Christ’s Birth is Prophesied

BY Hayley Morgan

Text: Isaiah 7:14 & Isaiah 9:2-7

It’s burgundy, worn down in some places, soft and mellow like crust of a holiday pie. The gold foil lettering spells out his name. This Bible was a gift from a pair of Jesus-loving grandparents at the occasion of my husband’s birth, full of hope for his future. Now, more than three decades later, this book thumps with their heartbeat, his heartbeat, and the heartbeat of all God’s people through the ages. It’s the book of Life, rich and layered, offering stories of hope and peace and redemption to all who open it.

I’ve seen that Bible all over the place, in all seasons of our life. It’s been a steady presence, a well-worn and well-trusted touchpoint. We prayed with it in hand while we were dating, and I wondered if one day I’d have gold foil that mirrored his last name. We cried into it when our third son Asher was born gravely ill and with no prior warning. That tattered and aged burgundy Bible has been a character in each scene of our life, its lines always spoken with Hope.

If you’re a Christian—a believer in this upside-down Kingdom and its King who saved the whole world—you already know how the story ends. You already have hope. But, did you know there are little love notes, evidence of the hope of a coming King, all throughout the Bible?

The book of Isaiah is known as one of the most important prophetic books of the Bible. As a new Christian, I was utterly fascinated by the threads that were woven between the Old Testament and the New. The Old Testament was no longer just a set of clunky books filled with rules and lists of kings; it was alive with tiny arrows showing the way to our Savior. Bible scholars believe that Jesus fulfilled over 300 prophecies written in the Old Testament!

The words of the prophet Isaiah act as a bridge between the Old and New Testaments, the whole book telling of a hope and salvation that man is powerless to create. This is pretty radical considering Isaiah was speaking among a group of people well-versed in how to be “good” according to the law. But tucked into the book of Isaiah is a promise of a coming King who will change everything, who will hold the government on His broad shoulders but will come as a child. It promises hope.

Hope. We see it all through Scripture. But it’s not hope in ourselves or what we can do—it’s hope in the promises of the One who never lets us down. It’s Hope who came as a tiny baby, turning the Old Testament prophecies into realities and making a big, beautiful pile of fresh promises for us to cling to. Like the words in that burgundy Bible, those promises are true for every generation, and the Hope who holds them will never fail.

For an added layer of worship during this sweet season of adoration and expectation, we’ve created a Spotify playlist for Advent 2014! You can find the complete SheReadsTruth | O Come Let Us Adore Him playlist at this link, or listen to today’s track on the player below. Enjoy!