December 20, 2021
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Our ministry summer outreaches in Native America are some of our daughter's most cherished weeks of the year. But the year her first child was due in late summer, there was no way she could get the doctor's green light to travel - especially when the destination was the villages of Native Alaska. Now that's one of the amazing aspects of the first Christmas - that Mary would travel by donkey from Nazareth to Bethlehem in her ninth month of pregnancy. I've traveled the road from Nazareth to Bethlehem by car, not by donkey or foot as Joseph and Mary did. It's a tortuous journey through hills and mountains. It's about 90 long miles. There's no way you're going to get a loving husband to go with his very pregnant wife on a trip like that on the eve of their baby's birth, right? Wrong.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Unstoppable Plans of God."
For almost 500 years, the prophecies of God had said that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Little problem: Joseph and Mary are living 90 miles away in Nazareth. There's apparently no way you'll ever get Mary to Bethlehem when the Messiah in her womb is full term. But the plan of God says Bethlehem. What God does is absolutely amazing, and a very special encouragement for you and me this Christmas.
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from these familiar verses, Luke 2:1-4. "In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world...and everyone went to his town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David."
Now the man seemingly making all this happen is the Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus. History tells us that he murdered members of his own family, he actually was a mass murderer, and he instituted emperor worship. He was, in many ways, a monster. And here is little Joseph caught up in the great whirlpool of history. But it is Caesar Augustus who turns out to be the big player in this divine drama, and yet just a footnote to history. He thinks he's flexing his muscle with this universal census, but this most powerful man on earth is but an unsuspecting instrument in the hands of a sovereign God.
God will get His destiny couple to His destiny place, even if He has to move an empire to do it! The Christmas story is God's powerful statement that God's plans are unstoppable! Including His plans for you. Plans that He says in Jeremiah 29:11 are "plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
Now it may be that right now there appears to be no way things can turn out right. The money isn't there, your health isn't there, the relationship looks impossible, the job frustrations are mounting, the mountain isn't moving, and the answer isn't coming. It looks like there's no way for things to work out, not enough time for an answer to come.
But you belong to the God who, with the stroke of an evil man's pen, moved an empire to place His kids, Joseph and Mary, right where they were supposed to be. Yes, there was a difficult process, but God delivered them exactly where they were supposed to be. And believe me, God will get His plans for you accomplished if He has to move an empire to do it, or use even a godless instrument to do it.
Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Just getting Him there was a miracle! So would you relax in the strong arms of the God of Bethlehem. He will move whatever He has to move to finish what He has started in your life!