Christmas usually is seen as a time for giving. The spirit of giving seems to float through the air through the smallest village to the largest city. Of course much of it is materialistic; advertisers hawking their wears trying to entice the buyer to choose their merchandise.
Giving of real substance was established by God from the very beginning.
Even before the sin committed by Adam and Eve had caused their ejection from the garden paradise in which they lived, God began the rescue by promising one who would be presented to mankind as the ultimate sacrifice to bind the sin-wound caused by that first rejection of God the Father. God further demonstrated what He meant by shedding the blood of an animal to use the coat to cover the two naked sinners as He banished them from the garden. God’s story began to unfold from that time forward.
Cain had raised vegetables that were pleasant to see and tasteful to eat. It was from his own labor that he offered those vegetables to God as a sacrifice. Able had listened intently through his life and somehow had discovered that shed blood was the sacrifice that pleased God. When the smell of the burn-offered lamb Able had sacrificed reached God’s senses, He was pleased. Cain’s sacrifice of his own labor was not acceptable.
Abraham walked to the place of offering where his faith was to be tested to the limits. As he and Isaac walked toward that place, the inquisitive Isaac observed that there was wood for the altar, fire to enflame the wood on the altar, but where was the lamb for sacrifice? Abraham knowing all too well the answer to that question simply said, “God will provide a lamb for sacrifice.”
When the chosen people of God had been enslaved for four hundred years their days of captivity was over on the morning after the LORD passed over the household when He saw the blood of the lamb on the door post of the family home. He saw the blood and the family inside were safe.
The priests lined the burning alter by the hundreds as the lambs without blemish were being quartered and burned as a sacrifice for the people. And on one day each year a lamb was the atonement lamb for an entire nation. Indeed, even the High Priest needed the blood of that lamb to have his sins pushed back.
What is this gift of the blood of a perfect lamb; covering the sins of an individual, then entire families, and later an entire nation? Early on the first Christmas morning, somewhere in Bethlehem Judea, in a small stable, a cave really, among the animals, a baby was born. That baby’s name was Jesus; He had been promised throughout the ages, His life had been promised by the prophets even so detailed as to where He was to be born.
After growing to adulthood and following His Heavenly Father’s every detail, He was announced by John, “Behold, The Lamb of God.” Here was the covering to mankind’s sin, the sweet savor of Able’s offering, the answer to Isaac’s question, the freedom of enslaved families, the atonement of a nation, and indeed, the atonement to all mankind.
Is it any wonder that Jesus was born in a stable? How could it be otherwise? After all, where else would the Christmas Lamb be born?
Merry Christmas
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