Category Archives: Christmas

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Jesus was a Refugee—Matthew 2:13-15

Among some, the claim that Jesus was a refugee has become politically divisive these days, so I should point out that the title used in this analogy predates the controversy; it was my own observation, published in my IVP Matthew commentary in 1997 (pp. 69-70). How that should apply to details of contemporary political debates may be a legitimate question. Whether Christians should care about refugees and try to help them is not. Whether Jesus and his family actually had to leave their country because of political oppression is a debate only among those who question the historical authenticity of Matthew’s report. Having prefaced my comments with these remarks, I turn now to the pre-controversy Bible study I wrote back in the early 1990s and have only slightly updated.

Persian Magi were known for using stars and dreams to predict the future, and it appears that on this one occasion in history, God spoke to the Magi where they were looking. Although Scripture forbade divination, in this period many people believed that stars could predict the future, and rulers anxious about such predictions sometimes executed others to protect their own situation. (One ruler, for example, is said to have executed some nobles to make sure that they, rather than he, fulfilled a prediction about some leaders’ demise!)

So large was the Magi’s caravan in Matthew 2 that they could not escape notice; Matthew says that all Jerusalem was stirred by their arrival. The Magi had every reason to assume that a newborn king would be born in the royal palace in Jerusalem; but despite Herod’s many wives, he had sired no children recently. Herod’s own wise men sent these Gentile wise men off to Bethlehem, just six miles from Jerusalem and in full view of Herod’s fortress called the Herodium. They later fled Bethlehem by night, but the disappearance of such a large caravan would not go unnoticed for very long.

Herod acts in this narrative just like history shows us Herod was: he was so paranoid and jealous that he had executed two of his sons on the (false) charge of plotting against him, as well as his favorite wife on the (false) charge of infidelity. On his deathbed, he would execute another son, and leave orders (happily unfulfilled) to execute nobles (so there would be some mourning when he died; cf. Prov 11:10). A probably apocryphal report attributes to the Roman emperor the opinion that it was safer to be one of Herod’s pigs than one of his sons.

Contrasting the different characters in this account reveals striking ironies. Fitting a theme in Matthew’s Jewish Gospel, these Gentiles come to worship Jesus. By contrast, Herod, king of the Judeans, acts like a pagan king: like Pharaoh of old (and another pagan king more recently), he orders the killing of male children. Most astonishing to us, though, should be Herod’s advisors, the chief religious leaders and Bible teachers of the day: they knew where the Messiah would be born, but unlike these Gentiles they did not seek him out. Merely knowing the Bible is no guarantee that we will obey its message. (We should note, however, that the Sanhedrin, whom Herod uses here as advisors, was not very independent in this period; he had executed his opponents and replaced them with his political lackeys.) As in the parable of the sower, we ought to sow on all kinds of soil; sometimes God has plans for the people we least expect.

But notice also the other characters. The narrative repeatedly emphasizes “the child and his mother” as the objects of Herod’s hostility. Though this powerful king will soon be dead, he feels threatened by those who were at the time politically harmless. Undoubtedly able to use the resources provided by the Magi, however, Joseph’s family found refuge in Egypt, like an earlier biblical Joseph. Probably they settled in the massive city of Alexandria, where according to some estimates nearly a third of the city was Jewish.

Years ago, when I wrote my first commentary on Matthew, I wrote at this point that Jesus was a refugee: a baby in a family forced to flee a corrupt dictator, just like so many political refugees in different parts of the world today.

As I wrote it, I grieved for my dear friend Médine, whose country, Congo-Brazzaville, was at war. Later I learned that her town had been burned down, and did not know for eighteen months if she was alive or dead; if she was alive, however, she was undoubtedly a refugee, along with perhaps as much as a quarter of her nation. Still later I discovered that she had fled the town carrying a baby on her back and joining others in pushing her disabled father in a wheelbarrow.

When Médine read in my Matthew commentary that Jesus was a refugee, she found meaning in what she had experienced; Jesus had suffered what she had suffered. Médine is now my wife, and we have a happier life. But we cannot easily forget those who, like our Lord two millennia ago, face suffering because of others’ injustice.

The story of Craig and Médine together appears in Impossible Love: The True Story of an African Civil War, Miracles, and Love Against All Odds (Chosen Books, 2016). Craig S. Keener is author of a smaller commentary on Matthew with InterVarsity Press and a larger one with Eerdmans (The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary, 2009), as well as The Historical Jesus of the Gospels (Eerdmans, 2009) and Christobiography (Eerdmans, 2019).

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Mary and Zechariah—Luke 1 (9.23 minutes)

Luke compares and contrasts many figures in his Gospel and Acts; this comparison begins already in Luke’s opening scenes, with Zechariah, John the Baptist’s father, and Mary, Jesus’s mother. Zechariah is positive, but Mary is even more positive. John is great, and Jesus is even greater.

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Reliability of Gospels (plus harder questions about John and about Christmas)

George Wood interviews Craig regarding his book Christobiography and therefore on the reliability of the Gospels. At the end, he hits Craig with harder questions. Listen to Craig try to figure out what to say! 😮

https://influencemagazine.com/en/Practice/The-Gospels-as-Truthful-Biographies-of-Jesus

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Mary kept all these things in her heart—Luke 2:19 (and: prophecies vs. ‘prophetic declarations’)

But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart (Luke 2:19, NIV)

Christmas is a joyful time for many parents, but also a time of grief for those who have lost children. (This is also true for other deep relational losses, some of which my wife and I have experienced, but few losses run deeper than the loss of a child—something Mary would eventually experience.) This may be especially true for those who believe that God has shown them about their child’s destiny and, at least so far, things appear to be working differently.

Jesus’s birth, of course, is special in a way that no other birth is. But we can still learn some lessons from how Mary responded to clear revelations about Jesus’s identity and mission.

The shepherds testified about what the angels had said: this baby would be a savior, Christ the Lord (Luke 2:8-17)! This testimony confirmed the message that Mary had already received directly from the angel Gabriel (Luke 1:28-37). Many in Bethlehem marveled at the shepherds’ testimony (2:18). Mary, however, preserved these matters in her heart (2:19). She does the same thing later after the young Jesus’s encounter with Bible experts in the temple (2:51). (Luke might even tell about Mary’s memory of these events to suggest that Mary is his source for this information; certainly he met at least briefly with Jesus’s brother James, in Acts 21:18.)

The term used for the “matters” or “words” she kept in her heart appears often in the preceding context, for Gabriel’s message to her (1:37-38), for God’s wonderful work for Zachariah and Elizabeth (1:65), and for the angels’ message to the shepherds (2:15, 17). It will soon be used for God’s prophetic message to Simeon (2:29). All children are special, but Mary, more than any other mother, had good reason to know that her child was the most special of all—the one we all must depend on.

Soon after this event Simeon in the temple prophesies that this child, God’s Messiah, will embody salvation for all peoples (Luke 2:26-32; cf. 2:38). This goes well beyond what Mary and her husband would have imagined (2:33). This message also fits a theme that Luke develops further throughout his work (e.g., 3:6; Acts 13:47; 28:28).

Yet Simeon also prophesies that this child will face opposition and that Mary will face pain (2:34-35). He is prophesying what the Spirit is saying—not simply making a “positive confession” about what Mary might want to hear, or what Simeon might want to come to pass. He is not merely expressing everyone’s hopes for the child. There is a difference.

Simeon’s message underlines a steep price to Jesus’s mission. God has appointed Jesus to expose what is really in the hearts of people (2:35), using Greek terms that Like later uses for Jesus revealing the hypocrisy of many religious people (5:22; 6:8) and even the wrong thoughts of his own disciples (9:47; 24:38). By showing people for what they were, he would become a stumbling block for many, what Simeon calls their “falling” (2:34; cf. 20:18). By contrast, he would be for others a promise of resurrection, what Simeon calls their “rising” (2:34; everywhere else in Luke-Acts this means the resurrection of the dead). Jesus as a sign will also be “spoken against” (2:34: antilegô), a term also applied to hostility against his followers (21:15; Acts 13:45; 28:22).

Further, a figurative “sword” will also pierce Mary’s own heart (Luke 2:35), perhaps initially fulfilled when her son is missing (2:43-48), because she cannot yet understand his life mission (2:49). It may have been further fulfilled when, instead of immediately answering Mary’s concerns, Jesus embraces his disciples as mother and siblings (8:19-21). He warns that loyalty to himself comes before loyalty to parents (12:53; 14:26; though Jesus still affirms honoring parents, 18:20). Even Mary herself must accept the role of disciple as well as mother (Acts 1:14). Jesus’s death would surely prove most traumatic of all.

Sometimes a prophecy is true and it comes to pass in ways that do not make sense to us. The cross was a steeper price than Mary would have imagined; and how could the cross lead to Jesus embodying salvation? Joseph’s father disapproved of his dreams (Gen 37:10), but his father kept it in mind (37:11), just like Mary did centuries later. Yet with Joseph’s apparent death, any possibility of the dream being fulfilled seemed hopeless (37:33-34). Unlike Jacob, the reader of Genesis 37 knows that Joseph remains alive. But how will his exploitation as a slave lead to his exaltation?

Jacob’s son Joseph still has enough faith to remain loyal to God (39:9). He has enough faith—or at least such irresistible gifting—to continue interpreting dreams (40:8-22). And finally this gift exalts him, ironically fulfilling part of his own dream many years earlier (Gen 41).

That is often how God works: he brings humility and often even humiliation before exaltation (Prov 15:33; 18:12; Matt 23:12//Luke 14:11; Luke 18:14). That pattern climaxes in the cross: our divine Lord humbled himself. He did so even to the point of the most shameful and humiliating of deaths, execution for treason against the mighty and widely feared empire of his day (Phil 2:8). Yet every knee will bow at Jesus’s name (2:10) and every tongue confess that he is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (2:11). God’s plan was fulfilled (Acts 2:23-24).

Unfortunately, not all prophecies are clear. Moreover, in circles today where we believe that God’s Spirit still speaks to us, we also need to do a better job of testing today what some claim that God is saying. Some circles risk watering down real prophecy, even inadvertently, with their own interests. Toward the beginning of their callings, God warned both Jeremiah and Ezekiel not to be moved by the opposition they would face for speaking the truth (Jer 1:8, 17; Ezek 2:5-7; 3:8-9). Those who prophesied only what people wanted to hear were suspect (Jer 28:9), and if their hearers were living ungodly lives, the prophecies of peace were false (Jer 4:10; 6:14; 8:11; 14:13; 23:17; Ezek 13:10, 16; Mic 3:5). Of course, not all prophecies include elements of reproof or bad news; two of the seven New Testament churches in Asia Minor were spared reproof, and one was even spared any bad news (Rev 2—3).

Scripture is worth standing on. Scripture also says that we should hold fast true prophecies from God (1 Thess 5:20-21). The same context, however, warns that prophecies must be tested (5:21-22; 1 Cor 14:29). Circles that believe that God will bring about whatever one speaks in faith weaken the distinction between what they say and what God says. Yet “Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it?” (Lam 3:37, NIV). Genuine authority to command mountains (Mark 11:23-24) presupposes faith in God (11:22), which in turn presupposes that what we are trusting for, God actually supports.

Not everything that everyone says to us is God’s message, and that may be true especially in circles where people believe they can make “prophetic declarations” apart from genuine direction from God’s Spirit. When those declarations are made publicly and fail, they can make true prophecy harder to believe. But of course more people today, like most people in Jeremiah’s day, will listen to those who tell them what they would like to hear (2 Tim 4:3). Full disclosure: I personally also absolutely prefer what is positive! But in the long run, truth is what matters most of all. God is not wrong simply because someone spoke wrongly in his name. But when we speak in God’s name and are wrong, we dishonor God’s name. Whether in prophecy or in the gift of teaching Scripture, we should be very careful when we say, “The Lord says.”

Other times are more like the above examples from Jesus’s childhood, or the earlier story of Joseph’s dreams. God really has spoken, but we do not understand the message’s full import until it is fulfilled.

Sometimes what God has spoken is best kept in our hearts, as in the case of Mary, until we understand how it will be fulfilled. This helps prevent bringing dishonor on God’s name; a prophecy, like a biblical text, sometimes needs interpretation. Our understanding is finite, and our interpretations are limited. Not everything God tells us is for public consumption, especially when it seems foolishness to outsiders, and especially when we are not yet sure enough of the meaning to risk God’s honor in case we are wrong.

We know in part and we prophesy in part (1 Cor 13:9), but we can truly trust that God has everything under control. We know he works things for our ultimate good, even when we do not understand how (Rom 8:28). In faith, we do our best to follow his leading. In faith, we trust that he knows what he is doing even when we do not.

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Was Jesus from Nazareth or was he from Bethlehem?

I repeat the question of the title, “Was Jesus from Nazareth or was he from Bethlehem?” only to point out the absurdity of the forced-choice question. Recently someone posed to me the supposed dilemma of Jesus being from Nazareth or from Bethlehem. Since Jesus was Jesus “of Nazareth,” they suggested, he could not be from Bethlehem. Initially, the “contradiction” struck me as so absurd that I could only laugh.

Whatever your belief about Jesus being from Bethlehem (I do accept his birth there), this is specious logic. It is a contradiction only to the kind of person who would assume that if a person is smart they cannot also be healthy, or if they eat broccoli they cannot also eat spinach. It is a forced choice between alternatives that could sometimes be complementary instead of contradictory.

Both Kentucky and Illinois claim Abraham Lincoln as their own (and for that matter Indiana and Washington, DC, may have some claim to him as well). Lincoln was born in Kentucky, but Illinois is the “land of Lincoln” because he spent so much of his political career there.

Once the question was posed to me, I asked my son where he considered himself to be from. He was born in Congo (where he spent three years), but spent seven formative years in Philadelphia before we moved to Kentucky. So he can say, “originally from Congo” but that he “grew up in Pennsylvania.” I asked my daughter, also born in Congo, but living in Kentucky since she was eleven. Sometimes she says she’s from Congo and Kentucky; sometimes she just says she’s from Kentucky. In Congo, my wife would say that she was from Dolisie (the city that became her own) or from Mossendjo (where her parents hailed from). Yet she was born in neither place.

The Gospels are clear that Jesus grew up in and spent most of his pre-ministry years in Nazareth. People thus knew him as “Jesus from Nazareth.” This has no bearing on whether he spent any time somewhere else, especially in his earlier childhood before he was known to the generation that knew his Nazarene origins.

Some questions are so poorly informed and poorly framed that they offer little more than distractions.

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A Tale of Two Kings–Luke 2:1-20

(Rerun from Sept. 2013)

Part of our Christmas story is a tale of two kings: one powerful in the eyes of the world, and the other identifying with the lowliest of people. It is the latter who is the true King, and this reminds us that we serve a God who is not impressed with power or status, but who dwells close to the lowly (Ps 34:18; Is 57:15). If we want to find God’s presence, we too will likelier find Him among the lowly.

This passage opens with a decree of Augustus Caesar, who displays his power here by censuses used to collect taxes for Rome and its empire (Lk 2:1). Augustus had achieved power by brutally crushing his competition, and he maintained power through absolute political control. Emperors fed Rome with free grain levied as taxes on Egyptian farmers—whose children sometimes starved. His was an empire maintained by force and propaganda, utterly different from the unpretentious kingdom that Christ came to bring.

All the important people would feel honored to be in Caesar’s presence; by contrast, Christ was born to a betrothed village couple from Judea’s “frontier” of Galilee, forced to migrate to Bethlehem for Caesar’s census. In contrast to Caesar, Christ was not born in what people of status would have viewed as a “respectable” family.

For readers in the Roman Empire, the narrative here is full of similar contrasts. Augustus lived in a palace; Christ was born in a feeding trough meant for animals. Choirs in Augustus’ temples hailed him as a god, lord and a “savior” for the empire; an angelic voice hailed Jesus as “born this day a savior,” “Christ the Lord” (Lk 2:11). The empire celebrated Augustus’ birthday; heaven celebrated Christ’s.

Imperial propaganda announced and celebrated the “Pax Romana,” the “peace” that Augustus established (i.e., imposed) for the empire by subduing (i.e., conquering) many of its enemies (i.e., neighbors). By contrast, at Jesus’ birth heaven announced God’s offer of true peace to humanity (Lk 2:14).

Virtually everyone in the empire knew of the emperor. Yet God chose to reveal Jesus’ identity to shepherds, who were outcasts to most of ancient Mediterranean society. Who would heed shepherds? Yet they faithfully proclaimed what they had experienced to anyone who would listen (Lk 2:18). Some ancient laws rejected the testimony of shepherds and women; yet Luke’s Gospel opens and closes with such testimony, approved by God.

If Augustus had a son now, he would be born in a palace and clothed with expensive garments (cf. Lk 7:25). But some time after Mary and Joseph reached Bethlehem, Mary gave birth and laid Jesus in a manger in a cave, apparently because the house was too crowded. (Contrary to most translations, there was no “inn” involved; if anyone excluded them from the house at all, it was apparently not an innkeeper, but relatives!) Mary wrapped Jesus with “swaddling cloths” (wrappings meant to help a baby’s limbs grow straight), not royal robes.

At Christmas we celebrate the incarnation of God in flesh, the incomparably great one sharing our broken humanity and ultimately our mortality. When God came among us, he came not among the great and mighty. He was not impressed with the pretension of human power, as if the prestige of powerful human empires mattered anything to him. Instead, he came among the broken, among the lowly, and showed us that we do not need to pretend to be anything great; he welcomes us by his own generosity. Like the shepherds, let us recognize the love of our king who cares for each of us, and tell everyone about him.

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Mary believed the angel’s word—Luke 1:38

“I’m here! The Lord’s servant! Let it happen for me just as you have said!” (Luke 1:38). That was Mary’s response of faith to an astonishing message from the angel Gabriel.

Literally, Mary says, “May it be with me according to your word.” This is only the second time in this Gospel that Luke has used this Greek term for “word” (rhema); the first was in the preceding verse: “For nothing will be impossible with God!” (Luke 1:37), or, “For no matter [rhema] will be impossible with God!” This announcement closely echoes God’s promise concerning Sarah’s birth of Isaac, in the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament: “There is no matter [rhema] impossible with God” (Gen 18:14).

No matter will be impossible with God; Mary embraces instead the matter or word that God has spoken. Mary had wondered at Gabriel’s greeting (Luke 1:20) and questioned how such a thing could be, since she was a virgin (1:34). That is, her conception was inconceivable. But as her son will later explain, what is impossible with people is possible with God (18:27). The maker of heaven and earth is not subject to the patterns of existence with which we mortals are familiar. She believes the unbelievable, and God does what he has promised.

By contrast, Zechariah, the respectable, aged priest serving in the temple, gets in trouble because he did not believe the angel’s “words” (Luke 1:20). Luke uses a different term for “word” here, but they were often interchangeable. God fulfills the promise anyway, but Zechariah’s response falls far short of Mary’s. Later in Luke we read about those who believe the message and are saved (Luke 8:12), so long as they continue in the faith (8:13). In Luke’s second volume, the Book of Acts, we continue to learn about those who believe the Lord’s message of good news (Acts 4:4; 13:48; 15:7).

Mary is not the only one to receive the Lord’s rhema. When Zechariah’s son John is born and Zechariah is able to speak again, news (rhemata, plural) spread throughout the area (Luke 1:65). The shepherds eagerly enter Bethlehem to see the matter (rhema) the Lord had made known to them (2:15), and they spread this news (rhema) around (2:17); Mary guarded all these matters (rhemata) in her heart (2:19). When Simeon in the temple sees the baby Jesus, it fulfills the message (rhema) that God had spoken to him (2:29). Later the prophetic message (rhema) comes to Zechariah’s son John in the wilderness (3:2).

It’s at Jesus’s word that Simon Peter lets down the fishing nets (Luke 5:5) and discovers an extraordinary catch of fish. His disciples did not understand his teaching (rhema) about his impending death and resurrection (9:45; 18:34). After his words (rhemata) came to pass, his followers recognized that they were true (22:61; 24:8), but the male disciples were not ready to believe the message (rhemata) of the women who announced that Jesus had risen (24:11). Throughout this Gospel (and into the Book of Acts), God provides a true message. Sometimes people believe it enough to act on it (for example, Peter with the nets), but sometimes, as with the resurrection, the message seems too good to be true. (Again, I could have given more examples still had I included references to the other Greek term for “word,” which Luke often uses interchangeably with this one.)

Yet a teenage virgin from the village of Nazareth responded with greater faith, and she becomes a model of discipleship for us. Gabriel’s good news to Mary was virtually unbelievable, but she believed it. Even when God’s message to us seems too good to be true—that he has sent a Savior to deliver us from sin’s penalty and from sin’s power—that good news remains true, because God is its author. May we, like Mary, respond, “I’m here! The Lord’s servant! Let it happen for me just as you have said!” (Luke 1:38).

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Observing special days–Galatians 4:10

Happy New Year–may you have a great day!

But some people feel that however their New Year’s Day goes, that sets the tone for the entire year. (Hopefully they don’t have a hangover today.)

Paul complained that the Galatians, now considering a traditional Jewish calendar, were observing days, months, seasons and years (Gal 4:10), just as they did in their pagan past.

Here is the comment of Ambrosiaster on this passage (Ep. Gal. 4.10.1-2, in Mark J. Edwards, ed., Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians [Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, NT 8; Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1999], p. 58): “The observers of days are those who say, for example, “Tomorrow there must be no setting out on a journey.” … The observers of months are those who watch the course of the moon, saying, for example, “Contracts must not be sealed in the seventh month.” … People pay respect to the year when they say, “The first day of January is the new year,” as though a year were not completed every day. … For if God is loved with the whole heart, there ought not to be any dread or suspicion of these phenomena so long as he is near.”