Calvary Road Baptist Church
“THE INTRUSION OF GOD”
If you are a grandparent, it is likely your childhood was forever altered by memories of the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as the impact on our nation of the Vietnam War. Your grandchildren were forged in the crucible of the September 11th attack twenty-one years ago today, the wars in the Middle East, and changes to our daily way of life that have come about because of that. You do not remember traveling by air without the TSA, but we who are older do.
My generation remembers the Cold War and the threat of Soviet domination. You, who are of our grandchildren’s generation, have never practiced nuclear bomb school drills under your school desks. Neither have you experienced Bible reading or prayer in public schools. Much has changed. And so rapidly. Let us not be distracted from significant matters, events of singular importance. I call your attention for a few minutes to an issue of eternal significance.
The birth of my Lord Jesus Christ involved what Bible teachers called the incarnation when God became a man. I would like for us to think about that and consider the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, when He left heaven’s glory and became a man, culminating in His birth nine months later in Bethlehem.
As well, I wonder if you had ever considered what it was that God, the Son, did when He became a man. Just exactly what happened that led to Jesus being born in Bethlehem? Have you ever given any thought to such a thing as that?
Let me use an unusual word to describe what the Lord Jesus Christ did when God, the Son, became a man. He intruded. That’s right. In less than four months, we will celebrate something on Christmas Day. What we will celebrate on December 25th (though most people have no real grasp of its significance) was God’s intrusion into the affairs of the human race nine months earlier.
Correctly defined, the word “intrude” means to thrust yourself uninvited into the affairs of another.[1] And when God became a man, that’s precisely what He did in the affairs of the human race. He thrust Himself upon us uninvited. That is what Christmas is all about. Is it not a fantastic thing that people worldwide will celebrate with gifts and merriment the birth of Someone they reject? They will give and receive presents, exchange many gifts, and spend millions upon millions upon millions of dollars to celebrate the arrival of Someone whose Lordship they will deny in their personal lives. But I digress.
The fact is that God does intrude into the affairs of human beings. And He thrusts Himself upon us without invitation. He did so when He expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. He did so when He overspread the entire planet with the Flood, with only eight human survivors. He did so when He confused people’s languages at the tower of Babel. And He did so when He redeemed the children of Israel from Egyptian slavery.
I’m tickled to death that God didn’t ask my permission to thrust Himself into my life because if He did, I’m sure I would have foolishly said “No.” He knows so much better what to do than I do. Are you willing to admit that God is better qualified to intrude into your life without your permission than you are to weigh that consideration and then grant or deny Him such permission to influence and affect you?
No matter. I want to call your attention to this broad subject of God’s intrusion into the affairs of the human race this morning under four separate categories for your consideration.
CATEGORY #1 IS GOD’S RIGHT OF INTRUSION
God does have the right to intrude into the affairs of human beings, whether He receives our prior permission or not. And He has that right based upon two things:
I submit that God has the right to intrude because of Who He is. When you understand that God is God, then certain qualities must be attributed to Him that no one can deny:
First of all, we understand that according to the Word of God, God is righteous. What that means is that the possibility of God behaving in an unjust and inequitable way is not at all possible. Any time God would intrude into the lives and affairs of human beings, we must understand, because God is a righteous God, that His intrusion cannot be unrighteous. He does not behave contrary to His nature. We don’t either, by the way. That’s the reason it is not good people who do evil things. No, we behave according to our nature. It is evil people who do evil things.
God is also holy. This means He is without sin, moral defilement, or contamination. However, holiness should not be understood to be a passive attribute or a negative characteristic—quite the opposite. God’s holiness is positively a good, noble, lofty, and most excellent attribute. Therefore, only high and lofty motives are behind His intrusion into the affairs of men.
Third, God is wise. The Apostle Paul described Him as the all-wise God. Do you know what that means? It means that only in error would often foolish people like you and me question the wisdom of God’s dispositions and actions. When you deal with an all-wise being, and you question His behavior in your life, and you understand that He is all-wise, what does that make you when you doubt Him? It makes your judgment suspect. Many times in my life, I have exhibited foolish behavior by questioning the actions and motives of the all-wise God. And all of those memories are dark memories.
Fourth, God is also omniscient, possessing infinite knowledge and information. God knows when to intrude profitably into human lives as no other being would.
Lastly, but not in any way, finally, God is love. The motives behind God’s intrusions into human affairs, and the motives behind His intrusions into your life, must always be for good because He loves you.
This, then, consider: If ever a being had the right to intrude into the lives of others, it is God Who has the right to intrude into your life.
First, because of Who He is. Not only that but also because of what He has done. Let me ask you a question: Does one possess, and should one keep, certain rights and privileges related to the ownership of that which he has created? Surely. Should you be able to own what you have fashioned? Of course, you should.
Only an obsolete Marxist would deny an artist the right to own the picture he has painted. Only an obsolete Marxist would deny a writer the privilege of copyrighting his work product.
Only an obsolete Marxist, I’m sure there are no obsolete Marxists here (they are obsolete), would deny the Creator the right to exercise control over that which is His by right of creation.
Expand this principle to the nth degree, and you see God’s position. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.[2] All things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made.[3] The things which we see were made of things which do not appear, Hebrews 11.3.
God made everything. Therefore everything is His. He owns it. So, you see that, although you might not enjoy either God’s intrusions or His right to intrude into your life, no one, and I mean to tell you, no one can offer valid philosophical objections to the right of God the Creator to intrude into the life of any man, any woman, any boy, and any girl He chooses, whether it’s you or anyone else.
Not valid objections, anyway. There are many objections, to be sure, but none of them are valid. No one is more qualified to intrude into your life or mine than God. And because all that we see is His by right of creation, He does have the right to intrude at any time.
No wonder the Marxist denies property rights. No wonder socialists advocate the state’s ownership of everything. When the Eighth Commandment declares, “Thou shalt not steal,” it not only establishes the personal property rights of every individual, and the right to control the use of that private property, but it also undergirds God’s ownership of every human being and the absolute of God right to control every human being.
CATEGORY #2, SCRIPTURE’S REVIEW OF GOD’S INTRUSION
Let me share with you some examples of God intruding into people’s lives, referring more specifically to what I have already alluded to. And you can figure out whether He knows what He is doing or not.
What about Adam and Eve? Their rebellion against God resulted in their spiritual death, your spiritual death, and mine. And though they hid from God because of their nakedness, God intruded into their lives without invitation. He then clothed them and restored fellowship with them. Do you suppose afterward they objected to God’s intrusion into their affairs? Of course not.
Abraham would have lived and died and gone to Hell as a Babylonian idolater had not God intruded into his life. The effects of that intrusion can be felt now. Thousands of years later, we see and feel the effects of God’s intrusion into Abraham’s life with the Jewish people’s existence.
And then there is Moses. After slaying an Egyptian, he would have spent his entire lifetime herding sheep in the Midian desert after he ran away from Egypt to avoid punishment. But from the burning bush, God called Moses. God intruded into his life and called him to deliver an entire nation out of bondage, four centuries of Egyptian slavery.
Though always uninvited, God’s intrusions into the affairs of individual men are sometimes unwelcome, as well. Such was the case with a prophet named Jonah. Though it meant salvation for thousands of Assyrians, Jonah rebelled by resisting God’s intrusion into his life. You see, he wanted only hellfire for the enemies of his people. But with a great fish, God prevailed, and a city repented from its sins and was spared God’s judgment.
You might say, “Will God’s intrusions result in hardship and privation?” Oh, yes. Absolutely. Consider, if you would, Joseph and Mary. Critical characters in the incarnation intrusion of God. Would you ladies enjoy the lifelong label of fornicator? Imagine the stares, remarks, and cruelties you’d suffer in that culture, unlike ours, where immorality is so common and casual. But in the society of Galilee two thousand years ago, where a woman who appeared to have lost her virtue would forever have been looked down upon, would have been mocked, would have been ridiculed, would have been ostracized, would have been scorned? Or the degradation that accompanied Joseph for marrying a woman who was supposedly a slut, a tramp, an immoral woman in the eyes of so many? No honorable Jewish man in Joseph’s day would knowingly marry such a woman.
Do you think people believed Mary when she told them, as her pregnancy began to show, that she was a virgin? Her mother? Her sisters? Her lifelong friends? “Oh, yea. Sure, Mary. Right. You’re a virgin. Right. Right. And my Aunt Minnie, who has ten children, is also a virgin, Mary.” All anyone knew was that Mary went South for six months, supposedly to visit a cousin, and came back obviously pregnant. It looked really bad. Friends, no one believed her. No one believed her. Not her mother or her father. Not any brothers or sisters she might have had. No one believed her except for her cousin Elizabeth and Zacharias, the parents of John the Baptist. But they were very old and would soon die, leaving her alone with Joseph and the truth that no one would believe.
I hope my comments do not astonish you, but in John 8.41, when the Lord Jesus Christ was dealing with His enemies, the Sadducees and the Pharisees, they came back to Him and said,
“We be not born of fornication.”
How do you think they heard about that thirty-three years later, thirty-three years after He was born? Where do you think someone came up with this notion of,
“We be not born of fornication”?
The gossip was still making its way around Nazareth thirty-three years later. Jesus’ enemies found out about it when they sent their investigators to dig up the dirt and all the slime they could come up with, the lie that Mary and Joseph had to live through their entire lives and could not escape. They were innocent, but they looked so guilty. To be sure, God’s rewards in heaven for this meek couple are going to be very great, indeed; tremendous. God is going to bless them wonderfully. But they suffered terribly for the privilege of being the earthly parents of the Messiah.
Where would this world be had they not possessed the wisdom, the humility, and the insight, to be both responsive and responsible when God intruded into their lives that way? I wonder how many of you men would have responded if the angel Gabriel had approached you and said, “Ah, you know this woman you are engaged to, who you just found out is pregnant?” “Yeah, yeah.” “She’s a virgin.” “She is?” “Yep. She’s a virgin.” “Now, what’s going to happen, now that the Holy Ghost has overshadowed her, is that she will give birth to God’s Son.” “Wow! That’s great.” “Yes, it is great. But there’s a downside to this whole thing. For the rest of your lives, everyone will think she cheated on you and that you are a fool for marrying a woman with the morals of an alley cat.”
How would you like that in a society where such behavior was severely scorned? Most of the men in this auditorium would say, “No thanks, I’m not interested in allowing my reputation to be ruined, even for a good cause.” I wonder how many of the ladies in this room would have been able to endure the difficulty, the tragedy, and the hardship of the angel Gabriel coming and announcing to you (God not asking your permission, but informing you) that God has selected you, Himself? Because you are a virgin, God will do something to you that will ruin your life’s reputation through you. You have the privilege and the opportunity to bring into this world and be the physical mother of the baby Jesus. But it’s going to damage everything in this life you hold dear. Is that not intrusion?
So, some rebelled against God’s intrusion, like Jonah. At other times great pain and trials accompanied God’s intrusion, as with Joseph and Mary.
CATEGORY #3, SCRIPTURE’S REASON FOR INTRUSION
Why does God intrude into people’s lives?
Referring to Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ once said,
“The son of man has come to seek and to save that which is lost.”[4]
You study the Bible through and through, and you will note that every time God intrudes into the affairs of men, He has done so to either directly or ultimately bring about the salvation of men’s eternal and undying souls. You ask, “Why?” Because, since the fall of Adam and Eve into sin, our race has been rebellious toward God, self-willed, denying Him lordship over that which is His, and rushing headlong toward eternal destruction, according to the Word of God.
You might say, “How do you know? You don’t know anybody who has been there and come back.” I know one person who has been there and come back, the Lord Jesus Christ. According to the Bible, we are a race without hope except for Christ, without joy except in Christ, and without purpose except from Christ. And you know how shallow and unfulfilling a pursuit it is for people to seek mere happiness because happiness just depends on what happens.
It is a shallow thing for someone to wrap himself up in his job or career. When retirement comes, what do you have? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, you might very well be dead a couple of months later because the only thing you had was your work. What happens when someone wraps himself up with his wife, and she dies? What about a woman who wraps herself up in her husband, and he dies? What about when a dad or a mom are so devoted to their children and are then betrayed by those same children? So you see, my friend, life really doesn’t have any valid purpose apart from Jesus Christ.
Knowing that sinful people will not seek after God, according to Romans 3.11, no matter how many Church services people go to, my Bible tells me there is none that seeketh after God. No, not one. That means I don’t seek after God. That means you don’t seek after God. That means you don’t know anyone who seeks after God.
If God loves you and doesn’t want you to go to Hell, and we will not seek after Him, then it is left to God to seek after us. And if we have a mind and a heart that is alienated towards God and in rebellion towards God, then the only way that God can deal with us effectively and demonstrate His love in our lives is to intrude into our lives ... uninvited.
CATEGORY #4, AN INDIVIDUAL’S RESPONSE TO GOD’S INTRUSION
These last two thousand years have seen God intruding into people’s lives primarily through preaching His Word. He doesn’t intrude much by signs and wonders, miracles and revelations. But He does still intrude through Gospel preaching. That being the case, I want to examine two, and really the only two possible, responses to the intrusions of God that you can ever find:
In Acts 24.25, we see the response of a man named Felix to the witnessing of Paul:
“And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled, and answered, Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.”
When the Apostle Paul dealt with and reasoned with him out of the Scripture, Felix’s response was essentially, “Later, not now.”
Do you know what “later” means? Later is another way of saying “No.” Isn’t that right? It’s another way of saying “No.” By the way, we never again hear of Felix in the Bible. We don’t know if there was a later for him after that meeting.
It may have been because of this experience that when Paul wrote to the Corinthian Church, he said, “Behold, today is the day of salvation, now is the accepted time.” Because some people just put it off. Put it off, put it off, put it off, put it off, and put it off. And they keep putting it off.
I know a girl who was witnessing to a man in his late 70s. The man was in the hospital, and he was dying. And he understood the claims of Jesus Christ upon his life. He understood his eternal damnation to Hell because of his sin. And he understood that it was deserved. And when the girl was sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with him, the old man said, “Later.” Later. You say, “That old man was pretty foolish.” But it’s not any more foolish than an eighteen-year-old saying, “Later.” James 4.14:
“Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”
But in Acts 16.30, we see the other possible response should God intrude into your life. The Apostle Paul and his co-laborer Silas were in the Philippian jail. Their backs had been laid open to the bone by a whip, a Roman cat-of-nine-tails. Paul and Silas demonstrated the difference between joy and happiness in that jail.
Remember, those men were bleeding. They hurt all over their entire bodies. They had been beaten to a pulp. What happened was terrible, so they weren’t happy. But they did have great joy. As a result of their joy and their testimony, they communicated to the jail keeper the Gospel of Jesus Christ, when men equipped only with happiness would have spent the night moaning and groaning, “Why me? How could this happen?” God brought an earthquake and knocked the cell doors open. But none of the prisoners escaped. How come? My guess? All of them had trusted Christ. And when the jailer ran in and was going to kill himself, because in Rome, if you lose your prisoner, you lose your life, Paul said, “Do thy self no harm, we are all here.”
That jailer may very well have overheard what was going on inside that jail cell, and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” Do you know what that was? That was one man’s way of asking, “How do I say ‘Yes’ when God intrudes in my life? How do I say ‘Yes’?” Paul and Silas said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved.” My friend, Almighty God, the Creator of heaven and Earth, is an uninvited Intruder into men’s lives, savingly so in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ.
We have correctly and logically considered God’s right to intrude into the life of any human being. Any human being. Even your life. And we’ve reviewed some examples of His intrusions, even considering God’s reason for His intrusions; to save individuals from purposelessness in this life and perdition in the next life. To put it more precisely, to save people from their sins. Finally, we have seen two different responses to intrusion: Felix’s “Later,” was really a “No.” The jailer’s question, “What must I do to be saved?” was asking, as I said before, “How do I say ‘Yes’?”
Let me ask you, What is your response to God’s intrusion? Sometimes He intrudes in a very forceful way, but most of the time He intrudes in a very gentle, somewhat delicate, prodding of the conscience and the heart when the Gospel is preached. Has God been doing that with you? Has He intruded by means of the preaching of His Word? Keep in mind that God might not intrude into your life again. He may not. He’s certainly not obligated to intrude in this way, which is the reason Paul wrote these words to the Corinthians:
“now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”[5]
If God is intruding into your life, no matter how delicately, tenderly, and quietly, I urge you to respond. I urge you to say “Yes.” But how do you go about saying “Yes” when God intrudes, so you are not rejecting His advance, so you are not ruining your opportunity? You need to do what the jailor did. You need to ask how to say “Yes.” The short answer is “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.” But for more explaining, perhaps you and I need to talk. Would you speak with me immediately? Then let me know after the service and we can speak. Or you can call me and we can arrange to meet during the week.
Whatever you do, don’t be a Felix and reject God’s intrusion into your life. You need to be saved from your sins, and that will not happen if you insist on your own timing and schedule instead of responding when God intrudes into your life.
I close with this reminder that God will intrude at least one more time. It will be when the Lord Jesus Christ returns in power and great glory. If you have not already trusted Him for salvation by then, it will be too late.
__________
[1] Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1996), page 1002.
[2] Genesis 1.1
[3] John 1.3
[4] Luke 19.10
[5] 2 Corinthians 6.2
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Pastor@CalvaryRoadBaptist.Church