GOD CAME DOWN.
Acts 7:34.
(Bible reading - Matthew 1:18-25.)
There is a hymn written by Christina Georgina Rossetti which begins, ‘Love came down at Christmas.’ Now this is true, because God is love (1 John 4:8), and Jesus is God (John 1:1; John 10:30). But Christmas was not the first time that God ‘came down.’
Ever since man first fell, God has been the One who took the initiative, coming down to us even when we would not reach up to Him. After eating of the forbidden fruit, our first parents ‘heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden’ and ‘hid themselves’ (Genesis 3:8). God had come down, and was searching for them, and Adam was shamed into answering the call of God.
Repeatedly, throughout the Bible, we read of God coming down. We read of one such occasion in our text today, part of deacon Stephen’s defence before the Jewish council. Stephen quotes the LORD as having said to Moses: “I am come down to deliver them” (Acts 7:34; cf. Exodus 3:8).
The deliverance of the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt is a ‘type’ (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:11) of our own deliverance out of the thraldom of sin and of death. Even before the birth of Jesus, Zacharias prophetically sang, ‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed His people’ (Luke 1:68). The incarnation of Jesus is the ultimate instance of God coming down for our salvation (Philippians 2:5-8; Galatians 4:4-5).
In the incarnation Jesus was for a little while made a little lower than He had been, expressly for ‘the suffering of death;’ ‘that He by the grace of God might taste death for every man’ (Hebrews 2:9). He said, ‘I delight to do they will, O my God’ (Psalm 40:7-8; cf. Hebrews 10:7). ‘Not my will, but thine be done’ (Luke 22:42).
Jesus was born to die, the ultimate substitutionary sacrifice for all of our sins, that we might be redeemed in Him. He drank to the dregs the cup of His suffering, that we might receive full, free forgiveness in Him. He overcame death on our behalf, and is risen from the dead as proof of our justification (Romans 4:25).
The Jewish council refused Stephen’s message (cf. Acts 7:57-60), but God was not finished coming down. The risen Lord Jesus soon appeared to Saul of Tarsus, and arrested him in his tracks (Acts 9:3-5). Thus was born again the man known to us as the Apostle Paul, writer of much of the New Testament.
Even in the application of Jesus’ sacrifice for us, it is God who takes the first step, it is God who ‘comes down’ into our lives. ‘As many as were ordained to eternal life believed’ (Acts 13:48). We read of Lydia, ‘whose heart the Lord opened’ (Acts 16:14).
The Holy Spirit continues to come down, drawing people to God through the work of Christ. Sometimes we talk about ‘finding’ God; but it is not God who was lost, but we ourselves. If we have a testimony at all, we share that of John Newton: ‘I once was lost, but now am found’ (Amazing Grace).
‘He came down to earth from heaven, who is God and Lord of all,’ sang Cecil Frances Alexander in the second verse of her hymn ‘Once in Royal David’s City.’ Paul explains why: ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them’ (2 Corinthians 5:19). Which underlines what Peter said: ‘Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved’ (Acts 4:12).
And hear the Christmas angels sing: ‘Glory be to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men’ (Luke 2:14). To God alone be the glory. Amen.
FOR THE COMMUNION.
We have been hearing a lot recently about Jesus being the child ‘born to die.’ Originally, of course, it was not God’s original intention that anyone should die.
However, the LORD God had commanded the man, ‘Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it, for in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die.’ Literally: ‘dying you shall die’ (Genesis 2:16-17).
‘The thief comes not, but to steal, and to kill, and to destroy,’ teaches Jesus. ‘I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly’ (John 10:10).
Jesus came to die that we might live. Life in all its fullness in the here and now, and eternal life beyond. Or, to use the same Hebraism, ‘that living we may live.’ Amen.
