Christmas Archives - Page 10 of 10

Introduction

Last Lord’s Day, the message was brought to us from the conclusion of Isaiah 40, and we learned from that message that there are two kinds of waiting. There is a waiting that causes our strength to dissipate, and there is a waiting that gathers our strength for us. There is a waiting that renews, an anticipation that is full of joy, and there is a waiting that is an emotional corrosive. This week we want to develop this idea further, and to do so from a few verses earlier in that same chapter.

The Text

“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD’S hand double for all her sins. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever” (Is. 40:1-8).

Summary of the Text

The text begins with comfort (v. 1). Godly preparation does not begin with affliction, but such preparation actually ends the affliction. How so? The prophet speaks comfortably to Jerusalem, telling her that her sins are forgiven before the great deliverance arrives (v. 2). The next verse is a prophecy of the ministry of John the Baptist (v. 3; Matt. 3:3; Mark 1:3; John 1:23), who prepared the way for the coming Christ. Every valley is lifted up, and the high places are humbled—for just one example, Zebulon is humbled, and Galilee is exalted (Is. 9:1). Notice that this time of preparation is a time when things are made level, not uneven, when things are made smooth, not rough, when things are made straight, not crooked (v. 4). This time is aiming for a particular result, which is the revelation of the glory of the Lord, which all mankind will see (v. 5; Luke 3:4-6). The prophet is told to cry out—but what is he told to cry? Men are like the grass, and their glory is like the flowers of the field (v. 6)—and as the grass withers and the flowers fades, so men also fade (because of the breath of the Lord). This passage is quoted by the apostle Peter (1 Pet. 1:24-25), to the effect that the Word preached to Christians is the Word that stands forever, and it is the Word by which Christians are born again (1 Pet. 1:23). This means that men who are regenerate are no longer numbered with the withered grass and fading flowers. That Word is preached “by the Holy Spirit” (1 Pet. 1:12), which is of course the same breath that makes the flowers fade.

Two Kinds of Sorrow

Just as there are two kinds of waiting, so also there are two kinds of sorrow—and they parallel the two kinds of waiting. One dissipates strength and the other restores it. One kind of sorrow rakes you over the coals, and the other is the word that speaks comfort. “For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death” (2 Cor. 7:10). One sorrow leads to comfort and no regret, and the other leads to sorrow upon sorrow. You can be sorry today, sorry tomorrow, and you can die sorry. That is not what Christ came to do for you.

Repentant or Penitential

Our English words repentance and penitence are obviously related to one another (via the Latin paenitere), and we do have to be careful not to be superstitious about words. But there are different connotations to these words (in English) having to do with their history in our theological debates. Beginning with Tyndale, who translated metanoeiete as repent, instead of do penance, we have had a long history of distinguishing what it means to receive the grace of God, and what it means to try to surreptitiously earn the grace of God. Luther’s 95 Theses began with this whole issue of penitence understood in gospel terms: “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, in saying “Repent ye,” etc., intended that the whole life of believers should be penitence.”

The Real Deal

True repentance should take the time to confess and forsake real sin, and the time should not be wasted through indulgence in nebulous angst about possible sinfulness that is always carefully undefined. “Penitential” seasons can be put to a genuinely good use if they are a time when serious, once-for-all mortification of particular sins occurs— if real sins and real bad habits are uprooted from your life. Pray, practice and pursue Colossians 3:5 and 3:8. Who could possibly be against that? The real problems come in when sin is not really dealt with, and yet the times of squirrel-cage run penitence don’t even slow down, and the penitent daily comes to resemble more closely the policemen in Penzance. “Yes, but you don’t go!”

Glad Tidings

Jesus assumes that such times can be spiritually healthy, but He requires His followers to keep it a secret that they are observing such a time. “Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly” (Matt. 6:16-18). A fast is a time for reflection, personal discipline, and confession, and if you are doing this during a penitential season, Jesus requires that you take reasonable measures to hide what you are doing from others. Why? Because your life should embody the truth that this entire season is a time when we are bringing to the world tidings of comfort and joy.

Introduction
One of the most familiar elements of the Christmas story is the star of Bethlehem. But at the same time, it remains one of the most unknown features of the story—because unlike the wise men, we don’t really look straight at it.

The Text
“I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth” (Num. 24:17)

Summary of the Text
As you know, the prophet Balaam was a covetous and sinful man (Jude 11; 2 Pet. 2:15). But at the same time, even though he was not of the nation of Israel, he was a true prophet. The Spirit of the Lord really did come upon him (e.g. Num. 24:2). Balak, king of Moab, had Balaam summoned in order to put a curse on Israel. In spite of everything, the Spirit of the Lord refused to let Balaam prophesy disaster for Israel—it kept coming out as blessing (Micah 6:5). Balak was understandably peeved with Balaam (Num. 24:10), but Balaam calmed him down by giving him some very practical and carnal advice . . . for a fee (Rev. 2:14). The women of Moab enticed the Israelite men into idolatry and fornication, and God dealt with them severely (Num. 25:1-3). Balaam was eventually killed by the Israelites when they invaded the land (Josh. 13:22). Judging from the number of times it is referred to explicitly, both in the Old Testament and the New, this is a very important story. And in the Christmas story, we most likely have an implicit reference to it.

At the end of his exchanges with Balak, Balaam gave the words of our text above, and as a prophecy of blessing for Israel, we should be careful to ask what it means. The first fulfillment of these words came with the reign of King David four hundred years later. He was the one who struck Moab (v. 17), not to mention Edom (v. 18). David was the king who was a type of the great king, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus—so Jesus is the antitype, the final and complete fulfillment of this word. A star shall come out of Jacob and a scepter out of Israel, and He will establish his reign. The scepter would stay with Judah until Shiloh came, and He would be the one who would gather all the people to Himself (Gen. 49:10).

The Wise Men
Balaam was a prophet, but he was not a prophet of Israel. He was from the east, and was of the heathen nations there. The wise men who came to search for Jesus because of the star were also from the east. It is likely that Balaam’s words had been preserved outside of the Hebrew Scriptures—and note how the wise men speak of this (Matt. 2:2). They appear to have much more information than could be gleaned from looking at a star in the sky, even if they were serious astrologers. Balaam had prophesied of a king, one with a scepter. The wise men asked about a king. Balaam had specified that this king would be from Jacob, and the wise men asked about a king of the Jews. Herod, the man they asked about it, was an Edomite, one of the peoples that this prophecy described as being conquered by the coming king. And, most noticeably, Balaam spoke of a star, and the wise men came in response to a star. Incidentally, we don’t know for certain that there were three wise men—that is simply an inference from the three types of gifts they brought (Matt. 2:11).

Led By the Star
One of the reasons we don’t look too closely at what the text says about our star is that it might mess with our modernist cosmology too much. The text says that the star, the same one which they had seen in the east, led them from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, a distance of about eight miles, and that the star then stood still over the house where Mary and Jesus were (Matt. 2:9, 11). Picture a star leading you to Pullman, and then pointing out a particular house.

Either the wise men were being “led by” the star in some astrological sense, meaning that they were doing some serious math on the back of their camels (also unmentioned in the text, by the way), or a star actually came down into our atmosphere and did some very un-starlike things. But why should this be a surprise? A whole host of stars did the same thing for the shepherds (Luke 2:13).

Not What We Were Expecting
Now if we don’t accept the astrological math option, then that means the star came down into our sky, and stood over a particular house—fifty feet up, say. Does faithfulness to Scripture require us to accept absurdities? That a flaming ball of gas, many times larger than our entire earth, came down into Palestine in order to provide first century mapquest services? And that it did so without incinerating the globe? We need to take a lesson here from our medieval fathers in the faith, brought to us via Narnia. “In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.” “Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.” If we can leave our bodies behind when we go to heaven, why cannot a star leave its body behind to come to earth? But any way you take it, the Christian faith flat contradicts the truncated cosmology of moderns. Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve.

Remember What the Star Meant
Balaam is talking about what will happen to all the tinpot monarchies when the real kingdom arrives, when the true scepter is established. In the book of Revelation, Jesus identifies Himself with His ancestor and subject, King David. He is the root and offspring of David, and He is the bright and morning star (Rev. 22:16). Balaam was talking about what was going to happen in “the latter days” (v. 14), and he is very clear about the rise and fall of nations before the Messiah would come. First, the Amalekites would perish forever (v. 20). After them, the Kenites would go down (v. 22). They would be followed by invaders from Kittim (the Greeks, under Alexander), which is what verse 24 is talking about. But then the Greeks would fade away (v. 24), which is what happened with Rome in the ascendancy. And thus it was that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed (Luke 2:1).

So Caesar gave the command in order to tax the whole world (v. Luke 2:1). The star gave the command that magi from the east would voluntarily come, bearing gifts (Matt. 2:11). Augustus won his throne through a great deal of killing at the battle of Actium. The Lord Jesus won His throne at the battle of Golgotha, where He conquered and crushed the devil by dying. The star in the east, the one the wise men followed, was a star that declared a coming kingdom, a kingdom that will never end. This is the kingdom of the true king, before whom the most magnificent kings in the history of the world were but flickering types and shadows.

The star of Bethlehem is therefore the regal emblem of a scepter, a scepter of neverending glory.

Tidings Of Comfort And Joy