AN INSURGENCY CHRISTMAS MESSAGE
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us
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A Magnificent Acapella Incarnation Song
What is Christmas all about?
The one true and living God created man from the dust of the earth, in His own image and likeness. Male and female He created them and called their name Adam (man)
In a single act of simple disobedience the first man, following the temptation and deception of His wife, as head and root of all who would descend from him, plunged the whole of mankind into a state of death and rebellion against their creator.
Dogs produce puppies and cats produce kittens. Sinners produce sinners. There is no escape and in his dead heart of sin and left to himself, man wouldn’t want one anyway.
The reason that eternal fiery damnation is the just sentence for sin against God is because of the God who it is against. A single bite from a piece of forbidden fruit is fatal. Not because of the fruit, but because God is perfectly righteous and holy. Even the slightest defiance demands death.
Thank God that the story doesn’t end there, which it could have and He would have been perfectly just in leaving all men descended from Adam to die in their sin.
However, before ever He said “LET THERE BE LIGHT” God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit had already decreed a purpose even for the sin of man.
God cannot simply overlook sinful rebellion and let it go. His perfect holy justice forbids it. Sin must be paid for. Just as in a functioning human society, imperfect though they all are, crime must be paid for. And the penalty must fit the crime.
When the crime is against God Himself, eternal death is the only fitting penalty. If any are to be saved, who can pay that penalty and redeem them? Seeing that all men are born sinfully dead in Adam, none of His descendants qualify. Even if a sinless man could be found, he could only pay for the sins of one other man.
God’s eternally begotten Son Himself entered humanity, conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of a young Jewish first century virgin woman named Mary. Jewish because of the Father’s even then ancient covenant with Abraham in which was promised that in Abraham’s seed would all the nations of the Earth be blessed. This was the fulfillment of that promise.
As proclaimed in the song above: “in the weakness of a baby, …God had come to Earth”
Jesus of Nazareth. Fully God and fully sinless man because Adam was not His father. He would live a life of sinless perfection, fully obeying all of God’s law and then offer Himself as the perfect blameless sacrifice in payment for the violation of that law for all who would trust Him for their salvation from sin and death.
Because He was fully man He could die in man’s place. Because He is God, that death could cover as many as the Father might please. Because He had no sin of His own, death could not hold Him.
His life FOR theirs so that His life could BE theirs.
Dear readers if this is not what Christmas is to you, then you’re doing it wrong.
A “Christian” is not somebody who agrees with a suficiently persuasive package of propositions. Somebody who agrees with the Bible. A Christian is somebody who has been supernaturally taised from death in Adam and born again as a new creature in Christ into the very family of the most high God. Again, His life FOR theirs so that His life can BE theirs.
The trouble with people is not what they do. The trouble is what they are. What they do is merely the natural outworking of what they are.
Regardless of what folks may or may not do, they cannot change what they are. Only the power of the Holy Spirit can do that and only in those who confess Jesus as Lord and believe in their heart that God raised Him from the dead.
Is that you?
If it is then you will necessarily be growing in love for what God loves and hatred for what God hates. It cannot be otherwise for God’s true children and worshipers, Jesus Christ’s true brethren of which He is the firstborn. We know what God loves and hates from His word, the Holy Bible. That’s also how we know everything in this message. A sure sign of where somebody is with the Lord is their attitude toward His Word.
If you know that’s not you, it can be. Just for the asking from a broken heart of faith that recognizes it’s own guilt and helplessness and the bloody cross of Jesus Christ as it’s only hope. His life FOR yours so that His life can BE yours. Full, free and forever.
If you don’t want that to be you and you persist in this life of self willed sinful rebellion against Him who made you, then you will pay for your own sin for all of eternity. Either in Christ or in yourself, ALL sin WILL be paid for. Whether you beleieve that or not is entirely irrelevant to anything beyond your own eternal destiny. By the time you are sure it is, it will be too late. It is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgement.
We read in these news articles day in and day out about all these competing human agendas. God’s agenda is the only one that ultimately matters and His Agenda is to glorify Himself by displaying all of His blinding perfections before His creation.
To exalt His own perfect holiness, judgment and justice in damning His enemies on one hand, and His own perfect mercy, grace and love in redeeming a people for Himself from among them on the other.
We pray in this holiday season that God in Christ will receive all the gloty that is rightfully due Him and His great name.
Beautiful. May there be many who weren't of the "choir" who need this today. And, oh! It is so lovely to hear in my ears - The Gospel!
Agreed