He Is Wonderful – Christmas 2016
Yeshua Ha’Mashiach
For a child is born to us,
a son is given to us;
dominion will rest on his shoulders,
and he will be given the name
Pele-Yo’etz El Gibbor
Avi-‘Ad Sar-Shalom
[Wonder of a Counselor, Mighty God,
Father of Eternity, Prince of Peace],
in order to extend the dominion
and perpetuate the peace
of the throne and kingdom of David,
to secure it and sustain it
through justice and righteousness
henceforth and forever.
The zeal of ADONAI-Tzva’ot
will accomplish this.
Adonai sent a word to Ya’akov,
and it has fallen on Isra’el.
Isaiah 9:5-7 Complete Jewish Bible
He was remarkable in his Birth.
He was remarkable in his Life.
He was remarkable in his Death.
Remarkable in his Resurrection.
He Will be remarkable in his return for both the Living and the Dead.
Yeshua Ha Mashiach, we know him in the Anglicised form as Jesus, the Anointed one. The prophecy of Yesha’yahu, we know him as the prophet Esaias, or Isaiah, is full of the promises of God to and about the future of Israel and Jerusalem, in particular. The
Isaiah provides the most detailed prophecies about the Birth, Life, Ministry Death and the Resurrection of Jesus, of all of the prophets; both major and minor, in the Old Testament. If you’ve been anywhere near a traditional church for the vigil of both Christmas and Easter, you will have encountered, at the very least excerpts from “Messiah”, by G F Handel; in particular, we are considering the movement “For Unto Us a Child is Born”, today. Like so many parts of the bible, that have been set to music, our familiarity with the tune and even the lyric, has driven the neglect of what is actually contained within those verses. Reading is good, listening is good, writing is good, but study and meditation is even better when combined with each, if not all three, of these.
Why did Jesus come as a child? surely if God had simply stepped down from Heaven and taken charge of things we would have stood to attention and moved forwards quickly and completely to the resolution. Why could he not just wave his hand over all the sick and have them made well? Why, oh why did he have to die and if he did what is the resurrection all about? Surely, once raised from the dead it would have been ideal for him to present himself to the regular and legal authorities of the day and take over; surely it was a bit of a waste rising and then just ascending; leaving a rag-tag bag of uneducated men and women to carry out the mission with the ‘promise’ that he would one day return after all the work was done; isn’t that just grandstanding on a large scale?
If any, or even if all of these questions have gone through your mind at some stage, don’t be concerned. Everyone who is seriously seeking and genuinely looking for God has gone through these and even more questions over their journey. Yes, they are all good questions and I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not going to deal with all of them right now. For a start, you don’t have the time to do them justice, right away and equally, it would take more than a few hundred words to deal with them effectively. Suffice to say, I will deal with the most pressing right now. Why as a child?
The question of Why God came to us as a child is to do with the topic of Incarnation; God in human form. The story of humanity’s origin provides insight into why this was so essential.
Because a man was the reason for the Fall and thereby the cause of spiritual death upon ALL humanity, it was necessary for a man to rectify the imbalance. God couldn’t go back on his own word and just take back the Earth; God and his word are synonymous; to do so would have been self-annihilating. He’d given the full authority over all of the works of his hands to Adam and in bowing his knee to Satan Adam committed High treason; turning that authority over to Satan. That is why Paul writing about Satan refers to him as “the god of this world system”. He never refers to him as God; but, recognises the degree to which Adam’s authority extended. Have you never wondered why in Job chapter 1 we find Satan before the throne of God accusing God of unjustly protecting Job? Or, why we are told that the Accuser of the brethren is eventually able to be cast down from the throne-room of God?
God prophesies to Satan just exactly How his downfall will occour. But, he doesn’t give him the timeframe. It took millennia for the incarnation to be possible and the Old Testament reveals the process required to enable God to re-enter this world legitimately and legally, as a man. In Galatians, we are reminded that He lay aside ALL of the attributes and Qualities and Abilities that made him God to come in the LIKENESS (not as but, in the same image) of sinful flesh. Jesus, Yeshua Ha Meshiach, The anointed one and the anointing working together to fulfil ALL that the law required. It is also the reason that he is referred to as “The Last Adam” because he was just like Adam was before the Fall a man with a sin nature could not fulfil every aspect of the law; only a sinless man could do that and that is the reason the law was written the way it was; to expose the sin nature of humanity without God. Jesus operated AS A MAN ANOINTED WITH THE HOLY GHOST AND WITH POWER, NOT as God. That is why he is our model, once we are born again, of how we can operate, once anointed with Holy Spirit Living within us, to enable us and UPON us to share the Love of God with those, around us, without him.
As a sinless man, he died a sinner’s death, unjustly
As a Sinless man he was dragged into Hell, because he had taken upon himself (by choice) all of our sinfulness and the accumulation of all of our sin (past, present and future) thereby appearing to be sin in such a fashion that even the Father could not look upon him, his own sinless spirit was crushed deep within that crusty shell made up of the sin of humanity, so much so that even satan himself was unaware of the sinless manhe was having dragged into the very bowels of Hell itself, unjustly.
As a Sinless man he was raised from the dead and pronounced Just by the Father and Ascending to Heaven regained ALL the authority and power that he had layed aside and then gave it to Us to use in his stead until he comes again.
His return will also be spectacular.
But, until then, we are called to make disciples of All nations. We are commanded to lay hands on the Sick, to Cast out the Devil wherever we find him and to be a demonstration of the Kingdom and the power and the authority of God on this Earth in the same way Adam was supposed to, in the first place.
The difference is that NOW we have an advocate with the Father who, having the form of a man, has been tested in ALL WAYS as we are daily, without sinning. So that if we do sin we can go before the father, confess our sins and be fully restored once again.
Before the resurrection, from the dead and his ascension, we had sin on our minds all of the time.
Now, we are told to look to his rightstanding with God as our own, as a breastplate even; to maintain that rightstanding and consider ourselves dead to sin; not to beat ourselves up if we do sin, but to deal with it immediately and move on towards our goal and our high calling. That takes Faith. That takes faith that can only grow if it is challenged; each challenge should be seen as just that; not as an end, but as a chance to grow and develop.
That doesn’t mean we go out of our way to seek, or commit sin. But, we are to meet it head on and if we are unable to shake off the burden; then we confess our faults to one another and get the power of agreement in on the case.
This is the Link to the Audio Message from Christmas Eve, Saturday, December 24, 2016.
He Is Wonderful
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AUDIO: He Is Wonderful
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