Revelation 12:1 (The Great Nativity Sign)

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Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day sermon. We pray that as we declare the word of God, that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

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Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's word, and may the Lord be with you.

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Well, today we begin a brand new Christmas series in the book of Revelation, which may seem a little bit odd to you if you're used to Christmas series.

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You probably haven't had one in the book of Revelation before, but Revelation chapter 12 actually does give us a view of the coming of Christ.

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It gives us a view of his nativity. It gives us a view of his birth, and it tells us why his birth is so important.

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Now, let me give you an example of this. When you're trying to learn a topic, one of the best ways to learn the topic is to explore that topic from different genres.

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For instance, you can read about something in a mathematical textbook, or you can read about something in poetry, or you can read a novel about a topic, or you can read a scientific journal about a topic.

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I was thinking about the Battle of Bunker Hill. If I wanted to learn about the Battle of Bunker Hill, which I know virtually nothing about, but if I were to want to learn about it,

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I might read some news articles from the time, some reports, I might read a diary from one of the soldiers who participated in the battle, so I could get a different vantage point of it, or I might want to read a poem about the

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Battle of Bunker Hill, and I confess, I started a poem and got busy and did not read it.

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But if I wanted to learn about the Battle of Bunker Hill, I would do these things, because different genres give us different aspects of a topic so that we can understand it more clearly.

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Revelation has given us an apocalyptic vantage point of the Christmas story. It's given us dramatic images about how

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Jesus was born from the tribe of Judah, about how his birth was contested by all the powers of hell, and how

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Jesus is going to bring the war that ends all wars, and that eventually brings peace to the earth, and puts all of his enemies under his feet.

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It tells us about the kind of kingdom that Jesus is gonna bring, and it tells us about the kind of war that Jesus is gonna bring.

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And in this sense, I think we've missed a critical aspect of Christmas. We've got our

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Hallmark cards, and we've got our little sweet little babies in mangers and live nativity scenes and all of that, and that is beautiful and good, but we've missed the fact that Christ launched his revolution on Christmas.

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The shot heard round the world did not happen in New England, it happened in Bethlehem in the stall that morning when

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Jesus came to reclaim a world that was in rebellion against God. And the war that Jesus brought is not gonna end in defeat or stalemate, as many popular views attest.

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His war will end in victory. His war will end in Jesus winning the nations.

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Now how do we understand this? Well, we have to understand the vision of Christmas that Revelation paints, because it's true.

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And it says things that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are saying, but are actually saying less clearly than Revelation.

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Isn't that a fascinating thing? But to understand this, we need to do some work, because Revelation is a difficult book.

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Revelation is one of those books that you get to and you think, I have no idea what is happening in this story, so I'm gonna read it to finish my reading plan.

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I've already made it this far, but I'm not gonna get a whole lot out of it. This is where the term panmillennialism comes from.

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Revelation is so confusing that I'm just gonna be a panmillennialist. What is that? I believe everything's gonna pan out in the end.

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But we have to do some work, because this is God's word. I've been so captured by eschatology for so long, because it's one of those parts of the

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Bible I didn't understand. And I've always sort of had a penchant for the underdog.

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I don't know why. And Revelation kinda seems like the underdog of the Bible, so I've gravitated there a little bit.

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But I wanna understand what God says, because this is God's breathed -out word for us. And I hope that we understand it this season.

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But to do that, we need to understand how signs work, because Revelation is a book that is filled with symbols and signs, and if we don't understand how a sign works, then we're not gonna understand

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Revelation. We're going to have our basement charts and our tinfoil hats and our string connected to different events, naming

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Fauci as the Antichrist and George Soros as his prophet, and all sorts of other madness if we don't understand signs.

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So today, what I'd like for us to do is I'd like for us to, in typical Shepherd's Church fashion,

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Derek made a joke in Sunday school that we used to preach over -an -hour sermons. What he failed to mention is that we preached over -an -hour on less than a verse.

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The first sermon at Shepherd's Church was Jude 1a, not even

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Jude 1. Well, today, we're gonna be in Revelation 12, verse 1a, and we'll probably be here for a minute, so hang tight.

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Today, we're gonna look at a great sign that God unleashed in the heavens, a sign where you see this woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, with 12 royal stars as her crown, but before we reveal her identity, cliffhanger alert, we need to lay the foundation.

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Today, I wanna talk about three things. What is a sign in the Bible? What does it mean?

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What does it accomplish? What is it for? Then I wanna look at how Revelation is a book filled with signs, and it accomplishes the purpose that we will argue for, and then

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I want us to look at how Christmas is the greatest sign of all. And it's probably more than you thought it was.

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So with that, turn with me to Revelation 12, 1a. We'll read all of verse one today.

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And by the way, take a picture of that if you need the verses. There's a few of them. See, this is how

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I make it 50 minutes. All of that, okay. Let's read.

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And a great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of 12 stars.

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Let us pray. Lord, we see in the book of Revelation that a great sign has appeared, and that sign is the sign of the birth of your son.

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Lord, let us understand what these things mean. Let us see them for what they are saying, and let us understand how this applies to Christmas, and to the nativity, and to the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

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Lord, it's in your name that we pray, amen. Now, when we read a passage like this, especially jumping into the middle of the book of Revelation, there's only one thing harder to do when preaching

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Revelation. The less hard thing is to start from the beginning and try to build towards the end.

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We're jumping in halfway in the middle of the book, so pray for me. But here we see a woman who is dressed with the sun, whatever that means, and she's got the moon at her feet, and she's got a crown of 12 stars upon her head, so apparently she is averse to flame, because she has not been consumed by these flames, right?

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Well, there's more to it going on than this. Revelation signs seem very foreign to us, because we don't understand the lens through which the

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Old Testament people, or the ancient peoples, are trying to view the text. When we see lambs that are opening up scrolls with seven eyes and seven horns, that seems strange to us.

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When we see a woman who's riding on top of a multi -headed beast, that seems strange to us.

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And it seems strange to us, because those are not our signs and our symbols in our day. Those are signs and symbols that belong to them.

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And I would argue that if we shared our signs in 21st century America with the ancient peoples, they would be just as confused at our signs as we are at theirs.

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So for instance, signs in their world are things like marks of the beast. That has real meaning to them, but to us, we think about that as a computer chip or a neural computer link from Elon Musk, because that's not our sign.

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And we try to import our meaning from our time onto their sign for their time, and we get confused.

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When we see dragons and plagues and all those types of things, we get confused. We look at the locust revelation, and I've heard people argue that those are

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Apache helicopters, because we misunderstand their signs and our time.

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The same way they would misunderstand our signs. We have signs that tell us when to go and when to stop. Can you imagine an ancient person who comes up to a stop sign?

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They would have been like, what is this red thing? We have signs of wealth.

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We have the dollar sign. We have the golden bull on Wall Street. Can you imagine

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Moses seeing our golden bull? He would have grinded it down and made every Wall Street executive drink it for their lunch.

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He wouldn't have understood that we're so sophisticated in our modern world. We have signs of food.

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Every time you see a golden arch, you know that there's a disgusting meal ahead. Every time we see that hideous man -eating mermaid, we know energy is just around the corner.

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Starbucks. And whenever we see that chili pepper from Chipotle, we know that a good time for our taste buds is about to be had.

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We have other signs and symbols. Signs of our nationalism. For instance, the Liberty Bell. That's a sign of who we are.

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Or the Statue of Liberty. Or the American flag. Or figures like Uncle Sam. None of these would have made sense in the ancient world.

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Not one of them. Let me give you an example of this. I'm gonna give you one of the great

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American apocalyptic anthems, which is by a man named Toby Keith. This is apocalyptic, think about it.

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Think about this like you're in the ancient world listening to this. When we see old glory flying, there's a lot of men dead.

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So we can sleep in peace at night when we lay down our head. Hey Uncle Sam, he put your name at the top of the list.

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And the Statue of Liberty started shaking her fist. And the eagle will fly, man, it's gonna be hell, when you hear

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Mother Freedom start ringing her bell and it feels like the whole wide world is raining down on you.

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Brought to you courtesy of the red, white, and blue. Can you imagine in the ancient world a group of dispensationals getting together to interpret this?

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I can imagine them in their underground catacombs with their yarn connecting the points.

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And they might have said something like this. You know, I'm not sure what this apocalyptic vision means, but it points to some very ancient glory.

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Perhaps the glory of our fathers that is restored when it flies overhead. And it'll be a time of great bloodshed and sacrifice where many warriors shall fall and their lives are given to protect the peace of God's people.

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And then Uncle Samuel, our great prophet, faithful servant of the Most High will be called upon once more to write their names in God's list of enemies on top of the

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Lord's great scroll. And surely this will be a sign of God's judgment and his mercy. And then a towering figure, perhaps an idol of some sort, called

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Liberty, will lift up her hand in defiance and the Lord's anointed shall not be shaken.

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The eagle, the symbol of Roman imperial power, will spread its wings and then red, white, and blue, let the reader understand, and will be the fires of his justice, the white robes of the saints, and the blue expanse of God's glorious heavens.

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They would have made as much nonsense of Toby Keith as we make of Revelation if you get the signs confused.

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If you take their signs and apply them to our times, you get nonsense. But if you take our signs and apply it to their times, you get nonsense.

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So the answer to the question of how do we understand Revelation is trying to understand their signs in their times.

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That's the only way that we're gonna understand the book of Revelation is if we go back and we understand their signs in their times.

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Or else we'll Toby Keith Revelation and there will be hell.

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So so far what we've seen is a very general point that signs are time sensitive, they're time stamped.

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And they're time specific. They apply to a certain time at a certain place for a certain people.

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That's the first thing that I wanted us to cover. So when we see things like lambs with seven heads, do not try to understand what that means based off of the news of our day.

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When we see beast with seven heads, do not try to understand what that means for our day. Or marks on the head and on the forehead and on the hands, do not try to make sense of what that means in our day.

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That will introduce confusion. Confusion. If you wanna understand these things, you have to understand them according to their world.

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And how did they understand it in their world? Through the Old Testament. The Old Testament was their sign book.

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The Old Testament was their source book. The Old Testament was their answer key for what these signs mean.

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I've heard it said and I think it's true that Revelation is the most Old Testament saturated book in all of the

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New Testament. Did you know that? The book of Hebrews is not the most Old Testament saturated book.

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Almost every single verse in the book of Revelation has an allusion to an

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Old Testament reality. Almost every single one. If you were to poke it, it oozes

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Old Testament. So if we're gonna understand Revelation in the way that it intends for us to understand it, we have to understand the

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Old Testament. We have to understand what a sign means in the Old Testament. When signs show up in the Old Testament and what a sign communicates.

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That's how we get there. And just so you understand right up front,

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I'm gonna give you the thesis. A sign in the Bible signals that judgment and salvation is coming imminently.

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Whenever God gives a sign, judgment is coming and salvation is coming. Anytime you see a sign, those two things are happening.

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So let me give you an example of this. In the Bible, signs demonstrate salvation and judgment.

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Think about the time of Noah. Noah's sign to the rest of his world was the ark.

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Imagine the silliness of building an ark in the middle of a landlocked area. Noah's building it for 100 years and he's preaching to the people to repent and turn to God before it's too late.

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That ark of Noah was a sign of the salvation for anyone who would get in and it was a sign of judgment for anyone who stayed out.

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The ark was God's sign to the people of imminent judgment.

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Now, I wanna point out something very basic here. Signs in the Bible are not for a different people at a different time.

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They're for the people who receive them. So when you read about signs in the Bible, they're not 2 ,000 years later applied to a particular people like us.

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Signs are always applied to the people who receive them. Noah did not build an ark and say, 2 ,000 years from now, there's gonna be a flood so you better repent.

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That's not how signs work. Signs are imminent for the generation who receives them. Another example, the

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Exodus. God gives the sign of a burning bush to Moses. Why?

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Because God intends to save his people and to condemn his enemies. God gives Moses the sign of leprosy when he sticks his hand into his coat and he gives him the sign of the snake, the serpent, that when he throws down his staff.

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Why? To tell the people that God is going to save them by destroying Egypt. And then

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God gives 10 plagues back to back to back, one after another, decimating

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Egypt, judgment, and yet freeing his people, salvation. Then God gives blood on the doorpost during the

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Passover. Why? Salvation for those who painted it on the doorpost and judgment for those who didn't.

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God parted the waters of the Red Sea. Why? To save Israel but to judge Egypt. When you add all of these up, and there's a lot of signs in the

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Exodus account, God is stacking signs and symbols in order to demonstrate that he's bringing salvation but he's also bringing judgment.

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Think about Mount Sinai. Mount Sinai, when it was shaking and quaking and thunder and lightning and earthquakes and all of it, that was happening on top of the mountain, was a sign to the people of Israel.

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What was it a sign of? Salvation if they would obey the terms of the covenant and yet condemnation and destruction if they would disobey.

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Salvation if they would obey. Yes and amen but look at it. The golden calf example, judgment.

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The clans of Korah, judgment. The entire generation that died in the desert because they refused to go in and enter the land, judgment.

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Think about Jericho. The Ark of the Covenant was the sign of God and they took that Ark and they marched around the city and can you imagine the people of Israel, especially the men who were out there, how foolish they must have felt.

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They didn't have weapons, they had their voices and they had the Ark of the Covenant and they were supposed to sing and shout.

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Can you imagine how foolish they must have felt until they understood the point? The point is that this

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Ark was a sign of God's coming disaster upon Jericho and God's salvation of his people so that when they sang and shouted on that seventh day,

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God destroyed Jericho and God saved his people. Elijah and Mount Carmel.

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I'm just giving a couple, they're all over the Bible. Elijah and Mount Carmel, Elijah preaches and tells them to repent.

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Fire comes down from heaven as a sign of Elijah's truthfulness of his message. What was it for? It saved

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God's people and it put the prophets of Baal under the curse, under the doom. Think about Hezekiah, Hezekiah prayed.

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The Assyrians were, he was no match for the Assyrians. His army was no match for them. 100 ,000 strong led by the greatest general of that time,

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Sennacherib. Hezekiah prays and God gives him a sign and what happens?

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It is for the salvation of the Jews and it throws the Assyrians into an absolute panic and confusion where they kill each other so bad were they humiliated that they didn't even write about it in their history.

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The signs and there could be more that were given but unlike America where our signs really don't mean much to us, there probably are many days in your life that you don't think about Uncle Sam.

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There are probably many days in your life where you don't think about the Statue of Liberty. There are probably many days in your life you don't think about the signs that are native to us.

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That's not true for them. The signs were important to them because they demonstrated that something was getting ready to happen.

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When you saw a sign, it meant that judgment was very soon upon the horizon or salvation was very soon upon the horizon.

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The generation that received those signs were supposed to recognize that something big was getting ready to happen.

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That's why when Jesus came doing miracles, which are signs, preaching sermons that he called signs, telling parables that he called signs and even pointing to his crucifixion as the sign of Jonah.

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When Jesus came stacking sign after sign after sign, the first century Jews should have recognized that two outcomes were coming very quickly.

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The judgment of the wicked, which happened in AD 70 and the salvation of the righteous, which happened when those who believed in Christ and were saved.

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They should have recognized it and yet they didn't. So when we get to the book of Revelation, we've now seen that all of the

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Old Testament and the Gospels have this sort of motif that signs equal salvation and judgment.

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It is not just the story of salvation, it's the story of both. Now that we recognize that, now we need to turn to the book of Revelation and understand how it takes this same theme of signs and applies them in its pages and it applies them in very interesting ways.

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Revelation 1 .1 says this, the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him to show his bond servants the things which must soon take place.

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I love that passage by the way. The things which must soon take place, not 2 ,000 years later.

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Revelation is not about things that happen 2 ,000 years later. Revelation is about things that happen soon to the first century audience.

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The things which must soon take place and he sent and communicated, underline that word, communicated it by his angel to his bond servant

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John. That word communicated there is the verb form of sign. The Greek word for sign is, well

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I just lost it. The verbal form is semino, semino.

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This is the verbal form. So John is saying this is a sign book and if you're a first century

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Jew, you would have recognized that this is a book of imminent disaster and imminent salvation.

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That's what you would have recognized. That's what you would have heard. It is not like us today where we're looking at this book and saying, well that's a fantastical image.

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Oh that's a really cool thing that happened there. We read it like a comic book. They should have read it as a warning of doom.

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John is literally saying the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to Jesus to show his bond servants the things which must soon take place because he sent and he signed it.

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He signified it. And revelation, just like the exodus, is filled with many signs.

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I'm sure we've talked about this before, but when God repeats things in the Bible, that means that the certainty of it increases.

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Right, it's like amplification. So when God repeats his own name, holy, holy, holy, he's amplifying it, saying that it's infinitely holy.

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When Jesus says Martha, Martha, he's giving her terms of endearment.

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He's amplifying her name, showing her that, Martha, I know you, I love you. When the Bible repeats and echoes signs, it is ratcheting up the intensity to show that a small judgment is not coming, but a massive judgment and a massive shift in the history of salvation.

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It's coming. Just like in the exodus, the book of Revelation stacks one sign after another after another, and the

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Jews of the first century should have noticed it, and they should have repented, and they should have turned to Jesus Christ because the disaster that Jesus prophesied in Matthew 24 was coming.

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Revelation itself tells us why the Jews were going to come under the judgment of God because she killed

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God's son, and she also killed God's people in the first century, and the book of Acts discusses all of the different persecutions that the

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Jews of that first century perpetrated upon the early church. Disaster was coming.

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The book of Revelation was supposed to be a warning to them, but in their sin and in their haughtiness, they ignored it, and they pushed forward until the

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Lord destroyed them. Here's a couple examples of signs in the book. The seven lampstands.

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This is not literal. This is not literal. When you go to the seven churches of Asia Minor, you are not going to see seven lampstands at the entrance of every church.

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This is communicating that God, seven is the perfect number, God is the light who brings light into the church, which is a sign of their salvation because the light of the world has come to dwell among his people, but it's also a sign of judgment for those who are outside of the church because they don't live under the light of God.

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They live in the darkness of their sins. So these seven lampstands are a sign of salvation and judgment.

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The title Synagogue of Satan is a sign in the book of Revelation chapter two and three that's pinning the first century

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Jews as a gathering that is satanic in nature.

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That's not a mild insult. That's a covenant woe. Remember Jesus in John chapter eight said that your father is not

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Abraham, your father is the devil. John is repeating this in apocalyptic imagery saying that your father is the devil and your satanic worship that you think is

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Christ or you think that is godly, you think that is honoring to Moses is actually going to be what brings woes upon you.

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The book of Revelation calls the early first century Jews Jezebels. That's not the title that you wanna be called if you know your

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Old Testament. He calls them Balaams. You remember Balaam who was paid to try to lead the people of Israel into sin and idolatry.

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That's not a title that you wanna be called if you're a faithful Jew. God gives seven bowls and seven seals and seven trumpets.

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If you read those, and we don't have time to cover all of them today, I'm just giving sort of a very large overview.

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If you read them, they sound a lot like the plagues of Egypt. Why is that? Because the

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Israelites of the first century had become just like the Egyptians. They were the ones who were persecuting

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God's people, not Pharaoh. They were the ones who were killing God's people, not Pharaoh, and they were the ones who were getting ready to be drowned under the fury of God's wrath, not the

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Egyptians. There's four horsemen in the book of Revelation. That is a sign.

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We are not awaiting horse riders in the sky who are gonna come down and do mean things to the people of Earth.

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These are symbols and signs that God's covenant doom and covenant woes are coming, and if you read those, they look a whole lot like Deuteronomy 28, which details the covenant curses that'll come upon Israel when she's unfaithful.

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Exodus, or sorry, Revelation 19, 18 and 19, Judah is described as a high priest.

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If you read her outfit in Revelation 18 and you look back to Exodus 28, she's dressed like a high priest, and it says that she, dressed as a high priest, was whoring herself with the beast.

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Who is the beast? The beast is the one who comes out of the sea and travels from the east and comes to the land of God.

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Who is that? It's Rome. Daniel, in Daniel chapter seven, describes

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Rome as a beast. Daniel seven tells us what this symbol means.

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Rome is the beast. And here we have Israel, Judah, whoring herself with Rome.

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This absolutely happened in the first century. We don't have time to go into a ton of it, but the temple became a bought and paid for, a pay -to -play sort of thing.

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We think about the temple as having high priests who are true and good. That's not true. By the 200s, under a man named

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Antiochus Epiphanes, maybe you've heard of him, he ended the line of the priesthood.

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There is no more legitimate priest after 200 BC. So for 200 years, illegitimate priests who were bought and paid for by whatever power was in play were put into the temple, not from the line of Aaron, like they were supposed to be, not from Aaron's son, the line of Zadok, which is what a true priest was supposed to be, but they were put in place as a political appointment.

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So that when you get to Herod the Great, Herod the Great is picking and choosing who he wants to be priest. This is why

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Caiaphas, when you read the history of it, held the priesthood longer than any other priest at that time because he was a master politician, but he was not from the tribe or from the line of Aaron.

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He was an illegitimate priest. So Herod, deriving his power from Rome, is appointing priest, the whore is in bed with Rome.

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Do you see the imagery there that's being played out? And because of that, this high priest who is whoring herself with Rome in Revelation 18 comes to utter destruction in AD 70.

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That's just a few examples in the book of Revelation. Signs are used to show that imminent judgment is coming for the enemies of God, but imminent salvation is coming for the people of God.

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And there's all sorts of examples that we could give, but that's the point. Now when we turn to Revelation 12, the first time the word sign appears in the book of Revelation as a noun occurs in Revelation 12.

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A great sign appeared in the heavens. If you are an ancient person and if you are a Jew, you would have thought, okay, sign, judgment, and salvation.

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I better be on the right side of this one. I'm gonna read all of Revelation 12 for a second to give you an idea of what's going on.

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Because this great sign concerns the birth of Christ. His birth is a sign. His birth is what awakened the covenant blessings upon God's people and the covenant wrath upon God's enemies.

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The birth of Christ was a sign from God of both salvation and judgment.

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So let me read. A great sign appeared in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and her crown of 12 stars.

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And she was with child and she cried out being in labor and in pain to give birth.

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This is Jesus. Then another sign appeared in heaven. And behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and 10 horns and on his heads were seven diadems.

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And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth so that when she gave birth, he might devour her child.

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And she gave birth to a son, a male child, again, that's Jesus, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.

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And her child was caught up to God and to his throne. And then the woman fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared for her by God so that she would be nourished for 1 ,260 days.

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And there was a war in heaven. Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war and they were not strong enough.

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And there was no longer a place that was found for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world.

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He was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him. And then I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our

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God and his authority of his Christ have come for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down.

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He who accuses them before our God day and night. And they overcome him because of the blood of the lamb and because the word of their testimony.

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And they did not love their life even when faced with death. For this reason rejoice all heavens and you who dwell in them.

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Woe to the earth and the sea because the devil has come down to you having great wrath, knowing he has only a short time.

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And when the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child.

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But the two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman so that she could fly into the wilderness to her place where she was nourished for a time and a times and half a time.

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But from the present of the serpent. And the serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman so that he might cause her to be swept away with the flood.

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But the earth helped the woman and the earth opened its mouth and drank up the river which the dragon poured out of his mouth.

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So the dragon was enraged with the woman and went off to make war with the rest of her children who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.

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What we have here is an apocalyptic vision of the birth of Christ, of the death and ascension of Christ and what happens after his ascension.

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This is important because this teaches us something about our theology. When Jesus ascended into heaven, according to Revelation 12, he ascended to heaven to make war with the serpent.

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If you remember an Old Testament book of Job, Satan has access to heaven and Satan comes and he accuses all of the saints day and night.

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He wanders to and fro upon the earth and he comes and he makes accusations against the saints. Here in Revelation 12, because of Christ's faithful resurrection and ascension,

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Satan is cast out of heaven. The casting out of Satan from heaven happens when

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Jesus ascends. Satan then is cast down to the earth. What is his purpose? His purpose is to make war with the church and if we had 10 ,000 hours,

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I could show you how that happened in that first 40 years of the church's history, how

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Satan made war with the saints. These are signs, not just of a cuddly manger scene, but they're signs of God's judgment that is coming upon his rebels.

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First, the rebel of Satan. The rebellion of Satan and his followers is gonna be put down by Christ.

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His birth is the first shot fired in that war and he will win that war.

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The rest of it is judgment upon the rebels, those who persecute God's people will be put down as 1

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Corinthians 15, 25 says that Jesus is gonna put all of his enemies under his feet. That's what Revelation 12 is arguing for, that Jesus is gonna put all of his enemies under his feet so that he can bring to salvation all his people.

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The sign of Jesus's birth. Is a sign of cosmic warfare. A sign of judgment and a sign of salvation.

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A sign of war. That war raged first in the heavens, that war spills out onto the landscape of earth and that war continues 2 ,000 years later as Jesus is continuing to put his enemies under his feet as he reigns from his throne in heaven.

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That is what Revelation 12 in a macro sense is all about and it's really important that we understand that because if we don't understand that, we won't understand

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Christmas correctly. We won't understand Christmas as being about a war because it is.

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We will understand Christmas as a hallmark and lifetime movie channel version that is nice and fluffy with lots of hot chocolate and tinsel and those parts are good.

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Those parts, all the decorations are good because Jesus brought the war. Think about it this way.

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There is no society on earth that gets to the point of the level of thought that we put into our decorations if they don't have peace.

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You can't decorate your home if you're at war. You can't read literature if you're at war.

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You don't read poems when you're at war. The high parts of society, the richer things of society come after you've been granted peace.

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So the reason that Christmas can be joyful, the reason that this season can be filled with laughter and mirth, also mirth, is because Christ won the war.

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In this sense, the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ is a great sign. It is a great sign that judgment came upon our greatest enemy which was

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Satan, sin and death. It is a sign that he brought war to all the rebels who will eventually be put completely down and to where Isaiah chapter nine, verse six through nine is come true.

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Do you know what that passage says? This passage is one that I love to harp on at Christmas because it is missed on the extent of how good it is.

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Listen to this. For all of us here who know Christ, this is what the nativity is all about.

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For a child will be born to us and a son given to us and, most important word in this passage, and the government will rest upon his shoulders.

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That means he was born to rule. He wasn't just born to lay in a manger. He was born to rule.

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And his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

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And there will be no end, say that, no end. There will be no end to the increase of his government or his peace.

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Look around. If you think America is still not completely under the government of Christ, then his job isn't finished yet.

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If you look at Sudan, or if you look at Somalia, or if you look at North Korea, and you say that government does not look like Christ, well, then

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Christ's job is not finished yet and Christ will not return yet. Christ will not return until the increase of his government knows no end.

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On the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore, the zeal of the

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Lord will accomplish this. The zeal of the Lord will accomplish the kingdom of God expanding until there is no end.

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How can we have a view of the end of the world that stops short of the peace of Jesus extending everywhere?

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If God promised it against his own character, it's going to happen. The nativity of Christ is the war for the world that will deliver the world back to Jesus in just the way that it was before the fall.

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If we don't believe that, we don't believe Isaiah 9. For us who know

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Christ, that is the salvation that we've been brought into that will remake the world according to the image of Jesus.

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This child born in Bethlehem's manger has toppled the empire of Rome.

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It has toppled empires and kingdoms for 2 ,000 years and it will continue to topple all who oppose

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King Jesus. But his birth was also a sign of judgment.

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Psalm 2, we read this earlier, says this, "'I will surely tell of the decree of the

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Lord. "'He said to me, you are my son, "'today I have begotten you.'" That's about Jesus. "'Ask of me,' it says

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God telling his son Christ, "'after he is resurrected from the dead.

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"'Ask of me and I will surely give you the nations "'as your inheritance and the very ends of the earth "'as your possession.'"

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Do we think that Jesus, after he rose from the dead and God said, ask of me, son,

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I'll give you the entire world, I'll give you all of it and Jesus is like, nah, I'm good, no.

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God promised in Psalm 2 to give the entire earth to Jesus and Jesus asked and Jesus received and he will continue to receive until this comes to pass.

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And then it says of Jesus, this doesn't fit the European hair model Jesus that we've created in America, but it says, "'You shall break them with a rod of iron.'"

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What is that? The enemies of Christ. Jesus is gonna break his enemies. He's gonna shatter them like earthenware.

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"'Now therefore, all kings and presidents and potentates "'and parliamentarians and senators and whoever else, "'show discernment.'"

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That means act with intelligence, people. "'Take warning, all judges of the earth. "'Worship the

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Lord with reverence "'and rejoice with trembling and do homage to the son "'so that he does not become angry with you "'and you perish in the way, "'for his wrath may soon be kindled.'"

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Jesus is going to bring this earth under his dominion. He will either bring this earth under his dominion with people bowing down and worshiping him or he will bring this earth under his dominion with their neck under the heel of his sandal.

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Brothers and sisters, signs in the Bible mean something. They mean judgment for the wicked and they mean salvation for the righteous.

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The judgment upon the wicked is more fierce and ferocious than you could possibly imagine and the salvation that God has called us into because of Christ is deeper and wider and better than you could ever dare dream.

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The question that the nativity of Christ presents us with is what side of the sign are we gonna be on?

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Are we gonna be on the side of belief and salvation or are we gonna be on the side of the rebels and destruction?

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That is what the nativity of Christ, this great sign has beckoned and heralded to the world for 2 ,000 years.

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What side of the manger are you gonna be on? What side of Christ are you gonna be on? And with that,

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I wanna finish with a short poem that I think makes this point really clearly.

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Beneath the stars and shadows deep while shepherds watch their quiet sheep, a blaze of glory split the skies, a war began that never dies.

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No chariots rolled, no swords were drawn, no banners waved at break of dawn.

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Instead, a king in secret came, his conquest veiled in infant frame. In a surprise attack with heaven's force, he stormed the barns of ass and horse.

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A blitzkrieg's blast behind enemy lines, the stables veiled his grand designs.

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Christ is Lord, not Caesar's throne. The angels sang in thundered tones. A fiery star with brilliance gleamed led

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Magi to this baby king. Three kings from east were gifts in hand drawn by the star of Bethlehem.

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The child had come, his reign begun, a kingdom forged for God's own son.

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So raise your hearts and lift your voices. The world shall bow while heaven rejoices.

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Merry Christmas to all. Let praises soar. This child has come, and that means war.

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A war that began in wooden trough, a war that continued on a wooden cross.

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A war overseen from heaven's throne, a war until all the curse is gone.

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Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that you came bringing war.

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We thank you that the great sign that appeared in the heavens was your birth, and it signaled both the salvation of your people, and the judgment of your enemies.

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Lord, let us never adopt a view of history that ends in defeat.

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As surely as you will save your people, you will crush your enemies.

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As surely as you have brought your elect into salvation, salvation, you will bring any and all who oppose you into reprobation.

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Lord, you are the king of history. You are the king of glory. You are the king who rules with an iron fist, and you are the king who will turn this rebel planet back into a garden of Eden once more.

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Lord, help us to believe what scripture says about you. And Lord, help us to be delighted that the future of our world is not liberalism, secularism, socialism, feminism, and all of the deadly isms.

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The future of our world is Christ, and only