God's Committed to Humanity

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0:00 So, you know, the 12 days of Christmas, you know, the song of Partridge and the Territory, the Five Golden Rings, that that is actually supposed to be the 12 days of after a Christmas, and you're familiar with that, that it's not the 12 days of the Christmas, the 12 days of Christmas is the 12 seasons of the season of Christmas, from the celebration of the incarnation to the celebration of the Magiah, the 15th, which is on January 6th, which is tomorrow.

0:32 And so, I was thinking about that idea as we were celebrating Christmas Eve together, and wanted to think about, and also, like, what we could preach about six different ideas of the incarnation, which is not fair to you all. And so, I said, I'm going to make, I'm going to elongate our season of Christmas and pull out for several weeks different things we learned from the reality of the incarnation about the character and attitude of our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,

1:06 the God of Christ and Church, the God of creation and life. And so, last week we talked about that from the incarnation, we learned about God's preferential option for the poor, that God could have been born anywhere to anyone at any time, and God is born in the person of Jesus to the woman Mary, and the man Joseph in the town of Bethahum, in a village,

1:39 in a little manger, and grows up in Nazareth. At the time, scholars think Nazareth had about a population of about 400. We talked about how God chooses the poor over and over again, throughout the whole story of Scripture, the marginalized and the poor, and that that can't be for piety's sake. God is not choosing the poor in order to look highest to the world,

2:09 or somehow to just pick the right things though God is obligated to do something that is right against what God wants to do. Note that God must continually pick the poor and socially marginalized because God actually cares for the poor and the social marginalized. And out of that we talked about two main things last week that what do we actually care about?

2:39 And can we identify the ways in which we are the poor that God cares about? A prayer for me this past week has been, Lord, where is my poverty? In what ways in my poor that you would come to me? The other thing we learned is that because of the incarnation, we have the capacity, like God, to actually care about people. You don't have to settle for doing the right thing because it's the right thing.

3:09 You don't have to settle for obligation or guilt. You can become a person who actually cares about the poor, the broken, the marginalized in the world, Christmas means that you can't. This week I want to look at another kind of thing that Christmas teaches us about God. And what struck me thinking about the incarnation this year in the celebration of Christmas is how determined God is to preserve humanity.

3:46 It struck me this year looking at the story of Christmas that with the birth of Jesus, God puts the stake in the ground that He is not giving up on humanity. And this is fascinating for me. And I want to look at a little bit, kind of orient ourselves to why that would... The reason that that's fascinating is because I think about the story of Scripture,

4:17 and every time God gave a restart for humanity. How many times God did that? When you follow the story of Scripture, it seems almost like there is an evolving strategy where God tries one way to work with humanity and it doesn't work until God tries another way to work with humanity. It doesn't work until God tries another way and then finally just like final solution of the incarnation arrives. And as I was thinking about that, I thought, oh God is so determined with humanity.

4:52 And I want to look at a couple of those. You know the first one at the very beginning of the story of Scripture in the garden of God creates humanity. Near as we can tell, God is not obligated to create humanity. Just like His fresh, hard-to-turn option for the poor, God is not creating humanity because God must. God creates humanity because God will, because God wants to call humanity into a world that God created just for them.

5:24 And it's like, phrase, go out into this garden that I have made out of my own imagination. Be fruitful and multiply. I love that. It does not command humanity to go out and be kind and serve. Be fruitful and multiply. Go live. Expensive, growing lives.

5:58 Accomplish the things that you want. Be fruitful and multiply. Expand. Build. Create. Be fruitful and multiply. And then the contrast to this invitation to humanity that we'll see happens over and over the story of Scripture is it feels like the response of humanity to this invitation to be fruitful and multiply,

6:33 to be creative and expansive, to live and build, is like the response is like the two words that came into my head were fear and my opium, like, myopic fear, like, narrow, small vision and fear. And you can see it right there in the garden at the very beginning. God, out of creativity, and I can just spread out this whole garden in front of them and just go out there.

7:06 Be fruitful and multiply. And in fear and my opium, humanity focuses down on this one little piece of fruit that behind there we are sure God is holding out on us. This is what we'll focus on. And we'll channel all of our fears that we're not getting something that we ought to be getting. That God is not good, that might not work out well, that we are missing out. We'll channel all of our fears and get narrowly focused on this one thing.

7:38 It's our undoing. Over and over again it's our undoing. Fear and myopia against the invitation of fruitful and multiplying life. And so God spins it out, you know, and he starts us again. We choose the fruit and God says, man, I wish he had it. And I don't know exactly how many people there were in the garden.

8:08 He seems to be dealing with mainly the two, but I don't know how long they've been there. I don't know. There's a lot of questions, right? But seemingly it's still at the beginning of things. It would have been easier to just start over. Right? But like God is a true artist, right? Who's the painter, the PBS painter, like, like, yeah, I thought about stuff like that. Like, he makes the bush into a tree and he messes up or something.

8:42 You know, like, he does all this stuff. Right? There are no mistakes. He just makes up a new alphabet, right? God's like a true artist, right? So he sets it out. He doesn't give up on him. He sets it out. He has to give up on him. He says, okay, to swap here, it's going to be way harder for me. I wish that you had not given in to your fear, myopia, and taken up my invitation. It's going to be way harder for me. Your relationship dynamics are going to be challenged.

9:13 Your work is going to be a pain. But let's go out there and I promise I'll come up with a solution. Right? There you go out. And what I want to look at is the story that we don't look at all the way a lot. The story of the flood in Genesis 9. It's really interesting because the flood is the closest God gets to just like a brand new canvas, right?

9:49 And he's like, I mean, the phrase that like launches the worldwide flood is everything which demands all evil all the time. It's hard to say the situation is much work. Like you can't, I mean, that's bad. Every inclination, all evil all the time. And evil defined as moving away from the back. So this looks like fear in my open, like that.

10:23 Fearful thinking, selfish thinking. And so he grabs Noah and those kids and all of the animals and gets them on the boat that he told to know exactly how to make, right? And supposedly there's a guy in Kentucky or something that builds a scale, like actual two scale model, like the one to one of the art. Have you heard about that?

10:53 You can go see it. It's like a big part. You go to see Noah's art, walk through it. I don't like to be, somehow he like, wondered, figured out how much a cubic is in today's measurements and built with art. I don't know. I haven't seen it. Noah built the art, survived on it, right? And they're in for four days and four nights and they're longer while they're waiting for their water to go down. And then by the time you get to chapter nine, right? And the chapter eight, they've got, they disembarked from the art.

11:26 And verse 20, Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and awkward bird offers and the altar and the Lord smelled the pleasing of Rome and the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man for the intention of man's heart is evil from his view. Neither will I ever strike, again, strike down every living future that I have done. The first thing is like, even God has decided he will cut humanity some slack.

12:07 Every desire of the heart from the time they are born was every, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his view, away from God. So if you find yourself at the beginning of this year, any kind towards fear, any mile, if you are narrowly focused on areas of your problems, if you find that you are consumed by worry and you don't know how things will work out, if you find that you are overly

12:43 focused on dollars and jobs and not able, if you are overly concerned about yourself and can't find in yourself the capacity to care about other people in your house, in your on your street, in your city, in your church. First step at this beginning of the year, like the God of creation, cut yourself some slack. You are human.

13:15 And from the beginning, humanity has had a problem with fear and myopia. We just are afraid and it's hard to care, to look at things outside of ourselves. It's hard. Cut yourself some slack. The God of creation, as he approaches after the flood goes, okay, I got one little family, I'm making a commitment to myself, I'm going to cut them some slack because all the influences

13:47 from the time of birth is evil. Neither will I ever strike down every living's preacher as I have done, while the earth remains seat time and harvest cold and heat summer, winter day and night, shall not cease. You know, it's cold and the heat, like it's mitigating that sun for us here, we get like heat and blessed heat, but you get the point.

14:18 Chapter 9, and God bless no one in his sons and said to them, here's what I want you to see, God bless his sons and said to them, I'm not right after the, right as they get off the boat, be fruitful and multiply until they are taking his status to the first one. Hey, go out there now, you have, this is a restart of humanity. If it were me, I would sit him down and go, okay, but here's the main road, don't screw this up,

14:48 we got a whole new earth and just wash it clean. You're the first ones, if I talk to you, I'm talking to everybody. So let's lay out exactly what will happen, how you live, what you'll do and what you won't do. If you go down this road, you know it's going to be a problem, I want to put it in right now. So if you walk down that road, I can strike you down and start over with these, he didn't walk. Like he just says, go out there now, I cleaned it up for you. Go and live like beautiful expansive lives, creative and productive, fruitful and multiplied.

15:22 Live in a way that expands out in front of you, be fruitful and multiply. Of course, like in a matter of a few generations, they're like building a tower. They had the whole world, they've all gathered together around this one tower because they're sure that their future lies in their broken little hands. The God has not washed out from them, so they're going to build a tower and get up to the God and tell him how it all is.

15:56 And here, so he spreads them out, he doesn't give up, he spreads them out and he picks Abraham and he tells Abraham what, how many of you lay beautiful land? Look at you, all these offspring and kids. And you'll be a blessing to the whole world, would you let you do that for him? And Abraham's defying characteristic is he says, yes Lord, I will let you give me a fruitful and expansive life.

16:30 Yes, I will let you give that to me. I will let you give a prayed and my haka kra, turning on myself so that you won't confer on your promises. Yes, I will let you in, of course, Abraham and chaos because he's human. And the aid of finding characteristic of our God that is see in the name here is that he refuses to give up on him and he will God, without creation of life.

17:03 Abraham might have been taken to Christ's in the church, will refuse to give up on you. He will refuse to give up on you. Abraham fails, cool, lay life and at the Egypt he brings them out in order to what? Give them land where they can live, creative, fruitful, expansive lives where they can multiply.

17:33 And what do they do? They're like terrified. They're afraid this land that you've given us, walled cities, fruitful vineyards will never work, it'll never work. You've got to be a king and some armies, these kings of armies are not big enough. We're going to make a deal with the Assyrians, I know they've got some other dominance, they're not going to be working, you're not panning out, here. So God takes them out and then there's his famous passage in Jeremiah 29. I think that's where it is, let's see.

18:13 Because he took them out, they're like conquered by Babylon and he sets them up in Babylon and then, oh yeah, they're like in Babylon, he's like taking them into enemy, but he hasn't forgotten and he speaks to them. Their fear of my obedience turned their lives upside down, they're taking out of their land, they're putting another place. And what has God told them to do? Jeremiah 29 verse 3, even the letter was sent by the hand of Elsos, verse 4.

18:44 Of Jeremiah 29, that says, the Lord opposed the God of Israel to all the exiles who might have sent him to the verse 5 build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their failures. Take lives and have sons and daughters, and take lives for your sons and give your daughters a marriage if they make their sons and daughters and multiply their denies. Seek the welfare of the city where they're sitting in the exile. Pray to the Lord on his behalf, for his welfare and you will find your welfare.

19:14 I know you've screwed it up again, but you're human. Here, start again. Go here. Be fruitful and multiple. Live creative and expansive lives. Build things and live. And then they come back and he's be sets in Jerusalem and then Jesus comes on the scene. And when Jesus gets cornered over and over again about why he's there, what does he say? I've come to set the captives for it. I've come to Him and they have life and have it to the full.

19:49 One of my favorite little passages is just one verse, so it's probably not fair to pull it out, but I'm going to do it anyway. In Matthew chapter 25, Jesus is telling a terrible kind of about what it will be like when it comes back the next time. And what is coming here to set up for everyone? In Matthew chapter 25, in verse 31, he starts to say, son of man will come and separate the sheep from the goats.

20:21 And the sheep is the group you want to be. Those who are going with them forever. And he says, come, you who are blessed from a father and inherit the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world. The vision Jesus paints for the very end for the culmination of all of his work is that he has prepared al-kingdom for you to go and live in. And he's been prepared since the foundation of the world. What are the best flowers that we love to look at? It's there for you.

20:55 What scenery is the most crepe like exhilarating for you, the waves and the mountains, right next to each other, just for you. He has been preparing al-kingdom for you just for the foundation of the world for you to go and live in. Where this broken, afraid and monopic humanity is finally put to bed forever. And like the Christ, you have the capacity like you see in Abraham and in glimpses.

21:27 In Mary after the celebration of the birth, like you see in the woman Anna and the old man Simeon in his stories, you have inside of you now. In fits and starts the capacity to trust that God will give you a life fruitful and multiplying. Right now, we, to the capacity that we are able can live lives that are fruitful and multiplied.

22:08 Because we have a God who will not give up on offerative. You will feel over and over again, fear and myopia welling up inside of you. That's fine. That is very human. But know that Christmas means that's not all you'll find inside of you.

22:39 Christmas means that you will also find the capacity to live fruitful and multiplying lives to owe how God to give you joyful, creative, expansive living. And that all you taste of that here is a small sporty of what has been comparing to you since the foundation of the law. Christmas shows us that God is absurdly committed to you.

23:14 He is not afraid of your failures and shortcomings. He is not afraid of your fear and myopia. He is not turned off by a God who is cresting your fear and myopia. And continue to offer you again and again, expansive and beautiful as a fruitful and multiplying life as a Christmas means. And he has found a way for you to start that now and live it through.

23:46 I'm afraid that you can be people like Abraham who take him up on that. Hey Lord, good God, thank you for your generosity and tenacity towards us. We are acquainted with here in their own vision. We are familiar with despair and feelings of being overwhelmed.

24:30 We would like also for you to make us familiar with the feelings of joy, creativity, hope. Or let this Christmas season be a beginning or a new beginning, a beginning again of fruitful and multiplying life with you. Christmas is the end of prayer.