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What was He doing here?
Someone has said before that many babies have been born a king, but only one king was born a baby. Jesus came to inaugurate His kingdom coming to earth.
In Pilate’s headquarters Pilate questioned Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus was disrupting things already, but not in the typical way. He said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” His kingdom is not established by family lineage or use of force.
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Songs Working Overtime
Advent is a season of anticipation. I’ve given four exhortations to confession for sake of our preparation the previous four Sundays, and, now that we’re here on Christmas day, I’ve got a final imperative: rejoice exceedingly with great joy!
The angel told the shepherds that he brought “good news of great joy that will be for all the people” (Luke 2:10). If we don’t have great joy, then we haven’t believed the good news.
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The Suburbs of Fellowship
We have a natural tendency to think about relationships in spacial terms. Some are close, some are far. It makes sense when we think about Aunt Jane who lives two-thousand miles away. We don’t see her very often; we’re not that close.
Of course actual distance between people doesn’t actually determine their unity, their fellowship, their closeness. Your spouse might be in New Zealand and yet she is in your bosom.
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A Time to Give, Apparently
We are less than a week away from Christmas day, and we’ve been trying to make sure we’re ready. It’s not best to do all your gift-buying at the last minute, and neither to do all your heart-prepping. I’ve exhorted us to be broken, to embrace the flesh (with provisos), and to expect anticipation.
With crunch time upon us, here is the fourth exhortation: give blessing. My son said the other night, “Christmas is a time of giving, apparently.
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Then He Was Washed
Dishonorable conduct always comes at a high cost. It could cost reputation, relationships, alimony, jail time, lost endorsements or contracts, jobs, and sanity. Just the weight of a man’s thoughts about what should have been and if it will ever be better can bury him.
Consider the men in Genesis 34: Jacob, Jacob’s sons, Shechem, Shechem’s father, and the men of Shechem. Every single one of them committed something foolish or outlandish or horrific that he would have to live with.
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We Need the Wait Training
Counting today Christmas is only thirteen worshipping days away. For the previous two weeks I’ve given a couple exhortations for sake of keeping our focus during this delightful, but overfull, season. First was: be broken. Second was: embrace the flesh (make sure to mark the qualifications).
The third exhortation is: expect anticipation. What I mean is, remember that getting there takes the whole way until you’re there. And we’re not there yet.
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Outside Our Comfort-Circles
Hospitality matters because God is generous.
In Genesis 18 Abraham showed grand hospitality to three strangers. He didn’t know it at the beginning, but he was entertaining angels along with the Lord Himself. Abraham quickly prepared and served a great banquet to his unexpected guests. The author of Hebrews urged his readers to be ready to do the same.
Abraham was a man of means, but hospitality is a responsibility for every believer.
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Like Esau?
There is an unexpected allusion to the reunion of Jacob and Esau in the Gospels. It is another reunion story with an uncertain outcome at the start, another story with two sons.
In Luke 15 Jesus told the parable of the prodigal son and the gracious father. After the younger son disrespects his father and leaves the family, he takes a journey into a far country. He eventually loses all that he has and decides to try his luck at home.
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Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Christmas
As we continue to move closer to Christmas I said that I would give a series of exhortations to help with our focus. Last week I urged us to be spiritually broken which is important for perspective keepers.
The second exhortation is: embrace the flesh. This also helps our perspective, but needs a clarification. There is a way, and it is the primary way, that the New Testament talks about the flesh where the “flesh” represents the sinful pull in all of us.
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A Noble Trick
I highly recommend Eve in Exile and the Restoration of Femininity by Rebekah Merkle. Here is a taste of the book where she describes the glory of a woman who gives substance and shape to an idea.
Our job as women—and it’s a phenomenal responsibility—is to enflesh the weighty truths of our faith. If our role is to make truth taste, to make holiness beautiful, then what does that look like in the details?
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Made Limp in order to Lean
We will probably not wrestle God in flesh (like Israel did in Genesis 32). We will, all of us, be touched by God in a way that changes how we walk, that stops us from relying on ourselves. We will prevail only by struggling on the mat of suffering that compels us to be comforted by God.
Paul blessed “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort” as he penned what we know as his second letter to the Corinthians.
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Why God Sometimes Conceals His Remedies
From John Calvin’s commentary on Genesis 32:
[T]he Lord willed that the mind of his servant (Jacob) should be oppressed by this anxiety for a time, although without any real cause, in order the more to excite the fervour of his prayer….For although he anticipates our wishes, and opposes our evils, he yet conceals his remedies until he has exercised our faith.
We, also, are to learn from him, that we must fight during the whole course of our life; lest any one, promising himself rest, should willfully deceive himself.
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Not to High-Five Our Righteousness
Christmas comes in less than four weeks and, since we’ve finished the Thanksgiving leftovers, it is time to turn toward the next set of festivities. The end of year holiday season is especially full and it can be difficult to focus. So this begins a short series of advent exhortations as we prepare to celebrate Jesus’ birth.
The first exhortation is: be broken. Christmas is not a time to decorate our pride or feed it with sweets.
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Thanks Not Required (at least in the way we might think)
I’ve observed before that the reason we give thanks around the Lord’s Table is because the Lord Himself did. “On the night when he was betrayed [he] took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you” (1 Corinthians 11:23-24a). Then in the next verse Paul recorded, “In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (verse 25a).
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Lapping the Pace Car
Most people agree that being thankful is good. Most people also agree that cardiovascular exercise for twenty or more minutes, three to five times each week is good, but that doesn’t mean they do it. For Christians who want to make progress in their thankful-fitness, I want to offer a couple cautions at the beginning of the program.
Caution #1: An increase in thankfulness routinely correlates with a decrease in pride, especially pride as seen in personal independence or, in extreme cases, even isolation.
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No Other Bride for Christ
While studying Genesis 29 I was encouraged by the thought that God is nothing like Laban. We will not wake up one morning in heaven (if we sleep at all) to find that we’ve been tricked. God promised us Christ, and that is who He’ll give us. How can we know?
Unlike Laban God does not make us work for our relationship. Salvation is not a wage we’ve earned. We couldn’t earn it in seven years or seven thousand years.
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The Goodness of God’s Discipline
None of us have endured the sort of hostility that Christ endured, not even one. He is an example par excellence that we “may not grow weary or fainthearted” (Hebrews 12:3). Keep running the race. He did, so we should.
Hostility and difficulty prove the grace we’ve received; joyful responses are not natural but supernatural. Struggles also train us to grow up in Christ. The author of Hebrews has a lot to say about this training and, in particular, about the goodness of God’s discipline.
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Fiction as a Political Weapon
The second Raggant Fiction Festival is less than two weeks away. This year’s theme is: Fiction as a Political Weapon
I get to lead off the day comparing two dystopian imaginations, That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis and 1984 by George Orwell. There’s a new children’s track this year for kids ages 3-10. I wrote a short story that I’m going to read for them in the afternoon. Check out the festival page for the full schedule and titles of the talks.
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288 Ways to Judgment
In The City of God Augustine took time to interact with another philosopher who calculated that there were 288 different ways to get meaningful, personal peace. As it turned out, some of those paths could be considered the same, but whatever the exact number is, men have a variety of options to choose from.
Many people are pursuing many different paths today and, while Christians usually say that all paths don’t lead to the same place, what if we turned that around.
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The Taste of Truth
Eve was deceived by the deceiver of the world. Sin in the heart deceives the sinner. Riches deceive from what is truly valuable. God is never deceived; He sees straight through. And we must put deceit away if we want to receive the word of truth.
I’ve observed before that we’re never commanded to read the Scripture. We’re commanded to hear it, to meditate on it night and day, and to do it.
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The Problems with Blessings
Those Christians who are gospel-centered are in great shape to see blessings in context. Good things do not ever exist in a vacuum.
The closest it’s ever come to having good things without problems was in Eden. But even there, everything good was given. No man has ever had anything good from and by and for himself. He has always needed to give thanks. It wasn’t a trial, but it was a test.
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It’s a Lie
I’ve heard it said that our talk talks and our walk talks but our walk talks a whole lot louder than our talk talks. In other words, we’re known not just by what we say but by what we do. “Even a child makes himself known by his acts” (Proverbs 20:11).
Since we speak, then, with both our lips and our lives, and since it’s true that we lie with our lips, then we should also consider that we can lie with our lives.
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Big Brother
Jesus is a much better big brother than Esau. Both were willing to give something up, but one gave up to his shame, the other to His glory.
Esau despised his birthright. He was born into a special position but it meant nothing to him, so he basically gave it to his brother. Jesus is the firstborn of creation and the firstborn from the dead. He did give up glory, in a way for a time (see Philippians 2:5-11), but not because He despised His position.
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A Profanity Problem
In a paragraph of instruction about how we ought to treat one another, the author of Hebrews named names. In particular, he named the name of one man that we must not be like. There were many men and women of faith to be imitated in chapter 11, but in chapter 12 we must not be like Esau.
Starting in Hebrews 12:12 we’re told to pursue peace and holiness. We are to help everyone obtain grace.
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Combing Hair at Thermopylae
On the first day Evangel Classical School met for classes I read the following quote from C. S. Lewis during my convocation address.
If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavourable.