Like most holidays that we celebrate, Christmas encompasses only a brief time on our calendar. One day a year we celebrate this holiday in various forms. For some, December 25th is celebrated as a time of gift giving, or of family time, or even as a day of pagan worship. Yet, the term Christmas has at its center the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. It was a Christ-mass, a day of worship, in which to celebrate Jesus’ birth. The day in which God was wrapped, not just in swaddling cloths, but with the flesh of humanity. December 25th isn’t the actual day of Jesus’ birth, that exact day has been lost to time, but it represents a monumental moment of history. Even the calendar that we go by today, hinges on trying to divide two eras of history on this one birth.
Yet, even though our cultural tends to lengthen Christmas’ buying season ever earlier, we tend to view Christmas as another passing day. There’s a big push up to the day, then a celebration of it, and finally the aftermath of returning to regular life, looking forward to the next holiday.
In one sense, this lead up and experience is a part of the Christmas story itself, yet the aftermath is very different than what we tend to experience. This Christmas season, we are going to look at the Christmas story’s lead up, celebration, and aftermath as it was intended by God. Three lights of the story as it were. In a lot of churches, especially what is called the high church, there is the use of what is called an Advent wreath. This year, we too are going to light our own candles. Three lights of the Christmas story that we must recognize, accept, and implement into our lives.
The first of these lights is the light of Prophecy. Just like the ramp up to Christmas begins months in advance of the day, prophecy is the ramp up to the life of Jesus. The whole of the Bible contains about 31,102 verses; out of those, approximately 8,352 verses contain future prophetic words (J. Barton Payne’s Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy). That means that about 27% of the Bible concerns itself with prophecy. In other words, about 1/4 of God’s Word, speaks to future events, both already fulfilled and still yet to be fulfilled.
Out of these roughly 1,800 future prophetic words, there are approximately 300 specific prophecies of the Jewish Messiah (All the Messianic Prophecies of the Bible by Herbert Lockyer).
Out of these 300, today we’re only going to concern ourselves with the lead up to Christmas. Those prophecies that were specifically about the birth of the Messiah. Some of these are going to be well known to you, some are going to interconnect, and some will build on top of each other
Let’s start with some of the most well known ones. These are the Christmas prophecies that get mentioned overtly in the Christmas story. We can call them the Who and to Whom Prophecies.
These two prophecies are found in Isaiah. Isaiah 7:14 states, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” The second is found two chapters later in Isaiah 9:6, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
These verses speak to who the Messiah will be. He will be a boy, but not just a boy, God in the flesh. He will be given many names, some of which we just read, but all will point to him being God come down to humanity. This is the Who part of the prophecies.
The to Whom part, is the person he will be born to. It will be unique, because she’ll be a young women who is a virgin. A miraculous birth for a miraculous event.
Both Matthew and Luke record these prophecies being fulfilled. Matthew 1:18-23 reads, “18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. 20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’ (which means “God with us”).”
The fulfillment in Luke 1:29-33 reads, “Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.’”
Now these two prophecies may seem impossible to a person who doesn’t believe in Jesus. They can be easily dismissed as being fanciful reinterpretations of verses to fit into the Christian narrative.
Yet there are prophecies that are given that surround historical events that are separate from the moment of Jesus’ birth. These we can call the Kingly visitors prophecies. One of these prophecies comes, not from the Jewish people themselves, but from an outside source. This outside source are men from the east, to which the Bible refers to as Magi. These kingly men are recorded in Matthew 2:2 as saying, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
This is a prophecy, which is here interpreted by non-Jewish people, and is recorded in the book of Numbers 24:17, where it reads, “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel. He will crush the foreheads of Moab, the skulls of all the people of Sheth."
The visit of the Magi also fulfills another prophecy, this one from Psalm 72:10-11, “May the kings of Tarshish and of distant shores bring tribute to him. May the kings of Sheba and Seba present him gifts. 11 May all kings bow down to him and all nations serve him.”
We find this fulfillment in Matthew 2:11, “On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.”
Another prophecy connected with the Magi, comes from Jeremiah 31:15, which states, “This is what the Lord says: 'A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.’” Ramah is connected to the biblical figure of Rachel through her son Benjamin. Rachel died giving brith to Benjamin in the area that would later be called Bethlehem. This prophecy speaks to an event where children would be killed in and near this same place. This event is fulfilled in Matthew 2:16 and 17 where we find out, “When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.”
These prophecies show that the build up to the Messiah’s brith would not be a closed off event, but rather it would encompass many people from all walks of life, and from distant areas. Things uncontrollable by Jesus or his family.
The final set of prophecies we’ll look at today is a prophecy that builds upon itself and spans the whole of the Old Testament. We can call these the Lineage prophecies. It starts in Genesis 12:1 with God calling Abraham “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. 2 I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
Abraham is being called by God to become a great nation. A nation God will work with to bring about the Messiah. We then see how this great calling of a mighty nation is reduced to a specific family in 2 Samuel 7:11b, “‘The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you: 12 When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with a rod wielded by men, with floggings inflicted by human hands. 15 But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. 16 Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.’”
This forever kingdom was spoke to David. So the Messiah must come from the line of David, but we run into a problem. In Jeremiah 22:28-30 we read, “Is this man Jehoiachin a despised, broken pot, an object no one wants? Why will he and his children be hurled out, cast into a land they do not know? 29 O land, land, land, hear the word of the Lord! 30 This is what the Lord says: ‘Record this man as if childless, a man who will not prosper in his lifetime, for none of his offspring will prosper, none will sit on the throne of David or rule anymore in Judah.’”
Why is this a problem? Because Jehoiachin is the last king to sit on the throne of Judah as an heir to David. Yet, just one chapter later, Jeremiah in chapter 23 verse 5-6 states, “‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. 6 In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The Lord Our Righteous Savior.’”
So how can there both be a son of David as the Messiah, and yet, through his linage they cannot be on the throne? We find out how this is done in Matthew 1:1-16 and Luke 3:23-31. In Matthew we find out that Jesus is adopted by Jospeh as his son. Jospeh is indeed in the linage of both David and Jehoiachin, yet Jesus is not the blood of Jehoiachin and therefore fulfills the prophecy of rejection of Jehoiachin’s line. Whereas in Luke we find out that, Joseph’s father-in-law, Mary’s father, is also in the line of David through David’s son Nathan. So, both by birth and by adoption Jesus fulfills two prophecies of the required linage of the Messiah.
These are just a few of the prophecies made about the coming Messiah centuries before his birth. They are just some of the lead up that God granted humanity to know before Christmas came. From what his gender would be, to who his mother was, to the kingly people that would come to his brith, and his family’s linage, the build up to Jesus’ birth had been anticipated for over 1,500 years.
As we ourselves, in our society and across the world, ramp up for Christmas this year, God wants us to realize that we are a microcosm of the waiting that others had to experience for centuries. Let us see this time as a time not just when we’ll get one more holiday out of the way and then on to the next, but rather see this time as moving us closer to the greatest event of history, Immanuel, God descending from his glorious throne to take on human flesh and walk this life with us.
We must see and understand the work God did to prepare for Christmas. When we do, we can experience the immense impact it should have on our lives. By missing the build up that God prepared through the centuries, we miss the overwhelming call to the manger. We miss the call of the God who left his throne to be with his creation. We miss the perfect life he lived, and the underserving death he endured. That death was a self-sacrifice for us, but we will miss the salvation it has for us, and in the end, we will miss the eternity that God has for us.
I pray that we do not miss what Christmas truly means. The day when heaven met earth, so that God could bring humanity back from the precipice of sin and death, to himself.
This week I want to challenge you to participate in a three part craft. Each week we’ll light a candle representing one light of the Christmas story, this week it’s the light of Prophecy. Take a three light paper found in your bulletin, and then on your way out, grab a flame to light one of those candles this week. The challenge that accompanies this is to spend this week in praise of the build up to Christmas that God did through his prophetic words. That the coming of Jesus didn’t just happen in a vacuum, but God had been carefully planning it through out the course of human history. And as an added challenge, seek out additional prophecies that were fulfilled in the Christmas story. Simply read through the first three chapters of both Matthew and Luke to see some of these additional prophecies. Then in response, continue to praise God for his prophetic words.
Let us be a people who see the workings of God throughout history and realize that we are truly blessed to know the story of Christmas in its entirety. Amen.
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