Thought for the Week

Scriptures to Read:

Isaiah 1:10-17

Isaiah 1:18-20

Isaiah 2:1-5

Isaiah 6:1-7

Isaiah 6:8-12

Isaiah 7:12-14

St. Luke 1:26-38

I am inviting Isaiah to the Christmas Story. He lived some 700 years before the birth of Christ. He was of both royal and priestly bloodlines. But I invite him because he is the most major of the "Major Old Testament Prophets." The 66 chapters of his writings are worthy of hours of study and are embedded with nuggets of truth regarding the life and ministry of Christ.

Isaiah knows God desperately loves His people. In his very first chapter, he begins a summons to call the people back to God. I don't want to minimize that. It is important, even imperative. But there is something almost too general about it. A wife-beater recognizes a shop-lifter. A racist recognizes a liar. A murderer recognizes a bank-robber. Each will recognize the other as someone who is doing wrong he may even point out that wrong, but may not see himself in the same desperate straits of sin.

Isaiah has such an experience. It is as though Isaiah has been in a cellar and opens a double door into brilliant sunshine. He has a vision of the brilliant-holiness, the sinless-perfection of God. He hears holy angelic beings worshipping the majesty of God. He now sees himself as God sees him. He no longer is a royal, priestly, prophet. He is a lost, fallen, corrupted man, not worthy to live before God.

This brings Isaiah to a place of true repentance. He begs and pleads for the mercy of God. Because of God's nature, that mercy is swift and complete. When God has thoroughly forgiven and cleansed Isaiah of his sin, Isaiah is now ready to serve as God's spokesman regarding the coming of God's Messiah.

I would wish it could be extremely successful. I would wish people would immediately obey God's summons to repentance and return to God. But it never seems so. People can hardly ever see themselves in need of forgiveness and salvation. I can see the sins in others but not my own. I can even point out what others are doing wrong but do not see myself as God sees me. Unless and until I do, I wallow in my sin none the wiser of my desperate doom.

Isaiah sees and points out to the people and the world tiny glimpses of the Coming of the Christ. One truth is that no sinful man can provide the sinless sacrifice required for sin's forgiveness. King David acknowledged he was born in sin. Isaiah acknowledged his sinful condition. God would have to start with One born sinless. God would start with a virgin to conceive a Child born not from a sinful father but with The perfect Father. It is just one of the nuggets of truth.

Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son. The fullness of that truth was not be seen for hundreds of years yet, but it is basis for the Christmas Story repeated by Angel Gabriel, to Zachariah, Mary, Joseph and many others as well. It makes the Christmas Story holy. It brings us to worship at the manger of the Infant Child Jesus, as it did the shepherds and the wise men. Still, today, people ignore the sinless perfection of the Christ-Child.

To even those masses who have glimpses of the story, He is only a child born of poor parents into poverty. They do not see Him as having left the splendor of Heaven, to take onto Himself human form and fashion. They do not see Him as God become Man. But they must The Christmas Story cannot begin without this. Please read these first nuggets of truth from Isaiah as you prepare for Christmas. The Story is incomplete without them.