December 31, 2009

There is a need in every one of us to get right with God. When John preached about confessing and repenting, people showed up. One of Roman Catholicism’s most important practices is the rite of confession. We all know the truism “confession is good for the soul”. Other well worn phrases include, “coming clean”, “fresh start”, “clean slate”. We all desire to be washed and clean before God.

Yet every effort at getting past our sin results, at best, in a fresh start wherein we simply begin to fall short before God all over again.

This is why Jesus’ baptism is greater than John’s. John is just a man who motivated others to choose to admit their sins and want to change. That’s a necessary start but it doesn’t do what only God can do: wipe away our bad record, and empower us to live, not sinless, but above and beyond what our weak human will can do.

Washing with the water is a great symbol which points beyond itself. Immersion in the Holy Spirit is that to which the water points.

December 30, 2009

I’ve recognized recently that I have not spent daily time confessing and repenting of my sins. Instead my prayers have focused on seeking God’s help in various ways. Repentance is the Greek work “metanoia” which means “change of mind”. I know that I can tend to “drift”. I can fall into habits and attitudes that are not God-honoring and are frankly selfish. It is therefore important for my spiritual health to admit my sins and decide to think and act differently. Confession and repentance need to be daily disciplines.

John preached that we should admit our sins, be genuinely sorry for them, and decide to live better than we have been living. John’s preaching, however, was “pre-christian” meaning that he was telling everyone who would listen that they need to confess and repent in order to receive forgiveness. Christianity, however, is a “post-cross faith”, which means that Christ has already forgiven us.

The reason an “already on the cross forgiven believer” confesses and repents daily is not to earn forgiveness, rather we do so simply because we know we are forgiven, loved by a God who cares for us and wants the best for us. We want to live out the life and forgiveness he’s already offered.

I choose to live a life of loving God because he first loved me.

December 29, 2009

Mark skips Christmas!!! I’m wondering if Mark isn’t a little like Peter . . . uninterested in all the personal stories surrounding Jesus’ birth . . . just wanting to get to the meat of why God came to earth.

He jumps straight to prophecy. He quotes Isaiah 40:3, Malachi 3:1 and even mixes in an allusion to Moses in Exodus. He is making it abundantly clear that Jesus is the Savior of the World expected by the Jewish people for centuries.

Although I don’t think this is Mark’s intent, it nevertheless strikes me that God sends to each of us people, circumstances, problems, challenges, joys and suffering, all of which function to prepare our hearts to acknowledge Jesus as Lord.

Whom has God sent to you to prepare the way for you to receive Christ as the leader of your life? What has God allowed which has led to your becoming a Christ follower? A good spiritual exercise would be to name those people and circumstances, thank God for them and recognize that is at all times intersecting your life with his love and presence so that you are constantly being redirected to the life that he offers.

December 28, 2009

I am writing this on Sunday morning. Right now Pastor Mike is concluding his third message of the morning and I’m certain everything in him is yearning for all present to “get” the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Beginning this coming Sunday I’m going to preach through Mark all the way up to Easter. I hope you take it upon yourself to invite those who do not yet know the Good News or do not understand who Jesus is or who have no clue what the facts of Jesus’ life on earth have to do with our day to day lives in southern Chester County.

Mark’s gospel has been called the Gospel for people with short attention spans. It’s only 16 chapters long and the word “immediately” or “at once” is used between 50and 60 times. Mark had become Peter’s friend and co worker in Rome and after Peter died (tradition has it that he was crucified upside down because he felt he was unworthy of being crucified as Jesus was) in the early 60’s, Mark decided put into writing all that Peter had told him about what Jesus had done. It’s a fast paced narrative of the powerful presence and work of God which Jesus had begun and continues to this day.

I hope you and many others join me in this adventure of discovering anew or for the first time the power and love of God.

December 21, 2009

I think the following quote from the daily devotional by Oswald Chambers was “right on” for Mary and maybe especially for Joseph. It’s a great picture of what each of us should “aspire” to.

"Most of us live on the borders of consciousness- consciously serving, consciously devoted to God. All this is immature, it is not the real life yet. the mature stage is the life of a child which is never conscious; we become so abandoned to God that the consciousness of being used never enters in. When we are consciously being used as broken bread and poured-out wine, there is another stage to be reacehd, where all consciousness of ourselves and of what god is doing tthough us is eliminated. A saint is never consciously a saint; a saint is consciously depenent on God."

December 19, 2009

Laszlo Tokes, the Romanian pastor whose mistreatment outraged the country and prompted rebellion against the Communist ruler Ceausescu, tells of trying to prepare a Christmas sermon for the tiny mountain church to which he had been exiled. The state police were rounding up dissidents, and violence was breaking out across the country. Afraid for his life, Tokes bolted his doors, sat down, and read again the stories in Luke and Matthew. Unlike most pastors who would preach that Christmas, he chose as his text the verses describing Herod's massacre of the innocents. It was the single passage that spoke most directly to his parishioners. Oppression, fear, and violence, the daily plight of the underdog, they well understood.

The next day, Christmas, news broke that Ceausescu had been arrested. Church bells rang, and joy broke out all over Romania. Another King Herod had fallen. Tokes recalls, "All the events of the Christmas story now had a new, brilliant dimension for us, a dimension of history rooted in the reality of our lives … For those of us who lived through them, the days of Christmas 1989 represented a rich, resonant embroidery of the Christmas story, a time when the providence of God and foolishness of human wickedness seemed as easy to comprehend as the sun and the moon over the timeless Transylvanian hills." [And] for the first time in four decades, Romania celebrated Christmas as a public holiday.

December 17, 2009

Herod told these scholars from the East, probably from what we identify today as Iran, a boldfaced lie. Lying is one of the most blatant (and unfortunately effective, at least temporarily) forms of manipulation. Herod lied to them so that they would become be his “sleuths” to find Jesus. And the scholars from the East seem to have believed him.

Naïve, trusting, open minded, seekers from Persia meet powerful but fearful, dishonest, and manipulative Caesar.

I have a friend who says his parents did him a terrible disservice by raising him to be trusting, honest and didn’t show him how to “work the angles” in life. He says it’s a dog eat dog world and if you don’t eat, you’ll be eaten. He thinks it’s simply wrong to teach your children, that trust and honest are the way to make it in the world.

I like the Magi. They trusted, followed, believed, even naively. And they found the king and it wasn’t Herod. Herod, on the other hand, certainly did make it big in his world. Unfortunately for him, his world did not have the final word.

December 16, 2009

I find it interesting that secular Herod, the wealthy militarily powerful King fully backed by Rome, took the time and effort to find out where the hoped for the Messiah of the Jews would be born. Of course Herod’s job was to maintain peace and make sure no “would be Messiah” would mount a rebellion against Rome. For that reason and investigation is warranted. Nip a potential problem in the bud. But I wonder was in the back of his mind. Possible paranoia aside, could he possibly have wondering if he really might be on the wrong side of God?

Also interesting is that Micah 5:2 is quoted here. Micah centuries earlier had predicted the exact birth place of Jesus. How did God work it to get Jesus to be born exactly there? Read Luke 1:2-4. Even Caesar was a pawn in the plans of God.

December 15, 2009

This event may have taken place as many as two years after Jesus’ birth. It’s a fascinating event. Bethlehem is a tiny, tiny village, smaller than West Grove. Herod was the magnificent visionary King of the region, ruler over all of Judea. He had built coliseums, palaces and fortresses. His huge military fortress towered above Bethlehem. It’s kind of a tale of two kings. One temporal, the other eternal. The former with temporal power and wealth, the latter a lower class citizen of a (in a wordly sense) meaningless nation. Who is it that these magi, representatives of the rest of the world, seek? And who is it who feels threatened. Add all of this up and you will learn much about how God comes to us individually and how God sets about righting the world.

December 12, 2009

Matthew is quoting Isaiah 7:14 which, he discovered in researching for this gospel, is a “double prophecy”, that is, it was fulfilled twice, once in the immediate context of the Old Testament and then more fully in Jesus. Isaiah prophesied that a young woman from the house of Ahaz who was not married would marry and have a son. Before three years passed (one year for pregnancy and two for the child to be old enough to talk), two invading kings would be destroyed. This occurred. Secondly, Matthew shows the further fulfillment of this prophecy in that a virgin named Mary conceived and bore a son, Immanuel, the Christ, God with us. Interestingly, Matthew ends his Gospel with Jesus’ words, “I will be with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20)

December 11, 2009

Joseph would not have expected God to send a Savior to forgive sins. Rather he would have expected a savior to free Israel from Roman oppression. When Joseph’s dream directed him to the name Jesus (Joshua in the Old Testament, Yeshua in Hebrew) I wonder I Psalm 130 came to his mind. This is certainly the Psalm that Matthew had in mind when he wrote verse 21.

1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;

2 O Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy.

3 If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins,
O Lord, who could stand?

4 But with you there is forgiveness;
therefore you are feared.

5 I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I put my hope.

6 My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.

7 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD,
for with the LORD is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.

8 He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins. Psalm 130:1-8 (NIV)

December 10, 2009

Matthew writes from the Perspective of Joseph just as Luke writes his Gospel from the perspective of Mary. Joseph was shocked and embarrassed. His fiancee’ (in that culture it was like being married without living together) either had an affair or really was pregnant by God’s Spirit. There simply was no other option. Either Mary had been sleeping around or . . . .? Joseph at lest knew it wasn’t his doing. And that must have been awfully tough. How does a man handle that?

Joseph, I think, must have been a really great man. Somehow he paid attention to a dream, believed it was God speaking, and believed that God had altered the natural laws of reproduction. It seems to me that’s a very large leap of belief.

And that’s exactly what he chose to believe and act on. I have the impression that Joseph must have been a young man who knew he was living in God’s world, a man who, when wanted to lead him, could sense that God was “speaking” and was will to do whatever it took to follow that leading with integrity. Joseph handled his humiliation by courageously following God.

I would like to see a father son picture of Joseph and Jesus somewhere. Wouldn’t you?

December 9, 2009

It is difficult for the modern mind to imagine how an “immaculate conception” could have taken place. For some it is easier to believe that both Matthew and Luke made the story up to add credibility to their biographies of Jesus. Following are some considerations which have helped me to understand this Miracle which Matthew and Luke tell, but which both Mark and John omit.

1. Neither Matthew nor Luke needed to add this story if it weren’t true. Each simply reports it. The evidence of the resurrection is “proof” enough of Jesus deity.

2. If Matthew and Luke had colluded in making the story up, one would think certain apects of their stories would match up better than they do.

3. The section of Luke that recounts this event is written literarily in obviously Jewish literary style, completely different to the rest of the writing in his Gospel. This leads one to conclude that he may have simply copied it from written records of the events, perhaps from Mary herself, whom he most certainly interviewed.

4. I concluded at the beginning of my Christian life that it is not necessary to decide a priori that miracles don’t happen. God is outside of/beyond nature. He’s the creator and sustainer of it. If this is so, then He can tweak and alter the “laws” of nature in any way He wishes and at any time.

5. Matthew also cites at least 53 Old Testament scripture references fulfilled by Jesus. This is astonishing. One of those is Isaiah 7:14. He must have been amazed as he did his homework and discovered how Jesus was the piece of the Messiah puzzle that pulled them all together.

6. Joseph certainly believed in a virgin conception. He believed his dream. He didn’t believe his fiancee’ would cheat on him and he knew he wasn’t the father.

To be fair, my first decision was to decide to believe in the virgin conception, before actually believing it deep down. However, as has been the norm in my walk with Jesus, God has provided more and more corroborating and compelling evidence to support my initial decision. And yes, this is a valid way to proceed on your faith journey.