Gateway Church's Podcast
God's Hand in My Life
A Gateway Sermon
You are very kind. It is a blessing to be with you this morning. Pastor Robert had planned some vacation time and we always like it when he's refreshed. So, he asked me if I would bring to you a message this weekend about the birth of the Lord. So, I would ask you if you brought your Bible today to open those up to Luke's Gospel, the second chapter. And if you did not bring your Bible, that's okay, we'll put all the Scriptures on the screen for you. Read with me, please, in Luke chapter 2, beginning in verse 1. It came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This census first took place while Claudius was governing Syria and so all went to be registered, everyone to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth into Judea to the city of David which is called Bethlehem because he was of the house and lineage of David to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife who was with child. So it was that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered and she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the end. I want to share with you this morning four details of this story that are very much a part of the Christmas story that you may or may not be aware of. Four things that Jesus teaches us even in his birth and the first one is this, in the birth of Jesus, we learn a lesson about God's authority. We learn a lesson about God's authority. Luke, as you know, was a medical doctor, also was the author of the book of Acts. Being a medical doctor, Luke was a person who was well acquainted with the techniques of research and development and building a case for a proposal and he even said at the very beginning of his gospel, he said, "I have thought out and researched this whole thing and now I'm presenting it to you." So Luke shares with us some details that none of the other gospel writers share with us. He shares with us about Caesar Augustus and about this little decree. Let me tell you exactly what he's getting at. Caesar Augustus history tells us was one of the greatest leaders that has ever lived on the earth. It is said about Caesar Augustus that when he arrived in Rome, it was in brick and when he died, it was in marble. One of the things that we know from history about Caesar Augustus was that he had a brilliant mind for financial accounting and so in order to set taxation in place, it only makes sense that he would want to know where the family trees were and what was the city of origin for every person in the land. So he issued a decree, "Go, now, back to your hometown and fill out a form." My question is how does this make a guy feel his wife is eight and a half months pregnant? I guarantee you every Jew in the land detested this census because it was a very stark reminder that King Herod, who was king of Israel, was nothing more than a puppet king. That the real ruler over God's land and God's people sat in a palace in Rome. Joseph and Mary had to get on a donkey and travel 90 miles in the cold from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Don't think for a moment that this was their plan. They lived in Nazareth. They had no, it wasn't Christmas yet. They had no trips plans. She's eight and a half months pregnant. My wife and I had a baby four months ago. Our doctor told us here in the jet age, "After the seventh month, don't leave him." They had no trips plans. Their plan was to birth this baby in Nazareth and then they get this decree. Go right now. You can't wait. Go right now to your hometown and fill out a form. So what does God do? Their plan is to have this baby in Nazareth and so God has a pagan ruler issue a decree that gets the son of God from Nazareth to Bethlehem so that prophecy can be fulfilled. Don't miss friends who is really in control of your life. That part of the Christmas story is that God is willing to use all sorts of people and all sorts of circumstances to accomplish what he has set to accomplish in your life and in mine. Friends, this is part of the Christmas story and I think sometimes it's pretty easy for us because of our circumstances to forget who really is in control of our lives. We sing a song here. In fact, we sing it just this morning, "Blessed be your name" and it's a great worship song. And right towards the end of this song there's a little refrain that says, "You give and take away." And I'll never forget the weekend that Pastor Thomas taught us this song of standing right back here in the back of the sanctuary. This refrain pops up on the screen and I looked across God's people and I wondered what are they thinking in their hearts? My hunch is that many of us, when this little refrain came up, "You give and take away." The lot of us looked around and everybody else kept singing so we did too. But that on the inside it looked like this, "Pause, wait, let me stop and think just for a minute about this." Because I think you and I have been conditioned to believe easily in a God who gives and he does, generously. But I think somewhere along the way much of the Christian church today has filtered out of their theology, the God who takes away. You see, we have come somehow to associate every negative event, every downturn in our life, everything that is unpleasant with the devil. Can I just tell you this morning, it's not so. Sometimes God does take away. In fact, the words of this song came straight from Scripture. Job chapter 1, before we put the words up on the screen, "I want us to read them together in just a moment, but let me set the context for you and what's going on in Job chapter 1. I'm going to give you the Marcus paraphrase and you go back and check me later, make sure that I was on target." Here's what's going on in Job chapter 1. In Job chapter 1, God calls a meeting of angels. The angels begin to show up, and lo and behold, who shows up in heaven but the devil himself. And God says, "What are you up to?" And he says, "Just Roman back and forth across the earth, essentially to say, "Seeking whom I may devour." And God says, "Consider Job, he loves God, Job fears God." And the devil says, "Well, I imagine he does. Look at all the goodies you've given him. A man would have to be a fool to not love you given all the goodies that you've given to him. And God, you take away all those goodies and Job will curse you to your face." God says very well then everything he has is in your hands, but don't touch Job. So in the next few verses, there are four messengers that come to Job. The first three tell Job, "All of your assets are gone. Your servants, your livestock, your plants burned, killed, stolen, you have nothing left." The fourth messenger comes to say, "Job, all of your children were together at the oldest brother's house. A tornado hit the house. They're all dead. I alone escaped to tell you." This is Job's response. Job, chapter 1, verses 20 to 22, "And then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell to the ground." This is aerobic grief, and he worshiped. And he said, "Naked, I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord." And in all this, Job did not send nor charge God with wrong. This is holy ground in Scripture. Well, let me tell you one of the troubling things for us. The troubling thing for us tends to be not just that God allows this to come. The troubling thing is not either so much that God sometimes initiates it. The troubling thing for us often is that God promises it will come. Jesus said in John 1633, "In this world you will have trouble." Hebrews 12, 25 to 27 says, "See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks." If they did not escape, when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him, who warns us from heaven? At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised once more, "I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens." And the words once more indicate the removing of what can be shaken, that is created things, so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Let me give you two reasons this text tells us that God promises shaking in our lives. Number one is this, to remove that which can be shaken. You see, the natural tendency for human beings encased in flesh and blood is that we latch on to things that have been created and we begin to assume that we can draw life from them. We need to see that it is God's great love and great mercy for us, that God will come into our lives and he will begin to shake until we are forced to let go of created things. It's not wrong to have stuff, it's not wrong to have things that are created. There's a gentleman named Tony Campolo, some of you may be aware of Tony Campolo, he's a professor at Eastern Christian College in Philadelphia. And one of the things that he does is he goes all around to universities all over the country recruiting young people to go to the inner city. And so, Tony Campolo says that everywhere he goes, he begins to recruit people to go when they graduate from college to go live in the inner city and just be Jesus to those people. And he said the common question is this, is it dangerous? And here's his response, it's not near as dangerous as moving to the suburbs where you can be distracted by stuff and lose your focus on God. That's real danger. You see the first reason God shakes our lives is to cause us to let go of things that can be shaken, things that won't make it anyway, but the second reason in God's great love that he shakes our lives is to establish that which is secure. And most of us who have been through shaking and my guess is that all of us have at some point been through some form of shaking at God's hand. There comes a point eventually when you're willing to say, if I survive this at all, it's enough. You see, what God's really after is that we will let go of things that are going to burn anyway. And so, it is always out of his love that he begins to shake. About two years ago, my family and I went through tremendous, tremendous shaking. And I remember about halfway through, how do you begin to fear? And I knew it was the Lord's will for me to fear, and so I began to play in fast because sometimes your head can convince everything else, things that your heart knows better than. My heart knew better than to fear, but my head said, if you will look around you, you have every reason to fear. So I began to pray in fast. In the middle of the praying and fasting, the Lord said to me one day. He said, Marcus, is there any remote possibility that I'm going to let you starve to death? I said, no, Lord. And he said, then, it seems to me that you have a choice to make. You can either choose to live in fear or you can choose to get excited about what I'm about to do in your life. And the word of the Lord to many of you here this morning is, you have a choice to make. You can live in fear or you can get excited about what God is about to do in your life. Because the ultimate test of whether it's Satan or God who's shaking your life is this. Satan desires to kill you before you reach Bethlehem. God desires to get you there. And if you're shaking in any way, aids your journey to your Bethlehem where the Son of God can be birthed in you, that's how you know if it's God or not. Let me tell you something, friends. God is after a lot more than our convenience. God is refining our character. And as God refines our character, what he's after is to birth something redemptive through us that will be a blessing to us, so bless everybody around us. And part of the Christmas story is friends don't miss who's really in control of your life, that there is purpose, that what Joseph and Mary probably saw as an inconvenience, that she could have died on the way to Bethlehem, that what God was doing in their lives was fulfilling prophecy. Here's the second thing that we learn about God from the birth of Jesus. We learn about God's power. You realize that the Christmas story is filled with a testimony that God works in both natural and miraculous ways in the lives of this people. That God is always, always, intimately working in you and around you and through you. And there are a lot of people probably here this morning who would say, "Well, I've never seen a miracle." Maybe many of you have. I want to tell you, we're going to see a lot here. But one of the biggest traps we fall into is assuming that if we've never seen a miracle, we've never seen God work. Let me tell you something friends, God works every day in completely natural ways. Now, please hear what I'm saying. I've been run off from a church before for preaching that God still works miracles. This is a hill that I'm willing to down. But we also need to hear that God also is powerful enough to work in completely natural ways that the testament to his power. Let me tell you what I'm talking about. The Christmas story is filled with God working in both miraculous and in completely natural ways. Here's one of the miraculous ways, the conception of Jesus. Jesus was conceived in a virgin by the Holy Spirit, it's a miracle. But can I tell you that the birth of Jesus is not a miracle? You realize that the birth of a baby is not a miracle? We hear it a lot in hospital rooms when a little baby is born, it's not a little miracle. Can't you say it's not a miracle, the birth of a baby? The reason is because Genesis 1 says that every living thing will reproduce after its own kind. And whether it's a seed planted in the ground and a tree comes up or whether it's the birth of a baby, this is a fulfillment of Genesis 1, but it's not a miracle for a baby to be born. It's awesome, it's fantastic, it's amazing. But it is the only natural thing that can happen if all the conditions are right. Let me give you the definition of a miracle. The definition of a miracle is when God breaks in to the natural order of things and reverses them and causes something else to happen. That's a miracle. Your first birth was not a miracle, but it does require a miracle for you to be born again. And everyone here who's been born again has witnessed a miracle because what God did was He broke in to the natural order of our lives and where the natural progression of who we were was taking us. And He reversed them and He calls something completely different to happen, that's a miracle. But people who say, "I've never seen a miracle, so I've never seen God work miss God all the time." But please learn from the Christmas story that those who look for God every day see Him constantly look. Let's be people who look for the hand of God everywhere because He's all over the place. What we learn about God's power, here's the third thing that we learn from the birth of Jesus is we learn about God's priority. Can you hardly imagine a more uncomfortable place in Joseph and Mary in the cold 90 miles on the back of a donkey? I can hardly imagine being more uncomfortable than that, but here's the point that being a carrier of Jesus, which you are, will always eventually take you out of your comfort zone. The reason is because God's priority is not our comfort, God's priority is not our convenience. God's priority is not getting all of our circumstances to line up so that life just sort of smooth out like a highway ahead of us. You realize that life really was like that. You've never grown, and God is adamant about your growth in mind. You see, the priority of God is not that we're always comfortable. The priority of God is getting Jesus where He needs to be. What were the circumstances that brought you to the Metroplex, or wherever city you live? We'll say the job office. Do you see who's really in control of that? You see, maybe the only reason that you are where you are is because Jesus needs to be there. It's God's way of providing for you right now, but it's not about you. It's about God getting Jesus where He needs to be. Where does Jesus need to be? Does He need to be in your classroom? Does He need to be in your office? Does He need to be at your work location? Maybe that's the only reason that you are there. That God looked at that place and said, "I need Jesus in there," and He found somebody namely you who knew Him and put you in there. I want to tell you, it can be very, very uncomfortable to be a carrier of Jesus. My wife, Lexa, has a younger brother named Layton, three or four years ago, graduated from Texas Tech, got a job in Midland, Texas, selling oil-filled software, a young single guy making lots of money. The economy turned south and so did his job. He got laid off and through a contact with his father, landed another job. Now here was his job. You remember the movie Scooby-Doo that came out a couple of years ago? Well, just before the movie came out, there was a traveling road show, a stage play, and it was promoting the movie nationwide, but it was live, and so Layton's job was driving the Scooby-Doo van. It was a purple Chevrolet Astro minivan with leather turquoise interior, had a picture of Shaggy and Scooby and all the mystery hunters plastered on both sides of this thing. And Layton's job was to be the last one that left the set at night, and the first one to be there the next morning when they would go from Atlanta to Charlotte or wherever it was. And he's driving the Scooby-Doo van. And they drive across the country, they go up the eastern seaboard, and he calls us real late one night from New Hampshire, and he says, "I need some help." We say, "You need to send you some money," or, "What is it?" And he said, "Well, I don't need money." He said, "I'm going to jam, I don't know what to say." And he said, "Well, what's the problem?" And he said, "Well, the people I work with found out that I'm a Christian." And he said, "One of them is Jewish, two of them are homosexual, and the fourth is a former prostitute, and they're not buying any of it." You see, he was from the comfortable Christian South, where believing in Jesus is supposedly part of the whole fabric of who we are as a society. That's funny. He'd never been around people that authentically disbelieved that. He says, "I don't know what to tell these people." And my wife, Lexa, had a word of wisdom from the Lord for him. She said, "Laton," she said, "You know that you're not there by accident, don't you?" And I think some of us really need to hear that word this morning that is uncomfortable as your place may be, that you are not there by accident, that God is behind this deal, and in your life is a manifestation of his power and his priority to get Jesus where he needs to be. And one of the things that Jesus teaches us in his birth is that we begin to evaluate life in terms of the priority of God. What's God doing? What's he doing? Well, the fourth thing that we learn in the birth of Jesus is that we learn about God's plans. We learn about God's plans. Verse 7 says that Jesus was born in a manger because there's no room for him in the end. My wife and I, about three years ago, bought these children's videos of the whole Bible. We started out with the Gospels, and that's entertainment video, very well done, cartoon, specifically focused to children, and they just captivate little kids. And so we put in the one, one day, about the birth of Jesus, and our kid, we can't even get their attention. I mean, they're just enthralled by this story. And most of you have seen some rendition of the innkeeper, a rude, kind of brash, hadn't had his coffee yet, got up on the wrong side of the bed. There's no room here. You know, I think the innkeeper's taken it on the chin. I don't think that's the way the innkeeper was at all. I think the innkeeper just didn't have room. He said he was full, the inn was full. He wasn't mean. He didn't hate God, he just didn't have room. I think if he had known that Messiah could have been born in his little inn that he would have cleared out the presidential suite, but you see, there's a message for all of God's people in here about the plan of God, and that's that God's plan is to birth Jesus in the most humble of places. And it is part of the Christmas story and part of the divine plan that Jesus was not born in a palace, but in a manger. And in years and years of ministry now, one of the things that I've come to learn about believers in Jesus is that most of us view our lives more as a manger than a palace. Kind of messy. Some stinky stuff over in the corner that we really hope nobody notices. We're sure going to ignore it. We always know it's there. We realize that God knows the pain that you've been through. He knows the trauma you've been through. He knows the discomfort right now. God is aware of the mess that we have made by our own intentions and our own hands. He's not mad at you. And I say to you today that God looks at the manger of your life. And he says, I'd like to birth my son there. And most of us like the innkeepers, assume that if God really is going to come here, surely he could find a better place than my life to do a work. I want to say to you today that's a lie from the enemy. That Jesus looks right at whatever mess your life is in, whether it's your fault or not. And God says, that's a good place to birth my son. And God good, the mess and manger of your life does not dissuade God, one Iota. His desire right now is to find somebody, anybody, who will just make room for him. Can you buy your heads, please? Father God, thank you so much for the message of Christmas. Father, thank you so much that you see us differently than we see ourselves. Father while most of us would believe, what other people would say about us, that we really are an unlikely place for God to come to a work that you can found every human being on earth. And you say, really like to give them a real gift right now. And Father, I pray that you will sink deeply into the hearts of your people, that part of the Christmas story, is that your great desire is to birth Jesus anywhere somebody will make room for. So Lord, we just say right now, yes, we say yes to you. We choose by an act of our will to say yes to you. Lord, would you come and birth Jesus again right now in our mangers? We're thankful, Lord, that while most people on earth have no idea where Bethlehem is, or where a little manger may be in a little out of the way town, that Father, we are not hidden from your side, that our lives are not too far out of the way and off the beaten tracks for you to come and do a work. So we make invitation to you right now. And we thank you that your great love for us is more astounding than we've ever known. [BLANK_AUDIO]