Mark Scott told the story of a student in Bible College who was running late for his 7AM class. The class had started and was in the middle of morning prayer when he stumbled in, panting, arm loaded with books. The prayer just continued. As he attempted to sit down, his books all dropped out all over the floor. He sat down in his seat as he gathered books and papers from all over, just then, the one leg of his chair was hanging out over a step down also went down – so did the rest of the chair, with the student in it. Once again, the books and papers went flying, this time with the late student also taking an unplanned trip to the floor. Once again, he regathered himself and everything else, and just as he was in his seat the AMEN at the end of the prayer came. The student looked up at the professor. “Did I miss anything?” “Yes, the ceiling!”
I’m starting a new series that will take us up to Christmas, and I don’t want you to miss out on any of it. I encourage you to make sure you hear all of it. This series has 3 parts that each build on the one before. Just remember that, because, after all, it’s December and you’re expecting to hear things about Jesus as a baby and wise men and shepherds in the fields and all that. We’ll get there. Just follow along in this series. Some will be asking, “Hey, where’s the Christmas in all of that?” I want to be answering an even bigger question. Where is God? Where is God this Christmas? Maybe you ask that same question every December as you venture out onto the streets or into the stores. Maybe this Christmas is harder than any other you’ve ever had to face, and now it has you asking “Where’s God?” I hope we can answer that – thoroughly.
Israel was asking a similar question. For 430 years they had been slaves in Egypt. Imagine it – some 17 generations of people who knew nothing but a slave’s life. Maybe some of them were asking, “Where is God?” Or maybe even, “Who is God?”
So one day in the Sinai desert, God uses a burning bush to help Moses become better acquainted with Him. It was the day that Moses was informed he was to go and command the king of Egypt to let God’s people go. That’s kind of like telling some person on the streets of Bagdad that he has been chosen to rid the world of Saddam Hussein.
He didn't want to lead Israel out of Egypt. He kept searching for the reasons he shouldn't be the one. Then, he tries to shift the burden to God, "What if they ask Who's sending me? What would I say? I don’t even know Your name!”
God said: YHWH - I AM - from the Hb "to be" "Moses, Tell them the I AM sends you." It's as though God were saying through that name, "I am the Being One. Existence itself finds its definition in Me." The Scriptures bear that out:
-Jn 1:3 "Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made."
-Acts 17:28 'For in him we live and move and have our being.
-Hebrews 1:3 The Son is…sustaining all things by his powerful word.
-Rev 4:11 "you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being."
Hamlet struggled: “to be or not to be” – Dream on. That isn’t up to you. Everything that is, that we can know of, owes its very being to God.
Ill - Bill Hybels, 1989 message he asked, "How do we know there's a God? "
the points were:
1. Only God could create a universe out of nothing.
2. Universal order could not happen without design.
3. Credible people demonstrate the born again experience.
4. It is mid September (at this writing) and the Cubs are in first place.
God is there. If you want to have a reason to celebrate Christmas, you have to get that fact straight. The basic truth of God's existence is the foundation of our worldview. If we believe that God is there, it affects everything we believe about life.
David believed it, and in the 139th Psalm he’s expressing to God some of what that belief means for him.
Psalm 139:7-10 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
Poem - He was just a little lad, and on a sunny day was wandering home from Sunday school, and was dawdling on his way.
He scuffed his shoes into the grass; he found a caterpillar; he found a fluffy milkweed pod and blew out all the "filler".
A bird's nest in the tree overhead, so wisely placed and high, was just another wonder that caught his eager eye.
A neighbor watched his zig-zag course and hailed him from the lawn, asked him where he had been that day and what was going on.
"Oh, I've been to Sunday school" -- he carefully turned the sod and found a snail beneath it -- "I've learned a lot of God."
"A very fine way," the neighbor said, "for a boy to spend his time. If you'll tell me where God is, I'll give you a brand new dime."
Quick as a flash his answer came, nor were his accents faint. "I'll give you a dollar, Mister, if you'll tell me where God ain't."
He is the God Who is there. I didn't get that message from the typical Christmas marketplace. This is a basic tool for surviving the Christmas season that everyone needs. Because God is there I have 3 words of encouragement and one word of command from Psalm 139 this morning.
God is there so…
I. Life Has Purpose
-Ill – A few years back, Calvin Klein produced a fragrance called "B." Their add: "Be this, be that, just BE." We live in a world that is caught up in exerting our existence. Every crazy notion that people come up to just stand out is another attempt to be saying, "I AM." But only God has the right to be called “I AM,” the Being One. The One Who Is. And beyond that, it seems that God has made us for something other than to exert our existence. It all keeps pointing back to Him:
- Ecclesiastes 12:13 "Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."
Our purpose for “being” is relationship with God. That’s what we’re for.
Take God out of that picture, and where are you? You’re where at least ½ of the people you run into in the store are. You’re where all your non-Christian friends are! They’re celebrating Christmas but aren’t sure why! They know they exist, but don’t know why. They don’t know where they’re headed, but they’re making good time getting there!
What if, somehow, one of the those people were to hear from you that life does have a purpose? Christmas really gives us a window of opportunity that we don’t have other times of the year. People are at least looking at reminders that Jesus was born.
Are you sending Christmas cards? Don’t just send a season’s greeting – send a word on behalf of God that Christmas is about the day God took on human flesh and lived among us. Don’t just give another obligatory Christmas present to someone just because it’s the polite thing to do. Give them a present and use it to explain God’s give to all of us. Tell people! Tell them there’s a God Who is there! Tell them there’s purpose to life – that the only way they’ll ever be fulfilled is by having a relationship with their Creator, the One Who made us human BEINGS, not human doings! God is there. That means life has purpose.
II. There’s a Standard of Good Above Ourselves
In Hillsboro, OH, they began to call the annual Christmas Parade the annual “Holiday Parade.” It just sounded more “PC.” So, welcome to the “holiday season.” We used to call it Christmas. We used to put up Nativity scenes in public places. But now, even before Halloween arrives, we very tactfully blend it into Thanksgiving and call the last month of the year “the holiday season.” After all, we wouldn’t want to offend the Jews, or the Muslims, or the atheists, or women, or the spotted owl!
-Ill – My friend had a book of "Politically Correct Christmas Stories" with titles like, "Rudolph, the Nasally-empowered Reindeer," "Frosty, the Person of Snow," and "Twas the Night Before Winter Solstice."
Pay attention to what’s going on here. What has gone wrong with Christmas isn’t just that it has become commercialized. It’s a few steps beyond just making a buck.
We are where we are as a society because the Church has endured the twaddle that we can't force "our standard" on the world. Instead we openly tolerate anyone's standard. You have a right to believe what you want, as long as it doesn't step too much on my freedoms. You have the right to do what you want in the privacy of your own home. What two people do together is their business as long as both of them agree to it.
The world's (and Church's!) current failure to oppose what's wrong -- to instead be "tolerant" starts with a denial that there's a clear and authoritative standard - a standard that's higher than man and absolutely true.
If God didn't exist, if there were no being who was present everywhere and who knew everything and who had all power, then everyone would have to admit there’s no right to say who's right.
As long as the place we’re looking is somewhere among ourselves, we can't set a standard of right and wrong -- Who gives you the right? But, if the standard of right and wrong isn't from ourselves, if it's from a source that's beyond all of us, that’s higher than us, then there’s something we have to accept.
Ill – Is our world ready to hear something like this? 2,000 years ago, when Jesus hit the world scene, the Roman world was ready for this truth. They had borrowed the gods of the Greeks. They had worshiped these beings who were morally bereft; who could be overpowered. They found the idea of worshiping something that had weaknesses to be wanting.
The Scriptures say that when the right time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a virgin. The time was right in the 1st century for Jesus to come, because the world was coming to its senses about the emptiness of worshiping something that wasn't beyond itself. I look around and I see a lot of people who have tried the idea of worshiping things apart from God and they have found it wanting.
Because God is there, we can say there's a standard of right and wrong apart from ourselves. That's why we don't accept false teaching. That's why we don't apologize for calling a lie a lie and the truth the truth. The standard isn't from us. We didn’t invent it. We can’t reinvent it.
It exists apart from us in the God Who is There.
God is there, that also means…
III. We Should Live a Holy Life
Here’s a Bible quiz this morning. See if you have any of the answers:
Where did they think God was when they did it?
-Eve, when the serpent deceived her, and she ate the fruit. Did she think God was in some other part of the garden?
-Adam, when Eve gave him the fruit. Did he think God was lost in the woods somewhere?
-Cain, when he murdered Abel and then said to God, “I don’t know where he is!”
-Jonah, when he boarded a ship and tried to run the other way. Did he really believe God was left behind on the pier in Joppa?
-Judas, when he agreed to betray Jesus. Did he figure God never hung out with the chief priests?
-Ananias and Sapphira, when they plotted to lie to the Church about an offering they gave. Did they assume that since the door was closed God couldn't hear their conversation.
Lot of crazy people in the Bible, weren't there? I’m glad we’re never so presumptuous, never so naïve so as to assume that something we do or say escapes God’s notice! But what if we were to personalize the question this morning:
"You, when you did whatever it was you did a year ago, a week ago, yesterday. Your parents weren’t there. Your spouse didn’t know. Your boss was away. Did you just think that God wasn't looking? Do you think that you were someplace God couldn’t see you or hear you? Was it some time of the day that He wasn’t watching you?”
Jeremiah 23:23-24 "Am I only a God nearby," declares the LORD, "and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?" declares the LORD. "Do not I fill heaven and earth?" declares the LORD."
There’s power in accountability. Just knowing that someone you love or respect is watching you affects the way you act. If only we could remember this about God!
Ill - There was another person in the OT who I think really had a grasp of this, besides David as he was writing this Psalm: Joseph. He had a chance to do some things no one would ever find out about. He even was propositioned by the boss' wife.
But Joseph knew about the God Who is there, Who has searched us and known us, Who perceives our thoughts from afar, Who discerns our going out and lying down. And when he was put right in the middle of temptation he said, "How could I do this great wickedness and sin against God?" Those are the words of someone who realizes that God sees him. He realizes that, even if his father didn’t know, even if the people of his family didn’t know, so what? God knew!
Realizing God is there -- no matter where there is -- places on us the necessity of living lives of holiness because God is there and knows.
The concept of Santa Claus, who sees you when you're sleeping and knows when you're awake; who knows if you've been bad or good so... So whoopdy doo, and dickory dock, and don’t forget to hang up your sock. Cause just exactly at 12 O’clock he’ll be coming down the chimney…” isn't some clever approach invented by parents to get their children to behave if they want to be rewarded -- it's actually a borrowed fact of Scripture concerning the God Who is there and watching us. Because God is there, we should live a holy life. Just because God is there, no matter where there is.
Finally, because God is there…
IV. We Don't Have to Fear
This Psalm is one of reverent fear, but it's also a Psalm of confidence in God. The idea that God knows all about us and goes anywhere we go is kind of scary because of some of the stupid things we've done.
I don’t mean like when you’re 6 years old and your brother bakes a pan of those sticky Pillsbury caramel rolls, and pulls them from the oven and sticks his finger in that hot caramel and then dances around the kitchen screaming so you go and stick your finger in it too. I don’t mean allowing your family to take your picture a few years ago when you’re in costume for a madrigal dinner and then for the rest of your life you have to listen to your son say, “Hey, Dad, remember that time when you wore a dress?” Actually, I think God must spend a lot of time chuckling over those things! No, I mean like morally stupid things that we wish we could erase from our memory and everyone else’s too! I’ll let you fill in the blanks there!
But the fact that God has always been witness to even our very thoughts also means that when we're at difficult and hard times in our lives, the times where we look back later and wonder how we made it through - God is there with us too!
-We do well to remember that Satan is a spirit being and in a whole other league beyond ourselves. We can’t beat him on our own. But I want to give you something to remember this morning: Satan isn't the "Being One."
-In Job, when God asks him where he has been, the devil says, "Roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it."
-Jesus said "When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it."
-I Pt 5:7ff "Be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary the devil prowls about like a roaring lion."
Why is Satan on the move? Why does he roam and prowl? Because he can’t be everywhere at once! That’s a God thing! There may be a lot about the spiritual realm we can’t really understand at this time, but I do at least get this impression – just by his very nature, the devil has his limits.
Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world! God is the One Who is present everywhere - the only one! We don't have to fear when life shoves us into dark places: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me."
Whatever time in your life put this to the test, whatever time you felt so beat up by what’s happened to you, whatever time you felt like no one at all understood you or cared about what you were going through, God was still there.
-God is There. We don't have to be afraid. We don’t have to be driven around by our fears. God is there.
Conclusion:
Psalm 139:23-24 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
That's a great conclusion to a wonderful Psalm. Search me. Test me. See me. Then, because No One else knows me like You, and because no one else realizes my need like You do, on the basis of Your greatness and my condition, God, lead me.
What comes to mind when you think of being searched?
-When the police search someone, it usually involves checking to see if they have something in their possession they shouldn’t, like drugs or weapons. We bemoan that at airports now, we have to be thoroughly searched.
-When a doctor searches someone, they might use a scanner or a stethoscope or even a small camera to go inside of us and look around. Is there a disease or a tumor or an organ that needs to be removed!
But when God searches us, it’s not for something hidden on our body, or something to be discovered inside our body. God searches places where no human can see. He searches out our very being. He knows exactly what’s inside – what should and shouldn’t be there. He searches us; He knows us
Like a mother knows the cry of her child above all others. Like a couple knows the meaning in each other's eyes. Like a child knows his father's voice.
There’s nothing quite as frustrating as being misunderstood. Sometimes we lack the ability to explain ourselves. Sometimes others lack the ability to understand what we’re going through. But God searches, He knows, He understands.
God is There. When we start with this fact, as we have tried to do today, everything else falls into place. When we skip it, everything falls apart.
There are a lot of people falling apart this Christmas. They say there's a God, but He's not like the one we've reading about today. They need to say the words of this Psalm with faith this morning. They need to say, "You're there God. I'm here, and it’s not exactly where I want to be. You know what I need. Please make the difference in my life."
Psalms 139:1-12
O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD. You hem me in--behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me," even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
