The Willing Servant

“…behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying ‘Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. …When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him:  he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son.  And he called his name Jesus.” Matthew 1:20b-21; 24-25

We’ve talked about Mary this month, who was indeed God’s servant, but today I thought it would be appropriate to mention Joseph.  His sacrifice for God was also great.  No doubt he endured some disapproval and/or ridicule for marrying an already pregnant girl.  Later, after another God-sent dream, he flees with the family to Egypt, abandoning his home, friends and livelihood.  He does all this without complaint or questioning.  He doesn’t hesitate or procrastinate.  In fact, He never speaks!  The Bible does not include a single word spoken by Joseph. What we do have is a record of his action — obedience.  God knew the kind of man He wanted to raise His son;  a man who understood servanthood and could model it for Jesus as He grew up.

It is humbling to realize how far I fall short of this ideal.  Often I obey, but in a slow and grudging manner.  I whine about my circumstances and wish for an easier life.  I don’t usually want to suffer or sacrifice, even if it’s for the good of others, even if it seems to be God’s will.  If I’m honest, I’ll have to admit that I’m more like Jonah than Joseph.

So today, of all days, amidst the gifts and the feast, the visiting and rejoicing, I need to take time to meditate on the lives of Joseph and Mary, God’s faithful servants.  The people who raised Jesus, the God-man who lived and died as a servant to all of us.  I’ll remember what truly pleases God.

“Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord?  Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.”  1 Samuel 15:22

God doesn’t want us to be “good” people;  He wants us to be His people. Dear readers, I wish you a Merry and Blessed Christmas.  Go in peace;  serve the Lord.

 

 

 

The Road Map

This is a continuation of the ideas in yesterday’s post about the Sunday sermon at St. Paul’s.

Joseph followed the directions God sent him orally, through the visitation of angels and in prophetic dreams.  Those sorts of occurrences were rare even in Bible times, so we can’t expect to rely strongly on them today to guide our decisions.  However, we do have an important road map for finding our way.

“Thy word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path.” Psalm 119:105

The Bible is God’s word.  It enlightens us.  It informs us.  It guides us.  It’s hard to follow any path in darkness, but the verse above tells us that God’s word brings the light we need to follow Him.  Try imagining it like the luminaries that some churches put out on Christmas eve, along the street or sidewalk.

Of course, the Bible does not contain specific instructions for every situation.  It does have broad principles that can point us in the right direction.  It also contains the life stories of many of God’s people.  As we study them, we learn how to deal with similar challenges and temptations.  The book of Psalms is another great place to start.  In Psalms you will find every human emotion known to man.  The Psalms can teach us to cry out to God, in any situation.

You can come to church each week and hear God’s word.  Better yet, you can study it every day on your own or with others. What a great New Year’s resolution that would be!  Follow God’s road map and you will always walk in the light.

“All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”  1 Timothy 3:16

Following Directions

a”Now when they (the magi) had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child and destroy him. And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod ….

But when Herod died, behold an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Rise and take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.’ And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel.  But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father, Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee.”  Matthew 2:13-15;  19-22

I love it when God makes it clear to me that I should be paying attention to something.  Yesterday morning I put up the blog post with our new theme of obedience;  then I went to church and heard my husband’s sermon about ….guess what?  Obedience.  And no, we didn’t plan this or discuss it ahead of time. Terry doesn’t look at our blog very often, and my practice is to hear his sermon the day he gives it, just like every other lay person in the congregation.  This coincidence is what I like to call a godcidence  and I already know that obedience is something I need to be thinking, acting and praying about this month. What about you?

Anyway, back to the sermon.  It was taken from the gospel reading above and was about the earthly father of Jesus, Joseph.  We know very little about Joseph.  He never speaks in the Bible.  However, we can learn infer a great deal about his character by studying the way he behaves.  Notice that he never questions God.  He obeys immediately.  He has a dream and he gets up in the middle of the night to follow God’s directions to leave for Egypt..  Then he does it again when God tells him to return to Israel (if you’ll recall there is a third example, when Joseph is told it is ok to take Mary as his wife).  How many of us would obey this quickly and unquestioningly? I’m pretty sure I would say something like, “OK God, let me check out the real estate ads to see if I can afford a house, or let me send out some job applications, and I’ll go when I find work.”  I might even ignore the whole idea, putting my crazy dreams down to stress, or as Scrooge said in The Christmas Carol, “an undigested bit of potato.”

Of course, I’m not saying we should start acting on every dream or idea that comes to us, assuming it to be a divine message.  We are called to “test the spirits.”  Joseph must have known from the character of the dream itself, or past experience in recognizing God’s voice, that these messages were God-given.  However, there are times when, like Joseph, we need to just pack up and go.

How can we emulate Joseph?  How can we know what God is telling us?  That’s a topic for another post.  I’ll be thinking about that.  Maybe you will too.

 

Thankful that God is in Control

“Samson went down to Timnah and at Timnah he saw one of the daughters of the Philistines.  Then he came up and told his father and mother, ‘I saw one of the daughters of the Philistines at Timnah.  Now get her for me as my wife’.  But his father and mother said to him, ‘Is there not a woman among the daughters of your relatives, or among all our people , that you must go and take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?’  But Samson said to his father, ‘Get her for me for she is right in my eyes.’

His father and mother did not know that it was from the Lord, for he was seeking an opportunity against the Philistines.  At that time the Philistines ruled over Israel.”  Judges 14:1-4

In Sunday School yesterday, our lesson was about Samson, one of the judges of Israel, chosen by God.  He was a bit of a spoiled brat.  He wanted what he wanted.  It looked like he was making a bad decision.  In fact, he was making a bad decision. (He made plenty of others, as well).  Luckily, God was in control.  He knew what Samson would do.  He knew his weaknesses.  He used them, wrong as they appeared at the time, to ultimately do good.  If you know the story, Samson is eventually humbled, cries out to God and through his physical strength, topples a building to destroy 3000 of the Philistines who were oppressing the Israelites.

The same thing happens in the story of Joseph is Genesis.  Joseph’s brothers are jealous of his favored position with their father.(Joseph is a bit of a brat like Samson, he taunts his brothers).  They sell Joseph into captivity.  For years he is a slave in Egypt, and is even falsely imprisoned.  In the end, through his gift of interpreting dreams (a gift from God, like Samson’s strength) he rises to power in Egypt and saves his family when famine strikes.  He tells his brothers,

“And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant of earth, and to keep alive for you man survivors.  So it was not you who sent me here, but God.”  Genesis 45:7-8

Once again, what seemed like an evil situation was used by God for good.

The moral of this post?  Thank God that He is in control.  He knows our strengths and weaknesses and He will use them both.  We only see “through a glass darkly”;  He has the entire picture.  What seems bad at the moment will work out for our good in God’s time.

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good.”  Romans 8:28

 

Switched On Mentors

If you would like to study some examples on people who were spiritually reborn or “switched on.”  their stories are in the Bible, and many of them are listed in the 11th chapter of Hebrews.  (which is, by the way, my favorite book of the Bible).

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  …By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things that do not appear.

By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than did Cain….

By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death….

By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events yet unseen, took heed and constructed an ark for the saving of his household …

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance;  and he went out, not knowing where he was to go.

By faith Sarah herself received the power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised…

By faith, Abraham when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises to offer up his only son …

By faith Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau …

By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites…

By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid for three months by his parents because they saw he was beautiful and were not afraid of the king’s edict ….

By faith, when he was grown up,Moses refused to be called the son of the Pharoah’s daughter, choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the people of God ….

The author of Hebrews goes on to say that there was not enough time to tell of all those who had seen the things which were to come through the spiritual understanding received in their faith. Will you be one of the “great cloud of witnesses”(Hebrews 12:1)? Whose spiritual insight has inspired you?