December 5 Advent

I am going to interrupt our story to skip backwards a few books to an old testament prophecy about John the Baptist. This still fits into the theme of the last couple of days, about speaking the prophetic words God gives you. (I promise this won't be the theme for the entire Christmas season! But it is a big one surrounding John...)

Malachi 3:1

"“I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty. 

Pretty self explanatory, right? WELL! The next part and the following chapter are the reason I felt this book required noting in this Christmas season! Take a read, thinking about how Jesus treats the priests and teachers of the law during his time of ministry...

Malachi 3:2-5

But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years. “So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty."

I think that last verse is haunting. Doesn’t it sound like Christ’s very words and purpose? If you read Malachi chapter 4, you will become confused, and wonder if you are simply reading one of Jesus’s rebukes to the teachers, in the New Testament. You could almost copy and past almost this whole book, stick it into the middle of Luke and highlight it in red, and you would never be able to tell it wasn’t Christ speaking!! Do you know why? Because Christ says “I Am”. This means, Malachi was writing the words of Christ, because Christ was with God and was God, even before He came to the earth. It would seem as though Christ got to hand-pick John the Baptist, and already knew before His own birth how He would act, whom He would love, and who’s hearts would be hardened towards Him. Interesting eh? Malachi... give it a read! Its a short book, you can do it! 

This may not seem Christmas-related... but just think... before Jesus was born, he was “I Am”. He spoke to the patriarchs of the Jewish faith, gave Moses commands on mount Sinai, granted His authority to Elijah, Elisha, Jeremiah and more, mentored King David and Solomon, had his hand in the destruction and captivity of the Jewish nation, and more. Jesus knew His whole life, AND ours. He knew the hearts of each and every Pharisee, each and every disciple, all before He was even conceived. Jesus knew how very little He would comprehend as a newborn infant, and that He would need to learn it all again, as a human. Jesus knew exactly what He was getting Himself into. And yet He chose to come anyway. 

I wonder if He was able to remember much of heaven, or if it just came in glimpses. I wonder sometimes, if He had to learn about His faith like every other boy of that time, or if He simply knew it all, even as an infant in His mother’s arms... Questions I will ask when I get to heaven. In the mean-time, today’s “lesson” is simply to marvel in gratitude at Christ’s informed choice to become what He became on Christmas. To dwell on some of the things prophesied of old, that may have been Jesus speaking to His future (like the whole book of Malachi pretty much).

Dear Jesus,

Thank you for coming, even though you knew what would happen ahead of time. You knew every careless heart, and yet you pursued each and every one anyway. You knew the ridicule, and the horror of a death you would face, and you knew how all your heavenly power and wisdom would vanish in an instant, the moment you were conceived and born. Lord, we pray you would soften our hearts to marvel at what an extraordinary thing it is, that you were fully God, yet an infant with so many limitations. Bring us gratitude that you would sacrifice everything, to become a helpless baby of a teenage girl, and grow up pure and spotless, to be our perfect sacrifice once and for all. Thank you Lord.

Amen.