Sermon manuscript:
The message that the Bible gives us is that God dwells with
his people. In our Old Testament reading today we heard about God entering the
tent that God had instructed Moses to build. For about ten chapter of Exodus
there are very specific and elaborate instructions that are recorded. The tent
had three parts. There was a curtain placed around the whole perimeter, kind of
like a wall. The tent itself was to be inside this courtyard. There were two
chambers in the tent. The ark of the covenant was to be in the most holy place
in the back. That was where God dwelt.
In our reading, the glory of God that was manifest in the
cloud came to rest in that tent so that Moses could not go into it. When the
glory cloud would go up from the tent the people would pack their things. They
would follow God wherever he led. When he came to rest, they would unpack their
things, including the tabernacle that God had instructed them to build, and
they would stay there until the cloud of his glory would go up again.
This was a new epoch for God’s people. With Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob God did not stay with them in such a way. God would appear to the
patriarchs from time to time and speak to them by the Angel of the Lord. When
he appeared he would give them promises to encourage them. But he did not dwell
with them the way that he dwelt with their descendants as he led them out of
Egypt with the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. After
the ark of the covenant and the tabernacle was built, that was the way that God
dwelt with his people.
Among all the nations of the earth that existed, it was only
among the descendants of Jacob that God dwelt. This made them a holy nation.
They were blessed by being in God’s presence, whereas those who were not holy
were repelled by God’s presence. That’s the way it was in the beginning, is
now, and ever shall be. Those who have been prepared to be in God’s presence by
being forgiven and sanctified find God’s presence to be healthy and life
giving. Those who are unholy and sinful bear God’s holiness.
The Old Testament, from Exodus onward, has this presence of
God among his people at the heart of it. God is present with them first of all
in the tabernacle, then later with King Solomon’s temple. Generation after
generation God sanctified these people. They were blessed to know him and his
Word in this life and were prepared to live with him in a yet more intimate and
better way in the next.
A new epoch for God’s people came with Jesus. The Apostle
John speaks to this in the opening words of his Gospel that we heard this
morning: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him everything was
made, and without him not one thing was made that has been made… This Word that
existed already at the beginning became flesh in the person who was named
Jesus. God dwells among us in this Jesus.
I mentioned last Sunday that there is nothing in the Old
Testament that holds a candle to what the angel Gabriel said to Mary. The God
of the Temple and the tabernacle, the God of Mt. Sinai, the God who created the
world was going to take up residence in her womb. This is astounding almost to
the point of being absurd. On the other hand, though, it is quite in keeping
with the general way that God operates.
When God chose a nation to be his own, he did not choose the
most powerful or populous nation. He chose Abraham, and his wife, Sarah. He
chose them when they were childless and already well advanced in years. They
didn’t even have any offspring who could receive the inheritance that God was
promising to them.
With the new epoch of God’s grace that came through Moses,
you see the same thing. This people hardly deserved to be called a nation. They
were an enslaved people under the Egyptians. They didn’t have any autonomous
government. They didn’t have a military. God fought for them and subdued the
Egyptians with his mighty arm. They were a wandering band for forty years
before they entered into their promised inheritance in Canaan.
After that, through all the years when the Israelites lived
in Canaan, they never developed into anything more than a regional power. They
never became as great as the Egyptians before them or the Assyrians,
Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, or Romans after them. They were a small people
with the great God in their midst.
The birth of Jesus fits this pattern. At this time the
Israelites were again a subjected people. The Romans ruled over them. The flesh
and blood for the eternal Son of God was chosen to be from a virgin who didn’t
even live in Jerusalem. She lived in Galilee, the hinterlands.
It’s quite clear that Mary and Joseph did not have a lot of
money. Otherwise they never would have found themselves in the straights that
they were in at the time of Jesus’s birth. If they could have afforded it, they
probably would have found some better accommodations than a manger for his bed.
The sacrifice that they gave at the temple shortly after his birth was the
cheaper option of two pigeons instead of the more expensive option of a lamb.
Plus, what’s much more, who should believe Mary and Joseph?
It’s one thing to be a nobody from nowhere without a penny to your name. It’s
another thing to be disbelieved as a charlatan and a fool. To this day there
are people who think that it is impossible that Jesus does not have an earthly
father. They think that he was conceived by an earthly father out of wedlock.
This is how it has always been, however. People who looked
at Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would not have believed that God was in their
midst. People who looked at the nation of Israel while they were enslaved, but
also when they were at the height of their power, would not have thought that
God was in their midst. This is especially the case with the virgin Mary. But
to those who have believed, this is a wonderful thing in their eyes. God
despises the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
This general pattern of God’s grace being found among the
poor and humble continues on to this day. God dwells in humble little churches
that have to struggle to find a way to pay the bills. The big churches with the
big endowments, the National Cathedral, or St. Paul’s in London, quite
literally have unbelievers preaching unbelief to those who go to hear them. It was
not the biggest, most beautiful building within which the Christ child was
found. He is content to dwell in places where we wouldn’t even dream of giving
birth to our babies.
So you do well to not be put off by appearances. The way
things look is one thing. What God promises is another. The truth is that God’s
people have never looked very impressive. In fact, whenever they started to
look impressive they tended to depart from their faithfulness. But God’s people
have always been blessed with the most wonderful promises.
The same is true for you as God’s people. Take, for example,
what was said in our Gospel reading this morning. You, who have believed, have
been given the power, the authority, the status of being a child of God. John
says you have been born not of blood, or the desire of the flesh, or of the
husband’s will. You have been born of God.
I cannot conceive of a higher or better thing than that you
should have Jesus as your brother and God as your Father. That is what John is
saying. This is what God has done by uniting himself with us. The promise is
high, almost to the point of absurdity, because the appearances do not match up
with it. But the appearances will come eventually when the time is right.
Right now we are God’s workmanship. He who has begun a good
work in you is going to bring it to completion on the Day of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Then you will behold the splendor of our God who now works among us in
a humble and hidden way, preparing us for the holiness that is to come. That
will be the final epoch of God’s grace when everything will be as it should be.
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