New Thoughts (8/29/04-8/30/04)
How different this whole scene is from what the Christmas traditions hold forth to us! I know I grew up with this image of the two parents kneeling by the crib, with sheep, cows, and donkeys about them, and the shepherds respectfully standing at the edge of the scene. Of course, we somehow think to find the magi here at the same time, because we are determined to compress several years of His story into a single half hour. But this scene we grew up with is nothing like what is laid out here.
Why would there be sheep in the stables, for instance, if they're all out in the fields with the shepherds? Indeed, other than a few donkeys or horses belonging to travelers, the place may well be pretty empty.
Issue number two with the scene we grew up with is the nasty inn-keeper telling the poor couple that he has no space. Joseph didn't take his wife anywhere near such a place as would have an inn-keeper. Such an inn was a rough place, filled with rough men. Hardly the environment for a young lady, hardly the setting in which to give birth to your first child. No. The place he had approached for shelter was more likely the house of a relative, perhaps one who was well to do, and therefore more likely to have a guest room. These guest rooms were hardly an uncommon feature in Israel. These are the same upper rooms that wind up playing such a role throughout the Gospel story. However, on this night, the guest room is already full. But, the stable is empty! The shepherds are in the field, and there will be privacy and quiet there tonight. It is well, no need for the caravanserai.
As for the meek shepherds standing folded in silence at the edge of the scene, that's not the picture we are given here. Nope. They've burst in fresh with excitement, out of breath from their rush to find this child. My goodness! We aren't even told whether so much as a day has passed since the Son was born. I can imagine that God's excitement was not unlike that of any father seeing his firstborn. Men have ever, it seems, had the tradition of making immediate announcement of the blessed event. Do we think our Father in heaven is any different? I don't! I think the messengers were sent out just as soon as that wonderful Babe was born. And it wasn't much after that that these shepherds came rushing in on the couple in the stable.
Mary was doubtless a sight, still. Yet, the shepherds are received. I suppose they must be, given that it was likely their stable the parents were in. Besides, any misgivings quickly subside as the men excitedly share their story. No peaceful folding of the hands, no prayerful silence for these men! No way! They are so full of excitement that it's probably all the young couple can do to calm them down enough to get the story out of them clearly.
And what of Mary in all this? We are told that she was paying particularly close attention to what these men had to say. She was committing it to memory, and spent long hours in thinking on what they had said, and what it must mean for her child, for God's Son. What, then, did she have to say to them in return? I have mixed feelings about this, but I think it more likely that she said little to nothing. If my sense of the timing of these events is right, this visit was close on the heels of Jesus' birth. That being the case, Mary must still have been exhausted from the experience, and probably was not particularly presentable just yet. In fact, I can imagine Joseph scrambling to provide her with some privacy as these strangers come rushing into the stable.
Alternatively, if she had had time to recuperate from the birth experience, it is possible, I suppose, that she spoke to them of the circumstances surrounding Jesus' arrival. After all, these guys had just met with angels. Who better to comprehend and accept her own experience!
Truth be told, the shepherds, with or without Mary's added details, had plenty of cause for rejoicing. They had seen the sign confirmed, which in turn declared the accompanying message to be true. The King was born! They have seen the Savior! Who could be silent about that? No, the more I think about it, the less likely it seems that they heard Mary's story that night. They didn't need to. They would cause enough of a stir with their own experience, and they would be hard to believe as it was. Had they heard Mary's own story, they would doubtless have related this, as well, which would simply have made it that much harder for any to hear with believing ears.
There are a number of lessons to be taken from the events of this scene. As our church moves into 'the prophetic' I think these lessons are particularly important for us to get hold of, the keep hold of, and to be shaped by. The prophetic ministry is a ministry that will inevitably be involved in the miraculous. Whether or not it is well advised to seek out the miraculous, the miraculous will certainly seek out that ministry which is earnest in its pursuits, pure in heart, and seeking solely God's glory. The lessons I see in this passage will serve well to shape the ministry to fit that definition.
The first lesson I find is in the example of the shepherds. These men, from the lowest classes of their society, were given a message. Interestingly, they were not given any direct order to deliver that message to any other. They could, one supposes, have kept the whole thing to themselves and been within their rights to do so. There was only this one thing: the message was of a great joy that would be for all peoples. Surely, then, they felt it their responsibility to make certain that all the people heard about it! Yet, they did not speak of it immediately.
They were given a sign to confirm that this message was the real thing, the genuine article. After all, centuries had passed since Israel had had any such direct line of communications with their God. Who could still recall what He sounded like? So, a sign was offered, that they might be certain. There are several things in their reaction that we do well to learn from. First, they did not refuse to accept the sign. They didn't reject to possibility of miracles out of hand. Ahab had done just such a thing. He had been offered a choice of signs, and refused to even choose. No! He would have nothing to do with this God of miracles, this God who could not only determine the course of nature, but could supercede the natural order. God was offended by Ahab on that occasion, and gave him a sign in spite of himself, a sign that the shepherds were hearing fulfilled in their own day. They did not reject the possibility of the impossible.
Secondly, they did not idly sit about waiting for this sign to make itself known to them. They were instant in seeking it out. No sooner had the messengers departed than they were on the trail, in pursuit of this miracle that God had declared. When God offers such a marvelous opportunity to bolster our faith, we are fools not to seek it out. Indeed, there may be some who think that their rejection of such signs is a sign that their faith is strong. It needs no added buttresses to believe. All I can say to that is, look to Ahab. He likely put on the same front, but his reaction was a rejection of the God who is in favor of a god more to his own liking. God doesn't offer up signs frivolously. He is a God of purpose. If He deems it necessary to bolster your faith, you can be sure your faith needs bolstering! He should know, after all! He gave you that faith. If we refuse to so put our own efforts towards seeking out that which God has offered, how are we different than Ahab?
Here's another lesson we do well to learn from our shepherd friends. They didn't immediately rush out with the news they had received, shouting it out to one and all. Jesus, in teaching about the kingdom of heaven, brought up the example of the farmer's crop. The soil, He noted, brings up a crop from the farmer's seed without any real further intervention. The crop grows by stages, first blade, then a bud, and only at the end, the mature grain. The farmer awaits that moment at the end, when the crop is matured, and only then does he harvest the crop (Mk 4:27-29). This is much the same process that we see happening with the shepherds. The seed of faith has been planted: a message and a sign to confirm. The blade of faith springs forth in their decision to seek out the sign, that they might be more certain of the message. The bud of faith, though, does not break forth from the blade until that sign has been seen. Now, faith undergoes a real growth! Now, the richness of the soil is seen, and a good crop is rapidly coming from that seed. The maturity of the grain of faith is seen in what comes next. Just as soon as that sign is confirmed, they are walking in their commissioned task. They are telling everybody they meet about the Word that came from heaven.
There was an order to this! They could have, one supposes, skipped the sign and simply fallen to declaring the message. The message would be just as true whether they went to see the Child or not. But, the power of their own belief would not have been there. Their faith would not have been full, the full grain would not have grown, and the message would fall flat on the ears of its hearers. Many of us today make the mistake of jumping the gun on this order of things. We hear the message and we're not ready or willing to wait for the confirmation. We're out telling everybody all about the word we've received, and rather than building faith, it winds up tearing faith down. Why? Because we have not waited to see the thing happening before we spoke. The grain is not grown. All that we've had is the excitement of a possibility, and that's nothing but emotionalism. Those who hear of it will perhaps catch the emotional wave, but it will crash them against the shore long before the promised outcome occurs. Instead of saying, "Look what the Lord has done," we're left with "Look what the Lord will do."
It comes back to this: It's one thing to know God speaks, it's another to hear Him personally. It's one thing to know God can perform miracles, it's another thing to stand witness to the miraculous. It's one thing to know the Scriptures, it's another thing to live in the experience of their truth. When we point forward to the coming wonder, we have only declared what God is, what He is capable of. We have spoken truth, and we have spoken truly, but we have not spoken life. When we can point at the accomplished work of God, when we can speak of our healing as a confirmed and established fact, when we can point back to a dead addiction that no longer so much as touches us, when we can speak with the voice of experience, then we have moved from speaking dead truth to speaking the words of Life!
Order: Accept the sign, seek the sign, seek eagerly. Then, only when the seeking has been satisfied by the sought, speak out! Declare what the Lord has done! Declare the proof! Glorify God for the miracle He has wrought. Sing praises to Him for that which He has done in your very sight. This is what makes testimony powerful! It's no longer a reciting of what we have learned from others. It's no longer what we were raised to believe. Now, it's what we have seen with our own eyes. "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world" (Jn 4:42).
There is also a matter of obedience, here. It is not, however, a matter of obedience to some explicit command given them. It is a matter of obedience to the demands of faith. They had experienced an open heaven in the appearance of the angels. They had heard a Word from the God of that open heaven. They had responded to the Word with action - not merely hearers, but doers of the Word. They sought eagerly for the sign they had been given, and now they had seen that sign. Here's where obedience to faith's demands comes in. They do not simply pat each other on the back, share amongst themselves how cool this was, and go home. Neither do they limit their discussions of the events to those of like faith. No, and they don't remain camped out with the newborn King, either. They don't make of Him an excuse to forego their own duties, or to withdraw from the course of daily life. What happens? They leave the stable, heading for the hills once more, and all the way, they are shouting about the glory of God, singing out praises to His name for the things He has done!
Well! That's a fine thing! But, remember, it's still in the early hours of the morning, perhaps not even dawn yet! These guys are making a scene! They are announcing to one and all, those who are curious, and those who are not, that today a Savior is come to Israel. To the curious, they will gladly declare the whole of these wondrous events, but everybody's going to hear about it one way or another! Every head that popped out of a window to see what was causing such a disturbance heard their shouts: "Hear about the great things the God of Israel has done this night! A King is come! A Savior is come to His people! Rejoice, O Israel!"
Some doubtless responded with muttered complaints about these crazy shepherds. More, however, were hungry to hear about a God who is alive and well, Who still watches over His children with active concern. To every question, the shepherds responded gladly, leaving all who asked in a state of wonder, marveling not at these shepherds, but at God.
This is as it should be. This is what comes of earnest faith encountering a real move of God. When God moves, He won't be staying inside the walls of the Church. When His people see Him moving, they won't settle for patting each other on the back. Men of faith cannot be satisfied with tingling flesh and emotional excitations. Men of faith, stirred by a word from an open heaven, must act, must declare boldly all that the Lord is doing. Men of faith will cause all around them to marvel. Some will doubtless respond only to what their fleshly senses perceive. They will perhaps perceive a crazy man, or a man leaning on his emotional crutch of religion. But others will hear with ears opened by the finger of God. They will hear the promise of life in the words God puts upon our lips, and they will cling to those words to their own salvation!
Here is the simple lesson for us. Those who hear the Gospel are those who are called to spread the Gospel. It's the ultimate pyramid scheme, if you will, or basic advertising, but with purity and power! "What I tell you in the dark, speak in the light! What has been whispered in your ear, shout from the rooftops!" That was Jesus' instruction (Mt 10:27). That was exactly what these shepherds were about. That was exactly what the apostles were about. That is exactly what we are to be about today. The whispers of God in a charismatic church may be loud and exciting, but they remain just that: whispers, until we get out and shout it from the rooftops.
"Hear, Lowell, what the Lord has done! Hear what He is doing right now in your midst! A King reigns in heaven! The powers that twist the souls of man in this city are broken by His might! There is freedom for you! You! Held captive to your drugs! You! Enslaved by the bottle! You! On the streets, without a hope in the world, just waiting for death to take you! A Savior is given to you! There is no hope in the world, but in heaven, there is hope and more! There is certainty! There is life, life that can replace the living death you walk in, life that can break the bondage of drugs, alcohol, sexual perversions, dependency, name it! He is greater! He is not dead, as so many would have you believe! He is alive, and He is actively seeking you out, calling you home, offering you life if you will just let go of your death and come to Him!"
There is no other proper reaction to the word of God! Anything less makes a mockery of His gifts to the church. Anything less makes Him nothing more than another entertainer come to keep us amused. If that is our opinion of Him, rest assured, He is not amused. What the shepherds had seen, they made known to one and all. We who call ourselves Christians are shepherds one and all. We have seen. We have heard. Will we follow this example, and make it known? It will be a noisy affair. It will be a bit messy. But, if our faith is real, if the flames are truly being fanned, and it's not just a bit of fun for the faithful, that noisy, messy affair will turn this city upside down, just as the true Word of God preached by true men of God has always done!
New England has known that power before. Sadly, we live in a time when there remain none who remember it. Nobody hears, any more, about the things God did in the early years of this country. It is suppressed in the schools, suppressed in the media, rewritten by historians who prefer to put forth man as the hero. But, the truth remains the truth. The fundamental reason why this nation was empowered to strike out for its liberty was because God was on the move. The power of the American Revolution was the Power of the Great Awakening, the power of true men of God who spoke the true Word of God, and spoke it with true faith in Him whose words they declared! These were shepherds after the model of this passage! These were men who, seeing an open heaven above them, reached through to God, touched Him in unwavering belief, and brought back from that experience the true excitement of real experience. They did not simply relate their experience, though. They drew those to whom they declared these things into the same experience, so that every one of them could say, "Now we believe because we have seen and heard for ourselves that He is Messiah!"
What about Mary? She also has a lesson to teach us in her reaction to these events. It would be easy to get all worked up, when we are standing near the center of what God is doing. It is very easy for us to become confused, and turn the whole matter into something about us. Pride ever wants to swell up in us. "Oh, yeah! Look at us! Aren't we something!" None of that! There is no quicker way to stem a move of God than to turn the attention on ourselves.
Is our worship really good today? It's not because we're so good at what we do. It's not our talent and it's not our dedication to practice or our commitment to excellence that makes it so. If we've got that in our minds, then we have become fools! No! It's our commitment to God, our dedication to living as He leads, to remaining centered right where His presence has said to be that makes us any earthly good at all! If the worship is good, it is because we have disappeared from it, we have put aside any personal interests, any agendas, any least shred of 'look at me,' and clothed ourselves in Him. If our worship is good, it is only because we have allowed Him to so wholly engulf our being that we are no longer seen, but only the glory of God.
Is our preaching really something today? Don't you dare take the credit for that on yourself! If there is any power in our words, any eloquence in our phrasing, anything more than empty chatter, it is not because we're so hot, it's because God has found a willing vessel! God has found one who will keep himself out of the way and let God play through!
Are lives getting saved? It's not because we are such hard workers, because we've come up with the perfect PR campaign for Christ, and delivered on in perfect form! It's solely because He has sovereignly moved through us. It's all about Jesus!
Mary, upon the arrival of these shepherds, and upon hearing their story, could easily of responded from pride. "Look at me! God chose me for this! I must be really something, huh?" She does no such thing. She has not lost sight of the wonder of God. The glory is not in being used, and she knows it. The glory is not hers. It's all a God thing, and the glory is all His. She bore a child. Where is there reason to glory in that? No! The wonder is not that she gave birth. The Wonder is He whom she bore, and He who created that Child in her. God had moved yet again, and Mary would not settle for the emotional excitement, the first-flush reaction to what He was doing. She wasn't willing to stop at being entertained.
She could simply have reacted to these shepherds with that sort of reaction, "oh, cool!" She could simply have been impressed with the sudden coincidence, with the strangeness. She could have 'got all excited,' and even jumped up and shouted, but none of that would have moved her beyond the emotion. None of that would have carried her through the next thirty odd years. It wouldn't have even carried her through the next day!
Instead, she reviewed all that they had said. You know what? They didn't have tape ministries back then! They didn't have notebooks either. Would that we took the same care, who have all these tools at our disposal today! We take our notes, and then forget them. We buy the tapes, listen maybe once, and then toss the tape aside. Mary, without any of these aids, treasured up the message the shepherds brought, carefully stored it in memory, going over and over each nuance of the word until she was certain that she would forget none of it. She treasured it up, committed it to memory in a fashion that would allow her to recite it at will, or simply to review it. She treasured it up so well that when Luke came by, years after her Son had ascended to His throne, she could still pull that night forth from memory with accuracy of detail, and tell him exactly how it was, and exactly what had been said.
Why? Why was she so careful with the memory of these events? In part, it was simply because God was involved. God had said something, done something, and because it was His words, His deeds, she wanted to be certain to lose nothing of what had been said and done. More importantly, though, she wanted to be sure she fully understood the significance of what He said and did. She not only committed these things to memory, she spent long hours considering the implications, meditating on this Word from God. She "pondered them in her heart." She was not going to be satisfied until the events of this Holy birth, and the events that were happening as God revealed His work, were made an integral part of who she was. She would not be satisfied until the things of God informed her will, informed her feelings, informed her thinking, informed her own words and actions.
If we will not allow His words, His movements in our own lives and times to so inform us, why are we even bothering to spend time on Him at all? If we settle for being entertained by our services, then we are wasting our time and His. Worse still, we are bringing a greater condemnation upon ourselves. Judah heard this verdict because they had seen and heard more of what God was doing as they watched sister Israel in her punishment and exile. Yet, they continued on like nothing had happened. If we are hearing God, if we are seeing Him move in our midst, and yet we are not changed by it, but continue on like nothing had happened, we, too, will find ourselves exiled from the kingdom of heaven, and we will know full well that we deserved it.
When God speaks, we need to be afraid of forgetting what He has said. We need to commit it to our memory by every means we have available. We need to dwell upon His words until we are certain of our understanding. This is especially true of the revealed Word of God that is ours in Scripture. This, first and foremost, is His message and His move. That is as true for us today as it was for the early church so many centuries ago. Until we have taken the time to commit His revelation to mind, until we have so meditated upon His revelation that it now informs every fiber of our being, every thought and emotion, every word and action, every desire and demand; until then, how can we dare to trust ourselves to the rhema word? How can we think ourselves safe to judge from what spirit we are hearing if we have not bothered to learn the genuine heart of God from that which He has sovereignly chosen to give us as the revelation of His heart?
I tell you, if we would truly commit ourselves to that task, to getting the Gospel engraved on our hearts, to knowing His word, knowing not only how to quote it, but it all means, knowing His heart as our own: if we will do this, we will not find ourselves so much in need of the rhema word. We will not be so much in need of something new, something novel, some wonder to tickle our senses, because we will find in Him a constant marvel, a ceaseless cause of wonder. We will find in Him enough and more to keep our hearts and minds occupied in full all the days of our lives.
God continues to make His presence known today, and when He does, He leaves no room for doubt. I know it was like that with me. Men had tried to bring me around to faith. My own wife thought to coerce me to faith in her own gentle way. But, these were not God making His presence known. When God made His presence known to me, though He used many men to do so, yet it was not the doing of any of these men. It was so clearly His work that no room was left for doubt. I could not deny the things He had spoken directly to my heart. No man had given me to understand what was going to unfold in the next few days, just that Holy whisper in my ear, "Just allow these two things: I Am, and there are no coincidences." That was it. That was all I was handed. Yet, in the course of three days, so many events simply happened, so many just happened to be passing by at the very moment I was thinking of speaking with them, so much happened that could 'only have been coincidence,' that the thought of these things all being coincidence became utterly absurd! Clearly, Somebody was in control, and He had warned me, as it were, what was coming. Who was in control? He had already told me. "I AM."
In that brief three days, I had moved from the ranks of the entertained and amused to being fully convinced, freed of all doubt. It's all real! Salvation is come! The shepherds heard it, and could not help but shout about it! I finally got it, and I, too, could not help but shout about it! I could not help but weep about it, for I had not even seen how much I needed that Salvation until He had made clear that He Is. Why, my very refusal to admit that He Is was cause enough for me to need His Salvation! God knows there were plenty of other reasons, but I had been blind to it all. I had been convinced I was a good man in spite of all my habits, my addictions, my arrogance and pride, my spiteful treatment of one and all. Blind! But, now I see! Indeed, I can still see! I can still see so much that still needs His Redeeming touch upon it in my life. I can see things that I have stubbornly held onto in spite of His gentle cajoling. I can see, also, the things He has stripped away, the spots where all the dirt has been scrubbed away, and only the cleanness of His own presence remains.
What possible reaction could I have to this glorious manifestation of the God of Life, than to praise Him! To sing praises is to acknowledge what has been received from Him, it is an offering of thanks in recognition for what He has done. In the workplace, they like to give out awards as a combination of recognition for the one awarded, and incentive for those who are not. That recognition part is praise. Indeed, one hardly hands out an award without declaring at length what has made the person worthy of the award. That's what praises are: declaring what makes God worthy of the praises we sing. They recognize, or seek to recognize, all that He has done in our lives, all the change He has made, all that He has created and all that He has recreated. What an endless source of song we have in that!
To glorify God is to cause His worth to be manifest, and to cause His manifest worth to be recognized and acknowledged. How do we do this? We do this by making His glory evident in our own actions and choices. A life lived for God's purposes, in accord with God's instructions; a life whose every emotion, though, word, and action reflects the indwelling Holy Spirit and the daily renewal that is God's purpose in us, will make His glory manifest. What God is should be evident in who we are. When we have so pondered the things of God that they are now our own heart and soul, when the things of God inform our every choice, it will be evident in our choices. It will be evident in our speech. It will be evident in the way we pursue the course of our livelihood. It will be manifestly different, and it will be manifestly better, and this manifest improvement over the way things are will force recognition of the majesty of Him who is at work in us. There will be no choice remaining but to honor Him who made us what we are. There will be no choice remaining but to fall in worship before Him Who sits on the throne.
What is your purpose? To glorify God, and to enjoy Him! That is the teaching of the Westminster Confession of faith. What a wonderful teaching it is! Glorify God! That's it! Seek those things that are pleasing to Him and do them. Do them in a fashion that is pleased to please Him. Make His ways your own, your own by choice, your own by habit, your own because they are who you are. How better to enjoy Him than to share in His desires and pursuits?
The enjoyment that couples have in each other is often found in these shared desires and pursuits. It is made complete when the one can rejoice simply because the other has pursued his desired pursuit, the other can rejoice simply because the one's desire has been met. The biggest part is in that shared purpose that develops with times of intimacy together, but that intimacy allows for the parts not shared to still be cause for joy. So it is with God and us. As we spend our times in intimate relationship with Him, our desires, our pursuits, our purpose, become more and more united with His own. What delights Him delights us, and to an ever increasing extent, what delights us delights Him. The further we progress in pondering the things of God, the more we have internalized His ways and made them our own, the greater will be our shared delight as we manifest His glory to the world around us.
