Wednesday in the Word

what the Bible means and how we know

Christmas

Why Jesus came, a Christmas message

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Matthew 1:21 Why Jesus came, a Christmas message | WednesdayintheWord.com

The angel tells Joseph to take Mary as his wife because Mary is about to have a son through the power of the Holy Spirit. Then the angel also tells Joseph something about this son. Who does the angel say this child is?

Passage

18Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. 19And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. 20But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”  – Matthew 1:18-21

You’re probably familiar with the basics of the Christmas story. Joseph and Mary are engaged when Joseph learns Mary is pregnant. Assuming she’s been unfaithful to him, Joseph resolves to break the betrothal quietly, but then an angel appears to Joseph in a dream. The angel tells Joseph to take Mary as his wife because Mary is about to have a son through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Then the angel also tells Joseph something about this son. 

“She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” – Matthew 1:21

  • In Hebrew, the child’s name is “Yeshua,” which we think of as Joshua. When this name is translated into Greek, it because “Iesous,” which is then transliterated into English as Jesus.
  • The name means “God saves.”
  • The angel tells Joseph to call the child “God saves” because this child will save his people from sin.
  • Today we’d much rather talk about how God loves us. Sin is not a message we want to hear.
  • But if sin is not a problem, then Christmas is not a big deal.
  • The Bible is very clear that the biggest, deepest, most urgent problem everyone in the world has is sin. For example:
    • Jeremiah 31:31-34
    • Luke 1:76-77
    • Matthew 9:3
    • Matthew 26:27-28
    • Luke 24:46-47
    • Acts 2:38
    • Acts 5:30-31
    • Acts 10:43
    • Acts 13:38
    • Acts 26:16-18
    • Romans 3:23-24
    • 1Corinthians 15:3-4
    • Galatians 1:3-5
    • 1Peter 2:24
    • Revelation 1:5

On Christmas we celebrate the birth of the one who brings redemption and rescue to an evil world. 

If we’re honest with ourselves, our biggest problem is our hard-hearted lack of love for God and our neighbors.  That has two very terrible consequences.

  1. We are slaves to sin. Sin, loss, futility and corruption characterize our lives and we can’t escape it.
  2. We are guilty before God and deserve condemnation.

The biggest problem we have in this life is solving our problem with sin. 

Celebrating Christmas without understanding what we are saved from is not much of a celebration. On Christmas we celebrate the birth of the savior who came to save us from sin.

Please listen to the podcast for more detail and explanation.

Series: Christmas

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New Testament Studies

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Season 20, bonus episode 25, track #66

Christmas Carol Sing

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Enjoy this is a 30 minute video of Reggie Coates leading 10 Christmas songs that you can sing-a-long with and be drawn into the Christmas season with a focus on Jesus.

  • O Come O Come Emmanuel
  • Joy to the World
  • Angels We Have Heard on High
  • Mary Christmas
  • O Come All Ye Faithful
  • O Holy Night
  • Silent Night
  • Go Tell It on the Mountain
  • Jingle Bells
  • Feliz Navidad

Have a Mary Christmas Luke 10:38-42

The Christmas Redeemer

How to take the bite out of gift-giving

What is there to celebrate about Christmas?

An exceptionally good Christmas

Where to next?

New Testament Studies

Old Testament Studies

Topical Studies

Bible Study 101

Have a Mary Christmas Luke 10:38-42

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How to Have a Mary Christmas | WednesdayintheWord.com
This December you can have a Mary Christmas or a Martha Christmas.

  • In a Martha Christmas you are so frantic doing good things that you miss the best gift of all.
  • In a Mary Christmas you recognize what is truly important and find the best gift of all.

Meet Mary & Martha

About six months before Jesus would head to Jerusalem for his last time, he visited Mary & Martha (Luke 10).

Now as they were traveling along, He [Jesus] entered a village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home.- Luke 10:38

Martha lived in Bethany with her sister Mary and their later-to-become-famous brother Lazarus. Martha may have been widowed for she appears to be oldest and the manager of the household. She was also a woman of great faith as she tells Jesus in John 11:27: “I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world.”

Her sister Mary appears to be a younger single adult living under the same roof. There are several Marys in Scripture. This is Mary of Bethany, a godly woman who is part of a household that is rather well-off.

Our first picture of Martha is positive. When Jesus appears with twelve hungry men (and who knows how many other followers), Martha voluntarily provides the hospitality expected in her culture — which was not an easy task, especially since she probably had no advance warning. Jesus could not call ahead on his cell phone nor send her a telegram.

Of course, Martha is busy! And Martha is busy doing good, right, proper and necessary tasks, from which others will benefit. Now what happens? She’s loses her primary helper.

She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to His word.- Luke 10:39

Picture the scene. Both Mary and Martha began to prepare the large meal. As they went about their tasks, they could probably hear the Lord conversing across the dwelling, as houses were not large in that day.

The words of Jesus distract Mary from her task. She stops what she’s doing and listens intently. And then, maybe without even thinking about it, she quietly sits at the feet of Jesus, eager to hear every word.

Minutes pass. Suddenly Martha realizes she’s handling all the preparations alone. Of course she comes unglued. Who could blame her?

But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she came up to Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me.”- Luke 10:40

Martha’s Mistake

Martha appeals directly to Jesus for help. To Martha’s way of thinking, Mary’s actions are selfish and irresponsible. Who has time to hear the words of Jesus when there’s work to be done? Who has time to sit at the feet of Jesus and hear the words of life when hospitality is at stake?

That’s Martha’s mistake. Martha was so busy with her preparations that she lost the main focus of the moment.

The Son of God is sitting in her living room! The Messiah — who is going to Jerusalem in a few short weeks to die on the cross to redeem his people from sin — is sitting in her chair. Yet she couldn’t listen to the words of Jesus, because she was too busy with the work and stuff of daily life. Notice it’s her activity-level that Jesus corrects.

But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”- Luke 10:41-42

Jesus does not rebuke her for her hospitality or her preparations for the forthcoming meal. He’s concerned with her priorities.

1) Proper Priorities

The first step to a Mary Christmas is proper priorities. Martha was concerned with too many things: the work of meal preparation and hospitality; the chores of caring for and meeting the needs of a household. While good and important, none of the work of daily life is more important than listening to Jesus. Nothing is so important that you can’t drop it when the Messiah comes to town.

Priorities matter. Some things can wait. Some things can’t. Knowing Jesus is more important than doing good things for Jesus. Jesus didn’t want Martha’s service. Jesus wanted Martha’s fellowship.

I think Martha meant well, she loved the Lord, and she thought she was serving him, but her priorities were off. Martha’s idea of what was necessary was different from Christ’s. Martha thought all her busy, frantic activity was necessary to please the Lord when from Jesus perspective only one thing is necessary: her simple humble faith.

but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.” – Luke 10:42

2) Proper Desires

The second way to have a Mary Christmas is proper desires. Mary was hungry, but not for dinner. She was hungry for spiritual food. She wanted to hear the words of eternal life, and was not going to miss the chance while Jesus was in her home.

Jesus calls this “hungering and thirsting after righteousness” (Matthew 5:6). Who wants to eat food when the Messiah is sitting in your living room! She was being deeply fed by the bread of life and living water. Mary desired the right thing, and wanted what is truly important.

3) Honesty

The third step to a Mary Christmas is to be honest about who you are and what you truly need. Mary knew it was more important to learn from Jesus than to complete her do to list, serve the perfect meal or host the perfect Christmas. You can’t earn your salvation by being good. You can try harder but it will never be enough to negate prior sin and disobedience.

Jesus was born on Christmas Day to keep God’s covenant and live a perfect life. Jesus died on the cross on Good Friday and was resurrected on Easter Sunday to pay the penalty for our sins. God accepts his voluntarily death on the cross as payment for our crimes. Because of Jesus, God can forgive us and save us from sin. The third step to having a Mary Christmas is knowing where life is to be found. It is to be found in Jesus and not self-effort.

4) Choose faith.

The fourth way to have a Mary Christmas is to choose “the good part.” In other words choose faith. Trust that God — through the blood of Jesus Christ — both intends to and will in fact save you from your sin. The “good part” — the best gift of all — is sitting at our Lord’s feet in order to learn the words of life. Meals will come and meals will go. Christmas will come and go. Gifts will be wrapped and opened and broken. Memories will fade, but the word of life will last forever.

There is only one thing truly important and necessary thing, and that is knowing Jesus. Trusting Jesus and believing that he loves you and came to die on the cross to pay the penalty for your sins.

To do lists can wait. Good works can wait. But knowing Jesus can’t. There will always be work to do; good, important work that seems so necessary. But only one thing is truly necessary: Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

My prayer for you this holiday season is that you have a Mary Christmas — a Christmas where you grow in faith and the love of Christ; a Christmas like Mary where you leave the kitchen and sit at the feet of Jesus; a Christmas where you can be still and know that He is Lord.

Series:  Christmas

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Season 5, Episode 13

How to take the bite out of gift-giving

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How to take the bite out of gift giving | WednesdayintheWord.com

My annual performance review — aka Christmas  — is approaching.   If you adjust for the fact I caught a cold last year, I expect my scores to be slightly higher with lots of room for improvement.

Being the family matriarch means I am the primary gift-buyer as well as the primary baker, decorator, hostess and social event planner.  When Christmas dawn breaks, I know the contents of 95% of the packages under the tree, the stuff in every stocking and the food that will be set at each place.

When I became the oldest woman in the family tree, the success or failure of Christmas settled on my shoulders like a straight jacket.

I suspect I’m not the only one who wakes Christmas morning with the uneasy feeling that whatever I did — it was not enough.  Whether I spent a little money or a lot of money or no money at all on gifts, it wasn’t enough.  If I bought gifts, I should have spent more time on home-made items.  If I gave home-made gifts, I should have bought them.  The gifts aren’t right; there aren’t enough of them or there are too many of them.  They won’t do.  And it’s my fault.

I want each Christmas gift to say: “I know you.  You are loved and valued and of infinite worth.”  Yet, how can anything that can be wrapped and put under a tree transform the life of the recipient from misery to joy and from loneliness to belonging?

Those wrapped boxes send other messages instead:

  • “Here’s what I think you ought to want.”
  • “I can afford to give you this because I have so much money.”
  • “I’m broke this year.”
  • “I had no idea what to get you.”
  • “I’m getting this for everyone and you’re on the list.”
  • “This is what the cool people are giving this year.”
  • “I would really like this myself.”

While these messages are not necessarily bad, they aren’t the message we really want to send.

The best gifts say: “I know you so well that I knew you would love this as soon as you saw it even if you didn’t know it existed.”  You know the gift is perfect when the recipient reacts with obvious, uncontainable joy.  And that is your reward.

Yet giving such a perfect gift is rare.  If you can give a perfect-gift 5 times in your lifetime, you’re above average.  And if you can give a gloriously-perfect gift twice to the same person, you have accomplished the impossible.

Yet we matriarchs expect to perform this miracle annually.  How can we possibly expect every gift to be perfect when we’re giving to the same people year after year after year?

No wonder Christmas feels like a performance review we’re destined to fail!  It’s time to take the bite out of gift giving:

I resolve to give ordinary gifts with ordinary love,
to receive ordinary gifts with ordinary joy, and
to leave the miracles to God.

Henceforth, I resolve:

  1. The only burden an ordinary gift needs to bear is sending the message: “I have not forgotten you.  You still matter to me and I love you.”
  2. I will not expect to equal — let alone top — last year’s gifts.
  3. I will be satisfied if the recipients express ordinary gratitude, and thrilled if they express ordinary joy.
  4. I will not expect the recipient to reassure me my gift was perfect (when it wasn’t).
  5. I will be grateful to receive ordinary gifts that show ordinary love.

Now if only I can remember this on my birthday.

Series: Christmas

Where to next?

New Testament Studies

Old Testament Studies

Topical Studies

Bible Study 101

Photo by the author.

An exceptionally good Christmas

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Alone and cold in a German prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to his fiancee: “I think we are going to have an exceptionally good Christmas.”

As I sit in warmth and comfort, enjoying the gathering family and the growing pile of presents, anticipating hearty meals and the joys of wonderful surprises, I wonder at his words.

My idea of an “exceptionally good Christmas” does not include facing death in a prison cell while a world war is raging.  What was Bonhoeffer thinking?

Bonhoeffer explained:

The very fact that every outward circumstance precludes our making provision for it will show whether we can be content with what is truly essential. I used to be very fond of thinking up and buying presents, but now that we have nothing to give, the gift God gave us in the birth of Christ will seem all the more glorious, the emptier our hands, the better we understand what Luther meant by his dying words: “We’re beggars: it’s true.” The poorer our quarters, the more clearly we perceive that our hearts should be Christ’s home on earth. — Letter to Maria von Wedemeyer, December 1, 1943

Wishing you an “exceptionally good Christmas” and the true joy of the season that only the peace of God in hearts can bring.

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Where was the manger and what was the inn?

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Typical village home in Palestine

Like most people, when you consider the traditional Christmas story, you picture Mary giving birth alone in a barn filled with straw and animals because all the hotels were full.  You can probably recite the details by heart. You would be wrong.

According to middle-eastern scholar Kenneth Bailey, much of our modern understanding is based on “cultural mythology.”

Rev. Bailey has spent 40 years living and teaching in the Egypt, Lebanon, Jerusalem and Cyprus.  He brings his impressive knowledge of middle-eastern culture and language to understanding the life and times of Jesus Christ.

In Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels, Bailey makes a powerful case that the traditional understanding of the birth of Jesus (Luke 2:1-18) relies more heavily on tradition (in particular a “novel” published around A.D. 200) than on the biblical text and culture of the day.  He writes:

To summarize the problems in the traditional interpretation of Luke 2:1-7, Joseph was returning to his home village where he could easily find shelter.  Because he was a descendent of King David nearly all doors in the village were open to him.  Mary had relatives nearby and could have turned to them, but did not.  There was plenty of time to arrange suitable housing.  How could a Jewish town fail to help a young Jewish mother about to give birth?  In light of these cultural and historical realities, how are we to understand the text?  Two questions arise:  Where was the manager and what was the ‘inn’? (pg 28)

Bailey’s research reveals that, while the wealthy at the time had separate quarters for their animals, the typical village home had only two rooms: the family living quarters and the stable (see photo).  The stable was lower than living quarters, next to the door, and housed the family animals overnight for warmth and safety.

Those more well-off might also have a room exclusively for guests on the other end of the house or on the roof.  This “upper room” or “prophet’s chamber” is the “inn.” (The Greek word literally means “a place to stay”.)

When the family cow became hungry in the night, it could stand and eat from the mangers cut into the floor of the family living room.  Wooden mangers for sheep and smaller animals would be placed on the floor of the lower level.

To summarize, a part of what Luke tells us about the birth of Jesus is that the holy family traveled to Bethlehem, where they were received into a private home.  The child was born, wrapped and (literally) ‘put to bed’ in the living room in the manger that was either built into the floor or made of wood and moved into the family living space.  Why weren’t they invited into the family guest room, the reader might naturally ask?  The answer is that the guest room was already occupied by other guests.  The host family graciously accepted Mary and Joseph into the family living room of their house.

“The family room would, naturally be cleared of men for the birth of the child and the village midwife and other women would have assisted at the birth.  After the child was born and wrapped, Mary put her newborn to bed in a manger filled with fresh straw and covered him with a blanket (page 34-35).”

Bailey’s work shows the importance of stripping away our cultural presuppositions when we approach the Bible.

When we do, we learn that “the manger was in a warm and friendly home, not a cold and lonely stable. … Yes, we must rewrite our Christmas plays, but in rewriting them, the story is enriched, not cheapened.”

Series: Christmas

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Photo from Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, page 33

The meaning of Christmas

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Meaning of Christmas - Bible Study | WednesdayintheWord.com

What is there to celebrate about Christmas?

There’s nothing like the Christmas season to force you to face the fact that life is often neither joyful nor triumphant.

Separation, divorce or singleness can leave people celebrating alone.  People who’ve lost a loved one may be especially mindful of the loss at Christmas time.  And those who are unable to travel to their hometowns may feel abandoned and left out.

But for those surrounded by family and friends, sometimes Christmas isn’t much better.

The holidays add stress of having to cook and entertain for large gatherings.  For many people, family gatherings bring to the surface all those long-standing hurts and conflicts.  Add to that the financial stress, the extra time demands of holiday activities, and the unrealistic expectations of that this year ‘we’ll finally have a Norman Rockwell experience,’ and you can see why many people find Christmas depressing.

It raises the question, what is there to celebrate about Christmas?  I’d like to answer that question by looking at one of my favorite Christmas stories:  Job.

Job had everything we think of as important and worthwhile, and then he lost it.  His herds and flocks were stolen, his houses demolished, and then, as a crowning blow, all of his children, seven sons and three daughters, were killed in a single day.   I can’t even imagine that kind of loss!  In addition to everything else, Job was afflicted with a terrible siege of boils, open running sores, from head to toe.

In chapter 19, we find Job sitting on ash heap, bemoaning his terrible fate.  Seeing no reason or explanation for the tragedies that assailed him, Job cried out in agony to God. But then in the midst of his gloom, Job declares his hope.  In the deepest pit of darkness a person can experience, Job had an amazing flash of light.   He says:

For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.   – Job 19:25

God’s ultimate answer to the agony and sufferings of this life is a Redeemer who shares our anguish and pain and will solve it once for all.

A Redeemer is simply a rescuer.  The word was used of the person who buys another out of slavery and the person who takes care of widows or orphans who have no one else to care for them. A Redeemer was a person you could count on to take the responsibility to deliver you from your peril.

The hope that sustained Job sitting on that ash heap, scraping at his boils, is the knowledge that he had a Redeemer. This is the message of Christmas.  It is the reason we can celebrate no matter how difficult our circumstances.  Because nothing happened to Job that God could not redeem.

Nothing.  True, Job lost everything.  He lost his family, his wealth, his health, his marriage and his friends.  From our point of view that’s about everything a person could possibly lose.  Yet Job suffered no loss that God could not redeem.

We celebrate Christmas because our Redeemer lives. He was born on Christmas day.

Series: Christmas

Photo by Tessa Rampersad on Unsplash

Season 2, Episode 25