Tag Archives: birth

Just An Ordinary Kid?

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JUST AN ORDINARY KID? 

“About that time Caesar Augustus ordered a census to be taken throughout the Empire. This was the first census when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Everyone had to travel to his own ancestral home town to be accounted for. So Joseph went from the Galilean town of Nazareth up to Bethlehem in Judah, David’s town, for the census. As a descendant of David, he had to go there. He went with Mary, his fiancée, who was pregnant.

“While they were there, the time came for her to give birth. She gave birth to a son, her firstborn. She wrapped Him in a blanket and laid Him in a manger because there was no room in the hostel.” Luke 2:1-7 (The Message).

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? A young man and his pregnant fiancée! It could be the story of any young couple in today’s world of free sex and blurred morality, in fact, very little morality when you come to think of it. Anyone reading this story for the first time would think that this is a story about our times.

However, Luke has already made it quite clear that Mary’s pregnancy was not the result of a one night stand or a young couple who couldn’t wait. She was a highly favoured teenage girl whom God chose to be the earthly mother of His Son. The baby who was so soon to be born was no ordinary kid. Yes, He was an ordinary human being like you and me and yet His conception was the union of the human and the divine, God stepping down for a season to become one of us.

Because of a government decree, Joseph and Mary had to make the gruelling journey to Bethlehem to join the head count in their ancestral home town. Why then, of all times? Mary’s pregnancy was almost full term. How could she make the long trip before the baby came? There was no train or bus service and certainly no plane to make the flight in an hour or so. This was a long journey on the back of a donkey over rough terrain which would take many days.

But they had to go and they went.

To crown it all, every nook and cranny of the town was filled with visitors. Every house with a spare room was full. There were no luxury hotels to make the situation easier for them. They had to take what shelter they could get and make the best of it. The only space in the local hostel was the downstairs room where the cooking was done and where the animals were sheltered at night.

And then, on top of that, Mary went into labour! What did she think about all this? Didn’t God know that this was not the place for His Son to be born? After all, He was the Son of God. At least God could have arranged it that they have a place in someone’s home where there was female help for this young girl having her first baby.

But God knew exactly what He was doing. Centuries before, through the mouth of the prophet Micah, God promised a ruler who would come from Bethlehem. “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from old, from ancient times.” Micah 5:2 (NIV). But Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth.

They would have to be moved from Nazareth to Bethlehem at the right moment for the child to be born there. How could they be forced to make the journey at such a crucial time? Only a government decree would motivate them to relocate to Bethlehem. And why in such a lowly place? It was God’s idea to stage His Son’s entry into the world in a place so humble that no one could ever think that they were excluded from His grace.

This is just like God, isn’t it? He didn’t only come to earth but He came to a scenario that was below the level of human beings so that He could lift us up. Even His death was the death of the lowest of the low. He could not go any lower.

And now, He cannot go any higher, because He is the highest of the high!

 

Zachariah Breaks The Silence!

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ZACHARIAH BREAKS THE SILENCE!

“Then Zachariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied,

“’Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, he came and set His people free.
He set the power of salvation in the centre of our lives,
And in the very house of David His servant,
Just as He promised long ago
Through the preaching of His holy prophets:
Deliverance from our enemies and from every hateful hand;
Mercy to our fathers,
As He remembered to do what he said he’d do,
What He swore to our father Abraham –
A clean rescue from the enemy camp,
So we can worship Him without a care in the world,
Made holy before Him for as long as we live.’” Luke 1:67-75

Finally, after nine months of silence, Zachariah’s voice was restored. What a difference from the last time he spoke! Skepticism and unbelief were not permitted to escape his lips during the entire duration of Elizabeth’s pregnancy. God’s will was in the process of being fulfilled and He would not permit foolish and unbelieving words to inhibit His plan from being fulfilled.

Those nine months of silence when his thoughts were locked up inside his mind, his only expression so laborious that he was limited to writing his basic wishes, must have been months of slow metamorphosis, like the gradual thickening of Elizabeth’s waistline as the child grew in her womb.

Perhaps his unbelief embraced more than just a pregnancy for his wife. Did he also balk at the idea that this child, whose coming he doubted anyway, would be all that the angel Gabriel prophesied; his child a prophet of the highest rank among all God’s prophets; a forerunner of the Messiah for whom they had waited so long that His coming seemed only like a pipe dream? Could it be that their deliverer could finally be on the doorstep after all these years of longing and waiting?

What was the hope that formed in Zachariah’s mind as his thoughts ran riot in his brain? What did deliverance mean to him? Did he have the same expectation as the disciples of Jesus had? Their expectation of a national and political deliverer shut their minds to a greater deliverance even from Rome, which Jesus could only achieve through His death and resurrection.

Zachariah spoke of salvation. What was this salvation of which he dreamed and spoke with such eloquence when his tongue was finally loosed? Was he longing for a new kind of freedom, when the guilt and power of sin would be removed forever? Did the possibility of deliverance from his own treacherous nature ever cross his mind? Did he see God’s salvation as the process of becoming whole again, restored to fellowship with the God from whom mankind had been estranged since the day Adam chose to go his own way?

I don’t think any of these thoughts crossed his mind as he pondered the nature of the child in Elizabeth’s womb. But, nevertheless, he must have considered the possibility that, since the angel had prophesied the birth of a baby to two people too old to have a child, the child would become and do all that Gabriel had said.

When Zachariah’s thinking became one with the mind of the Father, he was ready to receive and father the prophet in whom was invested the honour of fulfilling God’s plan. The early years of this child were crucial to his mission. He had to have a father who clearly understood his role in the raising of this boy. Unless Zachariah fully embraced the angel’s prophetic words, who would sow the seeds of John’s future into his life and destiny?

It was Zachariah’s role to prepare him for his future task. In this prophetic utterance of an overwhelmed dad, Zachariah expressed his confidence in the prophetic word and fully embraced his fatherly responsibility to raise his son into the role of which the angel had spoken.

Dumbstruck

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DUMBSTRUCK

“Zachariah said to the angel, ‘Do you expect me to believe this? I am an old man and my wife is an old woman.’

“But the angel said, ‘I am Gabriel, the sentinel of God, sent especially to bring you this glad news. But because you won’t believe me, you’ll be unable to say a word until the day of your son’s birth. Every word I’ve spoken to you will come true on time — God’s time.'” Luke 1:18-20 (The Message).

Does old age dim one’s confidence in a good God, or had Zachariah become so sceptical that not even a high-ranking angel’s appearance could convince him that God was actually communicating with him?

Imagine speaking to an angel like that! Surely the presence of an angelic being so awesome that Zachariah was paralysed with fear, would have convinced him that this was no joke, especially after Gabriel had given him details about his son’s nature and upbringing

Gabriel was God’s messenger, particularly assigned to carry messages regarding the coming of Messiah. It was he who visited Mary six months later to announce that she was to be the earthly mother of the Messiah.

Why did Zachariah respond with such scepticism? There are probably many reasons. His longing, together with his wife, Elizabeth’s, had died as old age took away any hope of their having a child, and with it their confidence that God would finally answer their prayers, regardless of their physical impotence to bear a child.

The angel came so unexpectedly and pounced on him so suddenly that his elderly brain had no time to process this surprise. All he could think of was the state of his body and the body of his wife. He was so much like us. We tend to look at the impossibilities rather than God’s promises, and draw our conclusions from what we can see rather than what God said.

Israel reacted in the same way when they were confronted with the prospect of entering and conquering a land that was full of giants and had fortified cities to overcome. They did not reckon on God’s promise, made to Abraham centuries before, and the power of God to override natural difficulties with supernatural intervention.

Zachariah’s unbelief came with a price. God would not let him off for mistrusting His Word. Zachariah was not only emotionally dumbstruck by the angel’s appearance; he would also be literally dumbstruck for the nine months of his wife’s pregnancy. This would present him with some unusual difficulties including the neighbours’ idea that being dumb meant that he was also deaf! (Luke 1:62).

Fortunately Zachariah’s handicap only lasted until the birth of his son. Perhaps it was in the mercy of God that He shut his mouth so that he could utter no more words of unbelief until the promise of God was fulfilled.

How often do we not put God’s promises on hold, or even cancel them by our confession of unbelief because we are more impressed by what we can see and hear than what God has said in His Word. We might learn a lesson from this reluctant priest who robbed himself of speech until the Word of the Lord proved him a liar.