7th Day of Christmas - Gifts of the Spirit

 On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me seven swans a swimming.

The seven swans a-swimming can represent the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. 

There are a few passages that tell us of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Romans 12:6-8 and 1 Corinthians 12:8-11 both give us manifestations of the Spirit, while Isaiah 11:1-3 gives a specific list of how the Spirit will manifest in the Messiah: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.

“A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him— the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the LORD— and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.” Isaiah 11:1-3 NIV

I never understood where they got seven gifts from the Isaiah passage - as I count it, there are six. That’s where a little digging led me to realize that the seven gifts are found in the Latin Vulgate. Most English translations use the same words for piety and fear of the Lord, so those two get combined into “fear of the Lord.”

These seven gifts described who Jesus is. In him was the fullness of the seven gifts mentioned in Isaiah. Have you ever done a deep dive into the gift of the Spirit?

Links:

Gifts of the Holy Spirit

Why 7 gifts?

6th Day of Christmas - Creation

 On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me six geese a-laying.

The six geese a-laying can represent the six days of creation.

The creation account in Genesis tells us how our world came into being. The Genesis account does not contradict the latest science, as many would have you believe. Evidence has to be interpreted, and your worldview determines how you will interpret the evidence. God tells us in his own writing that he made the world in six 24-hour days to give humans a model of how we are to live. 

Day 1: God created light and separated the light from the dark.

Day 2: God separated the waters, creating atmosphere and oceans

Day 3: God made dry land appear from the waters and created vegetation

Day 4: God made the sun, moon and stars

Day 5: God made the sea creatures and everything that flies

Day 6: God made the land animals and humans

I have studied multiple sides of the creation debates. After 30+ years of research, I have come to the conclusion that God did indeed create the world in six 24-hour days. A literal reading of the text aligns best with the rest of Scripture and with science. (btw, all Scripture should be read literally - that does not mean that you ignore metaphor, allegory, or simile, but that you understand when they should be used.)

What questions do you have about creation?

Links:

Hugh Ross, ICR, and the Bible

Did the early Church believe in a flat earth?

Six 24-hr Days

Response to Hugh Ross

5th Day of Christmas - Pentateuch

 On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me five golden rings.

The five golden rings can represent the first five books of the Old Testament, called the Pentateuch or the Law of Moses, or the Torah. 

• Genesis is the book of beginnings, telling the Israelites how they came to be in Egypt.
• Exodus is about the departure from Egypt.
• Leviticus, named after the Levites, sets up the way to worship God.
• Numbers takes a census of all the people.
• Deuteronomy is the second Law, all the people are reminded of God’s Law before they enter the Promised Land.

These five books form the foundation of Judaism and Christianity. They are God’s revelation to the whole world and demonstrate his wisdom and creativity. They also set up God’s redemption plan for humanity. The Pentateuch aims towards the perfect Messiah, who is the destination at the end of the journey through the first five books.

The New Testament authors quoted more from the Law of Moses than any of the other books in the Old Testament combined. These books give us a rich history of how the world began and how we are to relate to the God who created us.

Links:

https://www.crossway.org/articles/10-things-you-should-know-about-the-pentateuch/

https://christiancourier.com/articles/the- -the-cornerstone-of-scripture

https://www.compellingtruth.org/Pentateuch.html

4th Day of Christmas - Gospels

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me four calling birds.

The four calling birds can represent the four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Skeptics of Christianity often state that the four gospels contradict each other because there are variants in the tellings. While this is true, it is a good thing that the gospels don’t tell the exact same story four times. Why? Because true eyewitness statements vary - each person notices something different about what happened and tells their perspective. That is exactly what we see in the gospels: four accounts that are similar enough to tell the same story from different perspectives. If the gospels were all exactly the same, any investigator would know that the authors collaborated with each other before writing so they could be “on the same page,” so to speak. The variations in the eyewitness accounts in the four gospels corroborates that they are, indeed, eyewitness accounts.

I appreciate that the Gospels all tell a slightly different story and show us who Jesus is with a different emphasis on who he is. Matthew shows us Jesus as the kingly Messiah, the Lion of Judah. Mark shows Jesus as a servant. While Luke emphasizes his humanity, John contrasts that with Jesus' divinity. Together, the Gospels form a unified account of who Jesus is and a fuller picture of his life on earth.

3rd Day of Christmas - Theological Virtues

On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me three French hens.

The three French hens can symbolize the Theological Virtues: faith, hope and love. Did you know that Paul made a rhyming poem in the famous “Love Chapter”? It is really a fabulous piece of literature, like a Shakespearian sonnet, but it has much more value spiritually.

1 Corinthians 13 - ISV

If I speak in the languages of humans and angels but have no love, I have become a reverberating gong or a clashing cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can understand all secrets and every form of knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains but have no love, I am nothing.  Even if I give away everything that I have and sacrifice myself, but have no love, I gain nothing.

Love is always patient;

    love is always kind;

love is never envious

    or arrogant with pride.

Nor is she conceited,

   and she is never rude;

she never thinks just of herself

    or ever gets annoyed.

She never is resentful;

  is never glad with sin;

she’s always glad to side with truth,

    and pleased that truth will win.

She bears up under everything;

    believes the best in all;

there is no limit to her hope,

    and never will she fall.

Love never fails. 

Now if there are prophecies, they will be done away with. 

If there are languages, they will cease. 

If there is knowledge, it will be done away with. 

For what we know is incomplete and what we prophesy is incomplete.  But when what is complete comes, then what is incomplete will be done away with.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, and reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up my childish ways. Now we see only an indistinct image in a mirror, but then we will be face to face. Now what I know is incomplete, but then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Right now three things remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.

2nd Day of Christmas - Old and New Testaments

 On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me two turtledoves.

The two turtledoves are said to represent the Old and New Testaments.

I grew up thinking that the two testaments were the old and new covenants, and basically, the new covenant (testament) made the old invalid. Because of that thought, I felt that reading the Old Testament was not something I needed to pursue and was just a lot of nice stories to fill in some blanks. Similarly, I had often heard that the God of the Old Testament was an angry God, and the God of the New Testament was a happy God. After much study, I have learned that these concepts were very misguided. The Old Testament is still a valid covenant, and the New Testament is an additional covenant that compliments the Old, and God is the same God in both Testaments. 

The Old Testament gives meaning to the New, and reveals a lot about how intricately God designed his redemption plan. The New Covenant does not make the Old Covenant invalid, the Old still holds, it has just been added to to include Gentiles as well as the Jews.

In order to understand the New Testament writers, we need to have an understanding of the Scriptures they were referencing. So many misunderstandings of New Testament verses can be explained by referencing the Old Testament. Revelation, for instance, references 24 of the 39 books in the Old Testament. Jesus quoted mostly from Deuteronomy and Psalms.

The Old and the New Testaments comprise the entirety of God’s Word, and together they develop a complete narrative that tells us who God is.

References: 

2 Corinthians 3:14 (the veil concealing Messiah is removed, revealing the new covenant)

Romans 10:4 (Messiah is the end goal, arrival, of the law)

Matthew 5:17 (Jesus didn’t abolish the law, but fulfilled it)

Galatians 3:24 (the Law leads us to and teaches us of Jesus)

Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 3:18 (God does not change)

1st Day of Christmas - Jesus

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me a partridge in a pear tree.

 O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel.

Jesus is the long awaited Messiah, first foretold only three chapters into the Bible. Right after man had sinned, separating him from God, God already had redemption and reconciliation planned. The prophet Isaiah tells how Messiah would be born of a virgin (7:14), that he would have God’s spirit in him (42:1), that he would be rejected by his own people (28:16) and tortured to death (50:6, 53:4-8) and rise again (53:10-11). During his lifetime on earth, Jesus fulfilled over 300 prophecies that were written a few hundred years before his birth. The odds of any one man fulfilling even 30 prophecies is enormous, let alone over 300.

No credible scholar doubts that Jesus was a real person who lived in Judea. He literally changed the world - even our modern calendar centers on his birth. Where doubt comes in is whether or not he was the Son of God, but even skeptics cannot deny that:

• Jesus was a real person

• Jesus was crucified by the Romans

• The apostles all had experiences they believed to be of the risen Jesus and died for their conviction. 

The important question that faces every human being is: what will you do with Jesus? Will you realize that you are a sinner who needs Jesus to fix your separation from God? Or will your pride keep you relying on your own ability to fix yourself? The only way to get into God’s presence and stay there is by confessing that Jesus is Lord. If you do not confess that Jesus is Lord, you will be separated from God for eternity, and that will be hell.

Links:

Prophecies Jesus Fulfilled

Names of Jesus - Immanuel

Names of Jesus - Jesus

Extra-Biblical Evidence for Jesus

Isaiah 7:14, 11:2, 42:1, 28:16, 50:6, 53:4-8, 53:10-11

12 Days of Christmas

I did not grow up in a liturgical church; I thought the twelve days of Christmas started on December 13. It was many years later - after I had kids - that I learned that the twelve days of Christmas start on Christmas day, and are the countdown to Epiphany - the celebration of when the wise men visited Jesus. I discovered that the liturgical church has a rhythm to the year involving counting down to certain high holy days. Similar to the Hebrew feasts that are a reminder of God’s plan of redeeming love, the “Church Year” is a way of preparing one’s heart for Jesus. In an attempt to separate from Jewish traditions, the liturgical calendar replaced the Jewish feasts with its own high holy days and days of preparation. I find value in the Jewish feasts because the narrative of creation, deliverance, and re-creation is embedded in them. I find different value in the liturgical calendar as it offers us seasons of anticipation and celebration.

Maybe you've seen the viral posts about how the 12 Days of Christmas is a kind of secret catechism for the church. While that has been debunked numerous times, I still find value in it. Just like the Christmas narrative doesn't have Mary riding a donkey or mention an innkeeper or a stable, it is still a fun way to enlarge the story. Over the next twelve days, I am going to expand on the classic Christmas carol and maybe learn a bit about and deepen my faith. Won't you join me?

Links: Church Calendar Seasons of the Church Year Church History for Kids Jewish Feasts and Christian Calendar