God’s plan has been unfolding for millennia and now it is finally coming to its culmination. As you read last week, God has been telling people about His plan of redemption since the fall into sin and now the Savior is finally here. Even so, before Jesus arrived God needed to put a few last things into place.

The first item which sets the stage is the birth of the forerunner of the Messiah. This person is born so that He could be a flashing street sign pointing people to the Savior.

The second matter which needed attention was the finding of the Savior’s birth mother and a step-father who were both descended from David, and, further back in time, Abraham. We will begin reading about these last preparations for the Savior and about the Savior’s arrival in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These books are called Gospels and are the first four books of the New Testament. They were all written by Apostles, or people who got their information directly from the Apostles, and each one focuses on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus from different angles and in different ways. We will spend most of our time in the gospels of Luke and John. Now, having said the rule, here is an exception to that rule: when Matthew and Mark offer information that which does not appear in Luke and John, we will look to them for help.

Please note: on some days we will start our readings with a short verse or two from the Old Testament. This is done in order to emphasize the connections between the promises which God had made in the past with the fulfillment of those promises in Christ.

With that, let’s begin looking at what the whole Old Testament was leading up to…