Near to the Heart of God
First B Jackson
2023-12-10

Automatically transcribed. Where this and the recording disagree, the recording is the record.

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Alright. Good morning, everybody. How are doing? Hey. Would you stand with me, and we'll we'll worship together in the second Sunday of Advent.

I've got a good word from, Luke two for us to to lead us into worship. It was after hearing the birth announcement from the angels that said, the shepherds said to each other, let's go to Bethlehem. Let's see this thing that's happened, which the Lord has told us about. So hearing was good. Hearing the birth announcement was good, but they wanted more.

They wanted to see it for themselves, and they later shared it. Let's start by singing angels we've heard on high.

What's happening?

Carl? Oh, yeah. I wanna see you at Awana. Five forty five, a regular club night tomorrow. Awana's on.

It's a little crooked. Okay. Is this thing off? There it is. All right.

Hey, my volume is down a little bit. Hey, but you got that. You know that I want us happening. You know the calendars are back there. This is what the Christmas season is looking like here.

The scouts are serving breakfast this morning in between service. So they're down there. They spent the night in the church last night. They've been preparing, oh, yeah, pancakes and strawberries and all kinds of syrup and good stuff, some meat in there too. There's an angel tree back there.

There are a few tags left in the foyer. If you would like to be a part of that, grab a tag, go get the gift, bring it back wrapped, but with the tag attached to it somehow so that we know what's in it without unwrapping it. And we will try to bless a needy family with that gift this, Christmas season. We have the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, is meeting to do I don't know exactly what. Tim, you know exactly what.

Meeting. An initial kind of an informative kind of meeting, rallying the troops a bit. Fellowship of Christian Athletes, great organization, meeting here if you're interested at 06:45 at Frisbee for families of high schoolers. If you'd like to know more about it, come on Tuesday night, the twelfth, 06:45 right here at Frisbee for With With dinner. All right.

Awesome Tuesday. Taco Tuesday. Perfect. I love this announcement. I'll see you on Tuesday.

Candle piece. Naomi Anderson is coming forward to be our candle lighter this morning. Thank you, Naomi. Green light? Is the green light on?

There you go.

There we go. Hold on. Hi. I'm Naomi for those of you who haven't met me. And ironically enough, when they asked me to do this, I was flooded with a lack of peace.

So here I am to read about the candle of peace. Here on the second Sunday of Advent, we're lighting the candle of peace, in preparation for celebration of the coming of the prince of peace. And second Thessalonians three sixteen says, now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with you all.

Amen.

Would you stand?

Amen. Stand with Just begin by a word of prayer too. Amen.

Lord, we thank you for your peace. A peace that passes understanding, a peace that guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. We pray, Lord, for your peace to rest on us this morning, Lord, that you would give us an awareness of it. It's there. It's there for the taking.

But, Lord, we we would that we would yield ourselves to you to have this peace to your gift of wholeness. In Jesus' name. Amen. Let's keep singing. Lord, as we sang that song, I continue to think of the the shepherds receiving that birth announcement from the angels.

Lord, you revealing yourself to the humble and the lowly, not the powerful or prominent, but those who are humble and lowly, and that you oppose the proud, that you give grace to the the humble. Lord, that we would come to you humbly today. Lord, if our if our pride is just in the way today, God, would you remove it so we can see you clearly? In Jesus name, amen. Man, you can have a seat here for a moment.

This is the worship through giving part of the service, and I'll invite the ushers to come on forward and we're say, come thou long expected Jesus. From Matthew one, the the angel said to Joseph, he said, don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife. So give birth to a son, and you're to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from his sins. And that's what we're gonna sing about. Before we do, Ray, I ask you a point.

God almighty, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Lord. That you, that you are so powerful and almighty, Lord. And when we incline towards you, you are already inclined towards us.

You're leaning towards us with mercy. You're leaning towards us with grace. Lord God almighty, you blow my mind. I pray lord that you'd accept these offerings. Everything that we give.

Lord, what we put in these plates figuratively but literally and figuratively too, Lord, for every bit of time that we commit to you, to getting to know you better, to getting to fill our hearts so that it'll overflow out of our mouths, Lord. I pray that you would bless that, that you'd multiply it, that we would see it. And when Carl was speaking about appearing to the lowly shepherds and having them act immediately, I think of Mary too, her heart was so full of scripture and she'd been meditating on it that what burst forth from her mouth was your praises. 15 or so references to the Old Testament. Her heart was full, Lord, and the Magnificat was full of your praises.

May we praise you, Lord, during the storm, during the busyness. May we just be praising you. I pray, Lord, that you would take what's given in faith and that you would multiply it and bless it to, other people's hearts, that the gospel would advance. In Jesus' name, we pray that we would be about your will and your way. Amen.

Downstairs. Goodness. Is this thing on? Can you all hear me?

All

right. There they go. I love that this the little pitter patter taken off out of here. I like them when they come in too, but I'm glad that they're here. It's good.

And there are some holes in the seating now. If you all want to come forward, you're welcome to. Woah, that's not where we're supposed to start. Early January two thousand and seven, maybe we'll start further back than that. Let me just tell you about the week this week.

I confessional preaching. Getting home this week, I was feeling the bustle of the season pretty heavy. And I went to sleep on Tuesday night, and I had probably the worst nightmare I've had in several years. And you might not think this is a bad nightmare, but this is what I do for a living, right? And I got up and had nothing, just total blank, nothing to say.

Now I knew it's Christmas season. I'm going away from my normal scheme of going in chronological order, just whatever we did last week, I'm starting right there for the next week. I was away from that, and I had this blank, I guess, in my subconscious. And when I went to sleep, I had nothing. So it wasn't this church building, but I got up and I, oh my goodness, froze.

And so I went and I sat and I talked to somebody while everybody else watched me talking to them. And when I sat down to talk to them, I normally am personable and can talk to people even if I don't know them. And I had nothing to say to him. And I just felt, I have no words. And that was a terrible nightmare.

Woke up in a cold sweat, just feeling awful. And then I went back to sleep eventually. And when I woke up, I had a song in my head and my heart that I could not get away from. It's one that was put there when I was little, you know, as little as I ever got. I was big when I got here.

My mom is here today, by the way. She can testify to that. There is a place of quiet rest near to the heart of God. And it just gave me such comfort. And I was overwhelmed by how good God is.

And I'd been thinking, where do you go? I've told the Christmas story now to these people 11 or 12 times at least. You know, building towards Christmas, and I thought, come now long expected Jesus, and long lay the world in sin and error, pining, longing for Messiah. And I thought, near to the heart of God. Who is near to the heart of God?

David. David is near to the heart of God. Did a wedding last weekend. One of the readings in the wedding was from Colossians. It says, Speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

And it's a good advice, but it's a command. Be speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. This gave me rest in the quiet of a dark morning, middle of the wintertime here, with nobody speaking it to me. But I thought, I'm speaking it to y'all on Sunday. I'm getting it out and bringing it to you.

So this was Doctor. Cleeland McAfee. And this song that gave me great comfort, and I hope that it will bless you too, comes from a really tragic story. So he was a Presbyterian minister. He served several churches.

And he knew what it's like to have unexpected problems or crises in people's lives that he knows because he's a pastor, and we do get those calls, right? And so you get the calls, and sometimes they're pretty difficult things. And he got the call that his brother's daughters both died of diphtheria within twenty four hours of each other. And in the job and in life, I don't think there's anything worse than losing a child. I haven't come across anything yet that compares.

The affliction was terrible. The double catastrophe broke the man's heart, and he it was made even more difficult. I mean, we've all been through COVID in the past three years. You know what it's like to be quarantined? Well, Dip Theory was a quarantine illness.

And so the family who had been in the house with the girls could not see anybody and nobody could see them. And it was just isolated. And it was a time of such deep grief. They were unable to go inside, express their condolences. So McAfee set up really late.

I can attest to that. Praying and pondering what he could say in a sermon, he felt he had no words. But the following Sunday was coming, it always is, and he wanted to compose something that would be a comfort to his family. I mean, was his brother's daughters that died very close, and he couldn't see them. Couldn't hug them.

Couldn't hold them. So he wrote this song, and he wrote the music for the song, and he taught it to the choir at their regular Saturday afternoon evening practice. And from there, right after the Saturday evening practice where he taught them the song, they went over to the quarantine home, threw rocks at the window, had to open the window, and the choir sang the song of this new hymn, Beneath the Darkened Windows, and they shared it with the congregation at a communion service, which we're doing today, the next morning. There is a place sorry, my voice is shot, but I'm not going sing it. I'll read it.

There is a place of quiet rest near to the heart of God. I almost didn't share this because the next line has sort of a trigger word in it. It means to bother. That's what it means, to bother. And it's a euphemism that's been used for all manner of evil since.

But there is a place of quiet rest near to the heart of God. A place where sin cannot molest near to the heart of God. Oh Jesus blessed Redeemer sent from the heart of God, hold us who wait before thee near to the heart of God. There is a place of comfort sweet near to the heart of God, a place where we, our Savior, meet near to the heart of God. So it's been since 1903 that this song has been sung and grown in popularity.

But I hold on to it. This is the basis right here. Part of the basis is one forty five eighteen, Psalm one forty five eighteen. The Lord is near to all who call upon him. I love that.

He is open. People, yeah, yeah, all the time about the exclusivity of the gospel and then yeah, yeah, all the time about how God ought to do something different. But you're putting your human reasoning above what God has. We just read through Job together as a church. And finally, when God speaks to Job, he says, hey, man, brace yourself, right?

And Job, after God says, where were you when I set the stars in place, when I hung them up exactly where they needed to be? Where were you when I told to see where to stop? On the sand. And Job says, I misspoke, right? To all who call upon him in truth.

Now Job was a righteous man, and he worked through this whole thing and eventually got to the place where he was questioning. But I think that at some point, we do that if we don't dwell on the good stuff, if we don't meditate on the good stuff. And there's plenty of ugliness in the world. Why should we add to it? Why should we amplify it?

Let's do what this Psalm says. But this is about verse 18. We're gonna get 17 verses before we get back here. And then a couple more after. The Lord is near to all who call upon him.

David says, man after God's own heart. If you're after God's heart, draw near to him. Reach out to him. In truth, God, I'm doing this because I want to know you better. Psalm 145 is a Psalm of David, man after God's own heart.

Here it is. I will exalt you, my God, the king, and I will bless your name forever and ever. Yes, I see that there's stuff going on around me, but what I'm choosing to do is say, God, you're the king. You know better than I do. You've given me breath in my lungs.

You've given me a way to go forward, and I'm gonna take it. Thank you, Lord. I will exalt you, my God, the king, and I will bless your name forever. This is before Jesus. It's a thousand years.

Right? Before Jesus. He's saying, I trust you. I don't know how you're gonna do it, but I know you're gonna do it. I will exalt you, my God, the king, and I will bless your name forever and ever.

Every day, I will bless you. Every day, I will bless you, and I'll praise your name forever and ever. I'm not going to stop doing this, Lord. I'm going to keep on keeping on, and I'm going to do it with the strength that you give instead of going, man, Christmas. Ugh, I wish it was over.

Which is easy to do, right? There's so much that's got to happen. Oh, there are four ballet performances and there's a ceremony of carols coming up and there's Christmas and I got to get away from my script. Oh, Lord God, help me. We got company coming in.

Yeah, that too. I need to do this. I need to do that. God almighty, you've given me family that can come visit. God almighty, you've given me this moment to celebrate who you are.

Every day, Lord, I'll bless you, and I'll praise your name forever. Great is the Lord, and he's highly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. If you're looking for the goodness of God, you're going to find it, and you're not ever going to exhaust it. You're not ever going to get to the end of it. His greatness, his goodness is unsearchable.

You will never find the end of God's goodness. One generation will praise your works to another. That goes both ways. It's not just old folks are going to tell the young folks. The young folks, children's church, my goodness.

Ask them what they learned. It will bless you, right? One generation will praise your works to another and will declare your mighty acts. Now, when I see this in the Old Testament and I see David mentioning it, I think of, well, they're talking about when God led them across the river. Right?

What he did with Moses, what he did with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, what he did, they're looking back and seeing all those mighty acts from biblical mighty acts. And yes, proclaim those things. When we come up to the time of the Rahab hiding the spies in Jericho, she says, we have heard of your mighty acts. Because people are saying them. They're telling them.

Tell of his excellent greatness. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. When you get a chance to praise God, which is every day when you wake up with breath in your lungs, praise him. When you get a chance to in conversation. Yeah, God is so good.

He's so good to me. The standard these days is to say, what about the problem of evil? If God's all powerful and he's all good, he can't he can't be one of those things because he'd stop it. There are other folks' wills involved, right? He's given us responsibility.

He's given us a will. And if you track down ugliness, you're going to find human error. You're going to find human sin eventually, right? Even if it has to go all the way back to Adam and Eve, right? God is not the author of that.

He is so good that no matter what evil befalls us, he can turn it for our good and his glory. That's almighty. One generational praise works to another. Aunt Laura's memoir. Oh my goodness.

Somebody gave Aunt Laura a I don't know what it is. It's something where you tell stories and they write down stories and they compile them in a book and it's good. But Aunt Laura's memoir became Aunt Laura's and John's and Emily's and Ray's memoir. She asked me to tell a story, and I have never written it down. And she said, but you ought to.

I said, thank you. I've got a lot to do this weekend, Laura. Could I just tell it out loud right now on the phone and you write it down? She said, I'd rather you do it. I said, okay.

So I started to think about it. Can you go to that Wichita story? This is one she asked me to do. And this is, it's not just the mighty acts of God in the Bible, okay? Because that can seem so distant.

I want you to think about something that you have experienced. Now it was God who did it. There's no doubt. I didn't do anything in this story that God didn't have to orchestrate because I couldn't have done it, right? But think of those stories.

I want for you to think of those stories. I want for you to have them in your heart. I want for you to have them in your mind. I want for them to start coming out of your mouth. Probably does already, but I want to encourage you to tell the story.

This is early January two thousand and seven. That's where we lived. Pascal was born Mexico. We were coming home in January from Christmas in Georgia, and we had a choice. Yes, that's home in Georgia right there, Shiloh, Georgia.

And we got to Houston, and we got a phone call from Jackson, Wyoming. And it was from my brother-in-law and sister-in-law and Palmer. Wetzel had been born at the hospital with underdeveloped lungs. And at 6,300, underdeveloped lungs are pretty tough. And so we didn't know how he was going to do, if he would make it or not.

And we were in Houston, and we had employees to pay in Rio Bravo, Mexico. So what do we do? Turn and go towards Jackson to be here or go home. We went home. And we paid our employees.

Writing the checks in Mexico, Angel, Tovar, Medina, Manana, Dociento, wow. It just went on and on and on. We paid the employees. And then we get on the road and we take off. And we're going through Wichita, Kansas, straight on up.

We're on the Turnpike. We've been on it a pretty good while. Needed to use the restroom. We had baby, Pascal, and Tanya and I were in this Toyota Camry. It wasn't a pickup truck.

It wasn't a work vehicle. And we stopped at this little gas station. I walked by a Mexican man who had on a fur lined coat and he was standing there with his and he said, which means do you have tools? Now, first of all, do I look like I speak Spanish? Just, I mean, really.

But I said, see, see those tingles? I got them. I got them in the car, in this Toyota Camry. It's not a pickup truck or work truck or whatever. And he said, We got problems with a truck.

And I said, which one is it? So we're in Wichita. And we're traveling from south to north to get here. He was in California heading towards Virginia, and he gets to Wichita and his truck breaks down. And he's sitting there at a gas pump and he said, well, all of a sudden all in Spanish.

He said, well, all of a sudden, all the lights on the dash came on. It was like, bam, everything. I said, oh, I think I know what that is. He said, I said, yes, Adler pulley probably messed up. I've had two or three of these things over the years.

And I'll be right back. So we ran to an auto parts place, came back and started putting that together. And while we're standing there talking, he's like, Suicento, your accent, where is that from? I said, well, I learned how did you learn Spanish? Two years in high school, two years in college.

But we lived down in Mexico, a little town. And we started talking. He said, well, I'm on my way to Virginia from California. So we're on our way to Jackson, Wyoming. And we talked for a little while.

And as I'm fixing the car, he goes, But that accent sounds really close to home. Where is it? And I said, Between Reno, San Mateo Moros. He goes, Which one? Between Reno, San Mateo.

Rio Bravo. It's real small town. And he says, What do you do? I said, I build schools for the deaf. That's what we're doing.

My wife and I are down there. And this little girl is Mexican, you know, little Pascoe is Mexican because she was born there. And he said, That's Rio Bravo. And he said, do you know Maderas Mexico? Mexican wood, it's a company, lumber company.

It's like Bison, it's a lumber company. And I said, yes, I know it. And he goes, He had a next telephone. Norman's his wife. And she says, He goes, And it's like, do you know a big gringo?

And he goes, she said, she goes, Like just that fast. And he goes, He's fixing my car. And she said, are you home? Because she's in Rio Bravo and he's in Wichita, right? Are you home?

Because that's where I live. That's what she knows. I mean, our house is Maderas Mexico is where they lived, and that's our house. It's that far away from each other. Now the mighty acts of God.

I mean, we're on our way and He's on His way. And He put us there exactly at the same place. And she knew me, she knew why we were there. And I mean, we're just the fact that the person who stopped that had tools had all this. Isn't that sweet?

This is a blessing to me every time I think about it. It was a blessing to that guy because he got to Virginia, right? It was a blessing to Norma for hearing what's going on. I don't know a way of telling this story that's not a blessing, right? And I didn't have anything to do with it except for being present in the moment when God put it together.

I love that. It's so much. Do you have stories? Do you have stories where you go, God did that. I know God did that.

Tell them. Tell them. Please tell them. I brought a mic up here if there's one of you that wants to tell one. Actually, I'll wait.

I'll wait. There's a place in the text for that. How about that? Gracious. It's not time quite yet.

That's coming. That's coming. Come that long expected Jesus. I threw Blake for a loop this morning. No problem.

So I've got a million of them where God showed up when we couldn't show up, and it just was an amazing moment. The fact that the Boy Scouts have been meeting here for ninety years blesses me too. I'm thankful for that. There have been ups and downs. There have been hard times.

I'm sure they have a booming time right now. There are a lot of dressed up Boy Scouts and leaders down the other in the hall wanting to serve breakfast. I love that they're here. I love that they are making the noise on Wednesday evenings just bouncing around this place. It's good.

Where are we, Blake? Oh, All right. Maybe now is the time to sing that song. How about this? Or maybe one of you all needs to be speaking up right now.

Emily, my cousin Emily, Aunt Laura's daughter. She said after a summer working for centrifuge camp, fugue camps out in California, she was at LAX Airport waiting to fly home. While she was waiting, she checks in at the desk and there's an older couple behind her, and they kind of struck up a conversation probably because of her accent. And they said, Why are you headed to Atlanta? She said, Well, I've been at camp all this time.

Mentioned I was going home. The man said, he'd been out in California visiting a friend, doing the same. The more we talked, they wanted to know where I was from, how long I'd lived in Atlanta. So I'm not really from Atlanta, from a small town about 75 miles Southwest of Atlanta. The man added that, Yeah, I lived in that area for a while.

Want to know more specifics about home and where I was from. So I told him that was a tiny place, about 400 people not everybody knows about. I've already told that story once this morning. And it's in rural Harris County, Midwestern or West Central part of the state. And his face glowed and said, I know exactly where Harris County is.

Which city? She said, Well, Shiloh. And he said, I was born in Shiloh. We got kind of excited about that. And I could feel people around us starting to look and roll in their eyes at these two Southerners jaw jawing.

And he said, I was born in a house down behind what used to be the old hotel. And she said, You're not going to believe this, but that old hotel is where I live. And the one down behind it is my grandparents' house. And he said, Are your grandparents Rex and Grace McDaniel? He said, Yeah.

He said, That's the house I was born in. And then he said, I went to school with them. Tell Lewis Chapman I said hello. Isn't that correct? There are things that you just go, oh, that's coincidence.

There's no such thing as coincidence. People take it when God does something like that and go, you know what, Lord? This is a divine appointment. You put me in this place for this time. I pray, Lord, that I'll have I'll enjoy this moment that You've done, but it's Your mighty act, not mine.

I want to recognize You. Anybody have one? A short one? Yellow mic, Blake. Not that you're not busy enough.

Testing. Testing. Okay. I have actually two. They're a little bit interrelated from Jackson.

They've all happened. One was very recent. One was about two years ago. There was a girl that I was mentoring through Young Life that was struggling with some identity issues, we'll say, and had was raised in the church. Her dad is a pastor down in Texas.

They went to church here. And she just said, I just don't hear God anymore. I've been praying and praying, and I just don't hear him. And I said, well, what are you expecting his answer to look like? Because God could write your name in the sky with stars, but he usually doesn't tend to work like that.

Usually, he works through his people. And she said, well, I'm not sure exactly how I'm expecting to hear from him. So we, like, sat we're in Whole Foods, and this is probably 06:00 on a winter night, so it's pitch dark. And we're sitting at that front window looking out. And I go to take her home, and a woman chases us down.

And I'm getting in my car, and she's getting

in