An unmitigated disaster.  Far from a shining moment for the capital of the New South, the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics proved disastrous.   Even battle tested Atlantans, were shocked by the gridlocked traffic.  The logistical disorganization and remoteness of some venues elicited universal criticism.  And the bombing at Centennial Olympic Park confirmed the opinions of many that the American south was still a hotbed of racism, violence, and extremism.  In the closing ceremony, the IOC chairman slighted the city and the games calling the Games only “most exceptional.” Breaking his precedent of describing every other  Olympics as “the best Olympics ever” at the closing ceremony.

But perhaps the greatest embarrassment was the mascot.  Intended to brand the Atlanta Games “Izzy,” short for “Whatizit,” was an amorphous blue blob wearing training shoes and variously draped in the five Olympic rings. Izzy was so poorly received when introduced at the end of the Barcelona games that it was redesigned and renamed by the children of Atlanta. Over time, a mouth appeared where there had first been only lips; stars appeared in his eyes; and his initially skinny legs became more muscled. Finally, a nose grew in the middle of his face. 

Despite the overhaul, Izzy never overcame the fact that it was unintelligible.  Or what it miscommunicated about Atlanta.  A mascot, logo, or icon must clearly express the core values of the person, place, or thing it represents.   If Izzy represented Atlanta, just what were her core values or virtues?  No one knew. And no one could know from Izzy.  Worse than failing to communicate values, Izzy communicated a vacuum.  Perhaps Atlanta had no core values or virtues.  Maybe this is what Izzy intended to convey. To say Izzy was a public relations failure would be a stunning understatement.

When something is ill-defined, it ultimately communicates whatever the receiver imputes.   Words or pictures without context or explanation will always take on a life of their own.   As communications guru, Marshall McLuhan quipped, “A word is worth a thousand pictures.” Or to quote the Proverb, “where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint.”  A brief trip to an art gallery quickly reveals that beauty, concept, value and virtue is, in the absence of explanation, in the eye and mind of the beholder. Only revealed truth keeps us from descending into paganism and superstition.  A point demonstrated by our divergent views about the reasons, ways, and effects of living sacrificially.

Sacrifices were known in every ancient culture.   The first sacrifice is only alluded to in Genesis 3 as God provides a covering for Adam and Eve from the skin of an animal.  And the first murder arose over sin regarding a sacrifice.   The patriarchs sacrificed.  And pagans sacrificed.  But their goal was to feed their gods, believing that the way to a god’s favor was through his stomach. Sacrifice was everywhere practiced yet nowhere clearly explained.   Yet its meaning is not to be subjectively determined by the feelings or intent of the offeror.  

The meaning of sacrifice is rooted in what C. S. Lewis called ‘the deep magic.’   The Bible tells us that Jesus is the lamb slain from the foundation of the world.  The deep magic of sacrifice stands outside of time.  Sacrifice means something.  It communicates something.  It affects something.  It points to something.  Something objective.  Something specific.  Something revealed not discovered. 

When the Galatians began to slip from grace to legalism, Paul reminded them that the law was not the way.  But rather the law pointed them to the One who was the way.  He wrote, “So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.” (Galatians 3:24)  The word ‘guardian’ is often translated ‘schoolmaster.’  The law teaches us about Christ and about sacrifice.

We would not understand John’s cry, “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” without first understanding Leviticus with all its meticulum for the reasons, ways, and effects of sacrifice.   The first seven chapters of Leviticus are the priest’s handbook to sacrifices.  What to sacrifice, how to sacrifice, why to sacrifice.  And in these remarkably mundane pages we see the beauty of Christ.

Leviticus 1 details the first and most often used sacrifice, the whole burnt offering.  Sometimes called ‘the holocaust.’  And here our schoolmaster, the law, teaches us about the deep love of Christ for sinners.   As Andrew Bonar noted.

All is ashes.  So complete is the doom of the sinner – as testified on this altar, and fulfilled by Jesus when He took the sinner’s place.  That smoke attests that God’s righteousness is fully satisfied in the suffering victim.  His blood, “His soul,” is poured out! And the flame of the Divine wrath burns up the suffering one! 

Leviticus, Andrew Bonar

Join us as we examine Leviticus 1:3-17 and consider the reason, ways, and effects of whole burnt offerings and how they speak of Christ.  We meet each Lord’s Day 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. 

Firstborns in the modern era have completed baby books.  When our first child was born we had sticker calendars.  First bath, first time to roll over, first visit from Grandma, first army crawl, first spoon of rice cereal, first words, and first birthday.  A firstborn’s baby calendar had more stickers than the window beside a toddler’s car-seat.   But second-born children are a different story.   Their bevy of ‘first’ stickers often don’t make it to the calendar.   We place a few but miss more than a few.  We had good intentions.  But diapers, sleeplessness, and an active toddling older sibling inevitably hinder our chronicling.

By the time baby three comes along, we don’t even have a sticker calendar.  All the ‘firsts’ are captured and archived among terabytes of digital photography, rarely accessed and hard to locate. It’s not that those subsequent ‘firsts’ are less precious, it’s just that the tyranny of the urgent insists on more itinerant curation. 

Before the modern era, however.  That is, when I was a boy, we had no sticker calendars or baby books.  The mementos of our birth and growth were simply placed in a decorative box, to be discovered and perused every decade or so at a Feast of our Nativity. Growth out our house was charted simply with pencil marks, initials, and dates on the doorway in our kitchen next to THE telephone.   Each year on our birthday, and sometimes at the beginning of the school year, my father would assemble us in the kitchen for the ritual marking.   Like rings on a tree, these marks recorded only how much larger we were than last year.   Silent, but salient, these marks on the doorframe spoke of growth and change. 

It is part of being human to grow and to mark our physical, mental, relational, and vocational growth.  On the fourth day of the world, God created celestial calendars to mark the days, months, years, and seasons.   Even before he made man, he marked time.   Man was created into and continues to be born into a cycle of days, months, years, and seasons.   To be human is to exhibit and chart growth.

One of the great truths of our faith, central to God’s redemptive plan and indispensable to the gospel, is that our Savior is both fully God and fully man.  Paul noted in 1 Timothy that this is a great mystery, writing, ‘Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh.’ (1 Timothy 3:16).   And elsewhere he wrote.

Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

Philippians 2:5-7

 The Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 8.2, expresses this mystery well.

The Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance, and equal with the Father, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon Him man’s nature, with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof; yet without sin: being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, of her substance. So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person is very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and man.

Westminster Confession of Faith, VIII.2

Yet this great mystery has always been a fertile field for confusion and error.  And often this confusion has tended to diminish Christ’s humanity as merely illusory.  Or it has confused and conflated his divine and human natures in some hybridized fashion.  We often hear Jesus referred to by the theologians as the ‘God-man.’  But even this term reveals our struggle to accept that ‘two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion.’

The Scriptures are replete with the revelation of the deity of Jesus Christ.  Even the best efforts of anti-trinitarians to deliberately redact the Greek New Testament cannot erase the pervasive scriptural witness that Jesus is fully God.   And yet, the New Testament also gives clear and compelling witness to his full humanity.   A humanity that is true and distinct from his divine nature, though joined in one person. 

The story of the boy Jesus in the Temple is a prime example.  Bookended by two passages that speak of Jesus physical, intellectual, emotional, relational, and spiritual growth, we encounter in Jesus’ response to his mothers’ rebuke, his first recorded words.  Words that acknowledge a growing consciousness of his identity.  A growth that surprises us but should not.

It is part of being a real human to grow.  And like the marks on the doorframe of my childhood kitchen, the Bible points to the true humanity of Jesus by indicating that he grew.  He grew in size.  He grew in wisdom.  He grew in favor with God and man.  He learned obedience.  And in his humanity, there are many times when there were things he did not know.   And while this surprises us, it should not.  

We cannot fully understand the interaction of Jesus’ human and divine nature.  Yet we can be sure that Jesus’ humanity was real.  It was not hybridized, confused, or conflated with his deity.  The heart of the gospel and our redemption depends upon the full deity and full humanity of Jesus.   The Westminster Larger Catechism puts it well.

38. Why was it requisite that the mediator should be God? It was requisite that the mediator should be God, that He might sustain and keep the human nature from sinking under the infinite wrath of God, and the power of death; give worth and efficacy to His sufferings, obedience and intercession; and to satisfy God’s justice, procure His favor, purchase a peculiar people, give His Spirit to them, conquer all their enemies, and bring them to everlasting salvation.

39. Why was it requisite that the mediator should be man? It was requisite that the mediator should be man, that He might advance our nature, perform obedience to the law, suffer and make intercession for us in our nature, have a fellow-feeling of our infirmities; that we might receive the adoption of sons, and have comfort and access with boldness unto the throne of grace.

40. Why was it requisite that the mediator should be God and man in one person?
It was requisite that the mediator, who was to reconcile God and man, should Himself be both God and man, and this in one person, that the proper works of each nature might be accepted of God for us, and relied on by us, as the works of the whole person.

Westminster Larger Catechism, Questions 38-40

In Luke 2:40-52 we encounter a passage that challenges us.   We see the reality of Jesus’ humanity displayed through the very fact of human growth.  And in this we learn that our Savior is indeed our faithful high priest “touched with the feeling of our infirmity.”  And sharing with us in flesh and blood that he might, in our nature“ 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)

The story of the boy Jesus at the Temple is more than a literary transition from his infancy to his manhood.  It is a critical passage reiterating the glorious truth of our Savior’s full humanity.  Join us as we examine Luke 2:40-52 and consider the reality and significance of Jesus’ full humanity. 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. 

“You get what you pay for!”  Or do you?  Does paying more necessarily mean getting more?  The spin doctors and podcasters of popular finance tell you, “Never pay full price.”  Clark Howard and Dave Ramsey certainly feel a disturbance in the force if you shop the department store and not T. J. Maxx or let that Dollar General coupon expire unused.  Though Americans do not have a haggle culture, we haggle in different ways.  We hunt discounts like game. Then mount our trophies on social media.  

Digital couponing, GoodRx, Temu, Fuel Rewards and a thousand other weapons are at our disposal to track and bag remarkable discounts on everything from food, to pharmacy, to fuel.  “Never pay full price!” And when there is no discount weapon available, we simply ask for the ‘unadvertised discount.’  Few refuse this simple but powerful tactic.   But in our rush to discount everything in life, is there perhaps some truth to the maxim, ‘you get what you pay for?’

My dad was a depression-era baby, steeped in all the financial austerity of his age.  He never bought brand names, he never paid full price, and simply refused to buy something if it was more than he wanted to pay.   But there were a few things my dad said were worth full price.   A mantra that has served me well is, ‘son, when you get insurance, get State-Farm and when you have to fly, Fly Delta.  They will never be the cheapest, but what they cost in money, they make up in service and reliability.’   This has proved good advice.  There are few things for which we must pay full price, but there are some that are worth it.

It is one of the great paradoxes of our faith that grace is one of those things.   It can only be purchased at full price.  The cost of grace is never up for debate.  But what makes grace, grace is not what it cost, but who pays.  The cost of our sin is staggering.   There are no discounts, no works, not piety, not good intentions, no sincere motives that make its cost affordable.   We simply will never amass enough to pay its bill. 

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus speaks of the costliness of judgement.

Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

Matthew 5:25-26

And the Psalmist noted.

Truly no man can ransom another,
    or give to God the price of his life,
for the ransom of their life is costly
    and can never suffice,
that he should live on forever
    and never see the pit.

Psalm 49:7-9

Paul speaks of our predicament and our debt in Romans and again in Galatians.

“None is righteous, no, not one;
    no one understands;
    no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
    no one does good,
    not even one.” Romans 3:10-12

For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith…”  Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. Galatians 3:10-11, 13

And so, when Jesus dies on the cross, he cries out one word in Greek, tetelestai, translated “it is finished.”  A word inscribed on ancient receipts to indicate a debt paid in full.   Grace is not a discount.  Not writing off bad debt.  No mere debt forgiveness.   No, a price had to be paid.  Every penny of our guilt had to be remitted.   What makes grace, grace is not what it costs, but who pays.  

Christ has paid for those who believe in Him.   For those who will not believe, the debt is theirs.   From the beginning of his earthly life, Jesus was a man under the power of the law.   Even in his infancy, his obedience to the law pointed at every turn to the full price he would pay to provide grace for us.  No sooner had the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, than we read about Jesus’ obedience to the law and hear the words of the aged Simeon that “this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and as a sign to be opposed— and a sword will pierce your own soul—to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.” 

The ransom of your life is costly.  There are no discounts, no subsidies, no generics.  The full price is demanded.  Grace is not about reduced cost, but a change in payor.  Only in Christ has the full price been paid in full.   Are you still trying to pay the skyrocketing cost of your sin yourself?  Join us as we examine Luke 2:21-40 and see the cost of our salvation begin to come into focus through the rituals of the law and the song of Simeon. 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.