Christmas Confidence

Luke 1:46-55

Christmas Confidence

Christmas is a time to celebrate Christ's birth, but it is a reminder that every Sunday is a celebration to celebrate that birth. It reminds us of the conflict between the seed of the woman and the seed of the servant. We find great joy in the coming of Christ. We find great love of all aspects of Christmas. And now we move to the idea of confidence in Christmas. We see with this passage the confidence that Mary had with God and His promise to her. We also look at Miriam and Moses and Hannah's songs from the Old Testament. We compare the songs of Hannah and Mary side by side and we see so many similarities between them. It is obvious that Mary was shaped by Scriptures, aware of Hannah's song and confidence in The Lord. The challenge in their songs is to see all of life this way, formed and shaped by the Scriptures. 

Confidence Promise #1: God remembers His promises to His covenant people. He has helped His servant Israel. God remembers His mercy and promises. We have confidence in the present and the future because God has kept His promises of the past. He does all that He does for Himself as His motivating cause and His people always benefit from it. Mary has picked up a theme from Psalms - her song here is woven with the words of the Psalmist. God remembers His everlasting love and mercy, we find this in Jeremiah. God has not forgotten us and we see this in our Scriptures. The word remember here is not used as a recall, but an acting upon the memory. God promised and did not just keep the promise but kept it and acted out His promises. God demonstrated this by the pregnancy of Mary and the holy birth of Christ. 

Confidence Promise #2: God is no respecter of persons. Simeon and Anna...even shepherds, all were shown the Christ child. God does not show favor towards those high and lifted up above others. Those of poverty are granted heaven and a glimpse of the great joy of heaven through Christ. The problem is not the rich and the poor. God does not prefer the poor over the rich. It is that God takes care of His children. The antithesis is not between the rich and poor, the real antithesis is between God's covenant and those outside the covenant. Christ, Himself, came from the line of David, a king. God raised up a Messiah and used the most unlikely scenario to bring it about. There is no one to whom God would not stoop to save. All are within His fold. We can have great confidence in our missionary mindset as well to know that God takes all. 

Confidence Promise #3: History is God-directed. God has done all the doing. God has put down the mighty and brought up the lowly. It is not time plus chance plus circumstance. It is all carefully orchestrated in God's own direction. History is person, it is not one action because of another, it is one action of God, after another action of God. God is the one doing all the doing. History is brought about by the finger of God. We are supercharged with meaning because God gives us that meaning. 

Confidence Promise #4: God is our Savior. He remembered Israel and sent His son to save those outside of the faith. We have been reconciled and He has become our propitiation. We have the confidence that we are a saved and redeemed people because God is our Savior. This is an unforgettable truth. He always has been and always will be our personal Savior who has committed our sins to Himself so that He has wiped away our sins without any assistance from us. He needs no assistance. All contribution to salvation belongs to Him and none can go towards us. 

The Conflict of Christmas

Genesis 3:15, Romans 16:20

The Conflict of Christmas

It has been said that the first passage (Genesis 3:15) captures the most glorious and noble of all phrases. The most foremost idea is the idea of enmity - warfare or hostility, a deep hatred. We see the scope of this enmity, the conflict first begins between the serpent and the woman. Then it spreads out to the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. It is a very real war. The plural seed of the woman narrows down to a singular seed, Hebrew meaning of the word "he". So we see the true seed, the champion, is Christ. The climax of this passage is the great battle between Christ and Satan. This war is broad and narrow...we see how it belongs between very few and yet also a great deal of people (all people). Christmas is a time of warm fuzzies, but also we see it being a war of conflict. The bruising of the heel happened at the cross and crucifixion, but the crushing of the head happened with the resurrection. C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy displays the true conflict between the good and bad. We too often make the conflict about all spiritual and nothing truly corporeal. We refuse to see the it is as truly powerful as it really is. We also need to be in prayer: God, give me a fire for You and as such am enmity towards those who oppose you; give me the proper love, not love as they see it, but true love; true love being the fact that we do what is best for them, not to let them go on their path to hell, but true love to correct them and help them see Truth. 

Christmas...The Divine Expression of Divine Love

1 John 4:7-11

Christmas...The Expression of Divine Love

"Dear brothers, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God because God is love. This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we ought also to love one another."

Throughout the Bible we see the love of God displayed clearly. From creation to the cross there is a theme of love woven into every moment. There are five aspects of love to look at today: love of God to Himself, Trinitarian love, love of God to His people, the love of His people to God, and the love of His people to one another. Agape love is a self-sacrificing love, an earnest and anxious desire for others. This love is displayed by focusing on others. True self-sacrifice. This self-sacrificing love is displayed to Himself, He displays it by loving Himself. Many cannot fathom God loving Himself the highest, some would call it narcissism. But it is either God worships us first or Himself first. We are not here for Him to serve. God's highest love is for Himself. In the sending of Christ, it is true that it was a picture of the love to God's people to save them, but it was also a picture of God's love to glorify Himself and upholding His law. He is meeting the standard which He set. 

Selfless love is shown in the giving love given among the Trinity. The Father shows unique love for the Son in this passage. He sends His only Son, there is a certain tenderness in this passage that speaks of the love between Father and Son. The Son goes as commanded from the Father and the Father sends the Son in order to further glorify the Son. God did not create the world in order to have people to love. He did not make the world because He was lonely. The inter Trinitarian love was constantly present long before the world was created. We see the Son agreeing to come save this people out of love for the Father and the Father so loves His Son that He gives Him a people all of His own. He loves Himself and He loves the whole Trinity. He does all He does for His glory and for the pursuit of the glory of the Trinity. God is preoccupied in Himself while at the same time His love is overwhelmingly selfless. If our love was half as true love as God's is then we are blessed. Our prayer life should be filled with thanks for His love and for the request to be more like Him. We should not think of ourselves more highly than we ought. We see this in how the Trinity gives so freely. 

We now move to the love of God to His people. Especially at Christmas we are moved to see how great and magnificent God's love for us is. In sending His Son, He displays His selfless love for us to save us. God is interested in our good. He will not give us a stone if we ask for a fish. How touching, how amazing, how breathtaking that God loves us! 1 John 3:1a "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us!"  Yes, God loves Himself, but also He loves us. The love of a husband to his wife or the wife to the husband is that the love will spill over and bless the family. The love pours over and is applied to the children and those around. This is the love of God: first to Himself but it over pours to apply to us as well. Without that love we would be nothing. Without that love demonstrated by the sending of the Son, we would be twisted and selfish dying sinners. With the love, though, we have the opportunity to live and love others as has been given to us. We now live because of Christ and because of this we ought to lift up our eyes and be burdened for those outside of Christ and to offer up prayers for their salvation. 

The love of God's people to God: we are focusing our love upon Him and no longer within ourselves. We cannot love one another without loving God first. "Love The Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and might, and love your neighbor as yourself." We love Him first and then others. We show our love by keeping His commandments. That is the true love to God, that we are in keeping with His law and defining true love according to that. 

We are to love one another. We see the love of God to us and so we turn around and love one another. We carry one another's burdens. We serve one another by taking care of one another and thinking of others as higher than ourselves. We give to each other at every turn. We see the demonstrated love and so we have a privilege to love and serve one another. The world talks about love so much these days, but the love we have in this season is manifested by the great love given as an example to us by Christ. The love we are to give is the deep love as set out by Scripture. 

The Joy of Christmas

The Joy of Christmas

Luke 2:8-20

"Do not fear". Be full of joy. The advent season and a Christian life are to be characteristic of joy. The angels bring joy with them in their announcement to the shepherds. That joy does not rest on Herod or the shepherds or anyone making it of their joy...so whether they are joyous or not, there is still joy. This joy is the joy of The Lord. In the Christian's life joy is not always an emotion, though it can be an emotion. Rather, it is a quality that we display. 

1) the joy of the pivotal event of Christ's birth: we have long awaited this announcement and coming of the promised Messiah. This joy and anticipation is compared to a bride and her wedding day, a long awaited day and the on the actual day, there is even more joy. Here is the one who is promised. God kept His promise and here is our Redeemer who has come to set up apart and save us from death and doom. This redemptive announcement to the shepherds remains with us even today. 

2) the joy of the coming of God's glory due to Christ's arrival. Dark night had been at work and with the coming of Christ, the "now" is the front row and the "not yet" has taken a back seat. The serpent has been cast out. There was an entrance of a new kingdom casting out the old evil kingdom. This gives us a great reason to be joyful! We can have joy because the change and new order has come in. Mary's words come true, those of low birth are highly esteemed. Even with the shepherds, those of low birth are first to get the news, their fear is to be replaced with great joy. 

3) personal joy for the individual and individual joy. The shepherds took the news and spread it everywhere (verse 17). They could not hold it in, but rather give it away. Once you've given it away you are given even more joy! It was a double joy for them. This joy is personal and they own it and you see that they own it by how they went out and could not hold it in. Joy is cheated when you cannot go out and "blab" it to others. And so we also are to go out and spread this great tiding of joy to everyone. What a mission statement that is. This emotion of joy is to take over our fear and fright, just as it was to the shepherds. We get so afraid for the battle that is already own thanks to Christ and His bringing of joy. 

Mary's Song

"My soul magnifies The Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for He has been mindful of the humble state of His servant. From now on a generations will call me blessed. For the Mighty One has done great things for me - holy is His name. His mercy extends to those who fear Him from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with His arm; He has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. He has helped His servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as He said to our fathers." Luke 1:46-55  

Old Song

1. Oh come, Redeemer of the earth,

And manifest thy virgin-birth. 

Let every age in wonder fall:

Such birth befits the God of all. 

2. Begotten of no human will,

But of the Spirit, Thou art still

The Word of God in flesh arrayed,

The promised Fruit to man displayed. 

3. The virgin womb that burdened gained

With virgin honor all unstained;

The banners there of virtue glow;

God in His temple dwells below. 

4. Forth from His chamber goeth He,

That royal home of purity,

A giant in twofold substance one,

Rejoicing now His course to run. 

5. From God the Father He proceeds,

To God the Father back He speeds;

His course He runs to death and hell,

Returning on God's throne to dwell. 

6. O equal to the Father, Thou!

Gird on Thy fleshly mantle now;

The weakness was of our mortal state

With deathless might invigorate.

7. Thy cradle here shall glitter bright,

And darkness breathe a newer light,

Where endless faith shall shine serene,

And twilight never intervene. 

8. All laud to God the Father be,

All praise, eternal Son, to Thee;

All glory, as is ever meet,

To God the Holy Paraclete. 

Veni, Redemptor Gentium

Advent hymn written by St. Ambrose in the fourth century.