Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

On Christmas Eve, we talked about the fear that filled Mary and Joseph and the shepherds as they encountered the angel of the Lord. We talked about the fact that throughout Scripture, the immediate reaction of anyone who encounters hard evidence of God’s existence is fear. Because when we encounter God in an up close and personal way, it means that we must respond—we must do something about it. And we tend to find this somehow threatening—God is so far beyond our ability to understand that we often try to move back toward something more comfortable, something easier for us to comprehend, something we understand.

Luke, who is the author of our gospel, was a physician who accompanied Paul on several of his missionary journeys. He was well educated and was probably an historian as well as a doctor. He was also Greek, making him possibly the only Gentile author in the New Testament. And he’s the only gospel writer with no firsthand knowledge of Jesus. Tradition, as well as some of the histories of the day, indicates that Luke did a great deal of research before writing this gospel, interviewing many people who knew Jesus during His lifetime. It is believed that he spent a great deal of time talking to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and that she was one of his primary sources.

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FEAR NOT

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

It’s Christmas Eve—a time that we usually think of in terms of such words as love, joy, and peace. Yet as we read the Christmas gospel, we find that when the angel appeared to Mary, she was “troubled.” And when the angel appeared to the shepherds, they were “filled with fear.”

Why were they afraid? The angel told the shepherds: “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people” (Luke 2:10). Is good news frightening? The angel has come to tell Mary that she is going to be the mother of the “Son of the Most High.” He tells the shepherds that they can go and see “Christ the Lord.” What is frightening about this? Don’t we all want our children to be somehow more special than anyone else’s? Don’t we all want to see Christ the Lord?

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Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

The fourth commandment tells us to: Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. (Exodus 20:12).

The first three commandments deal with our relationship to God—because that must always come first. The remaining seven deal with our relationship to other people, beginning, in the fourth commandment, with our relationship to our parents.

There are several things that are important to note about this commandment. The first is that God specifically said that we are to honor both our father and our mother. And He said this to a culture that existed in the world at a time when women were considered to be of little worth. Even today in many Middle Eastern countries, women are treated as being of less value than livestock. But God is commanding us to treat mothers, and all women in authority over us, not only with respect, but with honor. He is, in a radical way that did not occur again until Jesus came, demanding equality in the treatment of women.

It’s also important to recognize that this is not a commandment that was written just for children—which is often the way that we think of it. It applies to all of us as long as we have parents who are living.

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Grace and peace from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Last Sunday’s sermon apparently struck a nerve, as I have heard from many of you about it during the past week. It seems that many of you believe—or want to believe—that it really is all right to take the Lord’s name in vain if you don’t mean anything by it. Apparently there is a great deal of profanity taking place that people want to believe is not a problem.

I will once again remind you that it’s not what we think, or what we intend, that matters. What matters is what God thinks—and He has made it very clear that He takes offense whenever we use His name wrongly, regardless of our intentions.

Let me tell you a true story that happened in California. A man who had a habit of parking wherever it was convenient, collected a number of parking tickets, which he ignored. He figured it was no big deal—they were only parking tickets and he wasn’t trying to cause trouble. When he parked in no parking or handicapped areas, it was usually because he was only going to be a minute and he was in a hurry and there was no one else around who needed those spaces—he didn’t mean anything by it. But one night at 4:00 AM the police showed up at his door and arrested him for failing to pay his parking tickets. The following morning when he went before the judge, he said, “I’m really sorry, your honor. I didn’t mean anything by parking in the wrong places—and I’ll try not to do it again. And I’ve brought $700.00 with me to pay for all of the tickets and all of the court costs.”

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WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

How important is your good name to you? It takes years to build a good reputation, but only one bad decision to destroy one. And reputations stick—sometimes far beyond our lifetimes. Our actions determine our reputation and that’s what people remember about us when we are gone. What comes to mind when I mention Adolf Hitler? How about Abraham Lincoln, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther? How about the apostle Peter? Paul? King David? Judas? Pontius Pilate?

Names are important. We all receive a name at birth and then we spend a lifetime attaching meaning to it. Most of us try hard to build a good reputation and then we jealously protect it. Our names communicate history and tradition and family heritage. They connect us with our past.

God’s name is important to Him, too. And when someone uses His name in a way that is wrong, He doesn’t like it any better than we like it when someone uses our name wrongly. God feels so strongly about they way His name is used that He gave us very clear instructions on the matter. The Second Commandment says: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain” (Exodus 20:7).

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