[This devotion is part of our series on The Apostles’ Creed, you can find all the videos in there series on our Apostles’ Creed Page. The devotions will be added as they are posted.]

Micah 5:2, Zechariah 9:9, Psalm 41:9, Zechariah 11:12-13, Psalm 22, Genesis 3:15, Isaiah 7:14

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I believe Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary. What are the odds of this seemingly simple Bible prophecy coming true? Well, to talk about the odds, I imagine most of you are probably familiar with the lottery. Do you know what your odds are of winning the lottery? It’s 1 in 300,000,000. That number is expressed as three times ten to the eighth power. Eight is the number of zeroes that comes after the three.

If you want to visualize this number three times ten to the eighth power. Picture a football stadium. And if you were to fill that football stadium with golf balls, you would have about 300 million golf balls. So imagine marking one golf ball, dropping it in there, stirring them all up, and three times ten to the eighth power would be your odds of picking exactly that golf ball out of that stadium.

A mathematician by the name of Peter Stoner wanted to know the odds of biblical prophecy coming true. And so he and a team of mathematicians, together with some anthropologists based on population numbers from what we know about ancient civilization, wanted to calculate the odds of just eight biblical prophecies coming true. So they picked some things, like being born in the city of Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), riding into Jerusalem on a colt (Zechariah 9:9), being betrayed by a friend (Psalm 41:9) for 30 pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12-13), and being crucified (Psalm 22). They came up with one times ten to the 17th power, were the odds of those eight biblical prophecies coming true.

Let’s visualize that number one times ten to the 17th power. So we actually have to leave the football stadium behind to visualize this number. And we have to go to the state of Texas, the entire state of Texas, 268,000mi². We’re going to cover the state of Texas with golf balls 37ft deep. Take one golf ball, put a mark on it, drop it in and mix them all up, and one time ten to the 17th power your odds of picking that golf ball up. That’s just eight biblical prophecies.

So Peter Stoner and his team wanted to know, what does 16 biblical prophecies look like? The number is one times ten to the 45th power. To visualize this number, we have to leave the planet Earth behind. Go to the center of our solar system and start building a planet with golf balls. If you were to have enough golf balls to have 45 zeros in the number, you would have a planet with a radius that is 2.7 billion miles long in every direction. Your planet of golf balls would have swallowed up the sun, the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and have gone just past the orbit of the planet Neptune. Mark one golf ball, drop it in, mix it up. And one times ten to the 45th power is your odds of drawing exactly that golf ball out.

What if we triple it? What if it’s just 48 biblical prophecies coming true. What are the odds of that? Well, the odds are one times ten to the 157th power. That is a number so big that if you were to use golf balls, you would fill the known universe with golf balls and then some. There are over 400 prophecies directly connected to Jesus, and many of which were already fulfilled in his life on earth.

But of all the amazing prophecies that come together in the life of Jesus, the most profound is just one. In Genesis three, when God says that the seed of a woman would come and crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15). In Isaiah, when he would promise that the Virgin will give birth to a child and will give him the name Emmanuel, which means God with us (Isaiah 7:14). Just what are the odds of the infinite God who fills the whole universe, coming down to be born of a virgin, getting nailed to a cross and by his foot being struck on the cross that he would crush the serpent’s head. What are the odds of that? Amen.

Genesis 1:9-10, Micah 7:19

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Hi you guys, is Pastor Pittenger again, and today we’re going to read about the third day of creation. So this is from Genesis 1, this is verses 9 and 10.

And God said, let the waters underneath the heavens be gathered together into one place and let dry land appear. And it was so God called the dry land earth and the waters that were gathered together. He called seas and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:9-10)

So as God created all that water and separated it from up above and down below, then he gathered those waters into places like ponds and lakes and rivers, but eventually all those things end up in the ocean or in seas.

Did you know that oceans or the sea is so big that it wasn’t until just a few hundred years ago that people found a way to safely sail across the ocean or the sea? That means that for thousands and thousands of years, people couldn’t cross them and get to new places. The seas were just too large and it was too hard to know where you were to navigate. And the waves were too strong for the little boats that people were making.

Well, not today. Today ships sail back and forth across the ocean, submarines, and even scuba divers travel underneath the waves. But still, God’s seas are still quite a mystery to us. Scientists say that they know more about the moon out in space like, four hundred thousand miles away, then they know about the ocean. I live one mile from the ocean. And we know more about the moon than it.

God created the seas to be very, very deep in places, the deepest spot in the world is called Challenger Deep. It’s a place so deep that if you could pick up the biggest mountain, the tallest mountain in the world, Mount Everest, you could drop it down in that place and it would go underwater completely. It would disappear and you wouldn’t be able to see it. That’s how deep the ocean is.

So I want you to pretend that you’re on a ship and you’re floating out there over that spot in the ocean. Now, pretend that you reached in your pocket and you could pull out rocks, stones from your pocket. And each stone had written on it your sins. Bad things, naughty things, that you had done when you didn’t listen to your mom and dad, when you didn’t obey God’s word, pull all those rocks out. What would happen if you went over to the railing, the side of the ship, and you dropped them into the sea? Well if that giant mountain disappeared, these little stones would disappear as well. They’d be gone and no one could ever find them again.

Listen to the second Bible reading that I have for you today. It’s from Micah chapter 7, verse 19 here, God says:

You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. (Micah 7:19)

Except God doesn’t take us on an ocean voyage to get rid of our sins. No, in Jesus, God has promised that our sins have been forgiven and washed away and they’re completely gone. God says he doesn’t even remember them. And so in Jesus, we are new people, forgiven and loved and free. Love him in return.

The Bible tells me so.

We’ll see you guys later.

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There must have been quite a stir that day in Jerusalem.

Scholarly men from the East had traveled hundreds of miles following a miracle star that they said was telling them where the king of the Jews was to be born. That star led them to Jerusalem.

Many people must have been impressed, God performed this incredible miracle, a star to indicate the birth of Messiah. The birth of the savior.

Where does that star lead? It leads them to Jerusalem to inquire of the religious leaders there.

Where was the Messiah to be born? The religious leaders don’t turn to crystal balls or to fortune-telling or miracles or the spiritual movings, but they turn to the simple and plain word of God. To the prophet Micah and there they find God’s simple truths laid out in complete detail as Matthew records for us in his second chapter

But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel. —Matthew 2:6

The details were all there. Plainly written down in scripture. The Messiah, the king of the Jews, was to be born in Bethlehem in Judea. It also describes who this baby was. The one who would Shepherd God’s people.

Micah in his fifth chapter gives us a bit more detail even as he describes this one

whose origins are from of old, from ancient times. —Micah 5:2

Certainly this was a precious child who was born, who was himself eternal, the Ancient of Days, God come down to earth to be born a human being for the salvation of mankind.

We are certainly impressed by miracles and outward signs and God at times has given those things, but the place where he has promised to give us his specific details concerning his plan of salvation is in his Holy Word.

He invites us to seek that word, to read it, to see his plan of salvation there. That the Christ child who comes comes as our Savior from sin. Amen.