“Opening To God”
Scripture Reading: Matthew 1:18-25
Sermon Transcript for February 26, 2006
By Pastor Bob Coleman
Now I want to start, for the time and season of Lent, because this is the first Sunday of Lent, a series called “Life with God”. It will be for six Sundays. It will culminate, of course, as we enter Holy Week with Palm Sunday and Easter. The focus of this “Life with God” series was based upon a book which I purchased last year called Renovare’ and pardon my French if I didn’t pronounce that correctly. But it is a word that means in Latin “renew”. And with that understanding, it is a renewal time for this Lenten season. And I hope through this series you will feel some sense of renewal spiritually, emotionally, mentally and maybe even physically through the time if that is a need for you. It’s going to based upon mostly scriptures from Luke with the exception of this first Sunday. The scriptures are chosen particularly to help us to see that there are certain points, pathways, and understandings that are there in scripture that give us stories and understandings that help us to know that God wishes with great effort on God’s part to be with us. That’s why we use the phrase “the Immanuel principle”--Immanuel meaning “God with us”. We know from Advent and Christmastime that that’s the name that was given, in addition to Jesus, as being The Immanuel, God with us. God comes in human form as Jesus. Well these scriptures, through the Immanuel principle for the time of Lent, will enable us to hear key points and understandings of how God offers to be with us, calls for us to be with God, and knowing that primarily and most effectively through the person of Jesus Christ.
I want us to start a little bit with some visual identification. And it’s on the screen that you see before you. There are three images there and they relate to images that I have chosen out of Scripture and out of the history of our faith to help us identify and focus in first visually. Look at the one up in the corner that looks like it is wings, those are angel’s wings. That’s meant to represent the arch of the covenant. From the very opening passages of Scripture, God wishes to be with God’s people. But when it comes to a particular time when the people need to know that God is truly with them, God says “Carry the Ark of the Covenant with you and I will be in your midst. I will be your God and you will be my people.” And so the Ark of the Covenant, which if you remember the movie, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” that was the whole purpose and center of that movie. The Ark is carried around among the people. It was God in a box to use kind of a very quick summary. God was living, as far as the people knew, within that box called the Ark of the Covenant. In their midst, he was their guide. God was with them.
And then later, the second image is the Bible or the Torah in this case—the Torah showing the five laws, the books of the Torah. And with that understanding the people were given now, not just something to carry God around in, but something from which they could read. We know it now fully as the Holy Scripture. It is in the book in written word that God further reveals Gods love in a way to give us a sense of now we can carry that just God around on our shoulders but we can carry God in our hearts and in our minds by way of the written Word.
The third image that is there is one of candles. Candles or flames, throughout Scripture, represent God’s presence. Now if you haven’t noticed, the altar is like the ark. Its representative of a place where we come, where we believe we set the altar here as a place to verify where God is. Of course, the Bible is up there as the word of God and finishing out with the candles.
So those are the visual understandings and the historical Biblical understandings that throughout all of Scripture and all of history God is saying, “I want to be with you.” So what’s the block? The block is ourselves. We have to choose to be with God. We have to choose to allow God to be with us. There is one character, one person in the Bible that I want to focus on now and it comes from Matthew 1:18-25. It focuses us back to Advent with the birth of Christ. This is the narrative from Matthew, the first chapter, talking about how Jesus was predicted, prophesied to be born, and then the process of that taking place. Now we know Mary is the key element; she gives birth to the Son of God. But what about Joseph? Joseph often is thought of but sort of overlooked. I’m going to focus on him today because Joseph is given a challenge of choosing to be with God. God clearly wants to be with Joseph and gives him some directions. And we will see through the Scripture how Joseph responds.
Let me begin reading and stop occasionally as I go through the reading with some further comments. Verse 18 of Chapter 1 of Matthew, “This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. His mother, Mary, was pledged to be married.” That means engaged. “But before they came together she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.” Stop right there. That’s Matthew writing it. Joseph doesn’t know the Holy Spirit’s part yet so keep that in mind because I want you to feel what Joseph feels through this. “Because Joseph, her husband, was a righteous man…” That means he understood the law of God. He’d gone to school; he understood the teachings; he was right-minded by knowing God’s law and word. “Because he was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.” He knew the law; he could have applied the law. He could have had her brought before and found guilty of what would be considered adultery, obviously, to become pregnant before marriage and not by Joseph. He could have applied that law and been found still righteous. But we see already the character part of Joseph for he applies the law but then modifies it with mercy and compassion. It’s one thing to know the letter of the law; it’s another to apply it with compassion and mercy. And we already should appreciate Joseph for this. So he has in mind to divorce her quietly.
Going on with verse 20, “And after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, Son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife because what is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.” How many here have had God speak to you in a dream? Even if you have, probably you would not admit it. Most people believe that when God speaks to them there is something wrong with them mentally. True? I mean how many times have we heard today people say, “Well God told me to do that” or “An angel of the Lord told me to do that.” Now let me say very clearly that if people speak in that way and what they are saying they are told to do is something against God’s law that can not be God speaking to them. For example a person says that God wanted me to kill that person. That’s against God’s law and would not be considered right or clear or true. When you have a dream it’s also one where you can wake up and say, “Was that true or was it a nightmare? Was it something I made up? Was it something I ate the night before? Or what was it that caused all of that?” Joseph apparently has none of that because the dream was so real. And now he is told what’s happened, why Mary is pregnant, and what he will do about it if he will accept. He is to name the child and call him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.
“All of this took place,” we move on in Scripture, “to fulfill what the Lord has said through the prophet. The virgin will be with child and give birth to a son and they shall and will call him Immanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with Mary until she gave birth to a son and he gave him the name Jesus.” The clear point for me for Joseph was that he seemed to have no question what so ever. The dream was clear enough, God’s intention was understood clear enough, and he therefore went forward and did what he was asked to do. Now even Mary, when she is approached by the angels, she raises a couple of questions. Are you sure Lord? I am just a virgin, how can this be? She raises questions because it’s an awake kind of conversation.
And then a dream, when Joseph wakes up, I like his approach to understanding what submission means. Submission means quietly going about and doing what you are told. Joseph first felt shame. Wouldn’t you if you were sitting in a situation like that? He could have reacted with anger and a little bit understandable. He could have brought judgment. But rather, he felt mercy instead and compassion. But then when God told him the truth behind the matter, he responded faithfully and submitted and the call that God gave him for the directions of that dream.
God was with Mary and Joseph, both of them without exception. Mary and Joseph are two Biblical examples of God with us—the Immanuel principle. Both had to say yes to God; they had to choose to obey and to be with God. Mary, a bit more personable carrying that child with her. Joseph could have kept the distance. The beauty of Josephs’ story is that he knows he has to do this, but Joseph will never see the end result. Are you aware that after Jesus was taken by Joseph and Mary to Egypt and was brought back Joseph was never mentioned again? The assumption is that he’s died somewhere along the way, but the assumption also is that he probably raised Jesus as a carpenter taught in the ways of that livelihood for what purpose Joseph would not know. He would not be able to see what Mary saw. So Joseph acted in faithfulness and through this action of God in his life, something greater would happen. But he would not see the end results. So often pastors will go to churches and they work and they work hard to see something done. Then they leave and they are not able to see the fruits of their work. So often Christians will work hard and well in some mission or ministry and they get to the end, they can not see the end results but they feel like that’s what God wants them to do. And that’s what Joseph is feeling here. I’ve been told, I will do it, I may not see (as we know he does not see the results), but in faithfulness he responds. He was law abiding and compassionate person. Joseph discovers that he can have a part in the great mystery of God’s plan.
God has a habit of doing that to us doesn’t he? God has a habit of coming to our lives sometimes in a very surprising and unexpected way. Here, in a dream to Joseph, in your life, maybe reading the Scripture, maybe some other aspect of being in a quiet place called a house of worship, maybe watching a sunset. But the underlying piece through all of this is that when God asks you to do something, he almost always says, “But don’t be afraid about this. I am in charge. I know what will be. I know what will come about.”
It’s been wonderful to come to Franklin and start to settle in. We were given tickets and we went to the Artcraft Theater on Friday night to see the movie, “Hoosiers”. How many else, there were a few others that were there? It was a good movie, by the way. I had forgotten the powerful message of redemption and forgiveness that was in that movie. And it was fun to go to a theater like that sort of like the old ways to going and see a movie and having kids walk up and down the aisle selling popcorn and cokes and such like that. A great way to be introduced to the community. But I want to point out in that movie that there is a parallel to what I am talking about here and it comes in two ways. There’s the coach who comes in with the rambunctious bunch of teenagers who have lost their beloved coach and now have all the men in the community in particular who are willing to step in and be assistant’s to the coach and tell the coach what to do and how to do it. The coach comes in and says, “I am the coach. If you are going to be on this team, you don’t forget that and I will tell you what to do.” How many Christians struggle against God in that way? And I don’t want to equate basketball coaches as being near to God, please don’t do that! But how many of us struggle thinking we know better what God has in plan for us. We question when the Scripture says something to us, we question when even the spirit speaks to us. It’s our human nature to question and that’s what raises Joseph even higher in my estimation of a person who is faithful to God’s call.
And the other part of redemption in the movie, by the way, is clearly when Shooter, who is an alcoholic, is given the second chance by the coach to come in and be the coach in a crises situation in a game. And to watch the forgiveness and redemption that takes place between Shooter and his son is indeed an act of God being portrayed in that movie for forgiveness is one of the traits that show that God is with us forgiving ourselves, forgiving other people for what they’ve done to us. The action of God being with us is Immanuel in our daily living.
God is with Joseph and Joseph is with God. And the other part of it is that Joseph chooses for he could have awakened from that dream and gone a different direction. Each day we are given an opportunity to recognize that God is with us, Immanuel. We are often given an opportunity to accept that relationship and to move forward and choose to be with God for the rest of that day. How many of you start you day that way? How many of you start with a prayer similar to this: “Lord, I know that you are with me. I trust you for that and I choose to follow your way today. Show me your path.” How many of us do that? Take just that moment to connect with God when you awake in the morning. It may make the rest of your day go much better. It also may bring you into challenges that you would never choose to do. But God says, “If I lead you there, do not be afraid.”
So I want to leave a couple of thoughts with you. In fact two challenges, and two points, that you can take with you and store in your mind and your heart and it is something very simple: One, for this Sunday and forward through Lent through the rest of your life, do you know that God is with you, that God is Immanuel with you in the present form in spirit and truth through the law and scripture, through the Holy Spirit? Do you know in your heart, in you mind, that God is with you? And the second question, do you choose to be with God? It’s one thing to recognize God as the creator of all there is and it’s another to say, “And Lord, I want you to be in my heart.” And we know that through Jesus, the Christ. Do you choose to be with God through Christ? God does not force God’s Holy Spirit upon you. Offers, encourages, nudges, even comes to you in dreams and other circumstances and may surprise you, but does not force you to accept the relationship. Wishes for you to choose freely, wholly, without reservation, without fear.
So let’s consider that as we take a moment for prayer that I will guide you through to think about what it means to have God with you and for you to be with God. Let us enter into a time of prayer. “May today for each of us here, may there be a peace that takes away your fear. May we know that you are with us God. May we trust you God that we are exactly where you wish for us to be—here this morning worshiping you at this place. May each of us not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith in you. Gracious God you have given us so many gifts and we receive those gifts. They are from you and through them we may pass on love and service and generosity of spirit and of wealth and resources of our minds and our hearts and our bodies and our lives. These are the gifts that you give us that we choose you through them. Lord, may we be content without fear knowing that each of us is your child. We are your children. We are you people as we choose to be so. And gracious God, may this presence here this morning and your Spirit touch us into the depth of our souls allowing our souls to sing forth in freedom and dance and praise and love and serve You with abandon. Your presence is there for each of us. You are with us. God it is you who calls to be with you and may we choose you this day to live life with You. Amen.
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