shawnethomas

In the 1800s, R.H. Dana was a student at Harvard who got measles, which weekend his eyesight and kept him from being able to read, so he took a job on a sailing ship in hopes of regaining his health. His book, “Two Years Before The Mast,” tells the story of how he joined the ship “Pilgrim” and first began to live and sleep in what sailors call the “forecastle” of the ship. The “forecastle” (pronounced “foke-sul”), is a structure on the front of a ship, where all the common sailors bunk. When Dana moved in there, he said “we now began to feel like sailors.” He wrote “no man can be a sailor, or know what sailors are, until he has lived in the forecastle with them, turned in and out with them, and eaten from the common (meals).” 

What we celebrate at Christmas, is that in Jesus Christ, God left His home in heaven, and came to live in the “forecastle” with the “common people” of this world, that He might be one of us, and die for our sins on the cross.

There are a number of passages we traditionally turn to during the Christmas season: Luke 2, Matthew Chapters 1 & 2, like we read in our service last night. But as many of you know, this year I have taken my messages each Sunday from something we read in our Daily Bible Readings the week before. This week we see a wonderful Christmas passage in our regular reading this week, in Zechariah 2: 

“‘Sing for joy and be glad, O daughter of Zion; for behold I am coming and I will dwell in your midst,’ declares the LORD.

This scripture was originally a promise to God’s people who had come back to Jerusalem a little more than 500 years before the time of Christ. If you remember, God had chosen Israel to be His people, to bring His word and the promise of the coming Messiah/Savior to the world. But for generations, Israel had disobeyed Yahweh, and served others gods instead. God gave them warning after warning through His prophets, but they would not repent, and finally He brought judgment on them, and they were carried away into captivity into Babylon, where they stayed for 70 years. But now in Zechariah, according to God’s promise, they had come back to the Promised Land. But they were a lowly bunch, few in number, and oppressed by their enemies around them. Their future didn’t look that bright for them. But God gave a great promise to them here in Zechariah 2:10-11 — the greatest promise there is — that He Himself would come and would dwell among them. God’s promise to His struggling people here was: “I am coming … and I will dwell in your midst” — so He says, “sing for joy”! Let’s look at what God promised Israel, and US, here in Zechariah 2: