What's new at Hope.
Hi Hope Family,
Kids Worship resume this Sunday and musicians young and old who would like to hone their skills as part of a worship team are invited to join us. Weekly Sunday morning practices are at 9am in the Den. Bring your N2Worship binder if you have one, an empty binder if you don’t.
Contact hala tompkins for more details.
New to Hope? We’re glad you’re here! Text the word WELCOME to 512-777-1826 to connect with our welcome team!
God is not stingier than advertised — he is more generous than we are comfortable with,
and that is the part that trips us. The hardest thing he asks of us is not effort but
reception: to let him be better than we are, to let the ledger stay lopsided, and to accept
that the inheritance he is handing out is himself.
Matt has had generosity on his mind since he preached on glory two weeks ago and
asked whether anyone could imagine outgiving God. The Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s
turned out to be the right morning to press it — starting, unexpectedly, with a military
ambush.
The king of Syria kept raiding the northern tribes and kept finding Israel already moved.
Convinced of a traitor in his cabinet, he learned the leak was a prophet — and then decided to
ambush him. Matt enjoyed the absurdity: the plan was to sneak up on the man who always knew
where you would be. They surrounded his city overnight, and in the morning Elisha’s servant
went out and panicked (2 Kings 6:15–17).
Elisha prayed the army blind, told them they had the wrong city, offered to take them where
they wanted to go — and walked them straight into Israel’s headquarters, where he prayed their
eyes open again. The king of Israel asked the obvious question, twice, in Matt’s telling:
they’re in our paw now — can I kill them?
“He answered, ‘You shall not strike them down… Set bread and water before them, that they
may eat and drink and go to their master.’ So he prepared for them a great feast, and they ate
and drank, and he sent them away, and they went to their master. And the Syrians did not come
again on raids into the land of Israel.”
Matt worked both sides of it — the Israelite soldier watching the deer walk up to his blind,
begging for one shot; the Syrian trying to explain his day to his wife. And the raids stopped.
Whether they lost their nerve or were stunned by the generosity of God, they were done. This is
the God, Matt noted, whom Jonah refused to preach for, because he already knew how it would
end (Jonah 4:2).
“The truth is that God is more merciful than you or I would be,” he said. In our better
moments we imagine we would make benevolent gods. In fact we are rather into crushing our
enemies when the chance comes — and not fictitious enemies. People we actually dislike.
Because God’s generosity is a stumbling block, Jesus addressed it head-on
(Matthew 20:1–7).
A master hires at dawn for a denarius — a fair day’s wage — then keeps returning to the
marketplace at the third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh hours. Matt tracked the men’s shrinking
expectations: by the ninth hour they are well past loitering, the day already written off, and
anything at all beats nothing. The eleventh-hour crew will manage one solid hour. “I don’t know
how you compensate for that. Here’s a coupon for Burger King or something.”
Payment starts at the wrong end, and the one-hour men are handed a full day.
“Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them
also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, saying,
‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden
of the day and the scorching heat.’”
Matt put the pressure exactly where the parable puts it. The master is not harsh and he is not
stingy. The offense is that he gives too much money to people who do not deserve it — and the
early workers had agreed to their wage, freely and in advance.
“Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am
I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?”
“I think a lot of people are afraid that Jesus is going to be more harsh than advertised,”
Matt said. “But are you mentally prepared for a Jesus that’s too generous? That’s a funny
problem.” He drew the picture: you were out in the fields, you went door to door, you gave to
missionaries — and now here is the deathbed convert, the lazy cousin, the IRS agent who audited
you, being richly rewarded in front of you.
He flagged where this is headed when Hope returns to Romans. People approach
Romans 9
braced for a God who is harsher than they feared; Matt reads it the other way. The mercy Paul is
defending is the inclusion of Gentiles — Johnny-come-latelies, tax collectors, centurions,
officers of an occupying empire — people who had not been keeping Torah their whole lives. Same
sentence, opposite fear: I can have mercy on whom I want.
Matt listed the benefits without embarrassment: fullness of joy in God’s presence
(Psalm 16:11),
and the plainly material good of belonging to a body — meals when you are sick or have a new
baby, help with your car, a place to stay when you travel, aunts and uncles and brothers and
sisters added to you. Spiritual gifts exercised toward you. Peace that surpasses understanding.
Healing and miracles. Then he went for the one that is hard to say out loud: God is generous
with himself.
“And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a
bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the
dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and
God himself will be with them as their God.’”
Note which relationship gets used for the connection between Christ and the church. Not staff.
Marriage — the most intimate bond we have, and the one carrying the highest rights of
co-ownership, legal standing, and privilege.
Most of us, Matt suggested, would settle for far less and call it humility. The nosebleed
section. A closet in the back, sleeping on the floor. A butler’s role, so at least you get to see
the palaces. Chauffeur for important saints. Cleaning up after the horses, close enough to catch
the splash zone of a worship service from a distance. “Wouldn’t you accept that? But that’s not
what the Bible says.” And the dwelling is not a supervised tour of a fenced White House lawn. It
is commitment, belonging, acceptance: we will be his people, and the inheritance is him.
“It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will
give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this
heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.”
Without payment. The only qualification named is thirst — which is the whole point for anyone
weighing themselves against the church planter or the Mother Teresa and coming up short. You do
not deserve glory and honor and immortality. You can still say you are thirsty.
It is hard, Matt admitted, to say the psalmist’s lines and mean them all the way down.
“Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My
flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
Same claim in Psalm 16:5–6
— the Lord is my chosen portion and my cup, and I have a beautiful inheritance. It is a strain to
believe he is willing to forgive you enough to make you a butler. It is a further strain to
believe he wants to be your father.
So the question the message was named for: are you prepared to let him be better than you? Can
you receive from someone who gives you more than you give back? Can you let him love you more
than you can love in return, and let that imbalance stand — “I love you, and I feel like my love
is imperfect” — without trying to square it? Matt’s suggestion is that the discomfort is
something to repent of, not manage. Come like a beggar to a feast: no entry fee paid, not sure
you dressed properly.
And then the hardest part — believing he is pleased to do it. This is not community
service, and he is not trying to impress the angels. If he needed servants, he has angels. If he
wanted music, they are already on key. He made a universe unassisted; he is not short of help.
“He wants you, and he wants to be generous to you. And he wants to dwell with you.”
Matt closed by praying that the Spirit would enable hearts to accept that generosity — and,
as with Elisha’s servant, open our eyes to see what is actually real.
New to Hope? We’re glad you’re here! Text the word WELCOME to 512-777-1826 to connect with our welcome team!
That God would come and dwell among us was his idea, and he has never once
depended on us coming through for him. Abraham and Mary were handed impossible promises,
not assignments to fulfil them. So can the church, and so can you.
Matt set two things side by side. First, that God would dwell among us was his own
idea. Second, he has shown the energy and momentum to accomplish his own plans, and from what Matt
can tell has never depended on us coming through for him. The rest of the message was an argument
that those two facts should change how a Christian reads the news.
Matt described growing up a millennial being told constantly that the church in America is
retreating and shrinking — concern-trolled, as he put it, or rage-baited in the newer vocabulary.
Is Christianity in the West shrinking? Is social decay rampant? Will every tribe and tongue
actually hear the gospel? Will the church implode from lack of confidence?
Some of those fears are not reasonable, but listen to the enemy long enough and “doubt starts
feeling smarter than faith.” The side effect is subtle: “We start thinking that God is essentially
asleep at the wheel. We wouldn’t say that. We just act like it. And we then take on his crushing
burden to make all of his promises come true.”
Matt was hardest on his own profession here. Preachers working from that mindset scold with
words like whips — come on, guys, we have to make this happen, because God is doing his
Weekend at Bernie’s thing and if we don’t go, no one will. As if the Great Commission were
Jesus digging into his first-century pockets, tossing the disciples the keys, and saying keep it
running for me.
Two people received impossible-sounding promises, and how they took them is the whole lesson.
“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show
you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so
that you will be a blessing… and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Matt lingered on the target audience: all the families of the earth. Every tribe,
every region, every people group, every corner and corridor. And then the obvious question — was
Abraham selected because he had a running start, already a father of twenty or thirty, half the
work done? The opposite. He and Sarah could not have children at all. When the waiting stretched
on, Sarah proposed Hagar as a way to get God’s promise moving
(Genesis 16) —
fear and desperation deciding to make it happen. Matt let that stand as a cautionary tale and
moved on.
The child came, late. And then came the harder request, and the oath that followed the ram:
“By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done
this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely
multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore… and in
your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my
voice.”
That offspring is singular — one particular descendant through whom every family of
the earth gets blessed. Abraham obeyed without knowing the mechanism, trusting God to restore or
resurrect the boy somehow. Obedience, yes. But underneath it, confidence that God would follow
through on what God said.
That singular offspring is promised to a young woman in Nazareth.
“And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!’ But she was
greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.”
Mary is favored by God’s choice, Matt said — not because she had been reading up on how to
raise a Messiah, not because she went to school on being a virgin who gives birth. And that Old
Testament phrase carries freight: “The Lord is with you conveys that God is doing a great big
thing and you get to be included if you want to join. It doesn’t mean God is your assistant and
this is your project. It’s the other way around.”
Read what Gabriel actually says in
Luke 1:30–33
and notice the grammar of it. You will conceive. He will be great. The Lord God will give him
the throne of his father David. Of his kingdom there will be no end. None of that is a
request. “This isn’t a list of requests. Hey, Mary, can you make the following things happen?
She’s being told.”
Her question is the reasonable one — how, since she is a virgin — and Gabriel answers with the
Holy Spirit, with Elizabeth’s impossible pregnancy, and with a sentence that covers both:
“For
nothing will be impossible with God.” Elizabeth was barren but married, Matt noted; Mary’s
situation is “impossibler.” He guessed she still had questions afterward, and said he would have.
Her answer came anyway:
“Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”
Then the shepherds arrive with their own angelic report
(Luke 2:8–14),
and Luke records what Mary did with all of it — she “treasured up all these things, pondering them
in her heart”
(Luke 2:19),
while the shepherds went back glorifying God. Neither response is a chore. Nobody is scheming
about Messiah school, Messiah nursery songs, or when the training starts.
Matt read the Passover trip, the day’s journey home, the three-day search, and the twelve-year-old
found among the teachers — his parents astonished, his mother asking why he had treated them this
way, and the boy answering, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
(Luke 2:41–49).
The point is what Mary and Joseph are not doing. Not the parents hauling a talented
kid to auditions. Imagine them carrying our doubt and fear — how do we make him the Messiah, what
do we feed him, which nursery songs. “He just is the Messiah whether they push him into it or not.
God’s promises have legs of their own.”
We were born further down the line — after Jesus lived, taught, died, rose, ascended, and left
a church — into the stretch of the story where the Great Commission is being fulfilled and every
tribe and language finds its final destiny in the glory of Jesus. From the inside it feels
daunting, especially for Westerners kept on that diet of scolding.
But God has declared it, not requested it. Daniel tells a king that the God of heaven will set
up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed
(Daniel 2:44) —
“this wasn’t a passive-aggressive suggestion.” Habakkuk’s promise that the earth will be filled
with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea
(Habakkuk 2:14)
is not wishful thinking. Which is why Abraham and Mary were put in front of us: we hold real
promises in one hand and real weakness in the other, and the honest response can sound like hers.
How can this be, since we’re incompetent? How is this kingdom going to stand forever? Have you
seen us?
Then Matt walked the Bible at speed, and the cumulative weight was the argument. Abram was
chosen with no human prompting. Joseph reached Egypt through dreams, betrayal and providence — “it
wasn’t because of human cleverness that God saved the day. It was in spite of human schemes.”
Moses was raised from infancy through strange circumstances and given Aaron as help; he did not
arm-wrestle Pharaoh, and Israel did not have the better army. In the wilderness and the cycles of
the judges, God kept raising up deliverers by his own initiative. When a kingdom finally existed,
Samuel was sent past every human expectation — past the biggest, wisest, richest, strongest — to
anoint a shepherd boy. Prophets were conscripted rather than recruited: “I know you didn’t apply
for this job, but you’re hired.” Esther was positioned for such a time as this without seeking it
(Esther 4:14).
And the detail Matt clearly enjoyed: for everyone frightened that there are simply too many
pagans out there for God’s will to be done, the return from exile was initiated by pagan rulers.
Then Mary. Then the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. Then disciples minding their
own business — you’re hired, follow me. Then the Spirit poured out because Jesus is the
baptizer, not because the apostles found the cheat codes. Then Paul, so counterproductive for the
kingdom that his hiring required a dramatic divine interruption. “Jesus can hire whoever he
wants.”
Matt made the turn and then repeated it deliberately, because it is the whole message: “At what
point in this story about God’s interaction with humankind was it we who had to make it happen?
Instead we can think — God is going to make this happen. How could I be a part of it? What is he
asking me to do?”
He imagined the verse that does not exist anywhere in scripture — God confiding to an angel
that he really hopes they come through, because he was depending on them and is a bit behind the
eight ball. Funny, and sad, and not in the book. God is the one who
works
all things according to the counsel of his will, through pagan rulers or otherwise, because
it
is God who works in us, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
The application was gentle and specific. Maybe today your response is simply the shepherds’
response — rejoice. Maybe it is going back to what God has already told you to do and seeing it in
a new light: he is with me, meaning he is doing it and I am helping. Matt returned to Esther for
the last word, and to Mordecai rather than the famous verse: if you don’t, God will raise up
another deliverer. His plans will not fail. You might — God won’t.
So if you deeply want the knowledge of the glory of God to cover the earth, that is going to
happen. If you want all the families of the earth blessed in Jesus, that will happen. If you are
worried the church will crumble under its own pathetic weirdness, it won’t — “this is his body,
his bride. He’s always been our great shepherd and captain and defender and lord and lifegiver and
the seeker and the saver of the lost. He’s always been awake.” We are the ones who fall asleep at
the wheel, and it takes no prophet to point that out. What takes faith is remembering everything
he has done and believing he can do what he said and
more
than we can ask or imagine.
Matt closed by praying for the Spirit to come in great measure and stir up faith — faith like
Abraham’s, all right, let’s go, and like Mary’s, let it be as you said — and
asked God to strengthen our unbelief with his mercies. The heart ministry team stayed up front to
pray with anyone who wanted it.
AN EVENING OF IMAGINATION
Invite friends to come and hear this timeless redemption story as veteran actor, Joe Friedman, in period costume, reads aloud Charles Dickens’ beloved classic, A Christmas Carol, for our enjoyment. Ebenezer Scrooge, Marley, the Ghosts of Christmas: Past, Present, and Yet To Come, and Tiny Tim with the rest of the Cratchits will come to life in your imagination. Joe is in his 36th year of reading this story for others.
BRING SOMETHING TO DO “AROUND THE HEARTH”
Bring your puzzles or knit, sew, make crafts (a great time to make ornaments!) – whatever your preferred activity to do is while you listen – in the Den upstairs.
ARE CHILDREN WELCOME? YES, OF COURSE… Parents, it’s up to your discretion as to whether your kids have the right temperament for a two hour reading (with an intermission).
Joe says, “Feel free to dress in period costume!”
RSVP ON REALM
No tickets needed: free for all as Joe’s gift – but let him know you’re coming.
New to Hope? We’re glad you’re here! Text the word WELCOME to 512-777-1826 to connect with our welcome team!
We spend most of our language on how we glorify God. This message turns the sentence
around and asks what God has done to honor us — and finds three answers, all of
them resting on the fact that God the Son became a real human being and never stopped.
Matt opened with a contest nobody can score: the joy we bring the Father
against the joy he brings us. “Who glorifies whom better? I think he’s going to outdo us.”
But the fact that God is inclined to appreciate our small offerings, our service, our
“little adorable chats,” makes it an immeasurable contest — and it points at something we
rarely say out loud. God has honored humanity, in three specific ways.
The aim was to stir up hope, because
Christ in
us is the hope of glory — and that hope answers a longing already in us. “We long for
a dignity, a place, a place of belonging to belong into his family. That’s what he’s
created you for.” Matt admitted the difficulty plainly: if it weren’t in the Bible you
wouldn’t believe it, and some of us still struggle even though it is.
So, first, what is glory? Visible splendor — a bride, and everyone looking at her because
she matters. Or a victorious general and his troops marching back through the gates while
everyone who is anyone watches, as if respect had taken physical form. Or the dignity of a
judge in his courtroom, or a performer working at the edge of impossibility and pulling it
off with grace, so that you simply stand there in awe.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of
the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
The emphasis fell on flesh. When the church first taught this, some could not
take it in: God is so special and we are so scummy that surely he only appeared to be one
of us. “They thought there’s no way he would actually dignify us that strongly by truly
becoming a human. But he really did.” And the verb John reaches for is
tabernacled — a deliberate echo of God among his people in the wilderness, which
the message would come back to.
The one exception is sin —
Hebrews
4:15, tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sin. Which Matt turned straight
toward anyone who has, as he put it, drunk deeply from the cup of self-hatred. You get
tired, thirsty, hungry, sick. You may find yourself disgusted with your own humanity. But
anything Jesus was is good, and Jesus was human. Being tempted did not make him bad. It is
okay to be a person.
Who is the “us” he joined? Individuals, yes — but also a mass of collective humanity.
Matt borrowed C. S. Lewis’s picture from Mere Christianity: spread humanity out
across time and you would see not scattered dots but a tree, everything continuously
connected. We are still saved by grace through faith, individually; and yet salvation came
to the tree.
He proved the connection from an odd corner of scripture. In
Hebrews
7:7–10, Levi is said to have paid tithes to Melchizedek — though Levi had not been
born, because he was still in Abraham’s loins when
Abraham
met the king of Salem. “Sorry about that. Merry Christmas.” You carry your descendants
with you; humanity nests inside itself. Follow it back far enough and we are all in Adam,
which is Paul’s point in
Romans
5 — not merely that we imitate Adam’s sin, but that we were in him when he sinned.
“If the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, so is the whole lump.”
Paul told the Athenians the same thing from the other direction: God made every nation
from one man, so that they should seek him and perhaps find him, “yet he is actually not
far from each one of us”
(Acts
17:26–27). The sad note is
John
1:11–13: he came to his own and his own did not receive him — but to those who did, he
gave the right to become children of God.
“As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and
precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be
a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
That “you” is plural. We are the bride of Christ, and we are also a temple.
“So Moses finished the work. Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory
of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter
the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it.”
Matt wondered aloud what it would have been like in the room. Did the glory have a sound,
a smell? Would it have made you woozy, or light, or heavy? “One minute it’s a tent made by
people. The next, it’s a holy place. And the difference was God himself arrived.”
Which is what holy means. Picture a flawless sheep on a hill, brushed, with a bow. It is
still not holy — it is a mundane sheep doing nothing. It becomes holy when it is given to
God. Same with tongs: the pair in your kitchen is mundane, the identical pair in the
tabernacle is the Lord’s. “Holy means special or set aside or reserved because it belongs
to God or it’s been marked by his presence.” Which is why one of the commonest words for
Christians in the New Testament is saints — holy ones.
David wanted to build God a house better than a tent, and was told his son would do it
instead (2
Samuel 7:1–13). At the dedication, with sheep and oxen past counting, the same thing
happened: a cloud filled the house so the priests could not stand to minister
(1
Kings 8:3–11). Steve, from the congregation, caught the wording — not that they could
not stand it, but that they could not stand to do their work. Brick and mortar one
minute; sacred the next, because the Lord arrived and sanctified the work of human
hands.
Babylon destroyed that temple, and the returning remnant built another. Haggai asks the
survivors who remember the first one: “Is it not as nothing in your eyes?”
(Haggai
2:1–3). It was smaller — but the louder clue, Matt pointed out, is that no glory cloud
is ever recorded falling on it.
“I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I
will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts… The
latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former.”
Greater than what, though? If the comparison is the second temple, that is a low bar —
something podunk becoming less podunk. If it is the tabernacle or Solomon’s temple, the bar
is very high indeed, and nothing made of stone clears it. What clears it is the temple of
Jesus Christ.
Matt was not inventing the equation. Jesus made it himself: “Destroy this temple, and in
three days I will raise it up.” His hearers objected that it had taken forty-six years to
build — and John, helpfully, explains that he was speaking about the temple of his body
(John
2:19–21). That body is the one we are built into.
And the Spirit who filled the tabernacle and the temple is the Spirit who fills us —
Romans
8:9–11, every “you” of it plural. “It’d be wrong to say there’s no current temple of the
Lord on earth. There is in fact a sacred and glorious one all over the earth, active and
vibrant, because the body of Christ.”
Peter tells the suffering church that after they have suffered a little while, “the God
of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore,
confirm, strengthen, and establish you”
(1
Peter 5:8–10). Called to his own eternal glory. “Can you even take that in?
What words do we even use to describe it?”
Then the inheritance itself. When someone mentions an inheritance we picture a lump of
money, a plot of land in New Mexico, a crocheted pillow. Scripture says
heirs
of God and fellow heirs with Christ. Matt named the smaller thing we tend to settle
for: the splash zone. “I’m barely a Christian, I’m going to be in the nosebleeds, but one
day I’ll shake his hand and then I’ll be basking.” No — God intends to give honor and
dignity and splendor to his people, a bride adorned by God himself.
“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed
into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who
is the Spirit.”
And the most shocking line of all, from
2 Peter
1:3–4: he has called us to his own glory and excellence, and granted his great promises
so that we “may become partakers of the divine nature.” Matt interrupted himself to head off
the exit anyone might be reaching for — this is not for some special church lady. “It
applies to you because of the blood of Christ.” The same blood shed in our place is, he
said, a divine blood donor giving us the source of life itself straight to the veins.
The message closed on a permanence most of us never think about. He became man, lived,
died, rose — and then did not announce that he was unincarnating. God made man is on the
throne of heaven right now. “There’s no reason to believe God also became a bear just to
honor the bears.” Out of every species, we are the one that can say he became one of us.
Which is why the hope is not only future: it is already a glory to belong to him, and the
more you think about it, even a glory to suffer with him.