You can find this message on my YouTube channel, here: https://youtu.be/Hq1qIl6YL4o
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Today is the third
Sunday of Advent – the season during which many Christians focus a bit more
closely on the time God sent His only begotten Son into our world to rescue us
from the grip of Satan, sin, and death.
I hope to make two
points in today’s message. And while at first blush each point might seem an
odd for this season, I hope at the end of the message you will see the
connection between this season and this message.
A while ago I
downloaded an album by Christ for the Nations. One song in particular caught my
attention during my quiet time with the Lord. It’s titled, ‘When I’m With
You.’ Here are some of the lyrics:
I was made for loving
you/I was made to worship/I was made to give you praise all of my days/O lord,
my all is for you/My all is for you
As I listened to the words,
I wondered, “Why would God create us to love and worship Him?”
Some might answer that He
did so because He is the supreme narcissist. You might remember the story of
the mythological character, Narcissus. The young man was so in love with himself
that when he saw his image in a pond, he wouldn’t leave it even to eat. Eventually,
he starved to death.
Is God narcissistic? Is
He so in love with Himself that He had to create a whole planet of creatures to
fawn over Him?
Of course not. Over and
over Scripture tells us God is love, not self-love, but REAL love, the
kind of love that is other-centered. However, that kind of love carries great
risk. The Lover permits the beloved the freedom to embrace that love – or
reject it. And some of you listening to
me understand very well the heartache of rejected love.
In one of the saddest verses in Scripture, God
tells us how His beloved Israel broke His heart by their adulterous wandering:
Then those of you who escape will remember Me . . . how I
have been hurt by their adulterous hearts which turned away from Me, and
by their eyes which played the harlot after their idols.” (Ezekiel 6:9)
Yes, God’s
other-centered love risked deep hurt. But it also enables deep joy when the
beloved embraces His love.
So, since God did not create us to satisfy His self-centered
vanity, why DID He create us? Some think God ‘needed’ to create us to keep Him
company.
That’s nonsense. Scripture
tells us that God is three Persons in one God. Not three gods, but one God who
is known as Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. The great I AM of Exodus 3:14 could never be lonely within His own
eternally unified and intimate Trinity. If He had never created us, He would never be
‘lonely.’
So, no. A thousand times, no. God did not create you and me
to fill some void in His life, but to include us in His eternally
perfect waltz of love.
The Hebrew prophet Isaiah
speaks of God’s love-driven ‘creating’ in this way: “As the bridegroom
rejoices over the bride, so your God will rejoice over you.”
(62:5). Zephaniah says it this way: “The Lord your God
is in your midst, a victorious warrior. He will exult over you
with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with
shouts of joy.” (3:17).
Think a moment of the
imagery in that Zephaniah passage. God delights in you and me so much that He
rejoices over us with singing! Imagine our God singing love songs
over us!
And then of course in John 3:16 – “For God so
loved the world that He gave . . . .”
So, why did God create us? I suppose
there are several reasons we could examine, but they all could be synthesized
into one:
God created us simply
because it pleased Him to create us. As the angels and hosts of heaven forever
proclaim: “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power:
for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were
created.” (Revelation 4:11, AKJV)
At a human level, parents understand that pleasure
when they want to have children. They don’t ‘create’ (so to speak) children so
their children will worship them. They ‘create’ children because their joined
love desires to share their love with offspring.
On an incomprehensibly greater scale, it pleased
God to create us so He could share His love with those He created. And like
human parents hope for a loving relationship with their children in later
years, God creates us to have a personal and loving RELATIONSHIP with Him
throughout our lives.
So, at its most fundamental level, THAT is why God
created you and me. He is in LOVE with you and me. And His enduring desire is
that you and I, of our own free will, choose to love Him in response.
Which brings me to my second point which is intimately
related to the first about why God created us. When God is the lover, how far
will we as the beloved trust the lover?
A knee-jerk response might be something like, “To
the moon and back.” But I had a few disquieting thoughts one morning during my
quiet time with the Lord. Let me tell you why.
During the last several days we’ve been praying
for a friend of ours. He’s in an ICU bed, on a ventilator, at times more dead
than alive. We’ve known him and his family for decades. He is as faithful a
Christian as any we’ve known. Yet there he lies between death and life, a
victim of the global COVID pandemic.
As I repeatedly pleaded with the Lord for his
life, I reminded God of His promise to His people, Israel: "If you will
give earnest heed to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in
His sight, and give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will
put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians; for I, the
Lord, am your healer." (Exodus 15:26)
Then I reminded Him of His promise in Psalm 91: He
who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow
of the Almighty . . . .” For it is He who delivers you from the snare of
the trapper and from the deadly pestilence . . . . You will not be
afraid of the terror by night, or of the arrow that flies by day; Of
the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or of the destruction
that lays waste at noon. A thousand may fall at your side and ten thousand at
your right hand, But it shall not approach you . . . No evil will befall you, nor will any plague
come near your tent.
“Lord,” I said, “I don’t understand You. You
promised to protect your people from plagues such as this global pandemic. But
there is Your servant hovering near death from this plague. Why, Lord? I do not
understand.”
Then this thought dropped into my mind. “You
don’t have to understand; Follow Me.”
Immediately afterward a dozen Bible passages percolated
in my mind, such as Isaiah 55: “For My thoughts are
not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My
ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
And this from Proverbs
3: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own
understanding.” And this one, after St. Paul begged the Lord to take away
the ‘thorn’ that hounded him. God told him, “My grace is sufficient for
you.” (2 Corinthians 12)
Then I remembered the
Lord’s comment to Peter after He told the disciple of his eventual martyrdom
for Christ: “Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used
to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will
stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you where you
do not wish to go.” 19 Now this He
said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when
He had spoken this, He *said to him, “Follow Me!” (John 21:18-19)
Two verses later, Peter
pointed at John and asked the Lord: “What about this man?” I get the idea Peter was asking
Jesus, “If I am to die a martyr’s death, what about John?” But notice again Jesus’ response: “If I
want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow
Me!”
Always, the Lord says: “Follow
Me.” Always He says, “Follow Me.”
Job didn’t understand,
but he followed. The psalmists didn’t understand, but they followed. Paul
didn’t understand, but he followed. Peter didn’t understand, but he followed.
We were made to
follow Jesus. Even if it doesn’t make sense. Even if we don’t like what is happening
in our life.
During the Crimean War, a miscommunication sent
the British light cavalry into a suicidal frontal assault against a
well-prepared and fortified Russian position. Surely every soldier questioned
the order. Surely every man thought it an insane order. But on they
rode, sabers high – into a crushing barrage of deadly fire. The assault ended
with terribly high British casualties and no decisive gains. A few weeks after
the carnage, Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote the well-known poem, The Charge of
the Light Brigade.
Half a league, half a
league, Half a league onward/All in the valley of Death
rode the six hundred/“Forward,
the Light Brigade!/Charge for the guns!” he said/Into the valley of Death rode
the six hundred . . . Theirs not to reason why/Theirs but to do and die/Into
the valley of Death rode the six hundred.
Cannon to right of
them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them/volleyed and thundered/Stormed
at with shot and shell/Boldly they rode and well/Into the jaws of Death/Into
the mouth of hell rode the six hundred. . . . While horse and hero fell/they
that had fought so well/Came through the jaws of Death/Back from the mouth of
hell/All that was left of them/Left of six hundred.
When can their glory
fade?/O the wild charge they made!/All the world wondered/Honor the charge they
made!/Honor the Light Brigade/Noble six hundred!
When the Lord Jesus
knelt in the Garden of Gethsemane, He asked three times of the Father – Please
take this cup from me. The Father’s answer is not recorded in Scripture,
but we can safely assume He said to Jesus essentially what Jesus Himself says
to His followers – follow Me, even if it be into the Valley of Death.
Yes, I know Christians
get sick and die. They get cancer, and heart disease. They die in accidents and
from murder. We are subject to the same slings and arrows of this sin-sick
world as is everyone else.
So, do I understand why
my friend is so sick with the plague, despite what I consider God’s promises
through Moses and the Psalmist? No, of course I don’t understand. But in and through
it all, Jesus’ words now confront me with two particularly hard
questions: Will you follow Me – even if following Me doesn’t make sense? And
will you follow Me even if I take you into the Valley of Death?
The Light Brigade
stormed against hell’s fire because they were honorable men, noble men who were
all under orders. It didn’t matter if they agreed with the order. It didn’t
matter if the order made any sense at all. They just did as they were commanded.
And Christian, don’t
think for a moment our Great Commander Jesus doesn’t ask you the same questions:
“Will you follow Me if nothing makes sense? If you don’t understand, if you
don’t like it, will you still follow Me, even into the Valley of Death?”
And so, on this the
third Sunday of the Advent season, as our minds wander to the manger and the
straw and the shepherds guarding their flock by night, as we follow those
thoughts then to His miracles and His teachings and His crucifixion,
resurrection, and ascension, please Holy Spirit, prepare us today and every
day, to follow Christ honorably, and nobly, wherever He leads.
Please Holy Spirit, prepare
us each day so when life kicks us to the ground, we do not turn from you in
rage or bitterness or in quiet despair. Prepare us each day to lean on You, to
trust You, and not our own feeble and fallible understanding.
Amen
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