It’s time to zoom out and consider the Christmas story from a wide-angle viewpoint. After four hundred years of radio silence, heaven re-established contact and sent messengers (that is the meaning of the Greek word we translate as “angel”) to prepare the way. Headquarters shined a beacon (the star of Matthew 2:2, 7, and 9) to lead the allied agents to the place. God then thwarted the enemy’s attempts to discover the king’s location and assassinate him.
Operation Bethlehem was the first stage in a multi-pronged offensive. Heaven was on the move, and the long-awaited king had arrived.
What can we learn from this? We can learn that God’s timing is not our timing. If you remember, the prophet Isaiah had foretold this day: “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 Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever” (Isaiah 9:6-7).
I imagine Isaiah thinking that this prophecy would come true in his day. Perhaps he said to God, “If ever the there was a time for you to keep your promise, it’s now. There is war on our doorstep, suffering in our future, and our king is imperiled.” Yet hundreds of years would pass before David’s heir would appear in Bethlehem.
Such a thing was, from Isaiah’s point of view, unthinkable. The need was now! But he could not see what God saw. During those intervening years, Alexander the Great spread Greek culture and – more importantly – Greek language across the western world. Greek became the trade language of Africa, Asia and Europe, and that made it possible for ordinary men from Galilee to carry the news of the king and his kingdom across the globe.
In the decades before Jesus’ birth, Mighty Rome came into its own. The Empire was the greatest road builder that had ever been seen. Their roads made foot travel over great distances possible for the first time. The iron fist of Rome also put an end to the petty wars that were continually breaking out from India to Britain. The ensuing time of peace (called the Pax Romana) made it possible to cross previously closed political borders with the message of the kingdom.
The right time awaited only Caesar Augustus’ infamous census to bring the right people to the right place at the right moment so that the promises could be fulfilled, and a king could be born in Bethlehem of Judea. God’s timing is not our timing; it’s better. It’s perfect.
Viewed through our wide-angle lens, this story forcefully reminds us of another important truth: that God’s ways are not our ways. Why choose a village almost no one had ever heard of, in a country that few paid any mind, as the birthplace of the great king? Why not Rome or Athens or Alexandria?
And who would ever have dreamed that God would select pagan astrologers to welcome his royal king into the world? I cannot think of a Christian denomination that would make that choice. But God’s ways are not our ways.
And above all, why send a baby? Isaiah had prophesied that God would “shatter the yoke that burden[ed] them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor”; that “Every warrior’s boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood [would] be destined for burning, [would] be fuel for the fire.” What great warrior would God send to accomplish these mighty deeds? We would send an Eisenhower, a MacArthur, or a Patton.
But God’s ways are not our ways: he sent a baby. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. . . He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.”
So when God isn’t doing things the way you think they should be done – and when does he ever – will you still trust him? One of the great lessons from this wide-angle view of the Bible is that if we insist on understanding what God is doing before we trust him, we will never trust him. You cannot decide to trust God based on what is happening in your life, but on what happened on a cross. The good news is not that everything is going to work out just the way you want, but that Christ died for us, death has been conquered, and the kingdom of God is at hand.
If you remove the Christmas story from the larger narrative that surrounds it, from the promises of God to rescue and renew his people, you still have a nice story but you may just miss the point. This little child is the fulfillment of the great promises. He is the king. Bethlehem is not just an inhospitable town; it is an invasion site. Bethlehem ought to be listed with Thermopylae, Troy, Normandy, and Omaha Beach. With the coming of this child the forces of the eternal kingdom have arrived, and the deciding campaign of the Long War has begun.
The actual arrival of the king is described in Luke chapter two. In our Matthew text, we are told of the events that followed his birth. Look at verse one: “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea…”
Judea was the current name of the province, but it had previously been referred to as Judah. Judah was one of Israel’s original twelve tribes and, as early as Jacob, almost two millennia before Jesus, we find that is was from Judah that a king was to come.3 Interestingly, in the years leading up to Christ’s birth, there were prophecies and predictions coming not just from Israel but also from all over the Orient that a world ruler would arise from little Judea.4
Also note Bethlehem. Before the famine on words from the Lord, the prophet Micah had promised that Bethlehem, the home town of King David, would be the arrival site for the Great King who would be his descendent.5
So, “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod…” Stop there. Israel had gone into exile. They lost their land, their temple and their king, the descendant of David. But God promised to return their king, and now they had one: King Herod.
Yes, but Herod was not the promised king. He did not belong to the tribe of Judah, was not a descendant of David, nor did he hail from Bethlehem. Forty years before Christ, the Roman army crushed Israel and most of the Middle East. Rome made Herod’s father, an Idumean collaborator, governor of the province. Later, when the Parthians invaded Israel and placed a Jew on the throne, it was young Herod who led the military counterattack. The war was extremely bloody, but he won the country back for Rome. As a reward, the Roman senate, led by Marc Antony, conferred on Herod the title, “King of the Jews.”
Some of the great names of history are found in this story: Julius Caesar, Marc Antony, Cleopatra (with whom Herod shared a mutual dislike), and Caesar Augustus. It was Rome that gave Herod to Israel, not God, and the people never really accepted him. Herod married a woman from the most important family in Israel, thinking that it would give him legitimacy in the eyes of the public. But legitimacy was something that not even Herod could command. Years later, when he thought that two of their sons were plotting his overthrow, he had them killed. Then he had his wife killed. In the days before illness and age put an end to him, he had a son by his second wife put to death. The man was insanely suspicious, always fearing that someone was trying to usurp his throne.
Back to verse 1: “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi [a kind of Persian intelligentsia, astronomers and priests] from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, (verse 2) ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.’”
You can imagine the effect that news had on Herod. The man had killed his own sons and his wife when he believed they had designs on his throne. And now the worst possible news: a legitimate king had been born. So, verse 3, “When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.” When Herod was disturbed, Jerusalem was disturbed, because when Herod was disturbed people died.
Remember that not only miracles and messages cluster around those periods when God acts decisively in history; so does opposition – spiritual opposition. That kind of opposition enters human affairs through some kind of human bridge, in this case, Herod. He sent for his intelligence officers, the chief priests, and teachers of the law (verse 4) and requested operational information.
They told him that the assault on his kingship – that, of course, was not what they said, but it is what he heard – was to originate from Bethlehem in Judea. The powers of darkness had long had free reign in the king; and now see what came of it. He sent the Magi to “go and make a careful search for the Child” (verse 8), but he didn’t tell them that this was to be a “search and destroy” mission.
They did as they were ordered, but when they receive a communication from heaven, they went into hiding. Herod and the powers at work in him were forced to adopt an alternate strategy, a campaignof shock and awe. He sent his soldiers to the vicinity with orders to kill every male child under two years old (verse 16). Killing infants seems to be a favorite tactic of the opposition. 6
But the promised king escaped. God’s promises are not held hostage by evil powers – whether men or spirits. The invasion had been successful, though it was not without casualties (verse 18): “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”
Now consider this story from a wide angle viewpoint. After four hundred years of radio silence, heaven re-established contact and sent messengers (that is the meaning of the Greek word we translate as “angel”) to prepare the way. Headquarters shined a beacon (the star of verse 2 and 7 and 9) to lead the allied agents to the place. God then thwarted the enemy’s attempts to discover the king’s location and assassinate him.
Operation Bethlehem was the first stage in a multi-pronged offensive. Heaven was on the move, and the long-awaited king had arrived.
The “seed of Abraham” sprouted and “the line of David” came to a point in a dusty corner of the Roman Empire, a place known as Bethlehem. How does the promised king appear in history? It’s an old story and we know it so well—don’t we?
We know about the poor man who was a poor man engaged to a young woman, who became pregnant, but not by him; her pregnancy was supernatural. And they had to go to Bethlehem because of something to do with taxes, and they just made it to town before the baby arrived, but the Bethlehem Inn was full up, and the only place the innkeeper could put them was a stable. And she ended up having the baby there, in the company of camels, cows and sheep.
Later that night the stable got really crowded, because a bunch of shepherds came, and then some kings from the Orient arrived. The kings are also called Wise Men, which begs the question: if they were really so wise, what were they doing barging into the poor girl’s room on the night she had a baby?
We almost know the story by heart: the innkeeper put Joseph and Mary in the … stable. But the Bible never talks about a stable; that idea arose because Luke mentions a manger – a feeding trough for animals – so we assume there must have been a stable. For that matter, the Bible never mentions an innkeeper either.
And how many kings came to see him – three? But there are at least three problems with that: First, the “kings” did not arrive on the night Jesus was born, but many months later. Secondly, Matthew does not call them kings at all, but magi – members of an ancient Persian tribe. And third, their number is never mentioned. We assume there were three because that is the number of gifts they brought. But some old legends held that there were twelve.
And what did the angels sing in the sky over the shepherds? “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, good will to men.” To start, that translation is questionable; but beyond that the text never says that the angels sang. Rather it says, “They said, ‘Glory to God in the highest…’”
Well, maybe we don’t have the details of the story down as well as we thought, but it’s not details we are after, but the sweep of biblical history, its main themes. But, when it comes to the birth of Jesus, do we really have the main themes down? The way the story is usually told is full of human interest: unwed pregnant girl; young guy who mans up and marries her; arriving in Bethlehem on a cold and snowy night (though it almost never snows in Bethlehem, and the Bible says nothing about it); forced to give birth in a stable. All of that evokes emotion. It makes us feel good to see how God took care of the poor girl and her noble guy. But we might miss the broader themes.
The Christmas story of stable and shepherds and wise men and, most of all, of a tiny baby, is part of a broader narrative. God had, as we have seen, made promises: to Abraham, to bless the peoples of the earth through his offspring; to David, that his descendant would rule from his throne forever; to the people going into exile, that he would bring a remnant back to the land and return their king to them. promised to enter into a new covenant with his people and to write his laws on their hearts, changing them from the inside out. He promised to forgive their sins; promised that they would know him, and that he would be their God, and that they would be his people (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
If you remove the Christmas story from this larger narrative, from the promises of God to rescue and renew his people, you still have a nice story, but you may just miss the point. This little child is the fulfillment of the great promises. He is the king. Bethlehem is not just an inhospitable town; it is an invasion site. Bethlehem ought to be listed with Thermopylae, Troy, Normandy, and Omaha Beach. With the coming of this child the forces of the eternal kingdom have arrived, and the deciding campaign of the Long War has begun.
I was flying from Dakar, Senegal, West Africa to Paris. I left Dakar about 11:00 at night, and within minutes the ground below us grew very dark. We were flying over Mauritania, Western Sahara, and Morocco, where towns and villages are few and far between. And even where there were towns, there was not always electricity.
I must have been sitting by the window because I can remember looking down into the blackness for long periods of time. And then I would see a little spot of light – some village in the Sahara – and then back to blackness.
When we reached Spain, the light of towns and villages became much more conspicuous. And as we began our descent and drew near to Paris, the world below us was full of lights.
I see a parallel to that in spiritual realities. Sometimes people expect to see miracles all around them. They think that if the faith is true, they should see evidence for it everywhere – a thousand point of light in the form of remarkable healings and nature-defying answers to prayer. Certainly, such things happen, as Scripture strongly affirms. But those things usually happen in clusters around significant acts of God in history.
For example, after the Fall and the Flood there seem to be few miraculous suspensions of the laws of nature. There are some but they are few and far between, like the lights we saw from above Mauritania. But as we look over the spiritual landscape that Abraham occupied, we see more miraculous events, scattered around the patriarchs. Then when God acts in history to liberate Israel in the Exodus, we see many more. Miracles cluster around Moses, like moths around a flame.
During the years preceding the exile, it happened again: miraculous events clustered around the great prophets Elijah and Elisha. It was a time of spiritual battle. The prophets won the battles, but Israel lost the field and went into exile. Following the exile, miracles became few, and by the close of the Old Testament, some four hundred years before Christ, it seemed that God himself had gone into hiding.
It was not just miracles that were absent. Messages from the Lord had stopped coming. Heaven observed, you might say, radio silence. The prophet Amos had warned that it would happen: “‘The days are coming,’ declares the Sovereign LORD, ‘when I will send a famine through the land – not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD. Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it’” (Amos 8:12).
Imagine that an alien race sent explorers to our solar system and among the data they wanted to record were electromagnetic wave transmissions. When they first arrived, in our year 1865, they found nothing within their parameters. But when they dispatched a second exploration team 150 earth years later, the air was full of voices. In the U. S. alone they found over three billion phone calls daily, not to mention radio and TV signals.
In terms of the biblical story, after the prophet, Malachi, there were no signals, no Voice in the air. There was silence. But coming to that period of history in which the Son of God was incarnated is like our aliens coming from the mid-19th century to the twenty-first, or like my flight over the desert to Paris. The Voice of heaven once again had much to say. With the coming of Jesus miracles begin happening again, and the word of the Lord was heard once more. All of history either leads to or flows from his appearance on earth. His life, death and resurrection form a great spiritual divide, the watershed of history, and the province of miracles.
It is also the time of the greatest spiritual opposition in history. The approach of the King drove spiritual tyrants to take up arms – hence the many accounts of demonized people in the gospels. We find good and miraculous things happening around the appearance of Christ, but we also find horrific things. The battle had been joined.
But they did not wait too long. They didn’t wait long enough. Some of them didn’t wait at all. Instead of trusting God, they took matters into their own hands. They gave up on God, but God did not give up on himself or his promises.
And what about us? If God let his promise to them fail, might not his promises to us be annulled? If his anger smoldered against them, might it not smolder against us? If they waited too long, might we not wait too long?
But they did not wait too long. They didn’t wait long enough. Some of them didn’t wait at all. Instead of trusting God, they took matters into their own hands. They gave up on God, but God did not give up on himself or his promises.
According to Alexander Pope, “Hope springs eternal,” but that spring often gets plugged at this time of year. In ancient times, enemy combatants would use stones to stop up the wells and springs of a city under siege. In this way, they could force their adversaries to abandon their strategic advantage and become vulnerable.
We too become vulnerable when the springs of hope upon which we depend are stopped up. Marriage problems, health troubles, financial pressures, and job tensions are all stones that can stop up the spring of hope. COVID has been a boulder.
Years ago, the State of Maine enacted a controversial plan to generate hydro-electric power. The plan required the Corp of Engineers to dam a river, and that meant evacuating a small town that would be permanently flooded. It took years of hearings and tons of paperwork before the plan finally went into effect. Eventually, the state purchased the property from the town, and gave people ample time to find other places to live.
As soon as the decision was finalized, a fascinating thing began to happen. The once beautiful town fell into disrepair. When things stopped working, machines failed, or windows broke, the people of the town just let them go. One of the residents said, “Where there is no faith in the future, there is no work in the present.”
“Faith in the future” – that is, hope – is crucial. I once spent a few days in a small town in northern Ontario. It was one of the most depressing places I’ve ever visited. I heard a resentful Anglo townsperson complain that First Nations folks were lazy, but conversations with residents led me to another conclusion: people weren’t lazy, but some were hopeless. The two, though very different, look similar from the outside.
When the dissident Russian intellectual Alexander Solzhenitsyn was in the gulag, he became so physically weak and emotionally drained that he wanted to die. The brutal treatment, the terrible conditions, and the hard labor had overwhelmed him. He knew that if he quit working the guards would beat him, probably to death. So, one day he stopped working. He just stood still, leaned on his shovel, and waited for the end to come.
When he stopped, one of his fellow-Christians in the camp noticed. He reached over with his shovel and drew a cross in the dirt at Solzhenitsyn’s feet, then quickly smudged it up before the guard had a chance to see it. Solzhenitsyn later wrote that his entire being was energized by the sight of that cross. It was his symbol of hope.
People quit when they don’t have hope. Marriages fail, not because they are irreparable, but one or both partner is hopeless. Voters who have no hope stop going to the polls. When those struggling for justice lose hope, they surrender to the status quo.
The Christmas season exacerbates hopelessness for some people. The stones – financial pressures, relationship difficulties, job tensions, and loneliness – plug up the spring of hope. The most wonderful time of the year can be the most depressing.
Some people can almost see Dante’s line, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” written at the beginning of December in their calendar. The season most characterized by anticipation becomes for them a time of gloom. It is ironic, but it was bound to happen is a culture that has left Advent’s spiritual springs of hope to wander in the secular wasteland.
People can combat hopelessness during the holidays by refusing to isolate, overspend, or pull an all-nighter wrapping gifts. They can connect to encouraging friends and avoid the emotional pitfalls of the past. But the best thing people can do is to rediscover the true meaning and purpose of Advent.
It is, after all, what people call a “religious” season, and we should not expect to find hope in it if we treat it like a secular holiday. But those who enter fully into it find “faith in the future” or, rather, the God of the future finds them. For them, Christmas, which comes and goes almost as quickly as the cross at Solzhenitsyn feet, becomes an energizing symbol of hope.
When Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the promises made to David about a son, and made to Israel about a king, had not been forgotten. There had been no real kingdom for hundreds of years. There had been great heroes, but no true kings. David’s line had not been raised up. But some people still held to the promise. How could God deny himself? He would keep his word. A king would come. And when they looked at Jesus, they recognized that king.
Do you remember how people called Jesus the “son of David”? Poor Bartimaeus, sitting on the side of the road leading out of Jericho, shouting again and again, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” A few days later, on the way into Jerusalem for Passover, throngs of Galileans hailed him again as “the Son of David,” the “king of Israel.” Again, I ask, why Jesus?
Remember the promise made to his mother, even before his birth: “The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.” Remember that he was born in, of all places, Bethlehem, the town of David. The prophet had hundreds of years earlier said, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel.”
For centuries Israel had waited for a king, the king, the son of David. Then one day in Galilee a charismatic young man – about David’s age when he assumed the throne – a man born in David’s hometown, whose leadership ability was off the charts, whose spiritual life was inspirational, began traveling through the countryside. And the first words he spoke were: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Now we begin to see why, on the day when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the people were shouting to the Son of David, the one coming in the name of the Lord! Jesus borrowed a young donkey to ride into the city, and so reminded everyone of the treasured words of the prophet Zechariah: “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” On that day it seemed as if all the promises of God were going to be fulfilled: after all these years, David’s greater son had finally arrived.
And five days later he was dead. God’s promises, once again, seemed like empty words. Here, in viewing what for Jesus’ followers was the greatest of disappointments, is a wide-angle theme to remember: God’s ways are not our ways, and his time is not our time. We’ve seen it again and again. God promised Abraham a child, but Abraham and his wife could not and did not conceive for twenty-four years. He promised his people a land of their own, but it took them forty years to enter it. He promised David a kingdom in perpetuity, but the kingdom cracked within two generations, and was broken to bits within a couple of hundred years. He promised Israel the return of the king, but just when they thought he had arrived, he was executed.
God hardly ever does things the way we think he should. Why send the long-awaited king to a cross? Why inaugurate the kingdom by having the King crucified? Here is where we need a wide-angle lens in looking at the Bible. Yes, he is King, but he is also the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. He is the Manna of our souls. He is the Captain of salvation. He is the Son of David, but he is also the Son of God. There are depths to him that even a wide-angle lens cannot take in because God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.
If some of God’s people stopped trusting his promises when they saw their king executed, they stopped trusting three days too soon. The resurrection vindicated their trust in God. And if you and I stop trusting when we see our hopes withering and our prayers falling to the ground, we stop trusting too soon. God will keep his word. As Solomon son of David once put it, “Not one word has failed of all the good promises [God] gave.”
There was never anyone like King David. For a few years, God’s kingdom thrived through God’s king, in keeping with God’s word. David did what no one before him had ever managed to do: he united all the tribes of Israel. Under him, the house of Israel became the kingdom of Israel. His leadership ability was off the charts. His military prowess was legendary. His spiritual life was inspirational.
He was God’s man, and part of the line through which God’s Son would come. After David had assumed the throne, God sent a message to him through the prophet Nathan. It is one of the key passages in the entire Old Testament: 2 Samuel 7. “The LORD declares to you that the LORD himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. . .Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.”
That promise was recorded and published, and it left an indelible impression on the minds of the house of Israel. And I say “the house of Israel” again because it was only a few hundred years after David that the “kingdom of Israel” was a kingdom no more. The kingdom was shattered from within, and then crushed from without. David’s descendants were sent into exile. The royal line vanished in a faraway land.
It was a horrible time in the history of Israel. The promise that David’s throne would be established forever had not been forgotten, but the throne had been destroyed, and the kingdom was dust in the wind. They had lost the promised land and the promised king in one blow. And where was God while all this was happening? That’s what the psalmist wanted to know.
In Psalm 89, Ethan the Ezraite recalls the story of how God found David and anointed him king. He then repeats God’s covenant promise to David: “I will also appoint him my firstborn, the most exalted of the kings of the earth. I will maintain my love to him forever, and my covenant with him will never fail. I will establish his line forever, his throne as long as the heavens endure.” For emphasis, God’s promise of faithfulness is then restated: “I will not violate my covenant or alter what my lips have uttered. Once for all, I have sworn by my holiness – and I will not lie to David – that his line will continue forever and his throne endure before me like the sun; it will be established forever like the moon, the faithful witness in the sky.”
But David’s line went into exile and Israel’s kingdom no longer existed. What had happened to God’s promise? What good was God’s word, if he didn’t stand behind it? And it certainly didn’t seem to the Israelite people that he was standing behind it. So, the Psalmist goes on in accusatory tones: “You have renounced the covenant with your servant and have defiled his crown in the dust. You have broken through all his walls and reduced his strongholds to ruins. You have put an end to his splendor and cast his throne to the ground.”
If God had gone back on his word, if he was unreliable, then there really was no hope. Those were dark days for Israel. The majority of people had given up on God and turned elsewhere for relief. But a few voices kept calling out: “Don’t forget God’s promises. God will keep his word. The king will return.”
One of those voices belonged to the prophet Isaiah. He wrote: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. . . 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 Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this.”
When we hear those verses, we think of Christmas. When Israel heard those verses, they thought of God’s promise to David. Don’t give up on God. Don’t forget his promise. He will make his word good.
Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life… (Philippians 2:12-16a)
Have you been grumbling about the pandemic? First, it was the toilet paper shortage, then the closures, then the mask mandates, then the lifting of mask mandates, then the vaccine – and always the people who thought differently than you. If you have been grumbling about the pandemic, may I suggest that you’ve got infected by a second pandemic, even more viral than the first and just as catastrophic: the pandemic of grumbling.
We are going through a grumbling surge right now. Grumbling is viral. And it is highly contagious, which means you’d better be careful you are hanging with! Grumbling has the potential to ruin everything.
Because this is serious, I am in favor of compulsory mask-wearing—not for COVID but for people who can’t stop grumbling. In fact, quarantine is probably in order – even if the complainer … is me.
Grumbling is talking to yourself or to anyone who happens to be near about the wrongs you have suffered, the wrongs you must endure, and the injustice that is your lot. Your mind rehearses these things, almost as if it was programmed to do so. It’s not that you intend to grumble; it’s just that these things keep irritating your mind until they come out of your mouth, like a mental sneeze.
When we complain about one bad thing in our lives, we are likely to infect the good things in our lives too. But it’s not so much the things that get infected; it is us. We carry the infection with us. Wherever we go, wherever our minds go, the infection goes with us. Eventually, it contaminates everything. Nothing retains its luster.
It doesn’t stop with you, either. It spreads to the people around you. It infects them, contaminates their pleasures and joys. It leaves families, workplaces, and even churches blighted.
I’ve known families in which a grumbling spirit has been passed down from one generation to another. I’d rather my parents passed on baldness and heart disease (which they did). Baldness and heart disease cannot rob me of joy, but grumbling can and does. I can serve Christ well even when I become the latest family member with cancer, but I cannot serve him well when I grumble.
Grumbling and arguing can ruin a marriage that is otherwise strong. It can ruin a house, though you once thought it was a palace. It can ruin your car, though it is still dependable. It can ruin your paycheck. Grumbling and arguing can ruin anything.
And yet everyone – or nearly everyone – does it. There is an attraction to it, an appeal. Grumbling seems to relieve pressure, but it is the same kind of relief we get when we scratch the poison ivy rash on our leg. It feels good for a moment, then makes the itch even worse.
We can take up other people’s grievances, join their side, feel their anger, and hate their enemy (who has become our enemy). We can even feel righteous because of it. Feeling righteous – especially more righteous than someone else – is highly addictive.
Everyone wants to complain, but have you noticed that hardly anyone wants to be around a complainer? We can’t wait for them to stop complaining so we can start.
Everyone is vulnerable to this infection, but there are steps we can tale that will make us less susceptible. To understand those steps, we need some context. Earlier in this chapter, Paul urged the Philippians church members to look to the interests of others and not just their own. Those who do have a high degree of protection from grumbling and arguing. He speaks in verse 4 of – literal translation – “scoping out the interests of others.” If there is a vaccine against grumbling, this is it. Grumblers are always focused – sometimes continually focused – on their own interests.
Secondly, people who begin a regimen of mind transformation develop long-term immunity to grumbling and arguing. Verse 5 says, “Have the same mindset as Christ Jesus,” or literally, “Think this” – an imperative mood verb – “among yourselves which also [was] in Christ Jesus.” If we don’t change our thinking, we’ll never be able to stop complaining – even if we want to. It is in our thinking – our mindset – that the grumbling virus lodges. We need, to quote Ephesians 4:23, to “be renewed in the spirit of [our] minds.”
No shot from a hypodermic needle will renew your thinking. For that, you need an injection of Scripture – not just a couple of times, with a Sunday sermon booster – but a regular regimen of biblical truth, administered under the oversight of God’s Holy Spirit. If you don’t know how to get that, set up a time to talk to me and I can help you.
One more thing about context: This “scoping out the interests of others,” and the attendant renewal of the mind happen within the life of the church. It happens when people are together in community. Chapter two (especially the first four verses) makes this clear. Renewal of the mind doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens as we live side by side, help each other, pray for each other, get hurt by each other, and forgive each other. As John Wesley put it: “The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion.”
If we try to do everything without grumbling and arguing, we will need each other’s help. I invite your help. This is a command I have broken more times than I can count. But we will have other help – and better – than what our church family can give. We will have God’s help too. Look at verse 13: “…it is God who works in you” – you here is plural and might refer to the church: it is God who works in your church family – “to will and to act according to his good purpose.”
God promises his help. There is nothing quite like this in the sacred texts of the world. Other gods command and even pity, but they do not help humans both to will and to do. But the God and Father of our Lord Jesus does. And not from a distance; he takes up residence in us by his Spirit. He doesn’t set a fire beneath us (the fires of hell) or pull the strings above us (as if we were puppets). He neither causes nor coerces. He enables – enables us to choose the right thing and enables us to do the right thing. But we must learn to trust him.
We are talking about doing everything without grumbling and arguing. This is not a matter of human willpower – mind over matter – but of God’s faithfulness – God over evil. We’ll not succeed at this because we have a strong mind, but because we have a trusting heart.
And we must succeed at this. There is a great deal riding on it. Listen to what St. Paul, who penned this letter, wrote to the Corinthian church: “…do not grumble, as some of them” [he’s talking about Jews in Moses’s time] “did—and were killed by the destroying angel. These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come.” (1 Cor. 10:10-11.)
The command to do everything without grumbling and arguing is not just important because of what might happen to us, but also because of what might not happen through us. If we are to fulfill our calling in the world, it is critical for us to understand this. And to understand this, we need to understand a truth about God’s people that sometimes has gotten blurred.
If someone were to ask you to describe God’s people – what they are like, what the church is like or, at least, what it is supposed to be like – how would you answer? You might say, “They are gracious. They are honest. They are loving. They are generous.” Those are good answers, every one. God’s people are – or, at least, are supposed to be – like this. Another way of putting it is to say, “God’s people are holy,” or even “God’s people are different.” According to one famous scholar, that is what it means to say someone is holy: he or she is different.
God’s people are different. Or they are supposed to be. They have different values and, because they have different values, they have different morals. And because they have different morals, they act differently. If they are not acting differently, they are not serving their purpose. In fact, they are subverting it.
Here we have one way – there are many others but this one is vitally important right now – that God’s people are to be different from everyone else: they don’t complain and argue. People have always complained and argued, and Christians have always been instructed to do neither. This is one of the places where we are to be different.
There are others. We don’t have sex outside of marriage – at least, we are not supposed to; we are to be different. We don’t spend our money only on ourselves – at least, we are not supposed to; we are to be different. We don’t pay people back for the wrongs they have done us – at least, we are not supposed to; we forgive; we are supposed to be different. We don’t go around putting people down; we “do not judge,” – or, at least, we are not supposed to. We are supposed to be different.
At this moment in world history – in this era of unparalleled complaining and arguing – one of the primary ways God’s people will stand out is by abstaining from complaints and refusing to argue. Some contemporary Christians teachers think we need to lodge our complaints as loudly as possible and do whatever it takes to win the cultural argument—as if that’s our job. But St. Paul says it is our job not to complain. It is our job not to argue. We are to be different. That’s in our job description. The success of our calling is riding on it.
Just think how different we would be if we neither complained nor argued. Not on Facebook, not on social media, not in person. If you went through a string of Job-like catastrophes without complaining, how would that impact the people around you? We are to be different. If we lose our jobs, lose our homes, and lose our reputations, and yet don’t complain, we will be different – and, in our role as Jesus’s people, different is good.
But there is more to it than that. If you lose your job, your spouse, your health and yet never complain, I will say you are a fine person. You are extraordinary. You are one in a million. But it will never enter my mind that I might be like you.
But if neither you nor I complain when we are struggling through difficulties; if you and I and Michael, and Jenny, Mark, Paula, Scott, Chris, Tanya, Emily – our entire group – doesn’t complain or argue, people will believe that such a life is possible, that there is a way to it, and that we know what it is. And if our entire church doesn’t complain or argue, even when things are scary, unfair, and tough, people will believe that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Let’s look more closely at verse 14. The apostle says, “Do everything without grumbling or arguing…” Everything? Dishes, driving, golfing, board meetings, conversations about the government, the pandemic, the weather – everything? If that doesn’t even sound possible to you, you may be addict. It’s alright to admit it. “Hi, my name is Shayne, and I am a complainaholic.”
But it is possible to stop grumbling and arguing for those who have come over to God’s side, trusted his Son, and received his Spirit. Remember, “it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” It is not mind over matter but God over evil.
Verse 15 tells us why this is important – why we as Jesus’s people simply cannot be like everyone else: “so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation…” God wants us to stand out. He wants us to be different. His plan for the world depends on us “shining like stars in the universe.” Paul took that last phrase from the 12th chapter, third verse of the prophet Daniel, where Daniel was talking about people who lead many to righteousness. Both Daniel and Paul are thinking about God’s plan to bring people to himself. That is not primarily done by brilliant apologetic arguments or inspiring sermons. It is done by people who are different, like those who don’t complain. They stand out like a sore thumb or, rather, like a bright star against the dark sky.
To make that clear, Paul continues: “as you hold out the word of life.” Not the word of COVID or the word of politics, or even the word of advice. We hold out the word of life. The word of life is the announcement of the good news and the life it makes possible. It is a new life, not the same old life that never satisfies. It is an eternal life, not a fleeting one – indestructible is how the author of Hebrews described it. It is a free life, not one intertwined with addictions. It is a life of purpose. A life of love. A life we love. And it is possible because God is at work in us both to will and to act according to his good purpose.
There is a negative and a positive here. The negative – what we don’t do – is complain and argue. The positive – what we do – is hold out the word of life. That combination – not doing the one while doing the other – produces results in our lives, family, and community. Any other combination – doing neither, doing both, or worse, getting it exactly backwards and doing what we shouldn’t and not doing what we should – makes our lives unhappy and our efforts to bring other people over to Christ’s side ineffective.
You can’t complain and argue with someone one moment and tell them about Jesus the next and expect them to believe you. You might as well tell them that you’ve gone bankrupt five times and then recommend your financial advisor. Our work as God’s people includes recruiting family, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances for Jesus’s side. But for us to be successful at that, we cannot complain and argue. We must be different.
And for that, we need training in the way of Jesus. That training continues throughout life. Jesus’s people are life-long learners. They are always involved in continuing education. But there are also steps we can take now.
I’ve already referred to a couple of them. We can start scoping out the interests of others. One way to do that is to pay attention to the prayer requests we hear on Sunday. We can join the prayer chain during the week. We can be on the lookout for ways to help. Just getting our minds off ourselves and onto the needs of others will help us stop grumbling and arguing.
Another thing we can do is pray for and seek the renewing of our minds so that we start thinking like Jesus. The Bible is a great help in this. The Spirit of God uses the word of God to transform the minds of the people of God. Start reading the Bible regularly. Join a Bible study or just get together with someone each week to talk about the sermon. Spend at least as much time reading or talking about the Bible as you spend on social and news media. Those media also transform minds, not to think the way Jesus does but the way some powerful person – perhaps even an adversary of Jesus – wants you to think.
Finally, don’t underestimate how difficult it will be to do everything without grumbling or arguing. You’ll never succeed unless you make a choice to do so. You can choose to do this or not, but you’re not going to drift into it by chance. To help you make that choice, we have set up a page on our website (www.lockwoodchurch.org) where you can publicly affirm your intention to do all things without grumbling or arguing this week. One week. It is only a start, but you’ll never get there if you don’t start.
I encourage you to tell someone (a spouse, a friend, someone you work with – or all three) that you’ve made a commitment not to complain or argue for the entire week and enlist their help. Ask them to call you out if you should start grumbling or arguing.
This is important. This is our opportunity. Let’s take it to the glory of God.
I went from early elementary school through high school with a boy named David. He was sometimes my friend – we started a club together in late elementary school – and he was sometimes my enemy – the club lasted one day. David enjoyed making fun of me, for he was a master of repartee and I enjoyed proving my physical superiority over him, for I was twice his size.
David was a smart, funny, often irritating kid. By the time we got to high school, he was also an ambitious one. In our senior year, he went around soliciting students to vote him “most likely to succeed.”
I believe he did succeed. The last time I saw him, I was working my way through college at the Ford Motor Company, earning a hitherto unimaginable paycheck of nearly $250 a week. One day, I met David at the tennis courts and asked him what he was doing. He was pursuing a career in dentistry, while working weekends as a server at the downtown Hyatt. I was shocked to learn that he made as much in tips over a weekend as I made at Ford working six days a week. Later, I heard that he had opened a chain of offices in Florida.
I always knew that David was Catholic, though he never mentioned going to mass, and I don’t think he did very often. In our earlier years, I didn’t go to church at all, but by high school that had changed. I had been converted and was trying, in a stumbling manner, to live consistently with what I had come to believe.
One day in high school, David showed me a “nickle bag” of weed he had just purchased. I said something like, “Man, you’ve got to quit doing this stuff.” David, who knew about my faith, countered: “Look, when I get old – like 70 – I’ll get religion. Until then, I am going to have some fun.”
To him it made perfect sense. Religion was all about getting into heaven when you die, but religion also imposed constraints on you while you lived. So, why not wait until you were about to die to get religion? For David, that meant waiting until one was ancient, say 70, and already had one foot in the grave. That was the time to get religion.
I didn’t have a comeback. To tell the truth, his reasoning seemed sound. The only problem I could see with it was the risk it entailed. A person might die before he was ancient, before he was 70, and then it would be too late.
I wish I had known then what I know now. I had accepted the premise that religion was all about getting into heaven—how could I not? Even the religious people I knew talked as if that were true. At the time, my familiarity with the Bible was slight and I knew nothing of the great theological traditions within Christianity.
Had I been better informed, I would have strongly disagreed with the idea that religion was only or even mostly about the afterlife. The Bible, which contains approximately three-quarters of a million words, uses very few of them in discussing the afterlife—a fact that would, no doubt, have surprised David.
It’s true that the Bible speaks of “the life of the age to come” and “the life that is life indeed,” but it does not use these terms to refer exclusively to existence in heaven. From the Bible’s perspective, the inception of the “life of the age to come” begins now and transforms a person here. The reception of this life brings purpose, peace, and joy.
My friend David wanted to wait to “get religion” because he feared missing out on the fun. Over the years, I have met many people like David, and it doesn’t seem to me that any of them ever caught up with the fun they were pursuing. They ignored religion because it seemed to have nothing to do with life on earth, but it turns out to have been the place where the things they were seeking – purpose, peace, and joy – are found.
The Way Home 