There's no typo in the title - "Christmas Eve Eve" is how we've been refering to this day, two days before Christmas.
The year goes by so quickly. It seemed like we were just getting ready for last year's Christmas, and here we are again on the cusp of another Yuletide celebration. As Kermit would put it, "time's fun when you're having flies."
I've preached one sermon on the birth of Christ, and will preach another message tomorrow morning with Christmas in mind. My theme tomorrow is Christ as the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6), with a focus on what sort of peace Christ brings. The main point will be the peace that He has made between sinful man and a holy God. But I'll also speak of the ramifications of that peace - an eventual peace between man and man, and a cosmic peace that will be brought to all of creation.
I spent some time today learning how to use our new digital camera. A few weeks ago I told Robyn that I felt it was high time we entered the age of digital photography (we aren't always on the cutting edge of technological progress). Robyn agreed (somewhat reluctantly, at first), and we took the plunge and bought a digital camera. So far, no buyer's regret! The most advantageous part of the whole deal is that we can e-mail the grandparents photos of the kids. They like to be fed a steady stream of grandchild pictures, and it isn't always easy to keep up. But this should help.
We're heading off for Wheaton, Illinois on Monday. That's right, we'll be spending most of our Christmas day on America's interstate system (after a few children, you can pretty much kiss flying anywhere goodbye). Not ideal, but at least we'll get to spend the most time possible with Robyn's family this way.
There is a wonder to Christmas that has nothing to do with, as Mr. Potter would put it, the "sentimental hogwash" of holiday nostalgia.
It is truly staggering to consider that God became a man, and that he entered his creation as a baby in a woman's womb. When I think of our children at their birth, I think about how utterly helpless they are. Yet the Lord of glory was once an infant baby. And he became that in order to die for sinners. As the hymn says, "Thou who art God beyond all praising, all for love's sake becamest man." What mystery! What grace!
What have the Johnsons' been up to lately? For one, we're getting ready for Christmas. For the fourth year in a row, we bought a Christmas tree at the same tree farm in Purcell, OK. It's a nice tree, but not our best ever. It leans a little so we've secured it to a curtain rod with some fishing line.
We've continued other Christmas traditions as well: making Swedish wafer cookies, opening presents in the Advent calendar my mom made for us a few years ago, watching "It's a Wonderful Life," and putting up various decorations. Robyn boldly went where she had never gone before: making a candy-decorated "choo-choo" train cake. The bold part was decorating the cake with the two girls.
I've started teaching Meredith a Bible lesson once a week as part of her homeschooling curriculum. The first lesson was based on Psalm 139:14: "I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made."
Speaking of which, our baby is progressing nicely. She's 28 weeks along, well past the half-way mark.
I preached Sunday morning on John 3:16. I can still remember the time when, before I had become a believer in Christ, seeing "John 3:16" signs at sporting events and wondering what in the world they meant (and did it have something to do with rainbow hairdo of the man holding the sign?). Now the verse is familiar, but almost too familiar. I enjoyed preaching on it, but as always, left feeling that I did not begin to do justice to wonderful truth of which it speaks.
We said goodbye today to Anne-Marije, a delightful young lady from the Netherlands who worshiped with us the last four months during her time as an exchange student at OU. She gave us a Dutch phrase book so we can be well-prepared for our visit there sometime! Lord willing, someday, we will be able to do that.
I just finished reading a novel, "Gilead", by Marilynne Robinson. It's a series of fictional journal entries written by an elderly Congregational minister that he intends to be read by his son when he's grown up. It was worth reading for the quality of the writing, if for nothing else. I have to be honest though, and say that the book didn't "do much" for me. It had the same spirit about it as the oft-heard expression, "I'm not religious, but very spiritual." It contained some theological language and references to Christian faith and life, but in the end I'm not really sure what lessons the minister is supposed to have left his son except for some vague notions of the goodness of God and the sacredness of life.
We've hosted soup night a couple of times recently. And, we are planning for our trip to the Chicago area soon. We'll leave on Christmas day and return New Year's Day.
Finally, we decided it was time to enter the 21st century and buy a digital camera with some money we've received for Christmas.
Sometimes I can't believe that I am a preacher, and there are a couple of reasons why.
First, although by now I've gotten to know alot of other preachers, and have stood in the pulpit on Sunday mornings enough times to become somewhat accustomed to the role, part of me still finds the idea of a "preacher" somewhat foreign. Growing up, I virtually never heard preaching, let alone knew any preachers personally. So, my idea of a preacher was a caricature: a man who waves a Bible around and shouts "Praise the Lord!" alot. Even now I feel a little odd when someone refers to me as "the preacher".
But I'm getting used to it. Who knows, maybe someday in the pulpit I'll even wave the Bible around and say "Praise the Lord!" more often. It is really the second reason that is the big one for me. And that is, when I think about it, I just can't believe that God has chosen ME to be a steward and a herald of the message of the good news of Jesus Christ.
What has prompted this reflection is the text I have chosen to preach on this Sunday: John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." Who I am to speak of something as indescribably glorious as the message of God's love for the world in Christ Jesus? I am just a man, one who has been redeemed by God's grace, but a finite and weak man nonetheless. I am a sinner - I have been made acceptable to God, and adopted by him, in Christ - yet, I am still a sinner. And I am a messenger of the Lord of glory?
When Jesus was born, God sent a multitude of angels to proclaim the good news to humanity. How much greater, I think, would be the preaching of the gospel if God would send angels again in effluent brilliance and heavenly splendor to preach to this lost world the death and resurrection of Christ. But God hasn't chosen this way. Rather, he has called men such as myself, mostly unremarkable, to preach the Word. It is like serving the world's most exquisite wine in Dixie cups. But in this way, God receives all the glory - God chooses what is foolish in the world to shame the wise and what is weak in the world to shame the strong.
Preaching is hard work. It is almost an exercise in the impossible - to proclaim the riches of the grace of God in Christ in a way that is clear, cogent, engaging, persuasive, and powerful. My aim is not so much to impart information, but, by God's help and Spirit, to impress Christ upon the hearts of my hearers. That is a daunting task. As Paul says, "Who is sufficient for these things?"
Despite all this, I do feel his hand upon me, constraining me to continue in the work of making the gospel known. My prayer is that God will use my preaching, as unremarkable as it is, for his glory.
Talk about a "rude awakening!" Poor Jacob, after slaving away for seven years for his beloved Rachel's hand in marriage, wakes up the morning after his wedding night to find the wrong person next to him. As the Scripture puts it, "behold, it was Leah!" (Gen. 29:25). Jacob's conniving uncle Laban switched daughters on Jacob, so that he ended up in the marriage bed with Leah instead of Rachel.
Jacob's expectations and hopes to marry the one he truly loved were dashed by Laban's trickery (of course, Jacob did get to marry Rachel, but only after he committed to serving Laban for another seven years). One of my favorite Genesis commentators, Derek Kindner, says this about Jacob's unpleasant surprise: "this moment [is] a miniature of man's disillusion, experienced from Eden onwards." How true. The serpent fed Eve a great line about the forbidden fruit, how she would not die from eating it, how she would become like God, and how she would gain the wisdom to know good and evil. When she and Adam ate the apple, they were let down in a mighty way. Not only did they not become like God, but they were sentenced to die and cast out of the garden. So much for their foolish hopes.
In this life, we are beset by disappointment and failed expectations. Whether like Adam and Eve, we are let down by the deceit of sin, or whether like Jacob, we are victims of another's lies and fraud, we find that very little in this world lives up to the hype. Certainly that is true when it comes to the glowing promises of Madison Avenue for whatever product they are pitching to us. Sadly, it is also true, far too often, for people when it comes to their own families and "friends." Promises are broken, selfishness prevails, and the result is broken hearts and disillusionment.
There is one expectation and hope that will never let us down - the promise of God's love for us in Christ Jesus. The Bible does't give us a whole of information about the details of heaven, or of life in the new heavens and earth. But, we can say for sure that it will be far greater than anything we can possibly hope for. As the Scriptures says, "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him" (1 Cor. 2:9).
Rev. Tim Keller is a PCA minister in New York City. I downloaded a lecture of his earlier this week to listen to on my mp3 player while I ran. He gave this lecture in 2004 at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, and it is called, "Preaching to Believers and Unbelievers."
In his talk, he summarized the results of a survey he had taken of young twenty-something New Yorkers about their views on Christianity. He boiled down the responses to six basic objections, which he calls "defeater beliefs." That is, objections that are really culturally-conditioned beliefs that make Christianity seem implausible and therefore unacceptable.
Here are the six:
1. There can't be just one true religion in the world.
This, Keller says, is the intellectually weakest of the six, though it is almost taken for granted as being true in the culture at large. Keller points out that this expression of western inclusivism is really "covert exclusivism." In order for it to be true that all religions are equally valid, then either God must not exist, or if he does exist, he must not care about what people believe. This is a very definite view of God that this "inclusivism" demands of others without giving any warrant or justification for it. So, it is an objection to Christianity that is "absolutely inconsistent."
2. The existence of evil and suffering.
Keller says this objection is a result of our consumer culture, in which we demand designer lives free from all trouble. The answer to this objection, he says, is to point out that if God is great and transcendent enough to get mad at because he has not stopped evil and suffering, then he must also be a God that is great and transcendent enough to have good reasons, which he hasn't given us, for allowing it to exist and continue. This is one to ponder over a bit!
3. The sacredness of choice.
Keller found in his survey the common notion that for a person to yield any submission to another authority than personal choice is to be less authentically human. Choice is elevated to the level supreme authority (Although Keller didn't say this, it does explain why extreme pro-abortion advocates will accept absolutely no limits on abortions, even those that are partial-birth and late-term. Personal choice - of the mother - must remain completely sovereign). Keller's response to this objection is to essentially point out that a person cannot be totally consistent with this view. If he is, then he must allow the sincere mass-murderer (i.e., he believes in what he is doing) the right to do evil. The sacredness of choice is fine when it comes to me, but not to what the other guy is choosing to do!!
4. The record of Christianity.
This is the objection based on the fact that people have done horrible things in the name of Christ. Here, Keller says he just goes for a tie! For every historical instance one may cite of Christians doing good, someone can think of a time Christians did something bad. Keller says he points out to people that the proper Christian response to injustices or wrongs done in the name of Christ is not a call to abandon Christianity, but to live it out more faithfully. He gives Martin Luther King, Jr., as an example of someone who did this.
5. God is an angry God.
This objection says, "Why can't God just forgive me without all the blood? If God is the God who has to have a bloody sacrifice on the cross, then I don't want to serve that God." Keller points out that nobody who has been seriously wronged by another can "just forgive." There are only two options: revenge, or a forgiveness that is costly. It is costly because it means surrendering the demand for justice to be served. He cites Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "Forgiveness is always a form of suffering." In the same way, God could not simply forgive our sins. In order for him to surrender the demand for justice his own nature requires, someone has to pay the debt that sin has incurred. According to the gospel, it was God himself, in Christ, who bore justice's demands so that God could forgive.
6. The Bible is socially regressive.
Interestingly, Keller found that the problem people had with the Bible was not that it is (supposedly) unscientific or unhistorical, as was the case a generation or two ago, but that the Bible (supposedly) fosters the sort of oppression and exploitation that we as a society are trying to overcome (the suppression of women, gays, etc.). Keller says, in his own words, that this is a very arrogant view of the superiority of our own time. Our children and grandchildren are going to be embarrassed by what we thought was wrong with the Bible in our day. Furthermore, Keller asks, what kind of God is it that conforms to our likes and preferences at every single point? It is a God of our own making.
Genesis 28 tells the account of Jacob's journey to Haran. If Jacob was the type of man given to reflection, his trek eastward to the country of his mother Rebekah's family, being several hundred miles long, would have offered more than enough time for some soul-searching.
Did he reflect on the purpose of his journey? Although he was sent out with his father Isaac's blessing, and with his charge to find a wife from Rebekah's family there, Jacob knew that his journey was a forced exit from his family and the beginning of an indefinite time of exile. Before Isaac sent him away with a blessing, Rebekah sent him off with a warning: Jacob's brother Esau was set on killing him.
So Jacob was fleeing for his life. And he only had himself to thank. Esau's rage was inflamed when Jacob so deceitfully took the blessing of Isaac away from him. Jacob was foolish, for the blessing was his in the first place. Had he, and his mother Rebekah, only trusted in the Lord instead of in their cunning, Jacob would have both inherited the blessing (despite Isaac's plan to give it to Esau; Jacob was God's choice, not Isaac's) and lived at peace at home. But apparently Jacob was faith-challenged; he relied on his own wisdom to acquire what God had already declared was his will to give him. Surely Rebekah had told him more than once the words God had spoke to her while he and his twin brother were still in the womb: "the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger" (25:23)
But because of his faithlessness and ungodly ways, Jacob was now a fugitive from his own family. Yes, he had in Isaac's blessing the promise that he would multiply, and that he and his offspring would inherit the land of promise. But what good were those promises, when he was now outside the land, and had no wife or children at the time?
And now, after who knows how many days of travel, Jacob finds himself in a "certain place" - who knows where? He looks for something for a pillow, and the best he can do is a rock. Some great thing this is, being the heir of God's promises to Abraham - sleeping on a rock in the middle of nowhere, escaping from a brother determined to kill him!
But then Jacob sees the vision in his dream: the stairway and the angels going up and down it. And the Lord himself stands next to him and speaks to him the glorious promises: that he is with Jacob and will keep him wheverever he goes, and that he will not leave him until he fulfills his word for him.
When Jacob wakes up, the first thing he says is, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it" (28:16). Now nothing is the same for Jacob. He's in the same place, to be sure, but it's no longer just a "certain place", but it is "Bethel", the house of God. The rock is no longer a head rest for Jacob, but he makes it into a memorial stone for God Almighty who appeared to him.
What was more real for Jacob then? What he saw in his dream, or what he saw when he woke up? The lonely wilderness, or the heavenly stairway and the awesome presence of the Lord? By faith, Jacob obtained "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." The vision of his dream became a greater reality for him than the reality he woke up to.
Faith in God and in his Word is like that. By faith we know that God's promises are a greater reality than the reality we see with our eyes each day. By faith we know that this world is under the rule of Christ, though it seems at times to be at the mercy of the forces of evil and wickedness. By faith we know that death is not our end, but a better life - a far better life! - awaits us on the other side of the resurrection.
Christ came into the world. His Spirit dwells in his people. God is truly in this place. But, do we know it?
As I look out of my study window, I can hardly believe my eyes. There is a snowman in our backyard. A genuine, three-tiered, icy little man with pennies for eyes, a carrot for a nose, and a perpetual raison-toothed grin. His spindly little arms stick out from his sides as if to say, “Give me a hug now, because I’m not gonna be here for long!” No cold shoulder from this friendly-looking fella.
I’m not shocked by his actual existence, since I did build him today with some help from the kids. But I’m surprised that there was enough snow on the ground in the first place for us to make our snowy pal. We’ve only been here in Norman for a little over three years, but I figured that it never snows here. We’ve had dustings of course (with the requisite litany of school closings), but never anything like this. I think we got about four inches. I know that isn’t impressive for anyone north of Kansas, but here it’s quite a big deal.
We hunkered down all day yesterday and most of the day today. I had a few appointments that were cancelled because of the bad weather. To enhance our rare alpine experience, we made some tasty hot chocolate.
The snow will be gone soon. But it was nice while it lasted.