Good News, Great Joy

         We celebrate the birth of Jesus at the end of the last month of the year. It is a good time to reflect upon the year in a way that leads us to repentance and joyful faith as we meditate on the great reality of Christ who has come into our world.

The message of the angel who declared the birth of Jesus to the shepherds was: “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

(Lk 2:10-11)

The first words of the angel, fear not, addressed the fear we would all feel if enveloped in the shekinah glory of the divine presence of God in the middle of the night. It is a fear that we would feel not only because of the mystery and intensity of such an experience, but because of an innate sense of our own sinfulness in the presence of our holy God. Just think about this last year. Our hearts are moved to fear by a meditative reflection in the dark night of our sins by the revealing light of his holy Word and Spirit 

And yet, we are commanded not to fear because of the good news of great joy that will be for all people, even us. The more clearly we see our sin, the more precious the good news becomes. It is not just a word of pronouncement, but the promise of a person: for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. Consider how this makes the good news of the Gospel, personal, datable, geographical, pardonable, and theological.

Enjoy your Christmas this year in the light of God’s unspeakable gift to us in his Son.

Rebuilding

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?…“As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.” (Ps 2:1,6)

     The temperature of the political rhetoric has been escalating for quite a while from both democrats and republicans. We have just learned about the bombs sent in the mail to several prominent democratic leaders. At this point we do not know who is behind this, but I’m sure we will find out very soon. Like the shooting of Republican House Majority Whip, Steve Scalise of Louisiana on June 14, 2017, (and several others), this was the action of an individual or group of individuals who violated the law by threatening or harming human life because of political rage.

Why this rage? God raises the question in Psalm 2 not because he does not know why, but to show the futility and danger of violating God’s rule. We are one country under God, however divided we might be about the best paths for moving our country forward. Healthy and respectable debate is a necessary and helpful part of the process in our democracy. Freedom of speech is no license for the verbal assassination of character or of resorting to violence. 

When Paul speaks to a divided church, his counsel is much like Psalm 2. Christ, God’s king, has lived and died for sinners and is seated upon his throne offering grace and mercy and love to all who will receive it. Our calling as Christians is to share that good news with others in a way that displays a more excellent way (I Corinthians 13).

Meditation

      There is a familiar discomfort in the ear that is experienced by anyone who has flown in an airplane or descended under the water for more than about 6 feet. The explanation has to do with atmospheric pressure. It changes as we ascend into the air, or descend under the water. The experience under the water creates a greater pressure because water is of course heavier than air. At sea level, the atmospheric pressure is about 14.7pounds per square inch. That means that the 1’x1’  column of air that extends from the top of your head into the clouds weights 14.7 lbs. at sea level. In every square inch of your body this pressure is being exerted. You are literally under pressure. Why don’t you collapse? Because the pressure inside your body (i.e. nose, ears, lungs), is the same as the pressure outside. So as we ascend or descend, we must equalize the pressure inside our body with the pressure outside our body in order to remain comfortable. This is usually done by holding your nose and blowing it so that equalization may occur through your eustachian tube in your ears. It feels like a “pop” or a “squeak” as the air equalizes.

      I think this process might illustrate the connection between Bible intake, meditation and application. When we read God’s Word there is a spiritual pressure that we are exposed to. The pressure may be like an exhilarating dive into crystal clear water, exposing us to the depths  of the beauty and mercy of Christ and his great work. Or it might be like ascending the hill of the Lord and standing in his holy place. Whenever we encounter God in his Word there is a kind of pressure upon our soul to respond in repentance, faith, and worship. This response is what I’m calling meditation and it is something like the equalizing of the pressure within our hearts to the truth of God’s word that comes to us from without. When our hearts have rightly responded to God’s word, then we find a new level of trust and obedience that we can joyfully walk in. If we fail to meditate upon God’s Word we experience the pain and disruption in our lives that always comes when we are resisting the Holy Spirit.

      We must hear God’s word, meditate upon it, and walk in it. The missing element, too often, is meditation. Without meditation upon God’s Gospel provision in Christ for our life, the Word of God is experienced as pressure and seems painful instead of profitable and prosperous.

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Joshua 1:8

Sharing

 But Jesus said, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” Mt 14:16

In the feeding of the five-thousand, the disciples express their concern to Jesus for the crowds by suggesting that the crowds go into the village and get something to eat. It is a no doubt a heart-felt and pragmatic solution. But Jesus surprises them by commanding them, “You give them something to eat”. 

But the reason that the disciples were suggesting that the multitude find food in the villages is because they themselves did not have any to share. Why then, would Jesus ask them to feed five to ten thousand people, when all they had among themselves was five loaves and two fish? 

They therefore question his command by reminding him of their inability to meet the need with what they had. Jesus addresses their confusion by instructing them to bring all that they have to him. He then blesses the bread and the fish and breaks it and gives it to the disciples with instructions to distribute it to the crowd and all were fed and satisfied, resulting in a surplus of twelve baskets of leftovers. 

It has been said, “love is like two fish and five loaves of bread, it’s never enough until it’s given away”. But it is only enough if what is given away is first given to Jesus and has his blessing upon it. We must bring our busy schedules, homes, food and kind intentions to Jesus and ask him to so bless them that they might be multiplied in reaching out to others. 

He is the true bread that has come down from heaven that we must share with others. But he often chooses to share himself through our expressions of hospitality and serving in his name. If we can’t get our neighbors into our homes as friends, we can hardly expect them to come into the church and become family. I think Jesus hears all of our objections to his call to hospitality, and would have us bring it all to him. Would you ask him to bless you, break you, and send you out to invite others into your home and into your church to share the bread of life.

We Need Worship

      There is nothing that defines or develops our lives like our worship of God. We attend worship services and participate in worship each week. Some of our worship is done individually before God in our private times, and some of it is done publicly in worshipping God with others. In both private and public worship, the more important aspect of it is what God does in us, more than what we are doing for God.

God delights to reveal himself as the glorious triune God that he is, presenting himself to us as the Father who is worthy of our worship, and the Son who has made us worthy to worship, and the Spirit who points us to the Father through the Son by his indwelling and enlightening ministry of the Word. In other words, worship begins with God’s revelation of himself to us and in us and through us.

But our worship also requires our response and participation. Our liturgy, whether old-form or new-form, or somewhere in-between must be faithful to the Scriptures and move us to a Spirit wrought and Scripturally taught experience of God. As the Bible says: …true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him (John 4:23).

Imagine that! God is looking forward to our worship of him, not because he needs it, but because we need it. In worship we are transformed by him, and he gets the glory.

Our Unity In Christ

               The Bible says, And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation (Rev 5:9).

The Song of heaven is a song declaring the sufficiency, and worthiness of Christ. And it is a song being sung by people who are different in culture, language and geographical location. We could add the fact that they would be different socially, politically, economically, etc. But the point is that Christ is no respecter of persons (verse), and that his redeemed community as seen before the throne in heaven has left all differences aside except their allegiance and worship of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That they are different is not to be ignored, or tolerated, but celebrated. What a wonderful display of the Gospel when all of the differences in humanity are overcome and replaced with a wonderful unity in the Spirit through the work of Christ, as Paul wonderfully explains in Ephesians 2. 

The confusion in what is being called racialization, argues on social grounds for recognition, acknowledgment, and fair treatment for all. This is an appropriate desire, but a sinful demand. The Gospel provides the only way forward in the complicated process of cultural and social interaction, assimilation and social equality of people who are different from one another. And all sincere  Christians desire to see the perfect expression of this equality. But until we get to heaven, the closest we will get to it is in our life together in the church, which should be a foretaste of the heavenly assembly with all of its rich diversity.

In Acts 6 Luke records the fact that racial tensions was one of Satan’s earliest tactics to disrupt the Gospel ministry of the church: Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution (Acts 6:1). But the church dealt with the issue with wisdom and insight so that the ministry of the Word was not hindered. The danger of social issues is that they take center stage and move us away from the centrality of the proclamation of the Gospel as our priority which is the life of the church.

I commend our Haitian members who meet with us in worship and have become a part of our church, even though it means worshipping and participating in their second language. What a wonderful display of grace in their lives, and how enriched we all are as we share our lives in Christ together. We can even now begin to sing in the church this new song that will be heard around the throne of heaven.

A Resurrection Meditation

        Every Lord’s day, and every day the Lord has made, should be a rejoicing in him as our resurrected Lord. To grasp the significance of his resurrection we must understand what his sinless life accomplished when he came to earth as a human being in the likeness of sinful flesh (Rom 8:3). We must also take into account that he carries out his mission in the world as the perfect God/man, who shares both our nature, and the divine nature without any mixture of the two natures, in one person. This sinless life lived out as a man before God as our representative means that all the righteousness that we need to stand before God is found in Christ’s perfect obedience.

That he was resurrected assumes not only that he lived as a man, but that he also died. And his death was also for us. He did not just die, but he was delivered up for us as Paul says, “Who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Rom 4:25). Our problem is our trespasses. It is our sins that make us guilty before God and defiled in our hearts so that anything we do good or bad (in human terms) is stained by our sin. God punished this sin which separated us from him, by judging his own Son in our place on the cross. God's justice was satisfied, so that everyone that he calls to himself and who places their faith in Christ alone, may stand before him without condemnation (Rom 8:1), but also, eternally loved and accepted through Christ (Rom 8:38-39).

If he lived in our place, and died in our place, he was also resurrected in our place. In the words of Rom 4:25, he was “raised for our justification.” This is God affirming the person and work of his Son whom the world had rejected and condemned. But it is also God affirming and confirming all who trust in him as being raised together with him — free from sin, death, and condemnation and alive to God in joyful fellowship with him through Christ. We are called to live in participation with the risen Christ as spiritually resurrected people looking forward to the day of our bodily resurrection which has been guaranteed by Christ’s bodily resurrection. That’s why every Lord’s day, and every day the Lord has made should be a rejoicing in him as our resurrected Lord!

God's Gift of Time

                  Time is a gift that is given to us by God. Most of us think about time in terms of a clock or a calendar.  But clocks and calendars are only a measure of time, they are not the essence of it. Time is the opportunity that God gives us in life to experience and to express his mercy in our lives.  

The timeless Christ was outside of time and creation, but entered into time and creation by becoming a part of it, so that he could take away the curse that had fallen upon it. His life, death and resurrection were a perfect expression of God’s law and mercy. Indeed, God’s law and mercy found their meaning, interpretation and definition in him.

Sabbath rest has been opened up to us in a new way that goes beyond anything we find after the fall in the Old Testament. The veil of the temple has been rent, there is no longer a need for temple, alter, or Sabbath ceremony. Christ has called us to come to him and enter his rest by taking his yoke upon us and we will find (not earn) rest (Mt 11:28-30).

Is this rest to be experienced in one particular day out of seven? I think the answer is “Yes” and “No.” The rest we experience in Christ is surely a daily rest — and yet, the New Testament clearly establishes Sunday as “The Lord’s Day” a new day commemorating Christ’s resurrection which seems clearly to correspond to the 4th commandment in the Moral law.

The principles of refreshing ourselves in God by experiencing and expressing his mercy in Christ on the Lord’s day is what our hearts should prepare for, hunger for, and prioritize. These things will find expression on other days as well, as God gives us time and opportunity. But the Lord’s day was designed to be a day to celebrate Christ. A key question we  need to ask ourselves is: How is what I’m doing on the Lord’s Day a meaningful and purposeful experience and expression of God’s mercy in Christ?

So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. (Heb 4:9-10)

Faithful Servant

        I always look forward to February as a wonderful month of celebration. The first Sunday is Homecoming Sunday which is the birthday of our church. Our church will be 36 years old this month. On the 25th of February, we celebrate Mamie’s birthday. And a week later, is my birthday (March 1). The church has also designated the first Sunday in March as “Pastor Appreciation Sunday” (March 4th). So we come into the month and finish out the month celebrating the Lord for his goodness and mercy towards us.

This month, we have an unexpected event to celebrate. Bob Chase, one of God’s choicest servants has entered his rest and reward in Christ, at the end of January. Bob came to our church a few years ago, and began to serve as soon as he was given the opportunity. He was one of our go-to-guys whenever we needed anything done around the church because he was single, retired and made himself available for the Lord’s work.

Bob was an active deacon, a substitute teacher for our Senior Adults and children’s classes, the Servant Leader of our Care Team, a regular teacher for our Children’s Church, and an active participant in our T² groups. To say that he will be missed by his church family is an understatement. He not only served the Lord faithfully in all of these ways, but he enjoyed it in a way that was obvious to everyone. His is a life to celebrate, because he so clearly displayed the grace of God at work in his life by his manner and ministry.

What was said of the Apostle Paul, might be said of him: But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me (1 Cor 15:10).

        The thing that I would point out about Bob’s life as a Senior Adult is that these are not things Bob “used to do” in the past — this was Bob’s active life and ministry in the present. His death to us was surprising and unexpected, because he seemed to be in excellent health, but it was of course, no surprise to God. He left this world as Christ’s faithful servant and I’m sure he heard those words from our Lord to his faithful saints: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master” (Mt 25:21)

Living By Grace

     David Murray has written a helpful little book entitled, Reset: Living a Grace Paced Life in a Burnout Culture. I would commend his reset approach as you begin the new year. We enjoy learning about the grace of God, and singing about the grace of God, but when it comes to living by grace, we are, as Robert Robinson’s well known hymn puts it, “prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love”.

     And yet, we must be careful that we do not try to “repay God’s grace”, by a life of self-commitment, but rather realize that grace has paid all debts, and is itself the energizing life of God in Christ that empowers us to live for his glory (Gal 2:20).

     Murray identifies five areas where grace often seems lacking in our lives, and then shows how to address these “grace deficiencies” in the rest of the book. The five areas include:

1. The motivating power of grace is missing so that we find ourselves absorbed and exhausted by self-effort instead of (to cite John Piper), “living by faith in future grace”.

2. The moderating power of grace is missing which results in our failure to deal realistically with the limitations of our sinful humanity and misses the necessary dependency upon Christ’s sufficiency.

3. The multiplying power of grace is missing, so that we drive ourselves into the barrenness of a busy life, without resting in Christ and finding the necessary balance that living by grace brings to our life.

4. The releasing power of grace is missing, which causes us to become controlling people and angry people (anger is almost always an indicator that we are trying to control others or life itself). Grace allows us to pray for what we desire in others and in life, and to take responsibility for trusting God to do what only he can do in this life.

5. The receiving power of grace is missing, so that we ignore the ordinary means of God’s enabling grace such as good food, exercise, healthy sleep patterns, and all of the spiritual disciplines which are designed for our progress in godliness.

      Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb 12:1-2)