We all arrive at Advent carrying something broken—a diagnosis, a fraying relationship, a season that feels anything but joyful—and our instinct is right: we want God to fix it. In John 6, the crowd feels exactly that after watching Jesus feed five thousand people, so they move to do something about it. The question the passage presses on us is whether we actually understand what problem he came to fix.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
So here we are, it’s the first week of Advent, and I’m kind of having a hard time getting my head around that this year. Maybe it’s because of the unseasonable weather, but as many of you know, I’ve also been praying my uncle’s quite ill, and I think part of it, I don’t think, I know part of it is simply my mind isn’t at Christmas right now, so to speak. I’m not necessarily thinking in those terms like I often am. He went on hospice a few weeks ago, and when you’re dealing with that, I know some of you have been dealing with that even recently, and unfortunately we all find ourselves in all sorts of situations at some point in life.
In those moments, especially when it’s around Advent, when it’s around Christmas, we don’t necessarily think, “Oh boy, I’m ready to celebrate,” because we’re profoundly focused in that moment on what’s broken in the world. Because here’s the thing, friends, if there’s anything that’s broken in the world, it’s death. Every time we think about death, every time we see death, every time we watch death creeping up, what do we do, what do we know? We are seeing the impact of sin. We are seeing the impact of a world that is broken. And so that’s what I’ve been finding myself thinking about, and if you’re in that place, or you’ve been in that place, or maybe you just got noticed that you’re going to be let go from your job, or maybe you’re coming up to the end of the semester, and you know your grades aren’t exactly where you want them to be, and you’re a little worried about what does that mean? Am I going to have to retake a class? Am I not going to graduate? Those sorts of things.
All those different things pile on in life, and we arrive at the Christmas season, and we hear the joyful music, and, of course, we passed Halloween and Mariah Carey started singing, and we get to that point, and we think, “I don’t feel very joyful.” But here is what we find in those moments. We find this. We find that we yearn for things to be fixed, right? Don’t we? Don’t we yearn? God, would you heal? Would you repair? Would you restore? We face a broken world, but we go to the right impulse, which is that we want God to fix it.
Now, as we begin this series, we’re in John 6 tonight, and as we begin that, we find a moment in time in first century Palestine. Palestine is in the news right now, right? Israel is in the news right now, but first century Palestine, Roman province, is under the oppressive government of the Romans. There are a lot of people there feeling like the world is broken, and they’re feeling like it’s broken because we thought that we were meant to be the promised people of God. We were supposed to have a kingdom that was under God’s pleasure forever with his appointed successor to the king of Israel each and every day for eternity. Someone in the line of David would be the one as king every day when we woke up.
And yet everyone that was there in that first century never had experienced that because it had been years since the king of Israel or the king of Judah had been anyone that was even remotely appointed by God in the sense of, here is my favored one. Now maybe some of them speculated, “Well, I mean, everything’s under God’s control, so we’re still experiencing God’s control in some sense.” But they were very aware that something was broken. Every time they paid too many taxes, the corrupt tax collectors of the day demanded not only what they needed to, but more so they could live lavish lifestyles where everyone else was struggling. They were aware it was broken.
Every time someone was killed because they didn’t quite go along with the Roman government, they were aware that it was broken. And isn’t that still true? Maybe you went to a Thanksgiving dinner this week and the family was at odds with each other over the dinner, and it felt like, “This is supposed to be joyful, and we’re supposed to be giving thanks,” and right now all I want to do is give goodbyes and get out of here because it’s broken. Maybe it’s just the people you deal with every day, the people who are unkind and thoughtless. We all know that something’s broken. And that’s the context we’re in in John 6.
Jesus, right before the passage we’re going to look at, we’re not going to look at the whole chapter because it’s quite a lengthy chapter and we only have a short little Advent season to do it, so we’re not going to look at the very first verses, but they’re very familiar. I’d encourage you to go ahead and reread them this week, but the first verses of John 6 are the feeding of the 5,000. And you think about this. Here are these people. They’re generally not very well off. They hear about this charismatic rabbi that’s been going around preaching the gospel. They don’t even know what that really fully means yet, but they know that he’s proclaiming the kingdom, and they think, “Aha, here is the one who’s going to fix everything. Here’s the one who’s going to bring back the things that God said would be true for us. He’s going to overthrow those Romans who don’t worship the living God, who oppress us, who ruin our lives, and he’s going to become the king. He’s going to make things right.”
A lot of people are starting to kind of whisper those sorts of things, and they go, and they hear this charismatic rabbi preaching, and what does he do? They’re out there. It’s coming up to Passover. They’re out there to hear him. They’re not right next to any place convenient. There isn’t a McDonald’s around the corner or anything like that. They’re out in the middle of nowhere. They’re getting hungry. He gives them a plate of food, and he multiplies and he gives it to all of them. Anyone who’s there that sees this has no doubt what’s happening, that something miraculous is happening, that this man is clearly, at the very least what they’ll say, that he’s a prophet of God, that the Lord is working through him, and if the Lord is working through him and he’s speaking so powerful and he’s proclaiming the kingdom, then what does that mean for all the brokenness that we’re experiencing? That’s the solution. That’s where we find ourselves tonight.
Sometimes when we’re reading through God’s word, maybe you have those aha moments, “Aha, here’s the solution,” but the question we have to ask ourselves when we have that experience is not only is God the solution—the answer is yes, absolutely—but do I understand what God’s solution really is? That’s where they run into trouble. Let’s pray and ask that our God would help us to understand what the solution he has for us is, that we, as we approach this text, as we go into this Christmas season, we have the right mind. We have the mind of Christ in our lives. Let’s pray.
Lord, we come before you, and all of us carry things into this season. We just talked about our blue Christmas service and how we’re going to spend time bringing those things before you, Lord. We know that’s not a new thing. We know that’s every single generation since our first parents who fell into sin. As we reflect on that, Lord, we yearn for you to make things right. We yearn for you to take away death. We yearn for you to take away uncertainty and lost jobs and family conflict and all these things that we find ourselves buried in. We yearn for that, Lord, and yet, as we do, we often go and we imagine it’s going to be solved in ways that aren’t pleasing to you. Would you help us tonight to understand what you really do and what you really call us to do in the midst of that? We ask that in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
So we’re going to turn to John 6, verse 14 if you want to look there with me. And here’s what we read there in John 6. It says, “When the people saw the sign that he had done,” that’s the feeding of the 5,000, “they said, This is indeed the prophet who has come into the world.” They’re doing pretty good up to this point.
Now, we could quibble with them, right? We have the perspective of thousands of years of history and theology and Bible studies and all this sort of stuff, even a little bit longer, just a few decades longer, even a few years longer, and they might have been more astute in their answer because you might want to say, actually, we had someone say this in Bible study a few weeks ago. Someone said something about Jesus as a prophet, and they didn’t mean that Jesus is only a prophet, but Jesus as in that role of prophet, and another person said, “Well, he’s not a prophet. He’s so much more than a prophet.” And the answer, of course, is yes, he is so much more than a prophet, but he also is a prophet. He’s no less than a prophet. And so they weren’t wrong. They didn’t understand the fullness of who Jesus is. They didn’t understand the fullness of what he was going to do, but they understood this much—that he had been promising for hundreds and hundreds of years that he was going to send someone greater, a greater prophet than Moses, and that greater prophet was going to solve the problems of the people. He was going to come and give them what they really needed, and they knew that much, and so they were anticipating that this prophet was going to come, and they see this one who’s doing miracles that are greater than the prophet Elijah, greater than the prophet Elisha.
I mean, can you imagine? I still have a hard time getting my head around this. Imagine that you’re there, and you see someone carrying up this little take-home sack of fish and bread, and they take it up to Jesus, and they hand it to Jesus, and you’re thinking, “Well, that’s really sweet that someone wanted to give that, but come on, it’s a doggie bag. What’s even the point?” And then, I don’t know what it looks like, but somehow there, Jesus starts breaking it and putting it into baskets, and the next thing you know, 5,000 people are eating a fish dinner. And how does that even work? I can’t even begin to fathom other than, if you experience that, you know that Jesus is really doing something amazing, and you think about this prophet that you’ve been anticipating all these years, and you say, “I’ve just seen the most spectacular thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’ve heard he’s done all these other amazing things, like healing the blind and the lame, and now he’s taken the leftover fries at the bottom of the bag, and he’s given us all combo meals.” This man isn’t just any man. This is the prophet that we’ve been waiting for. Anticipation.
We talk a lot about anticipation around Christmas. We’re anticipating Christmas Day. Who’s excited for Christmas? Ah, yes, yeah, we have some excited. Yeah, it’s coming, isn’t it? Christmas is coming. We can start counting down. Yeah, the goose is getting fat. 31 days. Yes, 31 days. Hey, okay, Kayla has it down. We know it’s 31 days away, and that means I need to ask you a question that some of you might be saying, and I hope everyone around me has this down, and some of you might be saying, “Oh, no, that means you have 30 days to finish your Christmas shopping.”
30 days to start, yeah. So you don’t have very much time, and what do we anticipate every Christmas season? What is going to be the gift? Gift cards. Yeah, you can always give a gift card. They work. Well, yeah, I guess you can just do gift cards, but let me just—some of you, this is going to predate you. Some of you will say, “Oh, yeah, I remember that.” How many of you remember the Furby? You love Furbies. Hey, okay, so the Furby, 1998, the Furby comes out, and everyone is going mad that I have to, my kids have to have a Furby. There were fights over Furbies. I mean, actual, it came down to blows. “I have to have my Furby,” and “You’re not going to have my Furby.”
Now, if you translate the dollar amounts into 2023 dollars, apparently a Furby at retail sold for $66 in 1998, and it seemed like a good deal at the time because here was something you could speak to, and it sort of seemed to kind of learn, and it could talk to its other Furby friends, and this was kind of mind-blowing at the time, and so there was that, but then, when it was unavailable, and you didn’t want to have your son or your daughter be the only one without a Furby, I mean, can you imagine the shame of going back to school after Christmas, and you’re the only kid without a Furby? You couldn’t do it, so what did parents do? Well, they started buying them in the aftermarket.
So, in 2023 dollars, Furbies were going for $566 in 1998. Yeah. That is some serious cash for a Furby. But there was anticipation, right? We have to have the Christmas gift, and you can’t get the off-brand Furby, it has to be a Furby, right? And it can’t be a Tickle Me Elmo from a few years before, it has to be a Furby. There was anticipation, and anticipation causes us to be looking for something, right? If you walked into a store and you’d been shopping for that Furby, and you see the Furby box, you’re going to jump on it at the time.
Well, these people had been shopping for a prophet for a much longer time, and it wasn’t just, “What am I going to get my son or my daughter for Christmas?” It was, “How am I going to live my life, and how is it going to look anything like what God has promised?” And they said, “Here is that prophet.” And it goes back before the prophets, it goes back before the exodus with Moses leading the people of Israel, it goes all the way back to Genesis, where the cravings just took us a few minutes ago. Think back to Genesis 3:15. 3:16. Those beautiful, beautiful verses.
You look at that, and we look at what God promises there. Here you have Adam and Eve, they’ve sinned against the Lord. God tells them one thing, only one thing they can’t do, and they do it anyway. Can you imagine what I would do, what you would do? Most of us would not act so well.
What does God say in Genesis 3:15? He says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” That’s what God says to the serpent, to Satan.
And you think about that. All the way back at the very beginning, God already offers a promise. It’s not completely clear. No one heard that. Adam and Eve didn’t hear that and say, “Oh, I know, someday there’ll be something called the Christian Church, and it’ll look just like this,” and so on. But God gives that glimmer of hope. And what we see over the Old Testament is this building of hope. That’s what we think about this first Sunday in Advent, is that hope.
Because while Jesus has come now, while the fulfillment of the one who, yes, his heel would be harmed by the serpent. Jesus went to the cross for us. Jesus dealt a death blow beyond all else to Satan because Satan thought that he could win over Jesus, and what did Jesus do? Jesus triumphed over death itself. And so we see that fulfillment.
I don’t know that the people, as they saw the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000, could fully understand what was coming, but they understood something was coming. Just like sometimes when there’s that hit Christmas gift, you may not fully understand what it’s all about, but you know it’s about something. And so, they knew that something was coming, and then, for example, Deuteronomy 18:15: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers. It is to him you shall listen.”
So, they had that long-term promise. They had a nearer term, but still very long-term promise. Generations and generations of people have been waiting for this, that someday there would be someone who was greater than Moses that would be raised up. And then they see something else.
Because what happened when the people of Israel were out in the wilderness? How did they get food? Did they go to the local Deerbergs or Schnucks or Aldi, or did they call up Instacart? Is that how they got food? No, they didn’t do that.
What happened? What happened in the wilderness? Manna. Yeah, which means what is it? They weren’t quite sure what it was, but it was pretty amazing stuff. Can you imagine if you’re… Pardon? Fruit bars. Yes, fruit bars. We order from Instacart now and the groceries come through the cloud, right?
But this was literally food from the cloud. You’d have food rain down and they’d gather it up. Incredible miracle. And a miracle that came from the Lord, but came through the prophet named Moses, right? Moses was there. He’s the one communicating from the Lord what’s going on. And he says, this is going to happen and then it happens. And they have food.
So here’s what they see in Jesus. They see someone who looks more miraculous than anyone they’ve ever met, anyone that their parents have met, their grandparents have met, their great-great-grandparents have met. And now the food didn’t rain down like manna, but the food is multiplying out and meeting their needs in inexplicable ways. And in that, they think of what Moses did, what happened there, and they say, “There’s something to this.”
And they knew the promises had been given over and over again in the prophets. For example, Jeremiah 23:5, “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.”
Notice here what kind of ruler God’s going to give. They were used to corrupt rulers. They were used to corrupt politicians. If you went to Thanksgiving dinner and you have someone who was sitting there with a really dour look on his or her face complaining about those corrupt politicians in Washington, D.C., and how horrible they are, and whatever party they don’t like is the one that’s ruining everything, and of course maybe you had people sitting at your Thanksgiving table that argued opposite political parties there, so it made it even more enjoyable for Thanksgiving, when they were doing that.
Arguing and arguing and arguing. There’s nothing new about that. They were doing that in the first century as well because Rome, again, would take advantage of the people over and over again.
And here was the promise they’d been given by the prophets. Not only after God’s judgment would there be a Davidic king again, a king descended from David, someone who was God’s anointed one, someone who was there representing the very kingdom of God in this world. Not only would that happen, but on top of that, he’d be righteous.
Can you imagine if I told you next year, 2024, when we elect the next president of the United States, whomever it’s going to be, we will be, we will have a president who is righteous.
And you look at the political field and you say, no, I don’t think so. And really, that’s not a knock even against our current politicians. It’s just realistic because none of us are righteous. We constantly do what’s displeasing to God. And what you know when you put people in positions of power, they do what’s displeasing to God. It’s not surprising, but it happens. And here is a promise of someone who will do differently. Someone who will actually rule with righteousness. Who will do what’s right before the Lord every single time.
And they look at Jesus, and he’s doing all these spectacular things. They know these promises and they say, “Aha. We know where this goes next.” He’s the prophet. He’s the fulfillment of these different prophecies. He’s doing these spectacular things.
Imagine if someone can take a little to-go bag and turn it into enough food for 5,000 people, what he can do when he’s ruling the people. He’s not going to be corrupt. He doesn’t need to steal from people. He doesn’t need to take advantage of them because he can take nothing and turn it into everything. They weren’t wrong.
But they got the response wrong, just like we often get the response wrong. I struggle with that sometimes, trying to figure out what we’re doing because we’re planning services a lot of times, actually. I was thinking about that over this last week. Jim had written about two weeks ago now and said, “It’s coming up to Thanksgiving and we need to have a Thanksgiving dinner as a church family.”
Which, I’m sorry for those of you online, I don’t mean to brag about this, but we just had some amazing smoked turkey. It was really, really good. Great size. It was wonderful. Thank you to everyone who brought food tonight. Especially Jim, thanks for getting it rolling and smoking that turkey. It was wonderful to get to do that as a church family.
But here’s the part where I was struggling. Last week, we had a number of different things. People traveling because of the holiday. We had some people sick. We had some people who, for scheduling conflicts, couldn’t be here. We had all kinds of things going on. And the long and short of it is it meant that most everyone wasn’t going to be able to be here at dinnertime to have Thanksgiving dinner.
So Jim and I talked, and we agreed. Jim generously offered to cook yet another turkey dinner for us and do it this weekend. Then I started to look at the weather forecast. Did anyone else look at the weather forecast and hear about all the snow? Yeah. I kind of feel disappointed it didn’t because I was looking forward to snow. But I wasn’t disappointed for this reason. We got to eat turkey.
I started to think about this forecast, and they were talking about snow and wintry mix. And all of a sudden I imagined all of us trying to skate our way into the church today. And I started to think, well, do I write Jim before we start to smoke that meat and say, “Why don’t we hold off one more week so that we don’t end up where you’ve smoked more turkey and then no one can get here because of the ice?” And so it was a question, what’s the right response?
Well, as it turned out, the right response was just go full steam ahead because happily we made it and we had our turkey. But that was a question. What’s the right approach to this? And a lot of times in life when we hear God’s promises, we struggle with, well, what’s the right approach? How should I respond to this? Do I move forward? Do I need to do something right now? Do I need to knock over the pulpit? Do I need to hold off and wait and see what God’s going to do?
Thank you. What’s the right approach? Too often we don’t get the response right. The people here don’t get the response right. Verse 15, “Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force, to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.”
They wanted an earthly provider of stuff. That’s what it really boiled down to. They wanted an earthly provider of stuff. They looked at the situation and they see how things are so messed up. They have the right idea, yes, he’s the one that’s going to solve our problem, but the problem they wanted solved wasn’t the right problem. So often what I want God to solve isn’t solving the right problem either.
And so what they said is, if he can provide a meal for us for one day, what if we made him a king? He’s a politician who really could put a chicken in every pot and all the sides to go along with the chicken. And he’d get rid of taxes completely. And he’d get rid of war completely because he’s powerful. This is going to be great. And again, they were getting a sense of how powerful he was, but they weren’t getting it in the right way.
What do politicians do today? They promise us all kinds of stuff. They don’t promise the things that really matter to God. Not really. What do they do? They promise they’re going to give us what we want because that’s what gets them elected. And we play right into it because that’s what we want.
I was thinking this week, because it’s that time of year again, it’s time for the war on Christmas. Anyone ready for the war on Christmas again? You start tuning in online to all the people posting the pictures of retailers that have put up a happy holiday sign rather than Christmas sign. Anyone’s blood boiling?
And you know, it is kind of ridiculous when you think about it. You have stores that have big happy holiday signs. “Order now and have your gifts in time for the holidays. It will arrive by December 25th.” And I’ll admit, I’ll think, “December 25th isn’t just some random day. It might be called something. You could call it that if you wanted.”
But on the other hand, on the other hand, I can go right into that and I think, “Boy, this is ridiculous. Just call it Christmas because that’s what it is.” On the other hand, it strikes me, I wasn’t placed on this earth to evangelize people into Christmas.
My job, your job, all of our callings in life is not to make sure that people call December 25th the right thing. What’s our job? Our job is to make sure that people know the right one to call on. And we spend all this energy and Christians get so upset every year because I need to make sure that you know that this is Christmas Day and you’re going to call it the right thing.
And what God really wants us to do is to make sure that people know Jesus. Because you can call it Christmas Day all you want and if you don’t know Jesus, it’s not going to do you any good at all. Yet we spread so much anger rather than actually spreading the hope, the redemption of Jesus. And that’s the sort of thing that Jesus sees in this crowd.
He sees them out there and they’re getting it, sort of. They’re getting that there’s this man who can do something amazing. They get that. But then what they’re thinking is, “And now we’re going to get back at the Romans. The Romans thought they had it on us, but we’ll wait until they meet our new king. We’ll make him king, and when we make him king, someone who can take a little bit of fish and a little bit of bread and turn it into a meal for 5,000 of us, that’s someone who’s going to make Rome run. And we’ll exact vengeance on them and they will now know our wrath and they will call our holidays by the proper names and they’re going to do things our way now. They’ve made us do things their way for too long and now they’re going to understand.”
And what are we told in verse 15? Jesus perceives that they’re going to do this and he retreats. He retreats. Why does he retreat? Can you imagine? Can you imagine if you’re in Jesus’ position, if you’re in a position where everyone’s saying, “Hey, let’s make you king. Let’s make you queen of the nation. We want you. You’re amazing.” Can you imagine retreating? That’s not the time you retreat. That’s the time you go and say, “Okay, well let’s go measure my robe and make sure the crown fits okay. Let’s do it. This is good,” right?
Jesus retreats because Jesus understands what they’re thinking, what they’re desiring, and what they’re desiring, they’ve come to a point, they understand that Jesus is interesting, but what they haven’t done is actually come to the point of understanding who Jesus really is.
And lots of people are going to celebrate Christmas this year and they’re going to come to that point, they understand that this is something we should observe, it’s something worth remembering, but the question is, why is it worth remembering? What’s the real point of it? Is the point so we can have beautiful decorations? I love our decorations. I wouldn’t want us not to have them. Aren’t they beautiful? My mom’s done so much work this week all this up, it looks so beautiful in here.
Is it about the decorations? Is it about the food? Is it about the gifts? What’s about one gift? About the gift of Jesus. And Jesus knows they don’t get that yet. So he retreats.
Do you ever go around looking for where the Christmas gifts are hidden? And you start going around, I’m going to actually step off here, let’s go look around this building a little bit here, I’m going to go see if I can find something. And ah, here it is.
Do you ever go, ever go and start looking and maybe you finally find what you’ve been really looking for, and I wanted to bring this out, this was I got this in Christmas 2000, not 2000, 1996. I was really excited about this. This is a Sega Saturn here. A Sega Saturn. Now let me tell you about this. Yeah.
This is great. So, you know, back in the days before Microsoft made a game console, they were just the boring company that made Windows, and back when Sega did what Nintendo don’t. Yeah.
Sega, I mean this was amazing. I had a Sega Genesis, and then this was the next generation here. I have Sonic Jam in here. Yeah, oh yeah. So, you know Sonic was so much cooler than Mario. And I saw one of these that came out in 1994, but these things were really expensive when they came out in 1994.
In fact, in 2023 dollars, if I had gotten this in 1994, it would have cost 768 dollars. It’s amazing to think about now. And so I didn’t get one in 1994. But I remember wanting one of these so much, and a lot of people did, and they were hard to get, and so Sega came out with something else. It was called the 32X.
And for those of us who already had Sega Genesis, because they were so much better than a Super Nintendo, but we wanted it to be even better while we were waiting for the day that we could hold one of these in our hands and say, “I have a Sega Saturn.” You get a 32X, and you could put it on top of your Sega Genesis and it made it a 32-bit next generation video game console. It was so exciting. And the anticipation was building, wow, we can make this so much better, and so it came out. It was less than half the price of what a Sega Saturn was going for. It was available, and some people bought it, but not many. I bought one, but not at Christmas. I bought it in summer of 1995, because here’s the thing that happened with the 32X.
Yes, it did make the Sega Genesis a little better, but it couldn’t do what the Sega Saturn or the Sony Playstation could do, and so people quit buying it. And this 32X, which itself was going for like $150, I remember going into Venture back when there was a Venture store, it was sort of like a Target, I got it for $20.
And then I went to Blockbuster, they were still around, and I got a bunch of used video game cartridges for pennies on the dollar that would go into it, because no one wanted it any longer. And in that you see the remarkableness, you might say, “Well, why are you talking about video game history?” Here you see the remarkableness of what Jesus does here as he turns away the crowd.
Because you think about this, everything has a value for a time, right? No one today, well maybe if you’re a video game historian or you just love retro systems, you might want this, but no one today is standing in line to get a Sega Saturn either, the 32X came and went really, really fast, the Sega Saturn didn’t last very long either, but no one’s standing in line for a Sony Playstation either, or Nintendo 64.
Why? Because they passed. No one, you can go and buy a Furby, I can get a Furby delivered tomorrow, no one cares.
What? They’re banned from the US now? Oh, well I can’t get a Furby tomorrow. Actually, I saw them listed online though, so I don’t know how that worked, but anyway. Yeah, well I guess they’re contraband Furbies, I don’t know, but no one, it’s not a big controversy because people don’t want Furbies anymore.
And you imagine the disciples watching Jesus as he turns away and he retreats, and they say, “Jesus, don’t you realize everything has an expiration date on it? Don’t you realize Jesus, right now you are the hot Christmas gift? Don’t turn away the people that want to make you king. Maybe they don’t fully get it, but go ahead and embrace it right now, and they’ll get it later.”
Jesus missed the opportunity though because he didn’t come so he could be king, he didn’t come in that way. He didn’t come to be an earthly king, he didn’t come to exact revenge on the Romans.
Jesus came to save us.
So what did Jesus do? As everyone was putting him up there as the next hot Christmas gift, and he knew he wouldn’t even make it through the holiday season before people decide to discard him and go for something else. What did Jesus do?
Jesus said, “I’m going to turn away because I am not going to play by your rules. I’m not going to just become another king. I didn’t come into this world to exact revenge on the Romans or anyone else, I came to save the Romans. I came to save the Jews, I came to save the Samaritans, but I came to save the Romans and the Babylonians and the Chinese and the Ethiopians and every other known and unknown land near and far. He came to save every single person in the world that would turn to him.”
And so while those watching that day may have thought, “You’re missing your opportunity, this will only be the hot gift for this moment, take it,” Jesus knew what we truly needed. When we have that yearning, when we feel that brokenness and we wonder, “God, what are you doing? How are you going to do it? How is it going to be made right?” Jesus went and did what really needed to be done.
He backed away so that those who truly wanted to seek him could not see a political rising star, but they could meet the one who would save them. And today we can do the same.
As you contemplate what you’re going to get people for Christmas this year, know that God gave you the ultimate Christmas gift and gave everyone that encounter the ultimate Christmas gift too. All we have to do is open it.
The only expiration date is that we live a finite amount of time that we don’t know, and the question is, “Am I going to choose to open that Christmas gift in the time that I have?” But as we do, Jesus came not to do all the things that people constantly claim that what they really want done will be done. He came to do something so much better, to truly right the world.
We don’t need a quick fix for our current problem. We need the one who will fix the real problem and offer us salvation.
Let’s pray.
Father, we thank you that you indeed are the God who can make all things right. You are the one who sent your son to live, to suffer, and to die for us, and as we celebrate Christmas, we remember that’s exactly what Jesus our Savior did. Whatever trends come and go at Christmastime, whatever decorations light up and make everyone smile and whichever ones fall down or burn out, there’s one gift that remains.
It’s not what the people saw when they saw the power of Jesus. They saw the power and thought they could have that power for themselves. It’s often not what we see when we hear about you and think what it is that you’re going to do either. What it is that you actually fix us.
Lord, would you help us as we struggle through the various challenges we meet in life as we feel that yearning for something to be fixed and restored that we would understand what that really means.
We desire not a quick fix of a political fix or a new job or restored health but so much more that we would desire that you would draw us into your kingdom and that you would draw those around us into your kingdom that one day we might see something so much better.
And we pray this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
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