The Promise of Christmas

God moves in the midst of chaos.  He shines when everything seems the darkest and, with God, there is hope in even the deepest despair.  It is part of who he is…it is what he does…and it is why we can place our hope in him even as we approach the most ominous of valleys.

Our God not only moves in the midst of chaos, but he was moving long before there was even a hint of turmoil.  Before darkness had a name, God was speaking light.  He was speaking peace when despair was not even a thought, and the valley shimmered in the distance.

And when, in an instant, the perfection of his creation was shattered, God gave us the promise of Christmas.

With one act of disobedience in Eden the cosmos was fractured, from the most distant galaxies known only to the Creator, to the DNA strands he used to carefully weave the creatures who would occupy his most treasured planet.  The damage rippled from the tiniest atom to the largest star.  All the beauty that appeared when God spoke from somewhere deep within the glory of his imagination was shattered and broken through the rebellion of the beneficiaries of his magnificent work.  Creation was fractured.  Man’s relationship to God was fractured.  Adam’s relationship to Eve was fractured.  The absolute order of all things became foggy and muddled.

But God moves in the midst of chaos. 

 

Standing in the devastation caused by sin, God makes a promise he resolved to make somewhere in the eternity before creation.  He would pass a judgment onto the woman.  He would pass a judgement onto the man.  But before he chastises them, he gives them hope for the future.  First, God curses the physical serpent:

 The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.   Genesis 3:14 (ESV)

Then God curses the spiritual serpent…the liar…the deceiver…the seducer…Satan… with the words:

 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”  Genesis 3:15 (ESV)

In that curse is the promise of Christmas.  In that curse is the promise of the cross and the promise of the resurrection.  With those words God was promising to do what he had determined to do long before he spoke anything into existence.  The Creator himself would take on flesh, crush the enemy and redeem his people.

Our Father planned it from eternity.  He promised it even as he felt the pain of man’s rebellion echo through the cosmos.  He spoke it before he led man from Eden into a life of toil on the earth, “A woman is going to have a son, and he will crush Satan along with the death and destruction he has caused.”

 But when the fullness of time had come….God sent forth his Son….born of woman… Galatians 4:4 (ESV)

In God’s time, when everything demanded by his perfect timeless plan was in place, the Creator humbled himself to do what only he could do.  He placed himself into the hands of his rebellious creation, and set out to fix, restore and redeem what had been lost in the garden.

…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…John 1:14

With that, the promise of Christmas became a reality on that most sacred and holy of nights.

^….And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
Luke 2:7 (ESV) 

To be sure, that is not the end of the story.  It is not the end of the promise.  But it is a beautiful reminder of the depths our Father will go to move in the chaos, to shine in the darkness and to bring hope even in the deepest despair.

Christmas: Turning Fear into Joy

Well, it’s the time of the year to dust off Luke 2 again.  From Linus using it to explain Christmas on one of the airings of, A Charlie Brown Christmas, to six year old’s wrapped in sheets gently being pushed onto the stage as the narrator reads, “And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.”  Families around the globe will pause during the hectic bustle of the season to read Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus.  It will be read in churches on Christmas Eve and Christmas day and probably on the Sunday before as well.

It occurs to me that this is the gospel in its most simple form.  Either that baby was who the angel proclaimed him to be…a Savior.  Or he wasn’t.  Either that baby grew into a man who ushered the Kingdom of God into this world by dying on a cross and being raised from the dead, or he grew into a man who deceived the world.  It is the gospel in its simplest form.

And, as Luke 2 is read on Christmas Eve all over the world, denominational distinctions will fade, Armenians will harmonize with Calvinists, and the church will unite around the birth of this baby who was born a king and destined to die for his kingdom.  On that night, the premillennialists will not be debating the postmillennialists, and it will not matter whether the rapture is pre, mid, or post tribulation.  All eyes will be on that baby in the manger.  Theology will bow, for one night, to the image of that newborn in the arms of his mother being worshipped by shepherds.

There is so much packed into Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus, but a few things have stood out to me this year as I’ve worked my way through the Advent season.

First, I have realized, that in the account of the angel appearing to the shepherds, the angel has received too much attention.  In saying that, I mean no disrespect to the angel, and I have no desire to detract from the countless boys and girls who have landed the role of the angel in this year’s Christmas pageants.  Believe me when I say that I am a fan of angels, and I am sure the appearance of this one two thousand years ago grabbed the attention of the shepherds.  However, I would suggest that what caused the fear in these nomadic sheep herders was not so much an angel lighting up the darkness of the night sky, but 

 rather can be found in the words right after the appearance of the angel.

"…and the glory of the Lord shone around them…"

And then what happened?

"…and they were filled with great fear."

Again, not to be dismissive of the angel, but the glory of God trumps everything.  The weight of God’s glory pushes the splendor of anything around it to the side.  When the heaviness of the glory of God invades any space, it fills that space, while men tremble and are terrified.  The angel appearing may have shocked these men and made them afraid, but the great fear that they felt came from the glory of God shining around them.  They saw the bright light that surrounds the presence of God, and they were rightly terrified.

 

Some of the most righteous men in the bible were terror-stricken in the presence of God’s glory.  Consider Isaiah’s words,  “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” Isaiah 6:5 (ESV).  Or the apostle John getting a glimpse of the glorified Christ in Revelation,  ^“When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.” 
Revelation 1:17 (ESV). 

Whenever man gets a glimpse of the glory of the Creator, with all of his manifold perfections, human sinfulness is exposed for the assault on God’s character that it really is, and man is left trembling in fear.  In the light of God’s indescribable glory, the utter darkness of man’s heart is laid bare and there can be no reaction but one of dread.

For anyone who has ever acknowledged Christ as their Savior, there has been that realization.  They receive a Holy Spirit anointed glimpse of the glory of God through his Word, or through a sermon, or through someone sharing the gospel message.  Maybe they receive it through seeing the beauty of his creation, and hearing a voice whisper the truth that it was formed by the finger of God.  Or by seeing his glory in the eyes of a child. Or in the unseen hand that silently touches them as they wait through a dark and lonely night. 

There are so many ways that God reveals his glory, but a common denominator for everyone who has come to him is that they have seen a glimpse of it.  And, in seeing that glimpse, they see his purity.  They see his excellence.  They see his beauty. 

When any person sees just a glimpse of that glory, he is driven to momentary despair in knowing that he is worthy of every bit of wrath and anger this God who is perfect in perfection would pour out on him.  It is, in this place, where we have to acknowledge that we are not mistake makers, we are sinners.  We have to admit that we don’t just slip once in a while, we live in the depths of rebellion against this glorious God.  We no longer think that, while our actions may sometimes be wrong, our hearts are in the right place.  When even a little of God’s glory is revealed to us…when we see even a little of what God is like…the darkness and wickedness and depravity of our hearts are laid bare.

That is why Isaiah cried, “Woe is me.”  It is why John, “fell at his feet as though dead.”  And it is why the shepherds were filled with great fear. 

But even as they were filled with great fear, the angel tells them not to fear.  He says, “I bring you good news of great joy.”   So he says to them, in the midst of their great fear from being surrounded by the glory of God, “I’ve got some good news for you, that will not only remove the fear, but will turn the fear into great joy.”

What was the good news?

^“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” Luke 2:11 (ESV)

Notice the order.  They see the glory of God, and in seeing who God is, they realize their utter sinfulness.  They realize how hopeless it is for them, and so they are filled with great fear.  But the angel says, “Here’s the good news, a Savior has been born for you.”

For sure, it was good news that brought them great joy.  When you hear about the good news that saves you from the justifiable wrath and judgement of the God of all creation, it brings great joy.

That is always the path to Christ.  A revelation of the glory of God reveals the reprehensible state of our sinfulness before a holy God.  And as the Holy Spirit brings that revelation he also whispers to us, “But here’s the good news, there is a Savior who is Christ the Lord.”

The other part of Luke’s account of the birth of Christ that has stood out to me as we’ve gone through the Advent season this year is the last verse.

And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen….  Luke 2:20 (ESV)

The shepherds returned.  What did they return to?  They returned to being shepherds.  They returned to the sheep. 

At the time of Christ’s birth, shepherds did not have the reputation that their forerunners in the Old Testament had.  The Old Testament had the Patriarchs, Moses and David.  By the time the New Testament roles around shepherds  were considered dishonest thief’s.  They were not allowed to worship in the temple, and they were not permitted to be witnesses in any legal battle.  They were not trusted.

After seeing the angel, experiencing the glory of God, and kneeling before the Savior, they returned to herding sheep.  Nothing had changed for these guys.  They were still not welcome to worship in the temple.  They were still not trusted and were still considered thief’s  Their testimony was still not reliable, and people would prefer that they not enter their villages and cities. 

Nothing in their circumstances had changed.  But they returned glorifying and praising God. They returned rejoicing because they were filled with joy.

It occurs to me, and the lesson I take from this is that when we experience a taste of the glory of God, and kneel before the Savior, often times, God does not take us out of our situation.  He does not always change our circumstance.  What he does, however, is flow into our space.  And whenever God fills the space that is our life, there is an overflow of praise and worship…there is joy…and there is rejoicing.  We may return to the same condition we were in before, but we return rejoicing. 

May you see the glory of the Father in new ways this Christmas.  May you bow before the Savior in new levels of worship.  And, may our God flood the space of your life with ever increasing joy.

       

     

The Dream

I had a strange dream one night not long ago.  Ironically, in the dream, I was waking from a dream.  The dream inside of the dream was that the past forty years of my life had been the imaginations of a sleeping brain.  This life that I had struggled through at times, and walked victoriously through at others, had been nothing but a dream.

Forty years ago next month, I committed my life to Jesus Christ. On that night, I confessed that I was a sinner, asked Jesus Christ to be my Savior and, in the peace following that prayer, I fell asleep.  The dream I dreamed was that my life, since I fell asleep that night four decades ago, had been in the imagination of my unconscious cerebrum. The Christian walk I had thought I had walked had been nothing other than the nocturnal ramblings of my gray matter.  In essence, I woke up starting the first day of my walk with Christ.

Now, I have never been good at remembering dreams, and that remained true of this one.  What is vivid, however, is the range of emotions that I felt when I realized that my life as a follower of Christ was truly just beginning.  The slate was clean.  The canvas was blank, and ready to be painted.  And, what I had thought was going to be the story of my life, had been nothing but visualizations of a brain doing what a slumbering brain does. 

  

The first emotion was one of relief.  Even in my unconscious state, I realized that a forty year dream would have been a long one, but the first feeling I had was of relief.  I had not yet run the race.  While I was preparing to finish the race, the race had not even started for me.  I would be able to run it stronger, jump the hurdles that had tripped me up, and avoid the valleys that had bogged me down.  I would bury myself in God’s word and bathe myself in prayer.  I would keep my eyes on the prize and not let anything detour me.  There would be success where there had been failure, strength where there had been weakness, and victory where there had been defeat.  For an instant the excitement of starting the race anew flowed over me.

But the relief and excitement rather quickly gave way to disappointment.  Rather than being thrilled that I got to do it again, I faced the discouraged realization that I had to do it again.  For sure, there have been utterly beautiful times in my life that I would like to relive.  But for every one of those times, there have been bitterly destructive times filled with shame and regret for how I have trampled on the grace of Christ.  Even as I told myself, as I woke from the dream, that I would walk more faithfully, love the Father more deeply, and serve Christ more devotedly, I knew that I wouldn’t.  I knew that my youthful pride and arrogance would not tolerate that any more than my self-sufficiency would permit it.  

Indeed, it was my pride, arrogance, and self-sufficiency that caused the initial rush of elation when I first woke from the dream, as they teamed up to assure me that it would be different now that I knew where the pitfalls and valleys were.  But the realization soon came that it was through the pitfalls and valleys where the God diminishing characteristics that were assuring my ego that we would be successful this time around were drained away.

With this awareness, I understood that I could not avoid the dark places, because it had been in the dark places where my Father had done some of his deepest work.  As he carried me through the valleys of my sin and rebellion, I am convinced that it was there that he did some of his most profound shaping.  I have been shaped more in the valleys than on any mountaintop.  He has carved and molded me more in the quiet places than in the most ardent worship, the dark places rather than the sunny, the gloomy places more than the joyful.  It was in the shadows where self sufficiency was drained away and God dependency grew.  And, as grateful as I am of the work my Father has done in those places, I do not want to walk them again.  While I am grateful for the refining work of the fire and the transformations it has brought about, I have no desire to experience them again. 

I realize that through the flames, I have experienced the grace and mercy of Christ in ways that could never have been accomplished apart from them.  Because of them, I stand firmly on the grace poured out on the cross, and put no confidence in my flesh.  I realize that what God wants to do in me, is more important than anything I feel that I need to do for him.

To be clear, I am not claiming that God walked me into darkness in those seasons in my life so that he could mold and form me.  I took myself to those places through sin and rebellion.  My pride, arrogance and ego dragged me into the valleys.  But there was a thickness of the presence of God in those dark nights of the soul that chipped away at those prideful character flaws that had led me there.   

Everyone suffers.  Some suffering is self-inflicted.  Some just comes from walking through a sinful world.  But the truth I have learned about my Father in those dark places is that he redeems our suffering.  He does not waste even one of our sorrows.  He does not squander our pain.  In a way only the creator and sustainer of all things can, he uses those seasons for his glory and, ultimately, for our good. 

In these seasons, I have learned the depth of the grace and mercy Christ poured out for me on that cross.  God has imprinted Paul’s words somewhere deep within my soul, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”  It is that rhythm of grace that beats deep within me.

And, while I am thankful for the work God has done in those seasons of desperation,  and while I praise him for opening my eyes to the depths of his mercy, I have no desire to walk through them again.  I am happy to be nearing the end of this journey, to be on this side of the race, to be looking toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  I am content with that.  I am satisfied with that.  And, I am happy the dream was only a dream.