How to Not Miss the Visitation of Christ

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part II of our Series on Visiting and Remembering

God visits us; through, with, and in the form of his servants. That’s what we learned at the conclusion of our last post.

That’s the truth conveyed in the book of Exodus:

1Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.

3And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” 4When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

7Then the LORD said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, 8and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

9And now, behold,the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. 10Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” (Exodus 3:1–10)

In Jesus, God visits his beloved children physically, personally:

9The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 10He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

14And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:9-14)

In Christ, God looks at us through actual human eyes, touches us with actual human hands. It is the event to which all previous visitations point. Unfortunately, we humans usually miss his visitation. Note how Jesus describes this as he visits Jerusalem:

And when he drew near and saw [Jerusalem], he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” (Luke 19:41–44, ESV, emphasis mine)

This is reminiscent what we talked about earlier this month: Stay awake! Be ready! The Lord shows up in the way you least expect him to…and yet he’s told you exactly in what form he’s going to visit: the stranger, the naked, the imprisoned. There is no reason for us to not know the time of his visitation as long as we remember and treasure his word.

How do you balance helping the Lord when he shows up as the stranger, naked or imprisoned while not enabling others in their sin?

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The Intimacy of God’s Visitation to Us

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part I of our Series on Visiting and Remembering

Visitation is hospitality gone mobile. It’s more than just a social call or a brief chatty check-in. The word signifies something big:

God showing up where before there was no one; life showing up where before there was nothing; deep care where before there was neglect; correction where before there was open sin.

“Visit” in the Hebrew, paqad, means “to personally inspect and pay close attention to.” Think of a general inspecting troops in the field and then stopping to talk with one particular soldier.

Amazingly, visitation is even more intimate than that!

In the New Testament, “visit” is typically the Greek episkeptomai, meaning “to examine with the eyes.” This is not about showing up to shoot the breeze or make small talk. John Wesley called it “close conversation.”

As author Amy L. Sherman notes, in the Bible visitation means something even more than inspection. God visits human beings who are soul-sick and languishing in the prison of sin, widowed and orphaned by the father of lies.

In I Samuel 2:21, God “visits” barren Hannah—and the result is that she is enabled to have five children. You’ll recall that God had graciously given Hannah the gift of a son, Samuel, whom she dedicated back to the Lord. God has more that he wants to do for barren Hannah, and so He “visits” her and she conceives new life.

The visitation of God imparts life!   

Scripture portrays God visiting human beings in distress who cry out to him. As we’ll talk about later on this month, when God calls us to visit those in prison, we can look to him as the perfect example: he made the first prison visit ever recorded in the Bible. He looks in on the wrongly-accused Joseph and imparts to him the gifts of friendship-love and favor:

And Joseph’s master took him and put him into the prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined, and he was there in prison. But the LORD was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. (Genesis 39:20–21, ESV)

At the close of his life, Joseph prophesizes that the God who remembered him and visited him in prison will surely not fail to remember and visit his children in Egypt – a remarkable event given the understanding of the day that gods were restricted to their own geographic domain. This God, however, will cross any domain to lead his children to the home he has prepared for them. Joseph is so certain of God’s character that he forces his children to swear an oath based upon the visitation coming to pass:

And Joseph said to his brethren, I am going to die. But God will surely visit you and bring you out of this land to the land He swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob [to give you].

And Joseph took an oath from the sons of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and you will carry up my bones from here. (Genesis 50:24–25, ESV)

And so God does. A few generations after Joseph’s prophesy, the Israelites are ground down into slavery. God hears their cries and resolves to show them heartfelt care, commissioning Moses. That’s an important principle that we’ll be developing this month.

God visits – through, with, and in the form of – his servants.

How have you experienced the visitation of God through others?

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Come Lord Jesus – Come!

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part XI of our series on Opening Your Home

Every act of opening our homes is more than a response to human need. Even more, what it is is a foretaste or partial revelation of the divine hospitality that eventually all creation will experience in full. I love what Guice writes. He says:

The early church as well regularly practiced the Eucharist, the good gift, and recognized it as a sign of God’s hospitality. Each time the Eucharist was taken, the costliness of the divine gift was remembered (Alexander and Rosner 2000).

They also saw it as a foreshadowing of how hospitable God will be in the future when all the believers join him in the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev 19:7-9). This regular gathering around God’s table served to inspire them towards the future and remind them of the Jubilee that was part of their past and present. Jesus while present reminded them, “But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” (Luke 14:13 NRSV) (Russell, Clarkson, and Ott 2009)

The visions of John end with a simple call that is a model for what the church is to be when he writes, “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.” (Revelation 22:17 NRSV).[1]

We have a sign right next to the front door of our home that says, “Mi casa es su casa”—my home is your home. But maybe we ought to change that sign to read, “Even so, come Lord Jesus—come!”

And each time we open our door, we ought to think to ourselves and perhaps even say out loud, “Even so, come Lord Jesus—come!”

[1] William Guice, “Hospitality, Part 2,” What if…, August 18, 2010

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