Fear Not, God Uses Costly Obedience

The Christmas message can be summed up as God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. God really does love you and He really has a wonderful plan for your life.

Bill Bright, 1952, he wrote a little pamphlet called The Four Spiritual Laws, and that’s law number one. And then law number two is about all mankind has separated from God because of our sin. And law number three with Christ paid the penalty for our sin. And law number four is you must receive Christ personally. And then in that booklet there was a little prayer.

God does love us and He does have a wonderful plan, but over time, some people, maybe to try to make the gospel a little bit more appealing, they have sort of shifted what that word “wonderful” means. And as a result, we have I think a lot of people who think that if you just follow Jesus, you have a marriage problem, it’ll go away. You have a problem child, that’ll go away. You have financial problems, they’ll go away. If you don’t believe it, just turn on the TV. You send them money, they tell you God will, you know, send you money.

I mean, there’s this crazy, crazy thought that this wonderful life means painless, easy, free, everything gets solved. But what I want you to know, God really does offer a wonderful life but it’s a bit different.

In fact, our Christmas story, Exhibit A, Zechariah and Elizabeth. Elderly, barren couple receive miracle baby who becomes first prophet in four hundred years: John the Baptist. Is that wonderful or not? It’s miraculous. Exhibit B: Mary. Humble peasant girl from wrong side of town becomes earthly mother of Jesus through virgin birth. Is that wonderful? It’s amazing! Exhibit C: Joseph. Blue-collar worker, marries unwed mother and becomes the earthly father of the Savior of the world, Jesus.

Those sound like headlines, don’t they? See, we spiritualize all this and romanticize it, but that’s, those are the wonderful things that happened. Do you know what the word wonderful actually means? Look at your notes. This is the definition in the dictionary of “wonderful.” Marvelous thing, miraculous, inspiring delight, an object of astonishment.

Literally, it comes from full of awe or wonder, extremely good. It’s seeing something that is just so magnificent. In fact, the Hebrew word pala is a phenomena outside of the realm of human explanation, that which is separate from the normal course of events. “Wonderful” doesn’t mean easy, nice, everything works okay. In fact, just lean back. You don’t need to turn there.

Let me give you a biblical example of the word “wonderful.” Psalm 139, filled with the Holy Spirit, David writes, “Lord, You have searched me and You know me. You know when I lie down and when I rise up. You understand my thoughts from afar. You scrutinize my ways and my path and my lying down. You are acquainted with all my ways. Before there’s a word on my tongue, behold Lord, You know it all.” Think of that. Before you say a word, God knows what you will say. Every private thought, every part about you.

He goes on to say, “Even before there’s a word on my tongue, behold Lord, You know it all. You have encircled me behind and in front and You have placed Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, I cannot comprehend it.”

Here’s what I want you to get, God has a wonderful plan as in astonishing, supernatural, miraculous, not to be confused with easy, painless, fulfilling, everything is going to be great.

As you open your notes, I have a question that I would kind of like to ask and answer, because if you’re a thinking person: if God really does have this wonderful life, astonishing, miraculous thing He wants to do in us, why are there many people, I mean, many people disappointed and disillusioned with God?

“I thought Jesus offered a wonderful life. I thought He was going to make things better.”

The answer to this question literally flows right out of the Christmas story and the answer can be found in a study of Joseph’s life.

Joseph teaches us the high cost of receiving God’s wonderful plans. Please, don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. God wants to do something in you, in me, and through you that will astonish people, that you would look back and marvel, that you would go, I’m just a regular person. How could God have ever done this? But it doesn’t happen right away, there’s a process you go through, there’s much perseverance, there’s great difficulty, and pain, tribulation, and suffering, and those are a part of a fallen world, even for those that love Jesus with all their heart.

In fact, let’s check out Joseph’s life. The context here, Matthew opens it up. So, Matthew – right? Remember? Tax collector, not a follower of Judaism let alone Jesus, comes to Jesus, is transformed. And what he realizes is the Jewish community he is going to write [to], believes that the Messiah is going to come, He is going to crush Rome, they are better than everybody else, life is going to be great, and the Messiah is going to solve everything.

But he gives us a genealogy. And the genealogy challenges and upends his audience’s worldview and their expectations about Messiah.

So, don’t miss this. Matthew starts with Abraham, because that’s the father of the Jewish race. And the first promise to Abraham was about, “Through you all the world, all peoples,” not just Jews, “all people will be blessed.”

Matthew puts four women, three of which – are you ready? are Gentiles. One is a prostitute, one sleeps with her father-in-law because he betrayed her and didn’t keep his commitments. And then you have one that the way the world worked, you know, David made some really big mistakes, but Bathsheba wasn’t innocent. Women in the Middle East were very conscious about being very modest. She decides she goes up on the roof to bathe. That was a, that was a duo.

All I want you to get is he is poking holes at these expectations. He’s going to say it started with a concern for Gentiles, it ends with a list of a group of people that no one hardly even knows, and there’s embedded four women, who don’t have a lot of status, three of which are fairly immoral at some season of their life. And Matthew says: You want to know the context of God’s wonderful plans? It’s for people who you would never think even deserve it.

And then he goes on and introduces Joseph. This is the man who will be the earthly father of Jesus. And I would like to say the situation is not so wonderful. And we pick up the story in verse 18 of Matthew 1. Now, this is the birth of Jesus the Messiah and how it came about. His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.”

Now, you know, again, the romantic side of the story is, oh, he found it was from the Holy Spirit. Everything is going to be great. I’d like to suggest that Joseph’s response is a very painful dilemma.

First, as far as he knows he has been betrayed. Anybody been dating someone and find out they cheated on you? You don’t have to raise your hands. Anybody been married to someone and found out they cheated on you? So, your response is, “Oh, it’s okay because I’m a Christian and everything is wonderful,” right? Or are you livid? Angry? Mad? Betrayed? That’s where Joseph is.

Here’s the dilemma, according to the law, the consequences for this behavior is Mary should be stoned. But because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law or another translation will say because he was a just man. It means he was a righteous man. Joseph believed, he trusted, he lived out his faith, “Because he was a righteous man he did not want to expose her to public disgrace, but he had mind to divorce her quietly.”

He has been betrayed, but the Old Testament talks about a compassionate justice…Isaiah 42, the first five verses are speaking of the coming of the Messiah. And he talks about the compassion and the tenderness in which this Messiah, the God who has every right to judge all the sin and all the idolatry, it says, “He will bring about justice.”

And so, the dilemma here is: I have been betrayed, I’m hurting deeply, yes, I could have my way and expose her, maybe feel better about myself but I love her. So, his righteous compromise is: I’m just going to put her away quietly. I want to follow the spirit of the law. I want to give her what she doesn’t really deserve.

In the next section where it talks about the angel’s intervention, it says, “But after he had considered this,” would you just circle that and then we’ll come back to this section?

That word considered is a very, it’s a word in the New Testament that has two meanings. One, it can mean to consider or to ponder. But it’s used throughout the New Testament as much more as it means to be angry, to be deeply disturbed, to be mad.

In Luke 4:28, remember Jesus reads the text, it says, “I am the Messiah,” and they take Him out on a hill and they are going to throw Him off. This word is used. It says, “And the wrath of the people from the synagogue,” same word.

It’s a picture of someone who emotionally feels so angry. Any of you felt really angry when someone did something terrible to you and you want to say something or do something but Joseph takes time and he ponders and he goes: Okay, there’s a righteous compromise here. I’m not denying there’s a wound, I’m not denying that I haven’t been really angry and really, really hurt. But I want, I want to be righteous, I want to treat her in a way that she doesn’t deserve.

And notice, because that’s what he does, the response. The response is, “And 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. Take Mary home as your wife because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit and she will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus because He will save His people from their sin.’”

The angel intervenes and basically says – what? “Fear not.” What I want you to get, this story, Joseph is going to have this incredibly wonderful, miraculous life with unmentionable privilege of being the earthly father of the Savior of the world who will come and live a perfect life, die for the sins of all mankind, and offer forgiveness to whosoever would believe.

That’s the great reward, but the process is he was a righteous man.

You know, can you imagine the guys down at the Jerusalem coffee shop? “Did you hear about that guy in, guy in Nazareth?” “Yeah, yeah, everybody thought he was a really righteous guy and, you know, he’s got his, got his girlfriend pregnant and they slipped out of town.” “You know, I was going to have him do our carpentry work, but he lost his reputation. His family name is disgraced.” I mean, his world is falling apart. How many people do you think would believe this, oh, this-baby-is-from-the-Holy-Spirit one? Oh, oh, yeah, Joseph. Yeah, I mean, you know, that happens all the time. You know?

See, we, again, we’ve got this picture of the nativity scene and the lights and all the notions and all the little movies and Bible stories. Here’s a man whose life, whose work, whose family, whose reputation is absolutely disgraced and he chooses not to be afraid regardless of the cost and the consequences because he hears a word from God through an angel.

I’m going to swim upstream. It’s hard to believe and the price is really high, but this child is of the Holy Spirit. And I want you to do two things. Number one, Mary is going through a big struggle. I want you to marry her right away, I want you to take her home. This legal contract that you had, right? It’s a betrothal. The only way you can get out of a betrothal, is a writ of divorce. No, I don’t want you to divorce her. I want you to find her and I want you to bring her into your home, I don’t want you to have sex with her – it says it a little bit nicer in the New Testament here.

And then I want you to name – you name Him Jesus because as you know, that word Joshua: Savior of His people. Joseph, here’s your assignment. It’s hard, it’s difficult, it’s painful, it’s not fair, and people are going to think all kind of stuff of you. But you are my man. And what I want you to do is I want you to embrace it, I don’t want you to be afraid, because life is more than just now. You are a part of this wonderful, astonishing, miraculous plan that I have put in place, but there is a big high price to it.

And that’s what he does. “All this took place ‘to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet,” Isaiah 7:14, “[the] virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call Him Immanuel,’ (which means ‘God with us’).”

Your expectations about what was going to happen have been painful, difficult, costly. From the outside, this is what people think and they are judging you. You were actually chosen because you are a righteous man because you would trust His word.

So, all the world now thinks this of you and God is saying: I have this wonderful, miraculous, astonishing – I mean, in awe. And you are going to be the one who raises this little baby to become a young man. And I will use Him in ways like no one who has ever been born because He will be fully man and fully God. He will live a perfect life, He will die for the sins of the world, He will rise from the dead, and that is your role in your life. And the price is very, very high.

That’s not exactly Joseph and Mary on the little donkey with the violins in the background. It was hard. It was painful. How many of you have been deeply disappointed with God? How many of you really wondered, If God really cares and loves me? Why this? Why now? This is so challenging.

And here’s the thing, as though something is strange or wrong or unbiblical, when the fact of the matter is, Joseph tells us there’s a very high cost to obedience.

The wonder that He wants to do in you, the miraculous that we talked about doesn’t happen casually. It happens to people that hear His Word, are willing to swim upstream, and to trust God when all the things around you just feel like, Oh God.

So, what does Joseph do? What’s his response?

It’s immediate, radical, and costly. “When Joseph woke up,” notice the immediacy, “when Joseph woke up, he did,” underline that. How many times has God given you a little prompting: Call so-and-so. Go ahead and share your faith. I want you to help them out and pay their rent. I want you to go volunteer for that. I want you to ask the person at work that you can tell is really struggling, “You know, is everything okay?”

Here’s God’s will: Obey immediately. Just respond. Radically obey to what He shows you. God’s plan is to give us these little tiny windows of light and you obey, then He gives you more. Then you obey, He gives you more. But if you don’t obey what He says, you don’t get more light. That’s the teaching of Jesus.

And so, he awoke and immediately, he did what the angel of the Lord said – what? “He took Mary into his home as his wife, he didn’t consummate the marriage until she gave birth to a son. And then he gave Him the name Jesus,” the One who would save the world from our sin.
God indeed loves each one of us and has a wonderful plan that brings great joy, new life, requires radical, costly obedience. But somehow when your expectation, like those Jews who thought the Messiah is going to come and they rejected Jesus – why? Because He didn’t fit their box! I want a Jesus that does what I want Jesus to do to make my life work on my terms in my way. And when you don’t get that, you can reject the very Jesus of the gospel. That’s what the Jews did.

At what degree have you and I unconsciously bought into that line of reasoning to where, you know what? You don’t volunteer, you’re not in the Scriptures, you are not all in. Because part of it is, well, you know? I’m not getting what I want. And if I’m not getting what I want, as though life was all about me, isn’t Jesus here to make my life happy and comfortable and better? And didn’t they tell me that there’s a wonderful plan for my life and didn’t I translate “wonderful” to mean easy, what I want? See, what Joseph is saying to us: I have a wonderful life but there is a price of radical, costly obedience, which is the path.

The little Bible study is the price, Jesus would say in John 16, this is His last words on the last night to His disciples. “In the world,” not if, “in the world you will have trouble,” difficulty, pain, tribulation, “but be of good cheer! I have overcome the world.” They persecuted Me, they’re going to persecute you. It was hard for Me; it’s going to be hard for you. I ended up going to the cross; you’ll end up going to the cross. I have a resurrected life; you’ll experience a resurrected life. Your life isn’t about getting better or improving or being nicer. It’s a whole new life that I promise. But it comes with a price. After it is received completely by the grace of God. And then it says: here’s the path. John 12:24, “Unless a grain of wheat fall unto the earth and die, it remains by itself…but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit.”

It’s the upside-down kingdom. Get, keep, control, me, mine: loss. Give, share, sacrifice, others-centered: gain. “If any man will come after Me,” Luke 9, “let him deny himself, take up his cross, her cross, and follow Me. For what will it profit a man or a woman to gain the whole world and yet forfeit his soul?”

The path is a very counterintuitive journey - Aren’t I just supposed to come to a few meetings and sing a couple songs and try harder to be a nicer person and, God, aren’t You supposed to make my life work out? That’s not what the disciples heard.

Notice there’s not just a path, but there’s a process. I put it on the screen because, Verse 1 of [Romans] chapter 5 is one of the most magnificent verses in all Scripture. “Therefore, having been justified” – how? “through faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained by faith in this grace in which we now stand. And we boast,” or exult or glorify, “in hope of the glory of God.”

In other words, there is a day coming, it’s eternal, and we will be with Him and God has promised it. And we boast also in our suffering, because we know that suffering produces perseverance. This is the process. Everyone goes through suffering.

Perseverance produces character. It’s what God uses. The hard times, difficult times. Character produces hope because you realize I’m changing and I’m seeing things differently and there’s power. And hope doesn’t disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

That’s the process.

James chapter 1, same process. It’s to consider it all joy, not if but when, external, unfair, unjust, painful trials. Drunk drivers, downturns, abandonment, sexual immorality by someone that you love. Ungrateful kids, uncaring parents. You do understand that whether you’re a follower of Jesus or not, everyone is experiencing, in a fallen world, pain and suffering and difficulty and injustice. What God says as you follow Jesus: I’ll redeem it. I will use it, but you have to be in the process.

And then finally, I love the last part. It’s the product or the reward. Ephesians 2:10 says, “You,” regular you, just like a Joseph, just a Mary, elderly couple, regular people, “you are His work of art,” or, “His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto a good work and a purpose from the foundations of the earth,” God has a plan to use you in your world, in your relationships, with your personality, with your background, with your baggage, with your pain, and with your struggles. I mean, the reason I talked about the wonder of those first few people – were they regular or what?

A priest who couldn’t get his wife pregnant, a peasant girl, a blue-collar worker. We’ve got a whole group of people thinking, I need to know more or be more or have more for God to ever use me. Or you think that you have so blown it in the past, that’s why the genealogy. Rahab: prostitute. She’s in the line. Tamar, sleeping with her father-in-law to get back at him and - I mean, this is a book of reality, not of romantic idealism.

And then at the very end, “Now, to Him,” chapter 3 of Ephesians, “who is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all that you could ask or think, to Him be the glory and in the Church.”

In other words, when you go through that process, you know what the wonderful life is? It’s the wonderful thing first He does in you. That you are so different over time. And then the wonderful thing He does through you that you’re just shocked, you’re amazed.

We had an anniversary coming up. So, we went out to dinner. But we sat there for a couple hours and we, I don’t, I’m not old, but I’m older. Okay? Old is when you give up on life, only look in the rearview mirror, whine about everything that hurts, and complain, and blame. Older is you’ve got a lot more tread on you than most people and it’s a little bit harder to stay focused and keep going hard.

But I will tell you, after forty-five years of marriage, we – the blessing of older, we went back and, boy, the struggles we had in our marriage. Big ones. Rebellious child, miscarriage, cancer, made a big move, and betrayal. And there’s not a single thing after forty-five years - here’s the blessing of older. When you’re on the front end of it, it’s: Where is God? And the will of God is: persevere. And you don’t know how it’s going to come out.

You get older, there wasn’t a single thing that we talked for two hours where we could look back at the difficulty, the pain, the injustice, our own mistakes - that God has not used for good. But you’ve got to take that by faith. I mean, apart from a commitment, I would have given up on my marriage. I can’t even tell you how many times I was going to quit the ministry.

When I left high school, I went away to school and I really, my parents relocated so I really didn’t go back, so I don’t have, like, high school friends. I still knew a few people, but last September, I got a note. They said, “We are having our fifty-year reunion.” So, I thought, Every fifty years I should go. And so, a number of my classmates, to my shock and to theirs, is we had become Christians, followers of Jesus.

And some of them had read, you know, a few books or something that I had done. And they said, “You know, we, it’s really astonishing - if you don’t mind, we’re going to have the big party and all that stuff, but we’re gonna, we’ve got two-hours blocked, would you come and tell your story, because actually, as we have been talking, none of us can believe. I mean, you were that arrogant, mouthy, insecure, foul-mouthed jerk!”

One guy, I was, about fifteen years after, you know, I got involved in ministry, literally, he calls and he goes, he saw something on the Internet, “This isn’t the same Chip Ingram from Gahanna Lincoln High School, is it?” And I said, “Well, yes, it is.” Next line, “Are you still as arrogant now as you were then?” He was just being honest.

All I can tell you is I had never opened this book, I had never met the risen Savior, I had no idea what He could do. I wanted to quit my marriage, quit the ministry, I have had so many struggles. And all I can tell you is God keeps His word.

And we clung to one another and now forty-five years, I can look back and go, “Amazing.” High cost, greater reward.

Don’t believe the lie: Follow Jesus, everything will be easy, everything will be great. Jesus said, “I come so they could have real life,” eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed, but I want you to know the journey is challenging. And it is so, so worth it.

As you get to the back page, let me just highlight some real application to put this into practice. So many of us have had very, very sincere people and a lot of teaching roaming out there that subtly have planted seeds into your mind, into your heart - why should it be? I had one guy say to me, “Why does it have to be this hard?” And I wanted to get theological, “Well, your own flesh, sin, the devil, fallen world. You need more?”

It’s going to be really, really hard. But you are more than a conqueror through Christ. You can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. As you absorb His Word into your heart, He will change your thinking. He will give you power to overcome temptations. He’ll give you power to break addictions. He’ll give you power as you persevere and you’ll desperately need the community of God’s people. And as you do, your life will become astonishing, miraculous, wonderful. And there are no shortcuts.

What was Matthew’s not-so-subtle message by including the Gentile woman and morally flawed people in the genealogy of the Messiah?

And for those of you that feel like, I just don’t measure up and I’m too far gone or I’ve made big mistakes, that maybe there are still secrets, could I just tell you, there’s not a big enough mistake, there’s nothing in your past.

Remember, the first line is, the Christmas message, “God loves you.” Not if – He loves you. He is for you. His lineage is filled with messed up people like you and me.

Second is when and where have you been disappointed with God? And how have your expectations, of what a wonderful life looks like from God, changed as we have studied Joseph?

Some of you just need to get a set of glasses off. God didn’t do that and I didn’t get that and this hasn’t worked out. Just throw those rose-colored glasses away and put on some Bible glasses to say it’s normal, it’s difficult, it’s painful, I need God’s grace, I need God’s people, I need God’s Word. I refuse to give up and we are going to see the wonderful thing He is going to do in me and through me. And I just need grace for this moment because I can’t even think about next week or next year and all the issues I have in my life. And that’s what Joseph did; that’s what the early disciples did.

What fears are holding you back from immediately, radically obeying what God wants you to do?

By the way, memo, you’re going to suffer. Think of this. It’s a fallen world. So, you can say, “I’m going to do relationships my way and make it about me. I’m going to do money my way and try and try and create my own security, I’m going to do work my way and try and get all the credit.” And guess what, you will get the consequences, you’ll suffer, people will say you’re a selfish, arrogant person, do your own thing, we don’t want to be around you, and you’ll suffer.

And you’ll have the normal stuff that we all have, right? A little cancer here and there, a little downtrodden situation there, a rebellious child over here, singleness when you don’t want to be single over there, a divorce. Right?

Or you can say, “Since I’m going to suffer, I want to suffer for doing what is right, I want to be righteous, I’m going to swim upstream, I’m going to do life God’s way, I’m going to do relationships God’s way – imperfectly. My money God’s way, imperfectly. Serve Him imperfectly. And in the midst of that, guess what, you will suffer.

And He’ll change you and He’ll love you and you’ll have an intimacy with Him and people will see how He changes your life, and He will use you in ways that as you, little by little by little, take these tiny baby steps of those promptings and little by little by little by little you’ll go to a high school reunion and people will go, “This is a miracle.” Because that’s what it’s all about.

It's not some idealized life where everything goes your way. That’s a myth. It’s a wonderful, challenging, supernatural, awesome life. Don’t let your fears hold you back.

Fourth question was how does God’s wonderful provision, protection, power, and blessing on Joseph inspire you?

You think, Well, Chip, you know, this is scary. Well, who will take care of me? Well, if you’re Joseph, a few magi showed up with some coin. And if you don’t know what to do, a dream, hey, guess what, you know, better go to Egypt because they are going to wipe this group out. By the way, it’s time to come back. Herod is dead. Direction, provision, protection. Didn’t Jesus promise you if you’re a follower of Jesus, “I will never, ever leave you or forsake you.” Trust Me. Just trust Me.

Probably the most important question you could ask as we wrap this up and go into our Christmas season is: Lord, what, what baby step of obedience? Where have You kind of prompted me? Who did You ask me to talk to? What did You say I should do? Who do I need to forgive? Just, you know, it’s not like some big thing. It’s just like when you just say: The moment I hear God’s voice, I’m going to obey. I’m going to obey when I feel like it, I’m going to obey when I don’t feel like it, I’m going to obey when it’s popular, I’m going to obey when it’s unpopular, I’m going to obey when it’s super costly and I have no idea how God will work it out. And you will never, ever regret it.