Here we are … looking forward to Christmas … again. Can you believe it? But turn the clock back to that first Christmas. What were people looking forward to back then and what does that mean for us today? Let’s find out. Well it’s that the time of year again. Here we are just a few weeks out looking forward to Christmas. Again. Can you believe it? They just seem to roll around so quickly. Well, what are we looking forward to when we look forward to Christmas? Maybe it’s a rest or a holiday. Maybe you’re looking forward to the family gathering or the presents or maybe there’s something more. Looking forward to Christmas it’s kind of a funny thing. You know over the years as I’ve grown up we’re you’re a kid it’s different you look forward to the presents you look forward to the excitement you look forward to all that summer holidays stuff. But I guess for me as I’ve grown up and you’re in the workforce you don’t get the sorts of holidays you used to get when you were a kid at school. To tell you the truth as I look forward to Christmas of course living in the southern hemisphere it’s summer for us. As I look forward to Christmas the biggest thing that my body looks forward to quite frankly is a rest. You know, just the ability to stop producing and stop doing and just have a time with my wife and my daughter and my family. Just to rest for a few weeks over that period. Yet somehow in these weeks leading up to Christmas, we seem to race around and rack up bills on the credit cards busy preparing for what? My hunch is that we almost never stop and think what am I really looking forward to when it comes to Christmas? Let’s be honest, I’m being honest with you. One of the biggest things I look forward to is that the notion of just having a rest. And that’s natural that, that’s ok. But I wonder in all the racing around, all the doing all the stuff that we’re involved in, I wonder whether sometimes it’s just not easy to miss what’s happening at Christmas to miss what God always intended should happen at Christmas. That whole issue of what are we looking forward to it is as valid a question today as it was back 2000 years ago at the first Christmas. Let’s just step back in time for a minute and look at what was happening for the nation of Israel when they were approaching whether they knew it or not the very first Christmas. The 2000 years of the life of Israel leading up to the birth of Jesus so that’s beginning about 4000 years ago when God first spoke to Abraham the Father of the Israelite nation. Well, that 2000 leading up to the birth of Christ... it was a real rollercoaster ride. They had some big ups and some big downs. They’d began their lives as a nation in slavery in Egypt and then God released them from that and took them to the desert under Moses leadership for 40 years. Then he took them into the promised land, the land of Israel where they had to fight to take possession of the land. And over the next several hundred years they had some real blessings and abundances as they lived their lives for God as they lived their lives as God had always intended them to live those lives. As I said it was the land flowing milk and honey. It was a nation blessed they had some great Kings. They had some lousy Kings too. And over the coming centuries, God sent prophets to them. Men whose job it was to speak God’s will into the life of the nation of Israel. Often we think of a prophet as being someone who predicts the future and in part, the prophets did that but only about 5% of the prophetic writings are about predicting the future. The other 95% are about speaking God’s love and God’s warnings and God’s encouragement into the lives of His chosen people, the nation of Israel. Sometimes what the prophets on behalf of God was really encouraging. Things like, look there is a big battle coming up but let God fight this battle for you. This is God’s battle, let him fight just stand and watch and see what He will do for you. That’s pretty encouraging stuff. But sometimes, sometimes the prophets had some dire warnings. So often the Kings of Israel or the people or the priests strayed away from God. They married into the nations around them. They ended up worshipping idols, they ended up doing all sorts of things that just weren’t God’s will for them. And so God often sent messages through his prophets when the people had strayed from God to warm them, to call them back. Those were very difficult and tough messages and some of them were messages of judgment. But as well as the real prophets, those that were genuinely appointed by God, speaking into the life of Israel, there were also some self-styled false prophets. They were saying everything is ok just hang loose enjoy life do you what feels good. In fact, we know that there were some false prophets when one of the greatest prophets Isaiah was prophesying God’s judgment to the nation of Israel because they were worshipping idols. These other prophets were saying "No, no, no everything’s fine." It’s a bit like today really. Here we are in the West about 70% of people say they believe in God, a god of some sort and in this media generation that we have everyone and everything seems to be about talking at us. And some of them we know, we listen to that voice and they have a genuine ring about them. You listen, you think man I think God is talking to me through that person or through that voice and others, others laugh and chortle at what God’s saying. They look at God’s people and say what a bunch of losers. Look really the answers out here buy that new car, spend the money, get the career, go on the fantastic holiday None of those things are bad, none of those things in themselves are bad, until they displace our first love. That beautiful relationship that God wants us to have with Him. So in a sense, even though the society was different and the times were different there is a strong parallel between what was going on in Israel way back then in those hundreds and thousands of years leading up to the birth of Jesus and what’s going on in our society today. In about 596 or 597 BC there was a really ugly thing that happened. A number of the prophets had been prophesying to Israel saying look if you don’t get your act together here, if you don’t start living the life God wants you to lead, if you don’t start honouring God first and seeing that justice is done in the land and loving the people around you, there is a terrible judgment that is going to fall on you. And we know historically that in 596 or 597 BC that the Babylonians came and they took over Israel, they took over Jerusalem they razed Jerusalem l to the ground they destroyed the temple and they took Israelites into captivity for 70 years as slaves in Babylon. And in a sense from that point onwards it was downhill all the way. The last King that reigned, reigned just at that point and after that there was no more King for Israel. So here was Israel God’s chosen people, God lived in the temple he was doing wonderful things for them but he called judgment down upon them. And after the Babylonians sure they came back into Judea and back into Jerusalem they rebuilt the temple but they were never under self-rule again except for a brief period. The Babylonians were the world power and then the Persians and then the Ptolemites and the Seleucids from 597 BC right through to 167 BC what 400 something years, Israel was an occupied territory. It was an occupied country out of the occupation, out of the pain out of the oppression, God has appointed a number of prophets to speak about a Messiah, a king someone who would come and bring freedom and peace. A messiah means literally God’s anointed one. The kings of Israel were referred to as messiahs they were God’s anointed ruler. And so the prophets time and time again were...

Released on 5 Dec 2021