Christmas Eve (24 December, 2017)

Promises Kept

Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz, "Ask a sign of the LORD your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven."  But Ahaz said, "I will not ask, and I will not put the LORD to the test."  And he said, "Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also?  Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.  Isaiah 7:10-14

(A Psalm of David.) The LORD says to my Lord: "Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool."  The LORD sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies!  Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power, in holy garments; from the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours.  The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, "You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek."  Psalm 111:1-4

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.  Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.  In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.  By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.  And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.  Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.  So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.  1 John 4:7-16

[The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. ...] and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.  So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations.  Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.  And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.  But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."  All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:  "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel" (which means, God with us).  When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.  Matthew 1:(1) 16-25

If there is any one thing that we can guarantee that God does, based on these readings at first glance, is that God keeps His word.  Think back to the proclamation He made in the Garden; that He would send someone to redeem people.  The entire narrative of Scripture is about tracking that promise from Eden to Bethlehem.

Ahaz, a king in the Davidic line, is given a reiterated promise of this redeemer.  God gave the king an opportunity for a sign as "proof" that the promise made to David was still in play.  I honestly don't know if Ahaz had forgotten the promise, or if he had just abandoned it.  David knew this promise, and wrote about saying that "the Lord said to my lord."  David knew that his ultimate successor would be truthfully greater.

Maybe Ahaz thought that each successor was to be greater than the previous king and was feeling upset with God for not making Ahaz's kingdom greater than his father's, grandfather's, and great-grandfather's.

We have the benefit of hindsight, true, but everyone should have seen it.  That's why we're given a list of the lineage of the kingly line, from Abraham to David, David to the exile, and the exile to Jesus.  This child, born in such humble states, is King.  But David only called him Lord, not king, and notes that this ultimate descendant is a priest.  And not just any priest, like Aaron's line, but a priest who rules.  That was who Melchizedek was.

And so the time came for that child, the King of all Creation, to be born as a humble servant.  Born to the no-name descendants of a former royal line that was founded by the last and least of a collection of sons.  Born at just the right time when the displaced people of God had no homeland, no ruler, no law, no hope, no power whatsoever to right what was made wrong.  Born to bear the unstoppable judgmental glare of a righteous and just God who's law had not just been broken but shattered.  Born to redeem all children of God from the shackles that they had put upon themselves by flaunting their sins in the face of their Creator, spitting on His just and proper Law.

Born to do the last thing anyone would be willing to do: die for another's wrong.

But He could not stay dead.  The grave would not hold Him.  Even Hell itself was powerless against His invasion.  That ultimate conquering Savior who defeated Death by death was born in lowly circumstances to a meek virgin pledged to be the wife of a son of David.

No pomp, no parades, no celebrations.  The beauty of God's plan for salvation is in its simplicity.  It makes no sense to us, who expected a conquering warlord, riding on a charging stallion at the head of a vast army.

Instead we joyfully receive a humble child as our Lord and Savior.