Have yourself a Supernatural Christmas 

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry, aka Duplex Gratia Radio, as we say in New England. I don't know if I should laugh anymore or not. I was forwarded a Facebook comment that I guess was in the S. Lewis Johnson Facebook page, and someone listened to the interview I did with Pat Apendroth and the Pactom and Mike Grimes about S. Lewis Johnson and the Colossians commentary, and this person said that the interview was good once he got past the giggling-like schoolgirl's introduction.

Do I sound like a schoolgirl to you?

I thought to myself, what a buzzkill. And we sit here, when Steve's here, it's we, today it's just the royal we, and we sit here and we talk and we laugh a little bit, and I'm imagining, I'm imaginary, I'm thinking of an imaginary buzzkill right now.

I don't think I've ever said buzzkill in the 3 ,600 shows that I've done, but hey, what are you going to do? Anyway, you can write me, mikeatnocompromiseradio .com. If you'd like to get some bulk books for Christmas, you want to go buy one or two, you can just.

Go to Amazon.

If you want to buy bunches, gobs, heaps, piles, you can email me, mikeatnocompromiseradio .com. Hal Roche said this, some businessmen are saying that this could be the greatest Christmas.

Ever.

I thought the first one was.

Here's more schoolgirl laugh.

I've been thinking, of course, about Christmas. Today is December 8th in real time. This would probably play 15th-ish or something like that. I thought, well, they try to take the Christ out of Christmas, right?

Xmas. I don't even mind Xmas that much because shorthand for Christos in Greek is X. That's where we get the sound CH in Christ. In Greek, it's an X. If you put an Xmas, to me, that's just shorthand, just like when I draw a circle and a line through the middle from left to right, that's theos because it's a TH sound in Greek, or for the Holy Spirit, I just write HS.

When I write, it's theta HS, so there you have it. Anyway, it's proper to think about the supernatural when it comes to Xmas. Sometimes I think we have our eyes so focused on this earth. We walk by sight, not by faith all the time.

If you're not careful, you are going to think about Xmas in a secular way. What do I mean by that?

If I could talk, it might help.

It means that there's supernatural and natural. If we just kind of think in a natural way, because that's what society pushes, that's what Xmas is all about for them, we're not thinking about the supernatural.

So tonight, we're going to have a little concert at the church, an outreach concert, a Xmas concert, and I give a little devotional, a 5 or 10 minute deal, and so I'm going to practice on you today. So if you pull this up and watch it, I guess you can do that, or you can just listen to me talk a little bit about the greatest Xmas ever, doesn't even have to be on December 25th, right?

And it has to do with the supernatural, the divine, very important in our secular, humanistic, philosophical world. So instead of putting Christ back into Xmas, although that's good, putting the supernatural back into Xmas, back into Christians, I need to start this whole show over.

I mean, this is a bad show so far. Oh, that was an excellent show, though. Remember the first time you watched that show, and you saw the ending, and you just thought, wow, that was amazing. Still be amazing today, even if you watched it.

Four Supernatural Reminders of Christmas

Let me give you four supernatural reminders associated with the birth of Christ, four supernatural reminders, just so you can make sure to think about Xmas, the incarnation of Jesus, from the perspective that there's natural and supernatural, and we believe in the supernatural.

I think it was J. Gresham Machen that talked about two religions in the world, supernatural and the non-supernatural, biblical and liberal. Number one, the first supernatural reminder associated with the birth of Christ, the pregnancy was a divine pregnancy.

The pregnancy was a divine pregnancy. Matthew 1, 18, now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child by, it was not another man, by the Holy Spirit, and so this is a divine pregnancy.

I did, for fun, look up the message version. Let's see what it says. The birth of Jesus took place like this. His mother Mary was engaged to be married to Joseph. Before they came to the marriage bed, Joseph discovered she was pregnant.

It was by the Holy Spirit, but he didn't know that. Joseph, chagrined but noble, determined to take care of things quietly so Mary would not be disgraced.

Okay.

There you have it.

All right. I guess I've heard worse. That kind of gets the gist of it. I prefer more word for word translations, obviously. Well, if you understand a little bit about the culture back in those days, you would understand that there would be an engagement, right?

You'd have your marriage arranged, matchmakers would be the parents, of course, and then there'd be something called a betrothal. It was legally binding, one year, no marriage bed, promise to marry, and then the marriage ceremony itself.

And so they're technically considered married in this betrothal period. Don't think of our modern day engagement stuff. And before they come together physically, intimately, which would be after the marriage ceremony, she was found to be with child.

Probably had morning sickness, stomach growing, et cetera. And so Joseph wasn't the father, and Mary's a virgin. No other man was the father, and the text says, found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.

He, the Holy Spirit, was the source. It's a betrothal period, Mary's pregnancy's found out. I don't know if she's feeling it, wondering what's going on, and now she begins to show, and now Joseph asks, and after having a long genealogy in Matthew, the first 17 verses, now we have the divine genealogy, human genealogy, now divine genealogy, and the Spirit of God.

And like in creation, kind of hovering, Luke chapter one talks about it in a very discreet.

Way.

Without male DNA, causes the baby to be conceived. It's a virgin conception. And Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, desired to put her away secretly. And so in the betrothal period, you're called husband, even though you're not having the literal marriage ceremony yet and sleeping together.

He didn't want to disgrace her. I mean, it's disgraceful enough to be pregnant, but he was a righteous man and he wasn't going to marry her, and yet he still didn't want to expose her. So he decided to just put her away quietly, not with resentment.

We're not, we don't see that, and not with, I'll show you, not with anger, but with compassion. And we know more than he knows. He doesn't know yet that it's by the Holy Spirit. So here we have what's important with this supernatural conception is that Jesus is not tainted by sin, right?

Through the Father's line, here we have the Holy Spirit superintending, not even tainted by an egg that's tainted by sin, because the Spirit of God is making sure no sin. Jesus had to be sinless, otherwise he'd have to die for his own sins.

He couldn't die for our sins. And therefore we see this Savior who's going to be a true human, but truly divine, and therefore no sin. The deity of Christ, the eternal Son of God, is now taking on human flesh, making sure that he's not tainted by sin in any way, the Holy Spirit assuming, doing that.

And we have the true human and the true sinlessness of Jesus. No Adam sin, no personal sin, no sin from Mary, obviously no sin from Joseph, he's not even involved, to make sure we have a substitute, a spotless Lamb of God, to take away the sin.

Of the world.

Every other person has inherited by God's decree the sin of Adam, we call that imputation of Adam's sin, Romans chapter 5. But this virgin conception, with the Spirit of God working, guarantees, supernaturally, that this birth is going to yield a sinless Savior.

One writer said, "...the virgin birth is posted on guard at the door of the mystery of Christmas, and none of us must think of hurrying past it. It stands on the threshold of the New Testament, blatantly supernatural, defying our rationalism, informing us that all that follows belongs to the same order as itself, and that if we find it offensive, there is no point in proceeding further.".

Here we have highlighted the supernatural birth of Jesus. This does not happen naturally, this is supernatural. Now, the birth was supernatural, I mean, natural, of course, but the conception, no. First supernatural thing associated with the birth of Christ was the divine pregnancy.

Second, the divine pronouncement. But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream saying, "...Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for that which has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.".

Now, I don't know about you, but when you look at wedding announcements or baby announcements, some of them are pretty wild. I mean, I saw a little fake scratch-off lottery tickets, and you scratch it off, and it says we're having a baby.

That's always kind of cute. People say they booked a table for three at the restaurant, and then, you know, you show up, and there's one extra, right, congratulations over the third table setting, and you kind of trick your spouse.

Or a diaper delivery comes to your door, and you let your spouse, the husband, answer the door, and then he figures it out. There's some pretty, I guess, probably some pretty cool ways to go ahead and do that.

I remember the first time that Kim was pregnant with Haley, and I just remember walking into the bathroom, and she had the little pregnancy deal, the little, almost looks like a, I don't know what it looks like, what do you call it if you want to take your temperature, thermometer, like a little thermometer-looking deal.

And I don't know. I mean, we were trying to have children. I don't know if one line means pregnant or two lines means pregnant. You know, I think it's a little easier now, plus or minus, or you're pregnant or whatever.

It says.

But she was, Kim was crying, and I don't know if she was crying because it's another month, because it had taken like eight months to get pregnant, it's another month that she's not pregnant, or she is pregnant.

So, here, for Joseph to know that his wife has not committed adultery, it's going to take a divine announcement. And therefore, God sends the angel to assure Joseph that this is not Mary's infidelity.

This is something that God is doing. I mean, put yourself in Joseph's shoes. What would convince you otherwise? Your wife, betrothed wife, is pregnant. I mean, if Mary said something to you, if you were Joseph, would that convince you?

It would take a divine, supernatural pronouncement, and just at the right moment, behold, the text says, under the gracious guidance of God, Lenski said, here, Joseph hears from the angel. And he has been convinced that what is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit, not of another.

Man.

We've got the divine pregnancy, the divine pronouncement or announcement, but to keep the peace, pregnancy, pronouncement. Third, divine pardon. Look at that double alliteration. Divine pregnancy, divine pronouncement, divine pardon.

I wonder if my fourth one will have the same thing. What else is going on here before I get into this passage? If you are praying for me, thank you for praying for me. By the time you hear this, I'll have started my second drug targeting the leukemia.

It's in my blood, bones, and lymph nodes. And good prognosis, they think they're going to get it all. I have to be in the hospital, though, all day Tuesday and all day Wednesday, maybe overnight even, for five consecutive Tuesday, Wednesdays.

So the 12th, 13th, 26th, 27th, no, that doesn't make sense, 12th, 13th, 19th, 20th, 26th, 27th, 2nd, 3rd, and 9th and 10th, something like that. Anyway, so far so good. Just pray. I don't know what it's going to make me feel like.

Right now I'm just tired. I set my alarm once in a while, but I'm just trying to get as much sleep as possible. And I don't really get much done these days. I meet with a few people, have a few meetings here or there, still preaching, probably have Pastor Steve preach soon enough here.

Anyway, thanks for praying. Divine pregnancy, divine pronouncement, divine pardon. Matthew 1 .21, and she, Mary, will bear a son, here's still this pronouncement, and you shall call his name Jesus, for it is he who will save his people from their sins.

Mary's pregnant. The angel announces, the angel's sent by God, that's what an angel means, right? Sent by God. With an announcement, we know it's a son before the ultrasound, and you, Joseph, the legal father, are going to name the child, and his name's going to be Jesus, because Jesus means savior and salvation, and Yahweh saves from Joshua, Joshua.

Jesus is going to save people from their sins. To Mary it was said in Luke 1, and behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end.

Now the text does not say, save his people from the Romans in some type of political rescuing. No, this is savior of sins. It's been said that mothers back in those days named their children Joshua often because they were hoping they'd have a son that would live up to their name to set Israel free.

But it is he who will save his people from their sins. Now we regularly talk about, are you saved, in Christian vernacular. Are you saved? And if you've been a Christian for any length of time, you know what that means, and you know that, I guess, technically it's shorthand for save from the wrath of God that you have earned as a sinner, and you have been delivered from the kingdom of darkness into the marvelous.

Light.

You have been saved from something, someone really, God and his holy vengeance and wrath, and you've been saved unto something, right, to be a trophy of God's grace, et cetera. I liked what R .C. Sproul said several years ago.

I was walking across the courtyard in the campus of Temple University in Philadelphia. I was alone minding my own business on the way to the faculty lounge in the School of Theology when suddenly out of nowhere, a gentleman stood up in front of me and blocking my movement.

Are you saved? He demanded. I wasn't quite sure how to respond to this intrusion, and the first words that came to my mouth were, save from what? What I was thinking but was given the grace to refrain from saying was that I'm certainly not saved from strangers coming up to me and asking me questions like this.

Save from what? I think my friend was as surprised as the question as I had been by his, and he kind of lost it. He stammered and stuttered and wasn't quite sure how to respond to the question, save from what?

Well, you know what I mean?

He replied, you know, Jesus, that brief encounter left me an impression, left an impression.

On me.

On the other hand, of course, I was delighted in my soul that someone cared. So I could ask you if you're listening, are you saved? And that means, are you saved from sin, from the consequences of sin and the guilt of sin?

Do you have someone to pay for your sin instead of you? Do you have a substitute? Do you have a representative to live for you and a substitute to die for you? Because sin is awful and it's an atrocity and it's against God and there has to be justice.

Here, Jesus, with his great divine pardon, it takes God himself, God-man, so he can be a representative man and he'll have enough righteousness for all those who would believe of God to save. It's he and he alone, the text shows in the original language.

Not anyone else, not a Pope, not Muhammad, not Joseph Smith, not a Buddha, not anyone else. There's salvation in no one else for there's no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.

And you need to be saved. Thankfully, by the grace of God, I was saved and we need to be saved, not from a bad self-image, not from bad economics, not from bad political parties, but saved from our sins.

We have trespassed against God, we have sinned, we have transgressed, we've committed iniquity, sometimes with our hands, sometimes with our hearts, sometimes with our mind, sometimes with our words. And the reason why Jesus came is to seek and save the lost, Luke 19 10, John 3 17.

God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Jesus said, I'm the door, if anyone enters by me, he will be saved and we'll go in and out and find pasture.

Acts 2, Peter said, and it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Acts 15, but we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus. And they brought them out and said, sirs, what must I do to be saved?

And they said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. You and your household. Here we have this Jesus that goes on to die for sinners, to fully assuage the wrath of God and then is raised from the dead to confirm that he has victory over sin, over Satan, over death, over hell.

And the only way you can have divine pardon is through trust in this God, man. It's not by works. It's not by simple things. It's not by religious things. It is by Jesus alone. And that's why you have to believe in order to be saved.

You can't save yourself. What must I do to save myself? No, no. What must I do to be saved? Someone has to be the savior and I have to be the saved. And if I have to be the saved, I can't do anything to be saved because then I would be the savior.

See what I mean? Save one. Oh, what's this? What's this right here? How did that get in the middle of this? I said blue suede, but I wanted it to be blue suede shoes.

Come on.

What's wrong?

We're out here.

Oh, I see another double alliteration. Divine prophecies. Divine prophecies. Fourth and finally, today on No Compromise Radio Ministry, I found a book called The World's Worst Predictions. And they've got all kinds of things.

Like King George II said in 1773, American colonies had little stomach for revolution. Of course, you know, the one with the white star line built a flagship Titanic and it was declared to be unsinkable as it was launched in 1912.

New York Times said in 1939, the problem of TV was that the people had to glue their eyes to a screen and that the average American wouldn't have time for it.

Now that's where I should have Ooga Chaka right here.

Matthew 1 .22. Now, all this took place that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is translated God with us.

Old Testament prophecies written hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years before this happened. How can you say, well, we're going to prophesy a virgin's going to bear a child? I mean, you might do what horoscopes do and palm readers, and, you know, you can have great joy.

You're going to have some success. Some people that are close to you will hurt you. I mean, I can do that. I mean, not hurt you, although I could, but just make up these general things that apply to everyone.

Here we have the virgin birth prophesied. It's implied back in the Old Testament was Genesis 3 with the announcement of the gospel that the seed of the woman is going to have victory over Satan and sin and death and hell.

How are we going to predict that there's going to be an offspring without a human father? God with us is predicted. I read about some forecasting rules. It's difficult to forecast the future. He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass.

And the moment you forecast, you know, you're going to be wrong. Just you just don't know when and in which direction. Matthew 1, 24, Joseph arose from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took her as his wife and kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a son and called his name Jesus.

Divine prophecy fulfilled. Who knows the future except God? And so today, and I'll say even tonight when I'm at the concert, there's natural thinking and supernatural thinking. And I want you to think about Christmas this year in a very supernatural way, knowing that only God could create a baby in a womb without sperm and an egg.

There's a pronouncement. Only an angel sent from God could convince Joseph that his wife was still pure. The divine pardon. If you look to Lord Jesus, you shall be saved and prophecies fulfilled so you can trust.

The Bible.

Isn't that good? Our response is thank you for the risen Savior. We believe, we trust there's an empty tomb. Of course, Jesus grew up to be a preacher of the gospel. Then he healed people, did all kinds of good for others, died on a cross for our sins and was raised from the dead.

He's crowned now in heaven and he's coming back soon. And we, as a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, get to proclaim the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous.

Light.

That's true. That's very true. Well, my name is Mike Ebenroth. This is No Compromise Radio. Glad you're listening today. If you have a question, you can always write me. We used to get a lot of questions, a lot of hate mail.

I think now Spencer weeds most of those out, but I still get some once in a while. Occasionally I'll look on Facebook and try to respond on the No Compromise website. Instagram, I hardly ever do because I'd get sucked into Instagram just scrolling down with these reels.

And Twitter, I don't know, I like Twitter. So we're there for Twitter. Mike Ebenroth, No Compromise Radio.