FROM THE PRESIDENT
DECEMBER 2017 / THE CHOSEN PEOPLE - 2
Dear friend,
Shalom and a Merry Christmas
and Happy Hanukkah to you!
We celebrate two great
festivals of deliverance and joy
during December. One of the
holidays is observed by Christians
and the other by Jewish people.
There is some cross over today as,
once in awhile, I find a Christmas
tree capped with a Jewish star or see
a Jewish person with a Hanukkah
bush in their home!
Sometimes this is done to ease
the tension of a mixed marriage
by bringing the holidays together
for the sake of the children. Rarely
is there recognition that, at its
root, Christmas is a Jewish holiday
and Hanukkah finds its ultimate
fulfillment in Yeshua, the Messiah
and Light of the world.
Believe me,
it is not easy to
persuade the
most ardent adherents
that the
above is true,
but when recognized,
it brings
a greater delight
and joy to each
of the holidays.
Let me explain
by reminding
us of the story
of both holidays, beginning with
Christmas.
THE CHRISTMAS
STORY BEGINS IN THE
BOOK OF GENESIS
Where does the Christmas
story begin? Most people would
answer correctly—in the Bible.
However, they would begin the
story with the wrong Testament
by jumping right in with the birth
of the Messiah! The story in fact
begins much earlier. The story of Christmas begins in the
Old Testament as far back as the book of Genesis. The first
promise of a redeemer is found in Genesis 3:15:
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on
the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.”
Moses tells us that God would one day deliver mankind
from sin and death, from disobedience, and from all the evil
and human hardship that came about as a result of the fall of
Adam and Eve. This deliverance would come through the seed
of the woman who, in the process of destroying the serpent,
would bruise his heel—not with a mortal wound but painful
nonetheless.
The wounding of this son of Eve points to Jesus who bore
our sin. He was born of a woman, innocent, perfect, and without
sin. His death may be viewed like the bruising of the heel,
painful but not fatal since He rose from the dead. In Yeshua’s
rising from the dead, He proved that the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob had accepted His sacrifice for sin. Later on, in
Isaiah 53, we read these words,
“All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has
turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity
of us all to fall on him.”
We are all sinful and we all need a Savior.
We are unable to save ourselves because we
have inherited the disobedient nature of our
“parents,” Adam and Eve. All praise be to
God who sent His Son to die as the solution
for our sins—for both forgiveness and
transformation!
This glorious story of redemption begins
with the first sin because God’s grace has been
available from the very start to all those who
would receive it! The drama of redemption unfolds
throughout the Old Testament Scriptures.
In Genesis 12, we discover that God calls
an elderly couple, Abraham and Sarah, to be His bridge of grace
to a broken and sinful world. Their descendants, the Jewish
people, were chosen for the sake of those who were not part of
their own community and who ultimately would be used by
God to bless the world: “And I will bless those who bless you, and
the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of
the earth will be blessed” (Genesis 12:1-3).
Eventually these blessings to the world would come
through one descendant of Abraham, the Messiah Jesus,
and through Him the world would receive the blessings of
redemption.
But, how would the one promised in Genesis 3:15 be
recognized? The Scriptures begin filling in His qualifications.
CHRISTMAS
THROUGH
JEWISH EYES
Christmas is the
drama of redemption
fulfilled through the
Jewish Messiah.
Bethlehem today
stefano baldini / Alamy Stock Photo