Author Archives: justkeithharris

⁸ And there were shepherds in the same region, living out of doors and keeping watch, guarding over their flock by night. ⁹ And an angel of the Lord stood near them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terribly frightened. ¹⁰ And the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring good news to you of great joy which will be for all the people: ¹¹ that today a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, was born for you in the city of David. ¹² And this will be the sign for you: you will find the baby wrapped in strips of cloth and lying in a manger.” ¹³ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God and saying,

¹⁴ “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace
among people with whom he is pleased!”

Luke 2:8-14

Refresh & Restore — December 29, 2022 (Behold the King) – Refresh & Restore | A JustKeithHarris.com Podcast

This is the Refresh & Restore Bible study for December 29. You can find the written version of this (complete with Scripture references and footnotes) on our website.

1. Refresh & Restore — December 29, 2022 (Behold the King) 30:18
2. Advent 2022 — The Story of Christmas 27:29
3. Advent 2022 — December 24 (Christmas Eve Reading for Our Kiddos) 06:04
4. Advent 2022 — December 23 12:32
5. Advent 2022 — December 22 04:22

“The Angels’ Song: How Did God Come? (Part 2)”^[1]
by Alistair Begg

The God of Surprises

But [God becoming flesh and dwelling among us] is not the only surprise. The place where God’s Son was born is also a surprise, and the people to whom God sent the angels is a third surprise. And they show us something of what God is like.

First, look where the God-child is. “You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” It was not unusual to have a baby in swaddling cloths. It was unusual to lay a baby in a food trough.

In human terms, the reason why Mary had her child in a shack (or very possibly a cave) used for sheltering animals was straightforward. In distant Rome the emperor, Caesar Augustus, had ordered that a census be taken, obliging Mary and Joseph to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and there was no room for them to stay anywhere else. Augustus meant “worthy of adoration.” According to an inscription on a stone carved in around 9 BC and found in a marketplace in what is now Turkey, Augustus’ birth “gave the whole world a new aspect.” He was regarded as a “Savior.” He encouraged the worship of his adoptive father, Julius Caesar, as a god, and allowed himself to be styled as “the son of God.” So great was his power and his impact that the inscription continued that “from his birth a new reckoning of time must begin.”

And so the shepherds must surely have been struck by how vastly different this child in a manger was from the power and majesty of the Roman Emperor, from this Caesar Augustus figure—from the person who established the glory of his name and the might of his empire at the head of his armies, and who could move his subject peoples around at the stroke of a pen. And yet here in this food trough lay the one who really is worthy of adoration, whose birth changes everything, who came as Savior and who really is the Son of God—and whose birth-date is the way we still reckon our time 2,000 years later.

He was not born to a queen, in a palace. He was born to a girl, in a cave, and his cradle was a food trough. The Son of God came to be just like us, among us, rather than to lord it over us. If you have known poverty, so has he. If you have known what it feels like to be an outsider, so has he. His was not a gilded, protected existence. He knows what life is like. As Jesus himself put it when he had grown up, he “did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10 v 45).

The second surprise is where the announcement was made. God did not make his announcement to Augustus. It came to a group of poor shepherds. We might expect that God would be most interested in those who had status, those who were powerful, those who were mighty. In actual fact, throughout Luke’s Gospel, we discover that again and again he goes for the least and last and the left out. He works in a way that we might not anticipate him working. And we have to allow him to surprise us: to be different than a god we would make up, and to work differently than how we would if we were God. This is the real God, and you and I are not him. People find it perfectly easy to tolerate Jesus just to the point where he contravenes their expectations—and then they tend to have a very different response.

Peace Offer

So that’s the message of the angel—but no sooner have the shepherds picked themselves up off the ground than the reinforcements appear. The Redeemer has come and the angels of heaven are there to announce it for him.

And the choir declares what this baby will achieve: “On earth peace.” Augustus had established what was known as the “Pax Romana”—an empire at peace and guaranteeing safety (unless you happened to be a slave or a rebel). But the peace of Rome was about to be dwarfed by the peace of God. Epictetus, a first-century philosopher, observed rightly that:

“While the emperor may give peace from war on land and sea, he is unable to give peace from passion, grief and envy; he cannot give peace of heart, for which man yearns for more than even outward peace.”

Caesar Augustus could not transform any of his subjects’ hearts or change any of their eternal futures.

But, the angels say, this baby could. Here is an announcement of a peace that goes deep within, and lasts beyond the grave—the peace “for which man yearns.” The peace of God that invades a life is based on the discovery of peace with God.

Today, our newspapers are filled with all kinds of attempts at peace. Peace between husbands and wives, between family members, between nations, and so on. But Epictetus is still right—peace of heart proves elusive. No matter how well we do at trying to establish peace with each other, until we discover what it is to have peace with God, we’re not going to discover the peace of God.

And, since we are separated from God—since we have declared independence and rebelled against our rightful Ruler—this is a peace that can only be brought about by the intervention of God himself. We may try to find peace without God in our own way—peace through owning stuff; peace at the bottom of a bottle. We may try to find peace with God in our own strength—peace through obeying religious rules or through being “good people.” But the truth is that only God can give us peace with himself. The angels tell us where his offer of peace was made. This is a peace that isn’t found in something. It’s a peace that is found in someone. And it is a peace that pursues us, seeks us, comes knocking on the door of our lives.

But it’s a peace that so many miss out on because they fail to make room for the one who brings it. Remember why Jesus was lying in a manger in the first place? Why was the God of heaven in a feeding trough? Because there was no room anywhere else. No one had made room for him. He made the entire universe. He came into his universe. And there wasn’t a place for him. Let’s be honest; in the lives of many of us, it’s no different. We have no room for him either—not if it makes life in any way uncomfortable for us, not if his presence brings any inconvenience to us, not when his actions and words surprise us. But our response does not change the truth. God has visited this world. He has come as one of us, to bring peace to us by redeeming us from our sins. Will you say to him, “No room?”

^[1] Alistair Begg, Christmas Playlist: Four Songs That Bring You to the Heart of Christmas (The Good Book Company, 2016), 45–49.

²⁵ And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. ²⁶ And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he would see the Lord’s Christ. ²⁷ And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus so that they could do for him according to what was customary under the law, ²⁸ he took him in his arms and praised God and said,

²⁹ “Now dismiss your slave in peace, Lord,
according to your word.
³⁰ For my eyes have seen your salvation
³¹ that you have prepared in the presence of all the peoples,
³² a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and glory to your people Israel.”

³³ And his father and mother were astonished at what was said about him. ³⁴ And Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed—³⁵ and a sword will pierce your own soul also, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed!”

Luke 2:25-35

Refresh & Restore — December 29, 2022 (Behold the King) – Refresh & Restore | A JustKeithHarris.com Podcast

This is the Refresh & Restore Bible study for December 29. You can find the written version of this (complete with Scripture references and footnotes) on our website.

1. Refresh & Restore — December 29, 2022 (Behold the King) 30:18
2. Advent 2022 — The Story of Christmas 27:29
3. Advent 2022 — December 24 (Christmas Eve Reading for Our Kiddos) 06:04
4. Advent 2022 — December 23 12:32
5. Advent 2022 — December 22 04:22

“Simeon’s Song: How Did God Do It?”^[1]
by Alistair Begg

Of all the things that are said when someone takes a little baby into their arms, many are quite silly and said out of embarrassment. We don’t know what to say and so we just come out with, “My, he has his mother’s nose” or, “Can you believe how much hair he has?” or whatever else. Older men are often the worst at knowing what to say in this situation (I know, because I am one of them).

But our fourth and final “singer” was in no doubt about what he would say when he held the infant Jesus in his arms the first time Jesus was brought to Jerusalem, the capital, and to the temple, the center of Jewish religious life. His name was Simeon. He was a devout believer in God. He was patiently waiting for the promises God had made to be fulfilled. And not only that, but God’s Holy Spirit had told him that he wouldn’t die until he saw these promises begin to unfold on the pages of history.

The angels had brought the news that a Savior had been born. Likewise, Simeon announces the truth that he is looking at God’s salvation, lying in his arms. And Simeon understands that this Savior has come to save not only “your people Israel”—the ancient people of God, the descendants of Abraham—but he has also come “to the Gentiles”—everyone else. If you carry on reading Luke’s Gospel, you find the adult Jesus living this out. People think he’s going to go for the religious folks, and he doesn’t—he hangs out with the irreligious folks. People think he’s going to go for the people who are doing their best, but he doesn’t—he welcomes the people who have done worst. That’s because he has come to bring to light and then deal with their greatest problem, whether they are religious or irreligious, good or bad—their sin. As the angels promised, this child would be good news of great joy for all people. There is no one who does not need Jesus to offer them salvation, and no one to whom he does not offer that salvation.

So this old man is now content to die. He has been waiting his whole life for this one sight, and now he has seen it—the Sovereign Lord’s salvation, in the shape of a human, lying in his arms.

Your Heart will Break

But Simeon did not only speak of salvation. He spoke of suffering too. He had more to say to Mary…. He was explaining, or rather hinting at, what was to come—not just announcing that this child would bring salvation, but hinting at what it would cost him to bring it. He was the child who would cause many to fall, and others to rise. He would reveal the deep secrets, and the true attitude towards God, that lies in every human heart. He would be opposed verbally; and one day, his mother’s soul would be torn apart emotionally. Imagine taking a newborn child in your arms, then looking at his mom and saying, One day, your heart will break because of this child. That is what Simeon is warning of here. He does not tell Mary what will happen; but he does tell Mary how it will feel.

Easter at Christmas

My guess is that Mary never forgot Simeon’s words, nor that she really understood them, until the other end of her child’s life. As an adult, the one who had lain in the devout Simeon’s cradling arms was hung from a cruel Roman cross. But this is Easter—and isn’t this a book about Christmas?! Yes, but unless you understand the events of Easter, you’ll never grasp the heart of Christmas. Simeon understood that—which is why he pointed forwards to Good Friday even as he welcomed the baby at the center of Christmas. Simeon is pointing us to how God redeemed his people….

And this is why the wooden food trough led to the wooden cross, and why you will never get to the heart of Christmas if you don’t grasp the meaning of Easter. Christianity is not good advice about what we should do. It is the good news of what Christ has done. Christianity does not proclaim that you are worth saving or able to save yourself. It announces that God is mighty to save.

Paid

Do you like paying bills? I actually love it—I think it is because of the satisfaction and relief of getting it dealt with. I don’t like that I have to pay the bill—but I do like getting the bill paid. And it is especially satisfying to pay a bill in person. You walk over to the counter and you pay for it, and then you have the joy of seeing someone take your bill and write PAID. I prefer it actually when it is a stamp that stamps PAID in red with double circles.

As long as I have that bill marked PAID, no one can make me pay again. It’s been settled. It is all over, paid for, in the past.

And three days after the events that must have pierced Mary’s soul, God stamped PAID unmistakably against all the sins I have committed, all the debt I owe to him. After all, the death of Jesus could have been merely a tragic incident. The afternoon darkness and the ripped-apart curtain could have been sheer coincidences. Within hours, his corpse lay cold in a tomb. But three days later, God the Father left no one in any doubt that he had accepted Jesus’ payment for sinners’ debts—that the price to free sinners had been paid:

¹On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. ²They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, ³but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. ⁴While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. ⁵In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? ⁶He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ⁷‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’” (Luke 24 v 1–7)

Luke’s Gospel finishes in a very similar place to where it began. We began with angels appearing, and we finish the same way. We began with an angel announcing the presence of life where it is, humanly-speaking, impossible—in the wombs of a woman who was infertile and a woman who was a virgin. We finish with angels announcing the presence of life in a tomb—the resurrection of a crucified criminal to eternal glory.

And between the events of the first Christmas Eve and the first Easter Sunday, Simeon’s words had come true. Jesus had reached out to those who were outsiders, excluded. He had been opposed. He had revealed what people really believed. Physical nails had pierced his hands as an emotional sword pierced the soul of his watching mother. And, as he hung on the cross, he had redeemed his people—he died the death that tore the curtain and he paid the price that bought the salvation that Simeon had spoken of all those years before.

He died on that cross because Simeon, Mary, Zechariah, the shepherds, you and I are sinners—and because he loves them, and us, anyway.

^[1] Alistair Begg, Christmas Playlist: Four Songs That Bring You to the Heart of Christmas (The Good Book Company, 2016), 51–64.

⁸ And there were shepherds in the same region, living out of doors and keeping watch, guarding over their flock by night. ⁹ And an angel of the Lord stood near them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terribly frightened. ¹⁰ And the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring good news to you of great joy which will be for all the people: ¹¹ that today a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, was born for you in the city of David. ¹² And this will be the sign for you: you will find the baby wrapped in strips of cloth and lying in a manger.” ¹³ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God and saying,

¹⁴ “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace
among people with whom he is pleased!”

Luke 2:8-14

Refresh & Restore — December 29, 2022 (Behold the King) – Refresh & Restore | A JustKeithHarris.com Podcast

This is the Refresh & Restore Bible study for December 29. You can find the written version of this (complete with Scripture references and footnotes) on our website.

1. Refresh & Restore — December 29, 2022 (Behold the King) 30:18
2. Advent 2022 — The Story of Christmas 27:29
3. Advent 2022 — December 24 (Christmas Eve Reading for Our Kiddos) 06:04
4. Advent 2022 — December 23 12:32
5. Advent 2022 — December 22 04:22

“The Angels’ Song: How Did God Come? (Part 1)”^[1]
by Alistair Begg

Birth announcements are big business. There are so many ways to announce the entrance into the world of your little one—Pinterest, Shutterfly, WhatsApp, Tiny-Prints.com. You can take hundreds of pictures, magnify and crop them, and send them round the world. It becomes a competition. “Here’s our new arrival in her crib. Here she is in her first nappy. Here she is having her first bath. Here are her footprints.”

Well, if you happen to have a baby next year, here’s how to outdo everyone else. Forget emails. Forget a photograph on Facebook or an entry in the New York Times. Here’s how to win the announcement competition: have an angel announce the birth. Have an angel coming down the street in the middle of the night, waking your neighbors to tell them what’s just happened, and then follow that up with a whole choir of angels providing celebratory backing vocals.

That’s how to win. And (although sadly the angels aren’t taking bookings right now) that is how the arrival of Mary’s baby was announced on the night he was born….

God’s Name

The angel told these shepherds who it was who had been growing in Mary’s womb, and who was now “wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” He described the baby’s job—“Savior”: Redeemer. He announced the baby’s title—“Messiah”: God’s King promised for centuries to his people, promises recorded for us in the Old Testament. And he revealed the baby’s identity—“the Lord.”

And that word, “Lord,” is making a staggering claim, because it is the word that was used by Greek-speaking Jews to translate the Hebrew word “Yahweh”—the personal name of God, by which he had introduced himself to his people for centuries. “God” is not God’s name, any more than “Pastor” is mine. My name is Alistair, and my friends call me that. God’s name is Yahweh, and it’s what he told his friends, his people, to call him. In other words, here’s the deal: good news, great joy for all the people, has come because a Redeemer, the ultimate Ruler, has been born. And he is God Almighty.

Every so often at Christmas, we hear about a wealthy businessman who’s gone and served in a soup kitchen, or about a very successful athlete who spends some time on Christmas Eve in the children’s hospital. And everyone says, “That’s great—what an amazing and kind and humble thing for him to do.” And it is. But now see what this angel is saying: The God who made you, who gave you your DNA, who woke you up this morning, who has sustained your life—that God, in the person of Jesus, stepped down into time, making himself accessible.

On the first Christmas night—and this is the heart of the Christmas story, and the heart of the Christian faith—God took on flesh. The voice that made the cosmos could be heard crying in the cradle. The hands that placed each star in its place grabbed hold of Mary’s fingers. Her son was fully human, and fully God. In this man, divinity met humanity.

So, unlike every other conception and birth, this was not the beginning. God the Son had always existed, equal with and eternal with the Father and the Spirit—one God in three persons, what often is called the Trinity. God the Son—the “Word”—predates his birth; he is older than his conception, or what is often called his incarnation:

¹In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was with God in the beginning. (John 1 v 1–2)

I remember my daughter when she was young once asking me, “Where was I before I was born?” And the answer is, “You did not exist before you were conceived and born.” (I avoided mention of the conception part when I answered my daughter.) But that’s not what happened with Jesus. He did exist before he was conceived and born. What happened that night was the birth of God the Son as a human. But it was not the beginning of the person God the Son.

This is unparalleled. It is unique. It is mysterious. And Luke is claiming that it is historical.

A Virgin Birth—Really?

Perhaps this is where you struggle with the Christian faith. You are prepared to accept Jesus as a great teacher, a religious leader, or a brilliant philosopher. You are prepared to accept that he spoke for God, perhaps. But you struggle to accept that he is God—that as Mary and Joseph peered into the manger, they were looking at the eternal Son of God. You struggle with the idea of a virgin birth and a miraculous incarnation.

Well, if your starting point is that there is no God, then the incarnation question is irrelevant. If there is no God, he could not have been born as a baby in Bethlehem. But if your starting point is that there is (or even that there might be) a God who created the entire universe, then surely he is capable of entering his universe. Why would we be surprised that he can do what he wants to do? After all, in the last century or so humanity has worked out how to bring about conception without sexual intercourse. A hundred years ago, that idea would have seemed impossible and not worthy of being believed. Now it seems plausible and obvious. If doctors can do it in their way, do we really want to say that God cannot do it in his? God the Son taking flesh is a mystery that we will never understand. But not being able to understand how God became one of us is not proof that he did not become one of us.

Of course God’s ways are mysterious and at times inexplicable to us! He would not be much of a God if our limited minds could reason out everything about him. No, this is mystery, because it is divinity; it is God—but it is also history. Heaven is breaking into earth. The shepherds would find the Creator of the universe wrapped in strips of cloth. Here is the answer to the human predicament, the solution to our slavery to sin and our separation from God. God bridged the gap by coming from heaven to earth. This is how much the mighty God cares about us. Love was when God spanned the gulf. Love was when God became a man. Love was when God surprised those he had created by being born as one of them—as a baby.

^[1] Alistair Begg, Christmas Playlist: Four Songs That Bring You to the Heart of Christmas (The Good Book Company, 2016), 39–44.

⁶⁷ And his[1] father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying,

⁶⁸ “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,
because he has visited to help and has redeemed his people,
⁶⁹ and has raised up a horn of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David,
⁷⁰ just as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from earliest times—
⁷¹ salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all those who hate us,
⁷² to show mercy to our fathers
and to remember his holy covenant,
⁷³ the oath that he swore to Abraham our father,
to grant us ⁷⁴ that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies,
could serve him without fear ⁷⁵ in holiness and righteousness
before him all our days.
⁷⁶ And so you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High,
for you will go on before the Lord to prepare his ways,
⁷⁷ to give knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins,
⁷⁸ because of the merciful compassion of our God
by which the dawn will visit to help us from on high,
⁷⁹ to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to direct our feet into the way of peace.”

⁸⁰ And the child kept growing and becoming strong in spirit, and was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance to Israel.

Luke 1:67-80

“Zechariah’s Song: Why Do You Need God? (Part 1)”^[2]
by Alistair Begg

Song lyrics seem to have a way of embedding themselves in our memory, so that as soon as we hear the first line, we know the song. Growing up in the sixties, my memorable first lines include:

“When I get older, losing my hair …”

“Hello darkness, my old friend …”

“Hey mister, that’s me up on the jukebox …”

“There is a house in New Orleans …”

How did you score on knowing the songs? (If you’re young enough to be struggling with these classics, google the first line to give you the song.)

When it comes to first lines, the opening words of the song of Zechariah deserve to be in anyone’s list of memorable ones. While Mary’s is the first song recorded in Luke’s Gospel, hers was not the first miraculous pregnancy to be described in Luke’s Gospel. That belonged to her relative Elizabeth. She and her husband, Zechariah, had been “childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old” (Luke 1:7). But before the angel Gabriel visited Mary, he had visited Zechariah to announce that his wife would fall pregnant, and that their son, John, would grow up “to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (v 17). John would be the warm-up act for the main event.

And that’s what Zechariah sang about as his son lay in his arms. It’s a song whose first line contains two words that lie at the heart of the Christmas message…. Here are the two words: “come” and “redeemed.”

A Visit with a Purpose

God has come to visit. He is moving into the neighborhood. But why? To redeem. If you want to understand the first Christmas—if you want to grasp the purpose of God’s visit—you need to understand redemption. So what is that about?

“Redemption” is the act of providing a payment to free someone. And Zechariah is explaining God’s work in his present situation by referencing God’s work in the past—in the time of the exodus, a millennium and a half before. It was the time when (to give an extremely cut-down summary!) God’s people Israel were stuck in Egypt, enslaved by Pharaoh. Despite Pharaoh’s resistance, God freed them through a series of plagues sent against the inhabitants of Egypt. The last plague was the worst—death. The oldest son in each family would die, God warned. But God also provided a way out—through the death of a lamb. The lamb died, the people who trusted God lived, and Pharaoh, devastated by what his decision to resist God had done to his nation, let them go. God had “redeemed” his people.

Well, that is great, and it is an exciting historical story—but what does it have to do with Zechariah, and what does it have to do with you and me?! Everything, actually—because, Zechariah says, God is redeeming people all over again. Not from enslavement to an Egyptian king, but from enslavement to their own sin—to our own sin. We need, he says, “forgiveness of [our] sins.”

What Zechariah is referring to here is not being freed from a material plight, but a moral plight. “Sin” is an unpopular word, but it is a word the Bible unashamedly uses, and it is a word which explains both what we see within us and what we see around us. Sin is essentially me putting myself where God deserves to be—in the place of authority and majesty, running my own life, charting my own course. It is saying to God, whether very politely or extremely angrily, I don’t want you, I won’t obey your commands, I will not listen to your word. I will call the shots.

Literally, to “sin” means to miss the mark. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the World Darts Championships. One of the main competitions is held in England each Christmas. Two competitors stand nearly eight feet from a board 18 inches wide and throw darts at it. Thousands turn up to watch them. And the worst thing the players can do is to miss the board—to throw short or to throw wide. These contestants are wonderful at it, and it sounds very easy—but if you’ve never tried it, have a go. It’s not as simple as it looks!

And the Bible says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Everyone throws and misses when it comes to glorifying—to recognizing, pleasing, loving and following—the God who made us, who sustains us, and who gives us everything we have. You can miss the target by an inch, or by a mile, but no one fails to miss. Often, we don’t much care whether we miss or not—we are not even aiming at living in a way that pleases God, but rather one that pleases ourselves. But even when we do care and do try to obey God, we still miss. Even on my best day, I miss the mark, the target. I sin. Sin is something we choose, and yet sin is also something that traps us. We can’t stop, even if we want to. Like a bad habit that proves impossible to break, we’re enslaved to what we’ve chosen.

Spoiled and Separated

And sin is not merely a bad habit. In fact, sin is our greatest problem. People suggest that our greatest problem is a lack of education. Or a lack of social welfare. Or a lack of self-esteem. But if that’s the case, then why are family gatherings at Christmas so often occasions of discord and conflict, even for the most academically gifted, well-off, personally confident people? Why is this not all fixed by now? Why is it not all sorted out? It is not fundamentally a lack of education or welfare or self-esteem that spoils things. It is sin. Sin causes alienation from others. It causes brokenness at the hands of others—and perhaps you are a victim of something that has been done to you. It causes conflict with others—not only wars on a world stage, but closer to home, conflict within our hearts, our houses, our marriages. The lies we tell. The envy we feel. The anger we show. Each time we miss the mark, we spoil our own lives and the lives of those around us.

But this “spoiled-ness” is not the most serious aspect of sin—because my sin has crippled my ability to know God and to live with God. I can’t know God. I can’t make my way back to God because I am trapped in my sin, enslaved by my sin. I’m stuck with being separated from God—both in my present and in my eternal future. We’re cosmically stuck, hopelessly separated.

The singer, Sting, once sang:

“Everyone I know is lonely And God’s so far away
And my heart belongs to no one,
So now sometimes I pray
Please take the space between us
And fill it up some way.”

I often hear people say that death is the great equalizer. The idea is that in eternity, all bets are off and, no matter what we believed or how we lived, the scale is reset. The Bible has a very different view. One early Christian, Paul, put it this way: “[God] has set a day when he will judge the world” (Acts 17:31). It will be absolutely fair and it will be completely final. There will be no redos. We have separated ourselves from God’s love because we have sinned. And so we will be separated from God for all eternity, suffering the punishment of eternity in the place Jesus called “hell”—a place separated from God and everything that is good.

Actually, this view of eternity—one that includes judgment—is the one that best fits our sense of justice. Whenever we hear on the news about some terrible human act and think, Why doesn’t God do something about that? we are asking him to judge. The Bible says that he will. All sin will be judged, and all sin will be punished by separation. That is very good news when we suffer at the hands of sinful people, and deeply troubling news because we ourselves are sinful people. Sin is our greatest problem, because it separates us from the God whom we were made to know and designed to enjoy. But in another sense, the truth about sin is also our greatest insight, because it explains life as we experience it. There is a mighty, loving God who made us—and so we are capable of acts of greatness and kindness. But we reject that God’s authority—and so we are capable of selfishness and evil. We were made to enjoy life with God eternally, but we all choose to live in defiance of him. Hence the flatness, the “blues” that come after Christmas as once again we get beyond the busyness and distraction of the festivities and think deep down, I don’t have the answer. There’s not a gift I could buy or a gift I can receive that seems to satisfy. There’s not a vacation I could enjoy, there’s not a book I could read, or a piece of music I could listen to that will actually fill the hole. When we feel this, we are really saying, God, please take the space between us, and fill it up some way. We are asking God to redeem us from the sin we have chosen—from the slavery we cannot escape and the debt we cannot repay.

[1] Zechariah was John the Baptist’s father.

^[2] Alistair Begg, Christmas Playlist: Four Songs That Bring You to the Heart of Christmas (The Good Book Company, 2016), 27–35.