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

 HIS POWER...HIS PROMISE Helping people walk in the Spirit the devotional below is seminal! The devotion below is today from Oswald Chambers. I makes me think of some I have known that have assumed that the Lord doesn’t want them empowered by the Holy Spirit or that He won’t manifest Himself in them because they have reasoned otherwise. Given ministry opportunities to have the Holy Spirit confirm the Word of God with demonstration of the Holy Spirit and power, they rely on how they feel, their experience thus far and not on the reality that the will of God in mission and ministry is either done in the Holy Spirit’s Power or not at all. Our capacity to do what Jesus does has nothing to do with our imagined capacity, but upon the indwelling power of God through is. Now to Him who is able to do far above and beyond what we could ever imagine or think, by His power at work in us now, to Him be glory…   Matthew 25:14-30 Jesus told the parable of the bags of gold as a warning ...
Post a Comment
Read more
HEARING MUST BE UNITED TO BELIEVING Hebrews 3:16-19 “And who was it who rebelled against God, even though they heard His voice? Wasn’t it the people Moses led out of Egypt? And who made God angry for forty years? Wasn’t it the people who sinned, whose corpses lay in the wilderness? And to whom was God speaking when He took an oath that they would never enter His rest? Wasn’t it the people who disobeyed Him? So, we see that because of their unbelief they were not able to enter His rest.” I have heard people say, “If I heard the voice of God. I would not rebel; I’d believe.” Others have said, “If I saw a miracle, I’d believe.” We really do not have a grip on the capacity for unbelief that is resident in the human heart and mind. The children of Israel saw God decimate the false gods of Egypt in the plagues He sent through Moses. The Lord God who had called Abraham made sure that Abraham’s children saw that the gods and religious culture surrounding them for 400 years were not gods at all...
Post a Comment
Read more
 HE IS RISEN! IT IS FINISHED! After the Israelites had passed through the Red Sea by God opening the way for them to be saved, the whole of Pharoah's army, his horsemen and chariots pursued God's people into the opened way. Once they were all in, the waters flowed back into their place with suddenness and fury. Not one of the enemies survived. All perished in those waters. When Jesus Christ hung on the cross, all that sin contained, the full measure of the rebellion of mankind for all time, all the wickedness that was ever in human hearts were absorbed into the Lamb of God as He died our death, received our just judgement from God for all time, taking all that sin and death contained. In Him, sin and death died once and for all. They were overwhelmed, covered and drowned in the sea of His precious blood, poured out for the sin of the whole world. Not one enemy remained alive, all were stripped of their power to hold us in slavery to sin any longer. All their weapons were confis...
Post a Comment
Read more