Some thought about the upcoming Christmas season - Part 1
Although it may just be November you need to begin to think on one of the most important times of the year. Christmas is more than just “a time” of year. It is truly a season that allows you to reflect on the birth and life of the most influential Person who ever walked on this earth.
There is neither book that He authored nor estate that He left. Yet more than 2,000 years later, millions of followers proclaim His life and work and worship His name.
He is the man Jesus Christ. ALL Man—yet ALL God.
His natural birth was “love’s” intervention into the human experience and condition. It was so radical that it infiltrated all aspects of human reality that even secular history
continues to be troubled by the birth of the One Man, our Messiah.
His birth has become a marker in time which God gave to divide human history into two significant parts; before Jesus Christ’s birth and after.
Only God could so fundamentally change the human experience to cause us to conclude that this Baby, born in a manger, was in fact God incarnate, Emmanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)
The Prophet Micah stated some 700 years before the birth of Jesus, the following in Micah 5:2 - “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to Me the One to be Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.''
- God in His Word, not only celebrated the birthplace of Jesus Christ but reiterated the idea that His Son was from everlasting.
- No doubt this prophesy along with the great star helped the wise men find this Messiah Jesus.
- Notice the fulfilment of this verse as recorded in Matt. 2:1 “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem”
The apostle John tells us of an important fact regarding this Christ child before His entrance on the human scene that first Christmas morning.
John 1:1-5 & 14 - “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 4In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. 14And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Gen. 1:26-27 - “Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 27So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
- The Bible tells us that Jesus was in the beginning as in Genesis 1:1. In verse 26 of that same chapter you see that Jesus was present when God made man.
- The “Let Us make man” phrase is indicative of the Triune God-Head’s creative power at work. Father, Son and Holy Spirit were in attendance at this vital occasion, working together to bring about the conception of humanity on the earth.
The Bible tells us that “All things were made through Him,” as recorded in the book of Hebrews because life is in Him.
- Hebrews 1:1-2 - “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;”
Jesus declared that He is the way, the truth and the life.
- John 14:6 - “Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
Jesus affirmed His divinity when he was praying to the Father as documented in the same gospel.
- John 17:5 - “And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.
Jesus stated it publicly before the people He was teaching.
- John 8:58 - “Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.''
- We know that “I AM” is one of the names of God.
The Apostle Peter acknowledged this fact in his first letter.
- 1 Pet. 1:20 - “He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you”
The writer of Hebrews gives us revelation about the fact that Jesus is like the Priest Melchizedek—>without Father and Mother and from everlasting.
- Heb. 7:1-3 - “For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, 2to whom
also Abraham gave a tenth part of all, first being translated "king of righteousness,'' and then also king of Salem, meaning "king of peace,'' 3without father, without
mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, remains a priest continually.”
The writer of Hebrews continues to emphasize that Jesus Christ is without beginning in the following verse.
- Heb 13:8 - Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Stay tuned for more about the upcoming Christmas season in the December Updater. In the meantime, continue to say the following aloud with conviction: “I’m believing to be at the Right Place, at the Right Time saying the Right Thing and the right thing to say is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”