O Come All Ye Faithful/ His Name Shall Be
O come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant
O Come All Ye Faithful/ His Name Shall Be
O come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant
The Spirit of
CHRISTMAS
Growing up, Christmas in our home was always
a busy time of year. All would awaken early on “Christmas Sunday” (the Sunday
before Christmas) to the sound of my older sister belting out “Noel” in the
bathroom, running the final rehearsal before her big choir lead. The grunts of my elder brothers could also be heard, as they carried an assortment of heavy
“Christmas Musical Supplies” outside under the sharp guidance of my mother. My
Father, of course, would already be gone ahead to prepare communion for the
church. And I would be dressed in swaddling clothes, or as a lowly lamb, or, in
my senior year, as Mary herself, in authentic Israeli garb (my mother’s best sheets
and Aunt’s robes and belts.)
All the way to the church we would rehearse lines and recite our Christmas speeches, stomachs turning inside out at the thought of public speaking.
But, for all its stress and strain, Christmas
Sunday was always special. Anointed, even. And the performances were
always perfect- no matter the mistakes- because the hearts of many were touched
through our small productions. I recall a man, recently released from prison
and visiting his family, falling at the altar in surrender during a play’s final
musical selection. And because of moments like that one, when the whole church raised
their hands to God in praise, I came to love CHRISTmas.
But oh, how
Christmas has changed over the last few decades!
Rare are the
Christmas plays, nativity scenes and reenactments of the Christmas Story. Nearly
extinct, are the Christmas suits, Christmas Speeches, and Christ centered
Christmas songs! As the grandparent generation dies and a less ‘traditional’, faithful,
and spiritual generation comes into parenthood, such experiences have been
deemed trivial and have been replaced.
Christmas is still being celebrated…in fact its bigger than ever! But the heart of it, its essence, has become misconstrued. This needs no statistics to validate, though many can be applied. All one need do is scroll the timeline of any social media network:
Matching pajamas? Check.
Beautiful family portraits? Check.
Sexy Christmas selfies? Check.
Glamourous Christmas photoshoots? Check.
“I deserve it,” posts? Check.
“Woe is me,” posts? Check.
But Jesus, Jesus- has been
left unchecked from the priority list - even by the Saints!
What happened
to the Church’s Christmas?
Before we begin, we all know that Jesus was
not actually born on December 25th. Christmas is not about the actual
day He was born, but rather to celebrate that He WAS born. And while the
origins of Christmas may be debatable, the purpose of Christmas for the Church
is very clear. If you’re looking for an article that either resists or supports
the validity and necessity of Christmas, you’ll have to keep looking. This
article isn’t that.
But, for clarity sake, my own stance is this;
that because Jesus feasted, remembered, and celebrated, so will I. And because
His birth was the greatest thing that ever happened to me, I have great
cause for such celebrating. December 25th is just as good a day as
any to celebrate Him, perhaps even an advantageous day when considered from
a witnessing perspective.
But it was from this thought which sprung the
question of this article, are we?
Celebrating Him,
I mean?
Is the church still
celebrating Jesus on Christmas? Is His birth still the reason for our
Christmas season?
Or, has somewhere
along the line, the adventurous tale of God’s visitation to earth lost its awe
to us...and (as spoiled children receiving too many gifts) we throw it aside into
a pile of others with just a simple, ‘thank you?’
My stern answer
is yes. Yes, we’ve forgotten Him, yes, we’re desensitized, and no, He’s
not the central focus of Christmas anymore, not even for Christians. Please
understand that I am speaking from a blanketed, collective, majority rule, and
not to you (unless it is you). It is to us, I speak.
And however awful
these truths are, (terribly awful), pointing fingers is not the point.
Awareness is. For we did not simply forget the importance of glorifying Jesus
in this season and become self-glorifying and indulgent by chance. No. It was
through much more intention than that. Satan planted seeds that would grow into
weeds, weeds that would attempt to choke Christ out of a generation. That Christless
generation presents Christless Christmas, the fruit of seeds sown long ago. And
while caroling and hot cocoa sweeten the exterior, at the center of it is satan,
or santa, depending on how you spell it.
Santa Vs Jesus
Let us examine the
superficies.
Firstly, the story of Jesus has never
been given the glitz and glamour treatment that that other character is
constantly given. Growing up I’d often long to see stories of Jesus, his birth,
and his super-natural childhood in a tv series, or David and his incredible war
adventures, or Joshua, or Samson, or Esther play out on the big screen with a
big budget.
But though God himself was being born as a human,
and the heavens literally opened to reveal a host (an innumerable
amount!) of glorious angels singing… and there was a giant, glowing,
supernatural star moving through the sky and shining down as a spotlight… and there
was an angry, vicious, wealthy, King carrying out a positively diabolical plan to
murder babies… Hollywood has never invested in telling this story. But many
have naively presumed that Bible stories are simply “too boring” to be made
into feature films.
That couldn’t be further from the truth.
One day, while
watching a Marvel comics film, I realized that I was, literally, watching a scene
from the book of Revelation. Later, while watching another comic film, I recognized
the story of Jesus playing out and it hit me - we’ve been watching the stolen skeletons
of Bible stories play out for years in blockbuster films- stolen themes and
stolen messages manipulated and sold without rights. And as generations of
Christians who do not read the Bible rise alongside the now majority mass who
identify as non-religious, this blatant plagiarism is lost to unbelieving
hearts.
They will never
tell the story of Jesus because they used it to create their Superman.
And as the crowds
grow to watch them bring ‘superman’ to life, crowds to hear about the true
Superman wane, his biography told as a myth, discarded as an old relic. Through
deception they worship a false god, while the true Superman, Jesus, who really did exchange his life for ours, remains uncelebrated.
In conclusion, if
one asks Santa, or Satan? The answer is that they are one and the same. Santa, as
the Easter Bunny and the Snake from the garden, is just another disguise that Satan
puts on to steal God’s glory.
One
look at that twinkling eye, glaring red suit, omniscient and omnipotent presence,
transposed letters in the name (santa), riding through the air (Ephesians 2:2),
and debilitating thirst to take over Christmas, should be enough to set a
Saints tooth on edge against Santa.
The world simply does
what they do best- sell it to us- but the church must not become the top
consumer.
As the enemy is intentional in planting
seeds of carnality and deceit, we must intentionally promote and plant seeds of
truth. We must each allow His glorious story to shine as many Christmas lights
in the darkness.
He gave us the first and greatest Christmas gift, His son. If you look closely, you will see His blood in the stripes of the candy cane. You will see His crucifixion in the Christmas tree. As the salvation army rings their bells, you will remember that He was not born into luxury, but poverty.
And He desires for us to be a light, that
star in the darkness that will lead wise men to Him.
If we dig deeply enough, we can find His
skeleton in the frame of many Christmas traditions.
Will you join me in
peeling away layers of distraction, self-indulgence, and materialism to spread
the joy of Christmas again?
Merry CHRISTmas,
Noisy For God
God Vs. the Universe
Let us begin with a simple, reasonable
question- can a created thing compete with the one who created it?
Can one whom draws
power and resource then turn to the donor from which he draws and boast of his own?
One is inanimate,
the other the source of life.
One, a reflection of
the genius and creativity of the artist, is a canvas by which the creator
garners glory and esteem.
“To God be the Glory,”
Indeed.
In more grounded terms, it would
seem preposterous (altogether fictional!) for a computer to outsmart the computer
scientist who programmed it. (Jingle Jangle, anyone?) It would seem laughable to
imagine a painting relishing in the praise of its beauty, with no regard for
the one who painted it.
And yet this is, it seems, the climate of
our current culture. We the created, the programmed, the fragile creation
rebel against our Creator. Even more outrageously, we, the created, have chosen
to replace the creator with another created object!
But this irrational tension, this reinforced
resistance between the truth and the lie, wrestles within the will of much of mankind!
And as a child biting the hand of the one who feeds them, we resist our Creator,
naively embracing fallacy instead. Less innocent and cherubic is the result- a sometimes
irrevocable separation from Him! Isaiah warns,
“
Woe unto him that
striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the
earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? or
thy work, He hath no hands? Woe unto him that saith
unto his father, What begettest thou? or to the woman, What hast thou brought
forth? Thus saith the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, Ask me of things to come
concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command ye me. I
have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched
out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded.” Isaiah 45:9
It seems, in plainest
terms, that we ought not wrestle with one as mighty as He!
And yet every day- with increasing fervor-
we, the created, muse in earshot of our creator that we have made ourselves. “Self-made,”
we like to boast.
We- who had absolutely
no control or choice in our existence, nor the way we were made- steal the glory
of His creative work and refuse to give him credit.
“A natural beauty,” or natural anything for that matter, ought
to give God praise!
A ‘gifted individual” ought to thank
the source!
But alas, we do not.
We thank ourselves, who took no part in the giving.
We worship
ourselves, we worship each other, and so God said it would be;
“Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served
the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.” Romans 1:25
But the
question of why remains glaring and pronounced, looming in the shadows of
righteous thinking.
Why
do such a foolish thing?
Isn’t it plain that we, as children, can
only earn merit in learning about what He has created, and are limited to create
only from what He has given? In absolute truth there is nothing new that we can
create, for everything we use was first given by him! It is only through that
which he has supplied that we fashion anything at all! As children building
with Legos, we build our lives and our world with his pieces.
The
obviousness of this point is not lost to serendipity, but the Bible states that
it IS obvious, because the truth of God’s power presents itself in undisputable
clarity!
Of those who were originally
rebellious, the Bible says it was not because they did not know God, but
because through vanity they decided that they would not glorify him as
God, and as a result their foolish hearts became darkened;
“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are
clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal
power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God,
neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish
heart was darkened.”
–
Romans 1:20,21
As they continued down the twisted road of vanity, the Bible says that
“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” Doesn’t
this sound accurate? For it is often those in glorified secular positions who
boldly refuse to call God, God.
Digging deeper still, there is a way that we
have about us, a way that not only desires to discredit God, but to ascribe His
glory to another deity. In vanity, we attribute anything- everything- to anyone
other than God.
Anything. A great
bang! Anything…a monkey!
As rabid and sick animals we seek to devour
our own Begetter.
He remains unaccredited in science for the
force and energy of the Universe that He created.
He remains
unmentioned in his history books, and HIStory they ban from schools.
He remains innominate in moments of great
success, an unmentionable and unsavory name of which no one will specifically
name. Originally, it was the name Jesus they refused to say, accepting a
more ubiquitous title of God, because, for all we knew it could be god.
But now, even his title, God, is unsavory. After all, god still has the
implication of God, and could easily be construed as such.
But now, universe. We thank the Universe.
There it is. Big enough to seem bigger than us, and yet not a God in the real
sense of the word. Big enough to include everyone, yet not tangible enough to
complicate our lives.
Universe. It allows
me to believe that I am still in control, and yet feign humility when I want to
convey spirituality.
But at its very core, this is very wicked.
For refusing to attribute all these things is not
only anti-Christ, but in truth, robbery. It is also foolish and the path to a reprobate
mind.
Continuing in Romans, we are warned that as
we continue down the path of self-glorification and soft atheism we will become
a slew of other things,
“…And
even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over
to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness,
covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity;
whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful,
proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection,
implacable, unmerciful:Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit
such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in
them that do them.” – Romans 1:29
There it is- written in Holy script!
When
we remove God we remove the moral backbone, because He is righteousness.
Literally.
When we remove Jesus, we have nothing to
measure morality by. And as the bible woefully writes in the book of Judges,
“Every man will do (did) what was right in his own eyes”. We begin to judge
ourselves by ourselves, and “professing ourselves to be wise, we become fools.”
As our society moves deeper into rebellion
and fulfillment of the scriptures, the bottom line comes into focus- stomp
out God, so that we can do what we want! We desire to live according to the
lust of our flesh, and to do so condemnation free.
It is also from this point that we taste the
fruit of our choices.
As we push to overthrow the Biblically derived
justice system, we smell the first scents of lawlessness. Hopelessness, despair,
and depression rise as we stick out our hands to be handcuffed with the
shackles of perversion and iniquity. The babes of vanity will rise into raging beasts,
released on our own volition. The full consequences of rejecting Jesus Christ lurk
ahead.
In
the end, the Creator wins. Did we think it any different? In the end, God will take
back His glory. It will be his name, that name that they cursed and
swore by, that name which they made mockery of- Jesus- that will be
dominant, forefront, looming.
And at His name, all of His created things will
cease rebellion, and ALL will bow.
The next time you hear the foolish accredit
anything to the created universe, I pray that these words ring in your mind. For
you see, the devil doesn’t care who you bow to, albeit cat, a statue, the
universe, or your own self. As long as it isn’t God.
Noisy For God
“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”- the ten lepers of Luke 17:13
Leprosy.
The flesh consuming disease that destines its prey for
certain death. The contagious plague that caused infected people to be exiled to
the outskirts of the city. And although some cases of leprosy still exist in Middle
Eastern and North African countries, it is largely dismissed by Bible readers
today as an archaic condition.
But boy- Oh Boy! – could we be more wrong?
Leprosy
is alive and well today because leprosy is metaphorical for our spiritual
condition.
And just as the leper’s only choice was to call out to Jesus
for mercy, we too are doomed to an eternal life of death without the deliverance of Jesus Christ.
But- what happens when the leper does not want to be cleansed?
What happens when the contagious leper walks boldly into the
midst of the people, spreading the disease of sin?
What happens when leprosy
becomes so common that those who are whole have become the minority?
Well, in my mind I see a picture of the walking dead!
Indeed, we are living among the walking dead! Our generation
has become so self-consumed that they refuse the balm of Gilead, attempting to justify
the leprous condition of their souls.
But whenever one seeks
to justify their sin, they continue in leprosy. This is a great application of
the prophecy that in the last days men would be “lovers of themselves.” (2 Timothy
3)
The love of our own flesh makes it where we cannot
resist the desires of our own flesh. We literally become irresistible to
ourselves, and what our flesh wants, our flesh gets. Even if it defies the desires
of the almighty God.
This is because there is strong demonic influence at work
in the gratification of self. As the devil himself was in complete rebellion to
God, so he gains entry and access to our hearts when we walk in rebellion against
the revealed (written) will of God.
The devil loved himself so much that he believed that he deserved to be God. He loved himself so much that he became disillusioned and eventually began to believe that he could assert himself above God and be victorious! Satan became so jealous of God that he HATED the very words that God spoke and began to believe that his own thoughts and opinion mattered more than God’s. His emotions took the driver’s seat, and he became the embodiment of rebellion.
Is this you child of God, walking in emotion and rebellion against God’s word? Is it you that feels that your opinion and feelings on a matter are more righteous that the Lord’s? Is it you that feels anger and resentment rise in your flesh when you read or hear scriptures that go against your urges to gratify your flesh? Is it you that has no problem with leprosy, and possesses no desire to be cleansed?
Revelation may come
when we see that this disease, of which pride is the root, actually consumes
the host, not protects them! For continuing in sin is like continuing in
leprosy, willingly subjecting the person to a fate of pain and death,
As I conclude, I am reminded of a story from
the book of Numbers (Numbers 25) where idolatry and sin had crept into the camp
of Israel. Many of the young people were committing sin, and then boldly
walking into the presence of God in a defiled state. They had gotten out of line
(There IS a line!) and they refused to cleanse themselves!
But Phinehas, from
a priestly lineage, was strong enough to stand up for righteousness. Wearied of
the disrespect, the Bible says he leapt up and drove a stake through the torso
of one particularly blasphemous young Israelite and the representation of his fornication
with sin, a Moabite woman. God was pleased, not with the people’s words and excuses,
but with the zealous actions of this young man to stop sin in its tracks.
Which side do you stand on, child of God? Contrary to popular (false) doctrine today, God’s word is truly black and white. If you are not for God’s word, you are against it (Luke 11:23). If you do not stand with God, you stand against Him. Many ministers today attempt to preach from God’s word to prove one point and then discredit the scriptures to prove another. But when you refuse to forsake and renounce sin as sin, you reject the truth of God’s word altogether. To be healed from leprosy we must see our condition in light of this truth!
God sees the condition of our hearts and knows when we are avoiding being fully healed. He perceives our motives as we reject his true prophets and listen to whomever causes us to feel content and motivated to continue in sin.
As a former leper, may I encourage you to cry out to the master for total healing? After being set free from the chains of death and depravity, I now see that the opportunities offered to gratify my flesh were really bondage and infection to destroy my future.
I am now committed not to spreading leprosy, but spreading the cure.
Will you be made free?