Month: December 2016

The Twelfth Day: Morning

Behold the King at Christmas

 

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.”

Matthew 2:1,2

Also read Luke 1:31–33

 

The baby lying in Bethlehem’s manger on that first Christmas so long ago was none other than the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

We must say this because the angel Gabriel said it to Mary in no uncertain terms (Luke 1:31-33). The wise men, who journeyed far to find Jesus, made it clear that they were searching for the King of the Jews (Matt. 2:2). Did they have a complete and accurate understanding of Jesus’ kingship? Probably not. But the Holy Spirit of God had given them enough illumination to know that Jesus was born not only to be a king but a very special kind of king.

The gifts they brought to Him speak volumes. There was frankincense, myrrh and gold. Strange gifts for a baby you say? Not for this baby! Frankincense (pure incense) was something offered to God. Myrrh was a burial spice. And gold was a gift appropriate for a king.

Did they wrap their gifts? No. But wrapped in their gifts was a ton of truth. They had found the baby who was God in human flesh, the baby who had come to this earth in our humanity to die for sinners; they had found the baby who was King over all. Origen was surely correct in saying of the gifts the wise men gave Jesus: “… gold, as to a king; myrrh, as to one who was mortal; and incense, as to God.”

The very fact that the wise men worshiped Jesus tells us a great deal. No ordinary baby, this baby! No ordinary king, this king!

But we haven’t gone far enough if we merely assert the kingship of Jesus. We must ask: What kind of king? Herod saw in the baby of whom the magi spoke a rival to his own throne. If Jesus had been born a king, He must be the same kind of king as Herod himself—the king of a temporal realm. Herod could conceive of no greater king than an earthly king and no greater kingdom than an earthly kingdom, yet he could not possibly have been more mistaken. Yes, Jesus was a king, but not at all like Herod! Jesus did not come to be mere the temporary king of a temporary kingdom. And He certainly did not come to rule His subjects with the cruelty and heartlessness that was Herod’s.

One day, Jesus himself would say to Pilate: “You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice”(John 18:37).

Three words should spring to our minds when we think of King Jesus and His kingdom: spiritual, universal, eternal.

 

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The Eleventh Day: Morning

This King Is a Shepherd (1)

 

O Zion, You who bring good tidings,

Get up into the high mountain;

O Jerusalem, You who bring good tidings,

Lift up your voice with strength,

Lift it up, be not afraid;

Say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!”

Behold, the Lord GOD shall come with a strong hand,

And His arm shall rule for Him;

Behold, His reward is with Him,

And His work before Him.

He will feed His flock like a shepherd;

He will gather the lambs with His arm,

And carry them in His bosom,

And gently lead those who are with young.

Isaiah 40:9–11

 

Have you ever wondered why the angels announced the birth of Jesus to shepherds? It seems that the birth of the King of kings should have been announced to royalty rather than to ordinary shepherds. Did the angels misunderstand their assignment? Was there some sort of computer foul-up in heaven? No, there was no mistake. God had the birth of the King of kings announced to shepherds because it was appropriate. Jesus was to be a king, but He was also to be a shepherd.

King and shepherd? It sounds like a glaring contradiction. Consider the shepherd of the Bible. First, his life was one of extreme hardship. He was constantly exposed to the extremes of heat and cold. He usually subsisted on meager supplies. At times his life was imperiled as he defended his sheep from the attacks of wild beasts.

His life was also one of dull routine. Each morning he led the flock from the fold to the pasture by going before them and calling to them. At the pasture, he maintained careful watch over the sheep. If one strayed he sought it out and brought it back. He counted the sheep as they entered the fold to make sure none was missing. Since there was usually no door to the sheepfold, the shepherd himself would serve as the door by positioning himself at the opening of the sheepfold. No sheep could leave and no intruder could enter without the shepherd knowing about it.

That’s certainly a far cry from the life of a king. The king knew nothing about extreme hardship and dull routine. He was surrounded by scores of people whose sole purpose was to keep him from facing even minor inconveniences. And when the king got bored, there were numerous avenues he could take to find a diversion. The king could travel, throw a party, or call in the court jester.

It seems, in light of these things, to be utterly ludicrous to mention a king and a shepherd in the same breath, let alone suggest one person could be both. But this is, in fact, what the passages in these two readings tell us about Jesus. He is both shepherd and king, the shepherd-king. In other words, He is the king who rules in the manner of a shepherd. He combines a king’s authority with a shepherd’s heart.

 

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The Tenth Day: Morning

This King Is a Servant (1)

 

A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for a disciple that he be like his teacher, and a servant like his master.

Matthew 10:24-25

 It is not too far-fetched to imagine a king who is a stranger to the people over whom he rules. But who can conceive of a king being a servant? It’s like talking about a giant pygmy or a square circle. The two simply don’t belong together. Everyone knows kings are not to serve, but are to be served.

Jesus Christ is not a typical king, and the Bible makes it clear He came to be a servant. He said it Himself: “… the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve…” (Matt. 20:28).

How can such a thing be? Jesus is such a great king that the Scriptures actually call Him “King of kings” (1 Tim. 6:15). If He is the greatest of all kings, how can He be a servant?

Let’s stop and think about servants for a moment. What pops into your mind when you hear that word? Do you not think of someone who has work to do? Do you not think of someone who is under authority and who has no will of his own, but simply does the work assigned to him? Do you not think of someone who has little or none of the world’s goods, lives in lowly circumstances, and has no status? Do you not picture someone whose life involves suffering, pain, and sorrow?

Do you agree these are the major characteristics of the servant? You will find that all of the characteristics of a servant are prominently displayed in King Jesus.

 

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The Ninth Day: Morning

This King Is a Stranger (1)

 

That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
John 1:9-13

 

Christmas is the time when Christians celebrate the birth of the greatest king of all times, Jesus Christ. When we think of kings certain things quite naturally come to mind. We think, for instance, of someone who has absolute authority over a distinct group of people. This person is enormously rich, and he indulges himself to the fullest with extravagant living. (We still hear advertisements of products that will help us to live like a king.) This person is always surrounded with servants who answer to his beck and call. Quite often, we think of a king as someone who wields his authority without much rhyme or reason and without the slightest regard to the welfare of his subjects.

As we examine the kingship of Jesus during this Christmas season, we are going to discover He is nothing at all like the typical king. In today’s readings, I call your attention to Jesus as a stranger. Perhaps you have never thought of Him in this way. The hymn-writer, Mary MacDonald, thought of it and wrote:

 

Child in the manger, Infant of Mary

   Outcast and stranger, Lord of all.

 

The Scriptures above reveal two distinct ways in which Jesus may be regarded as a stranger.

 

Defying Expectations

Jesus was a stranger to His own people in the sense that He defied their expectations.

The Jews were certainly looking for a king. Make no mistake about that. They knew their Scriptures, and those Scriptures were steeped with prophecies about a coming king. The Book of Deuteronomy assured them that a prophet like Moses would arise (Deut. 18:15,18). King David, their favorite king, had been given marvelous promises that a great king would arise from his descendants (2 Sam. 7:12-13,16). Their prophets had punctuated their prophecies with promises of the coming of this king, and with intoxicating descriptions of the glory He would bring to Israel (e.g. Amos 9:11-15; Hag. 2:8; Zech. 14:1-21).

The people longed for this king to come. The glory days of Israel had now faded into the distant past and not even one prophet had arisen in the last four hundred years to trumpet afresh the promise. We might interpret this combination of events to mean the people were ready to give up all hope, but it seemed to cause many of them to cling more tenaciously to the promises and yearn more intensely for them to be fulfilled.

 

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The Eighth Day: Morning

Christmas for the Sinful (1)

O LORD, I will praise You;

Though You were angry with me,

Your anger is turned away, and You comfort me.

Behold, God is my salvation,

I will trust and not be afraid.

Isaiah 12:1,2

Read Isaiah 12:1-6

Each Christmas we hear countless statements on what Christmas is “all about.”  Someone invariably says Christmas is “all about” family or sharing or loving or giving or partying and so on.

When was the last time you heard someone say Christmas is all about sin? No one ever says that, but that’s exactly what Christmas is about. If there had been no sin, there would have been no need for Christ to come, and if Christ had not come, there would be no Christmas.

The prophecy of Isaiah contains what some scholars refer to as the “Book of Immanuel.” This small book begins with chapter seven and concludes with this twelfth chapter. This is a chapter about deliverance. Some think it describes nothing more than the joy the people of Judah would feel when they were finally delivered from the threat of conquest by the Assyrians.

While there can be no doubt that this hymn of praise was indeed a fitting response to that deliverance, we must go beyond it to the far greater deliverance that Christ came to provide. We have a scriptural precedent for doing this. The deliverance of the nation of Israel from Egypt, for instance, is used by the apostle Paul as a type or picture of the Christian’s deliverance from sin (1 Cor. 5:7).

In addition to that we must remember we are in the “Book of Immanuel,” in which the prophet looks beyond the political situation of the day to that time when God would come to dwell among His people through His Son, Jesus. No mere political deliverance can begin to compare with the deliverance Jesus came to provide for His people.

Each Christian can, therefore, look back on his or her salvation and say to the Lord the very same things that the prophet here records. First, the Christian can truthfully say to the Lord, “You were angry with me” (v.1).

 

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The Seventh Day: Morning

Christmas for the Sorrowful (1)

The people who walked in darkness

Have seen a great light;

Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death,

Upon them a light has shined.

Isaiah 9:2

Read Isaiah 9:1-7

 There can be no question about the identity of the member of the “Ful” family being entertained here. Here we have the people of God entertaining none other than Sorrowful. The words “gloom” and “distressed” (v. 1) tell us as much.

What was the cause of this sorrow? The Assyrians had inflicted great distress on the northernmost tribes of Israel, Zebulun and Naphtali, and they were now hovering menacingly over the remaining portion of the kingdom of Israel and over the kingdom of Judah. So the people of Zebulun and Napthali were already living in deep darkness (v.2), and the dark storm clouds were gathering for many others.

It is possible that the words of the passage before us were sent by Isaiah to the distressed northern tribes to comfort them. The other possibility is Isaiah delivered this message to his own people, the people of Judah, to assure them of a glorious future that would include even those northern regions now under Assyrian control.

This much is beyond dispute: the message of Isaiah found its ultimate fulfillment in the Lord Jesus Christ.  We know this because when Jesus began His ministry in the northernmost region of Israel, Matthew claimed it as a fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy (Matt. 4:12-16).

We can say, therefore, that through the words of this passage the prophet Isaiah was comforting the sorrowful people of his day by pointing them ahead to the coming Christ. In essence he was saying: “You must look beyond the sorrow of this time to the coming of the one who can drive sorrow away.”

We are also living in an age of sorrow. Millions know what it is to have the dark clouds of gloom hovering over them. Why are so many sorrowful today? “Gloom-makers” abound. Sickness, death, financial hardship, family tensions—all of these and many more generate sorrow.   Sorrow is not, however, the only thing that connects us with Isaiah’s distant day. Just as he pointed his sorrowing people to the Christ, so we can point the gloomy of our day to Christ. The only difference is that while Isaiah pointed to a coming Christ, we are able to point to the Christ who has come.

How does Christ drive sorrow away from human hearts? The prophet gives us the answer to that question by calling our attention to the four names by which the coming Christ would be known: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace.

What balm and solace there is for the sorrowing in those four names! They affirm that each sorrowing child of God has four things in Christ that can drive sorrow away.

 

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The Sixth Day: Morning

Christmas for the Doubtful (1)

There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse,

And a Branch shall grow out of his roots.

The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him,

The Spirit of wisdom and understanding,

The Spirit of counsel and might,

The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.

Isaiah 11:1-2

The prophet is here referring to the house of Jesse. It was a grand house indeed. It was from that house that great king David had sprung. Jesse was his father.

It was while David was king that God made some staggeringly glorious promises regarding the house of Jesse. David was told that the promised Messiah would come from among His descendants, and that the Messiah would be a king like no other. While all other kings rule for a limited period of time, the Messiah would reign forever (2 Sam. 7:16).

It would seem, in light of these promises, that the house of Jesse was destined to go from victory to victory without so much as a single lull. It would seem that the luster of the house of Jesse would never diminish.

 

The Miserable Condition of the House of Jesse

Now we fast forward several years to the time of Isaiah, and the future house of Jesse is not so bright. It was a terribly serious time. The powerful Assyrian Empire was running around consuming her neighbors, and the nations that had not been overrun were nervous and afraid. Among these nervous nations was Judah. As her citizens surveyed the future, they found themselves wondering how long they could survive.

The survival of the nation was much more than a personal and political question. Bound up in it was this perplexing question: if the nation did not survive, what would become of all the glorious promises God had made to the house of Jesse? Specifically, what would become of that greatest of all the promises, the promise of the Messiah? The situation in Judah was so bleak at the time Isaiah was ministering that it appeared as if there would not even be a house of Jesse from which the Messiah could come. I can imagine several of the people of that time saying something like this: “Before the Messiah can get here the house of Jesse is going to be nothing more than a rotten stump.”

In light of these things, we can say many in Judah were entertaining one of the more distasteful members of the “Ful” family—doubtful.

Fueled by the Assyrian crisis, their doubtfulness was destined to become even more pronounced in the future. The Assyrian crisis was to pass, but a far more serious crisis would take its place, one that would see the Babylonians come into the land of Judah, destroy the city of Jerusalem and the temple, and deport the king and most of the citizens.

Those who had to endure the Babylonian ordeal would have even more reason to shake their heads in dismay over the house of Jesse. At that time it would look as if Jesse’s house was nothing but a dead, decaying stump.

 

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The Fifth Day: Morning

Christmas for the Fearful (1)

Now it came to pass in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to make war against it, but could not prevail against it. And it was told to the house of David, saying, “Syria’s forces are deployed in Ephraim.” So his heart and the heart of his people were moved as the trees of the woods are moved with the wind.

 Isaiah 7:1,2

Most of us are familiar with the “Ful” family. We spend a good bit of our time with them. Some of them are very appealing. Joyful, Prayerful, Hopeful and Faithful are among the most attractive.

Other members of this family are unsavory characters to say the least. There are, to name just a few, Fearful, Sorrowful, Doubtful, and Sinful.

Sadly enough, many of us spend more time with the repulsive members of the family than we do with the attractive members! They always seem to be knocking at the door, and, all too often, we let them in. And they are guests that never want to go home! Well,   I have good news for all those who have been hosting the unsavory “Fuls.” Among all the many benefits and blessings of Christmas, we can and must acknowledge this: Christmas deals in a marvelous way with the dreadful members of the “Ful” family. It has the capacity to drive them from us and to bring peace and tranquility in their stead.

The prophecy of Isaiah brings before us the sad spectacle of a man who was entertaining one of the “Ful” family. Here we have Ahaz, king of Judah, entertaining none other than that nasty and despicable character, Mr. Fearful. Verse two of the passage before us says of Ahaz: “So his heart and the heart of his people were moved as the trees of the woods are moved with the wind.”

In other words, Ahaz and his people were frightened, terribly frightened. They were so afraid that their hearts were trembling within them.

 

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The Fourth Day: Morning

The Christmas Sorrow of the Angels (1)

 

For to which of the angels did He ever say:

“You are My Son, Today I have begotten You”?

And again:

“I will be to Him a Father,

And He shall be to Me a Son”?

But when He again brings the firstborn into the world, He says:

“Let all the angels of God worship Him.”

Hebrews 1:5-6

The angels of heaven rejoiced over the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ because it marked the beginning of His redeeming work in history, a work that was designed to bring glory to God. The angels always rejoice when God is glorified.

If it is legitimate to speak of the Christmas joy of angels, it would also seem to be legitimate to speak of the Christmas sorrow of angels. But what is there about Christmas that would cause the angels to be sorrowful? The author of the book of Hebrews provides insight on this matter. He writes to Jews who had made a profession of faith in Christ but had begun to waver. Some of them had begun to wonder if they had been right to forsake Judaism and profess Christ.

So this author takes up his pen and begins to write. He devotes more than half of his letter to demonstrating for his readers the superiority of Christ. He does this by showing how those persons and things most venerated by Judaism pale in comparison to Christ. Moses, the priesthood, and the temple itself cannot begin to compare with the Lord Jesus.

The angels were among those most venerated by the Jews, so much so that the author begins his presentation of the superiority of Christ by showing how He far surpasses the very angels themselves.

The author drives this point home by making note of what God has not said to the angels (v.5) and then what He has said to them (v.6).

 

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The Third Day: Morning

The Christmas Joy of the Angels (1)

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying:

“Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!

 Luke 2:13,14

Read Luke 2:8-14

We know the angels are capable of joy. The book of Job tells us they shouted for joy as they watched God perform His work of creation (Job 38:7).

The joy of the angels on that occasion must have been very great indeed. How amazing to hear God speak a mere word and then see something pop into existence! Perhaps the angels exclaimed, “Oh!” and “Ah!” as they witnessed one act of creation after another. Perhaps we do not go too far astray if we imagine them conversing as they watched. A particular act of creation may very well have caused one to say: “Wow! That was a good one!” Another act may have caused yet another angel to say: “That’s the one I like!”

How did the angels respond when they saw the first man, Adam, spring forth as a result of God stooping down, taking a handful of dust and breathing into it? (Gen. 2:7). There must have been some “Ohs” and “Ahs” then. This man, a little lower than the angels themselves (Heb. 2:7), was God’s special creature. He was made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26), crowned with glory and honor, and set over all the works of God’s hands (Heb. 2:7).

And what of the angels when man, that special creature of honor and glory, suddenly turned upon his Creator and sinned so grievously against Him (Gen. 3:1–7)? Is it safe to say their joy turned to sorrow?

After Adam and Eve’s sin, the Lord stationed cherubim at the entrance of the Garden of Eden. They, with their flaming sword, were to “guard the way to the tree of life” (Gen. 3:24).

Did those mighty heavenly beings look with sorrow and wonderment first at the tree of life there in the garden and then at Adam and Eve sadly walking away?

So what was there about God creating that would cause the angels to rejoice? What was there about man’s rebellion that caused them to grieve?

We know the angels are utterly devoted to God and to His glory. They find inexpressible joy in anything that brings glory to God, and sorrow in anything that robs God of His glory. They rejoiced over God’s creative work because it brought glory to God. It put His wisdom, His omnipotence, His sovereignty, and His grace on display.

Conversely, they sorrowed over man’s sin because the very essence of sin is falling short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). It is the creature thumbing his nose in the face of the Creator and saying: “I will not have you ruling over me. I will be God myself.”

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