Post Christmas ponder

It is very easy now that Christmas Day has passed to put away the Christmas story for another year, to wind down the carols and to focus on the social aspects of this season. After all by next Sunday we shall be thinking about the New Year and what 2018 will bring.

However before we consign Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus, shepherds and wise men to the spiritual attic of our lives, it is good to take a moment to reflect again on these key players in the greatest birth that the world has even seen. The whole event was upside down.

Royal births are a major occasion and Jesus’ birth should have been the most royal of royal events. Yet nothing could have been more removed from this birth of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. This was not a birth to royal parents in a palace with every convenience that 1^st century Judea could provide. This was a birth in a stable of all places to two very ordinary but Godly people, carefully chosen by God to fulfil this most precious assignment – to parent the Son of God.

I often wonder what Mary thought when she realised she was going to have to give birth in a stable. She had had to deal with all the social ostracising that her pregnancy had caused, all the gossip and rejection that she and Joseph must have had to bear in small town Nazareth. Now it seemed that God wasn’t even going to provide a small clean room to give birth to his son. Poor Joseph too must have been distressed that he couldn’t provide a suitable place for this royal birth.

As I’ve said before it is so easy with the benefit of hindsight to see the significance of these events but when you are living them, Mary and Joseph had a tough time.  Then the first visitors were not the good and great, the significant and famous as it should have been – it was shepherds – unclean in every way - shepherds. These were probably the shepherds who looked after and provided the sheep and lambs needed for the temple sacrifices. More deep significance that those at the bottom of the social ladder, those providing the sacrifices for the temple, were the first to see Jesus the perfect sacrifice, the lamb who takes away the sin of the world.

I wonder how many mangers in how many stables and outhouses the shepherds checked before they found Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus. They would have entered awkward and gauche to see the baby but bringing the story of angels coming to their hillside telling them that a Saviour had been born – the Messiah. They were so excited about what had happened that they told everyone about it. I expect Mary and Joseph received a lot more visitors after that. But the Bible makes clear Mary treasured all these things in her heart and pondered them.

Before we pack away Christmas for another year it is worth taking a moment to also ponder the amazing fact that Jesus came in the most unlikely of circumstances with the most improbable of people as the key players to come and save us, the most underserving of people. Do we treasure up in our hearts the wonder of our salvation by the King of Glory? 

Born of incorruptible seed

Paul wrote I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 1 Corinthians 3: 6 – 7.

I cradled our latest grandchild in my arms. She was just a few days old and I marvelled again at the potential in this tiny scrap of humanity. Within her was everything needed for her to grow into a mature adult. Thirty-two years earlier I had cradled another baby and he had grown into a fine young man, the father of this child. Of course we had cared for, taught, guided, protected this child. We had done our best to bring out the best but all we were doing was watering the seed within.

What a miracle it is that within every baby are the seeds of all they will need to develop, grow and mature into a fully formed adult. I wonder if as Mary held the infant Jesus in her arms she pondered how her child would grow and develop. Yet within this baby was everything he would need to mature into the Messiah.

Paul pointed out that you don’t plant a fruit to get another fruit – you plant a seed. Now I am no biologist but as I understand it, within each one of us is the seed or genetic code inherited from our parents that determines physical appearance, personality and maybe natural talents – in fact how a person will turn out.

However God has also planted within each one of us his seed, an incorruptible seed and when we are born again and become believers that seed which contains the very DNA of Jesus is activated (1 Peter 2: 23). By faith the character and likeness of Jesus begins to mature so we become more and more like him.

All of who God is resides in our spirit. For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form and in Christ you have been brought to fullness Colossians 2: 9 – 10. In the King James version it says we are complete in him. We lack nothing to grow into the likeness of Jesus.

John made an interesting point No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. 1 John 3: 9.  The life from the spiritual seed cannot sin because it is the seed of Jesus. The natural one is the seed that likes to sin. By faith we must help the spiritual seed to grow so the likeness of Jesus shines forth.

When Jesus was born as a baby, he was complete. He had no sinful DNA from his father because his Father was the Holy Spirit. By faith yet nurtured by Mary and Joseph, family, friends and the rabbis he grew to fulfil his destiny. He had to consistently let the spiritual seed of God rule over any temptation that would be placed before him and so he remained sinless and therefore able to be the perfect sacrifice to be the Saviour of the world.

We are people made in the image of God and the world needs the believers to walk in all that Jesus walked in and more. This comes by putting to death the sinful life spawned by the natural seed and letting the spiritual, incorruptible seed grow through faith and obedience.

Emmanuel - God with us

At this Christmas time, we remember that Jesus is Emmanuel – God with us. Jesus came to show what God is like as well as to die for the sins of the world. He told Thomas ‘if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the father.’

If we stop and think what Jesus is like, we see someone with a huge heart for the lost and dying, someone who loved people, who helped and healed those whom society had little time for. 

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and illness among the people.  News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralysed; and he healed them. Matthew 4: 23 – 24.

Having met their needs, he then sat down and taught the crowd, the teaching now known as The Beatitudes. The first one was ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ Matthew 5: 3. Who were the ‘poor in spirit’? I believe, as Dallas Willard wrote, that the poor in spirit were this crowd of needy people – the sick, demon possessed, those in pain and paralysed. They had been blessed because the Kingdom had come to them. 

When John the Baptist, discouraged and in prison sent his disciples to ask Jesus if her was the one, he told them; ‘Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor’ Luke 7: 22.

The sign of the Kingdom (the King’s domain) and of the Messiah, the King was wonderful things happening and good news proclaimed to the poor.

As I have written before God gets a bad press. People are very quick to believe that God is an angry, vindictive God just itching to judge and condemn the world but nothing could be further from the truth. … God is love.  This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 1 John 4: 8 – 10.

Jesus was only ever angry with the religious leaders and temple authorities who should have

known better. Right from his birth they stubbornly refused to believe that Jesus was the longed for Messiah. They opposed him who came to bring life in all its fullness. Jesus never was angry, cross or irritated by the poor, ignorant and needy people. He had compassion on them but those who led the people astray into dead religion he condemned.

God is everything that is good and kind. He is gracious, merciful and he showed this by sending his son into the world to show the world just what he is like. Jesus is Emmanuel.

But now as Bill Johnson said: Its all about us becoming a generation who can authentically display who Jesus is. He is the desire of the nations. (Haggai 2: 7). He is what everybody wants they just don’t know it.  The more we represent Jesus as he genuinely is, the more desirable we become to the nations.  Our job is to destroy the works of the devil, just as Jesus did – heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons and cleanse lepers (Matthew 10: 8).

So this Christmas as the world turns albeit briefly to remember Jesus let’s be those who represent Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, to the world by doing the things he did and by bringing his presence wherever we go.