I am going to post my paper that I wrote for Systematic's II as my thought for the day. I want to preface the assignment a little so you know what I was trying to accomplish. The assignment what to write about the "real meaning" of Christmas using ONLY Luke's two works. The Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts were our Scriptural foundation. It was supposed to be three to four pages and written as if it were an article in the Lutheran Witness. However, I still wrote mine basically as an academic paper and it ended up being seven pages long. The professor made a comment in class about when I handed him my paper he thought I must have used really heavy paper since it weighed so much more than everyone else's. For this class our papers do not get letter grades. We get either Pass/Marginal Pass/Not Pass. If you get Not Pass you have to re-write the assignment. If you get Marginal Pass you have your choice whether you want to re-write it or not. and if you get Pass you do not have to re-write it. Then at the end of the class your grade is determined by how many Marginal Pass's or Pass's you had. I got a pass on this first one which I was very happy about. So I do not know if it is an A paper, but it was close enough to what he was looking for to pass. I apologize for it being so long, but if you feel adventurous enough to read the whole thing, here it is. Enjoy.
Christmas to most people these days is all about buying
gifts, decorating the house, making huge extravagant meals, traveling home to
be with family, or going to church. Even
Christians who know the story of Christmas as the birth of Jesus get lost in
the meaning of Christmas. They may go to
church and they may even wear a pin or button that says, “Jesus is the reason
for the season.” They may even put up
decorations that say, “Don’t take Christ out of Christmas.” However, even these people have most likely
been engrained to be confused about or just plain forgotten the “real meaning”
of Christmas. The Bible has many great
answers to what Christmas is really about, but according to Luke, in both his
Gospel and the book of Acts, the “real meaning” of Christmas is the birth of
Israel’s King.
The Old
Testament is the narrative of God’s people, Israel. It’s not the happiest story as a lot of
tragedy and hard times happen to them, but it is also a story of promise and
hope. God made a promise to Adam and Eve
in the garden, God made a promise to Noah before the flood, God made a promise
to Abraham, then Isaac, and then Jacob, and God made a promise to David. The promise that God makes with almost
everyone of these is that there will one day be a “savior”. Abraham was promised to have offspring more
numerous than stars in the sky and be the blessing to all nations. This was passed down through Isaac and Jacob,
with the promise that their descendants will inherit the entire earth. Then God promised to David that his house and
kingdom shall be made sure and his throne would be established forever. This is the key promise to Luke. In many of the Psalms, we see God’s people
who have no human king and are under foreign rule and oppression cry out for a
king to come and save them. The
Psalmists know though that God is their one true King who reigns and will send
the messiah, the Davidic King that was promised to David. No matter how bad the times in the Old
Testament got, they had this hope of the promised king who would come and rule
once and for all. The King of Kings who
would fulfill the promise made to David that his throne would be established
forever. This is the promise Luke zeros
in on and points to as he writes his Gospel and the book of Acts.
The “real
meaning” of Christmas is the jubilee that this Davidic King, promised for so
long, from the rule of David through four foreign captivities of the
Babylonians, Persians and Medes, Greeks,
and then the Romans, is born! This King
that will establish the throne of David, the one sang about in so many Psalms,
the one longed for by the people Israel, the one prophesied about by the
prophets, is here!!! He has finally come and is born to this world. I am not exactly sure about this part of
Biblical history, but I imagine that if a people with no king heard the news
that the “queen” had given birth to a son who would be the one to reign and
rule as soon as he reached a proper age, there would be grand celebrations,
praising and rejoicing among that people.
Especially for a people who have been waiting centuries for this king to
come along. And on top of the fact that
their king who will save them is born, this birth also shows that their God who
had made this promise for so long is a God who keeps His word. He promised them a messiah, a Davidic King to
establish the throne forever, and now He has fulfilled that promise. It is no longer a promise that is hoped for
because it is a promise that is now trusted in.
It is assurance that God does indeed love His people and is faithful to
His covenants. The birth of a king who
has come to save and a direct sign from God that He has not forgotten His
people or promises of salvation all in one birth is definitely worth
celebrating and this is the “real meaning” of Christmas that Luke focuses in
on.
Now I am
not just making this claim, but I have scriptural evidence for this. I am going to mainly focus in on Luke’s
Gospel because this is only to be a brief article and there is plenty of
support in his Gospel alone without diving into the book of Acts. The very beginning of Luke’s Gospel, with
both the foretelling of John the Baptist and the foretelling of the birth of
Jesus, points back to the Old Testament.
The foretelling of John’s birth is a parallel to the story of Abram and
Sarai’s promise of Isaac being born.
They are a couple old in age, barren, and laugh at God when He tells
them that they will have a son of their own.
I believe Luke starts his Gospel with this parallel to take the reader
back to the original promise God made to Abram.
He is connecting all events of this Gospel with the one narrative of
God’s people. Then the foretelling of
Jesus’ birth is clearly pointing to the promise made to Daivd, “And the Lord
God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the
house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Lk.
1:32-3). Jesus is the offspring of “his
father David” and will establish his throne forever over the “house of Jacob”
or God’s people. In Mary’s song, even
she sings of God finally saving His people when she sings, “He has helped his
servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to
Abraham and to his offspring forever” (Lk. 1:54-5). Mary who is a faithful servant to God, knows
the Scriptures of the Old Testament, she knows the Psalms. When the angel tells her she will give birth
to the “son of David” she knows how grand of a deal that is for all of Israel,
going all the way back to Abraham. Luke
goes on in the birth story to tell that Jesus was born in the city of David
because he was of the house of David.
Simeon’s song in Luke 2, the one we sing most Sunday’s in liturgy, shows
that Simeon through the power of the Spirit knows this is the Davidic King who
has come for the salvation of the people Israel. These are all ways Luke is directly pointing
the reader of his Gospel to the fact that this one who was born is indeed the
King of Israel, the King of all of God’s people.
So we know
that the real meaning of Christmas is that Jesus is the promised Davidic King
of the Old Testament, the promised messiah of the Psalms. However, what did this King come to do? He came to show that He has established the
throne of David forever. He came to show
that He has salvation for the people Israel.
Throughout Jesus’ ministry, He shows the people what His salvation
is. When John’s disciples ask Jesus if
he is the one to come, Jesus answers by saying, “Go tell John what you have
seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are
cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news
preached to them” (Lk. 7:22). Later one
when Jesus in continuing to heal people, He also begins to tell them that their
“sins are forgiven” or that their “faith has saved them”. Jesus, the Davidic King, was born into the
flesh to bring the people Israel their long awaited salvation. What did this salvation look like? It looked like their King healing their
diseases and afflictions, and it sounded like Him telling them they were
forgiven and saved. An important point
Luke is making is that Jesus was giving salvation before His death and
resurrection. This is not the salvation
the people of Israel were hoping for though.
They wanted a king who would come and defeat all their enemies and rule
over them in prosperous times when they would suffer no more. Jesus did not come with armies and riches to
wipe out everyone else and make His kingdom a rich nation with a luxurious
lifestyle. However, a king being born in
a stable should have been a good sign that He would not live up to the
expectations the people had for Him.
However, He constantly reminded them that He was the fulfillment of the
promises and the prophets. Even right
before He is betrayed and killed He reminds His disciples of what He has been
telling them all along when He says, “For I tell you that this Scripture must
be fulfilled in me… for what is written about me has its fulfillment” (Lk.
22:37). He has come to fulfill the
promises of the Old Testament. He has
come to bring the people Israel their salvation, even if that salvation is not
what they expected or wanted.
I think
it’s important to show that Luke includes quite a few places where he shows us
that Jesus is not just the King of Israel, but King over all of creation. The miraculous catch of fish by the disciples
in Luke 5, the calming of the storm in Luke 8, and the quote by Jesus of “even
the stones would shout my praises” in Luke 19 are just a few examples. Luke is showing the reader that Jesus is
indeed the Davidic King of God’s people, but He is also the King of all
creation and His rule extends to the animals, winds, waters, and stones. He is King of all of God’s creation.
The fact
that he claims to be their King, but is not the type of king they desired is
what got Him killed. Jesus foretells His
death three times, and He tells them He will be rejected, delivered into the
hands of men, and be killed. (Lk. 9:21, 9:44, 18:33). He does not say, “I must sacrifice myself,”
or “I must die,” or “I must lay down my life” in His foretelling. Luke is showing that this is the King who
came to save but was rejected by His own people. He is not paying the price of our sins on the
cross, but simply being denied as king by His own people. In chapter 19, Jesus enters Jerusalem as the
heroic King, with people shouting out, “Blessed be the King.” However, that joyous occasion is short lived.
Throughout the rest of Luke’s account of
Jesus betrayal, trial, beatings, and death, it is made clear that the people
want Him dead because He claims to be a king, more specifically their
King. Again, the Davidic King that they
had waited for so long was not what they expected and so they denied Him as the
Davidic King. They thought they knew
better than God and rejected this one sent as their King. As Jesus hung from the cross, looking down at
the people who rejected Him as their King, the ones He came to save, He says,
“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (Lk. 23:34). He is saying that they do not know that they
are rejecting their King; they do not know that they are throwing a coup over
God Himself. They are killing the very
one they have begged God to send.
However,
because He is the Davidic King who has established the throne of David forever,
He does not remain dead. Three days
later He rises just as He told them He would.
He knows He is the fulfillment of the prophesies of the Old Testament
prophets. He knows He will rise again to
once again take His seat at the throne of His Father. When He appears before His disciples, He
tells them, “Everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets,
and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (Lk. 24:44).
Luke wants
us to see Jesus as the King of David’s throne, the fulfillment of God’s
promise. He wants us to see His death
and resurrection as the rejection of His people and the fulfillment of the
Scriptures. However, this does not mean
that His death and resurrection are not important. Luke’s whole Gospel is concluded in chapter
24, verses 46 and 47. “Thus it is
written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead,
and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to
all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”
The kingdom of God is now at hand because the King has come and
fulfilled all promises and prophesies.
Jesus has shown us what His salvation will be when He comes back for
that final day. To believers, their sins
will be forgiven, their faith will have saved them, they will be healed and all
afflictions corrected. This is what
Jesus showed us in His ministry and it is what He will bring with Him when He
comes back. He is reigning on His throne
forever because the Davidic King has come and established His throne
forever.
So what
does that mean for us? What did it mean
for the disciples after He ascended?
Luke tells us in His Gospel and throughout most of the book of Acts:
“That repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to
all nations.” The apostles were given
the directions to go and proclaim this way of life, repentance and forgiveness,
to all nations. They include this in
almost all of their preaching in Acts.
And we know this is how we are still under the throne of Jesus
today. We are part of that all nations,
that Jesus told to hear His way of life.
We repent and are forgiven of our sins because we believe in the one
true King who reigns. Even Gentiles have
the fulfillment of the Davidic King, and they are included in the people Israel
who now accept their Davidic King knowing He is indeed reigning and
ruling. And just as the people of Israel
waited for His coming the first time, we now wait for His coming the second
time. His second coming, when He will
not be rejected again, but he will be professed as King by all. This is when He will bring His salvation once
and for all. What will it look
like? It will look the same as His
salvation looked during His ministry.
The blind will see, the lame will walk, and all believers will be
forgiven of sins and saved by their faith in Him.
So what is the true
meaning of Christmas? It is the birth of
our King, the one promised to establish the Davidic throne once and for all,
forever. It is the assurance that God
loves His people, including us today, because He kept His promise and fulfilled
His Word. And we can trust in His
promise He gives to us that our King will come again with the salvation of His
people. We can trust this because
Christmas reminds us that God keeps His promises and that our King, even though
He was rejected, lives and reigns. This
is worthy of celebration for sure.
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