Yountville Community Church Yountville Community Church

21 Days of Focus: Restoring Rhythm2. Work, Rest and Restoring Identity Dan Bidwell, Senior Pastor 15 January 2023
Intro: Whats in the box?
A member of church gave me this book early last year. Half Time by Bob Buford. A book by a Christian business man about how to make the most of the second half of your life.
Bob Buford was a TV station owner from the early days of television. He was wildly successful from a business perspective. But somewhere around the middle of his life, he got to a point in his career where he asked himself: Is this all there is?
And so in the book, he describes this pivotal conversation with his business mentor. His mentor, Mike Kami, had been a strategic planner with IBM and Xerox in the early days, and went to consult at Coca Cola a heavy hitter. And an atheist.
And Buford finds himself asking his mentor: (quote on handout)
What should I do? How could I be most useful? Where should I invest my own talents, time and treasure? What are the values that give purpose to my life? What is the overarching vision that shapes me? Who am I? Where am I? Where am I going? How do I get there?
In this blizzard of wonderment, Mike Kami asked me a simple and penetrating question: Whats in the box?
If you had to decide THE one thing thats the most important part of your life, the one non-negotiable, the puzzle piece that everything else is built off, the thing that defines and motivates you, what would it be? Whats in the box?
Thats what were going to be thinking about today as we open the Bible. So why dont we pray and ask God to give us wisdom.
Our heavenly Father, we pray today that you would give us clarity and focus as we think about what the most important thing in our life is. Give us wisdom as we read your word, and keep transforming us into the image of Christ. In his life-giving name we pray, Amen.
Well we are in the middle of our 21 Days of Focus something we do every January to help us refocus our faith at the beginning of the New Year.
This year were calling the series Restoring Rhythm how to find balance in a busy world.
We started last week with the premise that, as a society, we have a busyness problem.
Two cardiologists Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman have labeled our busyness problem as "hurry sickness." They noticed their patients in this continuous struggle [] to accomplish or achieve more and more things or participate in more and more events in less and less time."
Taken to the extreme, hurry sickness can cause real health issues. But most of us dont even notice it happening to us, because busyness is such a normal part of modern life. Its the air we breathe.
But its not how life is meant to be. Jesus said:
28 Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Matthew 11:28-29)
Commentator F. Dale Bruner said that the rest Jesus is offering us is not a vacation or a mattress to lie down on. Jesus offers us equipment, a new way to carry life so that our work and our rest are part of a life-giving rhythm.
So today I want to share the first piece of equipment that Jesus gives to help us restore rhythm, and to find balance in a busy world.
And that equipment is to restore our understanding of work, rest and identity (because theyre all tied up together).
1. Order and Disorder
To restore a right understanding of work, rest and identity, we need to go back to Creation.
At creation, God made humans in his image. And he gave us a role to play bringing order to creation.
God gave Adam and Eve a job: to rule over creation; to subdue it; and to fill it. They were to bring shape and creativity to the world. This is the original pattern for work. Work was good and purposeful and life-affirming. That was day 6 of creation.
Then on Day 7 God rested from his work of creation. And he commanded all of creation to do likewise.
Gods deliberate act of stopping, and re

21 Days of Focus: Restoring Rhythm2. Work, Rest and Restoring Identity Dan Bidwell, Senior Pastor 15 January 2023
Intro: Whats in the box?
A member of church gave me this book early last year. Half Time by Bob Buford. A book by a Christian business man about how to make the most of the second half of your life.
Bob Buford was a TV station owner from the early days of television. He was wildly successful from a business perspective. But somewhere around the middle of his life, he got to a point in his career where he asked himself: Is this all there is?
And so in the book, he describes this pivotal conversation with his business mentor. His mentor, Mike Kami, had been a strategic planner with IBM and Xerox in the early days, and went to consult at Coca Cola a heavy hitter. And an atheist.
And Buford finds himself asking his mentor: (quote on handout)
What should I do? How could I be most useful? Where should I invest my own talents, time and treasure? What are the values that give purpose to my life? What is the overarching vision that shapes me? Who am I? Where am I? Where am I going? How do I get there?
In this blizzard of wonderment, Mike Kami asked me a simple and penetrating question: Whats in the box?
If you had to decide THE one thing thats the most important part of your life, the one non-negotiable, the puzzle piece that everything else is built off, the thing that defines and motivates you, what would it be? Whats in the box?
Thats what were going to be thinking about today as we open the Bible. So why dont we pray and ask God to give us wisdom.
Our heavenly Father, we pray today that you would give us clarity and focus as we think about what the most important thing in our life is. Give us wisdom as we read your word, and keep transforming us into the image of Christ. In his life-giving name we pray, Amen.
Well we are in the middle of our 21 Days of Focus something we do every January to help us refocus our faith at the beginning of the New Year.
This year were calling the series Restoring Rhythm how to find balance in a busy world.
We started last week with the premise that, as a society, we have a busyness problem.
Two cardiologists Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman have labeled our busyness problem as "hurry sickness." They noticed their patients in this continuous struggle [] to accomplish or achieve more and more things or participate in more and more events in less and less time."
Taken to the extreme, hurry sickness can cause real health issues. But most of us dont even notice it happening to us, because busyness is such a normal part of modern life. Its the air we breathe.
But its not how life is meant to be. Jesus said:
28 Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Matthew 11:28-29)
Commentator F. Dale Bruner said that the rest Jesus is offering us is not a vacation or a mattress to lie down on. Jesus offers us equipment, a new way to carry life so that our work and our rest are part of a life-giving rhythm.
So today I want to share the first piece of equipment that Jesus gives to help us restore rhythm, and to find balance in a busy world.
And that equipment is to restore our understanding of work, rest and identity (because theyre all tied up together).
1. Order and Disorder
To restore a right understanding of work, rest and identity, we need to go back to Creation.
At creation, God made humans in his image. And he gave us a role to play bringing order to creation.
God gave Adam and Eve a job: to rule over creation; to subdue it; and to fill it. They were to bring shape and creativity to the world. This is the original pattern for work. Work was good and purposeful and life-affirming. That was day 6 of creation.
Then on Day 7 God rested from his work of creation. And he commanded all of creation to do likewise.
Gods deliberate act of stopping, and re

Zacchaeus: A New Start - New Years Day 2023Zacchaeus: A New Start Dan Bidwell, Senior PastorLuke 19:1-10 1 January 2023
Well good morning and Happy New Year!
I always like to start my New Years sermon with a list of the top New Years Resolutions. According to one survey , the top New Years resolutions for Americans are:
#1 exercise more#2 eat healthier#3 lose weight#4 save more money#5 spend more time with family and friends
Highly ranked spend less time on social media (Speak more about that during January as we take the month to re-focus on God at the beginning of a new year)
I was at an exercise class a few days before Christmas and the instructor said: Remember, come January 1, this place will be packed. Dont be put off, most people will be gone again by the start of February
We love to make resolutions, but its hard to stick to them.
So I found a different list of resolutions. On a website for a company that sells mattresses. (puffy.com). Here is Puffys list of 7 New Year Resolutions You Can Actually Accomplish In 2023
7. Do One New Thing A MonthNew Year resolutions often crash and burn because they try to tackle too much too fast. Set a goal once a month to do something youve never done before. That could mean eating at a new restaurant, gardening, or learning to salsa. However small or big, its still something to look back on at the end of the year.
6. Save A Small Percentage Of Your Paycheck
5. Do Your Bit For The EnvironmentTake baby steps. Carry a reusable tote bag to the supermarket (Im still trying!)
4. Be Kind To Yourself And OthersA small act of kindness will suffice. Text a friend you havent heard from in a while. Call your parents. Cook a meal for your partner. Treat yourself to a cupcake from your favorite bakery. Allow yourself to take a whole day off and do what you want to do.
3. Change Up Your LookTake a few inches off your hair, try a new hair color, get a tattoo, or simply switch up your personal style. Make 2023 the year you decide to embrace bold colors, mix patterns, and find the courage to wear outfits youve always wanted to but never thought you could pull off.
2. Try A New Recipe Each Week(This one actually sounds exhausting to me!)
1. Get More SleepWhile it sounds easy enough to get the recommended 8 hours of sleep every night, not a lot of people do. God has made us for Work and Rest, and were going to talk about this more as the month goes on
But there you go. 7 resolutions you can actually accomplish in 2023. (Some I really like!)
What about your spiritual goals for 2023?
My question to you as your pastor is: What do you hope God will do in you in 2023? Where do you want this journey to take you? What are your spiritual New Years resolutions?
Because were not just here for our weekly shot of religion. Were here for transformation. The kind of transformation that happens when people meet Jesus.
So thats what were going to see in our Bible passage today a transformation story, with three take away lessons that we can build into our own faith story for 2023.
So lets pray that God would start that transformation work in us (even now!) as we open his word.
Our heavenly Father, will you speak to us through the Bible as we open it now. Will you use it to sharpen us, and focus us, so that we become more and more like Jesus every day. In his mighty name we pray. Amen
1. Seeking Jesus
If you grew up in Sunday School, then you might know the story of Zaccheaus already. What does the song tell us?
Zacchaeus was a wee little manAnd a wee little man was heHe climbed up in a sycamore treeFor the Lord he wanted to see
If Zacchaeus was remembered for anything, it was that he was short! But possibly not the shortest man in the Bible. In the running for the shortest man you have Nehemiah (knee-high-mia). Jobs friend Bildad the Shuhite (shoe-height). But the winner is Simon Peter who fell asleep on his watch.
Now if we ever have Church Camp, youll know the answer to at least one of the Saturday night t

Christmas Eve 2022 - Gifts of Christmas4. Gold: The Gift of a King Dan Bidwell, Senior Pastor Christmas Week 2022
All this December we have been thinking about the gifts of Christmas. It got me thinking about some of the best gifts Ive received over the years.- Walkie talkies- Skateboards- Body boards (Christmas is in summertime in Australia, and we lived near the beach!) In fact lots of surf wear, swimsuits, towels, snorkels, fins etc. Water babies!
My kids are 20 and 18 now, and of course Christmas gifts change as kids get older. The value of the gifts goes up, and usually were told what to buy (and what not to buy).
I love the idea of surprising the kids, or my wife, with an outrageous gift. Have you seen those holiday ads from car dealers, the ones where a couple will surprise one another with a brand new car, without ever telling the other person. Has anybody ever had that happen to them?
Perhaps my most valuable Christmas gift ever was finding out that my wife, Joanna, was pregnant with our first child. Such an exciting Christmas gift! Jo remembers the gift of morning sickness
As I said, all through December weve been thinking about the Gifts of Christmas, particularly the gift that the wise men brought to the baby Jesus.
Gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Gifts that were of great value. But also gifts that had spiritual significance. They each point to a deeper truth about Jesus which would be revealed as he grew from Jesus the baby into Jesus the savior.
And today we come to our last gift the gift of Gold.
So why dont we ask God to speak to us and teach us as we open the Bible over the next few minutes.
Heavenly Father, as we open your Bible today/tonight, will you teach us about who Jesus is? Will you reveal him to us, as you revealed him to the wise men on that first Christmas? Will you show us Jesus the king, and will you help us to respond to him in worship? We pray this in Jesus mighty name. Amen
1. Revealing The King
As you may have guessed, I was not born in the US. I was born in Australia, and one of the stranger things about Australia is that we still belong to the British Commonwealth. So we still technically have the King of England as our head of state. (Feels strange to say The King after saying The Queen all my life!).
One of the big questions as the Queen got older and older was, who would become the next King of England?
Prince Charles was always the number 1 in line for the throne, but some people wondered if he would accept the role.
Next in line is Prince William, who for a long time was one of the most eligible bachelors on the planet. When I became a school teacher in 1998, Prince Wills (as he was known) was 18, and I remember the girls hoping they would meet him and fall in love and marry a prince (because thats the dream, right?). Its also a regular theme in Christmas Hallmark movies 
Why the lesson about the British royal family?
This year with the passing of the Queen, a new king was revealed King Charles III. And the coronation was this spectacle to behold uniforms and pageantry and ceremony and horses and chariots and crowds of people lining the streets, as the new King took the throne.
Because thats what we expect when the new king is revealed.
And thats why the story of Jesus birth is so unusual, so unexpected, so unceremonious.
Rather than a royal birth in a palace, surrounded by attendants and servants, instead Jesus is born in a stable, surrounded by animals. In fact it probably wasnt even a stable or a barn, but a cave where the animals sheltered. Jesus wasnt dressed in royal robes and laid in an ornate cradle instead he was wrapped in strips of cloth and laid in a manger, a feeding trough for cattle and donkeys. There was nothing to say that this birth was special if anything it looks the opposite. A desperate young mother and her husband with no family support, maybe because theyd heard that the baby wasnt Josephs.
I suspect thats what the scene looked like to th

Gifts of Christmas3. Myrrh: The Gift of a Lamb Dan Bidwell, Senior PastorIsaiah 53:3-7 18 December 2022
My wife, Joanna, was at her work Christmas party this week, and they each had to bring a gift for the White Elephant game, that game where you open a present but the next person can steal it if they like it more than their present. Anyway almost half the gifts were scented candles, so there was a lot of negotiating about who wanted French Oak, and White Bergamot, and Carmel Spice.
So as we start, a question for the people sitting around you. If you could only burn one scented candle for the rest of your life what would it be?
~
I bring up scented candles because the Christmas gift were talking about today had one use as a perfume.
Over these three weeks leading into Christmas, we are thinking about the gifts that the Wise Men brought Jesus gold, frankincense and myrrh. And particularly the significance of the gift, beyond just being valuable and useful.
Last week we talked about frankincense, which was a gift pointing to Jesus as the High Priest.
Today we are going to talk about the gift of myrrh.
So what do you do with a gift of myrrh? What was myrrh was used for?
It's unusual one again. Myrrh is actually quite similar to frankincense. It's another aromatic resin. Like frankincense, myrrh comes from a tree that grows in the Arabian Peninsula. It grows on a bush with lots of thorns and they cut the bark and the sap comes out and they use that to make the myrrh.
In the ancient world it was used as an antiseptic, and even today apparently myrrh is used in some mouthwash and toothpaste. It's also used as a light analgesic to relieve pain from small injuries, or mixed into a topical skin product that you can rub on bruises and sore muscles.
The word in the original language means bitter. Compared to a frankincense which has a very sweet smell, apparently myrrh smells kind of woody and earthy but a little bit medicinal. But it was also used as a perfume. And as you read through the Bible, myrrh is mentioned 17 times, about 10 of those references are in the Song of Songs where myrrh is described almost like an aphrodisiac.
But when you come to the crucifixion scene of Jesus, myrrh is referred to twice for a different purpose.
Look Mark 15:22-24
22 They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means the place of the skull). 23 Then they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. 24 And they crucified him. (Mark 15:22-24)
They were offering Jesus this wine mixed with myrrh as a kind of pain reliever to help him with the pain before they crucified him. But Jesus wouldn't take it. We assume that Jesus wanted to be completely lucid as he went to his death.
And then after his death we see myrrh again in John chapter 19 at verse 38
38 Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilates permission, he came and took the body away. 39 He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. 40 Taking Jesus body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs.41 At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. 42 Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.(John 19:38-42)
Myrrh plays this big role in the crucifixion scene of Jesus. And so when we think about the significance of this gift to the baby Jesus, the gift of myrrh actually points forward to the end of his life.
There's a kind of tragic irony that this gift given to Jesus at birth becomes the same thing that he's wrapped in in his death. One commentator wrote: the die is cast early in Jesus life, pointing ahead to an early death.
So why do I bring th

Gifts of Christmas2. Frankincense: The Gift of Understanding Dan Bidwell, Senior PastorIsaiah 40:3-5; Mark 1:1-8, 14-15 Sunday 11 December, 2022
In a small Southern town, the children in Sunday school were drawing pictures of the nativity. As the teacher went around, she complimented the children on their pictures of Mary, and Joseph and the baby Jesus. As she got to little Timmy, she noticed something unusual about his picture. The wise men were wearing firemens helmets.
She said to Timmy: Timmy, I love your picture. But why are the wisemen wearing firemens helmets?
Little Timmy says: Because, Miss, you told us that the wise men came from afar!
~
Well we are continuing today in our sermon series called Gifts of Christmas. Last week we began with the gift of preparation. And today we jump into the gifts that the Wise Men brought to Jesus, and from now until Christmas well look at one of those gifts each week.
Gold, frankincense and myrrh.
These were incredibly valuable gifts, but also very practical. Gold is money, and frankincense and myrrh had many uses in the ancient world.
But these gifts were not just valuable and practical. Each gift actually foreshadows something of what Jesus would become, some of the aspects of Jesus character that would be revealed as he grew into the savior of the world.
So those are the gifts were looking into over the next few weeks. Why dont we pray that God would reveal those insights to us now as we open the Scriptures?
Heavenly Father, we thank you for Christmas and the gift of a little baby who would bring forgiveness and life to the world. Will you reveal to us the gift that it is to have Jesus in our life. We pray in his name, Amen.
So I have a couple of little facts about the wise men before we continue. We often call them the three wise men, because of the three gifts they brought to Jesus (gold, frankincense, and wait theres myrrh). But actually the Bible doesnt say how many wise men there were it just says in Matthew 2 (on your handouts)
1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. (Matthew 2:1-2)
We actually dont know much about the magi. The word magi has the same root as our word magic, so it could refer to magicians or sorcerers. However in this case, it probably refers to those wise in interpreting the stars. Modern academic consensus is that the magi were astrologers from Persia (modern-day Iran).
Early Christian tradition said that they were kings (carol: We three kings from orient are bearing gifts weve traveled so far) They were given names Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar. It was speculated that they might have been the kings of Persia, and then later that they were kings representing Europe, Asia and Africa.
But that is all speculation. We just have what is recorded for us here in Matthew 2, and so we have to live with the mystery. I read somewhere that wise men and women are still seeking Jesus. I like that.
So, onto our gift for today. Frankincense.
What is frankincense?
Frankincense is the resin from a species of tree that grows on the Arabian Peninsula, and the Horn of Africa. The sap dries out into a resin, and the resin is very fragrant, very aromatic. The resin was added to essential oils, and became a very expensive perfume. The ancient Egyptians used frankincense as one of the embalming ingredients when a person died. It was used in the preparation of mummies. It also had many other uses. Here are some other uses I read online:
Antiseptic; astringent; carminative; diuretic; digestive; sedative; and vulnerary therapeutic properties.
In some parts of the world frankincense is still used to treat diabetes, and asthma, and blood disorders. A very useful product.
But there's a second use for frankincense and I think this is what points to Jesus.
In God's temple, the priests w