Good Monday to you my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
Do you find that Christmas brings out the best in all of us? Unless specifically instructed not to, people dress up and come to Christmas gatherings expecting enjoyment and also expecting that things will be done with excellence in music, food and festivities, am I right? WHY? That expectation stirs my Christmas question for today: “WHY a smelly, filthy animal stable; in a tiny village; involving insignificant people; for the Incarnation of God, the birth of King Jesus?”
If God is Sovereign over all things and God is all powerful, then would you agree God could devise any plan and organize all the details of that plan so the incarnation of God into our world could take place anywhere God wanted, at any time God thought was best, right? We should therefore conclude that the birth of Jesus involving Joseph, Mary and shepherds, in a smelly animal stable, in overcrowded Bethlehem, during the reign of Caesar Augustus and King Herod the Great, was exactly the perfect setting and the perfect time for God’s visit to planet earth… at least according to God’s plan, do you agree?
And because so many prophecies, spanning hundreds of years, were fulfilled in how and where the Christmas story unfolded, we should conclude this remarkable Christmas plan of God was clear in God’s mind millennia before it actually happened, and God orchestrated the details to occur as prophesied, have you thought about that? So come with me deeper into the Christmas story this Monday and let’s seek to answer this Christmas question: “WHY a smelly, filthy animal stable; in a tiny village; involving insignificant people; for the Incarnation of God, the birth of King Jesus?”
First is the word HUMILITY!
Humility is the absence of pride, self-advancement and arrogance. Christmas is God’s invitation to our human race, each of us, all of us, into a personal, loving relationship with Holy, all powerful, eternal God, but it requires humility! God took all the initiative to come to earth and offer us a relationship with God which we could not possibly imagine nor accomplish.
God modeled for us the HUMILITY required for this remarkable, wonderful, deeply fulfilling, outrageously exciting relationship between any person and Almighty God. Phil. 2:1-7 explains that. Pride prevents such a relationship with God. Arrogance aborts the conception of this amazing relationship with God. The Christmas arrival of God, in the person of helpless baby Jesus, born in an animal stable is a picture of the humble extreme to which Almighty, Creator God is willing to go to be AVAILABLE to any and every human being…from the wealthy, educated, accomplished; to the poor, uneducated, disadvantaged among us.
No one is excluded by God. But oh, so easily we disqualify ourselves from this God offered relationship by refusing in our pride to acknowledge our need for a Savior, our need for the help only God can give us. Do we understand this profound truth concept? How do you and I measure our HUMILITY as the doorway to the miracle of beginning and nurturing a life changing relationship with Jesus Christ, God incarnate, this Christmas season?
Second is the word FAITH.
While we each live everyday depending on a great deal of faith in so many practical things which we assume and cannot control, still most of us want to control our own lives in every way. Every person who experienced the miracle and wonder of the Christmas story did so by living great FAITH in God. Those who missed the wonder of the Christmas event refused to believe what God invited them into.
A young virgin teenager Mary amazingly responded to the unimaginable things the angel Gabriel told her about a God induced pregnancy and she becoming the earthly mother of the Son of God, with these powerful words of great FAITH: “I am the Lord’s servant. May be unto me as you have said.” (Luke 1:38) Do you hear both profound HUMILITY and outrageous FAITH in Mary?
Joseph was afraid and angry when he heard of his fiancé’s unexplainable pregnancy. He moved into control mode, determined to protect his personal reputation. But an angel urged Joseph to believe God’s explanation and take Mary as his wife, in full view of an entire town who would never believe the truth about her claim of a divinely accomplished pregnancy. Joseph knew that if they married, both he and Mary would live in the doubt and shame everyone would place upon their claim of moral purity and the son she bore would be assumed to be illegitimate.
I’ve never spoken this word before as it relates to Jesus, but in truth by refusing to believe the claim of divine conception, Jesus would be considered a bastard! Oh my, that sends a shiver up my spine! But Matthew tells us Joseph did not hesitate once convinced of God’s instructions to him. In great FAITH Joseph stepped courageously forward: “When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.” (Matt. 1:24,25)
Do you see my friends that the power of the life changing relationship God offers you and me, and any person is based on the degree of our FAITH in God and His truth? (Eph.2:8,9)
When the angels disappeared in the sky, the shepherds had an important choice to make. Did they believe the angelic announcement about the birth of the Messiah Savior in Bethlehem or was it simply too outrageous? Did they believe God could care about shepherds who were very often humiliated by people? The record says: “When the angels had left them the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” (Luke 2:15)
And as you know because they went in humility and great faith, they were the first to see Jesus, God incarnate, in the manger, we presume in a smelly stable. And as they spread the word in that busy Bethlehem, we have no record that anyone else came. No one in Bethlehem was willing to humble themselves or believe that God would come to earth in that place, at that time, in that way! Not even from the overcrowded Inn served by that simple stable!
So, this Monday, how is your heart my friend? Humble and filled with Faith in God, ready to experience everything God has planned for YOU this Christmas season or too busy, too prideful, too self-confident, too much in control and therefore likely to miss the miraculous God would like to accomplish in our lives and our world this Christmas? Ponder that as we worship Jesus, God the Son, our Savior and King with this Christmas song. . .
Today’s Scripture: Matthew 1:18-25.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
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Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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