UP TO WORK! CHARGED!

By

Eldridge E. Fleming, Ph.D.

New Hope Presbyterian Church

Rienzi, Mississippi

December 19, 1999

Our Old Testament reading comes from 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16. This is a reading that has to do with the experiences of King David. David has been described as a man after God's own heart in so many ways and so, let us listen in.
Our reading from the New Testament comes from Romans 16. The Book of Romans is that treatise of the Apostle Paul on his beliefs, trying to systematize the thoughts of the day and bring it all together in one eloquent presentation. As you study it, you find it to be just that -- an eloquent apology for the Christian faith -- especially if you take into consideration that the Jews of the day had set the pace and the standard by which we judge whether or not something was true according to God the Almighty. You have to remember that when the Roman letter was written, the gospels had not been written. You are reading material that is coming at the time when the Apostle Paul did not have those documents in his hand at that time, but he wrote this out of his experience, out of his inspiration, and out of what he had gathered and garnered from those apostles with whom he had talked and discussed. He had done that with all of them -- all of them that were alive. In the last chapter, at the very end -- there is a kind of plug for us to get going, to do the things we need to do. And it is his conclusion.

That is, of course, his benediction and his concluding statement. And if you will look at -- and we will discuss this in a few minutes in more detail -- it accordingly, you will see what he is summarizing from his work.

We will now hear that favorite passage that we read so often and one we will hear again later today on another occasion. It is from Luke 1:26-38. Would you stand with me as we hear the gospel?

The Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

One of those frustrating things for a child is to get a toy, look at it and see that it's all together and beautiful and ready for action and then turn it on -- but nothing happens. Then you look at the wrapper, you look at the package -- and in a little square box, it says, "Batteries not included." There you are with a perfectly good toy, something that can be meaningful and delightful and give you a lot of fun, and you have no power. "Batteries not included." But some of those manufacturers have gotten wise these days and they put a little box on the outside, "Batteries included." Through the years everybody who bought toys was trained to the fact that the manufacturer didn't want to deal with the battery company, that they just said, "Batteries not included." But some of those manufacturers have gotten wise and have now worked out agreements with battery providers, and they include the batteries and now say, "Batteries included." It makes it so nice because on Christmas morning, you unwrap the package and the gift and you turn on the switch, and it works.

That's the way it is, sometimes, with our lives. Isn't it? We have all the things put together in our Christian faith, but we just don't have the power. So therefore, we need to have that source that will give us the strength to do and to work and to function. We need to be charged up. We have to have the battery first, don't we? And then we have to have that battery charged up. What am I talking about? In our Christian faith, as we come into the Christmas season -- with this being Christmas Sunday -- there was a reason Jesus came into the world. He came into the world so that he could "charge" everybody and they could be ready for doing God's Kingdom's business in the world.

Oh, religion is not new. Religion is historical. Since the days in the caves, people who could think wondered about where they came from, wondered about where they were going, wondered what happened to them when somebody smashed somebody else's head or a rock fell on someone and crushed them. Why was it that at sometimes they were alive and responding and then later, they were not? What was the difference? Somewhere along the line they got the thought that something special was out there beyond them and there must be some kind of spirit for being that made them work. They knew that when that spirit was gone, the body didn't function any more.

We know it in our day and age as life. We talk about getting life crushed out of us, and if you've seen bad accidents, that's what happens. Through history we've thought that life was in the blood because warriors observed that when blood drained out of a body that was stabbed, that person didn't move any more. So life must be in the blood. Through the ages we've had different ideas about where life was. How is it that this thing moves? Oh, we don't think too much about it for ourselves because we can move, but we wonder about it for other folks. But as people began to think that the spirit had something to do with them, they began to come up with all kinds of ideas of how to worship and how to get that spirit to do things for them.

Martha and I have been on this fabulous trip. One of the things that we saw over and over again and what we heard over and over again was what is now called the "mythologies" of the Greeks. But those mythologies of the Greeks were their worship. They believed in sacrificing. They believed in consulting the oracle -- or somebody -- before they made major decisions. We read a moment ago that David called Nathan in. Nathan was a powerful fellow. In my image of Nathan I see him as a short fellow, smaller than David, a great deal smaller than Saul, smaller even than Samuel. But Nathan was known as the prophet. The prophet was someone who told it to you like it was, but he some other special power. He was attributed to having the power to discern what the Lord wanted you to do. By the time of David, this idea of many gods was still around. But for David and for Israel, there was to be one God. He is the Lord God Almighty. His names were many, but He was one God. He was not a pantheon, a group of Gods like the Greeks had or the Egyptians had. Egyptians worshiped the sun. Not that. The Israelites worshiped the God who made the sun, so He was the God Almighty. He was mightier than all the man made gods around.

And David was aware of the presence of God because of the Ark of the Covenant. David, being a thoughtful person, being one who was committed to doing God's will, thought about his selfishness in the presence of God. His thoughts were, "I'm dwelling in a house of cedar," and that was no mean trick to have a special palatial home with marble and all of that and fine cedar. Cedar, in Palestine, in the kingdom of Israel, meant that you brought it in from somewhere else. It had to be cut and sliced and put together in the right way. Stone walls maybe, yes, but the cedar was that which kept out the bad elements. And he looked around and he said, "Hey, I'm living in a permanent, stationary home made of the finest stuff we can get. Cedar, nonetheless -- and my Lord is in a flimsy tent. What kind of a guy am I not to be aware of that? The God of the universe, His Law -- kept in that Ark -- is in a tent. I'm not much of a fellow, so I'll tell you what I'm going to do. Nathan, let me know if this fits with God's will. I'm going to build the Lord a house so that the Ark of the Covenant can go into the house. And it's going to be a permanent one, not one of these things that you move around from place to place."

Nathan was accommodating. You can't always tell if these prophets are shooting straight with you on the first showing or not, but he thought it was a pretty good idea and he said, "Well, go ahead, the Lord's with you. Do whatever you want to do in your heart." Why would he say heart? David had a clean heart. Oh yes, he had sinned. He had sinned grievously -- grossly -- but he had been forgiven and had that pure heart. Do what's in your heart.

So Nathan went away. But that night, Nathan had a consultation with the Lord, and the next day he came back to David and said, "Thus saith the Lord, 'Don't worry about My house. I'm going to take care of you.'" That's what he said, in essence. You see, in that there was a coming of a relationship between David, the warrior -- David, the king -- and his God, the God of the universe. He was able to move and do his thing because of that. Now through the ages things deteriorated, as you well know. There were lots of religious ideas and beliefs. There was captivity, there was punishment, there was death -- all of these things, and many of them came about because they were disobedient to God. People didn't know what to do. Oh, they had these new rules -- I mean volumes thick, if you published them -- and today, with all those rules, you still would go away having all the knowledge, having all the understanding, but too often powerless, powerless to bring about that which needed to be done. That is, being obedient to God.

So, we have Christmas. The purpose of Christmas is to bring the battery into the middle of all that's put together and to charge up so that we can go about our work. For you see, we can have all the understanding of what we ought to be doing, but without the power of the Spirit of God, it doesn't work very well. So Jesus was born to save his people from their sins. He was that which would bring all the religious ideas together because he was bringing God's presence into the world in a new form, a greater understood form. He was human and we can see that.

Do you remember his baptism? We'll talk about that in a couple of weeks. At his baptism, the Spirit of God came upon him. Up to that point, Jesus was a carpenter. He was working in his shop, he was being kind to people, he was doing those things that people are supposed to do. But somehow or the other, that Spirit came upon him -- the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Father, the Spirit of the Creator -- empowering him to do beyond anything he had expected. It drove him.

When he came back from his temptation experience, after successfully fending off the evil one, he came back to his hometown and he read from the scriptures, and he said, "Today this is fulfilled in your presence. God has anointed me to do these things. He had the power. He was charged. He was ready to go; and from then on, he did. All the way down through his life. And on that eve just before his ultimate price, you can see the humanity and divinity struggling in the prayer of Jesus in the garden. For he tells us that he asked the Father to remove the cup -- the cup being the cup of death, the cup of sacrifice, the giving of his life. He said, "Can you move this thing away? If it's Your will, Father, remove it from me. I don't want to have to do this, but nevertheless, Your will be done and not mine. Now you know it takes a lot of courage and strength to do that, because it was as though he is on a self-destructive path. It's a path of love and gifts to others, but it is a destructive path. He's going to pay with his life; he's going to give everything that he has, in a short time, to others. And he'd really rather not.

But then there is that phrase, "Not my will, but yours, be done." Jesus had followed the will of the Father down to this point, but sometimes his will would be that which was human. But he had that charge in him and he had that Spirit upon him and that commitment within that said, "Not my will, but Yours, be done. Even to the cross. That Spirit of God was in him. It carried him through that experience. And as a result of having gone through that experience, then the glorious resurrection and the ascension, and as we had this morning in the Apostles' Creed, ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of the Father. That's where he is right now, waiting for the day he will return to gather us to him.

Charged. Ready to work. And the beginning point in history was in the stable at Bethlehem. This, you see, is why Christmas is so honored in the Christian churches, because we recall the coming of God to be with us in human form. Now I know if you study comparisons of religions, you'll see that these similar types of stories are written into others as well, but none of them have stayed like this experience of Jesus. And the reason is because it is truth, truth in a special way.

So now, how do we get charged up? We get charged up by the coming of the presence of the Spirit of God, and it is my wish for you at this Christmas season that you will have that charge and be charged up to do the bidding and the work of the Kingdom of God. Let us pray for a double portion of God's Spirit upon us in this season. Amen.