The Day Messiah Went Missing

One of the most surprising accounts of the Bible – The day Joseph and Mary lost the King of Kings.  On Mother’s Day, Jonathan shares a message that applies to every believer – How even those who love God can lose His presence – and how to get it back!

Thursday, May 11, 2023

Many names in the Bible contain the word “Bar,” meaning “son of”. Simon Bar-Jonah, Bartholomew and Barabbas which means “son of the father.” The word Bar-mitzvah, means “son of the commandments.” Messiah is called Bar-Elyon, which means, “Son of the Most High.” We’re to be little versions of Him, a little child of the Most High. What does that mean? Your identity isn’t based on yourself any more. It doesn’t come from you, your life, or your past. It comes from your Father in heaven. You are no longer Bar-bitterness- -a child of bitterness, Bar-failure- -a child of failure, Bar-sin- -a child of sin, or Bar-hurt- -a child of rejection, hurt and wounds. All those things are not you anymore. You are Bar-Elyon, a child of the Most High. That’s your identity, you are born from above. Your identity comes from Elyon, the Most High. That’s who you are, a beloved, holy child of the Most High. Start believing it. Start receiving it. Start living like it and acting like it. Because you, too, are a little version of Bar-Elyon, a child of the Most High.

Indoors forever. Amen and amen, and amen and amen.
And we still have, we have a mother’s day once a year where the culture honors mothers.
But for the rest of the year, we have a culture that doesn’t honor mothers and doesn’t honor family, doesn’t honor gender itself.
If you war against gender in the end, you war against motherhood and you war against family, the culture may speak praise of mothers, but it ultimately acts against motherhood when you, when you go again, when you war against family.
When families are that war is against motherhood.
When you war against fathers or fatherhood, you, you, you denigrate fathers, you, you ridicule them in the media, you are also going to attack motherhood that goes together.
Motherhood is a, is a divine reflection of one part of God’s love.
There’s a mystery of motherhood that that can only motherhood can show one.
A there’s an aspect of God’s love that are shown in this world by motherhood. More than anything.
Motherhood comes from God. It’s a shadow of something from God.
It’s built into nature, it’s built into the woman, it’s built, it’s not even just you look through the animal kingdom and motherhood is a big thing, you know, where we live, we have, we have bears and occasionally they come to visit us maybe like once a year.
Thank God. You know, but the thing is then generally they say if you have, if you see a bear, you run into it, what are you supposed to do?
You think? Ok. What are you, do? You play dead?
And that’s, I think for Grizzlies, for these bears, you’re supposed to go crazy and they scares them away.
But what you never wanna do, most likely it won’t bother you, but you never want to do is accidentally come between a mother bear and its Children because that bear will destroy you.
Because there’s something about a mother’s love. It’s a very strong love.
It’s a very, I mean, of course, listen, we’re in a fallen world.
There are exceptions all over the place, but the nature, God wove it into us and wove it into women, wove it in to have this mother and whether you have Children or not, there are spiritual mothers all over the place, but it’s a mother’s love.
What do we, what does a mother’s love by nature? What does it tell you?
Even if you don’t, you know, you may not think yourself like this, but it’s in you.
If you’re, you’re a mother, there’s something there, it tells you about God.
What does it tell you about God from the beginning of a mother’s love begins with pregnancy.
You know, you have, you know, there you are joined to your child more than anyone can be joined.
The true story. I knew a woman whose husband was a big, tough, like construction guy, mechanic, kind of guy, big.
I knew the guy when she was pregnant.
He started having the symptoms, she’s pregnant and he’s getting nauseous.
He’d wake up in the middle of the night. True story with cravings for strange foods.
As the day got closer, he got worse. She, she’s getting ready to go.
He’s stuck in the bathroom, he’s throwing up. Finally when she was pregnant.
If he finally had to go, she had to drive him to the hospital.
Is it true when they got there? He was so dizzy out of it. They took him in a wheelchair.
It’s true. Now, now that, that is an exception, most of the time the guy doesn’t feel that kind of thing.
But men, but most of time, men have little idea of what a woman goes through.
You know, the mother’s love. You know, it, it shows from the very beginning that mother that is nurturing the baby with her own life, that’s telling you something about God’s love that her own life is nurturing the baby.
That, that because that’s what God’s about, you know.
So the, it, the first thing about mother, the love of a mother, it’s sacrificial by nature.
It’s, I mean, so is parental love, but motherhood especially because it begins with your own life.
It, it so, so what it’s telling you is that God loves us the same way in that he doesn’t just love us.
He loves us in a way that he would, he even gives his life to love us.
He even gives his life to nourish us to save us. And that’s exactly what the cross is.
God’s nature is to sacrifice. Why is there a connection?
Why are there so so many sacrifices linked to God in the Bible?
Because God’s nature is to sacrifice Himself because love sacrifices itself. God doesn’t just love you.
He sacrifices to, he loves you to that point that His own, it costs Him.
What are the love we have? Everything we have from God. It’s free for us, but it’s costly for Him.
It’s totally free. It costs him for every bit of it. Every, every forgiven sin.
He can’t comes from the, from His own sacrifice on the cross. Everyone, you don’t have one sin.
That’s not costly for God. You don’t have one answer in prayer. That’s not costly for God.
A your entire blessing. Every blessing when you get up in the morning, every blessing you have as a born again child of God came from a sacrifice that cost him.
What else do we know about motherhood when I was hit by a train?
And that for those who know my testament, that’s how I came to the Lord only because I was hit by a train, you know, years ago, that’s how I got saved.
I thank God for that. But what happened is the, the engineer, the train never even saw me, never saw the car, the car, I didn’t realize where I was.
I at one point said let me just back out to be safe.
But I was still, I thought I was fine.
I was still in the track and the, the way that it was a dangerous thing, there was no protection.
But the guy, the engineer never saw me because when he got out, he was saying, you kids, you know what I’m saying?
He said, you know, you don’t, you didn’t stop, you just hit the train.
He didn’t even realize that the train hit me.
And what happened is when the police came, the police came and they, you know, they, they talked to the engineer got the story, never asked me what happened.
And I, I said, do you wanna hear it?
He says, ok, but I didn’t even take it down and it was the truth.
And the guy said it was not the truth.
And the next day it goes in the paper, you know, resident uninjured in train car collision.
It was a big headline thing and, and it says that the, the, you know, says the end the police say and the police said what the guy said, but it was a made up thing I can say this now.
But, and so, and so then so they called up my, they, they, at one point called up, my mother answered the phone and she, she, she, they asked us, you know, what’s the name of this?
But they didn’t ask her the story.
Then she called them back and said, wait, don’t you want to know the story?
And so she told them what I had told her, which was the when I got home.
And so at the very end of the story, he says, said this, it didn’t happen.
But at the end of the story, it says, it says Khan’s mother said that he claimed now she never would say I claimed she would say that’s what happened.
My baby said it, that’s what happened.
But they put in the paper as if my mother didn’t even believe me.
If your mother is not even backing you up, you’re in trouble because mothers will back up people who do all sorts of things, you know.
So even that because why? Because a mother’s love is a love that by nature protects protective.
You see it, you can see it in nature, you protective, protective.
What does that tell you God’s love is a protective love. He the same way.
Mothers, parents, you want to protect your little, your child. God has that in his own heart for you.
He wants to protect you. He’s not there trying to judge you.
He wants to protect you from judgment and from any harm. Messiah said, oh Jerusalem.
Jerusalem, you who killed the prophets and stone those sent you.
How often I have longed to gather your Children together as a hen, a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings but you were not willing.
What does that do? Mother? He, what mother he puts the, gets the, the chicks under the wings.
That’s the only way they can protect, they protect him.
And God is saying that’s how much I wanted to protect you. God is a protective his arms protective.
So the, the Bible speaks of, of dwelling under what the shadow of his wings under his wings that he always will protect you.
The Lord is our, what our defense, the Lord is your, what your refuge.
The Lord, the name of the Lord is what a strong tower.
He’ll protect you even from, he even protects you from your own sin. He protects you from judgment, protects you.
You run to him. He protects you. You’re feeling guilty. He wants to protect you from that.
He is a protective love. His his heart is right now. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t allow.
There are, there’s not, he doesn’t allow things to happen in your life. There’s pain, there’s things that happen.
But in the end, he uses it all for good to protect you.
In the end, some of it to save you.
I had to get hit by the train in order to be protected from judgment to be saved, I had to get saved.
But God has to allow those things too. It’s a good reason.
But he will always seek to protect you when you skin your knees.
When you were a child. Most of you didn’t go running to your father. You did if he was home.
If he’s the only one home.
Most of the time, most of the time you ran to the mother, even our puppy who’s, who’s been getting healed.
Praise God. The little puppy we just bought that was dying.
Runs to, he’ll come to be, but he’ll go to my wife.
You know, she, she’s his mother, you know, and, and you’d go to your mother, your mother would take the disinfectant and the reach for the wound and sometimes, you know, and say, you know, this will just hurt a little bit and then she would sting you crazy with that, that stuff, you know, but she had to do it.
It was for your sake. And sometimes you’d say, no, no, don’t touch, don’t touch, but she had to touch you.
I was playing with my son and he accidentally, I accidentally hurt my finger and I said, he’s looking at me.
So what’s going on? I said, you know, daddy’s finger is hurting.
He looked at me and said, with total ss. He says, do you want me to kiss it.
I started laughing and I said, yes, he kissed it and he said all better.
Where did you get that from? From his mother?
Mother’s love, which, which is a, which is to be made to be a healing love.
So what does that tell you? God’s love is a healing love. God’s love has the power to heal you.
Not, I mean, not speaking first physically that God does that but heal your soul.
God’s love is a healing love.
It’s like in life, you fall, you skin your knees, you skin your bruise, you’ve been bruised, you’ve been wounded, your heart’s been wounded.
And God is saying, bring it to me, bring me the wound. That’s exactly what I want.
Bring me the deepest hurts, bring me the deepest rejection, bring me the scars on your soul, bring it and I will bring you healing God’s love, heals, love heals, love makes him look what happened when the love of God came to earth.
What happened around him? The lame were healed, the death hurt because it’s telling you that God’s love heals.
If He touches you, you if he touched you, you were healed.
If you, if you brought your your whatever they had, they brought what they had, they brought to him, touch him and they got healed because they touched love, they touched his love, they got healed.
And if you’re not healed of those things in your soul, in your heart, in your in your whole being.
And I’m not talking about physically first. Oh yes, God. God can and does heal in that way too.
But the deepest first healing is inside.
If you’re not getting healing there, you’re either not letting God touch you or touch that thing, which is what you need to do or you’re not touching God with it.
God is saying come run to come to me, bring it open, pour out your heart.
It says like waters before the presence of the Lord. Pour it out.
Let it, you know, people came to Him. You know they can they brought their junk.
You have to bring it. If you don’t bring it, you can’t touch it.
Bring it, spend time in his presence, spend time in his presence.
Because in his presence, there is love and fullness of joy and in those things is healing, the more you spend in that time, you know, one of the words for ministry and that can also be ministering in worship is ministry in the Greek also that we get the word therapy from it that, that to minister to God and serve him and worship Him is actually therapy for you.
It actually brings healing to you.
You may not see how you don’t have to see how but to bring it to him, bring everything to him.
The joke goes like this. What’s the difference between a Jewish mother and a pitfall?
Eventually the pitbull, let’s go there’s a quality not just of a Jewish mother, but of a Jewish mother, but of, of motherhood that keeps holding on when I land or I could be going around the world when I, or around the country when I land, I get a little email that says, are you ok?
Love mom. If I ever tell my mother, I have a cold, forget it.
You’re cold, you could die what’s going on.
You know, and, and, and I, and I said, mom, you know, even when I come home, you know, I tell you, I’m ok.
You know what, you know, the plane is ok. It landed. We’re ok.
I said, but you, statistically speaking, air travel is safer than car travel. She doesn’t care, forget statistics.
Her baby is in the air. She’s not gonna be ok until he’s on solid ground.
She wants me to check in. So, so check in. So I don’t worry.
So I don’t worry how people have mothers who worry.
Oh, the other ones they don’t worry about you. God bless you. Good.
That’s why I remember one day I, I, you know, my mother is always worry, you know, you gotta tell me.
So I don’t worry. So don’t worry, you gotta call me, you know this, you know, call me, you didn’t call you for.
I remember one day I was reading through her old letters to her mother or her mother, her mother’s ledger when she was in college.
And her mother, my grandmother is telling her, where’s the phone call? Where’s the, where’s the letter you don’t call?
You don’t write. What do you know?
I’m worrying and I’m thinking ma you, you were the worst here and it probably went back the, the next generation.
Probably my grandmother who came from Fiddler on the roof in Russia, like a village like that.
When she left her grand, her mother probably said you never write, you never do this. You never do that.
Don’t you make me worry until she became a mother?
And then she did the same thing to those that each mother inflict that on the next generation.
The child tells the mother, don’t worry about it until they have a child and they do the same thing because God put it in you.
It’s in your heart, it’s in your fabric.
There’s something to it you’re worried about doesn’t matter how old your child is. You’re worried.
There’s something about it about not letting go, but it’s something divine in that because God loves you, loves us more than that.
And his love doesn’t let go either. Your love never fails, never gives up, never lets go.
And thank God it doesn’t because we let go much more easily than God lets go. He doesn’t.
He hold on. It says in Hosea. Hosea 11 verse eight, how can I let go?
How can I give you up? I’m talking to Israel. How can I give you over like my son.
How can I do that? My heart is turning over in me. That’s what God, all my compassion is around.
That’s, that’s what God is. It’s not some, some dry theological concept.
This is the heart even deeper than a mother. His love doesn’t give up.
He will not give up so many testimonies, so many testimonies of how I want a mother’s love, a mother who knew the Lord.
She never gave up on praying for their child, for a child. Never.
Some of you mothers have Children who have gone out, never give up on praying.
Because a lot of there’s so many testimonies of how God honors a mother’s prayer, even if it’s years later, he honors it because God put it in them.
And it’s saying the same way, you know, if we are God’s God’s child, he will keep on.
He’ll warn us. He’ll put hedges in our way.
He’ll put how many people have had, had God put hedges have put something in there.
You’re going the wrong way and he does something.
How many people it says God, you know, he corrects him. It’s a good sign.
You should rejoice when He corrects you because it means you’re not an orphan.
You’ve got, you’ve got God, you’re a child of God. That’s why he doesn’t give up.
And there are people there sort of testimony. People gone off the wall all out and God meets them.
You know, in the darkest place and brings them back.
I mean, he can force your will but he’ll do everything.
He can not to take it for granted because it’s a dangerous thing.
Don’t say, well, he’ll just bring me back so I can just walk off the cliff. No.
But on the other hand, have a comfort that you have, you have the arms of God around your life and he, he, his arms do not let go.
More than a mother. People have ideas of God. He is the distant king.
He’s up there cold. But what this is telling us, the motherhood part is telling that that, you know, a mother’s love is not distant.
It’s very close, it’s very intimate. It starts with the most intimate thing. Deep calls to deep.
And so what it’s telling you is that God’s love is not that way.
It’s deep, it’s intimate, it’s real close. Love.
It’s so close that no love can be as close as God’s love.
It says in Psalm 1 39 where can I go from your spirit?
God, where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you’re there.
If I make my bed in the depths, you’re there.
If I rise on the wings of dawn, if I settle on the far side of the ocean, the sea, even there, your right hand will hold me fast, hold me close.
If I say surely the darkness will hide me and the light will will become night around me.
Even the darkness won’t be dark to you. Night will shine like the day. For darkness is light to you.
And you created my innermost being. You wove me together.
When I was in my mother’s womb, I praise you because I’m fearfully and wonderfully made.
Your works are wonderful and my soul knows it.
Well, my frame wasn’t hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths, your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days that were ordained for my life were written in your book before there was even one of them.
How precious are your thoughts to me? Oh God. How great. How many are the number of your thoughts?
How many thoughts are you like that you have for me?
If I could count them, it would outnumber the grains of sand.
And when I wake, I’m still with you.
That’s deep saying that when you were in your mother’s womb and nobody knew you.
He knew you. I mean, now we’ve got ultrasound.
You know, I remember seeing, seeing a picture of our first born three months old and it’s amazing.
It was three months old in the womb. And to this day he looks like that.
And the other picture of didn’t come out well.
And Renato was saying, oh no, he’s gonna look like this and like this, he looked He looked great.
But God, before your mother even knew you ultrasound or not, God actually is the only one who knew you then.
And he says He has all he had all your days in his book.
Imagine that every day, including now it’s still being, it’s still there. You still got more days.
It’s still going on. It was all there back then.
Even today’s day was in the book, God’s love story is told a story, but it speaks of the truth.
Once upon a time, there’s a child ready to be born. It’s just a story.
Don’t get, it’s not a theological treatise.
One day he asked God, they tell me you’re sending me to earth soon.
But how am I gonna live there? Be being so small and helpless among the many angels.
I God said I chose one angel. We’ll be waiting for you but tell me here in heaven.
I, I don’t do anything but sing and smile. That’s enough for me to be happy.
You says your angel will sing for you and will smile for you and, and you, you’ll feel your angel’s love.
How am I gonna be able to understand when people talk to me?
How will I know what I don’t understand that? I don’t know the language.
Your angel will tell you the most beautiful sweet words you’ll ever hear with patience and care will teach you.
And what am I going to do when I wanna talk to you.
Your angel will place your hands together and teach you how to pray.
I’ve heard on earth there are bad men who will protect me.
Your angel will defend you even it means risking its life.
But I’ll always be sad because I won’t see you anymore. Your angel will always talk to you about me.
I’ll teach you my ways. At that moment.
There was much peace in heaven but voices from earth could already be heard and the child in a hurry as softly.
Oh God. If I’m a, if I’m about to leave now, please tell me my angel’s name.
Your angel’s name is of no importance. You will call your angel mommy.
Now, that’s not a theological thing with the, the, the the Children are born here, but it’s what a beautiful picture.
What a beautiful something very basic.
One of the most common things when people are leaving this life on their deathbed, often they will call for their mother.
Interesting because it’s interesting because here is like the first word or one of the first two words and the last word, it certainly says something how deep and basic this is to our lives.
Certainly for most people in this room, you came in this world helpless and needed to live.
And for most of you, it was your mother or someone who fulfilled the ministry of the mother whom you needed and who was there the most basic need.
You had was her love that never changed. You know, never, doesn’t, doesn’t generally disappear.
Most they love him. Mother is usually so strong and overcomes all the other things in life.
Your mother cared for you nursed for nursed, you felt your hurt, felt your tears.
Your mother sued you healed wounds, cared for you.
In when you were sick was concerned about you protected, you tried to hold on to you.
Sacrifice for, you gave you food, gave herself for you, touched you forgave you and loved you.
Even when you hurt her, loved you many of you when you disappointed her and loved you, many of you when you gave no reason for her to especially when you were teenagers, for most of you, for most of you, she kept loving all the days of her life and yet all of it, every bit of it, every thing was a shadow of something even greater and more beautiful.
Isaiah 49 listen, verse 15 scripture.
Can a mother forget the baby at her breast or have no compassion on the child of her womb?
And they think like no what mother can forget the baby at her breast or have no compassion of the child in her womb.
But then he says even these may forget because no mother is perfect, they couldn’t be perfect.
They’re a shadow and every mother, I mean there are mothers who just, you know, it’s the exception but they go off but but every mother’s the love, the mother still passes away and the love that love passes away, it’s for her Children to bless her and honor her while she’s still here.
But even deeper than that, a mother may even forget.
He said, can a mother forget the the child on his, on his breast?
But even these may forget but then comes up.
But I will not forget you from your crib to your dying day.
There is only one who was with you from the beginning and will be with you to the end and beyond.
It says in Isaiah 46 I have carried you from birth.
This is the Lord even to your old age and your gray hairs, I am He, I will sustain you.
I created you and I will carry you. Can a mother forget even these may but I will not.
My love is even greater than that. I will. You are so joined.
And you know, it says, can a can a woman forget a mother?
Forget the child of his womb of her womb.
You know, when Hebrew a beautiful, incredible thing, the word for womb, there is the word for room.
There, the womb there is and the word for mercy of God, the God’s mercy is Ham.
And they come, it’s basically the same word. It’s basically the same word.
In other words, the why the womb is a place that just nurtures you tender, just tender, protects you nourishes you and the mercy of God is like a womb that protects you and nourishes you throughout your whole life guards you.
That’s why we are, it is in His mercy, his his, in His mercy. We are born again.
What does God say? I have what I have inscribed you on the palms of my hand.
You know, people get tattoos of their girlfriend and their boyfriend.
You know, they put this whole thing on their back.
You know, you see this on the whole thing about and then they break up and they’re stuck with that tattoo.
God says nothing that God says, I’ve done more than that for you.
God says I have inscribed you on the palms of my hand. What does that mean?
He’s not planning to break up with you.
There is a love that lasts, that never gives up.
We didn’t plan that song around the message. God just put it together again.
There is a love that never gives up, that’s even more tender, more warm, more selfish, more protective, more caring, more forgiving, more passionate, more intimate, more never ending.
And that love is a love of God that’s calling you close closer. When everyone forsakes you.
God says I will not forsake you.
If everyone gives up on you, I’m there’s gonna be one who doesn’t, everyone’s failed you in some way.
I will be the one who will not never fail you. You’ve been betrayed.
I will never betray you when you, even when you fail, I will not fail you.
When you can’t walk, I’ll carry you. You can’t even know.
We cannot even understand the love of God. It’s too much, too great. We don’t have to understand it.
We just have to get it. We just have to receive it.
His love is more than any love, more than any love, even more than a mother.
And he will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever let you go. Amen.
I and I, you here I don’t a novel.
It a so oh no, I oh oh the Lord bless you, child of God.
The Lord keep you. The Lord calls his face to shine upon you this week and pour out the grace of his love upon you.
The Lord God and your father lift up the glory of his countenance upon your life.
And the Lord give to you shalom all the blessings of his love, all the blessings and comforts and fast love that he has given to you in the name of Yahia Hama, in the name of Jesus, the messiah aha Elohim who is the love of God and all his people say amen.