A Very Matthew Christmasنموونە

Dear believer,

Greetings in the name of our Lord, the name that is above every other name in heaven and on earth.

At Christmas we celebrate Christ’s birth, so I want to spend a moment with you today to think about Christ’s baptism. Because baptism is a symbol of new life in God, a sort of re-birth.

Go back with me in time to the moment when Jesus was first revealed, publicly, as the Son of God. It wasn’t the private moment at the manger. It wasn’t at the wedding feast at Cana. The first time the heavens boomed like thunder with the powerful voice of God was at Christ’s baptism when the Father declared: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

You have the luxury of hindsight and the printed Gospels, so you know that Jesus was born into the world as God’s Son. But no one around him, except for a few, understood this.

It wasn’t until the voice of love from Heaven thundered this truth that many of us started to understand.

People in the crowds smelled dust and body odor. They saw a man of about thirty, smiling, handsome, step into the water like a thousand other men like him to be baptized by John the Baptist.

Little did they know they were witnessing history and all righteousness being fulfilled as the prophet lowered the carpenter under the water. When he reappeared from below the water’s surface, there was a sudden boom of thunder, but not a drop of rain.

It echoed across the riverside. But it wasn’t thunder. It was a voice! And not just any voice: it was the voice of God. And this was after 400 years of silence from God.

400 years of doubt and sorrow and moral failure. 400 years of spiritual agony and darkness. 400 years of confusion and faith and longing. 400 years of loneliness.

Imagine what it would have been like to hear the voice of God that day! Now imagine: what was that moment like for Jesus?

How he must have longed for that voice in all his days as he grew up, ever since he entered earth and was born in that manger. As he lived in boyish form–God as flesh, God going through puberty, God on earth, with us.

We know the Spirit was with Jesus as he grew in wisdom and stature. We know that God’s favor was upon him. But had it ever fallen on him like this before?

Imagine Jesus, who in obedience and out of love left the Godhead, excused himself from that intimacy, so he might be made incarnate, conceived in the womb of a virgin, enter human flesh on the very world he spoke into existence.

I don’t think our finite minds can understand Jesus’ longing for the Father, his longing for the Spirit in his body of flesh. What, then, would it have meant to the heart of our Lord for him to see the Spirit descend on him in the form of a dove that day, and to hear that voice, the eternal voice?

Everything Jesus experienced of God was new to him, through a now-human filter, including hearing God’s thunderous voice of love.

I pray that as you prepare your hearts for Christmas, you will hear that voice of power declaring his love for Jesus. I pray that you will hear that thunderous voice proclaiming His love for you.

Blessings in the name of our Lord,

Your friend, Matthew

Light the candle of Advent

As we prepare our hearts for Christmas by lighting the candle today, may God’s great love for his people echo in our hearts.