Your Savior Is Born: As Promised

Your Savior is Born: AS PROMISED

Isaiah 7:14

INTRODUCTION

If you have spent any time traveling down Hwy 61 between Troy and Wentzville you have probably noticed the signs MODot has placed along the road to mark the various road improvement projects that have been recently undertaken. When MODot starts a new project, a sign goes up announcing the project with a projected completion date. When the road construction project is completed a diagonal strip is placed over the sign with the following phrase proudly displayed: “Completed as Promised”. MODot wants every Missouri taxpayer to know they have been good stewards of the tax funds allocated to them by completing yet another road project AS PROMISED.

If God wanted to take a tip from MODot’s Public Relations firm I guess He could have placed a similar sign over the manger in Bethlehem stating, “Your Savior is Born: AS PROMISED”.

Whenever we read the Christmas story we generally go to Matthew or Luke to read the details given in these two gospels about the birth of Jesus Christ. But the Christmas story as recorded in the Bible actually begins much earlier than that, hundreds of years earlier. Throughout the Old Testament God placed road signs in the writings of various prophets and other OT authors promising sinful man the birth of a Savior.

The first promise of the coming Christ was actually given by God in the very first book of the Old Testament, in Genesis 3:15. In the midst of God’s judgment against Adam and Eve and the serpent for their part in allowing sin to enter into the world, God the Father makes an amazingly gracious promise concerning the coming of His only begotten Son to earth to become our Savior. Speaking to the serpent that allowed Satan to use him to tempt Eve to sin, God proclaims:

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, And between your seed and

her seed; He shall bruise you on the head ,And you shall bruise him on the heel.

In this very first Christmas prophesy, God promised Adam and Eve that a child would be born from a descendant of Eve who would destroy sin’s power over mankind. That promised Messiah was Jesus Christ. At the cross of Jesus, God would deal a death blow to Satan’s head that would be far more deadly than the bruised heal Satan’s hatred would be able to inflict on our Savior. Satan’s hatred would inspire men to bring much suffering upon Jesus. But by raising Jesus from the dead, God the Father would deal a fatal blow against Satan by gaining victory over the power of both death and sin. It is unlikely Adam and Eve recognized the significance of these words and the time God made this pronouncement. But as other Old Testament gave more prophesies the message became clearer.

The Prophet Isaiah, writing nearly 600 years before the birth of Christ, was able to see across the centuries to give an amazingly accurate picture of the birth of our Savior. Listen to the words of prophesy recorded in Isaiah 7:14

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin

will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.

Isaiah said that the virgin birth of Jesus would be “a certain sign” that Messiah had come. We find perfect harmony with this prophecy and the actual pronouncement that was made by the angels when the announced the birth of Jesus in Luke 2:10-12.

And the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good

news of a great joy which shall be to all people. For today in the city of David

there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will

be the sign to you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths, and lying in a manger.”

With the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem God placed His own “Completed as Promised” sign over all the Old Testament prophesies that spoke of the birth of the coming Messiah.

The birth of Jesus as a tiny baby in Bethlehem from the womb of a virgin was an amazing supernatural sign. Today I want us to take a look at three aspects of what this sign should mean to us today.

TRANS: As a sign from God, the birth of Jesus as a tiny baby in Bethlehem is, first of all:

I. An Important Sign Of God’s Power

EXP: OT and NT Scripture make it clear that the birth of Jesus was not a normal birth. It was a supernatural birth. Isaiah’s prophecy predicted that “a virgin” would conceive and bear a child. The word “virgin” used here denotes a woman who has never been sexually intimate with any man, not just a young woman. This amazing promise must have caused Jewish scholars to wonder exactly what God meant by making such a promise. No doubt, some Jewish scholars probably had no problem believing God could cause a virgin to bear a son. But many probably wondered if the reference to a virgin giving birth was perhaps symbolic of something else. But when we read about the encounter Mary had with the Lord’s angel Gabriel announcing God’s desire to bring His Son into the world there can be no doubt what the prophesy meant. It meant exactly what it said; a virgin woman was going to give birth to Israel’s promised Messiah! The birth of Jesus was prophesied by Isaiah and documented by Luke as a miraculous event unlike any the world has ever known. The virgin birth of Jesus was a certain sign of God’s power. But it is not a sign that is easy for everyone in our modern day to accept.