Goodness or Blessing?

And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them...
(Genesis 1:21-22)

Why would God bless something that was already good? Why does something good need to be blessed? Only God can judge what is really good, and good things do not automatically contain blessing. Only He can add blessing to something.

We want what we consider to be good, much more than we want God's blessing. So we say to Him, "Just give me these things that seem good to me (career, security, Christian morality and lifestyle, "successful" ministry, a spouse, children), but the blessing is not so important." We think we have God's blessing because we have these things that seem good to us.

But to make the distinction clear and to highlight His blessing, God often separates the two and blesses that which He knows we will consider bad or painful. After the fall, blessing is always inseparable from sacrifice (symbolized by the blood of Abel's offering compared to Cain's which was merely good). We always try to separate the blessing from the suffering. But if we reject the suffering, we lose the blessing with it. It is more important that we receive and pass God's blessing on to our friends, to our husband or wife and children, than that we pass on "good" things that are passing away. The blessing is all that matters.

[AV, (c)1998]

The Missing Name

O my Lord, please let the man of God whom You sent come to us again and teach us what we shall do for the child who will be born. (Judges 13:8)

If we read the genealogy of Christ from the Gospel of Matthew, we will see Matthew mentions four women before Mary: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. What do these women have in common? They all are gentiles. It's very clear that Tamar, Ruth, and Rahab are gentiles; and Bathsheba, being the wife of a Hittite man, is probably also a gentile. In other words, if we were to compare this condition of being a gentile with that of having faith in a messiah, they are also barren. How can one be the mother of Jesus without being a Jew, one of the chosen people? All of them, they are gentiles. Rahab was a prostitute, like Gomer, the wife of Hosea. Barren, in other words. Ruth. Ruth had no children in her first marriage. And when she gave birth to a son, we read about her, the Lord gave her conception. The Lord did it. In other words, Ruth was barren.

Matthew wrote in his genealogy that there were fourteen generations in three different ages. From the beginning to David, from David to the captivity, from the captivity to the birth of Jesus. But if we don't believe Matthew, we begin to count, and we see that the last generation is not fourteen, it is just thirteen. Why? One name is missing.

Whose name is missing in the genealogy of Matthew? Your name. My name. It is an open genealogy. Because God wants that their children, that we, would be the mothers and fathers of Jesus. To be the fathers and mothers of Jesus in our family life, in the life of our neighbors, in the life of our friends. We have the possibility to give birth to Jesus in the life of our fellows. It is a tremendous possibility for us. It is a tremendous possibility for us to be a part of the genealogy of Christ. Are we really members? Are we really the mothers or the fathers of Christ?

God promises us, to all of us, a child. God promises us a Savior. The genealogy in the kingdom of God is open. You could be a father of God. The father of the Son of God. You could be a father of the Son of Man. You could be a mother of the Son of Man. Maybe there are some of you in this congregation who would say, I am very unsuccessful in my private life, in my spiritual life, in my business, in my family life. Don't forget that you are the mother of Jesus. Don't forget that you are the father of Jesus. Maybe there are some who would say, I will never have a child, biologically speaking. Don't forget never that you are the mother of Jesus. You could be the mother of Jesus. You could give birth to Jesus in the life of your friends, in the life of your congregation, in the life of your neighbors.

[AV, (c)1998]

Barrenness

O my Lord, please let the man of God whom You sent come to us again and teach us what we shall do for the child who will be born. (Judges 13:8)

This is the prayer of Manoah, the husband who is waiting for the child, Samson. One of the major subjects in the whole Bible is the subject of the promised child, promised children. There are several promised children of the Bible. All of them, they are preparing the way of the Messiah. All of them, they are preparing in a very miraculous way. "Make straight the way of the Lord," John the Baptist said. He is the last promised child before the Son of Man. The promised children, all of them, are pre-figurations of the Messiah, pre-figurations of the Savior.

Let us now put the question: in what circumstances did God promise a child? The answer to this question is in the first verse of chapter 13. "Again, the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and the Lord delivered them to the hands of the Philistines for forty years." Forty years. Forty years of pilgrimage in the wilderness. Forty days of testing in the wilderness. Forty years - the whole lifetime of a man. And forty years here means the total depravity, a continuous captivity in the hands of the Philistines. In that situation, in that condition, God promised to us a child.

Let us focus now our attention on another question. What condition must I be in to have a promised child? What condition must I be in to receive the promised child? To answer this question, it is good to remind ourselves of some of the promised children of the Bible. Isaac, the son of Sarah. Jacob or Israel, the son of Rebecca. Joseph, the son of Rachel. Samson, the son of Manoah. Samuel, the son of Hannah. The son of the Shunammite woman promised by the prophet Elisha. John the Baptist, the son of Elizabeth. What do the mothers have in common? What is the common factor among the mothers? For Sarah, for Rebecca, for Rachel, for the wife of Manoah, for Hannah, for this unnamed woman in the book of Kings, and for Elizabeth? All of them were barren. All of them, they were barren. To be barren, it is a sign of the total depravity. They are like the wilderness. They are the symbol of sterility in the Bible, of the sterility of the chosen people of God.

So then, what is the condition to have a promised child? It is a very dramatic condition. To be barren. In the kingdom of God, all things are upside down. Or, it's better to say that in our lives all things are upside down compared with the kingdom of God.

[AV, (c)1998]

Someone Is Coming

O my Lord, please let the man of God whom You sent come to us again and teach us what we shall do for the child who will be born. (Judges 13:8)

The meaning of Advent from the very beginning of Christianity is that Someone is coming. Someone is coming, a Savior. More than this, the Savior is right in front of our door, He is knocking at our door, and He is waiting to enter in our life. The faithful Christian expectation is that Someone is coming.

Against this, the general feeling of our age is that something is coming. Something unknown is coming and we are living in this fear. It is a very big difference to say, Someone is coming and He knows us and we know Him because He revealed Himself in the scriptures to us; and to say, something is coming, the unknown, the faceless, and this something will overcome us. Someone is coming is the way of hope, the life of hope. Something is coming would force us to explain, what is this, what could this something be?

For instance, it is very tempting in our family life to say, something is coming in the life of my teenager, something unknown to me and I'm not prepared to receive this. But it is better for us as Christians to say that in the life of my child, is coming Jesus. He is coming in all that happens in our lives. The Holy Spirit always translates our requests to the Father and if we remain in this unfaithful expectation, that something is coming, we will live only with our explanations instead of living in prayer. If we would say that Someone is coming in the life of my family, we are ready to accept Him in prayer. If we would say that Someone is coming in the life of my family, in the life of my congregation, this will always lead us to pray. To pray to live always in this very holy expectation.

Because the Savior is coming and He knows very well my struggles, He knows very well my doubts, He knows very well my debates; and it is very good to accept freely His coming with my doubts, with my debates, with my struggles. Because in this case I will pray for my child and for my congregation, and I will pray with my child and with my congregation. Someone is coming - it is the possibility for us to be together in this expectation.

[AV, (c)1998]