of Man, he takes the first swing of the sickle
and he harvests all the wheat that is ripe and ready for harvest.
And this is the harvesting of all those who have believed.
This is God bringing in those who have put their hope in faith.
They are the first harvest, but there's a second harvest.
And with the swing of the sickle, the clusters of grapes,
grapes representing those who, evil, those who have resisted God,
those who have rejected God, those who have turned their back
on the saving grace of Christ, extended during the time of salvation,
there comes a point where the grapes are harvested
and they are thrown into the wine press and the wine press is twisted down
and outflows what Revelation said is blood,
180 miles around up to the horse's bridle.
Judgment.
And you know who is presiding over that judgment?
Do you know who presides over the smoke of the torment of those
who are thrown into the fire?
It says the Lamb.
It says Jesus.
We can get in our mind that hell is a dark corner somewhere else,
but there's not an Adam outside of the sovereign rule of God.
There's not an Adam beyond his control.
There's not a place, there's not a dark recess.
If there was, then they could mount and they could assail against
God's kingdom again.
It is all under his sovereign control.
The idea of Christ as judge is hard for some people.
We imagine that love and mercy are at odds with wrath and justice.
Listen to how Tozer describes God's wrath against evil though.
God's wrath is his utter intolerance of whatever degrades and destroys.
He hates iniquity as a mother hates the disease
that would take the life of her child.
He hates iniquity as a mother hates the disease
that would take the life of the child.
I think what Peterson was trying to get at with the virtuous man
and the capacity for harm is he's saying there's injustices.
There are circumstances in our life where we want a judge,
we need a judge, and the human judges and human systems have failed,
but we want a judge to be there.
This last year we had the opportunity to go to Village of Hope
and to do some ministry down in Guatemala for young ladies.
Some of them raped by their own family members and impregnated.
Some of them taken, kidnapped, or trafficked
to do horrible things at 12 years old, at 11 years old.
I want a judge.
That person may never be caught here on earth, but I want a judge.
I want a judge.
I need a judge because that can't go unpunished.
And either it needs to be absorbed into Christ and his sacrifice on the cross,
or that person must pay their own penalty.
But I want a judge who will do that.
And our human institutions and systems don't always work, do they?
Injustice happens all the time, and the hope of Christmas
is that we have a mighty God who will judge.
We have a mighty God who will take up the cause of the powerless,
the weak, the abused, the marginalized.
When something flashes across my Facebook, two pictures of parents
who just drowned their infant child, I want a judge.
I need a judge.
And while I can't take that power into my own hands,
the Bible says, vengeance is mine, says the Lord.
What we've seen in the book of Revelation is the martyrs constantly
before the Lord saying, when will you judge?
When will you execute judgment against evil?
Even our brothers and sisters who were killed for their faith,
martyred for the cause, stand before the throne, under the altar,
and cry out day and night, when will you avenge our blood?
When will you end evil?
When will you punish the evil doer?
A God who is not angry at injustice and evil is not a God worthy of worship.
But our God is.
The Word of God says he is a mighty God, and he is powerful in creation.
He is powerful in redemption, and he will be powerful in judgment.
He has his evidence of his judgments throughout the Bible,
but the final judgment where all evil will be made right,
that's a mighty God.
Revelation uses this metaphor of Babylon,
Babylon as an archetype of evil,
and describes the end of Babylon at the hands of the mighty God.
And it says this, for this reason, her plagues will come in just one day.
These are plagues against Babylon.
This is God's judgment on Babylon.
Plagues will come in just one day, death and grief and famine.
She will be burned up with fire because the Lord God who judges her is mighty.
That's the same word that we've been studying, prophesied,
in Isaiah chapter 9 verse 6, mighty God.
The Lord God who judges Babylon is mighty.
Let me invite the worship team to come on up while we close out our time together
with my fourth and final point.
We see the prophecy of Isaiah chapter 9 that he will be a mighty God fulfilled in,
also and finally, his power in our lives.
How many of you guys have experienced the power of God at work in your life?
Yes, in salvation, but maybe even in other ways.
I love this scripture out of a book that probably not all of us have visited recently.
It's a book in the Old Testament called Zephaniah.
It's a small little book toward the end of the Old Testament.
In Zephaniah chapter 3 verse 17, it says, the Lord your God is among you.
Speaking of God's people, the Lord your God is among you.
He is a warrior who saves.
He will rejoice over you with gladness.
He will be quiet in his love.
He will delight in you with singing.
The Lord your God is among you.
A warrior who saves.
He will rejoice over you with gladness.
And he will be quiet in his love.
He will delight in you with singing.
His might, God's might is not simply abstract or something that's distant.
He is present among his people, fighting on our behalf, rejoicing over us in love.
I don't know what you've encountered in your life or the things that you have faced,
but there is power in this mighty God, this warrior God,
to face down those trials and those difficulties that you faced in your life.
It's not simply abstract. It's not something that he's done independent,
but it's something that reaches down.
If the incarnation teaches us nothing, it teaches us that God took on flesh and dwelt among us,
became like us, and he cares about us.
He cares about our circumstances and situations.
He cares deeply for us.
And he wants to show his power in our lives.
We'll open our eyes and see it.
On Thursday, my wife and I, we have a small group here at Village,
and we had the opportunity to try to do something a little bit different
and try to do something a little more missional, more of an event.
So we were able to get in touch with Proclaim International,
which offers some missionaries who go around to different places.
And this particular group of missionaries we were able to secure for Thursday night
was a gentleman named Pasha who plays the violin and writes songs
and beautiful violinists. For those who are here, hopefully you felt the same way.
I was really touched by his music and playing, and he shared stories about his life.
And someone else who was here with him was a gal named Sophia.
She's from China. Sophia is kind of her name that she takes while in the States
to protect her identity because China is close to the gospel and hostile.
Sophia told a story on Thursday night that I haven't been able to get out of my head
since she told it. It's stuck. That's a good story when it sticks.
Sophia lives in what she considered probably a small city.
It's a city of a million people. For us, that's a lot.
A city of a million people, and she lived in a high-rise
about the sixth floor of an apartment building. As you can imagine,
those cities oftentimes stack their people up in those apartment buildings pretty high.
You get all the folks in that same area.
Sophia wasn't a believer. She didn't trust in God. She didn't know God at all.
And she was going about her day in her sixth-floor apartment.
And on this particular day, a tragedy struck. An earthquake hit the city that she's in.
This earthquake was an 8.0 on the Richter scale in a city of a million people.
And as she felt her building began to shake and she began to brace herself,
she looked out the window, and the shaking intensified, and she was terrified.
And she looked out, and as she looked across the city that housed her family members,
her mother, her sisters, her uncles, her aunts, and friends and family,
she looked out. She began to see buildings collapsing, falling in on themselves.
And as these buildings collapsed, what happens? The dust begins to kick up.
And so now the whole city is beginning to be overtaken by a cloud of dust,
obscuring her view. She can't see anymore, and she is terrified
and believing that her life is possibly ending. Her building is about to collapse.
She looks out the window one more time, and as she looks out,
the cloud of dust that has obscured her view begins to part at the top.
And as she looks through the parting of the dust, what does she see? Blue skies.
And something hit her in that moment. Something hit her.
And she said in her terror and in her fear, she realized that her world all around her is shaking.
Her world is falling into chaos. Her world is falling apart.
And she looked up, and she saw the blue skies up there.
And she thought, if there is a God who can keep the blue skies from falling
while my world is falling apart, I must believe in him, and I must call out to him.
He is my only chance for salvation.
And so Sophia, looking at the blue skies…I love it.
She said she began to call out to the God of the blue skies.
She didn't know his name yet.
She calls out, cries out to the God of the blue skies,
save her, save her, and save her family.
And when the shaking stops and the dust settles, they begin to pick up the pieces of their lives.
She finds out all of her family, all of her friends are safe.
And from that point on, she trusts in what she doesn't know very well
until someone comes along and gives her a Bible and gives her a name.
It's more full and more complete and more beautiful than simply the God of the blue skies.
Jesus saved you that day.
And she puts her hope and her faith in Jesus.
And she goes around the world now to tell the story of the God of the blue skies
who saved her that day in more ways than one.
This is a God we serve.
This is the mighty God who formed the cosmos and raised Jesus from the dead.
And he can and he does act in the very lives of his children.
He cares and he intervenes and he saves.
If Jesus could hold galaxies together, if Jesus can calm the raging seas,
and if he could hold up the blue skies when your whole world is shaking and falling down around you,
he can hold your life together whatever you're going through today.
We can trust that there's no situation that is too broken,
no suffering that is too great, and no enemy too strong.
For the God of the blue skies, Jesus, our mighty God, our hero, our warrior king,
has nothing too big for him. Amen.
Well, it's Alexiomenos' God that we serve, the donkey on the cross,
but we see him in all his beauty and his glory.
What the blasphemer who thought he was being funny, mocking, the disciple couldn't see.
We see a faithful and mighty God who went to the cross, humbly bore its shame.
So that we could be free, so that we could hold our heads high as children of God in God's kingdom.