With: For God

Recap

Over these four weeks of Advent, as we prepare to welcome Jesus into the world, as we wait for his coming, we have been thinking about the less than ideal ways we can all relate to God.

We began by thinking about how sometimes we can live under God as if God is an angry God waiting to smite us if we mess up so we feel all sorts of pressure to by good and not make any mistakes. We can spend all our energy trying to be good enough for God’s love when he already loves us.

Then we thought about how sometimes we can live as if we are over God, as if God is not relevant or needed in our lives. This is a particular temptation for us as modern people who think we have figured out the world world through science and technology. We can live as if God made the world and has now left us to our own devices, but scripture reveals a God who is active even now in our world because he wants to be with us and a part of ur lives.

Last week, after the kids did such a great job telling us the Christmas story, we thought about how sometimes we can treat God like a giant vending machine in the sky who exists to give us the stuff we want. We thought about how we can all live from God, looking for God to meet our needs, but our greatest need in life is to be with God and to experience the joy of being fully known and accepted by the one who created us.

This week, we are coming alongside Mary as we consider the temptation we can all face to live for God, to make our life all about what we do for God, but fail to actually be with God.

Before we dive into scripture this morning, let us pray for God’s blessing on his word.

God of the universe, revealed to us in Holy Scripture through the writings of the prophets and the gospels, you have called us to prepare our hearts for your visitation. Ready us now to hear your Word and to respond as faithful servants, to the glory of Christ. Amen.

Text

Luke 1:26–38 NIV

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.” “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.” “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

L: This is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ!

P: Praise to you, O Christ!

The Temptation for Church

Of all these misconceptions of God we have talked about this month, I need to confess today, this one is my jam. I can fall into the trap of making my relationship with God all about what I do for God, all about mission and activity, about seeking his kingdom values here on earth.

And then, when you work at a church, the reality is that it is convenient if all of you think that following God is all about doing lots of things for God because there are a lot of things to do at church and we need lots of people to willing do them, for free. So, it is convenient as someone who works at a church to have a church full of people who think Christianity is all about doing things for God.

In fact, a lot of churches can put a lot of energy into getting people to move from being consumers to servants, from takers to givers. On the positive side, it is probably better to be living For God, treating God as the mission giver, rather than as some vending machine in the sky or as irrelevant to your day-to-day life, or as a scary vengeful God just waiting to punish you.

The central problem of relating to God primarily by what we can do for God, by our activism, by our mission is that it puts the mission of God in the center of our lives rather than God. Rather than seeking God, we seek success in the mission. And once the mission is at the center of our lives, we can begin to live From God, looking to God primarily for success in the mission or living over God by using every technique and technology to achieve the mission, but no longer depending on God, and so on. Rather than worshipping God, we can begin to worship the mission or even the institution of the church.

And in the process, we can put a lot of pressure on ourselves to do enough for the mission, to accomplish, to achieve, to be all we can be for God.

The Pressure of Being Significant

I was thinking about this desire to do things for God, to do something of significance, and it got me thinking maybe for the first time about Mary’s parents. I bet like all parents, they had some dreams for Mary. Maybe they tried to hide those dreams, to not put too much pressure on her so she could figure out her dreams. But they had some dreams.

And Mary had to know they had dreams for her, too. And like many kids, I am sure, as a good religious Jewish teenager, she wanted to live up to those aspirations. She wanted to bring honor to the family name and to please God by how she lived.

And then, one day, she comes to her parents and tells them she is pregnant. Unwed and pregnant. This is certainly not what they had planned.

I wonder how it felt for Mary to tell her parents about the baby… Did they believe the story about an angel? Even though she knew they truth, did she feel like she had let them down?

One of the harms this false view of God, that somehow our worth in God’s eyes comes from what we do for him, one of the harms this causes is that we put inordinate pressure on ourselves. We can begin to find our worth in what we accomplish for God rather than in God.

And this is terribly fragile ground on which to build a life. It leads us to start wearing Christian masks where we hide our sense of cluelessness, our spiritual struggles, our sin. For young adults and teens, they can feel that pressure to have a clear call from God. clarity in how they ought to live.

It can lead to adults trapped in worry about having missed their calling or failing to live up to their potential. It just puts so much pressure on us to do enough for God that we can forget the whole point of the gospel is that salvation and in fact life itself is a gift from God we do not need to earn.

The Appeal of Being Significant

But this way of living can be really appealing to many of us. It makes us feel important. God needs us to do things for him in the world. We can even keep track of all the great things we have done for God. It can give us a sense of significance and importance in the world.

Let’s be honest, we all want to be significant, for our lives to matter, for people to see us as valuable. It’s why so many people invest all their energy into a career. Why others seek the likes and shares on social media, to be seen and known. And why so many of us parents can out pressure on our kids to fit a particular mold of success because we can hope they achieve even more than we did. We find our significance in them.

Maybe Mary felt some of this appeal when the angel appeared to her. A 14 or 15 year old girl who will now be the mother of God. God literally needs her. It is her body feeding Jesus as he grows in her womb. She will be the one providing his milk when he is born. The one changing his diapers. The one cuddling him and calming him down when life is overwhelming to his little 2 year old brain. The one who first teaches him his letters and shows him how to tie his sandals. The God of the universe is completely dependent on her. We can feel like God needs us, but Jesus really did need her.

But of course, God didn’t need Mary to do any of those things. IF she had said ‘no’ to the angel, he could have come to someone else. Or, God could have simply made a baby Jesus and made the food Jesus needed just appear in his stomach or have some birds come feed him like they fed Elijah. I am sure the God who speaks and makes entire planets and eco-systems could have found a way to raise Jesus without Mary being involved.

The Relief of Simply Being Included

What this view of God, that we need to do things for God, misses a key aspect of God. God doesn’t need you. He chooses to work in and through us simply because God likes to do things with the people he loves.

God didn’t need Mary to say ‘yes’ to the angel. God could have found another way. And, God doesn’t need you to do anything for him. He doesn’t need you, but like your best friend, like your spouse if you have one, like your parents, God loves you and because he loves you, he wants to do things with you.

Raise a family. Help the single parent down the street. Reach Nepal. Mentor a student. Feed a hungry child. Clothe a struggling family. Get soap to the dirty. Introduce him to your friends. God wants to do those and so much more with you.

Phil Vischer is the creator of Veggie Tales, you know Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber. for about 10 years, Phil and his company Big Idea Productions were the talk of evangelical America. College students watched. Little kids watched. We sand silly songs with Larry and learned not Bible stories from vegetables and were told over and over again that God made us special and loves us very much.

Phil had a huge dream and passion to do something big for God and that ambition to do something significant for God led to Big Idea Productions, until finally, everything went south and by the early 2000s Big Idea was bankrupt, the company sold, and Phil was fired. His dreams of all he could do for God, the impact he could have for God, were dashed on the rocks of court cases, legal settlements, and bankruptcy court.

In late 2019, Phil gave a talk about the lessons he learned fro the rise and fall of Bob and Larry. The whole talk is about 45 minutes long, but I want to share just 2 minutes from his conclusion in which he summarizes his 3 key lessons.

Check it out

SHOW VIDEO CLIP

God sends out into the world with the mission of sharing our hope in Christ, that is absolutely true, but it is interesting. He came into the world as a baby, waiting to be picked up and invited into our lives.

God leads not with tasks to do or dreams to achieve, but with an invitation to relationship. That we might be with God.

Believe this gospel and go forth to live in its peace. Amen.