The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers – it is to Him you shall listen
We forget how utterly terrifying God is to sinful man. We can look back on things that happened during the Exodus and think how wonderful it would have been to see all those things, like the pillar of cloud or the pillar of fire. We forget something very important. Everyone who saw it was terrified. Not just awkwardly nervous – frightened out of their minds.
Sinful human beings can’t handle being in front of God Almighty in His power. That’s because God is holy and righteous and all that laundry list of stuff, and we know that we aren’t, and that by rights we ought to be smited into little bitty sinnery cindery bits. And so, God in His wisdom chose to come to His people in alternative means. For a time, there would be prophets – where only one poor sap would deal with the LORD directly and everyone else would get to hear things second hand.
But God did not create you and me to remain at a distance from us. Your Creator loves you and wishes to be with you, and so He decided to come to you Himself in a way that you can actually handle. He would come to you as one of your brothers – He would become man. God and man, one in the same, Jesus Christ – God there with you but as a man in a way that you can handle without terror. God there who can understand the trials the troubles you face in your life completely well and from experience.
With the coming of Christmas, we see God’s patience and wisdom, the lengths to which He will go to be with you. He takes up human flesh and is born of the Virgin Mary, because He is the God who wishes to be with you, to be your God, now and forever.
