A few months ago, in another post, we used a passage from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes to lead us into considering how God’s withholding from us knowledge of how everything in our lives is going to play out is actually a blessing, despite our feelings to the contrary. We saw how a gradual reveal is evidence of His mercy and grace in our lives. Today, I’d like to revisit that idea but with a twist. I’d like to draw your minds to ponder a gradual reveal more dramatic and astounding than any other in the history of mankind—the gradual reveal of Christmas.
For followers of Jesus, the account of His birth is
familiar, often to the point of becoming dull or cliché. The nativity scenes,
the carols, the bumper stickers reminding us of the true reason for
Christmas—all of these can lead us to look at this historical event as an
isolated incident disconnected from the context of the rest of human history.
In some Christian circles, there is rightly an effort to connect Christmas to
Easter, showing how the cradle leads to the cross, but even this perspective
falls short of capturing the full majesty of the arrival of Christ.
If we only look at Jesus in the New Testament, as someone
who bursts on the scene in Bethlehem during the governorship of Quirinius, we
miss the drama and the full weight of His coming. But He didn’t just appear out
of nowhere. His coming was expected, even if not exactly expected in the way it
happened.
We needed a Savior; that was obvious. Humans had been lying,
killing, cheating, stealing, blaspheming, and otherwise sinning since nearly
the beginning of time—since the Fall (Eve’s and Adam’s sin in the Garden of
Eden) to be exact. And God had known we would need saving and had a plan all
worked out even before our first parents rebelled. He could have just sent the
Savior all of a sudden one day. He had every right to simply say, “Surprise! After
a few millennia, I have some news—you need rescuing, and here’s your rescuer.”
But He didn’t do that.
Instead, He employed the gradual reveal. He started
immediately after the need for a Savior became apparent to His human creatures.
In Genesis 3:15, we see the first promise from God regarding Jesus—only at the
time they didn’t know it was Jesus whom God was promising. They only knew there
would be a descendant who would crush their mortal enemy. The specific who, the
when, the where, and the how were left undisclosed.
For the next few thousand years, over the course of history
covered by the Old Testament, pieces of God’s plan and of the Savior’s identity
were slowly revealed. Other events happened that provided foreshadowing of
Jesus’s substitutionary and sacrificial death (think the ram sacrificed in
Isaac’s place in Genesis 22, the Passover in Exodus 12, the bronze serpent in
Numbers 21, etc.).
Poems were written that foretold characteristics of the
Savior and specifics of His time on Earth (see the 23 Messianic references in
the Psalms).[i]
Prophecies also revealed pieces of the unfolding plan, such as the fact that
Jesus would come as a baby (see Isaiah 9:6), would be born in Bethlehem (see
Micah 5:2), and would be born to a virgin mother (see Isaiah 7:14). Fifteen
other prophecies in the book of Isaiah alone disclose pieces of information
about the coming Savior.[ii]
These prophecies/promises not only helped authenticate Jesus
as the person He says He is—that He is from God, is God’s Son, and even is God
Himself—but they also served to build the anticipation of Jesus’ coming so that
now, looking back, we can doubly marvel at His advent. Marvelous for its own sake
as being the arrival of the God-Man Savior, Christmas is also marvelous for
being the culmination of thousands of years of anticipation that had been
building through God’s masterful gradual reveal. When we look at the season
through this lens, we begin to feel the full weight of the drama of Christmas.
We begin to understand the overwhelming wonder that Simeon
must have felt as he, who had understood the promises and had been waiting his
whole life to see them fulfilled, realized that God was allowing him to witness
their coming to fruition before his very eyes and to hold the very One who had
been foretold for millennia (see Luke 2:22-35).
We begin to understand the unbridled excitement that Anna
must have felt as she was finally able to tell others, who had been watching
and waiting along with her, that the Savior had finally come—in the flesh! He
was here! God’s plan was revealed! (See Luke 2:36-38)
We begin to understand the exuberant joy that Zechariah must
have felt as his long-awaited son was born and as he realized the prophecies he
had studied were coming true and that God was using his own family to play a
major role in His master plan of salvation (see Luke 1:67-79).
We begin to understand the overflowing rapture that Mary
must have felt as she rejoices with her cousin Elizabeth that God has not
forgotten His promises to their ancestors and is sending the Savior at last
(see Luke 1:54-56).
When we place Christmas in its context of the overarching
narrative of the Bible, we become aware of just how significant the coming of
Christ is. And on top of praising God the Father for sending God the Son, we
can expand our praise to include expressions of gratitude and wonder for the
awesome way in which God let His plan unfold. He gave glimpses of Jesus to every
generation, and He’s placed us in the 21st century where our
generation can look back and see how all of those glimpses fit together into a
master story—a story all the more wonderful because it is true.
So this Christmas, join me in letting your thoughts trace
the thread of Jesus from the Garden of Eden to the ark to the mountains of
Canaan to Egypt to the wilderness to the tabernacle to the Promised Land to the
shepherd-king’s field to the temple to the exile to the fiery furnace to the
valley of dry bones to Nazareth to Bethlehem. And let yourself glory in the
grace of God that is shown in the greatest gradual reveal of all.
[i] Psalm 2:7 fulfilled in Matthew 3:17; Psalm 8:2 fulfilled in Matthew 21:15-16; Psalm 8:6 fulfilled in Hebrews 2:8; Psalm 16:10 fulfilled in Matthew 28:7; Psalm 22:1 fulfilled in Matthew 27:46; Psalm 22:7-8 fulfilled in Luke 23:35; Psalm 22:16 fulfilled in John 20:27; Psalm 22:18 fulfilled in Matthew 27:35-36; Psalm 34:20 fulfilled John 19:32-33, 36; Psalm 35:11 fulfilled in Mark 14:57; Psalm 35:19 fulfilled in John 15:25; Psalm 40:7-8 fulfilled in Hebrews 10:7; Psalm 41:9 fulfilled in Luke 22:47; Psalm 45:6 fulfilled in Hebrews 1:8; Psalm 68:18 fulfilled in Acts 1:9-11; Psalm 69:9 fulfilled in John 2:17; Psalm 69:21 fulfilled in Matthew 27:34; Psalm 109:4 fulfilled in Luke 23:34; Psalm 109:8 fulfilled in Acts 1:20; Psalm 110:1 fulfilled in Matthew 22:44; Psalm 110:4 fulfilled in Hebrews 5:6; Psalm 118:22 fulfilled in Matthew 21:42; and Psalm 118:26 fulfilled in Matthew 21:9. Source: Nelson’s Complete Book of Bible Maps and Charts, 3rd ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1996), 180.
[ii] Isaiah 9:1-2 fulfilled in Matthew 4:13-16; Isaiah 9:7 fulfilled in Luke 1:32-33; Isaiah 40:3-5 fulfilled in John 1:19-28; Isaiah 50:6 fulfilled in Matthew 26:67; Isaiah 52:13 fulfilled in Philippians 2:9-10; Isaiah 52:14 and 53:2 fulfilled in Mark 15:15-19; Isaiah 53:5 fulfilled in 1 Peter 1:2; Isaiah 53:1, 3 fulfilled in John 12:37-38; Isaiah 53:4-5 fulfilled in Romans 4:25 and 1 Peter 2:24-25; Isaiah 53:6, 8 fulfilled in Romans 5:6, 8 and 2 Corinthians 5:21; Isaiah 53:7-8 fulfilled in Mark 15:4-5, John 10:11, and John 19:30; Isaiah 53:9 fulfilled in Matthew 27:57-60 and John 19:38-42; Isaiah 53:10-11 fulfilled in John 3:16 and Acts 16:31; Isaiah 53:12 fulfilled in Mark 27-28 and Luke 22:37; and Isaiah 61:1-2 fulfilled in Luke 4:18-19. Source: Nelson’s Complete Book of Bible Maps and Charts, 3rd ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1996), 207.
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