Well, it is the start of Advent, which is the first

Sunday of the four Sundays leading to Christmas. And

the Lord is always in the habit of saving the best for right now. And

today, Pastor Ronnie is going to bring the word. Would you welcome Pastor Ronnie?

Good Springhouse. I

want to start off by announcing that I will

not be leaving here to coach the LSU Tigers.

I really love it here, having a great

time, especially since I retired.

Okay. I just thought y' all would be interested in knowing that for

some reason, I don't know.

Over 20 years ago, I wrote a monologue for

this season and I titled it Joseph Davidson.

And I, dressed in a biblical costume, brought out a big

staff and told the story from

Joseph's point of view. And I was asked to

do that again. It's probably been 10 years since I've done it. I don't remember

the last time I did it, but I was asked to do it again today,

but I felt the need to do it differently.

I feel as if I somewhat know Joseph,

especially from writing that monologue. And

I want to tell you his story in a

little bit deeper way than I don't want to tell it

in a way that is, oh, wow, he's

performing. He's doing something. No, that's not what

today is about. We want to present Joseph as a

real person. And so I come to you as a

slightly overweight,

middle aged teenager and

regular person. Joseph was regular person. He's usually relegated

to a very minor role in the story. In fact, if you

want to be Joseph, you don't even have to learn any lines.

You just need a costume. And hopefully one with a beard.

That would make Doug Jones jealous.

I don't know how anybody eats with a beard like that

without consuming part of the beard.

When we think of Joseph, we tend to think.

We tend to think of him from the sublime. We tend to think of him

in the stained glass thing, St.

Joseph. But I want us to not go there today, because

he's not only presented in the sublime in our culture. He's also

presented in the ridiculous Joseph and Santa Claus.

And you may think, wait a minute, Joseph isn't in that picture.

That's an angel and that's Mary. You

see that brown thing kind of behind Mary sort of hanging down there?

That's Joseph's costume back there. And that's

where Joseph tends to fit into a lot of things. And then

sometimes culturally, he's presented as old Joseph, which quite

frankly, I find disturbing

because Mary was a teenage girl.

And let's kind of Go. No, not old Joseph.

That's not what he was. He's one of

us. And if you're here today and

you're young, then I'd like you to kind of

really put yourself in his situation.

To some extent, you may be. To some extent you will be

through your life. If you're here and you're in the middle,

I would like you to consider what it takes,

what it took, what is God asking

of you? And if you're here and you're old, then just

reflect and understand, because you

probably can look on it with some understanding.

His story is one of the most fascinating stories of all time.

I mean, this is an incredible story, really, what this guy went through.

There's love, there's,

you know, we have to kind of fill in the blanks ourselves, but there's romance,

there's falling in love, there's

betrayal or seeming betrayal.

It's the kind of thing that would keep you coming back to watch the next

episode next week. There's also

travel prompted by politics,

things and fraught with danger.

Joseph's story, he kind of went from the highest to the lowest

and back to the highest and back to the lowest. And it was.

It was a real, real roller coaster of a life.

It contained instructive prophetic dreams,

angelic visitations. And since

I want to go deeper into his story than we usually go,

I felt the need to ditch the costume

and the accent and just try to bring him home

as one of us. I called him

Joseph Davidson. Not because he ever heard the word

Davidson in his life. And that's not just because he

didn't speak English, but Davidson is what we

speak, and that's what he would be called here today if he were. If

he were Scottish, he'd be Mac David.

If he were Irish, he'd be O David. Or if they shortened

it, it'd be O Day. Maybe

that's Connie. I know it is. Back there.

Most of us have a surname that was passed down to us

by a notable ancestor. Or perhaps maybe you were.

You were. The surname that you have had something to do with the

trade. We have some Smiths here.

My maternal grandmother was a Bateman, so I

suspect that had something to do with what

her. Somebody in her family did at one time. Or

perhaps your. The name that you have, that's a

surname, comes from a traitor that was specific in your family,

like Meek.

We used to have a guy who came and spoke here a few times. His

name was James Ryle and James was a terrific speaker. He's

Gone on to be with the Lord now. But I remember him coming to me

after one of the services and going, you know, have you ever thought how weird

it is that we're kind of here doing this thing together and you're meek

and I'm Ryle? No, I hadn't thought about

that. James had. And

Joseph was named. His given name was for an illustrious

ancestor who was also a dreamer. Instructed

by dreams and also beyond being a dreamer. He was the

archetype of the one who was to come of Christ. He

was foretold. What he was going to do was foretold. He

was rejected by his brothers, and yet God

brought him through many difficulties to not only save his

brothers, but to save the lives of many people.

And he was from the great. The line of the

great King, from whose line

Messiah was to come. Nevertheless, he

was an unlikely candidate. He was simply a

tradesman living under Roman oppression.

He was also relatively young, and as is

usually the case, he became interested in a young woman.

And so that brings Mary into the story.

Okay, I'm going to say this. It's probably going to offend somebody, but I

got to say it anyway because this is the way my brain works,

and it's kind of cool.

It may sound sacrilegious to say that Joseph had the hots for Mary,

but Joseph had the hots for Mary. He

absolutely did. I mean, come on, he's one of us.

When I was. When I was a teenager, the church I went to had

this magazine that would come out monthly. And I think

it was. I think the title of the magazine was High Call. It was

for teens, and it was either High Call or. Or High

Teens, which isn't a good title for Christian

magazine. But it came out. And I only remember one

installment of this magazine came out every month. But this one

month it came out and it was all about

sex. It's all about sexuality.

And I thought, I'm going to read that. And I did.

About 10 years later, I met a man named Gail Irwin. And it turns out

that Gail was the editor of that magazine. And his intention

had been to make that an annual issue that

they would send out. However, the day after

it hit the churches, he got a visit from the

assistant General superintendent of the Assemblies of God,

who came down from on high. Tell him you're never

going to do that again. And the reason he gave

him was because our kids aren't

interested in such things.

Wrong. Our kids were interested in such

things, and so was Joseph. The man fell in love,

as is also Often the case, he had no idea what this was going

to end up. Involving him in places this was going to

end up leading him, but it ended up leading him to a

betrothal. Mary became

betrothed to him. I guess that's the way it works. During

the years that I was in Zimbabwe, their culture was in many

ways similar to what Joseph's culture would have been. And

if a young couple became betrothed, they would present them before the

body, they'd present them before the church, and they would go, this

girl and this boy going to be

married. And for the next year, they will be

betrothed to one another. And we are presenting them to you, and we

want every one of you to keep an eye on them.

Everyone in the village knew everyone was

watching. But what a great thing for everybody to be

watching. Your happiness and, and your. Your

overflowing joy. Until

one day Mary came to Joseph with some news.

This had to have been a very difficult conversation,

especially, especially for Mary to bring,

to bring this news to Joseph. And you know what the. You know what the

news was? She was with child.

What kind of man believes that his

fiance, with whom he knows

he's never had those kinds of relations,

what kind of man doesn't believe that she must have cheated on him with

another man, but was

instead pregnant by the Holy Spirit?

What, what, what a story to

convey to him. Were he a certain kind

of man, were he like most men,

he could have gone public denouncing her, proclaiming

his innocence. He could perhaps even have her

stoned. You know, I wonder. This is,

this is kind of a little side thought, but I wondered this week when I

was coming across this point, wondered if Jesus, who sure

knew the story of his parents and how they came

together and all that was. I wonder if that. If

that story entered his mind when they brought him the woman taken in

adultery and said, should we stone her?

He was a real person, had a family.

Well, Joseph was not that kind of man. Did he get angry?

I am pretty certain he got angry. I

suspect it probably took him a few days to

cool off, a few days to calm down with things.

Was he crushed? Absolutely

crushed.

You know, I remember being first engaged and thinking,

oh, wow, this is just great, and this is just wonderful, and my

life is getting ready to change, and this is more

than I could have ever imagined. And then this,

then this comes along.

Instead of going public because he wasn't that kind of man,

and proclaiming his innocence and shaming Mary,

he made the selfless, reasoned decision

to put her away quietly to divorce her quietly.

Once they were betrothed, there actually had to be a divorce for them to

separate. And the decision was, you know, we'll do it

quietly, and maybe all of this will just blow over.

And I can walk away from it. Obviously, Mary couldn't walk away

from it, but I can walk away from it. And that's a very

reasonable thing to do and a very honorable thing to do.

But wrong. But wrong.

We. We tend to think that if something makes a lot of sense,

and if it's. Especially if it's honorable, then this

must be what we're supposed to do. And oftentimes it is. I

remember growing up. Well, actually, not just growing up, but

often I would hear at funerals,

he was a good man. I'm sure the Lord will

accept him because he was a good man. And because of how I was

raised and what I was taught, what I was thinking, my thinking would be,

being a good man doesn't cut it. You know,

it's not what you know, it's who you know. And the question is, did

he know Christ? And, you know,

I'm not the judge, and I don't know the final answer, but I know that

just being a good person who does the honorable

right thing is not necessarily what God has in mind. Because there is

a way that seems right to a man. But the scripture says that

in the end, it leads to destruction. And his

thoughts are not our thoughts, and his ways are not our ways.

So what was he supposed to

do? In my monologue, I had

the character of a rabbi who Joseph treated as a

confidant. And he went to the rabbi and he told him what

Mary had said. And the rabbi was shocked because he had known Mary since

she was a little girl. Can't believe that Mary would do something

like this. And Joseph, I can't believe it either. And the rabbi advises him, why

don't you take some time and ask God what to do?

And Joseph's going, well, God will talk to me.

Yes, he will talk to you. And

he won't just talk to St. Joseph. He'll

talk to you. And he'll do remarkable things,

things that you'd never, never think of God doing. You know, sometimes we think about.

That was a great testimony, Connie. We think about somebody being

saved and their life being changed. And that's great. Or maybe, you know,

the check came in the mail or some big

thing. It's not all. It doesn't have to be a big thing. He wants to

be involved in every area of Our lives.

About three months after I came back to the Lord, I bought myself

a Bible. And it was. It was this Bible.

Bought it on July 12,

1975. And I know that

because I wrote it in here when I bought it.

And a couple of years later, two or three years later, I lost it.

I lost it. It was gone. I looked. This meant a lot to

me. Oh, and by the way, this cover, some friends of mine who got

saved shortly after I did bought this for me at Christmas

that year. People wear T shirts now. This is how we used

to advertise. You know, we go around with a big old

Bible and a big old cover on it. Why, yes, I'm a Christian. Why do

you ask? You know, let me tell you how you can get one of these

Bible covers, too. It's a beautiful

thing. But anyway, I lost it.

Search. Scoured the house, searched the car,

looked under the seats in the car, got a flashlight and

bent down back when I could, bend down and

looked under the seats and everything, and it was gone.

And Margaret and I just went, well, you know,

I don't know anything else to do. Let's just pray. And

so we prayed. We prayed, lord, you know where this Bible

is and just

send an angel to go get it and bring it to us.

That's a stupid prayer, isn't it? I mean, that's just.

That's so out there. I mean, we, when we. When we were praying it, we

thought, that's kind of out there. But we're going to pray it anyway.

Next morning I get up to go to work and

I go down to get in my car, and laying in the middle of the

back seat is this Bible

kind of thing. Well, you're going to. Thank you, Connie.

You probably think, well, you were going to be a preacher, and God knew that,

so he had to do something special. You do it for anybody.

Somebody check on Will.

I was telling Michelle about this story this week,

and she had a chit. Is that what it's called?

Chip. Okay, It's a chip. It's not a chit. I

mean, who says that it was a chip that

she had gotten for her time at.

For completing the cr. Yeah.

And she lost it. She said, I can't find this thing.

And she said, I've looked everywhere in the house. I've looked in my

car. Said, have you looked in your car? I've looked in my car. This is

a very thorough woman, by the way. Very thorough looker when she goes

looking for something. And I said, well,

why don't we pray.

You heard the story. And, you know, when she

heard the story, I think there was a little bit of kind of in it.

But anyway, we prayed. And

I go out to the car and I lift up a sweater, and laying

on the seat in the middle is a chip.

Here you go. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Isn't it cool when

something like that happens? Yeah, it is. It can happen

to you. You just have to open your eyes and believe. God

will speak to you. God will do stuff.

Anyway. God is no respecter of persons, by the way.

So he goes in my monologue, he goes and takes the rabbi's

advice and asks God, what. What am I supposed to do? And he had a

dream. And in this dream,

he's visited by an angel. Now, I don't believe

that all dreams are divinely inspired, but clearly God

speaks to us in dreams. He spoke to people in

dreams in the Bible. And the angel said to him, joseph,

son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home

as your wife, for what is conceived

in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give

birth to a son, and you're to give him the name Jesus because he will

save his people from their sins.

Joseph was not just an honorable man. Joseph was a man of

faith, Great faith. Mary had been

visited by an angel. She saw the angel. The angel told her his

name. I'm Gabriel. I've come from God. I've come to bring this

message. And once she said

yes. And that took faith, that took

courage to say it. But once she said yes, the

die was cast, the deed was done. She didn't have

much choice, since she knew she was a virgin

and she knew she was with child.

She knew this angel was speaking the truth.

Joseph. Joseph didn't have that kind. He did

not know with such certainty. He only had the

word of Mary and what he had heard in a dream.

But he listened and he had faith.

We attach faith to things

like being saved. You need faith to be saved. Yeah, you do need faith to

be saved. And probably back around 50 years ago,

some point in the 70s, we began in this culture anyway, to

attach faith to getting your miracle or

getting something that you need or making something

happen.

But that's not. There is faith attached to

that. You know, that's kind of like having your birthday.

Well, there are 364 other days in the year.

And faith is about how

you live. Living by faith,

not by sight, not by

reason. Isaiah

wrote, the virgin will conceive and will give birth to a son, and they will

call him Emmanuel, which means God with us.

And it's perhaps unlikely that Joseph knew that scripture,

knew that prophecy, but his confidant did,

the rabbi that I had in my monologue and

imagine being Joseph and hearing that news. Hey,

Joseph, you know, Mary told you this and we both knew,

know Mary, we thought, well, we'll give her the benefit of that. And then you

had that dream and an angel came and talked to you.

Isaiah, the prophet said this was supposed to happen.

Can you imagine how he felt that day? I mean, you know,

he would be floating, hearing that news.

I told you, it's kind of some ups and downs because there was some other

news as well that would be coming.

You know, the Bible doesn't always say what we want it to

say, what we would like for it to say, and

nor do we always understand what it's saying. You know, and I have

people come to me sometimes and they go, well, you know,

I tried reading the Bible, but I just don't understand it.

I would read the Bible, but I don't understand it.

You don't understand stranger things, but you keep watching it.

There's a lot of things that we don't understand,

but we keep, we persevere, we keep going

with it. So why not the Bible?

Why not the word of God, for crying out loud?

The rabbi continued to search the scripture and

he came up with some other news. Oh, by the way, Messiah is supposed

to be born in Bethlehem.

Now I was trying to think of a,

something to compare that to. Now, you know, if you were going to have

a child and you're living in Smyrna, Tennessee,

and for some reason you discover this is not where this child is supposed

to be born. This child is supposed to be born in Papua New

guinea. And you have no idea what Papua New

guinea even is. But here's the thing. You could get to Papua New

guinea from here a lot quicker than you could get from

Nazareth to Bethlehem.

So maybe, and. But

that was Joseph's ancestral home,

but it wasn't where they are now. But we

could make that happen. But yeah, let's

get on our donkey and ride right now. Let's make it happen.

That is not how God operates. It's how we

operate, how we tend to operate with things. Those of you

who've been here for a while, you know, know my story,

my journey into the ministry. I actually

felt like I was called to the ministry when I was 16

and I was, I went out and preached some and I

discovered that was so wrong. The people

who had to hear those sermons. God Loved them. There is a special

place in heaven for those people if they continued to believe

after they heard me preach. And then I

got away from the Lord. And then when I came back to the Lord a

couple of years after that, I had, you know,

that assurance in my heart that I was supposed to be

a pastor, be in the ministry. So I applied for

seminary and they told me no,

they didn't want me there. My undergraduate

career had been something less than stellar. And

God said. I said, well, what am I supposed to do now, God? And God

said, nothing.

Wait, you know, sometimes

God tells us about something and we do have to do something. When he called

Abraham to leave his home in Ur of the Chaldeans and go to

a land that I will show you, he had to get up and go

to do something. But most. If it's something that God

is going to do, if it's something that God is going to fulfill in

your life, and especially if it's something that only God can do,

then it's a bad idea to try and do it ourselves.

So they just couldn't up and move. John says, over in.

John the Baptist says, over in John 3, a person can

receive only what is given them from heaven. And

so God gave them something from heaven. And that was

instructions from the government. This was

Augustus Caesar. He called for a

census of the entire Roman world. And it

was highly inconvenient because people would have to go to their ancestral

home. And so that meant that Joseph was going to have

to take his pregnant wife, very pregnant

wife, and travel the 70 to 90

miles, whatever it was, to get to Bethlehem through some

dangerous, dangerous territory at a dangerous time. There's going to

be a lot of thieves on the road because there's going to be a lot

of people on the road. You

know, we sometimes rail against the government. The Bible doesn't, but

we do. And our attempts. But

our attempts to change the government, you see, we're kind of going back to, we

got to do this thing. No, we don't.

God's going to do this thing. And you know what? He's not going

to change the government. He's going to do away with it and

establish a kingdom with a king. And I

say, come, Lord Jesus, the quicker the better. But you

see, our attempts to change the government into something godly are bound

to fail because that's not what Jesus came to do. That's not what

he commissioned and anointed us to do. He commissioned and anointed us

to go and spread the news. There's a kingdom coming, there is a

far better way than what the world

knows. And also because we're kind of ignorant of the

consequences, we think if we pull this string here that this is going to

happen. But as soon as we pull this string, that happens because we don't know

what's going on, but God does. And so, you know, he had

Augustus Caesar in Rome proclaiming

this census and not

understanding that the most important consequence

of this. What is that called?

Census. The most. I'm getting. I'm old.

The most important consequence of this census

there was a peasant couple that he had no knowledge of

in Galilee. They were going to have to go to Bethlehem.

And it seemed like a dangerously bad thing for

Joseph and Mary, but in fact, it was absolutely perfect.

You know, Mary was away from her hometown. She

was in the right place, but she was also in the right place because she

wasn't in the wrong place. She was away from her hometown. When the baby was

born, well, people must have known she was pregnant. Oh, come

on. She didn't go to the maternity shop to get

her clothes. You know, she had these robes and things on.

Why do you think I now, when the occasion

warrants, why do you think that I now like to wear my T shirts out

and come dressed in clothes that hide this

billowy.

Talking about the clothes. I'm not talking about me being the clothes.

Bethlehem, the night of the birth, two wonderful

things happened. And I got to get going here, but I'm going to. Two

wonderful things happened. First of all, Jesus was a boy,

and had it been otherwise, it was going to be. It was going to kind

of blow the whole thing out of the water. And here's the thing.

When God gives you something, something that you're

supposed to order your life around,

things are going to happen and the enemy is going to plant

doubts in your mind every day. That's not really

God. You're not really supposed to do that. Do you know how stupid you're going

to look when this happens

or when that happens? The enemy

plants these doubts in our minds all the time. And

I'm sure that Joseph was having to deal with some of them, but that doubt

got erased for sure. And then they were visited by

shepherds. Shepherds, for crying out loud. You

know, they're in this town where they don't know anybody and they just had this

baby that they think they've been told

by angels and such is the Messiah of the world. And this

gang of guys that don't smell very good and don't Look,

Very good. Come in the middle of the night and

you don't know them. And they're going, where is the one who's born to be

the Savior of the world? Wow.

Angels appeared to us and sang to us. And of course, God

announced the birth to the poor. Jesus came to bring good news

to the poor. The poor don't get a lot of good news. But. But

Jesus came to do that. Herod was asleep in his

palace while the shepherds were outside seeing this

thing, this incredible thing.

The announcement to the shepherds was peace on earth,

goodwill toward men. Think

about that for just a second. Peace on earth.

Can you even imagine it?

What a pronouncement.

And so this was for the shepherds. It was for all of mankind,

but it was also for the young couple.

Luke says that Mary stored up these things and pondered them

in her heart. And while Luke doesn't say so, I'm going to step out and

boldly proclaim. So did Joseph. He

kept these things in his heart and he pondered them. And then a year or

so later, Magi from the east appeared.

Matthew says they came to the house where the young child was.

And imagine all that Mary and Joseph had been through

all of this stuff, and now they're. They've perhaps

established a home, he's perhaps established his trade

and in Bethlehem and the world, and their whole world is getting ready to be

turned upside down again.

I hear the music.

Who told you guys to come out here? Did an

angel? Never mind. I'm gonna finish

anyway. Yeah, it's okay.

Just as they're settling in, their world's about to be turned upside down again.

The Magi were not actually kings, and we don't know how many they

were, but they were Gentiles.

Think about that. The circle is now complete.

Sometimes people would. Would kind of get on to me and go, well,

you know, why are you doing celebrating Christmas? Don't you know that's pagan holiday?

Not for me. I mean, we try

to make it a pagan holiday,

but not. Not for me. That's not how I look at it.

Well, the Bible doesn't tell you you have to celebrate it. Well, no, it doesn't,

but it tells me that Jewish shepherds observed it and

gentile Magi observed it and angelic

beings observed it. So I think I'm okay

getting to do that.

And they brought expensive gifts and amazing. I mean, imagine

you're living in a little carpenter's home in these, and a caravan

pulls up with all this stuff.

Well, they brought gifts and

encouragement, but they also brought trouble. Why

would this young family need expensive gifts? Well, maybe because they were getting to

uproot and go be refugees in a foreign

country. And Joseph was the one who had to

make that decision. And he was warned in a dream that Herod

would seek to kill the child. Is the story getting interesting yet?

Herod would seek to kill this child, and in fact, he

killed many in the attempt to do so. But child wasn't there

because Joseph listened. And he made the

arduous journey trek

with Mary and Jesus. And then he was later told to return to

Israel and then specifically to Galilee.

Joseph Davidson, you guys can come out now.

I love you guys. I really do.

The man God chose to raise the Christ,

he was just like us. Or at least like we can

be. He

listened. I know this is a touchy subject for

some of you, Justin,

but Vanderbilt's got a good football team.

Anchor down. That's right, baby. And I've got a

good friend I went to high school with who is a big

supporter of their athletic department. He

graduated from there, so he gets a pass and

knows a lot of people in the athletic department. He told me this last summer.

I. I asked him, I said, why, you know, why is. Why is Clark

Lee had this kind of success? Why is he such a good coach? And he

said, ronnie, I have asked several people

associated with that program that very question, and they all had the same

answer. He listens.

He doesn't feel like he knows everything.

So he'll listen. We can

hear and hear and hear and hear

again. But until we listen and we realize that

God can speak to me and is speaking to me,

we don't take the next step. He was

brave. Taking Mary as his

wife required courage. He said, well, you know,

we usually associate bravery with something you do in a. In a fight,

but there are more kinds of fights than fistfights and gunfights and knife

fights. In fact, those are just kind of stuff.

These are real fights.

Taking his very pregnant wife to Bethlehem required courage. Well, you know, it

required a lot on her part, too. Yeah, I know, but it was his decision,

and he could have said, no, we're not going to do it. I'm not going

to. This is supposed to be the savior of the world, and this is the

woman that I love, and I'm going to put them in danger. No, I can't

do that. I can do that because I trust in God.

Being willing to uproot and go to a foreign land required

courage. Being willing to come back to Israel required

courage. His courage was born of

faith. He was a man of faith. Faith is not

about making something happen. It's not about

getting your miracle. Faith is a component there,

but that's not. When the Bible says

the righteous will live by faith, that's not what

it's talking about. It's talking about,

okay, that's what you said. It's what we're going

to do, and we're going to walk it out. Not

just on the special day, we're going to walk it out

365 and a quarter days a year.

Faith is about how you live. And faith without

works is dead.

Would you stand with me?

For those who are going to minister to people, come forward.

You, you may have come here today needing a miracle. You may have come

here today, you know, with something big going on, and,

hey, that's part of the deal.

But you may have come here today with something else that

matters to you. And you go, well, this doesn't matter to God.

What matters to your children matter to you. What's important

to them is important to you. And

so if you need prayer, you come forward.

We're going to worship for a few moments, will wait on you.