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GOD MAN KING | Week 1 | Sermon · Rewind

Rock Point Church

47 min

Pastor Bill Bush · Apr 8, 2024 · 5 min read · 47 min listen

The big idea

God is with us, and once we really believe that, we can trust Him enough to go wherever He asks — even when the path is scary.

In this message

The big idea
Point 1 of 7Matthew's opening genealogy sets up who Jesus is: the sovereign king in David's line and the sacrificial son in Abraham's line.
Point 2 of 7Joseph's story shows that Jesus's birth was the fulfillment of Emmanuel, God with us.

Point 3 of 7Jesus is the everlasting Father, the God who has always existed and who sees us.
Point 4 of 7Jesus is the Prince of Peace, but the peace He brings is peace with God before it is peace in our circumstances.
Point 5 of 7Jesus is the wonderful counselor, meaning His counsel often looks beyond our comprehension before it looks good.
Point 6 of 7Jesus is the mighty God who shows up with power once we trust His counsel, even after we reach the end of ourselves.
Point 7 of 7God is present with us on the field of life, like a patient father coaching a nervous child through a game he doesn't yet understand.
Take it into your week
Transcript

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Scripture in this message

Matthew 1
Matthew 1:1
Matthew 1:23
Isaiah 7:14
Isaiah 9:6
Genesis 16

Rewind AI drafted the Big Idea and some point headings shown here from the sermon transcript. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Pastor Bill Bush · Apr 8, 2024 · 47 min watch · 3 min read

GOD MAN KING | Week 1 | Sermon

In this message

Big Idea
Key points
Application

Scripture in this message

Matthew 1
Matthew 1:1
Matthew 1:23
Isaiah 7:14
Isaiah 9:6
Genesis 16

Big Idea Key points Application

Big Idea

God is with us, and once we really believe that, we can trust Him enough to go wherever He asks — even when the path is scary.

Matthew opens the story of Jesus with the good news that God did not just watch us from a distance — He joined us as Emmanuel, God with us. Because He got in the game with us as wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace, we can trust Him even when His plans feel scary or make no sense, and simply believe Him.

Key points

1
1Matthew's opening genealogy sets up who Jesus is: the sovereign king in David's line and the sacrificial son in Abraham's line.
Pastor Bill walks through Matthew 1:1, noting that calling Jesus a descendant of David points to Him as the promised king of kings, while descendant of Abraham points back to Isaac, the son offered as a sacrifice, foreshadowing God offering His own Son for all people. The order of the book mirrors this: the first twelve chapters emphasize the king, the Lion of Judah, and the later chapters move toward the cross, the Lamb of God.
2
2Joseph's story shows that Jesus's birth was the fulfillment of Emmanuel, God with us.
Joseph finds out Mary is pregnant and plans to quietly divorce her, but an angel tells him to trust God, quoting Isaiah 7:14 that a virgin will conceive and call Him Emmanuel. Pastor Bill explains this means God did not just stay with us from a distance in the Old Testament, He joined us by taking on humanity.
3
3Jesus is the everlasting Father, the God who has always existed and who sees us.
Pastor Bill explains that Jesus did not begin to exist at His birth but is the originator of eternity, showing up throughout the Old Testament as the angel of the Lord. He tells the story of Hagar in Genesis 16, mistreated and running away, whom the angel of the Lord meets in the wilderness and who names God 'the God who sees me.'
4
4Jesus is the Prince of Peace, but the peace He brings is peace with God before it is peace in our circumstances.
Pastor Bill clarifies that the peace we usually want is the absence of problems, but the peace Jesus offers is the presence of harmony that comes from being reconciled to God first. Only after we make peace with God, he says, can we experience the peace that surpasses understanding even while walking through hard valleys.
5
5Jesus is the wonderful counselor, meaning His counsel often looks beyond our comprehension before it looks good.
Pastor Bill reworks the common reading of 'wonderful' and 'counselor,' explaining that counselor means a king's directive, not optional advice, and wonderful means beyond human comprehension, not simply pleasant. He points to Job, who never got an explanation from God but was satisfied just seeing who God was, and applies this to trusting God with money and with scary decisions like sending people out to plant a church.
6
6Jesus is the mighty God who shows up with power once we trust His counsel, even after we reach the end of ourselves.
Returning to Hagar's story in Genesis 21, Pastor Bill describes her being sent away again, running out of water, and collapsing in despair, only to have the angel of the Lord open her eyes to a well of water right there. He draws the lesson that reaching the end of yourself is actually the beginning of God showing up in might.
7
7God is present with us on the field of life, like a patient father coaching a nervous child through a game he doesn't yet understand.
Pastor Bill tells the story of his four-year-old grandson Phoenix's first tee-ball game, melting down repeatedly because the game didn't go the way he wanted, while his dad stayed on the field patiently coaching him. He applies it directly: God is with us in the game He created, not to harm us but to help us, and we simply need to believe Him.

Application

Don't just believe in God — believe Him, and go where He's going because He's with you.

Pray about going with the church plant
Consider whether God is calling you to join Echoes Church as part of the sending team, even though it may feel scary or costly to Rock Point.
Step into the gap if you stay
If you're not called to go, engage practically by serving and giving where others have stepped back, growing your own trust in God in the process.
Trust God's counsel even when it makes no sense
Especially with time and money, obey what God's word directs before you fully understand it, rather than waiting until it seems safe or logical.
Make peace with God first
Stop waiting for painless circumstances to trust Him; settle your relationship with God so you can receive the deeper peace that holds even in hard valleys.
Keep trusting when you reach the end of yourself
Like Hagar in the wilderness, don't quit when God's promise seems impossible — that's often the place right before He shows up with His might.

Take it into your week

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Scripture in this message

From the transcript
“we're gonna be going through. It's the gospel of who is Jesus. And we'll be taking that apart and seeing what does it mean for him to be this God who became a man who is the king. And what does that look like was entailed today in Matthew one, our big idea to open the series”
From the transcript
“And that's why in the book it opens up with look. Verse one of Matthew says this. This is the record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and Abraham”
From the transcript
“It's found in verse 23 of Matthew one. It says this, Look, the virgin will conceive a child. She will give birth to a son and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God is with us”
From the transcript
“She will give birth to a son and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God is with us. That's Isaiah seven fourteen”
From the transcript
“Isaiah nine:six says this, For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. So he's talking about humanity now. A man. But he says the government will rest on his shoulders and he will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, and prince of peace”
From the transcript
“he shows up and he speaks to a woman named Hagar in in Genesis 16. And essentially, the first time he shows up and actually speaks to someone, it's it's this woman that's not even a Jew”
From the transcript
“You will be able to walk through the valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil because God is with you. Psalms 23”
From the transcript
“So that's where I wanna pick up the story. Look what happens in Genesis 21. It says right here, it says, so Abraham got up early the next morning, prepared food in a container of water, and strapped them on Hagar's shoulders”

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

Sign in to track your progress through this devotional.

Day 1

There is a world of difference between knowing someone's name and knowing their presence. Matthew opens his gospel with a genealogy that looks, at first glance, like a list of names to skim past. But it builds to a moment that changes everything: a child born of a virgin, named Emmanuel — God with us. Not God watching from a safe distance. Not God sending a memo. God entering the game. Pastor Bill drew on that image deliberately — a Father who doesn't just coach from the sidelines but steps onto the field alongside us. Whatever you are carrying today, that is the ground floor of this week's reflection: the God of the universe chose to become acquainted with what you are acquainted with. Hunger. Grief. Exhaustion. Betrayal. Confusion. He didn't observe those things; He lived them. That means when you bring your hardest day to Him, you are not explaining yourself to someone who can't relate. You are talking to Emmanuel. That is not just a title Matthew assigned to a baby in Bethlehem — it is a living description of who Jesus still is to you right now. The week ahead will ask you to move from believing in that truth to actually trusting it. But it starts here, with the name.

For reflection

Where in your life right now do you most need to remember that God is not distant but genuinely present with you?

Pray

Pray for a fresh awareness of Jesus as Emmanuel — God who is actually with you today, not far off.

Day 2

Matthew didn't invent the name Emmanuel on his own. He reached back roughly 700 years to a promise God made through the prophet Isaiah — a sign so audacious it could only come from God Himself. A virgin would conceive and bear a son, and His name would be called Emmanuel. When Matthew quotes this verse in chapter one, he is making a bold claim: the promise that seemed impossible is standing in the room. What strikes you when you sit with that? God made a specific, bewildering promise centuries before its fulfillment, and He kept it — exactly. Not approximately. Not spiritually. Literally. That matters when you are in a season where a promise feels delayed or a prayer feels unanswered. Isaiah's audience couldn't have imagined how this would come together. Mary and Joseph certainly couldn't have planned it. And yet the thread held, because God was holding it. Faith is not the feeling that everything will work out nicely. It is confidence that the God who kept His word across seven centuries is the same God who is at work in the gap you're staring at right now. The sign was given before anyone asked for it. The promise arrived before anyone could manufacture it. Emmanuel was always the plan.

For reflection

Is there a promise from God — in Scripture or in prayer — that you have quietly stopped believing He will keep? What would it look like to hold onto it one more day?

Pray

Pray for the faith to trust a promise you cannot yet see fulfilled.

Day 3

Hagar didn't go looking for God. She was running away — a servant, used and then driven out, sitting alone in the wilderness with no plan and no people. And yet the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water and asked, 'Where have you come from, and where are you going?' He already knew the answer. The question was an invitation for her to say it out loud. Pastor Bill pointed to this story because it captures something stunning about who God is: He is the God who sees. Not the God who notices you when you've cleaned yourself up and found your footing, but the God who tracks you to the desert. Hagar named Him El Roi — 'the God who sees me.' She became the only person in all of Scripture to give God a name. She was a foreigner, a slave, a woman in crisis — and she met the living God. If you have ever felt like you were too far out, too broken, or too forgotten to matter to God, Hagar's story is written partly for you. You don't have to find your way back into view. You were already seen. The Everlasting Father, as Isaiah calls Him, is not waiting for you to locate Him. He has already located you.

For reflection

Have you ever been in a 'desert' moment — isolated, depleted, far from where you expected to be — and sensed God's presence anyway? What did that teach you?

Pray

Pray for the confidence that you are seen by God right now, exactly where you are.

Day 4

Four names in one verse. Wonderful Counselor. Mighty God. Everlasting Father. Prince of Peace. Isaiah piles them together as if no single title could hold what he needed to say. Pastor Bill worked through each one carefully, and what ties them together is worth sitting with: every single name is about what God is toward us, not just what He is in the abstract. He counsels — and His counsel is wonderful, meaning beyond what we could think up ourselves. He is mighty — and His power shows up in our lives when we stop trying to generate it on our own. He is an everlasting Father — the originator of time itself, who still sees the individual. He is a Prince of Peace — and the peace He offers runs deeper than circumstances. These aren't credentials on a resume. They are descriptions of how He moves in a life that is open to Him. The question the sermon was building toward all along is this: Do you relate to Jesus through these names, or do you hold them at arm's length as theological information? There's a version of faith that knows the titles and never lets them land. And there's a version that says, 'Wonderful Counselor — I actually need Your counsel today.' That second version is what Pastor Bill was pointing us toward.

For reflection

Which of these four names feels most personal to you right now, and which feels most distant? Why do you think that is?

Pray

Pray that one of these four names would move from information to lived experience for you this week.

Day 5

By Genesis 21, Hagar is back in the wilderness — this time with her son Ishmael, cast out again, water gone, hope gone. She sets her child under a bush because she cannot watch him die. And then God opens her eyes and she sees a well of water that was already there. Pastor Bill used this image to make a point that is both humbling and freeing: when you reach the end of yourself, you have arrived at the beginning of God. The well wasn't new. Her ability to see it was. Something happens when we finally stop straining to solve what is beyond us — we become capable of noticing what God has already placed in our path. This is not a passive message. Hagar still had to get up, fill the container, and give her son water. The provision was real, but she had to receive it. Surrender is not the same as resignation. It is the posture that makes room for God to act. If you are at a wall right now — financially, relationally, physically, vocationally — today's reflection is an invitation to ask whether you've truly handed it over or whether you're still white-knuckling the plan. The Mighty God tends to show up most clearly at the exact place where our own resources run out.

For reflection

Where are you currently straining to keep control of something that might need to be surrendered to God? What is one concrete act of trust that could look like?

Pray

Pray for the courage to release the thing you've been trying to manage on your own and to trust God's provision at the end of your own effort.

Day 6

Pastor Bill referenced Psalm 23 in the context of the Good Shepherd — the God who leads, restores, and walks through the valley with us rather than around it. David doesn't write this psalm as a man without trouble. He writes it as a man who has learned what it means to be accompanied through trouble. 'Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.' There is that word again — with. Emmanuel. God with us. This psalm is a personal testimony to what trusting God actually produces over time: a settled quality, a 'my cup overflows' kind of contentment that has nothing to do with the absence of hard things and everything to do with the presence of the Shepherd. Pastor Bill's challenge all week has been to move from believing in God to believing God — and Psalm 23 is what that shift looks like from the inside. It doesn't mean you see the whole path. David certainly didn't. It means the one holding your hand knows the terrain, and you've decided to keep walking. Peace with God comes first, as Pastor Bill said. Contentment follows. Not the other way around. You don't earn the peace by getting your circumstances right. You receive the peace, and then you walk.

For reflection

What would it look like for you to walk through your current 'valley' with the posture of Psalm 23 — present, trusting, unafraid — rather than waiting for the valley to end before trusting God?

Pray

Pray for the kind of deep, settled peace that comes from walking with the Shepherd — not from having an easy road.

Day 7

We end where the sermon began — the whole of Matthew chapter one. A genealogy, an impossible pregnancy, a frightened carpenter, an angel's word, a name that meant everything. Looking back over the week, the thread that ran through every day was this: God is Emmanuel, and Emmanuel changes things. Not as a title you frame and hang on a wall, but as a living truth that rearranges how you hold your fear, your money, your time, your calling, and your next frightening step. Pastor Bill's closing image — a four-year-old stepping onto a t-ball field, nervous but trusting the Father's hand — is worth returning to. You may not understand the play. You may not feel ready. The Wonderful Counselor's direction may not make sense to you yet. But the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace — He knows the game He made. The whole point of Emmanuel is that He doesn't ask you to trust someone unfamiliar. He became familiar with everything you face so that your trust would have a foundation. This week, the invitation was not to feel differently but to move differently — to take the step, do the thing, trust the counsel. That is what believing God, not just believing in God, looks like in a real life.

For reflection

What is the one specific step God has been asking you to take that you've been putting off — and what would it look like to take it this week, even if you're nervous?

Pray

Pray for the courage to take the next step God is calling you toward — and for the faith to trust Emmanuel every step after that.

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

This message centers on one of the most stunning claims of the Christmas story: God didn't watch from a distance — He stepped in. Take a moment to think about what it would mean if that were really, truly true.

Discussion questions

1
Matthew 1:23 introduces Jesus with the name Emmanuel, which means 'God with us.' What do you think Matthew wants his readers to understand about Jesus by starting the gospel with that name?
2
In Genesis 16 and 21, Hagar is alone and out of options in the desert — and God meets her there. Pastor Bill connected her story to the title 'Everlasting Father' from Isaiah 9:6. What does that connection reveal about the kind of Father Jesus is described as being?
3
Pastor Bill drew a distinction between the title 'Prince of Peace' and the promise of a conflict-free life, saying the peace Jesus brings is first a peace with God. How does that change the way we might think about what it means to experience peace?
4
Pastor Bill described the counsel of the 'Wonderful Counselor' as a king's directive rather than optional advice — guidance that is 'wonderful' precisely because it goes beyond what we can figure out on our own. What makes that kind of counsel hard to follow, and what might make it worth following anyway?
5
Pastor Bill challenged us to move from believing in God to actually believing God — and said that shift shows up in the practical, sometimes frightening places, including how we steward our time and money. What's the difference, in everyday life, between those two postures?
6
Pastor Bill said, 'When you reach the end of yourself, you have arrived at the beginning of God.' How might that idea shape the way a community of people — a family, a church, a small group — faces a situation that feels beyond them?

Pray together

Ask God for the courage to believe Him — not just believe in Him — and to take the next step He is inviting you toward, trusting that Emmanuel is already there

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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GOD MAN KING

Week 1 · 3 messages

Where these passages are preached

Matthew 1 Isaiah 7 Isaiah 9 Genesis 16

Explore related topics

Emmanuel: God With Us Peace With God Surrendering to God's Will The Names of Jesus Trusting God

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