6 Amazing Facts About Christmas - 1. God Fulfilled Many Promises

Hello and welcome to Van Life Devotions. Here’s an amazing Christmas fact. Long before Mary ever held Jesus in her arms, God spoke, promising that a Savior would come.  The very first prophecy of the coming Messiah appears in the first book of the Bible. After Adam and Eve sinned, when darkness entered the world, God spoke a promise saying that the seed of the woman would one day crush the serpent’s head. Think about that: Before judgment came, God gave hope. Before they left Eden, God gave a promise. Before the first sin was punished, the first Savior was promised. A few thousand years later, God added details to His promise. A prophet named Isaiah declared: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14 NIV). For 700 years this sounded impossible… until the angel appeared to Mary and said the Holy Spirit would overshadow her. Jesus’ birth would be unlike any other human. He came as God and man.   Around the same time as Isaiah, God spoke again saying the specific birthplace location of Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), which was a small and insignificant town. And here is what’s incredible: Mary and Joseph didn’t live in Bethlehem. They lived over 4-days away by foot in Nazareth. But God orchestrated an entire Roman census to move them to the exact place the prophecy declared.  While these prophecies are about Christ’s birth, there’s even more about what He would do, who He is, and even His sacrificial death.  It is a fact that Jesus’ birth was no coincidence, nor chance, nor luck or myth. It was a long-standing prophetic tapestry woven together by the hand of God — fulfilled perfectly in Jesus Christ, God’s Son.  David Moyes