Sunday 25th December & Sunday 1st January
And they will call him Immanuel,
(which means ‘God with us’).
Matthew 1:23 (NIV)
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
In our Christmas services this year we have been exploring Reasons Jesus Came, focusing on some of the verses where either Jesus himself or one of the New Testament writers explicitly states why he came: we have seen that he came to save, to bring life, to die, to bring light, to bring freedom, and to bring us home.
Mind you, it is not only those verses which state it explicitly which tell us why Jesus came. We could, for example, have revisited the opening chapters of Matthew’s Gospel to find further answers to the question, ‘Why did Jesus come?’:
He is the Messiah (Matthew 1:1), who came as the son of Abraham to bless all nations (1:1), the son of David who will be king for ever (1:1), the one who will bring God’s people back from spiritual exile and so back to God (1:17), who will save his people from their sins (1:21) and be called ‘God with us’ (1:23).
He has come as the king of the Jews (2:2), who will be worshipped by the nations (2:11), who will be the embodiment of God’s people and lead them through another exodus (2:15) and yet live in obscurity for much of his life (2:23).
He has come to baptise with the Holy Spirit and fire (3:11), to gather his wheat into the barn and burn up the chaff (3:12). As the dearly loved Son of God and the faithful Servant of the Lord (3:17), he has come to resist and ultimately to defeat the devil, living on God’s word (4:4), worshipping him only (4:10) and refusing to test him (4:7); in him a light has dawned (4:16) and the kingdom of heaven has come near (4:17).
There is clearly far more than one way of explaining why Jesus came, and it is easy to miss out on the richness of who he is and what he has come to do. However, if there is one way to sum up why he came, perhaps it is to say that he came to be ‘God with us’ – Immanuel – because it is from this stunning reality, this greatest of all miracles, that all his other blessings flow.
Lord, may I never cease to wonder that you should ‘come down to earth from heaven, who is God and Lord of all.’ Amen.
Yours warmly, in Christ,
Chris Hobbs (Senior Minister)