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Merry Christmas, God with Us!

By apologia on December 16th, 2007 at 05:05pm ()

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.

We had communion at church this morning and, being in the Christmas spirit, it had a profound effect on me. The long and short of it is that Jesus was born to die-- just like the rest of us. We seem to lose that in the Christmas season. Jesus is the baby, away in a manger, and He rests there eternally in the Christmas mindset for some people, just like He does in the mind of Ricky Bobby the racecar driver.

But He went on to teach us, to walk willingly to His crucifixion and to rise again and take seat at the Father's right side as our mediator. He became our perfect high priest as Hebrews 8 tells us, and the only way to do that was to be born like us and die like us.

He was born to die.

Isaiah, who described His brutal death in Isaiah 53, called Him Immanuel-- God with us. In those swaddling clothes some 2000 years ago, God came among us as He never had before. He was born to live as we do. He was born to die as we do (and will). And He was born to arise as we can in Him.

And as I took communion this morning, as I drank of the fruit of the vine in symbol of His blood, His name rang in my ears. God with us. I realized what an appropriate symbol it is. The grape is crushed to give us its life from its juices. God came among us to be crushed and, only in that way, to give us His life.

Merry Christmas to you. I pray Immanuel in your life, and that you partake of His.

Isaiah 53
WHO has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him.

He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.

But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.

He was taken from prison and from judgment,
And who will declare His generation?
For He was cut off from the land of the living;
For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.

And they made His grave with the wicked--
But with the rich at His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was any deceit in His mouth.

Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.

He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,

Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death,
And He was numbered with the transgressors,
And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.

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