* Let me offer my apologies on the early and incomplete version of this that went out earlier this morning. One of my major pet peeves when working on a laptop is that you can’t turn off the touch pad. The way I hold my hands when I type I sometimes hit the touchpad with the pad of my hand resulting in the cursor suddenly getting punched in random and unexpected places. With my current laptop that doesn’t happen quite as often, but this morning the cursor happened to be sitting on the “publish” button on my screen. The odds of that are vanishingly small, but there it was. Thankfully, there is a safeguard built into the page so you don’t accidentally publish something before you’re really ready. It asks if you are sure. My fat hand, however, managed to hit the publish button not once, but twice, send it live before I could hit the cancel button. When I went back to actually finish writing, I made sure the cursor was on the complete opposite side of the screen. Here, then, is the full version.

“…and Jacob fathered Joseph the husband of Mary, who gave birth to Jesus who is called the Messiah. So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations; and from David until the exile to Babylon, fourteen generations; an from the exile to Babylon until the Messiah, fourteen generations.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Everyone has a story. That’s something our culture today tends to celebrate. What is also true, but to which we don’t give quite as much attention today is that everyone is part of a story. We tend to focus only on ourselves and the chapter we are writing, but our story is only part of a much larger story that has been unfolding for far longer than the boundaries of our lives. As much as this is true about each one of us, it was also true about Jesus. And although His legacy includes some things that ours likely does not, it also includes a bunch of other parts that ours do share. This is all another gift God gives and which we can celebrate in this season of giving. Today, let’s talk about the gift of legacy.

Jesus’ birth was foretold long before it came to pass. The apostle Paul tells us that Jesus entered the world “at the fullness of time,” or when the time was just right. God waited patiently for hundreds and hundreds of years before the time finally came to introduce Himself to the world through His Son. In all of that time, though, He wasn’t just sitting up in His throne room twiddling His thumbs, basically doing nothing. He was busy getting ready. He was busy creating a legacy that would give Him a context that made sense to us.

He first hinted as His coming when the dust from the explosion of sin into the world was still thick in the air. He hadn’t even finished highlighting the consequences of sin when He assured us that He was one day going to deal with it in full. Sometime later, when He was ready to work more specifically on building the family line and the culture that came with that family line that would produce His Son, He told Abraham that one of His descendants would bless the world. He reaffirmed this family lineage to Abraham’s son and grandson. He even made it clear which of Jacob’s twelve sons would be the bearer of this particular honor (Judah).

God told us even more than that about His coming Son. He revealed to the prophet Isaiah that Jesus would be born of a virgin. He shared with us through Isaiah many details about His life, ministry, and death. Micah told us where he would be born. Hosea told us He would come out of Egypt, prophesying the trip His family would have to take to escape Herod’s murderous designs which were foretold by Jeremiah. Jeremiah also told us He would come from the line of David, giving even greater specificity to His lineage. We even knew ahead of time about Jesus’ trip to the temple when He was 12. Malachi gave us a clue to that particular episode. That one is more significant than it seems because Rome destroyed the temple in 70 AD and it was never rebuilt. This locked Jesus’ life into a specific historical period.

There are actually many, many more prophecies than this about Jesus scattered throughout the Old Testament. These prophecies accomplish a couple of different things. For starters, they help us see that no one but Jesus could possibly be God’s Messiah. The odds of any one single person fulfilling just a few of these prophecies are staggeringly small. Jesus fulfilled all of them. Completely. This speaks to God’s power and ability to work through human history along very much natural lines to see His plans brought to fruition. The other major thing this does is to create a legacy of faithfulness. Jesus came out of a whole legacy of faithfulness. God’s faithfulness covered everything He did. Everything that happened to Him dripped with it. God had been intimately involved in every single part of His story from its absolute inception. And He did all of that to make sure we would have the chance to be in a relationship with Him.

When Jesus entered the world as a baby, He came bringing this gift of legacy with Him. He brought it with Him for us in two different ways. If you are in a relationship with God in Christ today, it is because of this legacy. Yes, you can probably point to this or that person who was the one who actually shared the Gospel with you or who discipled you in the faith, but that wouldn’t have happened without this larger legacy of faithfulness firmly locked into place.

That is quite a gift in and of itself. This gift of legacy goes even further than that, though. You see, God didn’t put this much effort into the life of only His Son. He puts this much effort and attention, this much consideration and care into the life of every single person born into this world. You are part of a legacy of faithfulness. As King David once wrote, He knew all of your days and what they would entail before a single one of them came to be. He had great plans for you before you were even in your mother’s womb. He guided human history from time immemorial so that you were born precisely when you were. And if He put that much energy into getting you here, it is only reasonable to believe that He put an equal amount of energy into the plans He has for you and the things He wants to accomplish with you while you are here. You are a part of God’s gift of legacy.

This means that however you happen to feel in a given moment, your life is rich with significance. There is a purpose to your existence far beyond what you could even imagine sitting where you are right now. You could not begin to conceive of the things God plans to accomplish through your life. Each interaction you have with another person is a divine appointment intended to advance God’s kingdom more fully into this world. All of your circumstances are part of God’s larger plan to shape you into just the person He needs you to be to expand the reach and impact of His kingdom in the world around you. Even the hard things He allows, He allows with a purpose. You are not alone in anything you do. There is significance to your life in every possible way. Reflect today on this incredible gift and just what it means.