Living Like a Christian

Christmas All Year Round

December 25, 2019 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

I’m gonna keep this one short. You should be with your family and friends, eating a slab of fudge, or smoked brisket, or downing some mulled wine.

All I want to remind you of on this Christmas day, is that Christmas is a year round truth. Yes, the month-long crescendo which leads up to Christmas morning is a wonderful reminder of the long wait for Christ’s first advent, and the joy which geysered forth that first Christmas morning. It is a month which should be full of giddy excitement, anticipation, and gladness. God has come to make us His temple, His dwelling place. But Christmas isn’t just for December.

That first Christmas was when God planted the flag of conquest on the human race by taking for Himself a body. This means he intended to claim this planet for Himself. Christmas is a political event. Man’s kingdom––long ruled by the prince of darkness grim––has been overthrown, and is now ruled by a Man, like us, but One who died and overcame death and will never die. This Man is ruling at God’s right hand, for He came to bring the Kingdom of God. So remember, that this day is a reminder that Christ is King. Not in theory. Not in wish. Not in some esoterical “higher consciousness”.

No. Jesus Christ is King of planet earth. Now. The flag has been planted. The campaign of conquest marches on. And one day every knee will bow before Him, and every tongue will confess that truth. Which is why we, His people, ought to celebrate like crazy. So from my family to yours: have the holliest, jolliest, merriest Christmas, for Christ the Savior is born.

Hopes and Fears of All the Years

December 24, 2019 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

Years ago, the church I attended had an interim pastor, whose name I don’t remember, who was from Australia. That is unimportant to the story, but I mention it anyway. Free of charge. Anyway…he served through the Christmas season that year, and I recall that his Christmas Eve sermon lingered on that phase from the carol O Little Town of Bethlehem:

“The hopes and fears of all the years, are met in thee tonight.”

What a great line. In the tradition of the pastor from down under, I’d like to run over the implications of that phrase.

Think of those 4000 years from Eden to Bethlehem, from Adam to the Second Adam, from ruin to redemption. Right after the fall, we see Eve overjoyed that she has conceived a child, a seed, and she must have hoped that this was God’s fulfillment of His promise. But her hopes were soon disappointed as this first child became the like the serpent: a murderer.

Noah was a preacher of righteousness in the midst of a world dwelling in the macabre caverns of indescribable wickedness and corruption. So God overthrows the world, and in a sense, starts over with Noah. But soon the hopes of mankind being restored to Eden are dashed to pieces.

Mankind builds a tower to the heavens. God thwarts their purpose. God calls Abram out of the moon-worshippers of Ur; he believes God through all the windings of his sojourns.

Down through the ages, the story runs, and it seems like the coils of the serpent are inevitable. Egypt enslaves the people of God. But God delivers them. But they soon show that the serpent’s poison is in them. They rebel, they wander, they conquer the promised land, then they do what is right in their own eyes, and are like toddlers who so easily forget.

They offer bulls, goats, and sheep without number. They demand a king, rather than God being their king. God grants their request, and the king is possessed by an evil spirit. God gives them good king David, but despite his (and his son’s) reign being quite glorious, they both falter, sin, fail.

The hopes of the believing Israelite were often brought to the brink. At one point, there’s only one child left in the Davidic line. Over and over, their fears seem to grow large, while their hope seems to fail. But every time, God brings about an unexpected deliverance. Foreshadowing His greatest triumph.

Cain wasn’t the savior, nor Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, or Daniel. Through wanderings, exiles, slavery, idolatry, sin, triumphs, conquests, and defeats, God was bringing all the hopes and fears of His people to focus on a single point in history. After Malachi’s prophecy there were 400 years of prophetic silence. Their hope had grown dim, their fears had multiplied.

And then a cry is heard. A child was born. Mankind’s hope for salvation from sin had finally been answered. Mankind’s fear of damnation had finally been silenced. So look towards that little town of Bethlehem, where––two thousand winters ago––a child was born of virgin. In that manger is laid the bread of life from heaven. In that stable is the hope of all the earth. In that boy is the king who would conquer all our fears. Joy and peace had finally come to earth, and His name was called: Immanuel. God with us. In Him all your hopes find their answer, and all your fears are cast out, but His perfect love.

Grinnin’ & Singin’

December 23, 2019 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

The heavens are not silent. We know that night and day without ceasing the seraphim, those angelic creatures which surround the Lord’s throne, cry, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Unbelieving scientists even recognize that the universe is a noisy place. The stars are buzzing and humming away at frequencies so diverse we need very precise instruments to catch the faintest hint of their song.

When the heavenly host came down to Bethlehem heralding the glad tidings of Christ’s birth, they invited mankind to join their chorus. The Son of God had come, and should man remain silent? The world, which had remained under the dark lord’s tyranny since the fall in Eden, was now invited to follow this Child-king as He conquered the Enemy and ushered in His kingdom of peace.

Now, when Christ died, rose again, and ascended to the Father’s right hand, it might seem to the unbelieving eye that nothing had changed. But, indeed, everything had changed. God had become a man, died in mankind’s place, overcame death, and ascended to the throne of the universe. The early church while retaining the Hebrew Psalter, also began to compose hymns of praise to Christ. It became a singularly feature of the Christian faith: we sing.

And our singing is our weaponry. We sing good news. We sing “born that man no more may die.” We sing, “He rules the world with truth and grace.” We sing, “O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.” We sing, “The kingdom of this world is become the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ.” We sing, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” We sing, “To free us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray.” We sing, “Rejoice, rejoice.”

In other words, after all the shopping is done, after all the presents are wrapped, after the egg nog is poured in the mugs, after all the cookies are decorated, after the turkey is in the roaster, do not neglect to sing. After all, we have something to sing about. Sin is forgiven. Death is defeated. The works of the devil have been destroyed. The King of kings has come. He sits enthroned, swaying the scepter of the universe. Christians are to go about grinnin’ and singin’, telling all the world about this good news of man’s salvation in and through Christ.

So, sing, sing, sing. With big grins. Sing, and don’t worry about using your outdoor voices. Sing like men made free. Sing like men who will live forever in glory. Sing like those know that death has no sting. Sing, because the dragon is cast down. Sing, because Christ was born in Bethlehem. Sing, because Christ is King of kings, Lord of lords, and we are His people. Hallelujah, indeed.

Christmas IS for Fussers (Part 2)

December 22, 2019 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

Yesterday I said, “Christmas ain’t for fussers.” But––as Reb Tevye would say––“on the other hand,” Christmas is for fussers. We are a discontented race. We envy, covet, lust, gripe, murmur, dispute, wrangle, tangle, and war. If we have plenty, we are still dissatisfied that we don’t have their stuff. If we don’t have much at all, we’re despondent that the “1% are keeping us down.” But, Christmas is the offer of salvation from all our twisted up malcontent.

We wanted to be as God, and so we grabbed the fruit before the Lord’s appointed time. The history of lost humanity is one long tale of us hating God and hating our brother. We hate God because His holiness offends our grimy-grey morality. We hate our brother because he won’t fall down and worship us. We are a miserable wreck.

But Christmas comes. And it’s message is that Christ humbled himself (Phi. 2:7-8). The Lord if Glory came down into the garbage dump of the cosmos, laid hold of the dead corpse of humankind, and took it upon Himself, died the just death which was coming for us, all that He might resurrect you and me to share in His eternal glory which he had with the Father and the Spirit before all worlds.

It is this humility which is both our salvation and our example. He became one of us, that He might save us from our gripes and hatreds and sins. Then He show us the way to be truly human. Christmas is for the fussiest of fussers. The grinchiest of grinches. The scroogiest of scrooges.

This great mercy is why His name is the name which will be upon every tongue, and to which every knee will bow (Phi. 2:10-11). So we see in the Christ-child both the one who will pay the death-price for our sin, and the one who will show us the way out of the prison of our sin. The cost of our sin was the humiliating death of Christ. The way out of our sin is the humility of Christ. So all fussers come to the Christ child, and fuss no more. Instead, let your knees bend low, let your tongue sing loud:

Hail the heav’n born Prince of Peace, hail the Son of righteousness
Light and life to all He brings, risen with healing in His wings
Mild He lays His glory by, born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth
Charles Wesley

Christmas Ain’t for Fussers (Part 1)

December 21, 2019 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

We must all admit that we’ve had at least one displeasing Christmas present. Perhaps it was the wrong size, color, shape, brand, or age level. Someone just mentioned that their boyfriend’s mother bought her a giant rubber ducky for Christmas last year. She was 26 years old. It wasn’t a gag-gift. Once, my sister, being quite young, opened a Christmas present from our Grandma. It was a set of clothes. To which my sister memorably replied, “Clothes. Boring.” And tossed them aside.

Of course, we’ve all probably groaned or grumbled or fussed about some gift we’ve been given. We like to think that we left all the grumbling behind us in our childhood. But zooming out we can see that we adults are just more discrete in our fussing. Some families dread Christmas because it ain’t a slice of peace on earth, more like World War 3. So and so doesn’t want some other relative around because their feuding. The adult kids are with the other parents this year. Mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again. That sort of thing.

But we also can fuss in very spiritual looking ways. “Look at all this materialism.” “Christmas has pagan roots.” “This is all so over the top.” Or the sanctimonious, “I aim to be generous all year round.”

But Scripture forbids––in all its forms––fussing: “Do all things without murmurings and disputings (Phl. 2:14).” The greek word for murmurings is hilariously transliterated as “goggysmos.” What an onomatopoeia! Goggysmos means an inner secret debate. Like those arguments in your head that you always win, looking (in your mind’s eye) like a renowned rhetorician from ancient Greece.

So, regardless of your age, regardless of the gift, regardless of the season, be thankful. No fussing. Christmas ain’t for fussers. No fussing for children, and no fussing for the big people. Gratitude is the context in which Paul prohibits murmuring and disputing. Christ’s sacrificial humility (Phi. 2:5-11) is the mindset which we’re to have. In other words, Christ’s Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection should bring us up short if ever we’re tempted to fuss.

Materialism is an Orc

December 20, 2019 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

Christmas is a battle between two world-views. On one side, like an uncircumcised Philistine, stands Materialism. On the other, the armies of the Living God, shaking in their boots despite the fact that God has come in the flesh. Materialism is like an Orc, it is a twisted version of something beautiful. That something is the Incarnation. And the Armies of Israel should defy the giant, and sling a stone at his forehead.

For decades now, we’ve been told that the universe is governed by cold, brute “forces”, which the scientists like to call laws. Gravity. Chemical processes. Ecosystems. Nuclear fission. Second law of thermodynamics. “All that we see and touch can be explained,” so the white lab coats tell us. But then they wax eloquent about the beauty and glory of mathematical formulas, the boundlessness of space, the wonder of the animal spirit, and the mysteries of physics.

But the Materialist has no basis to call anything good, beautiful, or even true. If matter is all there is, then nothing actually matters. Our emotions are identical with a shook up can of Dr. Pepper.

However, this Goliath of our day has a smooth stone coming for his brow. That stone is the announcement which took place in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. There it was told to a virgin that she would bear a Son, miraculously, and this child would be a true human child, but whose origin was from eternity. His name would be Immanuel, God with us. In other words, the transcendent God drew so near to us that we could see, hear, and touch Him. The Incarnation is a big fancy word that we use to describe what took place when God became a man. Jesus did not cease to be God, nor did he ever become God. He was God. But God now had a material body.

Which means that the matter of this world was now joined to God not only in a relationship of Creator/created, but by a Redeemer/redeemed relationship. God had come to save the world, and redeem it from the curse. Man’s salvation has implications for the whole material world. It groans, we are told, for the adoption, “the redemption of our body (Rom. 8:23).”

The Materialist believes that stuff is all there is, and ends up with nothing. It can’t explain beauty, joy, glory, or goodness. But the Incarnation bridges the divide between God and man, Creator and creature. Now, in Christ, our body and soul is promised resurrection. Our final state is not one of disembodied ghoulishness. No, we will eat, drink, laugh, play, in a material world which will have been resurrected to glory.

So, Christmas is a celebration of the Incarnation, which means we should not just give each other the ethereal “Christmas Spirit.” We should give each other stuff. Things. Molecules of matter. God gave us Himself, wrapped in human clay, in order to redeem the whole created world. So smoke a pork shoulder, give diamond earrings, snuggle under a fleece blanket with piping hot chocolate, sing with vocal cords, lift up holy hands in praise, and enjoy the blessings which God has filled this world with and redeemed by His own blood.

Break the Bank Like Wise Men

December 19, 2019 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

What sort of giver are you? How much is too much? Do you tell yourself that because you’re such a generous person all year round that you don’t need to give elaborate presents come Christmas-time? Do you chide those who seem to go overboard with the gift-giving, and look down your nose at their consumerism?

Generosity is imitative. In fact, every gift and dollar you’ve ever donated wasn’t even yours to give. God has given you “play money” so that you can imitate His generosity. But you didn’t create those atoms out of nothing. You didn’t cause yourself to exist to take that breath to work that job to make that money which you donated to a charity. All of your giving is dependent on God’s giving.

Which is why, when it comes to Christmas, we shouldn’t be tempted to hold back. God demonstrates for us how we ought to give. He gives Himself. It is no cliché to say that He gave the greatest of gifts. In giving us His Son, He gave us Himself, and by giving Himself: “of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace (Jhn. 1:16).”

So break the bank this Christmas. Give lavishly. And it goes without saying, do so wisely. It isn’t generous to your family to rack up a bunch of debt, which, in effect, enslaves them for the rest of the year (or longer). But, give the most you can.

If you’ve been stingy all year long, now’s a good time to repent and sin no more. If you’ve been withdrawn and distant from your family this year, give them your time, attention, and thoughtfulness in the form of tangible gifts. And get busy being present with your family all the year round. If you’ve been generous all year, why stop short?

God has given unto us, and we ought to imitate Him in our giving. Which means giving the sort of gifts which cannot be repaid. Leave the receiver aghast in shocked joy. Give with such gusto that the grace shown to us at the first Christmas is echoed in our gift giving. We didn’t deserve the salvation which God sent to us in His Son; but He gave it out of sheer grace and goodness. So go and do likewise.

Give Christ. Give Him by imitating Him. Give Him by praising Him. Give Him by reading His Word together. Give Him by giving thanks for all the gifts He showers upon us daily and through each other’s imitative generosity. Give Christ. All of Christ.

Don’t Ruin Christmas

December 18, 2019 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

There are two sorts of people who ruin Christmas. Those who douse it with a gallon of sentimentalist syrup. These folks unreflectively trot out the Christmas tree, spread tinsel everywhere, spread “Christmas cheer”, and make sure Santa is center stage. The other sort are those who mutter about the pagan origins of all these things, and love to remind us “Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th anyway, bahumbug.”

Just because you’ve decked the halls does not mean that you are truly celebrating Christmas. You may just be celebrating an Americanized “Happy Holiday.” As a Christian, this is not at all acceptable. We celebrate Christ. He is the focal point of it, and if we or our families miss this fact, we’ve got the whole thing upside down.

But, if you’ve bought the myth that Christmas is really a pagan holiday with a Christian veneer, you couldn’t be further from the truth. To top it off, even if you’re correct about the pagan roots of Christmas, why should it surprise you that converted pagans celebrate Christ’s birth like pagans would? There’s a lot to cover in a short space so let’s look at some of the issues in question.

December 25th?

December 25th is a perfectly reasonable date for the birth of Christ. As William Tighe shows, the Romans likely hijacked it from Christians, not vice versa:

The pagan feast which the Emperor Aurelian instituted on that date in the year 274 was not only an effort to use the winter solstice to make a political statement, but also almost certainly an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians. The Christians, in turn, could at a later date re-appropriate the pagan “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” to refer, on the occasion of the birth of Christ, to the rising of the “Sun of Salvation” or the “Sun of Justice.”
William Tighe, Calculating Christmas

Christmas Trees?

Jeremiah 10:3-5 describes a heathen practice similar to trimming our Christmas trees. But Jeremiah goes on to explain that we shouldn’t fear the heathen’s idols or their idolatrous practices, they can’t do evil or good. God is the one who made trees and He was the first one to hang ornaments on them. If anyone did the borrowing it was the pagans. Just putting up the tree doesn’t mean you’re celebrating Christmas. We can certainly celebrate the birth of Christ without a tree. But, if we do have one we aren’t committing idolatry. After all, the trees belong to God.

Santa?

But what about Santa? If you’re marking gifts “From Santa”, I think you’re setting yourself up for awkward conversations with your kids when they realize it looks an awful lot like your handwriting. But, should we do away entirely with Father Christmas? I say, “No.” First of all, Santa was a real person. St. Nicholas was a brother in Christ, who famously punched the heretic Arius. Now that’s a Santa we can get on board with. He was also well-known for his generosity and service to the poor. His legend has certainly grown and been embellished. However, as Michael Ward shows in his book Planet Narnia, the figure of Father Christmas can be a helpful literary device to depict Joviality. So tell your family about the godly man, St. Nicholas. And don’t fret over the helpful symbol that a jolly king in red offers. But do not put him in your nativity scene.

Back to Eden

So don’t ruin Christmas. Don’t ruin it by decking the halls with sentimentality, or grumbling about the jolliness of the whole affair. Make the whole lead up to Christmas a robustly Christ-centered celebration. All the festivities and hullabaloo are pointless without worship of the Incarnate Christ being the main thing. On the other hand, don’t see pagan demons behind every wreath. Remember, the pagans were grasping after God in all the wrong ways, as Paul reminds us in his rebuke of the Athenians (Acts 17:23). The pagans were trying to get back to Eden the way we all do, by their own superstitious works of self-righteousness and worldly philosophy.

However, the only way back to the tree of life is through the tree of Calvary. And at Christmas we remember that the child born in Bethlehem would one day hang upon a tree for the forgiveness of our sins. Which is why we ought to celebrate with gusto.