What is the real meaning of Christmas?

Greetings All,

This week's thought comes to you from the well-known contemporary preacher/author -- John MacArthur. The title of his message speaks for itself.  Many others have tried to offer an answer to this same question, though in this excerpt -- selected for your Christmas consideration -- he offers his. Other things could be added, but one cannot leave out what he says and still be true to what the Bible wants us to know about Jesus birth.  Enjoy.

What is the real meaning of Christmas?

The answer may just surprise you. For many, Christmas is the time to think of Jesus Christ as a baby in a manger. While the birth of Christ is a special and miraculous event, it isn't the primary focus. The central truth of the Christmas story is this: the Child of Christmas is God. Christmas is not about the Savior's infancy; it is about His deity. The humble birth of Jesus Christ was never intended to conceal the reality that God was being born into the world...

I don't suppose anyone can ever fathom what it means for God to be born in a manger. How does one explain the Almighty stooping to become a tiny infant? Our minds cannot begin to understand what was involved in God's becoming man...Yet He did... One passage in particular, written by the apostle Paul, captures the essence of Jesus' divine nature and underscores the truths that make Christmas truly wonderful -- Colossians 1:15-20 -- where Paul writes:

"He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation, for in Him all things were created... All things have been created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the first born from the dead; so that He Himself might come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross." 

Ironically, some of the cults that deny Jesus' deity try to use Colossians 1:15-20 to support their view. They suggest, for example, that the phrase "the image of the invisible God" (v. 15) hints that Jesus was merely a created being who bore the image of God in the same sense as all humanity. But the truth is though we were created in God's likeness, we only resemble Him. Jesus, on the other hand, is God's exact image. The Greek word translated "image" means a perfect replica, a precise copy, a duplicate. Paul was saying that God Himself is fully manifest in the Person of His Son, who is none other than Jesus Christ. He is the exact image of God. Jesus Himself said, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father" (John 14:9)... Hebrews 1:3 makes an identical affirmation: "He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature."

Christ is to God what the warm brilliance of light is to the sun. He brings God from a cosmic location to the very hearts of men and women. He gives light and life. He reveals God's very essence. They cannot be divided. Neither has ever existed without the other -- they are one (John 10:30). Scripture repeatedly says that God is invisible (John 1:18; 5:37; 1 Timothy 1:17; and Colossians 1:15). But through Christ the invisible God has been made visible. God's full likeness is revealed in Him.

Colossians 1:19 takes the truth a step further: "It was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him." He is not just an outline of God, He is fully God.  Colossians 2:9 is even more explicit: "In Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form." Nothing is lacking. No attribute is absent. He is God in the fullest possible sense, the perfect image...Colossians 1:16-17 explicitly name Him as Creator of everything.  "By Him all things were created..."

       Christ is not part of creation; He is the Creator, the very arm of God, active from the beginning in calling the universe and all creatures into existence. John 1:3 says, "All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being." That could not be true if He were Himself a created being...  The size of the universe is incomprehensible... Who made all that? The babe in Bethlehem. He made everything."

With prayers for your Christmas observance to be a holy and joyful one, Pastor Jeff

The Trivialization of God

Greetings All,

     This week's 'thought' comes to you from Donald W. McCullough, and is taken from his book, "The Trivialization of God."  It is a perceptive look at the ways that we, or our culture, have "shrunk" God down to make Him more manageable, and comfortable to deal with, or be around.
     This selection has to do with the three popular American deities: The god-of-my-cause, the god-of-my-understanding, and the god-of-my-experience, concluding with the much needed God- beyond-my-view-of-God. By necessity I have tried to shorten one chapter into one page, using the cut and paste method. So, if you get a chance, read it all in his book. It's well worth the time. In fact, it's a must for people who desire to avoid the all-too-easy-trap of trivializing God. Enjoy.

"God Of My Cause

     It's natural to want help... When I was younger, there was a boy named David. He could hit further, pitch harder, and field better than any kid in the neighborhood. We always wanted him on our side; he pretty much assured victory... The challenges may now be greater and the stakes higher, but I haven't grown out of wanting a David on my side. I doubt I am alone in this desire. The bigger the problem, of course, the bigger the help needed, and God is the Biggest Help available.

     So God naturally gets called in to lend almighty support to various causes -- even good causes -- holding the earth with concern, loosing the bonds of injustice, letting the oppressed go free, sharing our bread with the hungry, and bringing the poor homeless into our houses.

     What could be more appropriate than seeking God's help with these things? Indeed, this must please the God revealed in Scripture -- so long as a subtle shift does not take place. What can happen, though, is this: instead of serving God by working for a just cause, we serve a just cause by using God. The cause pushes God aside; the divine end becomes simply a useful means, and God gets trivialized. With the best of motives, we throw golden rings and bracelets of passionate concern into the fire, and a calf appears to lead the way to the Promised Land of social righteousness...

     If God is brought in secondarily, after the problem and solution have been defined (oppression and political or economic liberation), that will invariably shape our image of God. We may view God, for example, as simply an aid to fulfilling our human aspirations, or simply Big Help for what is essentially a human struggle for self-improvement... Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, 'Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith' -- faith, I would add, in a God who transcends history, who knows the beginning from the end, who holds the truth of any problem in the context of all truth. Seeing salvation from any other god will come to grief, for a god pressed into the service of a particular cause will be a god too trivial to offer significant help.

God Of My Understanding

     A child at the beach digs a hole in the sand and, with her little bucket, busily sets about transferring the ocean into it. We smile at the grandeur of her ambition, but only because we know she will soon mature beyond such pathetic futility. An ocean cannot be contained in any hole of any size on any continent. And neither can God be fully contained within any theological system.

     Yet well-meaning Christians, in seeking to bear accurate witness to God, often become so attached to their formulations they forget the discontinuity between God and what can be said about God. They forget that only in Christ Jesus has there ever been an exact correspondence between God and humanity. Doctrinal lines are routinely drawn in the dirt, enemies named and challenged, and offending notions bombed in 'jihads' of theological self-assuredness... An honest desire to think and speak accurately about God moves, too easily it seems, to a presumptuous conviction that our affirmations contain the whole truth about God, which has the practical effect of confining God to our truth statements....

     The theological enterprise demands humility as much as critical thinking. The best theologians have known this. Thomas Aquinas, after completing thirty-eight treatises, three thousand articles, and the ten thousand objections in his Summa Theologica -- one of the greatest intellectual achievements of western civilization -- abruptly quit his work on December 6, 1273.  He had a profound experience while celebrating mass in the chapel of St. Nicholas, and he announced to his secretary that he would write no more. 'I can do no more,' he tried to explain, 'such things have been revealed to me that all I have written seems to me as so much straw'...

     Our theological systems may succeed in containing the god-of-my-understanding, but never the holy God.

God Of My Experience 

     The things we experience, naturally, are the things of which we are the most certain. So, my form of worship, and my style of prayer, and my focus in service easily shape the pattern into which I squeeze spiritual reality...

     As a boy I attended a Bible camp run by a Pentecostal denomination... The preaching -- filled with interesting stories, as I recall -- aimed for our conversion and baptism in the Holy Spirit (evidenced by speaking in tongues)... One night I knelt for what seemed like enough time for God to turn me into a certified saint, let alone make me speak in tongues. A counselor did his best to help me: he prayed over me, laid his hands on me, suggested syllables for me to mouth, and held up my arms when they got weary. But he himself got tired, I suppose, and at one point I heard him whisper to someone who walked by, "He really doesn't want it." He really doesn't want it? Imagine what those words did to a boy trying his best to please God! How could I not want it? How could I not want the Holy Spirit?...

     I have no doubt that some people have been given the ability to pray in ecstatic utterance as a sign of the Spirit's presence; the New Testament validates this spiritual gift (I Cor. 14), and I have many friends who testify to its importance in their lives. But there is scant biblical evidence for turning this into a necessary proof of the Spirit-filled life. So little, in fact, that most of the church for most of its history, has seen this manifestation of the Spirit as one of the least important (I Cor. 12:31).

     What has happened, it seems, is that some have been so moved and helped by this gift, they have not only wanted others to share in their experience, but have made it normative for everyone. Those who lack the experience must therefore lack the fullness of the Spirit, which is another way of saying they lack the presence of God. The counselor of my youth assumed that the presence of God would always be shown in a certain experience, and thus without that experience, God could not really be present -- at least not fully.

     Not only does this assumption contradict the fact that the God revealed in Scripture seems to love diversity (I Cor. 12:28-30)... it also has the effect of limiting God, setting boundaries on the way God works in this world....  How easy it is to define authentic spirituality according to my particular experience and expression of it. And when I do, I end up with a very different god from the one revealed in Christ... a god, consequently, too trivial to lift me out of my self and beyond the distortions of my flawed experience.

God Beyond My View of God

     ...Concerns held with passionate conviction, theologies that provide a helpful framework, and formative spiritual experiences are not bad. A healthy Christian will have all these things!  They can be lenses through which we see important aspects of the being of God. The problem arises when we forget the vast difference between our view of God and the reality of God...

     Any god I use to support my latest cause, or who fits comfortably within my understanding or experience, will be a god no larger than I, and thus not able to save me from my sin or inspire my worship or empower my service.  Any god who fits the contours of ME will never really transcend me, never really be God.  Any god who doesn't kick the bars out of the prison of my perceptions will be nothing but a trivial god."

     I have to say that as I was reading that section of his book I thought to myself: guilty, guilty, guilty.  In fact, I had written the word "guilty" next to one of his comments in the book.

     After all, it's hard not to want God to be the way I want Him.  It's hard not to want Him to be on my side of any cause, or not want my experience to define how He is. Thank God, though, that He does not comply with my wishes! He is who He is, and remains true to who He is, even if ALL want Him to be different -- and most do on occasion -- myself included. 

     God help me -- God help us all -- to grow to learn and affirm all that you reveal about yourself in Your Word, remembering the need for humility as we try to do so, since there is so much more of You than our finite and limited minds can ever grasp.

In the service of Him who is loving, beautiful, immense, and holy beyond imagination, Pastor Jeff

How is God Like?

Greetings All, 

     This week's thought comes from A. W. Tozer's book "The Knowledge of the Holy."  It has to do with the most important subject anyone can think about or speak about -- the existence, the Being, and the true nature of God.  When I first read this quote years ago it struck me as being true beyond question and has since guided all that I seek to do in the ministry (though I still fail in various ways). There are few quotes I have gone back to and used as often as this one, simply because I feel it is so "right on."  It speaks for itself, and I trust that like myself, you will find it is true in your own life and in the lives of others you know.  It is lengthy, but well worth your time and earnest consideration!  Enjoy!

 

    "What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.  The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man's spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.  Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God. For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at any time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. 

 

     We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.  This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church.  Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than her speech.  She can never escape delf-disclosure of her witness concerning God.  Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question, 'What comes into your mind when you think about God?' we might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that man. Were we able to know exactly what our most influential religious leaders think of God today, we might be able with some precision to foretell where the Church will stand tomorrow...

 

   That our idea of God correspond as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us. Compared with our actual thoughts about Him, our creedal statements are of little consequence. Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is.  Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God...

 

    It is my opinion that the [current] Christian conception of God... is so decadent as to be utterly beneath the dignity of the Most High God and actually to constitute for professed believers something amounting to a moral calamity. All the problems of heaven and earth, though they were to confront us together and at once, would be nothing compared with the overwhelming problem of God: That He is, what He is like, and what we as moral beings must do about Him... Among the sins to which the human heart is prone, hardly any other is more hateful to God than idolatry, for idolatry is at bottom a libel on His character.  The idolatrous heart assumes that God is other than He is -- in itself a monstrous sin -- and substitutes for the true God one made after its own likeness.  Always this god will conform to the image of the one who created it and will be base or pure, cruel or kind, according to the moral state of the mind from which it emerges.  A god begotten in the shadows of a fallen heart will quite naturally be no true likeness of the true God.  'You thought,' said the Lord to the wicked man in the psalm, 'that I was altogether like you.'

 

     ...Perverted notions about God soon rot the religion in which they appear.  The long career of Israel demonstrates this clearly enough, and the long history of the Church confirms it. So necessary to the Church is a lofty concept of God that when that concept in any measure declines, the Church with her worship and her moral standards declines along with it.  The first step down for any church is taken when it surrenders its high opinion of God. Before the Christian Church goes into eclipse anywhere there must first be a corrupting of her simple basic theology.  She simply gets a wrong answer to the question, 'What is God like?' and goes on from there.  Though she may continue to cling to a sound nominal creed, her practical working creed has become false.  The masses of her adherents come to believe that God is different from what He actually is; and that is heresy of the most insidious and deadly kind.

 

    Therefore, the heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him -- and of her.  In all her prayers and labors this should have first place.  We do the greatest service to the next generation of Christians by passing on to them, undimmed and undiminished, that noble concept of God which we received from our Hebrew and Christian fathers of generations past.  This will prove of greater value to them than anything [else]."

 

 

         With prayers that the Church of this generation would retrieve its lofty and majestic understanding of God (as put forth in the Bible), and would fall prostate in adoring worship before our thrice holy God in whose presence even the angels cover their faces.  May it be so, Pastor Jeff

Truth

Greetings All, 

     This week's thought comes from one of my favorite authors -- J. I. Packer.  It is found in his classic work, Knowing God.  Not that copies sold guarantees good content, but it has sold more than three million copies worldwide and is considered by many to be a book that should be a reference book on the shelf of every serious Christian. In fact, if you are looking for a book to use for a discipleship class for new believers, or a discussion group for Christians of any age or maturity level, this one should be high on the list.  It is filled with tremendously helpful insights into the Gospel and Christian living.

     Today's thought has to do with truth. But not just truth as "brute objective facts."  It has to do with truth as a revelation of the person of God. It speaks of how truth is personal (better yet, how truth is a Person -- as Jesus reminded us when He said, "I AM the truth..." ). And it shows how truth heeded brings immense benfits into people's lives.  I found it a good reminder.  I trust you will as well.  Enjoy.

      "Truth in the Bible is a quality of persons primarily, and of propositions only secondarily.  It means stability, reliability, firmness, trustworthiness, the quality of a person who is entirely self-consistent, sincere, realistic, undeceived.  God is such a person: truth, in this sense, is his nature, and he has not got it in him to be anything else. 

       That is why he cannot lie (Tit 1:2; Num 23:19; I Sam 15:29; Heb. 6:18).  That is why his words to us are true, and cannot be other than true.  They are the index of reality. They show us things as they really are, and as they will be for us in the future, depending on whether we heed God's words to us or not...

       Psalm 119:151 says, 'All your commands are true.'  Why are they so described?  First, because they have stability and permanence as setting forth what God wants to see in human lives in every age.  And second, because they tell us the unchanging truth about our own nature. For this is the purpose of God's law: it gives us a working definition of true humanity. It shows us what we were made to be, teaches us how to be truly human, and warns us against moral self-destruction. This is a matter of great importance, and one which calls for much consideration at the present time.

      We are familiar with the thought that our bodies are like machines, needing the right routine of food, rest and exercise if they are to run efficiently, and liable, if filled up with the wrong fuel -- alcohol, drugs, poison -- to lose their power of healthy functioning and ultimately to 'seize up' entirely in physical death. 

      What we are slower to grasp is that God wishes us to think of our souls in a similar way.  As rational persons, we were made to bear God's moral image--that is, our souls were made to 'run' on the practice of worship, law-keeping, truthfulness, honesty, discipline, self-control, and service to God and our fellow human beings.  If we abandon these practices, not only do we incur guilt before God; we also progressively destroy our own souls. Conscience atrophies, the sense of shame dries up, one's capacity for truthfulness, loyalty and honesty is eaten away, and one's character disintegrates. One not only becomes desperately miserable; one is steadily being dehumanized.  This is one aspect of spiritual death. 

      Richard Baxter was right to formulate the alternatives as 'A Saint or a Brute.'  That, ultimately, is the only choice, and everyone, sooner or later, consciously or unconsciously opts for one or the other.  Nowadays some will maintain, in the name of humanism, that the 'Puritan' sexual morality of the Bible is contrary to the attainment of true human maturity, and that a little more license makes for richer living.  Of this ideology we would only say that the proper name for it is not humanism, but brutism.  Sexual laxity does not make you more human, but less so.  It brutalizes you and tears your soul to pieces.  The same is true wherever any of God's commandments are disregarded.  We are only living truly human lives just so far as we are laboring to keep God's commandments; and no further."   

      Much of our culture's 'live for the moment, run on your feelings, indulge every pleasure, give in to every urge, and focus on the sensual instead of the eternal' has led to damaged souls, personal frustration, disillusionment, broken homes and marriages, and dysfunction in all levels of society.  We have forgotten (or chosen to ignore the fact) that order, and limits, and consistency, and virtue, and self-humbling worship, and self-discipline, and self-restraint are 'exercises' the soul needs to be trained in in order to be healthy and strong and weather the storms of life. And because they are so neccessary to health in life and society, it should come as no surprise that the Bible -- which encourages them all -- should do so.

   

      Packer is right.  People almost universally seem to know the routines needed to keep their bodies healthy and fit -- as if that were the most important thing. Yet they so often fail to apply those same principles to the soul.  We take so much care of the temporal, the decaying, and that which will pass away, and tend to ignore (to a large extent) the things most valuable and eternal.

     In the long run (in the light of eternity) it would be far wiser for us to train the eternal soul to be fit and godly, than to train the perishable body to have a mere decade or more of slightly better mobility and a little more energy.  Quality of life in this life has all but replaced the Christian emphasis on preparation for eternal life.  

     But, of course, such a change in priority and the paradigm shift it requires, would mean really believing that the things eternal and invisible far outweigh the things temporal and visible -- and that would require a radical counter-culture stance in nearly every way.  Hopefully, though, care for what matters most will win out, and you will make the necessary changes regardless of being counted in the minority when you do. It will never be otherwise, for narrow is the way that leads to life, and wide is the way that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13).  

With concern for what really matters,  Pastor Jeff

First-born of all Creation

Greetings All,

This weeks 'thought' comes to you from William Barclay (formerly Professor of New Testament and Hellenistic Greek at the University of Glasgow, in Scotland). It comes to you from his book "The All-Sufficient Christ."

I thought it would be an appropriate quote to meditate upon during Holy Week, since the events of this week make little sense, and have even less significance, unless we recall who it is that is being betrayed, put on trial by men, mocked, spit on, beaten, flogged and crucified.
It explains Paul's words in Colossians 1:15-16 where he says of Jesus:

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him were all things created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible..." Enjoy!

"In its English dress the phrase "the first-born of all creation" is misleading. The word for 'first-born' is prototokos, and it has two connected but quite distinct meanings.

First, it has what may be called a time meaning, and does mean quite simply born first in point of time. If that meaning is taken here, it will simply mean that Christ was the first of created persons to be born. It would make him a part of creation rather than make him separate from creation. But the whole tenor of Paul's thought forbids us to take that meaning, for Paul is concerned to show, not that Jesus is simply a part of creation, but that he is above and beyond creation; and in any event Paul goes on to say that all things were created by him and that he was before all things. This means we must seek the meaning of prototokos along its other line.

Second... the word prototokos came to have the meaning of primacy in honor rather than mere priority in time. 'Israel,' says God, 'is my first-born son' (Exodus 4:22). Israel was certainly not the first-born nation in the point of time, but Israel was certainly the first-born nation in the plan and design and the heart of God.

God says of the Davidic king: 'And I will make him the first-born, the highest of the kings of the earth' (Psalm 89:27). There, quite clearly, the word 'first-born' has to do with place and prestige and honor and not with time at all... In the rabbinic writings God himself is called the first-born of creation, which can only mean that God is the sovereign of all creation.

So when Jesus Christ is called the first-born of all creation, it does not mean that he was the first created person to be born. What it does mean is that to him God has assigned the first place, the lordship, the sovereignty of all creation. Here, therefore, the translation of the New English Bible is much to be preferred: 'His is the primacy over all created things.' (By this term first-born) Paul lays down the sovereignty of Jesus Christ over the whole creation of God.

Jesus is also called, 'the image of the invisible God.' The word is eikon. This word is a regular word for that which is a precise copy, reproduction, or replica. An eikon is an accurate picture or description... So, then, to call Jesus the eikon of God is to say that Jesus is the perfect portrait of God. If you wish to see what God is like, look at Jesus. In Jesus the invisible God becomes visible to men. So, then, as Lightfoot puts it, Jesus is the perfect representation of God (See Hebrews 1:3).

Yet ordinarily we can go and look at the person of whom the portrait or description is a representation. We cannot do that in the case of the infinite and invisible God. So not only is Jesus the representation of God; he is also the perfect manifestation and revelation of God. In one sentence, in Jesus we see God. When we look at Jesus, we can say, 'This is what God is like.' And what a blinding revelation it is to see God in the one who healed the sick, and fed the hungry, and comforted the sorrowing, and chose ordinary men to be his right-hand men, and was the friend of those whom the conventional and the orthodox and the pious regarded with contempt and supercilious disgust. Here indeed is a revelation that changes a man's whole relationship to God."

With prayers that this week will bring for you a renewed sense of devotion, reverence and joy in Christ,

Pastor Jeff