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12-23-07: The Once and Future King |
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We’ve been taking a look again at the biblical accounts of the birth of Jesus. If you can find the time, please read the passages in Luke 1 & 2 and Matthew 1 & 2. It would probably amaze us to know how little most Christians know about those passages. As mentioned last week, the true story of Jesus’ birth is far more complex and interesting than the sanitized little manger story that we tend to think about.
We’ve been taking a look again at the biblical accounts of the birth of Jesus. If you can find the time, please read the passages in Luke 1 & 2 and Matthew 1 & 2. It would probably amaze us to know how little most Christians know about those passages. As mentioned last week, the true story of Jesus’ birth is far more complex and interesting than the sanitized little manger story that we tend to think about.
But isn’t that true of Jesus’ life and teachings? His whole message breaks out of every box that people want to place Him in to categorize Him or make his message comfortable to our sensibilities. Remember this Christmas that the innocent baby became the man whom the power elite of Israel put to death on Good Friday. Remember that his teaching of the true message of God’s way led Him to suffer enormously and redeem our lives with his life.
Today’s message explores the idea that, for the nation of Israel, Jesus had much in common with their all important deliverance figure: Moses. Moses who mightily organized the Israelites into an escape from Pharaoh’s bondage, who was selected by God to give the people the Law, who led his nation to the land of God’s covenant promise, who prayed for them in their sinful idolatry and served as the mediator priest, gave his people new hope and new life. All faithful Jews of Jesus’ time revered Moses both as the obedient servant of God and as the one chosen to deliver them from their 400 year-long bondage in Egypt.
We don’t tend to look at ourselves as people in bondage – clearly we are not being held captive as slaves as were the Jews of Moses’ time and our country is not occupied by a foreign power as was Israel at Jesus’ time.
It’s probably safe to say that our bondage is more subtle. At Christmas we rejoice in this wonderful birth and we can thank God for His ultimate gift. But, at the risk of being a bit serious, we must also look at what it is that we are slaves to. What has us in bondage? It’s not a foreign power for you and me. But still it holds us until we release it to the Deliverer. Is there anything in our lives that has more control over us, sometimes or all the time, than we have control over it. These may be addictions, fixations or obsessions. Maybe they’re just ideas that we continuously come back to that stop us from getting ahead.
The truth is, most Jews of Jesus’ time were looking for God to appear and to give them direction as a nation and deliverance from external bondage. God appeared giving men and women direction for their lives and deliverance from internal bondage. God re-defined the whole order of things and gave mankind a new start. Christmas is about a new start, personally and as God’s people
Read the gospels again and, this time, read it with a new awareness and, I hope, with a new awe. You will find that our God is an awesome God.
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