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[00:00:25] Speaker B: This weekend I want to talk to you about some incredible events in the Christmas story and how it relates to our everyday life. Now, I'm just curious, how many people in the room, there's nobody here but us. How many in the room would admit that you are a spontaneous person? That's how you roll. You go with the flow. You're spontaneous. Go ahead, just put those hands up. We can see you people sitting next to you going to know if you're lying or not. Now spontaneous, you don't really work off of a hardcore schedule. You go with the flow. You're easy going. You can adapt and adjust. You're spontaneous. How many of you now are planners? You like a wow. The majority, you know, that happened at the 930 as well. The majority of the people in the room said they are planners. They don't like the spontaneity. They like more detail. They like more structure. And I understand that. And the reason I bring that out is because we work with people that way. Right? All of us have a little of that in us. Some of us like spontaneity and we like to kind of go with it. Others of us like a little more structure in our life. We like to plan our day and then work that plan. And so I think everybody works a little differently. Some of the stresses that you get in the job and in the workplace and in the home, it's when you have a spontaneous person trying to do life with a planning person.
That's why usually those people marry one another. You have a spontaneous person that's married to the planner. And what I hear them say is, well, I love that he's so free flowing. He goes with the flow. He's so spontaneous. I'm not that way. I love him because of that. And then he'll say, I love her. She's so structured and she follows a plan. She's detail oriented and she's that way. And the thing that attracts us to each other, if you're not careful when you're married, will be the very things that repel us from each other. She's running me crazy with these details and with these plans, he kills me. He doesn't plan anything. He's too free flowing. Now, Cindy was always very structured. She was the planner in our family, very detail oriented. She bought a label gun a long time ago, and even now she has a craft room in the house. And if I took you into that craft, everything is detailed. All of our photo albums from the time we were dating are identified from March, when we first went out on a date, the first, earliest pictures, I can put my hands on them, and I can find everything all the way up until she got sick and she passed. And I'm just telling you, she has left an imprint. And so she bought this label gun, and she was labeling everything in her craft room and everything in the house. Everything was just so orderly. Even our decorations, Christmas decorations, mantle decorations. And she had a little note on there. This goes on the mantle and this goes here. So all I do is, it's idiot proof. I just open the box up and just do what the labels say. And then what I did one time is I got a hold of her label gun. She wasn't home.
And so when she walked in, it said, light switch, bathroom door. I labeled one that said doorknob. I thought it was funny. We laughed and we laugh, right? She didn't see the humor in that. But I went all through the house labeling everything I could think of. But I'm just saying I understand what it's like to live with a very structured person, a very organized person. When I'm a little more, I tend to be a little more spontaneous, and I can adapt and adjust and kind of roll with the flow a little better, but I benefited from that. You need that structure, you need the planner in your life. But here's what I know, and this is where I'm going with this. The thing that everyone hates, if you are structured or you are spontaneous, you hate interruptions, you hate having anything that takes you completely out of your game. You kind of began in a task or you began going out a certain role, and all of a sudden you get an interruption. It may be someone, it may be something, but something that completely takes you off of your game and away from your plan. Now, what's interesting about this is UC Berkeley actually did a study on the effect of interruptions in the workplace. I guess they had to study something, right? And here's what they found. Interruptions cause a loss of focus and progress. Attention is ripped away. Our brain abruptly shifts, momentum is gone, and even a few seconds of interruption is long enough to make people lose the thread here's interesting fact. Recovery from an interruption ranges anywhere from eight to 25 minutes, depending on the complexity of the task. Now you think about that. When you get taken off your game and you get interrupted, it absolutely takes a while to refocus your attention on the thing that you were working on. Now, what I will also say about interruptions is that interruptions are inevitable. They're inescapable. If you are a planner and you do all your plan, you cannot get away from or avoid interruptions. They are just going to happen. And it's interesting because even the word interrupt comes from two words in the Latin that means to break or to break into. The word interrupt, to break or to break into. And what was incredible, when I thought about this as it relates to the Christmas story, I realized that the Christmas story begins with a huge interruption in the life of a young couple who had their life planned. They knew where they were going, they knew how they were going to get there. They were probably very meticulous in how they were approaching everything. And suddenly, literally, out of the blue, their lives are broken into, their lives are interrupted, and the interruption that they encountered would change the course of human history. And what I thought about, when I thought about that with relation to what I want to talk to you about, is how we interpret the interruptions of life, how we look at them. Is this an interruption that maybe God caused to happen in my life? Or is this an interruption that maybe God allowed to happen in my life? Because interruptions can be defining moments. When you go through a major interruption, maybe it's in a relationship, or maybe it's in a business partnership, or maybe it's in your finances, or maybe it's with your health, when all of a sudden the plans that you've made go astray because your plans have been interrupted, you have to learn to interpret the interruption and ask yourself, is this something God is stopping me? Is he slowing me down? Is he trying to teach me something through this experience?
There's a verse I talk about a lot here. It's in psalm 37. And the verse says, the steps of a good person are ordered by the Lord, and he delights in his way. And then it says, though the good person falls, he will not utterly be cast down, for God will bring him back up. And we talk about the steps of good people are ordered by the Lord. Even though good people fall, God will help them get back to their feet again. So when you are pursuing God, you wouldn't be in the room this morning. You certainly wouldn't be watching online this morning if you weren't pursuing God. So when you were doing that, what you can know is God is ordering your steps. God has a plan for your life. And by being here, you are signaling the fact that you recognize that and you're responding to that and you're open to that. But have you also ever considered that not only are the steps of your life ordered by God, but so are the stops in your life? The stops, the interruptions, the breaks, the time God intervenes in your life when you were going one way, and suddenly you find yourself going a different way than what you had planned. And you're spontaneous, you try to roll with it, but you also try to make sense of it. And if you're a planner, it's running you crazy, because this is not at all how you envision your life going.
But I told you a moment ago, the interruptions of that magnitude are inescapable and unavoidable.
What will happen in your life when you have that type of interruption is it will cause you to evaluate and reevaluate your faith.
Because what I found when God interrupts our lives, whether it's with a terrible medical diagnosis, whether it's with the loss of a loved one, maybe the loss of a relationship, maybe a financial reverse, or something of that nature, in that magnitude, God seldom explains himself.
He seldom sits down with us and says, okay, let me tell you what's going on. I allowed this to happen or I caused this to happen, and here's why he doesn't do that. Oftentimes there's a silence that we get from that experience. And in the void, in the vacuum of that silence, if you're not careful, you can fill that void in that vacuum with doubt. Why me? Why this God? What are you up to? This isn't fair. And we've all been there, some of you are there. And so you ask all of those logical questions and you begin to question God.
And I can tell you from experience that when life doesn't make sense, you can't allow your mind to demand explanations. Instead, you have to allow your mind to embrace promises, promises, promises like, I will never leave you or forsake you. Promises like trust in the Lord with all your heart, don't lean on your own understanding, and all your ways acknowledge him, he'll make your path straight. Promises like God sees the sparrow when it falls, so he has his eye on you. So all of those are promises that are important when you're going through a life interruption, when it makes no sense. And you're trying to navigate it. You can't demand the explanations. You have to embrace the promises.
And I look at the Christmas story and I think about Mary and Joseph.
We'll drop into our text in just a moment. But when you read the text, and I made a mistake this week, first one I made. But I said, it's Luke two in your notes. It's actually Luke one. So it's kind of scary. This handful of people caught that at 930.
So I'm saying this is very smart. Not that they weren't, but you're a very biblically astute crowd that probably have already caught that when I read it in a moment. So it is Luke one. It'll say Luke two. Ignore that. Luke one. But when I dropped into that text, what's interesting about it is they had planned their life. And those hebrew couples, what you need to know is when they would become engaged, betrothed, to be married. That engagement period could last better than a year. It was just standard. It was customary. So if you ask her to marry you, she agrees to marry you. Family is approval. All that goes into it. That period of time before you get married is a year. So you go through a period of scrutiny. They're looking at you, they're looking at her. The families are adjusting and accepting. So you have a year, and then when the ceremony comes, it's very elaborate. And by the way, it's very expensive.
Fathers of the bride, can you relate to that? These things can be expensive. And so after the ceremony was over, there'd be like a three or four day party. It was just expected. It was culture. Can you imagine, guys and gals, after you've paid for the wedding? Now you got to feed those people for four more days.
And not just feed them, make sure they have a place to stay. I mean, there's no getting away and running off to your honeymoon. No, you got four days worth of family you're going to deal with that, are going to be partying on your dollar. Well, that was the custom, so they're preparing for it. They got a year. And in the middle of that plan, Mary, as we know, was just a young girl, maybe 1617. Joseph was so excited, the love of his life. It's obvious from all the scriptures that you read about him, he was totally in love with this girl, totally devoted to her. And in the middle of their plan, an interruption here is a divine interruption. So look with me in Luke chapter one. We'll look at a few verses here beginning in verse 26. The Bible says it was the 6th month that this interruption happened. And God sends an angel, Gabriel, to Nazareth, to the town of Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, who was 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. And Mary was greatly troubled at his words, can you imagine? And wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said, don't be afraid, mary. You have found favor with God, and you are going to be with child and give birth to a son. And you are to give him the name Jesus. And Jesus will be great, and he'll be called the son of the most high. And the Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David, and he will reign in the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom shall never end. Can you imagine what that must have been like for this 17 year old girl to hear this? I mean, she's trying to wrap her mind around the fact she's going to have a child. And not just any child. This child will rule on the throne of David. He'll have a kingdom that will never end. Now, can I say this parenthetical before I read this text any further? Sometimes when we read scripture, we make the characters of the Bible out to be something that they weren't. We look at them almost like superheroes, like they were super spiritual. They were on a level that the average person never attains. Can I tell you? That's not who they were. The people in the Bible were no different than you and I. They had the same foibles and the same fallacies, and they had the same problems, and they had the same doubts that you and I have.
They had moments when they wondered if their life was meaningful and God had a purpose or a mean. They were just like us.
So don't make the mistake just because we talk about St. Matthew and St. Mark and St. Luke and Saint don't think know just because they've got saint in front of their name. They were a super species of people that were highly spiritual and didn't go through what you and I go through. That's not the case at all.
So can you imagine this young girl trying to wrap her head around what she just heard? And then so she goes back to the pregnancy thing and she says, how will this be? Verse 34, I'm a virgin. How am I going to give birth to a child? You're telling me. And the angel said, the Holy Spirit will come upon you. The power of the most high will overshadow you and the Holy Spirit. One will be called the Son of God.
And then he gives this illustration. Even your Elizabeth, your cousin, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age. They told her she could never get pregnant and she's going to have a baby. So in other words, what he's saying is, yes, it's a biological impossibility. But you need to know, God is really good at working out biological impossibilities. There's nothing too hard for him.
Verse 37, nothing is impossible with God. So, Mary, don't doubt what I'm telling you. If this is from God, this can happen. So she said, verse 38, I am your lord's servant. Do you think she understood that? No.
Somebody said, well, can you explain the virgin birth? I can't explain my own birth.
No.
To be accepted that this is what the scripture taught, that Jesus would come born of a virgin because he could not be infected by the seed of man, which was sinful from the fall of Adam in the garden. So he had to be of a divine origin, so the virgin birth was necessary so Jesus could be born without sin. So this was all part of God's plan. But do you think for a skinny minute she knew that? Do you think for a minute Joseph comprehended that when she tries to break the news to him in a little while? No, she just says, may it be to me, as you've said, and the Bible says angel left her. Now think about the burden on this girl's heart.
Now, she just found out that the Holy Spirit is going to have this divine implantation of this little one within her womb and she's going to have a child, though she is a virgin. And now she's got to go tell the guy she's engaged to be married, that she's pregnant and she's a virgin.
And he's supposed to believe that?
Remember, don't make them out to be something they're not.
These are ordinary people. How would you respond? Oh, you're pregnant.
God told you. All right.
The Holy Spirit divinely implanted this mean, really think about it. In fact, Joseph struggled so much that his first reaction was, the Bible says in another place, he wanted to put her away privately, meaning that society would judge her and him and would criticize them, that you couldn't wait, you're engaged. And we went public and all that, and, oh, you jumped the gun. There we go. Cart before the horse and all this criticism. And so he just said, I don't need the hassle. I don't want the criticism. Isn't it comforting to know people have always been critical? Does that bless you to know that the criticism, people being critical of your life didn't just start with you? They've always been that way. Isn't that comforting to know? Anyway, so he said, I want to get you away from the ridicule and the disgust and the discussions of people. I'll put you away privately. We'll have this baby. We'll come back. What was amazing is he loved her.
What's indicated when the angel has to appear to him to confirm what Mary told him? It tells me if that took that before, he was convinced that he had some doubts. I love you, baby, but I don't know if I believe this. In fact, I'll wait and see what that baby looks like when it's mean. I'm just telling you.
I mean, don't you know that man was having some second thoughts? And then the angel appears to him one night in the dream and he says, it's exactly as she's told you believe her. Believe me. What I love about Joseph, he said, yes, sir.
Didn't make sense. You think they were criticized? Are you kidding me? Of course they were criticized, man. They went from planning a wedding to preparing a nursery. And all those people around them were criticized. But here's what's beautiful about it. When you know you're doing the right thing and you're following after God, let the critics fall where they may. They're not going to help you anyway.
Some of the best things you could do for you sometimes is get off social media and quit caring what other people think and quit sharing so much about things of your personal life that nobody cares about because they're going to criticize you for. Don't put yourself out there. Can I just love you long enough and be your pastor long enough to tell you, protect yourself from that mess. You don't need their likes. Somebody said, I got a thousand friends on Facebook. No, you don't.
No, you don't. I love you, but no, you don't. You don't have a thousand people that will love you in spite of what you go through that will come into your world if everybody else walks out on you. You don't have a thousand people that would do that for you. If you got a handful, you're blessed.
So be careful how much of your heart you share. The Bible talks about not putting your pearls out before swine.
In other words, sometimes you put the most sacred things out before people who don't love you or care about you and do nothing but criticize you. So guard. The Bible says, guard your heart. And can I stretch it far enough to say, and your social media post, be careful, protect yourself. I just don't see you get hurt unnecessarily because people are bad enough without that. They don't even need ammo. Some of them will just shoot anyway. They'll make it up. You say, what do you do? Well, I tell you what they didn't do. They didn't go around, try to defend themselves. That's a tendency we. Have. You ever been criticized for something you know you didn't do?
Your knee jerk is to go defend yourself.
You just want to go Old Testament on them, grab them and run into the house with them. I mean, you really do. But here's what you're going to do. It's like the old staying goes. It's like nailing Jello to the wall. I've never tried it, but it sounds really challenging.
First of all, they're not going to be honest and tell you they said it. They're going to say, I heard someone say that's when you know they're lying. They said it. That's the first tell. So I'm just suggesting you cannot defend yourself because you'll go around all your day trying to do that. Here's what you do. If you know you've done the right thing and you know you're right in the sight of God, keep your eyes toward the prize. Keep moving in the direction you're moving. Time will prove you out. You'll be okay.
You'll be all right. The people who love you are still going to love you. The people who didn't are going to say what they say regardless of what you say. I'm just saying there's a lot in this Christmas story you've never considered. I know, but I'm just telling you, I don't think it's stretching it and getting too far in the world of supposition to think that they had to get there and get to the point where they didn't care about the criticisms they were going to endure following what God had called them to do.
They just did it.
And have you think about it, had at any point Mary or Joseph turned away, God would have. He would have sovereignly raised up someone else because his will will be done. But instead, Joseph and Mary would have missed the greatest opportunity of their life, and that was to be the instruments through which the son of God would enter this world, the earthly parents.
Now, we don't know a lot about Joseph. We know that probably he passed away when Jesus was young.
We know that he was a carpenter, and we believe that he probably taught that skill to Jesus, because later, after the birth of Jesus, Mary and Joseph would have other children. Because we know Jesus had brothers, and his own brothers really didn't believe that he was the son of God, because when his ministry started, his brothers one time said, we need an intervention. We think our brother's crazy. He's telling people he's the son of God.
And it took only the miracles of Jesus and the death and the resurrection to convince some of these of his brothers that he was who he said he was.
James was a half brother of Jesus, and he wasn't convinced until he saw Jesus raised from the dead. And then he died believing, died a martyr, believing that Jesus was who he says he was.
So I'm saying, sometimes you do the right thing and people will criticize you, but that shouldn't keep you from doing the right thing. And they stayed focused, and God used them.
In fact, we know Jesus earthly ministry was only about three years, from about 30 to 33, most scholars would say.
And so for the length of his earlier years in life, he was a businessman, probably a carpenter, probably had made enough money to where he could do an itinerant ministry without having to be bivocational. Now, when Paul started his ministry, he didn't have a lot of support of the churches early on. So he was a tent maker. He made tents on the side that was kind of his side hustle to keep food on the table and to cover his travel expenses. He was a tent maker. A lot of pastors I know are bivocational. They pastor smaller churches that can't afford to pay them enough to where they can do this full time. So they're bivocational. And there were a lot of that in the Bible because those churches were in their infancy and didn't have a lot of resources. Well, Jesus, we know, had to have some resources because Judas was a treasurer, and if you got a treasurer, you got some money. So the guys probably pulled their resources, and Jesus had a little money, enough to fund him for three years. And so what's my point? My point is, he was raised by a man and a woman who taught him how to make a living on the practical side. Have you thought about that? He was taught by a dad who taught him a skill, who spent time with him that knew, son, you're going to be out on your own and you need to know how to do this, especially if he isn't going to be in his life. And for the majority of the life of Jesus he's raised by a single mom.
That ought to bless a lot of you single moms.
So a single mom has his influence and she influenced him so much that when she stood at the foot of the cross, even in his dying moments on the earth, Jesus looks at his mother and says to John, take care of my mom. He wanted to make sure his mother was taken care of. I'm leaving, but you take care of her.
So what a remarkable job did Joseph and Mary do in the life of Jesus?
We know all that, we got the record and we look back in hindsight, but man, these were kids.
She's 1718 years old, having a baby, being criticized and probably had her back. Friends turn their back on her and he as a young man is trying to provide for her. And all this goes back to angel intervenes and God interrupt their plans.
And yet they went with it, they rolled with it, they were spontaneous and structured enough to say God, if this is your will, we don't expect you to explain it, we're just going to trust you and follow it. And it changed the course of human history.
Let me give you three thoughts that struck me when I read this and I was thinking about sharing it with you this morning when your life is interrupted. Three things I would encourage you to do that is obvious, things that they did. Number one is realize God is working.
He's working, God has a plan, he has a purpose, he's working. Romans 828 we know, we don't speculate. Paul said, it's not a hypothesis. We know that all things work together for good. To those who love God, those who are called to his purpose. Now, he didn't say all things are good. Don't read something into the dinner. He didn't say that all things aren't good.
What he said was God has the ability to take all things. Anything that you and I happen have happened to us. The interruptions of life, the good and the bad, he can take those things that he either caused to happen or he allowed to happen, he can take those things and ultimately make those things work out for our good.
It may be hard to see it in the moment, it may not make sense to you today, but to know and walk out of this room knowing in this interruption that you're going through in your life, to know the God in heaven cares about you and he is working in this situation ought to bring you some comfort, because God is working.
Listen. He's working when I know what he's doing, and he's working when I don't.
He's working when I feel him working, and he's working when I don't.
He's working when I sense his presence in my life, and he's working when I don't sense his presence in my life. And you're going to go through experiences when you don't sense him and you don't feel him, and you don't see him. But let me tell you something. In the silence of those moments, he's working.
Did you know God did the greatest work in redeeming mankind? In the silence of the cross, when darkness fell on the cross, and that cross became as dark as midnight at noonday. And the father said to the Son, or the son says to the Father, my God, why have you forsaken me? In that moment, Jesus had become so completely sin. The sins of the world, past, present and future, were rolled upon Jesus on the cross, and he became the sacrificial lamb on the cross to bear the sins of the world. God, who is righteous and holy, cannot look upon sin. And when Jesus at the cross completely became sin, the father turns his back on his son. His son cries out in the darkness. And it's in the silence of the cross that we were redeemed.
Some of the most profound things God will do in your life, he'll do in silence.
Remember that old hymn, the stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas.
Do you know what's true? They are big and bright, especially in the heart of Texas. But you know why the stars seem so big and bright? They're out all the time. Some say the stars come out at night. No, they don't. They're out all the time. It's just you can't see them because there's so much light in the day. So there's part of God's creation and part of the brilliance and part of the beauty that God has created that we don't see till it gets dark. You know what? God will use the dark seasons of my life and yours. Sometimes he will put us in darkness so that we appreciate things we would never see otherwise.
You'd never see the stars or the planets if it didn't get dark. You'd never appreciate the majesty and the beauty of space if you weren't in a situation where you could see it. What am I saying? I'm saying God is at working in the dark seasons of your life. You may be in one right now wondering why you even came to church or why you watched online and you're trying to connect dots. And all of a sudden I may have said something that just arrested your thinking for a second. To know God is at work in my life.
He knows who I am and he knows where I am and he knows what I'm going through. And maybe he's just used this moment to make me. Maybe this is an epiphany for me to know God is at work.
Second thought I'd give you before we go, not only is God working, but God is. He's watching.
Remember that Bette Midler song from a long time ago? God is watching us from a distance.
Remember that. Some of you.
Well, that's true.
But some people carry that to the extent that they think God is just a distant deity, that's unconcerned about what we go through in our daily life.
There were, in fact, two of our forefathers were what you would call deist. Deist. They believed in God, had a relationship with God, but their view of God was that he's distant and detached.
Think about it this way, that God created everything, like a person putting a little train on the track, and you turn the train on, it goes round and round the Christmas tree. Well, that's kind of creation and history, and God put everything in motion and everything's running, and God now just backs up and he just watches the train. Distant, detached, uncaring. And deists believe that it leads you to fatalism, to thinking of whatever will be, will be. You can't change anything. It is what it is, and a lot of people buy into that, but that's not true. Yeah, God is above all things. He is distant. He is. I'll give you another word. He's transcendent. But God is also active in our daily life. Let me give you a proof verse for what I just said. Ephesians four six. Listen to what Paul said. God, who is above all, transcendent, distant, above all.
Isaiah said, he sets on the circle of the earth, so flat earthers don't have a place to run. There. He sets on the circle of the earth. Isaiah said, so God is above all. He is distant. But then he said, God is through all. And then I think he might have had a little southern bent. And he's in you all. He's in y'all. God is above all, through all and in y'all. So what does that verse teach us? It teaches two things. God is transcendent and he's imminent. God is above everything in your life and he's involved in everything in your life. God sees that from a 10,000 foot view and he walks through that experience with you. Psalm 23. Even the experience of death. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil. Why you're with me. You're not just above me and distant and watching from a distance. You are walking through the experience with me.
Can I tell you this morning there's not an interruption or experience that you and I go through in life, that you don't have the presence of God with you.
He never leaves you, he never forsakes you.
1905, a lady by the name of Sevilla Martin was visiting the friends in upper state New York. And these friends had terrible physical challenges in their life.
The family's name were the Doolittles. And this lady had a terminal illness and her illness had progressed to the point she hadn't been able to get out of bed in several years. Her husband was her primary caretaker and he was bound to a wheelchair. Now think about it. Here is a man in a wheelchair who is having to care for eternally ill wife who cannot even get out of bed.
And she said, when I visited the family, what struck me by them about them was their outlook. They were so joyful, she said, they were so happy and they had such a positive outlook. And she said, I just asked them, I said, how do you have such a joyful outlook on life going through what you're going through? And she said, they looked at me and they said, you remember the verse, it's our life verse that said, his eye is on the sparrow. And I know that he watches me.
And that inspired her to the point that she went, you ever heard that hymn, his eye is on the sparrow? And I know that that lady wrote that song from that experience.
She couldn't get the words out of her head that God is watching. He sees the sparrow when it falls, meaning that he sees the littlest things and he knows every detail of your life. He's watching you.
But let's put it together and I'll close. God is working.
God is watching. Here's a third thought. God is waiting. He's a God of timing. The Bible says, in the fullness of time, God sent forth his son. Everything about God is rhythm, timing. Oftentimes he's not telling you no, he's just saying, not now, not yet, you're not ready. If he's going to grow squash, he'll take 40 days. If he's going to grow an oak tree, he'll take 40 years.
So a lot of what he's doing in your life and mine is he's waiting. We're going to walk out of here in just a few minutes, and some of you will go over and grab your kids out of met kids, at least those workers are hoping you do.
And when you pick those little boogers up, probably what you won't do is pitch the fob or the keys to them and say, you're driving us home today. Now, the kids would love that, even if their little feet didn't reach the pedal. Now, what you're not telling them is, no, you can't drive, meaning you'll never drive. You're saying, no, you can't drive because you're not ready to drive. Does that make sense? So oftentimes, God is not saying, no, you can't drive, because you'll never drive. He's saying, you're not ready. He's not going to give you something that will hurt you. And so he may withhold things from you because you're not ready to receive them. So what are we back to? We're back to where they were when they heard the angel. You trust him.
Proverbs three, five and six. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him and he'll make your path straight. You remember when Joseph was sold into slavery, betrayed by his brothers? And all of those interruptions in that young man's life ultimately led him to becoming the prime minister of Egypt.
And in a time of famine, his brothers came unknowing, not knowing that Joseph was the prime minister. The very brother they thought they had killed was now the ruler of the land. He provided food for them. And when that reveal finally happens in Genesis 50, it's a beautiful story of forgiveness. You know what he said to them. Many of you are familiar with this text. He said, what you did, you thought evil against me. You thought evil against me. But he said, God meant it for good, for the saving of thousands. And so many times when you go through the experience, you think, man, this is the worst thing I've ever gone through. And you don't know till you get on the other side and you look back and you realize, that was a defining moment in my life. God knew what he was doing. He had me every step of the way. He can be trusted. Let's pray.
Father, thank you for your word. As Isaiah said, that never returns empty. It never returns void. I pray the message this morning would be a source of encouragement to my friends. I don't know what interruption or life events they may be dealing with today, but, Father, you do.
And would you remind them of your presence and your purpose in their life, that you can take anything and make that anything work ultimately for their good?
Even though, Lord, we know sometimes things don't make sense and won't make sense till we're in heaven. I acknowledge that.
But, Father, we know you are too good to do wrong, and we know you are too wise to make a mistake. So we trust you.
I pray for my friends who may never have placed their faith in you, that this might be the moment right where they're right where they're setting, right where they are when they're listening, where they'll say, Lord Jesus, come into my heart. Forgive my sin with all that I know about me. I now trust all that I know about you, and I invite you now into my life.
Father, bless us this week. Go before us and guide us and help us to be sensitive to your work within us, and we'll give you great praise in Christ's name. Amen.
[00:37:45] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions or prayer requests, please contact us by visiting metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. We look forward to seeing you next week.
