Christmas Day Devotion
While each of us have our personal struggles and issues we have to deal with this Christmas, so did the people in Jesus day. There was a tax put on the people of Israel by the Roman government. Each family had to go to the town of their forefathers to register and pay the tax. Sounds exciting, except that they didn’t have the money to pay the tax. So Joseph took his pregnant fiancé to Bethlehem to comply with the Roman edict.
When they got there, all the hotels and inns were full and so they were allowed to stay in the stable with the livestock. Wouldn’t you know it, but Mary went into labor and gave birth to the child. This was not an ordinary child, but a son whose father was not Joseph, it was God Himself. He was all God, and all human at the same time. This is more than when we think our children are divine. This boy really was God in the flesh. The prophets in the OT had declared that the Messiah would come and the child would be God in the flesh.
Shepherds were out watching over their sheep that night when angels appeared to them. The angels declared that the Messiah, the Promised One, was born in Bethlehem. They couldn’t wait to go see him. When they did, they worshiped Him.
Pagan wise men, worshipers of the stars, knew of the prophecies and started a long trek to find this one who would lead the world. When they found the babe, they gave him precious gifts that would only be given to a king.
Even the evil king Herod was alarmed by the birth of Jesus. He was so afraid of this child, he had all the boys under the age of two slaughtered to get rid of any potential rival. There was weeping over the deaths of so many children.
Taxes, holiday travel, no place to sleep, birthing a child in a country run by another nation, mass murders, weeping and grieving,…sound like today?
So why didn’t God just come and straighten out the world? Because that wasn’t what God wanted to do. He loves you so much and wants you to be adopted into His family so much, that the only thing He could do was to send His Son to be born. Our sin separates us and prevents us from being close to God, or even to be part of His family. Sin created such a gulf between us and God that no one could ever span it. So God came to us. He was born to Mary, both flesh and blood, and God. He was born flesh and blood that He might die for our sins. He was God, that He might perfectly span the gulf.
Jesus spanned that gulf by dying for you on the cross. There, He took your sins upon Him as though He were the guilty party. Our sins were so costly, God himself had to pay the debt and it was paid on the cross.
Now, He offers to you the forgiveness of your sins. He offers to adopt you into His family and to receive all the riches of Heaven itself. We must take it. We are not worthy, but God loves you so much, He sent His only begotten Son, that whosoever believed in Him, would not perish, but have everlasting life.
For those who did receive Him, He gave the right to become the sons of God – born not of flesh and blood, or of our own decision, or by our heritage, but by the will of God.
When we think of Christmas, we get so focused on the baby, we forget who the baby is and why he is. He is the perfect gift from God to us. Will you accept Jesus and make Him your Lord and Savior?