Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - God With Us | Historical Books | Isaiah 51:1-16

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

Where is your home? Where do you find comfort? What is the good news of great joy? In today's episode, Jensen shares how Isaiah 51:1-16 reminds us that God made his home with us in Jesus' birth. Read the Bible with us in 2026! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Isaiah 51:1-16

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. Today, all across the world, believers will gather together to celebrate the coming birth of Jesus. For many, a Christmas Eve service has become a tradition, a holiday staple, a night filled with joyful songs and candlelight surrounded by family. Christmas is magical. It brings warmth and light to a season that is often. often cold and dark. Candlelight, community, joyful songs, these are all comforting and uplifting parts of the day. But as I read Isaiah 51, I was reminded in the first three verses of the key reason why Christmas is capable of bringing us true lasting joy, even more than songs and candles

and the warmth of a fire and the love of a family. In Luke 2, the angels declared, I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today, in the town of David, a savior has been born to you. He is the Messiah, the Lord. Now, I'm guessing this isn't the first time this Christmas season that you've heard these verses. The angels declaring to shepherds that Jesus has been born. They say it is good news for all people. They say he's the Messiah. And when our modern ears hear that Jesus is born, I'm sure that our minds are filled with hundreds of things about him. The way he died for our sins, the way he became a baby to rescue us from death that he rose from the dead so we could live with him again one day. Isaiah 51 opens with this. Listen to me. You who

pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord, look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the quarry from which you were dug. So there's this call for this. those who seek the Lord to look to the rock and quarry that you've come from, to look back, to see where your story begins. You see, when we think about Christmas, I think we often think about what it means for me right now, for my faith, for my salvation, for my future. But when Jesus came to earth as a humble baby, he came not just for you, but in fulfillment of all the promises of God. He came as the crux of a larger story of redemption that God had been weaving throughout history. And when the angels declared that the Messiah was being

born that this was good news for all people, they were harking back to that larger story. They were placing the birth of Jesus squarely in God's redemptive plan for all of creation. The same rock and quarry that Isaiah speaks about in Isaiah 51. Verse 2. Look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah who bore you. for he was but one when I called him that I might bless him and multiply him. So Isaiah, he's calling us back to the story of Abraham, the father of God's people. Abraham and Sarah, they were barren, childless, hopeless, until God called him, and did the impossible, remained faithful to his promises, and multiplied him into a nation as numerous as the stars. Speaking of Abraham and his faith in Hebrews 11, we can read this.

this. By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going, for he was looking forward to the city with foundations whose architect and builder is God. Abraham had the promise of an inheritance, the promise that he would be multiplied into a great nation, and though he could not see how he followed God. He was looking forward to a city that God would build. Hebrews 11 goes on to say that all who lived by faith, who trust in God, were longing for a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. What does this all mean? Well, the story of God's people begins with the expulsion from their home,

from a garden from Eden. But in Abraham, we see God's redemptive plan begin to unfold to bring his people back home. They longed for the place where they could dwell with God. For hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, God's people had been exiled, scattered from the homeland where God used to dwell in a temple among them. Some had returned, but God remained silent. His redemptive plans seemed to be on hold. All they had were promises. Promises of the one, the servant, the son of man, the Messiah, the descendant of David, the rightful king who would come and make all things right again for God's people. And so, when the angels declared that the Messiah had been born, they were weaving the birth of Jesus into God's redemptive plan for all people.

into the plan that Isaiah speaks about in verse 3 when he writes, For the Lord comforts Zion, He comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, Her desert like the garden of the Lord, joy and gladness will be found in her, Thanksgiving, and the voice of song. The Lord comforts his people, even in the wilderness, in the desert, in the waste places,

when it seems like God has been silent, When you are in exile, when the land is barren, God's people can hold fast to the promise that out of nothing, out of wilderness and desert, God will produce Eden. He will produce the Garden of the Lord. He will rebuild and restore and create a home for his people to be united with him once again. There will be joy and gladness, thanksgiving, and praise. The birth of Jesus was good news. because it meant that God remained faithful, as he always had been, to the redemption of his people. He would build them a city, a kingdom, a new and better Eden, and this Messiah somehow, some way, would be the one to do it. You see, the good news of Jesus' birth brings great joy for all people, because it reminds us that God is committed to restoring all of creation.

He is so committed that he became man, that he became a baby, so that he could live as the faithful Israelite. He could be the human who didn't chase after idols, didn't rebel, but who remained faithful. He could become the sacrificial lamb, the representative of all of God's people. He could take on our sin. He could bear the punishment of our sin,

and he could take it to the grave. And then because he was blameless, guiltless, because he is God, he would conquer death by rising from the grave. By becoming the first of the resurrected, in his death and resurrection, he established his authority in heaven and on earth over all the powers of darkness. He was crowned king, the conquering Messiah, and he promised to return again, and bring those who faithfully follow him into his kingdom for all of eternity. Jesus is preparing

a home for his people, one that will not be destroyed, one that cannot be taken away, all are welcome to come, all are welcome to be joined into the family of God. Jesus, drew near to us so that we could draw near to him for all of eternity. That is the good news that produces great joy for all people. That is what we celebrate, the finality and security of our future as God's people that was one when God became man, when a baby named Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem. Out of the wastelands, out of desert, out of wilderness, out of our broken world, God will, redeem, restore, and recreate Eden for his people, a garden city where we can dwell with him forever. So tonight, as you sing, as you worship, as you enjoy the gifts that God

has blessed you with, remember who that baby is. Remember what his birth means, not just for you, but for all people and all of creation. Long for the city that he is building for you. Remember that the good news of Jesus' birth changes everything because it secures the end of God's story for the redemption of all things.