Greater Than the Temple

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Good morning. Forgive me. While I got situated, this was not the pulpit or the podium I thought I was going to be using. It's good to be with you this morning. Good to see you from this side of the pulpit again.

It's been a while. How have you been? Very good. Been blessed. All right, we're going to dive right in.

They represented turning point.

I'm not using that terminology because of Charlie Kirk. It's actually a quote right out of a Jewish commentary.

These people that the commentator was writing about represented a turning point in the history of Israel. The coming of the 12 shifted how Israel would see, would hear the word of the Lord. Their earlier counterparts had been referred to as the seers. But with the coming of the 12, there was a shift in the role of the seer and the prophet. The twelve became better known as Neviim, which means prophet.

And not along with their ministry of prophetic site. It would became a part of their ministry which was the prophetic preaching of the word, the call to repentance. They became prophetic preachers. They came and testifying to the people of Israel and Judah that the coming, there was a coming change. The Shekinah, the glory of God was going to depart and they were trying desperately to call the people to repentance, knowing what was coming to ensure that the twelve prophets words were never lost.

They were compiled and each of their books were put in one book or one scroll so they wouldn't be lost. And that book is called. The book is called Treasar, which means the book of the 12. Sadly, we refer to it as the Minor Prophets. But there was nothing minor about their message.

Their books were just shorter. Some people believe that. Some sages believe that the change was set in motion during the days of King Uzziah, who was really a good king until the very end. He became king at 16. He did a lot of great things.

He fortified Jerusalem, he built towers, he built creative mechanisms of war. I mean, he became powerful and he became renowned for his strength. And the Bible says that when he bec strong, his heart became proud and he did something he shouldn't have done.

Some people believe that the earthquake that Isaiah refers to in Isaiah 6 is the earthquake that took place when Uzziah went into the temple, into the sacred place and attempted to offer incense before the Lord with 80 plus priests following him, pleading with him not to do this. This is the wrong place. This is the wrong time. You're the wrong person for this job. Don't do this.

But he became angry and he went ahead and immediately leprosy broke out on his forehead, and they hurriedly ushered him out. Isaiah writes in Isaiah 6, in the year of Uzziah's death, Isaiah the prophet heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said, here am I, send me. And he said, go and tell this people, Keep on listening, but do not perceive. Keep on seeing, but do not understand.

Was that the heart of God that he didn't want his people to understand? No, it is a prophetic description of how they were going to behave in his foreknowledge. He knew exactly how they were going to behave. In spite of this, the 12 continued to plead with them to turn and repent, because they knew the Shekinah glory of God was departing and with it the voice of the prophet.

The books of Tres are from Hosea all the way to Malachi. The book of the 12.

That book ends with these words from Malachi, behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord, and he will restore the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse. Those 12 prophets knew that prophecy was ending with them until until the time when Elijah would come.

They knew that no voice would be heard.

The book of 12 began with the writings and ministry of Hosea the prophet, and his life would be a parable. It begins with God telling Hosea that you're not just going to be a speaking prophet, you're going to be a prophet of paradigm, meaning I'm going to call upon you to do something that is going to be a story by which I am going to speak to the sons and daughters of Israel about their spiritual condition. Go and take for yourself a wife of harlotry. Go choose a bride that is already showing that she is unfaithful to the word of God and unfaithful to the covenants of her husband.

Hosea six one. He said, by the time you get to Hosea six one, this man is pleading with his people. He says, come, let us return to the Lord, for he has torn us, but he will heal us. He will bandage us, he will revive us after two days. He will raise us up on the third day that we may live before him.

And then in words that would echo throughout the centuries until the coming of the Son of Man, he wrote these words. So let us know and press on to know the Lord, that was his prophetic plea. And that is our prophetic prayer this morning. Will you bow your heads with me, Abba? Father, in the name of Yeshua, the Messiah, the Prince of Peace, the King of Kings, the light of the world, we bow our head and our hearts before you today because we want to know you.

And we know that to do that, we have to come through Yeshua to know you, because he is the heart of the Father. Father, my prayer this morning for the people in this place and the people who will join us today online and at later times that you would meet all of us in that place where we need to encounter you.

Make this your time. I ask in Jesus name and for his glory. Amen.

Hosea goes on, in chapter four, verse six, he says, and he's quoting God, really? What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah?

How many parents, if you're a parent in the room, have you ever felt that I love you right now, but I don't even know what to do with you. You are like, who are you? You have gone next level, and I don't know what to do. You can almost hear the frustration of the Father's heart. Ephraim.

O Ephraim. I mean, oi, what are you doing? Judah, I love you, but what is this? And then he says this. For your loyalty is like a morning cloud and the dew which goes away.

The Hebrew literally means that your loyalty is like the dew that just simply, I'm done, and walks away. You know, the dew's there in the morning. Pretty soon the sun comes up and soon it's gone. And that's how God describes, through Hosea, the spiritual condition of the Jewish people in Israel at the time.

God says their loyalty is fleeting. The Hebrew word here might surprise you because the word for loyalty is the Hebrew word hesed, which we usually translate as grace. It's the loving kindness and loving loyalty, covenant loyalty of God. And God says, these are a people who have no love. They have no covenant loyalty, they have no grace, and they show no mercy.

And then Hosea pens a verse by the leading of the Holy Spirit, which the Messiah will one day use twice to speak to the hearts of that generation, and hopefully today will speak to ours as well.

Hosea, chapter 6, verse 6 says, For I delight in loyalty, chesed grace, I delight in covenant loyalty. I delight in loving kindness. I delight in mercy rather than sacrifice. God says his delight is literally grace, but we have to understand the fullness of that definition. Hesed is God's loving kindness towards us, expressed in his loyalty to his covenant promise.

Even though as a father he's like, oy vey. What is wrong with you, Ephraim? What is wrong with you, Judah? What am I going to do with you? Even though your grace, your loyalty, your love is fleeting, mine is not.

I am faithful to you.

And that grace is the thing that delights the heart of God. And I so hope you hear that. This morning God says, the thing that makes me smile is chesed. It's grace. In Isaiah 62, the Lord declares his delight in the land and the people of Israel, so much so that he promises that the day will come when their land and their people would no longer be called forsaken and desolate, but they would be called Hephzibah and Beulah.

Have you ever heard that old hymn Beulah? Land means married.

I love that song. Hephzibah means my delight. Those that were forsaken and desolate would be called married. That's the heart of God.

If you want to believe that you know God, this is what you have to know about God. His delight, his desire is grace.

So let us know and let us press on to know the Lord and to know his heart's desire. This was the message of the 12. This is why they were chosen and why they were sent to Israel and Judah. And their message was very clear. God does not delight in sacrifices.

This is the irony. God's delight is not that in that which you give to him. God's delight is that which you give to someone else.

Loyalty, loving kindness, mercy, compassion.

So then we come to the Gospel of Matthew, a book that will reveal just how accurate Isaiah's prophecy about hearing and seeing without understanding would come to pass. In Matthew 5:7, when we began our Kingdom series started with a look at the Sermon on the Kingdom or the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus was calling his people to see and hear the Torah through the heart of God.

Not just through the interpretations of men, but through the heart of God. And so as they listened to Yeshua preach on that mountain, they were hearing God's heart. For how you walk this out, then in Matthew 8:10, we began what I called the Sermon on the Go. Chris called it the Kingdom in Action, where we see Jesus manifesting the kingdom through miracles and healings so that people could see and hear the heart of God through the Father. And everywhere they went, they preached, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

It's near. Because what they were trying to communicate is God still loves his people.

He doesn't want you to be desolate. He doesn't want you to be barren. He doesn't want you to be forsaken.

He wants you to know you are his delight.

In Matthew 9, Jesus returns to Capernaum, and some men bring a paralytic to him on a mat. And Jesus says, take courage, son. Your sins are forgiven. And instantly the scribes, the experts in the law, begin to believe that Jesus is blaspheming. And so Jesus asked them, why are you thinking such things?

For which is easier to say your sins are forgiven or get up and walk? But so that you may know the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. He turns. This man says, hey, stand up, take up your mat, and go home.

The point is that if Jesus can tell a man to get up and walk, then he also has the authority to say, your sins are forgiven.

Then Jesus doubles down. He doesn't just hang out with tax collectors. He calls one to be a part of his 12.

Can you imagine how shocking that was to the scribes and the Pharisees?

Don't think they didn't take note that he had 12 disciples and one of them was a tax collector.

He doubles down even more, having called this tax collector to be one of the inner 12. He then goes to his home, where the Pharisees see him eating and dining with tax collectors and sinners.

And the Pharisees asked this question, why is your teacher eating with tax collectors and sinners? Church, can I just. Can I shock you for a minute? That's a great question.

Have you ever asked that question?

Maybe you're afraid to ask that question. I'm not afraid to ask that question because my heart wants a genuine answer, not an opportunity for an accusation.

Isaiah said that they would see and they would hear, but they would not understand.

What does it mean when you look up and you see this man who is doing all of these healings and is manifesting the power of God? What does it mean when you see him hanging out with. With the people everybody says you're not supposed to be with? Have you considered what that means? Because the heart of God is communicating something through that.

It's a great question.

The only thing that makes it a bad question is the condition of your heart.

The Pharisees have asked the 12. They've asked Jesus about why he's eating the tax collectors and sinners. And Jesus learns this. And then in verse 13, he says, but go and learn what this means. And he goes to Hosea and he tells these Pharisees and scribes, he says, go and learn what this means.

I desire compassion and not sacrifice, for I did not come to call the righteous, but the sinners. This is the first of two times he's gonna refer to the message of the 12. Jesus says, if you really knew what these words meant, you would understand why Jesus was eating with tax collectors and sinners. If you understood the heart of God, that what he really delights in is loyalty and love and compassion and mercy, you would not look at that moment and see Jesus doing something contrary to the heart of God. You would see Jesus doing something that is absolute fulfillment, fulfillment of the heart of God.

Jesus tells these learned ones, go and learn. Ouch.

It's like telling your teacher, you know, you really need to go learn your topic better. I don't recommend that. I had a young man that went with us to Israel multiple times and enrolled in a Bible college course, was sitting in class one day, and the professor referred to Mount Carmel. And my young friend who had been to Israel long enough to hear how the Jewish guides pronounced that said, I think you mean Mount Carmel.

He chose poorly.

Matthew 10. Jesus summons His 12 and gives them spiritual authority to go and declare and manifest the kingdom in power before the eyes and ears of the people. And like their predecessors of old, these 12 were sent on a mission to bring people to return to the Lord and to know him. In Matthew 11, Jesus disciples have departed. And now as they are departing, John's disciples come to Jesus to ask him a question.

And they ask, are you the one, or should we expect another? And Jesus answer to them is, go and tell what you see and what you hear. Why does he say that? Because you're either a part of the generation that Isaiah described who will see and not perceive and hear and not understand, or you are someone who can see and perceive. Yes, you go tell him what you see.

The deaf hear, the lame walk, the blind see, the poor have the good news. You go interpret that. Because if you understand what that means, then you understand who I am.

Then Jesus turns to the crowds and he asked them, when you went out to the desert, what did you see? What did you go out to see and hear? May I insert a few thoughts into the narrative? You knew the voice of the prophet would not be heard again until Elijah. Why did you go out into the wilderness?

You had the evidence and the testimony of the 12 that the voice of the prophet would not be heard until Elijah came. And yet you ran out into the desert. But did you Understand? Did you perceive what you were seeing in the life of John the Baptist?

You see, the condition of our heart determines the perception of our eyes.

When you saw and heard John, did you know? And did you press on to know the lord? In Matthew 9, Jesus has already quoted Hosea, I desire compassion. Now, the New Testament that we're reading from was written in Greek and 170 times in the Greek Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. 170 times those Jewish scholars used the word that Matthew is using here to translate hesed.

It's the word for mercy.

Jesus asked them, what did you go out to see and hear? Why is it important?

Because there were a lot of people who went out to see. And they saw and they received. And the Pharisees went and saw and heard and got nothing.

You see, it turns out the condition of your heart actually matters. And so we come to Matthew 12, the chapter, the section I'm supposed to be preaching on.

Matthew 12, 1:3. At that time, Jesus went to the grain fields on the Sabbath and his disciples became hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat. Now, let's just stop for a moment. First of all, please notice that the disciples did not just wander off into the field. They followed the Master.

The disciples were the sheep, and he was the shepherd. I think David wrote a psalm about that.

He leads me by still he leads me to pastors. The shepherd knows when the sheep are hungry, and so he takes them and they follow him. The problem, as the Pharisees see it, is that they are doing is what they are doing on the Sabbath. It's not a sin to eat and glean from the edges of the field, because that was taught in the Torah to be there for the hungry and the poor. Verse two, before I read this.

Well, let me just read it. But when the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, see, look, behold, you catch the irony of that. A Pharisee telling Jesus to pay attention.

But when the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, look, your disciples, you know, the 12 do what is not lawful on the Sabbath. It's not that the eating and the gleaning is wrong, but it's the wrong time and the wrong place in the wrong way. They're not allowed to do that. And then Jesus does it again. He returns to the message of the first 12 in verse three, he said.

But he said to them, have you not read what David did when he became hungry and his companions, how he entered the house of God. And they ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for him to eat, nor those that were with him, but only for the priest alone.

Remember what I said about what's kind of set, what the sages teach kind of sets in motion this new season of the 12 prophets. It's when a king went into the sanctuary and decided that he could offer incense.

He didn't have to be a priest.

And here Jesus is now, and that guy got leprosy on his forehead. Now Jesus is using the story of David, who goes in and takes from the consecrated bread from the table and serves it to his men. How come he didn't get leprosy? I mean, if David had gotten leprosy, I promise you, Uzziah would never have done what he did, because Uzziah remained a leper till the day he died, isolated and separated from the people.

What's going on here? How come David can go in and eat the consecrated bread and Uzziah goes in and you know, oh, I've done all this for the Lord. I want to offer. I don't need you to offer incense for me. Thank you, Mr.

Priest. Me and God, I can do it my way.

Church, please hear me.

Apparently it does matter what's going on in your heart.

Why you're doing what you're doing apparently matters.

Even though for years I've been being told by people that that's not good enough.

Jesus gives a second example. He says, do you not, have you not read in the Torah that on the Sabbath, the priest in the temple break the Sabbath and are innocent?

I mean, you've got to lift the animal, you've got to use blades.

Jesus gives two examples, both about sacred things, sacred place and sacred time. And in both of those instances, people are doing things in the sacred place at the sacred time that technically based on the Torah, they're not supposed to do. And Jesus says they're innocent.

Because why you do something apparently matters. Just like when you look in and you see Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners.

Was Jesus supposed to hang around tax collectors and sinners? Does not the Bible tell us to be careful about who we hang around with? Yes, but what is Jesus doing? You have to look, you have to see. You have to understand why he's doing what he's doing, because why he's doing what he's doing matters.

And it was the difference between that, between David's heart and Uzziah's heart, which was full of pride, and David, who was being just a good shepherd.

So let Us know and press on to know the Lord. Because it's not enough to just know a commandment if you don't know the heart of the One who gave the commandment. Verse 6 Jesus says, But I say to you, something greater than the temple is here.

Juxta Cotton picking moment.

That's right, it's a juxta moment.

If it is possible to do what David did in the temple and not be guilty, and if it is possible to do what the priest did in the temple and not be guilty, how much more is it possible to do the things commanded by Yeshua and not be guilty, since he is greater than the temple and oh by the way, he's greater than the sacrifice or the Sabbath. Verse 7 But if you had known what this means, I desire compassion and not sacrifice, you would have not condemned the innocent.

Did you hear that? They weren't just asking questions. They weren't just trying to be spiritually helpful. There was condemnation and judgment in their hearts.

If you had understood what the 12 spent years trying to tell you about the Father, you would understand and you would stop seeing with your eyes and stop hearing with your ears. You would know the heart of God and you would want to know why is the Lord doing this not so you can accuse him, but so that you can appropriate his lifestyle and do what he did.

Because the condition of your heart, the why matters. How do I know that? Because Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, many will come to me on that day and say, lord, Lord. And Jesus is going to say, depart from me. I don't know you.

How can he say that one word? Why did you do it for your own glorification? Did you do it for your self aggrandizement?

Because Jesus says, I don't know you? Because they didn't know him.

Verse 8 For the Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath.

If we had the heart of God, we would see the Good shepherd feeding his sheep, not a man breaking the Sabbath. We would understand how important God's people are to God.

You would be the first to give grace instead of a questioning judgment. But the bottom line is that those who judge first and ask questions about what everybody else is doing usually are the ones who just don't know what they don't know. In verses 9 and 10, Jesus goes to the synagogue and they ask another question. Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath so that they might accuse Him?

Apparently why matters?

Asking Jesus a question is not a sin. Why you ask it reveals your heart or exposes it. You know, I know there's a lot of times people go through some very difficult times. And you may be one of those people right now.

And you're asking God why.

I want to ask you why are you asking God why?

Is it because you hold in your heart that this thing, this difficulty, this trial, this struggle, this financial whatever it is that you're going through this because it doesn't seem like he's being true to who he said he was.

Are you asking why? Because it's okay for him to suffer and do all these things for you, but he's asking too much. I mean, why are you asking why? Now, understand, I didn't say it was wrong to ask why.

Because there's a way to come to the Lord in times of difficulty and struggle and say, lord, what am I supposed to learn from this? What am I supposed to. How can I just be who you want me to be in this moment? And by the way, it's the people who try to find the answer for that moment that get the most frustrated with God. Stop searching for why it's happening to you and just be with him.

He's enough. Amen.

You see, apparently why we ask our questions and what is in our heart actually matters. It matters to the Father. So Jesus questions them about their own behavior. When a man or ox falls into a ditch, don't they go get him on the Sabbath?

Well, yeah, of course they know that. And Jesus in verse 12 says, how much more valuable is a man than a sheep? So it is lawful to do righteousness, to do good on the Sabbath. Then he said to the man, stretch out your hand. And he stretched it out and it was restored to normal like the other.

But the Pharisees, and let me insert having seen this, went out and conspired against him as to how they might destroy him.

What did Isaiah say? They saw. They saw a man simply stretch out his hand in faith and receive healing from Jesus. And they could not perceive the whole Gospel of Matthew from the sermon on the mount. 4.

It's all about calling us to check our heart. Do we know the Lord or do we just know the Commandments? Well, I'm not sure how to walk this out then. First learn to know the Lord. Learn who he is.

So let us know and press on to know the Lord. The Sermon on the Mount taught us to hear the heart of God in how we interpret the Torah. The Sermon on the Go taught us about God's heart. When the kingdom manifested in the healing of broken people, we saw His. His heart to bring the kingdom near to us.

The ministry of John the Baptist gave all of Israel a chance to see what the first 12 had told them would come to pass. That God would once again have his mercy on his land and his people and send a voice into the wilderness to prepare the way for God's best grace. His most vivid, powerful manifestation of covenant loyalty and loving kindness and mercy to his people would be announced.

When we finish chapter 12, in a few weeks, I'll be coming back and we're going to be diving into the Sermon on the Sea, which is the sermon where Jesus begins to teach in parables. My friends, the Torah, the miracles, the parables all have one thing in common. To understand them, you must see them and hear them through the heart of the Father. And as you understand Jesus, so let us know him.

Remember, that's the verse Hosea speaks, just a few verses before he says, I, if you understood, I, desire mercy, not sacrifice.

Apart from God's heart, apart from knowing what he delights in and what he desires. You cannot please God with your interpretation of the Torah, your performance, even of miracles, or your understanding of mysteries and parables. For without love, we are nothing. Because love, grace, mercy, compassion is the heart of God.

The question we must ask ourselves is, do I really know him, or do I simply know of him?

The first 12 had a very uncomfortable calling to preach and prophesy the real condition of Israel and the Jewish people at the time and to warn them about what was coming. David was moved to do what he did with the bread for his men because that he knew that is what God cherished the most. How did he know that? Because David was a man after God's own heart.

That's why David could write so passionately about repentance and forgiveness. Uzziah's heart was not filled with doing what God wanted him to do. It was filled with pride.

Because what's in your heart is what drives your actions, and that does, in fact, matter to God. David went to the holy place and took bread, sacred bread, to feed his men. And in doing so, he violated the covenant and was innocent. Why? We've taught you the words pikuach nefesh.

The preservation of life or the preservation of the soul is the law that trumps all other laws. It's why a man gets his son out of the ditch. It's why you get your sheep or your oxen. That's why I tell our tourists when we go, go to Israel, if you break your arm on Friday afternoon, I promise you they Will deal with you in the hospital before Sunday. Pekuach nefesh.

Life matters most to God. And Jesus used two examples of technical Torah violations, a violation of the holy place and a violation of the holy time, to show two things we desperately need to know, especially in this season.

Jesus is greater than both sacred place and sacred time. Both were given to men as gifts from God's heart, but they do not occupy a greater place in the heart of God than you do. Let that sink in for a minute. God cares more about you than sacred place and sacred times.

He created you in his image. When he chose Israel, he chose them to be his treasured possession. Jesus is greater than the temple and greater than the Sabbath. And, my friends, so are you in Him.

In him because.

He came to die for you.

He came to bring the kingdom near for you. The Sabbath was created for man, not man. For the Sabbath. God wasn't sitting in heaven with a lot of cool little ritualistic toys going, oh, man, I've got this cool thing called the Sabbath. I think I'll create some people and force them to do it.

Sabbath is a blessing because it's a gift.

Some of you will exchange gifts this season, some of you won't. But I promise you, none of you love the gift you're giving more than the one you're giving it to. Amen.

In this season, the people, oh, man, this is a season when you begin to hear the war drums.

You know, it used to be that what I heard a lot of during this season was people telling us that, well, we can't sing about the birth of Jesus and we can't talk about the birth of Jesus, because if we do that, we're going to validate a pagan day and we're going to do it in pagan ways. And everything's pagan, pagan, pagan.

I was there for a while, but this week, being online, I've discovered a whole new drum. It's people in the church pushing back and now saying, well, if you have no business celebrating Hanukkah because Hanukkah was the celebration of a temple that, to be honest, had been being operated by men who had no right to be priests.

And if you celebrate Hanukkah and light the candles, you're celebrating a pagan temple with a people who don't believe in Jesus.

Does that make you mad? Your blood boil a little bit? Oh, yeah.

Well, you're celebrating the wrong day.

Boom, boom, boom. Can you hear it? Everybody gets their drums out.

You're doing it in the wrong time.

You're Doing it in the wrong season for the wrong reasons, in the wrong way.

Why do your disciples do this? Lord, The Pharisees said the same thing.

You're allowed to do good things, but not on the Sabbath. The Sabbath is the quintessential good thing that God did for us. He created us so that we could be. But you can't do a good thing on the Sabbath.

The Pharisees said Jesus 12 disciples were sinning against the Sabbath when they walked with the Lord of the Sabbath and ate grain because they were hungry and they didn't see a good shepherd taking care of his sheep.

Yet somehow telling the world about the bread of life at the wrong time of the year makes me a pagan.

Worship team. You can come back.

And to everybody on all sides of those discussions, questioning someone. Because lighting candles for Hanukkah and remembering the light of the world, or singing a song about the birth of a baby in the city of David, in a town called Bethlehem, which means the house of bread. I'm not allowed to bring forth the bread of life for hungry people because someone's banging a drum.

Wrong place, wrong time, wrong action.

And to people on all sides of these debates, I humbly, as humbly as I can simply say, go and learn what these words mean. I desire grace, compassion, mercy, not sacrifice.

And here's the irony of the moment. Some of the people who will question me about what I'm doing will be quick to tell me. Now, I'm not judging you. I want you to know that what's in my heart is not condemnation.

So apparently, what's in your heart does matter.

Unless it's me.

You can judge me. And I'm supposed to accept that you're not doing what you're doing because you're telling me that's not what you mean in your heart.

But then you'll turn and you'll fillet the body of Christ because they want to connect. Some of them want to connect with the truth that Jesus is the light of the world. And when they light that Hanukkiah, they're not just celebrating the consecration of an old temple. They're celebrating the arrival of the perfect temple in Jesus.

You can bang that drum.

But I'm just trying to learn what it means to love like Jesus and to give what Jesus gave. I have a confession.

Just because I love sharing the gospel, even the birth narrative, doesn't mean I like every song that gets sung in this season.

My Church on Sunday, we're singing Go Tell it on the Mountain every Sunday to close Our service. I do not like that song.

There was another song years ago, I was with a friend and I was explaining to her, well, to be honest, I was trying to help her. I was setting her up to understand that the wise men were not actually at the Nativity that night because I'm so smart. And I called her young teenage son into the room and I said. I said, hey, let me ask you a question. Who was there that night?

And he kind of got. I said, no, no worries. It's just who was there at the birth of Yeshua? Remember? My big point is I'm going to prove that the, you know, the wise men weren't there yet.

And he said, well, Mary and Joseph said animal and baby Jesus. I said, well, who else? And he thought for a moment, I was sure he was going to say the Wise Men. He said, the Little Drummer Boy.

At which point I felt like a failure as a youth minister. And his mom just literally shrieked, Little Drummer Boy. It's not a song. That is one of my favorites, or at least it hasn't been. I didn't understand it, but it's actually a juxtaposition moment.

It's a song that juxtaposes the gifts that the wise men are bringing. And again, wrong time. But they invite this little drummer boy to go along.

And these are the words to this parable.

Come, they told me, parumpa pum pum A newborn king to see Parumpa pump. Maybe I didn't like that song because of the parumpa pumpum.

Our finest gifts we bring Parumpa pump To lay before the king so to honor him when we come.

And then in the poem, the parable, the little boy begins to address the baby in the manger.

And he begins to speak to the babe. And he says, this little baby rumpa pumpum I am a poor boy too.

I have no gift to bring that's fit to give to a king. A rumpa pumpa.

Shall I play for you on my drum?

The poem goes on. Mary nodded. He wasn't there. This didn't happen. It's a parable.

The oxen lamb kept time.

I played my drum for him Parumpa pum pum I played my best for him Porumpa pump.

Then he smiled at me, Me and my drum.

Jesus said, go and learn what this means. I desire grace.

Do you have that person in your life that's hard to buy a gift for?

How do you bring a gift to the God who created everything? And you have nothing that you can bring that he didn't create.

I'm just a poor boy, and I have nothing to bring that's fit for a king. And Jesus says, yes, you do.

For the thing that God wants the most is grace, mercy, compassion, loyalty, love. You have a gift fit for the king. But it's not something he doesn't need. Your grace. He doesn't need you to forgive him.

He needs you to forgive one another. He needs you to put down the drum of judgment and condemnation and play your best for him.

I want that moment.

When I can say, lord, I have no gift to bring to you that's worthy of you being a king, but I want to play my best for you and church. I'm just here to tell you when you're banging the drum of judgment against Hanukkah and Christmas and your brothers and sisters in Christ, when he's sitting there going, but what I want is mercy and grace and peace among my family. Play that drum. That's the one I want. Give the gift of mercy.

Give the gift of compassion. Wrong day, wrong season. Who cares? Someone out there still needs the bread of life. Someone out there is still broken and needs healing.

Someone is out there in darkness and needs the light of the world. Stop judging one another and start playing the drum we were called to play. Mercy and Grace, for I desire mercy and grace. And when you give that, that is your best drum. That is your best gift.

And then that child, that savior, Can you see a baby looking up and you're doing something silly? Talking in that voice, and that little baby smiles at you? There's nothing better. Except for this. When you've played Dream Best and given God what he wants the most, and he looks at you and he smiles.

That is what I always wanted. Thank you. That was the gift.