A Hope Fulfilled - Advent DevotionalSample

Imagine the vain and boastful collage of wise men and prophets, teachers of the law and ambassadors, entourages and princes gathered around the astonished usurper, Herod the Great. He was not the Hebrews' Hebrew, nor was he the scion of the House of David, and so he sat and throned in Jerusalem not only as a Roman client king, but as a usurper of God's promises to the royal House of David whose heir that very throne was promised to. Only a few miles away, down from the heights of the Judean mountains lay bucolic Bethlehem; a far different place than the war-torn, fenced in fortress it is today. There in the fields where Boaz, the son of Rahab the prostitute from Jericho, planted his barley; where young David who was ‘conceived in iniquity’, and not initially recognized among his brothers as a son of Jesse when Samuel came to anoint him king tended his sheep, where the priests of the temple in Jesus’ own time kept the sacrificial lambs prepared for the temple – Jesus the son of Mary, the son of David, the son of God lay in a humble manger, surrounded by oxen and sheep, and Mary and Joseph. When the Magi from the east with all their astrological understanding had perceived in the skies that a star had newly arisen in the east that was of great significance, fulfilling the 4th oracle of Balack, crossing through the constellations in prophetic revelation, how could they have gone anywhere else but magnificent Jerusalem with its golden temple and its ancient hopes? And yet from the very mouths of the scribes came a word confirmed by the star that would soon hover over that humble town: “In Bethlehem in the land of Judah… a ruler who would shepherd my people.” Not unlike the finger of God who wrote that word of judgment on the walls of Belshazzar’s blasphemous feast (Daniel 5:5) were the unguarded answers of Herod’s scribes and teachers of the law. In all his glory, Herod could not resist the word of God, but had to feign deference and a willingness to honor the coming king as the only rightful Lord and shepherd of his people. With superior weapons and military might the illegitimate Herod would descend upon that little Judean village in genocidal rage to purge contenders to his throne by dashing the heads of infants and children. How long and aching is the weeping of Rachel for her children in that mournful vale? It lasts even to this day. And yet, it is from lowly Bethlehem and not Jerusalem, nearer weeping Rachel than dancing Herodias, from amongst the broken bodies of little boys and not the wealthy houses of the priests, that God's chosen shepherd of His elect people descends. For those who have hope in this season where we memorialize Christ’s birth, may we look upon our sufferings, our losses, our injustices not as places where God is absent but rather where Christ must be present.

Prayer

Oh Lord our Lord how majestic is your name and all the earth! Had you not foretold it and the prophets come we would not have believed it! Instead, we would have trusted our eyes and understood with our minds, and like Herod, we would have been caught unprepared in the vanity of self-righteousness. You teach us this Christmas to look for you in the places of suffering instead of the palaces of pride. Amen.

John-Paul Lotz, Ph.D., serves as associate professor of Church History at the Regent University School of Divinity.