Missions Paul

Advent – good news of great joy!

Acts 13: 32

“We tell you the good news: What God promised our ancestors”

I have been waiting for this verse to come. You can guess why?!! GOOD NEWS!

The angel said to the Shepherds, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.”

• Sometimes joy is given

They were impacted by an unexplainable event. It was an out of this world experience, a God-thing. This year you will probably not have had the angelic host sing to you, but maybe one day you were going about your normal business and by the end of that day your life had turned around, why? God had come to you. He had revealed Himself to you. From that moment on you knew your life would never be the same again.

This might seem strange to you, but God does want you to be happy! In Ecclesiastes 2:6 God gives happiness!

• Sometimes joy has to be found

He wants you to be willing to have what He wants to give you. He wants your partnership.

Mary had a visit by the angel, but she had to be willing, “May it be to me as you have said.” The shepherds weren’t presented with Jesus nor were they picked up and placed into the manger scene. God won’t force you to have good things for your life. He won’t deliver them without your full participation and He won’t drag you into them either. Do not think they ran into Bethlehem with an A-Z map and all they had to do was find Manger Street. Maybe they tried every cowshed in Bethlehem before they found the one with a baby in it, for that is the meaning of the word ‘search’.

• Sometimes we have to fight for our joy

I am reflecting this morning on what was told me last night about a Church of Pentecost Pastor who is in prison today on false charges of speaking against the government. He has been in prison for 4 months and has had visitors refused. He is in a country that if I told you then you would know how horribly difficult this must be for him. His wife is going to have a very stressful Christmas this year as she prays for the release of her husband.

Sometimes we have to fight for that joy. The enemy wants to steal it. Maybe this year there have been so many battles for that joy.

Mother Theresa commanded her workers to smile every day.

Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote: “Have you realised that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?”

Maybe the greatest battle of faith is the struggle within.

Advent – I was there!

Acts 13:31

“and for many days he was seen by those who had travelled with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are now his witnesses to our people.”

The fourth part of the gospel message for the early church: death, tomb, resurrection and now witnesses!

That first century saw many witnesses able to communicate their experiences of a risen Jesus. Luke who is writing the book of Acts keeps coming back to the same thing: witnesses. Since his first sentence, “In my former book Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach” Luke has been referring continually to the fact that there were witnesses.

At the first advent there were many witnesses and we can name every character in the nativity scene and the journey towards it and from it. We even know some characters that somehow have appeared in there but the Bible doesn’t mention them!

What good is a dead witness? All these characters are gone now. It must have been great to live in the days when you can hear the story from one of the witnesses: Listen, I was there, this is what happened!

However there is one witness who was there and who is still very much alive and Luke is the one who writes of Him. Luke likes his witnesses as we now know!

Let me embolden the person so you can spot Him:

Luke 1: ³⁴ “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” ³⁵ The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.” …³⁹ At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, ⁴⁰ where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. ⁴¹ When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit….⁵⁹ On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah, ⁶⁰ but his mother spoke up and said, “No! He is to be called John.” … ⁶⁷ His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied:⁶⁸ “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,     because he has come to his people and redeemed them.

Luke 2: ²⁵ Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. ²⁶ It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. ²⁷ Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, ²⁸ Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: ²⁹ “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. ³⁰ For my eyes have seen your salvation, ³¹ which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:”

We can be so grateful that the one witness who is still alive is alive in us!

If there is one thing that the Spirit would want to say to you as you journey through advent it is this: “I was there! I was at work. I made things happen. I directed the journeys of the witnesses. In fact I was more involved then has been recorded! (That’s just my imaginative thinking!)”

“I was the power that conceived Christ within Mary. I was filling lives. I was revealing messages. I was moving people into the right places. I was there.”

Just slow everything down now. Before you do another thing. Pause. Breathe. God who is in you, the Holy Spirit, witnessed the whole story of the coming of Christ.

The Holy Spirt witnesses not by reminding you of the story rather He works the story of Christmas into your life so that you are continually changed by it. May He work that story in you again and again and as He does you will live your life in such a way that it will appear you were a witness to the event.

Advent – the God of the Resurrection

Acts 13: 30

“But God raised him from the dead”

The message of the church was and has always been ‘death, laid in the tomb, resurrected’.

What has resurrection got to do with Advent?

Surely it only appears at Easter?

That is certainly where we have reserved the word. One of my pet-hates is going to Church at a time of the year when the service is not focusing on the certain aspect of God for that day, ie. On Pentecost Sunday I want to hear of the Holy Spirit. I don’t want to be hearing about the story of Noah. I want to celebrate the events at the right time.

But today I wake to a difficulty. This week I am teaching the Christmas story in the 30 degrees heat of the Ivory Coast. It feels like the UK is having a glorious summer and it feels wrong to preach on Joseph and Mary and the birth of Christ. My mind is struggling with the adjustment!

So here we are, restricted by the plan of this devotional blog walking through Acts and we have this verse, “But God raised him from the dead” and it is Christmas!

I think the problem with my pet-hate is that I put these amazing words such as Resurrection and the Incarnation into secure unbreakable categories that actually then only focus on the grandiose understanding of the verse and miss a simple truth.

The word ‘resurrection’ simple means in Greek, ‘standing up’. It is ‘anastasis’.

Of course this is profoundly used for the fact that God raised Jesus from the dead and at the last judgment we too will rise.

But it means standing up, let’s not forget that also.

This Christmas we are again focusing on the birth of Christ. I have been blessed with 2 children and from birth I have seen their every development. I remember how they learned to crawl and then to stand. In learning to stand they learnt that after falling they stand again despite the fear of falling on the next step.

Isaiah said that the people walking in darkness have seen a great light (9:2). We do not have to stumble in danger now that the light has come. We can stand.

Zechariah sang that the coming redeemer has shone ‘on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.’ (Luke 1:79).

The resurrection power of Jesus is for now not after we have died. It is to enable us to stand again even in the difficult dark day, not after the ordeal.

Who put the ability for the Christ-child to get out of the manger himself and to stand? Who created the innate power within all of creation that whether a flattened flower or a fallen child (or adult!) or animal to get back up? Surely it is the Creator God with Resurrection power.

At that first Easter God raised Jesus from the dead but He had been raising Him at the first Christmas too.

Today no matter your state or status, circumstance or category, let God cause you to stand up. You can do this. You can rise in your life. You can think new thoughts again. You can reach out for joy. You can believe again. You can dream. You can stand up.

Resurrection is to be celebrated at the first Advent as well as the second.

Acts 13: 29

“When they had carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the cross and laid him in a tomb.”

The Apostle Paul saw the higher purpose in Christ’s life and death. The higher purpose was found in the fulfilment of the Jewish prophecies.

More than any other gospel writer Matthew will refer to the Old Testament prophecies over 60 times. Here in the birth story:

“All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet (Isaiah) …” Matthew 1:22

“When Herod called together all the … teachers of the law … he asked them where the Christ was to be born. ‘In Bethlehem in Judea’ they replied, ‘for this is what the prophet (Micah) has written …” Matthew 2:5

Describing how Joseph took Mary and Joseph to Egypt until after Herod’s death: “And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet (Hosea) …” Matthew 2:15

Herod ordered the killing of the boys who were two years and under … Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled …” Matthew 2:17

Speaking of how Jesus went to live in Nazareth, “So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets (?) ‘He will be called a Nazarene’” Matthew 2:23. The (?) because no singular prophet is recorded as saying this phrase. But Matthew records it as plural, prophets, indicating that they would use the theme of that sentence in their sayings. It could also be Matthew recording Isaiah 11:1: “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit”. Though there is no mention of Nazareth anywhere in the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for Branch here in Isaiah is NZR and it could be that Matthew was referring to the branch as the coming Messiah.

Isaiah, Micah, Hosea and Jeremiah are all used by Matthew in the telling of the birth of Christ.

So why does Matthew do this?

He is keen to show that Jesus and the gospel story are built upon a strong foundation, that there is no other way to understand Jesus apart from the story of God in the Old Testament. The truth once hidden is now fulfilled in Christ:

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the Incarnate Deity!

If that is the truth of Jesus, then what of us? One of those same prophets, Jeremiah, at the beginning of his prophecy says that before we were formed God knew about us.

With this firmly in mind then the message becomes more about the fact that our lives are governed by Gods design. This is His story. We are here for him, for His good pleasure. We are here to serve Him with everything.

You are not here by chance, accident or mistake. But for His purpose. We were meant to be, no matter our status, circumstance or difficulties. This is our moment. We can bring glory to Him. He designed it to be so.

Advent – finding the Truth.

Acts 13: 28

“Though they found no proper ground for a death sentence, they asked Pilate to have him executed.”

At long last the people of Jerusalem and their rulers searched after Jesus. But it was not the search for personal transformation but rather to condemn. They lived in Jerusalem and were the spiritual rulers of the people, they knew the Scriptures and yet they didn’t truly know them. As a result the people followed their example. They searched to condemn but couldn’t find anything to pin on him, so they asked Pilate to sentence him.

Maybe they were the same people that were around at his birth. Very likely they were, but older now, yet nothing had changed. You see at the slightest rumour that a Saviour had been born you would have thought that the scribes, rulers and Pharisees would have been the first to be there, to check it out if nothing else. There are many who ought to be the first but because of familiarity and cynicism or anger and feelings of injustice, are last. They were not there at the birth but they were there at the death of Jesus.

John 6:24 “Once the crowd realised that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum in search of Jesus”. And why? Well, Jesus wasn’t fooled. He told them it wasn’t a genuine search for him. It was just because they had been fed miracle food at the feeding of the 5,000. They were searching in order to fulfil their appetite for more. So we come back to the verse today. We realise we can search for all the wrong reasons.

In 2015 a scientist in Jerusalem claimed he had ‘virtually unequivocal evidence’ that could help explain the whereabouts of Christ’s remains. Yes, I know, the sentence doesn’t make sense and in fact it was virtual that was the problem for him! He had found a tomb with inscriptions on the sides. Apparently that is all that was needed. Anyway I think he is still searching.

From his birth the shepherds then later the magi searched. They wanted to find the Christ and they did. It is not easy in the English language to grasp the urgency that the shepherds had once the angels had left them. The Living Bible is probably the best at trying to convey the meaning of a 2-letter Greek word which means, “Come on! Let’s go!” It is not easy searching for Jesus. It must have been difficult and perhaps sacrificial to travel from their homes to the house where Jesus was born.

Let me encourage you to find something new in Jesus this advent. You do not know it all. Even the advent story, you may think you do, but there are still gems to unearth.

This Christmas:

Don’t let yourself become so judgmental that it leaves you disappointed and angry.

Don’t let familiarity stop you finding truth.

Don’t let your own wish-list be the focus of what you try to find.

Don’t let your intelligence make you a virtual fool.

Don’t let apathy or any difficulty slow you down from the urgency of finding Jesus.

Find the Truth and the Truth will never disappoint.

Advent – the unrecognisable God

Acts 13:27

“The people of Jerusalem and their rulers did not recognize Jesus, yet in condemning him they fulfilled the words of the prophets that are read every Sabbath.”

I am away from home at the moment and where I am I haven’t seen many Christmas trees or tinsel. I am looking forward to all that when I return. This is how we celebrate his birth and we love it. I do think God could have done the birth of Jesus on a grander scale. There was always that danger that people would not recognise Him, that He be missed. He was. Isaiah says there was no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. Did God do this on purpose I wonder?

I love a carol service. There are many going on during this week. The Churches this year have done amazingly well with reports of record crowds around the world with some creative and attractive ways of presenting the story. We work hard to try and get people to recognise Him. But God seemed to want not to be recognised. Jesus looked human, too human, ‘isn’t this Mary’s boy?!”

The big question is where will His church be this advent? God is not always in the earthquake, the wind and the fire, but the quiet whisper. God was to be found in the humanness of pain, of the spit and dirt of life. That is where He was and is. Where is the church? Can we become vulnerable to the core and humbled by brokenness. Can we be known as one who smells because we sit with those who smell?

Maybe many will not recognise Jesus again this advent. Maybe they will sing the carols without thinking about the words. But for some they will find a new life, a light will dawn in their life. They will realise that the baby born in Bethlehem is now the risen and exalted Son of God who came for them, to die and to rise again. They will recognise him perhaps because the Church has not been afraid to become dirty, stripped of its glitter, meek, innocent, vulnerable and surrendered.

Maybe at the first advent God had to be unrecognisable. He had to hide himself from the glory and the glitter. The apostle Paul thinks so. The unrecognisable God in Jesus was condemned and thus fulfilled the prophecy of salvation by way of His death. In His mercy He came to die and with justice He made sure His world could live.

“Justice now revokes the sentence,

Mercy calls you; break your chains”

(Lyrics found within the carol, Angels from the Realms of Glory)

Today our task is not to keep Jesus unrecognisable, it is not to paint a Christmas which is only full of tinsel, it is not a holiday it is a Holy Day.

The world needs to recognise that Jesus came unrecognisable for them.

There was no other way.

This is the mission.

Advent: the God-child

Acts 13: 26

“Fellow children of Abraham and you God-fearing Gentiles, it is to us that this message of salvation has been sent.”

It is to us! Wow! What an incredible revelation when you know that the Saviour was sent for you. Since my early childhood I remember preachers declaring that if I was the only person in the world Jesus would have come and died for me. A bit dramatic and a touch of fantasy but true nonetheless.

When I read this verse this morning then these words just leapt from the page. “It is to us!” I am overwhelmed by these 4 words. They speak volumes of the Christmas story…

700 years before the event Isaiah prophesies “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (9:6)

700 years later and angel Gabriel confirms to the shepherds: “Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.” (Luke 2:11)

A few years later (!) and in the summer of 1741 a composer who only 4 years previously had suffered a stroke which made it impossible for him to play a musical instrument or even conduct, had come to the end of himself. Paralysed in his right arm and he being a right handed man, with blurred vision, badly in debt, the man was suffering depression.

Prior to the summer he had come across a libretto (the text written with the intention it be used in an opera). This libretto was entirely composed of Bible verses. The man at his lowest ebb that he had ever been decided he would make one last effort. He would write an oratorio (a large musical work for an orchestra and singers).

This musical piece was going to be the turning point of his life.

His music is today known all around the world, especially at Christmas.

Set almost central to part one of the work, is the Chorus:

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulder; and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

His assistant heard him say whilst writing, “I did think I saw heaven open, and saw the very face of God”.

I am of course speaking of George Frideric Handel.

This suffering and in debt, depressed man saw heaven open!

That’s what happens when we understand For to us a child is born. It is to Isaiah. It is to the Shepherds. It is to the world. It is to Handel. It is to us.

So I sit here overwhelmed.by these 4 words, ‘it is to us’; ‘it is to me’. It doesn’t matter how bad it gets, the God-child has come for me. He has stooped down into the mud and mire of my humanity, carnality, hopelessness and loneliness. If He can grow from a humble, vulnerable baby to be able to carry governments on His shoulders then I too can rise from any position I find myself in. I follow this God-child into my destiny.

To you a child is born. Let this truth change you today.

Advent – searching for God.

Acts 13:25

As John was completing his work, he said: ‘Who do you suppose I am? I am not the one you are looking for. But there is one coming after me whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.’

John the Baptist knew who he wasn’t. He wasn’t the Messiah. That is who they were searching for and John certainly possessed remarkable qualities but he wasn’t the One and he knew it more than anyone.

I am not the healer.

I am not the Saviour.

So who was?

The one that is coming after me, John would say.

John says ‘keep searching’. Jesus says the one who seeks finds. Paul quotes Isaiah who says God was found by those who didn’t seek Him, so that is encouraging! The writer of Hebrews says for those who earnestly seek Him they will be rewarded.

The Christmas story tells us that not everyone who searches for Jesus are to be honoured. For example, cruel Herod searched but thankfully he didn’t find. But it also shows that every character is involved in searching at some point within that story.

This reminds me of the strangest of carols that I love to sing but for most of my life I hadn’t a clue what it was about and as a result it rarely made the Church carol service. Written in 1666:

I saw three ships come sailing in On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day; I saw three ships come sailing in On Christmas Day in the morning.

And what was in those ships all three, On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day? And what was in those ships all three, On Christmas Day in the morning?

The Virgin Mary and Christ were there, On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day; The Virgin Mary and Christ were there, On Christmas Day in the morning.

O they sailed into Bethlehem, On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day; O they sailed into Bethlehem, On Christmas Day in the morning.

Big question: How can 3 ships come sailing into Bethlehem?

This was written in the age of exploration and discovering new lands. I think this carol symbolically reveals the joy of discovering the Christ-child has been born which is similar to ships coming into land having searched for it.

So here’s my point:

Have you stopped searching?

Have you found all that you are looking for? Is there nothing left to learn and discover?

You may have found the star of David or the Angel for the top of the Christmas tree, it took an effort but you found them. Can you make that same effort this year amidst all the demands upon you to go looking for Him who came for you?

Are you looking at a man (or a woman) and not discovering Christ? Even if they have dazzling gifts and seem so Christ-like that’s all they are, Christ-like.

Is it possible that this Advent you can begin a fresh search for Jesus?

Advent is exactly that: the opportunity to search.

Advent – the God of the Before

Acts 13:24

“Before the coming of Jesus, John preached repentance and baptism to all the people of Israel.”

Paul is carefully but briefly plotting out the preparation that God was doing for the coming of His Son. He shows how John the Baptist born just a few months before Jesus was given the purpose of fore-runner, setting the scene for the ministry of Jesus.

Things were happening before the coming of Jesus that was necessary for that advent. Today is a product of yesterday. God was working in and for your life even before you knew Him. Even when it looked like God was silent, He wasn’t.

It was perhaps a couple of years after the birth of Jesus. The Magi had been and gone. Joseph and Mary are left alone with the Christ-child. But in their room are expensive and substantial gifts. This was a high time for Joseph and Mary. They were overcome with such provision – what are we going to do with all this, this is too much?

Within hours they would realise that God had provided at just the right time for them. They would need the gifts from the Magi to get them through the next period of time, on the journey and staying in a foreign country, Egypt.

When it feels like God cannot change the events of your life, take a step back, turn back the clock, it may only be for a few hours, but turn it back and you will find that He has been preparing you and providing for you in all that you will need for this period of time.

God was there before God is.

Isaiah prophesied in 7:14 of a virgin giving birth to a child whose name would mean “God with us;”

Micah prophesied in 5:2, that from Bethlehem would come a ruler whose “goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity.”

In at least Isaiah and Micah’s life but many more, God was. He was preparing them, revealing His plan. I am here but I am coming.

The Jews longed for the day. Simeon was looking for the ‘consolation of Israel’ (Luke 2:25) and when he saw Jesus he knew the hope of the world was fulfilled.

In 1744 Charles Wesley wrote a Christmas hymn:

Come, Thou long-expected Jesus, born to set Thy people free; from our fears and sins release us; let us find our rest in Thee.

Israel’s strength and consolation, hope of all the earth Thou art; dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart.

Perhaps not everyone’s favourite carol yet it reminds us of the expectation that had been growing, simply because God was preparing.

Before your today, God was working. Look around you. The King has come because the King was here.