Message summary: Remember this wonderful truth today, this season, and all your life; how blessed we are that God stooped down! Now let us reach up to Him who gave His all for us!

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"You stoop down to make me great” (Psalm 18:35). “Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:5-7).

I’m tall (about 6'2") though I'm probably shrinking a bit as I age! At my height I usually look down at those around me (in a literal sense, not figuratively speaking!) However I periodically visit with a Nigerian man in our church who is about 6'8" or more and look up to him literally. For me it's a reminder of how those who are 5'8" and shorter perceive my height. Brooksyne is 5'4" so she has had to look up at me for over 50 years now. That's the equivalent of me looking up to someone 7 feet tall!

Early in our ministry I learned the value of stooping down to greet children, seeking to be less physically imposing to them. As age marches on, getting down on my knees is much harder but I still do when I can or need to such as this morning in repairing a stove. but there have been times I've needed help getting back up! Brooksyne and I have also learned that stooping down is appreciated by people in wheelchairs or those who are bedridden. There’s a special connection we make when conversing at the same eye level as we seek to express genuine love, interest and care.

One of our favorite Christmas hymns is “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus”.  Each line of this Charles Wesley hymn is replete with rich theology concerning the incarnation of Christ, including one pertinent to today’s message; “Born a child and yet a King.”

Today let us consider the wonderful blessing in Scripture that tells us when God stooped down. It's in our first daily text which is part of an ancient song to the Lord written by King David some 3,000 years ago (1,000 years before the first coming of Christ).  In his extolling of the Lord David writes, “You stoop down to make me great".

I wonder what David meant when he initially wrote these words? Certainly he was cognizant of the greatness of God but how much insight did he have about the future incarnation and the very wonder that one day this great God of the universe; the Creator of all that exists would “stoop down” and clothe Himself in human flesh, entering this world as a helpless babe?

But that is precisely what God has done for us. A song from the eighties has a line, “He came down to my level, when I couldn’t get up to His.” Theologically we call this the “incarnation", God’s ultimate demonstration of grace in sending His one and only Son to this world to die for our sins. (Incidentally the Hebrew word for grace “hen” has an underlying sense of meaning “to bend or stoop in kindness to an inferior”.)

God in the incarnation “stooped down”. The apostle Paul, in his magnificent incarnation passage states, “Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:5-7).

Today what a difference it makes in our outlook when we consider that God has indeed “stooped down”. C. S. Lewis wrote so poignantly, “The Son of God became a Son of Man that sons of men might become sons of God”. That’s right! And remember this wonderful truth today, this season, and all your life! How blessed we are that God stooped down! Now, just as He stooped down, let us reach up to Him who gave His all for us!

B e encouraged today, Hebrews 3:13