First Conference 2010
Gateway Church's Podcast
Jack Hayford
Thank you very much, thank you, please, thank you, thank you, good morning. And happy new year everybody. You have no idea what a really happy thing it is for me to be here at the very beginning of the year with you and Robert's invitation came many months ago and I did the same thing last year. Robert even talked like it might happen next year but he's waiting to see how it goes today. But it is a joyful, joyful thing to feel such a part of Gateway Church life and to greet all of you. I was thinking about the nice things that he said about the sum of a life that has gone on for a long time. Folks, I'll tell you. You know, Anna and I, this is not to elicit any pla-pla so you're in a new obligation. We celebrated not very long ago our 55th wedding anniversary. People look at her and they say, thank you, they look at her and they say, they never said it to me but I know that they say 55th anniversary and they look at her and they say, she was got married when she was 10. But she's not with me on a trip because this is one of those bounce trips I go from here to Orlando and it's just here last evening tonight, this afternoon we fly to Orlando and one of my associates is traveling with me. So she's not here by bringing greetings from her and we just had probably one of the most wonderful Christmases that I think we've ever had. One thing making it so nice was being with so many of our great grandchildren. There is a word, five of them, by the way, were with us. They're all babies and just watching them play around together. It was just screaming at points. But I've laughed or I don't mean to scream, there was some of that too. But it was just very, very, very, just a lot of fun on Christmas morning. But anyway, there is a word, by the way, for people who have great grandchildren, old. And I heard one of us, actually it's a sweet little story, not long ago, of a granddaughter was sitting on her great grandpa's lap and she was four years old and she reached up to pat him on the face and then she paused and she felt the texture of his skin from him, she was sitting there on his lap and she could feel the wrinkles and the little stubble and she reached down and put her hand down on her lap and then she reached up and she felt her face and then she reached up and touched grandpa's face again. Then her face and she said, "Grandpa, did God make you?" And he said, "Yes, sweetheart, the Lord made grandpa a long time ago." She said, "Did God make me?" And he said, "Yes, honey, he made you just a little while ago." She thought for a moment and she said, "He's getting better at it, isn't he?" Oh, I love that story. We had our Autumn Leadership Conference in November and Pastor Robert was a guest, one of our guest speakers and as we've had the conference in LA and I told that story in the opening, the first session which I always introduced the conference and spoke there that leaders coming from across the nation in some parts of the world and so when I sat down afterwards, I said to Robert, "Have you heard that story before?" And he said, "No," he said, "but I'm going to tell it next week." I said, "Robert, you saved that story. I'm going to tell it when I'm there with you in January, don't you tell it?" And so he promised and he kept his promise I discovered, so it's a fun story to tell. I want to turn with you in the Bible to perhaps the most familiar story in the Bible and it's one that we've just walked through together through the Christmas holidays and you've doubtless heard referenced at least in one way or another. In fact, there's a beautiful thing about the Charlie Brown Christmas film as it has a good bit of quotation from the narrative of the Christmas story in the gospel of Luke and if you'll turn there to chapter 2 with me, I want to speak to you this morning. In fact, I'm going to use this for a title, I think. Would you say these words with me? The angels are still singing. Say it again, please. You know, the Bible does say in the book of Psalms, in fact, I think it's not Psalms, it's in Job, that it does say that the angels sing, that their reference there is the Morning Stars shouted together and all the sons of God, which is referencing angels in that, because it's simultaneous with while creation is going on. While creation was occurring, said that there was course as a praise that they were all, they all sang together and shouted for joy. So the Bible does say angels sing, but I reference that this phrase here that I've used for the title, because actually what we're going to read, it doesn't say the angels sang. They entered into a declaration, a chorus of declaration, it may have been a song, but it doesn't say that. And I only mention that not for the technicality of it, but for the number of things that we grow so familiar with the way we've seen them done in pageants, the way that we draw conclusions, but on the basis, for example, of the fact that there's nearly always three kings of Oriental and the Bible does say three gifts, but it doesn't say there were three of the ones that came from the east. It could have been two, we know it's plural, but it was probably possibly more than that might have been three, but it's immaterial, except to say that this story that is so dear and precious to us that we've heard over and over and over, that I was moved just three weeks ago, a pastor Jim Tull, who's the pastor of the church on the way now, son of mine in Christ, he asked me to speak on the Sunday before Christmas, and I was honored and pleased to do that. He asked me about four or five times a year, I'll speak at the church, and that's very special to be with the people, a lot of new ones through the recent years, but a lot of people I've served for over 30 years. And as I was preparing the message, preparing for it, I was moved to think about not just the Christmas Sunday that it was going to be, but I was thinking, so I was drawn really by the Holy Spirit to the angels, and something became electric to me. And I hope that that electricity, indeed, was as I sensed it was, and just something that is a spark of heaven that the Lord will ignite with you, too. And it's such a simple message, but it's something that I was conversing with someone about it, who I could speak in this way, and they didn't think I was looking for commendation. And I said, how does that hit you, and they were saying exactly what I had expected? And that the familiarity that we have with this is something that leads us more to think of it as the reading of the text, as the pageant reenacted, not that we take it less seriously than being the Word of God, but that, well, let me have you join me in verse eight. And I want to read and then get into this together, and for the next 20 minutes, I want to talk to you about the fact that the angels are still singing, or they're still speaking, and they're speaking to you, not to you collective, I just said to us, speaking to you. And so I want to ask you to prepare to listen, follow me, verse eight. Now, there were in the same country, shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night and behold, an angel of the Lord, notice an angel of the Lord, stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. And the angel said to them, don't be afraid. For behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people, for there is born to you this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, Messiah, the Lord. And this will be assigned to you. You'll find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths lying in a manger. And suddenly, now the one, there's a sort of a divine grace in the fact that first a single angel appears, the glory of the Lord shines at shocking enough, and it was sort of God pacing them into. Now this, suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host. By the way, the word host is a word from which we derive our word strategy, it's referencing a military term, and it was mindful that the word host is not just a crowd when it talks about angels, but it really is the army of God. An army sent in our defense, an army that goes before us in spiritual battle. The armed host of the living God, as he advances his purpose, and they are messengers of the Lord as well, who do his pleasure. The Bible says they are ministering spirits, they are also sent, the Bible says to minister for those of us who have become the heirs of salvation. Angels are not little fluffy characters, they just flitter around. They're dynamic beings that come in whenever they speak, they never speak on their authority. The word angel means messenger. They come with a commissioned message from the Lord, so that when you hear what an angel has said, then that angel that is speaking is saying, "This is God's word to you." And so they said, they shouted, saying, "Glory to God in the highest on an earth peace and good will toward men," and so it was when the angels had gone away. The shepherds said to one another, "Let's go," and they do go, and you go through the balance of the text, and it says in verse 20, "Having visited Mary and the child in Joseph that the shepherds returned, glorifying, praising God." As a fascinating fact that the word returned to the Jews, there is used 35 times in the New Testament, 33 of them in Luke's writings of either Luke or the Book of Acts. And much of the time when you use it, the emphasis is upon returning a different way than it was when you went to begin with. I'm praying that the Lord would have us here, angels, and go into the year, into the year, a different way than we came into it. Let me talk with you about this simple fact. It wasn't, I don't recall ever having counted before, about three and a half, four weeks ago. In the two chapters of Matthew and the two chapters of Luke, first two chapters of Matthew is where the whole Christmas story is in the Bible, if you're unfamiliar with the location precisely. In those four chapters there are six references to an angel appearing speaking, or in this one case the whole host of them, which is really a separate appearance from the one that appeared first, though they were back to back at that moment. And those six occasions, there are specific things said in each case that are directed to people. When they said on earth, peace, goodwill to men, this was not an abstract statement, it had to do with the shepherds as well, spoke to them. And each of the other times there is a very direct thing. For example, let me begin with the first one, and that's when an angel appears and comes to Zacharias, who was a priest, and he was performing his duties in the temple. And an angel, Gabriel, it names the angel in that occasion, twice of the six, it names Gabriel, and he appears to him, and he tells him that his wife Elizabeth will have a child. And Zacharias is just, it's a pretty much an incredible proposition to him because they have been married a long time and had given up any expectation there would ever be a child. And the birth of the child was the birth, as most of you are familiar with John the Baptist. And the significance of that has two facets of it, first from the external, you look at it and it's significant that the obvious arrival of this child is timed with reference to the fact that shortly after his birth the Savior will be born, and so that John the Baptist ministry will be in process, as he is called, and anointed for what his task was to just be there at the time Messiah is here. So there was a timing in the purpose of God, but I want you to go to the flip side of what we can objectively analyze and go to not just the shock of Zacharias, but go back and let me propose because I think it's very safe to say that there were many times that Elizabeth and Zacharias wondered why they didn't have a child. The birth of a child particularly in the culture of that time put such an emphasis on childbearing that there were in parts of the culture that you could divorce a woman if she didn't bear a child. Others saw only child birth for a woman, was the real sign of God's blessing on a woman. These are things culturally developed, these are not attitudes of God toward people children are a blessing, but the absence of children does not suggest a curse. But there was an inclination to have felt that. And the number of times that here's a person in his leadership, Zacharias dedicated priests to the Lord, so there was that addendum of feeling that I've been sanctified to the service of the Lord, but we have no children. But quite beyond the fact and thinking about it in generic terms, probe just a little deeper and try and think in terms of the questions that come to you and come to me when something that you would hope for indeed in fact felt was certainly worthy of expecting and not inappropriate in any way of something from the grace of God to you or that you have longed for. Hear me please because the message today centers in the phrase that was spoken by the angel that spoke to the shepherds, the first angel before the multitude, that word multitude by the way, literally means in the Greek word a minimum of a thousand and can be thousands. So there was a pretty sizable contingent up there. There's to be a stunning scene to say the least. But what the angel had spoken who came to them, the beginning was to you today a savior. So let me say it to you again, to you today a savior. Now will you help me preach this message? Turn to someone near you and say that to them and let them say it to you. To you, go on right now, right now, to you, come on. And that is the reason. What is the reason, dear ones, hear me today, that the Lord wants you to hear what the angels are still saying because they come with a message from God. And you read text elsewhere in the Bible that something is spoken to a person and you appropriate that for yourself. But I think in a peculiar way that that over and over reading of years and familiarity, even if you weren't active in church, that you've heard the story so many times it becomes an isolated kind of a drama that you observe because we see it done in pageantry. But what the angels brought of the message in and around Christmas time speaks still to people who will hear. And there are people here today that you have waited a long time. In fact, sometimes have wondered if the reason for the absence of whatever that may be that you have longed for just as Elizabeth would have belonged for that child. There it is that would have been a secret dream. Not anything inappropriate, but something as appropriate as a woman married to a man would expect a child that the beauty of the thing, and you just feel as this never happened, you can count on it that they had prayed for a child, but it hadn't happened. And we begin to deduce that either there's something wrong with us or it's a penalty for something we've done, maybe something that's preempted by reason of me. And we may not carry it very heavily, but it's just sort of a preclusion that we arrive at. The word of the Lord in this first angel message that has to do with a Christmas story is that the Lord was not penalizing, but his purposes, this is not a penalty, but it's in his purpose there's a timing. And that the timing of the Lord was what it was all about. And afterwards Zachariah and Elizabeth would realize what we for so long thought something must be wrong with us, and why hasn't happened, why hadn't it happened that was actually a part of God's timing. And hear me please, lay hold of that, because there's many of us here today, the Lord wants you to hear that. How many are you following me anyway? Are we tracking together here pretty good? That's about two-thirds. Let me give you one more try and see if there's others that I'm just not tracking with or you just say, "I don't need to raise my hand, he gets enough affirmation without me." Come on, just let it all go. How many say, "Yeah, I think I am tracking with you." Good. Okay, good. Thank you. You ever have the feeling pastor that sometimes there's people that have Jesus said it, they stand in there in the pulpit, "Jesus, we're here." Yeah, it's true, but I don't need to lift my hand. Be nice to the visitor, he's old. The second appearance in the Bible is the appearance of the angel Gabriel who comes to Mary and coming to Mary, of course, talk about the unimaginable, talking about the overwhelming and credibility of this proposition that the angel comes and tells her what doubtless she was familiar, every Jewish person that had any orientation to the things of God knew there was a prophecy in the Bible. Even hundred years before Isaiah prophesied, chapter 7, verse 14, "A virgin will conceive and bear a child," and described that this one who's come, that his name would be called Wonderful Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting father of the Prince of Peace, that Messiah was going to come and be born through a virgin. You know, there's no question in my mind that Mary had not sat around, forgive me for this. In fact, I've heard people who religiously feel that if you quote a scripture often enough, you can make anything happen by quoting it, you know. In fact, can you imagine Mary just saying, "Bless God, I've decided to accept the promise Isaiah 7, 14, I'm laying hold of that for me, praise the Lord," you know. I will be the virgin. Well, you know, nobody thinks of those things. I'm sure she didn't. The stunning visitation that comes, the humbling amazement and the sense of absolute helplessness when you say, "How can this be?" There was nothing of presumption, not the slightest bit of presupposition, even though an angel is bringing them as these. This is way beyond me. When we were greeted earlier this morning in the service and the summons to look at this year as being, it was said then, and I used the words a few moments ago, that you'll return from today into the rest of this year a different way than you've come to this point, not because there's something intrinsically wrong by any means. I'm not suggesting that. But there's something of us of the inclination to even know to say, "Absolutely, this is going to be a great new year," because we all feel that way at the beginning of the year most of the time anyway. But there's something of the Lord, I believe, wanting each of us to open up to what might be unimaginable, and maybe something unimaginable so basic is something that is an overcoming of something that is a habitual challenge to you, not even something evil, just something that you say that ought to be changed. They are just so ingrained in me, how have a guy turned that around? Unimaginable things of relationships, say, "How can that be turned around?" Things have been slugged and dragged through the mud so badly, it's hard to imagine that. There's things that the Lord wants you to hear the angel's singings in this post Christmas time of message that the song is still going on saying, "Behold favored one," that's what the angel said to Mary, "Behold favored one." And do you know that the form of the verb used in the original text there is only the verb is used in other places, but the form of the verb is only used in that way, one other place in the Bible in its city, Ephesians chapter 1, where it's talking about every one of us through the grace of God that has been shown to us in Jesus Christ. And so every single one of us come under the favor of God profoundly to the same measure that it's stunned Mary to imagine me. She was a virgin, but she wasn't claiming the miracle on the grounds of some personal discipline of obedience to the law of God. It wasn't law, it was grace. Favored one. The unimaginable is going to happen to you. And she still is so breath-taking and amazing. And here's what she says, she says, "How can these things be that I've never had experience with a man?" The angel said, "Obviously the message of the Virgin will conceive involved the unprecedented and the unequal to our time." The angel said the answer, "Please hear this." She's always the same. We say, "The unimaginable, how can it happen to me?" He said, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you." I want to ask how many people would say, "Come Holy Spirit." Just lift your hand just like that right now. Say it with me. Where do you come on? Come Holy Spirit. Let me lead you in this prayer. Come Holy Spirit. Come upon me. Make me a candidate for an openness and an availability to those points. You'll work in me or through me. What I cannot imagine by no means in my own strength or with my own faith, except that I open now in Jesus' name. Hallelujah. That's a plot, his praise. Praise your name Lord. I mentioned there are six occasions and I have not intended from the beginning to talk about all of them. I could and I know that many of you fear that, but I'm only going to talk about one more. I want to talk about the appearance of the angel when he comes to Joseph. Because the third appearance of them, the six, is an appearance in which Joseph has just become crushed by what seems to him a colossal betrayal of trust. The disappointment. The Bible makes very clear that he was not angry with her, that there was a gracious response to this word. That in itself tells us a great deal about Joseph, but he's no less a man. He feels violated. The engagement that they were moving toward or mentioned the betrothal that had taken place held the promise of a wedding before long. And she comes and tells him she's pregnant. She tells him by what means and even though he is not ungracious to her, you can even though he would doubtless have known the scripture. This is a stretch. You would almost be tempted to laugh when you say this would be a stretch to anyone's imagination. And I want us to feel the pulse beat of a heart that is virtually palpitating with a sense of having been violated, wounded. The same way that things come to all of us, of wound, of crushing disappointment, the feelings of being violated or feelings of being betrayed. As a matter of fact, I felt this last night and I didn't say it and I don't know that it was perhaps. Because the Lord knew he would bring that thought to me right now because it would be in this service. Because you don't want to seem accusing or inventive of an idea. But I feel that I must say that there is someone here this morning and you are living in that same point of disappointment of having had your trust toward someone violated by a relationship which Joseph suspected Mary had been guilty of until the angel comes. Until the angel comes and says, "It isn't what you think." And I'm not suggesting that if such a precisely same thing happened to someone here, which isn't the sole point at all. I'm not saying that it's the same at all because obviously the virgin birth is a one-time occurrence. But I'm saying that oftentimes the way we read the disappointments that come into our lives, that the Lord wants us to hear the angel speak and say, "It isn't the way you think." Say it with me with you, "It isn't the way you think." So much of repentance when we turn from our own way to the Lord's is wrapped up in the very meaning of the word that says you're not thinking the same way. You're coming to think in alignment with God's ways. Listening to what the Lord says in his word when you face great disappointment is reinforced by the picture of the angel speaking to Joseph and saying, "This is going to come out better than you could have ever thought." And I want to tell you today that whatever may be, long time coming, it's not been a penalty, it's in the purpose of God. Something that's unimaginable, go into the year opening to the availability and saying, "Holy Spirit, come upon me." And something that may be a great disappointment or a wound of someone violating an entirely another way, just violated trust or came on an anger in a way that became wounding, whatever it was, that the Lord says, "Look, don't lay hold of that the way it appears to you now because the outcome of this is going to be different if you'll listen to the angel song, the angel message, a message from God because today to you a Savior." And that Savior can turn every circumstance by His grace for His glory to your fruitfulness and fulfillment and you need to listen to His word today, listen to it from the lips of angels from His throne transmitted through a shepherd saying, "I've heard it and I'm saying it to you." Let's bow in prayer. Father, in the name of Jesus, I ask you to touch each of our hearts and let our ears resonate going from this place with the mindfulness that's stepping into this year, receiving your word that where we take every step, as you said to Joshua, it will be a possession of something we never had before because you ordained it and we open to it now. And is that your agreement point with me? Would you say amen? Amen. Amen. And thank you. It's a joy to be with you.