I will dwell in your midst.
Did anyone imagine that God meant that literally? Could anyone have thought that He would
condescend to be born into this world as an infant and subject Himself to the
judgment of mankind? All flesh, not just
humankind, is commanded to keep silent as the Lord has roused Himself from His
holy dwelling. We see that silence in
heaven in the book of the Revelation on several occasions prior to God's
judgments being revealed and poured out.
In your mind's eye, think of a great king facing rebellion all around
rousing himself from his throne with all his court and the attendants surrounding
him, wondering what it means that the king has risen up. What is the motivation, it could be anger at
the rebellion against him or something else. Who would believe that it meant He
was giving His life for the sake of the rebels?
How plausible is it really that Jesus was the only Son of
God, co-eternal and co-extensive with Him?
Is that really something anyone could imagine, much less believe, that
God lived among us for a season of time and allowed Himself to be killed by
those whom He created? Can we believe
that the God who stretched out and continues to stretch out the universe, which
is 46 billion light years across and continually growing. There are somewhere between 100-500 billion
galaxies in this universe and ours, not a particularly large one, has between
200-400 billion stars and billions of planets.
He loves us, oh how he loves us.
Jesus came from heaven, from above, wherever that is when we consider
the size of the universe. He offers us
an opportunity to be born from above and the only requirement is to believe
that the unimaginable is actually true, that Jesus is the only Son of God and
He chose to die on a Roman cross over two thousand years ago for the love of
something as insignificant as you. The
next step is to embrace your significance in light of the fact that the creator
of the universe adores you enough to die for you, that He might be with you
forever.
John gives us the second step, loving one another because
Jesus didn't just die for me, he died for you as well. We first embrace His love for us but He calls
us to love as He has loved and those whom He has loved. We move outwards in concentric circles in
love, first to those brothers and sisters in our local fellowships and then
outwards to other Christians, then to those whom He loves and died for who do
not know Him, even those who persecute us and do not believe. We love because He loved us first and the
more we share that love with others the more we experience of it from Him. John Piper speaks about Christian hedonism,
the pursuit of God as the pursuit of joy because He is the source of all joy,
so we should seek that joy with all that we are. If you have found some joy in Jesus that you
have never known anywhere else, abandon all else to pursue that joy forever,
just as He pursued you until He found you and took up His home in you so that
He could be with you always. Let Him
once again take on flesh and dwell on earth through you.
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