The Thread Of Trust

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. The opening video, you probably look at those pictures and go, where are they from? Actually, when Lisa saw it for the first time, those are public domain photos and video. But they're from different hill tribes in Southeast Asia. And we happened to, out in California when I was a pastor at that church, we had 100 members from the Lahu Si tribe, which is one of those groups. And we actually, I think we have at least one piece, and I'm using it as a Christmas little children's thing, one piece of fabric or a cloth that was woven like that, probably 20, 30 hours of work just in this one piece of cloth. It's not an easy process. That's the way it used to be. And in a number of cultures, a number of places, people still weave like that. It's not all machinery. A lot of manual labor. Speaking of which, I think this text today, we're looking at how God is into manual labor in the person of the Emmanuel, Jesus. We call it the Annunciation, the announcement of the angel Gabriel to Mary. And it's pretty astounding. It pulls in so many things. It pulls in the threads, the scarlet thread throughout the whole of the Bible up until this point. And it pulls things together in such a way that it's both astounding to Mary and to all of us just how surprising God is putting this all together. So let's read. Luke 1, 26 to 38. In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy. Now, Elizabeth and Zechariah, they were like Abraham and Sarah of the Old Testament. They were so old, they were given up on kids. And Zechariah doubted, like really doubted at the temple when the angel Gabriel told him that Elizabeth was going to have a kid. He named him John, right? Yeah. OK. And but anyways, when that had happened, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, to a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, Greetings, you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you. Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son of the most high. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David, and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever. His kingdom will have and will never end. How will this be, Mary asked. Since I am a virgin. The angel answered, The Holy Spirit will come on you and the power of the most high will overshadow you so that the holy one to be born will be called the son of God. Even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age. And she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month for no word from God will ever fail. I am the Lord's servant, Mary answered. May your word to me be fulfilled. Then the angel left her. Then the angel left her. Do you get that? It's like, wait a minute. Hold on, Gabriel, stay around for a while. It might be nice if Gabriel would have stayed around for a while, like a long time, actually, not just through an announcement here and then one to Joseph or there. But also, can you stay like a bodyguard for me? Because, like, I'm a 12 to 15 year old. We don't know exactly. Young, you know, teen or preteen. I don't know what I'm doing. I didn't birth no babies before. I'm not sure what's going on. And nobody's going to believe this. But the angel leaves. This is going to be part of the message. The angel left her. Wow. You know. How God chooses to do some of these things is just shocking. Today in our message, we're going to look at these two things. We're going to look at this phrase that the most high will become a child. And also he will be called the son of God. OK, I know only two points today. We'll see. You can time me. We might get out on time for a change. The most high will become a child. I don't know if you realize this. There is an executive summary by the Survey on American Life of the American Enterprise Institute. I read online from twenty twenty two and it said this among our culture right now. The marriage rate is falling. Have you noticed this? Women are having fewer children and many Americans, young adults in particular, are rethinking what it means to be family. In fact, do you understand why they're rethinking this? Why you can see this among college students and everybody that they're like, yeah, maybe not so much. Any of you have an idea of why? Yeah. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, by the way, like like a half a million, I think, to raise a child these days in America. And it doesn't end there. Any other reason why they might be thinking twice on marriage? Yes. And they also grew up in families. That they've seen all sorts of conflict and difficulty with. And...