Our Obscure King

“But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.”
- Micah 5:2

“And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”
- Luke 2:12

O little town of Bethlehem

How still we see thee lie

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep

The silent stars go by

Yet in thy dark streets shineth

The everlasting Light

The hopes and fears of all the years

Are met in thee tonight

For Christ is born of Mary

And gathered all above

While mortals sleep, the angels keep

Their watch of wondering love

O morning stars together

Proclaim the holy birth

And praises sing to God the King

And Peace to men on earth

How silently, how silently

The wondrous gift is given!

So God imparts to human hearts

The blessings of His heaven.

No ear may hear His coming,

But in this world of sin,

Where meek souls will receive him still,

The dear Christ enters in.

O holy Child of Bethlehem

Descend to us, we pray

Cast out our sin and enter in

Be born to us today

We hear the Christmas angels

The great glad tidings tell

O come to us, abide with us

Our Lord Emmanuel

- O Little Town of Bethlehem, Phillip Brooks


Dear Christ Our Redeemer Family and Friends,

We received an email this morning from some dear friends in Starbuck, Washington. Starbuck is an obscure little town, barely a spot on the map that is located about forty miles east of Walla Walla. There aren’t very many people in Starbuck. In fact you need to know what you are looking for even to find it. There is one store and a gas station and even those are closed during this winter weather. Most of the folks either work in agriculture, for the government, or they are unemployed. With the latest weather front in the Northwest, Spokane and Portland get all the news. No one knows or cares about Starbuck.

Years ago in an obscure agricultural village something amazing happened. The King of Kings was born in an obscure backwater town named Bethlehem. Consider that the Ruler of all became a newborn baby that was laid in a cattle stall in an obscure agricultural community. There was no fanfare and no press release. The only witnesses were mom and dad and some farm animals. Eventually some shepherds, some traveling magicians, and some angels came to herald the birth, but for now it is only obscurity. As far as the world was concerned it was just another night in an unimportant village.

Many times the glory of the gospel comes to obscure places, and in obscure times, and to obscure people. This is the mystery of the work of the Spirit under the sovereign hand of God. The gospel most often comes without fanfare, press releases, and attention. This gospel often comes to the unlikeliest of people and in the unlikeliest of places. It will not always be this way. The day is coming when this King is recognized and worshipped by all.

It is a joy for me to look back on this past year. I can see where God has been at work without fanfare and in obscurity. Rejoice, the King has come to obscure and needy sinners like you and me.

Rejoicing in our Glorious Savior at Christmas,

Dan

An Encouragement to Us Scrooges from R.C. Sproul

Dear Christ Our Redeemer Friends and Family,

I spent part of yesterday at Target, my all-time least favorite store. I think there’s too much red around and it serves to irritate the customers, at least in my case! Judy and Nathanael were trying to do a bit of Christmas shopping and I ended up in the food court sending a few emails from my Blackberry. If I’m not careful Christmas shopping can bring the Scrooge out in me. This time of year it can be very easy for me to slip into ‘Bah Humbug!’ syndrome. My friend, Mark Lauterbach, who pastors a Sovereign Grace church in San Diego called my attention to this recent post on Ligonier Ministries’ website (http://www.ligonier.org/blog/2008/12/marleys-message-to-scrooge.html). I’ve included it for you below and I’ve already read it several times. I am always provoked by R.C. Sproul and this has helped me in my perspective this Christmas. There is great reason for us to rejoice. In the Incarnation God has met our greatest need.

Scrooge thoughts begone! Joy to the World, the Lord has come!

Dan

Marley's Message to Scrooge
December 8, 2008 @ 7:30 AM Posted By: Tim Challies
by R.C. Sproul
"Bah! Humbug!" These two words are instantly associated with Charles Dickens' immortal fictional anti-hero, Ebenezer Scrooge. Scrooge was the prototype of the Grinch who stole Christmas, the paradigm of all men cynical. We all recognize that Ebenezer Scrooge was a mean person - stingy, insensitive, selfish, and unkind. What we often miss in our understanding of his character is that he was preeminently profane. "Bah! Humbug!" was his Victorian use of profanity. Not that any modern editor would feel the need to delete Scrooge's expletives. His language is not the standard currency of cursing. But it was profane in that Scrooge demeaned what was holy. He trampled on the sanctity of Christmas. He despised the sacred. He was cynical toward the sublime. Christmas is a holiday, indeed the world's most joyous holiday. It is called a "holiday" because the day is holy. It is a day when businesses close, when families gather, when churches are filled, and when soldiers put down their guns for a 24-hour truce. It is a day that differs from every other day. Every generation has its abundance of Scrooges. The church is full of them. We hear endless complaints of commercialism. We are constantly told to put Christ back into Christmas. We hear that the tradition of Santa Claus is a sacrilege. We listen to those acquainted with history murmur that Christmas isn't biblical. The Church invented Christmas to compete with the ancient Roman festival honoring the bull-god Mithras, the nay-sayers complain. Christmas? A mere capitulation to paganism. And so we rain on Jesus' parade and assume an Olympian detachment from the joyous holiday. All this carping is but a modern dose of Scroogeism, our own sanctimonious profanation of the holy. Sure, Christmas is a time of commerce. The department stores are decorated to the hilt, the ad pages of the newspapers swell in size, and we tick off the number of shopping days left until Christmas. But why all the commerce? The high degree of commerce at Christmas is driven by one thing: the buying of gifts for others. To present our friends and families with gifts is not an ugly, ignoble vice. It incarnates the amorphous "spirit of Christmas." The tradition rests ultimately on the supreme gift God has given the world. God so loved the world, the Bible says, that He gave His only begotten Son. The giving of gifts is a marvelous response to the receiving of such a gift. For one day a year at least, we taste the sweetness inherent in the truth that it is more blessed to give than to receive. What about putting Christ back into Christmas? It is simply not necessary. Christ has never left Christmas. "Jingle Bells" will never replace "Silent Night." Our holiday once known as Thanksgiving is rapidly becoming known simply as "Turkey Day." But Christmas is still called Christmas. It is not called "Gift Day." Christ is still in Christmas, and for one brief season the secular world broadcasts the message of Christ over every radio station and television channel in the land. Never does the church get as much free air time as during the Christmas season. Not only music but the visual arts are present in abundance, bearing testimony to the historic significance of the birth of Jesus. Christmas displays all remind the world of the sacred Incarnation. Doesn't Santa Claus paganize or at least trivialize Christmas? He's a myth, and his very mythology casts a shadow over the sober historical reality of Jesus. Not at all. Myths are not necessarily bad or harmful. Every society creates myths. They are a peculiar art form invented usually to convey a message that is deemed important by the people. When a myth is passed off as real history, that is fraud. But when it serves a different purpose it can be healthy and virtuous. Kris Kringle is a mythical hero, not a villain. He is pure fiction -- but a fiction used to illustrate a glorious truth. What about the historical origins of Christmas as a substitute for a pagan festival? I can only say, good for the early Christians who had the wisdom to flee from Mithras and direct their zeal to the celebration of the birth of Christ. Who associates Christmas today with Mithras? No one calls it "Mithrasmas." We celebrate Christmas because we cannot eradicate from our consciousness our profound awareness of the difference between the sacred and the profane. Man, in the generic sense, has an incurable propensity for marking sacred space and sacred time. When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, the ground that was previously common suddenly became uncommon. It was now holy ground - sacred space. When Jacob awoke from his midnight vision of the presence of God, he anointed with oil the rock upon which he had rested his head. It was sacred space. When God touches earth, the place is holy. When God appears in history, the time is holy. There was never a more holy place than the city of Bethlehem, where the Word became flesh. There was never a more holy time than Christmas morning when Emmanuel was born. Christmas is a holiday. It is the holiest of holy days. We must heed the warning of Jacob Marley: "Don't be a Scrooge" at Christmas.

Seeing with Clarity for the First Time

“…the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.”
-John 3:19-20

“…the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned."
-Matthew 4:16b

Dear Christ Our Redeemer Family and Friends,

The gospel is good news for darkness-loving sinners. When God gives sight to the blind light dawns where only darkness was known. In the Incarnation God has turned on the light of the gospel for those whose entire world was comprised of darkness. All we knew was blindness accorded by a world of inky blackness. All we knew and loved was the comfortable envelope of blackness. Several years ago I remember reading a National Geographic article about creatures that live in the depths of caverns. A picture showed a salamander whose eyes has become completely blind because its home was in the depths of darkness. This world was all it knew and its eyes had become useless orbs. Day after day after day no light had broken in to bring functionality to the eye. The salamander knew no difference. Blackness was its home and Its world was one of devoid of all light. In the gospel God has brought light to us. We did not see, nor could we see, nor would we see. We had become acclimated to darkness, because it is all we had ever known. This was the environment we knew and loved. And when the first rays of light come we squint and rub our eyes straining to see for the first time. Could it be that we’ve been so blind for so long? It is as if we’ve entered a whole new world. In the Incarnation God brings light into our darkness. For once in our lives we begin to see with clarity, and this is because God brought light into our darkness.

Grateful for the Light that has come in the Incarnation,

Dan

A Slave of Christ

“When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.”
- Romans 6:20-22

“For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a slave of Christ. You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men.”
-1 Corinthians 7:22-23

"And from the throne came a voice saying, "Praise our God, all you his servants (douloi = slaves), you who fear him, small and great."
-Revelation 19:5

“There is a sense in which all people are Christ’s possession because he created them and now sustains them; he is the one ‘through whom all things were made and through whom we live’(1 Cor. 8:6). But in every sense believers are his special possession, a people of his very own, because he purchased them as his slaves (1 Cor. 6:19-20, 7:22-23) along with their freedom from all iniquity (Titus 2:14). As a result of that purchase they belong to him totally, and only to him, a comprehensive ownership that his slaves voluntarily embrace. He is their absolute and exclusive Master. His rights over what he purchased are unlimited and he tolerates no rivals to his lordship, for no slave can adequately serve two masters. ‘Proof of purchase’, or the mark of this ownership is the presence and activity of the Spirit in the believer’s life. And that same Spirit is the guarantee that this divine ‘property’ will reach its destination intact.”
- Murray Harris, Slave of Christ, p. 125


Dear Christ Our Redeemer Family and Friends,

If you are a Christian you belong to Christ. Because of His mercies to you, you are not your own. You no longer belong to the dominion of self. You are no longer rightfully in charge. You have been ransomed or purchased for Christ as His own possession and for His own purposes. You have been bought at tremendous cost. The metaphors used for the Christian are many…friend, son, daughter, sheep, soldier, and disciple, but rarely do we refer to the Christian as slave. There is something in us that bristles at the thought of being the possession of another. One of the things my brothers and I used to tell one another is, ‘You’re not the boss of me!’ We couldn’t bear the thought of anyone telling us what to do, let alone one another. If we are Christians Christ is the gracious boss of us. He owns us, lock, stock and barrel. We are no longer our own. We belong to Him. To see ourselves as those who have been purchased will help us see things clearly. It will help us as we love and serve one another. It will help us as we determine priorities for our time and finances. It will help us as we interact as husbands and wives, and as we interact with our children. The shadow of the Cross casts long over our ownership. We are not our own, we’ve been bought with a price.

A slave of Christ together with you,

Dan

Gracious Speech

“Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you.”
- Proverbs 4:24

“Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.”
- Colossians 4:6

“For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”
- James 3:7,8

“It may seem too obvious to say, but Genesis 1 makes it plain that the first words ever spoken were spoken by God. Language is not a human invention to be used in whatever way serves our interests. If God is the first speaker, then language is his creation. This means that our ability to speak was given to us by the Creator and it exists for his glory. Everything we will ever say belongs to him and should be used for his purposes. Words, in short, have a high and holy calling.”
- Tim Lane and Paul Tripp, Relationships, A Mess Worth Making, p. 71

“It is time for many of us to confess that we have not known the way of love. Our words have hindered, not helped, what the Lord is seeking to do. We have been controlled by the passions and desires of the sinful nature and failed to represent Christ’s character. We need to cry out for grace to speak loving words as his ambassadors.”
- Paul Tripp, War of Words, p. 229

“Please forget the words I just blurted out,
It wasn’t me, it was my strange and creeping doubt
It keeps rattling my cage.
And there’s nothing in this world to keep it down.”
- Radiohead, I Can’t

Dear Christ Our Redeemer Family and Friends,

When I think about the things I’ve said over the years my knees get weak. James calls the tongue a restless evil that is full of deadly poison. I can still remember hurtful things I’ve said over forty years ago. A sharp word, a critical judgment conveyed to others, a terse argument, gossip designed to form an opinion – these, and more, are in my collection of spoken sins. My tongue is a restless evil. And there is a sinful satisfaction when the tongue does its work. To refrain from evil speech and to ‘tame’ the tongue is no easy task. It is restless, and the sinful heart is not satisfied until the tongue has its way. When we speak we are simply giving verbal expression to the restless evil already formed in the heart. Our speech reveals our heart and for me this is sobering. By our words we have the power of life and death. When I think about my words I am grateful for the thorough and complete work of Christ’s substitutionary work. Christ’s passive obedience, which is that perfect obedience Jesus rendered to the Father in fulfilling all righteousness, has been credited to my account. His perfect speech, sinless tongue, and unsinning heart have been imputed to me. I no longer bear the just judgment God declares against my sinful thoughts, words, and deeds. And yet, God’s sanctifying work is not yet complete in me. I need reminders to speak graciously. I need my speech, even now, to be redeemed. God, as the first speaker, must redeem my words, and He must do this continually by making my heart new. It will do no good to reform my speech with no change to my heart. I’m praying for God to renew my heart day by day and make it evident by the things I say.

Lord, let my mouth be an evidence of your work taking place in my heart.

Dan

A New Children's Book - The Prince's Poison Cup

Theology can be difficult stuff. Have you ever tried to explain multifaceted theological concepts to your children? In fact, ask the average Christian adult to explain substitutionary atonement and you’ll likely get a blank stare. Over the years I’ve come to appreciate Ligonier Ministries/Reformation Trust’s efforts at making gospel-focused theology accessible for both parents and children. Judy and I have purchased several children’s books written by R. C. Sproul. The Priest With Dirty Clothes and The Lightlings come to mind and both have been read to our kids and grandkids and we’ve also given them away as gifts. In each of these cases complex theological ideas become understandable and accessible. With the recent release of The Prince’s Poison Cup, Ligonier has done the heavy lifting for Christian parents. This is a great book that brings the grace of God in the bright glory of the gospel to bear in a readable children’s book. Kids will easily relate to Ella in her disdain for medicine and they will be drawn in to the deeper meaning of the story line about the prince who must taste the bitter cup. The illustrations by Justin Gerard are very rich and very good and reflect Ligonier’s attention to detail. But, my favorite part of the book is the discussion section for parents at the end. This section will help both children and parents understand this theme. This book will help Christian parents communicate the gospel to their children. For parents who take this responsibility seriously this is a book that will help us in our task. Ligonier Ministries deserves special thanks for helping us do our job. The Prince’s Poison Cup is available through Ligonier Ministries (http://www.ligonier.org/), Monergism Books (http://www.monergismbooks.com/) or through Christ Our Redeemer Church’s resource table.

- Dan

COR's First Child Dedication and Baptism

“In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.”
- Colossians 2:11-12

“The church is generated by the right preaching of the Word; the church is contained and distinguished by the right administration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.”
- Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, p. 10

“Baptism is important precisely because it is tied to the gospel, to the saving work that Christ accomplished in his death and resurrection.”
- Thomas Schreiner, Believer’s Baptism, p. 1

“Similarly, when a person is baptized, he takes upon himself the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19): he becomes God’s person, distinguished from all the other families of the earth. And the Lord’s Supper signs and seals the New Covenant in Jesus’ blood, by which we are separated from the world (Matt. 26:28; 1 Cor. 11:25).”
- John Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life, p. 413


Dear Christ Our Redeemer Family and Friends,

Last Sunday was a glorious day at Christ Our Redeemer Church. As a new church plant we experienced two ‘firsts’. First, six children were dedicated to the Lord. Jack Bowen, Abraham Gerving, Anaya Hamilton, Ethan and Felix Haugans, and Jason Wakefield came forward to be prayed for and both their parents and the church were given a charge to raise them under the influence of the gospel. This was a very happy occasion. And then following the morning service we went to The Marshall Center in Vancouver for a baptismal service and potluck. At the baptismal service Emma and Paul Hanger, Joey Ellis, and Lydia and Nathanael Morse made public professions of faith and were baptized. It was a wonderful encouragement to hear the testimonies of each person’s love for the Savior. This was another happy occasion.

I thank God for His work in our midst. To see parents with a desire to raise kids that love the Savior, and to see young people eager to make a profession of faith and follow the Savior is a great encouragement and joy. Make God give us many more child dedications and baptisms in the years to come.

I’m thankful to be serving the Savior together with you.

Dan