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Happy New Year!
January 2022
Encounter with Christ
A
month ago, we celebrated the birth of Christ. I have often wondered what it would have been like the night an angel of the Lord approached the shepherds in the fields, telling them of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem. The Bible tells us that the glory of the Lord shone all around them and they were frightened! Though the shepherds probably weren’t fully aware of what was happening, the angel was hand-delivering a message telling them that the Christ, the promised Messiah, was finally born. Animal sacrifices were no longer necessary. Jesus would be the ultimate and perfect sacrifice to pay for man's sin once and for all through His death and resurrection. The shepherds were engulfed in God's glory. In an instant, they went from the black of the night to being surrounded by the glory of God! God wants to make Himself known to us, not so that we just know about Him, but
Encounter with Divinity! that we can know Him in a personal way. He created us by breathing life into man. His desire for His creation to have
a way that Moses was in awe and he hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. This revelation is an image of
a personal relationship with Him is revealed throughout the Bible. Even before the fall of man, God had a plan to restore nearness. Jesus, the incarnate God, was already in place to close the gap. But even before He sent His son to be the propitiation for our sins, He spoke with Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend (Exodus 33:9-11). In Exodus 3:1-4, we learn of Moses' encounter with God on Mount Horeb through a burning bush that took on the form of the Angel of the Lord. At the burning bush, God revealed His holiness in
God's glory and holiness. But it manifested the sheer majesty of God and revealed that His glory is like a consuming fire that radiates light. God's glory is described in different ways, but one thing that remains the same is the response of the people who see it. In the book of Exodus, we are told that when the Israelites saw God's glory, they would not even go near the mountain for fear. Ezekiel fell on his face and was unable to stand. This is the glory of God that pierces the darkness and surrounds the unsuspecting shepherds. After finding
Jesus in a manger, they return to the field, but they are not the same men who had gone out into the field earlier that night. They had seen and heard Jesus! When you think of it, our natural reaction is to fear divinity. But why is that? We see in Exodus 3 and 4 that Moses questioned God and made excuses for not obeying the call to be God’s man to return to carry out God's purpose of deliverance. God had already told Moses that he was the man for the job of delivering the Hebrew people out of Egypt, but Moses expressed his fear to answer the call. Why? Because of selfperceived inadequacies. Moses was afraid of not being accepted by his own people. He was afraid of rejection. Just like Moses, we look at ourselves through our own eyes. We don't see the person that God sees. We look at our resources and wonder how can we possibly do what God is asking? Who are we that we should go and do this
