​Last greetings for the year Twenty-twenty to each and every one of our Bethel Youth!  Three days ago Pastor John looked forward to the New Year, urging that with the new year we have a “new ear” by which to hear God's voice. 

Pastor John first read to us from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 3 verses 13 through 17: “Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, 'I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?' Jesus replied, 'Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.' Then John consented. As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, 'This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.'”

What is baptism but publicly being cleansed of our sins and being reborn to a totally new life in Christ? So we come to the worldly custom of New Year's Day generally being a day to start something of a new life through New Year's resolutions. The idea is to form new habits and gain a sense of reset, of restarting. We have a gnawing and constant desire to change – not just the outside of ourselves but the inside. Any number of self-help books are out there, as well as innumerable social media sites, offering advice in all this. Basically they all require us to strive for something better through our own strength (and how about now with the new year?)

They are all ultimately, and most of them very quickly, inadequate. They are not the answer. Jesus is. So, let us start with the beginning of real change, of a genuine reset.

Pastor John explained to us that Jesus’ baptism that we have just read about reveals how change comes, that the Gospel changes everything! With truly taking in the Good News we have gone from death to life, from selfishness to selflessness, from pride to humility, from anger to love, from anxiety to peace....from sin to holiness!

Progressing from sin to holiness is the ENTIRE point of our temporal existence. If we each do that, our lives have been successful no matter what else in our lives or about our lives. If we fail to do that, our lives have FAILED, no matter what else.

Knowing well enough about the dark, fallen world about us and the futility of all of the advertised ways of changing ourselves within the context of that world, let us consider the genuine article, the real “new”:

Pastor John read to us from 2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” That's a big “if”, but consider the infinite consequences! It is the only “new” that ever matters!

In the last book of the Bible we read Revelation 21:5 “Behold, I am making all things new.” God doesn’t simply make new things, He makes all things new. Jesus will take what is broken and falling apart and He will make it new! The distinction is of the utmost importance, as it is each of us who instead of being swept away into the eternal incinerator will be made...new!

Through baptism. 

What Jesus demonstrated to the world, and each of us, for our benefit, that we might emulate.

Baptism is a symbol of going from death to life...from being outside God’s family to being inside...from being a stranger to being a child of God.

The story of Jesus’s baptism parallels the story of Creation. In both cases there is water and the Spirit of God hovering over the surface. Remember from Genesis  “Let us make man…” forward to baptism “Let us save man… and make him new”. Who is this “us”? The triune God! God the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit acting as One.

Baptism is a sign of being made clean - Like taking a shower when you are dirty. It is very important to remember that we are speaking in the passive voice here: in baptism we are not cleansing ourselves of sin; we are being cleansed of sin. God does for us, through our non-resistance to His invitation, what we cannot do for ourselves!

Our New Year’s resolution is usually about US trying to clean up OURSELVES and get things in order. Pastor John reminded us that by contrast true repentance and change is about saying “I can’t clean myself before God!” We go to Jesus to change us and cleanse us and carry us. 

Pastor John also taught us that Jesus’ affirmation of baptism reveals the motivation to change  – God is more concerned with who each of us is becoming than who we presently are. Again we read from Matthew 3:17 “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”  

“Listen to Him!”

That means very practically that the more we lift up Jesus – in prayer, praise, and all worship -  the more we change for the better. The key to a changed life is to KNOW we are children of God – each of us.

God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So we are no longer slaves to sin, but God’s children; and since we are his children, God has made us also heirs. This we understood from reading from Paul's letter to the Galatians 4:6-7.
 
Beloved!  

God wants to be the LOUDEST VOICE in our lives. He says “This is my beloved child!” So, the voice we each choose to hear will determine how each of us lives his life.

Altogether different from all of those self-help books and social media gurus, right?

Child-like!

“When people ask me how they should approach performance, I always tell them the professional musician should aspire to the state of the beginner.”  Pastor John noted that this is the famed Cellist Yo-Yo Ma saying that a real musician should not be tied-up in knots with worry during a performance but instead he or she should play with the abandon of an ignorant child. We read in Matthew 18 verse 3 that Jesus told us that we had to be like children in our not being tied up in knots about worldly things, if we want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Finally we read in one of the last books of the Old Testament - Zephaniah 3:17 "The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing."

If in the New Year we have a new ear to hear, surely come what may He will quiet us with His love.

Thank you Lord – that almighty assurance is all we need to hear!

We read from 2 Timothy 3:1-5 “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.”

Reread the above verses. Really now: doesn't that situation look and sound too familiar to each of us from our daily experiences of the world all around us today – right now?

But Pastor Daniel cautions us that we, each of us, are called to be different...growing not in sinfulness but in godliness. Yes, it is hard to keep faith in these worldly sinful surroundings but...if we cherish Jesus Christ and His word we will be completely excluded from the coming judgment.  God will deliver us as He delivered Daniel's friends from Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace . Jesus came the first time 2000 years ago to save us and in so doing to demonstrate God's love. He is coming again, as we know from Scripture. In His second coming He will be as judge not as savior. He will, as it were, segregate sheep from goats, wheat from chaff.  Non-believers and fake believers out will be segregated from the small minority of mankind who are true believers. As we read in Matthew 22 verse 14 “many are called (to the “wedding feast), but few are chosen” (actually make themselves presentable to attend through their belief and matching conduct.)

What of each of us, then?

If we truly, believe, keep on believing, and continually behave as if we really do believe, then the caution we receive about the elect few of God is our confidence...not of our time in this world but from the Word. We read in Ecclesiastes 7:1 “A good name is better than fine perfume, and the day of death better than the day of birth.”  

Since we know from Scripture above that in God's good time all will be destroyed, we ought to live holy lives not fearful but confident of deliverance from whatever may come. We repose no confidence in anything of this world, a place of temporary sojourn for each true believer.    

Remember the part of the Gospel of John where Jesus has His interview with the Samaritan woman?  Let us listen again to the conversation already underway in John 4: 21-41 “'Woman,' Jesus replied, 'believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.' The woman said, 'I know that Messiah' (called Christ) 'is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.' Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.' Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people,  'Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?' They came out of the town and made their way toward him.....Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, 'He told me everything I ever did.' So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers. They said to the woman, 'We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world'”.

Wednesday mid-December warm hello to BYM!

In his efforts to have all of us well-prepared for Christmas by understanding what this “glory” that we have heard of concerning Christmas all our lives really is, Pastor John read to us from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 10 verse 31 “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” 

All his life of ministry Paul had to fight against two tendencies that could derail Christian belief and life: one was “legalism”. This was what Jewish converts were more prone to fall into; that Christ's sacrifice on the cross was not enough; that they had yet to earn salvation through adherence to the Mosaic law that is fully detailed in the Book of Deuteronomy. The other pitfall Paul fought against tended to beset non-Jewish converts to a life in Christ. This was libertinism. This idea was that “since Christ's death on the cross saved me once and for all, I can do whatever I want during the rest of my life.” No Christians seemed more prone to this grave error than the Corinthians, since Corinth in Greece was from its early days like the stereotype of Las Vegas of the Mediterranean world: all manner of sin and vice flourished there. The Apostle Paul had repeatedly to caution the Corinthian Christians that if they truly believed, then they would sacrifice their own sinful pleasures to demonstrate their thankfulness for salvation through the Christ's sacrifice. The bottom line, as expressed in the verse above, was that they (and we) should consciously and continually use our freedom of choice to glorify God. 

Pastor John illustrated this by reminding us of his participation in a 5-kilometer run for charity when he was a high school student. The destination of the run was clear - the finish line! But there were distractions en route, chief among them the local Burger King. Our future Pastor John and his chums barely finished the race, so distracted were they. 

What about us? 

As Pastor John says, when we have a destination, we have a direction. Ultimately, our final destination and goal in life is to glorify God. That’s the bottom line. 

That goal - our purpose - is to ASCRIBE glory to the Lord. This is different from giving glory to Him, since it is He who already has it all! The difference just means that we are putting God at the front of our lives. Psalm 29 verse 2 says it really well: “Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.” 

Pastor John reminds us that to glorify God, to ascribe glory to God, means  making God number one, the first priority, in every part of our lives, in everything we say and do. Hence the Apostle Paul's admonition: “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” 

It is not in the first place about action. It is firstly about intention. Created in God's image, we are not robots. We can and must make choices during our brief temporal journey on this earth, in this fallen world.  We are conscious beings and have the FREEDOM to choose God over everything else. 

Will we? 

Pastor John cautions us that glorifying God is not a matter of will power, it’s about a genuine RESPONSE. It begins by our encountering the glory of God. From Scripture  we have many examples of heroes and prophets of faith encountering the glory of God: 

Isaiah – “Woe is me! For I am lost!” 

Moses – “He put a veil over his face.” 

Peter – “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man!” 

John – “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.” 

God's glory never makes us say, “Come!”; the tremendous apparition or experience of God's  glory always makes us say, “Depart!” As the above examples illustrate, it is utterly overwhelming.

​Pastor John flashed us the cute picture of Noah's Ark that you all knew from your time in preschool here at church. Then he followed with a picture of the Ark when God's wrath against sinful man is coming down as storm water. That is God's glory; scary to the Nth degree to those actually experiencing it. How could it be otherwise? He is God, and we are not. 

Pastor John then gave us this perfect gem: the glory of the cross is God's love and wrath in perfect combination. As he rephrased it, the cross is where  God’s LOVE and God's HOLINESS are in PERFECT union. How glorious! 

As Pastor John has noted before, the Sun gives off light; the Moon can only reflect light given off by the Sun. So also with us; glorifying God means REFLECTING His Love. As we are eternally grateful for the gift of salvation, so we seek to imitate the Author of our salvation, His only begotten Son. So we read Paul's admonition in Romans 8:29: “to be conformed to the image of his Son.”

God had to send Jesus to perfectly reflect God and His love because we, sinful mankind from Adam forward, had failed to do so. But fallen Adam did get the promise of the ultimate redemption of mankind and its fruit is contained in this verse John 13:34: "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." 

This command is fundamentally new because it says “as I have loved you”.  This is a key difference between the Old Covenant and the New. We have now known our Savior in the flesh. So we should imitate and reflect to others accordingly: 1 Peter 1:16 "You shall be holy, for I am holy.” This means that we, each of us, a temple and dwelling place for God. We are again reminded of this from 1 Corinthians 6:19-20: "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body." 

The temple in Jerusalem was as beautiful specimen of mega-architecture as the ancient world had to offer. But within the Temple the priests were always busy with the slaughter of animals as part of the duties of sacrifice prescribed in the Book of Deuteronomy. As Pastor John noted, at the end of his day's duties at the Temple a priest commonly came home with his garments heavily stained with blood. Jesus's sacrifice abolished all that, and instead we, each of us, became His temple! 

Think about that: the body, the life, that each of us has is God's temple of which we are custodians. Our bodies are for God's glory and we are charged to be mindful of that always. Doesn't that basic realization weigh powerfully on the choices we make even hourly in our lives? Wash your face, stand up straight, and infinitely much more!

​So the glory of Christmas is that Jesus, being God incarnate, perfectly reflects who God is. He is loving and He is Holy. The baby Jesus in the manger was headed for the cross – the place where God is most glorified – but His ultimate destination was not a place, but each of us!  

The glory of Christmas is the ultimate inspiration and prompt for each of us to make Jesus our destination of holiness.

Hallelujah!

​Glorious December greetings to every worshipper in our Bethel Youth Ministry! In humble faith in our Savior and constant obedience to Him, may we be primed to know true glory! Indeed, this glory is what Pastor John is carefully preparing us for this Christmas season of 2020. 

This last Lord's Day he got us underway once more by reading from the Gospel written by our fellow gentile and the Apostle Paul's traveling companion, doctor Luke, chapter 1, verses 26 through 38: “In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, 'Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.' Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.  But the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David,  and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.' 'How will this be,' Mary asked the angel, 'since I am a virgin?' The angel answered, 'The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.' 'I am the Lord’s servant,' Mary answered. 'May your word to me be fulfilled.' Then the angel left her.”

​Pastor John then had us consider the WAIT, a matter of time. This teenaged Jewish girl Mary was already engaged to be married to Joseph, a carpenter. She was a perfectly well-behaved young maiden fully observing all of the strict Mosaic law expected of her. And the angel had the most incredible message for her, for which nothing of her life experience could prepare her for but for which her strong inner faith in God did prepare her.

As Pastor John reminded us, Mary was thinking carefully about what she was being told. In Luke  1:29 - “But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be” and again in Luke 1:34 – “How will this be…?”  She would have to wait for the miracle to be fulfilled, the same as her elderly kinswoman Elizabeth, mother-to-be of John the Baptist. Anyway, through this humble, faithful girl God would give the fallen world the greatest gift – the gift of salvation – the Savior, the Messiah, the Christ – Jesus!

Jesus.

The name "Jesus" is the English from the Latin Iesus from the Greek Ἰησοῦς (Iésous) from the Hebrew ישוע (Yeshua) which is the shortened form for יְהוֹשֻׁעַ  (Yehoshua) a name which comes from the Hebrew verbיָשַׁע (yasha), which means to save. To get Yehoshua, the verb was combined with the Hebrew consonants for God Y-H-W-H. So in short, the name "Jesus" means “God rescues”.

(BTW the Korean 예수 [yesu] comes more directly from the original Hebrew used at the time of the Christ's earthly ministry. Just as Pastor John has said, Korean school can be worth it!)

Now, we can all recall that a short time back Pastor John soon came to realize the worth of a friend's gift of simple anti-acid medications. A worthy gift they were. But how much more desperately has all of fallen mankind needed the gift of salvation? From the time of Adam! The worth of the gift of the Christ comes in our realizing how desperately we need this gift!

Pastor John shared with us something of his family Christmas traditions: No trees, no gifts. But he had as a boy a great yearning for years for this special toy train set. One Christmas it finally came. There was great excitement because the WAIT WAS WORTH IT. 

​The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has apparently developed a usable Covid-19 vaccine. Its worth and value is commonly held high because of the WAIT for it by billions of people.

There is the obvious featherweight of a paper $100 bill. But a father taught his child the true WEIGHT of the $100 bill through cashing in for pennies. It was a huge weight; far more pennies than can be carried. It was a graphic way for the child to understand the true weight of the $100 bill.

​​Back to the interview with the angel Gabriel: humble, very careful Mary had to consider the WEIGHT of what she was being told. Her faith must have been so great as nothing in her life up to that point could have given her worldly preparation to calculate and accept what she was being told. We read again Luke 1:38 “and Mary said, 'Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.'”So, fully comprehending what she heard, in the greatest faith Mary was TRUSTING and SUBMITTING. In worldly terms she was taking a big risk – a broken engagement and complete social ostracism at least; possibly even being stoned to death if someone wanted to make an example of her. But, she said toi the angel Gabriel  “May it be according to your word” or “May everything you said about me come true”

Such courage from the faith of this young girl!

Mary with careful attention but without hesitation chose to bear the weight of the unique divine conception. Such is the inevitable weight of obedience which is true glory. We bear the weight of obedience because Jesus took on the greatest burden of obedience for us. In the Garden of Gethsemane when facing imminent arrest, show trial and crucifixion He did say to the Father “Not my will, but yours be done”as Mary had earlier “May it be according to your word”

The story of Christmas tells us that in the person of the Son, God became breakable, fragile - someone who can get hurt. He did so because He wanted to RESCUE US (remember: Jesus means “God Rescues”). God is holy, and yet approachable through Jesus our Savior and Intercessor. As Pastor John reminded us, in Jesus, we are made righteous and we are loved and we are safe. When we could not bear the heaviness of sin and the weight of glory (God’s holiness), Jesus took on that weight for us.

​So again we read Romans 8:18: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Here at Christmas!

Again, Jesus took on the greatest weight of obedience in the Garden of Gethsemane. 

More than our waiting on Jesus - Jesus is waiting on us with the weight of His sacrifice for us. 

True glory – hallelujah!

Early December greetings – brisk hellos – to each and every one of our Bethel Youth Ministry community!

Three days ago Pastor John read to us from the Gospel of John chapter 1 verse 14: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Alright then, what is this “glory”?  Well one dictionary definition is “praise, honor, or distinction extended by common consent”. That definition is not lame but it is pretty tame; God's glory is infinitely more intense in character:

Read from the Book of Exodus chapter 3, verses 1 through 7: “Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.”  “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.”

God's glory is so great that Moses could not come near, and he hid his face in fear of God's tremendous glory. Much later Moses is required to go up Mount Sinai alone to receive the Ten Commandments. He comes back down, and we read:

Exodus 34: 30-35  “When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him. But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them. Afterward all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the Lord had given him on Mount Sinai. When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face. But whenever he entered the Lord’s presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the Lord.”

And also in the New Testament for instance the Gospel of Matthew 17:1-8 “After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, 'Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.' While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, 'This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!'  When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. 'Get up,' he said. 'Don’t be afraid.' When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.”

By now we get it: God's glory is nothing like the usual human concept. It is a good, great, but fearful thing! God's glory bespeaks the essential difference between the Creator and any of His creations, including us.

Us. 

Imperfect, sinful, condemned us. But unfathomably so beloved by Him that he set in motion the most improbable, incredible rescue plan.

For us!

It was He, and He first took form as a helpless infant.

For many centuries the western world, and lately the whole world, has celebrated the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth, of the House of David, the Christ, in late December. We call it Christmas Day, in fact! The Christ, the Messiah, Our Savior, came to earth as a helpless infant on that day we say. 

Our Savior a helpless infant. Let us meditate on that incongruity for a moment. We shall seek to resolve it!

For many centuries the western world, and lately the whole world, has celebrated the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth, of the House of David, the Christ, in late December. We call it Christmas Day, in fact! The Christ, the Messiah, Our Savior, came to earth as a helpless infant on that day we say. 

Our Savior a helpless infant. Let us meditate on that incongruity for a moment. We shall seek to resolve it!​

“Became flesh” means that Jesus became TANGIBLE and real to us. He is God’s tangible expression of love to us. Now at some point in our lives (hopefully!) we each find one special person who we like (well, love) so much that we want to hold on to that person to the end of our days. So we marry, and symbolically the union between us and our special person, we slip rings on to ring fingers. As Pastor John said “If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it". That is love. How much more God's love that in baby Jesus He came not only to bring the message of good news, but He IS the Good News. God is love such that the Word became flesh.
 
In Jesus God became VULNERABLE. This right from the start. Who could be more vulnerable than a helpless infant? Thus began God's mission to us in human form, who could eat and drink and be angry and weep. Pastor John read to us from Hebrews 4:15 “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”

God became weak and vulnerable so that we, who are weak and vulnerable, can approach him.  As we know about the glory of God, how else could He become approachable?

Onward in Hebrews 4:16 “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

This teaches us that if Jesus became vulnerable for us, we can become vulnerable in our relationships with each other. We can learn to focus not on “having my needs met”, but on “meeting your needs.”  It allows us to see Jesus as one who died for us to meet our need as condemned by imperfection to burn for our sin. It is the only way to destroy sin without destroying us.

Many or most of us are too young to know the depths of despair.

Yet.

But keep in mind the picture of the person feeling quite beat up by recent vicissitudes in life. In the black depths of despair, this person says “I  prayed and God did not answer my prayers.”

Well, the human Jesus prayed in the garden – sweated blood in fact - but still felt abandoned on the cross. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” as He stared into the black abyss of Hell. Through Jesus our intercessor, our father God knows our travails in this life, to an acute degree. Before we even know them, in fact!

The baby Jesus was God who dwelt among us, new arrived on earth.

As Pastor John said, “dwelt among us” means at its root “pitched a tent” or “tabernacled.”  A  tabernacle was a tent where God dwelt for worship by his itinerant faithful (the Israelites wandering in the desert). Now, in the Old Testament to encounter the glory of God was fatal; it was just too much for people to handle. Remember how Moses had to go up Mount Sinai by himself to be in God's glory to receive the Ten Commandments? So, God “concealed” His glory in the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle. Recall God's very detailed instructions to the Israelites for crafting the tabernacle in Exodus chapters 25 through 31?

By contrast, in the New Testament, the Apostle John writes (John 1:14) that “...we have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son…”   Jesus became flesh and dwelt among us so that we can have full access to God. Again, just the little bit of glory that God could show Moses was like sunlight hitting the moon. And even that was too much for Israelites at the base of the mountain. All this about approachability again reminds us, as Pastor John so necessarily emphasizes, that belief in the Christ – true Christianity – is not about religion but about relationships. As we believe so through His love we are adopted into His family, as co-heirs of the portion of the Son, to enjoy forever. When 33 years later the infant Jesus died on the cross in human maturity for our sins, the Father's unapproachability was cancelled, as the veil in the temple in Jerusalem that separated the glory of God from His people was torn from top to bottom. Salvation was never anything we could possibly achieve. But through the life and sacrifice of the vulnerable Jesus, it was something that we now receive.