One of the nice things about the holidays is the food.  It seems that we both cook too much and eat too much and have plenty left over.  Then we eat the leftovers for many days after the family and friends have gone from our home.  Leftovers can often be better than the first taste.  It is sometimes true for me as it was this past Thanksgiving Day that I am so busy doing the things that are necessary to get a meal ready that eating and enjoying what I am eating are not really possible.  So, I look forward to the leftovers.

I have them every week following Sunday.  No preacher can preach all the material that comes out of a week of preparation for Sunday.  Any man who is lacking for material on Sunday is a man who is spening far too little time in prayer and preparation.  I never get to the end of a Sunday Sermon without having what I deem to be significant material that has been left out and thus becomes “leftovers.’  Let me share just a couple of these with you from this past Sunday.

We began our Advent Journey this year in the Gospel of Luke.  We are raising a question during this Advent and going to the text to find the answers:  “what did people do when they saw Jesus; how did they respond?”  The thesis for this series is that however they responded in that day should shape how we respond in our own day.  God is still making Himself known to us as Sovereign and as Savior.  We are told that through the  Scriptures we have a more certain word from God than did those who heard from God in those days.  More certain even than what the Shepherds received.  So, it is not true that we would have been as responsive as were the shepherds had we seen what they saw and heard what they heard.  We have been given a revelation from God that is more definitive than what was declared to them.  We are without excuse when we do not respond to what the Word of God declares about the Savior who has come.

We looked Sunday at how the angels responded.  We sought to establish the context in which we are told that a “registration” was ordered by Caesar Augustus and this was the “first” registration while Quirinius was governor of Syria.  I went right by that due to lack of time.  But here is a place that liberals seek to lambaste the doctrine of  inerrancy.  We know that Jesus was born during the time of  Herod who died in  4 B.C.; we also know that Quirinius was governing in Syria around A.D. 6-7.  So the liberals say that here is a place where the Scripture is just not accurate.  What they fail to note is that the word for “first” holds the key.  It is found in this reference and combined with the word for birth is used in reference to Jesus as the “firstborn.”  It does not here or elsewhere denote anything of numerical value.  The meaning is not that this registration was the first to be followed by a second etc. no more than firstborn means that Jesus is simply one son of others to which Mary gave birth with all of them being equal.  “Firstborn” signifies uniqueness and speaks of one who is special and set apart in every way.  So, the word “first” in relationship to the registration simply means that this registration was the foundation or template for other registrations.  Now we know that the registration during the rule of Quirinius was particularly painful and problematic so that the reference here is simply that this registration was the foundational registration and it happened prior to the ruinous registration of Quirinius.

The other issue that I just did not have time to develop is the reality that the peace that Jesus brings to earth comes through those whom God reconciles to Himself through Jesus.  Every person who belongs to God is by God’s design and for God’s delight a peacemaker.  It is one of the manifest distinctives of the people of God in the household of faith.  Does it then surprise us that the world has little attraction to the church when so many local bodies of believers are not marked by peace but by power plays among the people?  Would you agree that such people in such churches may have seen something, but it wasn’t Jesus?  He is the one who brings us peace and makes us men and women of peace in every relationship in which we are engaged.  There is peace where Jesus reigns and rules.  This peace is not the absence of conflict but it is contentment in the midst of conflict.  I think even now as I write these words of so many whom I love whose hearts are so conflicted during this season due to unexplainable episodes in their lives.  How can they know peace?  They can “know peace” the only way anyone can:  through trusting Jesus who is always faithful.  The slogan is right:  Know Him and Know Peace, Know Him Not and No Peace.

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