The Life Challenges Podcast
Modern-day issues from a Biblical perspective.
The Life Challenges Podcast
Prophets and the Promise of Christmas with Professor Emeritus Mark Braun
What if the most honest voices for Advent are also the most uncomfortable? We sit down with Pastor Jeff Samelson and Professor Emeritus Mark Braun to unpack what prophets actually did, why their words weren’t power plays or vague predictions, and how their message threads from Assyrian threats to a manger in Bethlehem. This is a journey through Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, and Hosea that reveals not trivia, but a pattern: short-term hardship, long-term joy, and a Messiah who stands at the center.
We start by redefining prophecy as God’s message delivered into real crises, not fortune telling. From Jeremiah’s lament to Elijah’s courage, the true prophet confronts kings rather than curries favor. Then we trace how messianic expectation formed over time—why many clung to visions of glory while tripping over a suffering servant—and how the New Testament guides our reading. Matthew names fulfillments overtly; Luke lets you see them unfold. Genealogies, far from filler, connect promises to a person and spotlight unlikely names like Tamar, Rahab, and “the wife of Uriah,” underlining grace at the root of Jesus’ story.
Along the way, we explore layered fulfillment: Bethlehem foretold amid looming invasion, “out of Egypt I called my son” filled full in Christ, and the way Jesus “relives” Israel’s journey to succeed where Israel failed. We also make room for the everyday reader. You can savor the beauty without mastering every context, and you can go deeper when ready. Above all, we keep returning to Micah’s gift: he will be their peace. Not the right program, not the perfect leader—Jesus himself. That promise meets divorce papers, hospital rooms, and quiet dread with something sturdier than sentiment: a Savior who came, who comes to us now, and who will come again.
If this conversation steadies your Advent, share it with someone who needs hope. Subscribe, leave a review to help others find the show, and tell us: which Old Testament promise gives you courage today?
The ministry of Christian Life Resources promotes the sanctity of life and reaches hearts with the Gospel. We invite you to learn more about the work we're doing: https://christianliferesources.com/
On today's episode, I think it is true that we keep on reading, we keep on finding things that we didn't know before, but I suppose you could say the beauty of it is that a simple person, in the good sense of the word, is not driven away by the message of the gospel, and yet the wisest person available has more to delve into than he can handle in a lifetime.
SPEAKER_02:Welcome to the Life Challenges Podcast from Christian Life Resources. Our world today presents people with complicated issues of life and death, marriage and family, health, and science. It can be a struggle to understand or deal with them. We're here to help by bringing good information and a fresh biblical perspective to these matters and more. Join us now for Life Challenges.
SPEAKER_03:Hi, and welcome back. I'm Krista Potratz, and I'm here today with Pastor Jeff Samelson. And we also have a special guest with us, Professor, I call you Professor, Professor Pastor, Dr. Mark Brown. Whatever. This is your third time on the podcast here.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, good to be back.
SPEAKER_03:It's great to have you. And um first time um, though, being on the podcast here with with Jeff um instead of Bob. So good. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I'm looking forward to it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Um your your last podcast uh with uh David and Bathsheba did really well. A lot of people really enjoyed it. And um and I think a lot of people too commented just not having thought of David with some of the things we had talked about too. Gave people different perspectives on that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, considering what we talked about, I wonder if enjoy is always the best word. Um I I listened to it uh driving up north. So I had a I had a chance to listen to the whole piece. And did you enjoy it? Well, I'm glad it came off well the way I think it did. I think we got to talk about everything we wanted to, but it's also a disturbing story. And we we don't talk about some of those things with David. But Bob was quite keyed into that too. He he talked pretty freely about how how cutthroat David could be at times, and and that's true. But we do we tend not to preach on those things.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, well, maybe a more joyous topic today, I don't know, as we talk about uh the Christmas and Advent, um, but uh particularly leaning into the prophets, the Old Testament prophets and prophecy and how it connects to the Christmas story.
SPEAKER_00:Good. Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. One place that I wanted to start was just maybe what we even think about or what we should be thinking about when we hear the word prophet. I think sometimes people might think okay, those are almost like a a fortune teller or somebody just rattling off things from the future. But what is really the definition that we should be thinking about when we hear the word prophet?
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell Well, I think for a definition you go back to when God is calling Moses to lead Israel. And Moses is the great excuser, you know, not the great pretender, the great excuser. And one of the excuses he makes is I'm not good at public speaking. And God says to him, Your brother Aaron is a good speaker. He can speak for you. You can be God to him, and he will be you to the people. And that's kind of a beginning definition of what a prophet is. It's a person who speaks on behalf of somebody else, and and then that becomes more formalized when Moses is very old, and the Lord says that the Lord will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers, you are to listen to him, and so the whole prophetic office grows out of that. Now, other countries had prophets, and some people I think would would maybe um use the word shaman sometimes with them because they had different kinds of uh rituals that they did to to to um uh to ascertain the future or to get get secrets, and sometimes there was, I suppose, some sleight of hand involved with that. The concept was around in other countries too, and then there are some places where there's uh the warning against false prophets.
SPEAKER_03:Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. That's interesting that you also bring up other countries and other places having prophets too, because I think that is something maybe we don't think about. So would you say prophets were just part of the culture at that time?
SPEAKER_00:Prophets uh generally tended to be counterculture in the sense that they would challenge some of the things that were the status quo. So you take Israel, for example, you have the whole priesthood, which is a a recognizable office, the the Levites have that. You have the kingship developing, you have judges which kind of arise out of wherever, but then the prophets will come along often at times of crisis or stress, and they will generally challenge the people and the leadership uh as to whether they're following God's will or not. So in that sense, they are uh a a loyal opposition. Sometimes their loyalty gets questioned, sometimes this is very dangerous for them. So the first, I think, reference we have when you talk about prophets in other countries is when Israel's coming into the land and Balak the king hires Balaam, and he's not really he's sort of a magician, but one of our professors had a memory device, Balak the king, and Balaam you'd keep the two straight by their names, but ironically, Balak hired Balaam to curse Israel. Balaam had no choice but to bless Israel, which he himself, I think, was surprised at. But then later on, you have false prophets in Israel who are telling first the northern kingdom and then later on's telling Judah, don't worry, you won't go into captivity. And don't worry if you go there, you won't be there very long, because after all you're God's people and nothing bad can happen to you. And then Jeremiah had the task of saying, No, you're staying for a while. And this is God's judgment on your lack of belief and your rejection, but it's also uh a purifying element that it's going to create a remnant which is going to come back. So and the prophets will sometimes complain that Jeremiah's especially good complainer. He'll complain that I didn't realize what I was in for. And he has his his emotions just swing from high to low. You know, he's praising God, and then he's angry with God, and then he's frustrated with the people, and then so it's it's um it's it's it's not a fun job a lot of times.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I I think one of the interesting differences or distinctions between the true prophets of the Lord and prophets where we'll find them elsewhere, whether they're false prophets claiming to speak for their Lord or the prophets of other religions, the oracle at Delphi or some shaman or or or whoever, is that the non-true prophets are almost always there there's almost always some aspect of advantage or power that they're after uh with with with their message, because they realize that if I successfully foretell the future, or if I successfully say, this is what you should do, and then you will gain success in war or what whatever, then I'm gonna, you know, everyone's gonna look to me and I'm gonna have influence and I'm and power and such. And so there's a real selfishness very often about it when you see it. And because of that, he's like, you know, you read some of the things that the oracle at Delphi said, and it's like, that is just gobbledygook. It could go any way, but you know, they're they very carefully phrase it so that no matter what happens, what they said fits, you know, the the the element or whatever. But that is such a contrast, I was saying, because you you look at Jeremiah, you you you look at uh Elijah, you look at all these prophets, and they're not in the position of power in Israel. They're usually the the ones who are going to the king if they're getting that far and saying, By the way, what you are doing is wrong. You know, this is what you should be doing. Most of the what we see in the Old Testament of prophets and kings is it almost adversarial. It's very rare that you have the good king bringing the prophet on on board and saying, you know, what is it the Lord wants us to do here?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I would say even more than almost adversarial. Although some prophets get to be kind of trusted insiders. I mean, you have Nathan who was in the court, and he had the very difficult task of having to confront David, as we talked about last time. You get a sense that Elisha is more of an insider. His his time lasts much longer than Elijah. We tend to know Elijah better, and you know, of course, he's he's essentially a public outlaw with with Jezebel and Ahab. And this especially comes out in in Jeremiah, Jeremiah 28, when all the false prophets are saying Hananiah is saying, You're not going to be there for very long. And Jeremiah says, I wish that were true. But the job of the prophet is to say what the Lord has says, and you haven't been in his presence, and your predictions must come true, or else you're not a true prophet. And by the way, Hananiah will die within a year. And then the the chapter just ends in the sixth month of that year, Hananiah the prophet died. So they have to come true.
SPEAKER_03:Transitioning a little bit to the messianic prophecies, what would have, I guess, just a regular average Jew known about the Messiah? In ancient Israel, what would they have understood about the coming Messiah?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I would say for one thing, um, since we're in Advent, think of those old Advent calendars that you'd get. You'd open a little door every day and and learn more. In the sense the the understanding of the prophets and the Messiah developed that way. As you move along, you get more information about what the Messiah would be like. Of course, by Jesus' time, the the typical understanding is that Israelites had latched onto the prophecies that talked about a glorious kingdom and having power and the Messiah driving his enemies out more than they could handle the messages like Isaiah 53 about a suffering servant. And so that colored their expectations and in some ways were the cause for some of them rejecting him. And that was true when when, for example, Paul went out and he would talk about that the Messiah had come, he go to the synagogue, and it was sometimes the suffering or the resurrection of Jesus that was a sticking point for them. So it was it was a thing that that grew on them. But I would say another thing about their relationship and their role in the Bible. When I was a little kid, there was a Bible salesman that came to our church, and he told us if we sell six Bibles, we get one of our own, so all of our relatives got one of our Bibles. But the thing about that Bible was every messianic passage had a star at the back of it. It's not that easy when you read the Old Testament. You look for the stars, but it they're not always obvious. Often, not always, but often the message of the prophet that's messianic is interwoven with his role at the moment. And you have to kind of sort this out and sometimes answer the question, well, how much of what the prophet is saying has got an immediate fulfillment and then how much of it has a long-term fulfillment? I think it was much better to learn the prophets as a whole in their context and what they're talking about. But I would say a lot of times our education didn't do that a lot. We focused on those star passages and kind of pulled them out. And very often a preacher will decide, I don't know if I should lead all these people into this in the sermon because we're gonna I'm gonna lose them a long way here. So we we sometimes are tempted to kind of leave a lot of that history out and just go right with the New Testament fulfillment. Well, you have to use your judgment, but it's unfortunate if that's the farthest we ever get in understanding of them.
SPEAKER_03:I think that's that's true because if Jesus doesn't say this is when I fulfilled this, or you know, like sometimes like he will say it, or or Luke or somebody writing the New Testament will say, like, this is the fulfillment of this prophecy. I kind of sit there and like think, how would you know if that wasn't highlighted for you, right? That like this was a fulfillment of a prophecy, because like the book of Isaiah is very long, and when I read it, I really don't understand a lot of what is being said. And I'm just like, how do these key passages get pulled out and listed as messianic prophecy?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, my Old Testament prop professor was pretty rigid, very um as that's kind of a harsh sounding word, very insistent that unless you have a passage in the New Testament that identifies it as a prophecy, you can't treat it that way. So, for example, when you're reading the story of Abraham being told to sacrifice his son, there is no place in the New Testament that says chapter and verse that this was fulfilled in Jesus. Now, I would argue that when Romans says he who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how did he not also along with him give us all things? That is really heavily influenced, or let's say it is connected to uh Genesis. But he would not have a pro uh uh a New Testament fulfillment. So you have the Micah passage about Bethlehem, but um you can see that that um the people at Jesus' time recognize that as a prophecy about a new ruler because the Magi went to the to Herod who went to his wise men to find that. You have the really big messianic prophecy about thus was fulfilled, a virgin shall be with child and have a son, they'll call him Emmanuel. But the tricky part is to know to what degree you should even expect to say this has an intermediate fulfillment and then a long range one. I would compare it to driving west into the mountains, and as you get to, let's say, eastern Colorado, you see a whole bank of mountains and it looks like a wall. As you get farther west, you get in the middle of them, and some are smaller and are behind you as you drive, and some are are more still in front of you. And from the Old Testament perspective, that's how the prophecies look a lot of the times. And then we get some of that unpacked in the New Testament, but then there are some prophecies in the New Testament too that have uh uh uh an immediate and a longer range fulfillment also. So it's um it's a little bit like looking at impressionistic art. You get uh you get an emotional response and you get information, but it's not like a snapshot. That's different.
SPEAKER_02:What we would really benefit from would be if we had been able to listen in with uh Jesus and the two disciples on the road to Emmaus after his resurrection, because there he opened up the scriptures to them. All the things that were written about him in the in the scriptures, you know, and how they it all had to happen that way. If we had that, then we'd be able to say, aha, that one is messianic, that one, okay, maybe, but you know, we would have had all the answers there. The Holy Spirit chose not to give that to us, which is fine because he knows better than we do. I've often kind of thought it would have been great to be able to listen in on that conversation.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and so when they they urged him to stay longer, it's probably that they still had more questions as well as that they're going to eat. There's an old book, which I think we all were encouraged to buy, maybe you didn't read it, Hanksenberg's uh The Christology of the Old Testament, where he goes through, and this is an old 19th century writer, Germanic and translated, so it's it's it's not easy reading, but he goes right through the passages that were regarded by Jews and by Christians as messianic, and will detail some of the issues that have arisen about them. And and I was looking through some of them a couple nights ago, because it is a helpful summary. He he can cite the rabbis and cite the church fathers. And so it isn't that we're we're um we're just kind of making this up on the spot. I've gone to academic conferences where Old Testament professors will say, well, you know, that stuff isn't in the Old Testament. These are things that Jesus, the New Testament Christians read back into their. They deny the possibility of predictive prophecy. And it's always was shocking to see the number of people in the academic study of religion that weren't very believing. Wow, that wasn't like pastors' conference, at least anybody who had doubts didn't come out in the open and say things like that. But but those people study that. And there's the line from Peter that says the prophets studied intensely what they what they were given, what that was revealed to them to see where and how the Christ would be born. So perhaps they didn't understand all the things they wrote either, or perhaps they were writing for their immediate circumstances, but then God had another, let's say, a layer of meaning, which in the long run is is the more important thing because most people don't read the Old Testament to learn more about the Assyrians.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I guess like that is maybe my question too. So all right, so you have just average Bible reader, Krista, myself, or something. Do you encourage someone like me then to go back and really dig deep into the context? So there are um famous verses too. Um you mentioned the Bethlehem Micah V and also the um virgin birth. I think that comes from Isaiah 7.14. I I mean, should I really like go in and like get into the trenches of the context of what was going on in those verses?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I would remind people that the Bible is a library rather than a book. And you go to the library and you find sections on other subjects too. And I go to the math department uh of the library, I can handle the easy stuff. You know, I can I can do long division and and and um I when I when I got to um plain geometry, that was kind of when my mathematics career was over. Now there are some people who can go much farther. I think series like The People's Bible are very helpful because uh they're aimed at an audience that are not professional readers. There are commentaries that are more in-depth. They may do the Hebrew, they may get you into larger amounts of history. That may be good for some people, but you can still get the get the kernel of the message sometimes from the New Testament without having to go in that far. I'm afraid that uh we might give the impression that the Bible is so dark and deep that only a few of us can understand it. The average person probably feels I can't talk about the Bible for you know two minutes, and the preacher reads eight words and talks for half an hour. How how does that work? How how do they do that? And do I need all of that? And uh sometimes that's a pastoral decision, too. And when we Have some people who watch the TV shows, you know, the history shows and the things that are hidden, and you find people coming up with all kinds of things that aren't there, then you maybe wish they'd have left the topic alone altogether.
SPEAKER_02:It's kind of like um drinking a glass of wine or or like with my daughter, a you know, a good cup of coffee. Uh there's the expert who can, oh, you know, this is uh, you know, I I taste the terroir of this. This, you know, I know where this one was. This was grown on a a north-facing slope of the Rhone River Valley, and and I'm getting the raspberry and here's a little bit of mango, and you know, all this kind of stuff out of it. But for somebody else who hasn't had all that training, it's just wow, that's a really good glass of wine. And and my daughter can do the same thing with coffee. The prophecies of scripture, really all of scripture, can be very, very similar. The average reader, uh, even the oh, you know, if there we can talk about such a thing, the below average reader, can still read what's in the Bible and say, wow, that's really good. You know, because like, I, I I know this one that's talking about Bethlehem and and yeah, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and they can make that connection and and and rejoice in seeing it. The scholar can get a whole lot more out of that. That may be helpful for that that early reader later on, but it's always going to be beneficial for you. You're always going to come out blessed from having read it.
SPEAKER_00:In our educational system, we start out with the simpler of the stories, generally speaking, to get a uh get a template of the Bible history. And then we see that we pull out passages from what were normally narratives or letters, and there's still a lot we don't read there. We put enough for a narrative. And and some people don't get farther than that. And whether that's right or wrong, I can't say. I think I I think it is true that we keep on reading, we keep on finding things that we didn't know before. But um I suppose you could say the beauty of it is that a simple person in the good sense of the word is not driven away by the message of the gospel, and yet the wisest person uh available uh uh has more to delve into than he can handle in a lifetime.
SPEAKER_03:When we think of the messianic prophecies too, I mean, what is maybe then just some good takeaways for uh a Christian um in terms of looking at the the prophecies? What should we draw from them? Are there ones that really stand out to you and just being ones that we should should focus on? What should our attitude toward them be during the Advent season?
SPEAKER_00:Well, during Advent, Isaiah and Micah are very big prophecies. You get to after Jesus is born. There's what I would not have recognized as a prophecy at all. Israel goes to Egypt, they're brought out of there into the promised land. Hosea says, When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I've called my son. It still doesn't look like a prophecy to me, but then when Joseph takes his family to Egypt to protect the baby Jesus, Matthew says, Thus was fulfilled what was written by the prophet. Now that that didn't look like a prediction of the future, so there is the sense where some prophecies Jesus like relives them or traces over them again. The term for it is recapitulation theology. Jesus relives the life of Israel. Not everybody likes that term or that concept.
SPEAKER_03:I don't know why.
SPEAKER_00:Well, you don't want to hear the Greek word, that's even more complicated. I found that though quite fascinating, especially in Matthew's gospel, how Jesus relives this history where Israel had failed. And in John's gospel, you can look at the chapters and see how Jesus replaces all the you know the Passover and the Sabbath and all these things with himself. But I don't know if I can give you a key to that. I I will say that these are very significant for Christians all through the centuries. When people wondered, is Jesus the one we're waiting for? You see John the baptizer, when John is in prison, the disciples are wondering if Jesus is the one. And John, I think, wants to transfer their loyalties to to him. And so they come to Jesus and say, Are you the one that is to come, or should we look for another? And when he talks about the signs that he's doing, those are things that Isaiah 35 predicted. And so we we should look that they are uh they're they're touch points for what the Messiah is is is going to do. And that's not true just an advent, but but all the time.
SPEAKER_02:I think you know something that's that's helpful again, just kind of the the the context or or even like a guide to how important do we see this or and how do we see it fulfilled. Look at the gospels, particularly uh Matthew and and Luke. Uh it's kind of interesting. Matthew is much more deliberate in saying, here is this Old Testament verse, this this passage, and here is its fulfillment. This is what we we we see happening here. Luke isn't so much the chapter and quoting the verses and things like that. Luke is more, you see it played out, and you say, Oh, yeah, that's that that that's what we're talking about. You know, he really starts with an Old Testament context with um uh Zechariah and and birth of John the Baptist, who sometimes is called the last Old Testament prophet. And then we we see okay, well, there's the virgin birth, there isn't there? Even though Isaiah isn't quoted, but it's it is mentioned that she's a virgin, you know, a virgin. When we see all these things playing out, where is uh Jesus born? Well, it happens to be Bethlehem, just like Micah said. So we see it all played out without the quotations. And so between the two of those, you you get this sense of, oh yeah, this is how it all comes together in this this wonderful, glorious way that you know the Lord had this plan way back from the beginning. Oh, and and talking about, you know, I think earlier we mentioned something about parts of the Bible that sometimes seem more more difficult or you know, or whatever. The genealogies in both Matthew and Luke, well, what are those doing? Those are connecting all of the Old Testament and the promises that were made there to the New Testament fulfillment in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00:Now, Matthew, especially, because Matthew is, we believe, writing primarily for Jewish people, and so he's very careful to point out the number of times, I think there's more than 50 times, where he says, this and this happened, this was fulfilled by the prophet of which said this or that. And I've sometimes told students maybe we should instead of saying fulfilled, we should say filled full, because there was a meaning in the original context and now it's filled with another meaning. I I've done a I've done a Bible class a couple of times, but you look at the the four women in Jesus' family tree in Matthew. And of course, there are there are lots of other women in his family tree. But why would Matthew pick those four women? Because all of them have an obstacle or a barrier of sorts. It's almost like the opposite of the heroes of faith. These are people who did bad things, or you're highlighting the bad thing that they did.
SPEAKER_03:And so you're talking about like people like Rahab, right? Yeah, there's genealogy.
SPEAKER_00:There's Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and then Matthew doesn't even mention Bathsheba by name, Uriah's Uriah's wife, uh, whose husband was Uriah. Why would he highlight those people? Now to go through those those stories back to Genesis or back to Judges or Joshua, you lead people into areas of Old Testament life which are really quite unusual for them, even disturbing. There's another place where you get a perfectly quite a different view of David because you go through that Bathsheba story. But then you see why this person, why that people person. And then Matthew quotes the story, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because he will s this baby born, he will save his people from their sins. So, and of course, the list of the men has got a lot of big sinners in it too. And so there's that there's that sense that he's writing for the for the people that would have known this story more and shows how this is filled full in Jesus.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. That probably is the big takeaway with the the prophecies, too, is that it does just that disconnect everything. The the Old Testament, the New Testament. I I mean, it is the big connector. It shows that God's design of a savior coming into the world was not just, oh, and now I'm gonna do it. Like it was there was this intention, there was this connectedness, it was thought through, it was planned.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and I think with with the birth in Bethlehem, you can see how God rearranges history and and kind of pulls the switch on secular rulers to do what they want to do, and yet he arranges that so that Jesus would have been born in Bethlehem. He wouldn't have been born there if if his father his parents had stayed in Nazareth. And uh you talk about the word Messiah, there is in Isaiah in chapter 44 and 45 where Isaiah calls Cyrus the Persian his anointed one. Now he wasn't talking about Jesus there, he was talking about a secular ruler who was going to operate entirely f uh concerned about his own issues and his own country. He was going to send these captive peoples back because why not make allies of them and they're just here and giving us problems sometimes. So he decides to send the various conquered peoples back, and yet Isaiah calls him the Lord's Messiah because he's you doing the Lord's will. Cyrus never became a believer, and so it wasn't that he was converted by that, but he was used in that way, which is, I think, gives people another slightly different view of the the very term messiah and and the role that a person can play even though he wasn't the messiah.
SPEAKER_03:Thinking about bringing everything together to our podcast here, Life Challenges Podcast, talking people through their struggles and just different things that we encounter in life as well. What is the hope that the prophecies maybe bring or in the fulfillment of the prophecies? What is the hope for believers?
SPEAKER_00:If you really wanted to summarize that in a simple statement, I think the prophets all say in the short term, it's going to get bad, or worse, in the long term it's going to be wonderful. So there's always a call to hope in a better future. And in the case of some of the prophets, in their circumstances, they still had how they would react to the message would still have an influence on what God was going to do. There's the the prophecy in Jeremiah about the potter at the wheel, and he watches the potter, and sometimes he makes a beautiful vase, and sometimes he balls it up and starts over. And then Jeremiah gets the message. If God had planned good for some country and they reject him, he can pull that good back. And if God decided someone's going to receive judgment and they repent, they can still change. So in some circumstances, that was part of the message, too, that things can change for us if we follow what God does, repent, and try to live a new life. But the prophets are not there to make you feel good about things in this life that are going to be difficult. It's the long term that we keep keep our eyes on and the future long-term goal that God has for us.
SPEAKER_02:And we do see from this long string from Old Testament to New, we it's not just long term, as though you're always waiting. We do see the fulfillment, the end that comes that is hope and joy and confidence and all these things. Just thinking of angels to the shepherds. Behold, I bring you good news of great joy. Okay, so this this is news for you that is good and it is joyful. It's for all people. Um what is it? It is the Christ has been born to you. That's not just something that exists in isolation by saying that the Christ has been born, it's everything that the old Old Testament taught about this, that has now been fulfilled here. It's a reality now. And so now's the time. Forget about all the troubles. Now is the joy. And um you know, so just as that happened that way, we can see that through all the difficulties and troubles in our lives, it's long term maybe, but the joy is coming and it is ours.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and you have you have the the reality that the Old Testament generations went many generations waiting for this. And if Luther actually understood Genesis 4 that way, that Eve believed her first child was going to be uh the Messiah, you know, and and and and Luther says she was wrong about the person but right about the promise that she that she believed it. I always feel bad for for Abel. Well, how how would you like to be the second child in the family after that first one? But you know, so there's that advent hymn, what they longed for many a year stands fulfilled in glory here. And we on our end come back year after year to hear the same prophecies, the same promises. For me, it's spent over 70 years of this now, and you say, Well, my parents listen to this, my grandparents, and people will are tempted to give up and say, That's that's that's not going to happen. But the Old Testament prophets encourage us to maintain the hope because God's God's clock is not the same as ours. And uh so we we long for things above what is seen is temporary, what is unseen is eternal. I I brought this little hymn verse along. Yeah. Just because I've always liked this hymn, which I don't know, always made it into new hymnals. I remember it was fifty-six in the old TLH, and I guess it's there now, but it was but but this is in our both, and but didn't have a number, so I think I I don't know if I've checked if it's there now. But Jesus came, the heavens adoring, came with peace and realms on high. So it's looking at the angels uh agreeing with the ministry of Jesus that he's going to come. Jesus came. That's one focus. Jesus comes again in mercy when our hearts are worn with care. Jesus comes to hear's rejoicing. So there's how Jesus comes through word and sacrament in our daily lives. Jesus comes on cloud triumphant, so that's looking for the future element there. And the readings and the hymns and the messages of Advent keep moving back between those those three themes. He came, he comes, he will come. And uh the will come may still take a long time, but uh the encouragement of the prophets gives us an impetus to be patient and to know that that timetable is going to be different.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:The the way our culture puts all the focus in December on Christmas, usually the commercial more commercial aspects of it, makes it hard for Christians to remember that that Advent as a season has has a dual purpose or or talks about two different comings. The one you know that gets most attention is Christ's coming the first time uh in Bethlehem. Um but traditional theme of Advent is also as as Mark mentioned, the the the Jesus coming again, the the second coming. Again, it's what we saw with the first coming, we can apply for for the second coming. I am going through some terrible thing. You know, there's a divorce in my family, there's a death. Um, you know, I uh I just got uh found out I'm pregnant and I'm not married and I don't know what I'm going to do. Uh my mother is uh in the hospital and she's obviously dying, but she's she's is taking a really long time and I hate seeing her suffering. And I I just want this to end. When will it end? All these kinds of challenges that we might might face. You know, as Christians, we know there is an end coming. Christ is coming, all the prophecies are going to be fulfilled, and it's all going to be with joy. So we have faith, we trust that God's going to keep his promises, and he certainly helps us in the meantime. I don't want to forget that, but that's something that we can latch on to.
SPEAKER_03:Do you do you have a favorite prophecy out of them all?
SPEAKER_00:I I think the Micah prophecy has meant more to me in some ways as I've gotten older. When you read before that prophecy, and like in verse 1 and verse 2 of Micah 5, what Micah is saying is they're coming. The Assyrians are coming, and there isn't any way we're going to stop that trauma from happening to our communities. And then he says that Bethlehem is going to be the place where the ruler is going to come. And then he says he will be their peace. So we have political issues. We wonder if the country's going to be hurt by this or that. We want things to change, and we are citizens of this kingdom too. So we we certainly can play a role in that. But the circumstances that are beyond our control, it's Jesus that is our peace, not the right leader, not the right program. He will be our peace. I have to say that last December, when I didn't know what this year was going to turn out to be like, and it's turned out to be a lot like I feared it would be, he is still our peace. That doesn't change.
SPEAKER_03:Well, thank you very much for for being here. And we thank all of our listeners for joining us. And if you have any questions on this episode, you can reach us at lifechallenges.us. And we've pray that everyone's Advent is going well. And um have a blessed Advent season. See you back next time. Bye.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you for joining us for the Life Challenges Podcast from Christian Life Resources. Please consider subscribing to this podcast, giving us a review wherever you access it, and sharing it with friends. We're here to help. So if you have questions on today's topic or other life issues, you can submit them as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes at lifechallenges.us, or email us at podcast at ChristianLiferesources.com. You can find past episodes and other valuable information at lifechallenges.us, so please check it out. For more about our parent organization, please visit ChristianLiferesources.com. They gotta give you wisdom, love, strength, and peace in Christ for every life challenge.
