Not too early to begin to reflect - James Montgomery Boice

....If you make room for Christ, then from this day on, the world will have no room for you.

We see this in Luke 2:7. For, notice, it does not say "because there was no room for him in the inn." It says "for them." That includes Mary and Joseph as well as the infant Jesus.

And who are Christ's mother and father and sister and brother today? Are they not those who do the will of Christ's Father, as He told us in Matthew 12:48-50?

He replied to him, "who is my mother, and who are are my brothers?" Pointing to his disciples he said, "Here are my mother and brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.

Are they not those who open their hearts to Him and follow Him?

Well, then, if you have followed Him, the world will have no more room for you than it had for Him.

You must not think that if you follow Jesus you will be praised for doing so. The "angels will rejoice over every sinner who repents," no matter how insignificant in the world's eyes.

But the world will not rejoice.

The world will scorn your decision. The world will seek to put you down. Then, if it cannot get you to renounce your decision or compromise your stand, it will turn its back on you and go its own way, shutting you out.

That is what Jesus foretold. It was He who said, "If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you" (John 15:19).

Jesus said, "Woe to you when men speak well of you" (Luke 6:26).

Jesus said to His disciples, "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).

To be Christ's follower is to be a person without a country. A displaced person. It is to follow Him into the poverty of the early years at Nazareth, the loneliness of the itinerant ministry, eventually to the cross, all the time knowing that the disciple, like the Master, has no place to lay his head.

Taken from The Christ of Christmas, by James Montgomery Boice

Christmas - No more myrrh...

No more myrrh...

On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh (Matthew 2:11).



We don't know much about the wise men. How many were there? (There were 3 gifts mentioned, but no mention of how many "wise men" brought them.)

Were they from the area of Babylon? Many think so. Others say, "No, because Babylon was a well-known location and would have been given as their homeland and so China, or some other exotic place is most likely." 

Kenneth Bailey reminds us that "from the east" was an expression used for many centuries, even today, to mean "across the Jordan," and so likely they were from Arabia, where frankincense and myrrh were found.

How long did it take them to get to Jerusalem?

We don't know. Maybe up to 2 years. We know Jesus was no longer a new-born baby, and He was in a house by the time of their arrival. Why did Herod ask that children under the age of 2 years be killed? Did he calculate that the little baby was now a small child? (It appears from the record that he did.) Did it take them that long to travel to Jerusalem?

And I have another question: Why did the wise men come to worship the child? Were they accustomed to worshipping Kings? Did they worship Herod? Or they could have gone all the way to Rome if they wanted to worship a famous king.

Who were these mysterious men and who gave them all the information? Maybe they had read the available Greek translation of the Old Testament and knew all the prophecies.

I guess all those answers are locked in a great safe somewhere awaiting a later time to be opened for us.

Anyway, I think about the gifts. We have all heard the symbolism: gold for the King; incense for worship; myrrh for burial needs.



Gold is easy. It's the precious metal of kings and has been for centuries.

Incense is significant because it was used in Temple worship. It was mixed with the oil that was used to anoint the priests. It was part of the meal offerings that were given for thanksgiving and praise to God. It gave the offering its pleasant odor.

Paul compared the gifts he received from the Philippians and praised them because  "they are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasant to God" (Philippians 4:18).

It was most important that incense was never mixed with sin offerings, which were meat and wine. Sin offerings never included incense. Only the offerings of thanks and praise were to have incense. Christ would never need to appear at the Temple with a sin offering. His offerings would always include incense.

What about myrrh? Much is made of this gift since it was used primarily for embalming. It was very costly. It was not  a typical baby gift. But for the wise men it was a gift of faith, just like their hazardous journey from the "east" to Jerusalem was a journey of faith.

We don't know what they knew about Christ's suffering. Probably they had the Old Testament scrolls and were familiar with the passages about the suffering Messiah.

Were they Jews who had been dispersed during the times of the Babylonians?

Or were they Gentiles who perhaps possessed some documents, oral and written,  that had been handed down from one generation to the next after the fall of Babel? Did their information predate Babel?

We don't know, but the ideas are certainly fascinating.

But what we do know is that myrrh was for embalming, not a gift for an ordinary baby.

What else do we know? Isaiah 60 foretells the second coming of Christ and His reign from Mount Zion. The text tells us...."The LORD rises upon you and His glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light and kings to the brightness of your dawn...and all from Sheba will come, bearing gold and incense and proclaiming the  praise of the LORD."

Gold and incense....no myrrh.....because the future coming of the Messiah will be a King reigning in glory....no suffering..no death...no need for myrrh.

WOW....DOXOLOGY!!!!

How We Come to the Manger

 

                                              How We Come to the Manger

"And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And the angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the  Lord shone around them and they were terrified...'Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.'" (Luke 2)

Sometimes we forget that those words of good news of great joy that came for all mankind were delivered to individuals. The word "you" appears four times  in these few verses.

God loves all mankind because He loves each! Don't ever think you are unimportant individually in God's great rescue plan.

Don't let yourself get lost in the crowd.

Remember Jesus tells us that He call us individually by name.

We come to the manger as we come to the cross......one by one!

Christmas - Emmanuel - Sally Lloyd-Jones

Mary and Joseph had to take a trip to Bethlehem, the town King David was from.

But when they reached the little town, they found every room was full. Every bed had been taken.

"Go away!" the innkeepers told them. "There isn't any place for you."

They couldn't find anywhere except an old, tumbledown stable

So they stayed where the cows and the donkeys and the horses stayed.

In there, in the stable, among the chickens and the donkeys and the cows, in the quiet of the night, God gave the world His wonderful gift.

The baby that would change the world was born -- His baby Son.

Mary and Joseph wrapped him up to keep Him warm. They made a soft bed of straw and used the animals' feeding trough as his cradle. And they gazed in wonder at God's Great Gift, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger.

Mary and Joseph named him, Jesus, "Emmanuel" -- which means "God has come to live with us."

Because, of course, He had.

     --From The Jesus Storybook Bible
                      by Sally Lloyd-Jones

Wise Men Still Seek Him!

After the shepherds and the wise men received their summons to meet the Christ Child, they obeyed.

They journeyed to Bethlehem. They found the Savior.


They discovered that the words of the angel and the message of the star were not misleading. It was not a hoax!

God's Son had been born. Immanuel had arrived!

He was there for all who would leave what they were doing and come to Him.

That is also true today.

In our day people talk as if it were hard to find Christ, or act as if it were hard to find their way through the superstitions of religion to the truth about God.

What a terrible misunderstanding!

To talk like that is to suggest that God is lost and that it is up to us to find Him.

He is not lost nor is the truth lost.

We are the ones who are lost, and the difficulties are in us and not in either God or His gospel.

Do not say the truth cannot be found.

Jesus said, "I am the....truth" (John 14:6).

Jesus is presented in Scripture.

If you want to find Him, you must search the Scriptures.

As you do, pray:"God, I am not certain what the truth is concerning religious things. But I believe that if You exist and if Jesus Christ is truly Your Son and the Savior You have sent into the world, then You should be able to show this to me as I study the Bible.

If Jesus is the Savior, I want to find Him. If I do find Him, I promise to be His disciple and serve Him all my days."