Author: W. Keith Brenton

Genesis 9; Luke 9 – An Accounting for a Life Taken

/ W. Keith Brenton / 17 Comments

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 4

In the early ages of mankind, Genesis 6 tells us, “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.” And He set the limit of man’s days – which had included some almost-thousand-year lifetimes – to a mere one hundred and twenty years. Then He resolutely promised to drown in water a mankind already drowning in wickedness, sparing only righteous Noah, his family, and the animals preserved on a great ship. When the flood receded, and Noah offered God a sacrifice from among the precious few animals, God blessed that family and permitted them to eat both grain and game. But He also warned them and the animals with them that in this new world, life was to be regarded as precious; and from every man and beast He would require an accounting for each life taken. And He promised never again to obliterate all life with the waters of a flood.

Luke 9 reveals that, after feeding a multitude with multiplied grain and game, the often-righteous Peter confessed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God. And Jesus promised to die and be the sacrifice pleasing to God, establishing a new kingdom and obliterating sin and death. So He resolutely set His face toward Jerusalem, and when He was not welcomed in Samaria, He refused to let fire be called down from heaven. For every thought of his heart was only good all the time, and Jesus had in mind bringing earth and heaven together by being suspended between them. By letting His years be limited to between perhaps 30 and 33, His intention was that a man’s days would far, far exceed one hundred and twenty years.

A Prayer Over the Bread

Lord God of all creation, righteous and just, You have preserved us to this day and You save us through the waters that wash away sin. Yet we know that only the sacrifice that You made could do accomplish this. That You could do this for so many, preserved by a ship no larger than a bowsprit and a yardarm, is astounding to us – such was the power in the body of Jesus on that cross to take up again not only His life, but ours. As we share this bread, we pray that, through the One whose body it represents, You will multiply our years in Your new world, Your Kingdom. Amen.

A Prayer Over the Cup

We give you honor and glory and praise, O God, and thanksgiving for the One whose blood was acceptable to you when ours was not, for our thoughts are so often given over to evil. Through that blood, celebrated in this cup, we are no longer held accountable for lives we have wasted, and we see how precious Your gift of life truly is. May a constant recognition of its value be our blessing as we drink together, we pray through Your righteous Son. Amen.

Genesis 4, John 11 – A Pleasing Sacrifice

/ W. Keith Brenton / 12 Comments

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 3

When the sons of Adam and Eve brought their offerings to the Lord, He looked with favor upon the fat portions of the flocks given by Abel, but not upon the fruits of the soil offered by Cain. Scripture does not tell us why. It doesn’t even say that jealousy over God’s favor was the motive Cain had in angrily murdering his brother. But before it happened, the Lord warned Cain that if he did not do what was right, something that desired to have him would lie crouching at his door – and that “something” had a name. God spoke the word “sin” into our lexicon in that warning. Confronted later by the Lord about his sin, Cain seemed to know that he deserved to die.

Yet in spite of the curse that he would wander the earth as a vagabond, the Lord showed him mercy – and put His mark of protection on him.

When Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, the religious leaders’ reaction was clearly jealousy over what they feared people would perceive as God’s power in the vagabond Preacher of repentance from sin. Even while plotting His murder, their high priest Caiaphas could not seem to keep from uttering the prophetic words: “You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”

Yet in spite of the fact that Jesus was God’s very own Son, the Lord did not put a mark of protection on Him, nor prevent His murderers from showing no mercy.

Something within the heart and head of every descendant of Adam with a working heart and head hears these stories and cries out: “That’s not fair! Cain deserved to die! Jesus did not deserve to die!”

And we are perfectly correct. Maybe the offering that Abel gave pleased the Lord because it recognized that the sin of Adam’s children leads to death; that sin requires sacrifice; that the blood of the innocent cries out from the altar, from the ground, even from a cross – and that God hears its cry.

A Prayer Over the Bread

Holy God, You have put within us a sense of right and wrong; of justice and mercy. You have refined it through Your teachings. You have perfected it in Your Son. We have all failed to live up to His example, and our self-righteous posturing and jealousy of each other would be sin enough to make us unworthy of His sacrifice. But the good in us still yearns for Your favor; to be the body of Christ as He gave His body for us. Through Him we ask Your blessing on this bread, His body. Amen.

 

A Prayer Over the Cup

Righteous God, we ask Your forgiveness for all those times when we have murdered others, just a little – by wishing them ill or judging them or dashing their hopes or stealing what they treasure. We know their blood cries out to you even while it still flows within them. We know that the only thing that can make it right is Your Son’s blood flowing in us, which He gave for all. Through Him we ask Your blessing on this cup, His blood. Amen.

Genesis 2, Revelation 21 – A Husband, A Bride, and a Garden

/ W. Keith Brenton / 6 Comments

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 2

When God brought the first Adam into the world, it did not take long for it to be obvious that it was not good for him to be alone. So God gave the man Eve, and He gave them a garden in their world, and He gave them everything they needed it, and to make them fully human, He gave them a choice between the self-minded sin and love for others and Him. When true evil came into the garden, He let them be tempted through hunger and doubt and ambition. When they heard God’s voice in the garden and were awakened to evil’s presence, they were forced from the garden together … they worked against hunger and thirst together … and they faced the death of their child together.

When God brought the last Adam into the world, God gave Him very little – a family and friends. Everything He needed to be fully human, including the choice between the selfishness of sin and the selflessness of love. He let Jesus be tempted through hunger and doubt and ambition. And when Jesus’ closest friends dozed off hearing His voice, they were awakened to true evil coming into the garden. When He was forced from the garden, He was led alone … when His last meal with them was gone, He thirsted alone … and at the end, he faced death alone.

But God knew it was not good for Him to be alone, nor for us. So we remember the Christ in this last meal together, and yearn for the day when we will be brought back to life as He was. We anticipate the day we’ll be presented to Him as His bride, beautifully dressed for her Husband. We look forward to the timeless day of a wedding feast that satisfies our hunger and thirst for his righteousness far beyond what these morsels of bread and sips from a cup can whet our hopeful appetites to share with Him.

And in them we remember His body and His blood, given selflessly so that we could be together for all time, by giving us life without end through His Spirit.

A Prayer Over the Bread

Father of the Bridegroom, we praise You for Your wisdom in providing all that we needed, from our families and friends to the relationship we deeply and desperately need with You. We thank You for placing us, the lonely, in Your gathered family, as Your children by giving your one and only true Son. Feed our hunger for Him through this bread, His body; feed our doubt through His faith; feed our ambition through His selflessness. Bless this bread and we who share it, recalling Jesus Christ and praying through His intercession. Amen.

 

A Prayer Over the Cup

Father of the Given Son, we give You glory for giving us all that we needed to be human – from the power of choice that speaks of Your faith in us to the blood of your Son which erases the sin we have selfishly chosen. Thank you for this cup which eases our thirst for the righteousness we cannot achieve alone. Bless it and us as we share in the joy of His redemption and praise You through His name. Amen.

Genesis 1, John 1 – Creating and Sustaining Life

/ W. Keith Brenton / 21 Comments

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 1

At a time when there was nothing, God created. He created the heavens and the earth … light and darkness … waters and land … life and vegetation … vessels of light in the heavens … fish and fowl … beast and beastmaster, mankind. That’s what the first chapter of Genesis tells us.

Written many years later, the first chapter of John’s gospel tells us that everything was made through Jesus – yet the world He made did not recognize Him.

Yet from the beginning, God must have known what He would ask mankind to accept on faith, and how we would fail Him. On the third day, when He created trees, He must have known that their wood could be used to create a cross. When He created vines, He must have known that their fruit could be used to fill a cup of blessing. When He created grains, He must have known that the bread made from them could be used to strengthen the body.

So from the beginning, He provided for our failure with His success. He provided for our hunger and need with His sufficiency. He provided for our nothing with everything. He provided His own body and blood to buy ours back from sin and self. And on the third day, He lived again so that we could live forever.

A Prayer Over the Bread

Glorious God and author of all creation … thank You for using your unlimited knowledge, wisdom, power and love to create a world of beauty even in view of the ugliness that could be brought to it. Help us to recognize You in it. Thank You for this bread that we have made from what You have made. Help us recognize You in it. Thank you most of all for Your Son, Whom it represents: the bread of heaven, broken for us. Help us recognize Him in it as He brings this prayer to you. Amen.

 

A Prayer Over the Cup

Thank You, Creator God, for setting eternity in our hearts even though we cannot fathom what You have done from beginning to end. Help us to recognize You where creation testifies of Your infinite love. Thank you for the contents of this cup, which we have distilled from what You have poured out: life and blessing through the blood of Jesus Christ. Help us always recognize Him in it as He bears this thanksgiving to Your throne. Amen.

The Message of the Table

/ W. Keith Brenton / 1 Comment

Preface: A Story to Share While Dining Together

In my church tradition – churches of Christ – we observe the Lord’s Supper every week. The key word in that sentence is “tradition,” based on an interpretation that the incident recounted in Acts 20:7 implies that first-century Christians shared the bread and the cup every week, and only on the first day of the week. Some even go so far as to call that interpretation a command, and others would insist that the meal has no significance more or less often, or celebrated on any other day.

Other fellowships observe this feast less often – some, once a year because Passover is observed once a year (and the first Last Supper was almost certainly a Passover meal); others, twice a year or quarterly (because that is their tradition). Some followers observe it rarely or not at all.

For some, only the bread is shared.

For some, the elements are shared only among believers and/or the baptized.

For some, the cup is filled with water rather than wine or the unfermented blood of the grape.

For some, the bread is flat and unleavened (like Passover matzoh) and for others it is not.

There are almost as many ways, rules, practices and traditions surrounding the Lord’s Table as there are church fellowships which dine there.

Personally, I think each one brings something unique to the Table. However, the Table is a place where the lavish meal shared by the Host shows the poverty of anything that anyone else could bring.

But on the subject of frequency (and even that subject is far too complex to treat in the preface to a book), I can’t say that I have ever heard of a group of believers who gather to partake of this meal every single day of every week of every year.

Yet, if the term “breaking bread” carries a consistent meaning in the New Testament, that is what the first believers did – in their homes and at the temple courts, the places where they worshiped together (Acts 2:42-47).

Perhaps that was observing too frequently and would be observing too frequently today. Perhaps not.

What we can be certain about from scripture – and this requires no interpretation – is that Jesus Christ, on the night He was betrayed, took the bread and the cup and blessed and shared them with His closest friends. He is quoted by Paul as saying twice to them that when they took the bread and cup, they were to remember Him (1 Corinthians 11:23-26). When Luke records His visit in resurrected form with two men walking to Emmaus, it was when He broke the bread at dinner that they recognized Him (Luke 24:13-35).

And that’s the purpose of this series of posts: to recognize Jesus in the bread and the cup.

There is a wrong way to observe this meal, and Paul is plain about it in that chapter to Corinth. He doesn’t mention content of the cup or the type of bread or the frequency of observance – in fact, quotes Jesus as saying, “whenever” or “as often as.” But he does emphasize intent, purpose, meaning, remembrance (twice), proclamation, recognition, and community with others – expressed in Corinth as patience until all arrive to share in the meal.

There is a right way to celebrate this Eucharist, too: with an unwavering, wholly fascinated, holy focus on the Christ.

He says “remember me,” and although Paul adds that we proclaim His death until He comes, His death is not the entirety of who He is. Jesus was before creation; all things were made by, through and for Him; and He sustains them all. He was spoken about by the Father to the first Adam, to the patriarchs, to Moses the lawgiver, to the prophets. He was born, lived, grew, taught, helped, healed, loved and died, then lived again … just as God’s word to all those before had said. And in living again, He gave His Holy Spirit to men to carry on the work God had in mind for us to do all the time: tell His Story and make known His name in all the earth (Genesis 12:8; Exodus 9:16; 1 Chronicles 16:8; Isaiah 12:4; Matthew 21:9, 28:19 Acts 2:21, 9:28; Revelation 15:4).

That’s the Story related by scripture: the Story of God and man. Jesus was both, to reconcile both. It is a Story about Him, start to finish. It looks forward to Him, looks intently at Him, looks back toward Him, then looks forward to His glorious return.

In every way, the Bible is the Story to be shared at the Table.

That’s what I hope this series of posts will communicate:

  • A call to remember Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Son of Man and the Savior of this world.
  • A call to proclaim Him as such; to demonstrate His unparalleled love for us in this self-sacrifice and to hear our own lives challenged to imitate it.
  • A call to corporately recognize the Host of our meal in its elements, in His presiding role at the Table, and in His Spirit within each one around it.

I don’t really intend for these posts to be a lectionary for communion. With fifty-five devotional thoughts expressed (there are alternates), this series of posts contains too few to reflect the exuberance of the Christians’ daily observance in Acts 2 and contains too many to examine for church traditions which surround the table only one to four times each year. If this series of posts must be used as such, let it guide rather than dictate; suggest rather than script.

I do hope these posts will simply prompt a yearning to delve more deeply into the Story and help transform our time at the Table together from a rote requirement of law into an opportunity to remember, proclaim and recognize Jesus Christ.

Whether we’re at the Table or not, that’s something God wants us to do and be blessed by doing.

Every day of every week of every year.

The Bold Challenge

/ W. Keith Brenton / 4 Comments

What if each one of us challenged our ministers and teachers to preach nothing but Christ and Him crucified for an entire year?

What might happen if our churches heard nothing but the pure, unadulterated gospel of Jesus the Savior for twelve months straight?

How many might come into a relationship – either for the first time, or an even closer one – with the God of grace through His only begotten Son and inspired by His Holy Spirit if their time of worship and learning revolved around the One whom the law and prophets anticipate, the gospels celebrate, the epistles inaugurate, and holy revelation consummates?

Suppose every message shared; every sermon delivered; every class taught came back to the life and death and resurrection of the Messiah who makes it possible for us to live again, too?

Would His presence in our assemblies become more tangible, more real, more perceptible?

Would His influence in our lives become more welcome, more obvious, more of a blessing?

I can’t make a challenge like this without being willing to take it up myself.

In 2009, I am resolved to blog nothing but Christ Jesus and Him crucified in this place. If what I write about here does not point to Him – directly or indirectly – it is not worth writing about here and I will not do it.

Sweet Little Baby Jesus Boy

/ W. Keith Brenton / 13 Comments

Oh, how much easier life would seem if He had just remained sweet little baby Jesus boy … had never grown up in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man … had never made life-shattering challenges to our selfishness … had never lived them out perfectly and died to capstone them and lived again to conquer sin and death for all time.

But there He is, big as Life, standing in our Way, speaking the Truth and keeping us from the self we want to be and achieve and accumulate and perish as.

Called upon as Son of God and Man to cause the rising and falling of many, and piercing our souls with His singular sword also.

If we could just get over Him, get under Him, get around Him, get through Him somehow … we could live the way we wanted to and die stuffed full of ourselves.

And we can’t.

All that’s left for us is to “get” Him; try to comprehend Him; wrap our heads and hearts and souls and arms around Him … beg for mercy from His terrible, irresistible perfection and find perfect love there.

Sweet little baby Jesus boy.

Won’t stay in the box of a manger. Won’t stay in the box of a tomb. Won’t stay in the box of Christmas decorations that we’d like to keep Him in for the other 364 days of each year.

Won’t stay out of our lives, because He loves us too much to let us live only for ourselves and die miserably for nothing at all.

The associate minister at my church is right:

This Child is Dangerous.

Incarnation

/ W. Keith Brenton / 3 Comments

I’ve had a truly crummy day, and don’t feel like blogging.

I’ve had to talk to both my children – separately – about academic integrity today while keeping in my anger that the new phone/Internet/cable was down when I needed to be doing urgent things online; that the dog had seen fit to wolf down an entire box of doughnuts AND a bag of frosted pretzels; that the garage door opener has gone on the fritz and will require an expensive repair call; that our planned family trip to Ireland next summer has been seriously jeopardized. It’s also my son’s 16th birthday today, and has been possibly the suckiest one ever for him, since we’ve had damp or dangerous weather three days in a row now and the State Police will not conduct the driving portion of the license exam. In addition, Angi put together his favorite red velvet birthday cake mix and left it in the oven to help preside at UALR’s winter graduation … and I followed my nose to its singed remains about an hour ago. If she said anything to me about it when she left, I didn’t hear her two rooms away.

If you want to read something profound and seasonal and spirit-lifting, read John Mark Hicks’s blog entry, Christmas: The Incarnation of God and/or Royce Ogle’s Merry Christmas.

I wish I could put two cogent thoughts together right now, but I can’t. I wish I could weave a great tapestry of meaning on how I wish Advent could be about shouldering the responsibility for being God-in-the-flesh as Jesus was rather than about indolently anticipating His return as if we had nothing better to do. But Paul already wrote the second letter to Thessalonica and I know I couldn’t do better than that.

Nor could I do any better than the two brothers I linked to above, who understand what Incarnation means and the sufficiency of it – and write about it powerfully and persuasively.

This evening I learned that incarnational living sometimes means dashing out in the <1/4-mile visibility fog to go to Kroger's and pick up a couple more red velvet cake mixes and a small bottle of cooking oil, recruiting my daughter to help me clean up the cake pan and mix the new one and pop it in the oven before Mom gets home and brother comes out of his room.

She helped a lot. As we were cleaning up again a moment ago, she said, “That was fun! I know you were having a bad day today. It’s better now, isn’t it? You were lucky I really didn’t have homework tonight.”

And she was, of course, perfectly right.

Instruments of His Peace, Part II

/ W. Keith Brenton / 6 Comments

Wow. That Part I sure was a long time ago. Wonder why I didn’t mark it “Part I”?

Maybe because, as I confessed last year, I am a world-class conflict avoider, and I said only as much as I could stand to say.

And because I continue to encounter people of good faith and firm conviction within the fellowship of Churches of Christ who simply believe with all of their hearts that the Bible (or at least most of the New Testament) inarguably forbids worshiping God through Christ today with instruments of music other than the voice … well, because of that, I can’t just let the subject drop.

A dwindling few of them have gone beyond the pale in making personal attack, judgment and condemnation on the question (which, for them, is no question at all). Yet many more have not. They simply teach that it is sin, that it displeases God and – some would say – will eventually lead to eternity in hell.

The teaching is based on presumption of the authority of the Bible as an end-to-end book of law, its complete sufficiency in all matters and questions of right and wrong, and therefore, righteousness and damnation.

That’s the first problem I have with this teaching. Where does the Bible claim to be – or even imply that it is – only law and wholly sufficient in every possible question or practice?

The answer might go, Well, 2 Timothy 3:16, for one.

Is that what it says, though? Does it say “all-sufficient”? Or just “useful”?

How about 2 Peter 1:3?

Where does that say “scripture” or “God’s Word”? Doesn’t it say “divine power” and “knowledge through him who called us”? And if that somehow necessarily implies scripture and only scripture (and somehow I doubt that the revelation of God’s divine power and the one who called us is limited to scripture, since I see Him living through His Spirit in other Christians all the time) let’s just go there. Let’s go to scripture. What does scripture say about worship with music?

Let’s start with the examples: Matthew 26:30 and Mark 14:26 and Acts 16:25.

Great example. If Jesus could sing with His followers on the way out to the garden and His imminent arrest, I should be able to do the same, even weighed down with my own sorrows. Same for Paul and Silas in jail. I don’t see any instruments there. I’ll grant that they probably didn’t lug any out to the garden or into the jail. (Though neither of those examples is in a church/synagogue setting.)

But Matthew 18:20!

It’s a great comfort to know that Jesus is with us when two or three of us are gathered to pray and ask God for something … but does He say that makes it a church in musical worship together?

The commands, then: Ephesians 5:18-20.

I’m not sure I’d call them “commands,” since Jesus only gave us one that enveloped the two most important ones in the law. Why not call them “principles”? I completely agree with the principle that we should be filled with the Spirit, rather that with alcoholic spirits – and that thanksgiving for everthing through Christ should characterize our songs to each other. The setting seems to be, not so much gathered worship, as it is everyday living.

Colossians 3:16: more thanksgiving.

Absolutely. Plus the opportunity to teach and admonish each other through song. Same surround: daily living, rather than just gathered worship.

And James 5:13.

Okay, I’m not convinced that this is talking exclusively about worship in a gathered setting, since the subject and verb are singular – but it’s a wonderful principle for any of us to sing songs of praise when happy. Just as Jesus did and Paul could when suffering – Jesus before leaving for the garden; Paul while in prison after being beaten.

All right then! Finally, the rest of the commands: Romans 15:9, 1 Corinthians 14:15.

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Neither of those is a command. Both say “I shall,” or “I will.” They’re expressing more of that gratitude from the heart. Are they examples? Maybe. Let’s take ’em one at a time. Romans 15:9 is quoting Psalm 69:9, perhaps as prophecy that the Lord’s name will be sung to the nations. It was a prophecy that included Gentiles – an important point in Paul’s letter to Rome.

1 Corinthians 14:15 is attempting to set straight some problems with some people speaking – even praying – in tongues during gathered worship, but without anyone translating, interpreting.

The point is that none of these passages has, as its primary tenor, the question of worship with or without musical instruments in an assembly.

Other issues are at hand, and are significantly more important. They are issues of the heart: being sober but joyful, teaching and admonishing, communicating clearly.

The question of the presence or absence of instruments just isn’t there.

If they must be authorized specifically, must not also a song leader, song books or sheet music, pitch pipes, amplification devices, slide or graphic projections also be authorized specifically in order to be scripturally acceptable to God? Does that not take these scriptures and make them say what they do not say?

Who gets to decide which of those supplements are expedient – a term not used with regard to worship in scripture – and which are not?

Does that not make the argument for authorization either man’s teaching binding on no one or God’s teaching binding in every instance in which a question of authorization might arise?

And if, as many from Eusebius until this day have argued, instruments cannot and do not praise God … do the instruments play themselves? Or are they played as the expression of human beings – plucked, stroked, even breathed into by human beings into whom God has breathed the breath of life? Can anyone watch and hear a virtuoso like Yo Yo Ma and still say that only the cello played; that the music did not come from the artist’s very heart and soul as well?

Can you do that with a pitch pipe?

When God breathes His Spirit into us, we become the instruments of His peace. He plays us as His instruments to make His music in this world. It is no longer we who live, but Christ living in us.

Finally, if the argument is made from Romans 14 (which irretrievably puts the question of instrumental/a cappella worship into the category of disputable matters and items of conscience – rather than God’s clear command), neither side can presume to say, “Then why don’t you just see it and do it my way in order to have my fellowship!”

Bottom line, then. Fellowship cannot be extended or denied based upon man’s teaching or preference or interpretation of that which is not specifically and clearly spelled out in scripture. Turning such matters into issues of salvation is arrogant judgmentalism in the extreme. If someone worships differently in such matters; in a way that offends your conscience or mine, we don’t have to worship in that way. But in order to be instruments of His peace, we absolutely must

Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. ~ Romans 15:7

Good folks – whether we like instrumental worship or not; whether we agree with a cappella-only worship or not as a practice – if we have any heart at all for maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, we must stop preaching Christian brothers and sisters into hell over an issue that our fellowship has raised as some sort of misguided mark of holy distinction from God.

Being “right” about a cappella worship is not one of what we have called five acts of salvation (or any of the other opportunities we have to accept, proclaim and be like Jesus Christ). Nor is instrumental worship “sin” – or it would it not have been in the Old Testament and would be in Revelation 5‘s kingdom-to-come, too?

No one is compelled by scripture to observe the practice they don’t like. No one has to give up the one they prefer.

But we must give up hatefulness and judgment and divisiveness and promoting man’s teachings as if they were God’s.

A Horn of Salvation

/ W. Keith Brenton / 3 Comments

Take a moment and read the song of Zechariah upon regaining the power of speech after the birth of his son, John, in Luke 1:67-79.

The song of Mary which precedes his (46-55) gets far more of our attention at this season when we remember the birth of Jesus.

They are similar in many ways.

Each begins with praise to God. Both are prophetic in nature, foretelling and forth-telling the promises God would fulfill through these two babies.

One would bring God’s salvation.

The other would prepare His path.

One would increase.

The other would decrease.

(You can even tell which is which, by the few number of lines in Zechariah’s song which are specifically about his son, and how many are about Mary’s.)

In fact, John’s death would even bring home the inescapable reality of what was ahead for Jesus. Still, the Savior would set His face resolutely toward Jerusalem until He was nailed down and then lifted up there.

Zechariah’s Spirit-filled song worships God “… because he has come and has redeemed his people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David ….” And the term is pretty much lost on us, even if we have seen it in dozens of Old Testament prophecies.

If you have an NIV Bible, you may have a footnote at the end of the word “horn” that says: “Horn here symbolizes strength.”

Sure, in the broad sense. But think about how many different ways the word is used in the Old Testament. A horn could be a ram’s horn, blown to sound the “all-clear” to go up the mountain of God (Exodus 19:3) or to topple Jericho’s walls (Joshua 6:4) … the redemption of Isaac (Genesis 22:13) … a part of the altar where atoning sacrificial blood was painted (Exodus 29:12; 30:10, et al) … a container for king-anointing oil (1 Samuel 16:13) … a last grasp from which to beg mercy (1 Kings 1:50; 2:28) … a deadly weapon against the Lord’s enemies (22:11) … instruments of worship to God (don’t shoot me, now! 1 Chronicles 15:28 and other citations) … a prophetic symbol of royalty and power (Daniel 7:24) … and more that I don’t really need to go into, in order for you to get my point!

And, to my eye, virtually all of them have a meaning that Jesus in one way or another completes, fulfills, embodies in the salvation He brings. Strength … sure.

But so very much more.

I’ve blogged before that I believe certain terms are used in scripture because of their richness of heritage and meaning; not so that we can argue about which meaning is “right” but because of the depth and wealth of the total etymology.

The reason I tend to think that this is one of them is that line in Zechariah’s song in the very next verse, “(as he said through his holy prophets of long ago)”.

Terms like “horn of salvation,” used frequently by the prophets, are not mere puns or double-entendres but gold-mines of deep wisdom.

To someone who loves words like I do, they are the Divine Artist’s signature hidden in the details of His masterwork.

And I think we skip over them because we don’t understand them; they’re mysterious and peculiar and perplexing – like John the Baptist himself.

Yet if we’re not paying attention to them, we’re missing out on part of the path that was prepared for the Christ.