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The First Choice of Christ - February 21, 2007

The First Choice of Christ

Colossian 1:15-17

Ash Wednesday

February 21, 2007

Rev. Dave. R. Garwick

Tonight's sermon is based on several passages that have something in common.  If you would follow along with me on the back of the bulletin, the first passage is a promise which God made through the prophet Micah about the long expected arrival of the Messiah when he wrote:  "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for Me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times."  (Micah 5:2)

Well, seven hundred years later, Jesus identified himself as the One who had been promised since ancient days when He said, "I tell you the truth, "before Abraham was born, I am!"  (Jn 8:58)

Then after Jesus rose into heaven, the apostle Paul concluded that," [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For by Him all things were created:  things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities;  all things were created by Him and for Him.  He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

Oh yeah...Jesus himself also said a few other things in the Gospel of St. John along the same lines.  He said, "No one has ever gone into heaven except the One who came from heaven - the Son of Man (3:13)  Point being:  before Jesus showed up here on Christmas, He had existed in heaven.

In another place He was confronting the skepticism of some Jewish leaders when He asked, "What if you see the Son of Man ascent to where He was before?"  (John 6:62).  Again, the point being that Jesus had already come from heaven.  And finally He prayed, "And now, Father, glorify Me in Your presence with the glory I had with You before the world began," (John 17:5).  Once again, He had been with the Father since before the world began.

So, unless He were a liar or someone who was mistaken about Himself, Jesus did in fact exist in heaven even before the world began, and it was through Him that all things were created.  Which is why we confess in the Nicene Creed that, "Through Him all things were made...He came down from heaven..."

Tonight we begin seven weeks of meditation in the course of Jesus' journey to the Cross...a journey He did NOT have to take, to a Cross from which He did NOT have to hang.  The way God works on earth is all about choice.  In this realm the Father forces nobody, especially not even His only Son.  Jesus had many, many opportunities to choose an escape for himself.  Any one of HIS escapes would have trapped us for eternity.  And every one of His choices against himself can only deepen our adoration and love for Him, to claim him as our Lord and Savior.  In these Lenten moments, we will reflect on seven of these choices.

Tonight we reflect on the first of these choices.  This first moment of destiny is summed up in the fact that through Him all things were made YET...He came down from heaven!  And it's not just that He came down from heaven, like some absentee landlord who swaggers about to oversee the squalid conditions of his miserable tenants and then returns to his palatial digs.  It's that Jesus came down from heaven to actually BE in our shoes, AS one of the creatures He had made.

You've all seen those toy ant farms - how the ants work and work and work for only a drop of sugar water once a day.  How they work themselves to death and are carried off by the others?  Who would voluntarily choose to actually BECOME one of those ants, by being born as an ant, especially when you see how ants get born?  Not a pretty sight.  But then, neither is how humans get born.

Look at the front of the bulletin.  Ain't that cute?  What a sweet picture of cuddly little baby Jesus.  But how many of us would give up all that we have right now in order to become a baby once again?  No, I don't mean a baby in one of the most privileged homes of this planet.  I mean, how many of us would voluntarily give up all that we have, all the privileges we have, all the opportunities we have, all the freedoms we have in order to be born a baby tomorrow morning in a hot, dusty, poor village that is occupied by foreign military troops that can torture and slaughter even babies?  And if you knew that doing this would only get you executed at a young age?

Would you do this if you knew that it would not get you yourself anything at all, that your situation would not improve in any way?

This is exactly what Jesus did.  We all know the story about His birth on Christmas.  But we give very little thought to what happened before that.  To the best of our knowledge people have nothing to do with getting themselves born:  that is something done by God and the parents - the baby has nothing to say about it.  That, by the way, is why we baptize infants:  if we have nothing to say in getting born, then why should we be expected to decide about our RE-birth?  It's all a gift from God and the adults to whom God has entrusted the child.

But Jesus was different in this respect.  According to His own statements, He WAS fully active before He became a baby.  He existed in heaven with the Father and through Him all things were made.  This was BEFORE He was born as a baby on earth.  And since the Father does not force His children, but insists on choice, then I have to assume that the Son of God chose to do what none of us would do:  to be born as one of the creatures He had made.

He did not have to do this...except to rescue us from ourselves, to rescue us from sin, to rescue us from the traps of Satan, to rescue us from death.  He HAD to have known what this would cost Him.  Last night, the CLW Bible Study talked about courage.  Courage is doing what is right when you do NOT have to do it, when you know that it will cost you, and maybe everything.

When you think about Good Friday, when you think about Easter, remember that this was made possible by the Son of God choosing to become the Christ Child of Christmas, so that, as the apostle Paul put it,
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.

THIS was the first choice of Christ.