Envy is a deadly sin. It destroys households and friendships and marriages. Saul envied David. That envy didn’t destroy David, but it did destroy Saul in the end. When we nurse envy, we are nursing a viper. When we tolerate envy, we are giving it a hand in our own self-destruction.

Envy, like all sin, doesn’t make sense. So rather than trying to understand it, we should simply repent of it. Envy is a universal sin. It is not whether we will envy, but what we will envy. It is sneaky. It creeps in easily.

We can’t reason with envy because it is unreasonable. The only thing we can do with envy is crucify it, and we can’t even do that. But we can take it to the Cross where Jesus dealt with envy once and for all. We can’t crucify our own envy, but if we are in Christ, He crucified it for us. And that is good news!

It’s true. God is lavish with His mercy toward us! He is the ultimate Gift-Giver, and His central gift to us is His unbounded mercy. What a lovely thought for the week. As we begin another week, built on the foundation of worship, let us all contemplate His mercies. When we wake up, when we go about our duties, when we sit down at the table, when we finish the day and lie down to sleep. Mercies crowd us on every side.

When we recognize God’s mercies, we can only respond with gratitude. And if our eyes are at all open to even a fraction of these mercies, we will be busy being grateful all day long. Imagine the consequences of such a day, busy with gratitude.

And when we overflow with gratitude to our good and gracious and gift-giving God, it follows that we will extend that grace and mercy to others — lavishly. We can do nothing else.

First, the Magi brought Jesus gifts. And they brought Him expensive gifts. Matthew calls their gifts treasures. So gift-giving has always been associated with the story of the Incarnation.

Second, the overwhelming message of the New Testament is that God gives to us so that we can give to one another. The two commandments to love the Lord our God and love our neighbor are like two parts of a whole, like a violin and a bow or a lock and a key. We don’t just love God in our hearts; we love Him by loving our neighbor. These two things are connected. These two commands are a unit. Freely we have received; freely give!

Of course there are ways we can sin in the gift-giving. One way is by being grumpy about it. Or we can sin by giving to our neighbor instead of giving to God, and we can sin by giving to God instead of giving to our neighbor. The Pharisees did this when they didn’t give to their needy parents because they had given the money to God (Mark 7:11).

Christians can  buy into the heresy that material things are bad in themselves. This can be a trap for many Christians, because it can sound “spiritual” to say that you are not going to participate in the crowds and the materialism and the crazy gift-giving of Christmas. Some say it isn’t about Jesus at all, but simply about commercialism.  So they don’t celebrate Christmas at all. Their kids get no gifts. Instead they say they will give a gift to the poor in lieu of gifts for the kids. This sounds super-spiritual, but it can be just like the Pharisees who called the gift “corban.” Remember the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? When she interrupted the animals having a little Christmas celebration, she called it gluttony and extravagance.

Our relationship to God is mirrored in our relationship with our neighbor, and our family is made up of our closest neighbors. The state of our marriage, our relationship to our kids, and our relationship to our friends and coworkers all reveal the condition of our relationship to God. If we are serious about loving God, we must be serious about loving our neighbors.

This means we act horizontally how God has acted toward us. He has given extravagantly to us, over and over again. He does not stint or ration out His grace and mercy and love toward us in tangible ways every day. We must not be like Namaan who wouldn’t stoop to be washed in the Jordan. He wanted something more “worthy” to do to be healed. We must not scoff at gift-giving as something beneath our great spirituality.

Of course this does not mean tearing around throwing away our money senselessly. We should give with wisdom. We should love the crowds of Christmas and we should love the merchants. Jesus loved the crowds and He loved to feed them. He gave them gifts of fish and bread. He gave them living water. The merchants at the mall are a form of God’s grace to us, so we should be thankful for them! Thank God for the mall and the crowded parking lot!

The best gift we can give to one another is gospel-saturated grace. When we give gifts to one another, we are giving to Jesus. He keeps track of drinks of water. So we should give our gifts with the same spirit of grace. When we give with the right spirit, Jesus says thank you. He graced us, and we imitate Him. He gave us the Holy Spirit so we would become givers and lovers like He is.

And finally, why do we wrap our gifts? So Jesus will be surprised. And we might say, “What are you talking about? Jesus isn’t surprised!” But when was Jesus hungry and thirsty or naked or in prison? When we give to one another, we give to Him.

So, we ought to load up all our gifts and laugh as we wrap them, and offer them all to Jesus in His name as we write on the tags and fill the stockings.

Isn’t God good that He lets us imitate Him in such delightful ways? And we glorify His gift to us in His birth with each gift we wrap.

God bless you as you shop. Don’t grow weary of the gift-giving. Render it all unto the Lord! And have a very Merry Christmas!

True prophets love the world without trusting it; false prophets trust the world without loving it.

Your heart should be lower than your knees when you bow down.

When leaders get above themselves and let their hearts go to seed, God does not mind taking them down. God is fully willing to overthrow His appointed leaders. Creative destruction is something He knows how to do.

We like comfort more than holiness.

Sometimes God crosses His arms to bless, just like Jacob did when he blessed the sons of Joseph.

1. We cannot peer into hearts to see who is born again. But the Bible says the works of the flesh are manifest (drunkenness, etc.) and the fruit of the Spirit is also manifest. We don’t have to look into hearts because we can see the actions. So if someone calls himself a Christian, but is carousing around town, it is not peering into his heart to be concerned about his spiritual state.

2. The sons of Belial are not Belialites, as though they belong to some political party. They are sons. There is a covenantal connection.  So the bottom line is, “Who’s your daddy? Is it  Christ or is it Belial?” Your baptism says who your Father ought to be. How does your life match up?

3. God loves the gospel, and He loves the gospel story. He has promised that His gospel will prevail in the earth. He is always either pouring the champagne, in times of great blessing, or He is shaking the bottle. Sometimes in our unbelief, we wonder why He doesn’t pop the cork. But if we believe His story, He will be soon pouring it out again. Hannah had the faith to believe, even when she saw God shaking the bottle. We must believe and ask God to pour it out now. This is His pattern. This is the arc of the story that He loves best. He has been doing this from the beginning, and He will keep doing it until the end of the world.

P.S. If you are a parent of little people, you might want to listen to the two sermons on Parenting Young People that are listed as well. Oh, my, yes. They were wonderful.

And, while I’m at it, I may as well plug a recent post of his on transparency. It’s very helpful.

The sentimental view of Christmas can’t deal with trials; this view wants Christmas to be trouble-free, a peaceful zone of silver bells and hot cider. But the first Christmas was a trial for Joseph and Mary, and it was certainly a trial for all the mothers who lost their sons to the sword of Herod’s jealousy and envy as he tried to destroy the Messiah.

So we should view our celebrations with the eye of Christian realism, knowing that a beautiful snowfall does not remove our sins. Only our Savior can make our hearts a suitable place for Christmas celebrations, hearts that understand the Savior’s mission to destroy sin. Knowing that He is dispensing our trials with wisdom and love, that each one is perfectly suited for each of us as He shapes us into crowns, gives us joy unspeakable and allows us to partake of his fullness of glory! And that is what enables us to say with faith, “Merry Christmas!”

When David was in the back of the cave, in the dark, he cries out to God with strong faith: God shall send forth his mercy and his truth (vs. 3).  He praises God from the recesses of the cave: Be Thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; let thy glory be above all the earth (vs. 5). When David is under a cloud of trouble, he trusts in God and makes his refuge in another shadow: in the shadow of thy wings (vs. 1). Praise begins before deliverance. Praise begins in the midst of trouble. Trouble reveals in whom we put our trust.  David has resolve; his heart is fixed (vs. 7). He is anchored and steady, so he sings and gives praise, waking up the dawn with his psaltery and harp (vs. 8). Troubles are God’s ordinary means of teaching His people, so we can seek His glory and exalt His name, trusting Him even as our troubles approach….always and for everything giving thanks.