12 Themes From the Birth of Jesus, Pt. 2

I'm going to finish up what I started last Sunday, because I obviously didn't have enough time to finish it. Didn't figure

I would. Ben didn't either, but he didn't get an opportunity to keep going on his. He had to do something else today.

But good to see all of you. And we had a wonderful Christmas season. It's still kind of ongoing.

But I guess it will end up tonight as we watch the new year come in.

And 2023, I guess, the farther we move away from original

COVID, the better we're doing, right? It was a better year than the ones prior to it, because we now have herd immunity.

And those of us who the vaccination didn't get, we're still here.

I think we're building up immunities to it, don't you? Because I think we've had another round of it, especially in your house,

I'm pretty sure, Abby. Dr. Al said he's treated more cases of COVID in the last three years.

Wow. So Dr. Al Fagan, our wonderful doctor in Fort Worth, said he's treated more

COVID patients this year than in the last three years combined. Than in the last three years?

Oh, really? So he's treated more in the last three months than in the last three years. Wow. That's amazing.

Mm. Well, thank the Lord he's built our bodies in such a way that we can build up immunities.

And so here we are. Well, I guess you guys saw a prayer request

I sent out via email a couple of days ago about a person who caught the original

COVID back when it first happened. And it affected her body in such a way that she no longer correctly creates new blood cells.

And so it attacked her bone marrow. And still, it's not really curable unless the

Lord cures it. So we've been praying for her. Well, we're looking towards a new year, starting tonight late.

How many of you are going to stay all the way up till midnight? Raise your hand. Let's see. I'm going to stay up till midnight New York time.

That's what I like to do. And so great to have each of you with us today.

That was really a blessing to start out with the young people. Man, that reminds me of Tony Spivey, well, when she used to be

Tony Spivey. Now she's Tony Golden. But she would get up and quote whole chapters like that.

In fact, she would quote till the preacher made her sit down. Anyway, all right.

Well, let's go to Luke chapter two. And we'll probably be mostly in chapter two.

Last time we started out in Luke chapter one. And right about verse 67 is where we, the whole, the context started, the passage we dealt with.

But we began to talk about 12 great Bible themes that are found in the Christian story and the story of the birth of Jesus and earliest parts of his ministry going up to that time period.

We see about 12 different major Bible themes of Christianity found in embedded within the story.

Now I say embedded because if you don't read carefully, you won't even see them. But if you read carefully, you will see them.

And that's what's so cool about the Bible is how many years have we read the Christmas story together and I didn't see these things.

Maybe you did, I didn't. And then all of a sudden this year, same Christmas story and I see 12 things in there

I'd never seen before. So that's what we've been talking about. So last time we talked about the, it mentioned, it alluded to the

Abrahamic covenant. Number two, the doctrine of salvation by grace.

Number three, the doctrine of election, including limited atonement, which half the world, half the world, 95 % of Baptists don't even believe that one anymore.

But back at the turn of the century, 90 % of them believed it. So that switched in the end times.

But it's embedded in this passage. The fourth thing was the deity of Christ. The fifth thing was the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man found together in the same passage.

And I'm gonna kind of pick it up right about there. So I think we would be in Luke chapter two, verse five.

Make sure my notes are right. Does that start out to be taxed? Is that what the verse says?

Yeah. Okay, so that is right. I got my notes right. So let's just start there.

To be taxed with Mary, his espoused wife, being great with child. And that's where we kind of talked about the responsibility of man.

I mean, they were supposed to pay their taxes. And back in that day, the Romans said, if you're in the line of David, you got to do it in Bethlehem.

So that's why they went there. But if they hadn't obeyed the law or had not been responsible about that, that's the human side.

They wouldn't have been in Bethlehem, but the Old Testament prophets, Micah, I believe it was, said it had to be in Bethlehem.

So that's the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. And they fit together, they always do.

The Bible doesn't have any problem with them fitting together but your neighbors will have a big problem and your family at Christmas, if you try to talk to them about the sovereignty of God, they want to leave that part out and just talk about responsibilities if the other one's not there.

Well, you can't do that. So you got to talk about what's in the Bible when it's in the Bible. So here they go to Bethlehem because they're supposed to.

And it was that while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

And she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.

Beautiful story, isn't it? But certainly a story man would not have come up with for a king, right?

For the birth of a king. Verse eight says, and there were in that same country, shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

Here again, they were doing what they were supposed to do but God's sovereignty in his sovereignty, he had them there so that they would witness this event that's about to take place.

So it's all orchestrated by God and yet they're just doing what they're supposed to do. And they find themselves in the right place at the right time as all of us always do.

And so lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them and the glory of the

Lord shone round about them and they were sore afraid. Wonder why?

What if you were out at night with a bunch of sheep and all of a sudden the sky lit up with angelic beings, especially for us now that the military has admitted that they've seen many and documented many

UFOs, right? So that's what we would be thinking. In fact, Ben had one at his house night before last and Matt saw it too and we have film of it if you guys would like to see it.

It's very interesting. Well, you don't know that. You're just assuming it was just a light.

But anyway, so it still makes us affrighted, doesn't it, Matt and Ben? It makes us a bit affrighted.

So there they were and verse 10, and the angel said unto them, fear not for behold,

I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.

Now, there again, the word all, pas, it doesn't mean to every individual because you and I both know that not every individual loves the

Christmas story. There are a whole nation such as Iran and Iraq that hate the

Christian story. So not all individual men, but what it means is all kinds of men.

In other words, every race, some people from every race will be blessed and find joy in this wonderful story.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior, which is

Christ the Lord. I think it's worthy to stop for a moment. Look at that word, savior.

In the Greek, soter, you know what it really means?

And I think this is a much more powerful English word. It means deliverer, a deliverer.

So you think about sin habits that we might have. Some of us may have had them from youth.

Jesus is not just a savior like, I grew up Baptist, so we talk about being saved a lot.

And you grew up Pentecostal, they talk about being saved a lot. But the concept of it is like not going to hell.

Pretty much, right? I mean, that's how we grew up thinking of it. I mean, like, I'm not going to hell, I'm saved. But biblically, it means while I'm here, it does mean that.

It does mean that, but it also means while I'm here, I am delivered. When Jesus becomes your

Lord, like Dr. Freeman used to say, he frees you from every lesser Lord. So that's what the word itself means, is deliverer, rescuer, one who delivers or saves.

Now let's continue here in chapter two of Luke, verse 12. And this shall be a sign unto you, you shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And I want to stop and have prayer, and then we're going to pick this up here. This is really important part of this,

I believe. Lord, thank you so much for the service today already, for the wonderful Bible verses we've heard that these children memorized and put deep in their hearts, so it'll always be there.

It's still, it'll be in our hearts too, because we'll remember this morning. And thank you for the singing, it was so beautiful.

And Lord, thank you for your word, it is most of all the most beautiful thing as far as things that we have on this earth.

It's the most, it's the only perfect thing we have. Thank you for it, and may you bless it and teach us from it this morning, amen.

So I want you to think about this. I'm going to call this the sixth major theme that I see here.

I'm going to call it the doctrine of divine revelation. And it's really important in a day like we live in where humanism has reared its head.

It was pretty big in the 70s and 80s, and then kind of not so big, and then now it's huge again, especially with things like YouTube, where you can go out and you can listen to atheists speak, and you can listen to agnostics speak, and you can listen to some pretty amazing young people that speak against them as well.

It's really fascinating to hear some of the wonderful young people God's raised up that can argue against these people from scripture.

So all that is there, but humanism has not died out. It is the religion of the earth, humanism.

Man is God, right? And so if you really think this through and you think of a man or a woman out on the desert, they have no books, they have nothing but themselves.

Maybe they've been raised well, and they know how to read, and they've read books, a few, but there they are with nothing but just themselves.

If they had not ever read any Bible or heard it preached or didn't have a family that even talked about it, maybe they were raised in an atheist family or an agnostic family, and they're out there on that desert island by themselves, there is nothing within that man that can produce the information that would teach them anything about God other than his existence.

And all they have to do to know that is look up at night and see the stars, and they would know there is God because there's design in the sky.

There's design everywhere around us. So you have the ability according to Romans chapter one to know there is a

God, and therefore no man is without excuse if he wants to say there is no

God, he's a fool. So we can know that, but we cannot know God without this book.

You cannot, or at least without some form of direct revelation from God to man.

So all, 100 % of the knowledge of God himself and even of ourselves, because we're too prideful to admit what we're really like.

So we wouldn't even see ourselves if we didn't have this book. And I don't mean just this book, because before Moses, it was verbal, it was carried verbally from Adam to Moses.

But it was, the point is God had ways he revealed himself to men. Now in Hebrews chapter one, verse one, it says he had a certain way that he revealed himself to men back then in the

Old Testament times, and he has a different way that he does it now and no longer does it the old way, he does it a new way.

And that is more related to the word of God, the canonized Bible, the perfect is what the scripture calls it.

Paul said certain things such as prophesying and words of knowledge and tongue speaking, where you can speak a foreign language that you didn't study at school, and people can hear the gospel in their own language as you do that, that those have passed away, the

Bible says, and the time when he said it happened is when that which is perfect is come. And it's in the neuter, which means it's a thing, it's when we had the word of God.

And from that time on, you can study church history and you see it has gone, it disappeared as recently as maybe 100 years, 120 years after John the

Apostle passed away. There was no tongue speaking in any church on the earth as far as we can tell from reading the early church fathers.

Now, they won't tell you that in a Pentecostal church or charismatic church, they don't wanna go there. But it's in church history, if you wanna read it, you say, well,

I only just go by the Bible. Well, then Paul said tongues will cease, go by that. You see my point?

So we understand that God no longer speaks to us as he did through the prophets, but he did speak through the prophets before they had the word of God.

How many people had one of these on their coffee table in their home in 50

BC? Nobody, maybe the priests and the priestly order had the

Old Testament scrolls, but no one else got to see it. In fact, in 50

BC, they weren't teaching from the Old Testament scrolls. They were teaching from targums, which were paraphrases, which lied about it.

So why they missed the Messiah for the most part. But my point is they did have revelation.

Now we have the revelation of God through the water and the spirit.

So we have the word of God, the water of the word of God, and we have the Holy Spirit to enlighten it and teach it and to speak to our hearts in different ways than he did in the

Old Testament. It's beyond the scope of this message to talk about the ways he does it now, but he still has ways he can speak to us.

It's just not in an audible voice anymore. Predominantly is through open and closed doors. And through peace or not having peace and through perceptions in your heart and mind that match up with scripture and with the peace and so forth.

But he has always had ways to reveal himself. And without that, my point this morning is you would know nothing about him.

All right, so in this Christmas story, I want you to think about how it's pictured here.

And this shall be a sign unto you, you shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

Now, an angel of the Lord, which the word angel is translated from a Greek word in the

New Testament that means messenger. A messenger from the Lord, which was an angelic being in this case, it's not always an angel, sometimes a different type of messenger, could even be the son of God himself as the messenger of the

Lord. But in this case, it's a group of angels. And one angel speaks and reveals something to these shepherds that they could not possibly have known if God had not chosen to reveal it to them through these messengers.

You see what I'm saying? They could not work this knowledge up from inside their own head. Human beings don't have the capacity in their brain, which is only this big, to bring up God and what he's like and who he is.

And you can't do that without revelation from God. His very name, sometimes we call him

Jehovah, or if you look at how it's spelled in Hebrew, Yahweh, but they don't even pronounce it so nobody knows how to pronounce it really.

But that name of God means that he is the I am, he is the all existent one who reveals himself.

That phrase is what that name means. The all ever, the preexistent one who reveals himself.

That's what the name means. You can't reveal him to yourself. He has to reveal himself to you.

And it's true of all human beings. And so here we see that God reveals something to these shepherds through a messenger from God to them.

Now, God, this is, you have to remember, the Old Testament time lasted all the way until Pentecost, which means all of the life of Jesus on this earth and the apostles, they lived a little beyond that.

But most of their work was done in the Old Testament economy. Not like it is in the church age.

You have to be careful when you interpret scripture based on that. Even the book of Acts, it's so many people, when they say like a full gospel church, what they mean is we're not leaving out the stuff in the book of Acts.

But what they don't get is it's a transitional book. And a lot of that stuff was Jewish in nature. And it began even before the book of Acts was over, it passed away and became predominantly

Gentile church. And the things that the Jews did, like laying on a hand to impart the Holy Spirit, that totally passed away.

Because it says later in the book of Acts that as the Gentiles heard the word, the spirit indwelt them.

No one touched them. So that changed, that was a Jewish thing. So it's a transitional book. People don't understand that.

It doesn't mean the stuff in it didn't happen. It just means it's not all happening in the church age anymore.

It will happen again when we get to the last three and a half years of the tribulation period. But before the church age began, and even part of the church age still had prophets up until the time of the canonization of scripture.

And when they died and the apostles died, it ceased. But after that, you didn't have it.

But before that, you did. So if you go back to this time that we're looking at, where these shepherds are out here, and Jesus is about to be, or may have already been born, they're about to go see him.

They were still under Old Testament where God spoke in those ways, through prophets, through visions, dreams.

You can list all the different ways, a burning bush, through an angelic being, through a voice. All of those are the ways he used to speak through the prophets to us.

And it says in these last days, but in these last days, he speaks through his son. So God spoke to these folks, and he told them how to find

Jesus, and told them what he would look like, and where he would be. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly hosts praising

God and saying, glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men. Don't just quickly read over that and think, well, what you need to do is stop and sit and picture this happening to you, because here's what's happening, and this is so important.

And so many people don't understand this today. This is one reason that the largest, fastest growing heresy in the world is the modern tongues movement, and the faith healing and all that, that that is from the

Holy Spirit. I don't deny that it's happening. I just know it doesn't come from, the source is not the

Holy Spirit, it's a different source. And it's not a good source. So it's either a human, which is humanism, or it's demons, which is doctrines of demons.

None of that's a good source. Now you say, well, why do we talk about it? Well, because it is the fastest growing, largest heresy in the world today in my lifetime.

And if you go back and you read every preacher you'll ever read about, which if they didn't do anything, you won't read about them, but if they did anything and you read about them, you will see that in their sermons, they fought whatever the biggest heresy was in their lifetime.

It would be a different one than this one probably, but they fight against it in their preaching. And my calling is to fight against this one because it's the largest worst heresy that we have because it's so predominant.

And it is based on pure ignorance. If anyone had knowledge, they would not believe that way.

If they'll be open -minded and listen. Now, sometimes we just think we know everything and we're not open -minded to anything that may be something we believe was wrong.

We're sometimes not open -minded, but most people in this church are. Most people in this church, we've been trained to, if you show me in scripture,

I will change my mind. And that's how it should be with anyone that's mature as a Christian.

You're not afraid of someone else's position. In fact, you'll go investigate it. In fact, it's fun to go investigate it.

So the truth is what is happening here is something that has always happened through the history of the

Bible. If you want to go and look at the Bible and tell the truth to yourself, major miracles like the parting of the

Red Sea did not happen every day in the Bible. I mean, you're talking about people like Moses and Abraham and Lot and David and Solomon.

In their lifetime, they did not see major miracles every day of their life. They saw them on average every 400 years.

Study it, you'll see that that's a fact. So they don't happen every day.

So why do we want to see them every day at church? You're not going to see them every day. In fact, the group of people that asked Jesus to show them a miracle, he said, you're an evil and adulterous generation.

I'm not showing you, I'm not going to show you a miracle. I think I said it wrong. I said, show you evil. I mean, they asked him to show a miracle.

And he said, no, I'm not. You're an evil and adulterous generation. I'm not going to show you a miracle.

He said, the next miracle you're going to see is I'm going to raise from the dead three days later. That's the only miracle you need to see.

So why is it so different today in the modern church where you won't see a miracle every day at church? Well, I understand wanting to, but I mean, it never has happened in the

Bible among Bible people in Bible history. God's people has never been that way, but we want it that way now.

Well, it's not going to be that way unless you want to fake it. And we don't want to fake it, all right?

So look what happens here. Imagine a dark sky with nothing but stars.

And all of a sudden you hear an angel speaking a voice from the sky telling you about this babe that's been born.

And then the sky just lights up with multitudes of angelic beings singing and whatever they're doing.

What does it say they're doing? I had someone question one time, show me where it says they're singing or whatever.

So let's see, what are they doing? What does it say they're doing? Let's see. Multitude of heavenly hosts praising

God. So I'm not going to say singing. I think they were singing, but prove it for me. You're the music man, find that out for me, man.

But I think, sorry, it was really loud, whatever was going on. I think they were singing. I think they were praising.

And I think it was so loud, it was frightening and so bright, it was frightening. So here's what's happening.

Throughout all of human history, when God wants to bring a new concept to his people, especially to Jews, which

I'll point that out in a moment, especially to Jews, which were his people that brought us the oracles of God, correct?

He had to provide a sign for them or they would not believe the new thing. The Bible teaches,

Paul said, a Jew requires a sign. Gentiles do not.

They require knowledge. The Gentiles would much prefer to sit around and study the Bible just all day long than to see me grow out someone's arm somehow miraculously.

Gentiles like knowledge. Jews wanna see that sign, then they'll listen to the doctrine. It's always how it is, still today.

So these Jewish shepherds out on this field saw a sign that I doubt anyone's ever seen.

So resplendent light full of loud music and praising God from beings that don't live here on this planet.

Do you think that those Jews when they saw that might have been apt to believe the message?

And what was the message? There is a child born. He is your savior.

You're not gonna be saved by the law anymore. You're gonna be saved by him. That's the message and it's new and you ain't gonna believe it because you like the law.

You love having to do stuff to try to please God. And by the way, you're not pleasing him.

What he is pleased with is that one that just got born that you're gonna go see because I'm telling you to go see him.

That's who he's pleased with. And when you receive him into your heart as your personal savior, God's now pleased with you because you're in Christ and he's in you.

That's the message. Do you believe it? Whoa! That's glory of God.

That's how I sing. That's why I don't get to sing. But that's the message.

Now, if I was one of those good old preachers that can sing beautifully, I would have just sung real loud right then. Would have been awesome. But like I said, it doesn't say they sang.

It said they praise God. So I can do that. Barely, I'm Baptist, so barely.

But I can do it. So my point is there were always signed gifts, always signs that were used by God throughout all of biblical history to authenticate the new message.

So memorize that. Signs are for the purpose of authenticating the new message.

Once the purpose has been fulfilled, the sign goes away. You don't still see the

Red Sea being parted, which introduces the law. And it was new.

Never existed before. You don't see someone throw a hammer on the water and it just swims on that water like it did when the prophets were being introduced.

Now you'll listen to the prophets, but you don't see that now because once it's authenticated and you have the message and the

Jew has believed the message, you don't have to re -authenticate it. And by the time long before this

Bible was complete, everything had been authenticated. It had been authenticated by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave.

And over 500 witnesses saw him who were still alive when Paul wrote about it.

And no one refuted it. And then so many other ways that got authenticated and even through the early church prophets and people who could speak foreign languages, they never studied so people could hear the gospel and get saved.

And then when they got saved, they could sometimes speak in foreign language. It was never gibberish by the way, but they could speak in foreign languages they had not studied so other people could hear the gospel.

And that went on till about the middle of Acts and then it stopped. And then when you get passed about Corinthians, which was one of the earliest epistles

Paul wrote and you get into all the latter ones like Ephesians, Galatians, Colossians, by Lehman, you don't see tongue speaking.

You don't see it talked about because it began to cease. Paul said it wouldn't, it began to cease. The need for it, the authentication of the

New Testament message was complete. And there was a transitional period where some people who didn't have a

Bible yet still needed that. And there came a time when the perfect was come when all of the

Bible, including all of the New Testament was put together into one book and the churches had that book. You won't find any evidence of any of those kinds of sign gifts happening from about 270

AD up until more modern times when there were some instances where people faked it like they do now in many instances.

And yet they were always accompanied by bad doctrine and usually immorality and fornication.

The people that were doing those sign gifts without the Holy Spirit doing it. So it's because the unclean spirits that mimicked it would also cause them to be unclean eventually.

So that usually plays itself out. So that is the history of it all. But my point here is that why did you have those gifts in the early church?

It was to authenticate the entire New Testament, ladies and gentlemen. I mean, you think about it. The Jew loves keeping the rules, but he can't keep them.

He's got how many rules? Ben or Matt, do y 'all remember? Dave, maybe? How many?

307 at least. Different rules that the Jews came up with just from the 10 commandments. Additional rules.

Okay, so they were a people who love rules. So now Jesus is coming to the world and saying, you can't be saved by works.

Only I can save you, so you just gotta believe. Is a Jew gonna believe that message? Do they believe it today?

Our dear Dr. Fagan, we just saw him. We've witnessed to him many times, but guess who his best friend is?

The Jewish rabbi. And every time I send him a letter with scripture in there, that rabbi will say, it doesn't mean that,

Dr. Fagan. It means this over here. He just undoes it. But we still pray for him, because we love him.

But listen, God would always authenticate the new message.

And here we see this in this Christmas story. Now, the second thing that we see is the

Jew, when he requires a sign, and he sees the sign, and he hears the message, he responds with belief.

And so it came to pass as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds sitting there, and all of this noise and all of this light is gone, and it's quiet and dark again.

Do you think that in itself might've been a little creepy? It said they were afraid, right? And so here they are, the angelic beings are gone, and they said, let us now go even into Bethlehem.

Yeah, I guess. Like, now let's go. Get your stuff and let's go.

I'm not staying out on this hill any longer. And so let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing which has come to pass, which, listen to this, which the

Lord has made known to us. That's the revelation. And it's a new revelation, and it was revealed with a sign gift, or a sign, a miraculous sign of angelic beings lighting up the sky.

And this is just how God has worked and given us his revelation from the beginning of time.

Now, the next thing that I see that the Jew does is the sign indicates that the revelation is in fact from God.

And so we see there at the end of 15, when they've now decided to obey and do the thing

God said, it says, look what the Lord has made known to us. So they acknowledged that the revelation was from God only because they saw the sign.

Are you with me? Now there is scripture that says the Jew requires a sign.

God knows his people, does he not? God knows the Jews better than anybody knows the Jews. And he chose them not because they were the biggest and greatest, but the opposite.

They're hard, they're hardheaded. They think they know everything. They're apt to just go the opposite way that God wants them to, and God loves them, right?

He chose them to be the ones who would carry the oracles of God, the scriptures into the world for him.

So now all of a sudden they acknowledge that it actually was God who sent this message.

And the next thing I see is that good works follow. Now it's the same order all the time throughout the history of man on the earth and his relationship with God.

So the Lord has made known this to us. Verse 16, and they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the babe lying in the manger.

So when God says something, he doesn't lie. He sent messengers, gave them a sign so they'd believe the messenger.

The messenger said, there's a babe there, it's gonna be your savior. And he told them he's the deliverer. He's the one you've heard about, the

Messiah. That's who it is, you're gonna find him there. Guess what they found when they went there? They found that it was true.

They had already believed it or they wouldn't have gone. So they didn't have to see that. What they had to see was the sign and get the message.

But then they believed the message and that it was from God and they acted on it. And they went there, but then when they saw this baby, they began to do good works and look at what they do.

They came with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the babe lying in the manger. And when they had seen this, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning the child.

So they became witnesses. That's an obedient act. We're supposed to tell others what we've seen

Jesus do in our life. None of this wouldn't happen if there hadn't been a sign first because they're Jews. But once God authenticated the message and they now believe it's from God, they acted on it.

And now we see them telling others. Now, guess what? As they went and told others, let me ask you this.

Did the angels show up in the sky and make a loud noise and make it so frightening that these others would believe?

Yes or no? No, they just had to believe the witnesses who were so frightened by the sign that they were probably pretty believable as they told the story.

Don't you imagine? You can look in their face and see their body language. But God didn't give the next group a sign because the message had already been authenticated.

This is why we no longer have tongue speaking. We no longer have prophesying. Now, you gotta be careful with that word because it means two things.

To prophesy means to speak forth God's word. So we still have that. That's what I'm doing. So in that sense,

I'm prophesying. But you don't have the future telling part. That ceased. Paul said it would through the inspiration of the

Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit said, I will not do this anymore. This is what angers me in a sense toward people who demand that it's still happening when the

Holy Spirit said, I will not do this anymore. So either they're lying or he is. Now, who are you gonna pick? Seriously, who are you gonna pick?

The Holy Spirit says, I won't do this anymore. I will cause it to cease. And they're saying, well, it's still happening.

Okay, well, then Holy Spirit lied. And that's blasphemy. To blaspheme the

Holy Spirit, to say that something that he says is something that Satan said or something or that he didn't say it or that he broke his word.

So I see, what I see in this story is when the Holy Spirit told them that the Messiah would be in that place, they went and looked and he was there.

He told the truth. But once that message had been authenticated, he didn't have to authenticate that anymore.

He just sends the messengers, which is us, to go and tell people that's still how it is today.

I mean, we tell people about how in the book of Acts, when they spoke with languages they had never studied and people heard it in their own language, well, was the miracle the speaking or the hearing?

Some people debate over that. It was both. And people got saved because of it. But let me ask you this.

Did they have the Roman's road yet? Did they have any scripture at all they could use to lead someone to Christ?

No. But once that message was authenticated, you don't see

God taking this tongue speaking to every single person that me and Charlotte have witnessed to, which we knocked on every door in Mahalia four times and most of the doors here once.

And not one time did they show up and speak with tongues and authenticate our message because we took this with us.

This book, we had it and we showed it to them. It is how God speaks now.

And Jesus laid out how he would reveal this to us. Even after he was gone, I'm gonna send things to my apostles that they weren't ready for and I'll send the

Holy Spirit. They'll write that down and that'll be the message. So this is shown in the

Christmas story. Now, as we move on here, they went out to Bethlehem, they see this thing that's happening, which the

Lord let them know, they made haste and now they are telling other people about it. And they went and made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.

They were witnessing that a savior has been born and they're talking to Jews, which is a bit problematic because they wanna see that same sign and God's not gonna show that one again, but he will show other signs as we read through the early portions of the gospels in the book of Acts.

And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying and all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherd.

So their witnessing was pretty effective. Everybody heard the story and they were wondered about it.

They didn't just blow it off. They started thinking, wow, could this be true? But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.

And the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen.

And it was told that were told unto them. Then in verse 21, it says, and when eight days were accomplished for the circumcision of the child, his name was called

Jesus, which was so named by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. And that was when

Gabriel spoke to Mary is when before he was conceived and Mary named said, I mean, the angel said, name him

Jesus. And when the days of her purification, according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought

Jesus to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. In verse 25 says, Simeon saw this and he takes

Jesus up. He was a devout and just man waiting for the consolation of Israel.

And the Holy Ghost was upon him and it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost that he should not see death before he would see the

Lord's Christ. This man was reading the true documents, the

Old Testament scriptures. He was not reading the Targums. He knew that there was a date that Daniel gave when the

Messiah would be born and he knew he was living in that time, Simeon did. He knew that there was a place that Micah said it would happen in Bethlehem and he knew he was in that place.

And so, anyway, Simeon did not miss the

Messiah. And he came by the spirit to the temple when the parents brought in the

Lord Jesus to do for him after the custom of the law to circumcise him. And then

Simeon took Jesus up in his arms and he blessed God and he said, Lord, now let thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word for my eyes have seen my own salvation which thou has prepared before the face of all kinds of people,

Jew and Gentile, a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of thy people

Israel. That is a beautiful sentence. And Joseph and his mother marveled at all these things which were spoken of him.

And Simeon blessed them and said unto Mary, his mother, behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel.

Not everybody in Israel gonna get saved, not everybody. I know the world wants to teach

God loves everybody and he's gonna save everybody nowadays, but even back then, some would rise, some would fall.

And for a sign which shall be spoken against, Jesus' death, burial and resurrection would be a sign that some would speak against and some would speak for.

Yea, a sword will pierce through your own soul, he says to Mary, the mother of Jesus, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.

And then in verse 36, there was Anna, the prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Aser.

And she was of great age and had lived with her husband seven years before her virginity.

And she was a widow of about four score and four years, never left the temple.

So she was in there reading the scrolls every day because not everybody had access to them. But she served

God with fastings and prayers night and day and she coming in that instance. So she was exactly in the right place at the right time and gave thanks likewise unto the

Lord and spake unto him to all them that looked for redemption in Israel. Not everybody looked for it, but to the ones that did, she spoke to him and told him she had seen the

Messiah and held him in her arms. Wow. So who do we witness to is something that's embedded in verse 38.

Who are we supposed to witness to, everybody? Or are we supposed to witness to all them that look for redemption?

Did you hear that? Are you getting tired? Yeah, I can see why. I've lost you.

So this information is too good to give to lost people. So that was a pun.

Okay, so we'll pick it up here next time. But in fact, I'll save this point for next time.

I didn't get as far as I thought I would because it's just too good a stuff. So the Bible should be gone through slowly,

I suppose. Anyway, we get back next Sunday, the Lord willing, we'll talk about who we're supposed to witness to and then we'll keep going.

We'll see the ninth point is of the great doctrines is the first advent.

Talks about that, obviously, that's what story's about. And then the 10th point will be about the second advent.

And that's really what I wanted to get to today and didn't. So we'll do that, Lord willing, next time. So we better quit.

Let's stand and have prayer together. I would challenge you as you read through the

Christmas story, look for the embedded information, the great doctrinal teachings that are there for the church age.

Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much for your word. Thank you for your Holy Spirit who teaches us, who helps us interpret it correctly, along with the words, the context, the grammar, making

Greek like math as you did. They chose to use it to reveal these wonderful things to us.

Thank you for everything you've done to teach us about yourself and about ourselves. We ask you to go with us into this time of fellowship now.

Bless our meal. And Lord, we pray that you will walk with us on into the next year and guide us each step of the way to know what we are supposed to do individually and collectively.