Silent Night

My Christmas message is offered knowing many people are not able to be worshiping in a church this Christmas Eve due to the pandemic.  And just as I had Thanksgiving meal alone for the first time in about a decade, I realize there are others like me who are single and alone, or folks who cannot be with extended family due to the high coronavirus risk.  It is a challenging time for many of us.  I have prayed you would be encouraged by my message.

   On Easter, I worshiped God all morning in my room, which included doing what I do most every morning: Scripture reading and pondering, prayer, and singing.  I also journaled.  And after spending much time thinking about and relishing a big blessing from God in my life, I gained a special blessing.

   The morning included intense lamenting as the coronavirus catastrophe was swelling in the U.S.  And my friend Christel, who had a different health challenge for many years, was in much pain that very day.  She passed away five days later.  Honestly, Easter did not seem like Easter.  Our neighborhood road is ten times calmer when high school is out, but on any given day some cars roll down our street.  Surely cars passed by on Easter Sunday, but I did not hear a single one all day.  The silence was eerie.  Yet before going to bed that night, I had joy and peace knowing that Jesus is risen from the dead, and that He loves me!

   Easter was the central yearly celebration for Christians early on.  In early centuries the celebration retained the term Paschal Festival or Paschal Feast, “Pascha” meaning Passover.  (Pascha is still used by some Eastern Christians.)  The emphasis was on the sacrificial atonement of Jesus as the Lamb of God, expressed by Paul in I Corinthians 5:7-8.  Yet resurrection was also key.  Ignatius once referred to all Sundays, which he termed the Lord’s Day, as resurrection-day!  Anatolius of Alexandria called the Paschal feast “the festival of the Lord’s resurrection.”  There is a classic set of writings of early Christians, edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.  Doing a search for the word “resurrection” for simply the first three volumes, I got 650 hits.  Resurrection was a focus for the early Christians along with the atonement.  Thus the term Easter was embraced eventually, a Saxton word which denotes resurrection (which I know thanks to the scholar C.F. Cruse).

   Centuries later, Christians started celebrating Christmas.  Carols have long been one of my favorite Christmas expressions, and “Silent Night” is a staple.  Jesus was born in the middle of the night.  Since so many people were in Bethlehem to register for the census, a few folks were probably still awake being rowdy.  Yet when the shepherds went to see the baby, surely there was much silent reverence before that newborn.  The quiet reverence surrounding the manger where the Messiah lay would not have been eerie like the April 12th silence, rather the silent reverence was surely awesome.

   And think of all the blessed reverence there has been by Christians year after year for the past two thousand years for the birth of Christ.  I personally have been a part of Christians being reverent on Christmas Eve expressed by both a joyful noise in celebration, and in that powerful act of softly singing “Silent Night” with candles in hand.  Revelation 8:1 speaks of silence in heaven when the seventh seal is opened.  God remains holy throughout all ages.  We should heed the teaching of Scripture: “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe…” (Hebrews 12:28).  Reverence for God is right even when so much in our world comes unglued in the midst of rampant sin.

   If you have never truly celebrated Christmas or Easter in your heart, you can.  That baby who was born in a manger was Immanuel, which means “God with us.”  And about thirty-three years later, Jesus was crucified on a cross for the forgiveness of sins of anyone.  He was the substitutional atonement for the wages of sin, which is spiritual death.  Then He was resurrected.  I invite you to receive Jesus as your Savior and Lord.  You need to truly believe in Jesus.  The result is eternal life in heaven, and hope in this world.  Though there has been so much sickness and death and loss and hurt and animosity and stress and loneliness this year all around the world, the love of God is still available, and the love of God results in everlasting goodness.

Hunter Irvine

+   Take some prayer time.

- Tell Jesus anything you want to right now.

- Give thanks to God that even after such a challenging year for so many, we have a reason to celebrate Christmas, thanks to the love of Jesus.

I encourage you to now sing “Silent Night! Holy Night!”

Here is a link with lyrics to the song performed by Natalie Raynes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoF6eVNo-Zc

I hope your Christmas is blessed, because Jesus loves you!  love, Hunter

Matthew 1:22-23 Immanuel

Matthew 1:22-23   All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” –which means, “God with us” (NIV).

Isaiah 7:14   “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” (NIV).

   Fitting that Matthew tells us the prophecy from Isaiah, since we learned last week the angel of the Lord said Jesus would forgive people of sins.  He is showing Jesus had the authority to forgive sins, since He was Immanuel.

   A big champion of what we now call The Nicene Creed was a church leader named Athanasius.  The scholar Dr. Chris Hall clearly explained in his book Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers that Athanasius refuted Arius with two key statements, the first being the fact salvation can come only from God.  Dr. Hall stated: “The Arian Christ, Athanasius insisted, could save no one.  No creature possessed the ability or prerogative to save from sin.” (1)

   Radically, the prophet Isaiah was saying in the 8th century, long before the birth of Jesus, the Messiah would be God!

   The picture on a Christmas card this year from my dad and step-mom is an old worn down barn next to a rolling field with low mountains in the distance.  An inch or two of snow covers the ground, and the sky is covered with clouds.  The photo was apparently taken near the Appalachian range of Pennsylvania, and reminds me of the Appalachian region in Virginia I am so fond of.  It looks really cold, yet I know that in mid-Appalachia, winters move on in due time.

   Having lived in Colorado for twenty-one of the past twenty-three years, the winters wear on me more as the years go by.  I miss the east coast where I grew up.  Though Colorado is not my climate of choice, I am thankful to live here now, because there are people here who love me.  For me, joy and peace comes not from a place, rather from who you are with.

   So even though I have had numerous rough circumstances ever since coming to Colorado to do ministry work, I have had joy and peace consistently, because all along God has been with me.  Sometimes, problems come in just like a winter storm in Colorado, and God seems hidden.  Sometimes God seems to be nowhere around.  Sometimes joy and peace seems elusive.  Yet God who is unseen is God who became a human being, beginning like all humans, as a baby.  There in the manager was Immanuel, which means “God with us.”  Jesus is still here today through the Holy Spirit in the hearts of all people who have given their heart to Him, and Jesus is speaking through Scripture which He inspired for humanity to learn from Him.

   Here on this fourth Sunday of Advent of 2020, in the midst of a long hard pandemic season, we can trust the revelation of Scripture that Jesus remains “God with us.”

Hunter

Question for pondering:   When do you feel closest to God?

- Take some prayer time.  Talk with God about your needs and your hopes for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day upcoming this week.

(1)   Christopher Hall, Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 60.

Matthew 1:21 The Promise to Joseph

Matthew 1:21   "She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins" (NIV).

   We saw in the start of the book of Matthew the seemingly boring genealogy is filled with the promises of God, rooted in Hebrew Scripture, which would be fulfilled by the Christ.  Now in this New Testament Scripture, Joseph got a wild promise from God!  The promise came from an angel of the Lord speaking to him in a dream.  And what was the promise?  That Mary’s baby will save people from their sins.

   I add the name Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua, which means “YHWH saves.”

   How did Jesus make it possible for people to be saved from sins?  Romans 6:23 states: For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

   Physical and spiritual death is the result of any single sin.  Jesus died in the place of people.  Jesus was the substitute for the wages of sin.  Receiving the atonement Christ made results in life.  That was His plan from the beginning.

   How can a person receive this salvation?  By believing in Jesus.  The great proclamation of the Reformation was that salvation is by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ.  To believe in Jesus is to receive His mercy.  When you believe in Jesus, you receive the mercy and grace He wants to give you, because He loves you.

   And the result is being baptized with the Holy Spirit, which means a journey with Jesus has begun.  And on that journey a follower of Jesus is enabled to live a life becoming more and more of a loving person.

   For me it is more comfortable to ignore the topic of sin.  Yet facing the topic of sin is how to be free from it.  And facing sin requires dependence on Jesus.  We all need mercy, and Jesus offers mercy.

   And we all need to improve.  Thus we need to keep relying day by day on the power of the Holy Spirit.  There is much in this world which seems normal, and much in this world which “everyone” else seems to be doing, but which result in hurts, be they slight hurts or huge hurts.  Sin is harmful, and ultimately deadly.  Believing in Jesus results in salvation, then relying on Jesus results in an increasing freedom from sin.

Hunter Irvine

Question for pondering:

1.)   What is one wrong thing you did this past week?  You can ask God for forgiveness.

- Take some prayer time.  With the current coronavirus surge, problems galore are continuing.  Just this week I learned of several people who were recently sick with COVID, or who are sick now.  Please say one prayer for people who are sick at this time.

Matthew 1:19-20 Joseph considers divorce

Matthew 1:19-20

Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.  But after he had considered this, and angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit” (NIV).

   My first thought: “Divorce is not an appropriate Advent topic.”  Yet it is a relevant Advent topic, because had the angel of the Lord not given encouragement and a revelation to Joseph, and had Joseph not obeyed the angel of the Lord, Jesus would have been born into this world having parents who were divorced.

   Matthew calls Joseph “her husband” in verse 19.  2,000 years ago in the Jewish culture, if you were engaged, you were legally married, which is why Joseph would have needed a “divorce” to end it.  So here they are legally bound and on the doorstep of the wedding, and then Joseph learns his wife is pregnant.

   Under the Mosaic Law, the sentence against Mary would have been death, as is stated in Leviticus 20:10.  Obviously the Jewish leaders were not following this regulation of the Mosaic Law which was surely unpopular.  But we learn here Mary would have been publicly chastised, and it would have probably been a stigma for her which may have resulted in not being able to get another husband of good character.

   Interesting that Matthew says Joseph was a righteous man, thus we know that Jesus had a special father.  Yet even he had decided to divorce his bride, apparently without talking with her.

   My parents are divorced, and I was terribly hurt by their long separation and subsequent divorce.  Once I started following Jesus, a healing process began.  I consider in retrospect that I was a follower of Jesus for about a decade before I was ready for a healthy marriage.  God gently worked to bring healing in my life.  Then in the summer of 2000, there was an incredible event of healing when I took the afternoon to pray on the grass beside the library where my parents first met.  That afternoon, I forgave my parents for the sins they had done which led to their divorce.  The result was awesome: the capability to live free from the hurt and anger which had resulted from my parent’s divorce.

   But much damage was done in my life which I still have to deal with all these years later.  For example, to this day I still have the dream of being married, though I remain single at an older age where most women I know have been married for a long time.

   And now I recall a fact I have not thought of in a long time: After my parents got divorced, Christmas time was a bit depressing for me.  In my youth, Christmas had been the most exciting family day of the year.  But once my family was broken, the special day was no longer the same.  I remember one year in college where I slept in rather than waking up on time with my younger sister to get presents.

   Praise be to God that once I became a Christian, Christmas swiftly gained a growing significance which was not tied to my past family Christmases.  Christmas became about Jesus, my Savior and Lord.

   As we continue with the Christmas story here on the second Sunday of Advent, please know we Christians still have hurts and there is nothing unusual about hurts from family.  If you have such hurts, you may need to talk with a friend about such, yet first and foremost it is best to talk with God.  Tell Him about your hurts.  Listen to Him for help and for healing.

   We all need forgiveness from Jesus, and we all need to forgive people who have hurt us, including our parents for those of us who were hurt by our parents.  Forgiving requires dependence on God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the One who is merciful.

   What better Advent activity than to gain more healing, so we may be better prepared for the blessings of Christmas after this extremely challenging year of 2020.

Hunter

Question for pondering:

1.) Have you ever had a disappointing Christmas?