He Came Close

I am I'm taking the lead from my pastor and I've come down here on the floor this is such new territory I almost don't know what to do but he's a good one to follow so I'm going to follow in his footsteps and come right on down here and it probably won't be as scary as I thought it would be I ached and pained over what to speak about tonight because I am well aware that it is only so many days until Christmas 10 days and some odd hours until Christmas and I thought what in the world am I expected to talk about well Christmas is going to be in here okay but it's not necessarily going to be about Christmas I hope you're okay with that there's a story that's been told and some of you are probably familiar with it it's been depicted by actors and actresses in the Christmas time film Home Alone 2. now whether you want to debate me or not about whether that's actually a Christmas movie let's do that after this but uh Christmas time film I think we could agree on that it tells the plight of poor or lucky depending on how you look at it Kevin McAllister and it plays out for your viewing and cringing pleasure the all-important moments deciding whether Kevin will spend Christmas in Paris with his family or yet another year Home Alone happens at the airport he awakened on time for this trip he left the house with his family on this trip and he is even accounted for as they disembarked the 15 passenger van at the airport and that's where the trouble begins the McAllister family races through crowded terminals to make their flight for Paris and Kevin gets separated from them but he can still see his father and he's just following at a distance but that distance continues to grow until all of the sudden Kevin crashes into the flight attendant checking tickets at the door his father recently entered and the tickets spill all over the floor and if you wondered if this movie was made before or after 9 11 now you know because she allows him to board without even checking his ticket it's a scene that's frustrated viewers if you're like me it's terrified parents and it's delighted children for 30 years now 30 years the movie's 30 years old I feel old everyone watching knows that the man Kevin is following is not Kevin's dad but Kevin doesn't he boards the plane for New York while the one he was following but got a little too much distance between sits on a plane Bound for Paris the distance made the difference

why in the world am I talking about home alone 2. because it humorously yet accurately depicts for us the danger in the peril the frustration of distance the fact that there was distance between Kevin and his father is the reason that he didn't recognize that his dad had gone one way and he was following a man with the exact same coat going to New York distance when I think about God I think about how great and how Grand and how awesome he is I also always think about how far away he is you know the scripture that says for as the heavens are high as high as the Earth sows his Mercy towards you know he's got an abundance of it because there is an abundance of space between where we are on earth and where he is in heaven it's a long way up there if you've ever flown in a plane you know how far it is up there and that's only thirty thousand thirty eight thousand depending on where you're going feet in the air it's a great distance between us here on Earth and God and there's not just that physical distance but even just that more the mental distance he is so great as he's saying about you do Miracles so great his his power the distance of my power and between his power is so very great and so when I think about God I I think about the distance that there is but Christmas Emmanuel God with us the professor who taught me Hebrew at Seminary would be a Paul to know I remember only very little of it but he said he gave this definition of Emmanuel he said the exact rendering of it would actually you would actually say a with us God and it stuck with me that not so much the parsing of verbs and all the other stuff but that stuck with me he is a with us God and so when I think about me and when I think about you and when I think about him I don't really have to think about distance because he came in the form of a little baby in flesh wrapped in flesh in swaddling clothes and he came to be a with us God came closer and Christmas makes Christ accessible to us to all of us and not just us but to everybody in Saint Louis in Missouri and the United States and yay even the world Christ Christmas rather made Christ accessible and it brought God close he closed that distance that we were incapable of closing and our sin predicament and his love for us prompted and motivated his movement toward us and now he is not a distant Untouchable remote God but he is touchable we can feel him in this room tonight you have felt him now and other times he is a with us God he is close to us he is not some distant far-off unknown existential God but he is so real to us he has come close and made himself accessible to us he's a close God he is a close Source our God is the source he he's the source of all things I've heard it said like this God is my source and everything else is just a resource but God is my source and so I can be close to that source so if I if I need some Joy I can get it because I'm close and if I need some peace well I can get it because I'm close he has come close he has bridged the Gap that once existed between us because he came at Christmas he's made himself close to me think about being close to the source and we're blessed y'all we can turn the little tap water thing or Toby we can touch our she got this touch faucet it throws me off every time touch the faucet and begin to rain water from the faucet we don't have to carry our buckets down to the Mississippi thank God can you imagine brushing your teeth from water from the Mississippi some of you no I'm just kidding if I were living in like 1900 probably I would want to live close because oh girl don't want to walk just to get a drink of water or take a bath or have to brush my teeth I want to be close to the source I don't want to have to walk a mile right anybody else okay good I'm not alone in that but we we got we got it just at the touch and we got it we can just turn it we live close to the source the technology has brought this Source closer to us and so I think of God a little bit like that not like the money Mississippi but I think of God as he's CL I'm close to the source I don't have to want for anything David said in Psalm 23 he said the Lord is my shepherd I have all that I need I live close to the source of everything that I will ever need you live close to the source of everything that your heart longs for everything that your heart breaks about you can go to this close source that you have and receive peace and love and it's all because of Christmas he became a with us God so if you need hope here tonight or if you need peace if you need direction or wisdom God is close to you I don't want you to leave here thinking or believing that God is just way far away from me he can't hear me he can't understand me I can't touch him but you can touch him he is close to you he has come alongside of you he's with you right now though you may not feel him he is with you he has come close and that's what the story of Christmas tells us that he has come close and we can live close to Him scripture says it like this he can be touched with the feelings of our infirmities the new King James renders it like this he can sympathize with our weaknesses because he came close he he put Flesh on too he came close closer and the right response to that that he came close the right response to it is to come closer to him he took the steps that we couldn't take so we can take the steps that we can take towards him and so Crux of my lesson tonight is because God came close we can and should come close to him

think about the Christmas story in Scripture who came close well first of all the Shepherds came close in Luke Chapter 2 verses 18 through 17. now there were in the same country Shepherds living out in the fields keeping watch over their flock by night and behold an angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord Shone around 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 shall be to all people for there is born to you this day in the city of David close by where these shepherds are there is born to you this day close by 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 cloths lying in a Manger and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the Heavenly hosts praising God and saying glory to God in the highest and on Earth peace Good Will toward men so it was when the Angels had gone away from them the Shepherds into heaven that the shepherd said to one another let us now go to Bethlehem Let's Get Closer let's get as close as we can and see this thing that has come to pass which the Lord has made known to us verse 16 and they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph in the Babe line in a manger and when they had seen him they made widely known the saying which was told them concerning this child Emmanuel God With Us had been born the angels Heavenly beings had come close to them and told them that good news and their response was Let's Get Closer let's go see it I want to be as close to this as I possibly can I want to see it and experience it with my own eyes that can and should be our response as well because he has come close I want to get closer I want to see him I want to know him more I want to experience him for myself but the Shepherds weren't the only ones because the wise men the Magi in Matthew Chapter 2 you can find their story they also came close from further away than the Shepherds had come chapter 2 verse 1 of Matthew says now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king behold wise men from the East came to Jerusalem they came close when they heard the King Herod they departed to Bethlehem and behold the star which they had seen in the East went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was and when they saw the star they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy but they didn't just get to Bethlehem verse 11 says when they had come into the house they got real close y'all they didn't even have an invitation from Mary and Joseph they just we're here to see your kid like they didn't have an Earthly invitation from Mary and Joseph but they did have a Heavenly invitation from God to come close because he had come as far as he could and now he wanted them to come the rest of the way and I kind of think that he does the same with us he has come so so very far to be with us and he is inviting us to come closer Emmanuel God With Us God Has Come Close and the right response from us is to come closer to him

this pattern of course the fact that God had come through Jesus to Earth come close it repeated throughout the rest of the life of Jesus this response of people coming to him Jesus came close and people followed him they came close got closer Matthew did this in Matthew chapter 9 verse 9. scripture says as Jesus passed on from there where he had been he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office what a place to find someone at the tax office Jesus goes to the tax office apparently he went looking for Matthew Jesus came close and then he presented the invitation to Matthew follow me so Matthew arose and followed him he said all right if you're willing to come to where I am even though really where Matthew was wasn't liked by a whole lot of people it's still not liked by a whole lot of people but God isn't afraid to come where it may not be the most comfortable it may be a little frustrating it may be a little agitating God will show up to your agitation God will show up to your frustration he is not far off he will not distance himself from you no matter what and his Pastor taught us last week so wonderfully God is in our chaos he will come close to us in that chaos Matthew followed him when Jesus came close and invited him and so did Simon and Andrew James and John and the other disciples but in Mark chapter 1 verse 17 and 18 it says then Jesus said to them Simon and Andrew follow me and I will make you become Fishers of Men they immediately left their Nets and followed him Jesus this teacher this son of God they didn't know all of who he was at that time but they knew there was something special about him they knew there was something different about him they knew he didn't belong on a Fisherman's Boat they knew that they had entered into the presence of someone special someone that perhaps they they could perhaps feel that he cared about them and he invited them he had come close and he had invited them to follow him and they said absolutely if there's someone that will come to where I am and not care how it smells not care what it looks like not care that there's chaos or not care that there's strain and not care that there's grief not care about any of those things but yet he will come close then yes I am going to come close to him because he has come close to me and on and on many others throughout the gospels followed him as Jesus would present himself to them and he would make himself known they would follow him it continued on and on until Paul we read about him and we know that he followed Jesus because he would say in First Corinthians 11 verse 1 follow me as I follow Christ I'm Paul is saying I am aligning my life with him and his way and his character and his words and so come close to me and learn how to follow him too and we have that opportunity to come close and to follow him I am thankful

I don't want to go any further at this moment I just want to express my thankfulness to the Lord that he has come close to me in the chaos in the tribulations of my life and the struggles and in the storms in the Sin of my life He Has Come Close there is not an arm in the world that could hold him back from getting to me and I am so thankful if you are would you express that to him right now Lord we love you we thank you Lord that you have pulled Us close oh God that you have bridged the Gap that was there whether it had been through suffering and storm or whether it was because of sin you have bridged that Gap and you have invited us close and I thank you Lord I thank you I'm humbled by that thought that you would come close to me though I am not perfect and I am messed up and I am weak you come close in inviting me to come closer still if you have never made the choice to follow him and even if you have it may be helpful to ask these three questions as we think about how closely we follow Jesus if it is your desire to follow him and if it is your desire to be more like him and to truly engage and plug into this journey of transformation that I would encourage you to ask yourself these three questions where am I right now where do I want to be and what can I do to get there I want to come close to Jesus I want to come close to him I I want to be close in relationship with him but I also am saying this and I am also meaning I want to be more closely aligned with him and how I think and how I process in how I interact on Facebook and how I follow and support politics I want to more closely align with Jesus I want to follow him just a little closer I believe of all of you that it is your desire to follow Jesus I also believe that you have heard his invitation to follow him just a little bit closer with less distance between you and him with less discrepancies in how you react and how he would react the Gap is so vast if you're like me but when you start with the question where am I when you're answering that question be honest about where you are as I said the gap between where I want to be and where I am and how much I look like him and how much I don't that Gap is is very very wide but we can be honest about where we are because there's Grace to cover that Gap and scripture says my grace is sufficient for you he didn't say my grace is sufficient for those who sat on a church pew for X number of years or my grace is sufficient for those who are doing everything just right as right as they can no he said my grace is sufficient for you and I'm glad because I don't fit into those other categories I'm not perfect I don't always do the right thing but there's Grace for that gap between where I am and where he wants me to be and where I truly want to be that Gap that says you know what I could be a little bit closer I could be a little bit more like Jesus and so where am I I would encourage you you don't have to be ashamed of where you are or of who you are right in this moment you may not be doing everything that you even know to do you may not be doing and if you know to do it and you are doing it you may not be doing it perfectly and you may not be doing it 100 of the time because sometimes people cut you off in traffic and sometimes people say nasty things about you behind your back at work or in your family so you may not do it perfectly 100 percent of the time but remember there's Grace for The Gap and so God I I want to come closer to you I want to do better when I don't do right I want to do better I don't want there to be as big of a distance between he and I that there currently is so we don't have to be ashamed of where we are and secondly I would say please don't disqualify yourself from being closer to him you can come the invitation is to everybody the invitation the fact that God is with us that us includes us you and I and all of them out there God With Us he came close and he's inviting each of us to come closer so don't disqualify yourself because of where you are right now where you are financially where you are in your relationships where you are in your marriage where you are in your ministry experience don't disqualify where you are here's what I'll tell you start Where You Are start following him right where you are start coming closer to him right from where you are don't think you got to get perfect and then you can become what God wants you to be and then you can be used by God don't think you got to get good to get God we get God and he makes us good so start Where You Are maybe there's a gap between where you are and where you want to be in in any area of your life but particularly tonight we're talking about our relationship and our discipleship with the Lord so if there's a gap there don't pretend like it's not there it's not going to do any good to pretend it's not there we got to own it we got to accept it we got to realize it and recognize it and say okay I'm going to start from here and I'm gonna one step one step and I'm going to follow him a little bit closer every day until I'm able to close that Gap don't disqualify yourself because you make the same mistake over and over don't disqualify yourself because there's chaos in your life or you've got strained relationships or there's grief in your life or there's that chaos and Brokenness he came close during a time of chaos Pastor taught it last week Romans 5 8 says while we were yet sinners Christ died for us so I don't have to get any sort of in any sort of shape for him to accept me he accepts me when I start where I am and when I recognize and I'm not trying to hide who I am before him that invitation to come closer we can start where we are we can start with Who We Are because the invitation of Matthew chapter 11 verse 28 says come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest perhaps there are some in the room tonight maybe due to the holiday season maybe just due to Life's season that you're in you feel weary you feel burdened feel like you're carrying heavy loads you're laboring or you're struggling to carry what life has given to you Jesus didn't say come to me all who are crushing it living your best life and I'll give you rest no he invited those of us who are limping along struggling a little bit frustrated a lot he invited us come to me that tells me again you don't have to get perfect to get God with us he shows up right in the middle of all of that and he says I can work with that I can help you I can give you the peace that you need I can help you on your journey I can transform you I can make you what I intended you to be so where are you tonight are you under a heavy load you can come to him are you in the middle of a relationship struggle you can come to him in a financial mess are you in sin knowing you should do better well you can come to him just start Right Where You Are

we also can ask ourselves after we say where am I where do I want to be and that really can only be defined by you I'm not going to try to Define that one for you you can Define that one here's your homework take it home think about it reflect on these questions where am I where do I want to go and how do I get there what do I need to do one of the things that you need to do you are doing you're here you're faithful to the house of God we have opportunities to become closer to him through services like these these aren't the only opportunities but these are prime opportunities for us to become closer to him and to look more like him and to be more aligned with his will and with his purpose when we gather together and we worship and we hear the word and we fellowship with one another so you're already doing one of them prayer and of course every other spiritual discipline should be on the list of what can I do to get to where I want to go but it's also very likely that there will be answers on that list that will include more than just your spiritual disciplines it will take the power of the spirit but just some very practical actions that you can do to become more like him

invite you to stand with me tonight as we close there is a consistent invitation in scripture and from God in our relationship with him for us to not just follow him but to follow him a little closer just close the gap a little bit more to more closely align with him with his purpose and his design of Our Lives maybe that's in our attitude could I follow him closer in my attitude could I follow him a little closer with my priorities could I could I follow him a little closer in how I think and how I reason could I follow him a little closer and how I speak to others and how I interact with others as I've said following closer means less distance between us so I would just ask you this question what is between you and God what is between you it's in that Gap what's what's in that distance from where you are now and where you want to be where you're striving to where scripture tells us we can be what between you and God it's going to be different for everybody here everybody's going to have a different answer we all have different Hurts Habits and Hang-Ups and so only you can answer that one what is between you and God and then I'll ask you this question when I consider the distance between God and Me what is it that keeps me where I am why am I not moving closer why am I not taking step what is it that is keeping me where I am final question in light of all of that how then do I move toward him what effort can I make that I'm not currently making or what effort can I strengthen that I am doing but I could make it a little bit stronger he wants to come close he proved that to us through his birth and becoming Emmanuel God With Us what are we going to do we're going to come closer to him what's between you and God what keeps you from coming closer how do you move towards him

I want to end with Isaiah chapter 9 and verse 6 and verse 7. familiar particularly this time of year for a child is born to us a son is given to us the government will rest on his shoulders and he will be called wonderful counselor Mighty God Everlasting father Prince of Peace his government and its peace will never end he will rule with fairness and Justice from the Throne of his ancestor David for all eternity this is the line I don't know why I'd never noticed it before and I don't know why it's not plastered all over everything Christmas the passionate commitment of the Lord of Heaven's armies will make this happen will make what happen Amber unto us a child is born unto us a son is given God is fiercely committed to you he is passionately committed to being in relationship with you and being close to you so much so that he would send Jesus on this Earth to bleed and die for our sins he's passionately committed to coming close Amber are you as committed to coming close to him would you bow your head in whatever way you want to pray right now would you just Search Your Heart perhaps or would you just commit to him and maybe you want to make a step of faith and a step of commitment to say I'm going to come closer to you during this Christmas and holiday season Lord you have come close to me you have proved you're passionate commitment to me you have made it happen to where I can have a relationship with you and now Lord I want to draw an eye to you and your word says that you will then continue to draw nigh to me Lord I love you thank you Jesus thank you would you let that passion to be closer to him push you a little further right now in that prayer and maybe built into that prayer offer some commitments Lord I want to be closer to you so I'm going to get to know your word better Lord and I'm gonna I'm gonna rid myself of some things that are between you and I there's some things Lord that have hampered my walk with you and my following of you so I commit not just to draw nearer to you Lord but to some specific steps that I need to take in between now and then Jesus I need your help and I desire and want to be closer to you thank you Jesus