Pt. 3 – Detour Deliverance
Detours are despised by every path loving, calendar driven, time conscious people worldwide. However, as deeply as we despise detours they continue to be a part or our life and as we have seen over the last two weeks God is involved in the detours that we face. So we dealt with:
Detour Decisions
- Will you continue to follow and obey if your expected end isn't His intended end? Will you accept His plan if it means your plan has to be trumped?
- Will you continue to follow if the answer is "No"? We must understand that God doesn't inhabit our plans He inhabits our praise. So we have to be able to praise Him when He brings change to our plan!
Detour Details
- You cannot hide from Detours.
- Detours reveal our insecurities. This is important because we don't like it when our insecurities are revealed. However, God does this so we get our eyes off of our abilities back on to His abilities.
- Detours look like mistakes long before they ever look like miracles.
So today as we celebrate Christmas together as a family I simply want to talk to you about Detour Deliverance.
Text: Matthew 2:1-12
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:
6 “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’”
7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”
9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
We have to come to a place of agreement this morning! Before we can go one step forward we must agree during this Christmas service that Jesus is in fact the greatest gift that God has ever given to man! I realize He has done some great things for us . . . given us breath, given us companionship, given us gifts, talents, abilities . . . but the greatest, single most significant, calendar altering, life changing, eternity opening gift ever offered to those of us on this planet is Jesus! A God gift! The clearest and most precise glimpse of God's love for us.
If that is something we can agree on then I take you back to the account of the 3 wise men that I read to you and remind you of some facts from this familiar story. Wise men seeking God in the form of a baby follow a star. The natural King hears about the birth of this new king and asks these wise men to find Him and then once they have worshipped to return and inform him of this baby king's location so he can go and worship too. Wink . . . Wink . . . Wink. The wise men find Jesus. They worship Jesus. And then they have a dream that takes them on a detour. And it is this detour that I want to quickly say 2 things about.
a. A Detour Protected/Delivered the Greatest Miracle Ever Given to Man
Think about the statement I just made. Because if it is true for Jesus it may also be true for you!
God uses a detour to protect His only Son. Now God can use detours to protect His adopted, grafted in, purchased sons!
Quit despising the instrument by which God wants to bring your deliverance. If God used a detour to save His Son He may just have one designed to save you too!
B. Seeing Jesus Requires a Detour
The wise men encounter Jesus and in turn immediately face a detour. I am going to venture a bold statement to you on this Christmas Sunday! You can't come into contact with Jesus and go back the same way! Some of you haven't yet really encountered Jesus (notice I didn't say you haven't been to church, worshipped, given, or served) because once you do it will force you to take a different direction! Detours are an indication that you have had a Jesus encounter! If you aren't walking a different way then you haven't met Him yet! I think most of us meet Jesus start on a detour and then veer back to our comfortable path and never realize that we have exited the detour to our own destruction and to the destruction of the greatest gift we have ever received!
You can have the greatest Christmas you have ever had but it will require a detour! Have you met Jesus? Can we tell by the path you travel now?
