The arrival of the Lord Jesus into the world was a miraculous event. Every year we celebrate and memorialize Christ’s birth to a peasant girl and her husband, Mary and Joseph. We thrill at the appearance of angel messengers who are sent by God the Father to herald the descent to earth of His only begotten Son. How angels visited the lowly shepherds in the fields near Bethlehem, telling them that “today, in the city of David, a Savior is born to you, who is Christ the Lord.”
Jesus Himself is truly a “Miracle Man.” For never before or since has the Creator of heaven and earth taken upon Himself a second nature – a human nature, in order to bodily invade our world so that He might “seek and save that which was lost.” Only a God-Man could bridge the gap between lost and sinful humanity, and the holy God who had created them to be His own holy image-bearers. Only the God-Man could live an earthly life totally free from sin, and only He could bear our sins to the cross: the judgment tree of both wicked man…and our holy God.
The night before our Lord Jesus was betrayed by one of His closest companions, He had a final meal with his Twelve Apostles, one of whom would betray Him. And He told these close, close friends that He was just about to leave them. He was about to go away, and where He was going, none of them could follow. They were all troubled by this, and they begged Him to tell them where He was going and why they couldn’t come. Jesus wasn’t just talking about his suffering that lay ahead, where He would be handed over to the Romans by His own people to be mistreated and mocked and beaten and pierced and crucified. No, Jesus told them that His Father was about to take His Son back out of this sinful world, raise Him up into Heaven, and glorify Him.
When our Savior was on the cross, dying in our place – in the place of all His people the Father chose for Him before the world began – after Jesus endured all the humiliation of the Jews and the Gentiles, and all the wrath against sin that the Father heaped upon Him, He cried out, “It is finished!” The saving work the Son of God was sent here to perform was finally over. Christ Jesus was victorious, because he had become obedient even unto the death of the cross. And from that day on, the Cross would have a new meaning it had never had before! For that is where the God-Man laid down His life for you and me.
Christ Jesus, the holy One, the sinless One, experienced death. This, in itself, was a kind of miracle. Never had a sinless person had to face death. Yes, a couple of men were taken to heaven bodily before they died: Enoch, at the beginning of Genesis, and Elijah, toward the end of the Old Testament history. But only Jesus of Nazareth, who had lived a completely sinless, obedient life before God, died the death of a sinless man. But His sinlessness was then confirmed on the Third Day, the first day of the week when the Spirit breathed new life into the dead body of Jesus, and He walked out of the tomb alive!
God the Father granted His only begotten Son new life, because Jesus had offered His own sinless life to suffer an atoning death. A sacrificial offering that would pay for all our sin, turning away the eternal wrath of a just and holy God, from those who deserved to die, but would believe in the Son of God, and would be joined to Him by God’s grace.
But Jesus’ resurrection from the grave was only part of the glory the Father had in store for Him. For forty days, Jesus appeared again and again to his followers, alive from death, to be touched by them, speak with them, eat with them, be seen by hundreds of them. And then, on that wonderful, miraculous day, on the Mount of Olives near the holy city, Jesus was taken up into heaven, in the presence of His disciples. It wasn’t simply a mode of transportation from one place to another. Rather, Jesus’ Ascension was a victory march up through the clouds into Heaven’s court, to be crowned and enthroned on high as King of Kings and Lord of Lords!
After He died, God the Father began exalting Him at once. The dead body of Christ wasn’t treated like a common criminal’s body, normally just cast into the burning garbage dump outside the city gates. No, his body was granted to one of Jesus’ wealthy followers, who placed that precious body in a new tomb – a garden tomb. Jesus’ body was “planted” there in that tomb, so that three days later, the emptiness of the tomb would proclaim that “it was impossible for death to hold Him.”
Normally, people cannot be born from virgin girls. Normally, people have only one fallen human nature. Normally, people cannot cast out demons or raise the dead. And, normally, people stay dead after they die. But Jesus was different. He was God’s beloved Son, given a human nature free from sin, living a sinless, obedient life, to the Father’s glory and honor. And when He died in the place of God’s enemies, so that they could become His children, God couldn’t contain His joy. He was compelled to honor the Son, by raising Him to the highest place, Paul wrote in Philippians 2. That at the name of Jesus, every knee would 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.
On that fearful night before the cross, Jesus told those fearful disciples of His, “Let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in Me. In my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go, you know, and the way you know.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we know not where You are going, and how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I Am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No man comes to the Father, but by Me.”
Jesus assured all His friends and followers, including you and me, that it was to our great advantage that He was leaving them. Jesus’ work of obedience and sacrifice on this earth was about to come to an end. But His kingly reign in Heaven was about to begin. Today, our triumphant, eternal God-Man is on the throne of the entire universe, ruling over all things for the good of His people. Through His Holy Spirit and the preaching of the Gospel, Christ is now building His church, made up of people from every people, tongue and nation. And when that work is finished, and our mansions all made ready, He will “come again, and receive you unto Himself,” and we will be with our beloved Savior and King, forever and ever.
Amen.
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