Brown's Daily Word 1/7/15

    Merry Christmas to our brother and sisters in the orthodox Church, who celebrate Christmas today.  According to Russian News agency Itar-Tass, 87% of Russians will celebrate Christmas today, with only six per cent having already celebrated on December 25.  According to Russian Orthodox tradition, Christmas is preceded by a 40-day fast which excludes meat and dairy products.  The fast is broken on Christmas Eve with a dish of sweetened cooked grain followed by a full-blown feast the next day.  In Russia, home to 39% of the world’s Orthodox Christians, people enjoy more days off over Christmas than any other country in Europe, starting on New Year’s Day and carrying through to Orthodox Christmas day today.  Praise the Lord for Christmas that is celebrated all over the world with diverse traditions, diverse music, diverse foods and customs, yet all centered in the birth of Jesus our Lord.  Indeed, "Love in any language is fluently spoken" everywhere Jesus is worshipped and celebrated.

    We are still in the celebratory default.  Most of the Christmas trees in the parsonage are fully decked.  (After all, they went up a little late this year.)  The real tree is still alive and well.  Alice and I are always very reluctant to dismantle the "Christmas house".  We will not meet for out Wednesday Evening Gathering this evening on account of the extreme cold, so we all can stay home this evening and celebrate Christmas vicariously with our brothers and sisters from the Orthodox Christian tradition.

    I have been reflecting   on Herod the Great, who  missed Christ of Christmas.  Herod loved power and he loved possessions. However, he was extremely insecure.  Herod the great ruled over Judea for 40 years.  Things were secore in Jerusalem under his rule.   Yet Herod was very insecure.  He was possessed by the green-eyed monster, "jealousy".  So it was that he missed the one who came to set him free.  The inn keeper also missed the Christ of Christmas, as did the religious leaders and scribes. 

    Everybody loved what Herod the Great could do, but everyone hated what he cost.  The Jewish historian Josephus tells us that when Herod knew he was dying, he arrested the elite citizens of Jerusalem and ordered that they be executed at the moment of his death—just so someone in Jerusalem would be weeping when he died.  The people both loved and hated Herod the Great.

    In the words of Dr. Craig Barnes of Princeton, "In every life there is a Herod that has gained some power over you.  You are seduced into calling it "great" because it does things for you.  It helps you feel secure.  It helps you cope.  It's been around for a long time.  Herod is the name of whatever it is that offers you something you crave at a cost you cannot afford.  You love what it does; you hate what it costs. But as taxing as it is, you just keep paying."

   " For some of us, Herod is our workaholic addiction to success.  For others Herod is the name of an old hurt to which you have become addicted. You didn't deserve the hurt.  Maybe it happened a long time ago and perhaps you have tried to forget about it, but the hurt just keeps hurting.  You can distract yourself from it for a while, but it's always waiting for you, especially when you're tired.  In order to gain a little freedom from the pain, you've tried to forgive the person who hurt you, but you haven't succeeded, because the hurt's been around so long that you don't even know who you are anymore without it.  Every time you try to get rid of it, it isn't long before you invite it back into your heart.  Hurt makes it impossible for you to trust people, makes you cynical about all authority figures.  It sabotages many of your relationships.  Your Herod may be the alcohol that abuses you.  It may be the spouse that has abused you.  It may be the job that abuses you day after day.  But you can't let it go."

      In the Christmas event, the wise men entered Jerusalem, asking, "Where is the one who has been born the king of the Jews?"  Mathew 2 tells us that not only was Herod frightened by their question, but all of Jerusalem was frightened.  The city did not rise up with joy at the announcement that a liberator-king had just been born.  People have always preferred the misery they know to the unknown.  It doesn't make sense, but it is our human nature.  Just because you know you are addicted to how things are doesn't mean you want to be delivered from that addiction.  The people of Jerusalem were no different..

    Jesus is our liberating Savior.  He did not come just to give a holiday from Herod, but to establish a whole new kingdom.  This that means he came to liberate us.  No one could have understood that more clearly than Herod himself.  He knew that to have Christ born in your life means freedom from Herod. 

    The Herod that controls some part of our lives will do all he can in the days ahead to extinguish this hope from our hearts.  He knows that Jesus came to free us to enjoy the blessings we have in our lives, but are too addicted to appreciate.  He knows that Jesus will free us to forgive so we are no longer driven by hurt.  He knows that Jesus will free us to allow our own hearts to be filled with passion—even to break over the pathos of the world and the many things that break God's heart.  The liberating Savior will free us  to live as we were created to live—fully alive.

    With Christ, the King, God is opening up his arms to us.  All we  have to do to find the freedom he offers is to embrace the birth of hope.  We  will see that the hope will grow, just as the child grew and became a man—a man, Jesus, who lived our life, who felt our hurts and our hungers, and who witnessed our lousy addictions.  He offered us another way: a whole new kingdom so threatening to those who had grown accustomed to Herod that they killed this Jesus.  But he rose from the dead and ascended on high, because this is a kingdom of God's establishment, and you cannot kill this hope.  It will come.  The gates of hell cannot prevail against it.  It will come. 

In Christ,

 Brown

http://youtu.be/GJWz1-R88oc

Brown's Daily Word 1/6/15

    Praise the Lord for this brand new year full of our Lord's promises.   One of the British newspapers reported last week that the year 2014 has been a good year. According to the paper despite some of the tragedies and terrors around the globe It has been a good year.  I was watching the History Channel the other day and some of the Scholars were sharing that all major events are taking place in the middle East have been prophesied in the books of the Bible including Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel.  The Hymn reminds me, "This is My Father's World".  Our Lord is in control.  He is in charge.  The Lord is on the move.  Our Lord is the Lord of history.  History is His story.  One of the very practical matters that is very mundane is that oil prices are falling.  The gas price at the pump is coming down.  We praise the Lord for His goodness and grace.  His love never fails.  His mercy never ends.

    Praise the Lord for the way He orchestrated the Christmas story, the Christmas event.  He included a young pauper, and a peasant teenager, Mary, to be the virgin mother of our Lord.  He included Joseph, a young adult.  He included elderly Zachariah and Elizabeth.  He included the boy John the Baptist.  He included the shepherds.  He included the Gentile Kings... astrologers... the Magi.  He also included the single people who were elderly like Simeon and Anna. 

     In Luke 2:25, 38 it becomes clear that both were looking and hoping for God to do something.  Verse 25 says Simeon was "looking for the consolation of Israel."  Verse 38 says Anna spoke of the child "to all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem."  Simeon and Anna saw the coming of Christ as good news rather than bad news because they were looking and longing and waiting for God to break into history again and bring consolation and redemption.  In the back of Luke's mind may have been an ancient prophecy from the mouth of Isaiah which says: "Break forth, shout joyfully together, you waste places of Jerusalem.  For the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem" (Isaiah 52:9).

    In the coming of Christ, this prophecy was fulfilled.  The Lord has consoled his people—that's what Simeon was looking for; and the Lord has redeemed Jerusalem—that's what Anna was looking for.  Consolation speaks to those longings for healing and restoration from all of the past losses and miseries of life.

    In the course of several years a man, a committed Christian, saw three of his children die.  When one of them died, he said:

"I was sitting there, torn by grief. Someone called and talked of God's dealings, of why it happened, of hope beyond the grave.  He talked constantly.  He said things I knew were true.  I was unmoved, except to wish he'd go away.  He finally did.  Another came and sat beside me.  He didn't talk.  He didn't ask me leading questions.  He just sat beside me for an hour and more, listened when I said something, answered briefly, prayed simply, and left.  I was moved.  I was comforted.  I hated to see him go."

    That's comfort. . . consolation.  It's that kind of comfort Jesus would bring to the hurting.  Redemption speaks to our need to be delivered from powers that hold us in bondage.  It could be the power of sin.  It could be the power of death.  It could be the power of Satan.

    In another sense, we can see this same truth in relation to Christ's second coming.  We look forward to a day when our consolation and redemption will be completed at the second coming of Christ.  The good news is that Christ has come and he will come again, and no one is able to bring you consolation and redemption like Jesus Christ.

In Christ,

 Brown

http://youtu.be/TCHrQ7LOwsE

Brown's Daily Word 1/5/15

Praise the Lord for this First Monday of the year 2015.  The Lord blessed us with a wonderful Sunday yesterday, the first Lord's day of 2015.  It was Epiphany Sunday in the church Calendar.  We talked about the coming the Wise men to worship Jesus. At Christmas we celebrate the gift of the Lord that gave us in Jesus, wrapped in swaddling clothes, laid in a manger.  At Epiphany we celebrate our gift, to the Newborn King, Jesus, as the wise men from the East traveled over 1000 miles to come to visit and worship Jesus and offered to Him gifts of gold frankincense and myrrh. 

 

    One of the greatest advances of the last century has been in the whole area of transport.  Aero-planes, helicopters, Highways, buses, cars, electric railways, and the like were all invented or improved in the past 100 years.   As it is written in Matthew they came from the east.  From the Scriptures we know the wise men made the long journey and finally arrived in Jerusalem about 6 miles from Bethlehem.  They had seen the star.  They were looking for a king.  They were determined to find him.  It is ironic that, of all the people gathered there at Herod’s palace, it was these Gentiles who decided to travel the (now) short distance to greet Jesus.  After all, the chief priests and the teachers of the law had the Scriptures.  They too were looking for the coming king, but when they heard news that he had been born it was they who decided their journey wasn't absolutely essential, even though it would have cost them very little effort.  They were comfortable where they were, enjoying the favor of the king.  As these foreigners, who had only recently learnt of the new-born king, hurried on they did nothing to investigate the possibility that the Messiah they had been seeking for hundreds of years might have arrived.

    After their secret conference with Herod the wise men set out.  When they again saw the star, they were overjoyed.  In fact, if we want to be accurate, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.  Here was not only the destination to their journey, but the answer to all their searching and all their study.  In this house was the one true king who was unlike any other king they had ever met.  He was not a royal child pampered in luxury, to be brought up to carry on a cruel and violent dynasty.  Rather, he was an ordinary child living as part of an ordinary family and yet with such a holy presence they could do no other than bow down, and worship, and present their gifts. 

    They worshipped Jesus.  They offered Him the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  Best of all, they offered the fourth gift, their praise and worship.  They were warned in dream not to go back to Herod so they took a different route to journey back home.  It is interesting that they no longer used the stars, or their local knowledge, to choose the route.  Instead they relied on a warning they had received in a dream.  I believe this shows that the journey that the wise men made was far more than just a physical one.  It was also a spiritual journey which led them to understand who Jesus is.  Having discovered Jesus, they also learned to discern and obey the voice of the Lord calling to them. 

 

    It is written in  Matthew that, in the visit of the wise men, Isaiah’s prophecy was fulfilled in which all from Sheba would come, bearing gold and incense and proclaiming the praise of the LORD.  In fact one of the central themes of Matthew’s gospel is that in spite of its Jewish origins the good news of Jesus really is for all people.  In many ways the visit of the wise men points forward to the great commission at the end of Matthew where the eleven apostles are commanded to make disciples of all nations (Matt 28:19).  The coming of the wise men, so to speak, anticipated the going out and the proclamation of the gospel to every tongue and race and nation.

    People who live around us are also, on the whole, looking for meaning and purpose in their lives.  That’s why they too are looking at the stars, or New Age therapies, or pursuing other idols such as money or simply having a good time.  For all of them, Jesus is the answer to questions they aren’t yet asking, but we can pray and ask the Lord to open the eyes of some so that, like the wise men, they decide to start looking in the right direction.  They need someone to actually lead and direct them towards their final destination.  As far as we can tell, the teachers of the law didn’t sit the wise men down and give them the whole history of the Jewish people and the development of the Messianic hope in the Old Testament. They gave them just one verse - the right verse - because if they had one thing going for them it was that they knew their Scripture and were able to give the wise men the information they needed at the time they needed it.

    Unlike the teachers of the law we then need to journey with our friends to the point where they decide to worship Jesus for themselves.  We too have to be ready to move out of our comfort zones, to be prepared to invest time and effort to listen to their stories, to answer their questions, and above all to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit prompting and leading us in how best we help them move towards a decision for Christ.  1 Peter 3:15 puts it always ... prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

    People are looking in all kinds of places for spiritual answers and most have never really considered Jesus, so we need to pray for the Lord to call some to look in our direction and discover more of the Gospel .  We must not simply give people information about the Christian faith but to walk alongside them and share in their lives.  It is our calling to train and disciple those who come to faith so that they too learn to walk in the Lord’s ways.

     If God can work in the lives of a group of pagan astrologers and if God can use the words of the chief priests who had no intention of doing His will, then we can be confident that no matter how well we manage to walk in His ways He can nonetheless take and use us for His glory.  Our calling is not to worry, to fret about how we can achieve our goals, but to focus on Him and to respond with joy to those words: "Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you".  As we look forward to the New Year let us have the courage to step forward and do whatever the Lord asks of us, knowing that He can and will use even us for His purposes and His glory.

 In Christ,

   Brown

http://youtu.be/IDNRZHynmvw