What To Do When God Arrives - Audio
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So last week, if you were here, we were kind of talking about what it looks like when God arrives. We're in a series on Advent, Advent from the Latin Adventus, which is from the preposition ad and the verb venio, meaning coming or arrival. And so really, Advent is arrival. It's the coming, too. It's when you've gotten there. And last week, we were talking a little bit about what it looks like when God arrives in a place. You see, we typically have like, we have maybe an idea of what it looks like when God arrives. And typically, that's something like it's rainbows and cherry unicorns and fun time. You know, things are bad, things are awful, and then God arrives. And then things get great. God fixes it, takes care of business. And then so we said, well, okay, if there's one time when we can look and see what it looks like when God arrives, when his arrival happens, well, surely it's the incarnation. Surely it's the Christmas story. It's when God actually literally arrives. And then what we found as we looked at Matthew, primarily Matthew 2, what it looks like when God arrives is it's not like that at all. It's not rainbows and unicorns and happy times. In fact, it's actually kind of bloody. In fact, when God arrives, things that were status quo get flipped upside down. They get changed out. They get topsy-turvy. Now, when we're looking at the status quo, for some folks, the status quo is great. For others, the status quo is bad. But for everyone, the status quo is comfortable. And maybe that's not a good thing, but it's a true thing. It's comfortable. And yet when God arrives, he takes that comfortable status quo, whether it's good or whether it's bad, and he flips it upside down. Things get topsy-turvy. Things get crazy. In fact, things get worse. And we looked, as Matthew talks about some of the prophecies from the Old Testament in Hosea and Jeremiah in Isaiah, some of the things that he brings out and what's so crazy is how Matthew calls out these prophecies and these prophecies, our eyes to the history of Israel, to some of the places in Israel's history where God arrived. And we see the same thing over and over, that the places where God arrived, things got worse before they got better. When God arrived in and through Moses' authority to deliver the people from slavery in Egypt, things got worse before liberty happened. When Israel was recalcitrant, when Israel was kicking against God and he allowed the Babylonians to come in and punish and take them off to exile, things got a lot worse before they got any better. When David is anointed king, he's not just installed on the throne. Saul's not super happy about it. Instead, things get worse before David comes and begins a just and good rule. Things get worse before they get better. And maybe I suggested there's probably people here who, wherever you're at in life, things look topsy-turvy. They look like they're upside down. Whatever the status quo was, it's been changed. It's been altered. And maybe I suggested this is a sign that in your life, in some way, maybe the Holy Spirit has been stirred up. And maybe God has arrived. And that should give us some hope. But it also begs the question, if God has arrived, what do we do now? And that's kind of the thing I want to look at today because actually, if we follow the text, when we go back to Matthew, we're going to see that Matthew did show us all these, okay, God's arriving, and yeah, it's crazy, and yeah, it's bloody, and yeah, it's rough, yeah, it's scary. But in and through the story, he gives us one person who knew what to do when God arrived. And I think that if we follow the story of this person, we're going to get a sense for maybe what we're supposed to do, how we're supposed to approach it when God has arrived and shaken things up. There's a lot of text today. You can follow in your in your Bibles and the few Bibles or the Bibles that you brought with you, they're going to be on the screen up here. But they're also on the back of your note sheet. It's selections from chapter one and chapter two of Matthew. And I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to read the whole darn thing. And if you're still, if you're still awake at the end, I'll be really, really pleased. And if you're not, hopefully the person next to you will just kind of elbow you. Did you know they used to do this? And there used to be like a person whose job it was, was to like walk down the aisle and like slap people with a stick when they fell asleep. Because sermons used to be really, really boring. And hopefully they're not as boring now. But we'll find out. Let's read Matthew chapters one and two. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. Jesus Messiah Jesus. After his mother Mary was betrothed and gaged to Joseph before they came together, had sex, she was found with child of
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In the second of his Advent messages, Pastor Tom continues discussing how things get shaken up when God arrives, reminding us that the good of God's future is worth the troubles of His present.