Some Thoughts on Baby Jesus and the New Year by Aaron Hecht

 

When I was a kid, I remember driving around the small town I grew up in this time of year, looking out the window of my mom's car and seeing what are called "Nativity Scenes" set up on the front lawns of churches and private homes. This is, of course, the romanticized sculpture that tries to represent the birth of Jesus at His First Advent. The Christmas season is supposed to be a celebration of the birth of Jesus, and although most scholars agree that it's VERY unlikely He was born on December 25h, or even in the month of December, this traditional date is a good time to celebrate the fact that God sent His Son into the world.

Personally, I don't have any energy left to argue with people who want to be down on Christmas, or Nativity Scenes, or egg nog, or candy canes, or even Christmas trees. Your expressions of contempt for these things and the people who indulge in them DOES NOT score you any points with God and in my humble opinion, you're actually grieving Him by doing that.

All of that having been said, I do have a comment about Nativity Scenes and it goes like this.

A lot of people seem to really like "baby Jesus" and are comfortable with Him as a baby, but then a few days after ostensibly celebrating His birthday, they go out and drink too much alcohol to celebrate the new year. Sometimes, people drive past still standing Nativity Scenes to get to the new year's eve parties they're going to.

This, obviously, is a mistake but it's just one of many mistakes we make as human beings. We love "baby Jesus" but we don't much like the man He grew up to be and we often forget to follow the teachings He gave us when He grew up. That's partly because most of us rarely open up a Bible to read about His teachings and His ministry.

So, gentle reader, whether you celebrated His birth a few days ago or not, I hope you will join me in making a resolution to more faithfully serve and follow Him in the new year 2025. A great way to help ourselves do this is by spending time in daily Bible study, and the best way I've found to do that is by using the One Year Bible app, or if you're old-fashioned like me, maybe you even have a physical paper copy of the One Year Bible in your home.

It has been a great blessing to my own life to be a "One Year Bible" person, and I hope someone reading this will take advantage of the blessing that daily Bible reading can be to your life as well. It's a great time to start this habit, and if you don't keep any of your other new year's resolutions, reading the Bible every day will surely be one you'll want to keep.

The Lord be with all of us in this new year that's coming.

Theological Overlap between Maccabees and the Gospels

There is some interesting theological overlap between II Maccabees and the Gospels.

Intro to II Maccabees notes,

"It is a very Jewish book; its basic interpretative model is the Song of Moses, according to which God providentially cares for the Jews but hides his face when they sin, thus allowing foreigners to persecute them until the shedding the blood of his servants works atonement..."

In Maccabees, the blood of God's servants works atonement and God's anger against Israel relents.

In the Gospels, the blood of God's servant messiah works atonement and God's anger against mankind relents. 

Winning By Persistence

Persistence enables victory. I've found this to be true in several areas of life:

Blogging: Many years ago when blogs were popular, I had debates and heated arguments with other theological bloggers. They were very heated, at times vicious. But almost all the people who rebuked, insulted, and replied with angry caps are all gone. Some of them have abandoned faith and turned to atheism. Others have converted to different religions. Still others were ousted from their positions of leadership due to some public grievous sin. All of their critiques seem hollow now because they're long gone. I won because I persisted.

Side projects. I started Chavah MessianicRadio.com because there was some other Messianic music station that was decent but not quite good. Now that original radio station is gone, its founder jumped the shark, and Chavah is the best place for Messianic music on the web. Chavah won because I persisted.

I also created MessianicChords, a place to find guitar chords, piano sheet music, and lyrics for Messianic music. There have been a few others who have tried to do something similar including some recent attempts. I welcome more works for the Lord, let them grow and prosper! But past experience tells me few will last. It's hard to persist over years, over decades. I think MessianicChords will still be here in a decade, Lord willing. Persistence will help it succeed.

Life in the Lord: I have had countless times where I've been living in sin and distant from God. But I'm still here today as a child of God because I repented and God is faithful to forgive. He's like the father in the parable of the prodigal son: even when his son has been off in sin and sampling the world's false joys, when the son returns the father puts a robe and ring on him and celebrates, welcoming him back. God is good.

Language learning: I've been learning Hebrew for most of my life. While I'm ashamed to say I'm still not fluent -- I suspect fluency requires immersion --  I'm still learning. I can read and write Hebrew. My vocabulary is in the 1000+ words. And I'm improving daily through Duolingo, where I'm on a 2,453 day consecutive streak of learning Hebrew each day. I know Duolingo alone won't get me to fluency, but it helps.

Profession: when I was in my teens, I taught myself basic programming skills. I later got a job writing software. Now, if I had stopped learning then I would be unemployed today. But because I keep learning, keep honing my craft and my skills, I work for one of the largest tech companies on the planet and I'm excelling at it. I enjoy that work. It provides for my family. It would not have been possible without persistence in learning.

Marriage: My 20 year long marriage to Kristin has been filled with ups and downs. Fights small and large, a number of huge life-altering issues we've have to tackle. But we're here by God's grace because we persist in loving each other and forgiving. (May that continue until the day we die.) We win because we persist.

This gives new meaning to Yeshua's words in Matthew: "The one who endures to the end will be saved."

Keep fighting, friends. Sometimes just showing up day after day will make you the winner by default; all the others have given up. Persistence enables victory. Endure to the end and be saved.