Good Wednesday morning to you my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
Both Christmas and New Year’s celebrations are behind us, and very quickly 8 billion individual, busy people move on, beyond the holidays, rushing to get fully engaged in whatever their life journey is. For a great many, that is a struggle just to survive.
My purpose with these daily ‘Walking with Jesus’ few minutes with you is to help you and me do far more than simply survive! My aim is to help us to join with the Holy Spirit of God in HIS work of developing each of us into becoming the men and women God has designed us to be AND to follow Jesus in making the difference in our world HE intends for us to make, as we partner with God in accomplishing God’s purposes for our world in 2023! Now you may need to re-read that to gain an accurate perspective on life!
Before we began the 30-day journey toward Christmas, we were spending some time with the flamboyant man known as the apostle Peter as he was writing his first letter of encouragement and challenge to Christians living in a very difficult time and place in our human history: the latter part of the first century, and the Roman Empire. For most of those 30 days we looked at Christmas through the lenses of this statement from Peter: “Concerning this salvation, the prophets of old who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when He predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to these old prophets that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.” (1 Peter 1:10-12)
Oh, my what a very powerful statement. We understand, don’t we? Peter was saying all those great prophecies, written hundreds of years before that first Christmas in Bethlehem are now finally, fully understood by those who know the whole Christmas story, as historical fact, reported to us by Matthew, Luke and John. Peter is also saying, the glorious story of WHO that Christmas Jesus became as an adult and what He did in His miracles and messages spoken, but most importantly what He accomplished in His atonement death and resurrection are now all understood as the most significant events in human history, as the Holy Spirit of God has explained them to us through those who were eyewitness of Jesus and wrote them down for us.
But I also love that last line of Peter’s: “Even angels long to look into these things.” You and I look at Christmas and all remarkable events here on earth from a human perspective, but as angels watch happenings here, they do so from a heavenly and eternal perspective, since they don’t age! And even though they’ve been watching for thousands of years, the angels are still amazed, overwhelmed by how God reaches to you and me!
Peter challenges us to consider that from the heavenly, angelic perspective, the incarnation of God at Christmas; and the earthly life of the Son of God here on messy planet earth among wicked human beings; and the atonement death of Jesus at Passover Easter; and the resurrection of Jesus Christ three days later… are all such remarkable divine-human miraculous intersections that these angels simply scratch their heads in disbelief! They desperately want to understand WHY God goes to such great lengths to redeem sinful human beings and draw us into relationship with Him and finally bring us into heaven for all eternity with Him?
So, my friends, do you understand why God loves YOU so much that He’d go to the extreme of Christmas and Easter to draw you into a sin forgiven relationship with Him and give you eternal life in heaven? I know I sure don’t understand WHY God goes to this extreme, but I sure am grateful, eternally grateful! And because I want to understand, I keep digging into God’s truth book, the Bible, to keep learning! Thank you for joining me!
Peter says: “Therefore with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at His coming.“ (1 Peter 1:13) Peter is saying, ‘Christmas is behind us. Look forward now. Because of Christmas and who Jesus is, and what He accomplished while He was here on earth, and what the resurrected Jesus is doing right now in heaven, we should live in a hopeful anticipation that Jesus is coming back to earth again!!
No, Gabriel will not come again and announce to another young virgin girl that she’s going to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit, and no, there won’t be another Bethlehem stable birth. No, it won’t be private appearing in a quiet stable, this next time Jesus comes to earth EVERYONE will know, not simply a few unnamed shepherds out in the Bethlehem fields. And no, it won’t require a camel caravan from a far distant land following a star in the sky, for people to come and meet Jesus. The angels who appeared as Jesus left and ascended into the sky, returning to heaven said this to those gathered on that hillside outside Jerusalem: “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:11)
On this fourth day of this new year of 2023 Peter challenges us and encourages us to live in the confidence that the first Christmas really did happen, in fulfillment of many prophecies made hundreds of years before. And Jesus’ birth was witnessed by several people and recorded by others as a factual event in history. That record has been spread around the world and has for 2000 years become an annual, global celebration, even celebrated by people who have no interest in religion or God and do not care whether Jesus’ birth is a factual event or a myth.
So today we live in the wonder of the truthfulness of Christmas. But much more than that, we live in the reality of WHO Jesus was and the TRUTH of God which He spoke and is recorded for us. And more than that we live today in the wonder of the transformed people we can become when we trust that Jesus to be our Savior from our sin and Lord of our lives.
But while all that is remarkable and almost indescribably glorious, Peter tells us to live alert and aware that this very same Jesus is coming again, very soon, and this time when He comes it will be powerful and world changing and life transforming.
You see my friends, hundreds of millions of deceased Christians buried all over the world and at sea, will experience a great resurrection and Jesus will give them new bodies, much like His resurrected body which will serve them for all eternity in heaven with God! And hundreds of millions of other Christians who are alive when this cataclysmic event happens at Jesus’ next return, we will also be transformed as these earthly bodies will be changed into glorified, heavenly bodies as Jesus has. Can you even imagine what that moment will be like as it happens to hundreds of millions of Christians around the world?
This is described for us in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and 1 Corinthians 15! Then all those hundreds of millions of Christians, all in new heavenly bodies, will join Jesus as HE leads us all into God’s presence! Will you be with us in this experience my friends? It’s easy to know! The criteria for participation is simple… only those who have turned from their sin, and trusted Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection to be payment in full for their sin! Those people have been ‘born again’ by Almighty God and are guaranteed participation in this glorious rapture event when Jesus Christ returns to earth as Peter predicted!
So, my friends, Peter urges us, no matter where we live in the world, to live alert and fully sober, with our hope set on Jesus! Is that how you are living this first week of 2023? That’s Christmas celebration living all year long and here’s a song to help us live it, my friends!
Today’s Scripture is 1 Peter 1:10-13.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
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Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“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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