Galatians 4.4-7 Luke 2.15-21
Are you patient? I easily get agitated and start tut-tutting. Pacing up and down. Muttering, “this is ridiculous!” When the computer’s on a go-slow. When traffic lights stay red for-e-ver. In queues. In the doctor’s waiting room and he’s running 45 minutes late.
Not all waiting is this annoying. But we live in an instant world. Information is at our fingertips in seconds thanks to the Internet. Amazon Prime makes next day delivery normal and expected. Credit cards mean you can buy things you can’t afford - NOW! How did people manage in the old days (by which I mean the 1980s)? Waiting was just what you did. Maybe we were more patient?
In the Bible, God makes people wait. We’ve just finished Advent Season, waiting for Christ to be born. This waiting is over. But a month of liturgical waiting for us, was at least 4000 years of actual waiting for humanity. Advent is also waiting for the Second Coming. This is almost 2000 years and counting.
1) The Waiting Is Over
Christ’s birth isn’t the beginning of His story. We treat birth as day one of a new existence. However, before we get out, we spend nine months developing in the womb. We had to get into the womb in the first place. Each person has a pre-history. Our parents met one another rather than someone else. And their parents, and so on. If any combination of my ancestors met a different person, or even if a different sperm got to the egg first, I wouldn’t be as I am today. The DNA of different individuals combined to eventually make us as we actually are. A cast of thousands made us. This is also true of Jesus. Only with Him, it’s a greater story with greater significance.
Mary had to wait for her nine months of pregnancy to end. Nothing unusual in that (except she was expecting no “ordinary” baby but one who’d deliver Israel). Nine months was a short wait.
700 years earlier, Isaiah prophesied this. “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” and “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.” 700 years - a long wait.
One who’ll reign on David’s throne forever. God told David about this. “When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever (2 Samuel 7:12-13).” Seemingly fulfilled in Solomon, actually fulfilled in Jesus. The Temple Jesus built is the church, the living stones, which cannot be destroyed. 1000 years before Christ - a long wait.
In Deuteronomy 18:15 Moses told the Israelites, “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him.” In Acts 3, Peter confirms this is Jesus, even though it seemed like the Israelites Moses addressed would be the ones to hear him. Prophecy is a bit funny like that. No immediate coming - the Israelites had to wait 1400 years.
Just one more. God told the serpent in Eden, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” We see this as fulfilled in the cross specifically. The Devil tried hard to kill Jesus before the cross. Herod is the human villain in the Christmas story. The author of Hebrews wrote of Jesus, “since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil.” An explicit fulfilment of the coming of Christ as a human to destroy the serpent. That took at least 4000 years to happen. God is patient - and willing to make humanity wait.
2) The Coming of Christ
Paul wrote to the Galatians, “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman…” It was no accident that Jesus was born when He was. God didn’t think, “well, I think I’ve made ‘em wait long enough. This Mary chick is a nice girl. She’ll do.” He maneuvered history to this point, getting the circumstances just right. But what if He hadn’t and Christ never came? What might we be doing in the UK now?
We can only speculate. In spite of His coming, the vast majority don’t worship Christ. Half the people openly say there’s no god or they’re not sure. Society doesn’t compel them to assume they’re Christian or pretend to be when they know they aren’t. The Ten Commandments have been largely ditched.
If Christ never came, what might we be worshipping? Probably different deities for different occasions. Maybe ancient British or Celtic gods, Saxon gods, Norse gods? Plenty of those. And many are just variations on the themes of war, harvest, earth, water. Or maybe we’d directly worship the sun, moon, stars, trees, water, animals?
How would people who think the story of Jesus’ birth is fanciful nonsense cope with stories of Roman gods and goddesses? Or would they tolerate it for the wine and sex, the dancing and singing? Consider the Roman god Saturn, who devoured his children by his wife Ops as soon as they were born because of a prophecy that one would overthrow him. After chomping through 5 children, Ops hid the child Jupiter and offered Saturn a large stone wrapped in swaddling clothes instead, which so upset his stomach he was forced to disgorge all the other children. Or Venus, born of the seafoam. Naughty Saturn castrated his father and threw the bits into the sea. As they drifted over the water, the blood mixed with it to foment the growth of Venus. Or Bacchus, who was born twice. The first time fathered by Jupiter, who assumed the form of a snake, slithered into the underworld and impregnated Proserpina. Later on, Bacchus was killed, his body torn to pieces. Jupiter gathered them up, placed Bacchus’ heart into a potion which was drunk by Semele, a mortal, who became pregnant. She was murdered, so Jupiter ripped the baby from the womb and sowed him into his thigh to nourish him until he was born.
Compare these to the birth story of Jesus - the difference is immediately obvious. In spite of the angels, the virgin birth, the star, it comes across as a very human story. The Bible accounts are supernatural, not unnatural. We’re privileged this is our story and God hasn’t given us over to depraved gods and practices.
3) The Wait Goes On
God sent His Son. And the consequence for us? Our adoption to sonship. The Holy Spirit in our hearts. We are children and heirs.
Jesus is the only begotten Son. We are adopted children. This is a brilliant thing. God chose you. God is our Father because He wants to be. It pleases Him. We’re God’s children now, but we wait for the redemption of the body. The wait goes on for the second coming of Christ and the resurrection of the dead, when the perishable body will be raised imperishable, raised in glory and power. As John wrote, “now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”
The Holy Spirit lives within the believer, the guarantee of our inheritance, a deposit of what is to come. Our inheritance is to share in the glory of Jesus. It’s knowing God. It’s eternal life. “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all...will also, along with him, graciously give us all things”. Nothing in all creation “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The wait goes on for the fulness of this inheritance.
God has “blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” It “can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.” Moth and rust cannot destroy it. Thieves cannot break in and steal it. But the wait goes on. God kept mankind waiting at least 4000 years for the first coming of Christ. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that we’ve waited almost 2000 for the second. He’ll come when the time is right. God will keep His promise as He did before.
CONCLUSION
For many, Christmas is a time for the kids, the family, for eating and drinking too much. And God forbid any religion should sneak its way in! But for Christians, the religion must come first and the rest is trimmings. We need to “be more shepherd”. They heard the message of the angels and hurried off to look; then told everybody what they’d seen; they glorified and praised God. And we should “be more Mary”, who treasured the events to think about them often. And we, I, should be more patient...
Image by Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz
https://pixabay.com/photos/sheep-shepherd-young-man-portrait-5605251/
