Pas Ralph Douglas West - The Manger The Lowest Destination for God's Highest Purpose

0:02 This is the day the Lord has made. We rejoice. And we are glad in it. Amen. Thank you, men. I think we wait all year. Mac wiped us out this morning. He said, we're going to stop here. We're getting older. We're not as young as we used to be. We're going to skip over the 12.

0:34 Amen for that. In the same way that we rejoice waiting on listening to a song that we know we've heard, there's an anticipation about it. And without it, we feel like the week leading up to the weeks of Christmas is incomplete. Any of us who've been around the church, faithfully or casually,

1:17 that knows something about the Christmas story, believes that the calendar year is incomplete if the pulpit doesn't say something about these props that are on the stage of Christmas. we come to another prop.

1:38 On the dramatic stage of Christmas where it's repeated multiple times of the Savior of the world Christ the Lord will be born and for some reason there's this repeated statement about the manger. I want to tag my text this morning beginning at verse 8 in chapter 2 of Luke and concluding around verse 14. The manger. the lowest destination for God's highest purpose. Hear God's word this morning for his people and keep that in mind how God has an affinity with the lowly.

2:42 Beginning at verse 8. Now there were some in the same country shepherds living out in the fields keeping watch over their flock by night.

3:05 And behold, an angel of the Lord came before them, stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which is to be for all the people.

3:29 For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, and this will be the sign to you. You will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was, with the angels, a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace good will taught men so it was when the angels had gone their way from and gone their way from them to into heaven that the shepherds said to one another let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that the Lord has come to pass which the Lord has made known to us. And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the babe lying in a manger.

4:33 This is the word of God. You may be seated. It doesn't take you long if you take the challenge to read the story of Christmas in Matthew or Mark, comments that John may refer in his gospel that God has an affinity with the lowly. and the ability to raise that which is low to a higher purpose.

5:15 History is full of examples like this that reminds us that God didn't act just then, but God acts now and God acts always. I mean, can you imagine? In 1875 in Maysville, South Carolina,

5:40 17 children being reared in a one-room cabin. whose parents had been enslaved and some of the siblings too, that in the midst of that brood, that would be one who would become an educator, a political activist, a founder of a university, a friend to Eleanor Roosevelt and give counsel to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Thank you. in the midst of post-enslavement,

6:25 a brief reconstruction, the implementation of Jim Crowism, that here somebody would rise to that prominent status and become the president of the National Association for the Council of Women. By now, most of you already know I'm talking about Mary McCloud, Bethune. Now, according to her own words, so don't be offended,

6:58 she walked in the auditorium one day in her pronounced gate and said of herself, black as I am. God's sun still shines on me. Mayor McLeod Bethune knew something about the lowest destination being elevated to God's highest purpose. Luke chapter 2 serves that kind of description for me. Each year when I'm reading through these texts, to experience God's truth leaping from the pages, reminding me that God's love for his creation is inexhaustible.

7:56 It says something to me about these props that God has set on the stage for his higher purpose. All of them were low in destination. I mean you consider in regards to the people or in respect of places or in remembrance of things all of them are in a low state that God looks at and elevates to his highest purpose. I was meditating on this just a few minutes ago and Luke 2 in some ways reads as an answer to Genesis 1 and to the way that God has created all things to be used for his purposes. I mean, think about it. You and I are here because of what happened in what we just read in Luke chapter 2.

8:49 I mean, if it wasn't true by now, we would have splintered in multiple directions. We're held together by the story. I mean, look, once again, you know it, but here's a time for the one or two people that may have forgotten it or never heard of it in regards to these different people on the prompt stage of the drama of Christmas. Who does God select? Elizabeth and Zachariah in chapter one of Luke, Mary and Joseph. You can't discredit Quiranius, Herod, or Antipas, or Augustus, he uses all of these different people to move his purpose forward. Shepherds, my goodness. We've so sanitized the story, we look at shepherds like they're modern day pastors. These people were in the margin of society.

9:44 Nobody wanted to be bothered with a shepherd in the house. They had too much sheep on their shoes. An innkeeper with no vacancy over the portal of the door or to look around and say, these old people Simeon and Anna's waiting for God's glory to appear to them. You get the idea in regard of people and places.

10:27 I mean, you've been walking with God for a long time, some of you now, and so you're beyond just the people. Give attention to the places that's in this story. Nazareth. That too is on the back water in many ways. And then you talk about Judea or Bethlehem, Bethlehem. All these different places on the margin,

10:57 on the edge of society. And what about the things that God uses? Angels, my goodness. Of course, I believe in angels. I encounter them almost every day when somebody is nice, I say, there's an angel. They don't have to have wings and resplendent glory over their head. The next time somebody is benevolent to you in life, just notice that God sent an angel your way. Angels. The reason why we respond that way and clap because angels have been for many of us, some Sunday school teacher, some coach in high school, some math teacher, somebody who took enough time to sit down to help us understand a problem that we could not solve on our own.

11:59 And what about that angel On that Thursday when I was hungry As a college student And I had punched my card Full Saw me And beckoned for me And fed me Lord thank you for that angel And so Christmas, that's what it's about, is to remind us of how God can come to these lowly places to elevate us to his highest purpose. Did you notice in reading what we read, when you read beginning at verse 8 and come down to around verse 11, that it says about God and all of his bigness can come to us in our littleness.

13:02 And I need a big God that can get in the littleness of my life. I heard somebody in our church just recently make the comment how they didn't want to bother God. And I said, bless their heart, they're still trying to manage life on their own and do not know that God counts the fallen sparrows, even the hairs on your head, that God is involved in every aspect of your life. God in all of his bigness is interested in getting in to your littleness.

13:47 There's a side road in Paris, France that runs just north of the Seine River, not far from the Cathedral of Notre Dame. When you walk that way, you'll notice that the street is so narrow that if you and I were on bicycles, we couldn't ride parallel with each other.

14:14 It's a fourth of a city block in a city like Houston. And it has an interesting name, the street of cats that fishes. If you walk down that street, people still live there. They lived there for years in that dank, dark little street. on the street of cats that fish. And people get to that street and they look down it and they take pictures and this is the word they use. It's so picturesque. But most of the people who are there don't know for over 400, 500 years more cases of tuberculosis was discovered on that street than anywhere else in France or even in the then known world.

15:17 The street of cats that fishes. The manger is very much like that. When we look at it, we've dressed it up. When we look at the nativity scene, it looks so pretty. There's nothing dangerous about Christmas, is it? I mean, it's been over-sentimentalized Mentalized on one hand and commercialized on the other hand. It's about economy or capitalism and materialism or there's this high level of emotion that is born off the top of that kind of commerciality. In just a fancy way, saying that we have reduced the story of Christmas into manageable terms in dollars and cents are a kind of emotion.

16:12 The manger reminds us that God humbled himself, that this huge God thought so much of his own creation that he could have come any way that he wanted to, and yet he thought enough of you to be born in a manger with ox and asses and dung and urine. just outside of the end with the no vacancy side that God is out with nature and God is sanctifying nature wherever he is. Do you see this mom, dad, mother, father, who you have given up on, maybe a friend or a son or a daughter or someone that you know and you've given up on them and you forgot that God comes to us in the messiness of life. That wherever that is mess and we can't shout about it because we have so cleaned up the story.

17:24 I never wanted to belong to a church where everybody was good. I don't like that kind of church. You need to know that about me. I like, and I grew up in a church in Fitt Ward. We had all the hustlers and the players and the drug dealers and traffickers. That's the church I grew up in. You can't rejoice with that. Well, let me tell you this. God didn't come for the righteous. he came, Father, I'm right. And these are the lessons that are so difficult for people to really put their arms around it. They said, they'll sing it, they'll shout it, and as soon as it happened, everybody's surprised. And God says, I, in all my bigness, loved you so much that I came here to get into your littleness. whatever your addiction may be eating or drug or physicality whatever it may be I come to get into your situation that's what the manger reminds us that the God who is eternal became external the a priori became the posteriore God came to us to be with us John steps into this story And he says it this way And the word became flesh And dwelt among us You're looking at me Now that is disturbing me As if you didn't know this Is that you know it But it's hard to accept it isn't it Because when we write our moral codes On who ought to be admitted and those who ought to be exempt.

19:25 God's agenda don't line up to our agenda. Come on, it's the truth. We can be honest about it, that when you sit with people, when they walk out today, they're going to say, I like pass, but I ain't with that. I sure couldn't get with that church that he grew up in. And yet God can reach the lowest person to raise them to his highest purpose.

19:54 That's the only reason why people don't really tell their true testimony. They know that the moment they tell the truth, you're Shauna. Well, I want you to know you're welcomed in my house. That I want to be in the house where God welcomes the Simmons. God came and humbled himself and the external or the eternal became external and the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld the glory of God. You know another reason why people have a difficulty with the Christmas story when it's told this way. I mean, as long as we're talking about the Christmas story and says, Emmanuel, God is with us and that is his name and he is. and we say, as long as God is with me when I graduate from college, God is with me, I just landed a six-figure job.

20:57 God is with me, my marriage is secure. Ask the people that can tell you, as we look at those wonderful decades of marriage, they'll tell you, you better have God in the middle of this. Thank you. Yeah. The eternal becomes external. God comes, Eugene Peterson says in the Message Bible, that the word became flesh and God moved in our neighborhood. what I'm trying to do is to get you to move God from up there down here, that this is why he came, and that's why he shows up of all the places in a manger,

22:01 the eternal becoming external. How will I win your love? You know, that's what the Bible is in many ways it's a big love letter that God writes to whom he wants to love. It's a love letter. Read it that way sometimes. Think about it that you and I were on the outskirts and God is doing everything to win our love.

22:36 Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, tells a Christmas story in another version. He simply says it this way. There was a king who fell in love with a servant maid in his castle dwelling.

22:58 He went to the wise men in his employing acts, how do I win her affection? They said, simple. Dress up in all of your glory. Stand outside of her hovel. Call her by name. And in all of your glory, she will love you humbly, humbling herself, bending her knee to your glory. He said, that's exactly what I don't want. I don't want her love based off of what I am. In the sense of my glory, my wealth, my, I don't want that kind of love. I want a genuine love that sees me as a lover coming to love her. And he didn't know what to do until one night, walking up and down the corridor, He disrobed himself from all of his raw regality and put on the sandals of a servant and draped himself in the garment of a worker and stood outside her door and wooed her until she loved him.

24:17 And only then did she experience all the glory that comes with it. God has come to us and I don't want you to love me because I can give you a car. I want you to love me for who I am as God and creator. And when you love me, you'll experience life and life abundantly. Preach Pastor West. Let me give you one more thing. And I'll sit down on this.

24:54 This God who comes to us in his bigness and our littleness. And that is the God of everywhere is the God of somewhere. I remember learning these big words to describe God. You know them. You don't have to go to seminary to learn these words. These fancy Sunday school teachers of ours taught us this growing up. Omni.

25:30 They called them the attributes of God. You remember that. I know you do. We're going to learn now about the attributes of God. omnipresent omnipotent omniferous omniscient we can have a chorus today and say omnipotent God is all powerful omnipresent God is everywhere omniscience God knows everything And here when we come to the omnipresence, the everywhereness of God,

26:21 that God is everywhere, that's good, isn't it? God is everywhere. But I'm like that little girl that said to her mother, Mama, where is God? She said, everywhere. And that little girl said, I don't need God to be everywhere. I need God to be somewhere. And don't worry about it again by your response. You haven't needed God in a certain way. Keep on living. You're going to say, Lord, I know you're in Dallas, but I need you in Houston. I know you're on the south side, but I need you on the west side right now. I know you're over at St. Luke, but I need you at MD Anderson right now. I know you've been over there, but I need you right here. Everywhere, God is somewhere. When the angels made their appearance and made their announcement of fear not because the shepherds were terrified, they delivered a message to them.

27:28 Angelic hosts surrounded them. They were singing glory to God in the highest. God's peace will reign on those who receive him That's the gift of Christmas With all of the mayhem That's taking place in Washington When we have a person that has been elected To an office who believes That he is actually a monarch, a king That he does not have to obey The rules of law that he writes his own constitution and unfortunately, he's getting away with it. Oh, but I got another king. The old preacher used to say, who rules and super rules.

28:27 and they move from this everywhere to somewhere at this very moment and remind us at this point that we're going to Bethlehem to see this thing that God has done when Phillips Brooks had visited the Holy Land he came back and he wanted to write a carol for the Christmas Eve service for the children of his church. And he wrote down what was still fresh, though three or four years separate from his visit to the Holy Land.

29:09 He penned some words, Old little town of Bethlehem. How still we see thee lie above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by. you see when we think that God is disinterested and God is absent and God is uninvolved when we read a hymn that summarizes this story you have to go and remember in the dark streets shineth the everlasting light the hope and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight I don't know if Phillips Brooks meant it when he wrote it, but that's a highly religio-political statement to remind us that yes, there are wars and there are senseless wars. And America finds herself engaged in the stupidity of the military-industrial complex.

30:15 But today we come to worship a living God that says, I see all the hopes and the fears. in all the years shall find thou rest in me tonight. Christmas is not this little soft, dreamy experience. This is God getting involved in again, the messiness of life. The mess and flux of humanity. God knows what he's working with. Here you boasting, talking about, well, I would give my life, but when I get this right, y'all just don't know. We don't want to know what you've done. God already knows. And he still loves you enough to wake you up this morning to give you another Christmas gift of grace. Everywhere Somewhere In a manger Let me sit down now Because when these Shepherds March across the field They find Mary and Joseph And that baby just like The angel said but just like the prophets had also prophesied hundreds of years before the exact way that they knew that the story didn't begin just with incarnation that's that big beautiful word that means God became flesh it found its consummation in God's crucifixion you can't have Christmas without having Easter