He's No Longer a Baby

This Christmas we're focusing on God in the human body of a tiny baby.  We're looking at the promised Messiah that the Father brought into the world to do amazing things.  

He was born in Bethlehem over 2000 years ago.

Luke 2:4-7 KJV

 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, 

into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem;

 (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)

To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

 And so it was, that, while they were there, 

the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

And she brought forth her firstborn son, 

and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, 

and laid him in a manger;

 because there was no room for them in the inn.

But let's look at the hands on the Baby lying in the straw. 

They were tender little hands, perfectly formed, able to grasp the fingers of the ones that held him.  They would grow and develop into large hands that could do the things planned for him, but now they were soft and tender and just a little helpless.

That is no longer the case.

They are not tiny and not helpless.

God’s hands are strong. God's hands are here to help you.  He cradles you in them.  He holds you in the palms of his hands.  He even engraves you on the palms of those hands

Isaiah 49:13-14 I will not forget you!  

See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;

Isaiah 41:13  For I am the LORD your God 

who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, 

Do not fear; I will help you.

And he will always be near to hold on to us.  He will never forsake us.  He will not be out of sight or sound of or hopes and dreams and prayers. David explains in this Psalm that no matter when (on the wings of the dawn) or where (the far side of the sea), God will be there to guide us and hold us.

Psalm 139:9-11 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, 

if I settle on the far side of the sea, 

even there your hand will guide me, 

your right hand will hold me fast.

Yes, Jesus' hands are strong enough for anything.

The Wall

 

God walked with the man and woman in the garden.  He knew their stride, the way they moved.  He knew their strengths and limitations and they knew Him.  They felt him there. They heard Him.  He was close. They were His children. They were held in the arms of their Father.  They were family.

But as they grew familiar with life they decided they didn’t need His direction and they didn’t necessarily want Him to know them.  They wanted to walk alone.

They left Him of their own free will.  They weren’t forced away from home.  They built a wall that would stand between them and home – between them and their Father, their Creator so they left Home behind the wall they had erected.

God couldn’t live inside that wall.  It wasn’t His wall, so He wouldn’t climb it or tear it down.  He told His children they were to leave the freedom of the garden.  He would no longer be right there in their sight – because of the wall they had built.  

But He also promised that someday, when “The fullness of time” had come, He would send a carpenter to carry that wall away. 

That carpenter would be the Son of God, and of His own free will, in His humanity, He would be the perfect one to destroy the wall

The carpenter would walk with mankind.  He would feel their humanness.  He would know of their desire to live with the wall.  He would live as a man, but only as God had originally planned for them to live.  The carpenter would live as a clear unblemished, see-through man, and that would remind them of the goodness they had shut out with the wall.  And they would then see the Father, once again.

And it happened!  When the fullness of time had come – it happened.

God sent His Son (fully divine), made of a woman (fully human.) 

He sent His own Son to tear down that wall.  The Son pulled the wall down on himself.  He chose to take that wall on his own shoulders, and it killed Him.  That wall made of the bricks of sin and self we humans want to love, or use, or keep, again and again. 

Those bricks that men love killed the Son - the Rescuer, the perfect One.

But the wall doesn’t need to separate men from God any longer.  Man can stop building because Jesus has already torn that wall down brick by brick. 

If we come back home to our Father, we can walk with Him in the garden again.  And, even though the Son, the carpenter, gave His life to destroy the wall, that was not the end. 

He rose again.  He not only overcame the wall of sin, but He overcame the death that was the result of that sin, the result of man walking away from God’s presence.

Again, God walks with His people, the children who understand His love and His compassion and His willingness to welcome them home – if only they look up and take a step toward his welcoming arms.

Love Diane