There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
“He came”—these two simple words are at the root of all theology and of all truth!
Before Christ came in the incarnation, there had been only the eternal past. Then from the time of creation, we have such hints as “In the beginning he was God” and “In him was light” and “all things were made by him” and “In him was life.”
Now it says, “He came!”
We are struck by the wonder of these simple words. All of the pity that God is capable of feeling, all of the mercy that God is capable of showing, and all of the redeeming love and grace that He could pour out of His divine being—all are at least suggested in the fact that Jesus came!
Then too, all of the hopes and longings and aspirations and dreams of immortality that lie in the human breast had their fulfillment in these two words, “He came!”
The message is more profound than all philosophy. It may be a superlative statement, but I believe it to be a balanced and accurate statement, to insist that the impact of these two words, understood in their high spiritual context, is wiser than all of man’s learning.
Because He is “the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” man’s long night of darkness is dispelled. We celebrate with Milton the delight that “This is the happy morn wherein the Son of heaven’s eternal king, of wedded maid and virgin mother born, our great redemption from above did bring!”1
What the patriarch did early in the morning, after the family festivities, it will be well for the believer to do for himself ere he rests tonight. Amid the cheerfulness of household gatherings it is easy to slide into sinful levities, and to forget our avowed character as Christians. It ought not to be so, but so it is, that our days of feasting are very seldom days of sanctified enjoyment, but too frequently degenerate into unhallowed mirth. There is a way of joy as pure and sanctifying as though one bathed in the rivers of Eden: holy gratitude should be quite as purifying an element as grief. Alas! for our poor hearts, that facts prove that the house of mourning is better than the house of feasting. Come, believer, in what have you sinned to-day? Have you been forgetful of your high calling? Have you been even as others in idle words and loose speeches? Then confess the sin, and fly to the sacrifice. The sacrifice sanctifies. The precious blood of the Lamb slain removes the guilt, and purges away the defilement of our sins of ignorance and carelessness. This is the best ending of a Christmas-day—to wash anew in the cleansing fountain. Believer, come to this sacrifice continually; if it be so good to-night, it is good every night. To live at the altar is the privilege of the royal priesthood; to them sin, great as it is, is nevertheless no cause for despair, since they draw near yet again to the sin-atoning victim, and their conscience is purged from dead works.
ANDREW FULLER has said concerning this mysterious book:—“It is that to the New Testament church which the pillar of the cloud was to the church in the wilderness, guiding it through the labyrinth of anti-Christian errors and corruptions. It must not be neglected under a notion of its being hard to be understood. As well might the mariner, amidst the rocks, neglect his friendly chart, under an idea of its being difficult to understand it.”
Chapter 1
1–3 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John: Who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw. Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.
“To induce us to give the most serious attention to the subject, a blessing is pronounced on those who ‘read, and hear, and keep’, the words of this prophecy, especially as the time of its fulfilment was at hand. There does not appear to be any other part of Scripture that is prefaced with such an inducement to read, and understand, and practically regard it.”
4–6 John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne; And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
7 Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.
8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
9 I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.
He makes no mention of his being banished there by the persecutor: true virtue never boasts, or even invites others to admire it.
10, 11 I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.
12, 13 And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks; And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.
14–16 His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow (to denote that he is the Ancient of days); and his eyes were as a flame of fire; And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.
17–20 And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. (He was overwhelmed by the glory of his Lord’s appearance. We are as yet incapable of beholding the full blaze of the Redeemer’s glory: this corruptible must put on incorruption before we shall be able to endure the sight.) And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead: and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death. Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter; The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches.1
Zechariah 9:5 — Ashkelon was finally destroyed in 1270 by the Mamluk sultan Baybars and is now an archaeological site.
Zechariah 9:7 — Modern Ashkelon and Ashdod are now Jewish cities under the sovereignty of the State of Israel.
Zechariah 9:9 — Notice: a) Rejoicing b) by Jews c) of Jerusalem d) the King e) having salvation f) riding upon the colt of an ass.
This verse is quoted verbatim in Matthew 21:5. Let’s see how it was fulfilled! Salvation was coming that very week!
And brought the ass, and the colt (f), and put on them their clothes, and they set him (d) thereon. And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way. And the multitudes (b) that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna (a) to the son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest. And when he was come into Jerusalem (c), all the city was moved, saying, Who is this?
Matthew 21:7-9
Zechariah 9:10 — This goes back to Balaam’s prophecy of one having dominion (Numbers 24:19), and the praise of Bildad the Shuhite who knew that “dominion and fear are with him, he maketh peace” (Job 25:2).
Specifically, this is the promise of Psalm 72:8, “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.” David wished that of his son, Solomon, but Zechariah says that it hasn’t been fulfilled at the start of the post-exilic time period. Jesus the Peace has come and will return for His Kingdom (Mark 1:15, Revelation 19:16).
Zechariah 9:16 — The LORD will save His people! In Romans 11:26, we see all Israel shall be saved. Later on in Zechariah 12:10 we’ll see how it will happen in an incredible prophecy!
Revelation 17:3 — Where do we find a woman riding a beast today?
The founding myth of Europa and the bull has frequently been alluded to in relation to the continent and by the modern European Union, and can thus be considered not only a piece of toponymy, but also as a semi-official symbol or supranational personification of the European region.
Many expositors refer this to Rome. Seven hills formed the nucleus of the ancient city on the left bank of the Tiber. These hills received the names of Palatine, Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, Viminal, Quirinal, and Capitoline.
What regal mountain, then, was in power at the time John wrote? There can be no question on that point; it was the Roman empire. Thus, then, we ascertain and identify the sixth in the list, which shows what sort of kings the angel meant. Of the same class with this, and belonging to the same category, there are five others—five which had then already run their course and passed away. But what five imperial mountains like Rome had been and gone, up to that time? Is history so obscure as not to tell us with unmistakable certainty? Preceding Rome the world had but five great names or nationalities answering to imperial Rome, and those scarce a schoolboy ought to miss. They are Greece, Persia, Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt; no more, and no less. And these all were imperial powers like Rome. Here, then, are six of these regal mountains; the seventh is not yet come. When it comes it is to endure but a short time.
Psalm 145:11 — While it’s considered a Christmas song, this song actually talks about the Second Coming of Jesus!
Joy to the world, the Lord is come Let earth receive her King Let every heart prepare Him room And Heaven and nature sing And Heaven and nature sing And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing
J. Warner examines the orthodox definition of Salvation and the important work of the cross. Jim also answers listener email related to the nature of the soul.
Paul Harvey being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush/Wikicommons photo by Shealah Craighead.
Paul Harvey was one of the great radio personalities of 20th century America. Paul was a Christian man. He was a staunch American patriot and Godly man.
In 2005, Harvey was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ most prestigious civilian award, by President George W. Bush.
Bush said of Harvey’s career. “He first went on the air in 1933, and he’s been heard nationwide for 54 years. Americans like the sound of his voice…over the decades we have come to recognize in that voice some of the finest qualities of our country: patriotism, the good humor, the kindness, and common sense of Americans.”
His popular “Rest of the Story” segment was broadcast into millions of American homes and businesses.
Paul Harvey was also a devout Christian who was deeply concerned that the United States was abandoning God and morality at her own peril.
Every year, starting in 1965, Harvey shared a story at Christmas, ‘The Man and the Birds.’
“This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven” – Acts 1:11
Many are celebrating our LORD’s first coming this day; let us turn our thoughts to the promise of His second coming. This is as sure as the first advent and derives a great measure of its certainty from it. He who came as a lowly man to serve will assuredly come to take the reward of His service. He who came to suffer will not be slow in coming to reign. This is our glorious hope, for we shall share His joy. Today we are in our concealment and humiliation, even as He was while here below; but when He cometh it will be our manifestation, even as it will be His revelation. Dead saints shall live at His appearing. The slandered and despised shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Then shall the saints appear as kings and priests, and the days of their mourning shall be ended. The long rest and inconceivable splendor of the millennial reign will be an abundant recompense for the ages of witnessing and warring. Oh, that the LORD would come! He is coming! He is on the road and traveling quickly. The sound of His approach should be as music to our hearts! Ring out, ye bells of hope!
for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. (2:11–12)
Having reassured the stunned and frightened shepherds that he came bearing good news, the angel then gave them the details of that good news. That very day, in the fullness of time (Gal. 4:4), history’s most significant birth had taken place. It had happened in the most unlikely of places—in the city of David (the tiny hamlet of Bethlehem; see the discussion of 2:4 in chap. 12 of this volume). The angel prefaced his threefold description of the newborn Child by telling the shepherds that the One of whom he spoke had been born for them. Collectively, as noted above, Jesus is the Savior of both Jews and Gentiles; individually, He is the Savior of everyone who believes in Him (John 3:16). The angel did not give the Child’s earthly name; Savior, Christ and Lord are all titles. But since the name “Jesus” means “the Lord is salvation,” its meaning is encompassed by the term Savior.
The description of Jesus as Savior is an apt one, since the reason He was born was to “save His people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21; cf. Luke 19:10). That obvious truth is often obscured in contemporary presentations of the gospel. Too often Jesus is presented as the One who will rescue people from unfulfillment in their marriages, families, or jobs; from a debilitating habit they cannot overcome on their own; or from a sense of purposelessness in life. But while relief in those areas may be a by-product of salvation, it is not its primary intent. Mankind’s true problem, of which those issues are only symptoms, is sin. Everyone (Rom. 3:10, 23) is guilty of breaking God’s holy law and deserves eternal punishment in hell. The true gospel message is that Jesus Christ came into the world to rescue people from sin and guilt—not psychological, artificial guilt feelings, but true, God-imposed guilt that damns to hell.
Christ is an exalted title for a baby born in such humble circumstances. The name and its Old Testament counterpart, Messiah (Dan. 9:25–26), both mean “anointed one”; one placed in a high office and worthy of exaltation and honor. Jesus was anointed first in the sense that He is God’s appointed King, the “King of kings” (Rev. 17:14; 19:16), who will sit on David’s throne and reign forever, as Gabriel told Mary (1:32–33). He was also anointed to be the great High Priest (Heb. 3:1) for His people; the mediator between them and God (1 Tim. 2:5) who makes intercession for them (Heb. 7:25). Finally, Jesus was anointed as a prophet, God’s final and greatest spokesman (Heb. 1:1–2).
Lord in a human sense is a term of respect and esteem, given to someone in a position of leadership and authority. Especially it was the title borne by slave owners; kurios (Lord) and doulos (slave) were connected. To call someone Lord was to acknowledge your subservience. In the New Testament Sarah called Abraham lord, acknowledging his authority over her as her husband (1 Peter 3:6).
But in this context Lord is no mere elevated human designation; it is a divine title. To say that this Child is Lord is to say that He is God. When used in reference to Jesus Christ, kurios (Lord) conveys all that is implied by the tetragrammaton YHWH (“Yahweh,” which the Septuagint translates kurios)—the name of God (cf. Ex. 3:14–15). The most fundamental and basic confession of Christianity is, “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor. 12:3). No one who does not affirm Christ’s full deity and equality with God the Father can be saved for, as He warned the Jews, “Unless you believe that I am [God], you will die in your sins” (John 8:24. For a discussion of the “I am” statements in John’s gospel in reference to Christ’s deity, see John 1–11, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary [Chicago: Moody, 2006], 14, 348). Romans 10:9 declares that “if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”
The angel then gave the shepherds a sign by which they could recognize this remarkable Child: they would find find the baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. That the baby would be wrapped in cloths would not single out Jesus for the shepherds, since that was done to all Jewish babies (see the discussion of 2:7 in the previous chapter of this volume). To fail to properly care for a newborn baby, including wrapping it, was unthinkable (cf. Ezek. 16:1–5). But Jewish mothers did not usually put their newborn babies in a manger, so that would narrow the shepherds’ search to the Child of whom the angel spoke. The stark contrast between Jesus’ exalted status as Savior, Messiah, and God and the humble circumstances of His birth emphasizes the magnitude of His “[emptying] Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:7).1
12 The “cloths” (KJV, “swaddling clothes,” from the verb sparganoō, “to swathe,” GK 5058) would constitute a “sign.” Babies were snugly wrapped in long strips of cloth, giving them warmth, protection of extremities, and a sense of security in their newborn existence. The combination of a newborn baby’s wrappings and the use of the manger for a crib would be a distinctive “sign.” Perhaps they also imply that in spite of seeming rejection, symbolized by the manger, the baby was the special object of his mother’s care. In Ezekiel 16:1–5, Jerusalem is symbolically described as a heathen child who was neglected from birth until God rescued and cared for her. She had not been given the usual postnatal care and so was not wrapped with strips of cloth (Eze 16:4). But Jesus was not so neglected. On the other hand, the “sign” might be only the strange circumstance of the newborn child’s being in the manger at all. If one moves further in the Lukan narrative, this “sign” may also point to the burial scene of Jesus, in which linen becomes yet another “sign” (cf. J. Winandy, “Le signe de la mangeoire et des langes,” NTS 43 [1997]: 140–46).2
12. And this shall be a sign to you. The angel meets the prejudice which might naturally hinder the faith of the shepherds; for what a mockery is it, that he, whom God has sent to be the King, and the only Saviour, is seen lying in a manger! That the mean and despicable condition in which Christ was might not deter the shepherds from believing in Christ, the angel tells them beforehand what they would see. This method of proceeding, which might appear, to the view of men, absurd and almost ridiculous, the Lord pursues toward us every day. Sending down to us from heaven the word of the Gospel, he enjoins us to embrace Christ crucified, and holds out to us signs in earthly and fading elements, which raise us to the glory of a blessed immortality. Having promised to us spiritual righteousness, he places before our eyes a little water: by a small portion of bread and wine, he seals the eternal life of the soul.2 But if the stable gave no offence whatever to the shepherds, so as to prevent them from going to Christ to obtain salvation, or from yielding to his authority, while he was yet a child; no sign, however mean in itself, ought to hide his glory from our view, or prevent us from offering to him lowly adoration, now that he has ascended to heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father.3
Ver. 12. And this shall be a sign unto you.—What the angels said to the shepherds was, “This shall be the sign unto you; ye shall find a babe,” a babe like any other, “wrapped in swaddling clothes,” differing from other babes only in the lowliness of His birth, “lying in a manger.” The absence of any adventitious source of interest, anything awe-inspiring in the circumstances of the birth of Christ, was no mere casual incident; it was eminently significant, characteristic of His life, a symbol of His sway. The identification of “signs” with “wonders” was the common error of the Jews. All Israel was expectant of the Messiah. The reason why they received Him not was that they could not recognize the Divine in the ordinary. A babe was born in Bethlehem: only by those who shared the mother’s prophetic insight was the mystery of God’s interposition seen in His birth. Angels sang of His advent; their song was mute save to the listening ear of a few shepherds. And this is the common error of us all. “He that receiveth a prophet,” says Christ, “in the name of a prophet, shall receive a prophet’s reward.” Yes, we respond, that is well; we all shall know a prophet when we see him. But Christ also says, “Whoso shall receive a little child in My name receiveth Me.” He who is blind to the Christ in the little child may also fail to see the prophet when he comes. Such as Christ was manifested here, such did He ever continue. He would steal into the life of humanity as a babe twines round a mother’s heart. He would draw men to Him by the charm and sweetness of humna sanctity; and to those who were thus attracted to Him and abode in His fellowship, there came at length the revelation that this was the Divine. The cross lay hidden in the manger of Bethlehem. He was already bearing the only cross a babe can bear, poverty and man’s contempt; sweetened by a mother’s care, the symbol of that affection of pious hearts which never failed Him throughout His vexed and troubled history; and hallowed by the Father’s approval of the well-beloved Son, in whom, now as ever, He was well pleased. The sacrificial purpose and saving energy of His life already appeared. “Though He was rich, yet for our sakes,” &c. The mother of Jesus and the adoring shepherds must have been struck by the contrast between the honour of His annunciation and the meanness of His birth; between the splendours of the angelic host, and the manger where He lay. Eighteen centuries of Christian history have taught us that herein is no contrast, but profound consistency. What honour could the world have rendered the Son of God which would not have more sharply contrasted with His character and mission than poverty and the world’s neglect? There is nothing in common between Christ and the luxury of wealth, the ostentation of a palace, the statecraft of a Court. The manger of Bethlehem is the sign of the Messiah; the lowly, self-accepted lot of Jesus is the seal of His divinity. Men soar, God stoops; ambition is human, condescension is Divine. When God reveals Himself for man’s salvation it can only be by sacrifice; and the more complete the sacrifice, the fuller is the revelation. (A. Mackennal, D.D.)
The sign of Jesus Christ:—What a wonderful contrast between this verse and that which follows! What greatness on the one side, what humility on the other! That humility is the sign of the greatness. I. The sign of humility by which the entrance of Jesus into the world was announced, is found throughout the whole course of His history. II. The same contrast is found in the institutions which Jesus has left to preserve in His Church the remembrance of His benefits. III. There is, again, this same contrast of grandeur and humility to mark, with a Divine seal, the Church of Jesus Christ. 1. In its origin, composed of obscure persons from lowest ranks of a small unknown people. 2. As it exists to-day wherever the true Church is to be found. IV. The same sign of humility will enable us to recognize the worship with which God is pleased. V. The sign of humility which is constantly found in Christ, and in all that springs from Christ, must be found also among His disciples. (Horace Monod.)
Lessons of the holy manger:—At the cradle of Christianity, we may observe something of the predestined form both of Christian doctrine and Christian life. In the bud we trace the probable shape and colour of the coming flower. When standing at the source of a river we can determine at least the general direction of its course. In the Sacred Infancy, too, we may discern, without risk of indulgence in over-fanciful analogies, a typical portraiture of the Christian creed, and a precious lesson for good Christian living. To the theologian and the practical Christian, the sign of the manger and of the swaddling clothes is at least as full of meaning now as it was of old to the shepherds of Bethlehem.
I. Look then at the creed of the Church. It has two sides, two aspects. It is one thing to sight, another to faith. To sight, it is wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. To faith, it is revealed from heaven as supernatural and Divine.
II. Consider the moral import of the manger-bed of the infant Jesus. The world-wide principle of spiritual death needed to be expelled by a stronger and not less universal principle. It demanded a regenerating force, resting not on theory but on fact, a principle human in its form and action, but Divine in its strength and origin. Such a privilege we find in the Babe, wrapped, &c. This was indeed the Divine Word, engrafted on human nature, and able to save the souls of men. The Incarnation was the source of a moral revolution. By saving man it was destined to save human society. It confronted sensuality by endurance and mortification. It confronted covetousness by putting honour upon poverty. It taught men that a man’s highest life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth. But its great lesson was a lesson of humility. In the humiliation of the Highest, the nations read the truth which the incarnate Lord taught in words:—“Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.” For us men humility is the law of progress, because it is the admission of truth. At Christ’s manger may we learn the blessed temper which makes faith, repentance, perseverance, easy, and to which are promised the crowns of glory, worn by the blessed around His throne. (Canon Liddon.) The babe: A Christmastide meditation:—The Incarnation was the great event in the world’s history. Nothing can rival in interest to us the coming of God in our mortal flesh; the shadowing of Deity in a human form, so that we might see Him; the manifestation of Deity in a saving love, so that we might be drawn to Him; the shinings in our humanity of a Divine purity; which should at once reveal to us our sins; and deliver us from their power.
I. Our Saviour was a real man. All are alike at birth—babes. Christ came as we came. He passed through the entire experience of human life, starting from the cradle, right up to and beyond the tomb.
II. Our Saviour was simply a man. “Ye shall find the babe”: just a babe, no more. No accident of birth limited Jesus to any part of the community; there were none of those things about Him on which men pride themselves. He belongs to all, however humble, obscure, poor, simple, needy.
III. He was a loving man. A babe is the emblem of the mightiest thing on earth—love—the sunshine of the Divine radience.
IV. He was, for the most part, a rejected man. There never seemed to be any room for Him, from His birth onwards.
V. He is all in all to those who receive Him. 1. To find this Babe will be the beginning of truest peace to our own hearts. 2. To find this Babe will be the beginning for us of a better, nobler life. 3. To find this Babe will give to us the true spirit of brotherhood and charity. (R. Tuck, B. A.)
The sign of the manger:—Let us think what is the connection here. A sign—a signal: how so? In what sense did the mode and circumstance of the birth make it typical of the thing which Christ comes to do? What is that thing which Christ comes to do? He has come to be the God-man, the Redeemer, the Emmanuel, and the Saviour—the God for us, and God with us, and God in us—of the fallen, the sinful, the erring and straying man. Now, to be this, He must first incorporate Himself with men, take the flesh and blood, the nature and body and spirit of the race which He comes to save. He must first of all incorporate Himself—not with a man, or a few men, but with humanity—with man as man, and not with certain privileged specimens and choice individuals of the race. He has come to undo the fall. He has come to bear the sins, to wipe away the tears, to take the sting out of the death of the Adam race as a whole; therefore He must not only take flesh and blood—become one of us and live our very life: that is not enough. He must go down to the very rock from which we are hewn, and He must put on our nature—not in its ornamental but in its bare form—not as it may deck itself in the embellishment of rank or wealth, of social distinction or philosophical culture, but as it is in itself and in the commonest experiences of its humblest children. If the Divine Saviour had appeared in any other form than this, He would have misled men as to the thing which He came to do, and as to the relation in which He desired to stand as to the lower and the lowest portions of the human family. The sign of the helpless babe and the manger cradle was no capricious or accidental idea; for, inasmuch as it is Christ the Lord, therefore ye shall find Him not in the miraculous strength of an instantaneous maturity, and not in the guest-chambers of a king’s palace, but as a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. There was a connection and a congruity between the sign and the reality; for thus it was that Christ became, not the faith of a few, but the Saviour of all. None are poorer, none are humbler, none are less learned, none are less noble after the flesh, than He. None can say now, “His is the religion of the educated—of the philosophical—of kings and princes—His is the religion which admits or which favours a position of comfort or respectability, and I am none of these, so Christ is not for me.” And when, at this Christmas season, wealth surrounds itself with all its luxuries of mind and body, and thinks it much if, for a moment and in the most perfunctory way, it remembers the poor, we feel how slight must be the hold of these self-indulgers upon the faith which they profess to honour. If we would know the mystery of Christmas; if we would read the riddle of the angel; if we would know why he said, “The Saviour is born, and the sign is the manger,” we should turn our steps to some poor man’s chamber with its highbacked chair and its open Bible. We shall hear that man say, “Oh, I love both to be abased and to abound. I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, for Christ the Lord was born this day for our salvation, and His first earthly resting place was a yard and a manger.” (Dean Vaughan.)
Divine things veiled under earthly forms:—This shall be your sign: not the march of a conqueror, not the splendour of a king, but the Babe wrapped in swaddling bands and lying in a manger! Wherever God is, the presence is secret. What, for example, is the Book of God—the Bible—but an example of this sanctity in commonness: a heap of leaves, marked with ink and hand, stamped with signs for sounds, multiplied by printing-press and steam-engine, conveyed hither and thither by railways, bought and sold in shops, tossed from hand to hand in schools and homes, lost and dissipated by vulgar wear and tear? But go back to its composition. What was the Bible as it came forth originally, book by book, and chapter by chapter, from the mind which thought, and from the hand which wrote it? Was it not written, after all, both in composition and in dictation, like any other work of poetry or philosophy, of history or fiction—by the brain and nerve power of common human beings? Was it not given forth line by line from the lips of a Paul sitting at the tent-making, or some other evangelist alternating between preaching and handicraft—by the utterance of sounds in an imperfect human language to some obscure Persis or other amanuensis reporting? Yet in that Book of books, thus material, thus earthly, thus human in its circumstances, there lies concealed the very breath and spirit of God Himself, mighty to stir hearts, and mighty to regenerate souls. The swathing bands of sense and time enclose the living and moving power which is of eternity, which is Divine. Nay, the sign of the true Deity is the fact that the form is human. Take another example of this from another of God’s instruments of communication. What is that vessel for holding common water, which is the appendage of every Christian place of worship? Is there anything in that laver—that font—but what is of the earth, and of the very commonest of all earth’s gifts for refreshing and purifying? “What can be the use,” some might inquire, “of bringing that earthly water into the House of God’s worship, as though we had forgotten our Master’s own words, ‘God is a Spirit’? What significance can there be—certainly what virtue—in sprinkling those few drops of common water upon the forehead of a child, with or without a particular form of sacred words accompanying? What, again, can be less intelligible than that sight of that little frugal table of common bread and common wine, standing there in front of the congregation? How can eating and drinking in God’s house affect, in any degree, for good the soul of the worshipper?” We can but answer that Christ our Master commanded the one sacrament as the appointed way of dedicating a new life to His service, and that He appointed the other sacrament as commemorative of His own death and passion—as instrumental, also, in nourishing the soul that in it feeds upon Him by faith. And though it would be presumptuous, indeed, to attach any value to a form of man’s invention, we feel that the presumption would be all the other way if we neglected an ordinance of Jesus Christ, because it was either too mysterious for us, or too carnal. Nay, we can almost read in the very simplicity a signal of His working, who, when He came on earth came as a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, and made it a sign of His presence that He was lying in a manger. But the same thing which is true of the Bible and of the sacraments, is true also of the Church and of the Christian. Where is it, we ask, that God in Christ dwells most certainly, most personally, on this earth? It is no word of man’s invention which answers, to the Church—“Ye, collectively, are the temple of God,” and, to the Christian—“your body is the shrine of the Holy Ghost, which is in you.” Yet if we look at the men and the women and the children thus spoken to, we see nothing but human beings, frail and fallen, occupied for a large part of their life in the employments and the relaxations, in the talk and in the seeking, which are common alike to the righteous and the wicked, and which would equally be theirs if they had neither faith nor heaven. The treasure of the Divine light is always held in earthen vessels; not until the pitcher is broken at the fountain shall the full radiance shine out so as to be read of all men. Meanwhile the sign of God is the commonness. Christ came not to take men out of the world, but to consecrate and keep them in it. Coming to redeem earth, He takes earth as it is: not the ideal, but the real; and makes this the very token of His being amongst us—that we find a helpless babe and a manger cradle. (Ibid.)
The practice of swathing infants:—When the Gospels were translated in our venerable version, it did not occur to any of the translators that the word “swaddling clothes” would ever be an obsolete word, needing to be illustrated by a description of ancient or foreign customs. And yet so it is at this day. The usage which is alluded to in this word is to us entirely strange. Few things among the old world customs, I venture to say, strike some of us as more outlandish—more pitiable even—more entirely removed from our notions of good care and right training—than the swaddling of little helpless babies, as it is practised, for instance, in Germany. I do not believe an American mother can generally pass one of those poor little Wickelkinder, strapped down on its back to a pillow by spiral after spiral of convoluted bandages, without longing to apply the scissors and let the little prisoner go free. And yet it is only a few generations since this way of treating new-born children prevailed, with variations and aggravations, in all nations, even the most civilized. We owe our own emancipation, in this land and century, from this and other artificial traditions, to no other single influence so much as to a remarkable book published in the middle of the last century by a citizen of Geneva—the “Emile” of Jean Jacques Rousseau. It speaks thus of the universally prevalent treatment of an infant child as it had continued to his day: “Scarcely does the child begin to enjoy the liberty of moving and stretching its limbs, when it is placed anew in confinement. It is wound in swaddling clothes, and laid down with its head fixed, its legs extended, its arms at its sides. It is surrounded with clothes and bandages of all sorts that prevent it from changing its position. It is a good thing if they do not even draw the bands so tight as to hinder respiration, and if they have the foresight to lay it on its side to avoid the danger of strangulation.… The inaction and constraint in which the child’s limbs are confined must necessarily disturb the circulation, hinder the child from gaining strength, and affect its constitution.… Is it possible that such cruel constraint can fail to affect the character of the child, as well as its physical temperament? Its first conscious feeling is a feeling of pain and suffering. It finds nothing but hindrances to the motions which it craves. More wretched than a criminal in irons, it frets and cries. The first gifts it receives are fetters; the first treatment it experiences is torture.” Such was the practice of a hundred years ago in the highest families of the most civilized country in the world. In many lands, partly owing to this very protest, the practice is better now. But in the slow-going East the common practice of the nursery is no better, and it is probably no worse than it was nineteen hundred years ago. But it is worse than anything we ever see or hear of in this part of the world. In fact, it comes nearer to the binding of an Indian papoose to a board, than to anything that we are accustomed to see in the families of Christendom. Once wound around with these swathing-bands, sometimes with an addition of fresh earth against the skin, and packed in their cradles like a little mummy in its coffin, the poor little babies are expected to stay there, all cries and complaints notwithstanding; they are not removed by their mothers even for such necessary occasions as to be fed. I have heard pitiful stories told by missionaries’ wives, and by missionary physicians, in the East, of the sufferings of little infants in consequence of the obstinate persistence of parents in a usage which we clearly see to be so unreasonable and unnatural. (Leonard W. Bacon.)
The sign of the swaddling clothes:—Is it not strange, you will ask, that when the shepherds were given a sign by which they should know their new-born Saviour, they should be told, not of something distinguishing Him from all children beside, but of something common to all the infants that were born that night in all Judea? “Ye shall find wrapped in swaddling clothes.” Why not say, according to the instincts of heathen mythology, Ye shall know Him by the bees that gather to suck the honey of His lips, or the strangled serpents that lie about His cradle? Why not say, according to the suggestions of Christian legend and art, Ye shall know Him by the aspect of supernatural majesty, which it shall be the dream and the disappointment of all the world’s artists to attempt to portray? Or, Ye shall know Him by the halo of celestial light beaming from His brow, as in the “Holy Night” of Correggio, and filling the rude stall with an unearthly brightness? Or, Ye shall know Him by some accessories worthy of so royal a birth, by gifts of gold and myrrh and frankincense that strew the humble shed? The very question brings its answer: You are to know Him from all these natural dreams of a fond imagination, from the hopeful prognostications of Hebrew mothers, or the impatient fancies of fanatics, or the artful fictions of impostors taking advantage of the general expectation with which the very atmosphere of Palestine was saturated, to set forth some feigned Messiah—you are to know Him from all these by the fact that He is just the opposite of all such imaginings—that He is to all appearance just a helpless human infant, the most helpless thing in the whole creation, bound and bandaged in swaddling clothes. And if you would know how to distinguish Him from other such, it is not by His grandeur but by His poverty. There is no room in the inn for such as He; and they have laid Him in the manger, among the cattle.… The sign given to the shepherds is a sign also to us—that we find the Holy Child wrapped in swaddling clothes. Illustrious men have sometimes had an honest pride in inscribing upon their escutchon, beneath a noble crest, the symbol of the humble mechanic rank in which they had their origin. So the Church of Christ, beneath the diadem of supreme royalty, quarters upon its shield, beside the cross and the thongs, the manger and the swaddling bands, and invites the world to read the blazon. That family group which the painters of every later age have been essaying to depict—the carpenter with his simple, uninquisitive faith obedient to heavenly visions, the pure Virgin with her unskilled maiden tenderness pondering strange memories in her heart, both leaning over the Wonderful, but understanding not the saying which He speaks to them—these speak over again to us the language of that prophet who first called his child “Immanuel,” “Behold we and the Child whom the Lord hath given us are for signs and for wonders from the Lord of hosts.” (Ibid.)
Naturalness of the truly great:—To illustrate the use of such a sign as was given to the shepherds, let me suppose some traveller accustomed to the splendour and reserve of royal courts visiting the city of Washington, and asking, on his way to the White House, how he should find the President. We should tell him, “You may know him by this sign. He is a plain man, plainly dressed in a black suit, and you will find him in the centre of the thickest crowd, and everybody coming up to shake hands with him. First, he is not distinguished in the way you expect him to be; and, secondly, he is unmistakably distinguished in just the opposite way.” But for some such “sign” as this our traveller might naturally mistake for the President some attaché of a South American Embassy standing apart in a halo of dignity and a light blaze of gold lace. This “wrapped in swaddling-clothes and lying in a manger” was just the sign the shepherds needed. And we do well if, looking for the Christ, we take heed to it ourselves. We are not yet safe from the error of them of old time, who thought to find the Lord clothed in soft raiment and dwelling in king’s palaces. (Ibid.)
Christ’s humility:—In His nativity, and in His temptation (Mark 1:13), Christ was among beasts. Believers, ambitious of high place, forget their Master’s cradle. A manger is here honoured above a thousand glittering thrones. It is an ornament of His royalty, a throne of His glory. He comes in humility; He reigns in humility; He leads by humility. The manger and the cross are stumbling-blocks to many. His infancy and death are still rocks, wrecking human pride. (Van Doren.)
The sign of the Incarnation:—Christmas is full of surprises. It brings in, as no other event ever did, the element of mystery, of wonder. Its testimony is, God became manifest in the flesh. The Eternal Word was joined with a perfect human nature. The miracle of the Incarnation transcends every other that has been and will be wrought. It is in itself a wonder so great that all the accompaniments of the birth of Jesus sink into comparative insignificance. We are, I fear, inclined to forget the majesty of the fact in the strangeness of its surroundings. We count it a wonderful thing that He should have been born in the stable of a country inn, whereas the real wonder is that such a birth should take place anywhere, and so I ask you to contemplate one of the signs by which the shepherds of Bethlehem were to find and know the incarnate God—“Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes.”
I. It reminds us, by way of analogy, of a fact which constitutes the most trying element in the mystery of the Incarnation, namely, that God thereby came within certain limitations. How an uncreated and omnipresent, that is, a boundless, Infinite Being could be contracted within the circumference of a human life is the most puzzling problem of revelation. The impossibility of our understanding this is a temptation, not perhaps to deny, but to forget the deeper meaning of the Christmas feast. Remember, then, that within these swathing bands which encircled the infant form of Jesus there was bound the nature of a Being more than human, even God Himself. Men may call this an unreasonable tax upon our faith. It is rather a sign of God’s condescension to human weakness. The whole secret of the history of idolatry among the Jews and the Gentiles was a longing for some visible manifestation of Him whom they felt they must worship. Man instinctively longs for some incarnate form, some Word of his Maker manifest in the flesh, some finite manifestation of the Infinite Father. And the birth of Jesus, the enshrining of God within a human form, the swathing of that power, which otherwise knows no bounds, was but an answer to man’s desire.
II. The sign holds good, not only of the nature of Christ, but likewise of the life which, from first to last, He lived. That also was like every purely human life, hemmed in. It unfolded according to the ordinary laws of growth. His babyhood was as real as His manhood. He increased in wisdom as well as stature. He learned gradually the wisdom which all the world now confesses. The common idea which people have of Jesus is that, being Divine, He was exempt from the ordinary conditions of common men; that He never knew constraint; that there were no barriers opposing Him, no bands fettering the free exercise of that Divine power which lay hidden within Him. Yet duty was sometimes hard for Him. He longed to do things which He might not attempt, because the higher and more spiritual dictates of His conscience forbade it. The kingdoms of this world and their glory looked as fair and tempting to His soul as they do to ours. But the law of righteousness, the swathing-bands of duty, the rules of obedience which God throws around us, likewise constrained Him.
III. The manner of the Incarnation shows God’s estimate of human nature. If you are ever tempted to despise human nature because you see it now and then wearing disagreeable phases, or to think ill of, nay, to slight, your friends, remember God’s estimate of them. He does not thus stoop and toil to save the worthless. From being a King He descended to the lowest form of human life, entered the world in utter helplessness, was wrapped in swaddling clothes, and during all His development here on earth never rose above that form of a servant which He had taken. And He did all this, because even fallen man was dearer to His heart than the world of lost angels. (E. E. Johnson, M.A.)
Great things from small beginnings:—Not, Ye shall find the angel in the heavens, the king on his throne, the young prince in a palace, the commander at the head of his armies, but “the babe in a manger.” How strange are God’s ways of working out His strange plans! It is not by might, nor by power, that His agencies accomplish their vast work. The least things are often the greatest in His providence (1 Cor. 1:27–29). It may be the shepherd boy with his sling who gains victory over the mailed giant in whose presence the whole army of Israel stands trembling; it may be the tinker in Bedford Jail who writes a masterpiece in religious literature, to be honoured for centuries for its work and its worth; it may be the unschooled clerk from a Boston shoe-store who proclaims the gospel with a fervency and power which the best-cultured divines of all Christendom have not attained to; or it may be in the most unprepossessing child of your school or class that the grandest possibilities for the kingdom of Christ to-day lie hid. (H. C. Trumbull.)
The fitness of the sign:—“This shall be the sign,” saith the angel. “Shall be”; but should it be this? No; how should it be? Let us see. Why, this shall be the sign; ye shall find the Child, not in these clouts or cratch, but in a crimson mantle, in a cradle of ivory. That, lo, were somewhat Saviour-like I But in vain take we upon us to teach the angel; we would have—we know not what. We forget St. Augustine’s distingue tempora; as the time is the angel is right, and a fitter sign could not be assigned. Would we have had Him come in power and great glory? and so He will come, but not now. He that cometh here in clouts will one day come in the clouds. But now His coming was for another end, and so to be in another manner. His coming now was “to visit us in great humility,” and so His sign to be according. Nay, then, I say, first go to the nature of a sign; if Christ had come in His excellency, that had been no sign, no more than the sun in the firmament shining in his full strength. Contrary to the course of nature it must be, else it is no sign. The sun eclipsed, the sun in sackcloth; that is signum in sole, “the sign indeed” (Luke 21:25). And that is the sign here: the Sun of Righteousness entering into His eclipse begins to be darkened in His first point, the point of His nativity. This is the sign, say I, and that had been none. (Bishop Lancelot Andrewes.)
The sign nothing; the treasure all:—Make of the sign what ye will; it skills not what it be, never so mean. In the nature of a sign there is nothing, but it may be such; all is in the thing signified. So it carry us to a rich signatum, and worth the finding, what matter how mean the sign be? We are sent to a crib, not to an empty crib; Christ is in it. Be the sign never so simple, the signatum it carries us to makes amends. Any sign with such a signatum. And I know not the man so squeamish, but if, in his stable and under his manger, there were a treasure hid, and he were sure of it, but thither he would, and pluck up the planks, and dig and rake for it, and be never a whit offended with the homeliness of the place. If, then, Christ be a treasure, as in Him are “all the treasures of the wisdom and bounty of God,” what skills it what be His sign. With this, with any other, Christ is worth the finding. He is not worthy of Christ who will not go anywhither to find Christ. (Ibid.)
Christ born in a manger:—At midnight from one of the galleries of the sky a chant broke forth. To an ordinary observer there was no reason for such a celestial demonstration. If there had been such brilliant and mighty recognition at an advent in the House of Pharaoh, or at an advent in the House of Cæsar, or the House of Hapsburg, or the House of Stuart, we would not so much have wondered; but a barn seems too poor a centre for such delicate and archangelic circumference. The stage seems too small for so great an act, the music too grand for such unappreciative auditors, the windows of the stable too rude to be serenaded by other worlds.
I. That night in the Bethlehem manger was born encouragement for all the poorly started. He had only two friends—they His parents. No satin-lined cradle, no delicate attentions, but straw and the cattle, and the coarse joke and banter of the camel drivers. From the depths of that poverty He rose, until to-day He is honoured in all Christendom, and sits on the imperial throne in heaven. Do you know that the vast majority of the world’s deliverers had barnlike birthplaces? Luther, the emancipator of religion, born among the mines. Shakespeare, the emancipator of literature, born in a humble home at Stratford-on-Avon. Columbus, the discoverer of a world, born in poverty at Genoa. Hogarth, the discoverer of how to make art accumulative and administrative of virtue, born in a humble home at Westminster. Kitto and Prideaux, whose keys unlocked new apartments in the Holy Scriptures which had never been entered, born in want. Yea, I have to tell you that nine out of ten of the world’s deliverers were born in want. I stir your holy ambitions to-day, and I want to tell you, although the whole world may be opposed to you, and inside and outside of your occupations or professions there may be those who would hinder your ascent, on your side and enlisted in your behalf are the sympathetic heart and the almighty arm of One who, one Christmas night about eighteen hundred and eighty years ago, was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. Oh, what magnificent encouragement for the poorly started!
II. Again, I have to tell you that in that village barn that night was born goodwill to men, whether you call it kindness, or forbearance, or forgiveness, or geniality, or affection, or love. It says, “Sheathe your swords, dismount your guns, dismantle your batteries, turn the warship Constellation, that carried shot and shell, into a grain ship to take food to famishing Ireland, hook your cavalry horses to the plough, use your deadly gunpowder in blasting rocks and in patriotic celebration, stop your lawsuits, quit writing anonymous letters, extract the sting from your sarcasm, let your wit coruscate but never burn, drop all the harsh words out of your vocabulary—Goodwill to men.”
III. Again, I remark that born that Christmas night in the village barn was sympathetic union with other worlds. Move that supernatural grouping of the cloud banks over Bethlehem, and from the special trains that ran down to the scene I find that our world is beautifully and gloriously and magnificently surrounded. The meteors are with us, for one of them ran to point down to the birthplace. The heavens are with us, because at the thought of our redemption they roll hosannas out of the midnight sky.
IV. Again, I remark that that night born in that village barn was the offender’s hope. Some sermonizers may say I ought to have projected this thought at the beginning of the sermon. Oh, no! I wanted you to rise toward it. I wanted you to examine the cornelians and the jaspers and the emeralds and the sardonyx before I showed you the Kohinoor—the crown jewel of the ages. Oh, that jewel had a very poor setting! The cub of the bear is born amid the grand old pillars of the forest, the whelp of a lion takes its first step from the jungle of luxuriant leaf and wild flower, the kid of the goat is born in cavern chandeliered with stalactite and pillared with stalagmite. Christ was born in a bare barn. Yet that nativity was the offender’s hope. Over the door of heaven are written these words, “None but the sinless may enter here.” “Oh, horror,” you say, “that shuts us out!” No. Christ came to the world in one door, and He departed through another door. He came through the door of the manger, and He departed through the door of the sepulchre; and His one business was so to wash away our sin that after we are dead there will be no more sin about us than about the eternal God. I know that is putting it strongly, but that is what I understand by full remission. All erased, all washed away, all scoured out, all gone. Oh! now I see what the manger was. Not so high the gilded and jewelled and embroidered cradle of the Henrys of England, or the Louis of France, or the Fredericks of Prussia. Now I find out that that Bethlehem crib fed not so much the oxen of the stall as the white horses of Apocalyptic vision. Now I find the swaddling clothes enlarging and emblazing into an imperial robe for a conqueror. (Dr. Talmage.)
The Child in the manger:—
I. Learn from this story of the birth of Jesus, in the first place, that indigence is not always significant of degradation. When princes are born, heralds proclaim it, and flags wave it, and cannon thunder it, and illuminations set cities on fire with the tidings; but when Christ was born there was no demonstration of earthly honour or homage. Poor, and, if possible, getting poorer, and yet the recognition of the angel host proves the truth of the proposition that indigence is no sign of degradation. In all ages of the world there have been great hearts throbbing under rags, gentle spirits under rough exterior, gold in the quartz, Parian marble in the quarry, and in the very stables of poverty wonders of excellence that have been the joy of the heavenly host. Poetry, and science, and law, and constitutions, and commerce, like Christ, were born in a manger. Great thoughts that seem to have been the axle-tree on which the centuries turned, started in some obscure corner, and had Herods who tried to slay them, and Iscariots who betrayed them, and Pilates who unjustly condemned them, and rabbles who crucified them, and sepulchres which confined them until they broke forth again in glorious resurrection. Men are, like wheat, worth all the more for being flailed. Strong character, like the rhododendron, is an alpine plant which grows best in the tempest. There are a great many men who are now standing in the front rank of the Church of God who would have been utterly useless had they not been ground and hammered in the foundries of disaster.
II. Again, I learn from the text that it is when we are engaged in our lawful occupations that we have Divine manifestations made to us. If these shepherds had gone that night into the village, and risked their flocks among the wolves, they would not have heard the song of the angels. In other words, he sees most of God and heaven who minds his own business! We are all shepherds, and we have large flocks of cares, and we must tend them. I know there are a great many busy men who say, “Oh, if I had only time, I would be good. If I had the days and the months and the years to devote to the subject of religion, I should be one of the best of Christians.” A great mistake are you making. The busiest men are generally the best men. There is no point from which you can get clearer views of duty than at the merchant’s counter, or the accountant’s table, or on the mason’s wall.
III. Again, the story of the text strikes at the popular fallacy that the religion of Christ is dolorous and grief-infusing. The music that broke through that famous birth-night was not a dirge, but an anthem. It shook joy over the midnight hills. It not only dropped among the shepherds, but it sprang upward among the thrones. The robe of righteousness is not black. The religious life is not all weeping and sighing, and cross-bearing and warfare. Christianity does not frown on amusements and recreations. It quenches no light. It defaces no heart. Among the happy it is the happiest. Heaven itself is only a warmer love and a brighter joy.
IV. Again, I learn from this subject, what glorious endings come from small and insignificant beginnings. The New Testament Church was on a small scale. The fishermen watched it. Small beginnings, but glorious endings. A throne linked to a manger. Mansions of light at God’s right hand associated with stables of poverty.
V. I learn, finally, from this story of the birth of Christ, the glorious result of a Saviour’s mission. Have you ever thought how strangely this song of peace must have sounded to the Roman Empire? Why, that Roman Empire gloried in its arms, and boasted of the number of men it had slain, and with triumph looked at conquered provinces. Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Macedonia, Egypt, had bowed to her sword, and crouched at the cry of her war eagles. Their highest honours had been bestowed upon Fabius and Scipio and Cæsar. It was men of blood and carnage that they honoured. With what contempt they must have looked upon a kingdom the chief principle of which was to be goodwill to men, and upon the unarmed, penniless Christ, who, in Nazarene garb, was about to start out for the conquest of the nations. If all the blood which has been shed in battle were gathered together in one great lake, it would bear up a navy. The blow that struck Abel into the dust has had its echo in the carnage of all the centuries. If we could take our stand on some high mountain of earth, and have all the armies of other ages pass along, what a spectacle! There go the hosts of the Israelites through scores of Red Seas, one of them of water, the rest of blood. There go the armies of Cyrus, lifting their infuriate yell over prostrate Babylon. There goes Alexander, with his innumerable host, conquering all but himself, and making the earth to reel under the battle gash of Persepolis and Chæronia. There goes the great Frenchman, down through Egypt like one of its own plagues, and up through Russia like one of its own ice-blasts. Host after host. Tramp, tramp, tramp. Coming down to our day, I appeal to the grave-trench under the shadow of Sebastopol, and turning to India I show you fallen Delhi, and Allahabad, and the inhuman Sepoys, and the regiments of Havelock avenging the insulted flag of Great Britain. On this, the day before Christmas, I bring you good tidings of great joy. A Saviour for the lost. Medicine for the sick. Light for the blind. Harbour for the bestormed. Eternal life for the dead. (Ibid.)4
1 MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2009). Luke 1–5 (pp. 158–160). Moody Publishers.
2 Liefeld, W. L., & Pao, D. W. (2007). Luke. In T. Longman III & D. E. Garland (Eds.), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Luke–Acts (Revised Edition) (Vol. 10, p. 79). Zondervan.
Stories have the power to communicate profound truths and teach us something different each time we hear them. Such is the case with Charles Dickens’ famous novel A Christmas Carol. Each year I read it, I am impressed with Dickens’ brilliance and Scrooge’s dramatic transformation.
However, the danger in hearing a great story multiple times is that the narrative can become commonplace. Before we know it, the story that used to profoundly move us becomes ordinary and our sense of wonder is dulled. However, the story hasn’t change.
This loss of wonder is the danger the follower of Jesus faces when hearing the account of His miraculous birth. The countless Christmas cards, Nativity scenes and decorations that consume so much of the season can slowly and subtly create the false assumption that the virgin birth is no more factual than Scrooge’s memorable redemption.
However, the Bible not only claims the virgin birth occurred, but that it is vital to the redemption of mankind!
In Luke’s gospel, he provides us with not only the account itself, but also communicates his desire to tell the truth about the life, events, and ministry of Jesus Christ:
“Insomuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught” (Luke 1:1-4, ESV, Emphasis mine).
It is also important to remember that Luke provides us with a very unique perspective of Jesus’ story and claims when one considers that he was a Gentile, a physician, and the first historian of the Early Church.
Sir William Ramsey, an eminent archaeologist, once held that Luke’s writings were not historically sound. His own subsequent investigation of near-eastern archaeology forced him to reverse his position and conclude that “Luke is a historian of the first rank.”1
Further, as late philosopher Norman Geisler notes, “Ramsey spent twenty years of research in the area Luke wrote about. His conclusion was that in references to thirty-two countries, fifty-four cities, and nine islands Luke made no mistakes! That is a record to be envied by historians of any era.”2
Luke was a reliable source who paid great attention to detail!
However, can a thinking person really believe in miracles? I think so. Science has revealed that at some point in the finite past all space, matter and time exploded into existence out of nothing.3 This event is most often referred to as the “Big Bang.” Logically, the cause of the universe’s origin could not have been something (or someone) within nature because nature did not yet exist; therefore, whatever brought physical reality into existence must be outside of nature. And this is precisely what supernatural means! This evidence is what led agnostic astronomer Robert Jastrow to say:
“That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.”4
Einstein contemporary Arthur Eddington echoed Jastrow’s conclusion:
“The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural.”5
Thinker J.P. Moreland summarizes this evidence well:
“…since time, space, and matter did not exist earlier than the beginning of the universe, the universe’s cause had to be timeless, spaceless, and immaterial. This cause cannot be physical or subject to scientific law since all such causes presuppose time, space, and matter to exist. The universe’s immaterial cause was timeless, spaceless, and had the power to spontaneously bring the world into existence without changing first to do so. (If it had to change before bringing the world into existence, then that change, not the act of bringing the world into existence would be the first event.) Such a cause must have free will, and since only persons have free will, it is a personal Creator.”6
In conclusion, we are offered an account from a “historian of the first rank” that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin. Furthermore, we have seen that miracles are not only possible, but necessary to explain the existence of our universe. Therefore, a thinking person can indeed believe in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.
From creation to the cradle to the cross to the empty tomb, God demonstrates His love for us.
Courage and Godspeed, Chad
Footnotes: 1) W.M Ramsay, The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament p. 222; quoted in Bruce, F. F. The New Testament Documents – Are They Reliable?, p. 91.
2) Norman Geisler, Alleged Errors in Luke, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, p. 431.
3) For more on the evidence that the universe began to exist, go here. 4) “A Scientist caught between Two Faiths: Interview with Robert Jastrow”, Christianity Today, August 1982. 5) Arthur Eddington, The Expanding Universe, p. 178. 6) J.P. Moreland, “Does the Cosmological Argument Show There is God?,” The Apologetics Study Bible, p. 806-807.
Among all the other wonderful blessings of Christmas, at its core, this season is a celebration of the gift of life through the birth of a baby. Of course, any time a baby is born it’s a glorious event worthy of a decent party. My wife and I have 4 children, and our friends and family have greeted each birth with joy and excitement, and rightly so.
Every birth reminds us of the mystery of life and the gift of our created world. This person who is sleeping in my arms was non-existent only a year ago. In a small way, each birth reflects the original creation story as a movement from non-existence to life. God graciously spoke the world into existence from nothing and, upon assessment, considered it very good. Each life points us to this reality and gift. However, if every child born reminds us of the grace of the created world and physical life, then the birth of our Lord should bring us to rejoice in both the original created order and the new creation. In fact, we cannot grasp the joy of the new creation, brought by the birth and work of Christ, without a proper knowledge of its connection to the original creation.
The apostle John makes this connection explicit in the opening chapter of his Gospel. He writes that the Word “was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” Later in 1:14, he says that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Why is it so significant that the one who created the world out of nothing came to earth and dwelt among us? To ask this another way, how will making this connection between creation and new creation through the incarnation help us to truly appreciate Christmas and the gift of life we’ve been given?
To help explain this relationship, I’d like to enlist the help of the fourth century bishop, Athanasius of Alexandria. No doubt Athanasius is most widely known for his staunch defense of the deity of Christ and the Trinity against Arianism; yet, I’d like to draw from one of his earlier works, On the Incarnation, to help us this Christmas season.
Creator and Creation
Athanasius begins his argument on the importance of the incarnation by pointing out what we have already been discussing. It matters immensely that the same Lord who spoke the world into existence at creation should take on the form of a servant and come in the likeness of men. He wrote:
We will begin, then, with the creation of the world and with God its maker, for the first fact that you must grasp is this: the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation; for the One Father has employed the same agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word Who made it in the beginning.1(18)
The fact that the Word of God who came in the flesh is the one who created the world is significant, but it’s also necessary to rightly grasp the manner of creation. God did not use pre-existing matter to construct the world as a foreman builds a house. Instead, God spoke the whole of creation into existence out of nothing but his Word. Every plant, animal, ocean, and mountain was made by the power of his voice. At the very height of creation God placed mankind—made in his image and given the ability to know and love him. Athanasius describes this capacity as true life and a gift: “He reserved especial mercy for the race of men” (20).
Creation and Fall
Having been given the gift of physical life from non-existence by the Word, God placed mankind in the garden and gave them one prohibition so that they might “continue for ever in the blessed and only true life of the saints in paradise” (20). The choice was open to the human couple:
If they guarded the grace and retained the loveliness of their original innocence, then the life of paradise should be theirs, without sorrow, pain or care, and after it the assurance of immortality in heaven. But if they went astray and became vile, throwing away their birthright of beauty, then they would come under the natural law of death and live no longer in paradise, but, dying outside of it, continue in death and in corruption. (20)
Sadly, we live in a world where the tragic results of that first couple’s choice still reverberate today. When mankind sinned in Adam, the process of death began to undo the work of creation and plunge mankind into a spiral toward non-existence as we were cut off from the source of true life, the Creator God. Athanasius explains:
For the transgression of the commandment was making them turn back again according to their nature; and as they had at the beginning come into being out of non-existence, so were they now on the way to returning, through corruption, to non-existence again. The presence and love of the Word had called them into being; inevitably, therefore, when they lost the knowledge of God, they lost existence with it; for it is God alone Who exists, evil is non-being, the negation and antithesis of good. (21, italics mine)
The Divine Dilemma
The rebellion of mankind against God was more than a simple wrong decision that could be repented of and moved beyond. In turning from the author of life in rebellion, mankind turned to corruption and non-existence. Of course (from our perspective), this appears to put God in a dilemma. Here’s how Athanasius describes the apparent problem:
It would, of course, have been unthinkable that God should go back upon His word and that man, having transgressed, should not die; but it was equally monstrous that beings which once had shared the nature of the Word should perish and turn back again into non-existence through corruption. It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by Him should be brought to nothing through the deceit wrought upon man by the devil; and it was supremely unfitting that the work of God in mankind should disappear, either through their own negligence or through the deceit of evil spirits. (24)
So, what was God to do? His beloved and high point of creation, his image bearers, were corrupted in nature. His love for his creation was too great to leave humans to descend into further death, disarray, and disorder. However, he could not simply step around the sentence of death pronounced in judgment over sin. The judgment of death handed down for sin was not arbitrary. Humans were created to draw life from their Creator and to be sustained by his fellowship and under his authority. His Word is life, and to reject that Word is to turn from existence to non-existence and to utterly forsake that which is true life.
The heart of the divine dilemma lay in the rejection of life—and of existence itself—by humanity. God’s people had turned from true life to seek life in themselves, and thus began their descent into death and destruction. What could possibly bring them out of death and into life? What could reverse the course from non-existence to existence? Only the one who had originally given life. Only the true Word of God—who spoke creation into existence out of nothing—could bring life out of death. And so, he must go to the world he created and to the people he loved and take a human body in order to bring them to life.
The Incarnation Brings Life
Here is the point where we begin to fully grasp the reason the same Word who created the world had to be the one who became man to redeem the world.
This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men. This He did that He might turn again to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption and make the alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of His resurrection. (26)
Throughout John’s Gospel, we read about the life that comes through the Word who became flesh. In John 1:4, immediately after John tells us that all things were made through him, we read that “in him was life.” In John 3, Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born again, to true life, which only comes through believing in him. In John 5:21, we read, “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.” And finally, in John 11:25–26, Jesus says to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”
If Athanasius is correct, then all these passages describe the great reversal brought into the world with the birth of Christ, bought by the death of Christ, and secured by his resurrection. Christ’s birth was the key moment for which creation held its breath. By becoming man and entering the world, he could bring true life to those sitting in the shadow of death. Only the one who created the world could once again give life to the world.
Celebrating the Gift of Life
For us, this means the celebration of Christmas is a chance to recognize and rejoice in true life. We were created to enjoy God and fellowship with him. True life is found in him. Sin took that away through death and destruction, and the incarnation reverses course by bringing life to us. John 17:3 puts it like this, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” At Christmas, we are celebrating the chance to do what humans were originally created to do: live with God.
What’s so magnificent about the gift of life brought through the incarnation is what it tells us about God’s initiating love. Our greatest need was to be pulled out of the death spiral of sin, yet, we had no way of doing that on our own. The incarnation, perhaps more than any other moment in history, shows us that God pursues, seeks, and loves what he has made. He came. He showed up. He took on the form of a servant. In him was life, and he brought that life to us. He rescued us from death and decay when we could not rescue ourselves.
This Christmas, let the freely given gift of life, brought to us through the incarnation of our Creator, bring us to gratitude and joy.
[Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2020 and has been updated.]
[1] Athanasius (2018). On the Incarnation (A Religious of C.S.M.V. Trans.) Louisville, KY: GLH Publishing Company.
Professions Justified Before Men – Pastor Patrick Hines Sermon (James 2:14-26)
James 2:14-26 New American Standard Bible 14 What use is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith, but he has no works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? 17 In the same way, faith also, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.
18 But someone may well say, “You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” 19 You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. 20 But are you willing to acknowledge, you foolish person, that faith without works is useless? 21 Was our father Abraham not justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected; 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “And Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called a friend of God. 24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25 In the same way, was Rahab the prostitute not justified by works also when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? 26 For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.
We subscribe to the Westminster Standards as our doctrinal statement. It consists of the following documents:
The Westminster Confession of Faith The Westminster Larger Catechism The Westminster Shorter Catechism
We also believe that Christian Worship is to be regulated and defined by God’s Word, the Bible.
Our worship services are designed to please and honor the Triune God of the Bible. We place Scripture reading and the preaching of the word of God at the center of worship along with Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These are God’s gifts to His church and ought to always be at the center of Christian worship. We are a congregation that loves to sing God’s praises, recite His Word back to Him, and actively engage in hearing and learning from God’s Word.
We embrace and promote a comprehensive Christian world and life view.
There is no area of life which is not under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. It is to God and His law which all people, including governments and civil rulers, will answer. The Word of God embraces and informs the way we view marriage, the family, children, education, politics, worship, law, government, war, the church, missions, evangelism, and worship. In the world today there is a battle of opposing worldviews. There are basically only two positions: God’s Word and man’s ideas. We stand positively for Biblical truth and negatively against man’s ideas which are opposed to Biblical truth.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only hope for mankind.
Because all men fall short of obeying God’s law, all men everywhere are in need of divine grace and salvation from God. This salvation is found only in the Lord Jesus Christ who died for sinners, was buried, rose again, and is alive today seated at God the Father’s right hand.
We Worship God Together as Families.
We offer nursery during morning worship service for newborns and infants but encourage people to keep as many of their children as they can with them for morning worship. The audio of the service is in the nursery via speakers. There is also a crying room with a video screen and audio of the sermon. We offer Sunday school classes for all ages but worship together as families. We do not offer “children’s” church.
This year, a Nativity scene debuted at the U.S. Capitol, accompanied by prayer, carols, and the reading of the biblical Christmas story, thanks to the efforts of a courageous Christian group. While liberals claim that the United States was not founded on Christianity, the historical record overwhelmingly affirms that America was established as a Christian nation, guided by biblical principles that shaped its laws, governance, and culture.
The founding principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence are deeply rooted in Christian teachings and Scripture. John Quincy Adams, a Founding Father and former U.S. president, emphasized the influence of Christian principles on the nation’s foundation, declaring in his Fourth of July address that the freedom enshrined in the Declaration was born from Scripture and moral accountability to God. Adams warned against ideologies like Marxism and Darwinism, which he believed threaten America’s moral and spiritual foundation, stressing that the same biblical truths that guided the Founders remain essential for preserving a free and just society.
The Founding Fathers represented a variety of religious beliefs, from orthodox Christianity to Deism, with most coming from Protestant traditions such as Anglicanism, Presbyterianism, and Congregationalism. Figures like John Jay, Elias Boudinot, and Patrick Henry upheld Evangelical Christian convictions, while others, such as John Adams and George Washington, were influenced by Christian Deism. Deists like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin valued reason and moral principles but diverged from traditional Christian doctrines. Despite these differences, all the Founders shared a reliance on divine providence and moral frameworks derived from Christian teachings, which informed the Declaration of Independence and the nation’s enduring vision of liberty and justice.
Supreme Court Justice David Brewer affirmed this Christian foundation in the 1892 Holy Trinity v. United States decision, stating that Christianity “has so largely shaped and molded” the United States that it is “most justly called a Christian nation.” Centuries of legal precedent have emphasized Christianity’s moral and cultural role in both public and private life. Legal figures like Justice Joseph Story argued that Christianity provided the ethical foundation for free government and societal stability, while Founders like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln openly acknowledged the sovereignty and moral authority of God in their proclamations of prayer, thanksgiving, and divine providence.
While the First Amendment prevents the establishment of a national religion, it does not prohibit the public influence of Christianity, which has been integral to the nation’s identity. Recent activist judicial rulings rejecting Christianity’s role in public life depart from historical precedent and the Founders’ intentions. Far from conflicting with constitutional freedoms, America’s Christian values have upheld moral law, individual liberty, and selfless service. Rooted in principles of grace, redemption, and justice, these values remain essential to sustaining America’s identity and freedom.
The Supreme Court, in the 1892 case Holy Trinity v. United States, affirmed that the historical and legal record overwhelmingly demonstrates that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. This decision reflects a recognition of Christianity’s foundational role in shaping American law and society. However, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, many judicial decisions have sought to minimize Christianity’s influence, favoring subjective interpretations of the Constitution by activist judges. Despite this, abundant historical evidence, including Holy Trinity v. United States, continues to support the understanding that America’s origins are deeply rooted in Christian principles.
Judicial rulings and writings from prominent justices affirm that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, deeply rooted in biblical principles. Justice Joseph Story, in his Commentaries on the Constitution, emphasized that Christianity underpins the moral and legal framework of the United States. He observed that every American colony, from its founding to the Revolution, incorporated Christian principles into its laws and institutions. Story argued that fostering and encouraging Christianity was essential for public policy and societal stability, declaring that governments have a duty to support Christianity as critical to a free and just society. He pointed to state laws, like those in Massachusetts, that explicitly acknowledged the necessity of religion and worship.
Justice John McLean likewise asserted that Christian morality is foundational to maintaining a free government. He believed that the dissemination of Christian principles ensured societal stability and that a nation without moral guidance rooted in Christianity would falter under corruption and selfishness. McLean linked the moral life of a nation to its degree of freedom, insisting that Christian values are necessary to sustain the mission of liberty.
Chief Justice Earl Warren further affirmed Christianity’s central role in shaping America’s history and governance. In a 1954 address, Warren highlighted foundational documents, such as the Charter of Virginia, the Charter of Massachusetts Bay, and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, as evidence of America’s Christian heritage. He stated that the Bill of Rights was inspired by biblical teachings, emphasizing freedoms like belief, assembly, and expression. Warren maintained that adherence to Christian principles is vital for national strength and moral integrity.
In the landmark 1892 Supreme Court case Holy Trinity v. United States, Justice David Brewer delivered a unanimous opinion declaring that America is a Christian nation. The case, which involved an Anglican church accused of violating the Alien Contract Labor Law, led Brewer to cite over eighty historical examples demonstrating Christianity’s influence on American laws and customs. These included the invocation of God in oaths, legislative prayers, Sabbath observance, and widespread Christian charitable efforts. Brewer concluded that such traditions and customs unequivocally affirm Christianity’s foundational role in American governance and culture.
Together, these rulings and writings highlight the enduring influence of Christianity on American law and society. While the First Amendment prevents the establishment of a national religion, it does not prohibit the public influence of Christianity. These justices recognized that Christian principles uphold moral law, individual liberty, and societal stability, making them essential to preserving America’s identity as a free and just nation.
One of the more well-known passages of Scripture, particularly during the Christmas season, is Isaiah’s sweet promise of Immanuel: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14). The name Immanuel in Hebrew means “God is with us,” and Isaiah’s promise signals that the presence of God will bring salvation to His people. But curiously, in the next chapter, Isaiah describes a great judgment in the presence of this Immanuel, a watery judgment of torrential floods that sweep through the land and devastate abiding sinners (Isa. 8:8–10). Who is this Immanuel, and how can Isaiah describe “God is with us” in two very different ways?
Immanuel: “God with Us”
To answer this question, we need to turn back in the Old Testament to the opening chapters of the book of Exodus. After fleeing from Egypt, Moses spent much of his life in the wilderness tending sheep while the Israelites were suffering at the hands of their Egyptian taskmasters. When God told Moses to go back to Egypt to deliver His people, Moses asked:
If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them? (Ex. 3:13)
In response, God provided Moses with the first historical occurrence of His name: “‘I am who I am.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: “I am has sent me to you”’” (Ex. 3:14).
When God gave this name to Moses, He did so for at least two reasons. First, God intended to provide a simple description of His own nature to Moses. “I am who I am” means that God is the immutable One who has being within Himself, the One who alone gives life, movement, and being to all creatures (Acts 17:28). Second, because God is immutable in nature, He is therefore immutable in His promise to “be with Moses” (Ex. 3:12; 4:12, 15). God’s immutable “I am” nature grounds His immutable “I am with you” promises.
God’s “I am with you” promise is not restricted to Moses. In fact, when God led the children of Israel out of Egypt through Moses to the foot of Mount Sinai, Moses explained that the reason God did this was to dwell with His people in the tabernacle (Ex. 25:8; 29:45; Lev. 26:11–12; see also Ezek. 37:27; Zech. 2:10; Hag. 1–2). The tabernacle, or the “tent of meeting” (Ex. 27:21; 28:43; 40:32; Num. 8:24), was the place where the holy “I am” met with His unholy people. But this presence of God was a place of both salvation and judgment. For those who approached the holy “I am with you” in faith, the result was mercy and grace for sin (Lev. 1–6). For those who approached the holy “I am with you” in disobedience wrought by unbelief, the result was judgment and destruction (Lev. 10:1–10; Heb. 3:19).
The “I am with you” of the Old Testament tabernacle was a foreshadow of the greater tabernacle embodied by the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus identified Himself as the “I am” of Exodus 3:14 (John 8:58; see also Isa. 43:10–13). Matthew clarifies that Isaiah’s promise of “Immanuel” was foretelling the birth of our Savior (Matt. 1:23). In fact, Jesus—the God who made everything—took on human flesh and “tabernacled” among us, being the incarnate dwelling place of God (John 1:1–3, 14; 2:19; Col. 1:19) and the very embodiment of “God with us” (Matt. 1:23).
Judgment and Salvation in Immanuel’s Presence
Much like the presence of the holy “I am” in the Old Testament, the presence of the holy “I am” in the New Testament results in both judgment and salvation. For those who do not receive Him, rejecting Him in unbelief, the presence of the tabernacling Immanuel is not good news; it is terrifying news (John 1:11). Jesus described it this way:
I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled! . . . Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. (Luke 12:49, 51)
For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind. (John 9:39)
To the hard-hearted, the presence of the holy God incarnate results in the fiery floods of judgment, both now (John 3:18) and in the final judgment (Matt. 12:36–37). Even if the very rocks cry out the truth, the hard-hearted will not listen (Luke 19:40).
But to as many as do receive this Immanuel, to them is given the right to be children of God, because for them He came not to judge but to save (John 1:12; 3:17). For believers, “God with us” does not move us to terror, but to an awe-filled joy and praise before the Holy One, accompanied by peace on earth and goodwill to others (Luke 2:14). By looking to Immanuel, we who believe see the invisible God (Col. 1:15) and obtain every promise that He has made to us (Eph. 1:3; 2 Cor. 1:20). Because Immanuel took our judgment for us, we have full access to His holy presence (Rom. 5:2; Heb. 4:16), where in the final consummation of these promises, He ushers us into the heavenly dwelling place that He is preparing for us (John 14:3; Heb. 9:1–14; 2 Peter 3:10–13). There, we will be with the triune God—and God with us—face to face for all eternity (1 Cor. 13:12).
For many people, the question of whether a virgin can give birth is in the same category as questions about whether pigs can fly or time can be reversed or the sun can be stopped from shining. But in each of these circumstances, we must remember that all it takes for these supernatural events to be possible is for a supernatural God to exist. C.S. Lewis reminds us of this great truth in his book Miracles. In fact, he goes beyond it and argues that once we allow for a theistic worldview—one in which a supernatural God exists and is involved in the natural order of things—then supernatural events are not simply possible, they are to be expected. And if supernatural events are to be expected, then things like a virgin giving birth or the sun being stopped from shining are the kinds of things that we ought to expect to happen.
But, admittedly, it is one thing to expect events to happen that are like a virgin giving birth and another thing altogether to expect a virgin actually to give birth. Were it not for the clear teaching of the Word of God at this point, we would not be able to say anything more than simply that it is possible that something like a virgin giving birth could happen, given a theistic worldview. The Bible, however, specifically claims that a virgin did in fact give birth. Not only so, but it makes this prediction about a virgin giving birth more than seven hundred years before it actually came to pass. The prediction is then fulfilled in time and space in the life of the Virgin Mary, as recorded in the Gospels. Therefore, in order to know for sure whether we ought to expect a virgin to give birth, we need to examine this prediction, as it is recorded for us in Isaiah 7:14, along with its fulfillment in Matthew 1 and Luke 1.
Isaiah 7:14 clearly states that at some point in the future an unnamed “virgin” would give birth to a son, and she would call his name “Immanuel.” This passage, however, has been disputed by some scholars who have argued that the Hebrew word almah, which is translated as “virgin” in the English Standard Version of the Bible, ought really to be translated as “young woman” instead. They further argue that if “virgin” had been Isaiah’s intention, he would have used the Hebrew word bethulah in the place of almah, because, they claim, bethulah specifically refers to a virgin, whereas almah does not. There are several things that we need to say in response to this.
First, it is not at all clear that these two Hebrew words (almah and bethulah) mean what these scholars think they do. For one thing, the meanings of both words seem to be dependent upon the context in which they occur. The word bethulah, for instance, occurs approximately fifty times in the Old Testament, and in only about twenty-one of these occurrences does the word appear to mean “virgin.” The remaining twenty-nine are more uncertain; they could be referring to a virgin or to a young woman. One of these occurrences, moreover, in Genesis 24:16, suggests that bethulah is actually a more general word that requires additional information from the context before it can be translated “virgin.” Here, in this verse, Rebekah is referred to as a certain kind of bethulah—one “whom no man had known.” If bethulah really does always and only mean “virgin,” then the addition of the clarifying phrase, “whom no man had known,” would be unnecessary and redundant. The fact that it is included suggests that the word bethulah does not mean “virgin” all by itself but does so only when the context demands it. And a similar thing can be said in reference to the word almah. It occurs about nine times in the Old Testament, and in at least three of these occurrences, the context helps us determine that the word is obviously referring to a virgin and not just to a young woman. The point is that bethulah does not always and only mean “virgin” and almah does not always and only mean “young woman.” The context is vital in determining the precise meaning in each case.
The glory of Christmas is that the expectation of Isaiah 7:14 has become a reality. The virgin really did give birth to a son. He was called Immanuel, for He really was God with us.
For another thing, it is certain that the word almah is never used to refer to a married woman. This is true even in those occasions when the context does not allow us to say with certainty that almah must refer to a virgin. Martin Luther was so confident about this point that he actually offered 100 Gulden—which, from what I can tell, would be something like $45,000 today—to anyone who could prove that almah was used in reference to a married woman anywhere in the Old Testament. And neither Luther, nor anyone else since then, has ever had to pay up. That is because the word always refers to an unmarried woman who is of marriageable age.
Old Testament Judaism was not a culture that was known for its promiscuity, at least not among its young women. Jewish law required the death penalty to be administered to any unmarried young woman of marriageable age who was found not to be a virgin (Deut. 22:13–21). That means that in Isaiah’s day, the expectation among all the people would have been that an unmarried young woman of marriageable age would necessarily be a virgin.
Second, the context of Isaiah 7:14 indicates that the best translation for almah must be “virgin” and not simply “young woman of marriageable age.” God is providing a sign for unbelieving King Ahaz. And it is hard to see how a “young woman of marriageable age” who conceives and bears a son would qualify as a sign from God. By definition, a sign must be something extraordinary. Otherwise, how does one know that it actually is a sign? A young woman bearing a child out of wedlock certainly would be notorious, but it would hardly be extraordinary in a way that would be worthy of God. He is not only perfectly righteous and holy, but He requires His own people to be holy precisely because He is Himself holy (Lev. 19:2). The whole point of Isaiah 7 seems to be that God’s sign would be an extraordinary (not notorious) child who would be brought into the world by way of an extraordinary (not notorious) birth. He would be human and divine—human, because He would be born of a woman, and divine, because He would be “God with us.” He could not, therefore, come into the world in the same way that every other child does. His birth had to have been special. His birth had to be a virgin birth. If it wasn’t, then the resulting child could only be human. He could not be Immanuel, God with us.
Third, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, the Septuagint, confirms that almah is best interpreted as “virgin” in Isaiah 7:14. It translates this verse by using the Greek word parthenos, which more explicitly denotes a virgin, rather than neanis, which more generally means a young woman. Moreover, the gospel accounts in Matthew 1 and Luke 1 both use the Greek word parthenos of Mary and do so in a context that explicitly portrays her as a virgin. In Matthew 1:18, for instance, we read that Mary becomes pregnant “before [she and Joseph] came together.” That is why Joseph resolved to break off their engagement. He knew that he was not the father of the child she was carrying (v. 19). No doubt he would have gone through with his plans to put Mary away were it not for the “angel of the Lord” appearing to him in a dream and telling him that the child within Mary’s womb was not from a man but “from the Holy Spirit” (v. 20). Matthew then goes on to quote Isaiah 7:14 and to say, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that its prophecy is fulfilled in the virgin birth of Jesus. That is just what we would expect, given everything we have seen about Isaiah 7:14.
Similarly, in Luke 1:27, Mary is twice called a “virgin” (parthenos) and is told by the angel Gabriel that, while still in that state, she will give birth to a son who “will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High” (vv. 31–32). Understandably, Mary questions Gabriel and asks how this will be since, as she herself says, she has never been with a man (v. 34). Gabriel answers by telling her that no man will be involved in the process. It will be an extraordinary birth: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” And the Spirit’s power will produce an extraordinary child: “the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God” (v. 35).
For all of these reasons, we can be confident that a virgin really did give birth. Not only is this the kind of thing that is to be expected given the fact that a supernatural God exists, but this is the very thing that we should expect in itself, given the fact that the Bible tells us so. Isaiah 7:14 predicts that a “virgin”—and not just a “young woman”—would give birth to a son who would be both divine and human, and the Gospels record the fulfillment of that prediction in the life of Mary and Jesus. The glory of Christmas is that the expectation of Isaiah 7:14 has become a reality. The virgin really did give birth to a son. He was called Immanuel, for He really was God with us. And He was given the name Jesus, because He really did save His people from their sins (Matt. 1:21). That is why we sing, “Joy to the world! The Lord has come.”
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on December 24, 2018.
In this message, Adrian Rogers offers us a clear picture of how Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection fulfill all the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah.
In our troubled world, many wonder if evil is triumphing over good and if the darkness has eclipsed the light of Christ’s arrival 2,000 years ago. But Dr. Robert Jeffress shares why Jesus remains the true Light of the World, and how His light ultimately overcomes all darkness!
Today, we celebrate the incarnation of Christ as the Light of the world. In the new heavens and earth, where our dwelling with God will be perfect, we shall see clearly, for we shall see Christ, Who is the light of God, face to face, and He shall illumine all things. Now we see as through a glass darkly, but then we shall see clearly.
No temple is in the city, because God dwells with His people and they with Him in perfect fellowship. There is no sun or moon because Christ Himself perfectly radiates God. The glory of God radiates everywhere, so the nations walk in His light. Haggai prophesied a day when God would shake the earth and the wealth of the nations would pour into the temple. Believers are the precious jewels that come pouring into this radiant fellowship with God. John sees the gates of the city open, and people from all nations entering. But no one and nothing evil shall be found within the gates, within the wall. Only the glory and honour of the nations, those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life, are found in this city. All impurity, falsehood and what is detestable will not be found in the city coming down out of heaven.
If we have done shameful, impure things, do we have hope? Yes, there is forgiveness in Christ, Who took on flesh to bear our guilt. Everyone who trusts Him has their name written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Suggestions for prayer
Praise God for the birth of Jesus, Who took on flesh to take away our guilt so that we could be restored to perfect fellowship with God. Thank God for the purity we have in Jesus, and our eternal fellowship with our Triune God.
Rev. Calvin J. Tuininga was born in Grand Rapids Michigan, but as a PK grew up in different places, mostly in Canada. He served in four churches: Burdett Alberta (CRC), Telkwa, B.C. (CRC), Trinity St. Catharines, Ontario (CRC/URC) and Covenant URC in Pantego, North Carolina. He retired in September 2019, and he and his wife presently reside in Washington, North Carolina. Get this devotional delivered directly to your phone each day via our RP App. This devotional is made available by the Nearer To God Devotional team, who also make available in print, for purchase, at NTGDevotional.com.
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