A Baby Shower for Jesus

Have you ever been to a party for a family who's about to have a baby? Typically, most of the guests are women.

They'll play a few games, have some refreshments and talk about parenthood. The highlight ofthe event is when the guests pass the expectant mother their colourfully wrapped packages. She opens them and holds them up for the admiration of the audience: adorable infact outfits, baby toys, perhaps even a basinet and cradle, gift cards so the parents can buy what they need most.

About 2000 years ago there was a suprise baby shower for an Infant in Bethlehem, but it wasn't at all like the one I just described. The

Some wit has quipped that if the wise men had been wise women, they would have asked directions, arrived on time, helped deliver the baby, cleaned the stable, made a casserole and brought practical gifts! Instead, these visitors to Bethlehem (probably all men) brought odd, unconventional gifts. But their gifts had meanings that tell the story of salvation.

Myrrh, Frankincense and Gold

Myrrh was an unusual gift. Ancient myrrh was an aromatic resin that probably came from a species of the mimosa plant that’s usually rendered into a strongly scented oil. Back then, it was very valuable. But what interests us is its use: it was an ingredient for embalming a dead body.

The gift of myrrh reminds us that at the moment of joy at the beginning of a new life, death was already awaiting Jesus. Lyricist Mark Lowry captured this conflict in his popular Christmas song: “Mary, did you know,” he asks, “that your Baby Boy is heaven’s perfect Lamb?”

That’s the paradox of Christmas:

For even as He was born, fresh and pink and precious, Jesus was already marked as a sacrifice, like the lambs in the Hebrew tabernacle service.

It was Jesus’ death that made Him our Saviour. The apostle Paul said that God sent “his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering” (Romans 8:3). “At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly,” he wrote. So we are “justified by his blood” and “reconciled to [God] through the death of his Son” (Romans 5:6, 9, 10).

Jesus’ death means that:

Frankincense is an aromatic resin burned by the priests as a symbol o

With Jesus as our Priest, we can: