Week 5: My Dream Is Too Big (Radical)”
Notes
Transcript
Announcements:
Offering box is in the back
2. Bible reading plan is on the back table
3. We are excited about celebrating next week as one of our own takes a step forward in water baptism. I cannot wait to see what God has in store next week and you won’t want to miss it either! We will be having service here and then transitioning over to the community center afterwards for water baptism and lunch.
4. There is a signup sheet on the back table so we know who is bringing what for the lunch as well.
Worship:
Trading My Sorrows
2. Lord I lift Your Name on High
3. Rest on us
4. Graves Into Gardens
5. I Know a Name
Introduction:
I hope you have enjoyed this series. I really have learned a lot and have grown from it as well!
We are concluding our series entitled God of the Underdogs which is also inspired by the book of the same title by Matt Keller. Being an underdog means we don’t think we measure up and we tend to use excuses to keep from doing what we should be doing; especially when it comes to what God is calling us to do.
In the first week we talked about “our past being too bad” and we should not let our past keep us from what God wants to do in and through us in the present and future. We need to allow God to help us use our past to reach others who are in similar situations.
The second week we talked about “our reputation being too scarred”. We can get so used to labels others put on us or we put on ourselves that we tend to just accept them and live up to them. We need to not only know what God says about us but believe what He says about us and not buy into what others have labeled us or even what we have labeled ourselves as.
The third week we talked about “not being qualified enough.” We talked about how it can feel when we are being overlooked, but God chooses the overlooked! We talked about how God equips the inexperienced as He did with David by preparing him with walking in obedience and trusting in God Himself. And we talked about God anointing the unlikely. It is not about what we can do, what we know, what we have experienced but it is about relying on the anointing of the Holy Spirit in our life to be able to do what God has called us to do. God qualifies the called!
Then last week we talked about “being insecure.” We talked about the importance of dealing with our past as we discussed in week one because it reared it’s ugly head gain in feeding our insecurities. We also talked about how insecurity is loudest when God calls and we need to remember who is calling us and that He will go with us. His presence comes with His calling! We can’t focus on our limitations because God knows exactly what we can and cannot do and He wants to use us anyway! Lastly our insecurity will yield to God when we trust in God’s sufficiency. We have to trust in Him and know He will provide us with His Holy Spirit, His Word and His people to help us with what He is calling us to do!
As we wrap up the series this week, we will be talking about the excuse “My dream is too big.” There is no better person to glean some insight from than the one and only: John the Baptist.
Question: Have you ever felt God put something on your heart and you felt it was too big for someone like you? When you have something God has put on your heart to do, it is easy to use the excuses we have already talked about in this series: my past is too bad, my reputation is too scarred, I’m not qualified or qualified enough, I’m too insecure, etc. The list goes on and on.
I can tell you that we have. And you’re sitting in it! When God put on our heart to plant a church we wrestled with it for some time because we weren’t sure if it was God because it was an enormous task and we didn’t know if we could do it. To be honest, there are some days we still think “how are we doing this?!” and “how is this going to happen?” (ROFL). We have learned a lot as we have been taking each step in the dream God birthed in us and we are still excited about where He is taking us.
Imagine being John the Baptist. He was tasked with only preparing the way for the much-anticipated and highly-hyped Messiah that everyone was looking for! It was so huge and it was given to him at birth!
Transition: As we are turning in our Bibles to Luke 3, I want to look at some observations we can glean from John the Baptist in verses 1-22 and see how we can apply the same principles to our life today.
Body:
I. Big Dreams come in unlikely places and through unlikely people
1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, while Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Iturea (it ter rea) and Trachonitis (track o nitis), and Lysanias (lie san ius) tetrarch of Abilene,
2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, God’s word came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.
God’s word didn’t come from the Roman rulers or religious elite - it came to a desert dwelling prophet.
Big dreams often are born in dry, wilderness places
3 A voice of one crying out: Prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness; make a straight highway for our God in the desert.
27 Instead, God has chosen what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen what is weak in the world to shame the strong.
They come through unlikely people:
John was not in the palace, temple, or city center. He was in the wilderness, but that’s where God found him.
David (1 Samuel 16:11-13), tending sheep, overlooked, yet anointed king.
Jeremiah was only a youth (Jeremiah 1:6-9)
Moses was in the wilderness minding his own business and saw a burning bush (Ex 3)
Illustration/personal story:
We have had the opportunity to minister in many different churches areas and states. For some reason, when we were ministering in this area, God placed something in not just me, not just my wife, but our whole family. God put a compassion and love for this area. We don’t know why or how but He did. When we were finished where we were ministering, we found ourselves in a wilderness place because we didn’t understand why God would birth a love for this community only to seemingly have us leave.
Don’t despise the wilderness. Don’t focus so much on getting out of the isolated place you are in that you miss what God is trying to speak TO you and birth IN you.
We almost missed it but I am so glad for other people in the body of Christ who can be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and speak life at just the right time. We were so focused on what we THOUGHT we were supposed to be doing that we missed the DREAM God was BIRTHING in us to walk out!
Question:
Are you in a desert place? Are you in a wilderness season right now? Don’t despise where you are! Be quick to hear what God is saying and see what God is doing and wanting you to do!
31 Yet those who wait for the Lord Will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary.
Transition: We know now that big radical dreams come in unlikely seasons so we need to be prepared and not so quick to get out of uncomfortable seasons/places. We also know God uses unlikely people for big radical dreams as well! That includes us! Next, we see that:
II. Big Dreams Require Courageous Obedience
3 He went into all the vicinity of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,
4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah: A voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way for the Lord; make his paths straight!
5 Every valley will be filled, and every mountain and hill will be made low; the crooked will become straight, the rough ways smooth,
6 and everyone will see the salvation of God.
7 He then said to the crowds who came out to be baptized by him, “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?
8 Therefore produce fruit consistent with repentance. And don’t start saying to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you that God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones.
9 The ax is already at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”
What was John’s message? Repentance, justice and true transformation.
John challenged:
religious complacency (v8)
economic injustice (v11)
abuse of power (v14)
Illustration: John Lewis, a monumental figure in the Civil Rights Movement and a longtime US Representative, famously used the phrase "good trouble, necessary trouble" to describe his lifelong commitment to nonviolent protest and activism in the pursuit of justice and equality. He believed that it was not only acceptable but necessary to challenge systems and laws that were unjust and discriminatory, and that doing so, even if it caused inconvenience or resulted in arrest, was a moral obligation.
Big dreams will require uncomfortable action and bold truth-telling.
10 For am I now trying to persuade people, or God? Or am I striving to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.
John didn’t water down his message to please the crowd or make people like him.
And we need to be careful not to water down the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ so we don’t offend someone else.
Funny Illustration:
Sometimes we don’t help people—not because we don’t care, but because we don’t want to make things awkward. Let me give you a funny example...
A woman walks into church smiling from ear to ear. She just had a big, healthy kale smoothie for breakfast—feeling good, full of energy.
She’s greeting people, shaking hands, even giving hugs.
What she doesn’t know is… there’s a giant hunk of green spinach plastered right between her front teeth. Like, front and center. Full spotlight.
Everyone sees it—but no one says a word.
One person thinks, “Well, I don’t want to embarrass her.”
Another thinks, “I barely know her—I don’t want to come off as rude.”
Another whispers to their friend, “Oh my, look at that… poor thing…”
By the end of the service, she’s taken communion, smiled in every photo, and testified during announcements—still rocking the leafy green like it’s a fashion statement.
She finally goes to the bathroom, looks in the mirror—and screams.
“WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME?!”
Sermon Application:
Church, how often do we do that spiritually?
We see someone with something stuck in their life—some sin, some struggle, some blind spot—and we say nothing.
Not because we don’t love them.
But because we don’t want to make things awkward.
We’d rather let them walk around spiritually spinach-smiling through life than gently say, “Hey… you got something there.”
Biblical Tie-In:
Proverbs 27:6 – “Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.”
(Real friends don’t just smile and nod—they speak the truth in love.)
Ephesians 4:15 – “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow…”
(Love that never speaks truth isn’t really love at all—it’s just polite avoidance.)
Closing Line:
Don’t let someone walk around with spiritual spinach in their teeth.
Be the friend who lovingly leans in and says,
“Hey… I care about you enough to tell you something uncomfortable.”
Because love tells the truth—even when it’s awkward.
When God gives us a big dream, it will put us in awkward situations to where we will need to do what is uncomfortable.
Question: Are we going to trust in the dream God has given us even to the point of having to address some issues that we normally wouldn’t address?
Transition: SO, big dreams don’t just come in difficult season and to unlikely people (like us!), but they also require courageous obedience no matter what we come up against. The next observation I see is:
III. The Dream Is Not About You
15 Now the people were waiting expectantly, and all of them were questioning in their hearts whether John might be the Messiah.
16 John answered them all, “I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I am is coming. I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
17 His winnowing shovel is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with fire that never goes out.”
John knew his radical big dream was not about him. He was just the forerunner to what was to come.
The dreams God gives us is not to make us popular or bigger, but it is always about pointing others to Jesus!
The dream may be big, but you are not the star—Jesus is.
John 3:30 — “He must increase, but I must decrease.”
Proverbs 19:21 — “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”
Illustration:
The Apollo 11 mission to the moon made Neil Armstrong (first human on the moon) and Buzz Aldrin (second human on the moon) overnight celebrities. But they wouldn’t have been able to do what they did if it wasn’t for the techs and pilot (Michael Collins) who put everything together and piloted Apollo 11 to the moon in the first place. The techs and pilot knew it wasn’t about them but accomplishing the mission of getting to the moon and they did it! It wasn’t about getting the credit or praise!
God’s dream for your life may involve building a road that others will walk on—even if you don’t get the spotlight. But that’s kingdom greatness.
Transition: SO, big dreams don’t just come in difficult season and to unlikely people (like us!), but they also require courageous obedience no matter what we come up against. And God doesn’t just give us dreams to lift us up but to point others to Jesus Christ! Lastly,
IV. Big Dreams Cost More Than You Think—But It’s Worth It
19 But when John rebuked Herod the tetrarch because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and all the evil things he had done,
20 Herod added this to everything else—he locked up John in prison.
John the Baptist spoke the truth to everyone including those in power and it cost him his freedom and ultimately his life.
Illustration: Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a well-known theologian and pastor who was known for his opposition to National Socialism. He was tied to the July 20, 1944 conspiracy to overthrow the Nazi regime which left to his execution in 1945. He spoke openly and was banned from Berlin in January 1938 which led to him being banned from speaking in public in September 1940. He spoke against the regime, anti-semitism which included confronting and calling out fellow clergy and church members.
Pursuing a God-sized dream is costly—it will require sacrifice, but eternal impact outweighs earthly comfort.
24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.
25 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will find it.
26 For what will it benefit someone if he gains the whole world yet loses his life? Or what will anyone give in exchange for his life?
Talking about those who walked by faith: (35b-38)
35 Other people were tortured, not accepting release, so that they might gain a better resurrection.
36 Others experienced mockings and scourgings, as well as bonds and imprisonment.
37 They were stoned, they were sawed in two, they died by the sword, they wandered about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, afflicted, and mistreated.
38 The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and on mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground.
John never saw Jesus crowned in glory during his lifetime.
Like many missionaries or pioneers, your work may feel unfinished—but God finishes what He starts.
If you're afraid of the cost, remember the reward. You’re part of an eternal story, not just a temporary dream.
Conclusion:
What Dream Has God Planted in You?
Revisit the question: Is your dream too big—or is it actually from God?
Encourage the congregation to pray bold prayers and take small faithful steps.
Remind them: John didn’t do it all, but he did his part—and Jesus called him the greatest born among women (Luke 7:28).
28 I tell you, among those born of women no one is greater than John, but the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.”
Ask:
What wilderness season are you in right now?
What’s the bold step of obedience you’ve been avoiding?
Who will your obedience make a way for?
