The Birth of the Messiah Part two
Introduction-
Good Morning Everyone-
Glad that you are with us this morning and I pray the Lord would draw you close to Himself and make Himself known to you.
You remember last week I talked about being a Town Crier- I defined it a person who had the authority to pronounce royal decrees that should be heard and obeyed.
I decreed that heaven holds more interest to me as I get older. I shared some reasons why I said that.
I decreed that the world has a wrong idea of heaven- Because they think that they will all be there weather they accept what Christ did on the Cross or not. That is simply a lie from the pit of Hell.
I said that I was going to heaven for one reason and that was because of what Christ has done on the cross for me and not because I was a good person.
We had one main verse of Scripture- it was Isaiah 9:6-
Isaiah 9:6-
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called wonderful counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, prince of peace.”
Let’s Pray-
We know that the birth of Jesus was foretold 700 years before Jesus actually became flesh on this earth-
A miraculous virgin birth that was right out of the playbook of God.
We see that his birth lineage was described and laid out in the gospel of Matthew and that this was not just a last minute thought but well thought out and was a divine plan of God to send Jesus to redeem a world that could not redeem itself.
One of the most given reasons for people’s unbelief is the problem of evil- if God is so powerful why do bad things still happen? Bad Happen to Good People?
An Omnipresent God (everywhere) would certainly be aware of the presence of evil.
Omniscient God (all knowing) would certainly know how to overcome that evil.
Omnipotent God (All powerful) would certainly be able to enforce victory over evil.
God of love would want to get rid of evil.
Yet evil is still here! Wars, murder, oppression, torture, abuse, starvation, accidents, cancer… the list just goes on and on! Divorce…
It is because of free will- (Simple but complex answer) We were not created to be robots-
We are not forced into believing.
We have a choice and because we have a choice- some will make the right decision and some will make an eternally wrong decision.
Sin entered this world because man has sinned against God. It is not the world that God intended for us to live in but because we choose sin, it was our choice.
“And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on this earth, and he was grieved in His heart.” Gen 6:6”
Everything that God had made was “very good” but now He has a grieving heart because they have turned away from him and sinned.
We see in Genesis 22 the account of Abraham offering up Isaac.
Why would God put Abraham to such a test?
For him to experience such a heart break?
I cannot imagine that- can you?
Before harm was done- God speaks “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son to
Our Human sin and His Divine persistence/ our sin that just cannot go away by itself and His persistence to be our savior and provide away.
You cannot separate Isaiah 9:6 and John 3:16
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called wonderful counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, prince of peace.”
And John 3:16
John 3:16
“For God so love the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
God put Adam and Eve in a life situation of maximum freedom and minimum restraint.
Because of sin they ended up the opposite with minimum freedom and maximum restraint.
The world today is crying out for freedom. Everything is about your freedom.
Make sure no one robs you of your freedom- even if your freedom infringes on someone else freedom.
Make your choice and don’t care about others as long as you get what you want.
What Satan obscured from the view of man was to have perfect freedom was to be in perfect subjection to God.
We are at our best when we are in Him- not doing our own thing!
Illustration-
We are like a frantic dog that has tangled itself in its rope. And only entangles itself all the more with every circle around the tree. If he would only stop barking, and stop racing, and let the master come and help him.
Personal effects of sin-
We lost our innocence – Adam and Eve thought they would be wise, that their eyes would be open and they first realized they were naked! They now knew sin and what Satan didn’t tell them was that to know evil, they gave up goodness.
Guilt and Alienation- just like children who have disobeyed their parents, Adam and Eve “hid themselves” from God. Being in the presence of God which was natural was now uncomfortable because of sin. Sin always keeps us apart from God. You cannot hide from God.
Spiritual death- God warned them. “When you eat of it you will surely die.” The serpent lied to them, you will not surely die.” They did not instantly die, they died spiritually. Their relationship with a holy God had been broken and severed. There spiritual life as they knew it was broken and not the same. They lost innocence, perfect love, inner peace, happiness, joy. Sin had not expanded their life, it contracted it.
The problem today is that we cannot define sin- we have a whole lot of definitions of what sin is because each person believes that they should be able to define sin.
There is only one who defines sin and there is only one who can save us from our sins and His name is Jesus Christ.
“Sin is accountable wrongness before God”
“Missing the Mark”
Sin is anything that is wrong in God’s eyes! What He declares sin is sin!
If there were no God, there could be no sin because God is the evaluator of all moral actions. This is why this world is trying to get rid of God in some of the decisions they make because to get rid of God is to get rid of the measuring rod of righteousness and the penalty of sin.
No matter how many things found wrong in a house, a carpenter is not held responsible if there was no blueprint to go by.
Our idea of what sin is is pivotal to how open we are to the gospel of Christ.
(Rom 3:23) “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
If you do not understand that, you will think you are a good person and measure yourself against another person instead of a sinless holy God. It is not a new doctrine, the Old Testament says “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way.”
The evidence of this is in the bible as inborn sinfulness- “That which is born of the flesh is flesh”
Jesus taught that every person had to be born again- Spiritual rebirth because we are spiritual dead without Christ.
It means that human nature from generation to generation is spiritually dead and needing a savior.
Professor Taylor says parents are not procreating new members of the kingdom of God, but members of a fallen race whose inherited condition makes them incapable of saving themselves.
You do not have to teach your kid how to sin, they learn all by themselves because they are born that way.
No infant has ever been born (except incarnate Jesus) with a sinless human nature.
Every descendant since Adam has been born in sin- you and me included.
Adam and Eve were both naked and they felt no shame. (Before the fall) Then the eyes of both were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings. The Lord then made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. So he began to make a sin offering that covers our sin until Christ came to forgive us of our sins.
The greatest gift ever given is Christ. “For God so love the world that He gave…”
In a world where he says there would be tribulation- HE GAVE
In a world that had turned their hearts away from Jesus- HE GAVE
In a world that did not know Him.
In a world that did not understand Him
He came, He gave His life-
“That whosoever will believe shall not perish but have everlasting life”
Eternal life is promised for all- eternal life with Jesus is promised for all who believe in the Son and what the son has done for us.
ILLUSTRATION:
In Texas they tell a story about a man who used to hitch his horse every morning in front of the saloon. One morning the saloonkeeper came out and found that the horse was hitched in front of the Nazarene church. He saw the man walking down the street and called out, “Say, why is your horse hitched in front of the Nazarene church this morning?” The man turned around and said, “Well, last night I was converted in the revival meeting, and I’ve changed hitching posts.” That’s what it means to be born again. That’s what it means to be converted. It means that you changed hitching posts.
Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?
When I look at this world and see the rebellion against the things of God. It takes a lot of nerve and stupidity to say to the face of God that I can get to heaven on my terms and without you.
There are those who criticize Christianity for saying there is only one way to heaven.
But when we consider the inherited sin nature of man, quoting the late R.C. Sproul we can say:
The question is not, “Why is there only one way?” but “Why is there even one way?”
Why did God give us any way to salvation at all?
God would be fully just in condemning the entire human race.
Let me let you in on a fact. In hell, there is no such thing as an innocent person. Every last one of us is guilty.
And we do not have a good grasp on just what hell or eternal punishment is. Condemnation to hell is not annihilation, but a place of consciousness, where the Bible uses descriptive terms as in outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.
Herein is a problem with our modern culture:
There is no fear of hell because there is no knowledge of hell. The Scriptures speak more of hell than of heaven.
So without a knowledge of hell, why seek a salvation from hell? and this is the bad news. We all deserve condemnation. We all deserve an eternity in hell, eternal separation from our Creator, separation from God. That is the bad news.
But here is the miracle, the miracle of Christ.
He came so that we don’t have to go there. We would not die in our sins but be forgiven.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believed in Him would not perish but have everlasting life!”
When you look at or remember the manger with little baby Jesus, remember that He is the Son of the living God that came for you and came for me so that we can spend eternity with Him-
This world wants to commercialize the nativity scene and likes the idea of Christmas but you take Christ out of Christmas and you are just lost people giving out presents.
As I close
I think this is one of the saddest verses concerning Jesus reaching out to someone with the love of Christ for salvation. Your familiar with the story-
Pharisee Nicodemus came to Jesus- “Rabbi, he said, we know that You are a teacher who comes from God. For no one could perform the signs You are doing if God were not with him” (John 3:2).
This statement suggests a few things: Nicodemus was familiar with Jesus, most likely respected Him, and recognized that He indeed came from God, just like John 3:16 later states. Nicodemus obviously knew of the miracles Jesus had performed. He’d probably heard many truths Jesus spoke as well, all of which seemed to have triggered a driving question: Who are you? Perhaps you’ve asked God that yourself. Beneath his words of affirmation, of wonderment, Nicodemus appears to be investigating Jesus’ identity. To which Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again” (John 3:6).
Jesus told Nicodemus that all his years progressing in Judaism, all the time he spent reciting prayers and participating in festivals, accounted for nothing. Oh, they laid the groundwork, a foundation, if you will, for the truths Jesus was presenting. But they didn’t have the strength to carry Nicodemus to salvation.
It is only Jesus!
Prayer-
