December 18 I Saturday

Obadiah

Revelation 9

“He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognise Him.” 

—John 1:10

When Adam and Eve fell into sin because of the serpent’s deception, God cursed the serpent, saying, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:15). Right from the Garden of Eden, there had been the expectancy that the coming Messiah would one day come and defeat the devil. When Eve gave birth to her firstborn son, she said, “With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man” (Genesis 4:1). She thought he was the promised child from God, but little did she know that little boy would one day grow up and become the first murderer in the history of the world. 

      When Abraham was set apart by God and told he was going to be the means of blessing the world, the expectancy was this was when the Messiah was going to come, but He did not. From the time of Abraham, every time a Jewish woman became pregnant, she probably wondered, “Is this it? Is this child going to be the Messiah?” But it never was. 

      During those long years of waiting, the expectations of a Messiah had been molded into the thinking of the Jewish people by the circumstances in which they lived. The nation of Israel had been oppressed for nearly 800 years before Christ was born. They had been under the control of the superpowers within the Middle Eastern world: the Assyrians back in the 8th century B.C., then the Babylonians, followed by the Persians, and then the Greeks under Alexander the Great during the intertestamental period. Finally, about 64 years before Christ was born, the Romans became the superpower. Thus, the expectancy, amongst the Jewish people, was that God was going to send His Messiah, who was going to be a military leader that would throw off the domination of these superpowers and re-establish their independence, thereby giving them back their dignity.

      What the Jewish people expected is typical of any human. We all do the same thing when we have some great need, molding God to the shape of that need and expecting God to meet that particular need. But the truth is, He does not, because we have simply invented our own Jesus. This is why John wrote, “He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him” (John 1:11). They rejected the true Messiah because He did not conform to their own expectations.

      Does the Word of God give us the expectancy of the Messiah or do our circumstances mold our expectations?

Prayer: Precious Jesus, I receive You as my true Messiah. Keep me away from molding You into the shape that I need to meet a particular need; help me know who You truly are through Your Word. Thank You, Lord.