The Best Christmas Gift

Are you making a list of what you want this Christmas? Are you counting out money and budgeting for the list of presents you think your relatives and friends would like? Are you busy scouring the departmental stores everyday after work and on weekends like a honey bee just to find that perfect gift?

Well, stop.

Because the best gift on Christmas day is already there for the taking, and it’s free.

It is the free gift of eternal life and all you need to do is believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came to live among His people in the flesh, suffered for all our sins, was crucified and was resurrected three days later.

And He did it all because of you and me. The Bible tells us clearly what Jesus Christ endured so that He could redeem us from our sins and bring us back to God the Father.

He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.

Isaiah 53:3-11

My dear friend, the true meaning of Christmas is not a day of partying and exchanging presents. Rather, we remember that We Are The Reason that Jesus Christ came to Himself as the perfect sacrifice so that those who believe on His Name shall have eternal life!

This is my favorite Christmas song of all time, which I shall share with you this Shabbat.

Shabbat Shalom.