A Child Is Born Series

Today is part one of a 3-part series titled:

Without the manger there is no Cross.

We will be heavily in the OT for part 1.

We are going to look at some history today.

• I know, some of you may perk up,

• while others roll their eyes

This message has been on my heart for several months now.

• God truly has been working on the messenger, while the messenger works on the message!

• The challenging part, is taking what is right here (touch my heart) and have it come out of here (motion to my mouth) so that it makes sense to you, as it does to me here (point to my head).

• So here we go!

Controversy:

• We see controversy throughout the bible, and ever since His birth, controversy surrounds Jesus. Webster defines controversy as:

: a discussion marked especially by the expression of opposing views : DISPUTE

• If we asked 10 people here today, what does Christmas mean to you, we very possibly will get 10 different answers.

• I realize we could have many opposing views regarding Christmas, but hopefully the ideals we have in common ,will be stronger than those things that cause disunity.

The 3 key verses today are:

Isaiah 9:6

Isaiah 7 :14

Micah 5:2

Let’s read Isaiah 9:6 together:

Stand with me as we honor God while reading His word: (read from bible)

We’ll examine the first part of this verse in Isaiah 9:6 “For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given;

Then the rest of the verse: “And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”, we will look @ in the following 2 parts of the series.

For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given.

Before we go there, I mentioned history.

I believe everything in the OT points to Jesus. Dare I say everything in all of history points to Jesus.

I’d like us to look at two prophets who were contemporaries in the OT. Meaning their prophetic ministries overlapped each other.

These two prophets were:

Isaiah and Micah.

Quickly look at:

• The timelines

• Locations

• Main message and it’s importance

• Reason for the prophecy

• Some other details about prophets.

We are going to start with some details about prophets.

If you look at all the prophets in the bible, I think you will see this recurring theme:

• Rebellion of the people

• Judgement on the people

• Compassion on the people

• Redemption for the people

The “office” of prophet,

• was instituted in the days of Samuel, who was the last of the judges in the bible.

• Their role was to speak for God, confronting people with God’s commands and promises.

When we examine how God spoke to people it was in different ways:

• Directly (as with Moses)

• Angels (such as with Zechariah and Mary)

• Dreams and visions- that is what we are going to look at today.

So, when we look at Isaiah and Micah, we see some similarities.

• Isaiah was a prophet to Judah from 740-681 BC

• Micah was a prophet to Judah from 742-687 BC

• Isaiah’s main message:

• Although judgement from other nations(through God) was inevitable, the people could still have a special relationship with God.

• Isaiah’s prophecy is actually broken down to two parts:

• 1st part “despair”.

• 2nd part “hope”.

When we think about our own lives, I think most of us can see we had a season of despair, before we had a season of hope.

Isaiah’s message of hope, actually begins during the “despair” part of his prophecy.

Hopefully, this will make sense, at some point, as I tie-in all together with this series.

Micah’s main message was the prediction of the fall of both the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah.

To have a little better understanding of these kingdoms we must realize:

Prior to these prophets coming on the scene, there was a split that occurred in 930 BC (stay with my now), after the death of Solomon, and during the reign of his son Rehoboam (ruh-hO-bum). They revolted as a result of heavy taxes incurred both during Solomon’s reign and his son’s reign.

The tribe of Judah and the majority of the tribe of Benjamin accepted Rehoboam (ruh-hO-bum), and they became known as the Kingdom of Judah with the capital @ Jerusalem.

The other 10 tribes chose Jeroboam (jer-a-bow-um) as their king, and kept the title of Israel, which was the northern kingdom, headquartered in Samaria. Yes that Samaria. More on that another time.

As I said, a brief history lesson.