Gifted – Immanuel: God With Us

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason Burns and Access Church in Lakeland, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning, Access Church.

How are you feeling today?

It's December 18th.

That's right.

And so anybody else does have a panic attack?

It is a little close to Christmas, but we are there.

Let's do some group therapy.

All right.

How many people have finished Christmas shopping?

Raise your hand.

Raise your hand.

Ooh.

Okay, good for you.

Wow.

You know better than the rest of us.

You know better than the rest of us.

How many of you are still you have Christmas shopping to do?

Raise your hand.

That was a decidedly more male group.

How many of you are waiting on a package that was supposed to be delivered but has not been delivered yet?

Yes, I too am victim.

But not, I want to shout out Amazon UPS, FedEx, the drivers.

You are the heroes of the season.

Yeah, that got applause.

I love it.

You got Santa's got nothing on you.

I actually do like a little thing by my door where I leave them like Gatorades and candy and treats.

You know, I'm just like, hey, if you're a delivery person, God bless you, you know, because honestly, like online shopping's convenient, but it also helps me personally because I'm saved, but like I'm not always that saved, particularly in stores when it's this time of the year.

Like so, what'll happen is like somebody cuts you in line, you know, you know, and like I just I'm not as like my husband's always like, let it go.

It's fine.

He's just very calm and whatever.

And I'm like, actually, we were here first.

I'm just like, we were here.

I don't know if you saw us.

Um, I'm just very like driven towards that.

Don't get me started on the school car line.

The skippers.

You are the worst people in the world.

What makes you think that you driving up and you can skip the line?

No, no, no, no.

Um, that's why I don't have the access arrow on my car.

Um, so I am.

You think I'm joking.

I really don't have it on my car.

Um, but I am just grateful for delivery because it really keeps me and my flesh in check.

Um I love Christmas.

I love that this series is gifted.

I love giving gifts.

I love getting gifts.

That's my love language.

I love gifts.

Um, but I think it's cute how kids experience this season.

Um, just a few years back, one of our kids, I won't name any names, but one of our kids, he was just like, you know, I actually blame this on myself.

I put a gift under the tree in a gift bag.

And so, like, one day I walk by it and it's on its side, like the tissue paper's out, like it's half out of the bag.

And I'm like, so I bring the kid in, and I'm not gonna name names, but I'm like, Gavin, oh.

You all knew it was Gavin.

Um, I was like, Gavin, like, did you look at this gift?

He's like, no, no, no.

He was probably like four.

I'm like, did you look at this gift?

He's like, no, no.

And I'm like, Gavin.

Like the tissue paper's out of the bag, my guy, like, it's half out of the bag.

Did you, son, did you look at the gift?

And he's like, it's just so hard.

I was just like, bless him, Jesus.

Like, he, that's honestly on me.

From then on, I wrapped every gift.

No gift bags, all right?

That's on me if I did that.

Um, Gavin is just so sweet, he's eager to give.

Um, one year it was like kindergarten, and he went to the school Christmas store.

You know those?

Raise your hand if you've been victimized by receiving a gift from the school Christmas store.

What is the selection?

Who's selecting those things?

I was like, no, I do not want a bottle opener that says mom, number one mom.

Like, I don't even open bottles.

Um, so he had gone to the store, he had gotten his gift for Jason, and he's like, Can I give dad his gift?

I was like, No, honey, you gotta wait till you know Christmas Day.

That's the fun.

That's funny.

I just really want to give dad his gift.

No, honey, you gotta wait till Christmas Day.

And so he's like, Jason comes home and he's like, Dad, please, can I give you your gift?

It's like, no, no, just you gotta wait.

You gotta wait, you know, for Christmas Day.

And he's like, All right, Dad, I just really want to give you your wallet though.

And we're just like, poor guy, he just really can't, you know, keep that secret to himself.

So I love Christmas.

I love how kids relate to gift giving.

Um, I want to talk to you all about the greatest gift we ever received at Christmas.

Of course, that's Jesus, but you know, I grew up in the church.

I'm a pastor's kid, I'm a pastor's grandkid.

I, of course, married a pastor.

So I've heard the Christmas story, probably the most of maybe any story I've heard in my life.

But I do think when I was studying, preparing for this message, there's a part of it that I missed that is a game changer.

And I want to talk to you guys about that today.

We're gonna go to the word, the Bible, the word of God in Matthew, uh, and this is just at the beginning, the story of Jesus.

It says this it says, she, and this is referring to Mary, she will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.

And all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet.

The virgin will conceive, and there we go.

Okay, the virgin will conceive and give birth to his son, and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us.

For those of you who like to know when you're reading, where's this all coming from?

So they said this took place to fulfill what the prophet had said.

The prophet, they're referring there as Isaiah.

This happened in the book of Isaiah, chapter 7, 14.

Isaiah 7 · chapter mention

He says the prophecy that the virgin will conceive.

And then so in Matthew, it comes along.

I love that about the Bible, by the way.

It's just this oh amazing self-fulfillment.

That's why the Bible's not like any other book.

But in the Matthew, Jesus comes along and fulfills what Isaiah had said in uh 7.14.

And why is this significant?

Why is this significant that Jesus came?

Well, prior to this, okay, the end of Malachi, which we know as the end of the Old Testament, to the beginning of Matthew, the beginning of the New Testament, there had been 400 years of silence.

400 years of silence.

What does that mean?

Well, in this time, from the end of Malachi to the beginning of Matthew, there was no new prophecy given.

Okay, and if you're living in that day and age and time, you don't just have the Bible, you don't just have Sunday service, you really wait on these prophets to speak on behalf of God.

So imagine for 400 years, you haven't received any new word from the Lord.

So at the end of Malachi, it this is how the Old Testament ends, okay?

It says this in Malachi 4.

It says, See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes, and he will turn the hearts of parents, the parents to their children, the hearts of the children to their parents, or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.

Very cheerful, very chief reward.

So the end of the Old Testament ends that way, and then for 400 years leading up to the birth of Jesus, silence.

And I want to ask you today if you've ever been in a season where God seemed silent.

What do I mean?

Well, have you ever been in a season where you're praying for something so passionately?

You're like, God, I'm praying.

I have my church group praying, I've said the right prayers, and God, you haven't answered this prayer for me.

You're praying for a wayward child to come back.

You want your children to be saved, you want your spouse to come to know Jesus.

You've been praying for this for a long time, and that seems like no answer.

Maybe you need a healing touch in your body and you've prayed and you've believed, and it seems like silence.

No answer.

Or maybe your own life has not turned out the way you thought it would.

And in that, God seems so silent.

Here at Access, we we say this over and over, but I think it's too good to not repeat that God's silence does not equal his inactivity.

God's silence does not equal his inactivity.

And I want to talk about that today, but I even want to say and take it a step further, that maybe God's not silent at all.

Maybe we're just not seeing all he's doing.

What does that mean?

Every time it's Christmas, I tend to think of this beautiful story in the Bible from Esther, and that seems odd because it's not really a Christmas story, but I love the story of Esther.

I'm not going to go through it verse by verse.

I encourage you to read it.

It's a short book of the Bible.

Read it this week for yourself.

But to give you like a quick summary of what it is, Esther is this young Jewish girl.

She's orphaned.

Both her mother and her father have passed away.

She's thrown into essentially captivity, but she's being put in like a beauty contest to possibly become the next queen of her area, of her region.

And she's selected.

She becomes the queen.

And she uh is there in the palace when she finds out that her husband, the king, has decided he's gonna kill every Jewish person.

Think of the implications of just that.

Who comes from the line of the Jews?

Jesus Christ Himself.

So had this happened, had her awful husband king done what he said he was gonna do, we end the lineage in the line of Jesus, right?

So Esther is there.

She has an uncle who has this amazing quote where he says to her, You've been put into this place for such a time as this.

It's like a hobby lobby dream quote.

Um and so they he says that to her, and she says, Okay, I'll go, and if I perish, I perish, right?

So we we know the story now.

We're reading it hundreds of years later, and we read it and we go, Yeah, Esther, she was just like a cool chick.

Yeah, she goes in there, she says she winds up saving all her people.

But don't you think if you were Esther, that God would have seemed quite silent in your story?

Like, if you're Esther, where's God when both of your parents die?

If you're Esther, where's God when you're thrown into this thing where you have to go be with this man, try to please him, one of just hundreds of women doing these things?

God doesn't seem all that present in that to me.

If you're Esther, you're thinking, where's God when I hear that a plan is in place to kill all of my people?

And yet we know God was in it, right?

Because we know the end of the story.

But a lot of times when you're in the midst of the story, it's hard to see that God is working.

So let me personalize this for you, okay?

This church that you're sitting in, this building, this former Bell's, okay, this place was prayed for.

For 13 years, this church was a portable church.

What does portable church mean?

It means what it says.

We had a truck, we put the church in the truck, we set it up on Sundays, we packed it down.

For 13 years, when Jason and I started this church in our living room, like I had a baby in my belly that is now a sophomore in high school.

Like we started this church from blood, sweat, and tears, okay?

So it was a portable church.

And for 13 years, we were portable.

People would go to us like, hey, have you ever thought of um getting a building?

I'm like, oh my gosh, thank you for that.

Like we we hadn't, but in that moment when you said that, we literally toured y'all 60 locations looking for this church.

Our city's not that big, okay?

But we, if like a building would come up, like if uh rec room shoes went out, we were like, could we?

No, it's a rec room shoes, we can't do it.

But we were looking.

So every time a building came open, we looked and it didn't happen.

So, okay, now you're sitting in this beautiful building and you go, but God, he came through, right?

But what if to us we said God's silent because he hasn't given us a building?

God's not working because we're praying for a building for 13 years and we haven't gotten one.

Well, was God silent?

If the building was the only thing we accepted as the proof that God was working, then we'd say, God was silent for 13 years.

And what a lie that would be.

Because for 13 years, when we were set up and tear down church, people came to know Jesus by the hundreds.

For 13 years, while we were a portable church and we had to pack up and tear down and baptize people in a horse trough.

For 13 years, people got baptized.

Families came together, kids were called to ministry for 13 years.

But if we'd only waited and said, ah, we didn't still don't have the building, God's silent.

Do you understand why that would make a difference?

It's our perspective.

God was working in those 13 years, building or no building, right?

Let me personalize it even further.

I'm a cancer survivor of 17 years, okay?

My original prayer when I was diagnosed was outright healing.

I did not want to go through chemo, but I went through chemo.

I went through six months of chemo.

10 out of 10, don't recommend.

It is not a good time, okay?

But what if I had said, God, you didn't outright heal me?

You were silent.

Hmm.

I got chemo for six months.

It was terrible.

I had headaches, I lost my hair, like all that fun stuff.

But God was working.

Can I tell you what happened in those six months?

This church started to play into the dreams of this man and me.

This church would not be here had we not gone through that time because God spoke to us and he said, Hey, you know what you're feeling right now?

This need for practical ministry?

That's what I want your church to be like.

When you somebody shows up to your door with a meatloaf because you are so sick you can't even stand, and it's terrible meatloaf, whatever.

That's ministry.

Meatloaf is ministry.

That's gonna be literally the quoted quote from today.

Lady pastors, am I right?

All right.

So God was moving.

By the way, side note, I feel like a lot of people are always like, you always have to mention that you had cancer when you get up.

When are you gonna stop doing that?

Never, because Jesus healed my body.

And I'll be like, you're very raucous over there.

Yes, I am.

I am raucous about everything.

I dance and sing and get excited about like a cookie.

So why not about the God who healed my body, touched my life, so that I'm still here with three healthy, beautiful children since that day?

I will not stop giving him praise for that.

I will not.

Okay?

So if I had only thought outright healing was the proof that God was speaking, I would have missed it.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

Sometimes it's not that he's silent, it's that we're not focused on what he's actually doing.

Can I take it a darker step even further and say, some of you prayed for someone to be healed in your life or believed, and someone even passed away?

Can I say that even in death, God is not silent?

Because sometimes, even in death, it's you who will be the miracle outcome of that situation.

What do I mean?

Well, sometimes you lose someone you love and it takes the breath from your lungs, and just to get up every day and take the next step requires Jesus, and the fact that you're still here, still going, is a miracle of his love.

Even in death, he is not silent.

See, I love this verse.

It's like a life verse for me, Isaiah 55.9.

I don't think I put it in your notes, but write it down.

Isaiah 55.9 says, For your thoughts are higher than my thoughts, and your ways are higher than my ways.

When I don't understand it, it doesn't mean it's not valid.

He's still moving.

I think a cool side note, I did put this one in your notes, and I love the way the Amplified says it.

Psalm 127, it says, It is in vain, or it is vain, for you to rise early, to retire late, to eat the bread of anxious labors, for he gives blessings to his beloved even in his sleep.

Even when you're sleeping, he's working.

Even when you're sleeping, he's doing things for you.

As a side note, why do we strive?

Why do we stress and try to earn his love and make sure he's working even when you're asleep?

That's how big he is.

Don't strive.

He is working.

So sometimes silence can actually be the answer we need, or perceived silence, right?

Never in my life have I been more thankful for supposed silence or supposed unanswered prayers than when I've Facebook stalked an ex-boyfriend.

If you haven't done it, you're lying, you did it.

And like we would lay on the altar and be like, Lord, this man, I pray that he would love me and marry me, and just Lord, let us be together forever.

And it's like 25 years later, you're on Facebook and you're like, thank you, Jesus.

You know what I'm saying?

Do you know what I'm saying?

Y'all liars.

Grow up, you did it too.

It's fine.

Sometimes his silence is graceful answer, right?

And that's a joke way, but sometimes I mean we don't get it and we don't see it, and we think we know, and we pray towards something, and then later on in life we go, God, thank you, I didn't get that job.

You had something better.

Lord, thank you for your timing.

Your timing is perfect even when I don't understand it.

Yeah?

So from the last words of Malachi to the beginning of Matthew, there's 400 years.

And Malachi had said the coming of Elijah, and he's really kind of referencing uh John the Baptist who comes and is this precursor to Jesus.

He comes and he literally prepares the way, right?

He's the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

And so Matthew starts and it says that he is Emmanuel, Jesus, which is in Hebrew means God with us.

See, here's the game changer that happened for me with the Christmas story.

I think I always said, I know Jesus came, he was born as a baby, and he came to save us.

And he did, but he didn't just come to save us, he came to be with us.

That is the game changer.

That, friends, is the thing that makes all the difference.

You don't have just a God who came to save you.

You had a God who wants to be with you too.

He wants to be with you too.

Um we don't have to wait now.

Never again do we have to have 400 years of silence.

Why?

Because he is always speaking.

He is always speaking.

And because of Emmanuel, there's a few things I want to tell you.

That this shouldn't just be a Christmas story that you hear, that you turn out, that you whatever.

Like growing up, my parents made us read the Christmas story before opening gifts.

That's child abuse.

You start resenting, you know?

Like, we get it.

Open gifts.

Um it's not just a story, it's a game changer, okay?

He's always speaking, and I want to tell you a few things that because of Emmanuel, who he is, his name, his nature, a few things.

Number one is we are not alone.

What a cold world this can be sometimes, right?

I know I'm a people person.

I always knew I was a people person.

I never realized that more than in 2020, the pandemic.

We had isolation, we had all these things, and it was soul-crushing for me.

I remember four of my friends, we like went to the library, but we stayed in our cars, we put them in like a square.

It was very bizarre times, but we were all just like really lonely, yeah.

And we just needed like human interaction.

Uh, if you don't believe me, look up like the holiday blues or seasonal depression.

It's very real this time of year.

Why?

Because we watch Christmas movies where the girl and the guy fall in love, we sing, you know, I'm dreaming, I'll be home for Christmas.

It sets up ideals.

And then when your life doesn't look that way, it could be very sad.

It might be your first Christmas without a loved one.

You may be waiting for an answered prayer, and you go, This, this, my mine doesn't match the card, the Hallmark movie.

It doesn't match that.

Side note, I don't think anyone's life matches a Hallmark movie, and that's probably a good thing.

To be alone can be the most harrowing thing.

But because of a manual, because you have a God who not just came to save you, but a God who wants to be with you, you are not alone.

Sometimes it doesn't change our situation, but just knowing we're not alone in it can make all the difference, right?

Yeah.

Because of a manual, we are not alone.

Because of a manual, we are known.

You had to know I was getting to this one.

This is like my thing.

This is like my thing.

Thank you so much.

Um check me out on the Liz Burns Known Podcast weekly, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Um I love a story in the Bible.

It's in John 4.

And um, when I think of known, I think of this.

When God first gave me that word known, he was like, Women your age are always seeking influence, but they don't need influence, they need to be known.

Well, I think of this story in the Bible, John 4.

Jesus is going and traveling with his disciples, and he comes upon a Samaritan woman.

He talks to her, which first of all is highly bizarre because Samaritans and Jews would not have spoken.

But this woman is alone at a well in the middle of the day, and that's odd too.

Because going to a well to gather water, that's not odd, but going in the middle of the day is odd.

Well, why?

Because you would usually go to gather your water in the morning or the evening because of the temperatures.

But this woman, see, this woman was walking in shame.

She literally went in the hottest part of the day to get her water so she wouldn't be seen by her fellow townspeople who would judge her and shame her.

And Jesus comes up on her, and it's not a radical sermon.

He doesn't call her to some plan.

He doesn't give her the bracelet, plan of salvation, whatever.

No, what he does he do.

He looks her in the eyes and he says, I know you.

He says, You've been married five times.

The guy you're living with right now isn't even your husband.

And something breaks in the woman.

Why?

She was known.

We all want to be known.

We all want to be known at our worst and know that when we were known, even at our ugliest, I mean that metaphorical and physical sometimes that people would stay.

Right?

And just a moment with Jesus changes her.

Because suddenly she's known.

What happens?

She drops her jug of water and runs into the town that she was previously doing everything in her power to avoid.

Now she's known and it changed everything for her.

You are known.

You are known and seen by a God that loves you.

I love our kids.

Slogan for excess kids it is seen, known, and loved.

If those five, six, seven, eight-year-olds can grasp that now, won't they be so much ahead of where we are as adults still trying to get it?

I love it so much.

Just one moment with Jesus changed her.

Why?

Well, because she was known.

And because of Emmanuel, we are all known.

And then because of Emmanuel, we're not alone, we are known, and because of Emmanuel, we have hope.

There's almost nothing in this life that you will go through that you can't get through without hope.

I know a lot of you in this room right now who are walking through some stuff.

I know some people in this room who need physical healing.

I know people in this room who have been praying and waiting for a baby.

God seems silent.

I know people in this room who are praying for their marriages that are hanging on by a thread.

God has seemed silent.

But because of Emmanuel, we have hope.

And just as we feel that there's nothing we can't get through without hope, sometimes there's nothing you can do without hope.

You know, in the media this week, there was like a celebrity who lost their life to suicide, and I just was reading the comments, so fascinated because everyone was saying, I can't believe it.

I can't believe it.

I can't believe it.

And I said, I can believe it.

Because unless you've tasted of hopelessness, you don't know what that feeling is.

Unless you've struggled, you don't know what it's like to really feel without hope.

There is no end to that.

But because you have a God who came not just to save you, but to be with you, you never have to go through silence again.

Can I tell you why?

We have the Bible, the very alive, living word of God.

Don't tell me God's not speaking if you're not opening your word and reading it.

It is a phenomenal book.

It's an alive book.

I could tell you story after story after story of days where I just opened it and God's word like jumped out at me.

I mean, I've read the Bible through and through, like all these times, but still new things because it's a living word of God.

He's always speaking.

We have his word.

You know what else we have?

We have the Holy Spirit.

When Jesus was crucified, he died, he came back to earth.

And before he left again to go back to be with the Father, he said, I'm sending the Holy Spirit, a comforter.

Well, you have the Holy Spirit with you in you.

That voice, it sounds spooky, it sounds weird.

It's not either.

It's that knowing, it's that comfort.

It's that moment where you say alone, and a voice says, You're not alone, I am with you.

It's the Holy Spirit.

We have hope, we have the word, we have the Holy Spirit.

You know what else we have?

We have the body of Christ.

What's that?

It's a weird word if you're not from the church.

I just mean the church.

I just mean that when you're going through something, knowing God is with you, but knowing there's people alongside you can actually save you.

Um, just a few weeks ago, um, my dad got sick, and y'all can pray for him.

He starts his chemo tomorrow.

It came out of nowhere, it surprised us.

Um, and it bowled me over.

I was shocked, I was scared.

But one night, I got permission from my mom to share the prayer requests on Facebook.

And so I put up the status.

I say, please pray for my dad.

He's going through something right now, he needs healing touch in his body.

And like, it felt like just real time watching hundreds of comments come in.

Hey Liz, I'm praying for you, dad.

I'm praying for you.

I'm praying for you, Liz.

I'm praying for your dad.

We're lifting your dad up in prayer.

And I just went into my room and I started sobbing.

Not because I was sad, because I remembered I'm not alone.

Not only is God with me, but having you all lift me up to the Father, I felt so strengthened.

The only two times my dad has cried this whole time was because he felt really humbled by how many people love him.

And when I've been sick in my body, when we've gone through terrible things in our life and our home, you've lifted me up.

And it felt like the end of its wonderful life, all these people just praying.

And I knew you were praying, and it made a difference.

The church is a huge part of God's gift to us.

You are not alone.

You are not alone.

Emmanuel at Christmas means, yes, we have an all-knowing, all-powerful, creative God who came to save us.

He ultimately came to die, right?

To reconcile so we could be with the Father.

But he didn't just come as Savior.

Why is it important that he was Emmanuel?

Because his very name means he is God with you, with me.

That is the game changer that changed everything for me.

And what would change for you if you started living like he was with you?

He comes not just to be with us for our benefit, but he comes to transform you, to heal you of your sinful ways, so that you can bless others, to make you more like him.

What would change for you?

Maybe you would fear less knowing he's with you, knowing you're not alone, knowing you're known, knowing you have hope.

Maybe you would be able to turn your anxiety into something else, knowing that he is with you.

Maybe it would change some things in your lifestyle, knowing God is with you.

And today I just want to pray with you.

Will you bow your head and close your eyes?

Lord, thank you.

Sounds so ridiculous in light of such a gift, but I know you gave it freely in love.

So thank you.

Thank you that your very name means you are with us, that we never have to live in silence again because you are always speaking.

And today we want to live like we believe that.

We want to live like we believe your name, that you are Emmanuel, God, with us.

Remind us every day this week, as we're approaching life, to really live that we believe that way, God.

Hey, if you're in this room, every head is still bowed, every eye is still closed.

Maybe you've never met Jesus for yourself.

Maybe he's never been your savior, your Lord.

What a great day to accept him into your heart as your savior.

What does that mean?

It just means you say, please, like Jason said at the at the um during worship, put you on the throne of my life.

Forgive me of my sins.

If today you want to accept Jesus and meet him, no one's looking.

But will you raise your hand and say, today, I want to pray to accept Jesus in my heart.

Right now, no one's looking.

Just raise your hand.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

With your own words now, pray this with me.

Say, Lord, today I accept you into my life.

Jesus, Emmanuel, come and be my Father, my Lord, my King.

Forgive me of my sins.

I put you on the throne of my life.

I believe in you.

Now all my days may I serve you.

Thank you for your gift.

I accept it freely today.

In Jesus' wonderful name we pray.

Amen.

Hey church, look at me.

All day people have been accepting Jesus, and that is so exciting.

Let's celebrate that.