Was the world expecting the Messiah? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Sometimes we hear people say, and I might have said it in the past, that when Jesus came to Earth, the world was waiting for Him. There was a universal language, a universal travel system, and people were searching for hope. It sounds good to say, but as I pondered it, I wondered if that was true.
Even if we look at the Jewish people at the time, we don’t see them saying “Look! The 70 weeks of Daniel are almost over! The Messiah is coming!” Of course, they were expecting a Messiah, but there wasn’t an effort done to pin down when the date would be. When the wise men come to Herod, there is no urgency on the part of the Jewish people to go and see Jesus. There is no cause of celebration among them. If anything, we read the opposite, that they were troubled.
Jesus came into a world He wanted to save, but that doesn’t mean He came into a world that wanted Him.
Jesus came into a world where He experienced more rejection and suffering than any of us have. Even as an infant, He could not escape it as His family had to flee to keep Him from being killed. At this point, the only “crime” He was guilty of was being born.
Not only that, but for any of us, when we experience suffering, it is not as if we are perfectly innocent people. Jesus is the only one who there was no justice in what was done to Him by the people. He is the one who should have been received with the most love, but instead, He was condemned with the most hate.
Not much has changed in 2,000 years.
Of course, Christians can be jerks just as much as anyone else can, but also we live in a world where we are hated for the positions that we hold today. If you defend marriage as a man and a woman exclusively, then you are a bigot. If you hold that human life is sacred from the moment of conception and should not be killed in the womb, then you hate women. Since we hold to the biblical miracles, we are also obviously anti-science as well.
We, like our Lord before us, are not welcome in the world.
Yet like our Lord before us, we are called to love this world and give ourselves for the cause of its salvation if need be. We are also called to love those who persecute us. We should consider that if Jesus was willing to go to the cross for those He loved, surely we are willing to be called a name for those same people.
Christmas should be a time to stop and remember not just that Jesus came, but why He came. By all means, have fun and celebrate with family and friends, but also remember Jesus came into a warzone. We still live in one.
The world didn’t want Him. It doesn’t want us.
Yet Jesus gave Himself for the world. We have the same responsibility to save the world He loves.
Let’s do it.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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