December 15
“When he [King Herod] had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born. ‘In Bethlehem in Judea,’ they replied, ‘for this is what the prophet has written:…’”
Matthew 1:22-23
In these verses, there are actually two prophecies, not one. First, a virgin will conceive. We’ve already considered the wonder of any conception and development of a baby, let alone that of a virgin, and we’ve looked at how God made this happen. The second prophecy is of His name — Immanuel, “which means, ‘God with us.’”
The prophet underscores two things we’ve already touched on in these two weeks together. First, there is a God. That should go without saying in the context of this devotional guide, but it still needs to be underlined. Daily our faith is assaulted with just the opposite assertion. However, several of the interviewees in Strobel’s The Case for Faith contend that the more scientists learn, the less many can believe the complexity of life and the universe is a fortuitous accident. Walter Bradley quotes James Tour as saying, “‘I stand in awe of God because of what he has done through his creation,’ he said. ‘Only a rookie who knows nothing about science would say science takes away from faith. If you really study science, it will bring you closer to God.’”16 There is a God. One God. If there were not, December would just be the middle of winter, and Christmas would not exist.
However, December is not just the middle of winter. We are taught we are the product of billions of years of accidents culminating in us. In contrast, the prophet asserts that God not only is, but He is with us in the Man, Jesus Christ. If mathematics shows the accuracy of prophecies concerning Jesus would be statistically impossible as mere coincidence in the life of one man, I would suggest it is unwise to rely on any voice other than the prophets to tell us about the reality and involvement of God. Don’t get distracted today. God is here.
Jay W. Hill
December 14
“When he [King Herod] had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born. ‘In Bethlehem in Judea,’ they replied, ‘for this is what the prophet has written:…’”
Matthew 2:4-5
That is what the prophet Micah wrote in Micah 5:2. No slight adjustments to the words are required. There were no reinterpretations of the Hebrew. It was a simple declaration of a place that was right on target. How does it happen, then, that although the parents are from Nazareth, they are in Bethlehem, at least a journey of four days from their home, for His birth? How is it possible that they then move to Egypt for a time, yet Jesus grows up in Nazareth, and the Bible tells us all these things will be exactly this way? By now, it should come as no surprise. God knew, and He chose to tell us.
If we focus just on the birth, we might wonder how Mary, her pregnancy at full term, was persuaded to go to Bethlehem, riding a donkey and sleeping on the ground. Furthermore, she was obviously about to have this baby and probably traveling with people who knew she and Joseph were pledged to be married but not formally married yet. As if that weren’t enough, there are probably strangers amongst them who also now know this uncomfortable truth. The days of travel would have been long. What could compel them to be in the right place, as predicted, under these circumstances? Rome. The powerful Roman government. I assure you, Rome didn’t know what it was doing. Nevertheless, a census was called, and the result was that what the prophet said was found to be true. This was not a monumental coincidence; the hand of God is evident. Remember, He is not limited by the ways and designs of men. It was a small thing for Him to use Rome to call for a census that would force Joseph back to Bethlehem, the home of his ancestors, at the precise time when Mary would give birth.
Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem was not an accidental convergence of unrelated events. It was certainly not serendipitous from Mary’s point of view. No, it was a planned event. A piece of the puzzle of the mystery of God; determined before time began and announced long before it came to pass. Ultimately, this all came about for you and for me. It is from the hand of a loving and attentive God. He is still that loving and attentive God, and He is as aware of your circumstances as He was of Mary’s. This December 14, you have plans and things that need to get done. Some of it may be unpleasant, as it was for Mary, but find strength and comfort in the knowledge that God is aware and at work. He will not be surprised by your day. If He can get Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem in time for the birth, He can take care of you. Pause to acknowledge Him, and to worship. Be amazed!
Jay W. Hill
December 13
“Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
Zechariah 9:9
These words were written 500 or so years before they came to pass. Matthew, as he describes Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, again uses the words This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet … in Matthew 21:4. This promised celebration in Zechariah, however, doesn’t tell the whole story. Finally, it seems the King of kings and Lord of lords is getting the public recognition He is worthy of, but in less than a week it will culminate in the ultimate tragedy and then morph into the greatest triumph of all time.
Likewise, our Christmas celebrations often mask the pressures, frustrations, and fatigue we experience during December. Hopefully, our allegiance to Christ is sure. Nevertheless, our emotions can be fickle, like the crowd who celebrated Jesus one day and crucified Him a few days later. How do we keep Christ in Christmas? Keep Christ in your day. Start the day with Him, remember Him in the middle, and end your day asking Him to bless your sleep and prepare you for what tomorrow holds. The emotions will rise and fall. Children or co-workers, shoppers or drivers, spouses and best friends, servers, customer service reps, or tech support will push our buttons, but that doesn’t mean we have to respond in kind. Jesus kept His eye on the goal. He was not taken in by the praise, and He remained humble on that donkey. He stayed the course when the beatings began. With His help, we can keep our cool and make it through the day with our character intact and our testimony unblemished.
The One who could announce the triumphal entry well in advance of the day, knows what our day holds. Granted, He hasn’t announced it, but He still knows. Be it triumph or tragedy, He desires to walk with us through it. Today, in the knowledge that He accurately predicted the beginning of Jesus’ last week, take hold of His hand and let Him guide you through your day and the remainder of your December. December is a mixed blessing. It is too often a race to the finish on Christmas morning instead of a refreshing opportunity to serve others and give gifts that show thoughtfulness and bring encouragement. Instead of turning December into a marathon of special events let it be an invitation to not miss special moments. The One who prophesies accurately can make your December a season of wonder. Cling to Him.
Jay W. Hill
December 12
Matthew 8:16-17
He healed our diseases. This was prophesied over 700 years before His birth. Over, and over, and over again, He healed our diseases. No one had ever done that before. No one had ever spoken with such authority that the sick would be healed, the lame would walk, the dumb would speak, and the dead would live again.13 You might ask, “What does this have to do with Christmas?” This is part of the whole story of Christ included in a contemporary Christmas song, Mary Did You Know?14 In the minds of the writers of the song, Jesus’ actions raise a number of questions. Did Mary know what He would do? Did she know what it meant for her Son to be the Promised One? It is unlikely she fully understood. How could she know what Simeon meant when he told her that a sword would pierce her own soul? The questions, though, are not really the point. Instead, they lead us to the realization that Jesus did all of these things, and God told us in advance that He would.
Many of us enter December with infirmities, uncertainties, and anxieties. There is so much to do and so little time to do it. Today, December 12, 2019, is the first of four performances of our annual Christmas Dessert Theater. Talk about pressures and anxieties! Those of us involved can’t even count them. But, it is my desire that this year will be different for each one of us. That we will not lose sight of the simple majesty of the story we get to tell and that it will lead us all to worship. It is my prayer we will not forget that Jesus can handle all of our issues, that we were told he would, well in advance of the day, and that we remember he did and still does.
It is my prayer that you, too, will be able to keep a right perspective in light of the fact that God knew, told us, and then did what He told us He would do. Jesus healed, and His healing is not limited to physical sickness. He heals our broken hearts. He heals our wounded spirits. He sustains our overwhelmed lives. Today, as you prepare to go to work or about your day and as you pursue the additions Christmas brings, seek first His touch. The healing comes from His touch and our awareness of His presence. Dennis Jernigan wrote in one of his songs,
If I could just sit with You awhile,
If You could just hold me.15
That’s what we need. If God can accurately give us over 700 years notice, He can hold us and heal us today.
Jay W. Hill
December 11
“Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali – to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah: ‘… the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.’”
Matthew 4:13-15
This prophecy is found in Isaiah 9:1-2. Isaiah wrote these words over 700 years before Jesus’ birth. 700 years! Pinpoint accuracy! A story with details only God would write.
This raises questions that appear every Christmas. Why would the Messiah, the King of kings, be born in a stable in Bethlehem? Why would He grow up as a carpenter’s son, in utter obscurity, in a seemingly insignificant town? If He sought to be recognized, why would He begin His ministry in the least regarded region of the Jewish world? Truly, God’s ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. Jesus did not just talk about being humble, He was. He defined humility by the way He lived. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation (Colossians 1: 15). He is the perfect representation of God, for He is God and that includes His humility. God does not force Himself upon us. God often works quietly in our situations and whispers to us of Himself until we begin to notice and turn toward Him. He draws us. If we seek Him with all of our heart, He will make sure we find Him.
Listen. Let the Bible be His still small voice. Through the glare of the lights and noise of Christmas, see His
light and let it dawn anew in you.
Be grateful for December and the yearly reminder of who He is, what He has done, and how He has done it. Your day may be filled with wind and storm and fire. Keep your Bible close. Spend time with Him there. Be attentive. Listen. Let the Bible be His still small voice. Through the glare of the lights and noise of Christmas, see His light and let it dawn anew in you.
Jay W. Hill
December 10
what the Lord had said through the prophet…”
Matthew 1:22
Yesterday we spoke of the faithfulness of God as a promise keeper. Genesis 3:15 was only His first word on the coming Messiah. Many of our favorite Scriptures of the season are fulfillments of specific prophecies about His coming. Four times in Matthew 2, the author speaks of events that came to pass to fulfill the words of the prophets. Our passage in chapter 1 is a reference to a fifth prophecy fulfilled. In these two chapters alone, we read of five prophecies fulfilled at Jesus birth. Can this really be? Is it possible that specific predictions could be made and then fulfilled in one man, Jesus?
In an interview with Norman Geisler for The Case for Faith, Lee Strobel asks him about prophecy. Geisler, with references to specific prophecies about Christ’s crucifixion says, “So here you have incredible predictions that were literally fulfilled in the life of one man, even though he had no control over most of them. For instance, he couldn’t have arranged his ancestry, the timing of his birth, and so on. These prophecies were written two hundred to four hundred years in advance. No other book in the world has this.”10 Earlier in the interview, Geisler notes, “According to Barton Payne’s Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy, there are 191 predictions in the Old Testament about the coming of Christ, including his ancestry, the city in which he would be born, that he would be born of a virgin, precisely the time in history when he would die, and so on.”11 Geisler later concludes, “Mathematics has shown that there’s absolutely no way they could have been fulfilled by mere chance.”12
We’ve already paused in wonder at the change that transpires between conception and birth. We’ve reviewed that Jesus was born of a virgin. That prophecy is in Isaiah 7:14, Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. Matthew 1:22 and 23 say, All of this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” – which means, “God with us.” Ponder anew the miracle of this birth: predicted hundreds of years before it happened, predicted that the baby would be born of a virgin. He developed in His mother’s womb just like any other baby from a single cell to a fully formed human. Only God could do it, and only God would do it. We should kneel in awe.
Jay W. Hill
December 9
and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain.”
Genesis 3:15
Theologians have considered this verse the first biblical prophecy pointing toward the Messiah. At the Fall, God already had a plan in place. All was not lost when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden. God would not lose man that easily. Instead, He would destroy the deceiver and restore the loving relationship He had with man. He made a promise that one day, Eve’s offspring, though wounded by the Serpent, would crush his head. God keeps His promises. Paul tells us, in Galatians 4:4, that God acted on His promise. But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. At just the right time, Jesus came. When all of the pieces were in place, when God’s perfect time had come, He sent His son. Jesus came. Thousands of years transpired between the promise and its fulfillment. But, again, when the time was right, the promise was realized. There’s more. Not only was the Serpent’s head crushed by God’s Son, but a way was made for man to “receive the full rights of sons.” The promise included the possibility of becoming a part of God’s family.
Promises, Christmas, and family; they go together. Christmas is a season that holds great promise. Think of how your children’s or grandchildren’s eyes light up with expectation at the thought of Christmas. Think of their wonder at the sights and sounds of the season. Wonderful things can happen, and we hope they do. We look forward to seeing the expected come to fruition. We want to see wishes and dreams come true. We make promises to ourselves that this year will be different, that it will be better than last year, that it will be a Christmas the family will never forget, that you will get a particular project or present completed or purchased for this Christmas. We make promises to others, too. These are not idle or fanciful aspirations, they are goals and ambitions that will carry special significance this month. Each of us has goals and ambitions specific to Christmas, but obligations, activities, and distractions prevent us from reaching all of our expectations. We just can’t keep all of those promises. Don’t let that diminish the joy and anticipation. Remember there is One for whom this is not true.
God made a promise, and thousands of years of man’s disobedience and rebellion did not distract Him. No other obligations, responsibilities, or activities caused Him to lose track of time. Our need did not slip His mind. No, when the time was right, Jesus came. Today, reflect on God’s faithfulness and let it motivate the same in you. Like God, determine to be a person who keeps his oath even when it hurts, … Psalm 15:4b. It can be the best December ever!
Jay W. Hill
December 8
and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain.”
Genesis 4:1
During the first day, that one cell became two. On day 2, those two cells became four. On day 3, those four cells worked their way to becoming twelve, now combined as a single entity, rather than separate cells. On day 4, the cell count is up to 32. By day 7, those continually dividing cells start to specialize. Pause and think about this for a moment. This process begins with simple duplication. How does it know to start specializing? What triggers the change from duplication to specialization, from a group of identical cells to cells that will become skin, internal organs, and muscle? By Day 21, the basis for the spine and brain are taking shape. On Day 22, your heart began to beat, and it’s been beating ever since. By week 12, all of the fundamental parts that make you you were essentially complete in your mother’s womb.8 From that point forward, you matured until you were born. You are a miracle.
The birth of every child is a miracle. Every day new births are celebrated all around the world. There are currently, living on this planet, over 8 billion birth stories; 8 billion persons of inestimable value. I know this to be true because of the birth we celebrate in December. God, through the miracle of conception and birth, became a man to demonstrate the value of every other person born into this world. He, who has no beginning and no end, who has all power, set it aside (the Bible says “emptied himself” of this glory9) and became one of us. Through the activity of the Holy Spirit, a virgin became pregnant. The pregnancy, starting with the single-cell divided and specialized until a baby was born. The baby Jesus. God submitted Himself to the natural process of development and birth to demonstrate the lengths He is willing to go to for you and for me. God made a promise to Adam and Eve that one of their offspring would crush the head of Satan, and that promise was fulfilled when God came to us as Jesus. Let the miracle of conception and birth and a prophecy and promise fulfilled be the filter through which you worship today. Not just the corporate worship at church, but throughout your day. Look at your hands and what they can do with a computer keyboard, a musical instrument, a tool, or a touch. Consider your own children — their birth and development. Marvel at what God has done and at what He was willing to do by becoming a man.
December 7
and the man became a living being.”
Genesis 2:7
Life. I cannot define it as a philosopher might, but I know it is extraordinary. I know the more I learn of it, the more in awe I am of its sheer existence. Consider a single cell. In The Case for Faith, Lee Strobel quotes Walter Bradley describing the wonder of that single cell, by saying, “One person very creatively – but quite accurately – described a single-cell organism as a high-tech factory, complete with artificial languages and decoding systems; central memory banks that store and retrieve impressive amounts of information; precision control systems that regulate the automatic assembly of components: proofreading and quality control mechanisms that safeguard against errors; assembly systems that use principles of prefabrication and modular construction; and a complete replication system that allows the organism to duplicate itself at bewildering speeds.”7 I have recently learned the replication system for DNA essentially involves a copy machine. RNA carries the DNA to this copy machine and in the machine the DNA helix is split, copied, and recombined and then the cell splits, and where there was one there are now two. This is in a single cell we can’t even see with the naked eye. Some suggest this is the essence of life, the capacity to reproduce. I find this astounding and just another aspect of God’s revelation of Himself through what He has made.
I live and you live because God has breathed into us the breath of life. This makes us far more than a single cell and physically, infinitely more complex. It also makes us different from all other created things. Since we are created in the image of God, we have the capacity to know and be known. Again, I return to that idea because I just can’t escape it. God knows me. He knows you. He cares. He can enter into our world and be present with us. In Acts 17:26-28, Paul, speaking with the people of Athens, puts it this way: From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. “For in him we live and move and have our being.” As some of your own poets have said, “We are his offspring.” God is not far from any of us, and that is what we need to remember today and throughout December.
Jay W. Hill
December 6
‘…Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?’”
Just in case you don’t know Job’s story, I will summarize it. Job was a righteous man. Satan took issue with God’s protection of Job, and God gave Satan permission to test him. In the course of the test, Job lost everything: children, livestock, financial security, and health. His “friends” accused him of sin and told him to repent, but Job maintained his innocence and asked for an audience with God. God finally gave Job that audience, but He never directly answered Job’s “why” question. God essentially says to Job, “Who are you to demand anything of me?” “Where were you…” when I created the world, set the stars in place, made leviathan and behemoth? As we’ve considered this magnificent creation and some of the character of God, we might ask ourselves the same or a similar question: Who are we to demand God do things in a manner that makes sense to us? Who am I that the God of this universe would even know who I am or care?
In the midst of very intense physical and emotional pain, Job questioned God and especially God’s justice. For some, December is simply not all it is supposed to be. It is not the best time of the year for everyone. Many come to December with questions instead of anticipation. Those in such a situation should seek their comfort in the same place Job did; in the presence of God Himself.
As I’ve already said, Job never got a direct answer. What he did get was a change of perspective. God stepped in to meet with Job, and Job responded to the presence of God, to this opportunity to “know” God, to experience Him. Job says, I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted. You asked, “Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?” Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. You said, “Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.” My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes. (Job 42:1-6)
For Job, the presence of the Lord was sufficient. In that moment, he came to understand the vast difference between God and himself and he was satisfied. December, with its over-the-top expectations and anticipation, is overwhelming to some, and ultimately unsatisfying on Christmas morning when it all comes to a crashing end after the last present is opened. This season should remind us that God is making Himself known and available to us. Today, seek Him! Ask Him to make Himself known to you afresh. Remember today and throughout the month that God is here. He came to us, and unlike Job, we know what He looks like. He became like us in the Person of Jesus. Focus your anticipation on Him and be satisfied with Him. Anything more than that is just an added blessing that comes with the season.
