©2005 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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12-18-05 |
A Child Is Given |
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12/18/05
A Child Is Given
ISA 9:2-4,6-7 The people who walk in darkness Will see a
great light; Those who live in a dark land, The light will shine on them. You
shall multiply the nation, You shall increase their gladness; They will be glad
in Your presence As with the gladness of harvest, As men rejoice when they
divide the spoil. For You shall break the yoke of their burden and the staff on
their shoulders, ... For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;
And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be
no end to the increase of His government or of peace, On the throne of David
and over his kingdom, To establish it and to uphold it with justice and
righteousness From then on and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will
accomplish this.
We don’t understand, you know.
From the very beginning
we didn’t
understand.
We’ve never understood,
and because we
never understood
we kept
getting it all wrong.
Why is it, I wonder,
that it is so
hard for us to hear the voice of our God.
Why is it
that it is so
hard for us to hear
and to
believe His love?
I know what’s going on right now in many of your lives.
It’s just a few days before Christmas.
I know the stress you feel.
I know how, after last Christmas,
you vowed to
yourself
that you
would never do it again -
you would never allow yourself
to get pulled
into the Christmas nightmare.
So many presents to buy,
and everything so
expensive...
The guy who invented credit cards
really should be
executed...slowly, painfully.
And then there’s that other huge stress factor
that always comes
up at this time of the year -
the “F” word...FAMILY.
How are you going to handle it this year?
Is it worth all of the added stress
that will come if
you at last try to confront that family member?
You know the one, don’t you.
What does it really mean for you to love them?
Is love choosing to overlook,
to forgive,
to once
again say nothing?
Or does true love require that you attempt to address the
issues?
Remember what happened last time you tried it?
That was a mess,
wasn’t it.
And yet,
is it really
kindness and compassion
to forever
leave everything unsaid,
or is it just cowardice?
I wonder who wrote some of those Christmas songs?
“...It’s the most wonderful time...of the year!!!!”
Whoever wrote that one must have been an orphan
or tanked up on
the wrong kind of holiday spirits.
The thing with Christmas
is that it
doesn’t change anything,
it just amplifies,
intensifies
what’s already there.
It just cranks up the volume on life.
The good in our lives becomes even more intensely good,
and what isn’t so
good
becomes even worse.
Well, during the few minutes we have together this morning
I want us to look
at Someone else who had some family problems too,
and to see
how Christmas helped Him to overcome them.
I began our time together a few minutes ago
by saying that we
really don’t get it.
By “we” I don’t just mean those of us here this morning,
I mean the entire
human race.
It is a fundamental element of the human condition.
Understanding the way in which our Creator loves us
is simply foreign
to our thinking.
For most of my life,
at least since my
Lord blasted His way in so many years ago,
I have
thought that this difficulty we have
with understanding God’s love
must be a direct result of our sin and our
rebellion against Him.
How could we ever hear love from the One
whom we believe
demands from us what we cannot deliver,
and then
condemns us because we’ve failed to do what He wanted us to do?
With that kind of tension
existing in our
minds between us and Him
it’s no
wonder we found it difficult to buy into the love thing.
When dad told us to mow the lawn before he left in the
morning,
and we then took
off with our buddies for the day
and never
even got near the lawn mower,
it’s not surprising that we were not anticipating a cheerful
greeting from him when he came home.
But in recent years
I’ve begun to
rethink this whole thing
and have
now decided that our initial inability to hear His love
goes far beyond our rebellion against Him,
and the resulting fear of Him that it
produced within us.
You see,
even before sin
entered into the human scene,
Adam and
Eve didn’t get it either.
There they were,
utterly immersed
in a world
that
proclaimed God’s love for them everywhere they looked,
with everything they touched,
and yet they didn’t get it.
There is a common game we human beings play
in our
relationship with our Creator,
a game in which we tell ourselves
that, if God
would just do certain things for us,
it would be
lots easier for us to believe in His love.
We’ll call it the “If-God-Would-Just” game.
If God would just...
If God would just what?
If God would just let me win the lottery...
If God would just
get that person to love me...
If God
would just heal this huge, gaping wound within me...
If
God would just give me a child...
If God would just make this child I have
obey...
If God would just change my
husband...change my wife...
If God would just heal my tooth
ache...or my back ache...or my heart ache...
If God would just get me a snow machine...
or a boat...
or an
airplane...
or a
car...
If God would just do what needs to be done
in order to fix
my life so that it worked properly,
then I
would know for certain that He loves me.
Well, I hate to break the news to you,
but it’s just a
game,
another
hiding place from the truth.
You see, even if God fixed it all,
just the way we
wanted,
we still
wouldn’t get it
because we simply can’t get there that
way.
And how do I know that?
Because that’s exactly what God did for Adam and Eve
and they still
didn’t get it.
They had no financial worries.
they had no deep
wounds from the past,
they had no
tooth decay, no back aches, no heart aches,
they had no hurricanes,
no sheets of ice or wind-chill factors to
worry about.
And they had no fear of death
because death
didn’t even exist.
They lived in a global climate so perfect
that they didn’t
even need clothing...ever.
And still they didn’t get it.
Everything they needed for an absolutely perfect life
was already
theirs in abundance.
And it was more than that.
It wasn’t just that they had everything they needed,
but they also
knew exactly where it all came from.
They knew it had all been personally given to them by God
Himself.
Adam remembered perfectly
the day of his
own creation,
and each evening
he walked with
His Creator.
And yet...
and yet Adam and
Eve could not hear His love for them
in a way
they could receive it,
and
trust it,
and respond to it.
And neither could we.
Even if we got everything on our list,
and even if we
knew it came to us directly from God,
we still
wouldn’t be able to hear His love
in a
way that enabled us to trust it,
or respond to it.
God knew that, of course.
From the very beginning
He knew what it
would take
for us to
be able to hear His love.
He knew what it would take
for the Creator
to really
communicate love to the created.
And He also knew
that only when He
had succeeded in doing that
would some
of us finally love Him in return.
Love is such a very strange thing.
It cannot be bought.
It cannot be earned.
Ever tried to buy someone’s love?
Maybe you’re trying to do it this Christmas.
How much stuff do you have to get?
How much do you
have to spend?
Of course it works the other way around.
If you love someone
you’ll just
naturally want to give them
the stuff
you know will enrich their life.
But if you’re trying to create love through giving stuff,
it will never
work.
And from the very beginning
God knew that we
would never be able to enter into the knowledge of His love,
we would
never be able to know His heart
simply through the stuff He’s given us.
Because love,
real love isn’t
about giving or receiving,
it’s about being accepted just as we are,
right where we
are,
just
because we are who we are.
And here’s the tricky part -
God also knew
that we
would only be able to hear
and
to believe that kind of love
when there was no reason why He should accept us
and lots and lots
of reasons why He should not.
Have you ever wondered why God created adolescence?
Have you ever wondered why
He designed into
the human growth process
this
horrendous time of transition between childhood and adulthood
when our children are 99% impulse
and 1% judgement,
and who they are and who we long for them
to be
are light years away from one another?
My little 1993 Ford Ranger has a stick shift in it.
A few days ago I was driving an adolescent boy and his
brother home
and on the way he
asked me if it was possible to shift while we were moving
without
putting in the clutch.
I told him “No, it would cause a horrible grinding noise in
the gears
and very possibly
damage the transmission.”
At which point he then reached over,
pulled the gear
shift out of 4th
and tried
to shove it into either 3rd or reverse.
I’m not sure which.
All I know is
that we then heard that horrible grinding noise I’d promised.
He wasn’t trying to be mean.
He wasn’t trying
to be rebellious.
He wasn’t
angry at me.
In fact I have a really great friendship with him.
It’s just that 14 year old adolescent male minds simply
don’t work right,
they don’t
process consequences the way adult minds do,
and on
impulse
he
honestly just wanted to see if what I’d told him was true.
To his credit
immediately after
we heard the that grinding noise I’d promised
he realized
he’d just done a really dumb thing,
but why couldn’t he have figured that out in advance?
I happened to catch a program on PBS several months ago
about the
development of the brain during adolescence
and they
have now discovered that the very last part of the brain to develop
is
the part from which rational judgements come,
the part that processes consequences,
cause and effect
and then integrates those judgements into
the decision-making process.
That part of the adult brain
is the very last
to develop
which
doesn’t happen until the late teens.
Now why would God design such a time into the maturing
process,
a time when our
children are exploding with impulses
and almost
completely devoid of judgement?
I think, in part, it is because
it provides the
perfect basis upon which
we can
communicate true love to our children
just
prior to the adult years,
a love, and acceptance that is rooted not in what they do,
not in their
ability to perform up to our adult standards and expectations,
but a love that is rooted simply in who they are
as precious,
unique creations of God.
We can sometimes tell our children more about what’s really
in our hearts
in the two
minutes after they grind the gears
than at any
other time in our relationship with them.
And I also think God designed that phase into the
developmental process
because it
provides us with a tremendous window
into His
relationship with us.
Everyone of us begins our relationship with our God
at that point
where we have just grabbed the gearshift of our lives
and tried
to shove it into reverse.
And with us
quite often we
haven’t just done it on impulse,
but we’ve
done it
just
because He said it would be a really dumb thing to do
because, you see,
with all of us
that part
of the brain that processes moral judgements in our relationship with God
never developed at all.
And when we hear and feel the gears of our lives
grinding against
each other
and everything
within us wants to find some place to run and hide
from this God who has every reason
to reach out His almighty hand and slap us
on the side of the head,
when the whole human race
was at its
adolescent worst,
at that point God knew we were finally ready to hear
what He had been
wanting to say, trying to say to us from the very beginning.
And the people who walked in darkness saw a great light;
Those who
lived in a dark land,
The
light of the love of God shown on them.
And, rather than slapping us on the side of the head,
He increased
our gladness;
and He
made us glad in His presence
as
with the gladness of harvest,
As men rejoice when they divide the spoil
because He broke the yoke of our burden
and the staff
on our shoulders.
For a child was born to us, a son was given to us;
And the
government will rest on His shoulders;
And His
name will be called Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God, Eternal Father,
Prince of Peace.
There will be no end to the increase of His government or
of peace,
to establish
His reign in our heats
and to
uphold it with justice and righteousness
from now on and forevermore.
In other words,
when there was no
reason for Him to say it,
and there were so very many reasons why He should not,
our God,
our Creator
against whom we had all rebelled,
reached into our world,
and our pain,
and our
darkness,
and
our hopelessness
and then didn’t just tell us He loves us,
but demonstrated
that love through clothing Himself in a human body
and
entering our world -
Emanuel: God with us.
Merry Christmas!
And from the very beginning of this -
God’s ultimate
expression of Himself to us, His creation,
He wanted
to be sure we understood correctly
what was really going on between us and
Him.
Listen to this!
With every key conversation
that took place
between God and those involved in the birth of Christ
God
instructed His angel messengers
to
begin those conversations
with the same four words.
MAT 1:20 “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid...”.
LUK 1:30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid,
Mary...”.
And to the shepherds,
LUK 2:10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be
afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be
for all the people...”
And to all of us,
to each of us
the message
is exactly the same.
Yes, God Himself has entered your world,
but do not be
afraid!
And then John makes certain we understand why we should not
be afraid.
JOH 3:17 For God did not send the Son into the world to
judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.
And throughout the life of Christ on this earth
the message never
changed.
Do not be afraid!
With every contact He had
with those who
came to Him
His
approach was always carefully designed
to
communicate that same message - do not be afraid!
Why?
Because He loves
us.
Even with our hand still on the gear shift
and that horrible
grinding noise ringing in our ears
and in His,
He loves us.
And from the very beginning
of His ultimate
presentation of Himself to us
everything He did
was carefully designed to communicate the
one message we most longed to hear
and most feared we would never hear -
“Do not be afraid,
I have not come
to judge you,
but that
through Me you might at last find true life,
and that abundantly.”