Sermon Title: “Recognize God”
Series: How to Have a Happy New Year
Text: Isaiah 43:1-7, Psalm 29, Acts 8:14-17, Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Baptism of our Lord Year C
Dr. Steve Jackson
Delivered on January 7, 2007
“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Luke 3:22
Recognize God
Today being the first Sunday in the new calendar year we’re starting a new series of messages called “How to Have a Happy New Year.” It doesn’t matter what age or stage of life you’re in, the arrival of a new year is a time for reflection and personal evaluation. I’m sure some of you have made resolutions about things you want to accomplish in the new year; things you want to do differently, things you would like to change about your life, etc…. The usual list for most of us include things like getting in shape, or to stop smoking, or to finally take that trip you’ve been wanting to take for so many years. Have any of you done that? Since we’re already a week into the new year some of those resolutions may already be broken. What I want to suggest in this series of messages is that, as important as some of these usual resolutions may be, there are other very important things we can do as we begin a new year to make this your happiest, or greatest, or most successful year ever. So in this series we’ll be spelling out some very practical, biblical ways we can have the happiest year ever in 2007.
By the way, I was affirmed in selecting this series by an email I got on Friday
from
I’ll be preaching from the Revised Common Lectionary again during this series, and as I studied the suggested passages of Scripture for the Sundays of January I noticed a thread running through each week that provides four things we should do as we begin the new year if we want it to be our best year ever.
As for today, today is known in the church as the “Baptism of the Lord Jesus” Sunday. It’s the Christian commemoration of the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus. By the way, I think it’s quite appropriate that we consecrated our newest Elders on this day as they begin their public ministry among us – this was not done intentionally, but as it is with so many things God’s Spirit orchestrates, it’s perfect. The unifying theme in the Scriptures for today has to do with recognizing God in the midst of our lives. The idea is presented most clearly in the beautiful scene we read in Luke’s gospel where Jesus is publicly identified and recognized as God’s Son at his baptism.
It’s a scene rich in symbolism. At his baptism Jesus is praying – that’s an important detail when it comes to recognizing God. Then Luke tells us heaven was opened up – another key detail in recognizing God since we can only recognize God as he reveals himself to us. Then the Bible says the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus in bodily form like a dove. This is still another key detail since it is the Holy Spirit who reveals God to us, and finally, in case anyone missed all the other signs, a voice comes from heaven publicly identifying Jesus, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” (Luke 3:22).
In the Isaiah text we read we hear the Lord’s words through the prophet’s mouth declaring he “created us” and he “formed us” and he “redeemed us” and that he has called us by name and we are his. He goes on to say, Do not fear “when you pass through the waters I will be with you…because you are precious in his sight he loves us and he again says, “Do not fear, for I am with you…”
Those words bring to mind Jesus’ own words at the very end of his ministry when he said in Matthew 28:20 just before he ascended back into heaven, “And lo, I am with you always.” But it’s so difficult to recognize God’s presence in the blur of busyness our lives can be, isn’t it? Even so, all these promises of blessing, redemption, forgiveness, protection and guidance depend, first and foremost upon recognizing God in the midst of our often chaotic lives.
May I confess something to you? I know asking you to begin your new year by recognizing God in the midst of the busyness and complexity of your lives is a difficult proposition at best. I know this because I’m a pastor and my “job” is God. Every morning, every week, in season and out of season my job is to be God’s ambassador here on earth promoting, teaching, healing in his name of, loving, everything in my “bosses” name, God. But in the week just ended, the first week of the year, I found myself in a swirl of activity, call it “godstuff” if you will, and even in the midst of that I found myself making decisions without prayer. I found myself doing things in my own strength. I found myself getting angry and saying things I shouldn’t. I found myself being callous and indifferent to situations where I should have been much more sensitive. I found myself being far too interested in things that have nothing to do with kingdom work.
What I’m trying to say is I know it’s difficult for you all to recognize God because it’s so difficult for me and God is my job! You have other jobs and commitments I don’t have. You don’t have the luxury I do of spending all the time you want in Bible Study and prayer like I do – you have real lives to live. So let me just confess and admit right up front, I know it’s tough for you, but that doesn’t stop me from recommending that you make it a priority in 2007 to recognize God in the midst of your life, especially when you’d least expect to find God.
I was reading a book by Rob Bell over the holidays (Velvet Jesus) and he talks
about recognizing God by pointing out that Moses was tending his sheep in the
Do you and I walk on holy ground all the time, but we’re moving so fast or returning so many calls and writing emails that we miss it?
And remember Jacob’s ladder. Jacob lays down to sleep and he dreams and
in his dream he sees a ladder with angels ascending and descending on it.
Remember Jacob’s words after his dream? “Surely
God is in this place and I wasn’t aware of it.”
Could it be that God is all around us and we never notice Him? Is he trying to get our attention? Shouldn’t we do all within our power to recognize God? To find Him wherever we are? I’m not going to speak long this morning, but let me share with you three ways to help you recognize God as we begin the new year.
LOOK FOR HIM
The first thing I want to suggest we do is the most obvious: LOOK FOR HIM. I realize that is pretty self-evident, but I believe it needs saying. Sometimes when I’m talking with people and they’re lamenting the absence of God’s presence in their life or that their prayers seem empty as if no one is listening, I simply ask them, “Are you looking for God?”
I’m reminded of some books my kids had back when they were little. They were called “Where’s Waldo?” Do you remember them? They were a series of very busy pictures on each page and somewhere on each one there was a little picture of this character named Waldo.
There are corollaries from “Where’s Waldo” in what I’m teaching you this morning. First of all, you need to understand that you don’t just sit down and immediately find Waldo when you look at the picture he’s in. He’s there all right, but it takes patience, it takes slowing down and carefully looking over the picture to find him. The same thing applies as we look for God. Moses was probably planning on walking right on by the burning bush, but the Bible says he turned aside to go check out the bush – he investigated it, it was only then when the Lord saw that he had gone over to look that he called to Moses from within the bush (Ex. 3:3-4). The good news is that God isn’t hiding – he’s not being coy with us trying to do all he can to remain undetected. Like Waldo, God is there all along, just waiting for us to slow down enough and to look carefully enough to be seen.
A second corollary between these our search for God and the search for Waldo is that the best way to find Waldo was to look for his distinctive blue pants, red and white sweater and his beanie cap. There are distinctive things we can look for with God too, I’m going to talk about some of those in a moment.
A couple more things I want to mention about looking for God come straight from the Bible instead of where’s Waldo (which I’m sure you’ll be glad about).
First, the Bible says you’ve got to believe He exists in order to find
him. Hebrews 11:6 says, “…without faith
it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe he
exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” I don’t think that’s a problem with many of
us in this church, it’s really not even a huge problem in
Second, the Bible promises in several places that we will find God if we seek him with our “whole heart.” Deuteronomy 4:29 says, “But if you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and all your soul.” Jeremiah 29:13 says basically the same thing, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” This goes back to the Waldo illustration, we can’t expect to glance around half-heartedly and find him – we’ve got to seek him with our whole heart.
LEAVE YOUR EXPECTATIONS BEHIND
A second thing I want to encourage you to do as you attempt to recognize
God in the world around you in this new year is to LEAVE YOUR EXPECTATIONS BEHIND.
What do I mean by that? I mainly mean that many times we miss God in the world around us because of preconceived notions of who God is, what he might be up to in the world, and where we might find him.
Unfortunately a lot of people think God is all about rules and regulations. They believe God is out to spoil all their fun, do this…don’t do that. But that is not so. God is about life abundant, I suppose I quote John 10:10 every other week in my sermons. Jesus said, “I have come that you may have life, and have it to the full!” Abundant, full life is what Jesus is all about.
I don’t believe it’s any mistake that the first miracle Jesus performed was at a wedding feast. You could say Jesus was the life of the party. Remember what he did? They ran out of wine and Jesus made more wine for the wedding guests.
If we didn’t know better and I gave a multiple choice test to a group of people about the first miracle Jesus might perform and the choices were:
a) Restored a man’s sight
b) Fed a big crowd or
c) Brewed up a few barrels of wine
I doubt if many would choose “c,” do you? Jesus was no “stick-in-the-mud.” One of the problems with us recognizing Jesus is we need to leave our expectations behind.
This is nothing new either. In fact, Jesus’ biggest problem being accepted in his own time was he didn’t do the things folks expected a religious leader – a Messiah – to do. You remember the accusations, they said he associated with prostitutes and tax collectors and all the riff-raff of his day. No respectable Messiah would do that would he?
I’ve said it before, but I believe a whole bunch of believers are going to be shocked beyond belief when they see who all makes it into heaven. There are going to be quite a few surprises.
What I’m trying to say is this: if you want to see God, you may have more luck doing so down at the bus terminal in Atlanta, or anywhere else where the least, the last and the lost congregate than you will at some fancy church somewhere. We need to stop being so quick to judge and classify who is “in” and who is “out.”
If you want to see Jesus, you’ve got to go to the places Jesus himself hung out. God help us in 2007 if we can’t get past stereotypes and somebody else’s’ interpretation of the Word of God. Get in there and dig around yourself (as Vicki suggested last week) and you might be very surprised.
LOSE YOURSELF IN LOVE
One more thing to try in your attempt to recognize God all around you in
the coming year is to LOSE YOURSELF IN
LOVE.
This one is kind of a two-pronged means to recognize God. The first part is to lose yourself, which of course comes from Jesus’ own admonition in Matthew 16:25 where he said, “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” We’ve simply got to get ourselves out of the way if we want to see God. The metaphor I have in mind for this is the difference in a mirror and a window. I mean, let’s admit it, for most of us our favorite topic of all is ourselves. Everything we do revolves around us – it’s like we spend our time looking in a mirror at ourselves and our needs. Instead, the looking we do must be through a window, specifically the window of God’s love. We must learn to see the world through his eyes and his eyes are eyes of love.
And that’s the second part of this means of recognizing God. You see, if you want to find God, if you want to know what God is up to, you’ve got to look for love. Because where there is love, that’s where God is going to be found, because the Bible tells us, “God is love” (1 John 4:8).
Many of you know I love the outdoors. I love to hunt and fish. I learned a long time ago if I want to see any game, I’ve got to go where the deer are in order to see a deer. If I’m fishing, I’ve got to be fishing where there are fish and I’ve got to use the bait the fish are biting.
If we want to see God, and God is love, then if we follow love, or if we create environments of loving kindness towards other, then we invite God into those situations and we can see him.
Just last night I stood in a hospital room that was filled with love. It
should have been the saddest place in
Want to see God? Go to the places you’d least expect God to be, go and express the love of God and just watch, God will show up – actually he won’t “show up,” he’s already there….like Waldo…you’ll just finally be able to recognize him.
Let me encourage you to seek God in this new year – seek him and recognize him. Look for him, leave your expectations behind about him, and lose yourself in love, and you’ll see God.
We’re going to close today’s service with one of the ways Christ gave us to recognize him, the sacrament of Holy Communion. You may recall the story of some travelers on the road to Emmaus on Easter afternoon. Jesus came and walked with the men and taught them. Then they asked him in for a meal and in the breaking of bread he made himself known to them.
He does the same today, I invite you to come to the table and meet him there…. Amen.