041211 Sermon Christmas

04 am2 Immanuel

In every human culture all over the globe, no matter how isolated that culture is, there is the concept of God.

About a month and a half ago, TIME magazine carried an article with the cover story “The God Gene.” The article raised the question, “Do people believe in God because of their DNA?”

The article also quoted scientist Dean Hamer who says, “We’re just a bunch of chemical reactions running around in a bag.” He believes our belief in God may just be a figment of our genes.

But article also cites scientists (and of course theologians) who believe that God planted within us a longing and capacity to be able experience the divine. If we were divinely assembled wouldn’t make sense that our “parts list” would include a genetic chip that would enable us to contemplate our maker?

If there is a God in the universe, how might that God reveal it existence to us?

It is possible that our text this morning provides part of that answer:

If you have your Bibles please turn to Matthew 2:

18This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. 20But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." 22All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us." 24When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

In vs. 23 we see that one of the names of Jesus is Immanuel which means God with us or the “with us God.”

In this verse where Matthew speaks of the virgin being with child and giving birth to a son he is quoting am earlier passage from the Bible: Isaiah 7:14.

If we go back in the Bible to Isaiah 7 we have a picture of King Ahaz of Judah shaking in his sandals.

Back in 741 BC (before Christ) the King of Judah Ahaz is freaking out because he discovers that Rezin, the king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of the king of Israel, have joined forces to invade his Kingdom and place their own king on his throne.

How does King Ahaz respond? According to 2 Kings, he goes to the “bank”—i.e., he takes gold out of temple treasury and sends it to the king of Assyria, the superpower of his day. King Ahaz hopes that this gold will buy him the protection from his enemies.

But, God tells the prophet Isaiah, “Go to King Ahaz of Judah and tell him to trust me (God) instead of the King of Assyria.”

So, Isaiah goes to King Ahaz and says God wants you to trust him, not the King of Assyria. In fact, God even wants you to ask him for a sign that he’s going to deliver you.
But King Ahaz says, "I will not ask, nor will I test the LORD!" King Ahaz’s words sound very noble on the surface, but what he is really saying in a round about way to Isaiah is, "I have already hired the Assyrian army to save us. I don't need God's help. So, why do I need a sign from God?"
The prophet Isaiah says God is going to give you a sign anyway. And Isaiah says, 23"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us."
You’d think that King Ahaz who was about to be attacked by the combined armies of Israel and Syria--would welcome the news of God’s presence with him! But Ahaz through his non-response is saying in essence, “I’d rather bet my welfare allying with Assyria rather than with God.”

The sign of Immanuel the “with us God,” the message of Christmas is a message that is received as good news by some, but--like Ahaz--not welcomed by others.

Why?

Many people do not want God to interfere in any way with their lives.

Some people think that the reason that people believe in God is because they desperately want to believe in God—so they construct the idea of God, but God is imply a figment of their imagination. Freud argued, people believe in God is because they have a deep psychological need to believe in great parent figure.

But the exact opposite is true as well. There are powerful forces in us that would prefer NOT to believe in God.

I remember being at a school camp in grade 6 or 7.

One of the rules was that boys were not supposed to be in the girl’s cabins and girls weren’t supposed to be in the boy’s cabin. There was this one girl that I really liked and ended up hanging out in her cabin with her and some of her cabin mates. Someone came by the cabin and said Mr. Hiechert (who was the vice principal) is looking for Ken Shigematsu. I remember thinking, “oh no” and rolling under one of the bunk beds. A few minutes later, Mr. Hiechert knocked on the door and walked into the cabin and asks the girls, “Is Ken Shigematsu here?” The girls say, “No haven’t seen him.” Mr. Hiechert never looked under the bunk bed and I was not discovered.

When Mr. Hiechert came into the cabin and I heard him asking, “Is Ken Shigematsu here?” I remember thinking under the bunk bed, I so wish he wasn’t here.

There are many people who so wish God wasn’t here and they choose to not believe in God.

Jean Paul-Sartre, the French existentialist philosopher, as a young person was a sweeping floor and thought if there is a God, God is watching what I’m doing right now. He said I don’t want God to be looking at me. I don’t want God to know what I am doing. It’s not surprising that he became an atheist.

C.S. Lewis the great Oxford scholar talked about how he so desperately did not want to believe in God. He wanted to seek God about as much as a mouse that wants to seek a cat. This English bachelor scholar wanted more than anything to be “left alone.”

In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, he recounts part of his spiritual journey. You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen (College, Oxford) night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.

Dr. Armand Nicholi professor of psychiatry at Harvard points out that people who have a difficult time with authority figures in general and with their parents in particular, may have a more difficult time believing in God.

Professor Nicholi points out that people who want to break free of any kind of authority figure will tend to resist believing in God.

People with a certain lifestyle which they intuit would some put them at odds with an “all powerful, moral being” may choose not to believe in God. My best friend from childhood, choose not to trust God with his life, because he didn’t want God to interfere in anyway with his lifestyle.

King Ahaz was a King was notoriously evil King. Among other things he sacrificed his own sons to the idol of Molech—and so really it’s no wonder than he views this prophecy that God will be wit him not as a comfort, but as threat.

There are strong psychological factors that may cause a person to want to believe in God, but as C.S. Lewis pointed out there are equally strong psychological factors that cause us not to want to believe in God.

King Ahaz does not want God, he doesn’t want a sign from God; instead, he wants to ally himself with Superpower of his day, Assyria.

The prophet Isaiah says in effect King Ahaz want or it not, God is going to give you a “sign.” And Isaiah says 23"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us."
The word virgin in the context can mean among other things a young woman (or a young man about to be married) in the immediate context virgin is likely referring to Isaiah’s wife. Though the text doesn’t explicitly say this in Isaiah 7, presumably the virgin being referred to is Isaiah’s second wife, as his first wife already had a son and so she was clearly not a virgin and she apparently had died. The “virgin” is likely his second wife.

Isaiah lies with his wife and she bears him a son (Isaiah 8:3) Maher-shala-Hash-Baz, a name which can be interpreted that Judah’s enemies would be plundered. A name full of meaning and hope for the land of Judah!

But this was only a partial fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. The complete meaning Immanuel the “with us God” prophecy would take place in the coming of coming of Jesus Christ and this is why Matthew uses Isaiah’s words in describing the birth of Christ.

Matthew in out text describes a virgin and in this case she’s not just a young woman, but a young woman who has never has union with a man, who conceives because of the miraculous work of God in her. Matthew says his name shall be called “Immanuel” or the with us God.

The prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 was partially fulfilled through the birth of Isaiah’s son Maher-shala-Hash-Baz, but was fully fulfilled in the birth of Jesus Christ.

C.S. Lewis the Oxford scholar whom we spoke of earlier had long assumed that the Bible and particularly Christmas stories and Easter were myths of God taking on human form, dying, and rising again.

One of the turning points for Lewis occurred after dinner one night as he sat near his fire place with a militant atheist on the Oxford faculty. This atheist professor causally remarked that he thought it strange that there was surprisingly strong evidence for the historical reliability of the Gospels.

This casual comment caused Lewis to carefully read the New Testament in the original Greek. He had assumed that the Bible was a series of myths, but as he read the New Testament as a world class literally critic, it was immediately clear to him that the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) did read like myths, but rather as an eye witness accounts. As Lewis read the New Testament he saw that the Jewish writers were not familiar with the great pagan myths, that the New Testament had none of the rich imaginative features of Greek myth…

Through his studies of New Testament and conversations with people like Professor J.R.R. Tolkien the great writer of the Lord of the Rings and a devout believer in God, Lewis went from believing the idea of that God’s coming to earth in Christ and dying and rising in was all myth (like to all other ancient myths that spoke of the coming of God as a human, dying and risking again) to the conviction that the coming of God to earth in the birth of Jesus, and his dying and rising again… was the “true myth,” the myth that all the other myths pointed to, the grand story that actually happened in history...

The reality of the “with us God” became real in Lewis’ life…

The reality of the “with us God” began to transform every aspect of his life… Lewis said coming to believe in God was like waking from sleep… he didn’t know how it happened, but he knew when it happened…

As was the case of C.S. Lewis, we can believe in the promise of the with us God, not only because of the more “objective proof” of the eye witness account of his unique life and his death and rising again of Christ, but because of the way God begins to awaken us as from sleep and see him and because God begins to change.

Though it happens somewhat differently with each person, the reality of the “with us God” does transform our lives.

Two weeks ago, perhaps the most brilliant man that I ever acquainted with died.

His name was Brent McKnight, a highly respected federal judge and spoken of as a potential nominee for the supreme court south of our border
A loving husband, his wife described him as warrior poet.

Brent studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

His second day there was a Sunday morning. He was nursing a stubbed toe when a shaggy-headed student stuck his head in the room and said, “McKnight, are you going to church this morning? I see you when you registered you checked that you are a “Christian” (he what a cultural Christian and a “Christian” in name only…)

Brent had not planned to go but decided it could be an interesting cultural experience.

It turned out to be far more. At St.Aldate’s church that day, as the Rev. Michael Green (who some of us know) preached to a church thronged with students, an epiphany took place.

The Spirit of God descended on him with a transforming power. God’s presence begin began to change Brent’s life.

As he pursued his studies in politics, philosophy, economics he hungered to integrate the reality of the “with us God.” He came could best seek justice by teaching and practicing law of God and the laws of the land.

He sensed he best bring healing to society, but working for justice and mercy…

I remember Brent telling me, you can’t have grace without judgment. He says if some is guilty, he declares them guilty…thinks through what the punishment would be and halves it. That’s grace, but you can’t have it without judgment.

After the ceremony on the day he first became a judge he and his family were near the courthouse going to dinner. A big burly man came to him and asked, “Are you Judge McKnight?” The family tensed. Brent had been threatened before by drug dealers and others he had prosecuted.

But when Brent said that he was the judge the man put out his hand and said, “Judge, I want to thank you for sending me to jail. I got my life straightened out there and I am a changed man.”

He was a wonderful father…

He had had a black belt in Karate and taught his boys martial arts, but was so gentle. At bedtime he read to his boys every word of The Lord of the Rings…

On his death bed a couple of weeks ago, he passionately wanted his boys to know the reality of the “with us” God. He told his young boys:

“Know that the world is a lot more complex than the view presented by TV, the pop scene, and modern art. These reduce life and take the soul out of it.”

“The world can look two-dimensional. You must know of the third, vertical dimension: the Father! Without that the world becomes about making money and having the nicest car, and that is all.”

“A real part of life is the supernatural.
The heart of life is the moral law.
It is just as real as the physical world.
The moral law is expressed in Scriptures…

As a dying man in his early fifties not wanting to leave his wife Beth and his boys, he quoted from: from 2 Corinthians 4:18: “we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”

The with us God, transformed Brent’s living and his dying, the with us God can do the same for us…

When my wife was a news magazine editor and first coming to believe in God, she said it’s scary to think there is someone who knows all I’m doing, but as she came to know how loving God is, instead of seeing God’s presence as a threat—she began to see God as a great source of comfort.

The reality of the with us God can be a threat, but as we come to know this Immanuel, and we he is also wonderful counselor, everlasting father and friend, prince of peace…and we are comforted…
-------------------------------------------
Let’s take a moment to pray…

Perhaps you need to pray or re-pray that Immanuel—would live in you…

Prayer:

As you were born in Mary years ago, through a miracle I will never fully understand, so living God be born in me…. Come and clean my heart and live in me… I believe story of Jesus was grand story that actually happened in history, you came to earth and died and rose… now live in me…Amen

Mention the New Beginnings Pack
041211 Sermon Christmas
04 am2 Immanuel

In every human culture all over the globe, no matter how isolated that culture is, there is the concept of God.

About a month and a half ago, TIME magazine carried an article with the cover story “The God Gene.” The article raised the question, “Do people believe in God because of their DNA?”

The article also quoted scientist Dean Hamer who says, “We’re just a bunch of chemical reactions running around in a bag.” He believes our belief in God may just be a figment of our genes.

But article also cites scientists (and of course theologians) who believe that God planted within us a longing and capacity to be able experience the divine. If we were divinely assembled wouldn’t make sense that our “parts list” would include a genetic chip that would enable us to contemplate our maker?

If there is a God in the universe, how might that God reveal it existence to us?

It is possible that our text this morning provides part of that answer:

If you have your Bibles please turn to Matthew 2:

18This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. 20But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." 22All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us." 24When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

In vs. 23 we see that one of the names of Jesus is Immanuel which means God with us or the “with us God.”

In this verse where Matthew speaks of the virgin being with child and giving birth to a son he is quoting am earlier passage from the Bible: Isaiah 7:14.

If we go back in the Bible to Isaiah 7 we have a picture of King Ahaz of Judah shaking in his sandals.

Back in 741 BC (before Christ) the King of Judah Ahaz is freaking out because he discovers that Rezin, the king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of the king of Israel, have joined forces to invade his Kingdom and place their own king on his throne.

How does King Ahaz respond? According to 2 Kings, he goes to the “bank”—i.e., he takes gold out of temple treasury and sends it to the king of Assyria, the superpower of his day. King Ahaz hopes that this gold will buy him the protection from his enemies.

But, God tells the prophet Isaiah, “Go to King Ahaz of Judah and tell him to trust me (God) instead of the King of Assyria.”

So, Isaiah goes to King Ahaz and says God wants you to trust him, not the King of Assyria. In fact, God even wants you to ask him for a sign that he’s going to deliver you.
But King Ahaz says, "I will not ask, nor will I test the LORD!" King Ahaz’s words sound very noble on the surface, but what he is really saying in a round about way to Isaiah is, "I have already hired the Assyrian army to save us. I don't need God's help. So, why do I need a sign from God?"
The prophet Isaiah says God is going to give you a sign anyway. And Isaiah says, 23"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us."
You’d think that King Ahaz who was about to be attacked by the combined armies of Israel and Syria--would welcome the news of God’s presence with him! But Ahaz through his non-response is saying in essence, “I’d rather bet my welfare allying with Assyria rather than with God.”

The sign of Immanuel the “with us God,” the message of Christmas is a message that is received as good news by some, but--like Ahaz--not welcomed by others.

Why?

Many people do not want God to interfere in any way with their lives.

Some people think that the reason that people believe in God is because they desperately want to believe in God—so they construct the idea of God, but God is imply a figment of their imagination. Freud argued, people believe in God is because they have a deep psychological need to believe in great parent figure.

But the exact opposite is true as well. There are powerful forces in us that would prefer NOT to believe in God.

I remember being at a school camp in grade 6 or 7.

One of the rules was that boys were not supposed to be in the girl’s cabins and girls weren’t supposed to be in the boy’s cabin. There was this one girl that I really liked and ended up hanging out in her cabin with her and some of her cabin mates. Someone came by the cabin and said Mr. Hiechert (who was the vice principal) is looking for Ken Shigematsu. I remember thinking, “oh no” and rolling under one of the bunk beds. A few minutes later, Mr. Hiechert knocked on the door and walked into the cabin and asks the girls, “Is Ken Shigematsu here?” The girls say, “No haven’t seen him.” Mr. Hiechert never looked under the bunk bed and I was not discovered.

When Mr. Hiechert came into the cabin and I heard him asking, “Is Ken Shigematsu here?” I remember thinking under the bunk bed, I so wish he wasn’t here.

There are many people who so wish God wasn’t here and they choose to not believe in God.

Jean Paul-Sartre, the French existentialist philosopher, as a young person was a sweeping floor and thought if there is a God, God is watching what I’m doing right now. He said I don’t want God to be looking at me. I don’t want God to know what I am doing. It’s not surprising that he became an atheist.

C.S. Lewis the great Oxford scholar talked about how he so desperately did not want to believe in God. He wanted to seek God about as much as a mouse that wants to seek a cat. This English bachelor scholar wanted more than anything to be “left alone.”

In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, he recounts part of his spiritual journey. You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen (College, Oxford) night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.

Dr. Armand Nicholi professor of psychiatry at Harvard points out that people who have a difficult time with authority figures in general and with their parents in particular, may have a more difficult time believing in God.

Professor Nicholi points out that people who want to break free of any kind of authority figure will tend to resist believing in God.

People with a certain lifestyle which they intuit would some put them at odds with an “all powerful, moral being” may choose not to believe in God. My best friend from childhood, choose not to trust God with his life, because he didn’t want God to interfere in anyway with his lifestyle.

King Ahaz was a King was notoriously evil King. Among other things he sacrificed his own sons to the idol of Molech—and so really it’s no wonder than he views this prophecy that God will be wit him not as a comfort, but as threat.

There are strong psychological factors that may cause a person to want to believe in God, but as C.S. Lewis pointed out there are equally strong psychological factors that cause us not to want to believe in God.

King Ahaz does not want God, he doesn’t want a sign from God; instead, he wants to ally himself with Superpower of his day, Assyria.

The prophet Isaiah says in effect King Ahaz want or it not, God is going to give you a “sign.” And Isaiah says 23"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us."
The word virgin in the context can mean among other things a young woman (or a young man about to be married) in the immediate context virgin is likely referring to Isaiah’s wife. Though the text doesn’t explicitly say this in Isaiah 7, presumably the virgin being referred to is Isaiah’s second wife, as his first wife already had a son and so she was clearly not a virgin and she apparently had died. The “virgin” is likely his second wife.

Isaiah lies with his wife and she bears him a son (Isaiah 8:3) Maher-shala-Hash-Baz, a name which can be interpreted that Judah’s enemies would be plundered. A name full of meaning and hope for the land of Judah!

But this was only a partial fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. The complete meaning Immanuel the “with us God” prophecy would take place in the coming of coming of Jesus Christ and this is why Matthew uses Isaiah’s words in describing the birth of Christ.

Matthew in out text describes a virgin and in this case she’s not just a young woman, but a young woman who has never has union with a man, who conceives because of the miraculous work of God in her. Matthew says his name shall be called “Immanuel” or the with us God.

The prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 was partially fulfilled through the birth of Isaiah’s son Maher-shala-Hash-Baz, but was fully fulfilled in the birth of Jesus Christ.

C.S. Lewis the Oxford scholar whom we spoke of earlier had long assumed that the Bible and particularly Christmas stories and Easter were myths of God taking on human form, dying, and rising again.

One of the turning points for Lewis occurred after dinner one night as he sat near his fire place with a militant atheist on the Oxford faculty. This atheist professor causally remarked that he thought it strange that there was surprisingly strong evidence for the historical reliability of the Gospels.

This casual comment caused Lewis to carefully read the New Testament in the original Greek. He had assumed that the Bible was a series of myths, but as he read the New Testament as a world class literally critic, it was immediately clear to him that the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) did read like myths, but rather as an eye witness accounts. As Lewis read the New Testament he saw that the Jewish writers were not familiar with the great pagan myths, that the New Testament had none of the rich imaginative features of Greek myth…

Through his studies of New Testament and conversations with people like Professor J.R.R. Tolkien the great writer of the Lord of the Rings and a devout believer in God, Lewis went from believing the idea of that God’s coming to earth in Christ and dying and rising in was all myth (like to all other ancient myths that spoke of the coming of God as a human, dying and risking again) to the conviction that the coming of God to earth in the birth of Jesus, and his dying and rising again… was the “true myth,” the myth that all the other myths pointed to, the grand story that actually happened in history...

The reality of the “with us God” became real in Lewis’ life…

The reality of the “with us God” began to transform every aspect of his life… Lewis said coming to believe in God was like waking from sleep… he didn’t know how it happened, but he knew when it happened…

As was the case of C.S. Lewis, we can believe in the promise of the with us God, not only because of the more “objective proof” of the eye witness account of his unique life and his death and rising again of Christ, but because of the way God begins to awaken us as from sleep and see him and because God begins to change.

Though it happens somewhat differently with each person, the reality of the “with us God” does transform our lives.

Two weeks ago, perhaps the most brilliant man that I ever acquainted with died.

His name was Brent McKnight, a highly respected federal judge and spoken of as a potential nominee for the supreme court south of our border
A loving husband, his wife described him as warrior poet.

Brent studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

His second day there was a Sunday morning. He was nursing a stubbed toe when a shaggy-headed student stuck his head in the room and said, “McKnight, are you going to church this morning? I see you when you registered you checked that you are a “Christian” (he what a cultural Christian and a “Christian” in name only…)

Brent had not planned to go but decided it could be an interesting cultural experience.

It turned out to be far more. At St.Aldate’s church that day, as the Rev. Michael Green (who some of us know) preached to a church thronged with students, an epiphany took place.

The Spirit of God descended on him with a transforming power. God’s presence begin began to change Brent’s life.

As he pursued his studies in politics, philosophy, economics he hungered to integrate the reality of the “with us God.” He came could best seek justice by teaching and practicing law of God and the laws of the land.

He sensed he best bring healing to society, but working for justice and mercy…

I remember Brent telling me, you can’t have grace without judgment. He says if some is guilty, he declares them guilty…thinks through what the punishment would be and halves it. That’s grace, but you can’t have it without judgment.

After the ceremony on the day he first became a judge he and his family were near the courthouse going to dinner. A big burly man came to him and asked, “Are you Judge McKnight?” The family tensed. Brent had been threatened before by drug dealers and others he had prosecuted.

But when Brent said that he was the judge the man put out his hand and said, “Judge, I want to thank you for sending me to jail. I got my life straightened out there and I am a changed man.”

He was a wonderful father…

He had had a black belt in Karate and taught his boys martial arts, but was so gentle. At bedtime he read to his boys every word of The Lord of the Rings…

On his death bed a couple of weeks ago, he passionately wanted his boys to know the reality of the “with us” God. He told his young boys:

“Know that the world is a lot more complex than the view presented by TV, the pop scene, and modern art. These reduce life and take the soul out of it.”

“The world can look two-dimensional. You must know of the third, vertical dimension: the Father! Without that the world becomes about making money and having the nicest car, and that is all.”

“A real part of life is the supernatural.
The heart of life is the moral law.
It is just as real as the physical world.
The moral law is expressed in Scriptures…

As a dying man in his early fifties not wanting to leave his wife Beth and his boys, he quoted from: from 2 Corinthians 4:18: “we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”

The with us God, transformed Brent’s living and his dying, the with us God can do the same for us…

When my wife was a news magazine editor and first coming to believe in God, she said it’s scary to think there is someone who knows all I’m doing, but as she came to know how loving God is, instead of seeing God’s presence as a threat—she began to see God as a great source of comfort.

The reality of the with us God can be a threat, but as we come to know this Immanuel, and we he is also wonderful counselor, everlasting father and friend, prince of peace…and we are comforted…
-------------------------------------------
Let’s take a moment to pray…

Perhaps you need to pray or re-pray that Immanuel—would live in you…

Prayer:

As you were born in Mary years ago, through a miracle I will never fully understand, so living God be born in me…. Come and clean my heart and live in me… I believe story of Jesus was grand story that actually happened in history, you came to earth and died and rose… now live in me…Amen

Mention the New Beginnings Pack
041211 Sermon Christmas
04 am2 Immanuel

In every human culture all over the globe, no matter how isolated that culture is, there is the concept of God.

About a month and a half ago, TIME magazine carried an article with the cover story “The God Gene.” The article raised the question, “Do people believe in God because of their DNA?”

The article also quoted scientist Dean Hamer who says, “We’re just a bunch of chemical reactions running around in a bag.” He believes our belief in God may just be a figment of our genes.

But article also cites scientists (and of course theologians) who believe that God planted within us a longing and capacity to be able experience the divine. If we were divinely assembled wouldn’t make sense that our “parts list” would include a genetic chip that would enable us to contemplate our maker?

If there is a God in the universe, how might that God reveal it existence to us?

It is possible that our text this morning provides part of that answer:

If you have your Bibles please turn to Matthew 2:

18This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. 20But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." 22All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us." 24When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

In vs. 23 we see that one of the names of Jesus is Immanuel which means God with us or the “with us God.”

In this verse where Matthew speaks of the virgin being with child and giving birth to a son he is quoting am earlier passage from the Bible: Isaiah 7:14.

If we go back in the Bible to Isaiah 7 we have a picture of King Ahaz of Judah shaking in his sandals.

Back in 741 BC (before Christ) the King of Judah Ahaz is freaking out because he discovers that Rezin, the king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of the king of Israel, have joined forces to invade his Kingdom and place their own king on his throne.

How does King Ahaz respond? According to 2 Kings, he goes to the “bank”—i.e., he takes gold out of temple treasury and sends it to the king of Assyria, the superpower of his day. King Ahaz hopes that this gold will buy him the protection from his enemies.

But, God tells the prophet Isaiah, “Go to King Ahaz of Judah and tell him to trust me (God) instead of the King of Assyria.”

So, Isaiah goes to King Ahaz and says God wants you to trust him, not the King of Assyria. In fact, God even wants you to ask him for a sign that he’s going to deliver you.
But King Ahaz says, "I will not ask, nor will I test the LORD!" King Ahaz’s words sound very noble on the surface, but what he is really saying in a round about way to Isaiah is, "I have already hired the Assyrian army to save us. I don't need God's help. So, why do I need a sign from God?"
The prophet Isaiah says God is going to give you a sign anyway. And Isaiah says, 23"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us."
You’d think that King Ahaz who was about to be attacked by the combined armies of Israel and Syria--would welcome the news of God’s presence with him! But Ahaz through his non-response is saying in essence, “I’d rather bet my welfare allying with Assyria rather than with God.”

The sign of Immanuel the “with us God,” the message of Christmas is a message that is received as good news by some, but--like Ahaz--not welcomed by others.

Why?

Many people do not want God to interfere in any way with their lives.

Some people think that the reason that people believe in God is because they desperately want to believe in God—so they construct the idea of God, but God is imply a figment of their imagination. Freud argued, people believe in God is because they have a deep psychological need to believe in great parent figure.

But the exact opposite is true as well. There are powerful forces in us that would prefer NOT to believe in God.

I remember being at a school camp in grade 6 or 7.

One of the rules was that boys were not supposed to be in the girl’s cabins and girls weren’t supposed to be in the boy’s cabin. There was this one girl that I really liked and ended up hanging out in her cabin with her and some of her cabin mates. Someone came by the cabin and said Mr. Hiechert (who was the vice principal) is looking for Ken Shigematsu. I remember thinking, “oh no” and rolling under one of the bunk beds. A few minutes later, Mr. Hiechert knocked on the door and walked into the cabin and asks the girls, “Is Ken Shigematsu here?” The girls say, “No haven’t seen him.” Mr. Hiechert never looked under the bunk bed and I was not discovered.

When Mr. Hiechert came into the cabin and I heard him asking, “Is Ken Shigematsu here?” I remember thinking under the bunk bed, I so wish he wasn’t here.

There are many people who so wish God wasn’t here and they choose to not believe in God.

Jean Paul-Sartre, the French existentialist philosopher, as a young person was a sweeping floor and thought if there is a God, God is watching what I’m doing right now. He said I don’t want God to be looking at me. I don’t want God to know what I am doing. It’s not surprising that he became an atheist.

C.S. Lewis the great Oxford scholar talked about how he so desperately did not want to believe in God. He wanted to seek God about as much as a mouse that wants to seek a cat. This English bachelor scholar wanted more than anything to be “left alone.”

In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, he recounts part of his spiritual journey. You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen (College, Oxford) night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.

Dr. Armand Nicholi professor of psychiatry at Harvard points out that people who have a difficult time with authority figures in general and with their parents in particular, may have a more difficult time believing in God.

Professor Nicholi points out that people who want to break free of any kind of authority figure will tend to resist believing in God.

People with a certain lifestyle which they intuit would some put them at odds with an “all powerful, moral being” may choose not to believe in God. My best friend from childhood, choose not to trust God with his life, because he didn’t want God to interfere in anyway with his lifestyle.

King Ahaz was a King was notoriously evil King. Among other things he sacrificed his own sons to the idol of Molech—and so really it’s no wonder than he views this prophecy that God will be wit him not as a comfort, but as threat.

There are strong psychological factors that may cause a person to want to believe in God, but as C.S. Lewis pointed out there are equally strong psychological factors that cause us not to want to believe in God.

King Ahaz does not want God, he doesn’t want a sign from God; instead, he wants to ally himself with Superpower of his day, Assyria.

The prophet Isaiah says in effect King Ahaz want or it not, God is going to give you a “sign.” And Isaiah says 23"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us."
The word virgin in the context can mean among other things a young woman (or a young man about to be married) in the immediate context virgin is likely referring to Isaiah’s wife. Though the text doesn’t explicitly say this in Isaiah 7, presumably the virgin being referred to is Isaiah’s second wife, as his first wife already had a son and so she was clearly not a virgin and she apparently had died. The “virgin” is likely his second wife.

Isaiah lies with his wife and she bears him a son (Isaiah 8:3) Maher-shala-Hash-Baz, a name which can be interpreted that Judah’s enemies would be plundered. A name full of meaning and hope for the land of Judah!

But this was only a partial fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. The complete meaning Immanuel the “with us God” prophecy would take place in the coming of coming of Jesus Christ and this is why Matthew uses Isaiah’s words in describing the birth of Christ.

Matthew in out text describes a virgin and in this case she’s not just a young woman, but a young woman who has never has union with a man, who conceives because of the miraculous work of God in her. Matthew says his name shall be called “Immanuel” or the with us God.

The prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 was partially fulfilled through the birth of Isaiah’s son Maher-shala-Hash-Baz, but was fully fulfilled in the birth of Jesus Christ.

C.S. Lewis the Oxford scholar whom we spoke of earlier had long assumed that the Bible and particularly Christmas stories and Easter were myths of God taking on human form, dying, and rising again.

One of the turning points for Lewis occurred after dinner one night as he sat near his fire place with a militant atheist on the Oxford faculty. This atheist professor causally remarked that he thought it strange that there was surprisingly strong evidence for the historical reliability of the Gospels.

This casual comment caused Lewis to carefully read the New Testament in the original Greek. He had assumed that the Bible was a series of myths, but as he read the New Testament as a world class literally critic, it was immediately clear to him that the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) did read like myths, but rather as an eye witness accounts. As Lewis read the New Testament he saw that the Jewish writers were not familiar with the great pagan myths, that the New Testament had none of the rich imaginative features of Greek myth…

Through his studies of New Testament and conversations with people like Professor J.R.R. Tolkien the great writer of the Lord of the Rings and a devout believer in God, Lewis went from believing the idea of that God’s coming to earth in Christ and dying and rising in was all myth (like to all other ancient myths that spoke of the coming of God as a human, dying and risking again) to the conviction that the coming of God to earth in the birth of Jesus, and his dying and rising again… was the “true myth,” the myth that all the other myths pointed to, the grand story that actually happened in history...

The reality of the “with us God” became real in Lewis’ life…

The reality of the “with us God” began to transform every aspect of his life… Lewis said coming to believe in God was like waking from sleep… he didn’t know how it happened, but he knew when it happened…

As was the case of C.S. Lewis, we can believe in the promise of the with us God, not only because of the more “objective proof” of the eye witness account of his unique life and his death and rising again of Christ, but because of the way God begins to awaken us as from sleep and see him and because God begins to change.

Though it happens somewhat differently with each person, the reality of the “with us God” does transform our lives.

Two weeks ago, perhaps the most brilliant man that I ever acquainted with died.

His name was Brent McKnight, a highly respected federal judge and spoken of as a potential nominee for the supreme court south of our border
A loving husband, his wife described him as warrior poet.

Brent studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

His second day there was a Sunday morning. He was nursing a stubbed toe when a shaggy-headed student stuck his head in the room and said, “McKnight, are you going to church this morning? I see you when you registered you checked that you are a “Christian” (he what a cultural Christian and a “Christian” in name only…)

Brent had not planned to go but decided it could be an interesting cultural experience.

It turned out to be far more. At St.Aldate’s church that day, as the Rev. Michael Green (who some of us know) preached to a church thronged with students, an epiphany took place.

The Spirit of God descended on him with a transforming power. God’s presence begin began to change Brent’s life.

As he pursued his studies in politics, philosophy, economics he hungered to integrate the reality of the “with us God.” He came could best seek justice by teaching and practicing law of God and the laws of the land.

He sensed he best bring healing to society, but working for justice and mercy…

I remember Brent telling me, you can’t have grace without judgment. He says if some is guilty, he declares them guilty…thinks through what the punishment would be and halves it. That’s grace, but you can’t have it without judgment.

After the ceremony on the day he first became a judge he and his family were near the courthouse going to dinner. A big burly man came to him and asked, “Are you Judge McKnight?” The family tensed. Brent had been threatened before by drug dealers and others he had prosecuted.

But when Brent said that he was the judge the man put out his hand and said, “Judge, I want to thank you for sending me to jail. I got my life straightened out there and I am a changed man.”

He was a wonderful father…

He had had a black belt in Karate and taught his boys martial arts, but was so gentle. At bedtime he read to his boys every word of The Lord of the Rings…

On his death bed a couple of weeks ago, he passionately wanted his boys to know the reality of the “with us” God. He told his young boys:

“Know that the world is a lot more complex than the view presented by TV, the pop scene, and modern art. These reduce life and take the soul out of it.”

“The world can look two-dimensional. You must know of the third, vertical dimension: the Father! Without that the world becomes about making money and having the nicest car, and that is all.”

“A real part of life is the supernatural.
The heart of life is the moral law.
It is just as real as the physical world.
The moral law is expressed in Scriptures…

As a dying man in his early fifties not wanting to leave his wife Beth and his boys, he quoted from: from 2 Corinthians 4:18: “we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”

The with us God, transformed Brent’s living and his dying, the with us God can do the same for us…

When my wife was a news magazine editor and first coming to believe in God, she said it’s scary to think there is someone who knows all I’m doing, but as she came to know how loving God is, instead of seeing God’s presence as a threat—she began to see God as a great source of comfort.

The reality of the with us God can be a threat, but as we come to know this Immanuel, and we he is also wonderful counselor, everlasting father and friend, prince of peace…and we are comforted…
-------------------------------------------
Let’s take a moment to pray…

Perhaps you need to pray or re-pray that Immanuel—would live in you…

Prayer:

As you were born in Mary years ago, through a miracle I will never fully understand, so living God be born in me…. Come and clean my heart and live in me… I believe story of Jesus was grand story that actually happened in history, you came to earth and died and rose… now live in me…Amen

Mention the New Beginnings Pack
041211 Sermon Christmas
04 am2 Immanuel

In every human culture all over the globe, no matter how isolated that culture is, there is the concept of God.

About a month and a half ago, TIME magazine carried an article with the cover story “The God Gene.” The article raised the question, “Do people believe in God because of their DNA?”

The article also quoted scientist Dean Hamer who says, “We’re just a bunch of chemical reactions running around in a bag.” He believes our belief in God may just be a figment of our genes.

But article also cites scientists (and of course theologians) who believe that God planted within us a longing and capacity to be able experience the divine. If we were divinely assembled wouldn’t make sense that our “parts list” would include a genetic chip that would enable us to contemplate our maker?

If there is a God in the universe, how might that God reveal it existence to us?

It is possible that our text this morning provides part of that answer:

If you have your Bibles please turn to Matthew 2:

18This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. 20But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." 22All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us." 24When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

In vs. 23 we see that one of the names of Jesus is Immanuel which means God with us or the “with us God.”

In this verse where Matthew speaks of the virgin being with child and giving birth to a son he is quoting am earlier passage from the Bible: Isaiah 7:14.

If we go back in the Bible to Isaiah 7 we have a picture of King Ahaz of Judah shaking in his sandals.

Back in 741 BC (before Christ) the King of Judah Ahaz is freaking out because he discovers that Rezin, the king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of the king of Israel, have joined forces to invade his Kingdom and place their own king on his throne.

How does King Ahaz respond? According to 2 Kings, he goes to the “bank”—i.e., he takes gold out of temple treasury and sends it to the king of Assyria, the superpower of his day. King Ahaz hopes that this gold will buy him the protection from his enemies.

But, God tells the prophet Isaiah, “Go to King Ahaz of Judah and tell him to trust me (God) instead of the King of Assyria.”

So, Isaiah goes to King Ahaz and says God wants you to trust him, not the King of Assyria. In fact, God even wants you to ask him for a sign that he’s going to deliver you.
But King Ahaz says, "I will not ask, nor will I test the LORD!" King Ahaz’s words sound very noble on the surface, but what he is really saying in a round about way to Isaiah is, "I have already hired the Assyrian army to save us. I don't need God's help. So, why do I need a sign from God?"
The prophet Isaiah says God is going to give you a sign anyway. And Isaiah says, 23"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us."
You’d think that King Ahaz who was about to be attacked by the combined armies of Israel and Syria--would welcome the news of God’s presence with him! But Ahaz through his non-response is saying in essence, “I’d rather bet my welfare allying with Assyria rather than with God.”

The sign of Immanuel the “with us God,” the message of Christmas is a message that is received as good news by some, but--like Ahaz--not welcomed by others.

Why?

Many people do not want God to interfere in any way with their lives.

Some people think that the reason that people believe in God is because they desperately want to believe in God—so they construct the idea of God, but God is imply a figment of their imagination. Freud argued, people believe in God is because they have a deep psychological need to believe in great parent figure.

But the exact opposite is true as well. There are powerful forces in us that would prefer NOT to believe in God.

I remember being at a school camp in grade 6 or 7.

One of the rules was that boys were not supposed to be in the girl’s cabins and girls weren’t supposed to be in the boy’s cabin. There was this one girl that I really liked and ended up hanging out in her cabin with her and some of her cabin mates. Someone came by the cabin and said Mr. Hiechert (who was the vice principal) is looking for Ken Shigematsu. I remember thinking, “oh no” and rolling under one of the bunk beds. A few minutes later, Mr. Hiechert knocked on the door and walked into the cabin and asks the girls, “Is Ken Shigematsu here?” The girls say, “No haven’t seen him.” Mr. Hiechert never looked under the bunk bed and I was not discovered.

When Mr. Hiechert came into the cabin and I heard him asking, “Is Ken Shigematsu here?” I remember thinking under the bunk bed, I so wish he wasn’t here.

There are many people who so wish God wasn’t here and they choose to not believe in God.

Jean Paul-Sartre, the French existentialist philosopher, as a young person was a sweeping floor and thought if there is a God, God is watching what I’m doing right now. He said I don’t want God to be looking at me. I don’t want God to know what I am doing. It’s not surprising that he became an atheist.

C.S. Lewis the great Oxford scholar talked about how he so desperately did not want to believe in God. He wanted to seek God about as much as a mouse that wants to seek a cat. This English bachelor scholar wanted more than anything to be “left alone.”

In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, he recounts part of his spiritual journey. You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen (College, Oxford) night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.

Dr. Armand Nicholi professor of psychiatry at Harvard points out that people who have a difficult time with authority figures in general and with their parents in particular, may have a more difficult time believing in God.

Professor Nicholi points out that people who want to break free of any kind of authority figure will tend to resist believing in God.

People with a certain lifestyle which they intuit would some put them at odds with an “all powerful, moral being” may choose not to believe in God. My best friend from childhood, choose not to trust God with his life, because he didn’t want God to interfere in anyway with his lifestyle.

King Ahaz was a King was notoriously evil King. Among other things he sacrificed his own sons to the idol of Molech—and so really it’s no wonder than he views this prophecy that God will be wit him not as a comfort, but as threat.

There are strong psychological factors that may cause a person to want to believe in God, but as C.S. Lewis pointed out there are equally strong psychological factors that cause us not to want to believe in God.

King Ahaz does not want God, he doesn’t want a sign from God; instead, he wants to ally himself with Superpower of his day, Assyria.

The prophet Isaiah says in effect King Ahaz want or it not, God is going to give you a “sign.” And Isaiah says 23"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us."
The word virgin in the context can mean among other things a young woman (or a young man about to be married) in the immediate context virgin is likely referring to Isaiah’s wife. Though the text doesn’t explicitly say this in Isaiah 7, presumably the virgin being referred to is Isaiah’s second wife, as his first wife already had a son and so she was clearly not a virgin and she apparently had died. The “virgin” is likely his second wife.

Isaiah lies with his wife and she bears him a son (Isaiah 8:3) Maher-shala-Hash-Baz, a name which can be interpreted that Judah’s enemies would be plundered. A name full of meaning and hope for the land of Judah!

But this was only a partial fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. The complete meaning Immanuel the “with us God” prophecy would take place in the coming of coming of Jesus Christ and this is why Matthew uses Isaiah’s words in describing the birth of Christ.

Matthew in out text describes a virgin and in this case she’s not just a young woman, but a young woman who has never has union with a man, who conceives because of the miraculous work of God in her. Matthew says his name shall be called “Immanuel” or the with us God.

The prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 was partially fulfilled through the birth of Isaiah’s son Maher-shala-Hash-Baz, but was fully fulfilled in the birth of Jesus Christ.

C.S. Lewis the Oxford scholar whom we spoke of earlier had long assumed that the Bible and particularly Christmas stories and Easter were myths of God taking on human form, dying, and rising again.

One of the turning points for Lewis occurred after dinner one night as he sat near his fire place with a militant atheist on the Oxford faculty. This atheist professor causally remarked that he thought it strange that there was surprisingly strong evidence for the historical reliability of the Gospels.

This casual comment caused Lewis to carefully read the New Testament in the original Greek. He had assumed that the Bible was a series of myths, but as he read the New Testament as a world class literally critic, it was immediately clear to him that the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) did read like myths, but rather as an eye witness accounts. As Lewis read the New Testament he saw that the Jewish writers were not familiar with the great pagan myths, that the New Testament had none of the rich imaginative features of Greek myth…

Through his studies of New Testament and conversations with people like Professor J.R.R. Tolkien the great writer of the Lord of the Rings and a devout believer in God, Lewis went from believing the idea of that God’s coming to earth in Christ and dying and rising in was all myth (like to all other ancient myths that spoke of the coming of God as a human, dying and risking again) to the conviction that the coming of God to earth in the birth of Jesus, and his dying and rising again… was the “true myth,” the myth that all the other myths pointed to, the grand story that actually happened in history...

The reality of the “with us God” became real in Lewis’ life…

The reality of the “with us God” began to transform every aspect of his life… Lewis said coming to believe in God was like waking from sleep… he didn’t know how it happened, but he knew when it happened…

As was the case of C.S. Lewis, we can believe in the promise of the with us God, not only because of the more “objective proof” of the eye witness account of his unique life and his death and rising again of Christ, but because of the way God begins to awaken us as from sleep and see him and because God begins to change.

Though it happens somewhat differently with each person, the reality of the “with us God” does transform our lives.

Two weeks ago, perhaps the most brilliant man that I ever acquainted with died.

His name was Brent McKnight, a highly respected federal judge and spoken of as a potential nominee for the supreme court south of our border
A loving husband, his wife described him as warrior poet.

Brent studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

His second day there was a Sunday morning. He was nursing a stubbed toe when a shaggy-headed student stuck his head in the room and said, “McKnight, are you going to church this morning? I see you when you registered you checked that you are a “Christian” (he what a cultural Christian and a “Christian” in name only…)

Brent had not planned to go but decided it could be an interesting cultural experience.

It turned out to be far more. At St.Aldate’s church that day, as the Rev. Michael Green (who some of us know) preached to a church thronged with students, an epiphany took place.

The Spirit of God descended on him with a transforming power. God’s presence begin began to change Brent’s life.

As he pursued his studies in politics, philosophy, economics he hungered to integrate the reality of the “with us God.” He came could best seek justice by teaching and practicing law of God and the laws of the land.

He sensed he best bring healing to society, but working for justice and mercy…

I remember Brent telling me, you can’t have grace without judgment. He says if some is guilty, he declares them guilty…thinks through what the punishment would be and halves it. That’s grace, but you can’t have it without judgment.

After the ceremony on the day he first became a judge he and his family were near the courthouse going to dinner. A big burly man came to him and asked, “Are you Judge McKnight?” The family tensed. Brent had been threatened before by drug dealers and others he had prosecuted.

But when Brent said that he was the judge the man put out his hand and said, “Judge, I want to thank you for sending me to jail. I got my life straightened out there and I am a changed man.”

He was a wonderful father…

He had had a black belt in Karate and taught his boys martial arts, but was so gentle. At bedtime he read to his boys every word of The Lord of the Rings…

On his death bed a couple of weeks ago, he passionately wanted his boys to know the reality of the “with us” God. He told his young boys:

“Know that the world is a lot more complex than the view presented by TV, the pop scene, and modern art. These reduce life and take the soul out of it.”

“The world can look two-dimensional. You must know of the third, vertical dimension: the Father! Without that the world becomes about making money and having the nicest car, and that is all.”

“A real part of life is the supernatural.
The heart of life is the moral law.
It is just as real as the physical world.
The moral law is expressed in Scriptures…

As a dying man in his early fifties not wanting to leave his wife Beth and his boys, he quoted from: from 2 Corinthians 4:18: “we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”

The with us God, transformed Brent’s living and his dying, the with us God can do the same for us…

When my wife was a news magazine editor and first coming to believe in God, she said it’s scary to think there is someone who knows all I’m doing, but as she came to know how loving God is, instead of seeing God’s presence as a threat—she began to see God as a great source of comfort.

The reality of the with us God can be a threat, but as we come to know this Immanuel, and we he is also wonderful counselor, everlasting father and friend, prince of peace…and we are comforted…
-------------------------------------------
Let’s take a moment to pray…

Perhaps you need to pray or re-pray that Immanuel—would live in you…

Prayer:

As you were born in Mary years ago, through a miracle I will never fully understand, so living God be born in me…. Come and clean my heart and live in me… I believe story of Jesus was grand story that actually happened in history, you came to earth and died and rose… now live in me…Amen

Mention the New Beginnings Pack