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I never get tired of the Christmas story. The idea that the almighty, infinite God, the Creator of the universe, became a baby, a crying, smelly, helpless baby, is so unlike anything we could have ever imagined on our own. If you\u2019ve ever read the Old Testament, you\u2019ll realize how truly remarkable this is. Prior to Jesus, usually when someone encountered God it was a terrifying experience! How did He appear to Moses? As a dove? No, as a bush burning with fire that wasn\u2019t consumed! He appeared to Israel as a pillar of fire, and to Job as a powerful whirlwind. In Exodus 33, Moses asks to see God\u2019s face, and God tells him no because to see His glory would immediately kill him. The Old Testament is unmistakably clear: because of our sin we cannot directly encounter God and live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, what does this have to do with Jesus? In John 1:14, John describes his experience with Jesus saying, \u201cWe have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.\u201d This is remarkable, and anyone who understands the God of the Old Testament understands why. They looked upon the face of God, and it didn\u2019t kill them. In Christ, they saw what was before unseeable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the 2017 solar eclipse, if you wanted to look at it, you needed special glasses that would restrict the sun\u2019s radiance and brightness from burning your eyes.\u00a0In a similar way, God was made flesh in Christ Jesus so that we can look directly upon the wonderful glory of the almighty God. In Christ, we can finally see God, know God, and experience His love as we were originally created to. We can get close to the glory that would otherwise kill us. Through Christ we can come close to the living God, and Christmas is a reminder of this wonderful truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Old Testament, God sent prophets and angels, but in Christ He comes Himself to forever remove the barrier between His holiness and our sinfulness. He doesn\u2019t send us a messenger to tell us the way to get back to God, He comes Himself saying, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). The classic Bible verse John\u00a03:16\u00a0distills for us the meaning of Christmas, saying, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The story of Christmas is truly wonderful; it is the greatest story ever told, and the Christmas holiday reminds us of this with its numerous metaphors. The lights remind us of the one true light of the world, the gifts remind us that God gave us His only begotten Son whom He loved, and the tree reminds us that God\u2019s Son was given that He might die upon a tree so that we might live. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I urge you this Christmas season to reflect upon what Christmas is all about, and to ask yourself if you have accepted God\u2019s gift, if you have truly come to know the one true and holy God through His Son. If you haven\u2019t, the Bible is clear: you will face God\u2019s glory one way or the other. Either in the unfiltered, terrifying glory that we read of in the Old Testament, or through the baby born in Bethlehem who lovingly came into the darkness of our world to die so that we might live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I never get tired of the Christmas story. The idea that the almighty, infinite God, the Creator of the universe, became a baby, a crying, smelly, helpless baby, is so unlike anything we could have ever imagined on our own. If you\u2019ve ever read the Old Testament, you\u2019ll realize how truly remarkable this is. Prior […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3559,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-theology"],"yoast_head":"\n