The Lord Has Come
"Joy to the world! The Lord has come! Let earth receive her king!” These are the beginning lyrics of the popular Christmas carol, “Joy to the World.” It’s a familiar song that we’d all recognize if we heard it or at least we’d recognize the tune, but have you ever stopped and pondered those lyrics before? Have you just thought about their message without permitting the melody to get in the way? Pause especially at the middle part, “the Lord has come”. Let those words penetrate your mind. Stir them around in your head like you would the sugar or cream in your coffee. Or, if you take yours black like I do, sip it slowly and savor the flavor of the idea. The Lord has come. They’re just four little words, sandwiched between two simple phrases that, if true, have implications that ooze with relevance even today.
Now expand your thinking and latch on to the other two phrases. The first one puts the premise on the table that “the Lord has come” is a source of joy and you know, these days, I don’t know of anyone who would turn down some joy because frankly, in the economy of life, for many, joy has been a commodity that’s been in short supply. Ya think? For some of you reading this, that’s an understatement. In reality, you’re living in the midst of a joy famine and you’re starving. Like a band of marauding thieves, adverse circumstances have trespassed your life’s fences, kicked open your locked doors, and stolen your joy from you leaving you with painful grief and discontentment where satisfaction once resided. So, let’s tell it like it is. It hurts like hell.
Then there’s the last phrase, “Let earth receive her king.” Did you pick up on that last word? King? What do you make of that? Was the song writer serious? Considering that this Christmas carol uses the Bible as its primary source, the evidence would suggest that the song writer is serious. The song is about Jesus’ birth and if we were to fast forward and read how Jesus described his mission in the Gospel accounts, we’d see that Jesus consistently framed the issue around the idea that he was building a kingdom, not a movement, not even a church primarily, but rather, a kingdom, specifically his kingdom and therefore, that would make the baby in the Christmas story a king and not just any king either. The parameters both phrases, “joy to the world,” and “let earth receive her king,” are global. At face value, this message is intended to be for everyone.
Now, contemplating the idea that this baby talked about in the Christmas carol is actually the king of the entire planet, the logical question that arises is, what are we supposed to do with it? How do we apply it to our lives on a practical level? In terms of how it applies to the whole world, I’m not sure that I’m qualified to field that question. There’s like seven billion people on this spinning ball and the guys calling the shots on it are rich and powerful and they drive a Tesla and stuff. Yes, I like to think that I got some moxie, but dudes, I ain’t got that kind of moxie, and neither do you. For the record, I drive a Toyota, just sayin’.
So, how about if we scale things down a bit because the afore mentioned world where the borders are longitude and latitude and what not and wealthy power brokers dictate the terms of life, we got nothin’. However, in a personal world where the borders are simply confined to our personal volition and choices, we all have control over that world, at least to some degree. So, keeping that thought in mind, at the risk of committing musical heresy, let’s alter the lyrics of that song and sing it like this. “Joy to my world. The Lord is come. May I receive my king.” Do you see what’s just happened? The application has shifted from a spectrum where we have no control and has moved to a spectrum where we have all the control. We now have to do something. It's like when we were kids and our moms fed us that one thing at least once a month that we just hated but we had to eat it anyway. In my case, it was fried oysters. Yuck! I’d have rather eaten liver before I ate those, still would. Back then though, I had to deal with them because, the house rules were simple. You ate what was on your plate. In the same way, coming back to the dinner table of life, Jesus, the king in the song, is on our plate. He’s standing in front of us and whether we pass or play, we’re all eventually going to have to decide what we are going to do with him. Yep, pass or play, our choice.
So how are we supposed to do that? How are we supposed to make an intelligent decision on that one? I’m glad that you asked because this brings me to the point of this website for the next year. Starting with the Christmas series and continuing throughout 2022, I want to explore the facets of Jesus, both in terms of his character and his teachings and allow my readers to decide for themselves if he’s worth following or not. I would especially invite non church going people to follow this website. I won’t be using churchy terminology if I can help it and if I do use one, I’ll explain it. I'll try and use common items that most everyone is familiar with as object lessons and examples to help clarify things. Next week for example, using a simple Nativity set that was always in Mom’s living room each year, I’ll start examining the characters of the Christmas story.
Before I finish today however, I want to put this post in reverse and back up to the second paragraph. Some of you reading this right now I know have really suffered losses these past months because we know each other in the real world and you’ve told me yourself, in the exact same terms I used in that second paragraph how you are feeling. There’s also others of you who just stumbled across this site and when you read that second paragraph, it painfully hit home. That’s where you are right now and I’m guessing that you’d welcome some joy and if this king, this Jesus, can bring it perhaps, you’re at least curious. There’s others of you though, and you’re not so sure. This idea of Jesus as king on a practical level is an idea that you’ve never really thought about, at least not in those terms so the jury's still out on that one. I get it. And there’s a few of you right now who are so mad at God because of your loss that you’re not even sure that you want to talk to him, at least not in civil terms. If that’s you, by the way, I do understand and I really do hope that you stick around.
In closing, I want focus on the middle phrase, “The Lord has come.” Notice who initiates the contact. It’s God. The Christmas story is a story about God seeing a broken world 2000 years ago and reaching out to it. That was good news back then and its good news today because God is still reaching out to our world. Jesus, the baby in the manger turned rabbi, during one of his sermons said it like this, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear and the burden that I give you is light.” (Matthew 11:28 – 30) Another translation puts it like this, “Walk with me and work with me, watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.” Notice that the invitation is all inclusive, it’s intended for anyone who is weary and carries heavy burdens. Notice the common courtesy and the politeness Jesus employed as he extended the offer. He didn’t force his audience to accept His offer. By the way, he hasn’t changed in 2000 plus years. He still gives us room to choose, and, speaking from personal experience, he’s patient with us. He’s standing right in front of us right now and is offering us his resources at our disposal on his terms. What will we do with it though? We’ll probably do the same thing that his original audience did. Some took him up on it, some turned him down. So will we. The ball is in our court now and we're going to have to figure out what we're gonna do. I hope that I see you next week as we start the process.
The Nativity Scene: Mary’s Story
As I was thinking about how to tell the Christmas story using common objects, I recalled the family traditions for Christmas that Mom and Dad had established in our home. For example, we always opened presents on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning we would open our handmade stockings that were knitted by Aunt Grace. Later that day we would go to either Aunt Hope and Uncle Howard’s house for dinner. Now, while I could tell a version of the Christmas story using any of these things, I’m going to pass because some of you may not be able to relate. Maybe your family didn’t celebrate Christmas for any number of reasons. Perhaps your family had a different religion that wasn’t Christian or maybe no religion at all. In any case, none of that stuff really tells the Christmas story without a using lot of space which I don’t have. There was however, one thing in Mom’s house that was religious yet familiar to most people and it’s just what the doctor ordered. Let me tell you about it.
Even before we moved to the Roach Place, one of the first things that Mom always did when she decorated the house for Christmas was set up the ceramic Nativity Scene in the living room. The routine was always the same. The week after Thanksgiving, even if it was still November, she would get out the Nativity scene and set it up on an ornate wooden table in the corner of the living room. The tree and the rest of the decorations would go up a week or two later. The Nativity Scene though, always went up first and stayed up the longest probably because of how Mom and Dad felt about Christmas and because of the way that it told the Christmas story. So, let’s go back to the living room of the Roach Place and examine that Nativity scene and see what we can learn from it. Don’t worry about the dog, he won’t hurt you. His name is Duke and he likes people.
The first thing that you’ll notice as you walk over the table is the tablecloth. It’s this beige hand crotchet laced doily thing-a-ma-jig that covers most of the surface. Setting on it is this big stable with lots of fancy stuff on it. (She got this set from her mom, and Grandma liked elaborate things and this Nativity Set was definitely elaborate.) The next thing that catches your eye are all of the figurines. There’s an angel, a donkey, a cow, maybe a couple of sheep, a shepherd or two, three wisemen and a camel, the Baby Jesus, Joseph, the father, and the one I’ll talk about today, Mary, the mother of Jesus.
Now the ceramic Mary in Mom’s set was probably much more refined than was the real Mary. The ceramic Mary doesn’t have a hair out of place but on the night of the Christmas story as it’s recorded in Luke, the historical Mary had just had a baby three hours earlier give or take an hour or two. Stop and repeat that - slowly. Three hours earlier Mary…just…had…a…baby. Now men, the women already know the answer to this question but I want you to remember back to when your first child was born. Three hours after she popped out the kid, did your wife or significant other look like the ceramic Mary, all serene and put together. Neither did Dianna. In fact, just now as she just proofread this, her exact words were, and I quote, “not physically possible.”
The historical Mary was probably about 14 years old and frankly, she had to have been one mentally tough young woman. Look at the cards she was dealt. One minute she was minding her own business, engaged to be married to this young carpenter named Joseph and the next minute she had this angel standing before her telling her that the Holy Spirit was going to come upon her and she’s going to be pregnant while still a virgin. The baggage that announcement brought with it was off the rails. Mary lived in small town Nazareth where everybody knew everybody and her social circle was more than likely orthodox Jewish. If you’ve ever lived in a small town, one thing that you know is that there are no secrets. Everybody knows everybody and everybody knows what’s going on. And if you’re unmarried and pregnant, forget about it. Once you start to show, everyone’s gonna know and the consequences will be brutal. Best case scenario, people gonna talk and the worst case scenario, albeit illegal, they’re gonna stone you - literally. In spite of this though, Mary consented and obeyed.
Another thing that stands out about Mary is just how physically strong she was. Going back to Mom’s Nativity set, one of the figurines is the donkey and he’s there because tradition has it that Mary rode on the donkey when she and Joseph traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Great story line except for one problem. Nowhere in Luke’s account does he mention a donkey. Seriously, in all accounts of the Christmas story in the Bible, the donkey is a no show which means that it’s entirely possible that Mary had to hoof it from Nazareth to Bethlehem. And if even she did ride a donkey, it was still a bumpy ride because shock absorbers aren’t standard equipment on a donkey. In any case, whether she rode or walked, she was eight and a half to nine months pregnant when she did it and the only way, she could do that was if she was physically tough.
The third thing about Mary which becomes clear in the next chapter of Luke is that she was neither rich nor well-connected. The Mosaic Law for acceptable sacrifices was tailored to fit anyone’s economic station in life and Joseph and Mary, could only afford to give the sacrifice reserved for the poor. Here’s the thing, in that society, wealth and clout often go hand in hand and considering Mary’s lack of wealth, it’s safe to assume that she had no clout either.
So, why Mary? Why did God, as He initiated the action in the Christmas story, choose Mary over everyone else? To my non churched audience, I have to give a churchy answer here because it’s the only one that makes sense. God is sovereign, meaning that He can do whatever He wants to. However, He didn’t just arbitrarily pull a name out of a hat. Throughout the Bible, there’s resounding evidence that when God wants to do something He looks for people who take Him seriously and Mary definitely did. The evidence for this however is not just revealed in Mary’s actions but also in the description of Joseph, her fiancé. Bouncing over to Matthew 1:19, Joseph is described as being a righteous man, a man who took the Mosaic Law seriously. Mary was probably just like him and this is why I think that. Over the years what I have observed is that sometimes you might see a woman who will take God seriously but her husband or boyfriend won’t. However, I only know of a handful of cases where it went the other way around. Generally speaking, men who take God seriously have likeminded wives or girlfriends. I’m not saying that it’s impossible for things to be reversed in a relationship, I’m just saying that it’s rare. Furthermore, this might have been an arranged marriage where the parents were looking out for the best interests of their kids so hormones of youth would have had limited sway on the matter. In any case, based on Mary’s response when the angel confronted her, it’s clear that she was a person who took God seriously and that’s what God was looking for.
Now a reasonable question that might be asked her was did Mary understand everything about what God was doing? Hardly! She had more questions than she had answers, and many of her answers were probably wrong. Throughout the rest of the Gospel accounts, when Mary does make cameo appearances, all of the evidence would indicate that much of what she believed about the Messiah, in other words Jesus, was false and had to be discarded. However, in spite of everything that she didn’t know, she trusted the character of God, the one who was calling the shots, and that was enough for her.
How about us? Do we trust the character of God? I think that for many of us, here’s where things get dicey because as even a cursory read of the Gospel accounts will reveal, Jesus claimed to be God and the primary ask that he made to His audience back than was, “Repent and follow me.” He’s making the same ask of us today and he’s not going away until we give him an answer. So here is what we have to ask ourselves. Do we trust Jesus’ character and is he telling us the truth? Is he telling us the truth about himself? Is he telling us the truth about us? Is he telling us the truth about what is moral and what isn’t? Tough questions. And is he telling us the truth when he says that forgiveness is possible and that it’s possible to have an intimate relationship with God?
For Mary, probably because of her orthodox Jewish background and the fact that there was an angel standing in front of her when she got the message, she trusted God’s character and obeyed. But what about us? What about you? Trust me, there ain’t no angel delivering this message to you today. It’s just me and my free website. The question still stands though. Do you trust God’s character or not? For some of you, you honestly don’t know but if God can be trusted, you’re at least curious. If this is you, perhaps you might want to pray an honest prayer that goes something like this? “God, I don’t know if I can trust you because I don’t you at all. Please show me who you are and show me what kind of character you have. If you’re out there and you can hear this, please show yourself to me. Please help me to understand. In Jesus name, amen.” Don’t worry about being sincerely honest with God, He can handle it and don’t be surprised when He shows up. Honest questions appeal to Him.
In the next post, I want to take a look at Joseph, the father of Jesus and see what can be gleaned from his story.
Joseph’s Story: The Boy Everybody Had Forgotten -
Except God
As I contemplated how to introduce this next post, I ran across this quote by Tim Keller from his book, Hidden Christmas: The Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ. “Over and over again God says, ‘I will choose Nazareth, not Jerusalem. I will choose the girl nobody wants. I will choose the boy everybody has forgotten.’” It’s a great line. Not only is it true, it’s also the perfect launch point for this post.
The next figurine in Mom’s Nativity Set that we need to examine is Joseph, Mary’s husband. Scholars estimate that he was probably 18 or so when Jesus was born and Matthew, in his gospel, describes him as being a man who took God seriously. “This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.” (Matthew 1:18 and 19). Did you catch that? Joseph was faithful to the law, yet merciful at the same time. Concept. Other translations have used the term “righteous,” to describe him. Personally, I call him a class act, one of my heroes in the Christmas story.
A logical question to ask here is what changed? Why didn’t he go through with his plans? According to Matthew, Joseph had a vivid dream, one of several he would have throughout the Christmas story, where an angel appeared to him and told him that Mary had been impregnated by the Holy Spirit. This was a difference maker because Joseph realized that Mary had been faithful both to God and to him. She was still a virgin. Rabbit trail alert: Yes, the virgin birth is a miracle because miracles are often an integral part of the way things roll when God invades history. They come with the territory. Anyway, back to the story. Once Joseph found out what God was doing and what he was supposed to do, he was all in and his life was never the same.
Now, I initially hesitated to use that last phrase, “his life was never the same”, because usually when that phrase is used, it describes an event that brings fame and fortune to a person and, in Joseph’s case, that wasn’t true. Not remotely true. Joseph’s fame came after he died, fat lotta good that did him, and there was never any fortune. You see, like Mary, he lived in small town Nazareth, population 400 to 500 people, (that’s smaller than Twisp FYI) where people knew biology and could compare birth days and wedding dates, so his reputation most likely took a hit, albeit unfairly. Furthermore, for the rest of his life he probably had to keep looking over his shoulder periodically because if the people with political power knew who Mary’s baby really was, they would kill the baby, and Mary and probably him too. In simple terms, his mission was to protect the Son of God (i.e., Jesus) regardless of what it cost him.
So, how did he get recruited for this job? That’s an interesting question because I’m not sure that if you or I were in charge of personnel recruitment for this mission, that Joseph would be our guy. Yet Joseph was God’s guy, and from a human standpoint, that’s a bit odd. At the time, Joseph was this young carpenter living in total obscurity. Yes, he came from a famous family that had been powerful once, key word here being once, but was centuries before he was even born. At the time when he entered the pages of the Bible, he was, as Keller so aptly described him, a boy from a poor family who everyone had forgotten, not that they’d ever known him in the first place. So, what is the backstory on this family?
Joseph was a direct descendant of King David, the second king of Israel and the person whose family the prophets said that the Messiah would be born into. David’s son, also an ancestor of Joseph, was Solomon, the next king, who was said to have been the wisest man to have ever lived and archeologists tell us that he was Jeff Bezos kind of wealthy. Yeah, that’ a lot of wealth. Now, without belaboring the point, from Solomon until the Babylonians showed up several centuries later, this powerful family, Joseph’s family, would call the political shots at least locally in Israel for the next 400’ish years or so. In terms of how they rolled, for the most part, this family answered to no one but God, not that they often cared about Him either but that’s a whole different story. They did whatever they pleased.
Then came the Babylonian captivity when Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judah, thus ending Judah’s sovereignty. Judah was incorporated into the Babylonian Empire and the royal family was deported to Babylon where its members were forced to serve in Nebuchadnezzar’s government. Most of their political clout was stripped from them. Still, even in Babylon the family must have had some influence because one hundred years later after the Babylonian Empire fell, one of its members, Zerubbabel, led a band of exiles back to Judah and served as provincial governor under the Persian rule. After that however, things start to unravel as Judah became a pawn, passed from one empire to another in history.
In terms of the family storyline, in the genealogy, Matthew just lists one name after another with no real explanation other than, “and so and so was the father of so and so.” It’s not rocket science, locally, the political shots were now being called by others and the family’s political clout dwindled to nada. And Joseph, while he would be in line to be king if Judah was still an independent nation, was just an obscure working stiff. He was indeed the boy everybody forgot, except for God, and God recruited him to carry out a key assignment in his rescue mission of the human race. Joseph was entrusted with the responsibility to protect the person that the Bible identifies as the Son of God – Jesus, when Jesus, because of a choice that he made to set his divine powers aside and become one of us, couldn’t protect himself. In terms of importance, that’s kind of a big deal, don’tcha think?
For the application today, I want to talk to a very specific group of people and, if you don’t think that you particularly fall into this category, that’s okay, perhaps you can glean something from it anyway. The people who I especially want to talk to are those of you who would like to follow Jesus, but when you look at your family history you just think there’s no way. Is this your story maybe? Your grandparents or even your great grandparents were people of faith but then THAT, whatever “THAT” was, happened, and nothing’s been the same since. Maybe your parents messed up, maybe one of your siblings messed up, crud, maybe it was you who messed up. Regardless of who messed up though, you’re thinking that because of “THAT”, things are so bad now that to combine your name and Jesus follower in the same sentence would probably be offensive to Jesus.
Well, bro, sis, if that’s where you’re at, for starters, why don’t we let Jesus decide what’s offensive to him and what isn’t, after all, he’s the one who would allegedly be insulted by our identification with him. And secondly, let’s check out the evidence as to why God chose Joseph over all of the other descendants of David who were alive at the time. What did Joseph have going for him? Going back to Matthew 1:19 remember that he was described as a man who took God seriously. In my opinion, that was the key ingredient on Joseph’s part. Scattered liberally throughout other parts of the Bible are examples of this idea that the people who God is looking for are the ones who will take him seriously. And if that’s where you’re at, you want to change your life and start taking God seriously, hey, this is God we’re talking about and He can do anything, even flip the script on the “THAT” in your life. Regardless of your past, in the same way that He took Joseph out of obscurity and gave him an assignment in this rescue mission that He called salvation of the human race, if your heart is set on taking Him seriously, if God used Joseph, He can use you too.
Or maybe, this is your story. Your family has never been Christian, or religious, or Jesus followers or whatever you want to call it. What about you? Will God take you? I have great news for you. If you want to follow Jesus, in spite of your family history, there’s hope for you too. Let’s go back to the genealogy and see where Joseph’s family story began. It starts with this old guy named Abraham. Abraham was this idolater living in Ur when God called him. Abraham took God seriously and obeyed…albeit half baked sometimes, but it was obedience nonetheless, just in stages, proving once again that our screwups can’t derail what God is wanting to do.
Here’s a few verbal snapshots of his story and you’ll see what I mean. God instructed Abraham to take his wife, leave his family, and move west. He kinda obeyed. He took his nephew with him. Once in Canaan where he was supposed to be, because of a famine, he moved to Egypt where he lied about his wife, who must have been drop dead gorgeous, and told everyone that she was his sister. (That part was true, she was his half sister and before you get all grossed out, relax, they did that all the time back then. It wasn’t that uncommon, he just “forgot” to mention the detail that she was also his wife because he thought that the Egyptians would kill him if they knew.) Later, he slept with his wife’s maid servant, granted it was his wife’s idea but still, and had a son by her before his wife finally bore him a son. Hey, I’m not making this stuff up. It’s written in black and white in the Bible, in the book of Genesis. And these are only a few of the inconsistencies. His kids and grandkids stories were even worse. That family was a mess.
Here’s the point. Looking at Joseph’s family tree, what’s clear is that every faith legacy has to start somewhere and regardless of what you’ve done, or your family has done, if you want to change the direction of your life and start a faith legacy, you can. Consider this question. Is the same God who tapped Abraham on the shoulder and tapped Joseph the shoulder, now tapping you on the shoulder? What are you going to do about it? I won’t lie to you, some of you have a lot of baggage to unpack and it’s frankly going to be a process. Honestly, you’re going to probably end up talking to people who are more qualified than me to help you in that process, but I can still point you in the right direction to start.
So, what about you? Are you sensing that deep longing for something different, a longing to have your life be one that matters, that has significance? Going back to Abraham, his journey to faith was one step at time, the first one being to leave Ur. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time for you to take that first step of faith toward the God who loves you like crazy. Perhaps you’d like to pray something like this. “God, I want to start taking you seriously. I would really like to become a Jesus follower but you know what’s in my past, God it’s not good and we both know it. But you’re God and if you can do for me what you did for Joseph and Abraham, you have my attention. I’m ready to take the first step and take you seriously, please reveal yourself to me. In Jesus name. Amen”
In the next post, I want to take a look at the angels and link their story with an overall picture of what God was doing in history.
The Angels' Message
Hi there. The next figurine in Mom’s set that I want to talk about is the angel. It’s the big figurine to the left that looks like a woman with wings. Please ignore the chip that’s been glued back in place on the right wing. None of us kids have ever claimed ownership for that one. It wasn’t me though. It happened before I was born. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. Thank goodness for Elmer’s glue.
Now in the same way that the real Mary probably did not look at all like the ceramic Mary, that’s also in the set, it’s probably safe to assume that the real angels did not look like the ceramic angel with the repaired wing. Without going into a page and a half explanation about them that would just bore most of you, suffice it to say that the wording, specifically the word, “host,”, when used in other parts of the Bible to describe angels, always described an army of angels who were armed to the teeth. It’s just my opinion, but I think that what the shepherds saw looked more like angelic soldiers rather than a soprano with wings that was a part of Mom’s Nativity Scene. In any case, what they looked like is irrelevant. I’m far more interested in what they said as opposed to what they looked like because what they looked like has no bearing on how we live today but what their message was, and still is, an absolute game changer.
Probably the easiest way to understand the angels’ message is to let Luke tell it, after all, he was the one who interviewed Mary who most likely his primary source of information regarding the events that transpired that first Christmas night. Read what he wrote in Luke 2: 8 – 14. “That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terrified, but the angel reassured them. ‘Don’t be afraid!’ he said. ‘I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! And you will recognize him by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.’
Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven—praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.’”
Let’s break down the angels’ message into four parts.
“I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people.” The Greek word for joy here means joy, gladness, cheerfulness, or calm delight. The word is also closely related to the Greek word for grace that the Apostle Paul used in many of his letters to various churches and it means, “undeserved favor.” The other phrase that we need to pay attention to here is the phrase, “all the people.” The angels were announcing that this event that would bring grace and joy was all inclusive; it was for everyone and it was global.
“The Savior – yes, the Messiah, the Lord – has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David.” The angels were announcing the birth of a baby but not just any baby, this one was specific. This baby had a mission. The angels alluded back to many passages of the Old Testament as they announced that this baby was the promised Savior, the one who the Old Testament prophets had predicted would come. He was the Messiah, or the Christ. The Hebrew Scriptures would have called Him, “the Anointed One.” And then there’s this last term, “Lord.” It’s taken directly from a primary Greek word that means supreme authority. That term smacks of deity. Savior of the world, Anointed One, Supreme Authority; the implications for these three titles when they are glued together are loaded and can only mean one thing. To quote Dr. Tony Evans, “Jesus didn’t come to take sides, He came to take over.”
The third part of their message specifically identified who the baby would be. The shepherds would find him wrapped snugly in strips of cloth and lying in a manger, or a feeding trough for cattle. This isn’t rocket science. When the shepherds went into Bethlehem, they would find only one baby in the whole town who was all of these. For all we know, there might have been other babies in Bethlehem that night, but only one was in a manger. That’s what set him apart from the others. That’s what made him unique.
Then there was the last part of the angelic message, the part that was delivered by the rest of angelic army. “Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.” The fact that these angels are giving glory to God can only mean that this event, this birth, originated from God. Then there’s peace, the word here means prosperity and it’s all encompassing to the entire earth. And there’s the last phrase, “with whom God is pleased.” The literal translation is, “on whom His favor rests.” All of these phrases taken at face value can only mean one thing. Not only does God love us, but God also actually likes us, He takes pleasure in us.
As we examine all of this, the question that is flying in our face is, what are we supposed to do with it? How are we supposed to respond? The fact that God loves us is a good thing. Who wouldn’t like that? But then there’s this baby involved who is born of a woman. That makes him fully human but he’s also a baby with titles and it’s these titles are what cause us to reevaluate not only what we think that we know but also how we live our lives on a daily basis, especially when we grasp their meaning and full implications.
This baby is called a savior and, by implication, he’s our savior. Now stop right there and think logically. Why do we need a savior? What does that say about us? This isn’t rocket science. God is sending us a savior apparently because He thinks that we are incapable of saving ourselves. He’s saying that no matter what we do, we will never be able to atone for our rebellion against him, or, to use a religious term, our sin. God is saying that we need a savior and if that’s true, then that is humbling indeed.
Then there’s the second title, the Messiah or the Anointed One. That implies that this baby is holy, that he’s set apart, and he’s going to live among us. It also means that when he grows up, fully human and he has to make a choice between submitting to God the Father’s will or rebelling and choosing to exert his own will, he will submit to God the Father. When push comes to shove, he will always do the right thing. That’s kind of disconcerting for all of us because, when we have found ourselves in that situation, we have either compromised or outright gone against what we knew was right and have done the wrong thing at least once in our lives. The angels were saying that he never would however, and because we have the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, there’s no evidence that he ever did the wrong thing. In fact, the evidence indicates just the opposite. According to all of the eyewitness accounts, he always did the right thing. That puts him a class by himself but that’s not the real kicker. The real kicker is his third title.
The angel said that he was not just lord but the Lord, the supreme authority. To fully grasp the implications of this we have to put it in context. These shepherds are 1st Century Jews and they have at least a rudimentary understanding of Judaism. The foundation of Judaism is that there is only one Lord and that’s God. Within the framework of Judaism, these angels are taking a title that belongs to God and God alone and they are pinning on this baby. They are saying that this baby is the supreme authority over the entire world.
So, here’s what we’ve got according to the angels. We have a baby who is fully human and, at the same time, fully God. He’s holy, the Messiah and he’s the savior of the world. In fact, fast forwarding to other parts of the Gospel accounts, not only is he is the savior of the world but he is the only savior of the world who can get the job done. Thirty some years later, when this baby becomes an adult, he would say this, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me.” That’s an exclusive claim there. So, what will we do? Will we end our rebellion and accept him as our savior and make him the supreme authority in our life or will we stand pat? That’s the question we have to field. For a lot of us, that’s a lot to unpack and we’ll continue to wrestle with this issue next time. See you in a day or two.
The Not so Ordinary Shepherds
The next two figurines to be examined are the shepherd and the sheep. These two are perhaps the only two figurines in the bunch that actually look like their first century counterparts. The shepherds were the ones who the angels visited on that night when Jesus was born and the usual story is that they were these poor, stinky, sheep farmers who lived on the fringes of society. The idea here is that because God cares about the disenfranchised members of society, these shepherds were the first group of people He reached out to when Jesus came. It makes for a great storyline around the Christmas season except that it may not be true. Oh, it’s partly true. God does care for the society’s disenfranchised members, that’s just not who these guys were. On the ladder whereby we measure social status, they were up a rung or two from the usual shepherds.
These guys were most likely priests performing shepherd duties by watching the flocks of sheep in nearby Bethlehem. Now like the normal shepherds who are watching flocks of sheep out in the open country, these guys probably did stink. They worked with sheep. The smell comes with the territory.
To fully understand who these shepherds were and why they were chosen, we have to understand the purpose of the particular sheep they were taking care of, because they did have a specific purpose. The sheep that these shepherds were taking care of were most likely lambs that would be sacrificed at the Jewish Passover and in Leviticus, it’s quite specific what requirements these lambs had to meet. These lambs could have no physical defects and the job of these shepherds was to make sure that they didn’t. If a lamb did have or developed a physical defect, it was these guys job to weed them out of the flock.
For my readers who have never attended church, or if you did, you don’t remember anything about the Passover, suffice it to say that the Passover was a big part of the Jewish sacrificial system where animals were sacrificed as payment for sins that were committed. The idea was that an animal took the place of the person who had committed the offensive acts against God. I know that sounds harsh - it is, but it is fitting because God sees our rebellion against Him as a serious matter that has disastrous consequences for everyone involved.
Allow me to explain. Again and again, the Bible teaches two things. The first is that God is holy and good, and the second is that humanity’s purpose when God created us was to have perfect fellowship with Him. To do that however, it was necessary for us to live under His authority. When we rebelled against God though, it caused a separation to occur between us and our Creator and it’s been all downhill ever since. Take murder, for example. After the initial act of rebellion, it took exactly one generation for an act of premeditated murder to take place and since then things have spiraled out of control. We’ve turned murder into an artform as we’ve come up with all kinds of creative ways to literally end human life. Closely related to that however, we’ve also come up with ways to kill another person without actually killing them. We call it hatred and character assassination. (Perfect way to avoid jail time and it’s more economical. No bail money is required.) Every other sin has followed the same pattern, greed, lying, self-centeredness, pride, you name it. Face it, when it comes to committing sin, we’re experts at it, and God is holy and can’t be a part of any of this. His holy character won’t allow it. That’s where the ultimate consequence of our rebellion comes in. We know it as Hell. I know that we usually don’t talk about Hell in a Christmas post, it’s kind of a downer but in order to understand the shepherds and the sheep, we kinda have to bring it up.
To fully comprehend this, we have to revisit the last post and review the message that the angel(s) brought these shepherds. In their message the angels pinned three titles on this baby, the first one being savior. Now, for someone to need a savior that means there’s a danger out there and they need to be saved from it. Saved from what then? In context, it has to be from hell, it’s the only logical explanation. Am I sure? Yeah, I am. Consider this. Jesus, during his ministry, talked more about Hell than he did about Heaven. That’s fact.
In terms of what Hell actually is, the Bible speaks of it in many ways, all of them, incidentally, involve the imagery of fire. Jesus, for example, used an analogy where he called Hell, Gehenna, a valley outside of Jerusalem. During Jesus’ day, Gehenna was a garbage dump where the refuse was burned and the fires to consume that refuse were burning 24/7. Jesus described the sounds that came out of that place as the sounds of weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. John, in Revelation, referred to it as the Lake of Fire. He expressed the same idea here, that of an eternal fire. Were Jesus and John speaking in literal terms? We can’t discount it. Anytime that the Bible speaks of something using concrete objects such as fire, without specifically saying that it’s speaking figuratively, we have to assume that a literal interpretation is entirely possible if not probable.
But even if they were speaking figuratively, consider this. Imagine a place in all of creation where God is not there. In this place, evil gets to run its full course unabated for all eternity. Its inhabitants are beings who are self-centered god players from the greatest to the least of them and dog eat dog is the law of the land. The door to it is locked, from the inside so no rescue is possible. Am I just making this up? Look at what we’ve done to each other throughout world history and that’s with God putting limitations on our evil. No, what I’ve described is a place where self-centeredness gets to run its full course unabated for all eternity.
In any case, this much is certain. Nowhere in the Bible does the idea that Hell isn’t so bad or that it doesn’t exist, appear – ever. Rather, Hell is always described as a literal place that is horrible, so horrible, that we should do whatever is necessary to avoid going there. It’s also described as a place where, because of our rebellion against God, we deserve to spend eternity. And what of the idea that God is love? If God is love, why doesn’t He do something about it? He did. He sent the baby. Let’s get back to the shepherds.
If the shepherds were priests, then they would have understood how the sacrificial system worked. Like I said, because rebellion had its consequences, live animals were sacrificed so that people wouldn’t have to pay the ultimate penalty for their rebellion. People believed that God would accept the sacrifice as an acceptable substitute. It was an issue of faith that God would do what He said that He would do. However, the Old Testament also taught that someday God would provide a permanent sacrifice for humanity’s rebellion. Did people back then understand what this permanent sacrifice was supposed to look like? Not even close, but they took what was written in the Old Testament and rolled with it as best they could.
Then the angels showed up with this message, “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord,” and the shepherd’s world changed forever.
Let’s view this event from the shepherds’ perspective. Here’s what’s staring them in the face. It’s in the middle of the night but suddenly there’s this bright light that’s shining all around them and an angel is telling them that in Bethlehem, the long awaited Messiah that all the prophets had said was coming, has now been born and that they would find this baby lying in a feeding trough for cows wrapped in swaddling clothes. Granted the angel didn’t command them to go check it out but that was kinda the idea behind this whole visit so it was no wonder that they dropped everything to go see if this was true. I mean, would you want to be the one to tell the army of angels that, eh, we’ll get to it when we get to it? Me neither. The sheep will be fine until we get back. Let’s go. Then, when they found the kid exactly like they were told they would, that had to have just blown their minds. The prophesy had come true.
There’s something else that stands out here too and that’s what this announcement reveals about God. One of the characteristics of God is that He is all wise. That means that nothing that He does is haphazard and that would include His choice to reveal to this particular group of shepherds first that the Messiah had been born. The logic God used for this selection was solid. These shepherds had been tasked with caring for lambs that would be sacrificed for the sins of the people, a temporary solution, so who better to be the first ones to reveal the permanent sacrifice for the sins of the entire world to, who would best appreciate it? It was only fitting that it be these shepherds.
What God did was kind of give these shepherds a pink slip because 33 or so years later, this baby would be executed on a Roman cross for crimes that he never committed, thus paying the penalty for every rebellious act, or thought or motive ever committed and thus satisfying God’s wrath for the rebellion of every human being to have lived. He was essentially telling these shepherds that the particular job that they were performing would no longer be necessary. It was brilliant on God’s part.
So, what does this mean to us? Well, we’re in the same boat as those shepherds. The Messiah has come and his mission was to pay the consequences of our rebellion and restore the relationship between God the Father and us. He accomplished that mission. Now, the invitation that was given to the shepherds is being extended to us. The Messiah, the Savior of the World, has been born. Come and see for yourself. Hell doesn’t have to be our destiny unless we choose to reject this Messiah because the penalty invoked by our rebellion has been paid in full.
Here’s the thing though, God will not force us to accept this Messiah. If we choose to reject this Messiah, Jesus, we will remain estranged from God and that estrangement will last for all eternity. Make no mistake, Jesus would much rather be our savior than he would be our judge. Imagine this reality. Total forgiveness, every wrong thing that we’ve ever done, past, present, and future, paid for – a total pardon. For the person who chooses to end their rebellion against God and accept this Messiah, this savior, as their savior, starting from the moment that the decision is made until all eternity, this is their reality. It’s up to us though.
Reader, you know where you’re at, I don’t, but is it time for you to stop doing what you’re doing and pray a prayer that goes something like this? Does this prayer articulate your desire? “God, if this is true and if forgiveness for every wrong thing that I’ve ever done or will do, sin is what I guess the religious folks call it, is possible, then I want that. I don’t understand everything but I do understand that you and I are separated because of the things that I’ve done and I want that to end today. I choose to end my rebellion against you and I choose to accept this Messiah, this Jesus, as my savior. I’m going to take your word at face value and ask you to forgive me of my sin and restore the relationship between you and me back to the way that it was designed to be. I can’t do it but you can. Thank you for forgiving me. My rebellion against you is over and I’m submitting to your authority. In Jesus name, amen.”
What’s coming up next is a two segment post entitled, “Baby Jesus has Gone Missing…Again!!!” and it’s based on a true story. (I work in a high school, remember?) See you in a couple of days.
Baby Jesus Has Gone Missing…Again!!!
The next figurine that needs to be examined is the central figure of the whole Nativity set, the Baby Jesus, however, let’s step away from Mom’s house for this post and move to a different location and view a different Nativity Set. We’re going back to high school.
As some of you know, I work in a Christian high school so, during the Christmas season, the secular and the sacred peacefully co-exist. The Christmas tree and the wreaths and what not and the Nativity set all share space in the student lounge. Now this Nativity set at school, while not as ornate as the one that was in Mom’s house, is actually bigger. It has all of the same pieces as Mom’s did however although it’s currently down a piece as we shall see.
Last year during the Covid season, in terms of decorations, we scaled things down a bit while we were running a modified schedule with only a portion of our student body on campus at any one time. We did however, put up the essential ingredients of the Christmas season and that included the Nativity set. We put it in the central location so that it would dominate the room in many ways and, about a week in, it happened. The baby Jesus went missing! Yes, someone kidnapped the Baby Jesus and replaced him with a surrogate! Now who would kidnap the Baby Jesus in a Christian high school? If I had to guess, it was someone from the class of 2021 although no one ever came clean. Eventually, we did find the Baby Jesus stashed away in a wreath next to the big clock.
Fast forward to this year. It was business as usual as normalcy reasserted itself and our parent group along with a volunteer army of students decorated the entire campus. In the student lounge the same Nativity set was set up. For two weeks, nothing happened. Then last week, probably mid-week, I walked by the Nativity scene and noticed something was missing. The manger was empty. They’d kidnapped the Baby Jesus … again! Now, if experience has taught me anything in my job, I know my kids and this is not a crisis. In the first place, there are “Missing,” signs placed all over in the student lounge so I am pretty sure that he will eventually reemerge.
Also, for the sake of this website, I’m kinda glad that they did because they have given me material for this post. You see, when it comes to kidnapping the Baby Jesus, or at least removing him from Christmas, I wonder if we don’t do it too. I can imagine the angels watching what’s going on during the Christmas season in society and whispering to one another in soft tones, “Look at that. Baby Jesus has gone missing…again.” And many of us are nodding our heads, agreeing with the angels in righteous indignation until we realize something. They’re staring at us, you and me. But how, we ask? They can’t really be including us too, can they? Well, maybe they are and maybe it’s time to figure out just what they’re talking about.
Before I go any further, I need to explain what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to go after all of the secular items of Christmas. In the first place, they are fun and pleasant and to go after them seems frankly, grinchish. Also, they are no threat to Jesus, the baby in the manger, especially in light of who He really is. If we understand who this baby really is and if we put Him in His proper place, then the secular items become things to be fully enjoyed with gusto while the historical baby in the manger becomes the object of our worship and adoration. There’s no competition really and what I want to do is put Him back in His proper place. To do that though, we need to understand how Jesus gets kidnapped, again… and what He gets replaced with. Let’s get started.
Often, when Jesus gets removed, he gets replaced with a surrogate. Last year, in the student lounge, for example, the baby Jesus was replaced with a stuffed Gus-Gus, the mouse from Cinderella. Gus-Gus was the perfect size for the manger. They probably would have used Gus-Gus again this year except they don’t have him, I do. He’s currently setting on top of a couple of cans of Progresso Chicken Barley soup in my office. Candid observation, Gus-Gus is cute but he don’t do nothin’ like Jesus do. He’s an imposter. He’s just good for a laugh and an appearance in posts like this.
Now, moving to society as a whole, the surrogate of choice for Jesus usually is an overweight gentleman with white hair and a beard and he wears a red suit. Yep, Santa Claus. Don’t get me wrong, Santa Claus is cool, especially when Kurt Russell plays him, (The Christmas Chronicles is hilarious) and if one understands the legend of the historical Saint Nick, the giving of gifts is actually a fitting way to honor the man’s legacy. However, he does need to be put in his proper place, which is way below the historical Jesus. Santa Claus can’t save anyone and Santa Claus can’t transform lives so an individual becomes a better person. On the other hand, the historical Jesus, the God/man that the baby in the manger grew up to be, can do all of that and more.
Now some of you might be reading this about now and you’re tempted to shake your judgement finger at society in condemnation but I would hold off just a bit before I played that card because we aren’t different from the rest of society. We do it too. We just dress it in religious garb is all.
Probably the best way to illustrate what we do is to explain what we did this year when the baby Jesus went missing. After last year, I had suspected that the baby Jesus might get kidnapped again, so, in preparation for it, I took a picture of the real baby Jesus, just in the event that I needed it. Turns out that I did and last Thursday I printed off a copy of that pic, shrunk it to fit and taped it in the manger. While it was closer to being the real thing than is the church mouse, the cut out baby Jesus was still a sorry substitute for the real thing (as a junior girl walking by so aptly observed) because it has no substance but it illustrates perfectly what sometimes happens to Jesus around Christmas, especially in the church going circles. You see, sometimes we will acknowledge the baby in the manger is the savior but never connect the dots and link him to the crucified savior on the cross thirty some years later and definitely not connect him to the resurrected Lord three days later. Our Jesus remains tied to the manger, a helpless baby who is unable to save anyone at that point. Our Jesus is safe because He doesn’t challenge us to love our neighbor or call us out for our less than stellar behavior. He’s a savior we can control. Unfortunately, that’s not the real Jesus whose birth the angels announced.
The real Jesus, the Jesus that the real baby in the manger would grow up to become, is a Jesus with power. Remember that when the angels announced his birth to the shepherds that one of the titles they gave him was Lord, a title that, in cultural context, was reserved for God and God alone and yet, the angels pinned it on him. Rabbit trail for a minute, the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Philippians, wrote in Philippians 2:10 – 11, “at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” What Paul was saying is that everyone who has ever been born will someday bow the knee to Jesus and declare that He is the ultimate authority to the glory of God the Father. That’s a fact but there’s more. Let’s get back to the Nativity scene.
Another title that the angels pinned on the baby in the manger that night was savior and to illustrate this, I want to return back to the missing baby Jesus in the student lounge. Now, the historical baby Jesus had no flaws or blemishes but that is not the case with our baby Jesus in the lounge. The baby Jesus in our Nativity set has a flaw. He’s only made of hard plastic which can get brittle and sometime in the past couple of years, his left hand has broken off at the wrist. Our Jesus’ body is broken and I suppose that that’s kind of sad, but in some ways, especially as one views the historical Jesus, it’s fitting. Fast forward to some thirty three years after that night in Bethlehem. The scene is about six miles to the east of Bethlehem on a hill named Calvary, or Golgotha as it was also known as back then. The baby in the manger is now a fully grown rabbi and he’s being led away by Roman soldiers to be executed for crimes that he never committed. Even the governor who ordered the execution said he was innocent but it didn’t matter. The governor also realized that if he didn’t order the execution that a riot would break out and Rome would fire him so, essentially to save his own skin, he ordered the execution. The rabbi has been scourged by Roman soldiers and he’s trying to carry his cross but it’s too heavy for him. He collapses under the weight of it so a bystander is conscripted to carry it to the execution site for him. There, at the site of the execution, he is stretched out and nails are driven into his hands and his feet. Once secured, his cross is raised up and dropped into a hole in the ground. The impact jars his joints out of their sockets. It takes him three hours to die and afterwards, just to make sure that he’s really dead, a Roman soldier rams his spear into his side, full force. Blood and water, separated, spill out. This body of this baby in the manger, unblemished, thirty three years later is broken but he did fulfill his mission. He, the innocent one, paid the penalty for the guilty
So, what are we supposed to do with this during this season? Our natural response to all of this I suppose usually plays out in one of two ways. The responses are either outrage at the injustice or to push back, step back, and try to distance ourselves from the entire thing. Personally, I have hard time doing either one though, especially the latter. You see, when I look at the whole picture of what’s happening, I’m faced with this stark reality. The fact that this rabbi has been executed is my fault. I’m the reason that he’s there. Every rebellious act, thought, and motive against God that I was behind was the reason why he was there. Going back to the angels’ announcement to the shepherds, they called him Lord, God essentially, and that means that my rebellion, my sin, was a personal offense against him. And here’s where it gets crazy, I sinned against him but he willingly paid the penalty for it. He experienced death so that I could live eternally. And, just to prove that the sacrifice was sufficient to get it done and to prove that he really was God, on the third day he was raised from the dead. For forty days following, he made appearances to his followers, at one time to as many as 500 people at once. He let people touch him, he ate with them. This is the babe in the manger.
I suppose the question that some people are wondering at this point is, what was the point? Why was it all necessary? The churchy answer is that it’s because of our sin, our rebellion. But nobody’s perfect, so what’s the big deal? Follow the evidence trail. Based on what Jesus was willing to go through to address it, our rebellion is a much bigger deal with far more serious consequences than any of us would like to admit. If it wasn’t that way, there’s no way that this baby in the manger would ever have permitted his execution to happen, it wouldn’t have been necessary. So why did he do it? He loved us that much and he wanted to make it possible for things between us and God to be restored as they were intended to be in the first place. Look, the baby in the manger is God eternal, meaning that his existence didn’t start at conception, rather, it had no starting point. No, out of a lack of a better way to describe it, this baby, this Jesus, was a fully cognizant functioning adult in eternity past who willingly chose to experience what we experience from conception to death and not just any death, he chose death on a cross. Furthermore, even if there had only been one person in existence who needed him to do this for them, he would have done it. That’s what love looks like. That’s the real baby in the manger.
So, where is this baby, this resurrected Jesus, now? Yeah, about that, he’s gone missing again. According to the eyewitnesses, 40 days after the resurrection he ascended into heaven on a cloud with promise that someday he would return to earth to set up his kingdom. That means that, similar to the baby Jesus in the Nativity set, he will show up again. (Yes, I do believe that this event will happen in the future.) However, unlike the baby Jesus in the Nativity set that I have a hunch will be discreetly returned to my mailbox sometime during the first week or so in January, when Jesus returns a second time, according to the Bible, it will be a big deal. In fact, the whole world will watch it happen. Impossible…hello cellphones. Just sayin’. The question is, will we be ready when it happens?
I know that I’ve given you a lot to think about and, in light of what you have going on today, you may not get to it today, but please ponder it sometime in the next day or so. In the meantime, enjoy the people you’re around and give that aunt of yours a big hug. She’ll appreciate it. She hasn’t seen you for two years. Have a Merry Christmas and I’ll see you next week.
The Magi: The Outsiders Who Found the Child
For this post, we can leave the high school and come on back to Mom’s house because there’s one last group of figurines that we need to examine. They’re the three guys who look different from everyone else in the set. They’re the three wisemen along with their camel – careful – it spits. (Wait!? What? Ceramic camels don’t spit! They’re inanimate! Sorry, wrong story. My bad.)
Here’s the backstory behind these guys as Matthew recorded it in the second chapter of his gospel account. A year or two after Jesus was born this caravan of Magi from the east arrived unannounced in Jerusalem, went straight to the palace of King Herod, the ruler of Judea at the time, and inquired, “Where is the one who was born King of the Jews? We have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him.”
Now Herod was this hated, ego driven, paranoid ruler with absolute authority in Judea. (Yes, that’s a bad combination, but I’m not being judgmental, I’m just tellin’ it like it is. Before his death, the man gave orders that as soon as he died, his guards were supposed to go out and kill a bunch of servants in the palace. That way, in spite of the fact that he was hated, there would be mourning in the palace at the time of his death. Never mind that the mourning wasn’t for him, but at least there would be mourning. Paranoid, savage, ego maniacal tyrants can’t be picky. Just sayin’.) Okay, so, where was I? Oh yeah, the Magi and asking where the King of the Jews was. When Herod heard this, he was extremely agitated for two reasons. In the first place, the last time that he checked, he was the King of the Jews and secondly, which is frankly embarrassing for anyone with an ego like his to admit, he didn’t know where the King of the Jews they were looking for was. (He’d gone missing again. Oops, sorry, that was last Friday’s post. My bad…again.). As close as he could ascertain, these visitors had to be talking about the Messiah, and while yes, he had heard of this Messiah before perhaps, that was just legend, or at least so he thought. It was just wishful thinking on the part of the masses, kinda like the idea that the Detroit Lions will win a Super Bowl someday. Anyway, Herod inquired of the Jewish religious leaders where this Messiah was supposed to be born and they told him that the prophecies said that it would be in Bethlehem.
What Herod did was secretly meet with these Magi, determine when they saw the star and then sent them to Bethlehem with clear instructions that when they found the child that they were supposed to report back to him so that he too could go and worship him, something that he had no intention of doing. This child was a threat to his power and would have to be eliminated.
The Wisemen headed for Bethlehem and soon picked up the star they had seen back home again. It stopped directly over where the child was. When they arrived at Joseph and Mary’s home, they were overjoyed. They worshipped the child, they gave gifts and then they left, going home a different way because they had been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod. That warning was well founded by the way. Herod, after he realized that the Magi had double-crossed him, in effort to eliminate this King of the Jews, had all the male children under the age of two in the Bethlehem region killed. That was Herod’s m.o. for threat control. If someone was a perceived threat to his power, no problem, just kill ‘em. There. Problem solved. First wife make you jealous? Kill her. Two oldest sons are perceived threats and rub you the wrong way? No problem. Kill them too. It was just how he rolled. (I’m not making this up, Google it if you don’t believe me.)
So, who exactly were these Magi? No one knows for sure because Matthew didn’t tell us. He said that they came from the east …. that’s it. That’s all he said and when one looks east, that’s a lot of east out there. We also don’t know how many there were. Tradition says that there were three but once they got to Herod, you want me to believe that just three guys, even three rich guys, would cause all that commotion? Really? You’re killin’ me, Smalls. Although he doesn’t say for sure, smart money says that there were more than three Magi. Also, the gifts they gave indicate that they were men of means and the way that they arrived would indicate that they might have been men with at least some authority in their homeland. In some ways, their visit resembles an official government visit. And the verbiage that Matthew used to describe them in his record, Magi, indicates that they were stargazers, wizards, sorcerers. And folks, that’s it. That’s all we really know about them. Some Bible scholars have theorized that they might have been descendants of government officials in Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon some 500 years earlier and, while it certainly is plausible, no one knows for sure.
Something else that stands out about these men is that when they are compared to the Jewish religious leaders, the teachers of the Mosaic Law, the Pharisees and Sadducees is what they were called, the Magi were outsiders. The fact that they had to ask where the King of the Jews could be found is evidence that they were likely ignorant of the Torah and the rest of the Old Testament. No, Gentile stargazers is what they were. Polytheists? They could have been. We’re just not told.
In terms of what all of this has to do with you and me, there’s two things about the story of the Magi that really stood out to me at least. The first is just what it revealed about God. God has a desire to reach people, all people, and He’s not exclusively going after just one group, He wants them all. And, to get it done, He’ll often just play the hand that He’s dealt. In this case, getting it done included showing a star to a group of polytheistic stargazers in order to make it happen. Bottom line, He’ll use whatever is available to point people to Jesus and nothing is too difficult for Him because He can do anything.
The other thing was the Magi’s response. When they saw the star, they followed it to where it led them and then they started to ask questions. And, after they got their answer and saw that star again, they followed it to Joseph and Mary’s house. Once they were there and they saw the child, the word that Matthew uses to describe Jesus would indicate that he’s a toddler at this point, they gave him expensive gifts and they worshiped him.
So, does all of this apply to us? The Magi, it seems to me, were searching for truth and they weren’t finicky about where it came from. One thing that I have observed over the years is that sometimes, in our quest for truth, if we don’t like the source of the information, we’ll dismiss it outright, not because the information is necessarily false but because we don’t like the source where it came from. The Magi didn’t do that. In their quest for truth, they followed the evidence trail that was laid out before them and let the chips fall where they may. Do we do that or, especially if it’s something that’s recorded in the Bible, will we dismiss it because it runs counter to either our pre-suppositions or our ideology?
The other thing that is fascinating here is what the Magi did once they found the child. They worshipped him. The word here is that they paid homage to him in much the same way that a subject would pay homage to a king. This was in the time period when, among other things, emperor worship was part of the culture. Don’t miss the obvious principle here. The lesser always pays homage to the greater and in this case, it was the men of means and authority paying homage to the peasant child who the angels two years or so prior had pinned the title of Lord on, a title reserved for God and God alone. It’s also ironic in a sense because of who was paying homage to this child. It was Gentile outsiders and not Jewish insiders who worshiped this child.
You know, the last thing about Matthew’s account of the Wisemen that isn’t explained is why these guys were looking in the sky in the first place. Secular history tells us men like these were searching for truth and they thought that they could get their answers in the sky. Now, what stands out to me is just how relentless they were in their quest to find truth in their world. It’s entirely possible that what happened might have been that while they were going about their quest that, suddenly they saw this star and they wondered what its significance was so that they started investigating, looking through the information that they had. Perhaps it led them back to the Jewish scriptures that the Jewish captives had brought back with them during the Babylonian captivity some 500 years prior. Maybe they had had contact with the Greek civilization and had been introduced to the Septuagint, the Old Testament that had been translated into Greek. We just don’t know but what is obvious is this. Once they figured out what the significance of that star was, their response was kickstands up, we’re goin’ for it. Scholars have estimated that it might have taken them up to two or three years from the time that they saw that star until they actually arrived in Jerusalem. That’s factoring in both preparation and travel time. That’s dedication. What about us though? Are you and I that relentless in our quest for truth, especially regarding the stuff that really matters?
As I wrap things up, I want to talk especially to the person reading this whose life story perhaps doesn’t include church attendance or religion or anything like that. Not that you’ve particularly had anything against any of that or the people who are into that, or maybe you have but, in any case, it’s just never been part of your story. I have a question for you. What are you going to do with this Jesus, this child whom the wisemen worshiped? If the story of these Magi reveals anything it’s that you don’t have to be an insider to find Jesus, you just have to be willing to respond to the information that you have and be ready to learn. And don’t be surprised when your quest to learn, and find Jesus, takes you to the Bible. It was that way for the Magi. They were able to get to the general vicinity of the child through revelation that didn’t involve written Scripture, but they were only able to home in on the child’s exact location through prophesy that had been written in the Old Testament. For any of you reading this who are wondering how to investigate Jesus and evaluate what he’s all about, I would recommend that you read the first four books of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In most Bibles they are located approximately two thirds the way through the book. You can either use the Table of Contents in the front to find it or you can just take the guy approach and thumb through it until you find it. If you take the latter approach, as you’re thumbing through the Bible and you come across books with names like Psalms, Ezekiel, or Zechariah, keep going. If you come across Malachi, you’re almost there and if you come to Acts, Romans or Philippians, back up because you’ve gone too far.
One final thing, Jesus isn’t hiding. He wants to be found. There’s a promise in the Bible in Jeremiah 29:13 where God says, “If you will look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.” So, how about it? Jesus wants to be found, in fact, for some of you, he’s pursuing you relentlessly. The question is, how will you respond to him? Here’s the facts. Jesus never turned anyone away who was willing to come to him on his terms. Perceived insiders, definite outsiders, it didn’t matter. If they came to him on his terms, they were not only forgiven, but they also became family, adopted kids with full family rights and privileges. But those who blew him off, he honored their choice and let them go.
Does this prayer express where you’re at right now? “God, I’ve always considered myself an outsider when it comes to this God stuff, but if this is true, I want to know more about you. I want to find you. Please show me more. I’m interested and I’m looking for truth. Please show me the truth, about you, about me, about life. I want to know. I believe that what you said in Jeremiah is true so please help me to find you. In Jesus name. Amen.” Reader, if you pray that prayer or something similar to that, you won’t be disappointed. God will show up anytime that request is asked of him. Just be open to what he has to say. See you in a couple of days when I wrap up this series.
The Outtakes: Some Final Thoughts From Mom’s
Nativity Scene
I hadn’t necessarily planned on writing this particular post, not because I had any aversion to writing it per se, I just hadn’t thought about it, and yet, upon reflection, it kinda fits so let’s just roll with it and see where it takes us. One thing that always seems to happen when I write is that I learn a lot more than I post and in the rough drafts much more gets written than actually gets posted. Partly due to sheer volume and partly due to rabbit trails that just dead end, some stuff gets edited out. What I am going to do today is share some stuff that didn’t make the original posts. I guess that you could call them, the outtakes.
This paragraph was an actual paragraph that I wrote in the second post, Mary’s Story.
I want to take a rabbit trail for a minute. One of the things about Mary’s obedience and what it probably cost her is that it dispels a myth that’s out there that if we obey God, that life will be hunky dory. Not necessarily. Church goers, know this, sometimes obedience will cost us, a lot, everything, and if you’re a non-church attender, the same principle applies if you prefer to call it, doing the right thing. It’s merely a case of semantics because either way, whether you prefer to call it obedience or just doing the right thing, it’s possibly going to cost you and, in the end, often the tipping point for what we’re ultimately going to do will be the answer to this question. “If I do this or not, will I like the person that I see in the mirror or will I live to regret my decision.” It is what it is.
The second outtake is a reoccurring thought that I had as I was writing this series and that’s why we can trust these documents in the first place? How can we be sure that things happened like they say that they did? In a nutshell, I trust the Gospel accounts because they are eyewitness accounts told by people who were either there or interviewed people who were there. As they were telling their stories, these people had no reason to lie that I can see.
Just a back story on where I’m coming from with all of this. About a year and a half ago I came across a Christian apologist named J. Warner Wallace who uses a little bit different approach as he examines the Gospel accounts and the book of Acts. A career cold case homicide detective from California, Wallace was an atheist who began attending church when his wife became a Christian. He wasn’t all that keen on Christianity but, since his wife was now into this, he figured he should at least keep an eye on what she was getting herself into. As he tells his story, during one of the sermons that he heard, the pastor said that Jesus was the smartest man who ever lived and Wallace was intrigued enough to buy a $6 Bible to see for himself. He started reading the Gospels just to see perhaps if there might be a nugget or two of wisdom from this ancient teacher that he could use.
As Wallace began reading the Gospels, it that dawned on him that these accounts looked a lot like the cold case evidence testimonies that he had to deal with all the time professionally. Long story short, using his investigative skills as a cold case detective, Wallace became a Christian because he concluded that what was written was true. Nothing else made sense. For anyone who is interested in Wallace’s work, he has written two books, Cold Case Christianity and Person of Interest. Both can be purchased on Amazon.
Using this idea that Mary was Luke’s primary source for the Christmas story, I viewed Luke 1 and 2 from the lens of a mother’s eyes. The recorded events are things that would stand out to a mother but not necessarily to anyone else. When Luke wrote that an angel appeared to Mary and announced that she would bear a son, she was there and she was recalling it to him. The night of Jesus’ birth, when the shepherds showed up, she was there. The events of that night probably just blew her mind. She’s just had a baby and there was no room for her in the inn so she and Joseph had to make do. All of a sudden then these shepherds showed up and told her that angels appeared to them and announced the birth of her son. Don’t kid yourself, a mother doesn’t forget that stuff.
And why should we trust Mary? Consider this. In the introduction to his gospel, Luke states right from the beginning that his objective was to write an “orderly account,” of the events surrounding the life of Jesus. Bottom line, he’s a history guy and being a history guy myself, one of the things that we do is we make sure that we get our stories straight. There’s nothing worse than having to recant what you’ve written because your source was either in error or just straight-faced lied to you. (Don’t ask me how I know this.) And, according to Luke’s contemporaries who wrote about him, Luke was also a medical doctor. Track with me. If Luke was a doctor he may not have been able to treat dementia but he certainly would have recognized it when he saw it. If he would have sensed that Mary’s memory was shot or fuzzy, I have a hard time believing that he would have used her as a source. It doesn’t make sense. Furthermore, James, Jesus’ half-brother, was also alive at the time and could have corroborated the story. Either way, I am of the opinion that Luke can be trusted. The only reason that I can think of why a person wouldn’t trust him would have to be philosophical, the idea that the supernatural isn’t possible, because in terms of archeology corroborating anything that Luke recorded, archeology has never shown him to be wrong. Granted, there are things that perhaps archeology hasn’t been able to confirm, but that’s no different from any ancient writer. What’s key though is that they have never proven him wrong and until they do, Luke gets the benefit of the doubt, the same as any secular writer of antiquity.
Now probably the biggest outtake from this series that stood out to me was the fact that, as I looked at Mom’s Nativity Scene, aside from the angel, they are all outsiders rather than insiders. Mary and Joseph, two young kids really, at least from today’s standards, were poor. Yes, Joseph had the lineage perhaps, but the days of his lineage being of any significance were long gone. The shepherds, yes, they may have been Levites but they were the lowest on the food chain. They certainly weren’t the movers and the shakers in that world. And lastly, there were the Magi, Gentiles, not even part of the nation of Israel. Even the baby was an outsider when you think about it. Yes, the angels declared him to be Lord but he was born to a pair of working class parents and would live in their world for his entire life. If he was the Messiah, he certainly didn’t look very Messiahish.
All of these people had one thing in common though. They responded to God the Father on his terms. Mary, when faced with a decision between being a part of God’s plan for the world or hanging on to her reputation, said yes. Joseph was the same way. As far as the shepherds and the Magi are concerned, in both cases they responded to the revelation that was presented to them. What this means to anyone today who would consider themselves to be an outsider in relation to God, if they are willing to come to God on His terms, there’s room at the table for them.
As far as the baby is concerned, Jesus is God, the second person of the Trinity. Later in his life, John records that he said this to one of his disciples. “Whoever has seen me, has seen the Father.” If this is true, then what does this tell you about the character of God? He could have stacked the deck and come down in style and lived amongst the rich. He didn’t. If anything, He stacked the deck against Himself. He was born poor into the working class, in a barn at best. During His ministry, Jesus was homeless. His entire life, many who knew him, questioned the legitimacy of His birth. And the end, wow! He was falsely accused, framed, and lied about in an illegal trial. He was convicted in the end, not for anything that He did, but rather for who He was. He claimed to be God, which is blasphemy, unless you really are God. He was betrayed by one friend and abandoned by the rest. He allowed Himself to be executed in the cruelest way imaginable, crucifixion. And why? Because He loved humanity that much and there was no other way. If there was, based on what John wrote about Him on the night that He was betrayed, He would have taken it. And what does this tell us about the character of God. He is holy and all powerful and yet, He is gentle, humble, approachable. Oh yes, and just to remove all doubt as to whether or not He was really God, Jesus rose again on the third day. Boom!
So, where were the insiders, the established religious leaders when all of this went down? Did God just blow them off when Jesus was born? Did He neglect to send them a memo? I don’t think so and insiders, those of you who were raised in the church, just as I was, this one’s for us. For the record, I’ll be referring to events that a non-church attender may not be familiar with but we should be. As close as I can tell, the insiders got four memos sent to them.
The first one was when the angel announced to John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah, that John the Baptist would be born. Zechariah was serving in the Temple in Jerusalem, in the Holy of Holies, a highly restricted place when he was told that his barren wife would have a son who would become the forerunner to the Messiah. Luke records that Zechariah’s contemporaries discerned that something, a vision, a visitation, something had happened to Zechariah when he was in the Holy of Holies. The religious leadership never pursued it.
The second memo was when the angels visited the shepherds on the night that Jesus was born. After they saw the baby, the shepherds told anyone who would listen to them what they had seen. Apparently, the leadership ignored them.
The third time was eight days after Jesus was born when Joseph and Mary took him to the temple to be circumcised. In the temple they were greeted by an old man, Simeon, to whom had been revealed by God the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah. When Simeon saw the baby, he recognized supernaturally who the child was and he blessed the baby. At the same time, an old widow, Anna came by and Simeon told her all about this child. Here’s the deal. Both of these two believed that God was telling the truth when He said that He would someday send a Messiah and were looking for Him expectantly. After this experience, they told whoever would listen what they had seen, that the Messiah had been born, the key phrase here being, whoever would listen, evidently not the Jewish leadership.
And lastly, there were the Magi. This memo was an “in your face,” memo. It got Herod’s attention. But what about the religious leaders at the time, where were they? In Mom’s Nativity Set, as in real life, they are conspicuous by their absence.
The question that we have to ask here is what happened? Who dropped the ball? Why didn’t the insiders make an appearance? This is just speculation on my part but I suspect that they had a good thing going and they didn’t want to disrupt that. As we will see later in the Gospel accounts, when it came to providing animals suitable for temple sacrifices, they were making a killing. Imagine the profit margins that payday loan businesses make today and then put that profit margin on steroids. That’s what the religious establishment had going on in the temple. They would sell “suitable” lambs for sacrifice at exorbitant prices. Bonus history lesson here. Whenever you’re studying history, follow the dollar sign to its source and you’ll get a pretty good idea what’s going on.
I also have to think that they didn’t like the messengers because they weren’t one of their own. Zechariah came from Galilee, not Judea. The shepherds were pretty low on the pecking order. As far as Simeon and Anna went, they were just a couple of old people and not really part of the status quo. And the Magi? Seriously? They were Gentiles, ignorant of the Scriptures. My guess is that because of the source of the message, the messengers in other words, this message was either ignored or 86’d altogether.
Insiders, here’s what we can take away from that. If an outsider speaks truth, we have to evaluate it against what is written in the Bible and, if it lines up with what the Bible says, we have to take it seriously. Now, if it doesn’t line up, that’s an entirely different matter, however, if it lines up, regardless of the messenger, we need to pay attention to the message. I suspect that there have been many messages sent to us through unlikely sources that we have rejected, not because the messages weren’t true but because we didn’t like the messenger. They weren’t one of us and we have to stop doing that.
The next series that I want to tackle is a four or five week series about three parables that Jesus told in Luke 15. I’ll probably start that in the next couple of weeks or so. See you then.
In the meantime, I do welcome interaction with my readers and if you want to reach me, I can be reached at [email protected] . I do monitor that account on a regular basis. See you next time.