Isaiah 11:2 “The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him– the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.”

The Holy Spirit specially equipped and accompanied Jesus for his work of saving us. Three of the extraordinary powers Jesus possessed have to do with his thinking processes. He had a Spirit of wisdom, of understanding, and of knowledge. Some of what we know, how we understand things, and the wisdom to apply it we can get from books. Some we get from the school of experience. But there is also a wisdom that only the Spirit of God can teach us.

This is the wisdom that doesn’t sugar coat the human condition. It isn’t afraid to call a spade a spade, to acknowledge the way things really are, to diagnose the human dilemma in all its utter hopelessness. This is the wisdom that says “every inclination of man’s heart is evil.” “There is no one who does good, not even one.” “No one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by observing the law.”

And isn’t that just the wisdom that earned Jesus so many passionate enemies? The religious leadership of his day didn’t hate him because he taught a different 10 commandments, but because he refused to let them live in their delusion that they were keeping the ones that he and they agreed on. Jesus blew them away by suggesting that they weren’t good enough to save themselves.

Are we in any position to think that we are wiser than Jesus thousands of years later? Has the human race really become so much kinder and better and purer and more generous? Haven’t our sins and imperfections in many ways become magnified over the past couple of thousand years?

Jesus’ wisdom shows us how desperately we need a Savior, and how gracious God has been to send the Savior we need. He doesn’t hold out the perpetual uncertainty of self-improvement. “Have I ever done enough?” He holds out the certainty of a perfect substitute. Christ has done it all! His own words promise, “whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.”

And don’t judge this book by its cover. He may have a humble background, but the Lord poured out on him a “Spirit of counsel and of power.” No matter how long you look at the manger at Christmas, your eyes will see only a helpless baby lying there. Yet that little baby had the power to turn shepherds into preachers. No matter how long you stare at the grown man, no longer an infant resting in a manger, but suspended from a cross of wood, you will see only the battered body of a dying man. Yet that death has the power to turn sinners into saints and lifeless corpses into immortal creatures of heaven.

Our world has never known another power like this one. Sometimes we fear power, because power is so often abused. But we can trust this new king in David’s royal line because he wields it in “the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.” Jesus was not afraid of his heavenly Father. He is simply the only one who has ever treated him with the full respect and honor he deserves. Only he has lined up every moment, every feature, every purpose of his life with the will of our Father in heaven. And Jesus reveals that the will of the Father is simply this:  “that everyone  who  looks to the Son and believes in  him  shall have eternal life, and I  will  raise  him  up at the last day.”

The fear of the Lord brings us full circle to the first of the gifts the Spirit poured out on Jesus. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10). May faith in this Spirit-filled Savior fill us with the same Spirit-born gifts!

Isaiah 11:1 “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.”

Jesse, as you probably know, was the father of King David. David began a royal dynasty in Israel that provided kings for 350 years. But over the years the proud family tree David established fell into decline. Many of the kings abused their power. Many ruled selfishly instead, not in the interest of God’s people. Some became idolaters and even used their position to lead God’s people into idolatry.

That is what led to God’s judgment upon the nation and the royal family. First he tore the nation in two by civil war. Later he let foreign nations invade. Eventually the capital city was burned to the ground and the best and brightest people taken into exile. Only a handful returned 70 years later.

All that was left of the proud tree David started was a stump. When Jesus was born, there had been no kings in the family for more than half a millennium. There was nothing to suggest this family would ever produce a person of influence again.

The surprising thing about Jesus’ background is not his family’s slide into obscurity or his now humble roots. History is full of stories of peasants and paupers who rose to become great leaders. Think of the stories we learned about Abraham Lincoln in grade school. He grew up in a log cabin. He was schooled by his mother at home. His early life didn’t include the kind of grooming some have had to prepare them for national leadership. Yet he rose to become one of the most influential presidents our nation has ever had. That career path is not unique. We could multiply stories of inventors and explorers and businessmen and statesmen and churchmen who rose from obscurity to change the world.

What stumps us about Jesus’ background, at least from a worldly point of view, is that he had a choice. While others worked their way up, Jesus was, in a very real sense, working his way down. From heaven he oversaw the events that led to his family’s fall from power. He guided the history that went into his being born in a stable instead of a palace, that went into growing up learning carpentry instead of statecraft.  Other great men of history may have appreciated the lessons they learned from having humble beginnings. I doubt that they would have chosen such circumstances for themselves. Jesus chose to leave his heavenly throne, and to remove his family’s earthly throne, before he became the new shoot on Jesse’s humble family tree.

Would you? Isn’t our life so often about bettering our position? Don’t we pour ourselves into making our lives easier? Doesn’t so much of what we do revolve around making things as comfortable for ourselves as we can? And doesn’t this so often lead us to a rather selfish approach to life in which we attempt to make ourselves the center of our universe and the god of our own little world?

But though Jesus truly is God, he came to serve. He came to save us from the sinful life and selfish little universe we try to construct for ourselves. And in order to do that he had to become one of us and die in our place. His humble background helped assure that nothing would obstruct his mission. Earthly power and riches never got in the way of people killing him. It also helps assure us there is no one so low or so obscure they are beneath Jesus’ saving work. Jesus was common and ordinary and human, just like you, and just like me. And so we are qualified to be the common and ordinary human beings he came to rescue and make his own.

Isn’t that what rivets our eyes on Christ as we prepare to celebrate his birth? Jesus’ humble background is not just a great human interest story for the 10 o’clock news. It is the story of unfathomable love willing to give up every earthly advantage, and eventually life itself, to set a world of sinners free. He chose this humility, because he chose to make us his family. We are the fruit produced by this lowly branch.

Luke 11:28 “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”

Do you ever find the Bible frustrating?

Perhaps you have tried to read it cover to cover before. Things started well. Genesis was easy reading, because it covered the lives of real people, and there was plenty of action, intrigue and adventure. Exodus started out much the same way. But by the end of Exodus, page upon page of laws and instructions for ancient worship became tiresome. Leviticus was just too much. Its list of rules and regulations for the Israelites was sometimes hard to make any sense of. “This was once what faith in God was all about!!?” You put it down, and never started it again.

Or maybe you have visited Bible class before, but they had been studying this topic for three weeks already, and it was obvious that if you didn’t attend those first class periods, what followed wasn’t going to make much sense. “What was that exinanition of Jesus thing again?” At other times the class was starting a topic that didn’t have any immediate connection to your life. “Almost everyone I know and work with is a Christian. I live in a free country. Why do I need a class on dealing with persecution?”

Or maybe you have tried to start those home devotions that you always feel guilty about not having. But you didn’t feel sure of what you were doing, the kids were antsy and didn’t pay attention, and the whole experience seemed more irritating than uplifting. “This is supposed to strengthen my faith!!?”

Do we just give up?

Jesus pronounces blessing on those who hear God’s word and “keep” it: hold it dear, trust it, and strive to put it into practice. God’s promise through Isaiah still stands, “My word…will not return to me empty, but it will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11).

Time with God’s word is never wasted time. Ever. That is God’s promise.

But this does not mean that time with God’s word will always be a warm and wonderful experience. It doesn’t mean that reading or studying God’s word will always be an easy thing. In fact, sometimes it may simply be hard work. But isn’t that true of many lesser activities that are good for us?

At times we need to approach our study of God’s word and trust its promise to bless us in much the same way that Jacob approached the Lord himself when he wrestled with the Lord at Peniel (Genesis 32:22-32).

When Jacob was returning home and about to face his estranged brother Esau, the Lord appeared to him at night as a man and the two wrestled with each other all night until dawn. “When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, ‘Let me go, for it is daybreak.’ But Jacob replied, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me’” (Genesis 32:25-26).

Jacob’s experience was a painful one, but he held on. He held on and would not let go of the Lord until he received his blessing. As much as this was a physical struggle, it was a struggle of faith. And Jacob’s faith was blessed: “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.”

In the same way, when we are wrestling with God’s word–struggling to study it–and it doesn’t come easy, let us take a hold of that word and hold on to it in faith and not let go until it blesses us. God promises us it will. Maybe the blessing won’t be immediately obvious and maybe it won’t be the blessing we had in mind, but bless us it will. “Learn of me,” Jesus promises, “and you will find rest for your souls.”

Luke 1:13 “But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John.’”

Some have the impression miracles and angels appeared all over the place in Bible days. But no one was more shocked to be visited by an angel than Zechariah. He lived at the end of what has been called the 400 silent years. It had been 400 years since the Lord had even sent his people a prophet. No doubt Zechariah believed in angels, but this sort of thing just didn’t happen anymore. Yet here he was, standing face to face with an angel!

That unexpected messenger had an unexpected announcement. This elderly couple were going to become parents for the first time. And their son would be no ordinary child. “He will be a joy and delight to you and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth” (Luke 1:14-15). We hear that God is gracious to us and loves us. But to call a man great sets this man apart. The command that Zechariah’s son not drink alcoholic beverages indicates he was to live his life under the Old Testament Nazirite vow. His life was dedicated to God’s service in a special way. That this child was under the influence of God and empowered for great things by his Spirit would be obvious from the time he was born. Proud parents hope for their children to do great things. Christian parents hope for their children to grow up faithful workers in God’s kingdom. But Zechariah had hit the jackpot!

This other-worldly birth announcement is for our benefit, too. During this Advent season the Sunday gospel lessons direct our attention to John the Baptist’s ministry. So do many of the hymns we sing. Listen carefully! John the Baptist preached in a style that doesn’t play well on main street today. It’s sharp. It bites. It’s urgent. It demands a response. But no prophet ever spoke with a clearer commission from God himself. If John’s own message doesn’t make us sit up and pay attention to the Baptist’s words, then let the angel Gabriel’s announcement convince us this is a man we dare not ignore.

But why is it so important for us to hear this message? No prophet ever spoke with such promise. “Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous–to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Luke 116-17). A godly man like Zechariah could not have missed the angel allusion to the very last words of the Old Testament spoken 400 years earlier (Malachi 4:5-6). They announced that Zechariah’s son would be a new Elijah sent to prepare God’s people for the imminent appearance of their Savior.

God’s people desperately needed that preparation. To a godly man like Zechariah this might have been obvious. To much of his nation, such an idea might have seemed strange. The religious establishment felt that they were on top of the situation. This was a rare period in Israel’s history in which the people were not worshiping all sorts of strange foreign gods. Immorality was held in check. Public sinners were not accepted, applauded, and imitated. They were identified and avoided. On the surface it looked as though God’s people were doing the right things.

But their religion had become an empty shell. People were doing the right things for the wrong reasons. Zechariah’s son John was coming to make the people aware of the problem with their empty hearts. He was coming to turn those hearts to a Savior who would fill them with his forgiveness and grace, and to the life of love that that forgiveness and grace produce.

Have you looked at your December calendar and heaved a big sigh at the heavy load of activity this month? Even when it’s full of church events, that very busyness can make it hard for us to keep our eyes and hearts turned toward Christ. We, too, need a voice calling with the spirit and power of Elijah to turn our hearts from all the worldliness and externals of this season, and to rest those hearts in the grace and forgiveness of the Savior whose coming we celebrate.

Numbers  24:17 “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob.”

Balaam son of Beor was not a likely preacher of the Gospel. He was a religious mercenary, a prophet for hire, who would speak a message from any god if people paid him to do so. Balak, king of the Moabites, had hired him to put a curse on Israel as they marched toward the Promised Land. He didn’t want the threat of this new nation in his neighborhood. He was determined to drive them away, so he sought Balaam’s services for some extra insurance before he went to war.

Balaam hoped he could manipulate the Lord into letting him speak the curse and collect the fee. He had no true faith in God. He thought that he might control the Lord for his own selfish purposes. But God turned the tables on him. Balaam ended up being the one under control, serving God’s purposes.

This is how Balaam came to receive a glimpse of our Savior’s glory. What he saw was not the present moment, not even the near future. It was over a thousand years away, in a stable in Bethlehem, on a seashore in Galilee, and on a cross outside Jerusalem.

But did the mercenary prophet really see? When he failed to curse Israel for King Balak, he later devised another plan to make God angry with his nation. He suggested using the women of Moab to tempt them into worship of Baal and sexual immorality. After all God had gone through with Balaam, after all that he had seen, he still couldn’t put his vision of Christ together with faith. He never saw him with his heart.

Isn’t that a common problem as Christmas approaches–people see the newborn Savior with their eyes, but not their hearts? Millions will file past manger scenes in shopping malls. They will drive past them in front of churches or homes. But their reaction will be nothing more than “How cute,” or “How sad,” or “How poor.” A thousand entertainers will sing “Silent Night,” or “Away in a Manger,” but how many will see their Savior from sin hidden beneath the sentimental music?

We need to be reminded, too. The baby in the manger is not a Christmas decoration. He is Christmas itself. Our Savior is now. He is near. In the weeks leading to Christmas, let us see him in our worship, our carols, our entire celebration of his birth.

Let’s see him as the Lord showed him to Balaam, “A star will come out of Jacob.”

The illustration seems almost irreverent when we think about the kind of people who carry the title “star” today. But in many ways, the point of the illustration was not so different when Balaam applied it to Jesus. If you are going to look at a star in the sky, you obviously need to look up. It sticks out because it occupies a place above our heads, where it doesn’t get lost in the crowd. Those we call “stars” today have been put on a pedestal. Right or wrong, they occupy a space where people look up to them. Their heads stick out above the crowd.

In his birth, his life, and his death, Jesus seemed like anything but a star. He wasn’t rich, powerful, or privileged. Crowds of fans didn’t pay millions of dollars to see him. They came to get something, a touch of his grace, relief from some burden. When he appeared before kings and rulers, it was not as an honored guest but a criminal on trial.

Faith sees behind the humble exterior. It sees him shine. His glory is not mere popularity or talent. It is the glory of God himself. It came hidden in human flesh only so that he could live among us. His glory is not a life of ease and prestige. It is the glory of love so uncompromising, so devoted, so profound that it sacrificed everything–respect, life, even paradise–just so that we could be his own and share his glory. The poverty of the stable, the humility of his life, and the shame and agony of the cross shine with the glory of love.

And don’t stars stick out because they are a point of light against a dark background? As human as Jesus looked and acted, he was nothing like the world he came to save. His perfect life stands out against the darkness of human sin. The truth of his teaching is a point of light against the darkness of human rebellion against what is good and right, and ignorance about the way back to God. He lights the way to heaven through our dark world, the way for our return to God.

Jesus is still the true star of Christmas. Don’t just see him. Believe him, and follow where he leads.

Ezekiel 17:22-24 ” ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it; I will break off a tender sprig from its topmost shoots and plant it on a high and lofty mountain. 23 On the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it; it will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it; they will find shelter in the shade of its branches. 24 All the trees of the field will know that I the LORD bring down the tall tree and make the low tree grow tall. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. ” ‘I the LORD have spoken, and I will do it.’ ”

Earlier in Ezekiel chapter 17 the Lord used a cedar tree to picture the nation of Judah. An eagle plucked off its top and carried away to be planted in another country. There it thrived. The Lord was promising prosperity for the Jews who were living in exile in Babylon. He urged them to accept their lot. Exile and subjection to the Babylonians were the Lord’s will. He was disciplining them for their sin. They should not rebel against it.

At the end of the chapter the Lord goes back to that picture of a cedar tree. This time he takes a sprig off the top of it himself. He plants it and it grows into a great tree that produces fruit and provides shelter. This is a picture of the Messiah, whose birth we are preparing to celebrate this Advent.

Then the Lord makes this application: “All the trees of the field will know that I the Lord bring down the tall tree and make the low tree grow tall. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish.” The God we worship takes those who think they are above the rest–the rich, the powerful, the intellectual–and he humbles them. He did it to the corrupt leaders of his own people. Soon he would do it to the Babylonians who had conquered them. Every world power that followed met the same fate–especially when they got in the way of his saving plans.

This way of working is not limited to ancient history. The last hundred years have seen the rise of godless Nazis in Germany, and the atheistic communists in Russia. But the Lord brings down the tall tree and dries up the green tree. Those powers have fallen. The gospel of Christ is still being read and preached in both places.

The other side of God’s promise also proves true. He takes those who have nothing going for them– the weak, the poor, the simple–and he lifts them up. He takes an unknown, unmarried teenage girl, living in the backwoods of an insignificant little country, and makes her the mother of the world’s Savior. He takes uneducated fishermen and turns them into leaders of the world’s greatest religion, the only true faith. He took you and me. He adopted us as his own sons and daughters by faith so that we could be called the children of God.

God is as good as his Word. Do his people still trust his promises thousands of years later? Because so much time has passed, maybe there is doubt. Somewhere in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books the author describes what happens to people’s memories about important things after long passages of time. “History became legend. Legend became myth. And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.” Peter says something similar about those who scoff at Christ’s return: “They will say, ‘When is this coming he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.’ But they deliberately forget…”

It’s not just the scoffers. On a hundred smaller daily promises God has made, we suffer doubts when we don’t see the evidence right away: “You give them their food at the proper time;” “He will not let you be tempted beyond what you are able to bear;” “The Lord will keep you from all harm.” Our doubts erode our faith and accuse God of lying when he says, “I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it.”

But these words are intended for our confidence. Maybe we have experienced hunger, struggled with temptation, or suffered harm. These, too, have been promised in God’s word. “In this world you will have much trouble.” “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” If nothing ever brings us low, then how can we be the low tree that the Lord makes tall? The Apostle Peter promises, “And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast.” If it doesn’t happen sooner, it will happen on the day he lifts our souls all the way out of this world to himself in heaven.

How can we be sure? The Lord spoke all these promises about a Savior’s birth, life, death, and resurrection. And then he did it, just like he said. He is as good as his word.

Psalm 139:7-10 “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.”

Not that we would want to, but even if we tried, David makes it clear we cannot get away from the Lord. Go up as far as you can—travel to the farthest star. Go down as far as you can—dive to the ocean’s deepest trenches or dig to our planet’s core. He will still be there. Travel east to where the sun rises, travel west to where it sets (the far side of the Mediterranean Sea in the Holy Land), you still haven’t escaped him. Like it or not, he’s along for the journey, wherever your life ahead may take you.

But what’s not to like? “Even there your hand will guide me.” Life is filled with decisions. Where will I go to school? What career path will I pursue? Am I ready for marriage? For children? Should I buy or rent? Should I stay or leave? When have I put in enough time and can call it quits? There are decisions for the distant future we can’t even anticipate today. You haven’t, and you don’t, face this alone. Your Lord is with you, guiding you with his hand, even when it may not be clear where he is leading.

And he’s not critical if you need a little hand-holding right now. “Your right hand will hold me fast.” Isn’t that a dear picture? Like a little child, we slip our hands into his, and he gives us a reassuring squeeze to know that he isn’t going to let us slip away from him. We can’t get away from him, and he certainly has no desire to get away from us. We could not have been less appealing company when he gave up everything to live in our world, be rejected by it, and end up dead on a cross. But he did so to end the separation caused by our sins, to possess us and live with us forever.

Now he keeps holding on. Remember what Jesus said about his sheep in John 10? “No one can snatch them out of my hands” (vs. 28). Our Lord wants you to know the security and the peace that are yours because he promises to be with you whenever you need. He promises you will be with him when the very idea of “need” is nothing but a distant memory. He is with us always, because he is everywhere.

Psalm 139:1-4  “O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.”

Almost all religions would agree that “God is great.” “Great is the Lord” is splashed across the pages of the Bible. Much of our worship intends to teach and celebrate the fact. If God is not great, we might wonder why anyone would believe in him.

But what is so great about God? A Christian book exists that asks just this question in its title. Popular atheist Christopher Hitchens asked the same question in his lectures. We can list God’s attributes, his characteristics, and see that he has an impressive resume of talents: all knowing, almighty, eternal, and present everywhere. But maybe that seems like abstract theology. We believe it is true, but we don’t see that it makes much difference in our lives.

The psalmist David believed these things about God, too. But for him, it wasn’t just abstract theology. It had to do with the most intimate details of his life. He picks up the topic of God’s knowledge in the first verses of Psalm 139. What interested David, and should interest us, isn’t the abstract idea that God knows everything. It is the intimate truth that if God knows all, then God knows me.

Your Lord is deeply interested in you. He has searched you. He has become intimately acquainted with everything about you. This is not a casual or incidental knowledge. He has delved deep, as we shall see. Nor is this a dispassionate, unfeeling knowledge like the scientist researching rats in the laboratory. His heartfelt, concerned interest in you runs far deeper than that of your closest friend, or spouse, or parent, or any other person who has ever cared about you. His searching and knowing of you is a characteristic of his unparalleled love.

Your Lord knows you, right down to the thoughts running through your head at this moment. “You perceive my thoughts from afar.” He knows if you are feeling anger, or guilt, or doubt, or even a deep sense of emptiness and loss. He knows if you don’t know what to think or feel.

Some of our thoughts are not good. It’s a good thing no one else can see into our mind to know them. But now the Lord comes along and says he does. He knew, long before we did, that we are sinners. And he knows that is why we don’t always feel so comfortable with him knowing us so well.

But that is not the reason he reveals he knows you so well. Our Lord uses his intimate, thorough knowledge of you and me only to help us. He knew that the only solution for our sins was to send his Son Jesus to live and die to take them away. He knew that this was a burden that he had to carry entirely for us. He knows that this is still the best and only solution for our anger, our guilt, our doubt, our lust, our envy and every other ungodly thought that strays through our minds. Give them to Jesus. Let him take it away. God knew that we would need him.

Then be sure that he knows our weaknesses, not to take advantage of them, but to help us overcome them. He knows our troubles, not to exploit them, but to help us with them. You see, God also knows you as his own. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me,” Jesus says. God’s knowledge of you is an invitation to seek him in prayer, and seek him in his word, and expect that he will take care of the needs of the dear people he knows to be his very own.

Romans 8:35-37 “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble, or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

Sometimes God’s love feels a little theological, a little theoretical, like a set of abstract principles in mathematics. It works on paper, but is it real? Oh yes it is! Look at how God’s love intersects with our lives.

In order to open our eyes and help us see God’s love more clearly, Paul gives us a list we might call “Love’s skeptics” or “Love’s deniers.” So often experience seems to contradict the idea that God loves us. Ancient life was not so different than our own. Behind words like “trouble” and “hardship” in Paul’s Greek are experiences we know all too well. “Trouble” literally has the sense of “pressure.” We feel the “squeeze.” We feel pressure to compromise our morals or our integrity from the people we work for, or from our peers at school. “Hardship” puts us in narrow place, a tight spot. The walls are closing in. The options are running out. Finally, we are cornered and trapped.

Why, if he loves us, does God let us be persecuted? How come I can’t just fit in and be accepted? Why should they others make jokes behind my back when I try to live my faith? Why should my job, my reputation, my safety be threatened because of what I believe?

If I am God’s child and he loves me, then why should I suffer famine or nakedness? Or to put it in more 21^st Century American terms, why should I be living on the edge of poverty? Why should I be struggling to make ends meet? Doesn’t God promise our daily bread? What gives?

What about danger or sword? My house has to be a little fortress–dead bolts and alarms and tornado shelters–to keep me safe. And even these offer no real guarantees. Has God stopped loving us?

“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” In support, Paul brings a second list. Here are the leading candidates for getting between us and God’s love for us. Every one of them is destined to fail.

“I am convinced that neither death nor life…” Death can’t do it. Although death was at one time the penalty for sin that cut us off from God, now it is the gateway to life. It is our last step on the way home. It brings us into the direct presence of God and his love. It never moves us farther away.

Life can’t do it, either. More than death, people fear the things life throws at us. We don’t want to suffer. But the worst that life has to offer is just temporary, and God promises to love us through it all.

“Neither angels nor demons…” Spiritual powers, whether good or evil, cannot do it. We should respect them because their powers greatly exceed our own. But they are no match for God and his love. Even if the good angels were to turn against us (which they would never do) God’s love remains the same. It always protects us. It always says to them, “You may go this far and no farther.” These most powerful spiritual beings (other than God himself) cannot separate us from his love.

“Neither the present nor the future nor any powers…” Nothing in time can do it. We may not like the times we live in now. They feel like evil times. Christianity and Christians seem to be in retreat. We may fear the future with all its unknowns even more. But present or future, from now until the day Jesus returns, we will be the objects of God’s love, every minute, every moment, until the clock ticks its final second and time is over.

“Neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Build a space probe and travel to the farthest edges of the universe. Dig a hole and keep digging until you come out in China. God’s love for you is bigger and more powerful than anything else that exists. You will never find anything anywhere that can separate us from God’s love.

How do we know? In his Son, on a cross, and at an empty tomb God has loved us and loves us still.