Christmas is Not the Beginning of the Story
An angelic greeting. A frightened girl. In awe, Mary took in the words of the stranger who declared her womb would bring forth the child that would take the throne of his father David (Lk. 1:32). And so begins the familiar Christmas story that will fill our eyes, hearts, and homes each Christmas season. Or, perhaps, it isn't the beginning.
In reality, the words said to the virgin Mary weren’t a new development. They were very old words that had been uttered thousands of years before. The angel referenced a covenant that went back to the time of King David (2 Sam 7:8-17). A constant theme of Jesus’s ministry was to draw his listeners back—into the old promises that began in the Garden of Eden. God had promised the seed of the woman would crush the serpent, and for the following generations God filled history with hint after hint of this reality (Gen. 3:15).
Jesus is the fulfillment of this story God weaved together for years. He is the true and better Adam, the better Moses, the better manna in the wilderness, the better Joshua, the better high priest, the better Elijah, the better David, the better Solomon. The reality of what he would accomplish was foreshadowed and pointed to for years of Jewish history, and these shadows fill the first thirty-nine books of our Bibles.
As Mitchell Chase says in his recent book, 40 Questions About Typology and Allegory, Jesus came “wrapped in the swaddling cloths of the Law, the Prophets, and Writings.”
As we spend this advent to think upon the birth of our Savior, we can’t forget that his announcement is not the beginning of the story. Christ comes as the climax. This is good news to us, for when we take time to meditate on the way the Father revealed his Son to the world, we can be renewed with confidence in the purposes of the Lord.
WORKING IN REAL HISTORY
While so much of the Old Testament pointed ahead to our Savior—who would indeed come—the stories contained in those pages are still actual history. God worked and taught through the lives of real people and real events. They aren’t fiction. They aren’t tall tales. They aren’t fables. Instead, in God’s divine wisdom, he took real history and embedded deeper meaning into it for future generations.
Although the biblical narrative is certainly more than history, it is not less than history. And God has chosen to progressively reveal himself in and through history. As Chase says, “History was important for Israel because the living God, the God who was and is and is to come, had made himself known in history.”
This is a needed reminder that God is not far off from his people, but very near (Acts 17:27). He did not create the world, promise a son, and then sit back until he came. Instead, he was intricately involved with the history of his people. He had a covenant relationship after all. They were his children, and he made sure that teaching and foreshadowing would continue during the smallest of historical stories.
This should remind those suffering that God does care for us in our present troubles. While the story of Ruth points towards a deeper truth—concerning the kinsman-redeemer we have in Christ—this doesn’t mean that God was ambivalent towards the actual plight of Naomi’s emptiness (Ruth 1).
Too often we get stuck on the end purpose of our suffering, but God does not merely concern himself only with the end result. God’s not waiting for us to get through suffering so we can learn the purpose. He’s with us in the middle. He is the near and an ever-present help in trouble, even if our difficulty might later prove a teaching tool for another (Ps. 46:1). In his wisdom and power, he works fully in both at the same time. We are part of a much bigger story, but God is still ever present in every real-life part of it.
WORKS UNAWARE
Another amazing lesson from the shadows of the Old Testament is that in some cases the people involved had no idea of what their circumstances conveyed. They didn’t grasp the full story of redemption or the full meaning that their circumstances pointed to. We can feel a similar, sheltered view in our own lives.
Often, we do not understand the work of the Lord. We hold on to verses that tell us he is doing a good work and that he will work all things out for the good of those who love him, but sometimes the actual work remains hidden (Rom. 8:28; Phil. 1:6).
But this doesn’t mean he isn’t working! God’s purpose is mysterious to us sometimes. He is the Creator and we the creation after all. He is carefully crafting his children into his likeness, and using the fruit of their work for his plans in his kingdom.
Corrie ten Boom once talked about God’s hidden work saying, “This is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person he puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for a future that only he can see.”[1] The story of redemption shows a God who works through the real lives of people—often hidden—but always working. This means we can trust him as we wait and wonder. We can befriend faithfulness, because we know God will bring the fruit of it, even when we can’t see (Ps. 37:3).
WORKS WITH A PURPOSE
Finally, as we look at the way God prepared the world for his Son, we are reminded that our Father always works towards a purpose.
The types of the Old Testament always had a specific meaning. They were not haphazard. These intentional types tend to point to Christ’s greater glory. In fact, Christ is the true and better man compared to Adam. Christ is the true and better Law-Giver compared to Moses. Christ is the true and better king compared to David. Christ’s body, the true and better temple. Chase tells us, “All human history—and thus every type in Scripture—serves the grand purpose of the glory of Christ in the world.”
God has a purpose in history—to act for the sake of his own glory (Ps. 19:1-2; Isa. 48:9-11; Eph. 1:4-6). Yet he also has a purpose for us included within that, too. God still has that same purpose for us, for he is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8). In the midst of our pain and confusion, we can be sure it’s not meaningless. We can be sure that suffering points to God’s glory and that he will walk with us while our suffering is occurring.
If God carefully worked through the history of regular people, weaving their lives in order to give full glory to him, we can trust him to do the same with us. We can trust he is truly preparing an eternal weight of glory in the light momentary affliction we face (2 Cor. 4:17-18).
Whatever is happening in the midst of this new and different Christmas season—whether it be grief, loss, fear, or any other kind of suffering, we can be confident in our Lord. The entire Christmas story—promised in the Old Testament, revealed in the New—tells us so.
It tells us we can trust him with our entire life. He moves history along. He progresses our stories along. He cares for the details, works even when we can’t see, and he does it all to achieve his good and right purposes. Don’t forget the whole Christmas story, and glory in the Lord who has written his love for his people through generations of history, and who is still writing it today.
Brianna Lambert is a wife and mom to three, making their home in the cornfields of Indiana. She loves using writing to work out the truths God is teaching her each day. She is a staff writer with GCD and has contributed to various online publications, such as Morning by Morning and Fathom magazine. You can find more of her writing paired with her husband’s photography at lookingtotheharvest.com.