The Promised Messiah

"Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face, He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. 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.

He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who considered That He was cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due? His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet He was with a rich man in His death, because He had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth.

But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand. As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; by His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, as He will bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, and He will divide the booty with the strong; Because He poured out Himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors." Isaiah 53:1-12

A further aspect of the incarnation (God's taking on physical human form as Jesus) is the recognition of Jesus as the Messiah. Our wonder and worship of the Christ-child are greater when we see Him as the fulfillment of God's promise. It's easy to see through reading the Gospels that the people of Jesus' day did not really recognize Him as their Messiah. Especially absent was any official recognition by the religious authorities; they were the ones who instigated His death.

But lest we find ourselves too quick to judge, it stands as a point of challenge to us today: Do we daily recognize Jesus for Who He really is? As you read the Scripture for today, note - Jesus literally fulfilled everything Isaiah said would happen to the Messiah. And yet, even after His resurrection, the Jews still didn't recognize Him.

The power of the Christian life (and you've probably heard this many times) is in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And that's why Christmas is so important. Christ's birth as a human being made it possible for us to relate to and respond to God. His birth opened the way for us to know God personally, individually.

That pursuit is at the very heart of all worship and relationship between you and God - simply to know Him. And because of His arrival as a baby in that stable in Bethlehem, we can know Him. "O come, let us adore Him, Christ, the Lord."