The Encourager Newsletter
Toward Knowing God and Walking With Him
A FREE WEEKLY PUBLICATION with a BIBLICAL WORLD VIEW – Volume 3 Issue 52
December 11, 2009 Dan Carr, Editor
Our Religious Symbols (Part 2)
The Bible is full of symbols and it is God's idea. Symbols are endowed with meaning and are an outstanding teaching tool. John the Baptist saw Jesus walking and said: Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world (John 1:29). The people listening to John knew he was talking about lambs that were sacrificed to Jehovah God.
They also knew that there was a lamb-raising industry near Jerusalem that specialized in raising sacrificial lambs. It was more convenient to buy one of those lambs than to bring a lamb a hundred miles to be sacrificed at the Temple in Jerusalem. A lamb was small and relatively inexpensive. If a family was too poor to bring a lamb, they could bring a young goat or two turtledoves or two pigeons (Leviticus 5:7). The lambs easily attached themselves to the families that raised them, just like goats. They became "one" with their caretakers. I raised goats and milked them and know about the bonding. Sheep follow their shepherd. You do not drive sheep as you drive cattle. Jesus would be, in many points, like sheep.
The Bible speaks of …the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8). Jesus was the perfect Lamb of God. He was bread, water, life, light, shepherd, the word, Son of Man, Son of God, the resurrection, priest, prophet, the I Am. The Bible itself was bread, water, milk, meat, light.
There are many symbols in the Bible. The Tabernacle in the wilderness was made up of parts that taught about God. The Table of Showbread, the Ark of the Covenant and covering and its contents; the lamp stands and the oil. Gold overlaid wood. The colors, the herbs for the incense….all of these things were of special significance. The Tabernacle is a virtual encyclopedia of meaning. It was an outstanding teaching tool that taught the people about God. God ordered that the Tabernacle (and later the Temple) were to be made a certain way. No committee designed any of it, including the tools and procedures for doing everything. It was a treasure house of symbols. This was in keeping with the way God made us.
In the New Testament Jesus ordained what we call "The Lord's Supper" or "Communion." He ordained water baptism. Those are very important symbols and He said to do them. In the Christian world we unconsciously love and use hundreds of religious symbols. We have designed and adopted symbols that we accept that we don't even think about.
The American flag and the Christian flag stand as silent sentinels in the auditoriums of thousands of churches. The cross is etched in stained windows and on church signs on the front lawn. Some churches have a red flame on their church doors and signs, a symbol of spiritual renewal. Probably the most commonly used symbol used by churches for public testimony is the steeple with the spire that points upward to Heaven. The Bible does not ordain it but neither does it condemn it.
If you open up Microsoft Clip Art on your computer you may be amazed at how many symbols are there for you to use. The Broderbund company has hundreds of religious symbols available to use in print shops and on computers to reinforce bulletins, tracts, handouts, weddings, funerals, etc. Few if any of these symbols that we use were ordained in the word of God.
The Bible does not require us to put crosses in our offering plates and windows and on our communion tables and our signs and bulletins and tracts and Sunday school literature. Neither does the Bible forbid us to use crosses on all of these things. God made the human race to be at home with symbols. Symbols can be good or they can be evil. A symbol is usually a visual shape in which is embodied meaning much greater than the symbol. But a symbol can be a sound or a pattern of activity. Not all symbols are religious.
The Babylonian Empire used the symbol of lions. Alexander the Great used the symbol of the eagle as did the Roman Empire and later Russia, Austria, Germany..
Industry would be barren without symbols. Our cars and trucks do more than go varroooom. Dodge trucks are not just Dodge trucks. They are Dodge Ram trucks. The car companies use names like Falcon, Pinto, Mustang, Thunderbird, Firebird, Cougar, and don't forget the Stutz Bearcat of 1914. My grandpa's 1929 Model A Ford sported a chromed greyhound radiator cap. It was polished regularly whether or not the car was ever washed. The greyhound radiator cap was supposed to make up for the low-power engine….I think.
In our food supermarkets many of the products we buy are marked with symbols. Margarine sports the Indian woman and an ear of corn. The box of soda displays an arm and hammer. Carnation milk comes from contented cows. Morton's salt pours when it rains. And there's the little Dutch boy on cleanser and other products. Kellogg's corn flakes always leave the store with a rooster on the box.
The outstanding symbols for Bible believing Christians are probably the Cross and the lamb. I've already mentioned the church steeple and its spire pointing to Heaven. But we also have seasonal symbols for special days and seasons such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. When using a symbol, it should be for the glory of God, should communicate, and should edify the body of Christ.
O Holy Night—Barbara Carr
Last week I wrote that Silent Night is my favorite Christmas carol. But then, O Holy Night is number one also. The history of its writing is interesting.
In 1847, Placide Cappeau de Roquemaure was known more for his poetry than his church attendance. He was a commissionaire of wines in a small French town.
What is a commissionaire of wines? After much searching, I found the answer in Wikipedia. They are agents hired to negotiate prices with vine growers. They were paid according to how low a price they could negotiate and some employed unsavory tactics to achieve their means—including violence and intimidation.
He may have been taken by surprise when the parish priest asked him to write a poem for Christmas Mass. The poet was pleased to be asked to share his talents with the church. While traveling to France's capital city, Roquimaure began to think upon the request. Taking out his Bible he used Luke as his guide. As he read and thought about actually being present on that blessed night, he was inspired to write. By the time he reached Paris, he had completed O Holy Night.
Roquimaure was moved by his own work and decided this was not just a poem, but a song and needed a master musician to write the music. He asked Adolphe-Charles Adam for help. Adam's father was a classical musician and Adam had studied in Paris. He accepted this as a challenge. Adam was of Jewish ancestry; therefore, these words represented a man he didn't view as the son of God. However, he set to work and wrote a beautiful musical score for O Holy Night.
At first the song was accepted by the church of France and the song quickly found its way into many Catholic Christmas services. But when Roquemaure walked away from the church and joined a Socialist movement and the leaders of the church also discovered that Adam was a Jew, the song was denounced by the church. The leaders of the French Catholic church deemed O Holy Night as unfit for church services.
And, yet the French people continued to sing it and a decade later an American writer brought it to America. John Sullivan Dwight thought this wonderful Christmas carol needed to be introduced to America. Dwight was an abolitionist and the verse: "Truly he taught us to love one another; his law is love and his gospel is peace. Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother; and his name all oppression shall cease." Dwight was an owner and publisher of a magazine. In his magazine he translated O Holy Night and it quickly became one of America's favorite carols.
As I read the history of O Holy Night, I was reminded of how God can use people--people that don't know Him or believe in Him or in some way "not straight as an arrow." As we see in this story, the Lord used two unlikely men to create a beautiful carol to honor and glorify Him.
A study of Cyrus, the Persian king shows how the Lord used this king as His instrument. "Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying," Ezra 1:1
Long before Nebuchadnezzar knew the Lord these words were penned: "Behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, saith the LORD, and Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land, and against the inhabitants thereof, and against all these nations round about, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, and an hissing, and perpetual desolations." (Jeremiah 25:9)
If you haven't read all the verses to O Holy Night, please do. It is a very worshipful song. Did these writers know the Lord? We cannot see in their hearts as only the Lord can see. It is obvious that they were given words and music; telling the story beautifully. We as His children need to obey and praise Him because He sent Jesus that we might have eternal life. We have memorized Ephesians. 4:31 so let's obey this verse and this Christmas be free of everything that might mar our relationship to our Lord and Savior.
"O Holy night! The stars are brightly shining, It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining. Till He appeared and the Spirit felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices, For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices! O night divine, the night when Christ was born;
O night, O holy night, O night divine!"
The Encourager may also be read at www.biblewalking.blogspot.com .
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