Get Your Hopes Up!

 

“So I say, ‘My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the Lord’ …  The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him.”

—Lamentations 3:18, 25 (emphasis added)

I must have been twelve or so—the age when most girls start to worry about their appearance and whether or not they will fit in with their friends. I had asked for a certain kind of sweater for Christmas and literally didn’t care about receiving anything much else besides it.

Christmas Day came with the usual excitement and anticipation. Our family celebrated and gave gifts—and, after opening my gifts, I was shocked to realize that I had not received the greatly desired sweater. As a mopey teen, I clearly showed my disappointment. I even have a photograph to prove it! How could my parents have heard my distinct request and not fulfilled it?

Two days later, my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins got together for our annual extended family Christmas dinner and gift giving. Our large table was filled with all sorts of delightful dishes. We enjoyed lots of laughter and conversation. Once the dishes were done—it took so long in those days because we had no dish washer—we sat down to open presents.

Imagine my delight and surprise when the person who had drawn my name gave me the sweater. And not just the sweater, but the exact style, color, and size I had wanted! How foolish I felt for ruining my Christmas Day feeling sorry for myself and for doubting my parents’ careful love for me.

Many years later, I read the verses from Lamentations that I have quoted above at the beginning of this blog post. I realized then that God doesn’t want us to think of Him as an indulgent “Santa Claus,” who promptly gives His children everything for which they hope. Instead, He wants us to place our hope in Him and leave the actual details of meeting our genuine needs to His great wisdom.

The Scriptures tell us in Romans 15:13 that God is a God of hope:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

This kind of hope is an amalgam of joy, peace, and trust in our God. This kind of hope produces in us a much deeper sense of belief than just a child-like expectancy that comes whenever a girl blows out all her birthday cake candles wishing for something very special.

During this Christmas season, and throughout the year ahead, whether or not we receive from God all for which we hope, may we learn to hope in Him and be at peace with the decisions He makes in our behalf.

 

 

Prepare

 

“A voice of one calling: ‘In the desert prepare the way for the Lord;’”

—Isaiah 40:3

Christmas preparations seem to begin earlier every year. If you’re like me, you would rather have a more leisurely time to get ready than become swept up in a last minute rush. After all, the point of the trappings, gifts, decorations, baking, and carol singing is to create an enjoyable anticipation, right?

We prepare for Christmas by shopping and gift buying, putting up the tree, baking all those special cookies and treats that our families love, and gathering with friends to sing carols. The day itself, for which we have so carefully prepared, comes and goes before we know it. But, the warm glow of the anticipation of it seems to last much longer.

If we think in spiritual terms, the holiday that celebrates the birth of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, also requires a careful preparation. We consider Advent as that time of anticipation and readiness for both the celebration of Christ’s incarnation and also for His ultimate return. We sing hymns that reflect a poverty of spirit and humble consideration of how desperate we are without the new life that Christ came to give us.

One image that often gives me pause is that of the desert. We prepare for the Lord while we wander “in the desert.” We can think of this in terms of our dry, lifeless hearts coming in expectation to God. We can also reflect on the “desert places” of our circumstances. Perhaps the year has brought distress and sadness through grief or sickness or loss. God asks us to make this “desert” a prepared place for Christ to come to us.

John the Baptist was sent to prepare the people for Jesus’ first coming. John lived in the desert and preached repentance of heart to those who so long had anticipated the coming of the Messiah. The scriptures tell us in Luke 3:2-3:

…the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the desert. He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

So, how should we prepare our hearts for Christmas? Contemplation, repentance of sin, viewing our trials as a place for God to come and do new work in us, and considering with thanksgiving all He has done in sending Jesus to be our Savior, Lord, and King. In the words of Psalm 50:23:

He who sacrifices thank offerings honors me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God.

As we prepare for the celebration of Christ’s birth and spend time making our homes welcoming places for family and friends, we would do well to remember to do the same in our hearts. Let us truly make a welcoming place in our hearts for our Savior. Let us, indeed, “Prepare the way of the Lord!”

—Posted: Monday, December 27, 2021

 

 

O Little Town of Bethlehem

 

But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.

—Micah 5:2

At any time in history, most little towns would be considered insignificant. I know this first hand because I grew up in a little town of approximately 2,000 people. In my personal experience, this place ranked as a very significant town. As I judge significance, neither New York city, nor Houston, Texas, nor any other large city can compare to the importance of my little hometown.

In His scheme of things, through the prophet Micah, God declared the superior significance of little Bethlehem. From that insignificant little town would come the One toward whom history had marched for millions of years, and the One to whom every knee will one day bow, in heaven and on earth.

In our modern culture, we seem to think that the significance of size matters a great deal. We like the big box stores, the big SUVs, big city life, and even mega-churches. In my study of the Book of Revelation, I learned in Revelation 3:8 that, in His message to the church of Philadelphia, God said:

“I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.”

What a commendation! This small church was less influential and seemingly more insignificant than others, but God spoke to them in order to encourage them and promise them a future of blessing because they had endured and persevered.

When we consider our small churches, the ones that stay faithful to the truth of the Scriptures and, year after year, humbly minister to their people and the communities around them, we know that God does not overlook them. He sees the small churches and He often uses them to nurture great families, who see their sons and daughters do mighty things for Him.

When we think of the Christmas events and the people who witnessed the birth of the Savior, we find that among them were small, unremarkable men and women, whom God used to spread the glorious news of Jesus’ birth. Yes, the Magi came and presented great gifts, but the lowly shepherds also came and then went out to spread the word of Jesus’ birth wherever they went. Mary and Joseph themselves, so poor that they had to bring pigeons instead of lambs to the temple, had been especially called by God for a most significant responsibility.

When we look at ourselves, or our little towns, or our struggling churches, we must remember that God does not make the same assumptions of greatness that our culture does. He sees ways in which He can most often use the small to carry out His work in the most startling of ways.

 

 

Best of Times, Worst of Times

 

But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.

—Galatians 4:4

Charles Dickens described the days of the French Revolution in his novel, A Tale of Two Cities: ¹

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

That sentiment prevails whenever we consider other periods of history, as well.

In the days of Jesus’ birth, the Roman Empire ruled most of the then-known world. In the capital city of Rome, the society was secure, prosperous, and luxurious. However, hiding beneath the surface, the entire fabric of society and culture was in imminent danger from hopeless and hidden perversion.

The Greek language was spoken in the entire Empire, unifying it like the world had never seen before. Only the resistance of the Jews kept the Roman Empire from a total allegiance to the ruling authorities. According to Jewish scholar, Alfred Edersheim, the city of Rome: ²

… in one short reign was transformed from brick into marble, … side by side, the most abject misery and almost boundless luxury.

The religious life of the Roman Empire suffered from superstition and from the deification of the Emperor. As Edersheim describes it: ³

Might was right. The social relations exhibited, if possible, even deeper corruption. The sanctity of marriage had ceased. Female dissipation and the general dissoluteness led at last to an almost entire cessation of marriage. Abortion, and the exposure and murder of newly-born children, were common and tolerated.

Edersheim goes on to point out the vile, cunning, evil reign over the Jewish territory of the various monarchs in the Herodian Dynasty, who ruled from 47 BC to 72 AD. This explanation gives us an idea of the way in which God prepared the perfect coming of His Son, Jesus Christ, in the middle of this extremely vile reign of the Herods.

When we read in Scripture about the “Light coming into the darkness,” we begin to understand how bad life must have been for the Jews in those days, and how the most devoted of them waited longingly for the coming of the Messiah. The Lord Jesus Christ came in the fullness of bad times, when history brought all the ripened powers and circumstances together.

As you read the description of the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus’ birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection, we should consider these questions:

• Do we see a parallel between those ancient days and our own times?
  
  
• Can we relate to the “darkness of the hour” in our present age?
  
  
• Do we cry out for a new coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?
  
  
• Does He have for our day a time of spiritual renewal and hope?
  
  
• Or, will we experience the Second Advent of our Savior, when He will come again in the clouds of heaven?
  
  

As we consider these questions, the answers should move us to consider the longing that ought to reside in our hearts. In any case, we need to watch, pray, and stand ready to see what God will do in our time!

______________________

1 Dickens, Charles, and Harvey Dunn. A Tale of Two Cities. New York, NY: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1921. Book 1. Chapter 1

2 Edersheim, Alfred The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, LLC, 1993. Pp. 177-179.

3 Ibid.

 

 

What Did Malachi Know?

 

“See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty.

—Malachi 3:1

We hear the Prophet Isaiah’s words so often during Advent because he vividly foresees the birth of Christ. For example, in Isaiah 40:3, we read:

A voice of one calling: “In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.”

That word “prepare” is often associated with both the first and the second Advent of the Messiah.

In the New Testament, at the birth of John the Baptist—the man who would become the immediate forerunner of Jesus—his father Zechariah said, as recorded in Luke 1:76:

“You my child will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him.”

John the Baptist called the people who waited for the Messiah to prepare themselves because the Messiah was beginning His ministry among them. He preached repentance and sought to have the people purified, so that they might serve Christ.

Malachi’s entire prophecy, which happened some 400 years before Christ came to earth, called the people to prepare by purifying their worship, purifying their priestly line (the Tribe of Levi), purifying their marriages, and purifying their priorities in handling their money.

I love the section from which our opening verse is taken. Malachi 3:2-4 goes on to state these words of God speaking through the Prophet Malachi:

But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years.

This prophecy of Malachi refers to the Levites, or those who served in the Temple. I like to think that we, as New Testament saints, are as much Levites, for we serve in Christ’s church, as the Levites served in the Temple.

Yes, our full-time ministers and priests spend time as servants in the church, but so do the church musicians, the Christian Education teachers, those who prepare the holy ornaments of worship, the individuals who set up the Communion Table and prepare the elements of Holy Communion, those people who clean the church, and those who lead the spiritual and business matters of the church. All these people serve God in the church, following the example of the Levitical service in the Temple.

We see clearly that Malachi stresses the purity of those who would serve Christ. What can we expect from the Messiah as we wait for Him during this Season of Advent?

In Joel 2:28-30, this Prophet speaks of the kind of repentance that John the Baptist called for among the people of God. He promises a new day:

I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days. I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke.

Even God, speaking through the lips of the Prophet Malachi, as recorded in Malachi 3:10b agrees:

“See if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.”

So, in this passage, we see that Malachi saw the coming Messiah clearly. And, Malachi warned God’s people to Prepare, to Purify themselves and to expect God to Pour Out His blessing on them.

Certainly, in the first Advent, with the coming of Jesus to earth in the manager of Bethlehem, God began His revelation to all the people of His eternal plan to bring the people He had chosen to belong to Himself out of their sin and into the wonderful relationship with Him through His Son.

As we wait for His second coming, can we see how these admonitions fit us perfectly now? We, too, wait for the Promised One to come again. We need to prepare, to purify ourselves and wait for the pouring out of God’s blessing!

 

 

Image

 

The Son is the radiance and only expression of the glory of [our awesome] God [reflecting God’s Shekinah glory, the Light-being, the brilliant light of the divine], and the exact representation and perfect imprint of His [Father’s] essence, and upholding and maintaining and propelling all things [the entire physical and spiritual universe] by His powerful word [carrying the universe along to its predetermined goal].

—Hebrews 1:3 AMP

Who is this Messiah we consider during Advent? By scanning the entirety of Scriptures, we find Him defined with our inadequate language.

In Isaiah 9:2, we read:

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.

In John’s gospel 8:12, Jesus defines Himself.

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

That light, we read in our title verse comes directly as the radiance of God, a reflection of the Shekinah glory. This glory was reflected in the burning bush for Moses (Exodus 2:2), again in the pillar of fire leading the Israelites from Egypt. (Exodus 13:21). We see this awesome reflection in the tongues of fire that sat on each of the disciples at Pentecost (Acts 2:3).

In this day, how does God provide for us this reflection of God’s brilliant glory? We see God as we look at Jesus. We see His perfect image by gazing at Him through direction from His written Word and prayer, through Spirit-led preaching and teaching.

Not only in those ways, but God expects each of His followers to live as a reflection of God’s Shekinah glory in our lives. We represent the image of Christ to this world. The more “face time” we have with Him, the more fully we absorb and then give off His powerful light.

What a tremendous promise in this regard we read in 2 Corinthians 3:18:

And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Even if we shine brightly as lamps in this dark world, we must have oil or power—the Shekinah glory—from some source other than ourselves. The Bible often describes the oil we need as the power of the Holy Spirit. As we look at the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit allows us to mirror Jesus to the watching world.

We cannot expect to give off the Light of Christ in this world unless we reflect Him in the same way that the moon reflects the sun. Nor have the power to continue to shine as lamps without the oil of the Spirit.

This question is worth asking ourselves: “Is the ‘light’ I give off come to me from my own dimly lit bulb and does it shine for my own glory? Or instead, do I truly reflect the glory of my Father in Heaven?” The difference is like night and day!

 

 

The Key

 

Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.

—Psalm 100:4

So many times in Scripture, especially in the Psalms, we are encouraged to “Give thanks to the Lord.” The Psalms also persuade us to “Praise the Lord” and to “Worship the Lord.”

To me, praise and worship stem from a mindset that understands to Whom we belong and also from a mindset that understands His greatness and power. We worship because God is worthy of our worship. And, we praise Him for His attributes and those universal benefits we receive from His magnificent grace and power, including the salvation from the penalty of our sins.

To give thanks, however, brings praise to a personal level. In fact, I would like to assert that we open the door to God’s presence with thanksgiving.

We should ask ourselves: “Have our hearts ever felt cold and indifferent when we came to God in prayer?” Certainly none of us can claim that we always come to God with the totality of our heart, mind, soul, and strength, even though He requires that of us.

May I suggest that, when we feel distant from our Lord, we should consider beginning our prayer times with a round of thanksgiving. It doesn’t take long before our hearts engage more fully, when we think how personally God has intervened in our lives—even during times when we wait and wonder at the way He leads us.

This idea has come to me through two passages of Scripture. We find the first passage in Romans 1:21-32. Here the writer describes the wrath of God against wickedness, and the steps to the decline of evil in a person. The very first step downward in this list of sins is a lack of thanksgiving. Romans 1:21:

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to Him.

As we read the rest of the first chapter of Romans, we recognize that the sin that the Apostle Paul writes about only gets darker and deeper. One commentator uses the phrase: “… sin begets sin.” That is, new sin heaps itself on existing sin.

The other passage of Scripture, in which I read this kind of progression, is found in Psalm 106. Here we discover a record of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God. Interestingly enough, the Psalm begins with the admonition, “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.” When the Psalmist recounts the history of the Jewish nation and recalls their sin, notice the very first thing the Psalmist states about God in Psalm 106:7:

When our fathers were in Egypt, they gave no thought to your miracles, they did not remember your many kindnesses.

From there on, the list includes: rebellion, discontent, jealousy, idolatry, unbelief, apostasy, insurrection, and accommodation to the culture around them. This represents quite a list of terrible sins. But, please take note that not remembering the Lord and His goodness with thanksgiving is the lack of action that first started them down the wrong path.

During this Thanksgiving week, I invite you to rediscover with me the wonderful way in which the giving of thanks to God provides the key that opens the gate, allows us to come into the very presence of our Lord, and allows us to experience anew His sweet Spirit.