What a beautiful vision with which to begin the day! There will be peace in Jerusalem and the
Messiah will rule and reign. No enemies
shall trouble the people of God. Do we
long for that day with all our hearts?
The Lord, for whatever reason, chose Bethlehem as the place from which
Messiah would come. An unlikely place
perhaps but also the place where David himself was from. As we close out this year there has been
unrest throughout that region in a never-ending stream this past year and it is
difficult to sort out the meaning of all the change there. We, however, have reason for confidence
because of the Lord speaking to men like Micah in days of old concerning these
things but we also have confidence because in this day the Lord speaks to people
like us through the power of the Holy Spirit that He is sovereign over all
things and that His plan is not endangered in any way. He shall stand and shepherd his flock in the
strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they
shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth. There is nothing conditional about those
words.
“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does
not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” In my lifetime at least we have focused on a
conversion experience, a confession of belief and I understand that is truly
important but it isn’t all. What does it
mean to believe? Here and in many other
places, belief and obedience are linked.
If we believe Jesus is the Son of God, uniquely so, of one being with
the Father as the Creed says, then doesn’t He have a unique authority over our
lives? We have often reduced Jesus to a
cosmic buddy who gets us out of a tough spot.
To believe in Him, who He is, is to accept all the authority that comes
with that and our lives tell the tale about what we believe. Let us rejoice in the fulfillment of the
promise of eternal life but let us also commit ourselves to obedience.
As a first step in obedience, how about love one
another. The commands are not onerous
but they aren’t natural either and they aren’t always easy to keep. It isn’t always easy to love one another, it
requires us to be forgiving and to always keep in mind that we always need to
be forgiven. God’s nature and His desire
include forgiveness of sins, that was the motivation for Jesus coming, to serve
as propitiating sacrifice. He has not
only shown us His nature, He has set within us the same Spirit that we might
share His nature of lovingkindness. He
not only gave the command He enabled us to keep it.
Good Christian men,
rejoice with heart and soul, and voice;
Give ye heed to what
we say: News! News! Jesus Christ is born today;
Ox and ass before Him
bow; and He is in the manger now.
Christ is born today!
Christ is born today!
Good Christian men,
rejoice, with heart and soul and voice;
Now ye hear of endless
bliss: Joy! Joy! Jesus Christ was born for this!
He has opened the
heavenly door, and man is blest forevermore.
Christ was born for
this! Christ was born for this!
No comments:
Post a Comment