Look at Genesis 1:14-17, Psalm 19, Numbers 24:17, Genesis 49:10, Revelation 12:1-2 -- there we have a picture of the prophecy and some of the vast testimony of Scripture regarding the “scepter” that will arise from Judah, Leo in the heavens, a king who will come, born of a virgin, who will rule. This testimony was corroborated by the kings from the east in Matthew 2, who testified clearly to a unique, once-in-a-lifetime star in the heavens. Clearly a planetary occurrence from how they described it. The bottom line of this the heavenly event is this: our God knew the date and time of the coming of Christ BEFORE anything was created for the clock of heaven, the dance of the stars is timed and patterned. It is not haphazard but precise. Is it any wonder the scriptures declared that Jesus was slaughtered “before the world was made” (Revelation 13:8)? Jesus knew and had offered himself and it was set into “timing.”
No wonder the Gospels say Jesus was born in the ‘fullness of time,’ at the ‘right time.’ The Time had been set when God had started the clock of heaven the fourth day of Creation. Such a God - worthy of worship and praise, who has timed all things, knows too everything that is in our lives and can assist us to meet it. Every point of suffering becomes an encounter with Christ’s cross, a place to see God’s provision, and experience the gift of life anew. The theme throughout Advent is for us to embrace the miracle of his coming. Last year we looked first at this amazing research into the star of Bethlehem, the story of how the heavens are not random, but a clock that can be wound back via computers and reveal exactly what the skies above Babylon looked like in 3 BC around the time Jesus was conceived.
The testimony of the heavens was so vast and particular it caused those men, schooled in prophecy through the centuries-old testimony of Daniel, to leave their homeland and travel for months in order to meet this Child born King. They have been famously remembered as wise. We still demonstrate their kind of wisdom when we trust God’s word and step out to speak, to be His in this culture, to stand up. We still demonstrate their kind of wisdom as we worship and embrace this One in life, even when we encounter hardships as part of the journey. Their brave journey took months to accomplish. And they might have actually arrived to meet and worship the then toddler Jesus on December 25th, 2 BC, according to our calendars. That’s the date the planet Jupiter stopped above Bethlehem according to the clock of heaven. It seems too incredible to be true. But “the heavens declare the glory of God.”
Come share together in this wonderful dance of the heavens and in the testimony of God’s word that God knows and cares and is working in EVERYTHING! You might be able to embrace the miracle all the more through them.