Prophetic Precision Series

In 1998, an anonymous donor gave a marketing agency $150,000 to create an advertising campaign called “God Speaks.” His desire was to reach people who had drifted away from their faith.

The campaign created such a positive response that the Outdoor Advertising Association of America picked it as its public-service campaign for the year and began running ads on 10,000 billboards in two hundred cities nationwide. Here are some of the spiritual sayings they used.

“Wherever you go, there I am.”

“That Love thy neighbor thing, I meant that.”

“Keep using my name in vain, I’ll make rush hour longer.”

“Don’t make me come down there.”

Aren’t you glad we serve a God who speaks? While these sayings are catchy and are designed to get people to think, God has come down here when He sent His Son Jesus at Christmas.

We’re beginning a new December series called, “The Cast of Christmas.” Our focus today will be on how the Old Testament, from Moses to Malachi, is filled with exhortations to expect the coming of Christ.

This is captured in Isaiah 64:1: “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down.” The prophet was longing for the Lord to somehow come down into his world to make sense out of all the nonsense, to bring peace to all the problems, to dispel the darkness, and to extricate evil. Isaiah was hungry to have the Holy One enter his whacked-out world in an extraordinary manner. Brothers and sisters, aren’t you glad the Lord has come down?

This sense of holy anticipation and longing for the Lord to come is found in one of the Christmas carols we just sang: “O Come, O Come, Immanuel.”

O come O come Emmanuel

And ransom captive Israel

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear

Our main idea is this: The prophets foretold the coming of Christ with pinpoint precision. Christmas is rooted in the Old Testament because God had been planning our salvation for a long time. Today, our approach is to simply allow the Word of God to speak. I’ll make comments to help clarify but for the most part, we’ll be hearing directly from God.

Genesis 3:15 contains the first hint of the gospel in the Bible. These words were spoken by God to the serpent right after Adam and Eve fell into sin: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” The rest of the Bible shows the battle between the offspring of Satan and the offspring of Eve, which culminated in the ultimate victory of Jesus when He crushed the head of Satan through His atoning death and glorious resurrection.

From the moment of the first sin onward, the entire Old Testament prepares and points us to the great moment when Jesus saved us from the curse of sin. The Old Testament literally has hundreds of prophecies which have been fulfilled by the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Scores more will be fulfilled when He returns (we’ll focus on some of these during the sermon on Sunday, December 26).

I’ve selected 10 Old Testament passages which speak of the birth of Jesus. After listing each one, we’ll consider the corresponding New Testament fulfillment. Then, we’ll soak in several Scriptures from the Old Testament which deal with the death of Christ, and end by celebrating communion.

Prophecies about the Birth of Jesus

1. Jesus is the offspring of Abraham. Genesis 12:3, 7: “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed…To your offspring I will give this land.”

Listen to Galatians 3:16: “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many, but referring to one, ‘And to your offspring, who is Christ.” Matthew 1:1 opens with these words: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”

2. Jesus comes from the tribe of Judah. Genesis 49:10: “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.” A scepter was the privilege of a ruler, and a staff was the symbol of a shepherd.

According to Matthew 1:3, the genealogy of Jesus is traced through Judah. Let’s fast forward to the last book of the Bible where we see how the lineage of the Lord runs through the tribe of Judah. Ponder Revelation 5:5: “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that He can open the scroll and its seven seals.”