The God Who Shows Up

OK, folks, my faith in Christ doesn’t depend on my feelings or thoughts, but solely on what Christ has done for us sinners through His death and resurrection.

Jesus has conquered sin and its power to damn and kill us by taking our humanity and our sin into His sinless body and has opened eternity with God to all who live with repentant faith In Him.

That’s true whether I’m feeling it at any given moment…or not.

But sometimes, Jesus Christ gives me goosebumps.

I’ve just been reading the Old Testament book of Joshua which recounts events that took place about 1400 years before Christ Jesus, God the Son, was born at Bethlehem.

The leader of God’s ancient people, Joshua, whose Hebrew name, Yeshua, was the same as Yeshua, Jesus, is preparing for battle, when he’s met by someone.

The Bible says: “When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, ‘Are you for us, or for our adversaries?’ And he said, ‘No; but I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come.’ And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, ‘What does my lord say to his servant?’ And the commander of the Lord's army said to Joshua, ‘Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.’ And Joshua did so.” (Joshua 5:13-15)

The text makes it obvious Who the commander of the Lord’s army is in two ways.

First, Joshua falls down and worships the Commander. As a believer in God, Joshua would only have worshiped God Himself. Joshua knows that He Is in the presence of God, though mysteriously God as a man.

Second, the Commander gives Joshua the same directive that God gave to Moses when Moses encountered God in a bush that burned but was not consumed. There, God—Yahweh, or I AM—told Moses to remove his sandals because, with God present there, the ground Moses was standing on was holy. Throughout the Old Testament, the “pre-incarnate Christ,” God the Son before He was born at Bethlehem, makes appearances to God’s people. These appearances demonstrate that the one God in three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—never leaves or forsakes us, is involved with His creation, and cares for us.

The God we all now can know in Jesus Christ is the God Who shows up!

Even when the cosmos thrashes under the raging of sin, death, and the devil, the Lord fights for us. Ultimately, Jesus came into our world to save us from ourselves, bringing us peace with God, the forgiveness of our sins, and eternity with Him.

In Jesus, all your sins are forgiven. All who daily turn from sin and trust in Him can believe this promise.

Jesus tells us: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

Whether that gives you goosebumps or not, you can believe it’s true and, In the believing, know that you are reconciled forever with the God Who always shows up for the cosmos (and you) He created and still loves.