2 Christmas -  Sunday

posted

Isaiah 61:10-62:3       Vindication and  Salvation

Psalm 147:13-21       Lord of Creation

Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-18       Spiritual Enlightenment   

John 1:1-18       Living Word

Let the people of God rejoice and exalt in the Lord our God. He has clothed us in salvation and righteousness, as a bride and bridegroom are adorned for a wedding. God has caused righteousness and praise to spring forth, like the earth causes shoots to spring forth and as a garden produces sprouts from seed.

For the sake of Zion (the people of God, the Church) and Jerusalem (the heavenly City of God), let us not keep silent, or rest until she is vindicated, and her salvation shine as a flaming torch in the spiritual darkness. All nations and peoples will see her vindication and salvation. The Lord will give us a new name and we will be a crown of beauty in the Lord’s hand.

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Let Jerusalem (the Church) and Zion (the people of God) praise our God! It is the Lord who protects, blesses, and gives us peace and prosperity. He rules Creation and the forces of nature; snow, ice, wind and rain are subject to his command. He declares his word to Jacob (the inheritor of the promise), his statutes and ordinances to Israel (the people of God). He has not had such a close relationship with any other nation; they don’t know or acknowledge his Word.

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Let us praise God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have received every spiritual blessing in Heaven, “even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy (consecrated to God’s service) and blameless" (Ephesians 1:4) in God’s judgment. In love, by God’s will, he intended us to be his sons and daughters through Jesus Christ according to his eternal purpose, that his glorious grace (unmerited favor), freely bestowed upon us through his beloved Son, would be praised.

Because Paul had heard of the Ephesians’ faith in Jesus and love for the saints (believers), he constantly gave thanks to God and prayed that God would give them “a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him (the Lord)” (Ephesians 1:17; compare Isaiah 11:2), that they might have their spiritual eyes enlightened, so that they might know the hope to which they have been called, the riches of their inheritance, which they share with the saints, and the immeasurably great power of his working within believers, which he accomplished in raising Jesus from the dead to eternal life, dominion, authority, and power, far above any other, and gave him a name above every other name in this age and in the eternal age that is coming.

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At the beginning of Creation was the Word, the active, creative, eternal Word of God. The Word was with God in unity, and was God (shared his divine nature; was fully God). He existed in the beginning with God. Everything in Creation was made through him and nothing in creation was made without him. In him was (real, eternal) life “and that life was the light of men” (John 1:4b). “The light (of righteousness; eternal life) shines in the (spiritual) darkness, and the darkness (evil) has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

John (the Baptizer) was a man sent by God to testify to that light, so that all might believe in the light through John’s testimony. John was not the light but came to point people to the light.

The true light of spiritual enlightenment was coming into the world. He came into the world which had been created through him, but the world didn’t recognize him. He came to Israel, his own people, and his own home (Nazareth), but his own people did not welcome and accept him (Luke 4:16-30). “But to all who received him and believed in his name (his person and character) he gave the *power* to become children of God” (John 1:12), born (spiritually) by the will of God; not by human will or by flesh and blood.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only (begotten) Son from the Father” (John 1:14). John (the Baptizer) testified that this was he who followed John in chronological appearance, but ranked before him in power, authority and existence. Through him we have received abundant grace (unmerited favor; a free gift) beyond measure. Moses was the mediator of the Old Covenant of Law; but grace and (divine, eternal) truth come through Jesus (John 14:6; 1 Corinthians 1:17-25; 2:1-8). No one can see God, but God’s only Son, Jesus, who is in complete unity and fellowship with God, has made him known.

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The disciples of Jesus Christ are accounted as righteous and blameless in God’s Judgment, not by our own merits, but by faith (obedient trust) in Jesus Christ. The righteousness and sinlessness of Jesus are attributed to us through faith. The Church, the people of God, is the bride of Christ.

Believers are urged to proclaim the Gospel to a world lost and dying in spiritual darkness, until believers’ vindication and salvation are revealed to all people on the Day of Judgment at the Second Coming (Second Advent) of Jesus Christ. We are to be the “light of the world” (Matthew 5:14-16), the flaming torch of spiritual, eternal truth in the spiritual darkness of this world.

The meaning and purpose of life in this temporal world is to seek and find God, our Creator (Acts 17:26-27), and this is only possible through Jesus Christ (John 14:6). God was close to Israel because Abraham and his descendants heard, trusted and obeyed God’s Word.

God has always intended, from the very beginning of Creation, to establish an eternal kingdom of his people who willingly trust and obey God. This lifetime is our only opportunity to seek and find God (Acts 17:26-27) and to learn to trust and obey God’s Word.

God has designed Creation from the very beginning with the “Messiah,” God’s promised Savior and eternal King, designed into the structure of Creation. God designed Creation with the possibility of sin (disobedience of God’s Word) so that we could truly have free choice of whether or not to trust and obey God. But God will not tolerate rebellion and disobedience forever.

God has designed this Creation so that no one is worthy, by his own merits, to deserve salvation from God’s condemnation, and worthy of eternal life, so that God can give salvation and eternal life as a free gift (unmerited favor) to those who trust and obey God’s Word, fulfilled, embodied and exemplified in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Believers of the Gospel will begin to trust and obey Jesus’ teachings, and as they do so, they will receive the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit, which only Jesus gives (John 1:31-34), only to his disciples who trust and obey Jesus (John 14:15-17). Through the indwelling Holy Spirit, their “spiritual eyes” will be enlightened (Luke 24:45) by divine, eternal truth (John 14:25-26). They will experience the “first-fruits,” the “security-deposit” on eternal life, through the indwelling Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the seal and guarantee that one is in Christ and has eternal life (2 Corinthians 1:22; Ephesians 1:13-14; Romans 8:9b, 11, 15-16). They will experience the power of the Holy Spirit, the power which raised Jesus from physical death to eternal life, working in and through them.

Jesus is the fulfillment, embodiment, and exemplification of God’s Word, lived out in this world in human flesh. (John 1:1-3, 14). Jesus has been God’s one and only plan for the forgiveness of our sin, our salvation from God’s eternal condemnation and destruction of us in Hell, and our restoration to fellowship and eternal life with God in his eternal kingdom. Acts 4:12; John 14:6; see God’s Plan of salvation, sidebar, top right).

John the Baptizer was the last of the Old Testament prophets (spokesmen of God’s Word) and the first of the New Testament prophets. He was obedient to the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9) and he called people to repentance and pointed them to Christ.

Jesus is the central point of Creation! Jesus is the center of history! By the time of his coming the people of God had fallen away until Jesus was the last faithful one of Israel, the people of God, and the first of the New Israel, the Church, the New People of God. Many of his own people rejected Jesus, but those who receive him, who believe that he is the promised Savior, the Messiah, the only begotten Son of God, he gives the *power* (the promise and the ability) to become the (spiritual, adopted) children of God, not by human will, not by physical biology, but by the will and purpose of God.  It is up to us to act in obedient trust, with the power he gives, in order to receive the promise.

Jesus is the mediator of the New Covenant with God; the New Covenant of Grace (unmerited favor) through faith (obedient trust) in Jesus. Jesus is the only, divine truth, and the only way to restoration to fellowship with God our Father (Creator) and to eternal life (John 14:6).

Jesus has promised that he will reveal himself and God the Father to those who trust and obey Jesus (John 14:21, 23). No one can know or come to God except through Jesus (John 14:6; Matthew 11:27).