Nepaug Bible Church - http://www.nepaugchurch.org - Pastor's Sermon Notes - http://www.nepaugchurch.org/Sermons/zz20121209.htm

CHRISTMAS INTERLUDE
God's 2012 Christmas Season Provisions
Part II: God's 2012 Christmas Season Housing Provision
(Luke 2:1-7 et al.)
    Introduction: (To show the need . . . )

    This Christmas season, we face a tough housing environment, with much of the circumstances involved lying outside of our control:

    (1) On the national level, Edward J. Pinto's article, "The Next Housing Bailout? Big Trouble Brewing at the FHA," in The Atlantic (finance.yahoo.com, November 16, 2012) reported that the "Federal Housing Administration" in its "capital position has turned negative, by $13.5 billion. That's a shift of $23 billion in economic value in a single year, and it puts the . . . agency $34.5 billion short of its legal . . . requirement. If it were a private company, it would be shut down."

    Pinto explained, "The implosion of . . . Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2008 did not end the government's massive . . . role in the housing market. Instead, in the wake of their bailouts (taxpayers have forked over $180 billion and counting), much of the risk was simply shifted to FHA . . . (T)he increasingly poor-quality loans the FHA absorbed to grow its portfolio" will likely "compel the agency to seek a multibillion dollar bailout." However, "(t)oday the agency is still targeting low-income borrowers, pushing them into mortgages with ruinous consequences." (Ibid.)

    (2) This crisis is still great in our state: Morgan Brennan's piece, "The Foreclosure Crisis Isn't Over Just Yet," forbes.com, December 1, 2012, reported that Connecticut and 8 other states are not improving year-over-year in foreclosure rates. "Most of these locales still have incredibly high rates of mortgage delinquencies." (Ibid.)

    (3) Locally, our New Hartford Town Clerk, a member of our Church, just months ago expressed a Sunday prayer request regarding the foreclosure crisis that is hitting town residents in greater frequency.

    (4) Then, last Tuesday before arriving at the Church office to begin typing up these sermon notes, we received an e-mail message from our missionaries in the Philippines reporting extensive housing damage they and the people in the tribe among whom they work had suffered due to a bad typhoon that recently hit them.

    (5) In our own Church, several family units have been impacted by housing crises either in the last few years, or even currently!

    (6) One of the missionary families we support has asked us for prayer regarding their need to buy a home in difficult circumstances.

    Need: "In a difficult era, how can we obtain housing this Christmas?"

  1. Joseph and Mary committed themselves to heed God's will that first Christmas, with Joseph agreeing to take Mary as his wife though she was with child, the Messiah, and Mary agreeing to bear Him though she was a virgin, Matthew 1:18-25 and Luke 1:26-38.
  2. Thus, God supplied their every need so they could do His will, even meeting their housing needs in a difficult housing crisis:
    1. That first Christmas, Joseph and Mary faced a government-caused housing crisis that was entirely outside of their control:
      1. Emperor Caesar Augustus called for a census of the Roman world that required all Israel in line with Hebrew customs to return to their fathers' ancestral towns to register for the census, Luke 2:1-3; H. Hoehner, Chron. Aspects of the Life of Christ, 1979, p. 18-23.
      2. This mass relocation of people created a housing crisis so that as Joseph and Mary arrived in Bethlehem from their home in Galilee, there was no room for them in the town inn, Luke 2:4-5, 7b.
      3. However, they needed shelter: Mary was due to give birth to Jesus (Luke 2:5-7), and her delivery date (December-January, Ibid., p. 27) came at the rainiest time of the year, Z. P. E. B., v. Five, p. 27.
    2. The couple found shelter in a cave that was normally used to house animals (Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, 1972, p. 185), and there Mary delivered Jesus, Luke 2:6-7. Like the other caves in the area, their cave would have been composed of pale limestone that made for a "very clean and pleasant" cavity "-- not at all dirty or gloomy." (randomjottings.net, John Weidner, web log)
    3. Soon, Joseph was able to acquire housing in the town (Matthew 2:11), and the magis' gift of gold would have equipped the family to pay for housing in their temporary stay in Egypt, Matthew 2:11, 13-14.
    4. Yet, the story of GOD'S PROVISION of that CAVE for the birth of His Son reveals His VAST foresight, planning and work:
      1. In Genesis 1:20-23 at creation, God created huge swarms of sea animals, many with internal skeletal or external shell structures.
      2. Later, in the Noahic Flood, huge numbers of these creatures died as God broke up the earth's crust to unleash the fountains of the deep for use with the rain to destroy the pre-Flood world, Genesis 7:11.
      3. On top of the jumbled rocks of the earth's broken crust, the flood waters in "tsunami-like surges" deposited in some areas vast heaps of the dead sea creatures, and the settling of their skeletons formed the Judean limestone deposit that today is a mile thick. (Andrew Snelling, Ph. D., "The Geology of Israel within the Biblical Creation-Flood Framework of History: 2. The Flood Rocks," answersingenesis.org, December 15, 2010; bing.com, "limestone")
      4. Then, "(t)he end of the Flood also coincided" with the start of the "rifting that opened the Red Sea and the Dead Sea-Jordan River rift valley, as well as the uplifting of the Judean Mountains," Ibid.
      5. Now, the Great Rift Valley, a geological wonder of the world, is a 6,000 mile long crack in the earth's crust that stretches from Lebanon north of Israel down to Mozambique that borders the country of South Africa. (cotf.edu, "What Is the Rift Valley?")
      6. As plants grew on the soil above the limestone in Judea on the west rim of this Great Rift Valley, they produced acidic, decaying humus, and rain that fell onto the humus became acidic and seeped downward into the limestone, settling "along restricted planes" of the limestone strata, Ibid., Zon. Pict. Ency. Bible, v. One, p. 769.
      7. The water table with this acidic rainwater began to dissolve parts of the limestone, forming cavities in its strata, and gradual shifts in the Judean rim of the Great Rift Valley caused the water table to drop and the cavities to be exposed by an increasing tilt of the land, with the cavities drying out, forming habitable caves, Ibid.
      8. Thus, in great foresight, God produced a suitable cave for Joseph, Mary and the birth of His Son, countering a Roman ruler's induced housing crisis by way of His great foresight and power at Creation and the Flood with its mammoth, violent movements followed by centuries of using humus, rain, groundwater and ground shiftings!
      9. Also, before the Flood, there was no rain (Genesis 2:5-6), so God foresaw rain in the world's post-Flood climate, and planned to use it to produce acidic rain to form the cave for the birth of His Son to keep Him and His mother, Mary out of the rain for His delivery!
Application: May we (1) trust in Christ for salvation from sin to become a child of God under His "much-more care," Jn. 1:11-12; Rom. 8:32. (2) Then, may we commit ourselves to do God's will like Joseph and Mary, and see the Lord expend great effort to meet our needs for shelter so that we might complete His calling for us!

Conclusion: (To illustrate the message . . . )

When I received the call from Nepaug Church 30 years ago to pastor this Church, assured this was God's calling for us, we needed to buy a home because the Church did not have a parsonage.

However, though we had no debt, we had no credit, no income at the time, and no savings, and we as yet were still living out of state so that we could not personally meet with the bank officials, so the bank could not properly assess our capacity to pay off a home loan. We had never owned a house, so the Church candidating committee in our absence worked with the bank and Federal Housing Administration to begin our application for an FHA loan, the interest on the loan running at 13 % per annum fixed!

Remarkably, the bank with FHA approval amazingly laid aside the money for our loan, an unheard of event at the time under the circumstances that caused people "in the know" to marvel!

Several times since then, we have refinanced at increasingly lower interest rates.

Now, thirty years later, in the midst of the current nationwide mortgage crisis, as God has kept the Nepaug Church family faithfully supporting us all these years, our house is scheduled to be paid off in the summer of 2014! The Lord has equipped us to be able to pay it off now, but, not wanting to be "cash poor," we are opting to continue making regular payments until the loan is paid in full.

However, in light of this message, the information we have on the house construction shows it was built in 1974, the year Nadine and I were married in my junior year at Dallas Seminary! So, just as God as far back as Creation and the Flood foresaw Joseph and Mary's housing needs in Bethlehem so that Jesus could be born in a suitable shelter, God likewise foresaw our housing needs for this pastorate, and began to provide for our house to be built the year we were married, and arrange for us to pay off our final loan on it 40 years after the house had been constructed!

We can testify that if we as believers in Christ commit to doing God's will, He meets our housing needs!



May we trust in Christ as Savior for salvation, and then commit ourselves to do His will. HE will accordingly meet our housing needs so that we can fulfill His calling for us!