He Came Himself

Christmas has just come and gone and many of us took a bit of time to reflect on the coming of Jesus into the world. Christmas is so common place and the focus is not so much on Jesus anymore as it is "giving." We all go to church and sing the songs and then that is all the thinking we do, now onto the fun stuff. Yet, I listened to a sermon by David Platt a bit ago and he really helped to bring the focus back onto why we celebrate Christmas and it's not about the trees, decorations, giving, getting, or gaining 10 lbs in straight cookies. Our focus should be on Jesus and who He is.

Emanuel, God with us.

Think about that. Jesus is God on earth in flesh and blood. Even more crazy is the idea that Jesus was 100% God and 100% man. He was able to fully identify with us as human beings and be infinitely valuable so as to be able to bear the sin of the entire world. God is with sinful, evil, corrupted man. Not because we are anything special but because God is ultimately about God and that leads to love and grace for us.

In the words of David Platt, "What do you do with that? It just knocks you off your feet."

The us is the most crazy thing about Christmas. God with us.


Later in the sermon Platt gave an illustration that I thought was great when someone asks the question, Why? Why would God come to be with sinful man?

The illustration is this: Guys, when you prepare to marry your wife, do you go yourself or do you send some other guy to ask her to marry you? Of course you go yourself because it is your relationship with her. God did not send this messenger or that messenger, this prophet or that prophet, because in matters of love one must go himself.

"God has come for a sin stained world for sin stained men and women."

"He lived the life we could not live and died the death we deserved to die and then rose from the grave conquering the enemy we could not conquer."

This is the magnitude of what we should celebrate in the birth of Jesus Christ.

"In matters of love one must go himself." -David Platt