"Get Up!"

Matthew 2:13-23

If the “business of America is business,” the apex of the year has to be Christmas. I was in retail for some 25 years. It was very common to lose money for 10 months of the year in the hope that the last two would pull you out into the black. The entire retail industry runs that way. That’s why there is so much anxiety over Christmas sales. Christmas is the season for correcting the bottom line. And then comes January, one of the worst 2 months of the year, the other being April.

You know early on whether or not you are going to make it through the holiday season. The problem is that you order for the holiday season usually way back in July and August. If you calculate wrongly, you wake up on December 26 with too much inventory and owing too much to your suppliers.

A couple of times during my retail days, I got caught with a recession that flattened sales in the last quarter of the year, while we were planning for increases. One year in particular I recall as taking me several years to pull out. I learned the hard way to anticipate downturns before they happened.

As Christians, we attempt to minimize the retail aspect of Christmas. No matter how hard we try, however, it cannot be done to our satisfaction unless we give it up entirely, which creates a whole other set of problems with family and friends.

We’re stuck with Christmas. I found a poem this past week that pokes fun at the post-Christmas blues – the time when we have to clean up physically and financially from our binges:

‘Twas the day after Christmas, and all through the room
Strewn wrappings were crying for want of a broom.
The children were scattered; the friends’ gifts exploring,
Since now most of theirs were broken or boring.
All tummies were stuffed from the fabulous feast;
Leftovers would serve for one month at least.
And mama and papa were countryside ranging.
Those unwanted gifts returned or exchanging.
Yes, Christmas is past with its bustle and noise –
Sales and carols, Santas and toys.
Decorations are packed, the Yuletide discarded,
The holiday’s over, just as we got started.

We even romanticize the birth of Jesus by placing Him in a sanitized setting with a good supply of Pampers and formula, forgetting that the cave was a shelter for animals and that Mary had just given birth there. I have been downwind of Bedouins in the Wadi Kilt that stretches from Jerusalem to Jericho, and it is not a pleasant experience. While the shepherds lived in the fields nearby, they did not have showers. They brought the smell of sheep and body odor into the cave with them.

Those three kings from the Orient had been traveling probably for most of a year or more, sleeping out on the desert floor with their filthy camels.

No amount of frankincense and myrrh could cover that scent, let me assure you.

Yet, in the middle of all that was a picture that never leaves us – a guiding star hovering over the place where Jesus lay; bright lights in the heavens; angels singing and praising God; hope and excitement in the air. On the eighth day of His life, His parents, excited as they were by the circumstances surrounding His birth, brought Him to the temple to be circumcised, and there was that great meeting with Simeon and Anna who had been told by the Lord that they would see the Consolation of Israel.

We forget that it was nearly 12 miles along a dusty road from Bethlehem to the Temple, and 12 miles back. Yet, Mary, we are told, “…treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” While we may sanitize the story, as Christians we follow suit with Mary, treasuring up all these things and pondering them in our hearts.

While Mary is treasuring and pondering, however, Joseph is responsible for their actions after the excitement is over. God deals with Joseph directly, post-Christmas, and most of what He says to Joseph is, “Get up!”

Luke’s narrative of the next 3-4 years is purely historical and objective, while Matthew’s is drenched in tears and fears, pain and problems, blood and lament. Those are the realities that are left off the covers of our Christmas cards, but they lead us to believe that even Mary and Joseph must have experienced the post-Christmas blues.

How they dealt with them may help us deal with our post-Christmas blues.

There are very few times in the Bible where Joseph is referred to as Jesus’ father. One time was when Mary scolds Jesus for scaring her and His father to death for staying in the Temple while they were returning to Nazareth, thinking Jesus was in the crowd. Jesus rebukes her by saying to her, “Didn’t you know that I have to be in my Father’s house?”

Joseph is the quintessential Step-Dad. He has the responsibility without the ownership. While Mary treasures and ponders, Joseph gets dreams that direct him here and there. When Jesus was around the age of two, and, we can assume, Mary and Joseph had settled in Bethlehem, the three kings came to worship with their gifts. Herod has been tipped off about their search for “…the one born king of the Jews.” He was threatened by anyone who might have a legitimate claim by birth to the throne.
Herod consulted the Scriptures and found the oracle from Isaiah 60 that proclaimed a ruler coming out of Bethlehem who would be the shepherd of God’s people, Israel.

“When you come back,” he told the kings, “let me know where the child is so that I may go and worship him.” Warned in a dream, the Magi went back home another way. Herod was, to say the least, furious.

It is a year or so later, and Joseph now has a house and a toddler. An angel appears to him in a dream and says, “Get up, take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

Do you hear any mention of Joseph as the father here? The angel doesn’t say, “Take your son;” he says, “Take the child and his mother…” Had it been you or me, we might have been inclined to say, “Hey’ it’s your kid! I’m just getting settled here. You take care of him!” Instead, Joseph leaves everything behind and heads for Egypt.

The glow of Christmas surely has ended for the Step-Dad, Joseph. The king is furious; the infant is helpless; all boys under the age of two are slaughtered, and they are going backwards to that country where their forefathers had been slaves. The trip was about 80 miles to the Egyptian border, and they likely traveled another 100 miles to the Jewish community in Alexandria, a trip of about two weeks.

Joseph is escaping from the long reach of King Herod. Here is what Joseph knows about this Herod who spoils the glow of Christmas for his family:

Herod was born into a politically well-connected family and was accustomed to being a power-broker. At 25, he was named governor of Galilee. In 40 BC, the Roman senate named him “King of the Jews.” The Jews hated this title because they looked forward to the Messiah’s claim as king.

Soon after becoming King, Herod wiped out several bands of guerillas who were terrorizing the countryside. He brutally silenced anyone who got in the way of his power, including his brother-in-law, his mother-inn-law, two of his sons and his wife. The historian, Josephus, referred to Herod as “Barbaric.” Caesar Augustus is reported to have said, “It is better to be Herod’s pig than his son, because pigs are protected by the law.”

Herod was a dominating figure. He built 7 palaces and 7 theaters, one of which seated 9,500 people. He constructed stadiums, the largest of which seated 300,000 fans. He was the architect and builder of the new temple for the Jews. By his cold-blooded murder of the males below the age of two in Bethlehem, you might call Herod the “Butcher of Bethlehem.”

A voice is heard in Ramah,
Weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
And refusing to be comforted,
Because they are no more.

At the age of somewhere around 4, the Lord appeared again to Joseph in a dream. Same words – “Get up, take the child and his mother…” This time, he was told that those who were intending to kill Jesus had themselves died. No mention of Joseph as the father, Step-Dad or otherwise; just “Get up and go.”

It appears that Joseph planned to go back and pick up his life in Bethlehem. Along the way, he finds out that Herod’s son, Archaeleus, is on the throne and becomes afraid. Archaeleus is even more sinister than his father. So he changed course to the district of Galilee and the Town of Nazareth in which he and Mary had been living before the birth of Jesus but from which they had been away for some 4 years now.

It looks like the party is well over by this time. Reality has really set in. Those in Nazareth who knew them probably had their own ideas as to how Mary got pregnant. Nazareth was not exactly the garden spot of the universe. In fact, Nathaniel, a prospective disciple, asked about Jesus in John 1:46, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nobody lived in Nazareth except those who could not afford to live anywhere else. Even in His death, Pilate put the mocking inscription over the cross, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”

If anyone had a right to be bummed, it was Joseph. Here he was back in his home town, amidst all the gossip and finger-pointing, later to become father to several other boys but alone knowing that he was not the father of Jesus. He was merely the protector, a task that would be bound to take the bloom off any rose. And there was Mary, ever treasuring and pondering.

You wonder how Joseph kept from getting the blahs and how that relates to us today!
The first thing you notice about Joseph is that he seems to take his God with him wherever he may be. To put it another way, he is content with his circumstances. The Apostle Paul refers to this characteristic as a maturity test – “I have learned, in whatever state I may be, to thereby be content.” Joseph takes his God with him wherever he goes, settles in and assumes that this is where he is supposed to be unless told otherwise.

Most of us tend to live in the future. That is, we have dreams about what we could be doing or how we could be living if we were somewhere else. That is especially true in Maine in the winter, isn’t it? If you are like me, you tend once in awhile to get tired of keeping these furnaces going and struggling with the weather and say, “Why am I putting myself through this, when there are lots of other more comfortable places to live?”

The problem with that kind of thinking is that it strips us of our obedience. We are where we are, and where we are, that is where God wants us to shine at the moment. Joseph was obedient. The truth is that there could well have been limits on how much of this virgin birth stuff he was going to have to take. He could very well have been thinking about moving down to Jerusalem to give Jesus a head start at the best of rabbinical schools.

Joseph is content, however, in every place God puts him. He lives in the now – not in the future. His obedience is not postponed until he is a bit older, or the kids are grown, or the weather is better, or they have a place on the Sea of Galilee. Joseph is obedient:

So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet Hosea, “Out of Egypt I called my son” (v. 14).

So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: “He will be called a Nazarine” (vs. 21-23).

I am sure, like every other young lad, all Joseph wanted was a life and respectability. Yet, first on his list was obedience. He didn’t move until God said, “Get up!” He had learned at an early age that the remedy for the post-Christmas blahs was contentment and obedience. He doesn’t gripe like Moses; he gets up and obeys, like Abraham. He somehow understands that blessings flow not from who we are or what we do or even where we are; blessings flow from obedience.

Is God pressing something on your heart this morning – a decision you have been postponing; a relationship you need to heal or sever; a card you need to send; a phone call you need to make? Is God convicting you about a person you need to forgive or about griping about your circumstances? “Get up!” Obey!

The second thing that chases away the blahs is to lower your expectations. The King of the Jews and His family spent the first few years in exile, as refugees. When God says, “Get up,” we cannot assume that where we are going is a better place under better circumstances. Every Christian hope carries with it a testing time of hard times that follow. We want ease and comfort, but the Christmas that we know is about difficulty. Like with Joseph, the post-Christmas world in which we live our daily lives is neither our hope nor our home. God did not remove the difficulties from Joseph. He led him through them.

Good news always has its enemies. Somebody once said, “In order to see the Babe in Bethlehem, you must pass through Jerusalem and awaken King Herod.” Joseph had learned the hard way that when the angel told him to “Get up and take the child and his mother,” he was probably headed for hardship. Yet, he obeyed, even though the glow of Christmas morning was now a distant memory. He kept it alive with low expectations as to his comforts but with high expectations as to God’s ability to bring him through and high expectations of His abiding presence.

A good rule of thumb when we want to know the will of God in our lives is, “If you want to know God’s will, then do the will of God that you already know.” God did not tell Joseph to go to Nazareth until he first obeyed and went to Judea. If you want God to guide you, then start moving on those things you already know He wants you to do.

Finally, the path to chasing away the post-Christmas blahs is also to live at all times in the shadow of the Almighty. That was Abraham’s way, and that was Joseph’s way. The OT patriarchs have an entire chapter in Hebrews devoted to their faith. You will be loathe to find anywhere in the Scriptures a reference to the faith of Joseph, the Step-Dad of Jesus. Yet, his response was extraordinary under the circumstances in which he might well have wished he were somewhere else with someone else.

Joseph lived in the shadow of the Almighty. He somehow knew that the key to the things he desired was to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. He somehow knew that “…his delight was in the law of the Lord.” He somehow knew that he presenting himself as a living sacrifice to God was the way to open the floodgates of heaven. He somehow knew that his task was to encourage his family to obedience. He somehow knew that that little kid over whom he had been given temporary charge needed a strong and obedient Dad.

Lucy walks up to Charlie Brown just before Christmas and says to him, Charlie Brown, since it is Christmas, I suggest that we lay aside all our differences and be friends for this season of the year. Charlie Brown says, That’s a great idea, Lucy, but why does it have to be just at this time of year? Why can’t we be friends all year long? Lucy looks at Charlie Brown with disgust and asks, What are you, a fanatic or something?

With that, I’ll finish the poem for you:

To celebrate peace and the meaning of giving,
To discover real love and the purpose for living,
Dear Jesus, please help us to stop and remember
That you came to earth not just for December.
But from birth in a manger to death on a cross,
You gave up your glory and counted it loss.
So now as we trust You – God’s only Son –
The real celebration has only begun.

Waiting for the Cloud to Lift

By:
Stan Moody

December 7, 2008

Numbers 9:15-23
John 14:15-21

Do you ever experience the feeling that God is on vacation? My thoughts lately have not been very positive concerning the Christian life and the presence of God with His people. I have felt like the Prophet Isaiah who, when he heard the voice of the Lord, cried out, “Woe is me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” (Isaiah 6:5).


In the midst of these thoughts come two messages of hope. The first message of hope is that of the Shekihah, the cloud of the glory of God that was introduced to the children of Israel in the desert. The second message of hope is in the words, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”


This passage of Scripture in Numbers is very instructive for us as the groundwork for how God works with His people. When the cloud covered the tabernacle by day and as a pillar of fire by night, the people of God were to encamp. When it lifted, they were to set out in the desert. The people of God, then, were to be in one of two states – staying put or moving out.


While they were encamped, they worshipped God, conducted their lives in some normal fashion and learned from Moses and Aaron about the beauty and holiness of God. Perhaps it was during those times that they practiced living by the Law of Moses.


The times of encampment, however, were indefinite. God had placed His people in a position of not being able to plan from day to day. V. 22 tells us that the cloud was apt to be over the tabernacle for two days or for a month or for a year; they had no idea for how long. It was a lesson in patient living in the presence of the Lord – a lesson that they flunked time after time. What grated with them was that they could not plan their lives. They were trapped into total dependence on God.


God’s presence, however, was key to their existence. Likewise, whether staying put or moving forward, God is sovereign over our lives. The problem comes with our difficulty in staying put.


The American way is that if you are not going forward, you are going behind. That is why the Church of Jesus Christ in America puts so much emphasis on growth, progress, success and numbers.


If you read the 10th chapter of Numbers, however, you will notice that the times of staying put were the times when the Lord was especially present with His people. There were whole ceremonies of blowing trumpets, preaching, preparing hearts to love God and building strength for the next journey whenever that might happen and wherever that might lead. There is even a bit about Moses pleading with his father-in-law to stay with them instead of going back to his native Midian. He had decided to leave the assembly and go back to his people. Moses said to him, “Please stay with us. If you come with us, we will share with you the good things that the Lord gives us.”


The desert through which they wandered is symbolic of a wasteland, inhabited by enemies and dangers of all kinds. Here, in chapter 110, vs. 3, 36, is how Moses viewed their predicament:


Whenever the ark set out, Moses said,
“Rise up, O Lord!
May your enemies be scattered; may your foes flee before you.
Whenever it came to rest, he said,
“Return, O Lord, to the countless thousands of Israel.”


God’s presence is critical to our ability to stay put – to stay at rest. I believe that the believing church in America is straining at trying to move forward at a time when God wants us to come to rest. Times of rest are times marshall the resources necessary to move forward in God’s time and with His guidance – not in our time and in our own strength.


As difficult as it is for us Americans to accept, we are where we are and therefore, as Christians, are where God wants us to be. Instead of praying the usual prayer of, “Lord, what do you want me to do next?” maybe our prayer ought to be, “Lord, what do you want me to do while I am right here?” Direction from God is not just for the next big move into the unknown of the desert. It is, perhaps, merely to stay in the oasis of His presence now.


There is a phrase that intrigues me that I found had been originally employed by Dr. Altizer, the author of the “God is dead” movement in the 1960’s. His conclusion was that God had outlived His usefulness and had died with the crucifixion of Christ. My take is not that God had willed Himself to die but that the church kills Him off from time to time by refusing to stay at rest. But inviting the presence of God at times when nothing seems to be happening is a true test of faith, is it not?


I am thinking that we are living in a time when God has either been killed off by the church or been made so irrelevant as to be dead. We march on, taking the banner of Christ without the presence of the Father.


John 14 has much to say about such a way of living.


First, there is a lesson that we can draw from the OT Scripture this morning. That is, that people are insecure when God is not present. We as believers cannot cope outside the presence of our Father, the Living God. We become orphans and scared out of our minds. Jesus was well aware of this problem when He was saying goodbye to His disciples.


The discourse by Jesus in the 14th chapter of John begins with the words, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.” Peter was so attached to Jesus that he wanted to go with Him into death, if need be – anything but being left behind and abandoned. Jesus ties trust of God together with trust of Him, even though He was about to leave His disciples. There can be no Jesus without God, nor can there be any God without Jesus. Believing in Jesus but not trusting God is not an option for the Christian.


The discourse in John 14 ends with two thoughts in v. 18, “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” and “I will not leave you as orphans.” Jesus then destroys in v. 20 any thought of separating Himself from God the Father: “In that day, you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” There is a pecking order here – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, or Comforter. The Son reveals the Father, and the Holy Spirit reveals the Son. And yet, all three are One, as we are one with Jesus.


We must, however, study this for its real meaning. We have the Comforter promised to the disciples, and there is talk about things that will happen in “that day.” Can we separate the Comforter from the Christ, and has “that day” already appeared? If so, where do we stand?


This is about the transition from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant. You will see that the presence of God remains as constant in the New as in the Old. It takes a new form, however, from the nation-state to the individual; from the temple to the heart.


This discourse was delivered by Jesus just after Judas had left the Last Supper to betray Him. He turned to the others and addressed them with the words, “Little children, I will be with you only a little longer.” He then predicts Peter’s denial. The whole conversation hinges on the phrase, “little children.” These are His brothers to whom He is speaking. What Jesus is acknowledging here is that without His physical presence, they stand together in a comfortless and helpless condition. They are like fatherless and motherless children out in the cold – a fate that to Peter was worse than death.


Only one thing will change that condition, and it is found in the 18th verse: “I wil not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” This is a confirmation by Jesus that the constant and abiding presence of God will somehow remain with them but in a different form. This coming of which Jesus speaks is not some final coming at judgment. What He is referring to here is that He will shortly depart from them in bodily form for a season so that they may receive Him in a better form forever. He must go in order for them to receive Him in a better form that the one with which they had become accustomed.


The consolation of God’s people absolutely depends upon His presence with them. And yet, today, we talk about the “absent Christ” in the sense that He is somehow in our hearts, like some fond memory. We confuse bodily presence with real presence. Our consolation, the confirmation of our faith, depends on the real presence of the Living Lord. He has the audacity to say, “I come” during the very moment of leaving.


The average Christian today finds it convenient to live in the myth of the absent Christ, trying to do a rain dance to bring Him back. Instead, we are cautioned to live in the calm assurance that we are never alone but that we have Him with us more closely than did those who were nearest Him during His days here on earth.


“The world will see me no longer, but you will see me. Because I live, you will live” (v.19). This “Other Comforter” He will send – the Holy Spirit – is no substitute God wafted in from outer space while the spiritual Father and a physical Jesus sit by in the heavens until the final day. The coming of the Spirit is the coming of Jesus. Where the Spirit is, there is Christ; where Christ is, there is the Spirit. How else could these common men have pressed forward with the Gospel with quiet confidence? How else could the great ministers of the faith down through history have pressed forward unless basking in the assuring presence of Jesus?


If you take away Jesus Christ, our elder Brother, who alone reveals men to the Father, we are all orphans – fatherless children who gaze up into an empty heaven seeking an epiphany. The epiphany has come and is dwelling with His people. It is His part to come; it is our part to see, or to be conscious of Him who has come.


The nature of the world is that it fails to see Him. But the eye of the soul of the believer in Jesus Christ sees Him because it has turned away from dependence on the senses of eye, ear and touch. Because He lives, He has come. Because He has come, we who love Him and have accepted Him see Him and are comforted.


I began this sermon with the thought that I am sometimes overwhelmed with the sense that “…I am a man of unclean lips and dwell among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the Lord.” We fail to see Him because we have become guided not by His promises but by our senses. For most Christians today, it goes something like this: “God will not put up with this much longer; we are coming down to the end when Jesus will come again.” That is living by your senses outside the promises of God.


That is what it is like to be orphans in a fatherless world. Without His presence now, our worried eyes see only trials and temptation. Without His presence now, we are among the walking dead. Without His presence now, we cannot have the Father.


The Shekinah cloud of God’s presence stands over this little church that patiently waits for that cloud to be lifted. We have gone forward; we will go forward. But we must be careful that when we move, the cloud goes before us and that we do not leave the cloud of God’s presence behind.


In this Christmas season, we do not celebrate what once was but what now is and will be because of what once was. We ought not to pray for the lifting of the cloud. We ought, instead, to pray that when the cloud lifts, as it forever does, we will be ready to follow into the desert.


Because this is the Advent season, I looked up the meaning of the word “advent” in the dictionary. The best meaning I could find was “a coming or arrival.” Some say we are living between the Advents. I say that we are living in the Advent. The Christ who has come comes to His people, one by one, and remains present. We must learn to live and practice in His presence and stop living as though in His absence.


I ask that you pray for us as a church in this sacred season that we will find peace in resting in the presence of God through Jesus Christ, His Son.


May the season of Christmas remind us of God’s abiding presence. May the season of Easter remind us of the cost of that abiding presence and point us to a God who will, indeed, never leave us nor forsake us.