Getting Ready for the Big Day. Part 2: The Countdown
So 12 days to go till the Big Day. The commercial count down to this Christmas began on Boxing Day last year. Because of the countdown to the Big Day, people may have already asked you, “are you ready for Christmas yet?”
What they mean is: Have you got your tree up? Have got the gifts wrapped? Have you got the food and drink in? I am sure many of you will, like me, get to the Big Day and say, “I forgot the cranberry jelly!” Or even, “I forgot to get Lizzie a present!”
You most likely know that many of the traditions we practice around Christmas have pagan roots: the date, the giving of gifts, the tree- all have pagan roots. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas)
So why do we do them? Well, because one smart Christian, over 300 years after the birth of Jesus, decided to adapt these pagan activities and give them a Christian significance. This made the transition from paganism to christianity easier for new converts.
However, I am sure you will agree that these and other activities surrounding the celebration of Jesus’ birth, have taken pre-eminences over the actual reason for the celebration in the first place.
I believe that, because people are so caught up in the countdown, they miscalculate what it’s all about. People are so tired getting ready for the Big Day that it passes them by and so they miss the real message of the Big Day.
There was a literal countdown to the birth of Jesus and most people still missed it.
God’s Literal Countdown
In Daniel 9:23-27 God revealed that a Saviour was coming who would (1) finish transgression; (2) put an end to sin; (3) atone for wickedness; (4) bring in everlasting righteousness; (5) seal up vision and prophecy; (6) and anoint the most holy.
I don’t want to spend time doing mathematical equations in relation to the 70 sevens and what they mean. What I do want to do is show you that God began a precise prophetic countdown to the arrival of Jesus. It was unusual that God gave a time scale to the fulfilment of prophecy but on this occasion He did. The following illustrates how God revealed to Daniel the timing of Jesus’ arrival:
“Early in the Twentieth Century, respected British attorney, historian, and scientist, Sir Robert Anderson, the head of Scotland Yard, converted these dates. He determined from Nisan (April) of 444 B.C. until April of 33 A.D. was exactly 173,880 days (483 years x 360 days)! He took into account the difference between the Jewish calendar and our calendar; he also factored in the differential between the Julian and the Gregorian calendars, added days for leap years, and he came up with exactly 483 years! “What then was the length of the period intervening between the issuing of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem and the public advent of ‘Messiah the Prince?’ The interval contained exactly and the very day 173,880 days or seven times sixty-nine prophetic years of 360 days, the first 69 weeks of Gabriel’s prophecy.”(Robert Anderson, The Coming Prince p. 124ff.)
(see also http://www.spreadinglight.com/prophecy/707s.html for an explanation, I don’t necessarily agree with all of this explanation)
So why didn’t someone back then just read this prophecy before Jesus was born and calculate generally when He would be born?
In Matthew 2, we read of the Wise Men from the East who came to Jerusalem seeking the King of the Jews. These Magi (same word used in Daniel 14 times) were most likely from Persia, where Daniel was when he got this prophecy and it is likely in later years they read this passage and were able to understand the timing and so they travelled to Jerusalem following the star. (Altered from “The 70 Sevens--God’s Countdown by David Dykes”)
We are all living in a countdown to the promises of God being fulfilled in our lives.
Many are living with God’s promise of healing, blessing, salvation, the fulfilling of our hearts desire
You may not be able to calculate the day when the promise is to be fulfilled as the Magi did. The lack of precise timing for us can be so disheartening; so often we feel today could be the day, it could happen this week. Proverbs says “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” Prov 13:12. However, each day that passes by without your promise being fulfilled means you are a day closer to receiving what God has promised.
Prepare To Receive With a Date
As you live in the countdown to your promise I want to encourage you to Prepare to Receive. A date to promises fulfilled would make us lazy, leaving it all to the last moment. Not having a date keeps us living in the excitement of expectancy.
You know its coming soon, you just don’t know when, but its coming and it will suddenly come and every day it doesn’t come means you a day closer to it coming.
Our preparation to receive is all about doing what you can do because you cannot do what God is going to do.
Two things we can do to prepare to receive what God has promised:
Build up our faith, by feeding on the word, fellow-shipping with saints, communing with God in worship and prayer. Fellowship refreshes, Word restores, Communion reignites. (Acts 2:42; 2Cor 6:14; 1Jn: 16-7; Heb 10:25)
These things take discipline, and perhaps more so during the countdown to the big Day, because so many things can distract us from Giving Jesus prominence in our lives.
Battle for our faith, by fixing our eyes upon the Lord when the distractions arise.
I find that Building and Battling are interconnected. As you build up your faith, God will test it and Satan will challenge it so you’ll need to battle for your faith.
Faith is being sure and certain of what is to come, you may not see it touch but you know it because you have faith in the one who can do all thing well has said it will come. Heb11:1
The Magi were sure and certain that a Saviour was coming; however, it seemed that all they had to go on was this word in Daniel.
More Than The Word
Lots of people just have the word of God and know about the baby Jesus in a manger. The Magi had more than just the word of God, they also had faith, a faith that moved them to follow a star and seek out Jesus. If you believe the word and you have faith, then you too can move out to seek and follow Jesus.
The combination of word of God and faith is powerful. Your promise is only a word from God, but faith brings hope and certainty that God will fulfil his promise to you. Faith keeps us looking to God to answer.
When Doubt, Disappointment, Discouragement or Darkness distract us from hope and certainty in God, faith kicks in and kicks out Doubt, Discouragement and delivers us from Darkness.
The Faith of the Magi was tested
When they got to Jerusalem they still didn’t know where to find the Saviour and no one there, not even Herod, knew where Jesus could be found or that he had been born. No one was rejoicing at the birth of the Saviour.
When the star appeared again they were led to a stable, a smelly stable, not even a robe, a poor family, a baby. Their response could have been ‘is this it? Is this the Saviour!’
The Magi knew, because faith in their hearts was confirming the word of God, so they rejoiced, they worshipped, and they gave gifts.
God’s solution to life’s troubles, the answer to your prayer, the fulfilment of your promise, may not seem to be what or the way you anticipated it, but faith will confirm this is God.
Your hope in God will be tested but the solution to every test is trust.
