Daily Meditation

Christmas Is for Freedom

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. (Hebrews 2:14–15)

John Piper

Jesus became man because what was needed was the death of a man who was more than man. The incarnation was God’s locking himself into death row.  Christ did not risk death. He embraced it. That is precisely why he came: not to be served but to serve and give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).  No wonder Satan tried to turn Jesus from the cross! The cross was Satan’s destruction. How did Jesus destroy him?

The “power of death” is the ability to make death fearful. The “power of death” is the power that holds men in bondage through fear of death. It is the power to keep men in sin so that death comes as a horrid thing.

But Jesus stripped Satan of this power. He disarmed him. He molded a breastplate of righteousness for us that makes us immune to the devil’s condemnation.  By his death, Jesus wiped away all our sins. And a person without sin puts Satan out of business. His treason is aborted. His cosmic treachery is foiled. “His rage we can endure, for, lo, his doom is sure.” The cross has run him through. And he will gasp his last before long.

Christmas is for freedom. Freedom from the fear of death.

Jesus took our nature in Bethlehem, to die our death in Jerusalem, that we might be fearless in our city. Yes, fearless. Because if the biggest threat to my joy is gone, then why should I fret over the little ones? How can you say (really!), “Well, I’m not afraid to die but I’m afraid to lose my job”? No. No. Think!

If death (I said, death!—no pulse, cold, gone!)—if death is no longer a fear, we’re free, really free. Free to take any risk under the sun for Christ and for love. No more bondage to anxiety.

If the Son has set you free, you shall be free, indeed!

Irish Doctors Storm Out of Meeting

Protesting New Abortion Legislation

Thomas D. Williams
Breitbart London


Dozens of Irish doctors staged a walk-out of an emergency meeting on abortion legislation Sunday, saying that their concerns about conscience protections are being ignored.

Following a May referendum that repealed a Constitutional amendment protecting the right to life of unborn children, the Irish government has moved forward to legalize abortion beginning on January 1. Unlike other nations, however, which tend to locate the procedure in specialized clinics, Ireland reportedly will expect general practitioners and maternity hospitals to perform abortions.

The abortion bill being discussed would legalize abortion up to 12 weeks of pregnancy for any reason and up to six months or even further along in many circumstances. It would also force taxpayers to pay for abortions and oblige Catholic hospitals to perform them, while limiting conscience protections for medical professionals.

About 300 doctors attended a meeting of the Irish College of General Practitioners in Dublin on Sunday to discuss repercussions from the government’s plans regarding abortions. After about a half hour, dozens of meeting attendees stormed out of the assembly in protest.  More than 640 general practitioners have also reportedly signed a petition that refers to the proposed abortion legislation as a “serious crisis.”

Speaking on behalf of the GPs who walked out, Dr. Andrew O’Regan said that Simon Harris, Ireland’s pro-abortion health minister, had created the “very false impression” that general practice is an adequate setting for abortion provision.

Daily Meditation

The Greatest Salvation Imaginable

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah . . . ” (Jeremiah 31:31)

John Piper

God is just and holy and separated from sinners like us. This is our main problem at Christmas and every other season. How shall we get right with a just and holy God?

Nevertheless, God is merciful and has promised in Jeremiah 31 (five hundred years before Christ) that someday he would do something new. He would replace shadows with the Reality of the Messiah. And he would powerfully move into our lives and write his will on our hearts so that we are not constrained from outside but are willing from inside to love him and trust him and follow him.

That would be the greatest salvation imaginable — if God should offer us the greatest Reality in the universe to enjoy and then move in us to see to it that we could enjoy it with the greatest freedom and joy possible. That would be a Christmas gift worth singing about.

That is, in fact, what he promised. But there was a huge obstacle. Our sin. Our separation from God because of our unrighteousness.  How shall a holy and just God treat us sinners with so much kindness as to give us the greatest Reality in the universe (his Son) to enjoy with the greatest joy possible?

The answer is that God put our sins on his Son, and judged them there, so that he could put them out of his mind, and deal with us mercifully and remain just and holy at the same time. Hebrews 9:28 says, “Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many.”

Christ bore our sins in his own body when he died. He took our judgment. He canceled our guilt. And that means the sins are gone. They do not remain in God’s mind as a basis for condemnation. In that sense, he “forgets” them. They are consumed in the death of Christ.

Which means that God is now free, in his justice, to lavish us with the new covenant. He gives us Christ, the greatest Reality in the universe, for our enjoyment. And he writes his own will — his own heart — on our hearts so that we can love Christ and trust Christ and follow Christ from the inside out, with freedom and joy.

A Song In Remembrance of The Great Day

O Holy Night . . . All Oppression Shall Cease

1. O holy night, the stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Saviour’s birth;
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
'Till he appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn;

ChorusFall on your knees, Oh hear the angel voices!
O night divine! O night when Christ was born.
O night, O holy night, O night divine.

2. Led by the light of Faith serenely beaming;
With glowing hearts by his cradle we stand:
So, led by light of a star sweetly gleaming,
Here come the wise men from Orient land,
The King of Kings lay thus in lowly manger,
In all our trials born to be our friend;

ChorusHe knows our need, To our weakness no stranger!
Behold your King! Before Him lowly bend!
Behold your King! your King! before him bend!

3. Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is Love and His gospel is Peace;
Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother,
And in his name all oppression shall cease,
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful Chorus raise we;
Let all within us praise his Holy name!

ChorusChrist is the Lord, then ever! ever praise we!
His pow'r and glory, evermore proclaim!
His pow'r and glory, evermore proclaim!

Establishing Just Cause Is Substantial Obstacle

Thinking Through The US Withdrawal From Syria

Mollie Hemingway
The Federalist

The United States claimed its goal in Syria was to defeat ISIS. That has happened, so the goalposts are now being shifted to endless defeat of ISIS, a standard by which no war would ever be won, no victory ever claimed. With Wednesday’s announcement, Trump’s campaign pledges returned to the discussion.

“This is a good decision made in a bad way, through a process nobody would want to emulate,” said Benjamin Friedman of the defense think tank Defense Priorities in a call with reporters on Wednesday. That’s a good summation of the overall situation. The process has been an embarrassment and the communication of it outright contradictory, but the overall effect of departing Syria is sound.

Here are some arguments against an endless presence in the region.

‘Enduring Defeat’ Means Endless War

As noted above, proponents of sustained involvement in Syria changed the goal of our presence there from “defeat of ISIS” to “enduring defeat” of ISIS. Enduring is a very non-specific word that makes it easier to change the metrics of success and avoid political accountability for our warfighting efforts. It’s a word that suggests no time constraints by definition.

For much of its 17-year history (Yes! 17 years!), the war in Afghanistan went by the name Operation Enduring Freedom. But that operation also covered operations as far away as the Trans-Sahara and the Philippines. It was generally about the “Global War on Terror.”

But while you can go to war with a country or particular group, you can’t go to war against a method of killing. You can’t defeat it in the conventional use of the term, and using traditional nomenclature and paradigms for non-traditional opponents can further confuse the strategy. When you use fuzzy qualitative terms you make defining victory impossible. And you cannot win a war if you don’t define victory before you begin. And if you cannot define victory, you’re ensuring your own defeat.

When Trump-style critics were saying to avoid too much involvement in Syria lest it become an endless situation, they were told that the military action was very specific and manageable: the defeat of ISIS. But now that ISIS has been defeated in Syria, the proponents of Syrian involvement have changed the metric to “endless defeat.” That’s a mighty convenient change, but an unfair one to the American people who bear the physical and financial costs of warfighting there.

This change to “enduring defeat” is an obvious ploy to expand the war into the nation-building situation that has failed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Daily Devotional

The Christmas Model for Missions

“As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” (John 17:18)

John Piper

Christmas is a model for missions. Missions is a mirror of Christmas. As I, so you.

For example, danger. Christ came to his own and his own received him not. So you. They plotted against him. So you. He had no permanent home. So you. They trumped up false charges against him. So you. They whipped and mocked him. So you. He died after three years of ministry. So you.

But there is a worse danger than any of these which Jesus escaped. So you!!

In the mid-16th century Francis Xavier (1506–1552), a Catholic missionary, wrote to Father Perez of Malacca (today part of Indonesia) about the perils of his mission to China. He said,

The danger of all dangers would be to lose trust and confidence in the mercy of God. . . To distrust him would be a far more terrible thing than any physical evil which all the enemies of God put together could inflict on us, for without God’s permission neither the devils nor their human ministers could hinder us in the slightest degree.

The greatest danger a missionary faces is to distrust the mercy of God. If that danger is avoided, then all other dangers lose their sting.  God makes every dagger a scepter in our hand. As J.W. Alexander says, “Each instant of present labor is to be graciously repaid with a million ages of glory.”

Christ escaped the danger of distrust. Therefore God has highly exalted him!

Remember this Advent that Christmas is a model for missions. As I, so you. And that mission means danger. And that the greatest danger is distrusting God’s mercy. Succumb to this and all is lost. Conquer here and nothing can harm you for a million ages.

Ouch

Trump Criticized

Breaks With Longstanding American Tradition Of Remaining In Middle Eastern Countries Indefinitely

WASHINGTON, D.C.—After Trump announced that US troops would be pulled out of Syria, the President was quickly criticized by leaders on both the left and the right for breaking with the longstanding American tradition of remaining in Middle Eastern countries indefinitely.

Trump drew ire from both sides of the aisle for his "careless and reckless" disregard for the beloved American custom of meddling overseas without a congressional declaration of war and then hanging around for another few decades.

"Occupying a country on the other side of the globe and staying there forever is an American pastime," said a CNN host. "For Trump to pull out when we haven't even been there a decade yet is a disgusting display of his selfishness and unwillingness to conform to the standards of presidential decorum."

"Has he no respect for our ways of life?" the host concluded gravely.

In a rare moment of unity, pundits on Fox News agreed. "We just need another 20 or 30 years in Syria, and we can accomplish our goals," said a morning host on the right-leaning news station. "He didn't even really give our soldiers a chance to settle in."

"This is America, for goodness' sake—land of the free and home of messing with other countries' affairs. I don't like criticizing the president, but he's way off on this one," he added.

Daily Meditation

Life and Death at Christmas

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)

John Piper

As I was about to begin this devotional, I received word that Marion Newstrum had just died. Marion and her husband Elmer have been part of Bethlehem longer than most of our members have been alive. She was 87. They had been married 64 years.

When I spoke to Elmer and told him I wanted him to be strong in the Lord and not give up on life, he said, “He has been a true friend.” I pray that all Christians will be able to say at the end of life, “Christ has been a true friend.”

Each Advent I mark the anniversary of my mother’s death. She was cut off in her 56th year in a bus accident in Israel. It was December 16, 1974. Those events are incredibly real to me even today. If I allow myself, I can easily come to tears — for example, thinking that my sons never knew her. We buried her the day after Christmas. What a precious Christmas it was!

Many of you will feel your loss this Christmas more pointedly than before. Don’t block it out. Let it come. Feel it. What is love for, if not to intensify our affections — both in life and death? But, O, do not be bitter. It is tragically self-destructive to be bitter.

Jesus came at Christmas that we might have eternal life. “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). Elmer and Marion had discussed where they would spend their final years. Elmer said, “Marion and I agreed that our final home would be with the Lord.”

Do you feel restless for home? I have family coming home for the holidays. It feels good. I think the bottom line reason for why it feels good is that they and I are destined in the depths of our being for an ultimate Homecoming. All other homecomings are foretastes. And foretastes are good.

Unless they become substitutes. O, don’t let all the sweet things of this season become substitutes of the final great, all-satisfying Sweetness. Let every loss and every delight send your hearts a-homing after heaven.

Christmas. What is it but this: I came that they might have life? Marion Newstrum, Ruth Piper, and you and I — that we might have Life, now and forever.

Make your Now the richer and deeper this Christmas by drinking at the fountain of Forever. It is so near.

Grand Claims; Vacuous Tinkering

Les Grande Jestures

According to one commentator, Labour Governments are habitually prone to "the grand gesture".  Going back into the Pike River Mine is one example.  The passing of a piece of legislation legalising cannabis for medicinal purposes is another.  

John Roughan is not impressed.

Labour governments have one habit that annoys me intensely. They love to trumpet big liberal social advances without doing the hard work. The last Labour Government made an art-form of this and the present one is shaping up to be just the same.

This week its Health Minister, David Clark, moved the final reading of the bill legalising medicinal cannabis and hailed it as "compassionate and progressive" legislation that would make a difference to people living in pain and nearing the end of their lives. You could almost hear the violins playing in Labour minds and see the wistful look in their eyes as they imagined this moment in a movie made for audiences susceptible to simplified social history.

You had to read the news reports carefully to notice that a great deal of work on the bill, now law, has still to be done. "Little" details such as, what cannabis products? How will people know they are effective? Who will be allowed to make them? How are you going to restrict them to people genuinely in pain or terminally ill? [NZ Herald]

We predict that another piece of vacuous legislation will be the "reforming" of government controlled schools.

Bad Actors In the Global Trading System

China appears to be shaping up as a bad actor when it comes to New Zealand's cyber-security.  While the cyber world is murky for the layman, it seems that officials and knowledgeable folk are more than concerned with China's "foul play".

The NZ spy-agency, GCSB finds links between China and campaign of cyber theft in New Zealand, according to an article in Newshub.  Now the heat is going on the NZ Government to front up over the threat. 

Earlier on Friday, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) said it had found a link between a long running cyber campaign and the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS).  The campaign has targeted the intellectual property and commercial data of numerous managed service providers, including some that operate in New Zealand, GCSB director-general Andrew Hampton said.

Managed service providers offer a range of technology services such as internet access and email services."This activity is counter to the commitment all APEC economies, including China, made in November 2016," Mr Hampton said in a statement."APEC economies agreed they should not conduct or support ICT-enabled theft of intellectual property or other confidential business information, for commercial advantage."

Dr Paul Buchanan, a defence policy analyst, says that New Zealand needs to stop pussy footing around.  He argues that China has signed up to a rules based system, as has New Zealand and the rest of the national signatories.  But China's left-hand is very different from its right-hand.  This makes its presentation to  the Pacific in general, and to  New Zealand in particular that of a "bad-actor". 

Earlier on Friday, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) said it had found a link between a long running cyber campaign and the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS).  The campaign has targeted the intellectual property and commercial data of numerous managed service providers, including some that operate in New Zealand, GCSB director-general Andrew Hampton said.

Managed service providers offer a range of technology services such as internet access and email services.  "This activity is counter to the commitment all APEC economies, including China, made in November 2016," Mr Hampton said in a statement.  "APEC economies agreed they should not conduct or support ICT-enabled theft of intellectual property or other confidential business information, for commercial advantage."

Dr Buchanan says it is a "wake up call" and we need to take action.  "The bottom line is New Zealand continues to be seen as the weak link, or the Achilles heel of the Western-centric signals intelligence networks," he says.

If China is going to persist in such a "bad actor" capacity, New Zealand needs to scale back its commercial involvement and trade with China, until such times as that country can prove its good citizenship.  That might be a long time coming.

"Throw Away the Key" Ideology Takes a Hit in the US

Senate Passes Criminal Justice Reform Bill

Sean Moran
Breitbart News

The Senate passed the First Step Act on Tuesday night in a win for the White House, especially senior adviser Jared Kushner, as well as many Republicans and Democrats.   The Senate passed the First Step Act on Tuesday, 87-12, featuring massive bipartisan appeal for the legislation. The Senate will then move to the House, which may take up the legislation sometime this week. Speaker Paul Ryan has promised to reconcile the two bills in Congress’s lame duck session.

The House overwhelmingly passed the First Step Act in May, although the legislation faced hurdles from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AK), and John Kennedy (R-LA). Some allies of the White House were not on board with the bill.  The divisive issue split Trump’s team as Sens. Cotton and Kennedy fought the legislation but lost in the end. The wide margin made it difficult for senators such as Cotton and Kennedy to fight.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has served as one of the champions for criminal justice reform for many years and cheered the bill’s passage through the Senate.

Sen. Paul said in a statement on Tuesday:

Daily Meditation

The Final Reality Is Here

Now the main point in what has been said is this: we have such a high priest, who has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister in the sanctuary, and in the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man. (Hebrews 8:1–2)

John Piper

Christmas is the replacement of shadows with the real thing.

Hebrews 8:1–2 is a kind of summary statement. The point is that the one priest who goes between us and God, and makes us right with God, and prays for us to God is not an ordinary, weak, sinful, dying, priest like in the Old Testament days. He is the Son of God — strong, sinless, with an indestructible life.

Not only that, he is not ministering in an earthly tabernacle with all its limitations of place and size and wearing out and being moth-eaten and being soaked and burned and torn and stolen. No, verse 2 says that Christ is ministering for us in a “true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man.” This is the real thing in heaven. This is what cast on Mount Sinai a shadow that Moses copied.

According to verse 1, another great thing about the reality which is greater than the shadow is that our High Priest is seated at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. No Old Testament priest could ever say that.

Jesus deals directly with God the Father. He has a place of honor beside God. He is loved and respected infinitely by God. He is constantly with God. This is not shadow reality like curtains and bowls and tables and candles and robes and tassels and sheep and goats and pigeons. This is final, ultimate reality: God and his Son interacting in love and holiness for our eternal salvation.

Ultimate reality is the Persons of the Godhead in relationship, dealing with each other concerning how their majesty and holiness and love and justice and goodness and truth shall be manifest in a redeemed people.

The Future of the Eurocracy

Crumbling

Is the EU falling apart?  It has been a long, long time coming, but we believe the answer lies in the affirmative.  The endgame of the EU has always been to "retire" the nation-states and transfer authority, power, and governance to a federal government.  Britain would have been equivalent to a California; Germany to a Texas.  All would have been subservient to the federal overlordship.

But this longed-for trajectory has reached the point where to make further progress towards the great federal goal the Eurocracy must bring the nation states under more control.  Now the controls are extending to include those which purport to govern each local community.  Not unexpectedly, the locals are reacting.  Sumantra Maitra writes:

The EU is punishing Britain, threatening Switzerland and Italy, crippling Greece, and suing Hungary and Poland. Democratic elections in member states have little meaning within any country in the EU, as its purpose is to transcend national boundaries. Nothing is really consequential unless Berlin and Brussels agree to it.

There’s just one problem.

Criminal Justice Reform Possibilities in the US

Getting to Yes on FIRST STEP

By the Editors
National Review Online

We have watched with interest the intense debate within the Right — much of it on these very pages — over the FIRST STEP Act. We strongly believe that the federal criminal-justice system is dysfunctional and needs reform. We are also highly aware of the threat to public safety it poses to release violent individuals back onto the streets.

In a recent issue of the magazine, we urged Congress to address the serious concerns that critics such as Senator Tom Cotton had raised with the bill — and to do so with a sense of urgency, because the bill contains much that is crucial. Now, the sponsors have agreed to an amendment from Senator Ted Cruz that would, in Cruz’s words, “exclude violent offenders from being released early.” Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell plans to hold a vote this month.

It is worth continuing to hear out the bill’s critics when the final text is released, as is always the case with complicated legislation. Indeed, Senator Cotton has already vowed to introduce his own amendments to supplement Cruz’s. But so long as the changes achieve what Cruz has promised, FIRST STEP deserves to become law. As we detailed previously, it addresses a number of serious problems in the current system.

For one thing, it reforms the practice of “stacking” gun charges, in which a person charged with multiple offenses at once is treated as if he’d been caught numerous times and failed to learn his lesson. The 2004 case of Weldon Angelos illustrated this in stark terms: He received a 55-year mandatory-minimum sentence for selling marijuana to a police informant  multiple times while carrying a gun.

Daily Meditation

Replacing the Shadows

Now the main point in what has been said is this: we have such a high priest, who has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister in the sanctuary, and in the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man. (Hebrews 8:1–2)

John Piper

The point of the book of Hebrews is that Jesus Christ, God’s Son, has not just come to fit into the earthly system of priestly ministry as the best and final human priest, but he has come to fulfill and put an end to that system and to orient all our attention on himself ministering for us in heaven.

The Old Testament tabernacle and priests and sacrifices were shadows. Now the reality has come, and the shadows pass away.

Here’s an Advent illustration for kids — and those of us who used to be kids and remember what it was like. Suppose you and your mom get separated in the grocery store, and you start to get scared and panic and don’t know which way to go, and you run to the end of an aisle, and just before you start to cry, you see a shadow on the floor at the end of the aisle that looks just like your mom. It makes you really happy and you feel hope. But which is better? The happiness of seeing the shadow, or having your mom step around the corner and it’s really her?

That’s the way it is when Jesus comes to be our High Priest. That’s what Christmas is. Christmas is the replacement of shadows with the real thing.

Some Helpful Definitions and Distinctions

Different Strokes and Folks

Three "hot button" words these days are nationalism, globalism and patriotism.

Patriotism usually refers to the love of one's country.  It is a term which is often used in contrast to nationalism and globalism.  Patriotism is not spoken of much these days.  However, it is important to distinguish between patriotism and nationalism.  According to

These two words may have shared a distinct sense in the 19th century, but they appear to have grown apart since. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say that only nationalism has grown apart, since the meaning of patriotism has remained largely unchanged. There are still obvious areas of overlap: we define patriotism as “love for or devotion to one’s country” and nationalism in part as “loyalty and devotion to a nation.”

But the definition of nationalism also includes “exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups.” This exclusionary aspect is not shared by patriotism. [Merriam-Webster] 

Amongst an emerging group of politicians and nations, nationalism is bad, but globalism is good.  The idea here is that those who are globalist in their worldview purport to take into account the needs of the entire human race.  When adopting policies or pushing barrows the globalist allegedly considers the needs and aspirations of those who live in Bantustan, Manhattan, and Goa.  Or, that is the proud claim.

The claim is nonsense of course.  The globalist can never satisfy the aspirations or meet the needs of every person on the planet.  The globalist cannot promote policies which satisfy all individuals, all peoples, all ethnic groups at the same time.  So, the globalist uses the term as a smokescreen whilst he or she promote policies which are championed by the elites, the power brokers, and the monied.

President Macron of France has publicly championed globalism.  He has argued that this is what the true French patriot who loves France would do.  He is confused.  Lots of French who see themselves as patriots love France before an artificial loyalty to the whole human race.  Macron sees himself as part of a global elite trying to lead, pull, and push the whole world in certain directions--such as unrestrained borders when folk come knocking at one's door.

For the globalist, the evil bogey-man is nationalism.  The nationalist mindset has been responsible, it is said, for all kinds of wars and deprivations.

Charades

Another UN Climate Summit Ends in Failure

James Delingpole
Breitbart News



The UN’s latest climate summit in Katowice, Poland has ended in failure as usual. Also as usual the 60,000 plus delegates are putting a brave face on it, claiming that a last minute deal has been reached after tough negotiations and that important progress has been made.

If you believe the Guardian:

“This is a good agreement,” the European commissioner Miguel Cañete told the Guardian. “We have more to do but we can move forward now.”

Nicholas Stern, author of the seminal review of the economics of climate change, said: “This has been another summit of tough negotiations, but it has ultimately succeeded in its crucial primary task of agreeing the so-called rulebook for the Paris agreement.” . . . .


Every UN Climate Summit, it notes, follows exactly the same formula.

Daily Meditation

Why Jesus Came

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. (Hebrews 2:14–15)

John Piper

Hebrews 2:14–15 is worth more than two minutes in an Advent devotional. These verses connect the beginning and the end of Jesus’s earthly life. They make clear why he came. They would be great to use with an unbelieving friend or family member to take them step by step through your Christian view of Christmas. It might go something like this…

“Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood…”

The term “children” is taken from the previous verse and refers to the spiritual offspring of Christ, the Messiah (see Isaiah 8:18; 53:10). These are also the “children of God.” In other words, in sending Christ, God has the salvation of his “children” specially in view. It is true that “God so loved the world, that he sent [Jesus].” But it is also true that God was especially “gathering the children of God who are scattered abroad” (John 11:52). God’s design was to offer Christ to the world, and to effect the salvation of his “children” (see 1 Timothy 4:10). You may experience adoption by receiving Christ (John 1:12).

“…he himself likewise partook of the same things [flesh and blood]…”

Christ existed before the incarnation. He was spirit. He was the eternal Word. He was with God and was God (John 1:1; Colossians 2:9). But he took on flesh and blood and clothed his deity with humanity. He became fully man and remained fully God. It is a great mystery in many ways. But it is at the heart of our faith and is what the Bible teaches.

“…that through death…”

The reason he became man was to die. As God, he could not die for sinners. But as man he could. His aim was to die. Therefore he had to be born human. He was born to die. Good Friday is the reason for Christmas. This is what needs to be said today about the meaning of Christmas.

“…he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil…”

In dying, Christ de-fanged the devil. How? By covering all our sin. This means that Satan has no legitimate grounds to accuse us before God. “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect, it is God who justifies” (Romans 8:33) — on what grounds does he justify? Through the blood of Jesus (Romans 5:9).

Satan’s ultimate weapon against us is our own sin. If the death of Jesus takes it away, the chief weapon of the devil is taken out of his hand. He cannot make a case for our death penalty, because the Judge has acquitted us by the death of his Son!

“…and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.”

So we are free from the fear of death. God has justified us. Satan cannot overturn that decree. And God means for our ultimate safety to have an immediate effect on our lives. He means for the happy ending to take away the slavery and fear of the Now.

If we do not need to fear our last and greatest enemy, death, then we do not need to fear anything. We can be free. Free for joy. Free for others.

What a great Christmas present from God to us! And from us to the world!

Queering the Pitch: Trump, Global Warming, and the News Media

News Media Should Be a Champion of Free and Open Debate


Karl du Fresne
Stuff

OPINION: Whenever I read something about Donald Trump, my eyes go straight to the credit line at the bottom of the story to see where it came from.

If it's sourced from the Washington Post or the New York Times, I read it with a degree of scepticism. These once-great newspapers have dangerously compromised their credibility by allowing their almost obsessive dislike of the American president to contaminate their reportage.

This is made worse by their tendency to allow fact and opinion to become so entangled that it's hard to tell where one ends and the other starts. It's open season on Trump, and many American journalists make it clear that they despise him.

And actually, I understand why they feel that way. I despise Trump too, and worry about the damage his presidency might do to America and to the world. He's a man who appears to have no moral compass and no respect for the truth.

[Whenever we read comments like this which imply that Trump is somehow beyond the pale, we wonder whether it is meant to imply that he stands out as duplicitous in contrast to (say) the last ten US Presidents.  But then again, JFK could not keep his marriage vows.  Clinton was (and remains?) perversely immoral. Where, one wonders, was their moral compass?  Obama and Hillary Clinton were complicit in actively fomenting lies about the death of a US ambassador and colleagues in Benghazi in the attempt to deflect blame from the Administration.  And so on.  Ed.]

He has also, consciously and deliberately, made an enemy of the media. The terrible mistake made by news organisations such as the Washington Post and the New York Times is that they have been suckered into playing his game.

Good News

One Does Not See This Too Often

Criminal Justice Reform Bill May Get 80 Votes of Support


During Sunday’s “The Cats Roundtable” on New York AM 970 radio, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) discussed the criminal justice reform bill, which he co-sponsors, predicting the bill would get 80 votes of support.

Paul told host John Catsimatidis that it is “one of the few issues that right and left are coming together on.”

“[C]onservative Christians are supportive of it because they believe in second chances. They believe that you can change your life for the better and that giving people …  that mostly hurt themselves with drugs, giving those people a second chance is a reasonable thing. And you have progressives on the left who believe in the same thing. This has really brought a lot of people together. We’ll probably vote on this as early as this week, with the final vote next week. And it may well get 80 members of the Senate voting for it. That’s amazing to get 80 out of 100 to support one bill,” explained Paul.

“There are a few holdouts on the Republican side,” he added. “This is really a big achievement for President Trump that he’s gotten everybody together on this.”

Daily Devotional

Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh

When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. After coming into the house they saw the Child with Mary His mother; and they fell to the ground and worshiped Him. Then, opening their treasures, they presented to Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. (Matthew 2:10–11)

John Piper

God is not served by human hands as though he needed anything (Acts 17:25). The gifts of the magi are not given by way of assistance or need-meeting. It would dishonor a monarch if foreign visitors came with royal care-packages.

Nor are these gifts meant to be bribes. Deuteronomy 10:17 says that God takes no bribe. Well, what then do they mean? How are they worship?

The gifts are intensifiers of desire for Christ himself in much the same way that fasting is. When you give a gift to Christ like this, it’s a way of saying, “The joy that I pursue (verse 10!) is not the hope of getting rich with things from you. I have not come to you for your things, but for yourself. And this desire I now intensify and demonstrate by giving up things, in the hope of enjoying you more, not things. By giving to you what you do not need, and what I might enjoy, I am saying more earnestly and more authentically, ‘You are my treasure, not these things.’”

I think that’s what it means to worship God with gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.

May God take the truth of this text and waken in us a desire for Christ himself. May we say from the heart, “Lord Jesus, you are the Messiah, the King of Israel. All nations will come and bow down before you. God wields the world to see that you are worshiped. Therefore, whatever opposition I may find, I joyfully ascribe authority and dignity to you, and bring my gifts to say that you alone can satisfy my heart, not these.”

Gems From Jonathan Edwards: The World By Wisdom Knew Not God

Idolatry and Ignorance Are Conjoined--And Ever Will Be

Jonathan Edwards
The History of Redemption

One of the longest dispensations of Divine grace was the period of Moses through to David.  This was a period when all the nations of the world, apart from the newly established nation-state of Israel, were left to the practice of idolatry.  Why might this be?

Jonathan Edwards gives us some insight into the wider, deeper issues at play.

[The Gentile nations] were concluded so long a time in unbelief that they might be a thorough proof of the necessity of a Saviour; that is might evidently appear by so long a trial, that mankind were utterly insufficient to deliver themselves from that gross darkness and misery, and subjection to the devil, which they had fallen under.

That is might appear that all the wisdom of the philosophers, and the sages that the heathen had among them, could not deliver them from their darkness, for the greater glory of Jesus Christ, who when he came enlightened and delivered them by his glorious gospel.  Herein the wonderful wisdom of God appeared, in thus preparing the way for Christ's redemption.  Thus the scripture teaches us; "For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe, " [I Corinthians 1: 21].  [Jonathan Edwards, The History of Redemption, Comprising A Summary of the History of the Jews Up To the Destruction of Jerusalem (London: The Religious Tract Society,1836),  p.76f.]

It is ironic that the flowering of Greek philosophy and research into the structure and operations of the natural order turned out to be precisely the time when idolatry reached its most intensive and extensive influence.  Hence Paul, when at Athens, found himself grieved to the depths of his heart over the profusion of superstitious idolatries on every street corner.  [Acts 17:16]  Likewise, although the Romans were some of the most sophisticated and clever engineers of their times, their superstitious bent was beyond credulity.

For over a thousand years the grip of universal idolatry over the Gentile world did not just hold tight, it increased in both intensity and extent.  That lesson is as vital today, as it was then.  We are to learn that the preaching of the Gospel of Christ is the only remedy for fallen humankind.

China Persecution Update

100 Christians Snatched in Overnight Raids on Underground Chinese Church

Worshippers were taken from their homes and off the streets in coordinated crackdown across Chengdu in Sichuan province

Mimi Lau
South China Morning Post


About 100 worshippers at an unofficial church in southwestern China were snatched from their homes or from the streets in coordinated raids which began on Sunday evening.   Chinese authorities targeted members of the Early Rain Covenant Church across various districts of Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, in what appeared to be an effort to close down one of the country’s most prominent Protestant house churches.

Members’ personal accounts and cell group discussions on social media channels were blocked at around 9pm on Sunday while the church’s telephone line was also cut. The homes of the church’s leaders, including pastor Wang Yi, were among those raided.

Zhang Guoqing, assistant deacon of the Early Rain Covenant Church, was among two church members who were released on Monday morning after his arrest by Chengdu police in the Sunday night raids.  He is now being watched around the clock by “security personnel” in his home.

Zhang said he headed to Wang’s home at around 7pm on Sunday after hearing about the raids but the pastor and his wife Jiang Rong were nowhere to be found.  “His home was ransacked. It was a mess,” Zhang said.  “The police said our church is an illegal organisation and we cannot attend any more gatherings from now on.”

The Early Rain Covenant Church is one of China’s few unofficial house churches – Christian assemblies that operate without state sanction – and this is not the first time Wang and other members of the church have been detained.

Daily Meditation

Two Kinds of Opposition to Jesus

When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. (Matthew 2:3)

John Piper

Jesus is troubling to people who do not want to worship him, and he brings out opposition for those who do. This is probably not a main point in the mind of Matthew, but it is inescapable as the story goes on.

In this story, there are two kinds of people who do not want to worship Jesus, the Messiah.

The first kind is the people who simply do nothing about Jesus. He is a nonentity in their lives. This group is represented by the chief priests and scribes. Verse 4: “Gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, [Herod] inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.” Well, they told him, and that was that: back to business as usual. The sheer silence and inactivity of the leaders is overwhelming in view of the magnitude of what was happening.

And notice, verse 3 says, “When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.” In other words, the rumor was going around that someone thought the Messiah was born. The inactivity on the part of chief priests is staggering — why not go with the magi? They are not interested. They do not want to worship the true God.

The second kind of people who do not want to worship Jesus is the kind who is deeply threatened by him. That is Herod in this story. He is really afraid. So much so that he schemes and lies and then commits mass murder just to get rid of Jesus.

So today these two kinds of opposition will come against Christ and his worshipers. Indifference and hostility. Are you in one of those groups?

Let this Christmas be the time when you reconsider the Messiah and ponder what it is to worship him.

Wheels of Justice Grinding Slowly

Sauce For Both Goose And Gander

One of the most offensive things about Hillary Clinton is her apparent belief that sauce for the goose is definitely not sauce for the gander.  In other words, she and her "organization" seem to believe that they are above the rules and regulations to which lesser mortals must adhere.  They convey the impression that rules and regulations do not apply to them.

One of the most alarming examples was Clinton's maintaining a private e-mail server whilst Secretary of State.  Now a Federal Judge has laid into Clinton and her cabal over the matter.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered additional fact-finding in the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server to probe whether or not Clinton's private email system, which she used during her four-year tenure as secretary of state, was a deliberate attempt to bypass the Freedom of Information Act. [The Blaze]

Judicial Watch--an organization dedicated to keeping the government subject to the rule of law--has won a case in which the Clinton machine (and the State Department) was attempting to "keep things hidden".  This, from Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch:

Brexit: A Closer Look At the Tea Leaves

Theresa May Survived, but Brexiteers Gained Ground

By John O'Sullivan
National Review Online


The vote of confidence only leaves things more unsettled.

When Sir Graham Brady, the solid Yorkshire MP who chairs the 1922 Committee of Tory backbench MPs, announced the result of the vote of confidence on Theresa May as Tory leader Wednesday night, he did so in two installments. First, he announced that she had won, producing a loud cheer from May’s supporters in a general atmosphere of good humor and even hilarity. Then he announced the figures — 200 votes for May, 117 against her. That announcement was received with intakes of breath and a surprised silence. The effect was one of shock and alarm. Thursday morning, the newspaper headlines report a Pyrrhic victory for the prime minister that has solved nothing and left most things unsettled. In fact, the vote leaves things more unsettled than before.

First, all Tory MPs, ministers, and backbenchers alike voted. But they voted in very different ways. May’s “defeated” critics, mainly on the Brexiteer wing of the Conservative party, got 37 percent of the total vote but something approaching two-thirds of the non-payroll vote (a.k.a. backbenchers). Her victory was in part a result of the “bloating” of ministerial ranks — exactly the kind of thing denounced as corruption by earlier generations of reformers. What that says, however, is that a different leader with different policies would be able to command quite a number of the same votes.

Now, compare those figures with previous challenges to prime ministers.

Daily Meditation

Bethlehem’s Supernatural Star

“Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.” (Matthew 2:2)

John Piper

Over and over the Bible baffles our curiosity about just how certain things happened. How did this “star” get the magi from the east to Jerusalem?

It does not say that it led them or went before them. It only says they saw a star in the east (verse 2), and came to Jerusalem. And how did that star go before them in the little five-mile walk from Jerusalem to Bethlehem as verse 9 says it did? And how did a star stand “over the place where the Child was”?

The answer is: We do not know. There are numerous efforts to explain it in terms of conjunctions of planets or comets or supernovas or miraculous lights. We just don’t know. And I want to exhort you not to become preoccupied with developing theories that are only tentative in the end and have very little spiritual significance.

I risk a generalization to warn you: People who are exercised and preoccupied with such things as how the star worked and how the Red Sea split and how the manna fell and how Jonah survived the fish and how the moon turns to blood are generally people who have what I call a mentality for the marginal. You do not see in them a deep cherishing of the great central things of the gospel — the holiness of God, the ugliness of sin, the helplessness of man, the death of Christ, justification by faith alone, the sanctifying work of the Spirit, the glory of Christ’s return and the final judgment. They always seem to be taking you down a sidetrack with a new article or book. There is little centered rejoicing.

But what is plain concerning this matter of the star is that it is doing something that it cannot do on its own: it is guiding magi to the Son of God to worship him.  There is only one Person in biblical thinking that can be behind that intentionality in the stars — God himself.

So the lesson is plain: God is guiding foreigners to Christ to worship him. And he is doing it by exerting global — probably even universal — influence and power to get it done.

Luke shows God influencing the entire Roman Empire so that the census comes at the exact time to get a virgin to Bethlehem to fulfill prophecy with her delivery. Matthew shows God influencing the stars in the sky to get foreign magi to Bethlehem so that they can worship him.

This is God’s design. He did it then. He is still doing it now. His aim is that the nations — all the nations (Matthew 24:14) — worship his Son.

This is God’s will for everybody in your office at work, and in your neighborhood and in your home. As John 4:23 says, “Such the Father seeks to worship him.”

At the beginning of Matthew we still have a “come-see” pattern. But at the end the pattern is “go-tell.” The magi came and saw. We are to go and tell.

But what is not different is that the purpose of God is the ingathering of the nations to worship his Son. The magnifying of Christ in the white-hot worship of all nations is the reason the world exists.

Gems from Jonathan Edwards: Seeing the End in the Beginning

Jewels and Treasures From the Past

About fifty years ago the theological community was confronted with an allegedly new discipline, named Biblical Theology.  This was contrasted with the discipline of Systematic Theology.  Systematics dealt with the content and structure of biblical doctrines (e.g. divine revelation, the Incarnation, etc).  Biblical Theology, on the other hand, dealt with the progressive accomplishment of redemption and revelation.

It turns out, however, that one of America's greatest theologians, Jonathan Edwards (working and writing in the mid-eighteenth century) was way ahead of the curve.  His book, The History of Redemption remains to this day one of the best works on biblical theology ever printed.

We reproduce his biblical-theological commentary on the Flood as a prime example.

You Don't Get To Do This Every Day

Seizing the Mace

There is something magisterial about the passing of time.  Traditions imbedded over hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of years cannot lightly be laid aside.

Here is one of the latest examples from the UK:

The gold ceremonial mace which is carried into the House of Common’s debating chamber each day was wielded in the chamber Monday evening, as tempers frayed over Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union.  The Member of Parliament for Brighton, one of the United Kingdom’s most clearly left-progressive cities, Lloyd Russell-Moyle marched up the centre of the chamber and took the golden mace from the table, before holding it aloft and walking towards the exit.

Speaker of the House John Bercow, who is responsible for the proceedings of the chamber and has the power to punish members for unruly conduct, was seemingly taken aback by the move by Russell-Moyle.  Bercow repeated the word “no” until the mace was taken off Russell-Moyle by a uniformed usher, who ceremoniously returned the item back to the chamber.  Bercow then ordered Russell-Moyle out of the chamber, barring him from the rest of the day’s sitting — which was already close to completion.

Charlie Proctor

✔@MonarchyUK

BREAKING: Utterly extraordinary scenes as Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP is expelled from the House of Commons after grabbing the Mace. #BrexitVote #BrexitShambles

449

4:01 PM - Dec 10, 2018

Here is the chaser:

The mace is a gold-gilded silver symbol of the monarch’s authority in Parliament, and without it, the house cannot sit.  The mace has been seized on a handful of occasions in history, including during the English Civil War, and more recently by Michael Hesseltine in 1976. 

Such drama!  Such theatre! Such fun!

Daily Meditation

Messiah for the Magi

John Piper

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews?” (Matthew 2:1–2)

Unlike Luke, Matthew does not tell us about the shepherds coming to visit Jesus in the stable. His focus is immediately on foreigners coming from the east to worship Jesus.

So Matthew portrays Jesus at the beginning and ending of his Gospel as a universal Messiah for the nations, not just for Jews.

Here the first worshipers are court magicians or astrologers or wise men not from Israel but from the East — perhaps from Babylon. They were Gentiles. Unclean.

And at the end of Matthew, the last words of Jesus are, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations.”

This not only opened the door for us Gentiles to rejoice in the Messiah, it added proof that he was the Messiah. Because one of the repeated prophecies was that the nations and kings would, in fact, come to him as the ruler of the world. For example, Isaiah 60:3, “Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.”

So Matthew adds proof to the messiahship of Jesus and shows that he is messiah — a King, and Promise-Fulfiller — for all the nations, not just Israel.