Tag Archives: christmas

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Daily Broadside | An Immovable Faith in God Starts With Obedience

Daily Verse | 1 John 5:3
This is love for God: to obey his commands.

Friday’s Reading: 2 John and 3 John
Saturday’s Reading: Jude

It’s the Friday before Christmas and my last opportunity to wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas!

While our country is a hot mess and getting worse every day, the one thing that can’t be destroyed is a personal belief in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and in the birth of his Son, Jesus Christ. Indeed, it is often the only thing that has given people the strength to endure unimaginable persecution and deprivation under some of the worst regimes in history, starting with the Roman emperors and continuing to present day in states like China.

But such faith keeps us from disobedience and, in fact, strengthens us in our resolve to obey our Lord, as today’s Daily Verse shows us: love for God is to obey his commands. In fact, as I wrote here, to hear God is to obey God, and I end the week with the following meditation ahead of Christmas.

In speaking of what the greatest commandments are, Jesus said,

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
— Mark 12:29-31

In Deuteronomy 6:4 we find perhaps the most essential prayer in all of Judaism — the Shema (sh’-mah), a daily recitation affirming God’s singularity and kingship. The name Shema comes from the first word of the verse, which means “hear” or “listen.”

She-ma yisrael, adonai eloheinu, adonai echad.
Hear O’ Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.

To “hear” in English means to be aware of sound. In our culture, we can hear someone talking and either absorb and respond to it, or ignore what is said. Not so in Hebrew society. When they’re called “to hear,” it’s a call to act. Hearing and doing are the same thing. To hear God is to obey God.

Immediately following that declaration is what Jesus calls the first and greatest commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” If the preceding is true about God — that He is the singular, only true God, and that He is our God — the first and foremost way of expressing our devotion to Him is by loving Him with everything that we’ve got.

And, says Jesus, the next greatest commandment has the same force as the first: love your neighbor as yourself. No commandment is more important than these two.

Love God. Love others.

In Hebrew culture, love isn’t just an emotion — it’s an active attachment. It means following through on our commitment. If we “hear” (sh’-mah) this command, it means we will faithfully respond out of obedience and loyalty to the Lord. Being commanded to love is a matter of doing, not just feeling.

This is the foundation of our redemption. Above everything else, God desires that we love Him completely and totally. That is the greatest commandment. That is why Jesus came. The purpose God had in saving us was that we might love Him based on His intrinsic worth as the one and only true God. Out of that, we love others.

The baby born in the manger expressed perfect obedience to these two commandments. He always did what pleased his Father (John 8:29) and he loved others to the fullest extent possible (John 13:1). He showed us what it meant to love God through his unwavering obedience to His commands. He showed us what it meant to love others by going to the cross on behalf of a lost world.

O believer, may you hear these words this Christmas!

Have a great weekend.

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Daily Broadside | Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Daily Verse | 1 John 4:10
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Friday’s Reading: 2 John and 3 John
Saturday’s Reading: Jude

It’s Friday and Christmas Eve 2021, the day before we celebrate what is surely the most astounding event in the entire known history of mankind: that God Himself entered our world as a baby on a mission to rescue humanity from itself, culminating in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God.”

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.” Then the angel left her.

Luke 1:26-38 (NIV)

Our culture is so overcome with the commercialization of our holidays—every Tom, Dick and Harry is taking advantage of the occasion, trying to sell you something that you don’t need and can’t afford—that it takes great and intentional effort to put and keep Christ at the center of Christmas.

There is no secret to doing it. It’s simply refusing to get swept up in the madness and instead set aside time for bible reading, reflection and prayer.

That’s my prayer for you this Christmas. May the truth of the written record pierce your heart and flood you with wonder, joy and peace at the gift of God in the person of Jesus Christ.

If it would be helpful for you, I’m including below a harmony of the birth narratives that I put together from the gospels of Matthew and Luke. You can download it and have a copy to read on Christmas Day.

Have a great weekend, and Merry Christmas.

Harmony of the Birth NarrativesDownload
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Daily Broadside | All I Want for Christmas are the Four Virtues of Advent

Daily Verse | Philemon 6
I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.

Tuesday’s Reading: Hebrews 1-2

It’s Tuesday and sorry for the miss yesterday. We had a dear friend who was close to death on Sunday and we spent several hours late into the night with him. He died Monday. Fortunately, he knew the Lord and understood “every good thing we have in Christ.”

Many Christians participate in the Advent season, which are the four Sundays preceding Christmas. This year they started on November 28 and will continue through December 24. The word “Advent” comes from the Latin word adventus, meaning “coming,” which is a translation of the Greek word parousia which, in modern theology, invariably means the Second Coming of Christ.

Of course, the way Advent is practiced today doesn’t anticipate the Second Coming of Christ as much as it reminds us to anticipate and celebrate His first coming as a baby. Traditionally there are four themes (or virtues) correlating with the four Sundays: Hope, Peace, Joy and Love.

Our church ordered them this year as Joy, Hope, Peace and Love. As I reflected on those four virtues in that order, I was struck by the relationship between them.

Joy is the perpetual gladness of the heart that comes from knowing Jesus. Yes, it is an emotion that expresses delight in something, but it is also a deep-seated contentment that is unshaken by its circumstances, whatever they might be.

The shepherds heard about joy from the angel that said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people” (Luke 2:10). We’re even told that when the Magi “saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy” (Matthew 2:10).

Finding out that a Savior had been born was sure to lead them and, eventually us, to Hope.

Our church says that “Hope is the confident expectation of a better tomorrow based on the character and promises of God.” If you know that a Savior has come, you are suddenly filled with hope that you can be saved, based on the fulfilled promises of a coming Savior and King who would defeat death and the consequences of sin and lead us into an everlasting relationship with God Himself.

And once you have that hope, you’re filled with Peace. No longer are you anxious about whether or not you’re “saved” or if you even can be “saved.” No longer do you hang your head in shame because you’re not as good as the religious professionals who seem to have it all together. No, you live in peace, resting in the knowledge that you are “in Christ” and that he will “lose none of all those [God] has given me, but raise them up at the last day” (John 6:39).

If we are at peace, then, we are free to Love others. If we are anxious and unsettled and worried about our own life, we are preoccupied with what is wrong and soothing our anxieties. We become selfish and self-centered, making sure we are taken care of first.

Instead, being at peace allows us to focus on the well-being of others around us. We can seek their good without worrying about whether our good will be sought. We can treat them well because we realize that we have been treated well.

We are able to love because we are at peace.

We are at peace because we have hope in God’s promises and character.

We have hope because of the joy we’ve found in the Savior who has come and promises to save us from the consequences of our sin.

And we have joy because we’ve been told that it’s true.

It is Jesus who is our Savior — the entire line of dominoes falls with this first one.

Jesus has come, which leads to Joy, which leads to Hope, which leads to Peace, which leads to Love.

May those virtues be found in abundance in your life and in the life of your church this holiday season.

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Daily Broadside | An Odd Turn of Phrase May Be The Key to Appreciating Christmas

Daily Broadside | Philippians 3:17
Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you.

Monday’s Reading: Colossians 1-4

Happy Monday, my friends. I think this is the part where I’m supposed to raise the curtain for the announcer.

My wife and I “put up” Christmas this weekend. If that sounds odd to your ears, what I mean is that we decorated the house.

When I was growing up we talked about “putting up” the Christmas tree, as in, “We put up the Christmas tree yesterday.” But never did we put up “Christmas.”

Now we do.

But how do you “put up” a concept? “Christmas” isn’t a physical object. It’s a season, a celebration, a holiday. Those are immaterial ideas that are expressed through things like Santa, lights, trees, presents, music, words, snow and cards. “Put up Christmas” is a time saving phrase that encompasses all of those things.

It’s an effective phrase, but it’s curious how the meaning of words shift over time. How did we get to where we talk about “putting up Christmas” as if it were a wall or a barricade? Who started using that phrase?

When I searched the question, “How did we get the phrase ‘put up Christmas’?” I got about 287,000 results with the top one being, “Why Do We Put up Christmas Trees?” Even Google doesn’t know where the phrase came from. And if Google doesn’t know …

I’m left to speculate and here’s what I think. We live in an era when the amount of time between desire and fulfillment has shrunk to the size of the space between a mosquito’s ears. You can sit in bed at 11:00 p.m., order an item from Amazon using your phone, and have it delivered the next day. Don’t ask me how I know.

That’s nearly “instant” gratification. The smaller the gap becomes between wish and fulfillment, the “faster” life moves. The longer we experience that speed, the more conditioned we are to expect it.

That conditioning leads to things like “put up Christmas.” Why take the time to say, “We put up the Christmas tree, then we put up the lights, and after that we put up the garland and wreaths”? We’ve got things to do, people to see, places to go. Much faster to drop the common nouns and just summarize everything in one big, happy word: we put up “Christmas.”

I may be wrong, but maybe I’m right. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, maybe not. The point is that we’re moving fast and even Christmas isn’t immune to the hurry of today’s life.

But Christmas is the very time we need to slow down. This is the season when we pause — PAUSE — to reflect on the fact that God initiated a rescue mission. The mission: to save mankind from the consequence of their sin, which was the unbelief and rejection of God.

That rescue mission had a Rescuer who showed up in the form of a child named Jesus. He’s the “reason for the season.” He’s the focal point of the celebration. He’s why we give gifts, decorate trees, string lights, and gather with family.

Without Jesus, we would be left to our own devices and face the consequences of our sinful condition, which is eternal separation from God. Faith in Jesus saves us from that dreadful fate.

Incredible.

This Christmas, don’t let the hurry whisk you past the significance of why we celebrate. Intentionally slow down. Give yourself time to genuinely reflect on the meaning of Christ’s birth. Sit in awe of the magnitude of what the Bible tells us.

There’s plenty of time to “put up Christmas.” Just don’t put up with hurry.