The Scandalous Jesus (Part 2)

Portions © 1997 by Rick Warren from “When God Messes Up Your Plans”

Introduction
A few weeks ago we looked at the scandalous life of Jesus. He was hard to ignore. He was always saying something or doing something which forced people to take a second look at their lives. Many times they heard what Jesus said and just kept on living their own old, plain, ordinary, insipid and disappointing lives. Often, he made them angry and defensive. But sometimes, once in a while, they’d really hear what he was saying and it would revolutionize their life.

Paul put it this way:

Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. –1 Corinthians 1:22-24

Underline that phrase but to those whom God has called. When God has calls and you respond, you change. And that change gives you a different perspective on what is happening. God hasn’t changed. He hasn’t suddenly become wiser or more powerful. We have just become more perceptive. Without that relationship with God, all the spiritual truth in the world could be staring you in the face and you would choose to ignore it. Move over, Al Gore, if you want an Inconvenient Truth, it is this: we have seen the light and prefer darkness; God has shown himself by Jesus’ birth but we would rather gouge out our own eyes rather than admit that it is true.

Kind of like today. No one would like to admit that Christmas is about Christ. Its now a winter something, a season’s something, a holiday (oops, that’s holy-day, right) something. It’s about family, and giving, and food, right? No, its about Christ. Don’t get me wrong, I have the greatest Christmas memories at my grandma’s, watching in anticipation as people opened my haphazardly wrapped presents, eating pie until I could hold no more. As our culture shies away from Christ, they have nothing left to celebrate except the results of celebrating Christ. People came together as families, gave gifts, celebrated together because Christ gave meaning to the day. Want to know why Christmas feels more and more hollow? Because we have settled for the smell of apple pie instead the apple pie itself. Wonderful smell, but it just makes you hungry for the real thing. Or maybe its more like bathroom air freshener.

The scandal of Jesus is that the manger is once-in-history, A.D./B.C., never-again-repeated, God’s-beachhead in reclaiming humanity. You can choose him or abuse him, but the one thing you can’t do is ignore him. God has a strange way of messing up people’s plans.

When Jesus Christ was born that first Christmas, nobody expected it. It was totally unplanned. Nobody had made any plans for it at all. In fact, it messed up everybody’s plans.

You can make many plans, but the Lord’s purpose will prevail. - Proverbs 19:21 (NLT)

It messed up the shepherd’s plan because they were planning on another quiet night with the sheep. It messed up the religious leaders’ plans because they were expecting a political leader Messiah who would come and set them free from Roman captivity and Jesus came along and said stuff like, “Turn the other cheek,” and “Go the second mile,” and “Love your enemies”. They were saying, “Wait a minute, Jesus. That’s not what we wanted.” It messed up the innkeeper’s plan. He ran out of space.

It sure messed up King Herod’s plans.

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem an asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.” When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. - Matthew 2:1-2.

This King Herod had been made king over most of Israel because he had, at the last minute, sided with Caesar Augustus in the wars of succession that followed the death of Julius Caesar. He was called Herod the Great because he was one of the greatest builders of the ancient world. He rebuilt the Jewish temple so that it dwarfed the one built by Solomon. And then, there was his masterpiece: Herodium, where he won his greatest military victory and where he was buried. Walls five stories tall, a swimming pool big enough you could float boats in it, a 38 acre lower palace with gardens, it was both a fortress and a vacation spot. And…at 3 miles from Bethlehem, it dominated the skyline.

But King Herod had a problem: he wasn’t Jewish, and that never really sat well with the population. Assassination and paranoia were a regular part of his diet. He fell madly in love with a Jewish princess Miriam and married her, gaining some legitimacy. But that led to another problem: his kids were more “Jewish” than he was and he grew suspicious that they were plotting a palace coup. So he killed them, and their mother, and anyone else who looked at him cross-wise.

So when some Iraqi wise men show up talking about stars, signs and kings of the Jews, he is just a little perturbed. Herod was confronted with the truth, and rather than finding and following Jesus, he was true to form, killing all the boys under 2 years old. Just like Moses. Except that Joseph and Mary had to run away to Egypt to get away…kind of ironic. God sure messed up Herod’s plan. He died shortly after Jesus was born and was buried 3 miles from the true King of Israel.

But most of all, it messed up Mary and Joseph’s plans. Mary and Joseph were just a young couple, barely teenagers and all they wanted to do was get married and have little Mary’s and Joseph’s. In their wedding preparation, during their engagement period all of a sudden God comes along and says, “I’m changing the plan a little bit.”

The angel said to Mary and Joseph, “Mary, three things are going to happen. One, you’re going to get pregnant before your wedding day. Two, it’s not going to be Joseph who’s the father. It’s going to be a virgin birth. It’s going to be a miracle like has never happened. And three, by the way, the baby is going to be God.” That messed up their plans just a little bit. They weren’t at all expecting that to happen.

…His mother Mary was pledge to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. –Matthew 1:18b

Has God ever messed up your plans? I could give you an awful lot of examples in my life, a laundry list of when God messed up my plans. My wife, Helen, planned to be a CPA; an accountant; she wanted to sit in a bank and be cool (literally and figuratively). But God messed up her plans and she became a horticulturist instead. Good thing for me.

Some of you have had your plans messed up this last year. Most of us did in various ways. Several years ago, there was a story about a woman in New York who took her son to visit Santa Claus and set on his lap in the mall. When she got there she discovered that Santa Claus was her ex-husband who was not paying child support. I don’t think he was planning this. Three hours later she came back with a court injunction and slapped it on him and he wasn’t going, “Ho, Ho, Ho!” He hadn’t planned that.

A lot of things we plan just don’t happen.

• The launching of the Barry Bonds line of Red Bull health and fitness shakes
• The new Paris Hilton reality show The Simple Life Sentence (she got out too early)
• We never saw the Cornerstone credit-card tithing program or the Cache Creek donation for the new Cornerstone sanctuary
• We never saw the Lakers sign Danny DeVito. 

The point is: things don’t always go the way we plan them. I’m not saying that everything that happens, God plans. That’s not true. God is not the author of evil. If someone gets raped, God didn’t plan that. When someone gets abused, when someone gets cancer… the Bible says God is not the author of evil. That’s why we’re to pray for His will to be done. God’s will is not always done.

The fact is: a lot of my plans get messed up because I mess them up. My own stupidity messes up my own plans a lot of the times. We’re all very well acquainted that other people can mess up your plans. But sometimes God, through influence or direct intervention, changes circumstances because He’s got another idea in mind. And that’s obviously what happened at Christmas time about 2000 years ago.

What do you do when God messes up your plans? When God messes up your plans, what do you do? Three things.

1. Remember that God is trying to get your attention. When your plans get messed up, God is saying, “Hello!” He’s just trying to get your attention.
2. He has a different plan. When He messes up yours, He’s always got a better one, a different one.
3. He wants you to trust Him.

I think that’s what God wants to say to us this Christmas.

FIRST. GOD IS TRYING TO GET OUR ATTENTION when He messes up our plans. In Mary and Joseph’s case the plan was so fantastic, so unbelievable, so once-in-history kind of event that God had to use an angel to convince them that it was going to happen.

Because 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. – Matthew 1:19

Notice, it says Joseph was a righteous man. He was going to do the right thing and divorce her quietly. But God sent an angel to this righteous man, who said, “This is what’s going to happen. I need you to step in as the father of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. I’m God. I’m coming to earth in human form and we’re going to split history into A.D. and B.C.”

And what about Mary?

“How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?” – Luke 1:34

She knew how this sort of thing was supposed to work. Don’t you think she’d need a little encouragement if she found herself unexpectedly pregnant? You could imagine her thinking, “How’d this happen? You’d have thought I’d have remembered.” That could really mess with your mind. She needed an angel to help work out what was going on; to know that she had found favor with God, to keep her head up in the face of what would happen next.

The truth is, though, that most of us don’t need an angel to tell us what we need to do. That’s because God already gave us the Bible written down to guide us, the Spirit to help pay attention to what’s significant and other followers of Jesus to help us keep perspective. That’s 99% of the guidance needed. Sure, for the other 1% he can throw in an angel or a vision. Sometimes I’m looking for an angel when the Bible is in front of me, because I want something different than what I know he wants me to do.

No, the problem isn’t that God hasn’t spoken; it’s that we aren’t listening. Most of us have ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder. We put Him on call waiting, on hold. The phone’s busy. We’re so busy listening to the radio or watching TV or listening to other people or listening to ourselves for that matter, we don’t have time to listen to God. So God has to rearrange our plans to say, “Wake up! Let me get your attention.” God speaks to us in our pleasures, but He shouts to us in our problems and our pain.

For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them. – Matthew 13:15

Why does God want you to give your attention to Him? Because we get ourselves into a pile of trouble when we don’t follow what God tells us to do.

There is a way that seems right to a man, but it ends in death. - Proverbs 16:25

A lot of things in life look like the right thing to do but when you get to the end, it’s a dead end, a disaster.

Have you ever done anything in life, made a decision that you thought, “This is a guaranteed, sure-fire success!” and when it actually came to pass it was an unmitigated failure? Sure. We’ve all had plans that just didn’t go the way we intended them to go. Why? Because you don’t know the future and neither do I. Because we don’t know the future, we don’t know how things are going to turn out in spite of our plans.

That’s why God says, “I want you to listen to Me.” Because God does know the future. God can see around the corner. He can see the problems, the detours, the roadblocks coming up. If you just listen to Him, you avoid an awfully lot of pain in life.

In the Bible, there are many things where God says, “If you do these things, you’ll be successful, you’ll be satisfied, you’ll find meaning. Life will be easier. If you do these other things, it’s going to cause misery, guilt, resentment, broken relationships. It’s going to cause anger and worry and all kind of things.”

When He tells us what to do and what not to do it’s not because He’s some ogre or some cosmic cop in the sky, some bully just trying to make up rules. He does it because He loves us.

It’s like a mom who tells a little child, “Don’t touch the hot stove.” She’s not doing that because she’s a tyrant. She’s doing that out of love. Just like God. You can learn things the hard way or the easy way. There’s a way that seems right but it’s a dead end.

Sometimes He has to mess up our circumstances to get our attention. But He does more than that. When God messes up your plans, He’s also saying “I’VE GOT A BETTER PLAN.”

The Bible says very clearly that every person was made for a purpose. You were made for a purpose. God designed you uniquely. He has a reason for you being on earth. Part of your whole life is to figure out what your purpose is and do it.

`I know what I am planning for you,’ says the Lord. `I have good plans for you, not plans to hurt you. I will give you hope and a good future.’ –Jeremiah 29:11

A lot of people think, “If I really gave my life to God. If I start following Christ, He’s going to make my life miserable. No fun, no parties, total boredom. I’ve got to go become some kind of Amish person or something.” Yet God says, “No, you don’t understand. I made you. I love you. I designed you for a purpose on this earth.”

Let me tell you something about God’s plan for your life. Three things.

• God’s plan for your life is always bigger than your plan because He’s got a bigger perspective. Mary and Joseph just wanted to get married and settle down and be a nice happy couple. God said, “I want to bless the whole world through you.” If you don’t get anything else I say, get this: God made you for a purpose. You have no idea how much God wants to work through you; how much He could do through you if you were totally committed to His plan for your life, rather than your little plan for your life – your dreams, your ambitions, your goal. Look at Mary and Joseph: 

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him… - Matthew 1:24

I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said.” – Luke 1:38

You would not believe what God could accomplish through you. Because His plans are always bigger.

• God’s plan for your life is harder than your plan. That’s why so many people cut out on Him. Human beings and human nature, it’s our way to take the easy way out, to slide through life, to take the course of least resistance. God says, “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. In fact, it’s going to be harder My way.”

Why? Because God is more interested in your character than He is in your comfort. He wants you to grow up. He wants you to be mature. He wants you to be a person of character and integrity and to take responsibility. He is, in no way, going to take all the problems out of your life. It’s a harder way but it produces character. Take all of the problems removed out of your life, you’d be a spoiled brat. Fat, not muscle. If you got your way at everything, you’d be worthless. Nobody could live with you. So God, says, Yes, it’s harder.

When Mary and Joseph said, “Ok, God, we’re going to cooperate with Your plan. Use us.” Do you think that was easy?” No. It wasn’t easy for Mary to say, “Ok, I will be an unwed mother.” Can you imagine the gossip that went on in those days? And who’s going to believe her story? “It’s God!” Would you believe that?

Then at the end of Mary’s pregnancy, two or three days before she’s to deliver when most women just want to lay down, she had to get on a donkey and ride for several days from Nazareth to Bethlehem. No limo. No 5-star hotel. No mother or grandmother or all her relatives. No comforts of home around her. Instead by herself, in another city, in a stable that smelled like goats!

I’m sure Mary wondered if she could handle having Jesus as a son. “I could handle being a celebrity Mom. Really, it wouldn’t go to my head.” But God’s plan was harder, because he needed a baby. He’d tried angels; he’d tried prophets. He needed Jesus.

• God’s plan is harder, it’s bigger. It’s also more rewarding. The Bible says

No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him. – 1 Corinthians 2:9

When you cooperate with God’s plans and God’s purpose for your life, you have two benefits: significance and satisfaction – the two things that everybody tends to be looking for. Nothing can replace those. Not sex, not status, not success. But it’s significance and satisfaction. Because, once you discover God’s plan for your life and you start fulfilling it then you go, “Oh! This is it! This is what I was made for. I’ve found my niche, my purpose! I’m not here just to take up space and breathe air, waste resources.” You find that significance and satisfaction.

 
What am I supposed to do with my life while I’m here on earth? The 60, 70, 80, 90 years if I get that many years to live? What am I supposed to do?

God says, “I want you to do three things?

1. I want you to get to know Me not know about Me. You know about Jesus Christ. You know about God. He says, “I want you to have a relationship with Me. Not a religion but a relationship.”
2. I want you to know and discover and fulfill the purpose that I put you on earth for. You were put here for a unique purpose.
3. I want you to develop your talents and skills and I want you to build your character, because that’s the only thing you’re taking with you into eternity. 

This last year, we lost a lot of well know people: Dan Fogelberg. Tammy Faye Bakker. Evil Knievel. Luciano Pavarotti. Bill Walsh. Jerry Falwell. Boris Yeltsin. Kurt Vonnegut. Liz Clairborne. Some people die young and some people die old. But everybody dies eventually.

Only a fool would go all the way through life unprepared for what we know is eventually going to happen. That’s what Christmas is about, its an introduction to God, arranged by Jesus, because that’s one of the purposes of life, for you to get to know God.

Can you imagine standing before God one day after you die and God says, “I’m going to ask you two questions: (1) What did you do with My Son, Jesus Christ? Did you ever get to know Him? And then (2), “Did you get to know the purpose that I put you on earth for?”

Can you imagine saying to God, “God, I know this sounds kind of funny, but I was too busy. I knew about Jesus, I knew about You. But, sorry, I just didn’t have the time. I know You had a purpose and plan for my life, but I had my plans and I really thought that my plans were better than Your plans so I did it my way.”

God’s going to say, “What were you thinking? Do you think I put you on earth just to do your own thing? To never get to know Me? To never take the time to stop and figure out why I put you on earth and to fulfill the purpose and to get ready for eternity? Wrong answer!”

It’s going to be more than an embarrassment. It has eternal implications. That’s why Christmas is so important. That’s why the third thing God says, When I mess up your plans, I’m not only saying, Listen, I’ve got a better idea.

I’m saying, I WANT YOU TO LEARN TO TRUST ME.

Can you imagine the faith hat it took for Joseph to do what he had to do? If your fiancé came to you one day and said, “Honey, I’m pregnant. And, by the way, it’s God’s fault.” Would you believe that story? Joseph was going to call off the engagement but the Bible says:

But 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.” Matthew 1:20

He was going to call off the engagement until God sent an angel to him and said, “She’s right! It’s ok.” Can you imagine the faith that Mary had to have when she realized that, of all the women in the entire world, God chose to use her as the instrument by which He would come into the world?

God’s plan was so different from their plan for their own life that all they could do was trust. But that was ok. Because the Bible says there’s only one way to please God. It’s not by religion. It’s not by ritual. It’s not by ceremony. It’s not by a bunch of regulations.

“Without faith it is impossible to please God.” – Hebrews 11:6

It is by faith. God wants you to learn to trust Him.

Every time God messes up your plans, it’s a test. Am I going to trust God or am I going to trust me? Do I think I know better or do I think God knows better? Do I think I know what’s going to make me happy or do I really think God knows what’s best and what’s going to make me happy? It’s a test.

This Christmas, you may be feeling a little discouraged. A lot of people are – 2007 was a tough year for a lot of people. Or maybe you came in here feeling a little lonely. A lot of people feel lonely at Christmas time. You may be feeling stressed out by the whole situation and all the responsibilities of getting all the gifts and stuff like that. (You know, waiting until the last day to purchase gifts has its advantages. There’s only men in the mall then. Kind of a manly thing!)

For some of you this is the first Christmas since the divorce. For some of you this is the first Christmas since the death of that loved one. And I’m sorry. I hurt with you. And for some of you, this is the first Christmas since you’ve had that disability that you’re going to live with the rest of your life. If the truth were known you’re a little nervous about 2008 because you’re uncertain. You don’t know which way it’s going to go. You don’t know if you’re going to have a job or not or your relationship is going to last or your marriage is going to fall apart or if the kids are going to make it. You have all kinds of concerns and you don’t know and you’re worried.

The fact is, you don’t know. You have no idea. You can call as many psychic hotlines as you want and you still won’t figure out the future. Because its God’s secret. You don’t know what 2008 is going to hold.

But you can know three things:

1. God, in 2008, is still going to have a personal plan for your life. You may have missed it for the first 20, 30, 40, 50 years of your life but it has not changed. And you can get on it today, starting tonight, and make the rest of your life the best of your life.
2. You can know that God is never going to leave you, that He will be with you every step of the way in 2008.
3. You can know that ultimately the only legitimate, rational way to live is to figure out who God is, get to know Him, discover His purpose and start living that purpose. If you’re not living the purpose that God made you for, what in the world are you doing with your life? In fact, you’re not living. You are just existing. You get up, got to work, come home, watch some television and go to bed and repeat the cycle seven days a week. That’s not living. That’s existing. 

What do I do, when life doesn’t make sense? Don’t focus on yourself. Focus on God.

God says: You will seek Me and you will find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. – Jeremiah 29:13

In some ways, the wise men really were the wise men. They didn’t know exactly what was going on. They weren’t believers. They weren’t Christians. They just saw something really, really unusual and decide to check it out. “We’re just discovers of truth.” Some of you are like that. You haven’t yet given your life to Christ. But you’re on the road. You’re seeking the truth. There’s nothing wrong with that. Congratulations. We all start out as seekers.

But at some point you have to become a believer, you have to step across the line or you miss the whole point of life.

You say, “I just want to be happy.” Happiness is good. That’s a good thing. But that’s not the purpose of life. “I just want to be loved.” Love is a good thing and God wants you to be loved. But love is not the purpose of life. “I just want security, freedom, to get rid of these memories of my past that are bugging me. I want to be financially secure. I’m looking for peace of mind.”

Those are just the smell of the apple pie. They are the sign of something deeper: a relationship to God. You were made with the God-sized emptiness in your heart. Only God can fill it. If you try to put anything else in there – popularity, possessions, whatever – it’s like putting a square peg in a round hole. It doesn’t fit and you know it. And it’s frustrating.

I don’t care what your background is. You may be Catholic. You may be Buddhist. You may be Baptist. You may be Mormon. You may be Jewish. I don’t care what your background is. I’m not talking about religion. I’m talking about having a trusting relationship with Jesus Christ, where you’re not trying to earn your way to heaven. You just accept His grace.

We all came here for different reasons. Some of you came because it’s the Sunday around Christmas. You go to church once or twice a year. Some of you came because you were invited by a friend or a loved one, a relative, someone who cared about you. Some of you came because maybe you saw an ad in the paper or our sign on the corner. Some of you came because you got caught in the traffic and had to come in! You were actually on the way to Wal-Mart for that last minute gift! But you’re here.

I don’t care why you think you’re here; you’re not here by accident. God wanted to get your attention, even if just for a few minutes. So he could say this:

“I made you for a purpose and I love you and you matter to Me. And even though you’ve been going off on your plan, I want you to get on My plan. I have seen every single moment of your life, from your first heartbeat until now. I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly in your life and I still love you, because I am God.”

“I will never love you more than I do now and I will never love you any less because My love for you is not based on your performance. It’s based on the fact that I made you. If you’ll get with My plan for your life, you’ll be so much more satisfied and significant than if you just go off and continue to go with your little plans.”

All of us are in one of three spiritual positions in our spiritual journey.

Many of you here tonight already know Jesus Christ. You’ve given your heart to Him. You’ve developed that relationship to God we’ve talked about. And you are actively trying to fulfill the purpose that God made you for. To you I say, “Celebrate Christmas! Remember what a good deal you got the day you gave your life to Christ. Three things happened: He took care of your past, your present and you future.

1. Every sin you’ve ever committed, everything you’ve ever done wrong was completely forgiven and forgotten by God the day you said yes to Christ.
2. You began to get the power which you now live on daily to handle the hassles and the struggles and the problems you face on a regular basis. He gives you that daily power.
3. And not only that, He secured your future in heaven – God’s retirement program.” That’s a deal you can’t refuse and that’s the reason we have to rejoice this Christmas as followers and believers. 

But there’s another group of you here. You’re the seekers. You haven’t yet stepped across the line. You say, “I’m interested. I’m thinking about it. I’m checking in out.” Good for you. Congratulations. When will be a better time to take the next step?

Then there is a third group. You’re believers but you’ve kind of lost your spark. You’ve lost the warmth. You remember being close to God in the past but for one reason or another, you got distracted. You get involved in something else. Or something happened that knocked you off course. God would say to you tonight, “Come on home. It’s Christmas.” He’s not going to scold you. He’s going to welcome you home with open arms because He loves you and says, “Don’t waste another day being separate from Me.”

We’re going to close this service with a Christmas prayer. I invite you to pray it. You don’t have to close your eyes. You don’t even have to say it aloud.

Dear God, thank You for being patient with me. I’ve always known You were there but I’ve never really gotten to know You very well. I thank You for bringing me here tonight. I’ve known something was missing in my life, I just didn’t know it was you.

Thank You for seeking me even when I ignored you. Today I realize that you’ve been trying to get my attention. I admit that I’ve been focusing on my plan for life, not yours.

I realize that you made me for a purpose. So tonight, I want to take the first step by getting to know Jesus Christ, who you sent at Christmas. Today, Jesus, as much as I know how I want to open up my life to you. Replace my guilt with your forgiveness. Replace my confusion with Your peace. Please, replace my uncertainty about the future and death with your gift of eternal life.

This next year, I want to pay attention to You, God. I want to discover and fulfill the purpose that you made me for. I want to cooperate with your plan for my life. I want to learn to trust you more. In your name I pray, Jesus. Amen.