For the posts leading up to Christmas, I usually try to do a theme that’s been on my heart. This year I’d like to focus each day on an Old Testament prophesy about the coming Messiah and then its fulfillment out of the New Testament. I’ve wanted to do this for a while now, mostly because I love the Old Testament so much. Usually Advent focuses on the gospel narratives of the birth of Christ, and those are wonderful on their own, but they take on such a deeper, richer meaning when viewed in the context of hundreds of years of promises behind them. For a long time I saw the Old and New testament books as rather disparate and while I’ve always appreciated the Old, I had a hard time synthesizing it with the New. It wasn’t until I started reading the Bible in chronological order that I began to understand that Old and New Testaments work together to tell the single story of God’s love for us. It was like reading the Bible for the very first time! I started to pay attention to how the two halves interweave with each other. The Old Testament was written in anticipation of the New and the New Testament draws deeply from the wording and imagery of the Old. The gospel accounts of Christ’s life and the epistles aren’t meant to be read in isolation – they are intentionally meant to be read with an understanding of the Old Testament. In Christ, the Old and New merge into one. Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man, coalesces the promises and their fulfillment into reality. This is what I hope to reflect on this Christmas.
Most of the Old Testament verses will come from Jeremiah and Ezekiel, which I have been reading for the past few weeks and have found incredibly rich. And some will come from Isaiah, which is my favorite book of the Bible and it has a lot to say about God pursuing His people. The posts will come from whatever is on my heart to share each day; I won’t be using any other material other than the Bible passages. However, there are a lot of great books that discuss these topics and I encourage you to read a few if you are interested in digging in further. Wherever you are on your journey, I hope that you will share a few minutes with me each day marveling at God’s plan to come to us.
Blessings to you,
Sarah
anordinarymiracleday 