The gift has arrived

Perhaps you have heard the story of the woman who waited one Christmas until the very last minute to send Christmas cards. She rushed to the store and bought a package of fifty cards without even looking at them. Still in a big hurry, she addressed forty-nine of them to her friends and signed them. On Christmas day she glanced at the one card she had not sent and noticed, for the first time, the message it bore: “This little card is just to say . . . a Christmas gift is on the way!” She suddenly realized that forty-nine of her friends were expecting a gift from her – a gift that would not arrive!

There are more than fifty prophecies in the Old Testament where God promised to Israel a Messiah. Unlike the lady’s forty-nine friends, the people of Israel were not left waiting for a gift that never arrived. God’s gift was delivered to a Bethlehem stable. Unfortunately, not many people in Israel were willing to accept as their Messiah a Galilean baby living down the street who a few years later as a boy would work in His father’s carpenter shop. God’s gift of His Son was rejected for three primary reasons:

First of all, He was not born in the way people believed the Messiah would be born. Whoever heard such nonsense as a stable and a manger and shepherds and wise men from afar? Christians around the world today are thrilled to hear again and again the story that never grows old. But to the people in Israel two thousand years ago Jesus was not the kind of Messiah they were expecting. God could have arranged for His Son to be born in Caesar’s palace surrounded by pomp and splendor. eHeh hHe must get a great chuckle out of the joke He played on humans, for we are impressed by outward appearances. The King of Kings born in a stable? Only God would have thought of that.

Second, Jesus did not act in the way people believed a Messiah would act. We want our leaders to look, act, and talk like leaders. We normally vote into office those who talk and act like leaders, and vote out of office those who demonstrate they do not know how to lead. We admire leaders, for they turn weaknesses into strength, obstacles into stepping stones, and disaster into triumph. Isn’t it interesting, however, that the only king who has ever lived who had absolute power humbled Himself and became a servant? He was not above washing the feet of His disciples.

Finally, Jesus did not die in the way people believed a Messiah would die. Even as Christians around the earth today celebrate His birth, we are aware of the agonizing way He died. You may be familiar with the Holman Hunt painting called, The Shadow of Death. It is a painting of a young man in the carpenter shop in late afternoon rising from a cramped position where He has been working to stretch out His arms to relax them. As He does this, the sun casts on the wall behind Him his shadow in the shape of a cross. His mother, Mary, is standing nearby, and her face is filled with terror as she looks at that shadow. Hunt imagines her intuitively aware that her Son will meet a tragic end.

It was an enormous obstacle for first century Jews to believe the promised Messiah could die like a common criminal upon a Roman cross. In allowing this to happen, God confounded human wisdom so that no one would ever be able to boast of having enough virtue to merit salvation. Only one thing saves us, and that is faith in the crucified, resurrected, and living Christ. You and I would have done it another way.

Yes, God’s gift has arrived. It has your name on it! But no gift can be truly yours until you accept it!

 

 

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