Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men.”
Luke 2:14 (emphasis added)

The greatest message humanity has ever been given. And most people think it’s a Hallmark slogan. All those gooey-gooey feel good movies. That’s what people think about. Lights and trees and fat men with presents. The world likes to claim Christians stole December the 25th as the birth of Christ from a pagan holiday. That is not entirely true. Back when the church first began celebrating Christmas, they were using a different calendar. The Julian calendar. On that calendar, there WERE not pagan holidays anywhere near the 25th. The closest was on the 13th. But they weren’t picking the day based on other holidays. When a Jew wants to honour a great Jewish individual (like a great teacher or prophet), they took their day of death and went back nine months and used that day — regardless of the actual date of birth.

In about 150 AD, North African churches were doing this. The Jewish Christians were taking the date of Jesus’ death (March 25th Julian calendar and April 6th Gregorian calendar) based on the Jewish feasts and when He was killed during those, but before a Sabbath. That’s how we got December the 25th. It wasn’t until two hundred and fifty years later (around 400 AD) when the Roman Catholic church was rising and the Gregorian calendar was being adopted that the Christian celebration and the pagan celebrations came close together (though STILL not on the same day). The priests co-opted some of the symbology of the pagans (greenery, trees, etc) combining them with Christian traditions (like a resurrection tree — a collection of sticks bound together — and lights to symbolise Jesus as the Light of the World). This gave us the mishmash we got today where we are celebrating Yule Logs (pagan practice), mistletoe (pagan practice), alongside candy canes (a Christian invention to symbolise Christ the shepherd, His blood, and our washed away sins), the manger, and the shepherds.

But in the beginning of the beginning, it was a pure message of hope from an angel to the shepherds. It was a story of glory coming to earth. The beginning of our realising the restitutionary plan of the Lord toward humanity. This is why it is so foreign to the world. This is NOT how the world does story. In the West, stories revolve around a single person and are told from that person’s point of view. It is all about their strength of character or will and changing things or achieving a goal. In the East, more than one person tends to be involved, it gets presented with a third person perspective, and they rely on others to achieve their goals. In the West, happy endings rule the roost. In the East, nobody is safe from the uncertainties of life. In both, conflict tends to feature, but in the West conflict is about action and violence, where in the East the conflict is not always centre stage and other things drive the story. But in all, strife of some kind is how the process moves along. All the experts agree: remove strife and the story is totally boring. In fact, they say that without conflict — central stage or background — there IS no story.

This is not how the Lord tells a story. The angels came with two little lines of verse followed by a rousing song of worship and praise. There was no strife. There was no conflict. It was the ANTITHESIS of conflict. It was the end to the only conflict that truly ever mattered: Sin vs God. It COULD have had conflict. When the devil and his followers fell from heaven, the Lord didn’t make a plan of redemption for them. The Lord never took an angel’s form, but the Lord came as a man to this world. The Lord came to die for humanity. He never did that for angels. Yet the angels showed no jealousy. No envy. No pride. Even though we had fallen, far below the station we were created to inhabit, they didn’t even blink. They came to share that story, spread the glory of the Lord, and worship the Lord God Almighty.

“Concerning this salvation, the prophets sought and searched diligently. They prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching for who or what kind of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them pointed to when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow them. To them it was revealed that they served not themselves, but you, in these things, which now have been announced to you through those who preached the Good News to you by the Holy Spirit sent out from heaven; which things angels desire to look into” (1 Peter 1:10–12). That’s right. The angels desire to look into the salvation process. They echo the psalmist in their wonder: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained, what is man, that you think of him? What is the son of man, that you care for him? For you have made him a little lower than Elohim, and crowned him with glory and honor. You make him ruler over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet” (Psalm 8:3–6).

So they came to tell us the Good News. The Lord had them come and tell the people closest to the newborn Jesus that would believe. The birth of Jesus is full of people who seem ordinary, but have the capacity to BELIEVE the words of the Lord. There are few who truly have faith. Many are called, but few answer (Matthew 22:14). So few, Jesus Himself wondered when He returned to the earth whether He would find faith (Luke 18:8). Faith is the air of the Kingdom. The current on which it runs. Faith in the Word of the Lord. God operates by speaking and that word coming to pass – through belief in the words spoken, given substance by seeing it in the heart (positive imagination). He has used His own faith to achieve things (Romans 1:17). He has used our faith (which is His faith gifted to us Mark 11:22) to achieve things. The WORD is the stuff by which everything gets created, operates, and continues (John 1:5; Hebrews 1:3).

These shepherds believed. We’ve always been taught they were your average garden-variety shepherds, but there is a fair bit of evidence that while normal average MEN, there was something special. There is a good chance that they were in fact priestly shepherds. Shepherds who looked after the lambs that were raised and shipped to nearby Jerusalem for sacrifice on the altar. There was always a big need for sacrificial lambs. They were sacrificed every evening and every morning. Plus the passover. 120,000 sheep were sacrificed at the dedication of Solomon’s temple. They were a mainstay and the priests did what they could to ensure that there was an ample supply. Who better to witness the birth of Jesus, the lamb slain before the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8) than shepherds who cared for the sacrificial lambs?

Who else would have that kind of faith but men who dwelt day and night on the importance of sacrifice? Who watched out carefully to make sure that there were no liaisons, no blemishes, and no anything that would disqualify them for use as a sacrificial lamb. “He was oppressed, yet when he was afflicted he didn’t open his mouth. As a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he didn’t open his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). “The next day, he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). “I saw in the middle of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the middle of the elders, a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent out into all the earth. Then he came, and he took it out of the right hand of him who sat on the throne. Now when he had taken the book, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each one having a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. They sang a new song, saying, “You are worthy to take the book and to open its seals, for you were killed, and bought us for God with your blood out of every tribe, language, people, and nation, and made us kings and priests to our God; and we will reign on the earth”” (Revelation 5:6–10).

Jesus was witnessed right from the beginning. By angels, and through the angels, by men who could recognise a sacrifice when they saw one. One that announced the end of the sacrificial system by fulfilling all blood sacrifice for once and all time through His own. Jesus fulfilled all the need for sacrifice. “In him we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace which he made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him to an administration of the fullness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, in him. We were also assigned an inheritance in him, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who does all things after the counsel of his will, to the end that we should be to the praise of his glory, we who had before hoped in Christ” (Ephesians 1:7–12).

“But Christ having come as a high priest of the coming good things, through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation, nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the Holy Place, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify to the cleanness of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without defect to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? For this reason he is the mediator of a new covenant, since a death has occurred for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant, that those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. For where a last will and testament is, there must of necessity be the death of him who made it” (Hebrews 9:11–16).

Jesus is the price paid for all sin, the fulfilment of all blood sacrifice, and the sealant on the relationship we have with Yahweh Father God. The Father no longer sees sin when He looks at us, but the righteousness of Jesus in whom we abide (2 Corinthians 5:21). Sin no longer separates us from God. We don’t need to be sent away for our own protection (Genesis 3:22–23). We aren’t in danger of being trapped in sin forever. We are clean. We are whole. We are at peace with the Lord who IS our peace. ANYONE can come to the cross, believe, confess Jesus to be Lord, and be saved. ANYONE can begin the journey of all journeys. ANYONE can be in relationship with the Lord God Almighty. If THAT isn’t good news for all humanity, I don’t know what is. If THAT doesn’t kill fear and inspire faith, I don’t know what would. It is positive proof of the manifestation of the total Love of God toward us. His perfect love. His total peace. His best for us in every way possible. The end of fear. Good News for us all, indeed.

Daily Affirmation of God’s Love: Acts 20:28

We all intimately know the power of ownership. There is little in this world that will bring out the fury of a person as much as someone touching their stuff. We learn this so well and so early, that you see it even in babies. Oh, it can be cute at that stage. Seeing them get grabby and protect their toy, their cupcake, or their parent. But when they get a little older, it can mean fights. It can mean the development of something more than just a cute impulse, but true jealousy. This continues as we grow, nursing those slights and injustices that we feel were done against us in regards to OUR stuff, OUR opportunities, OUR, OUR, OUR. We twist ownership into horrible shapes and forms (possessiveness in a relationship for example). But there is such a thing as ownership that does NOT have anything negative attached to it. That is the ownership the Lord feels toward us. Talk about the anger of a Momma Bear? It is NOTHING to how the Lord feels when someone messes with HIS kids. Whether it relates to His beloved children the Jews or His beloved adopted children the Gentiles. Any child of God is precious in His sight. Precious and protected. So precious He bought us with His blood. And anything He purchased is HIS, HIS, HIS. “You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. They are of the world. Therefore they speak of the world, and the world hears them. We are of God. He who knows God listens to us. He who is not of God doesn’t listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error” (1 John 4:4–6). That is love in action. The Lord looking out for us, protecting us, and taking action for our sake. We might think the response slow (2 Peter 3:9), but He responds in the perfection of time and none can stand against Him (John 10:25–30). NO ONE can take HIS kids. EVER.

Your Daily Confession of God’s love to YOU:

Today God loves that I _______.