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To mark this festive season, Christmas 2021, I’d like to share some interesting truths with you.
I am sure we have all at sometime sang nursery rhymes, oblivious to their origins.
Have you ever wondered about the origins of Nursery Rhymes?
Child development studies have shown that the musicality, tone and rhythm of most nursery rhymes are actually beneficial to childhood development. A little further research reveals the corrupt and sinister, often disturbing, nightmarish nature of some of the rhymes. Plagues, medieval taxes, imprisonment, religious persecution and prostitution are topics you wouldn’t necessarily speak to your toddler’s about, yet the topics are sung in the rhymes with no regard to their origins.
Here’s a few:
Baa Baa Black Sheep – restrictive medieval 13th century tax system. The original version says that one third of the cost of a sack of wool went to the King, one third to the church, the final third to the farmer. Hence the little boy who lived down the lane having nothing, living in poverty. Removing the childhood poverty perspective, more recent adaptations have one third being distributed to the boy who lived down the lane.
Rock-a-bye Baby – full of connotations relating to child swapping at the birth of King James II of England. The escalating rivalry between Catholics and Protestants played out with the threat that the cradle, the Royal House of Stuart, would fall.
Ring a Ring a Rosie – speaks of the Great Plague of 1665 in London. Red rings of a rash on the body, covered up in public by a tissue, until the sufferer fell down…dead.
Mary Mary, Quite Contrary – the daughter of King Henry VIII, Mary was known for her murderous dealings often based on religious beliefs. It alludes to her garden being the graveyard of those who she ordered be put to death. The silver bells and cockle-shells both instruments of torture used to ensure that death wasn’t quick and nor painless.
Not all of the nursery rhymes are as disturbing as these.
By complete contrast is Mary had a Little Lamb. This rhyme speaks of a young girl whose family lived on a farm. One of the lambs was gravely ill at birth and the farmer not giving it much hope of survival. Mary convinced her father to allow her to care for the lamb, wanting to bring it back to good health. Over time this occurred such that the lamb became so attached to Mary (maternal / provider type relationship) that she couldn’t leave the farm with out it following her…everywhere she went.
I’d like to offer an alternative to the original version of this nursery rhyme. That is to demonstrate that there was another Mary who had a little lamb.
This alternative speaks of a young lady, a teenager also named Mary. She lived about 2000 years ago in a modern day Israel (Bethlehem of Judea and Nazareth of Galilee). She was a teenager who had been promised in marriage to a man named Joseph.
After having an encounter with the Angel of the LORD, Mary became pregnant. The Gospel of Matthew confirms this saying that “she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name JESUS, for He will save His people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21)
Whilst this reference is not literal to Mary having a lamb, references to Jesus being a lamb are found throughout Scripture. As with an contextual research of traditional nursery rhymes mentioned above, some context here is required to fully understand the connotation of Jesus being referred to as a Lamb.
Returning to the story in Genesis of creation, with Adam and Eve in the Garden, we read of the sin that entered into the world, destroying the relationship that mankind was designed to have with God. In an attempt to restore this relationship, countless stories in the Bible, and throughout history referred to a Lamb being used as a sacrificial offering to God. The Bible says in Romans chapter 5 verse 12 that as sin entered the world through one man, it needed the sacrifice of one man to restore this relationship.
The Israelites believed that their sacrifices according to God’s design would provide restitution of the broken relationship that existed between God and mankind. The religious sacrifice of lambs however would never in itself be sufficient to restore this relationship.
The whole sacrificial system established by God in the Old Testament set the stage for the coming of Jesus Christ, who is the perfect sacrifice God would provide as an atonement for the sins of His people. Hence, one of the titles used for Jesus is the Lamb of God.
The institution of the Passover Feast in Jewish tradition is recorded in Exodus chapter 12. This story outlines what was required to be done in an attempt to be restored to God. Following the instructions given to them, the Jewish people were delivered from their Egyptian captives. The illustration here includes the reference to people being held captive to sin and requiring rescue to live in freedom and a restored relationship with God.
Isaiah chapter 53 contains the prophetic message about the Suffering Servant, Jesus being the Lamb that was to be sacrificed (verse 7). This illustration of a scarified lamb for the restitution of sins would have resonated with the Jewish people of the day.
After the birth of Jesus, in the New Testament, John the Baptist announces Jesus arrival with this remarkable claim. Recorded in John chapter 1 verse 29, on seeing Jesus walking towards him, John declares “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Again, the following day (verse 36), John makes this same declaration of who Jesus is, and what His purpose was.
The Apostle Paul refers to Jesus as the Passover Lamb in the past tense (1 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 7). Since the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ had taken place, the Apostle Paul was attempting to educate his community that they no longer needed to live according to past rituals. Religious requirements of sacrificing a lamb for the restoration of mankind’s relationship with God was no longer required. For the sin that had entered the world through one man had been dealt with through one man (Romans chapter 5 verse 12).
Peter calls Jesus the “precious lamb who was without blemish and without spot.” (1 Peter chapter 1 verse 19). Being without blemish or spot describes the purity, as white as snow.
The Book of Revelation contains 28 references to Jesus as the Lamb that had been slain.
Further study would provide you with many more references to support my claim, that Mary, the mother of Jesus did in fact have a lamb. Jesus mission on earth fulfils the prophecies and declarations that He was the Lamb, the lamb to be sacrificed for the restoration of mankind’s relationship with God. Not just for the Jewish nation, but for all peoples throughout all history.
Everywhere that Mary went, the Lamb was sure to go. Everywhere that you go, Jesus desires to go with you, living in a restored relationship.
This Christmas as you reflect on the year past, and celebrate family and friends, give and receive gifts, remember this – the greatest gift ever given was this Lamb. That little Lamb of God, grew into a man whose life’s purpose was fulfilled when His life was sacrificed, so you can have a restored relationship with God.
May you have a Blessed Christmas and that 2022 would be a year of thriving, not just surviving!
If this message has challenged you and you want to know more about having a restored relationship with God, then click here for the prayer of salvation.
