1 – In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.
2 – (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.)
3 – And everyone went to his own town to register.
4 – So 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 line of David.
5 – He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.
6 – While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born,
7 – and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
ou know, as a minister I get asked a lot of questions. I’ve been asked, everything from, “What is the best Bible translation?” to “Where did Cain get his wife?” And I don’t mind most questions (as long as people don’t mind it when I don’t have the answers)…..but one that IS somewhat frustrating to me is when someone says, “Mark, what do you really DO all week long? I mean you preach on Sundays….what do you DO the rest of the time? What is your real job.”
One individual was surprised to hear that pastoring a church is something you actually get paid for. He just couldn’t conceive of my having enough to DO all week long to justify a full- time occupation. Well, without sounding defensive, if you have ever wondered that, I invite you to walk a mile the shoes of any pastor! Pastoring a church is a wonderful job….I DO love it…but it is a “24-7” job. I know from being a PK like David…and now am discovering an my own that pastors are never “not” pastoring. They are almost always DOING something or THINKING something that is job-related. And you know I’ve often wondered how God feels when we question what He does. When times are rough and we are going through some crisis and God seems to be silent and inactive we wonder whether or not God really DOES anything. I mean, we know He is here on Sundays…but we wonder what He DOES the rest of the week?
When theologian and author Thomas Carlyle was well along in years, he became seriously ill and experienced deep depression. A friend was visiting with him one day and the subject of religion came up. The friend said: “I can only believe in a God Who DOES something.” Carlyle reportedly winced as if in physical pain, and said with a sigh: “But that is just the problem. He DOES nothing….nothing at all!” To those who have read his works, it is obvious that this statement is by no means typical of the true depth of Carlyle’s faith. It simply represented the way he honestly felt at that moment as the clouds of depression totally engulfed him. And many people have felt the same way at some time in their lives. When a nightmarish problem persisted and it seemed that God did nothing, absolutely nothing at all, they honestly felt that GOD was, to use H. G. Wells’ bitter phrase, “an ever ABSENT help in time of trouble.”
Across the centuries, this is a charge that has often been leveled against God, yet the Bible claims exactly the opposite. The Bible declares over and over again the truth that God has been actively involved in history. If God stopped DOING even for a second what He does this whole universe would fall apart…as it says in Colossians 1:17 “…the universe as a whole in Him holds together.” You know, I could not show up for work one day and things would move right along…but if God ceased His involvement in this universe for even an instant everything would come to a grinding halt. God IS involved in our world.
This was one of the qualities that distinguished Him so radically from the false gods made and worshiped by men. In Isaiah 46 God spoke through Isaiah to make this point. Isaiah had been forcibly deported, like so many Hebrews, out of Palestine into Babylon, and there he saw for himself what another religious system looked like. He saw temples filled with heavy ornate religious statues….man-made idols worshiped as gods by the Babylonian people. During the New Year Festival these massive idols would be carried out of their temples and placed on the backs of animals and slowly hauled through the streets for people to see and worship. But tragedy struck the Babylonian Empire in the form of a man named Cyrus of Persia, who conquered everything in sight and eventually moved on the city of Babylon herself. Cyrus and his armies laid siege to this pagan city, and Isaiah watched as the Babylonians cried out hysterically to their idol gods. But what could these images of wood and stone actually DO? They were simply the creations of the people’s imaginations and hands.
Think about it, if you are really hungry, can you imagine a plate piled high with food? Of course you can! And can you then imagine yourself eating it? Of course you can! And will that experience in imagination satisfy your hunger? Of course it won’t! And in the same way, these Babylonians discovered that no idol that a human being has dreamed up has the power to DO anything to help in time of real trouble. Isaiah noted that these Babylonian gods had no power at all….in fact they had to be picked up and carried around by people…..when a “god” that was worth anything would have been able to pick up and rescue the people. Listen to verses 6-7, “Some pour out gold from their bags and weigh out silver on the scales; they hire a goldsmith to make it into a god, and they bow down and worship it. They lift it to their shoulders and carry it; they set it up in its place, and there it stands. From that spot it cannot move. Though one cries out to it, it does not answer; it cannot save him from his troubles.Isaiah watched as these frantic folk bundled up their idols to try to flee the city only to have Cyrus’ men seize them and hold the idols up derisively as trophies of their conquest. Over against such utter powerlessness, God uses Isaiah to remind us of the history of His involvement in the affairs of the nation of Israel, and the contrast could not be more dramatic. In verses 3 and 4 God says,
“Listen to me, House of Jacob, all of you who remain of the House of Israel, you who have been carried since birth, whom I have carried since the time you were born. In your old age I shall still be the same. When you hair is gray I shall still support you. I have already done so. I have carried you. I shall still support and deliver you.” Here God shows us how utterly different He is from the idols of Babylon. Instead of having to be carried by those who worship Him, here was One Who could do the carrying. In contrast to the gods of pagans, here was a God Who could DO something….Who was not just a figment of human imagination or the creation of their hands. And God is described in this dynamic way throughout all of the Bible. He is not some absentee-landlord uninterested in the affairs of men. The pages of this book proclaim over and over again that God DOES act in time and space. But the question is how does this happen? How does God “carry” us as He promised through Isaiah? It is at this point that we often run into trouble and fall into the kind of despair that Carlyle was voicing. When God does not act in ways that we expect, we can think that, “He does nothing, nothing at all.” John Claypool writes, “To see God’s involvement in our lives we need to widen our perceptions of what constitutes God’s ?carrying us’ and ?bearing us’.” And on this 2nd Sunday of Advent I want us to do this together by looking at five of the things God has DONE and continues to DO—other than join us here in worship each Sunday. It is at this point that the Christmas story can be most helpful….for here, more decisively than anywhere else, the Bible records that GOD DID SOMETHING.
1. You see Christians know that the best example of GOD DOING something is when He actually became one of us.
On that first “silent, holy night” He joined us in the human struggle.
He dared to enter this world the way every one of us enters it…and to participate fully in this pilgrimage from womb to tomb. In Jesus…and only in Jesus…God became flesh…He became a man. Though His conception was supernatural, Jesus’ birth was that of a normal child born of a human mother. Like you and me He got hungry and thirsty…His feet ached and He got weary from traveling. When struck, He bruised; When He was sad, He wept; When He was happy, He smiled. When He was angry, He revealed it. When He got cold, He chilled…when hot, He perspired. He needed sleep and refreshment. As the man, Jesus, God came down to our level. He went through our human experience. He walked down all the roads we have to travel and so He is fully able to understand us and sympathize with us. So, as it says in Hebrews 4:15…”In Jesus, we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but One who has been tempted in all things as we are yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace.” As the prophet Isaiah had foretold….that “babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger” meant that now God had a new name: IMMANUEL, which means “God with us!” God promised to be with us and carry us and bear us and sustain us from the time we are born until our hair turns gray and we face death itself. You see, the most important thing God has ever done is when He sent Jesus to be born that first Christmas night.
For in this act God not only DID something to help us deal with our temporary existence in this life. Jesus’ birth was God acting to change eternity for all of who will let Him do so. And that is GOD DOING SOMETHING of significance indeed! However this is only part of what God DOES. You see, He does not just come alongside us and say: “I understand your problem. I sympathize. I’ve been through that too.” He actually DOES things about those problems that can make all the difference in the world….which brings us to the second way we would answer the question, “What does God really do?”
3. You see sometimes GOD miraculously intervenes in our lives to help us.
Throughout scripture we see example after example of God powerfully acting to help both individuals and entire nations. He spoke audibly to the prophets of old. He made Himself visible first to Moses through the burning bush and then to the entire nation of Israel through the pillar of fire. He parted the Red Sea so that the people of Israel could walk across on dry land and then He let the waters crash back in on the pursuing Egyptian army. He sent fire from heaven to consume Elijah’s sacrifice. That baby born in Bethlehem grew up and stopped storms, healed the sick, and raised the dead. Throughout scripture time and time again God actually DID miracles, powerfully intervening in history. And this direct intervention of God is not just a thing of the past.
He still does this today. I know because I have seen Him act in this way in my own life. When I was about six years old, my family lived in Seaford, Delaware—-where my father pastored Grace Baptist Church. The parsonage provided for us was actually a farm house owned by a church member. We Adams’ children were permitted to go anywhere on the farm we wished-except inside this BARN because the farmer stored his equipment there and he was afraid we would be injured on it if we were to play there. We of course went in the barn anyway-several times my brother and I would sneak off to play in there. One day some friends from out of town came to visit. They had two sons the approximate age of my brother Jon and I…..and we thought it would be a great adventure to show these boys the inside of THE FORBIDDEN BARN. Without telling our parents where we were going, we headed off and had great fun showing our peers around all the tractors and harvesting equipment. One piece of equipment that was stored there was a ROTARY HOE. A ROTARY HOE is made up of several rectangles-each of which has several 10″ curved steel spikes protruding out and when lowered and dragged behind a tractor they do a great job of tearing up hard ground to get it ready to plow and plant. When this HOE was stored as it was that day each of these rectangles of spikes would be folded up. The spikes on the front then protruded out, horizontal to the ground with their steel fingers curved upward toward the sky.
Well I was showing off, walking along the “hitch” like on a tight-rope or balance beam, when for some reason, the hitch suddenly sprang upward, throwing me through the air like a projectile from a catapult. I came to rest impaled on one of these spikes with my feet dangling about 6 feet above the ground. The spike pierced my left side just below the rib cage. Well, my brother and the other boys ran immediately into the house to get help. And I distinctly remember what happened next. I hung there disoriented and trapped and scared for a few moments. And then I remember a “person” who suddenly appeared and hovered in mid air to my right. I believe this “person” was an angel sent by God to help me and he did just that.
First he calmed me. Then he told me how to get down from the rotary hoe. You see, I was stuck in the middle of this web of steel fingers and I remember wanting to get down to my left…closest to the exit. But he would not let me do that….for some reason this would not work. Instead he helped lift me off the spike and wind my way step by step through all the spikes to my right and then down to the ground and out of the barn. I could not have gotten down by myself. I stumbled out of the barn and met my dad coming from the house. He picked me up and rushed me to the hospital in our guest’s car. This too was part of God’s intervention….for our family car was in the shop that day. We would certainly have been delayed in getting to the hospital if this family had not been visiting. My father related to me that when the doctors examined me they were amazed. My chest had been punctured by an 8″ spike missing my heart by a quarter of an inch but somehow my lung had not been pierced. It had “moved over”. I was home in about a week….as good as new…and thinking of this event over the years and hearing my parent’s side of the story has been a constant reminder to me of God’s providential care in my life. This incident has always been proof to me of God’s love and the fact that He is not some distant Creator but is intimately involved in my life. I’m sure that if we had time many of you would have similar stories to share….your own accounts of God’s miraculous intervention in your lives because God DOES things like this. But that is not all that God DOES. He doesn’t just work around us….
3. He also works in and through us…
And in so doing He enables us to do things we were designed and gifted to do. Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” You know, one of my favorite stories told by our interim Pastor, Dr. Charles Bugg was the story of a girl named Susan. All her life Susan had suffered from low self esteem because she did not like her body which she considered too big-boned and muscular. She repeatedly asked God why He designed her in this way. During a revival she felt God’s call to full-time ministry and so she entered New Orleans Seminary and began to prepare for this call. Each day her route to class took her past a house with a big front porch. Every morning and evening she noticed a teenage boy sitting on the porch. When she drove by each day they would always wave at each other and after several weeks of this she felt drawn by God to help this boy in some way. So one day she pulled up in front of the house, introduced herself, and asked permission to take the boy on an outing. It was then that she noticed he was in a wheel chair.
You see, the boy was on that porch each morning because every day before his mother went to work she would roll him out there. And he would spend his days watching cars go by. Well the mother was only too glad to give Susan permission to spend time with her son. The first outing Susan arranged was a trip to the zoo. She arrived on time and then as she knelt down to pick the boy up and carry him to the car she became aware of how easily she lifted his weight. At this point a God-sent thought entered her mind, “This is why God made me so big and strong.”
God’s spirit led Susan to discover that she was custom-designed to minister to this particular lonely teen’s needs and you and I are just as uniquely hand-crafted by God. And when we become Christians the Holy Spirit comes to live in us and in so doing He empowers us to do what He designed us to do and this is a form of God’s activity every bit as real as His miraculous intervention.
Many times when non-Christians ask where God is….when they wonder if God is silent….if they don’t see Him working, could it be because we, His followers, refuse to let Him work through us?
If we want the world to see God, we have to allow Him to use us…to work through us . So God IS involved in our lives…He works around us….He works in and through us….
4. And then a fourth thing God DOES is to GUIDE US through life.
David, the Shepherd King, knew this about God.. His Psalm 139 is full of the realization of God’s willingness to guide us. Remember its words? “Oh Lord, You have examined my heart and know everything about me. You know when I sit or stand…when I am far away you know my every thought. You know what I am going to say before I say it. You chart the path ahead of me, and tell me where to stop and rest. Every moment you know where I am. .”And the Bible is full of situations where God has proved David’s statements true as He willingly, specifically guided someone. Noah was told to build a boat, and he was told exactly how to do it. Abram was instructed to leave his country and go to a land that God would show him. God guided Abraham’s servant so that he could locate a wife for Isaac. The people of Israel were led on their journey out of Egypt by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. God guided them in great detail in the smallest of decisions. He said if you get sick, this is how you get well and protect others from becoming infected.. If you get hungry, this is what you can eat and this is what you should avoid. When it came time to build the Temple, God gave Solomon very specific instructions, down to the measurements of the temple utensils. The shepherds were given specific instructions that guided them to the Christ child. The wise men were given a star to light their way. After Jesus’ birth, Joseph was instructed in a dream to flee to Egypt with his family so as to avoid Herod’s wrath. The book of Acts could just as well be entitled “The Book of Guidance.”
First the apostles are guided to wait until they are empowered with the Holy Spirit. Next after two apostles are imprisoned, God sends an angel to guide them out of jail. Before appointing deacons, the apostles sought and received God’s guidance. Philip is instructed by God to go to a place where he could minister to an Ethiopian Official and then instantly transported to another place of ministry in Azotus. Ananias is guided by God to go and pray for the persecutor Saul. Peter is guided to enter the house of Cornelius. On and on we could go demonstrating the dynamic aspect of God’s guidance. Isaiah 58:11 says, “The Lord will guide you continually.” Psalm 25:12 says, “Who is the man that fears the Lord?…God will teach him the way that is best.” Do you grasp this awesome truth? God is willing and able to guide every moment of your life and my life. The same God who guided the men and women whose stories are recorded in this book wants to guide your life and mine! He invites us into a relationship with Him through which He promises to point which way to go at each intersection on the road of life. SO, what does God really do? Well He works around us…..He works through us….He guides us…..And then, one other way that God is involved in our lives is when….
5. He steps back and lets us learn from our rebellious ways…
God is our Father and like any wise parent He often allows us to learn through suffering what we refuse to be taught in any other way. The Apostle Peter is a great example of this principle. On more than one occasion Jesus allowed Simon Peter to have his own way and then learn from the consequences of ignoring Jesus’ guidance. The most dramatic episode of this sort took place on the last night of Jesus’ life. As He alerted the disciples of the coming ordeal He specifically warned Peter that he would deny His Lord before morning, but Peter would not listen and made a typical brash promise, “Lord, I am ready to go with You to prison and to death.” When he said this, God did not move in miraculously STEP IN to stop Peter from denying Jesus. Instead he ACTED by STEPPING BACK and allowing Peter to enroll in that most awesome of educational institutions: “the school of hard knocks.” In this case, what God DID was enable Peter to endure a devastating experience and come out of it a wiser and deeper person, which of course is what occurred. And, just as Jesus warned, Satan did sift Peter like wheat that night. Peter wound up doing the very things he had vehemently declared he would never do, but out of all this he became a more realistic and humble human being. The rock-like character that we see walking the pages of the book of Acts did not get that way over night or by accident. Peter grew into an apostle because of that peculiar form of Divine help with allows us to experience trauma and failure that through such agony we might grow strong.
This form of God’s activity needs to be noted carefully, for more often than not, here is where confusion arises and we complain that, “God does nothing, nothing at all.” What people usually mean when they say this is that God has not intervened miraculously. He has not done in the midst of a crisis what Jesus did when he calmed the sea or raised the dead. Well, why doesn’t God work miracles more often? Well think about it. Consider what Peter would have become if Jesus had intervened at every junction and always done things for him and never asked anything of him or allowed anything harmful to happen to him? Any wise parent knows the answer to that question. Simon would have remained at the level of infantile dependence all of his life. The surest way to wreck the potential of a human being is always to intervene in that person’s behalf and solve their problems for them. The product of this sort of treatment is a perpetual infant, unable and unwilling to do anything on his or her own. For decades the bears that live in Yellowstone National Park have feasted on the food scraps left behind by countless tourists. Well a few years ago the snows were so heavy that the park was closed to tourists for several months. When it was re-opened, rangers found dozens of dead bears, bears who had died of starvation because they had forgotten how to feed themselves. The landscape of middle-class America is filled with casualties of this very sort, for we have confused over-protectiveness with love and in the attempt to keep our children from suffering have kept them from maturing. Part of the Good News of the Bible is that our Father in heaven is much wiser than many fathers on earth. He knows how to facilitate maturity, which means He is not going to intervene in our lives so often that we become spoiled or our true potential is unfulfilled and this is what we need to remember the next time it seems He is “doing nothing, nothing at all.”
So, what would you say if someone asked you, “What DOES God really DO?” You would say, He UNDERSTANDS. He knows what it is like to be a human being in this world because that first Christmas morning, He became one. But that is not all He has done. He doesn’t just sympathize with us. He often miraculously, powerfully ACTS IN or THROUGH our lives. He always GUIDES us when we let Him. And perhaps the thing He Does most like a parent is when He STEPS BACK and lets us learn from our mistakes so that we grow into more mature people.
You know, this sermon has been directed to Christians and so I want to close by speaking to any of you hear who are not followers of Jesus Christ. When Jesus was born, God didn’t just become one of us so that He could understand us. He became one of us so He could die for us. God became bless so that he could take our sins upon Himself. He conquered death for us! This is the greatest miracle of all time. Parting the Red Sea….sending an angel to help a small boy impaled on some farm equipment….stuff like this is nothing compared to the miracle that takes place when a person like you or me repents of his or her sin and accepts God’s forgiveness through Jesus’ death on the cross.
As the words to the old song go, “My Father is omnipotent and that you can’t deny….a God of might and miracles ?tis written in the sky. It took a miracle to put the stars in space. It took a miracle to hang the world in place…BUT WHEN HE SAVED MY SOUL…cleansed and made me whole….it took a miracle of love and grace.” Salvation is a miracle….something only God could do….and if you have never experienced that miracle then I invite you to this morning.