Our Congregational Theme for 2011 - "Eager to Maintain the Unity of the Spirit"

(This was my sermon for January 2, 2011, introducing Ephesians 4:3 as our theme passage this year)

I want to begin this morning by asking you a question. What is the one greatest area of need we have as a church that we could benefit the most from really working on this year? Or to put it another way, can you think of a particular scripture that would address what you think should be our number priority this year as a congregation?

Of course we all recognize that every verse of Scripture is inspired by God, that we must be faithful to the entire message of the Bible, and that my obligation is to preach the whole counsel of God. But at the same time, it is undeniable that at specific moments in the life of a church (and for that matter, the life of an individual Christian), situations and circumstances arise such that certain teachings in the Bible have more pressing relevance.

So, if you were to pick one crucial area where we stand to gain the most by concentrated effort, what would it be? That is the very question the elders contemplated a few weeks ago, and what they concluded is that for the year 2011, for a variety of reasons, a key passage for this fellowship is Ephesians 4:3.

“Eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

So for the year 2011, in my sermons, in articles in the bulletin, and in Bible classes where appropriate, my focus is going to be on the various dimensions of this Scripture. There will obviously be other subjects that we will deal with this year, and other passages to explore. But as much as is possible and practical, the theme of my work is going to be Ephesians 4:3. “Eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Why This Theme?

So why did the elders choose this theme passage? Go ask them! Actually, the primary factor was various comments and concerns that you as the members have raised over the last few months. So this really grew out of their effort to listen to you, which they have been doing in some face to face sessions with our membership. And I really want to commend our elders for being genuinely interested in wanting to know what you think, of working hard to be true shepherds who know the flock.

Two issues in particular have driven the decision to pick maintaining the unity of the Spirit as our congregational theme. First, the issue of togetherness. We are very blessed as a group of people in that we are at peace. This is not the case in a lot of places. I have worked in churches that had a history of ugly divisiveness, and been through the some situations that began to resemble the bitter factionalism of the church in Corinth, where members were pitted against each other. That is not a problem here, and thanks be the Lord that’s the case!

So when I say the elders are concerned about the issue of togetherness, that is in no way a reflection of worry over some kind of schism. But just because we are not at war with each other doesn’t mean we are as close as we can be. True fellowship in the Lord is not simply a matter of never fussing with each other, but is instead a partnership of like-minded followers of Christ held together by brotherly affection. It is the kind of relationship Paul spoke of the Philippians having in Phil. 1:27, “you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.”

To put it another way, some of you may come from families marred by all sorts of jealous rivalries and feuds. That is a tragic and painful situation to be in. But just as sad is a family that – while not full of hate and conflict – lacks any sense of warmth, that rarely communicates or does anything together as a family. Where members feel isolated and unwanted.

That might be true of our flesh and blood families, but it should never be true of our blood-bought family. And so to help all of us in the Woodland Hills family be even more sensitive to our need for each other and our responsibility to be one heart, one mind, one spirit, the elders want us to dwell on the implication of maintaining the unity of the Spirit.

There is a second issue that made Ephesians 4:3 stand out as a vitally important passage for us. That is our need for unity in the home just as in the church. Marriage is a living demonstration of God’s power to unify. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Eph. 5:31). Because marriage is such an intense expression of unity, it is also the place where unity is most intensely tested.

And so if maintaining the unity of the Spirit is important for a church, it is even more so for a family. In fact in Ephesians 5 Paul makes a direct link between the oneness of a husband and wife and the oneness of Christ and the church.

Eph. 5

³²This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. ³³However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Your marriage is to be a vibrant example of the unifying work of God, on par with the relationship of Christ to the church itself.

In fact, the elders are working on plans to do some special teaching on marriage later this year. But in the meantime every family here stands to gain by making Ephesians 4:3 the theme verse of your family just as it will be of our congregation.

So that’s why the elders have selected this as our theme. Let’s spend the rest of our time together looking at what the verse actually says and start laying a foundation for what we can work on together this year.

Unity of the Spirit

The first point I want to emphasize about this passage is that Paul says we are to maintain the unity of the Spirit. He doesn’t say we are to obtain it but to maintain it, implying that we do not create unity. It is created for us. And in the text Paul says it is unity of the Spirit. In other words, we are united by the Spirit. Oneness is the work of God, indeed it is the gift of God.

This is how the book of Ephesians began. In 1:9-10, listen to how Paul summarized God’s eternal plan:

Eph.1

⁹ making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ ¹⁰as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

God’s eternal plan, once unrevealed in mystery, but now revealed in Scripture, is to unite all things in Christ. The way Christ did this was to die for the sins of humanity, making it possible for us to be at peace with God and with each other, and especially in light of the first century, for Jews and Gentiles to be at peace with each other.

Christ taught, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” (Matt. 5:9). The Son of God was the ultimate Peacemaker.

Eph. 2
¹¹Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called "the uncircumcision" by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— ¹²remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. ¹³But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. ¹⁴For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility ¹⁵by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace

Christ is our peace; His cross made peace. And it is through that peace that we can be bound together. That is why Paul says in 4:3 we are to maintain the unity of the Spirit “in the bond of peace.” We are to maintain unity created through the peace-making work of Jesus.

Also, in Ephesians 2, Paul explains why this unity is in the Spirit.

Eph. 2

¹⁸For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.

²²In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

It is in the one Spirit that we have access to God. We are built together by the Spirit. It is the unity of the Spirit.

None of us deserved the peace Christ purchased for us. None of us deserved to dwell with God by the Spirit. This unity and peace is the gift of God. The recognition that oneness is a display of God’s grace and love should motivate us to work in grateful diligence to preserve what God has done for us. This is the very way Paul exhorts the Ephesians in the opening of chapter 4.

Eph. 4

¹I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ²with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

We have been called by God to share the rich inheritance of His saving work and unifying purpose. In the words of one translation, we are to “live in a way that is worthy of the people God has chosen to be his own” (CEV) and a crucial part of that worthy walk is maintaining the unity of the Spirit.

So unity comes from God. It doesn’t come from us. We don’t invent it or manufacture it. But we are to maintain it. So let’s think about what that means.

Maintain the Unity of the Spirit

I think I told you all the story about getting this Bible. It is my dream Bible, with wonderful calfskin (it smells like a cow – in a good way!), a great layout for reading, and good paper for taking notes. I had been talking with one of the members of the Weatherly Heights church in Huntsville (where I recently preached) about Bibles, and he graciously sent this to me. One of my preacher friends asked me to set up a gospel meeting for him so he could mention his dream truck!

Anyway, this Bible was a very thoughtful gift. But now that is has been given to me, it is my responsibility to take care of it. My old Bible is coming apart because it has been dropped far too many times. There’s a section of the book of Isaiah that has coffee stains from an accident that took place while teaching a home Bible study. And because I forgot to put the cap on a red pen one day, a large section of the gospels and Acts has an enormous red ink stain. So I am a little paranoid about this new Bible. This is the first time I have brought it to the assembly, and I feel as cautious as those of you who have brought newborns to church the first time!

The point is that it’s one thing to get a gift; it’s another thing to take care of a gift. Some of you who are clumsy or absent minded or just plain sloppy may have heard the same thing I heard a lot growing up – “I just can’t get you anything nice because you’ll just ruin it!” Well God has given us unity, a very costly gift, and we are to have the maturity to recognize this gift is precious and therefore take care of it.

The word Paul uses in this verse expresses urgency. “Maintain” is almost too weak. It sounds like instructions in your car manual (for proper maintenance of your engine change your oil every three thousand miles). Of course, if you don’t do proper maintenance, you’ll have serious car trouble. And if we don’t do proper spiritual maintenance, we‘ll have problems, too.

But this word means to “keep watch over, keep, preserve, holding on to something so as not to give it up or lose it.” In fact it often is used for holding a prisoner in custody, as in Acts 24:23.

Unity is something that we must carefully guard and protect. And undoubtedly it requires this vigilance because it is so easily lost. That is because our natural inclination is selfishness, which only leads to strife. Paul said this to Corinthians in 1 Cor. 3-

1 Cor. 3

¹But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. ² I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, ³for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? ⁴For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not being merely human?

Sometimes we dismiss faults by saying “well, we’re only human.” But you and I as children of God are not “only human.” We are forgiven; we are converted; we are raised to walk in newness of life; we are a new creation in Christ! And as such we cannot revert back to being “just human.” We must walk worthy of our new calling in Christ, maintaining the unity of the Spirit.

But to do this requires constant surveillance of our own attitude and heart so that the divine gift of unity is preserved rather than squandered.

Over the next few weeks I am going to preach about the key attitudes we need to safeguard unity. They come right out of the same context as our theme verse. Look at Eph. 4:2:

Eph. 4

²with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.

That’s a good place to start: humility, gentleness, patience, and forbearance love. It will require intentional effort to maintain unity, and meditation on these virtues is the foundation of the worthy walk of unity.

But there is one more attitude that we need to accomplish this, perhaps the most important of all. And it is the first word of our theme verse. “Eager.”

Eager to Maintain the Unity of the Spirit

Lots of people make resolutions this time of the year. Some of you may have written down some goals for self-improvement. Lose weight, exercise, get out of debt, pray more, read the Bible through, etc. There is nothing wrong with making resolutions – it’s good to have something to shoot for.

The problem is that most people do not follow up on resolutions. They stick with it the first few days of the year, and then the novelty of the moment wears off. Lots of people buy exercise equipment in January that by February they use to hang clothes on. The problem is that simply turning a page on a calendar doesn’t magically change anything. Real change only comes from within.

And that is what Paul means when he says we must be “eager” to maintain the unity of the Spirit. The definition of this word in Greek is “to be zealous, take pains, make every effort (which is how the NIV translates it in Eph. 4:3), to be especially conscientious in discharging an obligation.”

New Year’s Resolutions often fail because they are not prompted by a New Year’s conviction – they are artificially contrived because the calendar says it is a particular day and month. And by the way, the elders are under no illusion that just because we are announcing a theme for the year that it will magically come to pass. But what we hope is that by drawing attention to the word of God and what it says about unity that the Scripture will elicit that conviction in honest and good hearts, and that all of us will be truly eager – zealous – diligent – and determined to maintain the unity of the Spirit.

I wish there was a simple way to produce eagerness. There isn’t. But I think there is a pretty simple set of reasons why we do become eager to do what we are supposed to. Last August I started working on getting healthier. I didn’t make a big announcement about it – in fact, I told a couple of people. And it wasn’t because mid-August was a magical time to lose weight. It was because by that point in time I was in a lot of pain after injuring my knee and having surgery, and I knew that I needed to do something. And second, it was because I finally convinced myself I could do it. And third, it was because I knew that if I wanted to think about sharing my life with someone else, it was what was best for them. And if any of you have ever lost weight or stopped smoking or made some other huge adjustment in life, I would bet it has been for those same kinds of reasons.

That is what I think Paul means when he speaks of “eagerness.” You and I need to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the first place because we need that unity. I need you. We cannot function as Christians going at it alone. Satan is too fierce and the world is too unfriendly to possibly try to make it as an isolated Christian. To try to be a spiritual loner is to bring pain and disappointment.

In the second place, we must convince ourselves that unity is a real possibility, that we can truly be of one mind and spirit. If the Lord could bring Jews and Gentiles together after centuries of hostility and enmity, what reason do we have for thinking He cannot still create the unity of the Spirit? Why would we doubt that Christ can restore a marriage? Why would we question that Christ can heal division? Eagerness means we are convicted that we need others and convinced that Christ can bring us together.

And finally, eagerness means that we are aware that others need us. I bet we all know guys who were pretty immature and irresponsible who straightened up once they got serious about a girl. Sometimes bums never change, but sometimes the awareness that others depend on them and need them is the very thing that a man needs to awaken the conscientious of responsibility. I know that I need you, but I also know that I am needed, and that makes me want to do what I can to be there for you.

Conclusion

This past year we have gone through a lot as a congregation. Some of our older members have reached the point where they can no longer be with us. Several families have moved away. Many of us have lost people special to us. If you are looking for reasons to be discouraged and demoralized, you can find them.

But the Lord has been gracious to us as well. He has allowed many of our older members to continue their assembly with us and the blessing of their influence. We have lots of great young families. The Lord has given us several babies, with more on the way. We’ve had lots of visitors recently. And we have a very dedicated core of hard-working, loving people at peace.

There is a lot to be excited about, and lots to do. We just need to make sure we do it together, “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Logos 4 Custom Bible Reading Plan

Back in November I decided to take the plunge and buy Logos 4 (I got it at an enormous discount at a conference). Logos 4 is an amazing Bible study tool that seemlessly integrates thousands of resources in a digital format. I am in the initial stages of learning how to use the program, but it has already proven its worth.

One of the cool features of Logos is that it enables you to create a custom Bible reading plan. For several years I have used the plan developed by Mark Roberts. This year I wanted to try something different. And with the help of Logos I have created my own reading schedule.

I chose the following options:

• A plan that has readings for each weekday (Monday - Friday).
• A plan that will finish the entire Bible in a year.
• A plan that includes readings every day from each major section of the Bible (Genesis-Esther; Job-Song of Solomon; Isaiah-Malachi; the New Testament).

So today's reading will be Genesis 1-2; Job 1; Isaiah 1; and Matthew 1. This way I will get a portion of narrative, a portion of poetry, a portion of prophecy, and a portion of the New Testament every day.

One of the blessings that comes from this sort of schedule is that it opens the door to connections between parts of Scripture one might not normally read together. So I am excited at the prospect of all sorts of new discoveries this year, and from time to time I will share them with you.

In the meantime, let me encourage you to find time for the word every day.

How can a young man keep his way pure?
By guarding it according to your word.
With my whole heart I seek you;
let me not wander from your commandments!
I have stored up your word in my heart,
that I might not sin against you.
Blessed are you, O LORD;
teach me your statutes!
With my lips I declare
all the rules of your mouth.
In the way of your testimonies I delight
as much as in all riches.
I will meditate on your precepts
and fix my eyes on your ways.
I will delight in your statutes;
I will not forget your word. (Psalm 119:9-16)

The Weary World Did Not Rejoice (Christmas Carols Vs the Bible Part 3)

Most people love babies. Just think of the excitement that breaks out when one of our young families brings their newborn to our assembly for the first time. And of the people who don’t love babies, for most it is really that they are afraid of what to do with one, since babies are so fragile and delicate. Even that awkwardness is born out of the concern to make sure the baby is treated properly.

And most people love the baby Jesus, meaning that most people still cherish the traditional story of the Nativity. Our culture for the most part still draws great comfort and inspiration from Christmas. The awkwardness comes in trying to relate to the grown- up Jesus, who made dogmatic declarations (“I am the way, the truth and the life”), debated theological opponents (“you are wrong not knowing the Scriptures or the power of God”), denounced pretentious hypocrites (“woe to you scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites”), and demanded total allegiance (“whoever loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me”).

So the baby Jesus is still very popular, but the grown Jesus is not. This was illustrated a few years ago in a movie called Talladega Nights, which lampoons a redneck racecar driver named Ricky Bobby. Even though he is worldly and arrogant, he pauses to give thanks for his meal, but typical of the shallow fecklessness of his character he addresses his prayer to the “Dear Eight Pound, Six Ounce, Newborn Baby Jesus, in golden, fleece diapers.” When an older man interrupts him and says, “He was a man! He had a beard!” Ricky says, “I like the baby version the best, do you hear me?”

While the movie is ridiculing the utter imbecility of Ricky Bobby, the fact is that lots of people feel like him. They are content to confine their thoughts about Jesus to the little infant in the idyllic manger. Babies are lovable, babies are huggable, and babies are not threatening.

The last couple of weeks we have been measuring famous Christmas Carols against the standard of Scripture, and to paraphrase Daniel, they have been weighed in the balances and found wanting. The picture of the birth of Jesus often conveyed in these songs sounds more like a Mother Goose story than a biography, which is what the gospels claim to be. Silent Night claims that “all was calm, all was bright” the night Jesus was born when in fact He was delivered in very chaotic conditions. Away in the Manger expects us to believe that the little Lord Jesus did not cry when as we studied last week the grow up Jesus wept many times.

This week the aspect of Christmas Carols that I want us to consider is the pervasive joyous optimism with which they speak of the birth of Jesus. The way they come across, everyone is like Ricky Bobby and loves the baby Jesus.

And since I have critiqued Silent Night and Away in the Manger, to be fair this morning I am going to focus on a line from my own personal favorite Christmas song:

O Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining.
Till He appeared and the Soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

There is so much about this hymn (and that’s really what it is – not a Christmas carol but a hymn!) to love. But here is the question – did the weary world really rejoice when Jesus appeared? Did everyone love the baby Jesus?

Some Did Rejoice At Jesus’ Birth

Unmistakably, many people did rejoice at the birth of Jesus. When the angel Gabriel told Mary she was carrying the Messiah, she broke into a glorious song called the Magnificat, which begins:

Luke 1

⁴⁶And Mary said,
"My soul magnifies the Lord,
⁴⁷ and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior

And as many songs suggest, the angels rejoiced at the news of Jesus’ birth.

Luke 2

¹⁰And the angel said to them, "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. ¹¹For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. ¹²And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger." ¹³And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
¹⁴ "Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!"

After those shepherds saw the newborn King the text says in verse 20 they “returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.”

A few days later when Mary and Joseph brought Jesus into the temple, an aging saint named Simeon praised God because he was allowed to see the coming of the Messiah:

Luke 2

²⁷And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, ²⁸he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said,
²⁹"Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,
according to your word;
³⁰for my eyes have seen your salvation
³¹ that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
³² a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and for glory to your people Israel."

So on the surface it is easy to see why so many carols reverberate with happiness. Many people were thrilled to see the Christ child. Luke continues the parade of well wishers with a godly woman named Anna, who according to Luke 2:38 “began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.”

But the issue is not whether a few deeply pious believers rejoiced at Jesus’ birth. I don’t mean to be irreverent in any way, but just to make a point, if you think about it, probably as many people if not more rejoiced at the news of your birth as did Jesus’ birth. The issue is, did the “weary world” rejoice?

Many Were Troubled

We all know that at least one person was not thrilled by the news of Jesus’ birth, but was threatened.

Matthew 2

¹Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, ²saying, "Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him." ³When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.

Herod had a special relationship with Rome that permitted him to consider the land of Israel his own little kingdom as long as he kept the peace and made sure Caesar got his tax money. He was a prodigious builder, most famous for constructing the temple in Jerusalem. He also built several palace/fortresses, which he needed because he was paranoid, and wanted secured locations all over his tiny fiefdom. His paranoia turned homicidal, to the extent that he murdered his wife and two of his children.

Someone that mad and that brutal would have no qualms about wiping out an entire village of babies, which is precisely what he ordered once he learned that this so called “King of the Jews” was to be born at Bethlehem.

Matthew 2

¹⁶Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.

And so Herod became a grisly parody of Pharaoh and ordered the death of Hebrew babies – whatever it took to stay on the throne.

Herod’s treachery is well known. But did you notice the end of verse 3. Is wasn’t just the despotic Herod who was troubled by news of Jesus’ birth. “All Jerusalem with him” was also alarmed. Why was Jerusalem so bothered by the news of Jesus’ birth?

Just as Herod represented the corrupt political structure of the first century, Jerusalem represented the corrupt religious structure. The priesthood and the Pharisees were every bit as power hungry as Herod. Remember what Matthew says Pilate discerned about the motives of the chief priests and scribes at Jesus’ trial? “For he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up” (Matt. 27:18). A career politician like Pilate easily saw through the charade of legalities and knew the Sanhedrin was just another bunch of politicians desperately clinging to power.

That’s why Herod and all Jerusalem were threatened by a baby. They saw Jesus as a threat to their power, and nothing, not even a little baby, can be allowed to jeopardize power. They hated the baby Jesus. That is not the stuff of happy, carefree Christmas carols. It is the tragic reality of a world gone mad with sin and selfishness, and for every joyful Mary and Simeon and Anna there was a young mother wailing the lament of Rachel for her children, who “refused to be comforted because they are no more” according to Matthew 2:18.

I will take it a step further. More people would have responded just like Herod had they known about the birth of the Christ. If a two-bit dictator like Herod wanted Jesus dead, imagine how Caesar Augustus would have reacted had he known about that angelic proclamation that an obscure couple from Nazareth was giving birth to a King? We don’t have to guess. Augustus was the nephew of Julius Caesar, and as he consolidated power after his uncle’s assassination, he ordered the only son of Julius Caesar, a teenager named Caesarion (whose mother was Cleopatra) put to death, because as one of his advisors is supposed to have said, “Two Caesars are one too many.”

As it turns out, Augustus unwittingly played a role in fulfilling God’s plan to bring the Messiah into the world, by ordering a census that forced Joseph and Mary to return to Bethlehem. Seven centuries earlier the prophet Micah wrote:

Micah 5

² But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,
who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me
one who is to be ruler in Israel,
whose coming forth is from of old,
from ancient days.
³Therefore he shall give them up until the time
when she who is in labor has given birth;
then the rest of his brothers shall return
to the people of Israel.
⁴And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD,
in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God.
And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great
to the ends of the earth.
⁵And he shall be their peace.

The Messiah born in Bethlehem will be ruler in Israel. Not Herod, not the Sanhedrin, not Caesar. The Messiah. And His name will be great, and He will be their peace.

Those last two expressions are particularly interesting in light of Caesar’s claims. “Augustus” was the name he took, meaning “august one” or “revered one.” And of course Augustus took great pride in the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace, that his administration brought to the world. But Micah says that it is the Lord’s Anointed who shall be great, that He will be the true source of peace.

In fact, lots of terms that are purely “Christian” to us were in widespread use in the first century regarding Caesar and his empire. When a successor was born or a victory was won, messengers would proclaim the “good news” – the euangelion – “the gospel” of Caesar’s success. Roman citizens greeted each other “Caesar is Lord,” and coins from that period often contained inscriptions referring to Caesar as the Son of God and Savior.

But Mark says that his book is “the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). And Christians confess that “Jesus is Lord.” And the angels told Joseph that Jesus would “save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). Jesus is the true King, the only Lord, the mighty Savior, and His coming is the good news, the gospel.

Which means that once Rome did figure out what the Christian gospel really was, conflict with Caesar was just as unavoidable as it had been with Herod or the Sanhedrin. This conflict was foreshadowed in the way the Jews manipulated Pilate in John 19:

John 19

¹²From then on Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, "If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar." ¹³So when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called The Stone Pavement, and in Aramaic Gabbatha. ¹⁴Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, "Behold your King!" ¹⁵They cried out, "Away with him, away with him, crucify him!" Pilate said to them, "Shall I crucify your King?" The chief priests answered, "We have no king but Caesar." ¹⁶ So he delivered him over to them to be crucified.

It is laughable that the Jews who hated Roman subjugation would profess allegiance to Caesar – but truth doesn’t matter to people craving power. But the main point here is that “Two Caesars is one too many,” and if Pilate allows this man to continue His claim to be King, he will be abetting a challenger to Caesar’s throne – no friend of Caesar would do this.

Pilate already knew that whatever Jesus was, He was not an insurrectionist like Barabbas. He wasn’t like anyone the old governor had ever questioned. Look at the interrogation of Jesus in John 18:

John 18

³³ So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" ³⁴Jesus answered, "Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?" ³⁵Pilate answered, "Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?" ³⁶Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world." ³⁷Then Pilate said to him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world— to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice." ³⁸Pilate said to him, "What is truth?"

Kingdoms in Conflict

There are two kinds of kingdoms. There is the worldly kingdom, and it is all about power. Power by any means. You scratch and claw and kill your way to the top and do whatever you have to do to stay there. It’s what Herod did; it’s what Caesar did; it’s what the chief priests did. In the worldly kingdom truth doesn’t even exist. That is sadly the only world Pilate knew.

But there is a kingdom that is not from this world; it is from above. And its defining quality is not power, but truth. Truth that confronts, and convicts and condemns the power structures that come from this world. And that is why the “weary world” doesn’t rejoice when the King from above bears witness to the truth.

No, the world doesn’t rejoice. It rejects. As John says in John 1:11, “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.” Or later, in John 3:19-20:

John 3

¹⁹ And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. ²⁰ For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.

Just this week I went through this passage with the ladies at Morningside. One of them is starting to slip a little, almost into a childlike state of naiveté. When I read these verses she said, “That’s horrible.” And it is. But it is the clash of the kingdoms of truth (light) versus power.

And it is our story. Your story. My story. All of us have sinned, all of us loved the darkness because our deeds were evil. This isn’t just about Herod or the Jews or Caesar. In Romans 5:10 Paul says we were God’s enemies! All of us made a decision at some point to embrace power rather than truth. That’s what it means to be lost. And when we were in the grip of that compulsion to have our way, to do what we wanted to, to be king of our own little world, had we been alive when Jesus was born and knew what He represented, I am afraid we would have felt a lot more like Herod than Mary.

So the weary world did not rejoice. It seethed with hatred because the light of God’s kingdom burst into a world of darkness and confronted power with truth. While none of the songs we typically think of as Christmas Carols mention this conflict, Mary’s song did. Look again at Mary’s song-

Luke 1

⁴⁶And Mary said,
"My soul magnifies the Lord,
⁴⁷ and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
⁴⁸for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
⁴⁹for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
⁵⁰And his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
⁵¹ He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
⁵² he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate

There it is plain as day – “he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, he has brought down the mighty from their thrones”!

What incredible insight that young lady had! From the beginning she understood what the coming of Jesus meant. It meant a challenge to every worldly power enthroned in pride.

No wonder Herod was so hysterical about the birth of Jesus. No wonder the ruling class of the Jews used every dirty trick in the book to murder Jesus. And no wonder you and I at one time were enemies of Christ. After all, “Two Caesars is one too many.”

The Ruler of This World

There is one more bitter adversary of the baby Jesus I need to mention. If Herod and the chief priests were antagonized by the birth of Jesus, imagine how the one Jesus Himself described in John 12:31 as “the ruler of this world” felt? Revelation 12 paints in vibrant imagery just exactly how the devil reacted to the birth of Christ.

Revelation 12

¹And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. ²She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. ³And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. ⁴His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth.

Let me pause here. In verse 9 John identifies this dragon – it is Satan. Pictured as a vicious monster, red (the color of blood), with seven heads (cunning), and ten horns (powerful), but with what on each head? Diadems – crowns – this is a king! And notice what the ruler of this world is doing-

Revelation 12

And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it.

This dragon seethes with hatred for a baby about to be born, hovers over it ready to pounce. And on paper this seems like a cruel mismatch. What chance does a newborn baby, the most vulnerable creature on earth, have against this grotesque monster? Or what chance does truth have against power?

Revelation 12

⁵She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne.

What was surely already clear is now made explicit. The child was the Christ, the one who would (in the language of the second psalm) rule the nations! No wonder this self-proclaimed ruler, wearing seven diadems, was so enraged at the prospect of His birth. But truth overcame power, and the great dragon was thwarted as the male child ascended to God.

Remember Mary’s song? “He has brought down the mighty from their thrones.” Even Satan could not withstand the Lord’s Anointed. What John pictured in vivid symbolic language here in Revelation 12 he also spelled out for us in the 12^th chapter of his gospel, where Jesus made it clear what He was going to do:

John 12

³¹ Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. ³²And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.

Jesus came to break the bonds of oppression, to defeat the ruler of this world and all his petty vassals, and to draw us to Himself through His death. As long as we still prefer the darkness so that our deeds are not exposed to the light of truth, we will be lost to our own pride of power. But if we will surrender our will to His truth, we can truly become free.

Last night I went to see the remake of True Grit, which tells the story of a crusty old U.S. Marshall named Rooster Cogburn. A young lady is trying to hire Rooster Cogburn to track down the man who shot her father, and promises him a lot of money. There is a line in the remake that I don’t think is in the original. He says: “I don't believe in sermons, fairy tales or stories about money.”

Pretty tough company for sermons! But I hope in these sermons about the birth of Jesus we have stripped away the fairy tale veneer of so many Christmas carols to let the message of the gospel speak for itself. It depicts a world in which not all is calm and bright, a world where babies cry and tyrants kill and the power mad try to win at all costs. And a Savior who exposes all that ugliness for what it is, and urges a “weary world” to rejoice in His salvation.

"No Crying He Makes"? (Christmas Carols Vs the Bible Part 2)

Last week after I preached about the line in Silent Night, “all was calm, all was bright,” someone jokingly rebuked me for ruining one of her favorite Christmas carols. And I feel her pain. I love these songs, too. In fact, before I “ruin” another one, I want to make a point about these songs we often call “Christmas carols.”

You and I know that lots of the typical pageantry surrounding Christmas is without any sort of biblical warrant. By the same token, we also understand that lots of misinformation exists about other Bible doctrines, like grace or the Holy Spirit. These erroneous beliefs present a problem, not only because of the errors inherent in them, but also because of the extreme overreaction they tend to produce. It is easy to fall into the trap of the reactionary who responds to error by embracing the most extreme position opposed to that error. Some people take liberties with God’s grace? Then I’ll do the opposite and only emphasize man’s obedience and God’s judgment. Some people obsess over the Holy Spirit? Then I’ll deal with that by never talking about the Holy Spirit. And the result is yet another set of unbiblical teachings, because it is just as wrong to ignore what the Bible says as it is to pervert what the Bible says.

And the same is true with the birth of Jesus, and hymns that speak of His birth. The Bible devotes a fair amount of attention to His birth, and while many songs fall short of the biblical evidence, some of them are among the greatest hymns ever written. Hark the Herald Angels Sing is saturated with Scripture, but sadly, we have allowed the world to pigeonhole it as a “Christmas carol,” and I never sang that song growing up.

So as I point out some flaws in what we commonly call “Christmas carols,” the last thing I want to do is feed any sort of reactionary spirit which says since the world misunderstands so much about the birth of Jesus the solution is never to say or sing anything about it at all.

Away in the Manger

With that disclaimer in mind, I do want to think with you about another well known song, Away in the Manger. Here is the first verse:

Away in a manger,
No crib for His bed
The little Lord Jesus
Laid down His sweet head
The stars in the bright sky
Looked down where He lay
The little Lord Jesus
Asleep on the hay

So far so good. Jesus was put in a manger, and there was a bright star that night. It is the second verse that veers off course:

The cattle are lowing
The poor Baby wakes
But little Lord Jesus
No crying He makes

“No crying He makes.” This song expects us to believe that stirred awake by the lowing of the cattle, the infant Jesus did not cry.

As I said last week, I understand that poetic license plays a role in all lyrics. My guess is that the point of this line in Away in the Manger is that even though the circumstances of Jesus’ birth we less than ideal that Jesus and His family were at peace. And of course the Bible teaches us that when we are going through tough times that we can also have peace through the care and protection of God.

But to say that the baby Jesus didn’t cry to is to stretch the limits of poetic license to the breaking point. In the first place, the biblical text nowhere says this. And in the second place, how realistic is it to think that Jesus wouldn’t cry? Babies cry. Jesus was a baby. Jesus would have cried and done all of the other things that babies do in the real world.

And that is the point of this lesson, and this series. The birth of Jesus really happened. This is not a fairy tale that assumes some dreamy, fantasy land in which newborns never cry. As well-intentioned as such lyrics may be, they in fact undermine conviction in the story of Jesus as a true depiction of actual historic events.

The Humanity of Jesus

I do think there is another factor at work in this song. It has to do with the unique nature of Jesus as both God and man. The Bible unabashedly claims that Jesus was God in human form.

John 1

¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

¹⁴And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The Word was God; the Word became flesh. This is the great truth about Jesus’ incarnation, personifying the meaning of His name Immanuel, “God with us.”

This is also a great mystery, and as a mystery, the incarnation leaves lots of unanswered questions for us - questions which theologians through the centuries have been eager to speculate about. And almost inevitably this speculation ends up denying either Jesus’ deity or His humanity. In early church history one heretic named Arius denied that Jesus was truly God, and instead claimed that He was created by God. The modern form of this heresy is the position of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

But other heretics denied that Jesus was truly human. He wasn’t born of a virgin, He did not really died on the cross, and He wasn’t really resurrected in bodily form. An early form of this heresy is apparently what John dealt with in his letters, when he warned his readers about the Antichrist:

2 John

⁷For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.

To deny the humanity of Jesus is nothing short of being antichrist according to the apostle.

While genuine believers would not object to Jesus’ humanity, there is no question that in early church history many Christians were uneasy with His humanity. They were so zealous to defend the fact that He is God that they sometimes went too far and deemphasized that He was man. One common form this “de-humanizing” of Christ took was to allege that when Jesus was born Mary felt none of the agony of delivery. One 4^th century writer said this:

Of Him then His mother's burden was light, the birth immaculate, the delivery without pain, the nativity without defilement, neither beginning from wanton desire, nor brought to pass with sorrow. For as she who by her guilt engrafted death into our nature, was condemned to bring forth in trouble, it was meet that she who brought life into the world should accomplish her delivery with joy." (St Gregory of Nyssa, Homily on the Nativity 4^th century)

There is not a shred of evidence in Scripture that this is the case. Yes, Jesus was conceived miraculously, born of the Spirit but also born of woman, so that He could be the perfect mediator between God and humanity. But to extrapolate from this that Mary felt no pain is an enormous jump in reasoning.

And it is exactly that same sort of thinking that I believe lies behind the verse,

But little Lord Jesus
No crying He makes

Certainly Away in the Manger doesn’t dispute Jesus’ humanity, but it clearly undermines it by proposing that unlike any other baby ever born, Jesus as a baby did not cry. And this compulsion to “clean up” the story of Jesus’ birth is sadly typical of the way His incarnation is portrayed.

Here is a typical portrayal of the Nativity. Notice that the newborn Messiah has an enormous halo, and the size of a large toddler! And Jesus appears to be speaking already!

And here is another depiction:

I guess the thing that stands out in this version is how clean the stable and the animals are. Those sheep look as well groomed as dogs preparing for the Westminster dog show!

Once again we have a highly sanitized version of the story of Jesus. In the real world childbirth is painful and bloody. Stables are smelly and dirty. And newborn babies are blotchy and don’t arrive with glowing cylinders around their head!

And of course, in the real world, little babies cry. And that is the insidious danger of lyrics like “no crying He makes.” Babies that don’t cry are in the world of make-believe, not the world that any of us live in. The gospel story needs to be more real for all of us, not less real. This is not a book of make-believe, and we do not do the gospels justice when we accept such fantasy notions as a baby that doesn’t cry.

Every time I preach I hear the refutation of Away in the Manger! We have been blessed with lots of babies, and we have more on the way. Sometimes it makes for a noisy assembly! And honestly, I would much prefer to be in a congregation that has lots of crying babies than in one where the silence is deafening because there aren’t any young families around. Babies rarely bothers me when I preach. Grownups sometimes bother me, but not babies!

After all, crying is the only way a baby has to let you know when something needs fixing. There is an “I’m hungry” cry, an “I’m tired” cry, an “I need to be changed cry.” Maybe there is a “I wish this sermon was over” cry! My point is that crying is a God-given way for a baby to express various basic needs that are vital to human existence. Why should it possibly bother us to think Jesus would have cried as a baby – unless it is just too uncomfortable for us to conceive of Jesus as a human being like one of us.

Yet the Bible is emphatic that Jesus was both God and man, and in His humanity He experienced the full range of the human condition emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Luke 2:52 says that “Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.” I thought Jesus was divine? He was. But He was also a man, and in His humanity He could become smarter and grow taller. He was the Son of God and the Son of Man, but also grew in His relationship with God and man.

The Word who became flesh could also become hungry (Matt. 21:18), thirsty (John 19:28), weary (John 4:6). He could be beaten and bruised, He could bleed, and He could die.

Jesus also knew human emotion. In Mark 3 we read this account:

¹ Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. ²And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. ³And he said to the man with the withered hand, "Come here." ⁴And he said to them, "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?" But they were silent. ⁵And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.

In one verse Jesus felt anger and grief, the kind of mix of emotions you may feel when you see your children do something wrong and you are upset with them.

Christ also felt compassion, as in Matthew 9:36-

“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

Jesus’ heart went out to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

And just as you and I sometimes feel overwhelmed by crises, the gospels describe in unvarnished language the passion of the Lord in the Garden.

Mark 14

³² And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, "Sit here while I pray." ³³And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. ³⁴And he said to them, "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch." ³⁵And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.

This same man who could calm the raging storm on the Sea of Galilee sometimes felt the swirling emotions of distress and sorrow, and most of all on that night in Gethsemane.

Jesus Wept

Later the writer of Hebrews reflected on this moment and wrote in Heb. 5:

Hebrews 5

⁷In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. ⁸Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.

Why would we think that Jesus wouldn’t cry as an infant when we know for a fact He cried as an adult – with “loud cries and tears.”

And it wasn’t just at the prospect of His own death that Jesus broke down. You remember the story of Lazarus in John 11, and the shortest verse in the English Bible which speaks volumes about Jesus’ humanity-

John 11

³²Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." ³³When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. ³⁴And he said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." ³⁵ Jesus wept.

Why did Jesus cry? He knew that Lazarus was not going to be dead for long, that He was going to raise him. But as verse 33 points out, when He saw the grief in Mary and the rest, He was troubled. Yes, Jesus cried in the Garden as He contemplated His own death, but He also cried when He saw the pain death brought to someone else. Christ is grieved by our grief.

One other passage speaks of the tears of Jesus. It is found in Luke 19, as He approached the city of Jerusalem one last time and prophesied over the coming judgment that faced its people:

Luke 19

⁴¹ And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, ⁴²saying, "Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. ⁴³For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side ⁴⁴ and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation."

The people of Jerusalem would soon cry for Jesus’ blood to be on their heads, and that of their children, and tragically, that prayer would be answered when the Roman armies of Vespasian and Titus devastated the city 40 years later. Christ knew this, and the bleak future that awaited the city of God was heartbreaking to Him. And so He wept.

Some of you may have recently seen the 60 Minutes interview with the new Speaker of the House, John Boehner. Much has been made of the fact that he broke down and cried during the interview, sobbing over how much he was concerned about the future of America’s children. A couple of days later I heard a pundit express discomfort with this – she said it made her feel really awkward to see a grown man cry. Years ago a Senator named Edmund Muskie was doing pretty well in one of the presidential primaries until he was caught crying on video – then he was finished. To a lot of people that is a sign of weakness – not the sign of a strong leader.

That is the way the world thinks, a world that mistakes cruelty for courage and arrogance with strength. But that kind of phony machismo is a pathetic substitute for the strength and courage of our Lord. I have been reading and learning a lot about some of history’s worst dictators, and while they come from all points on the political spectrum, one common trait is that none of them lived like the people they ruled. Dictators live privileged lives of pleasure. But the King of Kings courageously chose to live as one of His subjects, to enter the human condition and summon the strength to endure. And precisely because He lived as one of us, and felt what we feel, He cried.

Uninspired songs might have the tendency to diminish Jesus’ full humanity, but the inspired song of Isaiah 53 did not. The third verse of that song describes Jesus as “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3).

I am glad my Savior cries, because it means He cares. He cares for me when I am stricken with grief. He cares for me when I wander way from Him. He cares for me when I face crisis and distress. And because He cried and because He cares, I can go to him with confidence that as I pray through my tears He hears me and knows exactly what I am going through.

Hebrews 4

¹⁴Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. ¹⁵For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. ¹⁶ Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

We may be embarrassed to think of Jesus as a human being, but as Hebrews 2:11 says, He is not ashamed to call us brothers.

A Visualized Word Study - Sixty-six Clouds

Check out this link to a cool website that pictures the "word-clouds" for each book of the Bible. A word-cloud is a visual representation of the frequency of words in a given book, with the more frequent terms appearing in larger print. This is a neat gift idea!

Sermon: All Was Not Calm and Bright (Christmas Carols Vs the Bible 1)

Last night Kristi and I went to see Tangled, an animated retelling of the fairy tale of Rapunzel. It was a great movie – great animation, fantastic soundtrack, excellent performances by the actors who did the voices. And of course, it had a fairy tale ending (as if you would expect anything different!)

A lot of people don’t like these kinds of movies because they have happy endings. It just seems too unrealistic to a lot of people for everything to end “happily ever after.” They prefer movies with complex, ambiguous characters rather than heroes and villains, and unhappy endings, or at least bittersweet endings. Maybe you are in that category, would rather watch The Godfather instead of fairy godmothers and such.

The reason I bring all this up is because of the way the story of the birth of Jesus often comes across this time of year. We are just shy of three weeks from Christmas, and already the radio has been saturated by Christmas carols. I have to confess to you that I love this time of year, and I love holiday music. But I am also concerned about the way lots of Christmas carols describe the birth of Jesus.

Christmas Carol Myths

My concern is not really about the trappings of Christmas per se. I am sure that the members of this congregation are well versed in the Bible and understand that a lot of the traditional elements of the “Christmas story” have no connection to Scripture. We do not know when Jesus was born, and the Bible nowhere commands us to set aside December 25^th as a special holy day in His honor. “We Three Kings” were not actually kings, they were wise men, and we have no idea how many of them there were. They brought three gifts, but I am hoping I get more than one gift from each of you! And their visit did not take place the night Jesus was born, but some time later.

But these details are really ancillary to my concerns. What troubles me the most is the almost fairy-tale quality of many of the Christmas carols, the unrealistic way they describe the birth of Jesus. I am completely happy to allow for poetic license in songs; that is the very nature of music. The Psalms contain lots of imagery that should never be pressed into literal meaning. That is how lyrics evoke emotion and stir the imagination.

The problem is that many Christmas carols paint such a rosy picture of Jesus’ birth, a scene of unrelenting joy and peace and beauty, that the story becomes too unrealistic, totally irrelevant for a world that is filled with pain and conflict and evil. When that happens, the miracle of the incarnation can easily be relegated to the same bookshelf as Rapunzel and the powerful message of the coming of Jesus is muted.

So starting today I want to take some verses from famous Christmas carols and put them in sharp contrast with what the Bible actually says. And I can’t think of a better example to begin with than maybe the most beloved Christmas carol of all –

Silent Night, Holy Night

All is calm, all is bright

Round yon virgin, mother and child

Holy infant so tender and mild

Sleep in heavenly peace

I think I know what the writer of this hymn (Joseph Mohr) was getting at. I think he wanted to paint a picture of humble serenity. Jesus’ birth was a simple affair, not a spectacle like a royal wedding or birth would have been had one of the Caesars had just had a son. Jesus entered this world in humble circumstances. Further, I think these lyrics are designed to convey reverence and awe at the wonder of the virgin birth. So in that sense I like these lyrics.

But “all is not calm and bright” in my world. My world is filled with anxiety and clash and darkness rather than serenity and peace and light. If I am led to believe that the story of Jesus took place in a world where all was calm and bright, then what possible relevance could that story have to the grim realities of my world. This is the “fairy tale” quality of Christmas carol that I fear can undermine the message of the gospel.

The Birth of Jesus Was Not Calm and Bright

But is this the way the Bible actually tells the story of Jesus’ birth? “Calm and bright” are the last two words I would use to summarize the depiction of the birth of Jesus in the gospels.

In the first place just think of the circumstances under which Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Caesar Augustus commanded a census to be taken, which in keeping with Jewish tradition would have required Jewish men to return to their ancestral hometowns.

Luke 2

⁴And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, ⁵to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.

How calm could Bethlehem have been when Jews from all over Palestine were pouring in for this census? Bethlehem was a small town back then (as it is today). To be inundated with travelers from all around would have created lots of chaos and confusion in a small village, the very picture drawn for us in Luke 2 – a town so overbooked with visitors there was no room for the family in the local inn.

⁶And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. ⁷And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

Since Mary gave birth when they arrived, she must have been far along in her term when they started out from Nazareth. How calm do you think Joseph and Mary would have been traveling the 90 mile from Nazareth to Bethlehem with her deep into her pregnancy? What a difficult journey that must have been (and remember, they had to do it on foot or horseback).

And once they get into the little village there is no place to stay. Though the text does not say so, the reference to a manger indicates they had to bed down where animals were kept, possibly a stable. And in those less than favorable accommodations Mary went into labor. No hospital, no midwife, no room. What a nerve wracking way this must have been to end the long trip.

I have to wonder how Mary and Joseph would react if they knew centuries later we would be singing about how “calm and bright” that night was!

It was a painful, stressful, busy night for that family.

Just as there is a tendency for Christmas carols to make everything much cleaner and neater than it really was, those traditional songs typically fail to point out the very real emotions of worry and concern the family of Jesus felt.

When the angel Gabriel came to Mary to announce that she would give birth to the Messiah, she did not immediately start singing “Joy to the World”! Luke 1 says this:

²⁸And he came to her and said, "Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!" ²⁹But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

She was “greatly troubled,” and Gabriel had to reassure her not to be afraid. Now, to Mary’s credit, once she heard the promise of God, she did break into song – she is a true heroine of the faith. But as much as she was a heroine she was human, and she journeyed from fear to faith like we all must.

Her husband had to make that same journey. In Matthew’s account, when Joseph found Mary with child before their marriage was consummated, he was troubled enough to put her away. But the angel of the Lord came to him and said:

Matthew 1

²⁰But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”

“Joseph, Son of David, do not fear.” That tells me Joseph did fear, and like Mary he wasn’t always calm and needed the reassuring promise of God to graduate him past his fear to faith.

I can’t relate to fairy tale heroes, but I can relate to people who are troubled when life turns upside down on them, to people who are gripped with anxiety and need the promise of God to release the grip of worry. That isn’t the way many Christmas carols tell the story, but it is the way the Bible tells the story, because it isn’t make believe; it is real life.

The World of Jesus Was Not Calm and Bright

Real life is not always “calm and bright,” and neither was the world into which Jesus was born. There was a superficial calm, called the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace. The census that led to Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem was ordered by the first Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus (Luke 3:1), who prided himself on the peace and security his administration brought to Rome. But the Roman Peace came at a price. The sometimes brutal subjugation of anyone who challenged Caesar’s authority. And in no part of the world was the potential for violent rebellion stronger than where Jesus was born, in the land of Israel.

Many Jews seethed under the Roman occupation of their land, and resented having to pay taxes to Caesar. Periodically this resentment spilled out into open rebellion, and the Bible refers to several instances of violent suppression of the Jews. Luke 13:1 mentions a massacre of Jews from Galilee while coming to offer sacrifices in the temple, and Acts 5:36-37 mention two insurrections which ended in bloodshed. In Acts 21:38 Paul was confused with an Egyptian who stirred up a revolt of four thousand “Assassins,” the Sicarri, the knife-men who murdered those in sympathy with Rome. And of course, who did Pilate release instead of Jesus? Barabbas, a man “who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder” (Luke 23:25).

It seems like the Middle East has always been saturated with violence and hatred, and while that it is not actually the case, it certainly has been through much of its history, and especially in the time of Christ. The promised land, the land that flowed with milk and honey, in the time of Jesus flowed with hostility and animosity, and of course that hatred reached the boiling point 40 years later, when Israel went into outright war against Rome and was crushed.

All is not calm and bright now, and it was not when Jesus was born, either. But that hate-filled world is the very world He chose to come to. The purpose of His coming was to bring peace and healing to a world torn apart by sin. And the way He proved that He could do this was by His great miracles. Think of this story:

Mark 4

³⁵ On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side." ³⁶And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. ³⁷And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. ³⁸But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" ³⁹And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. ⁴⁰He said to them, "Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?" ⁴¹And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"

There is a lot going on in this story. It first of all establishes the power of Jesus over nature itself, which astonished (and terrified) the disciples. If He is powerful enough to dissipate a storm by simply speaking to it, what couldn’t He do! That is the sort of thing only God can do! As Psalm 65:7 says, it is God “who stills the roaring of the seas.”

Further, in the OT the stormy seas often represent the forces of evil and chaos, which God must subdue.

Psalm 89

⁸O LORD God of hosts,
who is mighty as you are, O LORD,
with your faithfulness all around you?
⁹You rule the raging of the sea;
when its waves rise, you still them.
¹⁰You crushed Rahab like a carcass;
you scattered your enemies with your mighty arm.

Jesus came into a world roiled by hatred, which was not calm and bright. But He came to still the storms, and while all is not calm and bright on its own, once Jesus acts, as Mark 4:39 says, “there is great calm.”

In the very next chapter of Mark there is another story from Jesus’ ministry that allows us to see the ugliness of the world that Jesus really came into.

Mark 5

¹ They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. ²And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. ³ He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, ⁴for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. ⁵Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones.

This is no fairy tale world where all is calm and bright. It is a story of evil, evil unleashed to do harm. The gospels teach that the world of Jesus was under attack by the Devil, who used his armies of unclean spirits to create havoc. In verse 9 the demons identify themselves as Legion, which indicates their great number (a legion at full strength had six thousand men), but more importantly indicates their purpose. They are an army, on the offensive, doing what armies do, wreaking destruction. In this case viciously possessing a man in the country of the Gerasenes and provoking him to do great harm to himself.

That is the world Jesus lived in. And He knew there was a war to fight, an enemy to defeat, a victim to deliver. It didn’t matter how many demons were arrayed against Him; just as He stilled a storm with one word of rebuke, Jesus sent a legion of the Devil’s soldiers plunging over a cliff in a herd of animals who appropriately symbolized their uncleanness. That part of the story gets all the attention, but I love the simple detail in verse 15 – the man who once gashed himself under the influence of demons was now sitting with Jesus, “clothe and in his right mind.” All was finally calm and bright for him.

Jesus did not come into a fairy tale world; He came into a beleaguered world needing liberation, and in His ministry time and again He did just that. But these miracles pointed to a larger reality, to a greater mission, which Jesus completed on the cross.

If you have ever doubted that Jesus could understand the misery and evil of our world, just think of the cross. There was no such thing as “death with dignity” for a Jewish rebel, which is what Jesus was accused of being. Crucifixion was an ugly and brutal form of execution, one Jesus endured surrounded by a jeering mob taunting Him to save Himself, ironically ignorant that if He saved Himself He couldn’t save them.

It wasn’t a world calm and bright, but cruel and dark, so dark that God shrouded the sun in the middle of the day.

Well might the sun in darkness hide and shut his glories in

When Christ the mighty maker died for man the creature’s sins

This book is not the Brothers Grimm; it is not Aesops’ Fables; it is a book that describes sinful humanity and a sin-cursed world in all its stark misery. But to that very desperate world God sent His Son at just the right moment, to share the misery and bear our sins so He could redeem us from our sins and we might become His sons.

Galatians 4

⁴But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, ⁵ to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. ⁶And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" ⁷So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

And He doesn’t promise us a story that ends happily ever after. Rather, He promises us a happiness that never ends, where all is finally and eternally calm and bright.

Baptism with the Holy Spirit

I have been teaching a class on the Holy Spirit this fall, and here is an outline of a lesson on Baptism with the Holy Spirit.

The Baptism with the Holy Spirit

In the last few lessons we have studied the identity of the Holy Spirit, as well as the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old and New Testaments. This week we are going to study an aspect of the Spirit’s work that ties together the expectation of the Old Testament and the fulfillment of the New Testament – the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

The Bible speaks of Jesus baptizing “with the Holy Spirit” in six passages (Matt. 31:1; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:6; John 1:33; Acts 1:5; 11:16). One more passage may speak of baptism “in” the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13, ESV and ASV). What does baptism with the Holy Spirit mean?

I. Various Views of the Baptism with the Holy Spirit

A. Various views in Protestanism

1. Calvinistic view: refers to regeneration.

2. Wesleyan view: refers to second work of grace.

3. Pentecostal view: refers to endowment, manifested in speaking in tongues.

B. Among brethren

1. The most common view is that baptism with the Holy Spirit only took place twice – the apostles on Pentecost and the household of Cornelius.

2. Some brethren (most notably Foy Wallace Jr) have argued that the household of Cornelius was not baptized with the Spirit.

C. I believe there is a better option – “Baptism in the Spirit” is simply one way to describe the coming of the new covenant and the era of Messianic blessings.

1. This does not mean that all Christians are supernaturally endowed to speak with tongues, as Pentecostalism suggests. This wasn’t even the case in the apostolic period (1 Cor. 12:10, 30).

2. In fact, a major source of confusion on this subject has been equating baptism with the Holy Spirit with miraculous signs, something that the text does not do.

3. As Moses Lard wrote in 1864: “Baptism in the Spirit does not consist in endowing the mind with miraculous powers, as seems to have been so generally taken for granted.” (Lard’s Quarterly I:275).

II. Baptism with the Holy Spirit in the Old and New Testaments

A. The Old Testament prophets looked forward to a new era of blessings through the Messiah, which included the pouring out of the Spirit.

1. Isaiah 32:15 – Israel will be desolate until the Spirit is poured from on high.

2. Isaiah 44:3 – God will pour His Spirit on Israel’s offspring, like water on a thirsty land.

3. Ezekiel 36:25-27 – God will sprinkle water to cleanse His people, give them a new heart, and put His Spirit within them to cause them to walk in His statutes.

4. Ezekiel 39:29 – God will pour out His Spirit on the house of Israel.

5. Joel 2:28-32 – God will pour out His Spirit on all flesh, followed by prophecy, dreams and visions.

6. Zechariah 12:10 – God will pour out on the house of David and people of Jerusalem a spirit of grace.

B. Observations regarding these OT statements:

1. Notice the comparison of the Spirit to water, “poured out,” connected with the “sprinkling” of the people, parallel to water on a thirsty land.

2. None of these passages suggest this pouring out would be limited to a handful of people. It is for the house of David, Jerusalem, the offspring of Israel, “all flesh.”

3. Except for Joel 2 there is nothing inherently miraculous in any of these statements.

4. This expectation continued into the New Testament period, as is reflected in the writings found at the Dead Sea. “Then, too, God will purge all the acts of man in the crucible of His Truth, and refine for Himself all the fabric of man, destroying every spirit of perversity from within his flesh and cleansing him by the holy spirit from all the effects of wickedness. Like waters of purification He will sprinkle upon the spirit of truth, to cleanse him of all the abominations of falsehood and of all pollution through the spirit of filth.” From the Manual of Disciple (1QS).

C. The fulfillment of this expectation in the New Testament.

1. John the Baptist taught that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit (Matt. 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:15-16; John 1:33).

a) Nothing in these passages indicates that John was speaking only to the twelve. Indeed, he said this before the Twelve were chosen. Luke is specific that he addressed “them all.”

b) Against the backdrop of the passages in the OT, John’s promise was that Jesus was the one through whom God’s new era of blessing and salvation for His people would come.

c) And baptism was the perfect metaphor in light of the language comparing the coming of the Spirit with water in the OT.

d) In light of the OT promises, nothing inherently miraculous was expected.

e) Since it is always God who would pour out the Spirit in the OT, for John to say Jesus would do this indicates that Jesus is deity.

2. Jesus taught that He would baptize with the Spirit (Acts 1:5).

a) He said this to the apostles, but it is not correct to interpret this to mean it only referred to the apostles – Peter understood this statement to have wider application in Acts 11:16.

b) This is in keeping with the promise Jesus made in John 7:37-39, where once more the Spirit is described in terms of water – “rivers of living water.”

3. The Day of Pentecost (Acts 2).

a) We sometimes call this the “birthday of the church,” the first gospel sermon, the beginning of the kingdom, the “hub of the Bible,” and so on. It was a pivotal event.

b) And since the OT pictured the Messianic age as the time when God would pour His Spirit on His people, Peter says that the Day of Pentecost is the inauguration of that era of blessings (quoting Joel 2 in 2:17-21).

c) In order to bear testimony to those in attendance that this the start of something new, God enabled the apostles to speak in tongues – 2:1-4; cf. Heb. 2:3-4.

d) But the speaking in tongues is not to be confused with baptism with the Spirit. Rather, the speaking in tongues confirmed that the new age of the Messiah, the start of the new covenant, the outpouring of the Spirit, had begun.

e) The promise of the Spirit is for all who turn to the Messiah (Acts 2:38; cf. 5:32).

4. The Household of Cornelius (Acts 10).

a) The Spirit fell on Cornelius and his household in Acts 10, enabling them to speak in tongues. This was to bear witness that God accepted Gentiles on the same basis as Jews (Acts 15:8).

b) In Acts 11:16-17, Peter says that when he saw this he thought of Jesus’ promise. He realized that the age of Messianic blessings was for everyone, including Gentiles.

c) Normally in Acts miraculous manifestations of the Spirit took place by the laying on of the apostles’ hands (Acts 8:14-18; 19:4-6). As Peter says in Acts 11:15, what made the events at the house of Cornelius so remarkable was that the Spirit came on them “just as on us at the beginning,” without any human intermediary.

d) The normal course of events in Acts is baptism, then the giving of the Spirit. This was different. “In Acts 10 the tongues were evidence that God wanted the Gentiles to be received into His church along with the Jews. Thus these events were not intended to be paradigms of conversion. They were meant to be exceptions to the rule in the sense that every miracle is an exception; this is what gives them their evidential value” (Jack Cottrell, Baptism: A Biblical Study, p. 61).

e) To emphasize: what makes Acts 2 and Acts 10 unique is that there were miraculous signs without human intermediaries. They were miraculous signs that the Messianic age (the age of the outpouring of the Spirit) had begun and included Gentiles.

D. Summary:

1. The OT expectation of the pouring out of the Spirit on God’s people was fulfilled through the work of Jesus Christ who baptizes His people with the Spirit.

2. All Christians share this blessing at conversion (John 3:5; Titus 3:5). It is not miraculous.

3. On two occasions (Acts 2 an 10) God did give miraculous signs that this age had begun. But these signs are not to be confused with baptism with the Holy Spirit.