The Gift

God's plan for the world unfolds in the first few pages of the New Testament.

We all like the idea of giving the perfect gift. But to find that gift, we need to take time in choosing it, and it needs to be timely. In Christ, we see both.

Many people pass over the first chapter of Matthew but, among other things, we can see the time God took developing his unique Gift to us. Nothing could derail his plan.

Not Abraham going through famine
Not the sexual escapades of David
Not the time of Israel's exile
Not the curse on Jeconiah (We'll get into that in a minute.)

Not only did this Gift take time, but it was unique. In Matthew 1:6, we are reminded that David was the king and that Israel used to have a king. If someone wanted to know who should be the rightful king of Israel, they could trace David through the royal line. And that's what Matthew 1:16 does: "Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ." Did you ever wonder why that wording is so meticulous? If we look at Jeremiah 22:28, we read about a person called "Jehoiachin" or in the King James version, "Coniah." Jeremiah 22:30 says, "this is what the Lord says: 'record this man as if childless, a man who will not prosper in his lifetime for none of his offspring will prosper, none will sit on the throne of David or rule anymore in Judah."

If we go back to Matthew 1:11, we read about Jeconiah, and a quick look at the footnotes will remind us that this is the "Jehhoiachin" or "Jeconiah" of Jeremiah 22. What this means is that no child descended from the line of Jeconiah could sit on the throne of David. So the rightful king of Israel cannot be directly descended from David through the line of Solomon.

If we go to Luke 3, we see another genealogy. This one also begins with rather strange wording. In Luke 3:23 we read "now Jesus himself was about 30 years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought of Joseph, the son of Heli." The words "so it was thought" remind us again that something is different here. In all the records there is nothing suggesting a son named Joseph born to Heli. There is however a daughter named Mary. If we read Luke 3:31, we see that this line traces all the way back to Adam but moves through the line of David through Nathan.

So you have two parallel lines coming down and intersecting in David the king, returning to two parallel lines, one royal line through Solomon and a natural line through Nathan, but intersecting and stopping in a man named Jesus who had no children. This Jesus is not the biological descendent of Joseph so the curse of Jeconiah is avoided. The child is the biological descendent of Adam, Nathan, and Heli. The biological line and the kingly line stop in one person, Jesus, who had no earthly descendents. Matthew calls him the "Christ."

A Timely Gift

Gifts should be timely. When I was seven, I got a really nice pair of slippers. I started wearing them as an adult when they finally fit. Age seven wasn't the right time for a pair of size 12 slippers. God's gift, on the other hand, came at the right time. Galatians 4:4-5 tells us, "when the fullness of the time came God sent his son." The politics were right. There was peace throughout the land, the Romans had built a good road system, and the gospel could be easily transported. The culture was prepared. Many people had been educated and several knew Latin and in some cases Greek. These were the two languages in which the Bible message would be passed along. And there was a renewed interest in the Scriptures.

What did this gift bring the world then and now?

Forgiveness and Understanding
Leviticus 17:11 says "the life of the body is in the flesh and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life." I have to have someone forgive me in order to forgive others. The Giver of the Gift knows what that is all about (Eph. 4:31-32; Luke 23:34). It was he who said "Father forgive them. They know not what they do." And the apostle Paul pointed out that "There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1). If it says no condemnation that means I don't even have a right to condemn myself. That is amazingly freeing. This Gift of God enables us to forgive ourselves and others.

But this Gift also lets us know we are understood. Hebrews 4:15 tells us that Jesus was tempted in every way people are tempted. He can identify with us.

Think of it this way. God gave his law from Mount Sinai but the people at that time could legitimately feel, "You don't know what it's like. You're up there on the mountainside making pontifications about how people are to live. But you don't know what it's like in this world. You don't know my boss. You don't know my family. You don't know my situation."

But because of Christ's entrance into the world, no one can ever say "God, you don't know how I feel." He even knows how it feels to have hay scratching his back and how it feels to be born in the humblest of circumstances. Talk about hope! God does something differently than man expects. You expect a king to be born in a palace, not a stable.

The Man and the Birds
It was Paul Harvey who made popular "The Man and the Birds," a simple illustration to help us understand the Gift. He told the story of a kind, decent man who was generous to his family and upright in his dealing with others, but he just didn't believe all that Incarnation stuff that the churches proclaim at Christmas time. He just couldn't swallow the Jesus story about God coming to earth as a man.

So he told his wife he wasn't going to church with her on Christmas Eve. Shortly after the family drove away, snow began to fall. Minutes later he was startled by thudding sound, then another, and another. When he went to the front door to investigate, he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They had been caught in the storm and in a desperate search for shelter tried to fly through his large glass window.

He couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he tried to direct the birds into the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in. He figured food would entice them, so he fetched breadcrumbs, sprinkled them on the snow making a trail to the doorway of the stable. But to his dismay, the birds ignored the breadcrumbs and continued to flop around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them. He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms. Instead they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted barn. And then he realized that they were afraid of him. To them he was a strange and terrifying creature.

If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me, that I'm not trying to hurt them but to help them. But how? If only I could be a bird, he thought to himself, I could tell them not to be afraid.

At that moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind and he stood there listening to the bells peeling the glad tidings of Christmas, and he sank to his knees in the snow.

Dave DeLuca, a pastor, is the author of various articles and Bible studies, as well as the book How to Deal with the Ten Toughest Stress Situations.

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