31. Believe the Good News

‘Behind Christmas’ Meditations No.31: Believe the Good News

Mk 1:15 The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’

So for this past month we’ve been doing a ‘painting-by-numbers’ exercise as we have been seeking to catch something of the background in Israel when Jesus came, before that first ‘Christ-mas’, and then see if perhaps there is a parallel to the world that we inhabit today.

We’ve pondered on the darkness and we’ve pondered on the way various people responded to it or even contributed to it. We’ve pondered on the ways ‘darkness’ imposes itself on our lives – international crises, government crises, economic crises, environmental crises, social or relational crises, personal crises. The thing about darkness is that it is naturally depressing or gloomy but the other thing it that darkness is not all there is – there is light.

If you were involved in a car crash, were in a coma for weeks and awoke with amnesia so you knew nothing, and you woke on your own at midnight, you might think that darkness was all that was. Yes, you take hope from streetlights perhaps, but what more is there. And then dawn breaks and there is a gradual lightening of the skies and then it turns red and suddenly there is a bright spot on the horizon that becomes the full sun, and everything changes.

So the spiritual darkness was there, John had come as voice into that darkness and for some, the sky was lighting up, reality was arriving with repentance and a fresh awareness of God. And then Jesus comes with a somewhat different message. Yes, repent but repent of what? Of unbelief, because God is here, the kingdom accompanies him, it is good news to be believed!

Here it is, the reason for Christmas – that the Son could come to earth and point us back to the Father by displaying His kingdom. All that has gone before, that we’ve been thinking about over this past month, was with that goal in mind. Our call is to similarly demonstrate the kingdom of God to the world by His love, His power, and His revelation, and if we turn away from that, or fail to teach it and demonstrate it, and substitute ‘services’ and ‘church clubs’ for it, we will be selling Jesus seriously short and all we may expect is the serious discipline of God. So let’s, as we leave one year and prepare for the next, determine to be those who will continue to do the works of Jesus (Jn 14:12) as he enables us. What does it require? Awareness, hunger, availability, and obedience. Let’s grab those for this year ahead.  Ponder and pray over those four things: awareness of the dark but also of the coming Son, hunger for him and for change, available to him as he says afresh, “Follow me,” and obedience that goes with WHATEVER he puts before us. Amen? Amen!

30. Worries & Hunger

‘Behind Christmas’ Meditations No.30: Worries & Hunger

 Mt 3:5 “People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan.”

I think the vast majority of us just get on with daily life without much comprehension of the big movers and shakers impacting our world. Yes, we see the news on TV, we see what those in government are saying and doing and bits of it impact us, but most of it, no. We hear of international conflicts but mostly they are a long way off and we trust they won’t come near. We do struggle when inflation makes prices rise and in some quarters, if we are a union member, we may allow ourselves to be stirred into strike action in our fears and worries about coping (as has been seen in the UK at the end of 2022).

So yes, there are the big fears and worries and anxieties that get imposed upon us by the ways of the world (often despots or greedy or foolish people in charge) but most of the time, I think, we don’t consider what the person next door is thinking, or the wider community feels about their life experiences in this part of the twenty-first century.

If we read a paper we may see the latest growing statistics about divorces, relational breakups, identity crises, and suicides especially among the young, but these (mostly) tend to be someone else’s problem, so we ignore them.

When it comes to church, we hear of numbers falling, numbers not going back after Covid, of church leaders collapsing after the stresses of trying to hold church together through multiple lockdowns, and we make our own decisions whether to turn up to the next predictable service or stay at home and watch something on the God-channel. But what are people generally feeling? What were they feeling in Jesus’ day?

One of the things – and remember we are still pondering on what was going on in the background when Jesus came – was that although there was a general spiritual darkness over the Land, that we considered from the beginning, it is clear (jumping thirty years ahead now) that there is a spiritual hunger in the people for nothing else explains why such large crowds flocked to John the Baptist to confess their sins and repent and be baptized. The enemy would seek to use such darkness to depress us, but the truth is that God is always at work and will therefore be stirring a hunger for light, real life and truth, in people to overcome that darkness. Is that how it is as we face the coming new year? Are our neighbours feeling desperate about life, thinking there must be something better, something more than this? Are they worrying about their own struggles to cope and wishing they had some power source to help them cope? The wonderings may be endless when God is preparing a people.

29. …. and more?

‘Behind Christmas’ Meditations No.29: … and more?

Mt 2:13 “an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. ‘Get up,’ he said, ‘take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt.”

So we have been trying throughout this series to build up a picture of the complex mix that was the background before Jesus came, and into which he came, and have perhaps, not very subtly, been nudging us to catch the bigger view of our lives today and some of the things that, similarly, interweave and make up the life we know. Little children get wrapped up in their own little worlds, and so perception and understanding of life around them only grows very slowly. Perhaps it is that they are too busy coping with each day’s new experiences to have time (and ability) to reflect on the wonder and complexity of it all.

That is the thing isn’t it, we can handle life when it just potters on day by day without change, but it’s when the crisis things impose themselves on us without warning that we struggle. Those crisis things may be sickness, infirmity, accidents, job losses, financial losses, relationship breakdowns, violence against us, theft and so on. Yesterday we had no expectancy of them but today …. Bang! … they are here, and they bring pain (physical or emotional), worry and anxiety. Our equilibrium has been completely upset.

What is true today, was just as true two thousand years ago. This new little family is living in Bethlehem, perhaps Joseph is doing jobbing work to support them (perhaps they sell some of the gifts the Wise men brought) but they’re all right. They are slowly settling into family life with an infant and then it happens!

Oh Joseph, not another dream!! If Mary had thought that, it is possible she might have been encouraged by the thought that Joseph was there with her only because of a dream. But this dream is also quite explicit – go to Egypt “for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” (v.13b) Oh my goodness, when will this end? Not until you see this son ascend to heaven in some thirty or so years’ time! You might think the Son on earth would mean an easy life for those associated with him, but quite the opposite; there is a war on! And so it is today, there is still a war where Jesus is in control but don’t expect life to always be easy; there are a variety of reasons why it may not be. Be mature in your understanding of these things as next year approaches. When Pandemics come, threats of wars and economic repercussions, when the weather suggests the environment is out of control, we MUST hold on to a fundamental truth: God IS in control, Jesus is overseeing the end times (Rev 5 on) and he IS reigning in the midst of his enemies (Psa 110:1,2) and he WILL continue reigning in the midst of it all until the time when he hands it all back to the Father. (1 Cor 15:24,25) 

28. Tiers of society

‘Behind Christmas’ Meditations No.28: Tiers of society

Mt 2:1 “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem.”

It is probable that this was several months after the birth (at least 40 days later when they went to the temple and offered the ‘poor offering’) and sometime less than the two years that Herod covered (Mt 2:16). The little family were clearly still in Bethlehem (Mt 2:1-11) when, apparently without warning, these gift-carrying visitors came to herald the newborn king. Three times Mary & Joseph appear to have had divine encouragements (the shepherds, Simeon and now the wise men). This is the God who cares and encourages and is still there for them – through and in the circumstances.

So the baby has arrived, ‘Christmas’ has been and gone (whether it was December 25^th or some other day earlier in the year) but what, as we near the end of this series, was the world of Jesus really like? Well first there were the authorities who we have considered, Caesar Augustus ruling over the empire, Herod ruling locally. Then there was the religious environment, the Law of Moses, unique to this nation, upheld by the priesthood and such self-appointed guardians as the Pharisees, then there were the ordinary people, the likes of Mary, Joseph etc., and the lower echelons of society, typified by the shepherds. And then, now we are reminded, there is the big world outside Israel, that supports different cultures and beliefs, some of which interact with Judaism, and that is the Magi.

I don’t know if you have ever seen it like this, but it is as if there are tiers or layers of society so when we read our Gospels, there is all of this background there and the particular mix is unique to Israel. Every nation has its own culture and its own history, but Israel stands out in the world by a culture and history that has been God-formed. Take away the top tier – Caesar and Herod – and everyone else we’ve considered has their ‘take’ on life because of the ‘God-factor’, His impact on their history and subsequent culture, and it is within this culture that Jesus is going to be brought up – as an ordinary Jewish boy going with his parents to Synagogue at least once a week, and to the Temple in Jerusalem at least once a year. He is God in the flesh, but the flesh (mind and body) is growing and developing as any normal human being grows, develops and matures and perhaps (because it’s a mystery) the God-element in him was growing in awareness and expression as well. So let’s turn to you and me. Human beings with history, growing up in a local culture but now God-aware, God-indwelt, God-empowered, God-motivated, guided and directed. Are you catching the big complex picture of which we too are a part? Marvel over it and give thanks for it.

27. Tram-rails of the Law

‘Behind Christmas’ Meditations No.27: Tram-rails of the Law

Lk 2:22 “When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.”

Being Jewish carries with it history and with history, obligations. I suspect a young couple today might say in the same circumstances, ‘Let’s not bother, no one will know,” but not this young Jewish couple. For them, first there was circumcision on the eighth day, probably by the local Rabbi in Bethlehem, then a number of weeks later there was going to the Temple to pay their dues as the Law required (see below). They were running on the tramrails of the Law, and it was as they were keeping on that track, that the next acclaim came, and we’re back to Simeon again. Are we running on tracks laid down by God, because if we are, watch out for the blessing that’s coming.

Let’s think about this some more because perhaps in some ways the very presence of the Law of Moses acted as the very air that the Israelite breathed. After they were born, baby males were circumcised – according to the Law (Gen 17:12 & Lev 12:3). At forty days  the first-born was ‘redeemed’ with coinage (Ex 13:1,2,11-15, Num 18:14,15) and the mother offered a sacrifice (Lev 12:1-4). Thereafter the Law prescribed how life was to be lived. It had been given by Moses nearly thirteen hundred years before and it was still followed. It was what the Pharisees focused upon and it was the reason that Temple worship still existed (although only for roughly seventy years more.)

But beyond laying down a way of living, what was the fundamental purpose of the Law? It was, surely, to make this a God-aware people, a constant reminder of covenant relationship, established back there at Sinai, paused it seemed [at least in the Land] during the Exile, but resurrected with the returning exiles as recorded in Ezra and Nehemiah. It was what those men turned to, to challenge disobedience and bring the people back in line. And it was still there, half in the background, half still being followed in daily life by ordinary people as well as the priests, Pharisees etc. It was the canvas upon which life was painted,  the ‘scenery’ in front of which, daily life was acted out. And today? Today not so much by many Jews, especially now the Temple is gone, but for us? We have another ‘law’, another guidebook to make us God-aware, God-conscious, not just the Old Testament of the Jews but ALSO the New Testament, the record of the happenings and the teachings of the apostles, revealing even more God the Redeemer, and His Son in the form of Jesus Christ, revealing even more relationship built on love not laws. And yet ‘the laws’, the teaching is still there in the background, in the same way revealing the will of God. Amen. 

26. Indifference to the Poor

‘Behind Christmas’ Meditations No.26: Indifference to the Poor

Lk 2:8 “And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.”

As we continue to gaze behind the scenes of the days before Jesus arrives, I suspect my approach typifies how we think of those days. If asked who the key players of the day were, we’d pick on Caesar Augustus, Herod, the high priests, the Sadducees, the Pharisees and then we would work our way through the key personnel – Mary, Joseph, Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon and Anna and the Wise Men and ….oh yes… the shepherds. They feature in children’s Nativity plays because we all like the idea of sheep and lambs, but otherwise I have a feeling those don’t rate very highly in our thinking.

If you want the personification of poverty, shepherds of those days were it. They were workers who lived out on the hillside looking after an owner’s sheep. We have this phrase don’t we, “out of sight, out of mind” and the shepherds were out of sight, out on the hillsides and, because they probably didn’t turn up at Synagogue on Saturday, they were considered outcasts.

Our modern Western society has made great leaps forward in some ways in recent decades as we have made ourselves conscious of the disabled and the damaged and they are encouraged to have a real place in life and not just hide away in the background somewhere, forgotten.

But when we think of the world in which we live, I wonder if there are strata of society we never think about, rich or poor, or just simply those who are different to us. Fortunately, Jesus doesn’t have such people, they are ALL part of the lost flock he wants to reach out to, and it seems as if God was making a point when the first people to be on the scene at His beckoning were from this lower, often rejected and despised stratum of society.  Jesus came to take down the divisions. Do we work to keep them up I wonder? The Law reflected God’s heart for those not so well off as the rest of us, for example, “Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits.” (Ex 23:11) or “during the seventh year let the land lie unploughed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it,” (Ex 23:11) or “Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor,” (Lev 19:10) This was God’s recognition that we’ll always have the poor with us (Mt 26:11 – repeated in both Mark & John) but also that He wants us to have a caring and compassionate attitude towards them, in whatever form they are poor – widows, orphans included (Jas 1:27, Psa 68:5, Isa 58:7). More than a coin in a collecting box, can we do more to acknowledge ‘the shepherds’ of our world?

25. Wonder

‘Behind Christmas’ Meditations No.25: Wonder

Lk 2:7 “she gave birth to her firstborn, a son.”

This is the day we remember that simple fact. At that time, in an inconvenient place, focusing on the inconvenient way that babies arrive, this couple act out history that, as part of the Plan of the Sovereign Creator, is just a tiny part (unnoticed by most) that would eventually affect each and every person on earth, the Saviour who would also be the measuring stick by which all will be judged at the Final Judgment. You can’t get much more significant than that, so on this day when most are focusing on feasting, refocus for a few minutes at least and bow in thankful worship to Him who sent His Son in such an unnoticeable way but who would provide a pathway back to heaven for each of us.

But there are things about Mary and Joseph that are uncomfortably challenging. First of all there is Mary who accepts this commission from the Lord of Glory to carry His Son, a charge that would open her first to misunderstanding by her fiancé and no doubt her family, and then to what for a young girl must be an anguish-heaping nine months, followed by a potentially terrifying experience of child-birth – no sanitized labour room accompanied by a qualified midwife and all the backup support of a hospital. As it turned out – and what a memory they would have – it was just a stable, a backroom or even a cave, depending on which commentator you believe, but a manger for a crib. And then shepherds as the welcoming party. What???

I was about to say, it wasn’t much better for Joseph but, oh, it was much better. He wasn’t the one carrying the baby sixty or seventy miles without modern public transport, he wasn’t the one having his son miles away from the family home out the back of an inn because all the rooms were taken for the census. No, Joseph’s challenge was to his pride and his righteousness, both of which went out the window when he was told to marry Mary. We asked yesterday about how much we think about Paul’s challenge in Rom 12:1,2 to give our entire lives to God. Mary and Joseph are the epitome or embodiment of that total submission of body, mind, and reputation to God, and without that, we really can’t even guess at what might have happened.

I often think the same about the man who gave young Billy Graham a lift to the local church youth club where he eventually surrenders his life to the most incredible life of travel and ministry to become the most famous evangelist of history, but I suspect he would have said that the cost far outweighed the fame, it always does. No, get behind the food and frolics of the day, behind the sweet Nativity play put on at school or church, and touch the reality of what went on and if you could see it with total vision, we would stand silently in awe of this amazing young couple and of the King of Glory who called them (and us) to this same path of sacrifice and submission to the wonderful will of God. Worship today.

24. Committed to God’s will

‘Behind Christmas’ Meditations No.24: Committed to God’s will

Mt 1:24 “When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.”

I think it is fair to say that in our early studies that picked up on people like Caesar, Herod and the high priests, these were not people committed to God’s will. Caesar quite likely saw himself as a god, Herod paid lip service to Judaism and used extending and glorifying the temple (that would be destroyed later that century!) as a means of currying favour with the Jews of the day (failed!), and the high priests would no doubt be offended if you suggested they were not committed to God’s will. The same applies to the Pharisees no doubt, but it is clear by their eventual responses to Jesus that spiritual blindness can mean a complete distortion of what you think God’s will is. For the high priests, as they saw it, God’s will meant keeping the peace so that the Romans would not stop their religious activities, but keeping God’s will is most clearly seen when God spoke directly to someone and they responded with obedience and this is where Joseph is such a delight!

Let’s be honest, the Christmas story is often uncomfortable, just like ordinary life is. People around us do things that disturb or even hurt us. Joseph must have been both, but he wants to do the right thing which means the end of their betrothal (engagement) and then … doh! …. God turns up in a most convincing dream and he has to realign his plans. He must now go ahead with Mary, despite what ‘the people’ might say. But he’s now a man committed to the strange will of God and as such he will be the guardian to the Redeemer of the World. Incredible! Committed to the will of God, even though it might feel uncomfortable? I say it so often that I believe it starts sounding trite, but I am convinced most of us – those who actually read the Bible – so often take for granted what we read without a great deal of thought. So in the present context, in the light of what we have been thinking, we happily read the apostle Paul’s injunction to “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Rom 12:1,2) Listen to how the Message version puts it: “Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.” Oh my goodness! That means twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, and so on, and it implies a God-awareness whereby we consciously moment by moment seek to obey God’s will. In fact, of course, Paul concludes those verses with, “Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it,” (v.2) and this is how Joseph responds to his dream and it’s going to have serious consequences. Awesome

23. Family Unity

‘Behind Christmas’ Meditations No.23: Family Unity

Lk 1:63 “He asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone’s astonishment he wrote, ‘His name is John.’”

A number of years ago, I approached a visitor to a dedication of an infant service and got talking to her. “Oh I couldn’t believe like they do,” she said referring to the child’s parents. I found myself replying, “Well perhaps not at the moment, but who knows what you might be thinking in say nine months’ time.”  Nine months later she became a Christian. I tell this because yesterday we thought about people changing, their ideas and their beliefs change, and how Elizabeth came directly in line with God’s will as conveyed by the angel to her husband. But now comes the even bigger change, now it’s Zechariah’s turn, and I find a thought arriving I’ve never seen before, that of the unity of this couple.

The psalmist wrote, “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!” (Psa 133:1) and how much truer that is when it involves a husband and wife agreeing to go along together with the will of God. Zechariah had started out from a position of unbelief. He struggled to believe the angel; after all both he and his wife were beyond child-bearing age. She had probably been through the menopause and so the odds were that their decades of childlessness were not going to change – but that didn’t take into account God’s intervention.

It seems an unkind and hurtful mystery why a number of women seem unable to conceive, and there are quite a number of them in the Bible, and they are particularly noteworthy because eventually God enabled them all to conceive. In the present context, Elizabeth was one, and Mary was another. It is almost as if God delights in breaking in on the apparently humanly impossible.

Now they both name their new son, John, which we suggested means ‘Jehovah is gracious’. What a banner to wave over this dark land, this land with so much unbelief, so many low expectations, so much occult activity, so much self-orientated activity. His very presence is a testimony and his name makes him stand out in this family who have both come to agreement in line with God’s directions; not something to be taken for granted but beautiful when it occurs. It is the unity of this aged couple that now strikes me. I wonder how often this actually occurs, especially in today’s world where ‘self’ is encouraged and the church mostly fails to teach the potential wonder of a unified-in-faith marriage. It is sad when it is absent, and becomes a primary goal for prayer and a goal for the coming days? But for those of us where it is a partnership of unity in the faith, this is a time of the year to be unashamedly thankful. The whole Nativity story involves two couples, one old, one young, but both committed to each other and to God’s will. If only …..  

22. People change

‘Behind Christmas’ Meditations No.22: People change

Lk 1:60 “his mother spoke up and said, ‘No! He is to be called John.’”

Life changes, people change, ideas change and beliefs change. If I am honest, I look back on much of my life as a Christian leader, with a large sense of failure. My wife and children beat me up (not literally) and tell me there were lots of good things I did as a leader, and yes that is true, but that still doesn’t stop me, from the perspective I have in life now, looking back with regret that I didn’t get the grace to handle bad situations better, or the wisdom to know how to lead a people better. But of course that is from today’s perspective; I have changed, I have learnt a lot more over the years and sometimes wish I could rerun some of those years again to do better.

But the big thing is that God call us, knowing what we’re like, knowing we are spiritual infants who are going to take a lifetime to grow up. You’ve only got to look at the imperfect people in the Bible that He had dealings with to know this – Abram, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, all of them spiritual pigmies who grew into spiritual giants – but it took time, years, failures and going again.

So now we focus on the strange events leading up to ‘Christmas’, with our starter verse.  This is some months before Jesus is born. It involves an elderly couple who had been minding their own business when God turned up in a new way in their lives. Disbelief was the response but now all that has changed. The baby HAS arrived and there are celebrations. Who would have thought, but it has happened, but why? There have been the angelic directions (Lk 1:15-17) nine months before and perhaps Zechariah had written them down for Elizabeth when he came home, but now? Now Elizabeth, now another of those little lights of expectation in the dark, has taken it in – and believed it! She almost certainly doesn’t understand much of it, but an angel spoke, she had a son, and that’s enough; she aligns herself with God’s will in this declaration. She has changed and so now she is part of the divine process that is being worked out, in her and around her.

She has had her baby and that must be The convincing factor and so, on the eighth day they go to circumcise the baby boy and name him, and all the family and friends expect him to be named after his father (Lk 1:59) and it is at that moment that Elizabeth (because Zechariah still can’t speak) breaks with tradition and declares a completely new, unexpected name, John. It is thought that name means ‘Jehovah is gracious’. We’ll ponder on that tomorrow but for the moment I want us just to realize – people change, their ideas change, and the best changes are when God has been working in their lives to turn them around. Just because a loved one is unbelieving now, doesn’t mean they still will in nine months’ time!