“Hark”, they say,”GLORY to God in the highest heaven, and on earth PEACE to those on whom his favor rests!”
Listen!! The prophet’s foretold!!
He said,
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called WONDERFUL COUNSELOR, MIGHTY GOD, EVERLASTING FATHER, PRINCE OF PEACE. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.
The seal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this!
and Paul declared,
Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage, rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death - even death on a cross!
Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father!”
How can it be? That God, the maker of heaven and earth, the Creator who spoke into being the reality that we know, having been betrayed and disowned by the very children he created, should then send what was most precious to him to earth to be born into disgrace and hardship, to live and grow understanding and experiencing all that we experience, yet never failing God, trusting always, obeying faithfully even when it meant dying the most horrific death possible for people who may or may not recognize what he was doing???
And he did. He lived; gently, passionately, wholly obedient and trusting towards God, his Father. He allowed them to capture him, to beat him, to kill him by hanging him on a cross to sufficate in tortuous agony, only because he knew there was no other way for OUR penalty to be payed. The penalty that we incurred by rejecting God, himself, and in so doing choosing the death which comes from being separated from him. The reality of that choice is death; spiritual, emotional death lived out through the length of our physical lives. Only by Jesus’s act of grace and mercy, in allowing himself to die in our place, once for all, was he able to cancel that penalty.
But even more, God’s goodness and grace, and passionate love for us is shown through Jesus’s resurrection!! The penalty was payed to death, but death didn’t get the “last word”. Death itself was shown to only be a tool in the hands of God, by Jesus’s overcoming it and coming back to life! The death that we deserved, was received in him but turned on its head and rejected by him, that WE might have his life, through him?!?!?
Does this not make your head spin?!?! Is this not INCREDIBLE?!?
Christmas Day, is about joy and presents and celebration. But it is so because of the joy and celebration that EXPLODED into the heavens when Jesus was born onto earth. The gift of his life and death and resurrection is what was being declared on that day, so many years ago. And that gift, and the honor of it, is what is being declared continually, to this day and forever more, in heaven.
“‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,’ who was, and is, and is to come....You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”
Thank you Lord Jesus Christ, and my Father in Heaven. Thank you for thinking of me, considering me when I so often don’t consider you! Thank you that your grace is sufficient for me, that I might know you and be known by you through your son. Thank you.
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