Heart Meditations

Scripture – 17 “And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. 18 But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. 19 Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, 20 that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, 21 whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.

Observation – The phrase that stuck out to me this morning was ‘the Christ appointed for you, Jesus’. I have known for a while that the word ‘Christ’ is not a name as such but a title, like ‘King’ or ‘Doctor’.  The title of ‘Christ’ literally means ‘a person who is anointed’.  In the Old Testament there were a few jobs which required a person to be anointed.  Anointing was intended to show to a person had been selected or appointed for a special purpose.

In the ceremony of anointing a priest (someone who themselves had been anointed) would pour oil over the head of the person and pray a special prayer.  This act was symbolic of the fact that God’s Holy Spirit should be with them and saturate their lives  just like the oil had saturated their hair and dripped from their bread onto their clothes.  The anointing  oil would have been perfumed with different spices.  It would take a many days to get the smell of the anointing oil out of your hair and off your skin.  Where ever you went people would smell your anointing before they saw you.  In the same way it was hope that the presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of the anointed person would be noticeable to those around them.  Ultimately this ritual pointed forward to the anointed One who was to come Jesus.

The people of God had been waiting a long time for their Messiah, their Christ, but when he actually showed up they rejected him.  Perhaps after all the waiting they expected someone a bit snazzier than a carpenter. Perhaps they were hoping for someone who came from a better part of town than Nazareth.  Maybe they thought the Messiah would come from an elite family not be the son of a teenage girl who got pregnant before marriage.  Maybe they imagined that their Christ would be surrounded by the good and the great not a bunch a fisher men and rejects from society.  But Peter reminds them that Jesus is the Christ appointed for you.

There are no other anointed Ones, no other options waiting in the wings.  This isn’t Blind Date with three contestants hoping to be your Messiah.  Jesus is the Christ appointed for us.

Application – In my own life I sometimes feel like I wish Jesus was someone else or at least that his teachings were a little different or more lenient then they are.  I wish he didn’t demand that He is the only way to God, couldn’t He have said he is one of the ways to God?  That would make it much less awkward when discussing Christ with people of other faiths.  I sometimes wish that He had not gone so far as name the Sabbath as His day and declare himself ‘Lord of the Sabbath’.  That would make it much easier for Christians who worship on the Seventh Day and the First day of the week to not judge each other.  I sometime wish He didn’t say the things he did about marriage, or creation, or loving your enemy, for forgiving those who hurt you.  However this morning God is saying to me that Jesus is the Christ appointed for me.  I don’t have the option to pick the parts that I like and leave the rest.  It is all of Christ or none at all.

Prayer – Sprint help me to more fully accept Jesus as the Christ appointed for me.  Help me to embrace Him in all of His beauty and complexity, His grace and His guidance, His love and His Law.  Lord anoint me with the Holy Spirit so that I might smell of you in the world.  Give grace and repentance to your people and may the ways in which we have rejected you in ignorance not be held against us.  Give us revelation in Your perfect time and enable us to grow in You.

Amen