He Came to Redeem Us

Christmas Message 2010 - Given at Toongabbie, NSW

We live in a world where the message of Christmas is vastly distorted. People change the things of God to suit their convenience and pleasure while others simply don’t understand the meaning of the birth of Jesus. For instance, there is a push to replace the good old ‘Merry Christmas’ greetings with ‘Happy Holidays’. On the other hand, our kids are influenced by the media to think that Christmas is the birthday of Santa Claus. Shopping centers bombard you with all kinds of pre-Christmas and Post-Christmas sales thus forcing you to make your Christmas a ‘credit card’ Christmas. So in all these mess and confusion, what is the Christmas message and why is Jesus’ birth given so much of an importance?

Apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians clarifies this misnomer about Christmas. According to Paul, two reasons why Jesus came into this world was to redeem mankind and make us to become part of His family (Gal 4:4-7). We will look at the first reason in more in depth.

Why should I be redeemed?

To answer this question we would have to go all the way back to the first book of the Bible, we read in Genesis that we are separated from God because of our sin. There is a gulf between God and mankind created by man as a result of believing in the subtle lies of Satan. Jesus is the one who will bridge this gap created by us and He does this by crushing the head of Satan (Gen 3:15). Therefore, at the appointed time God sent Jesus to be born of the woman. What intrigues me more is why the ‘appointed time’ (Gal 4:4)? Or some translations have ‘when the time fully came’. We will never understand what redemption means to us until we understand the merit of Jesus coming to us in a human form and dying for us. Therefore it is essential to put all this in the right perspective. To do this, we may have to go back to the earlier books of the Bible to decipher the historical evidences. Let me break it down for you.
In the following list you will notice how God weaved through the generations to make this day (Christmas Day) special for you and me.

• God’s promise to Abraham – ‘I will make you a great nation'
• The nation of Israel was under bondage in Egypt for 400 Years for their disobedience
• God brings the Israelites out of bondage and the 10 commandments were given to Moses at Mt Sinai
• Israelites reach the Promise land (Canaan) under the leadership of Moses
• 12 men were chosen to explore the land of Canaan, 10 of them refused to take over the land because they saw the occupant of the land stronger than themselves, but only 2 men had the confidence in capturing the land.
• Joshua and Caleb were the two who showed all the determination to capture the land that God had promised to their forefathers. Most of Israel doubted God’s ability to provide what He had promised. Israel were left to wander in the wilderness for another 40 years before they could enter the Promised land because of their disbelief
• Joshua, the new leader enters the promise land but the condition that God placed on Israel was that they were not to intermarry with the Canaanites or worship their gods.
• Once they were in the Promised Land, Israel showed their cyclic behavior of obedience and disobedience by doing all the things that God told them not to do.
• God appointed Judges through whom He would rule the nation of Israel but after a while they rejected the Judges and wanted their own king like their neighboring countries. Again with absolute disregard to what God had said and done Israelites continued in their disobedience they did what they thought right in their own eyes.
• The first king of Israel, Saul was selected but he did not honor God’s word, God chose David to succeed after Saul failed as a king.
• David ruled for a while and he trusted the Lord and did what was right in the eyes of God but he also failed as a King. Later, his son, Solomon ruled peacefully for about 40 years. He built the temple of God in Jerusalem which became a symbol a permanent dwelling place for God. After he died the nation of Israel was split into 12 kingdoms.
• The 12 tribes of Israel did not honor God’s word and they continued to live in sinful ways, God allowed the Assyrians and Babylonians to capture them and rule over them.
• During the 70 yrs rule of the Babylonian rule, God allowed prophet Ezra to write and consolidate the Old Testament scriptures and prophet Nehemiah to rebuild the Temple that Solomon built in Jerusalem.
• Malachi was the last prophet God spoke to and after this God did not have any interaction with mankind for 400 years, we call these years as silent years.
• After the Assyrians and Babylonians came the Greeks. One famous ruler was Alexander, the great. It was under Alexander, Greek become the common language of his vast empire. Furthermore, the Romans Empire built roads and highways. Every Roman citizen was given security as they travelled to other countries using these highways.
  

In summary, during the silent years which spanned for about 400 years, the writings of Moses and the teachings of the prophets were written to form the Old Testament. In addition to this, a number of synagogues were built by the Israelites who migrated to various countries. Furthermore, with Greek as a common language, people became literate to translate the scriptures and to teach them in their synagogues. Lastly, with the safety and security provided for Roman citizens, people could move about without fear to various countries and established their homes through the modernized road systems. Although these were 400 silent years, God was working in the background through various regimes to deliver His Son Jesus Christ into this world at the ‘appointed’ time. This He did to redeem us from the clutches of sin and death.