God provides a deliverer

DDG, Unit 19, Session 5, Day 3 – Luke 2:39-47

                We Westerners have lived our whole lives in relative freedom and prosperity. We’ve had our ups and downs, sometimes severe, but our expectation is that our “normal” state will just naturally return. It serves us well to be reminded from time to time that this has not been humans natural state. Tyranny and poverty have been the norm for most of human history, and is still the case in much of the world today. Add on top of that the observation that nature seems often desirous of our demise through tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and, obviously in our current context, disease.

                “Where is God in all of that?” you might ask. He has always been there. We see that in the story of His people, Abraham’s descendants. The Passover is the story of His deliverance of those descendants from slavery in Egypt and is commemorated annually in this festival. It is a great celebration in which each generation annually remembers God’s care for them. Jesus’ family was obedient to that celebration, as we see in today’s reading. A key part of that celebration was the sacrifice of a lamb. This becomes especially important to us as we consider that it foreshadows the sacrifice of a perfect lamb. Not for deliverance from physical slavery, but from slavery to sin. Peter tells us:

                knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. (1 Peter 1:18-21 NASB)

What feelings emerge within you as you read the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ childhood, knowing He would later become our Passover lamb?