Lo, This Is Our God

Israel knew captivity well: slavery in Egypt, deportation to Assyria, exile in Babylon. Isaiah 61 promises One anointed by the Spirit to preach good tidings to the meek, bind up the brokenhearted and proclaim liberty to the captives, and open “the prison to them that are bound” (61:1). Both Messiah (from Hebrew) and Christ (from Greek) mean “anointed.” Early in His ministry, Jesus stood in the synagogue at Nazareth, read this very passage, and said, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears” (Luke 4:21). Christmas celebrates the birth of the Anointed One, and He came for every kind of captive: to sin, to grief, to fear, even to death.

🔗 Cross-references

• Luke 4:16–21 ↗Jesus reads Isaiah 61 in Nazareth and declares that it is fulfilled in Him.
• Alma 7:11–12 ↗Alma explains that the Savior took upon Him our pains and infirmities so He would know how to succor us.
• Doctrine and Covenants 138:18 ↗In the spirit world, the Son of God appears “declaring liberty to the captives who had been faithful.”

Isaiah wrote these verses to a land in shadow. Around 732 BC Assyria carried away the people of Galilee and Naphtali (2 Kings 15:29), and Isaiah 8 ends in “dimness of anguish.” Then comes the promise: the people that walked in darkness would see a great light, and a Child would be born with the government on His shoulder. Each name repays slow reading. He is Wonderful and a Counsellor. He is The mighty God, because He is Jehovah. He is The everlasting Father, the Creator of heaven and earth (Mosiah 3:8) and the Father of all who are born again through Him. He is The Prince of Peace. Matthew notes that Jesus made His home in Capernaum, in those very lands, so the light shone first where the darkness had fallen first (Matthew 4:13–16).

🔗 Cross-references

• Matthew 4:13–16 ↗Matthew quotes Isaiah 9 as Jesus settles in Capernaum, on the Sea of Galilee.
• Mosiah 3:8 ↗King Benjamin explains why Christ is called “the Father of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things.”
• Mosiah 5:7 ↗Those who covenant with Christ are spiritually begotten and become His sons and daughters.

Abraham climbs Mount Moriah with the son he waited decades for. Isaac carries the wood and asks the question every reader feels: “where is the lamb?” Abraham answers, “God will provide himself a lamb” (22:7–8). At the last moment a ram caught in a thicket is offered “in the stead of his son” (22:13), and Abraham names the place, “In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen” (22:14). Jacob taught that this offering was “a similitude of God and his Only Begotten Son” (Jacob 4:5). Solomon later built the temple on Mount Moriah (2 Chronicles 3:1). When John the Baptist saw Jesus and said, “Behold the Lamb of God” (John 1:29), Abraham’s promise was walking toward him.

🔗 Cross-references

• Jacob 4:5 ↗Jacob calls Abraham’s offering of Isaac a similitude of God and His Only Begotten Son.
• John 1:29 ↗John the Baptist introduces Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
• 1 Peter 1:18–20 ↗Peter says we are redeemed by Christ, a lamb without blemish, foreordained before the foundation of the world.

David, the shepherd boy from Bethlehem who became king, wrote of the Lord as a shepherd who leads to still waters, restores the soul, walks through the valley of the shadow of death, and sets a table in the presence of enemies. A thousand years later, shepherds near David’s city were the first to hear that a Saviour had been born (Luke 2:8–11). Jesus later said, “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). He is both the Shepherd and the Lamb. Read the psalm slowly, as though each line were a promise addressed to you for this week.

🔗 Cross-references

• John 10:11–14 ↗Jesus calls Himself the Good Shepherd who knows His sheep and lays down His life for them.
• Luke 2:8–11 ↗Shepherds near Bethlehem are the first to hear the good tidings of the Savior’s birth.
• Alma 5:38 ↗Alma teaches that the Good Shepherd calls us in His own name, the name of Christ.

Picture a stump where a proud tree once stood. That was David’s royal family by the time of the exile. Isaiah promised a new shoot, “a rod out of the stem of Jesse,” and “a Branch” growing from its roots (11:1). The Spirit of the Lord would rest on Him with wisdom, understanding, counsel and might (11:2), and He would bring a peace so deep that the wolf would dwell with the lamb (11:6). In latter-day revelation the Lord identifies the Stem of Jesse as Christ (Doctrine and Covenants 113:1–2). When Moroni visited Joseph Smith in 1823, he quoted Isaiah 11 and said it was about to be fulfilled (Joseph Smith—History 1:40). The Branch that sprouted in Bethlehem is still growing.

🔗 Cross-references

• Doctrine and Covenants 113:1–2 ↗The Lord answers plainly that the Stem of Jesse in Isaiah 11 is Christ.
• Jeremiah 23:5 ↗Jeremiah also promises a righteous Branch raised up to David who will reign as King.
• Joseph Smith—History 1:40 ↗Moroni quotes Isaiah 11 to Joseph Smith and says it is about to be fulfilled.

Everything the week has traced arrives in one night. Luke tells it plainly, but read it with the prophets in your ear. Micah had named the town, Bethlehem, “little among the thousands of Judah” (Micah 5:2). Isaiah had promised a child born and a son given (Isaiah 9:6). The Lamb that Abraham said God would provide is laid in a manger, and the first to hear are men keeping watch over their flocks by night. The shepherds’ own words sum up the whole Old Testament year: “Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass” (2:15). In the Americas, believers who had been threatened with death watched a night without darkness and knew Samuel’s sign had come (3 Nephi 1:9–21). Read Luke 2:1–20 today as a promise kept.

🔗 Cross-references

• Micah 5:2 ↗Micah foretells that the eternal Ruler will come out of little Bethlehem.
• 3 Nephi 1:13 ↗The Lord tells Nephi, “on the morrow come I into the world,” the night before the sign appears.
• 1 Nephi 11:18–21 ↗Nephi sees in vision the virgin in Nazareth and the Child, the Lamb of God.

End the Old Testament year with the verse that gives this week’s manual its title: “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us” (25:9). Notice that the waiting ends in recognition: “Lo, this is our God.” The Christmas story is full of people who recognized Him after long waiting, from shepherds at a manger to Simeon and Anna in the temple. Some of what we wait for came at Christmas; some of it comes at Easter, when the promise of verse 8, death swallowed up in victory, is kept; some of it is still ahead. Look back over the year of reading and notice how often the Old Testament was really about Him. Then look ahead: next week the New Testament opens, and the One they waited for steps onto the page.

🔗 Cross-references

• Luke 2:25–26 ↗Simeon waited for “the consolation of Israel” and was promised he would see the Lord’s Christ before he died.
• Revelation 21:4 ↗John sees the day when God wipes away all tears and there is no more death.
• Moses 5:10–11 ↗Adam and Eve rejoice in their redemption long before the Redeemer is born.