And just like the rest of this fall, there are very few pictures from our Christmas. I don't have the first picture of anyone with a gift or opening gifts. Or the decorations. But none of those things define Christmas. Jesus does.
I chose Isaiah 61:1-3 for our card this year. I feel like there is so much darkness, division, brokenness, grief and sorrow in our world. And there is! But in the midst of it all there is GOOD NEWS.
Jesus HAS come.
"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the LORD has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor. He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the person to those who are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified." ~Isaiah 61:1-3
People need Jesus. That's all. People need Jesus.
I'm teaching Matthew's gospel account of Jesus this year at BSF. When we study God's Word, it's so important that we take the time to consider and understand culture and context. It adds so much to our understanding of what the Lord is doing, what He is trying to teach us. Yes, Matthew tells us of the coming, life, ministry, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. Matthew's original audience was the Jews, God's chosen people. He was determined to prove to them that Jesus is, indeed, the promised Messiah, the one the Old Testament prophets foretold, the King. His book is the bridge between the Old and New Testaments. That's why he begins with the genealogy of Jesus. He makes frequent references to the Old Testament and quotes over 60 verses from the Old Testament. A Jew of Jesus' day would say that He was not the Redeemer-King they were expecting. So Matthew meets them with the Old Testament, connecting the dots between the Redeemer that was promised and the Redeemer that was provided.
The Old Testament closed without the fulfillment of God's promise of the Messiah. Four hundred years passed between the last verse of the Old Testament and the first verse in the New Testament. Four hundred years of silence. I made a comment in my lecture about Matthew 1 regarding the blank page in my Bible between the Old and New Testament. Here's what I said:
"Did God change His mind? Did He fail to remember His promise? No. God always keeps His promises. Long silences and periods of delay do not lessen the certainty of God fulfilling His promises. At just the right time, God broke the silence, and He did it with the cry of a newborn baby being born to a virgin. Jesus was born during one of the darkest times in Israel's history. From beginning to end, including the blank page between the Old and New Testament, the Bible is all about Jesus."
I also talked about how during those 400 years . . . that blank page in my Bible . . . yes, God may have been silent, but that does NOT mean He was not at work. Because He was! He was working the whole entire time preparing the world for the arrival of His Son, Jesus, the God-Man.
I had no idea the impact of the "blank page." I had several ladies tell me the following week that they had never noticed the blank page before, that they pulled all the Bibles off the shelves they could find to look and see if there was a blank page between the Old and New Testaments.
Silence. Darkness.
My favorite lyric from one of my favorite Christmas songs, "When I Think Upon Christmas," is: Now the darkest of ages are done. For the Savior of heaven has come.
I have to admit. It seems dark. So dark in our world today. But we live after the cross. I can't even comprehend what it was like to live on the other side of the cross, before the cross, before the Light had come. That's a darkness I can't even imagine.
But Jesus HAS come.
I don't have any pictures of our tree with all the sparkly lights and memories hanging on it. But I do have a picture of the day we picked it out!
