This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to day four of our look through Matthew chapter two. We're looking
through this gospel. Remember the good news is God wants to change the story of
your life to the story of Jesus's life.

He wants to change the story. And these wise men have shown us the way to a life
of worship. We began last week looking at Joseph and how Joseph shows us the way
to a life of obedience.

You might remember we looked last week at the fact that Joseph was told to do
five things by an angel and he did all of them. And each response teaches us
something about obedience. Last week we reminded ourselves that he obeyed
immediately.

He obeyed consistently. This week as we continue to look at Joseph and what we
can learn from his life, we learned that he obeyed sacrificially. Let me put
that in terms of what you and I need to do when it comes to obedience.

One of the things you have to do is you have to let it go. To sacrifice is to
let something go. You have to let it go.

In verse 13, 13 through 15, "When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared
to Joseph in a dream. 'Get up,' he said. 'Take the child and his mother and
escape to Egypt.

Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill
him. ' So he got up, he took the child and his mother during the night and he
left for Egypt where he stayed until the death of Herod. " I want to look at
Joseph in a minute, but let me let you in on the story of Herod also.

Last half of verse 15 down through verse 18, "And so was fulfilled what the Lord
had said through the prophet, 'Out of Egypt I called my son. ' When Herod
realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave
orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old
and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what
had been said to the prophet, 'Jeremiah was fulfilled, a voice is heard in Rama,
weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be
comforted because they are no more.

'" This last few verses, Herod, Herod is one of history's ultimate examples of
what happens when we have to have it our way, when we have to hold on to our
power. Here's a man in ultimate power who ultimately uses that power to destroy
everyone else who he thinks is going to take that power from him. He took most
of his family's lives, we can read in history, out of fear that they would be on
the throne.

He just had them killed. And now that fear causes them to take the life of these
babies in Bethlehem. When you don't end up living in obedience, you end up
living in fear.

When you end up living in fear, you may not become a Herod, but terrible things
come into your life. Joseph and Mary, they are the kind of life I want to live.
They made the obedient choice.

Here they make the obedient choice and they move to Egypt. For them, obedience,
it wasn't always convenient. It wasn't all fun and games to have Jesus as their
son.

It was better, but it wasn't easy. It was great. They were the mom and dad of
the savior of the world, but it wasn't always happy or convenient.

The truth is, it is often uncomfortable to trust God and follow his plan. It's
emotionally uncomfortable, it's psychologically uncomfortable, it's physically
uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to break a bad habit or to face a fear or to
go somewhere unknown or to forgive someone who's hurt you.

Growth and change are not always comfortable. That's why a lot of people never
grow, never change. They're not willing to face that.

They're not always comfortable, but they're always good. When you hold on to
something that you think is making you comfortable, and in holding on to that
you don't do the thing that God is asking you to do, you're turning your back on
the one who can give you real comfort. You think that thing is making you
comfortable because you've used it to give you some kind of comfort, and it's
worked in some maybe small way, maybe a long time ago.

But the one who can give you real comfort the rest of your life and into all
eternity, the only one who can do that is your Father who's in heaven, and they
realize that. And so because God said to act, they acted. They left everything
that they knew.

They sacrificed their comfort. They had all along from the very beginning, from
that moment of engagement where Joseph had to take Mary secretly to be his wife.
They sacrificed the comfortable way they wanted to do it, or the pregnancy and
the donkey ride to Bethlehem and Lake pregnancy, sacrifice of comfort, the birth
in a stable, smelly shepherds, the first visitors, sacrificing comfort all
along.

And now they have to leave their homeland for a different culture and different
foods and unknown circumstances in Egypt. There's a great warning for us here in
the life of Joseph and Mary when it comes to sacrifices and sacrificing your
comfort. Watch out for putting limits on your sacrifice.

It's an easy thing to do. You start to think, "Well, Lord, I've given so much. "
They could have easily thought, "Lord, we've given so much.

We sacrificed the kind of marriage that we wanted. We sacrificed the kind of
birth that we wanted, and now we're going to have to sacrifice the way we're
going to raise this boy the first few years? Now you're asking for more?

I'm sorry, Lord. It's too much. I've already given too much.

I can't give him any more. " It's easy to think there's some kind of limit on
the sacrifice. But instead, the Christian life, it's the life of taking up the
cross.

It's the life of being a living sacrifice. It is the life of constantly, all the
way through this life, letting go of what I think will make me comfortable in
order to take up the life of Christ. It's not a matter of make five good
sacrifices and you're done.

You've done better than anybody else. No, this is a lifetime process. And don't
forget, in this lifetime process, that what seems like a sacrifice to us is
actually God bringing his blessings into our lives.

This sacrifice that they made to move to Egypt, it was rescuing the Savior of
the world. He's asking us to sacrifice what seems comfortable to us so that he
can give us what's real, what's lasting. Or he's asking us to sacrifice what
seems needed by us so that we can give someone else what they need, so someone
else can find eternal hope in him.

So what does it mean to be the kind of person who's obedient? We've learned from
Joseph, last week we learned it means you do it now, you obey immediately. He
did that also here, by the way.

God said move to Egypt, he immediately moved. We've learned that it means you
keep on trusting, you obey consistently. And now we add a third thing to it, you
let it go.

You obey sacrificially. Let's pray together. Father, I'll admit it, and I'm sure
many of our hearts feel the same way.

I don't like the word sacrifice, I don't like the word uncomfortable. I'd rather
live in a place of pleasure and comfort and everything happening for me like I'd
want it to happen. But Lord, I'm not the person, I'm not the man you want me to
be.

You've got a lot of work to do in my life. I haven't done all the things you
want me to do. You've got a lot of direction to do in my life.

And I know, I see that for that to happen, I've got to be uncomfortable
sometimes. I've got to make the choice that I don't want to make in order to
grow. I've got to make the choice that I don't want to make in order to go the
place you want me to go.

And so Lord, instead of seeing discomfort as some punishment that you're
bringing into my life, instead of seeing sacrifice as some evil thing that
you're bringing upon me, help me to see that it's a measure of your love. It's
an example of your love. That Lord, you're using those things in my life to get
me to be who you want me to be, to get me to go where you want me to go.

And so thank you for loving me. And Lord, I pray that your Spirit would give me
the strength to make these sacrifices in response to your love. And where I've
been bitter about a sacrifice that I might have been asked to make, Lord, for
that bitterness, I pray you would replace it right now with a sense of your
grace and love.

Comfort me, comforter. Comfort me, Father, in your power, in your love, I pray.
In Jesus' name, amen.

Tomorrow, we're going to see together two more life-transforming examples from
Joseph on this life of obedience.