This blog serves as an outreach for Pastor Randy Powell of the First Baptist Church of Franklin, PA. Feel free to ask questions or send me an e-mail at pastorpowell@hotmail.com
The Light seen by the Magi of the East is powerfully symbolic in Matthew's Gospel. This astronomical phenomenon brought them on a long journey to see the newly born King of the Jews. For us it serves as a reminder of our need, as disciples of Jesus, to also reflect his light in our world. Our task is to draw those in the darkness to the light of Christ that they too may be saved.
After having appeared to the priest Zechariah in the Temple in Jerusalem to foretell the coming of the great prophet John, God's plan shifts to a teenage girl in the backwater village of Nazareth. The angel Gabriel shares amazing and unprecedented news with Mary, setting up a moment of decision on her part. Will she run away like Jonah, hesitate like Moses or Esther, or will she embrace this responsibility of being the mother to the Messiah?
We all know how Mary responds, an incredible example for us to imitate of hearing the word of the Lord and obeying it.
Joseph of Nazareth was a fairly ordinary man up until the moment he found out that he fiancé Mary was pregnant. Instead of letting pride or anger rule him, Joseph chose to embrace mercy, he was willing to divorce her quietly.
Having demonstrated this strength of character, an angel of the Lord came to Joseph in a dream to tell him that God had chosen him for a monumental task: Adopt the Messiah.
Joseph may have been an ordinary carpenter, living in the unimportant village of Nazareth, but when he obeyed God's command by marrying Mary, Joseph became an example of faith and obedience that we would all do well to imitate.
One of the things that the First Fruits of Zion (HRM), Christian Fundamentalists (KJV Only zealots), and Latter-Day movements (JW, LDS, etc.) have in common is the belief that they alone have the Truth with respect to Jesus Christ.
But what are the implications of such a belief? What does it say about God if 99% of those who have ever put their hope in Jesus Christ were actually in fundamental error?
The answer is that in their view God is weak, a failure.
But that's not what the Word of God proclaims.
Where was Jesus before Bethlehem? For ordinary human beings like us that's a question that doesn't go anywhere, our lives began at a definite point-in-time. But for the Son of God, the long-awaited Messiah, that question opens the door to profound theological truths.
The Apostle John explains in the prologue to his Gospel that the Word (Jesus before the Incarnation) was with God in the beginning, that he is, in fact, God. Not only that, the Word (Jesus), had an equal hand in all of Creation.
That same person, the one who is God and is with God (the wonder of the Trinity allowing such phrases to be true), also came to Earth "in the flesh." The Word became a man, the man Jesus.
The wonders and depths of these truths are great, our response is simple: Worship Christ the newborn King.
