Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds. Repeat them in our day, in our time, make them known… (Habakkuk 3:2)
I was looking over the Golf Channel’s programming schedule for December, and except for the PNC Championship taking place Dec. 18-21 at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club Orlando, there isn’t much live or new programming.
All of Tiger’s wins in 2000 will be rebroadcast along with highlights from this past season’s U.S. Open, Masters’, and PGA Championship. There will be numerous reruns of School of Golf, Glam Golf with Blair O’Neal, Playing Lesson’s With the Pro’s, Wonderful World of Golf, PGA Tour Highlights, 5 Clubs with Gary Williams and other previously broadcast shows.
I bring this up because while some may like to rewatch tournaments, most of us probably won’t watch much golf this month. And then there is the rerun of the birth of Jesus.
How many times have we heard about the angels, the shepherds, the wise men, Mary and Joseph, and the manger? For some, the familiarity of Jesus’ birth is not ho-ho-ho but ho-hum. Been there, done that.
We all know the plot, we’ve seen the pageants, sang the carols, and heard the Gospel readings about the incarnation at previous Christmas Eve services. But like Golf Channel reruns of instructional shows, we may choose to tune out the miraculous replay of the birth of Jesus.
A re-run of the Old Testament may not be the first place you look when it comes to Jesus’ birth. Yet, there are numerous references anticipating the coming Messiah.
These prophecies are specific enough that the mathematical probability of Jesus fulfilling even a handful of them, let alone all of them, is staggeringly improbable—if not impossible, without God’s sovereign decree and providential oversight of history.
Peter Stoner was a Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Pasadena College, and he was passionate about biblical prophecies. He looked at eight specific prophecies about Jesus, calculated conservative probabilities for each being fulfilled, and then considered the likelihood that Jesus would fulfill all eight.
The conclusion to his research was staggering. “Suppose that we take 1017 silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly.”
“Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one?
Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing just eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, from their day to the present time, providing they wrote using their own wisdom.”
Dave Gibson has inspired me in my walk with Christ for decades. Here is his re-run on John 3:16:
For God…the greatest being
So loved…the greatest act
The world…the greatest company
That He gave…the greatest demonstration
His only begotten son…the greatest sacrifice
That whosoever…the greatest offer
Believes in Him…the greatest simplicity
Will not perish…the greatest loss
But have…the greatest certainty
Eternal life…the greatest possession
Prayer: Father, by the grave-robbing, kingdom-advancing, Christ-exalting power of the Holy Spirit, restore to me the joy of Your incomparable salvation this Christmas season.