I heard a friend share recently that Advent is a season of waiting. So true. We look forward each Advent Season to the joy and wonder of what God has done so long ago.
Here there are at least three different questions related to how this is a time of waiting:
(1) How long did God wait? Or how long before Jesus’ birth was God already planning and preparing for this momentous event?
(2) How long have human beings been waiting for the birth of the Savior? Here we are thinking about all the time from when God first announced His provision of a Savior until Jesus was actually born that first Christmas? The quick answer is most of the Old Testament period. But there is more we can say here.
(3) Aren’t there people alive today around this world who have never heard about Jesus Christ and are still waiting to hear this good news?
Let’s look at some answers:
(1) The first question involves God’s waiting. This is especially important since He is the key player in this whole story.
The best and most accurate answer is from eternity past. The story of Christmas wasn’t a last-minute Plan B. God knew about our need of a Savior from before the creation of this world in eternity past.
(2) The second question involves our waiting as human beings.
But first some history:
The answer here is that the first foreshadowing of the gospel message of God’s plan to provide a Savior for us is recorded in Scripture in Genesis 3:15, “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.” God would break our bondage to sin, death, and the devil through Jesus Christ as the ultimate and perfect Seed or Offspring of the woman.
I am sure that Eve would have wondered whether the promised seed of the woman would be one of her own children. I am sure she must have thought and prayed about that. I think a mother giving birth is always a miracle. But the first births of children for Adam and Eve would have been even more amazing. This had never happened before.
Now we don’t know whether they had Lamaze or natural childbirth classes in Adam and Eve’s day or not. I suspect not. After all there were no other human mothers who had ever given birth prior to Eve bearing Cain and later Abel, and still later Seth and whatever other children Adam and Eve might have had. But no, none of Adam and Eve’s direct immediate descendants were the promised offspring. And so, it continued on for who knows how many thousands of years until the familiar Christmas story of Joseph and Mary and baby Jesus. Jewish mothers wondering whether their child would be the promised offspring prophesied in Genesis 3:15.
But there are also many other landmark events that highlight and intensify this period of waiting throughout the Old Testament period.
One answer here took place approximately 2000 years before the time of Jesus during the lifetime of Abraham. Abraham was the forefather of the Jewish people. Here we can look at Genesis 12:1-3 and see how God promises that all the families of the earth will be blessed by one of His descendants. The specific promise here is found in Genesis 12:3, “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.” Yet as we read through our Old Testaments and look for any major world-wide blessings of people through Abraham or his descendants, we really don’t see any clear answer to this prophecy until the coming of Christ at that first Christmas.
Another landmark date takes place 1500 years before Christ at the time of Moses when God delivered His people from slavery in Egypt. This Exodus story marks the beginning of the nation of Israel as such. At that time, God told the Jews, “I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the LORD your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians” (Exodus 6:7). But the Bible also tells us that this group of people was both ethnically and spiritually “a mixed multitude” (Exodus 12:38). And subsequent history revealed how spiritually needy this group of people was. The lesson was clear: more was needed. The promised Savior was still to come.
Another key event took place about 1000 years before Christ at the time of David when God promised him that one of his descendants would be greater than David and have a kingdom that would last forever in 1 Chronicles 17:10b-1 4.
“Moreover, I declare to you that the LORD will build you a house. 11 When your days are fulfilled to walk with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. 12 He shall build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever. 13 I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from him who was before you, 14 but I will confirm him in my house and in my kingdom forever, and his throne shall be established forever.’”
David’s wives and granddaughters could have easily and appropriately wondered whether they would be the one who would bear this promised descendant of David who would have a kingdom that would last forever. But again, nothing happened for hundreds of years
Waiting from our perspective:
Christmas is a time when we obviously think about Jesus’ first coming two thousand years ago—and rightly so. The four Sundays in Advent are a traditional time of anticipation and looking back to His first coming. In many ways, the OT is a book of waiting.
The Apostle Paul describes the timing of Jesus’ birth this way in Galatians 4:4-5, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”
But I want us to reflect for a moment on an OT verse that talks about God’s timing for each of us as well as David himself, and by implication of Christ’s life as well. Consider Psalm 139:16, “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” Psalm 139 is a Psalm of David, so David is partly speaking of his own birth and death, but he is also telling us something about each and every one of us, including our Savior. God the Father and God the Son in His deity would have known about and even devised the perfect timing for Jesus’ birth and death—and even controlled the length of His life and everything that was happening in His earthly life. “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”
Here is an encouragement for each one of us. God chose the date and timing of our birth and the length of our lives and when our deaths will come. He hasn’t told us anything about how long we will live, but He already knows and has set a date for each of our deaths. Also notice the phrase in the middle of Psalm 139:16, “all. the days that were formed for me.” This verb “formed” could also be translated as “fashioned” or “ordained” or “controlled.” The New Living Translation simply says, “Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.”
This verse of Psalm 139:16 is both a personal comfort for each of us as well as an explanation of the Christmas story and the events of Jesus’ earthly life and ultimately His death and resurrection. God was in control of it all. Everything that took place in the Four Gospels took place according to the Father’s perfect plan. A Savior came to give us new life.
(3) But what about those who have never heard—and thus are still waiting for they know not what? This is where sharing the Christmas message with others is so important. God has given many of us new life through Christ. Our lives are different in many ways. One way is that God has given us a new desire to share with others what He has done in our own lives through Christ. Christmas isn’t the end of the story. In many ways, it is the beginning of a new period in our lives—a time of sharing with others what God has revealed to us about new life in Christ. So, let’s take advantage of the season and use it to share Christ with others.