2-28-2023

Good Morning All,

      John 1:12; “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,” 

    Why did Jesus come to earth?  Why did he leave his holy temple in heaven to come down to live with lowly man?  God could have just snapped his fingers and everything would have been changed, so why did he come to earth?

     The easiest answer is that he came to die for our sins.  This is the correct answer, but it leaves us hanging a little.  Jesus’ coming to earth in human form is part of the great story of the Bible.  Many people see the Bible as a collection of stories, some connected some not; some important some not; some of great value and some not.  The Bible is really one long narrative telling us what God is doing in our lives.

     Whenever the media covers a major news event, I only watch about 15 minutes of the first news coverage.  They present the facts, as they know them, and then just keep repeating them over and over.  They will use different reporters; those reporters will be in a studio or at the scene but we always get the same few snippets of information.  I like to wait so that they can tell it to me in a longer story so that I can begin to process what they are telling me is going on.  Here the news people will sift through the data and relay a narrative that follows a line of thought to make a coherent story.

     When we read the Bible, we can read it and look for different themes or threads of the story to follow.  One of those themes is the theme of restoration.  We can read from the fall of man into sin in Genesis 3 about how God is going to restore man and his creation.  Adam and Eve have to leave the Garden of Eden; they have to work hard, suffer pain and loss, live chaotic lives and then die.  This is not how God designed it but it is how man chose to go.  The introduction of sin causes all our problems. 

      In order to fix this, God chooses to restore man to his rightful existence.  God sent Jesus in order to restore us to be children of God.  Think of who Adam and Eve were, who were their parents?  They had no human parents; they were children of God living in the perfect Garden in holy communion and companionship with God.  We were to participate, in an active way, with God in the caring for the created world.  Yet when we sinned, we broke this relationship, we broke away from God.

     Jesus came so that we can experience his life and death and resurrection.  These are real events which give witness to God’s incredible mercy and his unbelievable grace.  Jesus came to bring you back into the family of God.  You are declared a child of God and we are given a promise to cling to and then we are given the faith to cling to it.  This faith doesn’t remove our struggles but it does give us hope.  A hope that tells us that this struggle we call life isn’t all there is to the story. 

     All that the story is about is our restoration, our becoming children of God in order to receive the gift of eternal life.  So we wait for the promise to be perfected or completed at which time our perfection will be restored and we can walk with God and converse with God without pain or sorrow.  Why did Jesus come to earth?  He did so in order that you might have eternal life; the eternal life with him in his holy kingdom.

Dear Father in heaven, through your mercy you have made us your children.  We rejoice in the certainty of this gift.  Help us to see that your will for us is alive and active and moves us every day to live according to your will and purposes for us.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen!

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret