In his book, The Case for Miracles, Lee Strobeldefines miracles this way: “miracles are outside the normal course of events. They’re a supernatural exception to the way the world usually works.”[1]
Richard Purtill, who was professor emeritus of philosophy at Western Washington University, taught that a “miracle is an event (1) brought about by the power of God that is (2) a temporary (3) exception (4) to the ordinary course of nature (5) for the purpose of showing that God has acted in history.”[2]
I think we can apply both of those definitions to the birth of Jesus. He was born by God’s power, the Holy Spirit. Mary was the only one who had a baby without having relations with a man. It showed God had acted in history.
While we all agree it was a miracle that Mary became pregnant while a virgin and that the baby was the son of God, I think we often forget that it was a miracle that there was even a nation of Israel for Jesus to be born into. Let’s trace Israel’s history.
About 2100 years before Christ was born, God spoke to a man named Abram who was seventy-five years old. God told Abram to move his family 1000 miles from Ur to the land we know as Israel (Gen 12:1–3). He was told by God to establish his family there, even though Abram did not know anyone there and had no idea of what to expect. He traveled those 1000 miles by foot, and twenty-five years later God finally gave Abram and Sara a son whom God said would grow into the nation of Israel (Gen 21:1–7).
About 2000 years before Christ was born, a severe famine (Gen 47:13) came across all of the land in the ancient Near East (the region around the Mediterranean Sea). People were dying (Gen 47:15) and families were selling their kids into slavery to get money for food. But God, through his providence, had placed Abraham’s great grandson Joseph in a prominent job in Egypt with resources, and Abraham’s family continued to live because of God’s placement of Joseph in Egypt (Gen 47:11–12).
About 1400 years before Christ was born, the Jews were in slavery in Egypt (Exod 1:8–14). Life was hard and difficult for them, but God still wanted them to be a unique people in the land of Israel (Exod 19:5–6). So God dramatically led them out of Egypt and to the land God had originally promised to Abraham (Ezek 12:37—15:21).
About 600 years before Christ was born, the Jews were taken into exile by Babylon (2 Kings 24:1—25:30). Even though the Babylonians worked hard to indoctrinate their captives and make their subjugated people “Babylonian”, God preserved the Jews while in exile and helped them remain unique and distinct (Dan 1:8–16).
About 500 years before Christ was born when the Jews were in Babylon, the Babylonians were conquered by the Persians. The Persian king allowed the Jews to return to their land (under king Cyrus, Ezra 1:1–11), rebuild their temple (under king Darius, Ezra 6:1–22), and eventually rebuild the walls around their city (under king Artaxerxes, Neh 1:1—7:3).
About 475 years before Christ was born, a group of Jews still lived in Persia. But a man named Haman in Persia hated the Jews and convinced the king of Persia to write a decree that would kill all of the Jews living in Persia (Esth 3:8–15). However, God provided an alternative decree to allow the Jews to defend themselves (Esth 8:5–14). In a dramatic way, the Jews continued to exist in Persia even after a decree was made allowing the Persian people to kill the Jews (Esth 9:1–9).[3]
About 300 years before Christ was born, a man named Alexander the Great conquered the known world. Alexander the Great conquered territory from northern Africa into southern Russia, as far as what we know is India today. Along with Alexander the Great came the most enlightened and most sophisticated culture there was in the world, Greeks. The Jews faced a decision. Do they maintain their separateness and remain Jews, or do they become Greeks like Alexander the Great wanted them to? With God’s help, the Jews continued to be unique and distinct in spite of the pressure to assimilate into Greek culture.
Alexander the Great died in 331 BC, and his kingdom was divided up into four parts (called the Diadochi). Two of those parts became important for Israel: Syria, ruled by the Seleucids (“the kingdom of the north”) and Egypt, ruled by the Ptolemies (“the kingdom of the south”). From 274–168 BC there were six wars between Syria and Egypt. Israel was literally caught in the middle between them and became a pawn in their wars because Israel was a strategic piece of land that had direct access to the Mediterranean Sea. Eventually, the Seleucids of the north of Syria took control of Israel.[4] And later the Romans grew in power and influence and gained control of Israel.
That’s the history of the Jewish people whom God miraculously preserved because God promised to Abraham and to King David (2 Sam 7:11–16) that there would be a people to whom the Messiah would be born.
It’s a miracle that the Holy Spirit conceived Jesus inside Mary, that she became pregnant without ever being with a man, and that God became human among us. But it is also a miracle that there was even a nation for Jesus to be born into.
As if that’s not enough, we see those past miracles still existing today. There is a people of Israel in the land of Israel. While some people debate whether or not Israel should be there or has a right to be there, most of us cannot debate the unlikeliness that Israel would be there. Most of us have to admit that it’s a modern miracle that Israel is back in the land.[5] The Jews were conquered by Babylon in 605 BC and ceased to be a people without a land for more than 2,500 years until their return to the land in 1948.[6]
The miracle of Christmas is this: The Son of God left his throne in heaven, and he came to earth. Paul describes this in his letter to the believers in the city of Philippi, “who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men” (Phil 2:6–7, NASB).[7]
The miracle of Christmas is that God came to us. He did not tell us a list of rules or sacrifices by which we are supposed to approach him. Instead, he took initiative. He came to us as one of us, and we celebrate that on Christmas when Christ the Savior was born as a baby.
What a miracle it was that God became a human, but it is also a miracle that the nation of Israel still existed for him to be born into.
When we praise God this Christmas, we praise him for the whole picture—not just the baby—but all the miracles that led up to that baby, the miracles we see today, and the miracles yet to come. That’s the miracle of Christmas.
[1] Lee Strobel, The Case for Miracles (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2018), 252.
[2] Richard L. Purtill, “Defining Miracles,” in In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God’s Action in History, ed. R. Douglas Geivett and Gary R. Habermas (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1997), 71. Quoted in Lee Strobel, The Case for Miracles (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2018), 27.
[3] Next we find the silent years, that period of time between Malachi and Matthew. We have 400 years where no Scripture is spoken to the nation of Israel. But God was still active in preserving Israel.
[4] In 175 Antiochus IV (Epiphanes) came to power.
[5] Their temple was destroyed in AD 70 and for the next 1900 years Jews live in scattered locations all around the world.
[6] There was a short period of time when Israel reclaimed their temple in 164 BC. This we call the Maccabean revolt. The conflict between the Seleucids rose drastically when Antiochus (IV) Epiphanies erected an altar in the Jewish temple and sacrificed pigs to the pagan god, Zeus. This act was predicted by Daniel (Dan 11:31) and became a model for what the New Testament mentions as the Abomination of Desolation (Dan 9:27; Matt 24:15). With that act, Antiochus commanded Jews to offer similar sacrifices at other locations. The pious Jews had reached their limit of the Pagan attacks on their faith. The Maccabean revolt was the result. The Maccabean revolt began when a priest, Mattathiah, and his five sons killed an Israelite about to offer one of those pagan sacrifices. What followed was a three-year guerrilla war campaign. Mattathiah died, but his son Judas Maccabeus became a fierce leader, and they claimed victory in 164 BC. This victory began a period of rule by the Jews known as the Hasmoneans, the family name of Matthias’s ancestry. This was the only time since the Babylonian exile that Israel had political control of her temple and her land. The Hasmonean dynasty, while producing extreme hope in the Jews, only lasted until 37 BC. (Bock, Studying the Historical Jesus, p. 90).
[7] Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible, Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.