Messiah Surprise

Guiding Prayer For Our Season of Fasting: 

Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom,the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

Myself in Truth

Ever Active Lord, may my excitement in your word be restored today and may my faith be renewed in the knowledge that I serve a God who is full of wonderful surprises.  Amen 

Nurtured and Nurturing

Today, oh lord, may my my delight in family and friends be renewed.  May we love each other for our gifts and for our faults which make us uniquely yours.

The Gathered

Gathering God, may we await your will for our lives and our church with great anticipation. Each day may we be made new in you our Messiah, Redeemer and Friend. Amen

Challenge

Read Matthew 1:26-38 and 2:1-20 and see if any new surprises occur to you as you read about the birth of the Messiah.

Luke 9:18-28

New Living Translation (NLT)

Peter’s Declaration about Jesus

18 One day Jesus left the crowds to pray alone. Only his disciples were with him, and he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”19 “Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say you are one of the other ancient prophets risen from the dead.”20 Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?”Peter replied, “You are the Messiah sent from God!”21 Jesus warned his disciples not to tell anyone who he was. 22 “The Son of Man must suffer many terrible things,” he said. “He will be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He will be killed, but on the third day he will be raised from the dead.”

I try to pretend that they’re not, but birthdays are kind of a big deal to me.  I don’t expect a lot, I just want to be surprised.  I don’t mind knowing who will be at the party (aka my family getting together at a restaurant) I just don’t want to know where it will be.  The element of surprise is important to me.

That need for surprise includes gifts.  I like not knowing what’s in the box. It leaves room for imagination and excitement. So when Gavin told me that he and Jozie were going birthday shopping on Tuesday, the excitement began to build.  When I got home from church around 9:00, they were still not home, so I did the fasting from TV thing, read my Bible, and tried not to wonder too much about what they had up their sleeves.

As soon as they walked through the door, Jozie yells with pure exhilaration “Mommy, guess what we got you for your birthday?!” She then begins to say “We got you…” at which point I put my hands over my ears and begin singing “LA, LA, LA” to the top of my lungs.  This delights her even more so all night she tries to tell me what they bought.  She was like a ninja spoiler, we might be in the middle of bath time and she would look at me and say “It’s a…” and again hands over the ears and loud singing resume.  She never got to spill the beans thank goodness! 

Before Jesus came along, the coming of the Messiah was like the birthday surprise for the people of Isael.  The coming of the Jewish deliverer was a time that the people hoped and dreamed for.  Kind of like Dr. Seuss’s  “Please Try to Remember the 4^th of Octember”, a story in which anything you wish and dream can come true but you have to wait until the 4^th of Octember, an imaginary date…but it’s still fun to dream!  The people of Israel had all kinds of hopes and dreams about when the Messiah comes.

In today’s scripture, Jesus asks his disciples “who do people say that I am?” The disciples reply that most people think he is either the prophet Elijah or John the Baptist.  Then Jesus asks Peter who he says that he (Jesus) is and Peter, says basically you are the Messiah from God.

Now here is where I get a little tripped up because next Jesus tells Peter and the rest of the disciples not to tell anyone who He is. What??  Then Jesus goes on to say:

“The Son of Man must suffer many terrible things,” he said. “He will be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He will be killed, but on the third day he will be raised from the dead.”

I don’t know about you, but for me, saying these things together seem illogical and random, even disturbing.  Why wouldn’t Jesus want everyone to know he was the Messiah?

Maybe it’s like the birthday surprise.  Maybe knowing that the true Messiah would suffer and die rather than reign on high and bestow a royal beating on the Romans would have ruined the surprise of the resurrection.  Imagine being told that the Messiah had come, but he’s really just here to die. If I had been a devoted Jew at the time I would have probably felt like “Well, dang. What’s the point of following him if he’s just going to die anyway?  This is nothing like what I had been expecting.  This can’t be the real Messiah."

But the people WOULD follow a prophet.  They soaked in the wisdom of one who spoke for God.  There were even people who were like prophet groupies that would follow the latest preacher wherever he spoke.  Maybe Jesus thought that they would have to see and experience to believe he was the savior, not just rest their hopes and dreams on the latest prophet. They would have to see him suffer; see the sky turn black and the feel earth quaking upon his death; and then hear from those who had seen him resurrected. They would have to experience the transformation in their minds of Jesus from prophet to Messiah.  A new and better surprise would have to replace the ideas that they had about the Messiah.

Does the story of the Messiah still hold surprise for you?  Does the story of the virgin birth and the resurrection stir up excitement and anticipation or are they twice a year stories that come and go?  As you have spent more time in God’s word this week, have you found any surprises?

The book of Revelation can sometimes scare people, they read about the war and destruction and their fears are stirred up, but we often forget that what waits on the other side is the Messiah. Our hearts and souls will be full to overflowing with the joy and peace that can only be realized in the second coming of Christ. That’s our re-birth day surprise, something that we can anticipate with excitement, for when He comes, all will be made right and whole.

Today may we continually be surprised by the gospel and look forward to the day when Jesus comes again!