DECEMBER PASTOR’S PONDERINGS
While most of us in this country will celebrate Christmas this month, a small number of our population will celebrate Hanukkah, the remembrance of the miraculous provision of God of oil for the lamp in the Temple during the time of the Maccabees. Each menorah, or candlestick, lit during this time of year has eight candles, one for each of the eight days that the one-day supply of oil lasted, (and usually a ninth candle—one for lighting the rest.)
When I think of Hanukkah three Bible passages arise in my thoughts as well. The first is Philippians 4.19: And my God will meet all your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus. While God may not choose to meet our needs with a miracle, He is just as rich and powerful as He has always been; He loves His covenant people as much as He always has; and He is as committed to His people as He has always been. He is not just the God of Paul; He is not just “my” God; He is the God of all those who trust in Jesus Christ and will meet the needs of all of them. We need to trust Him, this month and always, and to celebrate His constant provision for us.
Psalm 119.105 also comes to mind as well: Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path. In the Holy Place, the first room of the Temple, there were three pieces of furniture: the lampstand, the table of showbread, and the altar of incense. While the altar represented the prayers of God’s people, the table and the lamp represented the Word of God, its feeding us and giving us light for our way. God always provides light for our path, always speaks to our walk in Christ through His Word, always directs us in all our ways. We need to be in His Word, this month and always, and to celebrate His constant provision of such direction for us.
Finally, I am reminded that Hanukkah is a celebration of the Jews. In Romans 1.16, Paul says: I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. Most of us, I fear, read through that passage with ignorance, sometimes willful. The Gospel is for the Jew first—first in priority, first in time, first in proclamation, first in… you get the picture. Yet we ignore them—because we don’t know what to do, because we think their time is past and it’s the “time of the Gentiles,” because we just don’t know them, maybe for other reasons, but we ignore them. We need to remember, as did Paul, that they are a blessed people and that if God should call them to faith in Christ through our witness we who already trust in Him will be even more blessed. This month and always, we need to pray for them, evangelize them when we get the opportunity, and thank God that He has included us among those who trust in Christ even though we were not among His ethnic people.
I am not advocating that you celebrate Hanukkah, although you certainly can if you want. I am advocating that, this month and always, you take advantage of opportunities to think of God’s Word and what it says about the world around us and what it does, and then that you respond to God in gratitude for what He has done for us and in obedience to what He calls us to do. Now, you think about that.
– Pastor Jim
