We come now to the fifth Old Testament prophecy, which is Daniel 9:25-26a. This text fixes the very time in history when the Messiah was to be born: “Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing.” Verse 26 concludes by going on to give some more detail.

The third Old Testament prophecy comes from Isaiah 7:14, from which we learn that a particular sign will be given to Ahaz king of Judah: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” This prophecy seems to have had a specific meaning in its own day concerning the future judgment of the nation. Nevertheless, it is an extraordinary text, because it does say that a virgin would conceive and bear a son, who is to be called Immanuel, which means “God with us.”

We are used to getting birth announcements. They usually come on little white cards, sometimes with a picture of a stork on them, often with a little pink or blue bow attached, and other very nice little things. Well, there are many birth announcements of the coming of Christ, but there are two interesting things about them. First of all, the birth announcements that concern Jesus Christ were made hundreds of years before he was born. Secondly, they don’t merely announce his birth; they provide details concerning his life, his ancestry, the nature of his person, his place of birth and actually the time in which he was going to come into the world. Now, there has never been a child that has had birth announcements like that.

The final section of this psalm is a prayer for future deliverance (vv. 11-17), which is particularly interesting in this context. David had been in a situation so hopeless that he could only adequately describe it as being in a slimy, muddy pit. He had waited for God, and God had delivered him, lifting him out of the pit and setting his feet on a rock. Yet now, even though he had been delivered from great trouble, as recounted in verses 1-3, Israel's beloved king and poet still continues to have trouble and needs further help.