Once upon a time, this planet we call home was characterized by love and peace and beauty. It was created by a loving Father as a home for his children and as a place to share and enjoy life with them. The relationship of the children with their Father was perfect, full of love and trust. With perfect love and trust, there was intimacy, communion.
There were no thoughts of life apart from one another, no suspicion, no fear of rejection. The children knew everything that they needed their Father would provide, and because of that they never knew a moment of anxiety. No energy was ever wasted on worry. There was food. There was warmth. There was adventure. And everywhere the children looked there was an expression of their Father's love. The children also knew nothing but love for themselves and each other. There was never a hint of self-consciousness or selfishness. They had no questions of whether or not they were good enough, or strong enough, or smart enough, whether or not they were lovable or acceptable. They were naked and felt no shame. They trusted their Father. They trusted one another. They even trusted themselves. The planet earth and the Garden of Eden where they lived was a little colony of heaven, an expansion of the Father's kingdom. His desires, His will, was experienced perfectly on earth as it was in Heaven.
The children had total freedom to do whatever they wanted and there was only one thing that they were commanded not to do. They were not to eat of the fruit in the middle of the garden or they would experience death and the opposite of everything their Father desired for them. The tree in the middle of the garden was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Father loved the children so much that he didn't even want them to know that there was such a thing as good and evil, much less to experience a reality where evil, the absence of good, existed.
However, the children were not alone in the garden. There was someone else there, one who had been created to serve their Father and carry out his desires, but who had rebelled against the good Father and become the Father's, and the children's, enemy. He lived in the garden in the form of a serpent, and he was very cunning and persuasive, a master of lies and manipulation. By planting a seed of doubt that the Father could be trusted, the enemy deceived the woman into doing something she had never done before: act outside the will of her Father. Foregoing her complete dependence on Him, she acted with independence, taking matters into her own hands to meet her needs, thus agreeing with enemy that the good Father could not be trusted. She then turned and gave the fruit to the man, who had been silent, passive through the whole exchange. They both ate of the fruit and immediately everything changed.
In a moment their eyes were open to their nakedness, and for the first time they became self-conscious, self-protective, self-absorbed, and the worst of all self-loathing. They felt shame. They did what they could to cover their nakedness and they hid. And they had no idea the ramifications of what they had done.
The Father had put them in charge of ruling over the earth and carrying out His desires. By giving into the enemy's deception, they had lost their authority to rule and had given the enemy rulership over the earth. A new kingdom had been established. A kingdom of darkness. A kingdom of selfishness. A kingdom of fear. A kingdom of death. And from that day on things got worse and worse for the Father's children and their offspring. No one gave any thought to the Father and his goodness or his faithful provision. It was every man for himself. The evil grew so pervasive that the Father grieved ever having children and vowed to wipe them from the earth. Yet the Father still desired to share His life with His children.
There was one family who still loved Him and trusted Him, who listened to Him and believed. He protected this family while he destroyed the rest of the earth's inhabitants, and charged them with repopulating the planet. He was determined that his children would know him again by name and would know that He loved them and He could be trusted. First there was a man who knew Him. Then a family. Then a nation.
But there was still a problem. Every child born on earth, every offspring of his original children, had a rebellious, distrusting nature. The enemy's darkness again covered the earth. Evil kings carried out the desires of the deceptive lord. The planet created to be a paradise, a colony of the good Father's home, continued to be characterized by hate, depression, war, impatience, harshness, unfaithfulness, and lust. The vast majority of the inhabitants of the earth lived in complete ignorance or blatant disregard of their Father's desires.
It was into this kingdom of darkness that the Father enacted an invasion, a planned coup that would take back his colony and re-establish His Kingdom on the planet He created. But the invasion took place in the most unexpected way. The Father certainly could have taken over with force, but His desire was still to be known...and to be loved. And He wanted His children to know how they were created to live: completely dependent on Him, knowing His overwhelming, unfailing love and faithful provision for their every need.
Driven by that desire, he sent his only son, a son whose earthly parents He instructed to name Yeshua, or Jesus as we have come to call him, which means "Salvation." Born to a virgin named Mary, the Father's pure son was free of the rebellious, sinful nature that plagued every other child on earth. The Son carried within Him the Father's Kingdom, and the Father's will was always carried out by the Son. Not once did the Son rebel against His Father. He was completely aware of His Father's love for Him and He knew his mission: to bring glory to His Father, to let all the Father's children know How good He is and how much He loved them, to reconcile the children with their Father, and to restore all things to the way Father intended.
Everywhere the Son went, His Father's will was expressed. The blind received their sight. The lame walked. The sick were made well. The dead were raised. But most miraculously, those who were ridden by shame, and guilt and self-hatred were loved and forgiven, and could again love their Father, love others and themselves.
Thirty-three years after the first Christmas morning, the Son Jesus willfully allowed himself to be killed by men who unknowingly were carrying out the will of the evil serpent. However, the enemy was also unaware of what the Father was accomplishing through His Son's death. As a perfect and unblemished sacrifice, the Son was taking onto himself all the sin and shame of the world, even becoming sin, and with His death He was destroying sin and it's hold on the Father's children. Never again would the Father's children have to hide because of their shame. All who would believe that the Son had come and would trust that His death was sufficient payment for their sins would be forgiven and reconciled to the Father and the life He desired for them. As a result of their expression of faith, the son would also give each child His very Spirit, and with it a new Heart and a new nature. This nature would be prone to love the Father and to desire to see His Kingdom expanded over the earth. And by the power of Christ's Spirit, each child of the Father was enabled to embody the Son, expressing Him and re-presenting Him over and over again to the world.
This morning, the Jesus who desires for everyone to know the love of His Father is living in me, and it is out of His desire and the love He has placed in my heart that I share this story with you. Merry Christmas. You are loved!
