Whenever I checkout at the grocery store, I have a tendency to pick the slowest moving line, and so I wait. When I go to Starbucks, all I want is a plain old cup of black coffee, but I have to wait for the person who wants a sugar-free, skinny vanilla soy, double shot breve latte, no foam, extra hot, Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha with light whip, double cupped. And so I’m learning to wait.
Back in the Garden of Eden, God made a promise to Adam
and Eve after they sinned against Him. He promised to send a Redeemer who would crush Satan, but the world had to
wait thousands of years for the promise to come to fruition.
“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.” Genesis 3:15
Two thousand years later, there lived a man named Abraham. God
asked him to leave his country and his kinfolk and go to a foreign land that
God would show him. He obeyed and God made a promise to Abraham.
“I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you;
I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Genesis 12:2-3
All the people on earth would be blessed through the
coming Messiah who would descend from Abraham. But it all began with one child of promise. God promised Abraham
and Sarah a son, but they waited twenty five years for Isaac to be born.
The
nation of Israel began with Abraham and one of
his best known descendants was King David. When the prophet Samuel
anointed David to be
the next king, David still had to wait. He waited over 15 years before
he would
take the throne of Judah and he waited another 7 years before he ruled
over the united kingdom of Israel and Judah. And several years later God
makes this promise to David.
The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will
establish a house for you: 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
7:11-13
That
last phrase refers to the promised Messiah, but Israel waited another
thousand years before He came. Three hundred years after King David, God
raised up the prophet Isaiah. This promise came through the prophet.
Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The
virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.
Isaiah 7:14
The virgin birth is important. We’re all born with a sin nature because we are descendants of Adam and Eve. In order for God
to take on flesh and blood without the sin nature, he bypassed the earthly
father. The child in Mary’s womb was miraculously conceived by Holy Spirit. Therefore,
Jesus was able to live a sinless life and was qualified to be the perfect sacrificial Lamb of God.
After the prophecy of Isaiah, Israel still had to wait seven hundred more years for the
coming of Messiah. And many didn’t even recognize Him when He came. They didn’t realize
that He would first come to suffer and die and at His second coming He would
establish His earthly kingdom. He came to his own, and his own people did not
receive him. Many failed to recognize that the promised one
is Jesus.
In his gospel record, Matthew traces the
genealogy of Jesus all the way back to Abraham.
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son
of David, the son of Abraham. Matthew 1:1
And
so after the world waited over four thousand years, the
promised Messiah came to earth to save His people from their sins. That's what Christmas is all about.
He came to his own, and his own people did not
receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave
the right to become children of God. John 1:12
Jesus lived
a perfect sinless life, was crucified, died and was buried, and on the
third day He rose again victorious over the grave, death and hell. He is alive forevermore. Those who receive Jesus as Lord are given the right to become children of God and citizens of His kingdom. Jesus promised to return and yet we wait. For over two thousand years we’ve been waiting
for His promised return.
God’s timetable is not the same as ours. One
day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like one day to
the Lord. So from His perspective, Jesus has only been gone for a couple
of days! Peter encourages our hearts and reminds us why Jesus has not
returned yet.
And so as we celebrate His first advent this Christmas, we anxiously await His second coming. And everyone who has this eager
expectation will keep themselves pure, just as he is pure.
