Monthly Archives: September 2013

Heaven Invaded Earth!

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HEAVEN INVADED EARTH!

“There were sheepherders camping in the neighbourhood. They had set night watches over their sheep. Suddenly God’s angel stood among them and God’s glory blazed around them. They were terrified. The angel said, ‘Don’t be afraid. I’m here to announce a great and joyful event that is meant for everybody worldwide. A Saviour has just been born in David’s town, a Saviour who is Messiah and Master. This is what you’re to look for: a baby wrapped in a blanket and lying in a manger.’

“At once the angel was joined by a huge angelic choir singing God’s praises.

‘Glory to God in the heavenly heights,

Peace to all men and women on earth who please Him.'” Luke 2:8-14 (The Message).

Why these shepherds? Why not Herod in his palace? Why not the ubiquitous Pharisees?

Why did the angel choir not rouse these important people from their sleep to tell them the marvellous news? After all, weren’t the religious people eagerly awaiting their Messiah? Why not the whole city of Jerusalem?

Imagine the front page article in the morning Jerusalem Herald? “Alien being announces birth of a Messiah! Last night an alien appeared to a group of shepherds on the hills outside Bethlehem with the story that a special child has been born in the town. Apparently this child, according to the angel, is alleged to be the long-awaited Messiah. A vast crowd of similar beings appeared to confirm the story with an eerie song in praise to God; so reported the shepherds.”

In keeping with the baby’s birth in a kitchen cum animal shelter, the only people to witness the angelic announcement were shepherds, men who did the most menial and despised job in Israel. Why? Think of it this way: Had the announcement been made to the wealthiest and most important people in Israel, everyone else would have been excluded. Tell the shepherds and, automatically, every class and level of society would be in.

Who else witnessed this other-worldly even? Apparently no one at this stage. No one else went running to the “maternity ward” to have a look at this new-born. In the middle of the night, while everyone else in Bethlehem was asleep, a group of shepherds and a young couple gazed in amazement at the sleeping child and wondered what the future held.

That’s how God works. The angels couldn’t keep their mouths shut in that holy moment. They exploded in an anthem of celebration, but only the shepherds witnessed the outburst. Then everything went quiet again. The little family was left to get on with the business of daily living and the parents the task of raising this boy to be an ordinary Jewish boy who had to grow up and learn like every other Jewish boy.

Luke doesn’t mention the drama of the visit of Persian astrologers who read the story in the star, and the subsequent escape to Egypt two years later. That was left for Matthew to fill in according to his purpose for his writing his story.

A strange mixture of the natural and supernatural in this amazing event! A pregnant woman goes into labour far from home and gives birth to a baby boy in a borrowed shelter.  An invasion of angelic messengers announces the birth to an unlikely audience, a group of sleepy shepherds accompanying their sheep on a nearby hillside.

Their story? ‘This ordinary child is no ordinary child! He’s actually God’s Son. How can you be sure? Check it out for yourself. You’ll find Him in the downstairs room of the hostel in Bethlehem, not in the maternity ward at the local hospital. He doesn’t even have baby clothes on. All they had to wrap Him in was a blanket. The crib Joseph made for Him is back home in Nazareth, so they put Him in the feed trough.’

That’s how heaven invaded earth!

 

Let’s See For Ourselves

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LET’S SEE FOR OURSELVES

“As the angel choir withdrew into heaven, the sheepherders talked it over.’Let’s go over to Bethlehem as fast as we can and see for ourselves what God has revealed to us.’ They left, running, and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. Seeing was believing. They told everyone they met what the angel had said about this child. All who heard the sheepherders were impressed.

“Mary kept all these things to herself, holding them dear, deep within herself. The sheepherders returned and let loose, glorifying and praising God for everything they had heard and seen. It turned out exactly the way they’d been told.” Luke 2:15-20 (The Message).

Good for you, guys!

These men weren’t satisfied to take the angel’s word for it. This was a one-in-a-million event, after all, and they were not about to miss out on the opportunity to lay eyes on their very-long-awaited Messiah. Although they were the lowest of the low in society, they knew all about the hope of a deliverer that was promised in their Scriptures. They wanted to be the first to see the child and to keep that memory alive in their minds for years to come.

It was in the dead of night when they dashed off to the sleeping town. How were they to find the child and His parents in a town splitting at the seams with visitors from all over the country? Luke doesn’t tell us how they found the child. He tells us that they found Him; no doubt because they at least knew that the baby was sleeping in a feed trough.

How long did they tarry, gazing in awe at this brand new baby in whose future life lay all sorts of possibilities? Perhaps dawn was breaking and the people of Bethlehem beginning to stir when the shepherds reluctantly left the little family and made their way back to their sheep. They greeted every person they met with the story of the angelic visit and the exciting news that they had just come from the hostel where they had found that everything the angel had told them was true.

They must have been bone-weary when they got back to their sheep. Thankfully, the flock was still intact despite being left unattended. Perhaps they agreed to take turns in minding the sheep so that the rest of them could get some shut-eye. But how could they sleep when those magical scenes kept flashing through their minds? Perhaps they sat around the fire reminiscing about what they had just witnessed.

Back at the hostel, Mary couldn’t sleep either. She said very little to Joseph. She was too overawed by these events. Perhaps by this time they had a steady stream of visitors — people who heard the shepherds’ story and wanted to verify it. They had a busy day ahead. Now there were three of them to be counted. All the time, Mary was storing this all up inside, mulling over it and wondering what it all meant. Some day she would understand.

After all these exciting events, people soon forgot. They settled back into the routine of their daily lives; perhaps vague memories returned when the Roman soldiers, always around to keep order, sometimes to harass them, irritated them to the point of murderous hate. Then they longed for the Messiah who would deal with them and restore David’s kingdom, so they thought.

But locked up inside this tiny child lay a destiny far greater than an earthly kingdom and a royal palace. In that moment when He made His appearance, heaven and earth came together as a promise that, in this child lay the answer to earth’s most terrible plight — hell had invaded earth and ruined its perfection.

He had come to deal with that and to set earth’s course back to God’s original plan, a place for mankind where God and man can dwell together in perfect harmony in a huge family that mirrors their Father, recreated in the image of His Son.

 

 

A Tender Moment

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A TENDER MOMENT

“‘And you, my child, ‘Prophet of the Highest’,

will go ahead of the Master to prepare His ways,

Present the offer of salvation to His people,

the forgiveness of their sins,

Through the heartfelt mercies of our God.

God’s Sunrise will break upon us,

Shining in the darkness,

those sitting in the shadow of death,

then showing us the way, one foot at a time,

Down the path of peace.’

“The child grew up healthy and spirited. He lived out in the desert until the day he made his prophetic debut in Israel,” Luke 1:76-80 (The Message).

What a privilege we have to eavesdrop on Zachariah’s tender moment with his baby son! Many a father has cradled his new-born child in his arms, nuzzled its downy cheek and whispered words of expectation and hope into its ears. For Zachariah, this was a moment he never thought would happen. There was no digital camera to capture it for him, but Luke’s pen did the job equally well.

Instead of words of uncertainty and skepticism, Zachariah uttered the words that were birthed in the heart of God and spoken by the angel into his reluctant ears. All his doubts were swept away by this flesh-and-blood baby boy he held in his arms. If God could go against physical nature to make it happen, he had no doubt that God could overcome every other obstacle to fulfil His dream for this child.

There are two profound principles in the prophetic utterance of the old priest. Firstly, it was imperative that he release through his oneness with God, the will of God to be fulfilled in the life of his son. In the beginning God appointed mankind to manage the earth for and with Him. How would this be done?

This is an aspect of prayer that many believers do not understand. God revealed to Amos that He does nothing without telling His servants the prophets. Why? Was it just to keep them informed or was there something more to it? We find the clue in David’s response to God’s word to him through the prophet Nathan (2 Samuel 7:18-29). David affirmed and released God’s promise to be fulfilled by these words, “Do as you promised…”

Perhaps many of God’s promises to us remain unfulfilled because we have not released them into our lives through our declaration of faith in what He had said. “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through Him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.” 2 Corinthians 1:20 (NIV).

There is a second important principle in Zachariah’s words. He was not only affirming God’s word, he was also affirming his son. At the beginning of John’s life, before he had done anything good or bad, Zachariah gave him his fatherly blessing, releasing him into the potential for which he was created. No child can ever become everything he was made to be without the father’s blessing.

Our world is full of broken and unfulfilled lives because fathers have never said these simple words, “You are my son; you are my daughter, and I love you.” It was in the strength of these words, spoken at His baptism, that Jesus went out and conquered the world. He could say with utmost confidence, “My Father…” because His Father had audibly affirmed the relationship that gave Him His identity and released the power to become who He was, the Son of God.

It’s no wonder John grew up “healthy and spirited”!

Zachariah Breaks The Silence!

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ZACHARIAH BREAKS THE SILENCE!

“Then Zachariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied,

“’Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, he came and set His people free.
He set the power of salvation in the centre of our lives,
And in the very house of David His servant,
Just as He promised long ago
Through the preaching of His holy prophets:
Deliverance from our enemies and from every hateful hand;
Mercy to our fathers,
As He remembered to do what he said he’d do,
What He swore to our father Abraham –
A clean rescue from the enemy camp,
So we can worship Him without a care in the world,
Made holy before Him for as long as we live.’” Luke 1:67-75

Finally, after nine months of silence, Zachariah’s voice was restored. What a difference from the last time he spoke! Skepticism and unbelief were not permitted to escape his lips during the entire duration of Elizabeth’s pregnancy. God’s will was in the process of being fulfilled and He would not permit foolish and unbelieving words to inhibit His plan from being fulfilled.

Those nine months of silence when his thoughts were locked up inside his mind, his only expression so laborious that he was limited to writing his basic wishes, must have been months of slow metamorphosis, like the gradual thickening of Elizabeth’s waistline as the child grew in her womb.

Perhaps his unbelief embraced more than just a pregnancy for his wife. Did he also balk at the idea that this child, whose coming he doubted anyway, would be all that the angel Gabriel prophesied; his child a prophet of the highest rank among all God’s prophets; a forerunner of the Messiah for whom they had waited so long that His coming seemed only like a pipe dream? Could it be that their deliverer could finally be on the doorstep after all these years of longing and waiting?

What was the hope that formed in Zachariah’s mind as his thoughts ran riot in his brain? What did deliverance mean to him? Did he have the same expectation as the disciples of Jesus had? Their expectation of a national and political deliverer shut their minds to a greater deliverance even from Rome, which Jesus could only achieve through His death and resurrection.

Zachariah spoke of salvation. What was this salvation of which he dreamed and spoke with such eloquence when his tongue was finally loosed? Was he longing for a new kind of freedom, when the guilt and power of sin would be removed forever? Did the possibility of deliverance from his own treacherous nature ever cross his mind? Did he see God’s salvation as the process of becoming whole again, restored to fellowship with the God from whom mankind had been estranged since the day Adam chose to go his own way?

I don’t think any of these thoughts crossed his mind as he pondered the nature of the child in Elizabeth’s womb. But, nevertheless, he must have considered the possibility that, since the angel had prophesied the birth of a baby to two people too old to have a child, the child would become and do all that Gabriel had said.

When Zachariah’s thinking became one with the mind of the Father, he was ready to receive and father the prophet in whom was invested the honour of fulfilling God’s plan. The early years of this child were crucial to his mission. He had to have a father who clearly understood his role in the raising of this boy. Unless Zachariah fully embraced the angel’s prophetic words, who would sow the seeds of John’s future into his life and destiny?

It was Zachariah’s role to prepare him for his future task. In this prophetic utterance of an overwhelmed dad, Zachariah expressed his confidence in the prophetic word and fully embraced his fatherly responsibility to raise his son into the role of which the angel had spoken.

He Is Still Speaking

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HE IS STILL SPEAKING!

“‘Go to this people and tell them this:
You’re going to listen with your ears,
but you won’t hear a word;
You’re going to stare with your eyes,
but you won’t see a thing.
These people are blockheads!
They stick their fingers in their ears
so they won’t have to listen;
They screw their eyes shut
so they won’t have to look,
so they won’t have to deal with me face-to-face
and let me heal them.”

“‘You’ve had your chance. The non-Jewish outsiders are next on the list. And, believe me; they’re going to receive it with open arms!’

“Paul lived for two years in his rented house. He welcomed everyone who came to visit. He urgently presented all the matters of the kingdom of God. He explained everything about Jesus Christ. His door was always open.” Acts 28:26-31 (The Message).

And so our journey with Paul ends today. From Jerusalem to Rome — what a journey! What a story! Paul was no ordinary traveller. He could have made the trip across land in a few weeks or by ship in a few days. He was a messenger, a herald of the King, taking the message of hope to an earthly empire ruled by fear. His story had to be painstakingly told, day by day, town, by town, city by city, giving people an opportunity to listen, think and respond.

His biggest disappointment was the response of his own people. Time after time he met with the same reaction. A few believed but many rejected him and his message. He experienced what the prophets had spoken of centuries before, and they knew what they were talking about because they had first-hand experience of their people’s stubborn hearts.

Once again, in Rome, Paul had to shake the dust off his feet of those who heard the invitation to choose life but had chosen instead to walk away. He had faithfully delivered his message to them first but most of them were not interested in a place in the eternal kingdom of God. They were comfortable and complacent in their sin. It was too much effort to rouse themselves from their stupor and their false hope to embrace this new life, full of suffering, yes, but also full of hope.

As we cast our eyes across the years and across the miles of this man’s journey, what do we see? We see man who had only one vision. One would think that Rome would be his cue to retire. After all, had he not fulfilled his commission to take the good news of Jesus to the world?

Rome was the heart of his world, and here he was, at last, telling his story in the centre of his universe. But “retire” was not in Paul’s vocabulary. Like the Cheshire cat in “Alice in Wonderland”, whose smile was the last thing to fade, when he finally left, only his voice would be left to tell the story of Jesus!

Luke does not finish Paul’s story, perhaps because his story is not done. He had a mission to complete, to stand before Nero to offer him the opportunity to believe in Jesus. Nero too, rejected the message and demanded Paul’s head as the price for his faithfulness.

Like Abel, whose voice cried out from the ground long after his death; like Jesus, whose blood speaks of better things, Paul’s voice was not silenced when his blood was shed. His life, his letters keep on speaking of the One he faithfully served, and he still calls for a response to his eternal message of hope.