God is (Still) With Us

Those who know me personally know that I LOVE CHRISTMAS! Many of my favorite childhood memories involve Christmas, especially the year our extended Asplund family celebrated the season in my Asplund grandparent's farmhouse in Wilton, North Dakota, including the visit of Santa Claus (in the person of Uncle Leonard). My own family celebrated Christmas as a wonderful family event every year, making Christmas largely about quality time together as a family. 

But I also have a deep love for the image of the Christ child. It's not just that I love babies and families. Just the thought of the eternal Word of God, God's One-and-Only, being poured into humanity as a tender, vulnerable, dependent human baby, born to a poor family under very difficult and dangerous circumstances, always truly amazes me. And the details were designed by God very specifically, with special mention made to the shepherds that the sign they were to look for was a baby lying in a feed trough.

It was the prophet Isaiah, in the context of a prophetic encounter with the Jewish king Ahaz, that promised, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel" (7:14). The promise of this special birth and the child's name was the profound mystery that with the birth, God would be with us, our Immanuel. God has always desired intimate, personal, familial relationships with human beings, but the human tendency to reject God and to attempt to live independently from God has consistently blocked that holy desire. It was necessary for God to take the initiative, and to do it in such a way as to reveal the heart, desire, and character of our God. 

And so God came, as a tiny baby, offering the most basic example of a deep, personal relationship. And to emphasize the point, a host of angelic messengers and singers announced the birth to lowly shepherds, watching over a flock of sheep somewhere in the field. It wasn't just that they were at the bottom of the cultural totem pole, they were shepherds, chosen to welcome the Chief Shepherd of all God's sheep into the world of human beings. Can you imagine what it would have been like to be one of these shepherds, not only to see but also potentially to touch, maybe even to hold him in your arms? Mary's baby boy? God's Son?

From that moment to the present, God has revealed himself most clearly in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, our Immanuel, our Yeshua. Jesus put a face on God. Jesus perfectly revealed the person and heart of God. Jesus was a living invitation from God to turn to him and receive reconciliation and restoration. The angels said it so well. "Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.... Glory to God in the highest, and peace, goodwill toward men" (Luke 2:10, 14). The baby Immanuel was God's perfect expression of joy, peace, and goodwill, with a clear desire to live in an eternal relationship as a result of the coming of his Son.

As a result, as a result of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus the Messiah, the Anointed King, he is continually with us. I love how the apostle Paul always emphasized the present reality of Jesus as the center of our faith. In fact, when showing that the members of God's family were equally valued by God with no favoritism or partiality, Paul's reason was simply, "Christ is all and in all" (Colossians 3:11). Because Christ is still with us, we are each one the Father's favored child, the little brothers and sisters of the King, now and forever. All we need to do is turn our hearts to God and say, "Yes" to the invitation, to embrace God's Immanuel as our Savior and Lord, and find our new place in God's eternal family.

It is for that reason that we not only say, "Merry Christmas" this year. We boldly and joyfully confess:

The King has Come

The King is Coming

God is With us!

The Mission

 Are we just taking up space in our time and place? Are we just biding our time, waiting to die and go to heaven? I used to wonder why the preacher just didn't hold us under water when we were baptized, sending us straight on to eternal bliss. (Tongue in cheek.) My conclusion is very simple: Every day we get up and find we are still alive, we can only conclude one thing - we are still on mission with the Lord. 

Jesus clearly communicated his own "mission statement" in Nazareth. 

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19     to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor" 
(Luke 4:18-19).

Jesus saw that God's Spirit rested on him for a divine purpose. He had been sent from the Father to announce Good News, the Gospel of his Kingdom. It was good news to the poor, to those who were otherwise left out of the "good news" in their society. It was good news of freedom and healing. It was an announcement of God's favor. It was the work he had been sent to do in his coming, and it was the work he would pass on to his loyal disciples.

The "famous last words" of Jesus to his disciples showed him passing the baton of his mission on to them, and to future generations.

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age" (Matthew 28:18-10).

Jesus came as the King to announce the coming of his Kingdom, the domain of the King. But he was limited in his incarnation to making disciples among those in his immediate space. It was necessary for him to ascend to the right hand of the Father in heaven, having won the decisive victory over the system of sin and death in his own death and resurrection, and to send God's Spirit to be with and in the community of his followers. Only then would they be able to continue the mission of God and to extend it to all nations, to every people group. 

That assignment has, in turn, been passed on to every generation of Christ-followers. I'm sure there may have been times when a certain generation was tempted to throw in the towel, drop out and wait for the end to come. However, the end has not yet come. We're still here! I got up this morning and discovered that I am still alive! (My mother likes to say that when she gets up in the morning, she reads the obituaries and if her name is not there, she goes back to bed.) There is only one conclusion: I am still on mission with the Lord. You are still on mission with the Lord!

Jesus was clear that the mission would continue until it fully succeeded. 

I like how Matthew recorded it: "...the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come" (24:13-14). He did not state it as a goal or a desire but as a surety. The gospel of the kingdom will be preached, and it will be preached in the whole world, to all nations. No one will be left out. Only then will "the end" come.

Mark recorded the teaching of Jesus about the end-goal of the mission in stark terms. "You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them. And the gospel must first be preached to all nations" (13:9-10). It is absolutely necessary that the gospel be proclaimed to every people group on earth. In some cases, it will involve suffering, but even then, that suffering will contribute to the fulfillment of the mission, allowing the witnesses of Christ to proclaim the gospel to those in authority, those who would be acting as their "judges." No price would be too high to pay for the completion of the mission of God.

The natural tendency will be for the commissioned to become distracted or discouraged along the way. In another place, Jesus described the challenge of "the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth" putting a choke-hold on his followers, making them unfruitful (or at least less fruitful than they would have been otherwise). When times are good, the temptation will be to be distracted by all the blessings and to take our eyes off of the mission and the description of how the mission will succeed. When times are tough, we may be tempted to become overwhelmed with worry and fear and to be discouraged about even trying to complete the mission. 

It seems possible that we could come through a time of blessing, so focused on how blessed we are we begin to be distracted from the mission, only to enter into a time of trouble and find ourselves discouraged and frustrated, desperately looking for a remedy and a return to blessedness. If our eyes are off of the mission, if our focus is no longer on "the prize" of every nation encountering the gospel of the kingdom, we may instead begin to focus on issues and loyalties outside of the righteous reign of Christ that seem to promise a better future (or at least a return to "normal"). 

And then came 2020. A global pandemic, massive unemployment, chaos, and disruption on the streets. A divided society and a contentious election that promises to go on and on, the result of which (no matter who is confirmed as elected) may only make every other problem more difficult and toxic. Has the mission been postponed? How should committed Christ-followers, those dedicated to the completion of the mission, respond to such dire circumstances?

"In times like these" (to quote the title of my dad's favorite gospel song), our mission seems to be clear. "When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:13-14). It seems pretty simple. We need to recognize that there is nothing that happens outside of God's supervision. Recognizing that, we give ourselves to coming before the Lord in humility, to prayer, to seeking God's presence to come in power, to ask for a new sensitivity to the ways we have become distracted from God's rule, and to repent. Only then will God hear and forgive. Only then can we expect that God will heal our land.

I am often asked, "How long do you think this situation will go on?" The answer is clear. It will continue until there has been a sufficient process of coming before the Lord in humility, united prayer, a new request for revival among God's people along with a new commitment to obedience to the word of the Lord that is coming from God's throne, just for "times like these."

On the other hand, it is possible to begin to put our trust in the institutions and leaders of our society. While we make public attempts to pray and ask for revival, we also engage in the various controversies that surround us, as if any of them actually offers real solutions. There is nothing and no one in our society that is able to really hear us, to forgive and reconcile us, and to forgive us. Our natural human tendency to look to anything and anyone other than God is complicated by the fact that during an extreme crisis conspiracy theories abound, creating new and unusual opportunities to divide and hate. There is no hope in any of them. 

So, while we all exercise our right to have any and every opinion, let us never forget that we are taking up space on this planet for only one reason. We are on mission with the Lord, and that mission will not be complete until every people group under heaven has been impacted by the gospel of the kingdom.

At last count, there are 7,400+ people groups (out of 17,446) that have yet to be impacted by the gospel of the kingdom. They are "unreached people groups." Out of the 7.75 billion people currently occupying our planets, 3.23 billion (42%) live in areas that have not been "gospelized." Now is not the time to be distracted from the mission, from the reason why we are alive today. Now is not the time to take our eyes off of the prize (and focus on other pseudo-prizes). It may be that the primary thing we must repent of is allowing ourselves to place too much focus and importance on other things, other causes, other missions, of assigning more worth to people and institutions than they have in the eyes of God (the definition of idolatry). May we get back to our assignment: to humble ourselves, to pray, to seek God's presence, to repent, and to return to a life of obedience to Christ. After all, we are still here!