The Whole Bible Points to the Coming of the Savior

If you’re a pastor, you have likely had to figure out a series of sermons for Christmastime. In one sense, this is a pretty easy task – members of the congregation are usually excited about the season, and the main point (the incarnation of Jesus) isn’t too hard to find in the text and communicate to the church. But many preachers find it challenging to make a story that feels very familiar into sermons that edify, encourage, and engage their people.    

Seen from another perspective, however, the Advent season presents a pastor looking to a series of sermons on the coming of Christ with many great options because the entire Bible is about the coming of Jesus. The Old Testament points forward to it by way of promise, and the New Testament reflects on its meaning and lifts our heads to behold the certainty of his glorious return. Thus, the whole Bible is open to a preacher looking to talk to his people about the coming of God’s salvation in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

In that light, here are some suggestions for passages (or kinds of passages) you might consider preaching to teach your people about the way that the coming of God’s Son is woven as a theme throughout the Scriptures:

• In Genesis 3, the Lord promised his people through a curse on the serpent: 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. (Genesis 3:15) Here, in the immediate wake of mankind’s disastrous fall into sin and rebellion, God declares his intention to raise up an enemy for the serpent from the offspring of the woman. Christmas tells the story of this offspring’s long-awaited arrival, as God’s Son appeared to destroy all the works of the evil one (I John 3:8). His heel was bruised at the cross, but in the process, the head of Satan was crushed. 
• In Genesis 12, the Lord promises to make Abram into a great nation, bless the world through his descendants, and give the land to his offspring (Genesis 12:2-3, 7). In Galatians, the apostle Paul points out that the “offspring” spoken of in Genesis 12:7 is singular, not plural. This individual descendant who is heir to God’s promise to Abraham is the Lord Jesus (Galatians 3:16), and “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.” (Galatians 4:4-5) The arrival of Jesus is God’s faithfulness to the promise he had made so many centuries before.
• In Deuteronomy 18, the Lord promised the people of Israel that he would raise up for them a prophet like Moses from among them (Deuteronomy 18:16-18). This prophet would have the Lord’s words in his mouth (v 18) and go into the Lord’s presence on behalf of God’s people (v 16-17). In Acts 3, the apostle Peter reminds the people of Jerusalem of this promise (v 22, cf. Acts 7:37) and points to the coming of Jesus as its fulfillment (v 26). 
• The Old Testament also tells us about women whose lives seem to find their purpose in the advent of the Lord Jesus. Tamar’s story (Genesis 38) is strange and unsettling. Rahab is a pagan prostitute raised up by God to give victory to His people. Ruth is a Moabitess who experiences kindness from a faithful Israelite. In each case, the point of the narrative seems to be that it was through these people that God brought about the gift of his Son. Unexpectedly, in a long list of male names, Matthew’s genealogy mentions each one of these women as an ancestor of the Lord Jesus. One of the twins born to Tamar is Perez, cited in Matthew 1:3 (where Tamar is explicitly mentioned). Rahab appears in Matthew 1:5 as the wife of Salmon and the mother of Boaz. And Ruth, whose story concludes with the surprise revelation that she is the great-grandmother of David (Ruth 4:21-22), is singled out for a special mention in Matthew 1:5. The Lord uses the sin, struggle, and suffering of these women to bring his Son into the world.    
• There are also the stories in the Old Testament of God’s work of salvation being carried along through the gift of a son to a woman who could not have children. Elderly and barren Sarah gave birth to Isaac (Genesis 21:1-2), the child of the promise from whose line the Messiah will come. Manoah’s wife was barren (Judges 13:2) until the Lord gave her a child named Samson who would “save Israel” (Judges 13:5). And Hannah, a childless woman (I Samuel 1:2), was given a son named Samuel who was established as a mighty prophet (I Samuel 3:19-20) and who ultimately oversaw the establishment on the Israelite monarchy and anointed David as God’s appointed king (I Samuel 16:13). A careful reader of the Old Testament is then well-prepared by this pattern of God’s salvation arising out of miraculous births for the gospel accounts of the coming of Jesus. Barren women and virgins are the two kinds of women who cannot have children, so it’s not shocking that the story of the birth of the Savior begins with an elderly, childless woman (Luke 1:7) and a virgin (Luke 1:34) getting pregnant. Mary’s song of praise in Luke 1:46-55 provides a profound theological reflection on the meaning of this pattern.  
• In II Samuel 7, the Lord promises David his offspring will have an everlasting kingdom (II Samuel 7:12-13). Gabriel’s announcement to Mary makes it clear that the birth of her child fulfills this promise (Luke 1:32-33), and the subsequent reflection of the New Testament confirms it (Matthew 22:41-46, Acts 2:30, Hebrews 1:5).

We could continue heaping on examples (we haven’t even touched on the words of the prophets about the coming of the Messiah), but the point is probably made. The arrival of God’s long-promised deliverer (and his subsequent life, death, and resurrection) shows us the meaning of the whole Bible. Therefore, the pastor contemplating a series of sermons on the meaning of Christmas isn’t limited to the first couple of chapters of Matthew and Luke. The Scriptures tell us about God’s salvation through the gift of his Son, so we have unlimited ways and passages from which to tell that story to his people.  

©2023 Michael McKinley. Used with permission.