Posted on 12/24/2021 7:40:56 AM PST by OneVike
Had there been newspapers in the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago, some of the headlines might have been:
"GRAIN SHIPS DOCK"
"PIRATE SHIPS SUNK BY SIXTH FLEET"
"STUDENTS CLASH WITH POLICE, ROMAN RIOTS END"
Such headlines would look very much like the headlines in our newspapers today. After all, the world of the New Testament was a world very much like ours. There were wars, sickness, poverty, slavery, misery, and injustice. There were people who struggled to keep on living. They were living by habit, long after they had lost any sense of purpose, meaning, or goal. It was a world very similar to ours, populated with people just like us, and God was about to burst into this world of lost men.
Jesus would be born in the most common of circumstances. He would enter our world to the simple sound of animals, and the smell of manure. It was an unobtrusive birth with no doctors, and no fine linen. Baby Jesus may have been born in simplicity, yet after His birth our world, despite all its problems, would never be the same. The birth of this Baby would do what no authority or invention of man could. One day that Babe, full grown, would say,
He is the way for those who are lost, He is the truth for those who are confused, and He is the life for those who are dead in their sins. To every person who lives without direction, hope, or meaning - to you and me - the birth of Jesus offers a fresh newness, a life turned around and transformed by the power of God.
We sometimes yearn for great and startling evidences of God's presence. We think, "if only I could see miracles as they happened in the Biblical days. If only something great would happen to me!" Oh how we long for the sensational, and how much we have to learn. For the greatest miracle of all, God's greatest work, is done in the simplicity of daily life that is common to millions of men. Take a look at the stable and you may wonder and ask, do the great things God wants to do in us, and for us, bear the same stamp?
Being just five miles from Jerusalem, the small town of Bethlehem was very unimpressive. Yet today it is one of the most recognized places on earth, all because of the birth of Jesus. Like Bethlehem, we too are very unimpressive, but He makes us great, not because of who we are, but because of Whose we are. While Jesus meets us in our sin, His purpose is to save us from our sins. He saves us first from the penalty of sin, then from the power of sin, and finally from the presence of sin.
What Christianity presents to the world is not simply a code of morals, nor a system of theology, but a person. Many will point to the great history of Christianity, but Christianity is much more than its history. It is the revelation of a present Savior and the living personal knowledge that Jesus is eternal life, not the knowledge of the facts about the Lord's history. Sadly, because the world does not realize that Jesus is the true treasure of Christmas, it gets caught up in spending money to buy love during the holidays. Christmas is a story worth repeating, and a song worth singing, but most of all Christmas is a salvation that you can know. Christ alone is worthy of our worship! Oh, come! Let us adore Him!
Like today, the most important and influential citizens of the society, and the World for that matter, were clueless of some lowly carpenters son being born in some small village of Judea. Yet, it's a lesson to us as to whom God truly considers important, and it is not the movers and shakers of the World. Rather it was to a few lonely shepherds tending there flock, who GOD had his angels notify of HIS Son's birth, not those listed on the the who's who of society list.
No, God wanted the sick and the lost to be the first to see His Son. What better way to enter the world then to be heralded by the very misfits and social outcasts He would one-day die for? You see, He came to seek and to save those who are lost because it's not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick, like these misfits who were the first to welcome Him into the world. (Matthew 18:11)
Merry Christmas to all Freeper, and may your blessing be abundant.
Merry Christmas, Chuck.
Thanks Mary-Lou. I just now got online Ive been gone from things, or I would have noticed you greeting. I pray you Christmas was a blessed one, and May the Lord bless you continually throughout the new year.
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