This month I wanted to recommend a Christmas album that my
family really loves to listen to this time of year. Three years ago, Sovereign
Grace Music produced an album called “Prepare Him Room”. The idea of the album
came from a family devotional book called “Prepare Him Room” written by Marty
Machowski. I personally have not gone through that devotional, but have heard
great things about it. The album includes a mixture of familiar Christmas hymns
(many of them reworked with different melodies and lyrics) as well as some
original songs. Some of the highlights include their rendition of “O Holy Night
(Hear the Gospel Story)” which really
encapsulates the power of the Gospel story through new lyrics in both the
second and third verses, as well as the song “Who Would Have Dreamed” and “He
Who is Mighty”. I love the chorus in “Who Would Have Dreamed” which says:
Who would have
dreamed, or ever foreseen
That we could hold God
in our Hands?
The giver of life was
born in the night,
Revealing God’s
glorious plan
To save the world.
I hope this album serves you and your family well as you
take time to reflect on the reality of the incarnation. I am very thankful to
Sovereign Grace music for providing such a beautifully crafted, gospel rich
album!
You can find more information about the album and Sovereign
Grace Music at
This is part five of our blog series, “The Scarlet Thread.” Here’s how it’s gone so far. God rules, according to the story of Creation. We sinned and ruined Creation, according to the story of Adam and Eve. God works despite our sinfulness, according to the story of Joseph. We can be freed from the slavery to our sin, according to the story of the Exodus. And NOW, I want to share with you the story of the Israelites Wandering.
Quite frequently the Bible uses different metaphors and pictures to illustrate a truth. In the story of the Exodus, the Bible uses the picture of the Israelites wandering for 40 years in order to illustrate a dull, powerless Christian life. This is something I hear very often in ministry. It is common for someone to say they feel like their spiritual life is stuck in a desert, or a wasteland. There’s no passion, no power, and really no life to their spirituality. I think you know exactly what I’m talking about, because I believe this is something everybody experiences at some point in their Christian life. The story of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness just might hold the key to get you out of your figurative wilderness. It goes like this…
The wilderness came after the Israelites were delivered from the Egyptians. In a very real sense, the Wilderness wandering was self-imposed. It’s not like they spent 40 years completely lost without a map. They actually knew exactly where they were supposed to go, they were just not allowed to go there because of their lack of faith.
When I was in kindergarten, I experienced something similar. My school was about one mile from my house. One day, when my mom came to pick me and my brothers up from school, she had gone inside to see a teacher while we waited in the van. After a couple minutes, I also ran inside to grab something I had left. When I came back out, the worst thing imaginable to a kindergartner happened. The van was gone. My mom thought I was hiding behind the seat (something my brothers and I did regularly) and so she started on the way home.
I knew where my house was, and so I started walking in that direction. The only problem was, there was a man out on a run, coming in my direction. At that point, I panicked! I wandered back into the parking lot, and began sobbing. The whole ordeal felt like an hour, when in reality my mom quickly realized I wasn’t in the car and turned right back around to get me. I knew the direction I was supposed to go, but my fear kept me from moving in the direction.
This is what happened to the Israelites. Moses has even seen the Promised Land they were meant to travel to. But their lack of faith (fear), kept them from entering. I’m guessing you know exactly what that is like. After all, isn’t fear the most human thing about us?
See, God delivered them from Egypt, then gave them the 10 Commandments. They were on their way to Canaan, the Promised Land. Just before they arrived, they sent their spies to check it out. The spies said, “Nope. They’re big. They’re strong. They’re fortified.” God said, “Go take it!” And they said, “Mmmm, nope.”
These were God’s chosen people; the famous Israelites! They had already been through so much. God had come through on a Promise He made a couple hundred years ago. He had brought them all this way, and at this point, they officially lost their faith in Him. As a result of their lack of faith God says, “Ok, I’m going to send you back into the wilderness for 40 years until every one of you who rejected the Promised Land dies.”
Sounds harsh, right? But it’s what God determined was necessary in order to bring the Israelites to a place of faith. Sometimes He deals with people in ways we don’t fully understand. But when we look at God’s actions in light of the big picture we can see that what He does is always for our good and His glory.
So when it comes to The Scarlet Thread, what does the wilderness represent? First off, it does not represent being lost in our sins. Remember, the Israelites were delivered from the sin masters already. So for us, the wilderness comes AFTER we’ve become a Christian. The Wilderness then represents the carnal Christian. A person who has been redeemed and forgiven by Christ and yet refuses to surrender to God’s authority. If you are not currently experiencing a beautiful relationship with God in which He reveals sin, you repent, you enjoy talking with Him, you see blessings and thank Him for them, then you might be living in the Wilderness.
Your wilderness is the twilight zone between enslavement to sin and living the full, Christian life. The Israelites enjoyed neither the comfort of their old slavery nor the milk and honey and beauty of the Land of Promise. They were dumped in the middle. Perhaps you feel the same way. It really might be the most miserable place to be for a human. The Israelites had caught a glimpse of the beautiful Promised Land. They had seen the fruitful trees, the green fields, the strong cities, the clean waters. They KNEW it could all be theirs. And yet they turned away.
They also remembered having a bed to sleep on in Egypt. They remembered that they had food to eat and water to drink back there. It was a place they called home, but they could never go back to. The pain of wandering is great because you feel like there is no place to belong and knowing every day in the wilderness is a day that could have been spent in Canaan.
Remember, they were brought OUT of Egypt in order to be brought IN to Canaan. God’s plan was for them to enjoy Canaan. And yet, they cheated themselves out of it because they had no faith. Can you imagine, today, a Christian being filled by the magnificence of the Holy Spirit, God pouring His power into them? Jesus Christ completely redeeming them and now their record is perfect. A Christian is capable of so much. But can you imagine them refusing, whether by ignorance or deliberate rejection, the beauty, glory, and power of that life?
The Israelites were promised so much, yet they chose the Wilderness. And a Carnal Christian is someone who has Christ living in them and pretends like He is not there. If you have determined that you won’t have an intimate connection with God, and that you will only take what you like from Christianity and leave the rest, then you have chosen the wilderness.
But take heart! There is good news if you are in the wilderness! There is a cure!
Three things you’ll need to do.
1. Admit you’ve lost faith. The Israelites had faith enough to free them from Egypt, but they lost that faith. They had enough faith to be saved, but along the journey, they started complaining and wishing they were back in Egypt. So they wandered for 40 years and many of them died without ever admitting to their faithlessness.
2. Appreciate the Manna. Every day, while they wandered, God sent manna for them to eat every morning. It literally just showed up laying on the ground every morning. They named it manna, because that literally means, “What is it?” And this is where it gets crazy. They described the Manna in Exodus 16:15, 31 as tasting like fresh oil and honey. Meaning Manna was a reminder that God was presently with them, but also calling them to the Promised Land. (It flowed with milk and honey). It was a small wafer that wasn’t really enough to fill them up completely.
Manna was God’s way of calling the Israelites back to Him and back to the Promised Land. Every day they had a reminder of what they were missing. What they had in the wandering was not enough to satisfy. It was simply a call to surrender to Christ and enjoy Him completely. So what is your manna? Is there a place or time when you regularly feel convicted and challenged to make things right between you and God? Thank him for pursuing you that way. And listen to His calling!
3. The last thing to do is annihilate your unbelief. God sent the Israelites into the wilderness to wander around until all of the unbelieving Israelites died. For you, God is working to kill off your unbelief as well. He’s proving Himself to you every day. He’s sending out regular calls to come closer and deeper into Him. Perhaps you are in your own wilderness, feeling unsatisfied with where you are. Wishing you could have your sin and also wishing you could have a satisfying relationship with Jesus. Leave behind your unbelief. Listen to God’s call to you. Surrender to Him. And follow Him into the Promised Land of an empowered, fulfilling life in Christ!
In 1905
William Sydney Porter, an author that most of us would know simply as O. Henry
wrote what many considered to be a Christmas masterpiece: the Gift of the Magi.
It's a story of Jim and Della Young. A young couple who were desperately poor,
but on Christmas Eve they wanted to get each other gifts out of the tremendous
love they had for one another. Della is grieving over the fact that she can't
give her Jim a gift that reflects her heart’s love for him. She looks at the
money she's been saving over all these last weeks and she looks and there's
only a $1.87 to give him. The most
prized possessions that this couple has - she has her beautiful waist-length
hair and he has a gold watch passed down to him from his father, and from his
grandfather before him. So Della’s looking in the mirror on this Christmas Eve
and weeping about the fact that she doesn't have the money to get him a gift. While she's looking in the mirror an idea
occurs to her - she'll sell her beautiful hair. She goes to the hairdresser,
she sells her hair, she gets $20, so now she has a total of $21.87. She goes out looking for a gift to give him
and she finds this beautiful simple little gold chain that can go on Jim's
watch. She goes home and gets dinner ready. She's got this little gold chain
and she's excited to give him a gift but also terrified at “What will he think
when he sees me? When he sees my hair is gone?” Jim comes in the door and he
just stops in his tracks and has the strangest look on his face. Della says “Honey
I know it's different, I know it's strange, and I know it's not what you
expected, but I can explain. I love you
so much I sold my hair to get you this little gold chain for your watch. I hope
you can still love me like this.” She's worried and Jim says “Honey I love you
so much. I could never love you less for anything. You'll understand why I was
so surprised when you see your Christmas gift.”
He hands her the gift and Della opens it up and it was the series of
little jeweled, fancy combs that she had seen in a store window some months
before. Della makes the point, by the
way, “Where did you get the money for these combs?” He'd sold his watch.
I told
my daughter Aubrey that story. I was
just kind of kicking around some things in my mind and I said “Have you ever
heard the story of the Gift of the Magi?” I told Aubrey this whole story and I
said “What do you think of that?” She
was like “Aw dad, ya know...” I didn't
know if she'd heard much of what I had said.
About 15 minutes later I hear her in the other room telling her little
brother, Vance, the story and she gets to the end of the story and she says “Isn't
that terrible!?” I’ve got to confess to you I was thinking the same thing. Isn't that terrible!? Like the worst Christmas story ever? Like well, you had a little bit and now you
got nothing - Merry Christmas! I find it interesting that the author didn't
view it that way at all. He ended his story by saying this, “and here I have told
you the story of two children who were not wise, yet of all who give gifts, these
two were the most wise.”
This
morning we are starting a brand new series that, God willing, will last for the
entire month of December very simply called Christmas Stories. There are some
amazing Christmas stories out there. From Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”,
to “The Little Match Girl”, to the famous, famous one that most of us read to
our kids on Christmas Eve - “The Night Before Christmas”. Y’all it is my heartfelt belief that the most
beautiful, magical Christmas stories are found in the first four books of this
New Testament.
Today's
story begins in an incredibly unlikely place with an unlikely audience. It
doesn't begin with Mary, it doesn't begin with shepherds, it doesn't begin with
Joseph, it doesn't begin with a manger. Our story begins before there was
Earth, before there was man, before there was a material universe as we know it.
Our Christmas story starts when there was only God and His angels.
John 1:1 this morning. How many are glad
you're here? Say Amen!
John 1:1
1 In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning
with God.
3 All things were made by him;
and without him was not any thing made that was made.
4 In him was life; and the life
was the light of men.
Now most
of you, if you've been in church any time at all, or you've been around the
scripture at all, you know that when the Bible refers to the Word in this
context its talking about Jesus Christ. If this language sounds familiar, I
believe it's because this language in John 1 is Genesis language. In the
beginning Genesis says, in the beginning God created, in the beginning God gave
life, and what John 1 is telling us is that there in the beginning when God was,
and he was creating, and he was giving life, so was Jesus! Genesis tells us that in the beginning God
was. John tells us in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and
the Word was God the same was in the beginning with God. l I can't fathom it. I
can't properly describe it. I can't paint a picture for you. All I can say is
God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit, and God the Son, all 100% God yet
distinct personalities, for eons before planet Earth ever came around, God was
doing life with God. God the author of joy, the author of peace, the author of
life, the author of love, was doing life with God. Jesus was there and the
angels were watching. Genesis tells us in the beginning God created, but John
1:3 says all things were made by Jesus, and without him was not anything made
that was made. Colossians paints an even straighter picture when it says for
through Jesus God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth he
made the things we can see and the things we can't see, such as thrones,
kingdoms, rulers, authorities, in the unseen world everything was created
through Jesus and for Jesus. Oh listen! We're very prone to only think of Jesus
in terms of what He did on earth. Understand Jesus was integral to the whole
process of creation. When the universe was spoken into existence it was spoken
by the lips of Jesus.
Genesis
tells us in the beginning God gave life, but John tells us in Jesus was life. He
elaborated in John 5:26, the Father has life in Himself and He has granted that
same life-giving power to His Son. Here's the picture I want you to get. Long
before the manger, long before Christ came down and did miracles, long before
the cross, listen! There was Jesus in heaven sharing life with his Father, speaking
the universe into glorious existence, breathing life into His creation, and
there drinking it all in were the Angels. Every day their greatest joy was
seeing what Jesus would do that day. Every day the point of their life was
hearing what Jesus would say. Everything about Him is so glorious and magnetic.
There's not an earth yet, there's not a universe as we know it yet, there's just
God and that's enough! It was glorious and there was peace. I think we kind of
lost the true meaning of the word peace.
We think of peace as like an absence of war and absence of
conflict. The Jews had a word for peace
in the Hebrew it was Shalom. Listen Shalom meant life as it's intended to be. Not
just an absence of conflict but a presence of beauty, and glory, and wonder. It
was life as God created life to be! In wrapping their life around God the
Angels have peace but they would soon learn a lesson that they never should
have had to learn. They would learn that no God, means no peace.
You see
there was perhaps the brightest of the Angels, an archangel we believe,
musical, beautiful, named Lucifer. And Lucifer,
The Shining One, determined at some point that the only thing greater than the
glory of God and the peace that came with it would be if he could be God. If he
could sit on the throne, if all would bow the knee to him. Lucifer rebelled against God and a third of
the Angels, we believe, rebelled against God. Jesus said in the New Testament I
was there and I was watching when Satan fell like lightning from heaven. I
watched angels become demons. I watched Lucifer become Satan. He went from The
Shining One to The Accuser. Listen when this happened, when there's no God,
when there's no glory, there is no peace. We don't know how long, in terms of
time that went, after that event but we do know the time passed. The angels once again marveled. They're standing
there watching God, watching Jesus, and He does something brand-new! He decides
to create the earth. He creates man and woman. He makes them in his own image.
He gives them a garden. He gives them a place. He shows his glory to them. Adam
and Eve, wrapped around God, made in the image of God, they are drinking in His
glory and they are showcasing it to the world. It was glorious and there was
peace, but that Shalom, as you know, didn't last long. The enemy, this fallen angel, takes them down
the very same path that he'd gone. He makes an offer: you don't have to worship
God, you can be God! Why bow the knee to him when the world can bow the knee to
you? Instantly he says your eyes will be open and their eyes are opened! They
get what they wanted but they lose what they have, and they learn the lesson -
no God, no peace.
Here's
the thing that occurred to me during this study that I don't know that I've
ever articulated to a congregation before. I don't know that I've ever really
consciously like done the math on this. If I understand my Bible right, while
angels are unimaginably powerful, they are not omnipotent. OK? Here's what this means: you saw angels in the Bible. If you're simply thinking of like sweet
little cherubic naked babies with wings, that ain't the Bible version of angels! Read your Old Testament and see one angel
wiping out an army. Read your scripture and find Roman soldiers, the most
battle-hardened, bloodthirsty men on the earth at that time fall down in terror
at the presence of one of these shining ones. Angels are incredibly powerful
but they're not all powerful. They know a lot, they've been watching mankind
for generations, but they're not omniscient. They don't know everything and I
find it amazing that in the Bible you find this this tremendous scripture which
tells us in 1 Peter 1:12 that the angels desire to look into the mysteries of
the gospel. So when man rebelled against his creator the angels must have
wondered “What on earth is coming next?” They knew what the truth of Romans 3:23 - all
have sinned, all mankind has sinned and come short of the glory of God. They
knew Romans 3:17 - the spirit of it, the way of peace they have not known, and I
wonder if they didn't think something like this, “Surely God will abandon this fallen
creation. Surely just as Lucifer is cast down, without ever a chance or a hope
of being restored, perhaps He will destroy this earth and its inhabitants and
start again.” But I think these angels
must have marveled when God didn't. For the next 4,000 years of human history,
they would see a story of divine interventions. Adam goes against God, he tries
to be God, he falls and now he's naked. Now he's self-conscious, now he
realizes I don't have any peace. I'm going
to spend my life trying to find peace in all these places but I don't have it
anymore. I'm naked as the day I was born. And God, instead of shunning him, has
the first bloodshed that we ever see in the Bible. When God takes one of these
little creatures that he's created, kills it, and wraps Adam in the skins. The angels
are watching and wondering. We see Noah, when God looks down on the earth, and
man has gotten so corrupt that God says, I'm going to judge it, I'm going to
wipe it out. The Angels say you're justified in that God; you’re a God of justice.
Yet we see this man named Noah, who found Grace in the eyes of the Lord, and we
see that God does a whole new thing with this group of people and the Angels
marvel. You see Abraham, who decides to take matters into his own hands. He goes and gets Hagar, they have Ishmael,
and it seems like the line that God is creating through Abraham is over. But
then God comes down and tells Abraham and Sarah, I'm giving you Isaac. I'm going
to make a way where there is no way and the angels see it all. They see for thousands of years all these divine
interventions for Israel, all these divine interventions for mankind, they
start hearing prophecies. God tells men, I want you to write this down because
one day... You know about the old covenant, do this stuff and avoid this stuff
and you can earn eternal life, but I'm telling you there's a new covenant
coming that no man can earn. I'm going to write my law on men's hearts. God
says I'm sending a Savior one day and He's going to be a Jew, He's going to be
from the tribe of Judah, and they're going to pierce His hands and His feet, Psalm
22. Isaiah 53 says they're going to lay stripes on His back to redeem a people
and the Angels hear it, the angels see, and the Angels wonder what He means. Divine
interventions and prophecies. Another thing that the angels see for all these
centuries, are occasional Christophanies - times when Jesus leaves the throne
in heaven and makes a trip down to earth. We see it before the judgement of Sodom
and Gomorrah when Christ comes down and talks to Abraham. We see it when Jacob,
the patriarch, wrestles with an angel all night and at the end of that
wrestling match he's afraid that he'll die because he's looked in the face of
God. We see it in the fiery furnace when there's three Hebrew children who are
being persecuted, we think to death, but the fires can't burn them and when
Nebuchadnezzar looks into the fire he says I see not three, but four, and one
of them as the appearance of the Son of God. And the angels must have wondered “Jesus
why? Why are you doing this? Why are you
going down there? What's the point of all this?”
All this
transpired for centuries. The angels desired to look into it. They decide to try to put all these puzzle
pieces together. What is Christ doing? What is the point? Until one day those
same angels come to approach the throne of Jesus Christ, like they had done
every day for all eternity, and when they come to approach the throne of Christ,
Christ isn't on the throne. He's gone! Where could He have gone? Where would
the Son of God be? For the first time in
the history the Trinity, in a sense, is broken up. There's the Father, there's
the Spirit, but where's the Son? The rumor echoes through the ranks that Gabriel
has made a visit down to Planet Earth to some folks. The rumor begins to echo
through the ranks that Jesus has gone down to earth and that He's in a city
called Bethlehem. I picture in my mind
the angels, who lived on the glory of God.
It woke them up in the morning if they sleep there, and put him to bed
at night. They had drunk it in. It’s the greatest thing in their life just
being in the presence of Jesus. They
long to see Him, and they want to know what's going on, and they make their way
to Bethlehem, and what they find is indescribable.
Max
Lucado wrote a little book called God Came Near, he said these words a lot
better than I could:
The
omnipotent in one instant makes Himself breakable. He who had been spirit became
pierce-able. He who was larger than the
universe became an embryo. He who sustains the world with a word chose to be
dependent on the nourishment of a young girl. God as a fetus. Holiness sleeping
in a womb. The Creator of life being created. God was given eyebrows, elbows, two
kidneys and a spleen. He stretched
against the walls and floated in the amniotic fluids of his mother. He came not
as a flash of light, or as an unapproachable conqueror, but as one whose first
cries were heard by a peasant girl and a sleepy carpenter. The hands that first held him were unmanicured,
calloused, dirty. No silk, no ivory, no
hype, no party, and no hoopla. Angels watched as Mary changed God's diaper. All
my life I've pictured every dealing of the angels with Jesus as being glory in
the highest! Glory! I wonder if their
first response at that wasn't more like Aubrey’s, “that's terrible! Jesus why
would you leave glory and come down to earth in a stable with animals, and
filth, and manure? God why would you leave the praise of all the created order,
all the angels, all of us singing your worth, to come down like this? Why would
you lay aside your glory?” Do you remember
the scene in the scripture when Jesus tried to wash Peters feet and Peter said “no,
no, no, no, no! It's inappropriate. That feels weird. You're God!” Can you imagine how the angels felt seeing
Jesus like that? I don't know how the final puzzle piece slid into place. I
don't know when the moment of divine insight came. I don't know exactly what it
looked like when they got it, that aha moment from God of what he was doing,
but we know that they did because of Luke 2.
Turn
back with me one last time Luke 2:8
And there were in the same
country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by
night.
9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord
came upon them, and the glory of the Lord [by the way folks, think Shekinah glory that filled
the Old Testament Tabernacle, that filled the Old Testament temple, to where the
priests had to leave it was so bright and glorious!] the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore
afraid. 9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the
Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
10 And the angel said unto them,
Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to
all people.
11 For unto you is born this day
in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
12 And this shall be a sign unto
you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
13 And suddenly there was with
the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God,
One
evening many years ago an actress by the name of Mary Martin, Jenny and I were talking
about this I believe she's from Weatherford , Mary Martin was about to go on
stage for a production of South Pacific. Just before she stepped out on stage,
she received a note from the famous lyricist Oscar Hammerstein. Here's what it
said: “A bell is not a bell until you ring it. A song is not a song till you sing
it. Love in your heart wasn't put there to stay; love isn't love till you give
it away. Love isn't love until you give it away.” So on the surface when I look at Jim and Della
I say that is the worst Christmas story I've ever seen. They gave up everything. Do you know why they were wise? Because
giving your heart is the greatest gift in the world and it brings the greatest
return in the world. Two thousand years ago, listen to me, God gave us His heart.
He sent His son because love isn't love till you give it away.
Let me
ask you a question this morning. You may be here today and the truth is, for
some time God's been pursuing you about something. You've seen evidence of His
goodness in your life, you've had wake-up calls in certain areas that you know
something's off and it needs to be made right. Maybe you've ignored them, maybe
you've pushed them to the background. Maybe you're not a believer yet but something's
happening in you that's pulling you that direction. Maybe you're not a believer
yet and you've been skeptical and maybe you've been angry. By the way, every
atheist I've ever met is a person who's been hurt terribly in life. You may be here and there's some things
happening with you, including this service today, that you just can't
explain. Love isn't love till you give
it away.
I want
to tell you something, listen, 2,000 years ago God showed you how He felt about
you. Not the new, improved, cleaned up
version of you. He knows exactly what you are and that's the person he gave his
son for. He gave him away, for you! What would it look like this very morning
for you to reciprocate? What would it look like this very morning for you to
take that step of faith toward your Creator and say God I want to trust you, I
want to love you. I want to go from my love being somewhere in the realm of my
mind and my theology and I want to express it you. You know what? For a bunch of us it means we
need to get out of our comfortable little safe lives and do the one thing that
Jesus did, which is serve other people. Love isn't love when it's just a
theological statement. Love isn’t love
when it's just attending a church service. Love isn't love because you sing it
and talk about it. Love isn't love till you give it away. What is God calling
you to do? What is that step of love that he's challenging you in today?
