Can You Hear Me Now?

 “Can You Hear Me Now?”

 Devotional @ Jericho Ridge Community Church – Sunday, Dec 8, 2013

Text: Hebrews 1  // Series: Hope: More Than a Wish

Good morning, everyone.  Kids, you did just an exceptional job of singing and reading and playing.  Let’s give them a hand, shall we? 

We’ve been talking this month about Hope and how it is more than a wish. So kids, I have a question for you and for the adults as well: how many of you have made a promise to someone that has been hard to keep?  And, when you make a hard promise, how do you let the person know you are going to keep it?  There’s a few ways, I can think of.  One is the very traditional, still very potent “pinky promise”.  I promise I will play with you at recess and lunch.  Another way is something I wasn’t sure if they still did.  But this past year, I had to go deliver some documents to the court in Surrey and they asked if I wanted to put my hand on the Bible and promise that I was telling the truth.  You might be surprised that as a pastor, I said no! I simply affirmed that I was telling the truth.  Your word ought to be sufficient, you don’t need to swear on the Bible to prove to a judge or anyone else that you are going to keep your promise or that I am telling the truth.  Another memory I has is from waaaaay back when I was a kid.  One of my friend’s and I made a bet and whoever lost, they were going to give the other person something big.  I don’t remember what it was, I think it may have even been one of the good presents we got at Christmas.  (Parents, I don’t recommend letting you kids do this).  But in order to guarantee that this was going to happen, I remember him pulling out a BIG promise keeper.  He said “I promise to you, on my Grandmother’s grave that I will do this if I lose.”  In my little pre-adolescent brain, that was big stuff.  It was a serious promise if he was going to stake his dead grandmother’s reputation on it!   

All of these things remind me that that making and more importantly, keeping promises is big stuff.  Important stuff.  And this is one of my favorite things about Christmas - it reminds me that God made each one of us a promise.  It was a promise so important that He was and is willing to do something pretty radical to make sure that you and I got the message. 

Listen to the way that these three short verses from the New Testament book of Hebrews explains it: [Media note: Scripture is on a single slide]

“Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. 2 And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son. God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he created the universe. 3 The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command. When he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven.”

In these three short verses, we actually learn about an amazing promise that God made, not only to people who lived a long time ago, like Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and the magi and the people who were around when Jesus was born, but promises that you and I can count on as well.  So what did God promise?

God promises us that He spoke in the past and He is still speaking to you and I today.  God is communicating with us.  Kids, you’ll remember this from the things you are learning in Kids @ The Ridge…  Remember way before Jesus was born, way back at the beginning of the Big God story, God spoke to Adam and said that there was a problem that the Bible calls sin that had entered our world and every human heart. But God also promised that He would come and deal with this problem.  God repeated this promise to Abraham and then again to Jacob & David, telling them that this Rescuer would be from the tribe of Judah.  God used the prophet Micah to tell people that Rescuer would be born in Bethlehem and the prophet Isaiah told people that the Rescuer would be born as a baby but would also suffer and die on our behalf as the way God was going to overcome evil.  God kept talking to people through the prophets and for thousands of years He kept reminding them of His promise to deal with all that was wrong in the world and in our hearts.  But just like happens today, sometimes, some people were not very good listeners.     

Now, speaking of being a good listener, kids, imagine that you are playing in the basement or in another room in your house and your mom or dad has an important message for you.  Say they want to tell you that it’s time for dinner.  What happens if they say it and you can’t hear?  (They shout louder).  What if they shout louder and you still can’t hear?  Do you know what they are likely to do?  They are likely to come closer to you.  And if the message is really important, they will keep coming closer and closer to you until they can look you in the face and can be sure that you can hear them.  You know what? That is exactly what this verse says that God was doing at Christmas time.  The message of Hope that God wanted you and I and all of humankind to hear was so important He didn’t just shout it from heaven.  He didn’t just use all of His creation: the majestic stars in the night sky and the beauty and wonder and intricacy of the created world to tell us.  He didn’t just use the stories of the OT and the experiences of people in history.  He didn’t even just write it down in the Bible for us. 

God wanted to be so sure that we got the message that He Himself left heaven and came into our world to speak to us face to face.  In that baby lying in a manger that first Christmas morning, amazingly, God was sending us the most personal message of all by letting us know who He is and what He is really like.  Hebrews 1:3 says that “Jesus expresses the very character of God.”  In other words, God showed us what He is like most clearly by sending us His Son, Jesus.  The message He wanted to communicate to us was so important it took more than a pinky promise. 

To me, it’s kinda like that guy in the Verizon cell phone commercials who keeps wandering around. What does he ask: (“Can you hear me now?”).  When I think about what you kids have been sharing with us this morning, that’s the phrase that comes to my mind.  God’s message of redemption and the possibility that you can I can have hope, not just for this life, but for the life to come by placing our hope and trust in Jesus and the cleansing work He did during His life on earth was so important, God fulfilled His promise in the most powerful way possible.  He Himself came into the world to show us how to live on an adventure with Him. To invite us into relationship with Himself.  To remind us that ultimately, He alone has the power and authority to deal with the problems of sin and evil in our world and in our hearts.  As amazing as it seems, on that first Christmas night some 2,000 years ago in a little stable in a little town called Bethlehem, God wanted to speak to you and I so much, that he became human and asked us face to face: “Can you hear me now?”

And one of the most intriguingly implications of Christmas is that God is speaking, not just way back then but to each person here and now.  So the real question I would invite you to consider today is not about God’s promise, but about your response.  Through Jesus, through the Scriptures, through your life experiences, through those around you, God is speaking.  The real question today is “are you listening?”  Let’s pray together and then the band will lead us in a final Christmas song that uses this phrase of hearing and listening as we close our morning together. 

Benediction: From later on in Hebrews:

“Let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him... 23 Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise.”