Response time is everything.  It is the metric that drives our modern world.  When response times are not getting shorter, our patience is.  Hospitals tout real time wait times on interstate billboards.  Customer service call-centers give us our depth in queue and call back options up front.  When both lines are wrapped around Chick-Fil-A, we still expect no more than 47 seconds from order time to food delivery.  And our decisions about technology often hinge on megapixels and milliseconds.  Even our social media accounts report our response times in answering questions or responding to posts.

Response time is everything.  A slow response time is anathema.  Patience used to be a virtue, but now it is extinct.  We expect responses and we expect them to be timely, if not immediate.  Failure to respond and respond quickly is deemed a total failure.  While this is characteristic of our fast-food age, it is probably less a modern trait than we might believe.  Even in the past when responses have been methodical, deliberate, and slow, responses were always expected.

And as with everything, spiritual truths are reflected in our experiences.   The birth of Christ is a remarkable intrusion into the lives of people.  His presence demands a response.  Mary and Joseph’s plans and lives are turned upside down.  Sages are roused from their contemplations to make a perilous journey.   The vigilance of the shepherds was redirected away from their sheep.   And the townsfolk in sleepy Bethlehem are wakened from their sleep by strange tales of a strange baby.  Unlike our Nativity sets, these characters were not caricatures.  And their place in the drama is less about their casting and more about their response.  

When Christ intrudes into the world, He demands a response.   Mary treasured and pondered.  Shepherds returned glorifying and praising God.  The townsfolk simply marveled.  Those in the Gospels who refuse to receive him, who plan to follow Him one of these days, who wash their hands of him, who marvel at him, but refuse to ‘come and worship’ are always condemned.  Everyone’s response to Jesus is different, but indifference is not an option.  Some ignore, some resist, some deny, some hate, while some believe and follow.  Your present and your future are utterly dependent upon your response to Jesus. 

The shepherds believed and followed.  When the angel told them “today is born in the city of David as Savior who is Christ the Lord,” the good news demanded a response.   They went in haste and discovered everything God had promised them.   What is your response to the good news?   The opening of the Gospel of John lays this out for us.

He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

John 1:11-13

Response time is everything.  It is time for your response.   What is your response to the good news that “today is born in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord?” Join us as we examine Luke 2:15-20 and consider our own response to Jesus. We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Nothing keeps Christ in Christmas like our annual viewing of The Lord of the Rings.  Now before you accuse me of sarcasm or heresy, consider that Tolkien’s Christian worldview shines brightly through every line of his books and even through all twelve hours of the extended versions of Peter Jackson’s adaptation. 

Against all odds, as the irresistible darkness, oppression and malice of a Dark Lord covers the world in shadow and sorrow, salvation comes to the ruined race of men from the most unlikely of heroes.   Like all epic tales insurmountable odds are overcome and undaunted courage is exercised as common men perform uncommon deeds. 

Tolkien’s magnum opus is filled with many nuggets of wisdom, spoken at salient points.  In one exchange, the main character, Frodo laments, “I wish the ring had never come to me.” His friend, Gandalf responds, “So do all who live to see such times.  But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” 

The Lord of the Rings is a powerful story of courage, friendship, and redemption, eclipsed only by what its author once called “the only true myth” – the gospel.  The gospel is a story that is so unlikely, in which common men, empowered by faith, perform uncommon deeds and in which the ruined race of men is gloriously redeemed by a mighty hero, who took on the form of a servant and humbled himself, even to death on a cross.  

The gospel is a story of unlikely converts, not of men whose moral excellence made them acceptable to God or earned his favor, nor men of power whose mighty deeds destroyed the power of their great enemies, death and the devil.  No, the gospel is a story of the weak and powerless, snatched as burning brands from the fire. 

Nowhere is this seen more powerfully than in Luke 2, sometimes called “the Christmas story.”   The Lord of glory is born into obscurity while the only announcement is given to shepherds, the most despised and outcast class of society.  These enigmatic shepherds were the most unlikely of converts, men who were notoriously under suspicion, rejected from temple worship because of ritual uncleanness, and acceptable as witnesses in the courts.  If anyone hoped to receive God’s goodwill it was not these men. 

Yet these were the men to whom God announced, “for unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”  Unto “you!”  No one gave these men anything, but God gave them everything!   Luther once wrote that “the gospel is in the personal pronouns.”  Like them, if we hope to receive God’s goodwill and favor because of our works, we are sorely mistaken.  But the good news is that a Savior has been born to us, Christ the Lord.  And just like them, we are the most unlikely of converts.

Join us as we examine the story of the shepherds in Luke 2 and consider God’s powerful plan to save the most unlikely of converts.  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

No day of the year requires more preparation than Christmas.  The demands of the season have become increasingly prodigious.  We must find just the right gift for all our friends and relations, synchronize calendars so that all events can be attended, and devise elaborate culinary plans for nearly six weeks of feasting.   And then there is the decorating which gets earlier and earlier every year as it gets more and more sensational. 

The first mile marker on the road to Christmas for our family is the baking of the Christmas Cake.  Inspired by an episode of All Creatures Great and Small, Isabella bakes the cake in mid-October then methodically “feeds” it for the next two months.   There is no rushing the Christmas Cake.  Some things cannot be hurried.  The preparation must be slow and intentional.  Every step is important.  No shortcuts are possible.  And at last, after months of waiting, the day arrives just before Christmas when the cake can be iced and enjoyed with great fanfare.

I suppose it makes sense that our Christmas preparations are slow and methodical, unfolding step by step.   Since the great event our celebration signifies, the incarnation of Jesus Christ, was also slow and methodical, revealed step by step in the history of God’s redeeming work among men.   The Bible puts it this way.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

Galatians 4:4-6.

God took His time.  He worked in the fullness of time.  He could have done things differently, but He sovereignly chose an unhurried pace to prepare men for His work of reconciling them to Himself.   From generation to generation, He raised up men and women through whom He acted to remind us that God is not powerless or unconcerned to save us from ourselves and to prepare us to receive Him as our Savior and King.   But how careful have we been to prepare? 

Have we spent months preparing for Christmas, but have no time for Christ?  John the Baptist was the great preparer – the forerunner of Jesus.  His life’s work was to “make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”   At his birth, as friends and neighbors gathered to celebrate his parent’s joy, they speculated on what this baby would grow up to become.  

As his father’s unbelief gave way to faith, the Lord restored his speech and he uttered a long-delayed word of blessing.  But his blessing and thanksgiving were not about his baby boy, but the one his son would herald.   John’s whole life would singularly revolve around preparing himself and others for Jesus.  And Jesus would later declare that of all those born of women, John was the greatest.   Nowhere is John’s greatness seen more brilliantly than in the following exchange in John 3.

And they came to John and said to him, Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.” John answered, “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’ The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease. 

John 3:26-30

Can you say that?  Are you content to decrease, that Jesus may increase?  Does your life revolve around preparing yourself and others to love, serve and follow Jesus?   How do we avoid having Christ crowded out of our lives, how do we heed the thoughts of the line in Joy to the World, “let every heart prepare him room.”

In Luke 1:57-80 we are told of the birth of John the Baptist and his father’s prophetic song.  And in this benediction song, God teaches us to make preparation for Christ in our own lives and in the lives of others.   Join us as we examine the birth of John the Baptist in Luke 1:57-80 and our calling to prepare ourselves and others for Christ.  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

The story of Christ’s coming is the most dramatic story ever told. While it reaches a beautiful high point with Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, there is much more to this story – a story with origins in eternity past and implications in eternity future, a story of epic failure and dramatic rescue, a story that reveals a God quite different from the one our fears imagine.

Come and experience the rest of this story in God’s own words and in song as we share in An Evening of Lessons and Carols together at 7:00 pm on Friday, December 22. We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn.  Get directions here or contact us for more info. 

We live in a world filled with mystery.  We believe we live in an age of hard facts and scientific data.  We pretend that with enough computing power and scientific inquiry, everything question can be answered, every mystery resolved.   Indeed, we have accumulated much in the way of knowledge.   But, ironically, as knowledge and mystery increase in direct proportion.   The more we understand of the world in which we live, the less we understand about of how it works.   The more we know, the more we know about what we do not know.

From our digital age, we look down with smug superiority upon our forebears, quibbling about with pens and paper.   While we struggle to use our smart phones without consulting a small child.   Our technology is a mystery to us.    We think we have explored the earth — no new lands to discover and conquer, but we know less about the surface of the ocean, which covers two thirds of our planet, than we do about the surface of the moon.

We cannot explain even the simplest things we observe every day.  The sun, moon, and constellations are large on the horizon, yet seem to diminish in size as they rise overhead.    Yet if you hold out your thumb to the rising moon, then again when it is at its zenith, you will discover absolutely no difference.  What accounts for this remarkable trick of perspective?   Neither scientists nor psychologists can explain it.    And when you go to your favorite drive-in and order a milk shake, why does it give you a brain freeze?   Despite well-funded research, scientists have not determined the cause.   Our world is awash in mystery.

Some of these mysteries involve great contradictions — irreconcilable, yet indispensable truths.   In the early part of the Twentieth Century, as scientists observed sub-atomic matter, they realized that the physics of their day no longer explained the behavior of the nano-world.   A new physic, quantum physics, was born to account for what Sir Isaac Newton never even knew existed.  At the center of this new understanding was a radical new idea – that light acted but as a wave and as a particle.   No one could explain it, but accepting this mystery was foundational in constructing a model of physics that explained the sub-atomic world.   Seemingly irreconcilable, yet indispensable truths, that make the world go round.

This type of tension is no surprise to the Christian.   For the Christian faith is filled with such paradox.   Indispensable truths which seem to be in tension with one another.  “Truths,” as one theologian quipped, “to be believed, not discovered.”   Truths such as the absolute sovereignty of God and the undeniable reality of true human freedom.   And an even more incomprehensible mystery.   The truth of a Savior who is fully God and, at the same time, fully man – two natures, in one person, forever.   Yet, the scripture does not discourage “faith seeking understanding.”   God has given us minds that desire to know His truth, to seek and find what He has revealed.   This is what we see in a remarkable way in Mary, the mother of Jesus.

In Luke 1:26-38, we have one of the most remarkable stories in scripture.   The angel, Gabriel comes to Mary with a startling announcement — she will be the mother of her Savior.   Unlike the fearful skepticism of Zechariah, Mary asks “how will these things be?”   A question we all wrestle with as we consider a Savior who is fully God and fully man.   But in the answer, scripture points us to one of the most precious truths of our faith.   Because Mary asked this question, we, along with our forefathers, can turn to scripture and ask.   

Q22: How did Christ, being the Son of God, become man? 
A22: Christ, the Son of God, became man, by taking to himself a true body, and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and born of her yet without sin. 

Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 22

Join us as we examine Luke 1:26-38 and consider this question and why it is central to our faith. We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Every actor, every game-show host, every news anchor, and every preacher knows the importance of the dramatic pause.  It heightens anticipation, calls hearers to attention, makes the heart race. It dials up the emotional intensity to the gravity of the word it so intently awaits.  Silence that for a moment haunts listeners as they struggle to predict the coming word. Such is the power of silence.  It is hope, fear, uncertainty, disappointment, expectation all compressed by a sonic vacuum.

But what happens when that pause is more than a few fleeting seconds?  What if that dramatic pause goes on for hours or days or weeks.   Many couples have experienced the emotional estrangement that comes from a famine of words.  Without the nourishing words of assurance, love and comfort, silence imputes motives that arise out of our worst fears and harshest assessments of those we love.   But the silence of our beloved is as nothing compared to the silence of God.  Songwriter, Andrew Peterson, expresses this tension poignantly.

It’s enough to drive a man crazy; it’ll break a man’s faith
It’s enough to make him wonder if he’s ever been sane
When he’s bleating for comfort from Thy staff and Thy rod
And the heaven’s only answer is the silence of God

And the man of all sorrows, he never forgot
What sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought
So when the questions dissolve into the silence of God
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not.

The Silence of God, Andrew Peterson

The silence of God can seem devastating.  But that final stanza is powerful.  The man of all sorrows, he never forgot, What sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought.   And so, the Gospel of Luke opens with broken silence.  Jesus, the Word made flesh, was born to speak God’s love, mercy and comfort into a dramatic silence that had lasted 400 years. God was not dead nor deaf, not absent, not unconcerned, not idle.  

From before the foundation of the world, He had been bringing history to this point.  “[When] the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law.”   The God of the Bible is a God that breaks the silence of fear, of sorrow, of uncertainty with comfort, joy and confident hope.   He does this by sending His Son.

Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, knew about the silence of God.   Now an aged priest, his whole life had been devoted to pleading for God to speak and to act on behalf of his people.   How many years had he served God?  How many he years had he prayed for the salvation of the Lord?  How many thousands of times had he plead with God to redeem his people from the yoke of tyranny and sin?  Where was an answer, any answer? 

But Zechariah also had a personal plea.  He and his wife, Elizabeth, had served God faithfully yet God had closed Elizabeth’s womb.  There was no child, no heir, no “sound of little feet that was the music they danced to week to week.”  There was only stigma and silence from the God, whose service was their every thought and breath.  Yet, silence is never the last word from God.  

Amid this silence, Zechariah gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  He is called upon to offer prayers and burn the sacred incense before the most Holy Place in the temple.  It would be easy to imagine how he might be tempted to doubt.  Yet it is in this very moment that God breaks His long silence.  The dramatic pause is finished.  And the even more dramatic truth is spoken.  All that God has promised is about to come about.  The gospel, the good news, is revealed to Zechariah.  And Zechariah, whose life had been a silent witness to the silent God, becomes the silent instrument God chooses to make known his broken silence in the gospel. 

Join us this Lord’s Day, as we begin a short series of lessons from Luke’s Gospel in Luke 1:5-25 and consider the power of the gospel to break the silence of God in our lives.  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

“Don’t blink,” she says.  I steel my senses and attempt the impossible.  She begins the count to three.  But somewhere in the domain of infinite real numbers that exist between two and three she activates the tonometer.  A puff of air flattens my cornea and in the twinkling of an eye, my intraocular pressure is measured.  But mixed up in the terrifying uncertainty of what would happen and when it would happen, the inevitable occurs.  How could I help but blink?  After all, it is an involuntary reflex.  An instinctive response to stimuli.  No matter how hard I try not to blink at the optometrist’s or resist kicking when the GP brings out the rubber hammer, a reflex is irresistible.

Human life depends upon both involuntary and conditioned reflexes.  God has wired us with involuntary reflexes such as blinking or sneezing to ensure basic health and survival while conditioned reflexes reflect intentional choices.  We train our bodies and our minds to be this and not that, to do this and not that, and to avoid this, but not that.   We condition our reflexes to create, achieve, find joy and peace, and avoid pain.  But what is the ultimate stimulus for our reflexes?  Is it self-love or God’s love?  Your life is a response to one or the other.  One brings death, the other life.  Which describes you?

The God of the Bible takes the initiative.  He sees, hears, acts.  He reveals himself and saves us from the slavery of sin and death.  He brings us to himself and makes covenant with us.  A covenant sealed with his own blood.   He calls us to be holy as he is holy that we may abide with the one “who loves us and has freed us from our sin.”  His inexplicable grace produces an irresistible reflex of gratitude.  A reflex that animates us to glorify and enjoy Him and makes us more like Jesus.

For this reason, the Scripture exhorts us continually to train, study, exercise self-control, and “pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.”  God’s great purpose in grace is that we “be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”  Our sanctification grows from a reflexive response to the grace of God, sustained by the indwelling work of the Holy Spirit.   Paul makes this clear writing to the Philippians, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

This is the remarkable transformation we see at the end of the book of Exodus. The sin of the Golden Calf was indescribably wicked.  Everyone was complicit, Aaron, the elders, the Levites, and all the people.  Their guilt seemed unforgiveable. Yet, God’s grace is sufficient.  He demonstrates his nature as “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” Exodus 34:6-7

And in response, we see sinful, rebellious, stiff-necked people transformed into grateful saints, faithfully giving, serving, and following.  And so it should with us.  The irresistible reflex to God’s grace is unfolding sanctification in our words, thoughts, deeds, desires, intentions, attitudes, and perspective as God reclaims every venue of our total depravity. 

The Christian life is a reflex to the grace of God.  Grace and gratitude shape our worship, giving, service, and daily life.  Scripture reminds us.

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

Colossians 2:6-7

How are your reflexes?  Join us as we examine the people’s response to God’s grace in Exodus 35-40 and how it unfolds in faithful giving, faithful serving, and faithful following. We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

My mom was a die-hard fan.  And a woman of great faith.  Rooting for the Atlanta Braves in the Seventies demanded both.   Chief Nocahoma rarely roused from his tent.   Good students earned tickets to Braves’ games.   You could buy ‘knot-hole’ seats in the dizzying heights of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium for a twenty-five cents.  The exploits of Hammerin’ Hank Aaron were the only bright spots.   My mother would listen to Pete Van Wieren and Skip Caray call all the games on her transistor radio before Ted Turner and the SuperStation made the Braves ‘America’s Team.’ 

Emma Lou Wheeler was a true fan.  She understood all the subtleties.  All the complicated dynamics.  And yes, all the rules.  Even the ground rules.   I was probably the only of my friends who learned about baseball from his mother.  But all that secret knowledge went out the door when Don, Alan, Norman, and I along with whatever available neighborhood girls would hit ‘The Circle’ (our cul-de-sac) for 3-on-3 sandlot baseball. 

Our games were more ground-rules than anything.   Hitting Mr. Bradley’s Bronco was an automatic out.   Hitting rooftops between the telephone poles constituting our foul poles were ground-rule homeruns.   Balls driven into the oak grove between our house and the Boyd’s were considered doubles.   Bean-balls for baserunners constituted an ‘out.’   And we took turns spelunking into ‘the drain’ to retrieve wild pitches.   Any questionable play not defined in our evolving canon of ground-rules was determined by the mother of all sandlot procedures – ‘the do-over.’

After a few moments of healthy dissent and debate over where the ball actually disappeared and whether there was an applicable ground-rule some irenic soul would invoke in a loud-voice, ‘do-over!’  Baserunners were reset.  The pitch count, when we actually used it, was restored.  And all that had happened, including any hard feelings over the rectitude of the call, was set aside, annulled, wiped from the record.  And play resumed without prejudice.  In the absence of umpires or a level and unobstructed playing field, baseball becomes a game of second chances, of ‘do-overs.’

Life needs second chances as well.  The desire for redemption is an instinct planted deeply in our fallen nature. We are always seeking what was lost.  And we often hear that God is a God of second chances.  So, we think of his mercy as simply a divine do-over, a reset and restart in making better life choices.  But God’s mercy and forgiveness are not ‘do-overs.’ Or simply second chances.  Redemption means much more.  It is costly.  And transformational.  It changes more than the outcome of a decision.  It is a death and rebirth.  Hardly a ‘do-over.’

After the Golden Calf, Moses pleads for the redemption of the people.  Their sin is so shocking that he shatters the Tablets of the Testimony.  But God is not finished with his people.  His plan to redeem them is unchanged. He instructs Moses to chisel out two new tablets and to come back to the summit of Sinai to hear good news.  

The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin but who will by no means clear the guilty.

Exodus 34:6-7

This passage is often called the Gospel of the Old Testament.  Here we see the covenant love of a holy God for an unholy people.  But the last phrase is significant.  Unlike a second chance or a do-over, God’s mercy comes at a price.  Someone must pay.  Isaiah would later write of the Messiah, Jesus.

But he was pierced for our transgressions;
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
    and with his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
    we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

Isaiah 53:5-6

And Paul made this more explicit.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. 

Romans 3:23-26

God is much more than a God of second chances.  And our regeneration is no mere do-over.  Join us as we examine Exodus 34 and consider ‘the how, the what, and the why’ of redemption.   We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship. Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.