Kings, servants and the Savior!
Commentary
In the play St. Joan, obtuse King Charles is ranting to Joan of Arc about the source of her revelations that have made her a hero and him a source of ridicule. "Oh your voices! Your voices! Why don't the voices come to me? I am King and not you." Joan, in an attempt to satisfy him, replies, "They do come to you, but you do not hear them. You do not sit in the field listening for them. When the angulus rings you cross yourself and have done with it. But if you listened to the thrilling of the bells in the air after they stopped ringing, you would hear the voices as well as I!" Does God's voice come only to the rare individual who for whatever reason is especially tuned to hear it? Or does it come to all of us, only to find that it is just that rare soul that is listening for it who receives what could be captured by every one of us?
If the scriptures are a good indicator of the phenomena, the Voice of God, or that of one of his messengers, is not a rarity, sent out millennia apart. The Biblical record's list of human beings with whom he spoke is a long one. In fact, the divine-human contact is rather commonplace. The prophets heard it as clearly as they did the voices of members of their families. Kings like Saul and David, and Solomon, heard it. And common folks heard it, too. Mary, the young virgin from Nazareth, Joseph her fiance, Zechariah the priest and Anna his wife, heard it directly from the Holy Spirit or from a heavenly emissary. Rather then a shocking "happening" that they discounted as a mental aberration, or "an under-done piece of potato," each of the recipients of a message "from above" took it to heart, pondered it, then acted on it in one way or another. Divine communication between a living God and his people was an accepted fact of life.
All of the principal characters in the designated texts for this day had such revelations. Each one responded to the divine visitation in different ways. Ahaz, the King of Judah, turns down a chance to have God give him a sign to prove the Lord's trustworthiness. He declines with, "I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test." But despite his "No," God promises him a sign anyway ... and later delivers it. Saul is turned from being a Christian hater into Paul, the great Christian maker, on the strength of a visitation so powerful that it knocks him to the ground, and leaves him blind (Acts 9:1--19). Trusting that the Voice is indeed Heaven sent, he follows its commands, and the world has never been the same because of it. Mary, the teenager who is told by the angel Gabriel that she will bear a Child "Fathered" by God, accepts the gift some would see as a tragedy, and through her "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten Son from the Father." And Joseph, almost forgotten after the youngster, Jesus, lags behind the family to dialog with the Rabbis in Jerusalem, is more than a decent man who refrains from doing what other men would who are told before they marry her that the child his betrothed is carrying is not his, gives the rest of his life accepting the instructions of his angelic visitor and caring for Mary's Baby and her.
Reluctant recipients! Grateful recipients! Frightened recipients! Overwhelmed recipients! The range of receptors runs the gamut of possibilities. What is the factor common to them all? The fact that God continues to speak to his creation. And it just could be that he has been trying to get through to you, and to his church now-a-days, to express his will to us, and to enliven us, and to enlist us, rulers, servants, and run-of-the-mill folks, to let the world know that he is still at work proffering salvation to all who will accept it. It is "Emmanuel," the God who is with us, who is at work this week before Christmas, to get us opened up, and ready for the divine approach again!
OUTLINE I
When your number comes up with the Lord!
Isaiah 7:10-14 (15-17)
A. vv. 10-12. Since we so often are the ones badgering the Lord to do for, or give to us, isn't it shocking when God offers to provide something positive for Ahaz without his asking, Ahaz turns him down? What makes even more head-shaking is that Ahaz is in real trouble, what with his capital being surrounded by foreign troops and his options for "dodging the arrow" having about run out. "Ask" says the Lord. "Let it be something stupendous, even 'heaven high,' and I will give it to you as a sign that you will be delivered." "No!" comes back the king. "I won't put the Lord to the test." What a job it must be to be God, having to deal with human beings who can never be completely pleased by anything you do! And even when you do hit the moving targets your creatures send up for you time after time, it always is "What have you done for me lately?" that alone matters to them.
B. vv. 13-16. "Ready or not here it comes," God says to Ahaz. "I want to act and will, whether you like it or not." And what God sends is something Ahaz would not have asked for anyway! He is going to promise him that an almah, a young, usually married, woman, will become pregnant, and before that son is able to reach an age where it can "refuse" the evil and choose the good, perhaps three or four years of age, the siege of his land will be lifted and the invading armies gone. But what king wants to wait for four or five years to get the enemy troops ousted? Not Ahaz, certainly.
Humanity has such a short view of nearly everything! But that notwithstanding, God has a plan for their "good" and "salvation." Ask for it or not, the Lord is "getting it together" for them anyway! When all is said and done, then we will know what God had in mind all along was providing us with an Immanuel, his abiding presence among us which can make sieges of any kind, or length, endurable. Remember that when your number comes up with the Lord!
OUTLINE II
The gift is belonging!
Romans 1:1-7
A. vv. 1-2. Come up for breath, Paul! This sentence is nearly a paragraph long! But that happens when you get excited. You want to get out your message all at once, so the words come tumbling over one another.
His own credential, perhaps stated to give what he has to say some real clout, are put right up front. A "servant," Greek doulos, literally a slave, bought and paid for, and hence completely owned and controlled by his Master; apostolos, someone chosen by another, usually a king or state official, and dispatched to represent him and be his "person" when delivering a message, or acting in his behalf. The status was one with "clout," but also one that involved being accountable to the "chosen" when summoned to give an account of the actions taken and the things said!
B. vv. 3-7. The message carried was an old, "Promised beforehand through his prophets," recorded "in the holy scriptures," and specific, "concerning his Son," who resurrected from the dead was the One "through whom we received grace" to "bring about the obedience of faith." It also was "gospel," "good news!" You would think a mission built around delivering that kind of message would make for super receptions all around. Wrong! Paul would discover what Jesus meant when he told his disciples, "A disciple is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you (John 15:20)." Pretty sobering reality-therapy for the Christmas season, isn't it? But then, Advent's color is violet, and reality is what it is trying to address. Still, "To all God's beloved ... grace to you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
OUTLINE III
The forgotten member of the holy family!
Matthew 1:18-24
A. vv. 18-19: How matter of fact the account of Matthew about Jesus' conception and birth reads 2,000 years after the fact! "Now it happened like this...." That's it? I'll bet it wasn't that matter of fact when the virgin Mary went to her mother, then to Joseph, to explain how she got pregnant, and saw the disbelief on their faces when she told them about Gabriel, and how God really was the father of the Baby she was carrying! Even the Grimms brothers wouldn't have the audacity to try to put something like that into print. The best Joseph could do, being a "just" and obviously kind man, was get a quick and quiet divorce and let things from that point on take their course.
B. vv. 20-25. God doesn't give up so easily when the truth is the truth, things important need doing, and the people required to pull them off want to beg off of the assignments the Lord has in mind for them. Remember Jonah? And Moses? Well, Joseph was in God's plans, too, obviously, so angels were brought into play to "sign him up."
It still remains the fact that Joseph did not seem to take much convincing to do what God wanted to get busy at whatever it took to make it happen. Take the gossip about a "shotgun wedding" around Nazareth. Go extra slow to Bethlehem for the census, and you have to try to rent a room in the town where he surely had family to stay with, but who may not have put out the "welcome" mat because of the scandal about the two of them. Then, after the birth, go into hiding for a couple of years, drop the business in Nazareth, leave the family and friends behind to go into hiding for a few years. "Is that what you really need from me, Lord? It's yours!" Joseph was not his Father but he was a marvelous role model for this "God-with-us" Baby around whom his life would revolve for the rest of his days.
If the scriptures are a good indicator of the phenomena, the Voice of God, or that of one of his messengers, is not a rarity, sent out millennia apart. The Biblical record's list of human beings with whom he spoke is a long one. In fact, the divine-human contact is rather commonplace. The prophets heard it as clearly as they did the voices of members of their families. Kings like Saul and David, and Solomon, heard it. And common folks heard it, too. Mary, the young virgin from Nazareth, Joseph her fiance, Zechariah the priest and Anna his wife, heard it directly from the Holy Spirit or from a heavenly emissary. Rather then a shocking "happening" that they discounted as a mental aberration, or "an under-done piece of potato," each of the recipients of a message "from above" took it to heart, pondered it, then acted on it in one way or another. Divine communication between a living God and his people was an accepted fact of life.
All of the principal characters in the designated texts for this day had such revelations. Each one responded to the divine visitation in different ways. Ahaz, the King of Judah, turns down a chance to have God give him a sign to prove the Lord's trustworthiness. He declines with, "I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test." But despite his "No," God promises him a sign anyway ... and later delivers it. Saul is turned from being a Christian hater into Paul, the great Christian maker, on the strength of a visitation so powerful that it knocks him to the ground, and leaves him blind (Acts 9:1--19). Trusting that the Voice is indeed Heaven sent, he follows its commands, and the world has never been the same because of it. Mary, the teenager who is told by the angel Gabriel that she will bear a Child "Fathered" by God, accepts the gift some would see as a tragedy, and through her "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten Son from the Father." And Joseph, almost forgotten after the youngster, Jesus, lags behind the family to dialog with the Rabbis in Jerusalem, is more than a decent man who refrains from doing what other men would who are told before they marry her that the child his betrothed is carrying is not his, gives the rest of his life accepting the instructions of his angelic visitor and caring for Mary's Baby and her.
Reluctant recipients! Grateful recipients! Frightened recipients! Overwhelmed recipients! The range of receptors runs the gamut of possibilities. What is the factor common to them all? The fact that God continues to speak to his creation. And it just could be that he has been trying to get through to you, and to his church now-a-days, to express his will to us, and to enliven us, and to enlist us, rulers, servants, and run-of-the-mill folks, to let the world know that he is still at work proffering salvation to all who will accept it. It is "Emmanuel," the God who is with us, who is at work this week before Christmas, to get us opened up, and ready for the divine approach again!
OUTLINE I
When your number comes up with the Lord!
Isaiah 7:10-14 (15-17)
A. vv. 10-12. Since we so often are the ones badgering the Lord to do for, or give to us, isn't it shocking when God offers to provide something positive for Ahaz without his asking, Ahaz turns him down? What makes even more head-shaking is that Ahaz is in real trouble, what with his capital being surrounded by foreign troops and his options for "dodging the arrow" having about run out. "Ask" says the Lord. "Let it be something stupendous, even 'heaven high,' and I will give it to you as a sign that you will be delivered." "No!" comes back the king. "I won't put the Lord to the test." What a job it must be to be God, having to deal with human beings who can never be completely pleased by anything you do! And even when you do hit the moving targets your creatures send up for you time after time, it always is "What have you done for me lately?" that alone matters to them.
B. vv. 13-16. "Ready or not here it comes," God says to Ahaz. "I want to act and will, whether you like it or not." And what God sends is something Ahaz would not have asked for anyway! He is going to promise him that an almah, a young, usually married, woman, will become pregnant, and before that son is able to reach an age where it can "refuse" the evil and choose the good, perhaps three or four years of age, the siege of his land will be lifted and the invading armies gone. But what king wants to wait for four or five years to get the enemy troops ousted? Not Ahaz, certainly.
Humanity has such a short view of nearly everything! But that notwithstanding, God has a plan for their "good" and "salvation." Ask for it or not, the Lord is "getting it together" for them anyway! When all is said and done, then we will know what God had in mind all along was providing us with an Immanuel, his abiding presence among us which can make sieges of any kind, or length, endurable. Remember that when your number comes up with the Lord!
OUTLINE II
The gift is belonging!
Romans 1:1-7
A. vv. 1-2. Come up for breath, Paul! This sentence is nearly a paragraph long! But that happens when you get excited. You want to get out your message all at once, so the words come tumbling over one another.
His own credential, perhaps stated to give what he has to say some real clout, are put right up front. A "servant," Greek doulos, literally a slave, bought and paid for, and hence completely owned and controlled by his Master; apostolos, someone chosen by another, usually a king or state official, and dispatched to represent him and be his "person" when delivering a message, or acting in his behalf. The status was one with "clout," but also one that involved being accountable to the "chosen" when summoned to give an account of the actions taken and the things said!
B. vv. 3-7. The message carried was an old, "Promised beforehand through his prophets," recorded "in the holy scriptures," and specific, "concerning his Son," who resurrected from the dead was the One "through whom we received grace" to "bring about the obedience of faith." It also was "gospel," "good news!" You would think a mission built around delivering that kind of message would make for super receptions all around. Wrong! Paul would discover what Jesus meant when he told his disciples, "A disciple is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you (John 15:20)." Pretty sobering reality-therapy for the Christmas season, isn't it? But then, Advent's color is violet, and reality is what it is trying to address. Still, "To all God's beloved ... grace to you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
OUTLINE III
The forgotten member of the holy family!
Matthew 1:18-24
A. vv. 18-19: How matter of fact the account of Matthew about Jesus' conception and birth reads 2,000 years after the fact! "Now it happened like this...." That's it? I'll bet it wasn't that matter of fact when the virgin Mary went to her mother, then to Joseph, to explain how she got pregnant, and saw the disbelief on their faces when she told them about Gabriel, and how God really was the father of the Baby she was carrying! Even the Grimms brothers wouldn't have the audacity to try to put something like that into print. The best Joseph could do, being a "just" and obviously kind man, was get a quick and quiet divorce and let things from that point on take their course.
B. vv. 20-25. God doesn't give up so easily when the truth is the truth, things important need doing, and the people required to pull them off want to beg off of the assignments the Lord has in mind for them. Remember Jonah? And Moses? Well, Joseph was in God's plans, too, obviously, so angels were brought into play to "sign him up."
It still remains the fact that Joseph did not seem to take much convincing to do what God wanted to get busy at whatever it took to make it happen. Take the gossip about a "shotgun wedding" around Nazareth. Go extra slow to Bethlehem for the census, and you have to try to rent a room in the town where he surely had family to stay with, but who may not have put out the "welcome" mat because of the scandal about the two of them. Then, after the birth, go into hiding for a couple of years, drop the business in Nazareth, leave the family and friends behind to go into hiding for a few years. "Is that what you really need from me, Lord? It's yours!" Joseph was not his Father but he was a marvelous role model for this "God-with-us" Baby around whom his life would revolve for the rest of his days.
