The message today is the Christmas rescue plan, the reason for the season. Here’s what we’re going to be talking about Christmas. The reason there was a baby Jesus is that it was a rescue plan. Jesus came from heaven to come and save us. We’re going to talk about the need for rescue. We’re going to lay the groundwork for why there’s a Christmas story in the first place. Then the next part is to let you know that the Christmas story started before baby Jesus was born in the Old Testament in a collection of miraculous Bible prophecies that are scattered like a tapestry or a mosaic throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament. We’re going to look at some of the most prominent of those prophecies. Then we’re going to come together before we take the Lord’s Supper together and have some concluding thoughts on what Christmas ought to mean for the Christian, for all of us. You ready for it? Yes. Today, about half my words are just going to be Bible verses. We’re going to let the Bible tell the Christmas story. Amen? Amen. Let’s do it. 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. 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. 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. She will give birth to a son, and you will give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. You see, the reason that Jesus came as a baby, as Tony mentioned last week, Jesus did not come as a baby to remain a baby. He came here to rescue us from our sins. Do you see that Crystal’s story is not necessarily about shopping, although gift giving can be wonderful. But the purpose that Jesus came was to save us from our sins. We have, as a human race, self-destructive behavior in our sins, and Jesus came to rescue us from that.
And then this passage finishes and it says, All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet. The Virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us. So just to review, why did Jesus come? First and foremost, Jesus came because God loves us and wants to be with us. I want to persuade you from the scriptures that God loves you. That God loves you. That God knows, it says in Matthew 6, God knows what you need even before you pray to Him. He knows what you’re thinking. The Bible says that God has counted the number of hairs on your head. That God is determined in Acts 17. God is determined what century you’re going to be born in, what place in the earth you’re going to be born in. God is deeply involved in every detail of your life. One of the reasons that Jesus came to Earth was He simply wanted to be with us. Listen to what Hebrews 2:2 says about this. It says, since the children have flesh and blood, he, Jesus, also shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death, that is the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason, he had been made like them, fully human in every way in order that he might become a merciful and faithfulful high priest. Jesus is our high priest in service to God that he might make atonement for the sins of the people because he himself suffered. When he was tempted, he was able to help those who were being tempted. Jesus left his home in glory, his throne in heaven, so he could get his diaper changed so that he could know, like you and me, what it feels like to be hungry, what it feels like to be thirsty, what it feels like to watch a sunrise, what it feels like to watch a sunset, what it feels like to struggle, what it feels like to suffer, what it feels like to be tempted. God wanted to literally be with us. That’s the message of God’s love for you. I want you to be encouraged. A lot of people are not as impacted by the love of God as they could be. God is hoping by Him, I’m reaching out for you to have a relationship with you, to live with you and me shoulder to shoulder.
Also, God sent Jesus, as we’ve talked about, on a rescue mission. Now here’s a question I want you to think about. Do you need to be rescued from your sins? Do you need that? I would say, as a tendency, we as humans do not feel our need for being saved the way we ought to. We do not fully appreciate how badly we need a savior. That’s part of the Christmas story. You and I need rescuing. Christmas is a rescue mission. Listen to this passage in Romans 5, describe this. It says, you see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person. Though for a good person, someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we are still sinners, Christ died for us. You and I cannot solve our own problems without the help of God. Can I get an Amen? Amen. I know some of you have not learned that, and some of you have learned that. Most of us have learned it the painful, hard way that we cannot solve our own problems, but it is a sign of humility and telling yourself the truth.
Just go, I need the help of God. I love this line from the song that we sang today. It says, In our darkness, we were waiting without hope and without light, till from heaven he came running. There was mercy in his eyes. You know, the plan for Jesus to come was founded before the universe was created. In Ephesians 1:4, it says, God chose us in Jesus before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. From the time we were made, and the time that Adam and Eve sent in the garden, and we’re going to read that today, From the time that Adam and Eve sent in the garden, the mission was planned and set into motion that Jesus would come and rescue us. What we’re going to do is we’re going to look at some Old Testament passages. I want to set the scene for a couple of slides, and then we’re going to walk through nine miraculous prophecies in the Old Testament and then wrap it up with some concluding thoughts. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to look at this collection of miraculous Bible verses about the coming Jesus.
We want to set the stage for this. Then we’re going to read, go ahead and read these miracles. Setting the stage, Jesus tells his disciples, This is what I told you when I was still with you. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms. And so Jesus is saying, There’s prophecies about me already written, already finished. We have the Old Testament scriptures. They’ve been talking about me from the beginning of the Old Testament to the end of Old Testament. Brothers and sisters, the Old Testament, among many other things, is about Jesus. It’s about Jesus, his coming and who he is. To set the stage, can we do the entire history of the Old Testament in three minutes? Sure we can. Let’s do it. This is the history of the Hebrew people in the Old Testament. We have pre-history, Adam and Eve, Noah and the Ark. Then we have the patriarchs. Who are they? Abraham, his son Isaac, his son Jacob, his son Joseph. Those are the fathers. The Jewish people come from the patriarchs. Abraham probably lived about 2,200 B. C. That family grew.
They went to Egypt because of a famine. Eventually, that family was pulled into slavery, probably about 17 or 1,800 B. C. The the Hebrew people were in slavery for 400 years. Then scholars debate, if it was 1446 or 1293, I don’t know which, didn’t read up on it. But Moses leads the enslaved Hebrews out of Egypt, out of bondage, symbolically out of sin, through the Red Sea and into the promised land. Then you have a period of time called the where there’s no king. That period of time is about three or four hundred years from Moses and the exodus to the period of the Kings. You could also call this a period of tribes because the political government was not a monarch. It was a system of tribes. Then you have the UK. This is not Great Britain. This is the United Kingdom where we had three Kings of Israel. The first king was King Saul, then King David, then King Solomon. Then they had a civil war. Only three Kings in and we have a civil war. Unlike the United States, the country did not come back together. There was two separate countries. I don’t know if you know this, but in Israel, the Northern Kingdom became called Israel, and the Southern Kingdom was called Judah.
The Northern Kingdom, which had broken away and rebelled, was a lot worse than the Southern Kingdom as far as their moral behavior and how they treated their relationship with God. God sent a nation called Assyria and dragged all 10 tribes of the 12 tribes of Israel that had been rebelled and dragged them away into slavery, pretty much to never be heard from again. Some have even called this the 10 lost tribes of Israel, even though the Bible says there were remnants of every tribe that have filtered down into the nation of Judah. Judah was half and half. It had half good kings, half bad kings. It got worse and worse morally and then their relationship with God as time went by. The nation of Babylon came around 605, and again in 586, conquered that nation and dragged them into slavery. But we’re going to hear from them again, which is really good because Jesus is going to come from that race, that line. They’re dragged into slavery into a 70-year period of time, represented by the bottom line here called the exile. There’s prophecies that that would last 70 years. Then God moved a Babylonian king who was actually a Persian king named Cyrus to let them go.
In the post-exile period, any Jews who wanted to come back, a remnant of people came back to Judah. That’s the history. Maybe it was four minutes, all right? You got it. I’m going to lay Jesus’s timetable on top of this. What you have here is you have same timetable, 2,200 BC to about 500 BC. The last prophecies in the Old Testament were Malachi about 415 BC. You see, we have the law talked about Jesus. The Psalms talked about Jesus. The prophets talked about Jesus. As time went by in the Old Testament, the need for Jesus increased, became more achingly apparent, as the tribe saw that they couldn’t do good, as the monarch saw that it couldn’t do good, people could not solve their own problems even under the covenant of Moses. What you have here is called by scholars, progressive revelation. At the beginning of the Old Testament, you don’t have a lot of scriptures about Jesus, but you do have some. That’s why Jesus said the law testified to him. But then as you move into the period of the Psalms and the prophets, which overlapped each other, more and more scriptures are coming up about Jesus, teaching us new things about Jesus as it becomes more and more achingly apparent that we need to be saved, that we cannot save ourselves.
That’s the arc of the story of Jesus that we’re going to be reading. The people in Jesus’ day knew those scriptures. I want to show you a passage of scripture on that. We are now reading John 7, Hanukkah. This is the Feast of Dedication, which is Hanukkah. Here’s what the people are talking about while Jesus is in Jerusalem on Hanukkah. They say this. On hearing Jesus’s words, some of the people said, surely this man is the prophet. You notice they didn’t say a prophet. They had already figured out that all the Old Testament prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Elisha, Elisha. All those guys were not the prophesied, the prophet talked about by Moses. Others said he is the Mashiach, the Messiah, the coming anointed one. They knew of the prophecies. This is not the Pharisees in the Sadducees. This is the common crowds in the streets. Still, others said, How can the Messiah come from Galilee? Does not the scriptures say that the Messiah will come from David’s descendants? They knew that prophecy. From Bethlehem, they knew that prophecy, the town where David lived. These prophecies that we’re going to read now are important. They were important back then.
Even today, my own personal faith is strengthened by this. Every one of these prophecies we’re going to look at, and there’s a lot more that we don’t have time to look at, are miraculous prophecies that were finished in their prediction before Jesus was born and Jesus completely fulfilled them. I hope that you can see the miracle in that and be encouraged by that and that it will help you grow in your faith. Are you ready? Genesis 3, at the beginning, Garden of Eden. God says this to the serpent, And I will put warfare, intimacy, between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers, between Satan’s offspring and Eve’s offspring. He, singular, not plural, he, not they, he will crush your head and you will strike his heel. What this prophecy is saying is that a descendant of Adam and Eve, that would be Jesus, would achieve a crushing victory over Satan. Next prophecy, Deuteronomy 18, this is the prophecy of Moses talking about a prophet like him in the future. This is what the crowd was talking about. Here’s Moses speaking to us. The Lord, your God trivy effect. Did you see this is all caps?
L-o-r-d. All caps. Do you guys see that? I know it’s small print. All right, every time you see this in the Bible, that means the special name of God, Yahwey. That’s how the Bible is indicating that that’s the Hebrew word, the great I am. Every time you see all caps, that means Yahwey. Yahwey, your God, will raise up for you a prophet like me, that’s Moses, a prophet like Moses from among you, from your fellow Israelis. You must listen to him, for this is what you asked of the Lord, your God at Horreth, Sianai, on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let us not hear the voice of the Lord, our God, nor see this great fire on the mountain anymore, or we will die. The Lord said to me, What they say to you is good. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelis, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name. Here we see this prophecy that the people were already counting on in Jesus’ day that a unique prophet would give God’s people the message they need.
Our third prophecy on this is Psalms 2, which is only 12 verses long, and some very important new twist to the plot are introduced. Actually, what is a pivotal prophecy about Jesus? Why do the nations conspire and the people plot in vain? The Kings of the Earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed. We had the practice in the Old Testament of anointing a high priest, but nobody yet has been called by the noun, the anointed. I want to show you, I’ve been to school to study Hebrew. Can I show you? All right. So this is the word Messiah. This is the word anointed. So the Hebrew alphabet is funny looking, isn’t it? It actually reads right to left, unlike we who read left to right. So this funny looking house with a chimney is the letter M. This candlestick for three candles is S-H. It’s a sheen. So this is em, sheen, yod, gheath. The Hebrew alphabet is all consonant. There’s no vowels. The vowels are these little dots that all go around the consonant. This is an a, this is an e, this is an a.
This is Ma-Shi-Yach. That is the word Messiah. It’s appearing as a noun, indicating a coming anointed one. Now, the only people who got anointed in the Old Testament. Kings were anointed, high priests were anointed, and prophets were anointed. What was Jesus? All three, he is our King, our high priests, and our prophet. That was free. Psalms two, Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles. The one enthroned in heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them. He rebukes them in their anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying, I have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain. I will proclaim the Lord’s decree. He said to me, You are my son. What? It says, You are my son. Today, I become your father. Well, the Jewish faith is monotheistic like the Christian faith is. How could God have a son? This idea is introduced for the first time in Psalms 2, new twist to the plot. Somehow God, the one, only and true God, has a son who’s going to be installed as a King who is called the Anointed, the Messiah. You see how there’s progressive revelation who Jesus is, is being revealed in the Old Testament.
Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance. This son, who is a King is going to get the entire world as his inheritance. The end of the earth, the ends of the earth through your possession, you will break them with a rod of iron. Yes, that would be Jesus. With a rod of iron, you will dash them to pieces like pottery. Therefore, you Kings, be wise, be wise, be warned. You rulers of the earth, serve the Lord with fear and celebrate his rule with trembling, kiss his son, or he will be angry and your way will lead to your destruction, for his wrath can flare up in a moment, blessed are those who take refuge in him. Now in Psalms two, we see that God is sending a Messiah. He will be an awesome, even fearsome king, and that God has a son. That’s who that Messiah is going to be. Fourth prophecy, are we doing all right? I know it’s a little bit of Bible study here. All right, Isaiah 7:14, we’ve seen this already. We’re going to touch on it quickly. Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. The Virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us.
So what we see here is what we believe in the Christian faith. We in the Christian faith believe Jesus was born of a virgin. His mother was a human. His father was the Holy Spirit. And so we believe that Jesus Christ was fully human and fully God, fully divine. Next scripture, Isaiah 9:6-7. Let’s talk a little bit more about this son. It says, and as Tony read earlier in our intro, it says, For to us a child is born. This is on Christmas cards, right? Have you seen this on a Christmas card? For to us a child is born. This was written 750 years before Jesus was born, and it’s on a Christmas card. 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, so how can a kid be a God? Here’s that tension the Old Testament is introducing to the Hebrew people, to the Jewish people, and to all of us in every generation. There’s a Triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the Son has come. The word became flesh and lived for a while among us.
He is not only a child who grew up to be a king. He is mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of peace. It says, Of the greatness of his government and peace, there will be no end. He came from David. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this. Here we see that there is a son who will be a King, even God, and that his kingdom, this is impossible. His kingdom will live forever. It’s impossible because all Kings die and all kingdoms end, except the kingdom of the church, except the kingdom of God, where Jesus Christ, who lives forever, is going to be our King. Now, here’s a very important new change in the plot. Here’s some new information, and it’s found in Isaiah 53, one of the most powerful and important scriptures on Jesus and the whole Bible. This was written once again by Isaiah 750 years before Jesus was born. Who is this talking about? He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering and familiar with pain, like one from whom people hide their faces.
He was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering. Yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted, but he was pierced. That would be on the cross. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds, we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the sinfulness, the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. He was led, here’s the symbolism, like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shears, is silent. So he did not open his mouth. And Isaiah 53 concludes with this verse. God says, Therefore, I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death and was numbered with the transgressors, for he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressions. And so here we see that the King, that was the child, who’s the Messiah, whose God in the flesh is actually going to become a suffering servant.
Do you see that? He’s a suffering servant, and that God will vindicate the sufferings of this servant by exalting him and victory. It’s so amazing that God decided to not only humble himself, but humiliate himself by coming in the flesh, being rejected by men, not being understood, wrongfully killed, and that God powerfully raised him on the third day. I think we’re at number six, maybe number seven. Micah 5:2, it says this, But you, Bethlehemifratha, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come from me, one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from the old, from ancient times. There’s been a lot of people over the years who’ve claimed to be Jesus and who are fakers. One thing you can’t fake is where you were born. You just can’t orchestrate where you were born. So if you wanted to pretend to be the Messiah, and many people over the millennia have pretended to be our savior, this is something you can’t fake. The city you’re born in. These are prophecies that could only be miraculously fulfilled. I think this is number seven, Jeremiah 31:31. It’s a very important scripture.
I just want to explain this to you as we read this. The people in the Old Testament were under an agreement. They were under covenant called the Covenant of Moses, the Mosaic Covenant. That covenant was deliberately insufficient. It was deliberately incomplete. And Jesus came to fix that problem. Now it’s not like God made a mistake. Here’s what happened. God gave us the Old Testament Covenant of Moses to teach us what is right and wrong. That’s wonderful. That’s powerful. And it taught us the nature of God. Problem is our own human frailty. When we know right and wrong, we still cannot do right and wrong. And we need the grace of God and we need a better covenant. We need a better agreement. As Jesus came after we’ve been taught right and wrong. He’s come to solve the problem that we can’t do right and wrong, even though we’ve been taught what is right and wrong. That pivotal turning point is found towards the end of Old Testament history, when it became achingly apparent that salvation was not found in the covenant agreement with Moses, we need a new deal. It says, The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah, it will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt.
You see, he’s saying, it’s not like the Moses covenant. Because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband. Listen to that intimacy term, Because I was a husband to them, declares the Lord. This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my law in their minds and write it in their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people. I think, as I’ve already said, the Covenate of Moses, which teaches us right and wrong, cannot save. There’s a Christ covenant that brings us salvation. This is either the second to last or last. You guys are doing okay? Yes. All right. Now, Daniel, Chapter 9:24-27 is amazing. But for the sake of time, we only have verse 24. You can read it in your own personal Bible study time. It’s really astonishing. Check this out. Seventy-sevens are decreed for your people, ‘ says the prophet, Daniel, and your holy city, that would be Jerusalem, to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness. Now look, the Moses company does not accomplish this. When you sin, you bring an animal and it’s sacrificed to replace your sins.
Then next week, when you sin again, you got to bring another animal. But this is saying there’s going to come a time in 409, let’s do the math. Ojo is here so he can double-check me. All right, 70 sevens is 70 times 7, that’s 490. In 490, we’re going to put an end to sin. We’re going to atone for wickedness. We’re going to bring in not temporary, not repeated righteousness, everlasting righteousness accomplished on the cross of Christ, who died once for the sins of many, for all generations. What it’s saying in 490 BC is that in 490, this is going to happen. Literally, in the days of Daniel, they marked it statistically, objectively, measurably, 490 years from now, Jesus is coming. Jesus is coming. Look, I hope you’re blown away. The first time I saw that, I’m like, Wow, that’s really amazing. What we see is there’s a coming of the Messiah that’s precisely predicted about 500 years in advance and the permanent forgiveness of sins. Listen, if you read on, we didn’t list the scriptures of verses 25 through 27, but it indicates the temple sacrifice, like the Old Testament Jewish people used to do, it’s going to disappear.
It’s going to go away. In 70 AD, 40 years after Jesus was raised from the dead, the Roman Army came in and fulfilled this final prophecy and temple sacrifice was done away with, just like the Prophet Daniel said, 500 years in advance. We’ve concluded our survey of these scriptures. I hope you have found them amazing. We didn’t have time to go over a bunch more. Here’s a couple of other honorable mentions. Tony talked about the donkey last week. Psalms 22 is where Jesus on the cross says, Iloi, Iloi, Lama, Sabakhtonie, where he says, My God, my God. And it describes the events of the cross and all of these others. And there’s more than these, more than we read and more than just this. The Old Testament, the Old Testament prophecies are truly amazing. Here’s some concluding thoughts on this. By the way, I hope you can see the miracles. I was really convicted when I read this saying many years ago. I forgot who said this originally. It says, But for those who have a heart for God, no miracle is necessary. With those who do not have a heart for God, no miracle is enough.
I hope that you and the scriptures can see these amazing, fulfilled prophecies that we have in the scriptures. So here’s some concluding thoughts. Number one, God loves us, and I hope we can grow in our appreciation of that. Number two, we need to be rescued for our sins. Number three, did you know he did come to bring peace on earth, but only for the Christians, only for those who turn to God. And so the only people who are rescued in the Christmas story are those who choose and turn to Jesus for salvation. Let’s close with a Christmas scripture, and then we’ll take the Lord’s Supper together. It says, And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David, a savior has been born to you. He is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be assigned to you.
You will find a baby wrapped in clothes and lying in a majors. And suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest heaven. ‘ Here’s the encouragement. Here’s the Christmas card. And on Earth peace to those… There’s condition here. It’s conditional. There’s peace on Earth to those on whom God’s favor rests. You see, the peace on Earth is not going to happen to the whole Earth, and it hasn’t happened yet, and it’s not going to. The peace is found in Jesus’s kingdom. As we turn and as we choose Him. So this principle is true, that the Christmas story only becomes good news in your life if the baby in the mainstream becomes the King in your heart. Amen. Let’s pray together before we take the Lord’s Supper. Holy Father, it’s so amazing that you had a plan for us, not only to make us and not only to give us freedom, but to rescue us when we misused our freedom and when we turned away from you. Thank you so much, Father. Help us to see your miracles. Help us to see you working and help us to be grateful as Jesus brought at the Lord’s Supper a new covenant that brought grace and not a covenant of works.
We love you. Help us to appreciate you. We pray in your son’s name, Amen.