A Simple Endurance (Luke 2:1-7)
Notes
Transcript
Sermon
Sermon
Key Passage
Key Passage
In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.
(This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.)
And everyone went to their own town to register.
So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.
He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.
While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born,
and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.
Series Introduction
Series Introduction
A Simple Christmas
We are navigating the Christmas story in simplicity.
It is my hope that as we dive into these passages, that we can identify with the characters involved and find common ground in our lives today.
The interesting thing about these passages are that we tend to make these characters holier than they were.
All are sinners and fall short of the glory of God.
These people had the same emotions we do.
They had the same fears, same worries, and everything else.
As we saw last week, we can drop ourselves into the story and identify with them in some very powerful ways.
What I discovered last week was that by making this Christmas series simple, it also makes it somewhat “unChristmasy”.
It becomes real and applicable. I hope that is ok. That wasn’t my intent, but it is the outcome.
I frontload this sermon like this because today’s topic is a bit heavy.
If you were expecting to come to church today and have a nice cotton candy Christmas service, I truly apologize.
I hope what we take from this today is some real life application to some real life problems we have.
Last week, we looked at the will of God.
As disciples, the will of God is central to our lives because we have surrendered our lives to God.
His will is our direction for living.
It all results in His glory.
We had four points last week:
The will of God can be confusing
The will of God is rarely our will
The will of God always conforms to the Word of God
The will of God always demands obedience.
We are going to carry the same theme into our passage today.
It is good to seek out God’s will, but living out God’s will is something completely different as we will see today.
Introduction
Introduction
Last week we talked about hearing and the struggle with knowing the will of God.
I hope that was helpful to you. It actually was to me. I need to be reminded often that it is by God’s direction that I lead, not my own.
Last week, we saw that Mary was told that she would be with child by the Holy Spirit and not by sex with a man.
This was the will of God.
But when she told Joseph, he didn’t believe her. In fact, he didn’t believe her so much that he had in mind to dump her. Privately to save dignity, but he planned to break up with her.
This must have been devastating to Mary
But then Joseph had a dream and in the dream, an angel of God came to him and told him that these events were orchestrated by God and that he should continue with his marriage to Mary.
So he obeyed God.
This is where we left the story. Mary is pregnant and Joseph is aligned with her.
They likely had people in their community that didn’t believe her, but as long as Mary was walking this out with Joseph, they had relationship as they followed God.
It’s at this point that we pick up our story of Mary and Joseph.
Again, I want us to imagine being in Mary and Josephs shoes.
They are aligned with each other.
They know God’s will
They are walking this out together. Things are good.
Joseph likely got the house ready for a baby.
Mary was probably getting the nursery ready for a baby to be born.
They were likely getting their appointments at the hospital all lined up and called the insurance companies to make sure their coverage was adequate.
God had presented His plan and they were preparing themselves for that plan to be played out.
THEN
Don’t you hate the word, “then”?
When you have a plan, or God has a plan, or things are going good.
The word, “Then” shows up and wrecks the whole story.
That is where I want to pick up today.
In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.
(This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.)
And everyone went to their own town to register.
TRIALS
This passage doesn’t give us much of a timeline.
Did Caesar give a decree a year earlier giving everyone a heads up? Or did he just issue a decree that needed to be followed that moment?
We don’t know.
But what we do know is that the timing of the census was happening right around the 9 month mark of Mary’s pregnancy.
The pregnancy was going about as well as could be expected. Life was good. The nursery was ready, THEN a TRIAL
Trials seem to show up at the most unexpected, inconvenient time.
It may be as simple as only losing your keys when you are late for work.
Or a trial could be a massive issue that wrecks your life.
I want to talk this out with Mary and Joseph.
They were following God’s will. Both of them were being obedient to God.
It seems that they should get a free pass from God.
The journey of pregnancy should be smooth and simple, right?
But it ended up in a different journey.
Like a lot of stories, their obedience to God’s will was interrupted by the government.
The Caesar stepped into the middle of their following God’s will and made a massive hurdle to their plans.
When we follow God’s will, I think that we have the same feelings.
If I am reading my Bible, praying, growing in discipleship and even investing and serving others.
I’m doing the right things, maybe not perfectly, but God must see my progress, right?
THEN, a trial hits our lives.
Trials come in all shapes and forms:
Trial by God
Trial by Satan
Trial by sin
Trial by life
Invisible trial
Trial by God
When we are going through life, we might be tempted to ask, “Why is God doing this to me?”
We blame God for struggles.
Trial by Satan
The opposite of that is that we swap seats with Job and say, “Satan is throwing his fiery darts into my life”
We blame Satan for our struggles.
This is where some people get sideways. They make every seeming trial or hurdle the work of Satan.
In doing this, they feel they need deliverance from Satan in all of these different ways.
Satan is real. Satan does cause problems in this world
But Satan doesn’t have authority. The Holy Spirit lives within me and Jesus said that He would be with me always, even to the end of the age.
I can say that what is within me is greater than anything Satan can throw at me.
Rather than focusing on Satan and my circumstances, I need to focus on God.
Trial by sin
Our own sin causes trials in our lives.
Sin is real and sin has consequences.
We might think that this one is Satan as well. It isn’t.
I have a sinful nature. Satan doesn’t need to tempt me, sin living within me does a good enough job at that. (Romans 7 explains this well)
It’s as if once we had our sinful natures as human beings, Satan allowed us to go on cruise control, knowing that we will naturally drift from God.
Trial by life
Sometimes life itself causes trials.
It isn’t because God is doing it to us
It isn’t because of Satan
It isn’t because of my sin
But the trial is here anyways.
Invisible Trial
Sometimes we have trials that we don’t even know are trials.
Have you ever woke up on the wrong side of the bed and felt like following God is the furthest thing from what you want to do today?
It’s an invisible trial
I feel I need to say this because when it comes to this topic, there are a ton of things that are said that are either untrue or misleading.
One of the things that is often said is, “God won’t give you more than you can handle”
People will stand on this and claim it as a promise from the Bible.
The problem is that it is not in the Bible.
The Bible does say that we won’t be tempted so badly that we have no choice but to sin.
But it doesn’t say that you won’t be given more than you can handle.
I think sometimes people are given more than they can handle.
It breaks us to the point that we realize we cannot do this on our own.
We need God
We need His church
It isn’t good in theory
It is a necessity of humanity.
If you want to mix up the words to make that statement true, we could say that God won’t give us more than He can handle.
Now we are talking truth.
I certainly cannot go into the “why” behind every trial, nor am I in the business of giving a defense on behalf of God.
When we face trials, we often go to a place in our minds saying, “Was I not following God right?” “Did He change His will?”
Last week, we said that God’s will can be confusing.
I will reiterate that this week. God’s will CAN be confusing, and following it can lead to even more confusion.
This will lead us to our next point
TRIALS
TREK
Our next word is “Trek”
We tend to focus on the trials we have in our lives. Or the trials that have left us broken.
But I want us to think of our trials through a different lens.
We are called to follow Jesus. That isn’t in a moment, it is for a journey, a trek, a lifetime.
In that lifetime, we trust Him, follow Him, learn from Him and grow in Him.
I want you to see the life of Mary and Joseph
So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.
He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.
This event was a moment. They had a hurdle. They had a literal journey to go on.
I want you to see this as well.
Even though the government got in the way, they still trusted God.
Could God be glorified, even if the government gets in the way?
Yes.
What about today?
The answer is still yes
Much like the perspective I drew last week from Mary, at that time, God’s will didn’t seem good, pleasing and perfect.
But as the story progressed, we saw how a redeeming God made hard things good for His glory and in His time.
So as we follow Jesus as His disciple, we inevitably will come across some trials along the way.
David talks about this in the 23rd Psalm
The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters,
he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Do you hear the language that David is using to talk about his journey with God?
The Lord is my shepherd
Sheep follow a shepherd
He leads to places of rest or nourishment
He takes my on the right paths
But sometimes, that path is through the valley
There is even correction along the path.
David talks about following God as a journey.
We are called to a similar journey of discipleship.
We are promised that it will be difficult.
Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;
perseverance, character; and character, hope.
And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
James talks about our journey.
This is why it doesn’t matter the source of our struggles
If it is God, or Satan, or sin, or random, or invisible
These are trials of many kinds
The outcome to all of them is that they produce perseverance for the journey.
Perseverance must work within us, the trials must work within us and we will become mature.
Maturity is the outcome
I want us to consider something
Many think that maturity comes with knowledge and learning more about the Bible.
However, this statement tells us that maturity is the result of perseverance that comes from trials
Is it possible that the trials that seem to beset us are the very elements that mature us and draw us closer to God?
The hurt, the pain, the loss, the grief that have broken our lives in such devastating fashion, that we do not have an explanation for, drives us to trust God.
Trust Him when we don’t know.
Trust Him when we hurt
Trust Him when nothing makes sense.
This is greater maturity than all of the theology training you could ever fill your head with.
The trek is about perspective
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.
For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
We cannot set our gaze upon our struggles and hurdles.
Our gaze must be eternal.
Our trials may get our glance, but eternity get our gaze.
This is maturity.
TRIALS
TREK
TRIBUTE
While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born,
and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.
This is the verse that you may think brings all of the joy to our passage.
Certainly there must have been joy in Mary and Joseph for the birth of their child.
But, I want to track this down to a very real discussion for us.
On one hand, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords had entered the world.
Joy to the world!
On another hand, I want you to put yourself in the shoes of Mary and Joseph.
They knew they were pregnant with God’s kid
That is pretty significant, would you agree?
I want you to imagine the pregnancy.
Mary did everything exactly as it was supposed to be
Joseph crafted the perfect nursery, fit for God’s son
Everything was planned out to be the very best that Mary and Joseph could give.
This was the most important thing in history!
Then the trial struck
Caesar sends them to Bethlehem on what was likely around a week long trip
There was no perfect nursery in Bethlehem
In fact, because of the hurdle, what could they offer the Son of God?
Nothing. He was born in a barn and laid in a food trough.
How humiliating and how much failure do you feel that Mary and Joseph felt at that moment?
This wasn’t just their kid. This was God’s kid. And they couldn’t even arrange a regular room?
They had a filthy barn for him to be born.
Here is the last point of our sermon today. Tribute or worship
I want to walk us through the journey we have navigated so far:
We strive to follow God’s will
But we suffer trials
The trials may be devastating, but we mature as we persevere and keep our eyes on God.
But at the end of the road, it may feel that we are so broken that there is nothing but my brokenness and pain to give to God.
None of the dreams and hopes we had wanted to give to God are a reality. Sometimes even because of the trials.
But here is the hope. He delights in the broken little we have to offer.
He is glorified, when at the end all we have is him.
We have persevered. We have endured. This world may strip us of everything this world offers.
But it can never strip of of the one who holds our hope.
I think that is pleasing to God
What can we truly offer Him anyways? Nothing. Only a heart that trusts Him.
Even when it doesn’t make sense.
Even when God’s will doesn’t seem good, pleasing and perfect.
He is a redeeming God.
I don’t want you to think that following Jesus means your life will be a wreck.
In some cases, God redeems and there is good in this world and good in the next
In other cases, He redeems through His salvation. It may be hard or even tragic in this world
Tragedy is never fun. Tragedy is often bad in this life
But the God who redeems is the only hope we have in our trials.
May we recognize the trials
May we have the perspective of the trek
May we pay Him tribute for who He is
Real Life in Action
Head- How do I view trials in my life?
Heart- What do I need to surrender?
Hands- Worship
How do I view trials in my life?
Do I blame? Blame God? Blame Satan? Blame myself in defeat?
What do I need to surrender?
Do I need to surrender my path? My comfort? My claim to be right before God?
Do I need to surrender my demand for God to explain Himself and just trust Him?
Worship
A few weeks ago, we defined worship as a humble response to the almighty God.
In your brokenness, or in your joy, take this time to worship
