20...25!

 January, 2025.  Happy New Year!  While the celebration comes and goes, the new year stays with us.  And so as we look into 2025, we can hardly avoid encountering the ever-popular new year’s resolution thing.  There is value in evaluating where we are and planning so that we can use the year in constructive ministry and growth.  But as I like to say at this time of year, the performance-oriented, self-improvement perspective of many a new year’s resolution is not particularly Biblical or worthwhile.

 In Psalm 139, David, a man after God’s own heart and King of Israel, invites the LORD to search him and know him, to reveal sin that needs attention.  That is an excellent place to start.  Unlike David, we have the indwelling Holy Spirit to search and know us, to convict us of sin and reveal areas in our lives that need growth.  But then what?  It is easy to take the popular route and to invest our focus and energy on fixing ourselves, to measure our progress by our performance, and to compare ourselves to others to measure our success.  Or, we can sit back, put our feet up, and expect the Lord to change us while we expend no effort.  Neither option reflects an effective, Biblical approach to change.

 

The path of change requires a collaborative effort between the Holy Spirit and us.  Please consider with me two portion of Paul’s epistles:

 

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.  Ephesians 2:8-9

 

So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.  

Philippians 2:12-13

 

Paul’s words encourage us to appreciate the powerfully good news of the Gospel.  We have been saved by grace through faith.  We cannot earn our righteousness, our rightness with God, or our salvation.  We are blessed beyond measure.  But beyond our salvation, we are called to pursue a life that reflects our new life in Christ, and that requires confession, repentance, and obedience on our part as we depend upon Christ’s indwelling Holy Spirit.

 

The continuing good news is that as we seek God’s best for us, He takes even our feeblest effort and does His loaves and fishes thing: Just as Christ took the meager amount of bread and fish from His disciples to feed large crowds, He takes our small steps of faith and magnifies and multiplies them.  As we turn away from our self-focused desires and the counterfeit joys offered by the world, He works to conform our character to that of Christ.  We are able to love well and know deep and abiding joy.

 

We don’t have to change…. We get to change and be changed….

 

 

Christmas Is Coming!

 The beginning of December is unavoidably associated with the coming of the Christmas holiday.  It can be a time of stress, but it is also without doubt a time of anticipation.  And as I think about the upcoming celebration of the Incarnation, I am also thinking about God’s anticipation of this glorious event.

 

When the Triune God first created the world and the man and the woman, there was uninhibited relationship between human and Creator, and harmony among all parts of creation.  This was torn asunder with the fall.  Adam and Eve’s choosing independence from God replaced the intimacy they had enjoyed with their Creator with fear and shame.  The havoc their choice made echoed across all creation.  God wept, and all heaven grieved.

 

Genesis 3 tells us that in the midst of this tragedy, as God pronounces the consequences of their choice, He also makes reference to His plan of redemption: a seed of the woman will crush Satan’s head.  The promise of the Messiah becomes clearer as Hebrew history evolves, and the book of Isaiah is often known as the Fifth Gospel for a good reason: Isaiah proclaims with incredible clarity the coming Messiah.

 

And so the Hebrew nation begins a centuries-long wait for the Messiah.  I don’t think we often consider that God is waiting as well.  From the first, “Adam, where are you?” to His grief over His faithless people expressed by the prophets, we see in the Old Testament a God who hates the fall and its result.  He, too, is waiting for the fulness of time to bring forth the Savior of the world.

 

We also see a God who remains intimately engaged in His creation as He moves history forward toward the Messiah.  In fact, He is so committed that He makes “cameo” appearances.  Scholars call these Theophanies: visible appearances of God to humankind.  And many scholars speculate that those appearances are Christophanies: visible appearances of a preincarnate Christ to humankind.  The thread is strong enough that many commentators identify the phrase angel of the LORD in the Old Testament (not in the New!) as a euphemism—at least at times— for the preincarnate Christ.

 

And so the LORD and two angels appear to Abraham before the judgement of Sodom and Gomorrah.  He also appears to Hagar when she takes Ishmael and runs away from Abraham’s household.  He appears to Abraham again as Abraham prepares to sacrifice his son Isaac.  He wrestles with Jacob as Jacob returns to Canaan after running away from Esau.  And He appears to Moses in the burning bush.  

 

There are multiples instances in the Old Testament where it is at least possible and even quite likely if not certain that a pre-incarnate Christ inserted Himself in human events.  I can only interpret this as evidence that Jesus was as eager to come as we were for Him to come.  Our anticipation of Christmas can be a reminder that our Lord and Savior was as or more eager to take the step of the incarnation as His people were to have Him come.  And now, centuries later, we can at least speculate that as we look beyond our celebration of Christmas to the second coming of Christ, we can consider that He is as eager to bring the church—His bride—to His wedding feast as we are to come.

 

Come, Lord Jesus…!