The Bible has one overarching story, even though it comes in two parts. The Old Testament can be summed up this way: God created, we rebelled, we ran away, He’s coming after us. The story of the New Testament is about how He came after us.
It’s easy to think that the climax of that story was the birth of Jesus, the Savior that God had promised since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden. That’s not the case, though. It was an important turning point, but the real climax of the story was Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. It was an event that was witnessed by the disciples, then later by up to 500 people in the book of 1 Corinthians, and it was what convinced them that Jesus was truly their Lord and Savior.
Even after His followers had seen all He had done before and after the resurrection, they still didn’t fully understand what He had come to do. They still expected their Messiah to rule over them on earth, for one. They also didn’t expect Him to leave again. When Jesus ascended back to heaven after 40 days, they finally began to understand all that He had told them and all that the Old Testament had promised.
One day, Peter was preaching in the temple and explained to the crowd what he and the rest of Jesus’ followers at last understood: “Friends, I realize that what you and your leaders did to Jesus was done in ignorance. But God was fulfilling what all the prophets had foretold about the Messiah—that he must suffer these things. Now repent of your sins and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped away. Then times of refreshment will come from the presence of the Lord, and he will again send you Jesus, your appointed Messiah.” (Acts 3:17-20 NLT).
They began to look back at the writings of the Old Testament prophets in a different light. They realized that Jesus leaving them was an important piece of the puzzle. Peter went on in that same sermon to say, “For he must remain in heaven until the time for the final restoration of all things, as God promised long ago through his holy prophets” (Acts 3:21 NLT). The resurrection of Jesus had been God’s promise that the best was yet to come.
All of the prophecies made sense in light of Jesus. Isaiah predicted a day when the very nature of Creation would be so changed that “The wolf will live with the lamb” and “the lion will eat straw like the ox” (Isaiah 11:6-10 NIV). There would be a time when there was such an end to war that people “will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” (Isaiah 2:4 NIV). Ezekiel said that when the Lord came again, everyone would see that the land that had been laid to waste had transformed to look like the Garden of Eden (Ezekiel 36:33-36 NIV).
Isaiah had said, “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind” (Isaiah 65:17 NIV). When John received the vision that is recorded in the Book of Revelation, he called that same language back to mind because he finally understood what Isaiah had been talking about. “Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea” (Revelation 21:1 NIV).
God promised things to people over and over again throughout the Old Testament. He promised a Savior to Adam and Eve that would crush the serpent forever. He promised Abraham that he would be father to a nation that would bless the world. He promised David a dynasty that would never end. What we see as we read through the Bible is that God kept all these promises.
God will also keep the promise He made to us through His messengers when Jesus ascended back to heaven from the Mount of Olives. The book of Acts records the apostles “were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. ‘Men of Galilee,’ they said, ‘why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven’” (Acts 1:9-11 NIV).
God has kept every promise He has ever made, and He always will. When Jesus comes again, “‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4 NIV). The most important thing to celebrate during Advent is that we’ve only seen the First Advent of Jesus. When He comes again, everything that is wrong in the world will be made right. The most important thing about the First Advent is the Second Advent.
