Blog Archives - WELCOME TO THE JOY OF TROY

January 21, 2021

1/21/2021

A Strange Agent of Providence

    And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered....So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child. So it was that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. Luke 2:1-6, NKJV

    God's providence works in strange ways. Throughout the Roman Empire periodic censuses took place with the double object of assessing taxation and identifying those liable for compulsory military service. We know from the historical record that in Egypt such censuses occurred every 14 years. And from A.D. 20 until about A.D. 270 the exact documents for each census are extant. Interestingly enough, a government edict from Egypt states that "it is necessary to compel all those who for any cause whatsoever are residing outside their districts to return to their own homes" for the census.

    Thus it is that we find in the birth of Jesus the initial contact between the most powerful emperor in the world at that time and the future King of kings. We have in Luke's passage a premonition of kingdoms in conflict. Of course, we can be absolutely certain that Caesar Augustus had not the slightest notion of the existence of Joseph and Mary or the promised Christ child. In fact, he probably had no knowledge of even Nazareth or Bethlehem.

    But Luke is making it clear that the birth of the boy called Jesus is the beginning of a confrontation between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. Within a century or so the successors of Augustus would not only have heard of the birth of the child, but would be seeking to obliterate His followers. And in just a little more than three centuries the Roman emperor himself would become a Christian. The story of kingdoms in conflict was already in progress on the road to Bethlehem.

    Careful students of the Hebrew Bible would not have been surprised at the Bethlehem connection. Seven hundred years before, the prophet Micah had written"

             "But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,...
                from you shall come forth for me
                    one who is to be ruler in Israel,
                whose origin is from of old,
                    from ancient of days" (Micah 5:2, RSV).

    God in the past has used strange methods and people to work out His providence. My guess is that He does the same in our day.

January 20, 2021

1/20/2021

Jesus: "God With Us"

    All this happened in order to fulfill what the Lord declared through the prophet: "A virgin will conceive and bear a son, and he shall be called Emmanuel," a name which means "God with us." When he woke Joseph did as the angel of the Lord had directed him; he took Mary home to be his wife, but had no intercourse with her until her son was born. And he named the child Jesus. Matt. 1:22-25, REB.

    The first Gospel proclaims Jesus as the ultimate fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14. He is Emmanuel or "God with us" (Matt. 1:23). That is perhaps the greatest claim in the New Testament. And the recognition that Jesus is truly the Son of God is a central point in each of the four Gospels.

    Matthew 1:23 does not present Jesus as merely a great teacher. For Matthew, Jesus is no guru or seer, nor is He God's messenger in the sense that Islamic believers view Muhammed as the spokesperson of Allah. No! Matthew is empathetic: Jesus is "God with us." Christianity is built upon that essential claim. It cannot be discarded without totally abandoning the faith.

    Nor does Matthew present Jesus as the God above us. The Old Testament often pictures God as above humanity. He is the God of the unapproachable Most Holy Place. But from the very first chapter of the New Testament, we begin to get another view, a fuller revelation, of the Old Testament God. He is no longer the Deity above us but is present, through Jesus, as "God with us."

    Jesus, through His preaching, teaching, and healing acts of kindness, becomes the fullest revelation of God's character. "Anyone," Jesus claimed, "who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9, NIV). And the book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus "reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature" (Heb. 1:2, RSV). The fourth Gospel fills out the picture when it noted that "God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son" (John 3:16, RSV).

    In that only Son we have "God with us," the Son of David and the heir of David's throne and of God's promises to David and Abraham. We have the Messiah of God, the child born of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, One whose mission is to "save his people from their sins" (Matt. 1:21). That divine Person is the theme of all the New Testament.

    And He ought to be the theme and center of our lives. Through Jesus we need to be with God just as much as He is God with us. Today is the day to reorder our priorities. Today is the day for me to get with God and let Him be the center of my life in a new way.

January 19, 2021

1/19/2021

The Conquering Christ

        She will bring a son to birth, and when she does, you, Joseph, will name him Jesus--God Saves--because he will save his people from their sins. Matt. 1:21, Message.

    In spite of yesterday's reading, in one sense Jesus did act as a conquering king. He would "save his people from their sins." Here we must understand the word "sins" not only in terms of their guilt and penalty but also their power and consequences.

    In other words, Jesus would not save people in their sins, but from them. A prominent function of Christ's ministry was to liberate His people from the imperialism of their personal sins, from the control of sin over their daily actions.

    That liberation takes place at three levels. Frist, through His sinless life and His death on the cross, Jesus rescues His people from the penalty of sin. The Desire of Ages puts it nicely when it notes that "Christ was treated as we deserve, that we might be treated as He deserves. He was condemned for our sins, in which He had no share, that we might be justified by His righteousness, in which we had no share. He suffered the death which was ours, that we might receive the life which was His. 'With His stripes we are healed. " (p. 25).

    Second, Jesus delivers His people, as we noted above, from the power of sin over their lives. And He provides them with the gift of the Holy Spirit to achieve that task.

    Third, Jesus will eventually save His people from the presence of sin when He returns in the clouds of heaven to give them their eternal reward. All three of those "salvations" from sin are evident in the Gospels. Truly, Matthew's revolutionary Son of David/Messiah is a conquering king who will "save his people from their sins."

    And His people includes you and me today. God not only wants to save me (each of us) from condemnation, but He desires to transform (Rom. 12:2) my life so that I might be more like Him day by day. There is power (the Greek is dynamis from which we get "dynamite" in English) in the gospel (Rom. 1:16) for me each and every day. Jesus wants each of us to take hold of that power right now.

    Thank You, Father, for the gift of salvation through Jesus. Help me right now as I grasp Your saving power in a fuller way.

January 18, 2021

1/18/2021

A Revolutionary Proclamation

        "She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." Matt. 1:21, RSV.

    Here we have a revolutionary proclamation of the Messiah's mission. Matthew had plainly set forth Jesus from the first verse of his Gospel as the Messiah and the Son of David. In the Jewish mind, both titles had political overtones. The two came together in the vision of an earthly king. David had been an illustrious conquering warrior, and first-century Jews expected their Messiah King to carry out the same program. The Messiah, or Christ, was to be a national deliverer.

    For example, in the Psalms of Solomon (written in the period between the Old and New Testaments), the anointed Son of David is a king who will arise from among the people to deliver Israel from its enemies. That Davidic king would be endowed with supernatural gifts. "With a rod of iron he shall break in pieces all their substance, He shall destroy the godless nations with the word of his mouth" (Ps. of Sol. 17:24).

    Israel's history had experienced three great bondages: the Egyptian, the Babylonian, and now the Roman. The first two had had political solutions, and the Jews expected the same for the third. For first-century Jews, a Messiah who did not at least deliver the nation politically could hardly be considered genuine. The Messianic hope of the Jews rested upon a king of David's line who would free them from the oppressor.

    It is in that light that we need to see the revolutionary significance of Matthew 1:21. With one inspired sentence Matthew overturns the whole Jewish concept of the Messiah. The Christ, he asserts, would not save His people from their Roman overlords, but from their sins.

    The fact that Jesus, as the anointed Son of David, would not deliver people from their enemies came as a terrible disappointment to the Jews of Christ's day, including the disciples. One of Jesus' most difficult tasks was to teach a people, who preferred the conquering-king model, the true nature of His Messianic kingdom.

    If we look into our hearts we will probably find that we are very much like those Jews. It is much more pleasant to get rid of an enemy ("Let them have it, Lord; give them what they deserve.") than our pet vices, which are so tempting and beguiling. Yet the proclamation of Matthew 1:21 is that Jesus came to save me from my sins.

January 17, 2021

1/17/2021

The Forgotten Partner

        Now 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 of the Holy Spirit; and her husband Joseph; being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit." Matt. 1:18-20, RSV.

    And then there was Joseph! Not in a good situation.

    Most of us never give much thought to him or the anguish he must have felt in his role in God's plan. He is just there, kind of like a house down the street that we are aware of but don't know anything about even though we pass it every day. Because of our lack of interest in him, I almost decided to skip over him in this devotional. After all, "he is only the husband of Mary." But, we need to remember that the neglected partners of highly visible people are individuals who support and enable the celebrated ones to perform their functions.

    So it was with behind-the-scenes Joseph. Not merely "the husband of Mary," he also functioned as the earthly father of Jesus. Of course, most of their neighbors considered him to be the father, giving the rather scandalous circumstances of Jesus' birth. It was Joseph who took Mary and Baby Jesus to the Temple to dedicate Him to the Lord, it was Joseph who led the family to Egypt to escape the machinations of Herod, it was Joseph who brought the family back to settle in Nazareth, it was Joseph who accompanied the 12-year-old Jesus to the feast for His Bar Mitzvah, and it was Joseph the carpenter who taught Jesus the same trade. And during that teaching they spent countless hours together as the older man helped guide and shape the younger. To put it bluntly, Joseph is a crucial character in the story of redemption. Invisible to us, but quite visible and important in the life of our Lord and Savior.

    Joseph faced the crisis of his life when he discovered that Mary was pregnant. He knew for certain it wasn't by him. But who then? She had that story about the angel and the Spirit, but that was far-fetched to say the least.

    As a man with rights he could have made a scene. But being a good man who loved the "wayward" teenager, he decided to put her away silently. Then the angel visited him also and changed the course of his life--and ours.

    There is a lesson here. We are all too prone to overlook the person or persons who sacrifice to make possible the public work of more visible individuals. Today is the day to stop that injustice. Think of the sacrificing but "invisible" people in your world and go out of your way to drop them a card or make a phone call of appreciation--today.

January 16, 2021

1/16/2021

The "Gospel" Before the Gospel

        And Mary Said, My soul magnifies the Lord, And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever." Luke 1:46-55, ESV.

    In Mary's song we have what N. T. Wright calls "the gospel" before the gospel, a fierce bright shout of triumph thirty weeks before Bethlehem, thirty years before Calvary and Easter....It's all about God, and it’s all about revolution. And it's all because of Jesus--Jesus who's only just been conceived, not yet born, but who has made Elizabeth's baby leap for joy in her womb and has made Mary giddy with excitement and hope and triumph." Mary's song (often called the Magnificat) has been set to music with trumpets and kettledrums by Johann Sebastian Bach, whispered in the prayer closets of humble Christians around the world, and recited in countless church Christmas pageants. It is one of Christianity's most famous songs.

    It is a song of God's power and the victory that He will achieve through the unborn child. Yet it doesn't tell the whole story. Mary has viewed the glory of the gospel but she has yet many things to learn as her child matures. He will be like a sword who pierces her soul (Luke 2:35). She will lose Him for three days when He is 12.  Then she will question His mental balance when He is 30 and will utterly despair for three dark days in Jerusalem, perhaps wondering what went wrong and if she had been deceived. But beyond the fog and darkness of her clouded fears and thoughts will come Resurrection and Pentecost. Only then will she begin to see the whole picture of the baby she has conceived.

    But for now her song echoes the Old Testament promises in nearly each of its words. Those covenant promises speak of a Savior who will make all things right, who will rescue His covenant people and turn this world upside down.

    Oh God, like Mary of old, we do not see everything clearly. But like her, we rejoice in Your power and our salvation. We praise You today for what You have done, and doing, and will do in the future.

January 15, 2021

1/15/2021

An Abnormal Response

        "I am the Lord's servant," said Mary: "may it happen to me as you have said." And the angel left her. Luke 1:38, TEV.

    Mary could have made many possible responses to her short conversation with the angel. A quite normal one would have been, "Do you think I'm nuts" Do you really expect me to go around with an obviously bulging stomach telling the legalistic people in my cramped community that the Holy Spirit made me pregnant?"

    Here we need to get inside the skins of the Bible characters. It is all too easy to just read the story as something that happened to people who are essentially different from us. But that is wrong. It is unbiblical. We need to put ourselves into the story to get its true import. How would you feel if it happened to you or your daughter? What would be your response?

    Philip Yancey asks, "How many times did Mary review the angel's words as she felt the Son of God kicking against the walls of her uterus? How many times did Joseph second-guess his own encounter with an angel--just a dream?--as he endured the hot shame of living among villagers who could plainly see the changing shape his fiancée?"

    And Malcolm Muggeridge states that in our day, with its family-planning clinics that provide convenient ways to correct "mistakes" that disgrace the family, "It is, in point of fact, extremely improbable, under existing conditions, that Jesus would have been permitted to be born at all. Mary's pregnancy, in poor circumstances, and with the father unknown, would have been an obvious case for an abortion; and her talk of having conceived as a result of the intervention of the Holy Ghost would have pointed to the need for psychiatric treatment, and made the case for terminating her pregnancy even stronger. Thus our generation, needing a Savior more, perhaps, than any that has ever existed, would be too humane to allow one to be born."

    These would have been normal responses. But we can be forever grateful that Mary by faith declared herself to be God's servant who was ready to suffer the consequences to serve her Lord.

    And she set the pattern for all those who would accept her Son and live by faith in Him. They are abnormal from the ways of the world but normal in those of God. Like their Lord, they are different.

January 14, 2021

1/14/2021

An Improbable Explanation

        Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God....With God nothing shall be impossible. Luke 1:34-37.

    Mary might have been young and innocent and probably a bit naïve, but she knew the facts of life. And she also realized that babies did not come out of thin air, that it took a man and a woman to conceive one. As a result, her question is quite appropriate: "How can I have a baby? I'm a virgin" (Luke 1:34, TLB); "I am not married" (Phillips); "I've never slept with a man" (Message).

    The question was normal enough--an expected response. Gabriel's answer, however, must have blown this young woman clear out of the water: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you" (verse 35, RSV). Here we have an explanation that is unique and incomprehensible. It is a part of the incarnation. By this time Mary's head must have been whirling with all kinds of powerful emotions. But the plain fact of the situation is that the child would be fathered by God the Holy Spirit. Here we have a mystery that we can't even begin to understand. The Bible doesn't seek to explain it but merely states it as fact.

    The child that will be born of that improbable union is called "that holy thing," "holy child" (NASB), "holy" (RSV). The basic idea under the word "holy (hagios) is "separate" or "different." That which is holy is separated from the sinful ways of the world and set apart for God and dedicated to Him. All other human beings might become holy in their second birth when they accept Christianity (John 3:3, 5), but Jesus was born that way in His natural birth. He entered the world in a born-again state. Thus He had a desire for goodness from His birth onward.

    We hear a great deal of discussion in some circles about the human nature of Christ. It is difficult to follow all of the arguments. But the Bible right up front in the gospel story tells us that Jesus was different in that He was born holy. No one said that about me (or you) at my birth. But then I was not born of a virgin with the Holy Spirit as my father. If I had been, then, and only then, would I be just like Jesus. He was born holy, while I was born under the effect of Adam's sin (Rom. 5:12).

    Father, as we meditate upon the mystery of the Incarnation, help us to grasp more of the majesty and the wonder of it all.

January 13, 2021

1/13/2021

No Ordinary Child

        "And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end." Luke 1:31-33, RSV.

    While Mary may have been troubled (Luke 1:29) and afraid (verse 30) at the appearance of the angel Gabriel and his announcement of an unexpected birth, she must also have been totally astounded at the nature of the promised child. Mostly she was probably perplexed in the face of the information overload she received in a few short moments--information that would not only transform her life irrevocably but also change the course of world history.

    Gabriel tells Mary at least five important things in verses 31-33 about the child she will conceive. First, it would be a boy. That was always good news in a Jewish home. While girls were welcome, the birth of a son meant that the family name would be carried on and that there would eventually be one more strong back to help support the family in a subsistence economy. In a patriarchal family the birth of a son was the highlight of a mother's life.

    But what a son this one would be! A second point in the angel's announcement is that His name would be Jesus, the Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua, which means "Yahweh saves" or "God saves." And, of course, all Jews were aware of the historic role of Joshua in being God's agent in conquering Palestine and establishing their people there.

    Thus the very name assigned to the boy would be pregnant with important overtones. And Gabriel will fill out those overtones in a way scarcely conceivable to the human mind. He goes on to proclaim that this Jesus (1) will be "the Son of the Most High," (2) that "the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David," and (3) that His kingdom would last forever and never end.

    With those short phrases Gabriel told Mary that she would not only be the mother of the long-awaited Messiah, but that the Messiah would be divine. Here is a new idea, The Jews had viewed the Messiah as a great man like David, but not as God.

    All in all, the announcement was of stupendous proportions. How would you feel if you had such an experience?

    A side issue related to Mary's story is that God used such a humble girl for His purposes. And that is important news for you and me. God can also involve us in His great plan if we allow Him to do so.

January 12, 2021

1/12/2021

A Troubled Mary

        The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And having come in, the angel said to her, "Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!" But when she saw him, she was troubled....Then the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God." Luke 1:26-30, NKJV.

    Have you spent much time thinking about Mary? Here is a girl probably about 14 or 15 years of age who was engaged to an older man, as was the custom of the times.

    That wasn't so bad. But then an angel shows up in her room and tells her she is going to be pregnant. Put yourself in her place. To say the least, this situation will be difficult to explain. After all, you can't exactly hide a protruding abdomen. Then there will be the baby. And what will Joseph think?

    No wonder the Bible says she was troubled. You would be too.

    But to get the full impact we need to mentally move back to the first century. Modern promiscuous culture has blunted our thinking on the topic. Let's face it, with 1 million teenage girls each year in the United States getting pregnant out of wedlock, we may not feel the full force of Mary's predicament. It is one thing to have a "problem" in New York City, but in a closely knit Jewish village in the first century the news brought by the angel must have been disconcerting in the extreme. After all, Jewish law regarded a betrothed woman who became pregnant as an adulteress, subject to death by stoning.

    When we read the gospel story we need to remember that these were real people like you and me. They lived in communities with the same kinds of gossip mills and social dynamics as we have today. When Jesus left heaven for earth, He came to the mess that we call society.

    As I think of Mary, I imagine my own daughters if they had been in a similar situation and my heart shudders.

    No wonder Mary trembled. But, the God who knows each of us knew her. And the angel noted that she should "rejoice" because she was "highly favored" and "blessed."

    There is a lesson here for me. In my day-to-day challenges I don't see the big picture clearly, I easily get discouraged. But God views the larger whole. He knows that I am at times being blessed when all I can discern is the sky caving in on my life.

    Lord, give me the eyes of faith so that I might truly see.