I have been using these Twelve Days of Christmas posts to introduce both new Christmas musings and some good Christian friends. (Some are "only" blog friends, but friends nonetheless.) This morning a pre-Christmas reflection from Jeff McCrory of Geneva Presbyterian Church in Laguna Hills, CA. An OT Ph.D, Jeff gives us a nice insight into the connection of Exodus to Jesus.
I had a woman today say to me as she walked out of church, “Why don’t you preach on Christmas at Christmas time?” I was flabbergasted. I had just finished a series of sermons on the Book of Exodus and had preached on Exodus 40:34-38, “the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.” I had linked the text as proper to John’s statement (John 1: 14) that the Word became flesh and tabernacled (the Greek verb here is a derivative of the word which we translate tent) among us. I had used the metaphor of inviting someone into our house for Christmas dinner. “Why don’t you preach on Christmas as Christmas time?”
This brings me to the gospel Old and New. The New Testament Gospel that Jesus is God among us, in the flesh, is the same good news that God comes to dwell in the midst of his people in the tabernacle. The goal of the Book of Exodus, the story of liberation is not liberation, as many would have it, not guidance through life through the pillar and cloud, not even covenant (Exod 19-24). The goal is that Yahweh God would live among us. This is the Christmas story: the Word became flesh and lives among us. Why some people can’t see this in the Old Testament I do not know.
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