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.
