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Joy to the World: Those Looking for Answers
Pastor Rolan Fisher
We made it to the end of 2020!!!!
Congratulate yourselves and praise the Lord!!!!
As our lives have been turned on their heads, it has been God’s grace to us all helping us to search for the answers to life’s most important questions.
Questions like:
Why are we here?
How do we respond to life’s challenges?
Where do we go now?
We’ve learned the truth that:
“Serious circumstances remind us that the difficulty of finding the truth is no excuse for not looking.”
-Paul Copan
Focus: God brings joy to those looking for answers in Christ.
Looking for Answers
Finding the God Who Cares
Jesus at the Temple
Looking for Answers
We all have questions to which only God has the answers.
Luke 2:41-52
Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom. And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it, but supposing him to be in the group they went a day's journey, but then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances, and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. And when his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?” And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart.
And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.
Finding true joy in every circumstance is only possible when we look to Jesus for the answers.
We are all ultimately here to know God and make God known through his Son, Jesus Christ.
God is a constant tutor pointing us to this fact despite all of life’s varied circumstances.
In the midst of a Roman occupancy that did not particularly affirm their faith, the people at the temple in Luke’s account were those who were looking for answers.
They were giving God an opportunity to speak rather than camping in life’s discouragements or popular accusations against God’s goodness at the time.
The truth is that God is not afraid of your questions.
Isaiah 1:18-20
“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
When we come to God with questions, He doesn't always give us the answers that we want, but He ultimately responds with the answers that we truly need - those that lead to life and godliness.
The great challenge of our worship is learning to humbly trust and obey God with the answers that He provides.
We must come to grips with the fact that God can not be benevolent and sovereign when we like the outcomes of our circumstances, and treacherous or lack control when we don’t.
That would be equating our opinions and preferences to God - and they are not the same thing.
“Whenever I read the Bible and come across something that I disagree with, I have to assume I’m wrong.”
-Francis Chan
God is all wise and good all of the time.
Christ’s advent is joy for those looking for answers because it reminds us of the great lengths to which God went to demonstrate His love, make Himself known and reconcile us to Himself through the cross.
“Jesus didn’t come to win a debate, He came to win His people. Jesus never answered a question, He answered the person. Jesus never sought to win an argument, He sought to win the individual.”
-Ravi Zacharias
God intends our questions in life to ultimately lead us to Jesus.
Yet when we FOCUS on the wrong things, we can end up in the ruts of life marked by cynicism, nihilism and despair.
If we’re not careful, even the routines of religion can make us think that we’re in step with God when really we’ve left Jesus behind.
Mary and Joseph had their own moment of this when they lost track of Jesus.
We know that we’ve lost track of Jesus when we find ourselves in emotional and mental ditches trying to answer life’s biggest questions without the Lord.
2020 has brought plenty of opportunity for that.
What has been your “thing” - the one focal point on which you found yourself meditating most, that which became a lens through which you interpreted all else this year?
Was it the election, the economy, racial injustice, calamities in the world or the pandemic?
All of these tensions could have made a person afraid to even leave their house if they were all upon which they meditated.
You can fixate on such things or you can fix your eyes on Jesus and truly live, in every season, and at all times.
Because through His Word, you find that there is a God who cares.
Finding the God Who Cares
Jesus is God who reaffirms his care for those who seek him in the world.
God cares for us each individually.
When you seek God personally, you find that Jesus is the all wise teacher and gentle healer that we all need it right now.
Jesus is lowly of heart and is SO approachable.
Though that is His nature, we need to beware of responding simply emotionally when we are looking for answers.
Remember, as the Israeli prophet Jeremiah said,
Jeremiah 17:9
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”
Mary was understandably emotional when she couldn’t find Jesus, and so are we when we don’t sense God or understand what he is doing in our lives.
*However, Mary would have missed what God was doing if she didn’t give Jesus an opportunity to speak.
Jesus explained exactly why He was at the temple, revealing more about his nature and His unique relationship with the Father when Mary asked her questions.
Think of how many of you would not have been in church or moments of worship like this if it had not been for the upending of our worlds.
Think also of the countless lives that God has been eternally saving in the midst of our difficult circumstances.
But does God care for our world?
“Cynics point to the humanitarian problems around the world and then tell us that there is no God who cares. To answer the cynics who say that pain points to a God who doesn’t care, consider that the World Health Organization says that we could feed the entire world with food and clean water for thirty billion dollars per year. Yet we spend one trillion dollars on military worldwide. The cynics can’t honestly answer the question about human depravity. They fail because they point their rage at God rather than fellow humans who could solve hunger with 3% of their military budgets.”
-Rice Broocks in The Human Right
When we meet Jesus, we find that He is the only one who provides in the moment, comprehensive and eternal solutions to life’s challenges.
Mary and Joseph thought Jesus went missing and found instead that they were really the ones in need.
The good news is that we can make our way back to Jesus and find that He cares for our whole world.
Where do you find Jesus when you feel like He’s been lost?
You go to the place of worship where God’s Word is being taught.
You will always find Jesus there.
The Bible not only describes the problem with the world regarding sin, but also intricately describes its solution in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And so even in His youth, at the temple Jesus was showing those who thought themselves older and wiser how much they still had to learn.
Jesus at the Temple
We find our answers and joy at the place of worship.
When Mary and Joseph finally found Jesus, Jesus exclaimed, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?”
*God meets us right where we are, but also calls us to be where He is.
Those sitting at the temple with Jesus were committed to the worship gatherings where the heart and thoughts of God were revealed through God’s Word.
In this same way, God continually brings encouragement and joy to us today as He reveals Jesus not only as a good teacher, but the great God and Savior for whom all mankind is really waiting.
“It is impossible to read the Gospels or Paul and come away with the impression that Jesus of Nazareth thought of Himself as a mere man. Jesus said much about Himself that would have been outlandish if He were just a man.
“I am the light of the world.” —John 8:12
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” —Mark 13:31
“For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.” —Matthew 18:20 NKJV
“The prophets who spoke for God prefaced their statements with the phrase, “Thus says the Lord.” But when Jesus spoke, He didn’t say, “Thus says the Lord,” but instead He made comments such as “Truly I say to you.” He spoke in such terms because the Lord was speaking. JESUS DEMONSTRATED HE IS THE MESSIAH”
-Rice Broocks, Man, Myth, Messiah: Answering History's Greatest Question
In response to their search, Jesus was pleased to return home with His earthly parents.
And so He is pleased to make a dwelling in your life, family and home as you repent of sin and believe the good news of Jesus.
So where do we go from here?
Mary treasured the entire encounter that Luke recounts in her heart.
As Jesus grew, the Scripture says that He would “increase in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.”
And so Christ’s impact on the world would grow as well.
During our times of worship gatherings, we encounter both God’s word and the power of His Holy Spirit.
We are to bring our questions to God and then humbly ponder the answers in His Word to allow direct application in the ways in which we live.
Community groups are a great place to flesh this out with others!
We then allow the Holy Spirit to, like Christ, increase us in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men to take God’s gospel truth and care to the world.
This is what it means to go and make disciples of the nations.
“The Bible has built an entire civilization that has changed the world. We must see that the greatest steps toward justice have been taken by those following the cross. Vishal Mangalwadi says, “I call the Bible the soul of Western Civilization because it propelled the development of everything good in the West: its notion of human dignity, human rights, human equality, justice, optimism, rationality, family, education, universities, technology, science, culture of compassion, great literature, heroism, economic progress, political freedom.”
-Rice Broocks, The Human Right
When we return to finding the beginning and end of all of our questions in Jesus, we will once again find the joy for which the world is actually longing!
Repent of your sin and meet Jesus at the cross today to receive this great joy!
Second City Church - Joy to the World, Pastor Rollan Fisher 2020