Monday Morning Music Ministry

1-12-14

… This was the name of one of Paul Harvey’s famous radio features. We have just passed through, or survived, Christmas and New Years, times when we are obliged to deal with, if not actually think about, the concepts of God-with-Us and the New Year as a New Beginning. Thank goodness THAT’s all past us, eh?

Rather, we enter the season when the dust settles and we CAN think about these things. We should not forget them. Who was this Jesus… who IS this Jesus? And, do we need new beginnings? … Well, who doesn’t?

Jesus’s profession, we presume, was that of carpenter, like His earthly father. Of course, He was a carpenter who also mended broken bodies; but that ministry came after He was anointed by the Holy Spirit. No, his profession was carpenter, but His job was assigned from the day of His birth… indeed, from the foundation of the world: to die. For us. To assume upon his shoulders and brow the sins we all have committed, to receive the punishment we all deserve for rebellion against God.

Who was this Jesus? How did people know Him?

Did He have a halo, like in ancient paintings? No, He did not. He did not stand out from the crowd.

When Judas betrayed Him to Roman soldiers, the traitorous Apostle had to kiss Him, so He could be identified from among a small group of men.

There are times when “He passed out from them…” withdrawing from opponents, almost unnoticed. When He was a boy and separated from Mary in the marketplace streets, her descriptions of Him did not resonate with pedestrians. When He was discovered in the temple, it was the boy’s wise teaching, not His appearance, that indicated He was Jesus the Christ. For His whole earthly life, it was who Jesus was, not how He looked, that marked Him as the Holy One.

And with us, it is what’s in our hearts, more than our outward appearances or even actions, that God cherishes.

“Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?  For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground,” the prophet Isaiah described Jesus 700 years before He was born.

“He has no form or comeliness, and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

“Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.

“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

“He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken.

“And they made His grave with the wicked – but with the rich at His death, because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth.

“Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days… By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities. … He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”
The Christmas season is over. And now you know the rest of the story.

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