Today, I am reading and commenting on  Luke 2-3.

OK, again something I have never thought about before.  When the angel appeared to the shepherds, he told them that he was bringing good news, and that good news was that a Savior had been born, the Messiah.  That isn’t the new thought.  Then the angel told them he had a sign for them that what he had just said was true.  The sign was that they would find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.  I have always read this, and hear it preached about as directions on where to find the baby, but that isn’t what the angel said.  The angel said that finding that baby would be a sign to them that his message. that the Messiah had been born, was true.  The angel was not telling them, “This is how you will know you have found the baby I am talking about.”  The angel was saying, “This is how you will know that the Messiah has been born.”  I am not sure what the implications are of this different perspective on what the angel said, but I think they are significant.

I also want to comment on something I noticed about Jesus staying in Jerusalem when He was twelve.  So, it says that Jesus’ parents found Him after three days of looking for Him in Jerusalem.  It occurred to me this morning that this was a foreshadowing of His death and resurrection.  In particular, it foreshadows the three days of anxiety which His mother, Mary, would experience after His crucifixion: anxiety which was relieved when He rose from the dead.  Again, I am not sure what the implications of that foreshadowing are, but they are worth thinking about.  Of course, this account has two very important implications.  The first being that Jesus is always doing His Father’s business.  The second, that when we look for Jesus, we should start in His Father’s House.  Combining the two, we find Jesus when we look at where God’s business is being done.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.