God came down!

  “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.” (Philippians 2:5-7)

    At this time of the year we celebrate the birth of Jesus and how God, in the form of His Son, Jesus Christ, left Heaven and was born of a virgin in stable in Bethlehem of Judea over 2000 years ago. Have you ever stopped to think of the magnitude of what God was willing to do for you and me? The prophet Isaiah prophesized 700 years before He was born that: “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14) Immanuel means “God with us”. That is what God did! He came down and lived among us for thirty-three years and then gave “His life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:28b)

    Have you ever stopped to think about what it meant for Jesus to leave His place in heaven and to come down to earth to live as a human being in a poor and “foreign” land? My wife, Miriam, and I have spent some time in third world countries on various short term and one long term mission trip. One trip comes to mind immediately though, when I think of the shock one receives when going out of our native “industrialized” country to a completely different, more impoverished country.

  

    In 2000, Miriam and I and one other man went to support a pastor in Paramakudi, India. We were to preach at some outdoor gatherings (no longer legal in India), and teach some local pastors. We arrived in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) and had to stay overnight in a hotel before continuing our travel to Madurai by domestic airline and then by vehicle to Paramakudi. We landed at midnight in heat and the humidity and took a vehicle through the winding and dirty streets of Mumbai to get to the hotel. The multitude of people and traffic, even at that hour, was overwhelming. Homeless thousands slept on the sidewalks in makeshift shelters of cardboard and cloth and people were even cooking and sleeping next to night workers welding steel at a construction site. There were stray dogs, pigs, and cows roaming everywhere and there were open plots of land right next to houses with garbage piled high. (There is no garbage service.) There were open sewers that lent their smell the to the atmosphere and the incense being burned at Hindu shines that had the most demonic looking figures of gods that you can imagine.

     We arrived at the hotel, which was nice by Indian standards, but was a little different from the U.S. The shower was a bucket with a cup in it next to the facet. The water was cold. The toilet was a hole in the ground with two footprints marks where you would put your feet to squat over the hole and the room looked as though it had not been dusted, nor been cleaned well, in a while.

   As we lay in the bed I confess that I fell asleep fairly fast. Miriam could not. But it was not the lack of cleanliness, nor the poverty that she had witnessed that hit her hard. It was the spiritual darkness she could feel in that country that is shrouded in darkness and where the Hindu religion permeates every aspect of the country with its caste system and its stifling rules on what one can do or be in life.

    As she lay on the bed unable to sleep and feeling the oppression of her spirit she heard the Holy Spirit speak to her heart. He said: “You are feeling just a small part of what I felt when I left heaven to come down and live on the earth.” Miriam started to cry and she felt a heartfelt need to pray and to thank Jesus for all that He was willing to do for her in leaving His home in heaven and becoming a mere mortal so that He could die on a cross for our sins and be our High Priest!

   “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.”(Hebrews 4:15)

  So how about you? Are you thankful for what God, though His Son, Jesus Christ, was willing to do for your sake? If you are, thank Him today! Oh yeah, don’t forget to tell someone else that doesn’t know Jesus about what He has done for you also!

PRAY

1.     Thank you Lord Jesus for coming down to live among us and live a sinless life so that You could be our Savior.

2.     Help me to remember Your compassion for Your lost sheep like me, and that You allowed Yourself to be born in a humble stable in Bethlehem so that You could be our sinless and compassionate High Priest.

3.     Lord help me to remember Your love for me throughout the coming year so that You will be lifted up and others will know You as their Savior as I do today.