The advance of major religions across the globe at the point of a sword, the secularization of society under the sharp edges of sophisticated educators, the totalitarian persecution of faith under communism – all of these threats never have, and never will, thwart the spread of the Gospel.  Mark 4 guarantees it. 

We have to be careful when we make guarantees from the Bible.  Sometimes it is better to speak of general principles because people may experience exceptions to an apparent scriptural guarantee that has been misunderstood.  For example, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). That is wise advice, but it is not a guarantee.  However, there is a guarantee at the end of Mark 4.
Jesus was coaching his disciples.  His process of discipleship involved both taught content and practical experience.  When I was a child, my Dad explained how to ride a bicycle without training wheels (keep looking ahead and pedalling, etc.).  But then he also ran behind me, holding me steady as I pedalled.  Then when I spoke to him and got no reply, I realized he had let go, and I started to panic but remembered his words and kept looking forward and pedalling. They did not ride bicycles, but Jesus was a master teacher.
One evening, Jesus invited his disciples to cross the Sea of Galilee in a boat.  They set out.  Others did too.  It must have seemed like a good evening for sailing.  But then, a violent windstorm arose, and the boat began filling with water.  It was a desperate situation.  So the disciples woke Jesus, who was sleeping in the stern.  They rebuked him for not caring about their impending doom.  And then Jesus turned a storm into a famous story.  He rebuked the wind and the waves precisely as he had previously rebuked demons speaking out of turn.  (Some think the storm was a demonic attack on the boat.)  Immediately, calm was restored.  Then Jesus rebuked the disciples for their lack of faith, and they feared even more. (Mark 4:35-41)
We must be careful not to offer guarantees that the text does not yield.  For instance, the common idea is that if Jesus is in the boat of your life, you can smile at the storm.  Why?  Because whatever storm you are facing, Jesus’ presence guarantees a good outcome.  In an ultimate sense, this may be true.  But we must be careful with this line of thought.  Doctors do diagnose fatal diseases that end the lives of Christians.  Wars do take a terrifying toll on entire populations, including faithful followers of Jesus.  Actual storms hit land and devastate the homes of believers and unbelievers.
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The account of our Lord’s nativity, in its biblical and first-century Jewish context, is rich enough without seeking to supplement it with the counterfeit currency of legend. Stick to the facts. The biblical background of Bethlehem, David, the virgin, the angels, shepherds, and all the various details from the Evangelists have deep roots in the Old Testament. Trace those. Preach on them.

The Bethlehem shepherds were raising lambs for the temple? Jesus was born in a shepherd’s tower called Migdal Eder? Shepherds swaddled lambs to keep them unblemished then placed them in a manger to keep them safe? What are we to make of these popular claims?

It’s that time of year again for a wide array of questionable, if not outright false, legends to be circulated about details related to the birth of Jesus. Let me address a popular example, one that is frequently shared on social media.
There are several overlapping elements to this story/legend. We will tackle them one by one.
Temple Shepherds?
The first element goes like this: the shepherds around Bethlehem were not overseeing ordinary flocks but were responsible for raising sheep for sacrifice at the temple.
This opinion, popularized long ago by Alfred Edersheim in The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, is based on scanty evidence drawn from the Mishnah, the basic compendium of Jewish law. This is the document behind the vague references on social media posts to “Jewish practice” or “ancient tradition” at the time of Jesus. But when was the Mishnah dated? Maybe 50 BC? Or AD 75? No, around AD 200. That is, needless to say, two centuries after the events that transpired on the night Jesus was born.
While a graduate student at Hebrew Union College, I read and studied the Mishnah in Hebrew. I am very familiar with its background, contents, and importance. It is indeed valuable as later evidence that purports to preserve older oral traditions and teachings. That being said, the Mishnah cannot be used as reliable evidence for something that predates it by two hundred years.
So, were these individuals serving as shepherds for the temple, or (as some go on to boldly claim) even priests who were doing the shepherding? Maybe. Maybe not, but I doubt it. We do not have any verifiable way of knowing. We certainly do not, by any stretch of the scholarly imagination, have sufficient, irrefutable evidence to teach or preach that these were temple shepherds taking care of future sacrificial lambs.
The evangelist Luke offers no such clue, not even a hint, that these people were anything but ordinary shepherds taking care of ordinary sheep. Within the broader biblical narrative, their significance is likely to be sought in David himself being a shepherd around Bethlehem. As David was called from taking care of the sheep to be anointed as king, so these shepherds were sent by the angels to Bethlehem to see the newborn King and Shepherd of Israel.
Bethlehem Lambs?
Second, some posts on social media and various blogs will go on to claim that Bethlehem was famous for producing unblemished lambs that were used for sacrifice, including Passover lambs. Of course, this claim is based on the earlier, questionable legend that these were temple flocks. Unlike the earlier opinion, however, this one is not even built on scanty evidence; it is built on thin air.
I have found no evidence in older Jewish literature—and certainly not in the Bible—that if you were to stop someone on Jerusalem’s streets to ask, “Where do the best sacrificial lambs come from?” they would respond, “Bethlehem, of course!” This claim, therefore, is wholly unsupported by evidence.
So file this one under, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
Migdal Eder
When this claim is made, it is commonly joined to a description of the Migdal Eder, which is the third element under discussion. I will explain why momentarily, but let’s first identify what and where Migdal Eder is.
In Hebrew, a migdal (מִגְדָּל) is a “tower” and an “eder” (עֵדֶר) is a “herd or flock.” This “Tower of the Flock” or Migdal Eder is first mentioned in Genesis 35:21, as a place near where Jacob pitched his tent. In this context, Bethlehem is mentioned but we are not told how close Migdal Eder was to Bethlehem.
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Things are not right. Untold crowds protest. But in Psalm 130 we hear the perfect outcry that can, and must, arise from every heart. In this Song of Ascents we lift up our heads to Jesus Christ. We wait for him, more than the watchman waits for the morning. 

The year 2020 will be remembered, so far, for Covid-19, and large-scale protests. Vast masked crowds gather to rail against racism, policing, gender-inequality, climate change, and whatever other grievances each new week brings. Iconoclasts topple whole quarries of obnoxious memorials of the people and events of our past.
I tend to be cynical about all this. Protestors seem intent on inflaming rather than healing race and gender divisions. And they seem to give little thought to the consequences of their demands. Defund the police? Erase our history? How then will our grandchildren not repeat its mistakes?
Whatever I may think, thousands are getting off their bottoms and onto the streets. They are unhappy, distressed, and they cry out for change. “Things are not right! We want something better!”
In Psalm 130 the psalmist too was deeply unhappy and distressed.
In this they share some common ground with Psalm 130. The psalmist too was deeply unhappy and distressed. He too felt the pain of brokenness and cried out in anguish.
The difference is that Psalm 130 is a perfect outcry. It shows exactly what should be cried out, and to whom we should cry out, and for what reasons.
Psalm 130 is “A song of ascents.” The temple was on Mount Zion, the highest point of Jerusalem, which is itself a city on a hill. It may first have been sung by pilgrims as they streamed up through Jerusalem to the temple to worship. It looks up, away from self and the earthly, to the face of the Lord.
And Psalm 130 is, along with Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, and 143, one of the Penitential Psalms. We see a sinner looking up to God’s face and pleading for his mercy.
A broken heart cries out to the Lord.

Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy (Psalm 130:1-2).

David had once said, “I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold. I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me” (Ps. 69:2). “The depths” is the bottom of the sea, the base of the slimy pit. “The depths” can take many forms. It could be the depths of an airless dungeon, or chronic pain. It could be the depths of poverty, or of a broken heart. It could be the depths of despair, shame, or fear. It could be the depths of hopelessness, of looking forward and seeing nothing but the cold grave and endless torment. The psalmist cries out de profundis (Latin for “from the depths”) of this black and hopeless place. He dares to evoke God’s “ears” and begs that he will listen.
We should never forget that a loving Lord sometimes casts his people into the depths. Think of Joseph in the Egyptian dungeon and scabrous Job on his ash heap, consider David in the caves of exile, Jonah in the stinking whale, Daniel in the lions’ den, the Prodigal Son in the sty, and Peter in the abyss of bitter self-loathing on crucifixion eve. The Lord casts us down to death, that we might come to life and cry out to him.
Notice that the Psalmist doesn’t scramble out of the pit, and then call to God. He calls to God from the shroud. God wants our prayers from wherever we are, and even from whomever we are, at that moment.
Note two fundamental differences between the protester and the penitent.
First, the protester cries out to human authorities for change. Thus, they aim far too low and expect the impossible. Human governors can provide a degree of defense, law and order, communication, and healthcare, and we should be thankful for good government in Australia. But no government can reach into people’s hearts. They cannot make the greedy generous, the racist color-blind, the violent gentle, the selfish selfless, and the reckless responsible. The Psalmist cries out to the highest heavens. The voice of the protester, like a flapping dodo, fails to rise from earth and clay.
Second, the protestor cries for justice and rights. “Give me what I deserve!” The Psalmist cries out for the opposite. To see the Lord, the Rose of Sharon, the Lily of the Valley, the Lamb without Blemish, is to see at once the blackness of our own hearts, “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” (Jer. 17:9 NKJV). To see the Holy One, sword of justice in his hand, is to see at once what we richly deserve, the fires of hell and the worm that does not die.
We must tread very carefully here. There are people who are in the pit as an immediate consequence of a sin. Think Jonah, Peter, and the Prodigal Son. And there are people in the pit, but it is not an immediate consequence of sin. Think Job, Daniel, and Paul and Silas in the Philippian jail. Yet the cry in both cases is the same, “Have mercy!”
There is profound injustice in the world. “The poor you will always have with you” (Matt. 26:11 NIV). Love compels us to stand for the rights of the unborn, the impoverished, child-slaves, political prisoners, and the elderly who are abused and who live, in some nations, with euthanizing potions at hand. Christians will always want to defend the weak.
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