Skip to main content

 

When Adam & Eve believed & acted on the satanic lie that they needed something more than God, from that moment on, sin became an active, destructive reality for all humanity. We lost our home, the place of belonging, the place that gave us definition, identity and meaning. Home was the Presence of God, central to our life and being. Eden was just a manifestation of God’s perfect provision, love and care.

Like Cain, who killed his brother, Abel, humanity has lived “east of Eden”, moving away, running from the Presence of God. Mankind was broken. Sin brought alienation, isolation and brokenness to all people. There was no way for us to find our way home. We were lost to ourselves, to one another and to true humanity.

In Luke chapter 15, Jesus tells the parable of the lost sheep. The Shepherd leaves the 99 sheep who are safe and goes off to the wilderness to find the lost one. Finding it, He carries the sheep on His shoulders and there is great rejoicing…the kind of rejoicing in Heaven when one sinner repents and turns to God to be rescued.

On this third Sunday in Advent, I am reminded that we could not find our way home, so Jesus came the first time to bring Home to us…God’s presence…Emmanuel, God with us. That is Who Jesus Christ is. He left Heaven where the “sheep” were already safe (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, the prophets and many more unnamed who had believed God’s promise) and came to earth to seek and to save us…the ones who were lost and without hope.

We couldn’t find our way home, so Jesus brought Home to us; to bring us to Himself. His first Advent, His Incarnation, was His rescue mission to all who would but believe Him and receive forgiveness and restored life…home…God’s indwelling Presence…the Holy Spirit.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

 THE FOLLY OF IDOLATRY Martin Luther said that the human heart is an idol factory. The truth is that we were created to know and live by the gracious rule of and in the Presence of God who created us. Our peace, our understanding of meaning and purpose can only be truly grounded in God who created us for that meaning and purpose. The rebellion of Adam and Eve, their decision to do the opposite of what God said would make for life, resulted in spiritual and ultimately physical death. They chose to believe they needed something more than what God had provided. Their doomed attempt to try and live life without reference to God as the ground of meaning and purpose did not make life fuller, but emptied it. They wanted to decide what was good and what was evil without God and the disintegration of human life was the consequence. Rather than living in the Presence of God and by the gracious rule of God all around them, they turned from wholeness to brokenness, from fulfilment to scarc...
Post a Comment
Read more
  WORKING AGAINST ALL HUMANITY 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16 “They fail to please God and WORK AGAINST ALL HUMANITY   as they try to keep us from preaching the Good News of salvation to the Gentiles. By doing this, they continue to pile up their sins.” WOW! What a startling statement! St. Paul is making it crystal clear that those who oppose and work to prevent the proclamation of the Gospel are actually “working against ALL HUMANITY.” Why would he write that? It is because the only means of the restoration, reclamation and salvation of humanity is what God has done for all people through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is the essence of the Gospel: Jesus Christ. To oppose and try to silence the presentation of the Gospel is to work against the reclamation of all humanity. Who would want to work against ALL humanity? Satan is the name by which he is known. He hates ALL humanity because every human being still bears the image of God, albeit that ima...
Post a Comment
Read more
  TIMING Years ago, I head an old preacher say, “The right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing.” That statement is an offense to the culture being worshipped world-wide today. There is a lust for the immediate, as a line from an old movie stated, “Immediate gratification takes too long!” We want faster internet, immediate responses to our texts, mobile orders at the ready when we walk into Starbucks. What we want, we demand to have NOW. We are masters at justifying ourselves. “Well, we’re engaged already and we’re going to get married anyway, so what’s wrong with us living together and being sexually intimate now?” God’s timing in human relationship is not arbitrary, it is protective and covering. Sad to say, even some who call themselves followers of Jesus Christ choose to justify their living in sexual sin now, because they promise that they will one day get married. The context where sexual intimacy finds its true meaning and purpose is in the covenant of marriage. ...
Post a Comment
Read more