Christ Revealed

Christ Revealed
A Christmas Devotional

Christ Revealed
At Christmas we pause to remember that during the days of the Roman
empire, in one of its far-away provinces, the Son of God came into this
world. This event, anticipated in the Old Testament, proclaimed by angels
and celebrated by us, changed our history.
Yet it should not be seen in isolation. The birth of Jesus was the beginning
of his earthly life, and culminated in his death and resurrection. Its meaning
comes from being a part of a larger picture.
This reflection explores Christmas by tracing the life of Christ through the
glimpses of Old Testament prophecy. All the devotions (except day three)
look at an OT passage from Isaiah or the Psalms which is quoted in the NT.
The passages are treated ‘chronologically’, beginning with the Incarnation,
and then looking at Jesus’s public ministry, the cross, the resurrection
and his exaltation. To get the full picture, it is best to read the OT passage
together with the NT reference in its immediate context.
Dr Charlie Hadjiev
Lecturer in Old Testament and Hebrew

‘Isaiah saw his glory
and spoke about him’
John 12:41
1. The Incarnation
Read: Isaiah 6:1-13
The year that King Uzziah died Isaiah
had a vision. He saw the Lord sitting on
a throne above the temple of Jerusalem.
The temple was too small. It could not
contain within its walls the Creator of
the world. Only the rim of his robes
filled the building, but the fullness of
his glory covered the face of the earth.
Seraphs with six wings flew around the
Lord, proclaiming his holiness. The
shaking thresholds and the smoke, like
the thunderstorm and earthquake on
Mount Sinai, reminded the prophet that
there was a dangerous and frightening
aspect to God’s presence.
Isaiah was shaken by this experience
because he was confronted with
transcendence and power. He was
afraid. Faced with the holiness of
God, he was acutely aware of his own
unworthiness. But the vision of divine
power was not accessible to everybody
in Jerusalem. In fact, the prophet
was the only one who saw it. Isaiah’s
contemporaries had eyes, but did not
see the blazing glory. They had ears,
but did hear the voice that shook the
thresholds. Their hearts were dull, not
troubled by thoughts about their own
unworthiness.
Quoting this passage from Isaiah, John
makes a remarkable claim. The glory
that Isaiah saw was nothing else but the
glory of Jesus. And during John’s time
that glory was physically present among
the people of Judea. They, like Isaiah’s
contemporaries, had eyes but could not
see.
In Jesus, the Lord did not send us a
prophet to tell us of the divine glory.
He came to earth so that we can
experience his glory first-hand. Yet, as
it enters our reality the glory of Jesus
does not overpower us with spectacular
brightness or force itself on us. The
Word became flesh. We still require
hearts that are humble, ears that are
willing to listen, and eyes that are open
to see his glory for ourselves.

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‘And they shall name him
Emmanuel, God with us’
Matthew 1:23
2. The Incarnation
Read: Isaiah 7:10-17
It was not easy to be a king in
Jerusalem, especially in 734 BC, Ahaz
had just discovered. The armies of his
scheming neighbours were advancing
towards the city, bent on conquest and
intrigue. They wanted to replace him
with a puppet king who would do their
bidding. And who knows what they’d do
to Ahaz, once their soldiers were inside
Jerusalem’s walls. The life prospects
of deposed kings are not usually great.
All was hanging in the balance: his job,
his life, his family. No wonder Ahaz
was scared out of his wits. His heart
was shaking like the trees in a forest
battered by an almighty storm.
The boy Emmanuel from the days of
Ahaz was only a shadow of the things
to come. In the fullness of time another
boy would be born to a Judean virgin,
the true Emmanuel, the real God-withus.
To people enslaved by darkness and
sin, the true Emmanuel brings the same
promise. ‘He will save his people from
their sins’, the angel tells Joseph. He
is going to bring deliverance from the
power of darkness. He is going to rescue
those who are held in bondage. There is
no need to fear. ‘I am with you always,
to the end of the age’, he says (Matthew
28.20).
It is to a scared king that Isaiah, the
prophet, comes with a promise of a
sign. The virgin shall conceive and
give birth to a son, whose name will be
Emmanuel. The name of the boy is the
essence of the sign. It means ‘God with
us’. It promises the Lord’s presence in
the midst of a city threatened with war
and defeat. God is with us in this crisis
and he will sort a way out of it.

‘He has raised up a mighty
saviour for us in the house
of his servant David’ Luke 1:69
3. The Incarnation
Read: Isaiah 9:1-7
Israel needed a mighty saviour, a king
to lead them in their battles and protect
them from the enemy. During the
time of Isaiah those enemies were the
Assyrians. When Zechariah, the father
of John the Baptist, had his vision in the
temple those enemies were the Romans.
Whatever the name of the foe, the root
problem remains always the same: war,
strife, oppression. A king would help to
solve those problems. He would defend
his country because he was a mighty
saviour.
However, the people of God had
another problem as well, one which
was discussed less often. There was
no righteousness and justice in their
midst. Isaiah laments this over and over
again. Jerusalem ‘was full of justice,
righteousness lodged in her – but now
murderers’ (1:21). The Lord planted
his people like a vineyard and looked
after them. ‘He expected justice but saw
bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a
cry’ (5:7).
We shy away from talking about the
injustices we commit. It is more
comfortable to complain about the
cruelty of other nations than to focus
on our shortcomings. But to God
both things matter. Our troubles
are important to him but the moral
quality of our lives equally matters.
Unrighteousness is never a secondary
issue.
So Isaiah promises the nation a new
king, a mighty saviour from the house
of David. He will break the yoke of
oppression. But the climax of his reign
is the inner transformation of the
nation. It is the gift of endless peace,
justice and righteousness not just for
Israel but within Israel. The Son of God
who came to reign in our midst wants
to lead us in the path of justice. His
kingdom makes possible the fruit of
righteousness in our lives. He came to
transform us and make us as we ought
to be. A people of justice.

‘Today this scripture has
been fulfilled in your
hearing’ Luke 4:21
4. The Public Ministry of Jesus
Read: Isaiah 61:1-4
Synagogue last Sabbath ended
awkwardly. The folk from Nazareth
almost killed one of their own. They
were trying to throw him off a cliff but
it didn’t work somehow.
It all started when Jesus, a local boy,
was asked to do the Scripture reading.
He picked up a passage from the book
of Isaiah. Beautiful words described
the ministry of the ancient prophet.
Isaiah was anointed by God’s Spirit to
bring good news to his downtrodden
contemporaries: comfort to those who
grieve, healing to those who hurt, liberty
to those who were in bondage.
Jesus read the passage quite well. After
he finished reading things went wrong.
Jesus wasn’t content simply to present
those inspiring verses and let us enjoy
their beauty. He claimed, out of the
blue, that this Scripture was fulfilled
today in our hearing. Those who are
now captives can enter freedom. Those
among us who are broken-hearted can
experience wholeness.
Those of us who are filled with sorrow
can find joy today. It was startling
to hear someone with whom we had
rubbed shoulders these past thirty years
speak in such a way. We were outraged,
naturally.
It is strange for someone who offers
healing, freedom and joy to provoke
such a reaction. Why are people
angry when faced with the offer of
restoration? Is it just too good to be
true? Is faith really so difficult?
The Son of God comes to us in the
everyday reality of our lives. He seems
both strange and familiar, as if we grew
up with him on the streets of Nazareth
but never realised who he really was.
The mundane tries to blind us so that
we cannot recognise him. Our prisons
and our broken hearts feel so real. Pain
makes sure of that. But his voice pierces
the veil of pain, familiarity and doubt:
‘The Spirit of the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to you. Today’.

‘He will not break
a bruised reed’
Matthew 12:20
5. The Public Ministry of Jesus
Read: Isaiah 42:1-9
A mysterious figure emerges in the
second half of the book of Isaiah. He
is not called a king but a servant, the
servant of the Lord. The presence of
God’s Spirit is his most distinctive
characteristic. God’s utter delight in
him marks him out as special. The
servant has universal significance. He
will establish justice in the earth. All
nations, even those living in faraway
lands, will look to him and wait for his
teaching. He brings hope and light. The
glory of God is his focus and the power
of God is his fountain of strength.
Yet the most remarkable feature of this
servant is his meekness. He does not
shout. He does not seek to be the centre
of attention. He does not establish
himself by boasting and throwing
around his weight. The Servant of
the Lord is no bully. Instead, he lifts
up those who are meek. He does not
quench even a dimly burning wick,
one which has come to the end of its
usefulness. To him people are not a
human resource or means for achieving
higher goals. They are the goal.
Matthew uses this passage to explain
the healing ministry of Jesus. The Son
of God engages those who are on the
margins: the sick, the poor, the outcast,
the unclean. These people have no
competitive advantage. Society has no
use for them but that does not matter
to Jesus. He did not recruit mighty
warriors; he gathers bruised reeds.
It is not a sign of weakness. The Servant
of the Lord will not break a bruised
reed, but neither will he ‘grow faint
or be crushed until he has established
justice on the earth’. There is power
there, a different kind of power. Not
violent, threatening, or self-asserting.
Not self-seeking or idolatrous. The
power of the Servant makes all things
new and rekindles the dimly burning
wick.

‘My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me?’
6. The Cross
Read: Psalm 22
Matthew 27:46
It is dark at midday. In the midst of a
boisterous crowd Jesus is on his own.
People laugh, jeer and walk about,
but on the other side of the curtain
of noise there is emptiness. Utter
loneliness wraps the cross. Everybody
has left. Some scurried away with guilty
embarrassment. Some made the smart
move, switching to the winning side.
Some just weren’t there when the blows
began to fall. Jesus has been abandoned
by all. Even God is hidden in the safe
distance of heaven.
And so a cry pierces the veil of isolation
and in vain seeks to reach the sky. My
God! Why? It is the perennial question.
Even in moments of profound suffering
we still try to make sense of the world.
We want to understand. Why is this
happening to me? What is the point?
What is the reason?
his clothes. The bystanders strip him
of his dignity. They mock, shake their
heads and come up with witty jibes. No
wonder he thinks: ‘I am a worm and not
a human’ (Ps. 22:6). His body, his whole
being is disintegrating. The bones are
out of joint and his organs are melting
like wax.
On the cross Jesus entered fully into the
human experience of degradation and
abandonment. The cry ‘My God, why
have you forsaken me?’ is an outburst
of searing pain, all too well known to
people crushed by torture and a sense
of hopelessness. Now such people have
the Son of God in their midst. That
moment of pure despair tells us without
a shadow of doubt: God has truly
become one of us. He stands where we
stand. He can feel our pain.
There may be an answer to the question
‘why’, but it does not come as the
psalmist prays the prayer of Psalm
22. Instead, he remains the object
of continuing outbursts of violence.
Bulls, lions, dogs and wild oxen attack
him viciously. Robbers strip him of

‘By his wounds you have
been healed’ 1 Peter 2:24
7. The Cross
Read: Isaiah 52:13 - 53:12
To us, casual bystanders, the Servant
of the Lord was unimpressive. His
appearance was marred beyond human
semblance. He had no form or majesty
to attract attention, no beauty that
inspires admiration. Just the opposite.
His sufferings marked him out as an
unfortunate man, one whose company
had little to offer and was not to be
sought after. People shunned him,
appalled by his infirmities, or passed
him by without even noticing him. A
man of no consequence.
Yet, how little we understood what
we saw! How fooled we were by the
appearance of things! The man of
suffering was the arm of the Lord
revealed to us. That arm which in the
days of old woke up to fight the dragon
and redeem the people of God (Isa
51:9-11), was amongst us, his beauty
and strength hidden behind afflictions,
wounds and rejection.
We thought the wounds had nothing
to do with us. They were perhaps the
unfortunate results of coincidence,
a cosmic tragedy, unfair and brutal.
Or even worse, maybe they were the
just reward for some of his own past
misdeeds. In any case we did not
perceive those wounds as ours. In his
affliction we did not recognise our
suffering.
We were so used to seeing lambs
sacrificed at the altar, that when he was
taken away by a perversion of justice
and cut off from the land of the living
we did not see the truth: he was our
ultimate sin offering. That is why we
were startled when he was exalted and
lifted high. We now have to go back and
rethink what we saw. And as we do this
we begin to see more and more clearly.
He was wounded for our transgressions
and crushed for our iniquities. So in his
wounds there is healing for us. Through
the injustice he suffered we can be
made righteous. His condemnation and
death brought us salvation and life.

‘You have made known to
me the ways of life’ ACTS 2:28
8. The resurrection
Read: Psalm 16
We live in a random world full of
unintended consequences, unexpected
disasters and inexplicable turns. The
world must have seemed particularly
random on the day after the crucifixion
of Jesus. A lost saviour, an executed
king, a silenced teacher. What could be
more random than that?
The resurrection reshapes and redefines
that world. It heals it of its randomness.
The resurrection shows that trust in
God is not a delusion suitable only
for fanatics and lunatics. It is a viable
lifestyle choice. In fact, it is the only
good choice we have.
As David prays in Psalm 16, he reflects
on the choices he has to make in life.
He worships no other gods but the
Lord. The Lord alone is his refuge and
outside of him there is no good. And
Jesus faced those same choices as well.
He did not bow down to Satan in order
to receive all the kingdoms of this world
quickly and painlessly. He did not give
in to the Roman and Jewish authorities
in order to save his life.
David’s prayer overflows with joy, not
because these choices are always easy.
They were certainly not easy for Jesus
who paid for them by being thrown
in the Pit. The joy comes not from
the expectation that life will be plain
sailing, but from the confidence that
God is not going to give him up to the
power of Sheol. The person who sets
the Lord always before them cannot be
annihilated. The resurrection proves
that. As Jesus rose from the grave God
unveiled the path of life before him.
And what is true of Jesus is also true of
his followers. The Lord is my chosen
portion and my cup. Therefore, the Pit
cannot be the end.

‘And now, Lord, look at their threats
and grant to your servants to speak
your word with all boldness’ ACTS 4:29
9. The Kingdom
Read: Psalm 2:1-11
A new king is about to be revealed. The
Lord himself, who sits in heaven, has
established him on his holy hill. The
decree of the Lord is given to the king
during his enthronement. It contains
a solemn declaration in fulfilment of
the ancient Davidic pledge: ‘You are my
son, today I have begotten you’. The
king is God’s Son, his representative on
earth. The nations are his heritage. The
ends of the earth belong to him.
However, it is not a happy event. The
nations do not bend the knee willingly.
They do not want to recognise the
authority of the Lord’s anointed.
They conspire and plot against him,
scheming how to break the divine
yoke and achieve ‘true freedom’. They
do not want any restrictions coming
from God. The laws of the divine king
are not welcome. The peoples of this
world want to order their lives without
reference to the wisdom of God. It is a
revolution.
The apostles quoted Psalm 2 in their
prayer after they were arrested by the
Sanhedrin and ordered not to preach
Jesus to the crowds (Acts 4:1-31).
This prayer helps to put the psalm
in perspective. When the Son of God
talks about ruling the ends of the
earth with a rod of iron and dashing
rebels like pieces of pottery, he is not
thinking about military violence, or
political and economic power wielded
by his followers. The apostles are a
weak minority, without resources or
influence, preaching a strange message
in a faraway province at the periphery
of the empire. They do not have rods
of iron and they can’t dash anybody’s
head.
The military language expresses a
spiritual truth. Human schemes cannot
thwart God’s design. The nations will
never acquire ‘true freedom’ outside
of the realm of God’s anointed. Their
threats will not achieve the desired
effect. And so the apostles pray, not for
a rod of iron to smash the opposition,
but for boldness to speak the truth
of the Gospel and to be ready to bear
the consequences of their witness in a
manner worthy of their crucified and
risen king. Their victory is achieved ‘by
the word of their testimony, for they
did not cling to life even in the face of
death’ (Rev. 12:11).

‘The last enemy to be
destroyed is death’
1 CorinthIAns 15:26
10. The eschaton
Read: Psalm 110
With Psalm 110 we are back in the
throne room, observing another
coronation ceremony. We do not get to
see all the details, just the climax of the
ritual. Our gaze is fixed on God himself
who sits on his throne. As the king
approaches, the Lord speaks. The words
are striking: ‘sit at my right hand’. It is
an invitation to enter the presence of
God and assume a position of honour
and power. And then God speaks again:
‘you are a priest forever according to
the order of Melchizedek’. The kingpriest
is to represent his people before
God and to mediate God’s presence
to the nation. He is to be the living
conduit which connects the divine and
the human sphere.
The rest of the psalm, however, is
filled with disturbing scenes of military
violence. The reign of the king is not a
peaceful one, at least to begin with. The
king leads his forces into battle. On his
behalf the Lord will shatter kings and
fill the nations with corpses. And all
this violence continues until everyone
is subjugated and the enemies are made
into a footstool of the king.
In that humiliating position the
defeated foes will serve forever as a
visual symbol of his enduring power
and authority.
The New Testament makes it quite
clear that the king at the right hand
of God and the eternal priest in the
order of Melchizedek is no other than
Jesus himself. That is why it is difficult
to reconcile the psalm’s picture of
nations filled with corpses and the
reign of the Son of God who teaches us
to love our enemies. Here Paul helps
us to understand the military imagery.
The enemies are not people of flesh
and blood, but the cosmic forces of
wickedness. The last, most resilient and
powerful enemy is death itself.
Christ conquers the world, defeats evil
and destroys death not by violence, but
by self-sacrifice. When his victory is
complete death itself will die and God
will be all in all. And so we can look to
the future with hope. The reign of the
priest-king opens before us a world of
peace cleansed by the king’s own blood,
not the blood of his enemies.

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A golden Halo
God's Glory
Three Strands
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God with Us
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Stars
House of David
Oak Leaf
Oaks of righteousness
Candle
Rekindling the dimly
burning wicks
Crown of
Thorns
Christ's crucifixion
Red Berries
The wounds of Christ
IVY
Resurection &
Eternal Life
PURPLE RIBBON
Christ's Kingship
Laurel Wreath
Christ's Victory

Written by Dr Charlie Hadjiev
Illustrated by Cecilia Lund
Belfast Bible College
Glenburn House
Glenburn Road South
Belfast
BT17 9JP
www.belfastbiblecollege.com