Tag: Advent

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Lord's Day Liturgy

Second Advent Caring

In the Son’s first advent, He was hardly recognized as a King, more recognized Him as a servant, and He self-proclaimed Himself to be a shepherd. “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). His office is identified by His sacrifice. Then He says the same thing a couple sentences later, with a different emphasis.

He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. (John 10:12–15 ESV)

He sacrificed because, unlike the hireling who runs because he cares nothing, Jesus came because cares entirely for the sheep. Unlike a stranger, Jesus as shepherd knows His sheep and the sheep know and follow His voice. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27, also John 10:4).

He is making “one flock” and He is the “one shepherd” (John 10:16). And, church, will this care of the Shepherd, this affection between Shepherd and us His sheep, not also continue after His second advent when He is recognized as King “to the ends of the earth” (Micah 5:4)? Is this not why He says, “I give them eternal life” (John 10:27), abundant life (John 10:11)? This is why He came, it is why He is coming again.

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Lord's Day Liturgy

The Lex Talionis Gift List

It’s not found explicitly in the Gospels, but when Paul spoke to the Ephesians (in Acts 20:35) he mentioned that the Lord Jesus “Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.” That provides another virtue for Defeated Devil December.

We’ve considered that the ancient serpent would rather have us discontent and dishonest. Jesus called Satan the father of lies, so he lies about God’s goodness to man and gets men to lie about their goodness to others. Satan also gets men to lie about their generosity.

Ananias sold some property and claimed that he was Mr. Altruism when he laid the money at the apostles feet. He did everything he could to make it look like he’d given it all; of course he hadn’t. Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit…?” (Acts 5:3). A man convinces himself that it is more blessed to look like he’s given.

There is another angle to this devil-ish conceit. It’s giving, but with brown-paper bitterness tied up with strings. It’s giving, what you see is what you get unlike with Ananias, but what you don’t see is the internal spreadsheet keeping score in columns. Maybe it’s the Lex Talionis Gift List, expecting a gift of equal (or better) in return. Maybe, even more prevalent, is the Honor System Gift List, where the second column is for thank-you cards received (and not received)[1]. Such accounting acts as if it’s more blessed to be recognized for giving.

Be generous. Don’t give anything you can’t afford in your soul not to get credit for. Count it all joy to be generous, not counting appreciation. Don’t join Satan as an accuser of the brethren.

[1] YES. Writing thank you notes is great, appropriate, fitting, right, and something that parents should model and teach their children. The point of this exhortation, though, is about one of the ways we mess up on the giving side, while obviously it’s also possible to mess up on the receiving side.

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Lord's Day Liturgy

Anticipation Proper

Maybe the word advent is a little new to you. You’re familiar with Christmas, and even the building anticipation toward the 25th, but “advent” almost sounds like a separate holiday (compare to Acts 17:18 and those who thought “Jesus” and “the resurrection” were separate “divinities”). It’s possible that a few others of you are very familiar with Advent, capital A, from a religious/church context with all the formal tradition and stuff.

Advent proper is the four Sundays prior to Christmas, usually represented by four purple and pink candles, each one referring to a different element (Hope, Love, Joy, Peace) with a different reference (Prophecy Candle, Bethlehem Candle, Shepherd’s Candle, Angel’s Candle), and as Christmas gets closer the combined light gets brighter. A fifth, white candle usually gets lit for the day itself (Christ’s Candle).

We don’t have candles for our liturgy, though some have them at home, whatever colors and whatever you call them. Our community doesn’t talk about Advent like a narrow, let alone biblical, necessity. All are yours, and so parts of it are strategic without defining your righteousness by it.

The feast that we’ve been given and required to celebrate is the Lord’s Supper. And we remember Christ our Savior, not only in facts, but with the bread and wine.

The rule is that it shouldn’t be done alone, in isolation. It’s an activity for the body, for all the parts together. The rule is that it shouldn’t be done in the abstract, in the intellect only. It’s an activity for the body, chewing and sipping and swallowing. The rule is that it shouldn’t be done in MISERY, but in rejoicing and hope for His return.

In that sense our worship of the Lord in communion does exercise our feasting muscles, and prepares us for Anticipation proper.

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Lord's Day Liturgy

Advent Honesty

We’re back for the second exhortation of Defeated Devil December. Jesus Christ is the Seed of Eve, the fulfillment of God’s promise to bruise the head of the ancient dragon (Genesis 3:15). When Christ rose again from the grave He made a triumph over the serpent and the serpent’s offspring (Colossians 2:15). Though the devil still prowls around like a lion seeking prey to devour (1 Peter 5:8), greater is the one in us than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4).

How can we advent like death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered the serpent? Last week we considered contentment as an arrow in our Christmas celebration quiver. Satan would rather us be annoyed at all the things, be ungrateful for what we’ve been given, and be suspicious that we’re not really getting the best we could.

A second virtue of Defeated Devil December would be honesty. The devil is the father of lies (John 8:44), a liar since the beginning. Eve listened to the devil’s crafty deceit; he sold her a falsehood.

We should tell the truth. This doesn’t mean to delight in sharing our irritated opinion; “hey, I’m just telling the truth.” It more means telling the truth, “hey, I was irritated with you, even if at first I tried to say I wasn’t. Will you please forgive me?”

Satan doesn’t want you confessing your sin, or at least not all of it. He prefers your pretense of religiousness (like the religious ones that Jesus called sons of the devil in John 8:41, 44), anything other than the genuine affections and actions of sanctification. The offspring of the serpent bear false witness, but, Christian, he is not your father. Be honest.

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Lord's Day Liturgy

Defeated Devil December

Four years ago (2018) I shared a strategy for our family called No Discontent December. It wasn’t only about not being fussy about what you did or didn’t get for advent/Christmas gifts, but about attitude in all the extra pulls and pushes on our days and schedule and budgets.

I thought about running a second No Discontent December, and while that would be fine, in light of the passage that starts our advent series of sermons (Genesis 3:15), I’ve got a related, but similar idea.

Defeated Devil December – 3D

In no way do I mean to take Satan lightly. Jude said that the archangel Michael, when contending with the devil, didn’t presume to smack talk but called for the Lord’s rebuke (Jude 9). So the goal here is to take God’s promise of a seed that would crush the serpent’s head seriously (again Genesis 3:15). We know that seed was Jesus, and He has defeated and will finally defeat that ancient serpent (Colossians 2:15, 1 John 3:8; Hebrews 2:14).

So what attitude and behavior would demonstrate this December that Christ has conquered?

Interestingly enough, I think contentment really throws a wrench into the devil’s works. He is insatiable for more than he was given, and unraveled Eve’s confidence that the Lord had given her fulness of blessing. Discontentment double-dates with doubt, fussiness comes from a lack of faith in God’s Word and God’s goodness. The serpent wanted Eve to want more, to covet beyond her privileges and gifts.

This Advent/Christmas season, don’t listen to the father of lies. Resist him. Be grateful, content, and in so doing let the devil be frustrated, not you.

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Lord's Day Liturgy

Familiar Trees

It’s proverbial that familiarity breeds contempt. Our contempt starts with that statement itself; it’s contemptible to hear about how easily we’re made contemptuous. But our condition is one in which we get dirty and forget about it, we develop callouses and live with them, we fall down and it’s easier to stay there. We need to be washed, we need to have the hard parts cut off or filed down, and we need to get back on our feet.

So…we’re familiar with Christmas. Jesus is the reason for this season…we know…so how does He fit in our familiar celebrations? It’s hopefully more, though not less, than reading the story of His birth on Christmas morning (this year we’ll assemble as a church for worship on Christmas Sunday). For sake of scrubbing our holiday grime, let’s start with our Christmas trees. Why? What for?

For the first time in eleven advents, we had a choice for ourselves in the church’s building. Hey, we’re not Gnostics. We went for it.

And consider our pine tree configurations at home. We stand our trees in a location for maximum visibility. We place our presents under the tree for others. We hang lights and garland and other ornaments on the branches. We typically perch a star at the top most point. Which part is for Jesus? Which part is meant to honor Him?

Isn’t He pictured and honored every where? He is the focal point; our eyes are drawn to Him. He is the Father’s gift to sinful men. He is the light of the world, the Creator who decorated the universe. Not only did a star mark His birthplace for travelers, He Himself is the morning star. We can’t limit where we honor Him. He is the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, worthy to be honored from top to bottom. He ought to be so in our Christmas celebrations.

We cannot be overly familiar with Christ, only wrongly familiar in a way that doesn’t honor Him everywhere at all times. I also plan to start an advent season sermon series next Sunday. A reminder that the Word became flesh, full of grace and truth, and has made the Father known, even as we celebrate His Supper.

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Lord's Day Liturgy

Manger Ministries

The good news of great joy is not that God is satisfied with you, but that He sent a Savior for you. The good news of great joy is not that you have produced enough, finally, for Him to accept you, but that He has accepted you in Christ, with grace and peace to you. Rejoice! Rejoice!

There is a helpful distinction, perhaps even a tension, that is worth maintaining even at the Lord’s Table. Our heavenly Father is pleased with us and still not satisfied. He loves us; in one sense He could not love us more, and in His love, He renews and refines us because we are not yet complete in Christ. He is pleased with us in Christ even as He is pleased to conform us more and more into His Son’s glorious image. There is true peace, even though we have not been made perfect yet.

The meal in front of us bears great similarity to the peace offering in the OT. It was a shared meal that recognized peace between God and men (and those men with each other) based on the sacrifices. The fellowship, the communion, was in God’s pleasure, which didn’t mean that all His purposes were perfected yet.

Consider this alt-view of the angel’s glory shown to the shepherds:

“Fear more, for behold, I bring you true news of great import, that I saw how you treated your wife before you left for work today, and this is the latest in a long line of disappointments to God. He wants you to clean it up.”

That is not evangel. Nor does Luke have any critical word that that the shepherds didn’t all quit their jobs and start a missionary effort under the brand: Manger Ministries.

Were they deserving? Was Mary? Was God satisfied with them? But was God pleased to share His blessings, favor, grace, and peace? Yes! Glory to God in the highest! There’s great joy for all the people in the Savior, Christ the Lord. (And as you have received, so give.)

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Lord's Day Liturgy

An Irritated Puddle of Retaliatory Goo

We are well into advent now, rounding third and headed home. Yet because of how the days fall on the calendar this year, the fourth advent Sunday is still six long days from Christmas. A lot of events are done, but there are more on your schedule, especially ones with the people who tend to get on your nerves the most…family. That presents a significant challenge, because with strangers, you can’t predict as well what they’ll argue about, and you may never see them again. With the ones God has chosen for your permanent “neighbors,” you’ve seen the show a thousand times.

In a week of final preparations and feasting, even for a week with siblings at home from school all day every day, Solomon provides some counsel for the prudent.

The vexation of a fool is known at once,
but the prudent ignores an insult.
(Proverbs 12:16)

Vexation refers to the spleen in the pot, foolishness is like the fire that makes the complaints simmer. Vexation is what pets your feathers backward, what puts salt in your tea. It could be about the state of democracy, it could be about the state of dinner. It could be about the commute, it could be about your comment. And because of how the proverb runs, vexation isn’t only generic grumbling in your presence, vexation may be insulting to your person.

I have said much about not being angry or ungrateful, this is about how to absorb it.

But…she’s wrong! But…others will get the wrong impression if I don’t make a public correction! But…you don’t know how insulting my brother has been for years!

The New Testament version goes even further: love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8), which Peter uses as prep for the following imperative: “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling” (1 Peter 4:9).

Prudence and love like this are not pushovers, just the opposite. This sort of wisdom and care is unable to be pushed over into an irritated puddle of retaliatory goo.

Good sense makes one slow to anger,
and it is his glory to overlook an offense.
(Proverbs 19:11)

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Lord's Day Liturgy

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Christmas

The primary way that the New Testament talks about the flesh is where the “flesh” represents the sinful pull in all of us. The lust of the flesh, the works of the flesh, the flesh as enemy of the Spirit is most definitely not what we should embrace.

But “flesh” in those respects is not referring to the matter, not the muscles and nerves and blood and bones, which is also the flesh. The physical flesh is the flesh that Jesus took at (what we celebrate as) Christmas. Though He shared our weaknesses and faced temptations as a man, He did so yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). If God created that flesh and also clothed Himself with it, it can’t be all bad.

The incarnation shows that the flesh is not God. God, in the Word who was God before creation, existed without one. So we worship the Maker not the material. God is outside, before and beyond, human flesh. Christmas truth should keep us from worshipping our bodies, let alone stuff.

The incarnation also shows that God identifies with human flesh. God, in the Word, became like us. “Since the children share in flesh and blood, he himself partook of the same things” (Hebrew 2:14). He took on our form, with the physical limits and needs and in every other respect. Christmas truth means that we don’t have to escape the flesh to please God.

As people of the truth we tend to prefer two-dimensions; three-dimensions are hard. We want our Word on a page, not in a body. Too often we have great Christmas ideas without glad sacrifices and generosity and being worn out and used up to spill grace onto others.

In your body love, be joyful, be patient, show kindness, do good, be self-controlled. Decorate, bake, clean, sing, give, cry, so that the life of Jesus may be manifest in your body (2 Corinthians 4:11), just as He was manifested in the flesh (1 Timothy 3:16). Let our celebrations not be spiritualized, but let us be filled with the Spirit to keep Christmas in our flesh.

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Lord's Day Liturgy

Not a Puddle under the Pine Tree

Is it possible that God finds our celebration of Christmas not too hot but too lukewarm? Is it possible that we are too half-hearted in our worship of the Word become flesh? Will we give an account for how we gave gifts, or not, in Jesus’ name?

Yes, yes, and yes.

I’ve continued to meditate the past few weeks on the awkwardly phrased phrase in Romans 2:7. The context of Romans 2 is not seasonal, in fact, it’s not just year round but all of one’s life. God judges according to what He sees the whole way down into what you’re baking, not just the drizzle of icing on a holiday morning.

Those that receive eternal life are the ones who by endurance of work of good seek for glory and honor and immortality (Romans 2:7).

Though not limited to the advent season, it at least applies. So, are you wanting not just the glory of a great Christmas, are you wanting the glory from God in reward for having greatly honored Him this Christmas?

This does not mean that you must buy the most gifts you’ve ever bought, it does not mean you must spend the most money you’ve ever received in a stimulus check. It does not require a modern-day missionary journey to every relative’s house. It does not demand the turkey to be stuffed with duck to be stuffed with chicken. If these are opportunities for you, great. If your opportunities are other, also great.

It does mean that you must not be selfish (see Romans 2:8). It means that you must not collapse into a puddle under the pine tree, but rather endure. Seek the glory of God in the highest, and He will glorify those with whom He is pleased.