The Christians Hour

Aaron Brockett: Welcome. You're listening to TCH. This is a Christians Hour broadcast. TCH is a ministry of Gospel Broadcasting Mission, and GBM's mission is to broadcast the message of Jesus in their own language to unreached people groups and tribes worldwide.

For most people of our culture, Christmas has become so familiar that most people miss the point. Beyond the decorations and gifts in front of us, there's a much bigger story to notice: a vast forest of wonder and meaning for everyone. This Christmas season, Ben Cachiaras, lead minister with the Mountain Christian Church in Joppa, Maryland, is helping us look past the riffraff of the world's version of the holidays and the tree to see the really big picture of the hope that Christmas represents. It's in a series Ben calls, "Don't Miss the Forest for the Tree."

Years ago, I cut down a diseased tree in our front yard. I thought the case was closed. The tree, however, had other thoughts. Out of that stump grew a shoot, and then another, and another. Today, we have a beautiful bush. In today's message, "Hope from the Tree Stump," Ben shares how Jesus' birth is God making good on a promise of hope from a different kind of stump. And it's for all of us.

Ben Cachiaras: Hello friends. You've heard me talk about the cabin up in northern Minnesota. I love that place. I love so many things about it. I love the lake where we are. I love the loons on the lake. I also love the trees. We have a lot of beautiful trees right around our cabin. One of my favorites is the Norway pine. The Norway pine, or the red pine, is actually the Minnesota state tree. They typically are very tall and almost perfectly straight. They have red bark on them, real majestic and stately. They have no branches down low until about 20 or 30 feet up, and then they have all the branches and the big plumes of needles on the top. It is really cool.

We have a lot of those that stand around our cabin like old friends. They've been there forever. I always feel bad when the wind blows one of them over, or they get sick and you have to take one down. I always feel like I hate that. But where once stood a tall, stately, majestic tree with green and blossoms on it, now there is just an old stump. A tree speaks of life, future, and hope. A stump is the opposite. It reminds you of what used to be there, a place where hope has died.

I wonder if you have any of those places in your life right now? Something where there's just a stump where there used to be a tree? Where you've given up hope for something or someone? Maybe the someone is you or some part of your life. Trees are so full of life, and then something comes sometimes and just whacks them off. You have nothing but an old stump. We all have stumps in our lives, don't we? Can you think of a stump that you have in your life?

Some of us walk down the aisle having these dreams of evergreen times of love that would last forever. Then something happens, and it feels more like a stump. Or the way your life is going doesn't turn out the way it was supposed to, and it just feels more like a stump. A relationship, or maybe you've lost someone that's really dear to you, or some other episode or issue in your life. We all have stumps.

We're going to talk about that today. We're in week two of a series that we're calling, "Don't Miss the Forest for the Tree." It's helping us look at a series of different trees. There's a whole lot of attention given to the Christmas tree. The tree becomes symbolic for all that the hurried Christmas experience in America has come to represent, like all the hustle and bustle and Cyber Monday billions that we spend in order to buy something to put under those trees.

What we want to do is help each other avoid being the kind of people who are so sucked into the Christmas trappings and traditions that we just go along with the Christmas presents, parties, puddings, and pies and miss the Christmas point, which is much larger. We want to step back and see the forest, the larger forest of God's meaning that we'll miss if we just get caught up here. You can miss the forest for the tree.

We want to avoid that and help each other. It turns out as we step back, we're going to look at a different tree today because Christmas isn't really just about hoping you get some gifts underneath your Christmas tree. It's about hope itself. It's about what to do with the stumps in our lives. We began this series last week talking about life between the trees. If you didn't catch that message, I'm going to encourage you to go back and catch it. It might be one of the most important messages I've ever given. It was connecting with people in a way that shows its importance.

You need to hear it because it'll also help you know where we're going today and the following weeks. We're going to talk about a different tree today. This is a tree that was beautiful and then got lopped off and became just a stump. We're going to learn what God did with it because when we learn that, it's going to help all of us know what to do with our stumps. In order to do that, we're going to have to cover the entire Old Testament part of the Bible, which shouldn't be a challenge because last week we covered all of eternity. I think we can get through the Old Testament this week.

When you're going to start talking about the Old Testament, you go right back to the beginning. You go back to Genesis and we begin there. God creates, and he creates humans in his image and a beautiful world. He creates this environment for harmony: peace with God and peace with others. It was a beautiful place. He creates us to flourish and thrive, to have abundant life, to be like a tree by streams of living water where roots go down and are nourished and all is well with the world. That's what God created us for.

But because we think we're so smart, the first humans and every human since then has pushed back against God and denied him and defied him and tried to go our own way. Whenever you do that, it never goes as well as you think it's going to. In fact, that's what's happened with the human family. Everything began to fall apart. The Bible says all we like sheep have gone astray, each to our own way, because we think we know better. In our disobedience, this thing called sin enters the picture.

We willingly walk away and cut ourselves off from the light and the goodness and the nutrients of God that help us grow and flourish the way we were meant to. Now we live in this darkened, dysfunctional time of a curse between the trees. Everything's spoiled with sin. If there's going to be any solution to that problem, it isn't going to come from us because we're so messed up and radically flawed that we can't provide answers to our own situation. We've proven through history we cannot solve this problem on our own.

God steps in and he says, "I'm going to make a promise to you. I'm going to go back and I'm going to remake things." He makes a promise the way he always does; he works through people. That's what God's MO is. He always works through people. In this case, he starts with a guy named Abraham. He says, "Where you've got curse, I'm going to bring blessing. Abraham, I'm going to do it through you. I'm going to give you a family and that family's going to grow into a huge family tree."

It's going to be so amazing that all the nations can come and perch in its branches and get back to the way it's meant to be. "I'm going to use your family to do it, Abraham." Genesis chapter 12, verse 3 says, "I'm going to bless you, Abraham. I'm going to give you a nation, a family, and all this stuff. And all the people on earth will be blessed through you." God's eyes were on Abraham, but he was thinking about the whole earth when he made that promise. Whenever God blesses you, he never does it just for your benefit. He blesses you so you can be a blessing.

This is called the covenant or the promise with Abraham. It's a long-term project and it covers most of the Old Testament. This is what the Old Testament is about: Is the tree going to grow, or is it only going to stay a stump? Is God faithful? Does he keep his promises? The story moves on and the children of Israel start to grow. This family of Abraham starts to grow. Then they become enslaved in Egypt for 400 years, which is a real bummer. Then God hears their cries and says, "I'm going to deliver you, but I'm going to do it the way I always do—through a human."

He calls a young man, a prince of Egypt, to go to the king of Egypt. The guy named Moses says, "Moses, I want you to go down there and get my people out of there." He goes to Pharaoh and says, "Let my people go," and Pharaoh says, "No." About 10 plagues later, he changes his mind and lets them go. Here go the children of Israel escaping out of Egypt. They get up to the Red Sea and God miraculously parts it. They go through on dry ground. As the Egyptian army follows in hot pursuit, the water swallows over them and they're all drowned.

It was a great rescue and a great deliverance. It's one of the greatest moments of redemption in history. God's people say, "Don't ever forget what God has done in this very place." God says, "Yes, I want you to remember why I did this. I blessed you so you can be a blessing. Don't forget it. I have a purpose for you. Now let's get back on track. Where were we?" He begins to grow the great tree again and says, "I'm going to use all of you now to do it. If you're going to be my people, you've got to look like me. You've got to act like me. You've got to have my character and my heart inside you."

God gives us his word. It's called the law. It's a way of understanding how we can be like God. If you want to represent God, you've got to be like God in little ways here and there, and his word helps us know how to do that. You can't really save a dark world if you look like the darkness. God gives his word so we know how to look like light. This is the promise. A covenant with Abraham was made, and now with Moses, it's called the Ten Commandments.

As we always do, we have a way of taking beautiful words from God and making them legalistic. We make them rules, and rules were meant to be broken. That's what God's people do. They got bored and they said, "God isn't enough. We don't want to just live with God and his word. We want a king. Everybody else seems to have a king." Have you ever done that? You look around and say you want what everybody else has. God says, "That's a really bad idea. You've got me." They said, "We want a king."

God sometimes gives us what we want even though it's not always best for us. He gives them a king. So now God's people have a king. His name is Saul. He's the first one. Saul looked the part because he was tall, but tall people can be overrated. He doesn't work out so good. He had a character issue and he fell by the wayside. God says, "Let me pick and anoint the next one." He sends a guy named Samuel to pick him. In 1 Samuel 13:14, he says, "I've chosen a man after my own heart. I'm going to appoint him to be ruler of my people."

That was David. Son of Jesse is a good man. Jesse's got all these sons. God says, "I want you to go and I want you to pick the least little runt, the one at the end, the one that looks like nothing but a stump. I want you to pick him. He's going to be the next king of Israel." David eventually does rise to the throne. He serves for 40 years, and it's the zenith of Israel's history, the pinnacle of their achievement. It's the glory days, the David years. They've never seen such a great time before or since.

David defeats the surrounding armies of the Philistines and gets all kinds of people paying tribute to him. He gets this wealth and he's in control of the Promised Land. He brings the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem. He makes Jerusalem the capital city, and they begin to call it the city of David. They begin to call it the city of God, or Zion. It's a pretty cool thing. David is a man after God's own heart and does a lot of good. The Bible's quick to remind us that he's a lot like us, too.

He messed up pretty bad. He committed adultery, murder, and other things we're capable of. His family was a bit of a disaster, but he remains in the memory of Israel the greatest king they ever saw. God made a promise to David just like he did to Abraham and Moses to keep the promise going for the tree. He promises David, "A son of David will always reign over the house of Israel." Listen to how that promise got expressed to David. Some of this might start to ring familiar if you're familiar with the Christmas story.

In 2 Samuel chapter 7, verses 11 to 13, it says, "The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you. You're not going to build a house for me, but I'm going to build a house for you, David. When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood from your family tree, David. I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever."

Verse 16 is the punchline: "Your house and your kingdom, David, will endure forever before me. Your throne will be established forever." One of the descendants of David, God said, "I will make the great king, and he will be the one." But just like we all do, they got arrogant, complacent, and lazy. They thought things like, "God says we're his favorites. He really loves us and he's full of grace, so we're just going to coast. Nothing can touch us now."

That's what God's people do sometimes. Prophets like Jeremiah came along and said, "No, you're not immune to God's judgment. He will keep his promises to bless you, for sure, but he'll also keep his promises for judgment." They didn't listen. All the kings after David were horrible and disobedient and led the people away from God. They drifted until the whole nation, which was the tree itself, split apart in a horrible civil war, like a bolt of lightning taking the tree of promise and splitting it into two.

The nation starts to be fractured and the bad kings keep coming. There's finally a loser named Zedekiah on the throne twiddling his thumbs when the worst imaginable happens. In comes Nebuchadnezzar from Babylon with all of his armies, and they march into Jerusalem and they lay it to absolute waste. They destroy the whole city and they take all the people and thrust them out into exile way over in Babylon. David's kingdom has fallen and everybody is shell-shocked.

Where once they had the great tree and the promise and the hope, now there's nothing but a big chainsaw mark where there is just a stump. They called out to God, "What happened? God, where are you? I thought we were your favorites. I thought we were your people." Have you ever prayed a prayer like that? "What gives, God? What about the promise?" Psalm 89, verse 49 says, "Lord, where is your former great love, which in your faithfulness you swore to David?" Now we're just looking at a stump.

We've all prayed prayers like that. God, where are you now? The Old Testament comes to an end on that note. There really are no answers. There is no voice from God that they are aware of, no help from heaven. There's 400 years of silence, just a stump. What do you do when heaven's quiet and you're staring at a stump? What do you do when your hope is floundering? What they did is they dared to remember what God had promised. They dared to cling to some words of hope and faith that God had given them.

I think it's the same thing we should do. They remembered promises from the prophet Isaiah. This is 700 years before Jesus is born. The prophet Isaiah speaks into their situation where they're staring at a stump. Isaiah chapter 11, verse 1 says, "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a branch will bear fruit." I know you're looking at a dead old stump, but I promise you one day there'll come a shoot from the stump of Jesse.

I know it doesn't look like much right now. I know you're looking at something in your life right now that looks just like an old stump, but God says it's coming. They began to recognize in those days that it was a promise not just about David in the past, it was a promise about the new David that would be coming. God will once again raise up a son of David one day who will be the true king, the true shepherd of his people, the true man after God's own heart, the true ruler of his kingdom.

These other prophetic texts, we get them out every Christmas and we hear them. I want them to make more sense to you from now on. When you hear things like Isaiah chapter 9, verses 6 and 7, the prophet said, "For to us a child's going to be born, a son is given. And the government will be on his shoulders. He'll be the wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace." The greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing it with justice and righteousness from that time on forever.

Sometimes when you're looking at just a stump, you have just a promise to hold on to. Jeremiah 23, verse 5 and 6 says, "The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, a king who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land." This is hundreds of years before Jesus. All they had was a stump and those words. Sometimes all you have is a promise from God's faithfulness that you just hold on to.

400 years of silence, and then on a silent night, there's a cry in the dark and a little baby is born. It's the birth of Christ. Matthew ends that 400 years of silence with what we now call the New Testament because he wants to make sure we understand who this little sprig is. That's why he begins the New Testament with a family tree. Matthew chapter 1, verse 1 says, "This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the promised one of God." How does he identify him right off the bat? The son of David's here. The son of Abraham.

Remember all the promises of God—the Abraham promise, the David promise—here it is. Then he lists Abraham and goes through the whole genealogy. Section 17 says, "Thus there were 14 generations from Abraham to David, and then 14 from David to the exile in Babylon, and then 14 more from the exile to the Messiah." In other words, all along it looked like chaos. It looked like nothing but a stump, but God was at work in perfectly ordered 7, 7, 7, the perfect biblical number. All the time building a tree with David at the root and Jesus at the center with branches big enough for everyone to come and rest in.

You come to the Christmas story. Luke chapter 2, verses 4 and 5: "Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged to the house and the line of David." Jesus is in the family tree. He's the son of David. This is why the angel said to the shepherds, "Don't be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy for all the people because today in the town of David, a savior has been born." He doesn't say that to give the location of the birth. He tells it to give the identity of the child.

This is the one who would be born in the town of David because he's from the line of David. This is the Messiah. The new great David is here. Paul the Apostle and all the New Testament writers preach this to help people connect the dots that God's promise is being fulfilled. Acts 13, verse 22 and 23 says, "After Saul, he made David their king. God testified concerning him, 'I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart, and he'll do everything I want him to do.' From this man's descendants God has brought to Israel the Savior, Jesus, as he promised."

Can you see it all coming together? Jesus of Nazareth is the promised son of David. He is the Messiah, the new greater David, the true king, the true shepherd, the one who will rule over all the nations, and of his kingdom there will be no end. He's the tree of life that will never be cut down again. Friend, how's your life going? I invite you to think about the stumps in your life and remember this. Remember three things.

Number one, when God makes a promise, he keeps it. Sometimes all you can do is cling to the promise of God. It may not come at the time you want or look like what you want it to look like, but you cling to the promise of God. Number two, sometimes it feels like God has forgotten, but when it seems like God has forgotten, remember this: God remembers. Trust in the faithfulness of God. Number three, when something looks dead, remember that God can bring life out of dead things. It's what he does best. So put your hope in the God who can bring life out of things that are dead.

This Jesus proved that when he himself conquered death. Jesus was the perfect sprig of life. He was the very tree of life himself, and he was living a beautiful, perfect life, and they hacked it off. They killed him and they put him in the tomb, and there he was, nothing but a stump for three days. On the third day, the women went and visited him. And you know what they found? They didn't find a dead old stump. They found a sprig of life, and the angel said, "He ain't here. He's risen."

Jesus is still alive, and he is in fact the son of David who reigns over the house of David. He has created a tree that is big enough for every one of us to perch in its branches and to find the life God meant for us from the beginning. Jesus is that way and that truth and that life and the tree. I invite you now to think about that stump in your life, that area where you're struggling with hope.

While you're thinking about that, I'm reminded of a guy named Bartimaeus in the Bible. He met Jesus one day. Bartimaeus was blind. He had a messed up life. He heard Jesus was going to be coming to town, so he sat on the edge of the road and had someone tell him when Jesus got close. At the right time, when Jesus was coming by, he called out. You know what he said? He said, "Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me! Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!" Jesus hears him and responds and says to the man, "What do you want me to do for you?" He says, "I want to see." Jesus healed that man in that moment. I want to invite you to pray that same simple prayer. Think about the stump in your life and say, "Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me."

Aaron Brockett: Our thanks to Ben Cachiaras for today's message. Our thanks as well to Acappella Ministries for sharing their music of encouragement. When I cut down that tree in our front yard years ago, I didn't expect what's there growing from that stump today. In today's message, Ben reminds us of what God has promised through an old dead stump, so to speak, and that he has proved that he has the power to bring life, to bring his promises to fruition. God has promised redemption through Jesus, and that Jesus will return. What will you do with his promises, his hope?

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