It has
been 35 weeks, and though we are not in the pandemic red zone in our county, we
are being cautious and hoping in the God who is with us. On this second Sunday
in the season of Advent and this Communion Sunday we worship in Spirit and in
Truth.
Our musical selection is before us.
We enter the Advent season to help us get ready for
the “Advent” or the coming of Jesus the Christ, our Saviour who saves us from
our sins and the troubles that we easily get ourselves into. Jesus comes
whether or not we want to be saved. Just like we come into this world whether
we are ready or not and we leave this world whether we are ready or not, Jesus
comes to save us whether or not we want him to save us, whether or not we
welcome him and love him.
Listen to God’s word and hear how Moses was saved.
2 1. Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a
Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw
that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could
hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and
pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the
bank of the Nile.
4 His sister stood at a distance to see what
would happen to him. Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe,
and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among
the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. 6 She opened it and saw the
baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew
babies,” she said.
7 Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter,
“Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you? ”8 “Yes,
go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother.
9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this
baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and
nursed him. 10 When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter
and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the
water.”
We enter the Advent season to help us get ready for
the “Advent” or the coming of Jesus the Christ, our Saviour who saves us from
our sins and the troubles that quickly find us or as we easily get ourselves
into. Jesus comes whether or not we want to be saved. Just, like us, comes into
this world whether we are ready or not and we leave this world whether we are
ready or not, Jesus comes to save us whether or not we want him to save us,
whether or not we welcome him and love him.
Moses came into the world despite the fact that he
was supposed to be aborted like children have been aborted since the beginning
of time. He was like a refugee or a runaway slave. His mother Jochebed hid him
in a water tight basket and placed him in the river, floating into an unknown
future. Jochebed had a daughter, Moses’ sister. Her name was Miriam. Jochebed
had another son Aaron, Moses’ brother. They both came under the wire of Herod’s
law that authorized all Hebrew babies to be aborted.
At one time or another, any one of us could have the
experience Moses and his family had. At one time or another, we have found
ourselves in a world of trouble, threatened, legally or culturally with becoming
a basket case. Some of us may have felt like the character in the Footprints
poem where in the end we find we were not as alone as we felt. It was then that
God carried us!
The life of Moses reminds us that God carries us!
Moses was somebody special. Do we understand that we are just as special as
Moses? We are so special that anytime we are in trouble, anytime we need help,
anytime we find ourselves rolling down a river with no sense of where the tide
will take us, with no control of where we will end up, God carries us. God is
in charge. We always have a reason to hope. God has a purpose and a plan for
every tear we shed and every joy we share. That is how special we are to God.
Nothing about us is wasted. We are precious to God in every way.
All of us cannot be famous or wealthy, but we are all important to God and to the people of God. In Simon Sinek’s TED talk, I heard the story of a man who was considered very important. His name was Samuel Pierpont Langley.
In the 20th Century while everybody was trying to invent the plane, Langley was given $50,000 by the War Department to get the troops in the air. He had government money. He was from Harvard. He worked at the Smithsonian and he knew everybody that was somebody. The New York Times followed him around everywhere, and everyone was rooting for him. His goal was to be rich and famous.
At the same time, Orville and Wilbur Wright in Dayton, Ohio were working with a team that had no money, no college degrees, and nobody was surrounding them with microphones for a press conference. Simon noted -They tell stories of how every time the Wright brothers went out, they would have to take five sets of parts, because that's how many times they would crash before supper.
And,
eventually, on December 17th, 1903, the Wright brothers took flight, and no one
was there to even experience it. We found out about it a few days later. And
further proof that Langley was motivated by the wrong thing: the day the Wright
brothers took flight, he quit. He could have said, "That's an amazing
discovery, guys, and I will improve upon your technology," but he didn't.
He wasn't first, he didn't get rich, he didn't get famous, so he quit. (Sinek)
We are special and successful, not because we think
we are, not because the world says we are. We are all special because God has a
special purpose and a plan for each one of us.
We are all special for three reasons. We have God’s
commandments, we are completely covered by God, and God cares about us. We are
special because of the commandants. As I heard Pastor Greg Laurie say, God’s commandments are not obsolete; they
are absolute. God’s commandments are not designed to punish us or imprison us
but God’s commandments are designed to protect us from the evils of life.
We are special because we have been given God’s
commandments. Secondly, we are special because we are covered. Like Moses in
the basket, floating down a river, we are covered up, wrapped up, and tangled
up with Jesus. God love us and if we give God half a chance we can know it like
we have never known it before. If we stand still, we will see that God wants to
save us again and again. If we wait on God instead of running ahead on our own,
we will see more clearly the path God puts before us in order to fulfill God’s
purpose. As the songwriter Charles Tindley wrote “If we trust and never doubt,
God will surely bring us out. Take your burdens to the Lord and leave them
there…”
We are special because God gives us commandments. We are special because we are covered, and thirdly, we are special because God cares for us. Psalm 139.13 says God knit us together in our mother’s womb. Jesus tells the Pharisees in Matthew 23.37 God gathers us under God’s wings like a hen gathers her chicks, but you do not want to be gathered. In Jeremiah 31.3 God says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love. With lovingkindness, I have drawn you close.” Isaiah 51.16 assures us that we are safely tucked away in the palm of God’s hand. Luke 12.7 tells us how God knows us and cares for us so intimately that even the hairs on our head are numbered. Psalm 56.8 tells us that God knows the details of our sorrows, collects each tear in a bottle and records them in a book. Don’t ever tell me that God does not care!
At the same time, there are moments when we resist
being close to God. We want no parts of being tucked securely under God’s wing.
When we remember our sorrows, we may resent God for not preventing them in the
first place. Such feelings are human. We have conflicts with God just as we
have conflicts with each other. Every relationship has conflict. Every loving
relationship is a healthy relationship. Every healthy and loving relationship
has conflict, but the conflict is resolved peacefully, by the miracle and
majesty of our God.
If we hold on to our resentment toward God, more so
than we hold onto our love for God, we cannot have peace with God. We no longer
feel special or act special. Like a rose fallen off the vine, we begin to
wither and fade. If we love God, we will keep the commandments. And the
commandments are summed up in these two: to love the Lord with all of our heart,
soul, and mind and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
With all our weaknesses, failures, grudges, and
grumpiness, we are still beautiful and precious in the sight of God and Godly
people. In December 3rd’s Upper Room devotional Mabel Ninan of
California writes how she constantly prayed as a teenager that God would make
her beautiful. As she matured spiritually, she learned to affirm “All creation
meets God’s standards for perfection and beauty, including… [all of us.]”
We are special, so special that God sent us a savior.
Whether we accept Jesus or reject Jesus, we will always be reminded that we are
special because God gave us the Commandments, we are special because we are covered
in great love and we are cared especially in every detail possible. May this Advent
season be a time when you feel special from the royal crown of your head to the
bottom of your beautiful feet!
Let us
pray…
God, you
are so beautiful and we declare our love to you once again. We love you and
thank you that you have created us in your image. Help us to see each other as
beautiful and as worthy of love as you see us. Help our relationships to be
healing, healthy, loving, and as peaceful as possible.
We pray as
you taught the disciples:
Our father
who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on
earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread and forgive us our
trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into
temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power
and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
I hope
this message has inspired you to feel special and beautiful and to love our
creator God more than ever! Next week
will be the third Sunday in Advent, a reminder of Joy. The message is from Luke 2.1-7 entitled “New
Birth: Jesus, Holy Hay” If you would like to make your contribution to the
great ministry and mission of Bethel, the website is
Or you can
send it to 952 Bethel Church Road, Spring City, Pa. 19475. God bless you!
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