December 22, 2006

MEDITATING ON CHRISTMAS FROM THE FOOT OF MT. SINAI

Various Scriptures

I have been thinking about Christmas a great deal over the past two weeks. That is not really surprising, since it is almost Christmas, and I knew I needed to prepare a Christmas message for today’s service. But somehow this year has been different from other years. You see, I’ve been thinking about Christmas from a different point of view, a different perspective. I have been meditating on Christmas from the foot of Mt. Sinai.

The sermon I preached two weeks ago on Exodus 19 has continued to echo and reverberate in my heart and mind and that has formed the backdrop, the context, the frame of reference for my thoughts on Christmas. That scene has remained vividly in my mind: The nation of Israel standing in awe at the foot of the mountain as the thunder roared and the lightening flashed and the mountain shook and smoked and the sound of the trumpet blast grew louder and louder. And God came down in fire to the top of the mountain. The God of Sinai: majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, tender in love. What a God!

It is against that backdrop that I’ve been thinking about Christmas; a young Jewish virgin, her fiancé, a carpenter with work-roughened hands, a newborn baby lying on a simple bed of hay in a manger, an audience of shepherds from the nearby hills.

Now this is what I’ve been trying to soak in, to comprehend, to wrap my head around. Are you ready for this? The clear declaration of Scripture is this: The God of Sinai is the Babe of Bethlehem. Or we can say it the other way round: The Babe of Bethlehem is the God of Sinai. That little baby we sing about, “asleep on the hay” is the God of Sinai in human flesh. Friends, if we miss this truth, we have missed not only the true meaning of Christmas. We have missed the true meaning of the Bible, of human history and of life itself.

First of all, is the Scripture really so clear that we can make that connection? I think it is. Let us consider first a prophetic Scripture from Isaiah 7:14: Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. The name Immanuel means, literally “im” – “with”, “manu” – “us”, “el” – “God”.  We are told in the New Testament that this prophecy was fulfilled in the birth of Jesus. In Matthew 1:22-23, All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet, “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and they will call him Immanuel” – which means, “God with us.”

But what does this phrase mean? “God with us.” Isn’t God always with us? After all, God is omnipresent! But this is something more. Much more. The Apostle John says it this way in John 1:14: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. Do you remember in the Exodus account that God spoke, and his voice was so terrifying the Israelites pleaded for him to stop speaking? Now this Word has become flesh and pitched his tent among us.

The writer of Hebrews adds this: The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being… (Hebrews 1:3)

The Apostle Paul states confidently, He is the image of the invisible God… (Colossians 1:15) and …in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form…(Colossians 2:9)

God in a body, God in human flesh, God (all of God!!!) wrapped up in a baby! The God of Sinai is the Babe of Bethlehem! The Babe of Bethlehem is the God of Sinai!

I don’t know about you, but that blows me away! I stand at the foot of Mt. Sinai and I can scarcely take it in. How do we reconcile the blast of the trumpet from the heights of Sinai with the vulnerable cry of the baby in the manger? Yet it is in making that link that we discover not only the magic of Christmas but the essence and the uniqueness of the Christian faith.

As I meditated on this reality, it struck me very forcibly that the truths we learned about God at the foot of Mt. Sinai are also apparent in the Christmas story. Let us retrace our steps and see the links.

First, we learned at the foot of Mt. Sinai that the God of Sinai is majestic in holiness. He ordered the Israelites to wash their clothes in preparation for his coming. Then he commanded Moses to set boundary lines around the mountain, so that there could be no mixing of that which is unholy with that which is holy.

As I thought about the Christmas story with that theme in mind it struck me how carefully God protected his holiness as he slipped into human flesh. Turn with me to the account in Luke 1. He sent an angel to a young Jewish virgin to tell her that she would conceive and bear a child who would be the Messiah. This girl asked a very obvious question in Luke 1:34: “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”  Pay close attention to the angel’s answer in verse 35: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.

Do you see the emphasis on the holiness of God? Do you see how carefully God worked to ensure that there would be no breach of that holiness? He even sent an angel to Joseph, Mary’s fiancé, to explain it all to him, so that he would take Mary as his wife to give her protection from society’s wagging tongues, and yet keep her a virgin until after the special child was born. This is why the doctrine of the virgin birth is so important to us as Christians. (Some modern scholars may tell us that this doesn’t matter, but it does!) This is God, majestic in holiness, maintaining his holiness while still becoming human.

The emphasis on the righteousness and holiness of Jesus continues beyond his conception and birth. In his first epistle, John the Apostle makes this summary of the life and message of Jesus after spending three years in his presence. In I John 1:5: This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. That is a wonderful, descriptive way to declare the holiness of God. That is John’s summary of the message of Jesus’ earthly message and ministry. And in I John 2:1, he refers to Jesus as Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.

The God of Sinai is the Babe of Bethlehem and he is majestic in holiness. He came down, put on flesh and dwelt among us without sacrificing or compromising one iota of his holiness. He was tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin. (Hebrews 4:15)

What about the next truth we discovered at the foot of Mt. Sinai? The God of Sinai is awesome in glory.

Let me say very quickly that here we do detect an immediate difference. It is this stark contrast between the thunder and lightning of Sinai and the quiet, humble birth of this baby that makes it so difficult for us to comprehend the link. But the Bible does explain this contrast. In Philippians 2:6-7, we read: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing…The literal words there in the original say that he emptied himself. Theologians have long debated what exactly it was that Christ emptied himself of. Most would agree that at the very least he emptied himself of the outward manifestation of his glory.

I know that is true, and so apparent in the humble circumstances of Jesus’ birth. But on another level, as I read the Christmas story, it is also apparent to me that the glory is just below the surface, just looking for an opportunity to break forth.

 Did you ever watch a young child who has been asked to keep an exciting secret?  He knows he isn’t supposed to say anything – but it’s written all over his face. The big grins, the sparkling eyes, the almost unbearable compulsion to tell someone, anyone the exciting news he bears. That’s the impression I get from the whole Christmas story. The glory is being concealed, but it’s like that secret that just has to come out. And the glory  does break forth in certain brief flashes in the account of his birth. Nameless shepherds are watching their flocks in the field, and an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified. Does that remind you of Sinai? It does me. And after the angel delivered his message, what happened? Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying…What? “Glory to God in the highest…

It is as though a cloud has come across the bright sun of God’s glory, but the glory is there just waiting for an opportunity to burst forth. And it does before an audience of simple shepherds on the hillside. It breaks forth at other times during Jesus’ earthly life. Remember when Jesus went up on the mountain, and took Peter, James and John with him. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. The word “transfigured” means that he was changed from the inside out so that what he actually was on the inside came through on the outside. For that brief moment, the cloud moved and his glory became visible.

He emptied himself of the outward manifestation of his glory. But it was only for a temporary time period. In Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John 17, he prayed this in verse 5: I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

Literally, “I have finished my task here on earth. Now restore the glory.”

The entire earthly ministry of Jesus is about the glory of God. I read a few minutes ago from Philippians 2 which talked of Jesus “emptying himself” when he became a man. And that emptying was not complete at his humble birth. It continued through his life of service: …taking the very nature of servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross. But watch where all this is headed! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Awesome in glory! Yes, for a time that glory was veiled, but only for a time until he finished his earthly mission. Then he was restored to glory. The God of Sinai is the Babe of Bethlehem. The Babe of Bethlehem is the God of Sinai. And he is awesome in glory!! And when you and I see him, it will not be as a baby. It will be as the Lord of glory, and we will bow in worship at his feet.

We learned a third truth about God at the foot of Mt. Sinai. We learned that the God of Sinai is tender in love. Sadly, many people miss that reality in Exodus 19. There is a common tendency to think of the God of Sinai as an angry God, a God of harsh judgment. Yes, the God of Sinai is scary. He is not safe! He is not a tame or domesticated God. But he is also a God who is tender in love. Those who think of him only as harsh and angry have missed the whole significance of Exodus 19. The whole message of that chapter is that God came down to enter into a covenant with his people; To declare to the world that he was their God and that they were his special people, his treasured possession.

It is at this point that the Christmas story really comes into its own; in the revelations of the God of Sinai, the God of the Bible as a God of love. Yes, at Sinai God was revealing his love and commitment to his people. But at Bethlehem he did it in a different way.

I am reminded of the story of a little girl who was afraid of the dark. Her mother had tucked her into bed, but she kept coming out, complaining of all the awful, scary things under the bed that were frightening her. Again and again, her mother gently took her back to bed and tucked her in. Each time she reassured her little daughter that she was not alone – that God was with her. As the mother tried to slip away for the umpteenth time,  the little girl wailed, “Mom, I know God is with me. But I want someone with skin on!”

At Sinai, God came down to the top of the mountain. In Bethlehem, God came down to the bottom of the mountain and stood with his people. He put on skin! He became one of us! The writer of Hebrews says this in Hebrews 2:14: Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity…He then adds in Hebrews 2:17: …he had to be made like his brothers in every way…

His act of identifying with us, becoming one of us, was an act of incredible love and devotion. Lisbe Visser sang it so beautifully in her song last week: Love was when God became a man, locked in time and space without rank or place. Love was God born of Jewish kin, just a carpenter with some fishermen.

Tender in love! And oh, how the love of God shone through in the simple details of that humble birth! And how the love of God continued to shine through the life of that Jewish carpenter! When he reached out and laid his hand on the shriveled, ulcerated flesh of the leper - that was the God of Sinai, tender in love. When he opened his arms and welcomed the children to climb into his lap - that was the God of Sinai, tender in love. When he sat by the well in Samaria and struck up a conversation with a woman who was an outcast from her society for her immoral lifestyle, and he offered her living water - that was the God of Sinai, tender in love.

I could go on and on. And of course it doesn’t end there, does it? In the ultimate expression of love, Jesus, God in the flesh, went to the cross. As the song continues, Love was God nailed to bleed and die, to reach and love one such as I. The God of Sinai is the Babe of Bethlehem. That means that the God of Sinai is the Christ of Calvary. God, nailed to bleed and die, to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Whether we stand at the foot of Mt. Sinai, or beside the manger, or at the foot of the cross, this is the same God, who changes not! He always acts in total and utter harmony with his character. Majestic in holiness! Awesome in glory! Tender in love! What a God!

Here is my question for you this Christmas. Have you met this God? Do you know him? After the shepherds departed from seeing the baby on that first Christmas, the gospel writer tells us that Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.

It can take some time to figure it all out. There is a time for treasuring these things up and pondering them. If that is where you are, I trust that you will take the time to ponder and think and ask questions. But there is also a time to go beyond pondering to faith, to personal commitment to this God who became a man and died to reach sinners like you and like me. What better time to do that than at Christmas?