 Today, we finish the Bible, God’s revealed Word to us ends with, the words of Jesus, “Surely I am coming soon.” to which we hear John’s reply, and add our own voices to his, and say, “Amen, Come, Lord Jesus! the grace of the Lord Jesus be with all Amen.” The absolute most important truth and aspect of our lives is who is Jesus Christ. Overstatement is impossible when it comes to the Savior.
There is nothing and no one greater than Jesus. There is nothing and no one before Christ. Jesus is before all things. The Word of God the Son is the meaning, purpose, fulfillment, and ultimate end of all things (John 1;Col 1:15-20). If you were to look for the bookends of all time, the entire created order, Heaven, Earth, the Universe, you will see on each end, the One who was born to Mary and Joseph 2000 years ago, splitting our very concept of history in two. There was a time before Christ and now the world lives in the year of our Lord, awaiting His return to finally judge all of creation. The bright morning star invites you this morning to trust on Him and prepare your heart for His return. He calls you to follow His Word and His will for your life today. What is your response?
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 Do you want to have a good relationship with Jesus? He isn’t the one that shut the door between you and Him, you are. He is waiting patiently for you to realize that the only barrier between you and Him is you.
The passage we look at today, Revelation 3:20-22, was written to a self assured, self centered congregation. Affluence and worldly comforts had lulled them into a spiritual slumber. They had become so full of themselves and the things of this world that they no longer believed they needed the Lord Jesus or His help. And when we no longer see our need for Jesus we no longer pursue our relationship with Jesus. Persecution can cause us to doubt God’s goodness, rampant sinfulness and immorality can cause us to deny the beauty of our Lord but the comforts of this world can lead to us forgetting about Him all together. This is what seems to have happened in Laodicea. The people of that church were not bad people. The laodiceans were simply forgetful people. They had gone to sleep spiritually and decided they had everything they need. This is what happens so often in America. We have gotten to the point where materially speaking, there is little that anyone lacks. And where there is little need materially there tends to be little awareness of spiritual need. This is why Jesus said what he said about the difficulties of the rich entering heaven in Matthew 19:16-30. Jesus gives us a firm warning that when we give in and allow the things of this world to become our security and treasure we will be disciplined. He says that those who walk the path of apathy and refusal to do anything helpful in the kingdom will be spit out. He doesn’t say what this will look like specifically but it doesn’t sound pleasant to me. He tells us simply, “So be zealous and repent” Rev 3:19. By His grace though, He doesn’t stop with his warning as our passage gives us the greatest hope possible. The picture that comes to my mind here is that the people on the inside of the home have thrown out the One who built the home and locked the door. And rather than burning the whole place down, the builder and owner simply turns around and knocks and waits patiently for those inside to come to their senses and let Him back in. Jesus has given you everything good in your life. All good things come from the Lord above. He has provided you with everything you need. Open the door of your heart today and let Him back in, stop shutting Him out! Let us pray for the grace and wisdom to see the places in our lives and hearts where we are blocking the Lord out and let Him back in to fill us with His loving grace.  A favorite song of my favorite preacher ever says, “These are days of Elijah,” meaning that the same power available to men like Elijah is there for the taking for those who follow the Lord Jesus. We can look for His return at any moment in time and expect Him to come riding on the clouds to our rescue and to judge the world. Those who live with this truth in front of them will live differently than those who do not believe that Christ not only empowers their daily walk but will judge all those who do not walk with Him. Bro. Jim McDaniel, was a man of God who held firmly to his commitment to Christ, because He truly believed(s) the words that we read in
Daniel 7:13-14 this morning. The Lord Jesus will return to rescue His people, and everyone who has rejected the free offer of grace will experience the judgment of the One who died to give them that offer. While the study of end times is not something that I find as interesting as previous generations, I realize that a lack of urgency on the part of the church today is a direct result of our neglect of this precious doctrine. It is almost as if we do not believe that our Lord could return at any moment, or that we do not have the same power available to us that prophets like Elijah were able to wield. The truth is, the same life transforming power is in us, if we have given our hearts to the Judge of the earth. Jesus applies this passage to Himself, without qualification, throughout the gospels, but two instances stuck out to me in my reading this morning. Both the passages I mention have to do with His return, and subsequent judgement of the world. I encourage you to spend time this morning considering all ways you would live your life differently today, if you really believe them. I am going to end with these two passages in context without much comment. Mark 13:22-37 details the end of all things, Jesus tells us that people will attempt to deceive us and make us believe they are the true messiah in order to get us to do things that go contrary to Scripture. We need to see past our small idea that this can happen only if we believe a specific person who claims to be the Christ, and realize that our world is full of people who claim to have found the secret to life, happiness, and eternal joy, apart from Christ (not discounting there is an actual antichrist) this could be any number of deceptions that lead us from the Lord. Jesus’ main point here is that when He shows up everyone is going to know and there will be no doubt that He is the Lord so listen to Him and follow Him until He does! Matthew 24:29-31 talks about how the Lord is going to return and there is no one will be safe from His wrath. Only His people will be rescued from the flood of judgment that will cover the World when He returns. Read the whole chapter if you need to see more of what is going to happen but the point is the same. Jesus is coming and when He does the whole world of people that has rejected Him is going to be sorry, only those who truly love and follow Him will be safe. These are not happy thoughts so close to Christmas, but they are necessary thoughts for those who love Jesus, and they should be urgent thoughts for those who do not. I pray that those who claim the name of Jesus will like these are the days of Elijah and that will choose to follow the Lord and Him alone and those who do not know Jesus will admit they are sinners, believe in Christ and His free gift of salvation and Confess Him as Lord of their lives as they repent of their sins and ask for His forgiveness.  Christmas reminds me a little of that show, “Undercover Boss,” where the owner of the company would go and work among the, “little people.” There is just something disarming about having a very important person who is willing to do a job that society deems as unimportant or beneath them. The same goes for the very famous in our world. It’s always interesting when huge celebrities are caught doing ordinary people things like pumping gas or shopping for groceries. We forget that no matter how high up the chain you go, people are still people just like us. When Jesus came from Heaven to Earth, it was similar to a heavenly episode of undercover boss in that all humanity finally got to have the question answered, what if God was one of us. The answer we got was, He would be perfect and mankind would rise up and try to destroy Him regardless of how perfectly He treated us. Jesus knew the answer before He came, but He showed up anyway.
Our passage this morning tells us that Jesus held nothing back, He was entitled to all glory honor and praise yet He retained none these for our sake. He emptied Himself and put on flesh, He took on the form of a servant. The One all of Heaven bowed before became One that would appear to be beneath all others. Jesus went from having angels at His command to being led by the hand. He went from the throne of heaven to a dirty manger among the poorest of the World. Jesus humbled Himself by becoming a servant of all. He was obedient to the Father’s will all the way to the point of death, even the worst death imaginable, death on the cross. True humility is not thinking badly of yourself, true humility is forgoing your rights to the honor and privileges you deserve. Every Christmas we are celebrating the fact that our Lord, Jesus, displayed the greatest humility this world will ever know. He gave up Heaven’s praise to walk among the people of this world as a servant. And He allowed Himself to be subjected to ridicule even to the point of being hung from a tree like a common criminal. He never defended Himself, though He could have. He never force the pain and suffering and shame to stop though one word from His mouth would have ended it all. As Loretta Lynn used to sing, He could have called ten thousand angels,” but he suffered in silence and allowed His creation to mock and humiliate Him until they murdered Him for simply being good. Our passage today comes in the middle of Paul the apostle pleading with a group of people to show humility to one another and get along. He said in essence, “hey guys, have the same mindset that Jesus had by coming and dying on the cross,” “if you are wondering how to be humble and get along, look at what Jesus did for you!” Let us praise God today for the mindset Jesus had to come and die in our place for the His grace to live with such humility in all our dealings with one another.  When is the last time you got lost? I mean truly lost, to the point that you could not find your way to your destination? I’m betting it has been a while, or it was because you forgot your phone at home, or the place you were trying to go did not have an actual address. The last time I truly got lost, was during a time period where I attempted to navigate life without a smart phone. Turns out that was not a smart move, hehe. Since the advent of a smart phone in my life, there are so many new possibilities of adventure, it is often difficult for me to decide where to go. I can deviate from the prescribed directions and take other roads and explore where I wish to explore, without fear of being so lost that I might have to suffer the humiliation of being reduced to asking for directions, it is wonderful. This one small device has opened up a world of possibilities.
Titus 3:3-7 describes a whole new world of possibilities, due to the salvation that Christ has given us. Paul is telling us that as believers we do not have to follow the same pattern of life we did prior to coming to know Jesus. When Jesus saved us, He gave us a brand new life. A life that is not bound by our old character and sinfulness. A life that is fueled by the Holy Spirit who has cleansed our hearts and made us new. As you read down through this text you see so many different ways Jesus has given us a new life. We used to be: foolish, disobedient, deceived and then it is almost as if Paul realizes how long this list is going to be so he says, “enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures.” “We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.” What a terrible existence, another word for it would be lost! We were lost in our own sins and helplessness. I love how one old preacher explained the next part, he said, but then God, “butted into our lives.” As Paul says here, “But when the kindness and love of God our savior appeared, He saved us…but because of his mercy.” God interrupted our lostness to provide a new life through Jesus. The Lord Jesus has given us the Holy Spirit who has opened up for us infinite possibilities of living a new life. A new life not enslaved by what we want and desire buy by a true love for God and others. A new life where we are not lost but know where to go and what to do. A new life not weighed down by guilt and shame and hatred but lifted up by love and and joy and mercy for others the same mercy we have been shown, we show to others because of the gift of Salvation! We have a brand new life in Jesus full of possibilities and joy that we never dreamed of, things that were impossible without Him. As you leave the house today and I’m sure you will be certain to grab your phone on the way out, make sure you remember that because of Jesus you have a new life that you would be eternally more lost without than you would be without your phone. Ask the Lord for His grace to live out the new life He has put in you and as you say Merry Christmas remember it is truly merry because you have been made new!  Ask any teacher, parent, coach, any person who has ever been faced with training children, patience is required! Why? Because kids do not understand what they do not understand until you teach them. And there are times where even though they know nothing, they think they know everything. We assume we have patience until we are tasked with teaching a young person, or group of young people, who believe themselves intellectually superior to our expertise in the field we are training them. Even if that field is trying to get them to eat their vegetables. With every refusal to simply do as they are asked, our patience is tried a little further.
Imagine how God feels. He obviously knows more about our physical, psychological, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual makeup than we ever could. He understands where every single molecule came from, He is the one who put them there! Yet when He says, “don’t eat that fruit,” our response is to listen to a talking snake (Gen. 3). Lest we believe that we are somehow smarter than Adam and Eve, I imagine every person reading this has taken part in things that are far more obviously bad for you in the past day than a piece of fruit from a tree in the middle of paradise. The same God who said that also said don’t go to bed angry, or look at another in lust, or want what your neighbor has, or indulge in the sin of gluttony. God tells us over and over again to not get caught up in the pursuit of worldly treasures yet we run after the things of this world daily, and ignore the things of God. We just think we need patience. Christmas shows us just how much patience God has given to us in our sins. Think of how quickly your patience runs out for those you are in charge of training, imagine how long ago your patience would have run out in dealing with your constant back talk and ignoring the Lord if you were Him. This is something the Apostle Paul never got over. In our passage for this morning Paul confesses that when it comes to being shown patience, God showed him more than anyone else. Paul never forgot who he was without Jesus. Without Jesus, Paul was a murdering self-righteous monster who hunted down those who were following the Savior. Without Jesus, Paul worked harder than anyone else to stop God’s plans. He says the reason that God chose to show him mercy to prove to the rest of us that God has enough patience to save us. If He could show a man like Paul mercy then there is hope for the rest of us. Jesus was born to save sinners. That is why He came, not for good, respectable people, but filthy rotten sinners. We are not good people on our own. To believe this is to be as Paul was without Jesus. Paul was as good and respectable as a human could be before he met the Savior. God had told him that he was indeed a sinner but Paul thought he knew better than the One who made him. He was wrong and so are you if you believe you do not need Jesus to save you and forgive you for your sins. You are also wrong if you believe that you are too sinful for the Lord to save. Do not argue with the One who made you today. Trust His judgment, He knows more than you will ever know about you. Take HIs free gift of mercy and thank Him for His gift of patient salvation in Jesus Christ. Merry Christmas!  Jesus gives those who trust on Him so many gifts. One of those gifts is freedom. Freedom from earning our place with God. Freedom from fear of being cast away from the Lord. Freedom from serving the things of this world. When we trust on Jesus we are adopted into God’s family as full blown sons and daughters of the One true King. So much so that we are called heirs alongside Christ (Gal 4:7). Paul’s point is that if we are heirs of heaven the surely we are accepted by the Father. This passage in Galatians relies heavily on the Genesis account of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Ishmael. God had promised Abraham a son through Sarah but Abraham and Sarah decided to earn their way by taking care of things themselves. Abraham had a child with his servant instead of waiting on God to give him the son of promise. The result was that he had a son according to the flesh that was not his heir. The son he had with Hagar, his servant, was then sent away from the family. This is truly a heartbreaking story for everyone involved and that is Paul’s point. Any time we try to earn our place with God, by what we do, instead of trusting the promise of Jesus, that we are God’s children through the gospel, it become a situation as heartbreaking as the one we read about with Ishmael. What we are offered is a place in God’s kingdom through God’s Son. Isaac did nothing to earn his exalted place in Abraham’s family. There was no reason in Isaac that made him more special than Ishmael. The only difference was that Isaac was the son of promise, that is it. The extent of Isaac’s resume was that he was born. What is it that the Lord tells us to do in order to gain entrance into His family? Be born again, trust on Christ and have our sins forgiven. When we trust on Jesus we are called daughters and sons not because we did anything to earn it but simply because we were born into God’s family! Galatians 4:6 tells us that through Jesus we cry out “Abba! Father” which is to say daddy, or papa. Because of Jesus we call the God of Heaven and Earth, daddy. We do not have to approach Him with fear that we are not good enough. Jesus has done all that needs to be done to be accepted by our adoptive Father. We simply trust on our standing because of Christ and live free of the guilt and shame that we rightly carried before we were born again into a new family through Christ. Let’s live free today trusting the good news that we are God’s children and share that good news with the people God puts in our path. In some ways, when we say Merry Christmas what we mean is be happy if you are in Jesus you are a child of the King and if you are not in Jesus you can be set free by trusting on the Son of God. Merry Christmas!  We live in a day of entitlement. Everyone, it seems, believes that they deserve more than they receive. More respect, more pay, more vacation, just plain more! Our passage today points out that one of the gifts that Jesus brings to us is not giving us what we truly deserve.
The paycheck that is coming to all of humanity is, according to God, death. Paul asks us the question, what good ever came of all the sin you committed? The answer to that question is, sin does not give us anything good, it only gives us death. This is what we deserved but God sent Jesus. Jesus gives us a gift. The good news of Jesus is that we do not receive what we have earned but instead are gifted what Christ won for us on the Cross. Jesus took off the chains of sin and death and gave us holiness and eternal life. What a trade! We didn’t receive what we have rightly earned, death. We do receive what we could never get close to earning, eternal life. As you are tempted to serve sin today, ask yourself that question that Paul asked. What good ever came of me doing what I want to do instead of what God wants me to do? The answer will be the same that Paul gives here. None, it never satisfies and leads to death, every time. Instead of serving your old master, serve the One who has given you new life and hope for all eternity!  Can you imagine if Joseph had checked to see which opinions were trending before obeying the Lord? Everything, anyone would have suggested to Joseph would have been wrong for him and his family. He was told to overlook the fact that his bride to be was with child before they were together. He was told to move from his historical family home, in Bethlehem, to Egypt. Later, he was told to move back from Egypt, to the place where people had tried to kill his adopted Son. Then he was told to move to the worst place, economically speaking, in Israel. Not one of these decisions would have made sense to his buddies at work or to his parents or to his in-laws or even to the outlaws.
Despite every choice seeming to be without any rhyme or reason, Joseph does not seem to have even flinched when it came to complete obedience to the Lord. Someone pointed out at bible study, Wednesday night, that Joseph had angels appear to him three times! Usually people, in Scripture, had their lives redirected maybe once by an angel if that, but Joseph was like a pinball with all of God’s redirects. How could he possibly explain to someone that his decisions were for the best for his family and not simply a lack of purpose or direction? Unwavering confidence in God's calling is the only option for not losing your mind when you are called to make decisions that do not make sense to anyone but the Lord. You can tell them that an angel told you to do it but what do you think they really believe? You can hear his relatives, "sure Joseph, an angel told you to do it." I can imagine someone telling him to lay off the late night tacos as a remedy for his dreams. But Joseph held firm in his conviction of what God called him to and we can learn from his example. Today, everyone has an opinion about what you should be doing and when you should be doing it for yourself and your family. Take a lesson from the life of the man God chose to raise His Son. Follow the Lord’s will and Word for your life and let em talk all they want. You serve Him with confidence this Christmas season. Commit your path to His purpose for your life not theirs. The Lord provides as He guides. The odds were against this little family, but the Lord was with them, guiding Joseph to where He needed to be when He needed to there. Trust the Lord to guide you and know that He is with you as you go. The child that Joseph raised was more important than anything else in this world, including Joseph’s reputation. Why? Jesus is, “Immanuel,” God with Us! Savior of the World and He with us today as well. And guess what, your child’s relationship with the Lord and your personal relationship with the Lord is more important than your reputation as well. So by God’s grace, let’s set aside public opinion and follow God’s guiding for our lives this Christmas season. |
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