Psalm 89 v 1-8: Christmas is coming!

What is the aim of doing a jigsaw puzzle?

To put the picture together in the puzzle as it is on the box.

Now, what if someone spilt your puzzle pieces on to the floor?

You’d have to find them before you tackle the puzzle.

But before you could do that what if pieces of other jigsaw puzzles

were spilt all over the one you were doing.

You’d have to sort out your puzzle’s pieces from the others.

Would that be easy?

And what if also your eyes were blinded

to the sight of the puzzle you were trying to do?

Could you then find its pieces? And put the puzzle together.

Not without a huge amount of help.

God has pictured for us the purpose of His creation: it is this:

He will live with us. We will be His people, and He will be with our God. It is what we are created for. And in the beginning God walked with us in Eden. He was to grow us into maturity as His people.

But then the Devil filled us with desires to become like God. We obeyed him and not God. We turned away from God’s picture of life. The jigsaw of our togetherness broke apart. And we couldn’t put the pieces back together again. And worse the devil spilt many other jigsaws upon us,and we coveted what they pictured.

We needed someone to deliver us from the mess we had made.

We could not do it ourselves. God had to do it.

His great promise that we would live with Him

and He would live with us, was not going to be thwarted.

But we also had to be people who no longer followed the devil.

If not we might turn from God all over again as we had in Eden.

Starting with Abraham He formed a people for Himself.

Through Moses He rescued His people from earthly slavery

Through Joshua He brought us into a land He had chosen for us.

Through David He promised we would be ruled by one man after God’s own heart.

But while He remained always faithful to us, we have ever been ready to turn away from Him and put our trust in other gods. God needed to change us. Not by power, but by faith.

Faith is committing ourselves to Him. Faith overflows in our love for Him. Our love for Him generates lives obedient to Him. In our faith and love expressed obedience God makes His home with us.

God chose us to be His people, and finding not one who is ever obedient. He did the utterly un-God-like thing of becoming a human being. At Christmas God makes His home with us, not because we are obedient but because we are not. He becomes the one man who can say No to the Devil. The man who always says Yes to God his Father. The one man, who even though He is without sin, pays the wages of all sin, and dies for us.

Dying He delivers all who trust in Him from the devil. Believing in Him we become God’s children, able to call God, Abba, Father. God the Holy Spirit makes His home with us, transforming us to live lives pleasing to our Father. Our names are written in the book of life.

When all God’s work in this old order of things is done. He makes a new creation, where He lives with us and we with Him. Perhaps we could call the new creation, not earth but Emmanuel God with us. Praise the Lord: Christmas is coming