Merry Christmas to Abraham

From Adam onwards men knew of the promised Savior, but fewer and fewer believed the promise.  A devastating worldwide flood and the subsequent dispersion of man over the face of the earth did little to deter man’s desire to be god.  The promise was again pushed to the back burner of men’s desire and idolatry, with many false saviors, became the norm.  Then God spoke to one man, Abram.  God said to Abram, “Follow Me,” and Abram did.  God also gave Abram a renewal of the promised Savior, but this time He made it more specific.  The promised Savior was to come from Abram’s seed. 

Matthew begins his account of the genealogy with this specific promise in mind.  “Abraham begat Isaac and Isaac begat Jacob.”  Matthew began with Abraham and traced the promises God made to his son Isaac and grandson Jacob as well.  Jesus had a heritage of promise.  It had to come through the bloodline of specific people.  Matthew chronicles those precious names.  From Jacob’s twelve sons the promised ruler was to come through Judah.  Thus salvation was to come from the line of Judah or the Jews.  This is what Jesus told the woman at the well in John 4,  “Salvation is of the Jews”.  

This continuity of promise gives us all the assurance that God is true.  He is able to see the end from the beginning.  He is able to bring life from the dead, as He did with the birth of Isaac from Sarah’s dead womb.  He is able to bring victory from ashes, as He did in restoring Judah to the land after their Babylonian captivity.  He is able to control kings as He did with Caesar who commanded the world to be taxed so that Mary and Joseph had to go to Bethlehem where God said the Savior would be born.   That God is able is the clear message we find in the precious names of Advent.  Over a period of 2000 years against all the forces that Satan and sin could throw against His promise, He was able to complete all that He had said in every detail He had promised.  This is Advent hope.

The faithful children of Israel were still looking and longing for the promise to come and the joy that would attend it.  We, too, should be looking for the completion of the promise of His second advent and the joy that will attend that.  This song by Charles Wesley can be an expression of the hope of both Advents of Christ. 

 “Come, Thou long expected Jesus born to set Thy people free; from our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in Thee. Israel’s strength and consolation, hope of all the earth Thou art; dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart.”

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Merry Christmas to Adam and Eve

The Christmas season is a time of dreaming and hoping.  As the poet said of the children, “visions of sugar plums danced in their heads.”  It is not only children who hope and dream.  How many engagements take place around Christmas time?  I officially placed the ring on my beloved’s finger on December 20 the day before she was leaving for Christmas break and I had to stay and work.  Ours wasn’t a vision of sugar plums for a day but a life of joy together.  Hopes and dreams can be based on promises like, “I will take you and love you forever.” 

This view Christmas is not new.  It began with the hopes and dreams of man and the promises of God relating to the Advent of His Son.  In the books of Matthew and Luke we find genealogies for Jesus.  This isn’t just a list of people to be passed over in our reading of the Bible.  These were people with hopes and dreams and promises of the Advent of our Savior.  Matthew begins the list in verse 2 with Abraham.  Luke concludes the list in Luke 3 with Adam and God. 

Luke 3 shatters the “Santa Myth”.  That myth states that Santa only rewards the good.  Adam doesn’t exactly fit that mold.  He had direct access to God.  He had a perfect environment.  He had no needs unfulfilled.  He only had one simple rule to obey.  What could possibly go wrong in that scenario?  He sinned anyway.  There goes his merry Christmas, right?  Wrong!  It was in his sin that God gave the great promise of the advent of the Savior.  Instead of giving Adam and Eve coal, He gave them hope.  Instead of saying “Better luck next year”, He gave them precious promises. 

That makes Adam’s name pretty precious on the Advent list.  If God can forgive someone for messing up as badly as Adam did, then the Advent of His Son offers hope to all.  As Jesus said in John 3, “For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that world through Him might be saved.”  Thank God for the story of Adam for it gives true hope to us all.  Johannes Falk wrote the wonderful Christmas hymn, “O Thou Joyful!  O Thou Wonderful!”  Its first verse reveals the hope of man and the promise of God fulfilled.  “O thou joyful, O thou wonderful, grace revealing Christmastide!  Jesus came to win us from all sin within us: glorify the holy Child.” 

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Advent Adoration

Near the time of Jesus’ birth God had placed a sign in the sky so that the wise men of the East could find the newborn King of the Jews.  They did not initiate that search.  God did.  It was a simple proclamation that His Son was not only the King of the Jews but would be the King of all the earth.  God sent an invitation and the wise men responded.  With the light that God had given them they sought out the Christ.

It was not to be an easy search.  He had been born in a distant land in a time when travel was difficult.  They didn’t care.  He had been born a foreign king.  They didn’t care.  He had been born in a region where the governing power was at an uneasy peace with all the nations from which the wise men probably came.  They didn’t care.  When they got where they thought they were going they still weren’t there.  When they got stonewalled by the locals, they didn’t care.  Finally an answer was given and they finished their search.  In a house in Bethlehem they found the infant Jesus, He who had been born King of the Jews.

What did they do when they found Him?  The answer to that is the profound truth that all men everywhere, saved and lost, must both understand and emulate.  The wise men worshipped Him.  They knelt down at His feet and gave Him due adoration for who He is.  It is hard to picture them going into that house and raising one hand high and saying, “Yo, man, what’s up?”  Today the Church has become quite casual about worshipping Him.  It is as if He has lost His luster as the Divine.  He became a man, but He was still God and so they worshipped Him.  Paul told us in Philippians 2 that someday every knee would bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.  They will all fall at His feet and worship Him.  Whether they are Christians or Jews or Muslims or Buddhists or Hindus or atheists, they will all bow at His feet and worship Him and declare that He is the eternal Son of God. 

This Advent season let us make sure that we have on our “to do list” to worship Him every day.  Let us bring our gifts of praise and thanksgiving and fall down at His feet and adore the Wonderful counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace whose name is Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the Living God.  “O Come, Let Us Adore Him.

“O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, O come ye, O come ye, to Bethlehem. Come and behold Him, born the King of angels; O come, let us adore Him, O come, let us adore Him, O come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.” 

Words by John F. Wade

  The Friday Benediction

Until Monday, my friends, may the good God envelop you with His grace; may you prove the common confession of faith, “I believe in the holy Christian church and in the fellowship of the saints”, and may you be enriched with joy and hope as you exercise that confession this weekend.  Amen

 

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Advent Peace

I was in college during the great “peace” demonstrations of the late 60’s and early 70’s.  Many of those demonstrations were not very peaceful.  Two significant moments in the age of that movement came first at the Chicago Democratic National Convention and then two years later at Kent State University.  Those events ended up changing American politics and then the American perception of the war.  The tragic violence brought change, but it did not bring peace.

The prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel had head to head confrontations with the false prophets of their day who were proclaiming, “Peace, peace”.  They told the people that those false prophets had not been sent by God.  Anyone coming along and proclaiming that they can bring peace is not telling the truth.  This world is a place of sin and the deeds of the sinful flesh include, “hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambition envy and murders.”  That is just the short list that God made of our nature. We act out what is in the inside of us, and that isn’t a pretty concoction. 

But there is hope!  When the angels came to the shepherds they sang, “Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth, good will to men.”  The angels could proclaim peace because the Prince of Peace had been born.  In Zacharias’ prophecy in Luke 1 he says that the way of peace was coming.  Jesus promised His disciples, both them and us, that He would give us peace.  Paul declared in Romans 5 that we now have peace with God and in Philippians 4 that we can have peace that passes understanding.  Someday the heavens will open and Christ will descend and bring true peace on earth. 

All this is wrapped up in the joy of the Advent.  What men wanted and could not produce would be wrought by God.  It is His joy to bring us peace on earth.  Right now that peace comes one person at a time as they accept God’s Advent gift of His Son.  We can rejoice in that present peace and be confident that He will fulfill the entire promise of peace when He sends His Son again.

Wonderful, wonderful promise of peace in the Advent God has declared

Wonderful peace through the gift of His Son in a new life now He’s prepared

Wonderful song that the angels have sung, a song of true joy and true peace

Wonderful promise the Father has wrought, the peace, peace that never will cease  

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Advent Proclamation

When we got home from the store what do you think Princess did?  Did she drag herself into the house and slouch into a chair and sigh?  Did she run to her room to play with her toys?  Did she skip into the house and exclaim, “We got the bird!”  After she spent an hour staring at the bird and poking her finger in the cage and discovering that the bird did absolutely nothing, she went and played, but that wasn’t first. First everyone knew we had a bird.

How long had the angels been waiting to proclaim, “Christ is born?”  When they got their chance they did it up well.  The shepherds got that message loud and clear and went to see the newborn babe.  After they had seen Him they went on their way glorifying God and praising Him.  They didn’t do it in a huddle where no one else knew what was going on.  They made it “widely known”.  The Advent proclamation needed to be made. 

Several months later when Jesus was taken to the temple for His presentation to the Lord, Mary and Joseph met Simeon.  He was a righteous man who had long looked for the coming Messiah and he wasn’t shy about announcing it.  Then they met Anna, an elderly widow, who, when she saw the babe, spoke of Him to all who looked for the redemption of God’s people.  Then there were the wise men that came looking for the King of the Jews and proclaimed His birth even in the king’s palace. 

Unlike the bird, which never ever really did much beside sit and make a mess, Christ did all that He had been sent to do.  When He had finished His work He told His followers to go and proclaim the Good News of His salvation and the full hope that gave to all people.  That proclamation of Christ’s salvation, hope and peace is still needed by all today.  We need to be eager proclaimers of that hope.  “Christ has come!  Hallelujah!” 

Let us sing and obey the great Negro Spiritual, “Go, Tell it on the Mountain”.

Go, tell it on the mountain,
    Over the hills and everywhere
    Go, tell it on the mountain,
    That Jesus Christ is born.

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Advent Joy

Yesterday we considered the Advent promise given.  When it was given to Abraham he contrived to “help” God out.  That certainly made a mess of things.  Isaac and Jacob had their own problems with living out the hope of the coming Seed.  In practical terms the promise remained just that, a promise, and not much joy, except in the birth of their own sons, was evidenced regarding it.  But that was all about to change.

That first Christmas night when the angel spoke to the shepherds his message was Joy!  “Fear not,” he said, “for I bring you good tidings of great joy.”  The message resounds in Isaac Watts’ great hymn, “Joy to the World”.  The promise was fulfilled.  When I got my little girl the parakeet the promise was fulfilled.  She was much more joyous at getting the bird than getting the promise.

The promise of God was not a single event, however.  The promise of God in Christ is new every day.  In the book of Lamentations, Jeremiah makes this exclamation, “Because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.”  The Advent of the Messiah is a promise fulfilled, but in Him all the promises of God are fulfilled.  Paul put it like this, “For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God.”  Therefore we relive the joy of that first Advent day every day of our lives.  We do so because in Him all the mercies and promises of God are renewed to us day by day.  To paraphrase Isaac Watts, “Joy to the world because our Lord is still here.” 

One of the most common commands in the New Testament is to rejoice.  The “good tidings of great joy” have not disappeared.  Christ is alive and well and dwells with His people.  Christians too easily forget the joy of Christmas with the rush of the new year.  But God says, “Don’t forget.  My joy is for you every day.” We need to retain the joy of that first Christmas message and let our lives so shine for Jesus that all may see our joy in Him.

J. Edward Ruark wrote the hymn, “You May Have the Joy Bells”.  This lively hymn reminds us to find God and His joy in our lives every day. 

“You will meet with trials as you journey home; grace sufficient He will give to overcome; though unseen by mortal eye, He is with you ever nigh, and He’ll keep the joy-bells ringing in your heart. (Refrain) Joy-bells ringing in your heart, joy-bells ringing in your heart; take the Savior here below with you ev’rywhere you go; He will keep the joy-bells ringing in your heart.”

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Advent Promise

Years ago I was at the store with my four year old daughter.  At that time we were in the final stages of going overseas as missionaries.  In the store we went by the pet section and she asked me, “Daddy, can I have a bird?”  Well, I hated to say no to my sweet little girl so I said this instead.  “You know, Princess, that we are moving far away and we can’t take that pretty bird with us.”  She looked downcast for less than a second.  “But what if we didn’t move, Daddy?”  I replied, “Well, then, Princess, you can have a bird.”  That was a promise from a father to his child.

With just two months to go before departure my beloved wife suddenly became very ill.  She was sicker than she had ever been and there was no apparent cause.  As we had no insurance we did not rush to the doctor but we finally had to.  We were going to have another baby – surprise!  Several of the shots required for the country where we were going were potentially fatal to the baby, and so our plans abruptly changed.  (By the way, that baby is now a pastor.) 

Now there was a little matter of a promise of a father to his child.  She was only four and she might have forgotten, but I hadn’t.  Sometimes promises take a while to be fulfilled. Two thousand years before Christ’s birth God had made a promise to Abraham. During those two thousand years many had forgotten about the promise or assumed that God meant something allegorical instead of literal.  But God had not forgotten His promise.  Jesus was born, Paul said, in the fullness of time.  There was neither a delay nor a rush for the promise to be fulfilled.  God had it under control and Jesus was born when and where He should have been according to all the promises made to all the prophets during all of those thousands of years.  (By the way, she got the parakeet.)

During Advent we remember that the promises of God are sure. 

Great promise from the Sovereign God, to Abraham He gave

The “Blessed Seed” from out your loins, I’ll send for all to save

To Isaac and to Jacob, too, the certain word was shared

And prophets down through centuries reminded all God cared

But hearts grew cold and worldly ways had near erased the dream

But God His promises did keep and Abram’s Seed was seen 

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