God Is In the Manger

God Is in the Manger (Hardback)

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He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation.

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And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the first born from the dead; so that He Himself might come to have first place in everything. Paul was writing to the Christians at Colossae. The city was under the influence of what came to be known as gnosticism. Among other things, they taught philosophical dualism—the idea that matter is evil and spirit is good.

They believed that because God is spirit, He is good, but He could never touch matter, which is evil. And they taught that God could never become a man, because as a man He would have to dwell in a body made of evil matter. Those pre-gnostics explained away the incarnation by saying that Jesus was a good angel whose body was only an illusion.

That teaching and others like it pervaded the early church; many of the New Testament epistles specifically refute such pre-gnostic ideas. He specifically affirmed that Jesus is God in the flesh—the Creator of everything. He is the exact image of God. Hebrews 1 parallels Colossians 1: Regarding the statement that Christ is the image of God, for example, Hebrews 1: He gives light and life. They cannot be divided, and neither has ever existed without the other—they are one John Scripture repeatedly says that God is invisible John 1: But through Christ the invisible God has been made visible.

No attribute is absent. He is God in the fullest possible sense, the perfect image.

Disability Is No Accident

The first-born in a Hebrew family was the heir, the ranking one, the one who had the right of inheritance. And in a royal family, he had the right to rule. So Christ is the One who inherits all creation and the right to rule over it.

Hebrews 1 again has a parallel statement. Remember, verses 16—17 explicitly name Him as Creator of everything. Christ is not part of creation; He is the Creator, the very arm of God, active from the beginning in calling the universe and all creatures into existence. Christ was the Person of the Trinity through whom the world was made and for whom it was fashioned. The size of the universe is incomprehensible.

I have walked through 65 Advent seasons as a believer in Jesus.

God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas

I preached my way through half of them. So, counting Christmas sermons, that would be roughly messages during Advent.

Some horizons that expand as you approach. Some stories that reach back forever, forward into eternity, down to the depths of mystery, and up to the heights of glory.

The Resurrection: “According to the Scriptures”?

Advent is one of those. Luke is the only writer in the Bible to use the word manger in the New Testament. And what he does with this one word — what God does with this one feeding trough — is enough to make us leap for joy. For example, Luke uses it in Luke Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it? And in the most famous Christmas paragraphs in the Bible, Luke rivets our attention on the manger three times. Yes, we may be sure that Joseph and Mary cleaned it up as best they could.

They, no doubt, padded it in some way to make a comfy little bed.

Reflections on Advent and Christmas

But there is no way to romanticize this bed into anything other than a feeding trough for slobbering animals. The first bed for the Son of God was not a royal cradle. It was a common corn crib. At first, you might think it was a fluke of fate — a random misfortune.

God had centuries to get ready for this birth.

The prophet Micah lived years before the birth of Jesus and prophesied that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. You, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days. So, God had a good seven centuries and more! For example, he could have easily arranged that a faithful virgin and a just man, in the lineage of David, be found in Bethlehem in accord with the prophecy. But instead, he chooses Mary and Joseph, who lived in Nazareth, not Bethlehem.

And he plans for Mary to get pregnant far from the prophesied town. To solve that problem — which God himself had created — God could have arranged to get Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem by some personal means, say a relative who needed them urgently or a dream or some private legal or business matter. In other words, God arranged that the most powerful leader in the world would order everyone in the empire to go to the town of their origin to register.

You might call this providential overkill. You have no idea. Including the birth of my Son. Planning a bed for his Son was easier than planning a global census. Jesus was lying in exactly the place God planned: Every baby in Bethlehem was wearing swaddling cloths. That is not the sign. The sign is the manger.

God in a Manger, Part 1: Jesus Is Lord

In fact, this must have sounded so wildly scandalous, the shepherds probably did not think they heard the angel correctly. This Savior, Christ, and Lord is lying in a what? This is the sign. No other king anywhere in the world was lying in a feeding trough. Find him, and you find the King of kings.

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