Isaiah 25:1-10
Immense Power in a Tiny Package

Yahweh, you are my God. I will exalt you! I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things, things planned long ago, in complete faithfulness and truth. For you have made a city into a heap, a fortified city into a ruin, a palace of strangers to be no city. It will never be built. Therefore a strong people will glorify you. A city of awesome nations will fear you. For you have been a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat, when the blast of the dreaded ones is like a storm against the wall. As the heat in a dry place will you bring down the noise of strangers; as the heat by the shade of a cloud, the song of the dreaded ones will be brought low. In this mountain, Yahweh of Armies will make all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of choice wines, of fat things full of marrow, of well refined choice wines. He will destroy in this mountain the surface of the covering that covers all peoples, and the veil that is spread over all nations. He has swallowed up death forever! The Lord Yahweh will wipe away tears from off all faces. He will take the reproach of his people away from off all the earth, for Yahweh has spoken it. It shall be said in that day, "Behold, this is our God! We have waited for him, and he will save us! This is Yahweh! We have waited for him. We will be glad and rejoice in his salvation!" For in this mountain the hand of Yahweh will rest.

World English Bible

The story of Christmas overflows with paradoxes that defy our efforts to understand and our sense of order and control. The Son of God before Time began came to earth 2000 years ago. The King of the universe had to be carried off to Egypt to avoid being killed by King Herod. The infant in the manger was fully human, yet somehow fully God. The Messiah that came to save Israel did nothing to build up its military capability. We have Eternal Life because of His death.

Christmas appears to be much easier to understand if we choose to ignore one side or the other in these logical conflicts. We can identify with God's infant Son because we, too, know what babies are like. We are willing to sing the angels' song of "Peace on Earth" if we don't have to measure the cost. We can marvel at the stories of Mary and Joseph, for even though we haven't experienced the events that God led them through, we are capable of imagining how they might have felt and what faith was required of them. The events of Jesus' birth are filled with the drama of what might not have taken place, had those involved made different decisions. These are stories we can understand.

But the coming of the Messiah was not to give us warm holiday feelings and stories we can share, but to unleash immeasurable power on humanity. The passage above from Isaiah 25 is not a typical Messianic prophesy because it doesn't speak as much to the One that came as it does to the results He came to bring. The plan for a Savior was not God's response to desperate conditions, but a plan the All-knowing developed before creation. Jesus was not only a weak infant in a stable, but the ultimate strength that awes the strongest of earthly forces and defeats even death. Jesus did not come to gather around Himself the strong and powerful, but to gather every one of us in our weakness and frailty, so that He can dry our tears. Jesus did not come merely to save us, but to overwhelm us with abundant blessings.

The reality of the coming of the Messiah challenges much of the knowledge we have gained from observing the world. Nothing in our experience can compare with what Jesus wants to do in our lives, as Grace forgives our rebellion and grants us a Peace that passes our understanding. No authority, power, or righteousness we have ever seen can compare with what God sent to earth in the infant Jesus. In a world of "give and take", we must admit that we have nothing of value to offer God in response to the Gift God sent to us.

This situation presents each of us with a choice of how we respond. Too often, we limit our Christmas celebrations to the sweet stories of one miraculous night and set aside that which would challenge our sense of control and competence. Instead, we should embrace the coming of the Messiah as the earth-changing event it was and is, subject ourselves to the power of the King of Kings, and rejoice in the immeasurable blessings of God's magnificent Kingdom!