Today is Your Birthday

Reading Psalm 2 from The Message Bible.  I love this paraphrased version because it is so down to earth.  The first six verses describe the rebellion of the nations and their people.  God laughs at their bravado, at first amused at their insolence. Then he gets "good and angry."  I take up the text there:

"Let me tell you what God said next.  He said, 'You're My Son, and today is Your birthday.  What do you want?  Name it.  Nations as a present?  continents as a prize?  You can command them all to dance for You, or throw them out with tomorrow's trash.' "

It made me think of another time someone offered to give the Son the nations.  It wasn't His Father that time, but Satan, the ruler of this world.  Funny thing is, the Son clearly already HAD all the nations of the world to do with as He wished.  It was a birthday gift...from way back when.  Jesus had been baptized 40 days before and had not eaten or drunk anything since.  Forty days of fasting!  He had to be beyond hungry and thirsty...at an end physically, almost.  Then this:

"..when the time was up, he was hungry.  The Devil, playing on his hunger, gave the first test. 'Since you're God's Son, command this stone to turn into a loaf of bread.'

        Jesus answered by quoting Deuteronomy: 'It takes more than bread to really live.'

        For the second test, he led him up and spread out all the kingdoms of the earth on display at once.  The the Devil said, 'They're yours in all their splendor to serve your pleasure.  I'm in charge of them all and can turn them over to whomever I wish. Worship me and they're yours, the whole works.'

        Jesus refused, again backing his refusal with Deuteronomy.  'Worship the Lord your God and only the Lord your God.  Serve Him with absolute single-heartedness.'

        For the third time the Devil took him to Jerusalem and put him on top of the Temple.  He said, 'If you are God's Son, jump! It's written, isn't it, that he has placed you in the care of angels to protect you; they will catch you; you won't so much as stub your toe on a stone?'

        'Yes,' said Jesus, ' and it's also written, 'Don't you dare tempt the Lord your God.'

       That completed the testing.  The Devil retreated temporarily, lying in wait for another opportunity."

What was it that the Son actually wanted for His Birthday.  The day He was begotten on earth as in heaven?  Did He want to splay open the hearts of those opposing Him, killing them by the millions so that His holy blood-thirst could be satisfied?  Did He smash them like pottery?  What did He come to do?

Die.  As a sacrifice.  He came (John 1) to those whom He had created, and they did not receive Him.  Because they did not understand Him.  He was the Lamb...the One they sacrificed every year in the temple to cleanse their sins on the Day of Atonement.  That picture was always a picture of what He would do when He came to earth.  That is why there are no more sacrifices in the Temple.  They are unnecessary since the Lamb who was slain before the foundations of the world (Revelation 13:8) was sacrificed for all. Jesus came already owning His creation.  He did not need to receive it from the Devil.  It would have been a quick fix, though, not to have to die and instead just take what was already His and go on back to glory.  He could have.

But, He came to show us what God is really like.  Instead of a great bloodbath to cleanse the rebellion out of us, He healed those who were sick, raised a dead child and a grown man from the dead, forgave prostitution, faithlessness, and pride.  He could have used nature to destroy us, but instead He calmed the storms, only needing to speak to the weather for it to change. He could have broken us as the potter breaks the clay pots marked "irregular," but instead He recreated us and put us back together.  Hmmm.  Look what He did with His birthday gift.

Colossians 2 (The Message again)  "When you were stuck in your old sin-dead life, you were incapable of responding to God. God brought you alive - right along with Christ! Think of it! All sins forgiven, the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ's Cross.  He stripped all the spiritual tyrants (think Satan and his cronies) in the universe of their sham authority at the Cross and marched them naked through the streets."

For His birthday, He asked for the power to defeat our enemies, not us.  He wanted to heal our brokenness, not break us further.  For His birthday, He asked to be the sacrifice we could not buy for ourselves - did not even know we needed.  For His birthday, He asked that His blood at the Cross would defeat the very enemy of our souls who encourages us to scoff at a Holy God.  Jesus, the Son, already owned the universe He spoke into being (John 1).  He bought back from Eden what the serpent stole.  Quite a birthday gift....He gave to us on the day He was begotten.  Thank you, Jesus.