Hymns4Him

How many of us remember singing as a child, wondering what an ebenezer was, and how to raise one?  The word comes from 1 Samuel 7:12, where we read that “Samuel took a stone and set it up … and called its name Ebenezer; for he said, ‘Till now the Lord has helped us.’”  This took place after the Lord had given Samuel and the army of Israel a mighty victory over the Philistines.  It was to serve as a lasting reminder of God’s goodness to His people.  Samuel had led the people in corporate confession of their sin at Mizpah, a confession that was joined with acts of repentance as they put away the Canaanite idols which they had allowed to be in the land.

In Hebrew, Ebenezermeans “stone of help” (eben = stone; ezer = help). Samuel wanted the people to remember, not just for a few days, but for years, for decades, for generations, how God had come to the rescue of His people when they humbled themselves before Him. They were vulnerable, with their enemies approaching, and they did not deserve God’s rescue, having been chronically unfaithful. And yet in His gracious fidelity to His covenant people, God intervened with thunder to throw Israel’s enemies into confusion and give His people a resounding victory over the invading force.

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In the Gospels, we don’t often read of Jesus calling on people to “believe” in Him or to “receive” Him.  What we do find, however, is Jesus regularly calling on people to “follow” Him.  This means that being a Christian is not just about what we think, as essential as that is.  It’s also about how our thinking transforms our actions.  That’s what James 2:14-17 means, where we read that faith without works is dead.  There is a cost to discipleship, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote so famously in his 1937 book by that title, as he warned about “cheap grace.”

We find the concept present in numerous scripture passages, and then reflected upon in countless sermons on those verses.

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One of the wonderful topical sections in all hymnals has to do with creation.  Psalm 19 calls us to rejoice that “the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament (the skies) shows His handiwork.”  If we will open our eyes thoughtfully, we will see that all around us every day.  We awake in the morning to the brilliance of the sun and hear the delightful songs of the robins and bluebirds in the branches of the trees.  We go outside on a clear night, away from street and city lights, and look up into the heavens to see amazing lights, even without a telescope.  But if we add that instrument to our investigative arsenal, we are astonished by the realization that every one of those hundreds of billions of tiny pinpoints of light is an entire galaxy, each with billions of stars of their own.

In the spring, we walk outside across bright green grass and are awestruck by the blankets of purple azalea flowers throughout the neighborhood bushes.  In the fall, we look across the glassy-smooth blue waters of a lake surface to gaze at the reds and yellows and oranges of the sugar maples in the splendor of their incredible pallet of color.  In the winter we can sit for hours in our living room in the warm glow of the fireplace, hypnotized by the snowflakes falling gently and piling up on the branches of the blue spruces in our front yard. And in the summer, we sit on the porch after mowing the lawn, admiring the kaleidoscope of colors from the annuals we have planted … the zinnias and marigolds and petunias and snapdragons, and relaxing near the hanging baskets of ferns and fuchsias.

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The theme of God’s love is one of the most prominent and beautiful in all of scripture.  There is not an event, a person, a book, or a page in which we cannot see His love revealed and chronicled.  Countless sermons have been preached on God’s love, hundreds of books have been written about Gods love, and dozens of hymns have been written about God’s love.  It is a love that has no comparison among human relationships, even those of the highest purity.  It is a love that is tied to all of God’s attributes, so that His love is holy, it is eternal, it is compassionate, it is gracious, it is wise, it is powerful, it is patient, it is kind, it is merciful … it is all of these and vastly more.

A concordance will take us to a seemingly unending list of verses that speak of God’s love.  It is a theme often prominent in the ministries of the greatest evangelists in history, men like Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Charles Spurgeon, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, John Stott, and Billy Graham.  It is a subject often given major treatment by theologians such as J. I. Packer, John Piper, R.C. Sproul, and Al Mohler. Entire sermon series and conferences have been published and promoted, dealing with the many-faceted dimensions of the love of God.

The love of God is not infrequently misrepresented and cheapened by describing it in shallow sentimental terms that convey the idea of a god who is just like a nice old grandfather at the beginning stages of dementia, who really doesn’t know much about what’s going on around him, but is just always smiling and nice to everyone and perpetually in a good mood.  Such a god is not the biblical God!  1 John 4:7 tells us that “God is love,” at the same time that Hebrews 12:29 tells us that “God is a consuming fire!”

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Matthew’s account of the arrival of the Magi is intriguing in many ways.  For some, it has almost become part of the “once upon a time” character of the nativity story.  But these were real historical figures whom we are certain to meet in heaven when that will have become our mutual eternal home.  And this was a real historical event which was at the heart of the gospel itself.  Matthew is the only one who chose (under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) to include these Magi in the narrative.  His is the Gospel written especially for the Jews, so how marvelous to read how he chose to tell them that the birth of their King was welcomed by these influential men (though probably not kings) from the East, and how they bowed down before Him to worship Him.

We often ask questions about the Magi that the Bible doesn’t answer.  Who exactly were they?  What was their home country?  How did they know about this?  Were they astrologists?  What was this star?  Did it actually move?  How did they travel 800 miles across the desert?  Were they riding on camels, wearing robes and turbans, balancing gift containers on their laps?  How did their “escape” evade Herod’s spies, and why didn’t he send soldiers to chase them down? Obviously we do not need to know the answers to those questions, because the Holy Spirit has not chosen to provide such details.  Our focus needs to be on the Spirit’s intent.  As Alistair Begg has said, in places like this in the Bible “the main things are the plain things.”

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Most non-liturgical “free churches” do not observe Epiphany, though they do observe the Christmas and Easter seasons.  But it is a day worth recognizing, since it marks a wonderful historical event in the Gospel record, the first manifestation (from the Greek word, “epiphaneia”) of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, represented by the arrival of the Magi. Some churches (especially the Eastern churches) also celebrate Epiphany as the manifestation of Jesus’ divinity at His baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist, and His first miracle as He changed water to wine at the wedding feast in Cana in Galilee.

The festival originated in the Eastern church where it at first included a commemoration of Christ’s birth.  In Rome, by 354, Christ’s birth was being celebrated on December 25, and later in the 4^th  century the church in Rome began celebrating Epiphany on January 6. In the West the evening preceding Epiphany is called Twelfth Night, with the time between December 25 and January 6 known as the Twelve Days of Christmas. Epiphany is celebrated with special pastries in many countries, and children often receive small gifts in their shoes in honor of the Magi’s gifts to the infant Jesus. The holiday also has a number of traditions involving water as a reflection of Jesus’ baptism, including the blessing of houses with holy water. 

For evangelical Protestants, Epiphany can be a celebration of the Magi’s worship of the infant Savior, marking the wonderful fact that the gospel is for all the nations, not just Israel, just as God had promised 2,000 years earlier to Abraham.  He had told this patriarch that through him, all the nations of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 22:18).  We see that taking place as these Magi from the east came to kneel before the infant Son of God.  Scripture tells us that they followed the light of a star to find the place where the Savior lay.  How did know about this?  Some have suggested that the prophecies of Daniel six centuries earlier in Babylon (and then Persia) had been passed down through the years.

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