Jesus Is The Promised Messiah, Pt. 2

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Brothers and sisters, if you would open your Bibles to the book of Isaiah, chapter 53.

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Isaiah 53, if you're new to your Bibles, that's in your Old Testament. Big, big, big book.

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Isaiah chapter 53. This is the second part of our message on, is

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Jesus the Messiah? Yes, Jesus is the promised Messiah, most definitely. Isaiah 53, we're starting in verse 5.

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As you get there, I'll remind all of us that this is something that was written down over 600 years before the life, the ministry, the death, and the resurrection and ascension of our

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God and Savior, Jesus Christ. And so what you're reading now is God wielding history, speaking to the future before it even exists.

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And this is the story of Jesus. Isaiah 53, verse 5.

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Hear now the word of the living and the true God. But he was pierced for our transgressions.

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He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.

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And with his wounds, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray.

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We have turned everyone to his own way. And Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

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He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.

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By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people, and they made his grave with the wicked and with the rich man and his death.

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Although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth, yet it was the will of Yahweh to crush him.

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He has put him to grief. When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring.

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He shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

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Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied. By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous and he shall bear their iniquities.

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Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the many and he shall divide the spoil with the strong because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors.

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Yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors.

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Thus far as the reading of God's holy and inspired word, let's pray as God's people. Lord, thank you for this gift.

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The gift of your word, the gift of your presence, the gift of eternal life that we have because of this before us.

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God, you are the sovereign, the all -powerful God. You wield history according to your own will and purposes.

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You are love. And Lord, this before us, this promise of Mashiach, the promise of the

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Messiah, this is your doing and because of your love.

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And so we pray, Lord, today as we examine your word that you would renew our minds, conform us to the image of Christ, cause us to delight in these truths.

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I pray that you, Lord, would bury these truths like treasure within us so that we can draw from it later as we tell people about your excellencies, your truth, your supremacy.

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Thank you, Lord, for the gift of your word. I pray that you would get the teacher out of the way, that people would remember you and they've learned from your word and not me.

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We pray all this in Jesus' mighty name. Amen. Isn't that powerful? I can never get enough of Isaiah 53.

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It never gets old. It's always powerful. It's always glorious. And I think the more you meditate upon this particular passage of Scripture, the more it comes alive and you see those divine fingerprints through and through.

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At times you may forget. I have at times forgotten or grown numb or cold to just how powerful this just one chapter of Scripture is, how much it just shouts to us about who

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Jesus is. And I want to remind us again that according to the book of Isaiah, if you read chapters 40 through 46, 47, you see

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God, the true God, the living God, the first, the last, the one who says there's no God before him, none after him,

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God actually throwing down a challenge to the idols of men, to the false gods that people create.

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And there are a lot of those. There always have been because we're rebels against the true God. We want a

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God in our own image. And so God throws down a challenge to these idols in this very same book.

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And the challenge that he makes to the idols is this. Have your gods, have your idols tell you the future.

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And of course, we've said this a number of times, it's impossible to do. These are idols that are dumb. They can't speak.

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They can't see. They can't hear. They have no life. They have no real existence. They're figments of our imaginations given by representation with stone, wood, gold, or hay, whatever the case may be, something

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God made. We build a God out of and these gods do us no good. We put them up on pedestals and they don't move.

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They stay there. That's Isaiah's point, how foolish it is that we would worship these creations of our own hands rather than the creator himself.

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And God challenges the false gods. He challenges the false gods. Go ahead, false

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God, go ahead. Sovereign tell everybody the future. And isn't it amazing that in this very revelation,

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God sets down a standard for his people. You want to know, you want to know if somebody is actually speaking from the true

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God, if somebody has been sent by God, well, here's how, you know, Deuteronomy chapter 18, 22, 22.

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How should we know the Lord, which the Lord has not spoken. And God tells them when the prophet speaks, if the thing does not come to pass, it doesn't follow.

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That is the word, which the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You shall not be afraid of him.

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He actually says that that false prophet that pretends to speak in his name shall die.

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That's how serious it is to put words in God's mouth. And God says to his people, here's the standard.

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I'm the true God. This is fearless. If this was man -made religion, it couldn't be possible.

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It's a fearless challenge. One false prophecy, one false prophecy.

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This entire revelation is false. See, man -made religion can't take that kind of risk, can it?

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I mean, just consider for a moment. And I like to bring this up because I want to challenge all of us to love these neighbors as much as we can.

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We're in Mesa, Arizona right now. This is where we're meeting. And so we're surrounded by Latter -day Saints.

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So I'd like to give you as much as I can on this as often as I can. We could choose a number of different cults to do exactly the same thing.

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But Joseph Smith, Jr., the prophet of Mormonism, in his very short time period as the prophet of Mormonism, not only did his theology change from when he initially penned the

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Book of Mormon, this theology began to change. He went from monotheism to ultimately polytheism over time.

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It changed over time. But Joseph Smith, in the very short, about 15 years as the prophet of Mormonism, gave false prophecy after false prophecy after false prophecy.

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That's in a matter of just over a decade. This man couldn't, in just over a decade, get a perfect record of prophetic fulfillment.

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And you see that in the Watchtower Bible and Tract Association, Charles Taze Russell, Judge Rutherford, the 1970s, the organization lost a number of its membership because they gave a false prophecy.

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People had the consequences of these false prophecies. They lost homes and land and money.

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They were told Jesus was returning at any moment and they needed to give this stuff up. And they did.

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They did. But God challenges the false gods. He challenges them. Go ahead.

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Tell us the future. Go ahead, God. Tell me the future. But then God says something else.

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And this came up in Dr. White's debate this week with the open theist. God not only tells the false gods the challenge of tell me the future before it happens, but he also, also says, now also tell me the past.

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And why it happened that way. See, only the true God can do that because any of us can do an historical study.

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We could tell everybody for days about the details of World War II and how that started or World War I.

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Or we could talk about the Revolutionary War, the war for independence. We could talk about all the characters. We could talk about Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.

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Any of us can peel back the layers of history and say, this happened and this happened in history.

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But you know what? Only the true God can tell you history and this. Why? Why did it happen that way?

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Because only the true God sovereignly wields history according to his purposes, his desires and for his glory.

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Amen. And so here before us is one of so many examples that are the very foundation beneath us as we answer this question of whether Jesus is the promised

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Messiah. Here's one prophecy. It's not a word, a line, a maybe, sort of ambiguous.

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It is a clear and detailed, incredible description of what is going to be accomplished in Jesus Christ.

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It's compelling. It's powerful. And my challenge to all of us has been, as we examine this as a church body, do you know these things?

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Have you poured over these passages? Have you buried them in your heart, in your mind? If someone were to walk towards you as you leave here today and say,

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I want to know, why are you saying I need to come and die and be with Christ? Why are you saying I need to come and trust in Christ and repent and believe the gospel and that Jesus and Jesus alone is the source of salvation and life?

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Why? Why should I believe that? Would you be able to defend the claim that Jesus is the promised

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Messiah? Or is it something we just adopt as tradition?

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Something we're comfortable with because we love the Christian communion. Or kids, teenagers, is this something you believe because mom and dad raised you to believe it?

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I promise you that won't last. It's good to be in a Christian home under the hearing of the gospel.

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All the graces of Christ in your home, the word of God. It's not a curse. It's a gift.

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But I can promise you this, if you're following Jesus because of your mom and dad's faith, it won't last.

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And when life gets hard and it will get hard, this is an awful, awful world at times.

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You need to know Jesus for you. You need to know him personally as your savior and your

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Lord. And better than that, when the challenges of life come, and they will come, slander, difficulty, trauma, sin, brokenness, death, loss, when those things come, and they are coming for each of us, what's the anchor of your soul?

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Why will you depend on his words? Why are you going to trust in Jesus' words for comfort and for hope?

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Why? See, that's the important thing to answer is that in those hardest moments, trusting in Christ and his words is trusting in the sovereign himself and the

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God of the universe who never lies, who cannot lie, who makes promises and keeps them.

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And it all rests on whether or not Jesus is actually who he claimed to be. Amen? And so you need to know.

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Do you know? So I started this last week laying down some foundations, talking about prophecy from the

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Old Testament leading up to Jesus. We did not even nick the surface of the messianic prophecies of Jesus, but I gave you some pretty heavy hitters.

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Isaiah 53, Psalm 22. We talked about passages that give us this vivid description of Jesus.

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We talked about a timing indicator like Daniel 9, one of my all -time favorites, where Daniel 9 tells you long before Jesus comes, during the

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Babylonian captivity, when there is no Jewish temple, that there's this person coming, this anointed one who is coming, this prince who is coming.

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He is going to die. He's going to be cut off before that coming second temple is destroyed.

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He's going to bring atonement for iniquity. He's going to bring an everlasting righteousness, some pretty significant promises.

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And it all has to take place before that predicted second temple falls. And that's exactly what

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Jesus did. He made an end of sin. He brought an everlasting righteousness. He made atonement for iniquity.

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He was cut off and died a violent death before that temple was destroyed.

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And so what I left you with last week is this very important claim from the scriptures,

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Daniel 9, if Jesus is not the promised Messiah, then there is no

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Messiah. There isn't one. On the Bible's own terms, God says that Messiah had to come and accomplish all of those redemptive works and things.

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He had to be cut off and he had to die before that second temple was destroyed.

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And if you know your history, it was fully and finally destroyed in 70 AD. And so if Jesus isn't the

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Messiah, there is no Messiah. How powerful is that, brothers and sisters? It's a powerful thing.

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So today I wanted to leave a day where we can talk together about what is actually my favorite part of this.

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You see, when we talk about that question, is Jesus the promised Messiah? And my answer is most definitely

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M -O -S -T. The messianic prophecies fulfilled in Jesus, the original life of Jesus, the symbols fulfilled in Jesus and the transformation brought in Jesus Christ.

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When we talk about that, what I like to do is focus on the messianic prophecies that are actually direct lines right to Jesus.

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Lines like this, Isaiah 53, The Lord lays on him the iniquity of us all.

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He's done no violence, nor is there any deceit in his mouth. He'd be numbered with the transgressors, pierced through for our transgressions.

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I mean, that's just a straight line to Jesus. It's vivid detail. It's Jesus so clearly that many

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Jews take Isaiah 53 out of their annual reading of the Torah and the prophets because it's too controversial to read

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Isaiah 53. And why is it controversial? Because it's obviously Jesus.

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We wouldn't want Jews being confused, would we? And so there's direct lines, a direct line like Daniel chapter 9.

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That's a timing indicator. Here's how many days you can count down to Messiah.

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It lands on Jesus. Jesus has to be there and be cut off before that second temple is destroyed.

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That's a direct line. So when I say messianic prophecy, I want to say prophecies that point directly to Jesus.

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It's a line. One more example, Isaiah 9, 6 -7. That's a straight line.

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There's going to be a son and a child given to us, and he is going to be El Gibor, the mighty

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God. Well, that tells you the identity of the Messiah. He's not just a man. He's not just one of us.

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He's the God -man. He is Yahweh among us. Well, that's a direct prophecy.

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That's only God. There's only one true and living God. Isaiah says that throughout this entire book, and this one who is coming is a human and El Gibor.

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He is God. There's a direct line straight to Jesus. But my favorite actually is not merely those direct lines.

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They're amazing, but it's the symbols fulfilled in Jesus Christ that show the divine fingerprints all over this story of Jesus in ways that I know as a fallible man,

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I can in no way fully illustrate to you how glorious this is. I know

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I can't, but I'm going to try. Well, we'll start today after Messianic prophecies on the original life of Jesus.

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You see, there are certain things in the descriptions of Mashiach in the Old Testament that we need to look for in the life of Messiah.

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Let's take the one we were just on together. Make it easy for us, right? Isaiah 9, 6 -7.

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It's a human, a son and a child, and yet he has the titles of Yahweh, wonderful counselor,

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El Gibor. All those are exclusive titles of Yahweh.

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And so we would look at the life of the Messiah and say, okay, this Messiah is clearly human and divine.

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It is the God -man, so do we see the marks of that in Jesus' life? You also have

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Jesus, the Messiah, say in Isaiah 53, referred to as the servant of the

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Lord, the righteous one, the one that God himself lays the sins of God's people upon.

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He's pierced through for our sins. He makes us to be accounted righteous, and he's punished and numbered among the transgressors.

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So there's something unique in this Messiah. He's going to be righteous. He's going to be the one who can be the sin -bearer.

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Now, point here, everyone stop here for a moment. Remember the sacrificial system of the temple.

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What did you have to have in all the sacrificial system, all the way up from they had it in early stages to the temple itself, what did you have to have as a sacrifice?

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Something that was holy, without spot, and what? Flemish. It was a sign.

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It was a sign. There was nothing wrong with this. This thing is perfect, no spot, no blemish.

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You had to have perfection, and then they confess the sins of the people onto the scapegoats, and they also had the sacrifice spill its blood or lose its life on behalf of the people of God.

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They understood that a sacrifice had to be perfect, without sin, spot, blemish.

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It had to represent perfection, and they understood that this sacrificial system was speaking to something.

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You had to have representation. Something was going to have to take death because of your rebellion.

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Something was going to actually have the sins of the people confessed onto. That's already in their minds, and in Isaiah 53, we see that this righteous one who's coming, who's done no violence, nor is there any deceit in his mouth, the

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Lord lays on him the iniquity of us all. He's going to be the sin bearer, which means he has to be righteous and blameless and without sin.

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Do you see it? That's all there. So the original life of Jesus is important.

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Does Jesus fit what the Old Testament said had to be in place in terms of character and life for the

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Messiah? Now again, there's no way to fully exhaust this today, but let's talk about a few things.

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The original life of Jesus. In Isaiah 53, we see he's the righteous one.

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No deceit in his mouth. And in John 8, 46, Jesus can stand up in front of his friends, his family, and his enemies, and he can say, which of you convicts me of sin?

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Now, you've heard me say this, I said it last week. I dare you to try that. Husbands, I dare you to, as you leave here today, get into the car with your wife, cool it down a little bit.

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My goodness, it's hot. Look over in her beautiful eyes and say, Honey, try to show me my sin.

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Now, how long do you think that car ride is going to be? If you ask someone who's close to you, who knows your life and walks with you, convict me of sin, accuse me of sin,

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I'm sure there's a list. Or if you stand up in front of your families, any of us, and say, which of you accuses me of sin?

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People are going to line up with pen and paper, right? In all of our lives, if you say to people around you who know you best, which of you accuses me of sin, people will have something to say.

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And in terms of our enemies, people who don't like us, want to slander us, want to harm us, if we were to ask them, which of you accuses me of sin, they might actually have some examples.

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But Jesus is unique. He has an original life. Because Jesus is the only one that can stand up in front of his friends, family, and enemies, and he can say, which of you accuses me of sin?

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And it's silent. People can't say anything. And so what do they have to do with Jesus? They have to try to slander him with lies.

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Oh, he eats with tax collectors and prostitutes, as though that were a bad thing.

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Jesus says, I came for the sick, not the well, right?

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For sinners and not the righteous. And they lie about Jesus because Jesus is performing miracles, turning water into wine, and yes, it was real wine.

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It was a blessing from God. Drunkenness is a sin, but Jesus made actual, real wine.

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Jesus drank wine, obviously. So they say, okay, let's try to get him somehow. Ah, he's a drunkard, even though it wasn't true.

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All they could do was try to slander. And Jesus is eating with tax collectors and prostitutes and sinners.

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And it's like, oh, he's a glutton because he's eating. All they can do is lie and try to malign him.

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But Jesus has this life of perfection, and I want to challenge you with this. What would it take for you to go to your death, believing that your brother is the savior of the world, the righteous one, the one who could take away all sins and is

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God himself? That's what James did. James is the half -brother of Jesus, of course, through Mary and Joseph and James, the

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Lord's brother. We have this amazing work from him in the New Testament. We know much about James outside of the

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New Testament record. We know that James ultimately was killed in Jerusalem, thrown off the top of the temple, killed for his faith in his brother as God and savior.

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Now, James would have told you that Jesus is without sin and could take away anyone's sins.

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Now, who do you think would know Jesus best but his own brother who grew up with him?

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Right? You can fool somebody into being righteous and blameless for maybe a short period of time, but ultimately your sins are going to come and find you out.

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Right? Yes? You guys ever seen, we talked about this before, that really wacky lady that was mother

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God during COVID. She was like floating around the nation and then she ended up in Kauai and she was ultimately thrown off of Kauai because she said that she was not just like a reincarnation of Jesus.

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She was a reincarnation of like Pele and the Hawaiian gods and they didn't want anything to do with that.

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So she got thrown off. Now, if you watch her life, she tried to smile and be nice and act like she was actually

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God incarnate. But if you watch her, it only took a short while to see that this woman is a drunk.

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She is nasty and mean spirited. She is filled with hostility and wrath and she is clearly not mother

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God. It didn't take very long, but Jesus had people walking with him for years.

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His family who knew him, his mother who worshiped him. Jesus had an original life that has never been matched in history.

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Jesus, of course, if he is the promised Messiah, he must be divine. That is to say, he must be

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God. There is only one true and living God. We would anticipate if he's the God man,

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Isaiah 9, 6 through 7, that he would have control over his own creation. In Matthew 8, 23 through 27, you know the famous story.

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You could just mark it down. Matthew 8, 23 through 27, Jesus can speak to the waves.

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Jesus can speak to the waves and say, peace, be still. Now we read a story like that, and it is unbelievably powerful.

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It almost seems like it can't be true. Jesus can actually just with his own mouth speak to the waves and say, peace, be still, and they stop.

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Now what would you expect from God himself who became a man? If you read the beginning of your

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Bible in Genesis 1, what's that story start with? God spoke and there was.

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God said, let there be and there was. With his own speech, God creates.

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With his own speech, God controls his own creation. And here you have the God man in the incarnation can say to the waves, peace, be still, and they stop.

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Only God can do that. Jesus shows creative control over the creation itself.

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And I want you to see, there's so many passages that could demonstrate this, but I want you to have one in your toolbox.

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Go to Psalm 89, 9. This is what would have been going through the minds and hearts of the disciples and those that they told this story to.

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Psalm 89, verse 9. Let's start with verse 8 actually as you turn those pages.

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Psalm 89, 8 says, O Lord God of hosts, who is mighty as you are,

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O Lord, with your faithfulness all around you, you rule the raging of the sea.

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When its waves rise, you still them. Well, what would you expect to see if God took on flesh and came as a son or a child, that God would have control over his own physical creation?

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This isn't the only time that Jesus did such a thing. We, of course, have the amazing story of Jesus walking on water.

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That must have been a sight to see. In Matthew 14, 22 through 33, the testimony of the eyewitnesses is that Jesus came walking on water.

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And this wasn't a trick. This wasn't sorcery. This is Jesus controlling his own creation.

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He can say to the waves, be still. He can walk on water. All the marks of divinity are in the life of Jesus.

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Righteousness, control over his own creation. And, of course, we see these amazing, sweet, beautiful moments throughout the

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New Testament record of Jesus in the Gospels. What do you see? You see Jesus with such compassion.

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Jesus with such love and mercy. The people who were the throwaways of society, whether you were blind, deaf, mute, lame, whether you had leprosy, people who were just seen as lost and without hope,

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Jesus had compassion on them. He had mercy. People were running to Jesus in crowds, lowering people down to Jesus through the roof so that Jesus could simply touch them.

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People knew the power of Messiah. It was so well known that even one woman is just trying to reach through the crowd just to touch even the hem of his garment, and she's healed.

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That's how much divine power that Jesus had. And Jesus heals the blind in John chapter 9.

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He can just give sight back to somebody. Now, that's a powerful thing. You know, I think at times, all of us, if we're honest, we get kind of cold -hearted at times, numb -minded.

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We don't look at the stories in the gospel record, the eyewitness testimony, we don't look at it as though we were there in the scene itself, as though we were there.

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And just consider that. All around us right now, there's hospitals everywhere. All around us.

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Now, I've had my fill of hospitals over the last year. I don't ever want to go to one again, but I know that I'm going to.

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I've felt like I've lived literally at the hospital over the last 10 months many, many times.

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Hospitals are horrible places, aren't they? They're horrible places. There's death occurring all around you in the hospital.

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There is sickness, there is sadness. One of the worst hospitals to go in is a children's hospital.

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When you walk into a regular hospital, you're seeing the aged, you're seeing, you know, 40 -year -olds, you're seeing teenagers.

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Oftentimes, it's just this spread and spectrum of people. When you walk into a children's hospital, it's very different, isn't it?

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All the small children, all the babies. It's heartbreaking. It's a fallen world that ought to hurt us, that ought to gnaw at us.

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It's terrible. It's a terrible thing. All this sickness and pain all around us, and at times we feel at such a loss, there's nothing

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I can do. There's nothing I can really do. I mean, you're just pleading with God. Can you do something,

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God? Can you act? And the glory about the ministry of Jesus is that this took place in this world, in this dirt, in this life, with real flesh -and -blood people just like you and I.

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And Jesus touches people, gives them their sight back. Jesus can speak to somebody, and they're healed.

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Jesus can just say they're healed, and they are. Jesus can say to somebody that had no legs for their entire life, no ability to control their legs,

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Jesus can say, take up your bed and walk, and they get up. And they walk.

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He speaks it into existence because he's the creator himself. And Jesus can do what all of us so desperately want to happen when we're at the bedside of a loved one who's died.

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Have you ever been there? Have you been in those moments with somebody who's so precious to you, who you've been with your entire life, or even somebody who's been a best friend?

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That moment where they're dying, it's an incomprehensible thing, and it's a thing we can't describe.

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That feeling of pain and loss and lack of control where you finally have to let go of someone that you love, and you have no control over it.

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Those are our hardest moments as human beings. Amen? Death.

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Death. And not only does Jesus take away our fear of death because he's conquered death on our behalf, and he says to you, whoever believes in me, though he dies, yet shall he live.

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But Jesus does something even greater that shocks people. Of course! Because maybe some of the things that you see

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Jesus do, you might think, oh, it's a magic trick or it's hypnotism or maybe that person wasn't really blind.

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You could have some kind of excuse for it. And let's be honest, there are charlatans alive and well today who fake healings, miracle healings.

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Men like Benny Hinn and Todd White and all the rest of them, fake healings, charlatans who are pretending they're playing a role in a part.

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They're deceiving people. They're not really healing people, even though they have a miracle healing ministry.

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And so some people could maybe say, well, maybe that person wasn't really blind. I'm only an onlooker here, a bystander.

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I don't know this guy's life. Maybe he was brought in as an act. It's possible.

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But what you cannot fake is a resurrection from the dead. And Jesus comes into the room of a little girl.

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They have professional mourners there. This girl is dead, dead, dead.

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They know that she's dead. And Jesus is saying she's only sleeping. And, of course, this is a jolting statement to make, and so people think this is kind of funny.

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What do you mean she's sleeping? We all know that she's dead, and dead people don't come back to life.

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That's not how this world works. And Jesus walks to the bedside of a little girl.

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And fathers, mothers, I want you to imagine for a moment that you've lost your child, and you're there in the room with the child, and you feel like there's nothing left, and there's no hope, and this is completely powerless.

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And then the God -man walks in. The God -man walks in, the creator of life, the one who made your daughter in the first place and gave her to you.

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He walks by her bedside, and all he has to say is a couple of words.

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He says to this dead little girl, he says, And this little girl arrives, and she comes to life to the shock and dismay of everybody, of everybody.

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These are the kinds of miracles that Jesus performs. Now, I've told many of you this before, but I'd like to end now because I have this experience in my life.

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I've seen miracles in my life, a number of crazy things, but I'll just say quickly that I've wondered, when

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I've read the New Testament record and the eyewitnesses, these crazy miracles are happening. What is it like to be in that scene?

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What is it like to see a little girl arise from the dead or to see somebody get their eyes back?

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You've known this family member has been blind their entire life, and all of a sudden now they're seeing the world in glowing color, and this is because Jesus gave them their eyes back?

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What was it like to be there in that scene when they're bringing people in crowds to Jesus, and he's just touching and healing, and the fame of Jesus is going everywhere because he's legitimately healing people of real diseases and raising people from the dead?

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And when God healed my son Augustine from spina bifida, it was a shock.

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I just want to share with you at least what my own experience is in actually experiencing a miracle right in front of your eyes.

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Augustine was diagnosed with the worst stage of spina bifida. There's four stages.

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He was on the better end of the worst stage of spina bifida. He had to get a brain shunt and brain surgery, and they had to seal his back up.

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As soon as he came out of the womb, they had a team of surgeons on standby. As soon as they pulled him out to start this 2 to 6 weeks of surgeries,

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Candy saw the ultrasounds as Augustine was in the womb for weeks.

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Just a week before Augustine was delivered, Augustine's back was wide open in the ultrasound.

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You can see that big black spot. And then all of a sudden, we have the world praying for Augustine.

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All Christians everywhere, God, heal him. God, heal him. Please, Lord, we trust you. Please heal him.

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Now, God doesn't need to heal any of us. We don't call God down from his throne in this fallen world and demand of him, you do what

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I say, but God has all power to do as he wills. Amen? And so we were asking.

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We trust you, Lord. We know you can. We were asking. And as I've said to you guys,

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I think one or two times before, there was only one time this came out of my mouth.

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The rest of the time, I was pretty chill and closed about it. As we were praying for healing and God to bless his little life and body, we trust you,

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Lord, and if you would, Lord, please heal him. But as Candy and I were waiting and getting a cup of coffee while he was in the operating room with his biological mother being taken out by C -section, we're waiting for all this to go down.

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Candy says to me as we're leaving getting coffee, she says, Are you ready? And I said,

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Yeah, I'm ready. I'm ready. And she says, No, are you ready? I said, Ready for what?

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And she said, For this to be maybe worse than we even expect. And I said, Of course.

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Of course I'm ready for anything. He's my son. I said, And this is the first time it happened.

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I said, But are you ready? I said it kind of defiantly to her. I said, But are you ready? And she said,

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Yeah, ready for what? I said, Are you ready for God to completely heal him? And she said,

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Oh, yeah, I know he can. Yes, I know he can. And I was sort of like defiant as I said it to her.

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Are you ready for God to completely heal him? And so we go back into the hospital. And you know the story is they brought us back into the operating room.

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He was supposed to go to NICU not to be touched for like two to six weeks because of all the surgeries and the wide open spine.

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And we go back there into a room with shouts and crying and screaming because he was completely whole, healed, back closed up.

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The doctors are mystified walking around the hall saying, We can't explain this. We can't explain this.

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They're coming in and they're unrolling him from his wrap and they're looking at his back and just showing like,

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Look, this is not a mistake. Like what happened here? How did this happen? The surgeon who was the best surgeon in Arizona in charge of this kind of operation said that in his 35 years of practice he had never seen anything like this ever.

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And I want to share this with you. For my life, that was a miracle that I got to set in.

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I didn't see it coming. I know that God can do whatever he pleases. God can split the sea.

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God can create anything. I know that. But it was this unexpected miracle

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God threw at us where we had a complete healing from head to toe, almost to the point where you're like,

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Can you guys maybe check again? Are you sure? Are you sure this is real?

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And I want to tell you that my experience of being present in the midst of a miracle like that is that you lose your ability to speak.

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So just imagine it. If it's anything like we experience, when

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God was walking among us, my experience, Candy's experience, when we had this miracle presented to us and it was a bona fide, genuine miracle from God.

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We could show you the ultrasounds. This miracle in front of us, you lose the ability to speak, to articulate words, to put together and form sentences for hours upon hours upon hours.

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You're just there in stunned silence. You can't speak. And so I like to imagine that there was a lot of that going on.

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I'm sure there were moments when the healing happened, which happened to us as well. I think Candy was actually speaking in tongues for a minute.

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Not really. But it was screaming and shouting and dropping the knees and those sorts of things.

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I know that happens, but then you're sort of set into this strange silence and you're dumbfounded and you can't move and think and everything's a blur and you just sit in silence.

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I believe there's probably a lot of that going on during these miracles. These are real people, real lives, real hurt people.

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Jesus healed Elaine, John 5, 1 through 29. Jesus raised the dead, Mark 5, 41, the little girl.

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And finally, Jesus raised himself. Jesus said to Jews during his day, destroy this temple and in three days

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I will raise it up again. He was speaking about the temple of his body. Jesus did something that was incredible.

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And that is something that even surprised the disciples who saw his miracles. Go there with me just for a moment.

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Think about it. Think about that. In Jesus' ministry, Jesus could say to another person, arise.

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Jesus could say to another person, be healed. Jesus could perform these miracles for others.

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But what was something that the disciples could not comprehend was that Jesus would be able to affect his own resurrection because they saw him murdered on that tree.

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And that's why they were so confused. We thought he was the

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Messiah. We thought he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. We thought he was truly the one. How could this be?

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He's dead. He's in a garden tomb. He's dead. How can this happen? And then

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Jesus is alive from the dead. Jesus shows control over his own death by his resurrection from the dead.

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It's a powerful thing, the original life of Jesus. Boy, it's hot up here.

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Are you guys warm? Are you warm? This is old school. Can you imagine that when people planted here in Phoenix, what were those nutcases thinking?

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Are people who lived here initially without air conditioning? Do you know the guy who invented air conditioning?

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Do you know it wasn't really that long ago? Who knows his name? Anyone know his name? He's the hero of mankind, and no one knows his name.

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But do you know that people lived here in Arizona, here in Mesa, before there was air conditioning? Those people were beasts, right?

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I mean, here we are complaining because it's like 80. Some of you guys are like, oh gosh, it's 80 degrees in here. We're going old school.

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Okay. So, is Jesus the Messiah? What's the answer? Most definitely.

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We've got now 50 % of you saying it. So, is Jesus the Messiah? Most definitely.

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Messianic prophecies fulfilled. What's the O stand for? The original life of Jesus, and now the symbol's fulfilled.

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Now, I want you to consider something, because this is powerful. I told you this is my very favorite, and there's no way

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I'm going to be able to do this to show you how spectacular this truly is. I'm going to do my best.

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But I want you to consider something, that this Bible, 66 different books and letters, written over a period, depending on how you date, say

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Job, the oldest book in the Bible, written over a period of about 2 ,000 years, by dozens of different authors, spanning all this time and all these geographical locations.

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I want you to consider that when you are a Jew in Egypt, in slavery, and God's going to deliver you through this

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Moses figure, and he's telling you to do all these things, you don't have any concept of Jesus dying on a cross.

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You don't. When it's Passover, all you know is your pain. All you know is your slavery, your bondage, and all you know is that there's been some pretty crazy things happening in Egypt.

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Water turning into blood, locusts, frogs, some pretty crazy things are going on with this

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Moses prophet guy, and he's showing somehow that this

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Yahweh God is the true God, and that all the Egyptian gods are all false gods because they can't get rid of the frogs.

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The frog god should be able to do something about them, and he can't. So the Jews are just living this experience.

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There's no concept, no understanding of Jesus the Messiah, who lives righteously, blamelessly, dies on a cross, rises from the dead, descends.

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They don't understand that. They don't. It's Passover, and God says, here's what

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I'm going to do. I'm going to take the firstborn. You take a lamb, no spot, no blemish.

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By the way, don't break its bones. Put the blood of that lamb over your door, and then when

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I bring my wrath, I will pass over that house on account of the blood of the lamb.

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You'll be freed from your bondage to enter into the promised land of the relationship with God.

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That's all they know. They don't have any concepts to understand how this is going to land on Jesus.

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And as you move further into the story of Israel, let's be honest. Some of the stuff that they're told to do in the

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Torah, in terms of temple, priesthood, sacrifice, how they're to dress, what they're to do, let's be honest.

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Some of that stuff is strange to us. It's strange. And guess what?

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I'm going to go as far as to say it was also probably strange to them as well.

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All they know is God is saying you must do this. You have to do it in this way. You need a priest.

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You need a holy of holies. You need to do it this way. They don't know. They're just saying God said and we do.

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That's it. And then there's time going by and more given by God. And time goes by in a different location and more given by God.

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And they don't have anybody controlling this story. No, they don't.

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Let me give you something. Proof that through that revelation they just couldn't fully grasp what

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God was saying is that when the disciples were walking with Jesus, they didn't even fully comprehend these things.

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When Jesus died, they thought this was over and done.

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Right? Even they didn't understand how all these symbols were revealed in Jesus and how these prophecies landed perfectly on Jesus.

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It was this massive revelation, this divine revelation, that even the disciples themselves didn't fully grasp until after the fact.

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They were like, oh, my goodness. Temple, priest, sacrifice. It's all right there.

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Oh, my goodness. Jesus fulfills this. Prophet, priest, king, he's the righteous one. They fully understood it after this story was happening and unfolding right before their eyes.

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The symbols fulfilled in Jesus are insane. If you want to see the marks of divinity, you can go beyond the direct prophecies to Jesus to the symbols fulfilled in Jesus.

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Let me tell you a story about a man named Adam. God's first creation, image bearer of God.

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God creates his image in a garden. The image of God. Adam was supposed to be

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God's light in the world. Adam was told to take dominion over the earth, to subdue it.

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He was supposed to beautify God's creation. Adam names the animals. Adam is

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God's image in the garden. And Adam was told by God this but not that.

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He was given a word from God, a command. Here's my word. Here's my command.

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This but not that. And then, of course, Adam, our first parent, that first image bearer of God, sins against God, plunges all of humanity into death and condemnation and rebellion.

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And so what does God do? God curses the very ground and says, a sign of the fall itself is going to be thorns and thistles.

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And then God banishes Adam from the garden because of this sin, sends him off into the wilderness.

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And that's the plight of humanity. That's where this begins. And then let me tell you about a second

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Adam, Jesus. Jesus, the perfect image of God. Jesus, who obeys the

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Father perfectly. Jesus, who in the wilderness temptation, resists the trial and temptation, resists the devil by doing what?

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By believing the words of God and obeying God. When Satan comes with a temptation,

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Jesus uses the word of God and obeys God. You shall not tempt the Lord, you're gone.

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And when Satan says, here's all the kingdoms of the world, it's what you came for, Jesus. I'll give them all to you right now.

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All you have to do is bow and worship me. Jesus says what? You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.

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Jesus is the perfect image of God. He is what Adam was supposed to be and failed.

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And Jesus comes. He is the light of the world. He obeys the Father perfectly.

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He sacrifices his life for the sinners. And this is a glorious thing in terms of the symbolism.

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Where were we created? Where was humanity created? Where? In a garden.

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Where did death enter? In a garden. Adam was told to take dominion and subdue the earth.

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He was supposed to spread that garden kingdom into the whole world as God's image. And he fails.

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And when Jesus, that perfect Adam, the second Adam, when he goes to the cross, remember something.

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It was the Roman soldiers. Not Jews. The Roman soldiers that didn't know the

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Torah, they didn't understand these things. They, in mockery of Jesus, fashioned together a crown of what?

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Thorns. And so when Jesus, the perfect image of God, that perfect Adam, when he is dying on the cross, they fix onto his head the very symbol of the fall itself.

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Thorns. And so when Jesus dies for the sins of his people, he is wearing those thorns, identifying who he is and what he's actually accomplishing.

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But a more glorious thing is that Jesus is buried where? Where? In a garden tomb.

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Where did death enter humanity's experience? In a garden. Where was death defeated?

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In a garden. And I love, you've heard me say this so many times, I love the little one line in John's gospel.

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Sort of thrown in. It seems like, I don't know what that means. You've probably read it a thousand times and you're like, okay, she mistaken him as a gardener.

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Isn't it interesting that Jesus, the perfect Adam, conquers death in that garden, and when the woman comes, she's confused, where's

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Jesus? And she confused Jesus as the gardener. Why would you ever confuse somebody as a gardener?

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They must have been doing gardening things. And so when Jesus defeats death in a garden, the first thing the perfect Adam does is he gets to work on the ground, which was

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Adam's original vocation, to subdue the earth and take dominion. Isn't that powerful?

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We're just nicking the surface. Think for a moment with me about Israel. Did you know that Israel, in God's word, is called

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God's son? Did you know that Israel is called God's firstborn?

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Did you know that Israel is called God's servant? And you know what's powerful is this.

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If you just read tonight, do this when you go home. Read the first four chapters.

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Read the first four chapters of the gospel according to Matthew. Matthew's focus is more towards the

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Jewish mindset and Jewish understanding. And as you read Matthew, you see some pretty powerful things.

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Matthew is recapitulating the life and history of Israel in Jesus himself in just the first four chapters.

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So the first thing Matthew does is Matthew lays out the genealogy. It's all of our children's favorite part of the

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Bible, right? We're doing Bible study, kids. And we're going to start in Matthew 1.

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Our kids are like, yay, all the names. Thank God for those names, amen?

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If you didn't have those names, you wouldn't have a record of God's keeping his promise to David and to Abraham.

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Matthew's lineage shows the lineage to the royal right to the throne through Jesus' adoptive father,

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Joseph, that he has the royal right to the throne. Luke's gospel,

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I believe, tells us Mary's biological genealogy that shows it going to David and to Abraham.

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So Jesus is physically descended from David and Abraham. He has a right to the throne, and he has a royal right to the throne through Joseph, his father.

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But Matthew shows you the story of Jesus. He has the royal right to the throne.

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And then it shows that Jesus, his life was in danger as a baby.

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They tried to take his life, and they were able to protect him, and they fled to Egypt.

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So you see that Jesus is going through this recapitulated history of Israel.

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We see marks of Moses there, and Jesus is in Egypt, and it says, Out of Egypt I called my son.

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Wait a second. That verse is about Israel. But the

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New Testament writers understood that that Old Testament was all about Jesus.

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Israel was called God's son, but Israel failed. Jesus is God's true son that does not fail, and he went out of Egypt and fled

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Egypt to ultimately Nazareth. And then, of course, you see in Matthew's gospel what?

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Jesus is driven into the wilderness for 40 and 40. Now, there's a lot to say about fasting for 40 days and 40 nights.

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Have you ever tried to fast? Anybody ever try to fast? We should all be doing fasting, yes.

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Amazing health benefits in fasting, but also mostly the spiritual benefits, right? But have you ever tried to do like a 24 -hour fast?

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I know someone close to me. I won't name names. But this person got through about 8 hours of a fast and literally acted like they were dying, like literally dying.

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It was obscene to see. It was like, you've got to be kidding me. You better hope there is never like a food shortage or a famine because you're dead on day two.

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It was like 8 hours in, and it was like, I'm dying, I'm dying dead. I just gave it away.

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And then 24 hours, it was literally like, take me to the hospital. I'm like, we are all so privileged in this nation.

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But it's something to say about, wow, the strength of Jesus to do that kind of fast, to focus on the

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Father and to obey God. But what did Matthew do in that story? What's he do?

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He's taking you through Israel's story, but Jesus is the true and better Israel.

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He is what Israel was supposed to be. He's the servant Israel was supposed to be.

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Israel was supposed to be God's light to the world. They failed in that vocation. Jesus is the true light that enters into the world.

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And when Jesus goes into the wilderness, he doesn't wander like Israel did, disobeying

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God and doubting God. Jesus goes into the wilderness and he defeats Satan using the words of God and obeying

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God. And so the whole life and story of Jesus is to demonstrate that Israel's story, what they were supposed to be, and they failed.

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Jesus is the true and better Israel. The marks are there throughout the

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New Testament. I'd love to point this next one out. I hope you know it.

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The Day of Atonement. People say Yom Kippur. It was actually Yom Kippurim. It was the

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Day of Atonement. But we know about the Day of Atonement. The Jews today are not able to practice it truly as God commanded them.

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But the Day of Atonement was a very special day where you had to have a priest. Because he is a sinner, he has to offer a sacrifice even for himself.

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Because he's not blameless. He's a flawed priest. He is a sinful priest.

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Even he needs atonement for himself. And so the first thing he does is he offers a sacrifice for his own sins.

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And then the priest has to have two animals. One becomes the scapegoat.

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One is the animal that dies a death. And so what they had practiced on that day was this sinful priest offers a sacrifice for himself.

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Then he sacrifices one animal. He sheds its blood for the atonement for the sins of his people, of God's people.

01:00:06

And then he has the scapegoat where he presses his hands onto the goat.

01:00:12

And he confesses the sins of God's people onto the goat. And then they take that goat and they walk away with that goat within the view of those who just watched this.

01:00:25

And they watch that scapegoat that took their sins being led away from them as far as the east is from the west.

01:00:32

And disappearing off into the distance. Showing your sins being removed from you and taken away from you by God.

01:00:39

You had a sacrifice for sin and the removal of sin. That's what they practiced. That's what they rehearsed.

01:00:48

And yet it was a flawed sacrifice. What's wrong with that sacrifice?

01:00:54

Is that it has to be repeated Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, every single year.

01:01:01

And you know what else is wrong with it? That priest is a sinner. And then he dies.

01:01:07

And then someone takes his place. So I never have like this really great intercessor.

01:01:12

This person who will live forever to intercede for me. And guess what? I have this constant reminder of my sins.

01:01:18

Every year I'm reminded. Every single year. I see the animal die. The blood is shed.

01:01:23

I see my sin is terrible. Look at the consequences. And every year I'm reminded. My sins on the scapegoat.

01:01:31

I've got to watch it leave again. All of this imagery and symbolism is happening. And it's just on repeat.

01:01:37

Repeat. Repeat. And then the glory of the gospel is that Jesus is the high priest.

01:01:44

Who guess what? Has no sin. He needs no animal sacrifice for himself.

01:01:51

He's the righteous one. He's the blameless one. Jesus is the one who is without sin.

01:01:57

And Jesus is the high priest who lives forever to intercede for us.

01:02:03

Because he is alive and will never die again. He is at the right hand of the father.

01:02:09

And he always intercedes for us. And he brings us to perfection before the father.

01:02:15

And his sacrifice, are you ready? His sacrifice, it is what?

01:02:22

Finished. It's a once for all sacrifice. Able to perfect forever those who draw near to God through him.

01:02:28

That's the glory of the gospel. He is a better prophet, a better priest, a better king.

01:02:34

He's what Israel was supposed to be. He's what Adam failed to be. The perfect image of God.

01:02:40

And of course, you know, one of my very favorite stories.

01:02:46

I do hope you know this. If you haven't read this, you must spend time doing this today.

01:02:52

Or tomorrow, this week. The story of Isaac in Genesis 22.

01:03:00

Now I love to bring this up because you'll also have to have this in your pocket when you're engaging with atheists who are critical of the

01:03:08

Bible. Atheists love this chestnut argument. I can't tell you how many times

01:03:14

I've heard it. I'm going to disprove the Bible. I'm going to disprove it. Well, how are you going to disprove the

01:03:19

Bible? I'm going to show you there's a massive contradiction in the Bible and that God is actually immoral. All right, please explain that.

01:03:27

And I don't understand as an atheist why that would matter to you if our ancestors were bacteria. But go ahead. I'll entertain it.

01:03:33

Please. Okay. Well, your God shows that he contradicts himself. Please explain how. God says in his word, he says, you shall not murder.

01:03:43

Is that right? And you say, that's exactly right. God says, you shall not murder. What did

01:03:49

God tell Abraham to do to his son? Now let that hang for a second.

01:03:58

I'll let it hang for a second. God told Abraham to give his son, the son of his love,

01:04:05

Isaac, as a sacrifice at a particular place. So how do you solve that problem?

01:04:13

God says, don't do this. Then he says, do this. And the answer is, this is all about Christ.

01:04:20

God was laying down the story of Jesus in history as to what God was going to do with his son, not what

01:04:27

Abraham was going to do to his son. And I want you to see the text for yourself in Genesis 22.

01:04:51

Genesis 22 .1. After these things, God tested Abraham and said to him,

01:04:57

Abraham. And he said, here I am. He said, take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which

01:05:07

I shall tell you. So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and his son

01:05:15

Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which

01:05:21

God had told him. On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar.

01:05:28

All right. That's scary. Everybody, this is the son that God told

01:05:36

Abraham that through this son, Isaac, I'm going to bless the entire world.

01:05:43

Through Isaac, your offspring is going to come through here. This is the seed through which the

01:05:49

Messiah is going to come. And now God says, take your son. That son that I promised is going to change the world through this line.

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It's through this seed, Isaac. Take him, the son of your love, your only son, take him, and now go sacrifice him in this specific place that I'm telling you about,

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Moriah. And so Abraham obeys, and he does a three -day journey to get to this, weirdly, specific place that God says to go to.

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It's a long way away. It wasn't around the corner. God didn't say, take the knife, sacrifice your son right now around that corner.

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God said, specific place, Moriah, go there and take your son, your only son, and sacrifice him there.

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Now what is Abraham thinking? This is kind of a big ask.

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Also, I'm a little bit confused. You said that you were going to change the world through Isaac.

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I'm going to have offspring as numerous as the stars through Isaac. This one. And now you're saying, kill him?

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We know a little something about what Abraham was thinking in the book of Hebrews, and that is this,

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Abraham believed God. Abraham believed God's promise that through Isaac, the world was going to be changed.

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And Abraham believed that God was even able to raise the dead. Abraham thought that he was about to see a resurrection because he knew

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God kept his promises, and he knew that God was saying, do this, bring Isaac. And Abraham said, we must be waiting for a resurrection today.

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But the story gets better. So it says in verse 4,

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On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey.

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I and the boy, listen closely, will go over there and worship and come again to you.

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So Abraham has his people with him. He's at the specific place God told him to go to.

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He knows this is the son of the promise. He's the son of his love, his only son. God's going to change the world through him.

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God says, sacrifice him here. So he tells the people with him, he says, we're going to go worship. And then we are coming back to you.

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So what did Abraham think was going to happen? Oh, a resurrection of his only son, the son of his love, after he was sacrificed.

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Powerful. Now watch, it says in verse 6, And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son.

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Huh, that's interesting. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son.

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So here we have Abraham told to go to a specific place, Mount Moriah, take his son, his only son, the son of his love, and sacrifice him there.

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And now Isaac, the son of his love, his only son, the promised one, is now carrying the wood to the place of the sacrifice.

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Powerful. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went, both of them together.

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And Isaac said to his father, Abraham, my father. And he said, here I am, my son.

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And he said, behold the fire and the wood. But where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Abraham said, listen closely.

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God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.

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So they went, both of them together. When they came to the place of which God had told them, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound

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Isaac, his son, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand, scary moment, and took the knife to slaughter his son.

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But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham.

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And he said, here I am. He said, do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now

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I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.

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Pause. Pause. Who's the angel of the Lord? Who's the angel of the Lord?

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Jesus. The messenger of Yahweh shows up, calls to Abraham, and says, you haven't withheld your only son from me.

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This is God speaking. Now, and Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram.

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A what? A what? A ram. A ram.

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There's a ram caught in the thicket. But wait a second. Isaac said, excuse me, dad, where's the lamb for the sacrifice?

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Abraham says, God will provide for himself the what? The lamb.

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They saw that day a ram. And then the text says, Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.

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So Abraham called the name of that place, the Lord will provide.

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As it is said to this day on the mount of the Lord, it shall be provided. And what is glorious, glorious, glorious, is that over 1 ,500 years later, more like 1 ,800 years later,

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Jesus, the son of God's love, his only son, carried the wood to that specific place.

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Mount Moriah is where Jesus was crucified. Jesus, God's son, the son of his love, carried the wood to that place of sacrifice.

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Only this time, when God did provide the lamb, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, on that day,

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God did not withhold his hand from killing his son.

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For what? For you, for me. You see, this story here,

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Abraham's story with Isaac, was God giving us a portrayal of what he was going to accomplish in Jesus.

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Listen to this. Do you think that Abraham and Isaac comprehended what was happening that day? They could not have.

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They could not have. But what did God know he was doing as he's working through history, this redemptive story, he knew he was laying the portraits and the portrayals of Jesus and what he was going to accomplish.

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Isn't this a powerful thing? Yes? And I told you I wasn't even going to begin to tap this out in terms of its glory.

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Now, there's one more left. I knew that this one was going to take a long time.

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So what I'm going to do is I'm going to combine the tea with our study on post -millennialism.

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So the transformation of the world, I'll whet your appetites, okay? The transformation of the world.

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One of the reasons it was fairly easy for me to become a post -millennialist and believe that Christ was going to have victory over the entire world before the final judgment is because all those messianic texts in the

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Old Testament say that the Messiah is going to have dominion from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the earth.

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The knowledge of the earth is going to cover the earth like the waters cover the sea. It'll be like rain from heaven falling on the grass that gets everything wet.

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All the families of the earth are going to return to worship Yahweh. He is going to put all of his enemies under his feet.

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I knew all those passages from these messianic passages, and that's why

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I became post -millennialist. So next week, the tea is going to be a combination of this message and what we believe at Apologia Church about post -millennialism.

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You guys good with that? Yes? Was this a blessing? Do you feel like you're a little more prepared now to talk to somebody about Jesus?

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All right, now ready? Brothers and sisters, I'll challenge you. Don't hide this between your eyes or behind your eyes and between your ears.

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Don't. Go tell somebody this glorious story about Jesus. It says the gospel is the power of God for salvation.

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You know that gospel. Go tell somebody. Yes? Amen. Let's pray. Lord, I pray that you'd bless the words that went out today for your glory and kingdom.

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I pray that you would cause us to fall more and more in love with these truths. I pray that you'd help us,

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Lord, to have a boldness about your gospel that we would tell people about Jesus boldly with humility and love.

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We pray, God, that you'd put your gospel on our lips and that we would preach it with power for your glory and kingdom.