2nd Advent Devotional ~"The Christ of the Gospel is the Christ you are seeking, the Christ you need."

And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.”

Luke 1:31-33

A man will be as a hiding place from the wind,

And a cover from the tempest,

As rivers of water in a dry place,

As the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.

Isaiah 32:2

God became Man that we

Might learn what a man should be!

How tender and true and strong,

How patient to suffer wrong.

When He for our sakes did die,

And rising, went up on high,

Still God, and still Man, He sent

A Guide to the Way He went,

Who should give to us, day by day,

Grace to live lives His Way.

God became Man that we

Might learn what a man should be!

In the House of my Pilgrimage

Isaiah’s words are not only man’s ideal: they are God’s promise, and that promise has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. God has set His seal to the truth, that the greatest power in shaping human destiny is Man himself, by becoming one with man, by using a human soul to be the Saviour of the race.

He is a man. Oh how often, in the thought of Christ’s real humanity, has my soul found a hiding-place from all manner of storms! God!—the word is great. God!—the idea is sublime. The great Eternal God, who made the heavens and the earth, and who bears them up by His unaided power, who rides upon the stormy sky, and puts a bit into the mouth of the raging tempest—how shall I, a poor worm of the dust, draw nigh to such a God as this? The answer quickly comes, “He has been pleased to reveal Himself in the Man Christ Jesus.”

Do not talk any more about the point where humanity leaves off and divinity begins, or divinity leaves off and humanity beings. Christ is all human, human all the time, Divine all the time. He is your brother, He is also more than that. He is your God. There is nothing in Christ that is foreign to what you and I aspire to know in our God. And yet Christ is as completely human as you. Pardon me, I have even understated my case. He is more human than you are. The only Man whom the world has ever seen is your Christ and mine, as human as you. Your humanity will come to its own only when it aspires to His and is represented in it. Remember, there is no dividing line between the Deity and the Humanity of our blessed Lord. He is both, and both are one. The Christ of the Gospel is just your Christ, the Christ you are seeking, the Christ you need. “A man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.”(Isa.32:2)

R. CAMPBELL

Sermons to Young Men

He is a Saviour. This figure of a rock, resisting drift, gives us some idea, not only of the commanding influence of Christ’s person, but of that special office from which all the glory of His person and of His name arises: that He saves His people from their sins...

He is ever living and interceding. Our earthly friends may die, but we shall never lose our best Friend. All merely human comforters will fail us sooner or later, but He will ever abide true and steadfast to all who rely upon Him.

He lives, the great Redeemer lives,—so His cause is always safe, and our safety is always secured in Him. Hide thyself, therefore, in the ever-living Man; for, there, thou needst not fear any change that the rolling ages may bring.

          Blessed be the name of Jesus, He is also the interceding Man; for, at this very moment, He is pleading for His people before His Father’s throne.

JAMES HASTINGS -1901

Isaiah