Friday, December 14, 2012

God With Us

Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’”  Matthew 1:23

What an incredible time together on Tuesday night celebrating Christmas with Tim Zimmerman and the King’s Brass.  I loved every aspect of our time together, but most valued by me was meeting your friends and family members you introduced me to.  I know how it goes when we invite people to an event like this; we leverage our relational capitol in hopes that our friends would be drawn closer to Christ and experience His love.  I saw the glow in so many PCC’ers who took the risk, prayed for people, invested in people and invited them. You did it, they came and God was honored!  I have loved hearing from you the feedback of your guests.

At PCC, my prayer is that we would value Immanualism more than evangelism.  Immanualism is when we do life driven by the values of Jesus: He drew close, and came alongside people to tangibly love and interact with them.  Jesus did this so that we could not just read about, or even hear about His love; Jesus’ model was for us to see His love in action.

Jesus’ Immanualism came at a great cost.  God becoming flesh was a forever thing.  In other words, Jesus did not give up His human nature after His death and resurrection.  The Gospels clearly demonstrate that after He rose from the dead, He appeared scarred (John 20:25-27), had flesh and bones (Luke 24:39), and ate food (Luke 24:41-42).

When Jesus ascended into heaven, still in His resurrected human body, it was announced that He would return in the same way as He went into heaven (Acts 1:11).  In the book of Revelation, Jesus appears as the Son of man (Revelation 1:13), and His appearance is so majestic, John falls at His feet (Revelation 1:13-17). He promises one day to drink wine again with His disciples in His Father’s kingdom (Revelation 19:9).

Wayne Grudem summed it up best in his book, Systematic Theology: “All of these texts indicate that Jesus did not temporarily become man, but that his divine nature was permanently united to his human nature, and he lives forever not just as the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, but also as Jesus, the man who was born of Mary, and as Christ the messiah and Savior of his people. Jesus will remain fully God and fully man, yet one person forever.”

Causes you to wonder, doesn’t it? Causes you to worship, doesn’t it?  This weekend we will do just that as we continue in our Wonder of Christmas series looking at The Wonder of the Incarnation. We will look at the Apostle Paul’s Christmas Story in Galatians 4:4-7.

Also, please plan on joining us at noon for our year-end congregational meeting.  We will gather to pray, get updates on the ministries of PCC, and vote on three internal pastoral shifts (Carlos, Dain and Tabatha). I look forward to being together.

I love being your pastor!