God Desires to be with Us

Pastor Phillips' Sermon

Advent Service, November 30, 2005

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, in this season of Advent, this time of anticipation, this time of remembering how Jesus came in the past and looking forward to how He will come in the future, bless us with your Holy Spirit. Help us to draw near to you, to have this wonderful sense of intimacy with you in our worship, in our devotions, in our prayer life, bless us and draw us to you. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Isn't it great that, in a world where we suffer things like rejection and loss, we know, without a doubt, the Creator of the universe desires to be with us, pursues us, comes after us, reaches out to us, because that is in His nature. We hear words like separation anxiety and fear of abandonment and grief, the bereavement process. And what they describe is our human condition as we go through life and we experience the challenges and the ups and the downs and the hard things that tear at our heart, the things we fear as we lose a loved one.

In the midst of all that, God is constant, unmoving, solid as a rock. And He remains steadfast in His love for us and He desires to be with us. There is nothing we can do that will chase God away and nothing we can possibly do to make Him love us more. He already loves us so much that He considers us worth dying for. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that wonderful to know we can count on that, that He will always desire to be with us?

This pattern of His desire is evident throughout His history with His people from the beginning of creation on. In the beginning, what you see up here is a depiction of the Cistine Chapel painting of creation where the hand of God is touching the hand of His wonderful creation, Adam, and He is giving life to humanity. From the very beginning, when God designed the world, when He laid things out and when He created the first person, His desire was to be with us. It's just amazing. It just boggles my mind that He, the Creator of the universe, desires to be with His creatures.

It says in the scriptures that God created us in His image, and I think that's a fascinating thing to ponder. What does it mean we are created in His image? And I think one of the chief things that indicates is we can give and receive love just like He does. We can have a relationship with Him that includes the giving and receiving of love. God created us and designed us in His image so that indicates quite a bit, doesn't it? His desire to love us, His desire to be with us and if you think deep in your heart, that is your greatest desire as well. That is the biggest need you have is to be loved and to have that intimacy with your spouse, with your children, with your heavenly Father. That is your greatest need from the moment of creation when He made the first people, God demonstrated His desire to be intimate with us.

The scriptures use a word, in fact, the Old Testament word is yada, and Pastor Meyer and I were talking about that a little earlier this evening. Yada means to know. But it's not just knowledge or awareness or facts and figures. It's the idea of an intimate relationship, and it's used in this way to describe the relationship of God with His people and, in Genesis 3, it says Adam yada Eve and she bore a child. Intimacy. The most intimate relationship you can have or conceive of, that is what God desires with you.

He demonstrates this again throughout scripture as He takes Abraham and He guides him away from his home in the Ur of the Chaldeans into this land his descendants would inherit. And He promises him that “your descendants will be as many as the stars in the heavens or the sands on the seashore.” God desires to be with us as He was with Abraham, as He was with Moses and the children of Israel, guiding them throughout all of those hardships for 40 years, bearing with them all the time, even when they sinned and rebelled against God and His leaders. God continued to be steadfast in His desire to be with them.

Later on, in fact, when our text comes into play, God showed His desire to be with the children of Israel as they entered into the Promise Land by giving them Joshua. Joshua, in Hebrew Jeshua. That's the Hebrew name for Jesus. It means the Lord saves. God is with His people. He desires to be with us. He desires to be part of everything we do and to be involved in guiding and directing our very existence. So, as He led them into the Promise Land through Joshua, He provided them with a wonderful and strong leader.

Now Joshua was coming in at a really tough time. Can you imagine following Moses, being his successor? The great law giver? The one who had been on Mount Sinai, the one God used to deliver them from Egypt , the slavery in Egypt ? Can you imagine following in his footsteps? That would be a tough act to follow. But God equipped Joshua for the task. Joshua was a fairly young man, and he was afraid. He was intimidated by the task of leading this nation and leading them in battle and yet God gave him these wonderful words, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified. Do not be discouraged for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” Isn't it interesting that in these powerful words, God isn't saying, you know, it'll be okay. He's giving him imperatives, commands, saying, “You be strong. You be courageous because I'm with you. I'm going to be with you all the way. Nobody can stand against you because I am with you.” God desires to be with His people. God desires to guide and direct us. God desires to protect and provide for us.

Later on, it says, as He was talking to Joshua, “Everywhere you put your foot, I will give you that land.” Wow, what a deal, huh? Man, I'd start walking. That'd be great. The idea was simply that God's people were evacuees, if you will. They were refugees. They had no home. They were slaves in Egypt . They escaped slavery and they wandered with no home. But God desired an intimate relationship with them and He wanted them to be established in their own land with security and comfort and so He gave them the Promised Land. He provided that wonderful place, and it's an amazing description, isn't it, in the bible. “Flowing with milk and honey.” It's kind of a strange image, isn't it? But that's the idea of prosperity, flowing with milk and honey, a wonderful place the loving creator of the universe provided for His children.

Again, God demonstrates His desire to be with us, His desire to be with His people. Later on in our text, He says, “Do not let the book of the Torah depart from your mouth. Meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.” He gave them His word. He gave them the bible. He gave them the scriptures to guide them, the wonderful revealed word of God, all those laws, they might seem burdensome or legalistic from the outside but here's the thing. God is providing the best path to walk. He's providing you the instruction manual, the way things work best and He ought to know because He designed it. So as He's giving them His word, He is demonstrating His desire to be with them. It says, “If they walk and do everything in it, you will be prosperous and successful.” Now you may have heard some of these televangelists doing this prosperity theology stuff where they say, “Well, you just have to give all your money to God and then you'll be wealthy like I am.” That's not what this is about. It's saying there's a right and a wrong. God reveals the right to us so we can avoid the pain of the wrong. That's how much He desires to be with us. He doesn't want us to struggle. He doesn't want us to suffer. So He provides His word.

You've heard me say Torah and that's not one you normally hear read on Sunday morning. Usually, you would hear law. Do not let the book of the law depart from your mouth. But the Hebrew word is Torah and it's really difficult to translate into English. It doesn't really fit law like rules and regulations. It's more the idea of pointing, direction, indication, or instruction. Doesn't that sound more like something you want to hear than law? God is guiding us by giving us His word. He's giving us the path, the way things work best, the way to avoid the pain of the misdirection, the pain of sin.

God continues to supply all of our needs, and I know you know these kinds of experiences I'm going to relate to you. God desires to be with us just like we desire to be with our loved ones. And you might be able to think of a time when you were separated from somebody you loved and you just couldn't think of anything else but being with them. And I remember, as I was working on this message, a time when I was separated from my youngest brother. Now I'm nine years older than him and he's the youngest of eight and, to us, he was always the baby. And, you know, somebody to take care of, somebody to keep an eye on, somebody to pick up after, and all that kind of thing. So, in 1991, when the first Gulf War came along, I'm still thinking as big brother looking out for little brother, but my little brother is in the 82 nd Airborne and he's a paratrooper going to be part of the assault on Baghdad. And in my heart and in my mind, I'm scared and I'm thinking of my little brother, the baby, and I'm thinking of these Muslim fundamentalists that would die for Allah and my baby brother fighting them. And I thought, “I just want to be with him. I want to keep him safe. I want to protect him.” I wrote to him letters and poems and things like that. And I can remember one poem I wrote and I can't remember the whole thing but the last part said, “Brothers from the very start, brothers even death can't part.” And he said he carried that with him as he did his work serving our country.

God knows these human desires we have. He created them in us, to be with each other and that's a reflection of His desire to be with us. As we walk these steps through Advent this season, let's draw near to God. Let's seek him earnestly just as the wise men followed the star hoping to see the king that had been born, let's pursue God and seek Him where He may be found in His word, in His sacraments, in worship, and in our devotion. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Copyright 2005 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church