Psalm 62:1
1. this picture you see of a gate into a garden is from the Abbey of Gethsemani outside of Bardstown, Kentucky (where they brew Barton’s Bourbon). Etched into the stone above the gate are the words, God Alone.
2. I first saw this gate in July of 1994 on a weekend retreat at the monastery chasing Thomas Merton’s ghost. They engraved themselves into the pictorial directory of my mind & have stayed there ever since. They move me, challenge me, examine me, inspire me & haunt me, depending on the day.
3. I knew these words – God alone – were from the Psalms. A little over 18 months earlier God led me to Psalm 62 on a day of
prayer I was observing at Mt. Angel:
My soul finds rest in God alone
my salvation come from him
He alone is my rock and my salvation
he is my fortress
I will never be shaken.
4. since then I have read, prayed & pondered these words more than any other in Scripture – my soul finds rest in God alone . They grabbed me on that February day, 1992, up at Mt. Angel. They grabbed me on that July day, 1994, at the Abbey of Gethsemani. And they are still grabbing me. And I want them to grab you today!
A New Year
1. we begin a new year today. A year full of new hope. New promises. New dreams. And new challenges.
2. I want to challenge all of us to make this a God alone year as we learn to live a God alone life.
3. lately I’ve been slowly reading my way through Practicing God’s Presence by Brother Lawrence, a spiritual classic from the 17th century. One phrase from the book that jumped out at me this week is – faith needs revival. Meaning our faith is always in need of cultivation, renewal, examination.
4. TIME magazine named Bill & Melinda Gates & this guy named Bozo, I mean Bono, as their persons of the year for 2005. In the article on the Gates, Melinda was quoted as saying every month she & Bill step back & evaluate how they spent their time – at Microsoft, with their children, with their foundation.
5. that is what I want today to be & this whole month for our church. A time of examination & evaluation of our faith & how we are spending or not spending it…on, with, or for God alone.
My
1. this means you. You matter to God. He created you. He put this wonderful world in place to sustain you, for you to enjoy. He loves you. He sent his Son to die for you.
2. no one can take your place before God. You have to take ownership over your life – your decisions, your relationships, your attitudes, your stewardship of pain, your enjoyment of life’s blessings, your walk with God.
3. God alone for each one of us begins with my.
Soul
1. soul does not mean that invisible part of you that relates to things spiritual – as opposed to – the physical part of you that relates to the natural world through your 5 senses.
2. in the Hebrew Scriptures soul means your very self, you, and all that you are. It’s another way of saying ‘you’ as a person.
3. soul is not a part of you; soul is you. The part of you that relates to God, to others, to the world & to yourself.
4. what I want you to get is that this statement – my soul finds rest in God alone – is talking about the full meal deal, all of you.
Finds
1. finds speaks of looking, searching, scouting for something. Finds speaks of effort, action, steps. This is not a passive soul but an active soul.
2. behind the looking, searching, scouting is a hunger for something. Hunger, longing, yearning.
3. this is tapping into the deepest longings of our soul, our lives, our hearts. This is what rises to the surface when all the noise disappears, when activity stops, when busyness ceases. When quietness begins to flood your life. Those inner voices that are always speaking but seldom heard.
4. what are we looking for?
Rest
1. we all of us are looking for rest. Rest is what Adam & Eve enjoyed & took for granted in the garden. It’s part of what they lost when they sinned against God. The relational unity & harmony they had with God, each other, themselves & the natural world. Now we are born into a fallen world estranged from God, each other, ourselves & our world.
2. the result? One being that we lack rest for our souls. Rest is the absence of the spiritual relational emotional & mental dissonance that marks our lives.
3. this Psalm 62:1 rest is deeper than 7 days on the beach in the Bahamas. This rest is far more than a day at home to read in your pajamas with the shades pulled & phone off the hook. This rest stumps a perfect day of skiing up at Mt Hood. This rest swallows up a growing, bulging bank account. This rest dwarfs the closest we can get to marriage intimacy & family togetherness. This rest beats anything that money can buy, earth can give, or hell can seduce with.
4. this rest is what the whole world is looking for.
in God
1. these are scandalous words to we who are born into this world wanting to be our own god. Our souls are seared with streaks of rebellion against this God.
2. rest in God. In God. Not in beauty. Or health. Or career. Or accomplishment. Or money. Or power. Or pleasure. Or houses. Or cars. Or vacations. Or iPods. Or Xboxes. Or relationships. Or knowledge. Or success. Or a fat nest egg for retirement. Or you fill in the blank.
3. we chase after a thousand gods in this life. I’m afraid we are just as guilty of idolatry as the Israelites of the Old Testament. We just don’t call them gods.
Alone
1. most if not all of us want God in our lives. That’s probably why we’re here today. We just don’t want him alone. We are ‘plus’ people. My soul finds rest in God +
* the idol that is my home – that place of shelter that consumes so much of your time, energy, attention & money
* the idol that is my private time – that you guard religiously to the exclusion of your God, your family & your neighbor
* the idol that is my bank account – it’s my money, I worked hard for it, I’m entitled to it, I can do what I want with it
* the idol that is my pursuit of pleasure – youth or adults, men or women, married or single…are you remaining sexually pure?
* the idol that is…you fill in the blank
2. that which neutralizes the alone in many of our lives is our sin. Some of us are in love with our sin. Our sin has become part of our identity, who we understand our selves to be.
3. your soul will never find rest in God alone unless you identify the idols in your life & slay them.
4. your soul will never find rest in God alone unless you identify the sin in your life & turn from it.
January 22, 2006 @ 6pm
1. November 18-19 the elders & Gov Bd went on a prayer retreat. No agenda but to listen to what God wanted to say to us about our church.
2. when all was said & done we felt like God was saying 2 things to us. #1 – in & through the difficult events of the past year I am doing a new thing in CAC. A new day is dawning. #2 – I want you as a church to come together and examine yourselves to make sure there is nothing in your past that will hold you back from the future I have planned for you. Are we right with God? Are we right with each other? What do we need to repent of – individually & as a church body?
3. Sunday evening, 6pm, January 22 has been set aside to do this. This is not a time to come & throw stones at others, or complain, or criticize. This is a time to come together to repent of our sin.
4. we have 3 weeks to get ready. 3 weeks to pray. To listen. To seek God’s face. To start our repentance.
Ten Steps for Spiritual Cleansing
1. Get alone in a quiet place with paper, pen, and your Bible.
2. Quiet your heart before God - put away all distractions and worries until you are finally quiet before God (this may take some time!).
3. Pray to God and thank Him for bringing you to this place in your life where you desire to be cleansed before Him and His holiness. Commit yourself to God and ask for the courage to not run away from the deep work that He wants to do in your life.
4. Ask the Holy Spirit, "please reveal to me the specific sins in my life - even the ones I may have forgotten - which lie between You and me. In Jesus name, amen."
5. List everything the Holy Spirit reveals to you. Don't give into the temptation to skip some of the harder ones. Give this some time, expect some struggle. When you have completed your list, number them in the order of how difficult they will be for you to confess and make necessary restitution.
6. Anticipate the personal struggle you will face, as you have not been willing to face these issues and confess them before the Lord until this point.
7. Confess your sins one at a time before the Lord, beginning with the hardest first. "Lord, I confess to You that I committed the sin of _____________. Please forgive me for this sin and thoroughly cleanse me from it." Go through your list one by one until you are finished.
8. Expect to have to humble yourself to at least one other person as you seek to make all things right in your life. Take the hardest first and personally visit with that person. If that's not possible, telephone, if that's not possible, write a letter. Always take the upper road and do more than what would be expected of you in order to satisfy the Lord and the offended person.
9. Write "DONE!" across your sheet of paper after you have "confessed, made restoration, forgiven, and received God's cleansing!" Then burn your sheet as an act of assurance of the Lord's total and complete forgiveness.
10. Thank the Lord when you have completed your list. Praise Him for His forgiveness and thank Him for His cleansing.
(taken from the book Personal Holiness in Time of Temptation by Bruce Wilkinson, p. 112)
Luke 1:46-55
PART ONE
Most of us know the story well – a teenage girl, a virgin, engaged to Joseph, but pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit. We call it the virgin birth.
This baby causing her stretch marks & sitting on her bladder is God. The new-born nursing at her breasts is the Eternal Creator of all things, including the warm milk in his mouth.
Mary lived as a mama to God-made-flesh while bowing in her heart to the King of kings & Lord of lords. She knew that she had been the site of a holy Miracle, the habitation of Divinity within her virgin womb.
It began something like this. The angel Gabriel told Mary that she was with child by the power of the Holy Spirit. He also told her that her baby was to be name Jesus, because (as Matthew tells us in his gospel) he will save his people from their sins. Mary has a Savior growing in her belly.
Mary’s baby is the long-awaited Messiah – think Savior – of Israel! Help is on the way. Deliverance is coming. God is re-visiting his people.
BUT not in the way that Israel expected. Not a political Messiah but a spiritual Messiah to free them from their sin. This baby was coming to deal with humanity’s ‘sin problem.’ It’s Frank Sinatra ‘I’ll do it my way’ problem.
After this angelic birth announcement Mary ran to her aged relative Elizabeth – barren, elderly, post-menopausal – but miraculously pregnant herself. Elizabeth calls her blessed.
And Mary bursts into a song. What I’m calling her not-so-tame song. Words of spiritual & social revolution roll off her virgin lips. READ LUKE 1:46-55.
In a sermon he preached on this song in London on December 17, 1933 Dietrich Bonhoeffer says: this song of Mary’s is the most passionate, most heated, one might almost say, most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. It is not the gentle, sweet, dreamy Mary that we so often see portrayed in pictures, but the passionate, powerful, proud, enthusiastic Mary, who speaks here. None of the sweet, sugary, or childish tones that we find so often in our Christmas hymns, but a hard, strong, uncompromising song of bringing down rulers from their thrones and humbling the lords of the world, of God’s power and of the powerlessness of men. These are the tones of the prophetic women of the Old Testament: Deborah, Judith, Miriam, coming alive in the mouth of Mary.
On this Christmas morning I want us to view this song through the window of humility – for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant (1:48). Humility. First in Mary. Second in Jesus. Third of God’s great reversal.
Humility in Mary
The yet-to-be wife of a carpenter sings this song – the poor, working man’s wife; insignificant to all but significant to God. Appointed to be the mother of the Savior of the world.
Not because of some remarkable accomplishment in her life – she hadn’t lived long enough, or great piety, or virtue. Only because God’s gracious will is to love the humble and lowly.
Her fiancée, her Joseph, a simple blue collar carpenter with rough, sand paper-like hands. Part of the framing crew putting up houses on the corner Juniper & Territorial in Canby. This humble working man’s fiancée makes her place in history as the mother of my Lord, as Elizabeth puts it (1:43).
We learn a wonderful thing here about God – he is not ashamed to be cast with the humble & poor. And neither should we. God loves the lost, the forgotten, the insignificant, the outcasts, the weak, and the broken. He feels at home with the humble.
Mary’s humility expresses itself as I am the Lord’s servant, may it be to me as you have said (1:38). Take my life, Lord, my body, my reputation, my coming marriage, my place in the community. May her words & her heart behind them be ours as well.
PART TWO
Humility in Jesus
Mary with child, by the Holy Spirit, is how God splits history in half. This is the turning point of the Grand narrative – creation then fall then Israel then Jesus followed by us, the church. A new ordering of all things on earth begins here in Mary’s womb. The Kingdom of God is unleashed.
God himself, the Lord and Creator of all things, becomes little and helpless, here in a corner, in seclusion, unnoticed, he enters the world. This is humility like nothing else in our world.
Think of George W. Bush going from President of the United States to President of the Knight School PTA. Think of Bill Gates going from running Microsoft to running Canby Disposal. Think of all-pro running back Shaun Alexander of the Seahawks going from the NFL to the Kyllo family’s annual football game on Christmas Day. Think of Rick Warren leaving his multi-thousand member mega church in southern California to join our staff as visitation pastor.
There is no human parallel that even begins to match the humility of God becoming man.
The ultimate perfecto picture of humility in our world comes in Jesus when the Almighty Eternal Creator God makes his home in his skin & bones.
This tells us something wonderful about God – he is not ashamed to be cast with the humble and poor AND he’s wiling to humble himself to become a piece of his creation. To be humble is to be God-like.
Humility of the Great Reversal
By Great Reversal I refer to the way we experience the world around us when God conceives new life in us.
In 1:51-53 we read that God scatters those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He brings down the rulers from their thrones & lifts up the humble. He fills the hungry with good things & sends the rich away empty.
These words roll off of Mary’s tongue like flames of fire. This is not a nice, sugar-coated, tame song. Revolution is on the horizon. Like Aslan, God is on the move.
The first will be last & the last will be first, is how Jesus says it. God & the humble & the hungry are exalted. The proud & the rulers & the rich are brought down.
This is a picture of the coming Kingdom of God that we experience in part now & in full when Christ returns. Salvation is not just about forgiveness of sins. It stretches out to include justice & mercy for the disenfranchised as well.
Pride, power & wealth should be held lightly. If not, they become thick barriers to a relationship with God. Humility before God is the pathway that God travels into our hearts. And out of our hearts into the hearts of our broken world.
As Christ followers we have a kingdom to participate in and a King to worship. Ours is a world large with creation and wonder, history and salvation. In Christ we are joyful participants in what has been and is yet to come. How?
By confessing our belief in the truth of this story of Jesus. By inviting Jesus into our story, our life, as our Savior & Lord. By humbling ourselves before God & others. By serving God, the downtrodden & the deprived.
Let us sing with Mary this Christmas morning, for (God my Savior) has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. My soul glorifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God my Savor. Amen.
4th Sunday of Advent
1. last week I talked about our storied existence. We live in stories. AND the Bible is a story book – grand narrative – composed of 5 chapters:
* creation (Gen 1-2)
* fall (Gen 3-11)
* Israel (Gen – Malachi)
--> advent / Christmas
* Jesus (Matt – John)
* Church (Acts – Rev)
2. God has a sovereign & saving plan for all of creation. This salvation is inaugurated by Jesus himself in his life death resurrection & ascension. This salvation is implemented through the Spirit-led life of the church. Jesus is the main character & salvation is the main theme of the story.
3. today I want to add song to story. We write & sing songs to mark important events in our lives. 2 examples:
* when the Bonneville Dam was being built in the late 1930s, the Bonneville Power Administration hired Woody Guthrie to write songs to promote the dam. In 30 days he wrote 26 songs & was paid $270. Out of that came Roll On Columbia, Roll On which was adopted as the Washington State Folk song
* after 9/11 Bruce Springsteen recorded The Rising, deeply emotive story songs about 9/11 that have helped thousands of people work through their grief
4. Our faith is not only communicated in & through story. It is sung through song. Ours is a singing story, a singing faith. The Christian Church is meant to be a worshipping community.
5. and this is no better illustrated than at Christmas time – we love singing Christmas hymns that tell the Christmas story.
Luke’s songs
1. in telling the story of Jesus Luke includes 4 songs that express the story significance of Jesus’ birth.
2. these are 4 songs of hope. Historically they have been identified in the church by the Latin words that begin each song:
* magnificat (1:46-55): Mary’s song
* benedictus (1:68-79): Zechariah’s song
* gloria in excelesis (2:14): shepherd’s song
* nunc dimittis (2:29-32): Simeon’s song
Magnificat – 1:46-55
1. the teenage virgin Mary goes to tell Elizabeth she is pregnant. And the elderly, barren, post-menopausal, pregnant Elizabeth hits her with Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me. Mary’s heart bursts with song & prayer – the Magnificat.
2. revolution is on the horizon. The proud, the powerful & the rich are reduced to size. And God, the downtrodden & the deprived are lifted up. In Jesus’ words, the first shall be last & the last shall be first. This is a picture of Jesus’ upside-down kingdom. God is on the move in Jesus.
3. this is a song to be sung. Mary’s soul glorifies the Lord. Her spirit rejoices in God her Savior. More on this next week in my Christmas Sunday message.
4. but notice this re: worship – 2 people meeting in a home out in the countryside. Is your home a place of worship?
Benedictus – 1:68-79
1. Elizabeth’s priest husband Zechariah, speechless since the day the angel Gabriel announced to him the conception of John, gets his voice back on the day his son is named & circumcised. The first thing he does is pray this song of praise!
2. read 67-75. Zechariah bursts into praise – praise be to the Lord. This song gathers the revelation of God to Abraham, David & all the holy prophets. It places Zechariah’s 8-day old son in their company.
3. read 76-79. this 8-day old infant is a prophet in the making. He is going to prepare the way for the Messiah. Salvation & forgiveness of sin will grace John’s lips. Light will shine in the darkness & death. Peace is coming. The tender mercies of God are being unleashed.
4. praise be to the Lord. When we hear of God’s tender mercies, his salvation, his forgiveness, his peace we praise God!
5. this song, these songs, are God-centered. They are about God & sung to God. They include humans but humans are not the focus. True worship has God in its sights. The more God is the focus of our worship, the more we can expect to experience his presence & glory.
6. worship is all about God & what God is doing.
Gloria – 2:14
1. the setting is a field near Bethlehem. It is night. Shepherds are tending their sheep. This is their work place. Jesus has just been born in a stable not far away. History has just been split in two. God has entered our space-time continuum in a little baby.
2. hinge-joint between chapter 3 / Israel & chapter 4 / Jesus.
3. suddenly the shepherds are flooded with light. An angel appears. Jesus’ birth is announced.
4. and then something even more incredible occurs. A great choir of angels appears. They are praising God. Can you imagine what a choir of angels praising God sounds like?
5. I’ve done 5 funerals this fall. I know of 5 people who now know the sound of a heavenly choir:
* Maureen Guthner’s sister
* Nancy Pickett’s mother-in-law
* Renae Roskott
* Tom Sawyer
* Bob Cryder
And others as well –
* Carol Beck’s mother
* Steve Thoroughman’s mother
* Kathe Cutsforth’s mother
7. these angels are singing their lungs out – glory to God in the highest and on earth peace on those whom his favor rests. What a picture of worship!
8. U2 often sings a song entitled Gloria at their concerts. This song comes from this verse –
I try to sing this song
I try to stand up
But I can’t find my feet
I try, I try to speak up
But only in you I’m complete
Gloria, in Te Domine
Gloria, exultate
Oh Lord, loosen my lips
I try to sing this song.
9. the praise of these angels joins what originates in heaven with what takes place on earth.
10. This is what worship is meant to be – a bridge activity. The joining of heaven & earth, God & humanity. The realities of heaven inform our praises on earth & our earthly realties are carried up to the heavenly realms in worship. On earth as it is in heaven, in prayer & in worship.
11. for the shepherds this worship scene happens at work. In the marketplace. Not at church. Do you expect God to show up at your job? You should. Can your work-place become a place of worship? It can!
Nunc dimittis – 2:29-32
1. read 2:27. Jesus’ parents bring him to the temple 40 days after his birth. According to the Law of Moses at this time a purification rite was held for the birth mother.
2. they are met by Simeon, an obscure senior citizen who is well-acquainted with the Holy Spirit (2:25-27). Simeon takes the baby Jesus in his arms & erupts with a song of praise, a song of completion. What he has been praying for his whole life is now present in this infant. He is ready to die!
3. if you’ve been around here long you know that Frederick Buechner is one of my favorite writers. I’ve told the family for years that I want to meet him before I die. I got the chance to meet him at Calvin College, April 2004. As he signed one of my Buechner books I told him that I was now ready to die, having met him. He quickly looked up with a panicky smile on his face & said something like – please not here, you don’t have to die!
4. what a lesson in visionary, expectant prayer. In patience & waiting. In not giving up but living in hope between promise & fulfillment. God can be trusted.
5. the theme of Simeon’s song? Salvation in Christ will to come to all people – Gentiles & Israel. I’m now back to our CAC barrenness from last week – do we have any new Christ-followers among us? where are they?
6. salvation-wise, I see our empty wombs. I encounter our quiet nursery. Each of these 4 songs celebrating Christ’s birth point to the reason for his birth – he’s a Savior. Where are the people he is saving?
7. there’s a repentance issue here. There’s a brokenness issue here. There’s a passion issue here. There’s a love-of-God-for-lost-people issue here that we must deal address.
8. mark Sunday night, 1/22/06 on your calendars. We’re going to gather together as a church that evening. We’re going to seek to make things right with God.
9. In the baby Jesus Simeon’s eyes have peered down on salvation. Salvation for all people. A light of revelation to the Gentiles & for glory to your people Israel. God intends to extend his tender mercies to all. Are we willing to join in? To help him?
Wrap-up
1. we began with Mary – we end with Simeon. The 1st & last worshippers in the story. They complement one another. Mary the young girl starting out in submission to God’s word as it comes by the Holy Spirit. Simeon the old man ending in submission to God’s word as it comes by the Holy Spirit.
2. a good place to end – in submission before God.
1. All of us live a storied life. We live in stories. I live in my story. The story of Tim, Heather, Hannah, Elizabeth. The story of my parents & my brothers & sister. The story of Canby Alliance Church. I live in your stories. And on & on it goes.
2. I also live in God’s story, just like all of you. The God-story that we live in began before creation in the eternal being of God. Part of God’s story is captured in the Bible.
Bible story in 5 acts
1. more than anything else the Bible is a story book. The majority of its pages are narrative. And this story has 5 chapters:
1 – Creation – Genesis 1-2:
2. God creates the heavens & the earth & everything in them & pronounces creation good, very good.
2 – Fall – Genesis 3-11:
3. Adam & Eve sin. They spoil God’s perfect creation. All creation is now stained by sin. We are born into a fallen world with a fallen, self-bent rather than God-bent, human nature.
3 – Israel – Abraham to Jesus:
4. God begins his rescue operation of the world. He forms the people through whom his Savior Son will be born. To this people God reveals his character & uncovers his holiness & power.
4 – Jesus – gospels:
5. Jesus is the decisive & pinnacle act of the 4th chapter. Jesus’ story is the climax of Israel’s story. Jesus’ story is the focal point of God’s redemptive drama.
5 - church – Acts-Revelation:
6. Jesus launches his ‘new’ people, the church, to take his story to the nations. Jesus’ story goes forth in the church. And is meant to bust down the doors of the church & permeate non-Christian culture. This Jesus story moves forward in my story & your story.
7. creation – fall – Israel – Jesus – the church.
8. according to N. T. Wright, these 5 chapters in God’s grand story offer a picture of God’s sovereign and saving plan for the entire cosmos, dramatically inaugurated by Jesus himself, and now implemented through the Spirit-led life of the church (The Last Word). This grand story calls every child, woman and man to submit in faith to the Lordship of the crucified and risen Jesus.
9. we live in the still open-ended 5th chapter. The 5th chapter goes on toward its final destination – the new heaven & the new earth of Revelation 21-22.
Transition
1. advent & Christmas compose the hinge point between the 3rd & 4th chapters, between Israel & Jesus. The story of God’s presence in Israel comes to a close. The story of God’s presence in Jesus begins to open up.
2. Jesus is the main figure in the story. The plot revolves around him. The sub-themes & sub-sub-themes of this story are saturated with the Jesus story, either overtly or covertly.
Spirit invading flesh
1. the Holy Spirit is mentioned 7xs in Luke’s account of Jesus’ conception & birth. Only in Luke do we find the Spirit so mentioned.
2. the cast of characters are an odd bunch. Jesus’ conception is paired with the prior conception of his cousin John. John is filled with the Holy Spirit in the womb of his mother Elizabeth, who by this time is a senior citizen. 6 months later Jesus is conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary. A virgin with no sexual experience.
3. these 2 women stand at the extremes of impossibility regarding having a baby. Elizabeth is a barren post-menopausal old woman and Mary a young virgin.
4. I want you to catch these Holy Spirit references:
1:15 – he (John the Baptist) will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his birth…this is told to Zechariah by an angel who appeared to him during his priestly duty – he’s going to have a son.
1:35 – the Holy Spirit will come upon you…this is told by the angel Gabriel to Mary when she asks how she is going to have a baby when she is a virgin.
1:41 – Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit…when the Mary came to visit her. Elizabeth & Mary were relatives (1:36).
1:67 – Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit…at the birth of his son & prophesied about Jesus the coming Savior.
2:25 – the Holy Spirit was upon him…speaking of Simeon.
2:26 – it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit…that Simeon would see the Messiah before he died
2:27 – moved by the Spirit he went into the temple courts…the Spirit led Simeon to Joseph, Mary & Jesus at his dedication in the temple.
5. Luke wants us to understand that God is actively creating & confirming life in this setting of sheer impossibility! The Holy Spirit moves in the lives of – the embryonic John, the virginal Mary, the great-with-child Elizabeth, the old priest Zechariah & the devout Simeon.
6. these were Divine days for the people of Israel. God was keeping his word. The Messiah was coming. The kingdom of God was entering the world in a manner never before seen, experienced, or imagined. The Holy Spirit was on the move.
7. but notice something else. The ordinary dimension. These 2 births are completely normal. Elizabeth & Mary carried their babies for 9 months. The babies born from these unlikely wombs (barren & virgin) had normal infancies. They were weaned from the breast. They gradually acquired the ability to eat solid food. One day they rolled over & started to crawl. Soon they began to walk. Then run. They made nonsense babbling sounds that turned into words. And then into sentences.
8. Eugene Peterson, The Holy Spirit, however miraculous in the conception of life itself, doesn’t seem to shortcut or skip anything that is human. There is nothing in a Holy Spirit-conceived life that exempts that life from the common lot of humanity. There is absolutely nothing in us that is inaccessible to or incapable of holiness.
9. nothing was missed. Nothing was bypassed. Even though the Holy Spirit is running the story. It’s a beautiful picture of the Divine-human dance that is ours as Christ-followers.
When the Spirit invades my life
1. the majority of the time the Holy Spirit shows up in our lives when things are at their normal-most. The Divine does not cancel out the human.
2. so often we want to be delivered from our hard circumstances. We want to be spared the agony of our fallen humanity. We want the unbearable made instantly bearable by the Divine supernatural intervention of God. And sometimes this happens, yes, sometimes this happens.
3. but as Peterson writes the Divine work of the Holy Spirit comes in the midst of the ordinary, the human.
4. I have 1 point I want to make as I draw this to a close. It has to do with Elizabeth’s barrenness. She was not able to conceive and bear a child. She was childless. Until the Holy Spirit changed all that.
5. we are barren as a church. The 5 chapters of the Grand Story tell us that we are to be a people who reproduce ourselves. We are to be witnesses of Christ’s love to others. We are to partner with God in bringing people into the kingdom of light.
6. we are barren. Our wombs are empty. Our arms are empty. Our nursery lies unused. Where are the new baby Christ-followers? Where the joyful chatter of new believers?
7. Divine-wise, we are totally dependent upon the Holy Spirit to draw people to Christ in salvation. Human-wise God stoops to depend upon us to witness with our lives & our words. Lost people matter to God. Lost people matter big-time in this Grand Story. Do they matter to us? it’s time our hearts were broken before God for not caring about the people he created, loves & died for.
8. the Holy Spirit is the only One who can change our barrenness. The power of the Holy Spirit is released in our lives through repentance, humility & surrender. We must turn from our sins. Humble ourselves before God. Surrender our all to him.
9. Christ comes to be born in our lives – the fullness of Christ – and to flow out of our lives into others to be born in them as well!
