24 Dec The Way To Prepare For Christmas
This time of year, our energy is all about getting ready for Christmas. Knowing Jesus was coming, in the final book of the Old Testament, God gives final instructions to prepare the family of God for the first Christmas with the last book of the Bible.
If you’ve ever gotten lost and needed to ask for directions, then you understand where the people of God were when God was speaking to them. In Malachi 2:8, it says “you have turned aside from the way”. The good news is that we have a Father with a home for us to enjoy forever. The bad news is that we have gotten lost and need to find the way home.
The primary purpose of the book of Malachi was to prepare people for the coming of Jesus as the first Christmas. Once Jesus arrives on the scene, He says something about “the way home”. In John 14:6, Jesus says, “I am the way…”. Jesus’ words are historically remarkable. Various religious and spiritual leaders have, throughout history, said that they could teach us about or point us to the way. But Jesus said what others do not say – that He is the only way to our home in heaven. His words negate any possibility that there are many ways, which means that any and every other possible way is not the way.
After dying for our sins and rising for our salvation, Jesus returned to Heaven. Going before us, He is the only way through death and to our forever Home. This concept of Jesus being the only way was so central to the early Christian church that Christianity was referred to as “the Way” (e.g. Acts 19:9, 23).
In Malachi and the time that followed, they were waiting hundreds of years for Jesus to come the first time and were instructed to walk in the way of Jesus until He arrived the first time. In Acts and into our own day, we are instructed to keep walking in the way of Jesus until He arrives for the last time.
Are you walking in the way of Jesus? Is there any big misstep you need to correct? What is your next step to walk with Jesus?
