Radical Obedience: Trusting God's Plan Amid Fear

It might be one of these transitional passages that you've read or heard many times in your life or things, and it doesn't seem like it's filled with very much information. And one of the things I want to encourage you that as we are studying and going through the book of Matthew, that those passages that normally you kind of just breeze by, you would actually kind of, like, pause a second. [00:02:36]

Because there could be hiding in the midst of something that just seems transitional sentences could actually be a wealth of something. Something to meditate upon, kind of a hidden treasure of the Lord. And so in verse 19, we come, if you remember at the end of last week, Joseph and Mary, you know, Joseph took Mary and the baby, and they fled from Bethlehem by the word of the Lord before Herod goes in and tries to kill the future king. [00:04:25]

Fear is a normal part of life the question is what do you do with your fear do you lead your fear into obedience to god or do you allow your fear to allow you to be disobedient to god and these are the things that you have to practice these are the things you have to think about because everybody will become afraid at some point everybody will go through a season of fear at some point and people who are not prepared in their heart and their spirit to recognize that truth then then that all of a sudden you begin to discover do i run away from god because i'm afraid do i take my life and the situation and the power of my own hands or am i willing to trust the lord am i willing to trust the word of the lord am i willing to trust who god is these are the questions [00:08:50]

And then all of a sudden, I get this word from God confirmed by three different people in very strong, direct, clear words from God that they could never have known. Two through dreams, one through just wisdom of an elder, 80 year old woman, nothing like an 80 year old widow praying for you. And then they come to a word to give to you. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. better listen. And then it helped because she gave me first a hamburger and a milkshake. And then she basically was like, get, stop, stop procrastinating. I thought, Lord, if this really is from you, well, I don't want, you know, I had just signed a new lease on my apartment and I don't want my owners to be out of a tenant. [00:12:04]

And then within 10 days, there was a new family coming to Budapest as missionaries, needed a place to live and needed exactly the size of apartment and price and took over my lease. And then there were a bunch of refugees that come and several friends of mine were working at a refugee center. And they said, we desperately need household items. So all of my things that I had like accumulated over three and a half, four years, I had to buy a new apartment. And I had to I was able to give away in an instant. And I came down to even I thought, well, I have three bags and I didn't want to have, you know, I didn't want to have to pay for luggage. So I even [00:13:38]

where is your heart and obedience when god speaks when we see these small little passages we think of course he had a dream he had a vision he went back to israel yay but that's not so simple why egypt was far better egypt was more stable egypt was safer egypt was more developed this was one of the major centers of power and an authority this is where learning and there was huge Jewish community that Egypt had better like even at that particular time the weather was better like everything was better and then who is this poor man Joseph if it had been another century Joseph might have become king of Israel and instead he's had to flee from his life he had did like died to his pride and now he's just seeing baby Jesus who still just baby Jesus [00:14:42]

What we don't know is more fearful than even the life of a slave that we knew. We knew where our food was. We knew what our jobs were. We had a structure, a community, a hierarchy. We had expectation. Everything was there. But sometimes when God speaks, he says, oh, move. [00:17:21]

Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Jared Herod he was afraid to go there and being warned and a dream he withdrew to a district in Galilee now think about that Herod was a tyrant and his son was a petty imbecile compared to his father [00:22:18]

proper King will be on his throne he held the promises of God in his heart for the timing of God and it's amazing how God prepared the way for Joseph when you walk in obedience one of the things you will always discover is God has prepared the way before you a lot of times in ministry and in missions we talk about those who go and like create the path and you know the tip of the spear and and and the ones who were going out first but this is the truth God has always gone before you and the Lord has always prepared things that you could never have imagined and sometimes yes your life can be put on hold while things are being prepared because unfortunately or fortunately or blessing or providence God uses people God uses people to prepare God uses people to be in obedience to his word and there could be people who are disobeying God and it could hold up your life and because God is not a tyrant or a puppet master he's patient and that might mean your promises get passed on to your children or your children's children [00:25:03]

And all of this because Joseph was obedient. Because Joseph feared the Lord and honored God. We have the Messiah who has come. [00:39:13]

We need to practice radical obedience. We need to have an expectation of obedience. If God says stay the course, you stay the course. If God says to move, you move. If he says it's time to move, and then you say where. [00:40:22]

There's some legends about it, but he died in Nazareth or nearby, never seeing what his son would become, but prepared everything for him to be who he was called to be. [00:41:20]