Isaiah 62:1-12 - Though this passage ostensibly focuses on Israel’s coming salvation, there are tremendous implications for us here as well. God’s saving work on behalf of Israel is not arbitrary or capricious. God saves Israel (and disciplines Israel repeatedly) so that all the nations might know Him as God. Verse 2-3: “2The nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory,and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give. 3You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.” This work that God has begun with Abraham and his descendants will be proclaimed to the ends of the earth and they will be a new people and be given a new name (“The Holy People, The Redeemed of the Lord” in v.12). As Ryan pointed out yesterday, these readings are entirely appropriate for the New Year. God calls us begin this New Year by remembering our new identity and new life which is ours in Christ.
Luke 2:1-20 – The early church father Athanasius argued that God elevated the human body in the Incarnation. That God taking on one human body in Christ gave new value and worth to every human body and every human life. Even those who don’t believe in Christ will often speak of “the miracle of child birth”. And yet there is something very ordinary about procreation and child birth as well. What do you find ordinary about Jesus’ birth? What do you find extraordinary about it? What does this ordinary event of the Incarnation with its extraordinary implications teach us about the nature and character of God?
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