We are blessed to have a Christmas Devotional from Pastor Victor Tafoya, pictured above, of Albuquerque today! Merry Christmas Victor and Barbara! Victor and Barbara are such a wonderful, godly couple; I have known them for years! We love you and yours!
Devotion in Motion By Pastor Victor Tafoya
The Hands that touched God – 1 John 1:1
I want to start by talking to you about a hands-on Christmas. I want to suggest we all make Christmas a more hands-on holiday.
Let’s read 1 John 1:1, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life.”
The Greeks who read John’s letter were an observant people. They studied the natural world and noticed that it operates according to universal laws.
They concluded there had to be a master plan – a logic or intelligence responsible for nature’s order and symmetry. They coined a term for the ultimate purpose behind creation – the logos – or in English, “the Word.”
This became the preoccupation of Greek philosophy, to identify the Logos of life. The Greeks examined the seeable world to determine its unseen purpose.
Yet despite their great wisdom, none of the Greek philosophers – the renown Plato, or Socrates, or Aristotle – were able to answer life’s ultimate question.
But the Apostle John had good news! Faith had succeeded where the philosophers had failed. John had discovered the Logos. The Word had been heard.
The unseen had been revealed. John had touched the Logos with his own two hands. In 1 John 1:1 the apostle refers to Jesus as “the Word of life” He writes in verse 1, “our hands have handled the Logos of life.”
Just as words are outward expressions of our inward thoughts – the invisible God has expressed Himself tangibly in the person of His Son! Jesus is the Word.
John is telling us that there is a God, and He has made known His nature and personhood in a way that we can touch, and hear, and see, and handle.
The reason behind our reality – the logos behind the cosmos – what the Greeks and all other humans search for is not a primal force, but a person named Jesus. Jesus of Nazareth is the residence of absolute truth, and of undiluted love, and of eternal life. Come to Jesus, and you’ll find the reason for your reality!
Though, it’s not John’s writings that are usually read at Christmas time, the apostle does much to help us understand the true meaning of Christmas…
Yes, John skips over the angel’s visit to Joseph, and Mary’s miraculous conception, and the couple’s journey to Bethlehem, and the birth of the baby in the stable, and the announcement to the shepherds – and even the visit of the wise men… yet, John does help us understand exactly Who it was in that manger!
John’s Gospel (John 1:14) says of Jesus, “The Word (or Logos) became flesh and dwelt among us.” The Greek word translated “dwelt” means “to pitch a tent.” The Almighty camped out with us in the person of Jesus?
Peterson’s Paraphrase renders verse 14, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” In short, God moved into the hood. The mastermind and meaning behind this grand, glorious, mysterious universe – the Word or Logos – was born in a Bethlehem stable and laid in a manger.
It’s mind-boggling to think that the colossal, invisible hand of God – the hand that paints sunsets, and hung stars, and corrals oceans, and parts seas – shrunk in size, and materialized. The hand of Almighty God took the form of five metacarpals – clothed itself in ligaments and tendons – even grew skin and gelatin nails.
Have you ever marveled at a baby’s hands? The fingers are so tiny, the palm is so soft. Imagine, the hand of God was reduced to a infant’s hand – but what’s even more astonishing is that God was willing to be touched by other human hands. This is what really impressed John.
He writes of it in our text!
He had heard the Word with his very own ears!
He had seen the Word with his very own eyes!
He had touched the Word with his very own hands…John hugged the logos. He embraced the Word of life!
What philosophers missed with their brilliant intellects, John touched with his grubby, humble, fisherman’s hands. The same hands that got hooks out of fish and cleaned dirty nets, touched the Almighty.
At times John grabbed Jesus’ arm to steer Him through the crowd. Like any bunch of guys, I’m sure the disciples and Jesus had playful wrestling matches around the campfire – John patted Jesus on the back, and shook His hand, and bumped into Him in the boat.
John even leaned against him at the Last Supper.
Jesus was God – the holy, spotless, perfect, unapproachable God. The OT said no human being could see God and live. His holiness is too intense.
And if no one could look on God and survive the experience; then touching Him was surely out of the question. How could sinful hands touch a sinless God?
Yet when God became a human, a new possibility occurred. He Himself grew human hands, and became accessible and vulnerable to other human hands. Now folks with feeble hands, and greedy hands, and sticky hands, and desperate hands, and pushy hands, even violent hands reached out and grabbed Jesus!
In the very beginning it was just Jesus’ earthly father and mother, Joseph and Mary, who touched Him.
Joseph had carpenter’s hands. They were rough and gritty – bruised by hammers and calloused from work. But, there was no midwife at the birth of Jesus – so the coarse hands of Joseph were needed to pick up the newborn baby and lay him in His mother’s lap.
And who would think that Mary’s hands would be allowed to touch the newborn King? They belonged to a teenage girl, and were used for combing hair, texting friends, twirling curls, and playing with rubber bands. Yet it was those hands that laid God in the manger. Changed his diaper. Cuddled Him and nursed Him.
And remember Simeon’s hands? He was the old man in the Temple who saw Jesus when Joseph and Mary brought Him to Jerusalem to be circumcised. Old Simeon’s hands were gnarled and withered with age – perhaps crippled by arthritis. They might’ve even trembled like a Parkinson patient. Yet, Luke 2 tells us “he took (Jesus) up in his arms and blessed God…”.
It’s interesting to me that Joseph never tried to stop Simeon from taking the baby in his hands. It could’ve happened so fast he didn’t have time to think. Mary must’ve shuttered when his old hands held her baby. How vulnerable was this baby called Jesus in Simeon’s weak and fragile hands? His old hands could’ve given way, and dropped the Savior on a slab.
Jesus narrowly missed trouble at the hands of the evil King Herod. Herod ruled Judea with an iron fist. The earthly king was determined to crush any rival to his throne – even if the threat came from an infant. His jealousy led to the slaughter of Bethlehem’s babies.
Herod died with innocent blood on his hands.
In the years that followed, you wonder how many hands…and what kind of hands…touched Jesus.
His ministry began when the sturdy hands of “another John” latched to His shoulders and baptized Him…
Leprous hands touched Jesus…
Repentant hands wiped His feet with tears…
Frantic hands, afraid of the sudden storm, woke Him from sleep…
The drowning hands of a fearful disciple grabbed His hand and was pulled back into the boat…
Worshipful hands poured fragrant oil on His head…
A withered hand, that seconds earlier had been crippled and paralyzed, amazingly reached out with healing faith and touched Jesus with deep gratitude!
The desperate hand of a woman who’d been hemorrhaging for fifteen years reached with faith and touched the hem of His garment, and was healed.
Mark 3:10 says the Lord Jesus “healed many, so that as many as had afflictions pressed about Him to touch Him.” Sick, desperate, human hands touched Jesus.
Mark 6:56 describes a familiar scene, “Whenever (Jesus) entered, into villages, cities, or the country, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged Him that they might just touch the border of His garment. And as many as touched Him were made well.”
When God became a man it was a hands-on celebration from the very beginning! And a relationship with God remains a hands-on experience even today.
Amen
Devotion in Motion
