Next please …
Waiting for my appointment in a clinic the other day, I noticed a notice that told me there had been something like 1600 appointments there last month of which 150 were lost due to patients failing to turn up. Now, ok, it is a standing joke, I know, that a few months ago we had a dentist appointment in the diary and drove the 80 odd miles to my wife’s dentist in Buckingham, only to discover that, in fact it was an appointment for me to see my dentist in Horsham—and thus I had just added to their statistic of failed appointments that month. But, I mean, 150 people failing to turn up—that’s appalling, he says! Anyway I had a 40 minute wait to get in to see the consultant—which gave time to read all the notices!
The passage of our lives tends to be dictated by appointments of one sort or another, doesn’t it?
But had you ever thought that God makesappointments? He’d made an appointment, not in Buckingham (or even Buckingham Palace) but in Bethlehem and he kept it precisely on time when his Son Jesus Christ became a baby born in a divinely appointed manger there.
And to think that Joseph and Mary travelled probably the same distance as we did for our non-existent appointment, to keep their appointment to be registered in the family town of Bethlehem (Luke 2:4-5)—only to find that it was God’s appointment
that Mary’s baby should be born there. This Christmas, I believe there are many of us who need to make an appointment to see the great Doctor or Consultant, the Lord Jesus. Many make an appointment each year to meet him as the Baby in the manger at Bethlehem, but the encounter goes no further— there’s no follow up consultation.
Though it’s Christmas, we need to make an appointment to meet him at calvary—and not to wait till Good Friday, either. The most crucial appointment in history for both God and mankind was that day when God’s own sinless Son would
die willingly on the cross bearing our sins and taking our punishment on himself.
We could perhaps reverently expand John 3:16 and say that God so loved the world that he made an appointment when he would give his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Thus it is the most crucial appointment we must make – to repent of our sins, thank the Lord Jesus for dying and bearing the penalty for our sins, and believing and trusting in him for eternal life, as he promised.
We should try never to break appointments, but this really is the most crucial we’ll ever make – don’t let it be a failed appointment. Hebrews 9:27 (NKJV) Just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgement, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to
deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly
waiting for him.
Elder
Dec 2014
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