Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:04 Hi and welcome to that makes total sense. The podcast where we talk about faith, finance and everyday life in a way that makes total sense. I'm your host Alexis BU city. On this podcast you'll hear the personal stories of friends I'll be interviewing who are doing familiar things in new and innovative ways. We'll answer questions specifically about money and our relationship with it and we'll explore faith and Bible teaching together in all of these. It's not about changing our convictions as much as it is about messing with our methods. We'll have a lot of moments here together where we pause and say, that makes total sense.
Speaker 0 00:44 Hi, I'm Alexis B city and welcome to that makes total sense. Merry Christmas. It is almost here and I hope that you are just finding this season to be full of joy and the anticipation that comes with being able to re live in a way read and re-experience the newness of um, of Jesus and his birth every single year. It's such a blessing and I have just a short episode for you guys today. I figured this might be one, you know, you're wrapping like one more gift or you're on your way to the mall for the last time, but it's going to be short. It's just a few thoughts that I have on a manual on God with us and God with us. This is one of those miracles that I hope never grows old to me. God with us is the creator of everything living with his creation and we see glimpses of Emmanuel of this God with us throughout all of history.
Speaker 0 01:57 You can, you can search the old Testament and find places where God was very, very much in the midst of his people. But we celebrate the ultimate fulfillment of a manual of God with us in Jesus, God's son, his very own son coming to live with us so that we wouldn't ever have to be alone again and so that we wouldn't ever have to wonder again about who he is. I mean, I admit who is God? It's a pretty loaded question. Um, but we got to see who God is in Jesus and who is God? One of the answers I'm becoming familiar with lately and I'm becoming really good with as an answer, is God is entirely other. God has been using a phrase with me over and over again lately to help me remember his otherness. And here it is. I'm not like you.
Speaker 0 02:58 He says that to me. I'm not like you. And of course he doesn't say it in some sort of demeaning way and he doesn't say it to be condescending at all because again, he's not like me. That's not his nature. But he sweetly reminds me that he's not like me and that that's a good thing. He came to earth as a human to be with me, but he's not like me. And he came to earth to be with you. But he's not like you either. He's other, he's, he's just completely other. He's gone. So let me try and put it in another way. We are made in his image. So while we're a lot like him, he's not like us. And this is kind of a card hard concept for us to grasp because we think the phrase goes both ways, but it doesn't. We are like him, but he is not like us.
Speaker 0 04:00 One of the ways he's not like us is he's invisible and he actually remains invisible to us unless he provides a way for us to see him. Like he's invisible. We can't just go searching for him and then we're going to find him if, if he doesn't, if he doesn't make himself known to us, if he doesn't reveal himself to us. And we see this in the old Testament, Moses desperately wanted to see God. So God allowed Moses to view him from the back. Just for a moment. Do you remember any passed by? And he told him it was for Moses own protection. He said, you, you can't see me. You don't understand what would happen. You would not make it. And there are other examples in scripture of how God has made himself visible to us and how he continues to make himself visible and a lot of ways in a lot of places.
Speaker 0 04:55 But ultimately this is exactly what he did in Jesus, and I love the way Paul puts this concept in Colassians. He just spells it out for us. He says, Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is Supreme over all creation for through him, God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can't see such as Thrones, kingdoms, rulers and authorities in the unseen world, everything was created through him and for him. He existed before anything else and he holds all creation together.
Speaker 0 05:48 Every fall, Jewish people around the world celebrate the old Testament biblical holiday of SU coat. It's the feast of booths in some places or the feast of Tabernacles and it's one of the pilgrimage feasts where Israel's people, no matter where they were, whether they were dispersed or living inside of the land, they were commanded to make the trip to Jerusalem to celebrate this feast. The holiday of SU coat or booze or Tabernacles was a reminder to Israel's people year after year when they celebrated that their ancestors, the ones who had been enslaved and lived in bondage in Egypt, that they lived in tents on their way to the promised land. So during this holiday, the people of Israel were commanded to go to Jerusalem and build tense, like builds these temporary dwellings and actually live in them for eight days every single year. And this experience reminded them of what their ancestors had to do for those 40 years when they were traveling in the wilderness.
Speaker 0 06:56 And during this nomadic period in Israel's history where they're wandering around, yeah, they lived in tents, but so did God to a degree. Do you remember this? So he was still invisible, but he chose to make a home among them so they could have a way to see him and experience him on a daily basis. Really, God commanded Moses to build a tabernacle. And you can read all about that in Exodus. It was a huge endeavor and it was inside that large extravagant tent that was, that was placed among the smaller, more modest tents that God made his presence known to the people day and night. He guided them and in front of this of this tent, you would see a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. See, he's invisible and he's entirely other. Hebrews tells us that so much of what Israel experienced in the old Testament, and we can, when we read about it and the writings that those things were representations and patterns of the reality to come in Jesus, and this actually includes that feast of booths.
Speaker 0 08:14 God guided his people in rehearsing his presence every single year. Yes, they were celebrating the past, but they were also being prepared for the future. So this is so cool. Just like God had made a tent for himself that would more or less fit in with these other tents in the wilderness. Jesus came to us in human form, in a tent of a body that would fit in with ours. But even though even though this happened, it was still hard for us to recognize Jesus when he came. Now we finally had something to lay our eyes on and he looked like us, but he sure didn't act like us. And there was this incongruent, this, this, I will say this seeming in congruence that was difficult for us as humans to handle. Jesus came to earth as a baby and grew up visible to everyone.
Speaker 0 09:18 He came to us with the law of love on his human tongue, but we as humans, expected condemnation instead, and he came performing miracles, but we expected judgment. Instead, he came with healing in his wings, but we didn't even know we were sick. He came looking like one of us, but acting like the one and only God because that's who he is. Again, we are like him in some ways, but he is not like us. But he still came and he brought with him a new dwelling place. So we had seen this in the past. We had seen these dwelling places in the wilderness that he, that he came and he made a space to dwell. Jesus did the same thing. He came and he brought a dwelling place with him. He brought a kingdom, but this kingdom that he brought was not physical. Like what the tents they saw in the wilderness and it wasn't physical. Like even when they got to come into the promised land, his kingdom is invisible just like he is invisible. This time when he came, there wasn't a fire or a cloud to guide us like there had been with the tabernacle because the tent of Jesus was here guiding us with his love and his words and his action. And this time genealogy or gender or ethnicity couldn't separate us from him because his kingdom is not of this world and neither are its citizens
Speaker 0 11:12 in the wilderness. He showed himself to us, but it was always from a bit of a distance in Emmanuel. He made himself known to us by his closeness. He showed us who he is once and for all so that we never have to wonder what he looks like again. So when we start to conjure up in our minds images of the invisible God like we do sometimes, and they're based on our own past experiences or history or even passages in the Bible that we don't completely understand, we have to because we don't have to wonder what the invisible God looks like anymore. We don't have to wonder what it would look like to live with him anymore because he provided the perfect picture of himself in Jesus. Emmanuel, God with us. Merry Christmas, everybody. So thank you again so much for listening. Don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss an episode. Share the link with your friends. You can visit us at <inaudible>. That makes total sense.com and until next time, this is Alexis Piseti remembering to do well for ourselves so we can do good for others.
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